by Dave Eggers
East Africa Seafarers' Assistance Program spokesman Andrew Mwangura told a different story: that the shipment ultimately was bound for the Government of South Sudan. (Note: Intelligence reporting (refs A-C) confirms Mwangura's story—not the official GOK stance. After reporting that he was warned by Kenyan government officials to stop talking about the shipment, Mwangura was arrested on October 1.)
Military officials have expressed discomfort with this arrangement, however, and have made it clear to us that the orders come "from the top" (i.e., President Kibaki).
***
Subject: XXXXX MP ON PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION
Created: 2007-04-04
Origin: Cairo
To: Secretary of State
From: Ambassador Frank Ricciardone, Embassy Cairo GAMAL ANGLING TO "GET RID" OF HIS COMPETITION
On March 29, XXXXX noted to Poloff his assessment that the recently approved constitutional amendments package is largely aimed at ensuring Gamal Mubaraks succession of his father ... XXXXX speculated that "hitches" to a Gamal succession could occur if Mubarak died before installing his son: "Gamal knows this, and so wants to stack the deck in his favor as much as possible now, while Mubarak is firmly in control, just in case his father drops dead sooner rather than later."...While discussion of presidential succession is a favorite parlor game in Cairo salons, hypothesizing about the acutely sensitive topic of a coup is certainly not regularly undertaken in Egyptian circles.
***
Subject: DEFENSE MINISTER ON GABALA, ARMAVIR, RUSSIA
Created: 2009-03-19
Origin: Baku
To: Secretary of State
From: Ambassador Anne Derse, Embassy Baku
Abiyev told the Ambassador about his late-January trip to Moscow to discuss Azerbaijan's allegations that Russia had made extensive weapons transfers to Armenia throughout 2008. In formal meetings, Abiyev said, his Russian counterpart stuck to the talking points and denied any involvement. However, "after the second bottle of vodka," that evening, he said, the Russians opened up and admitted to having transferred weapons to Armenia. In an interesting side note, Abiyev quoted Serdyukov as saying: "Do you follow the orders of your President?...Well, I follow the orders of two Presidents."
Best American New Band Names
The following is a list of bands that to the best of the editors' knowledge were new (formed or released their first album) in 2010.
Active Child, The Art Museums, BadNraD, Balam Acab, The Beach Fossils, Black Mamba, Blasted Canyons, Blondes, Broken Bells, Buke and Gass, ceo, Cerebral Ballzy, Chairs Missing, Cloud Nothings, Colleen Green, Com Truise, Constant Mongrel, Curry & Coco, Cults, Dalai Lamas, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., Darwin Deez, Diamond Rings, Dirty Gold, DOM, Dominant Legs, The Electronic Anthology Project, Electric Tickle Machine, Everything Everything, Flats, Foxes in Fiction, Frankie Rose & the Outs, Fungi Girls, Gayngs, Glasser, Gonjasufi, The Goondas, Grinny Granddad, Grouplove, Guantanamo Baywatch, Heavy Hawaii, How To Destroy Angels, How to Dress Well, I Haunt Wizards, I'm Really Tired of This, The Internal Tulips, K-Holes, Kisses, Lawrence Arabia, Light Asylum, Little Comets, Local Natives, LOL Boys, Magic Kids, Magic Man, Marina & the Diamonds, Maximum Balloon, Millionyoung, No Joy, Oh, Organ Freeman, Panda Riot, Paradise Titty, Peach Kelli Pop, Perfume Genius, Personal & the Pizzas, The Poet Dogs, The Pretty Reckless, Prince Rama, Pure Ecstasy, Puro Instinct, Romance on a Rocketship, Round Ron Virgin, Royal Baths, Sailors With Wax Wings, Shitty Car-wash, Shrapnelles, Sleigh Bells, Teengirl Fantasy, Trash Talk, The Tree Ring, Wild Nothing, Your Friendly Beast, Yuck
Best American Very Short Story
Padgett Powell
FROM Subtropics
How did I go from being full of bluster and cheer to being empty and afraid? Usually a man has to be incarcerated, or see his fellows slaughtered, or lose a child, or ... doesn't he? Normally, in a normal person, yes, I think a blow of some sort would be required to install the fearful void where there had been the hale stand-and-deliver. But a coward may just lose his sheen, as it were, and precipitate into his true state, overnight, or over a few nights, or over some modest period of time, without any sudden cause. The sheen after all was false, a gloss, like the thin wax sprayed on an apple.
