Moe Lane

I’m still stuck on tonight’s song — sometimes I know at first light; sometimes I have no idea at all — but this bit from (I guess) the John Adams miniseries is excellent. Both because it’s one of the best things he ever said, and because it was presented as a warning that absolutely went over the head of most of the people who heard it.

Yes, I must watch that miniseries.

Today and tomorrow, so I figure it’s going to be a bit quiet on my end and everything.  At least, online.  When it comes to family conversations mine tend to be LOUD.

Because sometimes you don’t want to look too closely at the magic, that’s why. What would discovering that this is fake get me, in the end? Would I be a happier person, really? I suspect not. I so suspect not.

The irony is, I don’t even have a strong opinion about Radiohead. But some things are just too good not to share.

And the headline of the year goes to… pic.twitter.com/SiboZ2gFex

— Grant Tucker (@GrantTucker) June 24, 2017

(Via Facebook) :Piously: You should never, ever break the law like this.

(more…)

(Via Facebook) As in, the family in question really is trying to hire a nanny who can get her head around the fact that the house is reputedly haunted.  They’re offering live-in boarding, fifty thousand pounds a year, and four weeks paid vacation. They’ve gone through something like five nannies in the last year. This apparently isn’t a joke, or anything.

Personally, I’d tell someone to take the job whether they believed in ghosts or not (I am rather skeptical about the existence of ghosts). If they don’t believe in ghosts, then there’s no problem at all. If they do believe in ghosts, well: the family is still living in that place and nothing’s happened to them. Perhaps there’s some trick to getting along with the ghosts, even if it’s something as simple (and hopefully, reflexive) like common politeness. The literature is full of anecdotes of people who happily live in allegedly haunted houses.

Besides, there’s that four weeks paid vacation. That’s quite a lot, really.

This story is from March: but this is the first I’ve heard of it, it’s all that the title promises, and delivers as the feel-good story of the day.

In 2014, three truck drivers sued Oakhurst Dairy, seeking more than four years’ worth of overtime pay that they had been denied. Maine law requires workers to be paid 1.5 times their normal rate for each hour worked after 40 hours, but it carves out some exemptions.

Said exemptions are:

The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:

(1) Agricultural produce;
(2) Meat and fish products; and
(3) Perishable foods.

As you might have guessed, the question here is: were there exemptions for packing for shipment AND for distribution, or was there AN exemption for packing for shipment and/or distribution?  The plaintiffs argued for the latter, and the defendants argued for the former. The court ruled in favor of human decency and sanity by declaring that the lack of a Oxford Comma made things too unclear.

WHICH THE LACK OF THE COMMA DOES.

Via Facebook.

It’s a little complicated: for me, the solstice is tomorrow, because it’ll happen at 12:24 AM Eastern Time. But for the rest of you, it’ll be today, because of time zones.  The point is that, in about seven and a half hours, the sun will stop its northerly movement in the northern sky, and start to move southerly. Because that’s what ‘solstice’ means : ‘sun-stop.’

[pause]

Did they teach us any of this stuff in school?  I’m forced to admit that I was zoning out for a lot of the boring stuff, because I had a good ear for what was going to be on actual tests and a not-unwarranted good opinion of my ability to cram/learn things at the last minute. So maybe I’m the only one who never heard anything about this, and the rest of you are going Geez, Moe, like everybody knows about how the solstice works! It wouldn’t be the first time, is what I’m saying.

Funny story: I used to be a researcher.  Library grad school, until they threw me out of it because of wine, women, and song*; then a decade in general real estate research tracking down the details of recent commercial/multi-tenant residential sales.  And, of course, there were those amusing days demonstrating to anonymous Internet trolls that there’s no such thing as anonymity on the Internet.  Good times, good times.

Anyway, I see this Tweet: (more…)

DART stands for “Dark Adventure Radio Theater,” in case you’ve missed somehow that I buy the HPL Historical Society’s radio dramas whenever I happen to have a combination of a bank account balance and the sweet, horrible cravings.  I picked up Dagon: War of Worlds (which has been a bit expanded from Lovecraft’s original story) when I could no longer keep myself from pre-ordering The Haunter of the Dark. I bought the physical CDs, of course — they come with props — but the HPLHS sends over the mp3s of the shows when you buy a physical copy, so Dagon’s unzipping as we speak.

The anticipation consumes me.  What terrors will be revealed?  What dizzying vistas shall I… um, hear? We’ll soon find out…

Today is the anniversary of what can be at least argued as the end of slavery in the USA: June 19th, 1865. On this day Union general Gordon Granger* formally announced that the Emancipation Proclamation had come to Texas.  Texan African-Americans have been celebrating Juneteenth every year; it’s been a state holiday since 1980, and a recognized one in 90% of the USA at this point.

As I’ve said before: it’s never a bad idea to throw a party celebrating the end of slavery.

Moe Lane

*I admit it: I had to look up the guy’s name.

Well, sort of. I got up at the usual time, because I had to go to the doctor’s to get the wart attacked again.  Which, as expected, hurt more than the last time; sufficiently so that, when I got home with the kids (who are now old enough to hang out quietly in the waiting room with a tablet and not get into stuff, thankfully) my eldest suggested that I should go take a nap.  Which was an excellent idea, so I did.

So.  Good morning.

Moe Lane

PS: The eldest was also all Ooh, what’s that? when Led Zep came on the radio.  So, basically, net gain for the day so far.

But apparently they are.  If these are fakes, then they’re fakes that have managed to survive over a century’s scrutiny, which is impressive all by itself.  But, seriously, this is real:

14,000 years ago two bison were shaped in soft clay, by torchlight, in the dark recesses of Le Tuc d'Audoubert cave in SW France #IceAgeArt pic.twitter.com/muhBwtibN3

— The Ice Age (@Jamie_Woodward_) June 18, 2017