Liza Pavelich | The Electron Pencil

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THE QUOTE

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is just opinion.” — Democritus.

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THE BIG 10’S BIG STORY

Herald Times sportswriter Andy Graham stopped in to the Book Corner earlier this week to pick up a Big 10 football preview magazine.

It was his last stop in town before setting off for Chicago, where he’s covering this week’s Big 10 Media Days dog and pony show.

You think anybody’ll be talking about anything other than Penn State?

A Prison Of His Own Design

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Check out Graham’s piece on the scandal that ran in Friday’s edition.

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… AND LO-OVE WILL STEER THE STARS…

It’ll be a great night for a meteor shower.

The Delta Aquarids shoot through the eastern sky late tonight. Seemingly emanating from the Aquarius constellation, they’ll be a teaser for the year’s biggest shooting star show, the Perseids, in fifteen days.

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Tonight’s display will be special, though, because the moon won’t interfere with it. The moon is waxing gibbous in the west in the early evenings these days.

Best viewing hours for the Aquarids are midnight through dawn.

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NEWLY ATTRACTIVE PREDATORS

Liza Pavelich of Bloomington says she was on the receiving end of a Facebook ad for something called Yummy Mommy Makeover.

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The ad features a testimonial from a now-scrumptious mother. It reads, according to LP: “It’s great. Now I get hit on by teenaged boys all the time!”

Which Liza characterizes, rightly, as “gross.”

She also points out that her memory of teenaged boys was such that any sane human being would shun their advances, considering how virtually sub-human they are.

Then again, it’s hard to imagine that anyone who spends the $300 to become a “yummy mommy” is actually, you know, sane.

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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

I Love Charts: Interactive History Of States & Territories

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❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.

❏ Present and Correct — (New Listing) Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ Caps Off Please — Comics & fun.

❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

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❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

◗ City Hall, Showers Plaza — Farmers Market; 8am-1pm

◗ Brown County Playhouse, Nashville — Indiana State Fingerstyle Competition; 11am-3pm

◗ Monroe County Fairgrounds — Opening day, 2012 Monroe County Fair, Queen’s Day, Grand Opening ceremony at 10am, Truck & Tractor Pull at 7pm, Queen contest at 7:30pm, (no carnival until Monday at 4:00pm); Noon to 11pm

◗ IU Wells-Metz Theater — “The Taming of the Shrew”; 2pm

◗ Brown County Playhouse, Nashville — Indiana State Fingerstyle Competition evening concert; 6-7:30pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Kumaré: The True Story of a False Prophet”; 7pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Finger Picking Competition; 7-9pm

◗ IU Wells-Metz Theater — “The Taming of the Shrew”; 7:30pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Joe & Jan Edwards; 8pm

◗ IU Woodburn Hall — Ryder Film Series: “Gerhard Richter Painting”; 8pm

◗ IU Memorial Union, Whittenberg Auditorium — UB Films: “Sixteen Candles”; 8pm

◗ Cafe Django — Post Modern Jazz Quartet; 8pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — Baron Vaughn; 8 & 10:30pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series:”Oslo: August 31st”; 8:30pm

◗ The Bishop — Eleni Mandel, Henry Wolfe; 8:30pm

◗ The Bluebird — Led Zeppelin 2; 9pm

◗ Max’s Place — Kayle Truman; 9pm

◗ The Root Cellar at Farm Bloomington — Depeche Mode dance party; 9pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Brett Holcombe; 9:30-11:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — Odkoga; 10pm

◗ Max’s Place — The Gentle Shades; 11pm

Ongoing:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

John D. Shearer, “I’m Too Young For This @#!%”; through July 30th
Claire Swallow, ‘Memoir”; through July 28th
Dale Gardner, “Time Machine”; through July 28th
Sarah Wain, “That Takes the Cake”; through July 28th
Jessica Lucas & Alex Straiker, “Life Under the Lens — The Art of Microscopy”; through July 28th

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
“A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
“Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
“French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits: Bloomington Photography Club Annual Exhibition; through August 3rd

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break

◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:

“What Is Your Quilting Story?”; through July 31st
Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

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THE QUOTE

“There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge in every country is the surest basis of public happiness.” — George Washington

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OUR GAL VI

The local Facebook-iverse was abuzz last night over the mention of one of our own in the Village Voice.

