Barkerburgh

49 today!

That’s 7 better than 42!

Hah, Douglas Adams! (God rest your crazy soul…)

Google string for the date

Canadawiki’s page for June 26

Hurricane Audrey, Wikipedia, “The first named storm , first hurricane and first major hurricane of the 1957 Atlantic hurricane season”

The Political Graveyard’s page for the date

Google string for barker “June 26, 1957″ for found-inspiration and stream-of-consciousness meditation…it’s fun!

Happy Birthday to ME! And many more!

I got a great present from dear friends that is up there right beside an almost identical present I got a few years ago from other dear friends. They are both equally the second best presents I ever received; the best being the Kenner Girder and Panel Building Set which I got for Christmas when I was about seven.

1> ‘The Unit’ looks like a good show.

2> So does ‘Boston Legal’.

3> That poor kid in Detroit who the 911 operator told to stop fooling around with the 911 system…

4> I really should have been watching ‘Babylon 5′ years ago.

5> Dean Koontz’es’s book ‘From the Corner of His Eye’ is a good read, nicely constructed, even though hardly anything really plotty happens until about page 600.

6> ‘My Name is Earl’ gets funnier and funnier.

7> Venus Express!

8> I love this weather.

9> The last few episodes of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ have been kickass, except I missed it both times on Space this past weekend through bad TV viewing planning. I guess I need to take a course.

10> ‘Coronation Street’ is getting kinda wacky, but that’s good. It’s a little boring when things are normal.

11> Nancy Grace is a foul human being.

12> If I was taller, I could see farther in a crowd during an emergency.

Two weeks without Coronation Street because of the 400,000-tickets-shy-of-an-SRO Olympics, that’s why, you bloody stupid wankers!

“But then out of the turgid miasma of Television white-noise video, on the same night he lost Coronation Street for two weeks, there came what were probably the last four episodes of his beloved ‘Arrested Development’, and the blasphemous and heretical South Park episode about the Blessed Virgin Mary. He nearly nearly choked twice from laughing, lost his breath, and his throat kind hurts today a bit….and all is good.”

Thank God for Battlestar Galactica and that there are no sports in space. Nerdal responses to that last phrase go here, God love ya.

Here’s the good version of ‘For Will in the Windows’ and the sequel ‘Maia’s Book’.

I found them in a directory on tnir with the useless name of ‘holding’. If I could, I’d reach back through a time portal and give myself a good smack for that. I didn’t get smacked by a disembodied hand back then, so I won’t be doing it, but maybe it’s the Grandfather Paradox thing…you know, since I didn’t get smacked, I used that directory name, so I will get smacked, so I won’t use that name, and so on…

Tom Swift Lives! Seriously.

And howzabout ‘The Complete Tom Swift Jr. Home Page‘?

I had most of these books when I was a lad, the hardback versions, not the later paperbacks.

I loved the ’science’ and the adventure, read them all to pieces.

Can’t believe the flashbacks I’m having just researching the links and verifying the info for this post. Wow. Better than Star Trek.

My favourite took place in ‘Ngombia’ in west Africa. It was called “Tom Swift and His Repelatron Skyway,” a magnetically suspended highway above jungle swamps. That flying machine in the cover picture on that page is actually laying the roadbed in the air; you can see the repeller device in the jungle below.

There were dinosaurs too . Years later, when I heard about mkele mbembe, I wondered which came first…

Then there was “Tom Swift and His Ultrasonic Cycloplane” where they discovered an ancient city inside a volcano and some silly damn thing called ‘rare earths’ as if dirt was rare. Right. Wander over to the Collier’s encyclopaedia and have me a good lookup and by Jeez, wouldja look at that, Rare Earths.

Way better than my sisters’ Nancy Drew books, although I read those too. Hell, I read those encyclopaedias like they were Tom Swift novels.

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‘Tom Swift books‘ google string

Last night I got to meet 6 week old Simon Varkast Ambedian Kotanen. I’d already met his parents, Peter and Leslie, so I didn’t have to talk to them much.

He was bigger than I expected and quite an armful - I got to hold him for a while, then Luisa (and Reid) got there…

He was quiet but alert, and seemed to like me. We have the same do so it must have been like looking into a handsome mirror for him, the lucky little guy.

I like babies but I don’t get much chance to hang out with them so this was cool. Last night I had a dream about looking for baby things in some kind of special store that nobody knew about, and there was always something more interesting behind whatever it was I’d been looking for and just found. I was worried about being able to afford all the stuff I wanted that wasn’t on the shopping list.

Mum and Dad served up some very nice cheeses, including a nice stinky Stilton and a Dutch cheese called Beemster, which is an aged Gouda, very nice.

Dear Friends,

In the spirit of the season, I offer the two items under ‘Pages’ in the sidebar section to the right.

The instructions are included. Pay attention to #7.

The season of presents! Always presents! Ever presents!

And kindness and love and hope, while we’re at it.

Luisa is part ancient Roman, part pre-Indo-European Italian aboriginal (maybe related to the Basques), probably part Classical Greek (ancient pre-Roman colonies at Naples, Taranto and Cumae, for example), maybe part Etruscan (it’s a short hike) , possibly part Saracen (invasions), possibly part Norman French (more invasions), perhaps Spanish (even more invasions). She might have the blood of immigrants, slaves or merchants from all over the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, or possibly, just possibly, Phoenicians or Egyptians out exploring for lands or trade opportunities far past the edge of their worlds when Greece and Rome were nothing and nobody.

(Of course, that means her two boys are half all that too, plus half of whatever their fathers have going.)

Well, she’s going back to one of the ancestral homelands for a visit, the central Italian province of Isernia, and the municipality of Macchiagodena.

This is a bit about Macchiagodena, the burg her parents come from, actually a village outside Macchiagodena with the mysteriously delightful name (for an Italian mountain village), Incoronata.

This is the Google map of Italy focussed on the latitude and longitude of Macchiagodena, (because Google Maps couldn’t find it otherwise.) You can zoom in on the mountains and countryside. It must be beautiful to be parallel to it at ground level, instead of perpendicular. I’m sure Luisa will get plenty of pictures for us.

Have a safe trip, dear friend. Bring me back a rock (even a pebble) of geographical and historical significance.

Craig Charles is joining Coronation Street!

If you don’t know what that means to me, then you’re not my friend. If you ever were.

Did I ever smeggin’ like you? Did I ‘eck as like.

I lost almost all my mp3s in a hard drive crash last week due to the heat and humidity - it was brutal - but now I don’t care nearly as much.

(Just making a half-full glass of lemonade here, people! Yee ha!)

I loves me a little Doctor Who once a week or so. Nanogenes, 51st Century sensibilities and nobody dies!

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Ann Bancroft died on Monday. When I heard about it this morning I actually got a lump in my throat for Mel Brooks. I remember how surprised I was when I heard they were married. What a couple! What? A couple? What an odd couple!

I’m remembering how taken I was when I saw “The Miracle Worker” as a child.

Now I’m remembering how much I was befuddled by “The Graduate.”

Okay, now I’m remembering how much I enjoyed “To Be or Not To Be.”

I could go on.

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For fun, interest, and your own private Meadian Samoa, I recommend the discussions on plastic.com.