Chicago is a giving kind of a town. Dr. Green submits kindly to our attention this Romeo and Juliet Statue, no doubt thinking of our prior interest in discovering truly comprehensive sources for visual offence. It is true that on a merely visual scale this work of an "expert artist" is even more impressive than other examples of sculptural feel-coppery we've seen offered at, ahem, rock-bottom prices.
But the ad copy, too, is of exceptional quality:
It can also make a sophisticated gift for any wild-eyed couple, whether long-time married or newly consummated. The powerful imagery of this bronze will surely evoke sensuous feelings in even the most inhibited individuals. Add our Romeo and Juliet portrait to your art collection. Or adorn your living room with this noble statuette and let it move you to new heights of affection for your mate.
In the presence of such exquisite sentences I stand dumbstruck and grateful for having been given the chance to read them.
As in so many matters, we are most indebted to Dr. G. for his keen eye and sensitive understanding of our tastes.
Every U.S. states has adopted an official motto. These come in varying degrees of silly self-importance: "Live free or die," "Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem", "Hasta Luego, Baybee."
A few have adopted one-word mottoes from Latin or Native American languages, such as Maine's Dirigo, "I lead", or Washington's Al-Ki, a Chinook word meaning "By and By" or "Hope for the Future."
Only four states, however, have one-word mottoes in English. Of these, three are nouns (although one could be used as a verb as well). The fourth, however, is a different part of speech from the others.
What is the fourth one-word English state motto? For bonus points, name the state. For triple bonus points and an extra life, what are the other one-word mottoes?
First correct answer posted to comments wins a personalized limited-edition neck face tag for your home or office. No Googling or writing to the governor. One guess per comment please, but comment as often as you like.
The inevitable must be faced. My current means of serving up slopulous writing in this space -- Movable Type Version 2.21 -- is simply no match for the onslaught of comment spam.
The IP blocking feature is little proof against the spammers, who seem easily able to fool my pathetic attempts to goaltend. And while I can, if vigilant, wash off the accumulating adverticrud on a daily basis, I don't have time for such attentiveness. The result of a week's inattention has been the insane accumulation of ads for grey- market get-it-up potions, virtual locations for gambling with somewhat less virtual money, Glengarry-ish investment cons, and, of course, lewd enticements ranging from shrugworthy to loathsome.
Most of it's gone now, although tomorrow will no doubt bring a fresh infusion of sludge.
So, I figure I need to either
1. Upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 and start using TypeKey, or
2. Find Something Else
I've been hesitant to do this for a number of reasons. In the first place, I'm not at all skilled in that world of actually getting applications to work and so forth. George W. Bush knows more about Shiite clerical politics than I do about this stuff. I've had one run-in with an error that nearly wiped my weblog off of my hosted space, and so doing a reinstall of a new version of MT or another application feels like a lot of work and a lot of opportunities to get something wrong.
In the second place, the free version of MT 3.1 limits your weblog to one author. As you may have noticed, the multi-author feature (which used to be in the free versions of Movable Type) comes in handy when one of our doughty Guest Quizmasters volunteers to step in of a Friday. And while I could shell out the requisite seventy bucks for the paid version (which includes multi-authoring), I'm not sure it's worth the price, given that that's the only thing I'd be paying for.
I know there are other applications (like Textpattern or Expression Engine) which might serve as well or better.
In case it isn't clear, I'm soliciting advice and possibly a little help getting through a rebuild -- should the Wombatfile move to MT 3.1 free version immediately, is the paid version worth it for lots of reasons I don't know about, does TypeKey even work well (and will its registration requirement drive away Friday participants?) Or are there better options for bringing the Wombat up to date and saying goodbye to its unwanted commercial sponsors?
A late start this morning, with apologies from your harried host. Away we go with this week's cranial reduction kit:
The process began at the turn of the century. China's offerings for this year include Yutu (the mythic Jade Hare), Wukong (the King of the monkeys), and Haitang (the Chinese flowering crabapple treee). Japan contributed Washi (eagle), Yagi (goat) and Tokage (lizard). Malaysia added among others Jelawat (sunfish) and Nuri, the blue-crowned parakeet. Micronesia threw in Soudelor (a legendary chief) and Nanmadol (a ruin which one source claims is known as "the Venice of the Pacific). The Philippines made some boldly poetic additions: Hagupit (lash or flog), Lupit (vicious), and Talim (a sharp or cutting edge). And we're not even getting into the contributions from North and South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, or the U.S.A.
To what list were all of these added?
First correct answer posted to comments wins a battered and chlorine-damaged G.I. Joe Sea Wolf submarine that my friend Kip accidentally left at my house in 1975. (The squid has both long tentacles chewed off by the dog, sorry). No Googling or asking the reference librarian. One guess per comment, please, but comment as often as you'd like.
Way back in June, you might recall, I announced vague intentions of a regular feature in this space, in which new and forthcoming books which had given the editorial staff some pleasure in our desultory page-flippery would be lauded for their particular beauties.
And then, of course, silence. While the four or five regular visitors to this space are likely to have been unsurprised by the slow pace of your reviewer's essays, all of us here nevertheless feel the jagged aluminum spurs of shame digging into our sides as we contemplate the pathetic output in the recommendation department.
A quick little ditty, then, in an attempt to cling to our self-appointed status as Praise-singer to the Worthy:
Arthur Phillips, The Egyptologist.
I never read the author's somewhat-ballyhooed first novel, a fact which I will have to remedy following the pleasant time I had with his second. Comparisons to Borges, Nabokov, and Pynchon -- my natural points of reference for a novel in which duelingly unreliable narrators unwind a mordantly hilarious shaggy-mummy story about a hidden tomb in 1920s Egypt, the legacy of a sexually obsessed Pharaoh, and an Australian boy with a monstrous drive for self-invention -- are misleading if for a reader like me inevitable. The Egyptologist reads like none of the above, and more to the point never makes the mistake of trying too hard to do so.
Instead, it's all breezily assured storytelling, mounting creepiness, and the kind of verbal style at play in the narrator's voice that forces me to use the word "droll." The eccentrically self-absorbed hero Ralph Trilipush has an instantly identifiable wrongness about him, and to tell you now that is to spoil nothing. By the time Phillips actually has us digging in the whereabouts of Howard Carter's famous uncovery of King Tut, the hieroglyphics on the wall are pretty recognizable pictures. But one is relentlessly driven to keep reading to the end, to lurch forward into the dark space uncovered in the sand, whatever one's suspicions are about what's inside. Utterly unsentimental and delightfully smart, and quite thoroughly unlike almost anything else that's come across my desk this year.
Next up: Cintra Wilson's Colors Insulting to Nature
One summer in Boston, a series of articles in the daily newspaper Courant featured opinions by a writer claiming to be a middle-aged widow living in a nearby rural district, and which dealt with various social topics. The author's self-portrait in an early essay indicated that the opinions would be largely critical: "I have...a natural inclination to observe and reprove the faults of others, at which I have an excellent faculty." One column memorably attacked the student body of Harvard: "They learn little more than how to carry themselves handsomely, and enter a room genteelly...and from thence they return, after abundance of trouble and charge, as great blockheads as ever, only more proud and self-conceited."
The author was, in fact not a middle-aged widow but an unmarried sixteen-year-old, and not a rural resident but a native of Boston.
What was the writer's real name?
First correct answer posted to comments wins a copy of the directors cut of The Death Wheelers. No Googling or asking Nicholson Baker to leaf through the old papers in his garage. One guess per comment, but you may comment as often as you like.
I know you've probably got better things to do with your time and all, but if you can spare a few minutes, I'd be interested to hear your response to this essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as some of the responses here, (in particular this and this).
A blinding headache pains the oversensitive Wombat tonight (I type this late on Thursday)– a weak moment tuning in to the President’s parade of cliché, half-truth, quarter-truth, lies and crowd-pleasing irrelevancies is probably responsible. (My favorite moment was when he stuck it to the New York Times -- of 1946! Boo-yah!)
But let us apply the soothing washcloth of trivia, and try to forget, for a moment, the lingering stench of the noxious vapor pumped out of Madison Square Garden over the past week. On we go...
Otto von Guericke had been a student of both law and mathematics, but two other subjects occupied a great deal of his time. The first was politics – at the age of 44 he was elected mayor of Magedeburg and a magistrate of Brandenburg. But in his second area of interest he made a bigger impression. Eight years after he took office at Regensburg, he used thirty horses and two pieces of copper to assist him in his demonstration of an elusive something which had been theorized by a number of illustrious thinkers. His audience was the Emperor Ferdinand III and the imperial diet.
What did Guericke demonstrate in this famous exhibition?
First correct answer posted to comments wins a leftover protest pink slip found on a downtown-bound A train. No Googling or searching your e-book collection of Neal Stephenson’s works. One guess per comment, please, but you may comment as often as you like.
While they wait at La Guardia for their flights back to God-Man's country, GOP delegates might want to peruse this audit (that's a PDF, don't say you weren't warned) featured on Al's Morning Meeting at the Poynter site (you have to scroll down a bit, past the Halloween-costume story) and now breaking into the papers.
Published by the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General, it's a bit chewy but it's hard to miss the fact that the background checks on applicants seem to be more than lenient (161 of 504 recently cleared applicants were found by the IG to be problem cases -- not quite a third of the total), and that while the training looks pretty rigorous on paper, it's widely variable among different field offices, and there's evidence that many air marshals don't complete the required training.
That's all aside from the more sensational details about specific problems with individual marshals, as highlighted here, for example.
Incidentally, while I hope that reporting on this helps give the lie to the notion that the Bush Administration has been effectively making this country safer, I do note that Homeland Security IG Clark Kent Ervin, while a former White House staffer under Bush I, a well-connected Texas politican, and a December recess appointment to his current job, did sign off on a report which, released in an election season, doesn't make his boss look good. So, bully for him.
