Mysterious lady
Tiptoes her petite frame, lists forward ever so slightly, on stiletto heels she uses like canes. She wears entirely beige, everytime we see her, which is randomly, on 5th Avenue between the 30's and the 70's. Her hat, either a perfectly-preserved polyester couture confection from the fifties or a cheap Chinatown import, is firmly clamped to her coiff with what appears to be a specially-outfitted bra-style chin strap. Her eyes cast downward, slightly, and she is either in a good measure of chronic pain, listening to Toscanini in her head, or both. She could be 50 to 90 in years; she is elegance, and she enchants even today.
posted by LauraB 11:06 AM
Not The Usual Poster Sez . . .
Boy, do I dislike Norman Mailer. Whoo boy. Yeppers. And yet (yanked from here without any permission whatsoever) I sure like this:
Letters to the Editor
THE BOSTON GLOBE
FOR WHOM THE WILL TOILS
Published on March 14, 2002.
To the Editor:
George F. Will writes: "Bush's terseness is Ernest Hemingway seasoned with John Wesley." ("Old Fashioned Values Return Since Sept. 11," Op Ed, March 12)
Well, one is hardly familiar with John Wesley's sermons, but I do know that to put George W. Bush's prose next to Hemingway is equal to saying that Jackie Susann is right up there with Jane Austen.
Did a sense of shame ever reside in our Republican toadies? You can't stop people who are never embarrassed by themselves. Will's readiness to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse can be cited as world class sycophancy.
Here's a passage from "A Farewell to Arms." It has more going for it than "terseness."
"I was embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice... I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words you could not stand to hear... Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the names of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates."
It is worth reminding ourselves that the life of a democracy may also depend on the good and honorable use of language and not on the scurvy manipulation of such words as "evil" and "love" by intellectual striplings of the caliber of our president.
NORMAN MAILER
Provincetown
posted by Mike 11:46 AM
Not Dead Yet, Sea!
Anyone getting kind of tired of reading those extremely dire and sorta
hopeless articles in Harpers' Magazine about the dwindling wetness and potability
of the Aral Sea? Well I sure am. So over lunch I sorta roughed out a schematic
diagram of a low-cost series of small, World-Bank micro-loanable desalination
plants (or lower cost -than usual, which is pretty high because of the non-corrosive
piping.) Sure, the critics will rear their developed-world heads and cry "unfeasible!"
But is it? I mean, what exactly else is going on in the Aral Sea - and all those
other drought-prone regions with which will have to contend in the coming years,
like say, New Jersey? Desalination with ordinary electric means yeilds an efficiency
of oh, say, 15% - i.e. for every 100 gallons of water pumped, you 15 gallons of
high-grade potable water, which isn't really that great, but it is 15% better
than 0. And but plus, in a micro-treated method like this
idea, you have a couple other factors at stake - make work programs, avoidance
of chemical weapons runnoff, etc.
posted by LauraB 6:24 PM
Variant(s): also cli·che /klE-'shA, 'klE-",
kli-'/
Function: noun
Etymology: French, literally, printer's stereotype, from past participle of
clicher to stereotype, of imitative origin
Date: 1892
1 : a trite phrase or expression; also : the idea expressed by it
2 : a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation
3 : something (as a menu item) that has become overly familiar or commonplace
- cliché adjective
In 1995, picking apart - or in the quaint parlance, unpacking - a comprehensive dictionary definition of a hither-then unconsidered everyday word was kind of productive, in a sophomoric kind of way. But now it is simply hackneyed up the wazoo.
posted by LauraB 5:03 PM
More low-cost ideas to make NYC even nicer!
Instead of a gynormously gratuitous "Start" button on the MTA Metrocard Vending Machine display, why not make it smaller and put the current time on there? It's crazy how few clocks there are in the stations.
Also: London's got 'em. Paris?s got'em. Express buses've got 'em. Pedal rickshaws all over Asia've got 'em. So why not our new subways? Yeah, I'm talking about upholstered seats w/ squishy cushions. I'm not saying it's a good idea, mind, I'm just asking why we don't have them Is it because of the vandalism factor? Is it a cost thing? 'Cause I think those are solveable problems, and if we use like old recycled plastic bags to stuff 'em, it could well be worth it.
Yours in the quest of better living through complete buttock swaddling and comfort,
- laboot.
posted by LauraB 10:17 AM
My own private 6-month comment:
The most beautiful picture of the WTC trade center was taken by its chief structural engineer, Les Roberston when it was under construction, and it is remarkable for the exceptional laciness of the towers. You can really see how very little structure was required to make them stand - the reason it never looked as diaphanous as it does in his photo was merely because no one had yet moved into the buildings and erected little cubbyholes. Just buildings and space.
