Monthly Archives: October 2006

A brief political announcement

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Please note that this episode has been edited to fix a few major factual difficulties. I haven’t gone back to find the source of the errors, but I suspect it was my head. Just to make things clear, to the best of my knowledge (obviously my best is none to good), Major Jim Bibb is not running for the governorship of anything. Since it’s only a matter of time before someone reads this and mistakenly thinks I care, or that I matter, I have updated the episode. In the great plastic press that is the Internet, it’s very easy to go back and change what you said.

Apparently there’s an election or something going on back in the Land of Enchantment, and up for grabs is the Attorney General’s seat. Attorney General is a politician in charge of honesty, which is especially oxymoronic in New Mexico. Insiders report that as of a couple of days ago the campaigns were clean and issues-oriented. [Apparently, as of this edit, that is no longer the case, and my man was the first one spotted by the elite muddled team of political trackers with his paw in the mud pot.] For all of you who worked on Pirates of the White Sand, here are a few things you need to know:

FACT: When we asked some menial flunky of governor Bill Richardson for jets to fly over, we got squat.

FACT: When we asked Major Jim Bibb for helicopters, he personally represented us to his C.O., and we got a helicopter.

FACT: Major Jim Bibb is running for Attorney General of New Mexico.

FACT: Bill Richardson is running for governor — or so he claims. Rumor has it that he and Hillary have scheduled an arm-wrasslin match to see who gets to run for president. Prognosticators give Richardson the nod based on his larger biceps, but there’s no denying that Clinton has leverage.

FACT: While Sikorsky gets all the glory, Piaseki broke the ground (or at least, that what his grandson told me).

INDISPUTABLE FACT: Major Jim Bibb is a good guy.

DISPUTABLE FACT: Major Jim Bibb would be a good attorney general. No one seems to expect the head lawyer of the land to have a legal background, but does that make him overly dependent on the entrenched bureaucracy?

COMPLETE ABSENCE OF FACT: I have no knowledge of the other guy, except that politically his father was (is?) a big ol’ wheel in those parts.

I was surprised to hear that Major Jim Bibb (You can’t edit that name. ‘Major Jim Bibb’ has a cadence to it that cannot be ignored.) was running for the hot seat in New Mexico. He struck me as an easy-going guy who saw the humor in life, although as a guy in charge of helicopters with big red crosses on the side, I expect he’s seen a lot of things that weren’t so funny. He didn’t have the ‘flyboy’ swagger or strut about him, just a love of life and the desire to make every day a good one. Not that I really got to know him that well; I am probably reading too much into his easygoing smile and willingness to help me get what I asked for. Nevertheless, I like Major Jim Bibb.

Thanks!

The Great Gatsby

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Some time ago I read The Great Gatsby. I remember that I liked it, but it has been a long time, and I’ve learned a lot since then. I’ve also pretty much forgotten Mr. Gatsby, except for his yearning posture as he reached out across the water to the beacon on the other side. Recently the book was mentioned in the comments here, and I was thinking about that pose, about the hopelessness of it but also the sureness of it, the purity of the ambition it embodied.

Or was I just making that up? I was in the bookstore the other day and there was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, and when I saw the price, I was decided.

My impression after the first page: somewhere between Somewhere between D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (completed in 1917) and The Great Gatsby (published in 1925), the twentieth century began. It’s not right, I guess, to expect literary trends to follow the Julian calendar, and I expect someone else has already identified this moment in artistic history and come up with a name for it (modern?), but I am no art historian and I have no intention of expanding what is probably already a body of criticism so vast as to border on useless. No, I will just say this. Fitzgerald retains an elegance to his writing that I can only envy, descriptions that are organic and evolutionary, yet thrifty. In the end, however, he speaks my language.

Near the start, Nick meets two women. They are in a mansion by the sea, resting on a mighty divan in a hall with windows open at each end. The paragraph is about the wind, how it moves the curtains, the ladies’ white dresses, the nap of the carpet. The women are part of that wind, idle, undirected and free in a somehow useless way, aloof and self-contained, and the description ends with a bang when Tom slams the windows shut, and a place that had been alive dies.

I haven’t finished the book, but I think he told the whole story right there, somewhere around page five.

I know I’m not going out on a limb to say this is a pretty dang good book; many others have done so in the past. But hey, every once in a while the general consensus is right. And for all the beauty and grace of the prose, it still reads easy. It’s a well-crafted story on top of everything else. Boy am I glad I decided to give this one another go. (Except that now I have a new yardstick to measure myself against, and this one seems forty-two miles long from where I sit.) If you’ve got that old high school copy you were forced to read lying around, pick it up and chew on a few pages.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

Thanks!

Embassy closed in observance of Embassy Closed Day

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The time has come for me to renew my passport. It’s past time, according to the immigration people the last time I visited the US. My passport has seen better days. Fortunately, I’m told the process for renewal at the embassy is swift and painless.

If you can catch them open, that is. My first trip I arrived at the front door at 12:15, only to discover that the hours for routine services are 8 – 12. No problem, I had accomplished something, even if it wasn’t much. While I was there I checked over the rest of the posted information, and noticed that they close for both Czech and American holidays. Nice job if you can get it.

A couple of days later I got up bright and early and set out for another assault on the citadel. Is was a promising day, and I took my time getting there, enjoying the peaceful morning, the deserted streets… the closed shops… The little light bulb over my head blinked on. It was a Czech holiday. I had known that. I had even asked a few locals what the holiday was to commemorate, but no one knew. The calendar just says “Czech Holiday.”

Well then, the next day was most certainly not a holiday, and I made my way through a morning much cloudier and chillier than the day before had been. There was a long line outside the door. I joined the queue and opened my book. I was prepared for the hurry-up-and-wait routine that I assumed would accompany any visit to an official building of any government. In fact I was too prepared. I was deep enough in my book that I didn’t notice others walking up and waving their U.S. passports to be allowed right in.

After going through security I made my way upstairs to a waiting room packed with people. There was a sign directing Americans in need of passport stuff to a side room, which was also filled with people doing nothing except waiting. I looked around for a number to take or any other imposition of order, but could find none. Finally, self-consciously, I approached a window, fully expecting the woman behind the glass to berate me to wait my turn. Again, I was incorrect. She cheerfully gave me the needed paperwork and instructions on where to get a photo and I was on my way.

Of course, another trip was required once I completed the paperwork. I’ve been procrastinating a bit, using a minor head cold as an excuse, but today I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the last clinging remains of the illness gone in the night. It is bright this morning, but there is a crispness to the air that is invigorating and refreshing, even while it is foreboding. I considered walking the few miles to the embassy, but in the end I decided to get there as early as possible, take care of business, and then enjoy the rest of the day. With my previous embassy visit under my belt, I felt confident that I would not be there long. To simplify getting through security I left most of my electronics at home, and foolishly did not bring a book with me.

There was no line of people outside the embassy. The door was closed up tight, and a sign said the embassy was closed in observance of an unspecified US holiday. Today’s a holiday? Now I’m going to have to find some Americans and ask them what the holiday is in observance of. I’m sitting in a café now, greatly regretting not having a book, as I scratch this episode out on napkins. It is, by any measure, a beautiful day, and it would be a shame to go all the way home to get a book when there are so many nice places to sit and read nearby.

Addendum: I ran into an American friend in the bookstore, and he was equally baffled by what today’s holiday might be. I bought four books, and this afternoon read Bukowski’s Post Office from cover to cover. It was pretty good, but not great. Engaging, quite funny at times, and it’s nice to know what people are talking about when they refer to him. I also bought some F. Scott Fitzgerald based on some comments in a previous episode (and the price of the book), a collection of letters by a Czech writer while he was imprisoned by the Communists, and a book called The Bookseller of Kabul, also about survival and art keeping one’s humanity in a totalitarian culture, and about surviving in the aftermath of a destructive war. It sounds interesting, anyway.

