Coffee Klatch

There’s a book that my high school German teacher read to us (or allowed us to read) that I recently decided to try to find. It’s 80 years old and pretty hard to find, but I got a first edition for a great price at AbeBooks. It’s called Gemixte Pickles, by K.M.S. (yes, that’s all the name we have, but by further searching in library databases I found out it stands for Kurt M. Stein).

It’s a very funny book of poetry in a sort of Anglicized German (or maybe Germanicized English). For anyone who has studied German, it’s pretty funny and very creative, but it takes a little getting used to. After you’ve read some of the poems, you get the feel for it and it gets easier. Here’s a sample of one of the poems:

Der Arme Fido

Der Fido war a guter Hund,
Polite und hausgebrochen.
Er konnte Tricks von aller Art
Und war in general sehr shmart
Und glich gern Chickenknochen.

Sei Mistress nahm ihn regular
Um zwei P.M. spazieren.
Er trotte mit wie ‘n Gentleman
Except, er tat, shust now und denn,
A Lampost inspizieren.

Sie hatt’ ihn von a Pup geraist.
So Loff is sinful, maybe,
But sie war crazy über ihn.
(Sie war a Maiden-lady, lean,
Und hatte auch kei Baby.)

Well, Hundenature die iss queer
Und Spring die Time von Passion.
Er sah von fern a lady Spitz,
Vergas sei Ma, und wie der Blitz
Wollt er hin zu ihr dashen.

Doch ach, da kam a Limousine
Am Boulevard geshpeedet.
Der Showfer tooteteh sei Horn,
But Fido lässt, in Thought verlorn,
Die Warnung ungeheedet.

Er sehft noch diesmal, Gott sei Dank,
Sei Leben vor dem Shpeeder;
But, Kinder, freut euch net zu früh:
Sei schöner Tail der is perdu.
Er waggt ihn niemals wieder.

Da hängt a Moral bei dem Tale.
Die Truth lässt sich net dodgeh:
Zu hasty sein, dass iss a Fault.
Man muss, auch wenn die Liebe called,
Den Traffic careful watcheh.

If this sounds funny to you, you’ll love the book! AbeBooks still has a few copies left.

A “captcha” is one of those little boxes that have squiggly text in them that you’re supposed to type so that the form you’re trying to submit knows that you’re a real person and not one of those stupid BOTS that plague our networks with spam. You’ve probably seen these when you’ve tried to post a comment one someone’s blog or signed up for an online account of almost any type.

David Warlick posted this morning on his 2 Cents Worth blog about how books are being digitized and thousands of people are helping with these projects by using “captchas.” His article is Re-Capturing Books through Captcha…

A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You’ve probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from “bots,” or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs.

About 60 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that’s not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into “reading” books.

To archive human knowledge and to make information more accessible to the world, multiple projects are currently digitizing physical books that were written before the computer age. The book pages are being photographically scanned, and then, to make them searchable, transformed into text using “Optical Character Recognition” (OCR). The transformation into text is useful because scanning a book produces images, which are difficult to store on small devices, expensive to download, and cannot be searched. The problem is that OCR is not perfect.

Since the human eye (and mind) is more accurate than OCR programs, this kind of user-involved digitization project results in a much more accurate transcription. Plus, it takes advantage of Distributed Computing, only of a more organic nature. What a cool way to take a new-ish technology that sometimes seems like a pain and turn it into something useful!

Be sure to visit the ReCAPTCHA site to learn more about how the system works (it’s very ingenious) and to help by typing a few words in.
Current music: Soundtrack from The Time Machine

I am getting back into reading the Wheel of Time series. I currently own the first 10 books in the series. The 11th, Knife of Dreams, isn’t out in paperback yet, but it should be soon. The downside of this series is that it’s ALL ONE STORY, just like the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Books usually end at a logical stopping place, but the epic story continues. I started back into the series on Book 8 this time, The Path of Daggers, and now I’m on Winter’s Heart, which is Book 9. I’ve read it before, but I wanted a refresher before tackling Book 10, Crossroads of Twilight, which I haven’t read. And I certainly didn’t want to start ALL the way at the beginning again!
By the time I finish these (they average about 800 pages apiece), Book 11 will probably be out in paperback. Robert Jordan has announced a working title for the 12th and FINAL book that will finish the series: A Memory of Light. I don’t know how long it will take for this last book to come out (2008?), but the characters are so compelling and the world system so detailed that you want to get immersed in it. Only feelings like wanting to wait for the series to be completed or irritation at having to wait so long for the series to end can keep you out of it.

