Thane Plambeck

Conversation in the car

COLE:  Mama --- do we get Easter off this year in school?

GLORIA:  Cole, Easter is always on a Sunday.

COLE:  We don't get any extra days off?

GLORIA:  No.

COLE: What a waste of a holiday.

Reinking study

I started today's Saturday NYT crossword by filling in KOOLAIDMAN for Ad pitcher who's really a pitcher, but I had my doubts. MRKOOLAID sounded better to me, but that didn't have enough letters, and the one crossing answer I had in mind for 1 Down, Dawdling sorts (POKES) seemed sort of lame, too. I was pretty sure I was headed for reinking something up in the upper left hand corner, but it wasn't clear what it was.


So off I went to the lower right corner, where I suffered my first reinking after writing in SPECIATION for Evolutionary process. The answer was ADAPTATION, instead. I've noticed that I tend to get into trouble with clues from areas that I know the most about (Math, Computer Science, & science in general), maybe because I can think of lots of words that work, and can't tell what the "most known" ones are. Another clue in this general category that I had trouble with in a recent puzzle was Verify, as a password (7), for which I could think of various technical words such as DECRYPT and the wrong-length answer HASHCODE, none of which I could manage to force from the front of my mind, stupidly (anyone ever actually use "hashcode" as verb? I don't think so...it's always just "hash" instead, but still, kind of a nice usage); the answer was simply REENTER.


Later, in the lower left corner, and wanting to be done so that I could watch the Stanford UCLA basketball game, I guessed the pair of crossing answers

DEPARTURE for Terminal offering and
EYES for They're near temples.

Instead, the answers are RENTALCAR and EARS.

So, more reinking there, but the upper left corner ended up being OK, after all. Done:

extraterrestrial

extraterrestrial, originally uploaded by biancavanderwerf.

After being refused entry into Kearney Junior High School to shoot video

VideoPhoto_1_84, originally uploaded by thane.

From Remembering the Swede

VideoPhoto_1_96, originally uploaded by thane.

Steve Rademacher illustrates how the Swede collapsed when hit by an retaliatory overhead smash.

Still from the "Remembering the Swede" documentary

VideoPhoto_1_55, originally uploaded by thane.

I'd like to know when Jim Sanks and I made this video --- I'm guessing 1985.  [ More stills ]

buffalo springfield, reprise (Monterey 1967)

Questions, many asked before

1) Why is Flickr Interestingness so boring?   Because the photos look like advertising?

2) Ab-Flabby vs Flat-Abby:   Am I rotten in The Core?  Maybe a few more V-Ups at morning basketball?

3) Too prone to Capitalize? Or to use [ ] to set off text in blog posts?

4) Reflection, after the party:  did I make at least one good pun?  [ john ciardi, i think]

5) The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks :  In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts --- they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.  [ r. w. e., quotation approximate ]

6)  "Print", "Print Preview", "Page Setup", "Format and Options", "Magnification", "Landscape", "Portrait", "Fit to One Page", etc :  why such a fucking nightmare of dialog boxes?  The web has been around for almost 15 years, and web pages still don't print properly, right?  Am I missing something?  Something went horribly wrong.  "The program is excellent, I am very impressed --- however, I noticed that it has no output. " [ devastating critique of a software product; who was it?  Someone from Intel, I think, or maybe Yao-Ting Wang. ]

7) Pang Chen:  "Why must every program have a name?"

The new planetarium at night

brunernight, originally uploaded by thane.

Nice --- when it's completed, this is clearly going to be the most interesting architecture in Kearney Nebraska.

Excepting some grain elevators, maybe.

Yussif Hussane, the Masked Marvel, and the Nebraskan with the Dangerous Scissors Hold

Yussif Hussane (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

From the New York Times, 27 January 1918:

Four leading heavyweight wrestlers will take part in finish bouts at Madison Square Garden Tuesday night. The program calls for engagements between Wladek Zbgszko of Poland and John Olin, the mammoth Finn, and Joe Stecher, the Nebraska grappler of scissors-hold fame, and Yussif Hussane, a Balkan.

No titles will change hands on the results of the matches, but the grapplers are rated among the the country's leading exponents of the mat sport.

