The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre Presents Reservoir Dogs

Snow Pictures

Here's the baby in his snow. We watched Dr. Zhivago the other day, so now I call him "Comrade Gilbertovich" and when he goes out to poop I call it "being exiled to Siberia."


(Side note: If you get a chance to watch the commentary tracks on the Zhivago DVD, keep an eye (ear) out for Rod Steiger. OMFG, he kills! A dirty old man! As he describes the scene where his character is about to assault Lara, he says things like "Oh, you sly, sly Devil...." and (when he grabs Lara and starts to kiss her) "I Strike! Bwah hah hah hah hah!". He describes the instance where he tells director David Lean that he is going to fake-kiss Julie Christie and then get his desired surprised look from the actress by kissing her again (without her prior knowledge) and slipping her some tongue. He comments "But of course, you know I'd kiss her twice for free!")

Here are some shots of some X-mas lights that The ♥G♥ put up on our fence that got covered in last week's precipitation. I thought it was kind of cool how they glowed under the snow.

Henry Ford Museum Pics

Over Christmas, we went to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Lots of nifty stuff. Here's the bus Rosa Parks sat in the front of. Someone in Birmingham must have been a GL fan.


Cool old Harley:


Here's a poem about Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House:

Happy Birthday David Bowie

Happy B-Day David Bowie. In honor, here's Thuggy Stardust -- A bunch of Ziggy/Hip-hop mashups.

The Dot and the Line

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics is a very clever cartoon short by the great Chuck "Not just Bugs Bunny" Jones, based on a book by the great Norton "Phantom Tollbooth" Juster. See for yourself:

Here it is performed live:

Nerds Book

This book looks good -- Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them. Excerpt from WaPo review: The nerd stereotype is a peculiarly American prejudice, which Anderegg (with substantial help from historian Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life") traces back to our nascent literary days. Indeed, he places the blame for American nerd aversion squarely on the shoulders of Washington Irving and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson, in the seminal 1837 speech titled "The American Scholar," gave "voice in the loftiest academic diction to a repeated theme in American history: that Americans are, first and foremost, men of action, not men of reflection." Irving had already put imaginary flesh on those bones, in the person of Ichabod Crane, the awkward scholarly schoolteacher scared out of town by his romantic rival, the pretend pumpkin-head Brom Bones, "a new American type: the anti-intellectual hero." Anderegg very seriously advises that "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" should not be taught until college for the damage it could cause to young psyches.

From the author's website:

The Last Nerd Self-Test You’ll Ever Need!

1. Are you sometimes so enthusiastic about your interests that you get carried away, and lose your self-consciousness in your passion for your subject?

2. Do you believe that people can be beautiful and smart at the same time?

3. Do you sometimes get interested in a book or a hobby that’s really difficult to get into, but you do it anyway because it seems like such a cool thing to learn?

4. Do you like precision or exactitude, maybe even so much that a right answer is an aesthetically pleasing experience?

5. Do you find tracking what’s fashionable just a teensy bit boring?

6. Do you admire people who are very knowledgeable even if their topic is a little arcane?

7. Don't you just love the word “arcane”?

8. Do you enjoy vivid imaginative accounts of alternatives to mundane reality?

9. Are you comfortable with the fact that Harry Potter wears big spectacles and is also a big athletic hero?

10. Do you find anti-intellectualism just a little bit….stupid?

Among the reviews of his book:

Publishers' Weekly, 12/17/07:

"In this intriguing treatise, child therapist and psychology professor Anderegg takes a wry and well-rounded look at the legacy of everyone’s (least) favorite schoolyard epithet, getting deep into the history of an idea as well as the nuts and bolts of childhood 'stereotype acquisition.'

Now here's the thing: There is no apostrophe in Publishers Weekly!