Friday, April 12, 2013

Seriously?!


13 comments:

  1. Huzzah for Deah!

    That said, where's global warming when my friends back east need it?

    Cat--I thoughtlessly installed iTunes 11 for Mac when it popped up, and it was a disaster--there were even hardware incompatibilities. With no little difficulty I uninstalled it and re-installed version 10.7 [many thanks to the DIY videos on YouTube]. Finally managed to get the music back, but haven't yet decided if I want to try to restore the playlists from backup or otherwise.

    --Alan

    Tax returns pretty much completed. Just need to move a bit of money among accounts, write checks and drop them into the mail.

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    1. Alan, since misery loves company, it's good to know that iTunes 11 is even menace to the Mac. Very glad you got it uninstalled and the previous version reinstalled.

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    2. Ditto on the glad it worked out part!!

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  2. "Deah" should be "Dean"

    --Alan

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  3. Turning out to be a pretty day. Not so for friends in the north--Vermont, Ontario, Montreal. . . .

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  4. Below is the cover blurb from *Making Light* -- the link to the article itself is below that. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Dickens, Dostoevsky, and a Whole Lot More
    Posted by Abi Sutherland at 03:48 AM * 12 comments

    I rarely do the “mutely pointing at another article on the web” kind of blog post, mostly reserving that kind of reference to the Parhelia. But, via John Mark Ockerbloom’s Twitter stream, I found myself sucked into this fantastic and absorbing account of literary and academic sock-puppetry stretching across decades.

    No single excerpt can sum the piece up. It’s got everything: Dickens, Dostoevsky, bad literary fiction, bad science fiction, a faked car accident, a dubious death in a shoot-out with the Estonian People’s Militia, and an extremely persuasive argument based on descriptions of women’s nipples. It’s an excellent piece of academic and literary detection by Eric Naiman. All it’s missing is a scorecard, which I’ve had to assemble myself to keep track of the shifting, interlacing pseudonyms and personalities he investigates.

    Go, read it. Really.

    http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1243205.ece

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  5. Well, we got 1/4" to 1/3" of ice pellets topped with a half inch or more of snow. Then the wind picked up. So I cancelled lunch an hour away with a dear friend AND my chiropractor appointment and just curled up at home.

    Tomorrow will be Spring again.

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  6. If this were t he end of November, I'd say, hmmm, nice photo. Seeing as it's the middle of April, not so much!

    Listener, I'm glad you're safe. We just got the heavy rain, no sleet or ice pellets that I know of.

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  7. Sometimes even the smallest things don't work. Went to YouTube to look for something and got distracted by a clip from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous from 1984 featuring Marie Osmond. I thought, Ah, this will be a nice, fluffy thing to watch. Clicked through to the video page, and after several tries, the video wouldn't play. Put it on my FB page and zapped over there to watch it, and the video didn't play. Even tried it on my other computer, and the video wouldn't play.

    You know, that's so petty and mean! Why would the demons or evil spirits or whatever go to all the trouble of making sure I couldn't watch some dumb little video clip of Marie?

    But of course even as I formulate the question, I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis' idea of the Devil, both in The Screwtape Letters and in The Cosmic Trilogy. Lewis contends that the Devil is, among other things, precisely petty and mean. He and his folk do pointlessly unkind, niggling things. Didn't Monty Python have a skit to much the same effect? Evil isn't just manifest in grand things but also in small things.

    Anyhow, whatever demons or gremlins or whoever they are messed up that video on my equipment really ticked me off!

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    1. Hmmm... Maybe somebody was listening. When I went back to give the video one more try, it played, not smoothly, but smoothly enough to watch.

      Thank you up there,whoever you are. *wave*

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  8. On the other hand, sometimes amusing things happen.

    The attic stairs in this house go around a curve at the bottom since the door from the landing is at a 90 degree angle to the main body of the staircase. The first step up and the third are triangular, but the second stair fits into the corner so the inner part is square, if you see what I mean, and the outer part is a triangle. The square inner section is maybe ten or twelve inches on a side. For quite some time there has been junk piled in that inner, out-of-the-way corner, but that has recently been cleared away.

    Last night Angel Kitty, who doesn't often come up too the attic, discovered this newly cleared space, and seemed very interested in it, skittering around and sniffing as much as to say, "Where did this space come from?"

    After she left, I got one of the kitty rugs and folded it into the inner square space. When Nicky Kitty came down, she did a double take. Then she put one front paw very cautiously on the rug and sniffed. Seeming to be satisfied that all was as it should be, she did the triple turn thing and lay down to go to sleep as though she'd been sleeping there for years.

    Haven't seen anybody there today, but then I got up terribly late.

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  9. Good kitty story, cat; thanks for sharing.

    Now to watch a movie--no more work I need to do tonight, although the weekend awaits. Next up: "Romantics Anonymous," which Naomi suggested to me. Looks like a nice modern love comedy.

    --Alan

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