Ellen's iPod is dying.  It had a good run and played hard for 3 years--which according to what I've read is a very long life for anything born in a Jobs factory.   Apples are notoriously strange fruits with seeds in their core that have been genetically engineered to  develop incurable infections on a preordained schedule--rendering them juiceless and useless.  Maybe it's a generational thing, but disposable technology never feels right to me.  I don't even like disposable razors.  And the idea of buying something that runs on batteries and will not accommodate a replacement is even more galling.

 Brett Mosley, the guy who started "BuyMyTronics.com." is also a huge EcoGeek...he basically buys broken electronics, fixes them, and then sells them on EBay. It's like recycling, but way better, because the gadgets get to keep living. He's recently expanded his business to cover iPhones, Zunes, and gaming systems, and is about to expand even further into cell phones and laptops.  But Brett is upset, and that makes me upset. Cause I when I went to the site to see what I could get for Ellen's failing iPod, I filled out all the info and received an estimate of two dollars.  Apparently, the recent generation iPods and the current iPod Nano have been designed to be 100% unfixable. According to Brett,

The new generations of iPods and the iPhone are not designed to be opened. Because the Nano, iPhone and generation 6 "Classic" bodies are metal to metal --the body gets completely trashed upon opening. In the Nanos and Shuffles, parts are actually soldered together, eliminating the possiblility of simple repair. So, for me, it will be harder to fix these, increasing repair costs and diminishing their resale value after they have been repaired.

I guess the flip side of the equation is that Ellen got three years of magic out of that device.  And it is like magic when you can store so much portable music (and pics and video if you like) on something slightly larger than a credit card.  Like my friend (SL) says about the price of gasoline:  " How much do think it should cost?"  It's all relative. 

Either Will Shortz didn't see my recent post, or his strong stable of clever cruciverbalists took an extended summer vacation and there's only slim pickins in his IN box .  Got Eliza (and) Doolittle before I knew why she was there, and when I did, the rain in Spain fell  heavily on my pain.   It's not often I walk away from a Sunday Puzzle, but this was really getting on my nerves.  Went to Rex Parker the next day to see what he thought and he concurred.  It's not often you'll hear him say: "But this grid has literally NO interesting answers outside the theme answers...."
and  "There's just so much rot. And I thought I hated ALIENEE more than any word that length—and then I met ENOUNCE. You'd have to hold a gun to my head to get me to let that thing into my grid. There's just a [shrug] "sure, whatever" attitude in the fill. "Well ... it's a word. Good enough—next!" It's dispiriting."  

But abandoning the Puzzle gave me more time to Paddle out in Gardiner's Bay where residual wind from previous evening storm had me rockin' and rollin' on chop so wild I quickly high tailed it for the quieter lagoon where I promptly sunk up to my waist in mud before managing to climb back aboard and ride the current a few miles down to the the beach where Ellen and Renee (who took short turns on the board only to quickly abandon ship and concede the day to the Mighty Wind) and Marty came in the car to save me from having to fight the wind coming back on hands, knees and prayer.  

abderian	Cartoon courtesy of  Drew Dee...whose website: Toothpaste for Dinner is only one of  the addictive digital playgrounds he and wife Natalie have created and maintained.  A IS FOR... Given to incessant or idiotic laughter
abecedarian	A person who is learning the alphabet
abligurition	Excessive spending on food and drink
accubation	The practice of eating or drinking while lying down
aeolist	A pompous windy bore who pretends to have inspiration
agelast	A person who never laughs
agerasia	The state of looking younger than one actually is
alphamegamia	The marriage between a young woman and an older man
anopisthography	The practice of writing on one side of the paper
apodyopsis	The act of mentally undressing someone

Idea whose time has come:

Genetically re-engineered mosquitos who suck fat instead of blood. 

BUT UNTIL THEN, THERE'S: 

Mosquito Deleto, the Electronic Swatter, Mosquito PowerTrap, Mosquito Terminator, Mosquito Magnet, the Bug Zapper, Mosquito Control Plus, the Solar Mosquito Guard, the Dragonfly Mosquito System, Mosquito 'Cognito, the Sonic Web and Insectivoro...not to mention all the lotions and sprays. 

