Sphinx, in her hat

Just right for the season

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:37:53 GMT

Earlier today I picked up the second to the last copy of Twilight that was left in the video rental place. Now that I have come back from viewing the costumes up on Broadway, I am going to spend the rest of the evening in unabashed self-indulgence. As cupcake_goth says: Spaaaaarkly vampires.

Writer's Block: Confessions of a couch potato

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:34:31 GMT

What is the longest uninterrupted period of time you've ever watched TV? Were you alone or with a friend/partner? Do you tend to watch more TV when you're happy, depressed, or simply bored?

View 719 Answers

Because of the internet, I actually know the answer to this question: 10 hours on April 20, 2003. I was a regular poster, at the time, in a forum that was devoted to TV topics and the post I made about my marathon is still there. I begin: I feel like an AA member coming in to confess to a bender. The TV was on from when I came home from brunch to when I finally went to bed.

My viewing included a couple hours of Food network, a couple of archaeology shows on the Discovery channel, an episode of one of Michael Palin's travel documentaries, the first installment of the miniseries Helen of Troy, two episodes of Masterpiece Theater one in real-time, one taped and a documentary about terrorist attacks. I think this adequately illustrates how cable TV gives even the bookish an equal opportunity to be a couch potato. And how, if you really want to get things done, you probably shouldn't even own a television.

I like how I closed a post about my second-longest marathon (only 8 hours that time): The checks are still unwritten for my bills, my roots are still showing and I'm going to run out of energy in about half an hour. Just in case, during the week, I wonder what *did* I do with all that time I had on the weekend, here's my answer.

Wizard of Radio

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:51:21 GMT

On Sunday I listened to one of the best radio shows I've ever heard. Studio 360 did a whole show on the Wizard of Oz: books, movies and other spin-offs.

http://www.studio360.org/americanicons/episodes/2009/08/28

Particularly good are Salman Rushdie talking about "Somewhere over the Rainbow" and the coming about of and the differences in the Russian version of Oz. Go! Click! Listen! It's good stuff. And it is possible to just listen to parts of it.

Fun thing found in a book at work

Fri, 29 May 2009 00:02:26 GMT

From: Culture Shock! A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette: USA

Once you've accepted an invitation to a party, you must attend. If something happens to prevent you, telephone with your excuses as soon as possible. People work hard to give a party; you must remember that it's nearly always your hosts, not the servants, who have spent the day cooking and cleaning, and they can be very upset if you don't show up.

The good news is that I didn't have a heart attack

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:06:28 GMT

The Bad news is that I have yet another unneccessary trip to the emergency room to put on my credit card bill along with a ride in an ambulance and a hospital stay. It really sucks to have nuisance ailments whose symptoms imitate the warning signs of a heart attack. Carried out on a gurney in the glow of those flashing red lights, people looking out their windows to see what the fuss is about...and it's either acid reflux or a panic attack. If only there was a way to test for those things when the EMT arrives other than eliminating the fact that it *wasn't* heart-related first.

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 06:54:30 GMT

I am rediscovering, as I do every year around this time, that I am never so interested in getting cleaning projects done around the apartment as I am when it's time to sit down and do my taxes.

Book talk

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:43:38 GMT

Hey, x_ice. Noticed that, as predicted, you weren't able to make it to the March meeting for the Speculations group at Elliott Bay. Did your kitties eventually accept the intrusion of The Lonely Werewolf Girl into your world? How long did it take you to finish?

Setting speed records did seem to be a hallmark of most of the readership for the book. Me, for example. 558 page book and I not only finished in time for the meeting, I finished early. When I last saw Jim at work that week before, he hadn't even bought the book yet. He got it Saturday and finished it over the weekend. Even some of the people who didn't like it admitted that it did have a way of pulling you through the pages.

Both the biggest thumbs up and thumbs down about the book was that it was a popcorn read. All story and nothing to think about. Our Elliott Bay leader found that to be a relief and relaxation. Two mainstream readers, who were there because that meeting was the only one that fit in their schedule, said that they felt they were wasting their time and they couldn't finish. Tori was madly conflicted. She was embarassed to be seen reading it, but she still couldn't put it down; and said that even if she didn't think it was that good of a book she won't be putting it out on the free table at work, and when the sequel comes out (yes, there will be) she probably will buy it and read it too. Not only does she know there is going to be a sequel she knows what it's called: Queen Vex. (Doesn't that just speak volumes of future turns of plot?)

Comparisons were made to Buffy and to the Stepanie Meyer vampire romances. The latter brought one of the mainstream ladies out of her shell to protest vociferously. Oh no, this book was NOTHING like the Twilight books, those were GOOD. I tried to get her to compare and contrast. She said that she thought Meyer's writing style was better, "I like her ideas." (???) She did admit that the basic appeal of the Twilight books was Meyer's spot-on ability to capture what pushes women's erotic buttons. And that, apparently, is what makes her a better writer.

Where the Buffy comparison works the strongest is the degree of characterization. The Lonely Werewolf characters aren't fleshed out in a way that a literature professor would acknowledge as being fully three dimensional, but they aren't completely flat either. Like characters in favorite comics they do have recognizable qualities that make people latch on to them and love them. The Fire Queen and her fashion traumas was mentioned and the cool, white, deadpan Dominil.

There really turned out to be a lot to talk about, which we kind of doubted going in. It was fun. Sorry you couldn't go. Here are my minutes. Hope this helps.

Gunslinger Girl

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 03:54:55 GMT

I've been having an anime orgy this weekend with the various titles available to me via Comcast's On Demand feature. I want to see as much of it as I can before I have to cancel my digital cable and bust myself down to rock-bottom basic.

One of the places that I know you can find anime is under IFC Free. (Path: Cutting Edge > IFC Free > Anime) What they have available there now is two episodes of this really unnerving series called Gunslinger Girl.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunslinger_Girl

It's funny how in the world of anime there is this whole bumpercrop of kids/teenagers who suddenly become masters of the sword in some way or some otherwhere and we take it all in stride. If you watch anime you also see children/teenagers put in the control seats of giant fighting machines called mecha. Doesn't take too long to take that in stride too. But these little girls with their machine guns rat-a-tatting away is just really disturbing. You'd think it would be the same thing, but it is not. I watched the one episode just to see what it was about. I decided that I didn't need to see anymore, and I don't want to become accustomed to it.

Chapter title found in a book at work

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:30:55 GMT

"Old McDonald Has No Farm: He Dies, She Dies, Sold."*

Clever. Depressing as all get out. But clever.

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:39:48 GMT

Hey purple_mark...

Maybe those apocolyptic images are making the rounds in people's night thoughts. I also slept in this morning culminating in a dream that Mt. Rainier was starting to erupt. There was black smoke coming out of the top of it as we looked south and the pumice that was falling out of the sky was also black like little lumps of coal.

snow...

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:04:04 GMT

How weird for it to be snowing when half the sky is blue.

Lonely Werewolf Girl

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:28:53 GMT

The March book for the Speculations book group at Elliott Bay is The Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar. Just started it this morning. I was kind of hesitant about the choice -- it's so much fatter than his other book that we also looked at (The Good Fairies of New York)-- but now that I've started reading it I've realized it's going to be a breeze.

This reads like a print version of the movie Underworld. The characters all seem to have this penchant for leather clothing and don't so much talk to each other as banter with icy wit. Lots of pop culture references. The book even has some imbedded suggestions for a sound track. Lots of fun next month, I see, without any of that worrying substance.

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 08:06:54 GMT

Jimmy Kimmel at his after-the-Oscars show: "Slum Dog Millionaire won best picture this year. It was the favorite going in. Looked like the only way it might lose was if it picked Sarah Palin as a running mate."

Writer's Block: Listening In

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 21:21:46 GMT

Even if you're not actively eavesdropping, you can hear some interesting things. What's the best conversation you've ever overheard?

View 405 Answers

Walking home from the store on election day, I overhear a girl on a cell phone:

"Mom! It's 297!"

