Tiny Money Land

OVERDUE THOUGHTS: On the topic of George Carlin's book not being offered in WalMart retail outlets, and the mini-uproar which followed: If you're the type of person who goes to a WalMart expecting to find anything by Carlin, you've probably never been to a WalMart.

On the Sox winning the series: Good on ya, Boston. You've been an inspiration to perennial underdogs everywhere. I just hope it won't take me 86 years to start raking in the winnings again.

Oh yeah, there's this bit, too...

JUST FINISHED: Gulliver's Travels, by Johnathan Swift. This one's going to be short, because it'd be presumptuous to think you need a plot summary, at least for the first two books (Lilliput and Brobdingnag). If the kid's lit versions are all you've ever read, though, the full version is worth your while, since otherwise you'd likely miss Gulliver's way of putting out a Lilliputian fire, and some of the nastier bits of the ironic and satirical arts (hint: the mercy of the King of Lilliput is a scary thing). Swift seems to be the type that wants people to redeem themselves, to aspire to their utmost and highest, and nowhere is this clearer than in Gulliver's nothing-spared, nothing-sugarcoated dialogue with his Houyhnhnm host about the state of Europe at the start of the 18th century. It's a brisk read in mostly accessible language, and since the core of human nature hasn't really changed in 300 years, still aims its daggers straight and true.

If you don't spring for a hard-copy version of Gulliver, I lean towards Lee Jaffe's web version, with copious background notes and a glossary. If you do, keep in mind that the selection from the book that Jaffe lists last (the letter from Captain Gulliver) was actually a preface added after the first edition, which definitely gives a different spin to everything that follows and made it a slightly different reading experience to subsequent generations. I know most of you have heard of "A Modest Proposal", but I'd also recommend looking up the story behind the Isaac Bickerstaff predictions, giving us yet another reason why you never want to cross swords with a satirist (I'm looking at you, Bill O'Reilly).

 

YANKEES AT THE BAT: It doesn't have the apocalypic implications of last year's playoffs, but it's very satisfying that the Sox have another chance to snap the back of the Curse. I'm not a huge sports fan, so nothing I say on the subject will really mean anything, but watching history unfold is always interesting. Peter David puts the whole thing into verse so we don't have to.  

RANDOM LINES, SNORTED FROM THE MIRROR OF HISTORY: In the interest of filling space, a few Sox/Yankees comments from last night's chat...

WALDOEVIL:	Fox probably told the Yanks to throw 3 because they would lose millions in ad revenue
FireThunder:	How many Red Sox fans will jump into the sea like lemmings?

<...>

jtts:	I'm just glad to know that God hates the Yankees
jtts:	either that or he likes watching Red Soxs fans suffer

<...>

FireThunder:	If the Red Sox win tomorrow, there's gonna be a riot.
FireThunder:	I just can't decide in which city...

<...>

Doom:	GO BOSTON
Doom:	BURN
Doom:	BURN BABY BURN

 

I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU SEE IN THAT GOEBBELS: If you need a reason why McSweeney's rocks the house among independent publishing concerns, check out this hilarious piece from their website: "How Past Girlfriends Could Have Changed History."
 

I'M NOT GOING TO BE YOUR MONKEY: Jon Stewart, America's number one source for fake news, had a restaurant quality dustup with the Crossfire gang the other night, as you can see here. He seems to be holding a lot of newsies' feet to the fire lately, but this time, it added up to what one trusted source called "one of the more uncomfortable half-hours I've seen on television" (and he should know, since he wrote for the Pink Lady and Jeff show).

I accidentally found out that Fox News ran a clip of Jon's appearance on Fox and Friends, and hilariously enough, it looked like their copy was taped on a worn-out videocassette with a consumer-grade VCR that badly needed its heads cleaned. One more reason I get the bulk of my news from my Yahoo start page.
 

ADVENTURES IN GOOGLING: From time to time, I share the wonders of search engine desperation with my loyal followers (both of you), and thanks to this cheerful little feature I've anchored to my sidebar, I can find out just what draws in the traffic, to exploit your whims for my bid for world domination. Imagine my horror, then, when the greatest influx of outside traffic (read: people I don't already know) comes from folks looking for porn. The crux of the whole situation is that if you don't tell them you're hunting for a phrase, web spiders pin down individual words scattered throughout a page. So if on one part of the page, I mention "tits" (and yes, I meant TATER TITS, bub), another part talks about teens, and the two are naturally mixed with the title of the blog, the search result returns TINY TEEN TITS. And in spite of not having ANY pictures of the above to offer, I've been getting multiple hits from people apparently looking for pictures of topless women.

