As in hanging on by. . .fingernails, that is. To what, you ask? To an internet connection at the domicile of MOS. We've found that, if we hold the laptop just so, we can catch the wave from an unsecured network: Nambla-net. We do have to pretend to be a twelve year old altar-boy, but we feel that's a small price to pay.
Anyway:
Suppose anyone learns how to buckle a seatbelt from the flight attendants’ presentation? They’re always so earnest about the whole thing, it would be a shame if everyone were unmoved by it.
We had a student this past semester who got excited about the strangest things,
The Solipsist: So, if you want to connect two independent clauses, you can use a comma and a coordinating conjunction--for, and, nor, but, or, yet, or so (FANBOYS for short).
Student: Wait, so. . . Sir? So, you’re saying I could put a comma. . . .and the word ‘and’. . .and join two sentences?
Solipsist: That’s right.
Student: (In a high pitched shriek) WHAT?!? Well! I NEVER knew that!!!!
Solipsist: (Making fending off motions) Hey. . . .Whoa there! Heh. . . .Think THAT’s cool, wait’ll we tell you about pronoun-antecedent agreement.
We imagine that student might get something valuable from the seatbelt exegesis.
“WAIT! Wha-- I put the FLAT end WHERE???”
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Solipsistic Publication Update
Hi Nation.
Tonight, we're off to a little backwater burg called "New York City" for a couple of weeks. We'll be staying with MOS, whose apartment is rather 20th-century; in other words, not really wired for internet. We're optimistic that we'll be able to access someone's wireless network, but we won't know for sure until we get there. All of which is by way of saying, we'll either talk to you all tomorrow as usual, or we'll be back in a couple of weeks.
In case you don't hear from us, please use this time to look over back issues of "The Solipsist." If it was relevant when we said it then, imagine how much more relevant it will be now. Like a fine wine or a stinky cheese, the Solipsist's pontifications only improve with age.
See you soon!
Tonight, we're off to a little backwater burg called "New York City" for a couple of weeks. We'll be staying with MOS, whose apartment is rather 20th-century; in other words, not really wired for internet. We're optimistic that we'll be able to access someone's wireless network, but we won't know for sure until we get there. All of which is by way of saying, we'll either talk to you all tomorrow as usual, or we'll be back in a couple of weeks.
In case you don't hear from us, please use this time to look over back issues of "The Solipsist." If it was relevant when we said it then, imagine how much more relevant it will be now. Like a fine wine or a stinky cheese, the Solipsist's pontifications only improve with age.
See you soon!
Thursday, May 27, 2010
More Musings (A Brief Post)
Overheard a couple of students talking about orcas today. Has it become politically incorrect to refer to them as "killer whales"? Because, frankly, whenever we hear "orca," the first thing that comes to mind is that 1970s-era, "Jaws" ripoff of the same name:
And, frankly, THAT was a killer whale if we've ever heard of one.
And, frankly, THAT was a killer whale if we've ever heard of one.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
We Contain Multitudes
Yesterday, we commented on how unfazed we were by the privacy-diminishing actions of Facebook. Today, though, we had our own moment of internet-induced privacy-paranoia.
As regular followers know, YNSHC teaches at a community college. Community as in "public." Tosay, we discovered that this idea of "public" extends to areas we hadn't thought about-- specifically, our salary. We suppose that, if we had thought about it, we would have realized that employee salaries at public institutions are as much a matter of public record as any other budgetary line item. Still, we were shocked to open our e-mail this morning and find a letter from a colleague, addressed to the whole college community, and containing a link to a county-budget webpage. There, in descending order by total compensation, was a list of every single county employee! Including, of course, us.
Are we hypocritical in feeling somewhat violated by this posting of what is, after all, public information about our private life, even while we critique others for privacy concerns? Do we contradict ourselves? Very well, we contradict ourselves.
It's just that salary seems an inappropriately intimate topic to be spied upon by strangers--or, even worse, by people who are not quite strangers, but not quite close companions either. It's like seeing people you have a passing relationship with in their underwear, only not as much fun.
All we can say is, we're glad this list came out at the end of the year, when everyone is packing up and scattering for the summer. And we would like to be given the option next year of posing in our underwear rather than having our most intimate secrets revealed.
