We're okay redux
Out-of-towner equatorialsts: we're ok. The recent explosion in Chelsea (caused by nail polish remover!) was no where near us or anyone we know. We are currently seeking legislation to pave the streets in something squishy - rubber, feathers, or perhaps the miraculous new flubbery aerogel.
posted by LauraB 4:06 PM
Kinda callous
We didn't write this pun:
Abstinence makes the church grow fondlers.
But we can't stop chuckling, ruefully.
This one, however, is way worse.
posted by LauraB 10:47 AM
Peace & Love for the studio audience
Recommended entertainment cartridge of the week: John Lennon and Yoko Ono's week of guest hosting the Mike Douglas show in 1972. Ok. Douglas is a cheesy dink who can't croon, but dear god! This was John and Yoko's televisual slipping of a big ass mickey to us all. You can probably find it at your local library under "Switched On."
posted by LauraB 10:39 AM
gray day turns out OK
It's nice to walk to barbyQues in brooklyn.
posted by LauraB 5:26 PM
Please
Set the refresh rate on your computer monitor for as high as you can set it. And remember to look at something far away for at least a minute as often as you can (at least once an hour.) Your eyeballs will perk right up and kiss you.
posted by LauraB 6:09 PM
Best idea since the solar-powered radio:
Sugatra Mitra is a New Delhi based physicist who has this idea to put "hole in the wall" kiosks all over the slums, and watching the digital divide narrow. This reminds me a bit of the old 70's-era Berkely computer science professors, who used to load up their old AS400s into their VW minivans and go driving into Oakland. Except in this new context, he might get higher infiltration rates. Here's a sample from this fascinating article:
Example No. 2 is the bicycle. I think we have the biggest bicycle-manufacturing industry in the world. The bicycle is ubiquitous here, and it's much the same in Malaysia, China, Africa. But you don't ask how the population became bicycle-literate. They just use it. So what I'd like to see is an India in which a large part [of the population] treats the computer that way.
Thanks and boo-ya for the link, Hackly F.
posted by LauraB 5:59 PM
Laconia
Due to increased employment lately. More to come. Here's some pix of a day in the park with the band. Happy spring.
posted by LauraB 4:28 PM
More Miscellenia
Formidable thinkers rock.
posted by LauraB 3:20 PM
It's a bit of a hodgepodge today over here at The Equatorial Factory, what with the ole career careening cheerfully out of control (inner monologue today goes something like this: "hmm, last slack day of the slackest job you ever had there, boots. Why are you quitting again? Ah, it's too slack. Too slack? You're quitting? Because of over-slackitude? In the midst of a recession?") There's no such thing as careers, it's just a question of fate. Anyway, let the commonplacing begin:
Well, the news from Mellow Mayor Mike is just too happifying to pass up, especially in these troubled times. If you'd like to let him know that you're down with his springtime-buds-a-blooming program, there's a handy normal little form letter here. Though perhaps a side effect of the ole Bob Hope is that one tends to forget about the importance of saving our garbage.
And this here bit of overheard curiosity, which is just not the kind of thing one expects to hear from NYC teenages, who generally seem a fiercely, ironically worldly and secular lot:
Bunch of teenagers, hanging out after school in a deli, nursing big-gulpy type soft drinks.
Boy Teen 1: so like the thing is, the only thing i ever read is Harry Potter. That's it, man, that's like the only thing.
Boy Teen 2: yeah, Harry Potter's grayyyyate.
Girl Teen 1: (mild surprise) heh! *only* Harry Potter? What about Scripture?
(all teens murmer in unison, as teens do)
Boy Teen 1: yeah, well, Scripture - i don't even consider reading Scripture
*reading.* It's more like getting FED.
(all teens murmer approvingly)
Boy Teen 3: I'm like reading Ecclesiastices right now, man; it's like
not even a book it's so interesting.
Girl Teen 2: Yeah, Eccelsiastices is a good book
Boy Teen 3: You know what's good? Numbers.
Girl Teen 3: I'm just so happy learning from Scripture. It makes me want
to pray.
Boy Teen 3: Wanna pray now?
(all teens murmer approvingly, fold hands together, and bow their heads)
Girl Teen 2: Chandra, you go first.
Girl Teen 1 (Chandra): Dear Lord, we just want to say thank you for your
books, for your knowledge, for scripture, for this deli where we can pray
to you, and we just want to ask you for all the knowledge in the world.
We're all going off to college and we just pray that you will see fit
to fill our heads with knowledge." &etc.
Girl Teen 1, in a whispered aside to Boy Teen 2: now you go.
Boy Teen 2: Dear Lord... & etc.
(All teens take their time going round robin, like on "That 70's
Show" when the pass the duchy.)
Girl Teen 4:...Amen.
All teens in Unison: Amen.
Boy Teen 3: Aight. B-ball?
and finally a Bonus
PR-PS for struggling painters who need ideas for quick roads to their 15
minutes.
posted by LauraB 12:43 PM
Do you think anyone else on the planet had this problem last night? Here 'tis: my husband's extremely irascible feline-beast, Quinton the Christless, vomited a hairball onto my very long and once delicately-scented tresses (which may, in fact, have even been the source of the offending fuzz-orb but as I was asleep can only hypthosize), but apparently he was overcome by some sort of proto-mammalian guilt, and attempted to wash his sins clean by shampooing my head viz a v. knocking over a giant bottle of water onto my head, thereby doing a not bad job of washing out the hair-matting puke. (This was little consolation at 5:15 am.)
So my two questions to the human species are: 1. how many people suffer the same fate as yours truly did last night and 2. if we're such sophisticated urban dwellers &etc., the type of species that's just about ready to colonize space, why the hell are we still sleeping with the animals? Bleck.
posted by LauraB 10:06 AM
Well, it ain't the Bloomsbury Group, but it's phonetically close anyway:
Remember when Richie Daley fired up the bookish of Chicago and had them read
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee? And it actually sort of happened
- libraries had extra copies donated, Oprah went into full swing, Barnes &
Noble had a megasale, &etc. Even if you're not crazy about the book, you
gotta admit it was a feat of civic literary engagement and organization. And
now (more than ever) New York is readier to follow suit! Yeppers, somebody
asked Mayor Mike just what that unique New York book of the moment should
be, the one beacon of the power of words that can transcend the million mutinies
that is this precious gothamic burg, and you know what he said? Why, his autobiography,
of course: Bloomberg
by Bloomberg.Ah-hem, exsqueeze me? I realize his recycling plan is a farce, and some of
his marketing schemes may be deeply, well, fictional, if nothing else, but does
he really have that much to say, as meta-subject or meta-author? A rousing,
spirited hymn to NYC? Anything that approaches the badinage of the Algonquin
Round Table, or the gritty insights of Huburt Selby? The poetry of Poe, the
cold magesty of Hamiltonian logic? The moral wit of Washington Irving? A smidgen
of humanity? Anything but himself and his company? What, oh Mayor Mike, is so
compelling about your piece that you'd actually swallow the very predictable
hue and cry of "hubris!" to suggest this tome to all 9 million of
us (schoolkids included, I might add)?Why folks, he needs the royalties, of course! (after all, our votes
were so expensive). So gosh darn it, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna read
it so that you don't have to, gentle equatorialist - what the heck, the Craig
Claiborne Cookbook on the back of my WC is all memorized anyway. And plus, I
keep forgetting: the arts aren't sleeping, they're completely dead.
posted by LauraB 6:05 PM