virtues & values: the children’s book

When we were kids, we had a few books from a series that had a great influence on us. They helped steer our imagintion and moral compass in the way that good children's books really should. However, they did not effect such a great influence that we remembered their series title.

For most of our book shopping life, we have been looking for a series called "The Virtue of…" They were tall, thin, white books that each focused on a single person from history: Lincoln. Louis Pasteaur, Will Rogers, Helen Keller, Christopher Columbus, etc. All thes, we had. And each story told the historical person's life through the lense of a virtue they were perhaps known for or that guided their lives.

We knew we wanted these books for our children. And we wanted them for ourselves, to relive our younger days and look at the old footprints by which we once measured our own feet. In every used and new bookstore we entered, we asked after this series. And, to a bookseller, each said, "Wow, that sounds like a great series, but I have never heard of it." We've been seriously buying books for the better part of 15 years now, and it's been a fruitless search.

But you, dear kind reader that you are, knew this tale would have a happy ending. And so this one does. Behold! They are not "The Virtue of…", but "The Value of…" The series itself is called ValueTales. How happy we were to find a "shrine" for ValueTales right here on our very own Internets. We came across their true name through ebay, and there are many for sale on ebay, and some for sale on amazon. But the most we found for sale are through abebooks. And this makes us so very very happy. Alas, they are out of print, but just knowing they are alive and well (and exist! they exist!) on the used books scene is good enough for now.

harassment takes a back burner

So it seems that the whole Winnie Pooh stuff has gone away. We can only hope.

The Taquito is on the way soon. We've been thinking a lot about home movies recently. While we don't have a fancy shmancy movie camera, we do have a small camera that will take clips, and we can take still pictures like a muthatrucker. So what we need is editing. We have been really interested in Jahshaka, the open source movie editing software. But then recently, we've been seeing some free online tools. Eyespot is one such online editor. Jumpcut is another. We haven't tested any of these, but we are willing to check them out.

Another big thing we have been seeing a lot of online talk about it Firefox extensions. Now, we love ourselves some Firefox extensions. And we are aghast to find that SessionSaver is a veritable memory sieve. We've been wondering where our memory has been going (and no, this has nothing to do with the parking lot at the slam). TabMixPlus is supposed to be an excellent replacement for SessionSaver, with a whole bunch of tabbing and memory saving built in. W00t! Plus, our good buddies at lifehacker have been putting together some interesting Firefox extension packages. We're excited about those, too. And lastly, this might be our favorite extension since "Open all linked pictures in new window": DownThemAll! This little bugger downloads everything off a site. It's like pictures and sitesucker all in one. Neat!

Now here are some things we might classify under web design and general design. Firstly is an AJAX-enabled color themer: Color Tool 2.0.1. We've used lots of themers before and this one is nice, too. Next is an awesome gallery of classic arcade artwork. One of our earliest calls to the world of design was the come-on in the darkness of the Bunny Hutch and Corbin Bowl arcades. Wait, rephrase. Oh, nevermind. Behold: The Arcade Art Library! Now granted, we've never Varkon in our lives, but damn, that's some great sideart. And lastly, there is EveryStockPhoto.com. This site collects Creative Commons licensed pictures and allows you to use them at your whims. Nice.

If you've been following our trevails in this blog, you'll know that we have some serious-ass networking issues. We've tried a lot, but we're always willing to try more. We're hoping Network Magic won't bite up in the ass. Yet another software package that promises to make networking easier, file and printer sharing a snap, and etc., etc., etc. And then there's Vyew, which promises easy web conferencing. Though when they require Flash updates and recommend IE and Java, we wonder at how much we would really use the damn thing to begin with.

2 more that we can't leave without telling you about. First is a nifty Ray Carver site we found, and it includes a few (3) audio snippets of Ray laughing. Joy. Pure joy. PinkDome is a local lefty news & politics site our friend Gen tipped us to. So far, we haven't been greatly offended.

literary history 2 – living the history

We took a major break last year. It’s the first paid vacation we have had in 5 years (at least). It was a scant 4 and a half days from work, but with national holidays and weekends, we managed to parlay it into 11 days off. In that time, we had to say an official goodbye to our original site, which fills us with deep sorrow. We traveled some (nothing of note, really), sent out a lot of cards, set up a new computer (a really good deal on an old Apple G3 from Discount Electronics), set up the HD of the HDTV (just in time for the Rose Bowl–Hook ’em Horns!), and appeared in 2 First Night Austin pieces, including one where we managed to draw the ire and curses of standersby during a family friendly show. And last in the wrap up news, we finished our last book of 2005, Bee Season.

