May 10, 2008
Gratuitous Musickal Posting
The noted Viennese musick critic Eduard Hanslick remarked, after listening to a four-hand pre-premiere piano arrangement of Brahms' 4th Symphony:
"Throughout the whole movement I had the impression of two dreadfully intelligent people beating each other up."I can say truthfully that I know exactly what Hanslick meant. At the same time, I can also say truthfully that there are times when this sort of (really) self-warfare resonates extremely well (not, of course, that I am particularly intelligent - dreadfully or otherwise). I've noticed that it is always when I am very tired and, at the same time, very dissatisfied with myself that Brahms is most appealing to me. Go figure. Actually, I think it is Brahms' rigid formalism that allows us strident anti-Romanticists an honourable outlet when the mood seizes us.
Posted by: Robert at 08:13 PM | Comments (30) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
BSG
Alright--is Starbuck our mystery Cylon or is it Baltar? Just wondering.
Posted by: LMC at 02:38 PM | Comments (31) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
LMC Nineties Retro Reunion--the Gals of Melrose Place
This is the first of a series which examines the ladies of that quintessential nighttime soap opera aimed at the twenty-somethings. My favorite: Daphne Zuniga who played Jo:
Robbo back in the day.
Posted by: LMC at 02:25 PM | Comments (27) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Shmokin!
Mrs. LMC ordered The Tudors from Netflix. The portrayal of the court of Henry VIII is one of unbridled lust, best captured by Natalie Dormer in her portrayal as the monarch's second wife. She radiates that attitude that says: "I'm bad for you but it will be a wild ride."
Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn from http://cedarwaxwing.vox.com/
Posted by: LMC at 02:07 PM | Comments (25) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Random Domestic Saturday Observation
Isn't it funny how household chores naturally allocate themselves? I seem to have become the official Bedsheet Tsar of Orgle Manor by the simple formula that if I don't change them, nobody will.
The worst part of dealing with the Llama-ettes' beds is the fact that all of them are packrats and all of them use their beds as storage space. Often times, it takes a lot longer to clear the junk off than it does to strip and replace the sheets. This is particularly annoying with the eight year old, who still sleeps in the top bunk of the bed she used to share with her elder sister. (The bottom bunk is reserved now for some of her myriad stuffed animals.) This morning I pulled 22 books, an old mylar birthday balloon, three stuffed bunny rabbits, two comforters, two old nightgowns (dirty), three socks (all mismatched), a soccer trophy and one of the coccooned caterpillars she's keeping in jars away before I could get at the sheets. These gels don't sleep in beds, they sleep in nests.Posted by: Robert at 11:04 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Medic!
I was out pruning in the Orgle Manor grounds this morning. Tackling a fairly thick branch of the crepe myrtle that overhands the drive, I placed one arm of the clippers against my chest and pulled with both hands on the other. Suddenly I felt the most extraordinary burning sensation in my chest muscles, coupled with a kind of wind-knocked-out shortness of breath. The sore spot is still there a couple hours later, right to the left of my sternum.
I think I was on the edge of cracking a rib or sumpin'. Time to invest in a chainsaw.Posted by: Robert at 10:55 AM | Comments (25) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Random Saturday Morning Gripe
I hate it when people say "a scissor" as in "hand me a scissor". It's a pair of scissors, dammit.
UPDATE: Oh, this reminds me that I heard a curious expression last week: to raise sand, as in "When I heard what bad things the company was doing, I went to the shareholders' meeting and raised sand." Anybody else ever heard of this before?Posted by: Robert at 08:14 AM | Comments (32) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
May 09, 2008
Gratuitous Nationals Posting
The eldest Llama-ette and I are watching the Nats play the Marlins this evening. We're keeping our hopes up regarding the 7th-Inning stretch:
Heh. The Nats fans in the audience will know what I'm talking about. The rest of you should go here. And anybody who wants some pro-Teddy gear should go here.
UPDATE: Well, I dunno who won the presidential race, but the Nats couldn't catch the Marlins up. Too bad. Perhaps it was the cadaverous appearance of Alan Greenspan - flanked by Judy Woodruff and Andrea Mitchell - in the seats behind home plate that put a hex on the thing.
For those of you unfamiliar with the local media market, some of the Nats' games are broadcast on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, or "MASN", and others are broadcast on the local UPN affiliate, WDCA-20. Whenever they're playing on DC-20, the announcers (play-by-play guy Bob Carpenter and color commentator Don Sutton) are forced to play up some new UPN show featuring an odd abomination of a fellah by the name of "Flavor Flav". I often wonder what's going through their heads as they read off the copy on Mr. "Flav". I can only assume that their enthusiasm is....feigned.
