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| March 2, 2022 |
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As a soothing diversion from the war and rumors of war, today will be
devoted to life beneath the sea. Over a hundred years ago, Gérard
de Nerval supposedly led his lobster Thibault around Paris on a leash, but today,
YouTube
is in Love with Leon, adopted from a supermarket. Brady started
this story on Halloween, and he's posting monthly updates. If you
need to catch up, this will bring you up to date.
What about these big sea-insects? Aren't they just food? Any problem with boiling
them alive? In 2004, David Foster Wallace published
Consider
the Lobster. Skip that if too distressing, and just enjoy
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| February 28, 2022 |
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Gary Brooker died last week; this post commemorates his passing. He was the force behind
Procol
Harum, the British prog-rock band, one of my favorites. Gary
Brooker and Keith Reid were similar to the team of Elton John and
Bernie Taupin, where the former wrote the music, sang, and played
piano; while the latter, who wrote the lyrics, lurked in the
background. Many wonderful songs from their first six records;
here's a sampler: nine of the best (omitting the tenth, really
the first, but you already know "A Whiter Shade of Pale").
Procol Harum Bonus: the band had two keyboard players; that's probably
Gary Brooker on the piano in organist Mathew Fisher's
Wreck of the
Hesperus, also from the "Salty Dog" LP, illustrated
here via Terry Gilliam's "Münchausen."
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| February 22, 2022 |
- NPR: Americans
are fleeing to places where political views match their own. Texas
has fashioned itself into a sort-of breakaway redneck republic.
- According to Forbes, Americans
Will Need To Register To Travel To Europe In 2023. A European Travel Information and
Authorisation System (ETIAS) visa waiver will be required to visit the Schengen
zone. Travelers aged 18-70 will apply online, supplying an email address and
debit/credit card to pay the nonrefundable €7 fee. I may turn 70 before
I return to Europe, unfortunately.
- On BBC4: Soul
Music, a long-runnng series about pieces of music with a
powerful emotional impact. Previously I'd only heard the
Wichita Lineman, catching
up now. Note the series title's a bit of a red herring; I've yet to find one of
these (I guess the kids call 'em 'podcasts') about a Motown song.
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| February 17, 2022 |
- Euronews: UK
scraps Golden Visas, effective immediately. Those of us who dream of emigration
envy those who can afford one (although I believe Portugal is the more favorable
destination, rather than Jolly Olde). More about Immigrant
Investor Programs at Wikipedia: The IMF
estimated in 2015 that the vast majority of golden visas are issued
to Chinese nationals although the UK action was sparked by
renewed calls for the UK to review its links with
Russia.
- Timothy Snyder: How
to think about war in Ukraine.
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| February 2, 2022 |
- Ottawa
update vs. the
scene in Canberra. As US media remains strangely mute concerning events up North, I'm finding
more useful reporting in r/Ottawa. (Can you
imagine this happening in DC? After January 6th, yes; and I'm reminded of the farmers'
Tractorcade -- but that was in
1979, before the Culture Wars.)
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| February 1, 2022 |
- Outside Austin, the
only telescope in the world which has been victim (and survivor) of a handgun (and hammer)
assault.
- Been listening to this British crooner who was killed in the Blitz,
Al Bowlly. He recorded
more than 1,000 songs, like If
Anything Happened To You, The
Very Thought of You, and
Midnight, The Stars, And
You (in an extended version which goes on for an hour).
- Busted a tailight and would've found fulfillment previously at car-part.com but
like so many things Internet, what was great several years ago has gotten crappy in
the interim, and another site has grabbed the ball, in this case
rockauto.com.
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| January 27, 2022 |
- Some school board in Tennessee has banned
Maus. Good
for sales, I reckon. Spiegelman
responds on CNN (although the link's into Reddit, where I've been spending a lot
more time recently, since moving away from Facebook). He mentions Timothy Snyder's
20
Lessons from the 20th Century on Tyranny. That's just the executive summary; I've
read the book (and you should, too). Here's two of the lessons.
- #1
- Do not
obey in advance (valuable advice to all wage-slaves), and
- #10
- Believe in
truth.
You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference
between what you want to hear and what is actually the case.
- I thought Jen Sorenson's recent
Wide
Cars was a joke, but then noticed Messy Nessy's
weird
and wonderful wheels of Jay Ohrberg and if that photo is to be believed, two
Cadillac convertibles were merged laterally into this big blue square. Another
double-wide vehicle was the Third Reich's proposed
Breitspurbahn -- somebody
created an animation
of this train on YouTube.
- The
Kopp-Etchells Effect -- leading edges of choppers' titanium blades
ignite air-borne sand.
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| January 21, 2022 |
- Wow, here's a time-suck: the
WikiArt Visual Art Encyclopedia.
Find your favorite artist, everything's there... and lots more.
- Brian Eno holds forth
on NFTs.
- Apartment Therapy addresses cozy
around the world, what it means, and looks like.
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| January 11, 2022 |
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Smiles all around among the NASA astronomers; the new telescope successfully
deployed. But its imagery may be underwhelming -- unlike Hubble, this is
an infra-red telescope, so the pictures from it we'll eventually
be seeing will all be false color. Since it's still en route to the LaGrange
point where it will stay, another week away, let's check in with
Juno,
which took five years to get to Jupiter, and now that its
mission has been extended (with a very close encounter with Europa
planned for late this year), let's celebrate
the five year anniversary of Juno's orbit insertion in psychedelic
style...with some new eye-catching posters,
available
for download. And for really trippy fun, five videos, all with music
by Vangelis.
