C'mon, I'm closer to 64 than you are.

Ok, I googled it, and now I feel guilty...

It took me a minute to notice which number open thread this was.
Thank you for the delightful reference which I'm now going go humming, as I head out to pick up my sweet friend Lise from the commuter train and sing it to her.
Grins!

I expect soon to see Sir Paul singing "Oh, she was just 64..."

"You know, such a bore,"

Somebody else is gonna have to complete that.

I think you've mentioned it here before.

Last of Tri-City Mall is coming down

Sir Paul is 64 on June 18th. Of this year. That's less than 8 weeks away,

Will you still be sending me a Valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine?

He's has had a lot of sadness on the way to 64. Count the number of major people in his life who have died before their time.

I think we should still feed him, don't you?

dootodoot Doot Doot dodododo

So, are you waiting for Sunday to get your Veronica Mars fix, or do you generally wait for DVD, or are you thinking of "other methods" for getting your HS Noir on?

...And the way she shook was way beyond compare
Oh how could I sit with another,
When I saw her rocking there?

I now regret "shook". "Slouched"? I was going for a rocking chair but I think I may have evoked some unfunny condition.

BSD, are you talking to me? Bittorrent, baby.

Mind you, if they'd just put it on iTMS, I'd gladly shell out.

Some rocking chairs can do a decent imitation of shake. Rattle is a bit more likely.
And a very early happy happy to him, too!

When I read that Particle about Lincoln's duel, I at first pictured the plank as *spanning* the pit, and that the fight would take place on it.

That would rock.

PNH: He's has had a lot of sadness on the way to 64.

Aye. I saw the title of the thread, promptly got the song as an earworm -- and then realised that it must be 7 or 8 years now since Linda died. (I checked - 8 last week.) That song's had a bittersweet edge for me these last few years.

I've got a request for information on behalf of my aunt and uncle. My uncle just accepted a position at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, and they will be moving there in June. They'll visit sometime in May to look for a house, but probably not more than once, since they currently live in France.

So, can anyone familiar with Flagstaff recommend neighborhoods they should look in? An ideal neighborhood would be close to campus, close to downtown (my recollection is that NAU is pretty close to downtown, so that's probably the same thing), reasonably accessible after heavy snowfalls (which I understand are common there), and have 2-3 bedroom houses at something like a reasonable price (I don't know what housing prices are like there, but let's say definitely under $500K, and preferably under $400K). Townhouses would be fine, assuming there are any.

I expect the school will find a buyer's agent for them, but if anyone happens to have a recommendation for one in that area, that would be great as well.

Any advice will be appreciated.

There's such a thing as a good earworm. This one is forever attached to the PBS TV-Movie of The Lathe of Heaven. After all, to go is to return.

And now I'm having defective memory. Wrong song, somehow appended to a favorite movie.

Okay, I give up. I've googled, I've thought, and I've tried to remember. What does "FAQK" mean? Frequently Asked Questions, Kinda?

Dan Blum,
You might try Zillow. Here's the link to University Ave in Flagstaff. Take their values with a salt cellar; even they admit their data isn't complete.

NAU is indeed right downtown. It's where I-40 and I-17 intersect.

Fiddling around with Zillow a little more, it looks like there are a fair number of $200-250K houses within a mile east of campus. I have no idea what that kind of money buys in Flagstaff.

It's always been a bit of a bittersweet song for me - although I do hope it ends up being true... enough.

I think Spider Robinson has that covered in 'Rubber Soul'...
As my grandparents did retire to a cottage on the Isle of Wight, I have fond memories of the song, and of my childhood visits to the island, which seemed to be designed for children to play in.
On a more serious note, there is a campaign in the UK to freeze music from 50 years ago into corporate thraldom.
Do support ORG in resisting this.

64 has ended up being my lucky number. partly because of the song.

I wonder what the Paul McCartney who wrote the song (er, at the time the song was written) would make of Sir Paul today.

When I read that Particle about Lincoln's duel, I at first pictured the plank as *spanning* the pit, and that the fight would take place on it.

There's your crossover fanfic right there.

"YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

Amazing story. Broadswords at dawn. I am puzzled by the pit thing (and a small one too - ten by twelve feet, if I read it right), unless his intent was to terrify his opponent out of the duel. Lincoln was a tall chap, with a good reach, and being in a ten-by-twelve pit with him wielding a sword at you would be rather like being in a kitchen blender.
(breaks off to follow the link)
Ah, yes. Indeed it was.

Lord Peter Wimsey makes an aside once about having been challenged to a duel, "but I don't think he cared for my terms. A bullet can go anywhere, after all, but steel's pretty well bound to go somewhere."

I was speaking to you. I kinda figured, and MAN is that tempting.

There's a great RiverWorld Fanfic... uh, short story in a collection by other pro authors in a RiverWorld anthology about musicians in RiverWorld. I can't remember the title.

