THANK YOU

On a walk, a longer walk than usual, we added a turn around a park pavilion, a turn that we’d never taken before. I was listening to This American Life, to a long segment by the writer Sean Cole about his struggle to stop smoking cigarettes. And I started thinking about cigarettes.

Or more accurately: I started feeling about cigarettes. I last smoked a cigarette almost thirty-four years ago (October 8, 1989), and I would never smoke one again, but I still sometimes miss them. I started visualizing a pack of Pall Malls — the deep red, the elongated white letters, the (fatuous) slogan “Wherever Particular People Congregrate.” I visualized the blue paper strip across the top of the pack (I think it showed a somber-looking Native American man in my day), and then I visualized the tips of the unfiltered cigarettes — white outlines with brown and tan flakes of tobacco, all against the deep red pack.

And then, as we moved past the pavilion, I saw a sign above the picnic tables: THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING. Well-placed, Department of Parks and Recreation.

Related reading
All OCA smoking posts (Pinboard)

Reading and writing in the dark

Master Abraham is thinking of turning his learned tomcat Murr into a caged performer:

E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, trans. Anthea Bell (1999).

Also from this novel
“Scholarly voracity” : “My little right paw”

[“Smell of the lamp”: “Said of a literary production manifestly laboured. Plutarch attributes the phrase to Pytheas the orator, who said, ‘The orations of Demos′thenēs smell of the lamp,’ alluding to the current tale that the great orator lived in an underground cave lighted by a lamp, that he might have no distraction to his severe study”: Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1895). Notice the help with pronunciation. Brewer’s also glosses “inkhorn terms”: “This phrase, once common, might be revived to signify pedantic expressions which smell of the lamp.”]

The Republic of Laundry

“I’ve become a model citizen in the Republic of Laundry.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Elaine is the prime minister.]

From Artie to Zippy

[“Pucker Up.” Zippy, August 10, 2023.]

Today’s Zippy needs annotating. The artichoke has cried out: “Help! I’m an an advertising mascot trapped inside an artichoke!” But it’s more complicated than that. Artie the Artichoke is the mascot for Scottsdale Community College. There’s also Arti the Artichoke, who represents Ocean Mist Farms, growers of, yes, artichokes.

When Zippy mentions Speedy Alka-Seltzer’s “skill” (it’s “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz”) and asks Artie about his special ability, Artie replies, “I can thistle!” Artichoke thistle is an invasive species found in California.

Related reading
Alkalize with Alka-Seltzer : All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

“My little right paw”

Murr learns to write:

E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, trans. Anthea Bell (1999).

And look: here’s the cuff. And the manual.

Also from this novel
“Scholarly voracity”

[Hilmar Curas: “A teacher and author of the manual Murr mentions, entitled Calligraphia Regia. Königliche Schreibfeder, published in 1741.”]

Ian’s Shoelace Site

Ian’s Shoelace Site, with twenty-five ways to tie your shoes, and more than a hundred ways to lace them. (Who knew?)

“The stuff that was good”

Shahid Kamal Ahmad, game developer, interviewed on the podcast Mac Power Users:

“It’s a short life. We’re not kids anymore. But we forget so much of the good, and it’s just the way we’re primed. Evolution rewards us for remembering that which screwed us up. It does not reward us for remembering the stuff that was good.”

I listen to most of MPU at 1½× — so much of it is beyond what I need for my Mac endeavors. But every time I listen, I hear something of interest — though before today it’s always been something about the Mac. A reminder to remember the good stuff in one’s life is helpful regardless of platform.

“Scholarly voracity”

Murr learns to read:

E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, trans. Anthea Bell (1999).

A Gennett Records documentary

From WTIU, a 2018 documentary, The Music Makers of Gennett Records. Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Uncle Dave Macon, and Charley Patton were among the musicians who recorded for Gennett in Richmond, Indiana. Here’s a list.

Driving back from the east coast on I-70 one summer, totally beat, we went through all of Ohio without finding a hotel room. Something was going on: the Indy 500? a state fair? both? It was past midnight when we ended up snagging the one available room in Richmond, in the Leland Hotel. I realized that musicians — at least white musicians — might have stayed there in the late 1920s and ’30s when recording for Gennett.

[The Leland now provides housing for older people.]

Two Millhauser reviews

Two reviews of Steven Millhauser’s new book of stories, Disruptions : one not so smart, in The New York Times, and one smart, in The New Yorker. I haven’t read Disruptions yet, so I read just enough of these reviews to think I know what to think about them.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)