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Sunday, November second, 2008
Ever since I posted the video of Harry Gibson playing "Harry the Hipster" several months ago, I get Google hits searching for his more famous song, "Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?" -- frequently enough to make me curious. So I went and looked it up. Cool tune! And since today seems to be a good day for posting YouTube videos (here chez READIN), let's put another one up. Take it away, Harry!
posted afternoon of November second, 2008: Respond
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Slacktivist posted this video yesterday, with the note that there are only three more days -- well today there are only two more days; and this is the perfect version of the perfect song for this moment. I had totally forgotten about Tracy Chapman, glad to be reminded.
 Mmm... that makes me want to hear Bob singing this song. Here he is in 1964: (Dylan is 25 in this video; Chapman is 28 above.)
posted morning of November second, 2008: Respond
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In Hovering Flight, Chapters 15 and 16 -- as Addie struggles with cancer and with chemotherapy I feel like she is finally starting to come through as a character -- still very much an odd bird, but I'm starting to understand her well enough to identify with her, and with Tom. And in parallel I'm thinking that Scarlet (who is now grown up) is beginning to understand her parents as people rather than just as cryptic "parents". By that token the writing in these chapters strikes me as more mature, more fully developed than the writing in Chapters 7 and 8 -- Scarlet is again (mostly) absent from the story, but there is no drought of character. I wonder if it would be possible (and if it would be worthwhile) to argue that the narrator "grows up" in parallel with Scarlet -- that Scarlet getting to know her parents enables the reader to know them with a fulness of human character. Would it be appropriate to call this a Bildungsroman?
 (And a nice bit of continuity at the end of Chapter 16: at the party celebrating Addie's newfound artistic success, "And there was Scarlet, watching them all and smiling...")
posted morning of November second, 2008: Respond
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Lots of long, vivid dreams this weekend! Last night I was in a sort of huge video game/maze type of setting -- the introduction is our hero disembarking from a futuristic train into a deserted station lit with purple neon and reminiscent of If on a winter's night a traveller... -- he goes downstairs and out through a turnstile and sees too late that he has dropped his wallet in the hallway of the station. The action is trying to figure out how to get back into the part of the station where his wallet is: the turnstile is built so there's no way of jumping it, and when you go into the station's entrance you are in a completely different place, very crowded with Pokemon-style figures (the ones I remember best looked like Militank). I spent a long time going up through levels searching for the train platform (because I knew how to get to the exit from there) and being blocked by the figures, which were not actively opposing me but were behaving like a crowd -- moving with no regard for where I wanted to go and not allowing me to push past them. Occasionally I would get within sight of the platform but there was always some obstacle preventing me from getting there.
posted morning of November second, 2008: Respond
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Saturday, November first, 2008
 Ellen on the porch with a pumpkin. Hallowe'en parade at Seth Boyden school: Sylvia as Hermione.
posted evening of November first, 2008: Respond
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Two extremely vivid dreams last night about very mundane activities, taking the dog for a walk and making tea for breakfast. Ellen and I were walking both dogs around the block. Somehow Pixie got off the leash but we were unconcerned and went on walking Lola until we got back to our door. There waiting for us on the lawn were two big doggy-poops which I needed to throw away. Yuck. When I woke up Pixie was anxiously waiting to go downstairs and out to the yard -- it was the middle of the night but I let her out figuring (a) the dream had some prophetic element and (b) the M&M's which Pixie snuck last night had given her diarrhœa. After I got back to sleep I was called on to make some mint tea for Sylvia's breakfast. Easy enough right? But somehow I kept doing things wrong, like using coffee instead of hot water, mixing up the creamer with the kettle, pouring hot water into a mug that had holes in it... This went on for ages and I don't think in the end I was able to make a cup of tea.
posted morning of November first, 2008: Respond
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Friday, October 31st, 2008
via The Wooster Collective comes news that artist Alëxone has launched his own web site, alexone.net. I had never heard of Alëxone before but am anxious to find out more. Beautiful images, strongly reminiscent of something but I'm not sure exactly what.
posted morning of October 31st, 2008: 1 response
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So I had this dream last night in which I was hosting a dinner party. My food strategy was to go to a dealer in prepared food, and buy roasts of beef -- several of them, I think I probably bought one roast for each guest. Then I realized I needed a side dish so I picked up a little take-out container of mac and cheese. Got home and I started carving up the beef. It was taking a long time, and I realized the dish of mac and cheese wasn't going to be enough, so I made a container of instant mac and cheese to supplement it. Also I thought a vegetable would be nice so I opened a jar of pickles, and sliced some rich cheese of some kind for an appetizer. Somehow everybody had arrived and was at the table, so I served them plates heaped with roast beef. Forgot the mac and cheese which I had left warming in the oven, and the pickles and cheese never made it to the table either. Everybody liked the roast beef but there was way too much of it, and people drifted away to other things... I have a clear memory of asking Sylvia if she liked the dinner and her saying she did, so it was not a total failure I guess.
posted morning of October 31st, 2008: Respond
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 A fine day for trick-or-treating, here in NJ anyways. Pet uploaded a huge mixtape of scary songs. Kate Beaton has had a festive week of posting, with dancing skeletons, a headless horseman, and the Flying Dutchman --  this last in particular is hilarious. Enjoy!
 (Boy, this is an exciting weekend! -- starts with Hallowe'en, then you get the end of Daylight Savings Time, and to top it all off on Tuesday we elect a new president! Not to mention, on Saturday Steve Lehrhoff is playing at The Crossroads.)
posted morning of October 31st, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, October 30th, 2008
Chapter 4 of The Golden Compass: Sylvia and I are both, separately, trying to figure out why the Master sends Lyra off with Mrs. Coulter,  who is obviously a Bad Guy. Sylvia laid out her hypothesis to me: Sylvia: Dad? What is that thing the Master gave Lyra? What did he say it could do? Me: The Alethiometer you mean? He said it was a machine that would tell her the truth. Sylvia: ...I think it's going to tell her that she's a Gobbler. He knows it and he wants it to tell her. Me: Hm, that sounds like it could be...
(A minute later) If he knows though, why doesn't he just tell her? Sylvia: Because she would probably just refuse.
That's a good thought. I also am working on an idea where maybe Mrs. Coulter's kid-stealing activities are actually benign, or serving a greater good, and we've been misled by the children's talk of Gobblers. The distinction between Good Guys and Bad Guys is not as clear in this book as in most of the other stuff we've read before. But I think Sylvia's idea is probably closer to right.
posted evening of October 30th, 2008: Respond
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The Virginia Quarterly Review publishes a newly translated 