Anyone read it?

Josh: Yes, but I don't remember the title either.

Took me a while to get it, but then I was 14 when I read the thing. :)

Paul has such an opportunity for a charity concert or tour theme ...

My single music gig was the summer of '63. Summer camp talent show. Since I couldn't play an instrument, I got the idea of parodying The Beatles, and gleefully rewrote a couple of their songs.

"She was just 64

and shaped like a door

and before too long

I barfed over her-errrr..."

Three other girls and I borrowed guitars from our Joan Baez wanna-be counselors, combed our hair forward, and learned a single chord for the beginning, strummed it, began to sing--but did anyone hear my brilliant lyrics? No, because as soon as that camp of about 500 girls heard the opening strains of a Beatle song, they started screaming, and screamed all the way through until we bowed just like the Beatles did in those early days. Testament to the astonishing power those guys had over us all, in those days.

Do people write American President fan-fiction? Maybe young Republicans. Sounds like something Bart Simpson would sneer at.

And no, I'm not googling for it.

Well, there's this.

No fun Beatles song parodies : (, but a boring request for book information: science fiction, interstellar society is recovering after a war with aliens, protaganist's relative dies in a suspicious spaceship accident, causing a chain of events that leads him to stumble upon mysteries involving an idolized great dead hero of the alien war, a former teacher of classical history whose musings on ancient Greek battles lead the way to the ending plot twist . . .

All google gets me is Pournelle's stuff . . .

Thanks . . .

There's also this...

BSD, are you talking to me? Bittorrent, baby.

Mind you, if they'd just put it on iTMS, I'd gladly shell out.

You know, I'm glad there's finally some media owners realizing this. I don't do P2P. I'VE never done P2P. The husband downloaded a TV show over P2P once, after the third airing of something we wanted to see got moved without warning again (thus thwarting our VCR), and we were ready to go ballistic. If that show had been available in a widely useable format for a decent price (personally, I think that $1.99 is low, but $9.99 is too high), we'd have purchased it rather than take the (very limited) risk of the P2P download.

Do people write American President fan-fiction?

Two words: Fox News

Do people write American President fan-fiction?

And no, I'm not googling for it.

I'm quite sure that you could find Bush/Cheney slash.

I know you could find Kerry/Edwards slash. Why? Because it was ALL OVER the blogshere last election.

Do people write American President fan fiction?

I don't know about that, but they have been known to write Marx/Engels fanfiction.

Actually, speaking of presidential fanfic, you could certainly apply that label to Parson Weems's biography of Washington --- it wasn't exactly presented as fiction, but many elements, starting with the (in)famous cherry-tree story, were purely inventions of the author...

Do people write American President fan-fiction?

Two words: Fox News

Two more words: Michelle Malkin

Teresa pointed out Bush/Putin slash on the `Annals of short lived phenomena' thread.

Choice quotes are too choice for this forum.

Patrick provided a link to a picture of Mike Resnick's ALTERNATE PRESIDENTS anthology.

Let me add that ALTERNATE PRESIDENTS is, imho, THE best alternate-history anthology. Fascinating stories, based on events most people are unaware of; a lot of the stories led me to seek out the real history of the people and events behind the fictions.

(Although there are people who still haven't forgiven Resnick for making "The Hammer" eligible for SFWA membership.)

And on a completely diferent subject:

I noticed over at FireDogLake that the comments have a number assigned up in the upper right hand corner of the message.

This is a really handy feature for comment-heavy blogs; remembering the number of a comment you want to comment on is a lot easier than remembering the poster and approximate date/time of a post and then scrolling up and down to try and find it.

Might one ask that this be kept in mind for the next upgrade on Making Light?

Dan S.

There's an Asimov story, "Black Friar of the Flame", which involves a re-run of the battle of Salamis, with spaceships. He even included ramming tactics.

Doesn't seem a very good fit with your recollection.

Prompted by the link in Sidelights to Mr. Franks' beat-down of that ever-deserving nudnick Joe Klein, I found the Turnip Day speech, with both audio download and and transcript, courtesy of the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.

Somehow, I don't think Joe Klein could have been talking about this one; maybe there's some other Turnip Day Speech Harry Truman delivered. Or maybe he just got the Turnip Day reference from somewhere, and didn't check its context. Having read it just now: Them's fightin' words, that's what they are.

Please do not be alarmed by Mr. Truman's accent. They didn't do voice coaches back then.

Ah, "64". I remember singing this song, riding my bicycle every weekday from Offenbach to a small town outside the city in the summer of '69.

But times pass, we age. As evidence of my 'out of it' status, I offer "420," which I only learned of this week.

I second Bruce Arthurs' upgrade proposal and add this: Can the date/time be added to the headlines on the "Last 400 Comments" page? Something like this:

April 26, 2006, 01:34 PM: Patrick Connors on Open Thread 64

That will help us out if we miss a day or three.

