So I've started reading the Pen Addict blog. Dude loves his pens and writes loving reviews daily. Yesterday he posted a photo of the SIXTEEN pens he currently carries daily. (Y'know, there's no information about the blogger - I think he writes like a bloke, but I have very little to go on in that regard. My apologies all around if I'm wrong.) 

While there are several pens at my desk, as of this year, I use two pens. Both fountain pens. A LAMY studio palladium fountain pen with a 14K gold medium nib for use at home, and (because the cartridges are proprietary and I found the studio so pleasant), a LAMY logo with another medium nib for use away from home. At some point, I might upgrade the away from home to another studio, but replacing a logo should I lose it won't hurt as much as shelling for another studio.

My penmanship hasn't improved much (unless I concentrate hard when I write), but I enjoy writing by hand much more  than I had with either ballpoints or cheap plastic fountain pens (which I was using for a while, determining whether I wanted to take the dive into real fountain pens).


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In two weeks, last_girl_guide and I will be in London for a couple days. We'd thought maybe of seeing David Benson (who performed an incredible Noel Coward revue to way-too-small audiences at the Prague Fringe) in Dirty Soho. And then I saw that John Barrowman has joined the London cast of La Cage aux Folles, which I'm sure can't help but be fabulous. In many more ways than one. Am conflicted to say the least.



hmmm.

Firedoglake reports:

 Gracious - if you thought the movie was cheesy, check out the complete set of 66 Tron trading cards (plus the puzzle) (flickr), released by Disney in 1981.

Not sure what to make of the possiblity of Tron 2.0. Especially as the director has no other completed credits (or transfer credits for that matter), and his only other listing on imdb is a remake of Logan's Run scheduled for 2011.

...That's what they were calling us following Obama's election. (My ass, I say.)
Seems no one told the City of Brotherly Love:

So after the origianl Star Trek, they came up with Star Trek The Next Generation (and a buncha movies and two other series and other related merchandise). Coming soon in comics format Star Trek The Last Generation.

Do you think they'll come up with something under the rubric Star Trek The Greatest Generation?

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Saw the MD this morning and am on a new ulcer drug (Omeprazole, also known as Prilosec) and hoping it does me some good.

 It's not a big thing, but it's really bloody simple. The US is a big country with a pretty short constitution. And both presidential and mid-term elections get a fair amount of press in Britain.

So. In an article on Alec Baldwin's political aspirations (undefined as they are), we get this: 
"The next elections to the US legislature are due in 2012."

No. We have a bicameral legislature. Terms in the upper house (the Senate) are 6 years; terms in the lower house (House of Representatives) are 2 years. One third of the senate is up for re-election every two years. The entire House of Representatives is up for re-election every two years. If you took note that the elections last November also included the House and Senate, then you'd know, the next elections to the US legislature are in 2010.

Yeah, I might be being a little snarky. My knowledge of the rules regarding UK (not to mention Dutch and Czech) elections is shaky at best.

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such as bezigebij ...

From the English-language Der Spiegel

A Vision of the Berlin Wall as a Giant Garden

Billy Lee Riley ...
one of the remaining original Sun Records artists, Is in VERY bad need of help! Billy has had his share of health problems, and is now battling Stage FOUR bone cancer. Although musicares is helping with house payment, car and such, He and Joyce are totally out of money and can barely afford to eat. This is a CALL FOR HELP to all musicians and fans. Please remember, twenty bucks from all of us would make a HUGE difference in Billy's life! What if this was you? Let's all get together and send something today to Billy and Joyce and show them that he means alot to us. If you have a website, a facebook or myspace, please post this need for help on it! We can't save the world, but it will mean alot in
Billy Lee's life!

His address is:
Billy Lee Riley
723 Crest Drive
Jonesboro, Arkansas 72401

This info is from the Hound Blog. More informatoin about his contributions to rock n roll are here and here.

Rest If You Can.

Congress authorized the war after Johnson contended that American warships had been attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug. 4, 1964. The attack never happened, as a report declassified by the National Security Agency in 2005 made clear. The American ships had been firing at their own sonar shadows on a dark night.

At the time, however, the agency’s experts in signals intelligence, or sigint, told Mr. McNamara that the evidence of an attack was iron-clad. “McNamara had taken over raw sigint and shown the president what they thought was evidence,” said Ray Cline, then the C.I.A.’s deputy director of intelligence, adding, “and it was just what Johnson was looking for.”

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I gotta buy some books. There was a fine used bookstore we passed in Haarlem. In the entry were three or four rubberbanded selections of Penguin 60s. Turned out to be only a euro a pop, but I didn't know that when I grabbed the one I did.

So: Aristophanes' Lysistrata, Tacitus on Nero and the Burning of Rome, Plato's Phaedrus (which I already have in this format, sorta knackered though), Rimbaud's Season in Hell and Balzac's The Atheist's Mass.

Also purchased: the Gwyn and Thomas Jones translation of The Mabinogion.

Tasty.

Paul Morrissey (director of Hound of the Baskervilles, among other things) Andy Warhol Janis Joplin (these two need no introduction)Tim Buckley (father of Jeff among other things)





h/t adski_kafeteri 


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Let's see. Thursday evening was supposed to include a picnic in Amsterdam, but I got myself in a fenderbender on the N11 on the way home. No serious damage, but I was sort of shaken up. We had a lovely supper on the beach in Noordwijk instead.

Friday I took off to get the car looked at, replace the front license plate ('cause last_girl_guide  is going to Germany tomorrow and it had to be replaced in advance of that) and do a bunch of other errands. Was pretty successful all the way around. The weather has been abso-fricking-lutely gorgeous for a while now, so Friday evening we hopped on our bikes after supper and rode out to Warmond before bed. Lovely little neighbourhood, that.

