Aside from that, though...

You have no idea how little interest I had in the guests on Jerry Springer today. From what I could hear they started off with a woman who wanted to have her first lesbian experience with a particular stripper, which, dare to dream. Afterwards was some judge show which seemed even worse, but by that time I was nearly ready to leave the laundromat.

Luckily I had the foresight to bring a book along. A Sherlock Holmes omnibus to be specific. I decided to revisit "The Adventure of the Empty House", the story in which Watson learns to his elation that Holmes is not actually dead, even though Arthur Conan Doyle had fully intended him to be. There's a brief passage I love so much I just have to share it.

"Because I recognized their sentinel when I glanced out of my window. He is a harmless enough fellow, Parker by name, a garroter by trade, and a remarkable performer upon the jew's-harp..."

That is just classic Holmes. Not only is the guy who strangles people for a living an afterthought, not only does Holmes describe him as "harmless", but to the extent he's acknowledged at all it's to compliment his musical talent. How can you not laugh?

Mark one

Please select the option that best corresponds with your response to the article about spontaneous human combustion.

1. It wasn't that hot.
2. It made me see red.
3. I'm burning to hear more.
4. It was okay.

Pesky

This cast recording is apparently on YouTube in its entirety. I'll be obligated to at least sample it someday soon. Wayne I know from Ellery Queen and Batman, the latter of them where he played a campy sixties Mad Hatter. Bracken I don't know much about but IMDb tells me he starred in a Tales from the Darkside I sort of remember. Carol Channing is Carol Channing obviously.

I'm not a big fan of roaches myself but I can definitely see a cat chilling with one rather than killing it. Especially if it had charm.

Cat and mouseski

While it isn't the main point of this blog post, I find it interesting that Ayn Rand disapproved of Rex Stout. To be clear, she was a fan of mystery fiction, and was full of praise for the detective novels of the left wing Dashiell Hammett. (Since Hammett had frustrated ambitions to write "serious" books that would make everyone forget Sam Spade, I'm not sure how much comfort he got from this.) But as Evans states, she thought of Stout as an un-American "Red." While I don't know whether Stout would have exactly welcomed her hatred, I doubt it bothered him a great deal.

It got me thinking about The Second Confession. That's the Nero Wolfe novel that probably reflects most its having been written during the Red Scare. It concerns a wealthy man―not an uncommon condition among Wolfe's clients―who wants Wolfe and Archie to prove that his daughter's boyfriend is a communist so that maybe she'll see the light and dump him. Stout is not to be underestimated. The premise sounds like it would date poorly, but he wrings some unexpected twists from it and winds up with a very satisfying yarn.

Not surprisingly, the Canadian-produced Wolfe show that aired on A&E never touched this one.

Strange attractor

As Germany prepares to ease off its lockdown it tickles me to think of the urban explorers around Berlin who now have the chance to take a jaunt to Spreepark PlanterWald, an amusement park that opened in 1969 and went out of business early in this century. Amusement parks tend to have sights that are odd objectively, but attendees just take them for granted as they have fun and/or try to remember where they parked. But seeing a huge model dinosaur with no head or a teacup ride with a thick coat of dust brings it home again.

Nearby Treptower Park houses the Archenhold Sternwarte observatory, which houses the world's longest 21m reflecting telescope. The author of the DRB article describes it as "look(ing) like a surreal gun pointed into the sky from the building."

Um, yeah. That's one thing you could say it looks like.

Jump and jive

While out walking today I saw birds on the ground. They were hopping, not flying, not apparently trying to fly. That's just how they got around on the ground. Not the first time I'd seen birds doing that, but I did start to wonder why some tended to hop while pigeons and ducks, to take two examples, walked to get around when they weren't in flight. The answer is elementary but interesting. It's apparently an adaptation caused by perching in trees, where walking isn't really a practical means of motion. Well, whatever works for them.

I got no strings

As the title of the video makes clear, these bunraku performances are from over 60 years ago. And the modern form goes back almost three centuries before that. That's...really something. These puppets can't really be described without using the phrase "eerily lifelike." Which makes it a little unnerving to see the head working without the body.

???

Today a friend asked me where I went to kindergarten, because he's the kind of person who'll ask that. I told him that I had a hard time remembering. I knew I went to a Waldorf school, but wasn't sure if that were for kindergarten, first grade, or some combination thereof. And really it seems kind of weird to me that I went at all. It seems like part of a different life story from mine. Although the four temperaments stuff is the kind of thing I eat up.

Quote of the day

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to accept."    Henri Bergson

I went through a Bergson reading phase a few years ago. It was fun. He's one of the great philosophers of the twentieth century, and certainly of its first half. It would have been nice for him if he had lived to see the end of German occupation in France.

Anyway, it's true. People seem incapable of seeing one thing when they're convinced they're going to see something else.

The return

I've gotten Saturday morning/early afternoon breakfast at the same place the past few weeks. The girl serving me at the window today is very responsible, very personable. It was the first time I'd seen her in a couple of weeks at least. The last time I saw her there was when there was an incident, one caused by overzealousness on one person's part, which is as far as I'll describe it now. So part of me was worried that she might have been made a sacrificial lamb. So it was a relief to find out that wasn't the case.

As a worry it seems small. We're not a huge part of each other's lives, necessarily. But lately the circle of people I feel I can trust has shrunken somewhat. I don't like to lose contact with those people.

Spinning straw

An Exquisite Task from beck underwood on Vimeo.

This is just a beautiful piece of work. The animator shot it in an old barn that was set to be torn down. The figures are just a hairless doll whose face can't move and a baby's arm (not holding an apple), but there's expression and feeling here. Also I love how the action is integrated with cameos from the animals that live in the barn. They could already move, I'm guessing.

Sounds

There are birds that chirp. There's a particular kind, not sure off the top of my head which, that sings and chirps in groups, starting at a certain time of night. Basically if you're up and you hear them, you know you've stayed up too long.

They're not at it yet. But they are a constant, no matter what else is going on. Well, so far at least. One of those things you depend on.

There aren't a lot of human sounds outside, what with the virtual curfew going on. Inside the building it's a different story. Apartment living, you get used to it.

Alighting

Piano Migrations at Lisboa Soa, 2019 from Kathy Hinde on Vimeo.

In which I continue to keep the weird coming for you folks.

Not sure what you'd call this. Prepared player piano? The sound coming from the piano box, whatever you want to call it, is too discordant and erratic for most of us to listen beyond a very short term of time. Still, as a project it's pretty interesting, and it looks fantastic.

Ahoy!

The next few weeks look to be a prime time for getting some combination of bored and anxious. Luckily there are still a few constants we can fall back on. Vintage Gahan Wilson is one of those good things in life.

The lesson here? I guess, if you get a chance to get out on the high seas, look for adventures rather than inconveniences.

Fairy dust

I have a book of English fairy tales. Aptly enough it's called English Fairy Tales. How I got it I'm not 100% sure, but it's never been new while I've owned it so it seems like book swap or library sale is the most likely route. The most notable thing about it is probably the illustrations by Arthur Rackham. These are very simple line drawings, not the detailed paintings he's best known for, but Rackham delivered regardless of the format.

I reread a few today, including this one. That final "and they lived happily ever after," traditional as it is, seems especially rich in this context. I'm pretty sure the girl would have some ongoing trust issues, at the very least.