Drama on the horizon

As seen out the window, through the rain and darkness: the horizon in silhouette.

This post's theme word is festinate, (v. tr.) "to hurry or hasten" or (adj) "hurried or hasty." The festinating weather blew a storm across the road in just a few minutes.

Book sold!

With the conversion of swap.com to a book reselling site ("valet service"?), I have defaulted back to selling my secondhand books on Amazon. This is not as great --- the books get exchanged into money, and some of the money is tithed away; I prefer books getting swapped into other books. Plus there is no "media mail" in this foreign country where I live, so shipping inevitably eats up my supposed profit.

That said, I do have a lot of books. Which I am trying to whittle down to my core library of essentials. I'm one surplus book closer to this goal. Huzzah much-neglected Project Simplify!

Suggestions for other ways to find new homes for my books are welcome.


This post's theme word is awumbuk, "the feeling of heaviness and sorrow you feel after your guests have departed." Selling or trading books leaves me no awumbuk aftertaste, although recycling or trashing them would.

Doomsday Book

Connie Willis' Doomsday Book is amazingly good. It features time-travelling Oxford historians of the future, rural English peasants of the past, and the epidemics and personal connections that intertwine their lives across hundreds of years. It is excellent. I had intended to ration out the nearly 600-page novel, but instead ended up reading it in one contiguous binge. It is not a tense page-turner, but such a quality novel, with intriguing characters and plot, and well-written, that I did not want it to end. And indeed, as the book in my right hand dwindled, I became increasingly worried about the yet-unresolved fates of the many characters.

The themes concluded on the melancholy, yet woven throughout was a persistent thread of the hopefulness of all academics and those who seek and disseminate knowledge. I can see echoes in Doomsday Book of To Say Nothing of the Dog, but the shared world and frantic action which were used to comedic result in that book, were used to other ends in this. Computers, paradoxes, math, history, survival skills, the art of consuming a gobstopper, and the curious evolution of the English language, are each given focus in turn. Intelligent characters keep their senses of humor while determinedly solving problems and achieving goals. 

So good. You should read it.


This post's theme word is calque, "a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation." Wikipedia informs us that determining a word is a calque is often more difficult than identifying mere loan words.

Now You See Me

Now You See Me was slick, shiny, sparkly... produced within an inch of its life. It had no plot to speak of, except in tones of aggravation, e.g.:

• why is the camera continuously spinning?
• why were there 5 main characters? It would have worked with 2. (It would have been better with 1, who wakes up at the end and dreamed the entire movie! There, I improved it.)
• why were there so many attempted plot twists? Unnecessary.
• why does each magic show last 90 seconds? wouldn't a real-life audience riot after such a short show?
• does Morgan Freeman simply walk onto the set of a movie and declare, "I am in this movie now"?

If you want a film with a clever caper, watch Ocean's Eleven instead. If you want a film where Morgan Freeman is a shadowy authority figure, watch Wanted instead.
If you want a film about magic which will make you think, watch The Prestige instead. (Thinking during Now You See Me may result in sprained neurons, and should be attempted only by professional movie critics receiving hazard pay.) If you want to turn off your brain for a 120-minute experience, go take a nap under a tree.

Honestly, you should nap under a tree anyway. It's beautiful outside.


This post's theme word is charivari, "a confused, noisy spectacle." Avoid the charivari of this movie; I have endured it to forewarn you.

Coventry Cathedral memorials

Previous experience from only Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog had incompletely prepared me to visit Coventry Cathedral. (And inaccurately, for there were no time-travelling historians to be found. I looked.)

The destruction wreaked by the bombing and fires was accurate, though.

What remains is a memorial of and to World War II. The Cathedral was a real thing before it was a destroyed monument, and so it itself contained memorials like this one for World War I.

This post's theme word is intromit, "to enter, send, admit." Coventry Cathedral now intromits sunlight and the elements, as well as tourists and the religious.

Shakespeare's birthplace

This picturesque half-timbered building, subject to such immaculate preservation and dense precision gardening, is the birthplace of Shakespeare. Its preservation, picturesqueness, and landscaping are all the result of this fact; for now is the heyday of our fanatical devotion to Shakespeare's work, and everything associated with him can earn valuable tourist income.

Well, almost everything. I did not pay to take this photo. I did not buy any of the many beautiful editions of his plays for sale in the adjacent Shakespeare store. They are all available free in searchable electronic version, which is how I prefer to consume my ancient texts. Parchment and clay tablets are so burdensome.


This post's theme word is parnassian, "of or relating to poetry." Shakespeare's parnassian fame is the bane of many schoolchildren.

I found Queen Elizabeth I!

Queen Elizabeth I has been sighted, haunting picturesque Kenilworth Castle picturesquely, pausing hither and thither to strike a regal pose.

I snuck around and furtively snapped photos of her as she made her stately way across the grounds. Perhaps she returned to the site of so many happy memories, the home of her forbidden love... or perhaps she was there as a publicity stunt for English Heritage. She likes them; they cast her in a good light. (Literally: look at that filler light on the ground!)

Who knew royalty could be so much fun? I'm getting the same endorphin rush as catching Carmen Sandiego or locating Waldo.


This post's theme word is distaff, the adjective meaning "of or relating to women," or the noun "a staff for holding flax, wool, etc. for spinning; women considered collectively; a woman's work or domain." Elizabeth demonstrated the monarchy's power in her distaff way.

Science museum

I spent a fantastic afternoon in the science museum. I have a new favorite dongle. It's the Jacquard loom! I must have watched the workings of the loom for 30 or 40 minutes. It's fascinating.

Top half of a Jacquard loom.

Bottom half of a Jacquard loom.

Another level of the museum featured large machinery.

Notice the rails on the floor? I hypothesize that these were used to move the machinery into the museum.

 The rails continue throughout, even passing through this atrium where Foucault's pendulum used to hang! (It's now in a display case, with a replacement pendulum hanging there. I also saw the place in the Panthéon where the pendulum hung, but that's under construction now.)

Just look at those gears!

Honestly, this museum was the most fun and interesting one I saw the entire trip.


This post's theme word is tyro, "one who is beginning to learn something." Although I have several degrees, I often feel that I am merely a tyro.

Futuristic Paris 13

I really like the futuristic look of the new Paris 13. I almost expect to see students on hoverscooters rocketing around.

This post's featured word is splificate, "to flabbergast." The use of 'splificated' splificated her readers.