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What pisses you off?

Created by ptocheia

Urg. Still sick. I went to class, and practiced sidekick 'til my hips burned, then did some two-on-one sparring, against a blue belt and a white belt. Two-on-one is where people get hurt, and it's usually not the one. He's bouncing around, madly trying to keep one person behind the other, while deflecting the nearer attacker's blows. This movement doesn't leave much room for error, and if he gets too excited, it's easy for him to move too fast too hard, and really smack somebody. We survived with minor injuries.

All right, Internet. Brace yourself for my news.

I am engaged. To an impossibly lovely woman, who makes me happier than I knew was possible. She also makes me clean the bathroom, but that's a small price to pay.

Being engaged is wonderful, of course, but it seems to consist mainly of planning a wedding, which is less fun than eye surgery. And of course, when I find certain pages on my history, it gives me the jibblies.

Sick. I am sick. Never has the term Odious better applied to my mucous-oozing, phlegm-rattling, bleary-eyed, dim-witted self. Naturally, I have a three hour martial arts class today. Miss it? Never! Duff Gardens...hoorah!

My view of Mars was obscured by rainclouds. They thought they'd beaten me, but there's no rain in space, bastards.

Arts and Letters Daily. Humanism? No. Yes.

Of course, from my point of view this argument is like two guys arguing about whether their space aliens abductors were green or grey.

Now the unbelievers among you can see the truth.

Friedrich of 2 Blowhards comments on Self magazine. I myself am an enormous fan of Clueless, and consider it the best film adaptation of Emma yet. But I'd rather discuss the origin of the attitude he decries.

To view health as the only important quality is a perfectly logical conclusion--based on materialist premises. If there is no spirit, there is no benefit to morality except to improve health and increase one's chances of breeding successfully; indeed, those two criteria define morality. A good action is one which increases personal well-being or the well-being of descendants--and well-being is limited to bodily health.

And on those two Self magazine has its sights. Beauty is a far greater attractor of a potential mate than any other factor, and so Self emphasizes looks. Of course, one's mate will tend to leave if one demonstrates mental instability, so being happy ("carefree") becomes important. This problem affects women more, so while we see men's magazines about beauty, mental health is seldom discussed.

This view of morality-as-health has more serious results than causing people to worry more about their weight than, say, their soul. I read an article some time ago (this will be a link if I can again track it down) about the attempt to reform criminals by demonstrating that their actions were irrational; that is, that they were less likely to succeed through an illegal strategy than a legal one. Leaving aside the questionable assumption (that legal methods are more rewarding), this argument seems to me to teach a single lesson: don't get caught. If the wrongness of an action is defined solely by its effects on my physical well-being, I have an obligation--a moral obligation--to succeed in my illegal doings and get off scot free, not to restrain myself.

They believe that all the evil results of human crime are the results of the system that calls it crime. They do not believe that the crime creates the punishment. They believe that the punishment has created the crime. They believe that if a man seduced seven women he would naturally walk away as blameless as the flowers of spring. They believe that if a man picked a pocket he would naturally feel exquisitely good.

G. K. Chesterton

The reform program was an abyssmal failure, as I recall, with recidivist rates higher than the control group, who received no counseling. Character, as Mr. Moody once observed, is what you are in the dark.

I have seldom been prouder or more sure of my Welsh ancestry. A crossbow has style.

Today I finally discovered a potential use for my crescent kick. I've never been terribly impressed with it as a technique; others exist which follow the same line, with more power and a better striking surface. Moreover, I'm unable to get mine above solar plexus height without losing most of the benefits--and I don't like high kicks anyway. Sour grapes? Maybe, but also practicality. High kicks get grabbed.

Which got me thinking about the crescent kick. What if I were fighting a grabber, who was looking for a leg down with which to take me? My standard feeling is, "Oh, you want to use both hands (one won't be enough) to control one of my legs? Okay, but here's one of mine in your eye/collarbone/ear/jaw/solar plexus/floating ribs!" But a good wrestler could take me down fast enough to prevent my counter.

