I learned a meme today from Prof. Brendan Riley called troll quotes. He explains it requires “1. a well-known quote with 2. a false attribution from an equally well known person and 3. the wrong picture.” Here’s his favorite example, which I love too, but I had to contribute to the lore myself.
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A great line from the movie Network.
Somebody on Facebook shared this YouTube video, which just pleases me no end.
It’s a digital reconstruction of the city of Bergen, Norway around the year 1350 AD. No doubt it means more to me than to you, because I’ve been to Bergen several times, and recognize the general outlines. (It’s Sissel’s home town, though I’ve never had time to properly stalk her.) Some of the stone buildings are still standing, and the row of buildings along the wharf still exists in principle, though the structures have burned down and been replaced several times in the interval. It’s called Bryggen, “the wharf.” Used to be Tyskebryggen, “the German wharf,” until the late unpleasantness of the 1940s. Shortly after the time of this video, the German Hanseatic league took over Bergen’s trade and established its Norwegian headquarters on that location.
I love this stuff. One of my Facebook friends noted that there are no people, but then he remembered that it was about this time the Black Death came to Norway. So everybody was probably either dying or in hiding.
Maybe the fact I grew up with backyard gardens compels me to plant vegetables of my own, but I’m not very good at it. I haven’t studied techniques or seeds much, and when we have an abundance of zucchini or tomatoes, I don’t necessarily know what to do with them. I’m trying to save my tomatoes from the birds lately, and my dwarf okra seems to be going well so far—no okra crop yet. In the last three years, I’ve planted herbs in what used to be a wildflower garden. The rosemary was a great first choice, being a hearty grower. I finally got basil to grow this year. Apparently, I don’t have the knowledge or knack for growing food from seed, so my previous attempts at growing basil never “took root”—snort! I crack me up.
We have thyme, sage, mint (a vicious weed), and oregano now. I thought the oregano would die at the end of the year, Continue reading Flowering Oregano
The Minnesota State Fair. Artist’s Conception.
It occurs to me that I should have taken pictures at the State Fair on Saturday, like Lileks does. But then I realize, it was hard enough dragging myself around the fairgrounds, let alone taking a camera. I know people have tiny little cameras in their cell phones nowadays, but I’m a straggler on the dragging edge of technology. I only get things after they’re passé (except for my Kindle, which was a gift from… well, I won’t embarrass him again).
It was possibly the most perfect day for the fair I’ve ever seen, from the perspective of weather. Nice temperature, and it started sunny and then clouded over without actually raining more than the occasional tiny spit. This was great for the concessionaires, not so great for Avoidants and Introverts. You know that place in the gospels where Jesus is pushing through a crowd, and stops and says, “Who touched Me?” because (He says) “I felt power go out of Me”? I didn’t heal anybody (may have injured some) but when we pushed through a crowd of teenagers who suddenly appeared around us, screaming for some pop singers (or something) at a radio station booth, I felt the power go out of me, all right. I was a shell of a man by the time I got free of that.
The conclusion was obvious. I need to lose even more weight, and get some exercise. Which I’m trying to do.
Or else give up the fair.
I need to retract an endorsement.
Hunter Baker (funny, I was just thinking about him) commented on my review of Lee Child’s Killing Floor, writing the words I always dread:
I have read a lot of Lee Child books, but had to stop a couple of years back. He revealed himself in a couple of books to be pretty seriously anti-Christian. And made the Reacher character share those views. That did it for me…
I was a major fan of his. It began small with Reacher refusing to fly Alaska Airlines because they put a small Bible verse on each tray. In a subsequent book, there is an extremely bizarre Christian character who is some kind of caricature of American evangelicals. Once I read that one, I just decided Lee Child didn’t need any more of my money.
Sad, but not really a surprise. No more of my hard-earned will flow to Lee Child either.
Alissa Wilkinson blogs about poet Donald Hall’s rich moments in his memoir, Life Work
Artist Makoto Fujimura asks, “Has the concept of the ‘American Dream’ changed since the events of September 11, 2011?”
