Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:06 PM

At 12:38 PM, I finished reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Just... wow.

I won't say anything else for the moment, because (a) I'm still trying to digest it all, and (b) I'll give other folks a chance to read it before I spoil anything.

However, It was definitely worth the wait, and off the top of my head I can't think of any fanfiction that entirely measures up. [JKR has made a number of additions to the canon that I think will provide a lot of fodder for future fanfic, though.]

Anyway, that's all for now; I just wanted to record this for myself for later. Now to update my books read list and possibly grab lunch...

Enjoy yourself! [I am.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:35 AM

Yes, today is my birthday. This day last year I went on the web and compiled a list of all the "today's birthday" horoscopes I could find from various newspapers. That was fun, so I'm going to do it again:

Boston Herald (Joyce Jillson)

TODAY'S BIRTHDAY (June 21).
This is destined to be your best financial year yet, when principles of wealth are applied whether you are conscious of them or not. Friends come to you for romantic advice -- put into practice exactly what you tell them, and by August, you'll be blissfully in love. Be conservative in September. Couples tie the knot or take a second honeymoon in November. Your lucky numbers are: 5, 3, 19, 20 and 25.

Boston Globe (Eugenia Last)

Happy Birthday:It is time to push your ideas and follow through with your plans. Believe in yourself, your abilities and your goals. You can inspire enthusiasm in anyone who comes into your world and you should welcome the help and support that others offer. Your numbers are 7, 15, 23, 32, 35, 43

New York Post (Sally Brompton)

IF TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY
Some obstacles you can go through, some obstacles you can go 'round, but some obstacles can only be overcome by changing your own attitudes and methods, and that is the kind of obstacle you will be faced with this year. To put it another way: If you want to change the world, you have got to change yourself. It's the way you look at the world that matters.

Boston Metro (Stella Wilder)

Alas, not available this year because the Metro only publishes on weekdays

Free Will Astrology (Rob Brezsny)

CANCER (June 21-July 22)
"It is impossible for man to look straight at the present," noted media prophet Marshall McLuhan, "because he is too terrified by it. We stand on the stern of the ship looking at the wake and saying, 'We're in very troubled waters.'" I'm presenting you with McLuhan's theory, my fellow Cancerian, because you are now poised to refute it. It's true that lately you've been fixated on turmoil unleashed in the past; it's as if you've been peering out of a portal in a tiny room at the back of a fine yacht and moaning, "Everything feels cramped and I'm in troubled waters." But I predict that any minute now you will leave your cramped quarters, bound upstairs, and stride to the front of the ship.

The Onion (Lloyd Schumner)

Cancer: (June 22--July 22)
It may need clarifying that when you said you loved your spouse more than life itself, you didn't mean yours.

Note: these are the major syndicated astrologers I found, but if you see a horoscope for me that I'm missing, post the URL and a copy of the text in the comments to this post, and I'll add it to next year's litany.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:18 AM

Okay. I've got my copy of the book and I'm back at home. I'm happy.

Status:

3:05 AM	pg. 200
5:25 AM	pg. 500
noon	pg. 800 (yes, I caught some sleep last night)

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:30 PM

See, that's the problem with news blogging. Once I finally publish an entry, I find three more equally deserving stories... It's like potato chips, "you can't eat just one." The latest, and the one that pushed me over the threshhold to actually writing another post is this quote from Josh Marshall:

[T]here really is no new debate or new scandal [about the administration's over-hyping of evidence about Iraq's WMD programs]. It's really more that it's suddenly become acceptable to discuss what everyone knew for the last year or so: that is, that the administration was willfully misrepresenting the evidence both on WMD and a purported link to al Qaida.

Marshall goes on to link to two articles garnering a lot of posts in the blogosphere: by Ackerman & Judis and by Kenneth Pollack. The New Republic piece is getting a lot of favorable attention, but because of his earlier anti-Iraq advocacy, Pollack is undergoing much more scrutiny, such as these comments by Tom Spencer and Matthew Yglesias.

2) Lots of people have been writing about how the Bush administration has been obstructing the investigation into what happened on 9/11/2001. But I think my friend Spike has found the money quote:

NASA's Columbia Accident Investigation Board was created 90 minutes after the incident; $50 million was immediately set aside for the probe. And in just four months, the board has already made public significant findings about the crash investigation.
By contrast, nearly two years after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the 9/11 commission only recently opened up its New York City office. The commission's budget has been increased ... to $14 million.

