Month: January 2009

A is for Alphabet


My wife went to Ukraine in the summer of 2002 – the preparation for which was complicated by a bat in our home. A couple years later, a friend of hers made the same teaching trip and gave our newborn daughter an alphabet book from there. The title appears to be AbETKA – it’s the B-looking letter that’s the second, rather than the third letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.

This alphabet was not entirely foreign to me. I grew up in a city called Binghamton, NY, an upstate New York locale with a number of eastern Europeans. The Russians and the Ukrainian churches, primarily Eastern Orthodox in faith, sometimes used both Cyrillic and Latin/Roman.

As for the latter, it has some variety among the many languages in which it appears, such as accented letters (á, è, î), extra letters, and ligatures (two or three letters joined together – æ, e.g). this page has links how to type special letters in Windows, MAC, and HTML,m plus much more.

A recent Final JEOPARDY!: 2009-01-09 ALPHABETS: In the phonetic alphabet used by the U.S. military, it’s the only letter that has the same name as a warrior people.

Ending up with the Jack Kirby alphabet and a couple of Sesame Street pieces:

LINK

LINK

JEOPARDY! – What is Zulu?

ROG

Inauguration Day


I seriously considered taking off today to stay home and just take in the moment. But I had already used one vacation day and two sick days last week.

So I am recording the seven hours of coverage on ABC (10 a.m.-5 p.m.) today Don’t know how much I’ll actually watch, besides the speech, of course, though I am really looking forward the prayer. No, not from that guy. From THIS guy.

I suspect the word inaugural and its variants are often misspelled; two u’s! Reminds me of the word millennium, which was spelled quite often with only one n in 1999 and 2000.

Inauguration Day 2009: Where to Watch on TV, Radio, and Online.

More of Where to Watch Obama’s Inauguration Online.
***
Since Obama’s a comic book fan (Spidey and Batman), it seemed appropriate to Obamatize this picture of the Batmobile.

***
Quincy Jones has started a petition to ask President-Elect Obama to appoint a Secretary of the Arts. While many other countries have had Ministers of Art or Culture for centuries, this country has never created such a position. The country needs the arts–now more than ever. Please take a moment to sign this important petition and then pass it on to your friends and colleagues.

www.petitiononline.com/esnyc/petition.html

Now here’s something that can make a positive difference in the lives of all Americans! MORE ART, LESS WAR!
***
Happy 50th birthday, Arthur at AmeriNZ, a US expat. (His birthday’s on the 21st, but he’s in New Zealand and it’s a time zone thing…)

ROG

ROG

The King Holiday


Isn’t it convenient to always have your birthday on a Monday? (Well, it would be if ML King, Jr., like I do, took his birthday off.) For the record, his birthday was actually January 15 and he would have been 80 this year.

Who woulda thunk that Ronald Reagan would be the one to sign the holiday into law in 1983? It was first in 1986, but there was a lot of resistance, and it wasn’t observed in all 50 states, the Wikipedia notes, until 2000.

I was fascinated by the discussion before it became a holiday, as noted here:

“There were many who opposed the idea of holiday for Dr. King. America had only honored two individuals with national holidays – George Washington and Christopher Columbus. Many felt that there were other Americans that deserved a national holiday, such as Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.

“One barrier to the confirmation was the Senator from Georgia who had denounced Dr. King as a communist.

“Others feared the King holiday was meant as a way to make up to African-Americans for slavery. Other feared the cost of the holiday, with the extra overtime paid to federal workers who had to work on the holiday as well as millions to those federal employees who were paid for the day.

“Senator Bob Dole pointed out to those critics “I suggest they hurry back to their pocket calculators and estimate the cost of 300 years of slavery, followed by a century or more of economic, political and social exclusion and discrimination.”

The Holiday’s Campaign Song
OR LINK
As I pondered writing this piece, before looking up any sources, I was going to suggest that the King holiday WAS a sort of reparations for slavery and its aftermath. And then I discover it’s Bob Dole -BobDole! – who had already laid out an economic justification for the holiday.

