So apparently 7 beers and 6 hours of sleep are enough to give me a horrid hangover. I'm getting old.

But the bright side is that in the course of this mild booze-up, I won poker night and took home a couple hundred bones to spend frivolously this weekend. So hooray for me, boo for my swollen, tender head.

sunlore wrote:There reigned a manly storm yesterday, so I went for a bike-ride after work. Nothing like plowing yo' wheels into a decent South by Southwester. After a while I came by this construction site, and there was a carcass of a new apartment complex, and it was like one giant harmonica, or a Call of Cthulhu type thing. Just this drone:

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

With bits and pieces flying off of it.

I just stood there for a while and then went home.

That storm got sent your way from the British Isles, where it killed a dozen people. The strongest on these shores for seventeen years apparently.

I didn't hear any humming, but I did watch some scaffolding begin to fall apart on top of a building near my work. The tarpaulin intended to cover it was loose and billowing, and scaffolding poles were bending in the wind. I watched four or five of these poles break off and fall to the street below, which was out of my sight; fortunately the five-0 had already cordoned the area off. One pole in particular scared me - it dropped a couple of storeys, then the wind caught it and sent it wooshing up the Headrow. Fuck knows where it ended up, I'm just glad it seemingly didn't hit anybody. No city needs wind-powered scaffolding poles flying around it's CBD.

daniel robert chapman wrote:

sunlore wrote:There reigned a manly storm yesterday, so I went for a bike-ride after work. Nothing like plowing yo' wheels into a decent South by Southwester. After a while I came by this construction site, and there was a carcass of a new apartment complex, and it was like one giant harmonica, or a Call of Cthulhu type thing. Just this drone:

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

With bits and pieces flying off of it.

I just stood there for a while and then went home.

That storm got sent your way from the British Isles, where it killed a dozen people. The strongest on these shores for seventeen years apparently.

I didn't hear any humming, but I did watch some scaffolding begin to fall apart on top of a building near my work. The tarpaulin intended to cover it was loose and billowing, and scaffolding poles were bending in the wind. I watched four or five of these poles break off and fall to the street below, which was out of my sight; fortunately the five-0 had already cordoned the area off. One pole in particular scared me - it dropped a couple of storeys, then the wind caught it and sent it wooshing up the Headrow. Fuck knows where it ended up, I'm just glad it seemingly didn't hit anybody. No city needs wind-powered scaffolding poles flying around it's CBD.

I got caught in the bluster yesterday lunchtime. Streetlights were wobbling and fences were being blown-down along the road. As I turned the corner an elderly chinese man was dashed to the ground by a gust of wind, hitting his head on the pavement. Some passersby helped him to his feet and I could see that his face was all bloodied. There was what can only be described as a hole in his forehead. Poor guy.

I think that wind is travelling northwards, though I haven't seen any weather reports so it might be a different wind. But me and Rex have been sat here for hours listening to its banshee howl outside. Being indoors late at night - well, it's 6.15 am now so it's not really night, but it's dark and I haven't slept so it's night to me - with coffee and chocolate and the company of an excellent hound while the weather goes ballistic outside is a fine thing.

Two things.

1.

One of the 101 classes I teach is comprised solely of Commerce students. We discussed an Ambrose Bierce story today. I took this opportunity to bring in The Devil's Dictionary and gave a handout with some choice excerpts, among which I highlighted the entry for "commerce":

COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the
goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money
belonging to E.

Some of my students are sociopaths. I have no doubt these students will find the most success upon graduation.

2.

I really wanted some popcorn at home tonight. I plugged in the top-loading electric popcorn machine and filled it generously with kernels. I then headed out onto my deck into the night (great winter stars) and down the steps to the laundry room located in the basement of my building. Upon re-entry into my apartment, I was met with a lot of black smoke and a foul odor.

My popcorn machine had become a flaming molten gimp. The great soup pot I'd naturally placed to catch my popcorn was black as a cauldron, full of rank fire. Flames moved across the bubbling laminate counter and, worse, licked up my cupboard reaching for the ceiling. My kitchen was on fire.

At this, I reacted with four simultaneous thoughts, each holding equal importance in my mind: Is that slender little fire extinguisher attached to the wall in this apartment or the last one I lived in?, Water!, The bloody smoke detector is going to go off!, Man, I really wanted some popcorn!

