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Catherine
Aug. 17th, 2008
10:48 pm - Wedding Songs
My friend Emily is getting married, and, in order to save money, she's coming up with the playlist for the reception herself. She put out a general help request for songs, and I've sent her this list:
( wedding songs? )
which is okay, I guess, well, I don't know. I know I'm missing a lot of songs I've heard and thought, "if I was a wedding dj, I'd play that". I'd suggest a lot more jazz/swing music, but I'm not sure how into it she and her guests are.
The other suggestions people seem to be giving her are things like "Mambo #5" and "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)". It's not that I don't think those are good songs, but for her wedding? She did specify love songs or party songs, so I guess that's what people were going from.
So here's what I want to know: if you were dj-ing a wedding reception (or were coming up with a playlist for your own reception), what song(s) would you make sure to play?
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goodAug. 15th, 2008
08:53 pm - On Addictions
I've been scratching my arms to bleeding all day, which is probably because of all the mosquito bites, but might be because I've watched all of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and now there's no more and I'm in withdrawal. I know that sounds extreme and silly, but Dr. Horrible is pretty fabulous. I guess I should have taken the title as a warning, "this will not leave you feeling wonderful. If it would, it would be called Dr. Wonderful's Sing-Along Blog. But it's not. Consider yourself warned."
If you can, you should watch it, for free, here. There are 3 fifteen-minute-ish acts, so you can watch it without committing to the full 45 minutes at once.
Also: there is laundry.
Aug. 11th, 2008
01:04 pm - More New Old Books
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st
Stored in a sky-lit reading room on the top floor of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples are the charred remains of the only library to survive from classical antiquity. The ancient world's other great book collections -- at Athens, Alexandria and Rome -- all perished in the chaos of the centuries. But the library of the Villa of the Papyri was conserved, paradoxically, by an act of destruction.
Lying to the northwest of ancient Herculaneum, this sumptuous seaside mansion was buried beneath 30m of petrified volcanic mud during the catastrophic eruption of Mt Vesuvius on August 24, AD79. Antiquities hunters in the mid-18th century sunk shafts and dug tunnels around Herculaneum and found the villa, surfacing with a magnificent booty of bronzes and marbles. Most of these, including a svelte seated Hermes modelled in the manner of Lyssipus, now grace the National Archeological Museum in Naples.
The excavators also found what they took to be chunks of coal deep inside the villa, and set them alight to illuminate their passage underground. Only when they noticed how many torches had solidified around an umbilicus -- a core of wood or bone to which the roll was attached -- did the true nature of the find become apparent. Here was a trove of ancient texts, carbonised by the heat surge of the eruption. About 1800 were eventually retrieved.
(via Arts & Letters Daily)
Aug. 8th, 2008
01:53 pm - Ice and Aladdin
I've been watering my plants with ice. It's generally too hot outside for normal, liquid-based watering to be effective for long, even at night, but with ice the moisture evaporates slower and plants don't just get a jolt of water followed by hours of dry. But the main reason I do it is that, since ice cubes make pretty good projectiles, I can water most plants from the doorway.
Also: how fantastic is this?
An astonishing project is underway in Timbuktu, Mali, [a city in] one of the world's poorest countries. On the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, experts are opening an enchanted Aladdin's Cave, filled with hundreds of thousands of ancient documents.
The Ahmed Baba Library alone contains more than 20,000 manuscripts, including works on herbal medicine and mathematics, yellowed volumes of poetry, music and Islamic law. Some are adorned with gilded letters, while others are written in the language of the Tuareg tribes. The contents remain a mystery.
(via Bookslut)
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blankAug. 3rd, 2008
07:18 pm - Books and Movies, July 2008
I woke up to a thunderstorm Saturday morning. At exactly 5 am. I sleep with my head about four feet below the roof, and this storm came right overhead. Lightning kept striking within 1000 feet of me, so I ended the night on a couch downstairs. Then woke up and came back upstairs. I expected to see trees and powerlines down all over yesterday, but there wasn't any wreckage. I guess it was cloud-to-cloud lightning after all.
