And a beautiful book it is, too. I can’t wait to read it!
Sentential Links #227
Lnikage. Likange. And linkage!
In other words, the one economic policy Republicans will fight for, no matter what, is the one economic policy we know didn’t work.
:: I deserve some kind of compensation though so I have decided to make this a Mozart day. I’m listening to nothing but Mozart for the rest of the afternoon – light, fluffy early Mozart, nothing later than K200 or so. (Awww, that seems a bit limiting! I can think of few pieces of music more sunny in nature, more optimistically life-affirming, than the ever-wonderful K364.)
:: But there’s a dark side as well. We know about the real world of the era steampunk is riffing off. And the picture is not good. If the past is another country, you really wouldn’t want to emigrate there. Life was mostly unpleasant, brutish, and short; the legal status of women in the UK or US was lower than it is in Iran today: politics was by any modern standard horribly corrupt and dominated by authoritarian psychopaths and inbred hereditary aristocrats: it was a priest-ridden era that had barely climbed out of the age of witch-burning, and bigotry and discrimination were ever popular sports: for most of the population starvation was an ever-present threat. I could continue at length. It’s the world that bequeathed us the adjective “Dickensian”, that gave us a fully worked example of the evils of a libertarian minarchist state, and that provoked Marx to write his great consolatory fantasy epic, The Communist Manifesto. It’s the world that gave birth to the horrors of the Modern, and to the mass movements that built pyramids of skulls to mark the triumph of the will. It was a vile, oppressive, poverty-stricken and debased world and we should shed no tears for its passing (or the passing of that which came next). (Sorry for linking an entire paragraph like that, but I couldn’t figure out how to distill it down without destroying it. So there it is.)
:: “You can’t do that!” Wesley says, “Lando doesn’t know how to fly spaceships!” (Interesting post about the current generation of Star Wars fans…albeit with some of the usual “George Lucas sucks!” stuff in the comments, as per usual.)
:: Tomorrow I will bury the bunny in my backyard and say a little blessing for it. And if after that I feel up for another bike ride I will, regardless of the wind, most definitely go the other direction. (I’m so glad I found this blog.)
More next week!!!
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Bears 22, Bills…less than 22.
This was a fun game to watch. The Bears ran it well, but the Bills stayed right there, even taking a 19-14 lead in the 2nd half. But as the fourth quarter ran on, you just felt it coming. You knew it was there, waiting….
And sure enough, with the Bills trying to set up a tying field goal to send the game to overtime (after a freakishly good bounce on a Chicago punt to leave the Bills at the 1-yard line), QB Ryan Fitzpatrick rallied the troops…and then promptly unrallied them by throwing an interception, allowing the Bears to run out the clock.
Splat.
BTW, I know it’s hard to judge sitting at home watching on the teevee, but it sure sounded like the crowd at this Bills “home” game — played in Toronto — consisted of mostly Chicago fans. Yuck!
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Back to the kitchen with you
I was looking around some blogs this afternoon, and in the comments on one blog that I keep coming back to for some reason (even though I can’t stand the blogger, her viewpoint, or her writing) offered this in reference to last week’s elections:
It was nice to see Nancy Pelosi put in her place!
Wow. “Put in her place”. I’d take the charitable view here and assume that this writer meant, as a conservative, that it was nice to see the top Democrat in the House relegated to probable Minority Leader status. But I’m not going to take this view, as this person’s writings over the years have made clear that she deeply fetishizes a time when a woman’s place was a lot more clearly defined than it is now. I’m always surprised to see such rhetoric employed out there.
Nancy Pelosi has achieved the highest elected position ever ascended by an American woman…but now, she’s been put in her place. One wonders if the blogger in question hopes John Boehner gives Nancy Pelosi a fifty and tells her to “go buy herself somethin’ pretty”.
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Tinkering under the hood….
In general I’ve liked the changes I made to this blog’s appearance a while back, but there were two things that bugged me: my ragged right-margins, and the fact that text offset using the blockquote tag didn’t stand out as much as a block-quote as it did in my previous template. I have now fixed both problems.
See? Here’s my new style of blockquote! Huzzah!!!
OK, back to my normal blathering. Carry on!
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Sunday Stealing
I haven’t done a Sunday Stealing quiz in a while, so here’s this week’s edition.
1. What do you consider your hometown to be?
If I’m talking to people around here, I’ll say Orchard Park. In a more general sense, I just say “Buffalo”, because I consider the whole region to be the “Buffalo” region. I’m a big fan of regionalism, actually; I think a lot of Buffalo’s problems could be helped along, if not solved, by allowing the city to annex suburbs. Unfortunately, that apparently can’t happen in New York the way the laws are right now.
If by “hometown” we mean the place I was born, then it’s Pittsburgh, PA. But we moved from there when I was only two or three, and while I have always had strong emotional ties and a deep love for that city, it’s not my home anymore.
2. What’s the hardest part of your average day?
Mid-afternoon, usually. That’s when my attention and motivation levels sag a bit as I start to make the mental transition to evening.
3. The easiest? Why?
Morning and evening. Those are when I’m the most fired up.
4. What beverage do you reach for to quench your thirst?
If I’m thirsty, then it’s water. I’ve cut quite a bit down on drinking pop and alcohol over the last few years, and I indulge in those when I’m specifically in the mood for one of those, not for when I generically need to wet the proverbial whistle.
5. What is one not-so-secret goal you have for your life? I’ll let you keep your secret ones to yourself.
To write something that makes someone else say, “Hey, I’ll pay you a nice sum of money to let me publish that.” (I’m somewhat flexible on what qualifies as a ‘nice’ sum of money.)
6. What physical pain do you fear most? For example, I’m trying to decide how bad my jaw pain needs to get before I risk a potential needle from my dentist. So, for me, throbbing is preferable to jabbing.
Probably sharp chest pains, I suppose. Never had any, but I’m not wild about the notion.
7. Where do you find solace?
Home. That’s what home is for.
8. What makes you the saddest when you read/see the news?
Children dying. Of anything.
9. What do you eat for a favorite snack?
Heavens, I like to snack. I need to cut it down, really — but there are tons of things I like to snack upon. Cheese and crackers. Apples and peanut butter. Apples and cheddar cheese. And, of course, too many kinds of crunchy-and-salty things that come in bags at the store.
10. What movie could you/would you watch more than two or three times and still enjoy just as much as the first time?
Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Casablanca, My Fair Lady…pretty much any movie on my Top 100 list.
11. What boy/girl first made you cry?
Not really sure. It was probably this girl I had a wicked bad crush on when I was a sophomore in high school. Her name was Deanna. She was nice and friendly to me, and then…she wasn’t. Ouch! I wonder what ever happened to her….
12. What brand of coffee/tea do you drink most often?
8 O’Clock coffee, mostly, although I also buy some nice flavors in The Store’s brand. For tea, I’m all over the place. I love Rishi Tea’s Green Mint — absolutely adore the stuff. It’s wonderful.
13. Dig in the dirt with or without garden gloves?
Depends. If I’m just repotting a single plant or two, then no gloves. If I’m doing quite a bit of work in the dirt, then I put gloves on. Since we live in an apartment, this isn’t much of an issue — more often I have to do this kind of thing at work.
14. James Taylor or Carly Simon?
What an odd dichotomy! I think I like more Carly Simon songs than I do James Taylor songs, so I give the nod to her. I guess. Hmmmmm. (Plus I just like the name “Carly”.)
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Sunday Burst of Weird and AWESOME!
Bite me, Millard Fillmore!
I love Sporcle, and I’m always drawn like a moth to flame to the quizzes about the US Presidents. Even though my brain is apparently wired in such a way as to be utterly unable to retain the piece of information that we had a President named Millard Fillmore, who is somehow always an answer on these quizzes, and who is always one of the couple of Presidential names I’m desperately trying to coax from my gray matter as the quiz expires. Case in point. Stupid Millard Fillmore!
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A moment of arse-kicking awesomeness
Meh….
Yeah, last night’s election results are disastrous and idiotic, but I’m not dwelling on it. Political power comes and goes. It’ll come again…and it’ll go again. Like the tides.
I will say this, though (which I said on Twitter and Facebook last night, but not here): Watching these Tea Partiers trying to govern is going to be like watching Edward Scissorhands eat with chopsticks.