In the entryway to the large, central cube, Vonderwelt finds a letterboard announcing an event hosted by a certain Dr. Glenn Bacca, Ph.D.: “Building Trust, Building Sales: It’s Your Move!” On a fold out table to the side there is a cardboard box filled with glossy pamphlets describing Dr. Bacca’s many accomplishments. “Dr. Glenn Bacca, Ph.D., is one of the most sought-after motivational speakers in the country,” the pamphlet announced. “Known to earn up to $20,000 for a single engagement, Dr. Bacca has made a name for himself wowing crowds and boosting sales from Palm Beach to Palm Springs.”

That’s from a very bitter short story about conferences and the dregs of the academic life. It’s by Justin E. H. Smith, who is a professor of, I think, philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal. The fellow above is posing as Dr. Bacca, the motivational expert.

The protagonist of the story is a poor schmuck who can’t find the conference room for the talk he’s supposed to give. The reason is that the talk has been canceled, and the reason for that is there was never a good reason to give the talk, as the fellow himself realizes. Reflecting on the sign for his talk:

Dammit! Vonderwelt thinks. Why do they always write ‘Ural-Altaic’ when it’s supposed to be ‘Aral-Ultaic’?! And where is that damned circumflex accent over nâk? Nak doesn’t even mean anything! Come to think of it, nâk doesn’t mean anything either. I thought it did when I did my thesis. I made up this whole big structuralist structure that made it mean something. That went out of fashion, the profession crumbled into a thousand little camps –dear old arrowhead collector here, indigenous advocate there, grating culture-studies clones all around– and I was left with my meaningless nâk: just a sound, really, just a meaningless sound the fates had conspired to make the center of my career. Nâk means employee benefits is what nâk means. Nâk means braces for the girls. Nâk meant braces for the girls anyway. Now it’s just this last meaningless talk of an undistinguished career, advertised with clip-art, to be given in the Minnetonka Annex of the Minneapolis Sheraton.

Ouch! Closer to home, Professor Smith is bitter about life at Concordia and the effects on his toilet of an imaginary Tom Friedman. Who can blame him?

(Via Sullivan, once again.)

I don’t believe a word of all of this. Berlusconi is a happy married man and loves his family, he would never do such a think. This is a conspiracy of the Comunists Party who wants to bring the governament down. GO HOME YOU COMUNISTS

Boobee, Lachine,

That’s a comment left on the Times of London web site under an article about Silvio Berlusconi’s alleged adventures as a consumer of paid sex. Boobee is amazingly determined in calling Berlusconi “happily married,” given that Berlusconi’s wife has told the press how pissed off she is that he’s spending time with an 18-year-old model. In fact Berlusconi was at the girl’s 18th birthday party, where he gave her an expensive piece of jewelry to honor their already extant friendship. But if you saw Colbert last week, you already know that part.

The latest stage of the scandal centers on women who were paid to attend Berlusconi’s parties and who allegedly did the sort of things you would expect. From the Guardian:

Nicolò Ghedini, Berlusconi’s chief legal adviser, defended his client over the D’Addario affair by describing his client as a mere “end user” of the women, who was not therefore at risk in the Bari investigation. For good measure, he added that “Berlusconi could have them [women] in large numbers for free”.

As an American, I didn’t know Italy could have a sex scandal.

Sherlock Holmes and Dracula team up … to fight Jack the Ripper.

Who turns out to be Watson!

Yeah, like J.M. DeMatteis tried that one.

The young Nabokov was an amateur gymnast and athlete. At age 27 he waded into a distressing OJ-type situation of the time:

… a scandal had broken in Berlin around a Rumanian violinist named Kosta Spiresco, whose wife was found hanged, covered with the marks of a severe beating. Though Spiresco’s regular assaults were the cause of her suicide, he escaped punishment. German newspapers commented that no decent restaurant would hire him after this, but a Russian restaurant defied the prediction and a number of blowsy women began to buzz around the restaurant’s new violinist in perverted admiration. … Nabokov, an individualist in his notion of justice as in everything else, would always dismiss the concept of collective guilt but insist fiercely on collective accountability … he and his friend Mikhail Kaminka visited the restaurant with their wives, and drew straws to be first to hit the “hirsute, ape-like” Spiresco (Nabokov’s description). Nabokov won, slapped him on the cheek, and then, according to the newspaper report, “graphically demonstrated upon him the techniques of English boxing.” Kaminka pitched in against the rest of the orchestra, who took Spiresco’s side. At the police station where the three principals were taken, Spiresco refused to take charges, hinting instead that he would call them out to a duel. He declined however to take the addresses they proffered, and Nabokov and Kaminka waited at home in vain the next two or three days for Spiresco’s promised seconds.

The sources are the contemporary Russian emigre paper Rul’ and notes given by Nabokov to Andrew Field in 1973.

From Brian Boyd’s Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years