There’s a lot out there about the significance of today in light of what’s going to happen tomorrow. Just Google king obama and you’ll know what I mean.

So I hope that today’s more than just a day off. The holiday’s become a day of community service; I believe the Obamas will be doing just that. Quiet reflection would also be OK; there are lots of books out there – here are three picture books recommended by Rebecca, e.g. Or you can go celebrate at an event. Quiet, loud – I don’t care.

One thing to check out, somewhat to my surprise, is the B.C. comic strip for January 18, 2009.

OR LINK

ROG

ROG

Chuck Lorre and I are LikeThis


I was reading Ken Levine’s column last month. By sheer circumstance, I may have been one of the first people in the country to notice the now-famous Chuck Lorre placards:

Times Union Section: LIFE & LEISURE
Page: D7 Date: Wednesday, October 1, 1997
`DHARMA & GREG’ HAS HIDDEN MESSAGE
ROB OWEN TV/Radio writer

The new TV season is only in its second week, but already there has been a noteworthy sighting of minutiae — an insider’s joke during the end credits of ABC’s “Dharma & Greg.”

Roger Green of Albany telephoned last week to point out the producer’s credit for Chuck Lorre Productions that included lines of type running down the screen in less than two seconds.

Green videotaped “Dharma & Greg” and by freeze framing it was able to read the statement from the show’s executive producer, which included the following:

“I believe that the obsessive worship of movie, TV and sports figures is less likely to produce spiritual gain than praying to Thor.”

“I believe that the Laws of Karma do not apply to show business, where good things happen to bad people on a fairly regular basis.”

“I believe when ABC reads this, I’m gonna be in b-i-i-g trouble.”

A spokesperson for the show’s production company said this type of credit is unusual, but wouldn’t confirm whether it will be different each week.

But the lightning-fast statement concluded with this hint: “Please be sure to tune in again to this vanity card for more of my personal beliefs.”

Set your VCRs tonight for just before 9 p.m. and prepare to freeze frame.

Here’s the complete message.

I recall specifically that I taped the new show only because I was about to watch it when my good friend, the late Lillian Johnson, called right at 8:30. So I taped the show on the VCR. Then I watched it immediately thereafter and had a “what was that?” moment.

It was three weeks before I saw the phenomenon mentioned in Entertainment Weekly, so I’m going to assume I was among the first to note it.

See all of Chuck Lorre’s placards, for The Big Bang Theory. Two and a Half Men and Dharma & Greg here. Apparently, he wasn’t doing the messages for Cybill or Grace Under Fire.

Not so incidentally, I can’t help but think of Jenna Elfman whenever I hear about the Dharma Initiative on Lost.
ROG

ROG

QUESTIONS designed to ensure domestic tranquility

Something happened recently, and my wife, who I must note rarely even reads my blogs, said, “Why don’t you ask your readers” about a particular topic. I couldn’t just ask you one simple question, though. I figure I’ll ask you a series of question, all initiated by nearly 10 years of marriage. I’m going to try not to color the responses by what position I take versus what position she takes.

1. Where does your garbage cans reside on the days the garbage isn’t going out: in the front of the house (including the front porch), on the side of the house, or the back of the house?

2. Do you wash your brand-new clothes before you wear them for the first time? Is the answer different if we’re talking outerwear versus underwear?

3. Does it make sense to take dirty clothes from the first floor to the second floor so that they can be sorted, then taken to the basement to be washed?

4. Eating cottage cheese with eggs, the way you’d eat toast with eggs: normal or weird?

5. When your partner comes through the door, how long, if at all, do you wait before asking for a task to be done? (If you’re not currently in a a live-in relationship, think back to when you did. If you’ve never been in such a situation, think about what you would think is appropriate.)

6. Not actually a question. Explain, if you can, the current scoring methodology for figure skating, how to calculate earned run average in baseball and why anyone watches soccer on television.

ROG

ROG
Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial