Objects in the Future are Closer Than They Appear

trivia images placeholder

2007-02-05T15:23:00.000-05:00

Just looking for a place to host some images for awhile.

It's been a long time...

2007-01-30T13:31:00.000-05:00

...since my last post. The same caesura happened last winter and I am at a loss to explain it. It seems to relate to some swing in mood, but one I can't explicate to any further extant. At the same time, my sense of humor has diminished lately. Not absolutely, but to the extent that I haven't found headlines and obituaries as humorous lately, and I haven't been able to come up with any funny trivia team names. The two things are related I'm sure.

But without further ado, I found a page of headlines on www.1010wins.com that seemed to capture a certain, crystalline, decrepitude of American culture. Almost poetic in it's brevity and clarity. I reproduce the links for you below:

NYC School Assignment Results In Man's Arrest
Mom, Fending Off Rats, Accidentally Suffocates Baby
4th Teen Arrested in Girl's Videotaped Beating
Woman Charged With Running Over Boyfriend
Baby Found at Bottom of Bronx Trash Chute

They seem to depict a society filled with such barbarity and harsh comedy as to resemble Grand Guignol theater, or a descent into brutishness and animalistic behaviour depicted repeatedly in the Old Testament and requiring God's destructive and punitive intervention. And of course the truth is that these things are most likely not more common now, only that we are more aware of them. I am inclined to believe the world is not much different than it has ever been and while this view may seem cynical, it actually gives me hope against the doomsayers and Jeremiahs...

...but then I consider global warming and George Bush.

I will try to post more. I have been wanting to write on the word cattywampus, its possible relation to caterwaul, its certain relation to cattycorner, and other words similar in meaning or use like cock-a-hoop. And I've had another post in mind wherein I ruminate on the words jocose, jocund, and jocular and why we need all three (joy, joy, joy.)

Until then.

Word(s) of the Day Addendum

2006-12-18T16:31:00.001-05:00

Inre: the post below I learned two new terms related to childbirth. I will quote directly from my nursing student friend's email below:

Cheese-like is exactly the way [vernix] was described to me, and in fact, the way it looks in person. Did you know that the later in gestation the baby is delivered, the less vernix it will have? More fun-OB-terminology/fun facts: when the placenta is delivered, they examine it to see how it detached from the uterus. It can come two different ways - with the baby's or mother's side on the outside. These two placental presentations are called, respectively, Shiny Shultze and Dirty Duncan. How weird is that? Doesn't Dirty Duncan in particular sound like some sordid sex act?

Yes, Dirty Duncan does sound like some sordid sex act, like a Dirty Sanchez to be precise. However, in obstetric terminology, I am inclined to suppose that the two phrases have no real importance and are only used as more colorful and easy to remember replacements for up/down or yes/no signifiers.

As an aside. Here is the full OED entry on Placenta:

PLACO- (comb. form) + -, suffix generally forming adjectives. Cf. French placenta (1642 in sense 1, 1694 in Tournefort in sense 2), Italian placenta (1694 in sense 2, 1698 in sense 1), German Plazenta (16th cent. as Placenta in sense 1). In plural form placentae after the Latin plural form.]

1. Anat. and Zool. A round, flat, spongy, vascular organ to which the fetus of most mammals (i.e. those other than monotremes and marsupials: see PLACENTAL

adj. 2) is attached by the umbilical cord, through which oxygen and nutrients pass from the maternal blood, and which is expelled as the afterbirth. Also: a structure having a similar function in other animals, such as certain viviparous fishes, ascidians, etc.
1638 A. READ Man. Anat. Body of Man (new ed.) I. xxvi. 252 About the upper part of the bottom, unto the which the placenta uteri is tyed, it becommeth almost two inches thick. 1667 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 2 510 He giveth a particular account of the double Placenta or Cake, to be found in Rabbets, Hares, Mice, Moles, &c. 1692 J. RAY Wisdom of God (ed. 2) I. 67 The Blood still circulates through the Cotyledons or Placenta. 1728 E. CHAMBERS Cycl., Placenta, in Anatomy, a softish Mass, found in the Womb of a pregnant Woman. 1782 Philos. Trans. 1781 (Royal Soc.) 71 359, 5 women had the puerperal fever, of whom four died. In one of these the placenta was undelivered, and continued so to her death. 1832 London Med. & Physical Jrnl. 68 72, I have observed..many placentæ expelled in natural labour. 1875 C. C. BLAKE Zoology Pref., Sharks bring forth their young alive, and nourish them while in the womb by a temporary structure called ‘placenta’. 1888 G. ROLLESTON & W. H. JACKSON Forms Animal Life (ed. 2) 445 In Salpa the developing embryo is nourished by a placenta formed, in part at least, by follicle cells. 1923 J. M. M. KERR et al. Combined Text-bk. Obstetr. & Gynæcol. xxvii. 390 In binovular twin pregnancy there are, no matter how closely the placentæ are approximated, two distinct chorions. 1986 A. S. ROMER & T. S. PARSONS Vertebr. Body (ed. 6) v. 134 Some lizards and snakes have chorioallantoic placentae, reduced yolk, and other features normally thought of as purely mammalian. 1990 Birder's World Aug. 58/1 They frequent pupping grounds of seals, feeding on the feces and placentas of the seals. 2002 R. PORTER Blood & Guts i. 7, Immunities passed via the placenta or mother's milk provide infants with some defence.

2. Bot. The place or part in an ovary where the ovules are attached. Also: (in ferns and fern allies) the point on a leaf where the sporangia arise.
1681 N. GREW Mvsævm Regalis Societatis II. iii. 233 The seat of the Placenta, black; which reaches almost half round the Bean. 1682 Anat. Plants IV. III. vii. 191 The Seeds stuck all round about upon the Ambit or Sides of the Case; or upon a great Bed or Placenta within it. 1727 R. BRADLEY Family Dict. s.v. Flower of Parnassus, A Membranous fruit..having..one cell full of seeds, fastened to a placenta which is often very square. 1750 Philos. Trans. 1748 (Royal Soc.) 45 565 Every Seed is fastened by its Point to the Placenta, as to a common Centre. 1830 J. LINDLEY Introd. Nat. Syst. Bot. 75 Its ovarium contains, instead of three ovules adhering to a central placenta, one only, which is pendulous. 1865 G. BENTHAM Illustr. Handbk. Brit. Flora p. xxx, Placentas are axile, when the ovules are attached to the axis or centre. 1875 A. W. BENNETT & W. T. T. DYER tr. J. von Sachs Text-bk. Bot. 395 The sporangia arise..from some of the superficial cells of the placenta or part to which the sorus is attached. 1914 F. E. FRITSCH & E. J. SALISBURY Introd. Study Plants xix. 245 In an apocarpous ovary the carpels are folded so that their margins meet, each edge usually bearing a number of seed-rudiments or ovules..and being generally somewhat swollen to form a placenta. 1965 P. BELL & D. COOMBE tr. E. Strasburger Textbk. Bot. 580 At the base of the submerged leaf [in the Salviniaceae] are several globose sporocarps..; these enclose the sporangia, which arise from a columnar placenta. 1998 Jrnl. Torrey Bot. Soc. 125 272/2 Placentae range in size from small bulges to prominent protrusions within the locules.

The etymology is intriguing and bears no relation to the etymology of place or placid. However, the word Placent has two meanings, one, an adjective, means eager to please. The other, a noun, while being both obsolete and rare, means a flat cake or tablet. I can find no other word in common use sharing the same etymology as placenta. Kind of a shame, nu? This is why language can be endlessly disappointing, even while we enjoy its riches we are also struck by how rich it could be and is not.

I am tempted here to explore the meanings of puerperal but better stop.

Word(s) of the day

2006-12-14T13:44:00.000-05:00

My posting tempo has been slowing down. No good reason, but my apologies.

I have a new niece! The very first niece in my immediate family (there are already three nephews.)

And to celebrate, I have three nifty words concerning childbirth and newborn imps:

Meconium

2. Med. and Veterinary Med. The dark, greenish-brown sticky contents of the intestine of the mammalian fetus in the later stages of gestation, forming the first faeces of the newborn.

1706 Phillips's New World of Words (ed. 6), Meconium,..the Ordure of a young Child, which sticks to the Entrails after the Birth, so call'd from its Colour, resembling that of Poppy-Juice. 1732 J. ARBUTHNOT Rules of Diet iv. 404 All of them [sc. newborn infants] have a Meconium, or sort of dark-colour'd Excrement in the Bowels. 1844 H. STEPHENS Bk. of Farm III. 913 It [sc. colostrum] has a different composition from milk, and acts as a purgative to the new-born calf,..removing the sticky sort of dung called the meconium, from its bowels. 1890 J. CAGNEY tr. R. von Jaksch Clin. Diagnosis vi. 165 The term ‘meconium’ is applied to the substance discharged from the rectum of the child immediately after birth. 1952 D. M. STUART Daughter of Eng. 328 The passage of meconium led to the suspicion that the child might be dead. 1968 New Eng. Jrnl. Med. 7 Mar. 530/2 Severe meconium staining was seen with the birth of the buttocks. 1989 J. A. B. COLLIER & J. M. LONGMORE Oxf. Handbk. Clin. Specialties (ed. 2) ii. 128 Meconium (passage of babies' bowel contents) is seen in 13% of labours of >38 weeks' gestation.

In other words, meconium is baby shit that is usually expelled during the stress of birth. I have heard too that mothers also occasionally shit during birth, they're trying to strain every darn muscle down there, so it kind of makes sense. The etymology is interesting as it's greek and is the same word as used for the poppy or for a particular variety of poppy, and then for the thickened juice extracted from the poppy. I can only imagine (but will try not to) that the thickened juice of the poppy is somehow similar to a baby's first shit. Think about that the next time you're shooting up heroin.

Vernix

or, in precise terminology, vernix caseosa

2. Med. In full, vernix caseosa [mod.L. casesus, f. L. caseus cheese]. A greasy deposit covering the skin of a baby at birth.
1846 DUNGLISON Dict. Med. Sci. (ed. 6) 785/1 Vernix caseosa. 1882 W. T. LUSK Sci. & Art of Midwifery iii. 75 In the fifth month the surface of the fetal body is covered by the vernix caseosa, a whitish substance composed of..surface epithelium, down, and the products of the sebacious glands. 1956 Nature 18 Feb. 330/1 The specimens [of amniotic fluid] were centrifuged and the vernix and supernatant fluid removed. 1978 Jrnl. R. Soc. Med. LXXI. 212 Copious vernix caseosa is often present. 1980 Brit. Med. Jrnl. 25 Oct. 1138/1 With difficulty but determination she gave birth to an enormous child coated in so much vernix that it seemed to wear a cream cheese pack.

What's neat about this is trying to envision the exact texture of a material that is consistently referred to as cheese-like; I particularly like the phrase "cream cheese pack" in the usage example above. The word is straight from the medieval Latin for varnish.

And finally, and perhaps most perverse:

Lanugo

Fine soft hair or down, or a surface resembling this; spec. that covering the human foetus.
1677 Phil. Trans. XII. 904 The lanugo seen upon a Peach, Quince, or the like. 1766 Misc. Ess. in Ann. Reg. 192/1 A Monchinel-apple falling into the sea and lying in the water will contract a lanugo of salt-petre. 1871 DARWIN Desc. Man I. i. 25 The..so-called lanugo, with which the human foetus during the sixth month is thickly covered. 1876 DUHRING Dis. Skin 33 Very fine, soft hair, called lanugo, found upon the face, trunk, and other regions.
attrib. and Comb. 1891 W. A. JAMIESON Dis. Skin i. (ed. 3) 4 The small lanugo hairs seem as if dependents of the sebaceous glands. 1897 Allbutt's Syst. Med. III. 686 A tuft of delicate lanugo-like hairs.

It's interesting that the etymology of lanugo stems from "lana," the Latin word for wool and from which must derive the word lanolin. (Lanolin merges Lana-wool with olin, stemming from oleum, the Latin for oil and from whence comes oleo, and oleaginous)

So there we are. Three good reasons why giving birth is kind of disgusting, yet provides us with three very nifty words.

Word(s) of the Day

2006-12-02T19:13:00.000-05:00

So I came in second in the Spelling Bee seasonal championship last Monday. This was typical but I was pissed, though I was also trying hard not to be pissed. Firstly, even if I hadn't gotten the one word wrong that I shouldn't have gotten wrong (as opposed to the words I got wrong that were entirely reasonable to get wrong) I likely would still not have won. Secondly, half my annoyance was at the fact that the prizes I received were fairly useless. I hate being an ingrate, but it seems like a natural condition. My wife always commented on it, how hard I found it to be simply gracious.

Anyhow, as prizes I got a six-month or year membership to the Brooklyn Museum, something of almost nil value to me since I can get in free anyway. I also received two free tickets to the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a musical I've wanted to see. Except I had already gotten free tickets from the previous bee and I haven't used them yet as I can't find anyone to go with, don't want to go with a stranger (and I don't have even casual acquaintances who want to go) and I'm not so mercenary as to bother auctioning them off on Craigslist. I also got a pair of earmuff/headphones, but I have never owned a portable music player in my life nor often felt the need to. Finally, I received a gift certificate to a bakery that is reputed to bake some pretty fine cupcakes. I hope to make use of that, at the least. I don't mean to sound bitter; it's simply that there seems to be something deeply buried in me that greatly resents the imperfect gift.

But that is all by the by. The word I misspelles that I should have gotten correctly was:

Saltimbocca

A dish consisting of rolled pieces of veal and ham cooked with herbs. Also in Comb., as saltimbocca (alla) Romana.

1937 M. MORPHY Good Food from Italy 89 (heading) Veal and Ham à la Romana [Saltimbocca alla Romana]. 1959 Good Food Guide 224 Escalope Cordon Bleu, ‘rather like a Roman Saltimbocca only deep fried in batter’. 1960 Harper's Bazaar Oct. 154/2 Saltimbocca combines paper-thin slices of veal with prosciutto and a sage leaf. 1969 G. GREENE Travels with my Aunt I. xiii. 126 He put a lot of saltimbocca Romana into his mouth. 1977 C. MCCULLOUGH Thorn Birds xvii. 447 I'll have pâté, some scampi and a huge plate of saltimbocca. 1978 Chicago June 237/1 [There are] half a dozen veal dishes (Saltimbocca alla Romanawith prosciutto, butter, herbs, and marsalais a specialty), [etc.].

I knew that the crux was one c or two; and I was leaning towards two. But my natural inclination is for one (is it Italian or Spanish in which the word for mouth is "boca"?). But the official pronunciation of the word is with a short o, as in bocce, (to me, as in Vacca, that seems to invite two cees, but someone in the crowd yelled out that it should be a long o, as in boat. That made me reconsider, incorrectly of course.

But I was pleased with some other words I had to spell. I forget the challenging ones that I ad to guess at, but one of the fun ones was

Arachnophagous
A word I can't find in the dictionary but means, of course, spider-eating; phagous or phagy being my favorite Greek root. The word makes me laugh not because of it's meaning but because whenever phagous is used as a suffix I am reminded of Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street. As if he had siblings with even odder names. And then the word is easy to spell.

And that was that, below are some words I will not bother at the moment to define or discuss but which tweak my consciousness occasionally:

Avuncular
Avoirdupois
Adipose

Toodle-oo

And in high school news...

2006-11-14T10:26:00.000-05:00

Didn't I just write that my high school has been haunting me lately? well, an old classmate just reconnected with me via Classmates.com, the first time that service has proved useful to me.

I wonder what's next.

Word(s) of the day...

2006-11-14T10:12:00.000-05:00

Or, Things I learned at last night's spelling bee.

I misspelled this word:

Coeliotomy
Also celio-.
The operation of cutting into the abdominal cavity; laparotomy.
1881 Trans. Obstet. Soc. Lond. XXII. 128 If a new word was needed to supersede ‘gastrotomy’ perhaps ‘cliotomy’ would do. 1908 Practitioner Oct. 608 Anterior and posterior vaginal coeliotomy. 1954 BACON & TRIMPI in K. C. Jonas Babcock's Princ. & Pract. Surg. xliv. 1423 Celiotomy.In the doubtful or confusing case, exploratory laparotomy is advantageous.

That's from the OED. The reason I got it wrong is that coeli- is not an acceptable American spelling, like foetus, and I guessed the British spelling. But th word is easy otherwise as I remember from high school biology that whether or not an organism has an enclosed body cavity with differentiated cells on the inside and on the outside is an easy marker of complexity. Animals which almost have body cavities or whose cells are not quite specialized are described as having pseudoceloms (although I suspect the plural would be pseudocoela.)

Oddly, while celiotomy is the accepted American spelling as I stated above, I did find this word in Webster's:

Pseudocoel

So the "oe" has not altogether been replaced.

