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Stumpage Reports
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Friday, January 31, 2003 :::
Giggle, Giggle, You Got A Funny Name
In my preservation of archival materials class we have started a section on photographs. Thank god. Its interesting and we have a different instructor for this section. I've had him for two other classes and he's a good guy and energetic teacher. Last night he told us about the inventor of photography, a guy named Nicéphore Niepce. That is pronounced Neecy Four Nee Eps. In his first successful experiment he coated the photographic plate with a substance called Bitumen of Judea. Say that out loud a few times: Nicéphore Niepce and Bitumen of Judea, Nicéphore Niepce and Bitumen of Judea. The giggle of girls in the class couldn't stop giggling whenever the teacher said the name, it got infectious and even he couldn't help cracking a smile whenever the name came up. Even though Niepce invented photograpy, Louis Daguerre made it popular and his name is more often associated with it. Another pioneer we get to learn about is Hippolyte Bayard. More giggles.
I don't know if most of my six readers just blow on by any links I put in here, but the Niepce and Daguerre sites above are really nice. If you like old pictures, take a look.
Quote of the Day:
I seem to have been quoting some classic horror stories lately. Couldn't let that little phase pass without quoting the best opening paragraph for a ghost story ever written. Its been quoted a lot, but always worth reading again:
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."
--- Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
::: posted by tom at 10:25 PM
Thursday, January 30, 2003 :::
James Madison Tells It Like It Is
I've been reading a book called A Necessary Evil? Slavery and the Debate Over the Constitution. Of course I'm enjoying the hell out of it. It reprints all the debates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that concerned slavery. The founding fathers did not want to even bring up slavery at the convention. The Constitution did not contain the word "slave" or "slavery" and the document and their debates show some pretty impressive linguistic gymnastics trying to avoid use of the word. I keep running across phrases like "persons in involuntary servitude" and "all other persons." On the surface, the states appeared to be dividing along the lines of small states vs large states, but leave it to James Madison of Virginia to come in and tell the truth:
"Mr. Madison contended the States were divided into different interests not by their difference of size, but by other circumstances; the most material which resulted partly from climate, but principally from the effects of their having or not having slaves. These two causes concurred in forming the great division of interests in the United States."
A lot of people say the events that led to the Civil War really started heating up in the 1830s with the rise of the abolition movement. Others claim the Compromise of 1850 or even the Missouri Compromise in 1820. I don't know, that date keeps getting pushed back for me, James Madison saw what was happening in 1787.
Quote of the Day:
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
--- Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death
::: posted by tom at 11:35 PM
Tuesday, January 28, 2003 :::
Eat My Dust West Virginia Timber Market Report!
If you type the term "stumpage reports" into Google this little blog is now number 1 on the list, beating out the above-mentioned West Virginia Timber Market Report.
I'm not sure how Google rates their search results, I think some of it is based on number of pages that link to that page and maybe the number of hits. It's a nice coincidence that "Stumpage Reports" moved to number 1 on the hit list on the same day I got my 1000th hit. The best I can tell, the Tega Cay Viking Hordes rolled in with hit #999 at 9:23 this morning, shortly followed by #1000 at 9:37 which appeared to be some slob at Plick Mick who sits on their butt all day and surfs the internet. I would have offered a cash prize, but all my spare change goes here.
This was all done with a combination of elan, boredom, self-centeredness, joy de vivre and All-American Pluck. Just when I was thinking of changing the title of this blog to Hookworm Statistics .
Quote of the Day:
The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head.
--- Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, (1820)
::: posted by tom at 9:59 PM
Monday, January 27, 2003 :::
Hookworm Statistics: or, The Rest of the Best
Here is the last of my current stash of racist, goofball, and gross old time headlines from the Raleigh News and Observer. These are all from 1900 to about 1912.
Stabbed to Death. He put his arm around my neck and drove the blade into my body, said the Woman as she lay dying.
A Fatal Despair. Maddened mother shoots herself thro' heart.
Bigamist is Gone.
Baptists Leave Problem to God. He will take care of the Negro Question.
Died From Drug On A Flying Train. Negro Suspected.
Sink Of Iniquity. Horrible Conditions in Insane Asylum.
Bomb In Pocket. Workman Stumbles and is blown to atoms.
Negro Crazy For A Row. He got it alright -- Began shooting, got chased into a wheatfield & nearly out of the world.
Impudent Negro Says He'd Rather Go To Pen Than on Road Gang.
