7 Quick Takes, Take 9
See the “Baby Edition” of 7 Quick Takes at Conversion Diary!
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I got myself added to a list of Catholics on Twitter this week, and over the past two days I’ve been inundated (relatively speaking) with new followers. I feel a vague pressure now to make more of my tweets Profoundly Catholic in response to this new audience. I know that that’s not really the Twitter way, though, and so I’ll do my best to maintain my natural style and content. A hodgepodge of insignificant nonsense and shallow commentary, in other words.
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We’re on the cusp of a major warm-up here in Ithaca, with temperatures going from 5 degrees Fahrenheit this past Monday to nearly 60 over the weekend. It feels like it’s about time, although there’s still the possibility of a major storm or two during the next few weeks. It would be our first. While it’s been a much colder winter than what we’ve had for the past few years, we had very little actual snow. In terms of overall grade, I’m hestitating between a B minus and a B at this point. A late snowfall could still pull that up to a high B, though!
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Now that there’s a Kindle app for the iPhone, the battle’s on between that e-book reader and Stanza, which at one point last year had “outsold” the original Kindle. I’m very interested to see what’s going to happen in this market.
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America’s Funniest Home Videos could actually be an entertaining show if its producers didn’t feel compelled to “enhance” each submission with Fun Sound Effects and cute commentary. Self-annotating your poetry to explain the metaphors employed is a sure-fire way to deflate its impact (there’s an exmaple of this that I can’t quite remember, cited in The (In)complete Book of Failures). There’s a strong argument to be made for letting such things speak for themselves.
And no, I’m not comparing America’s Funniest Home Vidoes to poetry. Perish the thought.
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Did you know that famed diarist Samuel Pepys has a blog? More about Pepys in a minute….
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I believe that Microsoft has passed its zenith and now faces a steady decline into decadence and dissolution, much as the Roman Empire did. And probably a raid and destruction by hordes of wild barbarians.
And I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing.
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Pepying Toms
So Old Man Pepys is sitting in his study just a-writing away. Pretty soon his head starts to nod, and not too much later his head hits the desk with a thump and he noisily slumbers.
About that time, a group of townsmen — loafers, really — happen to pass by. They peek in the window — curiosity gettin’ the better of them — and spot the venerable man enjoying his nap. So they run around to the front of the house and pound on the door in great excitement. In a moment it’s opened by young Sammy Pepys, and they say to him, “Master Pepys, your father’s napping, snoring away in his study!”
But young Sam stomps his foot petulantly and says, “Who told you to go spying on us? I’m really ticked off!”
Then the leader of the group speaks up hastily and apologizes. And another voice from the group ups and squeaks:
“Our clique’s sneak peak wasn’t meant to pique young Pepys by seeking where his dad Pepys sleeps.”
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2 years ago