FunnyStrange.com

Yesterday I think I had a breakthrough with our smoker. We've had the smoker for about a year now, and we've been really happy with it except for one problem: everything takes way longer to cook than it should. A chicken or pork ribs are supposed to take about 4 1/2 - 5 hours, and would take me 7-8. Tougher cuts like pork butt or beef brisket would spend 12 hours in the smoker and still wouldn't be tender. They tasted great, after we finished them in the oven the next night.

This time I did some searching online, and discovered that the smoker manufacturer has a forum. And several people mentioned having problems with the temperature differential between the top of the dome, where the thermometer is, and the grill where the food is.

Yesterday I used our digital thermometer, ran it through one of the vents and left the probe sitting on the grill. The temp at the top of the dome was 230°, just where I always keep it, but at the grill it was only 160°. No wonder it took forever to cook the meat.

After that I ignored the dome thermometer and raised the grill temperature up to about 185°. Lo and behold, the cooking time was much closer to what the cookbooks all say. The chicken was in for almost 5 hours, and was really tender. It could actually have gone a little longer for my taste, but I'm a philistine about chicken, I like it a little overdone. Judging by the way nice restaurants cook their chicken, that is.

Besides a chicken I also smoked a small (about 3 pounds) pork butt. And sausages -- two chorizo and one Italian sausage which I had for lunch in a hot dog bun. That's my treat for myself, every time I run the smoker I throw in some sausage and have a sausage "hot dog" for lunch.

This time instead of keeping the pork butt "low and slow" the whole time, I let it get up to 160° internal temperature, then cranked up the temp inside the smoker. The instructions said to bring it up to 350° but I never could get it that high. To be honest, I ran out of steam in late afternoon and didn't put nearly enough energy into maintaining it after that point.

Running a smoker doesn't sound like it would be as tiring as it is. You just have to check it every half-hour or so, adjust the temp if necessary. And at least once an hour open it up, baste the meat, add more water to the water tray, more charcoal to the fire and more wood if necessary. Every few hours the charcoal burns down enough that you have to get the chimney out and start up another batch of hot coals, then pick them up with tongs and drop them into the charcoal compartment one by one.

You get a faceful of smoke every time you open the lid. Which I was doing more often than usual because I was trying new things with the heat, so was having to do way more adjusting than normal. Plus dealing with the digital thermometer probe run through the vent, that was a hassle which meant I was standing over the open smoker more, which meant more smoke inhalation. I wish I had thought to run the probe up through the lower vent. Would have been easy to do while it was cold, and much easier to deal with during the day.

And it was so hot yesterday, and I didn't want to turn on the a/c because I was going in and out so much. Besides running the smoker I also made a cherry pie yesterday. I meant to do the pie in the morning, but I had to get some work done. (and by the way, trying to write code and run a smoker at the same time is officially no fun.) So I didn't get to the pie until the afternoon. By then it was so hot in the kitchen that just rolling out the crust made me feel kind of ill. (Note to self, if it's too hot to work in the kitchen, it's definitely too hot to work with pie dough. The crust did not turn out well, must be because of the heat.)

Georg got home just after I had finished assembling the pie and cleaning up the kitchen, and found me .. well I don't exactly remember. Sitting on the couch mumbling incoherently about the heat, probably. He took over from there, because he is awesome. He finished the pork butt, baked the pie, and made us a lovely salad including the chicken which was already out of the smoker. I fell asleep at about 8:30, woke up at 1, got up long enough to make sure the food had all been put away, then back to sleep until 6. It felt so good.

Despite my complaining, yesterday was a good day with the smoker. Just in terms of what I learned. I have a good idea what I've been doing wrong & in future I think we'll have much better control over the cooking times. And we have food for almost the whole rest of the week. Tonight we're having pulled pork sandwiches.

Following links this morning led me to The Unlikely Fan, a great fan site geared towards Americans who (like me) are interested in World Cup and (like me) don't normally follow soccer. The site is full of good posts for the new fan, maybe the best is The World Cup, Translated Into American, in which he compares every World Cup 2010 team to an American sports team. It's funny, gives you a hook for each team, and also gave me a big boost because I got way more of the references than I expected to. (For instance, he compares England to the New York Jets because their fans talk so much more shit than is warranted by the team's performance. I got that!) I guess I'm not a complete ignoramus about sports after all.

