Foreshadowing the Weekend

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There is 150 feet of 1″ manila rope in a box in our entry way, a slingshot in the basement, a roll of yellow poly twine on our kitchen counter, and a heavy bolt or nut somewhere on the premises.

There are two size #3 soccer balls in a bag in the entry way.

In the basement, there are a number of unused toys stored in shelves in the back room.

In the back of a small theater in Little 5 Points, there is a play-board with one more show left in it.

In the backyard, there are a number of left-over fence stakes still staked in the ground.

There are squeaky doors leading to the bedrooms of children, and a can of WD40 in the garage.

These material items form a map of my weekend to come.

Book Log – Emma

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Emma by Jane Austen

“That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”
~ Emma Woodhouse

“You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones.”
~ Emma Woodhouse.

I think the strongest effect of having read this novel is a strong desire to watch Clueless again. I had forgotten that Emma was the source material for the movie, and I found it very entertaining to consider the particulars of the adaptations made from one to the other. All in all, I believe I’m fairly impressed with the translation.

The second strongest effect is that I really want to incorporate the phrase to own the truth into my conversation.

The third strongest effect is that the concept of overt and formal class distinctions is jarring.

The fourth is that this is a amusing read of a very foreign culture.

Book Log – Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

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Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

The second illustrated autobiography of a unusual childhood I’ve read this year, Fun Home is a humor and sorrow filled read. Bechdel, author of the popular Dykes To Watch Out For comic, is extremely adept at creating a mood and atmosphere. The downside is that it’s a melancholy mood that lingers long after you’ve put the book down, but while you’re reading it, it is terribly engrossing.

This is basically the story of Bechdel’s family as affected by the distant and troubled father. There are many parallels drawn between their lives and the classic literature her father obsessively reads. If nothing else, I am left with a feeling of inferiority in my aptitude for literary analysis.

Extremely well drawn, extremely well told.

Accomplishment, Thy Name is This Past Weekend

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Man, I’ve got an accomplishment buzz.

The garage? I went medieval on the garage.

Things I cleared out or quarantined for disposal:

– The desiccated corpse of a rat
– 5 Advanced D&D Dungeon Master Guides, 2 Fiend Folios, 3 years worth of Dragon Magazine, 4 AD&D Player’s Manuals, Basic D&D sets 1, 2 and 3, and an inch worth of paper comprising characters and hand made, graph-paper dungeon maps made in the early to mid 80’s, various non-D&D RPG paraphernalia (Paranoia, Gamma World, Twilight 2000)1
– A dozen comics compilations: B.C., Heathcliff, Garfield, and others I don’t even recognize anymore
– The dredges of my grandmother’s Sci-Fi paperback collection
– My college footlocker, complete with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off sticker

Things discovered and not thrown out:

– Wedding dress (worn once)
– Wedding night nightgown (worn once)
– 6 jillion Georgia Shakespeare sweatshirts
– a 3 gallon bucket filled with crayons (needs to be returned to Imagine It! Children’s Museum)

There’s a wheelbarrow with Tools With No Home that will require some shelving, and a 5×8 foot area full of stuff that needs to be 1-800-GotJunk’d, but otherwise it’s a work of art.

steakums unloaded 3 garbage bags full of baby girl clothes off on two friends expecting 3 girls between them.

I cleared off 4 or 5 shelves of books in our IKEA IVAR shelving to make room for putting our computer center there, and making the kitchen eating area free of computer desk induced clutter.

Most of the books will be put up for sale in our planned May 24th yard sale, and those that don’t go then will be paperbackswap’d or trashed.

If we can keep up the momentum, we’ll be clutter-free in no time. Or rather, 5 or 6 weeks. Which is no time on the geologic scale.

_______________
1 Lest you think I bought all these, they came out of a bunch of boxes that belong to my brother that he left when he moved out. By the look of things, all of his friends left their D&D and other gaming stuff to him, probably when they were de-cluttering.

The steady drip… drip… drip… of a book

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I came across DailyLit via unclutterer.com.

Essentially, you can buy an e-book (looks like they’re around $5), but it comes to you in little email installments, at a frequency you set. This is for people who don’t have time to read a book, but do read lots of email everyday. You almost fool yourself into reading a book.

The catch seems to be that they don’t have much in the way of selection, only about 750 titles available. But, you could knock out one of the 422 public domain classics for free.

Book Log – Please, Mr. Einstein (abandoned)

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Please, Mr. Einstein by Jean-Claude Carriere (abandoned)

This was a book I put on my wishlist, though I can’t remember why, now. A recommendation from someone? Dunno.

And someone got it for me for Xmas. Which really makes me want to read it and enjoy it, because I said I wanted it through my wishlist. The thing about asking for something for Xmas is that while people sometimes feel a little uncreative for resorting to what you asked for instead of surprising you with something you didn’t even know you wanted, they get the consolation of being “guaranteed” to have gotten you something you will enjoy. Boy, that’s a convoluted sentence.

At any rate, I didn’t enjoy this book. So much so, I just can’t finish it. I sloughed through 2/3s of it… that’s all I can handle.

The premise is, a young, nondescript girl from modern day walks into an office because she somehow knows that Albert Einstein will be there. There is a waiting room, filled with folks like Isaac Newton, all waiting to see Einstein. The girl gets in, and Einstein talks about his theories with her. He can open doors, and they walk into different parts of space-time. There is no explanation (though the girl wonders at how this could all be), it is just a convention we accept for the purposes of allowing Einstein to describe his theories to us, and some of his feelings on political situations and results of his theories.

Basically, it’s dumb. And annoying. And not very interesting.

It was done much better (though not great) in the 1982 play Insignificance by Terry Johnson, with the bonus that that play also includes Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Joseph McCarthy as characters. Also, it’s kind of funny.

Book Log – Leave It To Psmith

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Leave It To Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse

Another much appreciated loan from curt_holman, this was both the final Psmith novel chronologically and the last one left for me to read.

I stumbled across a very good Wodehouse book chronology, which clears up some confusion I had in titles…

1909: Mike: A Public School Story, a two part novel, the first later revised and published as Mike at Wrykyn and the second revised and published twice as Enter Psmith and Mike and Psmith.
1910: Psmith in the City
1915: Psmith, Journalist
1915: Something Fresh (in the U.S., Something New), not a Psmith story, but the original story taking place in Blandings Castle, the setting for…
1923: Leave It To Psmith

I read on a website that Leave It is not on Project Gutenberg because, due to its later publishing date, it is somehow included in the extended copyright as fallout from the “Disney rat” copyright extension stuff that went on.

Were I an English major or some such thing, I might take the time to track recurring plot elements in stories such as flowerpots, stolen valuables, obnoxious poets, etc. in all Wodehouse’s works. You could probably set up a family tree and track the mix and match use of such things through the stories.

The first Jeeves and Wooster book of short stories was published in 1919, I believe from a series of magazine columns. In a way, I imagine Wodehouse taking the Psmith character, who begins as a member of the idle rich and ends as a gentleman’s personal secretary, and splitting him in two: Jeeves the gentleman’s personal gentleman taking the impeccable style and high intelligence, and Wooster the idle gentleman taking a propensity to talk incessantly and turn a nice phrase.

An excerpt, dialog between Psmith and his fiance Eve, shortly after becoming engaged:

[Eve] ‘When I met Cynthia at Market Blandings, she told me what the trouble was which made her husband leave her. What do you suppose it was?’

‘From my brief acquaintance with Comrade McTodd, I would hazard the guess that he tried to stab her with the bread-knife. He struck me as a murderous-looking specimen.’

‘They had some people to dinner, and there was chicken, and Cynthia gave all the giblets to the guests, and her husband bounded out of his seat with a wild cry, and, shouting “You know I love those things better than anything in the world!” rushed from the house, never to return!’

‘Precisely how I would have wished him to rush, had I been Mrs. McTodd.’

‘Cynthia told me that he had rushed from the house, never to return, six times since they were married.’

‘May I mention — in passing –‘ said Psmith, ‘that I do not like chicken giblets?’

‘Cynthia advised me,’ proceeded Eve, ‘if ever I married, to marry someone eccentric. She said it was such fun… Well, I don’t suppose I am ever likely to meet anyone more eccentric than you, am I?’

‘I think you would be unwise to wait on the chance.’

If I had read that before performing the ceremony for my brother-in-law’s wedding, I might have worked it in to the script. Probably best that I didn’t.

Just as an aside, the P.G. Wodehouse Quote generator

A Long Way To Go For A Coffee Table

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I have a plane ticket to (and from) Omaha, Nebraska.

I have a car reserved in Omaha, Nebraska.

I am anxiously awaiting a phone call from a nice lady who will book me a hotel room in Omaha, Nebraska.

I have a request for credentials about to go in the mail, which will get me into the Qwest Center in Omaha, Nebraska.

This trip is 8 years in the making. What will I be doing in Omaha, Nebraska?

I will be sitting in an auditorium with 27,000 people listening to a 77 year old man and an 84 year old man talk about life, investing and business.

I will be walking around, admiring the products of all the many, many businesses owned by the company that the 77 and 84 year old men run.

I may tour private luxury jets that I could spend thousands of dollars to buy a small percentage of.

I will be shopping for a coffee table in the largest single-building furniture store in the world.

I may watch a 2 time U.S. Chess champion play chess against 6 opponents simultaneously, blindfolded.

There will also be a magician.

Why am I doing this?

Because I am such a geek I even shun myself.

Also, so the Dragon*Con folks can have someone to roll their eyes at.