Reading: (selected chapters)
MARC Manual: Understanding and Using MARC by Deborah J. Byrne. (This book makes me want to disembowel myself and hang myself with my own intestines.)
Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts by Frederic Miller.
Providing Reference Services for Archives and Manuscripts by Mary Jo Pugh.
Quotes of the Day:
"In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning."
--- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up
"It made me very happy to see how your journalism stands up as prose and I read the book until three o'clock in the morning. That was the mystic hour that haunted Scott. It always seemed to me the best hour of the night once you had accepted insomnia and no longer worried about your sins."
--- Ernest Hemingway to Edmund Wilson, November 8, 1952.
::: posted by tom at 10:23 PM
Saturday, January 25, 2003 :::
So When You See Your Neighbor Carryin' Somethin': or, I Live Next Door To A Bulemic Ax-Murderer
I have a weird neighbor. Eight out of ten times I go out the door to leave or have a cigarette, her toilet flushes. It just happened ten minutes ago. So I thought maybe she was bulemic. Another thing, these apartments I live in are just big cinderblock cubes stacked on top of one another. Everybody has heavy, sliding wooden doors on our closets, so when your neighbor opens the closet, you know it. I keep my clothes in my closet and maybe open it once or twice a day. She must open hers thirty times a day. She has a burst of opening-the-closet-activity every morning about 2 or 3 AM. I usually go to bed about midnight or a little after, and every night wake up a couple hours later to her booming doors. She just opened her closet now, even as I type.
I can't imagine what anyone could keep in their closet that they would have to get to it that many times a day. The only thing I can think of would be some liquor or a huge supply of crack, but she lives alone, so who's she hiding it from?
To add to the toilet-flushing saga, last week I was outside smoking, I heard several times, large splashes in her toilet, followed by choking, flushing, sound. The only logical conclusion is that she is an ax-murderer. She hides the bodies in her closet, chops them up, and flushes them down the toilet. Someday soon, you will turn on the evening news and see me standing there saying: "I don't know, she was kinda quiet. Kept to herself."
Quote of the Day:
This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off the sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next.
--- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Reading:
A Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John Peter Zenger , by John Peter Zenger (1736).
The Federalist #78, by Alexander Hamilton.
::: posted by tom at 10:27 PM
Thursday, January 23, 2003 :::
Damn, Its Cold Tonight: or, Some of My Favorite Movies
For lack of any other ideas, here's a list of some of my favorite movies with pithy comments describing them. They're not really in order, but the first three could probably be #1 depending on what day you asked me. All the links are to The Internet Movie Database entries.
The Great Escape (1963): I heard someone describe this movie as the ultimate "schoolkids vs the principal" fantasy. This is a great mixture of adventure, humor, sadness, all of it beautifully photographed, and a crackerjack cast.
The Searchers (1956): John Ford's journey into the dark side of the American West. John Wayne played one of his most villianous roles, acted with a subtlety people don't usually associate with the Duke.
King Kong (1933): Simply the greatest love story of all time. "Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast."
Goodfellas (1990): A wonderful retelling of the American Dream. Scorsese's bravura camera work and a rockin' soundtrack complete this 146-minute piece of perfection.
The Ten Commandments (1956): The only guilty pleasure on this list. This thing freaked me out as a kid and I can watch it anytime today. With a cast that included Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Yul Brynner, and Vincent Price, its a wonder the sets lasted through the movie with all the scenery-chewing going on.
Ask me tomorrow and the list might include Jaws (1975), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Quiet Man (1952), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), A Clockwork Orange (1971), This Is Spinal Tap (1984), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and The Cowboys.
Looking at this list, you can probably guess I'm not a big fan of Fellini or anything too avant-garde. I do enjoy movies where people bend the narrative and mess with the with form like Don't Look Now, Requiem For A Dream, Run Lola Run, and Reservoir Dogs. But for a favorite movie, I like a followable storyline, good guys, bad guys, a girl, and keep it under 2 hours unless you are David Lean.
Best Tagline For A Movie:
Who will survive and what will be left of them?
--- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Quote of the Day:
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
--- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
::: posted by tom at 10:21 PM
Tuesday, January 21, 2003 :::
Why Did God Make Kittens So Cute?:, or Shit!
Today when I was having my morning coffee I heard a cat crying outside. That was a little unusual since there are not pets allowed where I live, and I rarely see stray cats. Later, I went outside to have a cigarette and curled up on the cold, wet, cement stairs was the cutest, friendliest, gray, small cat / large kitten. It purred and rubbed my legs as I sat there and smoked.
