Readership Drive: Day 2 Summary

We have another confirmed reader! That brings us up to four. We're on track, and if we can lure in one more reader tomorrow, we'll meet our goal of five by the end of the week, so keep it up!

Dispatches from the Rotner/Uhr Basement: 1.5

My little brother got his first pimple today, and I feel this moment deserves to be immortalized on the "blog."

Mysteries of the Philosophers: Bertrand Russell vs. Harry Truman

In 1920, Bertrand Russell went to Beijing University to lecture on philosophy for a year. While there, he became very ill with pneumonia, and the Japanese media reported that he had died. In 1948, Russell was flying to Trondheim, Norway, when his plane crashed in Hommelvik. About half of the passengers survived, and Russell was among them.

Taken separately, these events do not suggest a plot, conceived by the American government, to exterminate Mr. Russell, but together they suggest the beginnings of a sinister pattern. When we add to this Mr. Russell's controversial, one might even say subversive, views on sexual morality, it seems not unlikely that President Truman, who was running for his second term in 1948, and who was well known to prefer his sexuality strictly unsubverted, took it upon himself to arrange the demise of a philosopher who threatened everything the Truman Reelection Committee stood for.

I leave you to contemplate the facts and come to your own conclusions, but whatever you consider to have been the government's role in Bertrand Russell's near-fatal episodes, we can all be glad that he succumbed to neither of them and lived to a ripe old ninety-seven.

Readership Drive: Day 1 Summary

Great job, everyone. We have two new readers and one new potential reader! This brings our constituency up to at least three people, but our work is not yet done. If we recruit one new reader tomorrow and another on Saturday, we can meet our goal of five whole readers by the end of the week, so keep up the hard work!

Readership Drive

A certain frienemy* of mine has suggested that blogging is "a waste of time" when "the number of surviving Beatles would be a generous estimate of the number of readers you've got." This person is clearly too unsophisticated to understand the process of contemplative self-examination which is obviously the point of blogging. However, his suggestion has made me insecure, and so 'The Essential Works of Julia Uhr and Michael King' is having a readership drive.

Please tell your facebook friends (and real friends if you have any) to become readers. Tell them we give out free t-shirts or beer or whatever you have to. If we can top five readers by the end of the week, I will be ecstatic, and just to make things a bit easier for you, I have appended a form letter** to the bottom of this post. You simply need to copy and paste it into an e-mail or facebook message to send to everyone you know.

*I use this term loosely, because I have no clear conception of what it means and only learned it from my mother, whose charming habit of keeping her lingo hip is apparently starting to rub off on me.

**Dear friend,
So there's this super-awesome blog that I found... It's called 'The Essential Works of Julia Uhr and Michael King,' and can be found at JULIAUHR.BLOGSPOT.COM. It has all of this cool stuff on it, like FREE PICTURES OF TOPLESS SUPERMODELS and INSIDER INFO ON PARIS HILTON. You totally need to check it out, lol, because it also tells you, bff, how to GET SKINNY IN THREE DAYS, GUARANTEED!!!
Thanks in advance for your COMPLIANCE and for your friendship, which has meant so much to me over the years,
Your Name Here

The Old Man Meets the Amoeba

Dear Reader(s),

Nothing of note happened today. This is unfortunate for you and me both, but dutiful blogger that I am, rather than leave you with my thoughts about how fitting in is the new standing out or what I would do if I was Hillary's campaign manager, I have opted to start a fiction serial, featuring The Old Man. His name is Clive, but that is irrelevant. He will have exciting adventures when I do not. I hope you enjoy his debut.

Thank you for your continued indulgence,
Julia
The Old Man was lying face up in his front yard at around two in the morning, stroking his long white beard and contemplating things of great import. His inner discourse touched first on asparagus and how It looks like trees you would find on a little tiny planet inhabited by people who wear helmets, even at breakfast. He wondered how people like that could have evolved, which made him think about how humans evolved.

Humans evolved from monkeys who evolved from large rodents who evolved from small rodents who evolved from Archaeopteryx who evolved from dinosaurs who evolved from an amoeba. It's wonderful how much information scientists come up with these days. Would an amoeba be a friendly sort of person or not? The Old Man's inquiring mind asked him, Because the answer to this question clearly defines the nature of God. If people came from God, and people also came from an amoeba, then if the amoeba was vengeful, so must God have been, before his untimely death in 1882. Likewise, if the amoeba was kind and loving, so must God have been.