Or is this a proposal I should submit directly to Six Apart?

Do people write American President fan-fiction?

This, I've written about before.

As for fan fiction based on Aaron Sorkin's The American President, the closest thing is Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing, I guess.

My recollection from grade school is:

She was just seventeen
And her hair was turning green
And the way she looked was way beyond repair
I'd rather dance with her mother
Since I saw her standing there...

Todd Larason wrote:

Okay, I give up. I've googled, I've thought, and I've tried to remember. What does "FAQK" mean? Frequently Asked Questions, Kinda?

I'd like to know, too. I'm also terribly curious about whether Lore Sjöberg's FAQK is the first such piece to be written by someone who hasn't previously written an autobiography for Wikipedia.

64 is 2^2^2. Which makes it a way cool number.

No, I'm not going to elaborate!

Xopher, that isn't computing. Being as 64 is 2**6... 2**2**3, that works.

Bush/Kerry RPS, in The New Yorker, no less.

I think that numbered-comments thing is a WordPress feature. We use Movable Type, and for that matter we're a version or two back, having been too busy to perform an upgrade. But I agree, it's handy.

Ugh. I should know better than to try to do math at work. 2^2^2 is 16, not 64. I musta got hit with a stupid stick on the way to the office. And, sad to say, 2^2^3 just is not as cool.

I'll be over here.

Some days I need a calculator just to do 2+2. May be a side effect of 'Since when did 9030 - 8925 become 300?'

book information: science fiction, interstellar society is recovering after a war with aliens, protaganist's relative dies in a suspicious spaceship accident, causing a chain of events that leads him to stumble upon mysteries involving an idolized great dead hero of the alien war, a former teacher of classical history whose musings on ancient Greek battles lead the way to the ending plot twist . . .

OK, my brain just threw up a WHOLE lot of chaff. I was trying to think of the name "John Barnes" or the series, including "Duke of Uranium", "In the Hall of the Martian King", and "A Princess of the Aerie".

I'm not sure if those are the books you want.

Things my brain produced instead of the answer: "That guy who does [horrifying thing] in that one book!" * And then "That guy with the 'Crooked Man' in the fantasy book" ** and "It sounds like 'John Brunner' but isn't. . .is it?"

* "Kaleidescope Century", I think.
** "One for the Morning Glory"

Thanks, Alan. I needed to feel older.

I don't regret the loss of the original Tri-City Mall central "fountain," which was a monument to unanticipated effects. It was a circle of floor-to-ceiling strings -- okay, either thick strings or very thin rods -- that had glycerine droplets constantly running down them. I think the idea was that it would look like slow-motion rain.

Unfortunately, flies that landed on the strings got trapped in the glycerine and were turned into nasty black blots. Over time, dust and flies accumulated on the strings in ever-thickening irregular blobs: a strikingly unappetizing effect.

So they had prostitution and cheap motels in the area? It's hard to imagine.

Dan Blum, I can't help you. Back when I knew anything about Flagstaff, the place was so small and backward that its x-rated bookstore carried Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Dan S., I take it from your remarks that you're not looking for Pournelle and Stirling's Go Tell the Spartans?

Patrick Connors, if we added dates and times to the "comments posted" list, it would double or triple in length, be harder to read, and shove the blogroll even further down the page.

Anyone have a URL for the website that keeps a list of (short?) (science?) fiction markets, their response times, and other info? I've seen it before, but can't seem to find my way back. It would list a magazine, and then say that its current response time is 6 weeks or 12 weeks or whatever. Anyway, googling doesn't help if you don't know the right key words.

Are you thinking of Ralan's, Greg? Or the Black Hole?

[no doubt a triple-post by the time I hit submit]

book information: science fiction, interstellar society is recovering after a war with aliens, protaganist's relative dies in a suspicious spaceship accident, causing a chain of events that leads him to stumble upon mysteries involving an idolized great dead hero of the alien war, a former teacher of classical history whose musings on ancient Greek battles lead the way to the ending plot twist . . .

Pretty sure that's Jack McDevitt's A Talent For War. A fine book. McDevitt's last two novels (Polaris and Seeker) are sequels of a sort.

Just curious, does anyone recall the title of a children's book where a boy finds a baby dragon at the playground/park and secretly keeps it in his room? I seem to remember something about him eventually having to set it free lest the dragon get caught. I think the title is "Benenuto" or "Benevedeo" or something similar. Starts with "Bene-" at least and ends with "-o".

Ralan! that was it. Thanks.

Looking at the numbers, its a bit of a relief as well. average response time, according to the mag's page is 4 weeks. Ralan says its more like 9 weeks.

I must hold on before I too go totally mad...