The wax wears off. Spots appear, the flesh softens, consumers (friends, lovers) back off, and one is taken from the top shelf, even if just in his mind, and is headed for a bag to be sent to the sauce factory. One defense is a commensurate loss of mind, which will allow the sodden apple to be giddy about the saddening. The commensurate loss of mind can be voluntary, as a tactic of camouflage or diversion, or it may come naturally as a contingent wearing off of essentially the same wax. At any rate the empty, afraid, ex-hale, post-stand-and-deliver fool will not accept at first that his wax is gone and that he is in decline. And then he will.
Best American Even Shorter Story
Amy Hempel
FROM Harper's
He carved the coat off the dead winter lamb, wiped her blood on his pants to keep a grip, circling first the hooves and cutting straight up each leg, then punching the skin loose from muscle and bone.
He tied the skin with twine over the body of the orphaned lamb so the grieving ewe would know the scent and let the orphaned lamb nurse.
Or so he said.
This was seduction. This was the story he told, of all the farm-boy stories he might have told; he chose the one where brutality saves a life. He wanted me to feel, when he fitted his body over mine, that this was how I would go on—this was how I would be known.
***
Best American Lawsuits
Every year people use the system to secure compensation for wrongs allegedly done to them. Sometimes these efforts are justified. Other times, they are absurd. Here are a few brain-splitting suits filed in the U.S. in 2010.
A New York City street performer known as "The Naked Cowboy" sued a competing street performer known as "The Naked Cowgirl" in federal court. Both play the guitar in Times Square with nothing on but cowboy boots and a hat. The Naked Cowboy is claiming that his female rival is "tarnishing the Naked Cowboy's wholesome image."
DRAWN FROM www.justia.com
A lawsuit against a San Rafael restaurant accused it of negligence for allegedly serving "exploding escargot." The suit was dismissed by a judge citing a "reasonable expectation of the presence and thus, potential personal injury, due to hot grease in orders of escargot which are prepared and served with 'hot garlic butter.'"
DRAWN FROM www.allbusiness.com
A Miami doctor sued a restaurant claiming that the restaurant staff failed to warn him not to eat the tough, pointy leaves of an artichoke. He is seeking more than $15,000 in damages for "bodily injury, resulting pain and suffering, disfigurement, mental anguish, loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life," and healthcare expenses after he wound up in the hospital with severe abdominal discomfort from eating an entire artichoke.
DRAWN FROM Miami New Times
An East Texas man sued the U.S. Post Office claiming it was negligent in shipping birds. The man alleged that he'd finally found the perfect racing pigeons in California and had them shipped to his home in Texas. The birds arrived several days late and were dead. The suit was dismissed.
DRAWN FROM Southeast Texas Record
Best American Adjectives, Nouns, and Verbs Used in Reporting on the Gulf Oil Spill of 2010
Adjectives
flat-footed (Los Angeles Times)
marshy (New York Times)
Herculean (Los Angeles Times)
gunky (New York Times)
looming (New York Times)
elusive (ABC News)
encroaching (ABC News)
kidney-like (ABC News)
subsea (ABC News)
like dish soap on bacon grease ( U.S.A Today)
Nouns
tar balls (New York Times)
brass balls, not tar balls (Los Angeles Times)
giant underwater shears (New York Daily News)
huge globs
of oil (Los Angeles Times)
beignets (Los Angeles Times)
oil mousse (New York Times) sticky mousse (U.S.A Today)
98-ton steel box (New York Times)
250 eagles (New York Times)
22 killer whales (New York Times)
silver bullet (Wall Street journal)
blowout preventer (Los Angeles Times)
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (U.S.A Today)
shattered reputation (New York Times)
submersible robots (New York Times)
deadly rig explosion (Wall Street journal)
hypoxic (ABC News) upsurge (New York Times)
transocean cemetery (Associated Press)
apocalypse ( New York Times)
clockwise loop current (New York Times)
smelly black tide (New York Times)
larvae of bluefin tuna (New York Times)
billions of fish eggs (Associated Press) globs of emulsified oil (New York Times)
