Mount Vernon, November 2003.

Damme and Damme!

I missed what appears to have been the biggest display of the Northern Lights over the lower 48 since 1988 last night.

Weeping and wailing will occupy me for the evening. There’s some sort of possibility of a replay, I hear tell. If that tip pans out, the wailing will end earlier than scheduled.

Thanks to y2k for trying to alert me, although I’d logged off when his kind email arrived.

“Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me.” This came from a New Jersey-based blogger who shall remain nameless.

The sentiment is drawn from a single and amusing animated video viewable at the site linked above. The song is by Australian oddity TISM. Here’s some info on the band, including the unexpected origin of the band’s name.

Finally, I totally forgot about Jason’s final (?) death day show. Bummer. Michael and Josh have both posted about it. In my defense, I must note that I am stupid.

Manny and I have been corresponding about pork and pears, or pork and apples, and apple and pear brandy.

These are portraits of a fine pair of calvados, now sadly departed from us. I find them heartwarming.

Oolite: “Retro space gaming with modern technology.” Of the ‘space trader’ genre, but where Nova relies on sprites, this renders all. Thus far, it makes docking a rather time-consuming procedure, but once the booze is out of your system, all should be well. The game’s discussion board.

(why is there not a Mir docking game?)

This weekend, Viv and I went to a free production of the play Red Noses in a nearby park. It’s running through the end of the month at the Miller Community Center on 19th, just over the hill from Safeway on 15th.

The play garnered a lukewarm review in the P-I recently, and I have to concur in the judgement that the production was uneven. I’d say it was still a decent summer night in the park – I saw bats! It was a big cast – about twenty – and the outdoor setting was less than ideal, planes overhead drowning out dialog more than once.

The play is about a religious order that formed in France during an outbreak of the plague, advocating holy clowning as a spiritual balm; it’s also a pretty cynical, anti-clerical play (perhaps anti-church is a more accurate phrase). its’ depiction of the Pope, in particular, as a cynical lord of the age, is a central narrative feature.

The actress portraying the Pope (Lisa SanPhillippo) steps beyond the part as written to present a vision of the Pontiff of Avignon as a kind of bug-eyed Ralph Steadman caricature, hideously hilarious, brutally over the top. I suspect that her performance is close to the spirit that the company hoped to execute the play in.

Unfortunately, timing is the essence of comedy, and I rather expect that the sheer volume of the play undermined the possibility of refining the timing of the bits, such as they are in the play. Rebecca Davis, as Father Flote (the founder of the order) is effective and held my attention – but her perfomance lacked bite or menace, which undermines the base concept of clowning to hold death at bay.

I must note that the tipping factor in leading us to see the play was my awareness that a very funny man of known and merciless wit who spends his days engaged (however self-deprecatingly) in a battle against a hideous disease was playing a significant role in the production. His wit leads me to impute a certain persuasiveness to him, and thus I rather wonder if he played a role in the selection of this play.

I was without oxygen, and equally without beer. It was only a matter of time until it was all over. No doubt they would find me, sprawled amidst the rock and snow, feed cap semaphoring over the miles, flickering yellow and off, yellow and off.

If not for the backwash of the snowboarders’ leavings, I would be dead toady, there is little doubt of that.

Enterprise: in cardstock and LOOKING GOOD. Alas for my BAC this night for I itch to assemble it.

via the indispensible genius The Cartoonist.

D2X for MacOS X [via Michael].

Oh lordy. Descent v.1 was the first POV shooter I played in a networked environment, about ten years ago. I remember the first games after we figured out how to get it to operate successfully over the work LAN; we were there until the sun rose. For some reason, most later, more evolved multiplayer FPS games never entertained me as strongly as Descent and Doom.

Wood type – someone’s wood type resource list.

I’m looking for a hand-lettery version of Walbaum medium italic, which I think I have, but can’t find as I don’t recall the name.