Dolloch, the book I know that's like that is The Dragon that Ate Summer, by Brenda Seabrooke. It has a kid name Alastair with a broken collarbone who finds a dragon and keeps it. May not be what you're looking for-- no bene anywhere.

This seems like as good a place as any to ask a question that has come up on the Bruce's Place Yahoo Group (a Springsteen-fan list).

Bruce's new disk, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions"* contains quite a few songs from the public domain. (At least one goes back to the 1700s.) Does anyone get the share of the profits that would normally go as the songwriter's royalty? Does "the Boss" get it because he's credited with the arrangements? Is it a matter of his contract with his record company?

If anyone can shed light on this for our group, I'd appreciate it.

Meanwhile, I recommend the album. It's not a hoot, but it's a hootenanny!

*And yes, a previous thread on the group discussed that the title becomes more interesting if you leave the colon out. Almost a Jack Dannism.

I'm not losing my hair, except by choice -- I keep it very short. But it is going silver. Yesterday was my mother's 87th birthday.

"And the seasons, they go round and round;
The painted ponies go up and down.
We're captive on the carousel of time.
We can't return, we can only look behind
From where we came, and go round
And round and round in the circle game."

Bruce's new disk, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions"* contains quite a few songs from the public domain. (At least one goes back to the 1700s.) Does anyone get the share of the profits that would normally go as the songwriter's royalty?

nope. one can argue that all new works are derivatives of Public Domain works, so Bruce's case isn't special other than how much he borrowed a lot from one particular Public Domain song. Profits go to Bruce and his record label as usual.

Cassie - thank you! That's awful close but not quite it. I remember the ending being really sad. The boy (Pablo?) never sees the dragon again. An "If you love something, set it free" type of thing. I also remember the family being Italian or Hispanic. I think it took place in NY. The title of the book was the name of the dragon, although I think it was just hinted at that the big lizard was actually a dragon.

nope. one can argue that all new works are derivatives of Public Domain works, so Bruce's case isn't special other than how much he borrowed a lot from one particular Public Domain song. Profits go to Bruce and his record label as usual.

This is incorrect.

--If Bruce writes a song and records it for Company X, Company X has to pay him the compulsory license fee, unless he agrees to waive it. If he records a song in the public domain, they don't have to pay this fee.

--Performance royalties are much lower for arrangements of public domain material than for original songs. In the case of BMI, performance royalties are paid at 20%. I haven't looked up ASCAP, but I'd be surprised if their policy were significantly different.

Company X still has to pay Bruce for performing the song, of course, but that's entirely subject to their contract; there's no statutory rate.

"#^*@$%@$#%$^!!!"

Three months after being promised we'd have no more layoffs this year, we've been told to expect more "by the end of the month," which means tomorrow.

I am so sick of this stuff. The fear of getting tossed out, then the survivor's guilt and the mess of trying to work out how to get things done with chunks of talent missing.

Fuck.

For those of you who knew him, I just received word that Brian Burley has died. Judy just found him this afternoon.

Details are sketchy at this point. I just talked to Judy and she seemed OK, if a little stunned. She had a houseful of people (and given the sort of people she knows she should be all right).

Stefan, I hope things work out well for you.

There's an Asimov story, "Black Friar of the Flame", which involves a re-run of the battle of Salamis, with spaceships. He even included ramming tactics.

I keep reading "Battle of the Salamis," which messes the whole thing up in regards to Isaac Asimov.

Of course, I'm way too late in the comments, but that was very interesting stuff in the way of Presidential fiction. I just thought there was Abraham Lincoln in that episode of "Star Trek."

Stefan: You have my sympathy. The modern American workplace is not a pleasant place.

Jack Ruttan: Would that involve hiding the salamis?

I've survived every layoff* for over eight years; maybe I'll luck out again.

If not, I'm well prepared for a layoff: I have 18 months living expenses (less health insurance) set aside, plus extra for birthday and xmas gifts and holiday trips and so on.

But I have *no* idea what I want to do next.

* Well, my entire division got laid off when Oracle sold it, but I had a job with the company that bought it the next day.

Fragano Ledgister :
Would that involve hiding the salamis?

Perhaps if they had cloaking devices.

But I was distressed seeing that I was making jokes after that bad news in the pair of previous posts. Not seemly, but I suppose that will happen in an "open thread."

I don't know the person who died, but reading about him felt the way it did when I was at a rummage sale in the front yard of a church, and a full-dress funeral procession went by just as I was looking at a box of CDs. I stood at attention, would have taken off my hat if I had one. A confusing moment.

"Pretty sure that's Jack McDevitt's A Talent For War. A fine book."

That's it! Found it sitting on the paperback scifi/fantasy rack at the Poultney (Vermont) public library, read it, loved it; next time I came by, it had vanished, lost or sold or whatever (although they had gotten quite a few good books on the state's natural history in the interval, which I count as a fair enough trade), and I of course couldn't remember any author or title info . . .

