Rachel Elizabeth Dillon

candicomics @ 12:00am: Candi - Dec 28, 2009

http://candicomics.com/d/20091228.html

Candi comic for Monday, December 28, 2009

bluedaisy @ 2:03pm: Twittering Away, Today!

• 00:27 Watched Castle with my husband, dad & grandma after touring Christmas lights. Getting to just hang out with family is nice. #
• 23:43 Now in Aloft Airport/Aurora. Room is mirror image of what we had in Aloft Broomfield. V. strange! Tomorrow: Yellowstone! #

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neried7 @ 1:00am: Twitter Feed

• 01:43 @jimgaffigan what about 'hilarious fucker'? #

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emperorkefka @ 11:30pm: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche

The Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in Berlin. It was bombed during WWII and left as a memorial.

jonquil @ 7:36pm: My husband just made the Best Dessert Ever
 He was making crab rolls for supper (mm) and decided to make dessert, too.

1.  Take ripe banana.  Quarter.
2. Lay a quarter-banana  on spring roll skin.
3. Sprinkle with brown sugar.  
4. Roll up.  Repeat.
5. Fry as for spring rolls.

Mmmmmm.

This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/912809.html. comment(s) on that entry.

baxil @ 6:46pm: "Sherlock Holmes" in 30 seconds
Robert Downey Jr.: Hey Watson, check me out. I'm House!
Jude Law: No you're not.
Robert Downey Jr.: I totally am. I'm an irascible slovenly guy that mistreats his closest friends, and the traditional professionals in my field grudgingly respect me due to my sheer brilliance. I even look kinda like him.
Jude Law: Hugh Laurie is House. You're Sherlock Holmes.
Robert Downey Jr.: Okay okay okay. Fine. I'll find another shtick.
Jude Law: You don't need a shtick. You're Sherlock Holmes.
Robert Downey Jr.: Wait, I've got it. Watson, check me out. I'm Batman!
Jude Law: *sigh*
Robert Downey Jr.: Master of disguise! Best bare-knuckled fighter in the world! Singlehandedly defeating crazy occult supervillains with my superpowers of kicking ass! And being smart.
Jude Law: Christian Bale is Batman. You're Iron Man -- I mean, Sherlock Holmes.
Robert Downey Jr.: No, I'm serious, I'm totally the mutherf--king Batman.
Jude Law: This movie is set in Victorian England. You are not the Batman.
Robert Downey Jr.: Three words. "Gotham By Gaslight."
Jude Law: *sigh* Just play your role already, Holmes.
Robert Downey Jr.: I am!
Jude Law: Your Sherlock Holmes role. You are Sherlock Holmes.
Robert Downey Jr.: *mumble* You should talk, Mr. Taller-And-Skinnier-Than-Me. "Oh, look at me, I'm Dr. Watson, I have perfect vision and I never got shot in Afghanistan --"
Jude Law: What's that? I didn't quite hear you over the sound of the giant explosions.
Robert Downey Jr.: Oh, nothing, nothing.

... So, yeah, meh. kadyg liked it -- or at least wants to see it again from not in the very front corner of the theater. Me? Something about the way that they cherrypicked the source material and booted everything that they didn't like just hit me like a slap in the face. (All set to the strains of annoying plinky plunky music that sounded like it wanted to be ragtime.)

It was an action movie. You can't turn Sherlock Holmes into an action movie!

Or, well, maybe you can. Rotten Tomatoes is currently giving it a 69%, so the public seems to think the film's getting more right than wrong. Personally, let's call it a C-; I want to call it a D+ but I think part of that opinion is due to poor theater placement.

rushthatspeaks @ 9:30pm: recent books + movie
( Fiona MacCarthy, Kit Whitfield, some manga, Sherlock Holmes )

time_shark @ 8:40pm: things I've seen
Yesterday Anita and I saw a movie that most everyone will see: the new Sherlock Holmes, starring current cinema darling Robert Downey Jr., who doesn't seem to have lost even a bit of the momentum he picked up after the first Iron Man movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Essentially, it's a modern whimsical action-advanture, a kindred spirit to the early Indiana Jones movies, or the first of the Antonio Banderas "Zorro" films (neither the second in that series, nor the most recent Jones installment, being worth much discussion).

The new Holmes incarnation as envisioned by Downey and director Guy Ritchie certainly stays faithful to the spirit of Conan Doyle's creation if not the exact letter (although there are references galore that will delight fans, and Holmes does utter some of his most famous bits of dialogue as things roll along) — and the plot he foils (um, is that really a spoiler?), involving a lot of cult rituals and demonic mumbo jumbo, isn't really out of place either, given the popular obsessions of the era, not to mention Conan Doyle himself. (Isn't it fascinating that such an icon of logic emerged from the pen of such a devoted mystic?) I see this film as a direct descendant of those old classic-yet-silly serials of yore, and as such it's a ton of fun.

Now, today Anita and I saw a movie that most people won't see: the adaption of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. In case there's really someone out there who doesn't know, it's about a father and son traveling through a world where an unexplained apocalypse, perhaps a nuclear war, has wiped out all life except for a few people, some of whom have resorted to cannibalism to survive.

I'll confess that I went in feeling The Road already had two strong points in its favor. First, the selection of director John Hillcoat, whose previous film, The Proposition (which I want to call a "Western," though that's a tad misleading as it's set in the Outback) was so beautifully bleak and brutal that even Sam Peckinpah might have felt a little inadequate after a viewing. Second, the casting of Viggo Mortensen as the father. It's not his role as Aragorn that made me so delighted to learn he had the part, but his acting in the David Cronenberg films A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. See those, and you know you have a guy who can do "tortured soul in dire circumstances" with resonance.

And so, how is The Road? Well, it is the book, though the extremes of violence are actually kept largely off screen, which may not be a terrible thing, as what's seen is bad enough. It is powerful and deeply depressing and yet heartwarming in the way man and boy struggle not just to survive but to keep their dignity and compassion in the worst of all possible circumstances. My only complaint, really, is the same I have with the book, in that an ending arrives rather suddenly that seems jarringly sweet and hopeful (by comparison, considering all that has gone before.) Were I Cormac McCarthy's editor, I'd have made him change it to make it more ambiguous (I can imagine several Clockwork Phoenix contributors nodding in rueful recognition upon reading that.)

I do feel a need to add that not only does Kodi Smit-McPhee, cast as the son, also do an excellent job, but his remarkable resemblance to his fictional mother (Charlize Theron, seen only in flashbacks) — which is emphasized in the film, as the boy is almost always seen wearing the toboggan that once belonged to her — helps make the father-son illusion even more convincing.

derekmcwilliams, posting in davis_square @ 6:26pm: Can I borrow someones woodshop for a few hours?
I'd like to make a wooden ring for my girlfriend out of ebony - I have a broken upright bass with a nice ebony fingerboard that's otherwise useless.  So, I'm wondering if someone would allow me use of their woodshop (basic tools and perhaps a wood lather) for a few hours so I can make this ring..

I'm reasonably competent in a woodshop - I wouldn't need much supervision...

Willing to pay for the time used...

Thanks!
Derek 

ff00ff @ 3:20pm: Clearly I am a genius/guru waiting to happen
Had you followed my investment advice circa February you would now be ~33% richer. I am. Yes +33% of broke is still broke.

nineweaving @ 5:01pm: ...a coat of sparks and starry galligaskins....
Now why in heaven's name did I not do this long ago?





Nine

secretlyironic, posting in davis_square @ 4:48pm: Trash-day curb Alert: TV stand, moving boxes, kitchen trash can
On the curb in front of 24 Washburn Ave in Cambridge, just down from Teele:

* A bunch of moving boxes. Already broken down. Not rain-damaged.

