Via SDB: Chicken-fried bacon.
I want some. I suppose that John Scalzi‘s already had some, which is why I hate him.
Ask Me Anything! (Final call)
I know, I said that last week sometime was to be the final call, but I figured I’d extend things one more time. So anyone wishing to toss a question or a suggestion for a posting topic, toss it in comments here. For lurkers, anonymous queries are fine, as long as they’re not too invasive or require me to go beyond this blog’s PG-13 rating. This is basically your opportunity to make me write about something, so go ahead!
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Twenty-five cents (part 2)
I launched this series a month ago, intending to update it every couple of weeks or so; then, intervening events threw it right out of my mind, until now. If anyone’s been waiting for this, sorry! And now, continuing my examination of the Statehood Quarters.
Here we have a quarter deliberately trying to tie itself in with pop culture, with Virginia riding the coat-tails of Disney’s movie Pocahantas, which had come out seven or eight years earlier. How shameless is that!
OK, just kidding there. The founding of the Jamestown colony is, obviously, one of the most important events of early American history, and this quarter features a beautiful design of the ships arriving on the shores of what would become Virginia. In practice, I do think that the design is a little too busy for the small surface of the quarter; maybe if they’d only shown two ships instead of three the picture would be clearer. But it was smart of Virginia to tie their quarter to the impending quadricentennial of their state’s founding.
Virginia’s quarter: $0.20
OK, so West Virginia’s not going along the coast, but it seems silly to talk about one Virginia and not the other one, so here’s West Virginia. They went with a depiction of one of that state’s most famous bits of scenery, the New River Gorge with its stunning bridge. There’s not much I have to say about this, except that it’s very well done. This is one of the better quarters in the series. (Although I admit that I’m surprised they didn’t find some way to get Robert Byrd’s name on their quarter, because in West Virginia, Robert Byrd’s name is on everything.)
West Virginia’s quarter: $0.22
Here’s a depiction not of a famous person or scenic locale, but of a very famous event: the first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk. Again, I don’t have much comment on this one. It’s very nice, although the plane, reduced to that small size, ends up looking a bit like a lopsided ladder. Might have been done a little better, but I like the idea a lot.
North Carolina’s quarter: $0.19
Design-by-committee strikes again. South Carolina crams so much stuff onto its quarter that the entire thing’s a mishmash. There’s a state outline, a tree, a bird, a couple of flowers, a motto, and a star in the middle of the state outline demarking the location of the state capital! Too, too much. There’s nothing here to really look at; this is a quarter that one looks at, says “Hmmm, South Carolina”, and then sticks the quarter into the slot along with three others to get a bottle of Pepsi. I don’t like this one.
South Carolina’s quarter: $0.07
Here’s more design-by-committee, although it’s better executed than South Carolina’s. Georgia-related plants curling up the edges of the coin, a peach, a boring state outline again, and another motto (“Wisdom, Justice, Moderation”). Again it’s too much, although the motto’s execution is creatively done, as Georgia didn’t just print the motto on the coin but depict it as being printed on a banner draped across the coin. The peach is nice, too, but I think it should have been larger – dominant, even. The big missed opportunity here, though, is that I think the quarter probably should have featured Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Georgia’s quarter: $0.15
I want to like this one, because I like what it’s trying to do…but I don’t think it works very well at all. The quarter tells us that Florida is the “Gateway to Discovery”, so we have a sailing ship approaching a sea shore with a couple of palm trees, and floating above that is the Space Shuttle. The problems are that the seashore looks totally divorced from the sailing ship – are they landing there? sailing by? getting ready to fire cannons? – and that the Shuttle is hanging in space up there, with no context at all of its own. They’d have been better served, with this theme, to ignore the sailing vessel landing entirely (really, lots of places in America were the scene of vessels from Europe making landfall, and Virginia already covered this territory in much better fashion) and just go with the space theme, in which case they shouldn’t depict the Shuttle apparently in orbit or final approach, but launching. A rocket launch would have made a terrific quarter, wouldn’t it? Florida seriously missed the boat on this one.
Florida’s quarter: $0.10
Moving along the Gulf Coast now, we’re at Alabama. They’ve got their plants vining up the side of the coin too, but two different plants: a long-leaf pine branch and magnolia, so that’s interesting. But in the middle of it all they’ve got Helen Keller, whose chair is draped with a banner reading “Spirit of Courage”, and in an inspired bit of design, they identify Keller not just with English lettering but with Braille. This quarter is very original. (It also strikes me that Alabama, which is now one of the most conservative states in the country, chose for its quarter to depict a woman who, although most famous for her overcoming her disabilities, was a very vocal figure for the political left in her day.)
