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 Posted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 9:49 am Post subject: |
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The Time-Life Book of Christmas
Hardcover
Produced by the Compage Company
Published in 1987
| Quote: | Whenever palm trees come alight with multicolored globes, and Salvation Army Santa Clauses tinkle bells on Hollywood Boulevard, I remember Christmas Day of 1940 when my father I called upon our 61-year-old Uncle Claude, known to the world as W. C. Fields. Having declined all invitation to celebrate the season, Uncle Claude was at home, alone, when we arrived, sunning himself in the yard of his residence on De Mille Drive.
... "At least," Fields muttered, "they don't serve the tainted day here with snow. Sleigh bells give me double nausea!"
He arose and retreated to the shade, carrying his wrought-iron garden chair. "All right," he said, "I supposed you'll go blatting to all the world about it, but I'm going to tell you why I eschew Christmas and other silly holidays. It's because those days point up a thing called loneliness. An actor on the road as I was for so long - finds himself all alone on days when everyone else has friends and companionship. It's not so good to be in Australia, or in Scotland, or in South Africa, as I was on tour, all alone on a Christmas Day, and to see and hear a lot of happy strangers welcoming that two-faced merriment-monger Santa Claus, who passes you by.
"We're all lonely enough as it is. By God, I was born lonely!"
Now Fields slowly started rocking on his stationary chiar, one ye on the gin bottle atop his portable bar constructed from a red, four-wheeled child's wagon. Some weeks earlier he had been at Soboba Hot Springs, a California health resort, where he was compelled to partake only of the native waters. He had imbibed nothing more powerful than ginger ale ever since the repair job.
"But Christmas and New Year's and Thanksgiving and all the rest," he eventually said, "make me even more lonely. So I observe only one day - April First. That's my day. It's Adam's birthday, too. If I remember correctly, the Holy Writ relates that Adam was created on April First. It explains a lot of things, expecially politics and psychoanalysis."
Unle Claude's gaze returned to the bottle of gin. "I've just reached a momentous decision," he announced. "I've either got to take a drink or shoot all the Santa Clauses infesting the boulevards." He made himself a triple martini. "It may interest you to know," he added, after a few sips, "that tomorrow I am removing both your names from my will. It was a hefty bequest, too. Oh well, if you prefer mistletoe..." (From Sleigh Bells Give Me Double Nausea, A holiday visit with W. C. Fields, by Will Fowler, pg. 246) |
A wondrous collection of classic Christmas stories, Victorian Christmas cards, White House family Christmases, Norman Rockwell Christmas covers, Life's unrivalled photos of American department store windows done up for the season, the famous tree and nativity at New York's Metropolitan Museum, traditional crafts plus recipes for the usual festive fare. A revealing glimpse at the American take on this Christian holiday. One of our favorites!
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| Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 4:31 pm Post subject: |
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The State Within
DVD
| Quote: | Episode 1
Death row at a Florida maximum-security penitentiary
Jane Lavery (British human rights lawyer): We need to talk about your appeal. The Supreme Court is ruling whether you received ineffective representation.
Luke Gardner (Falklands hero convicted of murdering two girls): You're wasting my time.
Jane: If you're not prepared to talk to me you're wasting mine.
Luke: (smiles)
Jane: Now, your previous counsel failed to introduce evidence from witnesses who claimed they saw you two miles from the scene of the murder, fighting with a cab driver.
Luke: I can't remember a cab driver. I can't remember most of that year.
Jane: Well, if you can't remember, how do you know you didn't kill those girls?
Luke: I'd know. I've had blood on my hands before.
Jane: The Foreign Office have a strong anti-death penalty stance regardless of your innocence. I'm here to inform you that they have made official representation to the Supreme Court.
Luke: Heads or tails?
Jane: What?
Luke: Heads or tails - choose.
Jane: Heads.
Luke: You've chosen to die by lethal injection. Now, they say it takes four minutes to die, but the doctor doesn't pronounce for 15. I bet you wish you'd picked tails now, eh, Jane?
Jane: You tell me.
Luke: Death by electric chair. You ever smelt burning flesh? It stays in your nostrils for life. But they say it's quicker. But do I really want that to be my mum's last memor of me? Tricky call. I'm not some kind of freak show. So you take your anti-death panalty stance and you get me the fuck out of here, all right, bitch? |
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| Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 5:24 pm Post subject: |
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Crash
DVD
| Quote: | Disrict Attorney: Who knows about the money?
Det. Graham Waters: You gotta be kiddin' me.
DA: There are only two people in this room.
Waters: Myself, my partner, Ferguson, Internal Affairs ...
DA: Jim Ferguson?
Waters: Yeah.
DA: OK. I guess I see the problem. As it wasn't Lewis's car, the money isn't clear evidence of any wrongdoing. And even if it was, we aren't going to prosecute a dead man. Which means the money Internal Affairs is holding can't be considered evidence.
Waters: You can do this dance if you want to, but I'm willing to bet when the coroner's report comes back tomorrow, it's going to say that Det. Lewis was coked out of his head.
DA: Fucking black people, huh? (Waters is black). |
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 2:22 pm Post subject: |
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The Immortal Game
A History of Chess
or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated
Our Understanding of War, Art, Science, and the
Human Brain
Hardcover
By David Shenk
| Quote: | Even with its broad resonance, though, chess was not immune to controversy. From the very first exposure to the game, there had been a serious and recurring question as to whether chess was allowable under Islamic law. The Koran - the sacred text of revelations received by Muhammad - did not mention chess by name, but did explicitly outlaw the use of both "images" and "lots." The prohibition of images was aimed at eliminating any sort of idol worship, and was instituted broadly against any directly representational art or sculpture. Lots included gambling of any kind. Since chess play at the time quite often involved wagers - indeed, one ancient story from India portrayed young players betting their own fingers in game, cutting them off on the spot after a loss, cauterizing the wounds, and continuing to play - many first- and second-generation Muslims considered the game altogether tainted and plainly illegal. Others regarded chess as having no purpose other than recreation, and thus falling into the category of official disapproval (though not strict prohibition).
But chess did have a purpose, a deadly serious one, according to many proponents at that time. It not only broadly sharpened the mind but also specifically trained war strategists for battle. "There is nothing wrong in it," proclaimed Muhammad's second successor, the pious and asustere Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab. "It has to do with war."
Eventually, a general consensus found the game acceptable in the Islamnic world under certain condtions:
no wagering
no interference with religious duties
no displays of anger or improper language
no playing in public
no representational pieces
This last item came out of the Koran's prohibition against images. ... (House of Wisdom, Chess and the Muslim Renaissance, pgs. 30-32) |
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| Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2008 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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Kootenai Brown
Canada's *Unknown Frontiersman
Paperback
By William Rodney
| Quote: | Fort Benton wasn't the West's healthiest town as the sign below on today's main street indicates. During the frontier era the local paper carried a news item that a horse thief had been caught and promptly hanged from a telegraph pole. The headline said simply, TELEGRAPHED HIM HOME.
| Quote: | THE BLOODIEST BLOCK IN THE WEST
"IT'S A TOUGH TOWN, WAL IN THE CENTER OF THE STREET AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT." GUNSLINGERS WALKED THIS STREET; FEW MADE A REPUTATION, MORE EARNED ETERNITY HERE THAN IN OTHER FABLED WESTERN TOWNS.
INDIANS WERE FAIR GAME. THEIR CORPSES DUMPED IN THE RIVER STARTED WAR AND MASSACRE. MOSE SOLOMON SALOON OWNER ELIMINATED 2 CUSTOMERS ON THE CORNER. LOU MARSHALL ADDED HINCHLEY AND SEVERAL OTHERS GUNNED DOWN ON THIS STREET "WON'T BE MISSED."