Thanks! and thanks everyone who made suggestions - new books to consider, since the several-hundred-title backlog simply isn't big enough . . . And sequel-like books too? Oh boy . . .

"Just curious, does anyone recall the title of a children's book where a boy finds a baby dragon at the playground/park and secretly keeps it . . ."

I'm thinking Benvenuto by Seymour Reit - although he finds it at camp . .. .

And hunting that down I heard tell of A Book Dragon by Donn Kushner - from the School Library Journal review on Amazon:
"Dragons are scarce these days, but they can still be found if you know where to look. Young Nonesuch, seeing his proud family wiped out by brutish humans during the Wars of the Roses, shrinks down to the size of a large insect to escape notice . . . Something draws him to a gloriously-illustrated Book of Hours, and he accompanies it on its bumpy journey through the centuries. It comes to rest at last in the back room of a quiet bookstore on this side of the Atlantic, and Nonesuch guards it there still; a small, ferocious presence, seldom seen but comforting nonetheless."

Two more, since this reminds me: a book for perhaps 8 to 12ers, about a boy who finds and befriends a fossil snake? (It comes to life, I think. And talks?) And another - similar (perhaps more 8 to 10-ish) age, about a boy who stumbles into an alternate reality where things are more or less the same, except that all the humans are dinosaurs . . or perhaps it's about a boy who stumbles into an alternate reality where the dinosaurs are humans?

Stefan: My best sympathies. I keep wondering: if you need two incomes to raise kids and pay the rent, and if nobody knows whether they're going to have a job next week or not, could this possibly have a depressing effect on the birthrate? And if, for argument's sake, it did, could this have some impact on the future ability of the Western nations to care for their old people? Which, guys, is us.

So, does anybody around here know a real huge lot about American history and politics from about 1760 to the Constitutional Convention?

I'm especially interested in people doing one thing or another about slavery during that period, from any standpoint, for any goals.

On a related subject, stuff about Benjamin Franklin and his family?

And another related subject -- Henry Laurens and John Laurens?

(Yes, I'm going to the library, but I found some really nice stuff when I asked the nice fellow and he told me to pay close attention to South Carolina)

Lucy K,
Walter Isaacson recently wrote a bio of Franklin, which is now out in paperback.

I'd look into the abolition movement in Britain to see if there were contacts with the colonies.

No help with Laurens.

Patrick, numbered comments can be done in Movable Type with the "<MTCommentOrderNumber>" variable. See here.

Thirding the question, "What's a FAQK?"

Does no one know, or is the universal silence part of the NEFA* conspiracy?

* NEFA: Never Explain the Effing Acronyms. Seen frequently prowling the newsgroups.

Jack Ruttan: Clearly, you had a proper upbringing.

Lori: my guess is it's a no-one knows. Acronym Finder doesn't have it. The earliest place I found it was from 1999. It has a similar tone and Lore Sjöberg was involved. Mind, it also relates to dnaA Chromosomal replication initiator protein but I just didn't feel like going there....

For songs in the public domain, if the writer is known but the song's copyright has expired, or if it's just billed as "traditional," there are no mechanical royalties paid. If it's listed as "trad./arranged by [artist]," then the artist gets a percentage of the royalties.

The Strawbs once decided to record a traditional song for the b-side of a single just to get everybody in the band a piece of the royalties. So, on the back of their hit "Part of the Union" was a piece called "Will You Go," credited as "Trad.Arr.Cousins/Hudson/Lambert/Weaver/Ford." But while it was a song often performed by folk artists (also called "Wild Mountain Thyme"), it turned out out to have been relatively-recently composed, by Francis McPeake, so the royalties ended up going out of the band. (Very successful single, too.)

Jesus is my superhero!

Incredibly funny. Has to be seen to be believed.

Stefan,

Just catching up on this thread. Sorry to hear the news. Crossing my fingers for you.

Well, I'm still employed, but at least two close long-term cow-orkers are gone and massive changes in organization and job responsibilities are underway.

You never get used to these things. It gets worse.

I made three pans of brownies last night and left them in the break room. As my manager says, "chocolate prozac."

Now I just need to make it through the reorg meeting so I can go home and make up for getting one hour of sleep last night.

Dan S. - OUTSTANDING (or a big Charlie Brown "That's it!" - take your pick)!!! Thank you so much. It's one of those books that I loved as a kid and for some reason lost. The title has been niggling in the back of my brain ever since. Every time I see the "Eragon" cover it stirs up old memories.

Lucy K., an article in the current Smithsonian has an interesting take on slavery and freedom during the American Revolution. See http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2006/may/presence.php. The author (Simon Schama, a man who knows how to write history) says "Seeing the Revolutionary War through the eyes of enslaved blacks turns its meaning upside down." Following the links, turns out this is from his new book _Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution_, due out May 1 according to Amazon. Should be controversial and fascinating...

