Stunningly efficacious

I have no particular, publicly-declarable goals to commemorate the incrementing of our calendar year, except that --- as always --- I want to hone myself into the startlingly effective, time-efficient, prosperous, merry, well-balanced person that other people (hopefully) think I already am.

I like circuitous sentences and superfluous verbiage, and I refuse to change either of those personal attributes in 2018. Come back and try again in 2019, haters.

Day 1 is marked by a high turnaround of holiday letters and emails, paying bills, updating all my yearly-in-January donations, and staring in awe at the truly prodigious list of half-written draft posts for this blog.

(Sorry about that.)

You, my diligent readers, whether my parents or my overcurious students or internet strangers looking to post advertisements as comments (don't, I delete them and it wastes everyone's time), will simply have to put up with me as I am, striving yet again, always, in a continual manner. I want to write more, and more cleverly, and because this platform is free and quick (except when stuck in draft limbo), it will likely be the recipient of this output.

Although frankly, a lot of it goes to /dev/null right now anyway, and that might be for the best.

My year-end phrase-stuck-in-my-head is "flamboyantly intelligent", which is a descriptor of the kind of people I'd like to surround myself with. Maybe there's a subreddit? I'm on a (mild) quest, in any case; if you find any such people, please send them my way. I am a diligent and snarky correspondent, and I have been told I am secretly kind and caring, but that was 2017 and I am looking to turn over a new leaf, so...


This post's theme word is palilalia (n), "a speech disorder characterized by involuntary repetition of words, phrases, or sentences." I am trying to remember the word for "having a phrase stuck in your head", but all I can come up with is palilalia, which is not-quite-it-but-close-enough-to-blot-it-from-recoverable-memory, plus: contains "lila" as a substring!

2015 retroblogging

The curtain closes on 2015 and my furious, year-end sprint to clear my blog queue, or at least slow its rate of growth. I am trying to tag all the retroblogged posts with the "retroblog" tag, so that you can try to peruse them, although I recognize that the fact that they are interspersed with other posts, and with previously retroblogged posts, does not make this easy.

My project:retroblog tag is from 2012, which shows that I am very consistent in my lagging and also my resolution to catch up. There's a new tag, simply "retroblog", which gets applied to everything blogged vastly out-of-time, without marking it as my 2012 project which may never reach resolution.

Here are the posts that are newly, retroactively inserted into the blogging timeline since last we reckoned:

• Wolf Hall
• Tidepool textures
• Manhattan
• Sunflower year
• Saarbrücken
• This post itself.

I'm embarrassed that this list is so short, and also about that last item. But really, why? I fell short of a goal I set myself which no one else really cares about. Take that, internet! Take my confessional failure to succeed at arbitrary self-set goals, and churn on it. There, now it's gone, isn't the flash of internet information great? Squeeze some emotion out, and move on.


This post's theme word is discomfit, "to confuse or embarrass." or "to thwart the plans of." O! discomfiting blogging failure! Woe is me, etc., etc.

Seasons change, decades pass

Another couple months, another set of life experiences and retrospective thoughts about them, posted to the internet for all of noisy posterity to (send robots to read, process, glean, and) enjoy. The daylight is noticeably shorter now, we rolled our clocks back in the historically-inherited acknowledgement of centralized time-measuring standards, and tonight everyone dresses up as something else and begs strangers for carbohydrates.

Seems like a reasonable time to reflect on the past decade.

It involved me leaving a lot of things behind: several countries, my life as a student (never again!), relationships tried and broken, and between 10 and 20 pounds.* Oh! Also my original (birth) ACL, gone forever, consigned to history and oblivion (although its replacement's image is immortally online). Now I have a gauche unmatched pair of ACLs. Most of these changes require no special comment; I do reiterate, here as elsewhere, my strongly-held belief that knee injuries should be avoided and knee surgery is not a suitable pastime. (Exceptions possible for knee surgeons.)

