a few early words from Philip Roth (enjoy the video)

"He was better off, I thought. No sense carrying dreams of Tahiti in your head, if you can't afford the fare."
--
page 120, GOODBYE COLUMBUS, by Philip Roth, Modern Libraries Edition.

Finished it moments ago. Some brilliantly accented dialog rich in sentiment. Intra-family relations forshadow Portnoy.

oy, time for library (as Neil Klugman the main character must have thought a million times no? )

and Columbus refers to the Capital of Ohio -- GOODBYE COLUMBUS is a nostalgia filled song honoring the school town . . . libraries and OHIO, what more could one want?

and a comment from the eggheads,

But back in the Patimkin house there is no relief for Neil. The wedding of Ron and Harriet offers an array of middle-aged couples that can only serve to confirm Neil's worst expectations of what the Jewish bourgeois lifestyle amounts to. Many of these people are affluent, but they have paid dearly for their success with emotional frustration, physical decay and spiritual emptiness. They are locked into their tradition of hard work, materialism and puritanism couple with a narrow-minded outlook on everything outside their own circles, and they also suffer from rigid sex rolrs where the male is the provider and the female the excessively proper housewife. There is no room in their lives for joy, passion, or any individualism except mere eccentricity.

(Page 84 of LOVE AND IDENTITY: NEIL KLUGMAN'S QUEST IN 'GOODBYE, COLUMBUS' By: Nilsen, Helge Normann. English Studies, Feb87, Vol. 68 Issue 1, p79, 10p; (AN 7087468)

hum, now an amusement:

slacktivism ENHANCE YOUR VOCABULARY (and mind)

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=slacktivism&defid=304835

slacktivism

1
The act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem.

Signing an email petition to stop rampant crime is slacktivism. Want to
really make your community safer? Get off your ass and start a neighborhood
watch!

2

The search for the ultimate feel-good that derives from having come to society's rescue without having had to actually gets one's hands dirty or open one's wallet.

It's slacktivism that prompts us to want a join a boycott of designated gas
companies or eschew buying gasoline on a particular day rather than reduce our
personal consumption of fossil fuels by driving less.

a note from Dr. McCain

now all i need is the 'no fighting in here, this is the war room!' clip.

Cake Update

OH, I did not make the cake.

A purchase: West Side Bakery 2303 W Market St Akron, OH 44313 (330) 836-4101

it was Lemon with butter cream icing and rasberry filling.

and its near gone! and very good. Lemon is a spring flavor . . . .

cakes and celebrity

Tomorrow is Paul's birthday, I am prepared in advance - from one of akron's best bakeries:

++++++++++++



Over the weekend I went to the book fair, in AKRON -- there are books in Akron. My brother drove (he looked for post cards).


It was written up in the BEACON JOURNAL -- and I regret not seeing this, the copy of a "$600 limited edition of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. . . . The cover is made of alumnimum instead of cardboard." The most expensive book I saw was a readers advance of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD for about $20,000. A lot of Civil War books (some of Akron still thinks its going on, like the Japanese soldier lost on Islands still fighting WW II).

I did get a book, well 3 in fact (Goodbye Columbus by Roth; Silas Marner - in a BOX, very old, and a paperback:


________________________________
MICROCELEBRITY

today's best read:
An article in Wired [ ironic it still comes out in hard copy] calls people with blogs, facebook pages, myspace users, not vain, -but microcelebritities (talk about annoiting inflated self image). I may rename the page from LIFE IN THE SKINNGER BOX to the Amazing Adventures of an AKRON Anderoid)


http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-12/st_thompson

in part:

Microcelebrity is the phenomenon of being extremely well known not to millions
but to a small group — a thousand people, or maybe only a few dozen. As DIY
media reach ever deeper into our lives, it's happening to more and more of us.
Got a Facebook account? A whackload of pictures on Flickr? Odds are there are
complete strangers who know about you — and maybe even talk about you.

from WIRED in DECEMBER (I am behind in my reading, is the Iraq war over?)
hum, and CLIVE did not coin it, its in the urban word dictionary, and over a year prior:


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=microcelebrity
microcelebrity

One who gains a cult or mainstream following due to viral internet
distribution. Does not refer to those who have gained limited or cult followings
through traditional media. Does not refer to has-beens or "B-list"
celebrities.

submitted: by LI in Los Angeles, CA Sep 14, 2006

if i had that following my google ad money would let me near retire to a fine homeless shelter, time to prepare a few birthday things....


NITE NITE

Watering holes and the Decline of Newspapers

taken from wsj.com without the benefit of clergy.

Bars across the world face the cutbacks in the news industry - clearly a profession dominated by a few drinks . . . in SF, Boston, NY, Chicago, and afar . . .

