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Year: 2007

Friday Random Ten

This one is surrounded by the kind of country music that makes country cool. It’s hard to not like a song in which Kristofferson enjoys his breakfast beer so much he “has one more for dessert.”

  1. “Sunday Morning Coming Down” – Kris Kristofferson – KGSR Broadcasts Vol. 14
  2. “Space Is Gonna Do Me Good” – Frank Black – Teenager of the Year
  3. “Walkin'” – Miles Davis – Miles in Berlin (Live)
  4. “Takin’ the ‘A’ Train” – Jimmy McGriff – The Worm
  5. “Rhythm in Blue Suite: Love in 5” – Danilo Perez – Central Avenue
  6. “Grab ‘Hole A Dis” – Charles Earland – Funk Fantastique
  7. “The Man Comes Around” – Johnny Cash – American IV
  8. “Wishful Thinking” – Wilco – A Ghost is Born
  9. “Sloop John B” – Dick Dale – Dick Dale & His Del-Tones
  10. “Private Conversations” – Lyle Lovett – The Road to Ensendada

Throw Earland and McGriff in there, and this is one weird little set. Of course, Cash can hang with anyone anywhere.

Damn American IV was a fine record.

Englishes, Olde and Nu

It’s not uncommon for students to protest that they aren’t used to “old English,” that it’s too hard. I frequently hear this while teaching Shakespeare, Poe, Lord of the Flies, or anything else written prior to 1985. I try to explain that everything I’ve taught is modern English, but today, I thought it would be fun to show them.

When I was student teaching, I learned how to read the prologue to The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, and I had an overhead with some side-by-side comparisons, but I thought it would more powerful to use something the students would likely be familiar with. While browsing Wikipedia, I found the Lord’s Prayer in Old English:

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum,
Si þin nama gehalgod.
To becume þin rice,
gewurþe ðin willa, on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg,
and forgyf us ure gyltas,
swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum.
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele. soþlice.

I figured most of them would be familiar with the modern version of this, so I hunted it down in Middle English to show the transition, first finding a version here, and then discovering Words in English, which had already done my work for me:

Oure fadir that art in heuenes,
halewid be thi name;
thi kyndoom come to;
be thi wille don in erthe as in heuene:
gyue to us this dai oure breed ouer othir substaunce;
and forgyue to us oure dettis, as we forgyuen to oure gettouris;
and lede us not in to temptacioun, but delyuere us fro yuel. Amen.

The modern version comes from my memory:

Our Father, who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
They Kingdom come.
Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

I spent a lot of time staring at this, comparing words and lines, fascinated by the evolution of this wonderful living language and wondering where it would go next. I often joke that I’m teaching a dying language, but it’s probably just evolving. Though, hopefully, not into something as utilitarian and artless as this:

dad@hvn
ur spshl.
we want wot u want
&urth2b like hvn
giv us food
&4giv us
lyk we 4giv uvaz.
don’t test us! save us! ok

I shared all this with my kids, attempting to pronounce the Middle English as best I could based on what I learned from Canterbury Tales, and they thought that was cool. They enjoyed seeing the Old English, and sadly, the text message version made perfect sense.

And, now that I think about it, I realize I’ve written about the texting of literature and its effect on language before.

Just Some Rocks

The other day I walked across the dam at our neighborhood’s little retention pond. I stepped right over these rocks, but only noticed them when I was walking back across with the sun at my back illuminating the rocks.

Sometimes you have to look twice to see once.

The Two People You Meet on Congress Ave

Today, I spent a bit of time doing something I haven’t done in years – wander around downtown taking pictures.

This one of the Frost Tower is my favorite from today. I spent a good amount of time trying to find an interesting shot, when I got the idea to go inside and see if there is an observation deck in this newest of Austin’s buildings.

I walked into a mostly deserted lobby and the security guy behind the desk jumped, half-shouting across the cavernous space, “Can I help you?”

“I was wondering if there’s an observation level here.”

“No sir. This is a private executive office building and closed to the public.”