President Obama. It's still hard to believe, but wonderful to behold.

Bus hanging over I-5

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:20:44 GMT

I decided to take another snow day, so I am home to hear the helicopter hovering over Denny. Thought I would check the tv news to see what it was all about. Two charter buses slid down Thomas (why on EARTH were they going down that street? That is not a gentle incline.) and crashed through the rail. The whole front end of one is hanging over I-5. The other broke the rail but is still all on the street. Miraculously nobody is hurt and everybody has gotten off the buses through the back windows. Yikes! I'm just about ready to vow not to leave my apartment until the temperature goes above 32 degrees.

Vellum

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:06:52 GMT

The last thing that I read from on Thanksgiving, third time around the circle, was Vellum by Hal Duncan. It's a very chewy book and not to everybody's taste, what with having to decipher, everytime there's a page break, which of the parallel universes in which the book is set that the narrative has hopped to this time.

But I love the way the book begins:

"A burning map. Every epic," my friend Jack used to say, "should start with a burning map. Like in the movies. Fucking flames burning the world away; that's the best thing about those old films," he said, "when you see this old parchment map just...getting darker and darker in the center, crisping, crinkling until suddenly it just...fwoom."

That was Jack for you: if you asked him what he wanted for his birtday he would tell you an explosion. Jack was crazy, but as I flicked forward through the Book, faster and faster as each page fed in me a growing sense of horror and awe, I thought of what he'd said. I thought of gods and tragedies, legends and histories, and movies that opened with scrolling tales of ancient times. The vellum pages beneath my hand flickered under a light that wasn't fire, however, but rather the pale blue of the underground vault's flourescent lights; and if there was a burning it was in my head, a fire of realization, of revelation. Still I couldn't shake the feeling that at any second the world around me would be torn away in flames and ashes, stripped back to reveal a scene of carnage choreographed as in some lurid Hollywood flick, and soundtracked with a crashing clashing music over screams and sounds of war.

Art

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:29:35 GMT

My second "reading" on Thanksgiving was actually a song by Tanya Davis. I heard it first on a radio show that features Canadian artists, but it was brought back to my attention by a video on YouTube. I like how the song seems to address a male muse of creativity like he was a slightly questionable boyfriend.

The video may be a touch on the cute side for some on my friends list. If you feel the glycemic index rising just turn around and listen to the song.

The taste of money

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:37:24 GMT

I'm feeling chatty about the things I read from for the brunch group's annual feed-and-read on Thanksgiving. I guess ron_drummond got me going in his reply to my first post about the event. So...one two three...here they are.

From The Wine Trials by Robin Goldstein:

I believe that wine actually tastes better when you know it's expensive, in every meaningful sense of the word "taste". For wine as for medicine, the placebo effect is not a mere delusion; it is a physical reality.

Goldstein goes digging into the science of taste perception and comes up with the most intriguing examples that illustrate his point.

The experiment I was most impressed with was done at Cal Tech. The subjects were put in MRI machines and sipped their sample wines through tubes -- lots of drawbacks on getting a full experience that way -- but the researchers wanted to be able to look at the brain during the tasting experience. When the subjects were given a wine they were given a price. Sometimes it was the right price; sometimes the price was considerably lower or considerably higher; sometimes the subject was given the same wine twice but with different prices.

Result? [S]ubject's preferences correlated with the fake prices of the wine, not with the actual prices. When people thought that they were drinking $90 wine they loved it, even if it was actually $10 wine. What's more, blood flow to a brain area commonly associated with pleasure -- the left medial orbitofrontal cortex -- also was correlated with the fake prices of the wines, but not with the actual prices. For the first time the neural correlates of price expectations creating pleasure were visible.

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:00:24 GMT

Hope everybody had at least a little bit of celebration to go to for the just-past holiday. My day was grand, but it usually is, as this is the holiday that the brunch group's annual feed-and-read is attached to. Always a good spread plus lots of wine and bubbly this year. To keep myself steady on my feet, I alternated my glasses of wine and champagne with cups of tea made from a new tea bag each time. My strategy worked, but I'm afraid I'm going to be up for awhile now.

