Toilet Tissue Wars (Scott and Northern Duke It Out)

House of the Future (in 1931)

Yankee Ingenuity

A few roses on a fleece blanket make a glamorous picture.

Some brown packing paper makes a lovely kitty corridor.

My New Eye(con)

Thanks to Chuck's aid, this eye should now brand my blog on most browsers.  The article he referred me to was useful though incorrect in claiming that an .ico file could be downloaded to your blog.  I tried it.  It didn't work.  I can recommend the Favicon Generator for turning your image into an .ico file.  Among the image hosters I recommend ImageBoo.  I tried HostAnyImage first, but after registering I couldn't find an upload button.  It was a confusing mess.
Why an eye?
This blog represents the world as seen through my eyes.  Plus I'm keeping my eye on my readers with StatCounter.
The eye has symbolized the sun, knowledge, understanding, judgement, and authority, among other things.  The ancient Romans used eye as a euphemism for vulva AND testicles.  In Latin, pupillis meant both the pupil of the eye and little child, which explains the vulva connection.  My source* offers no explanation for the testicles connection.  (I assume that the nose with the eyes reminded the Romans of the male genitalia)
The eye either symbolizes or is associated with all the major stuff.  And that's why it's my favicon:  this blog doesn't specialize; it's about everything!
*Ad de Vries, Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery, North-Holland Publishing Co.:Amsterdam. London, 1974,page 170.

Update:  The eye is not appearing in non-Firefox browsers.  We (and by we I mean Chuck) are working on it.
Update:  Problem fixed. 

Dress-Up Op

The Sunday before last  Sue, Julie, Dave, and I went to the Loeb Drama Center to see Clifford Odet's Paradise Lost, a play set during the Depression.  Wouldn't this play ring relevently true in today's economic environment?  In case our audience is too dense to figure it out, let's have the characters in modern dress (but with the 1935 dialogue) and have a couple of characters in the 3rd act wear Enron and AIG tee-shirts.  But, alas, even with good acting this stinker wasn't good enough to survive revival.

All of us, including J.B., who went on Saturday, thought the acting was good and the play weak.  (The Crimson reviewer thought different.)  But we still enjoyed going.  Something about live performance thrilled us more than movies.

This thrill is partly due to Dionysus, the divine patron of theater.  By going to a play we participate in a Dionysian rite.  Any accompanying numinosity should not surprise us.

Theater-going is also a dress-up op: a chance to wear those items too flashy or weird for work.  Of course, people don't dress the way they used to, when the whole theater stayed lit, and you could examine the audience's raiment (such as the lovely presentation gown by Worth, at the right) at any time during the evening.  In 1881 the Savoy Theatre introduced the practice of darkening the auditorium during the performance.*

Even though we aren't visible as much to our fellow theater-goers, we can dress up to satisfy ourselves and Dionysus.  We satisfy ourselves by playing a more festive alter ego, and this makes Dionysus happy.

* Judith Flanders, Inside the Victorian Home:  A Portrait of Life in Victorian England, London: HarperCollins, 2003, page 204

Big Heads? Bad Idea!

In the world of old science fiction (60s and earlier) your super-advanced aliens and your super-evolved human beings usually have big heads, like Gwyllim Griffiths (top) in the Outer Limits episode The Sixth Finger or like the aliens from the Star Trek episode The Menagerie

It makes sense.  Our pre-human ancestors had smaller brains, so our descendents a zillion years from now should have gigantic brains.  But I notice that these beings pictured above still have spindly necks like the current homo sapien.  How could a neck that thin support all that extra brain and skull?  I say it couldn't.  If we want to grow bigger brains, we must concurrently grow thicker, more muscular necks.

However, there is another evolution solution.  We now know that the brain isn't the only place with neurons; just look in your gut.  The gut brain rests on a solid base and could safely grow much bigger.  This is the place for brain evolution.  Guts are the thinkers of tomorrow!

