Shirley L retired after 50 years at the Library, and they had a big blow-out party  in the Mumford Room, with the Director and Deputy Director, her boss (which is the same as my boss), a cake decorated with a cherry blossom motif, and a bunch of people who knew her from current work or from way back in the day ( Read more... )

As a self-rebuttal, or at least refinement, to yesterday's dour reflection on Perky Life Advice, I will refer to the 1/9/2017 New York Times article-ette, Stop and Acknowledge How Much Luck Has had to Do with Your Success.

It reads: I have a lucky friend. Chances are you know him. He has written several New York Times best sellers. By any outward ( Read more... )

Know out why old people talk like that, in one-sentence aphorisms, "There's more fish in the sea," or "In a hundred years, who'll know?" As you get decades of adult experience behind you, you begin to see very large patterns, to get the feel of the statistical likelihood of certain kinds of events, from the simple weight of several hundred thousand ( Read more... )

Let's be clear, in case I left a false impression with anyone ( Read more... )

You might recall my horrifaction about Peter Watt's TMI entry in his Rifter's Newscrawl (As an obit for his beloved father, the Rev Watts, a Baptist church adminstrator, he outs him as a life-long homosexual, as well as the part where his mother was not happy with this. Sweet Jesus, what a purgative gush of private info.) And how I had realized ( Read more... )

I just figured it out last week, but I have been trying not to say it aloud for fear the words make it magically true. It is true, though. Peter Watts, that Canadian science fiction writer whose work I so enjoyed? He's one angry asshole. Online, it's one of his primary modes of being. I had seen commenters to his blog call him one, but I dismissed ( Read more... )

Okay, so you know my theory, or someones theory that Funniness is about what makes you nervous, worried, surprised, particularly surprised in that you recognize something in another form in the humor ( Read more... )

Courtesy of explodingbat, and not being sure how to embed videos from YouTube, I'll refer you to Spock's love of the word fascinating.

In praise of the concept of Spock, I have to repeat what I said on explodingbat's lj: Spock was great because he modeled keeping a cool head in tense situations, but even more subtlely, he made it okay to extract yourself from a scary ( Read more... )

Pardon me while I work this out outloud. Sorry if you have heard this before from me: I am still working on it ( Read more... )

Since we had a recent centi-thread here about religion, I have to comment on Chris Hitchens talking about how religion is poisonous for children ( Read more... )