"Aaargh!" would be a fitting end for this year, and pretty much every year starting with 2001. So here's to the New Year, may it be much less aargh-worthy!

Money is good.

And a very Happy New Year to everyone!

Fortunately I happened to have ESPN on at midnight ET and they showed the ball drop.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Suddenly, it was only showing two of them. She managed to increase it to five by changing all the dates to January 1, 2007.

But there's no reason for this to happen. It didn't happen in previous year changes. We haven't altered the way it's set up. And this definitely doesn't have anything to do with disk quotas.

I'm so tired of this.

And I had my little bottle of Champagne, and the accompaniment of noisemakers in the streets outside.

Suddenly, it was only showing two of them. She managed to increase it to five by changing all the dates to January 1, 2007.

Also, Happy New Year.

Happy New Congress...um, New Year everyone!

Singing in this fashion would appear to force the year to end with an 'aargh', or at least an 'ah' which sounds too close for comfort. A Happy New Year to all, regardless.

I don't know why the tech aspects of maintaining this road show get harder all the time, but they do. I think we've suffered basic damage to our confidence that Movable Type is any good at all, so we find it harder to summon up the confidence needed for that kind of systematic check of all the tiny details. Alternately, maybe we're just dipshits.

Oh, well.

Happy new beer!

There's a program called "tidy", found at http://tidy.sourceforge.net/, which -- unlike people -- does an excellent job of finding things like single-quotes-for-double.

I'm bad enough at catching small syntax errors that I try to use a validating editor when writing html by hand; I have absolutely no idea what to recommend for a Mac, though.

Its preoocupation with death and change and the cycles of nature was somehow fitting for this year; its overflowing beauty made it fitting to carry from one year into the next.

Happy 2007, y'all.

2007 didn't start well, and it's only 07:22 Zulu.

Google's current logo is cute, by the way. (it probably goes away tomorrow.)

Since this is an open thread, I would also like to give special thanks to Serge for driving all the way to my local Starbucks to meet - it was wonderful seeing you again.

It is increasingly common for the phrase "Why is it doing that?" to be heard during the last few minutes of audio from an aircraft black box recorder. Our systems are more and more frequently so complex that even intelligent experts are commonly mystified.

And sometimes it shades over into "How is it doing that?" The other day I had a PC power-cycling itself: four seconds on, four seconds off, ad infinitum, until I pull the plug. I didn't even know a PC could do that. The stop-gap fix was equally bizarre: move the graphics card to the other slot.

If you're not familiar with it, Risks is worth a look. It's a summary of things that go wrong in our modern world; often interesting, occasionally intriguing.

Dismiss the "dipshit" theory; the cognitive error you made while debugging is common, and merely evidence of imperfection, with which we all must find a way to live.

Which reminds me it's now twelve years since I went to Winnipeg in the New Year to see Keanu play Hamlet. I stood at the stage door, wrapped in every piece of clothing I'd packed, to get his autograph, and then couldn't manage coherent speech. So instead of giving him my utterly brilliant note on the blocking of the first scene, I managed to reply to his question and spell my own name.

Only this time it was my eldest granddaughter with the flu, throwing up in the parking lot (and not the inside of my car by seconds) of the Chinese resturant where we had just had lunch. Missed her sister's ballet performance, and Holly Black's New Year's party. But at least 2006 is finally over and buried. And not a moment too soon.

Jane

>There's a program called "tidy", found at http://tidy.sourceforge.net/

Thank you - that sounds like something I need to check out.

Doug Burbidge wrote:

> If you're not familiar with it, Risks is worth a look

Long ago, when trilobites ruled the earth, newsgroups and ftp were what the net was all about, and gopher, let alone the www didn't exist, a friend told me about this network called "the internet", in order to explain what a "newsgroup" was, in order to tell me how cool comp.risk was. More than 20 years later I *still* think it's just about the best thing on the net.

I hope everyone had a New Year which involved minimal exposure to "Hits of the 80s" compilations.

I went to do hatsumode today, which is where you go to pray at the shrine for a lucky year in Japan. I went to Atago Jinja, which has a lot of fun stuff. For example, there are two sets of stairs, the easy stairs and the hard stairs; if you climb the hard stairs (pictured in that link, but you can't really tell how steep they are), you will be able to achieve success. According to legend, a samurai climbed the steps on horseback! And there is a lucky rock to rub, etc. There's also a pretty pond with lots of koi, and you can see Tokyo Tower...a nice shrine.

Unfortunately after I had done all my climbing, rubbing, and praying, I bought an omikuji, which is a paper telling your fortune for the year, and I got the second worst!

(Having twisted my ankle the other day I didn't feel like venturing out for Hogmanay in 70mph wind and horizontal rain, so I'm relatively un-hung-over. Have to do something about that tonight; it's why we also get January 2nd off in Scotland. A sober New Year's Day is wrong.)

Last night, however, we went out for pizza!

The web page doesn't do the joint justice--no shots of the model train, for instance, nor does it note that the late owner was a Rodenberry. One of them Rodenberrys? I doubt it.

Long experience and a vast store of accumulated evidence demand that any person of science reject this hypothesis as fantastically unlikely. If anyone attempts to teach this in schools, I will oppose them...oh, wait, we're not talking about Intelligent Design, are we? Just something equally absurd.

While happily playing with the "Extreme Resolution" Sidelight, I happened across a partial torso and head just lying in a Boston street. Passersby seem remarkably casual.

Bottom left corner - I assume its an artifact of things changing between taking the pictures for each tile.

My husband has to work today, so we went to bed early, but I certainly heard the local fireworks display starting at midnight (they hold it less than a mile from us). Today I'm going to set the pile of galleys aside for a while and read the other book I picked up on Saturday, Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich -- just the right thing to tell me more about our local birds, after my curiosity was fully roused by seeing almost 20 of them circling, doing acrobatics, and occasionally perching uphill of us last week (biggest group I've seen here).

Best wishes to all, for a much better year than the one just past!

Reducing service bothers me a great deal. Last year, a lot of places were only marginally accessible to public transit. If my doctor recommended a specialist there, I might be able to get there on public transit (or I might not), but I would have to schedule the appointment carefully and expect a very long walk through pedestrian-hostile territory. They weren't places a person could commute to work every day without a car. I'm concerned that reducing service is making places that used to have functional transit into places with only marginal transit.

Last night, I was invited to a party in a home where I've been to a handful of parties. In the past, I either walked from the bus stop (quite a long walk), or called and asked for a ride. I feel a lot less awkward about begging rides from the bus stop, which inconveniences someone for about 10 minutes for the round trip, including putting their shoes on, than about trying to figure out who is coming to the party from my direction, before the party, and getting them to give me a ride. After the party, it doesn't feel too overwhelmingly difficult to find a ride back, either home or to whatever subway stop is convenient to the driver. But when the last bus is 2 hours before the party begins, it's discouraging.

Patrick, my eyesight underwent a sudden deterioration in my mid-40's -- I believe it can be a bit like "punctuated equilibrium." That may be all it is. But yes, seems like a good idea get it checked.

We celebrated with a feast last night. It was great. Unfortunately, it looks as if I'm going to be spending the rest of 2007 washing dishes.

Patrick, if you find out anything unexpected about your eyesight, will you please share? The same thing has been happening to my husband (age 47) and his ophthalmologist hasn't found anything out of the ordinary.

Faren, if you enjoy that Heinrich book, you should also check out his Ravens in Winter; great description of biological research as it is actually done. Two major themes: the chief workforce is grad students, who run on beer and pizza; and scientists spend a lot of time going "What the HELL is going on???"

Paula, if you think too many of your neighbors had fireworks, try New Year's Eve in Germany where they sell them in the grocery stores the week between Christmas and New Year's. Last night it seemed like there were fireworks going up from almost every house in the neighborhood. I just kept reminding myself that these houses have tile roofs and are generally made of stone or concrete. I know that fireworks precations developed for the Mid-West US in July don't really apply to Germany in winter, but still.....

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Today I will go to church, take the dog to the park, and then head off to a party at the home of some dear friends. 2006 was a bumpy ride.I will pray this morning for peace, good health, and blessings on friends and family. Happy New Year, all!

Somebody in my lab group once came to me in considerable anxiety. He had been finding it increasingly difficut to read small print -- everything close looked blurry. He asked someone else in the lab, another man in his early forties, and it turned out his eyesight had also been getting blurrier and blurrier over the last year...so they were both terrified they were slowly poisoning themselves with some trace chemical exposure that would eventually cause blindness. It was just the change of vision that happens with age, but they hadn't expected it, or hadn't expected it so soon (but I'm not OLD!) and the eye doctor provided them both with reassurance and prescriptions for reading glasses.

Vicki was just recommending a NYC eye doctor on my LJ, when I was whining about a related subject the other day. She likes hers very much, if you're looking for one.

Patrick, #25:

On New Years Day you get up late, watch the New Years Concerto from Wien (motto: All Strauss, all the time), then the skijumping from Garmen-Partenkitchen and veg out.

It's been a perfect day so far, only marred by the loss of one of those #$%^& tiny screws holding my glasses together during the night, which means I'm now wearing my backup pair, which is about roughly the size of two glass dinnerplates riveted together with bicycle frames...

They have the new no-eye-puff glaucoma testing gear, and Vicki speaks highly of them, though I have not been to see them myself. I'm giving this major metropolitan area, full of doctors and hospitals, with thousands of eye professionals, one more chance.

As for me, I'm spending New Year's Day making chicken stock. I've accumulated enough bones. I'm going to be home all day anyways, finishing final drafts. My goal for 2007 is to submit more stories than I did in 2006. (Given that I submitted a whopping 3 in 2006, this can't be that hard...)

What, the deadbeats who chowed all your wonderful food can't help? Or even do the dishes for you? Where I come from you either cook or you wash. But then I grew up a Puritan.

As for me, I'm playing with my new computer today. Brand new MacBook with a Windows 2000 virtual machine tucked inside it (which is where I'm writing to you from, right now).

This thing is so beautiful I can hardly stand it. There has to be some sort of sin involved here.

This thing is so beautiful I can hardly stand it. There has to be some sort of sin involved here.

The feeling of guilt will hit you when Steve Jobs unveils something even cooler at MacWorld San Francisco in eight days and 25 minutes.

my new years eve?
total emotional meltdown with partner on way to party following dinner where we always go to eat on new years eve.
end of relationship.
a dozen years up in smoke.
brushfire.
small spark escalates within seconds to full-blown engulfment of mountain.
this has happened too many times.
we're both tired of it.
oh i'm to blame too. no doubt.
and the kicker?
not only is this a romantic relationship, it's also a highly productive creative partnership i.e. the partner's thoughts complete mine in ways not possible otherwise.

what silly mortals we be.

Here, we watched the Peach Drop. It did not, however, go splat. Nor was there a boy named James in it...

The year begins with warmth and lots of light,
the year went out with dark and heavy rain.
We say these things in order to explain
just how the change comes, in order to do right
by all that's past and all will be bright
in conception, though we still will strain
to overcome the normal wear and pain.
Each sunny day's a sign that the long fight
has some real purpose, though we cannot tell
where we are going yet we forward march
towards the objective, to what we hope to get
for all our efforts; we'll pass through hell
itself to reach our goal, pass through the arch
in triumph. Above all, we will not forget.

We've no special plans for the day. There will be lounging about, reading, knitting and at some point I will cook a brisket. The kids will spend the last day of their vacation in an orgy of computer/hand held gaming device and tv use. It's possible we will drag ourselves out of the house and over to visit friends but mostly we're slothy.

Back from Our Bay Area trip last night. I just finished shoveling away the snow that was blocking our front yard. It confirmed my feeling that, after my youth in Quebec City, the only white Christmas I like is the movie one, with Danny Kaye. On the bright side, I understand that the bad weather here grounded Don Rumsfeld so it's not all bad.

Among our other plans... The Skiffy Channel is having its traditional Twilight Zone marathon. And, tonight, we're watching MST3K's The Day the Earth Froze.

Oh, well then; you've already got tidy, or at least it's already been packaged for your distro.

You've also got quanta, out of the KDE web development tools; it's a validating HTML (and javascript and php) development tool, with excellent documentation (they include the W3C HTML docs, very handy) and automated upload/download of projects. Might make wrassling with Making Light less stressful.

(There are at least three other things that will do this, if you count emacs; quanta is the one which I happen to have used.)

Patrick #25 --

Built what's going to be (when it gets a RAID card) the fileserver yesterday, and did laundry; today is dishes, phoning people, and stuffing the next couple of months of work into a tool called TaskJuggler. (I knew there had to be a decent open source project management tool; I have finally found out what it is.)

2006 wasn't, personally, all that bad; changed employer in place, went cramped quarters to rattle-around-in quarters, and my social life has managed to improve.

I'm still listening to the locally traditional list of sad songs, just because.

Happy New Year, one and all!

Not a single mention in the first 60-odd comments about the Rose Parade or the countless football games?

I was told (by someone who knew him) one of the engineers who worked on the Mars rovers had a bumper sticker reading: "My OTHER car is on Mars".

