I have no idea what’s going on here but I know I like it.
When Dad and I first drove out this road, there wasn’t a single horse, mule, or wagon in sight. Ten minutes later when we doubled back, they were everywhere.
The birds.
Not all of them. Just two. And only one of them is even real. I leave it to you to figure out which one.
Definite cake and possible death
This thing? Is taking place today and I have been abandoned by my local event planner (for perfectly good reasons) so it is falling to me to stampede things.
So you know all that stuff that comes easily to normal people? All the cheerleading, even on a small scale, and leading a conversation or event? That stuff? Can’t do it. And I particularly can’t do it when I am already resentful of the whole stupid affair.
The birthday card is currently being passed around with a note that says, approximately, “Please pass this along to a colleague (who is not me) until we have a critical mass of signatures. I suppose I need this back before 2 today, or the lucky person to receive this last can just bring it at 2. Thanks.”
So Trasherati and I will both be reluctantly convivial. She will do it gracefully and I will not. I’ll retire to silence that I hope is neutral. And eat cake. Cake that is not from Whole Foods. Evil, yucky cake from Costco full of terrible things like SUGAR and BUTTER and MORE SUGAR.
And then Trasherati and I will get in her car and ride out to the mountains together for a long weekend with our respective kin (who live in the same county), and I will tell her how the nutty coworker who stampeded this whole affair thought I should print out the entire website that goes with her gift and highlight the headers on each page.
I hate people. Not you. Other people.
A basic separation
“I am making a basic separation between architecture as moulding and architecture as the assembly of parts. That seems a very simple distinction: the mud house, the stone masonry. But in fact it represents a fundamental intellectual difference, not just a technical one. And I believe it to be one of the most important steps that man has taken, wherever and whenever he did so: the distinction between the moulding action of the hand, and the splitting of analytical action of the hand.
It seems the most natural thing in the world to take some clay and mould it into a ball, a little clay figure, a cup, a pit house. At first we feel that the shape of nature has been given us by this. But, of course, it has not. This is the man-made shape. What the pot does is to reflect the cupped hand; what the pit does is to reflect the shaping action of man. And nothing has been discovered about nature herself when man imposes these warm, rounded, feminine, artistic shapes on her. The only thing that you reflect is the shape of your own hand.
But there is another action of the human hand which is different and opposite. That is the splitting of wood or stone; for by that action the hand (armed with a tool) proves and explores beneath the surface, and thereby becomes an instrument of discovery. There is a great intellectual step forward when man splits a piece of wood, or a piece of stone, and lays bare the print that nature had put there before he split it.”
-The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski
Appalachia, ideologically, is at war with itself.
“Broad-based assumptions give way to a very complex reality: Co-existing simultaneously you have a deep-set conservatism and a deep-set liberalism. Co-existing simultaneously you have a region that has rebelled against American political and economic ideologies and a regions that has probably the most deeply felt sense of patriotism than any other place in the nation.”
[via]
I’m going to take the money and go buy a truckload of Hostess cupcakes. See if I don’t.
Context: A remote employee decided to spearhead the birthday celebration for our manager (Hi, Trasherati!). As you will discover, said has a…passion for having things done a certain way.
I was volunteered to collect the money for the gift and procure the cake. L. is another coworker who, unlike me, has the event planning gene and was good enough to take over local event planning for this extravaganza that, by the way, our manager hates the very idea of.
Coworker: Jagosaurus, u there?
Jagosaurus: Hi.
Coworker: With M.’s extra $10, can you get a decent cake at Whole Foods? They have some great ones.
Jagosaurus: L. and I are taking care of the cake. Actually, L. is taking care of the cake.
Coworker: Okay, Whole Foods? If not, I have to contact her.
Jagosaurus: Maybe. Or Wegmans.
Coworker: Yuck on Wegmans. Whole Foods uses better stuff.
Jagosaurus: Manager likes Wegmans.
Coworker : That’s gross. I’ll handle it.
Jagosaurus: Uh, no. L. and I can and will take care of this.
Coworker: Manager has had bad cakes from there enough. And everyone else.1
Coworker: She can try something better.
[silence from me]
Coworker : How do I effect power at 3,000 miles?
Jagosaurus: Not very well, I suspect.
Coworker: I’ve tried cooperation.
Coworker: I can threaten.
Coworker: Take my marbles home. Hmm, I am home.
Jagosaurus: Uh, okay.
Coworker: Hope you know I’m kidding.2
Jagosaurus: I suspected as much.
Coworker : Okay, tell L. what I suggest. I’ll have to leave it to y’all.3
Jagosaurus: I don’t give a damn about the cake. I mentioned Wegmans because Manager likes Wegmans. A lot. I don’t have a dog in this fight, though, since the cake isn’t for me.4
Coworker: Seriously, anything is fine.
Jagosaurus: Okay. I’ll follow up with L. this afternoon or tomorrow.
Coworker: But there’s a couple of great cakes over at WF. Okay, thanks.
Sweet Jesus. Go ahead and learn the hard way that badgering me to do something a certain way does not work. And then step the hell off.
1. Right. Which is why our manager recommended Wegmans when I gave her the heads up about this event.
2. Except that you’re not. I know enough about you to know that.
3. That’s right. You will.
4. Nor is it for you, Coworker. You’re not even going to be here.
Princess, firefighter, photographer
It wasn’t until I’d gotten about a third of the way through this gallery last night that I remembered something from my childhood: when I was little, one of the many careers options I considered was being a photographer for National Geographic.
Much like my other career aspirations–princess, firefighter–I had no idea what this actually entailed. I just knew that I wanted to do it. Well, in fact, I had a pretty good idea what being a princess meant as I had done extensive research and watched many documentaries on the subject. Also: tiara! I was less clear on what being a firefighter meant but I knew that if Dalmations were involved, it had to be great.
But I digress. The thing about it that interests me now is that I was only interested in being a photographer for National Geographic. I think it has something to do with the impression made by stacks and stacks and stacks of gold-trimmed magazines filled with page after page of photos of everything under the Sun. And I wanted to take those pictures printed on that paper and published in that magazine.
So what did I do? I didn’t pick up a camera until some 30+ years later.
Huaynaputina 1600
“While many eruptions in historic times caused real climatic changes, previously only Tambora had been linked to significant social disruptions, says Kenneth Verosub, a geophysicist at the University of California, Davis. Now, however, analyses by Verosub and colleague Jake Lippman suggest a connection between the 1600 eruption of Huaynaputina, a little-known peak in Peru, and one of the greatest famines ever to strike Russia.”
[via]
“Well, no wonder the South lost.”
This guy showed up at the flea market and asked if he could play. After tuning his violin for a couple of minutes, he launched into a series of excellent fiddle tunes. Yes, fiddle tunes. And he played the old-fashioned way, which was particularly impressive to me. His singing was a bit rough because he sang a few things out of his range but the fiddle playing? Excellent.
Turns out this is unacceptable to some of the vendors at the market who felt that fiddling is, I guess, just plain bad music. And not content to complain to the market management and leave it there, at least one of them had to come commiserate with Kris, who is from Virginia, and with me, who she does not even know, about how terrible this music is, saying, “Can you believe this guy?”
So we explained politely that we could, in fact, believe this guy and that his playing was exceptional. We even gave her a little background on the music.
And she said, “This is a southern thing? Well, no wonder the South lost.”
Oklo
“Earth does many surprising things, for instance explosions of diamonds, volcanoes of carbonate lava, eruptions of asphalt and red lightning flashing upward toward space. But Earth’s neatest trick may be the time it created a nuclear reactor all by itself.”
