Is there anybody out there?

"Already I had made a piece of cloth and a cat invisible. At once I set about performing the experiment on myself.

"I had not expected the suffering. My body was all afire. I understood now why the cat had howled until I chloroformed her. But I stuck to it.

"The pain passed. I shall never forget that dawn and the strange horror of seeing that my hands had become as clouded glass and watching them grow clearer until at last I could see through them even after I had closed my transparent eyelids.

"I gritted my teeth and stayed there to the end. At last only the dead tips of the fingernails remained, white and pallid. I struggled up and stared at nothing in my shaving glass, at nothing save where an attenuated pigment still remained behind the retina of my eyes, fainter than mist.

"I WAS AN INVISIBLE MAN!"

That was the passage on the back of my copy of H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man, so naturally, I had to buy it. Also, look at that bandage head on the cover. Tantalizing. Because this book was written in 1897, you don't have to buy it to read it. In fact, you can read the whole thing on your computer here. Maybe you should start reading a chapter a night. Maybe you should start right now.

The thing about this book is it isn't really what I was expecting (actually, it was even better), and the blurb on the back cover, while awesome, isn't totally indicative of the book. Its taken from a section towards the middle where the Invisible Man tells his secrets to an old school chum of his. The rest of the book is told from the view of a distant observer, and we usually have no idea what the Invisible Man is thinking.

I did learn that being Invisible is not all that great. First, to actually be invisible, you have to be naked. Wells didn't get into the more intimate problems one might foresee with this (it was 1897 after all), but he did note that it is often very cold and your feet get all cut up. Speaking of cold, if its raining or snowing, or even if dust is thrown up on you from the road, you become oddly visible again. And, when you eat, your partially digested food is visible until you have completely ingested it. Finally, being invisible does not allow you to walk through walls, make no noise when you walk or sneeze, or not be felt when someone runs into you.

This book had some great science stuff in it (becoming invisible is complicated), a nice little morality twist, and some creepy bits as well. Also, the choloroformed cat mentioned at the beginning of this post was not killed, he let it out his window.

Now I really want to rent this movie version of the book, starring Claude Rains as the Invisible Man... Have any of you seen it?

Roach-tacular

I think I would like to go to Plano just to see the Roach Hall of Fame.

Today

I managed to shout out "Dr. Fuck and Professor Shit" to my co-worker at the same moment that my boss opened my office door to sign something. And he had his 8 year old daughter with him.

Professor Shit, where are you when I need you?

Fridge in Context

Here it is folks -- all the memories of our weekends together exploring the items on my fridge have come to this: The Complete Fridge.

The top half:



Clockwise from the top center, we have:

1. My favorite Achewood comic.

2. Everyone's favorite 21 year old.

3. Fortune cookie fortune. [Which inexplicably reads: "Being an able man. there are always."]

4. A magnet from my alma mater, featuring Old Main, where all my English classes were held.

5. Fully visible tang construction.

6. Carhenge postcard and snake sex.

7. Super suit.

8. Fusion experiments.

9. A wedding invitation for a wedding we will be attending next weekend.

10. Alamo drafthouse schedule, held up by the Cheap Trick magnet.

Other magnets include the glow in the dark UNL "N", the UT Society of American Archivists Student Chapter, the UNL Writing Center, and RLG Cultural Materials. As you see, we don't have many hilarious or fun magnets.

And the bottom half:



[Sorry this picture is so crappy, it was hard to lean far enough away from the fridge to get the whole thing in, plus I was all down by the smelly garbage. Just be happy you've got this much.]

1. A postcard for a show of the fabulous art of our friend Allison Fox (sorry about the flash glare there A-Fox).

2. Gumby's Pizza magnet (even though we never ever get Gumby's pizza. We are more Austin's pizza or Mangia folks...)

3. Pedazo Chunk Video flyer.

4. Swirl art by Josh.

5. Paramount and AFS summer film schedules, held up by an "Operation STOP, Working to keep railroading drug and alcohol free" magnet/ruler.

The other magnets on the bottom half of the fridge are all freebee things and not really worth getting into in detail. I think I should go out and buy some better magnets.

Ta da! After milking my fridge to its utmost possible limits, I now have no idea what I will post about on the weekends....

