… again.
Whoopee.
Too fast for the drive-through
This past week has been a bit too eventful for my taste, but I did get a chance to stop for lunch at one of the better fast-food places in town.
Postcard from Missoula
Here are the answers to yesterday’s quiz.
Pigs, birds, trains
… and now for something less depressing. Here are some lines and fragments from various poems that occasionally pop into my mind. See if you can identify the poets and poems. I’ll post the answers tomorrow.
1. Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat!
2. No. Not this pig.
3. … yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a …
4. I have awakened at Missoula, Montana, utterly happy.
5. … boxcars boxcars boxcars …
6. May God damn for ever all who cry “Peace!”
7. Polyphiloprogenitive
8. What I tell you three times is true.
N.B.: The spoiler system for this website apparently doesn’t work for comments. Don’t read the comments until you’ve made your own guesses.
Today’s quote
TS:
The general election is dead to me, reduced to a mere curio object.
So abysmal are the choices that I have absolutely no skin in the game. I can write in PeeWee Herman.
Bonus quote from Mrs. Darwin:
But thanks to Trump virtually clinching the nomination by winning Indiana, I’m freed from the tyranny of the party. I don’t have to identify as a Republican anymore. When someone asks me if I’m a Democrat or a Republican, I can say neither! And for the first time, I can vote for someone I like for president. Who gets my write-in vote? Which person do I actually think would be best suited to run the country? It’s almost overwhelming.
(Illustration via AoSHQ.)
Update: Steven finds some positives. His post is in the appropriate category “Weird World.” Note particularly points #5 and #9.
Why Tolkien disliked allegory
What if The Lord of the Rings had really been about World War II?
In reverse, we could play with the idea of what would have happened in WW II if it had followed the lines of LotR…
The plot would focus on the destruction of the Atom Bomb (and implicitly all knowledge required to make it) by a small team of English patriots led by George Orwell, who infiltrate Germany and destroy the evil research establishment which is making the A-bomb.
The climactic end would be the death of Hitler (as the ready-for-use prototype explodes?) and the end of the Nazi regime in Germany with the return of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Snoopy goes to Gensokyo
Steven found some Touhou/Peanuts crossovers. Here’s a selection.
Coming attraction
It looks like tomorrow will be a good day for catching tigers.
Update:
Spring has sprung. We should hear the sirens any time now.
Update II: The tornadic storm fizzled out by the time it reached my neighborhood, and all we got was an hour or so of hail, none of it larger than half-dollar diameter.1 While this was undoubtedly a great disappointment to tornado aficionados, I have better things to do with the rest of the month than find a new place to live.
The greatest danger was inside the house. The only time I listen to traditional broadcast radio is during violent weather, when one of the local country stations intensively covers the meteorological events. They occasionally interrupt the descriptions of hail and flooding for commercials and public service announcements, the latter of which are mostly courtesy of the “Ad Council.” The mean sanctimony of these PSAs is sufficient to choke 2.65 SJWs and incalculably many people of normal sensibilities. They create a powerful temptation to punch the stereo speakers, which would hurt my hand.
First impressions, spring 2016
Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless — So listless, in fact, that his friend Ohta often picks him up and carries him over his shoulder. However lazy Tanaka is physically, though, his mind is active, at least until he falls asleep. It’s a one-joke show, but it has remained entertaining through three episodes with the introductions of Tanaka’s quirky classmates.
Um, okay
A couple of odd moments from current shows. The above is from Bakuon, which features the Queen of Tears in a non-angsty role as a motorcycle. Below is from Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless.
In case you were wondering …
… there really is such a thing as the hairy ball theorem.
Q & A
How can you tell that it’s early Sunday morning in Wichita?
The people next door are mowing and edging their lawn.
Useful phrases for the tourist
Level 6 dream
I ran one of my photographs through the Deep Dream Generator,2 over and over again, eventually yielding the above image. Can you identify what the subject was? (Click to enbiggen.)
Here’s an intermediate stage:
Spoiler
[collapse]
and the original:
Spoiler
[collapse]
A few more:
In the news today
• An explosive announcement concerning Yellowstone National Park
• A re-visioning of Mononoke Hime
• A history of “conceptual writing”
• An audio plugin to blend divine proportion into your music Update: now offline.
• Live tribble cam Update: now offline.
It’s possible that not all of the above news releases are related to today’s date.
Update:
More Kansas weather scheduled
We had a brown Christmas here this past winter. We’re going to make up for that with a white Easter tomorrow, or so the weatherman says, with one to three inches of anthropogenic global warming falling after midnight.
Today was the first time in nearly three weeks that the wind wasn’t furiously howling all day long. I was finally able to get out to the botanical garden to take some pictures.
Ursine melodies
Here’s a set of variations on a simple traditional tune, “The Bear.” Since this is played entirely on the white keys of the piano, the critter most likely is a polar bear. As usual, it’s my computer playing, not me.
Update: The score is here for the morbidly curious. You can right-click and download the mp3 here.
Black pawns matter
I’m rather preoccupied at the moment, but I’ll be back eventually. In the meantime, here’s a chess problem to amuse you. There is something wrong with this position. Find the problem, correct it, and then find a mate-in-one for white, no matter how you fix it. You can find solutions in the comments here.
Odder ends
Did you ever get the feeling that, if only you could figure out just what the hell was going on, you’d wish you hadn’t?
Solomon in all his glory couldn’t touch my coffee options!
Hillary Clinton or Cannibal Corpse: Easy Decision
(Via Ubu.)
Sakura, sakura
Here’s a handy schedule of expected cherry blossom bloom times, in case you should be heading to Japan during the next few months. If you can’t go to Japan, you can visit the botanical garden in Wichita, where the Okame cherry, above, has just started flowering.
The Japanese apricot is in full bloom now. Thanks to new construction and landscaping, it is no longer possible to get close to tree, but you don’t need to get close to appreciate its powerful fragrance.