This is where the crescent kick comes in. If I telegraph it, to draw a grab (Attack By Drawing), I can prevent the grab from succeeding by striking at the exposed hand with the unexpected horizontal motion of the kick, as opposed to the vertical motion of a front kick. Having opened up my opponent's guard in this way, I consider my options and inflict some damage.

I have news. The Internet can't handle it right now, but I may share it later. This is what's known as a "teaser".

UPDATE: Remember "if you have to ask, it isn't shock and awe"? Keep that in mind.

I recently purchased The Scourge of the Dark Continent, by James Loriega. It's a guide to the martial use of the African sjambok, as the subtitle would suggest ("the martial use of the African sjambok"). It's excellent on the basics of sjambok use, but really only enters into detail regarding the history of the weapon. For the martial uses the book describes, some familiarity with whips or sticks, or for preference both, would be necessary to understand the strikes he describes. But the three guards are there, and the lines of attacks are well described, as well as the intended result (generally, pain).

He also discusses the use of the sjambok with another weapon, especially a knife, and described how such a combination shores up the sjambok's weakness. The sjambok, while wonderful at long range, and effective close up, is not very useful in the middle distance, although certain strikes can wrap around the target to hit unprotected areas. But adding a knife allows you to use the sjambok to keep them at long distance against the threat of a close to short, where either weapon can come into play with great speed and effectiveness.

Mr. Loriega includes tips on customizing your sjambok, and addresses the chief problem of the synthetics: the agonizingly poorly designed handle. The problem is not that the handle is malformed or likely to slip from your hand; it's just painful to hold. Which is not a good thing; I want the painful end to be the other one, the one encountered by my victim...er, assailant.

In the heat of composition I find that I have inadvertently allowed myself to assume the form of a large centipede.
--C. S. Lewis

You are Raskolnikov of "Crime and
Punishment". You are a student who has
dropped out of college, cosumed with your
ideas, much to the concern of your family and
friends. What's interesting you the most right
now is your idea of surpassing morality, and
becoming a "superman". However, your
love of a religious prostitute, your concern
for your sister, and your guilty conscience
indicates that there is morality. Watch out for
urbane police inspectors!


Which Dostoyevsky protagonist are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

This is not a quiz that can end well.

I attended Katya Kabanova last night, whch I'm not going to review, except to say that it was surpassingly lovely, and excited fear and pity. Also, Patricia Risley, who is beautiful and talented and played Dorabella in Cosi and Varvara last night, cannot keep her dress down to save her life.

Further Adventures of the Family Mustelidae

Someone had recently killed a skunk on the way home. It's surprising how pleasant the smell is. It's complex, an animal smell opposed to the faked flowers and spices we surround ourselves with; I can tell why civet became popular as a perfume, if it's like this scent. It is, I've decided, to the nose as red wine just starting on its way to vinegar is to the palate. Unmistakeable, at first experience both intriguing and unsettling.

I've never been able to guess if the scent of such road-kills is an involuntary reaction after death, like people emptying their bowels, or if the skunk has one brief moment of olfactory defiance before its demise.

"...seeking to discredit astrology." Well, um, yeah.
Link via Fark.

Snazzy site worth a visit. It rambles a bit, but then, I've just written posts on moral law, the zorilla, and the various weapons I own. So I'm not getting uppity.

Z is zorilla, in fragrance unmatched,
Whose nocturnal rooting seeks rodents to snatch.
He hides from all comers beneath a great stone;
His scent glands ensure that he's left quite alone.

Hmm. Doesn't scan. Ictonyx striatus deserves better.

I sometimes encounter the idea that, were it not for laws against assault, I would race down the street, waving some weapon or other (and Heaven knows I've got some choice in that matter), striking down women, children, and the infirm. Let us clear up something.

I avoid such behavior not because the law has established moral behavior, but because I have the moral law within me.

Kant: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.

Laws are poor ways to create behavior; they are much more successful when they codify what people already believe. Examine Prohibition, that rousing success, and its modern counterpart, the War on Drugs. People who choose not to obey those laws are persecuted to ludicrous extents, and yet the behavior continues. Drug use is down among teens but steady elsewhere. The Eighteenth Amendment did not stop people from drinking bootleg hooch and listening to the jazz. Now the morality of environmental laws, affirmative action, and minimum wage is debatable. Even for one like me, who is rather uncomfortable arguing anything but a priori principles. But such laws cannot succeed if they do not reflect the behavior people would tend to engage in in any case.

Such laws can only occur in a society that has sufficient capital to focus on such things, rather than being preoccupied with the wolf which is right outside the door. Decent societies progress, in charity and in wisdom. A society unready for such laws might not survive them.

Too Hegelian a view of history? Tant pis, man.

Practicing with a whip is so much fun: the SNAP! at the end of a correctly aligned strike is impossibly congratulatory. I get out at least once a week with my (six foot) nylon whip, but I'm feeling a bit constrained with it right now. I'm chaining five or six differently directed attacks together, and getting good power and precision into them much of the time. There's just not that much more for me to do, particularly since I'm more interested in the self-defense aspects of flexible weapons; I practice with my belt after I've finished with the whip.

The sjambok is still a favorite of mine, and I combine its practice with fencing. The fencing footwork is partially applicable to all martial movement, and the lunge, I've found, is almost never expected by martial artists who haven't studied fencing themselves. Since I've neglected my fencing for a few years, my lunge is slow and predictable, but when I get it back to full speed, I'll enjoy myself greatly in sparring. Especially when I add in the fencing "fakes", which delude the opponent into moving the wrong way. They need to be adapted to this purpose, of course, and one can't move the precise motions from fencing to bare-handed sparring, but 'twill serve.

My short staff is the most often absent of my weapons. I'm learning xing-yi staff, which is entirely different from the other styles I've encountered. Less brutal, and pleasanter to watch. I'm not deriding it, or commenting on its effectiveness, but it's composed of more graceful techniques. I still practice, but only when I've scheduled it for myself. On a whim, I'm much more likely to grab some other implement of damage.

The sticks get a lot of play, against air or trees or (when no one's around to yell at me) the heavy bag. My siniwallis are becoming much more controlled, and my strikes have more power behind them. Sticks are the most practical of the weapons with which I practice; there's always something around one can use like a truncheon.

The cane is fun, but without a partner, I'm using it more or less just like a stick, or practicing my takedowns on an unsuspecting tree--which nevertheless resists them unmoving. There's little satisfaction to tripping air, or to tugging hopelessly on the trunk of an immutable juniper. I need, in short, a new toy. I'm thinking something sharp.

[M]en proclaim as a great mind and profound thinker a dull, ignorant philosophaster, a scribbler of nonsense, who by his ineffably hollow verbiage thoroughly and permanently disorganizes their brains; I refer to our dearly beloved Hegel.
--Schopenhauer, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

I realize that a number of my quotations of Hegel have been nasty, this not the least of them. I really don't have an agenda against him; I just think that philosophers getting personal is amusing. My basic feeling about Schopenhauer, keeping this quote in mind, is: Physician, heal thyself.

The Guardian catches up with Samizdata regarding Mr. Lynds' new theory of time.

An old and hoary restaurant superstition has it that catastrophes occur near or during full moons. I began to believe it when the second fire started last night. When the drunken customer made it all the way to the washroom, but not the toilet before an...unfortunate incident, my new-found faith was only strengthened. But when an usually immensely skilled waitress spilled a tray of eight steaks, all medium-well and thus requiring quite some time to start again, I decided to test out another restaurant superstition: any bad yin can be cancelled by the equivalent yang from a suitable source. That is, in English, "drink cocktails until it goes away". I am delighted to report this strategy was a complete success.

I recently upgraded to Avant Browser, and can no longer remember how I did without it. It blocks pop-ups, has tabs, is perfectly intuitive, and is free free free! I'm still giddy. So long, IE! Hello, 21st century!

UPDATE: Avant Browser gets a perma-link, raising its total links on this page to three.

We are now number one for a Yahoo search for 'cymbal banging monkey bender', so something's going right.

All Madame Mao, all the time. Her private jet is being turned into a restaurant.

take the nerd test.


and go to mewing.net. a nerd utopia.

Lies! All lies! But that should be a comma after "pretentious". And I'm not sure "immaculate" syntax is really what one's after (excuse me; "that after which one is"); all these little spots mean something.