BUT SUMMER IS OVER AND ONLY THE GREEN AND BLACK FLIES ARE STILL BUZZIN ON THE BAY IN THE SPRINGS, AND EVEN THEY SEEM TO BE LOSING THEIR MOJO. 

And now with the cool air having sent all the "some-are-people" back to whence they came, the place looks and feels even more idyllic than ever, though it doesn't entirely  make up (for we newly addicted Stand-Up-Paddling junkies)  for the fast dropping water temperature. 

About 1/4 mile from our house is Gerard Drive, which bisects a narrow peninsula with Gardiner's Bay on one side and the  shallow Acabonic marsh/harbor on the other.  Searching for images, I discovered an artist and fellow Blogspot Blogger who has painted various scenes of the area.  Her name is Tina Duryea and her site is: http://tinaduryea.blogspot.com/. 

Some of her work follows with her descriptions:

A different section of my favorite road, Gerard Drive in Amagansett.  I started this painting on site and finished it in the studio.

Accabonac Boats - 32" x 48" - Oil on Wood Panel - This winter I visited some friends out in East Hampton.  Their family home is in an area known as the Springs, perhaps most famous for being the location of Jackson Pollacks studio.  The Accabonac Marsh is one of my favorite types of water bodies.  A salty marsh, separated from Gardners Bay by a Sandy spur of land.  I think I could paint here for years and never get tired of the different views of sea, sky and water.

Gerard Drive II -

Clamdigger, The Springs - East Hampton, 32" x 48"

While visiting friends in the Springs this past March we saw someone digging for Clams in the Accabonac Marsh.

...and "A" is also for Arlen, as in Harold Arlen, who penned this gem with lyrics by Ted Koehler.  To some ears, this may seem a pretty simple and lightweight confection, but I've been playing with it for a few days and finding all sorts of wonderful possibilities in the voicings to bring out the inherent "Blues" that seems to run through all the great Arlen songs.  Even Somewhere Over the Rainbow can be played with a more than a touch of blue colorings--which  to me makes it even more affecting.  This is (the wonderful) Catherine Russell doin it with a combo that includes the always tasty Matt Munisteri* on guitar.  

BTW:  if at first you get a "Video currently not available" message on the screen, just refresh the page on top of your browser...then start video again...that usually works. 

* My Thanks to Dave S. for turning me on to him! 

MIXED BAG...

Beginning with another Clarke and Dawe from down under.  Much more from them on YouTube and all great. 

I never Metaphor I didn't like...

...is a lie, but can't resist the headline. And seems much has been said and written about our capacity for creative comparatives including one that couldn't resist the headline either...


... haven't read any of these--though I may peer into a few that offer free sample chapters online.

In  Buried on Avenue B, author Peter De Jonge sprinkles in quite a few good ones including one comparing a librarian placing books on the shelves to: "... a farmer unpicking fruit and returning it to the tree." 

Wandering through various online orchards, I picked a few that looked ripe

“The past is a pebble in my shoe.”― Edgar Allan Poe

“If television's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up.”
― Dorothy Gambrell,
“Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a
red flag to a bull. ..  like putting something very annoying in front of
someone who was annoyed by it.”
― Terry Pratchett
“Who was it that said, “Men are but wheat, and the government is the bread”? Ah yes, that was my grandfather, who shouted that shortly before hurling a loaf of bread at President Hoover during the great depression.”
― Jarod Kintz
“Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.”
― Werner Heisenberg
“unless you're the lead dog the view never changes...
― Bob Mitchley
“Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.”
― Wallace Stevens
“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
― Sigmund Freud

Where did expression: "That gets my goat!" originate? 

One theory:  from a formerly common practice in horse racing where the owners would stable their horses with goats to calm them down. Thus, to get someones goat would anger the horses and render them ineffective.
Another theory: 

“goat”  was word from prison slang meaning “anger.” 