A word I got right last night:

Frankincense
1. An aromatic gum resin, yielded by trees of the genus Boswellia, used for burning as incense; olibanum; occas. the smoke from the same.
a1387 Sinon. Barthol. (Anecd. Oxon.) 42 Thus album, i. olibanum, franke ensens. c1450 Cov. Myst. (Shaks. Soc.) 8 Kynges iij With gold, myrre, and ffrankynsens. ?c1475 Sqr. lowe Degre 849 Cloves that be swete smellyng, Frankensence, and olibanum. 1552 LATIMER Serm. Gosp. vi. 188 Franckumsence to signify his priesthoode. 1645 FULLER Good Th. in Bad T. (1841) 50 He..sent Leonidas a present of five hundred talents' weight of frankincense. 1718 PRIOR Pleasure 904 Curling frankincense ascends to Baal. 1834 LYTTON Pompeii IV. iii, Odour of myrrh and frankincense.

That's an easy one to spell. It's etymology is literally incense of the Franks (or French.) That won me the game which made my competitor pissed; she had to spell:

Flammiferous
[f. L. flammifer bearing flame (f. flamm-a FLAME + -fer bearing) + -OUS.]
Bearing or producing flame.

I probably would ave gotten that right since the -iferous ending is usually pretty easy to spot and I think I got it wrong once, spelling it with only one m, I would have guessed two last night.

More words soon, I promise.

~A

Another sign that God is unfair...

2006-11-09T12:37:00.000-05:00

Ed Bradley beats Andy Rooney to the grave!

There's probably some good jokes in here for next week's trivia team name, although the ones that pop to mind like "Ed Bradley now covering the afterlife" or "Ed Bradley scores exclusive interview with God" maybe come too close to my Cory Lidle Joke "Cory Lidle traded to the Angels."

I remember helping Ed Bradley when he shopped at Kate's Paperie from time to time, usually on a Sunday morning after he'd popped into Dean & Deluca. Seemed like a nice guy.

Two or three things

2006-11-08T13:39:00.000-05:00

I'm happy today that the democrats were successful enough yesterday that they matched or surpassed pre-election predictions.

If we were playing trivia today (instead of hosting) my suggested teamname would be:

K Fed is K F****ed

I like how it looks on the page, tautological and also insensible. And it sounds good too!

And finally, I'm wearing my underwear backwards today. I don't know how this happens. If not wearing underwear is "going commando" then wearing underwear backwards should be something else, but I can't think of the right term.

I like trucks

2006-11-05T16:01:00.000-05:00

Especially ones with neat names, like the Vactor 2100.

But I think the painter would be proud of the one below.

Them's good eatin'

2006-11-02T12:10:00.000-05:00

From the Science and Space section of CNN.com

• Discovery prepped for December launch

Whe I first scanned the page I read the headline as:

Discovery peppered for December lunch

It's much more fun that way...and appetizing.

In the news...

2006-11-02T10:25:00.000-05:00

Once in awhile a group of headlines simply appeals to me. Not for their humor, but for the way the various stories combine to present a remarkable view of society, a cross-section of stupidity, malice, venality and all the things that make humanity interesting. It's kind of like the Sesame Street song, "These Are the People in Your Neighborhood" but with a focus on criminality, not public service.

PHOTO: Police Seek Brooklyn Bank Robber
Trial Starts for LI Teen Charged in Sword Attack
Remains Search Rally Planned at Ground Zero
Con Ed: Power Outage Reported in Richmond Hill
Police Shoot Man in Tremont Section of Bronx
LIRR Starting Platform Gap Work at Woodside
Motorcyclist Dies Following Southern State Crash
John Kerry Apologizes for Iraq Comments
Children Named in White Plains Music Lawsuit
Third Man Surrenders in Shooting of LI Driver
VIDEO: Bob Barker to Retire From "Price is Right"
NYC to Hire More Experts in 9/11 Remains Search
Plane Mishaps Probed at Newark Airport
Joey Buttafuoco's Jail Sentence Postponed
NJ Senate Candidates Chime in on Kerry Comments
Archive

~A

Word(s) of the day

2006-10-31T14:45:00.000-05:00

Or, new words I discovered at last night's spelling bee:

Dirigibility
[f. DIRIGIBLE a.: see -ILITY.]
The quality of being dirigible; controllability.
1875 Q. Rev. CXXXIX. 137 One most important use of dirigibility would be in facilitating the descent, and in avoiding the many dangers to which the aeronaut, in his present helpless position, is so often exposed. 1902 Westm. Gaz. 25 Mar. 9/2 Proving the dirigibility of the aerostat. 1903 Ibid. 16 Nov. 7/3 Wireless dirigibility experiments. 1908 B'ham Inst. Mag. Jan. 254 The problem of..perfect dirigibility of dynamic flying machines.

What's especially pleasurable about that word is the presence of so many "i"s (it was given to another contestant, unfortunately, so it was not mine to spell.) Also that I had always presumed dirigble meant something like "inflated" although this kind of makes more sense. But we finally have an alternative to words like blimpiness. Time to celebrate.

Enclitic
[ad. L. enclitic-us, a. Gr. -, f. on + to lean.]
A. adj. That ‘leans its accent on the preceding word’ (Liddell and Scott): in Greek grammar the distinctive epithet of those words which have no accent, and which (when phonetic laws permit) cause a secondary accent to be laid on the last syllable of the word which they follow. Hence applied to the analogous Latin particles -que, -ve, -ne, etc., and in mod. use (with extension of sense) to those unemphatic words in other langs. that are treated in pronunciation as if forming part of the preceding word.

1656 BLOUNT Glossogr., Enclitick, that inclines or gives back. 1750 HARRIS Hermes I. v. (1786) 85 note, The Diversity between the Contradistinctive Pronouns, and the Enclitic, is not unknown even to the English Tongue. 1855 BROWNING Grammarian's Funeral, Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De. 1867 RAWLINSON Anc. Mon. IV. iv. 227 The pronouns had in certain cases an enclitic form.

I did get to spell this word, and I got it wrong. The first "i" is long, like "eye," so I dickered a bit with myself and spelled it enclytic, which is perfectly reasonable, just wrong. This is also a word I expect I will never ever use.

Leguminous
(lgjumns) [f. L. legmin-, legmen + -OUS.]
1. Of or pertaining to pulse; of the nature of pulse.
1656 in BLOUNT Glossogr. 1767 A. YOUNG Farmer's Lett. to People 45 Raising leguminous crops like field pease. 1827 H. STEUART Planter's G. (1828) 498 This practice will by no means preclude the cultivation of leguminous crops. 1898 Allbutt's Syst. Med. V. 591 Meat, leguminous vegetables and bread contain the same alkali.
2. Bot. Of or pertaining to the family Leguminosæ, which includes peas, beans, and other plants which bear legumes or pods.
1677 GREW Anat. Plants IV. III. v. (1682) 187 The Cod of the Garden Bean (and so of the rest of the Leguminous kind) opens on one side. 1785 MARTYN Rousseau's Bot. iii. (1794) 39 The greater part of the leguminous or pulse tribe. 1807 J. E. SMITH Phys. Bot. 446 Linnæus..asserts..that ‘among all the leguminous or papilionaceous tribe there is no deleterious plant to be found’. 1830 LINDLEY Nat. Syst. Bot. 88 Myrospermum, a spurious Leguminous genus. 1854 HOOKER Himal. Jrnls. I. ii. 50 A most elegant leguminous tree. 1890 A. R. WALLACE Darwinism 24 Climbing leguminous plants escape both floods and cattle.
b. Resembling what pertains to a leguminous plant.
1688 R. HOLME Armoury II. 97/1 The top [of Goats Rue] is branched, upon each stands many leguminous, or pulse~like flowers. 1725 BRADLEY Fam. Dict. s.v. Sainfoin, They are leguminous Flowers, White and sometimes Red. 1830 LINDLEY Nat. Syst. Bot. 87 Another and a more invariable character [of the Pea tribe] is to have a leguminous fruit.

I love the brevity and obcurity of that definition, mainly because it's use of the word pulse in a manner most of us today are entirely unfamiliar with:

Pulse
Pronunciation: 'p&ls
Etymology: Middle English puls, probably from Anglo-French puuiz gruel, from Latin pult-, puls, probably from Greek poltos: the edible seeds of various crops (as peas, beans, or lentils) of the legume family; also : a plant yielding pulse

It's interesting to note that Pulse, to beat, and Pulse, beans share a similar etymology. I suppose beating or pulverizing beans was common enough to lend the term to the actual plant.

But back to leguminous, not only is it a word that means bean-like, but it reminds me of the words luminous and bituminous, thus it sounds like you're descriping some kind of glowing, exalted, bean.

And now for a word I didn't hear at the spelling bee but just like to carry in my back pocket:

Dithyramb

(dræmb) [ad. L. dthyrambus, a. Gr. (origin unknown). In F. dithyrambe. Also used in the Latin form.]
Gr. Antiq. A Greek choric hymn, originally in honour of Dionysus or Bacchus, vehement and wild in character; a Bacchanalian song.
1603 HOLLAND Plutarch's Mor. 1358 According as Aeschylus saith: The Dithyrambe with clamours dissonant Sorts well with Bacchus. 1847 GROTE Greece II. xxix. IV. 118 The primitive Dithyrambus was a round choric dance and song in honour of Dionysus. 1873 SYMONDS Grk. Poets v. 118 The Dithyramb never lost the tempestuous and enthusiastic character of Bacchic revelry.
b. transf. A metrical composition having characteristics similar to this.
1656 S. HOLLAND Zara III. iii. 153 The Musick having charmed their sences with a Celestiall Dithyramb [pr. Dyrathamb]. [1727-51 CHAMBERS Cycl. s.v., Some..modern writers, have composed Latin pieces of all kinds of verse indifferently..without any order, or distribution into strophes, and call them dithyrambi.] 1859 A. A. BONAR in Spurgeon Treas. Dav. Ps. vii. heading, Ewald suggests, that it [Shiggaion] might be rendered ‘a confused ode’, a Dithyramb. 1860 ADLER Fauriel's Prov. Poetry i. 8 Martial dithyrambs, full of ardor and highmindedness.
c. A speech or writing in vehement or inflated style.
1863 GEO. ELIOT Romola xxxix, What dithyrambs he went into about eating and drinking. 1863 Sat. Rev. 153 M. Victor Hugo, in Les Misérables, has poured forth a rhapsody, or dithyramb, or whatever, under a classical name, expresses exaggerated and inflated nonsense. 1877 MORLEY Crit. Misc. Ser. II. 4 Mr. Carlyle..has reproduced in stirring and resplendent dithyrambs the fire and passion..of the French Revolution.

And frankly, the c. definition brings me back to a word I promised to deliver last week and which means almost the same thing as above:

Bloviate

Brit. /blvet/, U.S. /bloviet/ [Prob. < BLOW v.1 + -viate (in e.g. DEVIATE v., ABBREVIATE v., etc.); cf. -ATE3.]
intr. To talk at length, esp. using inflated or empty rhetoric; to speechify or ‘sound off’.
1845 Huron Reflector (Norwalk, Ohio) 14 Oct. 3/1 Peter P. Low, Esq., will with open throat..bloviate about the farmers being taxed upon the full value of their farms, while bankers are released from taxation. 1887 Amer. Missionary Sept. 258 And this is the New South over which Grady bloviated so pathetically? 1923 N.Y. Times 23 Aug. 14/4 We all like to bloviate against ‘corporations’, and there is no tenderness in New Jersey for the Public Service Railway Company. 1957 Amer. Hist. Rev. 62 1014 Occasionally a candidate makes some great pronouncement or drastic shift of position in such an oration, but more often he merely talks, or, as Harding put it, ‘bloviates’, being concerned more with the political effect of his remarks than with their meaning. 2002 Mother Jones May-June 82/2 Chávez seems enamored of the sound of his own voice, and he has an unpopular habit of taking over Venezuela's TV and radio stations to bloviate about his reforms.

So there we have it. Note that thanks are due to a dear friend who has loaned me a password and ID for an online OED. Therefore many of the links above will not work unless you have your own subscription. And the pronunciation key doesn't cut and paste. But those are minor quibbles.

Word(s) of the Day Addendum

2006-10-24T16:00:00.000-04:00

I just discovered the word Suctorial

Pronunciation: "s&k-'tor-E-&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: New Latin suctorius, from Latin sugere
: adapted for sucking; especially : serving to draw up fluid or to adhere by suction

I can see how this could turn into a great bit of rude slang, as in:

"Yo, that chick is mad suctorial!"

Word(s) of the day

2006-10-24T13:56:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking of starting a series of posts on words that inhabit the depths of my mind, that occasionally bubble up and float on it's surface for awhile before sinking again into the murk of memory. Many of these words I find sweet and flavorful and I like to roll them around in my mouth, toss them off my tongue, and squeeze them into conversation. My urge to write posts on the subject is hindered by my lack of access to the OED (the first time I have not had access since 2002), but I will make do as best I can. Often words do not come to me by themselves but in alliterative or etymological groupings and so to start off I offer you a trio (let it not raise your expectations too high for future posts.)

Scrofulous
Main Entry: scrof·u·lous Pronunciation: -l&s
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, or affected with scrofula
2 a : having a diseased run-down appearance b : morally contaminated

(Scrofula, by the way, is a "tuberculous infection of the skin of the neck, most often caused by mycobacteria (including Mycobacteriumtuberculosis)...by Mycobacterium scrofulaceum or Mycobacterium avium." Symptoms include "painless swelling of cervical (neck) lymph nodes, "(ulceration is rare today,) "lymph nodes may be enlarged elsewhere, fevers, chills, sweats, and weight loss can occur in 20% of individuals.")

Scabrous
Pronunciation: 'ska-br&s also 'skA-Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin scabr-, scaber rough, scurfy; akin to Latin scabere to scratch -- more at SCAB1 : DIFFICULT, KNOTTY
2 : rough to the touch: as a : having small raised dots, scales, or points b : covered with raised, roughened, or unwholesome patches
3 : dealing with suggestive, indecent, or scandalous themes : SALACIOUS; also : SQUALID

And finally,

Scurfy
Main Entry: scurf
Pronunciation: 'sk&rf
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Icelandic skurfa scurf; akin to Old High German scorf scurf, Old English sceorfan to scarify
1 : thin dry scales detached from the epidermis especially in an abnormal skin condition; specifically : DANDRUFF
2 a : something like flakes or scales adhering to a surface b : the foul remains of something adherent
3 a : a scaly deposit or covering on some plant parts; also : a localized or general darkening and roughening of a plant surface usually more pronounced than russeting b : a plant disease characterized by scurf
- scurfy /'sk&r-fE/ adjective

So you see how my mind runs. I like these words not only for the somewhat gross mental pictures they invite but also for the moral taint attached to them. Such poisonous tincture falls perfectly in line with pre-modern equations of illness and sin and points to issues discussed at length in Sontag's Illness as Metaphor and elsewhere. They become grouped together in my mind because they have similar meanings and similar sounds and I marvel at how frequently that coincidence occurs in English. In these cases particularly, the s, c, r, b and f sounds seem particularly suited to the meanings.

So if, in the future, you feel inclined to describe some dastardly fellow with bad skin who peddles porn, the words above should come in quite handy.

Note that in lieu of the OED I will be making greatest use of Merriam-Webster, to whom all the links above will lead you. Despite the annoying pop-up ads I like Merriam's inclusion of etymologies.

My next post, unless I become preoccupied by other words, will be a dilation on Bloviate and like terms.

A brief paean to PBS...

2006-10-23T10:53:00.000-04:00

I had another Saturday evening in this weekend and after the Cardinals-Tigers baseball game ended I switched it over to channel thirteen. Ever since coming to New York I have enjoyed Saturday night movies, commercial free, on PBS. I have picked up lots of films I never would have seen otherwise, at least until the arrival of Netflix. Although quite often the selection of movies doesn't interest me particularly, and they do have a habit of replaying some movies too often (but when those repeats are films like Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story, it's hard to complain.)

On Saturday though it was three great films. I caught most of Sweet Smell of Success for the first time and it's truly a kick-ass film that I hope impressed those European auteurs when it first came out. The ending shot is so absolutely devastating. You see Kirk Douglas looking over a balcony onto all New York in the morning having just lost what he was trying to save through the whole movie, his sister is walking down the street having just made a sorrowful break in her life, and Tony Curtis, who served as engineer of all of Douglas' machinations is getting punched by a cop and kicked in the gut on the sidewalk. Fantastic.

Then it was The Defiant Ones with Tony Curtis and Sydney Poitier; another film I've wanted to see for awhile and equally strong and bleak in outlook. And then, beginning around 2 in the morning, Night of the Living Dead. A film I've seen before, luckily, because I fell asleep in the middle of it.

So in tribute to the joys of late night programming I have only this to say:

They're coming to get you Barbara!!!

In the news

2006-10-19T15:55:00.000-04:00

Cheney admits premature optimism
I think someone just got a facial, and you know how it just ruins the moment.

So last night...

2006-10-19T12:42:00.000-04:00

...I had a dream where I discovered all my lost socks, as if they had been hiding, and I had no more unmatched pairs.

It was a very good dream.

My past is haunting me

2006-10-18T17:00:00.000-04:00

So I've been out of high school for nigh upon seventeen and a half years. Lincoln park high School, I remember it quite fondly. (It has no connection to the similarly named band, thank god.) In that time, I have randomly run into acquaintances from school on the streets of New York, been tracked down by others, and found myself on the mailing list of the alumni newsetter (the school's alumni association was only started about five years ago, so my class has never actually held any reunions.) But most of those run-ins happened well in the past and for all the people I've met here and ther wo have grown up in or around Chicago, none have ever been alumni of the school or had any great familiarity with it.

