Whoops! I was delighted yesterday when I saw the sun was once again shining into my living room. During the depth of winter, it’s too low in the sky for the rays to get past the (rather deep) skylight well in the ceiling.
Seeing it yesterday required three things I’ve been waiting for: The sun to get high enough in the sky (obviously); for it to be not cloudy, which has been a problem recently; and for the snow and (weirdly) the grime to melt off the skylight itself. The snow cover isn’t unusual, but I’ve never seen grime before!
Anyway, hooray, yesterday it happened. And then I woke this morning to winter again!
So I’m sitting here getting absolutely no work done on today’s post because I can’t stop getting totally into the music I’m listening to. The problem is that I really love seven of the eleven cuts. Four of the seven rank very high in my favorites list, and one of them is on my all-time favorites short list!
It’s ironic that a fairly vanilla song from a fairly vanilla singer-songwriter is such favorite, but the truth is, a good jam band can go off on anything. Maybe it’s the high degree of contrast between the original, which I think uses only five notes or so, and the mouth-watering jam.
I mentioned Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odysseyrecently. It’s actually one of my favorite films, although by “favorite” I mean it makes my Top 25 Best Films list (or it would if I ever made one). I consider it a major landmark in the cinema landscape.
I’m not sure it makes my Top 25 Favorite Films list, but that’s only because there are so many others I love for reasons beyond their mere quality. It would probably make the Top 50 list, and I’m sure it’s in my Top 100. Some find it opaque or pointless, but to me it’s a visual tone poem that’s as beautiful as it is technically accomplished.
When I say that last part, people sometimes ask me what a visual tone poem is.
Maybe you’ve been in a cafeteria and seen those spring-loaded plate dispensers. It’s a big stack of plates in a tube with a spring. As plates are removed, the lower ones are pushed up into sight. Pez dispensers and most gun magazines operate with a similar principle.
Sometimes someone comes along and dumps a new bunch of plates on top of whatever is in the stack at the time. One thing about a stack like this: if you do keep putting new on top of old, the old is never used. In some cafeterias, there might be a plate on the bottom of some stack that’s been there since the place opened in 1958!
One formal term for such a dispenser is a Push Down Stack.
Perhaps it is a personal penchant for irony-leavened paradox that has me pen a post titled 2014 that turns out to be more a look backwards. The dash of irony comes from the explicit mention of not being one who spends much time looking back!
But, also as mentioned, there is a time and place for most things, and January is a more ideal place for that than you may realize. The month is named after the roman god, Janus, god of beginnings and transitions, who has both a backward- and forward-looking face. The turning of the year is the time and place for both.
So here is a bit more looking back and looking forward.
What a thing to behold: 2014! I found it a bit startling to reach 2010; by now these high numbers seem almost normal. Some born in this millennium are already teenagers and aren’t far from voting age. For those of us born back in the fitties, it can be a little eerie.
When Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey came out in April 1968, I was in seventh grade and already a hard-core science fiction fan. Back then, 2001 seemed so far off that anything was possible. We first walked on the moon just over a year later in July. (My beloved Star Trek had been on the air since September 1966!)
It started when I noticed the Like buttons weren’t loading today. I decided to poke around in the underlying internet code, and I was blown away (and terrified) by what I found. It’s weird that no one has noticed it yet, but then it does seem as if it was deliberately designed to be missed. I never would have spotted it, except by sheer coincidence.
What I found has to come from the highest levels, and it has stunning implications for the future of the internet (and our personal freedom). The scary thing is that I think I’m being followed, and I’ve noticed some odd noises on the phone line. Probably just my imagination; this isn’t the movies, after all (no such thing as “black helicopters”).
But just to be safe I thought I’d write what I know before anythi
Of twelve. It’s hard not to notice how Christmas peeks out from under the covers earlier and earlier every year. One of my more recent seasonal traditions is noting how soon the first signs appear. The commercial opportunities of Halloween run interference in the fall; this year I found Christmas spoor on November 1st.
How Thanksgiving managed to escape heavy commercialization escapes me. Maybe people are spent out due to those two spendiest of holidays bracketing either side. Attics now store as many boxes of Halloween decorations as they do Christmas ones!
I guess the long foreplay is a good thing considering the instant exit once the deed is done.
May you — and all those you love — have a Merry, Happy, Joyous, Delightful, Wonderful, Warm, Delicious, Safe, Fun (yet Solemn), Sugar-Cinnamon Hot Cookie-Scented [insert appropriate holiday here].
My favorite part of the season just occurred! Over an hour ago the Earth swung past the winter-most spot in its orbit. That was at 17:11 UTC, 12:11 PM on the east coast of the USA, 9:11 AM on the west coast, and the rest of you will just have to do the math.
We’re headed back towards summer! (Ironically, today is also the first official day of winter.) It’ll take a few days before we can notice the growing daylight — it’s somewhat similar to how you pause for a moment when you turn and reverse direction. If the snow ever melts off my skylight, I’ll be able to start watching the patch of sunlight start working its way down again.
Whoops! I was delighted yesterday when I saw the sun was once again shining into my living room. During the depth of winter, it’s too low in the sky for the rays to get past the (rather deep) skylight well in the ceiling.
I mentioned 
Maybe you’ve been in a cafeteria and seen those spring-loaded plate dispensers. It’s a big stack of plates in a tube with a spring. As plates are removed, the lower ones are pushed up into sight. Pez dispensers and most gun magazines operate with a similar principle.
Perhaps it is a personal penchant for irony-leavened paradox that has me pen a post titled 
What a thing to behold: 2014! I found it a bit startling to reach 2010; by now these high numbers seem almost normal. Some born in this millennium are already teenagers and aren’t far from voting age. For those of us born back in the fitties, it can be a little eerie.
It started when I noticed the Like buttons weren’t loading today. I decided to poke around in the underlying internet code, and I was blown away (and terrified) by what I found. It’s weird that no one has noticed it yet, but then it does seem as if it was deliberately designed to be missed. I never would have spotted it, except by sheer coincidence.
Of twelve. It’s hard not to notice how Christmas peeks out from under the covers earlier and earlier every year. One of my more recent seasonal traditions is noting how soon the first signs appear. The commercial opportunities of Halloween run interference in the fall; this year I found Christmas spoor on November 1st.
My favorite part of the season just occurred! Over an hour ago the Earth swung past the winter-most spot in its orbit. That was at 17:11 
Logos con carne 