The parade just ended. The American Honda float is seriously impressive: firebreathing dragons! (Micaela doesn't beat Stephanie in the chitchat and color department. Thank you, KTLA!) Several Oklahoma centennial observances, both bands and floats. One float had the governor and his wife, but no Nazguls... and a guy with a real rocketpack, who flew several hundred feet down Colorado, and as Lucas's car came by, got to shake hands with him. Imperial stormtroopers, various Jedi and Sith, Vader (and the shot I saw had someone behind him holding up and 'Impeach' banner), queens of Naboo.

My day will be quietly at home, basking in the glory of my completed Project, cleaning up after myself, and riding in the afternoon. Posole is cooking for dinner.

--Mary Aileen

Another point for llamas. Horses fear them! Llamas rock, whereas I've never trusted horses. They're shifty.

If you're driving a decision like this, it seems wrong to me to use slideware as a basis for decision making. Far better to use slideware to set out an agenda and drive agreement on how decisions will get made, and then use discussion and good old documents and data sets to provide evidence.

Tufte has a well known bias against PowerPoint. He's also a brilliant man who is probably the foremost expert in visualization of data in the world. I respect and admire his work. That doesn't mean that he doesn't have his own personal hobby horses that he'll ride whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Blaming PowerPoint for bad decision making by NASA is rather like blaming the US Mint when someone sticks a penny into a fuse box and burns the house down. Selecting the wrong tool is the responsibility of the tool wielder, not the tool maker.

Disclosure time. I am speaking as an individual, and the thoughts I am expressing are my own and in no way represent the opinions or policies of my employer. (I work for Microsoft and am responsible for the marketing launch of the new versions of Office, Windows and Exchange to mid-size businesses in the US.)

I don't know about NASA engineers, but my husband has multiple t-shirts and a button saying that. However, as of last Friday he really isn't one anymore.

Everytime he wore the button to a meeting or conference, everyone else wanted one.

MKK

I'm feeling a lot more optimistic now. Here's hoping we all get what we need in 2007.

Well, perhaps he does. Or perhaps he has a well-considered expert opinion that PowerPoint is a bad tool. It's easy to accuse somebody of "bias" or "prejudice" whenever they have an opinion about anything.

"You've heard of how horses bolted at the sight of the first automobiles. That wasn't anything compared to the fright those ugly, loping camels threw into mules. The mules would lay back their ears and run for their lives and then the prospectors would cuss and reach for their guns and shoot at the camels. A lot of camels got killed that way."

FWIW, the specific example citied shows what I often see in newspaper articles as well. Headline says "America Loves Iraq War" and you don't see any real analysis or counter-argument until the last paragraph, which totally undermines the headline. To my mind, this was more of a case of the author of the deck being afraid to put a difficult opinion in the title or to be neutral and drive a real discussion.

(See disclaimer @ 75)

The comments to Tufte's piece are also illuminating. We can assume that there exists, among scientific and technical people, a widespread unhappiness with the way Powerpoint is used to substitute for actual analysis and argument. Or we can assume that all of those comments were written by other people who also happen to have "a well-known bias against" a product that is in fact without any drawbacks worth discussing. Which of these seems more likely?

Mary Eileen, the Redlands float had a very large bulldog on the front half and a building (from the University, I assume) on the back (the live dog was next to the floral version, sitting on his handler's feet).

Of course PowerPoint isn't inherently evil; Tufte isn't suggesting that it is. He's suggesting that, as used by many organizations, it tends to lead to bad ends. Lead-based paint isn't inherently evil, either, but as a society we've decided that it's not sensible to let it be used inside homes, because inevitably a certain number of children will eat the lead-based paint chips and poison themselves. You can call it "using the wrong tool" and charge building-code reformers with having a "well-known bias" against lead paint, but the fact is, when we discuss tools, we're never discussing their Platonic nature as they float in deep space; we're always talking about them as they get used by real people. Tufte is saying that Powerpoint has a strong tendency to get misused, with effects that are sometimes very bad indeed. Brushing off his very well-made arguments with charges of "bias" is mere namecalling. Suggesting that "the real issue is people choosing the wrong tool" sounds great, but you know, that's what Tufte was saying in the first place.

Presbyopia can set in younger than you think. To my great resentment, last year I had to go out and get my first pair of reading glasses, a month shy of my 40th birthday. I don't need them very often, but there's no denying now that sometimes I *do* need them. To my even greater resentment, my husband, who is a Patrickish sort of age, does not yet need them.

1. Load the optional XML widgets in the KATE browser.
2. Open the site you are worried about in the Konqueror web-browser.
3. Right click in the site and select "Open With... KATE
4.Wait while the page downloads and opens in Kate
5. Select XML/Validate XML on the top Kate menu bar
6. Click XML Checker Output in the bottom status bar, and drag the separator line up so you can see.

The output from performing these steps on this very page where I am inputting this is:

# line column message
1 26 44 validity error: No declaration for attribute REL of elem...link REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="favicon.ico"

(I left out the pointies on the link quoted in the message to avoid recursion)

Sometimes it takes a little digging to figure out the cause of what it is complaining about: missing end-tags cause miss-matches for other end-tags, for example, but the messages generally help me decide where to look.

What are you guys mentioned about in the book? I'm not getting a google account just for that.

Truly, the scriptwriter for the universe has a warped sense of humour.

(this is a test0

And I can't proofread.

Good night, all. Happy New Year.

(Welcome home, Serge.)

I've never seen Thom Moran wearing an "As a matter of fact, I am a rocket scientist" button, but his (erstwhile?) day job (running high-altitude atmospheric probes for MIT Lincoln Lab, IIRC) is all over his band's publicity. Which also figures in, sometimes, to their oddball lyrics (the songs have been described as "spare, melodic love songs for androids")...

One of the things on my todo list is Acme::Yak::Shaving ...

Truly, the scriptwriter for the universe has a warped sense of humour.

Heh. Warped indeed - although the best setup for something really daft being done does seem to be a bunch of otherwise smart people sitting around and saying "Gee - wouldn't it be dumb if they did _that_" [IPv6 over XML anybody?]

Oh, and three brick-like fantasy novels to read and review. None from Tor, so I can say that without feeling guilty.

It would give a whole new meaning to the term "key exchange."

--Mary Aileen

Teresa, Patrick, thanks for having us. It's a good place, this is.

That reminds me of a friend who was quite startled when my response to "Why are you looking so annoyed" was "I broke my G string".

Since then, the words have been food and beads: a trip to TJ's Sunday morning for goodies, then a trip to the Great Mothership of Beads, Shipwreck, to pick up some more mixed faceted beads to finish a few dozen small projects. Ham and johnnycake for New Years dinner, French toast for brunch, handmade pizza for dinner.

Was supposed to go bird watching with The Only Nephew today, but the weather turned all January on us: 41F, small fine rain, and winds gusting to 15mph. So I worked on two projects and on sorting the beads by color.

Some clever chocolatier ought to use the same French chocolate NoKa uses to make some goodies (ice cream? dipped cookies?), and advertise them as being made with NoKa chocolate.

And charge half of NoKa's price, thus undercutting NoKa's sales.

Interested in carpooling?

Which only confirms something I have always believed: only a dog can tell you how to really get to heaven.

Madison Square Garden is holding some sort of Professional Bull Riding contest. It was advertised on TV here.

Just Yikes. I consider that beyond extreme spot (and I've know a couple of bull riders when I was younger).

At 48, you're reaching the age where, even if you've paid for an extended warranty (by exercising, eating right, getting enough sleep, avoiding stress, maintaining a phlegmatic temperament, etc.), your body starts showing signs of wear and tear.

The eyesight weakens, the teeth become a regular concern, bruises and scratches take longer to heal, and you start using the word "regularity" to refer to your bowels instead of your sex life.

And this is just the minor stuff, the normal stuff, the routine stuff that comes with aging, not any major life-and-lifestyle-threatening medical problems.

This is all annoying. Very, very annoying. Especially since, while you can take steps to slow the process down, you can't stop it.

(The thought strikes me that the original ROCKY movie works as a good metaphor for Life and Death. Rocky Balboa is the "Everyman" who finds himself rushing towards an appointment with "Death" in the form of Apollo Creed, and who finds his inner peace in the realization that his "win" won't be by defeating Death, but by going the distance, by lasting the entire fifteen rounds.)

(Of course, if you go with that reading, the subsequent ROCKY movies get tossed into the fantasy category: ROCKY II is where Rocky actually does defeat Death/Apollo. Rocky III is Rocky vs. the Devil/Clubber Lang. And ROCKY IV, with the barely-human Russian fighter, is Rocky vs., ummm, Galactus, maybe?)

Myself, I'm trying, at age 54, to make myself look as good as 65-year old John Turner did.

(Jeez, what a depressing little comment. Am I a great guy to invite to parties or what? It may have something to do with just having read Julie Phillips' biography of James Tiptree Jr./Alice Sheldon.)

I was looking at beads at Big Lots yesterday (there's one next to the nearest Trader Joe's) hoping that I could find some big blue faceted beads to finish a memory-wire bracelet as a delayed Christmas present. All they had were small beads, and mostly plastic, at that. But they did have Christmas bags 80% off their original price.

I went to a party and was dancing my damn fool butt off to the Pet Shop Boys (and no, I'm not really that gay most of the time) until I developed a severe case of champagne hiccups. Unpleasant.

New Year's Day was spent, as usual, at Debbie Notkin's house party (which is why I baked the brownies) where I got to see and talk to many cool people, including meeting Anna Feruglio Dal Dan FTF for the first time.

then i got up, worked on my big honking writing/drawing project i have to finish by the end of the month or else, & drank two cups of coffee from my boyfriend's mum's new machine, & watched half an episode too much of csi:miami.

eventually, my boyfriend got up, as his parents got home from their dinner party. then my boyfriend's mum made extraordinarily good potato & corn tempura, & sauteed three-kinds-of-mushroom. oh man. & we watched a few good men cause it was on. i hadn't known it was an aaron sorkin movie, but boy is it ever an aaron sorkin movie.

then, after i finished all my page breakdowns, i dragged my 230-pound boyfriend on his back through two rooms before he was persuaded not to go back to napping but to get up & drive us home. i could do it, but i won't be able to lift my arms tomorrow (today, but, like i say, it'll be awhile before bed yet).

then i got home & got right on making light. don't know what i'll do now. go on with my layouts, or play with google image search (i can't imagine being a cartoonist before google image search, especially if one simply needs to draw michelangelo's moses as envisioned by r. crumb).

you asked....

Indeed and, as that animated movie from the early Nineties reminded us, all dogs go to Heaven. As for cats...

I was worrying about that too until last summer, when, after my exam, I got my new glasses. My vision was even worse with those than with my old pair that I had to go back. The doc had indeed made a mistake. How much of a mistake? The equivalent of one quarter of one out of ten. Apparently my peepers are sensitive to very slight changes. Maybe it's the same for you.

We used some of your rum to make brandy butter... actually, I suppose that makes it rum butter, technically.

That sounds like the start of a revised version of "Joe Hill".

"Don't mourn. Iterate."

The best part though was the coming attraction for the next Fantastic Four movie. It sounds like it might be better than the original movie. Which isn't that difficult, I know. Anyway, Johnny Storm's chasing after the Silver Surfer made for some spectacular stuff.

I had a fabulous start to 2007 - slept in, spent much of the day on the couch with a book (and one or both cats), and then went to a very civilized dinner party.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the Fantastic Four movie.

Perhaps I had low expectations, or perhaps it was my wife's thoughtfully asking every few minutes, "Now, is that how it was in the comic book?" which is one of my favorite questions to try to answer.

I enjoyed it, whatever my reasons, and I even liked it.

My impression is that most of the underwear movies lately have sucked, both by movie and by comic fan standards. I wouldn't know--this is the first I've seen in years--but I thought this one was fine.

In the Johns Hopkins UP book: "Single Stage to Orbit Politics, Space Technology, and the Quest for Reusable Rocketry" there are a few references to Tim Kyger, which really shouldn't be that much of a surprise.

Things seem to happen in a vacuum in this movie. I mean, they happen because, well, they happened in the comics. Ben Grimm is mad at Reed Richards for his own monstrous appearance, which made sense in the comics because Reed had cut corners on their fateful flight. Not so in the movie. We have New Yorkers cheer on the FF as heroes after that major car crash even though the whole mess happened because of Ben.

From some comments I read elsewhere, Michael Chikliss, who is a fan of that comic-book, wasn't happy with the original movie, and enjoyed the sequel much more. I can't wait for Galactus to show up near the end.

(to paraphrase the words of one Robert Wells)

The Powerpoint Sidelight had me thinking: Do Nasa employees have t-shirts saying, "Actually, I am a rocket scientist?"

To which Mary Kay Kare replied in #77:

I don't know about NASA engineers, but my husband has multiple t-shirts and a button saying that. However, as of last Friday he really isn't one anymore.

"Death does not release you."

(Happy birthday, PNH!)

