Wednesday: Hili dialogue

August 7, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Hump Day: Wednesday, August 7, 2019. Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) is feeling poorly, so there will be a paucity of posts today. As always, I do my best.

It’s National Raspberries and Cream Day. It’s also National Lighthouse Day and National Beach Party Day. Here’s Elvis having a beach party in the movie Blue Hawaii, singing “Slicin’ Sand”:

 

Stuff that happened on August 7 includes:

  • 1782 – George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.

Here’s the badge, awarded to only three people during the Revolutionary War. It was made of cloth:

The execution, by Swedish executioner Albert Gustaf Dahlman, was with an axe! The murder was a scandal in Sweden as it involved mother-son incest.

  • 1930 – The last confirmed lynching of blacks in the Northern United States occurs in Marion, Indiana; two men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, are killed. [JAC: you can see the photo here; the crowd at the lynching was estimated at 5000, and thousands of copies of the gruesome photo were sold as souvenirs.]
  • 1940 – World War II: Alsace-Lorraine is annexed by the Third Reich.
  • 1944 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).

Here are the left and right halves of the Harvard Mark I. Any Apple laptop must be better than this puppy:

  • 1947 – Thor Heyerdahl’s balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.

Unfortunately, Heyerdahl was mostly wrong: the Polynesians came from Southeast Asia, not South America (whose own ancestors came over the Bering Strait), though there’s some evidence of a tad of genetic introgression of Pacific Islanders from South America.

  • 1959 – The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the “sheaves of wheat” design, and was minted until 2008.
  • 1974 – Philippe Petit performs a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air.

Here Petit, who did the act without permission, sneaking his equipment up the towers, recounts his feat:

  • 1987 – Lynne Cox becomes first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union, crossing the Bering Strait from Little Diomede Island in Alaska to Big Diomede in the Soviet Union.

And here’s a brief video about that swim:

And to put some Darwin in, here’s a tweet sent by Matthew:

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1867 – Emil Nolde, Danish-German painter and illustrator (d. 1956)
  • 1903 – Louis Leakey, Kenyan-English palaeontologist and archaeologist (d. 1972)
  • 1916 – Kermit Love, American actor, puppeteer, and costume designer (d. 2008)
  • 1928 – James Randi, Canadian-American magician and author
  • 1942 – Garrison Keillor, American humorist, novelist, short story writer, and radio host
  • 1975 – Charlize Theron, South African-American actress and producer

Here’s Nolde’s painting “Exotic Figures II”, from 1911:

Those who “passed” on August 7 include:

  • 1941 – Rabindranath Tagore, Indian author, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1861)
  • 1957 – Oliver Hardy, American actor, singer, and director (b. 1892)
  • 2005 – Peter Jennings, Canadian-American journalist and author (b. 1938)
  • 2012 – Judith Crist, American critic and academic (b. 1922)
  • 2018 – Stan Mikita, Slovakian hockey player (b. 1940)

I remembered Mikita’s donut store from “Wayne’s World”, and sure enough, it was in there, though a spoof of Tim Horton’s. From Wikipedia:

Mikita appeared as himself in a cameo role in the film Wayne’s World, which featured a “Stan Mikita” doughnut shop, spoofing the Canadian doughnut chain Tim Hortons (co-founded by Hockey Hall of Fame member Tim Horton).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes a big to-do about crossing the driveway:

Hili: A stony desert.
A: Ten feline paces is not yet a desert.
In Polish:
Hili: Kamienna pustynia.
Ja: Dziesięć kocich kroków to jeszcze nie pustynia.

From reader j.j., a blissed out kitty:

From reader Ken, a hard-hitting cartoon, but not without some truth:

A tweet sent to me by Grania on January 28 of this year. Poor cat!

This is from reader Barry who says, “Your brain is a liar and this is proof.” I still don’t know how the damn thing works!

From Heather Hastie. Whoever took all this time to save this marsupial mouse is a saint! I’d like to shake his hand.

A tweet from reader j.j. “Plague doctors“, the physicians of the time, wore bizarre masks during medieval epidemics of bubonic plague. The “beaks” were filled with aromatic spices and herbs to ward off the plague, which was thought to be caused by befouled air. Here are some real ones:

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1155200800068517888

Speaking of plague, Heather sent a tweet of two otters plaguing a baby tiger:

https://twitter.com/wildanimallove/status/1156017042878693386

Three tweets from Matthew.  And Yay! Robert Anderson is going to rear out his botflies, like a good entomologist should:

An ant mates with his immobile pupal sister: both forced copulation without consent and incest at once:

That these are for sale is ineffably sad. . .

