Meet The Flockers: Josh Weichhand
Okay, let me just get out my index cards… (clearing throat).
Greetings to the greater Clusterflock community, flockers, readers, Christopher Walkens, etc. My name is Josh Weichhand and I’m the newest addition to the Flock. Thanks for opening the door.
Before moving on, I should take a moment to acknowledge Mr. Andrew Simone, who had more than a bit part in bringing me here.
Now a bit about myself:
Origins:
My surname is German — very German — and pronounced Why-Hand. Supposedly, we’re a rare breed (there’s only 34 of us or so in the world’s entirety). My grandparents told me our name means we have “soft hands.” This was supposedly meant as a compliment.
Interests:
I’m something of a communication apologist, immersing myself in critical theory and discursive studies in college. Someday I plan on going to grad school for semiotics or some such wet dream. Yet I’m a simple man with a simple existence. I like my beer cheap, my whiskey old and my public transit efficient. I’m a believer in footnotes, index cards, English gin, Thai food, used books and old typewriters. I collect my thoughts here.
Location:
Geographically, I was born and raised in a small Michigan town on the shores of Lake Michigan, which is not unlike living on an ocean. I left home after high school and have only been back on rare occasions and for some holidays. I’ve since lived in the bustling metropolises of Grand Rapids, MI (Hurray For Not Being Detroit!); Denver, CO; New York, NY; and I now reside in Boston, MA where I work in marketing.
Here in Boston, I live in the North End, which is the oldest neighborhood in the city. I live on the same street as that fellow who wrote the song “America” (My country tis of thee). Need another fun fact? At the beginning of the 20th century, a vat of molasses exploded in my neighborhood, flooding the streets and drowning a bunch of people (Yeah, that really happened). My older neighbors tell me that on a hot day, you can smell gingerbread in the brick.
Religion:
I tend to have strong opinions regarding religion, mostly due to my upbringing, which closely resembled the documentary Jesus Camp. I’ve been in the shit of evangelical fundamentalism and the beating hearts of their movement. Ask me about it sometime.
I’m comfortably agnostic, which actually has nothing to do with evangelical fundamentalism.
Family:
I got married over the summer to my aptly-named college sweetheart, Grace (whose surname is Kelly). She’s a designer and monograms all my cardigans.
I’ve experienced far more family death in the last 4 years than anyone should have to endure. This gives me a certain perspective about the world, which I don’t think is at all pessimistic or negative.
American Authors:
Out of my three favorite authors, two have killed themselves in the last five years and the other is such a recluse that he may already be dead. I’m not sure what this says about me.
Age:
With deference to Dave Vogt, I believe I’m dethroning him as the youngest Flocker, which is both meaningless and infinitely important. That being said, I enjoy being the youngest in the group as I feel it pulls me forward into some semblance of maturity or experience not shared by my peers. And that being said, I’m also completely self-conscious about it. Date of birth: August 26, 1986.
Lurking about:
I’ve been moonlighting as Christopher Walken for well over a year. I would point out which posts belong to me, but I feel like that sort of undermines the freedom and anonymity the pseudonym offers, thereby tainting my experience at the controls. All I’m going to say is that I am sorry about the prosthetic anus.
Conclusion:
This concludes the presentation. Thanks for letting me in on this experiment in community, interconnectivity and the perpetual sharing of thoughts and ideas. I’m excited to be part of this. Here’s to the start of something good.
Clustersourcing
Do you recognize any of these books?
It’s my friend’s bookshelves, the one whose house burned down. She can’t bear to look at it (another friend retrieved it from her Facebook account for me), but she asked if I could somehow to enhance it enough to identify some of the books. It’s too low-resolution to sharpen, unfortunately, and I can only make out the Chicago Manual of Style. Maybe you have a more varied library than I do?
If you see anything you recognize, could you please add a note to the photo at Flickr or leave a comment? Thanks.
Time traveler’s cheat sheet
[via Boing Boing]
Modest Mouse – Trucker’s Atlas
from the comments
Josh:
I had a family member once go on to me about Ashley Smith, the woman who talked down the Atlanta Courthouse Shooter by reading him excerpts from The Purpose Driven Life, and how this was evidence of providence and the power of the holy spirit throughout the ordeal.
But, then we found out about all that meth they took together and how she made him waffles.
don’t mess with Texas
A Texas woman intimidated an armed robber out of her store with the power of her finger and references to the Holy Spirit.
“I got mad,” said the 57-year old, pursing her lips. “The Texas part of me was challenged. So I pointed my finger and said, ‘In the name of Jesus, you get out of my store. I bind you by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
The gunman took a step back and told customer Kathy Vereen to drop to the floor. After she refused, Chadwick pointed her finger at the man and continued to chastise him. He walked out of the store cursing. He took nothing.
quote out of context
Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. So the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’
The Death of a Language does not mean The Death of Culture
So says my favorite linguist, John McWhorter:
What makes the potential death of a language all the more emotionally charged is the belief that if a language dies, a cultural worldview will die with it. But this idea is fragile. Certainly language is a key aspect of what distinguishes one group from another. However, a language itself does not correspond to the particulars of a culture but to a faceless process that creates new languages as the result of geographical separation. For example, most Americans pronounce disgusting as “diss-kussting” with a k sound. (Try it—you probably do too.) However, some people say “dizz-gusting”—it’s easier to pronounce the g after a softer sound like z. Imagine a language with the word pronounced as it is spelled (and as it was in Latin): “diss-gusting.” The group speaking the language splits into two groups that go their separate ways. Come back five hundred years later, and one group is pronouncing the word “diss-kussting,” while the other is pronouncing it “dizz-gusting.” After even more time, the word would start shortening, just as we pronounce “let us” as “let’s.” After a thousand years, in one place it would be something like “skussting,” while in the other it might be “zgustin.” After another thousand, perhaps “skusty” and “zguss.” By this time, these are no longer even the same language.
