Posted 9:52 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Mt. Ida

Next week I swear I'm going to get some scanning done. So for now, something old:

Mt. Ida, Crete, June, 1990

This view is very close to that shown in a previous post.

Um, wish I had more to say, but I don't.

At least it's not Hawaii[1].

[1]Muahahahaha!

Labels: Foto Friday, Greece

Posted 1:07 PM by Angie Schultz

Weapons of Mass Dessertion

The other day Instapundit thought he was being funny:

T'S EASIER TO GET SPOTTED DICK THAN YOU THINK, even in America. Consider yourself warned!

Oh, like who didn't know that spotted dick was a British dish, and not an embarrassing medical condition (not that there's much difference -- ba dum dump!).

Here's a quiz: which of these is NOT a type of British food?:

• Bubble and Squeak
  
• Toad in the hole
  
• Cock-a-leekie
  
• Hundreds and Thousands
  
• Pasties
  

Give up? Good. Because they all are. Ha ha!

But this part is disturbing: you go[1] to the Amazon page that Glenn linked (for the six pack of spotted dick), and you get "Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed..."

• The 300g single-can of spotted dick. For those who want to ease into weirdly-named foods.
  
• Heinz beans with tomato sauce. The Heinz corporation puts in another ominous appearance. Is John Kerry involved?
  
• Jello "Americana Egg Custard" pudding. Getting back to the pudding theme.
  

Aaand:

• Uranium Ore. 1 used & new from $22.95. Not eligible for Amazon Prime. Sorry.
  

Perhaps the uranium ore is used to treat the spotted dick.

Read the reviews. Here's a sample:

First, I'm not sure what the abundance of U-238 is in this sample. In any case, if you want this for "experimenting," note that this is NOT the U-235 that you probably should be looking for...

Did Saddam Hussein know about this?

[1]Rather, if you went yesterday you could see this. Apparently Glenn has craftily arranged to obscure the sinister uranium-spotted dick connection.

Right now, uranium-viewers are exhibiting a positively creepy penchant for lacy underthings. Mahmoud, you scamp!

Posted 10:42 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Tropical Breezes

Do I have to say that I didn't get to scan again, and you're getting something stale? Even that excuse is stale. Yet true.

Enjoy a tropical breeze:

Kapa'a Beach, Kauai, Sep. 1995

For those playing along at home, this picture is just a few yards inland of this one I posted in June. The colors are much more muted here; I'm not entirely sure why. I think that whole roll might have to be re-scanned (sigh -- in my next life).

It was very windy that day, and I think the camera was shaking a little, which may have produced the slightly blurry images. It turned out to be a nice effect.

Oh, and Muahahahaha!

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii

Posted 9:59 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Mt. Lemmon Vista

I thought I had something else (something extremely lame, to be sure) scanned, but it turns out I didn't. So we'll take a quick break from Hawaii[1] to bring you this scene of Mt. Lemmon in the fall.

View from Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, Oct. 1994

I'm not quite sure what that view is. Looks like a dry lake bed down there, but Google maps shows nothing promising (i.e., nothing in the general direction of Tucson).

Still, nice colors.

[1]Muahahaha!

Labels: Arizona, Foto Friday

Posted 10:56 AM by Angie Schultz

Greetings from Exotic India!

[Note: I'm not really in India.]

So all the cool kids are talking about this YouTube item, in which an Indian music video is subtitled with English lyrics that sorta kinda sound like what the singer is singing, though she's not singing in English. (WARNING: The video is innocuous, but the subtitles are risque and not safe for work, small children, grannies, or dogs under 15 lbs.)

It's the kind of thing that's amusing for maybe ten or fifteen seconds, but then it gets boring, especially as the song is kind of repetitive.[1]

So anyway, in the beginning of the video they're writhing around on top of this beautiful skyscraper:



"Wow!" I think, "exotic India!" I want to go to India someday so I can see that beautiful building. Note (in some scenes) the thick sky, gray despite the sunny day. This is due to India's notorious jungle conditions. I'm also thinking that it would be impossible to film this in the United States, or any other country with a brisk lawsuit business. They're dancing on the very edge of the building!

So a little later on they're splashing around in a fountain:



and I think, "Wait a damn minute. That's here." Specifically, it's the Wortham Fountains in Tranquility Park. Those are clearly the same buildings in the background.

And the big wall o' water:



is the, um, Water Wall. I've never been there (or even heard of it) so I didn't recognize it. Here's a site with photos of Houston landmarks, including several nice ones of the Water Wall. Now I am keen to go.

Oh, and the beautiful Indian skyscraper? The Niels Esperson Building.

Well, Molly Ivins always did say that Houston was like Calcutta (specifically, that they had similar climates).


[1]Somewhat more diverting is speculating what the video's about, as it shows the efforts of a beautiful woman to get some pudgy stiff to notice her. She dances, she writhes, she strokes his face, she slaps him with her long, silken tresses -- all to no avail. I see it as a sort of intervention: his mother fears he's, you know, funny, and has hired the hot-eyed singer and her dozen dancing darlings to tempt him. Occasionally it looks like it just...might...work, but he's only trying to figure out a way to get that gold necklace off her. Finally he says to hell with it and stalks off, unmoved.