 

51 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “Slicin’ Sand” strikes me as a pale knock-off of the King’s own, earlier “Jailhouse Rock”:

    1. I admit I’m ignorant about Elvis but I always thought it was a waste of that incredible voice and magnetic stage persona that Elvis didn’t team up with better songwriters. For such a prolific guy I can only think of a handful of songs that really stand out as great. Imagine if he’d teamed up with Spector.. Or Lamont Dozier and the Holland brothers…

      2. Elvis wanted to be a more serious artist but he was stymied at nearly every turn by “The Colonel” [Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk – Dutch illegal alien]

        [1] He’d have been stuck in Hollywood doing even more of those absurd surfer movies & garbage tunes if ACvK had his way, but eventually The King rebelled

        [2] Lead guitarist Scotty Moore & bassist Bill Black got him into the early rockabilly groove that made him distinctive & famous & although Evis explored a lot of genres he should have kept Moore & Black at the heart of his development, but they got pushed out by the wall of other musicians who got tight with him.

        [3] Elvis wanted to tour the World, but ACvK stamped on that because of his illegal status, thus Elvis was stuck touring the Fifty States – consequently in a rut with respect to his musical influences. A lot of people like his crooner Perry Como stuff, but I think if he’d travelled more [outside of the Army] he’d have developed into an exceptional rock singer instead of the karate chopping, glittery, Vegas caricature. Lennon said Elvis died when he went in the Army.

        [4] Dolly Parton wrote a great song [which I hate] made famous by that over-rated warbler Whitney Houston & it secured Parton’s financial future for ever through the royalties. Elvis had wanted it before Houston, but Parton turned him down because the lizard ACvK told her that it was standard procedure for the songwriter to sign over half of the publishing rights to any song Elvis recorded. I have wondered what other writers have turned up their noses because of ACvK’s venal stupidity & short sighted approach to management.

        I imagine an alternate history where Elvis, Black, Moore & someone who could write formed a tight band early on & toured everywhere until the mid-70s [leaving time after then for the lounge crooner Elvis to emerge]. Elvis at Woodstock, Elvis: Isle of Wight, Elvis LIVE at Leeds. Oh Well.

        1. The band would need a drummer too of course or even better, a series of drummers a la Spinal Tap.

        2. You mean “yooooouuuuuuuuuu”? Don’t much like Whitney Houston either. Did like Elvis’s ballads, though.Can’t help falling in love is gorgeous. I didn’t like the songs where he spoke some of the stanzas though. Incredibly hokey.

          1. I love his ballads toooooooooooo-uuuuwe-woooo so I give him post-’75 in my alternate universe to get into that thing with the trio of harmony chicks, brass instruments etc. No Vegas alimony residencies though ’til he’s a rotund 64 [Beatles] on his fifth wife. 🙂

          2. Hey Merilee, I hope you like this:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p47V3w4m1yg

            I never miss an opportunity to recommend this song, which is the single most beautiful piece of music I’ve ever heard.

            It also contains an overt nod to ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’*.

            *Because of this the Elvis estate forced Spiritualized to chop that part out, and it took more than a decade for this unedited version to get released, with its Elvis section intact.

          3. Thanks for the background on the song. The “Fool’s rush in” lyric really makes that song extra special.

          4. You’re welcome. I personally listen to it quite rarely because I don’t want to exhaust it of its magic. The same with Broken Heart off the same album and a handful of others by different artists.

            Songs don’t stop being special, but there does come a point where you’ve heard them so many times that the melodic power charging them dissipates a little, and I don’t want it to happen to my absolute favourite songs, the four or five that are really, really personal. It’s a habit, almost a superstition, that I’ve had since I was a teenager.

          5. I just came back to this thread and saw some sniffy comments. So I decided to listen to the song again. And it occurred to me that I hadn’t listened to it all the way through for(a lot) more than a decade, because of the aforementioned, slightly mental reasons.

            I wanted to check that it really was as lovely as I remembered…and it really is. I felt a thousand electric charges rush up my spine when that waooo-wow tremolo’d noise comes in at the chorus and the sky falls in.

          7. The Elvis song is lovely if a little sentimental. You’re just holding it against me that I didn’t like Mozart 😉

          8. Saul, I wouldn’t do that.🤓A chacun son goût. Btw Probably both versions are kind of sentimental but still beautiful.

          9. “A chacun son gout”… My French is a bit rusty but I’m pretty sure that means ‘yup, you’re right – as always’. The French have a phrase for everything, non?

