Another pointless piece of satire

Lyrics, Movies, Bands, Organizations, and the intellectually challenged:

• Darlin', darlin', darlin', save the last dunce for me
  
• Safety Dunce
  
• Invitation to the dunce
  
• Urban Dunce Squad
  
• Lord of the dunce
  
• Duncing down to Rio
  
• Flashdunce
  
• Dunce Fever
  
• Dunce with my father
  
• They dunce alone
  
• The Alvin Ailey American Dunce Theatre
  
• Morris Duncers in a minefield ("ching, ching, ching, boom!")
  

Not another list!

Yeah, so if all your friends wrote list posts at the end of the year, would you do it too? You bet I would, but I wouldn't be constrained by quantity, like "top 10," or "bottom 4" or something like that. I'm just gonna write a list and see what happens.

• Most annoying lexicographical slide: "comprised of" is creeping into acceptance. Never mind that it's dead wrong, rhetorical democracy is making it right -- as recently as 1996, according to one on-line dictionary, only 35% of respondents to some survey found it objectionable. For the record, comprise means include, not compose. So saying something is "comprised of" something else is a) wrong and b) a clue that you don't really speak the Queen's English. ("Don't you know the Queen's English?" "So's the King!" Haw haw.) You can say something comprises something, or something is composed of something. Take your pick.
  
• Runners up: additional s suffixes where they're not needed and modify meaning, specifically when added to the terms "bottom up" and "head up." "Bottom up" means doing something like budgeting, starting with the details or with the input of the lower-ranking members of a team, and aggregating the results. "Bottoms up" is a colloquial encouragement to drink, as in turn the bottom of your glass up. Likewise, "head up" is an attribute of a display, as for example in an aircraft, that the user can read with his head up -- not having to look down or otherwise away from the view out the windscreen. "Heads up" is a term for a warning or alert, as in Let me give you a heads up that claiming our product has a "heads up display" will be looked upon with disapprobrium. It's astonishing to me that otherwise intelligent leaders will publicly describe a planning process as being "bottoms up." Granted, a lot of planning this past few years probably was, but even so ...
  
• Best reasons to rethink one's opposition to cruel and unusual punishment: a tie among Robert Mugabe, Rod Blagojevich, that Madoff guy, and any member of the Kennedy and/or Johnson administrations who wants us to buy a hardcover book detailing how really, really sorry he is for the war in Vietnam.
  
• Guy who should never work in politics again: the person who first took John McCain aside and whispered, "One word: Sarah Palin." The Governor of Alaska: the first woman ever to become James Stockdale.
  
• Biggest crew of slackers and goof-offs: America's (and the world's, for that matter) political cartoonists. With all the targets of opportunity out there, all they can do, most of 'em, is draw pictures of Santa Claus in rags, laying off reindeer, or delivering coal to some disgraced public figure. The best of a sad, disheartened, demoralized lot: Pat Oliphant. The absolute rock-bottom, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal worst: Chuck Asay.
  

So that's enough bile for now. What's on your list?

I thought it was the Wall Street Journal ...

... that was acquired by Murdoch, not the New York Times. Can you say "anecdotal evidence?" I knew you could.

Again, in a sunbeam

Late Christmas morning, asleep with her present, which was quite a hit.

Happy Holidays

I was planning on writing something snide and cynical about the holidays and the economy and the polar bears and so on. But I got distracted by a dog. Pure zen in a beam of sunlight.

Look out, Daedalus Books

Although Daedalus remains my favorite source for remainders and other less-than-mainstream books, I've run across another source of good stuff, Revisionist Press, specializing in books that question conventional wisdom, mainstream science, and common sense. Here are a few items from their Holiday Catalog:

• The Really Interesting Stuff I Found, Douglas N. Thusiast. Chronicles two years' work on the author's family farm, excavating a site which he now believes represents centuries of pre-Colombian habitation by the lost tribes of Israel in central Indiana. Details his struggles with the archaeological establishment and his valiant efforts to bring his theories to the public, despite widespread scepticism and his complete lack of academic credentials. Not the first but certainly the most recent exposition of the "I really want to believe this, so it must be true" approach to epistemology. "Presents a distinctly new theory of the settlement of the Americas, based on seemingly irrefutable evidence consisting of some scratches on some rocks." The Complete Wacko Magazine. "Hard to argue with, since he refuses to speak to strangers." Journal of American Hallucination.
  
• Hydrate Your Way to Health, The International Bottled Water Association. A team of hired physiologists sets forth the case that the more water you drink, the healthier you'll be, also more attractive to the opposite sex, and cooler. "It's blindingly simple," explains the chapter on coolness. "Drink half a bottle of water and pour the rest over your head: presto, you're cool. Or cooler, anyway."
  
• Sons of Heaven and Corn: The Chinese Discovery of Des Moines, Louis Natick. Based on careful study of aerial photography, satellite imagery, and epigraphy (scratches on rocks), Natick (who holds a Doctorate of Divinity from the University of Phoenix) argues that an offshoot of the fifteenth century expeditions of Zheng He found the northwest passage, sailed down through Hudson Bay, built birch bark junks in what is now Lake Huron, visited the site of present-day Cleveland, and then marched overland to eventually found Des Moines, bringing with them the life-giving grain we know as "corn," plus the recipes for ethanol and bourbon. "Very convincing, if you're prepared to abandon two hundred years of western-centric thinking and hard data." Proceedings of the American Council of Deluded Halfwits.
  
• A Really Nice Guy, Once You Get to Know Him, Ed. Newton Leroy Gingrich. Anthology of contrarian biographies, exposing decades of liberal mud slinging at such misunderstood historical figures as J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph Stalin, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Slobodan Miloševic, Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, William Marcy Tweed, John Mitchell, and Attila the Hun. "Makes you think twice ..." The Wall Street Journal.
  
• Mounds of Rubbish, Rev. Utter Lee Barking. Lays out the Reverend Barking's theory that North America was populated in ages past by a race of white ("well, white-ish") mound-builders who were eventually overwhelmed by dusky-skinned barbarians from somewhere else (the book is a bit vague on just where the invaders came from -- in one chapter, it's the Middle East, in another place, it's Newark.) He bases his conclusions on the debris and discardia found in his excavations of a mound on his property in West Virginia, including inscriptions on golden tablets, copies of the Wall Street Journal, and some scratches on rocks. Traditional archaeologists, confronted with Barking's evidence, tend to resort to cheap shots such as pointing out that the mound in question is approximately 4 feet high and does not appear to have existed prior to 1987. Barking refutes this criticism in a chapter entitled, "Unbelievers Shall Burn in Hell!"
  

Get your copies now, while supplies last and lawsuits are still pending.

Shop Local

So things are a bit tough, economically. Here are some places to spend what money you have on hand, in the hope that they'll survive. (Apologies for the formatting - this site really doesn't speak HTML -- it just pretends to.)

