Eclectic Amateur

Gee, thanks Dale for those minutes of my life I won’t get back. 🙂

Bacardi 151 Congratulations! You’re 134 proof, with specific scores in beer (80) , wine (116), and liquor (113).

All right. No more messing around. Your knowledge of alcohol is so high that you have drinking and getting plastered down to a science. Sure, you could get wasted drinking beer, but who needs all those trips to the bathroom? You head straight for the bar and pick up that which is most efficient.

Via Dale, I found this interview with Sandra Miesel about life, the Universe, and everything … or at least about SF&F and her (rather more extensive than I had any inkling) involvement in it.

It’s interesting, and lots of history bits I didn’t know (which is a common experience when dealing with Sandra!), and has some good reading recommendations. RTWT.

David Warren is someone who I try to read regularly. Here are a few reasons why:

From Lebanon; Canada:

The French have, I think, looked fairly deeply into the new course of Middle Eastern events, and decided with their customary fortitude that they must choose the winning side.
…
The French ambassador will of course write in to correct me, explaining that France’s position is consistent with the ideals it has always upheld. God bless him.

Yes, I couldn’t resist the gratuitous French-bashing. More seriously, let us hope and pray that the current American and French pressure on Syria does lead to better days for poor, poor Lebanon.

From A bag of Smarties:

Generosity is not the only quality that distinguishes Americans. Many of the other qualities are less attractive. Sometimes I even think they are boobs, but usually not for long. An open heart is an open mind, in my experience, and I know no other people who are such quick learners.

And why do I like Bush? Because he is so damned American. The course he has led, over the last four years, and through the hell of Afghanistan and Iraq, and is now beginning to lead into Lebanon, is, I am now utterly convinced, one of the glorious passages in American history. The good that is being achieved, without entirely counting the cost, is real, and I will pray, enduring.

The sun is shining today. So many people ask me, sarcastically, how can I like Americans, and how can I like Bush? I thought I would just answer.

Indeed. As an American, I am happy, and a bit proud, that the Hussein family is out of business and that millions of Afghani and Iraqis are now getting the best taste of freedom they’ve yet had (at least in a generation — I am aware of my characteristic American historical amnesia; maybe there was some “golden age” in those countries previously that I don’t know about.).

I do fear for the cost, for I agree that we have not counted it; and the reckoning may be dear.

But, in a sense it is to our glory that we have not carefully counted it. For, if we do it right, it will be a good thing that we do here, and if one counts the cost-benefit ratio of a good deed too carefully, it stops being a good deed.

Just in case you ever needed good pictures of a cheetah’s face (say, for they hypothetical example of trying to help your son paint on onto his Pinewood Derby car), here are a few: a cheetah face, cheetah wallpaper, and a very cute cheetah kitten yawning.

The car is turning out very nicely, by the way.

In a world where the Dutch murder infants, celebrating Herod and not Christ, it is good to remember the gentle spirit of Mary.

Read the whole thing.

(hat tip: MCJ)

Apparantly, 500 British “art experts” have reached a conclusion:

APOLL OF 500 BRITISH ART EXPERTS has concluded that the most influential work of modern art is Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 work “Fountain,” which is an ordinary white porcelain urinal.

They forgot to mention that it was turned on it’s side. And signed “R. Mutt”. Yeah, that’ll make it art.

My poor college humanities teacher, Dr. Bill, tried to get me to appreciate Modern “art.” He failed.

But I see today that I was not quite right. I believed up to now that most of modern art is crap. Now I understand that “500 British art experts” agree with me that modern art is a crapper.

It comes “as a bit of shock,” art expert Simon Wilson told The Associated Press. “But it reflects the dynamic nature of art today and the idea that the creative process that goes into a work of art is the most important thing – the work itself can be made of anything and it can take any form.”

Actually, the only shock is that they didn’t award it to something by Jackson Pollock. And Wilson is right, this is part of the idea of Modern, the conceit that all that matters is the “idea”. Matter doesn’t matter. (Hmm … Modern Art as realized Gnosticism. Makes sense to me.)

Notice that Fountain was noted as most influential, not the “best”. I’m not sure the “experts” are wrong — a urinal may actually have been the most influential bit of art in the 20th century.

I think this explains a lot.

(The Independant has a good article on the influence that Duchamp had on modernism, and exactly what was being foisted on our culture by Duchamp and the Dadaists via Fountain.)

God have mercy.

“Good for John Kerry.”

I was fully prepared for nastiness, not graciousness, in the election endgame.

So, I am happily suprised, and will therefore give Senator Kerry credit where credit is due.

Let’s see … a familiar situation: Candidate X has won the popular vote, but it looks like Candidate Y, due to a close election in a contested state, may have a chance to win the Electoral College vote and still become President.

What should Candidate Y do?

1. Concede graciously — he could never have “legitimacy” as President without winning the popular vote.
2. Call out the lawyers and fight! Don’t let a little thing like the popular vote totals get in the way of having your sorry butt warming the big chair in the Oval Office.

[Note: I am actually a fan of the Electoral College.]

The real fun: people with more free time than I (probably rabble-rousing, pajama-wearing bloggers) should be checking the various punditry for whether their answers to the above question mutate from 2000 to 2004 depending on the values of X and Y.

“Congratulations, Red Sox!”

Inspired by Victor Lams, this started going through my head today …

Imagine there's no Haugen

It's easy if you try,

No lyrics of pablum

Kiss syncopation 'bye',

Imagine all the people

Singing harmony ... oooh, ooh



You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the Church will sing as one.

Victor, do feel free to add the remaining verses.