He even includes my home team:

One of Andrew Sullivan's readers came up with the clearest description I've ever seen of youthful selfishness:

"The world revolved around me and my needs, and I always knew what was right after a moment's thought. That justice was always aligned with my convenience was a happy coincidence and nothing more. When I grew the hell up, I came to understand that this sort of thinking marked me as a douchebag with entitlement issues...."

I say "youthful" though it's all too common in grown-ups who should know better.

We have a new refrigerator! I wrote last week about the plumbing problem that delayed installation. On Friday we had a plumber come out and install a shut-off valve in the water line, and I rescheduled the installation for today.

Turns out the plumber was also supposed to replace the copper water line with -- I don't know what. Something besides copper. Today's installer told me that they are instructed not to hook up to a copper line. Because copper can't handle being bent or twisted, and people sometimes have to move refrigerators around, and the copper line can crack and leak. He did connect the water line; he just had to write on the form that he did not hook it up. He was nice about it; he said "Put it this way: if you get a leak, it's on you." I laughed and said "I promise I won't come after you!"

It seems like a communication failure all around: the first installer was very unclear about what exactly was the problem. He just said "we can't hook up without a shut-off valve and we can't hook up to this kind of line." He didn't at all explain what that meant and I didn't understand that there were 2 problems, not just one. My mistake was not asking him to be more clear. He said that the plumber would know what to do and I was like, um ... okay, whatever you say! Big mistake. I should have asked him to draw me a picture, or googled it after he left, or something.

The plumber's mistake was not knowing that refrigerator manufacturers nowadays are anti-copper pipe. When the plumber installed the shut-off valve I said, now they told me that they couldn't hook up to this kind of line, do you have to replace the line? And he said no, this is standard, they should have no problem with it. And because I hadn't bothered to find out what the first installer was talking about, I didn't know that wasn't correct. Today's installer told me that this is the way it is now, and we should probably get the line replaced when we can. For the dual reason that 1) if and when we ever replace this fridge, we'll run into the same problem; 2) if we accidently push the fridge back over the line, it could crack and then we'd have a real mess on our hands.

So, mistakes were made. I'm not too upset about it because we have our new fridge! Today's installers were great. They had this crazy harness thing with a big wide strap that connected them together. They slipped the strap under the base of the fridge, ratcheted the strap to shorten it, then stood up and carried it between them. Really cool.

They had to remove the fridge door (though they left the freezer door in place), the sliding thing on the screen door, and the entire kitchen door. The kitchen door went right back together; the sliding thing on the screen door did not. When they unscrewed one end of it, the other end came apart. And the three of us couldn't figure out how to put it back together. Georg said he'd been thinking about replacing the screen door anyway. So we can look at this as an opportunity.

I cannot tell you how glad I am to get rid of the old fridge. Here's a little story that underscores how badly we needed a new fridge: Last week, when I thought we were getting our new fridge, I turned off the old one and dumped out the ice bin. Of course I had to turn it back on and load the food back in, but in the meantime it had a chance to warm up pretty thoroughly.

Today I went through the whole process again: load the food into coolers, turn off the fridge, dump the ice bin. I was thinking I would make a fresh pitcher of tea and fill it with ice so it would stay cool during the day. Until I looked in the ice bin and discovered that some of the ice was green. GREEN. There must have been some creeping crud growing in the ice maker, and the ice maker was always icing over because of the air leak, so when it thawed out, the melted ice must have mixed with the creeping crud and then refrozen into new ice. Horrifying. I stood there trying to remember how much ice I had used since last week, and had I looked closely at it. And also trying not to throw up. (I did not, in fact, throw up. I remembered that it had been 4-5 days since I'd had any ice, and if it was going to make me sick it would have already.)

On that appetizing note, I think I'm going to go get some ice from my new fridge.

June 9 movie: The Women. To my surprise, this movie almost fails the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test requires a movie to:

1. include at least two female characters (rule variation says they must have names)
2. who talk to each other
3. about something besides a man.

The women in The Women never talk about anything but men. I only found the following conversations:

• The first scene of the movie pans through a health spa, eavesdropping on snippets of many anonymous conversations, many of which are not about men.
• The main characters gather for lunch early in the movie and trade barbs, some of which are not about men.
• Mary (Norma Shearer), her mother and her daughter watch vacation movies and talk about the vacation.
• Mary's mother and her maid exchange a couple of sentences about the fact that the mother hates Mary's friends.

