Ethel the Blog
Observations (and occasional brash opining) on science, computers, books, music and other shiny things that catch my mind's eye. There's a home page with ostensibly more permanent stuff. This is intended to be more functional than decorative. I neither intend nor want to surf on the bleeding edge, keep it real, redefine journalism or attract nyphomaniacal groupies (well, maybe a wee bit of the latter). The occasional cheap laugh, raised eyebrow or provocation of interest are all I'll plead guilty to in the matter of intent. Bene qui latuit bene vixit.

The usual copyright stuff applies, but I probably won't get enraged until I find a clone site with absolutely no attribution (which, by the way, has happened twice with some of my other stuff). Finally, if anyone's offended by anything on this site then please do notify me immediately. I like to keep track of those times when I get something right.

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"When they say, 'Gee it's an information explosion!', no, it's not an explosion, it's a disgorgement of the bowels is what it is. Every idiotic thing that anybody could possibly write or say or think can get into the body politic now, where before things would have to have some merit to go through the publishing routine, now, ANYTHING." - Harlan Ellison JOLLY OLD PALS Other stuff of mild interest to some: unusual literature scientific software blog physical oceanography glossary computer-related tutorials and texts Friday, February 04, 2000 SCOUT SITINGS This week's edition of the always useful Scout Report contains an item or three of interest: National Resources Inventory, a "statistically based sample of land use and natural resource conditions and trends on U.S. nonfederal lands. It is the most comprehensive database of its kind ever attempted anywhere in the world." The state-by-state tables detail the changes in land cover and use from 1982 to 1997 as well as provide numbers for cropland use, sheet and rill erosion, and wind erosion. Chinese Military Power, a "gateway to full-text online analysis and research tools essential to understanding China's military policy, capabilities, and potential. The present featured article - "The China-Taiwan Military Balance" - tells us that "Despite rapid economic growth, China is actually becoming weaker militarily relative to Taiwan and all of its other potential rivals (except Russia, which has declined even faster). China's military equipment is the most backward of any large or medium-sized power. It is much inferior, for example, to the equipment used by Iraq during the Gulf War." This could prove useful the next time the saber-rattlers attempt to squeeze more expensive toys, er, weapons out of the taxpayer by playing the China card. H-Psychohistory, a web site and mailing list "to enable scholars to discuss research interests, teaching methodology and bibliographic sources for understanding the psychological sources of social and political behavior, past and present." Their front-page motto is "Putting the world on the couch." All I want to know is who the hell the Mule is today. History and Politics Out Loud (HPOL), is "a searchable archive of politically significant audio materials for scholars, teachers, and students." They've currently got audio materials (in RealPlayer format) and transcripts of LBJ, JFK, MLK, the Warren Commission and that crowd-pleasing favorite Richard Milhous Nixon. They plan to have all of the 12.5 hours of Tricky Dick's home recordings that were requested in the Watergate trial of Nixon's aides. That should make great party music. Arts Journal: The Daily Digest of Arts & Cultural Journalism, features current news and archives of arts stories in eight categories: dance, arts issues, media, music, arts people, publishing, theatre, and visual arts. Passages: A Treasure Trove of North American Exploration "presents accounts of European voyages and explorations to North America, from Columbus's Atlantic crossing in 1492 to the famous trip through the Northwest Passage by Roald Amundsen in 1905." The online materials are derived from a rare book collection containing over 600 works written in over 50 languages and dialects. posted by Steven Baum 2/4/2000 04:31:57 PM | link STRANGE LIT CRIT HIT Eric Alterman writes of the latest wave of literary magazines in his column "Not Dead Yet" in the Feb. 14 Nation, the most interesting of which seems to be McSweeney's. Alterman calls it "a hybrid that is part traditional literary magazine, part running commentary on media hubris, part National Lampoon goes to lit-crit grad school, with too many other parts to mention." A perusal of their online archives yields such intriguing titles as: Fragments from "Elian: The Musical!" Thought Police Blotter I See These People Walking Down My Alley Almost Every Single Day I Was