Above: bird alone on the parking lot next door after a suppertime shower.

I'm trying to get as much "art" out of this place as I can.

Grand enthusiasms on a early siummer evening! I had made a decision to get two plants I’d seen at Trader Joe’s, and conceived a grand outing wherein I would secure the plants, hit Micheal’s for frames for the pictures I will print and hang, and go to Target for a mirror. As I said, every week has to have some new tweak, something to indicate initiative and purpose to Fred Base One -

Hey, wasn’t that supposed to be the planters?

It was the planters. I got the planters, meant to hang on the balcony. I had ordered them in accordance with a long-standing conception of the balcony that preceded occupancy. Of course I would have hanging planters with bright foilage! They arrived; I unboxed; I hung; I hated. No. Also, as befits their Sino origin, they were cheap and the hooks were loose. Return. Scotch that. Now we retune and refine. Trader Joe plants to flank the TV.

When I got there I realized they were too tall, and would look silly. But: smaller plants pre-positioned in attractive pots, $12.99. That’s the ticket. I should note that the day was boiling, and hence I couldn’t take Birch in the car. It was the second time he’d been left behind. Good training, even though I know it unnerves him; when I’d returned from the afternoon workout and Zork Storage trip, he had distributed four shoes around the apartment and scratched some lines in the wall by the door. He was elated to see me. Going on nine years and he still doesn’t know we’ll be back.

Oh - Zork? Well:

Everything fit. The suitcases are prepositioned for the next trip. Now I can just relax and luxuriate in the $38 savings and know I need not go there again unless I absolutely have to have a cord, or consult my personal archives, which I won’t. I felt as if I’d ended and cauterized the period in which I was filling that storage bin with my life, and the items I would need in the future. This is success, somehow. I guess. Moving on.

I went to Michaels, found the frames, went to check out. The clerk was wearing a mask, at this late date. Tat-spattered. But I noticed one that was familiar.

“I have to say,” I said, not having to say it at all, “I’ve never seen that.” I pointed to his forearm. “The Angriest Dog in the World. David Lynch.” His eyes widened.

“No one has ever known what that is,” he said, and held up a palm for a high-five. I slapped his hand and left with a smile, international man of mystery who knows things.

A David-Lynch-tattoo-bonding moment. At a suburban Michaels.

At Target I did not find a mirror, but I did remember to get some household items. Got a reed scent-diffuser, as part of the ongoing effort to establish some sort of nice household aroma. Experience so far with various plug-ins and scents and such: I can’t tell. It’s either cloying or insubstantial. Eight dollars for a vague scent, the bottle dry in a week. I want to walk in and detect a clean scent like I walked into the waiting room of a cruise ship spa, and have no idea how to achieve it. Wax melts? No. Candles? Verboten. Reed diffusers? We’ll see. Everything fights the dog scent, and the dog scent always wins.

Another thing I have learned, to my chagrin: motion-activated LED lights in the pantry are a buck-suck non pareil, because they consume three AAA batteries per week. And that’s just switching on for ten seconds four times a day. They’re battery vampires. I bought some LED pucks for the shelves, and it’s the same thing. You can buy rechargeable lights but they have to be rejuiced every other day. Out! Done! Gone! Tossed!

Anyway, I didn’t get a mirror at Target, because they didn’t have one. Looked at art. Need art. have begun to finalize the art purchases for the wall. It's maddening. A million choices for wall art and they’re all wrong. The color is right, but the design is generic. A sudden unexpected discovery pushes you in a new direction, and now for the first time in my life I’m thinking:

Perhaps I should devote the Inordinately Large Bathroom . . . to England?

Not as a comment on the Scepter’d Isle’s current situation, but as a theme.

Mind you, I’ve never given any thought to a bathroom having a theme. A bathroom already has a theme inherent in its purpose. You settle on a color, and that’s that. In the old beloved home there was one of those four-photo frames, and I printed out some of my shots from a Greek island, various muses. That was it. Not a Greek Island theme. No blue towels with a white meander.

For Fred Base One, prior to occupancy, I bought a bright, tropical-themed shower curtain for the needless large bathroom, thinking I would add some Caribbean pictures from my travels. Basic sunset and sea and such. But I could put up some England pictures and a framed Heathrow baggage tag and perhaps a single large stone from the Walbers beach, and instead of a bright reminder of cruises I’ll never take again, a little embassy of Suffolk and environs.

(Available Here and Here.)

I’m inclined to the simpler one, just because it’s a smaller space. The first one has all the familiar sights, though. That’s the beach and houses and lighthouse I know, and my GOOD FRIEND Micheal Palin knew when he was a kid - he made a movie about it. It's a place I’ve gone with Astrid and Natalie, eating the best fish-and-chips from that little place up the street. I’ve been in that lighthouse with Natalie on a tour led by the fabulous Jan, who I believe just wrote her last season of her BBC radio show staring Joanna Lumley and Roger Allum, something absolutely none of the tourists would have known as she explained the light and the lens and the history.

Anyway. The bedroom will have abstract art, and I’m sure it would please Stella greatly to learn I had chosen his work based on the hue, and the way it matches the blankets.

I started watching a series only because it featured one of my favorite British comic actors, Steve Coogan. It was not a comic show. He was not a comic character. I’m all in favor of comics branching out and trying serious roles - there’s a solid reason they do drama well, because there’s usually personal drama at the heart of the need to do comedy - and I’m a big enthusiast for British shows set in the near past, the 80s in this case.

Eh.

It’s mostly about undercover customs agents fighting heroin. Ordinary blokes and of course blokessese having to navigate the underworld. Based on true stories! But not particularly believable. Coogan mostly scowls and utters clipped wisdom about the perils of leading a double life. I mention it only because it has the weary trope of the charming, friendly, courtly, plugged-in, eminently cultured middle-eastern drug dealer who’s a bit too old for this young-man’s game, and his beard is color-coded to THE COLOR.

NO ONE HAS A BEARD THAT COLOR. But of course everything else has to be THE COLOR, too.

So I went to watch another British show, Bodies. It’s a time-travel thing with four detectives in four eras - 1890, 1941, 2023 and 2053 - dealing with a corpse that shows up in Whitechapel.

The opening sequence shows us valiant Black and Muslim police fighting right-wing extremists who are waving flags, and it’s all THE COLOR.

Nice of the grafitti artists to use THE COLOR in their work:

Behold the horrid nationalist who has spray-painted his horse's armor with the COLOR, and tinted his white robe as well:

This ugly, inexplicable color. It coats the past and present. It’s sort of a time-travel thing with four detectives in four eras - 1890, 1941, 2023 and 2053 - dealing with a corpse that shows up in Whitechapel.

It’s based on a comic book.

Then we go back to the 40s, where everyone is white - the detective we meet is literally named WHITEMAN, although it’s really Weissman, because he’s a Jew, and his superiors drag him for being Jewish within 32 seconds of a conversation starting. We still have THE COLOR.

THE COLOR is not so prominent in the Ripper-era portions. Anyway, the British people pre-TODAY are mostly racist, anti-Semitic, crude, except for the protagonists. Fine! Who cares. But. The immigrant culture we see in present day is fun and warm and loving and all that, and there’s that peculiar sense of moral high ground and respect bestowed on any woman wearing a headscarf. No one ever asks them what they think about the Jews, though.

At some point someone is going to notice how this ugly color suffuses everything, like a Matrix filter. I'm not demanding that television programs be realistic, but at some point you think "what am I being required to believe? What am I being trained to endorse?"

(clip has no sound)

It’s 1932.

I wonder how many guys got a good job after learning at home in their spare time.

You’d think the jobs would go to shade-tree mechanics before the book-learning guys. Trad- school men would be ahead of the shade-trees.

But, as you note, "Morrison did," so there's hope.

Get into Electricity without lessons? Seems like an easy way to get the electricity into you, frankly.

“Most of the men at Coyne have no more money than you have.” They’ll pay your way to get school and get you a part-time job.

“Then in 12 brief weeks, in the great roaring shops of Coyne . . .” They’re demolished now. Wikipedia:

The school was established in Chicago as a branch of the Coyne Electrical School of Boston in 1899. In 1960s, the Coyne Electrical School merged with the American Institute of Engineering and Technology to become Coyne American Institute. In 2004, the school opened two new campuses, one on West Monroe and the other on North Green Street. They replaced the previous campus on West Fullerton. In 2013, the school established the Coyne American Institute Educational Foundation to assist students of Coyne College as well as students of Brown College. In June 2016, Coyne College moved to a new location in Chicago's business district known as the Loop. It closed in March 2022.

Or you could be a Cooke man.

As of the time of this writing, you could get some of the lesson plans on eBay.

They had so many ruptures.

Text:

SCIENCE now advises discarding steel springs, barbarous leg straps, and other harness that press against the rupture and thus prevent nature from healing it. A new sensible method has been perfected after experience of more than 50,000 cases, called Magic Dot- entirely different from any other way. Instead of "pressing" it "seals" rupture, and of course, allows users to run, jump, bend and cough in safety.

You can cough in safety.

I find no record of a comic called “Ain’t Life Wonderful” by a Mason, so it’s possible they’re making something up to remind people of Webby and Briggs and the rest.

Remember, “Given” in the ads of the time meant “Free.” Also, it was an era when “overstuffed” was a desirable attribute.

The catalog cover from the previous year. The catalog itself is . . . overstuffed.

Look at all the stuff you can get for free! It’s all GIVEN!

Is there a catch? Why yes.

While you’re there, why don’t you sell them greeting cards and seeds.

Free sample sent. What can you lose? Except your hair, when the unregulated chemicals make it all fall out.

On the site today: housing.

Good for pursuing a criminal through the burning ruins of a one-thriving civilization.:

That wasn't too obscure a reference, was it?

That will do. Joe's up around 11.