Thursday, January 27, 2011
SisyphOffice
I've got to stop the boulders from rolling back into my uhhhmmmm office(?). Hey! It has a desk (somewhere there) and a chair and a PC, so yeah, it's an office.
Barely.
The Ever-Loving Wife has "volunteered" her organizational skills and her incredible File 13 abilities. Let's see what a month (or two) will bring.
...well, it seems like I'm not the only guy in need of de-cluttering. Here's Barnaby Conrad, at home in Cupertino, CA. Too busy writing, I guess.
Labels: Promises
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Lucy's Ghost Invades Sportswriter's Soul
-From "The Sporting Scene " in this week's The New Yorker.
Dave Zirin must have been hitting the ol' Vitameatavegamin.
Labels: The Sporting Thing
Monday, January 24, 2011
Bloody Harvesting
I'd heard about this a while back from a cousin in the Old Country but, foolishly, put it in the Vicious Rumour bin as it had a taste of old Yugoslavia nastiness. I once had disbelieved him about this as well only to find out it was definitely true.
No matter how ridiculous or out the realm of possible human behaviour it sounds, when it comes to the happenings around the Old Country, I should simply nod and accept the truth of it. The details, as far as the West is concerned, will eventually come out.
Still...harvesting the organs of your enemy is beyond the cruel and the macabre.
No matter how ridiculous or out the realm of possible human behaviour it sounds, when it comes to the happenings around the Old Country, I should simply nod and accept the truth of it. The details, as far as the West is concerned, will eventually come out.
Still...harvesting the organs of your enemy is beyond the cruel and the macabre.
Labels: 2011-Peaking Over the Mole Hill, Former Yugoslavia
Going for Seven.
The Steelers are in. The Feb 6th game against the Packers should be a good one, a departure from the majority of Super Bowls when the best games played were the playoff ones to get to the Big Game. This will be a chance for Pittsburgh to get their 7th Super Bowl ring....
...for those counting, the Iggles are still dreaming of Ring #1.
And this is all good for Pittsburgh, a truly beautiful American city. Don't beleive me?
Check out these great panorama shots taken by the Pittsbugh Post-Gazette's Steve Mellon.
Last night prior to the Jets-Steelers game, on the water. (click on the button to enlarge the screen and then "arrow" yourself around. A beautiful (freezing) night in the 'Burgh.
..and if that was interesting for you, there's Mr. Mellon's views of:
The Andy Warhol Museum
St Nicolas Croatian Catholic Church (my favorite of Mr. Mellon's pictures)
U of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning
Carnegie-Mellon University's College of Arts
Anything that Floats Race on the North Shore
St Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church (version# 2)
Kennywood Park, site of the must-see film Adventureland.
More there if you care to spend your free time. But, seriously folks, you've got to get to the 'Burgh to see all of the places in person.
...for those counting, the Iggles are still dreaming of Ring #1.
And this is all good for Pittsburgh, a truly beautiful American city. Don't beleive me?
Check out these great panorama shots taken by the Pittsbugh Post-Gazette's Steve Mellon.
Last night prior to the Jets-Steelers game, on the water. (click on the button to enlarge the screen and then "arrow" yourself around. A beautiful (freezing) night in the 'Burgh.
..and if that was interesting for you, there's Mr. Mellon's views of:
The Andy Warhol Museum
St Nicolas Croatian Catholic Church (my favorite of Mr. Mellon's pictures)
U of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning
Carnegie-Mellon University's College of Arts
Anything that Floats Race on the North Shore
St Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church (version# 2)
Kennywood Park, site of the must-see film Adventureland.
More there if you care to spend your free time. But, seriously folks, you've got to get to the 'Burgh to see all of the places in person.
Labels: Pittsburgh
Sunday, January 23, 2011
All Kinds of "Woman"s
...there's Roy Orbison and some famous friends with his "Pretty Woman"....
..and there's Saad Haroon with his "Burka Woman" (I'm supposing he can't say "pretty" due to heavy veil-age....
Labels: 2011-Peaking Over the Mole Hill
Friday, January 21, 2011
Unhappy Hipsters...Doing One Line Comedy for Those of Us On the Sidelines of Modern Life
(Photo: Eirick Johnson; Dwell)
From this excellent site, Unhappy Hipsters. NSFW, as you may spit out your coffee on your flat screen, causing it to smoke thereby drawing attention to the fact that you may be enjoying yourself @ work.
TOTH to Execupundit for pointing out this daily treasure.
Labels: Blogs
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
I'm Trying to Friend On Facebook, Specifically...
Chaser is familiar with 1,022 nouns. That's like more than enough words to have a conversation with me on most days and, being of Slavic origin, nouns is all I need to converse. Verbs are better expressed through hand gestures anyway. With Chaser, I won't have any issues of getting in my opinion edgewise. Plus, if there's a disagreement, she would simply lick my face and we'd be best buds again.
....although, Chaser may tilt her head and give me the quizzical look that I get from certain folks, like the Ever Loving Wife, when nouns come spilling out my mouth with no topic to seek purchase of.
Wonder if Chaser is familiar with the expression, "Hmmmmmm"
Labels: 2011-Peaking Over the Mole Hill
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Thank You Michael Chabon.
I thought I was being churlish, curmudgeon-like, lacking in empathy....