(As for my New Year's Day, I made the chicken stock and got some writing done. Plus, I saw the first episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures. I have episodes 12 and 13 of Torchwood ready to watch tonight.)

Oh, wait. Strike that. Reverse it.

Wow, you're only a few months older than me. I feel totally inadequate.

Anyway, Johnny Storm's chasing after the Silver Surfer made for some spectacular stuff.

Boy Meets Strange Stoned Interstellar Being, Boy loses SSIB, Boy gets SSIB? Human Torch/Silver Surfer slash...it has possibilities!

I woke up at 7:30 New Year's Morning, ate breakfast, and fell asleep in the recliner for most of the morning. Read and picked up a few things the rest of the day.

No work today because of the National Day of Mourning for President Ford. I'm watching the funeral right now.

And do get those eyes checked out. It's amazing what they can do these days, but be sure to avoid the guy in the bazaar with the tankful of orbs who proclaims, "I just do eyes!"

Well, we know that Giles did some things in his youth that he regr--oh. Never mind.

Happy Birthday and cleared-up sinuses, Patrick.

(I was tempted to send a PowerPoint presentation to sing "Happy Birthday To You", but got worried that I'd have to pay a performing rights royalty on the song ...)

Also for sale: Empty fire exstinguisher, needs recharging. But confirmed operational.

Good price.

Need bail money.

We Tivoed the Rose Parade, as broadcast by HGTV since we like the way they go into the technical aspects of float decoration, and watched it last night. Yesterday spent taking down the tree and rearranging the living room furniture. For what may be badly-needed good luck, I cooked a sort of Hoppin' John with black-eyed peas, rice, and Canadian bacon among other things.

State decreed a day of mourning today, so spouse is off. If the funeral was broadcast, none of the Fry's large-screens was tuned to the festivities.

According to HGTV, it was indeed the chapel. I loved the bulldog; the muffler was an inspired touch.

As for cats, they're already *in* heaven right here and now. Great state of affairs.

I dreamed I saw Mike Ford last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I "But Mike, I heard you died."
"It was a joke," said he,
"It was a joke," said he.

And standing there as big as life
And smiling like he would.
Said Mike "True wit cannot be killed
As long as it is good.
As long as it is good."

From San Francisco to New York,
At parties, cons, and such
Where fans are laughing with their beers,
Mike Ford will be in touch,
Mike Ford will be in touch.

So Doctor Mike will yet live on,
The poems will still be scribed,
New games will run like railroad trains
And drinks will be imbibed,
And drinks will be imbibed.

I dreamed I saw Mike Ford last night,
alive as you and me.
Said I "But Mike, I heard you died"
"It was a joke," said he,
"It was a joke," said he.

Also, happy birthday.

#130 Serge: "the original Fantastic Four movie" -- I think we have two different movies in mind. To me, that's the Roger Corman one, where Dr. Doom "vogues" when he talks.

#161 Me: Does anybody here know a technical reason (or any other) why I shouldn't download the Olbermann Widget? I like Olbermann, so we can omit any reasons that have to do with not liking Olbermann.

The movie sucked.

"Stare at this wall long enough, and I am there. Cleave this squirrel, and there you will find Me. The kingdom of Heaven is laid upon the face of the earth, and dogs do not see it."

From the Gnostic Gospel of Bast, one of the Animapocrypha.

Does anyone know if the links to our own websites that we provide with our comments contribute to Google's complicated algorithms? As in, does Google count every post I make as a link to my blog that increases its page rank? Also, is that why there's such a thing as comment spam?

Just something I'm wondering about, both as a new blogger and as one who is irked by spam. And as a human person, and before God and everyone.

The one time I counted there were 70 people in the house where I spent New Year's Eve, and several had been and gone; the only dense crowd was the 20 players and onlookers of "Apples to Apples" in the 2nd-floor hall. Pace Charlie, a sober New Year's Night suited me quite well; it's hard to cook 5-10 gallons of sauce and 6 pounds of spaghetti (even with much help) when you're not stone sober. We heard very few firecrackers, but we drove home past a house that has appeared in news all over the country because of its gross excess of lights (and the fact that they stay on until well after midnight).

MKK#77: that's a pity -- I was looking forward to hearing the results of the 2nd level of propulsion experiment, using a watermelon-powered main with zucchini strap-ons. (I think Mike actually gaped for a second when J explained that one....)

The answer is no. Links from Making Light's comment section, whether embedded in the body of comments or in a commenter's headers, don't contribute to any site's Google PageRank, because our Movable Type setup is configured to automatically add a rel="nofollow" statement to any live link. This is one of the basic things you do to make your commenting system less attractive to spam.

I already know I have presbyopia. (As I observed when I was diagnosed, my eyes refuse rule by bishops.) What I'm experiencing is an alarming increase in how quickly my eyes get tired, and how hard it is to maintain focus at whatever focal length I choose.

JESR, #108, The HR person at Shipwreck, Carol, is a friend of mine. Say Hi the next time you go.

Paula, #111, consider ordering from Out on a Whim. Fire Mountain Gem cheats artists.

The local (DC) NBC station gave the results of the military poll.

Unlike "The Apocalypse Door", which I finally got my hands on, bolted down at one sitting, and which definitely didn't suck.

Ah yes, there was that unreleased version. It was, to say the least, terrible, but its heart was in the right place.

I don't think that movie's heart was anywhere near where it was supposed to be, anymore than the rest of its figurative anatomy was properly placed.

Or are we only talking about big-budget wide-release movies?

Anyway, there's no big-budget limitation although having a big budget gives a movie even less of an excuse for its being atrocious. Another top contender for the title of Really Bad Movie would be the sequel to Highlander.

I'll see your Ishtar and raise you a third-arm movie. ;)

"Marty Malt (Judd Nelson) is the worst stand-up comic in the entire world. He is equally terrible at his day job, a garbage collector. It seems that Marty is not destined for stardom ... until one day something strange happens that changes his life forever. His accordion-playing co-worker, Gus (Bill Paxton), notices a lump growing out of Marty's back while they are doing the rounds. This odd growth is diagnosed by the disturbingly incompetent Doctor Scurvey (James Caan) as a third arm."

According to this it is the director's best work...

How about The Thing with Two Heads ("They transplanted a white bigot's head on a soul brother's body!")? I understand that it is not the best movie that Ray Milland was in.

Serge, I have never seen The Thing with Two Heads, so I fear I have to concede. Somehow I don't think that even that one with the 7th planet and automated testicle remover (Ice Pirates?) can compare...

Plan Nine from Outer Space
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
Invasion of the Bee Girls
They Saved Hitler's Brain

How about this? They both are very crappy movies.

Serge, #179, I saw that one, too, for the first time. I didn't realize the guy was the neighbor. I figured he was a scientist the father knew.

Paula, #192, then try Rio Grande. They were designed for the trade, but now sell to hobbyists and small businesses. If you want things like clasps, rings, etc., I get those from Monsterslayer.

Here's one BAD movie that was made by pros that deserves to die a painful death... The Devil's Rain.

I think the all-time worst big-budget name-cast movie is Pleasantville, but I guess people actually like that one for some reason.

If it's a bad movie theme, and non-Hollywood is allowed, then I nominate Prehistoric Bimbos From Armageddon City.

Even if it doesn't count (it's obviously amateur, possibly a high-school project) then I still think it should win for the title alone.

On check-in in Portland, my Giant Rolling Bag of Christmas Gifts turns out to be 6 lbs. overweight. I remove carefully wrapped parcel of fudge from it; bag is now 45 lbs and gets checked in penalty free.

The TSA folks don't bat an eye at the hand-carried fudge.

On a layover at Seattle airport, cheerful cheer-spreaders representing the in-terminal shopping center give me a totebag to carry the parcel of fudge. Cheers, cheer-spreaders! My hand thanks you.

In Newark, giant bag of gifts never materializes. Alaska Airlines luggage office is baffled.

On the 26th, I get a call from Delta Airlines luggage office in Atlanta. I positively identify my giant bag. It gets delivered on the 28th at 4:30 am, by a guy who made a wrong turn and ended up driving in the boonies south of the Catskills for 1 1/2 hours.

Everything is intact, including a gold watch and a hard drive hidden in various crevices.

Whew.

I generally get glass beads from York Beads and semiprecious from Znetshows, VitaBeads, or South Pacific; also, don't forget eBay, which can have some surprisingly good deals if you have specific beadage in mind-- I'm still trying to figure out where some of their sellers are getting their cubic zirconia beads, since their prices are staggeringly lower than I've seen just about anywhere else.

Renee @ 202, I'll see your Bimbos From Armageddon City and raise you Hell Comes to Frogtown.

Zyzzyx Road grossed $30. Yes, $30.

New Year's Day was dedicated to sewing 1910s evening gowns and then a rigorous dance practice which left me with aches in really peculiar places.

Resolutions:
1. lose another 40 pounds
2. give up on men
3. clean house

Only #3 is recycled from last year.

Joe Lieberman seems to have neglected to join his own party. Ooops. Connecticut for Lieberman taken over by Lieberman opponent.

This should be entertaining.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space Much, much worse than you can imagine if you haven't seen it.

I'm not gloating - I'm thinking of joining.

I'm not sure if it's bad or good or, um, what but I am also very fond of The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, which is a live-action Dr. Seuss movie that actually looks like it was drawn by Dr. Seuss. Most of it is a child's nightmare come to life, but how can anyone resist the flaming lavender-clad Dr. T?

I want my leg-of-mutton sleeves, and in addition to those
I want my cutie chamois booties with the leopard-skin bows.
I want my pink-brocaded bodice with the fluffy fuzzy ruffs
And my gorgeous bright blue bloomers with the monkey-feather
cuffs.

Is it...atomic??

(The two movies are associated in my mind because I saw them both for the first time during the same evening.)

My sordid past pretty much permanently bars me from any office for which my opponent can afford oppo research.

It goes into high gear and goes way, way over the top when Bart (?) and his plumber friend get taken to Dr. T's dungeon by a singing elevator operator. Or maybe it's when the Terwilliker academy grads sing their fight song. Certainly, by the time Dr. T gets around to singing his "Dress Me!" song, which I'm trying real hard not to think of.

AAAAHHHHH!

Spody-do duds!

I, for one, want to know what stand the candidate takes on:

weasels
fruitcake
sodomy
dinosaurs

...not necessarily in that order.

http://www.toonopedia.com/horton.htm

I was quoting the Dress Me song ("Do-mi-do Duds") above. Careful not to think about the chiffon mother hubbard lined with Hudson Bay rat, now.

I can quote the executioner's elevator song ("Dungeon Song") too. But I won't.

'cause I'm going do-mi-do-ing in my do-mi-do duds...

Riiiight... After all, in my high-school days, I was on the student council twice. Sure, that's because nobody else wanted to do it so they asked me to.

Another thing, Fragano. The only time I was involved in a 'grownup' campaign was when Howard Dean ran for President. And we all know how well that went.

Cue Marvin Gaye sample on smoked beats, with badly (yet greatly) stolen David Sylvian lyrics...

As for worst film of all times, I do not know, but worst film I've been imposed seeing: Fist of the North Star. The film's so bad I was left a writhing mass of nervous spasms well after it was other.

I hear Samurai Cop deserves a price also, but I won't go anywhere near it.

Then I watched it when sober, and realised that it was terrible. Not quite as bad as some mentioned so far, but nearly.

On bad titles: I once started (and never finished) drawing a cartoon called "Time Travelling Bunnies from Planet Filth" - a friend well versed in bad movies told me the sequel must be "Renegade Vampire Bimbos from Planet Filth", which has occasionally been used as a pub quiz team name.

* We were very drunk when we watched it; for example:

Me: Why did he blow up that oil refinery again?
Jim: To get enough crude oil to slick back his hair to go undercover.
Me: Right.

Sgt. Kabukiman is a mild-mannered NYC cop who, when he eats sushi, becomes a master of kabuki theatre, able to defeat the bad guys with his oriental acting talent.

Julie L @ 206: thanks also for your sources.

Paula Helm Murray, you are so right about the difficulty of finding decent clasps in small quantity; I'm having an outbreak of three-string necklace making, and coming up with a clasp for the one I made my sister for Christmas drove me to Michael's (shudder) as I was sans transportation and in dire need after I figured out she wouldn't be able to open the lobster-claw I'd planned on using.

General topic: the worst movie I've ever watched is the original Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. The last half of Dr. T is one of the best things ever, which is just as well,since the first half gives me the same creeping dread that most 1950s live-action kids movies did, and indeed, most of TZ.

We watched the TZ marathon here; it was substantially less crazy-making than my husband's preferred amusement, which was The Three Stooges in Spanish with French subtitles.

You saw Hell Comes to Frogtown too? With my favorites, Rowdy Roddy Piper and Sandahl Bergman?

Gee, I thought I was the only one.

I see your Samurai Cop and raise you Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD.

Hey, you're cheating, this is a Troma movie for [insert here the closest thing you have to a god (now, why does it now sound perverted ?)]'s sake !

