I see what you did there.

And I take issue with it!

A visual representation of the current state of my blog

via

The best quiz I've seen in quite a while

Go play 18th-Century Connecticutian or Muppet?

A YouTube meme that I can't quite understand

Make your own fake emergency broadcast alerts!

Tvärvägen - September

Nws from the world of Litratur

Word comes of the latest attempt at publishing a book-length lipogram (a lipogram is an extended piece of writing that purposely omits one or more letters).

Soffi Stiassni will be rewriting Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee using Georges Perec’s sans ‘e’ method derived in A Void.

The revised title is either yet to be released or is now "—– — —-."

Meanwhile I am delighted to notice that the Wikipedia entry for Gadsby is similarly lipogrammatic -- much to the consternation of some of the folks chiming in on the discussion page.

December will be magic again

Oh, Reuters! Can you help me decide if I should bother with my annual fun of looking at the UK pop charts and obsessing as to what will be the Christmas Number One Single?

As the festive season approaches, the best-selling Christmas songs of the past will probably have a yuletide chart encore. But missing from the holiday revelry will be much in the way of new Christmas-themed releases from mainstream pop acts.

Some of the blame rests with the enormously popular TV talent show "The X Factor," which for the fourth consecutive year will release its winner's debut single right before Christmas, effectively rendering the once-pitched battle for the season's No. 1 a one-horse race.

The "X Factor" victor's single is due after the show's December 13 finale. The strongest challenger is expected to be "Once Upon a Christmas Song," a charity tune by transsexual singer Geraldine, a.k.a. comedian Peter Kay.

Hmmm.

Oh YouTube! Can we have a listen to that "Once Upon a Christmas Song" song?



Oh dear.

Well, I'll keep an eye on it then.

Made up word of the day

PROCRUSTINATE: To obsessively waste precisely the same amount of time
every day.

Things I find

I was unaware that Sixpence None the Richer did a cover of "Don't Dream it's Over."

It sounds exactly the way I thought it would!

Great Moments in Fashion

"Teen-age girls in blue jeans, wearing the beret, horn rimmed glasses and goatee affected by Dizzy Gillespie, "bebop" music king, stand to have his autograph."


via

Great moments in philately

From the New York Times interview with Karl Rove:

Are you going to send him [Obama] a little note congratulating him?

I already have. I sent it to his office. I sent him a handwritten note with funny stamps on the outside.

What kind of funny stamps?

Stamps.

Heading into the holidays

I post this photo again, just because everyone loves it.




I am aware of all internet traditions!

Offered without comment.

via

Compare and contrast

I've been thinking that these images are oddly familiar:


I just figured it out!



(Got Futurama)

Hello Dog!

From the new Life Photo archive at Google:

Conductor Artur Rodzinski looks on sternly as his poodle jumps into his mink coat-clad wife's arms on 57th St. and 5th Ave.

Location:	New York, NY, US
Date taken:	April 1944
Photographer:	Nina Leen

It's Homecoming season, time to dust off those oldies for the sock hop!

But I like making titles for blog posts. Coming up with a good title is fun.

"Changing hair is uniquely possible in novels. In comics, looks must be iconic; in television, it's subject to actor cooperation and continuity; in radio, no one has hair."

via.

The White House, made from dog chews

Addendum: Hey! That's not the White House! It's the Capitol Building!

I should have noticed that.

The White House, Love It! Bite It!, Saatchi Gallery, London., originally uploaded by Jim Linwood.

Offered without comment.

 

via Pulp of the Day

The Corrugated Iron Club would like to have some words with you

You can find them here.

The winning design for the Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre is absolutely wonderful

Learn more here.

Elephant Jumping On Trampoline

Boof! Squeek! Nya nya nya!

I love this panel:

from I'm Learning to Share!

The end of an era

Standalone VCRs are no longer being made.

when the day is named

If we are marked to die, we are enow

To do our country loss; and if to live,

The fewer men, the greater share of honour.

God's will, I pray thee, wish not one man more.

By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,

Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;

It ernes me not if men my garments wear;

Such outward things dwell not in my desires:

But if it be a sin to covet honour,

I am the most offending soul alive.

No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:

God's peace, I would not lose so great an honour

As one man more, methinks, would share from me

For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more.

Rather proclaim it presently through my host,

That he which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart. His passport shall be made

And crowns for convoy put into his purse:

We would not die in that man's company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is called the Feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a-tiptoe when the day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall see this day and live t'old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say "To-morrow is Saint Crispian":

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars

And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words

Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,

Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now abed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

and on your left you can see a lack of a building

This is a photo of a build site. As near as I can tell, it's here.



There's not much to this - we were walking down the street, and I thought this looked cool so I took a photo of it.

I wasn't thinking about posting it now. I was following a link about "forgotten authors" and found myself looking at Christopher Fowler's blog.

He thought it was interesting as well and put up an almost identical photo. Took me a moment to figure out why it looked so familiar.

Stuck in the middle with you

I've just find my way to Meetways, a google maps mashup that finds the location halfway between two points and then suggests the nearest place to meet.

So I decided to try it out using someone from Manhattan who wants to have a working lunch with someone from Beverly Hills.

I figured that they would enjoy a slice or two as they worked out their deal.

