I picked up Season One at the library today. We’ll see how it goes.
Car-lamity!
Well, that’s an overstatement. I was in a parking structure the other day trying to back out of a tight spot next to a support column. I misjudged the distance the passenger-side external mirror extended and brushed the column hard enough to break the clips which hold the mirror cap on, and then compounded that error by not stopping before I ran over the cap. After muttering a few expletives, I got out and picked up the part, threw it in the back and went on my way.
I called the local dealership about replacing it, and they said they had one in stock for $38. Not so bad, I thought, until they told me it was unpainted. If I wanted to match it with the driver-side mirror cap I’d have to take it to a body and paint shop to have it painted. Well, yes, I do want the two to match, so in addition to buying the part I now have to pay to have it painted. Fortunately I found a paint shop down the hill from my house where I was able to leave the part overnight and have it painted; they just called to say “come by after noon and we’ll put it on for you.”
This little exercise is going to cost me upwards of $100. Be careful when driving in parking structures!
No, we don’t need Syrian intervention
All you interventionists who advocate for using the US military to somehow “stop” the civil war in Syria and indirectly pick a pro-Western winner, can you look around at our previous record of trying to establish Jeffersonian democracies in the region first? What’s happened with Iraq? Well, it’s closer to Iran than it is to us. Afghanistan? Please. That “democracy” won’t survive our departure next year.
Besides that, the democracy we supposedly have right here at home isn’t in the best of shape. Witness the refusal by the two senior Republicans in Congress to fulfill their duty under law and appoint three members of the Independent Payment Advisor Board, a panel “tasked with making cuts to Medicare provider payments (it may not touch benefits) if costs exceed economic growth plus an additional percentage point in any given year.” Witness also the Republicans’ refusal to confirm a director for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Maybe we should solve our own democratic fiasco before jumping into another one in a place where we don’t even understand who the players are and what their ultimate goals might be.
Natalie Maines resurfaces, sans Chicks
Yep, it’s true. She’s just released a new album titled “Mother.” Here’s the review from Fresh Air, and here’s the first single. It’s a cover of an Eddie Vedder song called “Without You.” It starts at about the 0:48 second mark.
Grumpy dog
We had to go out for a medical appointment today, so we put Abby outside with her water dish. We left about 10:20 AM and didn’t get back till 1:00 PM. Was our dog dancing outside, smiling and laughing and cavorting, so happy was she to see us?
She was not. She came inside, went to her cave in the family room, and hasn’t spoken once. It’s funny. She’s got quite a case of the sulks.
Nook Reader — is now the time?
I got a notice from Barnes and Noble in my email today telling me I’d never find a better time than now to buy a Nook HD. That’s the 7″ version. The price for the HD fell to $149 for one with 8GB or $179 for the 16GB model. Additionally, B&N just did a deal with Google that means Google Play with all its Android apps is now included with a Nook.
Well, that price looks awfully good. But I have trouble wrapping my head around reading an entire book on an e-reader. I’ve been reading newspaper and magazine articles as well as long blog posts on desktop screens for years, but those screens have been no smaller than 11 inches, even back in 2000 when I was using a Packard Bell tower.
How much of an adjustment is it to read on a small screen? Do the differences in lighting between color and black & white (backlit for the first, edge-lit for the second) make that big a distinction?
Little help from the e-book readers, s’il vous plaît.
Derby Day!
Racing form ready, TV tuned up, ready to go!
Makes no sense, so it’s the Conservative POV, alright
In light of the howling about the court decision that access to Plan B contraception (the so-called Morning After pill) should be available to women and girls of all ages, and in light of the accidental killing of a two-year-old in Kentucky by her five-year-old brother with his own gun, this seems suitably sarcastic.
Update: Oh man. Look what was on sale at the annual NRA convention today.
Yes, it’s silly, but it’s compulsive
Today at Safeway I paid $10.67 for my exceedingly unhealthy foods (not a veggie in sight!). I heard the total and immediately thought “Aha! William the Conqueror was consolidating his realm that year!” You’ll remember, class, that William defeated Harold II at Hastings in October of 1066 and was crowned William I of England, the first Norman king, in December of the same year.
I do this all the time. I get a dollar total for my purchase and it immediately triggers my brain to find an event in that year. Obviously this only works from about 714 CE until the present. I’m best at 20th century events, for reasons that should be obvious, but I still remember some other historical dates too.
Am I alone here, or do others do this too?
Cannibalism?
Archaeologists occasionally find things the rest of us would rather not know about. The early Jamestown colony has been romanticized in our histories, not as much as The Lost Colony at Roanoke, but pretty widely just the same. The Pilgrims at Plymouth got more ink, but the Virginians and their plight were also covered in the texts I had in school. None of those texts mentioned that during the “starving time” of 1609 – 1610 there was a likelihood that some of the colonists resorted to cannibalism to try to stay alive. This despite contemporaneous evidence in letters from one of the Presidents of the colony, George Percy:
And now famin beginneinge to Looke gastely and pale in every face, thatt notheinge was Spared to mainteyne Lyfe and to doe those things which seame incredible, as to digge upp deade corpes outt of graves and to eate them. And some have Licked upp the Bloode which hathe fallen from their weake fellowes.
An anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in Washington has determined that the skull of a young girl from the Jamestown site shows signs of her flesh and brain being removed after death.
It’s terribly sad, but it’s not surprising. Desperation drives humans to do things they would normally never do.