Bosoms & Books
Before you straighten up in your chair and think to yourself, "Oooh, suddenly he's decided to post illicit pictures on here!", consider the following disclaimer: these are my bosoms we're talking about. Yes, I admit I don't exactly have what could be termed as 'bosoms', since they're more pectorals and they're quite manly pecs at that. But that would kill the snazzy alliteration used in the title of this little bit of nowhere, and I somehow don't think that "Pecs & Pages" has quite the same ring to it.
So why are we going on about my pecs? Or more specifically, why am I going on about my pecs. Well, if you hadn't already noticed the rampant narcissism in the last paragraph, I'm quite fond & pround of the manliness that are my pecs. So you can imagine the consternation I felt when I nearly lost one of my nipples while playing around with Shady. In Shady's defense, she really didn't know better and was just trying to viciously throttle the sock I had dancing around in front of her. However, when a small dog takes a flying leap at your chest, misses the sock completely and winds up running her rather pointy claws down your chest, you tend to notice the pain quite immediately. One claw in particular had targetted my left nipple.
I'm just relieved she doesn't have talons like a cat or a hawk, otherwise she'd have probably lobbed my poor nipple right off! I don't want to go around being known as the guy with only one nipple. I'm not even sure it could get surgically reattached without looking like I'd been in some sort of deranged "So are you up for a Darwin Award now?"
accident. Which does beg the question as to whether or not there are such things as prosthetic nipples. I'm sure there must be, in some tangible form out there. But are they metal or a polymer plastic? Can they be easily detached or just pop right off and land in someone's drink if they don't happen to be fastened down right (and you happen to be going topless at said party)? Would people treat it like some do a glass eye? "Come on, man, do the trick with your nipple! It's so cool. You've gotta see this, guys! He looks so freaky when he pops it off!"
The world may never know. Perhaps it isn't ready for something as revolutionary as this.
In other news that have absolutely nothing to do with nipples or my manly pecs, I found this quirky little news article about a library of unwritten books. Personally I find it encouraging to hear of a project like this, and laugh because this is the sort of strange collection I'd love to amass myself--not of my own works, mind you, but just for whenever I'm at a party and people as what I do for hobbies, I could say, "I collect only half-completed and unwritten books."
Library features books that have yet to be written
Last Updated Tue, 03 Aug 2004 15:01:04 EDT PORTSMOUTH - An exhibit at a gallery in Britain is a showcase for books with titles like One-Eyed Olaf, The Man Who Was Addicted to Seeing, Poke the Pig and Scrumping in Persia.
But unlike normal books, these ones have yet to be written. They are ideas for books that will probably never be realized.
The project, called the Library of Unwritten Books, is the brainchild of Sam Brown and Caroline Jupp, who have been travelling around Britain collecting tales from ordinary people they meet on the street.
Using a converted shopping cart that doubles as their "mobile recording unit," the pair ask strangers if they have any ideas for books. They then convert each narrative kernel into a précis only a few pages in length.
They have already collected more than 400 stories this way in the last two years and plan to find a total of 1,000.
The exhibit, currently on display at the Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth, features fantasies as well as non-fiction "books."
Some are based on family history, like the one from the woman who told a story about her father, who served in the British navy in the 1800s. Her mother was originally engaged to another man, who went off to war and was presumed killed in action.
Her mother married a different man, only to have the original fiancé come back alive.
"I think there's so much potential, there really is," Jupp told an online correspondent for the BBC. "But a lot of people just don't have the skill or the time – that very specific ability that it takes to write a book."
The inspiration for the exhibit came from the library of unpublished books in the Richard Brautigan novel The Abortion, and Jupp and Brown admit that many of their books will likely never get off the ground.
"Unwritten books are different to the books that they would write," Brown told the BBC. "A good unwritten book doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a good written book."