The Old Man saw immediately that the answer to one of life's persistent questions was almost in his grasp. He felt like Guy Noir. Why had no one thought to go about it like this before? He ran into his house and came back out with his telescope to pray. He put his eye to the eye-bit and his hands together. He said
"Great amoeba, I pray that ye may reveal thine self unto me, that I may look upon that what spawned me and know the nature of God."

Through the telescope, The Old Man spotted a tiny, roundish, hairy thing that wriggled closer until he thought he could make out its nucleus.
"What can I do for you, my fine fellow?" It inquired in the voice of a British street urchin.
"Which fork do you start with first?" responded The Old Man.
"Usually the salad fork, but a good rule of thumb is to always start with the outermost silverware first and work your way in."

The Old Man had learned all that he needed to, so he lay back down in the grass and sighed deeply. God was helpful and knew lots of things, he thought to himself, Just not the useful sort of things, and that's probably what did him in. Anyway, it was good to know.

Dispatches from the Rotner/Uhr Basement: 1.4

A gross assault upon the standards of decency has been committed in the Rotner/Uhr Basement. I went into the bathroom tonight with the reasonable goal of brushing my teeth and the naive expectation that this process would involve removing germs from my mouth. This was not to be. When I picked my toothbrush up off the counter where it lay dejectedly in a pool of water, I was horrified to see that its head was drenched in the blue mouthwash my little brother uses. I was obliged, upon further observation, to note the presence of toothmarks. Tomorrow I will buy a new toothbrush, but this affront to my delicate sensibilities will not soon be forgotten.

Sawtooth Mountain

Scrabbling in Heather

Dispatches from the Rotner/Uhr Basement: 1.3

On Friday, My dad and I went on a hike up to Sawtooth Mountain. I almost got attacked by a moose with a baby moose, so now I'm going to "post" some pictures.

Mysteries of the Philosophers: Rightist vs. Leftist Hegelians

"Right" versus "left" is a conspicuous conflict in many facets of our modern American lives, but surely no other embodiment of this ongoing disagreement is as close to our hearts as that pertaining to Hegelianism. This is why I have chosen to devote the first installment of the "blog"'s new feature, "Mysteries of the Philosophers," to the comparison of a rightist and a leftist Hegelian.

F.H. Bradley, the British Idealist, was a rightist Hegelian. He thought that the way ethics required a person to act depended upon that person's specific station in life. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "It has been suggested, possibly with malice, that the Bradleys in general were disposed to hypochondria." Bradley dedicated several of his books to E.R., a person whose identity remains unknown to this day (mystery), and he also shot cats.

Ludwig Feuerbach (pictured) started out as a normal Hegelian, then became a leftist Hegelian, and finally decided not to be any sort of Hegelian at all (!). He used the Hegelian dialectic to demonstrate the inadequacy of idealism, the Prussian government, religion, and various other things. He married Berthe Löw in 1837, the same year my school was founded (coincidence?), and at one point tried to be a geologist.

Hegelians, by nature, lead mysterious lives (a few of which will likely feature in future installments of "Mysteries of the Philosophers"), but some are more intriguing than others. Now that you've become acquainted with the issues, which sort of Hegelian do you want to be?

Mom's Run-Ins with Celebrities

1) My mother's eleventh grade substitute German teacher regularly played soccer with Einstein, when they were boys in Austria.

2) My mother's cousin, Sandy, had an uncle who was Doris Day's first husband.

3) My mother's supervisor, Shannon, once saw Ann Coulter in an airport. Shannon glared at her, and Ann Coulter glared back.

Revelation

I saw George Tenet's book, "At the Center of the Storm," at the Boulder Bookstore today, and I had a revelation: Former CIA Director George Tenet looks just like Mr. Bean! They have the same eyes.

Dispatches from the Rotner/Uhr Basement: 1.2

Readers of the "blog" will be relieved to hear that I do not have warts. I have determined, after two days of scrupulous observation and a thorough application of the scientific process, that the four itchy, red bumps on my foot are nothing more than the festering remainders of some mianthropic mosquito's ill-intentioned dinner party.
I hope this good news will fill the hearts of my readers with as many warm fuzzies as it has mine.