* Crate & Barrel TV stand. Wheels, two shelves plus a top that will hold about a 30" tube TV or a larger flat-screen. Light weight but sturdy. Lift it from the bottom, though. The shelves stay in place fine if you're pushing it around, but if you lift them up they'll come right off.

* Perfectly adequate, totally clean, white plastic 13 gallon kitchen trash can with swinging lid.
Doesn't fit in my kitchen.

* Perfectly adequate, totally clean, totally boring white bathroom size 3-gallon trashcan.

jonquil @ 12:02pm: Oh, Hell, here we go again.
 Another reputedly-Nigerian man has been taken forcibly off another Northwest Airlines Amsterdam-Detroit plane.  Breaking news, things may be exaggerated or incorrect (remember that the first stories about the Christmas Day mess were "some idiot set off firecrackers on a plane".   Whether it's completely true or not doesn't really matter, as far as consequences go.

The people who are enforcing American air-travel restrictions are petty tyrants who abuse their authority.   The authority to which they report has an enormous database of  "dangerous people" which, like the Hotel California,: once you get in, you can never, ever leave.   Those people will use these genuine threats to tighten their grip over the American people.  "What, don't like it?  Feel free not to fly."  The front-page story from the Times says "The government was vague about the steps it was taking, saying that it wanted the security experience to be 'unpredictable' and that passengers would not find the same measures at every airport -- a prospect that may upset airlines and travelers alike."   In other words, in the name of our safety, we won't be told what is normal regulations; we can never protest a TSA employee abusing his authority, because we'll never know what that authority precisely is.   The scattering X-ray machines that display your naked body will also, I suspect, speed through the regulatory process and become mandatory at all airlines.

I don't feel any safer.    

Postscript, boosted from amadi in the comments: It's now confirmed that the man is simply a businessman who was having digestive problems and didn't feel that he could leave the lavatory. He became distressed when people banged on the door and then, it appears that the door was forced open which caused him to really become distressed.

This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/912483.html. comment(s) on that entry.

ocschwar @ 3:23pm: Awwww, yeah. Azadi Iran!

zymurgist70, posting in davis_square @ 2:57pm: Wanted: band to play The Steve Katsos Show, 12/29
I know it's seriously short notice, but the Steve Katsos Show, a talk/variety show taped in Arlington, MA and broadcast throughout New England (including Somerville Community Access Television), is looking for a musical act to play on Tuesday night, 12/29.

We had a musical act cancel on us last minute, so if you could perform for us, please respond to this message and I will provide more details.

The only requirement is that the act has an album to promote (CD, iTunes, CD Baby, etc.), or has shows in the area.

Check out clips here: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSteveKatsosShow

Appreciate any assistance here.

Thanks,
JM

ocschwar @ 2:53pm:

When they can smash up your paddy wagons and pull out the prisoners, you're pretty much toast.

jonquil @ 11:22am: Loot!
For Christmas my husband bought me the much-coveted Ecole Lesage Chez Vous, and he bought it directly from Lesage, which means it came with an extended back cover containing packets of beads, sequins, and paillettes. (I now know the difference between seeds and paillettes!) It's a book of embroidery projects, all executed (of course) by the geniuses at Lesage, which means my copies would be dreadful. It's okay; this is a book about technique, like the French Laundry Cookbook, and it's a pleasure to know how the trick is done.

A couple of years back I signed up for a course on tambour beading, which I had to cancel at the last minute because of migraine. (No, six hours of fine handwork is not a good idea under the circs.) I need to keep my eye out for another opportunity. Meanwhile, I am picking my way through in my limited and non-technical French. I was tickled to discover that scattering sequins, as opposed to sewing them on in a straight line, is called "à la puce" (flea-style).
This entry was originally posted at http://jonquil.dreamwidth.org/912235.html. comment(s) on that entry.

foleyartist1 @ 12:40pm: Nor thorns infest the ground
It was an odd way of Christmas.

