OFFER: 7′ Pre-lit Christmas Tree (partially working) :/
Posted to the Dubuque Freecycle list:
This tree is approximately 5-6 years old — it belonged to my parents — I set it up the other night and can’t seem to get one section of lights to work and a few other lights here and there don’t come on. It’s a beautiful tree (well flocked) but I don’t have the time to go through each bulb and figure out what’s wrong with it. It came in a box but the box is pretty non-functional.
It was not used since Christmas 2008. One of the most beautiful artificial trees I have ever seen (when all the lights work).
Please email me with contact information — It needs to be gone before Tuesday night or it’s going to the curb.
from the comments
As some have noted, it’s an interesting distinction as to which books we enjoyed as children and which as adults. Nowadays I think Owl Service, for example, is just about a perfect book, but the ending perplexed me when I was a teenager. And maybe there’s a difference too between what we read as “children” and what we read as teens. I loved Heinlein’s ’50s science fiction novels for boys (especially Tunnel in the Sky) in probably 6th and 7th grades. When I was younger than that I loved Phyllis Whitney’s mysteries. I too read Wrinkle in TIme, probably in 6th grade, but I’m not sure I read anything else by L’Engle for several years. I guess I started reading Arthur C Clarke and Ray Bradbury in 8th grade (or maybe 9th) and read a zillion science fiction books in high school. It was summer after 10th, I think, when I read Lord of the Rings; Gormenghast would have followed that in 11th; and maybe in 11th also came along Ballantine’s new “adult fantasy” series, playing off Tolkien’s popularity. It was probably 6th or 7th when I read Call of the Wild and loved it, and I guess it was about the same time when I read some of Kjelgaard’s animal books too. (Daryl’s Big Red may be a Kjelgaard — I can’t swear to it.) Probably before I went into science fiction, I went through a biography period, reading mostly from a series of highly fictionalized books about the childhoods of famous people, many by Augusta Stevenson. (I particularly enjoyed the Knute Rockne book.) I think I read Alice in Wonderland in high school, and loved it, and never read Winnie The Pooh until high school, when I read it because I played Christopher Robin in 11th grade: we did the short Pooh play for several elementary schools.
As an adult — as a retired librarian — what books have I loved? Well, gee whiz, even though I absolutely despise talking animals, I think Charlotte’s Web is one of the premier books of the 20th century, far superior to most “classics” for adults. It works because EB White is a superb writer — and yet its existence has never moved me to read Stuart Little or Trumpet of the Swan. The Book Thief, published within the past decade, I think, is a first-rate book for junior high-ish kids. Louis The Fish by Arthur Yorinks may be my favorite picture book. Where the Wild Things Are is classic of course. L’Engle’s Arm of the Starfish is a fine fine thriller. There are probably more good books for the under-18 crowd than for adults.
dream name
The young man, the photographer hired by the insurance company, said his name was Keith. Keith Carradine. I thought that was a pretty odd choice on the part of his parents, even by dream logic.
On waking, I recalled that our neighbors the next street over from Dutton Drive had named their daughters after movie stars. Lana. And Rita. But their last names were not Turner. Nor Hayworth.
from the comments
Up bright and early for the Starvest. We traveled further each year, hopping from system to system in the rickety ship we’d pieced together. In order to keep needs low, artificial water had been rationed since before I could remember, but most of our days were spent gathering the real kind from the seemingly endless brimming galaxies. It got tough to even see stars for what they were after a few years, large gaseous rounds or small immovable solid objects. You just start calculating, as soon as you land how much you can gather. Bryn asked me the other day if we’d ever return to a star she particularly liked. I had never even thought of that possibility. Stars were simply starvested and we moved on, sending back smaller, heavily guarded vessels with the liquids to be counted and stored. The rich could afford the real stuff, but Bryn, my father and myself were given only a small measure on the anniversary of our birth. Father carefully saved his, hoping someday to trade for better parts or perhaps land on Home Planet. I taste the smallest sip every year, feeling the lightening quick effects of even the lightest drop for days, smooth against the tongue, giving courage to the heart and clarity to the mind, and then put my portion with his. Bryn asked why we tried so hard since more work just meant more star water for others, but she’s too young to understand that there are limits to this universe and there’s only a few more years left to gather. New stars are born to replace the old ones that have been harvested, but not quickly enough and they won’t even be ready when my ten-thousandth granddaughter is born and scraping the skies.
spam name
Bobbi Moody.
