Shoe madness

Shoes on display in a shop window, Vienna, Austria, July 2005. The prices are in Euro.
Photo taken by KF.

High heeled shoes are evil. They're high, with spindly heels on them.

I realize that Clinton and Stacy are all in favor of high heels, but I'm not really.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I own high heels. In fact, I just bought a stunning pair of red suede and patent peeptoe heels for a wedding on Saturday. The heels are really high because my dress is really long.

Thankfully, I found the suede shoes, because I would not have wanted to be stuck with these:

Photo taken in 2003 at a shoe exhibition at Drammen Museum in Drammen, Norway.
Copyright Jarle H. Knudsen. Released under the GNU FDL

Horcruxes

As transcribed by various sources, JK Rowling describes Voldemort's horcrux creation schedule as follows:

Horcrux -- Murder victim

Tom Riddle's diary-- Moaning Myrtle
Marvolo Gaunt's Ring/Resurrection Stone -- Tom Riddle Senior
Helga Hufflepuff's Cup -- Hepzibah Smith
Salazar Slytherin's Locket -- A Muggle tramp
Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem -- An Albanian peasant
Harry Potter -- N/A
Nagini -- Bertha Jorkins

But it doesn't make sense.

Moaning Myrtle was killed by the balilisk, and she's not mentioned at all in Dumbledore's explanations to Harry about the horcruxes, either. Furthermore, Dumbledore noted that Voldemort reserved horcrux making for significant murders, which means that the peasant and tramp also seem unlikely. And, finally, Dumbledore seems to think that Tom Riddle made Nagini into a horcrux when he killed the Riddle's old gardener, Frank Bryce, which may have qualified as a 'significant' murder.

Dumbledore also comments that Tom Riddle stopped wearing the Resurrection Stone/Peverell coat of arms ring once he turned it into a horcrux, and he's wearing the ring afterward in Slughorn's office, which seems inconsistent. It also seems somewhat inconsistent that Riddle already made two horcruxes before talking to Slughorn about the possibilities of making more than one horcrux. Tom Riddle may have been evil, but he wasn't totally stupid.

One possibility is that Tom created his first horcrux (the diary) when, at age 16, he killed his father and grandparents. This would tally with the age of the fragment of soul when Harry and Ginny encounter it in Chamber of Secrets.

Harry notices that the locket reflected Tom Riddle's handsome eyes, which seems to indicate that that horcrux predates the visit to Dumbledore when Voldemort had finally managed to efface his muggle father's features (gross). Voldemort also hides this horcrux in a location associated with his pre-Hogwart's childhood. So, perhaps poor Hepzibah Smith.

I rather like the idea that Regulus Black witnessed Voldemort making a horcrux following the death of one of the Order of the Phoenix and thought the locket was the only available horcrux.

So, do I think that JK Rowling is wrong? Or the transcribers? No, not really.

I think that Harry Potter inhabits a written universe and that one of the keys to good writing is revision. So, perhaps the horcrux schedule was revised.

and then I wonder whether or not there is actually something better to worry about...like why my last chunk of brie tastes like the plastic it was wrapped in...

Immoral Princes

enough said?

Well, maybe not.

It seems that fairy tale princes are believed to be highly moral, marrying Cinderella and Snow White even though there are no kings in the picture demanding that the marriages take place. Or, at least that's the way it appears to happen in the movies.

John Moore, a truly engaging writer of young adult fiction, however, presents a somewhat different view of princes and their various moralities. Realizing, perhaps, that as a fairly diverse grouping of people, the handsome princes might not all have exactly the same views on dating, marriage, and ethics, Moore shows princes negotiating some of these boundaries while saving distressed damsels, fighting dragons, and/or getting into general princely mischief according to their several personalities.


Having recourse to Wikipedia (OK, I must stop depending on this as a source for all my informational needs...but it's SO handy!), I find that "prince" means any number of things and can refer to the ruler of a principality (think Monaco), the up-and-coming ruler of a country with a king or queen, and of course, the Half-Blood Prince of Harry Potter fame, Severus Snape, who is, thankfully, not mentioned in the Wikipedia "prince" entry, which is at least somewhat reassuring.

