Good times. Kinda.

As long as this is an Open Thread: Safari and Vanity Fair Do Not Play Well Together; I've had to use Firefox. (For those of you interested in Mob Studies, there is a fascinating article on Arnold Rothstein by Nick Tosches; I will dredge up the URL once I've pulled up Firefox.)

Got back from vacation, and found that the contents had condensed down into a thick syrup, about a cup's worth. Waste not, want not, so Dad poured it into a cup and added a splash of evaporated milk.

(This was before Coffee-Mate or other artificial creamers, so in lieu of real cream, one used evaporated milk, from a can punctured on the far side with a church key to make a pour spout.) (The topic of "church key art", using a can opener to cut cans into decorative or useful items, is one for another post.)

That splash of milk hit that coffee, sank briefly, then floated to the top, curdled into a twisted lump.

But since Dad had been a Navy guy, he drank it anyway.

Every time my wife goes to James Wolcott's site (*) from her computer (which runs on Windows XP), it starts displaying its contents then it shuts her Internet Explorer session completely. I don't know if there's some IE setting that needs to be changed. Or maybe it's something in her Norton Internet Security. This started when his column moved back to Vanity Fair's site.

Any ideas?

(*) http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott

The Wolcott piece (see previous post) was pretty good, too. Vanity Fair's long essays would lead me to subscribe, if the rest of the mag were not instant recycling--several months ago they ran an article on the early history of surfing; there really was a Gidget.

"Real programmers drink real coffee."

I suspect some kind of weirdness in their HTML, but I haven't looked at that yet (it doesn't shut down Safari; it just mucks up the screen display). Security software might be the problem, though.

#5: I had to laugh. (I remember evaporated milk and the wadded-up wedges of waxed paper one inserted in the church-key holes, but the last time I used it [not counting Vietnamese coffee], it was Not As I Remembered.)

Perhaps the Javascript (pardon the pun) is creating the problem.

Oh, and #8: *Snort*

One variant, at least.

(In William Kienzle's mysteries, Father Koesler's coffee repelled hardened policemen.)

There are six airpots there, of which only one or two (Sumatran and Columbian) are filled on a regular basis.

Occasionally someone makes a pot of Decaf; a little less often, someone gets bored and brews one of the flavored coffees.

There are three types of "pre mixed" non-dairy creamer, plus one or two types of the powdered stuff. This muck is essentially edible tempera paint; fortunately, there is a dispenser with one of those little buckets of Half & Half.

Three types of sweetener.

A dozen types of tea. Hot cider and hot chocolate mix up in the cabinets.

Two posters asking people who've emptied a pot to make a new one. I created one of them:

If you use up a pot of coffee, please make a new one.

Click here for the image

Or we send the clown after you

I'd like to spend Saturday at Boskone with a small group of local friends that includes a 3-year old. The logistics of commuting to the con all look workable, except for the problem of "where can the child nap in the early afternoon?" Are any of you Boston fans with young children (or limited stamina) facing similar problems, so this is a solved problem I just don't know about? Or are you traveling from afar, and you have a quiet hotel room, part of which you can lend or sublet to a small napper and a supervising adult?

We can offer baked goods, a soft sculpture dragon, or cash. Without the nap, we don't expect a halfway-civilized preschooler in the late afternoon and evening, so this is really important. We're trying to avoid the level of profound exhaustion that lets a person fall asleep in a crowded consuite or elevator lobby, because this particular child goes through hours of being short-tempered and unhappy on the way to being that tired.

*residual shudder*

Still haven't found the spout-making can opener (though I could go home and find mine), but I found a number of other styles on e-bay.

Now I think I'll open my fresh can of Jittery Joe's coffee (sundown blend, ground Friday) and inhale. Ahhhhh... It's off to the coffee pot.

If you're planning on getting a Boskone membership for your child though, this looks like an option.

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark? What's next? Will Ferrel as Captain America?

On the other hand, my ancestors were merchants, ranchers and railroad men in and around San Antonio. While railroad coffee had a strong reputation (as thick and black as axle grease) boiled trail coffee is what I heard about, and finally experienced. (Drink seems inadequate.) Fill up the traditional four quart tinware coffee pot with cold water and place on the fire. When it boils dump in a level double handful of ground coffee, and bring back to a boil. An eggshell is a traditional addition at this point as well. (The traditional brand of course is Arbuckles Ariosa and there is a company that claims to have brought it back, but you can use the corporate descendant of Arbuckles -- Maxwell House.) Move to near but not on the fire, throw in a little cold water to help the grounds settle, and wait a couple of minutes. Powerful stuff.

Remember, pour carefully so the grounds don't get stirred up, and you don't want to drink this to the last drop. The last cup or so in the pot is perfect for helping put out the cook fire, or for taking the hair off cowhide.

I'm seriously thinking of doing a little photoshop work to make it look like the stuffed clown in actually gripping the knife in its hand, then making a commercial "make the coffee" poster.

I have another version of the poster using a different photo, one that used to be up on Lilek's newspaper photo archives site. It shown an OLD clown. A really scary wrinkled decrepit clown of the sort that makes wee kids challenge the carrying capacity of their Huggies.

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and the 'see more ads' ads:
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Lizzy L @29,

Consider switching to decaf. tea, or a low-caffeine green tea: it is darn good for you. (look up EGCG or Theanine in Pubmed. Coffee just doesn't have results like "Green tea extract reverses the despair behaviour in reserpinised* and diabetic mice")

* depressed mice, given the depressant reserpine.

A.E Van Vogt's The World of Null-A ?
Assimov's Foundation ? (I'm thinking psychohistory, but it's been so long since I read the thing I don't really remember)
Barjavel's The Ice People ? (I'm stretching a bit here, all right, this is a past futuristic society)

@Claude Muncey (#39):

Woohoo ! A way of making coffee I haven't tried yet. Thanks a lot for that.

Anyone here besides me ever been diagnosed with caffeine overdose ?

At least Robert Downey Jr. can act. And Jon Favreau is enough of a geek that I am inclined to trust him. For now.

I'm still wondering about the Star Trek XI rumors. Here's the latest blurbs, if you're interested.

SciFi Wire
Entertainment Weekly
IMDB Star Trek XI

And yes, I have a four-pack of Red Bull and a four-pack of Rockstar Juiced in my fridge...

The only brand I ever drank while there, whether in the office or in homes or in restaurants, was Community Coffee. I don't know why the grocery stores bothered selling any other brand. It was good, though; I missed it after I moved away.

As for Downey Jr.... You're right. Let's see what he does As for Favreau, he is a comic-book lover so he's less likely to screw up. If he does, that won't be on purpose. (Must have been interesting, having him, Ben Affleck and Michael Clark Duncan together in Daredevil, what with all three being comic-book people.)

I just realised the "²" character isn't on qwerty keyboards. Damn... talk about pestering people without realizing.

Anyway, I wouldn't really to mix the two in any other way to tell the truth.

Generally, toying around with different type of waters can be pretty rewarding (very strong tar pit like robusta + Hepar via an espresso pot is an experience in itself, though I wouldn't necessarily recommand it)

Because the extract is so low in volatile acids, it'll keep up to two weeks in the fridge with no loss in flavor. It tastes better than automatic drip (IMO), and it's great for coffee-on-demand, a cup at a time. It's so low in acid, I notice I no longer get the sour stomach that lets me know when I've had too much coffee. Sure, it can't compare to, say, real espresso, but for the morning eye-opener I really like it.

The actual process is a bit more involved than brewing a pot in the Mr. Coffee, but you only have to do it once a week or so.

This reminded me of this BoingBoing post where posters were placed to remind people to contribute to the coffee fund. When the poster had eyes, contributions went up.

I get bulk Italian Roast coffee and use it in the expresso machine (the type Starbucks sells but not bought from them) for breakfast lattes. I tend to make them a bit strong (quantity of beans, *and* amount of coffee vs milk).

On the mocha front: nothing better for studying Latin than a large mocha made with Guittard chocolate and lots of whipped cream. Too bad the purveyor turned into a Diesel store some years back.

Rooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhh ! I need to get myself one of those. Just for the insterest of experimentation, of course.

Thanks a lot.

I haven't been on the Drag in too long--I don't remember what turned into Diesel. Then again, I've never forgiven Strfcks for destroying Les Amis.

I can't eat or drink anything that has even a hint of coffee/mocha flavoring in it ... and woe to the person who ever tries to serve me tea made in a receptacle that was ever used to make even half a cup of coffee.

(Yeah, kinda sensitive here. I wish I knew why.)

But tea ... ah, tea. Preferably Earl Grey. Hot. And don't try to put anything in it, either. Steep it until the spoon starts to dissolve.

*sips day's 5th cup of tea*

I was amused to learn that the Dutch term for cafe latte is koffie verkeerd, which literally means "wrong coffee". They like it darker. (Though, more and more, it's just "latte" now, apparently.)

If Latin studies are aided by mocha (and I agree with joann that they are - I made it through a BA in Latin on Sufficient Grounds mochas), then Greek is only possible with strong espresso. I tried both, and disliked both.

And this thread reminds me of the year that my mother gave up coffee for Lent. None of the rest of us in the house gave up anything - we were suffering enough.

Sock yarn pimpage!--Blue Moon gave their sock-club subscribers a free skein in the December shipment. One-offs, irreproducible accidents, small lots...I got cabin fever today and started Yet Another sock with mine. It's gorgeous. They couldn't have picked a better colorway for me if they'd known me personally. I'm doing a plain old round-and-round, no fancy patterning to take away from the beautiful colors. (Join ussss, Tereeeessssaaaaa...joiiiiin usssss....)

On the bright side, though, my parents now have sufficient custom-dark-roasted coffee beans stashed in their kitchen cabinets to see them through a year of two-pots-a-day drinking habits.

So when I read it it gives me visions of dangerous Rube Goldberg contraptions involving fleecelined ferret hammocks, creme brulee torches and explosion-proof refrigerators.

Funny how the Google sidebar comes up with amazing non sequiturs sometimes.
(Identification tags for fish)

Sigh.

Back when I was young and strong and found sleep to be a waste of time, I started the day with the entire contents of a seven-cup stovetop espresso maker. Drank office drip all day. Had another pot of espresso with brandy (or, in summer, mineral water, milk, and brandy) after work.

I'm told these habits are not unconnected with my current regime of anithypertensives, but it was fun while it lasted.

--Shel Silverstein

We part company on the tea, however. I can't stand tea, either. Makes it hard to be social sometimes.

Good heavens. Shouldn't there be some complementary church festival in which you assign yourself additional (non-papal) indulgences? I would have recommended double celebration that year for all concerned.

They held off closing Quack's until two months after I'd handed in my diss, so there's that in their favor.

If you were ever even able to get a cup of coffee at Les Amis, you're clearly luckier than I ever was. Stuff just did not appear for me, be it waitstaff, what I ordered, or anything else.

Aw, now I'm all homesick!

with little wind the thin trees do not lean
against each other in their little crowd
in the pale light no shadows can be seen

this weather is the kind that aches the spleen
we pass each other with our bodies bowed
only the music seems alert and keen

not noble but submissive is our mien
on this dull day a fool could not be proud
in the pale light no shadows can be seen

even the grass has turned a pallid green
this day we feel was made to wear a shroud
only the music seems alert and keen

the lethargy's not abolished by caffeine
constricted are the limits of the allowed
in the pale light no shadows can be seen
only the music seems alert and keen

Also Tania @ 46 brings up something juicy with the Star Trek update. Though glad to see a return of the franchise, I was hoping they'd bring back my buddy Picard and the Next Generation crew.

