Chaplin on Veteran's Day

Veteran's Day has never been a holiday that really captured my attention, given that none of the veterans of my acquaintance have ever paid it remarkable heed. Perhaps it is a holiday of more interest to families of veterans, as Milt Wolff, who fought in the Spanish Civil War and then in World War II, used to remark upon the fact that his daughter always called him then.

I thought of Milt and of my father this Veteran's Day, they being the veterans I knew best. There was a film festival here for the holiday, and while I had a lot of work to do, I rode my bike over to the Neon to see Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator. I've seen quite a few Chaplin films over the years, but I don't think I had seen this one in its entirety before, although of late the final speech has been circulating the internet with considerable vigor. Chaplin's plea for humanity to reject hatred, delivered in the role of a Jewish barber disguised as Hitler-figure Adenoid Hynkel, remains as current today as in 1940. Milt and my father would have appreciated The Great Dictator being shown on Veteran's Day.

How Writing Groups Go Astray

Every writing group has its own peculiar character.

Bart turns into a bat and comes to the writing group at Alexis’s. Everyone but Stephanie realizes who the bat is; he perches on the back of the couch and squeaks. Later, Steve turns into a skunk and hides under the couch in embarrassment. Alexis tries to lure him out with a piece of cheese, but Bart eats the cheese. Bart insists on staying, hanging from the ceiling and sitting on the TV while Alexis watches, trying to persuade her to turn the channel to ‘Devil Girl from Mars’. Finally Stephanie brings lentil soup and he vanishes, leaving the apartment deep in guano.

Steve will leap out from under the couch and grab hold of Karla’s leg, refusing to let go until she lets him sleep in the bilge.

Some writing groups are more peculiar than others, of course. This was my third writing group. We often laughed uncontrollably about something called The Kitty Picture; just what The Kitty Picture was, I can no longer quite recall. I imagine it was a work of sentimental art retrieved from a garage sale, but perhaps I am mistaken and it appeared suddenly on a tortilla like a votive image of Elvis or the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Blogger Search Sucks

Those of you who have been reading blogs for some years have probably noticed that those hosted by Blogger usually have a search bar up at the top of the page. In theory, you can search the blog for mentions of a specific word or phrase.
It used to be that this search worked just fine, or at least I had no reason to believe it didn't. I used it every so often to locate old posts on my own and other people's blogs, and generally I got more results than I expected.
Over the past few months, however, I began to suspect that this search was simply not functioning properly; I'd search for something that I knew was discussed in a blog somewhere, and yet get absolutely no results, or not the specific post I was seeking. This made me panicky; were my friends deleting some of their old posts, or was I searching using the wrong terms, or what?
This morning I wanted to find what Jesse's old Brno blog had to say about Czech trains and train stations. I knew that Jesse had had quite a bit to say on the topic, so I started by searching for "train."
Not a single post came up. Gadzooks, I thought, can he only have mentioned trains in the plural? I did a search for "trains."
One post came up: a post about trams, which parenthetically calls them "street trains" although in English I've usually called them "streetcars" (A Streetcar Named Desire).
I began to feel a little frantic, and searched on "station." Again, I got one post, this one about the Brno train station. And hey, it used the word "train" right in the first sentence, as well as "trains" later on. Why wasn't this post coming up on my previous two searches? And for that matter, I knew Jesse had also blogged about the Prague main train station, about the train known as the Brnensky drak (sorry, my Czech keyboard doesn't want to work just now), and probably about quite a few other train-related matters.
Jesse began the blog well before Blogger introduced labels, and I don't think he added Delicious tags to each post. My own old blog is partly labeled and also has Delicious tags for quite a few posts, but that still doesn't help me find a lot of the old posts. So the reader really does have to rely on the search function to locate old material. It really has to work, and it just isn't anymore.
This annoys me.

Something Completely Different

As a change from photos relating to moving, I present a couple of photos from last Friday's birthday party in San Francisco. As it happens, no photos were taken of the guest of honor, as the other guests were too busy discussing literature and world politics.