Even my fellow crack-of-dawn gym women have commented on the kilograms, though ("Vous étiez ronde... vous avez maigri"). Two sides of the coin (as usual: ignore the metaphorically inconvenient edge). The nice: Of course it is always nice to receive compliments from humans. Robots, not so much. Second, the cool part about converting fat (voluminous) into muscle (dense) is that my skin nerves are closer to my muscles, so I can feel in my skin when I contract my muscles (as well as the normal nerve feedback from the muscles themselves). For some muscles in particular this sensation is novel and thrilling (intercostals!). The irritating: Buying all new clothes is a chore and so everything I've bought is stretchy, it'll fit me as long as I avoid supervillain shrink- or giganticize-rays. Also, now I am even less imposing, and so rush hour subway commutes are a continual struggle to evade crushing and obtain access to enough oxygen at my elevation. Maybe a subway snorkle? Then I could breathe, plus everyone would know there is definitely someone there in that spot-that-looks-like-it's-empty-space-between-tall-people.

I've retroblogged a little recently, but a lot is sliding because it is job-application season in academia.

• I cleaned some photos off my phone and reminisced about snowy winters past. Oh, Canada.
• Shaun the sheep is a clever and adorable schemer, but my true love for inventive scientist Gromit is unmatched.
• Japan trip: not a crêpe, burned down/fell over/sank into swamp.

I have a lot more photos from Japan, and the queue is full of all photos chronologically following that trip. Yes, I evilly withhold content from you while informing you of its existence. I am the gatekeeper of Lila-related ephemera, kneel before me! etc., etc.


This post's theme word is gloze, the transitive verb "to minimize or to explain away," the intransitive verb "to use flattery; to make an explanation; to shine brightly," or the noun "a comment; flattery; a pretense." His gloze glozes, but it is a gloze rather than glozing.

*As a theorist, I acknowledge that a factor-of-two approximation may dissatisfy others, but it depends if you measure from the maximum in the time interval or the average. High variance in the past decade, is my point. Yes, I have the data (much to my theorist shame).

... burned down, fell over, THEN sank into the swamp...

The fire brigades and construction squads just could not catch a break with Osaka Castle.

"The center of the castle is called Hommaru and in the case of Osaka Castle, the government palace was situated in Hommaru. The palace built in the Toyotomi period was burned down in 1615 during the Summer War of Osaka. Later the Tokugawa Shogunate rebuilt the castle together with the palace but again it was burned to ashes in 1868 during the civil wars of the Meiji Restoration. In 1885 a part of the palace in Wakayama Castel was moved to this place and was called Kishu-Goten Mansion but this mansion too was burned down in 1847."

The castle grounds are a huge nested set of walled and moated compounds, and it was not particularly clear which pieces had burned down when, although some very involved infographic maps attempted to portray it. This is not helped by the fact that the entire zone shifted, grew and shrank, over the course of these several hundred fire-swept years.

This plaque --- freestanding in an open area --- also notably does not describe when, or by whom, any of the currently-standing structures (mostly stone) were built. I remain clueless, but delighted. I do not think that a Western cultural location would ever have such a frank and unabated listing of the various destructions the area had suffered. And the details! Not simply burned, but burned to ashes, a complete obliteration into tiny constituent particles and released energy.


This post's theme word is adjure, "to command solemnly," or "to request earnestly." The shogun adjured that the castle be rebuilt --- this time, of fireproof stone.

Shaun le mouton

Shaun le mouton is a clever little lamb,the clear bellwether of his flock and a clever manipulator of human and canine mental states. He mostly uses his powers for harmless pranks and playful indulgences, like television and (human) snacks for the sheep. His mortal enemies, the pigs, are individually clever and mean-spirited as a group, but somehow content (or incompetent enough) to stay in their human-designated pen and simply provide sniping laughter from the peanut gallery when his schemes go awry.

