The Flatland Chronicles

It's Time for Another Random Link O' the Day!: The Virtual Drumkit

Maybe you've seen this before.  If not, you'll thank me.  Didn't you secretly always want to play the drums?  Doesn't everyone secretly want to be a drummer?   

I always did, but---this was back in the Seventies---my father found drumming unfeminine, so it was my younger brother (who really just wanted to play guitar) who got the drum kit.  ::Sigh::   As was later made clear to me, I have a poor sense of rhythm and little coordination in any case. 

But---particularly after growing up to learn the ritual , mystical, and therapeutic value of drumming in certain cultures---I still have a secret longing to play the drums.  Nowadays, it's my quiet husband and my fellow multiple-housing dwellers who oppose it....

So I'm grateful for this site, which appeases my yearnings to some extent, while simultaneously affirming my lack of talent. 

Blogcombing Zenmomma's Garden: "Art-O-Gasmic"

Zenmomma has a fantastic photo essay posted at Zenmomma's Garden entitled "Art-O-Mat = Art-O-Gasmic," written by guest author Jon. 

I have tried for the last five minutes to explain exactly what the essay is about, but it's a bit like trying to explain art; to experience it, you've got to see it.  Say this:  the family received as a gift a box containing a number of small but delightful works of art.  The photo-essay is essentially the story of the gift box and the opening of the gift box. 

The photographs are gorgeous (as is the writing).  Also it made me laugh out loud.

Well, except for this bit: Elizabeth King painted a Floridian palm tree and titled it Got Paradise? This piece is a kind of like a Missing Person Poster because Florida lost their paradise a long time ago."  : (   You all know that's not true, right?  I can prove it to you.   I'd refer Jon here.  You just have to look in the right direction.  There are 67 counties in Florida, Jon, and Florida includes not only the theme parks county (Orange) and related sprawl, along with a few overbuilt areas on the East Coast, but the nature coast on the west and the beautiful Panhandle. It's a big, big state.  And Miami has the problems of any urban area.  But everywhere you look anywhere else you can find paradise. 

Okay, just wanted to put that into the record!  Read "Art-O-Mat = Art-O-Gasmic." You'll love it.  I even liked the little orange block with a tree-like image painted on it. 

Update

I don't seem to have got the hang yet of posting daily material about my personal life.  It's not just reticence; it's that I live---and prefer---a very quiet sort of life.  I dislike being away from home.  I don't really get out that much or feel any desire to get out much and yet there really are not enough hours in the day for me to do everything I want to get done.  You could say I have a "rich inner life," I suppose, but that makes me sound exactly like Ignatius J. Reilly A Confederacy of Dunces (one of my all-time favorite books) except who wants to be Ignatius?

But I do have one bit of news to record and it's heavily qualified good news that my father-in-law (not even yet out of the woods) is progressing much better than the doctors ever dreamed, and thank God I didn't know how little they expected him to survive his three surgeries (!) at all.  He's now in the horrific post-surgical convalescent stage where one suddenly becomes aware of having been grossly invaded and traumatized, but though he's weak and furious at the many indignities imposed on him (good sign, that), he's hanging tough.

We really didn't know, because my mother-in-law didn't tell us, how bad the situation was.  She wants us to visit this spring, but when my father-in-law is more himself and more able to enjoy company than he is now, so we're in the process of planning a trip (end of February or early March). 

"Leave Spongebob Alone!"

Okay, I shook my head along with everyone else over this rather sweet young man's "Leave Britney Alone!"  Not that he isn't right; it was the lack of proportion, perspective, etc. that everyone else saw reflected.  I think she needs help too.  But then, so did (and so do) the monks of Burma.  For the monks, this might have been a proportionate response.  Or for the entire population of some third world countries.

But this----this is TRULY affecting.

And before you shake your head in judgment, please watch this first:

Blogcombing: A Passage to India? Photo Essay by Smiler

You all know how I love photo essays, right? 

