RubberCrutch status report

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Hi friends. How are you? I am fine. However, when I feel that this blog is looking lazy I like to provide a status report to deflect your negative attention from my laziness.

I started on a fairly ambitious post to denounce whistledick futurists, by whom I mean authors who pose as prophets or sophisticated insiders on the basis of ideas they've evidently gleaned (i.e., stolen) from dystopian fiction and Road Warrior movies. As I try to develop my own reliable synthesis of what's going on in this unsettling era I'm gathering information from history, which I believe is really important for context (and to avoid becoming a whistledick futurist myself). The stimulus of my wrath on this topic was a widely praised post by Douglas Coupland, the sort-of coiner of the term "Generation X," who appears to be an arrogant, under-informed hipster still huffing the vapors of his high-octane heyday. This past week I dedicated several hours to composing a high-dudgeon takedown of Mr. Coupland's condescending drool. But I couldn't get it right, and finally realized that a much more moderate and even-tempered response would do just fine. So I've scrapped the previous effort and will try again this weekend. To me, responding is still a worthwhile task because I feel many of us are buying into stock doomsday scenarios that paralyze our spirits. My preferred approach to social criticism is to avoid everyone's conventional wisdom, even if it comes from people who feel special because they had an Internet login in 1985.

Pictured above is a "cathedral of the prairie," a term I quote from a forgotten author who doesn't readily rise to the top of a Google search. I snapped it on the inadequate iPhone 3G camera, then doctored it in Bridge and Photoshop to approximate how I saw the scene when I felt compelled to interrupt my bike ride to document it. That selfsame bike ride, which took me halfway through Piatt County and terminated (before turning back) a few miles north of Deland, Illinois, ended up setting me back several weeks, sprained-rotator-cuffwise. Ended up being on the bike 90 minutes more than planned due to being waylaid on rural roads crumbling into gravel and dirt. Too much heavy lifting for Mr. Supraspinatus, evidently. So I've been pussing around the house this week instead of tackling the heavy lifting of blog augmentation.

Then there is the strange case of me actually finishing a woodworking project. It's pictured at the right, hanging under a kitchen cabinet. It may not look like much, but it involved some careful measurements, routing and sawing, and stock and stain decisions so it would match the in-place red oak woodwork. I finished cutting and assembly a year ago, then proceeded to stare at the bare wood, despairing about how to mount the thing in a non-remedial way. Finally, a recent chat with a cute lady carpenter on a completely different topic (strictly business) inspired me to buy a Forstner drill bit, apply a little mental elbow grease to hardware selection, then stain and seal it, and hang it up. Click the picture for a bigger view if you like, and note the scroll-sawed arch cut of the sides to match the arched sides of the spice compartment to its upper right. That's some pretty hot-shit woodworking for me, actually. Tonight I'm field testing the shelf to house a cute little AudioSource power amp with an old Sports Walkman (boasting "Mega Bass Groove") jacked in, and a pair vintage B&W speakers. It works!

Finally I've been distracted this past week by the unexpected return of some epic BP numbers, with my favorite being 182/88 (nowhere close to my "personal best," incidentally). I made an executive decision to return to my previous med protocol, which the doc had relaxed in response to my significant weight loss and general awesomeness as a physical specimen. The numbers are returning to where they were, which had been consistent with what might be expected for a world-class athlete at rest or a little old lady on life support.

And those are some reasons why it seems I've been neglecting you, but I assure you that you haven't left my thoughts during this hiatus. Thank you for your attention to this matter.