I wasted one of my quite scant vacation days in a damnably expensive and prolonged stay at O'Hare before finally giving up all hope of reaching Fargo (from whence home) and of seeing my checked bag again in the near future, returning to Dallas in defeat after a long series of phone calls to all relations discussing the various permutations of what could happen, including the possibility of spending the night with a cousin of my father's whom I have not spoken to or heard from in years, but was heartwarmingly willing to answer the call should such be required.

Persephone picked me up at the airport upon my emphatically not triumphant return and we bickered charmingly as people do who have arisen at 6:00am only to get home past midnight with nothing to show for their efforts.

And then her family took me in and fed me many Cuban things and some Middle-Eastern things and a hamburger from Whole Foods and we drank various Christmas drinks and I found them two CDs of carols which they had forgotten they owned and I was not alone. It was not my family, not my tradition, not my food, not my relatives I only see once a year, not my fire in the hearth, and not my mother waking me up at odd hours blasting holiday music she maintains I cannot possibly hear from my bedroom. We did not sing Christmas carols and no one read from the books of Matthew or Luke. I did not play 'O Lord I Pray to Thee' on the flute for my father's country church and there was no lighted tree with a tiny hidden bird's nest in it and all the ornaments compulsively arranged by my mother (who used to make a production out of letting my siblings and I decorate the tree, and then get up in the night after we went to sleep and methodically rearrange every single ornament we'd hung to better suit her liking). But, there were strikingly good beans and plenty of other food and a hastily-procured stocking filled with what appeared to be the contents of someone's desk drawer. I talked to most of my relatives by cell phone--miraculous if irritating invention. I secured a promise from my grandmother Lindholm to make me the plum pudding with butter sauce that I remember from early childhood if only I can magically produce more vacation days and get to Minnesota sometime this year. It probably won't happen, but it's something nice to think about. And Persephone kindly made me Swedish rice pudding at the end so that I could have something that was my Christmas after all.

And in the end, even in Dallas it was a white Christmas this year, wonder of wonders: we even skidded the car on a patch of ice on the way home and will have to take Persephone's car in to be looked at, as we threw it out of alignment going up over the curb in a very artistic fishtail. (She insists, against my better judgment, on driving it around in the meantime anyway.)

In short, it wasn't family, and it wasn't the Christmas I planned or wanted, but it was a Christmas, and there were elements I recognized, and people took me in and were kind to me, and as an adult perhaps you realize that if you are not alone, if you have people who take you in and are kind to you, you are really probably not doing so badly after all.

fjm @ 6:13pm: Book blog: 103
Ehrlich, E. (1997). Miriam's Kitchen. New York, Penguin.

I can't recommend this book. I can't recommend this book because it is too delicate. It is too coercive. it is too emotional.

I loved this book.

There are two aspects to the book: in one, Elizabeth Ehrlich listens to her mother-in-law talk of life in Poland, of being a survivor, of being a young mother in Israel and an immigrant to the United States, and begins to learn from her how to cook the families' traditional dishes. In the other, Ehrlich herself begins and makes the move back to kashrut, to keeping a kosher home. It also contains recipes which work (I've tried a few).

For those here who don't know me very well, I am a lapsed Orthodox Jew, whose parents were completely non-observant, but whose grandparents were conventional Orthodox. I was sent to a Jewish elementary school but to a "secular" state secondary school where I was the only Jew. I regard myself as lapsed but believing, where my parents would both call themselves lapsed but non-believing. For the past five years I have felt guilty about not keeping a kosher home, but I married out. I made my choice and I'm not about to make someone else's life a misery (although it has occured to me that being lactose intolerant would make a full dairy kitchen irrelevant). Combined with my interest in oral history, I was utterly ripe for this book, I am completely its audience.

