Thamus's blog, page 1

Last login: 35 hours agoThamus: Thamus is a 90 year old guy from Ireland.; Likes 5,194 pages, 32 videos, 38 photos • 358 fans • Received 152 reviews; Member since Dec 30, 2005

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Tipperary - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: May 2, 9:55am 1 review ireland, travel, lemurs, thanes •http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipperary; Where sheep may safely grave
My travels take me back to the low-rolling hills of Thomond - or, more accurately South Tipperary. Irish exiles never die - they simply go home and fade away into the Celtic mist.
Not that I have any intention of dying or fading, but it's worth doing a preliminary inspection of the lie of the land when you've lived away so long.
The picture is a corner of the Tipperary graveyard where my maternal grandmother has lain for most of the time I have been going through my own brief span of wandering the earth.
This little corner already looks Victorian, perhaps medieval, or even archaeological, compared to the shiny faux-marble, gold-engraved and spotlessly regimented graves of the newly dead in the "modern" churchyards nearby.
It is a startling reminder that not only are our lives brief, but our deaths may be too. These tombstones have grown from new to old and falling, in the same time that I too have moved from new to failing. Not only is grandma gone, but her 11 children are also gone, and even their children are now old fools such as I, wondering how our lives have been slipping past unnoticed.
But enough of morbid philosophy. This is Ireland after all, and while we have a relaxed relationship with death (listen to the Dubliners singing Finnegan's Wake), we have an even better one with life.
There are pubs not far from this rural graveyard (one of them a regular haunt of Martin Sheen, the faux US president). There is the distant sound of music, and old codgers wait with tall tales about the living and the dead.
As the winds whisper through the darkening woods, who knows what sly and evil lemurs lurk in the land, waiting to be lambasted (e.g., viz. EMMUTTMAX, op. cit., ibid.). In their dark castles warrior thanes may sleep still, waiting to be woken by the call to battle. If all that fails, there's still the siren call of the Jameson and the Bushmills...
Yes, time to leave the sheep to safely grave.

[FOOTNOTE: A stumbler asked me the origin of the title quote here. It refers to a very lovely section from the secular Hunting Cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach: Aria 5, "Schafe können sicher weiden" - "Sheep may safely graze."
For the reference to lemurs, thanes and Thomond, see Chronicles of the Celtic-Lemur Galactic War]

Visit Z&rich - Attractions in Z&rich: Apr 29, 7:15am 1 review travel, switzerland, zurich •http://www.visitzurich.org/attraction...; See Zürich and die, like James Joyce
I'm having a brief stopover in Zürich, the Swiss city usually named in surveys as having the best quality of life in the world (the official rebuttal to tiresome Americans forever boasting about being "the world's best.")
Of course, you could argue that Zürich should have been able to get its quality of life right by now, after nearly 2,000 years. But it doesn't always work - Beijing is still working on it.
Strange name Zürich - no one knows its origin or meaning. It was probably Celtic but was first mentioned in writing in the second century as Statio Turicensis (Turicum tax station, for the Romans).
By the 6th century it was already established as Ziurichi, it's origins lost in the mists of the eerily serene and calm Lake Zürich [right].
We Celts have a later important link with Zürich anyway. Ireland's great genius, the novelist James Joyce, died in Zürich in 1941 and is buried at Fluntern cemetery.
We eccentric intra-extraverts also have a link - Carl Jung lived and died in Zürich, and the city isn't a-Freud to honor his memory.
Or, as Joyce himself once observed about his daughter Lucia, "she's a girl who's yung and easily freudened."

kamirs reviews

Apr 24, 1:24pm

41 reviews

stumblers •http://kamir.stumbleupon.com/

Building wings on the way down

"Satisfied by life's simple pleasures she." Kamir, a woman of Long Island, is my 14,000th visitor and so gets my traditional 1,000-visitor free bonus review.
(Someone asked me what would I do about bonus-reviewing some Stumbler I hate. Would I thumbs-down it and tear 'em apart? Easy - I do nothing, and have ignored a couple of 1,000-milestone visitors for different reasons. One, for example, was a pea-brained right-wing redneck, another an innocent teenage new member with only two lines posted).
Kamir, an established mutual friend, I really do like, and thoroughly recommend her site. Her lovely quote from Siddharta himself could describe her own blog:
"All this fleeting world; A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; A flash of lightning in a summer cloud, A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream."
An astute and pleasurable blend of words and images, her site is relaxing and informative. "As a kid I would find these strange green orbs strewn alongside a stream in the woods not far from my home. I never knew what they were or from what tree they grew. I'll wonder no more... Osage Orange." And now, at last, I know too.
More seriously, Kamir introduced me to the "tinted and vintage - beautiful" photography of Irene Suchocki, and delightedly reminded me of a place I know, Gribun Rocks harbour on the Isle of Mull, with a lovely evocative photograph.
You want a laugh? How about some of Kamir's "interesting" cross-breeds of dogs:

