Author: Don

Question

Does anyone have any experience with Rakuten Global Market? I found a musical toy there I’ve had in mind for a while at a significantly better price than I’ve seen elsewhere, with free shipping. I wonder if it’s too good to be true.

Sprung

Eranthis

For a while yesterday it seemed that spring had finally arrived, with temperatures around 70°F. There even were thunderstorms in the later afternoon and evening, with hail. All that was missing was the tornado warning. It couldn’t last, of course. It’s back to winter this morning, with north winds and temperatures down in the lower 30°s.

While it was pleasant out yesterday, I made a trip to the botanical garden with my toy camera. Very little was in bloom, but I did find some color.

Continue reading “Sprung”

One kind of efficiency

I’ve been skipping around in The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse recently. Here’s a bit of practical advice from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Earth, crowded, cries: “Too many men!”
My counsel is, kill nine in ten,
And bestow the shares of all
On the remnant decimal.

Most of the verse is subtler than that — if an encomium to the London sewer system, for example, can be called “subtle.” If you all are very good, I won’t quote any more of it.

A hot cup of heresy

The truth about coffee:

  • Decaf is Docetic because it only appears to be coffee.
  • Instant is Apollinarian because it’s had its soul removed and replaced.
  • Frappuccinos are essentially a form of Monophysitism, having their coffee nature swallowed up in milkshake.
  • Chicory is Arian, not truly coffee at all but a separate creation….

(Via First Things.)

Snark for a Thursday morning

Theodore Dalrymple:

Physiognomy is an inexact science, but it is not so inexact that you cannot read the bemused feebleness on the faces of people such as Van Rompuy, Hollande, and Cameron, the latter so moistly smooth and characterless that it looks as though it would disappear leaving a trail of slime if caught in the rain.

Still silly

Here’s “Grace O’Malley” as she stands, this time with a proper virtual piano. I’m sick of her. I may return to this catastrophe later and do some severe pruning and rewriting, but right now I just want to work on something — anything — else.

Grace O’Silly

I found a couple of free prepared piano sample libraries and thought I’d see what my current project would sound like as played by John Cage. This used to be an Irish tune.

Notes from saccharine sweet hell

A question of taste

My minimum standard for singing is Hatsune Miku. If a vocalist can’t sing at least as well as software, he has no business near a microphone. Similarly, I can define a minimum standard for art: if an artist can’t paint or sculpt at least as well as Hozuki no Reitetsu‘s Nasube, he needs to master his craft before exhibiting his efforts. If his works are easily mistaken for trash by the cleaning staff, they’re not art. ((John C. Wright: “Go into a modern art museum and look at the trash on the walls. Bomb the museum. Go back through the wreckage and see if you or anyone can see any change.”))

Art

Continue reading “Notes from saccharine sweet hell”

The stupidcallafragilisticexpeallidumbass stupidity hammer

John C. Wright watched the second Hobbit movie, “this craptastic jerktrocious smegbladder of a film“:

To be quite honest, the actress Evangeline Lilly is not only quite attractive, she handles both the demands of the acting and a physical stunts very well. Indeed, I am afraid I have a bit of a crush on her, with her long lustrous hair, her finely chiseled cheekbones, her kissing-soft feminine lips, her soft curves aching with the promise of luscious loveplay … Oh, wait a minute. I am think I am looking at Orlando Bloom. Er, never mind. Sorry, Miss Lilly.

… But I am glad that Ishmael and Queequeg will appear in the sequel.

(For the record: I found Jackson’s version of The Fellowship of the Ring barely tolerable and was disgusted with the rest of his Ring cycle. You’d have to pay me to watch him trash The Hobbit, and pay me well.)

Afterthought: Lousy though they are, Jackson’s movies did make DM of the Rings possible.

*****

Lydia McGrew:

My more economically savvy readers may think that all of this is so obvious as not to need to be said, but listen around next time you hear some far less savvy young people talk about what people “should have” and what people “need” and what things “should cost.” You might get a surprise. Nobody has, apparently, ever explained to these people that neither money nor pharmaceuticals nor fully-trained doctors grow on trees. It’s just an astonishing thing, but the fairies don’t distribute goods and services.

I thought immediately of Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, in which the fairies sometimes do distribute goods and services. This may be related to the fact that the English-language title of the show is “Humanity Has Declined.”

Continue reading “The stupidcallafragilisticexpeallidumbass stupidity hammer”