I got the basics up of my new blog on Movable Type, although I haven't yet made it pretty. Ya know, with graphics and all. And also I haven't finished the navigation/links sidebar info, so some of the links there aren't going anywhere and I intend to put more in. So, I don't quite consider it ready yet.

But this is my blog's new home: http://www.batcafe.com/batblog/.

I've renamed the blog Extispicy.

Extispicy is one of the formal names for that ancient divinatory method about reading entrails. I'm always "reading the entrails," metaphorically-speaking, so I thought it a good name to use for a blog. Will doubtlessly assemble a more thorough definition and history of the word (it's fascinating .... if you like that sort of thing .... dissecting words and history, not sheep, I mean) and include it there when I have the time to do it right.

Sorry, things are messy here right now.

I'm in the process of moving this blog over to Movable Type. Hold on. URL forthcoming.

Today is the 50th anniversary of Irish Coffee's invention.

Saw this article this morning.

I knew about the drink having been invented at the Buena Vista in San Francisco -- used to work across the street from the Buena Vista years ago. But I had no idea before that there was on record an actual date of inspired mixology.

So, in tribute, I popped out to the corner store, bought a bottle of Irish whiskey, and made this little celebratory beverage "still life" pictured here:

A little Irish coffee and a little trivia is a pleasant way to start the morning (as long as I do not instead dwell on everything else that I noticed in the news this morning, that is).

Hmm. Three or four of these drinkies could probably aid me quite well in not dwelling. But as tempting as that sounds, can't indulge in that as I've got some other things to attend to today. Drat. And more drat.

As for any tendency towards dwelling, I could try to follow the advice of one of Oscar's lines:

"Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain."

But I'm not sure I could believe that wholeheartedly without really, really dwelling on it. Not to mention a whole lot more whiskey in my coffee ...

But what the hell. I'll take a stab at it this minute.

Joyous Irish Coffee Day. Cheers!

uh-huh.

A couple of years back, I wrote an article for Suffering is Hip called BATS: A Personal Essay on the Order Chiroptera with Parenthetical Tangents.

If you've seen that article already, you might remember that part of the article includes a few bits of trivia about bats, including a mention that the US Postal Office had never issued a postage stamp featuring bats (although they regularly put all sorts of other species on stamps). This piece of trivia I'd originally found in a detailed article about bats on postage stamps in the Spring 1999 issue of Bats, Bat Conservation International's member publication.

Well, recently I found out that the US Postal Office has now issued a commemorative edition picturing American Bats on stamps. The edition, released just this September, has four different stamp designs with four different species of bats featured.

Sooooo, if the idea of being able to have bats on your postage stamps gives you a special little tingle, well, see the US Post Office's website for details.

I usually pay little attention to what's on my postage stamps as I'm usually just lucky to scrounge up a stamp in my mess when I need one that actually happens to have the correct postage according to current rates. So, I don't much tend to care what's pictured on it as long as it's still usable without having to also try to scrounge up any 1-cent and 2-cent stamps that I might or might not still have as well.

But I even broke down and bought some of these bat stamps. Just had to.

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New Orleans Calling.

Last Sunday around 9 am, I got a phone call from Melusine and the Marquis, who were in the midst of what sounded like a fine drunken morning frolic. (They're in New Orleans; I'm in San Francisco.)

Apparently, from what I gathered in between slurred boisterous cackling from Melusine and insistent queries about whether I knew any details about Lady Miss Kier's demise from the Marquis, the Marquis had just been finishing off his graveyard shift as bartender at the Hideout on Decatur when Melusine came in and ordered a sidecar. Well, after Melusine had imbibed three sidecars and the Marquis had imbibed who-knows-what, Melusine and he decided to call up everyone they knew to inquire about Lady Miss Kier.

Now I, ignorant of certain music trivia, had no idea who Lady Miss Kier was. I was informed forthwith she was the singer for Deee-Lite. "Oh, yeah, Deee-Lite. I know who that is. Haven't a clue about your singer, though. Never knew what the singer's name was before," I replied. "Enjoying a nice post-Isidore Sunday morning, are we?"

