Finding Yourself

You’re in the kitchen. The cupboard next to the refridgerator, second shelf from the top. Behind the teapot.

Protection

My shampoo offers sunflower & UV protection. Do you often need to protect your hair against sunflowers? I don't recall it ever being an issue in my personal life, but I haven't met many sunflowers. They do seem like friendly chaps, though.

What Kusch read this week

In order to help jump-start the Badger, I have decided to follow the suit of Clockmaker and write at least one post a week (an auxiliary reason is to stop the Badger from drowning in Clockmaker posts).

I will save the earth-shattering insights in the nature of the universe for another week, however. This week I will provide an account of my literary sojourns these last few days. I have read a book by a fellow named Oliver Sacks - somewhat famous for books like "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" - entitled "Seeing Voices". It deals with the deaf in general and their use of language in particular, and encompasses such subjects as the history of sign language and of the education of the deaf, the horrible consequences that befall a deaf child that doesn't come in contact with any form of language he can understand as he grows up, and those grammatical and neurological aspects of sign language that make them totally unlike any spoken language.

It is this last subject that really got my imagination spinnig, and that has made me seriously consider learning (swedish) sign language. Because it's really fucking cool. If anyone believes that sign language is nothing but spoken language coded onto a set of hand gestures, they are gravely mistaken. Its spatio-visual nature provide it with many opportunities that our sound-based languages lack entirely. I feel sign language is the "final frontier" of languages, and I imagine it should be studied by anyone with an interest in the nature of human language and how it relates to human thought in general.

Oh, was that just me? Well, the rest of youseguys might wanna check out a funny Internet film-clip instead.

They don't make them like that anymore

This Betty Boop cartoon from 1932 features Cab Calloway as a ghost walrus. I thought you’d like to know.

Wales Redux

Containing also a delayed note on the Badgerversary

So we went to Wales again, and then came back. Which was good, you see, because Britain at this time of year is resplendent with greenery and suchlike, whereas Sweden, much as always, is Sweden.
We lived in Caernarfon, and we spent a day ambling through the town, mainly the castle, which is huge and well-preserved to the point where you can nearly get lost in it. Caernarfon Town itself is so small you can hardly do anything there, but the town doll's house shop is commendable in quality and there are several fine sources of palatable edible objects. Unfortunately, no Great Uncle Cornelius' Lemon Refresher.
We spent another day traversing the land on an antique-locomotive-driven railway and footpaths through sheep pens, observing mountains. They were good about it and didn't move or knock about any, and so we saw them and knew that they were good.
And. We spent nearly two days traveling. So really, avoid going to Wales by way of London no matter how great the allure of cheap airfare is. The trains will bilk that right back out.
Unusually, I wasn't harassed in customs even once during the whole trip. Hence, to compensate, the scanner people nicked my pocket knife, so that now I have none.

Things I learned, in no particular order:

• There really is no reason to live in Sweden, at all. None. Whatever. Really. I mean this in the most sincere way possible.
• The British, bizarrely, by and large seem not to know how to drink tea. What the crude interjection?
• Humans who snore will cost you sleep. Don't let your thriftiness get the better of you; let a room of your own instead of a dorm.
  
• Foolish planning may cost you or your loved ones a Pigguretto, not to mention a whoppingly whopping train ticket price.
• Quite possibly the single biggest benefit of the UK is the existence of Aero brand mint chocolate. Number two may be two-liter bottles of Dr. Pepper, but the Captain refuses to back me up on this.
  
• Things unavoidably work out. Perhaps society is constructed this way, or maybe the Tao just makes good on its promises, but things kind of fall into place by accident even were you to just roll your thumbs and kind of whistle off-key.
• Sheep can and will taunt you.
  

I will reiterate most strenuously: do not go by way of London unless you plan to stay some days there first. The small bit of extra cash for flying direct to Cardiff really is worth it for the improved inland travel comfort and ditto time. Do not. Do go to Wales at all. If possible, stay there.

In closing: The Badgerversary came and went, and we were as dead as ever, but I have a birthday present, and it will appear eventually. I think. Furthermore, once during a doldrum in work on the City I resolved to write at least one piece a week, be it short or be it shite, and that worked, for me. So I use this resolution again: one Badger a week. At least. For the foreseeable future.

Pop goes Mount Doom

I have little to offer you except a quote:

"Lava's all around me
I feel it in my toes"

This song was featured in the 1994 action/adventure movie "Four Beheadings and a Furnace", sung by the popular volcano band Hot! Hot! Hot! (yes, the exclamation marks are part of the name). It was originally recorded by The Blogs in 1968.

Necrotic Pulp

It was a cold, rainy night, the kind of night that makes you wish you could bolt your windows and draw your blinds and put another log on the fire. But for me it was the best kind of night – bad weather seems to draw out all kinds of people who have problems they don’t want any of their respectable friends and neighbours to know about. The kind of weather that makes decent people stay inside and mind their own business is the kind of weather that makes them put on their warmest clothes and pull up their collars and come looking for someone like me. A fixer. A problem solver. A dentist who asks no questions.

So I left my door open and my lights on, but on nights like this I always made sure there was a well-sharpened drill in the top drawer of my desk. You can’t fill cavities the way I do for long without making some enemies, and smart dentists like to play it safe. And smart dentists are the only kind of dentists around these days. All the other kinds are dead. In the second drawer I keep a bottle of whiskey, for emergency sedation.

I was well into my second glass of sedation when my first customer for the night showed up. I could hear her approach the door – high heels on dirty linoleum, drips of water falling from her coat – then hesitate for along time before she knocked. They always do.

“It's open,” I said. She opened the door and stepped inside.

“Are you... the dentist?” Her voice was low and pleasantly hoarse, and you could almost hear the ellipsis. “I have... a toothache.”

To be continued! Don't miss the next action-packed issue of Amazing Dental Adventures!

Discovery Log: 2006-05-01

Concerning: Hard Science

Sponge cake tastes best unsliced, eaten like a tortilla or banana, gripped over the packaging. (This specimen is a bar, with a trapezoidal cut.)
It goes well with Oolong.


[Unrelated note: Two weeks precisely until the Badgerversary.]

Live Haply Ever After

More Games

Hapland 3 is out. Rejoice, O ye who love getting stuck so hard in games it makes you weep.
Me, I'm happying my eyes out.

Cave Story

In Case You Missed It

Play Cave Story. Play it now. If you've any care at all for old-school platformers, you won't regret it. For one such as me, it is polished very near to the perfection of the genre.
The site linked to is itself an excellent resource for the game.

Cave Story is available for PC and Mac. It is, to the best of my knowledge, legally freeware.