My parents want to talk to me today instead of tomorrow, because tomorrow they're going to be out at something that they don't want to do (I think this is hilarious; they're going to watch my cousin in some kind of ice-skating event; Mom has been complaining about this for weeks, they even have to pay for it, they really don't want to go, and yet at no point have they just told my dad's brother/sister-in-law "No thanks"!).
But tonight, angelofthenorth and will be out seeing one of my favorite symphonies (we played the Finale in high school, I bought a cheapo CD of this and something else from Dvorak afterwards because listening to stuff I used to know that intimately is always fun...and M hasn't been to the Bridgewater Hall yet so I'm looking forward to seeing what she thinks of it).
So I told my parents about half an hour ago that I'm around if they want to talk, and the one downside of modern video meeting platforms (that works on both Linux and an iPad operated by people who don't know, for example, the difference between text messages and e-mails; we use Jitsi) is that I can't just wait to hear if they call so I'm tethered to my laptop for the next little while still, to see if my mom appears with her usual greeting "Do we have you?"
Edit: I never did hear from my parents, even though I hung around long enough to put off changing clothes and getting ready to go until after angelofthenorth got here. I got the exact same "We are home to talk" e-mail at 8.30 like usual. And of course I've done that "sending an e-mail before I check my e-mail" thing, but even after this there was no acknowledgement of my message or, y'know, my reality at all. Like V said when I caught them up on this news, it just shows how much this is not about me.
Today is cloudy and cold. We got a good soaking rain last night. :D
I fed the birds. I've seen a few house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 4/18/26 -- We went up to the Third Saturday Bazaar in the Otto Center, and also stopped at a greenhouse where I bought a flat of flowers and a couple extra petunias. But then I got home to find a frost warning for Sunday night. *headdesk*
EDIT 4/18/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 4/18/26 -- I filled a trolley with sticks from the south lot and dumped those in the firepit.
I’ve been re-reading my copy of Doctor Who and the Daleks, the very first Doctor Who novelization, and was struck by the stark line drawings of the original cover (not my edition, which has the familiar Chris Achilleos art) and the internal illustrations. They are pretty vivid, and as someone elsewhere commented, not really what you’d expect for a children’s book.
I dug a little deeper and found that they are part of the early work of Arnold Schwartzman, born in 1936 and still living, whose CV is simply extraordinary. In 1963, the year before he did his Doctor Who art, he was photographing the Beatles.
Schwartzman’s photo of Paul McCartney being interviewed.
The photographer visible in the previous photo took this one, in which Arnold Schwartzman himself, with thick-rimmed glasses, is visible behind the interviewer and Paul McCartney.
As well as building up his own portfolio of photography and design, he has written several books about art, with Art Deco being a particular interest. He moved to Los Angeles in 1978 and among other assignments was the head of design for the 1988 Olympics in that city.
This cycling poster is also one of his.
At the turn of the century he designed the posters for the Oscar ceremonies in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000.
But that is not all. As well as states design and writing books, Schwartzman has directed a few films, including the 1981 documentary, Genocide, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
So yeah. The guy who did those line drawings for David Whitaker’s children’s book ended up winning an Oscar for a documentary about the Holocaust that he made seventeen years later. It’s difficult to think of a visual contributor to the Whoniverse who has had such a massive cultural impact.
We have a spice mix grinder, with lemon and garlic and chili and sea salt in it. It's so good.
But when I tried to add some to our dinner tonight, I noticed it wasn't really working. Despite it being single-use plastic, I managed to take apart the grinding bits, and when I couldn't scrape away the gunk I just left them in some water to soak.
I was just thinking I haven't done anything today, but I've done that. Tiny little thing that should make the future nicer. And more flavorful.
Wandering around the South Bank - the Crossbones Graveyard of the Outcast 16-04-26
I couldn't go in as it was closed -so many years in London and I didn't know this existed, the Graveyard for the Outcast Dead. The outcasts were sex workers, immigrants, disabled and other minorities. Will try to go at a time it's open next time. The site next door is also interesting. London is full of interesting things!
