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.
Monday, June 1. 2009
This came in over the transom, I know not whence:
THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE CRUISE
To The Point is excited to offer the ultimate adventure cruise along the pirate-infested coast of Somalia!
We board our luxury cruise ship in Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden near the entrance to the Red Sea, and disembark in Mombassa, Kenya seven adrenaline-charged days later.
Starting at $5,200 per-person (double occupancy, inside room) and $6,900 (veranda complete with bench rest), you'll relax like never before.
That's because you are welcome to bring your own arsenal with you. If you don't have your own weapons, you can rent them from our onboard Master Gunsmith. Enjoy reloading parties every afternoon with skeet and marksmanship competitions every night!
But the best fun of all, of course, is Pirate Target Practice.
For the object of the cruise is to sail up and down the Somali Coast waiting to get hijacked by pirates. The weapons rental costs are as follows.
Rent a full auto M-16 for only $25/day with ammo attractively priced at $16 per 100 rounds of 5.56 armor-piercing:
On a budget? Rent a full-auto scope-mounted AK-47 for only $9/day with 7.62 ball ammo at $12 per 100 rounds:
Hello! Nothing gets a pirate's attention like a Barrett M-107 .50-cal sniper rifle; only $59/day with 25 rounds of armor-piercing ammo affordably priced at only $29.95.
Need a spotter? Our professional crew members can double as spotters for only $30/hour (spotting scope included, but gratuities are not.)
Want to make a real impact? Rent an RPG for only $175/day with three fragmentation rounds included!
Also included: Free complimentary night vision equipment - and throughout the night, coffee, pastries and snacks are always available on the main deck from 7pm until 6am.
Our deluxe package comes complete with gourmet meals and all rooms offer a mini-bar.
But that's not all! Twin mounted miniguns are available for rental at only $450.00 per 30 seconds of sustained fire!
We guarantee that you will experience at least two hijacking attempts by pirates or you'll receive an instant $1,000 refund upon arrival in Mombassa.
How can we make that guarantee? We operate at 5 knots just beyond 12 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia, thus in international waters where pirates have no rights whatever. In fact, we make three passes through the area's most treacherous waters to ensure maximum visibility by Somali "mother ships".
We repeat this for five days, making three complete passes past the entire Somali Coast. At night, the boat is fully lit and bottle rockets are shot every five minutes with loud disco music directionally beamed shoreside to attract maximum attention.
Testimonials from previous participants in the Somali Cruise:
"Six attacks in 4 days were more than I expected. I bagged three pirates, my wife nailed two, and my 12-year old son sank two boats with the mini-gun. This wonderful cruise was fun for the whole family" -- Fred D., Cincinnati, OH
"Pirates 0, Passengers 32! Well worth the trip! Can't recommend it highly enough!" -- Ben L., Bethesda, MD
"I haven't had this much fun since flying choppers in 'Nam. Don't worry about getting shot by pirates... they never even got close to the ship with the crap they shoot and their lousy aim... reminds me of a drunken juicer door-gunner we picked up from the motor pool in Phu Bai!" -- Dan J. - Denver, CO
Come on board and bag your own clutch of genuine Somali pirates! But cabin space is limited so you need to respond quickly. Reserve your package before May 31st and get a great bonus - 100 rounds of free tracer ammo in the caliber of your choice. So sign up for the Ultimate Somali Coast Adventure Cruise now!
Addendum 9/13/09 - We have just learned that this post came from the fine Doug Ross Journal: http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/05/somali-coast-cruise-package.html
PJ O'Rourke on the end of America's love affair with automobiles. (h/t, Env. Repub). One quote:
Politicians, journalists, financial analysts and other purveyors of banality have been looking at cars as if a convertible were a business. Fire the MBAs and hire a poet. The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of financial crisis, foreign competition, corporate greed, union intransigence, energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprints in the carbon. It’s a tragic romance—unleashed passions, titanic clashes, lost love and wild horses.
Read it (link above). Apparently making money from making cars was never an easy thing to do.
Saturday, May 30. 2009
Strong breeze and thus a very fine sail this morning. We passed this handsome old cruiser moored outside a CT harbor:
Friday, May 29. 2009
Sippican sent us the link to the Graham Rust gallery of residential trompe l'oeil. It sure beats wallpaper. Here's one:
 Maggie's Farm is holding its first Engagement Party tomorrow.
Or I think that's what you might call it. But not really - it's actually sorta like a mini-wedding reception with a receiving line and all that, because the actual wedding will be way up in VT in the shadow of the couple's Alma Mater, good old Dartmouth College (also the Alma of the bride's Dad and late Grandpa, and of the groom's late lamented uncle) - and will be just closest family.
We have the old place sorta spruced up (finally moved the old broke fridges and generators off the front porch, for one thing, got the old duck boat off the front yard, yanked out the saplings growing out of the roof, threw out three year's worth of garbage, and cleaned most of the skeletons out of the coat closets), and I finally even warshed my overhalls, which I hated to do seein as they were just getting comfortable. Might even take a shower if the Missus insists, but I been told that dihydrogen monoxide is bad for you unless it has Cape Cod ocean mixed with it - which is the only dihydrogen monoxide solution I happily enter- and only if it is as cold as hell. (Soap and shampoo are chemical poisons too: consensus science tell us that, and everybody knows it.)
So we got the champagne and the other good booze like bourbon such as Grandpa's Overhalls and the crab cakes and scallop n' bacon thingies and barbecue sliders with dippin sauce (gotta have them) and the required basil-goat cheese tartlets and the apple-onion tartlets, hot mini-tortillas, and a bunch of other tasties on the way. Plus a couple of bartenders and a number of good wait staff, and a couple of off-duty cops to organize the parking because, despite the global warming crisis, most folks still insist on driving automobiles to get where they want to go (horses are too slow, and emit noise-polluting and criminal volumes of methane from their hindquarters).
As a last minute addition, I added a case of Chalk Hill cab to the mix because Gwynnie forced some on me last night against my will, and the fragrance of it blew me away (can be cellared for 15 years? Are you kidding me? How about for three weeks?). Hardly have to bother drinking it, it smells so good. The fragrance is a meal in itself. Why bother with the drinking part, which only makes you stupider than you already were?
The fortunate heir has all four of his grandparents coming, too, along with closest family friends and the whole darn family - including the bride-to-be's family who all flew up to Yankeeland from Birmingham, Alabama in the rain last night.
I hope it don't rain tomorry, because we planned mostly for outdoors, without any silly tent.
Do we love the gal? Yes indeedy we do. She is a peach.
Thursday, May 28. 2009
Via Coyote, who links to more of them.
From Harsanyi in the Denver Post.
His personal piece caused me to ponder how those who seek social changes strategize to "normalize" those changes so that we stop thinking about them. I remain deeply conflicted about the idea of abortion.
I can't resist noting that Mary Roach, whose TED video on orgasms we linked yesterday, is the author of both Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex - and thus she is the only author I can think of for whom the interview question "What got you interested in this topic?" would be deeply stupid.
|
