This is what’s wrong with America.
I will NEVER eat this.
Images
Stafford Civil War Park
Stopped by the Stafford Civil War Park on my way home this evening. I had passed by it numerous times, and never stopped to look. Neat place, very close to home. This photo is an example of soldiers’ winter quarters.
Platefinger
Lovely moroccan silver & copper plate with fake finger.
The more things change…
the more they stay the same. My chief guerilla propagandist, from back in the day, continues his antics. My decades-old zine, in its newest incarnation as a big fat paperback book, has reached CHINA.
Office pranks
Employee goes on week-plus overseas vacation. Leaves car in lot and keys in closet “in case anything happens.” We joke around for a week about what kinds of pranks to pull on him before his return. At the last minute, the decision is made to park his car weird and block it in. It was about as funny as foil, styrofoam peanuts or post-its.
Technology FAIL, or “Thanks, Google”
Yesterday I managed to get a few photos of Sabina departing for the women’s Typhoon races. When she came in from the races and asked for a photo to send to her friends, I pulled up the Gallery app and all I saw were blank photos. I scrolled and scrolled, and that’s all I saw. I thought, oh no, what’s wrong with my phone? Are the files corrupt? Eventually I scrolled enough to find the photos, and realized what happened. I must have left the camera app open when I pocketed the phone after taking those photos.
I ended up deleting 90 photos of the inside of my pocket. But not before Google, in its infinite wisdom and generosity of spirit, backed up the photos and created a “Google Auto-Awesome” animated GIF of them.
Notes from Illuminatus!
It has been decades since I read the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. I’m currently listening to it in audiobook form, read by Ken Campbell and Chris Fairbank. It’s as if I’m consuming an entirely new piece, which technically I am — just like you can’t step on the same piece of water twice, the evolving mind can’t read the same book twice, because what you read is colored by everything else your mind has ever consumed and conjured. Ken Campbell really breathes life into it, as if it wasn’t full of enough life.
As with Cosmic Trigger, RAW’s work inevitably inspires attunement with the forces of coincidence, or whatever you choose to name it. The first notable coincidence came in the first paragraph, where the narrator is describing an event that occurs on April 23. That is today, and that was not planned.
The second coincidence comes later, where several passages refer to the gunning down of John Dillinger by the FBI, specifically the phenomenon of onlookers dipping their handkerchiefs in Dillinger’s blood as a souvenir. This phenomenon was also one of the subplots of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, which I finished listening to three weeks ago.
I’ll try and remember to post more coincidences as I run across them — I know there will be more.
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Honk…
Unfortunately it’s very hard to see in this photo, but written in what looks like Sharpie, on the rear of this fine out-of-state vehicle, are the words:
HONK IF YOU’RE HORNGY
I did not honk; I am not horngy.
De-winterizing the boat is fun… -ish.
We went down to the boat yesterday. The goal was to get a few things taken care of in terms of winterizing the boat. Change the oil, run all the antifreeze out of it, inspect for the next thing on the repair list, etc.
Oil change was a no-brainer, but when we started it up to run it for a while to run the antifreeze out of it, it appeared, and I vaguely remember this from last year, that there was an air bubble in the cooling system. It spat out a bit of the winter pink stuff, but then stopped, and the exhaust alarm went off, so we shut it down. We ran out of time to deal with it yesterday, so I attacked it this morning. One approach is to open the cap on the heat exchanger and fill it to the brim with coolant (or water, since we’re seawater-cooled), and run the engine some more, hoping that helps to fill the cavity and create the suction needed to get it flowing.
So sure, I did that, and then realized I didn’t have enough battery juice to get a start. It wasn’t holding a charge up to the level needed to generate a charge. So I went down into the battery box and popped the cells open. Sure enough, the fluid levels were low. Fortunately we had saved some distilled water aboard just for that. I topped up the cells with distilled water, reassembled everything and turned things back on. Quickly the system was able to charge the batteries beyond the required level for starts. Only now, the starter won’t even engage. Perplexing.
I remember when we installed the batteries last year that a loose connection generated the same type of failure. Going back down there last year and checking and tightening the battery connections resolved the problem last year. Not today. I checked them all, they didn’t move. I tightened them all, and still just a click on the start, no turnover. We ran out of time because of our plan to head home, but now we’re two tasks in the hole. We need to get the starter to turn over and then watch to make sure the air bubble is gone from the cooling system.
Meanwhile, last night around dinnertime, a crazy storm blew through Irvington, bringing heavy winds, sideways rain and frequent lightning. We headed over to Thai Pot for dinner just as the storm hit the club. We had already closed down the boat for the duration. Nice Thai dinner, and by the time we got back the storm was gone and the water was still as glass.
This morning it was still again, and look at all the pollen that had been dumped on the still creek.
An Evening with Amanda Fucking Palmer
Love her. Love her husband. Love imagining the combination baking inside her.
Love the fact that she’s playing with Morrissey for one date this summer. Kinda wish I could go. Love that she did a cover of his (Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want).
Love the fact that she did a highly relevant Kimya Dawson cover (All I Could Do).
Love the fact that pretty much the first words she said to us were calling us godless for coming out to see her on Easter. Then rambled about a King Missile song about Jesus that she sorta knows (Jesus Was Way Cool – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSfa56tjBQo), then used that to segue into Missed Me, saying, “this is not about Jesus. At All. But what if it was?”
Love that she did old Dresden Dolls stuff. Love that she took requests. Love that she brought highly enthusiastic young helpers from the audience onstage to hold an iphone with lyrics for one she didn’t remember exactly (Dirty Business I think). Loved that one of them kinda got lost dancing to it and had to be reminded to come back and hold the phone.
Love that she did Have to Drive and told the story behind it, how it evolved from the guilt of seeing a dead dog in the road. Personal synchronicity significance there.
Love that she did Runs in the Family and closed with the Ukulele Anthem.
Mostly I loved how much Sophie got into it. You know how teenagers are, it’s so hard to turn them on to anything new, even quality interesting shit, because they’re so into doing their own thing. By the end of the second song, she leaned over to me with a big grin. “I LOVE HER!”
Thanks Amanda, for a wonderful night in Richmond.
