The New Blog

The new installments of our adventures can be found at Rabbits Ate My Homework. No, I don't know what that means. Ask Orion about his dissertation-eating habits.

Busy or Just Wasting Time?

Regular readers might be wondering whether I've become lazy, overwhelmed, or have been taken into computerless custody by irritated rabbits. I am not entirely sure which except that the rabbits have not actually gotten me away from the computer. In fact, at the moment they are comfortably reclining under a chair, having extracted extra petting because I spent the entire day at home.
But it's true I've been spending quite a bit of time doing this-that-and-the-other thing related to teaching, and one of those things has been the lengthy process of making what must be well over 2000 reproductions of Czech art readily available to my students and other interested persons. One of these pictures is in fact now illustrating a post over at A Journey Round My Skull, in case anyone wants to see an early (cubist) Otto Gutfreund sketch.
It has also been my intention, for the past several days, to post the list several of my colleagues have compiled relating to the things tables are used for, but I keep not having the list on me at the moments when I think about blogging. My apologies to Robert and Aaron for my sluggish ways, as no doubt they have been anxiously waiting for this to go online. Art historians have to occupy their minds with strange conceptual matters from time to time in order to prevent becoming too preoccupied with actual art objects.
And there you have it.

Archelaus Examines Fiscal Crisis

The Archelaus Cards light-hearted blog Ruination and Despair has lately been focusing on historic cartoons about the Great Depression. Check them out at The Stock Market Crash, Prosperity is Just Around the Corner, Hard Times, and Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Another Done Dissertation is a Good Dissertation

I'm not the only person with a newly done dissertation. My friend Christine finished hers and defended beautifully to a whole roomful of people the first week of class (I'm not sure whether that full roomful was due to the time of the semester, to her being in Communication instead of Art History, or just to her personal magnetism... we'll say the last was a key factor). Christine even has a book contract already. But neither Christine's dissertation nor mine are online yet as the university moves slowly on that and Proquest moves even more slowly.
Danah Boyd, whose blog posts I sometimes note, has also just finished and as her dissertation is on social networking, it is hardly surprising that it is already online. Check it out and learn all you ever wanted to know about teenagers and social networking sites. I think the next topic to be dealt with is how the rest of us use these sites, a thing that has been intriguing me of late (when avoiding actual work and importunate rabbits).

Ruination & Despair!

I realize that many of my readers believe in making New Year's resolutions (a thing I don't believe I have done myself since I was about 17), and indeed my friend Dirk says he has resolved not to replace any more of his joints in 2009, while my father, on the other hand, resolves to replace his other hip as soon as he can get the surgeon's attention.
Certainly, it's important to start the new year off right, and I'm happy to say that my friendly local rheumatologist has not suggested that any of my own joints need replacing, although I'm sure my dentist would be happy to give me another crown or two.
On the other hand, not everything in life can be fixed, so right around now one of my relatives is going off her respirator and getting the last painkillers. We hope it's a comfortable exit (her son says she will "expire," which is definitely a step up from "passing away") and that she ends up where she'd like to rather than in what is sometimes referred to as "the other place" (although in my immediate family "the other place" now refers to New Zealand after my father's memorable remark that not only did we know people who had lived in Australia but also in "the other place"--our apologies to the inhabitants of New Zealand).
And I've been invited to a year-later memorial for my friend Milt Wolff. I won't be able to attend due to my hectic teaching schedule, but I've been contemplating getting a framed enlargement of one of my livelier photos of Milt, which I think would look nice somewhere on the wall. It would definitely be better than the photos I took the week before he died, anyhow.
In the general spirit of getting everything off to a good start before we all get too excited about the Obama inauguration, I direct everyone to the new Archelaus blog, Ruination & Despair. You can discover the perfect name for your six-fingered child, learn the correct diet for walking on water, and even find out which new Archelaus cards have just debuted. It's just the thing!

