Towse: views from the hill

November 28, 2008

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede

Filed under: life,news,shopshopshop — Towse @ 5:04 pm

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede.

Is Black Friday worth it? Do you really need this stuff on sale? Are you really saving enough money to make all this worth it?

Maybe it’s just that I am not a fan of large pushy crowds, but I decided that getting up in time to stand in line at Cost-Plus to be one of the first hundred through the doors for a 7 a.m. opening, which would score me a free pretty little glass Christmas ornament and a chance for a huge prize, was just not worth dealing with people in mind of a Black Friday deal.

Some stores opened at 4 a.m. Macy’s opened at 5 a.m. Other stores had midnight madness sales. People left their family Thanksgiving dinners early to stand in line to score deals on stuff.

More shopping news:

Gabrielle Mitchell, 28, from Rockville Centre, was out at the stores in Hicksville at 3:45 a.m. waiting for them to open. Almost four hours later, she said she had spent more than $1,600.

But did she need the stuff she spent money on? Does it make her happy? Does it make her happy even through the paying of the bills?

For me it’s much nicer to stay home today and read the paper back and forth over breakfast with his nibs and let the glow of family Thanksgiving keep me warm on a grey day.

Dinner tonight with friends. Money will be spent not for durable goods but for transient pleasure.

And no one dies.

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November 27, 2008

!Candied yams

Filed under: food,life — Towse @ 1:34 am

I volunteered to bring the yam-ish dish (among other things) to the family Thanksgiving tomorrow.

Not candied yams, which is what we had at Thanksgiving growing up.

This year I’m bringing sweet potato fries because I like them and hope others will too and, on request of the son-in-law, “those yams you made last year.”

Except. I can’t remember how I made the yams last year so in lieu, I did something entirely different. (Sorry, Bill!)

Cooked and peeled a certain number of sweet potatoes (0.49/lb in Chinatown). Mashed them with a chunk of butter, juice of one orange (10/$1 in Chinatown), shredded fresh ginger (0.79/lb in Chinatown), brown sugar.

Cooked and peeled a certain number of white yams (0.59/lb in Chinatown). Mashed them with a chunk of butter, maple syrup, a dollop of vanilla extract and ginger powder.

Took an old soup can out from the stash under the sink. Took the label off. Cut off the bottom to make a metal pipelike object. Washed thoroughly.

Put the can vertical in the casserole dish. Filled with mashed white yams. With can still in place, piled and patted all the mashed sweet potatoes to fill in the vacant spaces OUTSIDE the can. Used the metal bottom I’d recently cut off the can to press the white yams through the can as I removed it.

Sprinkled sliced almonds around the perimeter of the casserole dish, covering the mashed sweet potatoes.

Voilà!

Mañana I will bake the casserole until heated through and the almonds get all toasty.

Not the yams I made last year. Not the candied yams of my youth.

What shall I call this?

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November 26, 2008

Stephen King’s God trip | Salon Books

Filed under: books,writing — Towse @ 1:34 am

[you have an ad clickthrough before salon.com feeds you the content]

Stephen King’s God trip

On the 30th anniversary of “The Stand,” the novelist confesses what haunts him about religion and today’s politics.

By John Marks

Oct. 23, 2008 | In 1927, a little-known writer of horror stories named H.P. Lovecraft tried to put into words the secret of his diabolical craft. “The one test of the really weird is simply this,” Lovecraft wrote in the introduction to “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” “whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes or entities on the known universe’s utmost rim.”

That’s a mouthful, and yet I swear, two decades or so ago, I had the very experience that Lovecraft describes while on an overnight bus trip from Dallas to a Christian youth camp in northern Minnesota. Most of the other teen campers flirted or gossiped or joked around. Some endured the long hours by reading Scripture, and in their own way, may have been grappling with “the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities.” I was mesmerized by a less prescriptive but equally god-smitten work: Stephen King’s epic of apocalypse, “The Stand.”

This year, the novel “The Stand” turns 30, and far from fading into the dustbin of bygone bestsellers, King’s great tale of plague seems more prescient than ever.

[more]

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November 25, 2008

Second Life affair ends in divorce – CNN.com

Filed under: life,web2.0 — Towse @ 10:45 pm

Second Life affair ends in divorce – CNN.com

Pollard and Taylor met in an internet chat room, got married in RL and in SL in 2005, and then …

[husband] Pollard admitted having an online relationship with a “girl in America” but denied wrongdoing. “We weren’t even having cyber sex or anything like that, we were just chatting and hanging out together,” he told the Western Morning News.