And here's the result:

That's right on the border of Kansas and Nebraska.  I've never been to a Gambino's or a Casey's, but they look like fine enough places, and they are both hiring.  This means that if the folks from LA or NYC who've blown all their savings on the gas to get out to the power meeting have a Plan B waiting in the wings if the deal falls through.

And Meanwhile, behind the scenes

This post, as well as the two previous ones, were written from Zoho, rather than the Blogger interface.

I've said it before, I'm a sucker for the beta testing!

We are now departing on the non-linear vacation that you have just finished

I started this blog up knowing that I was getting ready to go on a trip.  So I started off talking about my trip with very few prior posts under my belt.

To keep my various posts about the trip in order, I back-dated everything so that when you go look at them now, you see them in a narrative order.

That isn't how we're going to do it this time.  For one thing, I now have people who are reading this on an RSS feed.  If I backdate posts too early, then it won't show up on the feed.

I'll post as I post, and nothing will be backdated.

Those in the audience who want a nice narrative order, stay tuned.

London Transit Posters

The London Transit Museum has a marvellous online archive of transit posters.

I really wanted a postcard of this one:

To start off with

In the run-up to going away, I decided to try out Tripit to dump all of my travel plans in.

One of the features that Tripit has is that it can print you out a detailed itinerary with all sorts of maps and directions.

Here is the map from my Tripit account of the location of our first hotel:

It also automatically gave us walking directions from Paddington Station, because we came in on the express train from Heathrow.

Now, where is the hotel, really?:

It seems that the Google Maps search function takes the phrase "Kensington Gardens Square" and uses it to find "Garden Mews, Kensington."

Garden Mews seems like a very nice little back alley, but it might benefit from streetlights so that people who show up a few hours after sunset aren't floundering around in the dark making sure there isn't a hotel hiding amongst the rubbish bins.

Pocket A to Z: 1
Google Maps: Nil

Speaking of McCluhan

I've been wondering about how McCluhan would have categorized the blogosphere. Hot or Cold?

Wikipedia, help me out here:

Hot media usually, but not always, provide complete involvement without considerable stimulus. For example, print occupies visual space, uses visual senses, but can immerse its reader. Hot media favour analytical precision, quantitative analysis and sequential ordering, as they are usually sequential, linear and logical. They emphasize one sense (for example, of sight or sound) over the others. For this reason, hot media also include radio, as well as film, the lecture and photography.
Cool media, on the other hand, are usually, but not always, those that provide little involvement with substantial stimulus. They require more active participation on the part of the user, including the perception of abstract patterning and simultaneous comprehension of all parts. Therefore, according to McLuhan cool media include television, as well as the seminar and cartoons. McLuhan describes the term "cool media" as emerging from jazz and popular music and, in this context, is used to mean "detached." (See: CBC Radio Archives)
This concept appears to force media into binary categories. However, McLuhan's hot and cool exist on a continuum: they are more correctly measured on a scale than as dichotomous terms.

Blogging can be both Hot (reading passively) and Cold (interacting by responding), depending on your individual choice. And if you are choosing to be a passive reader of an interactive medium, does that make it a Hot medium?

Also taking up my time

I recently discovered that the games put out by Everett Kaser have finally been adapted to run on Macs.

I spent four days solving this:

Oh, and did I tell you that I'm red/green/brown color blind? That made the puzzle extra fun!

One of the things I've been up to

I've finally taken the plunge and purchased Delicious to help me organize all of my media.

It's been quite a fine time, going shelf to shelf and waving everything in front of my iCam and watching the item magically appear on my virtual shelf. It's also good for my upper arms, especially with the art books and DVD boxed sets.

The only drawback is the UPC codes for some of my things are covered up by store labels, so I have to peel the labels off so the computer can look them up.

This means that I have to decide the fate of my favorite Borders price sticker (On Hugh Laurie's The Gun Seller):

Emil Sitka has a posse

Another in my long list of websites I've found my way to while completely forgetting about what led me there:

The Emil Sitka Fan Club

Wikipedia, can you tell us who Emil Sitka was?

Emil Sitka (December 22, 1914 – January 16, 1998) was a veteran American actor who appeared in hundreds of movies, short films, and television shows, is best known for his numerous appearances with the Three Stooges. . . He is remembered mostly for a line of dialogue he keeps repeating in the Three Stooges short, Brideless Groom, where he appears as the justice of the peace attempting to marry Shemp and Dee Green: "Hold hands, you lovebirds!"

If you want to see Brideless Groom, here it is at Google Video.

Towards the end of his life, "He was in demand at various Three Stooges conventions, and had numerous requests from Three Stooges fans to appear at their wedding to say 'Hold hands, you lovebirds!'" I haven't been able to find out if he actually agreed to do this. "Hold hands, you lovebirds!" is engraved on his tombstone.

More from Wikipedia:

Moe Howard asked Sitka if he could create a character to become the new "middle stooge" to replace the ailing Larry [Fine]. Sitka accepted the invitation and became an official member of the Three Stooges; publicity photos of Sitka in this capacity with Howard and Curly Joe DeRita were circulated. Sitka named his character "Harry" and thought of him as being extremely conscientious to the point of ridiculousness. Two feature film offers for this reconstituted Three Stooges were considered, but this version of the group never acted together on film. The Three Stooges officially ended with the death of Moe Howard in 1975.

Sitka's only appearance as a Stooge seems to have been for the photoshoot announcing that he had joined the trio.

USB Wine!

oh dear.

Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Blue's Clues and Magnum PI. The story should use puberty as a plot device!

Generated by the Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Idea Generator

This Moment in Pod got in the house like a pigeon from hell

My plan had been to finish up a fair amount of behind-the-scenes blogging stuff before I left, and then when I came back I would be able to hit the ground running.

Unfortunately, I didn't finish up the things that I thought I would before I left, and on returning, I have been finding little time to catch up.

For the meantime, here's some songs that I just grabbed and threw into 8-tracks to see how it would work. There's no particular theme to it.

And he's back.

So I understand that while I was away the economy collapsed.

Gone Dark

I've been busy and not blogging very much at all this month. My way of fixing that is by setting everything aside and going off on an adventure.

I'll be back in a little while. See you then.

Twang

I was in a meeting the other day when all of a sudden something in my elbow went "twang" and for about half a minute I found myself in excruciating pain. On the plus side as I was in the middle of explaining something, my sudden change from normal business-speak to high volume swearing actually helped to get my point across. The pain subsided and my arm was mostly back to normal.

I decided to head off to the doctor as this was sort of an odd thing to have happen and I wasn't keen to have it happen again. So a few hours later I found myself purposely waving my now pain-free and completely mobile arm in front of the triage nurse.

She could find absolutely nothing wrong with it.

"Have you been playing tennis?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

At the time, I was sort of happy with this line of questioning, as I felt that it indicated that I must appear to be an active tennis-playing sort of fellow. In retrospect, I think it indicates that I must appear to be the sort of person who wanders off to randomly play some tennis and then completely forgets about it.

After deciding that this was nothing serious, she started writing up my visit in her computer.

"Now how would you describe this pain, again?"

"I would call it a 'twang'"

"Would you call it a 'throb?'"

"It felt more like a 'twang.'"

"How about a 'stabbing pain?'"

"Is there a problem with 'twang?'"

"It isn't really a medical term."

"Perhaps you can put it in quotes."

"I'm going to call it a 'throb.'"

That's the problem with the medical profession today = all the poetry has been sucked out.

Why yes, that is indeed a monkey washing a cat.

Every so often, someone hauls out this old clip of a monkey washing a cat:



It is an exciting clip. I started to wonder where it came from. Some newsreel? A home movie?

I've been trying to find that out. The problem is that searching for it has it's own barrier - the only terms that I can use to search are "monkey," "washing," and "cat." Searching for "monkey," "washing," and "cat" brings a whole lot of people doing the same thing that I just did a couple of sentences ago: posting the clip and saying "Look! A monkey washing a cat!"

The best I can find is this site - the cleverly titled MonkeyWashingCat.com. It doesn't have more information about the identity of the Monkey or the Cat, but it does have the largest amount of footage. You can watch the monkey pick up the cat!

Some day I will know more.

Harvest TIme Again

This year's grape harvest came a bit earlier than it should. There was a hurricane coming, and a squirrel had been having a nice feast - so half of Saturday afternoon was spent picking grapes in the drizzle. There's some left on the vine, either too green or hard to reach, perhaps enough to survive to be picked later.



So here's the haul, I spent the afternoon picking out the stems and the green ones. In honor of the squirrel, I am going to call this year's wine "Squirlot."

Greetings Google Overlords!

Today I am told by Blogger Buzz:

For more than a year, you have been able to view all the photos you've uploaded to your blog in Picasa Web Albums.

No.  

No, I haven't.

Blogger Buzz from March 8, 2007:

all the photos you've uploaded since December will appear in an album there, and we're working on migrating your older photos as well. (It'll take a while though - there are a lot of them.)

Either they've stopped working on it or something went wrong, as those older photos have NEVER come over.

I don't mind this being low priority, Google Overlords, but please don't lie to me.

Waffle Bike

"Waffle Bike is a fully weaponized waffle making device complete with call to prayer public address system."

NME brings us the best headline of the current presidential campaign so far.

See for yourself.

"Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame Catcher Carlton Fisk bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back"

"The Love Poem Project, in which we take love poems and swap out any mention of the word love."

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 70

Just a note. When I've had multiple ads in a post, I've always gone from top to bottom. This one I'm doing the bottom ad first. You'll see why.


The Delta Queen is now being operated by Majestic America, but it looks like this summer might be the last - it had been exempted from maritime safety regulations, but the exemption is about to lapse, meaning that it will be no longer considered seaworthy. Naturally, there is information on the site that you can share when you contact your Congressperson, the media and whichever Presidential Candidate you might think would be interested in lending a hand.

In other bits of the site, I notice that you can cruise the Alaskan Fjords in a riverboat!

Outdoor traders is now setting its sights on sporting goods and not on casual wear of the caliber that you see pictured here. If you really want to rock the Madras Patchwork Trouser look, I was able to find some from Brooks Brothers.

Madras fabric is a light summer weight cotton fabric that is most frequently printed with plaid patterns. It is named for the city of Madras, India which is now known as Chennai.

Who am I kidding? I mean, just look at that. If only it was in color. Sigh.

Well I'll be dashed!

The internet did this all by itself! Honest!

The sun always sets on the internet

Constant/Setting "is a simple website that displays in real time, any sunset images taken and posted to Flickr as creative commons that correspond to the cities where the sun is setting at the moment."

As you can imagine, some times of day have a bit more variety than others.

