Author: NewMexiKen

A.B. Guthrie

… was born on this date in 1901. His The Big Sky (1946) is one of the classic works of western American literature. Its sequel, The Way West (1949), won the Pulitizer Prize for fiction in 1950.

What “The Big Sky” is: An unflinching account not only of the hardships and dangers of the 1830-1845 mountain man era, but also a glimpse into the meaning of our own existence here — the reasons why we come, the reasons why we stay. True to Guthrie’s bid for honesty, the answers aren’t always pretty.

Guthrie’s Boone Caudill is the quintessential anti-hero, a mean, moody misanthrope who heads West to escape his troubled past as well as to seek adventure and freedom. Ultimately, though, trouble follows Boone — because, after all, the one thing he can’t run away from is himself.

The theme, Guthrie wrote, is “that each man kills the thing he loves.

“If it had any originality at all, it was only that a band of men, the fur-hunters, killed the life they loved and killed it with a thoughtless prodigality perhaps unmatched.”

From The 100 Most Influential Montanans of the Century

‘I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor; Believe me, honey, rich is better.’

Sophia Kalish was born at a farm house along the road in Russia as her mother was emigrating to America on this date in 1884. As Sophie Tucker she was one of the great stars of vaudeville, the Ziegfeld Follies and early movies. In the 1930s she brought elements of nostalgia for the early years of 20th century into her show. She was billed as “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas.” Her hearty sexual appetite was a frequent subject of her songs, unusual for female performers of the era.

In addition to her performing, Sophie Tucker was active in efforts to unionize professional actors, and was elected president of the American Federation of Actors in 1938.

From birth to age eighteen, a girl needs good parents. From eighteen to thirty-five, she needs good looks. From thirty-five to fifty-five, she needs a good personality. From fifty-five on, she needs good cash.

Sophie Tucker

[Reposted from two years ago.]

Best line of the day, last night

“Have you watched any of these confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito? Senators are given thirty minutes to question the guy; thirty minutes exactly. Senator Joe Biden’s question took 23½ minutes. His question took 24 minutes. And Alito is smart. He’s brilliant. Do you know what he said? ‘I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?'”

Jay Leno

Firefighter Takes Test After Giving Birth

A Houston firefighter took a promotion test 12 hours after giving birth because fire officials wouldn’t bend the department’s policy to allow a postponement.

Beda Kent gave birth to a healthy baby daughter at 9 p.m. Tuesday, slept for about 2 1/2 hours and then took the Houston Fire Department captain’s exam at 9 a.m. Wednesday.

“It was uncomfortable,” said Kent, a 12-year veteran of the department. “I had my Motrin — thank God — but that only lasts for so long.”

Civil service regulations mandate that everybody take the test at the same time, District Chief Jack Williams said. A person who is given a temporary reprieve could gain an unfair advantage if they learn about the test from other test-takers, he said.

Yahoo! News

It appears the HFD rule is reasonable, so hurrah for Firefighter Kent for showing such stellar stuff.

The mouse’s 15 minutes of fame continues

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) — Was it really a mouse that burned down Luciano Mares’ house? Or was it just the wind?

Mares’ story of a flaming mouse that scampered from a burning pile of leaves into his rural home Saturday drew international media attention. Then on Monday, the 81-year-old told an Albuquerque television station that strong wind spread burning leaves, leveling his home of more than two decades.

But on Tuesday, Mares and his nephew stood by his original version that a mouse was the culprit.

“That dang mouse crawled in there,” Mares said in a telephone interview from a motel in Fort Sumner, where he is staying with his nephew. “I have an awful hate for those critters.”

CNN.com

Here’s the earlier NewMexiKen entry on the flaming mouse.

Your cell phone records are for sale

Or at least some are. AMERICAblog bought those of Gen. Wesley Clark.

All we needed was General Clark’s cell phone number and our credit card, and 24 hours later we had one hundred calls the general made on his cell phone in November. The calls included a number of calls to Arkansas, to foreign countries, and at least one call to a prominent reporter at the Washington Post.

For what it’s worth

… you might want to reconsider any purchase from D-Link that involves a rebate. NewMexiKen purchased a D-Link bluetooth adapter in late September and sent in the required rebate paperwork within a few days. For three months the online status report has said, “A check request for $10.00 is being processed.” So they had what they needed.

Today I finally called the 800 number. After getting my information, some poor, bored, young-sounding woman said, “Seeing as how it has been so long, I can expedite that check for you and you should be getting it in 7-to-10 business days.”

