For the last month, I haven’t touched a book other than to look up formulae, quotes or recipes. Well, that’s not completely true, I haven’t touched a really good book in the last month, which may explain my current aversion to them. A neighbor loaned me Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol and I figured why the hell not. On guessing the identity of the bad guy as well as the never-literal final thrust of the story halfway through the book, the compulsive in me had to plow through to the final page (also to figure out if I was right). That couldn’t end well.

Symbol wasn’t a total loss. It re-introduced me to Ben Franklin’s Magic Squares and a couple of other cool puzzles. Also makes me want to take a month to visit the Smithsonian again and other buildings in the nation’s capital.

Before that was Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Smart and well-paced for a detective thriller with heaping spoonfuls of social advocacy, but it didn’t propel me into its sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire. Chalk it up to the fact that we are in the throes of the horrifying BP oil spill and Season 1 of Treme and I’m not quite in the mood to read about a woman flashing back to psychological and physical abuse in the Swedish child welfare system, even if she does grow up to kick ass and take goth tattoos.

The Wall Street Journal’s Books’ section agrees with me: “If ever we“ve needed a healthy dose of escapism, this summer is it. We“re stressed about losing our jobs, paying our mortgages, selling our homes.” But even their selections are too shallow or too depressing.

These have been my reading attempts over the last five weeks:

– 15 pages into Kevin Baker’s Dreamland (really hard to keep the cast of 5000 characters introduced in the first 10 pages straight, especially when you’re falling asleep on an airplane)
– 2 pages into Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (I’ve had enough of the government passing bad regulations and not good ones for a while, thanks)
– 20 pages into Denis Leary’s Why We Suck (do I need Leary to tell me?)
– 16 pages into Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire (see earlier analysis)

These four books impede the purchase of Miguel Syjuco“s Ilustrado, Michael Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road, Citrus County by John Brandon, Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Angel’s Game and other recommended books. Who am I kidding? Existing books have never kept me from buying new ones. But, I don’t want to buy them and have them sit there.

Exercise, sleep and making the food, metronome, jewelry and clothing (other than the three t-shirts I altered the other day) I’ve long envisioned also wait in the wings. What’s stopping me? Sleep, or lack thereof, and the crap tv I watch in order to fall asleep but end up watching until late. Ideas?

Recently, I admonished someone asking, “Is this the We Drive Cars So Can’t Yell At BP argument?”

Don’t get Jeffrey started.

Any stupid hippie who wants to tell you “we’re really all to blame” because we drive cars is letting the criminals off the hook … Yes, I believe we need to make changes in the way we produce and consume energy. But those changes will only happen if we identify specific institutions and policies that need to be pressured. Nothing happens if all we ever do is throw up our hands and say, “we’re really all to blame”.

Cliff doesn’t say that we ought not to take BP to task, but eloquently points out that Louisiana’s dependence on oil as a source of income will take us right back to square one. When I vocalized this same thing the other day, I was told “That Obama Guy” would make sure we never drill in our own waters again. Uh huh, wait six months. This will be a faint memory.

… Our country is going to drill for oil anywhere and everywhere we can. President Obama has already stated he’s committed to it so there is no need to worry. We’ll be back to risking our wetlands and hurricane protection in no time. That’s what dependent people do. Louisiana is acting like the welfare queens of America. We want to do the right thing for our people and our culture but we are too afraid of what’s going to happen if we lose that check so we let bad choices happen.

And then there’s this jackass who says BP should tell whining American hypocrites to take a hike.

Hayward should go on TV and say: Excuse me, which country is the biggest oil consumer on the planet? Who refused to do anything about climate change, or even to put sensible taxes on gas? Heck, your president even flies around in a 747 when a modest Gulfstream jet would get him there just as fast. So of course the oil companies have to drill in more and more dangerous places. If you insist on being addicted to cheap oil, you have to recognize there are risks attached. So grow up, and stop acting like children.

Let me get this straight. Because we lease out our territorial waters to a profit-making corporation who sells our oil back to us and to other nations, minus royalty, transportation and refining costs of course, we should just bend over and let them take unacceptable risks. Speaking of “acting like children,” why is it that other oil companies don’t have the same awful track record BP does in North America? And 5000 feet water depth in the Mississippi Canyon of the Gulf of Mexico is not “drilling in more and more dangerous places,” it’s highly routine. If you can’t get that right, go home. To quote my very conservative father-in-law on this spill, “If you’re gonna run with the big dogs, you gotta learn how to lift your leg.”

