The Shining

While we're in Colorado, we'll be staying at a house called Kingstone, just above Estes Park. It was the mountain retreat of one Kenneth King, Denver industrialist and man-about-town. Since his death, it's been used for retreats, meetings, reunions, and so forth. That's the normal part. Now for the rabbit hole.

For all I know, Mr. King was a very nice man in person, but as an architect, he was insane. No two rooms are built in the same style. Log cabin alongside Southern plantation house alongside '50s ranch style alongside Victorian parlor. One room has blood-red carpeting and walls covered with Civil War memorabilia. Another has all the woodwork minutely carved with the insignia of King's college fraternity. Still another has a boulder coming through the wall.

All of that would be bad enough, but it also feels like Mr. King is still there. Despite being in heavy public use for fifteen-plus years, nearly everything is pretty much where he left it. There are things in the back of the pantry older than I am. I swear I found his yearbooks sitting on a shelf. And of course, several larger-than-life portraits of the man stare down at you from unexpected corners. It's as close as I'll ever get to staying in the Winchester Mystery House: it's like he couldn't stop building, without any plan, until the day he died.

I took a few pictures on our last trip; they don't really capture the full horror, just details here and there. But look at them all, then remind yourself that they're all in the same house. Oh, and lest I forget: this place is just a few blocks from the real-life hotel that inspired "The Shining". Isn't that nice?

Go west, young man

I'll be in Colorado over the New Year's weekend, chilling out mostly. Boredom might strike when I least expect it, so feel free to give me a jingle.

I was hoping to read a few books while I was there. Specifically, the Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World, all by one of my favorite authors, Neal Stephenson. Come to find out that there are precisely four copies each in the entire Kansas City public library system, and they're all checked out. Meanwhile Lincoln, a city one sixth the size, has twice as many copies. Shameful. I also feel vaguely dirty having to ask my brother to check out books for me...

Random shout out to Will Norton and his acapella group, whose CD I'm listening to right now. It's good stuff.

Loot, Part 2

Cool stuff that I received from other people:

• From my parents: A sort of granite candle
• From my brother: A modernist fountain
• From Bob: two bottles of Van Gogh Vodka
• From Matt: Pit
• From many sources, but particularly my parents: a stunning amount of alcoholiana, including wine, wine glasses, wine charms, coasters, shot glasses, corkscrews, bottle openers, and so on. I swear, my friends and family are trying to turn me into a wino.

Loot, Part 1

Cool Christmas gift stuff (in my opinion) that I found for other people:

• Mom: Balsamic vinegar, imported from Modena and aged twelve years
• Dad: Diet root beer from Historic Williamsburg
• Brother: Olympus D-540 digital camera
• Bob: True Love Waits, a CD of classical Radiohead covers
• Derrick: The Mill's coffee-of-the-month club
• James: Gabe's Pac-Man shirt in Penny Arcade
• Jesse: All the necessary ingredients to make spiced ale
• Justin: A replica of Sting, Frodo's sword in The Lord of the Rings
• Matt: Hermione's Time-Turner from the Prisoner of Azkaban
• Rusty: An ocarina, along with a songbook of Zelda tunes
• Tom: The Presumption of Liberty: Restoring the Lost Constitution

Note to self: don't repeat these next year, and if possible, top them...

Eureka!

I think I've finally figured out why my father is conservative (and possibly incidentally, Republican):

1) He is incapable of cynicism. I can't recall him ever finding something trite, saccharine, sentimental, overdone, insincere, or otherwise unworthy of being taken seriously.

2) He is unaware of the passage of time. He consistently behaves as if consumer prices, social attitudes, even musical styles have changed not at all since he was in his early teens. I know plenty of people who don't like the way things have changed since their youth, but few who simply ignore them.

3) He is incapable of becoming bored with things. The same dish tastes just as good the tenth time; the same joke just as funny the hundredth. The usual rules of operant conditioning fall apart; behavioral extinction never occurs.