And third theory: It originated with the word goad not goat. 

- to goad someone into doing something, to urge   into action or obedience.  the Bible provides very early references to a “goad” as something one could “get.”.  Jesus said to Paul “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”  

Jury is still out.

...and while on the subject, I neglected to include this  from Molly Ivins  in my recent post featuring many of her other gleeful "goat getters".  

"Then there’s Bush’s slightly alarming claim to the Amish on July 9 that God speaks through him. That’s what he said, God speaks through him. This raises some troubling prospects. First of all, I think God has a better grasp of subject-verb agreement than George W. Bush do."

Many a time I have boarded a crowded train (usually leaving the city) and encountered a  person sitting with bag(s) (often large) on seat next to them.  I say/gesture that I would like to sit in seat the bag is occupying and even offer to put the bag on overhead rack.  Person declines offer and  reluctantly takes the bag and puts it on lap to show me how uncomfortable and inconvenienced he/she now is.  Perhaps I should :

a.  Try harder to find a seat unoccupied 

by inanimate passengers.

b. Just stand like everyone else who neglected to board early enough to secure a seat for themselves and/or their possessions.

b.Offer to put the bag owner on overhead rack.

"What do we want!?

More research for ADHD!

When do we want it!?

“Ok, so we could get pizza or go back to my place, 
hey look, a squirrel…”

When I was a kid,  no one was ADD or ADHD--there wasn't even much concern about those exhibiting behaviors of the kind that today would be identified by those terms .  The term more often heard (amongst the jews) was: 

*Shpilkes: (shpill-kiss) literally, pins. Ants in the pants,  impatience. That feeling you have when you can't sit still from anticipation and/or anxiety. As Mike Myer's Linda Richman character would say, when she gets all worked up, "I have shpilkes in my genecktigazoink."  (which is not a real word)

My parents spoke Yiddish (actually a hybrid of Yiddish and German --my father's native tongue) around the house when they wanted to keep the "Kinder" in the dark.

Great Yiddish and Hebrew writers (left to right):
Mendele Moykher Sforim,
Sholem Aleichem, Mordecai (Rabbinowicz) Ben-Ammi,
and Hayyim Nahman Bialik (Odessa, circa 191

But I sussed out a few things and usually the key was in the inflection. 

And in Yiddish, inflection is the key to intent and often in opposition to literal meaning. 

Mordant syntax: "Smart, he isn't." 

Sarcasm through innocuous diction: "Maybe he should try to shoot himself." 

Scorn through reversed word order: "Already you're discouraged?" 

Contempt through affirmation: "My friend, he wants to be." 

Fearful curses enhanced through customized tailoring: "May all your teeth fall out except one, and in that one you have a toothache." 

Derisive dismissal disguised as innocent interrogation: "I should pay him for such good service?" **

Comedian's quip at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival:  "When Jesus went to heaven, wasn’t he essentially just' moving back in with his parents'?"

London Olympics officials revealed that during the games, The World Anti-Doping Agency performed 6,250 tests for 240 banned substances on approx. half of the athletes-- including all medal winners. By the end of the Games, 12 athletes had been expelled for doping irregularities, and 107 were disqualified prior to the beginning of the competition.  No information was revealed however, concerning drug use by those involved in the staging of the closing ceremonies.

Jeepers-creepers, got the heebie-jeebies. Too much helter-skelter with hoity-toity fuddy-duddy mumbo-jumbo. Not to mention the artsy-fartsy namby-pamby airy-fairy hocus-pocus . Tryin to focus on nitty-gritty but all the hanky-panky ain’t makin my boogie-woogie easy-peasy . Boo-hoo is me, so I’ll just willy-nilly make me a super-duper higgledy-piggledy hodge-podge of Rhyming Reduplicatives for an ADHD world.

