Charles and Jeremiah , Chupacabra of the Antipodes

Where is the Mason and Dixon line?

What is the diet of the kea?

I learned the answers to these and other riveting questions by flipping through my dictionary and letting my eyes wander, instead of just looking up one word and no more.

From my bedside dictionary:

Mason-Dixon line [Charles Mason English astronomer and Jeremiah Dixon English surveyor]: the southern boundary line of Pennsylvania -- called also Mason and Dixon's line

kea [Maori]: a large predominantly green New Zealand parrot (Nestor notabilis) that is normally insectivorous but sometimes destroys sheep by slashing the back to feed on the kidney fat

I thought I'd share what I learned about the Mason and Dixon's line because it was news to me. I'd always figured it was the line that was the northern or southern border of Tennessee (Tenneseein' is Tennbelievin'). Placing the traditional North-South demarcation line so far north really shifts my Weltanshauung.

I think what I love most about the second entry is that they kinda shared a bit too much information. It's like if they were defining me and said Daniel: a brunet male found in the Great Plains that normally wears collared shirts and blue jeans but sometimes wears his mother's dresses

Two Names

Noygel Massop

Greator Tshuma

Martin Mulling

Kosmo. I think I want to name something or someone this. Maybe a son, but not the first. (Other son names are Solomon [Sol] and Dean Henry Ellis.)

There was a last name in the credits of Across the Universe: Cazedessus. I really like it. There is a Jules Cazedessus that has a couple IMDb credits (the connection to all three movies: Frida, Titus and Across the Universe is Julie Taymor) and a Camille Cazedessus Jr. (which means there is a Sr.) that has a connection to editing stuff. I like this name mainly because it is reminiscent of caduceus.

Another dog name: A dachshund named Oscar, not after the weiner, but after the boxer De La Hoya.

As for Across the Universe, I liked it, not as much as Once, but more than some other movie I didn't like as much--the Romeo + Juliet with Claire Danes will suffice. Some of Taymor's set pieces didn't work for me, and I didn't appreciate all the musical performances, but there was enough of both in the 133 minutes that I found plenty of each to please. I agree with Katie, that if you like The Beatles and you like musicals, you'll like this movie.

Brilliant!

That really sums up the Regina Spektor concert at Sokol Auditorium, opened by Only Son (if you'd like to see one of the songs they performed together during the encore, watch the "Hotel Song" video from an earlier show in Chicago).

My sister, Marcy, has a bunch of pictures of the concert up on Flickr. If you aren't too busy, I like her picture of our kitten Simon, the predator, on her third page of pictures (the sphinxy one is fun too).

But back to the concert, it really was everything I had hoped that it would be. The Steinway was grand, literally and figuratively, Regina was really magnificent, and was a trooper too, fighting off sickness (a fight she was beginning to lose by the time the encore came), and Jack/Only Son had a very fun open, what with his iPodologue and all (that would be when he had a conversation with his iPod).

The last song of the evening was Samson. This was one of her songs that I greatly anticipated. When I heard it at the show, I thought about the burden Delilah had lifted from her Hebrew hero. I know my own experience pales in comparison, but I think I felt similarly to him when I decided it was more important to graduate from Union than it was to graduate from the Honors Program at Union. It was a tremendous relief to eliminate the academic burden I'd probably carried with me since third grade.

It's a Dog's Name

Costello is named after Elvis, not Abbott's buddy, and is also a Pekingnese that looks like its owner.

Peanut and China are a Daschund and Mutt respectively.

Costello is named in the vein of Keidis, the mini Australian shepherd I met at the dog run a while ago.