Alabama’s quarter: $0.19
There’s no reason to beat around the bush here: Mississippi’s may be the most beautiful of all the state quarters. In fact, scratch that qualifier; this is the most beautiful of the state quarters. Two flowers that render wonderfully in struck metal, and the motto “The Magnolia State” is rendered in a script font as opposed to the block lettering that has dominated the Statehood Quarters. Well, well, well done, Mississippi!
Mississippi’s quarter: $0.24
Here we have two possible design ideas crammed together by committee to the cheapening of each, combined with a third design idea that nobody would have missed had it not been there at all. They should have either honored the Louisiana Purchase by itself, or New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz by itself, but they cram both onto the coin. With a pelican for good measure. Nothing works very well on this quarter, I’m afraid.
Louisiana’s quarter: $0.08
There we stop for now. Next time I’ll start with Ohio and proceed westward across the Great Lakes region and the Upper Midwest.
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Keep telling me…
…why our health care system is just fine, or why the free market will make all this just hunky-dorey. I’m all ears.
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Watching 24: 2 pm to 3 pm
Due to all the craziness of recent weeks, I am now two episodes behind on my 24 watching. Aieee!!! So I finally started getting caught up, earlier this evening. Now I’m only one episode behind…at least for the next six minutes, because that’s when the newest episode airs, which means I’ll be right back to being two episodes behind. But I should be able to catch up.
In this episode, Jack and Company busted up Dubaku’s operation, destroyed the CIP device…or the CPU device…or the CUP device…or the ICUP device…or whatever it is they’re calling it. Yay, Jack! But here I’m getting all sad and stuff because some character who had been introduced in this episode committed a very brave act of self-sacrifice, for which he died. I’ll always remember you, Chemical Planet Manager John Brunner!!!
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The last team to check in here MAY be eliminated.
So The Amazing Race launched its fourteenth go-round last night. I don’t have a great feel for anyone yet, except that I know I hate this “hillbilly” couple (they call themselves that, not me). The guy’s a nag, and the lady’s a whiner. I have dubbed them Cletus and Lurleen. Unfortunately, they made it through to next week. Hopefully they go quicker than the last bunch of “hillbillies” they had on the show, the West Virginia coal miners from a couple of seasons back. (I actually liked those two, in all honesty.)
I liked how they cut down on all the Airport Intrigue that usually marks the first episode; maybe the producers have finally realized that watching people buy plane tickets just isn’t that interesting? Anyway, they did the “Initial briefing” by Phil at the start line, and then about ten minutes later, everybody was in Switzerland. Previous seasons wouldn’t have everybody out of the airport before the second commercial break, so that made me happy.
The roadblock was utterly insane: people had to use these rickety wooden contraptions to carry giant wheels of cheese down a steep hill, while Swiss guys laughed at them. Many cheeses got dropped, and boy, do those suckers roll. The first team to get eliminated? I couldn’t even tell you their names. But they wore orange. The team to arrive first was the mother and her deaf son, so Phil made the “You are team number one!” announcement in ASL, which I thought was pretty cool
Next week, we’re into Germany, and apparently Lurleen gets lost somewhere in the Alps. It’s on a road, though; she’s not lost on a glacier somewhere, only to be found by those St. Bernards who bring the casks of brandy with them. And apparently one of the detours or roadblocks involves pie throwing. I’m unaware of any specifically German traditions that involve the good old pie in the face, but hey, I’m always a fan of that bit of goofery.
I love TAR!
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Dollhouse
So I watched the premiere episode of Joss Whedon’s new show Dollhouse. I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that the Friday night 9:00 pm timeslot, forever known as the Timeslot That Ate Firefly And Spit Its Bones Back Out To The Consternation of Geeks Everywhere, will soon claim Dollhouse as another victim. I hope the show gets at least enough of its episodes aired to make the investment of time worthwhile.
I liked the pilot episode, in that I saw more than enough to keep me coming back for more (at least for a few episodes), but it was still a problematic show. I’ve read that the FOX suits didn’t care for Whedon’s original pilot and made him come up with something new, somewhat on the fly, hence this episode, which was a bit of a mess. I think they attempt to establish a little too much going on with this episode, and the main storyline, involving a kidnapped little girl, ends up having a lot less impact than it could have.
For those who didn’t see it, Eliza Dushku stars as “Echo”, a young woman who is an “Active” for a shadowy organization called the “Dollhouse”. Actives are people whose personalities are erased and reprogrammed for various missions — called “engagements” — that come via very wealthy people who have need of such things. In this pilot episode, Echo is programmed as a hostage negotiator when a very wealthy man’s young daughter is kidnapped. Dushku plays this part fairly well, although frankly this storyline isn’t anything anyone who has watched a lot of teevee hasn’t seen before.
That’s not all that is going on, of course; every show these days must have a continuing “mythology”, and some of this is established here as well. Questions are raised about the nature of the Dollhouse organization, but obviously not answered: who owns it? Who funds it? What is its purpose? Where do they get their recruits? What exactly did Echo do to get recruited? What’s with the doctor with the scarred face? Who is her “handler”, anyway? Also, there is an FBI agent who is investigating the Dollhouse but who hasn’t yet even been able to verify its existence. What is his emotional stake in the Dollhouse? Why is he pursuing it? And who is the guy we see at the end of the episode, but only from behind, watching old DVD footage of Echo in her former, pre-Active life, while two bodies bleed out on the carpet behind him?
This pilot episode felt overstuffed, as a lot of such pilots do these days. Plus, the show lacked that typical Whedon punch in the dialogue; there’s not a lot of humor to be found in this episode. I hope that changes in the future. Plus, I’m not sure if following Echo’s adventures is going to be as involving as it should be, given that she will literally be displaying a new personality each week. We’ll see.
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Sentential Links #158
[UPDATE: I screwed up the timestamp on this post, which is why it’s appearing Sunday night and marked as Monday. So I’m just changing it to a regular old Sunday post, for this one week only. It was supposed to run as a scheduled post tomorrow, but I blundered it. Oops! Plus I decided to add a few more links, because the post looked a bit half-baked to begin with.]
Continuing to traipse through Blogistan:
:: Way back when, my friend Jeff was a lunatic behind the wheel of a car.
:: “I am. I already was. I always will be.”
:: It’s a sadly accurate cliche that fans of science fiction (myself included) become so engrossed in our genre of choice that we often forget there’s an entire world to explore, right here on Earth. (Now, that’s just crazy talk.)
:: I can’t believe that in twenty years you never had a chance to use the sled.
:: I don’t mean angry or insane. I mean that Mad magazine shaped who I am, and I wouldn’t be half the schmuck I am without it. (Sometimes I miss MAD Magazine. My favorite feature was always the “Lighter Side”.)
All for this week. More next week, perhaps.
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Sunday Burst of Weirdness
Oddities abound!!!
:: Want a good, solid Republican solution to all your problems? Just type them in here, and it’ll tell you. And if you don’t believe them, then click the “That doesn’t make sense” button. It’s like having Eric Cantor right in your living room! (Alan linked this on Facebook.)
:: Via MeFi I see a group of photos on Flickr of two twin sisters, named Maurine and Noreene. Later, the sister were identified. This caught my eye because when I was in high school, there was a family of four sisters (none twins, though, all different ages) named Colleen, Maureen, Noreen, and Aileen. I guess you had to be there — but this is a pretty interesting tale of genealogical detective work.
:: Er…what? (Maybe not safe for work. Via Warren Ellis. Hey, if you want to believe that this particular activity is wrong, great, but if I see someone wearing one of these, I’m going to be awfully tempted to ask something like, “So how ‘ex’ are you? Because I’m gonna need to know that before I shake your hand.”)
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Unidentified Earth #56
UPDATED: Link fixed.
OK, I think I’ll be able to get back on schedule with Unidentified Earth now that life is seemingly (!) on the verge of returning to normal sinus rhythm here at Casa Jaquandor. As of this writing, there are exactly zero guesses for UI 55, so I probably made that one a wee bit too hard. So here’s hint number one: this location is in a state that borders New York. We’ll start narrowing it down, OK?
And meantime, here’s the new puzzler:
Where are we? Exact name isn’t required, but at least naming the state this is in and the significance of this locale is, for full award of some random number of Quatloos. Rot-13 your guesses, as always, please!!!
