136 Creepy Wikipedia articles. via the redoubtable Things. Outstanding.

In other news, Waxy.org turned 10.

Madeline Miller on Vergil.

An interesting conception of consciousness, via Eric Sinclair. Looks fascinating.

and for some reason I forgot about this:

A kid a row in front of us was grabbing fouls as they rolled by and he gave us one.

!

So naturally I got Ken’s autograph.

Ken and I went to the home opener at Safeco tonight. Ken’s theory was that we could get scalped tickets for under face value. We tried, but the lowest price we heard was $50 on the street, and there were no remaining tickets after the start of the game available from the scalpers, so I ended up buying walkup tickets in the 3rd inning for $65.

We were at third just past the visitor’s dugout.

Ichiro made it to third on this at bat.

Sadly, the M’s lost.

sunny, not a cloud in the sky. we headed out to the beach to catch low tide early (for us on a weekend) this morning and were at the park by ten am.

(pic actually taken yesterday)

it was as low a tide as I have seen there, and we found lots of stuff in the tidal flats: twenty-odd golf balls, a large nautiloid shell in perfect condition, a strange hornlike object, a large and feisty crab who wanted to fight me, several starfish in various stages of avian dismemberment, and the neck of what appears to be a century-old bottle, cork still in place.

(crap pic upside down, sorry. why there’s no default photo editor on iOS is unknown to me, or maybe insufficiently discoverable)

oh yeah, I caught a halibut with my bare hands!

we walked all the way to Boeing Creek, about a mile and a half south I guesstimate, to the point from which one can see the point north of Golden Gardens and the shore area of Carkeek Park.

Viv and blue heron.

It must be 74 out now. Once Viv gets off the phone we’re gonna have some nice drinks and chow. I am surprisingly tired.

apparently Camus wrote a thesis on Plotinus and St. Augustine, a task to which I was also set by one of my most challenging and rewarding professors, Shahira Davezac.

Her insistence on a higher-page-count reading list of only (or, at least, English translations of) primary Classical sources, no glosses, no pop retellings, was daunting as shit. I am so, so glad I hacked through all that hairy underbrush. It drove me to a wider, nonspecialist reading of Classicist materials as well as to a skill in close reading which I have had little academic need since acquiring it.

That skill has actually been terribly useful in learning code-related stuff as well as in verbal dispute (a place where it frankly serves the individual but not the polity).

I wonder if Camus’ thesis has been translated. I would love to read it but even his lucid, plain French can exceed my grasp on the page de temps en temps.

Last night I dreamt in French for a significant period of time. Can’t imagine why.

—–

Tonight is the third night in a row that a 1pm NBP game in Sendai, the Softbank Hawks v the Rakuten Eagles, has been widely reflected to the gettin’ places. The Eagles, who ended spring training in the cellar and who lost every game in their opening series, have handily, authoritatively even, beaten the Hawks in games one and two of the stand. It looks cold and windy in Sendai, much like own own chilly spring.

As I write this, it is the bottom of the fourth, Eagles up 2-1, Hawks at bat, one man on first, no outs, new batter up. If Tanaka has seen any action in this stand I have missed it.

I was happy to see his former teammate Iwakuma both in action as a reliever against the Colorado Rockies in the last televised spring training game for the Mariners last week and on the 25-man roster for the start of the US season today. Ken and I are headed to the first Sunday game, hopefully we can waylay the guy at the bullpen for an autograph and a pic.

In the time it took me to write that, the Eagles finished off the Hawks and are back at bat. I realize this is the first home stand and all, but yay!

Epic dream in which I somehow get roped into helping work on a documentary on The Clash and their two wholly imaginary attempts to recreate themselves as a folksinging children’s entertainment outfit.

The dream included:

– a guerilla editing suite, in which one had to constantly be alert for discovery and be prepared to run.

– a banjo allegedly invented by the world’s greatest banjo player, unidentified in the dream, which appeared to have wooden copies of elements of a pre-qwerty circular keyboard attached to the tone ring such that the player could chord the keys in order to engage frailing and chording patterns and eleven strings (somewhat in the manner of an oud).

– the epic re-recording of the bawdy “Whale Boat Song” as the more kiddie-friendly “Walrus Boat Song,” during which Mick and Joe meet again after a hiatus of twenty years, Joe inexplicably wearing a black satin damask cassock, richly detailed. His hair was inadvisably dyed and teased to cover his grey and disguise his retreating hairline, unlike Mick who made no attempt to hide his age.

This last amusing detail, Joe as priest, was somehow prompted by a recent viewing of Michael Palin and John Cleese’s famous appearance on late night British TV in which an Anglican bishop and Malcom Muggeridge treat Palin and Cleese as though they were the Sex Pistols over the then recent and controversial release of “Life of Brian.”

Other contributing factors include having spent a half-hour reviewing the history of the Rutles yesterday, Joes actual and brief stint with the Pogues, and of course, Spinal Tap.

The dream went on and on and on and was utterly exhausting. As you might imagine, the music was not very good (a combination of the terribleness of the idea itself and the fact that my insufficiently-gifted subconscious was having to invent the songs).