Above: Cesar, Betty, and Scott

Above: John, Ali, and Moazzam

On the Road to Where?

During the course of my trip east (post-Mexico), I stopped to visit various friends, among them Dr. Zaius, who gave me this spiffy helmet and directed me to look fierce for the photos. I'm not sure I was dressed suitably for the photo shoot, however. It looks more like I'm preparing for a long battle with the weeds on the front steps.

Megan Informs Me...

I was out carousing last night with Megan, whom I know from Prague, and she told me of a curious thing she had read recently. Allegedly, ice has replaced salt as... (at this point I said "a medical prohibition?") ...an object of culinary fanaticism.
Megan said that supposedly ice from icemakers is full of air, whereas ice made specially in sheets and cut with an awl is denser and doesn't melt as fast in one's drink.
I suggested that in that case ice from the polar ice caps must be in great demand--get your cretaceous ice here! no low-grade paleolithic ice sold!

Megan also told me about a young man of her acquaintance, a friend of some past housemate, I believe, who had taken a fancy to her sometime prior to Prague and was one of those people who can never take a hint that it is time to go away and end the conversation, or that they should refrain from following you home, or whatever. (I am sure all of us have been that kind of person at various times--I certainly have--so I don't hold this trait too much against him.)
During the several years that have passed since their first acquaintance, he studied Chinese medicine, so when they ran into one another recently he informed her that her "spleen chi" was "depleted."
Megan inquired what on earth he meant by that (she knows that chi is some sort of energy, but...).
He replied that he could see it on her face. He was eager to treat her for this problem, but she declined.
I am afraid that from now on, all we'll have to do to induce laughter is refer to "spleen chi." At one point I accidentally said it was "deleted," which prompted me to wonder whether he had deleted her spleen chi in order to claim it was depleted.

Of course, many of you already know that I'm easily amused. At least, by the right people and under the right circumstances. There are many times when I could very easily and stonily state "The Queen is not amused."

Get Your Red-Hot Fejetony Here! (Being a Bit More Explanatory)

This blog being a new volume, so to speak, after the previous, both my old readers and any new ones will wonder what it is about. Well, not having an overridingly obvious topic such as dissertation research in Prague, I really put off doing anything with this. After all, a blog should have some overarching topic.
But as it has seemed that the things I've wanted to blog about of late are fairly random (not that different from before, but without the big theme), I believe this will have to settle for being the sort of blog that takes its inspiration from the quirky columns that used to be a staple in newspapers, and be about whatever I feel like blogging about. A collection of feuilletons (Czech: fejetony), although the word feuilleton has never been much used in English as far as I can tell.
The form of the feuilleton will, I think, let me get away with pretty much any topic that strikes my fancy, whether it be the antics of the Spotted Pair (Calypso Spots and Orion), peculiar scholarly discoveries, or complaints about modern (perhaps that should be postmodern or contemporary?) life.
To get my faithful readers up to speed, my life did not actually end with receipt of PhD regalia, nor did I abandon blogging in favor of that controversial service, Facebook. Nay, I was hired to teach in a not so distant (but not so close) city and have been spending the summer putting together courses, writing and rewriting journal articles, and preparing to move.
The Spotted Pair and I have also driven across country to visit family and friends, and in our travels have seen several friends from my Prague life, such as Jesse, Hubert (and his companion the novelist Sue), and Megan. Megan tells me that Alex will shortly be visiting, so we think it behooves us to start thinking about a full-scale reunion, which we think would be very pleasing to have in a Tahoe cabin in December.
I am looking forward to seeing other friends as well, such as my old friend Scott, whom I haven't seen in many years but who is currently finishing up an intriguing novel.
As it happens, I headed west at the precise time I did in order to be on hand for my father having his second hip replaced (fortunately he is not a quadruped), but unfortunately the operation had to postponed (utterly at the last moment) until September. We are not pleased.
In other news, Archelaus Cards has been attracting retailers internationally and continues to present a strong presence at DC's Eastern Market, as an enthusiastic customer notes.
Orion and Ms. Spots are presently napping under a desk and do not wish to be disturbed.