In response to a number* of requests, the family portrait on the main page has been updated.  The rest of the pictures from 21 November are still awaiting processing.  (Life has been far more complicated than necessary since Thanksgiving.)

M-->

*--A number greater than 1, as unbelievable as that may seem.

1. It was recently pointed out to me that Joe Biden is the first U.S. Vice-President in nearly 15 years not to shoot someone in the face while in office.

Good on him.

2. (Holiday music addendum) Here's an interesting experiment that I just learned about: It is said to be possible to swap the words and melodies of "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" and "O Little Town Of Bethlehem"--that is, to sing the lyrics of one to the tune of the other.  I've tested this in one direction, and it seems to work out okay, musically.

What I'd like to hear is an entire choir going rogue and surprising their accompanist with this interchange.

M-->

It’s that time again.  Here are ten more songs that would make all-Christmas all the time radio much more pleasant to listen to, if they ever got any real airplay.

1. The Atheist Christmas Carol, Vienna Teng.  Case in point.  In spades.

Not that this one stands a snowball’s chance in a forest fire of getting much radio exposure.  But consider the opening lyrics:

It's the season of grace coming out of the void
Where man is saved by a voice in the distance

There’s no mention of a supreme being or the lack thereof, and I suspect that most people, regardless of their spiritual leanings, could get behind this sentiment.  The song continues in a similar vein for its remaining 17 lines, and the message triumphs over the title, if you ask me.

Stripped of the title (rename it "Season of Grace", maybe), this could be a “new holiday classic”.  It's certainly preferable to "All I Want For Christmas Is You", which is generally acknowledged to be the most recent song to join the Christmas canon*.  With its title, forget about that.  Nonetheless, one of my most deeply-held holiday convictions is that “there’s room enough in Christmas for everyone”, and that applies here, perhaps more than anywhere else.  At a time when even Pope Francis has been caught saying some nice things about atheists, this seems an appropriate contribution to holiday tunedom.

2. 2000 Miles, The Pretenders.  This one was featured on an episode of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, a show to which I have an unusual attachment, as you may know.  I got to it via a back route not involving that show, which may explain why it’s taken awhile to show up on one of these lists.

This is also a case where it’s good to go back to the original artist–KT Tunstall’s version was the one that triggered my interest, last December after Volume 5 went up, but I have rather strong feelings about holiday remakes.

3. Nutcracker, Straight No Chaser.  I am not a fan of ballet in general, nor of The Nutcracker in particular.  This surprises no one.  That said, I was drawn in part to this tune by a recent Dear Prudence column involving a meddlesome grandmother whose 11-year-old granddaughter had apparently made it a mission not to see said ballet, and who wanted to know if she could force the child to submit to a performance.

In a word, no.

But kudos to that child for staking out this position and sticking to it.

And kudos also to SNC for taking down that ballet in such fine fashion.

4. Chiron Beta Prime, Jonathan Coulton.  Because if you were forcibly relocated to an alien planet by robot overlords, you would surely have cause to mention that in your holiday newsletter.

One might even argue that that’d be a pretty good reason to start such a newsletter.

5. Warm Lovin’ Christmastime, Wilson Phillips.  There’s no real reason to avoid this song, which I mentioned a few years back (The Markives, 5 December 02010) as a Mellowmas entry logged over at popdose.com.  Mellowmas is ending after this holiday season (though surely the flow of bad holiday tunes will not), so this is a chance to recognize one song they highlighted that turned out not to be awful.  And as I said in 02010, in a tribute to dexterity:


That still holds, five years later.

6. Rootin’ Tootin’ Santa Claus, Tex Beneke & His Orchestra. This year's flashback entry, it comes with an instrumental opening that's over a minute long.  Music doesn't get more radio-friendly than that.

7. Christmas Is My Favorite Time Of Year, Lizzie & John Brenkus.  On the face of it, there’s a lot about this song that’s awful:

•   It pretty much hits every Christmas cliche in the book.
•   It rhymes “year” with “good cheer”.  This bugs me, for some inexplicable (by me) reason.
•   The lyrics include the line “Shelves have elves”, thus mentioning one of the more puzzling/annoying newish holiday fads.
•   Its abuse of the English language includes the phrase “full of Yule”.  I’m not sure what that implies.  It’s not like Yule, as I understand it, is a tangible product.

And yet...the tune is just so unabashedly catchy and–dare I say it?–fun that I can’t resist it.

8. Naughty List, Forever In Your Mind.  Because someone needs to stick up for the kids getting coal in their stockings.  And because this is kind of amusing, and different from the typical tone of Christmas songs--which is something I like to recognize.