But this summer, when I was in Washington D.C. for an archivists conference, I fell into conversation with a friend of a friend who, it turned out, had actually gone there about four years after me (we might have overlapped one yer; and then he went on to get a library degree at the same place I did.) He also revealed that he had dated the younger (and very cute) sister of one of my classmate, one who I had a crush on but hung out mainly with older years. So we had actually been in the same house near school.

Very odd. but this weekend I went to a wedding and was introduced to friends of the bride from Chicago and, lo and behold, he went to my high school! A bit more recently but we still could spend a few minutes chatting about teachers.

And then this morning the Today show did a feature on difficulties of applying for colleges and they used three "model" teens and their families to illuminate the stresses and one of them was from my high school. They even had film of the student roaming the hallways and outside. It was all very surreal.

So I've been wondering if I should find any significance in these (apparently) coincidental events. And if so, what possible significance can be found?

I'm open to suggestions.

The downside of personal fetishes...

2006-09-28T10:12:00.000-04:00

Man Wearing Collar Found Dead on Fence
NEW YORK -- A man wearing black leather clothing, a mask and a studded collar was found dead in the West Village in Manhattan Wednesday -- his body dangling by the collar from an iron fence.

It's like your mother's old admonition to always wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident. "If I ever catch sight of you in a leather mask, I'll have a heart attack, I swear. Even if I have to identify your dead body I'll pretend I don't know you."

The body has not yet been identified.

In the news...

2006-09-21T13:57:00.000-04:00

NYC Chef Accused of Sex Harassment in Kitchen
NEW YORK -- A waitress filed a $20 million lawsuit Wednesday against a high-end Japanese restaurant in one of the city's trendiest areas, claiming its head cook groped her, molested her with kitchen utensils and sexually harassed her.

It's the phrase "molested her with kitchen utensils" that interests me here. Because if someone has discovered new uses for a ricer I'd like to know about it. And frankly, I have always thought the erotic possibilites of spatulas have never been truly exploited.

Experts find 'smoking gun' spinach
Whaddya call this? Oh yeah, I think it's an "heirloom varietal."

Men and boys

2006-09-19T20:29:00.000-04:00

So I went to a bachelor party this past weekend. Going to a bachelor party is rare for me, I guess because I have only a handful of friends good enough to invite me, and most of them do not seem ever inclined to get married. And even if they did, they are not the type to have a bachelor party; this is the downside to being independent minded and out of the mainstream. It's for this same reason I think I have never been to Las Vegas or Atlantic City. I guess I am not so independent-minded and out of the mainstream to think that my life might be poorer for it. One notable thing is that it was a year to the day as the last (and first) bachelor part I went to. This one was quite as much fun, more exhausting, and less scandalous. I suppose the lack of scandal is something to be regretted.

The host of people, twenty men, were all about my age, or since most knew the groom from college, perhaps one or two years older than me. But they were all very similar in some ways. Most had "real" jobs in various corporate sectors (which they didn't spend time talking about); most were married with one or two kids or one on the way; most lived in somewhat suburban settings with one or two cars; the ones who weren't complaining jovially about the knocking they had taken that mnorning while hitting the ski slopes on mountain bikes were recounting their adventures, wins and losses, at the Foxwoods gambling tables the night before. Some lived quite near each other so that their wives and kids were spending the night together, the kids in bed while the wives cut loose; their own night out while the boys played. Many of them were "big" men, "loud" men, real "guys." Although I had little in common with them, a few beers and our common friendship with the groom made such differences vanish. Still, I felt like their kid brother, somehow excluded from the real life of the grown-ups.

There were drugs floating around, some x, some blow. We discovered that at the right hour you can hail a stretch limo in Manhattan. I forget how many beers I had but the evening stretched till after the bars closed in the city, and necessarily included a strip club. I was floating and restless, as I often am while drunk, unwilling to go home to my apartment. So I wandered the village for two hours, until the sun was well up; I was home by 7am, slept until 5 in the evening, watched tv in my underwear for a few hours and got a good night's sleep. Despite that I did not feel recovered until today; not a bad thing, I suppose. But the dissipation of the activities puts me in a strange mood always.

But a good thing. I am looking forward to the wedding.

A most wonderful front page today

2006-09-19T15:52:00.000-04:00

All afternoon it seemed to me that CNN.com had the most wonderful array of headlines. Bad news, frightening news, stupid news, a perfect mix right before my eyes. To try and share it with you, I have copied most of it here in it's entirety. My comments are interspersed and the very speacial headlines are bolded.

An astronaut aboard space shuttle Atlantis tells Mission Control they saw a second piece of debris floating near the spacecraft, NASA officials say.

BREAKING NEWS

Thailand in chaos after coup
Thailand's army commander ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a military coup while he was in New York, circling his offices with tanks, declaring martial law and revoking the constitution. A televised announcement from the commander ordered all troops to report to duty.
Tanks roll into Bangkok Thai currency falls
Chronology of events Map Gallery Facts
I-Report: Thai coup attempt Send your emails

[this is what the internet is for; to catch those "holy shit!" moments as they happen. I think Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra might want to book his hotel room for a few more nights. Besides which, they've missed the best headline: 'Coup de Thai!' It'll probably be in the Post tomorrow.]

Mystery object delays shuttle landing Video
Iraq says judge ousted in Hussein trial
Bush: Fighting extremism our 'calling' Video

[note that our calling apparently is only fighting other people's extremism; and this is yet another example of the use of 'code words' that sound like reasonable language but have specific meaning among the extreme religious right]

Tests may give clues in E. coli outbreak Map

[this isn't itself a funny headline, but I never thought I'd see the day when the federal government warned the entire American populace against eating spinach. Frankly, I feel like I'm in the midst of a Popeye cartoon. You know the one , where Bluto uses DDT or something to kill the entire annual crop of spinach and Popeye gets absolutely pummeled, until in a brilliant example of breaking the third wall, the film cuts to a shot of a live action kid sitting in the movie theater audience, a kid who just so happens to have stopped by a grocery store and has a can of spinach in his bag, a kid who is somehow able to toss the spinach through the movie screen and into the waiting hands of Popeye, who then proceeds to save the day. Of course you know it.]

Leaders come to pope's defense Gallery

[a headline yeaterday stated "pope implicated in nun's death," which was infinitely funnier and more macabre. Just so you know, I will never, ever, feel sorry for the Pope...or the Catholic Church by and large.]

Race may be motive in abortion kidnap case Video

[So here's a story of parent's who kidnapped their teenage daughter to take her and force her to have an abortion, mainly because the kid's father was black. And to think there were so many other available coercive options that would've not broken the law.]

SI.com: Arrests made in Duquesne shootings

[essentially, someone shot the entire basketball team. I think it's a first.]

Pete Rose to sign, 'I'm sorry I bet on baseball'

[But he will never, ever, be sorry for making money off being sorry.]

Alistair Cooke's fate raises tissue industry issues

[Old story, still funny.]

Smuggled, gloved apes forced to box

[The above headline absolutely resists making sense of. I've been trying all day.]

Mickey Hargitay, Mariska's dad, dead

[Am I the last person to know that Mariska Hargitay is the daughter of Jayne Mansfield?]

Doped 600-pound cow pulled from bottom of well

[Have cattle legalized marijuana? Since when is the bovine world so far ahead of us?]

Gallery: Unjoined twins go home Video

[Not being joined, they're not sure why they were at the hospital in the first place.]

Gibson daughter weds Kenny Wayne Shepherd

[Because it's never been any secret that Mel likes a good shepherd.]

Senator compares Iran's president to Hitler

[Having known both, he is an apparent authority.]

Prolific molester convicted of abuse

[Was he declared innocent of molestation?]

Ex-DHS aide pleads no contest to online sex rap

[The DHS has, and this is not secret, become an apparent dumping ground for otherwise unemployable government workers. But it's still funny when they lose their trials.]

Why is 'me time' such a big deal?

[Just because.]

Scientists: We must return to the moon

[The moon, it calls to us, it neeeeeeds us.]

College Football Power Rankings

[The phrase power rankings reminds me of D&D, and frankly, there really isn't any difference between gamers and stat freaks.]

Famous athletes who spent time in prison

[Trivia one should never forget.]

There Will Be No More Beautiful Days, or, 9/11 on a Platter

2006-09-11T13:43:00.000-04:00

I think that sounds like a diner breakfast order, two strips of crispy bacon and a side of (h)ash.

I was thinking I would write down my personal reflections of the event here, as it seems to be what everybody else is doing today. but I don't think I really want to take the time to narrate the complexities of my immediate reaction and activities nor my reflections since then on those events. So I'll bullet point it:

I was in Boston. I had gotten to work a half hour early and was spending the time surfing the net. The last site I would visit before getting down to work was CNN. Right as I loaded the CNN homepage it was maybe 9:05 and the headline read: "Second Plane Hits World Trade Center". Such a statement really takes a moment to digest, you know what I mean? I remember reading the headline outloud to a coworker who had just walked in, kind of in a "get a load of this" tone. And then the internet froze and we turned on the radio.
The towers fell while I was on the train ride home after they called for the voluntary evacuation of downtown Boston.
I spent the rest of the day with my then-wife and my friend Jonathan. We ordered pizza in, drank beer, and watched tv for the rest of the day.
Two weeks previous I had finished a small artists' book concerning Aberfan, Wales*. Afterwards the book was interpreted as a comment on 9/11, the Bush government, and the war in Aghanistan.
Aberfan, a long standing interest of mine, reawakened my interest in plane crashes, and September 10th I had spent a few hours reading cockpit and control tower transcripts of air disasters.
Thankfully, none of my friends or even seceondary or tertiary acquaintances were hurt or in the area that day, though many watched from their rooftops. My friend Chris, as always, had a similar emotional reaction to mine (though he works through those reactions in a different way.) The reaction was that despite the horror, it was also beautiful, though the horrific aspect would prevent us from ever describing it that way; it was the closest any of us might ever get to a thing truly sublime.

And that's all I will say on that. Except for this statement. Having lived in new York for seven years before going to Boston, I had lived through a few, a very few, perfect days like 9/11. Air that was crystaline clear, with a cool breeze and no clouds. All of Manhattan spread out with absolute clarity, devoid of atmospheric perspective. I don't know I have seen one since.

* Aberfan is a town in Wales that was the site of a mining disaster. The town was at the base of hills below the coal mine. Over decades of excavation, the mine had produced a gigantic amount of slag which had also been heaped above the town. One day, the slag fell down, buried a goodly part of the town including, most horrendously, a grammar school where many of the miners' children went. See: Aberfan

For me, Aberfan is emblematic of situations where our most noble and well-intentioned efforts (in this case making a living and supporting our families) backfire in the worst way, inflicting pain and suffering on ourselves and those we strove to protect or support. The secondary irony is that the rescuers were the town's miners, people trained and experienced in digging and excavating, yet when a moment came when their own children were buried beneath rubble, they were shown to be utterly powerless. The book I made, Angels to Aberfan, was a continuation of a line of thought and mode of representing Aberfan I had begun in college and had only just returned to in 2001. It utilized images of spaceships ("angels") that I had first drawn in kindergarten and first grade.

Two days after 9/11 and back at work, I went to a public church memorial on my lunch break. There, the pastor quoted the same Biblical text as was used in the main memorial service at Aberfan. I can't find the citation now, I believe it was the words of Paul.

In the news, or, The Heart is a Lonely Crocodile Hunter

2006-09-05T10:03:00.000-04:00

Hunters warned about manhunt area
What a perfect set up fo a horror movie:

"Don't go in the woods....or else, the hunter may become the hunted!"

Pictures show thinner Castro
I think some of the party apparatchiks just got busy with PhotoShop, ala Katie Couric

U.S. voters are angry, poll finds
These results were recovered off the bodies of pollsters dumped at the local precinct.

Europe's spacecraft hits the moon
Which is a shame, as it was aiming for Venus. "We don't really know whatt happened, it's like the moon came out of nowhere" one supervisor reported.

Bricks and Mortar

2006-08-30T13:38:00.000-04:00

I fell into a brown study today at lunch. I cannot explain this as it seemed to precede the moment I began reading the fiction piece by Richard Ford in last weeks New Yorker, but it definitely presaged the punishment inflicted on me by that story. Fiction is always so unhappy I stay away from it. It's like the complaint people often wage against the news on television, that it is so concerned with violence, tragedy and unhappiness that it entirely skews reality. Novelists and writers seem to find the depths, compleixites and myriad shadings of unhappiness more fascinating than the brighter side of life (whatever brighter side might actually exist.) One could make the argument that reporters are simply presenting the news as it happens and that happiness is not an event to be chronicled but a stasis providing little external action or incident. Writers may make the same claim but at least possess a clearer choice. They are actors rather than reactors.

The short story recounted in first person the tale of a man in a second marriage. His wife's first husband, disappeared and long thought dead, reappears and she leaves the narrator to reunite with him. The narrator, struggling for coolness and detachment, comes off as an unpleasant person who is overly satisfied with the complacency of his life and perplexed and angered by people who make other choices. But his description of the differences between first and second marriages rang true to me as far as I can perceive such things. And this caused me, logically, to reflect on my marriage and ideas of healing and the passage of time, issues I continually try to unravel, tease apart, worry at, and reconcile with how I feel.

The following might be instructive as to knowing how my brain works. I thought first of a cracked and split open heart and metaphors of repair. As we speak of mending a broken heart one rarely hears descriptions of how a heart might be broken in a physical sense, of what material it might be made of that it is so apparently frangible, fissile, and fragile. Without describing its material we can hardly begin to describe the process of repair. For instance, the heart does not seem to be such a thing that it can be sewn back together; neither do I think glue or paste would work, so already many materials are ruled out for the heart's composition.

My mind seemed to settle on an idea of ceramic or pottery or brick. I recall that I may have composed this thought before. One image I had was of a person struggling to collect potsherds off the ground, as one might struggle to pick up bruised apples without a basket. Eventually, one's arms are so full of items that the act of reaching down to gather another one in makes one or more bits fall back to earth. Like a gleaner, but without a skirt hem to draw up and use as a makeshift satchel.

But that was a digressive thought. A heart made of brick implies the presence of mortar. Repairing a brick or stone wall is a rich, active metaphor for "rebuilding" a life, making a "house" or container for one's self. Masonry has a storied history (the pyramids, the cathedrals, etc.) and a great accumulation of terminology and tools full of allusiveness (the hod, the quicklime, the trowel) and mortar has the additional meaning of the cup or bowl paired with a pestle, the receptacle within which things are ground, atomized or dispersed, a nice inversion of the material which holds things together.

As I was thinking of these things my mind turned (again, quite logically, I assert) to stories by Edgar Allen Poe. It seems to me that if we reflect on the story "The Cask of Amontillado" we can interpret it not as a simple tale of cruel revenge inflicted by one man on his unwitting nemesis (by inebriating him and then walling him into a niche in a deep medieval catacomb) but as an internal narrative of an act of healing conducted by a man on himself. This is not to say that it is a successful act or healthful. I mean that it is not uncommon for me (and others, I'm sure) to feel as if we have betrayed ourselves, that one part of us has undermined or negated the actions of another part. Is it not fair that, to ensure this ceases, we take action against ourselves? Can we not reasonably imagine that Poe's story is of a man who loathes a part of himself so much that he murders that part through calculated deceit? I think the story is more interesting that way even if the psychological interpretation ends up not having any textual basis.

I thought next of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and imagined that perhaps the shuttered, boarded-up heart belong not to a man killed by the narrator, but to himself. That embedding the heart beneath his floorboards was an attempt to erase a crime but the crime was in fact another misguided act of healing. Does not the bible say "And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off"? (Matt. 5:30). Can an offense of the heart not be solved the same way? (You might ask whether this is a good example of cutting off the nose to spite the face; I will leave that point unanswered.) So perhaps in Poe's story the narrator suffers from the impossibility of removing his own heart; that we cannot ignore for long its beating, that such an attempt makes us criminal even as if we have killed another.

I wish here I could recall the exact plot of "The Fall of the House of Usher." I am not sure if I could analyze it the same way. Another favorite story, "The Masque of the Red Death," does not apply. But I enjoy that story very much for it's similarities to both the Marquis de Sade's 100 Days of Sodom and Boccacio's Decameron. (Again, this is a digression, but I enjoy considering how all three stories focus on an escape from a city as a representation of legality, order, morality and societal structure. Out in the country, the characters in the stories nonetheless feel a greater security, safety and are able to unbridle their imaginations. In the Decameron this results in the telling of stories. In Sade it is expressed as unrestrained licentiousness. And in Poe as a costumed ball, though his ends with the note of futility of escape. One could include other books, such as The Cantebury Tales or Huckleberry Finn in this analysis, but neither involve the demonification of the physical city as a place of strictures and requisite dangers be they physical [the plague], legal, or moral. The more I think about it, the more I should include Huckleberry Finn except that it seems to involve less an idea of going from one place to another and more is about simply being on; and besides, I think in Finn all of society, not simply cities, are demonized, and society is represented by any land, not by a particular mode of habitation.)

