Long time, no post

I abandoned my blog in 2011, because I thought I had nothing to say...or was it because I got bored?  Posting about being bored is the equivalent of facebook posts that read "eating mac & cheese": meaningless.  Not to be outdone by banal fb posts, I offer this:

"look: I've posted something" 

That's right: my birthday:

Overnight Patchy Frost Lo 33 °F

Thursday Morning Frost Hi 61 °F

Thursday Night Patchy Frost Lo 30 °F

Friday Morning Frost Hi 64 °F

Friday Night Clear Lo 41 °F

Saturday Sunny Hi 76 °F

Saturday Night Mostly Clear Lo 51 °F

Sunday Sunny Hi 80 °F

Sunday Night Clear Lo 50 °F

Hazardous weather condition(s): Freeze Warning Hazardous Weather Outlook Overnight: Patchy frost after 3am. Otherwise, mostly clear, with a low around 33. Light east wind. Thursday: Patchy frost before 9am. Otherwise, sunny, with a high near 61. North wind between 3 and 11 mph. Thursday Night: Patchy frost after 1am. Otherwise, mostly clear, with a low around 30. Calm wind. Friday: Patchy frost before 9am. Otherwise, mostly sunny, with a high near 64. Calm wind becoming west around 5 mph. Friday Night: Clear, with a low around 41. Light south wind. Saturday: Sunny, with a high near 76. Saturday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 51. Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 80. Sunday Night: Clear, with a low around 50. Columbus Day: Sunny, with a high near 82. Monday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 49. Tuesday: Sunny, with a high near 72. Tuesday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 58. Wednesday: Mostly cloudy, with a high near 69.

I need a laugh

These made me laugh, but I've already read them...and as we all know, reading for pleasure doesn't come to the top of the list this semester.  You should read them though: 

                                                                                                                                    


And while you are picking these up, let's not forget that it's my birthday soon, and that I will have time to read over the Christmas break: 

Life is good:

In the beautiful reference room, listening to my favorite tunes, and typing a paper of Phillis Wheatley and rhetorical use of equivocation.  Does it get better?  Only if I had a beer! 

I'm back

Since I am on extended hiatus from the demon that is Facebook (and since I'm informed that I have a world-wide tribe..and really, isn't Dianistan a world-wide republic?), I have decided to re-open the bloggishness and engage in bloggofocationosity. 

Today's fun: 

"I've been accused of consorting with Satan!

Pick a scenario and get an outcome. 

Post your selection and outcome!  

Click here to find out your fate!  

 

(PS: like the premise of witchcraft accusations...and honestly, the whole of 1600s New England Puritanical ideology / theology, don't expect it to make sense... especially if you are female).

Vonnegut Explains.

Graphical representation of the stories, and why Shakespeare was the MAN.  What a loss for literature and for life, when he passed...Vonnegut, I mean.


If you are a Vonnegut fan, here's a site where you can get a wicked-cool (Boston idiom) KV shirt, along with others; I bought one and people look at it as say "Kurt...Cobain?".   

                                         

                                                       

Ummmmm NO!!!  


We live in a falling world, folks...and yes, I meant falling...

Books I think are worth your time

Wasting time is a specialty of mine...except when it comes to books and short stories. Don't waste your time on LAME authors (hint hint hint: DH LAWRENCE), or on novels by authors who later get so experimental and obscure that you wonder if they are dealing with dementia, or on poetry that is so abstruse that you feel dumb when reading it.


This is a partial list of reading that will not waste your time.  The links are included, in case you want to lick them up at Amazon. post your reviews / comments about the titles on the list, if you like!

"CLASSICS"...whatever that term means nowadays.... Some you will recognize, some may be new. If you haven't read the titles you recognize - don't. Read the titles you have no idea about and be surprised :)

Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Dombey & Son - Charles Dickens
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neal Hurston
Death Comes for the Archbishop  - Willa Cather

Titles that belong on the "classics" list: 
Cane - Jean Toomer
The Woman Warrior - Maxine Hong Kingston
HIS Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman


Will be classics as soon as the literary geniuses of the world realize that works in translation don't suck and belong in the so-called Literary Canon:


The Dictionary of the Khazars - Milorad Pavich (male of female edition are the same, save for one paragraph) 
My Name Is Red - Orhan Pamuk



Happy Reading!

