2012-01-11

nightdog_barks: (Red Daisy)
2012-01-11 04:15 pm
Entry tags:

Wednesday

Beautiful day, sunny, 64 degrees (17.8 degrees Celsius), a light wind out of the south. Sometime tonight ... another cold front.

Read the first part of Chekhov's A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire, and so far it is just terrific. It's a tiny paperback, only about 6 1/2 inches by 4 inches and 110 pages. The translation (by Rosamund Bartlett, Anthony Phillips, Luba Terpak and Michael Terpak) is lively and colorful, with Chekhov lamenting the quality of sausage in Tomsk (" ... when I started chewing it, my teeth felt as if they had caught hold of a dog's tail smeared with tar ... "), buying a replacement trunk (" ... have bought myself some piece of shit made of leather ... "), and consorting with a Japanese prostitute in Blagoveshchensk ("She has an incredible mastery of her art, so that ... you feel as though you are taking part in an exhibition of high-level riding skill."). The book was $1.95 at Powell's Books.

Still getting zaps from the big machine -- 14 down, 19 to go. Rockin' and rollin', chiclets. Rockin' and rollin'.