Portraits and Odd Awards

Dr. Zaius, who discusses his portrait choices further here, has also seen fit to give me the somewhat mysterious Marie Antoinette Award. I have no idea what this award was originally intended to connote, but Dr. Zaius claims it is just another award one gives to blogs one likes. I'm a bit suspicious of this--Marie Antoinette?! This is a woman who was beheaded for her frivolity and general bad PR, after all.
I guess I could pass it on to a select few people who might be able to think up political or other useful rationales, like Geoff, Mildly Annoyed Rabbit, and Bikerbar. I mean, you can't exactly give a Marie Antoinette Award to just any blog you like, can you?
Marie Antoinette did commission some fine portraits of herself, however.

Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Marie Antoinette and Her Children, 1787

On Correspondence

My friend Geoff, whom I've known for what I realize is a surprisingly long time, mostly writes about politics and things relating to the Spanish-speaking parts of the globe. In fact, he and his wife Susana have gone so far as to relocate to Spain, although at the moment they're back in New York.
The other day, Geoff was reminiscing about the days before we were quite so internet-oriented, when we used to send letters on actual paper in real envelopes through the mail. I had taken up the art of letter-writing at about the age of thirteen and had combined it with the art of the decorated envelope (sometimes stationery as well), and was still pursuing it fairly diligently by the time Geoff and I met.
Geoff recalls our correspondence and the decorated envelopes with due nostalgia. In fact, I think Geoff was one of the last people to whom I regularly sent my decorated envelopes, because I knew he appreciated them (and sometimes reciprocated with sketches on his own envelopes) and I was reluctant to give up the visual element of my correspondence for the purely text-based. But eventually our postal correspondence lapsed.
Had I any of my special envelopes handy, I'd scan one for illustration, but I think they are all in a box in my parents' shed (I didn't initially envision being away from the Bay Area for more than a couple of years and the acquisition of an MA). Most of them were done in collage and, I think the recipients will generally agree, were rather peculiar as a rule. I could make a new one, given that I have some suitable materials to hand (a Pottery Barn catalog arrived just the other day, despite the fact that I don't actually shop there). But then who would I send it to? Who would I choose to surprise?
I'm not sure who. Everyone I once sent them to, and it was a reasonable number of people, now keeps in touch with me via holiday cards and/or infrequent emails. They have spouses, children, pets, jobs, and the like occupying their thoughts. Some of them, like Geoff, live in foreign countries now, which makes for some caution about non-standard packaging.
It is true that my friend Megan keeps in touch with certain of her friends through exchange of physical letters and bits of stuff that almost make my old envelopes look like hasty productions; the wall of her bedroom in Kutná Hora was well decorated with mail of this sort. I gather, then, that there are indeed people--in their twenties!--who do not care to lead an entirely digital life, and I think this is a fine thing. But Megan and I do not habitually write to each other; we just make sure to see one another when in the same part of the world.
Actually, when I think about it, there are not all that many people in my life who engage in real correspondence of either the paper or the electronic variety. Nobody at all sends me paper letters. It's all email.
Some people send out a couple of long emails a year, or when something exciting is going on in their lives like (latest example) buying a house in Mexico. People in my department, of course, frequently email me about this or that in a relatively personal way, and this sometimes provides some interesting reading, but it is not what I would normally term real correspondence. Most of them do, after all, see me fairly often and so our emails tend not to be very discursive. When I think about it, there are really only a few people who exchange email with me that can be regarded as an ongoing conversation. Now, it is true that in part I am no longer very good at carrying on a correspondence with people when this involves doing a lot of catch-up on what has happened in my life, and this has probably dissuaded some of my friends from bothering. I try to do my big catch-up over the holidays, which renders it less individual. And for that matter I take the view that the blog ought to mean I shouldn't have to laboriously explain what I'm doing--if people want to know, they can come right here and get the public side of it and not have to ask things like "Have you finished your dissertation yet?" or "Are you still living in Prague?" But, of course, some people are convinced that "blogs are self-indulgent drivel" or that they can catch a virus by visiting a blog. Um, fine. Be that way.
In any case, while I rather miss the excitement of thinking there might be something delightful in the mailbox, with or without foreign postage, email and blog comments have the advantage that an entire multi-part conversation can occur on a topic in the course of a day or two. I am glad that at least a few people partake of this sort of entertainment with me.