When I left about a half hour later to have lunch with She Who Shall Not Be Named, I went down a different staircase so I wouldn't have to look at it.
I came back home about five hours later and the little guy was still there, and it was getting colder.
I ended up calling my parents, and they said "bring it over." He settled right in, scoped out their condo, then plopped down on the couch to lick its butt. The cat will stay at their house for a couple days. I put up some signs around where I live in case it belongs to somebody. Normally, I could put something like that out of my mind, but it was so damn cold and the poor little thing hung out on the stairs all day.
If no one calls or my folks can't find a house for it, I guess we'll have to take it to the pound. If I had my own place I'd adopt the little fella in a second. When I graduate, get a job (I hope) and move, I might have to get me a cat.
Other Stuff:
If you want to see a kitten that is so cute you will either fall in love or puke, click here.
Here's the Comic Book Bondage Cover of the Day.
Quote of the Day:
Lee asked his advice on artillery support. Longstreet gave it quietly. They rode back down the line. A quietness was beginning to settle over the field. The sun was rising toward noon. They came back toward Longstreet's line. Lee said, "Well, we have left nothing undone. It is all in the hands of God."
Longstreet thought: it isn't God that is sending those men up that hill.
--- Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels
::: posted by tom at 9:02 PM
Monday, January 20, 2003 :::
Unbridled Hijinks Ensue: or, Life In Pre-OSHA North Carolina
Here's another selection of wacky headlines. The theme this week is accidents. All selections are from the Raleigh News and Observer during the years 1902, 1905, 1909, and 1910.
Head Crushed To Jelly. Farmer loses his life at sawmill by being caught on a belt -- an excellent citizen.
Met A Horrible Death. Boy dragged half mile by runaway mule.
Big Plymouth Rock Rooster Attacked A Little Girl.
Crushed Between Cars. John N. McDonald killed at Harnett Lumber Company mill.
Dynamite - Laden Trains Rush Together. Half a hundred killed by three terrific explosions.
Storm And Floods. A woman blown against a red - hot stove and fatally burned.
Odor Killed Him. Negro dies after removing hide from his horse.
Car Filled With People Drops, Bursts.
Lightning Splits Tent Pole. Killing four men, injuring six, and strewing the place with dead poultry.
Quote of the Day: Damn, this is a long sentence, he's talking about squirrels. This guy really knew how to see.
One would approach at first warily through the shrub oaks, running over the snow - crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratiutious somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were fixed on him, -- for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl, -- wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance, -- I never saw one walk, -- and then suddenly before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time, -- for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect.
--- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Reading:
"The Letters of the Anti-Federalist Farmer" (thumbs down)
Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! by George C. Rable. 671 pages of pure joy, I shouldn't be reading this during school, but the hell with it.
::: posted by tom at 9:57 PM
Bonus Early Morning Quote of the Day, Brought Upon By An Online Chat With Big Ed
The following is from a short story by Ernest Hemingway. This is part of a passage that was at the end of his classic story "Big Two-Hearted River." Gertrude Stein advised him to cut out the extended passage, she said "Those are remarks, not writing." The section was later published in The Nick Adams Stories under the title "On Writing." This could make your brain hurt: as most people know, Hemingway drew on his experiences for his writing. He spent a lot of time as a young man in northern Michigan fishing and camping, as did his protaganist Nick Adams. In this passage, a character named Nick Adams, in a book of Nick Adams stories, talks about the stories he writes, some of which were in the book this was originally intended for, stories Hemingway actually wrote, Nick Adams also refers to writing some non-Nick Adams story that Hemingway wrote and also some stories Hemingway was yet to write. Wrap your brain around that shit. I hate terms like "post-modernism," but "On Writing" is post-modernism written when modernism was just starting. When Hemingway was good he was the best. Enough of my yakkin, here's the quote...
He wanted to write like Cezanne painted.
Cezanne started with all the tricks. Then he broke the whole thing down and built the real thing. It was hell to do. He was the greatest. The greatest for always. It wasn't a cult. He, Nick, wanted to write about country so it would be there like Cezanne had done it in painting. You had to do it from inside yourself. There wasn't any trick. Nobody had ever written about country like that. He felt almost holy about it. It was deadly serious. You could do it if you would fight it out. If you'd lived right with your eyes.
He knew just how Cezanne would paint this stretch of river. God, if only he were here to do it. They died and that was the hell of it. They worked all their lives and then got old and died.
