The elections are coming...

TV news has become so opinionated and paradoxically content free that comedians are taking over as the most credible source of news. I discovered long ago that simply stating truths in the simplest possible language causes people to laugh. I built a successful (at least successful enough for me) career on this phenomenon. I made recommendations, people laughed, then went away and did what I said, never knowing why they did it. It just felt good to them.

Honesty always feels good, if a little funny.

The good humor induced by honesty could explain the lack of humor exuded by our current administration. They are not honest - and dishonesty is never funny.

The Daily Show exploits the humor in unadulterated truth; so do many of the late night talk shows. Click here to see Barack Obama (who is smart and funny and truthful) on the Daily Show. It is a six minute video.

Unfortunately the American voting public has not valued smarts, humor, or honesty in recent elections. Similarly, many democracies elect leaders with none of these qualities. Simply because a majority in a geographic region vote for a leader does not guaranty that the elected leader will have any laudable qualities.

Fall in Chicago

Botanic Gardens - but click on the picture to get the real fall in Chicago.

Not your father's colonoscopy | CRAVE : The CNET Gadget Blog

Everybody my age should appreciate this device.
Not your father's colonoscopy | CRAVE : The CNET Gadget Blog

It gets weirder

Before attending the CSO concert this evening, we went to the rehearsal in the morning and the pre-concert lecture. Both were very interesting; however, I learned more about the story behind the music than is good for anybody's mental health.
The concert included works by Dvorák and Janacek. Both of them continued this weeks Chicago tradition of psychopathic stories about psychopathic characters. I commented on "The Pillowman" and "Salome" earlier this week.

The Dvorák piece (The Golden Spinning Wheel, Op. 109) tells of a young king who falls in love with a girl. She is murdered and dismembered by her stepmother who sends her own daughter off to marry the king. The girl's feet, hands, and eyes are later sent along to the king’s castle. An old man finds the rest of her remains and undertakes a makeover process that involves a golden spinning wheel. After much mucking around, the king races to the forest where he finds the original girl alive and well after the makeover! "Although the King has the murderers torn apart by wolves, Dvořák’s ending is uncomplicated and unequivocally happy." In summary this is how Phillip Huscher (the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) describes the work. Honest. I could not make this up.

"Jenůfa is Janáček's tragic tale of repression, infanticide, and redemption" says the teaser on the CSO website. No kidding. We saw act II (no redemption yet). Here, the step-mother kills her daughter's illegitimate child who was fathered by her nephew whose older brother slashed the daughter's face because he was in love with her and he did not want his brother to be married to her while she was beautiful. As a reward, the step-mother offers the daughter to the slashing brother as a bride.

What has gotten into the producers of Chicago art this week? Halloween, maybe?

Talking about wierd art...

... tonight we went to the new Chicago Lyric Opera performance of "Salome" by Richard Strauss. Last Sunday we saw "The Pillowman" by Martin McDonagh at the Steppenwolf Theatre.

First things first, the Pillowman was billed as a "dark comedy". It is much more dark than comedy. The plot is a tad implausible - but not really. It explores the mind of the psychopath (all the characters are indeed psychopaths) and as a result it appears to be implausible - but that is what psychopathic minds are - they see the implausible as plausible. "The Pillowman" draws one into the minds of psychopaths and treats them as if they are almost normal, but a little odd.

I often said (when I was gainfully employed) that I did not know what I thought until I wrote it down. This blog entry is a prime example of that. I started off intending the slam "The Pillowman" as an over the top piece of writing that delivered neither insight nor amusement. By writing what I thought, I discovered that it did indeed deliver insight - but its amusement quotient is, to me, still fairly low. So, if you want insight with minimal amusement, go see "The Pillowman." Be warned - the writer is a poor editor - the work runs for 2 1/2 hours - way too long.

