Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
1) This song is totally about the Saturnalia ritual via Frazer, right?
2) Is he singing "let the yoke fall from our shoulders", as all the lyrics sites have it, or "let the Oak fall from our shoulders"; i.e., give over to the Holly King? Or are we supposed to be hearing both at once?
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06:01:35 PM,Wednesday 26 January 2011
Listening Room, a website that's basically a chat room with simultaneous mp3 streaming, so you can get a bunch of people together and everyone can play music for everyone else. I think it sounds pretty fun. Who's up for a live blogswap DJ party?
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(18)
10:40:18 PM,Monday 24 January 2011
This morning K. and I were discussing stand-up comedy, and how we both like it if it's really good, but if it's only so-so we can't tolerate it. Then we got to talking about how two of our favorite comedians (Eddie Izzard and Margaret Cho) had pulled off the impressive feat of making actually funny jokes about airline food (Cake or Death, This Is Not the Chicken Salad of My People). The conversation wrapped up with me saying, "I just flew in from Innsmouth, and boy are my arms tentacles!"
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(1)
04:13:18 PM,Sunday 9 January 2011
Just because I'm really quite proud of this indeed, I'm going to post it on yet another website:
Ignore the last three minutes. YouTube added them on there for no reason I can discern; they're blank. Just stop the video after 1:48. But isn't it awesome? Plover speaks!
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12:12:50 AM,Monday 20 December 2010
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03:22:48 AM,Thursday 16 December 2010
Do you know who's adorable? Oliver Sacks. Oliver Sacks is adorable._
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(8)
06:10:07 PM,Saturday 4 December 2010
Putting aside brand names like Kleenex, Xerox, and Band-Aids, what are some words that are used by corporate spokesmen in ads, but are never used by actual users of the products in question? The ones I can come up with: "Notebook computer" for laptop, "wireless phone" for cell phone, "bathroom tissue" for toilet paper. No one I know actually calls those objects by those names, so whenever a commercial starts talking about them, I get a mild but unsettling parallel dimension feeling about the whole thing. I understand "bathroom tissue"; it's just a straight-up euphemism. I guess "cell phone" is too informal, and "cellular phone" would be too long or something. But I've never understood why they've been saying "notebook computer" for decades now, even though the phrase still hasn't caught on among the general public. Is it because laps are too scandalous to mention? Is it because they're sometimes shown on desks? I just don't know. Other examples of this phenomenon? And has it ever happened that after years of fighting a losing battle to get something like "buttery spread" to come into general use, they finally give up and start saying "margarine"?
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(9)
08:33:09 AM,Monday 22 November 2010
On the subway the other day I saw a young acting student (he was carrying a book called How To Rehearse When There Is No Rehearsal) intently studying a script. He turned a page and I caught just a glimpse of the cover before he folded it back. My brain turned the subliminal image it had been given into Dr. Turnkey's Criminal Exposition. I was pretty sure that wasn't actually what it said, but I was equally sure that I really wanted to see a play called Dr. Turnkey's Criminal Exposition. I spent the next several minutes writing and casting it in my head, but then, just before my stop, the acting student held the script up to his face and I was able to read the actual title: Dr. Funk's Christmas Explosion. I... I don't think I want to see that play.
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(2)
01:03:43 PM,Saturday 13 November 2010
O.o.C.Q.o.t.D.: "A delicious chai-flavored cheese in the shape of a tea kettle."
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(1)
12:54:16 PM,Saturday 6 November 2010
I've been googling all over the place, but I haven't been able to find a translation for the Yiddish parts of this song. Pretty catchy, though!
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09:40:52 AM,Monday 25 October 2010
K: Guess what?
M: What?
K: Chicken butt. One of Wilde's, sir. One of Wilde's.
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06:33:18 PM,Friday 15 October 2010
Some of you guys might already have seen this on the parts of the internet that I use for blatant self promotion, but I'm proud enough to want to post it here too: Interview with me on Geek Feminism about the new release of Plover, which now writes correctly formatted text into any Linux window.
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(8)
07:48:06 AM,Wednesday 13 October 2010
After reading aloud this amusing tidbit from the Wikipedia article on Phallus impudicus:
Writing about life in Victorian Cambridge, Gwen Raverat (granddaughter of Charles Darwin) describes the 'sport' of Stinkhorn hunting:
In our native woods there grows a kind of toadstool, called in the vernacular The Stinkhorn, though in Latin it bears a grosser name. The name is justified, for the fungus can be hunted by the scent alone; and this was Aunt Etty's great invention. Armed with a basket and a pointed stick, and wearing special hunting cloak and gloves, she would sniff her way round the wood, pausing here and there, her nostrils twitching, when she caught a whiff of her prey; then at last, with a deadly pounce, she would fall upon her victim, and poke his putrid carcase into her basket. At the end of the day's sport, the catch was brought back and burnt in the depest secrecy on the drawing-room fire, with the door locked; because of the morals of the maids.
K: I like it when you read me... Whatever that was.
M: It was written by the granddaughter of Charles Darwin.
K: Which means it was written by the great-great-granddaughter of Erasmus Darwin, which explains rather more, doesn't it?
"So the lone Truffle, lodged beneath the earth,
Shoots from paternal roots the tuberous birth;
No stamen-males ascend, and breathe above,
No seed-born offspring lives by female love.
From each young tree, for future buds design'd
Organic drops exsude beneath the rind;
While these with appetencies nice invite,
And those with apt propensities unite;
New embryon fibrils round the trunk combine
With quick embrace, and form the living line:
Whose plume and rootlet
at their early birth
Seek the dry air, or pierce the humid earth."_
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(4)
11:30:57 PM,Friday 1 October 2010
K. and I just noticed that Cake's Commissioning a Symphony in C is in the second person, which isn't too unusual, but it also doesn't have either an explicit or an implied first person, which is relatively rare in pop music. Can you think of any others?
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(3)
09:09:00 PM,Sunday 26 September 2010
Walnuts are delicious because they taste like poison. Delicious, delicious poison.
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(5)
11:11:36 AM,Tuesday 21 September 2010
Me: Where's the Naras Warp?
K: I put it in the drawer. I'm a little alarmed that I knew what you meant.
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11:00:23 PM,Friday 10 September 2010
Me: (writing shopping list) "Okay. Gyoza, ziplocs, and beer."
K: That sounds like a recipe from the horrible food shows you used to transcribe. "For a fun picnic snack, put dumplings in a plastic bag and fill it up with beer. Then deep fry the plastic bag, put it on a stick, and voila! Don't forget the mayonnaise!"
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(2)
07:24:36 PM,Friday 10 September 2010
One of my favorite things about the East Coast is all the acorns to crunch underfoot. In Montana we had horse chestnuts, but oak trees were vanishingly rare. They still seem sort of mythical to me, but I don't notice them until fall, when all these tiny perfect corniced chambers are scattered everywhere.
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(4)
07:17:49 AM,Wednesday 8 September 2010
I first heard this when I was in high school, and I've loved it to absolute bits ever since. Audio only.
Lea Delaria might have shot me down in a humiliating manner, and honestly I find most of her jazz singing pretty annoying, but I have to say I really like her cover of Sondheim's "Losing My Mind".
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(8)
06:26:37 PM,Saturday 4 September 2010