Last week, in a moment of weakness, I reinstalled Civilization III & various upgrades and patches on my PC. It hadn't been there for over a year.

Started and quit several games before getting a really good set-up. Worked things up to a really strong position over the course of several days, until last night, when the Indians invaded with overwhelming force. Spent an hour conducting the first turn of the war, which didn't go too badly, but after saving my position for the night realized I could do better. (Using my Knights to destroy his rail lines and roads to prevent reinforcements from coming over the border.) Of course I had saved at the beginning of the war, and could play it over again...

In a fit of resolve and self-disgust I un-installed the game, erased the directory it was in, and emptied the windows trash file. Went to bed feeling good.

Now I want to play again.

F**k.

There really needs to be a 12 Step meeting for these things:

"Hello, my name is Lyle G., and I'm a 4xAholic."

"Hello Lyle!"

"I once spent fifteen hours playing Masters of Orion II. I wore adult diapers and went through three two liter bottles of Diet Mountain Dew and a box of Little Debbie Chocolate Star cakes."

"I hear you man. We've all been there."

I'd be tempted to chug the extract, especially first thing in the morning.

Then I'd die horribly of the ensuing intestinal complications, since I love coffee but it does not love me back.

I switched back to Mt. Dew as soon as I got back, though.

Back on Open Thread 77, as 2006 was winding down,
Bruce Adelsohn at #294 introduced us to the terrors of the Planet Rock Album Quiz

A few of us here (I see Tim Walters, Rikibeth, abi, otherdeb, and myself) kicked it around a while, but then the thread moved on to other topics, and then it died out, as all threads must.

Well, I told my old college-radio buddies about the Planet Rock Album Quiz.

And one of my friends ran with the idea:

All the people I work with got hooked on the Planet Rock album quiz, but they all had the same reaction: too much Heavy Metal, and not enough ’80s bands. I took this as a challenge, and so here's the 1980s (give or take a few years) version of the quiz. See how you do:

Danny’s New! Improved! Version of the 'Album Quiz'.

I found it to be even more maddening than the original.

My fuel is coffee, made in Cuban style.
The Cubans start their coffee-training young,
With sugared milk (we're also sucro-philes)
And just a drop of kaff to train the tongue.
Then, as the years go by, the drink is changed.
The milk decreases, dwindles, and is gone.
But with the milk more coffee is exchanged,
Increasing in its darkness and its brawn;
So dense that even light cannot escape,
So rich that old King Solomon would blush,
As strong as Kal-El in his scarlet cape
And smooth and pure as is the driven slush.
The training ends. Thus are the Cubans made:
With azucar and cafe, weapons-grade.

There is.

Greg London (#87) Oh, and could someone explain what the "tragic" knowledge was and what the "farce" was?

From what my meager english could gather: Tragic = B. Senior's realisation, farcical = B. Junior's (non)-raction.

Hum.

Don't oil the escapements. The oil will surely get on to the matrices.

Don't put oil in the magazine. In other words, don't be foolish.

Don't attempt to remove a magazine without first inserting the locking bar. If you do, the matrices will spill on the floor.

Don't forget to close the cover on the lower magazine before starting to remove it. The matrices may run out.

Don't force the first elevator when a tight line prevents its dropping out enough to release the vice automatic. Ruined matrices will result, and a "squirt" is bound to follow if you do.

Don't abuse the machine when it balks or stops or fails to function properly. It is because you have neglected something, or something has broken. The machine is the most reasonable thing in the world, no matter how unreasonable it may seem.

Don't forget that the machine always does the best it can, in view of the treatment it receives.

Bach sang of coffee, for he music made
and that swift jangly rush hit a right note;
I write of tea, for my less urgent trade
allows me on the slow warm rise to dote.
Caffeine's in both, we know that to be true,
and in both gives us that aura of power,
but tea is better, that's the honest view,
although its making takes up half an hour.
Teas that are green, or black, or even white,
teas full of flavour, teas with tang and nerve,
teas with an attitude, teas with a real bite,
these from my regular course will make me swerve.
I hold that we can't judge a people free
unless over harsh coffee they praise tea.

:-D

Yup. I picked up a copy of the Linotype Instruction Book (1925, Mergenthaler Linotype Co.) at a used-book store a few days ago, and have been gleefully reading through it to see how all the various bits worked. It's simultaneously considerably more complicated and considerably less complicated than I had imagined.

And I keep tripping over bits of writing in it that I want to quote at people, too. For instance:

The mold is made of special steel, very carefully case-hardened and ground. It has to be made with very great accuracy in all its dimensions. Screwdrivers, or other instruments of the kind should never be used around the mold, except to tighten or loosen screws.

I like plant coffee. I used to travel to chemical plants for work, and there was always coffee available, even if it had been sitting on the warmer for hours.

And Community Coffee is awesome! We're coming to the end of the 3 lbs. from 1999....

There once was a cuban named Will,
Whose Spanish was virtually nil,
Though his verse was alright,
And with it he did fight
O'er his favorite caff'nated swill.

His opponent was worthy Fragano,
And their poems went mano a mano.
It was leaves vs. beans.
It remains to be seen
When the gorda will sing in soprano.

Because tea is a blessing, it's true.
It's contemplative. Raises IQ.
But when deadlines arise,
Then there's no compromise
And I needs me some stronger voodoo.

Your drink may have powerful chi
It is virtuous stuff, I agree.
But I will not be swayed.
Coffee must be obeyed,
And I'm just not as loyal to tea.

Bill, I hate to be a gadget evangelist, but the Toddy coffee extract has next to no oils or acids in it. That's the stuff that rots your gut. The first time I made the extract, I thought the coffee tasted so good, I had more. And more. And more! Finally it dawned on me that I was bouncing off the walls talking a mile a minute, and I realized it was because I usually stop drinking coffee when my stomach starts to turn.

The little booklet that came with it has a recipe for "Toddy espresso," which is basically the extract, heated, served in a demitasse. So it probably won't kill you. But I'd rather hold out for a real espresso with a nice crema.

I looking forward to summer, and pouring it over crushed ice with a bit of cane syrup -- and maybe some rum.

Caffeine habit's mighty bad
It's the worst old habit that I ever had
Hey, hey, come and take a sip on me.

I went to Mr. Kroger's on a spree
Saw a sign on the window says, "No more tea."
Hey, hey, come and take a sip on me.

If you don't believe caffeine is good,
Ask Alma Rose back in the woods.
Hey, hey, come and take a sip on me.

I love my whisky and I love my gin,
But the way I love my coffee is a doggone sin.
Hey, hey, come and take a sip on me.

Since caffeine went out of style
You can catch 'em drinking Red Bull all the while
Hey, hey, come and take a sip on me.

It takes a little coffee to give me ease,
Strut your stuff long as you please.
Hey, hey, come and take a sip on me.

Tea is the drink that more than merely cheers
but doesn't make you drunk or falsely proud,
it speaks in whispers but its voice is loud
yet unlike coffee does not end in tears.
To win approval of one's friends and peers
never requires the plaudits of the crowd
but a strong sense of what should be allowed,
and mugs of tea till it comes out your ears.
Coffee made strong will give men heart attacks,
its bitterness could rival that of gall
and heartburn is its truest consequence.
So give us tea, and be neither slow or lax,
for coffee's pleasures are so quick to pall;
tea is the drink for all folk of good sense.

Unfortunately, I can't find the exact story on the BBC website, but I'll summarize. Saddam is played as a folk-hero and martyr. Apparently the actor playing him has a remarkable resemblance. They did a bit of an interview with the actor. One line that jumped out at me:

"Saddam was ruthless. He killed and tortured. But he did it for the good of his country. Just like George Bush."

There are apparently three different theater companies touring with "Saddam" plays (that the BBC knew of), this one started the story way back when Saddam first took power.

#96: We were not in "professional photographer" mode when we took that photo. I have a variant made with the clown peering through pebbled glass that is even scarier, but the knife is hard to make out. And another, made without a flash, that shows the sillhouette of the clown behind the pebbled glass. What I linked to was best for my purposes.

I sing of drink that vim to vigor gives,
Its dark substance the stuff of arete
And drinks of lesser strength must now give way
For none can this oppose and after live.
I sing of coffee. It came first to earth
Rectangular, out of the frozen void,
Its influence among the apes deployed.
The caffeinated obelisk gave birth
To this world's howling band of sapiens
Who bonked the lesser apes upon the head
With reimagined bones as deadly tools.
Pay heed to this, dear citizens and friends.
Less caffeinated apes were left for dead
By those the coffee-obelisk did school.

(Wring out the jelly bag or cheesecloth with some water beforehand. Also, it can be a good idea to filter the initial supernatant anyway, before the entire mass of grounds dumps in.)

The concentrate is wonderful as a minor addition to a glass of cold milk. Or to a glass of ice water with some condensed milk stirred in. (Mix the condensed milk with a small amount of water first, before adding the ice and filling the glass.)

Strangely, it's made me think of coffee as a mainly summer beverage; in winter, masala chai concentrate is more the thing. Definitely time to make another batch of that.

Coffee is the Arab's pleasure,
That the Prophet has allowed,
Drunk with quite excessive leisure
While the talk gets wild and loud.
Coffee-house discourse is bitter,
Like the liquid, sharp and hot,
Acid, frothy, dark. Is it a
Happenstance? No, I think not.

Tea is like the East he grows in,
A great yellow Mandarin
With urbanity of manner
And unconsciousness of sin;
All the women, like a harem,
At his pig-tail troop along;
And, like all the East he grows in
He is Poison when he's strong.

Tea, although an Oriental
Is a gentleman at least,
Cocoa is a cad and coward
Cocoa is a vulgar beast,
Cocoa is a dull, disloyal,
Lying, crawling cad and clown,
And may very well be grateful
To the fool that takes him down.

As for all the windy waters,
They were rained like tempests down
When good drink had been dishonoured
By the tipplers of the town;
When red wine had brought red ruin
And the death-dance of oour times,
Heaven sent us soda-water
As a torment for our crimes.

- Chesterton, with additions.

I wonder if you couldn't put moistened coffee in the damp cheesecloth, tie it off, and immerse the whole thing? Then you could remove the mass of grounds in one go.

Also, I have learned a new word -- supernatant -- for which I thank you.

The proportions I'm using are 9 (8 oz) cups of water to 1 pound of coffee, although I find you have to adjust that for dark roasts, which weigh less per unit volume. I'm having tremendous fun with it right now, but I suspect that with time I'll go with different preparations for different purposes.

OTOH, my sister's Christmas present was one of those hideous coffee-pod one-cup brewers, which are an abomination, even worse than cartridge razors.

I think tying off the cheesecloth might compact the grounds enough to significantly reduce their combined surface area. Not that there's all that much convection going on overnight anyway, but it probably needs all the help it can get-- it's a deliberately inefficient extraction, after all.

A preliminary tie-off presents other problems as well-- you'll either have to scrape a nasty, gritty, messy pile of damp coffee grounds onto the also-damp cheesecloth to start with and then wrestle the entire mass into your container of choice, or neatly tie off the dry grounds inside dry cheesecloth and then hope the cheesecloth doesn't rupture as the grounds expand from liquid absorption.