This is exactly why there are different languages—what began in Latin as augustus became agosto in Spanish and, in French, août, pronounced as just the single vowel sound. Estonian is what happened when speakers of an earlier language migrated away from other ones; in one place, Estonian happened, in the other, Finnish did. And so while Finnish for horse is hevonen, in Estonian it’s hobune.
Notice that this is not about culture, any more than saying “diss-kusting” rather than “diz-gusting” reflects anything about one’s soul. In fact, all human groups could, somehow, exhibit the exact same culture—and yet their languages would be as different as they are now, because the differences are the result of geographical separation, leading to chance linguistic driftings of the kind that turn augustus into agosto and août. In this we would be like whales, whose species behave similarly everywhere, but have distinct “songs” as the result of happenstance. Who argues that we must preserve each pod of whales because of the particular songs they happen to have developed? The diversity of human languages is subject to the same evaluation: each one is the result of a roll of the dice.
I think he is right.
Ain’t nuthin’ better than a confused dog
I just keep watching it.
(thanks, Autumn)
A murder of…
crows or maybe an unkindness of ravens.
quote out of context
Rollino wasn’t even felled by old age. He was killed by a minivan — a fucking Windstar! — while crossing the street in Brooklyn.
William Eggleston’s Paris
Avatar for the Atari 2600
[via Boing Boing]
Fordson Snow Machine
A concept machine from 1929 (via)
Passive Aggressive WiFi
Why I haven’t thought of this sooner is beyond me.
(hat tip to Andrea Kremer)
the Mozart effect
Playing Mozart music to premature babies seems to help them gain weight faster and become stronger, new research found.
Once a day for two consecutive days, doctors played either 30 minutes of music by the 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or no music, to 20 pre-term babies at the Tel Aviv Medical Center in Israel. After listening to the music, the babies were calmer and so expended less energy than the no-music group. When babies’ energy expenditure is decreased, they don’t need as many calories to grow, so can gain weight and thrive more quickly – exactly what preemies need.
gene stealing sea slugs
Sea slugs are half animal, half plant, apparently, having incorporated the ability to produce energy through photosynthesis from the genes of algae they have consumed.
“They can make their energy-containing molecules without having to eat anything,” said Sidney Pierce, a biologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Priori Acute by Jonathan Barnbrook, for Emigre
Priori Acute is the result of a series of experiments into three-dimensional letter form design inspired by 19th Century display and artistic printing types. However, instead of simply adding drop shadows or fake relief to create the illusion of depth, the designers at Jonathan Barnbrook’s studio took their cue from such diverse sources as the angles on the Stealth bomber and the visual conceit in the work of the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher.
from the comments
I think, though, that it’s the saving of trash that really marks the boundary between cluttered and creepy. Rooms become minds, and when the person is gone and the place must be cleaned–a muttered posthumous telepathy remains.
stackable prefab
Rocio Romero was among the first, and least expensive, architects involved in the prefab Modern housing movement. The LV home, pictured above, was her first project, and has since expanded into a series of kits large enough to meet specific needs. Her latest newsletter shows the LV2 series which allows you to stack the various modules into new and customizable shapes — something offered by other prefab manufacturers, but not, as far as I know, at this price point.
Deconstructed & Abandoned Olive Oil Factory.
Fire
When I was a kid, I was convinced—I guess because of all the fire drills and fire safety education we had at school—that house fires were very common, so common that it was inevitable that at some point in everyone’s life, his or her house would burn down. I used to plan and replan my escape route, which things I would grab on my way to the fire escape, how I would rescue the guinea pigs, how I would climb down the ladder while holding them. Once I reached the last rung and dropped down into the downstairs neighbors’ garden, what would happen? Would I just wait there? What if my family didn’t make it out?
Classic Eggleston
I have long had a soft spot (or hard-on, just for symmetry) for the photography of William Eggleston. I guess it speaks to my rural Southern roots. One of my favorite early adulthood memories is meeting up with Eggleston and Alex Chilton of Big Star at Zinnie’s East in Memphis. We had all consumed our RDA of whiskey and cigarettes in the first hour or so, and we continued well into the night. I have met more famous people since, but none whose company I enjoyed so much.
kale chips
I need to try these.
Twelve Meditations on a Dollhouse | IV. Meditation on the Great Hall
The Great Hall. Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle. (Museum of Science and Industry. Chicago.)
(We have skipped past Cinderella’s Drawing Room, where “the vases at each side of the door going into the Great Hall are made of carved amber over 500 years old. They came from the collection of the Dowager Empress of China.”)
“As you go around the corner, stop and look through the clear glass in the center of the chapel window. You will see the altar, and on this altar is a little tabernacle. On top of the tabernacle you will see a beautiful golden sunburst. In the center is a glass container holding a sliver of the true cross. This was given to me by my friend, Clare Booth Luce, when she was the Ambassador to Italy and had her first audience with the Pope. He gave this to her, and she gave it to me to put in the chapel of the Fairy Castle.”
