dumb as a wooden chicken

I have a cold and a new apartment. The apartment is swank and spacious. The cold is highly evolved. If colds were a good thing I would be proud of this one's quality; as it is, I can only say that about the apartment.

I found a webpage where the Chinese swearing in Firefly is translated, and it turns out to actually be swearing. This helps, because the actors' pronunciation is not very good - I wouldn't enjoy looking it up myself. This link is mostly so I can check back when I have time to learn swear words and other impolite things.

everything looks brighter when

Poking around this morning, I came across a review of a book of letters Richard Feynman wrote, collected by his daughter and published recently. It reminds me: I have a lot of books lined up to read. Now I've got to add this to it, as well:

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself—it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

Best of luck and happiness.

Sincerely,

Richard P. Feynman

I already had his Lectures on Physics on the list. These days I read the first thirds of books and then don't have time to finish them, and that's what happened the last time I tried to read those. Also on the list:

1. Gravity's Rainbow (also afflicted with First Third Disease)
2. Remembrance of Things Past
   
3. Ulysses (this one has First Few Pages Disease)
   
4. Analytical Mechanics, 4th ed. (this one is tangentially related to a project)
5. A book on optics whose name escapes me
6. The Feynman Lectures on Physics (this may have been the original carrier of First Third Disease - an especially virulent strain, since this has three volumes and I read the first third of each)
7. Norwegian Wood (I've been reading Murakami books off and on for a while now)
   

There are others, too, but clearly I've got my work cut out for me.