CNBC, Cockatrice, Carpool Conspecific, Pilgrims, Jane Austen, and Cthulu

The TV in the conference room at the office is perpetually tuned into CNBC, a so called business news network. It’s good for one thing only as far as I am concerned: it shows the DOW and S&P numbers and such like. Otherwise it’s just so much wasted air. Business journalism is, in a world where journalism has reached its nadir overall, the worst of the worst. The challenges are somewhat unique in that businesses carefully manage their image and try to control information. Oh wait, that’s not unique. It is a challenge, though, and business journalists are just not up to it.

Last night at choir practice, we ran through a version of “A Little Child Shall Lead Them”. The part where “the sucking child will play on the hole of the asp” and “the weaned child will place his hand in the cockatrice den” killed me. I couldn’t stop laughing for ten minutes. Apparently, even in paradise, you will need to keep a close eye on your kids. I’m hoping that I will be able to sing this with a straight face when the time comes.

My carpool conspecific reckons that “they ought to outlaw commodity trading”. He blames speculators for high oil prices and the price of gasoline (we paid $3.30.9 the other day). We’ve been commuting together for three years, and my libertarian rants have apparently had little influence on him. I give up.

I’m reading Philbrick’s “The Mayflower”, about the settlement at Plymouth. I’m only a quarter through it and already realize that everything I ever learned about the Pilgrims was a crock. I shouldn’t be surprised since all my education in history from public schools has been more akin to mythology than to history.

I just finished two “annotated” works that I had already read before without annotations and found that the notes made them quite interesting. I liken the experience to watching a DVD with the special features and commentary. The first was “Pride & Prejudice” by Jane Austen. Having a better understanding of the social order really adds to appreciation for the story.

The second book featured stories by HP Lovecraft, a favorite from my youth. The annotations in that book were more in the way of cross references to other Lovecraft stories or to other authors in the genre, but there were quotes from Lovecraft’s letters and some tidbits about edits in the pulp magazines in which the stories had been published. Rereading Lovecraft these many years later, I didn’t feel the same sense of the “eldritch” that I felt as a kid. Real life is way scarier than anything the Old Ones can unleash. I imagine that the Old Ones couldn’t do any worse at running things than the humans are doing.