Online Journal of Author Jeffrey Dean Palmatier

Wow. Season premiere of Hoarders.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:09:21 GMT

It was nice to see a positive outcome for a change of pace. This episode features a 68-year-old woman who was living in home that had become a garbage dump. To my astonishment, she actually let her kids, doctors, and clean-up crew just go through her house and toss out a ton of stuff, clean it, and put it back together. It was just horrible. It had gotten to a point where she didn't even have a working shower, toilet, running water in general. They found two dead cats in the rubble, along with one of her false teeth plates that she had been lost years ago. However, after they got her house back in order, her daughter is paying for repairs to get her plumbing back in order. Also, the doctor is doing in-house treatment to keep her on track.

Pelican Shakespeare: on page 354 of 1751 pages total.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:14:56 GMT

1397 pages left.

Read Act III.5 and IV.1 of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Pelican Shakespeare: on page 352 of 1751 pages total.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:18:17 GMT

1399 pages left.

Read Act III.3 and 4 of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

The problem with having esoteric interests . . .

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:18:12 GMT

. . . is that it can be really expensive!

To wit, ever since 1996 when I took a course about the Soviet Union, I've been fascinated with this topic. The good news is that you can get a lot of books about this era and various figures pretty cheaply. For example, I ordered a nice copy of Adam Ulam's biography of Stalin for only 70 cents plus 3.99 shipping. However, if you want a more specialized monograph, you might have to pay some moolah.

There's this more minor figure in Soviet politics during the Lenin and Stalin eras by the name of Karl Radek who I've come across a number of times in biographies of Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky. Radek was a bit of wag, who was apparently the source of a lot of jokes about Lenin and Stalin, among others. I was able to get a fairly inexpensive copy of biography about him published in 1970, which I'm currently reading. I just found another biography from 1988, but the used copies I've seen for sale start at $150! So it dawned on me that I could probably get it via interlibrary loan. I can! So hopefully it'll be delivered soon to me at my local library.

Pelican Shakespeare: on page 349 of 1751 pages total.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:37:12 GMT

1402 pages left.

Yesterday I read Act II.2-3 and today Act III.1-2 of The Merry Wives of Windsor. As usual, Falstaff rules!

A small victory for a computer-illiterate idiot like me.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:58:42 GMT

I copied a number of photo files over to my memory card so I could print them out. However, I realized that I didn't need some of them so I tried to drag them over to trash . . . and was told I couldn't do that because they were locked! I finally called up Help and typed 'locked files' into it. It explained how to go to Finder and unlock those files. What's really weird is that I don't know how they got locked in the first place.

Pelican Shakespeare: on page 342 of 1751 pages total.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:36:44 GMT

1409 pages left.

Finished Act II.1 of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Oh, yeah: this play features good ol' Falstaff. Apparently Shakespeare wrote it because Queen Elizabeth wanted to see him again.

Kids friending their parents on Facebook . . .

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:15:20 GMT

. . . leads to so much comedy: http://www.lamebook.com/well-composed-dad

Also: http://www.lamebook.com/goodnight-sleep-white

And: http://www.lamebook.com/high-jacked

Family Photos 1970, 1977-1980.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:04:46 GMT

Today I scanned photos of our family that had been in my maternal grandmother's collection. This included pictures taken at the party held in honor of my grandparents' 50th anniversary. I'm glad these photos exist, but I wish I would have found them sooner because--you guessed it--I have to go back and insert them into the albums. This means that I have to rearrange yet again a ton of photos if I want them to be in the right order.

Pelican Shakespeare: on page 340 of 1751 pages total.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:56:41 GMT

1411 pages left.

Finished Act II.2-4 of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Pelican Shakespeare: on page 336 of 1751 pages total.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:28:33 GMT

1415 pages left.

Yesterday I finished Act I.1 of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Where's my whipping stick . . .?