Now don't get me wrong, I have as much of an eye for the jiggly bits as the next hetero guy, but come ON, what the hell do you people expect to find on Blogger? Coming to a site looking for porn and finding a guy talking about books and TV has to be an instant erection killer.

So for those who were dopey enough to come here anyway looking for barely-legal girly flesh, I cordially invite you to bite me. Then again, maybe I better take that back...don't want butt-biting fetishists to get the wrong idea.

And speaking of awkward transitions...

JUST FINISHED: The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley. The follow-up to Parnassus On Wheels finds Roger Mifflin, travelling bookseller, holding down a storefront in post-WW1 Brooklyn, holding forth on his favorite topic (his passion for reading) to anyone who will listen. Apparently a few people actually agree with him, as a friend sends his daughter to do a bit of apprenticeship to "get some of the 'finishing school' nonsense out of her head". While she gets accustomed to the way things are done in her new trade, a book of Oliver Cromwell's speeches keeps popping in and out of its assigned place on the shelf, and after somebody almost pitches ad man Aubrey Gilbert off the Brooklyn Bridge in a burlap sack for being too nosy, he starts to suspect something sinister going on at the bookshop.

I do have to give you fair warning on a few points, especially if you go into this book without reading Parnassus first (which isn't completely necessary). Morley has the good grace to apologize up front the romantic subplot running away with the book at certain points when his original goal was to give us more Mifflin. If you can't get into the literary lifestyle, you might take issue with the chapters dedicated to the importance of books, complete with reading lists, then-current publishing trends, and the philosophies of various book sellers. However, if you're the type who gets into kicking around musty covers in secondhand stores, these may be the most interesting parts. Morely has a wonderfully descriptive style, which gives you a real sense of the place and the times. As was mentioned above, he throws in a decent dollop of adventure and (naturally) some digs at the ad game.

Once again, you can pick up the e-text at Gutenberg, but Barnes and Noble's in-store imprint was kind enough to put into print a new illustrated hardcover edition which is well worth your time.
 

IT'S ALL IN THE CG-EYE: Do you happen to remember awhile back when I was screaming about how computer animated people in movies and TV never looked quite right, especially when they were supposed to be "photorealistic"? Somebody cooked up a theory about it, and as it turns out, it's mostly psychological. Read about it here.
 

STERN IN SPACE: Seeing as how I was hung up on this during the Month From Hell, I'd like to offer my belated good wishes for the future of Howard Stern, who finally made good on his threats to jump to satellite radio. Suddenly, Sirius is a force to be reckoned with, and yet I still see myself buying a digital shortwave radio before investing in digital satellite radio. As I mentioned before, Stern never figured into my local market, and considering how hung up they are around here, I don't see him ever cracking this shell. Still, good to see somebody's getting paid...
 

JUST FINISHED: Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley. My attack on Ulysses seems to have stalled for the time being; I haven't touched the book for nearly two weeks. I'm so ashamed, but I have every intention on picking up where I left off before the weekend's out. In the meantime, I settled on a shorter work to cleanse the palate.

Parnassus on Wheels, originally published in 1917, is a cheerful enough book, concerning Andrew and Helen McGill, a brother and sister who ditch the city and take up the farming life. Everything's copacetic until the day they inherit a relative's library, which promptly sends everything to Hell. Pretty soon Andrew is not only reading as he plows the fields, but starts writing books, eventually neglecting his "practical" work to crank out bestselling homespun homilies. Sort of Green Acres in reverse.

Into this ventures Roger Mifflin, a balding red-haired man who shows up one day intending to sell his horse-drawn mobile bookshop, the Travelling Parnassus, to Andrew. Helen, hellbent on snatching a temptation to desert the farm (again) out from under her brother's nose and having her own open-road adventure in the bargain, buys the Parnassus from Mifflin, who tags along to help Helen learn her new vocation.

Actually, it's more of a spiritual calling than a job, since Mifflin's attitude towards bookselling is a bit different than what we've become used to in the mallrat chain bookstores. He drives his rolling store around the countryside, selling his wares with the verve of a medicine show hawker, his goal to marry people to the book that suits them best. He sells books for what he feels they're worth, rather than cover price, and won't give a person a book if he doesn't feel they're "ready". The main goal is to instill a love of reading, and in that respect, business is booming.

Parnassus was a very brisk read (I managed to reach the end in just a few hours); there's adventure, a bit of romance, and even some stuff about books. Mifflin is a fascinating character, and my understanding is that The Haunted Bookshop, a sequel which allows him even more of a chance to hold forth on literature, is even better.
 