Wine, Deli, Chocolates	Morgan and York	1928 Packard, Ann Arbor 48104	734 769 9770	http://morganandyork.com/
As we say in Ann Arbor, "you know, the old Big Ten Party Store." Repeatedly voted Best Wine Shop. Especially in the realm of small French labels and Kermit Lynch - imported values, this is the place.
Wine	Everyday Wines	407 N. Fifth Ave - 1st Floor Ann Arbor, MI 48104	734.827.WINE	http://www.everyday-wines.blogspot.com/
Just as the name implies, Mary Campbell's shop is dedicated to affordable wines.
Produce, high-end groceries, wine	Produce Station	1629 S. State St. Ann Arbor MI 48104	734.663.7848	http://www.producestation.com/visit.php
With the exception of the Farmer's Market in season, there is no better place for produce in Ann Arbor, period. Small, inconvenient to get to and get around in, it's worth the effort. Unofficial Rules: do not use a full size grocery cart (even though they have them), do not bring children.
Deli, luxury foods, coffee beans, bread	Zingerman's	422 Detroit Street, Ann Arbor MI 48104	888.636.8162	http://www.zingermans.com/default.aspx
Although Zingerman's is the Superpower of local vendors, with aspirations to a global reach via their mail order side, they're still local, and they still roast a fine coffee bean.
Produce, meats, plants	Ann Arbor Farmers Market	315 Detroit St, Ann Arbor 48103	734 994-3276	http://kerrytown.org/detail.asp?id=336
In season, the best produce available. In the winter, a desolate tundra of crafts and wreaths. I mark the return of reasonable weather in the area by the reappearance of edible things at the market. Unofficial rules: no strollers!
Produce, groceries, wine	Fresh Seasons Market	2281 W Liberty St, Ann Arbor MI 48103	(734) 662-6000	(nothing useful yet as a website)
Again, "the old Coleman's Market." Not on my beat, but Northwest Side residents swear by it.
Meats, produce, groceries	Sparrow Market	415 N. Fifth Ave - 1st Floor Ann Arbor MI 48104	734.761.8175	http://www.kerrytown.com/sparrowmeats/index.html
There is no better, more consistent source of meat in Ann Arbor, with the possible exception of the actual raisers who come to the Farmer's Market. The rest of Sparrow's empire in Kerrytown is pretty darn good, too.
Meat	Hannewald Lamb	Stockbridge MI 49285 (in the Farmer's Market, too)	517-851-4718	http://arbormarket.googlepages.com/hannewaldlamb
A local raiser, with a Farmer's Market presence. The absolute best lamb I've ever cooked, and nice dog treats, too.
Smoked fish etc.	Durham's Tracklements	212 East Kingsley Street Ann Arbor MI 48104	734-930-6642	http://www.tracklements.com/contact.php
Nationally-known source for great smoked fish and other smoked animals. In fact, a tiny hole in the wall on the north side of Kerrytown. Wonderful stuff.
Groceries	Busch's	various	various	http://buschs.com/
Although Busch's exhibits most of the faults of supermarkets, it is, at least, a local enterprise. If you absolutely, positively have to shop at a supermarket, these are slightly better than the other places. Not recommended for anything that perishes or comes in grades of quality, such as fish, meat, deli, or produce.

And here are some places NOT to spend your money, for a variety of reasons.

Whole Foods: all marketing, all the time, with marginally better quality perishables than low-end supermarkets and a predatory approach to local competition. You spend more for what you buy and get far less value. Not a place to buy wine, either; if you can spell "Bordeaux," let alone pronounce it, you will know more than the wine staff.

Trader Joe's: just say no. There is nothing here that you want, and most of it is of very dubious provenance. Again, the staff know nothing that you don't already know.

Kroger's, Meier's, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Costco, etc. There is absolutely no viable cost/quality equation you can come up with that justifies shopping with these people. None. Don't try.

Just in time for holiday giving

A must-read for good little boys and girls. Thanks to Greasy Jimmy for the link.

Video from someone who actually knows ...

... what he's doing, in distinct constrast to me. The son of a good friend is in Germany, making video like this. Have a look.

Not again! More dinner shots

I'm sorry -- I'm just a hopeless chicken addict. Here's a half Amish "small roaster" from Sparrow Meats, frogged, rubbed with oil, salt and pepper, and thyme; served with sweet potato and parsnip puree' and a sauteed and broiled vegetable gratin. Simple stuff.

Frankly, doing chicken like this in the oven is second best -- the grill is the proper way to do it, but it's just too cold, snowy, and dark to do that, this time of year.

Happy Thanksgiving

After nearly a week of carrying on in one way or another with family and friends, I have a boat load of digital media, but I haven't gotten around to doing any editing. So until I do, let's just list the things we're thankful for:

• The company I work for, for very good reasons, isn't able to outsource things to the Pac Rim or South Asia, meaning that I'm not likely to have to go there. (Unlike a previous gig, when I did.)
  
• Linda's job, when she was applying for it, was described as "0% travel," so nobody's likely to send her to Mumbai, either.
  
• Coney Dog doesn't have a passport, so ...
  
• You get the picture.
  

Next time I'm rambling on at dinner about how I wouldn't invest a dime of development work in a country that has both a sectarian and a Marxist revolution going on, maybe someone will listen. Probably not.

The miracle of the dogs

Miracles happen all the time, if we just look for them. For example, this weekend I entered a local store by the back way, as per usual, and passed a perfectly nice Australian shepherd dog, tethered up and waiting for his owner. I was in the store for 15 minutes or so, and when I came back out, the dog had miraculously been transformed into a black Lab.

Don't laugh. Whole religions have been based on less ...

Arrrgh!

Occasionally, something that works well

Amid the clangor (one of my favorite words) and discord, tumult and shouting (big shout out to Ruddy Kipling and his blog at
www.ominousforeshadowing.com), and general can-o-whup-ass-opening (note that the more commonly heard term, "open up a can of whoop-ass," is absolutely incorrect and semantically ridiculous, as William Safire recently noted in his NYT column, "Who the f**k cares what William Safire thinks, anyway?"), it's nice to reflect on the one or two things that actually seem to be working.

No, that wouldn't be the various bail-out packages; nor any of the proposed paths to peace in the middle east, mid-west, or Midlothian, for that matter; nor the efforts by the government of North Korea to stay in the top six of America's worries (not kidding -- that is apparently a recognized goal of NK, never to be the number one on our hit parade, but to be four or five down on the list of things we have to concern ourselves with. I've worked for companies with that kind of strategy.) No, I'm thinking at the moment, anyway, of my recently-acquired Garmin GPS, with which I'm well pleased. I used to have a Garmin Quest, which was adequate, but had a user interface designed by a commitee of macaques, drunk on palm toddy. When it just quit working, I replaced it with a Garmin Nuvi 250. This little thing fixes all the complaints I had about the Quest, runs faster, and doesn't require downloading maps for different parts of the country.

Why do I need a GPS, you ask? Well, I find myself driving around the countryside in strange cities more than I used to, by myself, and it's useful not to have to fumble with maps while trying to not hit more than my limit of pedestrians and/or moose.

Bizarre feats of technology

The photo at the left is of a perfectly ordinary, generic, 2 gig USB drive, purchased a couple of years ago, and these days, probably worth about a dollar and a half. What's remarkable about it, you ask? Just that it went through the wash and the dryer in the pocket of my shirt and still functions as always. Strange.

Let's not forget the little guys

So as this week's election demonstrated, eventually appallingly bad leadership gets you sacked. Not soon enough, usually, but eventually, it does.

