I was looking at something about the Herzog documentary on the chauvet caves and that reminded me of something else and that reminded me of something else-- at any rate, I ended up stumbling onto the title sequence of a cop show from 1986 called "Ohara" starring Redd Foxx's good friend Pat Morita. Ohara was an unconventional Japanese-American LA cop who used meditation to solve crimes without a gun or a partner. Amidst the title images there I saw a character named Lt. Cricket Sideris who was portrayed by none other than Catherine Keener. Maybe you already knew all this, I didn't know she had been in TV. I think she is quite a good actress.
It's amazing to know she was on a show in 1986, that she did go through this route-- although the show was not a hit and was canceled after 1 1/2 years. I wonder if she was able to stash some money away. I'm sure most of you know about this, I just learned of it.
The series had poor ratings. Format changes were implemented to increase ratings. Ohara was changed from a lieutenant to a federal police officer. He was paired with a partner. Ohara began using a gun to assist him in his investigations. Finally, Ohara and his partner were turned into private investigators. Then the show was cancelled after 30 episodes.
You may or may not watch "The Big Bang Theory" -- the show is very popular, but its defiantly "old-fashioned" style and "big tent" approach may not suit everyone's taste these days. But "Big Bang" has some really funny moments -- and it can be impressive how it goes for the broadest possible appeal (a comforting throwback to the good old days), while also working in jokes about relatively "marginal" topics: Twitter, "Star Trek," comic books, etc.
Part of "Big Bang's" problem in the past few seasons, though, has been the way its original dynamic has been thrown for a loop. At first, the viewer was supposed to identify with Leonard (and, to a lesser extent, Raj and Wolowitz) -- and view Sheldon as a sideshow oddball -- but Sheldon ended up running away with the show, winning Jim Parsons an Emmy. Tracking the ups and downs of Leonard and Penny's romance -- the intended focal point -- now feels superfluous, as do both those characters (more or less).
So Sheldon is now the star... but the producers are unwilling to allow him to grow or change (become more "human," explore new things, etc.); and so he ends up feeling like too dense a "center of gravity," keeping the show even more static than its conservative nature already makes it.
That's why the introduction of Mayim Bialik, as Sheldon's platonic ladyfriend/associate Amy Farrah Fowler, was such a coup. She is exactly what the show needed -- a more likeable "Sheldon," who not only plays off his character in interesting ways, but also interacts with the "normal" folks in a way that Sheldon cannot.
Bialik's performance is excellent (as everyone probably knows, she played "Blossom" in her teens, but also has a real-life neuroscience Ph.D.). As Amy, Bialik is eminently "poker faced" -- like Sheldon, a coldly rational genius observing the world -- but the key to her appeal is how she also reaches out to the other characters, oblivious to her own strangeness. The most obvious example is the way she has declared Penny to be her best friend (calling her "Bestie!," asking embarrassingly personal sex questions, etc.). Penny puts up with it, but you can tell she thinks she's too cool to hang out with Amy (...which is Penny's problem).
While "Big Bang Theory" has become more and more about its side characters (Kunal Nayyar, as Raj, deserves his own appreciation), it was Amy Farrah Fowler's addition as a "regular" that has not only saved the show (in terms of its appeal and creative juice), but also points the way toward a possible future -- spinoff??
Houston artist Leila McConnell.
Interviewed by Sarah C. Reynolds.
We all knew each other at the Museum and we had a group...the Museum provided a room for us and we traded paintings-- that's how we got other people's work. Then the CAA [Contemporary Arts Association] came along and so we all worked in that also. In those days everybody dressed up for the Museum openings. They were fun to go to; you saw everybody-- artists and others who were collecting-- and everybody knew each other. I met Mildred Dixon there (she's Sherwood now), and Stella [Sullivan] I'd known from Rice. Lowell Collins taught a class. Robert Preusser taught a class. Miss Ruth Uhler taught a class. Frances Skinner taught a class. So I studied with all of them.
Mildred, when I met her she was a little bit older than I was and I called her Mrs. Sherwood once at the Museum class and she said, "For God's sake don't call me that. Call me Mildred." And Stella and I were good friends and Bill Condon, he came back to Rice after the war. He had a car at that time and he piled as many people in as wanted to go; we'd all go to lunch and things like that. Bill was really a very remarkable person. He's lost both legs in the war, stepped on a landmine. But he never made you feel bad about it or anything. One time we were sitting around talking about how much we weighed and he said he weighed 115 pounds. I said, "Bill, that's ridiculous!" because he was six feel tall or so. And he said, "Not without legs." That was the way he said it.
Frank Dolejska was a really fine artist. You know a lot of people thought of him as being Bohemian and stuff like that, but he wasn't. He was a true artist. He and Preusser were great friends and then when the CAA opened he was the man behind the shows-- decided how they would be hung and everything. Ruth Uhler-- Henri always said she was like a ship, and she was full sail. She was an imposing figure. I don't think she was really that tall, but she had the big, high hairdo, and you know, she was an imposing figure. She would come into a room and you knew she was there. She was great friends with Grace Spaulding John.
Houston artist David Pryor Adickes.
Interviewed by Sarah C. Reynolds.
1960 Ben DuBose had gotten a pretty good group of 12 to 15 artists. Other than myself there was Herb Mears, Charles Schorre, Charles Tedwood, Lamar Briggs, who was working just down the street at Evans-Monical... and then there were several women. Patty Waldrip Taylor was one of the best, one of the biggest.
Other galleries opened. Meredith Long Gallery opened out on Westheimer next to the railroad track near what is now Highland Village. Artists like Dan Windgren and others were his mainstay people. There was the Louisiana Gallery over on Louisiana near Brennan's, and Kiko Gallery opened down on Lubbock-- it was a very good gallery, very good-- next to Alliance Francaise near the middle of the block. Parker Cushman had a very nice gallery down on Montrose off of Westheimer, about where Numbers night club is now. Parker was importing Paris School stuff.
Those were the big days; that's when the gallery business really started to flourish. They had great openings. They were showing international stuff. The openings themselves were on Fridays primarily, and were the social event of the week. That was where you saw and met everybody. They were good and they a lot of fun and very active. The shows were covered by the press-- Maxine Messinger in the Post-- and it was very exciting.
1967 I opened Love Street Light Circus and Feel Good Machine in '67-- it was the hottest psychedelic club in town. It was down on Allen's Landing in an old white building; a night spot for kids. It was a big room with giant mattresses and hundreds of colored pillows, and everyone would lie horizontal looking at the light show. This was the same year that the whole thing started in San Francisco with the Fillmore Auditorium... I was out there that New Year's Eve of '66 and just fell in love with that projected light of psychedelic light shows. It was the hottest thing going-- it went wildly one summer and we tried to stay open through the next year, but the following summer I opened one just like it in San Antonio for the Hemisfair '68 expo, and it failed. The first band we had in Houston was called The Red Crayola and they were just a bunch of kids from Rice, but we had some of the big bands. Anyone who got close to it will never forget it. There are people I have run into today who remember.
Forced to follow-on to mpavilion's innings, in the sense that we are both batting against the media, I present my edition of the teevee corner.
The new ABC show Mr. Sunshine focuses on Matthew Perry as a somewhat successful, emotionally distant deadpan snarker who works as operations manager of an events arena in San Diego. He's a typical suit-wearing middle class dude surviving day-to-day under great existential pressure.
It is a setting-based sitcom with a group of comic regulars who go about their various duties while the shows and spectacles that pass through their arena provide week-to-week hurly burly to frame each episode. Typically, the events appearing at the arena mirror the conflicts that the cast of regulars are experiencing.
Everyone gets up to some pretty funny business (Allison Janney is particularly good as the owner of the arena) but that is not enough, not fulfilling, because, on the other hand, the characters are too humanized. This detracts from the pace and razor of the humor and admits spells of shallow emotion that dull the focus of the show.
So...it's good but it could be great if they had the balls to introduce a genie in the bottle or an enchanted talking lion cub (say, one that escapes from a circus being held at the arena)-- a non-human sidekick to Matthew Perry. And at the end of each episode all is well when the secret of the sidekick is safe again despite all comical mishaps. The sidekick and the main character become best friends, helping each other to move on to the next stage of their respective lives.
If they could do this but still keep the sardonic, detached tone I think it could work. I would care about Matthew Perry's character and I'd sympathize a little more with the others, fated as they are to lives without benefit of a magic sidekick. The point ultimately cannot be to identify with the tribulations of star Matthew Perry. He is always a TV star-- I don't see how we can escape that without the power of an enchanted, talking tiger cub.
