hosana superstar

Since first seeing a passion play as a little kid put on in other worldly crater in the Witchia Mountains in Oklahoma, I have wanted to see the play performed in Oberammergau.  It's not an opportunity that comes up everyday to see that sort of spectacle and I didn't want to miss it.  I was there once to visit the NATO school there--I wonder if those students take part.  For over four hundred years, the residents have performed this grand play to fulfill a pledge to God, promising to do so because the village was spared during the pestillence.  I guessed, like most passion plays, they have a limited run and confined to the Eastertide.  It turns out, I discovered while plotting vacations and other such get-aways, that the Oberammergauers take this show on, daily, for an entire season, running from May to October.  Jesus, for this decade, will be portrayed, by the village psychologist, and Mary will be played in this performance by an airline stewardess.

teach me tiger

This year Valentines' Day and the Chinese Lunar New Year coincide.  This year is the year of the Tiger, and according to the Feng Shui Index it will be volitile but especially auspicious for people born during the year of the Dragon (I count myself as one of those, dim sum and then some).  As you celebrate the dawn of the new year with your special Valentine, I'd recommend listening to the April Stevens classic.

semantic memories

I have a host of strange dreams, almost nightly.  A lot of them invoke some architectural associations, vast halls and impossibly high and steep drops, endless stairwells.  I dreamt the other night I was in an ancient Russian fortress, which had seen an incarnation as a firestation.  Deep wells ran through the turrets that formerly had fire poles to slide down.   Nothing so strange or spectacular there, but I distinctly remember taking out my digital camera and snapping a few shots of the castle.  I cannot recall ever having the wherewithal to have a dream camera at my disposal.  When I woke up, I reviewed the photos on the camera, just to make sure.

the mouse that roared

Ahmadinejad at Muppet Laboratories really amuses me, like some dancer in the chorus of a Busby Berkley musical number.  I do appreciate Iran's efforts to fill the science void that the devestiture of NASA will bring, and I am not sure if this was part of the promise to deliver a powerful message to Western global powers, but a rocket launched a little menagerie of two turtles, a mouse and a "few worms" to a sub-orbital clime.  A few worms doesn't have the same celebrity as Latka the Russian space dog.