POKER WAS PLAYED WITH 6-GUNS ATOP THE TABLES AND FEMALES FROM THE BROTHELS WERE AS TOUGH AS THE MEN. MADAME MUSTACHE BRANDISHED COLTS TO HALT THE LANDING OF A STEAMBOAT CARRYING SMALLPOX. "HOUSES" STAYED OPEN ALL NIGHT. THIS BLOCK WAS LINED WITH SALOONS, CATHOUSES AND GAMBLING DENS - SO LAWLESS IT HAD TO BE CIRCLED BY A CAVALRY TROOP SO A U.S. MARSHAL COULD SERVE WARRANTS ON FIVE OF ITS RESIDENTS. (Cutline and photo of authentic sign at p. 121) |
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Oh, yes:
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| Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 1:29 pm Post subject: |
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Cannibal Island
Death in a Siberian Gulag
Hardcover
By Nicolas Werth
| Quote: | We were living in Ergankina. Every spring, we left for the island of Nazino to harvest the poplar bark that we sent downstream. It was our only source of income. The whole family went along, and we took enough food to spend the season there. That year, what did we see? People everywhere. They'd been brought to the island - it must have been in 1932, or rather 1933. In 1933, in the spring. I was thirteen. We came to the village of Nazino Александровский район
, which is on the riverbank across from the island. People said, "They've brought people to the island." How many? It turned out that there were about 13,000 of them. So many people! We didn't understand what was going on. One thing was sure: the season was a bust for us. They'd put them on the island, disembarked them in the middle of the night, all those people, I remember.
They were trying to escape. They asked us, "Where's the railway?" We'd never seen a railway. They asked, "Where's Moscow? Leningrad?" They were asking the wrong people: we'd never heard of those places. We're Ostyaks. People were running away, starving. They were given a handful of flour. They mixed it with water and drank it, and then they immediately got diarrhea. The things we saw! People were dying everywhere; they were killing each other. Alongside the river, near the village, there was a veritable mountain of flour. "You want some flour? Here you go!" They gave them just a handful.
On the island there was a guard named Kostia Venikov, a young fellow. He was courting a pretty girl who had been sent there. He protected her. One day he had to be away for a while, and he told one of his comrades, "Take care of her," but with all the people there the comrade couldn't do much...People caught the girl, tied her to a poplar tree, cut off her breasts, her muscles, everything they could eat, everything, everything...They were hungry, the had to eat. When Kostia came back, she was still alive. He tried to save her, but she had lost too much blood - she died. The boy was out of luck. That was the kind of thing that happened. When you went along the island, you saw flesh wrapped in rags. Human flesh that had been cut and hung in trees. I heard that when people on the island saw Iakim Ivanovich, the doctor, pass by, they said, "There's one that would be good to eat, fat as he is." He ran away. The militia took him away so they wouldn't eat him. Then he was arrested as an enemy of the people. (Narrative recalled in the Preface, pgs. xii-xiv) |
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| Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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Frida Kahlo
The Brush of Anguish
Hardcover
By Martha Zamora
| Quote: | A bus happened by, a brightly painted new one with two long benches along the sides. Frida and Alejandro (Gomez Arias, charismatic leader of Cachuchas) felt compelled to catch it. The driver, rushing to cross the busy city on the way out of town, boldly tried to pass in front of a turning streetcar. He didn't succeed: the heavy streetcar moved forward and collided with the bus, pushing relentlessly into its side and pressing against the benches where the passengers sat.
... At the moment of the accident, Frida was more concerned about the loss of her new toy, which had flown out of her hand, than she was with the seriousness of the collision. Alejandro found her bathed in blood, without her clothes, virtually impaled on the rod of a metal handrail. A bag carried by a passenger had spilled gold powder all over, and Frida's bloodied body was sprinkled with it. Curious onlookers cried, "Help for the little ballerina!"
An overall-clad worker, whom Alejandro though he recognized as an employee of the Prepa, looked at Frida and said, "That has to be taken out of her." With no more ado he pulled the metal rod out of Frida's body to the terrible sound of breaking bones. Alejandro, horrified, carried her to a pool hall across the street, put her on a table, and covered her with the shreds of his ruined coat. They waited for an ambulance as Frida screamed in pain.
...A description of the wounds Frida suffered in the accident was compiled by her doctor in a clinical history years later: "Fracture of the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae; pelvic fractures; fracture of the right foot; dislocation of the left elbow; deep abdominal wound produced by a metal rod entering through the left hip and exiting through the genitals. Acute peritonitis, cystitis with drainage for several days."
