I vibe-coded an app the other day that reads scans of my receipts and categorizes them according to, well, categories. Aren’t I just tech-savvy guy who knows his way around the modern word! Eh. It was a matter of simple requests and fine-tuning. None of the granular coding I have to do with this site sometimes. I did it because I want to know exactly what goes where, so I can set aside the surplus to blow on a mad lavish indulgence:
Plates for Eight.
No, I don’t intend to have dinner parties any time soon, but I need more. Back in the old life, we had many plates, but they were all sold as part of the “2026 Life Dissolution Project” and someone is now eating meals off the Fiestaware. I have a set of four from Target, and you’d think that would be enough for one, but I run the dishwasher every other day, it seems. Fun fact: when you’re not paying for utilities, you run it whenever you want. Oh, this spoon is slightly smeared; best run the otherwise empty appliance for two hours. Well, no, I don’t, but it seems like I’m a plate shy.
If there is a dining room in The Last House, then it would be reserved for the evening meal. Breakfast and lunch in the sunlit kitchen nook, dinner at a proper table. Why, I can just see me sitting there, having a civilized dinner:
=
Okay wrong vibe.
This all presumes a lot, of course. I’m heading down to look at the Lake City place tomorrow. Uncle Gary says he has some nice old homes in Minneapolis at a reasonable price, but I’m curious about the neighborhood. And when I look, I get this:
That is half the size and 85K more.
I will open a vein first.
Uncle Gary warned me against moving to a small town far from the city. He is not alone. I’m getting both sides from all directions. I think people believe Lake City is a hamlet in the middle of nowhere instead of a small town with bars, restaurants (one with a bowling alley!), a new library, a new fitness center, a Mayo Clinic, and so on. Also, a Lake. Village green with gazebo.
You know, Willoughby! No hold on, not Willoughby. Or maybe Willoughby.
I don’t know.
I DON’T KNOW.
Here’s what happened Saturday. Last night I wrote:
Perhaps if I write about this I can explain it. I think I had a 24-hour bug and it led to a mild dissociative episode. Something new!
The bug thing was interesting. When I was picking up Birch’s meds, the pharmacist was coughing a lot, and as I left Target I heard other people coughing, and thought: well, it is that time. When was my last cold? Ah yes: got the ague good and hard in Walbers during the stay when I got The Letter, and ended up with a productive cough that stayed with me for three months.
The next day I suddenly felt a particular kind of scratchiness in the throat that always presages a cold, and thought back to the coughing pharmacist. Of all people from whom to catch a cold, a pharmacist. Well, here we go, hope it’s not the strain that laid the Giant Swede low for weeks. He had his kids to bring soup and check in on him. Hell, his Ex probably brought food and checked in on him.
I took Zinc and resigned myself. Realized my pneumonia shot was probably due. Made an appointment for that.
After I wrote that segment about houses and moving and the matter of the Fred being a transitional place, a decompression chamber, I went to sleep and had what seemed like hours of messy, unlikeable dreams.
Fever dreams.
I was standing on a street corner in Lake City looking at the vast Mississippi, stuck, alone, nothing but the great gray water and little me, some sort of purgatory, not a real place. Then dreams of houses going wrong, houses with tilted staircases, houses with slanted floors, then small houses in barren tracts with muttering unfriendly neighbors. I woke, uneasy, made breakfast, and started to feel ill. For the next six hours I had grotesque stomach pains. Decided I might cure it with exertion, so took Birch for a long walk. As we walked outside I heard this tapping sound in the breezeway, somewhat random, unfamiliar, unnerving.
When we got back, Fred Base One seemed entirely false and empty, not my home at all but some arrangement of items I had made to convince myself I had a home, and it wasn’t that at all. All these familiar items from the Real Lost Home were just empty items disconnected from meaning and history. It was just an impersonal box. I would be gone soon and it would all be filled up by someone else, and I would leave no trace. It wasn’t mine.
But I had no idea where I would go next. Lake City: the Lonely Exile, like decamping to the Hebrides except I’d be heading south. The Richfield rambler: alone on some block still driving around the same old places, sandwiched between strangers. I thought of standing by the Oak Island Water Feature talking to the next door neighbor over the fence. I miss that guy. Why Am I Not There? Ah: right: I was pushed out of that life. I felt sick again. Put the dog in the car and walked to Centennial and did another long walk, breathed in and out, deep, realized what old memory had been awoken: living in the high rise in college, disconnected from my old neighborhood and old haunts, completely alienated from place and self. I’d had the same stomach problems then, but for weeks. I had seen a doctor and was informed that I was probably an unhappy young man in college.
They saw a lot of that.
Once I realized this I could start to connect again, and by the time I got home I felt better. After a nap, mostly normal. In the evening, work and a movie, but not serious work. The movie was that one where Barbara Stanwyck is all confident and happy but then she falls apart and is prone to outbursts. That one.
I remembered the term “dissociative episode” later while I was getting the bag of dog food out of the trunk, and googled it. Trust me, I had the mildest example possible. But it was one of those strip-to-the-core moments that makes you realize there are levels of unhappiness you haven’t accessed yet, which seems . . . RIDICULOUS. I mean A) I’ve been doing okay here, and B) What’s left, for God’s sake?
Well, a bad patch, perhaps. A time when the Cant’s ’n’ Shant’s side of the ledger is overbalanced. Every option just seems pathetic. I just want to go home.
By the way, I heard the tapping sound again, later.
Then I figured it out.
Cultural literacy quiz: what did this make me think of? Two hints.
Honestly, in my mood, it was just as empty, haunted, and meaningless as the sound in that movie.
UPDATE: The next day I ran into Reed, who lives in that unit, having his Sunday outdoors cookout with friends. I mentioned the Haunting Tapping Thing and he laughed, knew what I meant, and then I stood there in front of his entire friend group and explained how it reminded me of a movie. I think I made the point. I hope so.
Sun and Mon better. Called the realtor and made an appointment. Going down on Wednesday to look.
I think I had about three months of feeling settled. Not bad. Could be worse.
It seems as if we will be doing the second season. And again: NOT A REVIEW. Who cares. We’re just looking for old friends.
This ep didn’t grab me much, but I did enjoy seeing YASTA, or Yet Another Star Trek Actor. Accent isn’t entirely solid:
But who cares. I did pay attention to The Demon With the Glass Hand:
Written by Harlan Ellison, who also wrote the first show in the season, the source of a later lawsuit against Cameron for “Terminator.” It’s set here, in an office building described as “run down.”
You should know this place by now. It is the architectural subconscious of the entire Noir world, and more.
I doubt very much whether they reset the entire directory, so this is probably an accurate record.
Anyway. It’s a taut, tense ep, one that works its way up the Bradbury floor by floor. The Damsel in Peril:
And I thought: YASTA? Yasta. Who did she play? No-prize to whomever names the first two characters of her name. NO CHEATING.
Any others? Yes: one of the guys trying to kill Kulp is the guy Scotty got drunk with the green stuff.
It’s 1927.
It’s not the most alluring ad, is it? I show it for a reason. Not because of the True Selective Powerful Quality Low Cost products, but the typeface at the top.
It’s Hobo. It got a new life in the early days of the internet. You still see it here and there.
It was created by Morris Fuller Benton and issued d by American Type Founders in 1910. A light version, Light Hobo, was released in 1915.
There are several theories regarding the font's name, and in fact it is widely recognized as one of the more interesting mysteries in typographic history. One theory states that its name came from a story stating that it was sketched in the early 1900s, sent to the foundry nameless, and progressed so little for so long, that it was called "that old hobo". Hobo, originally called Adface, was finally patented in 1915 along with Light Hobo. The prevailing bow-legged shape of the letterforms inspired another long-held theory that it was so named because they resembled those of a bow-legged hobo.
I love the technobabble. Guys love to swap tech talk. Hey, you seen that Electrad Phasatrol? It’s a beaut.
Google AI summary:
Marketed alongside other premium Electrad components like the Royalty variable resistor and the Truvolt wire-wound resistor, the Phasatrol was advertised as "The Ultimate in Controls." It was primarily designed as a specialized stabilization device used in early radio frequency (RF) amplifiers to balance circuits and prevent unwanted oscillation or howling in battery-operated and early AC vacuum tube radio receivers.
If people had to tune in the internet, this thing would've never gotten off the ground.
The only brand name to survive. And it’s been through a lot.
Whatever happens in ’28, you’re there with a Crosley. Imagine that: the news of the world piped directly to your set.
I wonder what kind of news they dreaded to hear.
Bremer-Tully, a radio for the hobbyists. You put it together yourself. The 6-40 meant six tubes, I think.
Brunswick brought the company towards the end of the 20s. You know, Brunswick, the bowling guys.
Browning Drakę now offering franchises! I feel bad for the man trying to convince his wife they should spend the rainy day fund on a radio sales franchise.
In August, 1923, Glenn H. Browning and Fred H. Drake, engineering students at Harvard University, undertook, at the suggestion of the radio editor of the Christian Science Monitor, Mr. Volney D. Hurd, a theoretical and mathematical study of tuned-radio-frequency amplification with a view to determining the important factors to be considered in the design of such amplifiers.
The radio editor was named HURD. Perfect.
Look at this beaut!
Alas:
Freed-Eisemann Radio Corporation, of Brooklyn, began operations in 1921 and was bankrupt in 1929.. The successor company, Freed Television and Radio Co., was founded in 1931 and operated into late 1930s, also without success.
Busy ad, but beautiful in its own way. Hand-lettered. A beautiful Art Deco artwork by the radio. Class all the way.
I’m pretty sure this is the story of Tobe S. If it is the same guy, he founded a chain that didn’t use his long German name.
It was called Radio Shack.
That'll do. See you here and there. More of the Ladies in Comic Sins. Tomorrow? No idea.
