From Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
That’s one of the ones without Chris Pine, you damn kids.
All the kids are asking why the iPhone is that big.
Siri, Why Don’t Kids Understand This Bit?
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Month: December 2015
Planning My Next Nightmare
I don’t know when I’m scheduled for my next nightmare, but I’d like to pencil crayon in something based on this box containing crayons distributed with the kids menu at a local restaurant:
Active volcanoes, monster trucks, tigers on choppers, and T-rexes on pogo sticks. Not depicted: Me, without any clothes on, late for a final.
On the other hand, if instead of naked I’m wearing a loincloth and carrying a bastard sword, that would be an awesome dream.
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Book Report: Melk Abbey by ABT DR Burkhard Ellegast OSB (2008)
This book is a memento/guidebook to the historic Melk Abbey in Austria. Someone got to go there, and I got their book eventually, although the book is available online.
Many of these style books have a lot of photographs and a little bit of text–this book, on the other hand, has a much higher text to photo ratio, but it is an abbey that is almost 1000 years old, so there’s a lot of history to cover. The book has two parts: A detailed history of the abbey (along with some regional detail) and a second portion that goes through the public rooms of the abbey along with their images; however, this second part recovers some of the historical ground covered in the first portion of the book. When I turned the page and was back at the beginning, almost, I was daunted. But I kept through it; the self-guided tour part is the part with the best images of the abbey.
I read this book before I read The Great Wall, and both of them have shaken my self-confidence in my knowledge of history. For although I’m probably better versed in history than most people, it’s a very localized and very high level knowledge of history. I know a bit about English history, I know a bit about American history, I know a bit about Roman history, and I know a bit about European history, at least names and countries after about 1600. But this book goes into detail about the smaller fiefdoms of Austria in the dark ages, and I don’t know anything. It’s a bit humbling (which means my knowledge is a mere half byte at this point–four bits in this paragraph, you see–it’s computer humor). But one of the things I’m really feeling acutely this year is the difference between reading widely and reading deeply–that is, to have a fine-grained knowledge of something very specific such as Austrian history 1000-1500 AD versus the overview I have, which is some specifics but large blank spaces in regional timelines. I’m still opting for broad knowledge, but sometimes books like this strike me with how little I actually know.
At any rate, for a glossy little paperback, the book does have some rather nice images of the interior of the abbey once we get to the self-guided tour part. For example, here’s the library:
I looked at it and thought I have almost as many books. Of course, I really don’t have almost that many books, and certainly not that many old books.
Also, in case you’d like some nightmare fodder, here’s a valued monstrance:
That is an elaborate tree sculpture designed to hold the purported jawbone of a saint. Which it does. I don’t mean to be dismissive of Catholic thought and the importance of saints, but the whole medieval relic worship thing. Ew.
The book was a little longer to get through than I’d hoped, and the most I got out of it was the knowledge that I don’t know much about Austrian history.
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Christmas Album Review: Merry Christmas by Bing Crosby (ca 1955)
This album differs from some of the other Bing Crosby compilations (such as Christmas with Bing) because it’s a Christmas album as a Christmas album, not a collection of other songs from other records. This one features more swing to it, as it was recorded in the 1950s while Bing was relatively young and not later as he grew to be an elder statesman of music and television host. Several tracks feature the Andrews Sisters as well to give you an idea.
The track list includes>
- Silent Night
- Adeste Fideles (Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful)
- White Christmas
- God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
- Faith Of Our Fathers
- I’ll Be Home For Christmas (If Only In My Dreams)
- Jingle Bells
- Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town
- Silver Bells
- It’s Beginning To Look Like Christmas
- Christmas In Killarney
- Mele Kalikimaka
The song “Faith of our Fathers” is new; the others, although standards, have a little zip on them and are festive. Overall, it’s a good listen for the holidays and breaks out of the normal Bing Crosby ouevre. Which, I suspect, many Bing Crosby albums do once you move beyond the often-anthologized.
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Breaking News: Republican Does Something Trivial That Press Doesn’t Cover When Democrats Do
Headline: Carson mispronounces ‘Hamas’ as ‘hummus’
Apparently, Democrat politicians do not misspeak like this; otherwise the press would tell me so.
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Book Report: The Great Wall: China Against The World 1000 BC to 2000 AD by Julia Lovell (2006)
I read this book as part of my recent Sinophilia kick.
This book is a bit of history and a bit of cultural psychoanalysis. Instead of a straightforward history, the book focuses on the story of wall-building in China, from the earliest walls in the Qin Dynasty through the creation of the Ming wall near Beijing called The Great Wall and beyond to the Great Firewall in the 21st century. As such, a lot of non-wall building dynasties and history is left out along with major trends in Chinese thought (Confucism vs Daoism and the import of Buddhism). The book chops around a bit, too, jumping from the early history to stories of explorers and Indiana Jones types finding remnants of the wall in the desert.
Still, it highlights some patterns and cycles in Chinese history, from where barbarian tribes overthrow a Chinese dynasty, remain vital for a while, and then become Chinese only to lose their military moxie and build walls in their decline. Whereupon another vital tribe takes over, remains vital for a while, and so on. The narrative sweep of the book isn’t compelling enough to pull you along unlike other books more biographical or focused on ascents of civilizations, and the author could have tightened in places a bit.
The author takes a couple of light shots at George W. Bush (president of the United States when the book was written) and at Israel (for building a fence of its own, the fools! The Mongols always get in!), but overall it’s not a political book nor a particularly noticeably leftist history book. It isn’t pro- or anti-China. It gets a few shots in at Jesuits, though.
So I’m glad to have read it.
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Source Of My New Retro-Authenticity
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a story about regional slang from Wisconsin, some of which is disappearing.
I’ve used bubbler recently enough, and I know what a Berliner is. I could suss out what Schafskopf is even though I’ve never played it.
Unfortunately, as some of the older Germans and whatnot are dying out, the old slang are going with them.
So to preserve my native heritage, to remind everyone in southwest Missouri that I am not a native, and to sound cool in my own mind, I’m going to start using them.
Particularly rumpelkammer, which means a storage room that’s messy.
Not mentioned in the article: rathskeller, which I specifically mentioned when looking for my latest home.
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Book Report: The Complete Jack Kirby June-August 1947 by Greg Theakston (2001)
This book is part of a greater collection, originally published in hardback no less, that collects all of Jack Kirby’s early work before he became THE Jack Kirby responsible for (with Stan Lee) Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and a variety of later things that would be important to Jack Kirby fans because they were Jack Kirby things.
This book focuses on summer 1947 and the numerous stories he wrote. He wasn’t THE Jack Kirby then; he was a contract guy for a bottom rung publisher of anthology series, so there are a lot of crime stories in here along with a romance story.
Well.
I’ve already sacrificed a lot of geek comic credibility when reporting on books that deal with Comic Art (see also Comic Art Now). Although some of the work can be elaborate, none of it really rises to the level of great paintings by, say, the Impressionists (although since it depicts things from a single point of view and is therefore comprehensible, comic art rises above Cubism, surely). The work in this book is all black and white, so it’s limited in what it can do to begin with.
So it’s worth a browse if you can find a cheap copy like I did or if you like comics. I mean, amid the history and biography of Kirby, it does have short comic stories in it. It’s definitely worth your time if you’re a real Kirby fan.
And the one thing I learned from the book: Dell and Delacorte originated as comic publishers and only then moved into paperbacks and then hardbacks.
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