--- Ernest Hemingway, "On Writing"
Coming Tonight: Fun in Pre-OSHA North Carolina
::: posted by tom at 12:27 AM
Saturday, January 18, 2003 :::
Based on what I did today, I had several choices about what I could blog about:
1) The two hours I spent at work arranging the correspondence of the NC Forestry Foundation.
2) Chatting online with Ed the Pope Killer and Bookpimp
3) Reading the writings of the Anti-Federalist Farmer
4) Typing up twelve pages of notes for my Constitutional History Class
5) Watching VH1's 100 Greatest Moments That Rocked TV and talk shit about Michael Jackson
By the overwhelming vote of my six readers, the answer is 5) Watching VH1's 100 Greatest Moments That Rocked TV and talk shit about Michael Jackson
I tuned in around #12 or so, and immediately started wondering what would be #1. The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show seemed an obvious #1 pick to me, but I also considered the debut of MTV and Elvis' 1968 TV Special. Imagine my chagrin when these choices rolled in at numbers 3, 4, and 5. What could possibly be left I wondered. Surely Public Image Limited's appearance on American Bandstand didn't rate that high. Chagrin passed and disgust ensued when Michael Jackson's moonwalk at some motown tv show and Bill Clinton playing the sax on the Arsenio Hall Show came in at numbers 2 and 1.
They showed different people commenting on the events, and concerning the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Eric Idle said "People will still be talking about that 100 years from now." I agree wholeheartedly. I really think unless he gets caught killing people or dies in a spectacular manner, in 100 years no one will know who in the hell Michael Jackson was. (You might could say the same for Clinton). He'll be one of those things that was incredibly popular at one moment in time but will have no lasting impact in the grand scheme of things. Kind of like if you read contemporary reviews of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, everyone compared it unfavorably to a book by Michael Arlen called The Green Hat. That was some incredibly popular book in the early 1920's that no one reads anymore.
It was fun to see again John Belushi mimicking Joe Cocker on Saturday Night Live. Public Image Limited wreaking havoc on American Bandstand was a lame # 96. The best I could tell, the musical moment that freaked me out more than almost anything I'd seen on television, Devo's first appearance on Saturday Night Live, didn't even make the damn list.
Quote of the Day:
This has been quoted a zillion times, but I think it bears repeating. I hardly watched any TV news all week and watched some yesterday and today and got really pissed about George Bush's attempts to get reelected by bombing brown people. So, here is poet Wilfred Owen describing a victim of a poison gas attack:
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing on his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues --
My friend, you would not tell with such high jest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.*
*It is sweet to die for one's country.
--- Wilfred Owen, Dulce Et Decorum Est
::: posted by tom at 8:36 PM
Friday, January 17, 2003 :::
Shameless Self-Promotion Blog #2: or, What I Did On Vacation Last Summer
Last summer to fulfill the internship requirements for my degree, I did photo research for an upcoming book: History For All the People: 100 Years of Public History in North Carolina. Well, some of that work can now be seen on the internet here. If you click on the Introduction and then click on Project Credits I am listed last, at the very bottom of the page.
To check out my work, and see some cool old pictures, take a look at the images and click through the decades along the left side of the page. I dug up a lot of those photos from the musty corners of the state archives and other state agencies and drafted the captions you see underneath the images.
Quote of the Day:
"The Historical Marker Bill went through the legislature as easily as the Thirtieth Division went through the Hindenburg Line, and with fewer casualties."
--- R. D. W. Connor to J. R. McCrary of Lexington, N.C., March 14, 1919
::: posted by tom at 3:24 PM
Thursday, January 16, 2003 :::
Chavez! Summarize Federalist #51 in 60 seconds!: or, The Federalist Papers: A Pleasant Surprise
Well it looks like my Constitutional History class is turning out to be the most interesting of my classes this semester. I saw we were going to be reading The Federalist Papers and I was dreading that. I was pleasantly surprised today when I cracked the book and started reading. The Federalist Papers are a series of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. The authors wrote these essays to encourage the ratification of the United States Constitution and I expected a mass of convoluted eighteenth-century political theory. Instead, so far I have encountered some practical and elegant arguments in favor of the republican form of government. The writers reinforced these arguments with examples that spoke to the situation at hand and at the same time articulated some universal truths.
In an earlier blog entry I railed against a certain long and pretentious sentence. James Madison and these other guys could pull it off though. In Federalist #10, Madison explains the propensity for people to form factions and the dangers those factions can pose to democracies. Some universal truth stuff here, and some stuff pertaining to issues they were concerned with:
"So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property."
That probably doesn't thrill you guys as much as me, but it just felt good to be reading the raw material of our government and understand it. I made nice little outlines of both the essays I had to read, so I will be ready tomorrow when my professor says: "Chavez! Summarize Federalist #51 in sixty seconds!" (He really does that shit.)
Even more exciting, I have The Anti-Federalist Papers to look forward to. I didn't even know there was such a thing. They were mostly written by Patrick Henry and John DeWitt. Who woulda thunk this would be so much fun?
Quotes of the Day: (If you are still with me, my hat's off to you)
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
-- James Madison, The Federalist #51
::: posted by tom at 11:50 PM
Wednesday, January 15, 2003 :::
Shameless Self-Promotion Blog: or, "...and, Slave Owner."
I have a feature on Michaelcosm. Be sure and check it out.
Quote of the Day:
Friar Barnadine: Thou hast committed --
Barabas: Fornication -- but that was in another country; And besides, the wench is dead.
--- Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, Act 4, Scene 1.
::: posted by tom at 9:21 PM
Bonus Afternoon Blog
I recieved an email from one of my six readers who wanted to know what "Chavez" meant. My answer...
"Chavez means nothing. Another guy with a web site always wanted to call someone Chavez and started calling me that a couple years ago and it stuck."
::: posted by tom at 3:02 PM
Tuesday, January 14, 2003 :::
Alphabet Soup: or, XML Shmexml
I went to my automation class tonight and we were lectured on MARC, SGML, EAD, HTML, XML, and the scary-sounding thing known as "Dublin Core".
It all made my head hurt, and I still can't explain what "metadata" is. So I came home to do some reading for my preservation class and slammed into this sentence: "Kuhn's analysis of scientific revolutions, Patrick Wilson's theory of research quality as consensus, the historicity of phenomenology and the textuality of post-structuralism, the rejection of positivism even by Western Marxism, the increasing acceptance of the centrality of interpretation in the social sciences...."
Fuck it, I know what the guy was trying to say. He was trying to say it is difficult for people to reach a consensus on a scale of values to use to measure whether or not a particular item belongs in a library's collection. That was not even half his sentence. I like to use big words and have people think I'm smart but that above statement is bullshit, that never should have been published.
I want my mommy.
Quote of the Day: (if the above was not enough)
" I nevor saw as meney ded yanks in my life" -- George W. Pearsall to his wife, May 11, 1864.
::: posted by tom at 11:20 PM
Monday, January 13, 2003 :::
Crime and Punishment: or, Running Amok in Pre-Great War North Carolina
Here is a selection of crime headlines from the Raleigh News and Observer from the years 1905, 1909 and 1910. Politically incorrect, gross, or just plain wacky, these things either crack me up or horrify me. All of them are exact quotes. More to come next week.
Negro Burned At Stake. The Body Was Riddled With Bullets Before He Was Incinerated.
First Class Fisticuff Was Narrowly Averted.
J.L. Hamon Glibly Denies Everything.
Murder At A Fish Fry.
Bad Negro Runs Amok.
Crazy Man Shoots Two.
Asked Apology, Got Lead. A Duel In The Road Results In One Being Dangerously Wounded.
Glass Blowers Draw Blood. One Man Is Killed And Two Are Wounded In An Affray.
AMOK! AMOK! HIS HAND WAS DEATH!
It Was A Loony Day. How The Police Court Was Queered. Jack Sellers, A Crazy Woman With A Mission As A Prophet And A Banjo-Picking Husband.
Almost A Raving Maniac. Chap Ramsey, Who Killed His Nephew, In Pitiable Plight.
His Neck Was Broken, Death Was Quick. Will Adams Declares Innocence To The End.
Quote of the Day:
"...we are social retards and, most of us are, introverts."
--- 42short, Monday, January 13, 2003 blog entry.
::: posted by tom at 10:51 PM
Sunday, January 12, 2003 :::
What Are You Looking For?
Here is a list of terms people have typed into seach engines that got them to this site:
red mean run son
werewolf t.v. show one eyed hunter
thomas connelly kings mountain
stumpage nc
fridays the clash
michigan stumpage
fernwood tonight
in a burned out basement
chavez and opec nothing but a band of thieves (my personal favorite)
motor city roller rink
bozos on the bus
gluteal crack
charles pinckney nickname
Listening:
I've had this album for about a year, but have really been enjoying it the last couple months. The band is called The Shiners and you can look at their website here. I can best decribe them as a old-time country band with a punk attitude and some electric guitars. Their songs cover sujbects such as: cowboys, rodeo clowns, rodeo whores, moonshiners, roadhouses, and hoodoo men from the holler. The Pennsylvania Jew and Bookpimp have been exposed to them and I encourage the rest of you to check them out. Their lyrics have provided many of the seeming nonsensical descriptive blurbs in the upper left corner of my blog. The album I have, which I can heartily recommend, is Bonnie Blue. They've since released a second, See Rock City, which I haven't heard. If for nothing else, they deserve mention because the played a festival called "Possumpalooza."