My husband followed up to this by pointing out:

NASA thinks that their program will be harmed if more spacecraft blow up and kill more astronauts.
The Department of Homeland Security thinks that their program will be harmed if more buildings DON'T blow up and DON'T kill more civilians.

Sad, but seems to be true...

3) And in that vein, get a load of this gem, courtesy of the Whiskey Bar:

I will never downplay Americans being killed in combat . . . But from a military perspective, it is insignificant.

Major General Ray Odierno
Press Conference
June 18, 2003

Didn't Miss Manners say something about stopping such expressions before the "but" and just omitting the hurtful conclusions? [If anyone can find the exact Miss Manners quote, I'd appreciate it.]

In better news, a Senate committee voted to revoke the media consolidation rules Michael Powell pushed through the FCC last week. And four bills designed to counteract the USA PATRIOT ACT are making their way through Congress, with 114 congressmen as sponsors. According to this article via PATRIOTWatch, they are: the Freedom to Read Protection Act of 2003, Domestic Surveillance Oversight Act of 2003, Library and Bookseller Protection Act, and the Surveillance Oversight and Disclosure Act of 2003. I wish them great success and hope many more like them will follow.

Just for fun, here's a law review article on the definition of chutzpah along with a history of Yiddish in American legal decisions. Courtesy of Eric Muller (Volokh).

And finally, CalPundit reminded me that Friday is cat blogging day, so here are some pictures of cute kitties to get you through the rest of the workday. Courtesy of Ailsa, the Cat of the Day website. And here are some more kitten photos from a friend on LiveJournal.

And now it's just one hour until the end of the workweek and I am so ready to go home. Have a great weekend, everybody!

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:17 PM

Ooh! BloggerCon at Harvard in October... Josh Marshall and Scott Rosenberg... Want to attend...

In other news on the personal front, we brought our car into the garage for a checkup and were told that it's not worth fixing. Nothing dangerous -- our brakes at least are in good shape -- but systems are failing and we're at risk of being stranded somewhere when it finally decides not to start. We've been advised not to take any long road trips, but otherwise I don't know how much time we have left. [More on this in Ian's journal, since he dealt with the garage directly.]

So, now we're in the market for another car. While our need is urgent, I really don't want to rush into anything; it is, after all, an expensive purchase and one we'll (hopefully) be living with for many years. My dad said long ago to economize in places where it won't show or won't matter. Better to skimp on things that are cheap or aren't expected to last long, rather than cutting corners on major long-term purchases. [This is one of the main reasons I was upset a few years back when they cut all the aesthetics from the Big Dig project. The tunnel and ventilation structures will be around for decades, they'll influence perceptions of the city among travellers and it will cost much more to retrofit them later than to do it right the first time. But I digress.]

Quoting Hesiod, frustration among U.S. troops stationed in Iraq is growing. The daughter of another blogger I read was career military but has "chosen not to re-enlist in September when her enlistment expired" partly due to the current mess in Iraq.

The number of Americans killed in Iraq has averaged over one a day since Bush declared the war over on May 1st! Bob Harris blogged this quote:

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave no explicit estimates for the time U.S. forces would stay in Iraq, but they did not dispute members of Congress who said the deployment could last a decade or more.
-- snip --
Pace told the committee that the U.S. force in Iraq is just under its peak of 151,000 combat troops and that the number will not be reduced in the foreseeable future.

Speaking of ongoing wars, did you know that the Bush administration is talking with the Taliban about providing security in Afghanistan and possibly joining the new Afghan government. The U.S. may put the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan! All that death and devastation may have been in vain. TAP has more on the story.

Meanwhile, now that they control all branches of the federal government, the Republicans are shedding their 'compassionate conservative' sheepskin and revealing themselves to be truly predatory. Influencial GOP bigwig Grover "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape" Norquist wrote a Washington Post op-ed a couple weeks back about their planned tax policy.

Another Post columnist, David Broder wrote a followup piece, summarizing Norquist's policy as "In short, the goal is a system of government wiped clean, on both the revenue and spending side, of almost a century's accumulation of social programs designed to provide a safety net beneath the private economy."