Seems that those city slickers suddenly have realized that there are actually people out here, and not just goats. And some of us Hoosiers can read and write and — gasp! — think.

State Senator Vi Simpson, top dog of the Democratic caucus, came in for the imprimatur on the Voice’s Scientology blog (golly gee, I didn’t know there was a crying need for such a thing). Writer Tony Ortega breathlessly marvels over the mere existence of Vi, who cleverly introduced an amendment to weaken a Republican bill to get creationism taught in Indiana public schools.

Clever Simpson

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Creationism, for those of you who understandably ignore the bleatings of the god-fearing Right, holds that the Earth is only 6000 years old and that a couple of white people named Adam and Eve ate some piece of fruit, causing all subsequent generations of humans to be born evil. Oh, and that a talking snake persuaded them to munch the honeycrisp.

“Go Ahead, Eat It.”

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I figure I’d be god-fearing, too, if I believed in a deity that deranged.

See, GOP Senator Dennis Kruse had introduced the original bill, SB 89, presumably because he thinks teaching evolution, biology, and geology are frightful wastes of our education dollars. The Indiana Senate actually passed the bill, leading me to wonder if those city slickers are right — perhaps we are just a bunch of illiterate goats out here.

Hoosier?

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Vi Simpson, though, proved at least some of us possess Homo Sapiens sapiens genetic material.

Her amendment called for the teaching of the creation myths of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology as well. Lo and behold, her amendment was passed, probably because, y’know, half to three quarters of those minty-fresh Tea Party legislators probably can’t read anyway.

And the kicker: Simpson received complaints from various minor religion zealots who were put out because their fave fairy tales weren’t included.

“Hey! What About Us?”

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In any case, the bill is now watered down enough to make it essentially toothless as well as brainless.

Here’s a hat tip to FB eagle-eyes (and Pencillistas) Michael Redman, Miles Craig, Susan Sandberg, Jim Manion, Steve Johnson, Mike Cagle, R.E. Paris, and Joy Shayne Laughter for catching the Simpson story.

And — huzzah! — those fancy folks from the Big Apple like us, they really like us!

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KILL ‘EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT ‘EM OUT

Great. Now some knucklehead with a gun and a teensy package has shot and killed a bald eagle in Morgan County.

The Herald Times reports this morning that the eagle carcass was found earlier this month near Eminence.

Target Practice

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Keep in mind that a couple of whooping cranes were gunned down late last year as well. Folks, can we please go back to shooting tin cans off fence posts?

I said this a little more than a year ago, after Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others were pumped full of lead in Tucson, and now it looks as though I’ll have to say it again: America, stick your guns up your ass.

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LOCAL ARTISTS SHOWCASE

Can you pony up two bucks?

That’s all it costs to see scads of local Bloomington artists show their stuff at — what else? — the Local Artists Showcase, Saturday, February 25, at the Bloomington Convention Center.

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Bloom magazine bwana Malcolm Abrams sauntered into the Book Corner the other day in search of baseball magazines — yes, it’s that time of year — and to pass out flyers for the event. Bloom is sponsoring the bash along with Ivy Tech.

Some 67 local painters, scultors, mixed media artists and many others will be on hand.

With tix so cheap, you’ll have plenty of dough left over to buy some nice pieces, no?

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CHICKS WITH DISCS

Have you caught Womenspace on WFHB yet?

If not, why not? Great music by a revolving cast of XX-chromosome DJs, including Carolyn VandeWiele, Catharine Rademacher, and Liza Pavelich. Check these Spinitron playlists for the show so you can see what you’ve been missing.

VandeWiele, Rademacher & Pavelich

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Womenspace airs every Thursday, 9-11PM. Women spinning women, baby. Catch it.

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