But in the afterglow of Obama's well-deserved victory, let's all pause to remember that our political system isn't just divided into Democrats and Republicans. America has a number of other parties, many of which, over the years, have fielded third-party candidates. For example, there's Ralph Nader who, for a self-serving, cynical, arrogant little prat, isn't, um, well, a quitter, I guess is what you can say about him. Ross Perot, the man who proved to the world that being rich and the head of a large corporation doesn't mean you know squat about leadership, domestic affairs, or foreign ones, ran as a third-party candidate. And of course, there was George Wallace, who ran for President on the American Independent Party ticket(AIP, pronounced just like it looks).

Of course, we shouldn't forget (although we'd like to) such mavericks as Ron Paul (an Ayn Rand fan and member of the Foreign Affairs committee of the House, despite believing that the US has no place in the UN or NATO) who is currently a Republican, but has run in the past as a Libertarian -- although strangely, his views on Liberty don't extend to reproductive choice.

Reaching further back, Teddy Roosevelt formed the Bull Moose party (or Progressive Party, as it preferred to be called), when he didn't get the 1912 GOP nomination. Its platform, in an uncanny foreshadowing, was titled "A Contract With the People," and had so many contradictions and anomalies that ... people loved it, enough to split the republican vote and give the election to the even-more-Progressive Democrats, Woodrow Wilson, in particular. (And we all know how well that worked out.)

And it goes on and on -- Wikipedia has a nice list of semi-organized wackos ... I mean, third parties, including such interesting groupings as:

The Modern Whig Party, a group so centrist that I couldn't really tell what it stands for, in the 30 or 40 seconds worth of research I was prepared to devote to it.

The Prohibition Party, which is exactly what you think it is. Apparently divided into two factions, the "pro-Dodge" and "anti-Dodge" groups. I selected one at random for the link, and frankly, I forget which one it is. If you figure it out, let me know, and explain what the one side has against Chrysler.

The Alaskan Independence Party, again, just what it sounds like (and a great idea, in my opinion.)

So the next time some Joe-the-Plumber, Joe Six-Pack, or (to steal a phrase from a friend of mine) Joe Bag-a-Donuts bellies up to the bar next to you and starts going on about how the damn two-party system is ruining the country, remember the wild and crazy guys and gals of our great third parties, and thank your ancestors none of 'em got elected.

A plug for a good outfit

If you're at all a folkie, consider giving Loomis House Press a bit of your hard earned. They're putting out the old authoritative Child Ballads in a new edition, one volume at a time. It appears to be all they do.

I have volumes 1 to 3, just ordered #4, and will be on board when they get the final volume out. These are books for the truly obsessed, I admit, but I love having this sort of thing around.

What is this ad telling me?

I really don't get this one. Quattro technology helps me when I'm driving over birds, clutching a bar of soap, exercising my grip, and preparing to throw a stone at a pedestrian? Or is it some kind of play on "a bird in the hand ...?"

Vorsprung durch Technik, by the way, translates to Projection/lead by technology. A better tag line might be, "Wir benötigen eine neue Anzeigenagentur," or "We need a new ad agency."

Veterinary Homeopathy

Here's a cheerful note from the Feedback section of the October 18th New Scientist. I'm just going to quote it -- you can draw your own conclusions.

AN EMAIL from Andrew Rankine raises concerns about Dr Frank's Pet Pain Spray, a homeopathic treatment for cats and dogs suffering from arthritis. It set us ferreting around, and we soon found a discussion of the spray on James Randi's quack-busting website. Here we came across a notion that hadn't previously occurred to us, despite it being so obvious. Perhaps homeopathic treatments for animals are said to "work" not because the animals report feeling better - how could they? - but because their owners and the homeopaths who treat them report that they are better. It's the placebo effect again, but the effect is vicarious, working on the owners and homeopathic veterinarians, not the animals.

By way of an anecdotal example, a link on the Randi site takes us to a case report on the website of the wonderfully named British Veterinary Voodoo Society. Here "a veterinary surgeon from East Sussex" reports on a client who brought in a dog with a skin problem, but who refused to allow the vet to do the requisite tests. Instead, he announced he was "off to see the local homeopath". A couple of months later he returned with the dog, saying: "I just wanted to let you see what a brilliant job the homeopath did when you were completely useless."

The vet comments: "What could I say? The dog stood there, to my eyes actually slightly worse than it had been on the day I'd last seen it. Frankly, it looked just awful. But in the owner's eyes there had been a massive improvement. I think this is how homoeopathy 'works' in quite a lot of cases. Somebody wants to believe the animal is better, so it is better."

There is, however, a further possibility which is raised by one of the contributors to the Randi discussion. If the owner is happy because they believe a homeopathic treatment has made their dog better, then perhaps their happiness will make the dog feel happier too - and as the vicarious placebo effects bounce back and forth, perhaps all this happiness will assist the dog's recovery from the condition it is being treated for. So perhaps homeopathy for pets can sometimes "work" after all.

Or not. What would "work" would be criminal charges against the owner, in my opinion, same as we do when dietary extremists let their children starve to death.

Disappointing

I was doing my usual thing on airplanes, sitting quietly with my eyes closed, wishing the flight crew would shut up about tampering with the smoke detectors, when a neologism came to me: we have architects (people who design buildings) and starkitects ("...architects whose celebrity and critical acclaim have transformed them into idols of the architecture world and may even have given them some degree of fame amongst the general public." says Wikipedia). How about architects who deliberately design inconvenient or ugly buildings because they're pissed off about something: snarkitects.

Unfortunately, you google it and you get 173 hits already. Missed the boat again. But I'm going to put it on Urban Dictionary, anyway.

A great headline

An otherwise not especially interesting article, but with a great headline. Would have been better if they'd been talking about pharmaceuticals.

That's a new one

I've heard a lot of excuses from airlines about delays, but this was a first. Coming back from DC, we boarded the plane, then sat for 15 minutes longer than usual -- I was just thinking, "Wonder what's holding things up." when the pilot came on and said, "Sorry folks, we're experiencing a bit of delay ... we're shipping some military dogs to the Philippines, and the ground crew is having a bit of, um, uncertainty about how many of them there are."

After a few more minutes, we got underway. Sure enough, after we landed in Detroit, there was audible barking from the baggage hatch.

Poor guys -- I've flown from Detroit to Manila, and it wasn't fun, even in the cabin, let alone in a crate in the baggage. Come to think of it, maybe it would have been better in baggage ...

Local boy makes good

With the successful defense of his thesis, a fellow named Pat becomes Dr. Patrick Russell McConnell. Feel free to send congratulations to p.r.mcconnell@gmail.com.

More books from the fringes

Books that haven't made it even into the Daedalus Catalog yet. Thanks to Greasy Jimmy for the link.

New cure for what ails ya

Apparently, a sports car is a cure or prevention for disabling ailments. In the course of doing our weekly farmer's market visit, we used a handicapped parking spot. I have qualified for a handicapped hang tag for some time now, although I don't actually use it all that often -- mostly just to avoid gimping miles in from the visitor lots at the hospital, when I do my MRI festivals.

But this week, the HC spot was all that was available, so we made use of it. First, as we were getting out of the car, one of Ann Arbor's miserable meter persons (a thankless job if there ever was one) accosted us "to let us know that's a handicapped sp ... oh, never mind" as he actually bothered to look for a tag.

Then, as we dropped off one set of purchases and were heading off for another batch, a huge woman in a huge SUV asked essentially the same question, in a distinctly hostile tone.

