Hooked on Darjeeling
A parody of the song "Hooked on a Feeling", originally performed by B.J. Thomas and further popularized by Blue Swede.
January 2020
14 posts
Maxwell JoslynNight Walk
I rambled through a grid of streets which I thought I knew cold The street lamps turned to will-o-wisps, alluring balls of gold I lost my bearings wandering—I got all turned around But I'm OK. I found my way, and now I'm homeward bound. I got disoriented on the roads I walked of old I took some time to cogitate—I knew I wouldn't fold The path that I was seeking is no longer sought, but found I'm A-OK. I found my way, and now I'm homeward bound. Surveying my surroundings gave my instincts purchase-hold Rearmed with subtle pointers, I grew confidently bold Old landmarks shuffled out to say, "You're on familiar ground" I'm A-OK. I found my way, and now I'm homeward bound.
Recent days have brought several new poem uploads, including "That's Podracing", "Esther", "Drongo Explained", and "Night Walk".
The next upgrade I have planned for this site will incorporate poems into the blog, so I don't have to make announcements like this one -- but the Poems page, as a collection, will remain a nonlinear rumpus. This is in keeping with the idea of "multiple views onto material" which I expressed here.
[2020-02-09: the aforementioned upgrade has been made. Poems now get their own pages, and are incorporated into the blogfeed.]
D'aww! Look what Kicks Condor had to say about my website!
Maxwell Joslyn Just the kind of personal blog that I really like the best - littered with projects and writings, thoughts stuffed everywhere. This is sort of like what [Sphygmus](https://sphygm.us/)’ or [Chameleon](https://wiki.waifu.haus)’s wikis would look like outside of TiddlyWiki.
Let it be known to all comers that Kicks Condor is one hell of a drongo, whose website has a supremely trippy, glitched-out aesthetic, and whose skill in smelling out the cool corners of the Web is second to none.
Drongo Explained
While corresponding with Kicks Condor, I realized I didn't have a snappy, instantly-recognizable definition for a drongo. To fill that need, I began this poem in December 2019, edited and extended it over the next couple months, and pronounced it finished on 2020-01-29, around 23:33.
Reading today:
- Naval Gazing's series on Anti-Submarine Warfare, Part 1 and Part 2
- Wikipedia: the Enigma machine
- Atomic Rockets: Introduction to Space Warfare.
That's Podracing
A Star Wars parody of the classic Dean Martin song "That's Amore".
When you pull a tight spin Without losing your grin— That's podracing When the chance cubes are rolled And you have to be bold— That's podracing Racers bring (Bring a ling a ling, bring a ling a ling) Pods together in battle Watto squirms (Squirmy lurmy lurm, squirmy lurmy lurm) Only Shmi left as chattel When you feel in command Soaring over the sand— That's podracing When a man screams "poodoo!" As he cedes ground to you— That's podracing When foes swear in Huttese As you place first with ease— That's podracing When announcers go wild: "Anakin, the slave child!"— That's podracing Racers bring (Bring a ling a ling, bring a ling a ling) Pods together in battle Watto squirms (Squirmy lurmy lurm, squirmy lurmy lurm) Only Shmi left as chattel
Review of Going Solo
Hey, Steve Ivy. The links on your archive page appear to be broken. Instead of showing the user your posts from the month in question, they instead show a single bullet point with no content.
[2020-01-28: Huzzah to Steve -- he's fixed the problem.]
Review of Red Sparrow
Word list:
- gamine: n. a mischievous, playful, or elfish girl or young woman; a female waif or urchin.
- cassoulet: n. an oven-baked stew or casserole from southwest France, containing beans, meats, vegetables, and herbs.
- spile: n. a pile (anchoring post); a bung or spigot.
- splenetic: adj. (also "splenic") Ill-humored, irritable. [obviously related to "spleen"]
- vitiate: v. reduce the value of, impair, spoil, make ineffective, invalidate; debase, corrupt.
I've finally uploaded the 3rd version of Ryan Quest, which removes the only game-breaking bug that snuck into the final release (almost a year ago now. Wow!) I've also updated some body text and captions on that page.
I've added an "All Tags" page, which lets you browse this site by its categorization tags. I like providing multiple views onto the website's materials because each view emphasizes different relations among those materials. To this end, the homepage shows some -- but not all -- articles, and doesn't mention notes; "All Tags" and the individual tag pages form per-topic indexes which cover most of what I've published here; and the blog/feed is a familiar chronological view of all material.
My thinking about those topics was stimulated by a recent weekend rewrite and cleanup of the site's primary build script. The overhaul made it much easier to experiment with collections of material where membership can be based on any of the publishing metadata I keep for each page.
Review of The Discovery of France
Stupendously D&D-able, the way that Fernand Braudel and other "histories of everyday life" always are. The first half of the book is about the myriad and variegated traditional ways of life in France up through ~1900; the lack of a conception of "France" as opposed to individual pays (tiny areas with fuzzy boundaries but strong identities); and the huge ignorance of the land's features and inhabitants in which most people persisted, for most of French history (not that anywhere else was much better). I kept finding parallels to what I know of China, past and present, with countless micro-cultures spread over a vast area. The second half concerns the growing of national identity; the bypassing of village, forest, and transhumance trail by railroad; the disappearance of folkways; and the replacement of ignorance of the contemporary with ignorance of the past.
Review of The Story of My Life
