Two Mindless Dog Videos

Carnivorous Attack by Golden Retriever Puppies!


Dachshund Attacks Bubbles!

Freemasons, Jews, Gays To Blame

Caravaggio: St. Matthew and the Angel. Wikipedia.

The Vatican really is in a frenzy to blame everyone else for its institutional failings, as Wonkette points out. Yes: Freemasons, Jews, and Gays.

What's next: blaming seductive children?

Not next-- already! From December 2007, comments by the Bernardo Alvarez, Bishop of Tenerife:

His comments were that there are youngsters who want to be abused, and he compared that abuse to homosexuality, describing them both as prejudicial to society. He said that on occasions the abuse happened because the there are children who consent to it.
‘There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you’, he said.

Extremities

Photo by andy_5322 under creative commons

In a store today I saw something that I've seen advertised recently: Dr. Scholl's Footmapper. It purportedly helps one determine which shoe inserts to buy.

I didn't try it, but it did make me think of shoe store gizmos from before my time that I'd heard of. Fortunately, these quaint foot-cancer-inducing machines are documented on the web.

• Shoe-fitting x-ray machine at the Museum of Quackery.
• Shoe-fitting Fluoroscope at Oak Ridge Associated Universities.

Commerce never rests.

"English is our language. No excetions"

Feedom doesn't come free

News reports on various Tea Party protests show a shockingly high incidence of poor spelling. I give extra points to those doltish nativists demanding an English-only jurisdiction via a marquee with comical errors. Pargon has collected a few illiterate examples in the rollicking Flicker set called Teabonics.

UPDATE April 5: Amercia!

Chihuahua Despair, Akita Devotion

Linda Christian with her green-eyed Chihuahua, from frankphotos.

From the History of Science journal Endeavour comes the paper The nature of suicide: science and the self-destructive animal. It gives examples of reported animal suicide, including these from the 19th century:

• A "a fine, handsome and valuable black dog of the Newfoundland species" that drowned itself in 1845.
  
• A canvasback duck that drowned itself after its mate died.
  
• A cat that hanged itself following the death of its litter.
  
• A horse that jumped into a canal after years of mistreatment.
  
• Dogs that starved themselves on the graves of their masters.

I contribute an anecdote I ran across recently regarding Linda Christian (pictured above): actress, wife of Tyrone Power, and curator of a turbulent personal life:

"June 1964 her pet Chihuahua, jealous over the missing attention he receives over the bullfighters, jumps to his death from her terrace."

Poor grammar, I know, but you understand what the writer's getting at. Jilting a pet is bad enough, but with professional animal torturers?

[Lest this post about Linda Christian's chihuahua be considered just more of the currently fashionable Christian-bashing over "petty gossip," I must admit that the Chihuahua story verges on the sensational.]

On a more positive note, not all tales of the "human fails animal" genre end in suicide: some are uplifting. If you haven't heard of the loyal Hachikō (from which at least two feature films have been made including a recent one by Lasse Hallström), then you may want to read about the touching behavior of this extraordinary Akita.

For the record I prefer dopey but basically sensible larger dogs: herders; hounds; and retrievers, especially Labs. Hardly ever suicidal.

Thanks to Mind Hacks for pointing to the journal article which is informative and thoughtful, and which I am not attempting to do justice.

Beard of Honor

BYU Honor Code Office: What is the process for obtaining a beard exception?

What is that process? Well, to start, collegians-- non-discriminatorily, they do not specify male or female-- you must get a physician involved to sport a beard at BYU.

For those who aren't aware, Brigham Young University (BYU) is a large Mormon institution in Utah -- one of the most Republican states in the USA.

You know what's coming, right? This is a photograph of Mormon leader Brigham Young, after whom the University is named.

Brigham Young Image from Wikipedia.

Maybe Brigham couldn't wrangle the mustache rider to the beard exception.

By the way, Mr. Young had about 55 wives.

Thanks to drgrist

Anti-White Bias

Boooring. Source: Today and Tomorrow.

COME ON PAINT ME WHITE AGAIN, an exchange between UK street artist mobstr and the Newcastle City Council. Click through for the images.

Soundtrack for the Universe

SadTrombone.com is a handy website to have up at nearly any given time. Today, the Republican congressional leadership should have it on an endless loop.

I think Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are hearing a much happier tune.

Happy Tune

I know nothing about this clip other than it's apparently a guitar player from Botswana named Ronnie using an idiosyncratic technique to play a joyous tune.

A new national anthem for Ireland!

Since it's St. Patrick's Day, and since I enjoy a song occasionally, here's a fine suggested anthem for Ireland.

A new national anthem for Ireland!: "Ireland, Ireland!

By ‘The Duckworth Lewis Method’

Ireland, Ireland, damp sod of earth
lost on the surf of the North Atlantic.
Ireland, Ireland, mountains and mist,
Vodka and chips, it’s so romantic."

Continued, and with audio of it sung with gusto, at the link. Not being Irish, I can't suss out what the censored word is.

One Movie I Won't Seek Out

Billy: The Early Years. A Billy Graham biopic directed by Robby Benson. Yes, that Robby Benson. Christianity Today says the screenplay "is full of extremely obvious and heavy-handed moments...."

