mcgees.org

Poor ain’t.  I’ve never said it but in jest.  Though it is thoroughly dialect-related, accepting dialects (with the possible exception of rock lyrics that need one syllable contractions) are dismissed as the rantings of the uneducated and poor.

We have spots for most negating contractions in our language.  Except the first person continuous of to be.  There, we would logically have amn’t.  But that’s really tough to say.  Ain’t could save the day[, as it was originally meant to] .

But ain’t doesn’t stop there.  It creeps into second person and third person formations, replacing the usable aren’t and isn’t.  Now, to be is a miserably irregular verb, and maybe it’s in some need of polishing.  And since in English, second person and third person are modified by names or pronouns (Joshua, you, he, she, it), there is no confusion.  “I ain’t who you think I am.”  “You ain’t who I thought you were.”  “He ain’t who he claims he is.”  No ambiguity.  Useful word.

But ain’t doesn’t stop there.  It, bizarrely, replaces hasn’t and haven’t?  No?  How about “He ain’t been here in three weeks?”  Right?  But try as I might, I have not been able to construct a sentence in which ain’t is ambiguous, even in this hugely expanded sense.  Ain’t in this case is always (as far as I can see) followed by a past participle, while the others are not.  I’d like to be proven wrong here.

But ain’t doesn’t stop there, either.  More to the point, ain’t don’t stop there neither.  It is almost always accompanied by a munged form of doesn’t (poor, sweet doesn’t, who never hurt anyone!) and a double-negative, which we all know don’t make no sense.

But is ain’t, properly used, salvageable?  Be my guest.  I cannot help, at this point, because it is unsalvageable while one is on the job market.  And that, socioeconomically, just about says it all.

Other uses of ain’t?  Other thoughts?

The YesForCalifornia campaign appears to be buying up ancient email lists and spamming the Californians they find on it.  They used an email address for me I have not used in a decade.

I picked up Niall today.  He saw me and, as usual on the days I pick him up, shouted “Daddy!”, and came running over.  After a hug, he went to his cubbyhole and gave me a big piece of paper.

N:  I was thinking about you today so I drew a picture of you and me together.

J:  Who’s face is that at the top?

N:  That’s you!

J:  What’s that at the bottom?

N:  Those are your legs.  (Looks in the middle, and gets pained expression:)  I forgot to draw your awams.

J:  Oh, that’s fine, Niall!  It’s a beautiful picture!

N:  (Handing me the small one:)  And here’s me!

Good for the gas bill:  Leaving your heater off at night!

Good for the environment:  Leaving your heater off at night!

Good for waking up to a 60°F house:  Leaving your heater off at night!

(HiNiceToMeetYou YesI’mFromCalifornia.)

I’m looking for a stationery embosser / book embosser.  This Acorn Pocket Library Embosser looks pretty good.  Anyone own it?  Anyone know of a cheaper and/or better one?

Here is the best way to do Avery labels in OpenOffice.org (much better than the built-in method.)  Note the instructions on how to copy from one cell to every cell.  Even easier?  Put your cursor in the cell you want, press Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, then, above each column where you want the labels inserted, click the mouse when the down arrow shows, and hit Ctrl-V.  Don’t do this in the spaces between the labels.

Here is where to get the best templates for Avery-compatible labels for OpenOffice.org.

To find which template to use, look at the top of the labels sheet (that one was hard for me).

Here’s where to get OpenOffice.org (like Microsoft Word, for free).

I used to be pretty decent with graphics programs, at least to do image manipulation.  Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, The GIMP, whatever.  Then the whole thing with layers came in, and I’m just fundamentally missing an idea.  I think it would take someone about five minutes to teach me the entire concept that I’m missing, the name and nature of which I don’t even know.  Things that used to be simple, like outlining a selection and dragging it to somewhere else on the image, seem impossible now, especially in The GIMP.  There’s not even a classic “hand” tool for moving stuff around.  Anyone want to teach me?

I’m going to introduce you to my favorite United States commemorative stamp.  Here it is.  I hope you will forgive the huge image:

Isn’t that drool-worthy?  It is printed by a type of recess printing technically known as intaglio.  A master artist takes weeks — sometimes months — with a scribing tool on a piece of copper.  There is no room for error.  He works in mirror-image.  Everywhere he scratches, there will ink be deposited.  Every place left unscratched, there the color of the paper will show through.

In this style of stamp, which is called frame and vignette, the artist cuts two plates: in this case, the one that takes the scarlet ink, and the one that takes the black ink.