This week's obsessive listening list:

Manic Street Preachers: "A Design for Life" 

Crowded House: "The World Where you Live" 

Oasis:  "D'you Know What I Mean"

Mansun:  "Disgusting", "Wide Open Space", "Tax Loss", "Serotonin"

The Smiths:  "Headmaster Ritual" 

Blur:  "There's No Other Way" 

XTC:  "Senses Working Over-time"

Echo & the Bunnymen:  "The Killing Moon", "The Cutter" 

Nick Kershaw:  "Wouldn't It Be Good" 

Siouxie & the Banshee:  "Cities In Dust"

That, my friends, is a play list. Now it needs a title...suggestions? 

Go? Don't go? I don't know.

The inept interpreter of one of my favorites books (aka Peter Jackson ak PJ: Primo Jerk) is directing The Hobbit Movie. My intestines are all cranky just thinking about how he and his screenplay writers are going to defile Tolkien's work. I made a decision not to go to the movie opening in 2012, because his interpretation of The Lord of the Rings was shameful. It's not what he got wrong, it's what he changed in the story to pander to Hollywood and viewers who may not have read LOTR.  As a matter of course, people who hadn't read LOTR had asked me what the big deal was all about. I tried to explain that the character subtleties and deep camaraderie that forged and maintained the fellowship were lost in the film, and that the subplot of the dangers of material pride over creation (which can be traced to Feanor in the Silmarillion, by the way) was lacking, so all one got was a movie about good vs. evil.

So why didn't people get it?  I suggest the cause is that script writing suffered at the expense of  creating a visual spectacle. Note to PJ: it's called dialogue, PJ...that's what moves the story - not your sweeping aerial shots of New Zealand and faux fight scenes and redaction of the text in pivotal parts. Loser. I understand that textual fidelity is difficult, but really PJ, Tolkien laid it out there, and all you had to do was follow it. Don't take my word for it, read the Guardian article; they're Brits, they take Tolkien seriously ... I hope. The article calls what PJ is doing with The Hobbit it 'tinkering' with the story; I call it tragic, in the Aristotelian sense that it evokes fear (I'm afraid to go) and pity (what gets done to Prof Tolkien's genius is truly pitiful). 

My mind was made up not to go and then, this rumour slips out by none other than Ian McKellan (Gandlaf).

If the delectable Mr Cumberbatch is the voice of Smaug, that is no reason to go...or is it?

What to do, what to do....

Reminding myself: "they are still young...they are still young"

The problem: a double sink -clogged

The place: summer housing for women ages 18 -20, and one anomalous 47 year old

The question: how long has the sink been like that? 

The response: since this morning

The clarifying question: is anyone coming to fix it?

The response:  maintenance doesn't work on weekends, so we have to wait until Monday. We did try looking everywhere for a plunger".

>>insert the needle scratching off the record sound here<<<

A suggestion for a solution: I have a car, so I'll go get some Liquid Plumber(TM). 

A counter-solution: isn't that expensive and  really toxic?.

So, what did I learn from this? The younger ladies in the house may not know how to shut of lights, or know what is / is not recyclable, but they do know a caustic product when it is mentioned as a solution to a problem.

I'm too old for this.

Ecstasy on a spoon

Previously on this blog I had mentioned the raisin / peanut butter heaven on a spoon.  I now offer, for your peanut butter pallet, the greatest pairing on a spoon:  **Nutella and **Teddie Peanut Butter.




 
Dear GOD!!!! What took me so long??? Was I blinded by the easy availability of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and a childhood fascination with them? Have I lost my PB creativity? Why am I so late to the part?  Well, better late than never, I suppose, and now I'm a Nutella+Teddy PB devotee. Now the challenge will be how to make it portable....


