chessandlena.com

So apparently, Mark Twain left instruction in his will that his autobiography, written in the last several years of his life, not be published until 100 years after his death.

Well. Guess what.

Allow me to introduce you to tv tropes, a website that lists in sometimes excruciatingly full detail, the devices, conventions, or memes that a TV show (or movie, or book, or whatever) uses. As the site points out, they are not necessarily cliches. For example, from the "Battle Cry" trope:

* Toy Story, Buzz Lightyear: "To Infinity and Beyond!"
* He-Man's "By The Power of Greyskull!"
* The GI Joe team uses "Yo, Joe!"
* And on the other side: "COOOBRAAAAA!"
* Starship Troopers: "Come on, you apes! You wanna live forever!?"
* From The Lord Of The Rings: The Return of the King, before Theoden and the Rohirrim charge at Minas Tirith: "Arise! Arise, Riders of Theoden! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered! A sword day... a red day... ere the sun rises! Ride now!... Ride now!... Ride! Ride to ruin and the world's ending! Death! Death!! Death!!! FORTH, EORLINGAS!!!" (Perhaps due to it being a fancy way of saying, "Let's all go get killed", this has been described as "worst... speech... evar". Of course, the delivery makes up for it, but see Literature, below.)
* Braveheart: "FREEDOOOMM!"
* Hot Shots! lampshades this with soldiers jumping out of an airplane : (Soldier 1) Geronimo!!! (Soldier 2) Geronimo!!! (Native American) Me!!!
* Wolverines!!!

On a side note, my own crew at work has amassed a few battle cries over the years, most of which are direct pulls from some modern-day meme or other. "To the hovercraft!", abbreviated as "hovercraft" or "HC" is the current call to go forth and conquer... usually the prey is a plate of quesadillas, or a close relative of that. But it's essentially the same thing. But I digress.

I apologize in advance for all the time you will lose browsing this site.

• The coolest name in all of literature: Hrothgar.
• As far as names go, literature shot its wad over a thousand years ago.
• Tolkien came pretty close: Aragorn, Fangorn, Rohirrim, Ungoliant, Ancalagon, Morgoth, et al.
• Even Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore veers close, from a certain point of view.
• There is hope still for someone to top Hrothgar.
• I'm working on it.
• My closest entry so far, Ludwig C Funk, isn't quite there yet.

Saturday:
Slept in for a while. Owwwh yeeeah. Woke up, only had to referee one cat fight. Lena and I went out for lubrunch at Klemm's Kafe on Wells Street... crummy coffee, excellent garbage omelet. Heavy on green and red peppers... was delicious.

While eating, I looked down the street and was whacked with a wall of nostalgia for my childhood in various places in Wheeling and Elm Grove. The buildings, as Lena put it, look rather run down, but once you get inside... well, they still look rather run down. But there's stuff in them! When my brother and I were kids, weekends would sometimes consist of Dad taking us to the army-navy store or the used book store in downtown Wheeling if it were saturday... or hockey then Isaly's bakery for apple turnovers if it were sunday.

In today's Fort Wayne on Wells Street, there is a used furniture store directly across from the kafe... nothing caught my eye, but they did have eight-track tapes. The real treasure is next door, where hyde bros quietly holds a trove of excellent-condition used books. We spent well over an hour in there, and I probably could have spent the whole damn day. The store is labyrinthine but well-ordered in its shelving organization. You go down the stairs, turn this corner, enter this room, wind around this wall, follow this aisle, and just when you think you've reached the end, there's another damn section of the maze. It felt like Borges' Library of Babel.

The real piece de resistance was that I found something there that has been out of print for decades: A good number of the Rick Brant Science-Adventure books (yes, I'm channeling Ross Geller here). I had three of them-- the Whispering Box Mystery, the Phantom Shark, and Smuggler's Reef-- growing up, but lost them in the mists of time, moving, garage sales, and siblings. They were excellent books, all the feel of a Heinlein Sci-fi juvenile, but without the orgies. Anyway, I'd never read any but those three... and Hyde Bros has about ten of them. At around 5-7 bucks apiece, I'm probably going to snag all the copies I can. But this weekend I just got the first three.

After all the Wells Street bustle, we took a bike ride round the greenway. We turned around at the filtration plant as the gates were locked; though there was a detour, we decided it was probably about the right time to go back... good thing, too. Our bike seats are of the Very Painful variety, and after an hour on them, the intra-assital region starts to feel it. We rode for two and a half-- it still hurts for me to sit down. Hmm... reminds me of work.

Anyway. All in all, serious unexpected nostalgic Saturday. Good stuff, with just a hint of sad longing thrown in for spice.

Interesting on a couple of different levels: When Books Could Change Your Life: Why What We Pore Over At 12 May Be The Most Important Reading We Ever Do