9. Nicki And The Crew, Treetop Sisters.  I stand against the introduction of children's choirs into holiday music with as much commitment as anyone.  The fact that these children are not a choir is enough to get this otherwise-worthy song onto this year's list.  In additional, this song also ticks the "other late December holidays" box by mentioning Christmas Adam.

In the world of overfamiliarity that I was touching on last entry, I'm willing to carve out an exception for calling Santa Claus "Nicki", in no small part because of its sheer brazenness.  "St. Nick"--common.  "Nicki"--not so much.  Well-played.

(This song does refer to Rudolph as "Rudy", though, so maybe it should be included with an asterisk.)

10. Save Some Snow, After Romeo. Once again, the list features a song that's been sitting in limbo since I first found it last December.  Off now to monitor the radio in search of the song to fill this slot for 02016.

Io Saturnalia!

M-->

*--Christmas Canon, by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, hasn't even cracked that list.  Seems like it'd be an obvious choice.

I am in-office for the moment, enduring very bad Thanksgiving music parodies ("All About That Baste", "I Love Butterball" [to the tone of "I Love Rock and Roll"], "Turkey" ["Mickey"], and the like) on the radio--which sort of makes one look forward to the timely return of Christmas tunes.

Key word: timely.  Backup key words: sort of.

Unwritten key word: good.  As in "good Christmas tunes".

Which brings me to this morning's email:  Steve, from Allen Park, MI, writes:

Seven words that will change your life, those.

Fortunately, "critical" was as bad as it got.

M-->

Monica 1 has learned about what I posted here last week, and has offered up Lonely Island's "I'm On A Boat' as another suitable maritime song for Shipwreck Day.

I note here, as I did to her, that a shipwreck might mean that one was off a boat, and in a bad way.  Nonetheless, we'll put this on the playlist for 02025.

M-->

WNIC (and other radio stations) has taken the leap and gone all-Christmas, all the time [as we decry over here in The Markives],
but yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior.  Where were the shipwreck songs?

Kids, here's the deal: Back in the day*, the non-existent "War On Christmas" didn't start until after Thanksgiving.  Sometimes not even until the calendar had flipped to December.

End of uncular ranting.

It seems like we have a collision of phenomena here: Christmas creep vs. the "War on Christmas".  The whole kerfuffle over Starbucks cups** strikes me as evidence that people are bored and looking for something to complain about.  Perhaps they should have watched any recent Presidential debate--while no less insignificant at this point, at least those have the potential both to be interesting and to evolve into something that matters.  Getting worked up over the lack of winter (not even Christmas) icons on your drinkware indicates that you lack for something to fill your days.  Might I suggest (again) a woodburning kit?

Oh, and one more thing: If your reaction to this non-threat is to tell the barista that your name is "Merry Christmas", you're not nearly as clever as you think you are.

Nor are you helping.

Not that help is necessary.

M-->

*--Prior to 02004+/-.
**--All-red cups?  I'm okay with that.  However, I've never been to a Starbucks, so I have no dog in this fight.

I have long maintained that the Michigan State football team can be counted on every year to win a game that they should have lost and lose a game that they should have won.  That theory may have taken a small hit last season, but recent games against Michigan and Minnesota have brought it back in full force.

The most ardent Spartan fan I know, in commenting that Michigan should have lost against Minnesota, was at least consistent in her concession that MSU should have also lost to Michigan.  This sort of consistency is far from foolish.

M-->

19 October 02015 (Happy birthday!): Central Ohio As Destination

Laurie's first day as "head librarian"* at the Findlay, OH branch of Owens Community College is today, and she's more or less settled in to what we're calling our "summer place" in Ohio.  Not exactly what one expects when considering vacation property, but then again, only one of us will actually be on vacation in the summers when we're both down there.  Moreover, it's entirely possible that she'll move into a slightly nicer place before the summer of 02016 rolls around.

The view from her desk looks pretty good:


M-->

*--Exact job title TBA.

One of my personal and professional interests is the names of colleges and universities, especially when change is afoot, which seems to be happening a lot lately.  It hasn't hit home yet--the name on my paycheck will probably stay the same for the foreseeable future--but it came close-ish today.

Down in the South, the Medical College of Georgia (with its Bollmanic connection gone by) and Augusta State University were merged not too long ago and renamed Georgia Regents University, a name which it seems that fewer than 10 people liked.  This happens.

Recently, the merged institution's name was changed to the University of Augusta, which sounds a little more classy, less likely to be confused with a right-wing Christian school, and more geographically precise.  Three for three.  Aside from a flicker of recognition because I've been to one of the merged campuses, this would have simply been filed away as a "right idea, but a touch late" kind of thing.