The Giant Deer of Long Road

Not really the Giant Deer
But close.
USDA photo by Scott Bauer


While driving on Long Road after a hiatus of about 18 months, I saw the Giant Deer. He looked about the same, actually, except without the spectacular antlers that he sports during the summer months.

I thought there wasn't that much to write about deer, except why they should fear acorns (See "why acorns should be scary to deer"), but Wikipedia showed me how wrong I was.

After all, there have been some rather famous deer, like Bambi, who would never have been the star of a film had he not been the protagonist of Bambi, ein Leben im Walde by Austrian Felix Salton. I read the book (in translation) a few times, and it seems to be about the fact that love does not conquor all, life is longest if lived alone and unencumbered, civilization kills those it tames, and that, basically, it's pretty darn tough to live in nature, particularly when hunters are chasing you with guns.

Interestingly, Walt Disney's version of Bambi was heavily influenced by the same sort of people who might, even as I write this, be masking their scent with acorns and setting off to transform hapless wild deer into tasty venison treats. (See http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/paschons/language_http/essays/salten.html). According to some experts, the hunters in the Salten book were transformed into a large forest fire through the magic of animation.

The Giant Deer seems uninfluenced by concerns about hunters masquerading as acorns or apples, forest fires, or even vehicular traffic.

In fact, the deer of the Poconos, as opposed to the bears, seem generally friendly and mellow. So friendly and mellow, in fact, that they appear to make friends with cars. Why, whenever I visit my former landlords, the deer trot over the the car after I park it, presumably to see if it's OK, and how it's been doing in the lowlands. This seems pretty odd when considering that the rate of deer-vehicle collisions was highest in Pennsylvania compared with the rest of the US in 2005.

Or perhaps not.

Far cry from Vezzini?

Wallace Shawn, who played Vezzini in The Princess Bride (see "Why, what in the world..."), also lent his voice to the Tyrannosaurus Rex in Toy Story. Interestingly, although the character in the film was made by Mattel (http://www.mattel.com/ ), the actual "actor" is copyrighted by Hasbro http://www.hasbro.com/.

Ironically, the Hasbro web site doesn't show Rex under their products, but an alternative "dinosaur" (actually a Transformer) named Repugnus seems to be available http://www.hasbro.com/default.cfm?page=ps_results&product_id=17570.

I would not like to be named "Repugnus," personally, but I suppose that robots have different sensibilities.

...but I digress...

Personally, I always found the scene in which Buzz Light Year glosses over the corporate affiliations of the various toys in Andy's room quite amusing, particularly the bit where Rex explains that he was actually made by a smaller company acquired in a leveraged buy-out.

Jean Baudrillard noted that we now live in a world full of copies, a world in which fakes actually set the rules for reality. That's kind of distressing, until you consider that you could possibly be a neurotic plastic dinosaur from Mattel...Hasbro...er, someplace.

Why, what in the world....

...could that be?!

In The Princess Bride, the Man in Black, aka Dread Pirate Roberts, aka Wesley, pretended to fall for this simple ruse while killing Vezzini with "iocane" powder. (So much for never going in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.) Vezzini, mid mad cackle, drops dead, and the Man in Black completes his capture of the Princess.

If only the drivers of New Jersey's rush hour arteries were as savvy as Wesley, aka Dread Pirate Roberts, aka The man in Black. But, alas, at least some of them are not. If my observations are correct, many fairly ordinary sights are quite amazing to them, causing rather large traffic tie-ups near piles of dirt, construction vehicles, and dead animals.



...or perhaps there is something less troubling going on. What if one person, who has actually never seen a large pile of black dirt before, asks the driver to slow down so he/she can take a look, and then other drivers, wondering what could possibly be so interesting about a pile of dirt, slow down to see what's happening. Since it's just an ordinary pile of dirt, many drivers might linger wondering why on earth anyone else would slow down to look at a pile of dirt.

Probably that's it.

