Okay, for the sake of a story, I can suspend my disbelief in sentient submarines and ships. I can accept “mental models” of these vessels that look like adolescent girls. I can even believe that stuffed bears eat carrots. But I cannot believe that any military would store vital materials on Iwo Jima . “Sulphur Island” is the tip of a rapidly-inflating volcanic resurgent dome, and it’s rising out of the sea at an average rate of about eight inches a year, rendering any harbor or dock temporary. Soon, geologically speaking, magma is going to meet seawater, catastrophically. The creators of Arpeggio of Blue Steel need to do better research.
Full disclosure: I am a creature of the sinister right-wing Koch brothers, just like Michael Mann. Both universities I attended, plus the one where I studied and photographed ballet and the one where I took part in the annual Renaissance Faire, have all received money from the Kochtopus.
After two summers of desert heat, we now have a summer of tropical monsoon rain. The Little Arkansas River, which runs north, west and south of my place, is the highest it’s been in years. More rain is predicted.
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It occurs to me that comparing Stella etc. to Girls und Panzer is misguided. Yura has more in common with such painfully self-conscious characters as Inu x Boku SS‘s Ririchiyo and Tsuritama‘s Yuki than with with Miho, and the story thus far has been more about Yura learning to play well with others than about girls playing with guns.
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Ryutaro Nakamura, who directed Serial Experiments Lain and Kino’s Journey, recently died. Jonathan Clements’ appreciation is here.
In my ballet training, I had no enemy but myself. Especially when I would watch myself in the mirror in the studio and execute my ballet routines, I often envisioned myself as Son-Goku struggling with the enemy. When I would fail, my hair would look darker; when I would triumph over a seemingly impossible task, my hair would appear blonder than it is.
Whenever people watch me dance, I hope they see the character I’m trying to impersonate onstage. I might be the noble prince from Swan Lake or the Prodigal Son; I might be a beggar or a soldier. In reality, I am just a geek owing everything I can do to an ape alien named Son-Goku.
What is the worst Bob Dylan song? I’m tempted to say all of them — Zimmerman, to my ears, has a modest talent for doggerel and none whatsoever for music — but some of his songs are worse than others. I’ll nominate one that’s a bit obscure nowadays (though not obscure enough), “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest.”
Well, up the stairs ran Frankie Lee
With a soulful bounding leap
And foaming at the mouth
He began to make his midnight creep
For sixteen nights and days he raved
But on the seventeenth he burst
Into the arms of Judas Priest
Which is where he died of thirst
If you perceive anything in the lyrics beyond the clanging rhyme, you need to detox.
Etna is doing her thing right now (10 p.m. CDT). You can watch the fireworks here. Also here (you might need to manually refresh the view periodically) and here.
Update: The show’s over for now. There’s a spectacular video taken close to the vent here. There’s also this snapshot of a less familiar sort of volcanic activity.
The sky was mostly clear this evening, so I tried to find Comet PanSTARRS. I couldn’t see it myself — it’s not a bespectacled-eye object in Wichita skies, though possibly someone with better vision than mine can spot it — but my camera did.
You can watch it in 1080 if your computer can handle it.
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Professor Mondo‘s novel is now available as pixels at Amazon.com. I just got a new pair of glasses, so I’ll probably wait for the print edition and read it the way books were meant to be read, on dead trees. You can read one of his short stories here.
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A note on current events in the Catholic Church: everything you read in the secular press is complete and absolute BS. Don’t believe anything you read. I suggest checking in occasionally with Elizabeth Scalia if you want an informed perspective.
At Etna you can walk on small lava flows with good hiking boots (it might be their last hike, though), because the lava is more viscous than on Hawai’i. However, you won’t try on a larger flow because heat radiation is so huge.
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.