And if, for argument's sake, it did, could this have some impact on the future ability of the Western nations to care for their old people? Which, guys, is us.

Well, as a thirty-something, I'm praying that social security and pensions are enough to get my parents and in-laws through retirement/old age without leaning too much on us;* and pretty much convinced we (husband and I) will be getting absolutely no help from the gov't in our old age.

*personally, I would be willing to pay more taxes to see this happen.

Loved the particle on how to do the Haka. Not that I ever would. It's sort of like wearing a clan tartan when you're not entitled, only more so. And I am here to say that, done properly, it's freaking terrifying.

hp: There is a fairly easy quick-fix to the Social Security problem. Remove the wage cap built in to OASDI.

(Puts on former SSA employee hat.)

Currently, you (generic) pay OASDI taxes on wages up to $96,000 per year. It has been noted by some experts that if this cap were removed, the money coming in would offset the baby boom bulge...

The Republicans don't want to do this as it would be raising taxes. (I think of it as everyone paying their fair share, especially if they're planning on collecting benefits down the road.)

As for your parents' and in-laws' situation, do you know if they will be getting pensions or have any sort of savings toward said retirement?

Social Security benefits are meant to meet one third of a beneficiary's retirement income needs. The other two thirds should come from a pension and personal savings.

If your parents and/or in-laws do not have these other income sources, things could get difficult.

(takes off former SSA employee hat)

Dave Luckett: I've heard this rumour that, in the filming of the Two Towers, a bunch of arty students (playing the Elvish army at Helm's Deep) were somewhat intimidated by the physically larger stuntmen playing Orcs.

So they did a Haka at them.

Unfortunately for them, almost all of the 'orcs' were rugby players as well as stuntmen and did a haka back. In full Uruk Hai makeup.

That doesn't appear to be on the DVDs, but I'd certainly pay to see a squadron of Uruk Hai doing the Haka.

(and diasp oir.net (without spaces) still triggers a ban for questionable content.)

I haven't seen any tape of Uruk-Hai doing a haka (that would be coool though). But on the DVD, they explain that the Uruk-Hai all banging their spears on the ground in unison started off as a blowing-off-steam sort of thing, and they put it into the movie.

Lore wrote several FAQKs for his now-deceased humor magazine Brunching Shuttlecocks. They started with his Vampire: The Masquerade FAQK, so one presumes it was meant there to be all gothick, though after the subjects diverged, he responded to a questioning reader that it stood for "Frequently Asked Questions, Kevin".

Fossilized snake! I read that!! Isn't there a little girl involved, who sometimes wears the talking fossilized snake as a bracelet? The snake rests in a small piece of rock, and when it's not there, it leaves a little coiled indentation. (I have no actual information to contribute, you realize.) (And suddenly I understand why I instantly liked Spellbreaker.)

TNH, speaking of:
"It was a circle of floor-to-ceiling strings -- okay, either thick strings or very thin rods -- that had glycerine droplets constantly running down them. I think the idea was that it would look like slow-motion rain."

I recall seeing such a thing in minature as a kid. There was this...statue-tchochke-thing that was made of a golden dome hanging over a cupid (?) statue, with the rods at 45 degree angles. A faint hum emenated from the base as the gylcerin (or oil?) was endlessly recirculated. It couldn't have been more than ten or twelve inches high. The fake gold color, the bright light in the base, the over the topness of the decoration, the nudity of the cupid and the artificialness of the "rain" combined into a metaphysical squick that was exceptionally creepy to my 7 or 8 year old sensibilities.*

Very creepy. Anyone have any idea what it actually was?
-r.
*I mean, we're talking an enduring sense of wrongness, like cthulu fthagn, ai type.

Stefan: Glad to hear you've still got your job.

As for your parents' and in-laws' situation, do you know if they will be getting pensions or have any sort of savings toward said retirement?

Social Security benefits are meant to meet one third of a beneficiary's retirement income needs. The other two thirds should come from a pension and personal savings.

If your parents and/or in-laws do not have these other income sources, things could get difficult.

The in-laws have a very good chunk of investments + a pension from a large corp that still hasn't done anything to cut pension benefits yet. I suspect their investments are even more than we know about.

The parents have (1) a 25+ year teacher's pension, (2) a partial federal pension (father was an on-and-off gov't employee; I don't fully understand what benefits he has from these jobs), (3) a small pension from a large NFP. But no investments and a small 401(k) balance, although my father is still working and still putting moneny into a 401(k). I believe the teacher's pension (mother) is one of those that results in opting out of her social security benefits, so that's a hit to them. They do have a house currently worth half a million, though.

(Most worried about the parents, obviously; I think the in-laws should do fine.)

I worked as a volunteer for a hospital in the early 70s, they trained us bigger teens to be transportation orderlies (the lifting training has stayed with me to this day and is why I have a good back...)

