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John Heaton
21 November 2009 @ 03:09 pm
Here's a fun way to pass slightly more than ten minutes: try to name as many of the 100 most common words in the English language in twelve minutes. I guessed 64 out of 100, putting me in the 73 percentile. The most common word I missed was ranked #40.

sporcle.com: Can you name the most commonly used words in the English language? (via Dave ex machina)
 
 
John Heaton
20 November 2009 @ 11:29 pm

Ten writers who whose holiday poems were published in The New Yorker:

  1. James Dickey
  2. Roger Angell
  3. Parke Cummings
  4. L. M. Rosenberg
  5. Karl J. Shapiro
  6. John Ciardi
  7. Peter De Vries
  8. E. B. White
  9. Marianne Moore
  10. Calvin Trillin

Yes, I'm still working on pulling together material for my Advent project.

 
 
Current Music: Law & Order: "Shotgun"
 
 
John Heaton
20 November 2009 @ 02:22 pm
First off, I want to pass along some free music that [info]anodyna posted in her journal the other day. These come to us by way Barsuk Records, and they're all quite good, so give them a try.

     Viva Voce - We Do Not Fuck Around (128 kbps MP3, 5.33 MB)
     Nada Surf - See These Bones (128 kbps MP3, 7.09 MB)
     John Vanderslice - White Dove (128 kbps MP3, 5.5 MB)

This next one comes to us from Lake Effect, a daily news magazine on WUWM 89.7 FM in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Jazz guitarist Jack Grassel stopped by the studio the other day, and performed three selections from his new album, El Refugio. This was encoded at a low bitrate, so you audiophiles out there may not be thrilled by the audio quality, but it sounds fine to me on my cheap earbuds.

     Jack Grassel - Live at Lake Effect (64 kbps MP3, 3.57 MB)

Enjoy!
 
 
Current Music: Digable Planets - Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)
 
 
John Heaton
19 November 2009 @ 11:47 pm

Ten programs installed on my computer:

  1. Microsoft Image Composer 1.5
  2. WM Recorder 12.2
  3. Super © Version 2009.bid.35
  4. Applian FLV Player
  5. ISODisk 1.1
  6. Mozilla Firefox 3.5.5
  7. CD/DVD Drive Acoustic Silencer
  8. OpenOffice.org 3.1
  9. PDF Split and Merge
  10. Toshiba Assist

I'm not sure what some of these programs even do.

 
 
John Heaton
18 November 2009 @ 09:52 pm
  • I was a big fan of the MTV game show Remote Control back in the day, so it was quite a shock to hear that host Ken Ober died this weekend at the age of 52. Hard to believe its been 20 years since it was on the air. Here is a complete episode of Remote Control from 2009, complete with annotations by one of the contestant.
    1989 episode of Remote Control, in partes duo )
     
  • Via the indispensable linkster [info]petzipellepingo comes an essay by Donald Graham about America's greatest President, James K. Polk, and his new biography, A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent. Graham says, "Robert Merry has done the impossible: he has made Polk's presidency fascinating;" I say, if you didn't already know his presidency was fascinating, you have not read my icon.
     
  • Speaking of shocking, I was stunned to hear that the City of Chicago is planning to demolish a building by the legendary architect Mies van der Rohe to make way for a train station. It is, to be fair, not one of his major works, but in my opinion tearing down a minor van der Rohe is like tossing a minor Rembrandt into the recycling bin. Adding insult to injury is the train station is poorly sited. It is directly across the street from a vacant lot, raising the question of why anything needs to be demolished to make way for it, and its design is not in character with the modernist buildings to which it will be adjacent.
 