The actual link for the news article can be found here, for those curious:
http://sympatico.msn.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2004/08/03/Arts/book040803.html
Today's Memo to Self: trim Shady's claws.
posted by Phillip at 5:44 AM
Hand Me That Piano, Dear Boy
Today's little bit of nowhere is a variety of small news articles and links. "But wait!" you say, "Don't you have anything about life to comment on?" And the answer is, no, not really. I'd rather not dwell on the events of last night, where Mel stomped me into the dust as we fought over who would get to conquer & rule the world. Things were going decent enough: our armies were evenly matched. The buffer armies were just sitting there placidly, inviting a good take-over. And then all of a sudden Mel lays down a few Risk cards, marches 23 armies onto the board and suddenly I'm noticing how the entire southern hemisphere is now a very pretty blue. Blind luck I managed to stockpile my last remaining armies into Japan before Mel took out my African and South American contingents.
And oddly enough, the West Canadian buffer contingent refused to be conquered by any of the American armies Mel sent at it. In the end, they fell to other Canadians.
But enough of my horrible, terrible loss. Let's dwell on other more positive things that don't include me getting ridiculously trounced in a game of Risk. For example, here's a blog written by an alleged bigname Hollywood insider (though no one seems to know just who this "Rance" persona belongs to), who seems to enjoy acerbic tales of the trade. I recommend the Tales of Revenge scattered throughout the various entries. You can also discover how the right pants can not only set the tones of big meetings, but of how they might just save the world!
http://captainhoof.tripod.com/blog/
And then there's this curious little tidbit about a Conan Doyle scholar's perplexing death. If only Holmes were around to solve this one...
Bizarre death surrounds Conan Doyle auction
Sherlock Holmes scholar founded garroted with a shoelace
The Associated Press
Updated: 5:24 p.m. ET May 14, 2004
LONDON - Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts got a rare glimpse into the private world of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as thousands of personal papers — from his passport to his jotted-down story ideas — went on display Friday.
At the same time, the archive has become entwined in a mystery worthy of Conan Doyle’s celebrated fictional detective: the bizarre death of a leading Holmes scholar. The papers are to be auctioned off Wednesday, perhaps to disappear again into the obscurity of private ownership, a fate that had obsessed Richard Lancelyn Green, a former chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London.
Green, 50, was found dead in his bed on March 27, garroted with a shoelace tightened by a wooden spoon, and surrounded by stuffed toys.
At an inquest last month, Coroner Paul Knapman said suicide was the most likely explanation, but he acknowledged there was no note, that garroting was a painful way to kill oneself, and that it therefore had been a “very unusual death.” He said the deceased had been acting paranoid, but that people assumed it was baseless.
Family and friends said Lancelyn Green had become fixated on the Conan Doyle archive, believing it should be available to students and scholars, not sold and dispersed.
“He might have been in the prime position to write the definitive biography of Conan Doyle,” said his friend, Nicholas Utechin, editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal.
An author and his craft
The items for sale are displayed at Christie’s auction house and viewable on the Internet.
The notebooks provide a fascinating picture of how one of history’s most successful authors practiced his craft. They contain Conan Doyle’s story ideas and research notes, as well as rough scenarios of how plots might unfold.
They are a reminder, too, that although Sherlock Holmes was Conan Doyle’s greatest creation, he wrote with great success of Professor Challenger in “The Lost World,” of a cavalryman in Napoleon’s army with “The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard,” and of medieval history in “The White Company.”
Other items provide intimate glimpses of a man who dearly loved his family — his well-worn wallet contains fond birthday letters from his children and a creased photo of a son who died.
Affectionate letters to his wife, Jean, are addressed to “My own sweet love,” and “You dear little angel.”
Up for auction are about 25 to 30 percent of the papers that would have been in Conan Doyle’s study when he died in 1930, said Tom Lamb, head of Christie’s books and manuscripts department. He said family members had been selling items over the years.
An expert in crisis
The auction is a great disappointment to scholars who hoped the papers would be donated to a public institution.
Lancelyn Green, co-author of an important bibliography of the author, was most deeply affected.
“He did become sadly obsessive about this matter in the weeks leading towards his death,” Utechin told BBC radio on Thursday. He was “quite clearly very perturbed indeed about the sale of these items at Christie’s.”