Or you get run over by Toonces the driving Turtle.

Aziz Ansari hosts the MTV Music Awards (with a message for BP)

Manish Vij is shutting down Ultrabrown, a four-year-old Indian-American literature and arts blog, to pursue tech startups (brave) and writing a novel (braver) full-time. You may recognize Manish as co-founder of and former blogger at Sepia Mutiny, which he left to found Ultrabrown with amazing, young writing talent such as Chandrahas Choudhury, Jai Arjun Singh and Anonandon.

Ultrabrown’s farewell post serves as a refreshing antidote to my despondency earlier today. My parents and the parents and grandparents of many over at Ultrabrown and Sepia Mutiny moved away from the Indian subcontinent and sacrificed much so that we, their children, would be judged by our work and the content of our character, not the color of our skin, flavor of our caste, weight of our bank account or the coin toss of gender. Lately, with all of this immigrant bashing, name-calling and othering, I’ve been starting to think their work was in vain. Until I read this:

I always thought our community would eventually be as integrated as desis in Canada and the UK, where you can’t turn a channel without running into a brown anchor. I didn“t foresee it happening this quickly. For all the ways in which America remains deeply tribal, it is also beautifully and pragmatically open to an Aziz Ansari or a Nikki Haley in a way that few other countries seem to be. One grew up [Tamilian] Muslim, the other [Punjabi] Sikh; Aziz strutted around in a white tuxedo last night and never even bothered with a stage name.

My father“s tech generation often Anglicized their goodnames, started their own businesses because they couldn’t get promoted, and were forced to hire white CEOs anyway because nobody would buy from a desi. And now the former PM of Britain is asking Vinod Khosla for a job. Mindblowing.

I hate MTV awards shows, yet read this with sappy tears forming in my sappy eyes and, as sappy as it sounds, it made me feel for one small second that Barack Obama was not wrong. That “in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.” The unlikely story that is Barack Obama, president of the United States. The unlikely story that he recently thanked DJ Rekha for performing Bhangra at the White House. The unlikely story that is my brother, partner in his own successful business solely due to his hard work. The unlikely story that is my aunt, dean and former provost of an American university. The unlikely stories that are my cousins, female sommelier, female aviator, female journalist, female physicist. The unlikely stories that are my nieces, carefree young American women. The unlikely story that is me, geologist, technologist and loudmouth, married to a sweet farmboy from northern Wisconsin.

Hope is what made these people. But, keeping American hope alive and giving it to the next generation requires work. Fighting the hatred, bigotry and violence that will erupt further from an increasingly troubled and changing economy and resulting shattered egos needs the resilience of will, pen and vote. And it needs a lot of love and support of one another. Manish has done us a great service in this arena. So, even if Ultrabrown has closed shop, I ask that you support the blogs and books of its talented writers and start your own movement to inspire and support more.

Good luck, Mr. Vij and the gang, grab your lungis and don’t panic!

“Okay, baby, hold tight,” said Zaphod. “We’ll take in a quick bite at the Vadapav Seller’s at the End of the Universe.”

* nola.com | BP’s Tony Hayward hands responsibility for oil spill cleanup to American spin-off

BP is to “hive off” its Gulf of Mexico oil spill operation to a separate in-house business to be run by an American in a bid to isolate the “toxic” side of the company and dilute some of the anti-British feeling aimed at Chief Executive Tony Hayward.

How convenient. As Greg puts it, “It’s not BPs responsibility any more ” and if the new ‘arm’ of the company goes bankrupt, well, that’s how business works.” Certain financial investments whose value has fallen significantly and for which there is no longer a functioning market but HQ is saddled with them and has to find a way to make them go away before investors ditch stock … what do we call those? Oh yes, Toxic Assets.

* The Demise of BP? I highly doubt it. A fraction of oil is captured after the installation of the LMRP cap and BP stock rises. How many of us stopped buying Exxon gasoline after ExxonValdez? Besides, it has been 25 years since the disaster in Bhopal and Union Carbide executives are just now being handed prison sentences. 25 years of death, suffering and pollution. Too little too late.

* Blair sent me this:

Unfortunately, this relief well, too, will hit snags, capture only a small percentage of the profits and not address long-term consequences.