El Padre Muerto

I finished reading Donald Barthelme's The Dead Father the other day. I'd previously read a book of short stories by Barthelme which I really enjoyed. I don't always have the words to describe what I think of Barthelme's writing -- its often very comic and surreal, with Kafka like situations of different realities with different rules. For example, this book consists of a group of 19 working men pulling The Dead Father (who is only sort of dead and apparantly very gigantic) across the country side so that he can roll himself in the Golden Fleece. They are supervised by a man and a woman. Most of the conversations take place between the man, the woman, and the dead father. And about halfway through the book, there is an old-tymey book-within-the-book called "A Manual for Sons" (translated from the English by Peter Scatterpatter), complete with woodcuts. Although the book is probably full of symbols, I mostly enjoy Barthelme for the ways in which he plays with language and expectation. The book is often very funny, and has a really unique structure and way of bringing back phrases and repeating them in new situations. I think overall I enjoyed his short stories a little more than this novel, but both are very much worth reading.

[By the way, Barthleme may somehow connected to the Dan Rather "What's the Frequency, Kenneth? mystery...]

freaky deaky

This new nickel design freaks me out. Seriously. Even worse than those eyebrows from the other day. Am I just overly sensitive?

Reading Update: The Cookbook Series

I really like reading cookbooks. Even if they are completely impractical and I will never cook anything out of them in my life. I like to read the cooking tips, the lists of ingredients, and the high-falutin cooking terms. Recently I bought Matthew Kenney's Big City Cooking from a discount catalog. The blurb said it was the perfect cookbook for someone in a big city (which I'm not really) and with a small kitchen (which I do have). The thing it didn't mention is that you would basically have to be super rich to cook the stuff in this book. Whenever a nice ordinary fresh ingredient would do, Kenney recommends some specialty item that can only be found through mail-order, and notes that the recipe just wouldn't be the same if you pick up the cheaper alternative. There is no denying that the book is beautiful, with gorgeous pictures, a nice layout, and wonderful thick paper. The whole thing is covered with this nifty plastic sheet that would save it from having expensive food spilled on it. Here you will find recipes for your Carpaccio of Cepes with Wisconsin Asiago and Balsamic Syrup, your Cherries Sauteed in Pinot Noir with Creme Fraiche, and your Sauteed Lobster with Asparagus and Blood Oranges. The nice thing is that even these fancy-named recipes don't come off as that hard to actually make. His directions are clear, and they don't involve a lot of special equipment. There were some very approachable recipes in here, and some which I might actually try to make, but overall it reads like a florid and detailed romance novel when you are alone on a deserted island. Nice, but unattainable under the current circumstances.

Title from the archives

Notes on the dynamics of a slightly deformable body

I can't decide if this should be the name of my arty rock band, my arty independent film, or my arty memoir....

No mo

Jerome Wilkerson's eyebrows freak me out. Although I do enjoy his TV commercials.

I. Am. Dying.

And these molds are killing me. The End.

Wailing it up

And here we have the front cover (click on it to get a better view) of the 1956 novel The Wailing Frail by Richard S. Prather, one of his many best-selling pulp crime novels in the Shell Scott detective series.

And of course, you will want to see the back cover in all its readable glory here.

I'm making such a big deal over the cover because the cover, after all, is why I bought the book at the Literacy Austin booksale a few months back. [As an aside, check out this slightly different and yet remarkably the same cover of The Wailing Frail as well as the covers of Prather's other books, many of which were painted by pulp and pin-up artist Robert McGinnis.]

I read this baby between lunch and bedtime yesterday -- its pretty goofy, but in an entertaining way, and it has a neat twist at the end. It involves our hero, the Private Eye Shell Scott, as well as a trio of beautiful women that he keeps almost sleeping with, but not quite. It also involves corruption in the California government, lots of shooting and punching, and some old fashioned detective work.

And naturally, there are also a lot of nice over-the-top metaphors, here's a little sample:

First, the obligatory "woman comes into the Private Eye's office scene" -- "I was going through accumulated mail, throwing away advertising, when I noticed that somebody was outside my office. I knew it was a woman, too, because of the shadow she cast on the window. I've seen lots of shadows on that frosted-glass window, but this was the first one that threatened to defrost it...."

And later, of course, they kiss: "A steel statue would have kissed her, and I am no steel statue....It was a kiss that melted on my mouth like liquid velvet, warm and infinitely smooth. It was a kiss in a class by itself. After this, kissing other women would never be the same. It would be as if other women kissed with their ears."

I find it funny that this dime-store pulp novel is now available as a Microsoft Reader eBook -- I suppose the two markets really would intersect.

Finally, none of the women in this novel ever really wail (although maybe they do metaphorically), and Shell Scott never picks a woman up and carries her the way he is on the cover. Maybe they had a title and cover all ready to go, and the text was just slid in there....

Rambling Coincidences

On Friday afternoon I read this post on WFMU's Beware of the Blog (that, as we covered earlier, I love). Pretty gross and yet enthralling, no? Then that night I watched "Comment je me suis disputé... (ma vie sexuelle)" -- although the English title switches the title around and puts it as "My Sex Life... (or how I got into an argument)", because Americans aparantly will watch anything that says Sex really big on the cover. And in that movie the same door/hand thing happens to one of the characters. Exactly the same! But not on the boat and he slams the door himself, it doesn't slam closed with the wind. Plus you get to see it and its pretty gross in a cool way.

I'm still not totally sure how I felt about the movie, gross hand scenes excluded. The acting was amazingly good, but the story didn't always do it for me. The people in it are beautiful, though, especially Marianne Denicourt (scroll down a tad for her picture) who was in my dream last night. In my dream I was at this party waiting for my friends and I didn't really know anyone. Then I saw my sister and she told me that Josh and all these other friends of mine had been at the party for awhile and that they were all in the bathroom. So I got really mad that they didn't come get me and I grabbed my shoes (which were these high heels for some reason) and my sweater and told my sister that I was leaving and I'd see her later. Then I started walking and walking, trying to get to this bus stop to go home. After I'd walked for awhile, I somehow ended up back at the party and Josh told me that I'd made our hostess really sad and worried by leaving. And the hostess was this French actress who was crying because I'd left so suddenly. Then I woke up and I was still vauguely mad at Josh even though all he'd been doing was sleeping.

Ta da!

No hands were hurt in my dream, though.

No fridge is infinite

Yes, I could have scanned each of these postcards and pictures in separately, but it just didn't seem the thing to do. All these items have been sent to the side of the fridge, and brought together as a group for a reason. So I will present them as one. Clockwise from the top we have:

1. A poster from my old roomates advertising a Chi Kung group they do on East Campus in Lincoln. I really like the picture, which our friend Siclone took -- one side is Tycho bending and Milt sitting, and the other side is the reverse.

2. Drunk Moby, we've already seen him.

3. Zymmir, the oldest daughter of the roomates mentioned above. A total cutie.

4. Postcard from our friend Melanie's art show.

5. Postcard from London, sent to us by Josh's mom while she was living there.

6. Muhammad Ali.

7. Beauty and the Beast -- which is a really awesome movie if you haven't seen it.

8. Postcard for the Neil Labute play "Bash" which we saw at the Hyde Park Theatre a couple of years ago with Josh's brother Nick. That was the best Thanksgiving ever.

9. (in Center) Postcard from an event at my work.

10. Valentine.

11. Spike and Mike's postcard. I have never gone to see this and I don't really like the postcard that much. I don't know why its on my fridge. I think I will take it off after this post and hang something else up there. If you send me something in the mail, I will hang it up in the offending spot. I swear. Email me for my address if you don't have it. If I get lots of stuff, I'll make it work. I'll hand stuff around the inside if I have to.

Next week -- the front of the fridge: All your favorite fridge highlights from yesteryear in context!

Kristy from the block!

Okay, I'm sorry to be all linky today, but have you seen this A9 maps site? They just added Austin to their block-by-block map rendering capabilities. They don't have every block in town, of course, but they have pictures going block by block, both sides of the street, from all over the place. Wow. This will provide hours of entertainment. Some of the strange shots of alleys, street signs, and parked cards are wonderful. So, who has the job of taking all these pictures?

I am...

in love with WFMU's Beware of the Blog. I just love new-to-me blog infatuations....

Hilaroo

Go and see this lovely picture of Lucinda Williams that my sister took. Go on, now. I promise it will be awesome.

What in the Dickens!

Yesterday I finished reading A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens -- which you can actually read free online at that link, if you like reading things online. I went the old fashioned route and purchased a hard copy of the book 17 years ago from a Scholastic Book order. I then let it mature on my childhood bookshelf, high school bookshelf, college bookshelf, single bookshelf, working girl bookshelf, dating bookshelf, grad school bookshelf, working again bookshelf, and married bookshelf. After moving this thing around with me for 17 years, I finally decided it was time to read it. And it was great.

I'd only read one Dicken's book before, Great Expectations, and I got really sucked into it. I didn't expect to like this one as much, since its about the French Revolution and all, and I always thought the beginning was kind of boring (you know, the "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." thing). It is actually very exciting, sometimes sentimental, with a wonderful structure, good characters, and some awesomely gruesome scenes like this one, which I shall quote in detail:

"The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it madly were two men, whose faces, as their long hair Rapped back when the whirlings of the grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than the visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous disguise. False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck upon them, and their hideous countenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of sleep. As these ruffians turned and turned, their matted locks now flung forward over their eyes, now flung backward over their necks, some women held wine to their mouths that they might drink; and what with dropping blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks struck out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and fire. The eye could not detect one creature in the group free from the smear of blood. Shouldering one another to get next at the sharpening-stone, were men stripped to the waist, with the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of rags, with the stain upon those rags; men devilishly set off with spoils of women's lace and silk and ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles through and through. Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened, were all red with it. Some of the hacked swords were tied to the wrists of those who carried them, with strips of linen and fragments of dress: ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the one colour. And as the frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in their frenzied eyes;--eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun."