Absinthe makes a legal comeback!

an article on legalization (in red) then a video down bottoms UPway

liberated from the sfgate.com:

Alameda distiller helps make absinthe legitimate again

Stacy Finz, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
.
It was the drink of choice for 19th century painters, poets and writers.

Vincent van Gogh sliced off his ear while sipping it, Edgar Degas and Pablo Picasso painted it, French poet Paul Verlaine cursed it as he lay dying in his bed.

For nearly 100 years, the United States and many other nations banned it.

Absinthe. "It leads straight to the madhouse or the courthouse," declared Henri Schmidt, a French druggist urging his own countrymen to outlaw the green liquid in the early 1900s, which they did.

Now it seems that no one can remember exactly why it was prohibited. Some say it was the chemical thujone found in the herb wormwood, used to make absinthe, that affects the brain. Others say it was a plot by the wine industry to put the popular spirit out of business. And there are those who believe it was a case of baseless hysteria, not unlike "Reefer Madness," the 1936 propaganda film about marijuana.

Earlier this year, a lone Washington, D.C., lawyer took on the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau in an attempt to lift the ban. After some legal wrangling, the agency agreed - with some limits.

Last week, St. George Spirits of Alameda received the news that, after seven applications, the federal agency had approved its label, the final obstacle before going to market. On Monday, the small artisan distillery sold its token first bottle, becoming the only American company since 1912 to sell absinthe in the United States. Then the staff took a moment to celebrate.

"We made champagne and absinthe cocktails, which rapidly degenerated into just sipping absinthe out of the bottle with crazy straws," said Lance Winters, a 42-year-old master distiller at the seven-employee company.

-

-





For 11 years Winters experimented, adding a little of this and little of that. No matter how close he came to perfection, each new batch had to be dumped down the drain to comply with federal dictate. But come Dec. 21, St. George will begin selling 3,600 bottles of its Absinthe Verte. That's too few to distribute to big chains, so for now the company will offer it at its Alameda tasting room and at limited liquor stores for $75 for a 750 ml bottle.

The 25-year-old company, started by Jorg Rupf, a German distiller who moved to the Bay Area to attend law school, is most known for its Hangar One vodka, but it also makes single-malt whiskey, grappa and a number of eau de vies.

From the beginning, absinthe was Winter's baby. The brewer-turned-distiller liked the challenge of blending his grape-based brandy with locally grown herbs like wormwood, absinthe's most important - and controversial - ingredient, plus tarragon, basil and mint.

Winters also uses anise and fennel.

"Absinthe is really complex," he said. "There are a lot of powerful botanical ingredients all fighting for dominance. So you strive for balance."

St. George will compete with three other absinthe distillers - the Swiss Kubler, French Lucid and the Brazilian Absinto Camargo. All have begun importing the licorice-flavored spirit into the United States in recent months. It was the Kubler distillery that hired attorney Robert Lehrman to end the prohibition, while Lucid was the brainchild of Ted Breaux, a New Orleans chemist who reverse-engineered an old bottle of absinthe to devise his formula. He worked with a French distillery to reproduce it. All have paved the way for U.S. distillers to sell their own perfected versions of the drink, which are likely to hit the shelves soon.

Lehrman said Yves Kubler, who produces a few hundred thousand bottles of absinthe a year, saw a real market for the spirit here and was eager to tap into it. So in 2000, Lehrman started making inquiries of federal regulators only to determine that the fight would be a tough one.

"When something has been banned since 1912, it's hard to get it undone," he said.
But Lehrman persevered. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau officials said they were willing to accept absinthe formulas that fall under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations that the drink contain no more than 10 parts per million of the chemical thujone, but the word absinthe on the bottle's label had to be small and used with a qualifier like St. George's Verte or Kubler's Swiss Absinthe Superieure.

Lehrman said thujone in mass quantities "is bad stuff," but small amounts are found in a number of herbs, ingredients and materials, including sage and cedar, and are considered fairly harmless. More notable is absinthe's high alcohol content, typically 120 proof or more, about 50 percent higher than vodka and whiskey.

"Look, absinthe is bad the way Jack Daniels is bad, the way Skyy Vodka is bad," says Lehrman. "The worst component is the alcohol. If you drink too much, something bad will happen."

