Aw nuts...

Berenstain Bears co-creator dead

This is Stan, y'know, of Stan and Jan Berenstain?

It's a shame. People my age and even perhaps a little older were the generation that really benefitted from the gigantic explosion of the children's book industry, something that took place in the sixties. Sure a lot of classics are older than us, books by Paul McCloskey, Goodnight Moon and so forth. Even Dr. Seuss got an early start on things. But authors such as Maurice Sendak, Leo Leonni, Eric Carle, and the Berenstains helped propel the industry to a new level. (If any of these general comments are incorrect, feel free to set me straight).

What this means of course is that the authors we grew up enjoying are now really old and might soon start dropping like flies(whereas Dr. Seuss died fourteen years ago and Richard Scarry died eleven years ago.) Maybe I should start a children's lit deadpool.

I will admit here that I never really liked the Berenstain Bears. Although I don't remember what books I liked when I was the age the Berenstain books are mostly aimed at, by the time I remember seeing them, I thought they were odd and somehow unpleasant. And the fact that the bears all had such big, human-looking feet and sharp claws kinda creeped me out.

~A

I'm still not hungry

Alright, that's a bit of an overstatement. Considering that it has now been forty-eight hours since I ate a most excellent Thanksgiving dinner, I should not be able to claim that it is either still in my stomach or that it's flavor is still in my mouth. Nonetheless, it was a memorable repast prepared by a good host. The other guests were quite lively; it is always a distinct and particular entertainment to introduce Thanksgiving to non-Americans. Frankly, it is the holiday I am most inclined to share and even to willingly export.

I have been more and more thinking about cooking lately. I am even beginning to do some which marks some sort of change.


~A

Nature knuckles under

Iceberg 'sings under pressure'

Iceberg arrests made by the FBI last week have started to yield larger results, officials close to the investigation say. One floe in particular is said to be cooperating with authorities. "With the information this suspect has provided it's clear that the North Atlantic is close to being absolutely safe for shipping, fishing, and democracy" a senior White House official reports, "we also think we may be able to clear the Bering Sea of any threat." Along with intelligence said to be gleaned from the U.S. Weather Service, government agents are optimistic they can follow the trail of terrorist ice all the way back to the glacier masterminds believed to be calving these attacks on international commerce.

When asked what techniques were used to make the arrested iceberg talk, one agent said "well, we put him in the hot seat and made things pretty warm. I can't comment whether any specific methods such as chipping, cracking, or the 'ice pick' were actually used, but it sure didn't take him very long to lose his cool." Vice President Cheney, while refusing to comment directly on the case in interviews yesterday, nonetheless asserted that the progress "precisely refutes those naysayers and critics who would have us abandon time-tested and proven interrogation procedures. If we obeyed the strict letter of the Geneva Conventions, not to mention the Kyoto Protocols, we could not have achieved these results. Americans will see that this reaffirms the rightness of our stance on terrorism and the environment."

The Vice President went on to say that if the government's policies were allowed to continue, we "might see an end to ice in our lifetime."



~A

Hear me sing...

My crowning moment in spelling came last month at the Williamsburg Spelling Bee season two finals. Ever since beginning my participation in this event, I had hoped that one evening I would be asked to spell onomatopoeia. This is a hard word to spell, but so familiar, as a hard word, that most people who attend the spelling bee know how to spell it. Yet I had never heard it given out at the bee and wondered if it was even on the word list.

But that night, with the Good Morning America cameras rolling and a reporter from German public radio taping I was handed the word...

...and I was able to sing it. To the tune of Old Macdonald. This I had learned as a freshman in high school. As my friend and I crammed for the daily vocabulary test in English class, he searched for any and all possible mnemonic devices that might help us remember the spellings and definitions of words. With onomato...etc. he realized that it fit the above children's tune, a song that is practically an ode to onomatopoeic words.

Better yet, the German reporter included it in her bit and you can listen to it here

I can't yet, since my computer isn't making any sounds today. Let me know how I fare.

I am inordinately proud of this. I owe it all to Mike French.

~A

A wonderful article to begin the week

I, like other librarians, subscribe to numerous listservs that perpetually fill up my inbox with pedantic discussions and irrelevant minutiae. Nonetheless, once in awhile something interesting comes along.

For instance, a discussion began recently in the Book Arts listserv concerning books bound in unusual skins and animal pelts. (Among the more standard skins and pelts of snake, crocodile, and other reptiles, for instance, a quite common material is Shagreen, the skin of a shark or ray). This discussion naturally (I could see it coming) devolved into a discussion of books bound (or purportedly bound) in human skin. Such items are not that rare and it seems as if every rare book room and special collection has an example. The listserv renewed the discussion this morning since an article was discovered in a Harvard Student Magazine on the topic. What is particularly neat about the article is that it focuses on a book that I actually have held in my hands since it is located at the Harvard Law School library rare book room, a place I worked as a library student.

But what really made me giggle was a term that may or may not be a neologism to describe these things:

Anthropodermic Bibliopegy!

I want that to be my trivia team name this week: the anthropodermic bibliopegists. I find this to be a wonderful start to a week.


~A

word strings

These are the type of random thoughts that go through my head when I would otherwise claim to be thinking of nothing:

Pneumonic, mnemonic, demonic, economic, gnomic.