 
John Heaton
18 November 2009 @ 08:45 pm

Ten real people who appear as characters in Sunnyside by Glen David Gold:

  1. Adolph Zukor, mogul
  2. Mildred Harris, actress
  3. ZaSu Pitts, actress
  4. Mary Pickford, actress
  5. Lee Duncan, animal trainer
  6. Charlie Chaplin, actor
  7. Frances Marion, screenwriter
  8. Edmund Ironside, general
  9. Edna Purviance, actress
  10. William G. McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury

I finished Sunnyside this afternoon, and while I enjoyed it -- especially the references to the Anti-Life Equation (a key element of Jack Kirby's Fourth World) and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick (from the novel and movie The Mouse That Roared), and a minor character named after comics blogger Chris Sims -- I don't think it was as good as his previous novel, Carter Beats the Devil. (Though possibly it's just that I have a taste for the formalized, quasi-nonfiction style he used for Carter.)

 
 
Current Music: Phineas & Ferb - Truck-Drivin' Girl
 
 
John Heaton
16 November 2009 @ 11:53 pm

Ten anthologies of Christmas poems and/or stories I recently borrowed from my local library:

  1. Christmas at the New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art
  2. A Child's Christmas Treasury, Mark Daniels, ed.
  3. The Book of Christmas, Fiona Waters, ed.
  4. Diane Goode's American Christmas
  5. The Young Oxford Book of Christmas Poems, Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark, ed.
  6. Michael Foreman's Christmas Treasury
  7. Joy to the World: a Family Christmas Treasury, Anne Keay Beneduce, ed.
  8. It's Christmas! by Jack Prelutsky
  9. The Kingfisher Book of Classic Christmas Stories, Ian Whybrow, ed.
  10. A Little House Christmas: Holiday Stories from the Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The first day of Advent is a mere 13 days away, which means it's almost time for my annual Advent project. This year I'll be posting a seasonal poem or work of prose each day through January 6, a.k.a. the twelfth day of Christmas. I posted poems in 2003 and 2006 as well, but luckily there's no shortage of Christmas literature out there. I'm a little behind schedule this year; normally by this time I would know exactly what poems I would be posting on what day, but this year I'm still choosing the material. I'll be ready by November 29, though.

 
 
Current Music: Unwrapped
 
 
John Heaton
15 November 2009 @ 10:47 pm
Art on Sunday: The Bombardment of Algiers, 27 August 1816 (study)  
George Chambers, Sr. (1803 – 40)
The Bombardment of Algiers, 27 August 1816 (study), ca. 1836
Oil on canvas
Chambers, The Bombardment of Algiers, 27 August 1816 (study)
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England

On August 27, 1816, a British naval squadron under the command of Admiral Sir Edward Pellew arrived in Algiers, seeking the release of the British Consul, who had been detained, and over 1,000 Christian slaves, many being seamen taken prisoner by the so-called Barbary pirates, who had plagued European commerce in the Mediterranean for years. No reply came, so the fleet bombarded Algiers, one of several such attacks that eventually broke the power of the pirates.

This painting has nothing at all to do with any act of piracy against the United Kingdom that may or may not have been undertaken this evening by parties that shall remain nameless. And now I'm off to watch the new Doctor Who special.
 
 
Current Music: The Baljeatles - Somebody Give Me A Grade
 
 
John Heaton
15 November 2009 @ 09:57 pm
Arr!  
I would expect a faster download with 3,537 seeders and 12,541 leechers. Not that I'm admitting to anything.
 
 
Current Music: Rufus Wainwright - California
 
 
John Heaton
14 November 2009 @ 08:37 pm

Just for the Hell of It

All the pretty woman thought
The poems I wrote on love
Were meant for them.
And I always felt badly
About having written them
Just for the hell of it.

Orhan Veli Kanık (1914 – 1950)

 
 
Current Music: Pink - Trouble
 
 
John Heaton
14 November 2009 @ 12:40 pm
I was going to post this on Friday the 13th, but appropriately enough I ran into a bit of bad luck: LJ was down for maintenance when I tried to post it!

