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January 11th, 2008
11:58 am - Auld Acquaintance meme
Borrowed from  chadu.
Make a post to your Live Journal, blog, MySpace, Facebook, or whatever, with a list of the names of old friends that you haven't seen in a long time, and would love to get in touch with again. Maybe one of them will Google their name and your post will turn up. Maybe someone on your friends list knows them and can pass the word along. Who knows?
So:
Ted Wrigley
Barbara Ann Hull
Bayne Steele
Andrew Chen
Price Pomeroy
...what are you guys up to?
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November 21st, 2007
October 29th, 2007
03:34 pm - A Long Line of Dead Men (and Women)
I recently re-acquired the Genealogy Bug, and have been spending rather more time than my wife would prefer at trying to trace out a first rough guess at my post-immigrant ancestry. The results have been interesting, at least to me.
I seem to be very, very American. So far, the most recent immigrant ancestor I've been able to find is a great-great-great-grandmother who allegedly came over from Europe, no later than 1842. The only unknown ancestors who could possibly have been earlier are my maternal grandfather's mother's parents -- and she was born in the US in 1860, so it's unlikely.
Subject to (extensive) necessary verification, I nevertheless seem to be descended from 3 Mayflower passengers, one Jamestown settler (second wave -- arrived 1622), one Third Virginia Charter settler (1635), two non-Mayflower early Plymouth colonists (1629 and 1630), and so forth. One of those colonial lines, the Fitz Randolphs of New Jersey, trace an alleged descent from pretty much all of the mediaeval kings of Europe, including Charlemagne and Louis I of France. As I said, extensive verification required.
The general patterns seems to have been:
1. Arrive to North American colonies
2. Move around a bit to acquire mucho land
3. Spit out a younger son or daughter who pines for the frontier
4. Have them move to an area just outside the boundaries of the colonies/states
5. Repeat as necessary every time civilization gets too close
6. Pass through PA/MD/VA, then NC and/or TN (optional), then KY, then IN, then IL just in time
Fascinating. We'll see what else turns up as I try to get past the low-hanging fruit on the family tree.
Current Music: Stanley Jordan, Magic Touch
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July 25th, 2007
12:10 pm - I Can Name That Tune in One Letter (Meme)
ctate gave me the letter Y and memed me to name my favorite ten songs beginning with that letter. Y, oh y, did it have to be y.
The problem with Y is not that there aren't enough songs, but that there are so very many very bad songs. Bad in every way that songs can be bad.
Sappy songs: "You Light Up My Life", Debbie Gibson.
Campy songs: "YMCA", Village People
Silly songs: "Yes, We Have No Bananas", Benny Goodman / Spike Jones / etc.
Satirical songs: "Yoda", Weird Al Yankovic
So, sifting through the dross, here are my top 10 Y-songs of all time.
( Read more...Collapse )
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November 30th, 2006
12:33 pm - A Midsummer Night's Screwball Comedy
As an early Christmas gift, my parents gave us tickets to the Folger Shakespeare Theater production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream". It was wholly unlike what I was expecting (whatever that was), and a lot of fun. The director's alleged inspiration was seeing a really bad performance of AMSND in the middle of a Busby Berkeley film festival, and realizing that Gable and Lombard (or Nick and Nora Charles) were a much more convincing Oberon and Titania than any of the vanilla faery interpretations he'd ever seen. So he staged the whole play as '30s high society with absurd musical interludes -- and it works!
( Details and more pondering...Collapse )
All in all, an excellent and very entertaining show. I can see why it was held over, and I'm sorry it closes so soon.
Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Brahms Motets
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November 27th, 2006
02:31 pm - Valabar's
We have tangible information! Steven Brust responded to a question I asked in his LJ, as follows:
od_mind:
I recently had the very great pleasure of visiting Hungary, and the even greater pleasure of eating at a famous Budapest restaurant that had me thinking about Valabar's. Is Valabar's modeled on some particular restaurant you've been to, or is it more a Platonic Ideal of restaurant?
skzbrust:
To some extent, it is modeled after The Bakery, a Continental restaurant in Chicago some years ago, operated by Chef Lajos (Louis) Szathmary.
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November 19th, 2006
01:36 am - Ha! Vlad meets Meyer
Steven Brust recently posted on his LJ that he's been enjoying re-reading the Travis McGee books of John D. MacDonald after a long hiatus. In one of his responses to comments, he wrote:
"I have the feeling that the next Vlad novel is going to have a few McGee-like passages, here and there. It's time I brought in a new influence, and he does sort of fit like a glove."
Whee!
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Jesus Christ Superstar, London Soundtrack
Current Location: The Cave
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November 13th, 2006
01:35 pm - That SFBC list thing
SFBC List of the 50 "most important" works of SF in the last (mumble) years.
I've bolded the ones I've read, italicized the ones I started and never finished, underlined the ones I've loved, and done a strike through on the ones I've read and hated.
( Read more...Collapse )
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November 12th, 2006
05:48 pm - Philosophistry
A rather amusing philosophy quiz.
(Actually, I was annoyed by the lack of a coherent alternative to choose in the first ethics question. I can believe that real moral choices exist, without believing that lying is always wrong no matter what...)
( Read more...Collapse )
Current Music: King Crimson, "21st Century Shizoid Man"
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November 7th, 2006
05:07 pm - I am not making this up
A sentence seen in a current news story:
"The listing was removed from eBay on Oct. 11 because it violated a policy against selling human remains."
Full story here.
Current Music: Mason Williams, Classical Gas
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