They had one of those lamps in the Radiology Department, it had a light, and a venus statue in the middle, and strings around it with a constant glycerin or oil-like fluid dripping down. If I recall, the thing was about 24-28" tall, and it was a hanging lamp.

I really really don't want to think about one that large (in the shopping mall). Eeuw. though if it attracted insects, I'd be inclined to believe the liquid was glycerin.

hp: Being a teacher, your mother is covered by that State pension you mentioned. It's considered to be equivalent to Social Security benefits.

If your father is eligible for Social Security, your mother can file for it as his spouse BUT any benefits she gets will be subject to the 'pension offset' which WILL reduce the amount she receives. Lots of married Federal and State employees are running up against this one (women take a worse hit on this than men do, usually because they're in lower paying jobs).

Federal pensions are odd beasties, how much your father receives will be based on how long he worked (total) for the government. Encourage him to put as much in the 401(k) as possible.

Sounds like the in-laws are set, but I think you've got grounds to worry over the parents.
Good luck!

rhandir, search "rain lamp" on eBay and you'll see lots -- with Venus, Cupid, generic nekkid wimmen, and even Madonnas. Very kitschy, even back in the day. I remember them in places like Italian restaurants with grotto-themed decorations and the kind of department stores that sold gilded flatware and brocade luggage sets.

As a youngster, I used to stand outside the lighting shop (Bowery Lighting, IIRC) in Kings Plaza and mock those lamps, with their pathetic faux-gilded Venuses and gooey stuff dripping down fishing line.

Many of my neighbors actually owned those lamps, because they went so well with the Rococo Italianate furniture (slipcovered in plastic, of course) and the plush olive carpeting.

I would, however, have loved to see a giant version, if only for the outsized mocking it would inspire.

Now I almost want one of those lamps...

Oh dear. Rain lamps. I remember those. Sort of like a hidden-in-sight trip toy.

From the funky of the 70's, oh Lord, deliver us!

Thanks, Lori, that's exactly what I need. But I'm going to order it from Bookshop Santa Cruz, not Amazon, because BSSC is a fantastically reliable place to order from and when I walk twelve blocks to pick up my order I get to browse around some more.

Larry Brennan wrote: "I would, however, have loved to see a giant [rain lamp] version, if only for the outsized mocking it would inspire." May I present ...

Australia's (& "the Southern Hemisphere's") first "shopping - community centre" - Roselands - opened on October 11th, 1965. Its centrepiece and symbol was the Raindrop Fountain: 15 miles of clear nylon thread suspended from the ceiling, with drops of water constantly trickling down into a pool. An image: Raindrop Fountain, Roselands
It was removed in a remodelling project in 1988. A new, quite different fountain was recently installed.

See Suburban Icons: A Celebration of the Everyday, by Steve Bedwell (ABC Books, November 1992 ISBN 0733301908 a "45,000 word (160pp) humorous Australian social history book") for more.

acronym finder

Just to nitpick, Ka Mate isn't the All Blacks' Haka.

It is one that they perform, but isn't theirs. It was originally a Ngati Toa haka, in celebration of the high chief of Ngati Toa, Te Rauparaha, surviving after hiding from another chief in a pit. The fact that it is the All Blacks Haka gives rises to oddities, such as South Island Maori performing a North Island haka, historic enemies of Ngati Toa performing a Ngati Toa haka, etc.

One thing to encourage is people perfoming haka other than Ka Mate. It gets wearing at sports events seeing that nth rendition of Ka Mate.

Lori, I've been disabled so long that the SS COLAs are bringing my SS up to almost the same amount as the private disability insurance (which doesn't have COLAs). On the other hand, the private disability stops when I turn 65.

Janet Croft,
Thanks for the google-fu! You are very kind.*

You wrote:
Now I almost want one of those lamps...
Now I am tempted to photoshop a cthulhu statue into one of those pictures. I think it would be...appropriate.

What is it about some kinds of kitch that to the subsequent generation you get the "ugghh" reaction sometimes and the "oooh!" reaction other times?

["Oooh!=restaurants in the shape of brown derbies. That's cool!]
-r.

*as are a number of other people in the Fanfiction thread who quoted or responded to me. Yay!

Oh my, the things you find when you start googling those rain lamps. An ebay seller named "britney naked". Someone putting in vegetable oil instead of mineral oil and "It turns out that the smell from that stuff gets pretty bad in a warm house for a couple of days."

Then there is the story of the inventor, Darrell Johnson Who prior to inventing* it worked at a Hollywood set company... "Clark Gable was my favorite because he would take me once a month to get his car serviced and buy me a malt while we waited," And after his rain lamp business was cut short by a hurricane... ...he later had walk on roles in "Kojak," "Hunter," "Highway to Heaven," "Dallas" and "Xena Warrior Princess."

