I already knew that ssa.gov, the site for Social Security, won’t let you sign in from an iPad. It doesn’t tell you that’s the problem — you get an error message saying there are “technical difficulties” — but that’s what happens.
ttp.cbp.dhs.gov — the site for the Trusted Traveler Program, which includes things like Global Entry — lets you sign in just fine.
irs.gov lets you sign in. Or so I thought. You can look at your account. You can make payments. But set up a payment program to pay your taxes on a monthly schedule? “Technical difficulties” again.
Fortunately I have a Windows 11 laptop in here, so I could do what I needed to do. But the trial and error to find out what is allowed, and what isn’t (especially since they won’t just, you know, tell me) may drive me mad someday. (Statler! Waldorf! Stop that snickering about “someday.”)
It was back in the late 1980s, and both Ulrika and I were working (in a volunteer way) the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Agoura, CA. There was something else trying to start up, and they were… highly interested in people with experience helping their enterprise. Word came down that anyone who worked or aided in any way a, “confusingly similar Renaissance event” would be canned, banned, and called nasty things forever more.
I mention all this because that phrase entered our lexicon. “Confusingly similar {x}…” is more useful than you might think.
For example, Ted Lasso’sthird season features a tall, knot-top, bicycle kicking superstar character named Zava. And it’s fairly clear he’s based on Zlatan Ibrahimović. So we call Zava , “the confusingly similar Zlatan character.”
I heard yesterday that Sakamoto had died. It was from cancer, and not wholly unexpected, but it still saddens me.
The first CD I bought was the soundtrack to Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. That meant I also had to buy a player for it, and then hook it up to my big receiver (the fashion of the time). Both the movie and CDs themselves came out in 1983, but I didn’t buy the disc until 1987.
“In summer 2018, it emerged that Sakamoto had found the music so bad at his favorite Japanese restaurant in Manhattan (he had long divided his time between Tokyo and New York) that he contacted the chef and offered to create a playlist. He went on to do the same for a new bar and restaurant the chef opened, without payment or fanfare.”
(The restaurant was Kajitsu, in Murray Hill. If you go to their website, you’ll find it’s now advising you to look at *.jp domain… because they’ve closed, and retrenched.)
Sakamoto won the Oscar for the music in The Last Emperor, which frequently looked like one long music video for him. But perhaps my favorite score he did was for Tony Takitani.
Lexicon. Björk discusses her notebook of lyrics. “This is the lyric to a song about my best mate, Jóga. But all the other pages? There’s absolutely no way I’ll open for you, whatever you offer me. Because that’s so private it’s scary. And I’ve got a beautiful little secret code which is called ‘Icelandic,’ so you guys will never find out what it says in this.”
I originally did this as a comment on someone else’s LJ, back in 2008. But I’d like to get it over here, so it’s more easily searchable.
So. I’ve been owing you this for a while. I mostly do my LJ stuff at my job, where I work the graveyard shift. It’s been such that I haven’t really felt up to it. But, as I say, I owe you, and who knows? This might be the first draft of a letter to le Carré, where I’d like to see what he says before he dies.
Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Specifically, 1998, and Ulrika is on her royal progress as North American TAFF delegate to the UK, and I’m the consort along for the ride.
We go to London, and as a devoted reader of le Carré and Hanff I want to see two things: “The Circus” and 84 Charing Cross Road. I know neither SOE nor MI6 ever had a HQ near Cambridge Circus, but there you go. I also know that Marks and Co., the bookshop in 84 Charing Cross Rd the book and movie, is now only marked by a brass plaque. Again, no problem, I’m just curious.
So we go to the physical location, 84 Charing Cross Rd and… Well, have you ever seen Charade? Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn? There’s a sequence in it when everyone is walking through a stamp fair in Paris, and then suddenly each of them put two and two together, and their heads start whirling about.
This was very like that. Because, you see, 84 Charing Cross Road is just on the edge of Cambridge Circus.
Now, let’s fill in a bit. “Marks and Co.” stands for “Marks and Cohen,” and was the actual shop. Leo Marks — screenwriter of Peeping Tom, friend of Helene Hanff, and cryptographer extraordinaire — was the son of Mr. Marks. If you read Between Silk and Cyanide, Leo’s memoir, you’ll see that he frequently used antiquarian books as the plain text for various ciphers he would send with agents into the field during his days at SOE/MI6. In addition, le Carré, who worked at MI6 at roughly the same time as Marks (a little later, but not much) does exactly the same thing. Note his use of the Simplicissimus in A Perfect Spy, acknowledged to be his most autobiographical book.