          1. Woodstock had a state-of-the-art built & cobbled together sound system by a genius tech named Bill Hanley who also set up the inline recording. Stage monitors weren’t too good for some reason so the ‘amateur’ acts really suffered getting in time & in tune & hearing each other. Thanks to Hanley we can hear just how bad 75% of the bands were those three days. Keef Hartley has resolutely refused for his set to be released for example – well he’s dead now & doesn’t care.

            Day one was awful with no musicians with the chops to grab the audience by the ears except maybe Joan Baez.

            Day two first half continued the snore fest & then The Who did their Tommy set [which I don’t think was good] & some good non-Tommy stuff [24? songs in 60 mins!] & the day was closed by Jefferson Airplane off their faces on acid & in the middle of a fallout having musical oneupmanship games with each other for over an hour & a half. Poor hippies had come across the country using their thumb & ended up listening to the privileged set who got shipped in by chopper & gave 50% effort. Janis was on earlier doing her Texas Chicken moves & wasn’t on the boil that day.

            On the third day… Joe Cocker rose & supplied the necessary power voice. That’s what’s missing from this Ravi Shanker hippy shit. It needed an Otis Redding & his soul, but he died too young – Elvis would have hit the spot & his bands were always so tight they didn’t need to hear each other. The event had Sha Na Na [ghastly] & Sly Stone [meh] – sweet soul & R&B music seriously lacking.

          3. Yes, very sweet indeed, she has an exceptionally clear voice & can’t help but be in key. The infant is her son Gabriel Harris who must be around 3 yo there, he went on to be an OK percussionist & tours still with his mum. Joan does a crystal clear cover of Hello In There [by John Prine] which is quite good although the arrangement is too ‘country’ & the guitars/drums are too far forward in the mix.

            Do you know Natalie Marchant [ex 10,000 Maniacs]? Her version of the Prine song is supreme – better than Prine or anybody, she absolutely kills it, skins it & makes it her own pair of furry boots. Here’s Natalie, Stipe & Bragg going into orbit from Glasgow on Prine fuel in 1990:

            https://youtu.be/csAp1KeueUU

            Since you’re enamoured of Spiritualised you should check out the leader’s roots in the Rugby band Spacemen 3 – sorta psychedelia punk on acid with fuzzy guitar. I have all their albums approx [3 anyway] & I adore their stuff – not enough other people did – no success [partly the drugs methinks]. It’s volume 11 music.

          4. I’ve always loved John Baez’s crystal clear voice but fairly recently saw a special of hers on TV with several other singers and she was kind of off key which surprised me Bigley.

          5. It’s a lovely affectionate impression she does. I’m slightly prickly about Dylan, not because he’s not good, but just because his flaws are so enormous and rarely mentioned. But this video is lovely, and you can see Baez’s affection for her ex.

            Yes, I’ve got all the Spacemen albums. I love a lot of bands, but Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized are probably the central obsessions of my teenage years. I even bought this incredibly pretentious e-book about Spacemen 3 just for the gossip.

            I love all the three later albums(they released four studio album, but the 1st was pretty much just a bunch of Stooges rip-offs and one decent song.).

            They mixed in a lot of religious symbology but that never bothered me, especially since the songs were invariably about drugs and love rather than religion. I know that ‘Lord Can You Hear Me?’…

            (youtube.com/watch?v=kOCOAUFWXX4)

            …gets played in churches occasionally, because it’s so divine and the lyrics are ambiguous enough not to be ‘offensive’.

            …Not sure about the Merchant video: the guitars are definitely too high in the mix…probably Bragg buggering things up. He wasn’t great with subtlety. Makes me want to hear the Prine original.

          7. The notes below the video says it’s Randy Scruggs aged 16 [son of 3-finger style bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs], but no way he’s 16yo – more like 19yo, but he was no scholar & perhaps older than assumed what with repeating years at high school – a tradition in NC, TN & thereabouts due to non-attendance & illiteracy to this day** 🙂

            He died last year & his dad in 2012 [Wiki]

            ** Same as parts of my Brum such as Aston [Black Sabbath dragged up around there], Small Heath [where I grew mostly] & Lozells, though we don’t repeat years in the UK.

          8. Oh. I need to mention for The Dude’s sake that Creedence were consummate pros as usual.

          9. Saw Creedence in late 69 at Fillmore SF. Always great. Did not drink whatever was being passed around in little Dixie cups. What did the dude say about Creedence?

