My nomination for headline of the day.
The week?
The year?
Head of UCLA Cadaver Program Indicted in Black Market Body Parts Case
Hard to stay ahead of the game.
Just ask Ted Williams.
Is there a separate (but of course, equal) market for African-American body parts?
And, of course . . .
You gotta have heart.
Too.
I'll say no more.
On the occasion of my recent birthday, I wrote here and here of my difficulty in finding numerical significance to the age achieved - well, not exactly achieved; gained would be more accurate - and wandered into the year 1967 (and the miniskirts and hot pants of that time, a weakness of mine on even my best days, I'll admit) without much satisfaction.
How silly of me.
At the age of 67, I am quite obviously . . .
At sixes and sevens.
Nothing more; nothing less.
The A-Man expands upon the subject:
To be "at sixes and sevens" is an English phrase and idiom, common in the United Kingdom. It is used to describe a state of confusion or disarray. The similar phrase "to set the world at six and seven", used by Geoffrey Chaucer, seems, from its context, to mean "to hazard the world" or "to risk one's life".There are several other possible explanations, including one mention of a similar phrase with a different meaning in the Bible (Job 5:19). However, one of the more interesting possibilities is that it may have come from a dispute between the Merchant Taylors' and Skinners' Livery Companies. The two, which were founded in the same year, argued over sixth place in the order of precedence. After more than a century, it was decided that at Easter, the companies would swap between sixth and seventh and feast in each others' halls. Nowadays they alternate in precedence on an annual basis. This is unlikely to be the origin of the phrase, as Chaucer had used it over a century before, but could well have helped to popularise it.
Most likely, the term derives from a complicated dice game called "hazard". It is thought that the expression was originally "to set on cinque and sice" (from the French numerals for five and six). These are the riskiest numbers to shoot for (to "set on"), and anyone who tried for them was considered careless or confused.
Ah yes.
Confused, disorganized, disorderly.
It fits, not because I am frequently in such a state but because of my many years of appreciation for the works of Mr. Chaucer, and for that matter, Charles Dickens as well, whose characters in The Pickwick Papers could readily have been so described.
Fine company, all.
I will enjoy the age . . .
Now.
TLOML and I are off to the theater (or theatre, as she prefers) to see The Producers this afternoon.
We have become quite fond of Saturday matinees, not as a function of advancing age (although there are all those buses lined up in the theater - or theatre; I believe the latter is also the preference of the proprietors of this stage as well - parking lot on these occasions, and the people disembarking from them are not of a younger set) but because it is easier to see to it that our attendance, and seating in our subscribed places for the season, will not be disrupted by other events.
The Boston Globe has a favorable review this morning:
arry Ivan, North Shore Music Theatre's new artistic director and executive producer, launched his inaugural season with a bang this week with the New England regional-theater premiere of "The Producers."Mel Brooks's hilarious musical re-imagining of his 1968 film is an homage to both old-school Broadway musicals and the borscht belt humor Brooks cut his teeth on. As staged by Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Susan Stroman, "The Producers" morphed into an exuberant celebration of musical comedy, with each production number building up to the final crescendo.
Director Bill Burns has his work cut out for him, honoring Stroman's original direction while reworking this proscenium-reliant show onto North Shore's arena stage.
We have enjoyed many such transformations, from the set within the proscenium arch to the set in the round, something this venue does with real skill and creativity, and I have no doubt it has done so on this latest production as well to open its 2008 season.
And so go, and enjoy . . .
We shall.
Toshiba-san came home yesterday, but only for a few hours.
He is still in rehab after his recent collapse, and much remains to be done before he can be relied upon here. The Music Man is in charge of the rehabilitation effort, so he is in good hands, and eventually all will return to normal, I expect.
It just takes time.
No; we'll take care of our own rehabbing responsibilities without calling in others, thank you very much.
We'll soldier on in the meantime - Mr. Lenovo and your humble servant - and keep you informed of progress on the technology front as it occurs.
When, not if.
Women, children and elephants first:
Hope the water isn't too . . . warm.
Nope.
It's more likely to be . . .
