The future is now
Jules White, Typewriter, Photo-Collage
Jake finished reading Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger yesterday, so today we had him begin reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night (upbeat stuff, eh?) He got stuck on this passage:
It is a curious typewriter Mr. Friedmann has given me — and an appropriate typewriter, too. It is a typewriter that was obviously made in Germany during the Second World War. How can I tell? Quite simply, for it puts at finger tips a symbol that was never used on a typewriter before the Third German Reich, a symbol that will never be used on a typewriter again.
The symbol is the twin lightning strokes used for the dreaded S.S., the Schutzstaffel, the most fanatic wing of Nazism.
Jake’s problem with this? He’d never seen a typewriter, and couldn’t imagine how such a thing could work.
Even with ample visual aids, he still didn’t quite get it. I showed him the high magnification image, pointed out all the parts, described how they worked. Next, I took a #2 pencil and scribbled out a dense rectangular box of graphite. I flipped this paper onto another paper, and by marking firmly on the back of the first paper, I left a mark on the second.
“Like that,” I said. “The key strikes the ribbon, which contains ink. That’s like the graphite on this piece of paper. It transfers the ink to the typing paper.”
He got it eventually, but the whole thing proved surprisingly difficult. Now, I’m wondering what’s next. Will I have to buy him a sliderule on eBay to prove to him that, yes, you can work trig functions with a clever bit of plastic?
Go on — I know some of you must have similar stories.
***
In other news: suddenly, I’m the WordPress God. I figured out how to put a frog on my header all by myself! You’re looking at a Dendrobates leucomelas, also known as the yellow-banded poison dart frogs. They are native to northern Brazil, parts of Guyana and Venezuela, and they’re a hearty species, easily kept and bred in captivity.
We don’t keep leucs. We keep blue poison dart frogs (Dendrobates azureus), a frog so beautiful folks never believe they are real until they hop.
Honestly, though, I haven’t yet achieved WordPress godhood. I have yet to solve my Blogger importation problems, and I can’t figure out why other computers besides this one refuse to recognize my password. That’s why I haven’t been able to post in the morning. No, it’s not a cookie problem; I’ve made the cookie settings as permissive as possible and it does not seem to help.
Time for The Daily Show.
D.
An Idiot’s Guide to Blogging
I’d like to thank all of you who have gone out of your way to help me with my troubles — Pat, Hedgehog & Peacefrog, Monica, everyone. Thank you.
By the way — Monica? You beat me:
And now, I would like to share a little bit of what I have learned. About blogs, not sluttiness. Clearly, I have much to learn about sluttiness. I mean, 49%? I’ve never scored 49% on a test, never.
(more…)
Finding time
I finished seeing patients at 4:30, then popped over to St. Mammon to see a patient and leave a note. By 5:20, I’m home — far earlier than usual, so I thought for sure I’d get some worthwhile editing in this evening, or at least a big chunk of blogging time.
Wheel of Fortune
Before it became a showcase for the talent of Vanna White, the Wheel of Fortune was a tarot card symbolizing change, luck, the whimsy of fate. Great card if it’s dealt in the standard position (as shown), the pits if reversed (upside down). That’s Fate for you — a strict 50-50, like the coin flip of Batman’s nemesis, Harvey Dent. Heads, you win the lottery. Tails, you’re blindsided by a trucker asleep at the wheel of his semi.
I bought my first tarot deck, one of the classic Rider-Waite decks, my first quarter at Berkeley. Old-timers here at Balls and Walnuts will remember that I had a spooky period — read lots of Castaneda, futzed with my dreams, wandered the Berkeley streets at night like I was on some kind of vision quest. Tarot was part of it.
How does a chemistry major reconcile something as obviously bogus as fortune telling? My theory of tarot, circa 1984, posited that folks reveal far more in their body language than they do with their words. I might not understand what their body language had to say, but my subconscious did. Using the tarot as a sort of Universal Translator, I could free-associate my way through a reading, blathering on and on, wandering from one card to the next and then back again, generating hypotheses, testing for internal consistency, and ultimately arriving at a coherent story.