Picture time fun

Blogger in Draft is tinkering with the photo interface, so I've been noodling with random pictures to see how it works. This post is an excuse to play. Perhaps you will notice the pictures change size and move around!

In order to find the random pictures, I'm using my latest dum-head internet game:

1. Get a random page from Wikipedia
2. Search for the random thing on Google Image Ripper.

Let's play!

First the random article: Fanny Normann.

She was Max Schreck's wife, and had a part in Nosferatu, so when I put it in the ripper, the first image to pop up is a screen shot of her:

That's the only image of her that comes up. All the rest are such things as:

• Some pictures of an audience.
• Pictures of chairs
• A fish and a cellphone in an aquarium
• Two pictures of Natalie Portman
• Some LOLcats
• An antique print of Sam Houston
• A clipping from an antique book about pies.

This is great.

Here's another go:

The random article: "Liberty Corner"

Score!

Look at this neat old store:

They don't make em like that anymore.

And this gorgeous old map:

Plaque

plaque
Originally uploaded by 0tralala

"A Two-Headed Turtle Is Stolen in Brooklyn"

From the New York Times.

The article includes a bit of background to the care of two-headed turtles:

Turtle pellets must be broken into two pieces or the two heads will fight over the food.

And a bit of insight into the life of a two-headed turtle owner:

The turtle was nameless, in part because Mr. Casey is afraid of giving animals names lest he get too attached to them. He had been planning on having a naming contest. . . There was no rush, he said. "It’s not like a doggie needs a name. He won’t come when you call him.”

On Thursday, the creature killed Myrtle.

Jezebel provides an explanation for what's going on in a Vogue Magazine fashion spread.

And in other news

"A giant inflatable dog turd brought down a power line after being blown away from a Swiss museum."

Slavoj Zizek is a right jolly old elf

Here he is at the Guardian.

Hello, George

The Orwell Diaries have now started posting.

As of this writing there are three posts up.

Topics:

1. snakes
2. rain
3. rain and snakes

Thinking about something to say about this has caused my brain to start singing:

    All the snakes have drowned/and the sky is gray...

There is also some talk of apples.  Which go with snakes, I suppose.

I love strange travel books

Here's a list of ten - I am astonished to realize that I have none of them in my collection.  Currently.

That is a page recommender widget. I have no idea what it's for.

Added to the bottom of the right hand column is an "Amazon Page Recommender Widget"

Help your visitors discover relevant pages within your website, using Amazon's own recommendations technology - for free! Drive page views, session lengths, and referral fees by placing this widget on the pages you'd like to be recommended to your users. Amazon's unique understanding of your users lets us target related pages and products tailored to their individual tastes.

How this seems to work:

1. Joe Example is surfin' the internets and comes accross this humble blog.
2. Joe is already logged into Amazon, because he just purchased some books on Thermodynamics.
3. The Page Recommender Widget will give him a list of links to portions of this blog that mention the sorts of things that Amazon thinks Joe is interested in.  
4. The widget will also show Joe a list of things to purchase that he might be interested in.

The trouble I am having is that I can't really expect the widget to work for me, because while Amazon knows what I am interested in, I also know that I am interested in most everything that is on this blog, so if I look at the blog, with Amazon logged in, it will give me a list that is pretty similar to the list of things that it would give me anyway.  And if I'm not logged in, the widget won't work for me because Amazon doesn't know it's me and has no idea what I am interested in.

There's a fine line between clever and stupid.

It doesn't seem to be recommending pages yet, because it needs to learn (by watching the page traffic) what people are interested in.  Considering that the whole stated purpose of this widget is to help "drive page views," I think that seems a bit recursive.


Still, if it does something really clever for you, please leave a note.  And don't be surprised if it disappears.

Hello Fjords!

Telemegaphone Dale stands seven metres tall on top of the Bergskletten mountain overlooking the idyllic Dalsfjord in Western Norway.

When you dial the Telemegaphone’s phone number the sound of your voice is projected out across the fjord, the valley and the village of Dale below.

But there's trouble!

 Telemegaphone Dale is wind powered and self-reliant. Recently however, the weather has been exceptionally calm in Dale and there has been a massive amount of people calling.

I wonder if the folks working in the Dale Sweater factory are delighted to hear "Hello, Hello, is this really Norway? Hello?  Am I supposed to hear something?" echoing in the distance as they whomp up their traditional Norwegian knitwear.

Great Moments in Wikipedia Vandalism

Chunky Mario Delight!

Home decorating tips

The English Buildings blog alerts us to Derek Jarman's cottage in Dungeness.

I am particularly struck by the photo of John Donne's "The Sunne Rising" added to one side of the house in raised wooden letters.

I want to do this to my house!

(I am also reminded that every time I read the poem, I am filled with a desire to call somebody a "Sawcy pedantique wretch.")

I have absolutely no idea why I was looking at this,

But now you can too:

The Norwegian Submerged Floating Tunnel Company.

The submerged floating tunnel is an innovative concept for crossing waterways, utilizing the law of buoyancy to support the structure at a moderate and convenient depth. The tube like structure is flexible with respect to cross section, length and water depth. It can be held in place by columns, tethers or pontoons.

What could possibly go wrong?

So what becomes of you, my love?

A while ago, I commented on the worldwide proliferation of remakes of The Office (Next in line: Russia!)

Need Coffee provides an update with video. And Wikipedia has a handy chart.

Noted: Martin Freeman's haircut translates into all cultures!

