A Gilded Planet

When Tommy Fitzgerald offered to buy me a drink for the 21st birthday I had several months ago, I did not know what to think. “Your 21st birthday should last all year, am I right?” he said with an enthusiasm bordering on spooky self-regard. Some friends had warned me that Tommy was a fat, two-faced liar. From what I had heard, he was a schemer of schemes and not to be trusted. But in my admittedly limited interactions with Tommy, I had found him fairly forthright and even amusing to be around. As he explained to me how to rent a car before turning 25, I thought I would let him buy me a drink after I finished my second beer of the evening. How often do you get to hang out in a cool Ethiopian restaurant-bar with a group of friends you see none too frequently? Sipping my Whiskey Sour as the somewhat slapdash and informal program started, I thought to ask Tommy about whether he would be voting for Maggie in a couple of weeks as I planned to do. I actually can’t remember if I thought abou...

I watched HP7-P2  a couple months ago and can't begin to tell you all how pleased I was with this wonderful product. It really does live up to its billing. And everything it does is so intuitive. The evil wizard Voldemort is a joy to watch and all of the product's many special effects function flawlessly. Helen Bonham Carter is fabulous and it never gets jammed or feeds more than one piece of paper at a time. I had occasion to give Hermione a real "trial by fire." The unit does not come with a manual explaining who all the characters are and what they are doing (that sucks). But it's on the provided CD. I like a paper copy of an operating manual so I printed out all 212 pages Hermioned in "Horcrux" quality. I was expecting the print quality to be so-so at best for this setting but was amazed at how good it looked. And the Hermione worked flawlessly, printing out all 212 pages on 106 pages of paper. Now for a couple of nitpick negatives. The movie prod...

Father Malkin is neither Filipino nor a bay laurel, but is actually the hated visitor to the local school. When he comes around, all the teachers sit in their desks and can only remember what they’re supposed to be doing. Their leisure is eaten away without even a clear idea of what the time is. That is disruptive. "     " is why the father is not the son. "     " is why the father connects with the jewel and the spike. The father always uses the tools at his disposal He likes a bigger screen to keep all our seaweed He likes two loves at once. He likes the fun of contradiction. He likes to make sure he’s alive. He hates oxygen but loves air. He jumps for joy whenever a snake bites the children. But he always protects the boys down the street from their parents’ unwilling unrewarding unaccepting This is the true nature of protection. When you can make choices that limit what others seek to put forward as rules before you, there is enough protec...

River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West by Rebecca Solnit My rating: 5 of 5 stars Solnit is a remarkable prose stylist, and her examination of the brave new world of abstractions and representations born in California's violent industrializing Gilded Age past works marvelously. I will even defend her occasionally tendency to wind off into tangled thickets of near schizoid conspiracism about the connections between the various phenomena she investigates with the careful eye of a social historian. Sometimes wild theorizing about the bigger picture is exactly what the doctor ordered.

don't open e-mail from me about "beach photos"- it's "phishing" X Inbox X Reply from Barrie Thorne  [email address redacted]      to Mary Hatfield Henderson et al   [email address redacted] date Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 6:58 PM subject don't open e-mail from me about "beach photos"- it's "phishing" signed-by gmail.com Important mainly because it was sent directly to you. hide details   6:58 PM (20 hours ago) Dear folks on my gmail "contacts"list, Alas, I have somehow been hacked. If you get an email from me asking you to see some photos from the beach, DELETE IT.  If more mayhem occurs, I'll take appropriate action.  My apologies, Barrie -- Barrie Thorne Professor  of Gender & Women's Studies and  Professor of Sociology University of California, Berkeley

"...I experienced a series of highly visceral hallucinations. I felt as if I flew high above the jungle upside down. The trees, the banana palms, the noisy yet euphonic hum of insects, the replicative green - everywhere green - whirled around me with dizzying splendor...Jiminy Cricket served as our guide. He taught us the ways and protected us from the gravest dangers we may have encountered. Undoubtedly my view of the jungle has been permanently altered by meeting it under such tumultuous circumstances... "I had already seen the muddy river below my dangling feet. But now we got deep in the muck. Our captain fancied that he was a Jack Sparrow, he heard voices, he talked to himself and he led us down the current feet first. I was prepared to dunk my head in the drink, I was ready to drown. "The day had not yet ended and my venturesome delusions now took shape as avatars - tigers first, and then ultimately elephants. I feel no shame admitting that I am terrified of anyo...

All photo credit to my sister, Katherine Bruens : hey, look, that's me with a tiger