Sorry to quote such a long chunk, but oh my god, doesn't that make you want to run out and read this?

In addition, I credit reading this book in four or five days, and then immediately reading an article about the Cultural Revolution and Maoism in China (plus a beer and brandy slam-down right before bed that riled me up instead of knocking me out) for my restless night of revolution gone a-foul dreams last night.

[Oh, and the illustration above is from my copyright 1962 Scholastic version. I do believe they are storming the Bastille.]

***

Let me add that I have just spent two and a half hours trying to get various State of Texas online applications accessed and started for my husband (because he is out and about, and I'm just that sweet), with variously frustrating results. Why can't every State Department use the same application system? Its the same application! Why have to fill the damn thing out so many times? Why not get servers that actually work instead of the ones that erase everything that I typed in the past hour? Why! And now some whiskey, because those applications made me cry. Damn them.

"You have no idea what a long-legged woman can do without doing anything."

We had a super Mary Astor weekend at the Paramount -- Saturday was Meet me in St. Louis, with Astor playing the rather saccharine and stable matriarch of the family. Then yesterday we saw Preston Sturges' Palm Beach Story, where she plays a hilarious and fast talking millionaire and steals every scene she is in. Being a Preston Sturges film, the whole thing was riddled with snappy dialogue. Two of my favorites (both said by Rudy Vallee as John D. Hackensacker III):

"That's one of the tragedies of this life - that the men who are most in need of a beating up are always enormous."

"This was my grandfather's yacht. He only took it out once. He's dead. This is his hat."

Astor has been in a ton of movies, but the only other one I've seen is the Maltesse Falcon (which is also wonderful, but for different reasons). The three movies of hers that I've seen were all made in a three year period, but she plays a range of at least 20 years and goes from noir-y experience to sweet motherhood to over-the-top comedy. If you would like to see some Astor action (and you live in Austin), they are replaying Palm Beach Story on Tuesday at the Paramount. And if you want to get your money's worth of snappy dialogue, stay for The Lady Eve, another Sturges film that is equally great.

Fridge Town U.S.A.

This next item in my "what's on Kristy's fridge" series features a hand-made postcard by everyone's favorite print-maker, Joolie! I can't remember what I did to deserve such a lovely card. The back of the card shows me that it was sent almost exactly a year ago, it was sent to just me and not Josh (well there is a P.S Hi Josh! on there, but its addressed to me), and Joolie had just watched "You Got Served" (or the dance parts, anyway). Also its got that Dr. Seuss stamp on it with a photo of the good doctor surrounded by his drawings. I love Dr. Seuss, but the stamp is kind of creepy, don't you think?

Foxy Dodos

Check out these pictures of the Moody Sunday School's Fresh Air program in 1903-1905. This group would take poor children from the inner city of Chicago for a spiritual and physical vacation to the countryside and the lake for two weeks. This is all well and good, but the real reason I'm sharing it with you are the posters in the background of the first picture. I can't wait to see Foxy Grandpa and King Dodo!

Fabulous Forgery

Last week I read The Poet and the Murderer: A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art of Forgery by Simon Worrall. This true crime book tells the story of Mark Hoffmann, a rare books and manuscripts dealer who also happened to be a master forger, and who sold hundreds of forged, and often embarrassing, documents to the Mormon Church (of which he was a member). He also created scores of non-Mormon forgeries, including a "previously undiscovered" poem by Emily Dickensen, around which the book revolves. Eventually Hoffman commits murder to cover up his crimes, and ends up accidentally injuring himself with a car bomb and going to jail. This book occassionally falls into the pop psychology that one often finds in true crime books, but the subject matter is so fascinating that it is easily forgiven. In addition to the specifics of Hoffman's case, Worrell delves into the strange history of Mormonism, the history and techniques of forgery, Emily Dickenson, and the potential for misdeeds in the world of professional auction houses. The amount of work that goes into Hoffman's forgeries is amazing -- and although as an archivist I'm not so big on the forging, I still have to admire the skill and detail involved.

And sometimes my job is great....

I ran across this book in my archival work this afternoon -- just gaze upon its wonder:




and the back cover:




It's a book from the early 1940s, designed for young boys who are interested in airplanes and engineering. And it's awesome. My favorite part is the A, B, C fingers. Now, that's the way to learn about aero-engine theory.

Wizard of Bras

Did you know that when Disneyland first opened, there was a Hollywood Maxwell Intimate Apparal store on Main Street called The Wizard of Bras. It was sadly short-lived and closed in 1956.