You grok that?? If not, Lambert on Atrios explains it more simply:

Student loans? "Wiped clean." Unemployment insurance? "Wiped clean"? School lunch for your kids? "Wiped clean." National parks? "Wiped clean." Your Mom's Medicare? "Wiped clean." Your Dad's Medicaid? "Wiped clean." And so on. Well, it is certainly "bold" and "audacious."

Forget the Prescription Drug farce now underway. (And why are we not talking about universal health insurance?) Since the tax cuts have gutted the ability to pay for the program long term, it's just a cynical ploy for 2004. It too will be "wiped clean" when the time comes

Skeptical Notion followed up:

This better be a rallying cry. They just flat out admitted that their goal is to rid the US of Social Security, of Medicare, of Medicaid, of unemployment insurance, of school lunches, of federal education money, of college loans....of everything that isn't the military or subsidies for businesses.

Going back to the Post article, when Broder asked if such candor was prudent, Norquist replied,

he saw it as an opportunity to show his fellow conservatives that "we don't have to try to operate under the radar screen. We can be very open about our agenda."

and

"I think the smart guys on the left have known for a long time they are in trouble -- and that we are going to dig out their whole structure of programs and power."

Yes, yes, I've known we're in trouble for a while, even while they were operating under the radar. The difficulty has been convincing other Americans that this is real and serious and they need to do something. And yet I know people who still claim there is no real difference between the Democratic and Republican parties...

<Sigh> Deep breaths. Just keep repeating: only 501 more days until November 2nd, 2004.

And only ten more hours until Harry Potter. Nice escapist fantasy... <pat><pat>

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:55 AM

Well, tonight's the night. Today's Globe lists some of the Harry Potter events at area booksellers. Oddly enough they include a lot of branches of chain stores, but not noted indies like Harvard Book Store or Brookline Booksmith.

Coolest package deal comes from the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, which (as the Christian Science Monitor says, "includes Harry Potter DVDs to wile away the evening until the book is hand-delivered to hotel rooms after midnight. Complete with Harry Potter jelly beans, it's an offer even villainous Voldemort couldn't refuse." [Here's the hotel's description of the deal.]

Also cool-sounding, several bookstores are using this as an educational event and bringing in live owls.

I said earlier that I would be going to WordsWorth in Harvard Square, and I'm going to stick to that in part to meet anybody who read my earlier message. However, the event described at Harvard Book Store also sounds tempting. I just hope the weather holds. [Costuming tip: old graduation robes make reasonable-looking and cheap wizarding costumes.]

FWIW, the rest of the weekend is shaping up to be a busy and festive one. I intend to start reading the book the moment I get it, and (hopefully) not stop (except for things like driving) until I'm finished. Yes, I'm going to try to pull an all-nighter. My goal is to finish it before my birthday party at 3pm Saturday, preferably with enough time to donate our less-worn copy to the local library on our way there. [The library is throwing its own Harry Potter event from 2 - 4pm.] After the party, I may call it an early night to catch up on sleep. And then on Sunday we're heading up to Vermont for my nephew's third birthday party. All in all, the weekend sounds somewhat exhausting and it may not be everyone's idea of fun, but I'm looking forward to it. Only sixteen hours to go...

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:36 PM

"I wouldn't call it a failed test, because the intercept was not the primary objective," said Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency. "It's still considered a success in that we gained great engineering data. We just don't know why it didn't hit." via CNN.

Wow. Now, I was able to parse what the meaning of "is" is, but this takes newspeak to an entirely new level. Our failure to do what we were supposed to is considered a success!

I suppose that's par for the course for this administration, given the number of American soldiers still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan since Bush declared victory, and all the other lies the executive branch has been spewing.

Of course, if you want to get real paranoid, President Bush has ordered the Pentagon to begin deploying a working missile defense system by October 2004. And what major American event is scheduled for the following month with the potential to disrupt the Bush regime or dethrone him entirely?

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:40 PM

[Senator Orrin "destroy copyright infringers' computers"] Hatch came under attack for allegedly being a copyright pirate himself. His hatch.senate.gov Web site's menus use JavaScript code created by the U.K. company Milonic Solutions. Milonic Solutions charges between $35 and $900 for the right to obtain a license number for its JavaScript menu, but Hatch's site does not include a license number. Instead, this comment appears in the site's HTML code: "i am the license for the menu (duh)."