The Howling Hex presented a concert of improvisations upon the works of Chilean composer Ernesto Calla.
Calla's music for synthesizer, steel guitar and piano features static non-melodic pieces often demonstrating that holding two notes at an interval for an extended period of time is not static: the sound pulsates-- to some, it sounds like wheels within wheels. The surfaces form into patterns with three geometries of abutting harmonies and electric guitar. The song patterns have either 49 surfaces or 2 surfaces.
The significant effect of this concert's sales number suggested that Calla will one day be considered a legend, particularly for his work on the SmackTownRaw concert video.
This new-ish sitcom is worth checking out; it's part of NBC's Thursday night lineup. The show involves three yuppie couples in their early '30s who spend most their time with each other. Each pair is "quirky" in its own way, and most of the humor comes from how their peculiarities interact.
(It's a single-camera show -- no studio audience, some location shooting. Production values are high.)
The set-ups tend to be well-worn (gender role conflicts, relationship issues, etc.) -- but the writing is sharp and usually pretty funny, and the characters (and actors) are strong. A particular standout is Christine Woods, as "Julia."
One quibble is how, true to recent convention, the characters are very "comfortable" (wealthy lifestyles) in a way that's taken for granted, and not examined or made an interesting part of the show (at least, not yet -- it's set in Portland, OR, so there's a lot they could do there). The more time that passes since "Arrested Development," that pinnacle of Bush-era culture, the more that show looks like an outlier in every way (but it's also not fair to go around comparing every new single-camera sitcom to "AD").
Anyway, "Perfect Couples" gets a solid B+. Recent episodes can be streamed here.(Some are better than others; I recommend "Perfect Jealousy" and "Perfect Health.")
It's always exciting when a good new sitcom comes along. To those of us who grew up watching them (and will continue to do so), it proves the durability and flexibility of the form, and offers the satisfaction of seeing the proven old moves executed well once again.
From One Arm Red:
MARCH FORTH! Open action jam session of collective abandon and discovery with found objects,
homemade instruments, video loops and contact microphones....
A WashMachine Annual Event at The O-Space
TURN UP YOUR ANTHEM!! Friday March 4th 2011 7pm
FREE-- BYOB
I was first born in Medina County, Ohio, which is funky but also cold. My biggest influences are the comic book Moon Knight and the films of Don Knotts. Many people ask how true my work remains to its original inspiration-- answer: very true since there was no original inspiration and so it remains.
I have been asked many times about the injuries that musicians sustain. I do have quite a few music related injuries. Sometimes, if I play a guitar and the neck isn't set just right my arm will go numb. My left ankle was broke playing basketball drunk and I never bothered to get it looked at because I was leaving for a tour the next day.
I like everything about music, it seems about the future more than the past, it suggests there can be more.
They ask: what can you do? Well, during the show, at one point the words "don't be a scab" are flashed up followed by clips of the first five pages of The El Paso Times from July 26th, 1943. These pictures just fly by during the show and I don't think people really notice them, they might set a mood is all. That's the kind of thing I can do.
I never really ask about why we play where we do, so I don't know. To test out the feel of the audience I usually begin the set with a song about a guy who ran away to Cincinnati to work for the United States Playing Card Company. One day he realizes he must go home when he hears a certain song on the radio.
The name of the song he hears is "Ancient Future"-- it's nice. He says to himself: "I can make my old home right again, after all who wouldn't want to be there?" The hook of the song he hears is a saying, a commonsense kind of thing you'd say to try to talk people out of an insane obsession. But this meaning escapes him and so he goes back home to tragic results.
Do the different animals have a special significance to the audience? No, they do not. It's just that a certain viewpoint crystallized at a time when Mighty Mouse was on the TV. It is common to a lot of people, it isn't personal.
You haven't heard a basketball game until you've heard Chick Hearn. I don't like the Lakers (Kareem, Magic and Worthy aside) but I love listening to basketball on the radio. And Chick Hearn was the best play-by-play guy ever.
The sound of the ball, court, shoes, shaking rim and buzzers combined with the constant description of the action running over is spiritually transporting when attended to with distinct mental discernment.
In addition, Chick Hearn coined the terms slam dunk, the charity stripe (meaning the free throw line), and he would say: "He has the Commissioner's name tattooed on his forehead!" when somebody had a shot rejected.