Not that $10 is any big deal, but it is my $10, and I’m thinking I had to ask or it might never have come.

(Don’t mind me. My back hurts and I just want to rant. I’d just as soon be eaten by an eagle today.)

Look, up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s …

The answer to a scientific “who-done-it?” has revealed a chilling fact: We used to be bird food.

Scientists announced on Thursday they had definitive proof that the “Taung child”, a 2-million year old apeman skull famed as one of the most dramatic human evolutionary finds, was killed and eaten by an eagle.

“Birds used to eat us and in doing so they shaped our behaviour,” said Dr Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand.

Reuters via Yahoo! News

Best line of the day, so far

“The only thing standing between Joe Biden and the presidency is his mouth. That, though, is no small matter. It is a Himalayan barrier, a Sahara of a handicap, a summer’s day in Death Valley, a winter’s night at the pole (either one) — an endless list of metaphors intended to show you both the immensity of the problem and to illustrate it with the op-ed version of excess.”

Richard Cohen, who just takes the Senator apart, including this:

“But his tendency, his compulsion, his manic-obsessive running of the mouth has become the functional equivalent of womanizing or some other character weakness that disqualifies a man for the presidency.”

NewMexiKen mentioned Biden’s longwindedness yesterday.

I’m so tired of this game

So, do I understand this correctly? If you have been nominated to an important position of public trust — let’s just say Supreme Court Justice — the idea is to go before a Senate committee and obfuscate your positions and background. The reason you do this I guess, is so that some of the people’s elected representatives won’t have a reason to vote against you.

Do I have it right?

Do you suppose that is what the Framers intended in Article II of the Constitution when they wrote “and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate”?

It’s enough to drive you to tears.

It’s the birthday

… of two fat loudmouths. Kirstie Alley and Rush Limbaugh both turn 55 today.

… of a skinny loudmouth. Howard Stern is 52 today.

… of a billionaire. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, is 42.

… of three classic singers of their genre: Ray Price is 80, Ruth Brown is 78 and Glenn Yarborough is 76.

When Ray Noble Price was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996, many noted that the honor was long overdue. Such feelings weren’t based so much on the longevity of his career or on the number of major hits he has recorded, for in those regards Price was no different from many other deserving artists awaiting induction. More importantly, Price has been one of country’s great innovators. He changed the sound of country music from the late 1950s forward by developing a rhythmic brand of honky-tonk that has been hugely influential ever since. As steel guitarist Don Helms, a veteran of Hank Williams’s Drifting Cowboys once put it, “Ray Price created an era.” (Country Music Hall of Fame)

In the Fifties, Ruth Brown was known as “Miss Rhythm,” a testament to her stature as a female rhythm & blues singer whose only serious competition was Dinah Washington. Signed to Atlantic Records in 1948 by label founders Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson, Brown gave the fledgling company its second-ever hit with “So Long,” a simple, bluesy showcase for her torchy, church- and jazz-schooled voice. Her second single, “Teardrops in My Eyes,” brought out her more swaggering, aggressive side, and she was rewarded with her first Number One R&B hit. For the duration of the Fifties, Brown dominated the R&B charts and even crossed over into rock and roll with some success with “Lucky Lips” (written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller) and “This Little Girl’s Gone Rockin'” (written for Brown by Bobby Darin). But her best work was to be found on such red-hot mid-Fifties R&B sides as “5-10-15 Hours” and “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean.” No less a rock and roll pioneer than Little Richard has credited Brown with influencing his vocal style. Brown’s two dozen hit records helped Atlantic secure its footing in the record industry, a track record for which the young label was referred to as “the House That Ruth Built.” (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)

From his days as the singing mainstay of “The Limeliters” through a long solo career that’s seen its share of hits, Glenn Yarbrough has been a respected interpreter of folk and popular music. He’s had a top hit in “Baby, The Rain Must Fall” and his interpretation of “Seven Daffodils” is the benchmark against which love songs are measured. From his days in a boys choir through today, Glenn’s powerful voice has rung with lusty conviction about all that he cares about. Listen to Glenn Yarbrough. He’s what singing should be. (All Music Guide)

Tuning in

NewMexiKen hasn’t installed the latest version of iTunes yet, though it’s available.