Clusterflockers with Children…
…is there a book you wouldn’t want your children to read?
in case the NAzis with the GERMAN dog come back to kick me out
I am clean and keep a neat tent. I shave and shower every other week, we can alternate so some one is always in the tent. My girlfriend will bring food so we don’t have to leave. $1.00 rent is due upon our agreement and is due on the first of every month. It is not refundable as your dollar symbolizes your dedication to the tent and our cause.
(via)
dear clusterflock
Favorite children’s book?
then I yelled at my dad
“It’s amazing to think all the water on this bus when during a lifetime each star makes a single ounce.”
headline of the day
ESP proponents claim that ESP skeptics are psychic, and use their powers to suppress ESP
recipe from the alley
Boil med size Shrimp in Jacket cook 2 or 3 min. 1/2 st. of butter or 1 Butter. 2 dice carrots a little Flour. 1 onion dice. Saute in Butter.
________________________________________________
2 big potatoes diced
4 cups of warm milk
consome de pollo in 1 cup of milk
cook 15 – 20 min
Film.com Reviews
A Roundup of our reviews for the weekend.
I wrote these:
Young Adult
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Other people wrote these:
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
New Year’s Eve
The Sitter
Touch of Evil
A serious of shorts, directed by Alex Prager. Fantastic and mesmerizing.
quotes out of context
She just has incredibly beautiful smelling urine.
Over the next three months, I kept up an ongoing dialogue via Facebook messages and chat in which I continually found ways to irk her by screwing up the Western Union payment, demanding she send me more photos and de-friend the other men on Facebook she’d added in hopes of scamming them, claiming I’d lost all my money during Irene, and repeatedly confiding in her that I had chronic diarrhea and hoped she would still love me.
He had never been like this before. Ever. He just woke up with it.
The compacted layers of fossil plants — excavated from sediments 9.8 feet (3 meters) deep — show that the bedding was periodically burned, possibly to limit pests and garbage.
It’s very simple: If you kill a cat, you eat a cat.
If you comment on this post…
I’ll say something insanely nice to you.*
*So make it good so I have plenty to work with.
from the comments
Sarah, I tell people to just tell me the end of the movie. I never want to be in a dark theater again waiting for supernatural occurrence and be treated to the ending of “Don’t Look Now.” Yes, it was full of signs and portents, a sightless woman seeing, red hoods and skin cut on glass, flowing blood. A portent reader straight from the woods not accustomed to screens and artifice never saw it coming. The real portents and conclusions are seamless, as natural as twilight moving into night and easing back into dusk. The ones we construct and splash in the outsize are the nightmares.
Swimming Like a Dolphin
Franky Zapata uses a flyboard to zoom in and out of the water and leap through the air.
It’s like a jetpack for water.
(via ★jkottke)
Wanted: Globe
Posted to Dubuque Freecycle list:
Just a plain old globe. Condition doesn’t really matter.
If you comment on this post…
I’ll say something insanely insulting to you.*
*So make it good so I have plenty to work with.
headline of the day, II
Trent Arsenault, Sperm Donor, Gets Cease Order From The FDA
Art Institute adds Warhol’s ‘Empire’ to Chicago skyline
From 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. [Friday, December 9], the modern skyscraper [the Aon Center] overlooking Millennium Park will be acting as a movie screen onto which the Art Institute of Chicago will be projecting Andy Warhol’s eight-hour silent, black-and-white epic “Empire,” which consists of one long, unbroken shot of New York’s Empire State Building. Said to be the first outdoor U.S. screening of this landmark — if not exactly action-packed — film, the event marks the very public, logistically challenging kickoff to the Art Institute’s new exhibition Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964-1977, which opens to members Saturday and to the public Tuesday.
Rick Perry Is an Ass-Hat
A response to Rick Perry’s Gay-Baiting Ad.
headline of the day
Rick Perry’s Gay-Baiting Ad Rivals Justin Bieber In YouTube Hatred
Hobo Lobo of Hamelin
Just go here.
And scroll.
image out of context