Conflate, confabulate, concatenate, admix

Coruscate, execrate, excrescence, ophthalmic

Flugelhorn, bugler, aglet

Carbuncular, avuncular, ovipositor, disquisite, perquisite

Berber

And then I start thinking about those unanswerable questions. Such as, if you can "add something to the mix" and so create an admixture, why is admix not an accepted verb (it seems to be an obscure Middle English back formation)? If you can have a carbuncle, can you have an avuncle? If an eaglet is a little eagle what is an aglet a little of? Or a sublet for that matter? Is there any relation between the words gnomon and gnome? Why do we have the words inquisition, perquisite, requisite, prerequisite, but not quisite? Since the s in those words is pronounced as a z and the root is the same as the word question, why is the origin of the word quiz unknown?

Obviously, I can entertain myself for hours this way.

~A

Has science come to this?

Hubble sees stars being born

(SPACE.com) -- A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals stars in the process of being born amid a fantastic scene of media hype and a crush of tabloid reporters and paparazzi.

It is unclear how the space telescope, previously renowned for it's glimpses of faraway galaxies and distant celestial bodies, was redirected to the surface of the Earth and, specifically, the Universal backlot in Hollywood, California. Nasa scientists responsible for the scheduling and targeting of the orbiting satellite defended their decision saying that "the study of the life cycle of movie stars, as much as the life cycle of planetoids, black holes and the deep emptiness of space, will provide crucial knowledge of our place in the universe. If we can understand how lowly, unatractive Kansas girls and back country boys make their way to the west coast, rise to fame, glamour and power before crashing and burning and fading from public popularity, we will gain a greater consciousness of what it means to be human. And Star Weekly paid us ten million dollars for the rights."

The pictures are scheduled to appear in next week's issue of that magazine. Editors of the tabloid had no comment.

~A

Signs

So I was walking around the northside this early afternoon. Wonderful weather we're having; certainly I have plenty of reasons to feel good as I had a fine time last night with someone interesting, new. This morning I drank coffee at one of those hip cafes. I wouldn't bother usually but it's nice to sit in public on hand-me-down couches, people watch. I completed the weekend's crosswords and other puzzles. I bought cat food (deluxe moist kibble in individual pouches, extra fiber, extra liquid; damn cat) Looked in a gallery and a shop or two. Came home. Read the short story in last week's New Yorker by Paul Theroux. I could really relate.

But that's not the point of this post. The point is two business signs I saw today. I have passed them before but today they seemed especially piquant.

Liberty Valance and Blinds

They make window dressings. I wonder how many people get the joke; it took me awhile.

And the other is some kind of a repair service for office machines:

Mechanical Response

It reminded me of a pest control truck I saw in the Village this summer named Terminate Control. I wonder if those business owners find their names solid, forceful, or particularly precise in meaning.

That same day, almost at the same corner, I saw an ambulance whose front bumper appeared to have been repaired with bandages or medical tape. It seemed that someone had taken the phrase "Physician, heal thyself" to include motor vehicles.

Those are my observations for the day. My relative terseness belies my caffeine intake.

~A

Winning is everything

Okay, fine, fine. It's not everything, it's the only thing.


Which is surprising considering that it doesn't seem to be the reason I play the weekly trivia at my local bar. We contested for over a year without getting any higher than third (and that only once) and my interest never flagged nor my spirits shrank. Certainly one of my teammates is more focused on winning, and is usually more crushed or dispirited when we lose but it's never had that meaning for me.

Somewhere in it, I think, is the fact that I go and play simply because it offers a confirmation that simply knowing a fact, a thing, a tidbit, is a pleasure in and of itself. I like knowing things, even if they are in no way useful. Trivia contests offer a rare opportunity to exercise both the knowledge and the pleasure of knowing. A key ingredient for me is the pleasure I take in other people's knowledge. I always prefer the evening where the correct answers are equitably provided by all my teammates rather than just one or two. Last night was a good example of this.

At any rate, we are winning, placing, and showing at a regular pace now, are in the season finals, and can approach the contest each week with a fair level of confidence. We won last night, by our largest margin yet.

Cheers.

Unfortunate names

Yet another reason to wonder how Long Island ever came into existence:

Suffolk Police: Woman Missing From Mastic Beach

On one hand, the missing woman is in no way humorous. On the other hand, from Webster's:

Mastic: any of various pasty materials used as protective coatings or cements

I am reminded of Ozone Park.

It's like home made porn

Taser to offer stun gun cameras

I know that this is actually a ploy by Taser to keep it's business going after it has come under increasing attack for actually being...wait for it...dangerous. I suppose by having a camera on the gun the company will be able to show that tasers are useful, necessary, and not the cause of death when somebody seems adversely affected by the however-many volts of electricity coursing through their body.

On the other hand, it strikes me as rather tawdry. You know, enjoy it while you do it, then sit back, relax, and enjoy watching yourself do it on videotape. It might be so much fun watching it, it will make you feel like doing it in real life all over again.


I wonder how long before they start talking about the taser as the 21st century marital aid.

~A

Death is up...and it's good

Why I stay out of the stock market:

CDC: Gonorrhea rate down; syphilis up

Or would this be futures? Anyhow, I only hope you sold the first and kept the second.

This reminds me of the various types of futures being bought and sold now such as weather or natural disaster futures. If an industry heavily depends on good weather, it can buy futures as a type of indemnity against bad weather (if my terminology is way off base, as I expect it is, I only hope a reader will correct me).

Therefore, the notion of selling futures in certain types of disease (say, to protect your business against a real outbreak of the flu) may not be such a ridiculous thing. I have long held a private fantasy along these lines wherein someone will start selling futures for death in general.

~A