Alan Greenspan's Roadie What Orrin Hatch Must Do to Win Today's Most Funniest Movie Bloopers My Life with Ronald Reagan Maxwell's Lyrics, or Maxwell's Equations? posted by Steven Baum 2/4/2000 03:12:30 PM | link IN THE NATION The February 14 Nation has some lovely tidbits. First, we find Josh McDowell - author of such relentlessly paralogical tracts as Evidence That Demands a Verdict and Evolution: The Fossils Say No - saying at a Family, Faith and Freedom rally in Des Moines, Iowa (in light of a study showing that the divorce rate for born-again Christians is higher than that for atheists) that: "Until we are willing to live the Ten Commandments ourselves, we have no right to hang them up in schools!" Next, in Alexander Cockburn's "Beat the Devil" column (a 1998 Anchor Christmas to whoever can tell me the origin of the column's name, by the way), he tells of a Haitian named Max Antoine currently living in New Jersey who keeps track of stories of police abuse. Why? During a 1996 warrantless search of his house at 2 AM during a party by a trio of New Jersey's finest, he told his sister to write down their badge numbers so he could file an official complaint. Cockburn's take on ensuing events: "This was poor judgment on Max's part. On the account of many witnesses the cops smashed Max with a nightstick, kicked and beat him, shoved his head through a glass door, sprayed him with burning chemicals, tossed him in a cell for two days and denied him medical attention. Max was left with a fractured eye socket, a broken jaw, bowel and bladder damage, and spinal injuries. He went through seventeen surgeries, is now paralyzed below the waist, depressed, suicidal and saddled with huge medical bills. Having thus effectively destroyed his life, the Irvington police charged him with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. A few weeks ago, on the verge of a trial, the prosecutors dropped the charges. Max's civil suit against the police is pending. The Justice Department has declined to take an interest." Although I can't find the stats at the moment, I'm fairly sure the land of the free has more police (i.e. federal, state, local, etc.) per capita than any supposed free country in the world, and they're certainly not all clones of Officer Kruppke. As Cockburn puts it elsewhere in his column: Those endless wars on crime and drugs - a staple of 90 percent of America's politicians these last thirty years - have engendered not merely our 2 million prisoners but a vindictive hysteria that pulses on the threshold of homicide in the bosoms of many of our uniformed law enforcers. Finally, in Patricia Williams column "Without Sanctuary" she writes of an exhibition called "Witness" at the Roth Horowitz Gallery in NYC showing pictures of lynchings from the first three decades of the 1900s, when that institution was at its peak. She points out that there is little said about it in history or legal books, but remedies the lack with some numbers (which can also be found in Robert A. Gibson's The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States, 1980-1950): Between the years 1882 and 1968, lynching claimed, on average, at least one life a week. Almost 5000 black men were lynched. In addition, black women, Jews, white cattle rustlers and a few white women became its objects. The practice began long before the Civil War but peaked during the backlash to Reconstruction, particulary during the decade just prior to World War I. She goes on to relate that the popular view of lynchings as mostly due to a pack of good ol' boys getting a little drunk and crazy and grabbing the nearest black is wrong. The victims were chosen not at random by drunken hayseeds but quite deliberately by sober folk, and they were inevitably those blacks who had "actually or purportedly challenged their status as inferior." And neither were the lynchings all late-night escapades attended by a few ne'er-do-wells but shunned by the majority of good folks: "...lynchings utterly obliterated the line between mob and official violence, between vigilantes and police. Sometimes lynchings occurred under the cover of night, but sometimes in broad daylight; sometimes they took place on the spur of the moment, but more often they were carefully planned, even ritualized events, choreographed as a kind of theatrical pastime. Whole towns routinely turned out for "nigger barbecues" (the victims were often burned as well as hanged). Newspapers would run notices of lynchings; schools would close so that children could attend; mayors, sheriffs and town officials freqently presided. Routinely, the crowds hacked up the bodies and passed out the pieces. Routinely, hands, penises, teeth, bones, ears, hair and skin were taken home or sent to friends as souvenirs. But, on the other hand, George Washington did tell the truth when he chopped down the