Our house, in the middle of our street

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Look out – here comes Multimedia Yak. This was taken on December 21 so it's already quite out of date. More pix to come...



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Entertainments II

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1. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, which I'd never even heard of until a couple of years ago. Because of the title similarity, I guess I assumed it would be something like Cold Mountain, but actually it's more like Oscar Wilde meets Wuthering Heights. A phrase that sticks with me is the characterization of one of the characters as a "trying female." Such a useful description. 2. Jagged Little Pill , the Alanis Morissette album from several years ago that I recently rediscovered thanks to my iPod, which I've been listening to on my commute, since there's only so much NPR you can take at rush hour without getting bored and/or depressed. Lots of cool songs in addition to the familiar singles. That woman has a way with words. I can't help but wonder how many different men she's trashing, how people manage to careen from love to hate, and about the success of her future relationships given her apparently poor track record (and the potential intimidati
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Beaky and spiny

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Yes, it's been a while. But today... today I have found something so inspirational that I can't help but share it with the world: long-beaked echidnas , beautifully described in The New York Times as "plump, terrier-size creatures abristle with so many competing notes of crane, mole , pig, turtle, tribble, Babar and boot scrubber that if they didn’t exist, nobody would think to Photoshop them." AND! Did you know the males have a four-headed penis? Oo la la. *** Though it's been a while since her death, I must still mark the passing of Bea Arthur, who created the unforgettable character of Maude, a rather underappreciated sitcom, lost in the 70s shuffle of "All in the Family," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "M*A*S*H" et al. One reason the show was so good was the writing, tackling fraught social topics and taboos just as AITF had before it. Here's a tour de force one-woman episode where Maude sees her analyst . *** One of the funnies
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You rock, you farshluggineh kids!

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Usually Ben has little interest in this blog, but recently he actually suggested that I post something here -- something that tells a profound and historic story in images. I'll let him take it from here... Ronnie James Dio apparently is credited with inventing the heavy-metal hand sign that means "You rock!" In doing a bit more digging on the web, the honor also seems to have been claimed for Gene Simmons and even John Lennon. Won't they all be shocked to realize that the gesture was actually invented in Farmingdale, N.J., by Jewish chicken farmers. The historically important moment was recently discovered in a photo taken on February 24, 1946 at the wedding of none other than my parents (Ed. note: from left to right, person #1 and #3; person #2 is unknown but looks somewhat menacing and/or drunk.) Look carefully at this picture and you'll see one of the invited guests expressing his enthusiasm for the wedding, proudly proclaiming, "You rock, and d
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