I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Yah, that’s how all the charlatans work. They throw out a million darts, hoping one or two will be bullseyes.” The trouble with that theory is, I never asked the recipient of the reading for verbal feedback. If he even spoke, I’d interrupt: “Don’t feed the reader. I don’t want you to say a word.” I was reading their body language, you see, and the cards merely catalyzed the process. (more…)
Read it ‘n weep
Someone or something stalks the boys and young men of the Reach, kidnapping them, abusing them in the worst ways, killing them, and discarding their mutilated bodies. Dubric Byerly must find the killer and bring him to justice. He’s accompanied by his squire, Dien, his pages, Lars and Otlee, and the ghosts of all who have been murdered during his watch.
Threads of Malice follows Ghosts in the Snow, Tamara Siler Jones’s first Dubric Byerly novel. Since I’m fated never to read a series in the appropriate order, I started with Threads. It’s a credit to Jones’s characterization skills that Dubric and his comrades sprang to life for me within the first twenty-five pages. No backstory, by the way — scarcely a peep about what happened in Ghosts — and yet Dubric, Dien, and the boys captured and held my attention from the start.
Jones has horrible things in store for this foursome. If I remember correctly, PBW likes to ask her main characters, “What’s the worst thing I can do to you?” — and then, she does just that. I suspect Jones did the same thing when she conceived Threads of Malice, only she must have been having a bad day. I mean, a really, really bad day, because man, is she ever cruel to her characters.
What an incredible one-two punch this is: deft characterization plus Jones’s willingness to tighten the screws far past what would be acceptable among polite sadomasochists. Repeatedly, I found myself thinking, Oh, no she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t . . . I can’t believe it, she DID! She pulled very few punches indeed. As a result, I ripped through this book in a week, which is light speed for yours truly.
I cared deeply for these characters, and, yeah, I admit it: she made me cry. Y’all know what a crybaby I am (Sheila, you got me in StarDoc — damn you!) but still. A writer has to have a good deal of competence to turn on my waterworks. I’m impressed.
This novel features gruesome torture-murders, nasty-nasty autopsy scenes, slimy critters that bring to mind the best stomach-churning images from Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko novels, and two love stories: something for everyone.
I can only fault Jones on one thing: she keeps the pressure on almost until the very last page. Although the ending wrapped up the plot, I wanted a longer cool-down period, a chance to live with the characters during the aftermath. I want to know what happens next to these guys! Do I really have to wait until Fall 2006 for Valley of the Soul? This woman’s cruelty knows no bounds.
I’m sounding like a fanboy, huh?
D.
This is progress?
Question: do any of you have as much trouble reading this font as I do?
What I Did Today
by
Doug H.
With much crying and gnashing of teeth, I:
- Switched to the only other WP theme I can use without figuring out precisely where to put new downloaded themes. (I thought I had this one figured out. I really did. But the new themes do not appear as options.) Consequently, my sidebar and my posts now line up.
- Figured out how to move my sitemeter to this site.
- Crashed the old site.
- Uncrashed the old site, mostly.
- Managed to move over 27 of the 500+ posts from the Blogger site before the importer-software-thingy seized up and wouldn’t transfer any more posts.
- Categorized those 27 posts because it was one of the few things I could figure out how to do.
- Finished the laundry.
- Did the grocery shopping.
I also finished Tamara Siler Jones’s Threads of Malice. Wow. More on that later this evening.
I wish I could:
- Figure out how to get the rest of my Blogger posts over here. When I try to repeat the import, the computer monitor stares back at me slack-jawed as a Deliverance banjoist.
- Figure out how to employ the template of my choice. I’ve put it in the right directory, but it’s still not showing up as an option.
- Not quite as important, but I’d love to learn how to customize the header like some of y’all have managed to do.
Back to real blogging soon. I promise. Meanwhile, I’m going to try out Dean’s Tortiere recipe. (Damn. Forgot the celery salt!)
Homemade pizza tonight; I’m going to prepare the tortiere filling in advance and bake it tomorrow.
D.
I knew I would screw this up.
I don’t know yet whether I’m a little screwed or a lot screwed.