          10. Lucky you – all that SF psychedelic folk rock you must have imbibed.

            “I’m the Dude, so that’s what you call me. That or, uh His Dudeness, or uh Duder, or El Duderino, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing”

            I don’t know that The Dude said anything about Creedence, but they were the tape soundtrack of his wasted life:

            https://youtu.be/BGEzNYKrIXc

            And of course he despised the Eagles with their fancy studio sound, perfect harmonies & other ornamental audio knick knacks. He’s a good judge & he abides.

          12. @ Michael Fisher:

            When The Dude reported his car stolen, the cops told him not to hold out much hope to get back the tape deck and the Creedence tapes, man:

  2. The Spinifex Hopping Mouse Notomys alexis is a true mouse, not a marsupial. Get better soon PCC[E]!

  3. The “dead” mouse isn’t a marsupial. Its a Spinifex Hopping Mouse Notomys alexis, a rodent of family Muridae. Not all Australian native mammals are marsupials. The are a lot of native “mice” (small Muridae) and “rats” (large Muridae). See List of rodents of Australia. The Australian rodents are divided into “old endemics”, which are a diverse group of rats and mice that descended from arrivals 5-6 million years ago and “new endemics”, all of genus Rattus that arrived much more recently.

  4. You’re grossly overestimating the performance of the Harvard Mark I by comparing it to a laptop. An (obsolete) iPhone 4 has a performance of 1.6 GFLOPS (1.6 billion floating point operations per second). The Harvard Mark I required six seconds to do one multiplication (not floating point, I believe). Therefore, the iPhone 4 is about ten billion times faster.

    1. Probably a better comparison would be with the calculator I bought recently, which does four functions plus square roots only, and cost $2 (NZ). And probably most of that cost was in the keys and display.

      I bought it for the novelty. It does almost exactly the same as the first pocket calculators I used in c.1970 (though they lacked the square root function) and they cost $300 – equivalent to about $1800 now. Who knows what the Harvard Mark 1 would cost.

      cr

  6. To Robert Anderson– Better to put a rigid dome (like a bottle cap or something) over the hole before you put a band-aid on it, your babies need to breathe freely. And when it finally comes out of your body, the key thing that most people miss is that the larva wants to dig. Get some fairly sterile loose soil (maybe sand with a bit of clay so its tunnel won’t collapse) and let it dig. Then it will pupate undergound and stay there for at least three weeks, maybe more. Be patient! When you least expect it, out will come your baby as an adult fly, surprisingly normal in appearance, not that different from a housefly.

  7. Darwin’s railway journey in 1838 – that would have been on the London & Birmingham Railway, which opened in that year – one of the very first British main lines.

    The roughness of which he complained was probably because the track had not ‘settled’ yet. (Under the successor London & North Western the line became one of the best and smoothest in the country).

    The first trains took 5 1/2 hours for the 112 miles, a 20mph average. Compare this with the stage coaches which (after centuries of development) had managed to reach 12 miles an hour on the best routes.

    cr

      1. Then he must have invested wisely.

        The extraordinary success of the early lines led, of course, to a ‘bubble’ – the Railway Mania of 1845 – where all sorts of absurd lines were proposed.

        It nearly bankrupted George Stephenson, by the way, and not through any fault of his own. He was much in demand as a consulting engineer, and he lent his services to some obscure line and accepted shares in lieu of payment. When the line folded, its creditors came looking for shareholders, of which Stephenson was the only prominent and wealthy one, and this was before the days of ‘limited liability’ companies. And (unlike Mr Trump), in those days bankruptcy was regarded as shameful and not an option. It took him several years of hard work to pay off all the creditors.

        cr

  8. I’ve always loved a meal but it never seen his kitties. Thanks. The above is siri’s version of I’ve always loved Emil Nolde but had never seen his kitties🙀 The first time she typed kidneys.

    1. I must get Siri. I didn’t know she was such a wordsmith “Kidneys” first and best.

          2. @Michael, thanks. Creedence as well as his rug help bring the Dude’s room together🤓

  9. Hey Saul,
    I respectfully disagree with you about the boring piece of music you offered. It can’t hold a candle to “Can’t Help Falling in Love”.I agree with Merilee. The latter is a beautiful piece of music. I am not a perfect fan of Elvis, but it seems to me it was his best.

    1. I just listened to it. I thought it was beautiful. This one is a nice cover:
      Ingrid Michaelson – Can’t Help Falling In Love
      https://bit.ly/1AuwBQ5

      I wouldn’t say it’s better than the original, though.

    2. You’re welcome to think Ladies and Gentlemen is a boring piece of music, but I reserve the right to lose any respect for your taste in music.

Comments are closed.