I raise Lady Oscar, but that's as far as I'm willing to go.

(By the look of it, my friend the bad movies collector is going to love the finds on that thread if he doesn't know them already.
Thank you. Brrrrrrrr.)

"That ship was on the same mission we are–to discover habitable life in the galaxy!"

Slim Pickens and Roddy MacDowell doing "Brokeback Robot."

Dishonorable mention: "Damnation Alley"

"Las Vegas is overrun with giant killer cockroaches!"

So was the theater we saw it in.

Also severely disliked by me, if no one else, was 21 Grams, which I felt was an irredeemably depressing load of pretentious horseshit. I just saw two in the theatre this last week that left me grossly disappointed and somewhat offended, but then saw Pan's Labyrinth and all was right with the world.

I love Killer Klowns. Maybe you could tell.

Attack of the Killer Tomatos is another in that vein, though to my mind much less funny. I have to admit, though, that when the guy dresses in the tomato costume to go spy on the tomatos...and it works...that's a great moment, even before he gives himself away by asking for ketchup.

And, important rule: all movies made from Stephen King horror novels are bad. Exception: Kubrick's version of The Shining. All others are tah-rash. (The Green Mile and Stand By Me are not horror novels; the latter is a short story, in fact.)

As someone mentioned above, some bad movies are made with tongue far into cheek. KILLER TOMATOES is one; may I suggest SHAKES THE CLOWN as another?

I also have a deplorable love for Scott Phillips' short film, SCIENCE BASTARD. (With SF/fantasy writer Bob Vardeman, and his son Chris, acting in it.) You gotta love a superhero story with a villain named Skunk-Ape.

One major exception is 1983's The Dead Zone.

I'm not sure if it's bad or good or, um, what but I am also very fond of The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, which is a live-action Dr. Seuss movie that actually looks like it was drawn by Dr. Seuss.

When I took film classes from him, Stanley Kramer was very bitter about that film, and would not show it to us. The script was by Seuss, and when Kramer couldn't direct it he spent a lot of time to find a director who could handle the job. When it was finished they delivered it to Columbia, where Cohn walked out of the screening room and said "That bastard has finally made a film I can't release." Cohn's solution? Kramer's contract said Columbia couldn't touch a frame unless a Kramer film made less than X amount over two weeks. Cohn released it out without any advertising anywhere of any kind, and when nobody bought tickets because they didn't know it was playing Cohn cut out between 30 minutes and an hour of material. From what little Kramer would say it was mainly from what's now the last half, with a little linking material involving the father at the front of the film. He pretty much burned to get It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T restored to their full lengths.

My favorite Troma title is Vegas in Space, which is absolutely brilliant for several reasons. I have not, however, seen it.

I considered therapy after seeing Gwendoline. Alcohol worked instead. Lots of alcohol.

TCM had a sentimental favorite on New Year's Day - a crisp print of Red Planet Mars. They don't make 'em like that anymore, I'm glad to say.

I don't know the title, but there's this hunting-for-Bigfoot film I once started watching in my "See Anything Remotely SF&F Oriented" adolescence.

It began, as I recall, with a college professor sneering at a student who didn't take Bigfoot rumors seriously. Because ancient philosophers believed in griffins and phoenixes and who are we to question the likes of Aristotle?

What happens after that, I can't say. I fell asleep.

Dull, slow, bad sound quality . . . just a tedious mess.

Not only is there Hell Comes to Frogtown, there's also the sequel, Frogtown II, the next sequel Toad Warrior, and (as of 2002) the last sequel, Max Hell Comes to Frogtown.

I've seen the first two (rainy afternoon, art deadline) insofar as I see movies on TV (I sorta listen and turn around if anything sounds particularly interesting). I seem to recall turning around a lot during the Frogtown movies - simply couldn't believe what I was hearing.

But worse than those - so bad I objected (afterwards) to watching it for free - A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell. Actually it was so bad I almost thought I'd dreamed it, or maybe hallucinated it, as I was watching TV late at night since the flu was keeping me awake.

Worst movie I ever paid for? Death Becomes Her. Van Helsing is a close runner up.

Seriously, now, The Black Hole goes down in history for two reasons: one is private -- that was the first Red Mike Review I ever wrote. Second, it was the first movie that used computer animation. (It predated TRON.)

Heh -- I know in which Friday the Thirteenth movie Jason got his hockey mask. (And that was the only good part about that particular movie.)

Until he faces his arch-enemy, San Francisco crimelord Doctor Noh.

I considered therapy after seeing Gwendoline. Alcohol worked instead. Lots of alcohol.

Do you mean the French production of The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak? From what I've heard you would have been better off with the legendary bondage comic it's based on, John Willie's The Adventures of Sweet Gwendolyn. Sort of The Perils of Pauline with ropes and leather hoods.

(How do I know about the comic? A friend wanted it and I found a [pardon the phrase] bound edition for her in pre-ADDDALL/ABE/Internet days. You think I didn't page through it before I wrapped it up for Christmas?)

Thank heavens. Brian Wilson's bad enough, I hate it when I switch universes.

I'm actually quite tempted to try and find a DVD of it now... oh lord, help me.

No, Ajay! Be strong!

Worst movie I ever saw all the way through: Manos, Hands of Fate (MST3K version)

Worst movie I ever tried to watch all the way through and failed: Plan Nine from Outer Space

Worst movie I ever actually enjoyed: um....actually...Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (crawls away and hides)

Being a pop-culture ignoramus, I have nothing to contribute to the discussion of bad movies, so I shall mention a political development that pleases me greatly: In Ontario a child can now legally have three parents.

Having spent some time with my 14-month-old godson this holiday season, I'm certain that this is a good and useful thing.

I am currently engaged in an animated discussion about maxixe tempi (84bpm? 96? 112? the music and the dance seem to want different things) and having a peculiar urge to take up cha-cha on Monday. (Mostly because of a cha-cha version of "Oh, Holy Night" or whatever fall-on-your-knees-hear-the-angel-voices is called. I mostly know it from the excerpt in "Mr. Tanner." It seems important to cha-cha to it, don't you think?)

(Is flock the correct group-term for bats?)

My, perhaps unanswerable, question is how did the wonderful idea of special collective nouns for various species come about?

An otherwise normal friend of mine got married on New Year's Eve. In a mediaeval chapel lit only by candles, wearing a red dress with a black lace top. The first hymn woke up a bat in the rafters, which spent the rest of the service zooming around the place trying to get out. (The lesson, incidentally, was Job xxix.) Just shows there's a little bit of Goth in everyone.

What does An Exaltation of Larks have to say on the subject of groups of bats? ;)

Have you ever seen anybody wearing costumes inspired by Girl Genius? It has so many possibilities that I was surprised not to see it at LAcon's masquerade, or at Boston's in 2004.

A few of us once (=a decade or more ago) had a plan to do "Do Mi Do Duds" as a group-costume, though. We thought we'd need at least three bodies to get all those items of clothing in. The final verse ("dress me up in liverwurst and Camembert cheese...dress me up in pretzels, dress me up in Bock Beer suds") would have featured a showgirl costume rather like the ones in "Springtime for Hitler" in the B'way version of The Producers. Unfortunately, we never got around to doing this group, though I suppose it's never too late.

The most notable exception to this was "Mars Attacks" which suckered me in with a dozen A-list actors (Jack Nicolson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J Fox, Tom Jones, Natalie Portman, Lisa Marie, Jack Black, Christina Applegate) AND Tim Burton directing.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116996/fullcredits

It was the only movie I'd paid to see at a theater that I was considering walking out on. The only reason I didn't was because I kept thinking, if I walk now, everyone will tell me it got better, or made sense, or had some payoff, at the end.

It didn't.

People who liked it try to explain that it was a spoof and/or homage to the silly science fiction movies of the 50's. But a spoof of stupid movies gives you a stupid movie.

Anyway, Tim Burton and I have stopped talking ever since I saw that movie.

Not that we were talking before, but....

You're not familiar with Girl Genius? If you click here, you'll be taken to a CafePress calendar based on that comic-book. If someone drafted me into a masquerade presentation, I'd probably wind up dressed as the jaegermonster seen on the page for the month of March.

In the "worst movie I've ever paid money for" category, I submit Ghost Dad.

Not even a visit from Cardinal Fang, skwid?

I'm not sure if it was CNN or some site aggregated on GoogleNews, but whoever it was thought a pilgrimage was made to Mt. Arafat a couple of days earlier.

The pilgrimage story is correct - the mountain's name is (and has been for a very long time) Mt Arafat.

Shame on me for not having done my homework and actually reading the article. Different hills--I was thinking large mountain in Turkey.

What is the appropriate position for abasement?

A basement.

("What most moves women when we them address?" "A dress." etc, etc.)

last night I was watching TV in a bar and they were talking about airdropping bails of hey to stranded cattle and what to do in an american see.

The movie had the best robots I'd seen in years -- instead of being cute, gay, wisecracking servants, they were semi-functional used cars. I like the part where one of the heroes has to talk a robot through a fight scene, telling it every move to make. It wins, and afterwards, it's shaking and smoking a little, so the hero (showing great prudence) pushes it off a balcony. The other robots watching the scene straighten up a little (which was the only moment in the movie where robots showed any awareness, unless you count the canned spiel from the pimpbot).

Now, The Black Hole wasn't a good movie. It had cute robots. But I have to give it this: it was an attempt by Disney to grow up a little. There are one or two good images, and a good death scene that works. And, of course, it has Dave Mattingly's matte paintings.

I can't think what the worst movie I've ever seen might be. It's like the difference between 40 below zero and 41 below zero. Yeah, there's a difference, but I can't feel it. One of the worst supposedly good movies I can think of is Altman's wretched hash of The Long Goodbye, which re-imagines Marlowe as a self-pitying loser in a puddle of piss. One might as well envision him as a happy-go-lucky young hunchback who sings and dances with his gargoyle pals.

It's Written and Directed by Arch Hall Senior; he also plays the Heroine's Dad.

The (Teenage) Hero is played Arch Hall Jr. who shows very little of the talent one would expect that he would have to have shown to get cast without accusations of nepotism.

The Heroine is played by Marilyn Manning; the internet, which has been known to be wrong, suggests that Arch hall Sr. and Ms Manning were romantically linked at the time.

Eegah, a giant californian caveman, is played by Richard Kiel, best known for playing Jaws in two James Bond films.

So in the film:

AH(s) is father of MM who is dating AH(j)

and in real life:

MM is dating AH(s) who is the father of AH(j)

As you might imagine, this makes scenes with AH(s) and MM very peculiar.

Tony Perkins got his salad tossed by a ROBOT? In a DISNEY movie?!?!?

Now that most of us have finished our holiday baking (I have Russian Orthodox friends, so I'm not off the hook for a few more days), here's something to think about - elevated levels of cinnamon and vanilla are detected in Puget Sound.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Whoa. Whoa. One of my all time favorite movies, ever. Damn, that movie's good.

Klowns are Kreepy.

Strange thing is, I must have been five or six when I saw The Black Hole and, while I don't remember anything about it except for the ship, I still feel it was a rather nice experience.
I guess I should leave it that way

Oh Fluorosphere, the shiny, the compleat expositors of fine gatherings (even to the cooking, from the mammoth and weasel to the Buddha and fruitcake), knowers of the five perfect rhymes for orange, you who are in blogs my daily floursphere, [mudra of query to the enlightening]

Where are the secrets for making a traditional wedding* without the standard sacrifice ($30,000 average in 2005 for the US)?
Or
What knowledge of negotiations and parties and gatherings that comes from fandom could be applied to holding a wedding?

My dear friend and sister is recently engaged, and so I've dived into educating myself on the wedding process.

So far I can only conclude that this trillion-dollar industry exists due to a puppet-master like creature... a Toxoplasmosis wedii that makes the couple unafraid of 150% markups on all goods and services.

But, however explanatory this theory is, I can't tell it to my sister- that won't be helpful. Being helpful is what I need to be about, here. Helpfully able to gently** bring forth alternatives and ideas.

any ideas*** on remaining sane and helpful?

-----
* Traditional typical late 20th century north american ceremony + reception. [assume humorous and respectful description that differentiates 'traditional typical' from Ren-faire / FSM / barsoom weddings]

**Gently, because currently my reaction so far to my wedding industry research is "What? Insane!Gaaa!" For example, I've had a dinner at the *best restaurant in the United States* for less than the per-person price some think reasonable for catered wedding dinners. What? Insane! Gaaa!

*** Or book ideas, if there's a good one. I know there are plenty of wedding planning books. That worries me. If any of them truly worked, wouldn't there be fewer of them? (It's like all the "how to survive your child's terrible twos" books- they work because if you read them all, when you're done the child is 3.)

I've been thinking about that one for a very long time- starting a few years ago when it was found that it was impossible to use caffiene to trace food-chain linkages because the chemical was so pervasive in the Sound. The same study noted measuarable quanities of the kinds of hormones found in birth-control pills.