 
 
Current Music: Christopher Walken/John Travolta - (You're) Timeless to Me
 
 
John Heaton
13 November 2009 @ 07:11 pm

Ten churches photographed by Camilo José Vergara and currently on display at the National Building Museum as part of their exhibit Storefront Churches:

  1. St. Martin Morning Star Church, Gary, Ind.
  2. Moorish Science Temple of America #25, Detroit
  3. New Life in the Great I Am Church, Jersey City, N.J.
  4. Christ Temple House of Prayer Deliverance, New York
  5. Thank God for Jesus Church, Baltimore
  6. Tabernaculo de fe Iglesia de Dios in Cristo, Los Angeles
  7. Little Widow's Mite B.C. Church, Bronx, N.Y.
  8. Triumph, the Church and Kingdom of God in Christ, Los Angeles
  9. America Come Back to God Evangelistic Church, Brooklyn, N.Y.
  10. St. Matthew of the Highway Church of Christ of the Apostolic Faith, Camden, N.J.

I had a job interview in Silver Spring this morning, and once it was over I decided I may as well stop in D.C. on the way home and take in a museum. I opted for an exhibit I'd heard mentioned on a radio program I had recently listened to, House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage, currently on view at the National Building Museum. Once at the museum, I saw a sign for another exhibit that sounded interesting, Storefront Churches: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara. And it was fascinating, not least because of the unique and colorful names often given to the kind of churches photographed by Vergara.

 
 
Current Music: The Folksmen - Skeletons Of Quinto
 
 
John Heaton
12 November 2009 @ 11:28 pm
Here are some songs by the Pixies, offered for the cultural edification of my friend Scott:







 
 
John Heaton
12 November 2009 @ 11:20 pm

Ten movies released between 2000 and 2009 and where they placed on The Times of London's Best of the Decade list:

  1. The Royal Tenenbaums (#88)
  2. Me, You and Everyone We Know (#80)
  3. Waltz with Bashir (#65)
  4. Spirited Away (#61)
  5. The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King (#50)
  6. Hunger (#10)
  7. Amores Perros (#95)
  8. An Inconvenient Truth (#94)
  9. Dirty Pretty Things (#92)
  10. Far from Heaven (#22)

The full list can be found here. For the record, I've seen 32 of the 100 films on the list. Not too good.

 
 
Current Music: The Pixie - Here Comes Your Man
 
 
John Heaton
11 November 2009 @ 02:08 pm

Ten veterans of the United States Armed Forces:

  1. Micki King, Olympic diver (Air Force)
  2. Susan Still Kilrain, astronaut (Navy)
  3. Jack Dempsey, boxer (Coast Guard)
  4. John Warner, U.S. Senator (Marines)
  5. John Paul Jones, Naval commander (Navy)
  6. Arthur Fiedler, conductor (Coast Guard)
  7. Amanda Hope, Playboy Playmate (Army)
  8. Dennis Rader, serial killer (Air Force)
  9. Gummo Marx, entertainer (Army)
  10. Chuck Swindoll, evangelical Christian pastor (Marines)

Happy Veterans Day!

 
 
Current Music: The New Main Street Singers - The Good Book Song
 
 
John Heaton
10 November 2009 @ 08:38 pm

Ten Sesame Street segments:


  1.  

  2.  

  3.  

  4.  

  5.  

  6.  

  7.  

  8.  

  9.  

It's the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street! Back in the day, I was a bigger fan of Electric Company than of Sesame Street, but to be fair the Electric Company sketches have not aged as gracefully as those from Sesame Street. Plus, the former would not have existed at all if not for the former, so there you go.

