Monthly Archives: August 2007

Never fails

It never fails. I come up with a cool idea for a website – one I know others will agree with me is cool – and just to be sure I do a google search, and yeah. It’s already being done.

Chapter 1

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without pie, and void; and “cream” filling was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the twinkies.

3 And God said, Let there be pie: and there was pie.

4 And God saw the pie, that it was cherry: and God divided the fruit from the non-fruit.

Current text from chapter 1 of the WikiBible as of today at this minute.

Carnival: Most Significant Day in my so-called life

Stlbloggers Blog Carnival #2 requires me to write about the most significant day of my life.

I interpret this as a day where if the events occurred differently, my entire life would be changed.

We’ll ignore January 21, 1969. It is a sine qua non, by definition, but everyone has that day in their life.

Days that compete
1) January 9th or 10the, 1986
2) June __, 1988
3) Feb 26, 2002

I’m going to drop #3 from the list. It was depressing being laid off from work, and the year that followed was equally depressing. I have a new career, but I’m still young and may even have more careers ahead of me.

#2 occurred a couple days after my brother graduated from college. The graduation was in New Jersey, and the family took a trip to New York afterwards. I attended my first Broadway musical. Les Miserables. Two years later, I was in Washington DC, and I bought the book. I have definitely become obsessed with Victor Hugo. I like mentioning that both the Christian Science Monitor and the Australian radio network ABC interviewed me during Hugo’s Bicentennial in 2002. (Coincidentally, the exact date of his 200th birthday was Feb 26th. A day I should have been celebrating, I was in shock from losing my job.) However, it still isn’t the most significant day in my life, so I’m not going to bother looking up the exact date.

That goes to January 9th, 1986 – when I first started feeling weakness in my arms and legs and in the afternoon entered St. Louis Children’s Hospital, or January 10th when I woke up paralyzed from the neck down. Both happened within the same 24 hour period.

I’ve blogged about my experiences with Guillain-Barre Syndrome here, here and here.

Legalized scalping

Missouri appears close to legalizing scalping (tickets, not heads).

The supply/demand arguments make a little bit of sense. (With legalized scalping there should be a greater supply, so prices will go down.) But that is dependent upon demand remaining steady. And I suspect there are people who refrain from buying scalped tickets — not because the price is higher, but they know they are ‘abetting a crime’ as the article puts it. Demand could go up as well. Maybe, as is so often the case on Ebay, supply will go up more.

It certainly falls in the category of ‘victimless crime’

Carondelet YMCA Book Fair – and the initiation of a personal book tax

Last year at the Carondelet YMCA mega-booksale I purchased 16 books. Today, I purchased 13. You could argue I am being more selective. But not really. I have too many books. I know this. That doesn’t stop me from getting new ones. It’s a problem. It’s not the cost. Combined, the 29 books last year and this year cost me $14.50. I’m running out of room to put them.

So I decided to institute a book tax. And as taxes go, it’s pretty high. 100%. For every book that comes in, another book must go out. And the books I got today weren’t grandfathered. Which meant I had to find 13 books to give away.

Surprisingly, I had a stack of 13 in under two minutes. It wasn’t difficult.

Incoming 13:

1) The Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace

Purchased soley because I remember it fondly from childhood. Though I suspect it won’t be long for my shelves with this new rule.

2) After many a summer dies the swan, by Aldous Huxley
3) Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
4) Watch the Northwind Rise, by Robert Graves
5) On Poetry and Music, by Aristotle
6) Parodies: An anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm and After, by Dwight Macdonald
7) The Greek Myths by Robert Graves
8) The Bedbug and Selected Poetry by Vladimir Mayakovsky
9) Ninety Three by Victor Hugo (Lowell Bair translation, with introduction by Ayn Rand)
10) The Lottery (and other stories) by Shirley Jackson
11) The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
12) The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
13) The Best of Cordwainer Smith

Outgoing 13

1) Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz
2) In the Night Room by Peter Straub
3) Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw
4) Judas by Suu Minazuki (Vol 1 – Manga)
5) Elephantasm by Tanith Lee
6) Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
7) Love’s been good to me, by Rod McKuen
8) Scuse Me While I Whip This Out by Kinky Friedman
9) The 5th annual Best SF (1971)
10) Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
11) Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War – by Al Santoli
12) Dangerous to Know – by Barbara Taylor Bradford
13) Fletch and the Widow Bradley – by Gregory McDonald

Those of you who live in St. Louis and who know me are going to get first dibs on the books. If you want one – speak up. I’ll carry them around in my car for a week or two and then any that remain will be given to Goodwill.

Beloit College’s Mindset List

In case you haven’t seen it yet this year, here’s Beloit College’s Mindset List for the graduating class of 2011 (Those entering college this fall.) A list of 70 items defining the 18-year-old mindset by what they’ve never witnessed directly, or what has always been around. Beloit does this every year. If you haven’t seen these before, go a few years back, and experience how old you really are.

#1 on the list is definitely jarring.

(and when you’re done feeling old, and need a laugh, here’s a parody: the mindset list for the class of 1918.)

Beloit College’s Mindset List

In case you haven’t seen it yet this year, here’s Beloit College’s Mindset List for the graduating class of 2011 (Those entering college this fall.) A list of 70 items defining the 18-year-old mindset by what they’ve never witnessed directly, or what has always been around. Beloit does this every year. If you haven’t seen these before, go a few years back, and experience how old you really are.

#1 on the list is definitely jarring.

(and when you’re done feeling old, and need a laugh, here’s a parody: the mindset list for the class of 1918.)