Dear Psycho Who Lives Upstairs in Apartment 601, Please stop yelling at the woman you live with. You sound mentally ill, and it’s obviously not changing her mind anyway. Seriously, sometimes in the hall I hear your voice and without pause a straitjacket comes to mind. Please stop stomping around. It’s really, really annoying me. Please stop this habit of starting loud, nasty fights late at night. If you have to fight, do it in the daytime. Please stop being so damned psychotic. Get help. Surely you don’t think screaming, throwing things, and freaking out once a week, on Thursdays, …
Month: December 2005
Baritone Insanity
I’ve decided I simply must get all of the Hamiet Bluiett Baritone Nation albums. This page has some audio samples that finally convinced me that I need CDs in which the majority of the band is playing baritone saxes. (More samples of another Baritone Nation CD here.) This is some heavy stuff. I like it. I shall have to order these or something, since I doubt any music shop will have ’em just sitting on the shelf.
Y-Line Adam, Mitochondrial Eve?
For those who’ve read Greg Egan‘s marvellous short story “Mitochondrial Eve”, I’ve got an old news report for you! Check this out: it seems that studies apparently show a high level of correlation between patrilineal surnames and patrilineal Y-chromosomes, meaning that at least in Britain, marital infidelity resulting in illegitemate conceptions may have been far less common than previously believed, at least in the last millennium. And just as Y-chromosomes can be used within men, mitochondrial DNA can be used to check matrilineal genetic inheritance. They’re even thinking of starting a business for people who want to check out their …
Lunar New Year Reads, #38: The Tsar’s Last Armada: The Epic Voyage to the Battle of Tsushima, by Constantine Pleshakov
It is impossible to read this book without a sense of looming doom faced by all the Russians you’re reading about. The first bit of text visible on the cover of this book reads, HOW RUSSIA LOST THE PACIFIC TO THE JAPANESE, and from that line onward, you know that the people Pleshakov is writing about are going to fail. How sad it is to watch them set out on their journey in inadequate ships, following ridiculous commands, navigating a hostile political climate as threatening as the ocean itself — and sometimes moreso — and all the while, steaming Eastward …
Lunar New Year Readings, #37: The Twits, by Roald Dahl
I’m starting to feel a little silly including these short childrens’ books on my Lunar New Year readings list, but (a) I wanted to create a log of all the books I read in the Lunar Year from 2005-2006, and (b) I really do want to achieve my goal of reading 50 books in that time. Besides, if Ezra Pound’s A Draft of XXX Cantos counts as only one book, and if I am not going to count all the supporting texts I’ve read chunks of in my study of it, then the kids’ books are, to my mind, not …