Tahrir

Sounds like I missed a fairly volatile day in Tahrir Square back in Cairo. Just got home and it will take awhile to catch up with the news.

Bill Simmons on the NBA draft hug hierarchy

Simmons with another FUNNY NBA DRAFT DIARY, which he does every year.

The highlight this time may be the “hug hierarchy” for the order in which players seem to hug people after being drafted. Seems pretty accurate to me:

“Mom (if she’s there)
Dad (if he’s there)
Girlfriend (if she’s there)
Brother (who’s usually there)
Agent (always there)
Future head entourage member/weed mule (if he’s there)
Extended family member (if they’re there)
And finally …
Hat Guy (the guy who hands them the team’s hat who just picked them)

If somebody hits all eight, that will be the Draft Cycle. [Derrick] Williams just went Mom-Girlfriend-Agent-Entourage-Family-Hat Guy. He fell two short.”

follow flights on the web

While I was on the flight yesterday, my brother sent me a link to an interesting website I’d forgotten about: FlightAware.

It allows you to track the progress of an individual airplane across the map (perfect if you need to pick someone up).

Or, you can simply follow all the traffic around a specific airport.

Here, for example, is the PORTLAND AIRPORT right now. The light blue planes represent flights that either took off from Portland or are scheduled to land here. The green flights have no connection to Portland’s airport but simply happen to be nearby.

Place the cursor over any plane to see information about its departure and arrival airports. (If you don’t know the meaning of the airport abbreviations, you can click on those as well.)

in-flight post

After all these years, I’m pretty sure this is my first time with WiFi on a flight.

Now high above, most likely, New Mexico, based on what the cap’n said of our route tonight.

Blagojevich convicted

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been FOUND GUILTY of 17 corruption charges.

He’s guilty as sin. The demands that he be paid off by whichever contender wanted Obama’s Senate seat was the initially most shocking and comical charge (he’s been found guilty of it, since the recordings of his conversations on the topic are pretty unambiguous). But the most despicable thing he did was probably the attempted shakedown of the children’s hospital.

Portland coming up today

The city’s a beauty, if you don’t know it.

In addition to the nice landscape and the animal-friendly, vegetarian-friendly lifestyle, another part of Portland’s appeal was that once Seattle became an unaffordable traffic jam nightmare, Portland was arguably the most livable big city remaining on the West Coast.

Potential long-term issue: that’s an active volcano you see in the background. Actually, on a clear day you can see three active volcanoes from Portland: Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, and even Mt. Rainier.

Schurkenplaneten

That’s German for “Rogue Planets,” which is the new Circus Philosophicus-type myth I wrote for Ralo Mayer’s art catalog for Linz.

The piece is now being translated into German, but apparently (I didn’t know this) the catalog will be bilingual throughout.

For awhile I thought Palin might ruin the word “rogue” through overuse just as McCain eventually turned “maverick” into a joke. But it doesn’t seem to be happening as far as I can tell.

Incidentally, if you like a bit of expressionism with your tea, then Mayer’s show may be just the thing for you. Its overall title is the very Schoenbergian:

“Woran glauben die Motten, wenn sie zu den Lichtern streben?”

Or, “What do moths believe in when they strive towards the light?”

(“Lights” in German, but we’d say “light” in English.)

eeriest moment in Lovecraft

There are many from which to choose. But at present I favor the three-way radio conversation between academics in Antarctica in “At the Mountains of Madness,” with one of the parties just a few hours away from being lacerated and strangled by awakening pre-Cambrian animal/vegetable hybrids.

The most gruesome moment is probably in “Dreams in the Witch House” when Brown Jenkin tunnels into Gilman’s body, completely eats his heart, then tunnels out the other side. (Funny that this very atypical Lovecraftian monster –a tittering overgrown rat with a bearded woman’s face, tiny human hands for paws, and a “quaint” name– may be his scariest.)

The scariest story overall may be “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” The scene of the narrator being trapped in his hotel room while the unknown enemies with “slopping” voices (who turn out to be fish-frog-human hybrids) try to break into the room is one of Lovecraft’s few “action hero” moments, and he pulls it off surprisingly well. Ever since first reading that story, I’ve occasionally attempted to imitate the “shambling” gait of Innsmouth residents, but can’t quite get it. Maybe a professional dancer could give us something plausible. I also like it when the normal grocery boy in Innsmouth tells the narrator that the pastor in his hometown “urged him gravely” not to join any churches in Innsmouth. Good call, since all the churches there seem to be filled with shambling/hopping priests wearing horrid robes and freakishly oval-shaped tiaras.

Incidentally, my first bus driver in Malta bore a frightening resemblance to Joe Sargent, the Innsmouth bus driver in the story.

lottery failure

I failed in my first attempt to win the Illinois lottery so as to purchase Lovecraft’s “shunned house,” which would definitely be converted into OOO headquarters. No more than two numbers correct on any of the tickets.

I’m trying the Iowa lottery this week.

interviewed by Kris Coffield

Kris interviews me at fracturedpolitics.com.

HERE.