I would have been disappointed if it weren't.

Stealing the Show

The Adventures of Prince Achmed, 1926. Source: Wikipedia

With tools such as DRM and copy protection, the movie industry is waging an apparently losing battle against film pirates. How long has this fight been going on?

At least since the 1890s:

Film tinting: "The process [of tinting film] began in the 1890s, originally as a copy-guard against film pirates. The film was tinted amber, the color of the safelight on film printers. The discovery of bleaching methods by pirates soon put an end to this."

True Indie Cinema

Preview of "The Family in Which I Live"

The film is based on a true story about the family of Hero Kim Kwang Chol, which works hard to repay the profound loving care and trust shown by General Secretary Kim Jong Il, always enshrining them.

Sun Hui, lead part of the film, becomes a daughter-in-law of the family of Hero Kim Kwang Chol as befitting the heroine who performed feats in the socialist construction site during her maidenhood. She displays sincerity as the wife of an officer and a mother for service persons on the frontline.

During these days she learns from the noble spirit of the Hero's parents and his brothers and the genuine family tradition. She creditably performs her duty like a cooker for the supreme command without expecting any honor.

-- Korea News Service

Photo-thing by Riffle. Explanation here.

Sarcastic Actions

David Letterman interviewed Julianna Margulies, who talked about her early years as a waitress. During the discussion, he said [in paraphrase]:

My friend George Miller would always leave a huge tip even when the service was terrible. I'd say: "The service was awful, why such a large tip?" George said: "I'm being sarcastic."

Made me laugh.

Also reminds me of the prefatory lines of the Rickie Lee Jones song Juke Box Fury:

Polly and I went to the circus
Polly got hit with a rolling pin.
We got even with the circus
We bought tickets but we didn't go in.

Non-verbal sarcasm is even harder to pull off than the usual kind, I suppose.

Confirmatory Graph

What if Canadians synchronized their flushing -- say, by peeing en masse during play breaks in the most watched hockey game in Canadian history?

Edmonton water consumption would look something like the dark line in this graph:
The universe is in order, as Nick Park would acknowledge.

Via Matt Yglesias.

'Pinocchio syndrome': a peculiar form of reflex epilepsy?

Reflex epilepsies can be defined as epilepsies in which all or a significant part of seizures can be regularly provoked by a given triggering factor, most often a sensory stimulus. Sometimes it may be unexpected, such as, reading or decision-making. We report an unusual epilepsy in which seizures occurred when the patient lied.

[....]

As in Collodi's tale, in which lies made Pinocchio's nose grow, our patient's lies became so obvious for his interlocutors. As he was a "eurocrat", using lies to evoke the truth in adversarial EEC negoations, it is thanks to carbamazepine [an anticonvulsant and mood-stabilizer] that he has been able to work again.

--Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry: 1993

As unpleasant as it is for the real subject, this sounds like a comedic premise.

[The linked article is a fairly brief letter to the Journal, and it's not such a tough read.]

Feel-Good Story

AP News: No harm in naked woman tied to tree in Tacoma park

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) -- Several police officers responded to a 911 report of a naked woman tied to a tree in Point Defiance Park in Tacoma.

Spokesman Mark Fulghum (FUL'-jum) told The News Tribune officers talked with the woman and a man Tuesday in the Owen Beach area and determined it was a "consensual rendezvous."

No one was arrested.

That's the full AP story, but I'm sure that's not the full story.

Political Notes

• Mickey Kaus is possibly going to run for Senate against Barbara Boxer. This engenders hilarity. It also gives me the chance to resuscitate the above graphic of Kaus compared to the Secretary of Education character in the movie Idiocracy. Kaus should put this on his campaign literature.
  

• I'm surprised by the recent softening of Tory support in the UK. Electoral Calculus is currently predicting slightly less that a 50% likelihood of a Tory victory. [Electoral Calculus reminds me a bit of Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com here in the US--a site that statistically predicts election outcomes. Nate at FiveThirtyEight.com did statistics for baseball before starting his political site -- did Electoral Calculus start with cricket stats?]. I'm pulling for the Tories to lose, unlike some Obama hands (though I don't trust the Wall Street Journal, it is plausible some signed on with Cameron).

• Evan Bayh was interviewed on Charlie Rose's show tonight. I watched for 10 seconds and thought: this is how the world will end, with one oleaginous tautology trying to out-vapid another; then the singularity.

Refreshing Olympic Spirit

John Shuster:

U.S. curling captain John Shuster stuck out his tongue in the middle of a match and uttered for all to hear on television at home, "I hate this stupid game."

That's the Washington Post. The NY Post quotes him differently:

"I'm sick of this stupid game" Shuster said after the eighth end and stuck his tongue out.

I'm pretty sure the Washington Post is wrong on this. Figures.

DrawMyTweets is drawing Tweets, such as this one: "My friend Dave the Moose was just named North American Moose Lawyer of the Year! He's a sweet guy and a terrific moose lawyer."

Innocent Shams

I'm generally not a huge fan of the Pakistani army, but this (retired) Colonel Innocent Shams seems like a worthy person.

Abseiling down a church tower.

Finding a rare and precious artifact.

If the Pakistani Army keeps arresting Taliban leaders in Pakistan, with or without outside help, I'll be even more well disposed to them. Even if they are not living in the UK and (presumably) Anglican.

It's Very Good

Grampian Horn: Master 5 on Asphalt Flat Roof from Alex Morris on Vimeo.

Lovely. Through and through.

Winter Sports

For someone who doesn't appreciate sports, I've been enjoying my share of the Winter Olympics on US television via NBC. Some tangential thoughts.

1) Identify the following flags (note: some may be flipped, rotated, fabricated, or unkempt):


[* See KEY to flags* below.]

2) Speaking of flags, a high proportion of flags at the Winter games bear crosses (Georgia's has five). Very few winter medal-winners' flags feature other designs such as the crescent, Star of David, or Wheel of Dharma. Deduction: Torture devices of the ancient Romans are important to nations interested in winter sports.

3) Figure skaters (or perhaps judges) seem to think that the music best suited to skating was composed in late 19th Century Russia. (It's not the only era represented, but it's the most likely one.) I'd like to see skating to something by Steve Reich--honestly. Clapping or Drumming or Piano Phase or, if worse comes to worse, Music for 18 Musicians:



4) I enjoy curling, but today I heard a commentator talk about the tremendous conditioning of the curling competitors. Don't bullshit a bullshitter, NBC.

5) In the USA, the tension between physical exuberance versus marketing, cheap myth-making, branding, jingoism, and mush is painful. Someday maybe we'll be able to watch the events we want to watch and not have them packaged by bloodless cynics.

[* KEY to flags: the point of this exercise is that a lot of flags are similar. That's the key.]

Habitina -- For Breakfast!

Habitina was the catchy name for a proprietary concoction, available in USA in the early 1900s, meant to cure opium and morphine addicts. Here's the formula:



With this stuff around, who would need to buy opiates ?

A testimonial (from a trial, not an advertisement):

Mr. W. J. H., Missouri, testified that he purchased Habitina to cure himself of the morphln habit. He Increased from a bottle a week to a bottle a day, and at last ordered six bottles at a time, which the company always sent without question.

Source: Nostrums and quackery , Ed. 2, 1912, by the American Medical Association. Their fuller story about Habitina and its purveyors is most interesting, as are many other parts of this book -- and often entertaining, too. I suppose if I knew more about the history of the AMA fighting other types of medical practitioners, it would be even more illuminating.

Hypnotic -- or worse

Advertisement found in the Eclectic medical gleaner, Vol 2. 1906.

Let's see. Chloral Hydrate and Cannabis and hyoscyamine in one easy-to-abuse elixir. Wonder how many turn-of-the-century Michael Jacksons died from that?

Or Mickey Finns?

Bromidia was still for sale in 1922, when the Journal of the American Medical Association published the case report ACUTE DELIRIUM APPARENTLY DUE TO BROMIDIA POISONING. It begins:

Mrs. R. B., aged 32, white, actress, admitted to the service of Dr. M. H. Bochroch in the psychopathic wards of the Philadelphia General Hospital, June 5, 1922, was unconscious, May 30, when her husband arrived home in the evening. In about ten minutes she revived, and talked rationally. That night she became delirious and talked at random, but had no fever. The next day she imagined that she was receiving electric shocks; she heard voices saying bad things about her, and thought that people were persecuting her father, and also trying to kill her with radio. No visual hallucinations were present. The history was unimportant until December, 1920, when the patient developed a pelvic inflammatory condition. At this time a physician prescribed Bromidia for insomnia. The patient took from one-half to 1 ounce daily of her own accord for nervousness, sleeplessness and pain for eighteen months.

Not sure it's worth paying for the rest of that article, but -- wow.

UPDATE: Another Google Book from the era [Nostrums and quackery from the AMA] lists the ingredients as

Chloral hydrate 15 grains
Potassium bromid 15 grains
Ext. cannabis indica 1/8 grain
hyoscyamus 1/8grain

I'd say Mrs. R. B. wasn't the only delirium sufferer due to this concoction. Libertarians take note: you are denied the opportunity to indulge yourself with Bromidia. Revolt!

Note to Self

Senator Evan Bayh may try to run for something else in the future. The manner in which he announced his retirement yesterday -- making it maximally likely a Republican will replace him -- should be recalled if he ever does so.

The guy is a policy lightweight, none-too-bright, unprincipled, cowardly and generally worthless. The only thing I recall that he's fought for is making it easier for Paris Hilton to inherit more money. Despite this, he bizarrely considers himself a deficit hawk.

If he cashes in and then tries to return to public life, I'll have these notes to refer to.

Oh -- and he's an asshole.

The Early Woody Allen 1952-1971

Photo: Life Magazine

Early Woody Allen: At WFMU's Beware of the Blog, Kliph Nesteroff writes another wonderful post, this time about Woody Allen's early years of writing and performing. It's redolent of the era and full of fascinating tidbits.

For instance, it's common knowledge that Woody wrote for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. But he didn't; Allen only wrote for a Caesar one-off special called The Chevy Show with Sid Caesar, and didn't like working with Sid.

As they say: read the whole thing.

Candide 250

Voltaire's Candide was published 250 years ago. There's a lot of genuinely funny stuff today that isn't as funny as that book.

“Well, my dear Pangloss,” said Candide to him, “when you were hanged, dissected, whipped, and tugging at the oar, did you continue to think that everything in this world happens for the best?” “I have always abided by my first opinion,” answered Pangloss; “for, after all, I am a philosopher, and it would not become me to retract my sentiments; especially as Leibnitz could not be in the wrong: and that pre-established harmony is the finest thing in the world, as well as a plenum and the materia subtilis.”

New York Public Library has exhibits on line (including the 2 minute Candide) and in the Library. [I'd love to see that Fame and Fancy: or Voltaire Improved pseudonymously published in Boston, 1826.]

French-language etexts are available, as are multiple English ones, too. And Kindle. And paper books.

And don't forget Bernstein's charming operetta (with lyrics by a pretty imposing crowd: James Agee, Dorothy Parker, John Latouche, Richard Wilbur, and Lillian Hellman).

Of course, that Lisbon earthquake happened just so Voltaire could get a book out of it. All for the best.

Hey, it's That Guy!

A fine compendium of many well known (make what well seen) character actors. Not sure why Harry Dean Stanton isn't there -- but it's still a stellar list.

Via Roger Ebert.

Meaningless Juxtaposition

Kim statue image from The Telegraph.

Morecambe statue image from Panoramio.

Saw a photo of the Kim Jong-Il statue and it reminded me of the statue of Eric Morecambe.

If only our world had more despots and fewer beloved comedians. Or perhaps a combo.

Kim Jong-Morecambe in bronze by Riffle.

Too Many Elections

Scott Cohen won the Democratic Party slot for Illinois Lieutenant Governor thanks to spending $2 million and to a large field that split the vote in that primary. There was little coverage of his background before the primary.

As it turns out he has what is politely referred to as a checkered past. He apparently raped his ex-wife. Earlier he lived with a prostitute and slashed her with a knife: the charges were dropped because she didn't show up in court. He claims he didn't know she was a prostitute but thought she was a "massage therapist," which is pretty funny because massage therapists require licensure in Illinois and I have a feeling his paramour didn't hold one.

He faces questions about an incredible array of sleazy dealings in this video, and is not only a moral leper but is also very stupid.

The video is stunning.

I am myself my own fever and pain

I attempt from Love's sickness to fly in vain,
Since I am myself my own fever and pain.

No more now, fond heart, with pride no more swell,
Thou canst not raise forces enough to rebel.
I attempt from Love's sickness to fly in vain,
Since I am myself my own fever and pain.

For Love has more power and less mercy than fate,
To make us seek ruin and love those that hate.
I attempt from Love's sickness to fly in vain,
Since I am myself my own fever and pain.

Exploring minor and major tendrils, this smart ca. 1695 setting by Purcell of an evocative John Dryden idea says far more than it should. Young people, listen up!

Emma Kirkby wasn't really a Capital S Singer when she started performing early music. I got the impression she was a very talented amateur who got mixed up with The Taverner Choir and the Consort of Musicke back when "period performance" was looked down upon. She worked hard, exploited her musicality and developed her brilliant voice, and she made this blissful recording and many more.

One of the many characteristics that lured me to early music recordings was the very light (often for instrumentalists, non-existent) vibrato. I hope I never have to listen to vocal wobble again.

If you don't have Kirkby and others singing Abbess Hildegard's "A Feather on the Breath of God" to play on days that require it, you are losing out.

Criterion Out of Print Sale

Criterion Out of Print Sale

Criterion Collection does generally fantastic releases of movies -- excellent prints transferred with great care. I've never seen the movies they release look better than in their editions. They try to keep everything in print, too. Unfortunately it appears that some of the licenses for their great releases are being forcibly transferred and they will have to cut some movies from their catalog. I am particuarly fond of Coup de torchon, based on a pulp novel by weirdo Jim Thompson, but moved from the US West to West Africa by Tavernier; Peeping Tom, a good movie which probably ruined Michael Powell's career; and of course their "Spine Number One,"the masterful Grand Illusion by Renoir.

Criterion really cares about movies: sorry to see them lose these. Thanks to them for notifying viewers and cutting prices on these titles.

Communication Gap

I studied immortal HeLa cells * at university. I knew there was a mystery about their origin, but had no idea anyone involved thought something like this:

We’ve got your wife. She’s alive in a laboratory. We’ve been doing research on her for the last 25 years. And now we have to test your kids to see if they have cancer.

Amazing story. Thanks to Rebecca Skloot for documenting this.

* "Immortal cells" is a misnomer. The cells are mortal, but the cell line appears not to be.

Remark of the Day: UK Division

Heroic Grump

I caught a wonderful line while watching BBC News America's report on the Blair testimony at the Chilcot Inquiry today. Part of the report focused on the protestors outside Parliament, showing video of crowds. The reporter intoned that tempers frayed. Then we see the man pictured above, in queue. He's in his late fifties or sixties I suppose, and proclaimed scornfully in a loud clear voice:

"If you're going to have a police state, at least organise it properly."

It's hard to imagine an American saying that, and it certainly wouldn't be aired as a soundbite on mainstream news. It's Ed Reardon-esque. Lovely.

EDIT: I found this on line. It's about 37 seconds into this video. And spelling corrected in the quote to UK standards.

UPDATE: A kind correspondent has identified the speaker as actor and activist Michael Culver. I can't independently confirm but it certainly does look and sound like him. Well done.

De-Ace What?

The other day I made passing reference to the ubiquity of the plainchant tune Dies Irae.

Ever helpful, the BBC has put together a program discussing the piece on the Radio 3 series Twenty Minutes. It's called Dies Irae: Day of Wrath and offers a decent 1/3 hour overview of a few ways the piece has been used over the centuries. (It also reminded me how thrilling Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique can be.)

The piece should be up on iPlayer soon at this page. The Wikipedia page about Dies Irae has a list of some uses of the tune, too.

Golden Age

Image by Cwluc.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cwluc/
CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

For years we've all watched more and more people texting while walking. But only today did it occur to me: this could make for a golden age of pickpockets.

Note: I am not encouraging anyone to pick pockets or otherwise steal. Especially from me.

Story of the Day

Overweight Woman Sentenced in Boyfriend's 'Sitting' Death:

"'So basically you can say that I can go sit on somebody and get probation?' said one of the victim's sister.

'I feel there wasn't no justice.'"

Indeed. There wasn't no justice.

Hootchy Kootchy Dance

When I was a kid, our neighborhood's lyric for that tune snippet was:

There's a place in France
Where the belly dancers dance.

Turns out that melody, with countless variant lyrics, has been recycled almost as much as Dies Irae. It's known by "Hootchy Kootchy Dance," "The Streets of Cairo," "The Girls in France" and many other titles, and has an unusual history. As Wikipedia puts it:

The song originally was purportedly written by Sol Bloom, a showman (and later, a U.S. Congressman) who was the entertainment director of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. It included an attraction called "A Street in Cairo" produced by Gaston Akoun, which featured snake charmers, camel rides and a scandalous dancer known as Little Egypt.

Bloom didn't (or couldn't?) copyright it and the phrase was repurposed for stage bits -- and later cartoon and silent movie scenes--with "Eastern" themes. Cecil Adams has written a typically informative and entertaining description of the tune's origins, but I read about the song in the book The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, which largely concerns the bizarre and astounding murder spree by H. H. Holmes.

Interesting to see that the tune's author, Sol Bloom, later became a politician. The most famous song attributed to a politician has to be"You Are My Sunshine," by Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis. However, for decades many have believed that Davis didn't write the song but basically paid a pittance for the rights. That appears to be the case, though Davis probably didn't even pay the correct author for those rights.

Bitter Flavor, Arabic Division

I'm exasperated at how cowardly the Democrats are now that they have only the second largest Senate majority in decades. Rather than fight fake populism with real populism, they apparently have chosen to fold.

November will be dire.

I've been drowning my sorrows in artificial bourbon flavoring and artificial tequila flavoring and artificial alcohol burn flavor (I can only imagine...), and other fake alcoholic beverage flavors available at the link -- without alcohol. Same acrid taste -- without intoxication!

I find it ironic that the word "alcohol" is derived from Arabic. It seems a lot of words that begin with "al-" (along with non al- words) have their origins in Arabic: algebra, alkali, alchemy, alcove, albatross, and many others. One of history's little quirks.

I'm fighting the political gloom. Soon I will be be happier, I think, after avoiding political coverage for a while by watching the TV series Friday Night Lights (which I was swayed to watch by a Brit). Good so far, amazingly.

For some reason, Mobile Phone by Kevin Eldon and the Cassettes has again cheered me up a bit. Must be that nearly eight-bit wall of sound. I hope these things elevate your mood, too.

More Flavoring

The Massachusetts Senate loss is still making me very unhappy. But my hard-hitting report yesterday about bourbon flavor set me to look for some other odd flavorings.

Cucumber flavored Pepsi.
Imitation Surimi Baby Eels
Dr. Brown's Celery Soda
Octopus Flavored Chips
Beef Tongue Ice Cream

The tongue-tasting-Tongue loop has been examined before, I'm sure. And this list reminds us that, as the story at the last link puts it when a Japanese person spoke about his countrymen: "'We like strange-tasting food,' said Keiko Hashiya." Strange food can always be found in Japan.

Also, here are miscellaneous flavors from this list at GBS Flavor Creators:
Natural Carrot Flavor
Cloudifier
Artificial Sour Cream Flavor
Artificial Crème Brulee Flavor
Artificial Ginseng Flavor
Natural Paw Paw Type Flavor
Natural Rocky Road Type Flavor
Natural & Artificial Fried Green Tomato Flavor

And finally, on that BGS Flavor Creators list, we wind up where we were yesterday:
Natural Bourbon Whiskey Type Flavor

Still a bad idea.

NOTE: In recent years, some companies -- especially smaller soda bottling companies -- have been putting out flavors just as gimmicks. The prime example is probably Turkey and Gravy soda from Jones Soda Co. Gimmicks qua gimmicks are sad.

Flavoring

That Massachusetts Senate race loss really sucks. What a terrible candidate Coakley was. She was like bourbon flavoring.

Why did that come to mind, you ask?