Here's an amazing photo-essay about India put together by Smiler from the photographs of  Claude Renault.  I won't say any more than that.  See for yourself.....

Blogcombing: "Central Sanity"

EX-cellent. At the centrist political blog Central Sanity, one of my first political blogs, Bridget Magnus has posted a list of Headlines for the New Year.  Here's a taste:

Headline I least expect to see in 2008: Both parties realize election cycle too long; primary season designated as the April before a November election; campaigning prior to New Years Day prohibited.

Being sick to death of all the candidates---especially the ones I actually like---I can only nod and shed a tiny tear.   These gravely over-exposed people will deserve it when the whole country, in a massive revulsion over having seen and heard them too much for too long already, decides as one to write in someone no one expects, such as Unity spokesman Sam Waterston (hey, why not Sam Waterston? He's a better actor than Fred Thompson and plays a prosecutor who's tough but fair in Law and Order). 

Read more headlines.....

Pictures from the Earth: Fan Boy

The subject of this photograph is a "fan boy"  in the most literal sense of the word----i.e., he's a boy with a fan.  In Japan.  The photographer, Kamoda/Nathan Duckworth, has a blog that I highly recommend to anyone in need of visual inspiration.  I intend to blog-roll it as soon as I'm done with this:  "Daily Photos of Everyday Japan." 

This---one of my favorite Flickr Creative Commons photos ever---is one you won't want to miss:

"Good-by, Old Year, You Oaf"--Nine Resolutions I resolve NOT to Make

Ogden Nash, whose poems were cherished by me as an adolescent (when they were already comparatively aged) wrote:

Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?

• "Good-by, Old Year, You Oaf or Why Don't They Pay the Bonus?" in The Primrose Path (1935)My parents had a complete set of books by Nash---already quite old by my time--- and I used to read them and laugh and laugh.  I wish I could find it reprinted somewhere on the internet, but I cannot.  (Screw the law of copyright----if people could read Nash's poems and see how funny and weird they were, the poems would have a whole new lease on life. As it is, people are likely to forget all about them.)   

Of course, he was writing in a period when the times were really bad, not to be compared to now, no matter how we may argue that we live in the worst of all possible worlds.  Still, this quote expresses what I essentially feel and the reason why I need champagne to see me through the New Year if I am to attain---as I did---a semblance of celebratory joy. 

But I am done making resolutions.  And here is a list of all the resolutions I am not going to make.

Pictures from the Earth: Champagne!

Happy New Year!  What with sickness in the family, exhaustion from the stress of it, and the imminent return to work, we decided to have a quiet New Year's at home.  But with champagne!  And at least the worst I can expect tomorrow is to wake up with a slight headache.

I worked hard finding these five photographs.  Most champagne photos are of wedding toasts or champagne fountains.  Many were stiff or pretentious or cliche.  I wanted pictures that really conveyed: CHAMPAGNE!

"Yellow Ledbetter" by Pearl Jam: Another One of Those Songs

I love Pearl Jam.  But it is a weird love that involves a complete inability to listen to most of their music without weeping, so I don't listen to them unless I'm prepared and fortified or else am free to cry.  I love Pearl Jam.  But it is a weird love that involves a complete inability to listen to most of their music without weeping, so I don't listen to them unless I'm prepared and fortified or else am free to cry.  And if you knew me, this would surprise you.  I'm not the sentimental type except secretly, in the same way as everyone else who takes a detached, ironic view of life. 

It's partly because Eddie Vedder has that sort of voice and the songs are those sorts of songs.  The lyrics to the songs Eddie Vedder writes are deep or at least give that impression (like poetry by Dylan Thomas, say). There's also that aspect of Vedder's singing that involves sometimes seriously mangling the lyrics, no doubt intentionally---which would matter more if I understood the lyrics.  There again, maybe I don't want to understand them.  Their meaning for me is---and remains---private.