Collie + Lhasa Apso produces the Collapso, a dog that folds up for easy transport.
Pointer + Setter = Poinsetter, a traditional Christmas pet.
Pekingese + Lhasa Apso = Peekasso, an abstract dog.
Newfoundland + Basset Hound = Newfound Asset Hound, a dog for financial advisors.
Bull Terrier + Shih Tzu = Bull Shih Tzu, a gregarious but unreliable breed.

As Kamir observes with a Ray Bradbury quote, "First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down." Now that is the spirit of our very best Stumblers. She is one of them. Go visit.

twhirl | a twitter client: Apr 15, 12:19pm 16 reviews internet-tools, social, blogging •http://www.twhirl.org/; Tweeting Thamus gives Twitter a twhirl
For a while I have been tempted to follow the example of the other Luddite curmudgeons here and slam the ass off Twitter as a futile exercise in pointless triviality gone mad.
As the Twitter review by Stumbler Tone the Moan says: "A service that allows you to inform the world when you brush your teeth, which train you are on, and other such important stuff is really needed... What a waste of my life and yours. It's shit like this that makes me consider going back to the abacus."
Agreed! And yet, and yet...
Well, there's still no fool like an old fool, and it's hardly a mark of maturity to scorn everything the young find interesting without giving it a whirl.
Or in this case, a twhirl. Having found this nifty little client called twhirl that lets you post to Twitter from the desktop (multiple accounts even), I've decided to see what all the buzz is about tweeting, which is what I'm told Twitters do.
Yes there's the obvious inanity - "I just got up; I'm having a pee now; I'm eating an apple; I'm noticing already how banal my life is, so now I'm hanging myself."
But it seems there could also be a challenge here for us writing types - can you find something interesting to communicate, and say it in 140 characters?
Would these snippets accumulate into a useful writer's notebook, enhanced by the self-discipline of just keeping it going? Could we make Lemurs' short stories even shorter?
Anyway, I killed an idle half-hour at the airport and signed up. I can't claim I've got the hang of it, or the point of it, or even the feel of it, other than feeling like an official Twit. If any of my Stumbler friends have this dirty little secret and are also Twitters, please join ("follow") me via the link below for the experiment. It's lonely out there talking nonsense to myself.
About twhirl - it's a snazzy application like an instant messenger and makes tweeting quite painless. You need to download two small things - Adobe Air, which it runs on (link is on the twhirl page), and twhirl itself. Install Adobe Air first, then twhirl, and off you go.
[Then join me at Thamus the Twit]

FOOTNOTE: Thanks to you speedy first responders, especially my dear friend Melluciana from Brazil who was a fast first. I am already surprised at the inventive posts of my few followees. Fascinating. I'll report back in a month on this experiment. It is already showing what the super intelligent and friend-loyal Stumbleupon community does best. Curioser and curioser.

Chronicles of the First Celtic-Lemur Galactic War: Apr 12, 7:28am 6 reviews satire, aliens, lemurs, thanes •http://thamus.blogspot.com/; The Rolling Thanes launch new album for Fetid Species Awareness Week
So I return from my travels to find much commotion in Castle Thomond. It seems the evil leader of the malodorous lemurs (e.g., viz. EMMUTTMAX, op. cit., ibid.) has caused extreme irritation by attempting to upstage the much heralded world tour by the Celtic rock legends, The Rolling Thanes. The tour marks the launch of their bestselling album Lambasting the Lemur in honour of Fetid Species Awareness Week.
It seems that in the absence of the Thane leader abroad, the fiddling furball produced an anemic pirate version of our album cover and attempted to pass it off as some "Made in Madagascar" ripoff by so-called "Stoned Lemurs" and titled Music By Which to Malign Thanes.
As is obvious from the superior quality of the Rolling Thanes album, nobody will be fooled by the hastily cobbled fabrication, coming from a species that considers nit-picking an artistic (probably even musical) activity. True, lemurs are permanently stoned, but no one is likely to pay for recordings of the discordant sounds emanating from their disgusting bodies.
The title track of the Rolling Thanes album, Let's Spend the Night Lambasting Lemurs, has already climbed to the top of the Celtic charts, and the follow-up track Little Rank Rodents is especially popular in the Thomond cat community.
With something for everyone, jazz fans have been raving about the Rolling Thanes venture into their field with the toe-tapping Horny Tonk Lemur and the catchy Tell Me You're Fucking Off has become just that with young Celtic warriors - a cool popular catch-phrase.
While reviewers declare themselves mightily pleased with Lambasting the Lemur, I must confess that for myself, the Rolling Thanes greatest song will always be the early smash hit that launched them - I Can't Get No Rat in Traction (and I tried).

