All the times I should have used the I Ching.
Currently re-reading after several decades but stuck halfway through: Logan’s Run: Vintage Movie Classics (A Vintage Movie Classic) by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. 📚 The striving for style gets in the way and I can detect differences in the chapters indicating, possibly, which writer wrote which. As for the term “vintage classic” in this printing, I can go with “classic,” but “vintage”? This book, and I, are not that old. And what is a “vintage classic” anyway?
Finished reading: In Plain Sight: An investigation into UFOs and impossible science by Ross Coulthart 📚
Watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. 🎟 🍿 When Sean Connery and Denholm Elliot’s characters meet and go through an inside-joke pantomime, I like to think the actors did the same, being reunited from their roles in Robin and Marion.
At first I thought the Windows sign-in screen said, “Did you know your PC can read you?” It actually said to you, but I more believe the former.
Currently listening to: A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain by Marc Morris. Read by Ralph Lister. I like the reader’s rollicking, exuberant approach. Matches the text. We’ll see if this holds up after 18 hours. 🎧 📚 (Audible)
The Signal Station
(Taken 2012)
“Dark Shadows” candle check-in, halfway through Collection 5: all the candles. 📺 👻 Gradually, the white ones in the younger-than-old house have been added to. Now we have numerous red ones, along with blue and, increasingly, green. We had a single green one in the regular old house, in which they hid an object. Well, it might all be as random as the beauty marks that change position and turn to stars (beauty marks everywhere) and the mark on the hand changing hands from one episode to the next, like Barnabas’ ring. On a show in which I’ve seen a studio camera creep into shot like a curious Dalek, it’s all delightfully par for the course.
Finished listening to: How the Medici Shaped the Renaissance. 🎧 📚 Concise, clear information. One of the best from the Great Courses. Very good presenter. Perhaps well-served by the six-hour format as opposed to the usual 12-hour behemoths.
Obligatory photo of a mug of coffee next to a laptop, with a pen somewhere.
Finished listening to: Princes of the Renaissance: The Hidden Power Behind an Artistic Revolution by Mary Hollingsworth. Read by Karen Cass. The reader’s voice was so enchanting that I have no idea what this book is about. 🎧 📚 (Audible)
Use a pencil, he said. Use a pencil. I am, sir. I am. And Beethoven used carpenters’ pencils, fat and flat, because he kept breaking the regular ones. May I borrow it, sir? I said. Mine do not break at all.
Finished listening to: The Fall of Carthage (Cassell Military Paperbacks) by Adrian Goldsworthy. Read by Derek Perkins. 🎧 📚 (Audible)
Finished watching “Dark Shadows,” Collection 4. 📺 👻 In an interview on one of the discs, Sam Hall, a writer on the show, said that they stole a lot from – “Who was that American writer?” – Lovecraft. Loved hearing this, but haven’t seen direct examples of it yet beyond general atmosphere. The change that takes place toward the end of this grouping of episodes is well done. And the candles in the now younger-than-old house are white. So, a-ha, the blue ones are purposeful and serve the set and atmosphere.
Watched Juggernaut for the zillionth time. A classic thriller and not as recognized as it should be. What a cast, with Richard Harris, Omar Sharif, Anthony Hopkins, and Ian Holm just for starters. 🎟️ 🍿
Finished listening to: Macbeth. 🎧 📚 A good production. Hugh Ross as Macbeth was very good. And heard with the credits at the end: “The porter was David Tennant.”
“Give me your favor. My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten.”
Another Musgrave order will have to be in the works. They just announced the Tennessee Round. ✏
Barnabas offering a glass of Amontillado to Peter in the old house is a nice touch. (Rewatching some of “Dark Shadows,” Collection 2. 📺👻)
