Sound. "Don't stop ... Believing ...."

You are right. Hang on.... Fixed.

Somehow this incident in my city has not had national attention. But here, for what it's worth: http://kxan.com/2014/05/12/former-apd-detective-kleinert-will/ http://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2014-12-05/breaking-jackson-shooter-arraigned/ And for details of the shooting: http://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2013-08-05/apd-searching-for-witness-to-fatal-officer-involved-shooting/ (This article is in three parts, in reverse chronological order.) Just to add: (1) the chase - on foot, partially in commandeered car - ended about 100 yards from the bank, which is literally above the creek mentioned; (2) the shooting wasn't in some gully, but on a creekside trail frequented by joggers, cyclists, and kids walking home from the local elementary school. ETA: The comments below the first article give some additional information; including the interesting recent history of our District Attorney.

Have you read Five Hundred Years of Printing? Steinberg gets a little bogged down in detail sometimes, but it's fascinating and comprehensive. I never knew so much about fonts before.

More plague literature! Yeah! We really have to put together a master list.

Ah, okay; I don't remember that being explicit, but it might have been; and I could have misunderstood the references to crossing the Rio. Thanks! ETA: A little poking around, and the movie is explicit about its being set in Nevada; the book isn't, but it's supposedly obvious if you're local; and the author was from Nevada. So Nevada for the win.

It feels weird to interrupt the discussion for a post about books*, but here's an excerpt from my current read, Dobie's Cow People: ---------------------------- I came down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, took boat for Galveston, and made my way overland to Austin. There I hired to a man named Neil Cain. He had a farm out about ten miles from town and put me to plowing at fifteen dollars a month. His field had a fence around it to keep cattle out. The only fences in Texas in those days were to keep stock out of fields; nothing fenced them in. There were not many fields. The Chisholm Trail from south Texas to Kansas passed right by our field. I could watch the herds of Longhorns trailing by, see cowboys riding, smell the dust of movement. I wasn't a bit satisfied with keeping my eyes on a pair of mule ears walking up one row and down another between a pair of plow handles. Moreover, I had learned that cowboys were getting thirty dollars a month, while here I was getting just fifteen dollars. I took the cow fever. About this time a phrenologist named O. S. Fowler came to Austin analyzing people's heads and telling them what they were suited for. I borrowed a horse from Mr. Cain and rode in to find out what I was good for. Mr. Fowler sat me down beside a table, pulled out a blank chart, told a young woman assistant to write as he dictates, and began feeling my head. He felt this bump and that bump, and the young lady wrote down everything he said. "Young man," he concluded, "you will always be under the spell of some woman. That woman should be your wife." I asked him what I owed him. "Ten dollars." I paid it--two thirds of a month's salary. Then I rode back to the farm. While we were eating breakfast before daylight the next morning I pulled the sheet of paper I had paid ten dollars for and put it on the table. Then I thumped my head and said, "Mr. Cain, everything in this head is in this paper. It don't say a damned word about plowing. I'm going to follow cows instead of mules." ---------------------------- By the way, does anybody know where The Ox-Bow Incident is supposed to be placed? The only clues are that there's concern the rustlers could have crossed the Rio Grande, which seems to limit it to Texas, New Mexico, and (maybe) Oklahoma. But there's mountains and heavy snow, which rules out Oklahoma and most of Texas. But crossing the Rio in New Mexico wouldn't have put them in Mexico. So the Big Bend region of West Texas in a particularly bad winter seems like the only possibility; but I don't recognize any of the place names. Really it all seems like it's set in Colorado. Maybe the rustlers had very fast horses. *ETA: When I started this post, we were still on disgusting bugs.

Yeah. As we say in Texas, that fella's a bubble off plumb.

Aaaaaaaaaa! The guilt! Don't hesitate to put Maupassant aside if he does nothing for you.

Finished 56. Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident. Here's the weak-willed Judge Tyler trying to salve his conscience for his failure to stop the lynch mob by giving an ineffective speech on law and order: ----------------- The men grinned, and Smith called, "Cut the stumping, Judge," and when the Judge hesitated, "It's all been said for you, Tyler. All we want's your blessing." Davies didn't want the Judge to get into an oration any more than the rest did. He came over beside the Judge's horse before the Judge could start again, and said something. Osgood trailed out too. "Certainly, certainly, Mr. Davies," the Judge said, but still in his platform voice, "just the point I was coming to." "Men," he addressed us, "you cannot flinch from what you believe to be your duty, of course, but certainly you would not wish to act in the very spirit which begot the deed you would punish." "By the time you got us ready to act, Tyler," Smith shouted, "the rustlers could be over the Rio." There was agreement; others called ribald advice. Ma leaned on her saddle directly in front of the Judge and grinned at him. The Judge's neck and jowls began to swell slowly and turn red. ------------------------- I had the pleasure of loaning the book to a friend today. She's planning to come back for Dobie's Tales of Old-Time Texas, and thought it was hilarious that Sam Bass was a hero-outlaw of Round Rock. (You'd have to live here to get why that's so amusing.) What to read next, oh what.....