( Books and Movies )
accomplishedJul. 28th, 2008
01:18 pm - Spam
The vast majority of spam email I get is titled along the lines of "Heyy real men!" which is fairly entertaining, considering.
But today is a special day! I have just become the proud recipient of an email called "New JRR Tolkien noovel is published - 34 yyears after his death," which I take to mean that the internet finally gets me. I love you too, internet.
Jul. 23rd, 2008
10:43 pm - Pi Approximation Day
In the ongoing theme "Catherine Forgets Holidays (That May or May Not Exist)," I forgot that yesterday was Pi Approximation Day (scroll down) until I read about it under today's Dinosaur Comic (note: not a link to today's Dinosaur Comic, but to a comic from Pi Day, about Pi Approximation Day).
Also, I watched the movie Pi recently. So I guess I sort of remembered? In advance? Oh well, I guess I can wait for November 10.
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hungryJul. 12th, 2008
03:18 pm - Sleep
Sleep and I don't get along, and I'm not sure why. I mean, when I do specific, sleep-affecting things like suddenly getting up early in the morning to go running, I understand that there are consequences. But 9pm-10pm naps? Why, body? Why?
Also, I often have semi-lucid dreams. I don't control anything, but I definitely have thoughts like, "But that building looks nothing like the Acropolis! Oh well, it's a dream. Entertain me, brain!" I guess when I'm asleep I'm too tired to fly? Also, I once had a dream where I kept trying to fall asleep and couldn't. It was the most frustrating dream I've ever had.
So anyway, I got up at 2pm today. By my calculations, I'll have to run thirty miles before bed if I want to get to sleep by a reasonable hour.
Jul. 4th, 2008
11:41 am
I had a dream this morning that I was in a trivia game. Just before I woke up I got asked this question: today, July 4, is Independence Day, but what holiday was celebrated yesterday, July 3? (real answer: Belarussian independence day? I couldn't find anything here that would have fit in the dream)
I thought, "oh yes, there was some holiday yesterday, but I have no idea what it was." I guessed something random, and was wrong wrong wrong. Dream answer: the Day of Kooky Amnesiacs. I woke up really disappointed that I missed it.
Jul. 1st, 2008
Jun. 29th, 2008
08:23 pm - Travel
I just spent three days in Carolina and a lot of time on the road/track. I'm really tired, and probably oily and smelly, too, but I'm also really happy. Good job, The South.
Jun. 22nd, 2008
10:27 pm - The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook
http://www.pvspade.com/Sartre/cookb
November 26
Today I made a Black Forest cake out of five pounds of cherries and a live beaver, challenging the very definition of the word "cake." I was very pleased. Malraux said he admired it greatly, but could not stay for dessert. Still, I feel that this may be my most profound achievement yet, and have resolved to enter it in the Betty Crocker Bake-Off.
Thanks, Omar!
Jun. 18th, 2008
10:57 am - The Re-Segregation of Rock & Roll
http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai
Sure, the recording industry in those days was racist and predatory. Industry execs quickly had Pat Boone and Bill Haley cover Little Richard’s songs, and the blander versions initially outsold the originals. But music lovers caught on fast, and the Georgia Peach was soon outselling his pale imitators. And if the industry wanted to hide the fact that rock ’n’ roll came from such pioneers as Little Richard and Fats Domino (who said modestly of his role, “Well, I wouldn’t want to say that I started it, but I don’t remember anyone else before me playing that kind of stuff”), white musicians were often more frank. “A lot of people seem to think I started this business”, said Elvis as early as 1957. “But rock ’n’ roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that kind of music like colored people. Let’s face it: I can’t sing it like Fats Domino can. I know that.”
