My bionic rebuilding has begun! As a result of my spill last week, my right ring finger received a small fracture. And that would not be too major except that the bone fractured where the ligament attaches so I sort of lost the use of the finger tip. The doctor gave me a temporary finger for the next six weeks. It does interfere with my typing and effectively ends my use of the question mark. Who needs that anyway. In the long run, I might as well accept the biotransformation of feeble flesh. My next body mod could very well be an eye scanner, maybe with lasers, much like that old rascal Locutus. Or his little pony.
Kerouac's Trail Before He Hit the Road: "Outside the 'Maggie Cassidy' house, a battered, four-story tenement at 736 University Avenue, Mr. Marion says: 'There's no sign that reads `Jack Kerouac lived here.' But his work has been translated into 20 languages. We're standing on a site that figures in world literature.'
Called Ghosts of the Pawtucketville Night after the opening section of "Dr. Sax," the 90-minute tour meanders past Kerouac's boyhood homes; the Pawtucketville Social Club, once managed by Kerouac's father, Leo, and where young Jack helped out in the bowling alley; the Ste. Jeanne d' Arc and St. Louis de France Churches, both of which Kerouac attended and which are now closed; over the Moody Street Bridge; past the Archambault Funeral Home where Kerouac's wake was held; ending at Notre Dame de Lourdes Grotto, a spectral place where the mysterious caped figure of Dr. Sax was said to reside."
[Kerouac, unlike Whistler, never pretended to be from "far away Baltimore."]
Ms. Sagan had an enormous international success with 'Bonjour Tristesse,' about an amoral teenager who sets out to keep her philandering widowed father from marrying again. The novel was originally published in France in 1954. The following year an English translation reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. Ms. Sagan was only 19, making her the youngest author to achieve that feat at the time.
...'Whoever has not thrilled to speed has not thrilled to life,' she wrote in 'With Fondest Regards' (1985). 'However madly and hopelessly in love you may be, at 120 miles an hour you are less so. Your blood no longer congeals around your heart; your blood throbs to the extremities of your body, to your fingertips, your toes and your eyelids, now the fateful and tireless guardians of your own life.'"
So far I have come home from school via foot, car, bicycle, and, most recently, ambulance. But that mode of transportation was only because of my bicycle. I was coming down the hill after school and heard a POP!-hiss sound. My first thought was that my front tire had blown out, but for a second everything was going round round like it should. But in the next second the air left the tire. The bike and I took a rough landing on the asphalt. I picked myself up out of the road and called to the woman on the street. She offered to drive me back to my apartment but my head decided it needed me to lay down on the sidewalk. She went inside to call an ambulance. The paramedics arrived shortly and decided I did not have to go to the hospital. Besides the shredded hands, road rash shoulder, various bruises, the only injury is a purply crooked finger. The paramedics gave me a ride home since they were heading my way anyway (and I hope they don't send me a bill for it). All in all, my head is fine, no body parts fell off, my iBook stayed safely in its pouch so my gripe is minor. Needless to say, bicycles are not as much fun anymore. I'll take the car, thanks.
I do not usually like to think about the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens; however, he has been hard to avoid this week. Mind you, it's not personal between us--his music is just reminiscent of cheap beer in cinderblock dorm rooms. Apparently he suffers from moodswings while in his reborn religious zeal. So which is it:
Lone Star: "'Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it,' Max Frisch once observed. At home or in a car or on an iPod, we listen to recordings differently from the way we listen in a concert hall, where the collective task at hand is to listen. Listening to recordings is often a solitary pastime. Recorded music is a companion for when we are alone or, with headphones on, when we wish to feel alone."
'Gilmore Girls' Brings Norman Mailer to Stars Hollow: "[Norman] Mailer will play himself in the episode. His son, Stephen, also guest-stars as a reporter who interviews the author during his stay at the Dragonfly Inn, owned by Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and chef Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy).
[Mailer] wasn't sure about doing the cameo until he saw a few episodes of 'Gilmore Girls.'
'It had taste. It was witty and well put together,' Mailer tells USA Today. 'It had a certain elan that I liked. To my amazement, I had a fine time.'
Mailer has written screenplays for a handful of television movies, including 'The Executioner's Song,' based on his book about Gary Gilmore. His 'Gilmore Girls' guest spot is the first he's done on a TV series, however.