"secret" code names

The lovely and talented M Maus has asked about the creation of code names in this blog.

Hmmm... MightyIsis finds this to be a bit of a stumper, actually, because she doesn't make up the names herself. Like James Joyce (and hopefully this is one of very few similarities), MightyIsis basically gleans things from the surrounding area.

Let's face it...most people make up their own names. Look at The Colonel and Kissmiley, for example. Even Mr Savior was only called that after he had cards made up that said "savior" on them.

And the cool bookstore lady is, in fact, highly cool, and works at the bookstore.

Can you make stuff like that up?

I think not.

Photo by Constantine P. Curran

The smell of truth?

In Room with a View, Eleanor Lavish, a silly independent woman journalist replete with the features of the lady novelists George Eliot once decried, dashes about Florence looking for the true underbelly of Italian authenticity. Believing the Italians to be close to the earth (IMHO a common representational flaw in all of Forster's "Italian" novels), Miss Lavish mistakes dirt for culture, discovering "true Florentine" smells amongst bull droppings and carrying about a pair of Mackintosh squares to protect her from any contact with profane elements of nature, like grass and Italian coach drivers.


Entertaining as Miss Lavish's antics of repression might be, MightyIsis finds the idea of "true smells" to be a bit distressing... well, outside of restaurants and botanical gardens, perhaps. For example, the "true deli smell" of Katz's (See "send a salami" below) is lovely, if a bit too meaty for vegetarians. Even the somewhat institutional aromas of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Cafe strike a better note, somehow.

Which brings us to Philadelphia, the site of a few smells that were truly...smelly. The "genuine" smells of Fairmount Park, which appeared to be having a problem with a rather pungent form of green scum mixed with garbage, were rather offensive in a "make-your-Nestle's-Toll-House-ice-cream-sandwich-less-good" sort of way. Later, M Maus noted the aromatic qualities of the region frequented by horse-drawn carriages while standing close to "The Signer," a rather nice Philadelphia landmark near the old visitor's center and Carpenter's Hall. (Of course, now that the Constitution Center has life-size statues of the actual signers, this amalgam [these are brilliantly explained in the opening of Parenthood] of various signers seems a bit superfluous, but I digress). In response to this smell, MightyIsis and M Maus had a brief discussion of EM Forster and repaired to Bookbinder's for better genuine smells and some lovely chowders and bisques...they also have a rather nice sushi and an interesting style of adorning the lobster cocktail (yum!)--authentic lobster parts.

And smells are not the only "authentic" items at Bookbinder's--they have pictures, lots of pictures, and a far more impressive array of stars than even Katz's deli. Of particular note was Pope Pius XII, who seemed fairly grim looking for a man about to partake of Bookbinders' cuisine (such a facial expression seems impossible after that lovely food), featuring in a glossy color photograph just across from the ladies' room.

...or perhaps he had come in from smelling some authentic Philadelphia horse droppings....

Hard to do redux

DG (aka "bat guy," "bug-eating guy," and "the 'wet pears' haiku poet") has asked about the status of the Colonel-Isis relationship.

Alack, alack, alackaday... MightyIsis-Colonel lovin' is no more.

Sad, but possibly inevitable. As Barbara DeAngelis notes in Are You the One for Me, the more ideological and cultural similarities between two people, the better the chances for relationship success.

Now, consider the likelihood of a military-minded, republican, NRA-membership-holding dude, sweet and heroic though he may be, and a bumbling, liberal, Quaker-sympathizing gal making a go of it. Not terribly high, n'est pas?

MightyIsis is very proud to note that DG heroically refrained from asking any probing questions about "technical proficiency" (see post of the same name, below).

Barbie's Patron Saint?

On a recent trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, we saw some rather grisly little depictions of the torture of St. Barbara, one of the many blonde virgin saints who were given over to ghastly bodily maltreatment by fathers who wanted to force them to marry, possibly themselves (a theme treated very well in Deerskin). Passing over the question of why on earth it would be better to torture your daughter to death publicly rather "accidentally" poison her and make it look like the wrath of your own pagan gods, it struck me that poor St. Barbara, with her stunning good looks, "dream" bathhouse, and exciting adventures was a forerunner of the Barbie doll.