A Review of Madame Mao, Predictably Obtuse

It's as though the Simpsons did Commies! The Musical!

Act I opens with Jiang Ching, our heroine, hanged in a prison cell, and goes downhill from there. She laments her misfortune, and curses the men "who taught [her] how to hate." At this point I realized that this was not going to be a subtle opera.

We watch as Jiang Ching is put on trial (I imagine she's remembering all this, but it could also be that the librettist really liked Memento), in a risible scene in which the chorus of soldiers and bureaucrats march about and shout at her to "Confess!" and also to "Shut up!" at the same time. Now wonder she was convicted. We travel further back in time, to see a young (and fairly hot) Jiang Ching as a ridiculously untalented actress. I'd have called the struggle between reality and drama subtext, except that it wasn't. When you come out and say things like, "I have played this part [Nora, from A Doll's House], and I have played another part in the world", it's not subtext. It's just text.

A nice waltz follows, the high point of the Act musically, being pleasant to hear. Jiang Ching is betrayed by her lover. Who can blame him? She needs a new job, so a good bit of Chinese opera follows, which was fun to watch and enjoyable to listen to, with a real melody and not just relentless ratchets and tympani. Jiang appears as Mu Gu-ying, and looks very cute in her little pink outfit and matching spear. She's accessorized!

The Chairman (Fanfare!) has come to watch the show, and applauds vigorously. It's the only thing he does vigorously in the opera; more on that in a bit. Jiang's cute little outfit ends up on the floor (this is what kept me from taking an early intermission), and the Chairman (Fanfare!) proceeds to get jiggy with it (not the outfit), to an unintentionally hilarious trombone (the woman in front of me muttered, "Yeah, I know how that is").

In comes Zhi-Zhen, Mao's (Fanfare!) wife. She and Jiang tussle. No one cares who wins. Jiang finally drops her with a nifty rabbit punch. Zhi-Zhen curses them and is taken to an asylum (historic fact, ladies and gentlemen).

The music can be divided into three sections: sound effects (as for a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but with less subtlety), five notes sequentially repeated until an aural after-image appears, and the Fanfare for Chairman Mao. I suppose the Fanfare could be called a leitmotif, but since it and the waltz are the only recognizable themes in this act, it seems unnecessary to do so.

Act II? Plot wise, stuff happens. Mao (Fanfare!) gets sick, Jiang takes over and decides China has too much culture. Better kill some people! She does so, but, strangely, things don't improve. Mao (Fanfare!) dies. Jiang dies. The opera ends, right where it began, with Jiang hanged. Jeez, I wasted two hours and I could've left five minutes in.

Musically, Act II can easily be recreated at home. Get a copy of Mao's (Fanfare!) Little Red Book. Read phrases from it in random tones. While doing this, take an ordinary ballpeen hammer, and strike yourself repeatedly on the forehead with every high note. Now you've got it. Interestingly, Act II had the only real chord progressions in the opera, but by then I was too beaten to care.

My overall impression? Drinks at the Santa Fe Opera are overpriced.

UPDATE: Here. Real reviews, with a brief note attached by me.

San Diego Magazine likes it. Apparently "banal" means "inoffensive to the ears". Also, note self-congratulatory bit about Eastern scales.

Houston Chronicle tries so hard to be nice.

Cincinnati Enquirer digs on spectacle. Who doesn't?

L.A. Times, with a pun in rather poor taste for the title.

And there you go. Informed opinion!

Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.
--Sir Francis Bacon

Quantum critical points were predicted by Einstein, in reference to super-cooled atoms acting in concert. That's all I have to add to this article. Although, if I were Dave Barry, I might point out that "Super Cool and the Atoms--in Concert"...oh, never mind.

This is just lazy thinking.

Correlation is not causality. I see no reason to assume that the speech energy centers are not caused by the harmonic scale, rather than the other way 'round. Boethius was more scientific than this study is.

A trip to North Korea.

Peculiar:

Don't know when you'll get this post, since it sounded like you were heading right back out again, but I agree with most of what you said. I may have come down hard on the plot since, for me, that's the easiest element to analyse.