Unsolved Murders, Dirty Burgers Spending time expounding upon the pleasures of basketball on the radio seems pretentious and scoldingly aloof in a world where people are busy supporting their families by supplying chemicals to the drug trade; an effort that seems exciting, scientific and responsible, by comparison.
...maintain some legitimate business like a fast food stand. Run a hamburger stall that feeds clubbers outside nightclubs. On the day you are murdered, you will be returning from a bakery with dozens of buns loaded in your family's minivan. You stood eye-to-eye briefly before the gunman unloaded a .357 Magnum.
--Listen, that horse got scratched, the one tipped for me, the one with foam buns.
--You mean the one I heard on the radio finished last in the Coxcomb Cup?
--Yep, Convicted Without Hearing was the name.
Such a tragedy of voided pleasure indicates that it is wrong to disturb the balance of works expressing a life of faith.
Rented Churches, Dirty Burgers
The Fresh Vineyard Congregation, a clan of Protestant founded less than a year ago by husband and wife Corwin and Octavia Larson, lease space in a public high school media center for their religious mission. Corwin, also the pastor, said the church is independent from any other organization but pays about $400 a week to lease the public high school television-training studio for its main sermon, and a classroom for Sunday school.
Inchoate Urges, Dirty Burgers
Listening is a fragile skill. Girls' and boys' specific generative development is not bound by some innate sense of nurturance coaxed forth by a repeatable series of audible commands but, rather, deepened and directed towards success by skill in active listening. The messages are shaped by different forces, driven by different urges, and subject to different stresses and failures. The audible is not implacable. It's something you choose. It's something you receive, in one form or another, in one measure or another, at all times. How you cope with it, that is a different matter. Listening is dependent on engagement in struggle and an effort to create the society mandated by cooperation.
The evolution of fragmented modes of consciousness in twentieth century American poetry is undeniable. The stage was set by the French Symbolists (and Freud) for this development, whereby different voices were emitted by the same writer within the same poem. Eliot took the objectification of the self to new levels in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land." In these poems, the reader is constantly challenged to determine who is speaking and thus the variegation of perspectives grows increasingly complex. One of the most perplexing figures within modernist poetry is Marianne Moore. Upon first glance, Moore appears to be utterly transparent when compared with the likes of Eliot and Rimbaud. Poems like "The Steeple-Jack" convey a purity of expression through a combination of visual imagery and observations on human nature. However, a closer reading of Moore will reveal a complex interaction of distinctive modes of consciousness. Although these modes of consciousness are less explicit than in the works of writers such as Eliot, they remain crucial to any critical understanding of Marianne Moore's poetry.
There are three "ideal types" of consciousness in Marianne Moore's poetry:
1) The presentation of the object as a thing-in-itself,
2) Direct commentary on the nature of existence (i.e. direct value-judgements), and
3) The presentation of the object as a metaphor for the nature of existence (i.e. indirect value judgements) as well as the absorption of the other two categories into the text.
Thus, the third category serves as the synthesis of the antithetical ideal types as well as the process by which this synthesis occurs. Through intensive textual analysis we will discover the inherent tensions between these modes of consciousness, but we will also find the dynamic energy that has rightfully brought Marianne Moore distinction as a great modernist poet. We will examine "Bird-Witted" as an "object poem" and "What Are Years?" as an example of a direct commentary on the nature of existence. We will then move on to examine "The Fish," and "The Mind Is An Enchanting Thing" as two poems where things (the sea or the mind) inherit moral content.
In Decision Theory, there are generally two kinds of analysis. Descriptive analysis is what people actually do, and prescriptive analysis is what people should do. Rarely are the two things the same. For example, when I use the win probability model to evaluate 4th down decisions, I'm doing prescriptive analysis. Trying to explain whatever the heck coaches are actually doing would be descriptive analysis.
To be fair, coaches are not computers. They are subject to all the imperfections of human decision making. In this post, I'll examine some of the ways that coaches may be making decisions, including minimax, minimax-regret, prospect theory, and expected utility. I'll also discuss the potential for how much of a difference a pure prescriptive analysis can make when applied in real games.
NFL Orthodoxy
NFL football has evolved as extremely conservative game. By that I mean that coaches adhere to the wisdom passed down from previous generations and are reluctant to deviate from the established orthodoxy. In the real world, away from sports, this approach usually makes sense. Unlike sports, the world is not bounded by sidelines, end zones, and 15-minute quarters. It is highly uncertain and far less predictable than we'd like to think. It makes sense to adhere to what is known to work rather than try to engineer an optimized outcome in a highly uncertain environment.
But in football, we have the stats. We know the probabilities. And we know the possible consequences. 'Conservative,' as I defined it, is therefore often not the best approach. I think the reason that so many coaches adhere to the same orthodoxy, whether in terms of playbooks or 4th down doctrine, is because they aren't conscious of the level of certainty available to them.
Minimax
One of the more conservative approaches is the minimax criterion. Minimax says pick the option that assures you the highest minimum utility. Let's say you have the choice between going on a picnic and going bowling. If it doesn't rain, the picnic pays off, but if it rains you've lost the afternoon. Bowling is not as much fun as the picnic, but it wouldn't matter if it rains. Minimax says go bowling because 1 is its minimum payoff while 0 is the minimum payoff for the picnic.
Minimax-Regret
Another decision method is known as the minimax-regret criterion. This method seeks to minimize potential regrets. Imagine coming out of the bowling alley and being greeted by a sunny blue sky. 'Darn. Should have gone on the picnic.' In this case, if you go bowling and it doesn't rain, you've gained 1 unit of utility but lost out on 4 units, for a net regret of 3. If you go on the picnic and it does rain, you've gained 0 utility but lost out on 1 unit, for a net regret of 1. If you want to minimize your regret, you'd choose the picnic.
Notice that I haven't mentioned the weather forecast yet. These methods are best relied upon when there is a very high level of uncertainty in the "states of nature" that will determine the payoffs.
Now consider a football example. Say a coach has three plays that make sense for a given situation, and the opposing defense can call one of three kinds of defenses.
Note that this is not game theory. We're not looking for a Nash equilibrium. The offensive coordinator is thinking of the defense as a "state of nature." It's something he has no control over and is difficult to predict.
Let's assume plays A and B have the possibility of negative payoffs but play C guarantees at least a payoff of +1. Play C therefore would be the minimax decision.
The regret method says something different. Assume the defense had called Def X and for Play A, the regret index is (-7). For Play B, it is (-5). And for Play C, it's (-11). Therefore, we'd pick Play B because it is the least costly in terms of maximum possible regret.
Expected Utility
What if we reduce the uncertainty in the defense? We can't predict exactly which one we'll see, but we can estimate the probabilities that we can expect each defense. The expected utility of a choice is the weighted average of the possible payoffs. For simplicity, say each defense is equally likely with a 1 in 3 chance. Now we can estimate the expected utility for each play choice. In the example above, the expected utility for Play A is (1/3)(-4) + (1/3)(4) + (1/3)(12) = 4. The expected utility for Play B is 3, and for Play C it's 2. The expected utility method therefore says Play A is the best choice.
The three methods each call for a different decision. Each method is logical and consistent in its own way, but there is only one truly correct method in football, only one prescriptive analysis. Remember, in football we can know the probabilities and the payoffs, or at least have a solid league-wide baseline for them. The expected utility method is the only correct method.
The math behind expect utility analysis couldn't be any easier. It's 5th grade arithmetic. The challenge is knowing the utility function. Yards, and even points, don't equate to utility. A 7-yard gain is usually good, but it's relatively useless on 3rd and 8. And a 3-point field goal doesn't help late in the 4th quarter when down by 7.
Fortunately, there is win probability (WP). WP is the one and only correct utility function for any game, including football. Winning is all that matters, whether by 1 point or 100 points. WP is also perfectly linear, which is essential to valid expected utility analysis. A 0.40 WP is exactly twice as good as a 0.20 WP, and 0.80 WP is twice as good as 0.40 WP.
Prospect Theory
But even if coaches were to somehow use expected WP analysis when making decisions (say by using 'quick reference' cards like they sometimes do for 2-point conversion decisions), it's likely they still wouldn't be very rational.
Prospect theory says that people fear losses more than they value equivalent gains. Humans evolved with a tendency to try to avoid loss. We're usually more upset with ourselves when we misplace a $20 bill than we are happy when one falls out of the laundry. This tendency has been borne out time and time again in clinical experiments and other studies.