Yeah, what he said

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried this device to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment's reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

--Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale

I want to read the transcripts.

From the Wikipedia page for Jaffa Cakes:

Under UK law, no VAT is charged on biscuits and cakes — they are "zero rated". Chocolate covered biscuits, however, are subject to VAT at 17.5%. McVities classed its Jaffa Cakes as cakes, but in 1991, this was challenged by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise and the case ended up before the courts. This may have been because Jaffa Cakes are about the same size and shape as some types of biscuit. A question that the court asked itself was "what criteria should be used to class something as a cake?"
McVities defended its classification of Jaffa Cakes as cakes. In doing so it produced a giant Jaffa Cake to illustrate that its Jaffa Cakes were simply miniature cakes.
McVities argued that a distinction between cakes and biscuits is, inter alia, that biscuits would normally be expected to go soft when stale, whereas cakes would normally be expected to go hard. It was demonstrated to the Tribunal that Jaffa Cakes become hard when stale. Other factors taken into account by the Chairman, Mr Potter QC, included: name, ingredients, texture, size, packaging, marketing, presentation, appeal to children, and manufacturing process. Contrary to a commonly held belief, whether something is considered a 'luxury item' is not a test for VAT purposes.
Mr Potter ruled that the Jaffa Cake is a cake. McVities therefore won the case and VAT is not paid on Jaffa Cakes.

Tangents.

The most frequent subjects of posts that never make it to actually being posted here involve me back tracking my path to whatever I find myself looking at.

A couple of months ago, the Cool Blue Shed had a revamp and a separate music blog was spun off. This is excellent, as there have been a number of posts about interesting groups that I've never heard of.

One of the posts was about his local music festival. I decided to click through and see who was playing. On the list: Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams. They will be making their UK premiere at the festival.

Now, GMatSCoD has been one of those groups that I keep hearing about but never have actually heard. So I decided to do some digging and snagged a few songs from eMusic.

There are some groups that people don't "get" until you see them live, and I suspect that this is one of them.

This clip might not be the best representation, but I thought it was clever so that's what you get.




And here's a silly Amazon widget to listen to:



Also, I see the festival offers "premium 100% beef burgers and Dutch treats. Don’t expect to see greasy tinned 50/50 hamburgers at Rhythm Festival!"

Now I'm going to have to find out what a 50/50 hamburger is.

Curiosity is a harsh mistress!

Buying the New Yorker 1976 - page 69

I had to do a bit of research for this one.

Much of this research involved me asking, "What was it like to shop for clothes at Talbots in the 1970's?"

The answer was "Is this for your blog?"

I'm starting to get a little worried about this.

The real answer: Much the same as now, except that back then it was across the street from the dentist.

One difference after looking at the ad: Back in the day, it seems that Talbot's stocked items from other designers, now it is all in house.

You can now find Meadowbark skirts at vintage clothing stores. Here's one.

Jacques Cohen Shoes has been bought up by Jacques Levine. They look sort of the same.

I tried to find Tapemeasure brand t-shirts, but I was thwarted by the large number of t-shirts that have images of tapemeasures on them. Here's a nice one from the V&A Museum store.

The strange luck of the amateur Star Wars tourist

A bit more than a year ago I had the opportunity to have a drive up and down California Route 128. As I was driving through, I thought "Hey! I think this is where Return of the Jedi was filmed! Cool."

Nope. It was filmed further north. I was in the wrong place.

About eight years ago I was in Finse, Norway. And I have just found out that The Empire Strikes Back was filmed there.

Of course, I was there in the summer when it didn't look quite so Hoth-y.

A muxtape of a mental mashup

Instead of having one song stuck in my head at a time, I frequently find myself with a bunch of songs in my head simultaneously. Come on in, have a look at what I've got going on at the moment.

The "anchor song" seems to be Frankie's Gun" by the Felice Brothers.

Chunks of Nina Gordon's version of "Straight Out of Compton" pop in and out of the verse of "Frankie's Gun." Frequently alternating between verse lines. I wonder if this might be a thematic thing rather then a melody thing, although the hunks of melody do fit together. At least when it's confined to my head.

Popping in less frequently is chunks of Al Stewart's "Post World War Two Blues." Most often the line "Now Ramona's in Desolation Row." The song is an attempt to do a British "American Pie" and that line is purposely tweaked to sound "Dylany." This makes it a good counterpoint to a song by a band that seems to defy all attempts to not be compared to The Band.

Also kicking around in there is small bits of what I will have to call "A song by Game Theory" I sometimes have the idea of a song stuck in my head without having the actual song. This can be frustrating because any attempt to think of what it might be can cause the song that I'm not thinking of to change into the one that I think it might be, but isn't. Anyhow, there is an absence of a Game Theory song that fits in with these other quite nicely. I can't, however, link to that. So here is a positive value of Game Theory songs.

Happy New Year!

Well, it is for me at least.

I've been hard at work with the day job for the last month and a half. Now it is slowing down. 07/08 is done and dusted and 08/09 is still getting its boots on.

Be prepared for a quick posting uptick as I finish up all the half started posts that have been laying dormant for far too long.

BBC News will teach you how to juxtapose photos

Proof that I'm not paying attention to the blogging

On July 15th I make a quick post. It posts at 6:15, meaning I did it roughly between my morning back stretches and my first cup of coffee.