Movie Madness

While Josh was out of town last week, I helped myself to some videos from the extensive Krauter collection. Since Josh wasn't there to watch them with me, I'll have to report on them here instead of relying on Movie-Watching Robot to do it for me.

First I watched Lindsay Anderson's Britannia Hospital, which was pretty heavy on the political satire, but still very funny. Plus it has Malcolm McDowell, an awesome scene where a guys head comes off and blood spurts everywhere, and Mark Hamill getting high in a news van.

Then I jumped to National Lampoon's Vacation, which is one of the few tapes that is mine and not Josh's, and which I haven't seen since I was a kid. It was awesome. Somehow I had remembered almost half the movie being John Candy and Wally World, when its really only the last five minutes. And I forgot that you see Beverly D'Angelo's boobs, but not Christie Brinkley's. It seemed that we saw them both (all four of them?) in my kid memory. Also, did you realized that John Hughes wrote the screenplay? Altogether excellent.

It is always special when movies I loved as a kid are still actually good when I see them as an adult because, honestly, all the goodness they usually retain is only in nostalgia value.

Fridge Update - Now with Magnets!

Josh brought this Cheap Trick magnet into the relationship with him, and I've loved him ever since. This magnet not only looks cool, it is also the strongest magnet on our fridge and usually gets the job of holding up the Alamo Drafthouse schedule. Can anyone here read Japanese? What does it say at the bottom of the magnet? I would love it if it said something more exciting than "Cheap Trick" or "Budokan." If you can't read Japanese, make something up.

Cheesy Macs

I have just discovered that HEB brand shells and cheese is way better than the more expensive Velveeta Shells and Cheese. Seriously. Or maybe I'm just really hungry.

Still tired

An unflattering portrait of me. At 6:30 a.m. Having forgot to set my alarm, I woke up ten minutes before I had to be out the door to catch the bus, and I still caught it.

In the time between 6:03 am (when I woke up) and 6:13 am (when I was out the door), I managed to:

1. Wash my face.
2. Brush my teeth.
3. Put on this weird dress that I don't even like.
4. Make a cup of black tea.
5. Put together a lunch (which I usually do the night before, but just like the alarm, I forgot). I had a frozen Rice/Veggie/Edamame thing, a plum and some pretzels.
6. Sort of brush my hair (but not really, as you can tell from the picture).
7. Eat a banana.

After catching my bus and starting the hike up to my building, I remembered that I brought my camera in my bag today and sleepily decided to take a crappy picture of myself and some random pictures on the walk. Most of these were taken by just pressing the "go" button on the camera while it was hanging in my hand as I walked (hence the blurs and strange angles). About half of the pictures ended up being of my dress or the ground, but some of them turned out nicely.

All I've got...

Is a mosquito bite in my knee-pit. It's very distracting.

Yip Yow

Oh lordy, my DSL subscription was activated today and I just hooked everything up this afternoon. Yowza. This is the first time I've had anything but dial-up on my home computer, and I've just been giddy with web surfing ever since.

So far I've checked all the blogs and pages I usually check (they load so fast), listened to some music, watched a bunch of toons and teen girl squad episodes on Homestar Runner, downloaded the updates to all my computer programs (which usually takes for freakin ever), and started my own Flickr page (which mostly has pictures from our walk in the Mayfield Preserve from a few months ago). These are all things that I previously could not do, or could only do at work, which is lame.

Now I can do whatever I want! I am invincible!

It is not a spam, it is a love

I don't usually even smirk at my spam anymore -- any humor that may have been gleaned from the misspellings, sexy claims, or outrageous subject lines has been lost in the flood of email that comes through my computer.

Then I recieved this.

I was going to just pull out a few select highlights, but honestly, the best way to share it with you is to just show you the whole thing. It will make you see smoking in a whole new way.

***

SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE AND HEALTH, ALSO DEVOTE LOVE TO 1000,000,000 BROTHERS AND SISTERS

(Note: It is not a spam, it is a love, we assist BGFG propagate information of love, BGFG don't know herself, please TO SAVE OUR 1000,000,000 BROTHERS AND SISTERS, GIVE LOVE TO THEM, to create   21-CENTURY NEW MAINSTAY PEOPLE-SERVE INDUSTRY, is a sort of charity.

Dear Sir:
Cigarettes harm 1000,000,000 peoples' health, so cigarette's revolution, new invention man-made non-toxic cigarette (abstract see appendix 1) rescues millions life of human being, is a very significant enterprise of world people. Man-made nontoxic cigarette is no tar, no toxic gas and vapor, no nicotine  cigarette (in a short transitional period keep down nicotine). Because its taste betterthan toxic cigarette, it can wholly replace toxic cigarette market, save or relieve our smoking brother and sister.