That they were.

I talked to them for quite a while until Melusine realized she was too drunk to talk anymore and hung up. Melusine likes to call me from her cell phone when she's in bars. This can be most fun. She does not make a habit of frequenting the bars that early in the morning, let me add, but -- hey -- it's been a weird couple of weeks there -- what with hurricanes/tropical storms Isidore and Lili having contemplated visiting their city and all...... so, I guess, it tends to really skew one's routine.

About an hour after that phone call, the phone rang again. It was a collect call from the New Orleans jail, where Sami is currently residing for a wee spell. Sami is a friend of the Marquis' and Melusine's whom I met and befriended on my last visit there.

He happened to mention that he'd just heard Florence Henderson had died.

"You're kidding? I hadn't heard about that," said I.

After we hung up, I looked online at the Reuters and AP feeds to see if there was news or some details on that. Never found any. Just some very strange jailhouse rumor?

Is this what they do in New Orleans in between hurricane warnings? Contemplate celebrity demises?

_____

A few days before that, when I was grocery shopping, I bought a pound of crawfish (they were pre-cooked. frozen, and thawed -- as that's usually the only way we get 'em out here). They don't usually have 'em and the price was good. I told the fishmonger I was buying 'em in honor of Isidore the Hurricane (as the day I bought them was the day it was supposed to hit land somewhere).

Just as I was finished cooking 'em for Laszlo and I, Ferret showed up on my doorstep and the sight of them scared him away after he scrounged my cigarettes and used my phone. I enjoyed scaring him with my swamp bugs (Procambarus clarkii).

As I sat down to eat my lunch, I turned on "In Search Of ..." and the episode was one about swamp monsters in Louisiana bayous.

____

Enough with the synchronicity from down south already.

It makes it almost seem like all of this must connect somehow, but damned if I know how it does.

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Mentioned I was half-mad a few entries ago. Guess I should amend my statement. I'm moderately mad. Or, rather, moderately disordered.

At least according to this:

Personality Disorder Test

I'm moderately schizotypal, obsessive-compulsive, borderline, and avoidant.

According to this test, I am this:

What revolution are You?
Made by altern_active

Je ne suis pas! Je proteste! Comment est-ce que je puis être la Révolution Française quand je préfère énormément Voltaire á Rousseau??


I just looked up what today would be in the French Republican (Revolutionary) calendar converter (there's a spiffy Mac version of it here). And it happens today to be a Fête day, no less. La Fête du Travail (3ème comp.), An CCX.

Festival of Work. (Labour Day).

Actually, looking at the calendar, it seems we're in a Revolutionary Calendar Fête week right now .....

Tomorrow's Opinion Festival Day apparently. La Fête de l'Opinion (4ème comp.), An CCX.

Maybe tomorrow if I'm being more moderately Obsessive-Compulsive than moderately Avoidant, I'll opine on something ......

Or maybe I won't.

"Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes."

--Voltaire

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From Reuters, Wed Aug 21, 1:50 PM ET:

French mayor bans residents from dying

LE LAVANDOU, France (Reuters) - The mayor of a French Mediterranean town, faced with a cemetery "full to bursting", has banned local residents from dying until he can find somewhere else to bury them.

Gil Bernardi, mayor of Le Lavandou on the coast 25 km (15 miles) west of Saint Tropez, introduced the ban after a court rejected his plans to build a cemetery in a tranquil setting by the sea.

Bernardi said most locals had obeyed the edict so far, but he was desperately trying to find a resting place for a homeless man who had recently passed away in the town.

"Initially, the decree has been remarkably well followed," the mayor said.

Bernardi has appealed against the ruling preventing the seaside cemetery being built, saying it would be the best final resting place for his townsfolk.

"What people want here, because it's a local tradition, is their own little personal plot of land, their burial spot, not an impersonal pigeonhole," he said.