There is then a gap of ten days until my next post.

In that span, I believe that I looked at this site once. Long enough for me to go "That doesn't look right." Then something else distracted me, and I forgot what it was that looked not right.

I misspelled "Feist."

Sorry about that.

Let me make it up to you by posting some other musical guests visiting Sesame Street.

Stevy Wondre:



Nohra Onjes:



ERM:

Help Wikipedia get their ducks in order

The Wikipedia's List of Fictional Ducks is flagged as "incomplete."

++++++

Hey! Gladstone Gander is listed as a Fictional Duck and a Fictional Goose.

Feist on Sesame Street

I'm sure everyone on the planet has this embedded on their blog by now, but "why not" I say.

I love the look on her face right as the segment ends.

How to improve The Running of the Bulls.

Instead of bulls, use Roller Derby girls with wiffle bats.

Elvis impersonators on scooters are also involved, but I'm not sure how.

A time bomb of filk

A hilarious story from Stephen Gallagher.

Strange carafes

I'm fascinated by these decanter things. I think that they won't be very good as actual decanters - the idea of a decanter is that you increase the amount of surface that is in contact with the air. These actually seem less efficient than leaving the wine in a bottle. I think pouring from these will be quite an event as well.

I suppose I just enjoy watching the videos of the things getting filled up with liquid.

Enjoy some tea!

via I'm Learning to Share!

If you are in New York City on August 5, you can see history being made

"Artist Cory Arcangel appears at Light Industry to perform the first complete and authoritative version of his now-notorious Bruce Springsteen Born to Run Glockenspiel Addendum. This appearance marks the first time—and perhaps last—that Arcangel will provide live accompaniment on glockenspiel to Springsteen’s canonical album in its entirety, alongside the premiere of a new video featuring Springsteen and the E Street Band."

observe a piece of comic strip history

The title was originally "enjoy a piece of comic strip history." I've taken the pressure off.

Cartoon Brew serves up a helping of what is perhaps the most consistently awful comic ever.

Click through to have a look at "Uncle Funny Bunny and Chumpy."

I am impressed by the masterful use of color.

Late Of The Pier - Heartbeat

I'm curious to see the storyboards for this.

A Question

If you were the curator of The Hammer Museum, would you see every problem as something to loan to the The Nail Museum?

Breaking Down the Nervous Detectives - How come all your friends are on their way to being someone else?

Word comes that the pilot for the American version of Life on Mars has been totally scrapped and production is off for a complete redo.

Will Pickering puts his finger on exactly what feels so wrong.

he Battle Creek Crafts Fair That Haunts Stu Mandelbaum’s Phantom Leg

The Poetry Foundation offers "Eight shortcuts to writing timeless odes and getting $$$ for it!"

Here she comes, here she comes. She's gonna cause a sensation now.

What seems to be a complete copy of Metropolis has been found.


It might be a while before it can get all cleaned up.

The Saturday Morning Cartoon will soon have a new golden age

from RTE:

Oates' 'tache gets cartoon treatment

One of the most famous moustaches of the 1980s could be coming to screens in a new animated series.

Billboard reports that 'J-Stache' follows the adventures of Hall & Oates star John Oates, who is coaxed out of his family man life and back into the music world by... his moustache (voiced by comedian Dave Attell).

Speaking to Billboard, Oates said: "In a cartoon setting, the moustache has its own personality. Just as I'm represented as the John Oates of today, the moustache is the John Oates of yesterday."

The plan is for the series to feature music from the Hall & Oates back catalogue.

"The focus of the music will be on the back catalogue," said Oates, "but it's an open-ended situation. There's even talk of the moustache trying to bring new bands into the picture."

The pilot episode, which is currently being storyboarded, finds Oates opening a new section of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for musicians with moustaches.

He is then warned by David Crosby of a mysterious group of moustache wearers trying to kill other moustache wearers.

Punch & Judy are invaded by bees

Bees vs Punch & Judy I
Originally uploaded by Paul Russell99

Oh how we laughed at those funny little half cut hams

Nichols and May do a live ad for GE refrigerators:

He's still going on about the paper crumpling. Just nod politely and try to get away.

Here's where I thought I would certainly find images of paper crumpling.

I was certain that Montague had a program that he crumpled when he found out that Abrahams was successful in making a date with Sybil.


I was just as certain that Liddell crumpled a newspaper or a copy of the events schedule when he found out that he was scheduled to run on a Sunday.


I was reasonably certain that Abrahams crumpled up the letter from Mussabini. He actually folds it back up.


That's a handkerchief he's holding. He has just demolished a straw boater, but I don't think that counts either.

The big picture.

After watching Chariots of Fire, I was struck by the number of times that people are shown crumpling paper. I could think of four or five places where people were shown crumpling a piece of paper, and I was positive that another viewing would reveal even more.

The other viewing revealed no more examples, and served to show that I was remembering wrong.

There are two shots of people crumpling paper in Chariots of Fire. Unless I missed one. Which is possible.

I find this somewhat interesting. Not sure why.

Coldplay currently have the number one single in America.

The folks at Anglophenia have pointed out that this is the first time that a UK Band has topped the American charts since February of 1997.