Fried Sushi is Just Wrong

Multicultural cuisine in America has always fallen a little short of accurately representing the flavors and styles found in the native cooking of the dishes we import. To serve an American audience, many recipes have a great deal of their most flavorful ingredients (like spices) left out or included in drastically reduced quantities. This trend is even more prevalent in Asian cooking, where the western adaptation often is incomparable with the original dish.
In a truly American fashion, Chinese and Japanese restaurants in the states feature heaping portions of sauteed, pan fried, or deep fried meat and often contain vegetables only as a side dish or garnish. The sauces too have seen the influence of America's junk food-hungry culture. Typical American Teriyaki sauce contains three to four times as much sugar as a common Asian recipe calls for. That is, of course, simply a result of demand. The reason Chinese restaurateurs cook fried, salted meats and sugary, candy-like entrees is because more traditional vegetable dishes just don't sell as well. American diners would rather pretend to experience another culture's cooking styles while staying firmly supported by the familiar, overwhelming flavors of sugar and fat.

Lisa

A funny cartoon would be of Lisa Nowak, and somebody asks her what her most embarrassing moment is.

Dispatches from the Rotner/Uhr Basement: 1.1

I'm having a sleepover with Minna tonight. I read her two picture books. She learned to spell "skunk" and read me "Eddie and Little Skunk." Then the pinky toenail on my left foot fell off, and I decided it was high time I trimmed down the rest of my nails. As I did so, the conversation turned to toes and feet and... warts!
Minna has warts on her feet, her back, and lord knows where else.
I tried not to panic. I asked her in my best not-panicking voice if she knew how warts spread. She at least knows enough to not touch them too much with her fingers, because then people will see them. I begged her, in my slightly less not-panicking voice, not to kick me in her sleep or rub her back on me. She laughed at me and agreed, but all through our conversation about how you can't bring your pillow backpacking, how it would be easier to stand on one leg if you had claws, and how everyone needs to know not to compost the wrong way, I was fretting about warts.
Even now, watching her sleep like a good-natured, four foot tall baby gerbil, I can't quiet my apprehension. She's so sweet (and quite a cuddler), but my fear of warts has been a lifelong affliction, born of childhood trauma. Is it surmountable, or will this be another sleepless night in the Rotner/Uhr basement?

Coming Soon...

Do you like your coffee with a twist? Well so does Jean Chicago, our very own cafe correspondent, who will be enthralling readers of the "blog" with tales of life, love, and lattes from behind the counter in a bookstore coffee shop. You've never really known that barista you see every morning...until now. Ms. Chicago's weekly column, "Hold the Foam," will be a semi-regular feature on the "blog," so keep an eye out for the first scintillating installment, coming soon!

Really, Really Old Music

My mother told me today about how one of her coworkers said he liked "really, really old music," by which he apparently meant music from the nineties. When she heard the phrase "really, really old music," she thought he was referring to sixties music. And when I heard the phrase, I must admit my first thought was that he must be into Mozart.
It seems there is some confusion about the issue, so I have composed the following guide to communicating the age of your music:

Old music = Fleetwood Mac
Really old music = Frank Sinatra
Really, really old music = Mozart

I'm glad we've got that all cleared up.

Best Movie Ever

"Now I'm going to tell you the way it has to be. Just relax your musicles and once you hit that spot keep right on pushing and give it all you've got. Now we've found your tinkle the solution is quite clear. For if we both can hit it now the bells you'll surely hear. Deep throat deeper than deep your throat. Don't row the boat don't get your goat. That's all she wrote."

My Bag

I have this tote bag, see. It's silver with squares on it and contains everything which is important to me, which is exactly what I told the Chautauqua people on the phone when I discovered it was missing. They hadn't seen my bag, so it followed that I must have left it in the dressing-room at Savers, while trying to distract myself from thinking about what I misinterpreted as having been facebook-insulted, by trying on clothes. I called the Savers people, but they hadn't seen it either.
I called my phone several times, and eventually a man answered. Through his thick accent, I gathered that he was on his way home with my bag, and I got his address. I pictured him being a large Armenian, with tattoos of topless mermaids and anchors dripping blood, who would refuse to relinquish my bag until I challenged him to a round of fisticuffs. However, when I got to his apartment, I found that he was a medium-sized latino guy without a marking of any sort on his visible skin. He returned my bag with everything in it down to the small wad of cash in the outer pocket, which I probably would not have noticed missing.
He said he found it outside of Savers, but I noticed that his wife was wearing a pink Hollister shirt which I had tried on and left in the same dressing-room that I must have left my bag in.
Anyway, it turns out that not everyone is evil. Surprise! Pictured above is the Nina Totin' Bag which will hopefully replace my current tote bag as soon as the NPR shop has them back in stock.