Put them all together and I believe you have the perfect conservative. He will always be perfectly happy with whatever the status quo is; and he will always act to preserve it, because for him, it has never and could never change. But how do you talk to a person like that?

Stille Nacht

Ah, Christmas Eve. In my family this entails, roughly in chronological order: delivering gifts all over town, having Valentino's carry-out for dinner, going to church, and opening most but not all of our gifts. A bit curious, but it works for us.

I don't know if it was a good year for retailers in general, but things were certainly busy over at Walmart. Busier than I've ever seen it, in fact. A useful tidbit of information: 4x6 prints of digital photos are $0.19 there, but 5x7 prints are $1.47. That's an expensive inch, that is.

The service for the evening was "A Festival of Lessons and Carols", a format first popularized (and now broadcast worldwide) by King's College in Cambridge, I do believe. Bible readings alternating with Christmas carols and that's about it. It's an enjoyable way to spend an evening even if you aren't the slightest bit religious. It also reconfirmed my belief that Greensleeves is the best song ever written. But original lyrics please, none of that "What Child Is This?" nonsense. Silent Night would be a close second.

Home for the holidays

Finally broke down and bought the Zelda Collector's Edition for GameCube, which includes the Legend of Zelda, the Adventure of Link, the Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask. Probably one of the best investments I've ever made. They're all just so infinitely replayable, I'm not sure I'll ever get tired of them.

For reasons unknown, my apartment complex has been frantically remodeling of late - first a few hundred new lighting fixtures, and just recently, a stone tile floor for the previously linoleum lobby. Which forced me to use what I like to call the "decoy" door: it looks like it ought to be the main entrance, and gives the building its address, but there's no way to buzz visitors in. If you ever stop by, don't be deceived!

The parents passed through on Tuesday, with my brother in tow and - surprise! - a kitten that they managed to buy during their twenty-four hours in St Louis. A Maine Coon, to be exact. It's an adorable little thing, that wandered my apartment and ripped up my carpet while we went to dinner. I hope she manages to make friends with the cat we already have...

Last night, saw the Phantom of the Opera with Matt, Steven, Rusty, and Stack. I thoroughly enjoyed it; but then, I'm also a big fan of the musical it's based on. It's really more like an opera, as the name suggest: nearly everything is sung, with little flat dialogue. But if you don't mind that, and you like Andrew Lloyd Webber's music, then I would highly recommend it.

I've gotten an astonishing number of Christmas cards and letters, considering I didn't think that many people had my new address. If one of them was from you, gentle reader, my sincerest thanks. I'm headed back to Lincoln after work this afternoon, and will be there for most of the following week, so give me a jingle.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

There are many sounds one might expect to hear in a Kmart parking lot, on a frigid December day, in the middle of Kansas. The sound of gulls is not one of them. Yet there they were, circling overhead. Eyeing the corpse of a fallen Christmas shopper, no doubt. A curiosity: how did I recognize, immediately and without looking, a sound that ought to be very unfamiliar to me?

I saw Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events today; the rest of this post concerns it, with relatively mild spoilers. Overall, I guess I'd say I liked it and recommend it, but in a bewildered sort of way, with reservations. The opening monologue by the "author" warns us that this will not be a happy film; but it's played for laughs and the audience obliges. By the end I realized how serious he was. It isn't a dark comedy, it's just dark. I'm not sure I would let children see it.

For example: it's easy to laugh at a melodramatic villain and his bumbling attempts at murder, particularly when that villain is Jim Carrey. But it becomes much harder to keep laughing when the villain is entirely and cold-bloodedly successful at some of those murders. You're just left cold after that. An added insult is that, though there's nothing wrong with leaving yourself open for a sequel, Unfortunate Events makes less of an attempt to tie up any of its storylines and mysteries than any film I can recall. Cinematic blue balls, if you will.

On the other hand, the whole film really is a delight to behold, on a par with any of Tim Burton's films. Quirky details are tumbling out of every corner. The closing credits are particularly stunning, and should be watched in their entirety. Possibly under the influence of your favorite mild-altering substance.

