Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2005-06-29:

"To one I owe a debt the size of a small Latin American republic's in analysts' fees saved and sorrows unsuffered during the next thirty-odd years. Her name was Angèle. She said: 'Tu n'es pas beau, mais t'es passable.' ['You're not handsome, but you're passable.']

"My brain reeled under the munificence of her compliment. If she had said I was handsome I wouldn't have believed her. If she had called me loathsome I wouldn't have liked it. Passable was what I hoped for. Passable is the best thing for a man to be."

-- A. J. Liebling, journalist, recalling his relationship with a "sporting girl" of the Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris in 1927.

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2005-06-29:

"To one I owe a debt the size of a small Latin American republic's in analysts' fees saved and sorrows unsuffered during the next thirty-odd years. Her name was Angèle. She said: 'Tu n'es pas beau, mais t'es passable.' ['You're not handsome, but you're passable.']

"My brain reeled under the munificence of her compliment. If she had said I was handsome I wouldn't have believed her. If she had called me loathsome I wouldn't have liked it. Passable was what I hoped for. Passable is the best thing for a man to be."

-- A. J. Liebling, journalist, recalling his relationship with a "sporting girl" of the Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris in 1927.

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

I'm back from performing at a Discordian/Jewish wedding. A good day, despite its having started way too early, and my now being so exhausted that i'm dropping things (fortunately I dropped the yogurt, not the eggs, and it just cracked rather than exploding, so I was able to transfer all but a few grams to another container). Gorgeous weather ... with a breeze that didn't feel like very much, until it was multiplied by the square footage of the chuppah which communicated to witnesses a strong desire to transform itself into a kite. The chuppah was subdued by quick-thinking volunteers and convinced to continue in its assigned role. In the distance, a donkey could be heard.

Wow, mentally scattered am I, eh? Good day but long day: tired (and sore -- pain meds have worn off. I think I'm crashing early tonight (though my body has fooled me on that score before).

Earlier I was thinking about the meaning of gender performance. Later, after somebody else mentioned gender performance, I started thinking about the meaning of 'gender performance' (which, I suppose, would be a good thing to nail down before working on the meaning of gender performance). But then I got to thinking about how concisely I can say (okay, write) "I was thinking about the meanings of gender performance and 'gender performance'" to a mathematician or a programmer, and wondering how many people would find that sentence more opaque than my earlier reference to a long-dead notional beast from that section of cyberspace that might be thought of as "the old country" nowadays.

I guess this isn't "be kind to readers" day in my blog. :-þ

Anyhow, I got so distracted by thinking about "thinking about gender performance and 'gender performance'" that my thoughts about the meanings of 'gender performance' and gender performance got sidetracked. I may remember to resume those trains of thought when I feel more awake. Or not.

(If there's no audience is it still performance? Or does it become something else?)

I think I am too tired to eat (which is not good, as I strongly suspect I am hungry). I'm clearly too tired to think, I think.

Pretty garb out today. And horses.

Note to self: re-use that "the old country in cyberspace" reference sometime when I'm actually awake.

I'm back from performing at a Discordian/Jewish wedding. A good day, despite its having started way too early, and my now being so exhausted that i'm dropping things (fortunately I dropped the yogurt, not the eggs, and it just cracked rather than exploding, so I was able to transfer all but a few grams to another container). Gorgeous weather ... with a breeze that didn't feel like very much, until it was multiplied by the square footage of the chuppah which communicated to witnesses a strong desire to transform itself into a kite. The chuppah was subdued by quick-thinking volunteers and convinced to continue in its assigned role. In the distance, a donkey could be heard.

Wow, mentally scattered am I, eh? Good day but long day: tired (and sore -- pain meds have worn off. I think I'm crashing early tonight (though my body has fooled me on that score before).

Earlier I was thinking about the meaning of gender performance. Later, after somebody else mentioned gender performance, I started thinking about the meaning of 'gender performance' (which, I suppose, would be a good thing to nail down before working on the meaning of gender performance). But then I got to thinking about how concisely I can say (okay, write) "I was thinking about the meanings of gender performance and 'gender performance'" to a mathematician or a programmer, and wondering how many people would find that sentence more opaque than my earlier reference to a long-dead notional beast from that section of cyberspace that might be thought of as "the old country" nowadays.

I guess this isn't "be kind to readers" day in my blog. :-þ

Anyhow, I got so distracted by thinking about "thinking about gender performance and 'gender performance'" that my thoughts about the meanings of 'gender performance' and gender performance got sidetracked. I may remember to resume those trains of thought when I feel more awake. Or not.

(If there's no audience is it still performance? Or does it become something else?)

I think I am too tired to eat (which is not good, as I strongly suspect I am hungry). I'm clearly too tired to think, I think.

