I am now the proud and permanent owner of Margaret Mead's stenographer's steno machine. Pictures to follow.Comment ...

Are there any locked room mysteries involving rare earth magnets used to manipulate a door chain or deadbolt into position from the outside of the door?Comment ...

Eeeh! Next Friday morning I get to sit in on a master class at Juilliard with His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts! I was afraid they wouldn't let me in because they were giving priority to professional musicians, but I just got the confirmation today. I'll probably bring my cornett but I don't anticipate playing it, because these days whenever I put it to my lips it makes a sound like an anemic water buffalo wrapped in a carpet. Still and all, I've been a fan of these guys for ages, and seeing them in person, talking and playing and ...

Dear subway preacher man: CPR does not, in fact, stand for Cardiopulmonary Resurrection, but thanks for playing.Comment ...

I want a jar of little semisoft ampules, like bath beads. But when you puncture one, instead of bath oil... Olive oil! And you squeeze it on your salad!Comment ...

I love this guy: I've been obsessed with the idea of quarantine my entire life. When I was a kid my parents drove to Flathead Lake, and we drove past this big sign on the side of the road. It had a bunch of small print on it, but the only thing I could read were the words "QUARANTINE ZONE" in huge terrifying black letters. I had nightmares every night for the entire week we spent up at the lake. What sort of hideous plague zone had we wandered into? Were we going to come back to Missoula as freakish mutants ...

I'm sitting on a bench on the Industrial Design floor of Pratt Studios, underneath tiny plastic toy versions of characters from Homestar Runner. (More specifically, underneath Strong Sad, Bubs, and Strong Mad, which three figures approximate the width of my head.) There is a gigantic mass of snow outside. It is pretty and white. Classes, needless to say, have been canceled. K. packed me a lunch, which I've been eating for breakfast: Her amazing homemade chana saag, a banana, an espresso chocolate chip granola bar, and some apricot fruit leather. In a bit I'll amble over to my coworking ...

What a lovely weekend. On Saturday I got to see Moss and Julia and Sumana for brunch (which was this really delicious baked egg thing with leeks and braised short rib, plus brioche doughnuts, yurm), then went to the Strand and came home to K., where we cooked asparagus and boiled new potatoes and lovely rich aromatic chicken soup and then watched a ridiculous CGI documentary about sea scorpions and shieldfish and burrowing tusky reptiles. Our boiler had been out for two days, meaning no heat or hot water, but on Sunday it was back on, and I had a nice ...

One of the best photos ever taken of me. By K., of course.Comment ...

Me: The transcript says "A portrait of (inaudible) and his wife, Nouche." K: That should be the title of your autobiography.Comment ...

Two steps: Alone and alone. A walk in the dust of a crater. The bath that draws the pain out, that draws it out and up and up, to float there, trapped like vapor.Comment ...

I love Philip K. Dick. I find him pretty hard to read, which is common enough among the people I know who've read him. But man, the shapes he bends my brain into... It's got to be good for something. Here's an excerpt from an essay of his on The I Ching and Schizophrenia. If you're totally schizophrenic now, by all means use the I Ching for everything, including telling you when to take a bath and when to open a can of cat tuna for your cat Rover. If you're partially schizophrenic (no names, please), then use it for ...

I walked past one of those little fake motorized racecar rides outside a store, where you put in a quarter and it goes up and down for five minutes. The car had all these fake sponsor stickers painted onto its chassis, and one of them read "Fairbanks Torque Converters". I liked the sound of it. Was there such a thing? Who took the notion to paint it on a little car ride? I googled it and found thousands of hits, but the entire first page seemed to be nothing but comment spam. The tenth hit led me to a page ...

Who Was I Made From? A Guide For Parents of GE Kids #picturebooksfromthefuture (I post it here because I only use my Twitter account to keep up a boring sanitized businesslike front; I never get to play the games.)Comment ...

So. The semester has started, my work situation has been nerve-wrackingly precarious for a week, but I'm more hopeful than I was that it'll turn out more or less okay. In less stressful news, K. and I saw an incredible show on Sunday that involved a symphonic orchestra playing David Bowie songs with a variety of incredible singers -- one a Broadway belter; one a creepy dude with a toothpick behind his ear; one who looked just like Manny-Moo from Black Books but had a beautiful white-hot rock scream; one who didn't know the words and made up for ...

Via Liz, a graph of health care costs and benefits that pretty much says it all.Comment ...

Just came back from an amazing tapas feast with my girl. One year married! My life is indescribably awesome.Comment ...

Ha! The background music in the Jeeves and Wooster TV show made a Lark Ascending joke, and I got it. I feel smrt.Comment ...

Plaidder writes a wonderful entry on Holmes slash. It was my first fandom, starting around age 8, and until I discovered the internet at 12, I thought I had invented slash. An easy enough mistake to make, eh? Anyway, as usual, Plaidder says it all. Holmes still kicks around in my head pretty often, but I must say I'm very glad I'm not married to him.Comment ...

Epic 2000 - 2010 wrap-up post! This is gonna be long. 2000: New Year's Eve found me on a bus going from Missoula, Montana, to Sidney, Montana, 577 miles and 10 hours away. I went to visit my then-girlfriend, S. Even though we were living together in Annapolis, Maryland and were both home for Christmas break to visit our parents, we wanted to ring in the millennium together. It was actually a pretty good time; I met her mom and her mom's water dragon and climbed some snow-covered hay bales and played some cards and then got on the bus for ...