... Frida suffered grim periods of relapse, questionable medical treatments, a long series of confining plaster and metal corsets, and numerous operations. The backwardness of medical technology at that time in Mexico resulted in some grotesque therapy.
She wrote to Alejandro, "This Friday they put me in a plaster cast and since then it has been a real martyrdom; there is nothing to compare it with. I feel like I am suffocating, with a terrible pain in my lungs and in all my back; I can't even touch my leg, and I can hardly walk, much less sleep. Imagine: they had me hanging, just from my head, for two and a half hours, and afterwards I was propped up on my toes for another hour, while the cast was being dried with hot air. But, even so, when I got home it was still damp...I'll have this martyrdom for three or four months and if this doesn't make me well, I sincerely want to die, because I can't takle it any more. It's not only the physical suffering but also that I don't have the least distraction, I don't get out of this room, I can't do anything, I can't walk, I'm completely without hope now, and above all you're not here."
... Among the vague diagnoses and suggested treatments mentioned in Frida's letters were thermocauterization, an operation to graft a piece of bone from her leg, the discovery of a lesion on her sciatic nerve, and constant changes of immobilizing corsets in different materials. Undoubtedly her recovery and moods were affected by the household gloom dictated by her parents' poor health and the familiy's precarious economic situation. The Casa Azul was still mortgaged, and at one point all the fine furnishings had to be auctioned off. Her mother's daily bad humor coupled with her father's misanthropic behavior caused to describe her home as "one of the saddest I have ever seen." (-- pgs. 25-31) |
Not a bio - or an artist - for the feint-hearted.
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| Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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Moments of Reprieve
Paperback
By Primo Levi
| Quote: | Eddy waited for me to get up, then asked to whom I was writing. I answered in my bad German that I was not writing to anyone. I happened to find a pencil and was writing on a whim, out of nostalgia, in a dream. Yes, I knew very well that writing was forbidden, but I also knew that getting a letter out of the Camp was impossible; I assured him I never would have dared to break Camp rules. I knew Eddy certainly would not believe me but I had to say something, if only to arouse his pity. If he were to denounce me to the Political Section, I knew it was the gallows for me, but before the gallows an interrogation - and what an interrogation! - to find out who my accomplice was, and perhaps also to obtain from me the address of the recipient in Italy. Eddy looked at me with a strange expression, then told me not to budge, he'd be back in an hour.
It was a long hour. Eddy came back to the cellar with three sheets of paper in hand, mine among them, and I immediately read on his face that the worst would not happen. He must have been quite clever, this Eddy, or maybe his tempestuous past had taught him the basics of the sad profession of interrogator. He had looked among my companions for two men (not just one) who knew both German and Italian, and had gotten them separately to translate my message into German, warning them that if the two translations did not turn out to be identical, he would denounce not only me but also them to the Political Section.
He made a speech to me that I find difficult to repeat. He told me that, luckily for me, the two translations were the same and the text was not compromising. That I was crazy - there was not other explanation. Only a madman would think of gambling in such a way with his life, that of the Italian accomplice whom I certainly had, my relatives in Italy, and also his career as Kapo. He told me that I deserved that slap, that in fact I should thank him because it had been a good deed, the kind that earns you Paradise, and that he, Strassenrauber, a street-thief by profession, certainly needed to perform good deeds. That, finally, he would not have recourse to denunciation but even he could not exactly say why. Maybe just because I was crazy. But then Italians are all notoriously crazy, good only for singing and getting into trouble. (From The Juggler, pgs. 31-33) |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:44 pm Post subject: |
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The Brandon Book of
Irish Short Stories
Paperback
Edited by Steve MacDonogh
| Quote: | On the very evening I burned down the left wing of our house, my father told me that he hated me. He just stood there in the shadow of the gutted roof thumbing a shell into the rifle, making no bones about it nor putting a tooth in it in any way, just telling me quietly and for the last time that everything about me made him sick, everything: the massive dome of my head with its lank fringe, my useless legs and piping voice -- most of all the lack of shame and outrage in my heart. He told me again that all the cruelty and misshapen ugliness of the world was summed up in my body and that he could not suffer it a moment longer. Then he told me that he was going to kill me. Frankly, this wasn't news to either of us. Somehow we seemed to have always known that our relationship would come to this; it had been fated from the beginning to end in some swift settlement of accounts, some bloody reckoning. Putting it another way, neither our house nor our world was big enough for two people such as us.
