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January 11th, 2008
11:58 am - Auld Acquaintance meme
Borrowed from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) chadu.
Make a post to your Live Journal, blog, MySpace, Facebook, or whatever, with a list of the names of old friends that you haven't seen in a long time, and would love to get in touch with again. Maybe one of them will Google their name and your post will turn up. Maybe someone on your friends list knows them and can pass the word along. Who knows?
So:
Ted Wrigley
Barbara Ann Hull
Bayne Steele
Andrew Chen
Price Pomeroy
...what are you guys up to?
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November 21st, 2007
October 29th, 2007
03:34 pm - A Long Line of Dead Men (and Women)
I recently re-acquired the Genealogy Bug, and have been spending rather more time than my wife would prefer at trying to trace out a first rough guess at my post-immigrant ancestry. The results have been interesting, at least to me.
I seem to be very, very American. So far, the most recent immigrant ancestor I've been able to find is a great-great-great-grandmother who allegedly came over from Europe, no later than 1842. The only unknown ancestors who could possibly have been earlier are my maternal grandfather's mother's parents -- and she was born in the US in 1860, so it's unlikely.
Subject to (extensive) necessary verification, I nevertheless seem to be descended from 3 Mayflower passengers, one Jamestown settler (second wave -- arrived 1622), one Third Virginia Charter settler (1635), two non-Mayflower early Plymouth colonists (1629 and 1630), and so forth. One of those colonial lines, the Fitz Randolphs of New Jersey, trace an alleged descent from pretty much all of the mediaeval kings of Europe, including Charlemagne and Louis I of France. As I said, extensive verification required.
The general patterns seems to have been:
1. Arrive to North American colonies
2. Move around a bit to acquire mucho land
3. Spit out a younger son or daughter who pines for the frontier
4. Have them move to an area just outside the boundaries of the colonies/states
5. Repeat as necessary every time civilization gets too close
6. Pass through PA/MD/VA, then NC and/or TN (optional), then KY, then IN, then IL just in time
Fascinating. We'll see what else turns up as I try to get past the low-hanging fruit on the family tree.
Current Music: Stanley Jordan, Magic Touch
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July 25th, 2007
12:10 pm - I Can Name That Tune in One Letter (Meme)
ctate gave me the letter Y and memed me to name my favorite ten songs beginning with that letter. Y, oh y, did it have to be y.
The problem with Y is not that there aren't enough songs, but that there are so very many very bad songs. Bad in every way that songs can be bad.
Sappy songs: "You Light Up My Life", Debbie Gibson.
Campy songs: "YMCA", Village People
Silly songs: "Yes, We Have No Bananas", Benny Goodman / Spike Jones / etc.
Satirical songs: "Yoda", Weird Al Yankovic
So, sifting through the dross, here are my top 10 Y-songs of all time.
( Read more... )
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November 30th, 2006
12:33 pm - A Midsummer Night's Screwball Comedy
As an early Christmas gift, my parents gave us tickets to the Folger Shakespeare Theater production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream". It was wholly unlike what I was expecting (whatever that was), and a lot of fun. The director's alleged inspiration was seeing a really bad performance of AMSND in the middle of a Busby Berkeley film festival, and realizing that Gable and Lombard (or Nick and Nora Charles) were a much more convincing Oberon and Titania than any of the vanilla faery interpretations he'd ever seen. So he staged the whole play as '30s high society with absurd musical interludes -- and it works!
( Details and more pondering... )
All in all, an excellent and very entertaining show. I can see why it was held over, and I'm sorry it closes so soon.
Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Brahms Motets
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November 27th, 2006
02:31 pm - Valabar's
We have tangible information! Steven Brust responded to a question I asked in his LJ, as follows:
od_mind:
I recently had the very great pleasure of visiting Hungary, and the even greater pleasure of eating at a famous Budapest restaurant that had me thinking about Valabar's. Is Valabar's modeled on some particular restaurant you've been to, or is it more a Platonic Ideal of restaurant?
skzbrust:
To some extent, it is modeled after The Bakery, a Continental restaurant in Chicago some years ago, operated by Chef Lajos (Louis) Szathmary.