From an interview with Snuffy Walden, who has written music for countless TV shows and movies:

I used to play in a strip joint called "The Cellar", where they sold fake booze. If you ordered a bourbon and Coke, they would bring a Coke with bourbon flavoring.

I suppose the attractions at a strip club are not really the drinks, but it seems like even those customers would get wise eventually. Especially since the drinks were not cheap, I presume.

Seriously, bourbon flavoring? What an awful idea.

Cussing Objects

"Cuss" graffitti from Fantastic Mr. Fox,
ineptly highlighted by me.

2010 has made me think that the Y2K bug did indeed hit -- just a decade too late. In the past couple weeks computers have rebelled, devices have failed. Even Fire, The Lever, and The Wheel have forsaken me. Perhaps I'm reliving this Woody Allen monologue.

I couldn't make a proper "Best of" list of movies for 2009. But before we slip into February and the endeavor becomes even more ridiculous, I thought I'd record a few that made an impression:

• A Serious Man: God is Great-- a great big pain in the ass.
  
• Hunger: Well modulated misery.
  
• An Education: I feel pretty ... unsophisticated.
  
• The Hurt Locker: War pros.
  
• Inglorious Basterds: Movies killed the Nazis.
  
• Up: Elegiac and giddy.
  
• In the Loop: Mustelidocracy
• Fantastic Mr. Fox: Wes didn't screw it up, for once.
• Goodbye Solo: Drama is not dead.
  

Things should pick up around here. If my devices have ceased failing.

Crazy Country

The invaluable Dave Weigel at the Washington Independent spotted someone selling The Sarah Palin Embryo Ornament.

Ten dollars plus shipping. What a crazy country.

Entirely unrelated: What girlfriends and boyfriends search for on Google.

Old Dogs

Illustration from Historiae Animalium (1551-1558) by Conrad Gesner.

The National Library of Medicine has released, as part of a larger project, scans of scientific books from the 15th and 16th centuries. They display them in virtual book form so you can flip through them (with a docent providing audio on some pages), and major illustrations are offered up separately in large jpgs.

Classic books by Gesner (above), Paré, Vesalius, and the spectacular illustrations from Robert Hooke's Micrographia appear. Lovely.

Hard Talk

The Economist skillfully draws a fascinating article out of a dorm bull-session topic: What is the most difficult language? For instance, one paragraph:

For sound complexity, one language stands out. !Xóõ, spoken by just a few thousand, mostly in Botswana, has a blistering array of unusual sounds. Its vowels include plain, pharyngealised, strident and breathy, and they carry four tones. It has five basic clicks and 17 accompanying ones. The leading expert on the !Xóõ, Tony Traill, developed a lump on his larynx from learning to make their sounds. Further research showed that adult !Xóõ-speakers had the same lump (children had not developed it yet).

I guess all those diacritical marks bruise the larynx when they bump by.

That's not the end of the article -- while the sounds are difficult, the sentence structure of !Xóõ apparently isn't.

I propose we cross the sounds of !Xóõ with the grammar, lexicology, syntax, and semantics of Tuyuca and create a language that most humans could never hope to speak, even if inculcated from birth.

PS: This is not a new observation, but Mark Twain wrote something clever about nearly every topic that matters.

Slow into 2010. With bells on.

I'm slowly sliding into this year. Here's a tidbit from the (very enjoyable) 1998 BBC production of Vanity Fair. A busker, presumably Belgian, performing Rule Britannia on Almglocken (tuned alpine bells).



If you'd like a set of your own, you may purchase one for a few hundred dollars.

If you'd prefer something more substantial, here is a limestone xylophone.



Actually the "xylo" in xylophone means "wood," so this is a lithophone. You're on your own finding a vendor.

Correct Noun Please

No, no no. You're not in the way.

Telegraph.co.uk: Police hunt supermarket bottom sniffer. [Video available at link: it's creepy.]

The man was caught on CCTV creeping up on the unsuspecting worker at least 20 times as he stacked shelves at a Co-op store in Plymouth, Devon. The footage shows him casually pretending to chose items from shelves before suddenly crouching down behind the employee.

In general, his behavior is one of the class of paraphilias, a list of which is on Wikipedia. If he were rubbing non-consensually, that would be frotteurism--but he's not rubbing. Flatulophilia doesn''t seem right. Olfactophilia doesn't either.

What's a classically derived term for butt-sniffing?

Noun please!

Christmas

I realize that, as an American liberal, I'm supposed to hate Christmas and want to wage war on and defile it. But, of course, I don't hate Christmas Day.

I do feel that pseudo-celebrating it for a month and more is ridiculous.

I live near a lot of Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Animists, Hindus, and non-believers as well as Christians. So I say "Happy Holidays" to people I meet unless I'm sure they celebrate Christmas. Except on December 25, when I will even wish those of other faiths a Merry Christmas, since on that day and that day only it actually is Christmas.

With that in mind, here a few tunes for the season. Joseph Spence is a Bahamian fingerstyle guitarist who inspired quite a few well known players, including Ry Cooder. Someone put up Spence's version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town with a hissy transfer, some misspellings in the video text, and a few other issues. But, c'mon, it's the kickiest version of this song you're ever going to hear.



