This is the Galleria, the tony shopping center in my neighborhood. I went to Crate and Barrel to get a Bodum French Press coffee maker, one with proper metal parts. I say nay to the cheaper plastic ones you can get at Target. Nix to the flimsy life.
They were out. Oh, they had the $99 one, but I had my eye on a more sensibly priced unit. While I was ordering at the front counter, an old couple came in the store. They had been lifted bodily from a small central-Minnesota town, complete with his feed-company cap and jeans and cane and cheerful outgoing how-de-do manner, and her matronly kindness that was both protective of her husband and a bit embarassed by him, but he'd always been that way, there's just no changing people, is there? The clerk asked what they'd come in for.
"A coffee maker," he said in a loud voice. He was beaming: I need a coffee maker! How about that! "Nothing fancy. Just a coffee maker."
"Right over here," said the clerk, and led them to a section of the store best described as The Extremely Fancy Coffee Maker section.
"You got a percolator?" he said. I didn't get the answer, because the clerk spoke 30 db softer. But I did hear the clerk pitch the Cuisinart and I heard the wife say that's a good brand, and suddenly I think i knew what was going on: he'd been making her drink from a Mr. Coffee for 30 years, one damned Mr. Coffee after another, all because of Joe DiMaggio, and now that it was broke she was going to get something nice and it was going to look nice on the counter. That's why she steered him to Crafe and Barrel. I mean, Target's across the street. You can get a great coffee maker over there, but they also have Mr. Coffees, and he'd probably insist on that. We did well by him nearly forty years on, woman, don't need this big square thing, take up half the counter. Best go to Crate, where there was no possibility of Mr. Coffee. I'll bet she'd alteady taken him to Williams-Sonoma in the same mall, just to give him sticker angina: I'm not paying three hundred dollars for something that makes one tiny cup at a time. And then she took him here.
I hope she got her Cuisinart.
Today’s Hallway Weed Quotient, hereafter the HWQ index: low. Both of the hot spots that usually have an invisible billow were dry today. Hurrah! Granted, I did not spend much time at the Fred today, even though it is, you know, my home. My other one. I have two for this month, and I just wish the other one had a family, say, a wife and dog. It would nice to plug right into a social structure in the Fred, and it would be fine if they all faded away to wraiths at the end of the month. You know, transitional entities. I’m sure robots will fill this function in a few decades, tailored for people in my situation. But wouldn’t you miss them when the lease is over? Not if they’re programmed to become unlikeable over time. Mean. Indifferent wouldn’t do. Mean. Then you kick them out and feel relieved. Some people would be content to make them leave and know they will walk outside and wait for the company to send a truck around, and stow them in the back. Some people would want to drive them back to the store just to give it all full closure.
But, absent rentable robots who make you feel at home in your smaller new place but eventually make you desire your solitudinous state, I go and knock around for a while and assemble things or put things away. There were three arrivals today, courtesy of Amazon:
1. A plunger, by Clorox. Interesting design. You pull the handle and the enclosure opens like the eggs from Alien.
2. A new webcam for future podcasts, so I’m not tied to my laptop.
3. Air-frier sheets to make cleanup a breeze. Or a snap? Could be a snap, but not in the October sense.
Also today: the mattress. But not the frame. I will not unbox the mattress and sleep on the floor. There’s something of the starving-artist-in-his-atelier about that. Or garret. I think if you’re starving, you have a garret. I am not looking forward to the bed frame’s arrival, because once that’s up, I’m out, or I should be. I guarantee I will go back to the house and nap, though. Everything cannot end at once.
Often does, though, so it’s not as it won’t.
I got the mattress box up to my atelier with some difficulty. It was big and heavy and sat on the dolly like Mr. Creosote on a footstool. It went into the empty bedroom, where perhaps it thought it would burst from its bounds right away and relax, breathe deep. Sorry.
The Giant Swede came by after quitting time and helped me get the top of the TV stand in place. Took a minute, then I paid him with a burger down the street. I went back to the apartment to continue assembling the stand, but I reached a point that required hammering. Nope. Whoever lives below probably just got home, and I do not want to hammer. I allow myself one or two construction sounds per day, because I know how you can build a reputation quickly by repeatedly making loud and annoying sounds early on. So far the place has been dead quiet on all sides, preternaturally so, except for that idiot who, at 4:22, mistakenly dumped a box of wooden hangers on the floor, and yes that was me. The clatter was startling, and all the hangers managed to link up like the plastic Monkeys who came in that Barrel.
Key facts about the Barrel of Monkeys:
1. it was co-invented by Milton Dinhofer, and while it is made today by Milton Bradley, there is not connection ‘twixt the Dinhofer and the current manufacturer. Milton Bradley was a different individual.
2. There are only 12 monkeys per barrel, hence the movie name.
3. There is no Crate of Monkeys, otherwise you could have a Crate and Barrel of Monkeys.
Now for scotch, then ice cream, the Tuesday night rewards for having finished the Three Tasks. Sounds like Chinese Communist programs from the 60s. Strive to complete the Three Tasks! Banish the Olds Who Only Do Two! The tasksL Bleat, Substack, NRO column. (I now write for the weekend, a small piece that tries not to chew the same cud as everyone else.) Subject: Moon.
I know I’d promised to talk Moon stuff here, because it is exciting and fantastic and remarkable and also oddly underwhelming, since it is not a novel accomplishment. It’s more like “Finally! I don’t know what the hell we’ve been waiting for, but also, why?” Moonbase prep. I suppose putting a base on the moon would’ve been a lot more difficult in the 70s. Now we have better air scrubbers and roving robot ice harvesters.
If we had built a base in the 70s it would have been dilapidated by the late 90s, everyone would be nonchalant about it, eventually accustomed to news stories about “New concerns threaten moon base heating system” and “stuck in the seventies, the moon base faces a major upgrade to its aging computer network,” and it would feel like a failure. Like a government project whose patrons moved on or retired. They'd be up there clomping around on weighted boots, studying fruit-fly mutations. Again.
My piece comes down in favor of a Musk-built moon base, because it's more likely the rovers will be cherry-red with tailfins. As they should be.
Now to write tomorrow's Substack. How about that: Four Tasks. I should get a commendation from the Party.
It’s 1932.
I don't know why I choise this one, lo those many months ago, in a halcyon time when the vagaries and tumult of 2025 were still ahead. Apparently this caught my eye on a cold January morn.
There’s not a lot of abiding interest on the Hume front page.
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Mayoral election results are in. The paper is damaged, but I can glean the story: a story broke right before the election, and that was the end of that.
Wonder who broke the story. If it was this paper, you'd think they'd crow about it. |
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As for Thomas Tipton, I found his son, Sesco V. Tipton, shown here during . . . his campaign for mayor.
Page 2 appears to be entirely a pre-print. We'll get to these comics later in the ongoing Obscurities subsite.
Eww
EWWWW
Same deal for page 3: a preprint from the syndicate. A serialized mystery novel from the author of the Horatio Hornblower stories.
Syrups and nostrums. That's what paid the rent for the little newspaper.
They can read minds?
The last page is local, again. No movie theater in Hume - as we’ll see tomorrow - but what about the Fisk over in Butler?
No record of such a place. Butler had a lot of movie theaters, and the names changed, so I can’t quite tell you where it was.
One last note:
Men!
Consider it!
They're not necessarily expensive!
That will do. More Seventies at the Wish Book update, and Substack leftovers around 11. See you hither / thither. Possibly yon. Thank you, as ever, for your patience.
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