Althouse: At the Main Street Café....

May 11, 2009

At the Main Street Café....

... you can distort the truth all afternoon.

18 comments:

Bissage said...: The woman in that artwork must be named Peg.; 5/11/09, 3:15 PM
Anonymous said...: MMMM - that tea looks so good.; 5/11/09, 3:18 PM
blake said...: How is that different from the other threads?; 5/11/09, 3:20 PM
Ann Althouse said...: It's espresso. For some reason, I got a pitcher of cream with it. An Ohio custom?; 5/11/09, 3:31 PM
Big Mike said...: I haven't seen a precolator like that one since I was a kid -- and that was a depressingly long time ago.

Thanks for screwing up my evening by reminding me how long ago my childhood was.; 5/11/09, 4:30 PM
Jason (the commenter) said...: That looks like a gigantic pot of coffee, not that I'm anything like an expert. I imagine its consumption will lead to a fevered conversation and a big headache the next day. But it's an indulgence that's worth the price.; 5/11/09, 4:53 PM
Anonymous said...: I debated - was it coffee? No - it has a cute little metal pot, must be tea. Anyway - it looked good - my office is really cold today...; 5/11/09, 5:03 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: So you got the bronze T-900. I was kind of hoping you'd pick red. Red for outrageousness.

I just now pressed a cup of espresso so I could add it to whipped egg yolks and sugar for Vietnamese coffee zabaione. Seen linked on al dente blog. It was an experiment.

But speaking of distortion. Did you know the new Nikons have a fisheye option under the retouch menu? It can be used on existing photos within the camera to produce distorted prints. It's dreadful. Not nearly as good as a fisheye lens.

Photoshop also has a spherize option under distort in their filter menu. It's also dreadful, and much of the image is cropped. So the bottom line here is the fisheye lens is the way to go, or do as Escher did, and you, and take your distortion wherever you can find it.

I'm miffed presently. I'm still waiting for Amazon to notify me when the super-fast lens is available from back order. The crumby thing is; what's the point of a prime account if the things you order are delayed? Marginally lower cost and free shipping, yes, but come'on, this is the second thing that I had to wait for. The first thing, a stoneware cloche, I waited a whole month and was eventually notified it's no longer available, so that whole time waiting was wasted. That's contributing to my present miffage. The delima is, the lens is the sort of thing that should reasonably be made available withing a week. So as soon as I get disgusted enought to blow them off will be the very moment the lens becomes available. It's like if you want the waiter to come, go ahead and torch up a cigarette. That will guarantee they appear within seconds. So say anonymous sources, but I really don't know much of anything about all that personally so I can not confirm it, nor provide links.; 5/11/09, 5:08 PM
Jason (the commenter) said...: Chip : I waited a whole month and was eventually notified it's no longer available, so that whole time waiting was wasted.

I always hate those emails from Amazon. I had a book pre-ordered since August and last month they told me the order was canceled. The worst part was, they didn't give me a reason.

I had to do research on my own to find out the book was written in full years ago but that the author was stuck in a never ending series of re-writes. I really can't complain though, because I loved how tedious his first book was. He's only trying to give me more of what he knows I love.

It had better be really tedious though!; 5/11/09, 5:38 PM
Maxine Weiss said...: CAMERON STRACHER -vs- FARRAH FAWCETT

______________

Cameron Stracher, senior media counsel for American Media Inc., the Enquirer's parent company, declined to discuss the investigation but issued the following statement: "The National Enquirer respects Ms. Fawcett and her brave battle with cancer, and acknowledges, as she has, that her public discussion of her illness has provided a valuable and important forum for awareness about the disease."

_______________________

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-fawcett-interview11-2009may11,0,5790379.story?page=1; 5/11/09, 6:06 PM
rhhardin said...: An Ohio custom?

Central Ohio McDonald's today has an unintelligible offer.; 5/11/09, 6:14 PM
Maxine Weiss said...: "Children's hospital wards are often painted in pastel colors because they soothe patients' anxieties. Fire engines are painted bright red or yellow since our brains recognize and react more quickly to those colors."

"In research studies, individuals dressed in dark colors are consistently judged to be more competent, but less friendly than those dressed in lighter colors or autumn hues."

(Althouse, with her stark black garments, has chosen competence over friendliness and approachability. No wonder she has a problem getting anyone to show up at the meet-ups !)

Love,; 5/11/09, 7:42 PM
rhhardin said...: I dress in white because it makes bike riders visible to motorists.; 5/11/09, 8:04 PM
rhhardin said...: White things with legs in air, from yesterday, pic.; 5/11/09, 8:07 PM
Ann Althouse said...: @rh Those 2 photos made me laugh quite insanely.; 5/11/09, 9:20 PM
William said...: I don't know if there's an explanation as to how or why it started. It just started. I was very proud of my technical skills as a mortician. I could bring a living blush of color to the deadest corpse. Maybe it was a Pygmalion thing. I started falling in love with my own creations. I started using a brighter shade of lipstick and dressing the remains in more alluring clothing. Soon it went further, much further.....There were incidents and reprimands. Necrophilia is not unknown among morticians, and, if truth be told, is tolerated by the higher ups. After each incident I was reassigned to another funeral home and told to seek counselling. I played the game. I acted contrite and said that it was just a momentary lapse. Wink. Nod.....But if my love for the remains sometimes exceeded ordinary boundaries so did my skills as a mortician. I suppose it was all part of the same twisted sickness. At any rate I became more and more in demand as my artistry and sickness became more and more pronounced. I became the mortician to the stars.....It all came to a head with the funeral of Mrs X. (If I wrote the name, you would immediately recognize it.) I had worked late preparing the remains to my own satisfaction. The look I had prepared was experimental and was not meant for public viewing. A rough draft as it were.....Unfortunately the son came in early in the next morning for a private viewing. I wasn't there, and they simply opened the casket for him. It wasn't so much the blonde wig and the ruby red lipstick that offended him as the push up bra.....The family had had their own share of scandals and, really, it was a victimless crime when you stop to think about it. Neverthess, the son was unforgiving. The scandal was to some extent hushed up, but I lost my license and was forbidden to live within 100 yards of any funeral home....In a way it worked. I was not around the object of my desire and my desire gradually diminished. I began to think of making a normal life for myself as a dog groomer.....Then she came along--mixing memory and desire like fresh pain in an old wound. Every time I see her face on television I feel the dark side of my libido increase and quicken. I know technically she is still alive but that frozen rictus of a smile, the immobility of the pallid flesh drive me up the wall. On behalf of necrophiliacs everywhere I ask Nancy Pelosi to stop taunting us with your flesh and ways.; 5/11/09, 11:27 PM
goesh said...: - a tough scene to balance, that layout - maybe pleasant objects defy balance and can't be totally captured; 5/12/09, 6:59 AM
traditionalguy said...: Warning: The Professor's brain is in expresso mode. Be alert for wild and crazy posts over the next 24 hours, followed by a cooling off.; 5/12/09, 7:22 AM