How it works is this: the frame plate is inked all over with a wool (or these days, synthetic) roller.  The ink gets both into the crevices and onto the smooth copper.  Then, a sharp blade, called a doctor blade, squeegees the surface of the plate.  The flat areas are now devoid of ink, but the ink remains in the crevices.  High-quality paper is wet, then pressed under enormous pressure against the engraving plate by another plate or roller.  The paper is literally squeezed into the crevices, where it picks up the ink.  It is allowed to dry, and then the same process is repeated with the vignette, or image inside the frame.

The plates are extremely expensive to make, they wear out (so there have to be duplicates — don’t worry, the engraving usually only happens once, and is mechanically repeated through a process I can explain if anyone cares), they have to be replaced — lots of costs.  Coupled with the very low number of people skillful enough to do this, and the salaries they can command, this is an extremely expensive way to make stamps, and is only very rarely used these days.

You can always tell an intaglio stamp, by (carefully!) dragging the back edge of a fingernail across the stamp.  Every tiny line will register as a bump.  It’s exquisite.  It’s true art.

This stamp, an oversized issue for the day (about 40mm × 31mm), and even then a rarity in two colors, is amazing.  Why this topic, George Rogers Clark’s capture of a British fort 150 years prior, was chosen for this honor, and not, say, the sesquicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, is beyond me.  But they did it.

Hold on, the story gets better.  As was the custom, when this stamp was being produced, each plate was numbered.  The numbers are printed by the plates in the waste paper around the block of stamps, or selvedge.  Twelve frame plates were engraved, twelve vignette plates were engraved, and all 144 combinations exist.  More interestingly, they are all approximately the same rarity.  To spice things up even more, there are plate blocks from the left and right of the sheet, which was cut into two panes for resale.  The left side has the word “Top” on the selvedge above one stamp in scarlet, then the plate numbers (in their appropriate colors; they are after all deposited by the plate) above two more stamps.  They are collected in 3×2 blocks.  On the right side, the word “Top” is in black above one of the steps, and the order of the plate numbers is reversed, and the letter “F” appears next to each plate.  So all told, there are 288 collectible plate blocks, all of which exist, all of which are obtainable, and all of which are pretty cheap.

If you’ve wondered how someone can devote a lifetime of study to one single stamp, here is an example.  If someone completes the plate blocks, he could then start examining mis-registrations (or other freaks), or plate flaws, or different plate states.  He could obtain trial proofs, india paper proofs, and printer’s waste.  He could probably win a major award at an exhibition with a study of this one stamp.

I collect plate blocks of this issue.  Here is my checklist at the moment:

I have a whole album, with a slipcase, devoted to this one issue.  Stop by and see it some time.

As you can see, I have a ways to go.  I’m only 15% of the way there.  They’re all out there.  Wish me luck.

OK, not “The Amazon”, but Amazon.com.

I just got email notification that my order has shipped.  At a quarter to ten.  P.M.  On a Sunday.  What sort of crazy deal does Amazon have with UPS, anyway?

Serious question.  Anyone know?  They have to be sending thousand of tons — more — of stuff a year to all over the globe with this carrier.  UPS must be wetting itself.  What’s it offering?  24/7 pickups, huge price breaks, what?  There has to be something screwy going on for Amazon Prime to be profitable, for instance (Two day shipping, for free, on anything, for $70 per year?  It can’t all be the Costco/Health Club algorithm of “they’ll pay but not use”, can it?)

I didn’t get into CSI during season one.  It was opposite something I watched, or I wasn’t watching TV, or something.  I can’t remember now.  Around season three Jenn got started watching, and I joined her, then she got the DVDs, and I started watching watching the backlog.

I’m glad I didn’t start watching at the beginning.  CSI is a show that got much, much better as it went along.  And now Spike (they may have finally stabilized their name), 7.5 years later, is airing season one episodes, and I’m watching with hindsight.

Season one had promise, in a low-budget, ham-handed kind of way.  No one really had their characters figured out yet, and were playing off-the-rack stereotypes: Petersen played The Emotionally Disconnected Nerd.  Dourdan played The Smooth Brother.  Eads played The Cowboy.  Guilfoyle played The Grizzled Cop.  Eric Szmanda played The Punky Whiz Kid.  With Marg Helgenberger, an actress I admire and have watched for years, they never figured out her hair or makeup that season (trying to make her look young, unsuccessfully?) so she seems to come off as The Self-Righteous Bitchy Woman, even though I think that if I were watching blindfolded I’d find her performances more textured.  The only one who had her character figured out from the beginning?  Jorja Fox, playing a complicated, troubled, multi-layered person with a lot of baggage.