Architecture, Film, Posters, and More!

Getting back to the more academic side of things, now that Mr. English Spot has recovered from his sniffles (though still has to be medicated, causing him to look at me with great loathing and struggle wildly as I attempt to get the syringe near his mouth)...
Er, yes. Academic sorts of things. Intellectual matters. All that.
Well, my advisor looked cheerful when I ran across her on Wednesday and claimed that since the election had been a certainty, she had been reading my dissertation rather than watching the returns. I was impressed at her managing to pull herself away from counting up electoral college votes to think about Toyen, surrealism, and interwar Czech sex-reformism.
And I wrote up a proposal for a conference paper.
And I am busily preparing next semester's courses, as despite my strenuous efforts over the summer, they weren't actually finished up. This was partly, but only partly, because 1) the syllabus I was basing my Realism & Impressionism syllabus on has to be altered significantly because everyone tells me that undergrads hate the textbook it used, so I'm switching textbooks and adding lots of short primary texts that have given me the chance to learn how entertainingly Stendhal wrote about the Salon of 1824 (I was sitting at my library carrel going over it and thought truly, I had no idea of Stendhal's gift for comedy; he trashes Classicism right and left); and 2) my syllabus for the Czech Modernism class has to be properly tailored to it being a seminar that focuses on teaching upper-div majors how to write a research paper. Um, yes, I will be placing every Czech modernist text the library owns on Reserve for the whole of next semester! And (sigh) a gigantic part of my personal library, weighing no doubt several hundred pounds. On the one hand, I plan to give the students whatever Czech scans I have created for my own use, to keep them from wreaking too much damage on the spines, but even with the help of our diligent interim VR director and her minions, only a certain amount can be scanned. And besides, they're supposed to (all seven of them) learn to research so I don't want to spoon-feed them. (But I can't expect them to perform research miracles either. I'll be lucky if any of them can read French or German, let alone Czech.)
Well, before I betake myself off to deal with the likes of laundry and then settle down to slave over the syllabi and presentations some more, I will direct my readers' attention to my British colleague Owen Hatherley's blog Sit Down, Man, You're a Bloody Tragedy, which deals with modernist (and sometimes postmodernist) architecture, film, design, posters, and other excitements of that sort.

Election Day Arrives

My neighborhood, as far as I can tell, is pretty solidly Obama territory. At least, going by signage. But one of the local landmarks of late has been this duplex on N. Highland. The large McCain sign on the one side is balanced by an army of smaller Obama signs.
I had initially assumed there was a bitter fight going on there, but one day I heard that the two neighbors actually get along well outside the political arena. The Obama half happened in to Tazza d'Oro one day and told my friends Lawrence and Alexis (who know everyone) that Obama signs simply keep showing up in his side of the yard and that they should feel free to take one or two for themselves. The McCain neighbor, meanwhile, is said to take in his sign at night to prevent it from being stolen. Well, it is a pretty stunning sign whether or not you agree with it.
I went to my polling place as soon as I could get myself out of the house. I was a little nervous given that I had somehow been registered as a Republican. It gave me that feeling that some dire thing might happen. Whether because of my bizarre alleged affiliation or for some other reason (I had not voted at this precinct before), the pollworkers wanted plenty of ID, and were finally satisfied with my California driver's license. I had brought a mountain of ID just in case.
All my past votes had been cast on paper, however. I was alarmed to see I would be voting on a computer screen. Visions of voter fraud went through my head, especially since I couldn't see any sign which company had manufactured the machine. Still, I succeeded in casting my vote, and proceeded on to Tazza d'Oro for some coffee. A steady stream of voters and election workers are coming through, emblazoned with more different Obama pins than I had previously seen anywhere. Perhaps my old friend Dr. Zaius is right about the course of the McCain-Palin campaign. And for that matter about the Bush presidency. I thought, however, that I had been too busy cutting my dissertation to get to any Halloween parties. I guess I attended one in my astral body over at the Zaius-Gregarious campaign headquarters. If you look closely, there I am in one of the photos. Not one of my better moments but I guess Dr. Zaius intuited that the costume in question is much like what I wore on my fifth birthday (hint: standing there next to Kermit the Frog).