So for the future guidance of the ill-bred, whose numbers around here appear to be increasing, yes, you can drive a 3-year old 350Z and still have cancer. No, nothing about owning a reasonably performant vehicle is proof against a permanent limp and a shaky knee.

More cookery

In my on-going quest to annoy everyone with images of food they didn't get to eat, here are a couple of shots of recent Domaine Ste. Melange de Berger kitchen output. Starters: a small plate with smoked trout (Durham's Tracklements), Arzua Ulloa cheese, roma tomatoes, toasted cumin mayo, and an olive or two. The other shot is braised rabbit with chasseur sauce and a corn n' peppers saute. And of course, our best customer.

Breaking scientific news

An important new research study, that you truly, truly do need to read. Oh, nothing implied, I assure you, just thought you'd be interested. Really.

Fetchez La Vache

Retrofitting a GAU 17

Just a note on the Marines' long-suffering V 22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. If you've followed this at all, you're probably aware that the Osprey -- intended to be faster than a helicopter, but do most of the same things helicopters do -- has had a long history of controversy, mostly due to a series of crashes during development and testing. Tilt-rotor is an inherently difficult technology, and experts have argued the pros and cons to the point of exhaustion. I don't know enough, myself, to have an opinion. The aircraft has finally made it into operation and is being used in Iraq. Anyway, one of the sub-issues that was raised almost at once is that it's unarmed. Designed to be a transport aircraft, it was not given any built-in weaponry, nor hard points for attaching modular munitions. It has a rear ramp for loading and unloading, and there have been some re-fittings with a machine gun that the crew can fire out the open ramp, but the arc of fire is obviously limited to a portion of the aircraft's rear aspect.

Now, there's a design for a ventrally-mounted, sensor-controlled gatling gun, operable by the crew chief (not the pilot). The gun is the GAU 17, a very standard 7.62mm (rifle calibre) rotary weapon, used on a wide range of aircraft, ships, and vehicles, both in our military and to a lesser extent in that of the UK. There's some demo video out there, if you're interested at all. Story at Defense Tech.

My only reason for posting this or caring, for that matter, is just that I find these retrofits interesting -- we learned in Vietnam that anything that flies low and slow and has the mission of landing in potentially hostile areas ("hot LZs") really ought to have forward firing weapons. Don't know how that escaped the attention of the designers.

Stories retold: Benihana Atlanta Culture Clash

(I'm going to set down, periodically, a few of the stories I seem to keep telling, in the hope that maybe I'll stop boring people with them in person. This is an old one, from many years back. Ed.)

Back in the eighties, I went to a convention in Atlanta, as the lone "headquarters" guy, teamed up with two young saleswomen from a small company we'd just acquired. Like many acquirees, they were nervous about the future, nervous about looking professional in front of the new owners, and so on. Although they were both from the south, neither knew anything about Atlanta, nor did I.

After the show floor closed, we headed out to find dinner, not knowing that downtown Atlanta rolled itself up at 5:00 -- instead of a cosmopolitan set of dining options, the area around the convention center seemed to be mostly emptied-out office buildings. We did, though, find a Benihana nearby and open.

I assume you know what a Benihana restaurant is: a corporate-teppanyaki-style Japanese place, where you sit around large tables, usually with other parties, and a cook prepares a limited set of dishes for you on a grill that's essentially part of the table. It's a kind of dining theatre that's old hat today, but was a more or less new thing in the US, back then.

We got seated, along with a group of self-conscious, dressed-up high school kids, and were talking about the day's work, when -- the drunkest woman in the world was seated with us. I don't know why they even let her in the door, but her state of complete intoxication was immediately apparent to us, her new dining companions. She sat down, looked dazedly around, and said, "Hell, I'm in a damn Chinese restaurant." I'm not going to try to do the dialect, here -- you'll just have to keep in mind that everything this person said was in a deep, deep southern accent, complete with multiple syllables where standard English would use but one; "damn" thus became "day-um."

Next, and before anyone could really absorb the magnitude of our friend's incapacitation, our chef arrived, and unfortunately for him, he was not of the expected ethnicity. In fact, he was South Asian, not Japanese. The drunk stared at him for a minute and then pointed out, "You ain't no Chinaman -- you're an A-rab." Everyone immediately looked away.

There followed a confused few minutes during which the chef tried to explain the menu (which was just a matter of choosing the kind of protein she wanted grilled.) Somehow, he managed to get her to agree that chicken would be OK, although he could probably have gotten her to order mongoose, if he'd wanted to. But as he began to do his knife skills thing, she began to have second thoughts. She turned to me (it was my honor to have the seat next to her) and asked, "They ain't going to kill that chicken right here in front of us, are they?"

"Yes," I said, "and be glad you didn't order beef."

At this point, my memory of the precise sequence of events becomes a bit hazy. I remember the saleswoman seated on my other side elbowing me, not wanting to see me make things any worse than they were (both of my companions were mortified, it later turned out, that their new Yankee owners were seeing such a sordid side of the New South.) And I remember the restaurant staff removing the drunk -- why it took them that long to realize what they had on their hands is baffling. But it remains one of my fondest memories of that innocent time, when things were still a blend of yuppified and stupefied.

How not to write history

Make a note: next time you're asked to write the text to accompany a bunch of archival photos of pre-Dreadnought warships, do a bit of proofreading. In The Ironclads, by Peter Hore, the second sentence begins, "Then, just as the British Navy delivered the victory of sea power in 1815 at the battle of Trafalgar ..."

Hore is ex-Royal Navy, associate editor of Warships International Fleet Review (whose website could do with a bit of proofing, itself), and "eight books." His writing, what of it I've read, is full of strange assertions and bizarre opinions, (viz, streamlining bulges on today's merchant ships and chin-mounted sonar on ASW craft are somehow descendants in naval architecture of late nineteenth century rams), but I have to presume that even he knows when Trafalgar was really fought.

End of summer panic

As the summer dwindles, I get cravings for summer flavors -- knowing that soon we'll be reduced to stews, steaks, and so on, and the vegetables in particular will go to hell in a handcart. Here's last night's act of desperation, Jody Adams' grilled fish with a basil-potato puree' and grilled heirloom tomatoes. No rouget to be had, nor any striped bass, either, so we went with farmed rainbow trout instead. The brown things are nicoise olives scattered around.

More on autism

Another study on autism vs vaccinations. As we all know, you can't really prove something is impossible or something doesn't exist, and the other side of this debate (notice how polite I'm being? I didn't say something snarky like "the people who desperately want someone with deep pockets to sue," or "the people who think science consists of deciding what you want to be true and then going to look for evidence that it is.") will certainly make that point in response. But the work described in this article adds some more weight on the rational end of the teeter-totter.

plus ça change ...

An old colleague from our days in the tape backup biz was in town, and without giving it much thought (although it was Friday,) we decided to go to the fabled Old Town (a.k.a, the Odd Town Tavern, famed in story and song, but mostly in the Wood-Charles News Service.) Lo and behold, we were seated at the same old long table in the back, under the same old nude painting. The same old Liz (not that old - certainly not as old as the nude painting, anyway) was on hand, as she used to be. We ate peanuts, drank beer, and told the same old stories of life in the world of employment.

Afterward, we went to the Wine Bar at the Earle, a block away, and were waited on by Felipe, another Old Town alumnus. Except for the fact that they fled the decaying urban grittiness of downtown Ann Arbor for the sanitary tracts of Zeeb Road and I-94, we could have made a real night of it and ended up at Metzger's. The only real change of any import is that you can now see where we were on Google streets, since they've thoughtfully photo'ed the whole bleedin' town.

Labor day morning

Momentarily excited

By the headlines: "McCain chooses Palin as running mate!"

But then I thought, "Wait, he's not a US citizen."

A mind is a terrible thing ...

I was annoying an old acquaintance with this, recently, and I thought I'd annoy you, too. The concept is: song parodies based on lurking in a barn. One of them is a contribution, the rest are my fault.

John Fogarty
Left a good job in the city,
lurkin' in a barn every night an' day

Bob Dylan
I ain't gonna lurk in Maggie's barn no more

David Allen Coe
Take this barn and shove it, I ain't lurkin' here no more

Traditional
I've been lurkin' in the barnyard ...

Dolly Parton
Lurking nine to five
Hay up to the ceiling
Crouching in a barn
With a rustic feeling

Loverboy
Everybody's lurking on the weekend,
Everybody's lurking in a barn ...

John Lennon
As soon as you're born they stick you in a manger,
And everything they do just makes you feel stranger,
Till you just cultivate an aura of danger,
A lurking class hero is something to be

Herman's Hermits
Babbadeebiddy DOOO.
Well I was lurking in the barn
(Late last night!)
When all the window shades were drawn
(Way down tight!)
I heard the raucous serenade
Of idiots on parade
(Idiots idiots idiots idiots on parade!)

Bachman-Turner Overdrive
I've been taking care of business, what's the harm?
Taking care of business and lurking in a barn

Ran across my copy ...

Of Richard Campbell's book, Managing AFS: The Andrew File System, which put me in mind of the following review I wrote for the old Wood Charles News Service, back when the book came out. I asked Richard if he would mind seeing this rubbish hit the streets again, and he was gracious enough to agree.

---

CAMPBELL'S NEW BOOK SHOCKS, INSTRUCTS

Managing AFS: Andrew File System
Richard Campbell,
Prentice Hall

Reviewed by: J. Francis McLuggage

Ann Arbor: I come away from "Managing AFS," Richard Campbell's new ... what? Novel? Autobiography? Prose Poem? ... thinking of nothing so much as Dos Passos' USA Trilogy. The work shifts, sometimes gently. sometimes with wrenching suddenness, from narrative to stream of consciousness, much as Dos Passos slipped back and forth between the lives of his fictional characters, biographical sketches of Woodrow Wilson and Samuel Gompers, and the lyrical, autobiographical sections he called "The Camera's Eye." Just so does Campbell weave his tale of "Andrew," the lonely, androgynous nexus of "Managing." And as we slip into and out of the disturbing, disturbed universe of Campbell's manufacture, so we come to feel like Dos Passos' Camera -- an eye, dispassionately observing.

In the beginning, "Andrew," is born of bohemian parents, caught up in the moment of drugs and casual sex on and around the Carnegie-Mellon campus ("... clients could mount practically anything, anywhere they wanted ...") We are gradually led to know that money was tight, mostly by the author's obsessive repetition of the (oddly misspelled) word, "cash." This concern with position is echoed in Andrew's often-expressed desire to be "well-connected" -- or is it another, perhaps darker, kind of connection he wishes for? Although political dogma is not a central feature of the book, there are hints that the young Andrew may have been dabbling. For example, he muses, apparently to himself (or possibly to "Vice," one of his dream- companions), "There is no ultimate limit to the size of a cell..." A cell in cold stone reality? A cell in an underground movement? Or the cell of mind? Is this a political tactic or a despairing comment on the futility of enlightenment? We are left to decide.

By mid-book, as Andrew matures, we find him struggling with the dualities of his responsibility. He tries to justify to himself the compromises he's made with his life, saying to David, another possibly imaginary interlocutor, "The rules are simple and sensible." But he also admits his rationalization of circumstances: "Once you are on a read-write path, it is difficult to get off." And again, "If you've made your cell visible to the outside world, it is difficult to make it invisible." "... the threads continue forever once started ..."

Later on, David reappears in what is probably a fantasy sequence involving folk dancing. Campbell effortlessly, in an almost Joycean voice, encapsulates an entire evening's pastime with the two-word phrase, "klog david." The joyful abandon of the moment soon turns to remorse, though: "... poor decisions will turn into immutable legacies." The sinister Ethan threatens blackmail, and Andrew is driven to contemplate black crimes: "Ethan's personal groups can be deleted outright ..."

Particularly impressive is Campbell's subtle weaving of psychological thematic material with changes in Andrew's mood and mind. From a deep, almost pathological worry about money, his character can go to a childlike, playful fatalism over it, repeating, "dcachehits, dcachemisses...," Andrew-speak for easy come, easy go.

What bothers the thoughtful reader, though, no matter how impressed he is with the structure or craftsmanship of Campbell's work, is the theist implications that -- perhaps -- poke their heads, like unwanted philosophical woodchucks, up from the humanist mainstream of Andrew's life-tale. Is there a God? Is Andrew God? Is the commune of information a kind of God in itself? We wonder, as the book concludes with a suggestion that Andrew's destiny is to become, "... a ubiquitous resource, omnipresent and dependable."

--

Richard Campbell is a founding member (some would say the founder) of the Ann Arbor Drinking and Thinking Society and a boating enthusiast. He runs a Manhattan-area Bed and Breakfast. "Managing AFS" is his first novel.

--

Ed. note: Shortly before going to press, we received an angry note from Mr. Campbell, claiming that our reviewer had completely misunderstood his book. In Campbell's view, it's a technical volume about some kind of computer thing or other. What the hell does he know? If we allow artists to start determining the meaning of their work, think of the impact on the humanities industry. You want a lot of unemployed Art Historians and English Lit PhDs wandering around downtown Ann Arbor, getting run over by Mini-vans and undertipping the wait staff? Jeez.

-- 30 --

Art imitating life, apparently

As many devotees of Michael Palin's inspired turn as Pontius Pilate will remember, he had a couple of friends, one very great friend, in fact, in Rome whose names inspired uncontrollable mirth on the part of the common soldiery. The straight line that leads to this marvelous piece of character acting is supplied by John Cleese, who says, "It's a joke name, Sir ... like Sillius Sodus or ..."

Well, turns out that the room full of monkeys on typewriters that make up the translators of ancient Latin texts have given us at least one ancient with exactly that name: Silius Italicus. Ran across him in a book on the Etruscans, about whom he apparently had something to say. According to easily available sources (the only kind I consult,) Silius was a kind of proto Robert McNamara, doing bad things for a while, then being really sorry about it, later on. Look him up on the net, if you're interested (either of 'em, Silius or McNamara, don't matter to me.)

Covert gear for waterfowling

Those of you in Michigan are probably aware that our largest tourist attraction is not the Great Lakes, our fabulous (if underfunded) state park system, nor even Zingerman's. It's the Cabela's store, down in Dundee, along M-23. I won't go into the various theories explaining Cabela's popularity, but I would like to draw your attention to a couple of really outstanding products, highlighted in their recent "Waterfowling" catalog.