BUT THE ABILITY OF THE INVENTOR of this item (i.e. our corporation) compare with such great enterprise IS VERY INSUFFICIENCY, need the beautiful peoples of all world dedicate LOVE,   assist and support us.

The smoking people is also our brother and sister. Let us stretch our assistant hands, and offer zealous LOVE  hearts. GIVE LOVE TO 1 MILLIARD CIGARETTE-PEOPLE. WHEN YOU HAVE READ THIS LETTER, PLEASE  YOU:

1.         (IF YOU ARE POOR MAN, HOW TO GIVE LOVE TO 1000 MILLION PEOPLE) Please you copy  this letter and transmit to 10 (or above 10) your friends and relations.

2. (IF YOU NOT A POOR MAN, AND IF YOU ARE A BIG CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTERPRISE) Please you invest this new mainstay industry, (can't invest, please YOU assist or support us purely, even less than US$ 10), to speedup this significant item's development. Our address and bank account see the end of APPNDIX 2.

 (The toxicity of cigarette is too severe, the  market of cigarette (about US$ 100,000millions) must 100% CONVERT from one side(toxic) to other side (nontoxic) quickly. Therefore need very large investment, hope your assistance. The market very large, so the investors not only have saved brother and sister, also God rewards themselves great chances for their benevolence.

3. IF YOU ARE NEWSPAPER, TV, IT ENTERPRISE, PLEASE PROPAGATE FOR IT FREE OF CHARGE TO THE INVESTOR AND FAR-SIGHT ENTERPRISER, AND OTHER PEOPLE, if you can't believe it is a real fact, please attend conference of cigarette revolution (SEE www.greensparkling.net)

Appendix 1: Abstract
Smoking is a kind of enjoyment, but its harm is very severe, so call for to abstain from smoking. BUT 21 century is a society of high-class civilization, also a society of high-class enjoyment. The five significant enjoyments of human being: Eyes enjoyments (TV, video); Ears enjoyments (music); mouth enjoyments (delicious food); Respiratory tract enjoyments (cigarette); Body enjoyments (car, lodging). To prohibit smoking make a backward of history (of enjoyment), is not a best stratagem. But tobacco's toxicity is very inflexible, can't be clean out. It must operate on the foundation of cigarette industry. The series items of non-toxic cigarette radically change the concept of cigarette industry, and the difficult nontoxic problem, that can't be resolved heretofore, be resolved.

The new nontoxic  technique contains a series of techniques:

The enjoyment of smoking isn't coming from the cigarette itself, is coming from the fog that emanate by burning cigarette to stimulate respiratory track. Electronic smoking apparatus emanates fog by man-made electronic method, to make nontoxic when smoke. But smoking with apparatus is not concert with smoker's habit, the second patent develop a nontoxic cigarette, similar to common cigarette.

Third patent is manmade low-toxic or nontoxic cigarette essence, manmade essence contains all effective, flavourous and sapid substance of natural tobacco, wipesoff all impurities and useless flotsam, has no tar, no toxic gas and vapor, no nicotine. It holds original taste of tobacco, but for it wipes off the bad taste emanating by burning impurities and flotsam, (and also by other useful technique), it has a strongpoint, i.e. its taste better than toxic cigarette, sometimes ascendant than high class toxic cigarette some degree. So it can 100% replaces old toxic cigarette and guarantees the health of smoker-people. Form a cigarette revolution. Nicotine's toxicity is lower than the other two toxic components (tar, toxic gas and vapor) of cigarette. In a not long transition period nicotine is not wiped off wholly for a while, to assure the cigarette revolution smooth and steady, and nobody break the ranks. The revolution of cigarette will complete every inch. (details please attend nontoxic cigarette learned conference. see:www.greensparkling.net) BGFG (Beijing Greensparkling Fragrant Grass high science Corporation)

Senor Mysterioso

Did you ever read The Westing Game when you were a kid? Because I did. About thirty times. And now I have read it again.

The verdict?

Still awesome.

Even though I had read this a bunch of times before, I couldn't remember the answer to the mystery (although a few things came back to me as I read). I was way too excited by the characters to spend my time piecing together clues to solve the mystery before the book ended, though, so I was happily surprised when everything fell together at the end.

Totally go read this book -- it will only take you a day or so, and it is thoroughly enjoyable.

[And if you have read it, check out this cute little site about the book and the characters, with games!]

Another Awesome Name from the Archives

Manfred Wolff

***

I love that it is Wolff with two F's. That is extra wolfy...