Much of this book is written as an elegy for a lost place and time, but also for a future set of choices, what will be preserved, what will be lost, what will be actively discarded. Ehrlich is writing both a memoir and a cultural history in which she takes in the radical politics of her parents, and weight of responsibility, in which she works out the cultural space in which her own choices were received by others.

Miriam and many of her friends were holocaust survivors. There are many ways in which this becomes linked with the food culture. I'm going to quote you just one paragraph which both indicates the power of this book, and why I am so reluctant to actually recommend it. This is not a book for everyone although I think I will be returning to it over and over again.

"It was Uncle Fred who at last described this crowd's aversion to the buffet meal. "I was in a concentration camp for five years," he said. "I don't stand in line for food." I blanched and cringed: my wedding. No one had told me, and I never understood for ten long years what was the matter, quite, what...."

fjm @ 5:40pm: Public Information Broadcast
A friend has just mentioned how often he poops. Several other people chimed in to talk about their own habits. I was taken aback by what people were taking for granted.

I do not mean to be alarmist, but one of the things that so delayed my own diagnosis of celiac was not knowing what was normal. Surely everyone went to the loo about half an hour after breakfast and stayed there awhile? Surely everyone felt bloated and uncomfortable after lunch? Surely everyone had a bowel movement four or five times a day? Surely everyone "had to run"? There are more serious conditions than celiac which cause bowel problems but what they all have in common is that the symptoms are too embarrassing to talk about.


1. Normal bowel movements are in the range of 3 times a day to 3 times a week. It varies but that's sort of ok.

2. It shouldn't hurt.

3. It shouldn't be catching you unawares.

4. You shouldn't feel bloated after eating and have regular constipation/the runs (I can't spell the correct word, sorry).

If you have issues with any of the above, see the doctor. If the doctor tells you that you have irritable bowel syndrome without running any tests explain very, very patiently, that this is a description and not a diagnosis.

Of the possible causes, celiac is now considered so common that if you have any of the symptoms (easy enough to look up) I recommend that you have the blood tests. If you are an Ashkenazi Jew, Italian, Irish or Scandinavian in origin, I raise the recommendation. Also if anyone in the family has aspergers or autism as there seems to be a link but it's not understood what it is or if it really exists.

scwizard @ 11:55am: Hmm
Someone in #Python told me:
[10:00] if your code is so complex it needs comments, it doesn't need ocmments, it most likely needs rewriting

That was the point I stopped trusting what they were saying.

tibbetts_blog @ 2:44am: Advice to Those Giving Birth at Mount Auburn Hospital

http://innocuous.org/articles/2009/12/21/advice-to-those-giving-birth-at-mount-auburn-hospital/

I started this post shortly after bringing my first child, Patrick Tibbetts, home from Mount Auburn Hospital. Now he is nearly eight months old, and I am finally getting around to posting it. In the interim, I have shared this advice verbally with several friends. I’ll keep it short, just three pieces of advice that I wish we had known.

For those of you that don’t know, Mount Auburn Hospital is in Cambridge, near Harvard, and is the preferred full-service birth hospital in the Cambridge/Arlington/Somerville/Belmont area. Their Bain Birthing Center is very progressive for a hospital-based center. Unfortunately it is a bit dated, which comes from having adopted many of the now-trendy features of birthing centers (big labor and delivery rooms, wood floors, real furniture, bathtubs, etc) early.