You see how far my thought wandered in the space of less than a half hour while reading a short story. I have the image of a man rebuilding a wall stuck in my head like a bad song. I need to go read Frost's "Mending Wall" and see if it bears upon this issue. But I will leave you with this:

"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall ; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No ? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power."
"The Amontillado !" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment.
"True," I replied ; "the Amontillado."
As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche.

There is no Amontillado, or if there is, it is not his to ever taste. What other quests do I lead my heart on from which it can never return.

Note to self: drink less coffee.

Okay, okay I confess...

2006-08-30T10:35:00.000-04:00

Polygamists are funny too. I can't explain it.

Police: Throbbing artery gave polygamist away

I think the arresting officers need to take a refresher course in anatomy; that was no artery....

Two more things today

2006-08-29T17:14:00.000-04:00

Firstly, I came across an unbelievably cool last name while sorting some papers. the name is "Paleologos," obviously Greek in derivation and meaning "Old words." (paleo=old as in paleolithic, and logos=word as in logo, logorrhea, dialog, monologue, etc.)

Secondly, something reminded me today of a phrase, a mot, I thought of years ago and have never been convinced I thought of it myself rather than reading or hearing it someplace else. It's not extremely clever but it confuses me as to how or why I would have thought it up.

It is the crack that makes the vase.

I remember now, it's called an aphorism. I can never remember that term. I think there are synonyms for aphorism that I also can never remember.

In the news

2006-08-29T13:53:00.000-04:00

'Most Wanted' polygamist captured

I think his defense is that he only married so many times because the women wouldn't take no for an answer. It's like being "The world's most eligible polygamist." Now that he's captured, everyone can marry him. It's like some old story about being abducted and held captive by Amazonians for breeding purposes.

Turkey bombs: 'Police hunt two'
Description of suspects: Toms, plump breasts, fully-fledged. Pose risk of flight.
This reminds me that yesterday I was thinking about cockroach and bug bombs and how those terms make it sound as if our various pests are waging their own jihad against society. Kind of like a "six legs good, two legs bad" scenario.

I like the rain and the autumn wind...

2006-08-29T13:25:00.000-04:00

So, in honor of the onrushing season I present three songs:

Who Loves the Sun by the immortal Velvet Underground

Who loves the sun
Who cares that it makes plants grow
Who cares what it does since you broke my heart
Who loves the wind
Who cares that it makes breezes
Who cares what it does since you broke my heart

Pa Pa Pa Pa. who loves the sun
Pa Pa Pa Pa who loves the sun
Pa Pa Pa Pa not everyone
Pa Pa Pa Pa who loves the sun

Who loves the rain
Who cares that it makes flowers
Who cares that it makes showers since you broke my heart
Who loves the sun
Who cares that it is shining
Who cares what it does since you broke my heart

Pa Pa Pa Pa who loves the sun
Pa Pa Pa Pa who loves the sun
Pa Pa Pa Pa not everyone
Pa Pa Pa Pa who loves the sun

Next is the first song I ever remember listening to on top forty radio (well, this and "Ring my Bell") and it absolutely mesmerized me when I was 7 or 8 or 9:

I love a Rainy Night by Eddie Rabbit

Well, I love a rainy night
I love a rainy night
I love to hear the thunder
Watch the lightning
When it lights up the sky
You know it makes me feel good
Well, I love a rainy night
It's such a beautiful sight
I love to feel the rain
On my face
Taste the rain on my lips
In the moonlight shadow
Showers washed
All my cares away
I wake up to a sunny day
'Cos I love a rainy night
Yeah, I love a rainy night
Well, I love a rainy night
Well, I love a rainy night
Ooh-ooh
I love a rainy night
I love a rainy night
I love to hear the thunder
Watch the lightning
When it lights up the sky
You know it makes me feel good
Well, I love a rainy night
It's such a beautiful sight
I love to feel the rain
On my face
To taste the rain on my lips
In the moonlight shadows
Puts a song
In this heart of mine
Puts a smile on my face every time
'Cos I love a rainy night
Yeah, I love a rainy night
Ooh, I love a rainy night
Yeah, I love a rainy night
Ooh-ooh

Showers washed
All my cares away
I wake up to a sunny day
'Cos I love a rainy night
Yeah, I love a rainy night
Well, I love a rainy night
I love a rainy night
Well, I love a rainy night
You can see it in my eyes
Yeah, I love a rainy night
Well, it makes me high
Ooh, I love a rainy night
You know I do, yeah, yeah
I love a rainy night
I love a rainy night
You can see it in my eyes..

And finally, one of my favorite standards of all time:

Autumn leaves, english lyrics by (my favorite) Johnny Mercer

The falling leaves drift by my window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold

Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I'll hear a winters song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall

A last note to that song. It's autumn and the singer is reminiscing about summer; he's lonely and apprehensive about the approach of winter. So why is it that the days are growing long? In the fall it's the nights that grow longer and it's also nighttime when we are most likely to be lonely, nostalgic and dreamy which is clearly the song's tone. This has never made sense to me so when I sing it to myself I change the lyric to "Since you went away, the nights grow long." Unless someone can otherwise justify the original to me.

In the news

2006-08-25T16:28:00.000-04:00

Depression may become Ernesto

But mourning most certainly becomes Electra

It's true, I find hurricanes almost as funny as NASA. And speaking of space, while I have been following closely the demotion of Pluto as a planet, I haven't really seen any funny sides to the issue. I would have expected lots of good humor but nothing has sprung to mind. Everything can't be funny, I guess.

In the news

2006-08-23T09:49:00.000-04:00

National Lampoon co-founder dead at 59

This is almost as funny as "National Lampoon's Dorm Daze" (2003) and "National Lampoon's Senior Trip" (1995)

Hundreds of body parts recalled

Fondly, they were recalled fondly. In a national day of remembrance yesterday, amputees and victims of disfigurement waxed nostalgiac on their lost limbs. Lepers told touching stories of their last moments with various extremities, and a few fortunate individuals proudly displayed their preserved parts in elgant cases. Special atention was given to internal organs and other "forgotten parts"--their loss often overlooked by the wider publice due to their low profile. Livers, kidneys, hip joints seemed to be some of the most common lost parts among this crowd. A minority came out to repesent their lost uvulas, appendices, and third nipples. But these were considered the lunatic fringe.

Conservatives ask FBI to investigate hotel porn

It's really sordid to admit, but I love it when the Hyatt takes it all off and goes at it with Marriott Courtyard. Or maybe a three-way between Motel 6, Days Inn, and Red Roof Inn. If you're into "mature" porn, you can catch the Plaza go down on the Palmer House. And next week we'll see hot man-on-man action with the release of "Room Services" featuring the Soho Grand and W Union Square.

back from vacation

2006-08-21T16:43:00.000-04:00

So my major vacation this year, the only occasion for leaving town for no specific purpose, just ended. This one was a rather obligatory family vacation on a lake that I can sum up in a few statements:

My family is great and fun to be around.
Conversation (regardless of subject) between people having babies and owning houses can become remarkably tedious and dispiriting.
Finding a New York Times and an iced coffee required more than a twenty mile drive, round-trip.
I am now the only person in my family not in a relationship. This is not counting my nephews.
Being on a lake would be a lot more fun if there was a boat you had full possession of and knew how to drive/paddle. Or had a driver's license.
I think the indigestion and sense of perpetual overindulgence I feel when with my family might be mental.

I suppose more could be said but it would probably get a little too bitter and untrue. Now that I am back the city's weather has a distinctly autumnal tinge and I am looking forward to leaving this muddy rut of a summer. And playing trivia. And looking up.

Again with the space...

2006-08-11T17:34:00.000-04:00

Shuttle countdown test goes smoothly

10, 9, 8...all the numbers were present in the proper order and functioning smoothly.

And I thought I was kidding...

2006-08-08T10:11:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I posted this:

"My first war zone, Now with "safe" rubber bullets" which was actually an article about a reporter's first time in a real war, in this instance the Israeli/Lebanese conflict.

But today comes this headline:

C'mon kids, let's go to Army World!

Which is actually about plans for a military theme park. Or maybe CNN has secretly entered the payroll of the military to help promote the armed forces to the next generation.

yeah I know, serial killers aren't funny...

2006-08-06T19:37:00.000-04:00

Accused 'Serial Shooter' described as 'really sweet'

His co-conspirator was referred to by a neighbor as "really salty."

"He doesn't even look like he would know which end of the (gun) barrel the bullet would come out of."

Apparently he made a really good guess.

And in other news:

NASA joins search for elusive woodpecker

The woodpecker, known because of it's impressive size as the "Good God" bird, is so rare that scientists now hypothesize it has left orbit for the colder climes of other planets. NASA, stepping into the research vacuum, seems perfectly suited to testing this novel idea.

and in kid's news:

My first war zone

Now with "safe" rubber bullets

My favorite illness...

2006-08-01T13:04:00.000-04:00

Exiles in Miami cheer Castro's illness

While Castro's exact illness remains unknown, a recent poll taken in Miami shows an overwhelming preference for general nausea/vomiting; diarrhea/intestinal distress/colitis; and broken hip.

A surprising number of votes were cast in favor of shingles, especially with permanent nerve damage; psoriasis, or simpy crotch itch, was also a strong minority favorite. Two voters said they wouldn't cheer unless it was the "biggest zit ever." Overall, the city concurred that if the illness turned out to be an ingrown toenail, impacted molar, or infected boil, they would stop cheering, because those are "just gross."

A strange day....

2006-07-29T20:01:00.000-04:00

I spent four hours having drinks with my ex-wife today...and my best friend....and my ex-wife's boyfirend. It was the first time in more than two years that we were all together and not part of a larger crowd. Once again, as previous times with my ex-wife, I enjoyed myself more than I think I should. I don't know why I should enjoy time spent with a women who left me. It is her boyfriend I don't wish to speak to. It's not that I don't enjoy seeing him, nor that I don't enjoy knowing what he's up to and that he's doing well. It's simply that I have nothing to say to him, and nothing I wish to share with him. I have noted this before, but I am still unable to explain it.

And it's two years to the week since she left me. This anniversary went unmentioned.

Give me a moment to think of the right joke...

2006-07-25T09:57:00.000-04:00

Mergers proposed for schools for blind and deaf

Why not go for the trifecta and add speechless people for a school of the blind, deaf, and dumb? (That is not the right joke.)

It reminds me that my elementary school had a special program for deaf, hearing-impaired and partially sighted students. I can still tell by a person's voice whether they are hearing-impaired though I was never able to absorb any of the sign laguage lessons they gave us.

I get confused....

2006-07-23T20:26:00.000-04:00

I don't understand, and it is a constant irritant, why people seem to think that experiences that are in most instances quotidian and unexceptional are actually unique and surprising, in need of special explanation.

For instance, the heat we've been having lately must be due to global warming because I can't recall anything like it. These rain storms are so fearsome, what possibly can explain them? The world must be coming to an end judging by the extreme novelty of the events in the middle east.

But of course, none of these statements are necessarily true. I should admit that I seem to recall occassions very similar to what has been happening lately. There have been hotter summers, more fearsome storms, and violence and military aggression in the Arab world prior to this, I claim to remember. But even if I didn't claim any memory personally, my inclination is to believe such things have happened before. Other people's inclination seems to be that such things haven't happened before, why is that?

Is it that we all feel a need to proclaim our own experiences special? But what then of our prior experiences. Do those experiences consigned to memory get disregarded or honestly so indistinctly recalled that they become disenfranchised? How is that possible? I find pleasure in watching the return of events similar to those in the past. Heat waves seem to remind me pleasurably of hot summers of my youth (despite my current discomfiture.) Thunderstorms, the more violent the more exciting, bring me back to numerous moments of my past. To claim any experience as new and unique would rob me of this pleasure; yet other people seem eager to claim such a disconnection from their past.

Often this seems merely an excuse to find an object to worry over. But the newness of a situation doesn't provide me any special opportunity to worry; aren't there enough things to worry about? Why should I make the mental stretch to be concerned about today's weather?

I only go on about this at length because it has been hot lately, and rainy; and the weather has been a preoccupation of my coworkers to the extent that I have become very annoyed by their prating. Why do people enjoy discussing their unfavorable reactions to the weather? Beyond being simple social currency (there are plenty of other topics which serve the same purpose), is it that weather is so far beyond our control as to be a constant flea in our ear? Is my confusion simply my habit of being contrary to prevailing opinion and action?

I can't know, but it makes me want to slap everyone I meet.

~A

Images

2006-07-17T21:03:00.000-04:00

a
b

1

2

3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

Why do I find space so funny?

2006-07-12T15:58:00.000-04:00

I honestly have no idea:

Spacewalkers lose spatula

Five days left in their mission and pancakes are off the menu. In possibly related news, a flaming kitchen utensil carved a mile long trough in a Kansas cornfield today. NASA refused comment.

Screwed once again...

2006-07-11T16:04:00.000-04:00

Depression tied to risky teen sex

Now, see, I was depressed as a teenager, and didn't have any sex, risky or otherwise, and now I feel Gypped! (I know that term is now considered politically incorrect, but it's usage is deeply ingrained in me.) Who knew that there were benefits to be accrued from depression? Maybe if someone had told me...

Life imitating art....

2006-07-08T15:16:00.000-04:00

'As the World Turns' Actor Commits Suicide

Give it two years, and then he or his evil twin will return, I just know it.....

Mattress King, Luis Barragan Dead at 34

Now that he's really sleeping, perhaps they should rename the business 1-800-Coffin

Home-alone boy survives 11-story fall
And he didn't hit anything soft either, as he hit a metal awning before slapping the concrete pavement. The best irony is "the boy ended up in the same pediatric intensive care unit at Albany Medical Center where his mother works as a receptionist."

In the news...

2006-07-07T10:07:00.000-04:00

Half-ton moose causing fatal crashes

I wonder what he's doing; did he learn how to shoot a gun? Maybe he's standing up and dancing the rumba? Did he put up a fake detour sign like Bugs Bunny used to do?

In the news:

2006-07-06T13:35:00.000-04:00

Putin kissed boy 'like a kitten'

and just a bit down the page:

Kitten survives churn through wood chipper

I can imagine someone saying "Kissing him was like kissing a wood chipper." In fact, I may have dated someone who kissed like that. I wish I could start referring to Putin as "The Wood Chipper," but noone would know what I was talking about.

If I were playing trivia tonight

2006-07-05T11:52:00.000-04:00

My team name would be "As I Kenneth Lay Dying"

The rockets' red glare

2006-07-05T11:40:00.000-04:00

It must be my state of mind....

But numerous events of the past day begin to blur together.

The fireworks exploding over the east river, some with parachutes like flaming paratroopers cascading out of doomed planes.

The North Korean missile launches falling into the Sea of Japan.

The space shuttle lifting into space.

Kenneth Lay dying from a coronary.

The cloudburst of rain this morning that has left me absolutely drenched and shivering.

Like the world is cracking open in volcanic cataclysm and something new is aborning amidst the roar and fume.

Things I wonder about

2006-07-03T14:20:00.000-04:00

Introduction to Probability textbook is free

The question is: Is it really free? Or just very likely free? Like the textbook on Schroedinger that may or may not be available at your local bookshop.

More news....

2006-07-03T11:25:00.000-04:00

Crack found on shuttle's fuel tank

In a serious setback for the NASA administration and for America's future in space, the discovery of illegal narcotics on the fuel tank cast doubt on the shuttle's ability to fly unimpaired and on NASA's drug enforcement policy. Public Affairs Officer George Diller stated yesterday that "NASA has a zero tolerance policy for alcohol and narcotics among all it's staff, scientists, pilots and orbital vehicles. Any violation is treated with the utmost seriousness and will take all apropriate measures after our investigation is complete." The fuel tank, unavailable for comment, is reported to have left the launchpad before dawn and is said to have checked in to a local medical clinic for rehabilitation. This is not the first drug scandal to rock NASA. Reader's may recall the discovery of rampant heroin use among the Gemini astronauts, apparently fuelling their "space cowboy" exploits. Chronic alcoholism is also rumored to be the cause of Spacelab's deteriorating orbit and eventual crash.

Elsewhere in space,

Large asteroid makes pass at Earth

Our home planet apparently gave the planetoid interloper the cold shoulder but the incident is raising the question of whether "Mother" Earth is back on the dating market after billions of years of singledom. None of the orbs involved could be reached (or necessarily even make a) comment. Astronomers at Lawrence Livermore labarotory commented "As we all know, space is a cold, lonely place. It's not surprising that a planet might seek a little something to warm up their dark side." "We all know that the moon is a cold dusty place with no atmosphere to speak of anyhow, why shouldn't Earth look farther afield." There are reports also that a profile for an individual resembling Earth was found on MySpace.com, but at the time of this writing the page had been removed. A spokesman for the website said the page was taken down for receiving too many hits from trolling comets, meteors, and other space depris.