Pretty garb out today. And horses.

Note to self: re-use that "the old country in cyberspace" reference sometime when I'm actually awake.

I thought "one of my haversacks is missing" and gave myself a Dolby earworm. Then I found the haversack.

My antihistamine has worn off as well. Definitely in a sub-optimal biological state.

There's that sub again.

Before the wedding, I used my wax-tablet book ("medieval PDA"[*]) to write down a tune that had accidentally been omitted from the sheet music we had on hand (my fingers know the tune but I wasn't going to be the one playing melody, hence the need to write it down). Fortunately the sun was ideally placed relative to the music stand[**] to make scratches in green wax pretty cleanly visible. There was much "that is so cool" expressed. I am, of course, disgustingly amused by the whole thing, as well as being quite glad that I had the wax tablets with me.

But as writing music with a ball-point is slower that writing it with a pencil which is in turn slower than writing music with a fountain pen, writing music in wax with a stylus is the slowest of the lot[***]. I barely managed to finish in time. Still: hey, more data regarding music-transcribing-speed in various media, so it counts as my having learned something.

Er ... my iPod appears to be haunted. I think I'm going to postpone pondering that until after I've slept.

[*] Yes, I know it's a PAA. The TLA 'PDA' just triggers the right associations faster. Though I do hold the stylus in my digits when I write in it -- does that count?

[**] Or vice-versa, of course, it being, after all, relative.

[***] Note that I am only claiming that it is the slowest of the methods that I have tried so far; I have not gotten around to conducting speed-trials engraving music in stone with a chisel, nor literally engraving it in sheet-metal with a Dremmel. Though I should grit my teeth and try mousing music into a computer again, because I am not certain that I've correctly remembered whether doing so was faster or slower than today's exercise with the wax tablet. (I prefer to type music into a computer in ABC rather than stroking it into a GUI, mostly because I can do so much more quickly.)

[****] And as long as I've already ventured into absurd-footnote-land, a sure sign of of a mistaken detour when attempting to navigate to the land of Nod, I'll throw in a not-as-random-as-it-seems-though-it-might-as-well-be question that made me want the Bat-computer: Is there any significant convection within a grilled-cheese sandwich (while it is cooking)? My guess is "no", but I'm acutely aware that I don't know. And designing an experiment to detect such inside a mostly-opaque substance, using just the laboratory equipment native to an ordinary kitchen, feels like just a little too much of a challenge right now.

I thought "one of my haversacks is missing" and gave myself a Dolby earworm. Then I found the haversack.

My antihistamine has worn off as well. Definitely in a sub-optimal biological state.

There's that sub again.

Before the wedding, I used my wax-tablet book ("medieval PDA"[*]) to write down a tune that had accidentally been omitted from the sheet music we had on hand (my fingers know the tune but I wasn't going to be the one playing melody, hence the need to write it down). Fortunately the sun was ideally placed relative to the music stand[**] to make scratches in green wax pretty cleanly visible. There was much "that is so cool" expressed. I am, of course, disgustingly amused by the whole thing, as well as being quite glad that I had the wax tablets with me.

But as writing music with a ball-point is slower that writing it with a pencil which is in turn slower than writing music with a fountain pen, writing music in wax with a stylus is the slowest of the lot[***]. I barely managed to finish in time. Still: hey, more data regarding music-transcribing-speed in various media, so it counts as my having learned something.

Er ... my iPod appears to be haunted. I think I'm going to postpone pondering that until after I've slept.

[*] Yes, I know it's a PAA. The TLA 'PDA' just triggers the right associations faster. Though I do hold the stylus in my digits when I write in it -- does that count?

[**] Or vice-versa, of course, it being, after all, relative.

[***] Note that I am only claiming that it is the slowest of the methods that I have tried so far; I have not gotten around to conducting speed-trials engraving music in stone with a chisel, nor literally engraving it in sheet-metal with a Dremmel. Though I should grit my teeth and try mousing music into a computer again, because I am not certain that I've correctly remembered whether doing so was faster or slower than today's exercise with the wax tablet. (I prefer to type music into a computer in ABC rather than stroking it into a GUI, mostly because I can do so much more quickly.)

[****] And as long as I've already ventured into absurd-footnote-land, a sure sign of of a mistaken detour when attempting to navigate to the land of Nod, I'll throw in a not-as-random-as-it-seems-though-it-might-as-well-be question that made me want the Bat-computer: Is there any significant convection within a grilled-cheese sandwich (while it is cooking)? My guess is "no", but I'm acutely aware that I don't know. And designing an experiment to detect such inside a mostly-opaque substance, using just the laboratory equipment native to an ordinary kitchen, feels like just a little too much of a challenge right now.