I know why (sewage treatment plants discharge treated waste water without running it through a stage where plants can absorb nutriants and biological agents) but I don't know why anyone thinks it's anything but scary.

// Red Planet Mars was also mentioned, above: I was surprised by the imdb page, as the writer of that hash of Civic Religion and SF cliche was also responisble for Gaslight and the original The Mummy.

First, are the couple planning on a church wedding? Being members of the congregation can get you a break on the church fees.

Are they looking for something more secular or eclectic? Arboretums and conservatories make lovely settings and can be inexpensive.

If they're trying to save money, a late morning or early afternoon wedding will be less expensive. Brunch buffets (or afternoon teas) are cheaper than sit-down dinners.

If you're going with a hotel for the setting, get the budget figure the couple are willing to spend, then talk to the hotel -- the key question being "What are you willing to do for $XXXX?"

Wedding Cakes -- if there is a local school of cake decorating they often will give you a break on the price if you have the students make one for you...

Give me specific questions (email if you like) and I'll try to help.

(I help run a small convention, and I'd love a second career as a wedding planner...)

That combination of hormones and flavorings is going to be modern humanity's downfall.

All those steroids will make creatures grow gigantic. Then we're going to discover that components in cinnamon and vanilla make up the anger pheromone for squid and octopus (similar to how the ester amyl acetate [banana oil / juicy-fruit flavor] is the primary alarm scent for bees). Those roid-raged beasts will take down the shipping industry, including oil tankers.

But seriously, I remember reading journal articles about medication-contamination in waterways 20 years ago. Yet it's only been the past couple of years that there've been ad campaigns asking people not to flush medicines away.

"The fastest way to break up know-it-all preconceptions is to get outside of the stuffy confines of your own head and engage with the grain of the material. Travel will do that in a hurry: meeting other people, other cultures.

And building stuff will do that, too. A two-by-four doesn't care how glib you are."

-- Bruce Sterling

I strongly recommend buying a copy of I Do But I Don't by Kamy Wickoff, and reading it. Then give it to your sister. It's not a wedding book. It's a book about how weddings make women crazy, examined through the lens of the author's own wedding craziness, and it's excellent.

It doesn't really answer your question, but I'm recommending it anyway, because it was a very good read, and Wickoff really managed to get into the strained way in which we negotiate the mythos of the wedding and the bride and whatever feminist ideals we have, and how they don't really match and it drives people crazy. You may find it a welcome change from the wedding-industrial rhetoric.

Practical suggestions: Even if you don't want an SCA or Con-style wedding, consider how Things Get Done at SCA events or cons. A dear friend of mine had a more-or-less traditional NorAm wedding (she and the groom were married in her church, with a champagne-and-sparkling-cider and cake reception in the church common room and a nice, small dinner reception at a local restaurant; no dancing because nobody in the wedding party really likes dancing that much), but ran her wedding in a manner similar to the way she ran her first SCA event. She drew on the talents, skills, and willingness to help of her friends and family. Her mom made her dress. The groom's step-mom made the cake (and it was fantastic and beautiful). A friend provided music. Another friend arranged the flowers. The dinner was arranged as a private party, rather than as a wedding, and the size of the room at the restaurant capped the number of people who could come to dinner, so that it was an intimate gathering of people to support the bride and groom.

It may not be the kind of wedding your sister wants, but it was lovely, and entirely appropriate, and I think it cost the bride, groom, and their respective families comparatively little.

Don't go to wedding shows. They're awful, and they'll only stress everyone out, and make everyone's wedding-related malaises much worse.

A friend who got married in Dallas a couple of years ago reported success with two techniques: asking for a discount (surprisingly successful) and offering to pimp the vendors (moderately successful).

I know the bakery and the florist gave them discounts in exchange for brochure or business cards placed by the wedding cake/floral arrangements, and I think they got a deal on the catering that way, too.

Good luck with the wedding planning.

Also, Bridal Bargains: Secrets to Throwing a Fantastic Wedding on a Realistic Budget is a great resource. I don't know if I would have thought of shopping for a dress at a bridal consignment store if I hadn't read it. Considering how much bridal dresses go for these days, consignment is the way to go. (Brief moment of retro-squee over the dress: handmade, ivory-colored silk satin, with hand-applied beading and a detachable train — $200. I paid more to get it altered than I did to buy it.)

Check local colleges and universities to see if they rent function space for weddings. If someone in the wedding is a student or an alum at the school, you may be able to get a steep discount. We used the chapel at Mills College, and with the alumna discount it came to something like 1/3 the cost of comparable spaces.

There are two things you can do to keep the budget under control. First, be ruthless about fripperies. Only pay for things you really, really want. If that includes personalised wedding stationery, floral arrangements at each place setting, and little wedding favours for every guest, then fair enough: but if you don't really want these things, don't bother with them. Nobody else will care, or even notice, that you haven't bothered with these sorts of small, yet terribly expensive details.

Second, be ruthless about the guest list. Your catering costs are directly proportional to the number of guests, and many other costs, from venue hire to any transportation you need to provide, will increase with the guest numbers. It's very easy to let the guest list swell uncontrollably when you invite everyone who really ought to be there, regardless of whether or not you like them or have seen them in the past decade, oh, and you have to invite Aunt Jemima, but if she's coming then you absolutely must invite the Rawlinsons, and if you invite them then Mr and Mrs Cordwangler and their kids will have to come as well or you'll never hear the end of it...

Sod that for a game of soldiers. Restrict the guest list to immediate family and close friends - you know, the people who you really want to have at your wedding - and you'll not just cut down the guest list substantialy, you'll also do a lot to contain the costs.

Basically, remember that this is your day, and do what you want to do, not what you feel you ought to do.

Thanks! looks like a perfect book suggestion. And it does exactly answer my question, given that my question includes 'what are answers to questions I don't yet know to ask?'

On tips from Con and SCA style weddings: my initial fear is that they're too practical and pragmatic* to be guidelines for Traditional Weddings. But that's a fear I can overcome- I need to be practical and pragmatic in researching this.

I should say I helped with a low-budget yet 'magic with all the trimmings' traditional wedding, and for that family and friends were the core of success. However, in that wedding, reality- a very, very ill relative- kept everyone focused. There wasn't time to read all the foot-thick wedding magazines or engrave the doilies.

Not so this wedding. There's plenty of time for Tox. wedii to take over, for the magazines to arrive by the ton.

---
* Planning for the non-trad weddings I've been to (Con, Renfaire, Wizard-geek...) has generally appeared extremely realistic- rooted to reality. One can't rent pirate jackets at the Tux shop ($300), so the FSM wedding** uses $2 hats from the party store. Vera Wang doesn't make SCA-couture dresses ($9000), so the bride made it. Velvet robes as guest-attire can't be bought at Macys ($200), so friends sew velvet robes for non-renfaire guests.

** the reception was FSM. The ceremony was Jewish/Quaker.

Doing the flowers yourself saves a bundle, and while I was reluctant, "The Knot Book of Wedding Flowers" from the library combined with a local mega-grocery with a big walk-in cooler saved us hundreds of dollars. The good news? Wired, taped stems are out! The book shows imaginative examples, then says "four stems of this, eight stems of that, give it a quarter turn", and, held together by a ponytail-holder covered with wide organdy ribbon, pulled out of the vase of water and given a quick swipe as the procession formed proved elegant. Took me two weeks to recover from the nervous prostration, but the flowers were fine.

On movies: Can anyone recall an example of a much-praised critical success that they couldn't, absolutely couldn't, stand, and couldn't understand what other people saw in it? I had that experience with "The Piano", a piece that made nonsense tedious. I walked out on it at the three-quarter mark. I'm told that the ending made as little sense as the rest of it, but as to that I cannot say.

It's amazing how even with the best, most resolute of anti-Wedding-Industrial intentions, the Wedding-industrial complex gets its hooks into people, and suddenly they're shelling out a bunch of money for things they'd have sworn up and down weren't important prior to deciding on a wedding.

By tips from SCA, I really meant the harnessing of volunteers who are invested in the wedding. One of the lovely things at the wedding of the friend I mentioned was that all the family members—her mom, dad, and sister, the groom's mom and step-dad, the groom's dad and step-mom, sundry aunties and uncles and grannies and step-whatnots—as well as her friends felt like they had a stake in this wedding. Everyone'd taken responsibility for something, and the magic happened. Because she was broke, and ruthless about her budget (not a Bridezilla, though), everything that happened was something that she or the groom really wanted to happen—nothing happened just because it would be the "done" thing. She had the white dress of her dreams, the hair, the makeup, the choir, the music, the cake, the bubbly stuff, the nice dinner.

So, practical advice:

Set a limit on the magazines. They're not really necessary. Set a hard budget. Not having any money to work with can be a wonderful antiidote/dose of reality. Ask yourself/the bride if things really need to be done the Wedding Industrial way or if there's a way of doing things just as well that doesn't cost Wedding Industrial prices (do you need those weird, fancy, engraved invitations? Will something a friend designs printed on supernice paper with all the relevant information do just as well?)

Don't be afraid to ask friends and family for help with things, but make it very very clear that they can say no with no hard feelings. Generally, when you're asking for help, it's best to ask for something specific, but sometimes asking someone to do one of two or three necessary things works better "We could really use someone to prepare the rehearsal dinner—just some lasagne and salad, and maybe a dessert? Or you know what else would be a real help? We're having a flower-arranging get-together the night before the wedding, and I know you've got a great eye." sorta thing.

The Big Modern Magic Wedding isn't that different from planning an Event, according to friends who have done both (don't look at me! I eloped! i've been severel times a bridesmaid, though, with varying degrees of stress and a closet full of dresses to show for it.), at least it's not that different as long as you recognize the same constraints you'd recognise in planning an event. It's just the trimmings (and the social baggage) that differ.

1. have it at someone's home

2. wear an ancestor's wedding dress/veil

3. have reception goodies prepared by a cadre of friends/relatives rather than by a professional caterer (if you have SCA friends, they probably know how to feed a crowd quite nicely)

Most of all: the more commercial/expensive/"that's how it's done" something is, the less likely you are to remember it 20 years down the road. Believe me (26 years and counting). Go for things that are MEANINGFUL TO THE TWO OF YOU; not things like strawberries in December (not a random example).

#269: Officially, "Cantique de Noel". Don't ask me why; the only other "Cantique" I know is "de Jean Racine", a much looser-form ABA piece that some of you may remember from the credits for Babe (heard over the radio at Xmas on the farm).

Oh god yes. I already said Pleasantville. Every single one of the formulaic "biopics" that people seem to fall for--A Beautiful Mind, Ray, Walk the Line, etc. Brokeback Mountain made me violently bored. Gladiator won a Best Picture Oscar, for the love of god.

Older movies like that I'm having more trouble thinking of, though I know there are some. It's not exactly the same, but I don't understand for the life of me why people think The Philadelphia Story is funny. It's depressing as all hell. I still think it's good, though.

Since that one was made for me to wear, it has a silk tie; my sister's Christmas present ended up with toggles on a short run of hand-built chain.

First: We avoided just about -anything- for sale that had the word "Wedding" on it. We actually purchased the rings, a book of ceremonies to crib from, and a tiered wedding cake stand. Other than that, we stayed out of the clutches of the Wedding Industry.

Second: We had the wedding and reception in our back yard, and had trustworthy people around to clean up and run the house for us whilst we escaped to Mexico. This limited the festivities to a select group of people. For music, well, we're filkers, so of course there was some of that, but we lucked onto a local medieval band playing in Bookman's, so we had exquisite music for the ceremony for not a lot of money.

Last but not least: Our mantra: It's our wedding, we're paying for it, so there!

If she wants flowers, have her talk to the florist about options. We said "this is what we like, this is what we can afford" and the florists were very understanding. Consequently, they are still my florist of choice, 13 years later. Of course, I focused more on colors than the actual plant. I'm not a horticulture/botany hobbiest.

For invitations (I'm a database manager, beware), get your list of invitees, or people who should receive announcements. Put them into your db, create a mail merge for the envelopes and print the addresses in an attractive READABLE font. Love stamps are cute, but if you have a large family (I do), it is much more reasonable to take the stack of envelopes to the local PO and have them metered, and pay the man. Remember that your/her time is worth something.

If you don't have a regular place of worship where these events would traditionally occur, see what service/community organizations your family members belong to. My father was/is an active Mason/Shriner and a member of the local Grange. My wedding and reception were at the Grange Hall ($100 rental fee), and the food was handled by one of the Masonic auxiliary groups (Eastern Star, I think). We had appetizers and finger food, and forced people to mingle.

Having been to way more weddings than I can count, mostly vanilla traditional, I cared more about the service and vows than the other trappings. People should be coming to the ceremony to celebrate the marriage, not pass judgment on the centerpieces, or lack thereof.

What are the accepted norms for the people involved - formal or informal? What would make them most comfortable and happiest - Uncle Norm in a tux making a toast with champagne, or Uncle Norm in a Hawaiian shirt making a toast with a foofy umbrella laden cocktail? Small children at home with babysitters, or underfoot and on the rampage?

