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Random 10 8-26-11

Last week. This week:

  1. “Love Spreads” by the Stone Roses
    I forgive you boy, but don’t leave town
  2. “Running Scared” by Roy Orbison, guessed by Occupant
    You turned around and walked away with me
  3. “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen, guessed by Occupant
    Kids are huddled on the beach in a mist
  4. You’re still breathing but you don’t know why
  5. “Trouble” by Ray LaMontagne, guessed by Kim
    She come around and knock me down again
  6. “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” by Mason Jennings (orig. Bob Dylan)
    And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
  7. “Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident” by the Mountain Goats
    Try to leave no traces when you go
  8. “Friday on My Mind” by the Busters (orig. the Easybeats), guessed by Occupant
    Even my old man looks good
  9. “Poem to a Horse” by Shakira
    But they’re rolling papers for your grass
  10. “Expectations” by Belle and Sebastian
    Start in Lingerie, and Doris is your supervisor

Good luck!

Wednesday

They grouped in the road at the top of the rise and looked back. The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world.
– Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

Happy birthday, Mr. McCarthy, sir.

My own day was largely uneventful, at least until my evening commute when the train car I was in flooded. I didn’t notice it for the longest time — long enough that my bag, which I make a habit of placing under my seat, got wet, and then so did my pants leg when I lifted the bag off the floor. I hoped at first that somebody had just spilled a large drink, but when I stood up before my station I saw that it was down the entire length of the car, a long puddle of water. At a guess, the toilet in the bathroom (which, as it happens, was in that car) overflowed.

There’s nothing quite like overflow from a communal toilet underfoot to liven up your evening commute.

Have I mentioned lately how much I don’t like the LIRR?

Beyond that, it was just a typical day, although I did manage to get a fair amount of work done, which was nice. And I finished reading John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I decided to read it after seeing the trailer for the upcoming new movie version. (It was already made into a miniseries starring the late Alec Guinness.) I liked it a lot…but also didn’t. It can be kind of boring and obtuse at times, although I think somewhat deliberately, since it suggests that’s an awful lot of what spycraft is, sifting through old files, making connections, ferreting out the truth. There’s a lot to really like about the novel, which is full of inventive jargon, often suspensful, and often quite dryly funny. But my opinion’s split.

I do think I’ll watch the miniseries and movie, though.

And that was Wednesday: mass transit toilet water and Cold War espionage.

Calm Sunday

I didn’t do a whole lot today. I went to see Source Code and thought it was okay, if ultimately a little unremarkable and forgettable. (I think I pretty much agree with everything Keith Phipps says here*.)

I watched a couple episodes of The Muppet Show on DVD and the first episode of MacGyver on Netflix. Yeah, I know. I also did the Sunday crossword and read a very little bit of Kaleidotrope slush, so it wasn’t all a bust.

I am running into some printing issues with the April issue of Kaleidotrope — of the “dear god toner is expensive and lasts a ridiculously short amount of time” variety. I’m hoping it won’t preclude my having finished copies in hand by next Saturday morning to mail them out, but that does remain a possibility. I think at this point all I can really guarantee is that they will be mailed out in April, though it’s not impossible that that will mean April 31.

* Roger Ebert, on the other hand, was a lot more forgiving; I bring up his review, really, just because of his aside that “After all, space travel beyond the solar system is preposterous…” which I find…well, a little oddly pessimistic. Certainly now space travel is a difficult and costly affair, but need it always be? However difficult, or even unlikely, is it preposterous to think that, in the future we just might have space travel beyond our sun?

That said, the science in Source Code really is fairly preposterous.