“The Crime Wave at Blandings” is the single most satisfying short story in the English language.
On a related note, there is a new poll in the sidebar.
Update: Only two votes so far? Good grief. You all need to do some remedial reading.
Category: Culture and anti-culture
Checking in
Odds and ends in lieu of a substantative post.
My ankle has healed to the point that it’s a minor nuisance, not a major problem. It doesn’t feel right, and I expect that it never really will, but I can get around plenty well now, up and down stairs and out on my bicycle. I’m done with formal physical therapy. Next month I plan to take a beginning ballet class as a form of advanced PT. I don’t expect to be back on the dance stage again — my ankle is getting better, but my knees aren’t — but taking class will be worthwhile just to demonstrate to myself that I can still do it, despite everything.
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I’ve installed a new photo gallery that I hope will be easier to upgrade in the future when it becomes necessary. I’m in the process of uploading the pictures from the old site. There are a bunch of them, and it’s going to take a while to post them all. Currently, there are some pictures from last year’s Walnut Valley Festival, some from the local botanical garden, and a selection of pictures from my days in the Society for Creative Anachronism. The last are mostly black and white and date back to when I worked in an old-fashioned chemical darkroom.
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Robert the LLama Butcher, one of my favorite bloggers, has his own place now, The Port Stands at Your Elbow. He promises to keep posting at the old site as well.
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Watchmen is one of the very few comic books graphic novels that I have read. The inevitable movie is due out next year, and it looks like it might not be a botch — though it almost was:
… they originally wanted Keanu Reeves for Dr. Manhattan, Ron Perlman for The Comedian, and either Jude Law and Tom Cruise for Ozymandias. Gack!
Toren makes an essential point in the comments there:
Alan has put his money where his mouth is and transferred all his share of the profits from the movie to Dave Gibbons, the artist. I’ve met Dave a few times here and in England and I must say he’s not only a great guy but his work in adapting Alan’s brutally difficult script has been vastly underrated. To take Alan’s insanely complex and dense scripts and adapt them to read fluently and yet contain the unbelievable amount of required detail and foreshadowing is one of comic’s great accomplishments. Dave’s work was hugely appreciated within the industry but alas, never got much credit outside of it. It was all “Alan Moore is God.”
It’s a damn shame.
Alan Moore isn’t God, but is he Shakespeare? Eve Tushnet has some interesting things to say about Watchmen (spoilers), finding parallels with Measure for Measure and much else. (You may need to scroll down to the entries for January 23, 2004.) Scroll up for additional comments and links.
Update: More on Moore from Tushnet.
Reviewers at work
Today’s quiz
Miscellany
The inhabitants of the moon never see an earthrise or earthset. However, spacecraft orbiting the moon, e.g., the Kaguya, do. Here is the earth rising and setting, as recorded in HD. (Via Aziz.)
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Speed Racer is probably worth skipping (though I might listen to Racer X). If you’re looking for an exciting race story, I recommend instead the Kuricorder Quartet’s take on “Highway Star”:
Here’s the quartet again with some tunes you might recognize.
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Understatement of the week:
Something tells me the commenter hasn’t met all that many nuns.
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Give peas a chance:
(Via Blackadder.)
At the variety show
Let’s see if nested blockquotes work:
I heard Fr. Neuhaus, in the EWTN commentary, try to sneak in something in, in that classic hushed, “golf announcer” tone:
“We have not been given background notes as to who to credit for introducing the Holy Father to aspects of the aesthetic suffering endured by the faithful in America.”
An unexpected combination
Frëd reviews an episcopal space opera:
One suspects the bad influence of the good, but inexperienced, padre. (Yes, you read the cover right: one of the co-authors is the Catholic archbishop of Newark, N.J.)
And don’t forget the Mutant Registration Act
And comment of the week:
When I was in law school I got involved in several long discussions about whether Zombies would count as persons under the 14th Amendment. And to think people called me weird.
(ibid. Via Eve Tushnet.)
Breaking the Cycle of Rudeness
It’s somewhat startling how many of her rules and guidelines stem from the basic principles of putting others first and protecting them from our rougher feelings: how to write a thank-you note for a present you didn’t like; how to respond to a friend who gets embarrassingly drunk at a party (and how that friend ought to behave the next morning!); how to politely and charitably point out that someone has cut in front of you in a line. Even the correct way to refuse an invitation (apologize, but say no firmly, and don’t make excuses) is concerned in part with sparing others’ feelings: If you say, “I’d love to, but I’m afraid I’ll be flossing my otter,” you not only invite argument and attempts to persuade you away from your excuses. You also let your friends know exactly where they rank on your scale of priorities — possibly above cleaning the gutters, but definitely below otter dental hygiene.
On pointe
It’s probably going to be close to two months before I can photograph ballet again. (The doctor says the bones are healing “perfectly,” but bones and ligaments take time, lots of time.) If you miss the pictures of dancers, visit Bill Luse’s page.
Traditional/historical painting methods and cicadas
Tiepolo’s Cicadae, pastel 2007, Judith Baker Waller
Judith Baker Waller, an old friend of mine from Wichita State, is exhibiting some of her art at the University of Wisconsin now through March 21. If you are in the Menasha area, it’s worth a visit.
Monday morning culture
A little bit of Mozart with unconventional instrumentation.
Here’s something different by the same perp and his colleagues.
Still life with Marx and Engels
Fred recently discovered Komar and Melamid. I first encountered them half a lifetime ago when they made an appearance at Wichita State. Their schtick then was that they bought and sold souls. They were particularly proud of purchasing Andy Warhol’s. The business wasn’t as lucrative as they had hoped, though, so by then they only accepted souls on consignment.
They came to Fred’s attention through their fusion of musicology and statistics. By polling, they attempted to define the characteristics of the “most wanted” and “least wanted” songs, and then realize the songs. I’m afraid that I’m the in the 28% that dislike the wanted song. The unwanted song, however, is an amazing hodgepodge of accordion, bagpipes, tuba, banjo, operatic soprano and obnoxious kids, and it’s worth 22 minutes of your life. Once will probably be enough.
Oh, yeah, Komar and Melamid are painters, too.
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Mr. Darwin is the son of a planetarium lecturer. He reminisces about the artificial skies here.
Dance and more
Let’s take a break from ballet and look at some other kinds of dance. Via Mark Sullivan comes this example of dance as a martial art:
Bonus points if you can identify the pianist.
Via Robert the LLama Butcher, an outstanding canine performer.
And there’s the dancing stormtrooper of Akihabara.
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One more reason why I intend to remain the last person in North America without a cell phone.
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If three women together mean “mischief,” what would, say, three geeks mean?
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An epic win for the Japanese: the Gurren-Lagaan Jack.
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Let’s get into the Olympic spirit:
Pre-holiday miscellany
Congratulations to the LLamas, who turn five today.
Congratulations also to Angus and Sarah.
Final Fantasy A+ (Via Shamus).
One way to handle a telemarketer (Via Ken the Brickmuppet).
I found a website that makes Flash jigsaw puzzles from pictures on your computer. There’s one made from one of my photos below the fold.
Update: A memory from my days in the SCA that I’d like to forget.
Continue reading “Pre-holiday miscellany”
He’s back …
… yet again. John Salmon, that is.