Don't be a wimp: try it and enjoy it, and then create clever with recipes that include both PB an Nutella and send them to me, dammit. ( I have no domestic skills in the culinary arts, and could use the help...I could also use some help with GRE Math prep, if anyone is interested)
**Nutella is a registered TM of Nutella USA / Ferrara SRL 
 **Teddie is a registered TM of Leavitt Corp USA:
I don't own these images, so call off the lawyers.

Apocolist Now

I have a list of things that will remain after society collapses under the baptism by thermonuclear device (and here, the Sun may actually count as a device...I mean really, it is going to happen...just not this week) or by virulent strains of highly transmittable diseases. This week's list entry:

                                                                       

(images: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/plants/)

Lots of chatter on the web about a 2007 study that found that as CO2 levels increase, urushoil (that nasty oil that makes me itch till I've removed several layers of flesh) becomes more potent...which may explain why as I kid I got a rash twice, and as an adult, I just look at any of the above a break out. I don't have the interest in looking into the validity of the research, or the article, but I will take the Wall Stree Journal's word for it.

This is a great 2 page info sheet, lovingly prepared by the CDC (aka your tax $...so order it and feel like that the  35% deduction from your check is doing something for you). Complete info on how to deal is on the CDC / NIOSH site, as well. 

Poor, Doyle...

Doyle was no Shakespeare or Austin, but really, he was the author of mystery short stories that still have world-wide readership, and a cult-like following. The character of Holmes is not only part of the literary landscape, but part of the vernacular in a way that would make Shakespeare jealous. Seriously, no one says  "No sh*t Shylock", now do they...so there.  


This makes me  think of authors who deserve to be respected and aren't, and authors that are respected, but are losers. This in turn, leads to rants about Thoreau. That poser Thoreau goes to live like a part-time nature boy in a cabin on Emerson's land, burns down the freaking woods, has lunch with the Emerson's weekly, and celebrities in this country fall all over themselves to preserve the area on the lake Thoreau wrote about how morally superior he was.  At least Doyle's writing is worth reading and no one gets lectured about how inferior they are because they don't walk in the woods for 4 hours each day (it's call having a J O B, Thoreau...oh, sorry I forgot that he transcended the need to work, being a slacker-sponge extraordinairre).


At any rate, Doyle's house looks like hell with plywood windows. Cough up some $ and help restore the house where Arthur Ignacious Doyle wrote the legendary story "The Hound of the Baskervilles". Serious work is needed to restore the house, and it seems to be happening none too soon. While it may be sad to think that the Brits would have let it fall in to such a state of disrepair, methinks that our friends over in England didn't realize the condition of Upshaw since the house has been owned by a developer since 2004. There is a campaign for private funds to restore the house that you can read about it and see images of Doyle's Upshaw here.


In the meantime, Project Gutenberg, has free on-line copies of the "HotB", which can be read here.  Enjoy!!! 

Ontology

See what you started, Descartes????  You think, therefore other people think and prove the existence of Flying Spaghetti Monsters.  Good job, moron.

New Items for the evil word list

and here they are, chicklets:  

Towards: 

as in "Moving towards a deliberative democracy"; "Towards a New Laocoon" and other foolish uses of the preposition by cerebral types who 1) can't stand the notion that things have a tendency to center; 2) think that towards means never getting to that center (because everything is destabilized now that Lacan, Foucault & Derrida are back en vogue in academia); 3) like to think that is something is towards, it isn't finally, but in development. >>>WHAT FREAKING EVER<<< The only towards I'm thinking of is the preposition that comes directly before the phrase "the white light" and follows the words "don't go"

Alienation:  

yep, marginalization's ugly aftermath. This term can be used by post-colonial apologists, but never when referring to illegal aliens.

Oppression:  

it's a big nasty world out there. What happens in this country isn't oppression, though it is repression.