As regular followers know, YNSHC teaches at a community college. Community as in "public." Tosay, we discovered that this idea of "public" extends to areas we hadn't thought about-- specifically, our salary. We suppose that, if we had thought about it, we would have realized that employee salaries at public institutions are as much a matter of public record as any other budgetary line item. Still, we were shocked to open our e-mail this morning and find a letter from a colleague, addressed to the whole college community, and containing a link to a county-budget webpage. There, in descending order by total compensation, was a list of every single county employee! Including, of course, us.
Are we hypocritical in feeling somewhat violated by this posting of what is, after all, public information about our private life, even while we critique others for privacy concerns? Do we contradict ourselves? Very well, we contradict ourselves.
It's just that salary seems an inappropriately intimate topic to be spied upon by strangers--or, even worse, by people who are not quite strangers, but not quite close companions either. It's like seeing people you have a passing relationship with in their underwear, only not as much fun.
All we can say is, we're glad this list came out at the end of the year, when everyone is packing up and scattering for the summer. And we would like to be given the option next year of posing in our underwear rather than having our most intimate secrets revealed.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Odds and Ends
From the first-time-for-everything-department: We made spaghetti tonight, and we actually made the correct amount. Generally, we grasp what seems like a proper sized fistful of the stuff, only to discover, when the cooking's done, that we've prepared enough pasta to feed a herd of moose. We would say that we need to remember what we did right this time, but it's already been nudged out of that part of our mind in which we store pertinent information, replaced by concern about Facebook's privacy policy.
OK, seriously? We have a confession to make. Despite strenuous effort on our part, we have failed to become worked up over Facebook's changes to its privacy policy. Partially, this is due to the fact that we have no idea what these changes entail, but we assume Jeff Zuckerberg isn't auctioning off our kidneys to a Chinese syndicate--and anything less than that is of little concern.
We don't understand what everyone is getting so agitated about. Haven't people grokked the fact that there is basically no privacy on the internet? Yes, your personal e-mail should probably stay personal, but aside from that? Do people not see something hypocritical in complaining about the lack of privacy on a website whose sole purpose is to allow people to post pictures of themselves and report on every last bit of minutiae of their daily lives?
We enjoy playing around on Facebook, and if the price we have to pay is that people will have access to information about us--information that they will presumably use to try to sell things to us--we're OK with that. All it means is that we have a few more commercials to ignore throughout the course of our day.
OK, seriously? We have a confession to make. Despite strenuous effort on our part, we have failed to become worked up over Facebook's changes to its privacy policy. Partially, this is due to the fact that we have no idea what these changes entail, but we assume Jeff Zuckerberg isn't auctioning off our kidneys to a Chinese syndicate--and anything less than that is of little concern.
We don't understand what everyone is getting so agitated about. Haven't people grokked the fact that there is basically no privacy on the internet? Yes, your personal e-mail should probably stay personal, but aside from that? Do people not see something hypocritical in complaining about the lack of privacy on a website whose sole purpose is to allow people to post pictures of themselves and report on every last bit of minutiae of their daily lives?
We enjoy playing around on Facebook, and if the price we have to pay is that people will have access to information about us--information that they will presumably use to try to sell things to us--we're OK with that. All it means is that we have a few more commercials to ignore throughout the course of our day.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Well Begun and All Done: "Duma Key"
The book: Duma Key by Stephen King
Opening line: "Start with a blank surface."
Closing line: "All the rest is only life."
At some literary conference of the future, tweed-jumpsuited academics will present papers on the recuperation fiction of Stephen King. Since 1999, when King suffered a near-fatal accident, injured protagonists have turned up frequently in his work. From the dreary (Dreamcatcher, 2001) to the quite good (Lisey's Story, 2006--not an injured-protagonist story, but King's imagining of his wife, Tabitha's, experiences if he had not survived), to a significant portion of the multi-part epic, The Dark Tower, into which King wrote himself as a character. Duma Key is another entry in the growing canon.
Duma Key tells the story of Edgar Freemantle, a successful contractor who is nearly crushed to death in a construction accident. He suffers brain damage, loses an arm, and, of course, experiences massive leg pain. On the advice of his doctor, he leaves the wintry climes of Minnesota for a yearlong retreat to Duma Key, off the west coast of Florida. While there, he rediscovers a passion for art and soon finds out he is far more talented than he had ever imagined himself to be.
