Twenty Questions

[Click for a larger, more welcoming view.]

I found this postcard between two books today. I’d forgotten I ever had it. I like the sentiment, which seems to me fitting for the start of a college semester.

This postcard has, however, an ulterior motive. It’s a piece of advertising. Can you guess what for? Welcome to what I suspect will be a pretty quick game of Twenty Questions. Leave your best questions in the comments. Play early, play often.

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August 26: My wife Elaine came closer in offline play: Alcohol? Yes. Clear? No. Brown? Yes. Bourbon? No. Scotch? Yes. But she couldn’t get the brand. Barnaby has the answer in the comments: it’s an advertisement for Johnnie Walker. Specifically, Black.

School days

What’s that? Syllabus week ? I never heard of the thing.

See also Oscar’s Portrait.

The mystery of Hog Island

[Henry, August 24, 2014.]

Today’s Henry (which is always yesterday’s Henry, as the strip is in reruns) raises an urgent question: where are Henry and his unidentified comrade headed? They could be preparing to visit an island in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, New York, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia, or Wisconsin. Or an island in Australia, the Falklands, Guyana, or Honduras. Or a now-defunct Philadelphia neighborhood that was not an island. That last possibility might require a time machine, not a frying pan.

Henry is a city kid, surrounded by stores selling Novelties and Notions and Meats. So I cast a vote for the Bronx’s Hog Island, though I too have no idea how to get there.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

[Arizona has islands? Yes. My choice for the best New York island aside from Manhattan: City Island.]

µBlock for Google Chrome

µBlock is an ad-blocking extension for Chromium-based browsers. The extension’s developer Raymond Hill says that µBlock uses significantly fewer resources than AdBlock Plus. That’s certainly the case on my Mac. Your figurative mileage may vary.

To see what’s going on under the figurative hood and what resources an extension is using, use Chrome’s Task Manager, available from the Menu Bar (Window ➝ Task Manager) or from the hamburger menu (☰) to the right of the Address Bar. There’s no keyboard shortcut for getting to the Task Manager on a Mac, but you can be sneaky and create one.

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August 25: Another reason to like µBlock: I ran into a problem with whitelisting, e-mailed Raymond Hill last night, and this morning there was a new version of µBlock at GitHub, problem solved. Thank you, Raymond.

[The hamburger is also figurative. I’m my fambly’s IT guy, and I take on that role cheerfully.]

On zip

The zip-line has become a fairly routine element in first-week-of-school activities on American college campuses. At least one school has assured students that though its zip-line line may not be spectacular, it serves the institution’s purpose.

That purpose would appear to be Fun. And I have nothing against Fun. There shall be Fun. But the purpose of a college or university, as I understand it, is another matter.

If anyone had told me that my first week of college would include a ride on a zip-line, I would have thought they were on something. You know, the way people used to say it — on something.

Telephone exchange names on screen: CIrcle

[Click for a larger view.]

Sean at Contrapuntalism sent this beautiful image from the fourth season of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire. As he observes, this card is “quite literally a ‘calling card.’” Notice the felt under the telephone.

Thanks, Sean.

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : This Gun for Hire

The page-ninety-nine test

It is a truth universally acknowledged on the Internets that Ford Madox Ford said or wrote these words:

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.

That’s the famous page-ninety-nine test, a handy if arbitrary way to sample a writer’s prose. The sentence above is widely cited, but a genuine source seems beyond tracking down. Ford did though describe a habit of sampling prose by turning to page ninety:


[“[A] habit of this writer, of turning to page ninety of any edition of an author . . . and then quoting the first paragraph of reasonable length that he comes upon.” Ford Madox Ford, The March of Literature: From Confucius’ Day to Our Own (1938).]

So it’s the page-ninety test. Adjust your sampling accordingly.

Turning to page ninety-nine has saved me significant sums in bookstores, most recently when I sampled a book on making great sentences, something that might have been useful for teaching. But there on page ninety-nine: a sentence beginning “Having said that.” Like “that said,” “having said that” is a ponderous way to begin a sentence. Now I wonder what page ninety would have shown me.

A tenuously related post
That said,

[The March of Literature has been reprinted by the Dalkey Archive Press (1994). The passage above comes from the reprinted book, found via Google Book Search.]

Music and memory

Fresca asks a great question: What songs will we remember after we forget our names? Go read her post and leave your list.

The context for this question: the film Alive Inside.

Definitions

Braggadoccio
Cardboard in its own juices.

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Trailsides
There are many such to sleep through.

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The Pollen Count
Another numbered breeze.

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A Secret Referent
Have a good one.

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Fine Garden
North of the sheds.

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Refrain
“I’m not asleep.”

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Tupperware
Bedrock.

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Sincerely
Yours sincerely.

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The 19th Century
Mainly yours.

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Refrain (2)
“I’m not making this up.”

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On a Little Street in Singapore
We’d meet beside a lotus-covered door.


Michael Leddy
September 1995

[Elaine found this sequence of tiny poems in a folder full of cards. I made a single copy, for her, side-stapled, one poem to a page, under the imaginary imprint of One One Books. I just figured out the “One One”: we were celebrating our eleventh anniversary. I’m sharing the poems here with her permission. The nineteenth century is still mainly hers.]

Marshall Fine (1956–2014)

Marshall was a character, a singular person. He always seemed to me like a man who stepped into our world from the nineteenth century, a learned professor of some -ology or other. (He was in truth a violist, violinist, pianist, conductor, and composer.) As Elaine wrote today, stories about Marshall “are ALWAYS interesting and colorful.” There will be less color in the world without him.

Elaine has posted two photographs of herself and her brother in kidhood and adulthood.