On the home front, life revolves around medicating an angry rabbit. After a morning of chasing Orion round and round the couch (he won), I gave up and incarcerated both rabbits. Ms. Spots has taken the whole thing abnormally well, although this morning she did let me know she thought I had taken this far enough. But then, she would happily take Orion's medicine for him. Orion still wants no part of it but recognizes that he has been bested. He's furious but submissive. I have to say that while submissive is convenient, I don't really like seeing him get that way. It isn't exactly natural to him.
The heavily trimmed dissertation has been turned in. We will see whether my advisor thinks it has been trimmed and revised enough to go on to the rest of the committee. I can only hope so. I wasn't able to cut as much as she wanted, but I did get rid of over a hundred pages. My stamina for this kind of thing is about gone for now and I really need to turn to other projects, like finishing next semester's courses and putting together job applications.

Mischief Over at Think Denk

Before I stop laughing, I must direct Obama-supporting, musically inclined readers to "An Interview with Sarah Palin." I hadn't previously realized how effectively musicology and political satire could be combined.
You may never think of Beethoven (or Schenkerian analysis) in the same way again.
My regards to Dirk for bringing this to my attention.
Dipping into other posts on the same blog suggests I could get lost there for awhile, assuming I don't fall on the floor with evil mirth. For example:

Well, I had just finished practicing the twelve Liszt Transcendental Etudes, twelve times, and my parents and I had an emotional conference about the comet while my father prepared a snack of tortillas and Cheez Whiz.

(This last sentence is an example of “local color” which I learned about at Las Cruces High School, from my charmingly insane English teacher. From this teacher I learned to write one-page essays about Kafka, asserting in their first paragraph that Gregor Samsa is an “unholy trinity of Christ, bug, and man,” and concluding “in conclusion, I have shown that Gregor Samsa is an unholy trinity of Christ, bug, and man.” My eloquence leaves me without words.)

Had to get in that Czech reference there, after all. (Yes, I know Kafka wrote in German, but he was from Prague and bilingual.)
Exam grading is now officially over. Some exams were better than expected, some were worse. Some of my students had better ask me about study skills and how to prevent going blank during exams when they clearly know most of the answers. (Do I know the answer to the latter problem? No, but I provide free unlicensed psychotherapy to the chosen few.)

Czech Resources Online

Some unexpected resources are beginning to turn up here and there online for Czech art and cultural history.
Google Books has copies of several volumes of the important art journal Volné směry, published by the Mánes Association, although they are erroneously catalogued as different editions of one book. It looks as though volumes 1 (1897), 2 (1898), 4 (1900), 9 (1905), 10 (1906), and 12 (1908) are actually viewable and downloadable PDF files. Several other years are listed as digitized but for some reason not actually available, perhaps due to confusion about these being editions of a book rather than unique volumes of a periodical.
The New York Public Library has digitized holdings of the related cultural and design magazines Žijeme and Magazin dp. These are done as individual JPGs, which makes them easy to put in PowerPoint but not as easy to read through.
I'm somewhat baffled as to just how one easily gets a sense of what digital resources the NYPL has without either having a specific target in mind or else leafing through hundreds and hundreds of images. Searching on "Czech" tells me that there are 2577 images, which is a fine thing, but I really don't want to go through 215 pages of thumbnails filled with things like views of Humpolec. There is, for example, a digitized copy of Nezval's Pantomima with cover by Štyrský, and Biebl's S lodí jež dováží čaj a kávu with cover by Teige. Then there's also the cover of the third issue of the Erotická revue, but apparently only one of the illustrations, a hermaphroditic drawing by Toyen (admittedly one of the better choices artistically speaking, but not exactly representative of the contents). Unlike some people, my patience for going through endless pages of images just to see what's there is rather limited. We'll just be glad for all those digitization projects out there and also for people who sift through them and point out more good stuff than I will ever do here.