Two final thoughts:
1) The wedding and reception only need to please the people getting married, everyone else can piss off.

2) Traditions can be created. Be creative, do something meaningful.

Good luck!

* Well, you couldn't exactly call me the Best Man, and I wasn't comfortable with Best Woman, so we went with Groomsmaid.

** The bride*** was Quaker, the groom was Catholic, wrote their own vows and got married at the groom's family homestead with areligious me officiating.

*** Which leads to confused looks when I am introduced by the bride as "the woman who married me."

And $30,000? Seriously?

For my wedding, I went to a regular florist for personal flowers (bouquets and corsages), but bought discounted Christmas decorations from craft stores for centerpieces (and 12 dozen bunches of roses from Costco).

ZeFrank is this weird dude with five-o'clock-shadow and an unblinking stare who sits real close to the camera and talks in monologue. The show is filled with inside jokes and free association. He's occasionally hilarious. Here's three of my favorite episodes. They're only a few minutes each. Go forth and watch:

Ze has airline troubles. I thought of this one frequently during my recent misadventures with Julie. "At least things aren't as bad as they were for Ze," I thought.

Ze goes to Austria.

Ze gets a message from the League of Awesomeness.

Jen @325,
$30,000; £15000, those are quoted commonly. I haven't seen a peer reviewed number, but with the $2000 dresses, the $75-$150 per person dinners, the $1500 photo packages... yeah, $30k, easily.

As Jennie @316 said:
It's amazing how even with the best, most resolute of anti-Wedding-Industrial intentions, the Wedding-industrial complex gets its hooks into people. And while I think I'm immune to the pressure, it isn't my wedding*. The bride-to-be...well, it's her day, but it's all of our sanity.

Sharon @309.
pimping the vendors- ohhhh, nice idea. The bride-to-be has a brother-out-law with a pagerank of 8 or 9**: that could be worth some trading.

Iain: nobody else will care, or even notice, that you haven't bothered with these sorts of small, yet terribly expensive details.
well said.

* I understand that many girls go through a 'plan your own wedding' phase. Comes after the Barbie but before the horse phase. Dunno what it means, but I didn't have any of those. I did start going through a 'plan your own library' phase- came after the 'raise frogs' and before the 'build a michaelson interferometer' phase.

** high google-juice = the ability (for good or evil) to make a phrase a first-10-results.

Wedding invitations:

If you want to be really, really correct, they're handwritten, not engraved, nor printed on a laser printer. You can order blanks from somewhere like Paperzone (they're on the web).

This serves a couple of purposes. It gives the bride something to do other than fret about things or come up with silly ideas. It improves the bride's handwriting. It really helps keep down the number of guests - how many invitations do you want to handwrite?

Needless to say, not paying for engraving & not inviting as many guests = saving money.

Venue:

If it's reasonable, don't hold the wedding in a large city. Things are more expensive there, usually. At least that was my experience.

Clothes:

If you have enough time, shop sales. We saved between 75 and 50 percent on my gown - and it was gorgeous, and I'm not easy to fit.

Incidentals:

Talk to people who've gotten married recently in your area - that's how we found the best cake maker in the valley - and she was not attached to a bakery or restaurant. She was also significantly cheaper than a bakery or restaruant.

My mom raised little pots of flowers (white impatiens, as I recall) for the table centerpieces for both my wedding and my brother's wedding.

I sewed my own garter, and wore white ballet slippers under my wedding gown. A wedding is not the time to wear uncomfy shoes.

I'd avoid those magazines like the black plague, incidentally. Most of them were just ad compendiums. The only one I found interesting or useful was the Martha Stewart one. If you get that one, remember - Martha has a staff!

No, they will dive ever deeper, and awaken the Ancient Ones. Then our troubles begin.

Stefan @307:
Thus do I bind books. It keeps me humble. It also teaches me to love the leather and paper for their own sake, and let them do their own thing.

I second (twenty-fifth?) the comment about getting family members to help with the wedding. My father printed the invitations (basement printing press), my mother made the dress, a family friend did the flowers.

The other thing that happened is that, after a catastrophic fight (my mother threw the half-completed wedding dress at me and told me to finish the effing* thing myself partway through), a friend dragged us to his house and made us watch "Father of the Bride" (the original version, with Spenser Tracy). That unwound us enormously.

We had no photographer at the reception. Instead, we put disposable cameras on the tables and let people do it themselves. The results were more memorable, if less composed.
_______
* Well, not effing...more explicit than that.

anyhow, i have a whole bundle of secret plans to make my wedding cheaper & more meaningful. my boyfriend's parents are in town & have a big beatiful deck & backyard. i'm hoping to have the wedding there (the only problems i can see with that is lack of kosher kitchens, & the fact that i hope to avoid inviting all of mike's folks' friends).

a friend referred me to the dressmaker she used, who is in seattle, & whose designs are beautiful & unique & run to about $200-300. i have a friend whom i think can make my wedding cake (in my kitchen, to keep it kosher).

what i'm still not sure about is the food (it can't be potluck style, cause of the aforementioned kosher business), the music, or whether anyone cares about stuff like flowers (i don't).

this serves a couple of purposes. It gives the bride something to do other than fret about things or come up with silly ideas. It improves the bride's handwriting. It really helps keep down the number of guests - how many invitations do you want to handwrite?

i have a secret plan for this, too. i'd like to design & hand-screenprint the invitations. i have a table setup for my t-shirt production, & i've done a few postcards & things for screenprint classes, but i never have done a large volume of prints on paper.

Ours was this summer, and was done for a fraction of the supposed £16k average. My number one tip would be to get friends and family involved helping out. Both being shortly out of university and burdened with school debt, there was no way we could afford the average sum, and we weren't going to make our parents pay.

We had a church wedding, followed by a afternoon tea in the church hall. As I was a member of the congregation and emergency organist, we weren't charged for church or hall hire, and the church organist provided some of the music. One of Sarah's theatre friends sang Gershwin during the service, and my professional musician cousin played cello during the signing of the register. Another of her director friends was put in charge of decorating the church hall. We asked our guests to bring food suitable for afternoon tea (at their discretion), and my former housemates down the road turned into a baking and sandwich assembly line. Sarah's parents paid for her dress, which was probably the single most expensive item. My dad's congregation (he's an Anglican vicar in France - long story) provided a number of cases of excellent champagne, and one of my friends I used to tend bar with ran that side for us.

But my favourite was came from one of my uni friends' dad, who was (amongst many other things) a freelance motoring journalist. 'Oh,' he said 'I happen to have the Bentley Continental GT on test that weekend. If someone happened to want to arrive somewhere in town at a certain time, I could use it as a city handling test...' I was bricking it waiting for my beloved's arrival so I never actually saw the car, but I am assured that it was the most beautiful vehicle she has ever been in.

A final thought: I can't speak for the bride, but I was so nervous before and overwhelmed by emotion afterwards that I didn't really notice many of the details. What struck me was that most of the people there had helped out in some way and were really enjoying themselves, and I felt loved and supported by all that. People still come and tell my how much they enjoyed it, so I guess it worked for everyone.

--Jakob

And maybe we could tie this in with the wedding discussion, to get his Bride involved -- and runoff from the wedding banquet could draw up Ancient Ones with a sweet tooth (fang) from the Sound...?

[Don't mind me, I'm just being silly on a drippy gray morning.]

Sit-down dinners are always more expensive than simpler receptions. They are not, in fact, a mandatory part of a wedding.

Open bars are not a good idea, no matter how much some of the guests love them.

Disc jockeys who spend the wedding reception organizing the guests into "fun" are also expensive, and are not necessary unless no one present knows how to act at a party. Dance-mix CDs prepared and played by ordinary people are just as good, or even better.

Activities (especially those involving the DJs, above) designed to get the guests to give the bride and groom cash (after they have, presumably, already bought a gift) are generally tacky, and are only tolerable when the couple and their families have limited resources and are having trouble covering even a small-budget wedding.

One reason wedding stuff (especially including clothes, flowers, food, and sites) costs so much is that brides and their mothers are traditionally major mega-PITAs to deal with. You're paying in part for the nuisance factor.

You also are dealing with the fact that lots of people have never handled any major entertaining before in their lives, and are at a complete loss to figure out how to Do It Right. They are threefore prey to ingenious merchants and hotelliers who are ready to sell them whatever they can for whatever they can get. Encourage everyone involved to keep their eyes on the prize and remain calm and civil.

Finally, as my niece observed "The exact variety of roses at the wedding seemed very important at the time--I'm not sure I can remember now what they were." What matters in the long run was whether people were having a good time. The guests should not be forgotten in the process of getting the couple hitched, and the family members should not have the day sullied by the start of half-a-dozen grudge matches.
Anyone who tries to tell your sister that this is the most important day of her life and it should be PERFECT!!!!!! needs to be taken outside and spoken to. It's an extremely important day in both their lives, and both members of the bridal couple should be able to look back with joy. Perfect is not automatically the ally.

I plan and execute a lot of tightly-budgeted events (though not weddings), but I'm having a severe attack of nerves today for some reason about one I'm holding tomorrow. There's the usual no one will come vs. we won't have enough food worry, but the reality check says that all the people I expect will arrive, and that we will have a huge excess of food. There's the My Dress Is Not Finished bit, but that's fixable this evening, I think, give or take several hooks and eyes and safety pins. And in a pinch I have a backup dress. And there's no financial worry, since it's privately backed. Really, the worst that can happen is I throw a mediocre party, which is possibly mildly damaging to my reputation but otherwise not the end of the world. But I'm still jittering around frantically today.

Trying to analyze my worries:

1. It's a posh party. I don't usually do posh parties. I have some worries about the mingling of the posh and the non-posh people, despite careful selection of the non-posh for both intra- and intergroup compatibility. Successful mixing of social crowds is usually a skill of mine, but I don't either know or control the selection of the posh crowd, so there's a random factor I don't usually permit here, and the non-posh crowd is right on the lower edge of the number range for successful event, which takes out some of my room for error.

2. It's in New York City, so I am depending on other people for site-prep stuff that I usually o/b/s/e/s/s/i/v/e/l/y m/i/c/r/o/m/a/n/a/g/e supervise personally. I also have to worry about getting punch bowls & cups and similar party props into the city without driving them in myself.

3. I do not have 100% confidence in the site-prep person, who is rather younger than her actual years and possessed of more money than sense, though presumably her senior family members (parents and grandmother) will not let it all go completely pear-shaped.

There's no point whatsoever to posting all this here, it's just symptomatic of my general state of tizzy.

If it does, you can always play Satie.

Concur on throwing parties after. We were married by the JP in the park next to the courthouse, no formal invites or decorations; the only other people who had to be there were the best man and the maid of honor, but others did show. I wore my interview suit; the groom bought a navy blazer. Photos were candid shots taken by friends. We picked up bouquets on the way down to the park, foregathered on our front porch afterward and had cookies and champagne. The core wedding party repaired to a brunch place afterward, and then we all went and voted, it being spring election day. (The JP had ended the ceremony with "I now pronounce you ... Y'all make sure and go vote, now!") Spouse and I went to fanciest restaurant in town for dinner, and then threw a large party, involving potluck, a couple of weeks later. The potluck included various forms of fondue including shrimp, which pulled in every cat in the neighborhood. Very successful party, still remembered fondly to this day.

The best man and maid of honor got married a few weeks later, also in the park, and we threw an informal wedding reception at our house; I made what seemed like several hundred tea sandwiches, and served vast quantities of not-expensive champagne.

But these were younger, more innocent times.

He was right — it helped slow things down so we were able to really be present with what was happening, instead of feeling like it had been a matter of walk-into-chapel-say-"I-do"-walk-out-of-chapel.

Having more than one reception worked well for us, too. We had the ceremony and first reception in Oakland, with my micro-family and his immediately family in attendance, then his mother held a reception for us in New York two weeks later, which all of his extended mega-family came to.

The wedding after ours in the chain of copying and learning from one another had one, and it's continued through family and friend weddings for 13 years now.

(We introduced the tabletop cameras. The previous wedding found the site we used for the reception. It goes back into history.)

If you want both a train and dancing, get a detachable train and detach it before the reception. Even if you're expert at managing it (and most women nowadays have no idea how to manage a train), no one around you will be accustomed to watching for it and it will get stepped on repeatedly.

These are also a no-no at outdoor weddings, unless the bride really wants to do an impression of Juliet's nurse. (Cue Mercutio: "A sail...")

Ladies, rest assured that, should your daughter be so foolish as to consider marrying me, I would settle for a conveniently-placed ladder and two airline tickets to Las Vegas.

I accidentally started a tradition at my taekwondo school by bringing a piñata to a school party for the kids. They didn't hit it with sticks--they lined up and took turns kicking it (no blindfolds) until it broke. Unlike the traditional method, this method causes gradual leakage instead of one catastrophic break.

Now the kids insist there has to be a piñata at EVERY party. I have become adept at finding piñatas with no pointy bits (so as not to injure bare feet) and contents that won't hurt if they fly across the room and hit you in the head. One of the most popular stuffings is, no lie, individually wrapped teabags (peppermint, orange spice, etc.). The kids grab them up as eagerly as they do the candy and small toys.