One day, his usually mild antics take a sinister turn when they cause the semi-abduction of the farmer, accompanied by a memory-obliterating concussion. The synergy of the displacement of mind and body results in the birth of a new person: the owner, sure, with his shearing skills intact, but with a zen-like lack of mental clutter, no memories of his past and no (apparent) desire to seek the mystery of his presence. The humans in this perverse, inverted world, all present a similar awareness of the present and lack of curiosity of the past, while the sheep (and, to a lesser extent, the other farm animals) have a more familiar human-like long-term memory and perpetual, low-level anxiety about plans to restore the farm, infiltrate the city, escape the dogcatcher, etc. As always, dogs are the go-between, exhibiting characteristics both partly-animal and partly-human.

The forbidding impossibilities of the outside world alternately form apparently-insurmountable barriers to Shaun et al.'s quest (passing as human, finding the farmer in a city of people) and are glossed as trivial (physics, probability, credulity, fashion). Yet somehow, this dissociative horror film wraps up all existential questions with a simple return to the status quo, all within a deceptively short 85 minutes, packed with basic questions of existence and purpose, as well as some pretty funny sight gags.

This reviewer also enjoyed the French localization. Sheep, of course, even in ominously-sentient-scheming form, do not speak (save "baaaaaaaaaa!", Shaun's spine-tingling catchphrase), but the human signs and written materials appeared in French, despite cultural indications that this was meant to be English countryside. Consider it another point chalked up for the weird, skew, not-quite-real universe of the film, contributing to the playful yet disquieting tone of the piece overall.

The movie was cute, and I am in a pompous mood. This is the result.



This post's theme word is barmecidal, "unreal," or "giving only an illusion of something." The animated clay figures present an allegory for the trials of real life, a barmecidal universe plagued by only a few of the true daily onslaught of existential challenges.

Another month of retroblogging

Once again I have spent my month sporadically picking over my giant pile of drafted posts. The retroblogging continues! (Previously.) Here are some new old posts that the RSS subscribers may have missed, including an entire series from the October Jaunt to Switzerland.

Photos from travel and everyday life:

• Tower of London Poppies
• Architectural juxtaposition
• The blue Eye
• Further idylls
• Cookie tree
• Skyrim or Switzerland?
• Frame of reference
• Mortal danger
• Honestly, Skyrim
• Acorn legs?
• When clouds touch down

Things I read or watched:

• Parasite
• Infinite Jest
• Ancillary Justice

Miscellaneous:

• Pi day
• Clickbait is sheer humbug

This post's theme word is guerdon, "a reward or recompense." (Also a transitive verb.) May these pointers to backdated historical posts provide their own guerdon.

Voting systems and the Hugo awards

The ciiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiiircle of life! It turns! The stars wheel around (as do we), and another year has passed: welcome back to the announcement of Hugo nominees! As in past years (2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009) I am going to try to read all the fiction (novels, novellae, novelettes, shorts stories) and think about them. (You'll notice that my extensive retroblogging project continues with these lists.) No promises how far I'll get through posting my thoughts this year, but links will follow.

One note before we begin. A fortuitous confluence of events means that I recently heard a seminar by Rida Laraki, on the subject of voting systems. It was a fantastic seminar, and I am certainly going to read some of his research. The takeaway points were these:

1. All voting systems are "wrong" for some scenario of voters and gaming the system. (We just have to decide which flaws we prefer to other flaws. Thanks for the pessimism, Arrow's theorem and similar.)
2. Most of the time spent making a decision should be spent selecting the voting mechanism and explaining it to voters, not campaigning.

How does this relate to the Hugo awards? Well, there's a giant kerfuffle happening right now over a campaign ("Sad Puppies") which produced a voting bloc and dominated the nominations in several categories. It is political, and social, and polarizing in some corners of the blagoweb. My main reaction is that I am sad that this strategy has been so effective, because it quashed the dispersed-voice-nomination-effect which brought me so many wonderful reading lists in past years. I'll still try to read the list below, but I'm appending another list of books I suspect might have made it onto the ballot in the absence of bitter canine whelps.

I feel that (1) trumps (2), since any adjustment to the voting system now will be reactionary, and if we change the voting system every time it produces a result we don't like, that doesn't seem too far (in theoretical terms) from simply weighting certain votes as "better" than others. It's meta-gerrymandering.

Best novel:

• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
• The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson
• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
• Lines of Departure by Marko Kloos
• Skin Game by Jim Butcher

Best novella:

• Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman
• “Flow” by Arlan Andrews, Sr.
• One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright
• “Pale Realms of Shade” by John C. Wright
• “The Plural of Helen of Troy by John C. Wright

Best novelette:

• “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart
• “Championship B’tok” by Edward M. Lerner
• The Day the World Turned Upside Down by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
• “The Journeyman: In the Stone House” by Michael F. Flynn
• “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” by Rajnar Vajra

Best short story:

• “Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet
• “On A Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli
• “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds” by John C. Wright
• “Totaled” by Kary English
• “Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa

Suggestions I've gleaned from elsewhere:

• Echopraxia by Peter Watts
• The Peripheral by William Gibson
• Lock In by Jon Scalzi
• The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
• The Martian by Andy Weir
• My Real Children by Jo Walton
• Annihilation / Authority / Acceptance (trilogy) by Jeff Vandermeer
• The City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennet
• Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey
• Defenders by Will McIntosh
• The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
• The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey
• The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
• Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson
• Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta
• The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
• Trial by Fire by Charles E. Gannon
• Coming Home by Jack McDevitt

... and now I am out of time to look for more possible-nominees, so I will certainly not have the time to read this entire list. The fun is in the attempt, of course.

This post's theme word is febrile, "of, relating to, or characterizing a fever; feverish." She entered a state of febrile reading.

Infinite Jest

Phew and egads! I finished rereading Infinite Jest. Relief is accompanied by psychic emptiness, a hollow longing to experience the entire thing again.

... the novel is about many things: fathers and sons; mothers and sons; addiction; communication; entertainment; politics; greatness, mediocrity and failure. It’s a coming of age story alongside a recovery story that is also possibly a love story, all wrapped in a cloak-and-dagger-ish mystery about international realignment and terrorism. Choose your favorite combination and go with it. The book is about a lot of things. -- Mike at Fiction Advocate

The hardest part, psychologically, emotionally, was reading the extremely violent scenes. The Antitoi brothers' deaths, Gately's shooting, the Mt. Dilaudid scene: these are described in straightforward words, treated with the same flat descriptive affect as the extended discussions of drug withdrawal, depression, and early-morning tennis practice. And this consistent authorial treatment is painful to read, because it creates the associative comparison that, for example, being depressed is just as psychically painful as suffering bullets, stabbings, blood loss, head trauma, etc. Reading the violence was unpleasant, not because the violence itself was distasteful or grim or extreme (although those things are true), but because it made so many other things, which had seemed vaguely painful at a clinical remove, become retrospectively intensely painful and excruciating.

Ow.

I understand that this was the a purpose of the book. The reading experience now is colored by DFW's suicide; descriptions of suicidal and anxious, trapped-in-your-own-head scenes are particularly pointed and affecting. When I read:

What's unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. ... everything unendurable was in the head, ... (p. 1055)

or

If a person in physical pain has a hard time attending to anything except that pain, a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell. Everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a hell for one. (p. 859)

... then my heart aches, and I am sympathetic and sorrowful that such pain can exist, and can have hurt someone who could so beautifully express the isolating pain in a way which is anti-isolating, which is relatable and unifies the human experience. Yet the words themselves, and expressing them by such clear and enlightening means, can worsen the problem:

Please learn the pragmatics of expressing fear: sometimes words that seem to express can really invoke. This can be tricky. (p. 226)

The novel balances on this edge, not by a sustained series of tiny nudges, but by massive swoops to either side: extreme fear, personality-obliterating anxiety, emotions invoked and clinically discussed and manipulated, each in turn. Rote cliches repeated until they gain meaning, lose it, and eventually become both antaclastically significant and a series of meaningless phonemes.