cherry tree. posted by Steven Baum 2/4/2000 02:15:27 PM | link Thursday, February 03, 2000 TAX CUT FOLLIES The Shrub is pushing a $483 billion tax cut as the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Or, more accurately, the ostensibly substantive centerpiece as opposed to the "compassionate conservatism" theme that's rung hollow from day one. So what's wrong with a tax cut., you say? Well, let's take a look at the arguments for it. The eternal chant of the voodoo doctors, er, supply-side grifters is that tax cuts will just stimulate the hell out of the economy, making it speed up not unlike a runaway freight train. Conversely, a tax increase would pummel the economy to the point where "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" would be back in the Top 40. Let's look at the evidence for this. First of all, the Reagan years are trumpeted as the ultimate proof of the genius of supply-side economics. Well, as Paul Krugman explains with alacrity (in Peddling Prosperity and elsewhere), economic growth can be divided into growth due to taking up the slack in unused labor (i.e. putting the unemployed back to work) and actual productivity growth (where each worker actually produces more). When you subtract the former effect from the highly touted growth of the Reagan years, you get the same growth in productivity (i.e. real growth) that the economy experienced from about 1970 (when it fell from the 2-3% of the post-WII years to between 0.0-0.5%) to the early 1990s (when it starting picking up again due most likely, according to most rational economists, to the high-tech computer economy kicking in). Now let's look at the accuracy of the gloom and doom predictions of the supply-siders as regards the tax increase of 1993. I'll let that silver-tongued devil Krugman tell this tale (in the context of an article about Bob Dole foolishly embracing supply-side mumbo-jumbo in 1996): But surely it is enough to look at the extraordinary recent record of the supply-siders as economic forecasters. In 1993, after the Clinton administration had pushed through an increase in taxes on upper-income families, the very same people who have persuaded Dole to run on a tax-cut platform were very sure about what would happen. Newt Gingrich confidently predicted a severe recession. Articles in "Forbes" magazine urged readers to get out of the stock market to avoid the inevitable crash. The "Wall Street Journal" editorial page had no doubts that the tax increase would sharply increase the deficit instead of reducing it. Well here we are, three years later. The economy has created 10 million new jobs, the market is up by 1500 points, and the deficit has been cut in half. While Clinton's policies certainly can't be given all the credit for that and subsequent growth, there can be no doubt that the predictions made by the supply-side gurus were completely wrong. Even if we completely suspend reality and grant the utterly discredited supply-siders that a tax cut would stimulate economic growth, how could that possibly improve the present economy? Just yesterday, Alan Greenspan raised interest rates for the fourth time since last October. Why? To slow down an economy he thinks is growing too quickly to keep inflationary tendencies in check. This is the same Alan Greenspan that Phil Gramm - another braying proponent of supply-side economics - has called the greatest central banker in the history of the world. That is, even in a fantastical reality in which the supply-side incantations would actually work the economy wouldn't be allowed to grow any faster than it already is under Clinton, and the brakes would be put on by someone nearly universally admired by the supply-siders (and pretty much everyone else). as a marvelously good steward of the economy. The final argument advanced by tax cut advocates is along the lines of "the tax revenues belong the the American people so any excess funds should be returned to them." This is rebutted in William Gale and Alan Auerbach's Does the Budget Surplus Justify a Large-Scale Tax Cut?, in which they examine the appropriate use of the current surpluses, with: The problem is that the future liabilities of the government also "belong" to the American people. The question in each case is, which American people, current or future. The issue is not that tax cuts are never a good idea (indeed, real economists can and will talk your ear off about when tax cuts are a good idea), but that a tax cut in the current economy doesn't make sense for any of the reasons advanced by its proponents. It's pure political hay advanced for no other possible reason than as a juicy reward to the wealthy contributers who've made Shrub the $100 million candidate. posted by Steven Baum 2/3/2000 10:34:45 AM | link Wednesday, February 02, 2000 META Another batch of links pinched from elsewhere, with