Since rhonan is on my friends list let me natter a bit about the libations. I was asked to bring wine, and I took my commission very seriously. I went tasting at a couple of wine stores on the Hill last Saturday as research (hardship assignment), but, in the end, settled on the wine I liked the best at a blind tasting I attended this fall: Trimbach gewurtztraminer. There was another gewurtz at the party and they both had the lightness and acidity, but the Trimbach has a blossom of sweetness that opens up on the tongue after you swallow. I think that wines that work in stages are just more interesting.

I also brought some champagne, partly because I knew one of the books I was going to be reading from was The Wine Trials. It's a book about 100 wines under $15 that the authors discovered, from blind tastings, get a better reaction than wines with labels of a fancier name and price when the label is not known. Domaine Ste. Michelle from that winery up the road beat out Dom Perignon when people didn't know what it was. I thought this called for a little taste test of our own. Nice stuff, the tiny bubble kind as opposed to alchoholic seltzer.

Speaking of champagne, I think I'm getting a bit of champagne head. Guess I should go see to getting hydrated and finding the Aleve.

It's on again

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:03:40 GMT

the South Park finale about the goths against the vampires.

Anybody else watch? I got some good laughs out of it. The conflict between the vampires and the goths reminded me of someone impatiently explaining to me about 15 or so years ago that many of the darklings of my acquaintance were actually gamer goths. And that preceding adjective supposedly negated the noun. He had that same mannerism of the one character who is constantly tossing the long lock of hair out of his eyes. That detail was spot on. And there was more than just that one. It was fairly well done. And when you think about it, it was only appropriate that there had to be a musical interlude. Music is important in goth life. Burning down a Hot Topic store though? Why would you want to remove a source? There can never be too many black clothes.

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:54:37 GMT

Happy birthday to cupcake_goth who Sphinx hopes will forgive her for her somewhat awkward greeting at her party on Saturday. I have been away from gothdom for awhile, and I came to the conclusion that there would be no better occasion than that night's celebration to end my self-imposed exile. Hope your whole birthday weekend was splendid.

I generally look upon myself as a recovering goth, but all the memory lane tunes (so many of them that night!) would not allow me to stay away from the dance floor. Though my feet were fighting with me afterwards for my exhuberance (In THESE shoes? I don't think so...), I would have to say I had a pretty good time.

Celebration

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:42:54 GMT

Ron Drummond has posted a long musing on being in Harlem while watching the announcement of Obama's presidency.

http://ron-drummond.livejournal.com/18872.html

I was wondering what reaction might be going on in other cities. There were spontaneous street parties on Capitol Hill -- literal dancing in the street at the intersection of Broadway and John. If the Scandinavian-descended Seattleites can be carrying on in such a fashion, I thought, what might be going on elsewhere? I can't wait to see the news footage tomorrow.

While I was watching the celebration on Broadway it occurred to me that this is this generation's end of the War. I didn't see any photogenic kisses being exchanged, but a guy I didn't even know stopped and hugged me when I was walking up to Broadway.

purple_mark is here

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 07:19:42 GMT

He's back, with a user name he likes better and actual posts this time. Stop by and say hi. You know how a response or two does wonders for ones desire to stick around here when one is first getting started.

Quandary

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 07:04:45 GMT

The upcoming U.S.election is going to be a hard one for comedians whose subject matter is primarily political. Sandy Toksvig, the host of a BBC (yes even over there) radio show called The News Quiz, commented after a long recitation of what Sarah Palin had been up to this last week: "I love this woman so much. It's so difficult to know whether you don't want her to be elected, because, you know, you want the world to survive, or -- how hilarious the last five minutes would be."

Polymath

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:40:40 GMT

Hey ron_drummond. I saw Polymath tonight. And I just wanted to let you know that I was really taken with what scene you ended up being in. Delany relates very painful incidents and discourses on sensitive subjects all through out the film in such a matter of fact way. And it was when he was talking to you about the way he found to reach his students that he teared up. Wow. It's very memorable. And you were there.