strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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May 9 07: quote for the day
Because I love it so: James Nicoll on my native tongue, and the habits thereof.
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. [source]
As it happens, this Mr. Nicoll has said a lot of amusing things, and many of them are listed on Wikiquote.
May 8 07: a letter to my brain
Dear Brain:
Okay, so I have a story to write. I need to distribute it to my writers’ group, the Secret Cabal, one week from tonight. It needs to be under 5K words. I think it’s time to get the d.s. story out there into the world, don’t you? You’ve only been teasing me with hints about it since the last night of the Gay Games, which I needn’t remind you was in July.
But after spending an hour and a half sitting down at and then running from and then sitting down at and then running from my computer, I realize that I need a couple of important pieces. I’ve read the scrap of story that I started shortly after coming back from Chicago, but I’m not sure that’s the answer, either. I’m off to bed now; would you mind having the subconscious work on this for tomorrow?
Thanks—
A
May 7 07: needled
Two of my best friends in the world are expecting a child. That child is due pretty much any day now — recent eyewitness reports have described the mother-to-be as both “big as a house” and “ready to blow.” Images of Violet Beauregarde dance in one’s head, but I would never be so gauche as to mention that here because Kathleen reads this every now and then and someday she’ll be able to move quickly again and at that point she would kill me.
Anyway. When one is a knitter, one has certain obligations. There’s a baby blanket on the needles: a Moderne Baby Blanket from those clever women at Mason-Dixon Knitting. I’ve never made a blanket before. It will be machine washable.
Blankets are big. Even when size 8 needles are involved, I never really appreciated how many stitches go into a blanket. It was supposed to be ready in time for the birth, but that? Ain’t gonna happen. I have worked on it at chorus rehearsals; I have worked on it on the subway; I worked on it today whilst doing a whole lot of remedial Doctor Who (am about two-thirds of the way through Tennant’s first season. W00t!), but there’s a long way to go yet. Photos will be provided of the final product as soon as. That is all.
May 3 07: from the culture desk
Apparently I’ve got a planet in the house of musicals right now. Recently I’ve had the opportunity to see two (2) different big Broadway shows. The first was “Legally Blonde,” which I saw in previews and you should have, too, because I’m not sure it’s worth the full ticket price. It’s pink, it’s intermittently funny, the cast is talented and really really enthusiastic. But the show itself is kind of forgettable. By the next morning I couldn’t remember a single bar of music. Perhaps it would have helped if I’d seen the movie — but Different Bob had, and as much as he adores the film he wasn’t that so crazy about the show either.
Now, “Spring Awakening,” on the other hand. There is a show worth full ticket price. I laughed, I cried, I looked on in amazement at how much the lead actor spits as he enunciates. No, really, I did all three of those things. Somehow my buddy Rich and I ended up in the front row, dead center; in most cases this would be a liability but the staging of the show made these the best seats in the house. What an incredibly talented bunch of kids; and the music (by Duncan Sheik) is great; and the book (a more-or-less verbatim adaptation of the 1891 play by Frank Wedekind), which must have been hugely transgressive in the late 19th century, still contains recognizable human teenagers. Go see that.
But if you are looking for a cheaper ticket — Hey! Twenty bucks! — or something more scientifictional, allow me to make a recommendation. My buddy Manoel Felciano (Tony nominee for his performance as Toby in Sweeney Todd) is producing a one-hour semistaged version of “The Hidden Sky” on May 14 at Joe’s Pub. And you should go see that, too.
“The Hidden Sky” is a musical version of the Ursula K. LeGuin story “The Masters,” from her collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters. The world is old, and changed: some catastrophe in the distant past has veiled the sky in clouds. The theocracy that emerged to salvage some form of civilization has responded to the destruction by banning all scientific thought, all machinery beyond its most simple forms, even all mathematics beyond the most basic operations. But a young woman cannot help but think, and ask: What makes the ball fall? Can the motion of a body in space be predicted? What are the numerical patterns behind the swirling of clouds, the whirling of water?
“The Hidden Sky” is a show that deserves your attention. I first saw it in a similar showcase at Ars Nova last fall. Peter Foley wrote it (with a book by Kate Chisholm), and the music is fabulous. Manoel will be one of the leads, opposite Marya Grandy, who is superfunny and so very talented. Here’s a flyer, to give to friends; but you should buy your ticket today from Joe’s Pub while you can. This show pushes every happy-button I have, and I am more than pleased to evangelize on its behalf. I mean, it has a song in which revelation on the nature of God is accompanied by a chorus singing the Fibonacci sequence. How can you not go?
May 2 07: subway report
Has anybody else seen the shiny new trains running on the N line? They’re, like, the 2.0 version of the trains they introduced a couple years back on the 1/2/3 and 4/5/6 lines, with these supercool dynamic LED route readouts. I rode in one today for perhaps the second time. It has the familiar automated announcements and the wheels sing the pseudo-Somewhere triad of minor sevenths as it pulls out of the station. The new model is called the R-160, and because the internet was created for people who like to talk about obscure topics, it already has an entire page of fan-made expository video footage. Apparently the first tests began last summer; there will be 660 new R-160 cars on the N and Q lines by the end of this year.
New trains are cool.
May 1 07: comma chameleon
For a while I thought this job would kill me. Not because it is hard — although it still kicks my ass from time to time — but because it requires me to violate a fundamental law of that which is right and good. And you know how I feel about those.
I speak, of course, of the serial comma. I am a serial-comma kind of guy. And this job requires me to — oh! the horror! — strip out serial commas wherever I find them. Yes! Each time I had to do this, a little black mark was left upon my soul, one with a tail that drooped forlornly. The only thing that eased the pain was I knew that these commas were going to a better place. Because that’s what they told us. Slowly, though, I realized the truth: there was no happy upstate farm where these newly homeless commas would spend the rest of their lives among the flowers and the butterflies. They were not cheerfully barking at semicolons out in a pasture somewhere. Eventually, on my lunch break, I found the dingy closet where the Copy Chief unceremoniously drowns them in a mop-bucket.
The fact that I did not quit right then and there should be read as a testament to (a) how much I otherwise enjoy this job and (b) how much I need the cash. Instead, in the little free time I have available, I have undertaken a new project: The Comma Rescue Society. We take commas that would otherwise be consigned to shelters and eventual euthanization and place them in loving homes.
Won’t you consider giving to the CRS — or sheltering a comma or two in your own household? And if you need a testimonial just ask our first satisfied clients: my parents, Ayn Rand and God.