But in 1905 the Swiss government was convinced that it was absinthe alone that turned a law-abiding citizen into a homicidal maniac. After Jean Lanfray, a 31-year-old laborer, killed his pregnant wife and two children, the Swiss government banned the spirit. Although Lanfray had sampled a bottle of absinthe before breakfast that morning,
officials failed to take into consideration that he had also consumed Creme de Menthe, cognac and soda, more than six glasses of wine and a cup of coffee laced with brandy, says Barnaby Conrad III, the San Francisco author of "Absinthe: History in a Bottle"
(Chronicle Books, 1988; the publisher is not affiliated with this newspaper).
Conrad, an artist and journalist who traced the downfall of absinthe in his book, says the drink became synonymous with the degeneration of the world's most famous bohemians, from Van Gogh's infamous ear cutting to Verlaine's debaucherous sprees of sex and rage.
Even Oscar Wilde was quoted as saying "After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world."

But Conrad says absinthe was probably the least of these artists' problems.

"Van Gogh suffered from schizophrenia, a disease that went way back in his family, and

Verlaine was a raging alcoholic," he said.

The author believes that absinthe merely became the scapegoat of politicians. Its controversy was probably fueled by the wine industry, which was threatened by the popularity of absinthe.

But the mystique of the famous liquid only adds to its allure, says Conrad, who has sold more of his books in the last five years than in the first 15 of its existence. Many young enthusiasts entranced by its folklore have tried ordering absinthe on the Internet, hoping not to get caught. Some modern-day moonshiners even tried distilling it at home.

"It's the forbidden fruit factor," says the author.

And that, he says, will certainly help sales.

"Just because you drink absinthe doesn't mean you're going to become a creative genius," Conrad warns. "But it will tickle your imagination as it tickles your brain cells."

Why the mystique?

Modern absinthe got its start as a medical elixir in the late 18th century but became immensely popular as a drink in the mid-1800s, especially among the avant-garde.
Edgar Degas created his famous painting "L'absinthe" of a woman sitting in front of a glass of absinthe, and Pablo Picasso painted "The Absinthe Drinker" during his blue period. Ernest Hemingway is said to have been a consummate absinthe drinker and was known to have a glass or two before running with the bulls.

Freelance writer C. contributed to this report. E-mail Stacy Finz at sfinz@sfchronicle.com.

The Chicago Sun Times had a contest. about the name of WRIGLY FIELD being sold; a TRIBUNE 'intern' entered with the support of a team of Tribunites. So there are those in the media with a mischievous sense of humor:

Easter bunnies, from the cute to the homicidal. check the video!

Alice's friend, the late rabbit: Everyone's favorite, BUGS!

Ah, a cute bunny!

and another cute bunny:

Frank, the bunny from DONNIE DARKO:

not so cute, but a great movie, with a fine line about Graham Greene - a woman at a parents meeting protests the teaching of his work, THE DESTRUCTORS, another parent asks if she 'even knows who Graham Greene is' to which the judmental censor replies, "I think we've all seen Bonanaza."

Now, click it twice, and watch, the most famous movie bunny, anyone seen my holy hand grenade of antioch?

HAPPY EASTER!!!!!!!!!!!

March 8-9 Blizzard Photos

A car STUCK in the street, a rescue effort by local plows, the chokeberry (home of the robbins).

An amazing snow, late in the season, worst (best?) in 40 years . . .

how lost is Persephone?

maybe she needs an Atlas, get it?

something wrong with google, pics wont post, will edit them in later.....


A few quotes from the Akron Beacon Journal this past weekend:

The sheriffs tried, “A Level 3 snow emergency has been declared in Summit County, meaning only emergency personnel are allowed on the roads”

The mailmen tried, but “One carrier was still stranded on Knollbrook Drive at 3:30 p.m. after becoming stuck 51/2 hours earlier, he said”

The plows tried, but “In Stark County, the roads were so bad that a Plain Township snowplow slid off Beverly Avenue Northeast and needed help from a front-end loader.

The nurses tried, and the hotels helped: “''We picked up 70 rooms,'' including 30 to 35
that Akron Children's Hospital rented so nurses could stay overnight, he said.”

The frugal ruled, “The city still had salt but was using it judiciously to conserve, he said. Only major hills were being salted, but Valle said cars were still having trouble negotiating them.”

the worst March snow in 10 years

I thought we were getting off early, in this our first winter in Ohio. Almost spring. There had been days in January with highs near 60 if not in the low 60s.

Now, a ton of snow. Blizzard warning, more heavy snow coming. Cover up and sleep.

But on my way to section a grapefruit I saw birds, you can gauge the amout of snow from the tree branches, or my tin plate on top of the bird feeder.

There were 4 bluejays, a cardinal, assorted titmice, and that fat loud bird (I have my audoban guide to birds of eastern north america, but that one .....)

this follows the ice storm of earlier this week. Yesterday at this time there was NO SNOW in the yard.

10 inches, 12? 15? once its like this who cares. AKRON is snowed in . . .

GUNS FOR EVERYONE! on COLLEGE SHOOTINGS......