Here’s a very helpful website related to all things “Wheel of Time:” Encyclopaedia-WOT It’s like a classy fan site, with lots of information about the books, the characters, the settings, etc.

UPDATE: There’s another cool site with links to where you can buy products related to the Wheel of Time: http://www.wotmud.org/directory/products.php (Check out the Trolloc Plush Doll!)
Current music: Bolero, by Stanley Jordan (no relation)

The final book of the Harry Potter series has finally had its title announced. Yahoo! News ran a story yesterday about how Scholastic Inc. (J.K. Rowling’s U.S. Publisher) had announced the name of one of the most anticipated books of all time.

Do you want to know what the title is? You’ll have to play a little game of Hangman to find out. First visit www.jkrowling.com and navigate your way through a bunch of hidden links to find the Hangman game. If you don’t want to guess and stumble through it on your own, here’s the list of steps you need to take:

• First, click on the eraser. That will take you to a room with a window, a door and a mirror.
• In the mirror, you’ll see a hallway. Click on the farthest doorknob and look for the Christmas tree.
• Click on the center of the door next to the mirror and a wreath will appear.
• Then click on the top of the mirror and you’ll see a garland.
• Look for a cobweb next to the door. Click on it, and it will disappear.
• Now, look at the chimes in the window. Click on the second chime to the right.
• Drag the chime, which will turn into a key, to the lock to open the door.
• Click on the wrapped gift behind the door to open the gift.
• Then click on it again to play a game of hangman and figure out the new title.

So there you go. Jump through all those hoops and you’ll find out for yourself what the name of the final Harry Potter book is. I’ve done it, but I won’t give away the title here. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.
And, no, there’s no date announced yet for when the book will be released. And HecklerSpray says that the announced title is really a hoax to make you think that Harry Potter might come to a bad end. The “real” title, they say, is Harry Potter And The Lovely Rainbow-Coloured Munchkin Rabbits Of Bibbledy Bobbledy Lane.

[tags]harry potter, rowling, books, fiction, hogwarts[/tags]

Here are some Deep Thoughts from Jack Handey:

To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there’s no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.

If they ever come up with a Swashbuckling School, I think one of the courses should be Laughing, Then Jumping Off Something.

It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.

If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you’ll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.

When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it’s not, mmmmmmm, boy.

To me, clowns aren’t funny. In fact, they’re kinda scary. I’ve wondered where this started, and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus and a clown killed my dad.

Laurie got offended that I used the word “puke.” But to me, that’s what her dinner tasted like.

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is “God is crying.” And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is “Probably because of something you did.”

If you want more, there’s also a ton on this website.

[tags]humor, deep thoughts[/tags]

As I’ve been going through my library, adding books to LibraryThing, I came across this book. Lamentations of the Father. It’s a funny look at family life and rules from a pseudo-Scriptural perspective. Here’s a quote:

On Screaming
Do not scream; for it is as if you scream all the time. If you are given a plate on which two foods you do not wish to touch each other are touching each other, your voice rises up even to the ceiling, while you point to the offense with the finger of your right hand; but I say to you, scream not, only remonstrate gently with the server, that the server may correct the fault. Likewise if you receive a portion of fish from which every piece of herbal seasoning has not been scraped off, and the herbal seasoning is loathsome to you, and steeped in vileness, again I say, refrain from screaming. Though the vileness overwhelm you, and cause you a faint unto death, make not that sound from within your throat, neither cover your face, nor press your fingers to your nose. For even now I have made the fish as it should be; behold, I eat of it myself, yet do not die.