GAD, WHERE IS MY STING?: Overheard last night on hearing that Rodney Dangerfield died Tuesday at age 82:

SonnyChiba: Here's a cliche you'll hear too much of
SonnyChiba: "Maybe he'll get some respect in heaven."
Ska: My first one was "He gets no respect from mortality"
Ska: My second Dangerfield thought was "HEY EVERYBODY! WE'RE ALL GONNA GET LAID! (THEN DIE!)"

Alternate ideas for epitaphs, as always, are welcome.
 

GIVE ME BACK MY LIFE, YOU BASTARD: A few weeks back, you might've noticed I was talking up a blog about making up stories connected to found pictures "until he either runs out of pictures or the rightful owner shows up to take back his/her life". I should've paid closer attention, because just a few days after Slashdot brought it to my attention, Engadget told all interested parties the site suddenly disappeared without a by-your-leave.

I had a wonderful imaginary scenario cooked up for this one, which I was going to cram down everybody's throat, but dangit if somebody else didn't actually write the guy to ask what gives:

Hi M. Thanks for the email. I haven't been contacted by the owner,
but I believe that he knows. The site's exposure got out of hand. I
hope to get the card back to the owner as soon as possible. I'll try
to put up a post when something happens.

So when he started seeing all those hits come in, Mr. Found Life thought to himself, "This is a good thing and a bad thing." Makes sense. Of course, since nothing truly disappears from the Internet as long as somebody's interested, there's a mirror of the last frontpage out there. Other than that, those who have an itch for recontextualized pictures will have to go to Cliff or that Lileks guy.

 

TIME FOR A QUICKIE: A nice side-effect of the Atkins army low-carbing the nation is that to accomodate our American predispositon for SUGAR (and keep it coming), the makers of sweets are turning down the volume on the oversweetness. A good case in point is in front of me now: the Bi-Lo store brand chocolate ice cream is flaunting a reduced carbohydrate count, but the lighter flavor is very nice, like a chocolate mousse. I tried a different store brand not long after, with a more traditional store brand flavor, and it tasted wrong, wrong, wrong. Too heavy, wrong mouth feel, so on and so forth.

Could it be that the push away from processed food and the cutting down of sugars will undo the country's taste for overly seasoned junk food? The trend has been towards stronger and bolder, and now thanks largely to the dead doctor the food companies have been forced to head in another direction. Some might say that underseasoned junk food is still junk food, but as I keep saying, you pays your money and you takes your chances.
 

IT'S ALL IN HOW YOU TELL 'EM: In lieu of original material (it's coming, I promise), here's a few random selections from a facsimile of Joe Miller's Jests, or The Wit's Vade-mecum, the most popular of the first-wave jokebooks (published in 1739). All the flaky style issues are as they came out of the original book, so you can't pin that one on me, but it does show that the classics never die, no matter how hard we try to kill them:

• A melting Sermon being preached in a Country Church, all fell weeping but one Man, who being asked why he did not weep with the rest? O! said he, I belong to another Parish.
• A Gentlewoman growing big with Child, who had two Gallants, one of them with a wooden Leg, the Question was put, which of the two should father the Child. He who had the wooden Leg offer'd to decide it thus. If the Child, said he, comes into the World with a wooden Leg, I will father it, if not, it must be yours.
• A Gentleman happening to turn up against an House to make Water, did not see two young Ladies looking out of a Window close by him, 'till he heard them giggling, then looking towards them, he asked, what made them so merry? O! Lord, Sir, said one of them, a very little Thing will make us laugh.
• A Countryman passing along the Strand saw a Coach overturn'd, and asking what the Matter was? He was told, that three or four Members of Parliament were overturned in that Coach; Oh, says he, there let them lie, my Father always advis'd me not to meddle with State Affairs.
• A Gentleman said of a young Wench, who constantly ply'd about the Temple, that is she had as much Law in her Head, as she had had in her Tail, she would be one of the ablest Counsel in England.

A longer selection will be made available on request, or an even longer one if there are no requests. That's my set for tonight...please remember to tip your wait staff...

AND ONE OTHER THING: Please welcome the Trackback link to my arsenal of things you're not likely to take advantage of. Haloscan kept piling it on until I had to give 'em my money, so there ya go...

I republished the entire blog so all the articles could be tracked back, and I hope that's the last time I have to do that for awhile. I live for my little sidebar comments, and it's always sad to see them go.

(Edit @ 10:30am: The upside is that all those cheerful comments from the beginning finally came back. W00T!)