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Observed on a gravestone in Highgate Cemetary, London:

 

Here Lies Gordon Bell

(His middle name was Ernest though he placed no Importance in it)

 

Simple and direct - I like it.

We've been coming to Florida several times a year for most of the last ten years and never before now have we really experienced what one could consider weather, unless it was the hot and steamy kind, and by that I don't mean the good type of hot and steamy like 'Body Heat' hot and steamy, but the miserable make-you-want-to-become-an-ax-murderer kind of hot and steamy.

As a reminder, previously we'd written about Frozen Dead Guy Days both here and here.

On our second, and regrettably last day at Frozen Dead Guy Days, we drove back up to Nederland to take in all the major events. Well, major for Nederland anyway. I suspect on  normal day a gathering of more than four people is regarded as a mob. The day dawned overcast and cold and went downhill from there. By the time we arrived back in Nederland the snow was coming down semi-copiously interspersed with lulls. It promised to be a cold day for us, especially in light of the fact that most of the activities were outdoors, at least all the ones that did not entail beer drinking.

 

 

For once I noticed a fashiony trend before Mary. Apparently the new hip thing for girls and middle aged women who still think they're girls, is to wear Wellies around town. I'd forgotten the term until Mary reminded me, but Wellies (short for Wellingtons, as in Duke of...) are the commonly accepted brand name which has entered general usage - kind of like Kleenex, but for rubber boots. In England, where they have been made since time immemorial, possibly from before the Romans got homesick and went back to Italia for a little pasta, Wellies are the knee length rubber boots that people out in the country wear because in England if you step off the paved path you'll instantly be up to your hips in mud, even in the middle of the summer during a drought. I'm forever puzzled why England hasn't dissolved into the Gulf Stream. It seems to consist primarily as a colloidal suspension rather than solid ground.

In any case why rubber boot fashion has become a trend in America, much less New York is a puzzlement. I don't think you can encounter mud there even if you roll on the ground in Central Park. But women far and wide throughout the city are wearing the boots. Filed under category - The Mysterious Female Sex.

Well, just when I'm getting ready to write off the Sony Reader, they come roaring back in the second period and throw a Hail Mary pass that sends the game into extra innings.

 

Sony announced today that they have reached an agreement with Google (It's All About World Domination, Man) to access the library of books that Google has been scanning and squirreling away in their Doomsday Bunker. Ok, I made the last part up. But if I had bunches of billions to play around with, I wouldn't spend it just on a widebody party plane. I mean I would do that too, but I'd also build a Doomsday Bunker. Not because I think Doomsday is close or anything but who doesn't want their own Doomsday Bunker. Anyone? Ok, maybe that's just me then.

 

Anyway, Google has been scanning books into a giant database for a while now and Sony has concluded an agreement to get access to those books, or at least the ones that are no longer in copyright. Which means pretty much anything from before 1923. Finally I can immerse myself in the entire oeuvre of my hero, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1^st Baron Lytton.

 

Amazon - your turn.

 

The New York Times today had an article on people (ok, men) who build replicas of the command chair that Captain Kirk sat in on the original Star Trek series. This pleases me in so many ways. I love it when fans show their appreciation, nay, fanaticism for a show now over forty years old, by building furniture. I also like imagining the conversations with the significant others when one announces their plans to build full size copies - and these chairs aren't exactly small.

 

"Honey, I've decided that my life is not complete without an exact full scale replica of Capt. Kirk's command chair, so I'm gonna build one. It shouldn't cost more than a  couple thou."

 

"But dear, what about your children, and our marriage, and the Little League team you coach, and the spare time you spend teaching the homeless to read? What about those things, don't they make your life complete?"

 

"Oh, sure, all those things are fine but we're talking about Kirk's chair here! That's something I've just now realized that I always wanted and....wait, we have children?"

 

I also like the fact that in the show it's the 23rd century and they're flying around the galaxy in a faster than light ship but the captain's chair has wooden arms? What's that all about?