More: main NASA
Juno page, and at Space.com, a collection of stills:
Juno's
amazing views of Jupiter.
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| January 8, 2022 |
- Here's a disaster -- the
1944
Hartford Circus Fire. Wrecking Crew drummer
Hal
Blaine was there; as was Emmett Kelly, the clown; and Charles
Nelson Reilly, who describes his experience in
this
segment from his "Life of Reilly" monologue stage-show. Afterwards,
he always avoided crowds, because of.
- Visiting
Another Green World: Organic paintings and drawings by Alexander Ross (b. 1960).
- Recently thinking about the
Paw-Paw
Tunnel, walking through it, on a couple different occasions, long ago. The
abandoned
Pennsylvania Turnpike, which is news to me, has two similar thrills.
- Nearby, from Roadside America, an
obvious bus stop
shelter, in Baltimore.
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| January 5, 2022 |
- In The Atlantic, Sophie Gilbert has
some questions about the World of Teletubbies and compares it to The Prisoner. This is
where I learned of the Tiddlytubbies, their world's equivalent to Smurflings.
(archived link)
- At Reasons To Be Cheerful, 192
ways the world got better in 2021.
- On the other hand, according to Umair Haque,
Want
to see a modern country commit suicide? Take a hard look at Britain, whose
decline will only accelerate after their monarch dies, I fear. Meanwhile, an
editorial in the Globe and Mail warns that since
the
American polity is cracked, and might collapse, Canada must prepare.
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| January 2, 2022 |
- Vice compiles 13
of the most surreal pictures of 2021. Happy New Year!
- A plea from Emily to draw them correctly: Enough
with the dead butterflies! The leading edge of their fore-wing (rather
than the trailing edge) should be perpindicular to the body.
- I remember in like 6th grade somebody pointng out that all of our trousers'
zippers had "YKK" stamped on the pull-tab, but it wasn't until decades later that
I learned those initials stood for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikigaisha (and thinking
this over, it's kind of amazing a Japanese company had a lock on anything
American schoolkids were wearing in the 1960s, when the only thing I had
that I knew was Made In Japan was origami paper).
Why
YKK zippers are the brown M&Ms of product design even has links to
anime videos produced by YKK to promote their zippers.
- Another video, unrelated: 8
minutes at Beany's in Long Beach in 1952, colorized and augmented with sound effects.
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| December 30, 2021 |
Some more local graffiti:
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| December 25, 2021 |
- Tacky Racoons posted a bunch of vintage cards:
Christmas
In Space!
- As of this writing, all seems nominal with the new telescope launch (although
it'll take months to become fully operational). A great day for NASA! Check
Where is
Webb? for current status & lots more info, and
this photo
of the GSFC people who made it happen, posing with a full-scale mockup
in front of Building 8.
- And a reminder that not everyone's holiday is happy: Joni Mitchell --
River. One
of these new 'official music videos' of an old song, which de-elevated my mood when
I heard it in an open-air outlet mall in San Clemente during our Thanksgiving trip
to SoCal (where we also visited the Nixon
library, which has the Oval Office I'm posing in, in the photo below). Wish I
had a river, myself, sometimes -- but I can't skate.
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| December 23, 2021 - Happy Holidays! |
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| December 11, 2021 |
- Sara Zaske in Slate,
Achtung
Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant
Children. Can't help believing my emotional development would've been healthier had I
naked play-mates when I was four years old; even so, I pity today's kids who aren't allowed
the 'free-range' experiences of growing up when and where I did.
- So this New Yorker
Tried 45 Oranges and This Is the
Best One does include helpful PLU numbers but all the produce tested came from
local NY markets. Silvia Killingsworth at The Awl reaches the same conclusion in
Satsuma
Mandarins Are The Best Citrus but I still favor fresh-picked California navels, in
season (which is almost here).
- Like the previously mentioned Jon Foreman,
Tamas Kanya
is a land artist who makes mandalas from seasonal materials.
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| December 5, 2021 |
The
evolution of the Oval Office. (Click to enlarge photo.)
Took advantage of a Black Friday deal to sign up with
the Washington Post where I see Alexandra Petri
assembled a 100-song
ranking of Christmas carols. That's
a lot; listing the ten best and ten worst,
as I did a
few years back, seems more manageable. Clearly, a
lot of padding in the middle -- one-third of these
100 are unknown to me, what are these animals. Donkey,
Hippo, Marco? Sure, assign The Drummer Boy the worst position,
but Do You Hear What I Hear? hardly gets #99, not with the
Two Front Teeth at #42 and The Twelve Days at #82.
Off
Limits places in Washington, DC. To add to #1, the
tippy-top is an 8-inch pyramid made of pure aluminum, which was
fabulously expensive, at the time of topping off (I've seen a
replica on display in the George
Washington Masonic National Monument, in Alexandria); and we
shouldn't stray from the Washington Monument without mentioning a
now off-limits place there I got to visit with my older brother and
his chums once, when they ran up and down the decorated stairways, before
they were closed to the vadalizing public. And isn't that #2 the
place along First St NW at Michigan Ave?
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So far, Ukraine seems to be
resisting the aggressor! But it's only Day 3. Someone at Bored Panda compiled