Until today, when one of my students came into my office wearing a GRU T-shirt.  Small world.  It turns out she was there for a research program this past summer.

I pointed out that it had expired, and she was aware of this development and appropriately concerned.

M-->

George Carlin once said "Grownups have it made.  They can order candy on credit over the Internet and have it delivered."

Friend o' The Markives Kristie Donohue is learning how true this is.  Kristie has developed a taste for a type of mint that she discovered in a hospital gift shop*.  Recognizing that this may not be the most efficient, and certainly not the most pleasant, way of procuring her candy of choice, she has found said candy on Amazon.

It's nice to be in the 21st century.

M-->

*--A place where she has spent way too much time this past summer, through no fault of her own.

There are days when what I say in class doesn't appear to make any difference in my ongoing quest to decrease the amount of ignorance in the universe.  Today was a different matter.

One of my classes was discussing the question of "In the event of a global cataclysm, what one piece of information would be the most valuable to any survivors looking to re-create all of human knowledge?"  This detoured, as discussions in my Honors classes often do, this time into an examination of the value of fire in rebuilding society, with one medically-inclined student coming down to "Give 'em a box of matches and a copy of Gray's Anatomy."

The book.  Not the TV show.  (Hence Gray's rather than Grey's--but that, of course, wasn't immediately clear in conversation.)

About half the class thought she was talking about some matches and some DVD's of the show; they had no idea that the book existed.  On some level, this surprised me--but I can chalk it up as tangible proof that my students learned something today.

One student then asked if the book had a character named "Meredith".

Two steps forward, one step back.  Usually it's the other way around.

M-->

So something interesting to many readers of The Markives happened in Nevada yesterday at 5:30 PDT.

Laurie and I could have watched it live, but the $99 streaming fee was too rich for my blood, especially since that worked out to over $6 per minute, and since we'd've been watching on a cell phone, an unfathomable amount per square inch.  The countdown Web page was kind of fun to watch, though.

Congratulations, guys.

M-->

Today marks the beginning of a medical experiment here in the home of The Markives.  I've been wearing glasses for 44.5 years now, but only today did I put on a pair of prescription sunglasses.  I've never seen the appeal of switching glasses on and off--especially when you wear them every waking hour as I do--and I've been wearing photo-sensitive lenses since 01983 or so, which has been good enough for me, light-wise.

However...it seems that I've recently contracted a chronic eye condition characterized by foamy tears and an increased sensitivity to light*.  The latter symptom is particularly irksome when I'm driving, which is when photo-sensitive lenses don't work well.  (The former condition is something I didn't know about until this whole thing was diagnosed.)  So, enter full-blown sunglasses.as a workaround.  Day One went well enough; there's the standard break-in period with new glasses that's always tricky, of course.  That came as a surprise because my prescription hasn't changed, only the tint of the lenses.

It has not escaped my attention that sunglasses might make the whole "he looks like Alan from The Hangover" thing more convincing.  I shall have to take the sunglasses to Las Vegas and see how that plays out.

M-->

*--One cause of this condition is "dirty eye makeup".  I am as certain of anything in life as I am sure that that is not how I contracted this.

We live in a world where there are three George Bushes in public life, and no George Carlins.  Some days that bothers me more than others, and today is one of them.

Not, perhaps, for the obvious reasons--last week's dustup over lion hunting is something he'd probably be on top of, and he didn't do too much with the kind of political chaos that is tomorrow's Republican Presidential "debate" (which will be adequately and properly mocked elsewhere)--but for his talent at calling the country out on its obsession with the utterly trivial.

Case in point(lessness): The pixels and bytes being spilled on the so-called breakup of Kermit and Miss Piggy.  Way too much time and bandwidth (including, but certainly not limited to, what I'm writing right now) is being invested in this entirely artificial phenomenon.

I can't point to anything that's receiving less coverage in the press than it ought to because of this, but if nothing else, it's summer and perhaps we could be enjoying the recently clement weather rather than obsessing about the artificial demise of an artificial marriage between two fictional nonhuman characters.

Yep, I'm going outside now.

M-->

I was, as is my nature, in a trivia bar last Tuesday.  We were watching the evening recap of the Tour de France in and around the trivia questions, as is our collective nature as a trivia group,.and so saw many---many---commercials for the online dating Web site FarmersOnly.com.

I am willing to believe that there's a meaningful need for a matchmaking site focused on farmers (or people seeking to date farmers).  I'm not altogether sure why that's true, but it seems plausible.