Yesterday we took the train to Haarlem, which is only about 20 minutes away. Also lovely - we were quite surprised we'd never been before. It was gorgeous and hot there too, so we just wandered around, rather than visiting either of the museums there. We'll be back.

The Leiden Culinary Fest has been going on for a few days and we partook of that last night. Koekjes & Kalfjes provided us with prosecco and a fine beef dish for our mains (such as they were - the fest is more of a way to get a taste of various high-end restaurants - they don't serve *much* food, but you feel they had when you see the bill) - I had a beefy starter and LGG had oysters. We wandered a bit and found LGG mussels for her first pudding. For second (third and fourth) pudding, we went to the pavillion hosted by Brasserie Fyn which served us a small cheese plate, a 2-layer mousse (choco and something gingerbread-ish), and a vodka-prosecco-lemon sorbet combo for which I'd not leave the house for weeks if I had the proportions and ingredients to hand.

Itr's looking to be a slightly less gorgeous day weather-wise, but this will make going to the gym less odious and the fact that I'm wanting to spend a bunch of time moving stuff from old external drive to new 1TB drive less like I'm wasting a day.

...but for the last godvervloekt time:

Do NOT try to raise your toddler in the same house as your 8-foot  fucking python.

This is not rocket science people.





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 Discussing the films of Paul Verhoeven with a colleague, I mentioned his early Dutch work (Soldaat van Oranje, The Fourth Man) and then some of his later American bits (Basic Instinct, Robocop). Said colleague replied, "Yeah, he tried to make another film, Zwartboek."

"Wait," I said, he directed the film, had it released and you saw it in the theater, right? And all you can say is "He tried to make a movie"?

"It was terrible." 

I'm going to have to remember that. Usually one says, "So and so made a bad film." Now we can simply say, "Well, that team tried to make a film."

 R.I.P. Lt. Stone...

Karl Malden, the Academy Award-winning character actor who for more than 60 years brought an intelligent intensity and a homespun authenticity to roles in theater, film and television, from “A Streetcar Named Desire” to “The Streets of San Francisco,” died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 97...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/movies/02malden.html?ref=obituaries





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NextGov has an interesting take on the value of poetry in battling the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Poetry, radio and Web 2.0 tools part of the battle in Afghanistan

...[I]nsurgents groups including the Taliban buy low-cost, battery-powered radio transmitters, position them near a village to broadcast messages to residents that include threats to kill them of they do not follow their policies and teachings. Smith said he wants to help the Afghan government counter the messages by using more powerful transmitters that can overwhelm stations operated by insurgent groups.

Smith said FM radio stations can deliver the programming that villagers want to hear, including poetry, a key component of the area's Pashtu culture, which dates back 400 years.

Broadcasting poetry to an audience that appreciates verse meets the key requirement of any strategic communications campaign: "Audience-focused communications. You need to meet the audience where they are at," said Bill Salvan, a reserve Navy public affairs officer and president of Signal Bridge Communications, a public relations firm in Phoenix...

...seems to be that more people write it than read it, at least according to Katha Pollitt.

This might be in the category of putting records of your dreams behind a cut, as frumiousb does, with the the notation "because other people's dreams are boring".

Pollitt, the author of several books, a poet, essayist and columnist for The Nation, writes on the topic under the title Poetry: Not Yet Dead. One note she makes is that while musicians by albums, and people who paint can be found in galleries, people who write poetry don't, it seems, read much of it.

This doesn't exactly speak to me - I often rely on other people's poetry to inspire my own, and to provide the mantras that ease me to sleep, but I started writing poetry long before I made reading it a habit.

She recommends five volumes by individual poets (Wislawa Szymborska, CP Cavafy, Sharon Olds, Brenda Shaughnessy, and Natasha Tretheway) here. I love Cavafy, have read bits by Olds, but nothing by the other 3.

Here's one by Szymborska.

Lot's wife
And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.


Recently I've been reading a little volume of ballads and some Robert Browning. Which poets are you enjoying these days?

Yup. It's that time of year again. San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has announced the 2009 winners.

Here's the sci-fi category runner up:

 From the NY Times - 11 Health Myths That May Surprise You. Of particular interest to me:

5. Cracking your knuckles will cause arthritis. Alas, the article merely states "Knuckle-crackers are no more likely to have arthritis than those who don’t make annoying popping sounds with their fingers."
I'd like to know the data, so that I can happily continue with the knuckle popping when last_girl_guide isn't around.

8. Sugar makes kids hyper. Well, it may not make kids hyper, but it sure as heck makes me hyper.

11. Food quickly picked up from the floor is safe to eat. Right. There is no 5-second rule

Today's adventure included the buzzcocks and the pretenders playing a fest in Den Haag.

Good stuff, though am quite sunburnt. Oops.

I'm rather interested in how the buzzcocks' punk pop has held up so much better than the Specials' more political stuff (played quite well at glasto the other night and broadcast on el beeb). More on the subject in the next couple.

 Sky Saxon, of proto-punk band The Seeds, passed away this week as well.

When Thriller was the big thing, I was in high school, selling records, and way too hip. Or something. My favourite acts at the time included The Tubes, Adam Ant, the Smiths and too many others to count. In '83 or '84 I bought an Adam and the Ants bootleg LP from the Kings of the Wild Frontier tour on which he introducted the song A.N.T.S.* thusly: "This is for you, for the shuttlecraft pilots, and for Michael Jackson who's the best dancer in the world." I had to rate Jackson a little higher based on that alone, though it would be ages before I really appreciated any of his work.

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* A parody of YMCA, the studio version of which was a blue flexidisc that came with some magazine - mighta been Trouser Press.