So… If one was a cryptographer who used antiquarian books as plain text, and if one was also the son of the owner of an antiquarian book shop, what would be the easiest way to distribute such books around the world?
One of the big questions that just slides by in 84 Charing Cross Rd is, what in the world was Marks and Co. doing having an ad in the Saturday Review for Miss Hanff to find in the first place? This hypothesis suggests an answer.
But it goes further.
Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins’ character in the movie) had some very interesting neighbors. Namely, Morris Cohen and Lona Cohen (known during their UK days as Peter and Helen Kroger). The Cohens were Soviet spies of long standing, having been among those assigned to Los Alamos to try to get nuclear information during WWII. Not only did they live quite nearby to Frank Doel, they also worked — wait for it — as antiquarian book sellers.
I don’t think that was an accident. I think the Sovs twigged on to what was happening at Marks and Co., and assigned the Cohens to try to keep tabs on Frank Doel. Hanff jokes this about in the book — or rather, she publishes a letter from Nora Doel (Mrs. Frank, played by an almost unrecognizable Judi Dench in the film) that treats the whole matter lightly.
But I think le Carré also knew what was going on, and placed headquarters at “The Circus” because, even if there was no staff housed there, there were considerable communications going through the place.
Heck, dare we say it? Could Frank Doel be the role model for George Smiley? Was he sufficiently bookish and anonymous in person for that, no matter how much wit comes across in his letters to Helene?
I can’t point to any particular flame. But it seems to me there are quite a few wafts of smoke here. Certainly enough for a Waldropian story or novel. 🙂
I did write that letter. And Mr. le Carré was kind enough to reply:
The problem, of course, is the “All Cretans are liars” issue. What else would le Carré reply? But for this fanboy, it was quite a thrill.
According to researchers at Tel Aviv University, plants that are stressed (such as being too dry, or having stems cut) emit sound. But the sounds emitted are at frequencies higher than humans can hear.
One of my favorites. A generous use of the public domain audio documenting the Mission Control broadcasts guiding Apollo 11. A great song by Public Service Broadcasting.
I was rooting around, trying to find a clip with Jeremy Davies doing the right gesture in Solaris, because I wanted to do a Lexicon entry… and I stumbled upon this thing, which looks a DVD extra the way they used to be. Really useful for showing how a director and actors work together, and the contributions crafts people make.
BEIJING – JUNE 5: A little boy attempts in vain to push a professional sumo wrestler before a sumo tournament, on June 5, 2004 in Beijing, China. A total of 111 sumo wrestlers are in Beijing for demonstrations of the Japan’s traditional sport. It is the first time in thirty years that sumo wrestlers have performed in China. (Photo by Getty Images)
It looks like I’ve deleted the original of this post. I’m going to try to reconstruct it.
I was very surprised to find out the main way opponents win sumo bouts isn’t by pinning, as in Greco-Roman wrestling. While that can happen, much more frequently someone pushes their opponent out of the ring.
What occurred to me was that often, in disputes today (especially political), we see the same thing — not persuasion by merit, but tarring one’s adversary with beliefs “all reasonable people” must abhor. Famously, portraying someone as a Nazi is known to work, even though in recent years that runs afoul of Godwin’s Law. Sexism, racism, socialism (at least in the US), communism… all of these accusations are meant to shortcut real argument (“…a connected series of statements, intended to establish a definite proposition.”), and just throw the other person outside the ring.
I am aware of the irony that in writing this, and explaining what I mean if I characterize someone’s speech as a “sumo move,” I am recursively doing the very same thing. But sometimes, that’s how it goes.
EDITED TO ADD: My wife Ulrika, a former graduate student of philosophy, notes the following. I think it’s worth adding.
Except that it is neither recursive nor ironic to point out a sumo move.
What a true sumo move (and it isn’t argumentation, it’s propaganda — re-setting the Overton window so that a particular subject won’t be subject to argument in the first place) does is leverage social pressure and people’s sense of decency/shame to make an entire subject unavailable for discussion by casting that subject as taboo in some way. Sumo moves attack the character of anyone who broaches the subject, thus kick the entire topic outside the ring.
Conversely, observing that a sumo move has been used does nothing to prevent the topic it’s applied to from being discussed. Noting a sumo move is meta-analytic. It talks about the way that a subject is being discussed and, rightly, moves the discussion back to the actual subject, rather than the character, motives, and mental state of the people discussing it. Now, it may be true that an honest broker may experience some shame once they admit to themselves that they have been using an illicit tactic, but eliciting shame isn’t the point of pointing out a sumo move. It absolutely is the point of using one.