This isn't a Christmas song, but for some reason I thought about it while gift shopping and it seems to fit the holiday. It's a catchy 1975 recording of postal workers at the University of Ghana post office cancelling stamps to a little melody they came up with. WFMU has a bit about it and there's more info about it here at Oddio Overplay.



Finally, a Tom Waits song from way back when. Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis.


Merry Christmas to you all.

A Serious Side to Nostalgia

Nowadays nostalgia is a paltry thing. TV, notoriously, builds itself on nostalgia for incidents that happened just a moment ago. In commerce, nostalgia moves product, while harkening back to a time when "product" referred mainly to the result of mathematical multiplication.

Oh, how I long for the days when nostalgia had force. During the American Civil War, "both physicians and laypeople viewed nostalgia ... as a deadly disease that might kill a man outright." Modern psychiatrists have contextualized it a bit:

In the official military medical history of that war, just one page is devoted to “homesickness,” a diagnosis that he said probably equates to major depression. Severe cases were termed“ nostalgia,” characterized by disturbed sleep, poor eating, and erratic behavior and that sometimes resulted in death. The only cure, said the doctors, was to send the unfortunate soldier home.

There are thousands of cases of nostalgia as a horribly debilitating physical condition recorded in the medical records of Union troops.

Nostalgia has a history that stretches back further, as the term was coined in Switzerland in the late 17th Century. Since there were so many Swiss mercenaries, there were lots of them to exhibit this "homesickness," as they thought it was then. "Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote in his 1768 Dictionnaire de la musique that it was forbidden to sing a ranz des vaches [a herdsman's song] near Swiss soldiers in foreign services, because they became homesick [nostalgic] and risked to die."

Then the concept of nostalgia splits into many war-borne shrapnel splinters (shell shock, battle fatigue, PTSD, depression, abjectness) and the name "nostalgia" into moods (Alpine tourism, Romanticism, longing for the detritus of youth, and enthusiasm among the aging for having "those damned kids endure the stultifying mores we grew up with") that evoke what we now consider nostalgia.

It's a fascinating topic and quite a serious one.

To make it all a bit less serious, I should point out that the Titan of misapplied nostalgia, Count Arthur Strong, begins a new series of his towering wireless program Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show! this Friday on BBC Radio 4. I generally don't exuberate over character comedy (a loose category, anyway), but Count Arthur always finds a way to make me laugh. I hope he has a few more good series in him, since the sitcom end of the writing has created a well-populated comic world for Arthur to ricochet around. I'll be listening.

Short to Long

A few things I've found funny recently (in one meaning of "funny" or another), from short to long.

• "Dexter" is Latin for right (as in right-handed). By a touch typist on a normal QWERTY keyboard, it's typed solely with left-hand keys.

• Humorous biography of Terry Gilliam written by Michael Palin, from the press kit for Brazil. Excerpt:

“Brazil,” as the result was eventually known, is the first film to have a country named after it. It’s bound to arouse strong feelings. But Gilliam is no stranger to controversy — he once took a melon back to a shop — and in his characteristic way he’s ready for anything.

• Andy Kindler, ace stand-up comedian, penned a piece about starting out in hack comedy for National Lampoon in 1991 which he reproduces on his website. It's called The Hack's Handbook: A Starter Kit. Funny 'cause it's true, and the dated references make it even truer.

• William Blades (1824-1890), publisher and book-lover, wrote an excellent book called The Enemies of Books, first published in 1881. It's available as an etext at the University of Virginia: The Enemies of Books. Enormously witty and informative, it includes chapters on water; gas and heat; ignorance and bigotry; vermin, and more. For example, from the "Fire" chapter:

  Books in those early times, whether orthodox or heterodox, appear to have had a precarious existence. The heathens at each fresh outbreak of persecution burnt all the Christian writings they could find, and the Christians, when they got the upper hand, retaliated with interest upon the pagan literature. The Mohammedan reason for destroying books -- ``If they contain what is in the Koran they are superfluous, and if they contain anything opposed to it they are immoral,'' seems, indeed, mutatis mutandis, to have been the general rule for all such devastators.

Vermin, a plate from The Enemies of Books.

Painting Pictures

Norman Rockwell, who is often close to kitsch but undoubtedly skilled (and appraisal of whom yo-yos quite a bit) painted from photographs of posed models. PDN Photo of the Day has collected a few of these and some of the consequent illustrations. It's a pleasure to see what Rockwell did with them.

Some commenters seem to think using photos is somehow cheating. Hrmph. Few would deny that Gerhard Richter makes high art, and many of his amazing paintings use photos as source material or even as substrate. I love much of his stuff and it can't even begin to be represented on the web. Get thee to a gallery!

An Interesting Life

There's one person who performed in-studio during the same TV program on which the Sex Pistols made their first TV appearance; appeared in the West End production of an early Andrew Lloyd Webber musical; had a role in one of the superior comedy movies of the 20th century; married a great UK comic writer/performer; and is now mayor of a town in the UK.

Who is it? Spoiler below.

It's Sue Jones-Davies. She was a member of the Bowles Rrothers Band, which performed on the same 1976 episode of Tony Wilson's So It Goes as the first Sex Pistols TV appearance. She appeared in Jesus Christ Superstar in London in the seventies. She played Judith Iscariot in Monty Python's Life of Brian. She married Chris Langham. She's mayor of Aberystwyth, in which The Life of Brian was presumed to have been banned (though it probably wasn't in actuality). She "lifted the ban" and had a special showing in 2009.

