Short Stories by James Thurber 2
I recently remembered my fondness for a set of short stories written by James Thurber. Some might even describe them as parables. Most traditional parables, such as Aesop’s Fables, seem inclined to suggest a behavior. Thurber’s parables tend towards sarcastic commentary on human nature.
Besides his parables, Thurber was a writer and cartoonist for the New Yorker. I would also suggest some of his longer short stories such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which tells the tale of a henpecked husband who daydreams himself into a variety of more entertaining situations then the errands he is actually performing, as well as Thurber’s children’s story The Thirteen Clocks.
Apparently for a variety of reasons many of the more interesting short stories have been transcribed on the internet, and I decided to copy a few of them and place them here so others might enjoy them.
- The Owl Who Was God
- The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble
- The Bear Who Let It Alone
- The Moth and the Star
- The Very Proper Gander
- The Unicorn in the Garden
- The Shrike and the Chipmunks
I believe these were all originally printed in James Thurber, Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated (New York, 1940).
Enjoy.
Soccer Dictatorships 2
Random commentary in St. Louis Post Dispatch on Sunday;
“A man I met once compared soccer to McDonald’s – just because it’s everywhere doesn’t mean it’s any good. Soccer represents everything America was founded against – Europe, poverty, inequality, socialism, dictators, etc. – why would anyone to embrace it? People came here to get away from that, not transfer it.” – Dan Levin, Creve Coeur
I am somehow left a little uncertain on how Soccer represents dictators.
Stephen Colbert's Bush Roast
Written transcript of the speech. As well as video’s
The first quarter of part one is just introduction for Colbert and the last portion the “press conference” video is eh, but most of part 1 and all of part 2 is well worth watching. The transcript doesn’t quite do it justice. Seeing Bush sitting right next to him adds to the burning thrust of the jokes.
Notable excerpts from the transcript:
bq. "Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don’t pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in “reality.” And reality has a well-known liberal bias."
and
“I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound — with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.”
Read!
Edit — May 5th
Apparently ABC News trained there camera on bush during this segment. Some interesting expressions were noted. Pictures of Bush during Colbert’s Speech.
The mainstream media remains enthralled by the Bush + Impersonator act, ignoring the main show. Just because reporters are everywhere, just because news is available 24/7 in real time with satellite feeds, embedded reporters and the kitchen sink in no way removes their ability to ignore anything they choose. No matter how much news is presented, something is ignored.
Institute for Applied Autonomy
A couple of weeks ago I made it out to a conference in which a few members of the Institute for Applied Autonomy got a chance to speak.
There basic concept is they are trying to be the DARPA equivalent for the common protestor and activist.
They are friendly to the RTMark method of viewing the world.
They were sparked in particular by attending a DARPA conference in which they viewed such excellent military technologies like “Self Healing Minefields”
What dear reader asks, is a self healing minefield? This excellent description explains. Or perhaps the simple explanation would be better. What exactly is a wounded mindfield? A wounded mindfield is one in which sections of the mindfield have been disrupted and no longer act as a working “area denial munition.”
Translation: Some poor sap got his leg blown off trying to walk through the mindfield, and now the military needs to fix the resulting gap in the mindfield.
What then does a “self-healing mindfield” do? Short answer? The mines talk to each other and can move. So when a mine blows up the other mines shuffle in closer to the area that was “wounded.” Actually they probably don’t shuffle, they hop.
… I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about my opinion on this …
So what did the Institute of Applied Autonomy do with this information? They made txtMob to enable the common protestor with the tools to communicate, coordinate and intelligently respond in hostile environments.
Translation: It lets protestors be as coordinated as the police.
Anyway, watch the video, it’s amusing. Some of the other applications are pretty entertaining/interesting as well. A robot for distributing subversive literature, a robot for writing political graffiti, a camera mapping system to allow for travel in cities following a route with minimal camera coverage. I recommend the videos for each of the projects, they are pretty entertaining.
Human Condition from Association with People
This was written in response to an assertion that the people we associate with should only be people that made us feel good all of the time. My apologies but I find myself forced to disagree.
I never met anyone in the world that I associated with that made me feel good all of the time.
This includes myself. Especially me.
So I certainly wouldn’t hold anyone else other then me to such a high standard that I frequently recriminate myself for not successfully matching.
That said, there is definitely a threshold at which point it is not worth it to deal with someone . I dunno if it’s above “most of the time”, “some of the time”, “a good portion of the time.” I do think it’s probably below “a bit of the time”, that seems to be below the threshold. Whatever the case the threshold definitely exists, and anyone below threshold is below threshold and not worth it. There are some people who are very borderline and those are the most dangerous to deal with.
Often because the only way they are at the threshold is that there is a simultaneous draw for them to be automatically below threshold and above threshold. Often the reasons for them to be in either place is complicated, horrible, wonderful, crazy, stupid, hateful, and any other emotional or rational overtone possible in the world.
This is simultaneously fortuneatly and unfortuneatly one of the central causes of the human condition. Hence why the human condition itself falls into said borderline threshold category. Anyway that’s my general opinion. Apologies for that. It leaves us with a wonderful horrible little tautology paradoxy thingy though. So I guess that’s cool. For the society for the study of wonderful horrible little paradoxical tautologies. If it exists. It should if it doesn’t. Maybe it’s called philosophy, science, or religion, right, maybe that was it. Can I answer all of the above? I never can remember.
As Douglas Adams stated so nicely in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish:
bq. God’s Final Message To His Creation is written in fire in letters
thirty-foot-high on the far side of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet of Preliumtarn, which orbits the star Zarss, which is located in the Gray Binding Fiefdoms of Saxaquine. The long path to the message is lined with souvenir stands at spaced-out intervals and the message says, “We apologise1 for the inconvenience.”
From the “we should look at things from other perspectives, but hopefully it won’t offend anyone” division
Or also perhaps the “This is all nonsense” division.
1 Apparently this is the british spelling or something according to my original source.
Bruce Campbell at the Tivoli
So I went to the Tivoli on thursday evening to see Bruce Campbell. He was almost exactly how I expected him to be. An amusing, witty jackass that knows he’s famous, but knows it doesn’t really make him all that. He talked about 15 or 20 minutes before showing his directorial debut, a movie set in bulgaria about gypsies, russian cab drivers with bling-bling, robots, frankenstein, Bruce Campbell doing a strange approximation of John Cleese, and random associated hijinks.
Just in case it isn’t clear, the movie was very low budget, silly and strange.
I don’t think I would necessarily sit through it again. It was pretty amusing to watch though, perhaps mostly since we had been warned by Mr Campbell at the beginning of the show, that we shouldn’t complement him on the movie until we actually saw it, as we might want our money back. He also warned that it had been funded by the Sci-Fi channel.
Most of his time talking before the show was spent answering questions from the audience about the movie, and random other things. I’m not entirely sure why but a number of the people asking questions were total morons. An opinion Mr. Campbell seemed to share, as he informed them as such. A choice example was a question asking if Mr Campbell was aware of an article that the questioner had read somewhere that suggested that due to the number of cameos and evil dead movies, Mr. Campbell’s face was more recognizable then any movie star.
To which Mr. Campbell responded by deriscively asking the questioner where he had read such an obviously false statement, and suggested that the internet might have been to blame for such a rediculous claim. Another great response was for the questioner who asked why Toby Maguire was chosen for the role of Spiderman, to which Mr. Campbell asked the questioner why they were asking him over the actual director of Spiderman, Sam Raimi. On the subject of when Evil Dead 4 might happen Mr. Campbell suggested it would require Mr. Raimi to stop making so much money from said Spiderman movies. However he did respond to one woman thanking him for being such an amusing character, that always brought a smile to peoples faces when he was onscreen, he promptly pulled $20 dollars out of his pocket and gave it to her on the spot.
His adlibbing on screen seems to be about how he generally deals with an audience in person. While we were all waiting outside to enter the theater, he passed by with the owner of Blueberry Hill, and gruffly asked everyone what the hell we were all standing in line for before anyone noticed him.
He wound up the talk by pointing out that this summer was full of B-movies masqueraded as A-list movies, and thanked the Tivoli and it’s attendees for supporting independent theater.
Definitely an amusing evening. If anyone else gets a chance to see him in any of the other 40 cities he is touring through, I would definitely suggest it. Assuming of course you know who he is in the first place.
Html Validator has limitations on sarcasm
I hadn’t remember to run the validators at the bottom of my page recently. The result was rather amusing:
Jury Duty 1
So this morning I woke up, worked from home for a little while, and then thought I ought to head into work. I hadn’t checked my mail in a few days, probably not since last thursday or so, perhaps wednesday, so I thought it prudent to check on my way out. I don’t get much mail so it’s not generally an issue.
I open the mailbox, and what should I find, but a crumpled small official postcard, with a change of address sticker on it indicating that the mail had been re-routed from my last semi-permenent apartment’s address.
The postcard said something along the lines of:
Jury Duty SECOND NOTICE: You are to report to the city court at 8:00am on August the 15th for jury duty. Your failure to show for this notice is a prosecutable offence. Please call the Jury Supervisor at 314-bla-blah...
So, lets recount the facts, I moved sometime in late may, then moved again the second to last weekend of July (in 105 degree temperatures no less). I filled out a late change of address form (plus 1 week delay for it to activate) for the temporary apartment (otherwise referred to as the psychotic roommates apartment), then filed a second change of address form to my new apartment, which canceled the prior change of address form (also taking at least a week to activate, but I’m pretty certain it took more)
This notice showing that I had been derelict for arriving this morning for jury duty, was in fact the first mail that proved my residancy in my new apartment. It was also the first time I had heard of any notice at ALL that I was needed for jury duty. It was also read about 4 hours too late.
Long story shorter, a friend drove me down and I got everything settled. There was some discussion about whether or not I still resided in the city as opposed to the county. My zip code indicates the county, but it happens to be in a slight jog in the line such that I actually live in the city. Which was useful before, as it meant I did not have to pay for an occupancy permit to live in my apartment. I probably could have got out of the whole thing had I just let the lady say I lived in the county, and let it be. However civil duty and all that, and already having been threatened by the door security man that they could arrest me (not a particularly pleasent person), I thought it wise to ensure my residency was correct, and thus must now pick some time in the middle of the school year during which I must come down and see if anyone wants me to be a juror for one of their trials.
Overheard conversation that worry me...
While walking by a number of people leaving a bar I overheard three people having a discussion about who was sober enough to drive home. The line in particular that caught my attention however was:
No, no, I’m alright to drive. You know why? Because I only drank beer tonight.
<sarcasm>Cause you know that beer, it don’t get you nearly as drunk as that hard alcohol, clearly A-OK to drive.</sarcasm> I’m just hoping I misheard and that what she actually said was “because I only drank a beer tonight”.
Some people do believe some interesting “facts” though…