First, there's the Webfoot Confidence Cow Decoy Apparently, you wear or crouch inside this thing in order to sneak up on unsuspecting ducks. And even more importantly, there's Quivering Duck Butts. Just in time for holiday giving. In fact, the catalog has page after page of this stuff, all to help you outwit ... ducks. Now, I'm a lapsed hunter, myself, and I certainly have no moral qualms about hunting, but if I was as unsure of myself as to believe I needed all this disinformation gear, just to run a fast one on a duck, I think I'd hang up my 12 gauge.

Archaeologists aren't historians, apparently

Two issues back, Archaeology magazine ran a short bit on some maritime work that had finally turned up the remains of "the (sic) HMAS Sydney," a warship sunk in WWII by a German armed merchant cruiser. The article referred to the Sydney as a "battle cruiser." Among what I assume were many notes sent to the magazine, there was the following, from me:

"Although it's interesting that the wrecks of the Kormoran and HMAS Sydney have been located (Archaeology, July/August, pp11) , I should point out that the Sydney was not a "battle cruiser." That term refers to a type of fighting ship built in small numbers, primarily during the naval arms race that preceded World War One. A battle cruiser was in size and armament similar to a battleship, faster, and with much reduced armor. By the second world war, when the Sydney - Kormoran engagement took place, there were only a few remaining battle cruisers in service -- HMS Hood was an example, and some authors would include the German "pocket battleships" Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The Sydney, in contrast, was a light cruiser, virtually without armor, and armed with weapons roughly the equivalent of those on the Kormoran. Had she been a battle cruiser, the chances of the Kormoran sinking her would have been vanishingly small.

Finally, your editors should note that it's not proper to refer to a British commonwealth warship as "the" HMAS Sydney, since the acronym means His (Her) Majesty's Australian Ship; use of the definite article is thus syntactically incorrect."

This month, they ran a tiny correction.

Shoals of Herring

Give this a listen. One of these days I'll tell you all about Ewan MacColl.

Just on the off chance ...

One of our close friends has recently entered the fromage biz. She maintains that I was the first one to make any cheese shop quips. In case you're one of the 3 or 4 people, world-wide, who aren't familiar with it, here's the initial version of the Cheese Shop Sketch.

Later versions, both audio-only and a live stage version, performed in the US when Python were on tour, tweak the dialog a bit, substituting, for example, a more explicit adverb in the phrase "I don't care how excrementally runny it is, hand it over with all speed." Nevertheless, the version linked here remains the original, doctrinally pure reading of the text.

For those interested, culinary concerns were a continuing thread in the work of M. Python, ranging from such oblique references as the fish-slapping dance to the more thoroughly explored themes of deliberately-introduced harmful substances and the iconic rat tart exposition.

A helpful suggestion

There's a new McCain ad that says Obama may be too popular -- too many people like him. If that turns out to be a real minus, I have a suggestion. Offer the Democratic Vice-presidential slot to George W. Bush. That'll fix the problem, tout suite.

As a comic, in all seriousness (as Eugene Levy's character, Bobby Bitman, used to say,) if I were in charge of McCain's advertising, I'd really question the wisdom of an ad showing his opponent as the center of adoring attention.

In an even more comic, though apparently true, development, the Hiltons are upset about the ad, which features news footage of what McCain thinks are Obama-like celebrities, such as ... yes, Paris Hilton.

Thanks to our favorite Saturday morning entertainment, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, for bringing this to our attention.

Can you identify this building?

How big a process geek are you? Hint: it's not a Starbucks, and it is in Pittsburgh.

Yes, friends, it's Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, home of CMMI-DEV, CMMI-ACQ, and soon, CMMI-SVC. I just got back from a week there, drinking the Kool-aid. Go ahead, ask me what maturity level risk management is assigned to. Ask me the difference between a managed and defined process. Go 'head, Command Sargeant Major, whip it to me. I know my shit. (Michael Casey, Obscenities)

Nothing much to add ...

I have raw video footage to work on, but no time this week. And I didn't take a camera to the art fair, more's the pity. But I can report that, oddly enough, the Pork Council or whoever's in charge of the "America's Other White Meat" slogan was present and apparently a sponsor. Why?

More questionable publishing ventures

I got another Daedalus catalog, "History," and there's a troubling number of biographies and attempted rehabs of criminal characters, viz:

• Blacklisted by History: the untold story of Joseph McCarthy and his fight against America's enemies, by M. Stanton Evans; the thesis of this book is claimed to be that McCarthy was not "... a lying Communist (sic) witch hunter and bully ..." Huh. Could have fooled me.
  
• Polk: the man who transformed the presidency and America, by Walter R. Borneman. "...the reasons why he was one of America's most astute and powerful presidents." Again: Huh.
  
• Not one but two bios of Walt Disney, for Christ's sake
  
• Rocky Marciano: The Rock of His Times, by Russell Sullivan. Reading about a boxer has to be right up there with watching golf on TV.
  
• Lion of Hollywood: the Life and Legend of Louis Mayer, by Scott Eyman Perhaps appropriately sandwiched on the page between the Marciano book and the one following.
  
• Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism, by Stephen Doril. For the record, this book isn't, apparently, any kind of an apology for Mosley, but you still won't like the ending (Mosley didn't get hanged, post-war, as he certainly should have been.)
  
• Again on the same page, one above the other: Young Stalin, by Simon Sebag Montefiore and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, by Conrad Black. Two in the series, Great Paranoid National Leaders.
  

And of course, if biographies of the wild n' wacky aren't your thing, there's the usual crop of books by wackos in their own right:

• Non-violence: The History of a Dangerous Idea, by Mark Kurlanski. "... argues that any war could have been avoided by non-violent means ..." Perhaps uncoincidentally, the same page offers Profiles in Folly: History's Worst Decisions, by Alan Axelrod. If you read the first, I'd suggest following up with the second, just as an antidote.
  
• And finally, just to reassure us that the likes of Barry Fell are still with us, there's 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, by Gavin Menzies. Mr. Menzies, you should know, is also the author of a book called 1421: The Year China Discovered America, which claims, among other things, that Verrazano saw Chinese people in Rhode Island in 1542. There are many, many theorists of this ilk, and they make great reading, as long as you keep firmly in mind that they're barking mad.
  

Tree Trouble

So 8:00 PM, Wednesday night, I'm sitting on the couch and the weather is getting dicey outside. Suddenly, the wind picks up, and all hell breaks loose.
Basically, a giant old box elder tree, right at the corner of four lots, finally came apart. A few years back, part of it came down on a neighbor's house, but the result was nothing like this. The pictures here are from today, Saturday, after the tree crew has been by and cleaned up enough for the utility to get to the downed power lines.
The weight of the tree on the wires snapped the 70-year-old utility pole like a twig. We had fence damage, some damage to gutters -- not sure yet if there's any roof damage. The insurance folks will be around next week to look into it.
Power was off for about 30 hours, give or take. The ironic thing was that our sparkling new generator was one of the things buried under pieces of tree, so it did us no good. If you've been in our back yard, you'll recognize that it's essentially full -- a whole yard full of tree shards. Sometime next week. a tree service will be coming to rectify that.

WRT box elders, Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs spends a couple of paragraphs damning them with faint praise: "For those areas of the country where tree culture is fraught with difficulty, this species can be recommended." (Trans: if nothing else will grow, try a box elder.) "Wood is subject to breakage ..." (Trans: Duck and cover!)

