The first time I used the toaster here, the toast flew all the way across the kitchen and landed in the flower arrangement. The second time, it landed on -- and ruined -- a watercolor I was working on. Today, it sprung at me and hit me in the eye. I tire of its slapstick assaults, and may have to switch to cereal.

No it's not snowing in Amsterdam. The pictures on the right are from a snow storm we had in Vancouver this past January. I'm just testing the new Flickr batch uploader for Macs. It's great, and will be on the site soon -- and lots more cool stuff.

I just finished watching Happiness and am still digesting it. It's twisted, but good. But, on a related note, I am very happy.

Walking around at night in Amsterdam you appreciate the enormous windows on the front of every building. You can see inside most of them, and see Dutch people eating their dinner, or reading a book on the sofa. Someone told me that the reason they have no curtains on their windows is religious and/or cultural: they are not doing anything that they are ashamed to have the whole world see. I wonder too, if this Dutch tendency is why the prostitutes in the red light district also stand in windows.

I went to a great party last night (Thanks Liz!) where I watched the end of the Netherlands-Sweden soccer game. It was a great match, if you didn't see it, it went into overtime and was won by the Netherlands in penalty goals. I sound here as if I know something about sports. I don't.

• There will be a dearth of new photos since I don't have a cable for my cameraphone, or the little bluetooth attachment for my phone and my free data distro service has expired.
• Last night I went to meet up with Peter and Jeff and Bryan at de Balie, where they are having an Adaptive Path seminar (and where they have this horrific wallpaper in the upstairs balcony of a closeup a man's body hair). I also met Marrije, GNE player and fellow booklover, who was taking the seminar, and who gave me a lovely little crocheted bone for Dos Pesos. I wish I could take a picture, it is darling. After the cocktails, we headed over to de Koe, "the cow" where I we had dinner with some Dutchies and BBC folks.
• I have been rereading Mason & Dixon while I am here, one of my favorites.
• I watched Thirteen, and Rogerio has lent me Happiness.
• The other night at the Cafe de Waag Rogerio drank a beer while I had a glass of wine, and he said that one of the wonderful things about his new policy of buying fewer books is that he is slowly reading all the books he already owns. We talked also about Walter Pichler's Prototypen, Constant Nieuwenhuys' Utopian architecture, the island of Yap, where everyone's mouth is red from chewing betelnut, the difficulty of running our own businesses and the sirenlike call of the Regular Job.

Kafka Cooks Dinner by Lydia Davis

Once again, headlines from around the world tell different stories:

New York Times: White House Says Prisoner Policy Set Humane Tone
The Guardian: Afghan detainees routinely tortured and humiliated by US troops

• Water boils very fast here, being as we are below sea level.
• I left my cameraphone at the restaurant 11 atop Post CS, where I had gone to meet Teike. I didn't notice it was gone until 5 hours later, and I ran back. Fortunately someone had turned it in, but not without taking a couple pictures first. Too bad they weren't of something more interesting. Which gives me an idea for a story, or an episode within a story. A few years ago I borrowed the company digital camera -- this was when digital cameras were very expensive and more rare -- which the creative director had taken home with her over the weekend, and taken a group of erotic photos of herself with her boyfriend with great blackmail potential. These were still on the camera. I was kind enough to erase them without showing them to anybody. I know a few people who would have loved to get their hands on them. She had enemies.
• Someone has gone around sticking little French Flags (the paper kind, on toothpicks) into every dog turd in this neighborhood. It is gross and amusing at the same time. Merde!
• Since I'm cooking for just myself, and not me and the mushroomhater, I can eat as many mushrooms as I want. Fungijoy.

We were discussing a well known online sociopath when I came across this description of sociopathy.

I know a half-dozen people who are like this.

• I have been listening to Glenn Branca's Symphony Number 6 (thanks Forrest!), subtitled Devil Choirs at the Gates of Heaven. It is fantastically infernal.
• I have to give the clerk at the Athenaeum Bookstore credit for not flinching at all as I bought Italian Vogue, Business Week, ArtForum and Revolver all at once. Revolver is AMAZING! A band called Slipknot is on the cover, and they look deranged. Italian Vogue is amazing too, but in a way that's probably already familiar to you. I bought these for the drawings I'm working on.
• Flaneurism=happiness.

Eye/Machine by Harun Farocki Originally uploaded by caterina.

I went to Post CS to the World Wide Video Festival (also home of Mediamatic, which I had a subscription to back when they had a print version). I finally got to see a Pierre Huyghe piece, he of the Big International Reputation, but I was most interested in seeing the Harun Farocki piece that was there, having read the detailed description of another work of his in The Threshold of the Visible World which centered around war and the cultural gaze.

In A Heart So White, one of the characters, Berta, the protagonist’s friend, belongs to a video dating service where the members send one another videos of themselves prior to arranging a meeting with each other:

A Heart So White, is like Marias’ other novels…perverse, sophisticated, foreboding, strange and brilliant.

I've arrived, my flight was fine, the apartment is great, I've taken a bath, will finish my novel, and will have a little nap before I'm here for real.