Month: January 2010

Another Tuesday

As suspected, today was an awful lot like yesterday, just without the rain. In fact, I spent the day working on all the same projects at work, and I’m thinking of watching another episode of House tonight, so you could probably just swap in yesterday’s post and be done with it.

I had dinner out with my mother this evening, since my father was at a company recognition dinner, and we returned home to discover that the oranges that had arrived as part of their Harry and David fruit-of-the-month club membership (a Christmas present from me and my sister) were moldy. I sent customer service an e-mail, so we’ll see what if anything comes of that. These things happen — it is fresh fruit, after all — but I’ll be disappointed if they can’t do something to replace this month’s inedible offering.

And that — moldy Honeybell oranges — is about as exciting as my day ever got.

Tuesday various

  • Boy, when Mark Twain called you an idiot, he didn’t fool around. “…scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link” indeed!
  • New York woman falls, rips Picasso painting. Well that’s embarrassing! Gawker [via] has more.
  • The Chinese have re-named a mountain “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain,” after the James Cameron movie. Because of course they have.
  • S.C. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer Compares Helping Poor to Feeding Stray Animals. They sure do know how to pick ’em in South Carolina, don’t they? [[via]
  • And finally, a lovely quote from China Miéville:

    The truth is different. Chrononauts litter no less than any other tourists. The past is a dump, each epoch a tip of its futures’ rubbish. There are no police: only overworked binwomen and binmen endlessly shovelling junk into timefills. They slog uninterrupted: the detritus is all over the place, and unnoticed by us natives. We stub our toes every day on things discarded from times to come.

Come Monday

So that was Monday.

I spent the day working mostly on an art therapy book we have in development, switching on occasion to chapters in a gerontological counseling book. Because that’s just how I roll. Despite the nasty weather, which seemed determined to tear my umbrella apart any time I went outside, the day went by rather quickly. I suspect tomorrow will be more of the same.

I started reading Olive Kitteridge this morning, and so far I’m really enjoying it. This evening, I watched an episode of House. And earlier, I learned that, strictly speaking, bears don’t hibernate.

And that’s about as exciting as my day went. How about you?

Monday various

  • Would you have spotted the fraud? I’m not convinced I would have. A good reason to avoid any unattended debit or credit card reader. [via]
  • Mark Evanier further defends Jay Leno:

    What I don’t get is why some people think Leno had a moral obligation to retire and disappear. They didn’t like that he did that 10 PM show. They didn’t like that he was willing to do the half-hour show at 11:35 when that was proposed. They don’t like that he’s going to take back a show that he and his crew didn’t want to give up in the first place. I know some of you don’t think the guy’s ever funny but you oughta try what I do. If I don’t like a performer, I don’t watch him. It’s just as effective as if he did disappear and it saves a lot of time.

  • Speaking of Leno, he’ll apparently be hosting this year’s White House Correspondents Dinner. I guess it’s better than Rich Little, but not by much.

    Then again, Leno’s hosted the event before (in 2004), and, Stephen Colbert’s 2006 appearance notwithstanding, they haven’t really been known for making memorable choices for host. Anybody remember Yakov Smirnoff’s routine from 1988 or Elayne Boosler’s from 1993? Me neither.

  • Last week on Twitter, I joked that in the new movie Extraordinary Measures, Harrison Ford is entirely computer-generated. By law, Brendan Fraser’s co-stars must be at least 35% CGI. Turns out I maybe wasn’t so far from the truth: Ford’s character didn’t exist in real life. I guess they figured he’d be more convincing as a Nebraskan than as a Taiwanese.
  • And finally, speaking of Twitter, the first live tweet from space! [via]

“Well the night does funny things inside a man”

I spent the day doing not much of anything, mostly because of the dreary weather and because my Sunday writing group was canceled. And yet, here I am, the day all but ended and the hours all but spent. I’m just sitting here, listening to some early Tom Waits, and failing to finish the Sunday crossword.

I was thinking maybe I’d find something to say about Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, which I finished reading last week, but beyond saying that I really liked it, or that the stories in it are all masterfully done, I don’t know that there’s a lot to share. Even saying which stories I liked in particular won’t offer much, since there’s not a wrong note in the collection and it’s tough to pick a favorite. I’ll definitely have to check out Lahiri’s other books, including her novel, The Namesake.

Okay, back to not finishing that crossword.