A glorious Saturday!

Oh, but it is a glorious day!

The dogs are outside, carrying on in the back yard, having a ball. I just got through a nice lunch: a little meat (shared with the dogs), some hot-and-sour soup, and a glass of Killian's "Irish Red." While waiting for the steak to grill, I noticed that the Killian's is manufactured under license from the "Brasseries Pelforth, S.A." That made my mind turn back to the first time I visited Paris, and fond remembrance of Pelforth beer there, which was the ideal refreshment after walking around the city all day long.

Getting Brad's LiveJournal Perl client up to speed was something of a task this morning. There are, apparently, a number of things that must be installed in Perl for the script to run, and as it usually turns out, installation of A won't occur until you install B and C, and then B won't install without installing D, E, and F, and so on. I ended up installing eight packages, but at least now the Perl client works. I'm going to make a couple of minor modifications and then see if I can't use it to do remote posts to LJ via e-mail directed to a particular account on my server.

But before I devote myself to that, I'm going to catch one or two rays, consume perhaps another "Red" as I cook some mushroom soup, and then get down to the business of cleaning up before Galina gets home.

Cheers...

Nose to the grindstone (and other uncomfortable poses)

I finally got around to installing the timber underneath the back yard gate. The dogs have taught each other how to dig, and sometimes I think the golden retriever helps the peke do the "Great Escape" bit under the gate. It is hoped that the buried timber will afford somewhat more of a challenge to my canine companions.

Lee called yesterday after work and told me she had been worried about me, and all. She had misunderstood me to say I was suffering from chest pains, which is not at all what concerned me on Wednesday. While I found her concern touching, I note that it was not of sufficient magnitude to cause her to rearrange her busy social schedule. She did say she would come home tonight, and there are just over two hours left to "today," so... let me get off of that subject. I'm beginning to whine.

Despite best intentions, I didn't get a whole lot done today, though there is some time left to the day. I need to do laundry, I need to do my ATA presentation, and it would probably be a good idea to package the mushroom soup and put it in the fridge so it doesn't spoil. Dinner was a couple of bowls of that soup and a Greek salad while I watched Kurosawa's Yojimbo, starring Toshiro Mifune. I remember watching this film a number of years ago, and I had a lot of trouble following it, and wanted to see if perhaps the intervening years had improved my comprehension. They had.

The basic story line concerns a small town dominated by two rival criminal gangs. Into this mess steps a wandering, jobless samurai - a ronin - played by Mifune. He proceeds to play the two sides against each other until the town becomes "peaceful" again. I couldn't tell whether he did it to amuse himself, or out of Doing the Right Thing. At one point, after expressing utter contempt for a man who forfeited his house and wife to erase a gambling debt, he nonetheless goes out of his way to kill the thugs keeping the woman captive and gives the man, the woman, and their child money to run away and start a new life. Ironically, the money he gave them had been paid to him by the boss keeping the woman prisoner. The film's nod to the American Western genre is pretty apparent, down to the long, dusty main street where much of the action takes place. I cannot help but think that some early Eastwood flicks share a lot in common with this film.

Segue.

If you can read this, it means all of my hammering and sawing paid off. This post was typed on a PalmPilot, and sent via the usual channels - via modem - to a special mail account I set up on my server. The account, in turn, feeds the message to a modified version of Brad's Perl script, which proceeds to post the message to LiveJournal.

I suppose it might be easier - in terms of end user steps - to simply write a LiveJournal client that communicates directly from my PalmPilot to the LiveJournal server, but that will require me to come up to speed in PalmOS programming techniques, while this will work as a quick-and-dirty solution, methinks. After all, there are times I go places without a computer, but I rarely go anywhere without my PalmPilot.

Cheers...

This 'test message' might stay...

Just testing the PalmPilot channel again. This time, I want to make sure 'cut' and 'paste' work...

The following item was written around 1915, and is a parody of the kind of ballad for which Robert W. Service was famous. I first heard it on an old Jean Shepherd program, and the only part that I remembered after hearing it was the phrase "hermit of shark-tooth shoal." So not long ago, I decided to track down this ballad, and it sure enough turns out that, if you look hard enough, you can find just about anything on the Internet! Without further ado...

THE BALLAD OF YUKON JAKE
    --Edward H. Paramore, Jr.

Oh, the North Country is a hard country,
That mothers a bloody brood;
And its icy arms hold hidden charms
For the greedy, the sinful and lewd.
And strong men rust, from the gold and the lust
That sears the Northland soul,
But the wickedest born, from the Pole to the Horn,
Was the Hermit of Shark-Tooth Shoal.