Fridge Stuff: Drunken Moby Edition

This picture of Moby, giving a thumbs up to readers while wearing sunglasses, stubble, a fake moustache, and a piano scarf was on the cover of Keyboard Magazine a few years ago, when I was inexplicably receiving a subscription even though I don't play keyboards and don't know anything about them. What was going on here, Moby? Whatever the intentions, the result is comedy gold.

[P.S. Josh voted, not Moby.]

Weekend Update

I most likely don't actually have the wherewithall (or the pop culture memorabilia) to attend this event, but it could be entertaining:

The Discovery Channel's Pop Nation: America's Coolest Stuff is filming at the Austin Convention Center. I don't have cable, so I've never seen it, but it sounds like Antiques Roadshow (which I love) for hipster-types, with the added pressure of someone there who will actually buy your treasures at the value quoted by the experts.

I am a band name nerd...

Another band name from the world of math:

Forcing with Respect

That's with repect, ya'll....

***

And as a bonus, the strangest name I've seen all day:

Babette Lucie Elisabeth van Antwerpen-de Fluiter

Ta da!

She can't say no... with sexy results!

A few days ago I finished reading Bombshell by G. G. Fickling (a pseudonym for the husband and wife team that wrote this and the rest of the books in the Honey West series). This is one that I bought at the Literacy Austin book sale a couple of weekends ago. Since the whole reason I bought it was for the cover, here it is:







How could you not want to read this book? Its got naked ladies with guns, Nazis, the threat of nuclear war, a guy named Johnny Doom (he changed it from Dombella because kids at school used to call him Johnny Dumbell), Hitler, and all kinds of action and adventure. Plus Honey West (our hero) is constantly having her shirt ripped off by redneck sheriffs, Nazis, and (with her permission) Johnny Doom.

Although the writing style is a little silly and overblown, this is actually a pretty clever, if improbable, adventure story. Apparantly the Honey West books were so popular in their day, they were made into a TV series. My favorite picture from that site is Honey West with her lipstick microphone. Nothing fights crime better than a tiger print leotard with fur trim and fishnet tights.

My next job

Its got to be here.

Got anything else I can read relating to devils or details?

This weekend I finished reading Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood by Jennifer Traig, which was kindly loaned to me by A. after I bought and read the wrong book (even though it did have both Devil and Details in the title.)

The book is a memoir about the author's girlhood bouts with OCD, primarily surfacing as scrupulosity, a form of OCD where the obsessions and compulsions revolve around religious practices. In Traig's case, the child of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, she chose Judaism, which has all kinds of crazy rules to follow. And, since she grew up in a town without any other Jewish people around, and no real religious education, she does a lot of improvising with the rules she decides to follow.

Everything is played for laughs and the quirky-factor -- even the dark parts of the book aren't treated very darkly. Although it was occasionally a little bit McSweeney's-y (Traig is a regular contributor), it wasn't all super-ironic and winky like those folk can sometimes be. The book is funny, engaging, and a light, quick read. I have to admit, I wasn't quite as interested in the times in the book when the OCD subsides and Traig discussed her normal teenage girl neuroses. Those are fine and all, but the crazies are much more entertaining.

I'm beered up and angsty, so get me some tikka masala, dagnabitt

The latest entries to the esteemed Oxford English Dictionary:

http://www.oed.com/help/updates/latest-additions.html

I find it interesting that dickwad and dickweed entered the dictionary at the same time....

What the world needs now, is to know what's on my fridge

Everyone loves postcards from Carhenge in Alliance, Nebraska -- especially if they were sent to you from some road-tripping friends who stopped there on your recommendation. After this they drove down to Josh's hometown of Bridgeport (which is maybe half an hour away? Correct me if I'm wrong there...), and took pictures of the grocery store where Josh worked and other landmarks of the town. Deirdre and Ricardo, I salute you!

[And, in case you were wondering, Carhenge is totally worth a trip out of your way to see. There are other sculptures out there as well, so you get your absolutely free admissions worth. Plus I guarantee there will be hardly any other tourists there to mess up your view.]

[Also, there are better pictures of Carhenge here than on the official Carhenge site, where there is instead a picture of a cluster balloonist who will apparantly be flying over Carhenge on the summer solstice...]

Give a hoot

There were 30 or 40 of these anti-litter signs up in the lobby of this art center in Baton Rouge. I've selected the six most grand for your viewing pleasure. And now we shall have a contest -- which one of these makes you feel the least like litering? Are you most affected by Satan or Hitler? A sad Earth or a They Live reference? Your response to this contest will actually give me your psychological profile, so don't be surprised if I look at you a little differently after you answer...

Something funny happened on the way to the math archives....