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November 19th, 2006
01:36 am - Ha! Vlad meets Meyer
Steven Brust recently posted on his LJ that he's been enjoying re-reading the Travis McGee books of John D. MacDonald after a long hiatus. In one of his responses to comments, he wrote:
"I have the feeling that the next Vlad novel is going to have a few McGee-like passages, here and there. It's time I brought in a new influence, and he does sort of fit like a glove."
Whee!
Current Location: The Cave
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Jesus Christ Superstar, London Soundtrack
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November 13th, 2006
01:35 pm - That SFBC list thing
SFBC List of the 50 "most important" works of SF in the last (mumble) years.
I've bolded the ones I've read, italicized the ones I started and never finished, underlined the ones I've loved, and done a strike through on the ones I've read and hated.
( Read more... )
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November 12th, 2006
05:48 pm - Philosophistry
A rather amusing philosophy quiz.
(Actually, I was annoyed by the lack of a coherent alternative to choose in the first ethics question. I can believe that real moral choices exist, without believing that lying is always wrong no matter what...)
( Read more... )
Current Music: King Crimson, "21st Century Shizoid Man"
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November 7th, 2006
05:07 pm - I am not making this up
A sentence seen in a current news story:
"The listing was removed from eBay on Oct. 11 because it violated a policy against selling human remains."
Full story here.
Current Music: Mason Williams, Classical Gas
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November 3rd, 2006
01:54 pm - Spot on
So much for my belief that I have mostly eradicated my native accent...
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. | | The South | | | Philadelphia | | | The Inland North | | | The Northeast | | | The West | | | Boston | | | North Central | | What American accent do you have?
Take More Quizzes |
Southern Illinois. Ding ding ding ding.
Current Location: The Salt Mines
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/nolegs/drained.gif) frazzled
Current Music: William Byrd, The Great Service
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November 1st, 2006
01:36 pm - Europe
I just got back from a nearly-three-week luxury cruise up the Danube with The Missus. Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, Duernstein, Melk, Passau, Regensberg, Prague. The first and last stops featured multiple nights in a luxury hotel; the others were all on board the (equally luxurious) ship River Cloud.
True confession: I'm 44 years old now, and this was my first ever trip to continental Europe. Better late than never, but I have a lot of catching up to do.
Overall, we had a wonderful time. The weather was nearly perfect, the places were interesting (and all different), the food was beyond description. I bought a digital camera just for the trip, and took over 1000 pictures (which I will weed down into a coherent subset Any Day Now).
( Particular highlights behind the cut )
I could go on, but those are what spring to mind up front. I'll try to follow up later with some thoughts on Europe As One Nation, the flourishing regionalism that goes with that, etc. I'll note in passing that when we were in Passau and Regensberg, the flag we flew on the ship was that of Freistadt Bayern, and the municipal buildings flew that alongside the EU flag. What is this 'Germany' of which you speak?
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September 14th, 2006
05:05 pm - Wilde Thing meme
From rolanni:
Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe. Repost in your journal. [NB: I took the first 5 that I firmly agree with... a slightly weaker requirement.]
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859 - 1927), Three Men in a Boat, 1889
There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.
Emile Chartier
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
Will Durant (1885 - 1981)
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642)
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755 - 1826), Physiologie du Gout, 1825
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August 22nd, 2006
12:45 pm - Home again home again
I have safely returned from my Hell is Travel excursion.
( Diabolical itinerary within... )
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12:28 pm - Quotation of the Day
"It's no accident that Chauvin was a Frenchman."
-- George M. Taber, "The Globalization of Wine", chapter 22 in Judgment of Paris: California vs. Paris and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine. NY: Scribner, 2005.
Current Location: The Salt Mines
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/nolegs/amused.gif) amused
Current Music: Lyle Mays
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July 27th, 2006
03:31 pm - Lyric translation nonsense
Idea snagged from ctate: pick a popular song lyric, and run it through a machine translation program, going English -> German -> French -> English, just copying and pasting.
