Let’s review some of the places I’ve been today.

Planet Ketchup

I followed a link from Metafilter. I do that sometimes. I had been led to believe that Henry John Heinz had inadvertently invented ketchup while trying to reproduce chutney, but both Planet Ketchup and the Heinz website offer decidedly different versions of what happened. Honestly, it’s bottled tomato paste, and I can’t really bring myself to care.

PROMT’s Online Translator

I was trying to see if the phrase “struck dumb”, when run through an English-to-Russian translator and back, really does yield the phrase “beaten senseless”. Apparently I was lied to again.

The Academy of American Poets: Emily Dickinson

Via e-mail, someone suggested that you can sing Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” to the tune of “Amazing Grace”. I replied that I had been told (perhaps once again erroneously) that you can sing any Emily Dickinson poem to “The Yellow Rose of Texas”. This is primarily why I have never bothered to learn the music to “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” I like Emily Dickinson. I have the feeling that would ruin her for me.

The hills are alive with the sound of…vampire slaying!

I didn’t watch last night’s episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (it was taped for me by a very nice person), but I was naturally intrigued by this Salon article. I like what author Stephanie Zacharek writes:

Unlike “The Practice” or “The West Wing,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” isn’t a show made by a guy who’s working overtime to show us how much drama there is in the prosaic; it’s made by a guy who understands that when you’re living high drama, you long for the prosaic. What Buffy Sommers wouldn’t give to be a presidential aide or a lawyer arguing a malpractice case! Instead, in a setup that’s formally classical despite the fact that the characters wear the latest fashions and live in Southern California, she’s destined to slay demons and vampires for the rest of her days — and possibly beyond.

Jabberwocky Variations

Just making sure I really do have it memorized. All mimsy were the borogroves.

Top Ten X-Files Episodes

Looking for a specific quote: “I didn’t spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons without learning a little something about courage.”

Medieval Themes and Topics: Some Interesting and Essential Stuff

A brief line in that Buffy article about melancholy as one of the four humours led me to wonder what the other three were. I’m an inquisitive sort sometimes.

Are You a Blogaholic?

Another one of those links from Metafilter. I am told that I am “a casual weblogger. You only blog when you have nothing better to do, which is not very often. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’d post a little more often, you’d make your readers very happy.” Do I have readers?

I understand that most of my visitors are here by accident (I probably need a disclaimer somewhere to ward off people looking for Unreality the gaming system), but if you’re interested, more photographs from this year’s Homecoming parade have been posted to the Penn State Monty Python Society website. I am in none but this photograph, since I took all the others.

I know I risk revealing my true geek colors by saying this, but I’m genuinely bummed out by the news that the Sci-Fi Channel is apparently cancelling The Invisible Man. I don’t get the Sci-Fi Channel but I’ve been able to watch it for awhile now in syndication, and it’s quickly become one of my favorite shows. Silly, I know, but then I guess so am I. Ironically, the Sci-Fi Channel will pick up future episodes of Stargate SG1, another favorite of mine which (and here’s the irony) comes on right after The Invisible Man (every Sunday night at 2 am). At least I’ve been able to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer (hands down still my favorite show on television) thanks to fellow capper lil_amish_boy, who has been sending me tapes and asks only that I not repay her in scrapple.

A few photographs from my Friday–which, as it turns out, wasn’t a half bad day at all. Eventually, more photographs from the Homecoming Parade (Vikings, Twister, et al.) should be uploaded to the Penn State Monty Python Society’s website. So if that’s the sort of thing you want to see, then that’s the sort of place you want to look.

As our nation’s civil liberties continue sadly to erode, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, the only senator to vote against the unfortunately named U.S.A. Patriot Act, is certainly a profile in courage. In a statement released on his website, Feingold says, in part:

Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America.

Well unfortunately, that seems to be what America is becoming in the wake of September 11. Thank god there are still some dissenting voices like Feingold–people who realize that dissent, not mindless unity, is what enables democracy to work.