Author Archives: Hal

The Redwood Cathedral and the Universe

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“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” — John Muir

I have long misquoted this (I’m pretty sure I first read it in Steven Minkin’s otherwise fantastic novel, …A No Doubt Mad Idea), but according to the Sierra Club I’m not the only one. So, now I have the authentic quote to go by.

I’ve used it for years to describe how my mind works, and why I digress as much as I do. The digressions aren’t intentional, it’s just that picking at things leads me to those hitches.

And while I’m on the topic, listen to this:

YAMAD

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Oh, boy, is this Lexicon.

Yet Another Movie About Dorks. The principle lurking behind YAMAD is, no matter how stupid, or clutzy, or socially inept you may feel, here’s a movie (or TV series, these days) about people stupider, less graceful, etc., so a broad audience can look down on them.

Origin: There we were, dear reader, at one of our weekly movies (we cut the cord before a whole lot of people) in 1998. We were being subjected to a trailer for A Night at the Roxbury for the 35th time. It was obvious this thing was incredibly stupid. It was obvious it was going to flop. But still, some studio exec had greenlit spending $17M of budget to make and market this steaming turd.

Why? Who did they expect to show up?

Possibly fans of Will Farrell, the Godfather of YAMAD. Chris Kattan, the co-star, never really showed up too much after this. (I mean, Sharknado 5?)

No, this is a movie of consolation. No matter how bad your life is, here are some clowns who are even worse. Dumb and Dumber is YAMAD. Wayne’s World. Anchorman. Kevin Smith is the Orson Welles of YAMAD — his characters are dumb on the surface, but there’s more there than you think.

Kardashians is YAMAD plus money. Most descendants of Candid Camera (think Ridiculousness on MTV; or nearly all of MTV, these days) are YAMAD plus voyeurism.

No big summation. “I alone escaped to tell thee.”

Place Maubert at Night

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Made by leaning out our top-story mansard window. The middle of the 5e arrondissement in Paris, looking northwest up the Boulevard Saint-Germain. The thing about making black and white photos in Paris is, so many older buildings are still extant your image can be compared to classic images from the past.

Headers

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Just in case it’s not obvious, all the header images are either by me, or of me. The woman shown across multiple headers is my beautiful, smart, and forbearing wife Ulrika (who also made many of the images of me).

The Churchill Globe

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This is the Churchill Globe. It’s 127 cm, or 50”, or 4ft 2in diameter. It’s priced at £57,500, which is almost $71,000 as I post this (and doesn’t even include sales tax).

It’s made by Bellerby & Co, Globemakers, a relatively recent bespoke firm. Not only do they make the globes, in many different sizes (though this is their largest), but they’ll customize them as you wish.

This post is mostly an expression of envy.

Facebook = “You Must Die”

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Lexicon. This comes from a phonetic rendering of the word “Facebook” into Mandarin, and then translating the characters back into English.

非死不可 

Fēi sǐ bù kě

This is reminiscent of what Paul Linebarger (who also wrote science fiction as Cordwainer Smith) did during the Korean War:

While in Korea, Linebarger masterminded the surrender of thousands of Chinese troops who considered it shameful to give up their arms. He drafted leaflets explaining how the soldiers could surrender by shouting the Chinese words for ‘love,’ ‘duty,’ ‘humanity,’ and ‘virtue’–words that happened, when pronounced in that order, to sound like ‘I surrender’ in English. He considered this act to be the single most worthwhile thing he had done in his life.

Linebarger here is Paul Linebarger, the real name of Cordwainer Smith. The Chinese words mentioned are probably 爱责仁德, pronounced “ài zé rén dé,” a fair approximation of the English.

(Rooting around about him, I see Project Gutenberg has five works by Linebarger, one of which is a novella written under his Cordwainer Smith pseudonym, three of which are works about China, and the fifth is Psychological Warfare, the book that established the field.)

”The Hot Dog Is Enlightened “

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Lexicon for Ulrika and myself. This originally comes from the FAQ for the Usenet newsgroup alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, which has a number of amusing bits. This is by far the one we quote, though. Here’s the whole section:

3-4. 

Hey, I heard a great Buddhist joke…

Yeah, we know. Let us tell it to you instead:

A zen student walks up to a hot dog vendor and says, “Make me one with everything.”

But we have a better ending:

The vendor then proceeds to throw the student to the ground and shove a Hebrew National, all-beef, kosher hot dog with Bob’s Own Zesty Vegetarian Chili into the student’s left nostril while screaming, “Do you know how many times I’ve heard that one?!?!”

The hot dog is enlightened.