Nigh-night! sweet dreams, kids!
Tag Archives: books
I’m back from walkies, showered and shaved… it’s nice go step out in the morning, after (or during) a light rain, before the sun has come very far up and started dropping heat all over the place.
Saw something that I’d not seen for years… a 2-baby stroller… (being pushed by a mommy who was in amazing shape, all the baby feeding fat was gone…unless it wasn’t the mommy. the things I assume.) 2 twin babies, about 6 months old apiece having a great time being slowly rollerbladed around the mainway. A cooing baby will always bring a smile to my face. Things like that makes me wonder all the more about people who don’t like kids…isn’t fondness for tots sort of hardwired into our nervous system? Even me, a pod, and a male, thinks that babies are adorable. The “insult” of being called a breeder by those that choose to not have kids is kind of silly, I think.
I notice that in the
I wouldn’t put this as my favorite book of all time, but it certainly would make for a wonderful coffee table piece (now, all I have to do is get the coffee table. The downside is… do I want to leave a book that is so costly laying out where Newt or some brutal can get at it? This is one of the perils of owning something expensive, and fragile. Maybe I’ll just sell it on Ebay…But I like to think that it’ll make a nice addition to my library, one day, when I have one. How do they say it? Possessions own you, as well as you owning them.
Trying my hand at footnotes… I think I prefer parenthetical statements, but I didn’t want to disturb the flow of writing. easier to put a number there, and come back to it later. 🙂 Um, am I being ignorant, or am I right in wondering why anyone would use the html command CITE when the italic command is only one letter?
- [1]
- an extravagance, bought when I was still living under my folk’s roof. That same paycheck paid for my personal phone line, too…not for social calls,per se, but to connect to BBS’s and Fidonet at 110/300 baud. gah…so long ago… I can read faster than 300 baud. No graphics saved for ASCII. Note to self, do an entry about my old BBS, run on an Atari 800, 4 floppy drives, and a 1200 baud modem, later that year. The Name? The Halls of Gladsheim. compared to today, like writing on cave walls
- [2]
- Well, if you want a rare first edition, that’s fair…but what about folks that don’t want to collect.. just want to read the book? this is my big gripe about comic books too. I don’t collect books as an investment. I collect ’em, because I’ve enjoyed reading them, I’m a pack rat, and have invested some emotional worth in them. Books, never read, in a vault. that’s perverse.
I’m reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol. I must have read it hundreds of times when I was a kid. It was a favorite tome. It’s odd to read those lines now as an adult and remember them in their muchness. It’s like going from big to small and back again. It’s all about as curious as it can be.
Check out also this page, with links to Oz, Tarzan, Tom Sawyer, and other fantastic texts.
see also – http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/People/rgs/rgs-home.html (more on-line books, including banned books on-line, and other specialties)
Free, baby. http://gutenberg.org
More than you or I could ever hope to read. 🙂
This is a Children’s Book? (Why I dig Oz)
People think children’s entertainment today is too violent? Check out this tale of disfigurement, slavery, contract killing, axe murder, and abuse of endangered species:
Now the Wicked Witch of the West had but one eye, yet that was as powerful as a telescope, and could see everywhere. So, as she sat in the door of her castle, she happened to look around and saw Dorothy lying asleep, with her friends all about her. They were a long distance off, but the Wicked Witch was angry to find them in her country; so she blew upon a silver whistle that hung around her neck.
At once there came running to her from all directions a pack of great wolves. They had long legs and fierce eyes and sharp teeth.
“Go to those people,” said the Witch, “and tear them to pieces.”
“Are you not going to make them your slaves?” asked the leader of the wolves.
“No,” she answered, “one is of tin, and one of straw; one is a girl and another a Lion. None of them is fit to work, so you may tear them into small pieces.”
“Very well,” said the wolf, and he dashed away at full speed, followed by the others.
It was lucky the Scarecrow and the Woodman were wide awake and heard the wolves coming.
“This is my fight,” said the Woodman, “so get behind me and I will meet them as they come.”
He seized his axe, which he had made very sharp, and as the leader of the wolves came on the Tin Woodman swung his arm and chopped the wolf’s head from its body, so that it immediately died. As soon as he could raise his axe another wolf came up, and he also fell under the sharp edge of the Tin Woodman’s weapon. There were forty wolves, and forty times a wolf was killed, so that at last they all lay dead in a heap before the Woodman.
From that timeless classic of children’s literature, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
When I have a actual *library* in my house, I’ll certainly want this in it –
The most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time comprises both the 50-volume “5-foot shelf of books” and the 20-volume Shelf of Fiction. Together they cover every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century.
F/X Porn by David Foster Wallace is a quick but good read on how special effects blockbusters like T2 and Independence Day are like porno films:
“Just like hard-core cheapies, movies like ‘Terminator 2’ and ‘Jurassic Park’ aren’t really ‘movies’ in the standard sense at all. What they really are is half a dozen or so isolated, spectacular scenes — scenes comprising maybe twenty or thirty minutes of riveting, sensuous payoff — strung together via another sixty to ninety minutes of flat, dead, and often hilariously insipid narrative.”
Poll of the Day
Also – Check out – http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/books.htm for all things Oz.
Better than Harry Potter, sez I. Not bad, for a book that recently became 100 years old. Really.