Zybsko, because of his triumph over Ed "Strangler" Lewis, a Kentuckian, in a tournament held recently at a local theatre, has laid claim to title vacated by the death of Frank Gotch. This claim is disputed by Stecher, Olin, and Earl Caddock, the Iowa wrestler, who is now in the national army. The match with Olin, therefore, will enable Zbyszko, in the event that he is successful, to eliminate a formidable foe in his chase for championship glory. Olin has compiled a creditable record, among his achievements being a two-hour drawn battle with Stecher.

The other bout, between Stecher and Hussane, will work the same effect for the Western grappler if he is successful. The Nebraska athlete, with his dangerous scissors hold, is favorably looked upon as a titular contender. His last appearance was against the "Masked Marvel," Mort Henderson, and in this contest Stecher easily and quickly demonstrated his superior ability. The Nebraskan depends almost entirely on his famous leg scissors on an adversary's body. In fact, the major portion of the Nebraskan's victories on the mat have resulted from this hold.

In Hussane, Stecher will be facing a worthy foe, though one perhaps less known. The Balkan has shown excellent ability, and in the few matches in which he engaged scored convincing victories.

All the grapplers are now in this city, putting on the finishing touches to their training work. Up to the day of the match they will work out in light training at some of the local gymnasiums.

* * *
Rats! Just when I was getting into this, I can't turn up the outcome of the Hussane-Stecher match in the NYT archive. I did find these breathless headlines from a few years later, though:

Joe Stecher Takes Heavyweight Wrestling Title at Madison Square Garden.
SCISSORS HOLD WINS MATCH
Loser Escapes from Many Dangerous Grips Before Falling Victim in 2 Hours 5 Min.
CROWD OF 10,000 ATTENDS
Followers of Grappling Game Pay Prices Ranging from $2 to $20 to See Contenders Perform.
Stecher Is Relentless.
10,000 See the Spectacle.
Stecher Goes Down First. Stecher's Strength Seems Greater.
Grappling De Luxe.

* * *
So, were these matches staged, in the manner of modern "pro" wrestling, or not?

This interesting youtube video of the Stecher/Caddock match ("Oldest Pro Wrestling on Film: Caddock vs Stecher, 1920") suggests that it might have been real, but that everything soon became staged after that.

More on the planetarium

From the photo I wasn't quite sure where the new planetarium on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Kearney was being built, exactly. This map will make it clear to anyone who spent many hours in the 1970s either in the then AO Thomas Computer Center, or at the chess club meetings in the Bruner Hall of Science, directly to the east of it:

Architectural rendering:

Too fucking neat! And it's going up only a few blocks from where I grew up, throwing paperwads into an "Official Apollo Moon Landing" metal trashcan!

Planetarium under construction in Kearney, NE

Planetarium Under Construction 3, originally uploaded by lillisjohn51.

Cool! Looks a little small though.

I periodically hear bits and pieces of news from my hometown, but it always seems to work out that the things I find the most interesting, such as this little construction project, I discover at random on the web.

owen-smiley-nose

owen-smiley-nose, originally uploaded by thane.

THANE: Someone drew a smiley face on your nose.

OWEN: I know.

THANE: Do you want to wash it off before we go?

OWEN: No.

[ Enter GLORIA. ]

GLORIA: Owen, let's go.  Find your shoes.

OWEN: They're outside.

GLORIA:  OK, go get them.  Oh -- you still have the smiley face I drew on your nose. 

OWEN:  I know.

GLORIA: Do you want to wash it off?

OWEN: No!!

THANE:  OK, wait, here's my camera.  Let me take a picture of your nose.

Getting ready to take a half-court shot at tonight's Stanford / Oregon St basketball game

Getting ready to take a half-court shot at tonight's Stanford / Oregon St basketball game, originally uploaded by thane.

Missed it to the right, but at least I hit backboard.

They gave me another shot, and I missed that one long --- it hit the top of the backboard and went over.

If I had made it, I would have won a signed and framed 3' by 4' John Elway Stanford football jersey --- not sure what I would have done with it

Saturday is the new Tuesday

Way, way, way, way, way, way too easy Saturday NYT crossword:

One reinking only at 15 Across, Tourist booth handouts, which started life as

FREEBIES

then became

FREEMAPS

and finally settled into

AREAMAPS,

but that was about it.   I was done in less than 6 or 7 minutes.

Very, very, very unsatisfying.  I'm depending on these puzzles to create a longer diversion, particularly on Saturday. 

If you see me in a bookstore looking at a giant book of Soduku, please intervene.

***

Added later:  Oops, found a mistake --- Use leverage on should be PRY, not PLY

I don't think I even read the crossing clue Cell alternative (PAGER, not PAGEL).

Friday reinkings

1) Wrote in ARAPAHO for One Across, Creek Confederacy Tribe, because it went well with MOLOTOV (Two-time foreign minister of the USSR). Nope --- ALABAMA, instead.

2) Wrote RECEDE for Withdraw. SECEDE, instead.

3) For the long answer at 56 Across, Fantastic flight, started to write in

MAGICCARPETRIDE
but then suddenly decided -- wrongly -- that that answer didn't have enough letters (I only wrote in one "C"). So I started reinking to
FLYINGCARPETRIDE
before realizing that had too many letters. So back it went to

MAGICCARPETRIDE
and I flew off into the sunset.

Powwow rainout

Powwow rainout, originally uploaded by thane.

Two weeks of middle ear infection

Not fun.

In my many Googlings, I learned how to spell "Eustachian" reliably.  There are plenty of helpful web sites:

The primary function of the Eustachian tube is to ventilate the middle ear space, ensuring that its pressure remains at near normal ambient pressure.

And when it's not "functioning," but is instead clogged for ten days with the carnage of an amoxicillin battleground?

As Eustachian tube function worsens, air pressure in the middle ear falls, and the ear feels full and sounds are perceived as muffled.  

I couldn't have said it better myself.  But what about that ringing sound?         

Patients may experience Tinnitis...

And what's that?

It is usually described as a ringing noise, but in some patients it takes the form of a high pitched whining, buzzing, hissing, humming, or whistling sound.

Or:  imagine there's a jumbo-sized invisible metal trashcan over your head.   Everything you say, and eventually, everything you even think, first echoes off the trashcan.  I tried saying, "I'm sorry, but everything I say reechoes in my ear, and everything you say over a particular frequency I hear twice, once when the sound reaches my eardrum and a second time after it echoes off the pool of fluid in my ear." This didn't really help the situation.

DOCTOR NOTE A:  The eardrum is bright red and the area behind it completely filled with fluid and pus.

Yummy. 

         DOCTOR NOTE B: Prescribed Amoxicillin & Vicodin.  Worst ear infection I've seen in an adult.

Hmmm, maybe I could enter my ear infection in the State Fair?

It's mostly better now, but still bubbly.

Owen works the Monday NYT crossword

Owen works the Monday NYT crossword, originally uploaded by thane.

OWEN: Ugh, I'm stuck. I'm going to finish this later.

THANE: Happens to the best of us.

The mysterious far east

COLE (8th grade): Dada---in Japanese, we are writing a formal letter to a pen pal in Japan.



THANE: Interesting.

COLE: It has to be done very carefully. You start at the upper right-hand sheet of the paper, and write down the paper in a column. Then you move the next column to the left. To start a new paragraph, you indent a little from the top, a specific distance.



THANE: Your Japanese handwriting is very neat and precise. The letter looks like something I would see on the wall in a fine Japanese restaurant. But let's compare, shall we, this Japanese letter to your most recent math homework:



COLE: Ha. Very funny.

THANE: Yes, I find it intriguing. Your Japanese homework looks like it was prepared with very great care. It honors the ancient tradition of fine calligraphy. Your math homework, on the other hand, looks like the remains of a ink bottle explosion, or the scrawlings of hyperactive 2nd grader. Yet these two pieces of work came from the same hand! It's absolutely astonishing, wouldn't you say so?

COLE: Japanese symbols are fun. Math is just, well, math. Look at how we write the letter "a" [scrawls an abomination]. See, ugly. Ugly compared to Japanese.

THANE: All writing is holy. Japanese is holy. Math is holy. Why make either profane?