[For newcomers who have no idea what's going on here, the first (sticky) post at the Chronicles of the Celtic-Lemur Galactic War explains all. Speaking of which, if you want to help me get that rat in traction, here's where you need to go]

Foreign Policy In Focus | Postcard from...Nicosia: Apr 9, 1:01pm 1 review politics, news, un, cyprus, nicosia •http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5137; And the wall came tumbling down ...
I flew to Cyprus and headed to Nicosia to watch the historic opening of a barricaded street in the last divided capital city in the world. I wasn't there when the barricades went up and split the city into north (Turkish) and south (Greek) in 1963, but it was still something of a closing circle for me.
I was in Cyprus during the brutal Turkish invasion in 1974 - indeed I fled with wife and child in the car from Kyrenia to Limassol as the Turkish tanks rolled ashore west of Kyrenia where we had rented a holiday home.
It was all very melancholically nostalgic for me (the child is now a married woman 10,000 km away) as my friend George Iacovou, now virtually prime minister of Cyprus since the recent election, opened the Ledra Sreet crossing on the Greek side and the curious crowds lined up to get passes north and south.
There followed a sobering reminder that peace in divided Cyprus has a long way to go. As night fell some 12 hours after the opening ceremony, the barriers slammed down on Ledra Street again as Turkish occupation forces flouted a status quo agreement and penetrated deep into the UN controlled buffer zone between the two sides. Turkish guards refused to leave and the Greek Cypriot government quickly sealed off the checkpoint. After the arrival and mediation of United Nations officials, the Turkish forces withdrew back to their ceasefire positions and the crossing was reopened.
[PICTURE: Left, the sealed Ledra Street, with a Greek guard post, looking north, a week before the opening. Right, the barricade has just come down, and I take this shot from the Turkish side of the border looking south. ©Thamus080403]

New York City: The Waldorf Astoria - Traveller Reviews - Its the Waldorf=Astoria…: Apr 9, 10:40am 1 review travel, new-york, waldorf-astoria •http://www.tripadvisor.ie/ShowUserRev...; 'It's the Waldorf=Astoria, and it's splendid'

Design and the Elastic Mind: Mar 22, 11:33am 31 reviews new-york, modern-art, moma •http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elas...; Designing artistic concepts for elastic minds
If you are interested in design technologies and ideas, then you should dispatch yourself to the Museum of Modern Art as I did during my sojourn in New York. Design And The Elastic Mind is showing until May 27. It is an astonishing journey into 3D Printing, Interface Design, Visualization and Organic Design. It takes the ideas and concepts that excite an Internet readership and offers it for everyone to consider.
Quote: "Over the past twenty-five years, people have weathered dramatic changes in their experience of time, space, matter, and identity. Individuals cope daily with a multitude of changes in scale and pace - working across several time zones, traveling with relative ease between satellite maps and nanoscale images, and being inundated with information. Adaptability is an ancestral distinction of intelligence, but today's instant variations in rhythm call for something stronger: elasticity, the product of adaptability plus acceleration."
I was utterly astonished to see that two stumblers (chperret and nadimchaudry) reviewing this site have dismissed the exhibition as "Nazi" and "fascist" in concept. You may not like the pace of technology and some of the avant garde design concepts that are scrabbling to make it more user friendly for a bemused public, but to label MoMA's laudable effort to make sense of it all as "fascism" is ludicrous - nay, even malicious - beyond misunderstanding.
One of design's most fundamental tasks is to stand between revolutions and life, and to help people deal with change. Designers have coped with these displacements by contributing thoughtful concepts that can provide guidance and ease as science and technology evolve. Fascism? Sounds more like a socialist vocation to me - would that it worked better.
The web site is a splendid substitute for a visit, but do dedicate some time to explore it, as you would in the museum. It is complex and a bit verbose in places, but the images are splendid and the interactive linkages fascinating.
[PICTURE: An origami insect and the paper creases it generates. Even origami has come a long way from folded paper cranes, like the iconic cigarette-paper images we remember from Blade Runner. Origami mathematics, computer generated diagrams, and creative ideas have taken ever more sophisticated roads, and hundreds of creases are now compressed into a single diagram to create incredibly complex models.] © MoMA

