This is the view from my desk. It is a comforting abstraction, and we all need a few of those now and then. A break from the literal. Why, one could be like a worker imagined by Mondrian and the DeStijl movement, coming home from a day at the factory to sit in a ridiculous chair and contemplate the lines on the wall, ordering one's soul through observation. The reality of the image above is the quotidian sounds of the breakroom beyond - conversation, beeping microwave, water in the sink, a clank of a dish in the rack. Hard to go all zen when people insist on being people willy-nilly. But that's only midweek, when people show up. Friday I have the place to myself, for the most part. Friday, if I wanted, I could microwave fish and no one would care.
Made some walleye for supper. The instructions said I should partially thaw the fillets. This I did, or so I thought. (There's a nice epitath.) They were tender and flaky on the edges, Antarctic core-sample cold in the middle. It concluded a week of truly miserable meals, and I owe my wife an apology for everything. The butter chicken was underwhelming. The meat in the green-chili burritos was slightly singed. Don't get me started on that "Basil Pesto" white sauce I put on the chicken on Monday. Grim business, all of it, and I have to make it up to her next week. She never complains! But she also doesn't ask for seconds.
There were a few pieces of leftover butter chicken, but not enough for a lunch. I was going to give them to Birch, and she said I should wash them off first. Denude them of their saucy coating. Well I suppose so, he doesn't like spice, but are you telling me that if he was living in Bombay and hadn't eaten for three days he'd turn this down? I looked at the dog. Well would you?
(Sideways wag: don't know what's going on but food seems tentatively imminent, reserving comment for the moment)
You'd turn down a vindaloo because oh, that's too spicy, and your ribs are showing?
(Advanced tail swishing, culminating in a short bark: GET TO THE POINT)
So I washed it and he enjoyed it. No matter how I may fail as a cook, I rarely disappoint my dog. He's never interested in licking my breakfast plate, because he knows. No point. Too hot. I don't know what's with you, boss. I don't know what it is with you and food that hurts.
This caused a great deal of hooting and seething in a subreddit about being old:
There are younger people who peruse the sub, and are quick to dump a bucket of bile on boomers for the least provocation. They’re self-congratulatory nepos who never contributed anything and sucked up all the money and now they’re sneering at anyone who can’t duplicate their effortless, unearned success. But most were just amused by the idea that the cars were faster.
No one seems to notice that the ridiculous image has unusable chairs.
Or that one is not “cool” for having spanned a certain era, or had access to certain things.
A few note that actually, dad, you are old. But are you that old? The entire subreddit is shocking, really, because the items, the Proustian madeleines, are immediately familiar, and don’t seem like a picture of the Antikythera mechanism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
One of them took me aback, and made me say: “That cannot be so.”
It said that Deborah Harry was 79. Which is true. She was in her 30s when Blondie went big, but still.
Sometimes you see something you didn't know you knew.
Took half a second. Hi-yo!
"If you recognize him, you're old." I suppose. There's a backstory - he was crew, I believe - but when I googled, something unexpected was learned. Odd taxonomy:
This is a sane part of reddit, or SPOR, and has not yet been infected by people who interpreted the accidental banning of 14 pr0n subreddits as a test of the OFF SWITCH, which will be deployed when the dissenting resistence voices on Reddit pose too much of a threat to the Reich.
I was in a business selling embalming pills, but it didn't seem to make us much money, so instead I started selling off portions of the famous people that we had embalmed. I don't know what people did with them, but it seem to be a very normal and accepted sort of business. however at some point I started using a different chemical, and the result was un appealingly fishy to everyone, so sales declined. I went back to the original formula.
LANCE MEATJAW. I wonder if this is an early iteration of Tiny. And I'm not sure if they're smoking enough.
I wonder how many underworld characters signed their suicide notes with their nom de crime.
Henry Gross (born April 1, 1951) is an American singer-songwriter best known for his association with the group Sha Na Na and for his hit song, "Shannon". Gross is considered a one-hit wonder artist; none of his other songs reached the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. However, his single "Springtime Mama" was a top 40 hit in the summer of 1976, peaking at #37.
The sound of the opening riff brings me back to the era, right away. The song does not grab me at all.
A note: "He played electric lead guitar on the Jim Croce album, I Got a Name."
That's it for today. Thank you for your visits and indulgence, and I'll see you Monday.