I bet there are a lot of good stories to be told by this person.

Don't Understand the Hype!

A correction at washingtonpost.com: "A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number."

Haggis and the Taliban

Limited exposure to Scottish TV programming hadn't left me wanting much more. What's that you say? ... A program about Scottish history? How many massacres and clearances and tartans can I stomach? Then a Glaswegian with sinusitis will show up and I can't understand the dialogue. Then I get skull-punched in the nose, breaking my septum -- and they call it a kiss. With such trepidation I started watching Neil Oliver's A History of Scotland.

What a great series. As television about history it was excellent: clear but not condescending; balancing anecdotes of instructive individuals with larger social themes; beautifully photographed; wonderfully written for TV. Even the re-enactment scenes -- in other programs frequently over-extended and wretchedly executed to a comical degree -- were brief, unvoiced, striking, and elliptically evocative rather than bludgeoning.

Oliver, an archaeologist and not a historian, has been bashed by some for the series. But his scripted narration was stellar: about as engaging and informative as one gets in historical TV, with many amusing turns of phrase.

I am unencumbered by a great knowledge of Scottish history. But the parts I know a bit about were featured in recent episodes (The Covenenters, dealt with in Episode 6: God's Chosen People; and the Scottish tobacco trade's influence on American independence, Episode 8: The Price of Progress), and they were deftly and accurately sketched. Many Americans would have their eyes opened by The Price of Progress, with Scottish mercantilism, colonial slavery, and Adam Smith's ideas examined as well as tobacco and the American colonies. For me it was the richest episode so far, using disparate personal stories to illuminate some huge historical themes and an important time in the history of ideas.

Oliver has an easier task than English history documentarians. Their past has been so picked over that I expect at some point to see a BBC program about the Greatest Fourteen Seconds of the Most Important 9 Cubic Inches in British History, as if Nicholson Baker got a commission. But Oliver has done the larger history well. Thus we have a pudding in which the proof is ... excellent, to my taste.

Covering nearly two millenia in ten episodes is going to leave a lot out. Still, perhaps Highland Scots deserved more time, though I'm sure that there would have been complaints about any depiction of their tribalism. I've also seen grumbling that the series was too anglocentric, but to me that's pretty thin: Scotland's history has for centuries been intertwined with that of England. Perhaps more could have been done with the Edinburgh enlightenment -- covered almost solely (so far) by a considered treatment of Adam Smith.

[Let's pause to thank Presbyterians for making literacy so important. I heard someone compare the Covenenters to Taliban recently, and I nearly plotzed. If the Covenenters ran Afghanistan, Pashtun in great numbers would be able to read and write, instead of having only a surname they couldn't identify in script or print.]

The last episode is this Sunday. I'll be sad to see it go. If you have any interest in history or even in popular depictions of history, perhaps you should watch it.

Oil Rags and Reality

1) I always presumed that the flavoring agent in Earl Grey tea was bergamot oil, from the mint-like herb (it has square stems like mint!) bergamot. But no, it's oil from the peel of the bergamot orange.

2) Reality TV is no longer just cancer on television; it has become a cancer on reality.

3) William Bolcom is a serious classical composer, with many suites, sonatas, symphonies, and other concert hall works to his name, but he also writes contemporary rags. I've found passable versions of two of my favorites on YouTube.

Graceful Ghost is one of the saddest and most beautiful of all rags--right up there with Joplin's Bethena. Here it's performed sensitively (if a bit poorly miked) by Megan Mui.



Another of Bolcom's Ghost Rags is Poltergeist, which is altogether more rambunctious-- particularly in the middle section when the ghost starts throwing the crystal around. Played by Olivier Cazal.



I believe both of these tunes were published in 1978. Bolcom's excellent old recording called Heliotrope Bouquet is out of print, but both these rags performed by the composer are on Bolcom's Complete Rags as well as various collections (Richard Dowling does a great job with Graceful Ghost).

Bolcom has also written what must be the funniest contemporary classical cabaret tune (faint praise, I know, but it's clever): Amor with lyrics by Arnold Weinstein.

What is this Watch Device?

Those are watches in there. But it's not a watch case.

What is that contrivance pictured above? It's not, strictly speaking, a watch case. It costs about 3,000 dollars. Ideal Christmas present for some hateful person.

Give up?

It's a watchwinder. For those who have more than one of those very expensive watches that wind with arm motion. With this implment you can keep them wound, since setting the pricier models is extremely difficult if they run down. [I actually don't mind self-winding watches, at least the cheaper sort which are easily set. But this device isn't for those.]

I particularly enjoy the fact that the device has: "Lighted LED digital displays are provided for extremely accurate quartz-based 12-hour time (AM and PM) and the turns per day indicators...." While you won't have to set your watch as often, you will have to set the quartz-based LED-signalled timer of your watch winder.

I thought of it thanks to this disquisition, though the watch winder described there is a bit different -- and it sounds as though it's more comical. The writer has a larger point to make, and to me it was worth a read.