Things That Are Good

I understand that you might not have input on this sort of thing, but Coulton MUST appear on “Not My Job” someday.

(The man plays a WICKED “Freebird” live, by the way.)

j. p. Jack, I don’t understand why that’s wasted tax dollars. Did you mean the entire International Space Station venture is a waste of tax dollars?

Adam, I am so technologically retarded here on the edge of the Green Swamp dial-upping my way through life that I would die of old age before I could download some of the cool stuff (can you guys feel the envy?), but I did watch Real Time last night. Some good writing on Maher’s material. Was Adam’s Invisible Hand at work?

Yo, I wonder if it was sumt’in’ I said…

T’ose Swiss Guards get mighty rough, if ya make ‘em mad. I musta dun sumt’in’ wrong, cuz dey t’rew me thru da window an’ out on ta da street before I knew w’at wus happenin’. I guess we’re not welcum at da Vatican no more. I broke anudder toot’ when I landed on my jaw. Yo, PhDale, I know you’re not a medical type doctor or nut’in’, but I could use a little noirsin’ about now. I’m just sayin’. Luckily dey got good drugs here on Corsica, so I’ll just lay on da beach for a couple of weeks and I’ll be good as new.

j.p. Jack, that’s actually a fairly interesting sort of experiment. At first glance I thought the suggestion was that he had done this test outside the ISS, which would have a) Not worked, since the motion of a boomerang is based on airflow over its surface, not simply the dynamics of a rotating body with an odd mass distribution, and b) Irresponsibly dangerous, since there’s enough space junk floating around up there to cause damage in high-speed collisions already. The fact that it worked in the moving reference frame of the ISS is pretty cool.

I’d much rather see my tax dollars used to lift a few grams of boomerang mass into low-earth orbit than to see it spent in Bush’s Discretionary War.

OK, j.p. Jack, now I’m in the game. I’m with Harold in finding the experiment interesting, but I generally agree regarding the Space Station, although were it politically motivated by a desire for constructive international relations, I would not necessarily consider it a waste, although it is certainly not a particularly efficient or dynamic component of space exploration.

Under Bush, and the people who pull his strings, any and all space projects are likely tied to a desire for the military control and utilization of space, something for which the Air Force has lusted for as long as I can remember. And the Bush folk are succeeding in driving China to think in the same way, since the United States has now made it clear that we are military unilateralists who are pursuing a whole new nuclear arms race. Of course it is possible that the Chinese, who are famous for their long-horizon thinking, are waiting for us to bankrupt ourselves militarily while they buy up the notes on USA, Inc. Just wondering.

Here’s some other really cool stuff. Forgive me if I had Oscar Hammerstein put it into verse:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so bad

When those doggies are bitiing and those bees are stinging, it’s good to remember the good stuff.Especially those whiskers on kittens.

oh dear. In the 1967 movie, Peter Cook actually cries out “Julie Andrews,” not my difficult-to-pronounce typo.

Sally, I don’t generally read on-line reviews, unless I or Tammy have written them!

Professionally I read the local papers (which are basically useless as they don’t drive sales); Publishers Weekly, which on-line, is by subscription, and reviews books months before publication; and the New York Times Book Review which has the advantage of being current and actually does promote sales. I also listen to the NPR book segments when I can. I think the NYTBR is free on-line if you have a home subscription. Sorry I can’t be more help than that. Tammy might have other suggestions.

And Coltrane was pretty damn good!

Oh, and more things that are good: the hyacinths on the south side of the house are peeking up out of the leaves and other detritus of fall and winter. And all the snow is melted and gone. Of course, this *is* New England, and it is only March. Still, the light has once again conquered the darkness. (Even though I still have to get up in the dark, what with Daylight Savings Time being so stupidly early this year.)

You seem to have conflated a few different traditions there, cooper.

Today is Dyngus Day. In the old country the young girls and boys would chase each other with buckets of water and much hilarity ensued when they would manage to soak each other and themselves. Six weeks of Lent can be very difficult in the village. In this country, we would try to be the first one up because then you would wake everybody else in the household by sprinkling them with water and shouting “Dyngus!” (deengoos) The wet t-shirts don’t figure in any of the traditions I’m familiar with, nor do the dirty dishes, but who knows what was really going on in the village?

The pussy willows were for Palm Sunday. My mother would wake us up on Palm Sunday morning by pulling the covers off our legs and hitting them (gently!) with pussy willows while reciting “Palma bije nie ja bije,za tydzień Wielki Dzień za sześć noc Wielkanoc” which roughly translates as “It’s Palm Sunday. In one week it will be a holy day and in six nights it will be a holy night.”

I hope this clears up any confusion.

A wild turkey hen trotted down the lane in front of me today. I drove as slowly as possible, but she was still having no part of my sightseeing and cut out across a field and into a treeline. She was lanky and winsome, and quite a catch for some lucky tom. Don’t know why she was on her own. We used to have a herd of wild turkeys round and about Green Acres. I’m afraid they might have been poached.

Meanwhile, the sandhills are as noisy as ever, and I am unable to mow because the butterflies are everywhere among the wildflowers that sprout up randomly around the yard.

When I was a kid, we never mowed until after the flocks had flowered and seeded. We didn’t, and I don’t, do sod lawns. It’s cracker yard all the way - you mow what grows, but not until after the wildflowers have had their time in the sun. As you can see, I am unfit for subdivision life. It’s either a native yard or an apartment in an interesting city.

Adam,

This is entirely off-topic, but I didn’t see an “e-mail me” kind of link, so I’m using a comment.

I have a link to Fanatical Apathy on my site as well as an incorporated RSS feed, and all links result in a php/MySql errors. Just thought you’d like to know, you’re missing out on the meager few readers that might land here via my humble site and possibly others that have the same problem…

Something else to add to “Things That Are Good” — David Rees’ blog on his “Get Your War On” page. It’s really off the wall, in a David Rees/GYWO kinda way.

My systems must be more downscale than I realized. I tried to play the Portal clip, on my new laptop yet, and it wouldn’t even play smoothly - it kept stopping to download more data… I don’t think this thing is for me somehow.