December 15, 2012

At the Micro-Climate Café...



... you can have your coffee iced or extra hot, you can sit near the door or over by the fireplace, and you can be perfectly pleasant or give everyone hell.

30 comments:

rhhardin said...

Long grass.

coketown said...

Remember Talking Heads? Well David Byrne collaborated with St. Vincent on a recent album called "Love This Giant." It's great in a quirky, funky way--lots of brass arrangements and jazzy beats. So if you have snobbish friends who won't listen to anything you'd hear on non-pirate radio, it would make a great Christmas present.

The subliminal theme for my family's gifts this year is hygiene. Sonicare toothbrush for dad, colognes for my brothers, luxury soaps for mom. It's funny when they notice the theme, but even funnier when they don't. Their general hygiene is impeccable, just so everyone's aware.

cough*althouseportal*cough

coketown said...

Last year's theme was sin. Wine for mom, bong for my brother, cigarette cases for the other two, cigars for dad.

Wince said...

Those tall evergreen trees just over the property line are to the south?

This post reminds me of Gladys Kravitz on "Betwitched" witnessing the strange goings on at the Stevens' residence.

Did Dr. Bombay come to visit?

Rusty said...

Either that lawn gets no sunlight or they have an extensive bunker system under their yard.
I'm goin with the bunker idea.

Wince said...

Okay, Gladys Kravitz looking out her own window, not in the Stevens' window.

TA said...

Should be black dog here somewhere.

Wince said...

...you can be perfectly pleasant or give everyone hell.

Poor Meade.

Wince said...

Coketown,

Got to sneak David Byrne out of the theater after his St Vincent "Giant" concert in September, and walk together a few blocks to his hotel.

Fun show, mixed with some Talking Heads.

Seems to me he gets a bad rap as being pretentious and stuck-up.

rhhardin said...

As nearly as I can figure from googling, you'd expect 2 kids of this age to die every day in the US, day in and day out.

So 20 kids is a ten day supply all at once.

It's not a great rhetorical ratio for making the case that kids die all the time (like 10,000 Americans die every day is), but it's true.

They do die all the time.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Perhaps the substance under the snow was a lighter hue than leaves or grass and hence not able to melt snow as fast.

Carnifex said...

Hi all!

Just popped in to say hi, and going "Galt" is working out great for me. I got more time for the family, and friends. trying to convince my son-in-law to turn off the news for 4 years, 'cause it's just going to be bad.

Hope everyone is enjoying the last few days of the Earth.(little Mayan humor there) I figger' it'll take Zero just 3 more years to destroy America.

Hope your Zero cash, and free health care was worth it.

Carnifex said...

Hi all!

Just popped in to say hi, and going "Galt" is working out great for me. I got more time for the family, and friends. trying to convince my son-in-law to turn off the news for 4 years, 'cause it's just going to be bad.

Hope everyone is enjoying the last few days of the Earth.(little Mayan humor there) I figger' it'll take Zero just 3 more years to destroy America.

Hope your Zero cash, and free health care was worth it.

Chip Ahoy said...

They do die all the time.

I can not be that antiseptically clinical about it. I think part of it comes from reading a lot of right wing opinion and part comes from not being married and not having kids, I tend to view them as rarity. Very precisely special rarities. And it's getting so bad I catch myself studying them as objects. As art. It's weird. I feel I must check myself lest I turn into a paedo perv.

For instance, I sent a picture of a boy who wanted to observe hummingbirds close up so he invented a mask which I showed to two friends. It's a ridiculous mask. And I was thinking, well why didn't he paint his face too? Since the spout is right there between his eyebrows. His face could be a flower under the mask, instead of a human face under there, part of the flower painted on the surface. To doubly fool the birds, or at at least help put them at ease. Then I found myself studying the boy's eyebrow as an artist studies anatomy and and notice the real beauty there in his eye, imagined how I would use a #1 brush and line them up just so to form the arc and then opposite to that but with the same brush straight zoink zoink zoink for lashes splayed at precise angles.

The focus is the mask and the bird but I'm studying a boy's eye brow which is not a part of the intended awesomeness of the photo. That's a bit pædo pervy. A word so repellant this thing changed it to 'percy' five times.

So when I do see children even when they're annoying and unbelievably squabbling they strike me as beautiful. Real treasures. Even more so as that comes with knowing the obscene impossible gauntlet they ran to get here. At any rate, I cannot even contemplate what happened out there in Connecticut and the damage that was done.

Anonymous said...

I take it south or southwest is to your right, and the yard is blocked by the house.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

So when I do see children even when they're annoying and unbelievably squabbling they strike me as beautiful. Real treasures.

I have four of my own and teach preschoolers all day and spend most of my free time around scout troops and youth sports teams and MOPS* and church nurseries and PTA meetings and sometimes I'm still transfixed by what gorgeous, amazing creatures children are. They just are.

(Mothers of PreSchoolers)

Bob Ellison said...

Your blog seems to be attracting new people with new ideas nowadays. I wonder why that might be.

Ann Althouse said...

"I take it south or southwest is to your right, and the yard is blocked by the house."

No, that yard is east of my house. And there was no sun, so it wasn't a matter of shadows.

edutcher said...

The yard may be over a cold pool.

Guildofcannonballs said...

I wonder if we could find Dennis Dugan and ask him about his snow?

He's not a detective, but he did play one, the great Richie Brockelman, on TV.

Help us Richie!

john bord said...

Laws to control behavior seldom work, they do alter but stop behavior? What laws stopped people from being killed today? What laws stopped people from driving to fast? What laws stopped people from drinking to much. What laws stopped people from smoking pot?

Laws do not stop behavior, they do provide consequences for the breaking of laws. Has the death penalty stopped people from being killed? The consequence is the death penalty and even that does not prevent people from being killed.

So if new laws are passed, what will they stop?

So often as a society we go to the government to stop a behavior we do not like by passing a law against said behavior. But what changes the behavior?

There are events happen in a persons life that occasionally effects change, it is not laws that do this.

Sometimes as a society we are comical in where we go looking for solutions to our problems.

Where is solace found, in the bottom of a whiskey bottle, maybe a snort of powder or a big puff on a doobie?

Watch where people go looking for solutions, how many do you see looking in the mirror?

MadisonMan said...

No, that yard is east of my house. And there was no sun, so it wasn't a matter of shadows.

No sun today -- but my guess would be that yard is usually shaded and the sun has not been able to melt last week's snow.

rhhardin said...

"They do die all the time."

I can not be that antiseptically clinical about it.


Put it another way: you don't notice two a day. It's called kids being perfectly safe. It's a huge country.

The media hype is for eyeballs and ratings via entertainment, not for information.

They call it information but don't provide what you need. It's a blip in a very tiny death rate.

Chip S. said...

It's strange.

Usually I enjoy self-parody.

But not lately.

I need to find a good source of entertainment.

This shit here just isn't doing the job.

Maybe I'm just experiencing a minor blip in my gastrointestinal tract.

Ann Althouse said...

"Maybe I'm just experiencing a minor blip in my gastrointestinal tract"

Perhaps wear a helmet. Wouldn't want to faint and incur a concussion.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Chip, school's out.

Richie Brockelman is in.

Check out the crash at the end and tell me that isn't ART good sir.

bagoh20 said...

This is the kind of thing that usually indicates there pods maturing in the garage or basement. Just pack up everything and move. It's only way to be sure you'll be one of the last survivors. Stay mobile.

Big Mike said...

No mystery at all. The property owners are dyslexic and misread the setting when they put down lime last week.

Chip Ahoy said...

Any occultist would spot this right off. It's clear indication of a curse. If you weren't so stuck in your material ways you'd see it immediately too.

You know what else The Force™ seems to have left and yet still lingers?

Manhattans. You see, that remark was segue to point to David Lebovitz who talks about trying to get rye whiskey in Paris to make Manhattans.

I didn't care to read it but I did anyway to see wtf.

He's an entertaining writer so I kept with it.

Turns out the opinion is rye is considered cheap form of whiskey but desired for Manhattans. And Canadian can be more rye than American labeled rye and contrary to that due to way countries write their laws about these things some Canadian labeled as rye contain no rye at all.

That reminded me of my sack of marbles. The sack originally wrapped a whiskey bottle. Purple with gold chord. And a crown. Best ever sack for marbles. I had a couple of those.

Easy enough to dismiss the post but the comments to it convinced me there must be a lot of Manhattan loving people out there. Apparently it's an old drink that nobody makes anymore. But wait! All these people do. And they're talking about 1/2 dry / 1/2 sweet Vermouth. Ha ha that's spelled ver mouth.

There's a bottle shop downstairs I could go right down there and get the stuff if I don't have it already.

[ I asked Joe a few weeks ago if my own bar is stocked well enough, after all what I know comes mostly from him and one other person he knows, and Joe goes, "Shit yeah you do. So I might already have rye whiskey in there but I'm pretty sure there isn't any Vermouth but I wouldn't bet on it. In fact, I have to get sturdier shelves.]

Also they mentioned those horrible cherries. I had a tiny jar for five years and finally used them for upsidedown cake just to get rid of them and now here they are talking about them again except better than supermarket kind. I think. Fancier jar. Luxardo.

So what do you think? If I know that I hate whiskey in all of its forms that I know about, is it worth a try? Should I have those things around here? Reviving an old thing could be a new deal to try. "Hello there, glad you could make it. Can I fix you up with a refreshing beverage like a Manhattan? I hear people drink that shit without it burning all the way down their throats and setting their bowls on fire. Would you like yours shaken vigorously with ice or stirred? "

Then, if you go to David Lebovitz home page where presently Manhattan drink is on top, below that is ... wait for it ...

New York. His idiosyncratic observations about New York as a guy living in Paris, about Americans, how New Yorkians differ from Parisians, on this visit, in ways and generally, (More polite!) so that his unique observations are fun to read through.

Robert Cook said...

'"...going 'Galt' is working out great for me...."

Meaning...? You quit or lost your job? You retired and are receiving Social Security?

If it enhances your self-image to imagine yourself living out Ayn Rand's cracked fantasy of a bunch of cry-baby rich people holing up in their own private community--hey, welcome to to whole world of the 21st Century!--so be it, but please remember it's just a fantasy.