The only conversation that clearly passes the test is the one with the vacation movies. One conversation in a 133 minute movie with dozens of female characters.

I decided not to include the Bechdel test in every movie I write up, because it's too easy to fall into thinking it means more than it does. It's not the ultimate test of whether a movie is sexist or not. It's just ... interesting. And when the results are interesting, as in this movie, I will mention it.

June 5 movie: Perversion for Profit. Oh. My. God. This is amazing. It's a 1965 anti-pornography propaganda film. Financed by Charles Keating and narrated by reporter George Putnam, who delivers the entire script as if he was anchoring coverage of a war in a foreign country.

The whole thing is Putnam standing in front of a map of the US, talking about the horrors of smut. Interspersed with images of the smut in question. Which is hilariously tame, of course. 45 year old girlie magazines look so quaint and wholesome compared to modern porn. All the women in the photos had black bars over their eyes and naughty bits, which made the whole thing even funnier. I wasn't sure why they looked so funny until Georg figured out that it was reminscent of the "Full Frontal Nudity" sketch from Monty Python. The one where the dirty old man keeps trying to look at naked women, and there's always an umbrella or mini car or something blocking the view of the dainty bits.

Georg also pointed out something odd: Playboy was completely absent from the movie. We saw the covers of dozens, maybe hundreds of different smut magazines, most of which wouldn't have existed without Playboy, but no Playboy. No idea why.

Things I learned from this movie:

• Once a normal person becomes perverted, it's almost impossible for them to return to a normal understanding of sexuality.
• The women in nudist magazines are not actual members of "nudist cults," rather they are paid professional models!
• Bodybuilding magazines can make you gay, even if you only read them for bodybuilding tips.
• The ancient Egyptian culture collapsed because of moral decay of the same type that was corrupting America in the 1960s.
• We have a Constitutional right to be protected from obscenity.

Describing Perversion for Profit is no substitute for watching it. Thank you, Youtube!
Part I:

direct link if embed doesn't work

Part II:

direct link if embed doesn't work

Kind of a frustrating day. I spent most of the day getting ready for the new refrigerator -- unloading all the food and packing it into coolers, defrosting the old fridge, measuring to make sure the new fridge would fit in the doors, waiting for the installers to show up. Each of the two entrances was a little smaller than the fridge, so I was a little worried about how the install was going to go.

Turned out to be moot: the installers showed up, got a look at the old fridge and announced that they couldn't do the install. Turns out whoever installed the old fridge didn't put in a shut-off valve. They just ran a copper pipe and hooked it straight into the fridge. Without a shut-off valve, the installers today couldn't disconnect the old fridge. They would have had to turn off all the water to the house. And they couldn't connect the new fridge to that copper pipe. They said I need to get a plumber to install a shut-off valve.

So, they took the new fridge away. I called a plumber. Turned the old fridge back on. Loaded the food back in. The plumber is coming in the morning. (He's awesome!) Georg cleaned behind the fridge so it wouldn't be so horrible for the plumber.

On the bright side, before they discovered the problem with the water line, the installers told me that getting the new fridge into the space looked like no problem. I guess they take the doors off. As they were getting ready to go, the one who did all the talking apologized for the inconvenience, and when I replied with "It's not your fault" they both looked a little startled. Maybe they were expecting me to throw a tantrum. I have to admit, a little part of me wanted to! But it really wasn't their fault.

(About an hour later I got a pushy fundraising call from the DNC, and when I declined to donate the guy suggested that none of the people on his call list were really supporters at all. I kind of chewed him out for that -- told him that I had made hundreds of those calls [if you include the easier GOTV calls it's probably more like thousands] and I knew they were hard, and here's a tip, don't tell someone you're asking for money that you think they might not really be a supporter. This is going to sound horrible, but blowing up at that guy made me feel better.)

I realize that in the grand scheme of things, a delay in getting your new fridge installed isn't much of a problem. Still, it was frustrating. The old fridge is so nasty, and we kept using it for so long. Twelve years, and it was old when we moved in. I thought we'd finally be rid of it today.

Raleigh cupcake bakery posts on their website that their cupcakes are so good they "make fat people cry." Customer writes in to complain, they call her "fat cunt" on Twitter. And are shocked, shocked I say! to discover that the cupcake-buying public objects.