Loren Eaton, at I Saw Lightning Fall, recommends an article by Danny Bowes on the Noir roots of Cyberpunk:
In the end, what noir and cyberpunk share is a simultaneous, paradoxical status as distinctly past-tense forms that nonetheless keep popping up everywhere in subsequent art. … Fittingly, as each was widely criticized — and exalted — as valuing style over substance, the lasting impact of noir and cyberpunk (connecting the two as one entity, since there is no cyberpunk without noir) is greatest in the visual arts and cinema. For in the shadows lies danger and mystery. Sex and power. The simultaneous thrill and fear of confronting death. Noir, and all its descendants, including cyberpunk, is the shadow.
Our friend Ori Pomerantz directed me to this video of “The Vikings” by Depeche Mode.
Mostly historically accurate, but the music is oddly inconsistent with the themes, it seems to me. Maybe that’s because I’m old.
In any case, I think the contrast clearly shows the superiority of my book trailer, which I link here simply for purposes of instruction:
This weekend–the state fair, with a friend. Sadly, he’s a guy.
Hope your weekend is good. Especially if you live on the southeast coast.
Here’s the news straight from the publisher:
On August 24, 2011, a New Jersey school district announced that it was removing from it’s summer reading list the novel Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami, published by Vintage Books in 2000. Citing objections from parents about inappropriate language and graphic sex, the school board withdrew its original approval of the novel, which had been placed on the list by its own committee of area teachers, librarians, and school administrators.
In response to this action, Knopf has issued the following statement: Continue reading NJ School Takes Book Off Reading List; Outcry Ensues
Christ Healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda, by Murillo.
I started committing poetry tonight (that’s a reference to the Norwegian movie, Elling, which I’ve reviewed here), but I stopped myself before it was too late.
I had this idea for a poem. I was contemplating the injustices of life, and it occurred to me (hardly an original idea) that sometimes injustices might be more just than we think. If I lack something in my life that I think I ought to have (can’t imagine what), the denial may be a mercy. Perhaps the responsibilities and concomitant sorrows that go with the blessings would be too much for me to handle.
I thought of writing a poem about the healing of the lame man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-15), and imagined there was another lame man there, who did not get healed. He is very bitter about being overlooked. But then (I imagine) years later he sees the man who did get healed, having become an active disciple of Jesus, stoned to death under the Herodian persecution.
But then I thought, that’s too simplistic. I don’t really believe everything levels out that way. And even if it did, it would still be a kind of condemnation on the one who was not healed, saying that God knew he didn’t have the courage and character to suffer for Christ.
The actuality is, these questions are way too big for me. Any solution I could generate, however complex and comprehensive, wouldn’t come close to divine wisdom.
So my job is just not to be bitter.
I’m working on that.
In a possibly related story, I saw this article (via Instapundit) which discusses the ethical debate scientists are waging, over whether memory-suppressing drugs, if they could be perfected, would be medically defensible.
I’ll have to admit it—if they could come up with a way to target specific memories, I’d be very much inclined to take the treatment.
But I have trouble imagining a drug that would be specific enough to remove just the right bits, rifle-style, rather than taking out big chunks like a shotgun.
You may or may not recall (it’s seared, seared into my memory) my recent post in which I highly recommended the novel The Last of the Vikings, available on Kindle. I had to hurriedly post a correction once I had downloaded it myself and discovered that it was an entirely different (and to all appearances much inferior) English book.
I now think I see whence the problem arose. The first listing of the book I saw on Amazon was not the listing I linked, but this one, which very specifically identifies it as Johan Bojer’s book on fishing in the Lofoten Islands. I bought it today and checked it, just to make sure. Nope. Same old English novel. Now I have two copies on my Kindle.
I suppose there’s some mechanism for requesting a refund, but it’s a little late in the day to start standing up for myself now.
My publisher, Nordskog Publishing, has now posted my book trailer on their web site, here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. It’s also on their page for West Oversea if you want to bore in and see it there too, for some reason.