In the end, the second thought in the above list proved most helpful. But my apartment reeks. I have three fans going in the direction of a door to the frigid outside. My cat is leaping around from thing to thing like a flying squirrel. And my once sun-yellow cupboard looks like a miner's lung.

John C3 wrote:I think that wind is travelling northwards, though I haven't seen any weather reports so it might be a different wind. But me and Rex have been sat here for hours listening to its banshee howl outside. Being indoors late at night - well, it's 6.15 am now so it's not really night, but it's dark and I haven't slept so it's night to me - with coffee and chocolate and the company of an excellent hound while the weather goes ballistic outside is a fine thing.

It's crazy over here. I was walking into the city the other day and it was the first time in my life I genuinely thought I might be blown off of my feet. It's an odd feeling of helplessness and utter awe.

For the first time in my teaching career, I am teaching a course on-line: a survey of western literature from 1660 to the present. I was ambivalent about it for many reasons, not the least of which my fears that class discussion--the cornerstone of any good literature course--would suffer and that I'd basically be testing people I'd never meet on reading comprehension.

I attempted to combat this by really organizing the discussion boards. There's a general board as well as a new board each week for each author assigned. Thus far I've been very pleased with both the quantity and the quality of their posts, never more so than last week.

One of our assigned texts was William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper," which details a young boy's woes as a 19th century London sweep. Only one of my fifteen students attends the college where I teach, and one young man--from over near Hazard, Kentucky--had this to say: "I can definitely relate to this poem in a big way. I just come out the mines for two years, and I'm going back to school so I never have to climb back into that hole again."

Note for the future:

When needing to leave your car at the shop over the weekend, make sure it's the LAST errand you do. >_<

BACKSTORY:

OK, hey - I'm from the MidWest USA, right? And more specifically, from the not-always-so-cultured Saint Louis, Missouri area. I do have somewhat of a voracious appetite for music, and all things related. But in these parts, we don't necessarily go through that 'Velvet Underground phase' that so many of you Northeasterners or maybe even Europeans, etc go through, y'know? Maybe we have the 'Foghat phase' instead, I dunno... so anyways... the other day I see that VU box set (used) for a good price and I says to myself "Hey, I'm finally gonna get my Velvet Underground Phase on, or at minimum add to my 'Rock Education' etc. etc." So I been playing these discs in the car the last few days...

OK another thing to point out, is that my sweet, darling girlfriend is at this point not surprised to find out that music I'm listening to is "weird" or sometimes has gibberish lyrics... I mean by now she's heard the Residents, some of the weirder Melvins lyrics, etc.

BUT STILL:

We're cruisin' down the road, listening to the 'VU with Nico' (Andy Warhol - banana) disc and suddenly, with all 100% seriousness, she turns and she says to me:

"Are they singing 'She's a fluffy towel'?"

WTF - awesome.

the temperature in my room is controlled by a thermostat in my floormate tim's room. every now and then it'll be so hot in here that i'll knock on his door and implore him to please turn it down.

today, at around noon, tim and i were trying to figure out how to adjust my heater/radiotor thingamajiggy so that it would match his, so that our rooms were always about the same temperature (he has a large corner room with several windows and i do not, so naturally he's always gonna require more heat than i do to feel comfortable). we putzed around with the dials in here for about five mintues and then he left. he said he'd come back later to compare how hot it was in each room.

then, at one thirty, i had an interview with a local magazine. this very kind, polite and inquisitive lady showed up looking nicely dressed and impeccably made up. i didn't hit on her or anything but she was indeed a fairly cute woman in her late thirties/early forties. so we're in my room, talking back and forth, and she's scribbling away all these notes. the interview is going well, but about ten minutes into it there's an abrupt interruption in the form of a knock at the door. rahter than getting up i decide to ask who it is in the hope that whomever it is will take a hint and go away.

*knock knock*

me: what?

nothing.

me again: yeah, what is it?

tim: hey dave, it's tim.

me: uhhh... i'm kinda... umm... i'm kinda busy right now.

tim: what?

me: i said, i'm kinda busy right now.

tim: ARE YOU MASTURBATING?

just then the lady lets out a loud involuntary laugh. this was especially funny because up till then the tone of the interview was very proper and professional. needless to say i buried my face in my hands and did my best to conceal my grin.