I guess that's really all I have to say. It is a good movie, but on the whole, the trailers have deceived you. It's a romp through the macabre, an exercise in how many tragedies you can bear to watch befall perfectly good people. If that's your cup of tea, go for it.

Pseudo Otaku

It's a strange thing to be a fan of a particular artist's music for years without realizing it. But such is the case with Yoko Kanno. She's written the music for a number of different anime series, including Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, and Escaflowne, all of which I love and have downloaded in large chunks. She's like my personal Japanese John Williams.

In unrelated news, I've put my older-than-the-hills personal webpage back up on my home computer, at least until I think of somewhere better. I really need to start over with it, but in the meantime, it lets me link people to various things (notably photo albums). Online whenever I am.

The perils of independence

I got one of those DVD cases in the mail today, and did a double-take when I realized it was an installation disc, not for AOL, but for Netscape. Granted, it's a wholly owned subsidiary and all, but still a nice change of pace. Purely out of habit, I went to zap the disc in the microwave. Then I realized that I'm living in my own apartment now, and it's my own microwave I'd be stinking up. I'm obviously still getting used to this...

Speaking of which, I pulled up the satellite photograph of my neighborhood today. Check it out if you find such things cool.

Flotsam

Bob and Sean were in town for a concert last night, and we went out to the bars afterwards. A nice evening all around. But, we were out until 3:30, so I sorta took the morning off work. It was well worth it. Come back any time.

Funny things today:

* On my way to work, I saw what appeared at first to be a police cruiser. But then I saw the side: "Kansas City Missouri School Districts", and below that, "TRUANCY". I found it extremely amusing, for reasons I can't fully explain. I mean, I knew such things existed in some cities, but the idea of a cop devoted to dragging kids back to school...

* A few rows down from me, there was an avalanche of hundreds of balloons, completely blocking the aisle. Someone's birthday apparently, but still, wow.

Less funny things today:

* I was calling around to used video game stores today, looking for a particular item. Now, there are several chains of them in town, each with several locations. But none of them, including GameStop/Babbages, had the ability to search the inventories at other locations. I'm sorry, but in this day and age, that's just inexcusable.

* Someone thought it'd be fun to call in a prank bomb threat, thereby cutting Cerner's large, lavish, company-wide Christmas party a good hour short. A disgruntled former (or current) employee, I can only guess, but it's still a pretty shitty thing to do.

Belated tolerance

On the Travel Channel tonight, I finally saw the United Church of Christ commercial that NBC and CBS both refused to air. I think that it expresses an attitude that Christians - and organized Christianity - ought to adopt far more often then they do. Check it out.

An article I read on the controversy had some wise words: "Though it has more than 1.3 million members in about 6,000 congregations across the country, the UCC, headquartered in Cleveland, is widely unknown. Focus group testing revealed that only a small handful of participants said they knew something about the denomination. Random testing also uncovered strong negative feelings about churches in general, regardless of denomination. A large percentage of respondents said they held churches responsible for past hurts in their lives, and many traced their feelings of inadequacy to negative church experiences. Many congregations, they said, left them feeling unwelcome, financially inadequate and inappropriately dressed. The television ad is geared toward those people who, for whatever reason, have not felt welcomed or comfortable in a church."

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm a little biased. First Plymouth in Lincoln is part of the UCC, and it's also my mother's church, so I've been exposed to it more than most. Nevertheless, I have to admire their stances on certain important social issues.

EE

Finally got to see The Return of the King: Extended Edition with a couple of coworkers last night. We kept our mouths shut for the new scenes (which are mostly pretty excellent), but for much of the rest of the film, we MST3k'ed it. Which is to say, we made fun of the characters and their cliches, made sexual innuendos, told vaguely related stories, and generally took the movie to pieces.

That might horrify a few of my friends, but we had all seen it several times before, and it is excessively solemn and self-important sometimes. It's a sign of love, really. Also, the folks at New Line won me over by offering the box for the set separately, for those of us who've already bought all the films, at a mere $3. Frankly, it's something I wish more studios did more often.