Someone bringing you down? No problem, just create a confusion matrix and you will be in the clear. Do not view the matrix yourself. It will only confuse you.

***

And, I love the picture on the bottom of this page. I will only pose in this position for all future pictures. Be forewarned.

Poop.

I had to crank up my reading speed this weekend and finish the long, and pretty good but not totally awesome The Road to Wellville by T. Coraghessan Boyle, as I have a borrowed book to read as well as my giant pile of new books that I want to get started on.

This book was made into a movie with Anthony Hopkins, Bridget Fonda, Matthew Broderick and John Cusack, all of whom I like. I am pretty sure I saw it and also pretty sure it didn't leave that much of an impression on me. Kind of like the book.

This is a nice satire, but cold and distant (as satires often are). There isn't a character to really grab onto, although many of them do have their moments. The book has some funny bits, including a lot of exposing and inspecting of John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of peanut butter, corn flakes and granola; a vehement vegetarian who was totally against sex and really really into enemas.

I like the historical stuff in the book -- all the patent medicines and special diets that intrigued the rich around the turn of the century. And, if you have read the book or seen the movie (or really, even if you haven't), there is a wonderful page up on the Willard Library site with pictures from Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium. No enema pictures, though.

So, this one is going into my pile of books to sell. The first step in my new plan to not keep books that I didn't really like and that I don't think I'll read again. And it's pretty thick -- I bet I could get three of my new pulpy novels into its space on the bookshelf...

Book it up, book nerds

Check out all my new books!

Yesterday afternoon we went to El Mercado and had a few margaritas, and then went to the Literacy Austin Book Sale and bought a bunch of books. My margarita head really wanted to buy sci-fi and pulpy novels, as well as (apparantly) a copy of the Westing Game and Laura Palmer's Secret Diary. I only spent $20 bucks, though, and it went to a good cause, so I'm not having any book buying guilt. I am resolving, however, to weed out some of the books that I have. I don't think I'll sell anything I haven't read yet, but I am thinking of getting rid of things I've read that Josh doesn't want to read and that didn't blow me away. My problem, I just love books. Like the physical book itself. Even if the book was bad, I still want to keep it. And buy more. And I'm out of room, so some decisions will have to be made. Either that or I'll just kick Josh out of the bedroom and fill his half of the bed with books....

It's Saturday! Fridge time!

This one was sent to us by Josh's brother for his birthday last year. Any clipping that involves this dude has to be on prominent display. Particularly if the dude has two nicknames sandwiching his middle name. That's right "Boob," or shall I say, "Cous," you have made our fridge wall of fame.

I wanna think up rock n' roll band names all night...

after reading scientific article titles all day!

And now, it is my pleasure to present - the rockingist rock and roll band that ever rocked - here for your viewing pleasure --

Unramified Forcing!

Bathroom Fixture Update

I'm sure you have all been saying to yourselves: "Sure, Kristy had fun in Baton Rouge. I saw the pictures. They looked great. But what about the fixtures in the hotel bathroom?"

What about the fixtures indeed.

Since nearly one in four internet searches that land on my site come from someone trying to find information about institutional bathroom fixtures, I felt it was duty to report that I had the pleasure of using a TOTO Toilet and a Speakman Anystream 2000 shower head in my hotel room (the one I used is pictured at the right side of the screen at the top). Actually, the toilet wasn't that great -- it was somewhat loosely connected to the floor, and when I would sit down or stand up the whole thing would wobble a bit. You don't want wobbly toilets. That could have been the fault of the installation and not the TOTO brand, however. The showerhead, on the other hand, was wonderful. I usually am dissapointed with hotel showerheads, but this one was mounted high on the wall (good for us extra tall gals) and had a nice stream. Any stream in fact. And it was the 2000 model, so you know that's good...

***

And, in answer to Mary P.'s Best/Worst purchase poll, I made a bad purchase in Baton Rouge. While enjoying some drinks at the hotel bar with my friends, I was seduced away from my gin and tonic plan by this cute little drink menu. I decided to go for an old fashioned. I'd made one of these at home before, and it usually involves whiskey, sugar (or simple syrup), bitters, sour mix (or Squirt), and a cherry or other fruit garnish. The bartender at the hotel made ours with sweet and low. Ick. Do not put sweet and low in drinks, people. It was really awful. Of course, I drank the whole thing, but I didn't like it, and I think the sweet and low got me all riled up so I couldn't sleep that night. The only good thing is that the drink was pretty cheap for a hotel bar, only $4.50 or something like that. Traci can back me up on this -- a horrible old fashioned. The moral of the story is: only order simple drinks if you don't know how the dude is going to make them.

Come to me Rock Stars, I have found your band name

Assessment of Chromatic Wedge Concern

[from the archives, again]