Starting the day looking up siblings of my g-granny from Dublin in the newly released 1926 Irish census. Having to check some more BMD certs (fortunately mostly available online, free, for this period for the Republic of Ireland) to verify addresses. But finding most folks sought.
Two of SF Performance's chamber music series wound up in the same week, and as a subscriber I got to both of them.
The Danish String Quartet on Tuesday had an interestingly unusual program: first, their own arrangement of Stravinsky's Suite italienne, which in turn was Stravinsky's own arrangement for violin and piano of excerpts from his Pulcinella ballet music. This came out very Stravinskian. Then, Alfred Schnittke's Quartet No. 2, four movements of unending extreme dissonance, some of it Very Loud, some of it Extremely Quiet, and strangely captivating throughout. A lot of composers who like being dissonant could learn from this how to do it effectively. Lastly, a series of pleasant Nordic folk songs and dances, mostly Danish and Faroese, though when it was announced that one piece was from Greenland, the audience broke out into spontaneous applause.
Quatuor Ébène on Thursday was a more conventional program of 3 canonical 19C quartets by Beethoven (Op. 18/2), Debussy (his only), and Brahms (Op. 51/2). For an encore, a bit more daring, Britten's Divertimento No. 2. All were played in a style very typical of their composer. This worked well with the Beethoven, his most lively and perky quartet, but though the sound quality in the Debussy and Brahms was pretty awesome, they were rather duller to listen to. This is the sort of thing that stood in the way of my appreciating string quartets for a long time.
A big shutdown of the approaches of the Bay Bridge for repairs this weekend is already being prepared for, and driving out of the City at night was difficult both evenings even if you weren't going in that direction.
Today is mostly cloudy and hot. It's 83°F already. :/
We went out to Market on the Prairie at the fairgrounds. This was mostly flea market stuff and a few crafters. I picked up a couple of hand-painted bookmarks and three plant stands. \o/
We also stopped at Whiteside Gardens for the last day of their Spring Spectacular. They had a craft table and a bubble station out. :D I picked up a celandine poppy and Doug got a yellow-green hosta.
The first field is sprouting with corn, which is odd because corn is a warm-season crop that won't sprout well in cold weather. Soybeans are usually sown first. The only thing I can think of is that, if someone's planting by measuring soil temperature, things are really fucked up for the soil to be corn-warm in mid-April.
I fed the birds. I've seen a few house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 4/17/26 -- I planted the new hosta with others in the forest garden.
I also moved a couple of indoor flats outside to get some sun, and uncovered the mixed plants in the water jug greenhouses.
EDIT 4/17/26 -- I planted the celandine poppy in the new shade garden at the east end of the savanna.
I've seen a male cardinal and a fox squirrel with nipples. I've seen a male cardinal and a fox squirrel with nipples. I heard a bluejay screaming but didn't see it.
EDIT 4/17/26 -- I was going to do more planting, but the wind has picked up so much that I just brought in the flats of seedlings instead. :/
EDIT 4/17/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 4/17/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 4/17/26 -- We picked up sticks from about the first third of the south lot, starting at the garden shed in the east and working down to the birdgift tree. So that will be ready to mow later.
I've taught him everything I know about Once Upon A Galaxy, and now it's time for Dabe to travel into that wilderness alone. Well, not entirely alone. You should go hang out! Day One of this month's tournament just opened up. I don't compete in tournaments generally, I find them scary, but I'm excited to explore this new part of myself.
One day every adult on Earth gets a box that contains a string that measures out the length of their life.
This premise seems designed in a lab to create a book to be read for book clubs, where everyone gets to discuss whether or not they'd open their box and how they'd react to a long or short string. It worked, too. And it is absolutely about the premise. Unfortunately, the book is bad: flat, dull, sappy, American in the worst possible way, and emotionally manipulative.
It follows multiple characters, all American, most New Yorkers, and all middle or upper class. Some get long strings. Some get short strings. The ones with short strings agonize over their short strings. The ones with long strings who are in relationships with people with short strings agonize over that.