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:04 AM

Just briefly I want to say that (1) I got into work and am doing much better; I like this place, they're very accommodating. (2) I don't know if I say this often enough, but I love my husband. Get a load of his latest words of wisdom (and with more context). That's all for now.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:35 AM

I can tell it's not going to be a good day today. Why? Because I simply couldn't sleep last night. Had trouble falling asleep and then noises outside woke me up around 5am. I've got a huge backlog at work (I was feeling so overwhelmed yesterday that I needed a break in the afternoon) and insufficient sleep aggravates my ADHD.

Oh well. I suppose my suffering will be your gain, since it gives me time to both read blogs and post about some of the stories that caught my attention. And there are some important ones out there.

• In a similar vein, (and also from TalkLeft), today's New York Times writes about the innocents whose lives have been ruined because post 9/11 law enforcement has relied too heavily on dubious anonymous tips.

  On a tip, her husband, Tarek Albasti, and eight other men were rounded up, shackled, paraded in front of a newspaper photographer and jailed for a week. The tip turned out to be false. But four of the men were then listed in a national crime registry as having been accused of terrorism, even though they were never charged, as the F.B.I. later conceded. The branding prevented them from flying, renting apartments and landing jobs.

  There's definitely something wrong with this country when people are fleeing to places like Yemen because "I did not feel safe in the U.S.," Mr. Alajji said in a telephone interview. "I felt I was being watched all the time, and the prosecutors decided that the file would remain open and I could be arrested at any time."
• Somebody recently pointed me to editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes, and this cartoon seems a disturbingly appropriate companion to that piece.
• My friend Yehoshua writes further on Orrin Hatch's troubling outburst (the one on destroying computers). If the chairman of the Judiciary Committee is advocating vigilanteeism, what does that say about respect for laws and... well... the judiciary? And how does that bode for the future of our country as a whole?
• Found a couple interesting pieces on political rhetoric.
  • Doc Searls writes about George Lakoff's essays on the differing conservative & liberal mindsets -- useful for both understanding one's opponents, which is necessary in order to persuade them. [Via See the forest]
  • The Watch quotes psychologist Renana Brooks on "how Bush uses language to bully people into doing things his way."
• Speaking of speeches and rhetoric, The Whiskey Bar lists still more blogs documenting Bush administration lies, as there are simply too many for just one site to track.
• Senator Jim Jeffords gives an amazing, must-read speech (via Ruminate this). Great use of repetition:

  The president says one thing, but does another. Does he think we don't notice?

• I'd ask why we're not hearing more of this from the Democrats, but according to Howard Kurtz (via Sisyphus), they're asking the same question:

  "Nothing agonizes House Democrats more than the perception that they don't even put up a fight. And, for this, they have a culprit almost as loathsome as Tom DeLay: the media. This dilemma was never more clear than on May 14, when a group of more than a dozen House Democrats, led by Bernie Sanders of Vermont (an independent in name but a loyal Democrat in practice), organized a press conference on a subject of urgent concern to them: an upcoming Federal Communications Commission ruling on media consolidation. The Democrats assembled and waited for the reporters. And waited. None showed up. None, that is, until a scribe from Roll Call hurried over to cover the humiliating spectacle of a press conference with no press. " 'The press has been disgracefully acquiescent,' says [Rep. Barney] Frank. 'Democrats these days are told by other Democrats, who are not full-time in politics, Well, we're disappointed. We don't hear much from you." ' ... "What truly drives Democrats berserk, however, are media reports declaring that 'the Congress' has passed a bill, without any mention of even the most furious Democratic opposition. 'We're out there organizing press conferences, fighting them on the floor, debating them nonstop,' says a leadership aide, 'and what you read in the press is, The Congress passed this," "The Congress passed that," and you don't even hear about the opposition.' " "During last month's tax-cut fight, a Democratic leadership aide said: 'I'm just out here to badger any reporters into including a paragraph--a paragraph--on our alternative. But I don't see anyone.' The next day, The New York Times did include such a paragraph (after 14 others on the Republican plan), but The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and two of the three major network news shows made little or no mention of the Democrats' protests.

• Given the news from Canada, I know that many of my friends will be interested in these pieces theorizing on legal recognition for foreign or out-of-state same-sex marriages from Slate Explainer and Eugene Volokh.
• Oh, and there's a new "comprehensive" EPA report coming out on the state of the environment. Curious how most of the data on global warming has been omitted. Quoting TBogg, "White House officials also deleted a reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures had risen sharply in the previous decade compared with the last 1,000 years. In its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion."