Dh gives Ubik a huge thumbs-up. (He loved Inception, too. I fell asleep during it.)

I don't think the book works quite right in British. Certainly "zed" isn't going to rhyme. And the Scots do something odd to J.

I wanted to test the hypothesis that it was the raciness of Year of Wonders that I didn't like, so I read 55. Colette, The Innocent Libertine. Which was good. So it was definitely not the raciness. Instead of an excerpt from the book, an excerpt from the preface: -------------------------- When I wrote Minne [the original title], I intended to write only a long short story, in the hope that I could sign it with my own name. It was necessary therefore, since any work of the dimensions of a novel was bound to be appropriated by covetous hands, that my story should be quite short. It was; but not for long. Its success proved fatal to it. I heard words of praise from a husband's mouth; I also heard other words, too strong for me to quote in this preface. I had to pad out Minne somewhat. --------------------------- I tried to start another plague book, Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed, but it was long and I need a break (The Last Man was a dozen pages short of chunkstertude) and am reading The Ox-Bow Incident instead. Other than some jarring passages in which characters break into didactic exposition, pretty good so far. Also I picked up some more Dobie on the clearance shelf and may read that. In general, feeling like leaving France and England and Italy to themselves for a while and resting here in the American west. Where's that McMurtry gone?

Wee Girl struggled with /ch/ (and with just about every other sound in English). It took her three steps to make /ch/ correctly: (1) Make sure the teeth are together for /sh/; (2) make sure the tongue is hitting the palate for /t/; and then (3) put them together, /t/ + /sh/, for /ch/.

I finished Mary Shelley's The Last Man. This is a really good book once you realize that it's not meant as futuristic dystopian fiction, but about the Shelleys' circle of friends, three of whom had already died young (including PBS) when Mary wrote the book. It's a book about friendship and loss, and how a world full of exotic foreign places and rich culture weighs nothing against the weight of loneliness and grief. Pam, please forgive me; I started Year of Wonders and just can't continue. I know it's much loved by many and so I will shut up about why I hated it. :) The relative numbers would indicate a character defect on my part. I'm going to read Manzoni's The Betrothed instead. Sorry....

Thanks Robin for that useful word! I told Middle Girl about "tsonduku." She was perplexed: "What else do you do with books you've just bought?" Me: "Most people buy a book, read it, and then buy another one." Her: "But you'd never get all the good books at that rate!" Paternal Christmas bookbuying tip: My dad is visiting and was looking for something to read, so I handed him The Stalin Front (NYRB), which I read last year and found too depressing and gruesome. He loves it. ETA: A book Secret Santa?

My grandfather liked his boiled beef, cabbage, and potatoes, and passed a taste for same on to my dad. I have assiduously avoided the Irish cuisine aspect of my heritage. But I still do Guilt. :D Otherwise, no, not really.

Oo, that's the Hašek who wrote The Good Soldier Švejk, isn't it. Also on my TBR pile (okay, bookshelf). Have you read it? Is it as good as its reputation?

I recently picked that up! I never read it, but I liked The Police's song about it. :D Okay, I'll move it closer to the top of The Pile.

Not much reading this week due to busy-ness and stress (visiting houseguest; cat decided to go on an adventure and only deigned to return after I had passed out flyers to every house in the neighborhood, in the rain). But I did finish 53. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class. Rightfully a classic; but I would have to recommend just reading the chapters "Introductory," "Conspicuous Leisure," "Conspicuous Consumption," "Pecuniary Canons of Taste," and (for us lot here) "The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture." The rest is very skippable. Now to finish The Last Man, which is beyond doubt the most melodromatic and overwrought novel I have ever perused. But good if you're okay with that sort of thing. And people are dropping like flies now. Then on to Year of Wonders.

Sorry -- I followed the link from the tote bag to outofprintclothing.com and saw it there.

I'm leaving my iPad where dh can't help seeing it, with the Master and Margarita t-shirt on-screen. Hint, hint.

Thanks for the tip!

Angel, Congratulations! https://mattsko.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/bang-bang-gif.gif <---Texan applause here

Jane: We're waiting for Shelley. Violet: (despairingly). Ah! (Pause.) You're sure it was here? Jane: What?