The T&T List

femtocells
green chilaquiles
Carla Sarkozy
M-theory
Novak Djokovic
Tortoise General Store
Inca Trail
The Salkantay Trek
Chock Full o' Nuts
zorse
From Prada to Nada
Avenging Angels

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Attention fellow bloggers: You may have noticed that I have a "right nav" over there called Blog-o-Mat. I'm always interested in exchanging links (and traffic) so let me know if you'd like to join the list.

Word of the Day: valgus

valgus (n or adj)

Bone deformity; the state of being bowlegged or knock-kneed.

"Oh, I see you have valgus," Dr. Sapirstein said.
"Huh?" said Billy-Bob.
"Your legs."
"What about 'em?"
"They're, uh, perfect for riding your horse I guess, hmmm?"
"Well...yup. I reckon they are good for that. But it doesn't matter now. I lost my job on the ranch, dag burnit."
"Really? Why?"
"I couldn't keep my calves together."
--Leahcim Setag, Strange Loops

My bone deformity is in my left little finger, which I broke in gym class in junior high school. The school nurse thought it was sprained, but it was broken, and I never got it set. When it healed, it was slightly crooked. It still is. It's my one imperfection (other than a weakness for puns).

(Valgus, by the way, is one of the words that the late David Foster Wallace circled in his dictionary.)

Much Ado about NOTHING

Sometimes I get obsessed with certain obscure subjects or objects. Currently, I'm obsessed with those diecast toy cars you can buy at Rite Aid and, I think, other drugstores.

They are quite accurate and detailed -- with doors and hoods that open, engines, and finished interiors -- and relatively cheap, so I've purchased several. I like the ones with the wilder styling, so I've concentrated on models from the 1950s and '60s -- the golden age of auto styling, in my opinion. The "oldest" one I have is a 1949 Ford Woody and the "newest" is a '68 Corvette. The most outrageous is a red 1959 Cadillac Eldorado convertible -- you know, the one with sky-high tailfins and rocket-tube tailights -- fully six-inches long.

I must be entering my second childhood.

Photo of the Week

My photo of a 9/11 memorial skyline sculpture at the Meadowlands Environment Center in New Jersey, showing the pre-September 11, 2001, New York skyline as it would have appeared from that spot. Click it, the better to see it with.

Remember?

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

I love talking to people who are a little bit crazy. Not a lot crazy, just a little bit.... Media company websites that don't have any search function drive ME crazy.... Local schools are back in session starting today, which means I'm walking to Journal Square every morning with a bunch of kids dressed in hoodies and wearing Hannah Montana backpacks. Makes me feel immature...or ancient...somehow both at the same time.... People who use video, for political purposes, of burning skyscrapers make me ill.... "I am a falafel cognoscenti with a Lebanese wife." Saw that sentence on Twitter -- the most splendid sentence I've seen this week, and it made me laugh....

Word of the Day: uxorious

uxorious (adj)

Excessively dependent on, attached to, or doting on one's wife.

"The queen asked her false husband whether it were possible to make her parrot talk, and he, in a moment of uxorious weakness, promised to make it speak. He laid his body aside, and sent his soul into the parrot. Immediately, the true king jumped out of his Brahmin body and resumed that which was legitimately his own, and then proceeded, with the queen, to wring the neck of the parrot."
--Sabine Baring Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves

Uxorious? I am married; let's not go there.

Instead, what's interesting to me about this strange passage is the whole notion of tricking one's bad self (evil doppelganger, you might say) into some neutral being or object (a parrot, in this case) and then killing it by destroying the object. Metaphorically, this is a form of catharsis. One splits off one aspect of one's personality into a work of art or, say, a blog. The rejected, repressed, or socially unacceptable part of oneself is "killed" by enclosing it in this container, where it can take on a life of its own, freeing the other aspects of the personality to go about their more mundane daily business. Or something. Once I had multiple personalities, but now we're feeling well....

(Uxorious, by the way, is one of the words that the late David Foster Wallace circled in his dictionary.)

Random Sequence

Scenario 26 (excerpt 12)

"I need a sadness treatment," thought Katrina, as she bit into her satin pillow. "All these inappropriate vitamins just aren't working!" Katrina now considered her expensive "witch doctors" to be nothing more than elegant idiots. "Maybe I'll try a faith healer," she thought. "One with warm hands, though...." But then she rejected that notion. Faith healers, it occured to her, were usually religious fanantics, into "fetus heroes," and she wanted nothing to do with that mind set.

