Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:51 PM

Went to Harvard Square part of the afternoon. Finally picked up Scardown though I may want to find and reread Hammered to refresh my memory first.

Also found both Honey, I'm home! : sitcoms, selling the American dream and Superman on the couch : what superheroes really tell us about ourselves and our society which look interesting enough to check out of the library sometime. Nifty, though I don't want to own it was a slipcased hardcover "Coronation Edition" of Spenser's Fairie Queen -- in honor of (a) the 350th anniversary of Elizabeth I's death and (b) Elizabeth II's coronation.

Though I didn't see either in the bookstore this visit, I just discovered there are two books titled "Culture of Fear": Barry Glassner's 1999 The Culture of fear: why Americans are afraid of the wrong things and Frank Furedi's post-9/11 Culture of fear: risk-taking and the morality of low expectation. And now I'm confused over which to read. Any recommendations, reviews or rumors to set me straight on the difference between them?

Meanwhile, people on my LJ Friends list are complaining about accidentally encountering unwanted spoilers for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I promise that I won't share any unprotected spoilers for the book for at least as many days as there are chapters (I know some people who are reading it a chapter a day). If I do feel compelled to post spoilers, they'll be on a separate page -- my equivalent of a cut-tag -- to avoid accidental disclosure to anybody reading this through an aggregator or LiveJournal. Okay? [Considering that I won't even get the book until late Saturday afternoon, I may not be online that much over the weekend to avoid being spoiled myself.]

In movie news, Tom Smith just pointed out Disney's end-of-the-month movie Sky High, about a school for superheroes. This summer seems to have been a season of disappointments from movies that initially looked promising. That said, I'm they've cast Lynda Carter as principal, Bruce Campbell as coach, plus Kurt Russell, Cloris Leachman and two members of Kids in the Hall in other roles. And the idea of turning a Multiple Man character into the chearleading squad is inspired...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:30 PM

Print and bring this coupon to any Borders or Waldenbooks today through Monday for 20% off all books (15% off DVDs). [More disclaimes on the coupon itself.]

Enjoy. And if you should buy anything, let me know what. I always love to hear about good books...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:33 AM

This morning, I dreamed that I found a bookcase of new (to me) Donna Barr books: new Desert Peach, new Stinz, new Bosom Enemies and other material I hadn't even heard of.

I had finally stopped gawking long enough to find the earliest Desert Peach GN with material I hadn't already seen, and had read about two pages into it (Pfirsich was visiting his son (who appeared to be about three years old) and explaining to a disbelieving Udo why he destroyed the records of his marriage) when the alarm rang and woke me out of the dream.

When Ian hit snooze, I tried to recapture it, but it was gone. Damn.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:40 PM

Despite the technical snafu earlier this evening, I am rapidly regaining the files and functionality of my old laptop.

That means, I'm pleased to announce, I have finally managed to update my Books Read in 2005 pages (both list and calendar views) and my Marlowe in Modern Fiction list. There are now 51 titles on the Marlowe list (nearly twice the original 26). Unfortunately, I seem to find new titles faster than I can find and read the works. I've dropped back below the halfway point, having only completed 25 of them (49%).

Just wanted to share that if anybody's looking for something to read.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:59 PM

Well, that sucked.

Just spent nearly two hours on a stupid computer problem.

My new laptop comes with 90 day free trial subscription of Norton Internet Security. When I got home from work, it said its LiveUpdate had some things to check. I accepted it, and allowed it to use Norton Firewall. Then it needed to restart and the bad mojo hit.

My machine rebooted to the wallpaper, but without giving me the taskbar across the bottom or desktop icons. Fortunately I experienced a similar problem before I had reinstalled everything. I didn't know it was related to Norton, but I knew I could get back to my desktop by going to the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and end the process of explorer.exe and then create a new task (File > Run) of explorer.exe.

This got me to a more usable state, but no network. From my earlier bouts with the problem, I knew this was a problem starting IIS (World Wide Web Publishing Service).

Eventually, I managed to disable the Norton Firewall (after getting errors from Norton that "You do not have the necessary rights to configure" when I'm logged in as admin) and reverted back to the Windows Firewall.

Particularly frustrating that this problem appears to be longstanding and well-known on the Internet, but I could find nothing about it on Symantec's site. I'm probably not the only person who chose XP Pro over XP Home for IIS, so you would think this would be handled more elegantly.

I guess I won't be spending my money on Norton's Internet Security.

And I'm sharing this with y'all in case any of you ever experience this problem.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:25 PM

As Salon's A&E column sums up:

Queen has unseated Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the most successful music act in U.K. album chart history. Queen's music has spent 1,322 weeks on the charts whereas the Beatles have spent 1,293 weeks and Elvis 1,280 weeks.