I suppose the natural extension of this method would be to line the pitcher/bowl with cheesecloth before adding anything else, so the grounds are loose and swimmy overnight but in the morning, the cloth's sides can be gathered together to pull out the grounds in one go. (Potential drawbacks: capillary action wicking up liquid and dripping it out around the edges, or losing the edges down inside the container.)

However, you still end up with a final phase of waiting for the grounds to finish dripping out. It's jelly bags for me; they're fine-meshed, washable, and have cute little tripod stands. (Illustrative link mainly chosen on the basis of Google topness; I bought mine from Orchard Supply Hardware.)

The farce came when the audience started to applaud Bush's emotional outburst -- farce because he wasn't crying out of pride for Jeb, he was crying for himself out of self-pity. Jeb stepping onstage to say, "There, there, it's all right," took the whole thing right off into the realm of abject humiliation. I found it painful to watch, yet fascinating, like the fourth act of a classic tragedy. It's like something out of Aeschylus*.

But that's just my take on it, perhaps because I'm trying to fit it all into a dramatic narrative that ends with W. in a psych ward in chemical restraints.

* I know we're all SF fans here, but I googled "Atreides" to get the correct name and spelling of Aeschylus, and all I got were references to Dune. I find that disheartening. Also, everyone should read Aeschylus's House of Atreides trilogy. And then post about it, with lots of links.

I was actually contemplating experimentations with a French press to try out that process.

The two contenders joust with poetry:
A caffeine-fueled SF sonnet slam.
Fragano takes the part of honest tea
And Will is coffee's advocate. Hot damn!
The verses fly. Will has the grounds to show
His drink produces forceful, urgent verse.
Fragano's meditative sonnets go
To prove that tea makes poets none the worse.
Now me, I drink them both, but take up arms
Against the two as well, if they're not bought
From sources where the people on the farms
That grow them are rewarded as they ought.
So write your verse and drink your drinks, you two,
But just make sure it's Fairtrade when you brew.

- o0o -

You're talking of coffees and teas
And missing the wood for the trees.
Whichever you choose,
The growers still lose
So make it all Fairtrade, guys, please?

- o0o -

Both coffee and tea
Taste much better without the
Salt of tears added.

Howard Peirce@115: I read the Oresteia in translation some years ago, and I agree: wonderful stuff. I plan to read it in the original sometime moderately soon. (Not this year, though; this year is for the Odyssey.) Also excellent: Euripides' The Bacchae.

"To prove that tea leaves poets none the worse."

Time for more of one or t'other to get the brain going.

Sweet Black Coffee Blues

I can drink it in the morning
I can drink it late at night
Your sweet black coffee, baby
Sure does taste just right

I can drink it in the bathtub
I can drink it on the Stairs
Your sweet black coffee, baby
I can drink it anywhere

Sweet Black Coffee, Sweet Black Coffee
I got the Sweet Black Coffee Blues

Well, you can keep your herbal teas
Your milkshakes and colas, too
The only beverage that I'll drink
Is sweet black coffee made by you

Well I like to sip it real slow
And roll it round my tongue
And when I've finished drinking
I've got to get me another one

Sweet Black Coffee, Sweet Black Coffee
I got the Sweet Black Coffee Blues

Your sweet black coffee, baby
It don't taste like any other
Even though you know I know
You got that recipe from your mother

Well I can drink it from a mug
Well I can drink it from a cup
I'll drink it off your body, baby
That coffee really gets me up

Sweet Black Coffee, Sweet Black Coffee
I got the Sweet Black Coffee Blues

You can cover it in whipped cream, baby
You can sprinkle on Chocolate too
I'll just spoon them out the way
To get to the coffee made by you

I drink it all the time girl
I can drink it by the pot
But if you ever run out, baby
I'll find someone else who serves it hot

Sweet Black Coffee, Sweet Black Coffee
I got the Sweet Black Coffee Blues

I'll say, for me
I blame abi
For this converse
Only in verse

Your coffee can open your eyes.
The finest Arabica bean,
Is grown where the morning sun lies
On mountainsides covered in green.

The finest Arabica bean,
The delicate Indian leaf,
On mountainsides covered in green
Is grown amid hunger and grief.

The delicate Indian leaf
To go in your afternoon tea
Is grown among hunger and grief
Of people whom you never see.

To go in your afternoon tea:
That dollop of pain in your drink
Of people whom you never see.
Before you enjoy, stop to think.

That dollop of pain in your drink
Is grown where the morning sun lies.
Before you enjoy, stop to think.
Your coffee can open your eyes.

I confess - I have actually sent three SF sonnets to Asimov's. I blame Serge and Fragano.

Your Muse shall now pretend
You didn't bite its hand.

(Just keepin' the theme)

Maybe a switch to decaf tea would help. Till then, I'm cutting down on the stuff.

Even with so few comments, a spot-the-cliche drinking game would still be very, very dangerous. Put down the wine bottle before reading, lest ye be tempted.

(No, it's not addictive. I just like the taste.)

I suspect Margaret Carter didn't really need grease in her frying pan, either.

Sorry. Carry on with the substantive commenting.

In a game, y'see, the players often prefer to believe that their actions have some influence on the outcome of said game.

It may very well be that in actual history, the Europeans were doomed to succeed no matter how they tried, and people who lived on other continents were doomed to fail for pretty much the reasons Diamond sets out (or, then again, it may not); but that doesn't make for a very interesting game.

All of which is just to say that if you're in the Iron Age with no iron, and no horses either, you are unlikely to survive long enough to discover that you also haven't got any saltpeter. (The idea of needing a particular technology in order to know what a horse is is quite ridiculous in its own right, of course.) On the other hand if you have those resources and your opponent has not, winning provides all the enjoyment and feeling of accomplishment that comes from beating up a 3-year-old. Overall this is a large step backwards in gameplay and enjoyability from Civ 2, where the influence of geography was much more moderate compared to the importance of players' actions.

In order to avoid worsening your addiction, I shall not mention Dominions 3: The Awakening, a game far more addictive than any version of Civ could ever be.

Oops.

-- with apologies to e. e. cummings

Also, I'd heard the eggshell trick for disembittering* coffee elsewhere. Does anyone here know if and how it works?

* It's a perfectly cromulent word.

Foolish, I know. But the last poetic attempt I made was an innocent little couplet, which touched off a veritable firestorm of couplet-capping; I may have brought the kindling, but you lit the flame, and whole threads were consumed.

Should we ever meet, I have no doubt I should feel moved to follow R. A. MacAvoy's instructions for a full prostration at your feet.

Unless we're, like, in a parking lot or something. Then I'll wait until we're inside.

All hail abi!!!

So say we all!

I plan my next class on good Master Kong
with the fine aid of a large mug of tea,
my thought and planning had been all at sea
but with the warming cup I find my song.
Had it been coffee, all would have gone wrong
my mind would have been hasty and not free,
out of my thinking would have come no tree
of knowledge, shaped perfect and strong.
The warming spirit that the soul revives,
that comes to us from out the mystic East,
gives us assurance to both think and act;
from its kind impulse all that's good derives,
it is the guardian sprite at every feast
and leads us always towards truth and fact.

Abi, when it is time for you to bake
a little something for some celebration
remember, if you will, the situation
of those who grew the spices that you take.
Those who love fair trade often only make
their choices about drinks, no cerebration
is needed, yet I have the strange sensation
they don't think of what goes in the cake.
The hard, dull work of reaping all that spice
done for low wages (or, in my case, none)
gets no attention from the cognoscenti;
they don't think of the effort or the price
of all that sweating under tropic sun;
those who earn so little should get plenty.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117957532.html?categoryid=14&cs=1

If it ain't good enough to drink black, it ain't good enough to drink!

Me

we travel in our minds beyond the stars
the planets circle fast in the mind's eye
in our imaginations we see the scars
of damage made by beings above the sky
of this we're certain for we cannot try
with our bare hands to keep our planet free
we sip from our small cup we wail and cry
and then we get our strength from honest tea

we've sailed a distance seen the ghostly spars
of flying dutchman that is sure no lie
we've watched the light of that red planet mars
and wondered if we could in its air fly
the dreams of burroughs those we cannot buy
with barnes or robinson we might just agree
someone will get there we're certain by and by
and then we get our strength from honest tea

each day the lone commuters in their cars
think as they watch the same old roads go by
of those who're telling stories in the bars
and trying to see through ray bradbury's eye
the martian stories as if from on high
from cluttered minds they now clear the debris
to mars they'll go they know the reason why
and then we get our strength from honest tea

prince or princess when you the future spy
from your high place in the great tall world-tree
with our aspirations you will soon ally
and then we get our strength from honest tea

Hail, fellow spirit!

... I find that I run into attention span deficit when the midgame comes around.

I have to say that a game where the spider-riding prophet of Me dies of a disease, AND THE SPIDER KEEPS ON PREACHING, is absolutely endearing.

That game, I got into a senseless war with Jotunheim while our neighbors grew large and crushed us... alas.

I am doing much better with my technologically clever Dryads and Minotaurs.

According to the report in The Register, he is now suing the University, the Campus Police, and the two Police Officers involved.

But get this:

UCLA's acting chancellor Norm Abrams said the university was "pursuing an independent investigation along with an internal campus police department probe". He said in a statement: "Shortly after the incident, I urged everyone not to rush to judgment and to let the investigations take their course. We regret that Mostafa Tabatabainejad has filed a lawsuit at this time."

It's been two months. I bet you really do regret this is going to be settled in court.

Does this sound familiar? Have you ever seen anything like that? Or did I imagine this in a dream?

1. quite intimidated and impressed
Now you know how I feel about your puns.

2. I don't dare contribute my humble efforts lest comparison be invited.
I just wrote a whole screed on being intimidated by the phantoms of other people. Short version: dare.

3. the last poetic attempt I made was an innocent little couplet, which touched off a veritable firestorm of couplet-capping; I may have brought the kindling, but you lit the flame, and whole threads were consumed.
That's either both your doing and mine, or neither. I can't see any construction that leaves you in the clear and me somehow taking credit.

I rarely cook with spices - I'm more of a chocolate baker. (Yes, fairtrade). It's hard to obtain fairtrade sugar, which I would like to.

Overall, I reckon that every pound I spend on ethical products is better than spending it on unethical. I can't get all good stuff, but all the goods stuff I get helps. And the drinks are where I can easily source them (all the major supermarkets carry them).

And that is a very good ballad you've got there, after a sequence of very entertaining sonnets. You guys set the bar high for late entrants!

The only person I know that says "expresso," besides the ENTIRE FREAKING STATE OF OHIO, is Sandra Lee of the dreadful "Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee," aka TheCrazyDrunkLady.

Like nails on a chalkboard every. Single. Time. Yet, I cannot look away...

It makes a very nice sun tea - less smoky, just enough to be interesting.

Thanks for the compliments. I am always in awe of your work (I haven't yet dared a pantoum, and am not sure I could carry one off).

I've tried a couple of different things lately, like this.

Stanzaic Standoff
Doggerel Dare
Prose Provocation
Rhyme Trials

I'll quit now.

* Strictly speaking, one friend and one acquaintance.

** John Morris (John Hearne & Morris Cargill), Fever Grass.

I get it from teavana (www.teavana.com, if you don't have a store nearby), which is where I get loose rooibos tea (and many other teas, I hasten to add).

will a's convinced that coffee is the best
and i'm an advocate of finest tea
abi for fair trade has made good protest
yet from the word-fight she will hardly flee
we enter into combat with great zest
for in this place such things can come to be
it's been a pleasant way to spend some time
engaged in a fun contest all in rhyme

Well, Mark Knopfler used "expresso" back in 1980 (viz., the song "Expresso Love" from the Dire Straits album "Making Movies").

