Sita Sings the Blues is a great movie

by Nina Paley. Watch it here.

It's the story of Rama's wife Sita and the difficulties of their marriage. Nina Paley, if you weren't aware of her, is otherwise famous for Copying is not Theft.

There are four levels of animation in the movie, which are used as themes for different story lines ...and such. The levels run from crude to incredibly stunning.

I spoke too soon.

Some hellacious tornadoes hit the midwest Sunday. Joplin was just destroyed. I like that town. We go through there at least once a year on the way to Mom's. My co-worker's in-laws live real close to there, too.

I hate to say it, but it was hard to take it seriously until tonight when I jogged through some of the damage from the one that went through North Minneapolis. A lot of big trees were down - thrown every which way. I had to climb over several. I guess it kind of hit me Monday morning, too, when I had to detour around a big tree that was down across the street on my normal route to work. A tall house lost its shingles. I don't know if the damage is worse than that or not, they had a big tarp over it.

I was running in the park along the river, skirting the edge of the residential area, so I didn't see anything but downed trees. Lots and lots of them. I also noticed the Mississippi is way up tonight. It was high before. Now it's higher. More flooding headed downriver.

We were at my younger daughter's dance recital during the storm. They announced that the tornado sirens were going off and that a tornado had touched down in Fridley, but they told us that the auditorium was the storm shelter at the school, so they'd just go ahead and put on their show. When we came out, it was clear and sunny. You couldn't tell anything had happened.

Oh, S**t! The World Ended in a Horrible Cataclysm Today!!

And I missed it!

I meant to ask my brother-in-law about that, but I forgot. It's for the best, I suppose. It'd be pretty hard to bring that up without coming off as gratuitously insulting.

Well, I did 24 miles today.

It took me four hours and forty-nine minutes, but I got it done. I consider that not too bad for a training run. Keep in mind that I'm training for a 50K. It kinda sucks that I'll have to throw away Grandma's Marathon as a training run, but it looks like I may be able to do that in around five hours, so it's not a complete loss. Who knows? Maybe there's something about that course that'll bring out a little more from me.

My sister's coming through town today. We're meeting them for dinner at Old Country Buffet in Roseville. They live in Germany, but they have a house in Superior that I've never seen. And they're headed back to Germany next Saturday, so I don't guess I'll get to see it any time soon.

Have I mentioned that they're missionaries for the Assemblies of God?

Well, I the word is that the sweats I'm wearing right now aren't going to cut it for dinner, even at OCB, so I've gotta go change.

Welp, I did 7:38.6 in the TC 1 Mile last night.

Legs had no problem, but my lungs didn't want to go any faster. I'm not at all sure now why I didn't kick harder at the end. Once again, I left some juice on the table. [Mixed metaphor, really, but it kinda works.]

Spring is here (finally)!

I have proof!

Notice the feet!

My friend Claire told me that [i]Calumet K[/i]

is available as a free audio book! It's a great story about a guy building a grain elevator back in the 1890s.

LibriVox recording of Calumet "K", by Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster. Read by Betsie Bush.

"A novel, with several elements of rather unusual interest. As a tale, it is swift, simple, and absorbing, and one does not willingly put it down until it is finished. It has to do with grain-elevator business, with railways, strikes, and commercial and financial matters generally, woven skilfully into a human story of love." --The Commercial Advertiser"
'Calumet "K"' is a novel that is exciting and absorbing, but not the least bit sensational. It is the story of a rush.... The book is an unusually good story; one that shows the inner workings of the labor union, and portrays men who are the bone and sinew of the earth."--The Toledo Blade.

"The heroine in this case is the hero's stenographer; but the action of the story grows out of the attempt of rival capitalists and grain men to balk the building of a grain elevator by a set date." --The Burlington Free Press

(Excerpts from the advertising material at the end of "The Merry Anne" by Samuel Merwin)



Note: This book contains racial comments that may be offensive to modern listeners.

For more free audio books or to become a volunteer reader, visit LibriVox.org.

M4B audiobook of Complete Book

Hey! Just got my copy of The Austrian School of Economics

The Austrian School of Economics

I'm just looking it over. Here's a nice quote from the preface:

Based on the assumption that the individual was the decisive economic agent, and thus centering its research on individual preferences and on the intersubjective balancing of these preferences in the context of markets, the Austrian school has consistently pointed to the fact that institutions such as money, states [?, ed.], and markets had emerged without any planning, without any central purpose, and without force [in the case of states, maybe kinda sorta]. They had emerged on the basis of human interaction alone, and in a manner that was therefore natural, befitting both humans, and human logic. This basic insight counters all political and economic ideologies that view such institutions as working arenas for the establishment or development of authoritarian activity aimed at influencing or even controlling the direction of individual preferences or their intersubjective balance.

This meant that during the interwar period in Austria, the Austrian School was attacked, sometimes fiercely, by political parties of both the left and the right. the Austrian school not only denied the legitimacy, but also the efficacy of many economic policies. furthermore, the school had always identified itself with a universal science in which there was no room for national, religious, or class-oriented constrictions. In ways it even represented a kind of alternate world to many of the country's idiosyncrasies: it focused exclusively on the individual and asserted that individual action on the basis of subjective preferences was the starting point of r research; it was based on a realistic image of humanity that was not suited for inconceivable flights of idealistic fantasy and therefore not amenable to cheap political exploitation; it was free of magniloquent utopias, upheld the principles of self-determination and non-violence, and was united in its fundamental criticism of any monopolistic and forceful intervention of the state. In addition, it emanated a highly scholarly ethos which made possible the emergence of an uncommonly cosmopolitan and tolerant discourse.

Hah! Only five typoes. Considering the complexity of some of those terms, I'm proud. Oh yeah, the bracketed comments are mine (I'm sure that was obvious).

To elaborate on that point... I mean, maybe the original groups who first decided to conquer and enslave their neighbors found themselves together in one place without planning or force, but they didn't accomplish their conquest without force. Although I'll have to consider whether a hierarchic society can arise without that special case of force we call fraud.

Funniness

You may have to hang out in some odd corners to get this guy's bit, but I think anyone can understand this one.

Hey! Atlas Shrugged opens Friday!

Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication

is an important contribution to the development of interpersonal and world peace.

The Wikipedia article on him looks like a good place to start studying him and his works. And here's the article on Nonviolent Communication.

But back to Naomi Aldort

I thought I'd quote a bit from the intro to Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves:

When you have the courage to stop defending the way you are, or the way your parents raised you, you can open up to the possibility that you are much greater and more magnificent and capable than you thought you were.

The Dallas SOS (Secular Organizations for Sobriety) group

has a helpful page - they call it a toolbox.  Here's one that I use a lot myself:

Fear — use it if you get it. Don’t live in fear, but use it. The same goes for horror, shame, regret or any other negative thoughts or feelings that may come when you think about your drinking days. Don’t stifle or deny these states of mind. Use them as tools to reinforce yourself, not stumbling blocks.

Maybe I should add the link to the page where I found this; there are a ton of other useful links there.

I haven't mentioned lately that I'd like to get together with like-minded ex-drunks (perhaps I should put that in quotes - it's an ongoing struggle) for a stroll through one of our local parks here in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis. Or Minneapolis, itself, of course - wonderful parks there, too.

I really like Naomi Aldort

I'll link her own webpage - the articles page - but her videos on YouTube are great stuff too.

Progressive Parenting: get with it.  (Don't confuse true progress with that proto-Nazi crap Presidents Wilson and both Roosevelts were pushing.)

It's quite likely your parents raised you wrong.

Mourn.

If that's the case, you're probably raising (or already did raise) your kids wrong.

Apologize and make amends.

Here's how.  To do the latter, not the former.

I was looking at my photo albums of my German trips

Back in the early '80s and I came across some pics of myself that kind of blew me away.

I guess I always thought I always had the gut I have now.  I mean, yeah, it was bigger a couple times - and pretty huge when I was guzzling gallons of beer daily - but I saw it as pretty big even back before I graduated high school.

I find these pics rather inspirational!  I believe I'll go exercise more.

Well, not right now.  It's damn near 1:30 AM.  It took me this long to figure out where the h my scanner hid the pictures. 

By the way, even though it's been almost 30 years to the minute since I've seen the G-- family, I still remember their names.  That's Roland behind me, Frau G-- (I'm afraid that's as much of her name as I ever got), Birgit (yes, that's spelled right), and Herr (Joseph) G--.  If they give me permission, I'll put their whole last name here.  Interestingly, their name translates to almost the same thing as the town they lived in.