It's possible to actually measure the risk aversion of coaches by comparing the WP advantages in situations where they went for the conversion to the WP advatanges in situations where they forego the conversion attempt.
An Advantage
The coach who can resist this human tendency and make decisions based purely on expected utility will have an advantage. Just how big an advantage, no one can ever know. Actually, that's not true--I'll tell you right now. Just by following a pure expected utility analysis on 4th down, a coach would win an average of an extra 1.4 games per year.
as far as is involved the question "Cancel the rxconor persona"-- the results were pretty conclusive. Poll respondents overwhelmingly voted in favor of cenceling RXCONOR.
What this would mneans is that the name would get wiped but also all the diaries written under that name by all contributors would also be removed-- so because that is such a big step wel'l have a publcic comment period where anyone who wants to can post a diary arguing for or AGAINST the cancellation process.
If any dairies appear we'll post them to the front page, the PC period will last til over the weekend.
panopticpants got this started in fine style, way back when, with this diary: TO RXCONOR-- so there's an open point or perhaps: the last word.
Also, if you want to grab and copy any old rxconor diaries now would be the time to do that because they'll all be wiped once the final decision is made (if it goes the way of the poll...)
and ps no comments here, you have to write a diary
I GoT leFt in charge for a while since everyone is busy and Mike never writes a damn thing anyuways. Usually in these work related stoppages we use the rxconor function (designed by the group) to fill the page.
However, left to my own i alone am thinking we might need to take things in another direction-- and so we'l
take a poll for a few days and see if we should cancel the rxconor persona and mov eon.
and here are they final results 10/27/09:
YES, Cancel rxconor: 618
NO, Do Not Cancel rxconor: 34
& thanks to everyoen who took the time to vote
...will have mOre on this topic tomorrow.
There is a disgraceful chasm (exemplified by a quote by Harlen Ellison: "To die a-flaming with the rest of the world...empty") between the Homeric and the Mahabharatan that ties me up in knots of silence, unable as I am to pronounce certain words properly that I have only ever read (and not heard.)
Does one epic shadow another or are they irreconcilable? Does only one truly convey the role of the citizen in society? We want the cultures to compete. I was taught the value of human ideals and the joy of pursuing heroic excellence in the face of irreducible fate. But is that particular folly like presenting the 'I'-Formation against a perpetually unrolling scroawl?
The rhapsode Bhero Ram Gujar Bhopa has memorized seven nights' worth of verses. He begins:
She cracked this week,
Drained bank accounts,
Stole a co-worker's driver's license,
Faked a 911 call about being stuffed
Into a car trunk by two black men.
She boarded a flight
With her 9-year-old daughter
And went to Disney World.
From time to time I write for Lowbrow Reader which is a magazine I really enjoy being involved with because it abets my curiosity and I end every year with an article or two to contribute to it, too. Oh, that did not come out right. At any rate, I was trying to write an article about Robert Christgau, my favorite rock critic, and I just could not square the circle on it before the deadline. It ended up being too scattered because the subject involves what I do in such a way as I kept going off on tangential apologetics. I think I was trying to build a maze in which to lose myself.
So although I got lost it did lead me to some firm conclusions about the art of hackery. I want to write a few posts about that as we get ready to do some shows coming up here in June, and we're finishing up another recording. Hackery. Humanity not myth. Not simulation. Not parody, forgery or minstrelsy. Hackery. Not earnest even in search of earnest profits. Hackery forever.
J.E. Ward is a poet AND Poet Laureate of Galveston, Texas. It is not clear from my research whether this is an honor approved by the City or a self-appointed wreathly laureation. Her work is a baroque kind of specie minted from within the stability presided over by petro-dollar spheres of influence which make her world so lovely. Here is my favorite poem by J.E. Ward:
I'm trying to write poetry,
But Barbara has to wee;
O my little Pekinese,
How can that possibly be?
She is my little red Pekinese,
And she is named
For two things;
One is Barbara Bush
Because she loves necklaces,
And such;
Yes, she is a little Princess,
And I love her very much.
She lives in a luxurious void of time which requires her to jot her sensations down poetically. I recommend starting with Seabrook Texas Within a Garden or Cherish The Thought-- especially if you haven't yet contracted Crohn's disease, nor have failed to be afflicted with antiphospholipid syndrome. J.E. Ward is also interested in Elvis and crafting her own pretend Japanese poetry, so there's really something for everyone in her work.