In Blue Monday, Rick Coleman writes that “Presley’s unprecedented fame obscured black pioneers like a supernova obliterating neighboring stars, making him the unwilling figurehead of white denial, even as he insisted that rock ’n’ roll began as rhythm and blues.” He quotes cultural theorist Joseph Roach on “the staggering erasures required by the invention of whiteness.” Elvis has been unfairly accused of hijacking R&B, but Coleman views him rightly as “unwilling”—as in no more willful than a supernova (literally, according to the dictionary, “an extremely bright, short-lived object that emits vast amounts of energy”). My friends and I (white and black) who grew up on Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Little Richard sneered at the naive souls who thought Elvis “started this business”, but in doing so we overlooked Elvis’s single most significant cultural contribution: Elvis gave white people back their bodies. His moves may have come from Congo Square, but if Elvis hadn’t wriggled his hips on television (everybody, or at least the teenage viewers, knew what Ed Sullivan was hiding when he had his cameramen shoot Presley from the waist up), we’d all still be doing the foxtrot.
Jun. 10th, 2008
12:53 am
Sometimes I think reading before going to sleep is the best thing ever, sometimes I think it's terrible. Case in point: I just finished a fantastic book, and now I can't sleep. Now I can't imagine ever sleeping again, all because of literature. It's under my eyelids and between my toes. I can't stop thinking. Dear brain: I promise I'll think tomorrow if I could just sleep now. Scratch that, I super-promise that if I can't sleep now, I won't be able to think tomorrow. You know it's true.
Jun. 8th, 2008
Jun. 5th, 2008
12:47 pm - Organic Housekeeping
So I finished the book on organic housekeeping (Organic Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck), and I liked it. Mostly I liked that it was a book on housekeeping for lazy people. Yes! I don't know that I'll drastically change my cleaning habits (for example, the section on the toxins used in dry cleaning was particularly grim, but I doubt there are any alternative cleaners around here) (also, it's not like I have that much dry cleaning). Anyway, here are some highlights that might be useful:
Susan Sumner, a food scientist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, developed an environmentally friendly method of decontaminating beef carcasses that turned out to be more effective than the standard method, which utilized chlorine bleach. She then turned her attention to a much more difficult challenge: removing dangerous microbes from fresh produce. Even if raw beef is heavily contaminated with bacteria, careful handling and thorough cooking will make it completely safe to eat. Lettuce, on the other hand, is very delicate and easily damaged, and is usually eaten raw.
The solution to the problem turned out to be the same for meat and vegetables. Sumner contaminated fruits and vegetables with salmonella, shigella, or E. coli bacteria, then sprayed the produce with hydrogen peroxide, vinegar, or both. Hydrogen peroxide was one hundred times as effective as vinegar, but vinegar and hydrogen peroxide worked together to kill ten times and many bacteria as were killed by peroxide alone. (p. 115)
Sandbeck goes on to recommend spraying the vinegar first, then quickly following up with the hydrogen peroxide, to wash off the vinegar so your lettuce doesn't wilt too badly. Incidentally, this cleaning method also works well on bathtubs.
Also, in a section too long to quote, she mentions NASA experiments with air-cleaning systems for enclosed spaces. The world's best air-cleaning systems? Plants. Well, plants and the microbes that live around their roots. The most highly recommended plants are: Areca palm (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens), Lady palm (Rhapis excelsa), Bamboo palm (Chamaedorea seifrizii), Rubber plant (Ficus robusta), and Boston Fern (Nephrolepsis exaltata). (pp. 297-299)
And in the Pests section (under Ticks), on the differences between chronic Lyme disease and Lyme infection:
I know a woman who suffered from debilitating chronic Lyme disease for many years. She was short of breath, anxious, and in so much pain that she curtailed her activities. Doctors could do nothing to improve her quality of life. Her symptoms miraculously disappeared when she divorced her husband. (pp. 303-304)
If your library has a copy, and you have time to spend reading a long book on organic housekeeping, I highly recommend it.
Jun. 4th, 2008
02:12 pm - Poll
I'd do a fancy poll thing, but I have the free, no-perks version of LJ, so you'll have to comment.
I'm updating my resume and I want to capitalize off my many years of Cross Country Team-ing. I'm listing it as one of my activities, but I want to stretch it some more; this is what I want to know: in your opinion, does "teamwork" count as a Skill?
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curiousMay. 15th, 2008
03:56 pm - we are all the characters of the future
While the notion of committing Britain to Zionism was inspired by General FitzMaurice and Mark Sykes, [Sir Ronald] Graham was probably more responsible than anyone else in the government for actually embodying the commitment in an official document, though his role tends to be passed over by historians--possibly because he failed to leave a significant archive of private papers behind him. - David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 1989
I can't tell if that's a jab at lazy historians or not. I suspect it is, but anyway. I've come up to Zionism in APtEAP, which is about halfway through the book. I've been reading it for about 5 months (it's really dense, okay) and I learn something new every page. For example, I recently learned that Woodrow Wilson had a foreign policy adviser named Edward Mandell House:
(House is on the left, Wilson is on the right.)
I have to imagine that the thought process on the tv show House, M.D. went something like this:
1) He's kind of like a detective, like Sherlock Holmes... Holmes...Homes...House?
2) Has anyone really ever been named House?
3) Quick search for the name "House".
4) Aha! and he had this friend Wilson, and Wilson's wife didn't like him.
Or possibly these things are all coincidences.
May. 13th, 2008
10:03 pm - A snake, ON FIRE
I had a dream last week sometime that I was part of a vast underground movement fighting storm troopers (like Star Wars, not like Hitler) and I developed a code?cipher? involving the geographies of little plastic towns in snow globes (green house with snowman in lower right quadrant means they attack at dawn! or something)(it was all very complicated, the positions of things mattered, their positions relative to one another mattered, it was actually a lot like astrology; anyway, it only makes sense if you orient a snow globe using whatever's written on its underside)(I've been thinking about snow globes a lot). Despite this ingeniousness, a colleague and I ended up trapped in a corridor by storm troopers. To get away, my colleague pulled a snake carcass out of a convenient storage locker and lit it on fire, using the fire to keep the storm troopers at bay (does rigor mortis actually produce flammable gas, or that just my imagination?). It was all pretty exciting.
As we stood there in that corridor, all I could think was, "well, I wonder what will happen at the last second to get me out of this!" Like I knew I was in a story. And now I kind of wish that same reasoning applied in my life generally: "well, my health insurance is due in a couple weeks, I wonder what ingenious and daring actions will get me out of this!"
May. 12th, 2008
07:23 pm - Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball
Nerve has collected the fifty best commercial parodies of all time here:
http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/nerveed
That is, the fifty best they could find with videos on the internet. If you have a lot of empty time, check it out.
May. 10th, 2008
01:13 pm - New Shoes
I got new running shoes yesterday (w00t!), and they're pink. So anyway, I went to a store that specializes in running gear and tennis gear (not sure how that happened), and spent a while with a sales associate finding the exact right shoes and the exact right arch supports. This is important because I have fairly low arches (that can't support themselves) and my right foot is about a half a size larger than my left. I end up with a size-8 shoe on my left foot and an 8.5 on my right and everything's great. Somewhere between the fitting chairs and the register something went wrong, though, because when I got home from running today and checked my shoes, my right shoe was the smaller one. D'oh!
As you may recall, this is not the first time I've run inanely.
May. 8th, 2008
11:34 pm - Tomorrow's Reading for Slovenly Home-making 101:
Further study revealed that the cleanest-looking kitchen often contained the most bacteria. Tidy people wipe up so often that they tend to spread bacteria all over the place. "You think you are cleaning, but you're actually spreading the bacteria," said Gerba [a microbiologist]. The research showed that the healthiest, most sanitary kitchens were kept by bachelors who never cleaned at all. Sloth emerges victorious. - Ellen Sandbeck, Organic Housekeeping, 2006
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