http://gcl.stumbleupon.com/: Mar 7, 8:31am 105 reviews stumblers •http://gcl.stumbleupon.com/; Abandoning us to the barbarians
I guess a review of the dear departing is properly called an obituary. So be it! "Death the Leveller," James Shirley called it: Only the actions of the just / Smell sweet and blossom in their dust. One of our finest and most brilliant Stumblers, GCL (Gwen) has posted this on her blog and is leaving:
Quote: "Dear Friends, I am releasing you from my list of Mutual Friends so you do not end up with "ghosts" on your lists... It has been all my pleasure to correspond with so many people from around the world and to have developed a warm relationship with you who have responded so generously... With Spring approaching, it is a time of new beginnings and old ends. I have miles and miles to go before I sleep and I must get on with my work. I am going into SU rehab."
Gwen!
How dare you! Slithering away are you? Leaving the rest of us semi-normal Stumblers to battle the encraoching tide of pimply youths, MySpace loonies, FaceBook click-collectors, marketing spam bots, glittering angels, women in negligees riding unicorns or sat on rocks in the moonlight, ageing Celts dressed in animal skins, and assorted collections of pussies galore, fake romantics, nightmarish dreamers, porno paparazzi, and fat bald 60s males using busty-leggy-scanty-blondie chicks as avatars.
Go on then! Run! Enjoy life! De-friend your old and new friends with heartless derision. Abandon our world to odiferous lemurs and buggered begats.
Let your cackles echo over the windswept Canadian steppes. Let Quebec quiver. Let the wolves howl in your wake, and the terriers throw up, and the yellow moon slide behind a black cloud.
Who cares. Who's even noticed. You'll be back.
"The garlands wither on your brow,
Then boast no more your mighty deeds! [From Death the Leveller,]
[IMAGE: Stolen from Gwen and mutilated by me. The Choice: Left SU, guarded by the sinister lemur; right, the future, guarded by the shadow of doom. (The Tardis time machine of Dr Who replaces GCL's phone-box-on-the-moon avatar.)]

The Journalist as Novelist of New York - WSJ.com: Mar 4, 10:39am 1 review books, new-york, journalism, irish •http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12045...; The journalist who became the novelist of New York
Pete Hamill, a classic New York newspaper man, is writer in residence at New York University, a long way from gritty city desk journalism. He is the only person to have been editor of both the New York Daily News and the New York Post.
In the past 40 years (he is now 72) he has also written 10 novels and two collections of short stories. But the focus of his now established literary life remains the same as in Hamill's newspaper career - New York City.

Quote: His stories display the attention to detail and history that are the hallmarks of a seasoned reporter -like last year's North River, the tale of a middle-aged Irish doctor who unexpectedly finds himself raising his 3-year-old grandson during the Depression in Manhattan.
"Unlike journalism, fiction is about people one at a time," Hamill says. "I've really been trying to get everything I know about New York into fiction." Mr. Hamill's most ambitious attempt was his last novel, Forever (2002), in which the main character gains immortality (as long as he remains on the island of Manhattan) and lives through 250 years here.

Hamill has a fascination with immigration beyond his own family and his own Irish heritage, as his novels and his memoir, Downtown: My Manhattan, demonstrate. He writes about Italians and Jews, about Chinese families in his neighborhood and the the Meatpacking District that used to be full of immigrants from Spain.

Quote: Looking at journalism today, Hamill doesn't think papers are going to vanish, but he doesn't feel that the business has "the same urgency to it." So is Hamill nostalgic for an older New York?
He could do without the recent smoking ban. "It seemed too drastic, too much of a buttinski view." But he doesn't miss the gritty, crime-ridden 1970s: "I don't think 42nd Street was great when there were guys peddling heroin like Baby Ruth bars."

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