The subject quote comes from Roger Taylor as quoted in The Guardian: "We were always incredibly ambitious. But we never expected to see a list that read Queen, then the Beatles, then Elvis."

The statistics and ranking are courtesy of the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles and Albums.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:10 PM

Ponzi's scheme: the true story of a financial legend -- for those (like me) who only know the term but aren't familiar with the history behind it.

Baghdad burning: girl blog from Iraq -- the first year's worth of posts by Riverbend. Considering the somewhat relaxed attitude towards copyright some people take towards material published on the web, I sure hope that she and her family are getting proceeds from this.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:05 PM

1986, between my junior and senior years of high school, my first summer in Boston as part of the Boston College Experience as a rehearsal for college:

July Fourth in Boston, it only seemed natural to spend the day following the Freedom Trail from one end to the other. I wound up at the Charlestown Navy Yard, watching the fireworks from a small barge tied alongside the U.S.S. Constitution watching fireworks directly overhead (I could see the ash hit water not five feet from us). [That summer the restoration of the Statue of Liberty was completed and unveiled, so John Williams spent the Fourth conducting in New York City. He gave the traditional Pops concert on the fifth, and I watched that, too.]

1990, between my junior and senior years of college, my second summer in Boston when I lived in a sublet and got myself a campus job as a rehearsal for post-graduate life:

A passel of friends and I left for the Esplanade about ten in the morning July Fourth. We staked out a huge area with blankets and hung out all day. [I think I drifted off at some point to Faneuil Hall to grab some food.] It was a hot and sunny day -- water trucks sat in strategic spots spraying people. I consider that the moment I knew my destiny was in Massachusetts -- because I broiled red as a lobster and had to call in sick the next day from the sunburn.

Though I've been back to the Esplanade fireworks many times since, it's been a while. So yesterday I got the itch and dragged Ian downtown for a taste of Boston traditions.

We had late lunch at Durgin Park and then discovered that Ian had never really walked the Freedom Trail, so we picked a direction from Fanuiel Hall and followed the trail towards the Public Garden. Many of the buildings had already closed, but we had fun watching street performers and wandering through the historic graveyards.

Ian wasn't feeling so well, so I took him to the Chinatown stop so he could T home, and headed over to the Esplanade. Wandered a bit, grabbed some food from vendors (Italian sausage, a surprisingly good raspberry lime rickey, and some kettle corn), and then found a nice little spot on the grass where I could hear the concert and see the fireworks.

The show seemed much more geared towards television audiences than I remembered from my first visit, but during the slots when home viewers would get commercials, the Pops played little short selections rather than going to dead air (which theprogram seems to imply happened in years before). Ever heard the Boston Pops rendition of "Charlie on the MTA"? I have! (8D) I don't remember hearing the shells during "1812 Overture" this time around. I wouldn't've thought it possible, but maybe the fireworks distracted from the big guns? I was trying to listen for them, though.

Fireworks were spectacular as always. I think I noticed two new shaped shells: Cubes (during U2's "Vertigo") and fuschia hearts (during the Selena song). According to the announcers, the television production aired them without commercials, which is a definite step up. [I remember the first year they synched the fireworks to music, they did a spectacular rendition of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" which the rebroadcast competely skipped for commercials.] For several years now, they've succeeded in producing bilaterally symmetrical shaped fireworks, including ringed planets and smiley faces (first seen to Good Vibrations). I'm still waiting to see an M, I and T launched from a Cambridge rooftop...

After that, it was time to make my way home. Walking through the darkened streets of Back Bay, I never felt scared because there were always other people within shouting distance. What were the announcers estimating - half-a-million people? I made it to Back Bay station about a quarter to midnight, called Ian to meet me at Oak Grove, and got back shortly before 1 in the morning.

All-in-all a good day.

PS @ 12:50: Daleynews photoblogged the concert. I guess they did shoot the big guns. And some pretty pictures of the fireworks. Thanks to Universal Hub for the link!

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:25 PM

Julia provides a fully-hyperlinked version while Timroff at DailyKos tries a rewrite.

We commemorate this day for more than just cookouts and fireworks displays. Any other useful thoughts in making this a living document?

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:10 PM

Via Balloon Juice, I find that the Washington Post is offering Variations on a Pledge: the four authentic versions of the Pledge of Allegiance (from its first draft through the 1954 addition of "under Gd" and they invited 19 writers and activists a chance to rewrite the pledge. Some are comic, some are more serious. A few that I am fond of:

It's an interesting exercise to examine and reimagine something we're all so familiar with.

Three years ago, I gave the Pledge a close reading in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.

Personally, I'm uncomfortable with pledging allegiance to the flag -- it gives too much power to the symbol over what it represents, as current debates over flag desecration make abundantly clear.