 

In the article one man said his wife threatened to divorce him if he tried to put the chair in the living room. Mary said that if I ever came up with plans for Star Trek themed home décor, she'd be looking into 'an institution', for me. I didn't ask what kind of 'institution', because it's better not too, really. I believe the prohibition also extends to themes for Star Wars, the Matrix, Terminator, and My Little Pony.

Well, we're off shortly to attend the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival in Nederland, CO. I'm not going to explain about it right now, as I expect to have lots of good stuffs to write about later. It promises to be.....interesting.

 

This is actually more Mary's thing as it was her research into the weird and possibly wonderful, that lead us to this festival. We'll see if it lives up to the advance billing. I'm going along because they have a beer tent. And I'm hoping there's funnel cakes. Hmmm, beer and funnel cakes.

New on the list of 'Things That Creep Me Out' is an ad I came across in the latest edition of Departures magazine (Obscenely Expensive Stuff That You Didn't Even Know You Needed Until We Told You), a periodical that we get free because we have some sort of credit card that is made of a rare element like tantalum or rhodium. Otherwise I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be subscribing to it, since we are somewhat averse to spending the average annual income of a typical village in many Sub-Saharan countries on a set of cuff links. And that's the main thrust of the magazine: lots of stuff you only need if the stacks of money in your bank account are getting so large that they may spontaneously combust.

Another television series we've had TIVOed (and am I allowed to use this acronym when we're really using the DVR supplied by Comcast?), for the last couple of seasons is Life. Excellent show, starring Damian Lewis who was so completely awesome in Band of Brothers back when. In any case, the other night there was an episode concerning a murder that occurred in a Southern Californian mall, which is kind of what I visualize when I reflect on what Hell might look like. Not that I do that frequently, just every once in a while when I commit the sin of gluttony, or think about committing the sin of gluttony or want to think about, ah yes, moving on.

A couple of years ago Mary and I were consumers of that most pernicious product of the airwaves, reality television. Oh, we watched it all: Survivor, Project Runway (well Mary watched that, not me...really), Top Chef, Amazing Race and so on. Nowadays, we pretty much only watch Amazing Race and Top Chef, and to large degree we check out the latter just to see what outlandish getup Padma is wearing. However, since during the last season she started dressing more like an adult than a seven year old with ADD, we may have to reconsider that stance.

 

In any case and getting to the point eventually, the one reality show we still watch with consistency is Amazing Race. I don't know precisely what it is that amuses us the most. The people who have a failing relationship and think the stress and frustration of a race around the world is going to make their love for each other magically shine again? The badly out of shape and overweight people that think that their superior brain power is going to allow them to magically outrun the twenty year old amateur Ironman contestants? Or my favorites, the ones who enter the contest and somehow, after thirteen seasons of broadcasts, still missed the memo that at some point you'll either have to swim or drive a car with a stick shift, since they make no effort to learn how to do either before starting the contest.

 

While watching the show we sometimes get ideas for things we'd like to do. For instance, several seasons ago the contestants tried out zorbing while in New Zealand. Mary loved this idea and even scheduled a trip out to a zorbing location, but we were running late and were unable to make it. Strangely enough we had enough time for me to crawl through an underground river in a stinky wetsuit but not enough for the zorbing.

 

So anyways, a recent episode on Amazing Race had the coolest event. The contestants had to take part in a wrestling match with Bolivian cholitas. This was magnificent for several reasons. It's 'professional' wrestling and I use the term professional loosely as indicated by the quote marks. It's unabashedly fake and hokey. And the wrestlers are woman. Tiny, little women. Who wear long traditional skirts and sneakers. It's amazingly fun. This is something that if I ever have the opportunity to go to Bolivia I desperately want to attend. Whenever the Bolivian government isn't throwing American diplomats out or whatever.

 

So check it out.