Things I Like September 2005 (continued ennui edition)

1. The television series Fortier. Gritty police crime dramas are a dime-a-dozen, but this one is superior than most anything else that’s airing right now. Reminds me a lot of Prime Suspect only with grouchy French-Canadians.

fortier

2. I’m not a big fan of watermelons, but I might reconsider now that they’ve been repackaged as Godzilla eggs.

godzilla_eggs

3. This essay on the Winchester Mystery House which recontextualizes Sarah Winchester’s mania into a capitalist parable.

Part of what makes the Winchester Mystery House so spooky, I think, is the way it reminds visitors and Silicon Valley neighbors of how fleeting industrial power really is–eventually, the fortunes made in Silicon Valley will pass away and remain only in the form of preserved houses built during the 1980s and 1990s. The death of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, symbolized in Sarah’s house, is a reminder to Silicon Valley professionals and residents that their industry, too, will die, taking fortunes and lives with it.

winchester

4. I’m not sure if I’ll see A Good Woman, but it’s goddamn great to see illustrated movie posters making a return.

a_good_woman

5. The unbelievably fantastic metallic album covers for Philips’ Prospective 21e Siècle series of avant-garde electronic LPs.

bayle_jeita

Exactly what somebody wanted to have happen

One last parapolitical thought – this one lifted from David Brin. I’m by no stretch a Brin apologist and his particular brand of militancy gets irritating but the last couple of paragraphs in this blog entry struck home. He’s talking about Iraq, but it basically applies to Katrina too.

Finally… see a couple places where moderates have proposed alternatives to the current “stay the course” vs. “cut and run” dichotomy. Both seem reasonable and are probably compatible — both could be done simultaneously.They are:

“The Way Out of Iraq: Decentralizing the Iraqi Government” and “How to Win in Iraq”

These articles make sense… and they won’t be implemented because the goal of the involvement in Iraq has never been success at nation building. Yes, that is officially our purpose now that there are no WMD and no Saddam. But Cheney and Rumsfeld both famously expressed contempt for “nation building” long ago and their disbelief in it still shows.

No, there are only two possible classes of hypothesis to explain such a disaster. (* Kool-aid alert! Paranoia riff about to resume! * 😉

Hypothesis 1. Incompetence. These are moronic frat boys, using the United States and our military as personal toys. The calamity is not what was intended. It is just what happens when skilled professionals – first diplomats and then military officers – are relentlessly over-ruled by meddling politician imbecilles bent on playing war and stealing everything in sight.

Hypothesis 2. What you see is what was planned. This explanation looks utterly paranoid and I am the only one suggesting it. And that means I must disclaim that it is formally what I BELIEVE to be true. Yes, yes. Brin’s Fantasy. But it IS logically the other side of the coin. My excuse is that I am a completist and must include it.

Still, let me repeat my call for you to step aside and look from another angle. If you were enemies of the United States, and looked across our history for some weakness to exploit, what two disasters nearly ruined us? Dividing us, sapping our strength, wounding the economy, tearing down our alliances, frittering our military strength?

The Civil War and Vietnam.

Now look at last year’s electoral map. And look at Iraq. And wonder… which sworn enemies of our culture have access to every powerful person in this administration?

Paranoid? yes. But reasonable people do not automatically dismiss that which fits all facts and has not been disproved. Always leave a “what-if” possibility open that what you see is exactly what somebody wanted to have happen.

But this goes to eleven!

When meterology meets Spinal Tap…

Have you noticed the ongoing arms race among local news broadcasts, trying to outdo each other with new generations of doppler radar? One station started out with plain old Doppler Radar. But that wasn’t enough. The station across town decided to make it sound better by calling it Super Doppler, or Mega Doppler. Then the numbers started coming in: Doppler 2000, Doppler 3000, (and Power Doppler 3000, Super Doppler 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000, 8000, 9000 even DOPPLER 10,000… but it doesn’t stop there… it goes all the way up to DOPPLER 13,000!!!

That is, until now. WCBS in New York may have just hit on the final solution to the Doppler Wars, inventing an utterly unbeatable, unstoppable, and unmatchable Doppler Radar technology:

DOPPLER TWO MILLION!

U-turns = Communism

no_u_turnI just started a new job in Rancho Santa Margarita – deep in the bowels of exurban Orange County and already I have a rant. Why can’t anyone make a u-turn in this burg? Not only do most intersections prohibit u-turns, but many streets have center dividers, so if you don’t know exactly where you’re going, you’ll end up driving miles out of your way.

Since most of the restaurants and shops here are buried in ambiguous-looking strip malls that face away from the street be prepared to drive a lot.

 

Long Beach Airport cafe

I’ve blogged about the Long Beach Airport (LGB) before – vintage terminal, free wireless, and happy times on JetBlue. I’ve never been to the cafe before though, so it was time for another round of coffee, pancakes, and bacon.

Long Beach Airport terminal

Pancakes @ LGB cafe

The food was your basic above-average diner quality and the wait staff kept the coffee flowing. The real winner though is the view out of the window where you’ve got a panoramic view of almost all airport operations. I could easily sit here, drink coffee, and stare out the window all day. Did I mention the free Wi-Fi?

Just down the street from the LGB terminal is the old McDonnell-Douglas aircraft plant. Boeing took it over when they they bought out McDonnell-Douglas and renamed the MD-80 descendants the Boeing 717. Boeing shortly phased out the 717 soon enough anyway. Still, the real tragedy is that the giant “Fly DC Jets” neon sign on the roof is no longer lit.

Old McDonnell-Douglas aircraft plant

Older photos of LGB

Things I Like August 2005 (ennui vs. manic depression edition)

1. This collection of posters for the movies presented by Mystery Science Theater 3000.

mst3k-starfighters

2. The “musical furry lobster”

furrylobster

3. Though not furry, the the sponge crab carries around a sponge on it’s back for camouflage.

spongecrab

4. Italian guitars of the 1960s. (full disclosure: I own a Crucinelli-built Vox Cheetah)

hagstrom_guitar goya_guitar

5. François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters’ comic series Les Cités Obscures. Mysterious steampunk adventure stories where the story/plots center around architecture city planning constructs. I’ve got three of the books and love them dearly, but I had no idea that there were nine more. Each one feels like a history parable that fell out of some parallel universe. (more reading)

schuiten

Wrenwood vs. Snowflake

There’s much more under the hood of Todd Haynes’ Safe than the basic slow death by suburban life plot, but regardless of which ambiguous analysis you follow the endpoint is still the same: Julianne Moore’s character is compelled and/or logically decides that living in a germ-free igloo is the only way to recover some real or imagined medical/emotional/psychological control.

I never would have expected Safe to be in that small list of “future now” tales like Blade Runner where the social milieu/whathaveyou inside supersedes the story. Well maybe not so soon. Enter Snowflake, Arizona…

In this town 150 miles northeast of Phoenix, “for sale” signs have become as commonplace as sagebrush. “Real estate has gone crazy around here,” said Bruce Wachter, an agent with the local Century 21 franchise.
But one “for sale” sign has a group of residents worried. They suffer from multiple chemical sensitivities, an illness that led them to flee cities for this remote high desert town.

An electrical engineer from Mesa, a broker from Chicago, a software executive from Santa Cruz, Calif. — all settled in Snowflake to escape pesticides and paints that they say caused them devastating health effects.

Now they fear that a nearby house could be bought by a family that wants to use chemicals on its lawn, or install a blacktop driveway, rendering the fragile haven a haven no longer. “We might have to evacuate some people,” said Susan Molloy, who has lived in the area since 1994.