I am currently reading a book called Byzantium by Stephen R. Lawhead. It’s my second or third time through the book, even though it’s 872 pages long!

Oddly enough, I got this book from a friend as a white elephant gift at Christmas a few years ago. He only gave it as a gift because somehow he’d gotten two copies of the book. And as of that time, he still hadn’t read EITHER copy.
It’s a very interesting book. Lawhead has primarily written fantasy-style books from a Christian perspective and I think this is his first foray into what could be called historical fiction. I’ve read many of his trilogies and must say that some are better than others. Part of it is probably that they’re geared toward different ages, but some of it is certainly the writing style. His Pendragon Cycle was pretty good and I LOVED the Song of Albion trilogy. Byzantium is a single book that’s as long as a trilogy and is probably one of Lawhead’s best works.

Amazon provides the following review from Publisher’s Weekly:

The bestselling author of the Pendragon Cycle now tells the story of Aidan, a 10th-century Irish monk sent to take the Book of Kells to the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople. Separated from his fellow pilgrims, Aidan undergoes various exotic adventures, including capture by and life with Vikings, political intrigue in the Byzantine court, enslavement in a caliph’s mine and loss of his all-important faith in God. Lawhead is a Christian writer, and here the Christian themes are integral and well developed; he also shows a keen and sympathetic eye for the values and cultures of non-Christians. Marketed as fantasy, the novel contains little overt supernatural content, although prayer is vital and dreams can be seen as omens. Still, the narrative has the excitement of a good fantasy novel, a vivid historical setting and a lengthy, credible and satisfying plot–just the elements, in fact, that have made Lawhead a commercial success time and again.

It’s a long book, but it stays interesting. There are enough plot changes and setting changes and new characters throughout that you don’t think of yourself reading hundreds of pages of the same thing. It’s a very interesting read. Especially for Christians who may find themselves relating to Aidan’s questions about his faith as he goes through life’s trials and adventures.

[tags]lawhead, fantasy, historical fiction, byzantium, dark ages[/tags]

It’s time for another humorous excerpt from Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg’s book: The Book of Ratings: Opinions, Grades, & Assessments of Everything Worth Thinking About. (BUY THIS BOOK! IT’S HILARIOUS!) Today’s topic: Ninja Weapons!

Ninja Weapons

• [tag]Nunchucks[/tag]
  These were the weapon of choice for misanthropic youths with rich fantasy lives in my junior high. They didn’t actually fight with them, of course–that would have involved wonking themselves on the head repeatedly–but they owned a pair. Or more. The reason for this, I suspect, is simply that while hardware stores don’t have a “ninja sword” section, they do carry chains, dowels, and black paint. C-
• Throwing Stars
  These combine the mystery of ninja death-dealing with the free wheeling fun of Frisbee, a classic chocolate-and-peanut-butter situation. (”You got Shogun on my Frisbee! You got Frisbee in my Shogun!”) They’re also great for the movies, because they require no special effects or skill on the part of the thespian-cum-assassin. Shot one: Ninja throws throwing stars. We hear a thwip thwip thunk thunk sound. Shot two: Victim has been punctured and/or pinned to the wall by his clothes. It makes Bewitched look like a special-effects spectacular by comparison. A
• Oreo O’s
  All right, this isn’t a ninja weapon. It is, rather, a breakfast cereal. But, I’m not going to be doing another cereal rating for a while, and I wanted to get the word out now. This stuff is just insane. It’s mind-cloudingly wonderful. It’s a breakfast cereal that tastes just like Oreos! It’s uncanny! You pour it in the bowl, you add milk, and boom, you’re eating Oreos. It looks a little weird–the O’s are dark brown with little flecks of “Stuf,” like a film negative of Apple Jacks–but it’s just indescribably fantastic. I have a history of falling in love with cereals that get pulled off the market shortly thereafter (Smurfberry Crunch comes to mind), so I advise you to get it while you can, stockpiling it militia-style if necessary. A+ Okay, back to the ninjas.
• Long Chains with a Hook at the End
  This seems a little unnecessarily complicated for ninja, the masters of the “hide, strike, fade into the night” triathlon. Change that to “hide, jump out, throw a chain so that it wraps around your opponent’s legs, yank him toward you, poke him with the hook a few times, then fade into the night” and you’ve lost a lot of the mystique. Add to that the fact that in the movies, characters normally only get the whole chain routine so that the filmmaker can show that the character can defeat even the dreaded chain, which would be impressive except for the fact that the dreaded chain never seems to do much. D
• [tag]Swords[/tag]
  Oh, I’m sure there are all sorts of names for all sorts of swords that your better ninja might be carrying, but they’re all ninja swords, and that’s what’s important. Swords are the second most important aspect of ninja cinema, right after those little footy socks with the big toe in its own little section. You whack them with the sword, then you kick them with the footy sock; it’s all part of the plan. B+
• Smoke Bombs
  Okay, I lied. Swords are the third most important aspect of ninja cinema. Even with your sword and your footy socks, you just aren’t a ninja without your smoke bombs. You can’t get in the ninja clubs, you don’t get your 10 percent ninja discount at Denny’s, and you can’t invest pretax income in the ninja 401(k) plan. A