I’m not a fan of her character.  When they need a problem on the show, they usually put it on her, maybe because she can act.  She was frequently badly-written, sometimes did surprising things, but always somehow made it work.  Her character arc became the most complex in the show, and through the whole thing, her character, as a believable human being, was making the journey — it wasn’t just an actor becoming accustomed to new stuff being thrown at her, like it was when Locke punched Charlie (switching shows, but seriously, WTF?  Almost couldn’t watch Lost after that.)  She’s also the least attractive regular on the show, maybe excepting Wallace Langham, and I like me some eye candy.

Mainly, though, I hate alcoholics on shows, and they made her into one, out of the blue.  Writers seem to find them easy to write — maybe more than the fair share through personal experience.  But TV alcoholics, almost without fail, are written badly: they’re not really like alcoholics.  They’re like self-rationalizations of alcoholics, hammed up for the screen.  Denzel in Courage Under Fire and Baldwin on H:LOTS come to mind as two of the very few exceptions in film and television.

The highlight in the first season was probably episode 13, Boom.  Magnificent guest performance by the criminally underrated Stephen Lee, and hints at some of the great stuff that was to come.  But most notably, in the first season, the characters knew less than they do now.

Much less.  Not just simple stuff like having someone on the set to pronounce petechia for the actors.  Not just “the audience knows less, so we have to pretend to be learning for the sake of exposition.”  Big stuff.  Huge stuff.  Like the following Grissom (he’s the Nerd) quote:

[I’m thinking about] how amazing the universe is.  All made of the same Carbon, from stars to trees, trucks to human bones

Pardon me?  Not a chemist here, but let’s do a miniature game of “Daddy, what’s X made of?”

Stars:  Hydrogen.  Hydrogen plasma, fusing into heavier elements, which are ejected as waste products.  H + H = He, H + He = Li, Li + Li = C, so yes, Carbon is being produced, but “made of” implies primacy.
Trees:  Sure, structurally they use carbon.  But a live tree?  Doesn’t it have to be mostly water, and therefore mostly Oxygen?  This is the only one that might have more Carbon in it than any other element.
Trucks: Uh, gonna go with Iron.  There’s Carbon in the tires, in the gas tank, in the Freon, in the seat liners, but seriously, half a ton, folks.  Gonna stick with Iron.
Human Bones:  Oh, for Pete’s sake.  Calcium.  Everyone knows that, right?

I may be wrong there somewhere, but I’m damn sure righter than Grissom.

Duchovny of The X-Files once responded to a question about the premise of his own show as follows: “It’s about a fictional world with alien visitations and supernatural phenomena.”  CSI is fiction of the same sort.  Perhaps the biggest and most harmful fiction?  The idea that, every time a dead body is found, a team of top-notch (at least starting season three) scientists swoop in and do their magic, then interrogate the suspects and arrest them.  In the meantime, they engage in shootings, restrain violent people, and so forth.  Kinda funny how on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, the detectives do all the sleuthing, including evidence collection and examination, along with the cop stuff.  Oh, and on House, the overqualified doctors perform the MRIs, CAT scans, defibrillation, and blood draws.  That’s why the original Law & Order was a neat premise: two very different teams, doing very different jobs, in the same episode.

In the real world, when you die, a team of scientists does not step in.  Not even detectives.  Bumbling cops do, they contaminate evidence, do wacky stuff like tell bystanders to hold the victim’s wallet while they dig in their own pockets (true!), and on, and on, and on.  I understand the need to reassign roles a bit, for effect, to give your actors camera time.  But to go as far as Skeptical Inquirer did by calling CSI one of the best things on television because science was put first?  Maybe if it were real science.  I’m not sure CSI is helping.

(I know I’m off the rails here with posting.  Bear with me.  Save up the posts if you want.  I’m probably going to crash eventually and mcgees.org will be silent for two months.)

Children’s literature is an odd market.  Children (and I can attest to this) do not treat their books well.  A first-edition Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in boards is worth a lot.  In a pristine dust jacket, it’s worth more than ten times as much.  Nine-tenths of the value of the book is in its wrapper, which was intended to be ephemeral in the first place (dust jackets were a originally a convenience for shopkeepers, and it was expected that they would be thrown away when the book was put on a shelf.)  Now let’s say I have one very nice first printing of Alice without a dustjacket, and a later printing with the same dustjacket.  Tempting, no, to take the dj from the latter and put it on the former?  The euphemism in the rare books world for this practice is sophistication.  If you’re reading a book dealer’s catalogue, and it refers to a volume as a sophisticated copy, the dealer is not saying it’s astute or for sophisticated people.  He’s saying it’s faked.  It’s an old-time, honest dealer who will admit that, as the practice is frowned upon.  And it is, in general, very hard to detect.