Note: Prodded by an Esteemed Reader, I have put in lots of links and also discovered that the NYPL has digitized ReD (Revue Devětsil)--here's volume 2.

A Little Revamping

It has been awhile since I updated the links on the right-hand side of the blog, and during that time some of the blogs have gone away and others have ceased to be active, although they're still worth looking at.
And, since I happened to run across a blog by one of my local friends this afternoon, that seemed like a sign that it might be time to do a little revision. I met Lawrence and his family some months back when we were sitting at neighboring cafe tables and one of the girls said something particularly funny that brought us all into conversation. Almost everyone I know in Pittsburgh is someone I met through school, so getting to know a few other people lately has been a nice change of pace. Furthermore, I didn't know any other writers here until I met Lawrence. While I wouldn't say I suffer when deprived of the company of serious writers, exchanging a few words with a compatible writer (even if we've never read each other's work) gives me the sense of quenching a thirst I had forgotten I had. With all that in mind, then, I recommend his intermittent but poetic and often profound blog, Moon on the Fifteenth Day.
But be sure to check out the other blogs, too. There's a lot of beautiful, wonderful, strange, and thought-provoking material there. The section of blogs by friends provides links to blogs with very individual perspectives. Some of the blogs in other sections are also by people I consider friends, but are ... oh, I don't know, more thematic? less opinionated? I'm not sure how to categorize the intuitive split here. Never mind, they're all interesting.

An Update, of Sorts

What, me dead? Me kidnapped by alien beings telepathically summoned by Orion as he sat in his litterbox?
Well, not quite. I didn't even manage to do the dancing forecast for last weekend (I hasten to say through no particular fault of my own but merely circumstances leading in other directions), although I do recommend the Frida Kahlo and Lee Miller shows up at SFMOMA. (I also recommend the food at the museum cafe.)
I did make it to a great party where I got to see fellow 1990s-era NWU activists.
I have also managed to spend some quality time (as they say) in various Bay Area cafes, communing with my laptop.
Of late I have been acquainting myself with the Kaiser Oakland Hospital, where my father has had the interesting experience of getting a new hip joint. So far I suppose this has gone well enough, although we could do without night-time disorientation that prompts him to think he can get out of bed or that people are out to get him. He is lively enough when wide awake during the day and interested in a topic. I'm not sure the medical staff always appreciate his playful answers to routine questions, however. I suspect his nurse Amelia, who gets along very well with him, purposely asked him who was president just so he could tell her "The president is... Dick Cheney... but the president doesn't know that."
I find that PK of BibliOdyssey, who could have confessed an attachment to Švejk to me long ago, has taken the unheard-of step of scanning illustrations from his own copy of the book to post. Those who haven't got their own copies, or who just want to look at some Josef Lada drawings, or even who just want to read what we all said, might want to take a look.

Beatrix Potter Drawings

As my readers may suspect, the Spotted Pair and I have arrived safely in California and are pretending to be very busy. (Well, I am supposed to be, while they are making a show of having much grooming and other business to take care of.) I have actually made two plum and apricot pies, with two more planned for tomorrow, but there are no photos because we ate the evidence.
In the meantime, those who are fond of rabbits and other small animals, or simply have a weakness for wonderful illustration, can go see the rare Beatrix Potter drawings at BibliOdyssey. For the most part I haven't seen any of these elsewhere, although I do have notecards of a different version of the dancing rabbits.
Speaking of dancing, I expect to do a good deal of that over the weekend, assuming of course that I do not break a leg going up or down library steps.

