Hi,

At the first New Faculty Seminar of the year, a new, rather distinguished colleague from Comparative Literature recited and discussed a wonderful sixteenth-century Aztec poem on mutability while we ate masoor dal and samosas. Interestingly, he then contrasted it with a delightful Japanese pop song by Namie Amuro, "Want Me, Want Me." You can check out the video athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKZ0JUwAzMM. We all studied the photocopied lyrics carefully while listening to the song on iPod loudspeakers. All the assembled professors were utterly po-faced as she sang in interwoven Japanese and English of her explicit desires. This is what we Harvard types quite rightly consider to be a working lunch.

Ever,

Ivan