this bunch leaning towards the silly side. Best Sleeper Films of the 90s (via camworld) UselessKnowledge (via /usr/bin/girl) Dorcus Menswear (hilariously via Kestrel's Nest) The Code of Hammurabi (via Mike's Weblog) Watch the World Die (via more like this) Nude Overclocking (via Backup Brain) All Songs Considered (via Bird on a Wire) posted by Steven Baum 2/2/2000 01:41:10 PM | link MORATORIUM IN ILLINOIS Gov. George H. Ryan (R), in a move probably guaranteed to sink his chances for re-election (or, more likely, his chances for renomination by his bloodthirsty party), has "decided to effectively impose a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois until an inquiry has been conducted into why more inmates [in Illinois] have been exonerated [13] than executed [12] since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977." The move, which only a complete and utter fool wouldn't at least consider making given the shocking numbers, was of course qualified in an attempt to cover his political ass. That is, even though Ryan's convinced that the death penalty system is "fraught with errors", "broken", and that "there are innumerable opportunities along the way for serious errors", he "still believes capital punishment is a proper societal response." Although this is a fairly courageous move on Ryan's part in the context of his party's reprehensible obsession with handing out the death penalty as another chest-thumping "tough on crime" issue, it isn't unprompted. An Amnesty International chapter in Illinois was calling for this at least three years ago, as were the American Bar Assocation, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune, whose March 3, 1997 editorial read: ...Illinoisans have ample evidence that capital punishment is not being administered properly - having seen a rash of cases in which inmates sentenced to death have not only had their convictions overturned but have been fully exonerated. The state came uncomfortably close to executing innocent men. Other states have actually put people to death despite grave doubts about their guilt. The "uncomfortably close" incident mentioned involved an inmate named Anthony Porter who, after 15 years on death row, came within two days of being executed before a group of student journalists uncovered evidence that exonerated him. Most of the death row releases have involved the use of DNA evidence, which was either unavailable at the time of the original trial or was denied by unscrupulous and/or politically ambitious district attorneys. The most infuriating case of the latter (of which I've heard) took place in Louisiana and was detailed on a recent Frontline. Basically the police had a sealed rape kit but refused to test it against the convicted man's DNA for 19 years. And even when the DNA test is performed and proves that the convicted man didn't commit the rape, the prosecutors tend to pull theories out of their asses that didn't exist at the time of the original trial, e.g. all of a sudden they theorize that the real rapist had an accomplice who, even though he didn't commit the actual rape, was just as guilty. There are also other problems. Getting back to Illinois, 33 death row inmates have been represented by attorneys who've been disbarred or suspended. The O.J. Simpson case was an overwhelming exception rather than any sort of rule, i.e. the rich and famous live by different rules and nearly all death row inmates are neither. And 46 of the cases involving death row convictions used testimony from jailhouse informants, a form of evidence about as reliable as hearsay yet ubiquitously used and accepted by ambitious prosecutors who want to hit the big time just like Rudy Giuliani. The national stats are that for every seven death row inmates executed since the return of the death penalty, one person has been exonerated and released. The death penalty is not "a proper societal response" and never will be solely on the grounds that the "system if fraught with errors." One doesn't have to advance other arguments of a less pragmatic nature to skewer the validity of this supposed societal panacea. It's going to take more than some blue-ribbon commission or public hand-wringing to fix the problems that have led to more death row inmates being released than executed in Illinois. The magnitude of the real problem is hinted at by what the police told a recently released black man in Texas when they originally apprehended him for a murder for which he was wrongly convicted. When he asked them why they had arrested him, they replied, "Because you're a nigger and you were available." Addendum: Matt's pointed out that I'm being unduly fair to the big endians in the above. While I sufficiently bashed the little endians (i.e. the GOP), I didn't point out that the Dems are almost every bit as idiotic about the death