"If people can vote and serve in the military at age 18, they should be able to carry a concealed gun," he said. ( Charles Smith, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Rifle Association)

Bill would lower concealed-gun age to 18


By MICK HINTON World Capitol Bureau
3/5/2008
Last Modified: 3/5/2008 1:32 AM


OKLAHOMA CITY -- A bill that would lower the age at which people can carry concealed weapons from 21 to 18 is headed to the state House for consideration.

"In my district when you turn 18, you already have 16 years of experience with a gun," said Rep. Jerry Ellis, who added that he was exaggerating to make his point.

[[ take a moment and watch this video



]]
Ellis, from southeastern Oklahoma, is the author of House Bill 2232, which was approved 15-1 on Monday by the House Judiciary and Public Safety Committee.

The bill was requested by the Oklahoma Rifle Association, the state affiliate of the National Rifle Association, said Ellis, D-Valliant.

Charles Smith of Yukon, executive director of the state association, said the reason for passing the bill is simple.

"If people can vote and serve in the military at age 18, they should be able to carry a concealed gun," he said.

Rep. Marian Cooksey, R-Edmond, who cast the lone dissenting vote, said she realizes that sometimes, especially in rural areas, fathers teach their sons how to hunt and handle a gun at an early age.

"I'm not against guns," she said. "But, I wonder whether 18-year-olds are old enough to carry them. I am here to vote for what I think is right."

A week ago, the judiciary committee approved a bill that would allow 21-year-olds to carry concealed weapons on college campuses and sent the bill to the House.

Ellis emphasized that his bill has nothing to do with that measure, sponsored by Rep. Jason Murphey, R-Guthrie.

But Rep. Lucky Lamons, a former longtime Tulsa police officer, said that if these bills both pass, an 18-year-old would be able to carry a concealed weapon into a college classroom.

Lamons, D-Tulsa, said he realizes that it is difficult for lawmakers to vote against legislation dealing with the Second Amendment's right to bear arms because they don't want to be perceived by their constituents as being against guns.

Lamons said college officials are quietly contacting legislators to express concerns about Murphey's bill but that administrators don't want to speak publicly against gun-carrying laws.

"It's a sad day in Oklahoma and the United States that we are even looking at these issues," Lamons said.

Rep. Mark McCullough, R-Sapulpa, who was not present during the committee meeting when the vote was taken, said he is still struggling with the merits of Ellis' legislation.

"I am a staunch supporter of gun rights and have a permit myself," said McCullough, a lawyer and a former assistant district attorney.

He and Lamons agreed that the Legislature needs to consider the bill's ramifications.

"This is something that we ought to have robust discussion about before we do this," McCullough said.

Meanwhile, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation says it is having a difficult time keeping up with all the applications for concealed-carry licenses. The OSBI has to run security and background checks on applicants within 90 days.

"We are absolutely inundated," OSBI spokeswoman Jessica Brown said. "We are barely able to process applications in the time frame allowed by law."

More than 60,000 Oklahomans are licensed to carry concealed weapons. Licenses granted in 2006 totaled 9,591. That number jumped to 16,426 in 2007, according to the OSBI.

TIME TRAVEL STIMULUS click till it plays

Sealed With A Kiss
by
Brian Hyland
Album: Greatest Hits Released: 1962

This archetypal American high-school teen love song was composed by Gary Geld and lyricist Peter Udell. The duo began their writing partnership in the early sixties and wrote over 100 songs together. One of their first songs was this, which they wrote in 1960 and was a hit for Brian Hyland two years later. Hyland said in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, "Sealed With A Kiss was recorded about a year before I did it by The Four Voices, who had a sound like The Brothers Four. It dragged and didn't have any life in it, so it wasn't a hit. I told them we should do it. Gary Geld was a classically trained musician and he had been inspired to write it from a finger exercise for the piano."

This was Hyland's biggest hit in the UK, but 2 years earlier in the US at the age of 16, he enjoyed an American chart topper with "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini."

Lyrics:

Though we've got to say good-bye
For the summer
Darling, I promise you this
I'll send you all my love
Everyday in a letter
Sealed with a kiss
CHORUS:
Yes it's gonna be cold, lonely summer
But I'll fill the emptiness
I'll send you all my dreams
Everyday in a letter
Sealed with a kiss
I'll see you in the sunlight
I'll hear your voice everywhere
I'll run to tenderly hold you
But, Darlin' you won't be there
I don't wanna say good-bye
For the summer
Knowing the love we'll miss
Let us make a pledge
To meet in September
And seal it with a kiss
(instrumental)
(CHORUS)
Sealed with a kiss
Sealed with a kiss
Sealed with a kiss