Think that’s insane?  Quick: what’s the most valuable thing on the planet, by weight?  Silver?  Gold?  Platinum?  Saffron?  Uranium 235?  Locks of Lord Nelson’s hair?  No, it’s arguably postage stamp gum.  You know that “thin glutinous wash” (as Rowland Hill, the inventor of the postage stamp, described it) that’s supposed to be, essentially, licked off?  If it’s a relatively modern stamp, like Edwardian British Colonies, it contributes — as a rule of thumb — 95% of the value of the stamp.  If it’s a real classic?  Original gum (or “OG”, amusingly) can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  So why don’t people just paint on some gum?  People do.  All the time.  It’s called “regumming”, and most estimates (by the few people who will admit to knowing the price) put the practice at $5 per stamp.  This, also, is hard to prove.  You have to put the perforations of the stamp under a powerful microscope to see if there are any torn fibers with gum on them, which of course would be impossible in a normal stamp.  You have to have the perfs checked, all of them, by a trained expert with a microscope, who then vouches for the stamp’s integrity, frequently insuring his opinion with actual monetary guarantees if he’s proven wrong.  Who gives a shit?  Almost everyone.  No one buys a gummed stamp for more than $1000 these days without submitting it for “expertizing”.  For a cheap stamp, that will run you $35 per stamp, minimum, and take months — more and longer for pricey stamps.  There are even people — “nutters”, let’s say (there’s no official term) — who buy expensive stamps, have them professionally mounted and framed, and display them gum side out.

And you thought the fervor over uncreased tush tags was silly.

OhForTheLoveOfAllThatIsSacred.  WTF?  A “commemorative” “9/11″ “coin” clad in silver recovered from Ground Zero? (Warning: link contains sound, moving graphics, and extremely bad taste).

I think I’m going to actually vomit.  I don’t fucking care that they supposedly give 16% (not counting handling charges) of their proceeds to charity.  These people need to be flogged.

OK, so you or a kid outgrows a garment — or, I guess, you come to loathe it and replace it, although I’ve never done that in my life.  Easy: craigslist, Goodwill, whatever.  Your choices are manifold.

Let’s say a seam opens on a perfectly functional garment, or a button comes off.  Again, easy: make sure that in every extended family there is at least one person skilled with needle and thread, and if that person’s not you, make sure you have no shame in asking for free tailoring.  No reason to get rid of a perfectly-fine bit of clothing for that.

But let’s say there’s a structural failure in the clothing.  For me, in denim jeans, it’s frequently a weakening around the seam at the seat of the pants, that begins as thinning and fraying, and finally opens.  It’s a structural failure of a whole panel, and would be very difficult to patch.  I suppose some people are skilled enough to remove and replace the panel, but I’m not.  What to do?

In a “use every bit of the walrus” sense, I hate throwing that stuff out.  In one long-distance sailing book I read, they talked about the ecosystem of a boat.  Textiles begin as clothes, then traverse the path of galley rag, deck rag, head rag, engine rag, overboard.  That’s wonderful.  Each time a piece of fabric is demoted, until it’s literally stiff with congealed grease, it has a new life, and then even after that, it presumably can be consumed by bacteria and oceanic microfauna.  But what do we, on land, do?  We throw it in the trash.

I had a book as a kid, a really fantastic, life-changing boy’s book entitled How To Do Nothing With Nobody All Alone By Yourself.  It’s essentially a rambling train of though by a man, Robert Paul Smith, who grew up during WWI and the Roaring Twenties, writing a book for the children of the late 1950s about how easy they have it when it comes to commercial toys, unlike when he was growing up and they had to make their own.  Transposed another 30 years into the 1980s, it was even stranger for me, and Niall’s copy, in the second decade of this century, will probably strike him as alien as will Chaucer.  I’ll tell my own story regarding the book some time, but don’t wait for that: check the aftermarket: sometimes sellers don’t know what they have and you can pick up a copy of this treasure for ten or twenty dollars.  It should be in every boy’s library, but I’m sure there are not enough copies extant to make that possible, even, say, for California, and as far as I know, it’s never been reprinted, which is preposterous.

Anyway, that book implied that when a garment was worn out, his (Smith’s) mother would cut all the buttons off before discarding the garment and put them in a drawer, was sure the reader’s mother would be doing so, too, and just assumed there was a drawerful of buttons lying around, next to the Borax and dad’s wooden cigar boxes.  My mother, it’s probably obvious to say, did no such thing (unless I’m wrong?) and we never had a drawerful of buttons in our house (nor Borax, nor cigar boxes, much to my dismay.)