... 'I'm going to shoot you stone dead,' he said evenly. 'And what's more I'm going to shoot you in the back.'
It's not going to be a fair fight then. I don't have any weapons to hand.'
'I'm going to give you a fighting chance,' he said. 'You're going to get a fifty-yard start over open ground and I have only one shot. If you make it, don't come back. Here's two hundred and fifty pounds to help you make a start in the world just in case. Invest it wisely. I'd recommend government bonds.'
... 'How about a head shot?' I said. 'You're always telling me that my head is too big for my shoulders.'
'Only at forty yards, beyond that whitethorn.'
'OK.'
'Plus ninety quid.'
'That's down to four pound a yard. It started out at five.'
'That's the law of diminishing returns. Take it or leave it.'
I thumbed the notes of the wad and handed them over.
'How do I know you'll only take the one shot?'
'One is all I'll need. Besides, I've only got one shell in the breech and if I have to reload you'll have gained another twenty-five yards. At that distance you'll be well in the clear.'
'What happens if I only get wounded? Suppose I take it in the lung and lie there bleeding to death?'
'Then I will leave you there and the crows will make short work of you. I'll walk out every day for as long as it takes and see how your death is progressing. On the day of your death I'll dump a bag of lime over you and within two weeks there won't be a trace of you except for a small, damp pile of chalk in the middle of that field.'
'A bag of lime isn't much of a memorial.'
'You're not much of a son.'
... By now the sun was a heavy rind over the hills and the earth glowered in shadow. The terms had been set out and I could think of nothing else I wanted to add to them. I was very calm and confident. I believed that at that moment I possessed every piece of worthwhile wisdom and knoledge in the entire world, every axiom and formula and instruction that was going to enable me to live longer. Nevertheless I wondered, did my father have any partinc words to send me on my way?
'You're not going to wish me good luck or anything?'
'There's no point in wasting fortune on a dead man.'
'Then I guess I'll be on my way.
'We seem to have covered everything.' (From The Terms by Mike McCormack at pgs. 265-267) |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:56 am Post subject: |
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Planet Earth
DVD
Featuring David Attenborough, softspoken icon of the
latest outstanding series on the natural world
| Quote: | Wolf chasing a young caribou in the Canadian Rockies
Narrator DA: Running directly at the herd is a play to generate panic. The herd breaks up and now it's easier to target an individual. In the chaos, a calf is separated from its mother. The calf is young, but it can outrun the wolf - if only it manages to keep its footing. At this stage, the odds are even. Either the caribou will make a mistake or, after a mile, the wolf will give up. (From the episode, Pole to Pole) |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 12:13 pm Post subject: |
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Scrubs
American medical twaddle
DVD
Episode 23
| Quote: | Dr. Cox: (To newbie intern) Oh, no. Is this the tox screen? (clearly unhappy with the results) Oh, Dougie. This does not bode well for you.
Dougie: I know.
Cox: I'll tell you what. Second chance. Get the results of Mr. Chervin's urinalysis. But if the numbers aren't good, I'm going to take one of your kidneys and give it to him. (To nurse Laverne) Ten bucks says I can make him wet himself before the day is over.
Laverne: (sarcastically) Oh, everybody's afraid of Mister Man.
Cox: Laverne, you give good sass.
Laverne: Dr. Cox! |
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 2:17 pm Post subject: |
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Timbuktu
The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold
Hardcover
By Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle
| Quote: | From the very earliest times, they always knew something was there. They being outsiders generally, the people of the north and northeast, and there being the south, the other side of the Great Emptiness of the Sahara Desert. What that something was thought to be shifted and changed as empires' fortunes waxed and waned. Was it rods of gold sticking up from the earth, ripe for the plucking, a great city of brass shining like a beacon in the southern sun, a mountain of rubies? Or was it the existence of wealthy and wise kings, sitting on stools of gold, a benevolent presence there in the endless unknown? The stories tantalized everyone who heard them. ...
