Trivia that matter
… and Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding and Richard M. Nixon. Fred Himebaugh, a.k.a. The Fredösphere, who has neglected his weblog for too long, shares the results of his historical research. Content advisory: robots, alien gods, banjos.
Fred earlier wrote a chamber opera “They’re Made Out of Meat,” using the Terry Bisson short story as the libretto, as well as a touching ballad of interplanetary romance, “Earth Girl.”
Spotted by The Rat:
For many years I used to see Kurt Vonnegut shambling around the streets of Turtle Bay, on the East Side of New York, always with a disconsolate expression on his face. I could never figure out why he looked so miserable; he was, after all, one of America’s most successful and admired novelists. Then one day, while reading Exposing Myself, I found out that Vonnegut had briefly been Geraldo [Rivera]’s father-in-law.
I was active for many years in the Society for Creative Anachronism. My interests were music, dance and costuming. However, the emphasis in the local group was on fighting, more fighting, still more fighting, and a bit of politics. I eventually got very thoroughly burnt-out, and I hadn’t been to an event in years until yesterday.
The Kingdom of Calontir (roughly, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa, plus Fayetteville, Arkansas, minus westernmost Nebraska) held its winter coronation at a school within trivial bicycle distance of where I live. So I grabbed my camera and spent a couple of hours there yesterday afternoon taking pictures of all the strange people.
Here are a few of the pictures I took. There are many more in the gallery here. (The photo plugin I’m currently using reduces the size of the image to fit the browser window. To see the pictures full-size, right-click to open the link in a new window.)
This sunset took me by surprise, and there was no time to run to a more scenic area to grab the shots.
I wonder sometimes how accurate are my memories of the places I lived when I was young. It occurred to me that I might be able to find out through Google maps. I quickly located the house in Brigham City, Utah, where my family lived for seven years. Aside from my current residence, that is the longest I’ve lived at any particular address. The house looks very much as I remember it, only smaller. The mountains are smaller, too. The neighborhood has changed, though. The horse barn down the street at the right is gone, as is the row of magnificently thorny honey locusts to the east.
Llamas and alpacas celebrate Christmas by going to Mass. (Via Aliens in This World.)
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So, what am I going to watch this winter beyond the rest of Shin Sekai Yori? Let’s see …
• I might watch all of Satoshi Kon’s work in order and see what overall themes emerge. With four movies and one 13-episode series, that’s a manageable goal.
• I might look again at series I started but never finished: Noein, Kurau Phantom Memory, Fantastic Children.
• I might finally watch some of the sets gathering dust on my shelves: Witch Hunter Robin, Welcome to the N.H.K., Texhnolyze, Samurai X, various Ghosts in the Shell.
• I might revisit old favorites that I haven’t watched recently: Serial Experiments Lain, Princess Tutu, Mushishi, Kino’s Journey, Jubei-chan: Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch, Divergence Eve.
• I probably will watch all of Shingu yet again when I once more make the mistake of thinking I can watch just one episode.
… or I might not watch anything, but instead read.
What I’m probably not going to watch is any of the winter anime offerings. In all the previews I’ve read, there is not a single show that looks even slightly interesting.
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I noticed that Hyouka was on a lot of best-of-the-year lists, including Jonathan’s, so I watched the first episode. It’s okay, I guess, but the premise wasn’t particulary interesting, and the characters were mildly irritating. I doubt I’ll watch more. What caught my attention was the plant above, the first mesemb I’ve seen in anime. There were also images of the distinctive and dangerous Euphorbia marginata, out of focus but unmistakable.
To be fair, I should note that I attended four grade schools and three high schools and was a bored outsider at all of them. I am not the least bit nostalgic for my school years, and any story set in a high school automatically has one strike against it.
Thomas Hardy does the hokey-pokey:
On a morning when the grey skies rained down sleet,
I stuck my left foot into the abyss;
I shook it to and fro, and then switched feet,
And thought how all must end with death’s bleak kiss.
Update: Poe sticks his left foot in.
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J. Greely notes that the DVD of the movie Megaforce has finally been released in the USA. Out of curiosity, I searched for clips on YouTube and found this. “Awesome” isn’t quite the word.
Coincidentally, one of the links in Greely’s sidebar is “A Cubic Light-year of Cheese.”
4. Disregard the haters who denigrate blogging as a medium. Blogging is an amateur’s medium, but there is a lot to be said for amateurs. Bloggers sometimes write about things they know nothing about. Professional journalists often write about things they know nothing about. Academics write about things they know so much about that they no longer have any passion for the subject or any sense of its intrinsic interest, since, for understandable reasons, it is all now very boring to them. So don’t be intimidated by their credentials or put off by your lack of them.
See also her list of books for 2012. I will have to track down Honor Tracy.
So less costs more?
(Spotted at the grocery store.)
