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Category: Personal

A breath

March 17, 2003
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Despite it all, I took some time this weekend to have a nice quiet breakfast and so forth, and since I broke away from my Neighborhood Diner obsession I thought I’d take note of it. Also, I wanted to write about something peaceful.

I went down to the Rosebud Diner in Davis Square, since I needed to pick up comics anyhow. I hadn’t been so impressed by it last time I went there, but this time I got the steak omelette and man that was the right choice. Fairly tender steak and lots of cheese, and I’m sure it says something about me that meat and cheese together make up most of my ideal meals. The coffee, well… the great thing about the Rosebud is that you don’t so much have to worry about the coffee, cause when you’re done with the meal you can saunter on down to the Someday and veg out for hours on comfy chairs drinking quality black manna. Very nice.

I also read a solid chunk of Deadhouse Gates, the second novel in the Malazan Empire sequence, whilst at the Someday. Sequence? Cycle, epic, something like that. I must admit that while writing my previous entry on the Malazan Empire books I caught myself being pleased about the prospect of reading thousands of pages of comforting sameness. Sometimes I get lazy; what can I say? However, Deadhouse Gates leaves the vast majority of characters from Gardens of the Moon behind and sets out on completely new territory. Also, Erikson’s dropped a lot of the Glen Cookisms and found more of his own voice. (Sorry, Kruppe, but once one’s read the Mocker it’s hard to miss the echos.)

Thus, I’m feeling better about my frothing fanboy nature. I have confidence, and I have a novel set on a whole new continent to read. It made for a nice morning.

Mystery wrapped in a riddle

March 6, 2003
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I’m not normally much on the wishlist thing but if anyone out there is overcome with the desire to blow a few thousand bucks on me? Get me this. I can’t even begin to express how much I want this object.

Wait, that’s a lie. I can easily express how much I want this object: less than five thousand dollars worth of want. I gotta say, this whole “money” concept is a very clever invention.

Woohoo

February 18, 2003
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This is the obligatory “wow, look at all that darned snow” entry. You’ve been warned. My driveway is snowed in so I can’t go anywhere so I have nothing better to do than to take pictures of the white stuff on the ground. I am comforted in the knowledge that various and sundry back in California will go “Wow, it must really suck to live out there.” Ha! I have a fireplace and a roaring fire going. Shows what they know.

Stiff upper lip, and all that. Thumbnails follow, they link to bigger pictures, you know the drill.

Continue ReadingWoohoo

Pinned hopes

February 1, 2003
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I’m sort of having trouble wrapping my mind around this one.

I just got my birthday gifts from my Mom. Among them was something I was actually given thirty-three years ago: a pair of gold diaper pins from Tiffany & Co. with my initials monogrammed on them. Inside the little Tiffany box is a note: “For Bryant, with love from Uncle Alex.” That’s apparently Alex Haley; yeah, the one who wrote Roots. (Not actually my uncle.)

So surreal.

Bachelor chow

January 25, 2003
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Warning: this may be disturbing to real cooks. Or not. I really have no idea.

My aunt, blessed be her name, gave me a rice cooker for Christmas. It has a no-stick pot so it’s super easy to wash. You don’t have to pay attention to it while you’re cooking something. It rocks. I made rice and put some beans in and it was great.

So then I decided to try something else. There’s a rumor floating around out there that you can cook meat in it. Mmm, steamed chicken! So I cut up some chicken and some sausage, and put some olive oil into the bottom of the pot, and turned it on. When the oil heated up, I threw in the chicken and sausage and stir fried it a little till I got bored. Then I dumped in a bunch of rice and some water and a can of black beans and a few random spices that were probably past their expiration date, and closed the lid, and made myself go into the living room to read comics.

When I came back, it was done cooking and had switched over to “keep the stuff warm until Bryant wants to eat it” mode. I opened it up, kind of assuming that the meat would be undercooked. Not so! Perfect! Nice moist tender chicken, tasty bits of sausage, all around goodness.

And cleanup was just rinsing out a non-stick bowl. Aw yeah.

Who's that man?

January 3, 2003
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We pause in our mobile blogging frenzy to present some biographical information regarding Jarvis A. Wood. They say you should find your niche and stick with it; possibly this is mine. Someone asked, by the by, if I knew who the businessman mentioned in regards to the Sherman Act in Special Delivery 2. I don’t know, but I’ll see what I can dig up.

The following excerpts are from The History of an Advertising Agency, Ralph M. Hower, Harvard University Press, 1949:

p. 79:

In 1888, Ayer took on his staff Jarvis A. Wood, a young man with a gift of ready words, who immediately began to devote much of his time to writing advertisements for Ayer customers.

p. 98-99:

In January, 1898, a step was taken that reduced the burden upon Ayer and McKinney, and promoted a more equable distribution of managerial duties. Two employes of the firm, Jarvis A. Wood and Albert G. Bradford, were advanced to partnership.

Wood had started to work for N. W. Ayer & Son in 1888 as assistant to F. W. Ayer. Genial, friendly, and gifted with a ready flow of words, he was expected to follow Mckinney as the agency’s leading business getter and producer of advertising ideas. His talents, however, lay in other directions. For a number of years he supervised the preparation of copy; his business associates believe that he was the first man to head an agency copy department. Later he was made manager of the large staff of employees and placed in charge of the general routine work of the Philadelphia organization. In that capacity his tact, his fatherly manner, and his complete loyalty enabled Wood to serve the agency well.

In addition to lightening the burden upon the two senior partners, the admission of Bradford and Wood represented the attempt to provide for a continuity of management. It is significant that these two had not been brought in from the outside. Both had been employed in the agency for more than ten years and knew every phase of the work. Like Wallace and Mckinney, neither of then contributed any new capital to the business; each paid for his share out of earnings received after admission to the partnership. Their promotion, like every promotion to top management in N. W. Ayer & Son before or since, was based not on financial interest but on their ability, promise, and experience within the firm, a fact which has given Ayer employees an incentive to put forth their best efforts.

After the admission of the new partners, the responsibilities of the business were divided as follows: McKinney was in charge, as before, of the business getting activities: Bradford handled the buying of space and other dealings with publishers; and Ayer, with Wood as his assistant, exercised a close supervision over operations as a whole.

p. 125:

It is worth noting that none of them could be regarded as a specialist in space buying, and that since the death of Jarvis Wood, there was no member of the firm whose specialty had been the preparation of copy.