"Salome" is, of course, a classic. It is also a tad tedious. Some of the music is, well, musical. Much of it sounds like Strauss trying to be Wagner, but never reaching the gut emotional impact that Wagner delivers. The "Dance of the Seven Veils" for me always raises the memory of Peter Sellers and "The Dance of the Seven Army Surplus Blankets." This sort of dilutes the emotional impact of the moment. The Dilbert book "Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy" also came to mind all to often. Despite being based on Oscar Wilde's play, Salome delivered no insights to me. I am a big time fan of Oscar Wilde's works, but the mix of Germanic music and Irish wit just does not work. Mercifully, it was over in 105 minutes with no intermission.

The Dilbert Blog: Good News Day

The Dilbert Blog: Good News Day
WOW is all I can say. Congratulations and best wishes to
Scott Adams

I was rained on today...

... which is not unusual - but what was unusual is that I was walking down my favorite trail (cell phone picture below)...

... listening to recent Podcasts. iTunes has a weekly podcast covering new music that they have added to their site. I listen to it to keep in touch with current pop music. Rod Stewart has made a recording of the Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Have You Ever Seen the Rain". As the chorus started, I felt the first drop of water on my face. Very odd.

Bio: First Memories

My Memory:
I am on a balcony overlooking a beach. A large warplane flies overhead, very noisily, very close. It makes me cry. With an open mouth I create a large blob of chocolate on my mother's white blouse. My mother is upset about the blob.

Factual Background:
I was born in a seaside town in the Cape Province, South Africa. I lived in that town for the first four years of my life, which was during the period now (2006) known as the "Second World War". Hopefully, it will become known as the "Last World War". This note obfuscates the name of the town to delay identity thieves.

I recently visited the town, and the view agrees with my childhood memory. I have never discussed this memory with my mother, so it not a memory that has been reinforced by repetition.

Bio: Preface - Autobiography

It has occurred to me that I have reached an age at which a memoir should be published. It has also occurred to me that nobody really wants to read my memoir, and that I am very unlikely to find a publisher that would pay me for a memoir. So I must publish it on a low cost forum - like here :-)

I shall begin publishing little bits of my memories here. My only justification for doing so is that I wish my ancestors had left me something that let me understand what they thought. These comments may be of little value now - but to future historians digging through internet archives they may provide some glimmer of what people (a person, plus whatever comments this blog attracts, if any) thought. They may also be interesting to my descendents.

The event that prompted me to start this was a radio show (or podcast - I forget which) on the topic of writing. The comment (obvious in retrospect) was that the best way to write 300,000 words was 1,000 words at a time.

I have no word count target - I just want to write what I remember. I do not want the only recorded memory of my life to be an inscription on a gravestone and a large volume of corporate and governmental records. Maybe nobody will read my account - but it will give me satisfaction.

To ease my future editing, I will prefix each memoir item with the characters "Bio:" followed by a possible chapter title. I do not expect chapter titles to gel for a while, so I feel free to change the entries over time.

Comments are solicited, welcomed, but may not be acted upon. These are my memoirs, after all.

Who needs a digital camera, anyhow?

I have recently added a Nikon Coolscan V to my scanner collection. I have been using a Konica-Minolta DiMage Scan Dual IV which I bought a while ago because it was cheaper than the Nikon. What a mistake that was. The DiMage works well enough, but the Nikon is way superior for my way of working. Three major advantages:

• Digital ICE removes dust automagically
• No need to mount slides and film strips in a holder. Just pop them in the front of the box.
• Digital ICE removes dust automagically
• The scans look way better than the DiMage when running on auto-everything. I prefer to work this way, and fix things in Photoshop afterwards. The Nikon scans need very little correction compared to the DiMage
• Did I mention digital ICE removes dust and scratches?

There are three kinds of mathematicians in this world:

1. Those who can count.
2. Those who cannot count.

Leica M6 + Nikon Coolscan V = Leica M8 - $4500

Iphigénie - Staged on a set made for Philip Glass

Last night we saw Iphigenie en Tauride by Gluck at the Lyric Operaa Theatre in Chicago. The performance was brilliantly staged and visually stunning, despite (or, more correctly, because of) the stark simplicity of the set and the costumes. Black and white, broken only by skin tones. The production made brilliant use of lighting and shadows to transform the three panes of blackboard panels into a larger than life son et lumiere show emphasising and punctuating the stage action.
A great start to the new season.