Mis y Mas

Why Live Without Writing

No, I'm not kidding myself that I'm a poet.
But portions of this article hit on the visceral aspect--or rather the deep-down-in-our-old-brain-need aspect.

by Durs Grünbein, translated by Michael Hofmann
Feb 2010 issue of Poetry

Today is being brought to you by the earworm/rallying cry:

I wear no pants!

This makes Tuesday go much better.

kellingson's son posted a great story on facebook. I was inspired to post one as well--but the when linked on FB, it yielded the image of an annoying ad. So, LJ wins this honor. KE, point The AntiBoy toward

A Culinary Tale from Skippy's List".

I give it 9 on the snorkameter.

Ms. Beaton salutes Emperor Norton.

Even as far back as 2007, she was respectin' the Emperor.

Are there Emperor Norton tours? Or does one just stand atop the highest points and say, "Yep, it was all his."

voiceofreason should opt to move to Ottowa. That's where the university used the model of a zombie invasion as a basis for a paper published in Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress.

We can't just leave you hanging: here's a link to the paper.

Do yourself a favor and listen to this brief bit of natter from NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, from 1 Aug 2009. Click on opening panel round.

Arkham couldn't top this.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lwxlc

90 minute dramatization of Putney debates, execution of Charles I. Derek Jacobi among the players. On BBC radio 7 for two more days. Requires Real Player or Real Alternative.

Dramatization, modern analysis and transcripts of the trials.

Another cartoon and essay by Kate Beaton. The cartoon is amusing, the essay is fascinating. Do click on the link to the wikipedia article of the Guinea Pig club. Nothing graphic, but it does discuss surgery.

Speaking with groblek and kay_gmd, I had one of my usual wandering conversations (well, we all three did), where you start one at point A, get to point B, and forgot where point A was.

I found it.

Point B was explaining Harry Flashman a fictional creation of George McDonald Frasier, and the source of the wonderful scoundrel who invades the honorable environs of the Adventurers Club in London every Christmas season.

And yes, groblek, the Wikipedia article does mention that Pratchett is a Flashman fan...and yes, there IS Rincewind. Oddly, this article does not mention Lord Flasheart of the Black Adder series, on of the most definite and acknowledged homages to this series (the character and series started in 1969).

And Point A? Because we started out discussing characters, such as Sherlock Holmes, that some people have come to believe was real.

From The Washington Post obit, 2008:

"When the first novel in the series appeared, "Flashman: From the Flashman Papers, 1839-1842," Mr. Fraser claimed to have edited manuscripts he had found at a household sale.

Several critics were initially taken in by the ruse and believed that the stories were drawn from a lost cache of authentic memoirs. But the character of Harry Paget Flashman originally appeared as a bully in "Tom Brown's Schooldays," a popular Victorian boys' book that Mr. Fraser read as a child. The story flagged whenever Flashman left the stage, Mr. Fraser noted, so he made the irrepressible rogue the central figure of his novels."