1. For birth partners (e.g. me) my first recommendation is to wear the most comfortable shoes you own, with good socks, and bring extra socks. This applies no matter where you are giving birth. The process can take a long time, and you are going to be standing or squatting or walking around with your wife the whole time. Everyone will be helping her to find comfortable positions for her and the baby. Your comfort will be somewhat less than an afterthought. Changing your socks is a good way to make yourself feel better after you’ve been on your feet for 10 hours.
2. Order food early and often. The kitchen at Mount Auburn is great. And meals for not only the mother but also her partner are included with the room. The food is great and they are very flexible about when you order things. The only problem is that the kitchen is only open 7am to 6:30pm. You will be on some night-shifted schedule and the kitchen will close before you know it. The best way to deal is to order more food than you will likely require and hang onto it until you are hungry. This also means that if you transfer to the postpartum ward after 6:30pm you will be unable to get real food until the next morning (there are some limited snacks in the postpartum kitchen). So I also recommend that you program a local food delivery place into your phone ahead of time.
3. Bring an eye mask. As previously noted, you will be really tired and on some crazy not-sleep schedule when you transfer to the postpartum ward. Unlike labor and delivery, at Mount Auburn these rooms do not have blackout curtains. If you want to sleep during the day, a good sleep mask is a must.

Obviously the comfortable shoes advice applies regardless of where you are giving birth. The other two issues are more peculiar to Mount Auburn, and really related to limitations of their facilities. If anyone from Mount Auburn is reading, I would recommend that you look into installing blackout curtains in the postpartum ward, and that you consider having a volunteer prepare a book of takeout menus to make available when people transfer after the kitchen has closed. Keeping the kitchen open 24-hours would be ideal, but I can see how that might be prohibitive.

These are of course all minor inconveniences. I cannot recommend Mount Auburn enough. Dr. Beth Hardiman is amazing, as is Arianna Stein, the midwife she works with. I also recommend our doula, Cynthia Maloney. Everyone was very helpful, and the whole process went as smoothly as I could have hoped.

halfelf @ 10:08am: Yep, that was Christmas alright
So, it's over again for another year. Another Christmas full of sadness, upset people, anger all around, frustration, and general displeasure. If I have my way, I don't really even want to do Christmas at all next year, but I'll suffer through as best I can. Hopefully it will be better next year.

The holiday wasn't completely black. I did get a couple of cool things, like Professor Layton and the Curious Village, the Metroid Prime trilogy for Wii, and some assorted gift cards and stuff. I had a good time with my in-laws, at least, the immediate ones. The fact that both sides of my family got me the same exact things? And got upset when I had to take some of it back? Yeah, could have skipped that.

But, onwards. New year's ahead, and we'll have a party, and that will be awesome.

fjm @ 11:07am: Book blog: 102
Mantel, H. (2009). Wolf Hall. London, Fourth Estate.
I've been trying to read this for a month now, held back by the sheer weight of the book. I think I can say confidently that from now on, if the book isn't academic, sf or fantasy, and is over 500 pages in hardback, I'll be looking for an electronic version because this book is fabulous and compelling. It was only its weight that interrupted me because it made me very reluctant to haul it around London.

So, the book. A super historical novel that seeks to reinterpret Cromwell's role in Tudor England and most definitely has the knife in for More. Most interesting to me though was that I had never quite realised just how desperately Herny VIII needed a son. The version I learned in school somehow made it seem a private vanity. I don't think was deliberate, just that the version lacked context. I hadn't registered that had Henry died without a male heir, with primogeniture not quite fixed as it later became and people very suspicious of female heirs, there were quite a few other possibles, none of whom had claims quite strong enough to obviously outweigh the others, but all of whom had claims reasonable enough to give them reason to fight. The chances of a civil war in the absence of a male heir really were quite strong. In contrast, by the time we get to the end of Elizabeth I's reign, the competing claimants have mostly disappeared and the choice narrowed.

The other thing that struck me about the book is how much it is structured in the same way as much horror. There is a constant sense of latency. We are always waiting for something terrible to happen, yet when it does, it is never terrible enough, and we sit back to wait for the Really Terrible Thing. And as in horror, the horror comes closer and closer to us/the protagonist, in _Wolf Hall_ as Cromwell and Henry draw closer together we wonder who is creeping up on whom.



I have a few books I started that I want to finish before the end of the year, so a bit of crazed reading going on here. I'd like a clean slate on Jan 1st with which to begin my New Year reading.

mizufae @ 2:02am: From Twitter 12-26-2009

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