The "apology" on their website is priceless: "the tweets you found offensive have been removed." Note that they don't admit to actually saying anything offensive. It's just too bad that customer was so oversensitive as to get her panties in a bunch about being called a fat cunt.

What kind of moron markets a cupcake bakery with anti-fat slogans?* No, I am not saying that all fat people eat cupcakes, or that all people who eat cupcakes are fat. I'm saying it's idiotic to insult people who like food when you sell food. I've heard of stupid bigots destroying their own business before, but this takes the, ah, cake.

I'm just sorry that I never go to Raleigh so I won't be able to watch this place go under.

*the same kind of moron who responds to a customer complaint by publicly calling her a cunt, apparently.

North Carolina is doing a Cash for Clunkers appliance rebate program. Starting today! If you've been wanting to upgrade your washing machine, refrigerator, freezer, dishwasher or water heater, now is the time to buy. And I do mean now -- the last round only lasted for 3 days before they used up the available funds. This one is a mail-in rebate rather than instant, so I expect it to last a little longer, but I still wouldn't dawdle.

We took advantage of the program to buy a fridge this morning. Between the Memorial Day sale and Cash for Clunkers, we got a pretty good deal. It's a basic side-by-side; we wanted to get the kind with the freezer either on top or bottom, but our kitchen is so small that we literally would not be able to open a full-sized fridge door. The side-by-sides have smaller doors that won't bang into the counter, so that's what we have to do.

The best thing about the new fridge is that, unlike our old fridge, it won't leak cold air out of the ice dispenser; the sides won't get covered with condensation; and the doors will shut reliably. We really are exactly the target audience for Cash for Clunkers. We've hung onto the old, incredibly wasteful fridge for years, wanting to replace it but never able to justify the expense. And an extra $150 finally put a new one within our reach. Our tax dollars at work!

May 31 movie: Where Eagles Dare. WWII thriller starring Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. It comes across like a Guns of Navarone knock-off, which is kind of exactly what it is. If you thought Guns of Navarone was great except that the plot made way too much sense, Where Eagles Dare is the movie for you.

I'm kind of sorry I watched this. On previous viewings I saw it as a fun action movie with some plot flaws. Unfortunately the problems become more glaring with each viewing. This time I was shouting "What the???" and "That's ridiculous!!" at the screen over and over. It's just not a movie that holds up to repeat viewing.

May 31 movie: Hang 'Em High. This was okay. Not the best Eastwood movie I've ever seen -- too preachy for my taste. Still, it had some great scenes. I'm not sorry I watched it.

May 31 movie: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Yesterday was Clint Eastwood's 80th birthday and TCM showed Eastwood movies all day. This is one of the best. I read that Eastwood didn't want to do the movie. He wasn't crazy about the script, he didn't like that his character was one of three main characters rather than the only star, and he was concerned that Eli Wallach was going to outshine him. He also didn't get along with Sergio Leone and never made another movie with him -- in fact Eastwood turned down the part played by Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West. Which I have to say, if Eastwood only wanted to be in movies where he was the star, then he was right to turn down that part. Bronson is fantastic but the movie belongs to Henry Fonda.

I also have to say that Arch Stanton would be the best pseudonym ever. Even better than Astro-Glo Bronze. I might start using it. You heard it here first; if you ever encounter someone online using the name Arch Stanton, it's me. Unless you meet an Arch Stanton who's an asshole. In that case, it's someone else.

I think the Benny Goodman show went well, if I do say so myself! No technical glitches, no "land the plane" moments where I lost track of what I was saying, and (thank the flying spaghetti monster) no EAS alerts.

I played 8 tracks from the CD of old radio shows, the one that had gotten lost in the mail and the otrcat.com guy zipped the whole thing for me and sent me a download link. I'm so grateful to him for doing that. Having those songs really made the show. Here's the playlist.

Now I feel like I could sleep for a week. I didn't do anything physically strenuous, but I've been going all day long. And staying up late the past few nights -- I would get so wrapped up in what I was doing that I'd lose track of time, and then when I finally lay down the gears I'd be thinking so much that I wouldn't be able to sleep. I even missed almost the entire war movie weekend on TCM. Finally I can relax. No more theme shows until the 4th of July!

After the show we went to Big Orange and picked out a new fridge. The old one is horribly inefficient -- the ice dispenser is broken and cold air leaks out, and when it gets hot the sides are always covered with condensation. We picked out the fridge we want, and it's on sale, and we found out that NC is doing a Cash for Clunkers appliance rebate starting on 6/1. So we'll buy it then.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I've been listening to a lot of old Benny Goodman radio shows. Many of these shows were sponsored by Camel cigarettes, and contain promotional messages from the sponsor. It's very strange to hear a radio ad for cigarettes. Cigarette ads on TV were banned when I was a wee toddler and I don't remember ever seeing one, though I do remember people talking about the fact that they were no longer allowed.

WXDU Programming just told me that's it's OK for me to play an old ad for a product that still exists, if I present it as an artifact rather than a commercial. Which is great news, because I have some really interesting old ads which I've always wanted to work into a show. Like for instance, spots during the Kraft Music Hall which tell housewives how to use Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to stretch their ration points. Or the following:

Someday I'd like to do a radio show of all wacky old ads. Two hours is probably too much, though I think I could easily fill an hour if they ever bring the Sunday Night Mystery Show back.

Great night at the Bulls game tonight with D. and S. We had dinner before the game at Bull McCabe's and then walked over to the ballpark. It was a great game, one of the most exciting I've seen in a long time. There were bad calls that went against us, and then a thrilling home run! And then another, that hit the bull! I've never seen anyone hit the bull before. And then a storm came rolling in, and we were on the edge of our seats hoping it held off.

The timing was perfect -- it started to rain literally seconds after the game ended, while the groundskeeper guys were still rolling out the tarp. We started heading back to our cars right away, and watched the fireworks while we walked in the rain. We got drenched but I didn't mind. Though I have to admit, the drive back was a little scary at times. We were so glad to get home!

Listening to the Benny Goodman radio shows non stop. My favorites are the "Madhattan Room" shows from late 1937. They had a show in a hotel ballroom which was broadcast on the radio. Apparently lots of hotels did this in the 30s. Put their dance band on the radio I mean.

Anyway the Madhattan Room shows are the best for my purposes because, well first of all the line-up is really good. Krupa, Wilson and Hampton are all around at this point. And the shows have an informal feeling that I really enjoy. In a couple of years Goodman's show would be the Camel Caravan, which was much more structured. Guest stars, inane patter, comedy routines, the "killer diller of the week," etc. I guess they wanted all bandleaders to be wisecracking showmen with funny hats and catch-phrases, and the fact that Goodman wasn't very good at that is irrelevant. (Camel Caravan is also problematic for my purposes because the show was sponsored by Camel cigarettes and they name-check the brand constantly.)

But in the Madhattan Room shows, it sounds like you're just listening in on a regular gig. Which is kind of accurate, actually. A concert for dancers in a hotel ballroom would have been a swing orchestra's bread and butter. Most bands would have been at shows like this every night. The best part is hearing what the orchestra sounded like in front of an audience. When they get the crowd fired up the audience starts to cheer, and you can hear the band respond with greater energy, which gets the crowd going even more. They feed off each other. It feels so different from a staged program, with the audience sitting down & applauding on cue. Just a completely different energy.

The quiet numbers are also interesting because you can hear the audience talking amongst themselves, and/or interacting with the band. I just heard one, a show from November 1937, where the Trio (Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa and Teddy Wilson) play "Where or When," and the audience starts to sing along, and it's just beautiful. Magical. For just a moment I felt like I was there too.

I heard back from the old time radio guy. He responded within a couple of hours, zipped the entire Benny Goodman CD and sent me a download link. I have the whole thing in my iTunes & am listening to the first program now.

OTRCAT.com rules! I can't recommend the site highly enough. I've ordered from him several times and the customer service is always excellent. Really, if you have any interest in old radio you have to check it out. He has all kinds of interesting things: dramas, comedies, music shows, and thematic collections.

My favorite CD I've ever gotten from him was Jubilee, a music program created during WWII by Armed Forces Radio. Servicemen would write into the show with requests, and the show would get the bands they requested to appear on the show. They would often mention the names of servicemen who had written in. Jubilee was aimed at black servicemen and the talent on the program was incredible. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Ethel Waters, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway, Louis Jordan, Jimmie Lunceford ... Everyone was on that show.

