I'm always hearing songs that are like other songs and

Seeing things that are like other things. Or people.
Just thought I'd let you know, in as much as Bob Dylan has released a new album and his picture is on Rolling Stone, that Mr. Dylan is looking very much like the actor Richard Boone these days. Well, not much like Richard Boone right now, given that he died in 1981, but like Richard Boone as he looked in say, the 1970s.

Some people's looks move in nearly parallel lines, looking like and then not looking like each other. I just finished reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. One of the characters in that story looked very like another character, and it became a plot point. Also, a library I worked at had a patron that looked like Harrison Ford for a few years. Nevertheless, as he grew older, he began to age differently than Mr. Ford.

In Bob Dylan's case, it's been just the opposite: I never would have confused him with Richard Boone until just now.

Small Amusements

Small amusements
Originally uploaded by YorickWell.

Word Play
Humor Test. This is only a test.

1. A character has photographic memory. That jogs my mind that I, too, have an art image-based memory. We call it "sketchy."

1.1 Marty Feldman's character in Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975) had a "phonographic" memory.

2. Today I was raring to go! I got up, got ready and headed off to work. I was up and molecule! (Which as you no doubt already know is even more than "up and atom".)

3. These are tense and scary times. Two of us were getting ready to go to a work event in a colleague's car. I called, "Shotgun!" and the person with me ducked to a crouch, scanning all around and shouted, "Where??!!!"

This concludes our test. If this had been actual humor, the words you just read would have been followed by official chuckles, giggles or guffaws.

What are you reading now?

I'd just like to say that I find it humorously ironic that a number of participants the the Summer Reading Program miss the line on the Reading Log that says prizes are available July 2. I guess it's compartmentalized reading.

A Riff on Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift wrote, "He was a bold man that first eat an oyster."
Polite Conversation. Dialogue ii. cited in Bartlett's Quotations.


I would say, "They are bold persons that first use e-readers in their 60s or 70s." In a way, I find the situation also analogous to walking--it seems simple and self-evident when one is doing it and has done it for a while, but the interplay of all the muscles and signals from the brain and the inner ear are quite daunting when one considers them as a list of things that need to happen in coordination. In e-reader land, the list of tasks to be accomplished at least once before they can start reading a book on the handheld machine can be annoying if not daunting.

Item 1. A person needs an online relationship (account) with the company that sponsors / subsidizes / sells the E-reader. If she doesn't have one, this is not necessarily "intuitive" to set up. And she still doesn't have any library ebooks yet.

Item 2. A person needs an "Adobe Digital Editions" I.D. and / or he has to register / authorize his e-reader with the email address from item 1 above. And he still doesn't have any library ebooks yet.

Item 3. A person needs to download and install on her computer and / or her e-reader Adobe Digital Editions, Overdrive Media Console, Blio reader app, or the OneClickDigital Media Manager. In the case of Adobe DE and Overdrive MC, she has to authorize those apps with the email address from items 1 and 2 above (which should be the same email address; I'm just saying...) And she still doesn't have any library ebooks yet.

Item 4a. A person needs to navigate the particular library ebook interface (another technical term) to choose a book, check it out and download it to the desktop, laptop, or e-reader.

Item 4b. Downloading the ebook may involved saving it to the desktop computer, laptop computer or the e-reader itself. If he downloads to one of the traditional computers, he will have to know how to move the ebooks to his ereader using his USB cable; if he downloads straight to his e-reader, he will have to be connected to wireless and know how to connect his ereader to that.

Providing that everything went smoothly without electronic or physical obstacles intervening, she may have a library ebook title now. Understandably, that's a lot of new stuff to get what one used to be able to just walk in the door and pull off the shelf. If you're are showing your father, grandmother, older friend or other relative how to navigate this process, be patient but not condescending. If it doesn't go smoothly at first, you may have to overcome something scary as oysters. Once they are reading on the machine, they should be happy as clams!

A Neologism for you

Sportsrighteous—one who is haughty about professional athletes’ ability and performance versus their broader philosophy.

e.g. “There’s so much more to life than baseball,” said the professional ball player.
        “Most B-Team guys say that,” said the sportsrighteous fan.

What We Talk about When We Talk about Ebooks

I love a mystery. A good murder mystery for entertainment, or solving less lethal mysteries as part of the job. I'm a public eye, or public detective. I help people find answers and entertainment. Lately the answers I've been asked to find have been about free ebooks from the library.

After some sifting of the clues, I can now tell folks how to search for and choose ebooks and eaudiobooks, how to download those books from the library for free and get them transferred to their machines--desktops, laptops, tablets, smart phones, and dedicated ereaders.

Another successful solution, which like current / contemporary mysteries being written, has nuanced complexities. But usually, I'm able to help library patrons get past the fact that "there are no friendly machines."

A Timely Book for 2012 (kind of repeated from a previous post)

Twilight of the A-Pooh-Calypse-Oh!

A Story of the End of the World and Latin Dancing For the Very Young-----------------by Timothy Sparrow, 1998.

I was reminded of this because of the recent comic New Adventures of Queen Victoria:

And because I expect to be as disappointed by December 21 this year as I was during the (non) arrival of the Jupiter effect--the alignment of a bunch of the planets in the solar system-- on or near March 10, 1982.