Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
Thinking about Katherine and her mental transcribing of French (which, as I mentioned, I do too), I wondered whether any of the rest of you do what I do and habitually watch TV and DVDs with the closed captions or English subtitles turned on. It drives the people I'm watching with completely bugnuts so I usually refrain from doing it unless I'm alone, but somehow it just gives me more pleasure to be able to read something at the same time that I'm hearing it. Am I the only one?
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(8)
09:24:13 PM,Wednesday 6 August 2003
These days, it's kind of funny when someone's name matches their profession -- "Ha ha! Your name is Baker and you're a Baker! Did you plan it that way? Huh huh huh," -- but I wonder just about when that started, and it stopped being funny when someone's name didn't match their profession -- "Ha ha! Your name is Smith and you're a Cobbler! Did your family disown you or something? Huh huh huh."
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(3)
06:35:19 PM,Tuesday 5 August 2003
The County Fair is tomorrow. I ain't been to the Fair in something like six years. Maybe even longer. I can't wait. Maybe I'll join the traveling carnival.
I really wish I could put something on this blog that wasn't snippy or cryptic. I've been reading all these other blogs, both on and off the blogmass, that are full of rich, fascinating essays day after day. But my head's just been sputtering. I don't think that's a change, or anything -- sustained narrative, much as I admire it, has never been something that's just welled out of me.
I've been doing a lot of admiring. There's so goddamn much that's worthy of it. And I shouldn't feel like a pissant in comparison, but... cowardice. Y'know? I love treading water so much that I have to constantly tinge my thoughts with dissatisfaction for it, 'cause I couldn't enjoy it at all if I thought I was going to do it forever. Same as why I love the Greyhound Bus. But the dissatisfaction is really just anxiety that I will make the choice to keep static, over the choice to do anything. I mean, that's a terrible choice to make. But think how many people make it. And maybe it's not cowardice that I mean... and maybe making the choice to aspire to greatness is just as terrible, and ridiculous to boot.
Aw, look what you made me did! I thought I'd kicked the habit of kvetching circularly about this stuff anywhere but in my head and to my mother, and now it's blarfed up on the blog again, ad nauseam. I was linked to the Mensa homepage earlier. Dude, at least I ain't one of them. It's sad, but it ain't. Indignity.
Isolation? That goes in and out. A couple days ago I felt very strongly for a few hours the distance between me and everyone else, each one in turn. I mean, I knew and know that it's usually a fairly stable ratio of distance mediating between the short length of discourse on either side. Whatever you say has to go through all the little channels broken up and then get reassembled, like the chocolate bar in Wonkavision. I just felt it acutely each time I had any conversation with anyone, stranger, new acquaintance, old friend, brother, parent, cat. It was a little unnerving but valuable, though I don't think I want to be aware of it that strongly all the time. I'm always a little bit aware of it. I don't know if there's anything that can be done about it, short of Sainthood.
Talk about my cat, he's started purring when he comes into my room late at night to eat, and he rubs against my leg. Just in the last three days or so. Makes me giddy with joy. Yarrow, at work, is always leaping on me and nuzzling me and purring like a zeppelin nonstop, and she's very welcome to -- she's soft and fun and delightful. But when Mitya does it, after six months of this aloof tolerance -- he lets me pet him but then licks himself fastidiously over every inch of fur I've besmirched with my foul fingers -- I feel like a million bucks.
Banal and banausic, though... I need a quest.
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(4)
07:22:13 AM,Tuesday 5 August 2003
Who's got twenty eight opera libretti saved to her eBookman?
Three guesses.
(hint: Wheeeeeeehaw!)
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(6)
08:53:37 AM,Monday 4 August 2003
I just discovered the Missoulian's webcam.
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(4)
06:34:28 AM,Monday 4 August 2003
Cnidarae: recite!
PlatonismElbow: What shall I recite?
Cnidarae: your lessons!
PlatonismElbow: Lesson one: upon the proper method and operation of taking compliments.
PlatonismElbow: Lesson two: timesing numbers times each other.
PlatonismElbow: Lesson three: geography.
PlatonismElbow: Lesson four: timesing numbers times other things, like stoats, or ostriches, or that strange fellow you saw on the street yesterday.
PlatonismElbow: Lesson five: recess.
PlatonismElbow: Lesson six: what to see, when.
PlatonismElbow: Lesson seven: wildebeests of the outer prairies.
PlatonismElbow: Lesson eight: what I sez to him yesterday, I sez.
PlatonismElbow: Lesson nine: See And Say It In Italian.
PlatonismElbow: Lesson ten: What The Archbishop Saw.
PlatonismElbow: Lesson Eleven: Initiation into the mysteries.
PlatonismElbow: This concludes our lessons for the day.
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(2)
02:06:15 AM,Monday 4 August 2003
Lust.
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(3)
01:23:06 AM,Monday 4 August 2003
Mr. Chimpanzee, an Operetta in one act, by Jules Verne. Hot damn, I love the internet.
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10:56:56 AM,Friday 1 August 2003
Olisbos O'Lesbos (O, lead and mellow Thesbos)
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10:13:43 AM,Friday 1 August 2003
Is "pease" a plural noun or an adjective? As in, "Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot, nine days old". It's problematical either way. I mean, we don't say "carrots cake"; neither do we say "chickeny soup". Or is it kind of like one of those odd singular-group nouns, like "a pair of pants" -- "a pod of pease"? I'm all confused.
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(5)
09:41:53 AM,Friday 1 August 2003
Mr. Brain's Pork Faggots. (via Lileks.)
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(3)
10:14:35 PM,Thursday 31 July 2003
Aristotle was an adept.
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(1)
10:46:08 AM,Thursday 31 July 2003
She could only come when she was beautiful. But when she was ugly -- Ha! Casanova could have learned a thing or two.
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10:45:47 AM,Thursday 31 July 2003
Would you call me crazy if I said that it sounds like Bach's B Minor Mass was influenced a lot by Vivaldi? I'm thinking especially the Crucifixus.
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(3)
10:44:38 AM,Thursday 31 July 2003
A geek is someone who tolerates weakness, but not just to be charitable; only when it's offset by a simultaneous strength.
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10:42:19 AM,Thursday 31 July 2003
Like I said before, I've been spending a ridiculous amount of money this summer: the tattoo, a wired remote for my jukebox, game boy games, CDs, sushi every week, and now, something that I've vaguely wanted for a very long time but never before had the gumption to actually purchase: a little "ebook" device. It's called the Franklin eBookman 901, which is about the lamest name I could have thought of in twenty seconds or less, but it's really much niftier than I had any hope of expecting. Its retail value is supposedly $129, but I got it for $50 off eBay, and Amazon is selling 'em cut-rate too for around the same price, so I guess it hasn't been terrifically popular. The two major complaints I got from the consumer reviews, that the screen was full of glare and that it ate batteries like Orson Welles at a clambake, seem to be marginally justified, but I don't think either one's a big enough deal to slam the thing. It's just so cool to be able to carry around a whole bunch of big books in a tiny little slip of gadgetry. Right now, I've got Neuromancer, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Montaigne's Essays, Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary, Tales of Chekhov, and Twelve Stories and a Dream. And it's only got 8 megabytes at the moment; I'm thinking of buying one of those massive memory chips so I can carry around way the hell more stuff than I can actually read; I'm just that kind of girl. I mean, look at the selection: there's all these to start with, plus plenty more besides -- and free as a boid! It's also got all those dorky little PDA functions, too, and though I've always been somewhat loathe to fall in with the dorky little PDA kids, I do have to admit it's kinda neat that a machine can read my handwriting, especially since nobody else can. At least, when it comes to late night blog entry inspirations, it beats writing on my arm with a ballpoint pen, which is what I've been doing for the last couple months. I know some people just don't like reading text off a screen, and I can understand that, but I kind of enjoy it, somehow. And even if I didn't, it'd be offset by the pleasure of holding a book one-handed without my thumb cramping up from jamming itself against the spine. Maybe I'm still just all fluttery from the novelty of the thing and'll start to see its faults when it wears off, but I gotta say I'm pretty jakked at the moment.
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(5)
10:33:43 AM,Thursday 31 July 2003
" To download this software, you must affirm that the following statements are true by pressing the button below.
By clicking the button below, I certify that:
* I am not listed on the Denied Persons List or The Entity List published by the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Export Administration; or the Special Designated Nationals List published by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.
* I am not a citizen, a resident of, or currently in an embargoed country (North Korea, Cuba, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Serbia, or the Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan).
* I will not use these products in, either directly or indirectly, the development of nuclear weapons, or any components thereof; of guided missiles; or of chemical or biological weapons."
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(11)
11:19:55 PM,Wednesday 30 July 2003
I wonder if slang and standard speech are stored in different parts of the brain.
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(11)
03:58:04 PM,Monday 28 July 2003
This is the Summer of Acquisition. It'll be over soon.
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(5)
03:16:55 PM,Friday 25 July 2003
The question is: am I cool enough to get a tattoo of something that was discovered in the ruins of Herculaeneum and wound up getting put on Anton Webern's gravestone?
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(9)
11:02:09 AM,Friday 25 July 2003