I enjoyed my stay with them immensely, and I learned a lot of German from them.  Heck!  They took me to Austria and Switzerland, with a heck of a long side-trip to Luxemburg!  And the Bodensee (Lake Constance) from Lindau to Meersburg!  Each of those was a daytrip.

Roland took a trip to Canada and the US the next year (1982) and stayed with us one night.  And I missed him on my second trip to Stuttgart, because I butchered the plans to meet.  I had arranged - well, I agitated for it anyway - the group tour of the Mercedes-Benz factory, because I wanted to tell my Dad all about it, so I didn't feel I could skip it.  But I was hoping to get away in time to catch Roland. 

But it was a big factory.  Whenever the guide said, "Now let's go see the blah, blah, blah..." my heart just sank with dismay.  I was the only one who cared and all I could think about was getting back to the D--s place to catch Roland.

The D--s, now...  Let's just say that that was about nail number 297 in the coffin of that relationship.  Not the final one, but one of them.  I pounded the last one home myself.  But that's a shameful story that won't ever be written down anywhere.

And I don't remember having any big conversation about the Mercedes factory with Dad either.

I just got the VLC Media Player

Seems pretty cool.  It's nice to be able to speed up Youtube videos.

It's free.  Here's their website: http://gofree.com/download/Video/Media-Players/vlcmediaplayer.php?gclid=CI_o_r3QzKcCFZFoKgodU27dFQ

Oh! Crap! We're springing ahead tonight?!

But I'm not ready!!

Out of the nest the chick must fly

The nest fits him not for eternity.

-Rhyme R Us.

It's likely that this couplet has been written before, but I claim to have come up with it independently. I like the double meanings in the archaic form.

I said this to my daughter this morning. She took her gloved hand off the doorknob and, rather flatly, asked, "What does that mean?"

"What do you think it means?"

"Uh...Leaving the house?"

That's what I get for offering my pearls in such a concrete situation.

Here's a fun quote

from Reimarus,

"Contradiction is a devil and father of
lies, who refuses to be driven out either by fasting
and prayer, or by miracles."

Pg. 76. It's a quick read. I've gotten this far since 9:00. About half the book.

You might want to look to the WikiPedia article to find out who Reimarus was.

Guess I'd better go to bed now.

My run yesterday reminded me a bit too much of Jack London's short story

To Build a Fire.

It was 1°F and snowing lightly when I headed out at 11:15 AM. Not windy at all. It was supposed to warm up into the teens sometime, so I expected to benefit from that before I was done, so I didn't bother with the balaclava or the strip of polar fleece I tie around my face to protect my nose and cheeks. And I didn't wear the safety vest, because it was daylight.

Everything went along just dandy for four miles, then the wind picked up. I managed another two miles into that before I gave it up as a bad job and headed back home. The plan was to run another three into that wind, but my beard and mustache were iced up - I mean solid - like a half inch thick - and my energy drinks were already turning to slush, so they'd be worthless, excess weight if I didn't head straight back right then.

When I got back to Thirty Sixth Avenue, about three miles from my house, I decided to walk for a bit and finish off my first slushee. The wind quickly bit through the layers wet clothing - the outer layer was wet with snow melt (even though I looked like a walking snowman) and the inner three layers were wet with sweat). At the verge of shivering I had to start running again.

Like Jack Frost's sled dog, I had to keep up a good pace all the way home, or feel the bite of the lash. Running over the railroad bridge at two miles was a bitch, because I was completely exposed to the wind. I tried walking again at a mile, but I got chilled even quicker that time.

Oh, I should mention that the first time I started walking, besides to drink, it was because the restriction of my vision caused by my hood pulling my hat brim down, a slight fogging of my glasses and the fact that the whole world was white caused me to miss the fact that the sidewalk dipped down suddenly to the street and I had a rather jarring landing that caused my hip to hurt.

Another post-mortem thought - a lesson I need to take - is that I really didn't power-up enough for the run. I only had one medium-large bowl of cereal to eat for breakfast. Even though I run slow, with the low temperature, I was probably burning more that 100 Kcal/mile.

I wish someone had snapped a picture of me when I got in the door. I got that wet crap off me as quick as I could and jumped in the shower. I still had ice chunks to pick out of my beard as the water was heating up.