Since many of us are fans of science fiction and fantasy, I thought that this would be of considerable interest to many of us here. Poul Anderson, long-time science fiction and fantasy writer, is in hospice care, and is expected to die very soon.
This from the bottom of Jerry Pournelle’s daily column at http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/currentview.html#Tuesday
************
Friends —
It’s with a heavy heart that I write that my father, Poul Anderson is receiving hospice care at home and is not expected to live more than a week.
I know that some of you are fans of his work, and if you would care to send an e-mail direct to my parents house ( trigonier@earthlink.net ) expressing what it has meant to you, he would be very appreciative. I’ll be going down there myself tomorrow (they’re in the Bay Area), so will not be getting mail here for a few days.
Astrid Bear
My chores are done, the sun is out, and I’m going to relax with a sleepy cat and a good book read in natural light.
Book – Wicked
Cat – Newton.
Time – Right now. See you kids later.
before I go –
Colin Powell on the U.S. and China: “I think the relationship is on an upswing now, now that the irritations are behind us… ” I wonder how people who have been unfairly detained, tried, and sentenced feel about being called “irritations”? Of course there are many, many more people who unjustly have been sent to Chinese prisons, labor camps, and graves. Perhaps they too will someday achieve irritant status.
I’m bad.
I have 4 packages to send out.
They’ve been sitting by my front door “so I won’t forget them” since Friday night, to take to the post office last saturdayt morning.
Tonight, when I see them, I’m putting them *IN FRONT* of the door, in order to ship them off. to them that’s expecting mail, it should get to you by the weekend.
Ack. On to good stuff.
I talked to my brother last night, and hopefully we’ll be getting together this Sunday to go to the pier, listen to some music, see a few friends. Listen to a band that I’d like to do a website for. We’ll see.
My morning fog obscures all memory of last night’s dreams. I lay in bed this morning, waking slowly, thinking of being with my sweetie in a park, watching the folks go by, seeing children playing. There was horseback riding and a lot of people there, even though they were spread out quite a bit…Its times like that when I wonder what we’ll be like five years from now… a decade, even 30 years. Her with a head of silver, me with a horseshoe of grey, grown old together…maybe children of ours having children of thier own. What’ll the world look like when my age has doubled? The same, but only with more crap music and cool technology? (Sort of how I view the shift from the 80’s to now…) I like to think we’ll still have books, peace and freedom. I think we’re overdue for a global confilct… I hope we never have another, but is that a realistic hope? I’m getting too old to serve, but will my kids one day have to kill people that threaten our way of living?
I just want to grow old with the woman I love. 🙂 A reasonable request, I think.
Here comes the rain… must submit to purrs and white noise of drips.
I’m going to snuggle in bed with Newt and a good book, with some champa burning.
Current Book – Great Apes – Will Self
browsing the news, found some dandy queso.
Talk about usability problems: the most recent RISKS Digest has a pretty funny story about a bunch of motorized shopping carts going haywire during a power outage. It turns out that the interface for charging the chairs involves plugging them in but then turning them on and placing the handle in the “forward” position — and then, when the power goes out to the outlet they’re plugged into, they surge forward and have to be chased down.
The New York Times has a pretty great article on the growing use of maternal-fetal surgery, and the recent shift towards performing the risky procedure not to correct potentially fatal intrauterine problems, but to improve the life of a baby with a non-life-threatening diagnosis. There are some good ethical questions embedded in this one.
slinkys and cults?
In a new book, Inventing the 20th Century: 100 Inventions That Shaped the World, I read that the inventor of the Slinky, Richard James, joined a cult in Bolivia to which he donated much of his profits. What cult? Do proceeds from sales of Slinkys still go to the cult?
Mr. Dark, a villain through and through. – Scary ugly, evil thing. (for )
Excerpt from Something Wicked This Way Comes:
“Well, what have you there?” Mr. Dark squinted. “A Bible? How Very Charming, how childish and refreshingly old-fashioned.”
“Have you ever read it, Mr. Dark?”
“Read it! I’ve had every page, paragraph, and word read at me, sir!” Mr. Dark took time to light a cigarette and blow smoke toward the NO SMOKING sign, then at Will’s father. “Do you really imagine that books can harm me? Is NaivetĂ© really your armor? Here!”
And before Charles Halloway could move, Mr. Dark ran lightly forward and took the Bible. He held it in his two hands.
“Aren’t you surprised? See, I touch, hold, even read from it.”
Mr. Dark blew smoke on the pages as he riffled them.
“Do you expect me to fall away into so many Dead Sea scrolls of flesh before you? Myths, unfortunately, are just that. Life, and by life I could mean so many fascinating things, goes on, makes shift for itself, survives wildly, and I not the least wild among many. Your King James and his literary version of some rather stuffy poetic materials is worth about this much of my time and sweat.”
Mr. Dark hurled the Bible into a wastepaper basket and did not look at it again.
Off the top of my head…
Assume both are *real*.
In RA Wilson’s Schrodinger’s Cat the first line is “The majority of Terrans were six-legged.” When I first read that a number of years ago, I had to stop and think about it for a moment. “Bugs”. What an all encompassing term for a myriad variety of critters. As Giger has shown us with the “Aliens”, extend insect/arachnids to human-sze, and the buggars are pretty damn indestructable. Not just because of their touchness factor, but their speed, adaptability, and sheer numbers.
Yes, I know spiders aren’t insects, but I think they have a higher ‘oogy’ element for most folks.