They offer this handy list, which does prove a bit of a point:

2000s (1 No. 1)

"Viva La Vida" by Coldplay

1990s (2 No. 1s)

"Wannabe" by The Spice Girls (February 1997)
"I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred (February 1992)

1980s (25 No. 1s)

"Good Thing" by Fine Young Cannibals (July 1989)
"She Drives Me Crazy" by Fine Young Cannibals (April 1989)
"Red Red Wine" by UB40 (October 1988)
"(I Just) Died in Your Arms" by Cutting Crew (May 1987)
"Human" by Human League (November 1986)
"Venus" by Bananarama (September 1986)
"Invisible Touch" by Genesis (July 1986)
"Holding Back the Years" by Simply Red (July 1986)
"West End Girls" by Pet Shop Boys (May 1986)
"Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits (September 1985)
"Shout" by Tears For Fears (August 1985)
"A View To a Kill" by Duran Duran (July 1985)
"Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears For Fears (June 1985)
"Everything She Wants" by Wham! (May 1985)
"Don't You (Forget About Me)" by Simple Minds (May 1985)
"Careless Whisper" by Wham! featuring George Michael (February 1985)
"The Reflex" by Duran Duran (June 1984)
"Karma Chameleon" by Culture Club (February 1984)
"Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes (January 1984)
"Every Breath You Take" by The Police (July 1983)
"Come On Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners (April 1983)
"Don't You Want Me" by Human League (July 1982)
"Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen (October 1980)
"Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" by Pink Floyd (March 1980)
"Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by Queen (February 1980)

Of course one of the things that it shows is not so much the decline of UK acts as much as the decline of bands.

A quick look then - the last time any UK act topped the US singles charts? Three months ago. The last time a band made it to top the charts? Last July.

Lost opportunity

About halfway through cooking dinner there was a knock on the door. There was some guy trying to balance a couple of boxes and a sheet of paper.

Him: "You Frank?"

Me: "No."

Him: "Is Frank here?"

Me: "Nobody named Frank lives here."

Him: (rebalances his boxes and studies his sheet of paper) "You sure?"

Me: "Yes."

He shifted again and showed me his paper. It had my address and directions for how to get here. Next to my address was "Frank - 6:30PM."

Me: "That's this address. No Frank. Sorry."

He shrugged and then bent over to pick up another box that he had set on the porch. It was at this point that I realized he was distributing Elvis dolls.



So all I had to have done was say "Why yes. I am Frank." and I would now have one of those in my house.

At least until Frank showed up.

Fine. I'll jump aboard too.

I am aware of all internet traditions.

Opportunities for job seekers

Now on Craigslist, a position for an aspiring copywriter:

Are you looking for an exciting opportunity make a real impact with your business and marketing writing talents? A dynamic, entrepreneurial for-profit college in Northwest DC is looking for an experienced copy writer and desktop publisher to lead aspects of both internal and external written communications. . . . You will report directly to the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing and will be responsible for writing, editing and proofreading a wide range of print and online materials including content for our web site, emails to students, and other marketing materials.

But wait, there's more!

While you are writing copy you will also fill the role of security guard, working 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. We will buy your uniform. You won’t carry a gun. Applicants must be able to pass a drug screen as well as a criminal background check. The security guard spends most of the shift seated at the reception desk, and there will be very minimal security duties. Practically the entire shift you will be able to focus on writing copy – you’ll just happen to be wearing a uniform.

This is why I love middle management academia. Always thinking outside the box!

++++++

Greetings, children aged 5-8! Have you considered a career in coal mining?

The end of Ulysses, as processed by Wordle

Say, isn't today Bloomsday?

Yes.

Lello & Irmao Bookstore, Oporto

The Stairs...
Originally uploaded by stukinha

The Monks!

and more nostalgia

I had a stack of these as a young-un too.

Either the internet is going through a phase were it is burping up random items from my formative years, or I am in a reflective mood.

Both, most likely.

I have removed the uncharitable comment from this post.

Currently up for auction: The script for Give My Regards to Broad Street.

Offered without comment

I experience a moment of crippling nostalgia

Hot on the heels of my new-found ability to purchase Quisp on the internet (and really, ultimately, I think that is what the internet was made for) comes a series of posts on Bob Logan's blog showing frames from old View-Master slides. Specifically, slides of Hanna-Barbera cartoons redone as 3d models.


I had these when I was a kid, and I recall being endlessly fascinated with them. First, I was fascinated by the fact that they looked somehow different from the cartoons on television. Then, when I understood that they were photographs of models, I was even more intrigued. How do you make these? What are they made of? How long did it take? How big are they? Who made them? Where are they?

I still have all of those questions. I suspect that these models have been destroyed long ago, but I hope they turn up somewhere. They are amazing.

I love old travel posters

These ones are "all illustrated in the 1950s and 1960s by British artist Daphne Padden."

They are adorable.

By request! Honest!

I didn't know they were still making Quisp

I certainly didn't know you could buy the stuff on Amazon.

"Porn For Rock Nerds"

Idolator reviews the latest issue of Mojo Magazine. There is nothing that I disagree with.

But Mojo wasn't just an enterprise based on challenging Rolling Stone for the title of "magazine that puts the Beatles on the cover for the most cynical, flimsiest of reasons whenever it needs a circulation boost or is otherwise short on ideas" (9 times since 1993, tied with Pink Floyd and not counting issues devoted to post-Fab careers). AP certainly had no problem whatsoever slapping down eight bucks a month for a magazine that, for no apparent reason other than it would probably be interesting to rock nerds, put out a Krautrock issue in 1997, the same year that brought a pre-Volkswagen campaign Nick Drake cover feature. Or would publish career retrospectives of AP's beloved Todd Rundgren and Roxy Music. AP could forgive the mag's fascination with Gomez, an English band that wished desperately to turn into Ry Cooder circa 1969.

