Paul Attinello

Author: paulattinello

  • Sturgeon’s Law

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    paulattinello
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    Various versions of this law appear in different places, including different final words… Ted Sturgeon's version was something like, "nine-tenths of everything is crap". Or crud, or inessential, or… well you pick. Having lately bought some books online, without seeing them first, I am feeling the sting of this tragically universal law. And if you…

  • Feeling

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    paulattinello
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    Last night I watched Weekend, the 2011 film of an encounter between two guys who clearly need each other. Fairly heartbreaking, and very, very well done indeed – writing, acting, all of it. They go through the usual chaotic mistakes of a hasty encounter between strangers, then as they realize they want to spend more…

  • Balance

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    paulattinello
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    Almost too faint, too evanescent, to write about – You know how it is, when you go through a day, or more, on what seems a different pattern: today was busy, one thing after another. Up early for the delivery man to pick up my passport renewal, rapidly reworking lists of compositions for an article…

  • Issuing a retraction

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    paulattinello
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    I find myself uneasy with one of my previous blog posts. A few weeks ago, I was in New York. Frank Oteri wrote a blog entry on our conversation; he was upset that I had given up on composing. I defended myself… but the truth is, although I thought I was clear on my stance and…

  • Biochem IIa

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    paulattinello
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    [PREREQUISITE: BIOCHEM I; or permission of instructor] I am noticing some other aspects of changing body chemistry, after the new HIV medications…. For several years, I have tended to get frequent bleeding, and clotting, in my sinuses. This has been worse since my 2009 stroke, and a subsequent three months of the dreadful medication Warfarin…

  • The Manticore

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    paulattinello
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    So… during a time of relative quiet – home a lot, mulling around various work, making lists, and doing bits of it – last night a novel caught me: Agota Kristof's trilogy The Notebook / The Proof / The Third Lie; and caught me so definitely that I read it from about midnight to ten…

  • Biochem

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    paulattinello
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    I have been negotiating a large turn of the great wheel of my HIV care… after twelve years on the same regime (Kaletra – which includes a daily dose of that hideous, damned, nasty Ritonavir, that everyone hated so much in the late 1990s; Efavirenz/Sustiva, and Abacavir/Ziagen) – a regime that has become archaically dusty:…

  • Not so wrong after all…

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    paulattinello
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    Trudy, my student and friend from ten years ago, has grown from a Hong Kong pianist into a New York publisher/performer/gourmet chef, and friend to many people across several artistic communities. Her husband Frank, whom I met for the first time a few weeks ago, is a composer/journalist/intellectual – one who can connect to a…

  • NYC – WDC – NYC

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    paulattinello
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    A trip to the US: going through New York to get to northern Virginia, for my mother's memorial service; and back to New York for four busy days. From the beginning, the sheer ease of things was startling: the flight to New York, the early landing, an almost unbelievably efficient and relaxed JFK – I almost…

  • Database

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    paulattinello
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    Finally getting organized to go to New York and Washington next week, for my mother's memorial service at Arlington Cemetary; and staying with my sister in New York, plus catching up with a few old friends. I went through my old addresses database – now increasingly supplanted by the data shared between my phone and…