No. But we get paid a princely sum to blog. Actually, our North Dakota headquarters have gold-plated toilet seats. Shhh… don’t tell anyone our funding secret.

First it was non-stop publicity for mangal pandey, now it is rushditty.

And M.I.A., the London bombings, my continuing obsession with the de Menezes case…

Blogs run off equal parts pointless outrage and pointless obsession.

I guess there are different ways to read the dedication, but for as disturbing as it was, it was perhaps the one thing that kept me reading the book without getting annoyed. It seemed honest, intentional and a bit manic. In other words, “human” and that made me listen, for once, without splitting the hairs of each line, praising the language hyperbolically or [physically] putting it down…

Speaking of language, I don’t think Updike knew what to say except to peg it as laborious. Well, he didn’t say that, that’s me-interpreting-him-interpreting-Rushdie, but it seems fairly obvious that he got stuck in the gates on this one, so much so that, dare I say, he had a hard time reviewing it.

And speaking of Rushdie… Sunday, at the Edinburgh Book Festival, he blamed Bush for radicalism in Islam and said something like “[Bush] succeeded in starting the jihad that ODB could not.” Sort of a misplaced comment, odd timing, as he also said quite a bit about Kashmir and how “benign” it once was, which tied nicely into the release of “Shalimar” but also seemed to disconnect him from the current political reality of Islam and Kashmir, which, despite its nostalgia, is what makes the book interesting.

(“OBL” not “ODB”–thought I’d get stupid and slip some Wu-Tang in there for ya’ll)