This being a fairly typical Stephen King story, it turns out that his supernatural-seeming talent is, well, supernatural. His paintings foretell the future! And his talent is a result of a sort of possession by a powerful evil force. . . . Blah blah blah.
As a great fan of Stephen King, we have long since resigned ourselves to taking the mediocre or the bad with the good. Duma Key is an example of the mediocre. Nothing unexpected happens, the good guys win in the end, with the requisite amount of heartbreak and horror along the way.
More interesting is to ponder the symbolism: A successful man suffers a crippling injury, only to discover his creativity blossoming. His creativity, though, is a mixed blessing: recuperative at first, energizing, only to become destructive to the artist and to those around him. What is Stephen trying to say? After his accident, he did consider packing it all in. Maybe conjuring horror and gore lost its appeal after suffering his own near miss.
Maybe, like Edgar, King cannot resist the beckoning of the blank surface (page); at the same time, though, he realizes that art is not all--the rest, after all, is (only) life.
Opening line: "Start with a blank surface."
Closing line: "All the rest is only life."
At some literary conference of the future, tweed-jumpsuited academics will present papers on the recuperation fiction of Stephen King. Since 1999, when King suffered a near-fatal accident, injured protagonists have turned up frequently in his work. From the dreary (Dreamcatcher, 2001) to the quite good (Lisey's Story, 2006--not an injured-protagonist story, but King's imagining of his wife, Tabitha's, experiences if he had not survived), to a significant portion of the multi-part epic, The Dark Tower, into which King wrote himself as a character. Duma Key is another entry in the growing canon.
Duma Key tells the story of Edgar Freemantle, a successful contractor who is nearly crushed to death in a construction accident. He suffers brain damage, loses an arm, and, of course, experiences massive leg pain. On the advice of his doctor, he leaves the wintry climes of Minnesota for a yearlong retreat to Duma Key, off the west coast of Florida. While there, he rediscovers a passion for art and soon finds out he is far more talented than he had ever imagined himself to be.
This being a fairly typical Stephen King story, it turns out that his supernatural-seeming talent is, well, supernatural. His paintings foretell the future! And his talent is a result of a sort of possession by a powerful evil force. . . . Blah blah blah.
As a great fan of Stephen King, we have long since resigned ourselves to taking the mediocre or the bad with the good. Duma Key is an example of the mediocre. Nothing unexpected happens, the good guys win in the end, with the requisite amount of heartbreak and horror along the way.
More interesting is to ponder the symbolism: A successful man suffers a crippling injury, only to discover his creativity blossoming. His creativity, though, is a mixed blessing: recuperative at first, energizing, only to become destructive to the artist and to those around him. What is Stephen trying to say? After his accident, he did consider packing it all in. Maybe conjuring horror and gore lost its appeal after suffering his own near miss.
Maybe, like Edgar, King cannot resist the beckoning of the blank surface (page); at the same time, though, he realizes that art is not all--the rest, after all, is (only) life.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Did They At Least Consider the Name "CamiFlage"?
Last night, we saw an ad for the cami secret, basically a Potemkin camisole that provides all the cleavage concealment of a traditional cami without all the rashes, blisters, and seeping wounds (we're guessing) caused by this most dangerous piece of lingerie.
Our world was rocked! At first, we were stunned by the technological ingenuity of the Cami Secret developers, who cracked the code of that most daunting of engineering challenges and crafted. . . the piece of cloth! 'Cause that's what the Cami Secret is, basically: a sort of bib that gets pinned to the bra straps for an adjustable boobie-concealing fit.
Then, however, we became troubled. Now, whenever we spy a camisole-wearing woman, we will wonder: Is she sporting a traditional cami? Or is she a lying whore? Our enquiring mind will need to know!
We expect to be getting slapped a lot over the next few weeks.
Our world was rocked! At first, we were stunned by the technological ingenuity of the Cami Secret developers, who cracked the code of that most daunting of engineering challenges and crafted. . . the piece of cloth! 'Cause that's what the Cami Secret is, basically: a sort of bib that gets pinned to the bra straps for an adjustable boobie-concealing fit.
Then, however, we became troubled. Now, whenever we spy a camisole-wearing woman, we will wonder: Is she sporting a traditional cami? Or is she a lying whore? Our enquiring mind will need to know!
We expect to be getting slapped a lot over the next few weeks.
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