Overall, a nice way to spend a holiday, whatever it was. Tomorrow, I think I’ll pop by the embassy.

Thanks!

The Little Café… is out of beer!

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Three taps may not sound like a lot to those on the other side of the pond, but this is a land of specialization. Three taps is about the maximum, except in tourist places. You choose your pub based on the beer you want to drink. One thing you always know is that the beer you drink will be fresh, because everyone in the bar will be drinking the same beer. A bar with many taps is met with suspicion. How long has that keg of Olde Snake Bite been tapped?

Which is all well and good, as long as there’s another keg waiting when the first runs out.

I asked for a Stella, and Wendy shook her head. “We have no beer,” she said in English. It took me a moment to digest that. “All three,” she said. “None.”

“Are the taps broken?” I asked.

“No, they’ve all been… I don’t know how to say…”

“Drunk,” I said. It’s not surprising she had a hard time with that word, as she knows it as an adjective that is applied to people. “Drunk up,” I added, not helpfully.

Little Café Near Home has been popular, lately. It’s been filled with a younger crowd, so when school starts to exert its fearsome grip on the souls of the nation’s youth, things might quiet down a bit here. While I wish the owner of this place all the success in the world, I’m kind of hoping the chain-smoking children who are noisily drinking the place dry get distracted by other pursuits.

The bar is out of beer. This is the Czech Republic. This should, quite simply, not be possible. In this country I imagine there is a room with rows of people staring into glowing monitors. At the front of the room is the Big Board, which shows the flow of beer throughout the nation. Right now there should be a giant red X flashing over this neighborhood while a klaxon sounds. People are screaming into their phones, and the army is mobilizing. A pub without beer. This is a national crisis.

I will keep one ear cocked for the sound of the helicopters making the emergency delivery, but in the meantime I’ll go next door and have some Budvar.

Thanks!

Disdeclined

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In Czech, there are seven forms for every noun and pronoun. These different forms provide important information about the relationships between the elements of the sentence. In English, most of those forms have been weeded out over the centuries, replaced by helper words and word order conventions. We still have the possessive form and the plural, but that’s it.

Except in pronouns. Now I call the English-speaking world to action, to hasten the inevitable and beat down those who would hold our language in stasis. You don’t have to thank me, it’s what I do. Let’s put the wooden stake through the heart of ‘whom’. No ambiguity is introduced when you use ‘who’ instead, English has developed all the mechanisms to keep the sentence clear without declining the pronoun. We just don’t need whom.

While we’re at it, let’s not stop there. I, me, my — it’s time to straighten all this out. We only need one pronoun to express the first person singular. All we need is ‘me’. “Me Tarzan, you Jane” is not at all ambiguous, and even introduces an implied ‘to be’ which can come in handy. “All for me grog” is not open to alternate interpretations. All these extra pronouns running about are causing more harm than good.

Granted, getting rid of ‘my’ may be pushing things a bit much, as English still uses the possessive form. If we really want to disdecline the language, we would have to resort to using ‘of’ a lot: “the pants of Jerry”, rather than “Jerry’s pants” (in the phrase “Jerry pants” mine name comes out as an adjective). Me not quite ready for that. Before you know it people would be writing “pants o’Jerry”, and the possessive would be back, only this time an o’ prefix rather than an ‘s at the end. Even so, ‘my’ and ‘mine’ could be consolidated without any loss. It’s already happened for nouns and most other pronouns. Kiss ‘my’ goodbye, and flush ‘yours’ down the drain.

These silly pronouns are holding us back. They remain mired in days gone by, the subjects of rules that are based simply on properness, not effectiveness — all they do is prove you paid attention in school. (Ironically, one pronoun we already have shed, ‘thee’, would still be useful to reduce ambiguity. Me therefore also call for the recognition of y’all to be what ‘you’ once was.)