So we don’t even do that.  We don’t even save buttons.  Let alone natural fibers.

OK, so I have a terminally-ill pair of jeans.  What to do with them?  Surely the rag industry could use the fiber?  They’re dyed, the jeans, but so?

I’m amazed Jenn hasn’t killed me.  In the “Recycle, Reduce, Reuse” thing, I don’t tend to Reduce, I try to keep everything for its potential for Reuse, and I cringe any time I can’t Recycle what Jenn makes me throw out.  She would have a fit if I started cutting up my old trousers to use as kitchen towels, even though I think that’s completely sensible.  Ever see Jamie Hyneman’s warehouse on TV, with bins labeled stuff like “Bungee Cords”, “Action Figures”, and “Cardboard”?  That’s my dream, except I wouldn’t have the discipline to keep everything so nicely sorted.  I’d just know that I had kite string “somewhere in there”.

So what to do?  Anyone recycle denim?  Can we do something other than throw it out?  In the sci-fi novel I’m kind of writing, there’s a reference to the lucrative occupation of landfill-mining, with old landfills being some of the most prized property.  But we can’t wait for that renaissance, because the cotton will have decayed by then.

So, what to do?  Who wants it?  Is there anything other than overboard?

(It’s wrapped around my body…)

No, seriously though, that’s not an option, is it?  ‘Cos you can’t buy string any more.

I’m going crazy.  It’s supposed to be there.  It’s part of our culture.  “Brown paper packages tied up with string.”  “Tie a string around your finger.”  Every single children’s craft book published before the 1970s.  But walk into a store today and ask them if they have string, and they look at you like you’re from Mars.  As far as I have been able to determine, the 99 Cent Only store, K-Mart, and Target are devoid of string.  Granted, I don’t even really know where to look.  I can buy sewing thread at Joanne’s.  I can buy hemp twine at Home Depot.  But what about simple string?  Does it even exist any longer?

In the late 1980s, I found a KayBee toy store that was having a clearance on summer and fall toys in winter.  I bought two or three reels of kite string, and they fulfilled my string needs for the next 15 years or so, until I lost it in a move.  I’m going crazy.  Somebody send me string!

How it is possible for anyone to be so talented is entirely beyond my comprehension.  At left is my concept sketch, at right is the final rendering by the artist I contracted:

eBay make this page a bit hard to find.  Click here to appeal a wrongful decision to terminate your eBay item.

USA or NBC are now airing a series, a part of the Cameron Terminator saga, that occurs in the lost years between T2 and T3.

It’s fucking fantastic.  Not “OK”, like the remake of Bionic Woman.  Not “Good”, like Alias.  Fantastic.

The characters of Sarah (played by Lena Headey, the queen from 300), the character of John (played by a new actor for me), and the female Terminator (played by yowza Summer Glau, made-up as a teenager) are all portrayed very convincingly and likably.  All three are beautiful people, too, which helps.

The best parts of T2 that were missing in its sequel and prequel, such as Sarah’s eloquent voice-overs and the great cyborg one-liners, are present and very crisply written.  I’m a huge fan.

Summer Glau as the Terminator gets the best lines.  An exchange, paraphrased, as her character is applying eyeliner to go to school as John’s “sister”:

John: You’re getting pretty good at that.  But then again, that would be weird, if you were this super-advanced cybernetic organism and were stumped by a dumb eyeliner pencil.  It’s not exactly brain surgery.

Terminator: [Deadpan:] No, it’s not brain surgery.  It would have to be much sharper for brain surgery.

Kind of funny when you read it, but Glau hits it out of the park.

The timeline of the mythology is a bit screwy, if I recall the storylines correctly, but that’s pretty much necessary to set this story in the present.

I hope it stays on the air.  I’m entranced.

I’ve contracted an artist for a small logo job.  I got several responses, and wanted to thank them by posting them here:

http://www.whitneystudios.org
http://www.jendiamond.com/web
http://soulstarisborn.deviantart.com/gallery/
http://www.barneda.com/
http://www.coroflot.com/abimage

And last but not least, the one I hired: http://www.justatoilet.com/portfolio

I have six credits at Swap-A-DVD.  What’s worth owning rather than just queuing?  What am I going to get from Netflix and say, “Man, I should have just bought this to start with”?

It’s Saturday.  I was driving around town around noon trying to find a place that could fill a prescription, and I felt like crap.  I began a mental checklist of whether I had forgotten anything.