...and then this write-up in the Atlantic from Mr. Chabon (Tip of the Hat to Michael Schaum over at Bookslut for pointing this article out!).
If I may...
" Obama was figuring himself (extraordinarily, I think) not as the Great Father but, more messily and searchingly, as an imperfectly lowercase father, "shaken from [his] routines ... forced to look inward," struggling in the wake of calamity to reclaim and to strive to measure up to a set of principles the burden of whose observance falls so unevenly on the narrow shoulders of the young. He was, at that moment, talking directly to me.
And yet ... Was it all the weird, inappropriate clapping and cheering? Or the realization that I am so out of touch with the national vibe that I didn't know that whistling and whooping and standing ovations are, when someone evokes the memory of murdered innocent people, totally cool? I never would have thought that I'd spend so much of that solemn Wednesday thinking—first on publication of Sarah Palin's latest piece of narrishkeit about the blood libels, then all through the memorial service—please, I beg you, can you not, finally, just shut up? It was distancing. Distracting. As he joined in, at times, with the applause, the president's hard, measured handclaps, too close to the microphone, drowned out everything else in my kitchen right then, and seemed to be tolling the passing of something else besides human lives. I don't know what. Maybe just my own sense of connectedness to the cheering people in that giant faraway room. I didn't feel like applauding right then, not even in celebration of the persistence and continuity of human life and American values. And then I was ashamed of my curmudgeonliness. Those people, after all, many of them college students, were in a sports arena; architecture gives shape to behavior and thought. Maybe if the service had been held in a church, things would have played differently."
The speech and President Obama's delivery was superb and without the spectre of a vulture at a tragedy. I'll go along with Mr. Chabon and blame the venue for the reaction; buildings can take the heat.
...and then this write-up in the Atlantic from Mr. Chabon (Tip of the Hat to Michael Schaum over at Bookslut for pointing this article out!).
If I may...
" Obama was figuring himself (extraordinarily, I think) not as the Great Father but, more messily and searchingly, as an imperfectly lowercase father, "shaken from [his] routines ... forced to look inward," struggling in the wake of calamity to reclaim and to strive to measure up to a set of principles the burden of whose observance falls so unevenly on the narrow shoulders of the young. He was, at that moment, talking directly to me.
And yet ... Was it all the weird, inappropriate clapping and cheering? Or the realization that I am so out of touch with the national vibe that I didn't know that whistling and whooping and standing ovations are, when someone evokes the memory of murdered innocent people, totally cool? I never would have thought that I'd spend so much of that solemn Wednesday thinking—first on publication of Sarah Palin's latest piece of narrishkeit about the blood libels, then all through the memorial service—please, I beg you, can you not, finally, just shut up? It was distancing. Distracting. As he joined in, at times, with the applause, the president's hard, measured handclaps, too close to the microphone, drowned out everything else in my kitchen right then, and seemed to be tolling the passing of something else besides human lives. I don't know what. Maybe just my own sense of connectedness to the cheering people in that giant faraway room. I didn't feel like applauding right then, not even in celebration of the persistence and continuity of human life and American values. And then I was ashamed of my curmudgeonliness. Those people, after all, many of them college students, were in a sports arena; architecture gives shape to behavior and thought. Maybe if the service had been held in a church, things would have played differently."
The speech and President Obama's delivery was superb and without the spectre of a vulture at a tragedy. I'll go along with Mr. Chabon and blame the venue for the reaction; buildings can take the heat.
Labels: 2011-Peaking Over the Mole Hill
Friday, January 14, 2011
Whatcha doin' on Sunday, from 9:00 in the A.M. (EST) until Noon?
Hope to catch you listening!
For those not in the immediate radio wave reception area (which would probably be the majority of the visitors here), you can tune in via the Internet using this link. Hope you join in on the calamities sure to abound.
Labels: Morning After, WVUD 91.3
Monday, January 10, 2011
Twain & Richards - Two Most Enjoyable Blokes
No, it's not that I've gone to the mattresses, although some mattress time does explain where I've been.
Apologies to my faithful visitors who've come here to find....Nothing. I've been ensconced with two massive tomes, autobiographies (or allegedly so, both).
One is from the man of whom it was written that the report of his death was exaggerated. The other is from a man whose death seems both inevitable and impossible.
Like other folks, I tend to keep a pile of books at the ready when insight, relief, or a touch of the mad is necessary to make it through the day/night. I can't recall the last time that I've enjoyed two books as much simultaneously. I won't be comparing the two now nor ever in the future. It was simply a bit of Kismet that they arrived so close to each other (one from that venial sin of self-choosing, the other from an act of Christmas charity from the Ever Loving Wife). The only similarity I can dare venture at this point is the minute detail of information provided by both authors (never thought I'd use that word with Mr. Richards). How both can recall so much, specifically the miraculously still living and breathing Keith Richards, is amazing. Granted, both are probably using the writing license to "extend" facts where story/recollection demands a bit of terra firma, with Mr. Richards' memories culled from a brain that's been taxed to the max with pleasures of the mind-bending sort.
Sometimes, switching from one to the other was like jumping from a train going south to one going north. Other times, it was like being a passenger on the same train that suddenly changed from a steam locomotive to a Shinkansen. It's not as if I needed one book to keep the other interesting; both stand up well by themselves. It's simply that the pure luck of having both available and open at the same time has put a kick start into reading for 2010.
Get on Board!
Labels: Reviews
