In the morning I’m off to the Windy City – subject of one of the English language’s greatest poems:
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UPDATE: Arrived safely in Chicago this morning, proceeded to have incredibly memorable day. Lengthy description coming soon.
Filed under: Travel on June 16th, 2008 | No Comments »
Look at this. Would you pay that much for a compact disc of anything? I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Even if it was a CD set of me playing Brahms’ Ballades, I couldn’t imagine paying almost $600.
But I knew something like this would happen when I began watching this auction. The story is that Kyrstian Zimerman made these Brahms recordings, DG released them, then he had second thoughts and the recording was deleted. Very few people have copies of this set, and when any reach the used market they fetch scandalous sums, though not always over $500.
Filed under: Music on June 10th, 2008 | No Comments »
Eight summers ago milk was $2.99/gallon; gasoline was less than $1.50/gallon. As prices for gas have steadily climbed since 2001, I imagined there would be a point at which milk would cost less than gas. In fact, I thought that $4.00 would be that threshold. Not so: milk is now $4.25.
Filed under: Cost of Living, Food on June 8th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The Grange, Alexander Hamilton’s home in New York City, is being moved several blocks to a park. But moving a 200-year old house is no walk in the park, as you can see in an awesome New York Times interactive feature coupled with this article. The pictures speak for themselves, but let’s just say that they moved a two story house over a large church.
Filed under: Current Events, History, Technology on June 7th, 2008 | No Comments »
An op-ed in today’s New York Times regarding this afternoon’s Belmont Stakes got me thinking about another crime perpetrated by the horse racing community, namely the names.
If Big Brown wins today he’ll be the first horse since Affirmed in 1978 to win the Triple Crown. “Affirmed”? What kind of name is that for an animal? “Big Brown” at least makes some sense, but “Funny Cide”, “Casino Drive”, “Touch Gold”, “Empire Maker”? Those aren’t names. They’re just words strung together, some vaguely related to gambling. When they’re brushing these animals in the stable do they actually use these absurd monikers? I hope not.
Maybe I’ll call my cat “Window Dressing” or “Furball Dancer”.
UPDATE: Big Brown loses.
Filed under: Animals, Current Events, Sports on June 7th, 2008 | 1 Comment »