Reading:
The Blessings of Liberty: A Concise History of the Constitution of the United States by Michael Benedict.
"The Progress of Constitutional Theory Between the Declaration of Independence and the Meeting of the Philadelphia Convention" by Edward S. Corwin, in The American Historical Review. Vol. 30, No. 3, April 1925.
If the above gets boring, I always have this to fall back on:
Preservation of Inkjet Hardcopies by Martin Jurgens.
Quote of the Day:
"Draw up your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I'll tell you a story."
--- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Notebooks.
::: posted by tom at 9:51 PM
Friday, January 10, 2003 :::
Must Not Have Been A Very Good Movie
Today I was digging through a drawer looking for candidates for the photo contest and I ran across one of those christmas cookie gift tins into which I've been throwing ticket stubs for the last ten years. I had not looked in there for awhile and spent some time pawing through it and enjoyed remembering who I went to the movie, opera, play, or author reading with and what was going on around then.
I have a pretty good memory for that kind of stuff. But here is a list of three movies I have absolutely no memory of. I could not tell you one thing about them. I know I could easily look them up on The Internet Movie Database but right now it's kind of fun to keep it a mystery. Maybe one of you could refresh my memory. If they are something really embarassing, I used to go to movies with a group of 4 or 5 people and we took turns picking the movie and I'm sure it was one of those.
Three Movies I've Seen That I Can't Remember a Single Thing About:
Eraser
The Devil's Own
Up Close and Personal
Three Movies I've Seen That Unfortunately I Do Remember:
Snake Eyes
Phenomenon (I had to have gone with a girl)
Vertical Limit
Three Movies I Saw at the Theatre That Were Really Good That I Haven't Thought About For A Long Time and Would Love to See Again:
Heavenly Creatures
The Straight Story
Gods and Monsters
Quotes of the Day: I've saddled my five readers with some pretty long sentences in the last couple quotes. Here are two of my favorite opening lines for short stories, both models of brevity, and neither one is "Call me Ishmael."
"None of them knew the color of the sky."
--- Stephen Crane, The Open Boat
"This is what happened."
--- Stephen King, The Mist
::: posted by tom at 9:08 PM
Thursday, January 09, 2003 :::
Warriors Against the Forces of Ignorance and Darkness: or, My Class Tonight
I went to my first class this semester tonight. I'm taking three classes so you may have to sit through two more entries like this. After that I'll be tired and bitching about my classes.
Tonight was "Preservation of Archival and Museum Materials." We watched a video called Slow Fires: On the Preservation of the Human Record. The film looked at the problem of entire libraries of books crumbling to bits because of their acidic paper and also other preservation issues. The film took a rather evangelical tone, exhorting librarians and archivists that they were responsible for the "foundations of civilization" and warning about an "upcoming age of darkness." I didn't know I was entering into such a noble profession.
One interesting thing I learned: Ancient Sumerian clay tablets held about 4 characters per inch and last at least 10,000 years. Optical discs can hold 50,000,000 characters and last about 5 years.
Quote of the Day: (Its only one sentence, I love it)
The boy, crouched on his nail keg at the back of the crowded room, knew he smelled cheese, and more: from where he sat he could see the ranked shelves close-packed with the solid, squat, dynamic shapes of tin cans whose labels his stomach read, not from the lettering which meant nothing to his mind but from the scarlet devils and the silver curve of the fish -- this, the cheese which he knew he smelled and the hermetic meat which his intestines believed he smelled coming in intermittent gusts momentary and brief between the constant one, the smell and sense just a little of fear because mostly of despair and grief, the old fierce pull of blood.
--- William Faulkner, Barn Burning
::: posted by tom at 9:54 PM
Two Good Things About Carrboro:
1. Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band at the Arts Center in Carrboro.
2. Richard Thompson at Cats Cradle.
Both concerts in the mid to late 1980's. It was the first time I saw Emmylou and she did "Streets of Baltimore." I've seen her twice since. Second time I saw Richard Thompson and I saw him twice more after that.