My idea for a tribute was based on this photo - just a very light, tensile superstructure with some extremely lightweight movie-screen fabric draped across each tower. You would see "through" the towers in the day, as in Les' photo, but at night you could have a rotating series of images projected onto the 2 towering "screens." I'll try to sketch it up for y'all, if you're interested.
posted by LauraB 10:16 AM
Equatorial Armaggedon:
For all four of you who may have wondered what the heck was up, and who didn't lose faith, what happened was that my now-old server company went out of business, sold my server space to a new company who never heard of me, threw up some year-old back-up files, yadda yadda yadda. It took me some time to get a new account, get propogated, and fix the FTP settings in the ole bloggeroo.
I do thank you if you've stuck with me, though. Look forward to a fancy, brand-new equatorial soon, with no more of the embedded scrollbars that Usability Wombats rightly loathe.
posted by LauraB 1:38 PM
Spontaneous Anti-Logic Quizzish Entertainment:
I am thinking of a number between Π and ι - any takers? First "correct" response gets a loaf of beer-cheese bread.
posted by LauraB 10:16 AM
Reason to live Number 682:
or, anyway, better than Alanis Morisette - o yes, layzies and gentlegerms: God speed you black emperor! will pluck the dissonant D-flat of your soul you forgot you had on the ninth, the eleventh, shimmer their augmented harmonics, and generally work whatever devilish sorcery that they do into your limbic system, your wa, your destiny until you do indeed, lift your skinny fists skyward as your knees give way and you bow like a beeyatch before your supreme divine master and say thank you, laws of physics. O yes. Thank you for music.
I mean, okay, you say, that's a bit purple, prose-wise, you might be thinking to yrself, for a freaking mainly-instrumental 21st c., vaguely samply, synth-, cello- and sample-heavy leftist Canadian symphonic rock band. But fear not, gentle equatorialist; epiphanic swells &etc. aside, GSYBE is where it's at.
The fact that the music equa-editorial board may or may not be tipsy has nothing to do with it.
posted by LauraB 10:55 PM
Freaky food thoughts from our newly-met upside-down pals
Hey! Somebody's out there! Lovely Shauna, who has recovered gaily from a gustatorily-peculiar childhood, has weighed in with an uberfood, which i present to you in actual HTM:
Hi Laura! i don't know if this counts because the recipe probably doesn't even qualify... but the food that always takes me back is vanilla icecream with Something Mixed In. my parents were too stingy to buy flavoured icecream so we were told flavour it ourselves. it could have been leftover jellybeans or some nuts or some strawberries, or some malted milk powder, or a dash of fruit cordial or as we got older, some Baileys... but you just dump something into a big bowl of vanilla ice cream then stir the crap out of it til it's one big mushy (yet smooth) mess. serve with a spoon.
She further elaborates:
btw, my sister and i used to call that green cardboard tube cheese "pong cheese", because it really does pong to high heaven. Ghastly stuff.
posted by LauraB 5:57 PM
Cop Creep
What used to be ONE Police Plaza, down near City Hall and smack dab in the middle of my walk to the #1 subway stop closest to my house, is now like 100 Police Plaza. First, The Catacombs were renamed to Bernard B. Kerik Center, apparenltly as reward for Mr. Kerik's "bravery" on 9-11. Next the police closed down the well-used public plaza near the Municipal Building. Then, the cops blocked off the streets to the jail, citing security concerns after their initial rounding up the the Usual Suspects.
The suspects were either released or moved to other states, but the fuzz just kept on fuzzing, requiring ID's of the residents in the 'hood, burning rubbish on the streets when they got cold on their "patrols," etc. Block by block, month by month, they've been usurping easement and passage rights through the hood, under the rubric "security." They've even got gynormous sanitation trucks blocking the roads, their motors running constantly - if a public bus or a cop car or a guy w/ the right badge goes by, the garbage truck moves. Most recently, they have purchased a whole fleet of garden sheds from Home Depot, which I suspect they're going to fortify and deploy in their ever-widening sphere of power.
I am here to tell you this a dangerous load of hooey: the police are using "homeland security"and the excuse that "our headquarters buliding is a terrorist target" to build a giant parking lot for themselves, and it's ravaging our neighborhood. Careful study reveals that these recently co-opted parking spaces (what used to be my sidewalk!) are driving non-government issue S.U.V.s from their homes in the boroughs or NJ and working your standard issue 9-5 day. This is not security; this is cronyism, this is obsfucation, this is Guiliani's legacy, this is the New York accent of a John Ashcroft nocturnal emission, writ (anti-)architectural.
posted by LauraB 12:50 PM
Sure and begorrah, lads and lassies!
Since my in-laws are "english-americans," living abroad in Ireland, I thought they might appreciate this handy chart. How's she cuttin dere, ma-n-da?
posted by LauraB 1:09 PM
What flavor is your madeline?