I love the smell of coffee, but it doesn't like me. About the only coffe-like thing I can drink is by a mob called Jarrah - they do a sort of instant coffee mix thing where they take the sweepings which escaped the notice of International Roast, and mix them with flavour extract, powdered milk and powdered sugar, so that you have a "just add hot water" version of bad coffee. There are two flavours I like - the Vienna (coffee and cinnamon) and the Barvarian (coffee and hazelnut), and in both cases they're only palatable if I add another 2 teaspoons of sugar to the mug. These aren't Fairtrade (but then again, they're hardly coffee either, and I don't plan on buying any more after I've used up the current lot) which is a pity.

If I go into somewhere like Starbucks or Gloria Jean's, I'm more likely to order a hot chocolate (in winter) or a chocolate slushywhatsit (in summer). At least those they can't stuff up too much. I've never yet figured out how they managed to ruin a perfectly simple cup of black tea, but somehow, they do it. Possibly because they wait for the teabag to leap out, rather than removing it prior to the tannin levels reaching leather preservation point. However, at home I have fairtrade Hot Chocolate mix (Green and Black's brand - keep an eye out for it) and I've also purchased some Fairtrade cocoa.

For Fairtrade tea, coffee and cocoa, if you're Australian, look either in an IGA supermarket (they tend to have a wider range than the two big chains - even in the ones which used to be Mum and Dad corner shops) or in the Oxfam shop(s) in your city. Failing that, there's a number of the Fairtrade suppliers which have internet sites, which means you've a chance of ordering it direct from the suppliers, and avoiding another link in the pricing chain.

[1] True Marxists use teabags, because all proper tea is theft.

- The water isn't boiling
- The water is boiling, but it has been so since the machine was switched on at 5am this morning.

Neither of which make for a good cuppa. Which reminds me - must go and put the kettle on...

Thinking that proper tea is vol-au-vent may be part of the problem.

Are you thinking of the abomination of the little metallic pot? The one that can't keep water hot? The one that is deliberately designed to spill as much water as possible?

Five years ago the California Dried Plum Board (formerly known as the California Prune Board) won a years-long struggle with the FDA to be allowed to label dried plums as dried plums instead of (or in addition to) prunes, although dried plum juice must still be labeled prune juice.

And in related news, California Governor Schwarzenegger has proclaimed January 2007 as California Dried Plum Digestive Health Month. Really.

I must respectfully disagree. After all, the American Revolution began, more or less, with a demonstration of Proudhon's third assertion: Proper tea is liberty. (In this case, the tea was most properly resting on the bottom of Boston Harbor).

But I'd buy a spider boat. The 21st century flexes onward.

I think they could do a good job of it.

In other TV news, anyone else planning to watch The Dresden Files Sunday? There's potential there...potential for greatness and potential for travesty.

I'm looking forward to Dresden's premiere
(I've started a good friend on the real books)
One part anxiety, one part suspire
They've got a light, fun source to mine for hooks.
Though Bob the skull they gave a human face...
the concepts and the lightness could survive.
But when they freehand draw, instead of trace
The qualities that worked? They may not thrive.
I'm barely fit to judge- I watch TV
For less than fourteen hours in a season
So if even if they get applause from me
It hardly indicates that watchers are a-cleavin'.
So free of guilt, I'll sit and watch and snark
The worst case is, the screen goes quiet and dark.

David @ 179 this is most likely a mistake by the Variety article, rather than by HBO: Scifi.com seem to have the correct title (it reads like it's written from the same press release).

People all over GRRM fan boards are shouting all kinds of ill-informed things about this, and since I'm as ill-informed as the next fan, I think I'll go over and do some shouting myself.

*Fluorospherites? Fluorospheridians?

I'm spoiled. I bought a Russell Hobbs electric kettle several years ago. It doesn't whistle, but the switch pops up audibly when it shuts off. (All it does is boil water. Fill kettle. Put lid back on. Push switch down, wait till it goes 'snick'.)

[*: any element that isn't carbon or hydrogen in an organic (i.e. carbon-based) molecule; afaik there are no bicuriousatoms, alas. Longer technobabble/punditry firmly quashed about trans-atoms in double bonds etc.]

I am cautiously optimistic about the Dresden Files. On the one hand, it is the SciFi Channel, purveyor of schlocky horror movies, but on the other hand, they did a decent job with Eureka (which comes back this summer for a second series), so, yeah, cautiously optimistic.

Anybody going to ConDFW this year? Emma Bull & Will Shetterly are GOH, and Steven Brust is coming back (as are many other most excellent authors, artists and others).

It's an interesting show. I hope the second season is as good as the first: it was so much fun watching the plots take a sharp turn somewhere in the middle, so the beginning of the episode was seen from the other side, so to speak. (I wonder what's going to happen to Stark?)

http://www.cafepress.com/nielsenhayden.11002814

Also, I know that several of us are fairly spheroid, though the Fluorosphere contains all shapes and conditions of, er, Humanoids.

"I'm a liberal."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOpTAL50bl8

As for how science and its practicioners are depicted in the show... Not being a scientist, I don't feel the urge to throw things at my TV set. Besides, hey, this is TV. One thing I do wish they'd get rid of is Matt Frewer's atricious Aussie accent.

Speaking of how scientists are portrayed in movies and TV... I've always liked the way Gene Barry did it in War of the Worlds. Anybody else has an opinion on that subject?

The implosion itself seemed well-done, not that I know anything about implosions. There was a series of flashes, then some impressive booms, then all the layers collapsed more-or-less whole to the ground. I had a moment of associative horror then, and as a huge cloud of dust boiled up and rolled toward us. But the cloud dissipated quickly, and the sun was shining over the layer-cake pile of parking garage with one crazily angled light pole sticking up from the top like a raddled daisy.

It's going to be strange coming into my city by highway now, without the big landmark that's always been the "five more minutes to home" symbol.

If it reaches Prescott at all, that may be months away. ("The Last King of Scotland" only now reached town.) But I'm dying to see it! There's a review in Locus Online.

Sestina: Drink

And who would write, to praise her favored drink
Whether cocoa, tea, or coffee, brown or green or black
A soporific toddy, or a waking brew
Given as a gift, or purchased, or in trade
Obtained, from old and well-loved friend
Sings from her heart, of what does cheer her day.

A ritual it is, a rite to start each day
With making, pouring, quaffing of a drink
Or in a cafe, speaking with a friend
Cool and collected, dressed in black
Discoursing now of politics, now trade
Now art, while sipping steaming brew.

Yet other times demand another brew
An alcoholic one, best supped at end of day
When beans and leaves for grapes and malt we trade
And Milton bid adieu as we do drink
Together, quick or lazy, white or black.
All beverages can help to make a friend.

But some are made by those who are no friend
To those who grow the plants for them to brew.
Their wallets full, their hearts yet glower black
And misery attends their farmers through the day.
Therefore, when picking out one's drink
'Tis Justice sends the word to buy fair trade.

Now some will claim, our souls we trade
When first we make caffeine our friend.
They say we will do anything to get our drink
And of addictivenesss accuse the brew.
That is true, but still to us a day
without caffeine is very, very black.

When waking brings a night still black
And people rise, to work their living trade
And dress themselves, and contemplate the day
With grumpy minds, that call none yet a friend
Heat up the water, make the boiling brew
Put all disputes aside, and sip your favored drink.

ENVOI

For that same drink, howe'er the sky is black
Will good thoughts brew, as you take up your trade
And be a friend, throughout the weary day.

That's wonderful.

("Letters" was well produced and well acted and moderately gripping, but definitely a bummer. Eastwood is making WWII movies shorn of all comfortable BS. Having seen "Flags of our Fathers" first was a plus; it is neat seeing how the stories interact.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070120/ap_on_re_us/katrina_brown

Says it was all politics.

Someone, I think it was Jon Stewart (but maybe not), had a great shpiel during Katrina showing all these republicans saying crap like "now is not the time to be playing the blame game", like half a dozen clips, followed by most of those same knuckleheads blaming the mayor, the residents, the state, and anyoen else they could think of. Complete hypocrites.

I tried googling for it, but haven't been able to find it. If this rings a bell with anyone and they know what show this was on or anything that would help a google search, I'd appreciate it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070120/ap_on_re_us/katrina_brown

"Pan" opened up in Portland yesterday, in the large prestiege indie theater on the edge of downtown . . . and in at least one very ordinary suburban multiplex theater, which happens to be the one closest to me.

It has a nice ensemble cast, with several more-than-2-dimensional characters. The episodes stand alone nicely, but watching all of them in order gets you a nice season-long arc.

And the science is most fictional, in the fun way - death rays! giant bio-engineered plants! time travel! home of the future! It's a fun show, and Sharon-Bob says check it out.

We saw it Wednesday night at a promotional preview, and it is so good. Probably the best fairy-tale film since Cocteau. Brutal at times; Ann closed her eyes during some of the violence but then had to open them again to read the subtitles. (We saw it at a multiplex, not the art theatre, and some in the crowd were very unhappy at being suckered into a film with subtitles.)

There are two parallel stories, a war story (1944, post Spanish Civil War) and a fantasy story, and they intertwine in fascinating and disturbing ways. It's a dark film, both physically (it almost all happens at night or underground) and psychically.

I loved it. I don't want to say much about it -- not even the debate that Ann and I are still carrying on about one of its major aspects -- but, my god, it is certainly one of the very best fantasy films ever made.

I have seen people online bickering about how literal some of the scenes can be read, but its ambiguities are some of its best aspects. Some things only work if you see it as a traditional fairy tale, and other things only work if you look at it from a realistic point of view. Lots of things work both ways.

I enjoyed watching it, and I have loved thinking and talking about it.

I've had very long, boring periods at work lately interspersed with high levels of being busy.

We're allowed Internet access as long as we don't stream video or radio and things like that that use huge amounts of bandwidth.

Somewhere in one of the (I think) author links I saw a reference for a word processor that basically is just a text typer/editor (as opposed to Word), it turns the viewscreen into a green or orange text/black background text editor for writing.

Because I was at work and one of the total Shall Nots is downloading anything, i just went to myself, that's cool and I'll catch it later at home.

Now I can't remember where I saw it.

Can anyone help? Thanks!

Is this it?

I had seen something like that too, and was able to find it again on MetaFilter (fortunately, it was where I thought I had seen it). DarkRoom (for Windows) is shown as a black screen with green type. The MetaFilter thread (Write without distraction) mentions other editors, too.

This BBC News article (see also this Washington Post article) mentions a report done by a Russian academic which estimates that somewhere between one-quarter and three-quarters of top Russian government officials are former KGB/FSB members.

Which is certainly disturbing, and not a good thing for Russia (and a dramatic contrast with most Eastern European countries, where the general idea has been to prevent former spies from holding high positions)... but I can't help wondering: what do you call a government run by spies?

All I can come up with is "espionocracy," which kind of rolls of the tongue nicely, but is really an improper French-Greek hybrid. Is there an appropriate ancient Greek word for spy?

And since this is an open thread, does anyone here know anything about basic plumbing? I live in an apartment and on thursday my tub started draining incredibly slow. Then on Friday the toilet started acting up; more slow draining after the flush. I tried drano-ing the tub and plunge-ing the toilet, but to no avail. I'm wondering if a $30 investment into a snake/plunger do-hickey will keep strangers from having to get intimate with my bathroom (and me from having to take another unpaid half day off work.)