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:45:21 GMT

. . . so that I can use it on whoever began that saying, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

I'm home today, watching TV. I just saw this guest on the news say this. It's like one person came up with this saying, then recently all these people have been aping it over and over.

Maybe a person is doing the same thing over and over just because they're a dumbass. Please stop using this saying, talking heads. Or at least come up with a new one.

High School Reunion short story revision: on page 44 of 44 pages total.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:35:02 GMT

Although I got through to the last page of this story (short novella?), it doesn't necessarily follow that this revision is done. It's certainly is a hell of lot closer to its final form. At the very least, I think I'm going to have to read through it one more time.

"No more!"

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:13:22 GMT

It's probably not a good sign when you wake up like I did today, and immediately think, "Bleh!" when contemplating the day and the rest of the week ahead!

There's a famous story how Goethe's last words were "More light", which others have taken as a metaphor for his life. One of my German professors was a bit of a wag. He asked me if I knew the story about him saying "Mehr Licht". Then with a grin he told me what he actually said was this and wrote it down: "Mehr Nicht!" I said, "More not?!", translating the words literally. My professor said, "No more!" and laughed.

Obama and Jintao's Press Conference.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:26:06 GMT

Pelican Shakespeare: on page 323 of 1751 pages total.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:44:46 GMT

1428 pages left.

Finished Act V.1 and this completes The Merchant of Venice.

What was interesting about this play is that it's in the comedies section, which apparently how it was originally categorized in the Folio. However, a lot of this play has a pretty serious, even grim tone. It isn't consistently light and funny as with the other plays I've encountered in the comedies section.

Family Photos 1979: 73. 1980: 1-16.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:04:26 GMT

I found a photo that I guessed might be from 1979, taken by neighbors who gave us the photo years later. I scanned all the photos we had for 1980.

Pelican Shakespeare: on page 320 of 1751 pages total.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:39:38 GMT

1431 pages left.

Finished Act IV.1 and 2 of The Merchant of Venice. Just Act V.1 left to read.

Family Photos 1979: 55-72.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:45:15 GMT

This completes 1979 and the first twenty years of family photos.

Um . . .

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:57:09 GMT

Man Arrested After Calling 911 for Sex

Talk about a booty call!

Family Photos 1979: 21-54.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:32:18 GMT

Gah. Scanning and editing 34 photos today might have been overdoing it. However, I did get through all of our vacation photos for that year. The remaining set for 1979 are the Christmas photos.

Edit: Whoops--I mislabeled one photo and it turns out I scanned 34 instead of 35 as I originally stated.

Aww! How sweet and wholesome!

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:56:16 GMT

There's a new TV commercial for their Kindle electronic reading device in which a pretty young woman is shown experiencing all the various (childlike) adventures she experiences from the books she reads on her Kindle:

I wonder what this commercial would have looked like if the novel Looking for Mr. Goodbar had been in her Kindle? (Yes, I'm being hateful today.)

Family Photos 1979: 1-20.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:34:26 GMT

It's very strange: there are two sets of photographs from the same vacation, but they are different sizes. I asked my mom if the difference in sizes just meant that she took the film to different developers. However, my mom said no, it meant that the photos were taken with two different cameras. My mom thought this must mean that they represented two different vacations, because she wouldn't have used two different cameras. However, comparing the two sets of photos proved to me that it was from the same vacation since us kids were the same sizes in both and wore the same clothes . . . not to mention the date in the corner of all was 'Aug 1979'. So thirty years on, my mom and dad couldn't remember why she would have taken two cameras on that vacation.

Pelican Shakespeare: on page 314 of 1751 pages total.

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:19:18 GMT

1437 pages left.

Finished Act III.4 and 5 of The Merchant of Venice. 9 pages left of the play.

Yet another Onion scoop:

jeffrey31045@gmail.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:05:52 GMT

Obama's teleprompter fails during his family dinner.

This reminds me of those numerous jokes from the USSR making fun of how Brezhnev couldn't speak without a text in front of him.