He’s back in the news, folks. After a recent spate of badly written books, (perhaps the world’s most famous living) novelist Salman Rushdie is once again in the center of controversy after Britain awarded him a knighthood on Saturday, June 16th. Once again, Iran is at the helm of the controversy, being one of the first countries to publicly announce that Britain’s honoring “one of the most hated men in the Islamic world” is a clear insult to Islam. And once again, the conflict is centered around Satanic Verses.

The situation, of course, is by no means simple since there has already been much violence done surrounding Satanic Verses. Starting eighteen years ago, there was a spate of riots, burning embassies, attacks on the novel’s translators, and, of course, the fatwa that, though thankfully did not ever come to death itself, meant the constant possibility of Rushdie’s own end for a good ten long years. I guess I’m trying to say that the actual material harm that has surrounded Satanic Verses came from both the insistence that the book be removed from bookshelves, and the responding insistence that book be continued to be published, or vice versa.

When asked how he felt about all that’s been done, Rushdie said that he can’t be responsible for the acts of madmen. This is, of course, undeniably true, but I can’t imagine that it’s easy for anyone to walk away from the idea that one’s own book has caused so much strife, and that his arrival on this conclusion was as simple as the manner in which he declared it. (more…)

Kris has been kindly nudging me to contribute to 12 Apostrophes for quite some time and I have held out till now. I thought why not give recognition where recognition is due and post something about the man who gave this webpage its name, one James Joyce. And what better day then Bloomsday, June 16^{th   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsday)} to celebrate the work of the man and give a shout out to one of my favorite authors.
 

Now, I could be mistaken and Kris and Donnie please correct me if I am, the name for the webpage/literary movement came from a random flip and point through Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and chance, fate, the hand of God drew your hands to this quote:
 

“The echo is where in the back of the wodes; callhim forth!                   
    (Shaun Mac Irewick, briefdragger, for the concern of Messrs            
Jhon Jhamieson and Song, rated one hundrick and thin per                    
storehundred on this nightly quisquiquock of the twelve apos-                
trophes, set by Jockit Mic Ereweak. He misunderstruck and aim           
for am ollo of number three of them and left his free natural ri-               
postes to four of them in their own fine artful disorder.)”
 

An apt quote in my opinion since there is nothing quite like “fine artful disorder” to make a creative venture work.
 

So, here is a first entry of sorts. Drink some Guinness and celebrate Joyce and his work.

I washed my cell phone the other day by submerging it in a tub of scalding, soapy dishwater, and it came out squeaky clean.

My downfall is that I don’t have a watch. Sans watch, I grab my phone to check the time. Friday night, with my right hand, I was trying to fill a pot full of water from the tap to cook some green beans. With my left hand, I was trying to check the cell phone. I should really know better than to tax my brain to attempt two tasks at the same time.

The result was pretty predictable. The pot in my right hand began to sag with the weight of the water, and my lighting-quick reflexes decided that, if it was a choice between saving my cell phone from falling into a bucket of hot dishwater, or saving the pot of water form spilling, by God, I wasn’t going to spill a single drop of that water!

Once that little peanut of logic in my frontal lobe noted that the cell phone in the dishwater was a priority of an entirely higher order, I cavalierly dropped my pot of green-bean water and scalded both hands blindly fishing my phone out of the dishtub.

The true miracle is, my phone survived. Not at first, of course. It was completely dead at first. But I learned a trick from my brother, who has soaked two different digital cameras at two different amusement parks, and saved them both; unscrew everything you can and let it dry out for a couple of days.

Voila! It wasn’t up to snuff immediately, though. After 24 hours of drying, the phone dialed the number six, ghost-like, as a single long tone whenever I flipped it open.

Six is speed dial for my Mom and Dad, so I almost called them about 12 times on Sunday. God, probably, was trying to give me a hint about filial duty and Honoring Thy Ma and Pa and what-not, but he gave up on me as a lost cause pretty quick, as, after 48 hours of drying, the six key fixed itself. All right!

Man, I should really call my parents . . .