As to the toilet, I'd check the float valve inside its tank. Those are easily and relatively cheaply replaced; just ensure that you've got the water valve below the tank (the one that has a flexible pipe going into the wall) turned completely off. The way to test is to turn it off and flush; if no water runs into the tank, you're fine. There's a gasket inside that valve which may not be working properly, in which case you might have a disaster (see here for my experience).

If it does continue to pump water through, turn the water off at the street side (for multiple apartment building uses, see the building supe if there is one).

I get cranky that anything popcorn-worthy is crammed into the summer, and anything "serious" is released at the very end of the year. Even in LA the release may only be one theatre and we have to wait a few weeks to see the Arty stuff. It's why even though I'm not the world's biggest Harry Potter buff, I enjoy the years the movies come out: it means I can spend a christmas in a theatre watching magic, pretty british scenery and Alan Rickman.

The toilet thing is not a flap-seal issue (have had that before) and I can't figure out how to get the drain stopper out of the bathtub drain to snake, so I guess I'm going to have to call the LL, take time off work, and possible prepare myself for lectures from strangers about toilet paper usage. Ugh.

You mentioned that you live in an apartment - I'm presuming that none of your neighbours have mentioned having issues as well? I'd be somewhat surprised if the plumbing wasn't combined at some point, and that'd certainly help figure out where to target...

Beyond that, it's probably worth trying one of the enzymatic drain cleaners - usually overnight works best - I've had them work when draino didn't.

Ever seen Rickman in 1991's truly madly deeply? Highly recommended, and you get to see him play the romantic lead, for once.

However, my favorite character is Fargo, and his Buffygeek-ism.

Did they ever tell what the dog's name is? Sirius, maybe?

I'm looking for a keyword-searchable collection of e-Kipling. Project G. doesn't seem to be it, unless there's a search-the-texts function I am missing. Any ideas?

(I'm working on planning for a ball celebrating the centennial of Kipling's Nobel.)

In the same vein, on Friday night, Turner Classic Movies is having two premieres. One is Billy the Kid vs Dracula, the other is Jesse James vs Frankenstein's Daughter.

Your theory is fine, except that Jeb Bush didn't lose the 2006 election, he just wasn't allowed to run. Florida has a two-terms-and-you're-out rule for the governor, one of the few smart political things the state has done recently.

Definitely a dark film, but appropriately dark. Very southern european. I was maybe 1/3rd of the way to misting up as the credit rolled.

Only disappointment: I wish there was perhaps one more fantasy / quest sequence, because they were so well done.

Not that the rest of the film wasn't. The Captain was one nasty piece of work, and Mercedes was a true hero.

After watching "Children of Men," "Letters of Iwo Jima" and "Pan" on three of the last four weekend-days, I'm really in the mood for something fun and silly.

http://www.starz.com/features/bunnyclub/borat/index.html

Speaking of references... I'll probably try the new season of Heroes tomorrow. I never could get into the original episodes, for some reason. This time, they have a new character played by Christopher Eccleston, as an invisible man named... what else?... Claude Rains.

Also, now that I think of it, the hero of Shockwave Rider could have easily grown up to be Henry.

Was worth the try, it's nice.

But not as much as I hoped from description. I think I'll stay with espresso pot in the morning, vacuum for day, and french press for evening/night.

Haven't dared "boiled trail coffee" yet. But I have to.

I likes it. It's not the book(s), not that it could be, but it has a nice inspired by vibe. There's a little backstory, with lots left unsaid, but I have a preference for stories that just drop you into a world.

(And TexAnne - it's playing again at 10 central.)

And speaking of committment . . . THANK YOU Sharon M. You mention that "Dresden Files" was playing made me go set my MythTV to record it for sampling sake, and I saw that "Battlestar Galactica" was playing tonight. That is the one show I'm devoting brainshare to.

I can accept the idea that good people might not fall for Buffy; I'm married to one. And commitment to complex continuing storylines is not the only matter which might discourage people; I didn't watch it until the last season, (and then spent hours every day catching up with the story) just because of the whole "teenager" aspect.

"What have I wrought?"

You're welcome! I've had variable access to cable and/or network tv over the years, I have no tivo (or equivalent), and regular schedules != me. And this is why I love Netflix.

There are series I'd never even *heard* of that I'm really enjoying. And the beauty of the commercial free multiple episodes on a disk concept needs no elaboration.

I saw some episodes of Buffy, and it's in my queue for further viewing. My veeery long queue, which I wish Netflix would let me categorize by format (move, series) and within format by genre. Also I'd like a pony.

As for myself, I'd like the complete DVD collection of 1983's TV series Wizards and Warriors. On the other hand, if I were granted that wish, my wife would divorce me rather than have it on while she's around.

Re: _Shockwave Rider_, it's Brunner, sure, but far far lighter than _The Sheep Look Up_ or _Stand On Zanzibar_. More like _Polymath_, I'd say, but with less Competent-Male-Hero-Saves-The-Day in.

with faux Klingon's in the White House

I don't think they even qualify as faux Klingons. Can you imagine any of them saying, "It is a good day to die," and, y'know, meaning themselves?

PS. I adore my electric kettle. And I just recently figured out that I can put my teamug in the microwave for 10-15 seconds, instead of trying to pre-warm it with hot water.

Like Serge and Paula, I've never been a fan of the Buffy show (loved the movie, though...), but I enjoyed The Dresden Files very much last night. Not perfect (I very much miss the basement apartment and WhereTF is Mister, anyway?), but most of the changes I can happily accept as necessary or advantageous for the medium translation.

And BSG was thought-provoking, as usual. I was stunned when Baltar turned out not to be Gur Pubfra Bar. I really thought that was a gimme.

Heroes tonight! I think I would watch this show even more devotedly if they focused exclusively on Hiro's plotline, but I think the vast majority of its viewers would disagree with that preference entirely.

Uh, doesn't that mean Laura Bush doesn't wear clothes?

(shudders)

"Join me, or... die..."

Well, we'll see how that goes. I'm glad that the Galactica finally started looking for Earth. Now, if they could stop having Six stop wearing those sexy outfits that just make her look even more freaky...

It did not surprise me that Q'Naan'f jubyr zbqry jnf obkrq, however. They've been leading up to that for a long time.

Can't agree more with your second point, Xopher. Long time coming.

Okay, y'all: Firefly or Battlestar Galactica? Me: BSG, hands down.

Not Ferengi. Pakleds. But they think they're Ferengi.

And I'm pretty sure that gur Svany Svir Plyba gung Q'Naan fnj jnf fbzrbar fur zrg ba Arj Pncevpn, aren't you? Because she said "I'm sorry."

Also, while Jewel Staithe entrances me and Christina Hendricks could probably have my soul just by asking nicely (Baccarin and Glau do little for me), BSG's Lucy Lawless, Grace Park, Katee Sackhoff, Tricia Helfer, and Kandyse McClure (my favorite) make for an ensemble of hawtness that would be difficult to beat.

Also, "Q'Naan" sounds like an Indian Flatbread dish especially made for semi-omnipotent non-corporeal entities.

Greg, don't just start watching it now. It will spoil some early surprises for you. Get the miniseries on DVD; if you like that, you'll like the series too.

Wait, so, if I want to catch up with the BSG series, I need to start by watching a mini series first? Not year 1 of the series playing now? Is the miniseries like a prequel to the regular series?

Yes, I live under a rock.

My husband is a big fan of Mary McConnell's character, for the record.

Me, I'm sort of disappointed that D'Anna seems to have been the Cylon version of the Edsel.

We rent or borrow each season as they become available, and enjoy them. And I'm with Serge, I don't get the appeal of Baltar. Then again, I found Ted Raimi as O'Neill on SeaQuest to be attractive, but couldn't stand him as Joxer in Xena.

If I want to watch a story arc crash into despair, I'll do it with Blakes Seven. Then at least I get Avon's wit and unintentionally funny special effects. (Explosions in space where the smoke rises and the debris falls. You can't beat that.)

Read Orwell's essay on making the proper pot of tea if you don't believe me. But that might be more British than purely anarchist. I have no idea how they treat it elsewhere.

He's a good listener?

Crazy is always hot.

For a little while, anyway.

Or, even better, Munch, in any of his incarnations (what's another crossover to that character?). Or Lindsey from Arrested Development as a Cylon. But I never underestimate the power of authorial intent to beat the inherent comedic power from an actor (Lucy Loveless in BSG proves that already).

I am, at the moment, convinced that there are no live good guys left on BSG, minus poor tortured Helo himself. So I'm very glad for Heroes starting over tonight, for Eureka having a second season pick-up, and even for the pale brew that is Bones.

Sorry about that, but when one packs links all over the internet all day, like an ant with sugar thses things happen.

Or, to President Roslyn, "As far as I am concerned you can destroy whatever you like. You can stir up a thousand revolutions, you can wade in blood up to your armpits. Oh, and you can lead the rabble to victory, whatever that might mean."

(Both actual Blakes Seven quotes, of course.)

Heheheheh...

Although I appreciate what he does for a small wet towel.

I don't feel the show is oppressively dark, although some particular episodes certainly are. The show as a whole has uplifiting themes of hope, faith, familial love, honor, and convictions in the face of moral ambiguity (both questioning unjust convictions and holding just ones in the face of adversity). These are positive strengths which are very difficult to portray in the medium, and they are played so well that they far outweigh any episodic angst one must endure, IMNSHO.

OTOH, my opinion of Farscape (to bring in yet another oft lauded show) was, in a nutshell: "Soooooaps iiiiin Spaaaaaace - Now with muppets!"

TTDV.

Doug Jones, the actor underneath the faun and the pale man makeup, also played the tallest Gentleman in Buffy's Hush. He introduced Pan's Labyrinth on opening night hereabouts. A fine mime, that fellow.

And if Helo's a good guy, so is Athena, yes?

BSG is more of a soap opera than Grey's Anatomy, even, and I say that as a person who skipped about half of high school to catch critical episodes of "Another World."

Please advise...

*it always kills me when Daffy Duck uses 'canard'

Serge, #278, he's the only human who will have sex with them.

Laurence, #291, Firefly

BSG v2 has always seemed to me over-produced and under-scripted; I can only tolerate it in small doses.

So anyway, Firefly and Farscape yes! I do enjoy the silly, so long as females get to behave as humans (or whatever their alien race is). I did catch the first Dresden Files and liked it well enough that I will probably continue to watch it. No one pissed me off, one of the Canadian actors playing a cop used a reasonable Chicago accent, and I really do enjoy Terrance Mann. Probably not like Titus Pullo or Baltar, but you never know.

Firefly hits that same spot that Star Wars did, back when I was a kid. It's a universe that I want to play in. Farscape was good, and visually very nice - it did spend a lot of time on how these people dealt with each other, but I wouldn't call it a soap opera.

On HEROES, I think I've figured out who Claire-the-indestructible-cheerleader's biological father is:

It's Jack Bauer. No matter how often or how badly that guy gets shot, stabbed, beaten, tortured, etc., he's going full tilt again one or two commercial breaks later.

And I can't remember the last time I've had a more extreme "Holy crap, you're incredibly right" moment than Skwid's Ferengi comment at #285. Wow.

Not to defend Baltar, who is a squid of a man, but he didn't know what he was doing. He thought he was committing a minor peccadillo to get into the pants of a hot blonde; he had no idea about the whole end of humanity thing.