And at our last party, I got dubbed the Dojang Den Mother.

Utopian Turtletop is analyzing Beatles bootlegs, which might be of interest.

"She's my sister...and she's a whole lotta woman."

Coffy, on the other hand, was like the trial run. Pretty much the same story, same star, not nearly as good, one year before.

You:
1) wait for the police
2) enter the house yourself
3) 1 and then 2 after it's been over an hour and no police

I'm sure this day can get worse somehow.

A) Get the steel spade out of the trunk of my car
followed by
B) Start beating my way through the basement and up into the house.

But that's just the mood I'm in right now...

I have been meaning to get a gun permit and a trench broom.

I know several brides and grooms who have done so, explicitly and repeatedly, starting from the announcement of the engagement.

I've also seen couples, and brides in particular, bend themselves into pretzels trying to please everyone, and mothers, in particular, making it clear that of course the bride and groom should have their special day, as long as their special day is the day that she, the mother, thinks they should have, and use every sort of manipulative button-pushing trick she's learned to convince her offspring that of course she knows best, of course she is the reasonable one, and of course she has only the couple's best interest in mind.

The firm line can work, if the bride and groom really believe that the wedding is their day, and are willing to tell the MOB that she may either attend with good grace or not attend; if she chooses not to attend, they will be disappointed, but it will be her choice.

Something I've observed is that wedding planning can really shine a spotlight on the way a couple and their families are going to comport themselves throughout the marriage. Interfering MOBs often seem to make very present mothers in law.

I also think that the more we buy into these stereotypes, the more we perpetuate them, setting up patterns of expectation for our interactions, which patterns can exert a very strong pull on everyone involved, and don't really serve anyone very well at all.

Oh, GOD.

Between my mother and my husband's best friend, my midweek chapel wedding with immediate family and very few friends, service provided by my husband's Episcopal priest father, ended up as a Saturday morning wedding in the main church at the Episcopal Church of the Olympia Power Elite, with everyone I know staring at my back (one of my particular phobias).

We did do it on the cheap, which was just as well as neither of us were employed on the date of the wedding.

(And Susan, please let us know you're OK as soon as you can?)

As a teenager, I chased crooks out of my house by repeatedly ringing the doorbell. (There was a back door for them to run out of.) I then went to a neighbor and called the police.

Do what you need to take care of yourself, and don't deny your feelings. Having your home broken into can be surprisingly difficult to deal with.

LWE very cogently lit into this author who keeps spamming about his t/r/a/s/h/ book everywhere.

Something substantial for which they had to pay taxes?

My sister and her husband just won -- courtesy Coors beer -- a fancy home entertainment system.

They're ecstatic, and are currently mostly concerned about where they'll mount the 50" plasma . . . but I'm wondering what kind of financial headache they'll be facing.

Any idea what they're in for? Do both the state and IRS get a cut? Are they liable for medicare and SS taxes?

I am a tax guy.

If they don't normally have a professional taking care of their taxes, they might consider finding one for the year in which this happened. You say they "just" won it -- did they receive the prize in 2006 or 2007? If 2007, they have some time to figure out how to deal with it.

A 50" plasma screen. OMG.

Will the IRS expect them to make quarterly payments?

The agency which handles delivery and publicity wants it installed in time for the Superbowl, which I guess makes sense. I don't know if the family will have to pose watching the telly with bottles of beer in hand...

Oregon (if they live in that lovely state) has a reputation for being fairly enthusiastic about tax collection, so I'm sure that state taxes will need to be figured in.

Again, a tax professional could be very helpful. They really should find one.

One thing I'd wonder about is whether the cost reported by the company (who probably gets to claim it as a business expense) or an independent fair market value prevails for tax purposes.

Very interesting stuff to consider. Sounds like having a professional preparer lend a hand is the way to go. Maybe they can invite him or her to watch some games . . .

When you think about the tax consequences, winning a non-cash prize is like having to buy something at a discount = (100 - your tax rate)%.

I want to get all the people I'm fond of, including family, together for a big party. I want to give at least several months' notice, and make it significant enough that people will rearrange lives to be able to attend. Making it somewhat formal would help with that, and besides, part of the motivation is that I don't want to miss out on wearing a once in a lifetime dress and generally being a princess for the day.

I don't know if I should have some kind of ceremonial aspect; I'm thinking about a celebration of all the love in the world apart from heterosexual monogamous happily-ever-after two kids and a mortgage. I don't have anything against married couples, mind you; married couples also have friends and family and people they cherish who are not their partner, so hopefully would not feel excluded from this plan.

Among my circle, I've had mixed reactions. A minority think it's a good idea, while most people think I should just have the party, but not try to connect it to the wedding I'm not going to have (a slightly annoying subset think I can't tell whether I'm going to want to get married at some point in my life). So now I'm tossing it out to a wider group: does the world need unweddings? Should I try to start a trend?

Why not pick another special occasion in your life, like getting your first book published, or college graduation, or maybe buying your own home, and throw the once-in-a-lifetime party to celebrate that? Or if you don't plan on doing those things either or have already done them, pick a special birthday. Or (more sneakily) organise the megabash for somebody else and make sure everybody appreciates the effort you've made - it will end up being your party too.

(*) meaning, I didn't label them at all and foolishly relied on the order in which they were stacked

thanks in advance -

I am deeply nonplussed by the glass chocolates linked from her site (Noka, take note?), and even more croggled by another link of micromosaics.

That said, having watched it recently, I wouldn't necessarily put it on my "recommend to friends" list. It has that 70s "star-studded" vibe of great actors alternately overacting (Agnes Moorehead) and sleepwalking (James Mason) through their parts, and the story -- well, of all the travesties visited on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it's the travestiest. Now, that can be a whole lot of fun for 80 or 90 minutes, but at a running time of around three hours, it's a bit much to take.

Of course, if you're a Frankenstein completist, you've got to have it.

For a more enjoyable slice of cheese, I'd recommend Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound (1990), based on a story by Brian Aldiss. And it's got Raul Julia as Victor Frankenstein and John Hurt as a time-traveling mad scientist from the 21st century with a talking electric car.

Oh, heck, it's your 21st anniversary -- ask for both.

It has indeed been a long time since I last saw Frankenstein - The True Story. That was late in 1988, while recovering from my vasectomy (*). And I have this feeling I'd agree with everything you said, except that it's the travestiest version of the story - because I had no problem going along with the conceit that these are the events that Shelley's novel was based upon. It had sadness and beauty in it. And I got to see Jane Seymour, aka Dr.Quinn, medecine woman, playing the Bride and getting her head popped off her shoulders by the Creature.

(*) I know, I know, there is such a thing as giving too much information

"Writers Find New Fiction Source in Economic Genre"

I have never, ever seen any Dr Who, and would love to watch it, only it exists on DVD in such gigantic but fragmented and very, very confusing form that I have no idea where to start. Any suggestions? (Preferably for things available on netflix, but I can be flexible, I guess...)

You can't go wrong just watching the modern incarnation. They assume that most of the viewers don't remember the earlier show, and they don't base plots on bits of trivia from thirty years ago, so you won't feel like you're in over your head.

FWIW, on the Corman commentary track, he brags that the whole time-travel angle was his idea, and not in Aldiss's original story. Seeing as how that's basically the entire plot, I don't know what Aldiss's story might be about, other than involving the Shelleys as characters.

Ethan: I think most American Dr. Who fans first got hooked on the Tom Baker episodes. I can remember seeing one of the early series repackaged as a TV matinee, and being very disappointed. Then I saw Tom Baker fight the Daleks late one night on PBS, and it became a part of my life, until that guy in the porkpie hat became Dr. Who, and I lost interest again.

BTW, thread crossing: Tom Baker has a small role in Frankenstein: The Untold Story. He's quite good, and worth staying awake for when he finally shows up.

As for our liking the same movies for different reasons... That's quite possible. Earlier, when people were coming up with the titles of bad movies in this thread, I thought of pointing something out on the subject of cheesy movies, then that sub-thread petered out so I decided to drop it. You gave me the excuse to say that I very much enjoy those old SF movies, even when they are extremely cheesy things like The Angry Red Planet or Twelve to the Moon. Why? There is one thing that they do that today's CGI-perfect movies don't do: in spite of their lacunae, they convey the sense of going into the Unknown. To me, anyway.

Truly bad movies are those multimillion blockbusters that have been previewed and focus-grouped to death, serving up empty platitudes and base emotional manipulation, garnering huge profits and critical acclaim. Forrest Gump is a bad movie. Jurrasic Park is a bad movie. Dances with Wolves is a very, very, very bad movie.

Plan 9 from Outer Space, on the other hand, is a very earnest, sweet, well-meaning movie.

Good point, Howard. That's why some of my nominees were Ishtar and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. And, if I remember correctly, that sub-thread had started because Skwid asserted that 1994's Fantastic Four was one of the worst non-porn movies while I thought that, terrible as it was, its heart was in the right place. (My favorite line was Reed coming to where Sue and Johnny were staying and him asking their mother: "Can Sue and Johnny come on my spaceship?") I never got the sense that that movie had been made for the sake of making money, but because the person in charge wanted to do it. Unfortunately, his movie-making skills and his budget were not up to the task.

Me (unmarried, no intention either to or not), if I ever had an unwedding, wouldn't do something formal and wedding-y, but that's me and I'm male.

I like the idea of a non-pair-bonding love celebration though, and will probably steal it for next time I throw a party for more than one reason.

* Partly because he has 2 parents and 2 step-parents, none of whom get on anymore, and putting them all in the same room would be like a very unfunny sitcom; not unsuprisingly, this is one of the reasons he doesn't want to get married.

I've no particular inside knowledge, but it's not hard to make an educated guess. Before Doctor Who, Piper was known to the public as a washed-up ex-pop-starlet, although a few people had started to notice the good performances she had delivered in a couple of one-off TV dramas. After Doctor Who, she is one of the hottest stars in the UK, starred in two high-profile costume dramas over Christmas, and has a starring role in the theatre coming up in the near future. Basically, DW gave her career a massive boost, and it was the right time for her to move on to other things and broaden her CV while she is still a hot property. If she'd stayed on much longer, she would have risked being regarded as just "the Doctor Who girl": as it is, I think she's likely to move on to a substantial career in TV drama. In short, I reckon she left because in career terms the time was right.

Well, owing a large sum at the end of the year is rather obvious. Whether it gets you in trouble depends on what the rules are and whether the IRS profiles catch you -- but it's not exactly easy to hide.

I don't know how non-monetary income works, but each year our tax accountant prepares a sheet comparing taxes due with taxes paid and in one year having us pay some modest penalty, calculated as interest, because we paid taxes as the money came in rather than uniformly. The form assumes uniform income; if you're a personal business and get an unplanned-for uptick in the last quarter you're just screwed. (IIRC, salary bonuses usually aren't a factor because they get run through the same deduction mill as income; the form looks only at quarterly payments.) Sudden income at the beginning of the year, I was advised, actually wins because of the above assumption; you can spread the additional payments over 4 quarters and it will look ok.

I don't know the exact conditions for filling out the form at all -- that's why we pay someone to do this -- so all of the above should be considered anecdotal; but saying the IRS won't even notice strikes me as implausible.

If you want to watch the older stuff, the 1970s stories (Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker) are probably your best bet. I have seen more Pertwee than Baker (due to BBC2 repeating them in the 1990s). His first story was Spearhead From Space in 1970: the first Doctor Who in colour, introducing a new companion as well as a new Doctor. So that might also be a good place to start, with comparatively little backstory to get to grips with.

Save the 80s Doctors (Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy) until you know more, and don't watch the American TV movie until you know enough to hurl abuse at it for the way it messed around with the concept. (Paul McGann's Doctor was pretty good, though.)

Truly bad movies are those multimillion blockbusters that have been previewed and focus-grouped to death.

They're one BIG type of bad, obviously.

We have the substantive "nanar" in french, both depreciative and affectionate, for the low budget, "very earnest", movies.
A movie can be bad. It can be a "nanar". And it can be both (you can be low budget, bad, and very earnest about it).

I was hoping an english equivalent of the word would eventualy pop up in the thread and even had my hopes up for a moment when spotting "campiness". Too bad.

Prizes might be treated differently. Hence the reason that Stefan's sister needs a tax accountant for advice.

About the rite-of-passage thing, absolutely. That's a big part of my motivation to do it. There seems to be a sense that an unmarried person is not truly adult, and I really want to challenge that. Getting married is great, but it shouldn't be the only definition of fulfilled, socially valued personhood. (Yeah, I had a bat mitzvah, but in modern society nobody takes seriously the idea that a 13-year-old is adult. And even a coming-of-age party at 21 isn't really marking the same kind of transition that a wedding does.)

PNH at #1: But is his sister called Rebecca?