By the way, the WSJ piece on Iraqi exiles that I blogged about yesterday? The Freepers have reposted the entire article. [I'd write about the Freepers' disrespect of copyright, but having looked through the site and read their comment threads, the words Freeper and respect don't go well together.] Anyway, in case you want to read the entire article for yourself, there it is.

And, I guess that's about all I have for y'all this morning. I'm going to grab some breakfast.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:40 PM

How about a cute kitten courtesy of Ailsa, who writes "Cute kittens are good for what ails you", a sentiment with which I heartily agree. [Unless what ails you includes the current cat being annoying.]

Anyway, I normally try to stay out of discussions on the Arab/Israeli imbroglio, but this article from the front page of today's Wall Street Journal makes a very interesting point that deserves more attention. The article is not available online, so I will quote a few paragraphs, hopefully keeping within fair use guidelines.

In Baghdad, Return of Exiles Sets Off Tense Family Feuds
Mr. Ahmed Seeks the Return Of His Ancestral Home; Where Do Khdayers Go?
By Yaroslav Trofimov

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- When Azad Ahmed laid eyes on his former home on Nawab Street for the first time since his family was thrown out of it by Saddam Hussein's regime in 1979, he was overcome with tears of joy.
     But they quickly gave way to anger at what he found inside: the family of Kerim Ali Khdayer, a 69-year-old former teashop owner.
     The now-escalating standoff between the two men -- Mr. Ahmed, a 37-year-old ethnic Kurd, and Mr. Khdayer, an Arab -- offers a window into Iraq's deep social problems. In a chaotic and still-violent city, returning exiles are now demanding payback, often at the expense of people who had nothing to do with the original injustice.
...
     After a perilous journey from Iranian exile a few weeks ago, Mr. Ahmed has now turned to an armed Kurdish militia. He wants to drive Mr. Khdayer and his dozen family members out of the house Mr. Ahmed last saw when he was 13. "One way or another, we'll force these people to go," Mr. Ahmed says. "They'll be out."
     Mr. Khdayer says he had nothing to do with the Ahmed family's departure and no idea that he had moved his family into property once confiscated by Mr. Hussein's Baath regime. He is the third owner of the spacious two-story house since Mr. Ahmed's family left, he says.
     He's willing to move his family out, he says, but wants cash compensation first. "We're not the ones who kicked out the Kurds," says Mr. Khdayer, sitting in his garden in a traditional Arab robe, surrounded by his children, grandchildren and daughters-in-law. "We bought this house with our own money, and now we have nowhere else to live."

My point is that it's hypocritical for Arabs to demand Israel do things they're not willing to do for their own countrymen. If Arabs refuse to relinquish their homes for exiles who have only been gone for 20 years, then what right do they have to demand Israelis do the same for exiles who have been gone for decades longer?

I don't actually expect a logical answer to this, but I was just struck by the inconsistency, and wanted to point it out for future reference.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:15 PM

A comment to last night's post suggested I read Senator Orrin Hatch's statement on the USA PATRIOT Act. Wow. What an amazing example of lies and doublespeak. Let me just repost one paragraph for your consideration:

Nothing in the Patriot Act threatens our cherished Bill of Rights. In fact, the act is expressly designed to enhance our nation's fundamental freedoms. Moreover, despite the steady drumbeat of opposition by some groups, none of them has cited one instance of abuse against our constitutional rights, nor one shred of evidence to contradict the fact that these tools have saved American lives by preventing terrorist attacks against our people.

Okay, once you've wiped the tears from your face (from laughter or despair) help me count how many ways this paragraph is wrong. Here are a few to prime the pump:

• "From a constitutional perspective, the certification and mandatory detention of suspected immigrants in the USA Patriot Act should give pause. In particular, there is good reason to believe that the provisions do not comport with the procedural due process required by the Fifth Amendment."
   -- Stanford Law Review, via TalkLeft
• The Department of Homeland Security's first public investigation was against the Texas Democratic party.

