Journal of a Sabbatical

March 20, 2001

really i was

Today's Reading: The Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan, Coffee-Houses by Ferenc Bodor

I was going to write an entry today. Really I was. Things to be written about just continue to accumulate all over the place.

I never did write the entry I'd planned for Sunday about Coffee-Houses by Ferenc Bodor. The first time I read this book, over potato casserole and espresso at Múzeum Kávéhaz, I laughed out loud which was really embarrassing because I was dining alone surrounded by mirrors and German tourists. Do any actual Hungarians eat at these famous coffee houses anymore? The word I used to describe it was "bizarre". It's more than bizarre. It's surreal, subversive, sarcastic, spot-on. Woe unto him/her who picked up this book expecting a touristic guidebook to the traditional coffeehouses of Budapest. It's a commentary on socialism. It's a commentary on privatization (or as István has called it "outbreak of wild capitalism"). So on Saturday night I started reading it aloud to Nancy, keeping her in stitches. We earnestly tried to figure out whether Bodor liked or disliked each coffeehouse he described. We speculated on how the Chamber of Commerce got duped into publishing this or wondered whether they were subversive too. So, I like, bought this as a gift for Mark as it reflects our nostalgia for the coffeehouses of Harvard Square or for that matter our nostalgia for Harvard Square, which actually used to be an interesting place with used-book stores, coffee houses, independent quirky shops, nary a sign of the Gap or Abercrombie and Fitch or Barnes and Noble or Starbucks... and we don't even have outbreak of wild capitalism to blame. Wild capitalism implies small entrepreneurs competing fiercely, but this new corporate homogenization of America/the world is something altogether different. How long will it be before Kalvin tér is just like Harvard Square? How long before Starbucks buys out Múzeum Kávéhaz and New York Café and Gerbaud and Lukács? How will I know if I am in Boston or Budapest or Seattle?

I never did write a rant about the terrible service at Best Buy, where they made us wait an hour to buy a Compaq Presario that was on sale on Friday.

I never did write a rant about how the Presario came with Windows Millennium Edition preinstalled, which for some reason does not include Microsoft Backup. I searched high and low on the disk for backup.exe and then went to Barnes and Noble, bought an O'Reilly book (did I ever tell you that I knew Tim O'Reilly back when he was a contract tech-writer with a stable of good contract tech-writers and not a publishing magnate? The late, great MASSCOMP figures prominently in Tim's rise to power.) that told me Me does include Backup but you have to install it yourself from the CD as an add-on. Is that crazy or what?

I never did write about how irrational pessimism in the stock market is eroding my fortune at a rapid pace. At this rate I'll have about two more weeks of sabbatical instead of two more years. Aiiiiieeeee~!

I never did write about what the hydrologists they keep interviewing on the local radio station are saying. But you can bet it isn't good news. Should I be filling sandbags?

I was going to write an entry today. Really I was.