She turned on her TV, a 64-inch 3D plasma screen. "Electronic mirages," she thought. "That's what I need." It was a wrestling program. A brute as big as a gorilla was beating a little bespectacled man, dressed in a red cape, with a metal folding chair while the crowd roared. "Ughhh!" Katrina moaned. She sank onto the carpet in front of the set and began to weep.

Suddenly, there was another earthquake. The TV careened off its pedestal and onto Katrina's head. She blacked out for a few seconds, then felt dizzy -- but not sad; rather, she felt refreshingly angry. "Bash blobs," she muttered. "Bash blobs...." It occurred to her that she had several scores to settle with a number of irritating so-called paragons.

(Not to be continued.)

Fish Food for Thought

Agree? More clip-art philosophy by me (and Seneca). Click here for the BIG fish.

More Philosofish ~ More Twists and Turns

Photo of the Week

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have NOTHING?

Well, Tabitha doesn't have to wonder.

Her family in Africa struggles to survive on barely anything at all. Her parents are dead. Grandma has incurable diabetes and needs injections every hour or she will die. Tabitha, who only has a dirty rag to wear, just wants to know what life is like when horseflies aren't biting her starving baby brother's open, infected wounds throughout the day.

Each night, the family divides a grain of rice to eat. Then they sleep on the cold, hard, concrete floor of their dilapidated hut. (Their sleeping mats were stolen by bandits.) In the morning, another struggle for subsistence begins. Tabitha must walk five miles to draw dirty water from the same mudhole where lions and hippos drink. (Speaking of lions, you may notice that her left arm is missing.)

Stop and contemplate that the next time you're complaining that there's too much air-conditioning or that you can't get a signal on your iPhone or the service is too slow at Fat Burger.

For just as little as 1/8th of a penny per day, you could sponsor Tabitha and save her from a life of slow death by intestinal parasites. But you won't, will you, you selfish, selfish monster.

(Click the photo for a closer view.)

Word of the Day: talion

talion (n)

Punishment that fits the crime, as in "an eye for an eye".

"The first question, then, is what is the suitable method of instituting a process on behalf of the faith against witches. In answer to this it must be said that there are three methods allowed by Canon Law. The first is when someone accuses a person before a judge of the crime of heresy, or of protecting heretics, offering to prove it, and to submit himself to the penalty of talion if he fails to prove it. The second method is when someone denounces a person, but does not offer to prove it and is not willing to embroil himself in the matter...."
--Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, 1487

Heretics and witches. I guess I am the former (by the standards of the time when Malleus Maleficarum was written), and I know someone who calls herself the latter. "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" It's not always that simple. The witch I know is one of those crazy cat ladies and is pretty benign, though -- except when she makes someone spontaneously combust.

(Talion, by the way, is one of the words that the late David Foster Wallace circled in his dictionary.)

Brain Dump (film noir edition)

Buy monsters; they're cheap these days. If you're a studio king or queen, beware of monster rate pile ups. Otherwise, you may end up on the Saloons Network, if you know what I mean. Cocaine weekends? Not for you, budget boys and girls. Words to the wise: be a minds pro. But ignore crappy mental tourism. Normal modules are the key. Oh, and two words for you: booby ultimatum!

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Hooray, hooray, it's the first of September. Something starts today, but I can't remember.... Reading a book -- actually some bound page proofs -- called You Are Not a Gadget. Indeed. Sometimes I feel like one, though, even when I post here. How do you know I'm not just an A.I. program equipped with a wicked thesaurus? "I'm sorry, Dave...." Jerry, the guy who has been cutting my hair for several years running, has vanished from the face of the earth. "He no longer works here," they tell me. So recently, I let an African-American woman with long, dark hair edit my scalp. And guess what? I actually like the haircut she gave me.... AIM, which I now have to use via Google Gmail's website, keeps failing me throughout the day, so I have to turn to Meebo to chat. Then AIM "comes back" and I'm suddenly sending and receiving in two different places simultaneously, both of which want me to log out of the other. Befuddling, in stereo. Life is SUCH as roller coaster. Do you even know what I'm going on about here? IM me (AIM me?) if you do....