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Korovyov's Sickening,
Totally Useless Pince-Nez |
“Are you writers?” asked the woman in turn.
“Of course we are,” replied Korovyov with dignity.
“May I see your ID’s?” repeated the woman.
“My charming creature...” began Korovyov, tenderly.
“I am not a charming creature,” interrupted the woman.
“Oh, what a pity,” said Koroviev with disappointment, and he continued, “Well, then, if you do not care to be a charming creature, which would have been quite nice, you don’t have to be. But, here’s my point, in order to ascertain that Dostoevsky is a writer, do you really need to ask him for an ID? Just look at any five pages of any of his novels, and you will surely know, even without an ID, that you’re dealing with a writer. I don’t suppose that he ever had any ID! What do you think?” Korovyov turned to Behemoth.
“I’ll bet he didn’t,” replied the latter, standing the primus stove on the table next to the register and wiping the sweat from his sooty brow.
“You’re not Dostoyevsky,” said the citizeness, who was becoming addled by Korovyov.
“Well, but how do you know, how do you know?” replied the latter.
“Dostoyevsky is dead,” said the citizeness, but not very confidently.
“I protest!” exclaimed Behemoth hotly. “Dostoyevsky is immortal!”
“Your ID’s, citizens,” said the citizeness.
-- Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, The Final Adventures of Korovyov and Behemoth
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And the winner is...
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Last night, in celebration of the now completed GREs, some of the physicists got together to go to a beer tasting downtown. The scene was kind of strange; imagine a warehouse of beer taps and unshaven men.
I did get a chance to sample some very nice beers... and some horrid ones. I tried a "Weisse" beer, a style of beer I enjoyed in München (Munich), and it tasted kind of like cough syrup.
My favorite beer of the evening came from a Québec brewhouse, Unibroue. I had never seen beer in a corked bottle before, and I thoroughly enjoyed La Fin du Monde (The End of the World). Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to sample any of the other beers from that table, because large hairy men kept shoving me out of the way.
Now that the GREs are over, DLicks can now do a gig every week. Check out a recording of our November 2nd gig at the band's new website. And stay tuned for information about our upcoming gigs.
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Jesse Thaler: bassist, physicist, and now... leader of the (posterized) revolution!
Ok, maybe not.
Photoshop makes for great procrastination, though in truth, I look forward to getting back to my reading. I'm in the middle of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, and except for the fact that one of the key figures (Old Scratch himself) doesn't appear until page 238 of 534, I'm enjoying the (lengthy) discussion of music, musical genius, and the destruction of society. Light reading, eh?
Speaking of musical genius, I've been playing around with the new version of iTunes. There is a "sound enhancer" feature that somehow makes all my music sound three times better. I can't think of what it does, except that it must selectively amplify certain frequencies. Whatever the means, it is surely the work of dear Mephisto.
The last devilish note of the evening comes from my math textbook: "Problem 14. Show that almost all numbers in the interval [0,1] are satanic, i.e., the measure of [0,1] minus S is 0, where S is the set of satanic numbers." Numerology in an upper-level math course!