I got to “food”, and I thought about the last time I’d eaten.  It wasn’t Saturday.  It wasn’t Friday.  It wasn’t Thursday.  It was some time before then.  I think I’ve had some wine and energy drinks in the interim.

I told my mother the last time I’d eaten, who asked, reasonably, “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

I responded, “I’m not doing it on purpose, I’m just not remembering to eat.”

“Sounds like your meds need adjusting,” she answered.

It would be really cool if I could buy “typo” domains for Amazon.com, like ammazon.com and azamon.com, and then “helpfully” redirect users to the correct site, after inserting my affiliate’s code in the URL.

Unfortunately, I can’t.

While we’re on the topic, you might consider dragging this link to your favorites toolbar and using it as your launchpad for Amazon: Amazon.  I’m not allowed to tell you why.

I literally laughed out loud.  More of a bark.

I needed some help with a PHP function.  I typed php help in Google, and the first match was phphelp.com.  Pretty obvious, I guess.

And under the heading “How send mail using the mail function”, I get this.  Seriously, look at it.  Looks like I’m going somewhere else for help.

Chain Link 3.  Reading bottom-up, right?

Jenn (hi Jenn!) bought my a wonderful gift for my birthday last month, tickets to Cirque du Soleil’s touring production of Corteo.  All in all, very impressive.

The premise, charmingly, is an aged man’s funeral procession, which continually is interrupted by surreal and mirthful memories and visitations.  The funeral procession keeps transforming into a happy marching tune, and everything is accompanied by wonderful levity, including (no pun intended) the scene with the “angels” in which he learns to fly.

It maybe succeeds too well.  At a minimum of twice during the performance, a man announces that the levity has to stop, as this is a funeral procession.  The levity does not stop for long, but both times I was startled.  The tone was such that I was continually forgetting that this was supposed to be funereal.

For aficionados, are Allegria, Quidam, and Corteo a cycle of birth, marriage, and death?  In Japan, they toured them as “The Shinto One”, “The Christian One”, and “The Buddhist One”, I think.  Don’t worry, they wrote it in katakana.

OK, to some of you the preceding was Very Funny®.  For the rest of you, moving on…

The least impressive parts are the bits where I the interactions of Stone Age physiology, 18th century physics and engineering, and 21st century materials are supposed to impress us.  (A 1cm braided steel cable and tackle of pulleys is enough to support a lightweight woman?  Say it isn’t so!  Modern elastics have very high restoring forces?  Gol-darnit!  The mass of a lightweight man accelerated at 1G is not enough to simultaneously rip out over 100,000 hairs?  OK.  Ouch.  But OK.)

The materials technology did allow some extremely impressive moments, though.  2m rings of gossamer metal (titanium?) were rolled onstage.  I thought they were just pretty props, until people spread-eagled themselves within and rode them around the stage.  I’ve seen the double-ring hoops with the inset handles for more than twenty years, but the single, thin rings are more impressive, largely because the operator has to adjust his grip when inverted, so that his knuckles are not crushed (he hand-plants at those times.)  There were some very talented gymnasts, but then the “ringer” (with a smug expression) came on and did more impressive maneuvers one-handed.  I was really impressed, but I have no real gauge.  Was this 1⁄3 again as difficult?  Thirty times as difficult?  I have no way to judge.

Someone closer to bisexuality would probably have enjoyed the whole show slightly more.  Personally, I don’t find the male gymnast’s body nearly as attractive as the female dancer’s.  Pleasantly, in the other most impressive moment, chandeliers were lowered so they were slightly above stage.  I again thought these were visual stage pieces, until female dancers climbed aboard and used them for incredibly impressive contortions and poses.  Impressive, and erotic.  My mind kept flitting to sexual positions, in an unending chain of “Oh, that’s possible?  Hmmm.  Yikes, they can do that?  Wow.  Holy cow, how does she hold that position?”

I’m curious as to the availability of acrobats.  The intersection of the people who want to be in a circus and who can suspend themselves by any single muscle in their body (tongues, maybe?) has to be vanishingly small.  One begins to understand the history of acrobatic families: early conditioning, combined with some fairly fierce Darwinian selection (Whoops, I guess we don’t have to waste any more training on Jimmy!)

Other impressive moments abounded, including stunts with see-saws, elastics, parallel bars, and trapezes.  I was most impressed with the synchronized events, in which mistakes of timing of less than 100ms would have resulted in mid-air collision.