Not Quite as Bad as the Chinese Earthquake, but Still Dreadful

Like many people around the country, I was shocked and unsettled to hear that Ted Kennedy's recent seizure was the result of a brain tumor. I've known at least four people who have died of brain tumors in the past twenty years--two in fact were co-workers at the same place.
And, like lots of people, I'm just enough of a hypochondriac that any weird change in my functioning makes me wonder if I've got one (when it isn't some other nasty possibility). Incoherent without drugs or alcohol? Must be a brain tumor. Dropped something yet again? Must be a brain tumor.
I hadn't realized, however, that brain tumors tend to be hard to detect, that there are more of them than there used to be, and that it can be hard to get the real prognosis out of the medical people. Susie Bright's comments (her father died of one) are enlightening.
Note: I wouldn't say I have been exactly obsessing about brain tumors of late, being too busy with my various projects. But it's better to know about these things.

Biking to the Animal Shelter

Via Kristen, who gives me all my blog ideas these days, I point my readers in the direction of Claudia's bike challenge. The idea is to bike somewhere at least once a week that one would normally drive, although it looks like most of the readers are already avid bikers or don't even own cars in the first place.
It has been so rainy that I doubt many people in Pittsburgh have taken up this challenge with success, but now that we've gotten a little sunshine, I'm on the bike. I don't think my three jaunts to and from school count since I normally take the bus, but today I biked over to the Animal Rescue League and on the way back I bought groceries, so that certainly counts.
While I was at the shelter, I had time to let Bingo and Basil out for exercise (I would have let out another rabbit or two, but it was hard to persuade Bingo and Basil that it was time to go in). Bingo, as usual, was a whirlwind of activity. His hormones haven't had much time to subside, so he promptly sprayed me (Ms. Spots was intrigued to find his scent on my pants when I got home). Basil is quiet only in comparison to Bingo; they both ran around tirelessly, but Bingo is more frenetic. The three does in the bottom cages got all upset when Bingo was out, but Jubilee and Harley were nicer about Basil and mostly didn't try to bite him when he came by. I think they rather like him. Bonnie, aka Babs, hates any rabbit who ventures near her cage, so she tried to bite both of them.
Sophia is in an upper-level cage, so she mostly ignored the excitement below. She remains tentative about me; so long as the cage door is closed, she's interested, but if I open the door, she hides in the corner. She did let me pet her for a few minutes, though, and clearly needs and wants more attention.
Two new rabbits have arrived, and both seem very nice. One is a white rex who was just neutered, and the other is a brown lionhead. Both were very grateful for the petting.

Niblet at Beginning to Bird

Roaming around a bit instead of going to sleep, I came across the blog Beginning to Bird, which although mainly bird photography (and pretty impressive bird photography) also features a spotted character named Niblet!
Niblet looks a good deal like Orion, but for reasons unknown to me hasn't really got ears. (Sometimes you do see rabbits up for adoption who have lost part of an ear, but Niblet is really lacking in the ears.) Never mind the ear thing, he looks like a rabbit of considerable character and style and he hangs out with several handsome cats. And, lucky for him, he isn't as fat as Orion, although it's clear he shares the same passion for paper goods.

