All Men of Genius

All Men of Genius by Lev A.C. Rosen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book stands on its own, but as you've no doubt read in other reviews / previews, it's also a mashup of Twelfth Night and The Importance of Being Earnest. Related to Oscar Wilde's personal issues, and the masquerade / hidden (sexual) identity in Twelfth Night, All Men... has alternate sexuality as plot points. None of it is "R" rated, I think, but perhaps a strong PG-13.

Readers with tenaciously held convictions regarding traditional sexuality may be more or less offended. Readers with less concern with those matters will not be bothered.

The story involves Violet Adams who wants to attend the premier science institution, Illyria College, where only men are accepted as students. She pretends to be her brother (the names of the character and the college are deliberate, not to say obvious allusions to 12th Night). All Men of Genius is not a pioneer after 12th Night using sexual disguise as a plot device. For example, in the first Alanna book in the series by Tamara Pierce, the plot point is exactly the same with all the complications involved for a teen girl trying to pass as a teen boy.

Along side the difficulties and confusions of Violet's progress in science academics is also the couples / mating "rituals" in an alternate Victorian England. This too, is well done. Like much of science fiction, it speaks to issues of today's culture through a lense of an alternate time.

The struggles involved in invention, discovering and fighting an elitist scientific club's plan to take over England and then the world provide page turning thrills. Many readers will finish quickly to appeaase their desire to discover "what happens next".

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Rhyming dictionary websites

Only two I will mention. There are others.

First of all, I get distracted by words like shiny objects or the exclamation, "Squirrel!" I was walking along and I saw the phrase, "100 years ..." and then I was past it.

Although I confess, I have not read the book, the first thing that came to me as I thought on the flashed phrase was "100 Years of Solitude." Then I thought of plays on that title--100 Years of Attitude, 100 Years of Certitude, etc.

So I looked for a rhyming dictionary online to help me come up with other amusing word mash-ups to see what meanings might result. RhymeZone rhyming dictionary at http://www.rhymezone.com/ is woefully inadequate. I'll just say it. Even if you ask it to search for near rhymes, if finds fewer words that I can think of off the top of my head.

The WriteExpress Online Rhyming Dictionary at http://www.writeexpress.com/online2.html works much better and came up with words I was expecting to see, including one syllable words that you could add to a phrase as well as the three syllable words that fit exactly into stress and rhyme pattern of solitude.

Oh. And another spoof title thought up by a colleague: 100 Years of Running Nude.

a table not next to the wood stove

I just posted a lie as a comment at a friend's posting request. He asked his Facebook friends to lie about how they met him. I am (much) more pleased with my lie than it deserves, so I thought I might inflict it on you as well--a kind of a "short-short" story. (You may hear an imperfect echo of a Marty Robbins song.)

We met...

Down in the West Texas town of El Paso, where I was drinking a Dr. Pepper.

You sat at a table placed next to the wood stove, and asked, "What do you think on a day like today?"

Thinking that this was the espionage pass phrase

I had been waiting for I answered thus, "Like the tide when the moon is leaving the seaside, your hair line, though dark is receding."

You started to jump up in umbrage proclaiming, "That is the rudest thing I've heard all day!"

Apprehending your meaning was not based in spying,

I tried to leave quietly, out the back door.

The waitress, though cute, had no patience with vagrants however they looked.

She brought a bouncer, bounced me back to the cashier. I was embarrassed and red.

This was not the unobtrusive meeting my handler had said.

And you were astonied, as they tossed me out, muttering, "I just bet he listens to old rock and roll five times a week if not daily!

We never saw each other again until, ironically, I was checking meal tickets and collecting lunch money at the serving line entrance in an El Cajon campus. Mostly unobtrusively, but without any espionage to keep me warm.

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.

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.

At long last, Trading Card from flckrtoys

I was finally able to make a trading card on the flickr toys thingy. It seems that way back before when I was having the trouble--I couldn't get the flickrtoys to see my Flickr account and load an image--it was because my computer/browser wasn't accepting cookies from the flickrtoys site. It didn't know that I had signed in and given it permission to see and use my photos.

But I solved that problem by telling the browser I trust flickrtoys. This has transferrable concept skills, because when a patron is having trouble using the licensed databases from home, or having trouble downloading audiobooks, one problem may be their level of security protection/sheilding. It could be their browser isn't accepting cookies from the library webpage or from the licensed content provider.

Some problems are harder than others to guess and solve over the phone.

Waiting for the Light

100_Waiting for the Light
Originally uploaded by YorickWell.

Art seems to frolick in the spirit of pretension.
In that spirit, and having to do with spirit and art,
I offer this picture:
stacked chairs in the modern cathedral in Coventry.

They are empty, except for other (chairs) like them, and yet...
Three points of light shine, suggesting more light to come.

Speaking of more light to come, I'm hoping the 27things beyond FlickrMashups are better. I played with the Montag, and it was kinda fun, but my mugshots didn't show up in the mosaic I made, so I left it.

Then I tried the Make a Trading Card Mashup, but for some reason, even when I gave the program/system/mashup permission to go to my flickr account (because I didn't want to upload more pictures from my computer), it wouldn't actually open a photo chooser for me to pick from my Flickr account. So I think I would have liked this one best if it had worked for me as I was hoping/expecting.