Romney Running-Mate Anagram of the Day

Looking for anagrammatic advice in their quest to add meaningful diversity to this fall's Republican ticket, the GOP braintrust likes the way that ROMNEY PAWLENTY highlights the fact that the ticket is PARTLY NEW MONEY, with Tim P being the son of a milkman who worked his way through college rather than the son of Governor and auto company president who feels that becoming President of the United States is his birthright.

Language Matters: "Die Wolkenkratzern von New York"

On very rare occasions, le mot juste just happens to be in German.
On days like today when the sky is low over New York, I always think that the best word for the city's tallest buildings is not "skyscraper", but "Wolkenkratzer." The German word translates literally as "cloud scratcher."

Has Governor Cuomo answered this message yet?

Watch Alec Baldwin and Josh Fox leave a message for Governor Andrew Cuomo about fracking in New York State from the stage of the Landmark Theater in Syracuse on June 2, 2012.




Has the Governor answered Alec's call yet?
How quickly would Andy answer the voice mails left by CEOs of those corporations which are generously promising our state jobs, money, cheap gas, trucks, pumps, derricks, flaming faucets, mystery chemicals, wastewater ponds, dirty air, and poisoned wells (and maybe hint in passing about helping him with his possible Presidential plans in 2016)?

Keeping with yesterday's space theme . . .

I didn't have a real camera at work today, but here are a couple of phone pictures of the Space Shuttle Enterprise making its final journey up the Hudson River earlier this morning as it passed the new World Trade Center and the Empire State Building.

"... a Goddess descended from light to Matter." Happy Transit Day!

I'm celebrating the Transit of Venus taking place on the 5th and 6th of June 2012 by reading the essential fictional account of the Transit of Venus observed and measured by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in Cape Town on the 5th and 6th of June 1761 (a few years before they drew the line across America that symbolically separates us from our less-liberal brethren).
Turn the first hundred pages of Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon for more reading pleasure and information about tangency, parallax, and the movement of heliocentric bodies, but here's a short paragragh from that long book to whet your appetite:

"Ladies, Ladies," Mason calls. "--You've seen her in the Evening Sky, you've wish'd upon her, and now for a short time will she be seen in the Day-light, crossing the Disk of the Sun, -- and do make a Wish then, if you think it will help. -- For Astronomers, who usually work at night, 'twill give us a chance to be up in the Day-time. Thro' our whole gazing-lives, Venus has been a tiny Dot of Light, going through phases like the Moon, ever against the black face of Eternity. But on the day of this Transit, all shall suddenly reverse, -- as she is caught, dark, embodied, solid, against the face of the Sun,-- a Goddess descended from light to Matter." (page 92 of Henry Holt hardcover)

Levon Helm

On levonhelm.com tonight, there's a message from his family that  "Levon is in the final stages of his battle with cancer. Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey."

Here's video of an interview with Levon Helm at his home in Woodstock, New York last month:

Watch Quick Hits: An Interview with Levon Helm on PBS. See more from Sound Tracks.

And here are Levon Helm and The Band performing The Weight at the Woodstock Festival (which, of course, was not in Woodstock, New York) in August 1969:

 

No Pulitzer for Fiction Reminds Me That It's Only 3 Weeks Until Pynchon in Public Day

In 1974 the three members of the Pulitzer Prize's fiction jury (Elizabeth Hardwick, Alfred Kazin, and Benjamin DeMott) unanimously recommended Gravity's Rainbow only to be overruled by the full 14-member board, which couldn't make it through the book (except for the pages they had dogeared and re-read to make sure they were "obscene").  The result was that no 1974 Pulitzer Prize for fiction was awarded even though they had one of the greatest novels of the century in their hands.

It will be interesting to hear why the Pulitzers couldn't agree on a fiction prize this year between David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, Karen Russell's Swamplandia, and Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, but mostly the news of the unawarded 2012 award makes me want to finish what I'm reading now so that I can start on Gravity's Rainbow again as soon as possible.  If I procrastinate enough, I might be caught reading it on Pynchon in Public day, May 8.  (Not only is May 8, 1937 Thomas Pynchon's birthday, but May 8, 1974 is the date of the New York Times article, "Pulitzer Jurors Dismayed on Pynchon".)  What will you be reading in public on that Tuesday?

Seamus Romney

Seamus Romney gives us the anagrams of the day related to defecating in terror when riding on the roof of the family station wagon for 12 hours:

Seamus Romney = Name Your Mess

... or more appropriately, as Seamus's name becomes a rallying cry for animal lovers everywhere in this election year:

Seamus Romney = My Name Rouses

How do we atheists worship on Easter weekend?

I'll start by watching and photographing the wildlife in my backyard.  

This guy visited me earlier this week on his way to steal some eggs. I'm sure that he's hard boiling and coloring them now and preparing to hide them behind trees and in downspouts and birdbaths of Christian homes (this traditional and ancient leporine curse has been misinterpreted by Christians as a blessing for centuries).

Photographic proof that Barack Obama is an alien!!

For all my right-wing friends out there, you need look no further than the hand signal from another planet that President Barack Obama was flashing in the Oval Office when he was photographed with Nichelle Nichols (alias Lieutenant Uhura) for your final proof that the current occupant of the White House is an illegal alien: