A friend posted this to Facebook.
Which meant, of course, I quoted Milton Waddams thus:
Probation was almost over, too . . .
He imposes a two-week quarantine on the CHP headquarters. Probably in a smarmy manner.
This, apparently, long after he finished medical school under the partial tutelage of one Victor Frankenstein, whom he tormented with questions about vermicelli.
This is, of course, Danny Goldman, who really makes his mark in Young Frankenstein:
Looks like he died in 2020. Was just a little younger than my mother.
[Alarm goes off]
Astronomer: [Mutters grumpily, puts on slippers, stumbles through the darkness, mumbles and mutters through endless spiraling corridors as the alarm continues to go off, climbs ladder to telescope, makes many adjustments while continuing to grumble, finally finds evidence of supernovaed star] Hey! You there! Stop with the supernova! [To himself] Stupid space weather.
Took me a while to find this on YouTube. . .
I have had, let me say, not the most stellar of weeks.
Work presented a constellation of glorious delights, from what appeared to be a simple set of documents to work with turning into a festival of requirement that is yet to be untangled. And I've *not* been busy, because the untangling involves other people who're more occupied with other things.
Free time, ironically, is short. We're as yet untangled from some volunteer positions, meaning nights and most Saturdays are not our own.
I'm supposed to be teaching a class. And putting up tile in a bathroom. And doing a constellation of other little needful things that need to happen before winter sets in in earnest.
And my days are swiss cheesed. No long blocks of time to dedicate to any particular thing, and some of these things take some time for dedication. I thought I had some time last weekend to get a chore done that I was actually looking forward to, but was called into the house five minutes after I'd started it to work on something else that needed to be done.
Then I asked my wife what she would like for Christmas. And got the reply that since the only thing she got from the desire for a recliner on Mother's Day was an invitation to go shopping for one, she held no high hopes for wishes.
(An aside: Would any sane man go shopping for a recliner without taking his wife? What if I get the wrong recliner?)
So I've been peeved most of the day. And kind of spilled my guts to our youngest, when I had to drive to Blackfoot -- leaving my chores undone -- to pick him up from a camping trip and then take him to Iona to help pick apples for yet another coming Saturday's applesaucing. Emotionally, I'm spent.
So I wanted to go to bed. But I grabbed some microwave popcorn first, then headed toward the stairs.
"Before you go upstairs, let me know," my wife said. "But not right now, I'm in the middle of something."
Okay. So I pop my popcorn. Then poke my head in her craft room, where she's grading papers. "I still have a few more to do, and I want to finish them before I start on another project."
Another project. And I can't go to be before it's done.
I don't need another project. I'm tired.
So I go to pout in the study. I do some grading of my own, because it needs to be done and may as well do it. But the peevishness is building. Scouting for Food tomorrow morning. Four hours in the cold. And volunteers are few.
Then the "project" emerges:
It's a tshirt for me. The weenie dog skeleton glows in the dark.
So the peevishness fades a bit.
While the elves are the lurking menace in Terry Pratchett's last novel, "The Shepherd's Crown," and while they show up at the end, the real menace in the book is menace itself.
The elves eject their queen. The elves spoil the beer. The elves raid, the elves feint, almost always offscreen, out of sight of the eyes telling the story, but always in the back of the mind of those reading the story.
Much like the Alzheimer's that claimed Terry Pratchett's life shortly after this book was written.
And maybe that's a stretch. Maybe I'm reading too much into this. But I feel like it's a possibility. Pratchett may indeed have written more of this book as it is claimed. But maybe just the presence of the "menace" of the elves -- which we know in a foregone conclusion will be defeated -- represents what Pratchett felt about the Alzheimer's destroying his brain. Maybe he wrote the rote happy ending to this novel of menace knowing such a happy ending wouldn't come in his own life. Pratchett is certainly a clever enough writer to pull this off. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into what happens in the book, paralleling what was happening in his own life at the time.
But it's possible.
And I wonder, what is he thinking now?
Yes, he was an avowed atheist. But even atheists go to heaven when they die. That is my belief. And I wish him no disrespect by writing this. But surely a fantasist of his caliber might welcome the real presence of other realms, other planes of existence, similar to what he wrote of in his novels.