Quote of the Day:
Then you could walk across the town and to the café where they say you get your education learning who owed money and who chiseled this from who and why he told him he could kiss his what and who had children by who and who married who before and after what and how long it took for this and that and what the doctor said. Who was so pleased because the bulls were delayed, being unloaded only the day of the fight, naturally weak in the legs, just two passes, poom, and it is all over, he said, and then it rained and the fight postponed a week and that was when he got it.
--- Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
::: posted by tom at 12:56 AM
Tuesday, January 07, 2003 :::
Chapel Hill Redux: or, Sometimes I Wonder If We're Livin' in the Same Land
Today I went to Chapel Hill and picked up about 5 pounds of photocopies of mining company annual reports. I've said it before, and I'm saying it again: something about that place bugs me. Nothing to do with that N.C. State / U.N.C. rivalry crap either. Heck, I'd love to go to school there if I had the time and the money.
There are just so many cutsey stores and restaurants on Franklin Street. I noticed today there is a Gap store there for God's sake. Now I know where all those people I see walking around get their sweaters and scarves. There are no J. Crew or Abercrombie and Fitch stores, obviously the denizens of that campus can get to there though.
Hillsborough Street, the main drag at N.C. State, has a couple of decrepit stop and robs, a bowling alley, two used book stores, and a couple pizza places and sub shops. I feel a lot more comfortable there.
Quote of the Day:
"America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it."
--- Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People
::: posted by tom at 10:08 PM
Sunday, January 05, 2003 :::
Fun With Political Uncorrectness
Today I was at the school library doing my much ballyhooed Confederate Monument research. I looked through old newspapers on microfilm. If it wasn't for the fact it makes you go blind I could do that all day. Besides doing research, I read the ads, the comics, the headlines, and usually get caught up in some totally unrelated breaking news story.
The following is a list a headlines and story snippets from the Raleigh News and Observer during the months of May and June, 1912. Back in the days when the electric chair was known as the "death chair," New York city was called "Gotham," and people who drove too fast were "speed devils."
"Opening of the School for the Feeble-Minded Today"
"Gorilla Pinched: Lenoir County Negro jailed on serious charge...Edgar Phillips, a negro of the gorilla type, was arrested for attempted criminal assault on his own daughter"
"The Death Chair for Floyd Allen"
"Stabs Brother, Sees Him Die. Durham Negro's unusual crime last night."
"Breath of Death Still Rides on Angry Floodwaters"
"A Smutty Day in the Hawkins Case. Evidence in trial largely of unprintable nature."
"Bad Negro Killed. Goldsboro Officer Fatally Shoots Desperado"
"Boy's Head Is Torn From Body. Death Comes in a Horrible Form."
"Posessed With Weird Idea Girl Leaps to Her Death. ...former school teacher believed white slavers are spreading nets for her."
By the way, did you get any work done?
Yes I did. I collected stories on the monument unveilings in Durham and Kinston. I also learned the monument in Windsor, NC, is in front of the courthouse as opposed to in the cemetery.
Quote of the Day:
The nearest approach to healthy sleep we had had for nearly a month was when during blizzards the temperature allowed the warmth of our bodies to thaw some of the ice in our clothing and sleeping-bags into water. The wear and tear on our minds was very great.
--- Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
::: posted by tom at 10:18 PM
Saturday, January 04, 2003 :::
You Just Kinda Wasted My Precious Time: or, So Many Dumb Things to Do
Time wasting stuff keeps piling up and class starts in five days. As I mentioned earlier, killing hours at a time with the new Age of Mythology game.
Finished the Robert McCammon book and also the Peter Benchley. I just started a new (new to me at least), book by Stephen King, From a Buick 8. Yeah, its another haunted car book, but it looks like fun.
I also have a bunch of new Confederate Monument information to assimilate and hopefully tomorrow I will go to the library and hit the old newspapers looking for more.
Sleeping, doing the laundry, lunch with She Who Shall Not Be Named, went into work today because I felt like it. Oh why do I have to go to class and/or work for a living?
Quote of the Day: or, Why I Love Stephen King's Writing So Much:
This is a great example of King cramming enough material in one paragraph that would justify at least three different short stories. Also his great backwoods characters, cheesy but vivid metaphors, brand names, and something just a little bit gross.
