Three More, the Third Day…
Tussel kept the pedal to the floor, pushing through resistance. The dusky, snow-blown scenery in his frost-glazed periphery, rushing and slowing as gusting wind pushed against him. Tussel’s car the beleaguered transport toward a what he could not yet name a why for.
Three “perfect” self-contained sentences a day…
Tussel bore left on the wye West–North, West-northish. Nosing his old de Ville into wind-chill rushing across glacial tundra and down, from a thousand miles ahead. Forty-five miles an hour, nine miles a gallon, Tussel gripped the wheel, leaned into the accelerator, pressing the head-wind.
I already screwed up. They’re not “self-contained.”
photo out of context
Miss Lucy
is becoming Mrs. Lucy today. On Thursday, I helped her get her hen on, in a swanky hotel bar.
I’m immensely honored to be attending her and Ross’s wedding, and the succeeding reception-crawl. I will bring a real camera to that.
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Earthquakes and Hurricanes
Irene roughed up my flowers and our psyches. Both are recovering nicely. As the storm moved toward us Friday night, we popped out to the John Prine concert. We sat on the expansive lawn of northern Virginia’s Wolf Trap concert pavilion. People were mellow, nibbling picnic food, drinking wine, chastened by a week of unexpected earthquakes and then, what next, a hurricane.
Night settled in and I pulled my wrap around me. I was carried away by the opening act, British singer/guitarist Richard Thompson. I closed my eyes and soared. He was dynamite, pumped up maybe by the hurricane mustering strength in the Atlantic. Then the Iowan bolted. He’d gotten a call — Home Depot, a shipment had arrived, the backup sump pump might be in. He was in natural disaster mode. So we left, rushed for the depot. I didn’t mind. The Iowan had talked me into going to the concert. I would have sat at home working and worrying. I got to see Thompson, I’d seen Prine several times. I got home and readied for the next day.
There was no sump pump backup (but of course). I went to bed, got up early on Saturday and shoveled copy all day as the winds blew and rains slammed. The Iowan went next door for happy hour, hurricane parties are big here. He was looking out the window when a big limb crashed down on the neighbors’ car. Later, the wind knocked down half of my “green screen” on the back porch, my outdoor living room, a mesh netting of climbing plants I put in to replace the running bamboo (!) the ambassador’s wife placed there as privacy for the (now gone) hot tub. The Iowan said “we’ll fix it in the morning.” But he got on the phone, and I got my little hammer and nails and slipped outside. I climbed up on the white wicker settee and tap tap tap in the wind and rain and set it to rights before the yelling started: “GET IN HERE WHAT ARE YOU DOING WE ARE HAVING A HURRICANE!”
Finally, to bed around midnight to sleep in fits and starts. The Iowan stayed up, prowling the blue house, stacks of old towels at the ready to fight off any water encroachment from the not-so-finished side of the basement to the other. I found the stub of a cigar on the porch the next day, dregs of red wine in a crystal stem on a side table next to the back door. I could see him in the mind’s eye, leaving the the covered back porch, stalking across the open deck, glaring into the black sky, pelted by rain but staring Irene down, daring her, don’t even think about it.
Sunday. Rainy but calmer. We were still standing, a few small tree limbs down (thank you, my talented tree trimmer). The sump pump held. We never lost power. I worked into the early evening.Sunday night. Drained.
We’ve had a week.
“They are tearing out part of the heart of Buenos Aires”
The interior of the historic Cafe Richmond was gutted a couple of weeks ago; a spot once frequented by Jorge Luis Borges and Graham Greene may be replaced by a Nike Store.
The plight of the Richmond has dominated local media since the cafe’s insides were gutted last Monday morning. Apparently to ensure it could not be returned to its former splendour even if the local government rules against the Nike shop, the Richmond was emptied of its historical interior, right down to its grandiosely comfortable Chesterfield wingback leather armchairs, in a 3am raid. The movers took the precaution of pulling down the security camera on the front of the building first.
“It’s against the law,” said Monica Capano of the city’s Heritage Preservation Commission. “The Richmond is one of the city’s emblematic landmarks.”
For a personal view: Oh, no: La Richmond by my friend Charlie.
Thinking of you, Clusterflock!
Went down the rabbit hole…
…following organ music tonight.
Again, I wish there were an “I’m sorry” category.
tweet of the day
beer is down
The predominance of beer as Americans’ favorite drink has waned over the past two decades, but that decline was punctuated this year with a five-point drop in mentions of beer, from 41% to 36%. This was driven largely by a 12-point decline among younger adults. Beer’s loss corresponds with slight gains in preferences for wine and liquor, both of which consequently register near their two-decade highs in 2011.
I don’t know what to believe anymore.
(via @fivethirtyeight)
Oscar Mayer. It doesn’t get better than this.
Oscar Mayer Sandwich Combos are one of the five unique varieties of Adult Lunch Combos.
Cindy tipped me to this, and I have been snorting ever since.
tweet of the day
Dear Clusterflock
86-ed?
help help help help
Glenn Beck is moving to Dallas.
Deadbeat Diary, 4
It’s a slow day on the internet and I guess that means it’s about damn time I write this (previously on Clusterflock).
I’ve actually been trying to write this for a few weeks now but can’t quite capture exactly how it feels. Cheap metaphors didn’t really work and a factual description fell short of what I want to convey. I tried making the investor into a villain…and the realtor and the government and the bank and myself and the builder and…
The truth is I don’t know how to write about what came next.
Our first offer was in. It was made clear to us that our only option was to accept the offer and wait. We were told not to wait for more and at the same time that the bank would probably decline such a low offer. It was about getting in the system. It was about making our intentions clear.
At this point we were still current on our mortgage. Alicia was still working. And getting in the system seemed important. How long could it take for them to decline our offer?
We waited.
The bank requested bank statements, tax returns, paystubs, a hardship letter…
We waited.
Levi was born.
We waited.
Sometime in late November the Realtor told us the investor wanted some concessions. They wanted us to sign a promissory note and bring cash to closing.
No thanks, we said.
The bank would not approve the offer.
It was time to start over.
I realized later the investor had no incentive to sell. As long as we continued making our payment, the investor continued getting a monthly check. Our mistake, perhaps, was trying to do it right – trying to anticipate the moment we wouldn’t be able to afford our payment and take action before it came to that.
We missed our first payment in November.
“a deep remorse that you ever doubted him, and a profound appreciation for his contribution to the continued awesomeness of the world”
To prove to you that you love him, Michael Bay knows that he must turn everything up to 11,000 this time around. He has to blaze a pure, bright after-image of his Bay-ness in your mind, so that you walk out of the theater blinking and spitting up lung pieces and knowing what the fuck Michael Bay is all about. Your eyeballs will be twice as bludgeoned. Your adult diaper will be twice as heavily laden! This time, it’ll be in 3D! All of the excesses from the previous two films will be doubly in excess — except for the hip hop Autobots, who are gone.
headline of the day, II
Ohio deputies: Woman sprayed us with breast milk
tweet of the day
Gay Superbowl…
Anyone else planning to watch?
R.I.P. Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011)
‘A dangerous mixture of sophistication and recklessness’: Patrick Leigh Fermor in Saint Malo, France, in 1992. Photograph: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images
Not unexpected. And he led a long and wonderful life. But I am tearing up. This is someone I never met who meant a lot to me in ways that are hard to explain just now. So here is the Guardian obituary. And I hope you will read at least one of his books.
Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has died aged 96, was an intrepid traveller, a heroic soldier and a writer with a unique prose style. His books, most of which were autobiographical, made surprisingly scant mention of his military exploits, drawing instead on remarkable geographical and scholarly explorations. To Paddy, as he was universally known, an acre of land in almost any corner of Europe was fertile ground for the study of language, history, song, dress, heraldry, military custom – anything to stimulate his momentous urge to speculate and extrapolate. If there is ever room for a patron saint of autodidacts, it has to be Paddy Leigh Fermor.
The Life Zone
Three women have been kidnapped from abortion clinics and are being held for seven months–until they all give birth. The film, which appears to cut right down the middle, examining the topic from both sides, offers a powerful, anti-abortion climactic twist.
And no, this isn’t satire.
Morning Wood
I’m rebuilding our deck. I thought it was going to be a simple re-surface job, then saw that the base needs to be redone as well. Yesterday two tons of wood and concrete mix were delivered. I had to bring it all into the back yard from the alley. I haven’t started yet this morning and it is already hot.
Flannery’s beer finds
You would think it would be an old guy like me giving my daughter tips about good beers–but for a while now it has been the other way around. She says, “Try one of these.” I take a sip and think damn, and I’ve been drinking that other shit.
Not all remakes are bad, but . . .
what were they thinking?
This remake of The Thin Man?
Honestly, I don’t believe that remakes are by definition bad. I’ll take the 1954 “A Star Is Born” over the 1937 original. (We won’t even speak of the 1976 version.)
But William Powell? And Myrna Loy? Asta? You just know the champagne will be flat this time around.
I hate to be an old spoilsport, but it feels like bad aesthetic judgment to me.
Dear clusterflock
Today is more than just your routine Tuesday. Michael Smith is now 30 years old today! I heard from a reliable source that he really was torn up over missing clusterflockstock this year. Happy birthday, Mr. Smith. We missed you there too.