Sources:

*www.bubbygram.com/yiddishglossary.htm

** Ibid: Slightly altered 

Learned right way to make Matzoh Brei from  Peter De Jonge novel Buried on Avenue B--you gotta soak crumpled Matzoh in boiling water briefly before adding beaten eggs. Some say use hot milk and Ruth Reichl  uses cold water --but she grew up in New York about as Jewish as I did...which if you take out the left wing politics and folksinging leaves you with more Pork Lo Mein than Matzoh Brei.  

People will read books, watch movies, go to museums to see latest evidence shining new light on the deaths of King Tut, Cleopatra, Jesus Christ,  and countless other long,  long  gone personages real and imagined, and yet one mention of the Kennedy assassination and it’s  “….c’mon it’s over, move on!”   What they’re really saying is…”Hey, too soon, too soon.”

I wonder if The Faust (or Doctor Faustus) story has never been popular in America (except in the heavily truncated form of the musical Damn Yankees) because the essential cautionary tale element strikes most Americans as absurd.  It’s “Let’s Make a Deal” with too much indecision, lousy prizes, an unhappy ending and a hero who doesn't know a good thing when he's got it. 

Just discovered that ...“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?”--
is from Marlowe version:  The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus. 

Randy Newman tackled it (bravely and humorously) and in his version (staged only a few times but available as recording) God and The Devil duke it out over the soul of a student at The University of Notre Dame.  Newman sings the role of Devil and James Taylor is The Lord.  Bonnie Raitt and Linda Ronstadt are on it too.

Just  learned (from generally reliable colleague) that most laundry and dishwashing detergent brands recommend up to ten times the necessary amount needed.  In fact, their recommended amounts will likely damage your clothes, damage your appliance (Got some soapy residue when washer is done?  Too much soap!)and reduce the longevity of both.  I’m shocked!  How and why would they do such a thing?

Friend of a friend is writing a mystery novel in which he quotes a two lines from a Bruce Springsteen Song-- editor reminded him he would need to get permission and likely pay a fee.  A phone call confirmed that it would cost him $3,600!  Kind of amusing since his total advance from the publisher was $3,000. And now he's re-writing that section and deliberately mis-quoting the lines with a footnote explaining why.  I suggested he also fire off a letter to The Boss saying ...

"Yes, everybody does have a hungry heart, though some are hungrier than others. "

 East Hampton. Was on the main drag for the first time in a long time (Our house in Springs is 20 minutes away--and thankfully reachable by circumventing the main village ) and reminded of how the oh so Tone-y town is nevertheless an appealingly quaint, historic, leafy, clean and peaceful place.  And yet during the summer months, it more often looks like just a very sunny playground for some very shady people.  

I believe the term used by the locals is... Cidiots. 

My nephew Brian studied guitar for many years and told me that he never quite got over his aversion to that lone major third in a sea of perfect fourths (The B string being the culprit) and was a factor in his taking up The Bass with its simpler (and two strings less) symmetry. Perhaps it’s the Adrian Monk in me—but I totally understand how he felt. So I got curious about alternate tunings (Not of the already- tuned-to-a-chord so you can play while in a coma Keith Richards variety) and found out that some players use an all fourths or all fifths tuning (like Robert Fripp) …so I tried the all fifths cause it sounded so extreme and beguiling .

At least I don't have to tune this monster--and I assume 

Pat Metheny (who owns one) has someone do it for him. 

        Promptly snapped off the high string (cause I didn't know that it was all fifths except that one string --which is just a 3rd up so it's really CGDAEG).  Then tried it on my electric and all was well till I started fooling around with some scales and realized that I was like a marathon runner at the ten mile mark who is so  frustrated at how slowly he's going that he stops, buys new shoes and goes back to the starting line.  Actually, a bad metaphor, cause the new shoes would eventually feel comfortable and I don't think my life will be long enough for me to get anything but musical blisters in this tuning. 

That's enough arcane mental flossing for one day...I leave you with an old favorite from Taj Mahal with the sadly departed Jesse Ed Davis (born 68 years ago today)  on guitar...and in photo appearing at 1:50 mark.   Tune was written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin.