We've moved! 

Union, Trueheart, and Courtesy is now housed at uniontrueheart.blogspot.com. Please update your bookmarks, reader feeds, and blogroll links.

This legacy site will stay active as long as I keep my dot-Mac account and don't need the storage space this takes up.  Feel free to continue to link to old content here; it'll stay up for the foreseeable future.

AudioArcher credits 

As we completed our walk around the neighborhood tonight, I caught Archer narrating to himself in the style of the audiobooks they've been giving away in Wendy's kids meals.

"We hope you have enjoyed this unabridged presentation of 'The Scorekeeper,' by Archer," he intoned.  "Text copyright 2007 by Archer.  Production copyright 2010 by Random House, Inc.  All rights reserved."

On the new UTC today: Part the First of another soon-to-be-abandoned blog series, this one on Places I've Lived.

Media Saturday 

Suddenly I'm getting Tasha-esque amounts of reading and viewing done -- check out the updates for the last few days on the master film and book list.  Those'll be the first items moved over to the new UTC when I make the break with iBlog permanent (that's when, not if ... I'm attached to my blogspot home now).  Today's entry segues from my enduring fascination with paint to barely-disguised bragging about how smart my kids are, with minimal logical connection.

Between books 

There's a wonderful moment after one book-for-hire is finished (in this case, the wonderful Peony in Love, which I'll be reviewing next week) and before the next one needs to be started, when I can pick up comics -- COMICS! -- and read them with unbridled joy.  So I'm midway through Alison Bechdel's highly acclaimed Fun Home and can't wait until bedtime when I can finish it.  Today's entry at the new UTC considers (very briefly) the intersection of money and funny.  (No, not counterfeiting -- fiscal comedy.)

The more things change 

Inspired by tonight's viewing of Shane Meadows' melancholy portrait of desperate nationalism, This Is England: the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Letter Of The Week.

One more kiddie quote 

I forgot one that cracked me up.  A couple of days ago, Cady Gray had what I kindly termed a "tricky day" with her toilet training -- lots of accidents.  "Remember what Mrs. Floyd [Archer's kindergarten teacher] always says," I told her.  "If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything at all."

A few minutes later, she repeated back to me, "Remember what Mrs. Floyd says!"  "What does she say?" I prompted.

Cady Gray hesitated, then answered loudly and decisively: "Don't make a mistake!"

Words to live by.  Anyway, today's entry at the new UTC has nothing to do with kids, but it is no less a navel-gazing affair for that.  Check it out.

Are you a wild animal? 

Lazy "cute things the kids say" post over at the new UTC.  Also, learn what those geniuses who invented 20q.net have been up to lately (Italian and Dick Vitale, for starters.)

Normalcy 

... is one of my favorite oddball words.  I love the way it quickly infiltrated the language, displacing the more common "normality," when Warren G. Harding used it on the campaign trail.   We've completed our own "return to normalcy" now that a non-conference work week has started, and I celebrated with a nice slow day of "Ask the A.V. Club" answers, interlibrary loan requests, and answering long-delayed e-mails.  Today's post over at the new UTC is part one of "editorials that got my back up."  If there's enough public demand, I'll do part two tomorrow.

Harry Potter and the 160-minute Film 

Just got back from seeing the new HP flick -- eh.  I liked some of the effects, and it was nice to see more of Gary Oldman and Alan Rickman than we did last year, but I found the pseudo-momentous pacing and the dead-serious pep talks every 20 minutes or so tedious.  Oh, there's a post at the new UTC with 300% more Muppets than I saw at the theater this evening.  Enjoy.

Coming up for air 

The three days are over, and (no blasphemy intended) I'm ready to come back to life.  Our conference was, by all measures we could think of, a success.  But I feel like I dropped off the face of the earth for half a week.  Today's entry, inspired by a disparaging remark about online communication dropped by a conference participant, is over at the new UTC.

By the way, the software company clarified that the free upgrade only applied to paid licenses, not to the free one I got four years ago.  So I paid up.  Whether that will give me an incentive to stick with iBlog, or whether I'll get addicted to the blog-anywhere ease of Blogger ... we'll have to see.

Nostalgia, 21st century style 

Still consumed by the tech conference, blogging it on HCOL.  After a three-hour dinner at Mike's Place, tonight's entry on the new UTC might be a little food-focused.  Tomorrow: my first visit to the Clinton Presidential Library, where one can buy many unapologetically FOB items.

Do you like technology?  Do you like conferences?

Then you'll love today's blog entry over at the new UTC.  And you'll also love what's like to come tomorrow and Saturday, since (like today) I'll be spending 12 hours sitting with other Honors people talking about technology -- in a conference format.

Sorry for those of you who might be more into the non-academic, non-administrative stuff.  Here's a random list for you: Questions I'll Soon (Or Someday) Be Answering In "Ask The A.V. Club"

• what's the holiday cartoon where post-apocalyptic animals discuss how humans destroyed themselves?

• how did slipping on a banana peel become a standard comedy gag?

• any information on that Sesame Street short film about an industrialized chicken hatchery?

• how do makeup artists handle movie scenes where the actor is underwater, bathing, or otherwise soaked?

• do astronauts get to take iPods on the shuttle?

• tell me more about the music in that cosmetic commercial

• tell me where that advertising jingle "Load Letter Paper" came from

• where did the cliche about breaking glass with a high-pitched scream start?

• what about the taunt "neener neener"?  what's that all about?

• while we're at it, where did "Booya!" originate?

• who designed the iconic male/female restroom signage?

• does sitting "Indian style" refer to Native Americans or inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent?

And that's just the ones I haven't actually written yet ...

Plunging 

In an attempt to see whether Google can win me over yet again, today's post can be found at uniontrueheart.blogspot.com, the all-new Union, Trueheart, and Courtesy.  Old content -- along with links to new daily content posted at the new Blogspot and at Toxophily -- will continue to be found here.  And I reserve the right to change my mind at any time.  See you at the New UTC.

Over a barrel 

You regulars may have noticed an unexplained hiccup in the daily blogging schedule yesterday.  I fired up the ol' iBlog only to be greeted by a notice: "Your trial period has expired.  Please register your software."

I shouldn't have to buy another license -- I was a licensed user of the previous (1.x) version, and the download page for 2.0 notes that it is a free upgrade for 1.x owners.  But the license key didn't transfer over during the upgrade, and I unwisely trashed the old version.  I e-mailed Lifli Software's registration contact with an explanation and a request to retrieve my old key (from 2003!), but haven't heard back in 24 hours.

They've got me up a creek, and not just because I'm addicted to daily blogging.  The "export" menu item is grayed out in my version, presumably because it's only available to registered users.  So the 540 entries in my blog can't be moved to another platform unless I pay the money to continue using this platform.

I'm torn, I really am.  The 2.0 release has turned out to have as many annoying quirks as attractive new features.  Chief among the problems: the absence of fundamental formatting commands, like line spacing, anywhere but in the code of the cascading style sheet, and the inability to easily define new styles.  That's why I can't turn off the extra line between paragraphs, which I like in text but desperately want to get rid of in poetry or a list.  That's why I can't create a bulleted or numbered list except by manually inserting the bullet character in front of every item.  That's why there are no nice hanging indents in my lists.

I've been wanting to move to a web-based or open-source platform for a while, but I can't just leave my readers behind with no notice.  So I'm paying up so I can post again, but I'll be investigating greener pastures.  If I can get some response from the developers, I'll demand a refund since I shouldn't have had to repurchase.  And maybe I'll be posting a moving notice before too long.

Tell me about the pluses and minuses of your blogging platform.  I like my Wordpress blog, but that notice about how much of my free space I've used makes me worry that I'm going to run out.  Any experience migrating from one to another?  Space restrictions at the free sites?  Publishing to a dot-Mac domain with various kinds of blogging software?  (Hey, I'm already paying for it, although if I stopped using it to host my blog, I just might move the photos to Picasa or Flickr and the movies to YouTube ... that $90 per year would be nice to have in my pocket.)

Advice would be most welcome.

Catching up with Tony

We've never had HBO (or Showtime) -- I have a pathological aversion to acquiring subscriptions and accumulating monthly expenses that stretch on and on forever.  (That's also high on our list of reasons we have a prepaid cell phone.)  So we catch up with the buzz shows, like The Sopranos, Deadwood, Big Love, The Wire, Entourage, etc., on DVD six months or so behind the times.  (Well, we've never even started with Entourage.)

Which means that a few weeks after the for-all-time Sopranos finale, we just finished watching the first 12 episodes of Season 6.  And it means that as the Extras Series 2 DVD is about to be released, we're finally starting to watching Series 1.

I'm getting weak, I confess.  One reason we are pop culture junkies is that there is an energy, even a palpable joy, in being part of the experience of a certain entertainment moment.  When everyone else is seeing it, you are too.  For all the problems of the mass media and the pseudoevents that they generate, they do succeed in uniting us, and therefore (perhaps) in helping us reflect on what we all are asked, expected, or enticed to share.

The half-year between those moments and the eventual DVD rehash dilutes most of that energy, although it may add what Anton Ego calls "a heaping plate of perspective."  Still, if there were ever, let's say, four shows on HBO at once that were of Sopranos quality, we might decide it's worth paying for.  Although, Abraham-like, you might be able to bargain me down to three.  What's really aggravating is that you can get HBO bundled with twelve other premium channels you couldn't care less about, but what you really want is an HBO/Showtime bundle.  Where's that media consolidation that everybody's complaining about when you really need it?