The ghosts of them surround me
Out of intolerable exhaustion, I may have slept close to twelve hours last night. The dreams I can remember were banally about a T station that does not exist in the middle of a salt marsh, much less have a sort of ferry situation for cars. Less fortuitously, our kitchen was abruptly deprived of water this weekend and the property manager has not yet sent a plumber to take a look at it. We have kept the taps faithfully dripping through the well below freezing temperatures, but as we have no control over the state of the pipes in the still uninhabited upstairs apartment, we are concerned. The last time something went wrong with the kitchen sink, half our pantry got ripped out. Have some links.
1. Following that meme about random geographic coordinates which assumes instantaneous transportation to the location with nothing but the objects currently on one's person, I rolled 28.36967, 80.57272 and seem to have been dropped in the middle of the Sharda River closest to the village of Majhaura in Uttar Pradesh. The good news is that it's south of the whitewater rapids and the rumors of man-eating goonch and when it's not monsoon season, it seems to have a relatively placid flow, albeit to the detriment of the surrounding communities it's been changing its course onto for decades. It's overcast, in the Fahrenheit forties, a little past seven in the morning. I am going to vote that I will be cold, exhausted, annoyed, and lose my shoes, but probably not drowned. As I know an extremely small number of words in Hindi and none whatsoever in Bhojpuri, it may take me a little while to explain the situation.
2. I had never heard of the Television Village:
This lack of formal training came back to bite the presenters multiple times. Hornby remembers being chastised by a producer for ruining "continuity" after getting a perm; Terry Jones of Monty Python fame tried to eat the studio's pet goldfish during an interview; and the whole production was put at risk when a Weetabix box that was being used as a prop to hold up scripts out of sight of the camera was accidentally broadcast, potentially breaching advertising rules. Numerous people involved with the station recall the broadcast being interrupted, only for it to turn out that a sheep had chewed through cable wires.
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spatch who did public-access television and college radio in the Pioneer Valley around the same time nodded in enthusiastic recognition as I read selections out to him. I am hoping that my keyboard survives the spit-take of the Weetabix box.
3. I had no idea that steak tips were specific to New England. I wonder if that means my parents only started making them after moving to the Boston area. They always seemed to occupy an intermediate niche between kebabs and London broil.
4. Intrigued by a photo of Neal Ascherson, I vectored through his aunt Renée and discovered that a film I have wanted to see since grad school was rediscovered this summer. I had not been aware that The Cure for Love (1949) had actually ever been lost: I just knew it as the sole film directed by co-star and producer Robert Donat which never did me the courtesy of turning up on any of my streaming services or the free internet. If it made it to TPTV, fingers crossed for TCM.
5. How did I miss the existence of The Vatican Stole the Menorah and We're Going to Steal It Back (2025), a one-shot, dreidel-powered TTRPG complete with a Player's Guide for the Perplexed? Obstacles include some schmuck and the Popemobile, allies include space lasers and the Golem of Prague. I hope they make their end-of-year goal for the print edition.
P.S. I have just been informed of the existence of a bilingual Sanskrit–Greek stele from the third century CE. This is such a neat planet. I wish people would not make it so difficult to inhabit.
1. Following that meme about random geographic coordinates which assumes instantaneous transportation to the location with nothing but the objects currently on one's person, I rolled 28.36967, 80.57272 and seem to have been dropped in the middle of the Sharda River closest to the village of Majhaura in Uttar Pradesh. The good news is that it's south of the whitewater rapids and the rumors of man-eating goonch and when it's not monsoon season, it seems to have a relatively placid flow, albeit to the detriment of the surrounding communities it's been changing its course onto for decades. It's overcast, in the Fahrenheit forties, a little past seven in the morning. I am going to vote that I will be cold, exhausted, annoyed, and lose my shoes, but probably not drowned. As I know an extremely small number of words in Hindi and none whatsoever in Bhojpuri, it may take me a little while to explain the situation.
2. I had never heard of the Television Village:
This lack of formal training came back to bite the presenters multiple times. Hornby remembers being chastised by a producer for ruining "continuity" after getting a perm; Terry Jones of Monty Python fame tried to eat the studio's pet goldfish during an interview; and the whole production was put at risk when a Weetabix box that was being used as a prop to hold up scripts out of sight of the camera was accidentally broadcast, potentially breaching advertising rules. Numerous people involved with the station recall the broadcast being interrupted, only for it to turn out that a sheep had chewed through cable wires.
spatch who did public-access television and college radio in the Pioneer Valley around the same time nodded in enthusiastic recognition as I read selections out to him. I am hoping that my keyboard survives the spit-take of the Weetabix box.3. I had no idea that steak tips were specific to New England. I wonder if that means my parents only started making them after moving to the Boston area. They always seemed to occupy an intermediate niche between kebabs and London broil.
4. Intrigued by a photo of Neal Ascherson, I vectored through his aunt Renée and discovered that a film I have wanted to see since grad school was rediscovered this summer. I had not been aware that The Cure for Love (1949) had actually ever been lost: I just knew it as the sole film directed by co-star and producer Robert Donat which never did me the courtesy of turning up on any of my streaming services or the free internet. If it made it to TPTV, fingers crossed for TCM.
5. How did I miss the existence of The Vatican Stole the Menorah and We're Going to Steal It Back (2025), a one-shot, dreidel-powered TTRPG complete with a Player's Guide for the Perplexed? Obstacles include some schmuck and the Popemobile, allies include space lasers and the Golem of Prague. I hope they make their end-of-year goal for the print edition.
P.S. I have just been informed of the existence of a bilingual Sanskrit–Greek stele from the third century CE. This is such a neat planet. I wish people would not make it so difficult to inhabit.
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785 miles southeast of the southern tip of Madagascar, for me. Glub glub. I just finished reading a novel where a plot point is that on an alien world a small number of non-sentient alien critters are instantaneously teleporting, or being teleported; human explorers -- limited by c -- would like to know much more. Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams. Ignore the hokey title. He very much was in thrall to Zelazny when he wrote that one, and he did a creditable job. Good luck with the pipes, or, more directly, with the property manager.
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Alas! The meme does seem necessarily biased in favor of the 71% of the planet that sloshes. I tried it again just now and ended up at the 59.15339, 87.89693 which translates to some kind of roadless taiga forest in the eastern part of the Tomsk Oblast, which in its favor looked like solid ground as opposed to peatland and in everything else would almost certainly kill me.
I just finished reading a novel where a plot point is that on an alien world a small number of non-sentient alien critters are instantaneously teleporting, or being teleported; human explorers -- limited by c -- would like to know much more. Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams.
I have not read that one! I remember enjoying Williams' Aristoi (1992), which seemed to owe some debt to Cordwainer Smith's Rediscovery of Man—not a bug. A grad school friend of mine knew him in person.
Good luck with the pipes, or, more directly, with the property manager.
Thank you. After three days, we need it.
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Dang. Antarctica itself you might at least land on top of researchers.
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Thank you! Not having a working sink is a significant impediment to everything.
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...I need to find skewers big enough for Property Manager Onna Stick.
Edit: I got within swimming distance, plus or minus pelagic snacky species, of Minami-tori-shima, which feels a little haunted!
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It makes Berenike sound like an even better place to spend a weekend if you ask me. We could get, like, eel with mango pickle.
...I need to find skewers big enough for Property Manager Onna Stick.
Only as a decorative element, on account of everyone's health, please.
Edit: I got within swimming distance, plus or minus pelagic snacky species, of Minami-tori-shima, which feels a little haunted!
Probably! But you'd have snacks while you figured out what to do about it!
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Anyway, I wish you water soonest!
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Thank you! The greatest sympathy on your vanished plumber of reasonable costs! I am glad it's manageable with a dishwasher, but come on.
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I like to think you could survive the civilization long enough to leave it, although this one isn't such top marks at the second.
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She has a wonderful bit part in The Fallen Idol (1948), but I haven't seen much of her early work either! Thora Hird's in there somewhere, too.
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Absolutely! It would never have occurred to me that they could be regional because neither of my parents is from New England. I'll have to ask.
($6.95, which made the dish posh for my thin and smoking grad student wallet.)
(Man, the economy.)