Something that failed to impress me was the tightrope act.  Now, I’m all for tethering performers.  Watching an athlete plummet to her death can really ruin an evening.  But to be impressive, you need to have a slightly slack line.  The tightrope artist was tethered by a taut line that seemed to be entirely supporting her weight, which would appear to reduce her act to a problem of posture.  For instance, at one point, one foot slipped off the inclined tightrope she was walking.  I don’t know if this was planned or not (I think not, and three viewings would provide strong circumstantial evidence) but they covered it masterfully: she hammed up the slip, making it appear dramatic, and the band had a ready musical sting for emphasis.  But she ended up horizontally cantilevered off the rope, and she didn’t fall at all.  I estimate that to maintain the position without a cable suspending her, she would have had to be exerting a force with her left foot equivalent to that imposed by a foot that weighed half a ton.  It seems daft to think the cable was taut for only this moment.  If I were rigging the show, and it was staged, I’d have it taut the rest of the time, and slack at the moment of the slip.

The humor was vaudevillian, which is not really my scene, but the audience seemed really to enjoy it.  I have to take issue with one aspect, though.  Some humor was driven by juxtaposing someone four-sigma larger than average with someone four-sigma smaller than average onstage (a giant and a … well, that’s been covered), and having them both play the fool.  I don’t find any inherent humor or pathos in this juxtaposition, not like the humor and pathos in having, say, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton share a debate stage.  I would have thought that in moving beyond exploitation of animals, they would also have moved beyond sideshows.  But in a sense, they just moved the sideshows onstage.

The giant, it should be said, did play a water harp (a rather naïve one, played by two performers and capable of just four simultaneous notes; I’ve seen one arranged such that one performer can simultaneously be playing a melody line and a series of chords.)  And one of the “little people” was able to achieve something immensely impressive: she was tethered to five enormous helium weather balloons, such that she was neutrally buoyant at the stage’s altitude.  She “crowd surfed” on point — slight motions of the hands of the audience propelled her about the tent.  I was entranced.

The Big Top was arranged such that there was no bad seat in the house and, excepting the extremely uncomfortable plastic chairs and the two young women seated next to us who reeked of marijuana, the performance was extremely, extremely enjoyable.  Thank you Jenn, so much, for such a fantastic night out.

OK, I know my readership is international, so please forgive the local news.  The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for today (24 January 2008) for Los Angeles and surrounding areas.  Please plan accordingly.

This is not the next post in the Chain Link saga, but I had to comment.

The (living) author J.K. Rowling hand-wrote and illustrated seven copies of the book The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which is referenced as a fictional book in one of her Harry Potter stories.  Each copy is magnificently bound, with deckle edges, Moroccan leather, and sterling silver.

All proceeds go to charity.  Good for her.

Amazon bought one for £1 950 000 at Sotheby’s, which presumably does not include a buyer’s premium.

Um, yeah.  A couple years ago, at least (when I was still following prices), you could buy a Gutenberg Bible and a Birds of North America for less money.  Save up a few more pennies, and you could walk away with a First Folio Shakespeare.  If you like children’s literature, you could probably buy every hand-written and -illustrated Beatrix Potter and Lewis Carroll volume and letter in existence for less.

What do you think will have more enduring value?

Chain Link 2.  You are reading this bottom-up, right?

This, too, was going to be one sentence in the following post, but it also grew out of hand.

It’s reasonable, I think, for people to be able to choose the words applied to them.

I grew up a gaijin.  That’s a Japanese derogatory racial epithet for foreigners.  What would I have preferred?  Well, I don’t really like American, as I don’t think one nation should get to claim the name of two continents containing 22 countries.  Westerner would have been OK.  Something descriptive, like he’s a U.S. Citizen would probably be best.

I weigh close to three bills.  That’s 21 stones if you’re British, 133 kilos if you’re from anywhere else, and two million grains if I’m fated to encounter an ungloved Midas.  Obese is unpleasant.  Morbidly obese especially so.  “Big Guy” is not a charming nickname (Bob Mike, do people call you “Slim”?  Do you like it?)  I prefer large.

I’m an atheist.  Calling me agnostic is likely to get you sneered at.  Calling me a Bright is liable to get you bitch-slapped.  Naturalist is comfortable.  Rationalist and Freethinker feel nice, but I imagine are offensive to many people, because they imply that if you rationally and freely thought about things you’d completely agree with me.  So I stick with atheist.

Now I’m venturing into unknown territory.  If I had very dark skin, I think I would still hate African-American.  It’s clunky.  It wrongfully suggests that all dark-skinned people are from Africa, which has to annoy Australians, yes?  And aren’t all Americans really, originally, African?  I think I’d like black, or even Negroe, with an e and capitalized.