My landlord has been slowly but surely replacing all of the hallway light fixtures in my building with much, much brighter versions. I'm not sure I care for it. Previously, they had that almost-but-not-quite dim ambiance of a hotel, or even Kauffman. But now it's like being in an interrogation room. Not much fun for my poor eyes in the morning.

A final tidbit for my friends from the Kansas City area: this spring, they're closing the I-35 river bridge. For up to nine months. Guess how I get to work in the morning? Gah...

The most wonderful time of the year

I've spent a small mint on Christmas gifts this year, and much of that online. I'm sure the Internet retailers are pleased, but really, I'd just as soon do my shopping in person if I could. It's just that I tend to be in the market for more obscure or unusual items, and it's hard to find them in local stores at a decent price, if at all. In other words, I'm addicted to obscene variety.

I have noticed an disturbing trend in the not-quite-top-tier sites, the ones that SlickDeals and Froogle send you to because you can get a deal. When you place an order, they require you to call in and "confirm" the order before they start processing it. Ostensibly a security measure, the only real purpose is to give them a chance to sell you additional items beyond the ones you actually bought. Upsells. It's probably been happening for years, of course, but it seems like it's becoming more widespread. And it sucks.

Unrelated:

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."
- William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence"

Employ

Some ironies grow richer with age, like a fine wine. For example: quite a few of my friends from college ended up working at General Dynamics, a military contractor. Meanwhile, I ended up at Cerner, a health care company. Killing people at one extreme, saving them at the other. I honestly don't mean that as a judgement, it's just what I think about sometimes.

Fire alarm at work today, the same hideously annoying variety that Kauffman has. I was amused at the number of managers who just closed their conference room doors and continued with their meetings. And even more amused at the good 15 minutes it took a fire trunk to arrive, long after the false alarm had been canceled and everyone had gone back to work. Makes you feel safe, doesn't it?

I'm going to be so poor by the end of the month, between Christmas presents, my remaining furniture, and the sales tax on my car. Donations welcome.

Ugh

I was awoken an hour early this morning by a particularly horrific sound: my next-door neighbor, screaming at the top of her lungs. Just on the other side of the wall from my bedroom, not ten feet away. Needless to say, it's the sort of sound that we're hardwired to respond to.

I was able to pick out the tone of her voice first. She wasn't in any trouble, and since no one else was speaking, she wasn't having an argument. Next I started making out words, but I though I could hear them perfectly clearly, I couldn't string them together into meaning because I had no context for what she was talking about.

By the time I was awake enough to try to understand what was going on, she'd been interrupted by a neighbor who came running down the hall to pound on the door and ask if she was okay. She probably managed to wake the entire floor. I only retain the faint, almost dreamlike impression that she was cheering at something, like a sporting event or a game show, and somehow managed to forget that she was in her own @#$% apartment at 6:00 AM.

My neuropsychology-inclined friends will take note that the sequence of understanding I just mentioned exactly parallels the brain's actual processing of language: sounds, then words, then meanings. If I were a little smarter, I could probably make some fascinating insight out of the fact that they seemed to become active in order. Oh well.

Strangeness: On my way to work I saw a car whose license plate read, simply, "4". A few blocks later I saw a car with the plate "7". It was like being in an episode of The Prisoner.

Look into it

A few of the questions I ask myself actually have empirical answers, like this one: what is the degree of correlation between the length of a word, and the frequency of its occurence? You'd want to measure both the number of letters and number of syllables. And get big samples of text in various styles: formal, casual, oral, writen, etc. But overall, I suspect that the coefficient would be quite high.

I can count on one hand the number of sunny days in the past two months. But today, by some one-in-a-million conjunction of atmospheric conditions and solar geometry, there was sunlight on my cubicle. For about five minutes, but still startling. I didn't even know what many of my neighbors looked like in natural light. I'll have to mark this date on my calendar for next year.

Wierd: I got a text message from a number I don't recognize in Tampa. An empty text message. Huh?...