At Lancelyn Green’s inquest, his sister, Priscilla Lancelyn West, said “something about this sale was worrying him enormously, and I tried to get him to explain to me what it was.”
His cryptic comments, she said, sounded like “the beginning of a thriller novel.”
At Christie’s, Lamb said the auction house had consulted Lancelyn Green as an expert and “he was very happy to help us.” In fact, eight of the photographs that illustrate the sale catalogue are “by courtesy of Richard Lancelyn Green.”
The auctioneer expects the sale will earn about $3.5 million for the beneficiaries of the author’s daughter-in-law, Anna Conan Doyle.
In the 1940s and 1960s, two Conan Doyle scholars had access to the papers, but after the death in 1970 of the author’s son Adrian, court battles broke out over the estate, and the collection was locked up in a lawyer’s office for about 25 years.
Sir Christopher Frayling, head of the Arts Council, which allocates government arts funding, called the papers “a vast piece of English heritage” that should be kept together for future scholars.
“If this was Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, there would be a national outcry,” he told BBC Radio.
Lamb said the estimated 3,000 papers have been divided in ways designed to encourage institutional buying.
“There are whole lots devoted to particular causes and interests of Conan Doyle, such as all the Boer War material in one large box,” he said.
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Today's Lesson: simply because you can doesn't necessarily mean that you should.
posted by Phillip at 6:43 AM
Blood. It's In You To Try To Give.
You know, you can't help but feel a little hint of rejection when you go to a blood drive, flash them your cool blood donor's card, run through the questionnaire & interview, get the needles plunged into your arm...and then get deferred. It's not like I was infected with any sort of hideous viral pathogen or anything; I have yet to hunger for human flesh and currently am not muttering the words "'itchy tasty, itchy tasty." Likewise it wasn't because I panicked and started thrashing around, exclaiming how they were all government agents out to get me.
No, it appears that I have a lower than normal blood pressure. Nothing to cause concern, happily, but with the levels I had on Friday, the pleasant (and above all, patient) RNs would have had to endure me sitting there for an hour or so. By their best guess it would have taken that long for my body to pump out the amount of blood they needed. Which might have been an okay thing had the temporary clinic was in its last 5 minutes before the slow teardown, or that I had to go back to work since my lunchbreak was nearing its own end. I'm betting they were just relieved they didn't have to put up with an hour's worth of me. I find myself the most wonderful of company, but newcomers into my dementia can only have so much Vitamin Phil in their systems before going into shock.
So I was deferred. Which meant that I could walk into the permanent blood donor clinic in the city (I didn't even know we had one!) within 24 hours and get my blood extracted, no problems! Well...except for one. Dammit, what are the odds, I'm working all of Saturday, the day the clinic is only open from 9am to 1pm? I like giving blood. It's a very humanitarian cause, very philanthropic, and best of all I get free cookies! Ultimately I was left with most of the same blood in my system as I had a few days ago. But I shall remedy that soon enough.
At the very least there's only mild bruising to mark my adventures with the blood drive. I don't have a problem with needles per say, but I'd rather not be staring directly at them whenever they pierce my flesh. I know my brain will try and get me to believe that I'm in more pain than I really am. However, it looks like I've got a few puncture wounds on my right arm from where they tried to find some decent veins that could fill my donor's bag up in less than an hour. Funny, all I felt at the time was the funkiest sensation that was more like the strangest tickle I'd ever received.
Or else the bruising is actually from the bandaid they put on my elbow after all was said and kind-of-drained. I'd rather it was from the needle. If I bruised from a bandaid while I had no problems with needles, I'd never live it down. "You freak at bandaids? Ha!" are not the words I plan on hearing from everyone I know.
In other news, I now know what to do in case of an emergency in Great Britain. Though I wonder why they assigned something so important as this to the Ministry of Vague Paranoia....
http://www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk/
Quote of the Day: taken from the "Preparing for Emergencies" website, we have things to remember
if you are involved in any emergency. It is important to: Run like hell, particularly if you caused the emergency.
posted by Phillip at 7:40 AM