Posted by: Robert at 07:40 PM | Comments (25) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Gratuitous Post Bizzness Trip Rainy Friday Observations
"Hi, evvverybahdy!"**
Yes, Robbo rolled back into town and home to Orgle Manor late last evening after a very eeeenterestink** week out on the road. It is sometimes exceedingly frustrating that I cannot relate to you, our lloyal Llama readers, some of the things I see and hear out there, but I console myself with the idea that perhaps I can produce it in fictional form some day. (I'm thinking more John Mortimer than John Grisham here.) Anyhoo, here are a few thoughts that have been eddying around Robbo's brain recently: *** One of the ways I distract myself while flying is by doing crosswords. Recently, I've noticed a number of clues along the lines of "former Italian coin" (emphasis mine). This irks me. As far as I'm concerned, the lira remains the proper currency in Italy, as does the franc in France, the mark in Germany and so on. You can take your "euros" and ram them right up your union. *** Another way I distracted myself during my free time this week was by purchasing at the airport a copy of Bernard Cornwell's Lords of the North, a tale of adventure set in the Britain of King Alfred's days. No doubt I'm going to generate a storm of protest by saying so, but I find this to be an immensely silly book. While I've no doubt that Cornwell's research of the period is thorough, the tale he spins around it and the prose by which he delivers that tale are pure Saturday matinee shlock. Furthermore, this story is just like every other one of Cornwell's I've ever read: a fierce anti-hero more noble than he's willing to admit to himself or anyone else, strong women who see him for what he is, plus villains of maniacal depth and ruthlessness, all knocking about in a world of cynicism and corruption in which all the outward conventionals are exposed for the flimsy facades that they really are. It was after only a couple pages that I suddenly realized what I was really reading was just Richard Sharpe and his friends dressed up in Viking helmets. Of course I'm going to finish the book, but I feel vaguely ashamed of myself for doing so. ***Speaking of books, I've made a couple new purchases from the devil's website as well. First, because Mom planted the idea in my head, I picked up John Stoye's The Siege of Vienna - The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent. The book originally came out in 2000, so of course the title is now out of date. And because the devil's website tempted me to, I also picked up Victory of the West - The Great Christian-Muslim Clash at the Battle of Lepanto by Niccolo Capponi. I've often wondered why, given all the hullaballoo about the eeeeevils of the Crusades, nobody seems to squawk about the Turks and the Moors invading eastern and western Europe. Free Constantinople! says I. In honor of my patrons, I also picked up copies of Aquinas' Shorter Summa and Augustine's City of God (the Dods translation with the Merton introduction). I was prompted in part to read the latter (which I have not done before) by the snotty things Edward Gibbon has to say about it. I am enjoying Gibbon's Decline and Fall immensely, but every now and again his self-satisfied snarkiness gets to be a bit too much for me. Finally, I picked up a DVD of Mozart's Le Nozzi di Figaro, as performed by Bryn Terfel, Alison Hagley, Rodney Gilfrey et al under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner. I've had the VHS of this for years and it is starting to wear out. Of all the televised versions I've seen, this is still the best one - impeccably sung and pretty well acted. The only things that annoy me are the minimalist sets and the occasional efforts to radicalize the story. I don't know about Beumarchis' original play, but Mozart was a progressive, not a rabble-rouser, and in his hands the story is about liberalizing the social order, not overturning it. ***As I mentioned some time last week, we had a tree removed from the side yard of Orgle Manor. What a difference! As I stood in the yard earlier today chatting with our landscaper, I couldn't help wondering what benefits might be obtained by felling some of the other trees in the area. Why is it that once you've pruned back one tree, bush or plant, you suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to start wreaking havoc on all the rest of them as well, like a gardening berserker? ***I was talking this week with a fellah who works as an Obamessiah operative in his neck of the woods. He predicted She Who Must Not Be Named won't last the month. All I can say, if this turns out to be true, is "heh". And touching wood, the prospect of going up against him this fall worries me less and less. From all that I've seen, Barak is just a limousine liberal of particularly light weight. Plus, he's got an awful lot of baggage in both his wife and his pastor. For all the novelty of his being the prospective first black presidential nominee, I think that'll prove just to be a summer thing and not enough, by itself, to encourage sufficient Donk enthusiasm this fall. ***We've had an awful lot of rain the past couple days here in the Dee Cee area. Somehow the prospect of not having to go to three soccer games tomorrow on account of water-logged fields doesn't disturb me very much. ***I gather that Sunday is Mother's Day. Frankly, I've never paid very much attention to it at all, as my own mother taught us to consider it a silly ersatz holiday. Howsomever, if you do intend to observe it, might I ask you also to consider and perhaps pray for those who might wish to be mothers but aren't (for whatever reason), and those mothers who have lost children? Thankee. That's it for the moment. (**Spot the quotes.)Posted by: Robert at 01:53 PM | Comments (30) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Free Range Kids
First off - let me say, I don't have any kids. So I'm not qualified to make any statements on this subject. It doesn't stop me from stirring the pot, however.
From Free Range Kids:Free Range Kids is a blog for "anyone who thinks that kids need a little more freedom and would like to connect to people who feel the same way." As I said - I'm totally unqualified to speak on this subject, but I live in a very safe rural area and am daily astounded to see parents waiting with children for the bus. They can't even wait for a school bus by themselves??? When these nanny-house children get to the age of military service, how in the hell are they ever going to be able to get to boot camp (let alone deployment) if mom can't come with to wipe their asses? Over-coddling children is contrary to the American spirit, if you ask me. Free range parents, I salute you!