I marveled at his ability to italicize so many words in one sentence, but I took the hint and read enough of his mind to make out, “…hit your ass on the way…,” and so off I went.

After crossing the street, I noticed this shot. I had to wait for a red so as not to get run over, and I had some help from a fellow photographer who was scouting places to shoot a parade next month. He shaded my lens for me and watched for oncoming cars while I took the picture.

Walking along I couldn’t help but marvel. Most people you see walking along the street on an ordinary day remain a mystery, but in the space of five minutes, unnecessary hostility had been erased by simple kindness.

Looking back at the Frost Tower, I thought about the way old gothic buildings were decorated with angels and devils, but today we build them steely clean with lines like highways to the heavens. Meanwhile, plenty of angels and devils can be found at street level.

Not Exactly Friday But Still Random Ten

This actually played on Thursday night, and I typed it up to get ahead knowing that I might not get to post on Friday, but when I actually had time, the CO detector started going off, and the fire department kept coming because the alarm company kept calling them.

Finally, a ladder company came to join the two engine companies, neither of which had a CO detector. Of course, the ladder company’s CO detector didn’t work, but since we were all still alive, we decided that it was a malfunction.

Anyways, since I typed this on Thursday, and am posting it on Saturday, I think that still averages out to become a Friday Random Ten, and an interesting one at that…

  1. “These Important Years” – Hüsker Dü – Warehouse: Songs and Stories
  2. “Vai Vai” – Thunderball & Thievery Corporation* – The Outernational Sound
  3. “five-five-FIVE” – Frank Zappa – Shut Up ‘N Play Yer Guitar
  4. “Chagrin Falls” – The Tragically Hip* – Phantom Power
  5. “Trouble & Luck” – Spring Heel Jack – Disappeared
  6. “Drivin’ on 9” – The Breeders* – Last Splash
  7. “Toxic Dart” – Jaga Jazzist – Animal Chin EP
  8. “Wow and Flutter” – Stereolab – ABC Music/Radio 1 Sessions
  9. “Airport” – Tricolor – Mirth + Feckless
  10. “20 Minutes of Disco Glory (Simon’s Come – Unity Mix)” – DJ Garth & ETI – Groove Soundtrack

* Artists I’ve seen live

Malevolent

I don’t know how many times I’ve walked past this tree, but each time it’s just a tree. On some nights, however, when the leaves rustle quietly in the wind, and everyone has gone inside, it looms over these houses, reaching out, waiting…

Greyhounds Big and Small: Iggies & Greyts

Photographer Amanda Jones’ Greyhounds Big and Small: Iggies & Greyts, is a beautiful book of black-and-white photography celebrating greyhounds of all sizes, be they Italian greys (iggies) or full-sized.

The photographs are variously funny, cute, and when she catches the greys running along the beach, inspiring. These are graceful and elegant dogs, but they’re lazy too. Jones’ book catches all of it.

Fortunately she stays away from the tracks, focusing instead on retirement life where she manages to capture the noble spirit, playfulness and personality of these most perfect of dogs.

[saveagrey]

The Lost Book Club: A Brief History of Time

Last week’s episode of Lost added another book to my list of Lost books. Fortunately, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is one I’ve read several times. In the episode “Not in Portland,” the book was being read by the Other who fell for “the old-wookie-in-handcuffs gag” while guarding the prison where Carl was getting a malenky bit of the old Clockwork Orange treatment.

Putting aside the verbal reference to Star Wars and the visual reference to A Clockwork Orange, we’re left with A Brief History of Time, yet another book suggesting that the island may exist outside the normal time stream of the rest of the world. The other books that suggest this are (links go to my posts on these books): A Wrinkle in Time, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” The Wizard of Oz, The Third Policeman, and Alice in Wonderland. When the Chronicles of Narnia appears I think the deal will be sealed.

