2019 Holiday Season

    There's Christmas music on the CD-player (I didn't do it), some (a couple hundred, just the beginning) indoor Christmas decorations are up, and there's an artificial log in the fireplace.

Hallmark Christmas Movies

    Every freaking one of them.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    “I can’t believe you didn’t pack any weapons.  Some kind of handgun adapted for Martian air.”

    “Believe me.  I didn’t.”

    She hesitated.  “OK.  Well, I did.  In the back of the food lockers, on both the gliders.  I stowed away crossbows.  To work them, you just have to-“

    “Found them.  Took them out.  Dumped them.  Sorry, kid.”

    She felt unreasonably enraged.  “Why the hell?  Listen to me, Dad.  Weapons like that have helped keep me alive a long time in the Long Earth-“

    “Don’t hold with weapons.  Wouldn’t expect that from a guy from Wyoming, would you, Frank?  Weapons kill people, in the hands of idiots.  And since most of the human race are idiots-“

    (from The Long Mars by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter)

    4½*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Passwords

    Mine's "Gilgamesh Shakespeare", and I'll refrain from pointing out that there's only one "n" in "Cuneiform".

Art Appreciation Sunday

    I love the Realism movement.

Anarchy at the Library

    Today was library day for us. We supported anarchy by signing a petition (on the steps of the library) to make healthcare more accessible to people with pre-existing conditions.

Parties

    This is soooooo me.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Dad followed me.  He sat down with a loud exhalation and turned to stare at me.  After twenty-seconds of uninterrupted comical glaring he joked: “If you’re on drugs you can tell me you know.”

    I lowered the magazine and laughed a muffled response.  “If I was on drugs I would never tell you.”

    “Why not?” he feigned surprise and hurt.  “You’d be missing out.  We could share.  I have a cupboard full back home.”

    “Really?”

    “Sure.  Uppers, downers, lefters, righters.  I got the lot.”

    (from An Idiot In Love by David Jester)

    6*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Cursive History

    This is pretty much historically accurate.

Vocabulary Tuesday

    Makes sense to me.

Eye Test

    This really works!!

Book Excerpt for the Day

    “If I tell you this,” I said quietly, “it could be bad for you.”

    “Bad how?”

    “It could force you to keep secrets that people would kill you for knowing.  It could change the way you think and feel.  It could really screw up your life.”

    “Screw up my life?”  He stared at me for a second and then said, deadpan, “I’m a five-foot-three, thirty-seven-year-old, single, Jewish medical examiner who needs to pick up his lederhosen from the dry cleaners so that he can play in a one-man polka band at Oktoberfest tomorrow.”  He pushed up his glasses with his forefinger, folded his arms, and said, “Do your worst.”

    (from Dead Beat by Jim Butcher)

    9*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Art Appreciation Saturday

    "Nude Descending a Staircase" by Marcel Duchamp.  I posted this on Facebook to see if they'd delete it for its erotic content.

My Retirement Career

    I've found my retirement career goal - teaching folk music to bees.

Artistic Punnery

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Words were what excited Jim [Morrison], writing rather than singing them.  “I never did any singing,” he told Rolling Stone, looking back on his youth.  “I never even conceived it.  I thought I was going to be a writer or a sociologist, maybe write plays.  Anne expected her brother to become a poet “and be poor all his life”.  As an example of his intellectual interests, she notes that when he graduated from high school in 1961 he asked his parents for the complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche as a reward, which says something about the sort of boy he was and offers a key to understanding the performer he became.

    (from 27 – A History of the 27 Club… by Howard Sounes)

  9½*/10.  The complete review is here.

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I confess

    It was me.  I'm the Whistleblower.

Philosophy Monday

    When Good Enough just ain't good enough.

Overdue Book Charges

    I got an email from the Phoenix Library this past week, informing me that they have changed their policy, and will no longer be charging/collecting fines for overdue books. You're free to ignore the due dates, but at a certain point, they will charge you a "replacement fee", presumably to buy a new copy of the book.

    I have mixed feelings about this new policy.

Depeche Mode

    Admit it.  You sang that chorus as you read this.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    The door to the archway banged open and the three lads startled.  They looked at each other sheepishly; it was only Treasurer Fogg.  “Gentlemen,” Fogg nodded at the lads.  “Mrs. Sprye, my light and joy,” he said as he bent to kiss her upturned cheek.

    “Foggy come a’courting, he did ride,” Stephen sang, sotto voce.

    Ben and Tom chuckled.  Tom wondered why it was the highest poetry when youths and maids fell in love but basest comedy when persons of middle years did the same.  Their lumpish figures, he supposed.  And their appalling lack of shame.

    (from Murder By Misrule by Anna Castle)

    8*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Editing

    I do some pro bono editing and beta-reading on the side.  This is exactly what we're supposed to do.

Word For the Day

    Gleeking came up in a book I just finished reading.  It was set in the 1580's, and there are two definitions for the word, one modern, one archaic.

    I presume the archaic definition was the one the author intended for the book, and it is "joking" or "gibing", which fit the context of the passage in the book.

    The modern meaning is considerably different, although still akin to the 1600's version.  I'll let you google it.  I was quite amazed there was a specific word to cover this bodily action.

Acronym Tuesday

    Weird.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Almost immediately young Boyd had alienated the other Scouts with his nettlesome commentary and disdain for physical labor.  By the time the troop made its first expedition, Shreave had been accurately pegged as the resident slacker.  Soon after midnight a prankster had opened his sleeping bag and set loose a juvenile armadillo, which innocently began to explore Shreave’s armpits for grubs.  The unhappy camper had reacted by clubbing the bewildered creature to death with his boom box, a second-degree misdemeanor resulting in the troop’s ejection from the Lady Bird Johnson State Floral Gardens and Nature Preserve, and of course, in Shreave’s lifetime banishment from the Scouts.

    (from Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen)

    7½*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Flip-Flop Philosophy

Dia de Los Muertos

    Happy "Day of the Dead", everyone!

French class

    In truth, my favorite word to practice over and over again in French class was "non".