I am not convinced, however, that all that much of FarmersOnly's target audience is watching bicycle racing coverage.  Indeed, I would venture that the percentage of farmers with access to the NBC Sports Network is lower than in the general population.

M-->

Recent developments have brought to mind a Winston Churchill quote:


We seem to be batting .500 as a nation today.  I can't say I'm surprised at the response of the right wing to this week's Supreme Court developments, but I think the online petition to replace every Confederate flag flying on government grounds by the gay pride flag is a bit of an overreach.

M-->

...this has been bugging me for awhile, and I found an I'net quote (in a comment section at slate.com) that clarifies things rather nicely.  In re: the prospect of a Hillary Clinton/Jeb Bush Presidential race next fall, and the babbling from people with time on their hands* about passing the Presidency from one family to another, with the "D" word being tossed around like they know what it means:

The Clintons are not a dynasty.  Jeb Bush's pedigree: he was a governor, his brother was a governor and a president; his dad was UN ambassador, CIA director, vice president and president; his grandfather was a tycoon and senator; and Jeb's great-grandpa was a rail-and-steel tycoon.  The Bushes have 4 generations of wealth and power.  That's a dynasty.

The Great Summer Shift has occurred here at the home of The Markives, with my return from 13 days in and around Kansas City (424,072 calculus tests this year; graded on time) closely followed by Laurie's departure for 10 weeks at Interlochen.  We actually saw each other for a few days in between those trips, which differed from last year.

In other news: It's been one full year now since BGM:NBN first went up for sale at amazon.com.  As I am a person of many quirks*, I've been checking its sales rank on a near-daily basis; it's kind of amusing to see its rank jump up by as much as 1.6 million spots when a single copy is sold.  On June 6, the book moved from #1,955,916 to #102,182--all without the apparent benefit of even one copy sold through Amazon.

There are two possible reasons that immediately come to mind for this surprise:

1. Amazon tracks total book sales through sources besides itself.
2. Over 1.8 million copies of other titles were returned that day.

Part of me wants it to be the second reason.

M-->

*--It has been said that a list of all my idiosyncrasies would fill a book.  Someday I should write that book.

It seemed like such a sensible plan.  Get the oil changed in my car today, and then drive it to Kansas City tomorrow for another round of the adult camp that is the AP Calculus grading marathon.

It didn't quite work out that way.

My car hit the 100,000-mile mark fairly recently, and so was subjected to a number of routine maintenance inspections, as it should have been.  It turned out that the brake pads were wearing a bit thin, and while not urgently worn down, really should be replaced.  In discussing the urgency or lack thereof of this repair and my absence from Albion for the next 13 days with the technician, he commented that the situation was indeed not critical, but "I wouldn't drive this car all the way to Texas like it is."

I countered that I'd been planning a drive to Kansas City, which also carried some risk, in his judgment.  As I am not interested in trying to find emergency brake service in western Missouri (or eastern Kansas) next week*, the parts were quickly located and the repairs are now in progress.  I should be able to leave on schedule.

And so it goes.

And so, tomorrow, will I, to join forces for a change with people who think that high school and college students should take challenging mathematics courses.

M-->

*--I suspect that the irrepressible Michelle Davis Baker would probably be able to direct me to a reputable brake shop in that area, but I'd just as soon save her KC connections for true emergencies.

3 May 02015: "Typographical Error" Is Not A Valid Thoroughbred Name*

--so I suppose that "American Pharoah" will have to do.

I know it's intentional.  That doesn't make it less annoying.

Spellcheckers in sports newsrooms around the world are throwing a rod at this error, and that's going to continue for at least the next two weeks.

Fortunately, the Memphis Pharaohs no longer play Arena Football, so the conflicts here may be minimal.

M-->

*--"Typographicalerror" comes in at exactly the 18-character limit, but I have a personal aversion to running words together like that.

After hearing last night of Stan Freberg's death, my thoughts turned to what my favorite among his many great comedy works might be.

Not an easy choice.  His career spanned nearly 7 decades, and while there's a clunker or two in the bunch, as might be expected, the overwhelming majority is comedy at its best.  Most of it still holds up decades after its original release, too, and that's what led me to "Incident at Los Voraces".  (That link is not yet active.  Maybe someday soon.)

This piece, a sendup of the excess that is Las Vegas, was featured on the first episode of The Stan Freberg Show in 01957, which means that it kicked off the last network radio comedy show.  For a variety of technical reasons, it was heavily censored from its original version (Something about the Gaza Strip and the hydrogen bomb being too controversial at the height of the Cold War.  Go figure.)  The original finally surfaced with the Tip of the Freberg boxed set in 01998.  Even though I had never been to Las Vegas (other than a brief layover at the airport in 01996) when I first heard either version, I thought its take on LV was extremely entertaining, and nothing I've observed in my visits to Nevada since 02000 has changed my mind about that.