A Brief History of Time is a wonderful and highly readable explanation of quantum mechanics, black holes, the big bang, relativity and the nature of time itself, which makes me wonder if we Lost fans should be wondering about the nature of time on a certain island in the Pacific. In the chapter, “The Arrow of Time,” Hawking writes:

The discovery that the speed light appeared the same to every observer, no matter how he was moving, led to the theory of relativity – and in that one had to abandon the idea that there was a unique absolute time. Instead, each observer would have his own measure of time as recorded by a clock that he carried: clocks carried by different observers would not necessarily agree.

Now, Hawking isn’t arguing that that there are different time streams here on Earth, but then Lost is fiction, probably science fiction, which often begins with the question, “What if?” The fact that the Others seem to know so much about everyone suggests to me that somehow they are able to connect with a future in which everything about the Oceanic 815 survivors has become history.

What if there was a wormhole or timewarp or some kind of flux in the space-time continuum in the south Pacific? What if it could be manipulated? What if people from the future were trying to change humanity in order to save their world?

How might they do this? I bet it has something to do with the hatch. They lost contact with the outside when “the sky went purple.” Does this mean they lost their wormhole or timewarp or whatever they were using to communicate with the future? The ability to connect with the future would explain how they are able to know so much, as well as do things like send that bus down the road at the exact moment that Juliet’s husband was stepping into the street.

According to Lostpedia, the Other is shown reading a page from the chapter “Black Holes Ain’t So Black” (h/t to Joshmeister, who offers some other interesting details about this).� In that chapter, Hawking describes the nature of event horizons surrounding black holes and argues that despite black holes having the reputation of being places from which nothing can escape, they do appear to emit particles, and over time, eventually shrink away.

Perhaps, whatever the hatch was doing was preventing some kind of black hole like time warp on the island from evaporating. Could it be that the Others have lost, not their contact with the outer world, but with the future? In that case, they would also be truly lost, just like the survivors of Oceanic 815.

Perhaps, when the hatch imploded, Desmond got a glimpse of (or spent quite a bit of time wandering through) the future. Is that why he knows things will happen before they happen?

I’ve wondered about this parallel universe/alternate time stream idea since I began reading the Lost books and really thinking about the show. Brian at Lost…and Gone Forever adds some fuel to that fire in his analysis of “Not in Portland”:

The company that was courting Juliet wasn’t Hanso or Dharma – it was “Mittelos Bioscience”.

[…]

As many astute readers have already put together, “Mittelos” is an anagram for “Lost Time”.

[…]

Of all the scenes that they could have shown during the one hour recap before this week’s episode, which basically summed up two and a half years worth of Lost – they included the scene of Sayid and Hurley on the beach, listening to the radio, with Sayid saying “It could be coming from anywhere”, followed by Hurley saying “…or any time.”

That one really struck me as well. The first time I saw it, I noted it, and placing such a minor scene in recap seems like a pretty big hint.

Brian concludes:

If the series ended with us finding out that either a) only days had passed since Flight 815 crashed – with the rescue crew showing up or b) many years had passed and grown-up Walt and Grandpa Michael showing up to rescue everyone – I would not be in the least bit surprised, and we would all look back and think “Hey, they were hinting at it all along.”

There’s something else, too. A commenter on my blog mentioned a scene in which the big dipper is shown backwards in the sky. That’s a phenomenon that is not supposed to happen for 50,000 years. I don’t know which episode shows that, and I don’t have time to run it down, but if anyone has more info on that, I’d love to know. Perhaps the island exists in a different time altogether or maybe it hovers between planes on the spacetime continuum (or exists in a gap between branes – see my post on Universe in a Nutshell, also by Hawking).

“Not in Portland” really brings up many of the time continuum ideas that the show has been toying with since season 1, but with Lost, it sometimes seems that when we can see the big picture, the details get fuzzy. As we zero in on characters, plot elements and theories, however, it suddenly becomes impossible to see the whole thing.

I think of it as Lost’s own little version of the uncertainty principle (also explained in A Brief History of Time). The fascinating thing is that this is exactly what happens at the beginning of each show. We see the word LOST on screen, but it’s out of focus. As it flies toward the viewer, it comes into sharp focus, but all we can see are parts of the O and S, the big picture having left the frame.

Click here for all of my posts on the Lost books.