The reason I’ll wait is that this new version, 6.0.2, comes with what some are calling spyware and adware. Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing has more:

Apple’s latest iTunes update, which, by default, switches on the “MiniStore,” an advertising/recommendation section that uses your current song-selection to recommend other songs that you can buy from Apple. In order to accomplish this, it must transmit your listening habits to Apple.

The problem is that Apple doesn’t inform you when you update your iTunes that you’re also turning on a system that transmits your private information to Apple and third-party partners. There’s no indication (apart from the recommendations) that this is going on, nor is there any information about what Apple will do with that information.

Apple has posted an article on How to show or hide the MiniStore in iTunes:

You can show or hide the MiniStore by choosing Show MiniStore or Hide MiniStore in the Edit menu or by clicking the “Show or Hide the MiniStore” button …

iTunes sends data about the song selected in your library to the iTunes Music Store to provide relevant recommendations. When the MiniStore is hidden, this data is not sent to the iTunes Music Store.

Still, Apple should have been more up front about this and made the option a choice to be made on installation. NewMexiKen isn’t paranoid on this privacy stuff. You can’t surf the web all day in fear. What I don’t like is Apple acting like Microsoft. One hopes that if enough of us wait to install the mini-store Apple will get the message.

By the way, in case you’ve wondered, you don’t need an iPod to use iTunes on your Mac or PC.

The other cartel

Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner brings us up to date on Those Poor Realtors:

If I were a Realtor, I might feel right about now that the entire free world has turned against me, having decided I’m a sharp-elbowed, greed-driven hustler trying to preserve an advantage that I don’t deserve. And I’d probably be right. In today’s New York Times is yet another chronicle of how the National Association of Realtors has used its muscle to keep all kinds of competitors, including banks, from taking a dip in its 6% commission pool. The U.S. Justice Dept. has already sued the N.A.R.; now comes word that the Consumer Federation of America is coming after the N.A.R. Here’s the money quote, from the C.F.A.’s executive director, Stephen Brobeck: “Because the industry functions as a cartel, it is able to overcharge consumers tens of billions of dollars a year. Consumers are increasingly wondering why they are often charged more to sell a home than to purchase a new car.”

When NewMexiKen had an agent out, she suggested the commission might be 7%. Probably to pay for more of those obscene signs and business cards realty people have with the glossy glamour shots. They ought to be investigated and sued for those, too.

The year in cities

Kottke has an interesting meme, which he got from Hanna.

Name the places where you spent the night last year.

For NewMexiKen:

Albuquerque*
Denver
Tucson*
Virginia near Washington, D.C.*
Mojave, California
Near Oakland, California*
Yosemite National Park
Jenks, Oklahoma
Shenandoah National Park
Kanab, Utah
Layton, Utah
Ontario, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Seaside, Oregon
Arcata, California
Indio, California
Barstow, California

Not very exciting, just eight states — but lots of time with The Sweeties.

Asterisk indicates more than one occasion.

More judicial activism

Unborn children don’t count when it comes to carpool lanes, according to a judge’s ruling.

Even after being fined $367 for improper use of a High Occupancy Vehicle lane, Ahwatukee Foothills resident Candace Dickinson stood by her contention that Arizona traffic laws don’t define what a person is, so the child inside her womb justified her use of the lane.

“To follow her philosophy would require officers to carry guns, radios and pregnancy testers, and I don’t think we want to go there,” said Sgt. Dave Norton, the Phoenix police officer who cited Dickinson on Nov. 8.

Reuters via Yahoo! News

As the police officer noted, the intent of the law is to lessen traffic congestion.

Starbucks: Win some, lose some

In a rare setback for the company that made “Frappuccino” a household word, a federal judge ruled that a small New Hampshire coffee roaster can keep selling its “Charbucks” brand coffee beans, following a nearly decade-long legal battle with Starbucks Corp.

Judge Laura Swain of New York federal court ruled last month that consumers were unlikely to be confused between Starbucks and the “Charbucks” and “Mister Charbucks” coffee blends sold by the family-owned Black Bear Micro Roastery of Centre Tuftonboro, New Hampshire.

Reuters via Yahoo! News

You may remember the Astoria, Oregon, woman who lost her case to preserve the name Sambucks.

7,000

Every once in awhile NewMexiKen deletes an entry from months back, for example ones I notice with nothing more than a broken link. And there are many that I deleted along the way, some right after I posted them because they just didn’t seem right.

So, when you get right down to it, there have been many more than 7,000 entries in the 29-plus months this blog has been in business. But, two items ago the official count reached 7,000. That seemed like a milestone worth congratulating myself for.