April 2008 Archives

This is a wonderful book for children.
Published for $5.00 on Lulu.com

The purpose of a Sunday Morning, is to allow you to wake up when your body, rather than some mechanical device inspires it.  This is only true if you don’t have children, dogs, cats, snoring spouses or various body parts that require your attention.

It was two out of the bunch this morning.  Which two shall remain unknown to the general public.

A lot of what would have been written here under MUSING has been relegated to Twitter.  Instead of a lengthy rambling, such as this, on Twitter, the entry is limited to 140 characters. 

There are hacks that will allow for longer, and you can load links, mostly miniaturized to expand the thought, but still, it is within the 140 characters I try to frame the complete thought.

All of the RSS readers this morning are filled to the brim.  We opened them.  We closed them. 

We brewed tea and read the news.  Then, after half of the tea was consumed, we wrote this rambling comment.

Now only use four letter words... is how the song Anything Goes speaks about modern authors, mid 20th Century. 

Not so about Sheridan Hay. 

I am currently reading Sheridan’s book, The Secret of Lost Things.  It is an introspective novel about a 15 year-old Tasmanian native transplanted from her antipode island to the smaller island of Manhattan.  There she begins work in a Dickensian bookstore located in the Madison Square-Union Square area of the island.

Each of the characters is fully developed enough to fit their place in the story.  But, though it may seem like one, this is not a book review.  Good Book-Read it!  There, that’s the review.

What it is about is my vocabularic shame.  In my youth I developed the habit of writing words I didn’t know in the  fly.  Then, unless the word was critical to the understanding of the story, I would, at the end of the day, go to the dictionary and learn the word.

Now we have The Kindle.  Each time a word appears that stops me short, and in this book it happens all too often, I use the Kindle’s instant dictionary referral tool. It can honestly be said, I will probably never use any of the words I have looked up in my Vulgate speech, but, I will in Scrabble.  I learned early in life to take Kipling’s words in his poem If, “...nor talk too wise.” to heart.  

What pleases me most is each of these words exactly fits their meaning as used in the sentence and the story.  Where it throws me, is are these the words a barely educated girl from a small village in Tasmania would use?  Have you every held a conversation with an Australian?  They do tend toward the saltier, more colorful side of the English Language.

Again, The Secret of Lost Things, by Sheridan Hay

When I saw the spoiler for the next season of NCIS on TV Squad, I thought this would be a good time to do a graze that didn’t involve my self centered tech interests. 

The added value had to be it was of some interest to me as well.  I won’t link to the NCIS spoiler because at the moment it’s more of a tease than a true spoiler.  It is more like what follows a newscaster when they start the sentence: “Coming right up after this break...” and then you don’t see the item for another two or three breaks.

This link to The Mysteries of Cheers on TV Squad is of some interest.  There is a link to the blog put out by the man who is credited with creating the show.  Here’s a spoiler.  If you visit Boston, take you picture outside the Cheer’s Bar across from the Public Gardens on Beacon.  If you go inside, you may be severely disappointed.

The second TV Squad link is to this news about the SciFi series Firefly.  I have the final DVD, but this is a report of a Blue Ray boxed set.  I will wait till its offered in  the big box store, but I will get it.

The big news here though is from SyFyPortal.com.  It is an article about the  upcoming Stargate Universe series.  This one has spoiler warnings all over it.  The “portal” website looked like its name was Battlestar Galactica Ringtones.

And finally, I was hoping to say nice things about the new online radio from the UK Radiopaq, but, trying it from a raw copy of Firefox 3.05b, I could get none of the links to open without a warning message popping up that I didn’t have this or that plug it. 

Oddly enough, I have had no problem with any other online radio/plog/YouTube embedded video.
Oh, well.