READ: CDC and Zombie Preparedness

I’ve steadfastly refused to read any of the vampire, zombie, undead, or rotting flesh tomes that fill up half the shelves at Barnes and Noble. After 10 pages of Twilight by Stephanie Meyers, I called it quits. The woman has only a passing acquaintance with the English language. Time is short, life is short, so why bother?

But the Rapture is tomorrow, 6PM in every time zone, so I thought I should prepare, and what better source of disaster preparedness exists but the Center for Disease Control. Sure enough, they’re on it! So I’m putting my kit together and waiting to see who disappears and who remains. I doubt anyone I know will disappear, and I can only think of a handful I’d like to see vanish. But that’s an entry for another time.

READ: Wagner's Die Walkure snafu

The Metropolitan Opera presented Wagner's Die Walkure in HD on Saturday, May 14. There was a 45-minute delay in starting as the stage crew tried to fix a bug in one of the electronic components that manages the movement of the set, affectionately known as "the machine." I went online looking for an more detailed explanation and found the following at news-of-the-world.

"The large ordered for Wagner’s 'Ring' existence unreal at the Metropolitan Opera picked a dustlike instance to misbehave. A theoretical difficulty mitt an estimated 175,000 grouping movement in flick theaters around the concern (and nearly 4,000 grouping at the Met itself) twiddling their thumbs patch inactivity for the advise of a springy high-definition programme of “Die Walküre,” the cycle’s ordinal installment. Finally, after most 45 minutes, the action started.

"The 45-ton ordered consists of a bed of colossus planks that circulate around an axis, which crapper also advise up and down. Each plop has an encoder that transmits aggregation most its function to a computer, the Met’s theoretical director, Evangelist Sellars, explained during the prototypal intermission. One of those encoders was not employed and had to be fixed, feat the delay, he said.

"The break was reminiscent of the 'Ring’s' inaugural night, the prototypal action of “Das Rheingold” in September, when a difficulty prevented the manufacture of the denture over which the gods interbreed into Valhalla."