あいどく。

The recent months have not been what you'd call a productive period of my life, with the singular exception of my productivity as a reader. I have read several books in mere weeks, some of them insightful. Just today, I picked up a copy of Intellectual Liverwurst: Selected Poems & Stories by Clarence von Lipkenstein. The first poem reads, in full:

The Jewish man makes
more money than you,
and he deserves it—
because you are an asshole.

Intellectual Liverwurst is not one of the insightful books. P.J. O'Rourke and Gore Vidal are a bit more insightful, such as when O'Rourke argues, quite persuasively, that "government itself is an immoral act" in the final chapter of Parliament of Whores.

Vidal, meanwhile, attempts to describe all creation in a novel called, fittingly, Creation. In the fifth century B.C.E., the grandson of Zoroaster travels widely as an ambassador for the Persian court. He encounters the Buddah in India, Confucius in China, and finally a young Socrates in Athens. Two highlights:

Lais always had the gift of knowing what it is that people most want to hear. Although she would ascribe this to witchcraft, I suspect that she is simply more intelligent than most people--the ultimate magic.

And:

I have never visited any city in the world where I was not told that I had just missed the golden age. I seem never to be on time.

Insightful. I'm planning on spending some time tomorrow in the basement of Sam Weller's Bookstore (third-best bookstore in the country; best basement in North America, maybe ever) looking for gifts. Other goals: teach myself the new language of Blogger code (it's called widgets) and get rid of the pre-fab I've got going on here.