'Gilmore' creator and bibliophile Amy Sherman-Palladino was giddy at having Mailer on set and watching him improvise some of his lines."
Whistler House tells story of artist's life: "Fancying himself a worldly fellow, James McNeill Whistler did not want anyone to know that he was born in Lowell. Instead, he let it be known that he hailed from places such as Baltimore or St. Petersburg, Russia"
Flickr at first seemed to be another social network program, and one I had forgotten I had signed up for. However, its new posture as a photo sharing system is much more novel. I have done some experiementing with it here.
(Shush to anyone who thinks I am two months too late. Just shush).
The slow death of punk: "That Franz Ferdinand are a pretty good group is beyond doubt, but in historical context, they're also depressingly conservative...
Naturally, blaming the musicians for all this is a little unfair. The fact that they seem trapped in pastiche is traceable to our residence in a world in which an endless past is built into the present: how do you slough off the hegemony of The Beatles, Stones, Clash, Smiths et al when their supremacy is fixed by CD reissues, DVDs and those nostalgia-crazed TV stations? When it comes to their dearth of substance, it's hardly the bands' fault that 21st-century pop culture is built on a mix of political quiescence and gormless machismo."
The man's claim of what music was, in those good old days, probably only exists in his own hindsight. Politeness as a band trait--how positively genteel!
Did I mention that I began classes began about three weeks ago? No? Well, they did. So far I have learned that there is a such a thing as a free lunch. But there will also be a long line to get to the food. Some days I feel like Buffy at the beginning of Season 4 when the vampire gang took Mr. Gordo. But the feeling passes and then I am me again. Such is life.
Disney loses song challenge: "US entertainment giant Walt Disney today lost its court bid to set aside a lawsuit filed by a local Zulu family in South Africa for royalties from the hit song The Lion Sleeps Tonight... Pretoria High Court judge Hekkie Daniels today dismissed Disney's urgent application to cancel a court order that its trademarks in South Africa can be sold to collect damage money. A total of 240 trade marks, including Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, were cited in the order by a South African court handed down on June 29."
Pup shoots man, saves litter mates: "A man who tried to shoot seven puppies was shot himself when one of the dogs put its paw on the revolver's trigger."
Rare books in German library fire: "Thousands of irreplaceable books are believed to have been damaged or destroyed in a fire at a library in the town of Weimar, Germany, officials say... Many of the books were impossible to replace and therefore had not been insured, Mr Knoche said."
Despite what Tracey Emin might say, this is certainly worse than the Saatchi warehouse fire. She has nothing on Martin Luther.
Mindless brutality? No, it's the spiteful gene: "The Smug Gene: Why are cats so smug, when ducks are all but incapable of it? While isolating the smug gene in humans is some way off, scientists have had some success producing genetically-smug wheat, which sits in a field all day looking extremely pleased with itself. Anti-GM protesters have labelled the wheat 'very irritating'."
Sri Lanka accuses ship of cutting island's Net link
Sri Lanka accuses ship of cutting island's Net link: "Sri Lankan authorities tried to seize an Indian ship Wednesday and sought US$5 million in damages, accusing it of breaking the undersea fiber optic cable that connects the tropical island's main Internet links to the rest of the world...
'We are totally innocent and in no way involved in the incident,' said Ralph Anandappaa, an official with the shipping company, Asha-Pership Group"
New harpist relishes royal role: "Performing for royalty has to be one of the highest accolades for any young musicians but for one Welsh harpist, it is just part of the day job.
Last month, 22-year-old Jemima Phillips took over from Catrin Finch as Prince Charles' official harpist."
I should not be surprised that Prince Charles has an official harpist--he is a prince afterall--but I still am. He should just buy an iPod instead.
Mozart behaving badly: "Mozart had numerous obsessions: clocks, cats, shoe sizes, his wife's safety - he had an unnatural fear of letting her out of the house. There is evidence of him twitching, grimacing, tapping his feet together and behaving oddly... Fugue and counterpoint became an obsession and he reinvented them: the contrapuntal complexity of his six "Haydn" quartets baffled his friends....Fugues appear to be chaotic but are rigidly and beautifully structured. Mozart loved to write passages that broke all the rules, yet needed to keep them within a tight overall musical structure."