I tried to import the Blogger files to this WordPress blog. Everything went well at first; WordPress claimed it had finished, and was merely adding the files to this site. I watched for half an hour as it slowly added my Shatter files, early ones first, to Balls and Walnuts.
Then it stalled. At least 30 or 40 minutes went by with no apparent progress.
That’s when I screwed the pooch. I figured, “Okay, I’ll just start over,” and did just that. Well, it’s not that simple. Now, my blogger blog is kaput, and I can’t seem to use the Import from Blogger function anymore.
Oy. I’m going to try begging for help from the WordPress gurus.
Note: All is not lost. Blogger still has my files, and I did save my Blogger template before starting all of this. I restored the template, but I think Blogger must still be, erm, disturbed, because I can’t seem to republish the blog. But at least the files are still there!
D.
A few preliminary WordPress questions
I’ve been horsing around with WordPress for the last few hours. Can anyone tell me:
Why are all my links ‘n stuff way down at the bottom of the page?Fixed, using crappy alternative template!- And why aren’t they alphabetized? (I’m anal about such things.)
And if I mess with a new template, will I lose all my links? (Hey, that’s what happens with Blogger!)Answered!How do I transfer my sitemeter over without losing the numbers? (Remember, Type A stands for ‘anal’.)Fixed!- How do I make this place look like MY place? You know, I’d like to doll it up a bit. Hang some pictures, that sort of thing.
How do I un-moderate comments?Answered!
I’ll add and subtract from this list as I grope around in the dark. Bear with me.
Yes, I’m figuring things out slowly but surely. If you haven’t guessed yet, I have no patience. (Please, no dumb puns about patience/patients. Those jokes are right up there with, “Hey, can you see through to the other side?”)
Note: please make sure I have you on my blogroll. If you’re not there and you’d like to be, drop me a note in the comments.
D.
Oyreka!
Know what I remember from the Ancient European Civ class I took in college?
- Historians like Thucydides better than Herodotus
- Writers (like yours truly) like Herodotus better than Thucydides. Herodotus knew how to entertain.
- The ‘y’ in those old Greek names, like the Persian King Cyrus, is pronounced ‘oo’. Thus, Cyrus = Soorus.
- Similarly, the ‘eu’ combo is pronounced ‘oy’.
Eureka = Oyreka!
The boy and I had a good day together in Eureka. True, the neat-o store on 2nd Street which sold carnivorous plants, glass eyes, and faded sepia-toned photographs has closed. It’s a Persian rug store now. Aside from that, however, we had a great day.
The boy and I did lunch at Hurricane Kate’s, where, on the way to the bathroom, I overheard the dishwasher belting out Rod Stewart‘s If You Want My Body and You Think I’m Sexy at the top of his lungs. Yet another food service employee with aspirations towards American Idol.
After lunch, we went shopping for birthday presents —
KAREN, IF YOU’RE READING THIS, STOP NOW!
for Karen, and Valentine’s Day candies too, for good measure. We made a trip to Borders and bought:
For me, Tamara Siler Jones’s Ghosts in the Snow (hey, if I can read PBW’s StarDoc series backwards, I can read Tambo’s Dubric novels out of sequence, too!)
For Jake (think homeschooling), Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Vonnegut’s Mother Night, and The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain.
For Karen (and me, I admit it): a collection of John Varley’s short stories, and Maureen Dowd’s Are Men Necessary? That one’s a birthday present — she doesn’t know about it yet.
Jake wanted to get something for Mom that was HIS idea, so we went back to Old Town Eureka, found another gift shop, and Jake picked out a cool tee-shirt with a crane on it, while I lingered over a pack of Rider-Waite tarot cards. I’ll save my tarot stories for another day. For now, since I’m playing with WordPress for the first time, I’d like to try uploading an image:
The Fool, one of my favorite cards.
D.
I’ve moved
Included for the sake of completeness:
Yup, Blogger done buggered me one too many times. Come visit me at
For the time being, it will look bare-bones over there, but that will change.
Update your links, folks. No telling when I might crash this place AGAIN.
D.