Now Jacob Kane was the Hermit's name
In the days of his pious youth,
Ere he cast a smirch on the Baptist Church
By betraying a girl named Ruth.
But now men quake at "Yukon Jake,"
The Hermit of Shark-Tooth Shoal,
For that's the name that Jacob Kane
Is known by from Nome to the Pole.

He was just a boy and the parson's joy
(Ere he fell for the gold and the muck),
And had learned to pray, with the hogs in the hay
On a farm near Keokuk.
But a Service tale of illicit kale,
And of whisky and women wild,
Drained the morals clean as a soup tureen
From that poor but honest child.

He longed for the bite of a Yukon night
And the Northern Light's weird flicker,
Or a game of stud in the frozen mud,
And the taste of raw red liquor.
He wanted to mush along in the slush,
With a team of husky hounds,
And to fire his gat at a beaver hat
And knock it out of bounds.

So he left his home for the hell-town Nome,
On Alaska's ice-ribbed shores,
And he learned to curse and to drink, and worse,
Till the rum dripped from his pores!

When the boys on a spree were drinking it free
In the Malamute saloon,
And Dan McGrew and his dangerous crew
Shot craps with the piebald loon;
When the Kid on his stool banged away like a fool
At a jag-time melody,
And the barkeep vowed, to the hard-boiled crowd,
That he'd cremate Sam McGee...

Then Jacob Kane - who had taken the name
Of Yukon Jake, the Killer -
Would rake the dive with his forty-five
Till the atmosphere grew chiller.
With a sharp command he'd make 'em stand
And deliver their hard-earned dust,
Then he'd drink the bar dry of rum and rye,
As a Klondike bully must.

Without coming to blows he would tweak the nose
Of Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And, becoming bolder, throw over his shoulder
The lady that's known as Lou.
Oh, tough as a steak was Yukon Jake -
Hard-boiled as a picnic egg.
He washed his shirt in the KIondike dirt,
And drank his rum by the keg.

In fear of their lives (or because of their wives)
He was shunned by the rest of his pals,
An outcast he, from the comraderie
Of all but wild animals.
So he bought him the whole of Shark-Tooth Shoal,
A reef in the Bering Sea,
And he lived by himself on a sea lion's shelf
In lonely iniquity.

But, miles away, in Keokuk, Ia.,
Did a ruined maiden fight
To remove the smirch from the Baptist Church
By bringing the heathen Light;
And the Elders declared that all would be spared
If she carried the holy words
From her Keokuk home to the hell-town Nome
To save those sinful birds.

So, two weeks later, she took a freighter,
For the gold-cursed land near the Pole,
But Heaven ain't made for a lass that's betrayed -
She was wrecked on Shark-Tooth Shoal!
All hands were tossed in the Sea, and lost -
Yes, all but the maiden Ruth,
Who swam to the edge of the sea lion's ledge
Where aboded the love of her youth.

He was hunting a seal for his evening meal
(He handled a mean harpoon)
When he saw at his feet, not something to eat,
But a girl in a frozen swoon,
Whom he dragged to his lair by her dripping hair,
And he rubbed her knees with gin.
To his great surprise, she opened her eyes
And revealed: his Original Sin!

His eight-months beard grew stiff and weird,
And it felt like a chestnut burr,
And he swore by his gizzard, and the Arctic blizzard
That he'd do right by her.
But the cold sweat froze on the end of her nose
Till it gleamed like a Tecla pearl,
While her bright hair fell, like a flame from hell,
Down the back of the grateful girl.

But a hopeless rake was Yukon Jake,
The Hermit of Shark-Tooth Shoal!
And the dizzy maid he rebetrayed
And wrecked her immortal soul!
Then he rowed her ashore, with a broken oar,
And he sold her to Dan McGrew
For a husky dog and some hot eggnog,
As rascals are wont to do.

Now ruthless Ruth is a maid uncouth
With scarlet cheeks and lips,
And she sings rough songs to the drunken throngs
That come in from the sealing ships.
For a rouge-stained kiss from this infamous miss
They will give a seal's sleek fur,
Or perhaps a sable, if they are able;
It's much the same to her.

Oh, the North Country is a hard country,
That mothers a bloody brood;
And its icy arms hold hidden charms
For the greedy, the sinful and lewd.
And strong men rust, from the gold and the lust
That sears the Northland soul,
But the wickedest born from the Pole to the Horn
Was the Hermit of Shark-Tooth Shoal!

(Begging Robert W. Service's Pardon)

Cheers...