The Sunday paper

News:

List found
Some months ago, I encountered a slip of graph paper in my files; it contained a hand-written list of book titles. I apparently wrote it who knows when back in the day; my best guess would be somewhere about 1994 (I feel a vague association between this list and my tenure at the Green Lake library). I thought it was a curiosity, and threw it back into the data stream, as it were.

Well, since I have this little summer self-improvement project that involves a lot of reading, I decided to dig it out and perhaps use it a structure for my reading. Of course, I couldn't lay my hands on it - it wasn't in any of the "current project" folders that I keep. Its absence was a niggling loose end.

Last night, with Swing Years on the radio, I launched a major file clean-up. I went through the four drawers of my file cabinet and three boxes of "to be filed" paperwork, purging old lesson plans, paper copies of class records, old utility bills, birthday cards, old ads and other stuff. About six inches from the bottom of the last stack, I found the list. (I also found some other neat stuff which may turn up here later.)

It's an oddly apt list on a number of levels. I wonder what impelled me to compile it, and what kept me from reading my way through it. It's a bit bracing to think that I could have spent so much time and effort on something -- it's very neat handwriting, for me -- and have never followed up on it at all. I'm not sure that it is the the list for me, who I am today, but it looks like a pretty good place to start.

(Click pic to embiggen. And yes, I see the error in the Campbell title.)

Scooter scene seen
As I was walking down to the U-District yesterdayto meet Dingo for a GURPS conference, I encountered a veritable horde of scooters proceeding en masse down Ravenna Boulevard toward U-Village. The sight of all those scooters, all different colors and makes and models, made me sigh for the recently departed Ruby. I don't think I would ever have joined such a party, but it would have been nice to be eligible.

Oddly, I have encountered a couple of people recently who are considering a scooter as their primary or secondary transportation mode, and they are running into the same barrier that I have found when considering replacing Ruby: the damn things are just too expensive. The Craig's List offerings seem to be priced 20-30% above last year. The invisible hand of the market makes itself felt!

Cats are weird
I don't know if it was the weather or what, but all the cats I had to deal with yesterday -- Sage, the cat-sittee, as well as the two who live here -- were all acting oddly, either overcharged or lethargic. At least Selkie appears to be back to normal, healthwise.

Travel section:

Pictures from paradise
More photographs from Otis, enjoying her time in Maui:

Otis and brah

C'mon, are you at all surprised?

Words are superfluous

Automotive section:

VW 100 miles-to-the-liter car
This is the first car that I have seen in twenty years that would make me actually consider getting a car loan. It reminds me very much of an independently-designed concept car that I saw back in the eighties; I think it was called the Aerostar (it predated the minivan) and it had the same tandem design, albeit with a less high-tech look (it looked more like an airplane fuselage sitting on the chassis of an old-school formula-one care). I can't even find any information on that one; this new VW version looks cool, though.

(Click pic for link.)

Entertainment section:

Punk rockers are still relevant alive?
Perhaps Jon of Monmouth can give us an informed response to this trailer, since he was once, briefly, a member of the Sex Pistols (although Wikipedia seems not to mention him for some reason). Apparently, this proposed ten-part television series has not yet found a home...

(Click pic for link.)




Funnies:

Just because it's relevant to our lead story, here's Alison Bechtel's recent graphic essay on reading the stuff we're "supposed" to read.

(Click pic for... ah, you've got it by now, no?)