� from the mission statement of the 1976 edition of the official Iraqi National Museum catalog

Someday when all of history is judged, it will not be written that a free country exported its freedom, but that a country without history destroyed everyone else's history. It is not a single museum that has been sacked, but the place inside each human soul where there is a reverence for all who have gone before us and all who will come after us.

� Rev. Joseph Ponessa, SSD, commenting on Piotr Michalowski�s History News Network editorial "The Ransacking of the Baghdad Museum Is a Disgrace"

So close and yet so far! I brought "German in 32 Lessons" by Adrienne, but I didn�t think also to grab the Langenscheidt (ha ha, I started typing "Langewiesche") off the same shelf, and as the grammar book does not have a word index in the back, the dictionary will be required. But there�s a blurb on the back of the book from Henry Miller, and the Preface/Vorwort stresses the importance of getting as much vocab as you can even at the initial expense of precise grammatical reckoning, my sentiments exactly, and a section titled "Beginners aren�t imbeciles!" begins, The boring repetition of inane exercises in �modern� methods is an insult to the intelligence. To repeat, endlessly, structured sentences is a sure way to kill the discovery of one�s own style. Right the fuck on, Adrienne. Where academic pursuits are concerned I am devoted to ritual out of both conscientiousness and superstition, so rather than starting off the project today with an online dictionary as my temporary guide, I�m going to wait until I can have my yellow helper beside me, and I guess I�ll need to swipe a notebook from the office-supply closet too. When I got in this morning, on time again � why do I punish myself? � deflated by the dictionary realization and bored by nine, I felt myself getting excited about the possibility, say, of dedicating the first two hours of every workday to Adrienne and the Langenschiedt and the lost lovely obedient schoolgirly pleasure of copying out vocab, watching new words appear in a new language but in my very own handwriting, gifts to me from myself, and I don�t know if that kind of schedule is long-term realistic, but oh man, it felt so good to get excited. I almost don�t want to say much because I�m afraid I�ll jinx myself.

(Discussion topic last night with Number Two: how if what I want is people who like me, who are interested in the same things I am and want to be introspective and analytical and media omniphages and who have all kinds of informed opinions they are merrily willing to have debates about � and I want not to have append sorry-if-this-sounds-like bragging every time I say these things and then make fun of myself lest, god forbid, I come off as intimidating � then what I need is to get my ass back to school. Period. Also, I�m starting to vacillate again on the liberal-arts grad-school issue: your comments welcome. When I was briefly corresponding with my old writing professor about the MFA option, he told me to ask myself *why* I wanted an MFA, what was my goal. This was instructive, and I�ve been thinking about the question as it applies to school in general. There�s a sense in which my goal is the same as everyone�s, and that�s to build up some kind of a self-distinguishing and marketable specialization while getting qualified to get a job that pays respectably, challenges me, lets me do work that somehow benefits other people, and doesn�t make me want to kill myself. However, that is not the kind of thing you can say in an application essay. My goal is also to be among people who, dammit, think like me, act as intellectual provocateurs in the sense that they introduce me to things I would not otherwise have known about and call bullshit on me as necessary, who challenge me and hold me to high standards and maybe even help me do something on a larger scale than I could have alone, who make me a better person with a better mind. I am not ready to say I want to be a professor or I want to be a writer and I don�t know if I ever will be. But maybe I�m ready to say I want to start thinking like one. This may not make coherent sense yet, and I apologize for that. I gots some mulling-over to do.)

Last night sucked sucked sucked in that when you�re all tucked up on the sofa with a movie on the VCR that you�ve been wanting to see for quite a while and then people show up with a DVD they also want to watch, even though both TV and DVD player are yours it would cross the line into bitchiness for you to stand your ground and refuse to take your videotape into your room and watch it on the tiny TV set with the cruddy sound, because after all you have a VCR in there too, and the only DVD player is in the living room. It especially sucked because over my cruddy sound I had to listen to the Dolby-digitalized perfection of the soundtrack to the Harry Potter movie, turned up extra loud so as to get all the (my) speakers working their audio magic. At the same time, I know I don�t have any right to be put out, because since I�m not around six nights a week, I recognize that I may have abdicated certain rights as a resident; Julian and Rebecca operate under the assumption that they�ll have the place to themselves, and on the rare nights when they walk in and I�m there I can their crestfallen expressions, and I do feel badly. (But: the worst case scenario would be a late fee, and is that so much to ask? But: I left a note on Tuesday morning stating that I would be there the following night.) But I can suck it up until September when the lease will end and my shackles break, and wherever I find myself living then could only be sumptuous by comparison, and, when I get them back, I will never take the comforts of home for granted again. It�s fine.

I have been doing some research about the sacking of the Baghdad Museum, and I�d wanted to write about it today, had in fact taken some notes towards an entry yesterday afternoon, but today there are some new wrinkles I want to investigate, so I think that bad boy has to wait until tomorrow. But will you humor me and just go read this article, which the Wash Post will be taking down from the free site soon? What I want you to see before it vanishes is the quote from Brigade Commander Col. William Mayville, "When you want to send the message, 'Hey, don't screw with the oil,' coming here was important." He says this in defense of the occupying army's priority as Kirkuk hospitals and businesses were being looted, which was to protect an oil stabilization facility and oil-gas separation facilities. It�s significant that a colonel and brigade commander sums up the "message" of the war like this; we can assume that he�s not extemporizing, that he�s been briefed and he knows what he�s talking about. And, yeah, it�s appalling that Karl Vick and Steve Vogel, who wrote the article, buried this damning admission so far down, but at least they included it. As of yesterday afternoon, when the article had been online for four days, the only other publication to have picked up the quote was the World Socialist Web Site. And, if I may adapt Professor Michalowski's terminology, that�s a fucking disgrace.