Icycles

"And I still remember... Marie St. Laurette." -- YMSB

Puccini: E Lucevan Le Stelle

The Philips Minigroove 45 of the Puccini opera performance by G. Giacosa (1858-1924) of air Cavaradossi from "Tosca," Act 3, and Boito's Ponchielli performance of Cielo e Mar (Enzo's romance from "La Giaconda," Act 2) brings to life the recording Enrique Caruso made the most recorded ever after it was first ported to vinyl in 1900. This gem of the Philips Minigroove collection also transports Sterbini's performance of Se il mio nome, canzone from "Il barbiere di Siviglia," Act 1, to the realm of the glorious. The recording featured the orchestra of the "Teatro di San Carlo di Napoli" conducted by Arturo Basile and Ugo Rapalo. The two tenors involved were Antonio Gallie and Petre Munteanu. Having heard the original Caruso, from John Samuel Day's private collection, your author can easily state that this recording also merits very high praise. It was conditioned by Francesco Molinari-Pradelli.

The Dreaded Phan Cat

Chiara Bautista meets Sean Kirby
"I miss that painting so much..."

-

The roses left the garden hoes unbroken.
Too many words unspoken
Never; and left again.
Your blooms will return,
Though the pruning hand has gone,
The sun still burns.

-

Prince Water's Gun

High Resolution

Another True Great

The vampire movie The Hunger, with Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie, shattered the time barrier with it's graphic portrayal of a descent into betrayal and madness. The direction failed to earn as much respect as it should have, but that failure by cinematic peers was decimated by the film's imagery. The film also deals with more than just betrayal. It reveals the deep seated mortality that follows every being, living or undead, and makes horror filled regret something that can be felt at a gut level. The solemn blessings of the Beatitudes, it could be argued, could barely pierce the gloom of the awareness necessary to understand the film from every angle, but nobody need fear it. It's just a movie, after all.

Nursery Times

Hello sushi
Hello planet
first cut blowfish
and then can it
there's a reason
it's well seasoned
but if you don't know how to cook
then damn it

(Music discussion follows)

Hello mutter
Hello fodder
Here I am in
Camp Granada...

[a great song:
Vue Foghe una Candella -> il Soffio del Vento
only heard in mono, however]

Vessel Pussycat

The tree dweller, El Gato Real Wilson Kittorz (Nancy Cat) reads in the dell
While gazed, shrews cruelly muse,
"Triumph denies the knowledge of ages past."
But victory comes to those who persevere,
And the critical will reap their just rewards.

Music Review: Debussy on Vinyl

Much of Debussy's genius vanishes when heard from a vinyl recording. The dynamics of the compositions are lost because there is no way for the music to pause without starting a new track. That entire problem was solved by the compact disc. Translation to digital made it very easy for the music to be distributed without authorization, but that would mean little to Debussy.

- from a mini-lecture by Arlen Speights (predating the recovery of Benjamin Brovman)

The Second: Jain Pilgrimage

No one loses their special idea of freedom. Religion does not burden those who do not want it. We are all free to spin our wheels in the darkness, throwing grime or failing climbs. The images we see, the tastes and smells, the hunger for truth and knowledge, these things concern some people more than the things they feel. Deep down inside of you their is no alarm, because the base never wavers or falters. It will always be there, and none have ever fallen.

Scripting Nautilus [Update]

Payload on Nautilus scripting from Paul Ferrill via Scott Ruecker:

Environment variable
::Description
NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS
::Newline-delimited
paths for selected files (only if
local)
NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS
::Newline-delimited URIs for selected
files
NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI
::The current
location
NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_WINDOW_GEOMETRY
::The position and size of the
current window
In Python, you obtain the value of these variables with a single call to
the os.environ.get function as follows:

selected = os.environ.get
('NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS,'')

This call returns a string with paths to all the selected files
delimited with the newline character. Python makes it easy to turn [snip]
into an iterable list with the following line:

targets = selected.splitlines()

Here's the link to this valuable Gnome tool. Of course I'm not a big fan of Gnome. I like the code better. Gnome is ghastly to anyone with insight into operating systems.

[This post was modified twice]