My thing for motorcycles

2006-07-03T10:06:00.000-04:00

Friends will know that I have a keen interest in motorcycles, despite never seriously considering owning one. Here is my new favorite, a boutique handcrafted machine:

It's from the Confederate Motorcycle Company, the F131 Hellcat. Their new design, the Wraith, is more adventuresome, but I have a real problem with the front forks:

I often think that many motorcycle designs would be vastly improved by remodieling the seats like the above, that is, by chopping them off directly behind the seat ratehr than having them stretch out for a pillion or whatever. think the more the rear wheel is exposed the nicer the bike looks. But the front fork on that think really gets in the way.

If anyone finds other examples of motorcycle design, don't hesitate to send thm along.

~A

This is just wrong...

2006-07-03T09:52:00.000-04:00

Car Plows Into Crowd at Boat Race; 11 Hurt

Next we're going to see boats in the stands at NASCAR.

And in other news:

Swim lessons for children, infants focus on safety

Which is funny, because you would think swim lessons would focus on swimming. But really, the safest way to avoid drowning is not to go near the water. Maybe driving lessons should be rename "Cars, and How to Avoid Them."

World Cup Brings Little Pleasure to German Brothels
But it's not about the pleasure, right? It's just a job. Besides, they were all rooting for Ghana. Or maybe it was all the noise from people yelling Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal! in the bedrooms, or the insistence the customers had of not taking of their shinguards.

~A

Follow up for my uncle

2006-06-29T21:03:00.000-04:00

The autopsy report came back; the coroner said my uncle died of "sudden death, possible arrhythmia." This has left his widow and much of the family frustrated and slightly angry. I have doubt that a real cause (such as aneurism, which has been ruled out) would make his death much more sensible. For such God-trusting people as my uncle and his wife, can an otherwise inexplicable act of god be so unacceptable? It will be a strange turn to the story if further developments occur.

~A

In the news....

2006-06-17T17:51:00.000-04:00

Study: Car stability could save 10,000 lives a year
The mental instability of cars is proving to be a major cause of death in the U.S. Analysts note a rise in the prevalence of bi-polar disorder, chronic depression, and even violent pathology among newer models, especially those made by the big three, leading to an increse in cars lashing out at their human owners, or at the least, showing amazing apathy at the fate of those in their care.

And these four headlines in a row just have a touch of poetry to them:

Long Island Volunteer Firefighter Electrocuted

Baby Dies After Suicidal Mom Leaps from Bridge

Boy Crushed to Death By Elevator in Newark

Man Charged With Having Crack in Sundae

It's a quatrain of crime. How beautiful

Everything Was Tasty and Okay...

2006-06-11T17:41:00.000-04:00

I am going to finish this narration of my trip to North Dakota today if it's the last thing I do. So I apologize in advance for any ellipses or omissions (not that you will really tell) but my memories are growing fuzzy and I want stop reviewing those moments; I want to let them pass comfortably into my real memory, instead of trying to hog tie them repeatedly to the present.

I got to sleep late from the night of drinking; I suppose it was around two am, but I was in no condition to tell exactly. I was told that my cousin Chase, who drove us back to the hotel, was weaving considerably, I am glad I was in no condition to perceive that either. I slept well, and heavily, my brother in the next bed. My family was kind enough to let us sleep until eleven or so and then roused us to get dressed and have breakfast with them. This we did though, unlike them, we didn't take the trouble of putting on our nicer togs for the occasion. We went to a "family restaurant they call the "Fryn' Pan". In New York or New Jersey it would be called a diner and have a bit more neon and be run by Greeks. Out there it was esssentially a Denny's knock-off. I am stillt trying to understand the particular placement of the apostrophe in their name. Apparently it's a chain. I ordered the biscuits and gravy, which I thought, mistakenly, would be a safe bet. The lumps of sausage rested in the gluey gravy like rabbit pellets
in mush. The coffee ( no iced coffee available, of course) was tepid and weak, and the cream and sugar were all in those little packets so after two cups of coffee the pile of trash begins to overwhelm the table. In the middle of the meal, the waitress came over to check up on things. Her line of inquiry was "So, is everything tasty and okay over here?" This was delivered in that particular Dakotan/Minnesotan nasal twang and was so gol'darn perky I had to struggle to keep from snorting up my coffee. It was also a question that seemed to invite, yet stubbornly resisted, an honest response.

My brother and I left the rest of the family to return to the hotel, finish our ablutions, tie those half-windsors, and rejoin them at the church. Once there we were still rather early, so there was plenty of standing around with nothing to do. Like the previous evening, but more strongly now, an incredibly acrid smell of manure filled the air and even made it's way into church. This was only appropriate, I suppose. I notice I forgot to mention that it was pouring. In Britain they would say it was tipping down rain and it continued to tip all day long. it was cold, fifty degrees or worse, with an unrelenting wind driving the rain in front of it and into our faces. Finally we took our places for the beginning of the serv ice. My brother Mike and I were chosen as active pallbearers (in contrast to a handful of honorary ones) which meant we were to sit in front away from the rest of the decedent's family. All of these arrangements were being directed by the )appropriately named) funeral director. But noone told us then that our family would be participating in a moment of close family prayer and together, a last viewing of the open casket before it was closed for the service. I was disappointed in missing it. The service was substantially similar to the wake service of the previous day; mainly it lacked the humor. The music was the same except that my uncle had at some moment requested that his funeral should open with the Adaggio for Strings and close with the Hallelujah Chorus. The latter I am overly familiar with, the former was new to me and is the saddest song I have ever heard; I need to buy it on CD. His son sang again, his daughter as well; those songs still come to me at odd moments. The service ended.

The pallbearers were called to lead the recession out of the sanctuary (all these wonderful church terms; like "narthex," it feels good to put them to use.) Once in the narthex (hey, how about that), near the front doors, the pallbearers seized the coffin, which had been wheeld out on its bier (now maybe that's not the right word for it) and lifted it three feet to the rear of the hearse. I had feared it's weight, but it was lighter than I expected, though four of the people lifting were my uncle's sons, and very young. The funeral director offered mu brother and I a ride in his car, so we could be near the hearse when it reached the cemetery. We accepted, got in, and drove to the front of the parking lot while we waited for the congregants (see? those neat words again) to get in their cars and prepare to process to the internment site. The funeral director was something of a jolly old soul; while waiting he traded remarks with the head of the Breckenridge police, who would be leading us away from the church. I guess they have had ample time to get acquainted. The director mentioned that, unlike in most towns and cities, the police here don't charge for these funeral processions; they do them for free. Maybe it's a welcome bit of activity. We pulled out of the lot at a creeping speed with four or five police cars blocking traffic with their sirens and flashing lights breaking the dullness and gloom. The director regaled my brother and I with old tales of himself and Wahpeton, his formation of a deer-hunting club, his life in small town. I think he would be fun to down some whiskey with; I will have to imagine it. Near the church, the Breckenridge cops retired and were replaced by the Wahpeton cops as we crossed into their jurisdiction. They led us into the cemetery where we stopped as near we could to the burial plot.

We stayed in the car until everyone else had arrived behind us. Then the pallbearers assembled, clapped on to the casket and drew it out onto it's moveable bier. Because the ground was soft from rain, we took it very slowly, and carried it as much as we rolled it, over the graves and plaques, and between the headstones, to the hole witht the tent over it where the last words would be spoke. There we slid it onto that machinery of straps and rollers built to lower it effortlessly into the ground, carpeted around with astroturf and all shielded so the family may gain no glimpse of actual dirt, or darkness, or void. The tent could only shelter ten or so people yet more than twenty crowded in. My cousin Dierdre was barefoot as she had given her shoes to her mother, whose own shoes were apparently completely unfit for the weather.

The last words were said; I can't remember them. In the following silence my aunt sang the benediction familiar to most protestants and we all joined in. People separated slowly, and we left.

The first reception was at a nearby church with a larger reception hall. It was nice to be able to sit at the table reserved for family. The repast was meager; the tables were all set with pitchers of lemonade and carafes of weak, weak, coffee, and with no cream or sugar in sight. This didn't diminish its popularity. The spread of eats included buns with cold cuts and sweets (more desert bars of all shapes). All the buns and bread were pre-spread with cheese (probably better spelled as cheeze, since that is what it tasted like). Humorously, this included the cinnamon raisin bread. All my cousins and sibling are cultured enough we found this humorous. Conversation was lively, banal, typical of family gatherings. I was introduced to distant second cousins I will never meet again; half the crowd were townspeople. The reception was prepared by my uncle's coworkers at the town health clinic. They had all worn blue; the entire clinic had shut down for the day (to hell with the ill!) and over fifty of the staff turned out to the funeral. Before that reception broke up we took family photographs:

The Grandchildren

The elders

The remaining siblings and parent

And my immediate family

That reception ended and we proceeded to the second reception. Between the two my brother returned to the hotel to change back into civvies; I also took the opportunity to pick up some more cigarettes at $3.50 a pack. The second reception was at the original church and was for immediate family only. They cooked hamburgers on an outdoor grill, had potato salad (prepared by a person who had attended cooking school I was told); there was more coffee, lemonade, and leftower desert bars. We sang a prayer of thanksgiving, ate and talked, and passed the evening. When that ended, us cousins went back to my aunt's house. We were somewhat guilted back, as most of us were exhausted and wanted to have a beer. But it was a good thing. We sat around and played board games with our cousins, the children. We spoke of movies and their plans for their summer. We unwound. We left by eleven; beer was then out of the question as we were all exhausted.

The rain had ceased finally, the clouds were blowing away and I think I could see the moon. I packed up and made ready so I could throw on my clothes the next day and leave in a split second. I woke at 4; my brother Mike and sister and I got out and on the road in the peaceful dark and made our way to the airport. There we waited with others in the only cafe open, waiting for the first flight of the day. My sister decided to give me relationship advice and explain that, whatever the faults of my ex-wife, her complaints about me were not unjustified or inexplciable. This was sensible talk, but yet a conversation I prefer to avoid. We were all on the same flight but sat apart, and didn't talk for the return. Landing in Chicago we separated and I returned to New York by 1 pm, in plenty of time to rest and catch up on sleep before returning to work the next day.

Death is tiresome and unpleasant; the rituals surrounding it are necessary, valuable, and must be endured and enjoyed as much as one can. I am glad I have written it down.

New York moments

2006-06-11T17:33:00.000-04:00

I got together today with my friend Dylan to go to MoCCA, the annual small press, independent comics expo (I won't bother with my reaction to it here) and strolling around it took about an hour or so. Afterwards, Dylan went home and I went to catch a matinee of the Pixar movie Cars at 2nd Ave and 12th street, a theater that used to show first runs, then turned into a second run theater, and is now back to showing new releases. (in fact I was outside there waiting to see an 11am Sunday showing of a Disney movie ten years ago when a prostitute tried to pick me up, apparently for one last trick before turning in). Anyhow today in the theater I ended up sitting across from Vincent D'onofrio and his family. I wasn't close enough to hear which jokes he laughed at, I was laughing too hard to pay attention to such things.

As to Cars, while it is not quite at the level of some previous Pixar films, it is created with such consumate skill, such palpable joy, so much visual wit and craft, that it is a pure joy to see. Crap on the NY Times, I think they just wanted to be the lone, high-minded, critic of dissent. We can always critique the originality of the characters and story, but it is also fair to say that some stories are worth revisiting if one can bring a higher level of execution to them (that's not a defense of the story, by the way, just a possible and legitimate defense).

So that was my latest New York Moment.

~A

Give me land, lots of land......

2006-06-03T18:01:00.000-04:00

There were no starry skies that night, nor blue skies the next day. In fact, the day of the funeral it poured solidly and consistently the entire day. I believe the weather cleared finally around nine pm and by eleven we could see the moon. By that time there was little solace it could offer.

I will take a break here from narrating events and describe my kin in detail. I have posted the photographs previously, please refer to them if interested. My mother, 64, was the eldest of three sisters, separated in age by around eight years. She was twelve years older than her sudden;y deceased brother. That means when I gathered the earliest memories of my uncle, thirty years ago, when I was around five years old, he was only twenty-two. My grandmother (my mother's mother) is in her mid-eighties. Her husband, my grandfather,was older than she by eight or so years He died in 1982, when he was seventy-two or so. My grandmother is younger than my father by about 4 years.

My mother's next younger sister is known as Jo, Aunt Jo, though her full first name is something else. She was the unattractive sister, the middle child, the wild one. She once turned a car over in the ditch while drag racing. Apparently my grandmother never favored her. Like the youngest sister, Jo went and studied nursing, but somewhere met a truck driver and married him. She was the first to wed. Her husband, a gruff, apparently humorless man, is named Dave. As the family in nearest proximity to us as kids, we saw them most frequently. They lived and raised their kids in kansas, about an hour's drive from the town of Manhattan.

Jo and her husband made their living in a variety of ways. During the fall and winter, Jo drove a school bus while Dave toured the country in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler. During the summer, they and their children were migrant harvesters. They leased trucks, combines and other vehicles and took them around to farmers who didn't have such motorized tools themselves. They would reap and thresh and bail field after field year after year. I was slightly jealous of this. Though it meant my cousins had less relaxing summers than I, it also meant they got driver permits when they were thirteen or fourteen so they could help in the work. My mother, in a similar fashion, can still back up a twenty-ton truck in a perfectly straight line, as one is required to do to follow behind the combine while it spits out its threshed grain into the truckbed. I always looked down and felt distinctly apart from my aunt and uncle and cousins. On one hand, they seemed like hicks with thick country accents. On the other hand, we seemed to them to be living in a scary, exotic urban habitat (we had gay people, for instance.)

Upon reflection, I never gave Jo and Dave enough credit for their now obvious intelligence, and for the closeness of their family. Their children, my cousins, are very smart, independent minded and world-wise. The youngest daughter, Travis, is my age within a month. She married at the age of nineteen, which I thought was a sure sign of the path her life would take. Her husband was in the military then and she moved to Germany with him. Now he is a policeman in a small town in Kansas while she sells insurance. But she is well aware of the limitations of small towns and understands just where she is. She loves big cities regardless of where she prefers to settle down. I know it was her husband who was not comfortable living in Houston and preferred a return to Kansas. She has a son who is nearly twelve or thirteen.

Her sister, Tonya, is the eldest in the family being the same age as my sister, Jodi, who is thirty-eight this year. Tonya married right after finishing college. Her husband, Dave, was a school teacher and a skilled cabinetmaker. Apparently he is also a bit of an entrepeneur and has started up a number of reasonably successful businesses. Tonya teaches history in high school, but is moving more towards counseling full-time. She takes annual trips with students to Europe and parts of the U.S. and seemed most frustrated with living in a small town. But she gets out enough and recognizes the good points of raising her own son in such a situation.

The middle sibling is Tyler. He is my brother's age, thirty-seven or so, and the two are closer than I have been with any of them. He always seemed to me to be a stern, bossy, an relatively unknowable person. To some extent he remains so now. He studied mortuary science in college. My deceased uncle, in typical humorous fashion, gave him a shovel as a graduation present. Tyler moved to Houston to work in a funeral home. There, he came out of the closet as gay. This was a shock to the family, though my Mom, as usual, said something like "I always wondered..." I never wondered, it was a complete surprise. He met a man, Jerry, who worked in that gigantic funeral corporation. If you ever watched Six Feet Under it is that corporation that is being parodied as evil. Tyler essentially retired for awhile. He and Jerry (a vice-president or some such thing), live a jet set lifestyle. They came to my wedding mainly because it was a convenient excuse to visit New York. Tyler told me on Tuesday that his favorite restaurants in New York are 21 and Le Cirque and that he has a friend who just bought a condo in Trump Tower (overlooking Central Park, those apartments are known to sell for three million or more dollars). For hi sisters' birthdays, he flies them to Houston and gives them his credit card. For his birthday, Jerry flew his sisters out to meet him in San Francisco as a surprise. It is a lifestyle I cannot comprehend. Tyler is now getting into the home construction business. He has had a variety of illnesses and physical ailments in his life, so I worry about his health. But he will be well taken care of.

My mother's youngest sister is Sheri. She was always the pretty one, and very cute for a very long time. Now, as she is reaches her late fifties, her looks are suffering in many estimations. She is stick thin due to a rigorous diet. She is also an avid nudist and has sent postcards from various resorts urging my mother to join her. The tan she has is no doubt responsibe for her poorly aging skin. Smoking doesn't help. But it wasn't so long ago when all nurses smoked. Sheri was never good at relationships and has been in and out of marriage. Now she seems reasonably happy and settled though I know her sisters grumble in quiet corners about her current partner. Her children followed her on a wayward path. The oldest one, Trevor, is my brother Tom's age. He really meant to come to the funeral, which many didn't expect, but he missed his flight. So he is the only one not shown in the photos. He has had his own trouble with drugs and alcohol but I guess he has more or less solved them. He doesn't talk with his Mom and he seems to be running a micro-brewery in Seattle. I haven't seen him in twenty-two years or so. His sister, Dierdre, is the bombshell of the family. She actually had breast-reduction surgery though there is no way you could tell. She also is the live-wire party girl. She it was who was sharing in the shots of Red Bull and Jagermeister. She has also done time in a federal penitentiary for carrying drugs across a state line. She claims a certain innocence in this affair. The pen she was pent in was the same as the one Martha Stewart inhabited. Unfortunately for storytelling, their terms were not concurrent. I meant to get her to tell us about it but missed the opportunity.

There is yet more to come.....

Rain

2006-06-03T17:52:00.000-04:00

As anyone who know me should be able to attest to, I have a fondness for powerful, earth-shaking thunderstorms, hail, wind, and any weather that might be called violent. I trace this to a childhood spent in Chicago and further west. I have what must be an annoying habit of complaining that the whether in the northeast, due mostly to the moderating influence of the ocean, is far too mild and cannot be considered "bad" weather, just like New York doesn't get very cold and rarely gets very hot. Humidity is slightly a different issue.

Therefore, I must say I have been perfectly satisfied with the last two days of rain. On Thursday I was actually at a co-worker's roof party and was able to witness the slow approach of the lifghtning-filled storm. On Friday, as I stod outside work, I was amazed at a strange orange-brown tint in the storm clouds; truly an unusual sight.

Good times.

~A

What my coworker just said...

2006-06-01T10:06:00.000-04:00

Synthetic vitamin icky is just not happy.

That is a beautiful utterance

This was painted on a truck...

2006-06-01T10:05:00.000-04:00

....Liberty Controls, Inc.

I wish I could say it had government plates.

Way Out West part three

2006-05-30T19:17:00.000-04:00

I ate at McDonalds. I forgot to mention that. The day of the wake, after my mother and I returned to the hotel to pick up my dad, we grapped food at the golden arches. I had a Quarter Pounder, a spicy chicken sandwich, a large fries and a coke. I had gotten up at 4 am that morning and had very little to eat (an egg sandwich at LaGuardia). I like McDonalds, I only eat there when traveling so it always feels like a special privilege. But that meal, with the addition of the tidbits at the church, explains why at the end of the wake service I was absolutely stuffed. We went back to the hotel, me in my Brother's rental car, met up with my second cousin Chase and cousin Dierdre and went out for dinner and drinks. We found a rather good spot on main street. It was a hundred year old restaurant that, despite its age, looked alot like a generic American bar and grill that nonetheless was stylish enough to fit in in Manhattan. Like many airport bars in the midwest, they like to serve beer in extremely large glasses, a pint and a half or more. I have no problem with this. They had ten kinds of cheeseburger and hamburger on the menu, yet when Chase asked for a bleu cheese burger they looked at him like he was a space alien. Not that Chase is really that far from actually being a space alien, but when he finally got them to serve him a burger with bleu cheese, they didn't realize they were supposed to melt it on there.

That's where we were in the country.

We were met there by my cousins (and siblings) Travis, Tyler, and Tanya. Those three are the children of my Aunt Joe. Dierdre is the daughter of my Aunt Sheri. Chase is actually my first cousin once removed as his mom is my great aunt (my grandmother's sister) Lucille. My brother Mike and sister Jodi were not in town yet, their plane wouldn't land until after ten o'clock. Here's a snapshot from the joint.

Excepting Chase, everyone in the photo is within five years of each other (Dierdre and Travis [pictured on the left] and I were born within a month of each other in 1971.

It was when we left the above establishment that the real fun began. We found another bar on main street (it's name really wasn't main street but I forget the exact apellation) called the Sportsman Inn...or something like that. I should not here that all the businesses were on main street, there were no businesses anywhere else. Considering that Wahpeton Breckenridge has only 8500 people, the main street was still more than a mile long. This particular bar had a pool table, darts, an outdoor volleyball court with with a "beach volleyball" league and a blackjack table. The bar tender looked somewhat like Harry Knowles, or like any overweight, bearded, computer nerd or comic geek. They sold five types of bottled Malibu, pickled eggs and pickled turkey gizzards. Some of the regulars looked like truck stop prostitutes (that may be a little harsh) and the rest looked like twenty year old college kids. But it was a Tuesday night so we had the pool table and darts all to ourselves. Most of us limited ourselves to Corona for the evening as the most palatable beverage in the joint.

We drank alot, and smoked alot as it was most definitely legal to smoke indoors. Chase is a dangerous man to drink with as he will gladly buy you beers to keep the evening going. And when someone else is buying, I stop counting. Most of the conversation was simply catching up with each other. There was only one cousin missing, Trevor, Sheri's son; the rest of us hadn't been all together in over twenty years, most likely since my deceased Uncle's wedding. Chase and others had cameras so there was a lot of picture snapping. We drank a toast to Gene. We drank a toast to each other. Chase and Dierdre, at the urging of the locals, began drinking mugshots of Jaegermeister and Red Bull. We closed the place at two am. More pictures below. A description of my extended family to follow in another posting.

~A

Chase and Tanya

Me, Travis, Chase and Tyler

My brother Tom and Dierdre
Me, Travis, Tanya, Chase, Tom, Dierdre and Tyler
All extremely drunk.

Travels west, part II.....

2006-05-21T17:48:00.000-04:00

I have to think where I left off. I meant to complete my recounting well before now, while it was fresher in my mind. I haven't been able to do so because I lack a web connection at home; when I am out at a cafe or at work I don't have the time to relax and compose my thoughts. It may be the moment to actually for a web connection at home.

But that is a digression. I believe I left off my story at the viewing, the first afternoon in North Dakota. A powerepoinit show of phoitographs with captions was being projected on the wall of the sanctuary. Family photographs from Gene's youth to only a month ago. I was surprised at how many had me in them, my family. More than my cousins. There, clearly, was the Gene I remember, a man who felt to me like an adult, but who really was only 20 when I began to know him. There were photos there with me I could not remember, ones taken since I left college, ones with my family when I was not there. These same photos were posted on billboards set up in the foyer of the church (although there is a better, fancier name for the foyer for churches, narthex). My favorite was one I had seen before. Gene was eighteen or nineteen and he and a friend were about to set out for a journey to Yellowstone on motorcycles. Both were astride their bikes, both wore leather jackets. It was 1969 and Gene looked cooler than he ever would after. It is that vitality of the young that I remember best.

I sat there in the pew while other relatives filtered in, hugging each other and weeping. I said hello to my aunts and cousins and siblings in turn. I stepped out for a few cigarettes to relieve the intensity. After a reasonable time my Mother and I left to go back to the hotel. We roused my father, I changed clothes (it didn't feel right to wear jeans to the wake) and we met and greeted even more relatives. We returned to the church. There were more friends and community members there now. The eldest child, Ethan, and his friends were setting up their musical equipment for performances they were to give during the wake service.

We secured seats in a pew and deposited my father there. It is always curious to bring my father out into a crowd. He is frail so that you place him in a chair and will remain there until you want to move him somewhere else. He hangs his chin and his thoughts seem to go deeply elsewhere. Yet if you rouse him to introduce people to him he seems entirely alert and cognizant. Many of these people my father has known for as long as he has known my mother. Forty years or more. That is quite a history. In some cases though, as with my cousins, I wonder if he really understands who he is hugging or if he has developed a facility for faking it. It makes things much simpler. Eventually my Uncle Roy came in with some of his closer family. He is my deceased grandfatherb's elder brother, a life-long farmer, 92. He was the only person there who surpassed my father in age and it was cute to see them together, two wizened senescent gnomes.

There was food laid out in the church prior to the wake: bread and cold cuts, deserts, weak coffee. I ate a bunch. There were really good rice krispie bar variations there. They had a base of cornflakes stirred with peanut butter and corn syrup (or something like, perhaps Karo syrup), and they were topped with chocolate frosting. As the next day would prove, midwesterners are expert at exploring the full potential of the desert bar. Finally, after more socializing and catching up we filed into our seats for the wake. The casket was left open for this service ( it was not closed until right before the funeral the next day) with the pastor standing at a dais behind it. The place was full, though not as full as it would be. There were a standard series of biblical readings, some old fashioned hymns, the type I am quite fond of ( the reason I have my own copy of the Methodist Hymnal at home). There were also those musical performances (on piano, guitar and violin) by my cousin and his friends. Those songs were modern spirituals of the evangelical gospel church sort. But also fairly nice, not strident or too infused trite popular music phrasing. They flashed the lyrics on a wall above the altar and most of the regular congregants seemed to know the words. I have one of them stuck in my head even now (blessed be the name, of the lord, blessed be his name, dah dah dah di dah and so forth). His younger brother, Christopher, read a prepared statement concerning his personal relationship to Christ. Christopher had just been confirmed in the church two days before and this statement had been prepared as part of the confirmation training. It was earnest, to say the least. It was also completely unoriginal yeat heartfelt in a way completely typical of adolescents, when each thought seems entirely your own and new-found. Yet they also contained some sharp phrasing, undoubtedly delivered directly as he had been instructed, that showed how little analysis was contained in his words. He described how he believed he was created by God for a unique and special purpose on this earth, as were we all, and not eveloved by mere chance. I was not the only who chuckled at that.

Gene's daughtewr, 8, got up then and sang. Her clear, sharp, small voice pierced the crowd. I'm pretty sure all the mothers in the crowd were weeping. The song was catchy, and also has been flitting through my mind lately, not a pleasant sensation. Her mother sat behind her to instill confidence and her older brother sang accompaniment. The pastor then read his sermon.

My Uncle and his pastor had been close friends and associates, as my uncle was an elder of the church. The sermon showed this and that was it's best feature. The sermon offered no clear insight into God's wisdom, it offered little comfort. But it did express effectively what all in the sanctuary were experiencing and that is always a valuable thing. He kept referring to my Uncle as Dr. Gene. This may have been how many people knew him, but to my cousins and I it was usettling, as it was not how we knew him. There was more singing and praying after that, and the service ended. Rain and cool weather had moved in, and the next day would bring more rain.

~A

horrow show

2006-05-20T15:26:00.000-04:00

So this elevator gets stuck in the Bronx halfway between two floors. Two guys climb out of the half open doors. The third guy to go has the bad timing. The elevator starts to move as he's halfway out and

HIS LEGS ARE COMPLETELY SEVERED!

The people remaining inside the elevator were sprayed with blood and weren't rescued for another hour. This means, of course, they spent an hour in a timy space, covered in blood, with two severed legs to keep them company. You can't beat that with a stick.

~A

The First Part of a Full Recounting of the Voyage West

2006-05-14T18:59:00.000-04:00

Really amazing things, these airplanes. They whisk you from here to there with no strain and nary an ounce of effort. You spend a day or two in a different world and then the planes whisk you right back again. Disorienting it is. Thoreau looked askance on train travel, reckoning anything other than walking as too speedy and alienating; I am inclined to believe him. But planes are useful in a pinch, for attending a funeral for instance.

I arose at 4 am on Tuesday to catch a 7 am flight. I suppose I could have tardied longer, but I alwys worry about making it to, and through, the airport in a timely fashion. I am also always dismayed at passing through airports at such an early hour. The shops are still mostly closed and the morning papers have not yet been delivered. I feel that if the planes are flying then all the associated amenities and services should be available as well. But this is but one of life's minor disappointments.

My flights were, thankfully, uneventful. I landed in Chicago at roughly 9am (Central Time) and had enough space to change terminals, dash out for a few cigarettes, pass back through security and wait for my parents to arrive. Fargo is such a small airport (four gates), that nearly everyone was coming in or going out on flights with other family members. Meeting my parent meant I could help my mother handle my father and the attendant luggage. My father is quite frail. They had requested a wheelchair in the airport at Chicago but had decided not to bring theirs along. With his walker my father has little trouble, but he tires easily and it was helpful for me to attend him while my mother used the bathroom, got the rental car, and so forth.

After landing in Fargo and taking care of the above tasks we set out in a Camry sedan (very roomy, a surprisingly large trunk) to make the hour drive south to Wahpeton. I noticed again that all the trees I saw were indeed planted in straight lines. I had believed this to be true but considering how long it has been since I have visited I had questioned that idea. I was relieved to see it confirmed. But I still find the spectacle unsettling. I had misread the weather report, expecting it be sunny and in the 70s during my visit. When we arrived, while it was warm, there were thunder showers moving through. Beautiful weather on the prairie as you can monitor the approach and passing of the storms for hours in the long distance. They were harbingers of more unpleasant weather for the next day though.

The 55 mile trip went quickly. My mother knows Wahpeton well from her visits to my deceased uncle and my living granmother, who is ensconced in an assisted living home there (the Leach Home, such an unpleasant name!) We easily found the hotel and checked in, all by about 1:30. The normal rate was $65 a night but they knocked it down to $50 on account of the funeral. My aunt stayed at another place where she negotiated a $33 per night stay for that reason. (My plane flight was reduce from $1300 to $400 with no penalty for alterations for the same reason).

We ran into some other people there, my Mom's cousin Nancy, my great uncle and aunt Cecil and Annette (my grandfather's youngest brother and his wife), Cecil's son Sterling, a PhD who teaches Latin American studies at a godforsaken outpost in Alberta or Saskatchewon. Also my Mom's cousin Chase. Readers of this blog may have read of Chase before, he seems to live mostly to get other people smashed. More on that below.

Those relatives informed us that while the viewing would begin at four and the wake or service at 7, that the family would be allowed in at 2. We put my dad down for a nap and my mom and I went over. We got there nearly at the same time as my grandmother (Alice), her sister Lucille (Chase's mother), her brother Cleo (a bishop, although they don't call them that, in a Babtist church sect, serving as regional administrator for Ontario, New York and Pennsylvania)
and Cleo's son David (also a cousin of my Mother's, if you are still following.)

I viewed my uncle's corpse. The makeup job was poor, he looked very pale and ashen. Part of this was due to the fact that after he was stricken, he had fallen and lain for hours undiscovered, on his right side. Thus the blood had pooled and his face had discolored on that side, a thing difficult to cover. His hands lay on his bible, open to the page that was marked when they found him. Like his wife, my uncle periodically read the bible front to back. The passages were from Deuteronomy, but were of no great import.

I met my uncle's children, all five, mainly for the first time. I had met the eldest once before, but when he was only 2 or 3 or 4. He is 20 now. My aunt Sheri was there as well, my mother's sister. She was the youngest of the daughters and closest in age to my uncle (though still 6 or 8 years older) and she was taking his demise the most visibly. My mother's other sister, Joe, came in with her husband Dave. The worst part of this moment, indeed the worst part of the entire trip, was watching my grandmother sob over the corpse of her son. I don't know if any of my readers have had occasion to witness such a scene. She was inconsolable, moaning "Oh Gene, Oh Gene" over and over. It was equalled in terribleness only by the sight of Gene's daughter, aged 8, crying "Daddy, Daddy!" repeatedly, over his casket.

This is not a just world. Therefore, I do not seek justice nor strive to explain injustice when it occurs without apparent or direct cause. Nonetheless, my uncle's passing is a moment of particular injustice, a moment that is perhaps harder for they to explain who believe in a loving and active god than for me, who belive continually that these things happen often, and it is merely by statistics that they happen mostly to other people, or to strangers. It is not less sad for that.

To be continued...

A few comments on North dakota (or ShitChrist, The Musical)

2006-05-11T15:11:00.000-04:00

I have returned today from the vaunted west, or perhaps more accurately, the western midwest. The farthest west you can be and still be dull and flat. I have only a few things to say this moment, I shall recapitulate the whole tour when I am more fully recovered:

I was served cinnamon bread slathered with cheese spread.
I woke up both Tuesday and Thursday at 4 am to catch early flights, this is both no fun and, somehow, strangely pleasant; kind of like exercising (so I'm told)
The church, indeed the whole town, smelled strongly of cow manure or perhaps it was pig manure, a concentrated, chemical, acrid smell.
A local dive bar had jars of pickled eggs, pickled turkey gizzards, four or five different types of Malibu, cigarettes for $4.50, an outdoor volleyball court and beach volleyball league. My compatriots there were encouraged by the locals to shoot glasses of Jagermeister and Red Bull.

In my next installment, I relate exactly what bearing the pall entails!

~A

Beautiful Saturdays

2006-05-06T17:20:00.000-04:00

I suppose it is days like these that can make life worth living. I woke up at the expected time, ca. 9 am, showered like a responsible adult, made myself presentable to the world, put on some comfortable clothes, packed up my computer and clomped over to my local cafe for some iced coffee. On my way there I picked up a pack of smokes and drank some orange juice in another futile attempt to convince my body that, despit my other activities, I did care about it's well being. This may not be actually true, but its not too much to make a gesture.

At the cafe I read the paper, completed the Saturday crossword, as per usual. A delightful woman sat down beside me and engaged me in conversation. Sha had sat beside me in the cafe before but I hadn't found occassion to open a dialog. I had noticed however that she was studying Arabic. Today she informed me that she's actually studying medieval Arabic literature. For those of you who know me, that's enough right there to guarantee a full-blown crush. She's also attaractive.

So we traded jocular comments for a while, I engaged in some actual work, then she departed to make a phone call while leaving some things behind for her eventual return. Since I also had to leave to attend a meeting at Columbia, I wrote a polite note inviting her to coffee sometime and included my email. I slipped it into the text she was studying. Who knows? Perhaps something may come of it.

I neglected to mention that, prior to that woman's arrival, another attractive woman with whom I have a very minor prior acquaintance stopped by for some coffee on her way to a gym and said hi. Unfortunatley she did not stick around long enough for a real conversation as I wouldn't mind getting to know her a bit better. All I know now is what I discovered last week: that she works at the same august institution as I though our paths are unlikely to ever cross there. She is also a friend of a friend of a friend...or something like that.

I went to my meeting and both coming and going took unreasonably long due to a disruption of regular train service. I will not bother recounting details here. Suffice to say that when I was halfway home I got out at Union Square. A friend from Boston is in town for the five-borough bike ride tomorrow and we had planned to have dinner and drinks around 5. The problem is, while not daffy or dizzy in any way, plans with this friend are always up in the air until the absolute last minute (which is why I am writing in this blog right now instead of enjoying her company.)

So in Union Square I found I had time to go home. But meanwhile I stopped by the farmer's market and located a woman there. I met her at my local spelling bee and I find her absolutely entrancing (though very young.) I said hi to her as I had expected to see her at the recent spelling bee championship but was disappointed. She is planning to spend three months on various farms in Sweden where, through a program, she will receive free room and board in exchange for labor. I can see how that might be quite an adventure. She leaves May 25th. Nonetheless I got her email (and gave her mine in return.) This is a rare accomplishment for me. I might invite her out for a drink before she leaves; I really have no idea if she would agree, but it will be fun, at least, to correspond in some way to a pretty girl in Sweden.

Then I came here, to Pete's, figuring I could enjoy a drink and take advantage of the web connection to write sprawling blog entries. The place is more occupied than I had figured due to the running of the Kentucky Derby today. But its not too crowded that I feel guilty occupying a table. I am finding my mint julep quite tasty as well, though I think I prefer mojitos. I am put in mind of the Derby party I attended last year, at the end of my unhappy and near-daisastrous year in New Haven. The party was fine, but I prefer not to dwell on that time in my life.

I should mention to that this morning I had a very pleasant exchange with my ex-wife. Any communication is becoming rarer but I sent her a note because she had performed a small nicety this week for me and I wanted to express my gratitude. It all felt very emotionally healthy.

You should know however, that I am talking around the important news of the day. That last night my Mother calleed me near 10pm. The timing automatically sets off alarm bells. The news was that her brother had died suddenly and mysteriously. He was 52, attending a conference at the Mayo Clinic in St. Paul (he's a family practitioner and that's in Minnesota for all you northeasterners). After a week's stay, the maid staff noted that he had not checked out by four as is custom....and they found him dead, fully dressed, in his room. He leaves a wife and five children, ages 8 to 19.

Although I have not been close to him as an adult, he was a fixture of my childhood, inasmuch as, only then in his early twenties, he was always around the family farm when we visited. He still took a boyish pleasure in playing with us kids--wrestling, rides on motorcycles, etc. I still remember Brownie, the last heifer he raised for the state fair as part of 4h. It was the only time in my life I have helped milk a cow and I must have been younger than six. He attended my wedding and gave, as a gift, a check for twenty-five dollars. That gift is no insult, rather, it is entirely typical of the hard-scrabble farmer milieu my mother's family is from.

My mother and her sisters were all very close to him though he was twelve years younger than my mother and six years (at least) younger than the youngest sister. I don't know if this is typical, yet my ex-wife and her three sisters are similarly close to their similarly younger brother. My mom described him last night, when her voice was still quaking with despair and shock, as a good, good friend.

It is the stereotypical moment to regret the relative distance in the relationship. I will not dwell here on those things. Despite that though, I feel compelled to attend this funeral, and look forward to seeing all my extended family again (or at least those who will come). Many I will not have seen since my wedding. I have reflected before that this is preciely what weddings and funerals are for, any why it is important to attend.

Attendance, of course, necessitates a very expensive plane ticket, a tiresome journey and a too brief visit. The town is Wahpeton or, more precisely, Wahpeton/Breckenridge, since the town sits astride the Red River. It is that same river that splits North Dakota from Minnesota. The town is sixty mile south of Fargo (again, the precise name would be Fargo/Moorhead). and neither possesses the lush beauty of Minnesota or the spare, desolate attraction of the Dakotas. I have not been there in twenty years and I regret that fact. But I have had opportunity to visit and opted out so I can only really regret my pigheadedness.

To conclude, I can only presume that the interesting, positive, interactions I have had today must derive, in some way, from the emotional state that has descended on me upon hearing the bleak news of my uncle's death. Has it made me more free? More self-confident? Less self-conscious? Are the events wholly disconnected? I can only ponder this possible series of coincidences.

Meanwhile the Kentucky Derby is about to be run, my drink needs refreshing and I require a cigarette. My uncle's name is Dr. Eugene Evans. He will rest in peace.

My Biggest Zit Ever!

2006-04-30T15:35:00.000-04:00

I guess I'll spare you the pustulant details.

~A

Kafka in Brooklyn

2006-04-22T12:44:00.000-04:00

It is certainly too easy to raise the specter of Kafka in my own fairly humble activities. Especially since I have never read the novels that gave rise to the use of this term for any experience with a circular labyrinthine bereaucracy. But I will relate my experiences and you can decide.

I lost my passport sometime last fall. My driver's license is expired. I let it expire because I don't have a car and the license was from Massachusetts. The process of getting a NY state license is the same whether my out of state license is current or expired (at least for a year). I don't have a ssn card and I have never possessed my birth certificate (and my mother can't put her hands on it either). I ordered a new birth certificate but then lost it (I actually suspect it is in the same place as my passport as I'm pretty sure the two were together. Of course, they might be together in the garbage dump now). I got a new birth certificate last month (and they cost about $40 each). I need an ssn card to get a driver's license since this will be my first NY state one. I can't get an ssn card because I have no valid photo id, and since I am unemployed neither do I have a valid health insurance card, life insurance policy, employee id. Or a passport of course. All of these would be acceptable proofs of identity (while the birth certificate provides proof of citizenship, a passport is the only id that does both). I can't get a passport yet because they take possession of your birth certificate for two to six weeks (depends if you get it expedited). Expedition costs nearly $200. I need my birth certificate and license(and apparently my invalid license will work for this) to prove to my new place of employment I can work I start Monday).

The ssn website said I could get a new card at my local office (on Havemayer right where you come off the Williamsburg Bridge). I took the half hour walk down there and there was a sign on the door saying they had moved to North Ninth St. I took the half hour walk back north and there was a sign on the wall saying that to get a new ssn card you had to go to the central office in downtown Brooklyn. I asked how long that rule had been in effect and was told about 4 years. When I mentioned that it contradicted what the website told me she just laughed.

I went to the downtown Brooklyn office and was turned away because I had my pocketknife on me and they have airport security there. I went back the next day and then found out I didn't have requisite ID. I don't know if my invalid license is good enough proof of identity to obtain my passport (the forms are unclear on this point). At least with the passport you can bring a friend, have him provide id and sign a legal document attesting to your identity. And all this is now done at the post office, which only increases the enjoyment. At least with the SSN office I found all the staff to be efficient, competent and polite. Post offices can't boast the same qualities.

So what is the solution? Start the new job, use the employee id to get a ssn card, apply for a passport now that I don't need to keep my birth certificate on hand and there won't be any hurry so I will only have to pay $100-$150 and wait the normal six weeks. Use the ssn card and my MA. license to get a NY state license. Hope I never lose any one of these items again.

In the midst of running around doing these things I watched the movie Das Boot for the first time since 1981 (I saw it in the theaters when I was 10). After all the crew struggle through to stay alive, they are met with the ironic fate of getting killed the moment they get home and step off their submarine. It made me fear that the moment I finish all these activities and get the ids something awful will happen.

We'll have to wait and see.

~A

Where have I been anyway?

2006-04-18T14:22:00.000-04:00

The short answer is: I'm not sure.

I suspected that my interest in keeping up a blog might be short lived, yet I can't say why the interest failed me at that specific point, late January, or why, now, I am moved to write a post. It's a question to ponder for a while and then toss aside without any answer.

Last night I attended the Williamsburg Spelling Bee for the first time since the previous finals last October. This was the last chance to gain a place in the spring finals in two weeks. Fortunately, I came in third thus ensuring a spot. In addition to winning a free sandwich they were also giving out free passes to the Brooklyn Museum and an invention named the "Asshole" that's currently being sold at retailers like Urban Outfitters. That makes sense as the Asshole fits in perfectly with Urban Outfitters' product assortment tailored to college aged bachelor pad and louche living. Briefly, the Asshole is a flattened funnel shaped to be easily affixed to a beer bottle and meant to turn said bottle into a more convenient ashtray. So the item is not without it's personal utility. The free sandwich I shall make use of tomorrow at the weekly quiz.

But you might ask what else have I been up to over the last three months (nearly)? Various things. Mainly I have been unemployed since NYU saw fit to relieve me of my position while they could still do so without cause. And to be sure, they did not present a cause except to lamely suggest that I was overqualified. I was told I was not a good fit for the position. Many people have tried to comfort me (and at the time I needed plenty of consolation) by telling me that such an event will prove to be "for the best". Yet I cannot see how. Life takes this path or that and we will always be inclined to view those paths in retrospect as better, or right, or somehow built by necessity to ensure a certain outcome. This is all to Panglossian for me. I do not resent the advice (I try not to at least), since I deeply respect the spirit from which the advice is given. And like I said, I relied heavily on the comfort of friends.

The day after I was fired I had my wisdom teeth removed . Even after two months, this appears to me as yet one more piece of evidence that there really is a God. There must be since this kind of cosmic humor is obviously constructed for an audience. The week after the dental procedure I spent time with my family down in Florida which was very much a pleasant distraction and enjoyable.

Besides these activities I decided it was the appropriate moment to regrow my beard and to cut my hair short. I have been complimented a suprising number of times on this new style, though it does not seem to me to be extremely different in effect or of any particular note. I resumed smoking as well, something I can hardly afford economically at the moment. And something I should not afford physically. It doesn't surprise me that in such a moment of emotional stress I sought whatever physical comfort at hand. I resumed drinking more too though not to the frequency I attained at Yale.

On a positive note, my consultation work at Columbia began the week after I returned from Florida. This was fortuitous to the extreme and has provided income to tide me through my unemployment. The flip side is that the Columbia income was planned to fund my tax bills which are sizable (that's an understatement). Needless to say, my personal finances, which had been rationalized recently to the extent I could claim to finally have them under control, have fallen apart. Not so seriously that I have been losing sleep, but it is disheartening to take such a step backward.

But I am no longer unemployed, having secured a two-year position as a processing archivist at an esteemed cultural institution. It is not an ideal position for me, as it carries no broad responsibilities, supervisory or management tasks, or real skill growth. But it is a step forward in income, and that is especially important at the moment. I fear that it will be isolating, and even dull; I will begin to find out next week.

Meanwhile, of course, the seasons have been progressing and the onrush of spring has buoyed my days of tedium and inactivity. There is hope yet in the world, and room for progress, though my cat has been having trouble shitting again.

There is a line that comes to mind at the moment. In Madame Bovary, Flaubert describes the conflicting desires of Emma thusly :"She wanted to die, and she wanted to live in Paris" At least this is how I remember the quote. I suppose the irreconcilibility of the two desires is meant to illustrate Emma's basic foolishness and dependence on whim more than will. I haven't read the book in awhile so I can't be sure.

But there was an instant last Decemeber when I changed my mind slightly about this quote. I was on an el train in Chicago, passing through a rough neighborhood in a dreary winter gloaming. My mood was equally grim and there was an instant when I felt those same two desires pass through me simultaneously. I don't know the right way to understand this. And this question seems more important to answer rightly than why or why not I am posting on this blog.

But in my next post, I will detail my fascinating adventures with the social Security Administration! Stay tuned.

~A

Fulfilling my resolutions

2006-01-22T17:35:00.000-05:00

I'm not one to worry about manufacturing and then fulfilling a formal list of new year's resolutions. There are always things I'm hoping to accomplish in a year; I don't think it makes any difference when I make myself aware of those hopes. Yet I know too that if, even by happenstance, I do accomplish something that was a resolution, it sorta feels good. And why shouldn't it. This is regardless of whether the accomplishment was actually related to the resolution or not. Often I think there is no connection. Last year, in October, I finally quit smoking. Or rather I began the 'quitting smoking' process. (I am in the fourth month of the quitting process now, I truly believe that a pack a day smoker requires at least two months before he is no longer a smoker). While quitting smoking was something I had hoped to get done last year, I think the fact that I did not begin to do so until October is evidence that I began the process because of more proximate, contingent reasons, than any ultimate causes such as a resolution to quit.

This is all an introduction to telling you about things I am doing in the New Year which are rather new for me, yet I can't say they are resolutions, would it make me look better if I said they were?

At any rate, these are some of my activities in January:

1)I mopped the floor of two thirds of my apartment today (The other third is mostly covered by a rug, my bed, shelving and cabinetry, so I'm not worrying about it at the moment.) Yesterday, finally, I bought myself a bucket. And a new mop and cleanser, but it was the bucket that was really holding me back. Unfortunately (and this is not really a surprise, more of a disappointment) my floor is in such poor condition that it is hard to tell it is any cleaner. I think, if I look closely, that it is cleaner, but it does not look clean. I certainly poured lots of dirty water out of the bucket.

One reason this commonplace activity is new to me is that although I know cleaning is a 'good' thing and something that one 'should' do, it gives me no pleasure or real satisfaction to have done it. At some point, it is merely intolerable not to do it. Most people I know actually seem to like cleaning, in that, once it is done, they feel good for having done it. This is never true for me. I am consterned to have to do it, consterned doing it, and consterned knowing I will have to do it again (I am trying to revivify the word 'constern' for general usage). Basically this is the same way I feel spending money on food. I like eating but I am continually frustrated by the fact that how much I eat today will have little to no impact on how much I will want to eat tomorrow. My stomach is the ultimate money pit and it offends me.

2)I went to the laundry and washed both sets of covers to my couch cushions, then I hung them dry in the bathroom. This isn't of any real moment, but I should have done it eight months ago.

3)I finally got my bathroom tile re-grouted. I am proud of finally cajoling my building's handyman into this as it should have been done years ago. It makes my whole bath look brand new practically. And now the grout is worth trying to keep clean. This was not the case before. But it raises yet another instance of my already stated ambivalence of cleaning.

4)I made chicken stock. Next weekend perhaps I might actually make soup. This is connected in some way to quitting smoking. About the same time as I was giving up cigarettes, I was trying to eat at home more often so as to save less money, I was staying away from bars to save money and diminish the smoking urge, and I was getting bored witht he food I was eating at home. This last consisted of ramen, peanut butter sandwiches, and hot dogs. I realized that while I enjoye those foods, it was certainly within my knowledge and capability to make more. So I started making rice and bean. Then I started buying canned soup. Then I started dating a person who talked alot about cooking and that made me ashamed that my apartment was pretty devoid of food. It's kind of rare that I actually have any real food in my fridge and this condition has made me the occasional laughingstock among my friends.

At any rate, my subtenant of last year had left some meat in the freezer. Sure it was somewhat freezer burnt, but not seriously. I had taken the ground chicken (which never has any flavor in the first place) and cooked it in a bunch of black beans which gave the meat plenty of rehydration. That kind of worked. I always thought of myself as somewhat of an intuitiuve cook.

But there was also about 5 pounds of chicken parts in the freezer. That's an awful lot of chicken, especially frozen. I started thinking that maybe the only thing I could do with it would be to turn it into stock. For that I knew I would need a stock pot. Luckily, my newly married friends had a spare pot, a very good quality one actually. The second thing I would need was a cookbook so I requested The Joy of Cooking for Christmas. Unusually, I actually got it. I went out and bought a lot of cookware that I haven't owned since I was married. (My exwife got most of the stuff, she being the real cook. And while I was able to keep most of the stuff that meant more to me, like the dvd player and the couch, I still really miss the All-Clad pans and things). I bought a colander, a bread knife, measuring spoons, tongs, a baking dish (Pyrex), a ladle, cheesecloth, some other things I don't recall. Then I stopped at the grocery and bought fresh vegetables and greens for the first time since my divorce. That felt odd. Then, the next day, I stood over a stove for four hours simmering five pounds of chicken down into the most lovely golden liquid. This is the most cooking I have done personally in ages. During my marriage I mainly washed dishes, something I was happy to do since the cooking was of high quality, though it might have been nice to come out of my marriage with a few more practicable skills and experience.

That was two weeks ago. Now I'm beginning to get impatient for something I can eat.

5)I went to the dentist. I haven't had dental insurance for about 8 months. It's been about 16 months since my last cleaning. I knew it wouldn't be pretty. One reason is that I have never flossed; another reason is that I was a heavy smoker; a third reason is that my gums have bled heavily while brushing my teeth the last month and I figured that couldn't be good. I figured that even using a Soniccare toothbrush for the last year wouldn't have helped.

And I was right. My (new) dentist was very vocally dismayed about the extent of gum disease present. The cleaning itself was quite painful though it went by fast (for me, apparently the dentist thought it was quite a long cleaning). So in the next months, here is the plan: I have two appointments for 'quadrant deep scaling'. This is essentially an ultra cleaning that is so slow an painful that they administer a local anaesthetic and do only one half of the mouth per appointment. Yay, er. A month after those, I have an evaluation done. The deep scaling should have caused my gums to start healing and the pocketing to lessen. If this is not the case, or if the healing is not significant enough, then I will have to plan on some periodontal surgery. Whoo boy. Before I even get the deep scaling done though I will have my wisdom teeth removed. At least there I can get put to sleep. I kind of knew that was in my future. I would have had it done at Yale but the Yale dental plan was so shitty (their medical plan wasn't so hot either) that I would have had to pay $800 or more for anaesthesia. At NYU I apparently won't have to pay anything.

Because of these developments, the last two days I have begun flossing. Yesterday I bought floss for the first time in my life. Like mopping the floor, this in no way feels good even though it is for my own good.

Tomorrow, I check in with a doctor and have my annual chat. God only knows what he'll have to say.

To sum up, these are all things that needed doing and that I am glad to have done. Well, I am glad to be able to say I have done them. They feel, more or less, like steps forward. My life does not contain too many instances of this feeling. None of these items were New Year's resolutions. If this is the way the whole new year is going to go then I won't have too much to complain about.

Think Ring 3

2006-01-19T13:12:00.000-05:00

Tape threatens new terror

Giving S&M a bad name

2006-01-17T17:41:00.000-05:00

Dominatrix denies dismembering client
The mistress in question is pleading not guilty, claiming her confession was forced. The cops are saying she liked it that way.

And yet another story about asking for it:

Cannibal: He asked to die
This is actually a really gross story that made big headlines during the initial trial. The victim answered an ad placed by the perpretrator in which he was looking for someone he could...eat. The victim and the perpetrator ate part of the victim together. After the victim was dead, a little more got eaten. Here is the confusing part:

Asked Tuesday why he left some portions of his victim uneaten, Meiwes said some parts did not appeal to him and that he also feared disease.

After all that, there's actually some part of this activity that turned him off? Exactly which parts were unappealing? Which parts werre eaten together?

It makes my flesh crawl.

Lately

2006-01-14T18:15:00.000-05:00

Not much has been happening. I think I have the winter blahs. Partly it's that we've hardly had any winter weather. I think a nice blizzard could really cheer me up. Otherwise it has simply felt quiet. And while it is certainly possible that the city is actually quieter than usual this time of year, I think it is more likely to be my outlook on things. I'll have to figure out something to change.

Meanwhile, in the news:

Humvee improvements fall on troops
Apparently the military felt the best way to deliver these improvements was to throw them.

Voodoo spirit survives Katrina
Thought for months to have drowned in the Ninth Ward, Papa Legba Atibon was discovered Sunday in Omaha, Nebraska suffering from amnesia. Since October Legba has been living in housing provided by a local Methodist Church. Church members were quoted as saying they had no indication of Legba's religious background or beliefs and that he was always very quiet and respectful. Like New Orleans itself, American voodoo has suffered the loss of many of it's deities. While some, like Legba, have been located, many remain missing and it is unknown how many of the diaspora can be reassembled into an effective pantheon.

Study gives teens argument to sleep in
Sleeping in allows teens to avoid study

What was I saying about omens?

2005-12-30T00:03:00.000-05:00

So I am back at home in New York now and feeling as always two ways about it. The upside is I'm at home with my cat. That feels good. The downside is that it feels like my vacation is over without anything happily remarkable occuring. Always next year I suppose. But I did want to relate what happened to me today.

I awoke at around 7, a little early considering I did not get to bed until 1 am or so. It turns out I was woken by the sound of my father falling down although it felt like I actually woke up an instant before he fell (doesn't it always happen this way?) My father, an elderly gent, has had a mild cold the last few days (the ailment precluded his full participation in his birthday celebrations). As a result he has been rather weaker than usual. This morning, needing to use the bathroom, he fell getting out of bed and could not get up. My Mom found that she could not him up either so she came and got me out of bed to help.

If an elderly person is on the ground and they are too heavy for you to lift directly into bed (and they are not completely comatose or otherwise incapacitated), this is how you get them up: 1)Pull their arms so as to lift them into a sitting position. 2)Get the individual to then turn on their side and bend their knees. 3)Pull them up to a kneeling position. 4)Supporting them, get them to lift one leg so their foot is flat on the floor and their knee is raised. Using yours and their combined strength, pull them to a standing position.

This, at least, is the strategy my Mother took this morning. I presume she has devoted a fair amount of thought to the process. It was as sensible an action as any I could conceive in such a moment. I might mention that my Father had sustained deep bruises on two or three parts of his body. He had a gash on his scalp that was bleeding and, had it been you or I with this wound, would most likely have received a few stitches.

My father is too heavy for me to pull directly onto his feet. I do pull him into a kneeling position. I lean forward to raise him up and my face comes close to his head. When he is on his knees and I stand up straight, I realize blood from his scalp is smeared down my face. Has this happened to you? Have you gone to help your father and ended up with his blood on you? How long has it been for me or you, since we have had anyone's blood on us other than our own?

Once in the kneeling position, he is able to lean over the bed and use his arms (along with my exertions) to pull himself back onto the bed. Dragging himself forward, his boxer shorts (I wear boxer shorts) are pulled down. He is cognizant of this, and somewhat embarassed, but the situation is not quickly corrected so that I have a good number of moments to contemplate his butt crack. Now fully onto the bed, we urge him to roll over onto his back. And then he momentarily loses control of his bowel and soils his underwear and the sheets.

With the combined help of my Mother and I and a wheeled walker, we are able to get my father on his feet toot suite and into the bathroom across the hall and onto the toilet so he can comfortably relieve himself. I pull the fitted sheet off the bed and replace it with a clean one. Luckily the mattress pad and other linens are unsoiled still. I retreat to the family room (five feet away) while my father completes his business and my Mom attempts to wipe him and wash him before returning him to bed. The smell of shit is rather strong. I note that it actually smells alot like my shit. I suppose that everyone's shit smells more or less the same, once you take into account differences in diet, yet I have not had an opportunity to think about the issue in such... depth. As the smell dissipates I realize that the smell of nursing homes is mostly composed of a faint shit smell. Maybe with a little clorox mixed in, but mostly faint shit. I had always figured there was an equal amount of other odors (such as urine and vomit) contributing to the atmosphere of such places but here plain old shit fading away seems to come pretty close. You learn a new thing every day I guess.

There, in the morning, I think of Nietzsche's line "And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." I think that the abyss and my Father's butt crack are close to being the same thing and maybe this is why God punished the sons of Noah for looking upon their father's nakedness. What was my alternative?

So I ask you friends. Am I mean spirited? Is writing this down in a public forum somehow low? Abasing? Where should I place these thoughts since I cannot banish them? To whom does this mortification of the flesh, this infirmity in old age, come as a surprise? Can you know this thing before living it? Tell me.

So that was my Christmas vacation. It began with a decapitated pigeon and ended with my Father's butt crack, with a chenille throw in between.

Christmas tidings...and omens

2005-12-26T10:52:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas. And I am specifically talking to all you non-Christians out there. Without us, you'd all be working right now. Maybe you are working right now.

But let me list some Christmas loot I received:

The Joy of Cooking. Now I can display this proudly on my kitchen counter so all visitors to my apartment will think I cook.

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. One of the more perfect doorstops I've ever possessed.

Obligatory shirt. Obligatory sweater. Both appreciated.

A chenille throw. Don't ask me to explain that one. Received from they who last year gave me a down comfortor lap blanket.

And finally I will leave you with this Christmas thought. Yesterday morning I was strolling around looking for a Sunday NY Times (found one finally at a 7-11). In my search, I came across a dead pigeon on the sidewalk. More than dead actually, freshly killed. How was it killed? It's head and neck had been cleanly (very cleanly) sliced off (and were missing). Christmas morning and I have chills down my spine, in the middle of the sidewalk.

Happy new year.

Gigantism is all the rage

2005-12-08T09:18:00.000-05:00

Apropos of yesterday's news:

Giant jellyfish destroying Asian fisheries

Start planning now. Tokyo is next, then New York. Destruction is inevitable, or should it be inedible.

The latest news

2005-12-07T13:59:00.000-05:00

Evidence that the world's AIDS crisis continues to grow:
Pinochet stripped of immunity

Technology helping blind, deaf enjoy movies
Maybe there's hope for the rest of us now.

Holiday depression follows Katrina
I'm hoping it'll develop into a holiday tropical storm.
I think I actually covered this topic here.

Giant snails threaten Florida
Because, frankly, with the hurricane season just past, it's ripe for the picking.

Aw nuts...

2005-11-29T16:36:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-26T22:34:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-26T21:21:00.000-05:00

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...

2005-11-14T14:11:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-14T09:16:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-13T13:18:00.000-05:00

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?

2005-11-13T10:40:00.000-05:00

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.

Signs

2005-11-12T14:54:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-10T12:03:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-09T10:07:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-09T08:41:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-08T17:04:00.000-05:00

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

I like beating Gawker to the punch

2005-10-31T13:03:00.000-05:00

Although I'm also slightly disappointed by my own lack of originality.

Unfortunate deaths and other things....

2005-10-31T10:13:00.000-05:00

Two in the news this morning...

Pastor electrocuted while performing baptism
I would make some joke about the entering in of the Holy Spirit but there is a strange twist to this story. I learned about it before it popped up online because the deceased is a good friend of my coworker's boyfriend. So she was pretty shook up this morning and I will refrain from making any cracks in deference to her...

...but you do have to wonder. Pastors have been using microphones during full immersion baptisms for decades yet it seems obvious they can pose an electrocution hazard. Why are such deaths not more common? Are there any waterproofed amplification devices on the market that would provide a safe alternative? Maybe this will occassion a cessation of full-immersion baptisms.

And in other news:

Woman falls after dangling from hot air balloon
One of the connecting themes between these two posts are how both included numerous spectators and both ust have been exceedingly terrible to witness. If the balloon accident had occurred in a movie though, the crash through the barn roof would have allowed her to walk away from it.

Justice is served neat, or on the rocks

2005-10-30T14:22:00.000-05:00

Four fraternity members sentenced in hazing death

Actually it would be much more fitting, and a lot more fun to imagine, if the headline read:

Four fraternity members senteced to hazing death

But I suppose we can't get everything we want in this world.

Sugar Falls in Manhattan

2005-10-28T10:16:00.000-04:00

I actually noticed this smell in the Union Square subway station around 7:30 pm. Considering that the station frequently pulls in odors from street vendors (the L platform always smells like roasted hot dogs) it didn't seem unusual. But it was quite distinctive...and very pleasant, even homey. It was immediately recognizable as maple sugar or maple syrup. But maybe it's a deceptively sweet harbinger of danger ahead. An evil attack of...THe Sweet Tooth!

Or something like that.

What's That Smell?
or
Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers

Just people being stupid. That's all.

2005-10-22T21:25:00.000-04:00

I peruse Craigslist somewhat frequently. If you ever have, then you know that the range of stupidity on display is rather impressive. Impressive, that is, until we realize that this is just a fraction of the stupidity occurring in the broader public. Therefore, I have rarely seen occasion to comment on it specifically. But then there is a line like this:

I'm a 23 year old girl...[who is]... interested in many things, mainly sports and other interesting things that enrichen the mind.

Yes, that's right folks. Sports enrichen the mind.

You heard it here first.

~A

Old people are scary...

2005-10-21T08:57:00.000-04:00

Here's an equation:

Old people are dangerous drivers.
Florida is filled with old people.
Florida is a dangerous place to drive.

In college I learned how to write that in symbolic logic.

Elderly man drives with body in windshield
Ignore the fact that the headline makes it sound as if he was driving with his own body in his windshield.

Here are some choice quotes:
A 93-year-old driver apparently suffering from dementia fatally struck a pedestrian and drove for three miles with the man's body through his windshield, police said. [emphasis added]

Sure he might have been suffering from dementia, but there are so many other reasonable explanations to consider. Malice, for one.

Ralph Parker was stopped after he drove through a tollbooth on the Sunshine Skyway, Traffic Homicide Investigator Michael Jockers said. The toll taker called police, he said.

The toll was fifty cents per person and obviously the driver underpaid. I wonder even if this was the wierdest thing the toll clerk had ever seen on the turnpike.

The investigator said of the driver: "That was the one thing he had, to get in his car and just drive for the sheer enjoyment of driving," Jockers said. Parker lived alone after his wife died in 1998, authorities said

I completely understand the sheer joy of driving...and mowing down pedestrians. Note the embedded pun. The pedestrian's leg was sheared off in the accident.

And in other news:

Report: 'Makeover' winner has criminal record
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- A disabled lobsterman who received a $500,000 log home from the TV show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in an episode yet to be aired has a criminal past, including an armed robbery conviction, The Portland Press Herald reported Thursday.

I think he confused the show with the witness protection program.

Spellingbee update

2005-10-17T10:30:00.000-04:00

For those not in the know, even though I have been on a spelling bee losing streak, I have made it into the championships tonight. The media is just now catching up to the phenomena with coverage by the NYTimes (accomapanied in print by the above photo), Timeout:

And various other regional media outlets. Tonight the finals will be filmed by Good Morning America. Be sure to catch my failed attempt at glory tomorrow on national tv. And check out the spelling bee web page.

Most of the credit for this coverage is due to the organizers of the event, particualrly Jen Dziura.

The odd thing is another friend Josh actually started his bee first and has also been receiving a fair amount of coverage.

It's just that the bee at Pete's is much closer to home.

PS. This posting is the most bloggish of any I've done. It seems you can't call yourself a real blogger unless every post displays an insatiable display of how much you read the web and how many of your friends also have blogs. It's as if the hip bloggers do nothing but prove their hipness and connectivity. This isn't a criticism, but a reason why I will never truly belong to the blogosphere. And I never want to type that word again.

~A

From the news today

2005-10-17T10:03:00.000-04:00

I know I have become a member of the blogosphere when so much of my thought gets caught up in the whole Judith Miller megillah of shenanigans, hijinks, and boondoggle. But in other news:

Couple completes coast-to-coast hike
I will take bets on how soon the divorce happens

School 'willing to sponsor a prom, but not an orgy'
But this just shows how outdated the concept of a prom is(abbr. of promenade, and similar in origin to debutante balls and the like). Perhaps, in the increasing pornification of our culture (or should that be calinifornipornification) schools themselves are outmoded and should be replaced by public bordellos. Then they can sponsor orgies unhindered by any educational responsibility and everyone will be happy.

National Zoo names newest baby panda
After the whole Valerie Plame fiasco, I wouldn't be surprised if this turned into a whole new imbroglio. Who leaked the Panda's name? Of course, the Panda ain't talking.

And yet another story proving why school marching bands are dangerous:

Wisconsin bus crash kills 5

See also:
At least 4 dead in U.S. tour bus crash in Canada
Bus crash in Georgia injures about 20 students on band trip
Bus collision injures 130 on way to college football game

That's all for now, I'll try harder to keep up.

~A

No apologies

2005-10-17T10:00:00.000-04:00

Hmmm, I think my blogging has slowed because my reading of other blogs has increased. This makes my thoughts less original seeming and leeches a bit of impetus away. Not a big deal. My time has been busy of course, two weddings, media attention, a cold. And too much rain by far.

Never retreat, never surrender

~A

My recent activities...

2005-10-03T14:30:00.000-04:00

But first, an apology. I have been negligent in updating this blog on as regular a basis as some readers (and I know there are only some readers) may have been grown to accustom. There is both a good reason (hectic schedule) and a bad reason (sheer laziness).

But I will fill you in. I typically am quite enamored of autumn. It is not only the seasonal change of weather but that more new things (and better things) seem to happen to me at this time of year than in any other period. This last week is a case in point. I attended a strip club as part of my friend's bachelor party. This was a longstanding desire of mine; not because I expected to enjoy it but simply because it is an immensely peculiar experience I thought I should know about. It was precisely that.

Secondly, my photo did indeed end up on the cover to the Thursday Styles section in the New York Times. This is most definitely a first for me. I should note here that many people comented upon my photo's placement beneath the heel of kate Moss. I found this apropos. The photo was omitted from the NYTime online edition; this has limited it's exposure and doomed my one chance at fame. But I have no regrets.

On Wednesday, after returning from a night out and a few beers, I hurriedly cleaned my apartment in approach of my brother's arrival later that evening. However, I fell into such a profound sleep afterwards that I did not hear him call, ring the doorbell, or pound on the door. He was forced to convince my neighbor to allow him to crawl out her window so he could walk across the fire escape and come in through my window. This certainly has never happened to me before and I am sure I have fallen in more than one person's estimation in return.

On Saturday I went to a wedding in Manhattan, my first in the city, and for various reasons I secured a hotel room that evening for me and my date. I have never done this before. It worked out quite favorably.

In light of these astounding events (I might call it a miracle week) I can only hope the rest of the season continues in the same tenor. If it doesn't, I shall still have good reason to look forward to this time next year.

~A

And in late breaking news

2005-09-27T11:12:00.000-04:00

My activities in the Spelling Bee got me invited to a photo shoot last night. Seems the NY Times wants to run a story in the Style section this week so they made us get together and fake pose a bee on a night when there wasn't one. See if I make the news.

Didn't I mention that's why I participate? Because I knew it was an easy road to fame and fortune.

~A