not to raise the attention of the trickster goddess

 Found it! A 30-mile (as near as makes no difference) route from home that is reasonably safe and interesting, that passes toilets, and that doesn't risk the attention of the trickster goddess of Amwell Road.

Trickster goddess? Yes. Forget what you learned in church, and forget that misbegotten Loki of the Marvel comic universe. Gods are powerful and arbitrary, and tricksters are the most arbitrary of all. On one occasion she will be sating you with willing partners followed by pizza and ice cream, and on the next she's gauging reactions when she replaces your digestive tract with a turkey vulture. (She has no particular interest in you; she's just as interested in the turkey vulture's comments.)

So today's was a good ride with no divine arbitrariness. Once again, I set the GPS so I couldn't see time or speed, and went at the pace that felt right. I was almost a mile-per-hour faster than yesterday (likely due to the early start; early AM is my time of day), but I was still passed a few times by the younger-and-faster, so I've got some humility to get right with. OTOH, I met a number of the Major Taylors coming the other way on Canal Road; I thought I recognized Ralph S-J's voice as he called out, and I thought I saw Vern H, and I'm SURE I saw and heard Albert B. So that was pleasant.

And I came up on The Excellent Wife (TEW) doing her ride for the day. We did a little bike-y flirtatiousness, and then I came home. Chores later.

I hope to see some of youse on tomorrow's ride out of Claremont. The hills aren't long or high, but they're nasty.

already got that covered

 

Of course it's too small; original here.

So the gal on the right wears my preferred cold-weather gear, the black turtleneck; do you think her sentiment reflects my attitude? (Hint: I'm afraid I do.)

giving up on latin

 Those who know me, know my intellectual snobbiness goes deep. But the little humility I've got demands I point out the limits of my learning. As my ol' pal, Desiderius Erasmus, wrote, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." He wrote it in Latin, so there's some latitude on the exact translation.

I'm giving up on Latin. I've just seen that there is an animated entertainment to be released entitled The Legend of Vox Machina. It's a Dungeons & Dragons story, and not my cup of tea. But that's not what I'm whining about; I'm old and cranky, and I find fault with almost everything that began after about 1980 (we can probably blame Reagan and his supporters).

The title, specifically the Latin, doesn't make sense. Latin uses word endings to determine how a word is used in a sentence, which has the advantage that you can completely upset the word order for the purposes of emphasis (one example of word endings changing to determine meaning in English is the use of 's to show possession; English, however, generally uses word order to determine word use: "man bites dog" is fundamentally different from "dog bites man").

And the word ending of Machina is wrong; it's the ending you would use if the machine in question were the object of a preposition. If you want to say "The Voice of the Machine", you'd say vox machinae.

I'm sure they took the term deus ex machina, "the god from out of the machine", and just yanked the word into their title (the term comes from drama. You can go ask your high-school English teacher about it; it refers to a practice in ancient Greek plays of getting a situation all messed up, then having a god come down from on high to clean things up [sometimes lowered on a mechanical platform, the "machine" in question]. They evidently liked that; modern critics and audiences consider it cheating [if you're gonna have a device fix everything up in act three, you have to set it into your play in act one]). In the case of deus ex machina, the ending of machina  is correct because machina is the object of the preposition ex, "out of".

It rankles just enough that I wrote this post about it. And I know so little Latin, that I usually have to go back to my textbooks (from 1973-74) to make sure I got stuff correct.

There are probably twenty people in the world who would see the title of the show, know enough Latin to know it's incorrect, AND get cranky enough to "spill some ink" about it (is it spilling ink if I'm blogging?).

Enough. I think it's time to give up on Latin. Nobody cares, and I don't need to broadcast any more examples of just what a wacko I am.

how to ride a bike

 

Also: how to do pretty much everything else.

From Incidental Comics, where the guy posts illustrated poems or poetic drawings about life, inspiration, and such. Not in theme, but in concept, he reminds me of William Blake.

Direct link to specific comic here.

almost true

It's not quite true:

Original here.

just do it; it's time.

Original here.

Just do it. It's time.

why he runs is why I ride

Of course it's too small; it might even be too small if you click on the pic. Instead, go check out the original, and then add Incidental Comics to your regular web check-ins.

You're welcome.

this is gonna sound rude

One of the webcomics I've started following is Maximumble. Here's today's offering:

...or you can see the original here.

(I should take the seated guy's advice. Just sayin'.)

...no, after you, my dear gaston

They're not updating right now, but the authors of Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery have the whole archive up.

I ran across this one last night, and it speaks to my condition, as I used to say when I was a Quaker:

Original here.

maybe we're glad he's not alive to see it

Maybe there are only a few of us who will find this as funny as I do. Maybe you've gotta be REALLY geeky AND have grown up in the New York metro area in the 50's and 60's.

Original, of course, from xkcd; aren't you checking him out three times a week anyway?

monsters

Do you remember that post about the Lunar Baboon comic from a couple weeks ago?

He posted another one.

