Updates: two sightings.

Two nights ago when I was reading in bed by the gentle light of my upright IKEA crepe lamp, I saw another earwig slip out from by the wainscotting and skitter across the attractive hardwood floors of my Danish Haven. I ended up reaching over and crushing it with a slip of paper I had been using as a bookmark.

Last night at the bar the gangly-pud boyfriend of my nemesis came into the bar near campus where all the students go, and where I was drinking and chit-chatting with a friend. The doorman and the bartender gave him enthusiastic hellos and shook his hand, which threw me off guard. Since his girlfriend is such a little ray of sunshine, I assumed both of them were equally well-loved, but I guess I was wrong. Whatever's up with that, though, one thing is clear -- he's only in the relationship for the ass. That was clear long ago. Whenever they're together he seems stressed out and overwrought like she's unloading her stress onto him, and he has to have some good reason to want to put up with that.

Learning HBRW: How great is the tetragrammaton?

My Hebrew is going decent. I can sound my way through sentences, but I wonder if I'll ever be able to look down at a page of Hebrew characters and have words jump out at me like they do when I look at Greek now.

The last unit I looked at was about the Hebrew name for God. It's sweet how they don't put in vowel points and just have the consonant series YHWH ("the tetragrammaton") -- leaving out the vowel points makes the word distinctive on the page -- and it's sweet how when you get to it, you just say the word "Adonay" ('my lord') instead, the consonants of which look nothing like the consonants in the tetragrammaton, they're completely different. I've always known that that was Jewish practice, but it's crazy different once you actually get to learning the Hebrew and do it yourself.

Gonna pump you up!

Someone's mixtape they play in the weightroom at the gym on campus has Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" on it.

While we're on the subject of the Carpenters...: today's music.

This past Sunday I asked my friend who mans the library guard desk of the main library on campus what she thought of the Carpenters. She was like, "The Carpenters, who are they? Are they what you young hucklebucks listen to nowadays?"

While we're on the subject of Nixon...: A condolence letter to Richard Carpenter.

Part of Nixon's condolence letter to Richard Carpenter on the death of his sister, dated February 22nd, 1983 (quoted Coleman's The Carpenters: The Untold Story, p. 325):

I remember how impressed I was with her vivacious and captivating warmth. The two of you were a great team and provided a sharp contrast to some of the groups in the Seventies who professed to be musical artists. I know how much you and her family will miss her but just remember that for millions of her fans she left only pleasant memories.

What an odd letter -- a condolence letter is no place to slam degenerate rock music, and is he implying that Karen Carpenter left unpleasant memories for her family? I hope Nixon wrote this in haste.

Memories of the Clown Memorial Service: Proclamation.

The program mostly consisted of an emcee clown introducing different other clowns to read different bits of information, like about the circus accident, or the Showmen's League of America (which had bought the land for the graves for the sixty-four unidentifiable bodies), and other stuff like that. After a bit of that, the emcee clown started talking about how International Clown Week was instituted during the 1970s, and then she was like, "I'd now like to introduce Oopsie-Daisy to read the proclamation of President Nixon."

Memories of the Clown Memorial Service: Raffle.

They had a raffle for the kids who came. Prizes were Harry Potter books, and the winners had to go stand around a grave from the circus accident for a man named "Harry Potter".