blob of black ooze (Associated Press) giant filthy ink blot (Associated Press) crystals (ABC News) a light sheen (New York Times)
blind shear ram (New York Times)
38 million gallons (U.S.A Today)
celestial GPS (Chicago Tribune)
skimmers (ABC News)
oil-soaked birds (ABC News)
tiny, invisible plankton (ABC News)
two new species of bottom-dwelling pancake batfish (ABC News)
denizens of the deep (ABC News)
Humpty Dumpty (U.S.A Today)
junk shot (ABC News)
a gleaming heap of eggs (Chicago Tribune)
propylene glycol (ABC News)
Lake Pontchartrain (ABC News)
monster (ABC News)
setback (ABC News)
creeps (ABC News)
moonlight (Chicago Tribune)
turtle carcasses (Chicago Tribune)
spigot (Christian Science Monitor)
unprecedented ecological disaster (U.S.A Today)
the oil slick was the size of Kansas (ABC News) tendrils of oil coiling like a nest of snakes in the Gulf of Mexico (New York Daily News)
the first inning of a nine-inning game (New York Times)
an icy slush of gas and water (New York Times)
the glistening sheen of sweet crude (Fox News)
long reddish-orange ribbons of oil (Fox News)
***
Verbs
belching ( New York Daily News)
capped (New York Times)
blew (Los Angeles Times)
pumped (New York Times)
choke (New York Daily News)
smearing (New York Times)
oozing (New York Times)
burned (New York Times)
inserted (New York Times)
skimmed (New York Times)
dissolving (New York Times)
ruptured (New York Times)
zapped (ABC News)
baked (ABC News)
whipped (ABC News)
nuked (U.S.A Today)
lurk (ABC News)
battered (ABC News)
nibbling (ABC News)
dodged (ABC News)
Best American New Entries to the O.E.D. Beginning with the Letter H
FROM www.oed.com
The Oxford English Dictionary was first published by Oxford University in 1884. It was the brainchild of Richard Chenevix Trench, Herbert Coleridge, and Frederick Furnivall, London intellectuals dissatisfied with the English dictionaries of the day who, in June 1857, formed an "Unregistered Words Committee" and got to work. Generations of editors have been adding words ever since, releasing new sections of new editions at regular intervals. Here's a slice of H.
hog call, n. North American, a loud, shrill call of a type traditionally used to attract domestic hogs.
hog caller, n. North American, a person who makes hog calls.
hog calling, n. North American, the art or practice of making hog calls, often as part of a competition.
hog piece, n. Shipbuilding, a piece of timber running fore and aft, to which the keel is attached.
hot doggery, n. A stall, restaurant, or other establishment selling hot dogs.
Best American Profile of an International Pop Star
Gary Shteyngart
FROM GQ
In Los Angeles visiting with M.I.A., the London-born, Sri Lanka-reared, art-school-educated hip-pop supernova. Google's satellite imagery reveals a house of sturdy proportions up in the city's privileged canyons, a nice change from her grungy former digs in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn.
I want to see the house, maybe write some smack about how M.I.A. is risking her street cred now that she's traded the leaks and mice for a touch of posh. But the singer, better known to the eagle-eyed guys at the immigration counter as Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, has another idea. Why don't we pick up her fiancé, Ben, and head for Las Vegas, where she'll get married on the spot? Yeah, why not! I'm game, but Ben talks her down on the phone, telling her they should at least wait for his mom, who's visiting in a few days. Instead we do two hours of vintage shopping at a massive L.A. thrift emporium with her friend, the British fashion designer Cassette Playa, whose hair sports many pretty colors, her large purple-framed glasses reflecting the world.
This is life on the M.I.A. Express: improvised to the point of being slightly insane. In a $150,000 appearance for H&M and Jimmy Choo in November, Maya stopped after a few songs to lecture Paris Hilton and the rest of the select audience on corporate America's involvement in war-ravaged Sri Lanka. She'd been planning to wear a costume made "out of loads of blown-up body parts and go as an explosion. But they told me I couldn't, because I had to wear something from H&M or Jimmy Choo." Um, yes. Thats H&M for you. A few months later, in March, she'll tweet her fans to meet her at a London club and hear her latest tracks in exactly thirty minutes. Impromptu Las Vegas wedding with me and Cassette Playa as witnesses? Bring it on.
