The New Yorker ran a piece on Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner. He sounds barking mad for the most part, but I liked his observation that evolutionary biology deals with the unconscious maximizer, the genome, and economics deals with the conscious maximizer, the person.

They also quote his claim that all men would rape women and molest children if there weren’t laws to prevent it. Huh? I’m assuming it was taken out of context. There are effective mechanisms in most societies to prevent widespread rape—reputation damage, possibility of retribution, shame, future marketability, ‘morality’—that don’t rely on clumsy, written laws. Actual rapists have never been shown to have a finely-developed sense of legal consequences.

Watched Charade on Saturday. Just delightful; Henry Mancini theme, groovy, swirly titles, lots of glamorous shots of airports and Euro ski resorts. And Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy, oh my! One beautiful candy-colored, funnel-necked coat after another, and little kitten heels. My gasps got tiresome; Cary Grant played it much cooler.

Compared to Hepburn, Julia Roberts clonks around Ocean’s Eleven like a kid wearing her mother’s (huge) shoes. I’m horrified to find myself agreeing with sleazy old David Thomson, for once—she’s over. George Clooney needs a co-star who can walk with grace and sign a contract that lets her snog her leading man once in a while.

I’m mourning the death of my secret Julia-Roberts-movie vice.

Lunch room conversations:

Jesse wants a pet. A skunk, he thinks, a baby one with its stink glands removed. None of the petshops in New York will sell him one though, so maybe a monkey. Keeping a monkey is illegal, but he lives in a loft in Williamsburg so it doesn’t really matter. We speculate that he can pass it off as a roommate, a conceptual artist behind on his rent.

But maybe he’ll rescue some of the live petfood they sell in Chinatown, an eel or some frogs, and try to raise those instead. That way, he wouldn’t feel so bad if they died. They gain an extra month and all the coffee and Froot Loops they can stand.

James’ college friend found a rat on the street and kept it for a pet. He didn’t even keep it in a cage. This challenges our notion of ‘pet’.

No one has heard of the old English sport of ferret legging. I always have to google my “In Europe…” stories to be sure I’m not making them up. But it’s on the Internet, so it must be true.

God ‘elp the beast in me.

From the New York Times:

“At one company alone, Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond trading firm that lost more than 600 employees, at least 50 widows were pregnant when they lost their husbands, company officials said.”

It’s impossibly sad.

Some novels have a soundtrack thrust upon them. I am tormented by Tom Lehrer every time I dip into The Artist’s Wife, which is about Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel.

Aaaaaaaaal-ma, tell us
All modern women are jealous
You should have a statue in bronze
For bagging Gustav and Walter and Franz

Stays with me all bloody day. At very least, I should be humming Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. (But that supposes I know it from Chanel.)

A dictionary of Limerick-Dublin slang. Courtesy of Tim. Surprisingly accurate; I wish I’d had this when I left home to go to college in Dublin. Though I managed to pass without it. In second year, a Dublin guy said to me:

“Wow, you seem reeelly sophisticated considering you’re from Limerick.” Aka Stab City.

My mother always complained that there were five other Marys in her class at boarding school. At the Brooklyn party on Saturday, half the women wore “Mary” or “Maria” name tags. Standard issue 1950s Catholic names (Mum’s sisters are Breda and Theresa, hardly a great departure).

My grandparents’ generation were given solid English names, like Charles, William, Margaret, Winifred. They were born before Irish independence, and before airs and notions. We Lemass-era baby boomers, on the other hand, were given high-falutin’ old Gaelic names, hard to spell and worse to pronounce. Any Dearbhailes, Sorchas, or Siobhans you meet are almost certainly around 30. Mostly, our parents tried to punt with old names that were still saints’ names, like mine, but a few daring ones went all-out on Celtic myths and called their darlings Naoise, Oisin, or Niamh.

Then the pope visited Ireland in 1979. This was back before a papal visit was launched on just any old country, and we thought we were something special. People bought televisions for the event.

“Young people of Ireland,” he boomed, “I LOFF YOU!”

Seven years later, my mother started to see a trickle of small John-Pauls in her classroom. It grew to a flood in the next five years, and she dreaded them.

“John Pauls are nearly always thick as a plank. And bold, too. John Paul Brennan, John Paul Loughnane, the lot of them.” she says.

Why are baby names subject to fashion and class distinctions in some countries and not in others?

Back in July, I met a woman who has no sense of smell. She shook huge quantities of salt and pepper onto her salad to prod her tastebuds, but most flavors were lost on her. I couldn’t imagine being deprived of my wine-loving gluttony, but she’d never known anything different.

Barbara Kingsolver has a piece in The Poisonwood Bible where Adah returns to America after years in the Congo. She marvels at supermarkets, which have a massive, odorless arrays of food, and misses the smell assaults of her African market.

The US is terrified of smell, I think. Procter & Gamble has warned us about all the nooks that harbor body odors, and we’re careful to hunt them down with the right products. There are too many people in New York to escape smells completely—our garbage ripens on the sidewalk, and Chinatown smells of raw fish and cooking all winter long. For the most part, though, you can persuade antiseptic Americans to bond over hushed stories of the guy in the office who had B.O., or the time they rode the Paris metro.

I wonder, what’s the big deal?

My friend Mark is taking steroids for a particularly nasty sinus attack, and can now smell properly for the first time in years. The experience seems traumatic. He’s being mugged by a sense he’s ignored until now. He sends me plaintive notes about previously unremarked smells and tastes—cleaning fluid, garlic breath, Diet Coke.

“I’m particularly concerned about the cat’s ass,” he says.

I realize that compared to him, I’ve been living in the olfactory equivalent of Pepys’ London, all chamber pots and reeking fish. I kind of like it. Nostalgie de la boue.

Could we launch a serious threat to P & G by offering sinus cauterization as a cosmetic procedure for the sensitive? No more need for Shake ‘n’ Vac, scented tampons, or Diptyque candles at $45 a pop.

On second thoughts, the economy might collapse altogether.

The candy jar in our office kitchen is full of Butterfingers, which I hate. I am reduced to stray Jolly Ranchers.

American candy sucks.