Long Beach produced both me and also gangsta rap, so that should tell you generally what kind of place we're talking about here.  It is, however, also a very interesting place if you are a fan of architecture, which I kind of am.  So I thought I'd share some of my photos from a pleasant day of wandering thereabout.  Long Beach was nearly taken out ( Read more... )

“But I don’t want comfort. I want poetry. I want danger. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin.”

-
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

You can't have assured comfort and freedom.  The two cannot exist together.  So, what do you want?

My annual pass to the Huntington Library and Gardens has quickly become one of the best investments I've ever made.  It's just a real joy to spend the day among beautiful objects, man-made and natural.  It's a good distance from my house, but I find that I'm so eager to get there when I'm heading out, and so relaxed and happy on the way home that I ( Read more... )

...for Halloween and all.

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No particular reason for the absence.  I'm just a lousy correspondent when there's actual work going on.  

...for puking one's guts out, I think I'd choose, "Calling Ralph on the big white phone."  I will say no more on the subject.  Anything else would be TMI, trust me.


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Now that the Freeh report has come out, one might have expected that the Paterno/PSU cultists might have been cowed by shame into a welcome silence.  And yet the newspapers are full of headlines about "JoePa's" precious legacy being tarnished.  My response to that is, who cares? His legacy was managing a lot of overgrown adolescents in the play of ( Read more... )

...from C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will ( Read more... )

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Told you. 

I used to drive an beat-up 1971 VW squareback.  I drove it for about 15 years or so, until I got rid of it around 1998 or 99.  Great, reliable, cheap to maintain car.  I loved it very much.


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1. Upon approaching the clubhouse entrance, I was once again delighted by the mega-art deco facade of the old place, and paused to take my one millionth Santa Anita photo, when a man walking by said, "What are you taking a picture of? ME?" I pointed out the obvious fact that I was taking a picture of the building, and he pointed to the sky and said ( Read more... )