Here's what Babelfish gives me for my chosen lyric, despite the fact that I punctuated the lyric into complete sentences before starting:
( Read more... )
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July 16th, 2006
06:25 pm - Which of the Major Tarot Arcana are you?
 | You scored as XI: Justice. The blindfold arbiter weighs the evidence and passes judgement without fear or favour. There can be no appeal.Justice is not necessarily the same as Law. True justice seeks out the spirit of the law, not just its letter. If a law is bad then true Justice will set that law aside. This is the sacred responsibility of those given the power to judge. If well aspected in a Tarot reading, this card can indicate settlement of disputes, the achievement of a just outcome. If badly aspected this card can indicate corruption and failure of justice.
XI: Justice | | 75% | XIX: The Sun | | 69% | XIII: Death | | 69% | X - Wheel of Fortune | | 69% | VI: The Lovers | | 56% | XVI: The Tower | | 50% | I - Magician | | 44% | II - The High Priestess | | 38% | VIII - Strength | | 38% | III - The Empress | | 38% | XV: The Devil | | 31% | 0 - The Fool | | 25% | IV - The Emperor | | 19% | </td>
Which Major Arcana Tarot Card Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com |
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June 10th, 2006
05:49 pm - Recently Read: Lud-in-the-Mist
(I posted the following 'review' of Hope Mirrlees's Lud-in-the-Mist to rec.arts.sf.written, but I thought I would also put a copy here, since there's very little overlap in readership.)
--
After several years' worth of promptings from the AlexLit recommender, various acquaintances, and a few famous advocates[1], I finally got around to reading Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees. I will try to avoid egregious spoilers, but I'm afraid that my comments on style and structure will turn out to be bigger spoilers than anything I might say about the plot.
( Review behind the cut... )
[1]The book's most famous and vocal recent advocate is probably Neil Gaiman. His cover blurb for the edition I have in my hand reads "The single most beautiful, solid, unearthly, and unjustifiably forgotten novel of the twentieth century."
Current Location: Home Sweet Home
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/nolegs/pensive.gif) pensive
Current Music: No, alas
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June 7th, 2006
09:43 am - SIP Quiz unguessed answers
Here are the two unguessed SIP lists from my earlier quiz:
- heptagonal room, imperial theologians, treasure crypt, master glazier, blind room are from The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco as translated by William Weaver.
- voluble self, fixed land, golden roof, golden sky, low worlds are from Perelandra by C.S. Lewis. I was sure "fixed land" would give that one away.
Current Location: The Salt Mines
Current Music: Malcolm Dalgleish, Jogging the Memory
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June 3rd, 2006
12:44 pm - Was Sam Frodo's Servant?
calimac posted the following in kate_nepveu's LJ:
"Also interesting: Bilbo and Frodo never had any servants, at least not visibly. Unrealistic, given their wealth and their large elaborate house, but the author's crime - if any - is of rendering them invisible, not lording it over them.
Sam, of course, was not Frodo's servant, but his gardener, an independent man contracted to work. He is deferential to Frodo, which however grating today is historically accurate for the Victorian period Tolkien is trying to evoke. But he travels with Frodo out of friendship and concern, not because he's his manservant. And he becomes Frodo's caregiver out of love, not class obligation."
Suffice it to say, I think this is a complete misunderstanding of the relationship portrayed by Tolkien. The Gamgees were hereditary family retainers of the Baggins family, in the timeless British tradition of such, as practiced through (say) the first quarter of the 20th century. The relationship was feudal in its roots, though the legal situation had changed quite a bit by Tolkien's time.
Sam was Frodo's servant, and they both knew it. As did everyone they met throughout the course of the book, from Faramir to Ioreth. I find it hard to see how anyone could dispute this, given the way Sam calls Frodo "sir" and "Mr. Frodo" and "master" throughout the book, even though they are roughly the same age. Not to mention the way everyone assumes Sam will carry the heavy gear, groom the pony, cook the food, etc.
And I think this is an important feature of the book, because the rise of Sam from gardener to Mayor shows that, as much as Tolkien longed nostalgically for the old order and ways, he did not necessarily see the elevation of the working classes as a bad thing, nor did he see any inherent gulf between the lower classes and "their betters".
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/nolegs/listless.gif) pedantic
Current Music: Steeleye Span, "Please to See the King"
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