Drink for thought

Stealing this from the current Kermit Lynch newsletter. A positive note in an otherwise negative storm:

---

"The specter of globalization that is so often used to frighten French
winemakers is really only a concern for those who have chosen to compete
with ‘new world’ wines. It doesn't aƒect winemakers who are driven
by conviction, philosophy, or passion. They've chosen the high road and will
be fine.” —Antoine Arena

---

Arena is a Corsican wine maker. I'll be checking with Matt at Morgan and York to see if any this stuff is going to make it to Michigan.

The Arizona Tourist Board Presents

Why it's great in Michigan.

The Next Leader of N. Korea?

Itchycoo Park.

Hidden clues to failure

One of my favorite book sellers is a mostly-remainder place called Daedalus Books. They have a web presence, of course, but I also get print catalogs, and I always enjoy going through them, looking for books that cater to my strange set of interests but not to a large enough audience that they were a success in the market. (Kind of the at-home version of going to the old Afterwords store, RIP).

Anyway, not to make this too long and drawn out, it's always amusing to speculate on the reasons why a book that was published at, say, $39.95, is available from Daedalus for $3.98. Some, however, don't require speculation. Consider the following, quoted from the most recent catalog:

• Are men necessary? By Maureen Dowd.
  
• Glass: A Portrait, by Robert Maycock. "Philip Glass occupies a unique place in modern classical composition." Yes, yes he does. Quite Unique.
  
• Horse Housekeeping: Everything you need to know to keep a horse at home, by Margaret and Michael Korda.
  
• Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth Century Opera, by Mary Ann Smart. "Mimomania is a thoughtful meditation on the persistence and transformation of the musical mimicry of bodily gesture ..." I got your bodily gesture right here!
  
• The Quotable Farm Animal, Ed. by Amy Glaser
  
• The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs, by Lyall Watson
  
• The Bastard Boy, by James Wilson. "Who is the Bastard Boy, and why are so many people intent on keeping Ned from finding him?"
  
• Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter, by Blaize Clement. "Checking in on her favorite gray Abyssinian cat, Ghost, she's found a man drowned in the cat's water bowl."
  
• Gascoyne, by Stanley Crawford. "... hunting down the killer -- last seen slithering away from the crime scene in a tree sloth costume ..."
  
• Hanna's Daughters, by Marianne Fredricksson. "This sweeping story traces 100 years of Scandinavian history ..."
  
• (And my favorite this month) The Last Templar, by Raymond Khoury. "... the book leaps (from the 13th century) to post- 9/11 Manhattan, when four horsemen in Templar garb burst into the Metropolitan Museum of Art and make off with ..."
  

This sort of thing helps explain why modern yoof don't read much, anymore.

Oddly ... odd

I don't exactly know why this product struck me ... it was listed on Amazon, among a raft of "multi-function devices." Somehow, it just looks over the line -- like too much function, jammed into a single machine. Not sure; maybe it doesn't strike anyone else that way, but I thought it was funny. It looks as though it were something that would go terribly haywire in the middle of the night, maybe in a thunderstorm, and start frying up catfish or something, carrying out some function you never knew it had. Or spitting out pictures of other people's children.

Anyway, got a dog here on my office couch, so I better attend to her. She doesn't look as though she needs therapy, but you never know ...

Recent Reading

(Updated 2008 06 15)
Once again, on the assumption that anyone gives a damn, here are some things from the recent reading list:

• War At Sea in the Ironclad Age, by Richard Hill. A nice little paperback survey of the transitional era of naval architecture (roughly 1860 to 1905), when countries were still working out the best uses of armor and steam. Although I don't actually know any steampunks, I would think this book would be a must read for them. (Ever wonder what a Scotch Boiler is? You'll find pictures and explanations here.) Odd, 3-D maps of various obscure naval battles, too, like Lissa, the Yellow Sea, and the bombardment of Sveaborg.
  
• Counselor: a life at the edge of history, by Ted Sorensen. Sorensen was "Kennedy's speech writer," as virtually all descriptions of him begin, but he was much more, essentially an intellectual troubleshooter for JFK. If you're a fan of the 50's and 60's, as I am, you may want to give this a shot, despite the occasionally self-justifying passages.
  
• My Battle of Algiers: a memoir, by Ted Morgan. Morgan is the author formerly known as Sanche de Gramont, a name he changed in the process of severing his connections with his native France and generally well-born origins. Another 50's book, complementary to St. Michael and the dragon; Memoirs of a paratrooper, by Pierre Leulliette, unfortunately out of print.
  
• Wars of National Liberation, by Daniel Moran. One of the John Keegan-edited Smithsonian History of Warfare series. Moran writes like an historian, unfortunately, with the last chapter (on recent insurgencies and their like) being especially weedy -- almost as though he was trying not to take any very recognizable position, since we don't know who's going to "win" yet, in places like Afghanistan, Chechnya, et al. But on the earlier conflicts, including Algeria, Indochina, and Africa, it's at least a useful survey. Nice maps, too.
  

Upcoming reading (as in, books I'm about to start)

• An Edge in the Kitchen, by Chad Ward. A big, beautifully researched book on cutlery. If you cook, you need to know this stuff.
  
• Literary Feasts, edited by Sean Brand. A collection of meals from literature, sent by my son and daughter-in-law for Father's day. Looks great.
  

Another Euphemism

The current issue of the Kermit Lynch Wine Merchants newsletter includes an article titled "MEDITERRANEAN BARBECUE REDS." Italian outdoor pinkos? Spanish paella partisans? Lebanese lamb chop liberals?

Market Day

It's Saturday morning in America, to paraphrase the Great Communicator.

Kamper Van Season is Back With Us

Another successful transaction in the wilds of Pinckney.

What do you want to be?

The last page essay in today's NYT book review is a letter from Beijing from an English teacher, Mike Meyer. It describes the government's frantic efforts to get large numbers of their citizens English-fluent by the time of the Olympics. Strongly recommended reading, including this charming bit:

"... when I asked my students about their [career] aspirations, the first boy yelled, 'When I grow up, I want to be a foreigner!'"

Factory Five GTMs making nice noises

Found this on the Factory Five site.

Feeding spaghetti to a dog and laughing

Thinking about rocks

Drove by a semi today, out on the highway, with the following (and only) info on the trailer:

"Rock Leasing"

Now, I knew times were getting hard, but I thought most people could still afford to buy outright.

Made me think, though, about other stone-age businesses we could start:

Chock full 'o chert
Good Schist, Inc.
We gypsum (law offices)
House of Pumice
Alluvial fan clubs

Whataya think? Got more ideas?

Old stuff

Here are few tidbits that have been knocking around on my Palm for a while, without becoming anything really unified. Take 'em as they lie.

---

Overheard in various parts of the world:
"We don't even have it hardly like we used to."
"low-flying fruit"
"She has the brain of a doughnut..."
"... And it's two o'clock in the morning, and I'm going, 'I don't even know what an algorithm is! ... I bought $500 worth of books, and they're all black and white pages, full of words and numbers ..." Graphic artist, overheard describing her one try at programming.
"I'll make you a leader if I have to kick your butt all over this church building!"