Oh, and to bring it full circle, in the very forum
where I dug that last bit up:

...there was a mall, very 50's/60's style, that had a HUGE one of those in the middle of the mall. ..
I guess it wasn't a lamp per se, but had to be 20 feet tall, with plastic plants under it, and oil dripping down the guy wires. Got kinda nasty as the mall got more abandoned, that stuff collected a lot of dust....
I was fascinated by it.

-r.
btw: Best resource yet: http://www.simnia.com/rain_lamps/

*okay, there were multiple patents issued to multiple people. History isn't that tidy.

Re: Presidential fan-fiction

You've all seen this, right? You really have to follow the whole thing... it develops in ways that you just can't anticipate.

Thanks, Taper! I'd found the Brunching Shuttlecocks FAQKs, but not the reader mail.

Another entry for the "Wingnut or Satire?" file.

Tim: Unfortunately, the author slipped up and said "but might do some day." Clearly a non-American construction. Still pretty funny, though.

Another one for the annals of self-publishing:

http://www.beckysweb.co.uk/beckysblog/2006/03/conversational-ebonics.asp

I still get a mental impression of one of those lamps every time I smell certain incense flavors or walk into a brass shop. I don't know why. It's the same incense that makes the tip of my tongue go numb.

For some reason it brings to mind wire butterflies with a panty-hose like fabric stretched over their wings, and those capiz shell hangy things, too.

I hesitate to make fun of any sixties/seventies decor item, because every time I do, someone will come in and ask if we stock it. We just got big wooden spoon and fork pairs in on the seasonal truck. Blech.

J Austin: We just got big wooden spoon and fork pairs in on the seasonal truck. Blech.

*Snork* My old neighbors had these too.

Then again, we put in a dropped ceiling in the kitchen to hide the original tin. To say nothing of the copper-colored appliances, faux-marble formica counters and wood-like laminate cabinets. (Of course, this took the room from 1920 to 1972.)

Then again, we put in a dropped ceiling in the kitchen to hide the original tin.

I recently removed a number of 1970s expanded polysterene ceiling tiles from my kitchen. Of course, this involved taking one outside and putting a match to it. In the interests of science and all.

The experience was educational and sobering. We'd had those tiles for three years and done nothing about them until then.

Randomly changing the subject: has everyone seen this? I'm aware there's a solution out there now, but am still trying to crack it myself. :)

For reference, the cryptogram is:

smithycodeJaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzvin

It's unclear whether 'smithycode' is part of the cryptogram or the key.

OK, what's a haka? Other than a kind of dance?

rhandir sez: Now I am tempted to photoshop a cthulhu statue into one of those pictures. I think it would be...appropriate.

rhandir, that would be ... well, I can't decide between eldritch and squamous, but that would nudge it from "almost want" to "the world would somehow be a better place if this existed." And it needs to go on the cover of a collection of Lovecraft parodies and fanfic.

Ack! I broke the blog!

Janet Croft,
Well, Cthulu has this cousin, see, patron Elder God of LiveJournal.

Ow! ow! ow! That's great!

Greg, I thought I broke the blog with my longing for a Cthulhu rain lamp...glad to see it wasn't necessarily the Elder Gods decreeing some things were not meant to be.

Yeah, I think that was the sound of one of the upstream nameservers falling over and getting rebooted. After painstakingly investigating the cause of the outage, I emailed TNH with my findings. Naturally, things were resolving again just fine as soon as I hit send.
-r.

A haka is a sort of dance the way scumble is a sort of drink.

a haka is a dance the way ol' painless is a sedative.

crap, no hotlinking allowed....

http://figuresoffortune.bravepages.com/Reviews/images/minigun/minifront2.jpg

WOW . . .

Rush Limbaugh arrested for prescription drug fraud.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12536446/

Wait . . . RELEASED ON BAIL? For cripes sake, how can we feel safe if they allow people like that to roam the streets?

It says on CNN, fraud by concealing information to get prescriptions. Not strictly drug charges, but drug-related. (Sounds like he wasn't telling doctors he had prescriptions already.)

Re: the Limbaugh thing, I wonder if this is new purchasing behavior or related to the old scandal.

If it's new, the preferential treatment he's getting is totally outrageous. If he was a poor kid from Appalachia or the Intermountain West, they'd be throwing the book at him. (Hillbilly Heroin, dontcha know.)

I also can't imagine what kind of doctor would write a painkiller Rx for him right now. Sounds negligent to me. (And maybe this is where pharmiacists could ethically refuse to fill a prescription.)

Greg, you do not speak of the drink, then, but another Ol' Painless? ... <rummages further> ... Ah, good description in a review here.

For those with fast connexions,
video.google.com/videosearch?q=haka
brings up individual, street, student, TV commercial, & even scottish versions of the haka, including the footage of the new All Blacks' "offici