We confess that we picked up Bee Season originally when we saw a preview of the movie a few months back, mostly likely in front of March of the Penguins or Murderball. It was something that the father figure, played by Richard Gere, says in the preview that caught our attention. It appears that he is driving in a car, and he talks about how it is our job in the world to help complete creation. This, if you know, is the Jewish doctrine of Tikkun Olam, a strange thing to hear from the mouth of that quirky Buddhist. Anyway, we never actually ended up seeing the movie, but we finished the book while traveling. Was it good? Is it worth recommending? We wish there was another chapter, actually, but over all, it was good. We suppose our desire is a desire to spend more time in Myla Goldberg’s world.

A great book we came across this break is the first volume in a 7-volume set called My People’s Prayerbook. This excellent series describes the origin, history, and meanings of the Siddur, as well as its varieties and editions. (Though we link to amazon.com for the book, we recommend, as always, using addall.com for finding the best overall prices on your books.) Also, on the topic of prayer, we were fortunate enough to find a CD of Shlomo Carlebach music for Shabbat services. Earlier last year, we met his widow and traveled with her, but that is another story.

Thanks to Jason Kotke and his Best of ’05 links, we have come across 2 great interviews of people we greatly admire. The first is Chip Kidd. While not an interview of him, it is an interview by him of Milton Glaser, and that is good enough for us. The second is an interview of Errol Morris, whom we have loved since we caught Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control at the Dobie.

it’s maaaaaaaaaaaaaagic!

Growing up, the most famous magician of the day was Doug Henning. (Sadly, we grew up long after the heyday of Houdini — though Fonzie was happy to do his milkcan trick on Happy Days. But Fonzie doesn;t have a neato action figure.) Then came David Copperfield, the young upstart. And then Sigfried and Roy. And then Penn and Teller (whom we continue to love). And then David Blaine brought a big renaissance of off-the-stage and closeup magic.

But we don’t like David Blaine. Though we can’t pinpoint an exact reason why. Was it the ice block “trick”? Was it the flag pole? Was it the sit in a glass box for a few weeks? Nah, we didn’t like him earlier than that. We didn’t like the “levitation” bit.

And Blaine begat the MindFreak guy, Criss Angel, and this Japanese guy Cyril Takayama. A big trick in both their bags is putting things through glass. What we’ve seen of Criss Angel, we haven’t loved. Maybe it’s that we generally dislike magicians act/say things like “oh my god, how did that happen?” Blaine brought that about, as we recall. But we confess a certain liking for Cyril. Maybe it’s that we can see a fella named Cyril getting his ass whooped plenty in high school.

Metafilter recently pointed us in the way of the x3magic blog, which details a lot of tricks, which we think is pretty neat. Also neat is Glen David Gold’s Carter Beats the Devil.

Calling on Dean Moriarty

On The Road is a longtime favorite. BigSleep666 asked, “Did you finish it and say ‘That’s great literature’?” No, but we didn’t say that about anything when we read it. And it’s a wave we frequently return to.

Of course, when people reflect on OTR, it’s usually on Neal Cassady’s (Dean) talking, his mad driving, and how puppy-dog Jack (Sal) is. Kerouac’s closing bits, which he famously read on the Steve Allen “Tonight Show”, talk about finding fathers, and not finding fathers, and “Don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear?” Sweet stuff.

Especially when you consider the opening, which we think has some of the most overlooked opening lines for any book, and in a way provides the impetus for the entire story:

I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead.

Everything dead. Yes yes yes. Fuck that “no woman / no cry” business! (Sorry, Bob.)

We are cheered by Marc Thorman’s current project, On The Road: A Kerouac Circus, peforming John Cage transformation on Kerouac’s work, including ambient sounds from the locales mentioned in OTR. Nice.

George Lakoff: our hero

One of the best reads of last year was George Lakoff’s Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think. (Admittedly, we were prejudiced in likeing Lakoff. He was our hero and guidepost through metaphor thinking in onlinecommunication — our master’s work.) Lakoff picks apart the varying controlling metaphors that Conservatives (as a group) tend to use and what that says about how they think, and he does the same for Liberals. All in all, quite amazing, and quite telling about how government is run and posed.

Recently, we found that there is also a DVD that you can rent / own.