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Saturday, October 16, 2010

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.

9 comments:

  1. William Jennings Bryan called an iconic church in Kansas the Cathedral of the Plains. The reference to grain elevators could be a play on that.

    It probably is helpful to scrutinize the "doomsday scenarios" and the perpetrators-- they all have some sort of axe-grinding going on. But keep this in mind-- the American lifestyle, which Dick Cheney stated was "not negotiable" is coming down just like a jenga tower. Anything built on faulty foundations and left unmaintained for years will come down. Unless gravity disappears (or forstner bits were used). When that happens (is happening now) the level and locations of dystopia will be determined by the intelligence and reasonableness of the people and their response to the changes.

    Look around-- what gives you any hope that will work out well? There was probably an optimist with the Donner party, for awhile. And he was delicious.

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  2. You definitely need some pussy...

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  3. OCH: I don't disagree with any of your points. And in a decadent society optimism must be measured in terms of decades, or maybe centuries. But my point isn't to find silver linings; it's to develop a more well grounded perspective in order to figure out how best to abide a dark age.

    Anon: Could be, but I have every reason to assume that getting some would amount to nothing more than a waste of precious bodily fluids. Can't have that....

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  4. All is change. Walk with open hands. (Bop shu wop).

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  5. Out that way (Deland I mean -- and probably further west) somewhere are some Ameren IP generators. Something like 6 identical good sized units in a N-S alignment....in the middle of no-where (man). An odd thing to happen upon. That, or there's some secret subsurface government project that requires one heck of a lot of power.

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  6. don't agree with which? That things with faulty foundations come down? That this culture has a faulty foundation? Or that it is coming down presently?

    You probably do agree with me. Your comment that you're wanting to be able to abide a new dark age implies you also think things are headed that way. I'm not saying that (a new dark age) will be doomsday for the human race, though the means for that exist now and didn't in the past. I'm actually thinking that for those who, like you, 'abide' the change, the whole thing is likely to improve many things for the earth people.

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  7. Oh, it says you 'don't' disagree.

    Nevermind

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  8. Emily: thank you for your attention to this matter.

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  9. Nice pic. I felt challenged to find the origin of "prairie cathedrals." The term pops up all over the place and seems to be a phrase in common use. This is the closest I can get to attribution: "Gohlke's observations are evocative of the romanticized view of these structures that, according to the geographer George Carney, began with the writings of modern architectural theorists nearly a century ago. The Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, who called grain elevators “cathedrals of the prairies,” is most often cited. " It is from this page - http://www.washburn.edu/reference/cks/newsltrs/S2005.html (Where did you go to school?)

    You might enjoy this link too - http://www.americanprofile.com/article/31661.html

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