When I first saw the WashPost exercise, I wondered how I'd feel if we pledged allegiance to the Constitution and the Republic for which that stands. But while that seems somewhat preferable, it still causes problems for when supporting the American Dream means working to amend the Constitution, such repealing prohibition or enshrining equal rights.

So better, I think, to pledge allegiance to the nation and to the ideals for which it stands.

I need to give this much more consideration before I could seriously undertake such a rewriting, though the essays I link to in my previous post provide a useful starting point. Anybody else care to give it a try?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:35 AM

I was in the process of linking to three essays about modern America to honor Independence day, when I came across this from Gary Farber:

NO ONE'S PART OF AMERICA IS BETTER than anyone else's, nor more or less "real," and claiming otherwise is, I say on this day, un-American and despicable. Todd Zywicki writes:

...sorry Justice Breyer, I don't count Cambridge as "real America"....

Why would it be more respectable to insert the name of any given spot in the United States into that opinion than any other given placename?

Is, America, in fact, more "real" in one locale than in another? Are citizens resident in that locale "realer" Americans than those residing elsewhere? Are their opinions more authentic and more "American" than those of other Americans?

Is this, in fact, a valid position for a law professor to hold? Discuss.

Naturally this got my dander up, having frequently passed Washington's army headquarters in Harvard Square.

Just the slightest bit of Googling turned up this official history of Cambridge, which includes:

William Dawes rode out Massachusetts Avenue on his way to Concord on April 18, 1775. The following afternoon, four Cambridge Patriots died in a skirmish with retreating British regulars at the corner of Massachusetts and Rindge Avenues. The provisional government confiscated many Loyalist estates -- George Washington used the Vassal-Craigie-Longfellow House as his headquarters for nine months in 1775-6. During the Siege of Boston, the General supervised the construction of three earthenwork forts along the Cambridge side of the Charles River. The remains of one, Fort Washington, can still be seen in Cambridgeport.  (For more on Revolutionary-era Cambridge, click here).

As Ian put it, we were here first!

I was thinking of going to watch 1776 today with friends, but now I'm tempted to head into Harvard Square and see the sites/sights.

And just as Tom here has written
We say to hell with Great Britain!
The eagle inside belongs to us!

For the record, here are the three essays I was going to link to. They are worth reading, but I no longer feel like excerpting them:

• Hilzoy's More Things We Throw Away on loving our country and the ideals for which it stands (via the always eloquent Jeanne d'Arc)
• The Corpuscle's Raise Your Pinkies And Let's Rumble on America as a civilized society (via Arthur Hlavaty)
• My Country 'Tis of Me by The Ferrett: America as a gifted child, as a warning against complacency

PS: Ian on patriotism

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:30 PM

Via Amygdala, Joss Whedon has some news about Summer Glau (who plays River in Firefly & Serenity) auditioning for the role of Kitty Pryde in X-Men 3.

But what really caught my eye were his comments about future plans for the Firefly franchise:

Summer would make a wonderful Kitty. (And I don't say that lightly.) As long as it doesn't interfere with SERENITY II: RICARDO MONTALBAN'S STILL PISSED -- or, much more importantly, SERENITY III: SO VERY NUDE.

He's such a tease!

But remember, you heard it here first! (unless you read Amygdala or his sources or anybody else who caught the news from one of those sources before I looked at them...)

In other movie news, Ain't It Cool News has found a creepy clip from Gaiman and McKean's upcoming Henson flick MirrorMask -- you thought McKean's art was unnerving? At least that stood still... And I just heard about The Aristocrats (and saw its trailer) and the concept sounds intriguing.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:06 PM

Sorry for the cliffhanger radio silence.

The second backup (which I did without compression immediately after writing the previous post in notepad) worked faster and sans error. On the negative side, it also convinced me tht I don't like the Roxio product and much prefer my older copy of Dantz Retrospect. Much to my annoyance, I haven't been able to find the install disks since the cleaning crews came in after the housefire. :(. As a positive, however, while searching for that I did manage to find my CD of SmartSuite 9.6!

I ended up pulling an all-nighter, reinstalling Windows XP and installing the programs I wanted. I honestly didn't feel tired until after breakfast, when I sat down for a few minutes and Boopsie used the power of purr do drag me down into sleeping beside her. Unfortunately, we had family gatherings planned for all day, so despite a short nap, I didn't get home until well after midnight.

The exhaustion got in the way of my plans to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys), but the next segment in my story is told from the point-of-view of somebody operating on no sleep and too much stress, so even though I don't consider myself a Method writer, I did get some useful notes down from my observations.

In the meantime, my computer is doing well, and feels much more like my computer than it has since I got it. I still have a fair bit to do, in terms of restoring files from TechFusion's backups and figuring out how to get plugins working in Opera, but I'm mostly good.

PS: Another addition to the possible book list courtesy of Salon: Rum: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776