Another good one is "Civil Defense PSAs," which is just what it sounds like: radio PSAs from the Cold War era. If you've ever seen "Duck and Cover," the cartoon with the turtle hiding in his shell while a monkey sets off an atomic bomb, it's like that on radio. (In fact the CD includes a radio version of "Duck and Cover.") There's one PSA about building a bomb shelter which recommends stocking your shelter with tranquilizers. Because it's boring to be trapped in a bomb shelter, and drugging your family will help them endure the tedious weeks while atomic war rages on outside.

Of the order I just placed -- the one that needs to be reshipped so I probably won't get it until next week -- I'm most looking forward to "Ask Eddie Cantor," a four minute long advice program by Eddie Cantor. Wha? It sounds so bizarre that I can't wait to hear it.

(Many thanks to kip_w for first cluing me in to otrcat.com!)

Georg has started recording this show called "Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations." The show seems to be about three annoyingly folksy guys (or maybe just three guys and one annoyingly folksy narrator) who drive around and visit outsider art things. Last week we watched an episode about one of my favorite art cars, World's Largest Collection of World's Smallest Versions of World's Largest Things.

We just saw an episode about the Houston Art Car Weekend. Imagine our delight when we realized that they filmed it one of the years we were there, so we recognized almost all the cars they showed. And imagine our amazement when we saw this:

Undersea Mah Jongg was only on screen for a few seconds. I think they filmed it during lunch after the Main Street Drag. That's the school tour on Friday morning. Afterwards everyone goes to a fun restaurant for red beans and rice, courtesy of the parade.

What fun to see all those cars we remembered from our time in Houston, and then to see our own too! It was a thrill. Tempered only by the realization of how much nicer the car looked six years ago, and how badly it needs an art remodel.

This episode also did a profile of the Flower Man, which I really enjoyed. I've met him briefly a couple of times at the Art Car Weekend and he always seems like the happiest man in the world.

In preparing for the Benny Goodman show this Sunday, I ordered from my favorite old-time radio show catalog. I bought a CD of Goodman's radio shows, plus a bunch of other stuff because there's always a bunch of things I want from that site and he has free shipping over a certain amount.

I placed the order on the 16th, plenty of time to prep for the show. He shipped on the 17th, and the past few days I've been wondering why the heck it hasn't arrived yet. This evening when they weren't there again, I checked to see if there was a tracking number -- and discovered that part of my address had been omitted from the shipping label. It was correct on the receipt, but wrong on the "your order has shipped" email. The package arrived in Durham on the 19th and had been returned for insufficient address. It's now in transit on its way back to the sender.

Dammit! There are 73 old shows on that CD. I have to listen to as many of them as possible, figure out which songs I want to use in the show, and clip them out in Audacity. By Sunday at noon. If he resends the CD with the correct address tomorrow, I'll get it Friday or Saturday. Which is not nearly enough time.

I wrote to him and asked if there's any way I can receive that one CD electronically. Even just part of it would be a huge help. We'll see what he says.

Tonight I'm finally getting down to business on researching the Benny Goodman show. The show is a week from today so I'd better get with it!

It's a cozy job, perfect for a rainy evening. I'm curled up in bed, reading the biography Swing, Swing, Swing. My laptop is next to me, to take notes in a Google Doc, and listen to songs mentioned in the biography on iTunes. And I have the discography BG On the Record lying open on the other side of me, in easy reach when needed to find out more about particular songs. Isn't technology grand?

BG On the Record is an interesting book. Not just a plain list of recordings, it includes a few paragraphs of description of each session. So instead of just "who" "when" and "where" you also get some "why." The format is also interesting: it was typed on a typewriter. I've seen books like this before but it's been decades. While doing academic research (back when I had need to do academic research, in the dawn of time) I would occasionally come across a type-written book. Usually they looked like someone's thesis that had been published by an academic press, and maybe resetting the book would have been too expensive. This doesn't look like a thesis. It was published by Arlington House; is that an academic press?

I bought it used from Amazon Marketplace, and my copy originally belonged to the Lexington Public Library in Lexington KY. It still has the envelope glued inside the cover where the checkout card would have been stored, though the card is long gone. Too bad; it would have been interesting to see how often & when it was checked out. The envelope is stamped "DISCARD." Lexington's loss is my gain.