One of them is black, a fact mentioned exactly once in the entire book, and one has a Hispanic name. One set is an old right-wing politician and his wife. But all of them have identical-sounding narrative voices. Other than the Hispanic-named dude, who is mostly concerned about job discrimination, and the politician, who just wants to exploit the issue, everyone is worried about having a relationship and children with someone who will die young/worried that they'll get dumped and not be able to have children because they'll die young.
Ultimately, isn't everything really about baaaaaabies? Shouldn't everyone have baaaaaaabies no matter what?
The book is so bland and flat. The strings are a metaphor for discrimination, as short stringers are discriminated against. It explores some other social issues, all extremely American like health insurance discrimination and mass shootings, but only peeks outside America for brief and stereotypical moments: North Korea mandates not opening the boxes, China mandates opening them, and in Italy hardly anyone opens their box because they already know what really matters: family. BARF FOREVER.
It was obvious going in that the origin of the boxes would never be explained, but no one even seemed curious about that. Once all adults have received them, they appear on your doorstep the night you turn 22. Video of this is fuzzy. No one parks themselves on the doorstep to see if they teleport in or what. No one has a paradigm-upending crisis over this absolute proof of God/aliens/time travel/magic/etc that the boxes represent. No one comes up with inventive ways to take advantage of the situation a la Death Note. No one is concerned that this proves predestination. No one wonders why they appeared now and what the motive of whoever put them there is.
The point that life is precious regardless of length is hammered in with a thousand sledgehammers, to the point where it felt like a bad self-help book in the form of a novel. The romances are flat and sappy. In the truly vomitous climax, someone pedals around on a bicycle with the stereo playing "Que Sera Sera" and it quotes the entire song.
It's only April but this will be hard to top as the worst book I read all year.
Hovertext: The key is to put the self-on-fire at the beginning of the video and promise to show that it technically cures cancer, but only if you watch to the end without skipping.
Have been noting hither and yon stuff about blokes 'looksmaxxing' and 'mogging' (which apparently does not involve cats? is there some reference to tomcats facing off and fluffing out their fur? probably not. Who knows.)
This is yet another of those things That Blokez Do apparently in order to attract the opposite sex and I do not think it is because I am Old, and my tastes were formed in A Different Day, that I feel that there is a significant Failure To Do The Research about What Actually Pulls The Chixx.
Not that this is exactly a new phenomenon, when I was reviewing those books on yoof culture in the 60s/early 70s, I was thinking that various of the paths being pursued by (presumably) cis het men, because Teh Gayz were in separate chapters, did not seem to me necessarily terribly productive - maybe being a great dancer, but not if it was all about him showing off moves, ditto the being A Mod Face.
And after all the idea that women only go for men who look a certain way is to laugh at, cites yet again the instance of The Late Rock Star Historian, who was a scruff who was not perhaps quite at the John Wilkes level of having serious disadvantages in the way of appearance to overcome but was - well, I suppose it depends on the artist you're thinking of and there were painters who would have turned out an excellent oil-painting of him but was hardly of male-model looks. But was if not of universal appeal, considerably popular with the opposite sex.
We are frankly not surprised at reports that young women are eschewing the dating game, because what it turns up is very likely young men blatting on about their self-maintenance regime and probably trying to shill for supplements and peptides.
Am also given to wonder whether the people who follow these creatures are all acolytes of their maxxingmessage, or whether at least some % are treating them as the modern equivalent of the old-style freakshow. (Though for all I know, in the darker reaches of the internet you can find videos of men biting the heads off chickens and so on.)
While I was thinking that it would be preferable for them to contemplate upon the natural world and build bowers for, or offer particularly attractive stones to, the objects of their interest, I also became cynical as to whether female bower birds and penguins are quite so appreciative of these efforts as naturalists would have us suppose. ('Him and his bloody bowers' - 'Not another pebble')
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angelofthenorth and will be out seeing one of my favorite symphonies (we played the Finale in high school, I bought a cheapo CD of this and something else from Dvorak afterwards because listening to stuff I used to know that intimately is always fun...and M hasn't been to the Bridgewater Hall yet so I'm looking forward to seeing what she thinks of it).
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