The earliest written reports date back to the Greco-Roman period, and a few hints are found in the classical literature. The great historian Herodotus, who was born in 484 BC, wrote extensively on Africa - his history of the Persians' invastion of Egypt and their defeat of the Ammonites in the Western Desert is a classic of historical writing - and he made several references to the penetration of the Sahara itself. One accound, admitted by Herodotus himself to have been thirdhand, was the story of "some wild young men" of Cyrenaica, "who drew lots to decide which of their number should explore the desert part of Libya, seeking to penetrate further than any had done before." (-- pgs. 6-7) |
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| Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 10:00 am Post subject: |
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The Easter Story
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Hardcover
Edited by someone or two at Bulfinch Press
View the cover art, Perugino's Crucifixion with the Virgin,
Saint John, Saint Jerome and Saint Mary Magdalene
| Quote: | Amoretti
Sonnet lxviii
By Edmund Spenser
Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day,
didst make thy triumph over death and sin:
and having harrowed hell, didst bring away,
captivity thence captive us to win.
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin,
and grant that we for whom thou diddest dye
being with thy deareblood clean washed from sin,
may live for ever in felicity.
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
may likewise louv thee for the same again:
and for thy sake that all like deare didst buy,
with love may one another entertaine.
So let us love, deare love, like as we ought,
love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
And when the day of
Pentacost was fully come,
they were all with one accord
in one place. And suddenly
there came a sound from
heaven as of a rushing mighty
wind, and it filled all the
house where they were sitting.
And there appeared
unto them cloven tongues like
as of fire, and it sat upon
each of them. And they were
all filled with the Holy Ghost
and began to speak with other
tongues, as the Spirit gave
them utterance.
Acts 2:1-4
Adjacent to Domenico Campagnola's The Descent of the Holy Spirit, 1518, Engraving, 7 3/8 x 6 7/8", pgs. 56-57 |
Magnificent reproductions of some of the world's greatest art treasures lovingly placed alongside western culture's greatest poetic tributes to the triumphant Easter metaphor. Strangely priced at a penny, making poetry and art the best values of contemporary life.
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editor
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 12:49 pm Post subject: |
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New York Times Magazine
Newspaper Subscription
The 7th Annual Year in Ideas
Prison Poker
By Richard Morgan
Dec. 9/07
| Quote: | In April 2003 the Pentagon created decks of playing cards to be given to soldiers, all featuring wanted members of Saddam Hussein's inner circle. When he heard this, Special Agent Tommy Ray, a state law officer in Polk County, Fla., got inspired. Two years later, he made his own deck of cards, each bearing information about a different local criminal case that had gone cold. He distributed the decks in the Polk County jail. His hunch was that prisoners would gossip about the cases during card games, and somehow clues or breaks would emerge and make their way to the authorities. The plan worked. Two months in, as a result of a tip from a card-playing informant, two men were charged with a 2004 murder in a case that had gone cold.
In July of this year, the idea took off: all state inmates in Flkorida now have access to two different decks of cards, describing a total of 104 cold cases. In mid-October, based on a tip from an informant at the Columbia Correctional Institutional Annex in Lake City, the police arrested a man in connection with a Fort Myers murder in 2004. The informant requested no reward money. Plans are now in the works to make decks of cards for all Florida county jails. And police departments elsewhere in the country are instituting similar programs.
Jack Levin, a sociologist and criminologist at Northeastern University who has written a book on gossip, is cautious about declaring the cards a success. "This is a clever experiment," he says. But to know if it works, he goes on, "you'd need to put some fake cases in there, to know how the inmates respond to those. Right now, this will solve a case here and a case there, but at a huge cost of wild-goose chases, paperwork, false hope and even the possibility of false convictions."
Of the 66 tips he has received, Ray says he is confident about 15 and excited about 4. "These cases are cold," he says. "Any information is better than no information." (-- pgs. 90-92) |
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