I don't have time right now for the full litany, so I'll proably keep adding to this post over the day/week, and I strongly invite others to submit your own corrections (including things from my past writings, both here and elsewhere). For reference purposes, here are online copies of the U.S. Constitution, The Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence (for our fundamental freedoms).
Remember, we're looking for:

1. ways the USA PATRIOT Act threatens the Bill of Rights,
2. ways the USA PATRIOT Act diminishes our nation's fundamental freedoms,
3. evidence of abuse against our constitutional rights, and
4. for extra credit,
   evidence these tools haven't prevented terrorist attacks.
5. for even greater extra credit^*, courtesy of navrins:
   any evidence these tools have prevented terrorist attacks? (terrorist act must have been prevented by something in USAPAT, not by pre-existing law enforcement tools) [Added at 12:45 PM]

Meanwhile, in other civil liberties news, TalkLeft points out how Ashcroft is trying to sneak in bits of USAPAT II into other legislation and how the RAVE Act is primarily being used to stifle political dissent. And there are many more stories out there that I haven't had the chance to read or blog about.

It's mourning in America.

Added 12:50 PM <grump>Hell of a time for the commenting system to go down.
Well, I've added navrins' question to the list. And I'm starting to wonder whether to offer an actual ^*prize beyond mere brownie points for the highest quantity and quality answers to these questions. I'll have to think on that.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 AM

Via Sisyphus Shrugged, a brief wrap-up of the Supreme Court term. A couple major decisions are still pending with one week left on the clock. I'm most interested in Lawrence vs. Texas (same sex sodomy laws) and ALA (et al) vs. mandatory filtering (SCOTUSblog suspects Rehnquist will be writing that decision), but the other biggies include whether corporations are entitled to free speech (Nike v Kasky) and the college affirmative action cases.

Decisions are generally posted about 10am Monday mornings, and I've discovered SCOTUSblog seems to post the rulings earliest among news sites.

I found a cool little LJ community for Harry Potter fanfic: HP100. Quoting from the rules, "Every Monday a new challenge is posted, and participants have one week in which to answer the challenge in a one-hundred word drabble. House points are given to the House of your choice if the drabble is exactly 100 words."

It's rather fun, and much less stressful than writing something longer and serious. All my entries will be stored here, although I notice they haven't updated it yet with my latest entry. Enjoy.

Meanwhile, it's now less than 63 hours until the stores will be selling Harry Potter Book 5, and the wait is getting harder and harder to bear. I know I'm not the only fan who feels this way, as these posts attest.

Still, I find myself wanting to echo the war cry of Igor from Dork Tower, when he yells:

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:30 PM

"[Sen. Orrin Hatch,] chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet." -- just seen on AP via Boston.com. Talk about overkill.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 AM

Last summer, I/we saw several excellent outdoor performances of Shakespeare, so I thought I'd check what these theater companies are up to this year:

• Commonwealth Shakespeare will be showing Macbeth free at the Boston Common from July 18 -- August 10, and their tour of the parks will be showing Midsummer Night's Dream.
• The Publick Theatre will also be playing Midsummer Night's Dream (starting this Thursday) and Twelfth Night starting in mid-July.
• The New England Shakespeare Festival will also be running Twelfe Night (I know Shakespeare only wrote 33 plays, but what's with all the repetition?)
• And if I could manage to get out to the other side of the state, Shakespeare & Company in Lenox will be performing Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado and King Lear
• Oh, and the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge is performing Pericles thru June 27th. [They're deferring Midsummer Night's Dream until next January.]

Don't know if I'll see any or many of these, but consider this a public notice for Shakespeare aficionados in the Boston area (as well as a personal reminder for myself).

PS: As long as I'm thinking about Shakespeare, I have to remember to bookmark Actors From The London Stage. They're a five-man theater troupe who perform Shakespeare with minimal props and each actor assuming multiple roles. Patrick Stewart's an alum of the troupe, so if you think of what his one man rendition of Christmas Carol, you'll get the idea. I saw their "Midsummer Night's Dream" back in college and it was excellent. The acting was so good and the story so engaging, I didn't have problems even when actors were portraying two characters in the same scene. [They try to minimize that, but it's not always possible.]

Anyway, it doesn't look like they're playing Boston this year, but every time I think of them I have to struggle to recall the troupe's name and website, so I may as well make note of it here. And if you have a chance to see them perform, whereever you are, I highly recommend it.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:00 AM

This account of my weekend is slightly disjointed, but the best I can do this Monday morning.

For an early birthday present, Ian bought me When Love Speaks -- a CD of British "contemporary artists" reading Shakespeare's sonnets (plus a few passages from the plays and one poem by Marlowe). I've been wanting this for ages and couldn't resist any longer. I haven't yet listened to the whole thing, but there are a few tracks that I doubt I will ever tire of.

