Okay, slightly drunk, and went on Facebook (which I know I shouldn’t do when I've been drinking). Saw a post by a fella recounting the story of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and repeating the tired old motif that “man shouldn't tamper in God’s domain.” I hate that sort of message, and although I had some whiskey in me I really like what I wrote in ( Read more... )

I didn’t expect to write anything about this. Frankly I was surprised, not by the media coverage, but by all the status updates my friends posted on Facebook about it. Did Steve Jobs really mean so much to everyone ( Read more... )

The new vid! This one is based on an old post here, but I’ll include the script because 1) that post is four or five years old, and 2) I’ve made a few changes to it, so that it reads better. It’s a little bit silly & fun, just following my train of thought on a cigarette break.

Click to view

Hello, brothers and sisters. I am OgreVI, and I’ve just stepped ( Read more... )

Just got in from my nightly walk. Halloween isn’t the best possible night for walking around. It’s a bit crowded, especially if you go as early as I did. There are lots of little people in strange clothes underfoot, and some of the pretty redheaded girls you see aren’t actually pretty redheaded girls ( Read more... )

A couple of years ago Mama bought me a book for Bogey Day. It was a new novel featuring Sherlock Holmes, written by someone who isn’t Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It wasn’t bad, but some liberties were taken with the character. The largest was actually the central motivator of the plot: Holmes had had an affair with a woman who featured in one of ( Read more... )

In 1937 a German publisher was interested in producing a German translation of Tolkien’s classic The Hobbit for publication in that country. Of course, at the time, the Nazis were in power there, and the publication of anything written by Jews was prohibited. The Nazis were not sure what to make of Tolkien’s name, so this publisher wrote him a ( Read more... )

Many errands today, all on foot. Walked to Lowe’s for nails to hang my one real on-canvas-and-everything painting, then to Kroger for sugar and cat food, and brought those things home. Then walked to Autozone for transmission fluid and stopped again at Kroger on the way back for two bottles of Strawberry Hill (now priced at an outrageous $3.79 ( Read more... )

I just had my first real walk since January 24th. It is 65 and sunny today, far too beautiful to waste time driving, and I had to go to the library to get a new library card, so I hoofed it. The library is on Franklin and covers the whole block between First and Second Streets. For Huntingtonians, that distance is roughly equivalent to walking ( Read more... )

So it’s 2010, and I have to go back, after ten years, to using two numbers for the year when I date things. I find that disappointing. As far as I know I’m the only person who actually did write dates as, for example, 12/31/9 as opposed to 12/31/09, so I don’t suppose anybody else cares, but I’ll miss it ( Read more... )

So the power’s out at 704. Also, it’s out at 702, next door. Everybody else on the block has power. It’s only the two of us who’ve gone dark. And cold, of course, because this happened just as the coldest day of the year was coming along, and we have electric heat ( Read more... )