Pittsburgh Blogs

I see that Brent at Peak Direction continues to offer great coverage of Pittsburgh public transit along with the occasional foray into transit around the world.
He's also linked to some interesting Pittsburgh blogs (including this one), so I too will point out a few:
Bike Pittsburgh covers anything that relates to biking in Pittsburgh (including national developments)
Pittsburghers Gretchen and Frank (both students, I think) give an interesting take on "The Blurgh" with occasional references to how it has changed since their parents' youth. (NOTE: It's set in a fictional future in which Pittsburgh is a better place.)
ClickNathan has his say about Pittsburgh issues and random other topics, like digital photography.
Green Is Good, based in Pittsburgh, looks at green energy here and elsewhere.
My Homewood reveals (among other things) that I could buy a house in Homewood (Pittsburgh's 13th Ward) for less than the new laptop will cost. Or I could go wild and spend $3700 for a different house. Um, I guess it's all "location, location, location." They look like pretty normal houses to me, not made out of Tinkertoys or covered in tarpaper.
Nullspace also notes the housing prices in Homewood.
Pop City focuses on technology, sustainability, development, and arts and culture here.
Pittsblog, by a local law professor, looks at a variety of local matters including an upcoming talk on intellectual property that sounds worth checking out.
Tube City Almanac's server wasn't working but maybe you can get through and find out what they offer...
Walking Pittsburgh explores different parts of the city and provides photos and history.
That's it for Pittsburgh blogs on Brent's list, but let's not forget Kristen's Procrastinating in Pittsburgh, and Tazza d'Oro, my neighborhood cafe, has its own blog. Tazza d'Oro is one of Pittsburgh's several (many?) special cafes. Unlike the cafes I haunt near school, it has a clientele of all ages and is an object of passionate devotion within the neighborhood. You can find knitting groups, writing groups, bicyclists, political organizers, students, mothers with small children, theater people, and entrepreneurs, and (in the warm weather, outdoors) dogs there. And now the big question: after I try (again) to order the new laptop, should I set off in the snow to Tazza, stay home, or go to the library?

Christmas Lurches Near

I happen to be one of those people who enjoys rather than loathes the holiday season, but like most people I find that certain aspects of it are fairly revolting. Like the noxious high-pitched Christmas-themed plaints that drove four of us out of Rasputin's in Berkeley this afternoon (this is supposed to sell CDs?).
But... for fun repulsive Christmassyness, Jim Dunn at Do What Now has been posting a remarkable collection of truly sickening, or at least really lame, photos of older holiday decor. They really bear looking into.
For example, a steel-wool angel bas relief, grotesque gift-wrap, "Cookware and Mummified Jesus," the industrial Christmas tree, the white wadded corduroy tree, the Pepto-abysmal-pink tree, the pink-swathed tree held up by a gold atlantid putto (I mean, I'm opposed to putti on principle, but even I don't think putti should be expected to hold up heavy objects, let alone this depressing abomination, about which My Sibling notes, "Rats kept in a cage near it would eat their own tails"), nasty "Angels We Have Loathed On High," glaring beheaded psycho pseudo-reindeer on a platter, drunk pixie under a toadstool, elf infestation, and finally, the piece de resistance, holiday doorbells made from pink mice in mousetraps (beggars description, has to be encountered to be believed, and maybe not then)!

Texting Explained

In Prague, I almost never talked on my cell phone. There was seldom any reason to. I had my phone set to vibrate, and most people SMS'd me, which I could then answer silently and at my leisure. A very nice way of making plans anywhere, anytime.
When I decided to go ahead and get a cell phone in the US as well, I assumed that this fine system would continue.
Alas, while most people under 60 now do seem to have cell phones, they seem to be baffled at the notion of using them differently (less obtrusively) than regular phones. I'd send someone an SMS and find out weeks later that it was received but that they "don't know how to answer" or "don't want to pay to do that."
It was very puzzling, so I was glad to see Danah Boyd explain the history of North American text messaging and compare it to the European model.
As she points out, the cell phone business is run very differently in America than in Europe. In Europe, you normally buy credit as needed and you don't pay for anything incoming, so your friends can contact you whether or not you've used up your credit. In America, you normally have a "plan" that allows some specific amount of voice calling plus (or not plus) other services. Even the pay-as-you-go plans are kind of weird; I've run out of credit on mine because someone called me when I was low on credit. It's not very much fun to have your phone act like a pay phone that's run out of change in mid-conversation.
I'm not too impressed with the American mode. I don't want to pay for anything incoming, and I don't want to have to talk to people when it would be easier and less troublesome on both ends to use SMS. If I want to have a good talk with someone, I'd rather SMS them first to see if it's convenient, not interrupt whatever they might be doing.
I suspect, however, that the American method is designed to let people run up the bill as quickly as possible. Ah, capitalism!