When I wrote a column for The New York Sun on “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Take The Subway Alone,” I figured I’d get a few e-mails pro and con. Two days later I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, FoxNews and all manner of talk radio with a new title under my smiling face: “America’s Worst Mom?” Yes, that’s what it took for me to learn just what a hot-button this is — this issue of whether good parents ever let their kids out of their sight. But even as the anchors were having a field day with the story, many of the cameramen and make up people were pulling me aside to say that THEY had been allowed to get around by themselves as kids– and boy were they glad. They relished the memories! Had the world really become so much more dangerous in just one generation?Yes — in most people’s estimation. But no — not according to the evidence. Over at the think tank STATS.org, where they examine the way the media use statistics, researchers have found that the number of kids getting abducted by strangers actually holds very steady over the years. In 2006, that number was 115, and 40% of them were killed. Any kid killed is a horrible tragedy. It makes my stomach plunge to even think about it. But when the numbers are about 50 kids in a country of 300 million, it’s also a very random, rare event. It is far more rare, for instance, than dying from a fall off the bed or other furniture. So should we, for safety’s sake, all start sleeping on the floor?"
Posted by: Chai-Rista at 11:44 AM | Comments (29) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Very easy on the eyes of the male of the species
Rosario Dawson celebrity profile
Today is Rosario Dawson's 29th birthday according to the local paper. Photo via AskMen.comPosted by: LMC at 06:12 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
May 08, 2008
Don't count her out yet
The Empire Strikes Barack:
Via the Politico.Posted by: LMC at 08:14 PM | Comments (25) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
The Puppies
Monica asked about my beagle puppies: Kiku and Misuke. These are a couple of girls Pep and I got in the fall. They are about 8 months old now. They're house broken, aversive to biting . . . people (each other is another story!) and spayed. What good girls!
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Posted by: Chai-Rista at 02:37 PM | Comments (25) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Posted by: Chai-Rista at 01:11 PM | Comments (28) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Is Hunter Thompson Dead?
A funny stab at getting to "the Truth" about Thompson's alleged demise.
Posted by: Chai-Rista at 01:00 PM | Comments (27) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Libel Terrorism
Did you have any idea that lawsuits in the UK against American authors have caused book burnings in the US? Admittedly - the books weren't actually "burned," but they were destroyed by court order. These were books published by Cambridge University Press!!! Yes - it has happened here at least once in the last 18 months.
It's called "libel terrorism." Wealthy Muslim oilmen who use their vast riches to support terrorism simply sue publishing houses that produce books saying so, until the publisher crumples like cotton in a hurricane. Of course, they also sue the author too, even though these terrorism benefactors are not US citizens. Money wins in court and these Muslim oilmen are buying indulgences on the US Constitution! For the details on recent good news against this outrage see here and here.Posted by: Chai-Rista at 12:37 PM | Comments (28) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Jiihad of Attrition
Object lesson #1 - A short investigation into dhimmitude in the UK . . .
Sadly - we already have exactly the same problem here.Posted by: Chai-Rista at 12:18 PM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
May 07, 2008
No Pot Candy for Kids in GA
"Georgia retailers soon will be banned from selling candy flavored to taste like marijuana to children."
"Senator Doug Stoner pushed the bill in the senate. "I don't think that folks are aware this is going on," Stoner told Channel 2 in April. "It's mainly, from what I can tell, particularly targeted to minority communities." Seems an uncharacteristic move for someone named Stoner, doesn't it? Read about "Kronic Kandy" and see a "Pot Sucker" here. Large cuppa Tazo Wild Sweet Orange to Mrs. Keysunset for providing the lead on this one!Posted by: Chai-Rista at 03:20 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Nietzsche Family Circus
Family Circus with quotes from Nietzsche. Never better!
Be sure to hit Refresh to see more. Update: God bless The Abbot! He pointed me to Cthulhu Family Circus which is so many magnitudes more awesome than Nietzsche! See here, here, and here. Have a tall Chai-rista's Special Blend, dear Abbot!Posted by: Chai-Rista at 03:15 PM | Comments (27) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Will She Or Won't She?
The pressure from the "in-the-Obama-corner" MSM is mounting for SWMNBN to pack it in.
Her campaign has canceled all events and is officially in "huddle" mode. My prediction - she's not deciding whether to stay in or not, rather she's brainstorming with her posse to generate a plausible public rationale for continuing. Of course, when I say plausible I don't necessarily mean plausible to anyone but herself. UPDATE:On the GOP side, The Onion gives us little gem:
She's in it to win it, baby!!! She's "loaning" her campaign $6.5 million. Lest we forget that the Clinton's are filthy rich (something the MSM likes to overlook). As long as she holds the MI and FL cards and as long as she has the potential to win some of the remaining primaries - West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico are likely to go her way - she will JUST.NOT.LET.GO! On Wednesday June 4th, the day after the final primary, Obama will in all likelihood still not have reached the delegate number to clinch. As long as that happens, SWMNBN will fight -
Posted by: Gary at 07:40 AM | Comments (32) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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