 
 
Current Music: Public Enemy - Fight the Power
 
 
John Heaton
09 November 2009 @ 02:27 pm

Ten contributors to State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America and the states about which they wrote:

  1. Alison Bechdel (Vermont)
  2. William T. Vollmann (California)
  3. Anthony Bourdain (New Jersey)
  4. Ha Jin (Georgia)
  5. Alexandra Fuller (Wyoming)
  6. Dagoberto Gilb (Iowa)
  7. Jack Hitt (South Carolina)
  8. Myla Goldberg (Maryland)
  9. Susan Orlean (Ohio)
  10. Jacki Lyden (Missouri)

I first ran across this book in trade paperback form at a bookstore. I looked at the list of contributors on the front covers and read the back cover and decided it looked pretty interesting, so I made a note of the title and resolved to look for it at the library. I put a copy on hold at my local branch a few weeks later, and a week or so ago I picked it up, having in the interim forgotten why I had reserved it in the first place. The copy owned by the LCPL was the hardcover edition, which was designed to evoke those old state guides produced by the WPA in the 30s, and my assumption was that it was in fact a sampling of the works from that series, which didn't enthuse me. But it's not that at all. The resemblance is intentional, though; like the Federal Writers' Project before them, the editors of State by State got some of the best writers in America to contribute to the project, and while the result is not on the same epic scale as the WPA American Guide project, it is an amazing collection of essays by an amazing collection of writers. The essay about my home state of Illinois, by Dave Eggers, is hilarious and well worth the price of admission itself, but the other three I've read so far (Dagoberto Gilb on Iowa, Myla Goldberg on Maryland, and Tony Horwitz on Virginia) are as good, and I can't wait to read the rest, even the ones about loser states like South Carolina. If there's a flaw, it's that there's no essay about the District of Columbia, though there is, included as an afterword, an interview with the Washington writer Edward P. Jones about growing up in the city, which was pretty good for what it was.

 
 
Current Music: Billy Goodrum - Razor Boy
 
 
John Heaton
08 November 2009 @ 02:14 pm
Art on Sunday: Autumn Dogwood  
Jane Larson (born 1922)
Autumn Dogwood, 1977
Sang de boeuf glaze and reduction-fired stoneware with impressed iron stain
Larson, Autumn Dogwood
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington

It's a beautiful autumn day here in northern Virginia. Too bad I'm too tired to appreciate it. This has been an exceptionally busy week.

Incidentally, this pot was not glazed with ox blood. Sang de boeuf is a deep red glaze created by the innovative English pottery studio Ruskin Pottery.
 
 
Current Music: Hugh Grant - Meaningless Kiss
 
 
John Heaton
07 November 2009 @ 01:16 pm

When Autumn Came

This is the way that autumn came to the trees:
it stripped them down to the skin,
left their ebony bodies naked.
It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves,
scattered them over the ground.
Anyone could trample them out of shape
undisturbed by a single moan of protest.

The birds that herald dreams
were exiled from their song,
each voice torn out of its throat.
They dropped into the dust
even before the hunter strung his bow.

Oh, God of May have mercy.
Bless these withered bodies
with the passion of your resurrection;
make their dead veins flow with blood again.

Give some tree the gift of green again.
Let one bird sing.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911 – 1984)
Translated by Naomi Lazard

 
 
Current Music: Tift Merritt - Virginia, No One Can Warn You
 
 
John Heaton
06 November 2009 @ 09:56 pm

Ten countries or territories designated as "Not Free" by Freedom House:

  1. Rwanda
  2. Mauritania
  3. Western Sahara
  4. Saudi Arabia
  5. Laos
  6. Afghanistan
  7. Zimbabwe
  8. Iran
  9. Guinea
  10. Vietnam

Freedom House is a non-profit organization that promotes democracy and human rights. Every year, they issue a report assessing the state of political rights and civil liberties in every country in the world, as well as certain territories ( Western Sahara, for example, is a territory of Morocco). The 2009 report lists 42 countries and 9 territories as "Not Free," meaning the citizens of those regions are subject to significant restrictions on their political rights and civil liberties.

Another interesting fact about Freedom House: they interviewed me for a job this afternoon. I think it would be a terrific place to work, and I feel like the interview went well. Fingers crossed!