Some fireworks for your New Year’s celebration (best appreciated in full-screen mode):
More fireworks, this time from Kamchatka (below the fold, because of goddam autoplay music (fortunately, you can turn it off)):
I’m not going to make a “ten best anime” list for 2012 because I haven’t watched ten shows all the way through. Two of the year’s best best are incomplete, and there are a couple of well-regarded series that I have yet to look at (Sakamichi no Apollon and Space Brothers). Instead, this is just a casual survey of this year’s offerings that I watched.
Series I didn’t make it all the way through the first episode of: Chihayafuru, Hayate No Gotoku: Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse and Magi. The last I might give another try sometime, since the writers evidentally understand more about economics than do our betters in Washington.
Series I watched only the first episode of: Accel World, Binbougami ga, Campione, K, Nyarko-san: Another Crawling Chaos, Sword Art Online and Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai. Jonathan thinks highly of the last, and I would watch more, but what I saw wasn’t sufficiently brilliant to warrant subscribing to Anime Network. (Update: Also Ozma, Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate and Shining Hearts: Shiawase no Pan. See how memorable they were?)
Series I watched more than one episode of before losing interest: Kamisama Hajimemashita, Polar Bear Café and Sengoku Collection.
Unfinished series I might yet watch the rest of: Inu X Boku SS.
The year’s major disappointment: Moyashimon Returns. Too much soap opera, not enough craziness.
This year’s minor disappointment: Dog Days II. Entertaining, and the characters are mostly likable, even admirable; but the fanservice-to-story ratio is too high. It’s a kid’s show that I can’t recommend for kids. (And surely Leonmitchelli can find something more appropriate to her station to wear than daisy dukes.)
These are the shows that I can recommend:
Like Marc Chagall on acid: animation based on artwork by Yoshitaka Amano.
Mind-expanding in a different way: an “Astronomy Picture of the Day” calendar, free for the downloading.
The most recent upgrade to WordPress broke an essential function. I’m going to try various experiments to isolate the problem and fix it, if I can. While I’m tearing my hair out, this place might look different. Don’t be alarmed; that roar you hear in the distance is just me yelling at the monitor.
Update: Fixed. Flexible Lightbox and WordPress don’t play together nicely anymore.
Thus far, my 360° panoramas have been of the interior of the Catholic cathedral in Wichita. It’s the most photogenic site to which I have convenient access. Wichita might be a tolerable place to live, ((except during July)) but there isn’t much to see here, and right now it’s at its dreariest. There are a few other buildings with interesting interiors I hope to photograph, and there might be a picturesque snowfall later this winter, but most of the locations I have in mind will have to wait for spring and summer.
In the meantime, there are plenty of panoramas from around the world to view at 360cities.com. Here’s a selection.
(Via Volcano Cafe.)
Update: Christmas isn’t complete without silly novelty tunes.
(Via Dustbury.)
The lyrics are here if you’d like to sing along.
St. Mary Cathedral, Wichita, Kansas in USA
While the rest of the inmates at the office were enduring the annual Christmas luncheon, I visited the cathedral again with my camera. I set the tripod up in the choir loft this time, and used a tripod head designed specifically for panoramas. The “Panosaurus” made a difference in the image quality. There are far fewer glitches than in my previous attempt, and they’re not as obvious.
When’s the next apocalypse?
The astounding thing about all the quackeries, fads, and movements of the past hundred years in America is that they were first accepted by superior people, by men and women of education, intelligence, breeding, wealth, and experience. Only after the upper classes had approved, the masses accepted each new thing.
—Gilbert Seldes, The Stammering Century (1928)
Perhaps it’s not that astounding; I long ago observed that high intelligence is not necessarily associated with common sense.
J.K. Rowling has been recognized in Thog’s Masterclass:
Dept of Trickle-Down. ‘There, in his poky office, Simon Price gazed covetously on a vacancy among the ranks of insiders to a place where cash was now trickling down onto an empty chair with no lap waiting to catch it.’ (J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy, 2012)
Daniel Barenboim also earns a mention in Ansible:
Pianist Daniel Barenboim is interviewed by Rosanna Greenstreet: Q. ‘What is your earliest memory?’ A. ‘In my mother’s belly, I remember not liking the tempi my father played the Beethoven Sonatas in.’ (Guardian, 2 November)
Christopher Tolkien doesn’t care for Peter Jackson’s movies:
Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why? “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25,” Christopher says regretfully. “And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film.”
This divorce has been systematically driven by the logic of Hollywood. “Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time,” Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. “The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”
So is the world going to end tomorrow? Nah. I suppose you could marathon RahXephon if you’re feeling silly, but I suggest listening to Geddy, Alex and Neil instead.
These are the acceptable ways to end civilization:
… asteroid/comet, climate, massive volcanic eruption, zombie pandemic, Daleks, the Master, the Mayor turns into a giant snake monster, Gachnar (although that would be a very tiny apocalypse), gateway to Hell opens over Los Angeles, Anubis, Tripods, Triffids, Ragnarok and possibly a Farnsworth Doomsday Device.
Here are a few videos that recently caught my fancy.
There are no “gangnam” parodies because I’m sick of them.