Do you suppose the hair on that monster is supposed to remind you of anybody?

webcomic: lunar baboon

Regular readers may know (or may not; I haven't linked to any of my regulars in these posts for about a year and a half) that I have a few webcomics that I check out regularly. I've got another favorite (just because I check them regularly doesn't mean I like all of them all the time). Below is the most recent Lunar Baboon:

(The quality probably suffered due to compression; you can check out the original.)

I wish he posted more regularly and frequently.

I'm home sick from work today, which makes me feel both guilty (leaving my responsibilities on my coworkers) and anxious (twice in my life, I've returned from a work absence to find my job in jeopardy). This comic (this one, AND the series) helps me to find perspective.

The artist and I have little in common; he's 30 years younger than I, with kid, but I like the way he places his priorities (he makes many comics about priorities).

Check it out.

pretty much anything

Yeah, pretty much. Apparently originally from Fowl Language (which I need to check out); I got it from today's Oddman.

headphones

One of the webcomics I'm newly following. The original is here, but go check out Maximumble.

And no, it doesn't apply to you. I only wear the unplugged headphones to avoid those other people.

Honest.

three from today's oddman

I'm just mopey enough that these helped my mood this insomniac morning:

I think "...moremi-mgadigadi-savuti...." is a nearly-perfect transliteration of the babble of half-overheard chatter.

"Cardbordeaux"! I nearly snorted coffee out my nose. And, even though I'm 60, the one below describes my inner experience as it occurs more frequently than you would think, although the specifics vary wildly:

All from today's Oddman, of course.

a good christmas

It's been a good Christmas. Last night, The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I went to see her side of the family at the Excellent Parents-In-Law; they're both still alive and able to complain about their condition, which, given their ages, is pretty good. It was a late night for me, and I think I got out with only upsetting one person, which is good, for me. We do the whole Polish Wigilia thing, with rituals I can't pronounce, let alone spell, and the singing of Kolędy (Polish carols; my in-laws love to hear their Anglo son-in-law hammer his way through tunes they're familiar with) and the no-meat feast. We do presents, and then TEW and I come home for a quiet Christmas Day, which is really more my speed.

This morning, we got up and did our presents. My mom bought TEW this excellent Doonesbury compendium:

It's bigger than the old Sears catalog that, come to think of it, many of you probably don't remember.

Mom got me this Mad Magazine anthology. My tween and teen years were difficult, and Mad Magazine was one of my regular companions.

Not to be outdone, TEW got me two excellent books. The first is The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, a somewhat-true graphic novel retelling of a partnership that built one of the first computing machines.

The other is The Wake, a novel written from the point of view of those whom William the Conqueror... well... conquered, I guess. It's written in a language that's kind of a best guess at how the folks then might have spoken (and written, if any of 'em had been literate). A quick look reminds me of Hoban's Riddley Walker, which I first read umpteen years ago.

Also under the tree, among the socks and shirts and stuff, was the Oxo crank peppermill. I make popcorn for snack, and to avoid the blood-pressure spike that would ensue from from weighting it down wit the amount of salt I'd like, I use fresh-ground pepper instead. I use enough, though, that using a regular peppermill might lead to carpal tunnel syndrome, or some such. I've used the crank today, and it's great.

The only vaguely bike-related gift is this Bell & Howell waterproof camera that I'm going to take on rides. I saw Tom H had one, and I cast the eye of lust upon it.

After the opening of the gifts, we took a walk (in the drizzle) around Johnson Park, then to breakfast at the diner. The fellow in  the other booth, eating alone, looked like he'd lost his only friend, so we secretly popped for his breakfast just before making our escape. Then home, for naps, stupid internet, and meatloaf for dinner.

Hope your Christmas went as well. How did you do? Any news or stories?

xkcd isolation comic

In a post last month, I pointed out that I didn't think our cell-phone culture will be the end of humanity. Today, I saw this on xkcd:

1. It's an honor to be agreed with by Randall Munroe.
2. You ARE checking in with xkcd regularly, aren't you?

overthinking

Another bit of excellence from the brilliant Randall Munroe:

Original here.

1. I don't know how to follow the citations at the bottom of the panels... but I was sure that study alluded to in panel two was wrong. And I remember hearing about the study referred to in panel three. (That one is of particular interest to me. I have little patience for those who romanticize our primitive past. If it was so good, we'd still be doing it.) 
2. Why on earth aren't you reading XKCD regularly?

free speech

As we Quakers say, this Friend speaks my mind.

I got it from today's Oddman, but it's originally this xkcd comic. If you're not checking out xkcd regularly, you should be (there's been a link over there on the right for years). It's an entertainment and an education. You won't get all of 'em, but google your way to the stuff you don't know; you'll be glad you did. The author/artist, Randall Munroe, subtitles it, "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language," and so I have found it to be.

In other news, a number of my favorite webcomics have either ended or stopped updating. If you have favorites, please let me know. (And we haven't really gotten that far from free speech, have we?)

he would have done it for free

I couldn't improve on that if I tried with both hands for a week. Original at today's Diesel Sweeties.