M-->

For as long as Laurie and I have been traveling to Las Vegas, we have maintained that it's possible, even desirable, to enjoy that town without doing very much (or any) gambling.  Her strategy is to maximize spa time; mine is to run around the city taking pictures of the sights.

Last week made that a little trickier, for me if not for her.  On Tuesday, we were out of Nevada at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah when in the middle of a photo binge, my camera stopped working correctly.  By that, I mean it wouldn't take pictures, nor would it shut off when turned off.

An annoyance, but one that had happened before at Yosemite NP in 02007, so I was somewhat prepared with a backup Nikon I found on eBay back then.  I didn't have that with me at that moment, but I was able to backfill with a digital camera until I got hold of the secondary film camera.  Frustrating, perhaps, and mildly disruptive, but not catastrophic, especially since it seemed like the camera might be fixable.

Two days later, and back in Las Vegas, I was lining up a long-range picture** of Texas Station from the top of the Stratosphere tower with my backup film camera.  The shutter stuck open and the camera is unresponsive.  This was a little more frustrating, in part because it's probably not locally fixable and in part because there's a full roll of film and some good pictures stuck in the camera.

Back to digital, but there's only so much I could do with my digital camera.  When you're 800+ feet in the air and looking down on incoming planes, a good telephoto lens is a big advantage, and I don't have much digital zoom capacity.

Camera catastrophes aside, it was a good trip.  And I got my first-ever senior citizen discount, at the Clark County Museum where Laurie and I confirmed that copies of our marriage license and a wedding photo are part of a display.  (Oddly, I was not offered this lucrative deal last year when we were there and I was still eligible.)

Yep, I'm in a museum exhibit.  Taken together with the senior discount (50% off the $2 admission fee), one might think I'd be feeling rather older than usual.  Nope.   The museum's collection includes items dating back to the Pleistocene.  Compared to that, I'm still quite young.

M-->

*--I hope everyone had a good Evacuation Day yesterday.
**--Seriously long-range--the two points are about 4.5 miles apart.

In the years that Laurie and I have been traveling to Las Vegas, a lot of iconic casinos (and some non-
iconic ones) have come and gone.  The Desert Inn, Boardwalk, Westward Ho, Stardust, Klondike, New Frontier, Barbary Coast, and Sahara were all there in June 02000, but are so no longer.  And those are just the ones that have vanished from the Strip.

While we were there for the demolition of the Stardust (The Markives, 21 March 02007), I can't say that the loss of any of these casino resorts affected us all that deeply.  That has changed with the recent sale of the Riviera and the announcement that it will close on May 4 and be demolished to accommodate an expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Ouch.

I have long liked the Riviera, even as its best days receded further into the past.  The wedding chapel where Laurie and I got married was right across the street at one time*, and while we weren't staying at the Riv that weekend, we did kind of use it as a home base.  We did get back and spend a few nights there eventually.  The best comedy club on the Strip, in my opinion, is the Riviera Comedy Club, and we've enjoyed many shows there over the years, including one on the night before our wedding.

I chose a photo of the Riviera for the cover of BGM:NBN in large part to commemorate the place it holds in my/our personal history, and in small part because it's still, to my mind, the best neon still present on the Strip.

M-->

*--It's now in the Clark County Museum, as are (I am told) a copy of our marriage license and a picture of us.

But, on a scale that is much more great, we can not set it off--we can not bless--we can not laud--this ground. The brave men, live and dead, who fought here, have blessed it, far more than we in our weak state can add to or take from it. The world won't note, nor keep in mind for all that long, what we say here, but it must not lose sight of what they did here. To look at it in a new light, it is for us who live to be here true to the great task which is yet to be done--that from these dead to whom we look up we take more of a pledge to that which they gave the last full sum of their vow--that we here well pledge that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this state, in the mind of God, shall have a new birth of free will--and that rule of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not be lost from the Earth.

M-->

*--First seen at onepartwords.com.

10 February 02015: Unpaid Advertisement

The irrepressible Michelle Davis Baker, whose foibles I've very occasionally tweaked in these parts, has entered the blog world, over at Erma Where Are You.  It looks like it's got the potential to be interesting.

Those of you who know Michelle may find this worthwhile reading.  For my own part, I suggest the following logical equivalency in re: absent icons:


M-->

With all due respect to the citizens of Punxsutawney, PA and their annual exercise in animal sadism, we here in Michigan knew the answer to the big question last night.