A Tangent Path

About a month ago, I was alerted to the astonishing price drop affecting the Monty Python complete series DVD box. (Down under $50 in some places). I was just about to snap it up when it occurred to me - the episodes that I've seen in the last few years have looked a bit rugged. I'll bet they're due to be remastered.

So I looked around and saw that BBCAmerica is showing a run of "newly-remastered" Monty Python.

They are somewhat lovely. There's still commercials, but they put the show in a 40 minute slot to accomidate them. Now if they'd only get rid of all the station logos, show logos, coming attractions and cartoon Gordon Ramseys that have taken over the bottom quarter of the screen, we'd be all set.

Anyway, last night I saw the episode with this bit:



and I thought, "Who is this supposed to be? Is this a real person, or just an amalgam?"

Turns out he's real. He's still alive. Here is his website.

And here's a clip of him from 1960.



Watching that made me wonder whatever came of Whiz Jones, the singer featured in the clip.

Turns out he's still alive. Here is his website. And here is a clip from a year and a half ago.

And in food news

Giraffes are Kosher!

Way down the street there's a lad in his place

Here's a floorplan of Sherlock Holmes' apartment at 221B Baker Street.

I've always been fascinated by the feel of the place. It's been represented on film and television so many times (and this is far from the first time anyone has ever made a floorplan).

There are always differences. Sometimes it is ornate and dark with lots of velvet curtains. Other times bare and bright with yellowing plaster walls. But it always seems the same. It always seems to be right somehow.

Is it familiar because I find it so interesting, or do I find it interesting because it seems so familiar?

And in this one - Those staircases are way too steep. You won't pass code with those things.

and Mort Sahl in charge of smoking.

Here's the first half of a pilot for a show that never made it to air. The premise is that every episode was to have been recorded at a different jazz club from somewhere in the country with the top jazz acts playing (This one features The Dave Brubeck Quartet at The Black Hawk in San Francisco). I can sort of understand how this might not have been picked up - I think much of the thrill of seeing it now comes from it now being a historical document rather than just a camera stuck in a nightclub. Still, it would probably have been a reasonably cheap show to whip together, and it is a pity that there aren't more of them for posterity.

I'm just hoping that the second half pops up sometime. The credits imply that the Modern Jazz Quartet is going to show up.

And be sure to catch what happens at about four and a half minutes in:



I tend to forget what an incredibly clean drummer Joe Morello is. (If Jazz isn't your thing, you can forward to the five minute mark to catch a half minute long drum break and be done with it.)

This Moment in Pod is gonna take it to a private eye.

The recent death of Bo Diddley has caused me to recall a number of late night conversations about music. Specifically conversations about the origins of the rhythm pattern that he was known for. There were generally three opinions.

1. Bo Diddley invented the pattern.
2. Buddy Holly invented it. Diddley then copied it for his song "Bo Diddley." Buddy Holly then recorded a cover of "Bo Diddley" just to be a smart-ass.
3. "Dudes! You're forgetting about the Hambone! You Know... Hambone"

After someone would say opinion three, they would start doing this:



Except they were generally drunker and less co-ordinated. For some reason, they weren't taken seriously.

Oh, Wikipedia? What can you tell us about the Hambone?

The Juba dance or hambone, originally known as Pattin' Juba (Giouba, Haiti: Djouba), is a style of dance that involves stomping as well as slapping and patting the arms, legs, chest, and cheeks. . . . The Juba dance was originally an African-American plantation dance, brought from West Africa by slaves who performed it during their gatherings when no rhythm instruments were allowed due to fear of secret codes hidden in the drumming. According to one source, the sounds were also used just as Yoruba and Haitian talking drums were used to communicate. The dance was performed in Dutch Guiana, the Caribbean, and the southern United States. . . . Modern variations on the dance include Bo Diddley's "Bo Diddley Beat" and the step-shows of African American and Latino Greek organizations.

Lee at Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anyplace Else has a wonderful file up here showing the beat pattern as it evolved in the 20th Century "Pre-Diddley."

I had always discounted the whole Hambone thing because of a radio interview that I heard Bo Diddley give years ago that I recall going something like this:

Disk Jockey: So tell me, how much were you influenced by the Hambone?
Bo Diddley: What! Hambone! What [expletive] [expletive] Hambone? [expletive] [expletive] [expletive] [expletive] [expletive] [expletive] ignorant [expletive] [expletive] [expletive]! [expletive] [expletive]! [expletive] Hambone.

Another milestone!

Two Notes:

1. There aren't really 1,000 posts for you, the reader, to read on the blog yet. The count here includes the posts that are either still in the drafts queue (there are 68! I have to get working.) There is also a post that is scheduled for a few months from now. I was testing the scheduled post option, so I have Henry V's St. Crispin's Day Speech set to get posted on St. Crispin's Day.
   
2. Most of the 6 Comments that need to be moderated are from me - I'm also tinkering with the moderation functions. Sometimes I think that perhaps if I spent as much time writing stuff and posting it as I do noodling around with the gears, this would be a more robust and vibrant blog. But that's not my bag.