I’m heterosexual.  That’s a fine term as far as I’m concerned.  I loathe straight (what’s the opposite of that?)  But if I were homosexual, I think I’d prefer gay (whether a man or woman.)  I know several practicing bisexuals, at least one of which self-describes as queer.  I think that’s mostly affect, but egads.  You’ve got to help me, people.  It this one of those rescued epithets, like nigger, that the “in” crowd is allowed to flaunt and outsiders can be murdered over?

But most sincerely — and this is my ultimate point — if I were significantly shorter in stature than the average person, I strongly believe I would like almost anything more than little person.  That sounds so bloody condescending to me.  Maybe not midget, but what — what? — is wrong with dwarf?

This will be relevant in Chain Link 3.

This was going to be a single sentence in the next post, but it sort of grew out of hand.  If you’re of an Abrahamic bent, and want to believe that I’m not really an asshole, stop reading.  Here’s your chance.

Still with me?  Are you sure you want to be here?

OK, thanks.  Regarding the shared bits of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc., here it is, in second person:

I believe that your God was the favorite tribal deity of a polytheistic, nomadic, historically insignificant Bronze Age people living in North Africa and the Near East.  Through a bizarre historical accident, a tiny messianic doomsday cult of this people was adopted as the state religion of the most powerful empire on the planet, despite the utter failure of any of the doomsday prophecies to transpire in the allotted time.

I believe your shared “testament” is a heterogeneous anthology of self-aggrandizing revisionist history, stolen legal codes, institutionalized bigotry, justifications for ethnic cleansing, “Just So” stories, the ravings of the mentally ill, census data, a sprinkling of common sense, and some truly beautiful poetry and children’s literature, all of which was rolled together and authorship attributed to a deity, which means to many of you that it has to be 100% factually accurate, even when it’s internally inconsistent or demonstrably wrong.

I believe the premise and existence of the modern state of Israel is at least as bizarre as if my family declared ownership of the British Isles, invaded, subjugated the citizenry, imposed martial law, renamed the nation “Mordor”, and declared war on Western Europe.

I believe that were we to argue theology, I’d argue to the point where we agreed that your god is undetectable, untestable, unpredictable, inelegant, unnecessary, paradoxical, and at least one of impotent, malicious, and completely incomprehensible, not to mention just plain weird, at which point I’d consider the topic not worth any further thought, you’d declare ineffability a feature rather than a bug, and I’d look at you as if you turned into a walrus in front of my eyes.

I believe people who “sort of” believe in God, “don’t really think about it”, “guess they do”, or find it the path of least resistance, are pussies leading unexamined lives.

I will, however, fight tooth and nail for your right to engage in your superstitions in your own home or normally-taxed buildings, or very quietly and personally in public.  I believe it is your right to live an unexamined life, in the same way that it is my right not to exercise, even though I know failing to will contribute to my early death.  I get it, kinda: we all have mental blocks.  I will even tolerate you indoctrinating your own children, although I really wish you wouldn’t, in the same way I wish Jews would stop mutilating the genitals of their male infants and Mexicans would stop piercing the ears of their female infants.

So there.

The “asshole” in the tagging of this post refers to me, by the way.

N:  (Upon receiving a snack:)  Daddy, what are Lifesaver Gummies?

J:  Gelatinized or pectinized fruit juice.  Juice and sugar in a hydrocolloidal substrate.

N:  (Pause)  Mommy, what are Lifesaver Gummies?

(Tadcu, cue Dave Lolliger story.)

Niall has been sick with a bad cold.  I took him to the doctor on Friday.  He was absolutely perfect, with tea party manners.

Dramatis Personae:
N: Niall
Dr: Pediatrician
J: Joshua

(Doctor enters)

N:  I am here today because I have a cold.  Is this the right doctor for a cold?

Dr:  Yes, this is the right doctor.  I’m Dr. Musavelar.

N:  My name is Niall.  That’s spelled N-I-A-L-L.  How is your name spelled?

Dr:  You can call me “Sadah” [ph].  That’s spelled S-A-D-A-T.  (Holds light up:)  Do you know what this is?

N: ???

J:  Remember, it’s to look in your ears.

Dr: May I look in your ears?

N: (Timidly) OK.  (Clenches face, squeezes eyes shut, and grits his teeth, but remains absolutely still.)

OK, precious enough?  On the ride home, he saw a sign that said “Dentistry” (he’s four.)

N:  Daddy, do you know what a dentist is?

J:  What is it?

N:  A dentist is a kind of doctor who counts your teeth.

He has signs of the early onset of pneumonia in his right lung, BTW.  If you post here, I’ll pass on your best wishes.

Are you aware that hypergraphia is a symptom of clinical mania?