Meow

I saw this kitty at the MSU Student Union.

Yikes

I thought my page had been hacked, but was just a typo in the url: bozeman-mt.blogPSOT.com (Mega site of Bible studies and information).

Weasels ripped my flesh...

...and deer munched my arborvitae.

Fashion police

Thankfully, baggy pants are not a problem in Bozeman.

Heh-heh

Taller peple are smarter sez Princeton study.

Calliope

My car now has just over 15,000 miles (500 miles/month on average). Maybe it's time to pimp my ride with an exhaust-powered calliope?

Bozeman photostream

bozeman - Everyone's Tagged Photos - a stream of flickr photos that have been tagged "bozeman".

Note: similar streams exist for Great Falls, Missoula, etc.

By the numbers

0 - pieces of bedroom furniture other than bed
1 - number of houseplants
1.5 - quarts of milk consumed per week (average)
3 - pieces of furniture accidentally broken this summer
20 - pairs of shoes & boots
38 - circumference in inches
232 - weight in pounds
500 - miles driven per month (average)

Goin' snakey

Re Snakes on a Plane - I only wish airplane lavatories were that spacious. Other than that minor quibble, I enjoyed the movie. Ssssssssssss........

Mayonnaise - in the news

I used to be amused by those competitve eating contests - until I read the mayonnaise record: 128 ounces in 8 minutes. Yuck.

Just as gross: recipe for Deep-Fried Mayonnaise.

And, I knew a guy in college who raved about sun-baked mayo sandwiches (a joke, I hope).

"World View" Quiz

You scored as Materialist. Materialism stresses the essence of fundamental particles. Everything that exists is purely physical matter and there is no special force that holds life together. You believe that anything can be explained by breaking it up into its pieces. i.e. the big picture can be understood by its smaller elements. Materialist 81% Cultural Creative 63% Postmodernist 63% Existentialist 63% Modernist 56% Romanticist 44% Fundamentalist 31% Idealist 25% What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

Home decorating

I'm considering painting my bedroom gray or blue, but maybe I should be more ambitious.

Classics lists

I've read sixteen of these "classic hits".

Section Line Ditch

The Section Line Ditch runs east of Fowler Road. The "Farmers Canal Company" owns and operates the irrigation ditch. Whenever they get the chance (e.g., when a bordering piece of land is developed), they replace the open ditch with a buried culvert ;-(

Cul de Sac exit

This cut-through at the south end of Sweetgrass Avenue is very convenient.

Gosling

This fellow discovered one of the perils of visiting Bozeman Pond Park: one of the goslings might follow you around all day.

Turtle @ Bozeman Pond Park

Matrimony story

I was talking to a recently married 50ish man the other day. He remarked that he did not miss looking for love in Bozeman's bars (not even the bars that attract a non-college clientele, such as Plonk).

I asked him where he found his wife....... he re-married the woman he had divorced a few years previously ;-)

Meta: blogroll updates

1. I added killerliving.com. This blog is by a real-estate person whom I know from meetings of the Bozeman InterNeighborhood Council.

2. I deleted a bunch of defunct blogs.

3. I decided not to add some Bozeman-based MySpace blogs. Although there are some exceptions, MySpace blogs tend to suck big time, IMHO.

4. I'll keep Revolving Duck on the blogroll for a few more weeks even though it has gone on (probably permanent) hiatus. The proprietor of this "personal journey blog" wrote an informative final post.

Argentum

I received a 1948 quarter in change today. The silver in the quarter is worth about $1.50. Woo-hoo!

Tomato

My two tomato plants now have at least one tiny tomato. I hope it develops into something like the "tomato with a human face".

Muttonchop mania

OK, not exactly a mania, but - at the bagel shop, I saw a guy sporting muttonchop sideburns and a soul patch. The guy was about 30, and his girlfriend looked completely conventional. I'll report back if I see a trend developing...

Here's an amusing article: "Feline reactions to bearded men". I haver never simultaneously had both a beard and a cat, so I am unable to report any personal anecdotes.

Talledega credit cookie

Talladega Nights has a funny credit cookie that explicates Faulkner. Well, I thought it was funny.

80's music videos - animated

Animated music videos from the 1980s:

A-ha: Take on me - cheesy song, but great rotoscoping of a parallel universe

Genesis: Land of confusion - puppet-mania

Peter Gabriel: Sledgehammer

Dire Straits: Money for nothing

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Shining - not a music video, but funny use of Peter Gabriel's song "Salisbury Hill"

Washington Post article

Driving Across Montana, From Old West to New

Two more Austen novels

My summer of Great Novels is nearing an end, but I have a backlog still to blog.

Jane Austen's Emma and Persuasion are considered the greatest of her novels, and among the greatest of all English novels. My endorsement: I will be re-reading these novels with care in the years to come.

If you are a beginning "literary reader" (like myself), I would recommend starting with one of Austen's earlier novels, such as Pride and Prejudice. Emma is 100% characterization, 0% action; and Persuasion has a set of inter-related characters worthy of a Tolstoy novel.

Ready to rumble?

I saw this SCA guy at Bozeman Pond Park. And no, I did not challenge him to a sword fight...

Recondite

Since I had read so much science-fiction as a kid, I felt pretty cocky when I added the H.G. Wells novella The Time Machine to my summer reading list. The very first sentence sent me to a dictionary to look up an unfamiliar word...

Anyway, the Time Traveller travels 800,000 years into the future and meets the eloi. These descendants of modern-day humans are all 4 feet tall and androgynous. The loss of sexual dimorphism in humans transformed this SF tale into a horror story for me ;-)
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Update (8/2) - In the recent movie adaptation, the eloi Weena is decidedly non-androgynous. This reinforces my view that movie adaptations of books should be considered on their own merits.