NOAA Says

TODAYS WEEK 2 BLEND CHART IS VERY SIMILAR TO THE 6-10 DAY BLEND CHART 

EXCEPT  
THE AREA OF BELOW NORMAL HEIGHTS EXPECTED OVER THE NORTHWESTERN CONUS IS  
FORECAST TO DECREASE IN MAGNITUDE AND AREAL COVERAGE. THE EXPECTED TEMPERATURE  
AND PRECIPITATION ANOMALY PATTERNS FOR WEEK 2 ARE  ALSO QUITE SIMILAR TO THOSE  
FORECAST DURING THE 6-10 DAY PERIOD ALTHOUGH THE NORTHEAST CONUS IS EXPECTED TO  
TREND TOWARDS A DRIER PATTERN DURING WEEK 2. (NOAA, 23 May 2011)

That means, it is going to take another week for the 

east coast to stop behaving like Portland, Oregon...or the like

weather in this (my favorite) episode of Courage the Cowardly

Dog: 

promdenade the lemondae

It's finally sunny and warm and I need me a cold beverage....go G Love: work the cold one!

Home....Home on the range....

Oh give me a home, where the Buffalo roam...

Who knew buffalo calves could be so cute?  Apparently, there is also a bison farm in Rutland, MA; I don't care about them because they are not here. (I'm working on my western Mass provincialism)

I may actually get me a buffalo burger soon.  I may also want company, if anyone wants to join :) 

A positive time sink?

This site  is a place to get lost for an hour or so, playing games w/ history. Pick an era and enjoy.  Think of it as Cyber RP, with no geeky dwarfs, wizards, and costumes.



I did the "Surviving the Roaring 20s".  I survived. 


http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/keys/games/

Western Mass Hair-Wear

The Pioneer Valley is lovely. The hair styles at the strip malls as - the horror! - WalMart, are not. The Mullet has gone the way of the mastodon, but the Mohawk is mighty in its resurgence out here, apparently.  I cannot account for this.

The Pioneer Valley (nice pics here) is a place with lots of green, lots of old homes, lots of cows, lots of farms, and now, in Chicoppee, lots of Mohwaks.  Why?  Are the 5-Colleges to blame? Probably not, if my eyes are faithful (and keep in mind that I was on my way to and at the WalMart in Chicoppee when the Mohawk mania was on display).

Find me a man or woman at Amherst College with a mohawk, and I'll call it an anomoly.  How about Smith & Mt Holyoke? To be truthfull, I avoid the radical eclectic mismash that is the Smith College campus, so I can only speak for Mt Holyoke College, where I love.  I have seen one Mohawk in three semesters. It's a small campus (2100 women) and sooner or later, if there was more than one, I would have seen it.  And what of Hampshire College.  If they have Mohawks en masse there, I don't see them because all the quasi-freegan hipster types are still wearing the hockey-helmet or Dave Grohl look.  That leaves the 22,000 student-filled UMass Amherst.  Not one noted in two semesters.

So it's not the colleges.  Is it the farmers? Hardley.  Hair style on an organic farm is hardly a priority, especially when hair putty that provides staying power for the Mohawk is probably ecologically toxic (and if it wasn't it would be outrageously expensive, and even if it could be afforded, farming and haute coiffure don't seem to be synergistic). Further, the hair dryer needed to achieve the lift of the Mohawk is a waste of electricity. New England Farmers may be a lot of things, but electricity slanderers is not one of them. 

Okay - the military personnel in the area.  Nice try, but no.  There is a difference between the military-regulated flat top with tight sides and the vertical vavoom that is a Mohawk.

It must be the every-day, blue-collarish work-a-day types...at Walmart for some reason.  Three: count them, THREE in the 1 hour I was there getting my eyes checked and fit for glasses (because I'm a broke student with no principles) .  On my way to the WalMart, I based by two motorcyclists who had blue and green Mohawks on their helmets.

http://www.mhnracing.com/gallery3.htm

Maybe these folks are wanna-be Roman Centurions? Maybe. It's the Valley. It's possible.