penalty, with (as I pointed out in a previous entry) Clinton himself having pulled the trigger on a retarded man on death row while he was governor of Arkansas. And it's not a valid excuse for them to claim that they're just attempting to keep up with the GOP's "tough on crime" rhetoric, either. Supporting a system that is demonstrably incapable of handing out the death penalty fairly or even rationally is just wrong. If you can keep a man in jail for his entire lifetime, then there is no rational reason to insist that he be killed by the state for no real reason other than making political hay, especially when so many are wrongly convicted and placed on death row. posted by Steven Baum 2/2/2000 09:36:17 AM | link SHRUBYA As much as I hate to kick a man when he's down, I'm going to give Gov. Shrub a few healthy kicks in the ribs as he struggles to rise from his drubbing at the hands of John McCain in New Hampshire, the "Spoiled Voters Get Primary Publicity or Die" state. Former President George "One Term" Bush's chief of staff Mike Dannenhauer has told reporter Toby Rogers of the "lost weekends" the Shrub enjoyed in Mexico, i.e. the same sort of weekends that've been lost by Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay and other self-proclaimed towers of moral probity. According to Dannenhauer, "There was cocaine use, lots of women, but the drinking was the worst." When the story came out, Dannenhauer of course called Rogers a liar, although Rogers says he taped the interview, so if push comes to shove Gov. Blow Monkey's either going to have to bring Rosemary Woods back from the dead to erase the tape or admit he was a crack whore and drown in deep doo-doo. This story and the re-release of the book by that other "liar" J. M. Hatfield (because we all know a felony conviction makes one's every utterance a lie, right G. Gordon?) are sending an avalanche (of the finest powder, of course) towards GWBJr that even his dedicated pit bull - lawyer Ben Ginsburg - won't be able to buy or threaten off. The AMPOL item on which this is based has a picture of Shrub "volunteering" to do community service - a photo that was pulled on the very day Hatfield's book was announced. That is, the book revealing that George Sr., the "Lion of Kuwait and Eternal Protector of the Kurds", picked a friendly judge to try Jr. for (at least) cocaine possession - a judge who rapped Shrub's knuckles and sentenced him to - you guessed it - community service. The AMPOL item also reveals that the same "BushBaby Gestapo team" (consisting of such media outlets as Newsweek and the Washington Post) that's bending over backwards to protect Shrub via "discrediting" his critics are having one of their reporters cobble together a book claiming that Al Gore was a major league pothead in college. That is, a story about BushJr's coke days based on a taped interview with a former BushSr chief of staff will be called a lie in print, while a story about Gore smoking pot in college based on the testimony of others who smoked pot in college will be treated like it was handed down from above chipped onto granite tablets. A big thing that's apparently driving the Bush camp (and its followers) is an overwhelming obsession about BushSr's loss to Clinton in 1992. The abrupt curtailment of what was beginning to be considered the GOP's divine right to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1992 drove some of them most of the way around the bend, and they won't feel exonerated (or that the country isn't on the highway to hell) until the GOP regains the throne, and if it's regained by the son of GeorgeSr the revenge will be so much the better. That is, they'll feel much better knowing that a waffler who had a retarded death row inmate killed while governer that they're sure was a cokehead is in the Oval Office as opposed to a waffler who had a retarded death row inmate killed while governor who they're sure was a dopehead. To be fair, they're reasonably sure that BushJr had little or nothing to do with the global conspiracy to viciously murder Vince Foster by shooting watermelons in Dan Burton's back yard. posted by Steven Baum 2/2/2000 09:15:11 AM | link MUSIC T-Bone Walker's Complete Imperial Recordings, 1950-1954 is not only one of the best recordings I've heard in while, but at under $10 for the two-disc set it's the best bargain you're likely to find. Included with the 52 tunes is a 12-page booklet discussing the influence he's had on modern blues playing. They don't mince words, i.e.: T-Bone Walker is the fundamental source of the modern urban style of playing and singing blues, and is widely recognized as having started it all back in the late 1930s when, almost singlehandedly, he forged the fleet, jazz-based guitar style that has since become the dominant approach for the instrument and, with it, the blues itself. In a very real sense the modern electric blues is largely his creation. The blues was different after T-Bone came onto the scene and it hasn't been the same since, and few men can lay claim to that kind of distinction. Walker - who was born in 1910 and died in 1975 - spent his younger days studying and learning from such early luminaries as Leroy Carr, Scrapper Blackwell, Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson in and around his native Dallas. He met Charlie Christian in 1933, who replaced him in the local Lawson-Brooks band when he left to move to Los Angeles in 1934. He claimed to have predated Christian as a pioneer in working with the electric guitar, saying in one interview that although he first recorded with one in 1939 he'd been playing one since 1935. In L.A. he led a number of small groups until joining the Les Hite's Cotton Club Orchestra in 1939, in which he played guitar and sang not only blues but standards like "Stardust." His first taste of fame came when he recorded his "T-Bone Blues" with Hite, with his most enduring tune "Call It Stormy Monday" following soon after. Late in the 40s he spent two years recording many famous sides with Black & White Records, but didn't really reach his peak until he signed with Imperial in 1951, a collaboration that lasted until 1954. This set contains everything he recorded for them. Constant touring and years of alcohol abuse caused him to break up his band in 1955 and concentrate on recording, although the remaining 20 years until his death were lean for him as for most blues artists. But just because he wasn't touring and recorded only sparsely doesn't mean he fell into obscurity. The musicians were certainly listening to him. Many of the tunes on this compilation seem all too familiar, mostly because somewhere down the line someone else copied the guitar style, the tune, the arrangement, or the vocal for a more recent rock or blues tune. For instance, try listening to "Strollin' with Bone", recorded in 1951, without thinking of Chuck Berry, who didn't hit the recording studio until several years later. Two discs worth of prime blues and rock history for a couple of sawbucks. You can't afford not to get this. posted by Steven Baum 2/2/2000 09:09:36 AM | link Tuesday, February 01, 2000 SOFTWARE A reasonable definition of a scripting language is a language that is primarily interpreted and which can be directly executed from a text file using the standard "#!" construct. The pros and cons of this particular definition could be debated until the cows come home, but I'll just leave it at that. Here's a list of the languages I've encountered while compiling my Linux Software Encyclopedia that fit the definition (more or less). Some are very well known but most aren't. I figure they all deserve some PR, especially since they're all freely available (in one form or another and for at least personal use). bigwig, a high-level language for developing interactive Web services BOIL, a C-like language with support for distributed programming via RPC as well as support for CGI and database programming Brain, a high-level, fully object-oriented language resembling something between Smalltalk and JavaScript ccsh, a scripting language intended to be powerful and easy to use for those familiar with C CH, a superset of C that can be used for shell programming, CGI, distributed network computing and scientific computing CorbaScript, an object-oriented scripting language for CORBA environments DINO, a high-level, dynamic-typed scripting language intended for the same application domains as Python and Perl eNITL, a scripting language engine for C++ applications designed especially for server-side Internet applications Expect, a scripting language designed for interactive programs FESI, a full implementationof the EcmaScript language, which is largely equivalent to JavaScript FPL, the Frexx Programming Language is an interpreted script/macro language designed to be flexible and easily inserted into any code Glish, a scripting language that makes it easy to develop distributed, loosely coupled applications Gorby, a small, powerful, stack-based scripting language that is infinitely extensible Guile, the GNU project that provides both a generic interface to scripting languages and a Scheme interpreter that allows that language to be used for scripting ICI, a scripting language that combines the syntax of C with a dynamic, object-based, garbage-collected data model Marx, an interpreted scripting language based on a C-like syntax MASH, a scripting language for developing multimedia applications NetRexx, a scripting language that makes it easier to write and use Java classes Object REXX, an object-oriented scripting language based on classical IBM REXX PACCO, an object-based scripting language for data processing PDP++, a scripting language for neural net simulations Perl, a biggie Pike, similar to C with powerful built-in data types Python, a biggie REBOL, a scripting language designed for messaging applications ROOT, an object-oriented data analysis framework that uses C++ as an interpreted scripting language Ruby, a scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming Socket Script, a scripting language for accessing sockets and building network-oriented programs Spanner, a glue/scripting/prototyping programming language whose primary purpose is to glue together software components written in C++ There's a lot of them and a lot of redundancy, but there's more than enough of a variety to satisfy nearly everyone's wants and needs. Give one or more a try. posted by Steven Baum 2/1/2000 10:44:01 AM | link STRANGE LIT P. H. Cannon's Scream for Jeeves was first published by the Wodecraft Press in 1994 and can still be obtained (along with a generous assortment of other marvelously macabre monstrosities) from the Necronomicon Press. It's a pastiche of P.G. Wodehouse, H.P Lovecraft and (in a lesser sort of way) various other authors. The author has been a part of both the Baker Street Irregulars and the Wodehouse Society, and has contributed articles to the "Baker Street Journal" and "Lovecraft Studies," so he knows his way around popular genre fiction. The flavor of the book is captured in this breakfast table dialogue between our man Bertie Wooster and his host Captain Edward "Tubby" Norrys (from the first of three separate tales in the book): I wish I could report that the chat over the breakfast table the next morning was all sunshine and mirth, but it was not. "I trust you slept well, Mr. Wooster," said my host, as he pushed the kippers about the plate in a morose, devil-take-the-hindmost sort of way." "Like a top, old sport. Like a top." "I was harassed by dreams of the most horrible sort. First there was a vision of a Roman feast like that of Trimalchio, with a horror in a covered platter." "Could it have been something you ate?" I said, sounding the solicitous note. I didn't want to hurt the old fellow's feelings, of course, so I refrained from saying that the fish sauce the night before had been somewhat below par. In truth, the cook at Exham Priory was not even in the running with Anatole, my Aunt Dahlia's French chef and God's gift to the gastric juices. "Next I seemed to be looking down from an immense height upon a twilit grotto, knee-deep in filth, where a white-beared daemon swineherd drove about with his staff a flock of fungous, flabby beasts whose appearance filled me with unutterable loathing." "Could it have been something you read before retiring?" 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' perhaps? Mind you, that one's about a shepherdess, not a swineherd, but it's the same sort of thing, don't you know." "Then, as the swineherd paused and nodded over his task, a mighty swarm of rats rained down on the stinking abyss and fell to devouring beasts and man alike." "Rats! By Jove, this is getting a bit thick. My man Jeeves thinks rats may be been the party to blame for your cats carrying on the other day like they had broken into the catnip." Cannon's funny prose is enhanced by several drawings by J. C. Eckhardt, with his cover illustration simply priceless. Any fan of either author should enjoy this. Being a fan of both, I was sucked in not unlike into the maelstrom of which we may dare not speak. And, in a not unrelated bit of crowing, I'd just like to offer that I found 32 Wodehouse paperbacks at Half Price Books this weekend at 48 cents apiece, which represents slightly over a third of the prolific P.G.'s lifetime output. posted by Steven Baum 2/1/2000 09:26:32 AM | link

Comments? Archive LISTS Books Software uPORTALS cider crime lit drive-in fake lit hurricanes os scripting sherlock texas music top 100 weirdsounds wodehouse LEISURE abebooks alibris amazon bibliofind bookfinder hamilton powells all music guide best used cds cd bargains second spin raven's links ampol arts & letters atlantic art history attrition bibliomania bitch bizarre bizarro bloom country bob 'n' ed bob the angry flower callahan chile pepper classical music cnnsi crackbaby cult films culture jamming discover disinformation dismal scientist electric sheep espn exquisite corpse feed fine cooking fishbowl fluble fried society fry and laurie hotel fred hotendotey hypocrisy network jerkcity last cereal leisure town logos london times mappa mundi miscmedia mp3lit mr. chuck show mr. serpent national geographic new scientist no depression not bored obscure store onion on-line books parking lot is full pearly gates phrase and fable probe red meat rough guides salon Simpleton sluggy freelance spacemoose spike straight dope strenua inertia suck superosity tawdry town too much coffee man toon inn verbivore vidal index yes minister you damn kid