Alan Rickman's rendition of Sonnet 130 (My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun) is simply magnificent -- you can hear a snippet of it on http://www.whenlovespeaks.com/ (go to downloads - clips from the album). His voice is so... oh... I think I could listen to this poem indefinitely. I'm rather disappointed that Annie Lennox only adapted the first half of Live with me to music, but I still adore both the poem and tune. [Again, you can hear a snippet at the same place on the website.]

To my surprise and delight, while we were looking for When love speaks, I discovered Michael Nesmith's pioneering music/comedy video Elephant Parts was out on DVD. I loved that one as a child and have wanted Ian to see it for ages. So we bought it, and we finally managed to hook up the DVD player correctly so we could watch it. [All credit on this goes to Ian!] Yes, it's a bit dated, but just as funny as I remember.

Afterwards, I did some websearching and found Nesmith's official website and looked up the evidence that Nesmith created MTV. [His music video program, Popclips, aired on Nickelodeon in 1980; Nick's parent company purchased rights to the show with plans to turn it into a 24-hour network. Nesmith was involved in some of the preliminary planning, but left over artistic differences.] Also found an interesting Wired article about an odd think-tank Nesmith has founded.

What an interesting man.

And since I'm writing of Marlowe and odd video discoveries, Friday night Ian and I found a video rental place on Main St. Wakefield. Little hole-in-the-wall place piled high with videos in an order that it took much of my librarian-training to discern. They didn't have Elephant Parts [though the owner says they used to, and now we no longer need it], but I did find several other rarities I'd been looking for, including It came from Hollywood (another childhood favorite I've been wanting to share with Ian) and Derek Jarman's Edward II. The place has a bit of a sleazy feel to it, but I'm thrilled by the selection.

Other things we did this weekend included helping my father troubleshoot his website, attending a friend's bellydancing recital. [Her rendition of Dona Dona was beautiful, but the song has too many strong/early/personal resonances. Another pair, calling themselves Queens of Denial did very funny choreography to "Istanbul, not Constantinople" and the theme to "I Dream of Jeannie".] Sunday afternoon we went out to Harvard Square and Newbury Street to enjoy the warm, pleasant weather. For dinner we went to a friend's graduation party, and then we watched Elephant Parts after we got home.

Work is good. The prank I played on C went over well, though I wish I were more capable of keeping a straight face.

So, Tuesday night, we stopped by our local Dunkin Donuts and got a couple of their coffee cups. Ian made coffee gelatin in one of them (letting a stirrer gel in as well), and let it sit in the fridge overnight to set.

Wednesday morning, we stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the way to work, where I picked up a box of munchkins and fresh coffees for my coworkers K & J. I also had some books from home I needed to bring into work, so Ian and I carried those upstairs to my cube first. As we came down the elevator (with some coworkers), we ran into K coming in. One of my coworkers was going to Dunkin Donuts and asked K if she wanted anything. I told her not to worry, that I picked up coffee for her. She gave me a worried "Oh, Lis, you know C was kidding, right?" At that, Ian and I knew things would go well.

We went back to the car and I grabbed the coffees (2 real, one gelatin) and donuts and headed back upstairs. I gave J and K their coffee, and... well... when K looked all concerned, I just couldn't keep a straight face. I told K that I knew C was joking, told her I was pranking him back, but said that if she wanted to give C a hard time anyway, that would be great. C came in late, so I left his "coffee" on his desk.

When C came in, K told him that I brought coffee in for all of them, and C looked a little worried. But when he noticed the stirrer didn't move, he asked me what I did. I offered him a spoon and said the coffee might be a little strong. And then I couldn't hold back my smile and told him what it was. He laughed and said that I got him good. He asked how long it would keep, and in fact it's still in his cubicle, up on his shelf. He's shown it to other people and told them the story, and a few of them have complimented me.

Friday morning, C gave me the nickname "Borden". [Please don't start; I'll take it from him, but don't want it to become common.]

C: good morning Borden
me: Mornin'
me:Given that greeting, were you going to axe me something?
C:hahah
C:its funny , when [manager] first decided to hire you
C:I kept saying,
C:when does Borden start? where will borden sit?
C:but they all thought it was a good idea not to call you that for a while

For now I'm taking it (I think my prank demonstrated that I fit in and won't take stupid guff) but I'm trying to decide whether to nickname him back or what to do next.