Me not ready to embrace this principle in me everyday writing, as, alas, there are many who would judge me based on outdated ideas of correctness. And that’s the rub, isn’t it? If me were to go it alone, me would be quickly written off as an ignorant buffoon, not a force committed to making the English language better. What can me do?

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Thanks!

Five stars, baby!

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Ah, what’s Saturday morning for if not tooting one’s own horn?

There are several sites on the Web specializing in finding all the bazillions of little applications out there to make it easier for the rest of us to find the tool we need. I use these services all the time, whether it’s to find an open-source audio editing program or a GUI interface for CVS. Most of these places allow users to rate the software and comment on it, but a few provide other enhancements, including, in the case of Softpedia, certifications that applications are without malicious code, spyware, and adware. Softpedia also will sometimes write in-depth reviews of programs. Which, of course, is where I come in.

I got a message from them a couple of days ago saying that I had been given the 100% clean award. That was nice and all, but I already knew there was no hidden evil in my program. Not long after that I got the message that the software had been reviewed. The reviewer really, really, liked what he saw. He also articulated something better than I’ve managed to do when explaining JersNW. Most of the features in business-oriented word processors are focussed on what happens to the words after you write them. Few of the features are oriented to helping you get the words written in the first place.

If you really care that much, you can read the review here. My favorite part was the summary:

The Good

Made for writing, with all those options and features that are actually useful to the writing process.

The Bad

The only bad thing about this program is that I haven’t been using it for many years already. The only thing that it is missing is support for multiple versions of a part of the text so that you can rewrite and keep the originals.

You have to like when the “bad” part is a compliment. Five stars out of five. I have no idea how common that rating is at Softpedia, but I’ll take it.

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Thanks!

Man’s best friend

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One of the canine regulars at the Little Café Near Nome is a friend of mine. When she first comes in she rushes about, greeting everyone — except me. Without fail I feel mildly hurt as this pup with whom I’ve shared many an evening rushes about looking for quick handouts. Eventually, after working all the other guests and carefully scanning the floor, she will come over and sit by me, and bonk her head against my leg. After a nice ear rub (she really likes ear rubs) she will curl up at my feet, until someone new arrives. Then she’s off again, checking out the possibilities.

I think human females regard me in much the same way. That’s not a bad thing, overall. I can handle being home base.

Thanks!

You may not be able to read this.

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I just got word from my service provider that something went wrong when processing my payment for this site. My current payment expires today, and if I don’t get it resolved in time there will be a blackout in the Media Empire. So if you don’t see this message, that’s why.

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Thanks!

All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku

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Some of you already know that on occasion I take time out from my busy schedule to watch Japanese cartoons. There are many reasons for the rise of animated series in Japan, and at the top of the list is the same reason there are so many reality shows in the US: They’re cheap to produce. The similarity ends there, however, as some (not all) anime can be watched without first cauterizing the pain centers in your brain. (It’s like comparing levels of hell, but Czech reality shows are, from my limited exposure, even worse than the American versions, and even more popular.)

Sometimes I come across a title that says “watch me”. That happened this week, when I stumbled across a 14-episode series called All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku. Sometimes you have to ignore the warning bells in your head and remind yourself that cat girls are generally pretty hot, even in cartoons.

The story is a familiar one. A super-genius scientist has created a super-strong androbot, using a cat brain. Naturally he crafted his super-robot to look like a schoolgirl, and enrolled her at the local academy, so she could learn to have human emotions. The scientist created her to combat the evil cabal intent on taking over the world. Said cabal supports Nuku Nuku’s school in exchange for being allowed to use it as a place to test their evil inventions.