B grade

Truly entertaining television programs have always been and probably always will be something of a rarity. I've found that the ones worth watching are so few and far between that I might as well just wait for the DVDs to come out and rent them rather than wading through a sea of commercials obviously written for an audience with severe cognitive impairments. On that note, does the Enzyte guy scare anyone besides me?
I am not usually very drawn to television in general; in a given week I watch maybe two hours or less of broadcast programming. The exception is when I visit my friends on the weekend. I go over to their house and invariably find them sitting before the screen enjoying a brew or working on an art project and watching the Sci-Fi channel. Just this last week, we watched a movie about a horrible heat wave that was caused by a meteor knocking the earth closer to the sun. We watched the entire movie rather avidly, considering that the movie looked like it cost about $350 to make. The acting was horrible, though it could have been flawless and still failed to pull off the nonsensical dialogue. The female characters never seemed quite certain whom they wanted to make out with next, so they settled on the safe option of everyone.
Despite all of this, I still like the experience of watching these movies. There is something relaxing about the sheer predictability of it all. They must be popular, because the campy, half-baked disaster genre has been hogging more and more airtime recently.
As a final note: A meteor or other celestial object with enough mass to knock the earth closer to the sun would certainly obliterate all life on the planet anyway.

Chautauqua

I had peanut butter pie at the Chautauqua restaurant today, and last week or maybe the week before, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! (My favorite NPR quiz show, not that Michael Feldman [pictured] doesn't sound like a nice guy, he just isn't as funny as Peter Sagal) recorded a show at the Chautauqua auditorium. They also recorded a show at Chautauqua last summer, which my mother and I attended and saw Paula Poundstone make a joke about Amish people sneaking coffee which was edited out before the show aired. It seems like everything has to do with Chautauqua. Isn't life just full of interesting convergences?

Save the Straws!

People are sooooooo concerned these days about what will happen when we run out of oil... but for the wrong reason.
People worry about how they will get to work to earn money to feed their families once there is no gas left to fuel their cars. They worry about how they will get cheese when there is no way to transport it from one place to another. But they do not realize the one truly disastrous loss which could be brought about by the depletion of our oil supply... the loss of our plastic crap. When all the oil is gone, folks, what are they going to make ipod covers and happy meal toys and livestrong bracelets and cell phone chargers and my little ponies and contact lens cases and earbuds out of? What are they going to make straws out of? Beef jerky? Do you want to suck your soda pop through a straw made out of beef jerky?
So lets all take a step back and rethink which aspect of this economic/environmental/political/social disaster we should panic about first, because America doesn't run on fuel. It runs on plastic crap.

Emily and I

I went to see a one woman show tonight called 'Emily and I' with my mother and her parents. We got there twenty minutes early, so we sat down all alone in the second row and contemplated the stage. The set was a three-paneled screen (the sort people undress behind in historical fiction movies) lit by a red spotlight.
"What do you think it means?" I asked my mother.
"Let's examine the symbolism. The red is probably a reference to blood, since Emily Dickinson wrote so much about death," she hypothesized. Then she quoted "A fly buzzed when I died," in the deep, dry voice she only uses to quote that poem.
"And the screen," I added, "might suggest that Emily hides her true self- the self that loves bunnies and just wishes everyone could get along- behind a screen of aggressive morbidity." My speculation was met with unanimous skepticism, and debate ensued.
When the play started, I found it somewhat less interesting than our pre-show commentary. It was more about Edie, the actress, and her decades-long obsession with Emily Dickinson, than about Emily herself. However I've always been a sucker for self-referential plays, and this one was all about Edie trying to write a play about the real Emily Dickenson, so she won me over quickly enough.
Like Emily, Edie has panic attacks. Unlike Emily, Edie has panic attacks in airports. I find that airports are an inviting combination of energetic and soothing. Nobody belongs in an airport, so OK if you don't either. It's a highly secured oasis of fast food and trashy magazines where you can relax for a few minutes before getting on your plane and wondering if your next destination will finally be the place you belong.
All in all, it was a successful outing.