I'm glad the rumored ending, as reported by Neil Gaiman, didn't come to pass. That's too neat of an ending, too rote. Because Esme Weatherwax, of all the characters Pratchett created, would certainly know that death, even an anticipated one, does not arrive on "one's own terms." Whether it comes after a long life of peace and loveliness or after a shorter life of violence and woe, it comes. The roteness of happy endings might have left Pratchett and others cynical about the thought of life after death, but I find weariness in the thought that this life is all there is, whether happy or sad. After we live, we live again on our own terms, but not before. Life after this, that is the flight of fancy we prepare for.
I just don't know how to react to this.
Are any of my friends corporations? Or the kind of random, uh, idiot who is *paying* Facebook to advertise their posts?
Because I just don't see how my adblocker is doing this. Unless Facebook is messing with the algorithm just because, like Sergeant Rizzo, they want their money.
Meanwhile, I'm still on Facebook's naughty list for the next two weeks. Why should I, a known and punished and unreformed miscreant, give a fig that Facebook is upset I'm feebly throttling their advertising power? And from my "friends?" Really?
Again, I'm having a hard time reacting to this.
Astronomers and space journalists, huddle up:
We know you're *very* excited about the pictures you've taken of two of Jupiter's moons with an Earth-based telescope. We are too. Just don't oversell it. These may be the "clearest yet" photos taken of these particular moons from Earth, but as far as clarity goes, they look like most of the photos I've taken of the Moon with my cell phone camera. Nothing to write home about.
I mean, keep working on the technology. Hopefully, Earth-based photos of distant celestial objects will continue to get better over time. Just don't expect the unwashed masses -- and this is coming from a life-long solar exploration nut who cut pictures of the Voyager encounters with Uranus out of the newspaper and pasted them into his journal and got WAY excited last year when he spotted two or three of Jupiter's moons through the eyepiece of his son's $120 telescope -- to get as excited about your potato photos as you are.
And don't tell me you can see any of Europa's famous surface cracks in this photo. Because all I can really see is pixels.
"The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" has been on my to-watch movie list since I learned many moons ago that it stars Jonathan Winters, shown here in all his glory giving a briefing to his family, baby included, before he runs off to confront the Red Menace.
While Winters was quite subdued in this film (his role wasn't as big as I imagined) it was worth watching, if only for an exploration of the character actors therein. That and the story is pretty darn funny, what with the mob mentality that easily translates into the new century. And the Russians as bad guys vibe, that still fits, no matter what Barack Obama might have thought.
It was fun seeing Tessie O'Shea in a non-Disney role, but it was this guy who presented the most challenge:
Obscure character actor of the day: Parker Fennelly. Best known, I suppose, as Pa Kettle from the Ma and Pa Kettle films, but I haven't seen any of those.
Overall, I enjoyed it, though the finale seemed a bit, eh. Maybe beyond belief. Part of me would like to see a modern remake of this one, but I shudder to think of who Hollywood would pick to fill out the ensemble cast.
A friend shared this link about the general inaccessibility of book sales data to the world outside of publishing, and I got to thinking about something related, and something new book authors probably hate me for: Who is tracking sales of used books?
Part of me, anecdotally, believes used book sales ought to be an indicator -- maybe good, maybe not so helpful -- of what current tastes in literature are. Maybe they're too niche? But there are a lot of niche publishers out there selling new niche books, so while maybe used books aren't a huge part of the market, they are part of the market nonetheless.
We're avid readers in our house. And I can guarantee at least 95% of the books we buy every year -- and we do buy northward of 20 books a year -- are used, purchased either online or in local thrift stores.
Is anyone tracking this data, and is it available publicly?
Alibris, for one, is collecting that data. They say on their "The Alibris Story" page:
"Because Alibris naturally collects a great deal of information about book buying and selling, the company came to be able to offer both customers and sellers essential market information. Today, Alibris knows which books sell and at what price. Alibris helps sellers continually update prices and makes sure that business customers get data for hard-to-find and used books that are as good as new."
Is any of that data available publicly? I don't know, and for this blog post, I'll be honest: I'm too lazy to find out. In brief, maybe? But I suspect you'd have to swim through a tangle of contacts and lawyers to find it. This is a company dealing in information and they take our privacy seriously. So I'm guessing not.
I'm not singling out or picking on Alibris here. They are right to be careful with their customers' data, and their practices probably mirror other resellers' as well.
Maybe Goodreads?
Whoah, momma.
While not directly from Goodreads itself (at least in what I can find) there is apparently a metric ton of data out there based on book reviews, interactions, etc., from the site. This is just one site I found, and I haven't had the time to do anything but scan their first page.
The first linked article rightly criticizes publishers' use and public concealment of the data, arguing the data is "conservative" and "racist." With only past sales data driving new acquisitions, they might be giving short shrift to authors who fall outside the norms. I've seen that on a microscopic fashion in anthropomorphic fiction, which I enjoy but seems to be niche these days. Maybe it always was. I don't know.
And lest anyone think that tracking used book sales is negative towards ebook sales, I'm wondering -- can you resell an ebook? Or are they dead ends? I assume they're not to be re-sold. I don't know.
Maybe scanning used book sales data -- or on the part of Goodreads, tracking what books as a whole are popular, not just the new popular books -- might be helpful. Or at least cast a beam of light into an otherwise obscure process.
Anyhoo, some interesting things to think about. Eventually.
Probably in Mrs. Barrett's third-grade classroom, where I had the best desk in the house -- right next to her collection of books.
I remember that school, Lincoln Elementary, fairly bursting with books. There was a shelf in each classroom. The center of our building -- the school was like a little campus, with two, then three buildings for us to roam in -- was also stuffed with books. The main building, which I was in for the second grade only, housed the library. But everywhere you went, there were books.
But it was Ralph the mouse, making the little "pbbbbbbb" sound has he rode Keith's little motorcycle around, that caught my attention. Of course, like many other Beverly Cleary fans, I soon wandered into other books: Ribsy, the dog with the weird name, and the many tales of Ramona.
I'm revisiting that world, bit by bit, as I read Cleary's memoir, "A Girl from Yamhill," a lucky find at my alternative library -- our local Deseret Industries thrift store. I'm enjoying her story, and recognizing that Clearly modeled the feisty, injustice-seeing Ramona on herself, unashamedly.
In her memoir, she captures attitudes reflected in Ramona: Why do words like mamma and kitty have that extra M or extra T, when clearly one will do? And how dare adults pass judgments on children, calling them too short to be a lilac in the school performance, or passing them out of first grade "on trial" when they couldn't see the obvious, like pillows being hot, just like wood stoves? I seem to recall identifying with Ramona and Cleary's other characters as they caught these adult idiosyncrasies that Just. Weren't. Fair.
From the book:
From a country child who had never known fear, I became a city child consumed by fear. . . An uppity Bluebird [an advanced reader in her first-grade world] in the neighborhood made fun of me for naming my doll Fordson-Lafayette after a Yamhill neighbor's tractor and the town where Grad-grandfather Hawn had settled. Dolls were supposed to have nice names like Alice or Betty. Nobody named a doll after a tractor. When children discovered I still believed in Santa Claus, everyone laughed at me. I had never endured ridicule in Yamhill. When I asked Mother about Santa Claus, she smiled and admitted there was no such being. How was I to know, alone on a farm where I believed so much that Mother told me? I did not mind disillusion in Santa Claus, but I felt that Mother had made me the butt of other children's derision.
Ramona, of course, lived in and squirmed in and tried to understand that world where things adult said weren't always reliable, not out of malice, but out of tradition or necessity or whatever. We should be careful to help our children -- and ourselves, for that matter -- navigate a world where the things we're told aren't always reliable.
So trust, but verify, might be Ramona's credo. And it's wonderful to peek into what made her world as I read this book.
Reading further: A young Beverly hears her parents' after-bedtime, whispered and urgent conversations about money and not having enough -- another theme repeated in the Ramona Quimby books.
Cleary, like Charles Schulz of her same era and Richard Thompson or our current era, really understands and can communicate the youngster zeitgeist like no others.
I was pretty excited Sept. 20 when the tile for our shower stall arrived.
I'll be even more excited when I can finally start putting it up.
I took a tile up to the bathroom last weekend to begin strategizing and marking tiles for cut, but I could quickly see the bodge job I'd done on the cement board wasn't going to work. Parts of it were really mushy. And I blame myself. When I put the board up earlier, I made the mistake of buying the thinner board and thought I could fix it by just putting another layer of board over the first. But it was so soft and yielding in places I decided I'd be re-doing the tile job if I put tile over that mess. So I took it down. And then remembered in one wall I have a gap in the studs of 21 inches -- lending another soft spot to the wall. So I just finished putting a ladder in the wall to fill in some of that gap and give me some sturdy surfaces to nail to. I'm almost caught up to where I was a few weeks ago, but I'm feeling a lot better about the foundation I'm laying for what's to come. If the foundation is solid, the finish will last a lot longer. Wonder where I've heard that before.
I'll admit I haven't been all that keen on this project. I really had to kick myself in the butt to get done this weekend what I have done, but I'm feeling better about things now.