My wife's site is set up in such a way that, if someone wants to write to her, all they have to do is click on the hot link coded in. Unfortunately, most of the email she now gets thru that address involves offers to make her own penis bigger and so we've been thinking of shutting that address down and setting up a new one. But not as a hot link because we'd then quickly be back to square one and to offers of barnyard excitement that doesn't deal with solely human partners.

Instead, I've been thinking of doing what Tom Tomorow's own site does. Thus he displays...

tomtomorrow–at symbol–ix–dot symbol–netcom–dot symbol–com

Is that the best and simplest approach?

link

If you want to contact me,
click on the image below:

It will bring up your default mail program, with a nonsense address;
fill in the correct address from the image.

Also, Texanne: And once you've seen it all, certain bits of Buffy will make more sense.

Oh, nuh-uh...really?!? I didn't know! I'm excited!

I've also added the first season of the new show to my queueueueue.

Oh, and Sarah S #406--That. Is. Hilarious.

Thought so. Mepf. I want my Cylert.

You out there, Susan?

Bricks...

Fish...

Does Harlan Ellison know?

Thought so. Mepf. I want my Cylert.

I don't know what I want, since I keep on wondering what you'll do with all those Cylons...

She's an utterly charming human being, IMHO.

xeger, I think you've figured out why the FDA banned Cylert!

She was looking fabulous when I met her, and complaining of a cold. If she looks that good with a cold, watch out, you people who are into women (I admired her esthetically, not being one of you)!

Of course...without my Cylert, I can't identify Cylons as easily. If the woods are suddenly filled with beautiful dance instructors, it's Katy Bar the Door.

And Serge...don't use racial epithets. It's beneath you. (As you can see, I'm a Heloite rather than a Tighist.)

Enjoy!

In case the melody wasn't coming through the text...

Better go easy on the Okonomiyaki before riding that one!

I made Katie laugh with it tonight -- my apartment has a screen door, and I pointed the screwdriver at it for a few seconds prior to opening, pretending that I was using it to unlock the door.

The UV light will make my lab rubies fluoresce, but not the stripe on money or the g-rune on my Jon Singer bowl. Interesting. I guess the latter need shorter wavelengths. (You really don't want short wavelengths on something you're giving little kids to play with.)

I suppose if you'd felt unconsciously attracted to her, you would have been admiring her anaesthetically.

I admired her esthetically, not being one of you

You admired her what? Well, I've never heard it called that before.

* And I've just spotted a typo

For some reason the BBC shop only seems to have the sonic screwdriver torch.

The tendency not to say 'yes' or 'no' persists in English in people of Irish descent, I find. I rarely say either unless I'm being emphatic and very plain on purpose (as when the judge asked me "would that experience influence you in any way" right before I was picked for a jury). Also, more Irish-Americans use the word 'slew' (meaning a lot, from Irish slua, host). We used it all the time in the home I grew up in; some of my classmates at school had no idea what I meant! It's in common use in the NYC area, but wasn't in Michigan, where I grew up.

Funny how things evolve over time though. Irish may yet wind up with a word that means 'yes' exclusively.

Latin also had no words for 'yes' or 'no', but late speakers acquired the custom of saying huic (this) or hoc (that) to mean yes. As French developed, different regions of (what is now) France preferred one or the other; the two forms developed into oil and oc respectively, and those words became shorthands for the two forms of French generally: Langue d'Oil and Langue d'Oc. Modern French developed from Langue d'Oil, and that's the origin of the word oui.

Oh, that's where a whole slew of things come from!

(I've got no Irish to speak of - not recently, at least - but I know that Welsh barely does 'yes' and 'no' as words, and the preference is still for 'it is' or 'it is not'.)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/01/09/DDGRJN7H211.DTL

Apparently the event went quite well, and many people had a lovely time. I wasn't there, so can't report.

I haven't heard from her since the event, I don't think, and the Gentleman hasn't mentioned seeing her. I owe Susan an e-mail, though (the blurb looks good to me!), so the ball's in my court, communication-wise.

(*) all of whom go to Heaven.

My party was excellent (and my dress was finished for values of finished that include substituting discreet basting for actual fastenings) and was followed by a long afternoon of successful teaching in NYC followed by exhausted collapse. I did a low-key maxixe with jennie's gentleman friend, whom I need to teach more maxixe to this coming Sunday, since he's of the perfect height to lead me but is somewhat short on interesting things to lead me into, maxixewise. Monday started out with having a hole punched in my forehead and a Frankenstein-like Large Black Stitch applied to it. My dance partner examined it carefully and sympathetically asked if they had located my brain.

Power Twin, we rocked through four figures (1-3-4-6) of L'Alliance. You shoulda been there both days.

Serge and Xopher, I am pleased to have successfully deceived you both as to my true appearance and nature, but stop now.

My cats are Chavez-like socialists. They have nationalized my favorite armchair.

Arkansas seems remarkably bereft of tango; I have no leads to offer except to look out for a touring show.

I will be at Arisia, minus my Large Black Stitch, I hope.

Damn.

(What's a burgular, Xopher?)

If they were real human beings who were interested, I wouldn't mind (or not much). As they're an automated search program collating things with certain keywords they probably won't pay attention to me sending them a notice asking them to remove it. Not that that will stop me.

In future I'll try and only post things that are of no possible use to anyone.

Weaselly fruitcake? Dinosaurs and ... never mind.

Damn. Getting delusional again.

No! Wait! If you and he dance it together, who's gonna maxixe with me?

Ah well. I can share.

It's also the word for 'burglar' in Uh-Oh-Scawy-Thingsese, a language spoken by couples in private when pretending to be scared as an excuse for snuggling up close.

Why are you all looking at me like that?

We do because your post's spelling sounds like you're practicing for the next PublishAmerica sting.

1. There are a whole slew of people who don't know what "a whole slew" is.
2. The reason for the phrasing "I have not" amongst Irish-Newyorkians.

It's a good core to the day.

I always use a 20-foot Czech. (Dollars would be nicer, but you can't have everything.)

I've googled "honyock", with many spellings, and although the definitions I've seen are congruent with my father's use of the word- a low class and boisterous child or young man- none of what I've found has a reasonable origin for it.

Any ideas where to look?

There's no 100% certain etymology for honyock, but that's the case for a lot of words. Dave Wilton's one of the most scrupulous etymologists on the net. I doubt if you find anything more conclusive than this.

As used around these parts, among those who were over 18 in 1941, it has a precise usage: the young men (or, very rarely, boyish girls) are not only rowdy and idle but prone to mindless and pointless destruction, the sort of people who'd inadvertantly slash their own tires when vandalizing the cars outside a wedding reception.

Greg (#434): #432 was a version of "Rock and Roll" by Gary Glitter that got some airtime way back when.

Doctorin' the Tardis, by KLF (as the Timelords).

I told one of my professors once that I thought I knew more about alternative and independent music since 1980 than I did about anything else. She said, "Surely you know more about your PhD work?"

She's wrong.

This is technically true but misleading. Chinese does not have a generic word which maps onto the English word "yes," but the way one answers yes/no questions is quite straightforward. You repeat the question's verb for "yes" and you negate the question's verb for "no."

So if someone asked you "Do you have the sacred pickle of pastiche Wagnerian opera?" Your response would be either "have" or "not have."

Wow. That was a fricken flashback. I had no clue KLF (3AM Eternal) did that version.

Gonna go seach youtube for some of my 80's music now...

The nucleus burgularis, in the anterior hypothalamus, is a group of magnocellular elements arranged in a ring around a capillary bed. The cells are predominantly monopolar, tightly packed, and are flattened at the outer border of the ring. The entire nucleus is surrounded or encapsulated by myelinated fibers. Electrical stimulation of this nucleus produced a short-latency, long-lasting and substantial antidiuresis in ethanol anesthetized rats. Water deprivation induced changes in numbers of nucleoli and cell size increases in these cells. The multiplication of nucleoli in this nucleus during water deprivation was more profound than that previously observed in the supraoptic nucleus. Decreases in multiple nucleoli accompanied voluntary rehydration. Seven criteria for status as an osmoreceptor are listed and the nucleus burgularis was found to meet 6 of these criteria, the seventh being the demonstration of receptor potentials which has not yet been attempted.

For what it's worth, as a young child in Milwaukee, I never heard the word "honyock" used as a generic term for young delinquents. It was always used as an ethnic slur against Americans with roots in southeastern Europe. To me, it carries the same connotations as "polack" or "bohunk."

I'd be careful about using the word "honyock" casually, if you don't know who you're talking to.

The OED, although the gold standard for written language, isn't always of help in tracing the evolution of spoken rudeness.

malkin (MO-kin, MAL-kin) noun
1. An untidy woman; a slattern.
2. A scarecrow or a grotesque effigy.
3. A mop made of a bundle or rags fastened to a stick.

A little quick browsing of dictionaries confirms that this is indeed a proper definition (and adds dialect meanings of 'cat' or 'hare'). Application to right-wing nutballs is left to the reader.

Curricks are small enclosures made from stones. They were used by shepherds as lookout points.

It makes sense. another definition is a "chambered cairn."

It never occurred to me that bohunk was a pejorative term. It certainly gives me a better than usual discussion topic the next time I call.

Serge - What's your opinion on Canuck?

Hony-moon,
applyed to those marryed persons that love well at first, and decline in affection afterwards; it is hony now, but it will change as the Moon.

and

Melilla,
my hony, my sweetynge, a worde of wanton dalyers.

Malkin, Maukin, or Scovel
to make clean an oven (the Italians call it Scovola di forno, id est the broom or besome of the oven) the Lat. is Peniculus, or Penicillus, dim. a pene. id est a tail; because they were in times past, made of the tails of beasts, as now they are of old clouts. Min.

Both of us! (And I'll still be better than the Gentleman because I'm more obsessed with practicing it.)

The viewing is best the further north you are: I'm in California, and all my attempts so far have been for naught, but others have been more successful- see the San Francisco pics.**

*or maybe it'll fizzle. Either way, see it now while you can, or see it now before everyone else does too.

**the Farallons are hard enough to see, as they're 30 miles offshore and usually hidden by the marine layer of fog... Farallons plus comet: takes some waiting.

Fabric? Break and stop? Please do write up more.

(or is this one of those "for the rest of the story, please paypal to..." situations where a bribe is needed? While I can't do paypal, I can offer something shiny at worldcon 2008*, for the rest of the story today.)

* assuming I've forgotten everything I learned this year ("throwing that bid party was hard, hard work") by 2008 ("Hey, throwing that party was nothing but fun fuzzy bunnies. Why not do it again?")

I thought you were talking about this song.

I don't mind it. But then again you might want to ask people who live in anglophone parts of Canada because I think that's who the term 'Canuck' usually applies to. As for Quebec's francophones, they're sometimes called frogs, for obvious reasons that don't really make sense because, really, frog legs are (supposedly) a delicacy with the francophones of France. 'French pea soup' has been used to refer to he segment of Canada's population from which I was spawned.

I think I'm actually going to post on how bananas haven't had sex for 10,000 years*, despite the evidence to the contrary elsewhere on the internet. Since 50% of my DNA is the same as that of a banana, I'm obviously going to have to investigate the (lack of) sex lives of my proud cousins, the bananas.

* Domesticated bananas that is. Wild bananas are probably having sex right now.

"...In this action-packed episode of Mythbusters, Adam and Jamie turn dirigible detectives to try and solve one of aeronautics biggest puzzles, while Kari, Tory and Grant come face-to-face - and have to flee - from some of Nature's natural-born killers..."

Heck, just watching them build a miniature Hindenburg and then have it go down in flames as Adam exclaims "Oh, the humanity!" will make it worth my while.

As for the politics of cats, as I've noted before, my 20-pound Norwegian Forest Cat is an Emperor! (For photo, see this site, second pic down. It's from several years ago, when he may have weighed a mere 16 lbs.)

Ooof, I was up till 2 am (eternal?) last night watching videos. I didn't discover "real" music until I went to college. The 80's for me was a world of farm country and country music on AM radio, with two distant FM stations that played top 40 stuff.

My taste for the decade appears to run towards the one hit wonders, and the very oddball songs.

Doctorin the Tardis being one example. Others that I rediscovered last night include "One night in bangkok", "You spin me around", "I wanna be a cowboy", "Rock me Amadaus", "Safety Dance", "Putting on teh Ritz".

Good grief, I'm a one-hit-wonder junkie or something.

Thank you ever so much. It was a map of a sheep-raising area (north of the Wall, actually).

We used "Safety Dance" and "Bangkok" (the instrumental preceding "One Night in Bangkok") as music in my high school marching band (which competed along with playing at halftime and such.) I'm still extremely fond of the Chess soundtrack. If I ever directed a show, that would be high on my list - I had difficulties with both the London and B'way versions, but I think it has great potential.

Speaking of, that's the first time I've seen a video on YouTube that basically just captures a visualizer rather than an actual video...I'm sure there are lots of them, it's just the first time I've seen it.

I don't. Cargo pants.

Western Canadians never seem to have an issue with Canuck (maybe the hockey team has something to do with that?), but easterners seem to be a little touchy.

I