Ok, this is a ridiculous theory, and it has nothing to do with the more official stories:

http://sill-www.army.mil/pao/pabarbar.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02284d.htm

Although one might suggest that the association between Barbie and GI Joe could somehow be traced to St. Barbara's connection to the military and cannons. Again, a silly theory, but entertaining to bruit about over one too many glasses of merlot.

Interestingly, a St. Barbara parish in Massachusetts has an entry "what time is 9 o-clock mass?"

http://www.rc.net/boston/st_barbara/index.htm

Send a salami...

...to your boy in the Army (read: Aahmee).

Photo: André Karwath aka Aka

Yes, that's right, folks, MightyIsis, with the lovely M Maus, visited Katz's Deli, http://www.katzdeli.com/ the site of the famed When Harry Met Sally fake orgasm scene (See "technical proficiency," in July). After tasting the brisket sandwich on rye (yum!), I understand how she might have felt, had she actually been eating the sandwich. However, I noted that Sally disassembled her deli masterpiece to have a higher bread-to-meat ratio, which appears to be a testament to her lack of sensuality. At this point, I wonder how anyone could even eat the bread, because that was the best brisket I'd ever tasted, outstripping even the efforts of a post-college boyfriend's grandmother, because of whose culinary expertise, I remain the only gefilte-fish-eating "goy" known to many of my friends.

It's interesting how New Yorkers deal with tourists. Due to a lucky set of circumstances, like M Maus's superb map reading skills and ability to find parking spaces in Manhattan, we arrived at Katz's about 20 minutes before the lunch rush. Since there was a lull, the deli men were happy to lecture us about the various deli meats, the correct breads to eat with them, and why we were not to lose the little blue tickets. Whew! If we'd gotten there later, I'm sure we would have been hustled along by unruly and hungry New Yorkers trying to get back to the office before their 1 o'clocks.

We also got to meet the actual Mr Katz. He is way cool, and really nice. It made the brisket taste even better, which would seem impossible.

Free Haggis!!

Yes, that's right. Not just haggis, but free haggis.

Where did I find such an amazing sight? In Newfoundland, of course. Well, maybe it isn't quite that logical, but some friends did actually partake of free haggis while watching Highland dancers perform in 28 degree heat (C not F) during a trip to St John's Newfoundland.

It was a bit surprising, I thought, mostly because the majority of the free food was dessert items, and it seemed a bit illogical to have haggis there alongside chocolate cake and apple pie. But maybe that was merely an American prejudice.

Forbidden highway

On a recent trip in rural Pennsylvania, I was nearly killed by a couple of drivers. Why? Because they felt that merging should be completed well (as in at least 1/2 mile) before the actual merge point. In fact, they seemed to think that they should enforce this opinion by the application of murderous energies toward those attempting to use the available highway lanes.

There's something very disturbing about this generally, but the most distressing thing to me was the vehemence with which these drivers gesticulated and yelled. They seemed to feel fully entitled to regulate the traffic in this way.

Hypothesis 1: a new group of truck-based transportation officers had been formed for PA.

Unlikely.

Hypothesis 2: Perhaps I was insane. After all, I learned to drive in New Jersey, a state generally recognized as having bad drivers. Possibly I had no idea of what I was doing, and I should have meekly sat in traffic for a mile while letting a perfectly good highway lane go to waste.

Well, maybe, but that still didn't explain the other drivers who were also trying to use the "forbidden lane."

Next step: research

After calling 9-1-1 and asking for a police officer to please come, I decided that my next step was to consult the driver's manual for PA. Sure enough, it's perfectly legal to pass a car on the left on a multilane highway. It also appears to be illegal to swerve in order to hit another vehicle or run it off the road.

Where does that leave my hypotheses? In scientific theory, the best answer is always the simplest.

Simple answer: two jerks tried to kill me (and my lovely passenger) on Wednesday.

Oh dear.