[tags]ninjas, cinema, martial arts, movies, humor, weapons[/tags]

The Book of Ratings, by Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg, has this to say about slogans that Coke has used over the years. (The Book of Ratings is a fantastic source of commentaries and tongue-in-cheek evaluations of lists of all kinds of things. Witty, insightful, and very funny.)

Coca-Cola Slogans

“Drink Coca-Cola” (1886)
This was the original slogan. I understand advertising was much less reliant on mountain bikes and navel-baring tube tops in the 1800s than it is now. This is the quintessential Coca-Cola slogan; it’s short, it’s vaguely authoritarian, and it completely fails to actually give any reasons why you should drink Coke. This is because you can’t actually convince anyone they need Coke. You either like the taste or you don’t, and it doesn’t provide you with any benefits you can’t get from other places, such as hummingbird feeders. Their ad campaigns are instead based on making sure that everyone who would ever consider drinking Coke never forgets for an instand that the option is available. Anyhow, this at least is simple and to the point. A-

“I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” (1971)
This was an offshoot of the unfortunate ad jingle turned folk song I was forced to sing too many times in grade school. The song was, among other things, about teaching the world to sing in perfrect harmony, which is pretty ironic because most of the people I’ve heard sing it were in no position to be giving lessons. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of starry-eyed idealism, but not when it’s being used to sell soda pop, and especially not when it contains forced lines about snow-white turtledoves. D

“Coke Adds Life” (1976)
They missed out on a great chance for an ad here. Scene: the Garden of Eden, circa 4004 B.C. God (looking not unlike the Coke-swilling Santa Claus of yore) forms Adam from the dust, humming mildly to himself as he does so. When Adam’s prone and lifeless form is complete, God dribbles a couple drops of Coca-Cola onto his lips. Adam blinks, sits up, and sees the Big Guy holding an icy-cold bottle of Coke. Being only recently made of dust, he’s parched, and he reaches out to God in a pose strongly reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel. “Coca-Cola Adds Life.” Boom, instant megahit. They could have followed up with a series of Old Testament Coke ads, and eventually released the Bible, Revised Caffeinated Edition. C+

“Coke Is It” (1982)
At this point they’ve gone from authoritarian to positively Orwellian. “Coke Is All There Is,” the slogan seems to imply. “All Is Coke. There Are No Other Forms of Refreshment. Drink Coke or Die Screaming.” Armed, jack-booted Cola Enforcers roam the streets, dragging off anyone caught with a can of Mountain Dew. Children in school pledge allegiance to Coke. History books mentioning Pepsi are burned in secret. Red flags with jaunty white ribbons running across them snap sternly in the hot wind. “Coke. Do Not Attempt to Escape.” A

“Red, White, and You” (1986)
This was a result of the doomed New Coke fiasco. The Coca-Cola company, whipped into shame by people who never protested when their ketchup or paper towels were “improved,” rereleases Coca-Cola Classic with this lame slogan. The ominous pronouncements of past campaigns are replaced with a wheedling humanist attempt to get people to identify themselves with Coca-Cola. Before, Coke was above mere humans; it was a force of history, a societal universal. Now it’s a touchy-feely hands-on Soft Drink of the People. “Coke Feels Your Pain.” D-

“Always Coca-Cola” (1993)
Now we’re getting back into the familiar realms of overstatement. Coke already trades on nostalgia to an alarming extent, especially come Christmastide. This slogan, I think, is an attempt to pioneer the powerful advertising concept of “pre-nostalgia.” Teen cola drinkers are too young to have misty memories of days gone by, but Coca-Cola assures them that one day they’ll miss their days of looking forward to the time when they can look back fondly on their youthful exuberance for their nostalgic future. And Coca-Cola will have been there. B

Current music: Book of Roses, by Andreas Vollenweider

From the Book of Ratings, an analysis of Cold Symptoms. (For those of you unfamiliar, the Book of Ratings is an AWESOMELY funny book by Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg, who provides “opinions, grades, and assessments of everything worth thinking about.”)

Cold Symptoms
Sneezing
In minute quantities, sneezes can be gratifying. I’ve heard orgasms described as a sort of full-body sneeze, and that’s an alarmingly accurate description. I don’t go on the Internet at two in the morning looking for pictures of bee pollen, so I think I’ve still got perspective, but I figure if you’re going to be expelling mucus at fastball speeds, you may as well put it in the best possible light. B+

Stuffy Nose
When I was younger I didn’t realize that sinuses actually swell when you’re sick. I thought that the reason I couldn’t breathe out of at least one nostril was that a wad of passage-blocking snot was in the way, and it bugged the preteen hell out of me that no amount of blowing could clear it. The only good thing about a stuffy nose is that if you’re in too much misery to sleep, you can always play “waiting for the nostril switch.” D+

Coughing
The human animal has an astonishing repertoire of coughs, the sickness equivalent of a high-end synth box. My favorite, which is to say the least annoying, is a quick lung-clearing hack. The worst are those long resonant vibrating coughs that leave you feeling as if your lungs had been scrubbed by an obsessive-compulsive with a fresh scouring pad. C-

Fever
I don’t find fevers pleasant–except, of course, for disco fever–but I am grateful for them as the ultimate vindication of one’s whining, short of wasting death. Complaining about headaches and scratchy throats can be dismissed as a ploy to get attention and/or avoid work, but once that thermometer reads 98.7 or so, you’re sick, baby, with all the pillow-fluffing and daytime-television-watching due thereto. B-

Sore Throat
A vague scratching at the back of my throat is, often as not, the first sign of an oncoming attack of several days of burning misery. Because of this, I pay frequent low-level attention to my throat, the way adolescent girls pay frequent low-level attention to the growth of their breasts. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to convince yourself that you have a minor sore throat if you’ve just woken up, inhaled cold air, or eaten wasabi in the last week, so there are a lot of false alarms, and many oranges have given up their lives for my paranoia. D-

Headache
I don’t get many headaches, of which I’m glad, because if one is to believe television advertisements, most headaches are slightly more painful than extended torture by intelligent evil mandrills and are accompanied by such uncomfortable effects as blurry close-ups of you grimacing while holding a hand to your forehead. Luckily, you’ve got Epoxidril, with the maximum amount of painkiller available without immediate liver failure. D

Personal Note: Up there with the coughs, at least from an observer’s unfortunate standpoint, is OTHER people’s coughs that are continual attempts to clear the phlegm from their breathing passages. Yuck!

Current music: In the Wake of the Wind, by David Arkenstone