I’m told that Japanese are cliquish and hostile toward outsiders. Judging by the fact that it is nearly certain any “transfer student” arriving at a school will almost always lead to untold destruction, I can’t say as I blame them for being a little slow to accept outsiders. (I am now imagining a story in which an American student transfers to a school in japan, but much like in Galaxy Quest, this is a world where all the stereotypes are all true. American has no idea. On the first day he will be detained and arrive to class late, after everyone else is seated. “Class,” the clueless teacher says, “meet our new transfer student…” Pandemonium breaks out as half the class dives for cover while the other half point to the empty desks next to theirs. (Good things happen to the first person to befriend the transfer student/unstable superweapon.))

Where was I? Oh yes. Nuku Nuku. I watched episode one, and found myself laughing out loud. This was a show that didn’t take itself too seriously, and had fun with the same stereotypes I enjoy commenting on. In each episode, when a character comes on, the action goes to letterbox to allow room for the subtext: “Snobby Rich Girl” or “Nihilistic heart throb”. The show is oddly lacking, it occurs to me as I write this, in a Ninja Girl. All I can figure is she transferred to another school to raise some hell of her own.

It is silly, but they use the silliness to create a couple of nice twists. When we are first introcuced to the evil cabal we see employees of Mishima corporation receiving the message “Secret Call.” in various funny ways. (One employee is sitting on the john and when he pulls out the paper, there is the message. The bathroom stall, conveniently, is an elevator, and down he goes to the prominently-labeled “Evil Meeting Room.” Eventually all the members rise through the floor, dressed in outlandish evil outfits. Hell Mishima appears and addresses his troops.

Some of the troops are more enthusiastic than others. Many in the Evil Meeting Room would prefer that company staff meetings were run in a more traditional fashion, they way they had been when Hell Mishima’s father was in charge. In the end, all the evil plans, while convoluted and doomed to failure as all evil plans are, lack one key ingredient. Evil. Mishima Industries is just another multinational out to increase market share, or as Hell Mishima says, “Take over the WORLD! Bwa ha ha ha!”

“I hope he grows out of this,” one employee mutters to another.

There are a lot of jokes going past that I know enough to spot, but not to get. Nuku Nuku continuously calls the snobby girl by the wrong name, a different one every time, and I’m pretty sure all those misnomers mean things. Not flattering things.

They say that “well begun is half done,” (Ben Franklin is oft credited as being one them) and in the case of this series, I think that’s about right. After the first episode, with thirteen more to go, they’d used at least half of the jokes. Some jokes get funnier with repetition — to a point. Nuku Nuku reached the last of those points around episode three, when the Evil Women (aka marketing department) flashed back to the the laundry machine run amok landing on them — just before the microwave oven run amok landed on them.

Nuku Nuku had one flaw, that I noticed right away but have waited to mention. The opening theme is most decidedly not ridiculous. I’m sorry, but if you’re going to name the show All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, you damn well better have lyrics that match Cutey Honey or Club-To-Death Angel Dokuro-chan.

Thanks!

Should have issued a gambler’s alert

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Right now the Charger-Baltimore game is at the 2 minute warning. I popped over to an Internet sports site to follow the game. When I remembered to look, there was about seven minutes left, the Chargers were up by six, and had the ball within field goal range. A quick glance at the stats showed that they were playing a good game. The first play that came over the ticker: 15-yard penalty. Now, four or five penalties and what appears to be two botched punts later (info is sketchy on these web update things), baltimore is within four and just completed a long pass. I have turned off the game tracker now.

I used to think that my San Diego Team curse was a joke, until last year when I issued this alert. The Chargers were expected to completely crush Miami. Note that the Padres have gone to the playoffs two years in a row for the first time in franchise history — the two years I’ve lived nine time zones away. The Chargers went to the playoffs last year, and are contenders again this year. They may have just played the lousiest five (game clock) minutes of football this season, and it was the five minutes I was paying attention to the game.

I’ll let you know ahead of time if I try that again, or (God forbid) go to one of the bars in town that shows American Football.

Meanwhile my eyes are clenched tightly shut until the game is over. I hope that’s enough.

Thanks!