He has since done other things which make him morally bankrupt, but letting Caprica!Six into the defense computers would have been a very minor sin indeed if she'd been what he thought she was.

Am I the only one who found the actor decorative but the character so annoying that it was an active turnoff?

Give me Wash any time.

Or maybe as Press Secretary.

Aw, c'mon, Mal meant well. And he was seriously dreamy.

Give me Wash any time.

Well, heck, give me Wash any time, too! Or Simon. I'd take Jayne in a pinch. Hell, give me Zoe, River, Inara, or Kaylee. What a bunch of pretty people.

Nothing against Cap'n Tightpants, but I think I do love Wash just a tiny bit more.

I should probably watch the miniseries soon, just to see it before I read it. That said, I'd say I have a very different view on revealing state secrets. I love my wife and all, but I wouldn't be giving her the launch codes for the nuclear missiles or the deactivation codes for the space shields.

Even if she had good intentions, it could endanger her.

Am I the only one who found the actor decorative but the character so annoying that it was an active turnoff?

My wife seemed to appreciate the scene where he was left in the desert, naked.

What annoyed you about the character?

Personally, I liked him. My favorite character was probably Jayne, though.

Hm, actually, if I bin the characters, they end up in three categories, like, neutral, dislike. Most of the characters were "like". The shepard and River, I was neutral about. And Simon was probably the only one in the "dislike" category.

On another topic, I checked out the Amazon page for the book discussed in the "Rave Reviews for Sale" article on the left sidebar, and the parts written by the author himself (as opposed to the "New York Times reviewer") are barely coherent. And yet the book was ranked #5556 in sales, which means that someone is buying it. I was mystified until I realized that these sales must be due to the article itself, from people who either wanted to view a train wreck or actually thought that the book sounded good.

Oh my, appreciate, yes.

The following is in the first roughly half hour of the miniseries: Baltar was having an affair with a woman who was, unknown to him, a Cylon agent. She told him that she was working for a defense contractor or somesuch and wanted to get into the defense computers to steal a march on her competitors. He arranged for this to happen (I misremember whether he gave her the codes or just logged her in himself). Since she was a Cylon, what she actually used the access for was to allow the Cylon fleet to bombard the various planets of the Colonies without warning.

Even if she had good intentions, it could endanger her.

Since the woman was asking for the access, one must assume that she, a reasonable adult, was willing to accept the risk. Baltar is not the kind of guy who would worry his head over whether he should expose someone else to that sort of risk even if they asked for it, an attitude he would no doubt justify by prating about "Who am I to tell a person what risks she can handle?" and whatnot--callousness dressed up as dislike for condescension.

There are a lot of directions in which Baltar's act can be bad; all I'm saying is that "knowingly facilitating the destruction of the human race" isn't one of them. If Six had wanted the access for the reason she claimed she did (and that Baltar believed she did), there would have been very little badness caused by Baltar's actions.

We can but hope that Baltar has learned that they're called "state secrets" for a reason, but his subsequent behavior makes this unlikely. He's a slime.

But mostly it's the very callipygian Ben Browder himself. Especially after he starts wearing black leather all the time (which he did because he discovered that he didn't get hurt as often or as badly doing the action scenes when he was wearing it).

I have been known to declare that the unit of masculine callipygy is "the browder." Ben, of course, has 1 browder; no one else has more than 750 millibrowders.

Leaving aside attachments, though, John Crichton has an incredibly sexy personality. Masculine yet warm, brash yet humble, confident yet...well, confident. Makes me go all tingly inside.

Also, there aren't a lot of butt shots on BSG. Not enough, anyway.

I think there's a joke somewhere in there.

Since she was asking for access, one then must assume the potential that she has other motives.

If she was dangling herself like a piece of bait before him, all the more reason to doubt her intentions.

I can't sympathize with his situation at all.

I've never seen, and kind of only vaguely even heard of, Farscape, but a quick perusal of the Superhighway reveals a certain swooniness to this Browder fellow, in photographs at least. Man oh man does the punctuation in that sentence seem off to me.

"Cu'atyhv ztyj'ansu Pguhyuh E'ylru jtnu'anty sugnta!"

Xopher, the thing I most hold against SG-1 is that they've made Ben Browder boring.

(Deletes two hundred word rant on the standard SG-1 plot,four acts of pointless exposition and technobabble then WHAM! God jumps out of the box, etcetera and so on.)

Watergate II, with more scum, slime, and lies, and cockroaches...

Don't forget the entertainment of watching them blaming each other for their problems. Or, as someone at Firedoglake put it, someone being thrown under the bus just when it loses its wheels.

I like that bit they did when she was taking a psych evaluation:

[ Reading question ]

"You are walking in the desert, and you see a tortise on its back. You do not help it. Why?"

[ Chews pencil. Writes ]

"Because... I.. am.. also.. a tortise."

I want the lot of them excised from the US Government and any position except inmate in federal prison, serving hard time and with enormous fines... let their families enjoy the lifestyles of the subminimum wage healthcare-bereft residents in lousy neighborhoods with inadequate insulation and dubious plumbing....

now THAT is funny.

JESR #383: I don't find him boring even on SG-1. But I have a very constant nature, to my consistent detriment! As for rants about SG-1...you should see mine about how even their math is wrong. It requires two-inch steel cable to suspend my disbelief for this show. But I still watch, even though I think they jumped the shark when they introduced the Ori.

Idea for crossover episode: A small child comes through the quantum mirror (or through the gate, mysteriously). He says his name is D'Argo Sun-Crichton, and that there are monsters after him. Shortly thereafter, in come Daddy and Mommy. Wackiness ensues.

I'd love to see Browder play both Crichton and Mitchell in the same episode; still more to see Black play her two characters, who contrast MUCH more sharply.

Anybody want to write the script /a/n/d/ /w/e/'/l/l/ /s/p/l/i/t/ /t/h/e/ /m/o/n/e/y/?

All this crossover talk makes me wish I could find a unified link for a SGA/Eureka crossover I read, which starts with Fargo hiding under his desk and whimpering, as any ex TA of Rodney McKay's would probably do.

SGA: the fic is better than canon!

(It's in the 50s outside, and not raining, so I am catching up on pruning that should have been done in August. Some days I'm really sorry I'm so good at growing great big roses).

The only thing that really caused my disbelief to crash when watching Firefly was the one "marooned in space with air running out" episode, because making space travel -- and the whole issue of where everything was -- plausible or coherent (or even consistent) was clearly something Whedon and company weren't the least bit concerned about.

(Well, that and the space station that had no traffic control, collision sensors, or even radar, so that random ships could crash into it whenever they wanted.)

Of course, my problem is that I'm an astronomer, so I tend to twitch involuntarily when people can't be bothered to get space-related things even remotely right, even though I know (intellectually) that I shouldn't let it get in the way of my enjoyment of the story.

[*] For example: it's the twenty-whatever-th century, and they can travel easily between the stars/planets/moons/whatever, and yet the doctor is restricted to mid-20th Century medicine?

*grin* Ah yes, good old BBC "wobbly sets" science fiction, where you get to see special effects which are done on a very low budget. I just purchased the fourth season of Blake's 7 recently, and got quite a giggle out of the episode "Traitor". It appears when Liberator exploded at the end of season three, the contents of the wardrobe room fell onto Helotrix - Tarrant winds up wearing one of Avon's old tunics, and I spotted at least another two of Avon's, two of Vila's and one of Blake's tunics on the various Helots. Best laugh of the entire series (Servalan - sorry, *Sleer* was responsible for annexing the costume budget, it seems).

Quite frankly, Avon was a *wonderful* creation. All sci-fi series really need someone as intelligent, cranky, grumpy and snarky as Avon, if only to throw the sheer unrelieved heroism of most lead characters into hideous relief. Some of his lines are absolute triumphs.

I liked it well enough, better than most of what's on tv, certainly, and would have liked to see more of it than was made... but

a) I'm discomforted by Mal's ethics and b) even more discomforted that everybody in Firefly fandom seems to be too busy cheering for him to be much concerned about it.

He's been forced to the wall by large-scale economic and political forces...and we see him begin crossing the line... and the show seems ambivalent about this.

This being action-adventure TV, I was left wondering if we're being told that criminality is OK if it's being done by Good Guys. I was left uncomfortable by that sort of moral reasoning, mostly because I couldn't figure out just what reaction Joss was attempting to elicit. (Presumably, given more scope, some of this ambiguity would have been resolved.)

About the moral ambiguity of Malcolm Reynolds: in the larger context of the 'verse, where the government has used the population of whole planets for drug experiments, and stolen River and messed with her mind, and even the preacher has a dark past, it's not as if there's an unambiguous morality anywhere- except in Inara's guild, and that's been a matter of a certain amount of fannish angst.

After a bunch of years thinking about the Whedon mind, I have come to believe that the Larger Message is the one that gets said midway through the run of Angel: "if nothing you do matters, all that matters is what you do."

I first parsed that to mean that all the dialog would be in meter and rhyme.

An odd notion; I don't know why my brain suggests such things.

(I haven't seen any Stargate except for the original movie.)

Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me
Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain't comin' back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from me
There's no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can't take the sky from me...

My guess is that uncomfortable ambiguity was the intent. Joss tells a whole lot of hero stories that call hero stories into question.

Zoe: Want to know the definition of a hero? Someone who gets other people killed.

As for Mal's ethics, I'd guess that he does not feel obligated to obey the rules of a government he rebelled against, lost to, and feels is illegitimate.

As for Mal's ethics, I'd guess that he does not feel obligated to obey the rules of a government he rebelled against, lost to, and feels is illegitimate.

Well, there's that.. but Mal is not just a defeated rebel - he's also turning himself into an armed bandit. And we're rooting for him.

Yeah. I seem to be subscribed to a lot of podcasts. I don't have a problem. I could stop at any time.

erm.

he's also turning himself into an armed bandit.

In the train job, he stole medicine and then gave it back when he realized it was needed or people would die.

He's hauled cattle, which I believe was owned by the man who paid him to haul, the illegal part was the private owning of the cattle, or something. Didn't quite get if there was anything illegal there, or if he was just trucking.

He stole meds from a government hospital, and it was sufficiently explained that supplies there would be suficient that no one would die if they cleaned out a few cabinets.

They salvaged supplies off a ship, which turned out to be government food, which turns out to be illegal in that universe, and had to sell it under the counter.

I can't remember the details of the "bank job". That may have been banditry. But all other cases of unrepentant banditry appear to be stealing from, or in some way sticking it to, the government. And given planet wide government experiments, and the sort of torture they did to River, the government in that universe is Evil (tm).

I may be projecting onto Mal here, but he seems to be of Lawful Good alignment. And Mal's in a world where those who make the Law are evil. And given those circumstances, Mal rightfully choose Good over Law, and has to deal with it. At one point, I think Mal said something to the effect of they're out in the dark with no rudder or something. Law would give him steerage, but it's implemented by an evil government. So, he feels like he's blowing in the wind.

But at least in the bits we've seen so far, Mal tries to follow the Good.

I lack the attention span to be an obsessive fan, but my impression was that each time out, Mal's capers were getting more serious, the rationales to justify the thefts were getting more strained... he was pushing the limits each time, and was millimeters from crossing over. I found that tension uncomfortable. (Especially when everyone else seems to be rooting for him.)

I didn't get that impression of Mal. Character-wise, he's a sort of Robin Hood archtype. He'd be lawful good, but the Law got taken over by the evil government, so now he's Chaotic Good.