[wife] Taylor is now in a new relationship with a man she met in the online roleplaying game World of Warcraft.

Be careful out there, folks! The online world can splash over into this one with nary a warning.

[via HMB @ unlibrarian]

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The Dunlap Question, redux

Filed under: life — Towse @ 6:15 am

The Dunlap Question

Someone asked elsewhere: What would you choose, Sal?

I’m still pondering.

Would I relive my life knowing what I know now and be constrained to live through =everything= knowing, for instance, about an upcoming miscarriage or divorce, the death of three siblings and my parents, all the crap and miseries? I couldn’t even spend more time with my sister or brothers or parents than I did because that would not be a life that was “just exactly as before.”

I’m not sure the happiness and satisfaction would offset the crap I’d have to live through again.

If I were oblivious, mind swept clear of understanding and memories, then maybe I would, but if I had to reprise my entire life with my memories intact and with foreknowledge of what unchangeable sadness was coming up next September. …

Probably not.

But … if … at the end of the reliving, I’d get more time, wouldn’t I? More time would be good.

Or would I be asked again when today rolls round again, would I be asked again at this instant, to make the choice again and choose whether to feed back into the infinite loop?

The question is a different one from whether I would change anything that had happened to me in the past. To that one I always say “no changes,” because all that came before — even the deaths and the sadnesses and the broken hearts and the wish-I-hadn’ts — led to where I am today and I’m pretty happy with today, thankyouverymuch.

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The Dunlap Question

Filed under: life,people,shopshopshop — Towse @ 12:04 am

Item listed in an upcoming Sotheby’s auction.

Item: a sheet of paper with the header, THE DUNLAP QUESTION, with typed questions and scribbled answers from F Scott Fitzgerald. (est: $8-$12K)

The basic question is followed by questions that refine the basic question and answer.

You make a quick survey of your whole life, remembering all your pains and all your pleasures, the humiliations and triumphs, the regrets and satisfactions, the miseries and the happiness. Then suppose you are compelled to make the following decision, with no alternative?

1. Live through your whole life again, just exactly as before, with no opportunity to better it by your present experience, or

2. Die instantly.

Which would you choose?

***

Interesting question.

The person posing the questions: Gilbert Seldes

***

I’m still pondering.

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November 24, 2008

Providing stability. Securing the future.

Filed under: financeconomics,news,politics — Towse @ 7:43 am

This year, our financial markets have been tested in unprecedented ways. And though the global landscape has become increasingly complex, one thing has remained consistent: Citi’s commitment to helping our clients and customers find solutions that will drive their financial success.

and the full-page ad in today’s San Francisco Chronicle (Page A16) goes on.

hahaha hohoho.

c2008 Citigroup Inc. Member FDIC. Citibank and Citibank with Arc Design are registered service marks of Citigroup Inc. Citi never sleeps is a service mark of Citigroup Inc.

Citigroup’s latest news

Citi dodges bullet
Government will guarantee losses on more than $300 billion in troubled assets and make a fresh $20 billion injection.

By David Ellis, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: November 24, 2008: 2:03 AM ET

Citigroup secured a massive government aid package over the weekend following a painful selloff last week in company stock.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The U.S. federal government on Sunday announced a massive rescue package for Citigroup – the latest move to steady the banking giant, whose shares have plunged in the past week.

Oh.

So how much does a full-page ad in the Chron cost?

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November 23, 2008

Esquire’s 70 Greatest Sentences

Filed under: culture,writing — Towse @ 1:11 am

Esquire's 70 Greatest Sentences

Well, these sorts of things are always, “Why did they choose that?” “Why didn’t they choose that?”

Sample sentences from the list:

Also, I shouldn’t have to say this, but do not, under any circumstances, put Pop Rocks in your ass. –Stacey Grenrock Woods, Sex column, 2003

It showed a crowd of freaks bending over a dying fat man on a dark and lonely road, looking at a tattoo on his back which illustrated a crowd of freaks bending over a dying fat man on a . . . –Ray Bradbury, “The Illustrated Man,” 1950

Many of the great sentences deal with sex, erections, and/or war.

Hm.

[via Grapes2.0]

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November 19, 2008

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

Filed under: history,photographs,URL,web2.0 — Towse @ 3:28 am

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

[via Scott Beale @ laughing squid]

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