Friday, June 19. 2009
I thought it was just an Alaska-style lawn sculpture, but the thing moves, too. Battlefield potential no doubt. Can you picture 30 of these, heavily armed, at the Battle of the Somme? h/t Jonah at NRO
Thursday, June 18. 2009
I grabbed this photo of Jim Clark's 289' Athena (built in 2004 by Royal Huisman Yard) in Newport, RI this weekend -
Monday, June 15. 2009
Photo quality looks like the Bird Dog pup took these with her cell phone yesterday, in Chelsea (aka Hell's Kitchen):
Reviewed here. Sounds like good fun.
Tiger posted some toon sites. I liked xkcd. A sample:
Saturday, June 13. 2009
It's time for a free ad for Sippican's craftsmanship. Readers may recall the stunning and unique humidor he made for me. He seems to be able to make anything, in any historical style, including custom built-ins.
I'm sure he'd love to build something for you, especially if you are friendly to him. Here's his furniture site. Here's a small (Shaker?) Tiger Maple side table he made for us:
Sipp was kind enough to bring over a similar table the other day, in an antiqued (can't appreciate the antiquing in my in photo) finish. It is situated among the pile of other engagement gifts, below:
Continue reading "Sippican Cottage Furniture makes good stuff"
Friday, June 12. 2009
Nina Anasiashvilli in Giselle:
 The Letterman thing exposes something. Something other than what's being discussed. It's difficult to write, and in turn, tell jokes. Really funny people rarely tell jokes. They outline a narrative in a humorous way. If you sprinkle in a funny turn of phrase here and there, those are jokes, but they're not the point. If you've ever seen a good comedian appear in a nightclub when they're working on new material, it's generally really disjointed and unfunny. There's no thread running through it yet, and the jokes bomb or get a laugh, but you can't get a wave to ride on. A monologue done nightly is just watercooler chat. The day's happenings in a stream. But Letterman's DOA joke about Sarah Palin's daughter wasn't really topical, and it wasn't funny, and it stuck out like a sore thumb. It was an excuse to be vicious, and it showed that Letterman had been waiting for quite a while for any chance to say something unpleasant about someone he really doesn't like.That's why it seemed so jarring. Letterman likes to trade on his midwestern homeliness, and likes the association people have always made between him and Johnny Carson. Carson was from the midwest, too, of course, and Carson liked Letterman and had a lot to do with his success. It always rankled Letterman that he didn't replace Carson. He's become bitter about it, and it shows. But the impetus of the joke that bombed is exactly why Letterman never replaced Carson. Carson was talented, and funny, and wry, and light on his feet, and he was every bit the equal of every star that sat across from him. He knew what to talk to stars about, because he was a star. Letterman was always a kind of lame-o Lucifer to Carson's Archangel, and everybody knew it. Letterman made his name by being the king's fool. The king suffered someone aping him, to amuse him, but a fool is always a fool. You're allowed to say what you want, but there's no promotion ever in the offing. You get to hang around until you put your foot in it. And when you displease your sovereign, you get the ax, not the hook. Letterman's congenital problem manifested itself in spades. He is a Beta male in an industry filled with Beta males. Even the industry's a Beta. He's not even an entertainer -- his job is to talk to and about entertainers. They say politics is show-business for ugly people, and the similarities are manifest. Politics is often home to Beta males that try to cut in front of the big men on life's campus by the side door. Same deal. That's why they get along famously.
Continue reading "Hey Jenny Slater. Hey Jenny Slater. Hey Jenny Slater"
Thursday, June 11. 2009
Ron Rosenbaum muses about the Salinger archives.
Tuesday, June 9. 2009
Is dating for adults only? Dating may be obsolete for the horny, thoughtless kids who just want to get into bed right away to accommodate their raging hormones and to find their animal pleasures, but married people still date all the time to maintain their relationships. From the piece on modern "relationships" (h/t, Insty)
"Going out on a date is a sort of ironic, obsolete type of thing," says 25-year-old Elizabeth Welsh, who graduated from college in 2005 and now lives in Boston. She says that among her friends, dating is a joke. "Going out on a date to dinner and a movie? It's so cliche — isn't that funny?"
Monday, June 8. 2009
 Mnemosyne was impregnated by Zeus for nine consecutive nights, thus producing the nine muses. Among other things, she was a goddess of memory.
The number of muses increased over time from the original three. Poetic license and creeping specialization. I had been looking up Euterpe, the muse of music and of lyric poetry, called "the giver of delight." The muse of song, but got sidetracked on the general topic of the Muses.
I posted briefly on inspiration the other day, and we had "Sing, Goddess..." recently. It remains fascinating to me that our mental creations seem to come from "elsewhere," to the extent that we can imagine that they come from a supernatural source.
In my line of work, we say that such things come from the "preconscious" or the "unconscious," but that's not much different from saying they are gifts of a Muse.
Whenever a preacher says "May the words of my mouth, and the thoughts and meditations of my heart, be acceptable to You," he or she is echoing the classical plea to the Muses. Our civilization remains a Greek one.
This site tries to personalize the Muses.
Image is Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Mnemosyne (1881)
Saturday, June 6. 2009
 It is anniversary season for many. I recommend some nice diamonds for the gal - especially if she hasn't let herself go because she is sick and tired of you and your dirty, stinky socks, your selfishness, your unromantic, piggish ways, your roving eyes, your cocktails and ceegars, your crappy personality, and your inadequate income.
It's a husband's duty and pleasure to remain manly, strong, productive and firm (even if it requires the humiliation of the little blue pills) and to never show physical or emotional frailty.
It's a wife's duty and pleasure to remain lovely, cheerful, supportive, feminine and desirable, and to never nag or complain (and to use that estrogen stuff if you're over the hill).
Anything less is a de facto rejection, and rejection is deeply hurtful and damaging to the soul.
Friday, June 5. 2009
Actually, what I am listening to in the car: Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer.
Not a new Nail Gun by DeWALT.
It can drive a 16-D nail through a 2 X 4 at 200 yards. This makes construction a breeze. You can sit in your lawn chair and build a fence. Just get your wife to hold the fence boards in place while you sit back, relax with a cold beer and and a smoke and, when she has the board in the right place, fire away like William Tell.
Mr. Free Market would want one, I am certain.
Thursday, June 4. 2009
I got 'em all correct, but I'm a good speeler. Fact is, if you write a lot you tend to begin to speel 'em right.
Wednesday, June 3. 2009
 A fellow former Marine who knows the family forwarded this to me. For those, few, who don't know what Semper Fi means, it's the shortened version of Semper Fidelis - always faithful. (I've removed the name of the recruiter; any Marine would do this for another.)
My dad Angelo was in the hospital in Tacoma, Washington. A former Marine and veteran of the Korean War, he was having his third knee replacement surgery. A long and very painful operation was going to be made even worse because dad was going through it alone. There was no one to hold his hand, no familiar soft voices to reassure him. His wife was ill and unable to accompany him or even visit during his weeklong stay. My sisters and brother lived in California, and I lived even farther away, in Indiana. There wasn't even anyone to drive him to the hospital, so he had arrived that morning by cab.
The thought of my dad lying there alone was more than I could stand. But what could I do from here?
I picked up the phone and called information for the Puyallup,Washington, Marine Corps recruiting station, where I joined the Marines ten years before. I thought that, if I could talk to a Marine and explain the situation, maybe one of them would visit my dad.
I called the number. A man answered the phone and in a very confident voice said, "United States Marines, Sergeant XXXX. May I help you?"
Feeling just as certain, I replied, "Sergeant XXXX, you may find this request a little strange, but this is why I am calling." I proceeded to tell him who I was and that my father was also a former Marine and 100 percent disabled from the Korean War. I explained that he was in the hospital, alone, without anyone to visit and asked if Sergeant XXXX would please go and see him.
Without hesitation, he answered, "Absolutely."
Then I asked, "If I send flowers to the recruiting station, would you deliver them to my dad when you go to the hospital?"
"Ma'am, I will be happy to take the flowers to your dad. I'll give you my address. You send them, and I will make sure that he receives them," he replied.
The next morning, I sent the flowers to Sergeant XXXX's office just as we had planned. I went to work and, that evening, I returned home and phoned my dad to inquire about his surprise visitor.
If you have ever talked with a small child after that child has just seen Santa Claus, you will understand the glee I heard in my dad's voice. "I was just waking up when I thought I saw two Marines in their dress blue uniforms standing at the foot of my bed," he told me excitedly. "I thought I had died and gone to Heaven. But they were really there!"
I began to laugh, partly at his excitement, but also because he didn't even mention his operation. He felt so honored; two Marines he had never met took time out to visit an old Marine like him. He told me again and again how sharp they looked and how all the nurses thought he was so important.
"But how did you ever get them to do that"? he asked me.
"It was easy. We're all Marines, Dad, past and present. It's the bond."
After hanging up with my dad, I called Sergeant XXXX to thank him for visiting my dad. And to thank him for the extra things he did to make it special: wearing his dress blue uniform, bringing another Marine along. He even took a digital camera with him. He had pictures taken of the two Marines with my dad right beside his bed. That evening, he emailed them to me so I could see for myself that my dad was not alone and that he was going to be okay.
As for the flowers, they hardly mattered, but I was glad for the opportunity to express my feelings. The card read: "Daddy, I didn't want just anyone bringing you flowers, so I sent the World's Finest.
Semper Fi.
Tuesday, June 2. 2009
I didn't know this (from Armed and Dangerous):
Punctuation marks originated from notations used to mark pauses for breath in oral recitations, but 17-to-19th-century grammarians tied them ever more tightly to grammar. There remains a minority position that language pedants call “elocutionary” - that punctuation is properly viewed as markers of speech cadence and intonation. Top-flight copy editors know this: the best one I ever worked with was a syntactic punctuationist on her own hook who noted that I’m an elocutionary punctuationist and then copy-edited in my preferred style rather than hers. (That, my friends, is real professionalism.)
I think our blog punctuation style is elocutionary.
Ranked across nations. I was surprised by these numbers until I realized that they were the %s that chose "10", so those who chose 9-7 aren't included. Thus I am not sure what to make of the chart.
|