"In 1979, the Jenny station at the intersection of SR 32 and the Humboldt Road was still open, but it was staggering badly; OPEC took all the little 'uns out in the end. The mechanic and owner was Herbert "Hugh" Bossey, and on that particular day he was over in Lassburg, getting his teeth looked after -- a bear for his Snickers bars and RC Colas was Hugh Bossey. NO MECH ON DUTY BECAUSE OF TOOTH-AKE, said the sign taped in the window of the garage bay. The pump-jockey was a high school dropout named Bradley Roach, barely out of his teens. This fellow, twenty-two years and untold thousands of beers later, would come along and kill the father of a boy who was not then born, crushing him against the side of a Freuhof box, turning him like a spindle, unrolling him like a noisemaker, spinning him almost skinless into the weeds, and leaving his bloody clothes inside-out on the highway like a magic trick. But all that is in the yet-to-be."
---- Stephen King, From A Buick 8
::: posted by tom at 9:51 PM
Friday, January 03, 2003 :::
The History of the History: or, A Hopping Friday Night With Chavez
Anyone who knows me or reads Stumpage Reports knows I'm fascinated with The Civil War, Confederate Monuments, and Slavery. I'm just as interested in the history of the history of these things. Or maybe a little bit more clearly, how the way people wrote about and understood these subjects changed over the years.
I was in the school library tonight from 5 PM to 10 PM, with a short break for coffee with weird friends, researching the ubiquitous confederate monuments. Besides the staff, I think I was the only person in the library with the exception of a few homeless folks. I've been looking through county histories for information on the monuments. Most of these little books were written between the 1920s and 1950s and were often published privately or by a local historical society. Some of them are a real hoot. I had a great time.
The whole point of the previous two paragraphs: Here's a couple of chapter titles from the above-described books.
"Something About the Colored Folks"
"The Free Negro Problem"
When this type of thinking is presented closer to the present, as opposed to Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, it gets harder and harder to stomach.
A Couple Things to Be Thankful For:
The person behind me at the Burger King drive-thru ordered twelve whoppers.
The new computer game Age of Mythology came out while I don't have to go to class.
Quote of the Day:
We humans live on the edge of the world's largest primal wilderness, the ocean. We venture onto and into it for recreation, relaxation, and exercise, without appreciating the fact that the ocean is the hunting ground for most of the living things on planet Earth.
--- Peter Benchley, Shark Trouble
::: posted by tom at 10:33 PM
Wednesday, January 01, 2003 :::
Sometimes I Wanna take to the Road and Plunder: or, Ain't North Carolina Great?
It dawned on me last November that I had lived in North Carolina for 19 years. It's pretty hard to believe when I think about what was going on when I got here and everything that has happened since, almost all of it good.
Usually when I drive to Charlotte, I take the I-40 and I-85 route. When I drive back to Raleigh, I usually exit the interstate around Salisbury and meander home along some combination of NC 52, 29 and 64. I did that today and drove slowly along, letting folks pass me, enjoying the scenery, and just generally enjoying the moment It felt good to be heading home after a satisfying seven day trip.
I love back roads. When No Name Girl and I go on a trip, as soon as we clear Charlotte we find the quickest way to get off the interstate. Today I drove along, enjoying the little stores, shops, and sights that seem unique to the south. A cinderblock building with "Live Bait and Gameroom" crudely painted on the side elicited a grin. I was happy to see the giant pumpkin made from a haystack is still in place on NC 52 just this side of Misenheimer. Just outside of Asheboro, I stopped at the Zoo City Antique Mall (next door to the Mayberry Restaurant and just down the road from America's Roadhouse) and purchased a tacky clear glass vase with obnoxious polka dots for $3.50. Then near Siler City, as I passed Bill's Motor Inn, I was treated to spectacular rainbow that stretched from horizon to horizon.
I've been lucky, both on my antiquing trips with No Name and my Confederate Monument research, I've got to spend some time in lots of little off the beaten path NC towns. Not just driving through them on the way to the beach, but going to these little towns as a destination and visitingthe antique stores, the library, patronizing a local eatery, and of course the statue in front of the courthouse. Places like Enfield, Louisburg, Tarboro, and Weldon. When I graduate in May, I don't know where in the hell I'll end up, but if it ain't North Carolina I'm gonna miss it.
I saw a haircut place in South Carolina called "Curl Up and Dye."
Reading:
Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon (almost done!)
On deck - Shark Trouble by Peter Benchley. I love school but it sure is fun to read whatever the hell I want to.
Also recommended - If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell.
Quote of the Day:
"Rain drummed harder on the roof. He listened to its muffled roar and thought how simple life had seemed when he was a child and all he had to fear was the pile of pig dung." -- Robert McCammon, Speaks the Nightbird
::: posted by tom at 10:22 PM
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