One overarching goal, or conclusion, or hypothesis of the novel has stood out to me in a few places, on different rereads. It is the conclusive-sounding, earnest, non-ironic idea that we need to give ourselves away.

American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret. (p. 74)

This is echoed later, with links that grab many of the other threads of the novel.

It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately---the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into. (p. 1102)

Certainly the drug-addiction plots, the tennis-academy plots, the terrorist-plotting plots, the militant grammarians, the film studies, the weird undercover assignments, the personal vendettas --- they all fall under this neat summary: the characters care deeply, dedicate their lives to giving their lives away. Although many of them phrase it as an escape rather than a gift; they all seem to be trying to flee some personal fear by this selfless giving-away of themselves.

It seems that Infinite Jest is fractally interesting. Every closer examination reveals another lurking meaning. I have the sense that each individual sentence could be deconstructed in this way, fruitfully although perhaps meaninglessly: the book holds together so well, it seems unlikely that its individually analyzed components would be as effective at achieving its goals. And in any case, I've written a dissertation already, and have no interest in sinking my time into this recondite time-sponge, especially since it will likely reduce my own enjoyment of the novel. In the end, I let the book describe my feelings about it:

This should not be rendered in exposition like this... (p. 113)

... so, what about rendering it in Legos?


This post's theme word is cathexis, "the concentration of mental energy on one particular person, idea, or object (especially to an unhealthy degree)." Infinite Jest uses the word "cathexis" effectively, as well as embodying in several different ways the never-ending loop of self-reflexive cathexis-spurred paralysis.

Pi day

Happy π day!*

Adapting to my locale, I used mirabelles (illegal to import to the US!) and a toaster oven to celebrate. The severe limitations of my micro-kitchen and single pie dish mean that I was limited to one celebratory dessert, and not the usual half-dozen-plus-board-game-party.

Happy dessert! Celebrated on nerd forums everywhere. You may also be interested in these resources: (1) Sad that pi day is over? (2) Rant against pi day: Vi day.


This post's theme word is diktat, "an order or decree imposed without popular consent or upon a defeated party." The Gregorian calendar's vagaries of calculation and representation compel the diktat: pi day occurs on a bleak, cold day in March, when pie fruit is least available in the northern hemisphere.

*It is π day for places that write the date US-style: month/day/year. For European-style dates (day/month/year), π day either doesn't exist or will take place the 3rd of February, next year (which, after all, will be the 14th month of 2015, in a manner of reckoning). I also like Vi Hart's "Engineer's Pi Day" on 3/14/16... see you next year!

Clickbait is sheer humbug

An instance in which the precision and clarity of the writing (and sad continued state of the English language) means that the word "modern" has not become dated:

... modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.

This ancient criticism from Orwell's Politics and the English Language applies today. A robot can make plausible spammy content titles,just by using formulas and "long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else." We should call clickbait "sheer humbug". (Although I advocate the adoption of this formulaic phrase, I am aware that such encouragement and behavior is exactly what Orwell rails against. A self-aware twinkle in my phrase-adopting eye.)

I'm rereading Infinite Jest as a way to purge such language from my mind, whether by frightening it away or by overwriting those parts of memory. If truly "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity", then Infinite Jest, for all its meandering ,difficult sentences and apparent lack of clarity, is overwhelmingly, achingly sincere. And in each style-separated section, DFW does convey something very particular and clear. It's just the kind of clarity that lets you see the many layers of sediment lying beneath the lens and the still water. I really like this book (and Orwell).


This post's theme word is snowclone, "a hackneyed sentence structure." Denigrating overused sentences is the new rock and roll... psych! Snowclone'd.