But Mozart's music is, once more for me, too smart. I'm led everywhere, without room to manuever. The emotions I'm to feel, the insights I'm to have, all are arranged neatly for me and presented on a platter. I find it more satisfying to struggle with the music, insofar as my frailties in that arena will allow it.

'Per pieta' is the exception here; the sense of spiralling away from simplicity is physically disorienting as one listens. SFO's Fiordiligi went off-tone enough that I could hear it towards the end, which didn't help (recorded versus live is a conversation for another time), but I still found it astonishingly lovely and affecting, while much of the rest of the music was affected.

But you're absolutely right about the operatic outlook of the characters, and that the music is perfect for them. Unfortunately, on the surface the characters remind me of, well, the people in The Anniversary Party, with the exceptions of Fiordiligi and Ferrando. They both seem sincere, and I kept hoping through their duet that they would end up together. Alas, not to be, for the da Pontian gods of convenience decree that all must end wrapped tightly and bound with a neat bow of good humor. This may be regret of this contrivance that led me to ascribe emptiness to their moments together, which is certainly da Ponte's invention. Indeed, all of the characters are deeper in the music than anywhere else, something which is true of all Mozart's operas I've encountered. It may simply have been too much work for any librettist to keep up with this appalling gifted genius.

Great to hear from you! If you get a chance (and I know you're out nearly all the time, but still), send me any links you'd like for your section, and categories, etc. for them. Or just put them up yourself, I suppose.

Odious has finally baited me into surfacing to respond briefly to his Cosi fan tutte post (sorry about the bad orthography, but I don’t have an html reference here in Frogtown, Utah). I agree with many of his statements, but I place the blame for the opera’s weaknesses squarely on da Ponte; Mozart develops the characters musically well eyond the degree one would think possible from the libretto. In my view, the principle interest in the opera is in the interplay between music and psychology in characters who possess a fundamentally operatic outlook on life and love. "Come scoglio" and "Un’ aura amorosa" are prime examples of operatic grandstanding and musical affectation, but that does not mean the emotions behind them are necessarily empty or unreal. The far more convincing "Per pieta, ben mio, perdona" begins with a seemingly earnest simplicity, but at the repetition of the first stanza Fiordiligi cannot resist her singer’s temptation to ornament the melody, and thereafter she gets carried away until the end of the aria is full of the wide intervals, trills, and arpeggios which characterize her role in general and "Come scoglio" in particular. She and Ferrando have a propensity, like so many of us, to get caught up in the tempo and key signature of a dramatic moment; and at last they cannot resist the temptations of a duet in "Fra gli amplessi". But such moments are not necessarily empty or meaningless; we mostly tend to ascribe emptiness only to those of them which we later come to regret.

The opera’s great weakness is certainly the Act II finale, which I have never found anywhere near as exciting, moving, or fun as the finale of the first act. I agree with the common critical view that the libretto to Cosi was unworthy of Mozart. All the complexity and awkwardness of the characters’ relationships are strait-jacketed back into the status quo, and the composer’s genius is denied any opportunity to seek musical answers to the questions of musical emotion which have been raised. One must remember that Mozart was quite in need of quick money in 1789, and that in the late 18th century composers and librettists did not typically engage in the close collaborations which produced some of the greatest works of the 19th. Despite its flaws Cosi fan tutte contains some of Mozart’s best music, and its many ensembles and relatively few arias give it a dazzle and momentum which is lacking in much of Figaro and Don Giovanni, which for all their superior psychological insight contain some awfully plodding sections.

Anyhow, the rivers are still running and I’m still on them. Up in Idaho, a local firefighter from Salmon was sadly killed in a fire which I floated through the next day. On the Middle Fork of the Salmon we had a quite frightening evacuation of a guide, who had a very peculiar and scary set of internal symptoms; she came out all right, but is still looking for a more satisfactory explanation of her condition than she received in the Missoula, MT emergency room. I just ran Desolation and Gray canyons on the Green here in eastern Utah, and tomorrow I’m driving back north for another Middle Fork and two more Main Salmon trips. Good stuff from Odious lately, and it’s awfully odd to know that a blogging heroine like Ms. Solent occasionally finds us worth a glance.

Please observe the lovely new perma-links. No one linked has been informed, since I'm not expecting to drive significant traffic their way. No, this is simply part of my on-going plan to transfer as much of my memory on-line as possible, so scientists--from The Future--can someday recreate me from my posts. G-d help us all.

To the unfortunate who came here looking for Swinburne's limericks: it wasn't this one:

There was a young girl of Aberystwyth,
Who took grain to the mill to make grist with.
The Miller's son Jack,
Laid her on her back,
And united the organs they pissed with.

But good luck! You poor bastard.

And that's all the smut you'll get from this blog.

Oh, I want to mention that I finally figured out what's wrong with Hegel, and can now put the damned book down.

I shall see Madame Mao on Friday. Expect a review fogged by plum wine and apathy.

So Samizadata thinks that this theory of time is interesting. So do I. As Humpty Dumpty said, I'd like to see it worked out on paper, but I do have one initial thought.

Let's assume that the uncertainty of a particle's position in space and momentum when measured simultaneously in space-like dimensions also applies in time-like ones. I know that momentum already has a time value, and the concept of simultaneity needs a bit of redefinition, but so what? Deal with it. If I am to believe in "electron clouds" in which the particle is spread over a bell-curve of probability, in all places at once, I have little difficulty believing that a particle may be similarly spread through time, rather than existing in an 'instant'. An instant seems to me to be an unsupportable idea in quantum mechanics.

Indeed, it seems to me that the increase in energy as the particle increases in speed may correspond to an increase in energy as the particle increases in speed in the time-like dimension, with effects much like those described by General Relativity. Most particles were given a space-like momentum with the Big Bang, and have only local intereference to alter it. Why not a similar time-like momentum given simultaneously (as simultaneously as things get without a time-like dimension), and interefered with locally. If time is as tiny as I believe String Theory suggests, the available local alterations would be similarly tiny.

Of course, how would we see such a particle, accelerating through time? We are ourselves the measure of time, and would see...more rapid alteration, a predictable shortening and increased density. It would look a great deal like acceleration in space, I suppose.

I should be more careful with my parallels; I've no cause for thinking that the time-like dimension admits of something like momentum. Ah well. Caveat lector.

UPDATE: Lynds' theory sure doesn't solve Zeno's paradox, though. At least if we're associating the uncertainty principle with his lack of instants. The paper seems more philosophical than anything else. Didn't Newton take care of all this for us?

A Biased and Ignorant Dawkins of a Review of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, as Performed by the Santa Fe Opera Company

I enjoyed it.

There's not much more to say. It was...nice. Ineffectual, pleasant, with lovely music and a competent cast. Nice. The plot places in squarely in the camp of Whiffle-ball opera, in which nothing serious ever happens. Even when Ferrando learns that Dorabella has betrayed him, and sings of his wretchedness, or when Fiordiligi despairs of her weakness, one is never worried that something bad might happen. The music won't allow it; it's too accomplished to make one consider that the lives of our actors might be less strictly organized.

The scenery consisted mainly of mirrored surfaces, playing on the obvious symmetries (and brief, shallow, assymmetries) of the two couples. Costumes were lovely, with Dorabella's skirt seemed to be designed to fly up at the slightest torque. My main complaint is not with the performance, but the opera.

In the hands of a Shakespeare, the uncertainty of love and fidelity becomes both comic and deeply disturbing. Midsummer Night's Dream has lovers declare their feelings undying, drink a potion, and promptly switch teams. While it's amusing, the idea that our loves and hates can be so easily constructed and destroyed is uncomfortable. What credence can the lovers give the declarations of their beloveds, when they've seen how little it takes for them to alter? Mozart, instead, and some blame probably rests with da Ponte, gives us fluff in which feelings are never shown to be strong in the first place. The boys take the bet far too quickly; one suspects they have their own doubts. Instead of a world in which deep feeling exist, but are terribly mutable, such feelings are ruled out from the first.

The idea of symmetry, and its failure, is also left unexplored. In the hands of a Chaucer, in the Knight's Tale, we get a glimpse at the differences between the two heroes, and their motives in struggling for Emily. Different reasons have led them to the same actions. Peculiar wrote a prize paper on much this subject. In Cosi, the couples differ only slightly. Dorabella is more easily won than Fiordiligi...or is it that Ferrando is less winning than Guglielmo? It doesn't matter; in the end, both women give in, and both men forgive them (more or less).

Properly told, the plot could have been the source of a great deal of creepiness. For Mozart and da Ponte, it was just an excuse for amazing music and some hours' entertainment, easily told and easily forgotten.

As an example, I've spent a lot more time recently listening to the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and thinking about it than I can bring myself to spend on Cosi. In fact, I've just reached the title track now....

So, well, then.

We never made it to Carlsbad. On our way, we stopped in White Sands National Park, which is an astounding site. For hundreds of square miles gypsum sands stretch, perfectly white except in the places where cryptobiotic soil has grown, anchoring larger plants like yucca, which struggle year by year to keep themselves out of the drifts, lifting themselves higher on lengthening trunks. In the middle of the dunes I cannot imagine navigating, unless one were well acquainted with the stars. The dunes become an infinite expanse of white, the sun near blinding, just as it is in snow-covered fields.

After a certain amount of horseplay and sunburn, we returned to our car, unpacked the cooler, and ate quickly at one of the alien picnic benches. the benches are covered by a single piece of sheet metal, which is fastened vertically on the south side of the bench and curves over the top of it. Seeing a group of them, one thinks of a fleet of tiny sailing ships, designed only for this place, and about to release their hold on the ground and be carried off over the dunes.

Coming ashore from our table, we boarded our car, the driver turned the key and was rewarded with...a gentle fizzing noise. "Hmm," we thought, collectively, like Leibnizian monads, "perhaps the battery is dead, or there is a loose connection." After some focused peering beneath the hood, we found that, indeed, a connection was loose, and the only tools we had (a good-bye present from the lovely folks at Jiffy Lube. They wanted them to be a surprise, so they hid them under the hood, and didn't tell us about them. Thank you, Jiffy Lube!) were an useless pair of pliers and a strange wire ending in an unpleasant hook at the end, which looked like the product of Torquemada's dreams after a long night of absinthe.

Fortunately, someone had had the brains to apply for AAA membership, and left with two other companions to get a tow-truck. I and another girl were left to occupy ourselves and make sure that the car was not stolen. We played gin. We played rummy. We played Speed, and near the end I was desperate enough to teach her to play War, the worst game ever devised. As the water supply and the sun steadily lowered, I began to concoct paranoid fantasies. They had left us forever, and were sitting in a swimming pool, in Dairy Queen, eating ice cream and being waited on by friendly penguins. The treacherous birds' natural coloring makes them perfect for the job. While we sat here, in the pit of Sarlak, playing half-witted card games, and turning a pleasant shade which Crayola calls "Boiled Lobster".

I was about to suggest that my companion and I bury ourselves in the sand and wait, before leaping on the next passers-by like trapdoor spiders, when our friends came back with a tow-truck. A twist of the ratchet and a jump later, we were on our way.

A mile down the highway, the driver made the mistake of hitting the brake. The car died. We pulled over. Our companions raced to a store and bought jumper cables. Power was restored. We drover further. The brake was pressed, the car was killed. This time, we had it towed to a mechanic's in scenic Alamogordo, who would be open in just a day and a half.

Alamogordo, as a base of operations, leaves several things to be desired. On the pro side weighs the Space Museum, one of the most enjoyable museums I've ever attended. Anyone who can go through it and not emerge teary-eyed has no soul. The men and women who took those great leaps for mankind shall never be forgotten. And have you ever wanted to land the shuttle? Here's your chance.

However, the restaurant we chose served my second beer at room temperature. Definite con.

I'm tired, so here's the pith: we're back, safely, and with a very nice poster of the solar system. Heaven our destination, indeed. I will post further on that tomorrow.

I'm off to Carlsbad for the week-end, so you'll just have to wait for my review of Cosi Fan Tutte. Hint: some nice fanservice from Dorabella.

I've often said that if one can't express one's philosophy on a t-shirt, it's not worth holding.