M.I.A. is perhaps the preeminent global musical artist of the 2000s, a truly kick-ass singer and New York-Londony fashion icon, not to mention a vocal supporter of Sri Lanka's embattled Tamil minority, of which she's a member. Her father was a key player in the Tamil separatist movement, and his links to the Tamil Tigers would later contribute to Maya's rep as a terrorist sympathizer. She also has a I-year-old son and a third album on the way. When asked about the new record, Cassette Playa (real name: Carri Munden) says simply, "It's sick."
Shopping with Maya is fun. "I like this Sade hat; That doesn't suit me; My head's too small." She's wearing a vintage Louis Vuitton sweatshirt, black tights, and ankle boots, looking disarmingly hipster-suburban. Her moods vary from slightly pissed off to go-fuck-yourself-already, but today she's bubbly and engaged, doing a sexy-tired southern-ingènue walk. From her song "Hombre": My hips do the flicks as I walk, yeah. We work our way through reams of'70s and '80s shit that reminds me of my own immigrant past. (My parents and I emigrated from the former Soviet Union in 1979.) Taupe-colored "refugee coats." EZ Spirit. Focus 2000. A Gitano denim coat. We get on the trendy subject of avoiding meat, and Maya says, "What are you gonna do, you know? We don't have the luxury to even think about being vegetarians or meat eaters. We're refugees. We've been dealing with normal shit, like how to stay alive."
I think to myself, The refugee is strong in this one.
She buys a king's ransom of thrift for $178.72 but still hasn't found her perfect wedding dress. "I've always wanted to get married in a white suit," she says. "I used to work at a Kodak lab in England, cutting photos after they'd come out of the wash, and in one I saw this couple getting married on a beach in white suits, and their kid was there."
Like many people in their mid-thirties, rock stars included, a part of her wants to grow up, soften up. She misses Brooklyn but chose L.A. for her son. "I wanted an environment where I could have a lot of friends and family come and stay. That was the important part for me. And in New York I wouldn't have been able to afford someplace wh
ere I could have, like, all my friends come and crash out and where I could still have a baby."
Over lunch at India Sweets and Spices in Silver Lake, a Bollywood wedding streams on the giant TV next to a statue of Ganesha. She shows me a video of her son, Ikhyd, a cute curly-haired bruiser of a boy, dancing with his jovial papa, Benjamin Brewer (a.k.a. Benjamin Bronfman), a musician and an heir to the Bronfman beverage fortune. She picks up my digital recorder and starts to rap: I don't want to live for tomorrow. I push my life today. /1 throw this in yourface when I see you, because I got something to say. I don't realize it then, but she's giving me a preview of "Born Free," a new song that will generate controversy a few months later, when YouTube restricts access to the hyperviolent nine-minute video, a dystopian parable in which redheaded men and boys are rounded up and executed by government thugs. With the recorder's tiny mike next to her face, her body in motion and the words just pouring out, she seems as happy and natural as I've seen her yet.
When GQ asks me for a 7,ooo-word piece on M.I.A., I agree quickly. (M.I.A.—what fun!) The next day, I wake up with buyer's remorse. Did they say 7,000 words?
The problem with writing about Maya is that it's like writing about the air. I've heard her drop-what-you're-buying-and-listen-to-me-fucking -now voice in every hipster boutique on both sides of the Atlantic (and the Pacific and, I'm sure, the Arctic Ocean by now), and then, after she'd blasted past the urban cognoscenti, in the cheesy bars of second-rate airports, in the cheesy bars outside Columbia University, in the cheesy bars of my native Russia (the kind of bars where someone with Maya's skin color might get more than a passing look). Wherever you go—there she is. Björk also managed to pull off this omnipresence in the 1990s, but it's hard to sing along to a Björk tune unless you happened to be born on her faraway planet. By contrast, M.I.A.'s hooks and jingles sort of wend their way into whats left of your half-electronic subconscious (Pull up the people, pull up the poor!), so that by the time "Paper Planes" hitched a ride on the global jet stream, it pretty much became Earth's anthem of 2008.