So the Julia Reed's essay in the NYTimes' Magazine's is surprisingly, reed-thin, we think. How can she so glibly claim a dearth of food-in-literature rhapsodies in American writing? Does anyone not salivate when reading the Wallace Carlos Williams poem about the plums? Gracious me, we get a slightly stuffed feeling on those rare occasions we're required to read Mr. Hemingway (platter upon platter of sausagy omlettes, even as Catherine Henry was on her deathbed!)
Lack of imagination in re: American writers of literary merit and OTT paens to ephanistic dishes notwithstanding, Ms. Reed does beg the entirely frivolous and somehow utterly profound question, what is that one dish that takes you back? For her it's her grandmother's cook's chicken club sandwhich with homeade mayo (for which a chicken must be specifically prepared, a practice I loathe - if you can't cook imaginatively with leftovers, you can't cook. Full stop. End of story. Especially if your transcendant dish was invented by a servant of your own employ! )
For me, it's cheese toast, which is really quite unfair of me, since it covers about 123,987,567 possible recipe iterations and I've never made the same cheese toast twice, but it was born of a quite specific recipe invented by my father: good ole Florida Pizza. Florida Pizza was NOT good, but it had great rules - don't use any dishes in the preparation of it, keep it toasted, keep it open-faced (closed faced sandwhiches are too bready), emphasize the freshness of the veggies, and don't overthink it:
Dad's Original Florida Pizza Recipe:
Stack the following, in order, on a piece of aluminum foil and throw
it under the broiler for 3 minutes:
- One slice of Health-Nut bread, toasted
- One thick slice garden-grown tomato
- One slice Kraft Process Cheese Slice
- FAR too much salt and pepper.
- A dash of "shakey cheese", straight out of the green cardboard
tube.
Broil until Process Cheese Slice turns black.
Laura's Favorite Florida Pizza Interpretation:
Stack the following, in order, on a piece of aluminum foil and throw
it under the broiler for 3 minutes:
- One superthin slice Peppridge Farm Health Nut, or possibly Deli-Rye
cocktail rounds, lightly toasted
- Light schmear of sun-dried tomato pesto
- One thin slice of getost, the fudgy Norweigan Ski Cheeese.
- One slice garden-grown beefsteak tomato, chopped roughly.
- Dash of S+P.
Broil until cheese is bubbly and a little bit crusty. Throw a handful
something chopped and green at it (watercress, basil, scallions, &etc.)
Cut into triangles.
So what's your uberfood? Let me know, and I'll post a collection of them.
posted by LauraB 12:56 PM
Lunch Hour, or The Death of Democracy at the Disconnected Hands of Technological Idiots:
1.) Read in NY Times that Gail Norten's new "policy" on permitting snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park has been made public by law, so that her office can collect comments and she can make appropriate "recommendations" to Shrubby.
1.a) Note that snowmobile congestion has made pollution so bad that park rangers are required by the Park Service to wear respiration protection, presumably so they cannot later sue the government for infringement of OSHA standards, but I may be getting ahead of myself here.
2. Check the extremely unsophisticated Interior Department website, where the new policy is not posted. Most mystifying. What's a pissed off protester with on 10 minutes left of lunch hour to do?
2.a.) By the way, the Interior Department's website is in violation of the ADA rules that apply to federal websites, but we'll let that slide until we quash the snowmobile thing, right? 'Cause tho we may be righteously outraged, we understand that people can be unqualified dinks rather than flat-out evil.
3. So we call the Interior Department to ask "Hey! Where do I leave my comment about this policy?"
a. Phone Operator 1 replies: "Honey, I don't know what you're talking about. Let me transfer you."
b. Phone Operator 2: "Well, it's probably on the website." Could you show me where? "ummm, no." Whereupon I am transferred to
c. Phone Operator 3: "The website's broken! Maybe you should try the Parks Department." Hmm, I say, nope it says here in the paper that Gail Norten office is collecting these public opinions, not the Parks Deparment." "Did you try the website? She asks. Yes, I say, but you guys say it's broken. She's all like "Maybe you should try Ed! His number is 201-208-1873." Can you transfer me? "Nope," she says, "I don't know how."
d. Finally, a conversation with Ed ensues... "oh, yeah, we're all real disorganized here, what with the website and all. So are you for or against it?"
e. Stream of icily polite invectives about why the policy is so bad.
f. Ed: "So! Against! Goodbye!"
It's insulting to the visually-impaired to use the cliche "blind leading the blind" here. The point is, and it's a small one, is that the Yellowstone Policy is clearly screwy - they're actually PUMPING fresh air into Yellowstone because the pollution is so bad. Please call to say against.
posted by LauraB 3:41 PM
Blinky Blinky!
Oh, if only Mr. Bataille were still alive!
Also, if you like this weblog, you haven't seen this.
posted by LauraB 12:11 PM
God = me
Finally, at the ripe old age of thirtyish, I get addicted to videogames.
posted by LauraB 12:26 PM