Ancillary Sword

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Sword is the sequel to Ancillary Justice, her knockout first scifi novel. All the excellent elements are there --- multiple simultaneous interwoven viewpoints, indignant outrage, powerlessness in the face of structural inequality. The book is about a spaceship in the body of a person, which body is itself often in other spaceships, and so of course the book is about boundaries and personality and what elements of a mind one can be aware of, and not aware of, and how each person must make conscious decisions that shape her character. Especially, of course, the supreme tyrant, in thousands of bodies, currently having a civil war over a little disagreement with herself.

The book is excellent. I have no idea how the author managed it, but it is supremely impressive. The characters develop meaningfully; the setting changes, without escalating to the Fate of the Universe Lies on One Heroine's Shoulders. Like Ursula K. Le Guin, Ann Leckie makes human-sized problems, daily issues of real life, have real-life-style focus of her books, while still mattering to a larger plot. And it's presented in an intellectually and emotionally engaging way. The mind boggles at the number of things she has juggled here, perfectly. seemingly-effortlessly.

It's weird that there are three types of ship: Justices, Swords, and Mercies, and in book I the main character is a Justice, and the book is called Ancillary Justice, but in book II the main character is captain of a Mercy, and the book is called Ancillary Sword. And of course book III is called Ancillary Mercy, since that's the third type of ship, and it's nice to finish the trilogy off on the note of mercy, but in the interests of evenness, will the third book focus its action on a Sword-class ship? I wonder. Just for structure, you see, because I'm sure that whatever Ann Leckie has plotted is magnificent and deeply satisfying and engaging on every level.


This post's theme word is monish, "to warn; to admonish." The AIs monish, but few humans heed.

Australian laundry

I encounter Australians when I do my laundry.

Every. Single. Time.

They peer at the machines (labelled in French) and the posters of instructions (in French) and the fire-escape instructions (French) and even the change-making machine (guess which language). Then, inevitably, they cheerily ask me for help: "Can you speak English? How does this work?"

And it's great. They are adorable at this. This one even tried to ask in French if I could speak English. But then again, he's the only stranger I've spoken to in months who correctly placed my origin as NY and not England. (My accent --- in English or French --- baffles the French, or they just default to assuming that English-speakers are from England. It's cute? I guess. Bizarre, to my ear.)

Since this happens with such predictable regularity, no matter what day of week I do my laundry, I grow more and more impressed with several (correlated) possibilities:

1. Australians visit Paris often;
2. Many Australians visit Paris;
3. Australians do laundry while travelling (possibly because the remoteness of Australia limits the amount of brought laundry, or lengthens the standard trip duration);
4. Australians with no knowledge of the local language nevertheless venture into strange regions and do not let linguistics limit their activities;

... and so on.The Australian launderers are always friendly, happy to chat, enjoying their trip, and pleasantly doing their laundry-chore like responsible adults. My interactions have all been positive, from the retired couple to the various students during (their) summer break, to assorted month-in-Europe travellers who work until they have enough money, then jet around the world, enjoying what it has to offer.

In this season, that seems to be mostly rain.


This post's theme word is enchiridion, "a handbook or manual." An English-language enchiridion at the laundromat would receive daily use.

When clouds touch down

Even Parisian natives tell me that the view from my apartment is picturesque.

This cloud came down to visit, and blocked my view of the two windmills uphill. It almost looks like the stereotyped rooftops with their chimney-clusters continue on forever.

This post's theme word is etiolate, "to make pale by preventing exposure to sunlight" or "to make weak by stunting the growth of" or "to become pale, weak, or stunted". The fog etiolated the ground-dwelling plants.

Acorn legs?

This window display looks like a strange, associative word puzzle.

Disembodied legs and acorns?  I don't get it. Ankle scales? Acorn knee? My brain keeps trying to
solve the puzzle, even though I know it's not a puzzle.


This post's theme word is lignify, "to convert into wood," or "to become wood or woody." The baby oak window display lignified my mind.

Honestly, Skyrim

I swear, I was on my way to see the jarl when I got distracted by these window-boxes of that one herb I'm collecting for a side-quest.