Posted 8:40 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Wailea View

This was the view from (what was then) the Wailea Marriot, our hotel when we stayed on Maui.

View from Wailea, Maui, Sep. 2003

I couldn't stop staring at it. I tried to read or blog, but my eyes were drawn into the distance. That's Pu'u Kukui (western Maui) on the right, Lanai on the left. Ahhhh...

There's a point to this. Maybe.

UPDATE: HA HA HA HA! YES THERE IS! Details later. Well, no -- cryptic comments later, punctuated by maniacal laughter. Eventually, all will be made clear. Or not. MUAHAHAHA!

ALSO: Itt's the Wailea Marriott, witth ttwo tt's, and itt's sttill tthere.

AGAIN: MUAHAHAHA!

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii

Posted 3:15 PM by Angie Schultz

The Greeks Had a Word for It

What's the word for a word that sounds like it ought to mean something, but it really means something else? "Malapropism" is not it; that's sort of the inverse of what I mean.

The other day on buzz.mn, Lileks had a post titled "Calling All Sybarites," which prompted one of his readers to comment:

[That's] a word I'm unlikely to use, and thank heaven. I had to look up "catamite" that appeared somewhere in Lileks' writings this week. By the look and sound of the word, I surmised that perhaps it was a mineral specimen. Imagine my surprise.

Har!

I've been trying to keep a list (in my head) of words that sound like they might mean something completely different, such as:

• Thesaurus: A giant reptile of the late Cretaceous
  
• Eponymous: A large mammal native to Africa
  

Unfortunately, that's as far as I get. Occasionally one occurs to me, and I vow to remember it, but never do. Let's see if we can think of a few now:

• Cenotaph: A method of long-distance communication.
  
• Prolix: A part of the body not mentioned in polite company.
  
• Sesquipedalian: Any of a number of species of small, many-legged creatures, many of them venomous.
  
• Obfuscatory: A small niche used as a hiding place [1].
  
• Armature: A covering of metal or other tough substance, used as protection for a fighter in battle.
  

See! It's fun! You could make up an entire story using these.

Karst shifted in his saddle, trying to ease the spot where his heavy armature chafed his prolix. "I don't like the look of this terrine," he called over his shoulder. He gestured to the rock stratus above them, catamite overlaid with sybarite. "This rising gorge is the perfect hunting ground for a thesaurus." His companion urged his stout eponymous forward to Karst's side. "When we reach Bougainvillea[2], we can send a message by cenotaph to the capitulate," he said. "The Argon will organize a posset to deal with the beasts."

Sadly, as my vocabulary grows these sorts of words become less obvious. The toughest read I ever had as an adult was Pietro Redondi's Galileo: Heretic, where on one page I had to deal with hermeneutics, hagiography, and exegesis.

• Hermeneutics: A complex and obscure branch of mathematics
  
• Hagiography: An ancient system of writing
  
• Exegesis: Something expelled from the body
  

(The toughest read I ever had as a child was a book about an old lady who had a pet monkey that had died of pneumonia. I couldn't deal with pneumonia, and returned the book sadly to the library. That damaged my self-esteem for years to come.)

My literary effort above reminds me of what many consider the Worst. Fantasy. Ever., "The Eye of Argon". It was written by a 16-year-old named Jim Theis (sadly no longer with us), and published in an obscure fan journal in 1970.

I'm not sure that the plot is particularly bad, but the writing is. In addition to the usual newbie vices of clotted verbs and overlarded adjectives, Theis misuses many words -- as when the hero, Grignr, defeats two men in battle and then glares "lustfully" at them as they die. (And no, Theis does not really mean "lustfully".)

Later he sees a girl in a tavern and admires her "lithe, opaque nose". I believe this is where I realized I was in the presence of genius.

Perhaps Theis was inventing a new type of literature, where the meanings of words are less important than their possible meanings, or perhaps we should say their homophonic meanings[3]. Working under that theory, "lithe" is a good description of a nose, hinting clumsily at grace. Though what Theis was thinking of with "opaque" I can't imagine.

I PREDICT that within a century this sort of thing will become a celebrated literary genre. I'd better get in while the getting's good.

Unless that's what James Joyce thought he was doing; then to hell with it.

[1] Actually, I can see Matthew Hughes using the word in that manner.
[2]OK, that's cheating a little.
[3] Or possibly homorthographophonic? There aren't any homorthographophoniphobes in the audience, I hope.

Posted 10:29 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Crofts Bay

The rocks out in the bay are kin to the 12 Apostles a little further down the road.

Crofts Bay, Victoria, Australia
Dec. 2000

I love the colors in this picture -- the blue sky, the green sea, the golden cliffs and the red land. Unfortunately I couldn't get more of the red land in on the left there. Must...get...20mm...lens...

What I don't love is the strange scanner artifact in the sky. Think of it as a UFO.

Labels: Australia, Foto Friday