---

Like Car Talk, here are some members of our staff:
Our Vietnamese - German - Afghan media critic: Hau Bohring Izzat
Our Mid-east anonymous restaurant reviewer Hassan al Reddy bin Deir
Out folk music expert, Fayaid Al' hammer
Our Pho chef, Breakfast Nguk
Our Sarbanes-Oxley compliance team is five guys named Donald: Don Aske, Don Telle, Don Geaudare, Don-Luke Tooclosely, and Don Wannaknow, with our deminutive French compliance officer, "Standards" Toulouse.
Our Portugese chef: Luca Howbeautiful
Our Recall coordinator: Dayall Doodat
Our Carburator technician: Norma-Lee Aspirated
Our Hot tub installer: Jacques Kuzzie

---

Listen, it ain't easy ...

Tossing bits of crispy cod leftovers to a dog while filming.

Thoughts of Pie

As one of Walt Kelly's characters asks, "Why is you so obsessed with thoughts of pie?"

We find that pies, from the Achatz Pie Company, are a crucial part of our lives, and we went looking for something to showcase their fruity goodness. As is so often the case, the Ann Arbor Potter's Guild sale had just the thing: these vaguely Mayan-looking triangular plates from Sue Woestehoff.

As an aside, some other potters we like and whose goods are in daily use on our table:
Beverly Allport
Gail Dapogny
Dorie Mickelson
Inge Merlin
Cher Rusling
Sue Steel

This is as creative as I get, these days

Anglo-Franco-Italian Fettucine in Cheddar Sauce with Peas and Escargot
Date 2008 05 11

Copyright 2008 Culinary Intelligence, Inc.

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 1 recipe fresh pasta, cut to fettuccine
  
• 1/2 cup fresh English peas
  
• 1/2 pint heavy cream
  
• 1/4 cup whole milk
  
• 1/4 cup English-style cheddar, grated
  
• 1/8 cup reggiano, grated
  
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and halved
  
• 1/2 TSP beef stock concentrate
  
• 12 large escargot
  
• salt and pepper, butter and olive oil
  

Preparation
Shell the peas. Make, rest, roll, and cut the pasta.

Firing
Bring a large pot of water to a boil, for the pasta.

Add milk, cream, garlic, and beef stock to a large sauce pan, over low heat. Cook for 20 minutes, making sure it doesn’t boil.

In another sauce pan, boil the peas in well-salted water for 8 to 10 minutes. Set aside.

In a small sauté pan, heat olive oil and butter; sauté the escargot (I assume you’re using canned, cooked snails) until warmed through.

A few minutes before serving, add the pasta to its stock pot. Add the grated cheese to the sauce, stir and allow to melt; adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Discard the garlic, drain the pasta, and combine with sauce and peas. Garnish with the escargot.

Notes
Omit the snails if you prefer – small clams or shrimp would be an acceptable substitute.

Dodge Magnum?

Sounds like instructions from a Dirty Harry script, right? Audi A8? Whatever. One of the nice things about living here at the tag end of the internal combustion era is that you can own just about any damn thing you like. Although I'm sticking with my own little mid-life crisismobile, it's certainly comforting (to me, anyway) that simply by writing a check you can go whizzing down the boulevard in something you fantasized about in your adolescence. Consider:

Porsche Speedster	Talbot Lago
1995 Saturn SW2 (seriously, if you don't know what this kit is copying, you need remedial 1960s training.)	Sort of a Morgan
1936 Auburn Boattail	Lotus Eleven

All of these are replicas, powered and underpinned by modern engines and frames. All are more reliable, better handling, and more powerful than the cars they simulate (notice I didn't say anything about "safer.") And these are just the standouts -- Lotus 7 replicas abound, street rods are everywhere, and if you've got a spare pickup truck lying around, you can make a Humvee out of it. What's my point? None, I'm just pleased that this stuff is out there. For a nice illustrated list of kit cars, see this site. And don't blame me if you show up for work next week driving a $75,000 kit car Willys coupe, based on a 1972 Piaggio Ape donor. No warrantee is expressed or implied.

Another waste of bandwidth

Yet another bad pun, with music and everything.

Sorry for the silence

Been out of town all week. I'll post something witty and to the point later on this weekend, lord willin' and the creek don't rise. Meanwhile, look at this for more government of the dogs, by the dogs, and for the dogs.

Coincidence Engine Working Well

10:00 this morning, I'm eating a croissant at the breakfast table and reading a book about canids of the world. I look up, and a red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is running through the neighbors' back yard. It wasn't literally the animal I was reading about at the moment (the bat-eared fox (Otocyon megalotis)), but still ...

Why dogs don't talk to us

Blame the poor quality of the video on the fact that I was just playing around with my Palm Treo and its notoriously poor camera capability, and the poor quality of the voiceover on the notoriously poor quality of my voice. Instead of wasting time with Google's flaky video capability, I'm just going to link to YouTube. Sorry, I didn't want to have to do that, but life is too short.

---

---

I do actually own a camcorder, plus a small digital camera with a video capture option, and maybe one of these days I'll post something made with one of them.

Casualty Stats Question Effectiveness of Future Surge

See the revealing stats here. Bring the boys home!

Odd product of the month

We get all kinds of catalogs. This is from the one that starts every product name with "The," as in "The Completely Useless Backyard Flotation Toy," or "The One Hundred and Fourteenth Atomic Watch We've Listed So Far." Anyway, here's the hands-down strangest thing they offer for sale this time around:

Imagine being the dog on this side of the fence. Or if both pet owners installed these things, each intruding into the other's airspace.

So far, so good

Talked to the doc this week, and he says, "Nothing new ..." in the MRIs. In other words, no new tumors, meaning that the soi-disant transplant did its thing. I say so-called transplant, since the point is less transplanting things (they were my stem cells, after all, sieved out, frozen, and returned to me) than it is giving one a big whackin' dose of chemo, which kills tumors, along with such other useful things as hair folicles, taste buds, digestive bacteria, and so on. But again, it seems -- at least today, 100+ days afterward -- to have been worth it.

Anyway, back to the salt mines, designing process improvements and, (as Maxwell Smart would say) Loving It!

Here, by the way, is what someone looks like, 100+ days after one of these treatments. The beard and mustache are coming back, not clear whether the hair will.

All I've got to say ...

MRI accidents

I spent hours (literally) this week, stuffed into an MRI machine, getting whole-body scans done. Won't know the outcomes until next week, but in talking about it to some of my colleagues, it became clear that they'd never seen or heard of the interesting occupational safety aspects of operating an MRI. The "M," of course, stands for "magnetic," as in "magnetic resonance imaging," and that implies big honkin' magnets, run off supercooled helium, not just line power. So the magnets stay on all the time, and that means you really should keep ferrous materials like, say, office chairs, out of the room. See the pictures below for examples.



The object in the shot on the right appears to be an IV pole; hope it wasn't hooked up to a patient when they wheeled him or her in.

While looking for something else ...

... I found the linked press release on the Ann Arbor government web site. We're the third most "walkable" city in the country, says here. Could be because it's such an impossible city to drive in.

#317 in a series: why I hate Michigan

The picture below was taken at 6:00 PM. At 2:00 PM, there was no snow on the ground.

I hate this, I hate it, I hate it. It's March 21, for Christ's sake! (Although we did go camping only a couple of hundred miles north of here one May 1st and got six inches of wet snow between 4:00 and 8:00 PM. Broke tent poles and everything. But that was aberrent. This has been the norm, this year.)