I keep trying to visit the wizard enchanter in his tower, but I can't figure out the right combination of riddle-answering, pick-pocketing keys, and outsneaking the guards, in order to gain access to the uppermost tower-chamber. 

In the meantime, I walk the flower-bridge and finish side-quests.


This post's theme word is cacique, "a local political boss." After claiming the eminently defensible river-centered tower as his headquarters, the cacique strengthened his political grip on the surrounding waterfront properties.

Mortal danger

Yep. This warning infographic is completely clear:

Possible interpretation: "do not use front crawl to race powered watercraft!" or maybe "boats hereabouts occasionally gain sentience and attack lone swimmers." Perhaps it means "there is a strong wind near the ground, which will push you into the spanking robot!"

In either case, the language barrier provides a completely clear and unimpeded avenue for comprehension. ("Lebensgefahr" means mortal danger. Clearly.)


This post's theme word is sitzfleisch, "the ability to sit through or tolerate something boring," or "the ability to endure or persist in a task." Strong selective forces ensure that all fully-matured, adult Swiss residents have super sitzfleisch and singular serenity.

Frame of reference

The framing suggests one direction of gravity; the framed, another.

Dark silhouettes in the foreground give no additional hints. Overhead dangling backpack-straps give light context. Distant lake suggests. The sound, if you could hear it, would give away the whole game: giant gears, grinding in track-inset teeth. We climb a mountain.

The view is well worth the auditory attack of the train experience. A clear sky, clouded only distantly and intermittently by sports more active than mountaintop viewing: paragliding, helicopter tours, gliding. (A glider buzzed our lookout point, profiting from the mountain's updraft.)

My instinct, looking out over such a well-curated landscape of diverse blue, light green, dark green, road, city, and house-tiles, is to figure out the ruleset and try to optimally manage my resources. Because this view, if nothing else, makes it clear that all of Switzerland is a giant (German-style) resource management game. Sheep for wood?

Frames of reference affect perception. The general approach adopted by tourists is this: seeing something is good, seeing more things is better; higher vantage points see more things; higher vantage points are better. The flow of tourists led here, to this sky-scrapingly high cablecar over a cliffside and down to the village below. Higher is better. But lower has cows, and those cows are wearing cowbells, and those bells are ringing. Audible from a distance (thought: "is that a cowbell?"), from an approaching street ("who's ringing those cowbells? is it a parade?"), and in the pasture itself ("oh, cows are ringing the bells.").


This post's theme word is fangast, fangast, "fit for marriage." Mostly gone are the days where fangast denominated a certain number of cows.

Skyrim or Switzerland?

Skyrim or Switzerland?

Ok, the child with glasses is a giveaway. Yes, that's right: Skyrim*! (*modded)

What you can't feel in this lens-flared photo ("this card is mostly blue") is this: the cold wind off the frigid lake, the warm sun pooling on your skin, the ferry schedule so well-implemented that we left with zero seconds of delay/advance, the multilingual chatter of tourists and locals filling the boat.


This post's theme word is incurvariid, "of or relating to a small family of minute moths." I need three incurvariid samples for my next potion; may I borrow your butteryfly net?

Cookie tree

It seems that cookies do grow on trees! At least, macarons do:

Yet another fantastic Parisian window-display. It seems a shame to waste so many sweets on (1) gluing them to a giant hemisphere, (2) letting them dry out while on display for weeks, and (3) ultimately discarding them as inedible lumps of colored sugar. I wonder about the logistics of taking down such a display: who does it? how long does it take? do the cookies all get composted?


This post's theme word is succuss, "to shake vigorously" (esp. a patient or homeopathic medicine). Do not succuss the macaron tree! --- the fruits will fall when they are ripe.

Further idylls

Quaint and picturesque, with vines growing over the trellised arch above the entrance. Yes, that's right:

It's the sapeuprs-pompiers!

Hip, hip, hooray! The shortest tiny little matching shorts live in this building.


This post's theme word is concupiscent, "lustful; libidinous." The defendent offered no explanation of earlier concupiscent remarks.