A couple of years back, I wrote an article for Suffering is Hip called BATS: A Personal Essay on the Order Chiroptera with Parenthetical Tangents.
If you've seen that article already, you might remember that part of the article includes a few bits of trivia about bats, including a mention that the US Postal Office had never issued a postage stamp featuring bats (although they regularly put all sorts of other species on stamps). This piece of trivia I'd originally found in a detailed article about bats on postage stamps in the Spring 1999 issue of Bats, Bat Conservation International's member publication.
Well, recently I found out that the US Postal Office has now issued a commemorative edition picturing American Bats on stamps. The edition, released just this September, has four different stamp designs with four different species of bats featured.
Sooooo, if the idea of being able to have bats on your postage stamps gives you a special little tingle, well, see the US Post Office's website for details.
I usually pay little attention to what's on my postage stamps as I'm usually just lucky to scrounge up a stamp in my mess when I need one that actually happens to have the correct postage according to current rates. So, I don't much tend to care what's pictured on it as long as it's still usable without having to also try to scrounge up any 1-cent and 2-cent stamps that I might or might not still have as well.
But I even broke down and bought some of these bat stamps. Just had to.
Today is the 50th anniversary of Irish Coffee's invention.
Saw this article this morning.
I knew about the drink having been invented at the Buena Vista in San Francisco -- used to work across the street from the Buena Vista years ago. But I had no idea before that there was on record an actual date of inspired mixology.
So, in tribute, I popped out to the corner store, bought a bottle of Irish whiskey, and made this little celebratory beverage "still life" pictured here:
A little Irish coffee and a little trivia is a pleasant way to start the morning (as long as I do not instead dwell on everything else that I noticed in the news this morning, that is).
Hmm. Three or four of these drinkies could probably aid me quite well in not dwelling. But as tempting as that sounds, can't indulge in that as I've got some other things to attend to today. Drat. And more drat.
As for any tendency towards dwelling, I could try to follow the advice of one of Oscar's lines:
But I'm not sure I could believe that wholeheartedly without really, really dwelling on it. Not to mention a whole lot more whiskey in my coffee ...
But what the hell. I'll take a stab at it this minute.
Joyous Irish Coffee Day. Cheers!
uh-huh.
This marks my first post using Movable Type instead of Blogger. Wow, Movable Type is very nice.
And it wasn't as horrific nor intimidating to set up as all the instructions made it seem like it might be. Although I had to get in the mood to stare at all the coding .....
My older blog entries were done using Blogger, and like I've noticed lots of people mentioning themselves, Blogger's irritating. Half the time, I'd end up fighting with my archive files when I tried to post a little something. As I have been fairly remiss about posting anything often, I really was not inspired to try to do a bit more blathering since I always ended up wasting so much time with Blogger's uncooperative tendencies.
I'll see if I can successfully import the Blogger entries into this now.
The following was something I posted in the Suffering is Hip forum last year on Thanksgiving. So, I thought why not pretend it's tradition and post it here this Thanksgiving.
My one steadfast (and arguably irrational) belief in an afterlife has always been that I get to have a welcome-to-death dinner party.
So, just to amuse myself one day a couple of years ago, I played a game where I tried not to think about it, but quickly jotted down the names of a table's worth of dead people I would most want at my "inaugural" after-death dinner party.
I then decided to ask other people who they wanted at their dinner party and emailed a bunch of friends. We circulated the "game" and the subsequent lists via a couple of different email lists and also Melusine then posted it to an old board she was active on a year and a half ago and got some great responses.
Below are a few examples of people's lists. I'm not including my own list because I've probably revised it a thousand times in my head since and somehow I was always much more amused by other people's lists and their occasional explanations for certain choices.
So, here, as examples, are just a few of the old responses from the spring of 2000:
The old list from Melusine:
Now the seating arrangements are another dilemma entirely but I absolutely certain I'd want to be sitting between Oscar Wilde and Mae West with Dorothy Parker in close proximity.
Anna's old list. (Anna's an artist , in case you can't guess from her Dead Dinner Party guest list. Her paintings are fabulous, if I may add.).
Anyway. Anna's list especially amused me because she included a menu with it:
Seared foie gras with balsamic reduction, carmalized onions and micro greens
and squab in puff pastry shells with fig sauce...fine wines assumed along
with additional courses...ps chocolate souffle too.
Laszlo's old list:
So? Who would YOU want at your Dead Dinner Party?