Freezing.
Come November.
I'm not, I confess, a gamer.
That may be why.
I've been writing about the so-called gay marriage debate for almost as long as I've been writing here.
Three years ago, I wrote:
We've heard much of the dangers to society should gay marriage ever be legalized.And as those who have been paying attention know, I am in favor of getting government - all government, federal, state and local - out of the marriage-approval business altogether, and the sooner the better.
I'm still in favor of that.
So when The Wall Street Journal declares:
California Ruling Reignites Same-Sex Marriage Debate
I yawn with the realization that I have no kindling to reignite, no fuel for that fire, no need for its warmth against any chill that one more activist court has brought into our society.
We are, I suppose, to be excited by this development.
I am not.
Neither is The Anchoress:
I frankly think it might be a better thing if the religious sacrament of marriage were separated from the legal action of marriage, and vice versa. Perhaps it would be wise for us to adopt the practice in France, where the civil marriage takes place at City Hall, and the Sacramental marriage at the church.A civil union is a mere legality. It can be defined any way the state wishes, but it leaves the church out of the question of who may "legally" be married and protects her ability to bestow sacraments and practice the faith free from "discrimination" lawsuits and the inevitable punitive damages that can materially destroy her.
Depending on how the courts go, we could conceivably see this issue coming up in a lot of states, and then there will be a press for federal recognition of gay marriage. If the church does not take steps to protect herself now, by advocating this sort of separation of duties and intents, she will be spending a lot of time and money (and losing tax-free status, of course) fighting for the right to practice the faith without government interference.
I am not particularly concerned by the financial or other distractions on the workings of the church, candidly.
The church - I speak in generalities here, but there are no innocents on the sacred side of the issues that I can identify - is, to an extent, reaping now what it has sown, the consequences of seeking to monopolize the business of marriage, to assert itself into what seems to me should be the exclusive concern of the civil realm for the church's aggrandizement, for the official confirmation of the church's centrality in such matters.
It is apparent to me that the church's withdrawal from the field of the civil side of marriage, now rather than later, in order to be able to offer the blessing (if the couple wishes to have it) of sacred acknowledgment of the union without government interference, would be most prudent.
Alas, I suspect such prudence will be a long time coming.
But still I believe:
Come . . .
It will.
Well . . .
How's that for a segue - or, if you prefer, a Segway - from the post about women and bicycle-riding?
A bit of a literary wheelie . . .
If I do say so myself.
According to Ann Althouse, there was concern, back in 1899, that women's fascination with the bicycle could be society's undoing.
Or at least in some circles there was:
Women of refinement and exquisite moral training addicted to the use of the bicycle are not infrequently thrown among the uncultivated and degenerate element of both sexes, whose coarse, boisterous, and immoral gestures are heard and seen while speeding along our streets and boulevards.
So wrote the Reverend W.W. Reynolds, pastor of the Brightwood Methodist Church of Indianapolis.
And that, of course, was well before the invention of spandex, too. One can only wonder at the paroxysms of rhetoric from the pulpit such elastics might have prompted, back then.
In my own family, my grandmother - so my mother reported to me - would not permit her daughters to ride bicycles because it was not considered a proper, feminine thing to do, was, in the language of the day, unladylike in the early days of the twentieth century.
Today, calling a young woman (woperson?) a lady is, I am led to understand, considered out-of-line, retrograde, at least mildly insulting, and quite possibly enough to make the person so described . . . uncomfortable.
The ultimate sin of our times.
I wonder whether the Victorian view of women and bicycles might have had anything to do with the notion that vigorous exercise by a young woman could compromise her . . . virginity . . . or at least give the impression of purity lost with the rupturing of the hymen which bicycle-riding might cause.
All things being equal.
Which of course they were not.
I don't know; I'm just wondering.
I was also told that the ban on such exercise ended abruptly when my mother and her sister learned, quite inadvertently, that their mother had, in fact, not only ridden bicycles as a young girl but had actually raced them, for sport and for pleasure.
Ah, in-family hypocrisy.
Can't live with it.
Can't, it seems, live without it . . .
Either.
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