He robs from the evil government and uses it to help himself and others like River and her brother. And when he finds out he robbed from the poor (the medicine from the train robbery), he gave it back to the poor, risking getting arrested in teh process.

He's probably a little more edgier than Robin Hood, but I think that's probably the closest archetype for his character.

(*) I know, I know, in that case, the captain is the misfit, whose only Home almost gets taken away by his crew.

I kinda can, but only in the way that makes me want to smack him, because everything you say about Six having motives Baltar might not know about is completely true. Baltar's very, very smart, and like many smart people the idea that he could be wrong is alien to him. Once he thinks he's identified Six as being just as venal as he is, he decides he's got her number (er, no pun intended) and stops looking, because he's smart and he can't be wrong.

He still didn't intend anything like what happened and is horrified when it does, and if he'd been doing what he thought he was doing it wouldn't have been a bad thing except in the stuffy governmental way. That's all I'm saying. Intentions do count, though admittedly in this case even intending to end poverty or find a cure for cancer wouldn't have been sufficient mitigation. :)

But getting back to the subject of masculine eye-candy, anyone with a love of jutting butts can only regret this is no longer the era of tight-shorts tennis. (Yes of course, I had to mention tennis again here, even with no takers on the previous remark.) These days most of the guys are wearing droopy drawers, but with tank tops in vogue there are plenty of biceps on view [ditto on some of the women!]. And the occasional in-match shirt change can be fun too, even for a hormonally-challenged crone.

While sex appeal is only part of the lure of tennis -- elegant motion, good reflexes and quick thinking also play their part -- it can add to the fun.

There's more than one reason why some football players are called 'tight ends'. Think of Jerry Rice.

Oh, thanks... like my poor laptop's hard disk wasn't full enough already ;-) (Since I don't live in the US, this is about the only way I can watch such things.)

Elegant motion? Good reflexes? Quick thinking?

That is my definition of sex appeal.

(Never heard WoNA used in anything other than jest)

It is amply obvious to me that y'all live in areas where the weather is crappy, and have, therefore, no reason to step away from the computer and take care of gardening chores left undone far too long.

I'm never going to catch up on any of this, but I'd like to report that one can now walk under the hazelnut bush.

At least one of them.

On its east side.

If you duck a little.

Cutting a 3" diameter branch with a pruning saw is good exersize, but a rotten way to maintain a hedge planting.

The ratio of sitting and having a nice glass of water to cutting branches off of things (the quince tree is now less messy and no longer blocks access to the Russell's Cottage Rose) has passed 1:1 and is dropping fast.

No, because as of today in my yard you can walk under the date palm tree without getting scratched. It doesn't ever get hot here, but if it did, under the palm would always be deep dark shady cool*.

However, you will likely lose an eye if you walk there, due to the many branches now cut at arm-height.

I've been testing all my pruning equipment and saws to see if any work well on palm branches.

None do.
Swearwordy fibrous thick stems, some almost as thick as my fist in cross-section. I'm now eyeing power tools. Perhaps the reciprocating saw. Probably not the Dremel, because even the metal cutting tips might not be strong enough for the plasteel-carbonfiber-neutronium strong palm branches.

* But we don't need shade, therefore the need to find a tool that works. The other current features of the yard are a lush carpet of Oxalis pes caprae (aka Rancid Buttercup, O. pestilence) and several giant aloes (aka Ouch). Luckily for the latter, I've found a local nursery that'll take them for trade. Unluckily, this requires digging up 3-foot diameter sea urchins.

Have you tried a tungsten carbide rod saw blade in a hacksaw frame? Or something designed to cut green wood?

Me... things went to hell last year, and actually the year before that, too, so that things I should have taken care of with a soft pinch are now the subject of wistful longing for chainsaws.

I've seen people struggle enough with the whimpy windmill palm to know that, as much as date palms are filled with all sorts of virtues, I'd not take one on for a bet. My advice for young gardeners would include taking a pruning saw to any sort of shrub or tree with branches more than a half-inch in diameter and seeing what it's like before they commit to ownership. By that measure, I'd have a lot more magnolias and a lot fewer plums, cherries, and peaches.

My solution to the hardest cuts, of course, is to hand the saw to my 20 year old son, but he'll move away eventually (if providence is kind) and then I'll have to come up with a better solution soon.

http://www.gardenandflowershow.com/home.html

Sympathy on the lost landscaping year: that happened for me too. The previous owner was ill for a few years, followed by 18 months of an empty house, and then for the past year my life's been a few hours short of a full clock. All that neglect has to be addressed before I can do my own gardening. At least it didn't become a jungle: in part because the oxalis keeps anything else from growing. Still, I've taken out a few small trees that could have been hand pulled when seedlings years back.

On oxalis- those are my names for it. Nasty bulblet-producing weed that it is, it gets worse if you try to dig it out. I'm not into gRoundup, and the climate here isn't conducive to solarizing the soil (plus I have a colony of slender salamanders to protect). So all I can do is try to starve the oxalis out by scything off the stems.

I have a little problem with roses the way Janis Joplin had a little problem with heroin.

May I steal that expression from you, Kathy?

That sounds like a good opening line for a story of the seedy world of gardening, with a detective named Phillip Marl-hoe.

Or have been; the combinbation of the domesticated thug Geranium "Claridge Druce" and creeping buttercup has driven me to the brink of herbicide.

If I may pick your brain:

I live in Buffalo, NY, which is a zone 5b. I was given a rose book for Chrismas 2005, with a pledge to put in the garden. (Yes, he promised me a rose garden.) I would very much like flowers with scent. What should I plant?

If not, just consider me very jealous of your roses.

I think Antique Rose Emporium still carries both of them; Heirloom has gotten spotty on the availability of old roses. There's a NE rose vendor whose name escapes me, too.

Then there's the Explorer Series of roses, which were developed in Canada;John Cabot is very nice, I hear,although I haven't grown that one.

I'm still absolutely chuffed with this saw from Lee Valley, which I've used for far too many things, including zip-tieing it to the end of a painters extension pole for tree pruning branches up to 5-or-6" in diameter. After all of that, and green wood, it _still_ cuts plywood cleanly. Wonderful thing!

Sounds more like a Sam Spade story to me.

No, more modern than that. Perhaps a Grew Grafton: "C is for Corm", "F is for Fungicide"...

Xeger,
2nd the motion to declare that saw shiny. By the way, if you happen to be carrying that saw and walking by a palm branch, could you test it out? If your neighbors don't have one, try the local botanical garden. I'm sure they won't mind.

mmmmm, saws. Having recently rediscovered how good it is to have a very, very sharp and strong and wellfit kitchen knife, I'm tempted by that saw.

More modern? So... nothing with Nancy Grew? Or Auguste Lupin?

tania (#455):
Ouch. Ouch. (And I missed "perennial" on the first read-through...)

Here's a funny picture on Wonkette. I think it will amuse a few people.

You mean the stories of Hemlock Hoelmes?

Tempting... but I suspect unfortunate comments from the owners of the botanical gardens ;)

mmmmm, saws. Having recently rediscovered how good it is to have a very, very sharp and strong and wellfit kitchen knife, I'm tempted by that saw.

Speaking of tools that tempt, I really need to get one of the lovely bear claws that Berkeley's Hida Tools makes, again. One of the level best all around garden tools I've ever had - and unfortunately lost to mov[ing|ers].

Offtopic discussion here.

I will look for those roses. I was planning on buying Canadian, on the theory that the plants will be used to the climate, at least, if they didn't find the weather here positively balmy.

- the narrator of MythBusters during yesterday's episode where the gang went to Moffet Air Base's BIG zeppelin hangar to prove it is possible to fold a square piece of paper more than seven times, provided said sheet is 200 feet on each side, and provided that you have a steamroller with you.

Well, I saw the movie, and first of all, goodness gracious. I recently went through a long period of watching movies and reacting each time with pretty much just a "meh," to the point where I was starting to be afraid that I just didn't particularly care for movies anymore. Which terrified me, because movies are one of the few things I'm really passionate about. Then I saw Children of Men and one reason I'd be willing to seriously fight anyone who makes fun of that movie is that it broke that long streak; I responded strongly to it and I started to think that maybe I was OK. Watching Eyes Wide Shut makes me positive. DAMN that's a good movie. Why did everyone hate it?

OK. For another thing, I'm curious about what you said in the post I linked to. Did you mean just the way all the characters react to him sexually, or is there more to it that I'm too dense to see?

Also, that was totally the Illuminati. Was that not the Illuminati? That was the Illuminati.

Yesterday, I dropped by the comics store, and, after a delay of months, there was the 6th of his 6-issue miniseries, The Eternals. I find myself reading thru, racing to the end, wondering if the Dreaming Celestial was going to flatten San Francisco and then the rest of the world. I get to the last image and... and... it said 'to be concluded'.

Huh?

I looked at the cover. It said this was the 6th of a 7-issue story. This is the first time I've seen a mini-series transform itself into a longer one before my very eyes.

Hats off to the magician.

As for the Bond movie... Go see it. The last one I had seen was Goldeneye, which was so-so except for Sean Bean being in it. This one's good. And this is the first movie where my wife actually liked the character of Bond. And there's no naked lady dancing in the opening credits.

High Country Gardens has John Cabot. They prefer you order plants in multiples of three, but you might want to try the hardy rose collection, which is four varieties.

Ew. Uh. Hm. Well. I didn't like it. Actually, I think it might be up there as number 2 of all time worst movies for me (with "Mars Attacks" beating it out by a narrow margin).

Top ten reasons I didn't like Eyes:

10: every advertisement for movie used the "Baby done a bad bad thing" song by Chris Isaak. (A song I really like.) Ninety percent of the movie soundtrack consisted of a guy sitting at a piano going ping ... five seconds of silence ... ping.

9: the "out-of-whack" event for Tom's character happens when he and his wife are getting high and his wife says she fantasized about some guy one time. Good lord, man, get a grip.

8: Tom Cruise, who has played a sexually aggressive male in most of his movies, can't seem to bring himself to do the deed.

7: In a party where everyone shows up in limos and he shows up in a taxi, why does he still get through the front door?

6: When they unmask him at the party and the woman "sacrifices" herself, so they let him go. If Tom's knowledge of the party is a threat, it's a threat. boinking some chick won't change that.

5: woman ends up dead after "sacrifice". Tom thinks its foul play. But if Tom's the problem, why would they kill her? Unless they're idiots.

4: My GAWD is this a slow movie.

3: Tom investigates death of sacrifice girl but is warned of powerful people who don't want him looking. He stops. End of that story thread. Apparently it wasn't important. Why was it in the movie.

2: The movie could perhaps be summed up as a "banging shutter" plot. There's a noise. People are scared. go investigate. its a banging shutter. In this case, the "banging shutter" is Tom's wife's drug-induced admission that she had a fantasy about another man. And then nothing happens.

1: And to those who talk about the story being a dream from the point after they get high, wow, so the last line is "And then he woke up."

That said, I'll watch the first five minutes of that movie any time I happen to see it on premium cable.

Hey!

;)

That was exactly my reaction. I also remember thinking that anyone who thought the sex in that movie was erotic, edgy, or shocking hadn't logged much time on the Web.

I can't remember. What happens in the first five minutes? The only good thing I recall about that movie was Leelee Sobieski was awesome. I was more interested in her five minutes of screen time than Tom running around for an hour.

And that would be bad, if it had been meant to be sexy. It wasn't.

I could go point-by-point through Greg's list at #473 and say why I think each one is dumb, but he's entitled to his opinions, no matter how much I disagree, and no matter how gratingly he expresses them.

Emergency Kindness is shutting down, due to lack of funds.

And if you don't see that...I can't explain it. Nothing wrong with you. But you either get it or you don't.

I suppose it is. Luckily, I don't care.

Xopher #483: Ahh. OK. I'd gotten halfway, I just hadn't made the interesting conclusions. Looking at the bit with the fratboys through that lens somehow hadn't occurred to me, even though it should have been the most obvious. ...And I've been staring at the cursor for nigh on five minutes now trying to put into words what I want to say next, and I just cannot, for some reason. You know. Right?

I hadn't heard it put that way before. If I could tweak it ever so slightly to:

The plot is a convenient framework upon which Kubrick hangs the things that he finds valuable.

Then I could agree with the statement.

Hm, thinking about Kubrick films now. Must go to IMDB for a bit....

I feel sort of unsophisticated, or something.

I didn't enjoy the movie, even though it was mostly very well done, because nothing good happened in it. Ever. At all. To anyone.

I hope that's not a terrible spoiler.

Not sure that's not a good thing, but I'm also not sure how you could think that telling people "it doesn't end happily" might not be a spoiler.

However, I don't think there's much room for debate in "It's a Guillermo Del Toro movie; expect bleakness." But that's no more spoilerish for Pan's Labyrinth than it is for The Devil's Backbone or Cronos.

I agree with Xopher at #489; the non-plot interested me, whether or not it was what interested Kubrick. Then again, I suppose it might be in my nature to respond to formlessness like that. I talked about Solaris here, which was similarly glacial in pace, and a lot of the movies I like are similar. Then once again, a lot of the movies I like are also about James Bond.

You just made me realise that having a pseudonym who reads as "aime décarrer" might not be the best way to fight French stereotypes. Not that anyone will notice.

ethan (#486): Damn. Had forgotten about Jan Bucquoy. It will take years now for my mind to feel a little less soiled again.

Good.

Sorry about the eye-burning quality of...
of...
well, of whatever that is in PVP. (What is it about that strip, anyway? I can't find the right word.)

The intent was to engage our better selves in a discussion of the relationship between punctuation and humor.

Feeling highly honored here!

Good piece, that. Thanks again.

My cocoon looks just like me, but
In those eyes there is no light;
          (Because I sent the light away,
In those gestures, no power;
          And focused all my power on the one,
In that face, no motion.
          The only one who made me move.)

...done with  s to space over. Blogger takes the  s out and replaces them with spaces in the code to force the lines flush left. Blockquote won't do, obviously. I even tried beginning those lines with '|' and it took that out, which I'm not sure I believe even though I just saw it.

It doesn't even wait for you to publish before taking out the  s. Put them in in HTML, switch to Compose, back to HTML, they're gone.

Why does Blogger suck in this way? And is there any way around it?

(I always meant to get to Nor'east Roses but then it got sold to people in California and they moved the entire operation of miniature roses and growing them from Rowley, MA, out to California... I waited too long...)

And Serge #496, Christ, yes, Tarkovsky's original. The Soderbergh version is so weirdly awful that I feel like he must have done it on purpose, and if I could only figure out why I would be at piece, or something.

Serge #507, my main problem with Soderbergh's version is that his main interest seemed to be telling a dull love story through flashback, and any of the philosophical and science fictional ideas were just incidental. Which, you know, love stories are fine, but not boring ones with pointless SF trappings. And you're right, it was one of the least visually interesting movies I can think of, which is odd considering that Soderbergh is such a visual director.

I can't agree with you about wanting Tarkovsky to get along with it, but I can understand that reaction.

(MD)(MD) #498: Have you seen The Sexual Lives of the Belgians? I loved it, but even thinking about the scene where he's talking to the camera about women he's been with, all the while stuffing his face with french fries and getting positively covered with mayonnaise, makes me want to yak.

And that second one sounds like a droid. "EmmtooDeetoo, have you seem The Sexual Lives of the Belgians?"

I love pictures of guys blushing.

I've done the simplest one for years: set up the Ganesh-ji image; set a sweet before it; burn sandalwood incense; say "Om Ganeshaya Nama" 108 times*; eat the sweet. The more complicated ones are actually shorter, but involve reciting a bunch of Sanskrit which at this stage I still have to read.

*Easiest way to get this right: get a traditional mala. Those strings of beads with a tassel on them? Those are malas (108** beads plus the tassel bead or "guru bead;" don't count on that one when you do the puja). For Ganesha sandalwood is best. They're not that hard to find. The first time I did it I had no mala; I looked around for something I had 108 of, and wound up using $10.80 in dimes! The puja was quite successful, even though I also forgot the sweet.

**I don't know why 108 is the sacred number in Hinduism. I've long suspected it has to do with the fact that it's 2²×3³, but that's idle speculation on the part of a mathemystic neo-Pagan.

I take back my angry response, which was made in ignorance of the facts.

Xopher, if that's an open offer, I'd very much appreciate the information. My e-mail address is as given; just correct the obvious misspellings in the part after "@."

(Most of the commenters seem to like the depictions.)

Details

Re: Hindu mythology.

My introduction to Hindu mythology (about 30 years ago) had been reading Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light. It inspired me to go to the library and read more.

For years I could find second hand copies of 'Lord of Light' any time I looked in a Salvation Army. I often bought an extra copy so I could pass one along; gave one to one of my high school teachers, and another later to a teacher in art college.

So I know we have taken a whack at the silliness of Sean Connery in Zardoz, but considering his role in the movie, his black ponytail and moustache, and that he dressed in red; should we take him to be Yama (the Hindu god of death)?

Some stills from the film, for those who never saw it.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070118.html

Some explanation of these wording changes here:
While you were sleeping (Bush took over the Government)

This seems like something we should be aware of, to put it mildly. I guess this is Bush's new spirit of bipartisanship - order the Federal government not to do anything the Congress tell sit to.

No, I can't say that I have. Good? Or an example of non-Indians playing Indian gods and looking silly?

I took a risk once, and went to see 1900 (aka Novecento) when it was playing at the Dryden auditorium; advertised as a 4-hr film*. Just before the film started, they announced that they had been able to get a copy of the 5-hr director's cut, which was what they would be showing.

Fortunately, it was an engaging film, and only dragged in the last half-hour.

With the development of the Indian film and CG industries, it would be interesting to see a mini-series production of 'Lord of Light'; I'd like an American hand in that production to keep it from becoming Bollywood-silly. It would be nice if it could be done without offending Hindu sensibilities, and involving Indian talent from the start seems like it would be the way to go. You'd have the advantage of Indian locations too. No, I don't think anyone is actually working on this; it's just my fantasy of a film production.

* The risk is, I am not going to leave once the film has started. I once sat through a 4-hr film that bored me in the first five minutes and did not let up.

... and Indian, and Caribbean, and ... (it's an astonishingly international cast, really).

I agree with Serge -- it works.

(As a side note: only a couple of the characters are "gods" -- e.g., Krishna; most of them are humans.)

There are branches of Protestant Christianity, or significant numbers of people in some branches, who behave as though the End of the World is a consummation devoutly to be wished, and in fact something to be worked for. Is this desire to blow us all up so that they can get to heaven something that also turns up among Mormons?

I say it's a cultural more than a theological question because I'm not aware of any significant sect that explicitly teaches "it is your duty to start a world war in the Middle East," but there seem to be people who are eager to immanentize the eschaton by so doing.

I'd be more concerned about offending Buddhists, actually.

Well... it would be nice not to. We might hope they wouldn't take offense, but we've seen Christians ready to picket 'Life of Brian' because it was assumed sight-unseen that it disrespected Jesus. I have no idea whether Hindus are typically so thin-skinned, but we might assume that some are. It would be nice to have an answer for them (much as Peter Jackson was able to answer Tolkien fans).

So not so much trying to screw the world up so much as to hasten the end of it, but more of an off-putting anticipatory schadenfreude about the whole thing.

The internet and search engines have probably saved my life.

[Sorry, longer than expected explanation and next to useless to boot.]

Serge@517: Ganesha [...]Lord of Auspicious Beginnings, and Remover of Obstructions.

Everytime I read this one I can't help but think about a book I read for a paper I did on tantrism. Around four obsessive pages on the size and specificities of the genital organs of elephants (male AND female, and why both can be confused by the ignorant), their practices, and the impact they can have on people, is the best introduction I can think of on the sexual coding of religious imagery.

For Xopher: 108.
In buddhism, I've often seen this described as the number of failings/afflictions/defilements (after a quick googlin' around it seems this last one might be the most used translation in english... strange how tranlations of the religious vocabulary can color things; see "éveil" in french for "enlightenment" in english)which can prevent you from reaching enlightenment.
If you're trying to reach for deeper knowledge in hindusim, a quick detour via bouddhism (especially those branches touched by tantrism) can prove invaluable. As I'm sure you know.

Also stumbled upon this while looking around.

I'd be more concerned about offending Buddhists, actually.

I concur. Some private event in Korea have taught me those pacifist monks can sure be mean brawlers.

I have no idea whether Hindus are typically so thin-skinned, but we might assume that some are.

Indeed.

Inquiry: How could a meatbag such as you identify my true spambot nature ?

Reminds me of another of Zelazny stories. In Isle of the Dead, his protagonist has taken up an alien religion. It is not a matter of professing belief; he has to wait until one of the gods of their pantheon selects him. While this does happen for him, he is skeptical whether these gods are 'real'. They prove to have more power than he expects.

To Die in Italbar shares the same background; but the Wikipedia entry for it is only a stub.

The (one) brief explanation I remember hearing when I was in India was that 1 + 0 + 8 = 9; and 9 is, as we all know, one of the Deeply Meaningful Small Integers. (And, as you pointed out, 9 times 12 = 108). This page has some suggestions, though it's a mish-mash of possible reasons for significance and examples of significance.

The Wikipedia page on 108 points out that the characteristic you mentioned means that it is a "hyperfactorial" (which I'd never heard of before); "2²×3³" can be expanded to read "1¹×2²×3³". It also has several other interesting/pointless examples of 108 things (the number of Penelope's suitors in The Odyssey! the number of minutes Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth! etc.).

As an aside, I was rather croggled to discover that, yes, Wikipedia actually has individual entries for each of the numbers between -1 and 200 (and for most of the numbers between 200 and 300, as well).

Then there's the way they re-shelved nearly everything in the library at work a year or so back. I used to be able to put my hand precisely on every report series, even the old obscure ones down in dark dusty corners of L-space, but I'm still a bit lost now. P'raps if I'd been able to work more since, I'd have re-memorized it all.

Why do crypto-spambots always assume that no one else is a crypto-spambot?

" * In the 7/16/1970 to 7/23/1970 sequence of Dan O'Neil's comic strip Odd Bodkins, Fred Bird, Hugh, and 5$Bill O'Brady escape Hell in the year 10,1970 a.d. via motorcycle and are attacked from the air by a Bandersnatch identified as a "Jabberwocky." They are saved by the Batwinged Hamburger Snatcher, who drives off the Jabberwocky from the air and then (it is implied), kills it off-panel. 12"

And in Notes it should say:

"12. O'Neill, Dan. (1973) The Collective Unconscience of Odd Bodkins ISBN 912078-33-2"

Can Someone Who Knows Wikipedia look this one over and make sure I didn't screw it up? Thanks!