Window Dressing

 

Here are a couple of snaps looking out of my cubicle window.  On the left note the cactus candle that my neighbor Rosemary gave me after I complained about all my cactus plants dying.  On the right note the nosegay of tulips that Sue gave me for Valentine's Day.  In picture number 1 I accentuated the noted items and deaccentuated some of the background.  In picture number 2 I used the poster edges filter.

Captain Future: Wizard of Science

While catalog-surfing I discovered that Widener had a science fiction pulp magazine form the 40s called Captain Future.  I requested it form the depository and scanned some of the covers.  Recently, I decided to use the new scan and deliver service to get scans of all the covers.  The new ones are higher quality.

Fall 1940
I'm putting them all in a Picasa web album.

Give Me Liberty and Give Me Lunch!

I had been curious about the Liberty Hotel for some time.  This hotel used to be th historically significant Charles Street Jail.  My neighbor Rosemary had been at receptions there, so she suggested we do lunch at its cafe, the Clink.  We ate there today at noon.
Before we got there, Rosemary pointed out the new jail.  It looks like a hotel to me.

There's a prison-related artwork between the escalators.  What's black and white and red all over?  The Liberty!










The central lobby is surrounded by balconies.













 This is at lobby level.

Here's Rosemary at our table in the Clink.  The bricks and bars are authentic jail leftovers.  They must have cleaned off all the graffiti and hash marks.

For more pictures go to my Picasa web album.

I Used Every Photoshop Brush to Make This

Fun Things I Have Done

Last Saturday (i.e. 1/23) Sue and I went to the MFA to see the current special exhibit The Secrets of Tomb 10A.  It showed off the stuff left over after looters took all the bling from the tomb of Djehutynakht and his lovely wife.  We saw lots of wooden model boats and some excellent tomb painting.  We took the audio tour, which was fun.  All you blog-readers should check this exhibit out.
Afterwards we ate at Betty's Wok & Noodle.  Sue's pad thai was too dry, but my peanut noodle bowl was good.
I did not take my camera with me, so I have provided you with pictures of Osiris, in the upper left corner, and Anubis, to the right.

I'm Still Alive at 55

And got these cards and gifts (a gift card good for a facial and some polymer clay earrings).  Over the long weekend I visited my college buddy Brenda in Hamden, CT.  We visited Guilford, CT where I saw a flying saucer-like house among the typical olde New England houses.  I tried to find out something about it online, but could find nothing.  It was on Old Whitfield St..

 

 

Update:  After further searching I found out that this is a bunch of condos designed by Wilfred J.O. Armster in the 80s.  See this NY Times article.

Snookums's Ultrasound

It seems she has a kidney infection and will have to take antibiotics for 5 weeks.  But this is much better than having stones in the bladder, about which the vet was worried.

The Ultimate Molasses Cookie Recipe

This is from the Sofra Bakery, and it's the best I've ever tasted:

3/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup molasses
1 cup sugar, plus additional sugar for cookies
1 large egg
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1. Combine all dry ingredients, except sugar.  Set aside.
2. Combine oil, molasses, sugar, and egg in bowl of a stand mixer.  Paddle on medium speed until smooth.  Be careful not to incorporate too much air.  Mix 15-20 seconds (or vigorously by hand).
3. Add dry ingredients and mix until well-combined, about 20 seconds.  Chill dough until it reaches room temperature, about 2 hours.  If preparing dough in advance, freeze so the oil doesn't separate.
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Using a small scoop, place formed dough into a bowl of granulated sugar to coat.
5. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet 1/2 inch apart.  Bake 12-15 minutes.  Cookies will appear underdone.

[I like to use brown sugar instead, and I don't bother to roll the dough in sugar before baking.]

Vending Machine Economics

You must enlarge the photo to get the full story.

Happy Birthday Sue

Photo Op Bomb

I headed out today with my small camera.  The first time I tried to use it, I realized the battery was dead.  Oh well, I don't need to take pix all the time.  So I am on the Red Line going over the Longfellow Bridge, and suddenly people are saying what is that?!  A stealth bomber was flying over the Charles.  Check your batteries people.  Here's what I missed:

Before Secret Aaaaygent Man..

...there was Danger Man starring the same Patrick McGoohan as John Drake, an agent for NATO.  (Secret Aaaaygent Man worked for MI9.)  I remember the Secret Aaaaygent Man song, but no details of the show.  Now, I'm filling in some of my childhood blanks by watching the original Danger Man.  The show had a mere half hour to present, complicate, then solve some problem of international import.  The first John Drake had few secret-agent type devices to help him; perhaps NATO had no Q-type person.  I can imagine early John Drake telling later John Drake how in the old days he had to depend on his fists, his gun, his charm, and his brain.  Nowadays, super secret agents are spoiled!  (Later John Drake rolls his eyes.)

It Was Christmas Day in the City

And everybody went to the movies...

So I knew that Sherlock Holmes had the now seemingly compulsory action hero stuff:  slow motion fights with acrobatics, bodies flying everywhere, and ridiculously loud punch-thwacks, but even so, I was surprised by its overuse.  They also had a fair amount of building destruction and explosions.  I did like Robert Downey Jr. a lot.  And the filming and computer animation was beautifully done.  Too bad there wasn't a wee bit more character development.

My apologies to Sue, Julie, and Dave.  I was going to save SH to see with youse guys.  But Mary wanted to see a movie, and she's already seen Up in the Air.

Happy Birthday Sun

Was December 25 really celebrated as the birthday of Mithras Sol Invictus?  Wikipedia says there are doubts.  But since we must celebrate it sometime, it might as well be today.

Don't Eat Yellow Snow

The street in front of my building today after a few Photoshop adjustments.

I Like Plaid

I'm a New Woman!

So I got my abscessed tooth removed, and my transformation is comparable to that of the protagonist of Shirley Jackson's story The Tooth.*

Now, if you haven't read that story, I wish you would.

The dental surgeon tried to sell me on an implant, though it will probably cost $4K and not be covered by insurance.  Rosemary, my neighbor, has had several molars removed and still has no trouble eating.

* Shirley Jackson, The Lottery and Other Stories, Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 1949 pp. 265-286.

Health Update

In my last exciting post, I was waiting to get a CT scan that would confirm or deny rumors of an aneurysm.  Since then, a big chunk fell off one of my back teeth.  The dentist said it was abscessed down to the nerve, so that probably was the cause of my face pain.  (I'd had my teeth checked a year ago when the pain was only mild discomfort, but she couldn't find anything wrong then.)  Then today I found out that my CT scan was normal.  This was a medical mystery worthy of House!

A Look Inside my Head

As previously reported, I was suspected of having trigeminal neuralgia.  The Harvard Health Service's main neurology guy had recently left, so it took a couple of months to see a neurologist.  He didn't think it was TN, and I got an MRI.  The MRI confirmed that I didn't have TN, but I may have an aneurysm.  The aneurysm could be pressing on a nerve and causing my facial pain.  However, the suspected aneurysm could be merely me moving in the MRI machine.  So tomorrow I get a CT scan, which is fast enough to avoid wiggle misreads.
 Since trigeminal neuralgia is rare and difficult to treat, and aneurysms are common and simple to treat, this is good news.  In the meantime, enjoy my brain.

Unitarian Offerings Declined

Last weekend Mary and I checked out the annual crafts fair at the First Parish Church in Cambridge.  The usual windchimes provide a reassuring continuity from year to year.

There are always a lot of knitted things, especially for children.  Recycled materials were another popular theme.

There are always a lot of pretty things, but not outstanding things.  The things didn't grab me and say, "Take me home.  You can't live without me!"  I know when I go to the Cambridge Artists Coop (for instance), I'll see lots of things, too many things, that I'd like to take home.  But this fair was only fair.  So we went sadly away clutching our unspent money.