Today, I get to experience the joys of getting up at about 4am and dealing with the airline industry all day. Well, it should build character. Plus I have Iain M. Banks’s latest Culture book to read while waiting and while on the plane. It’s from the library, though, so it’s hardcover and is large enough to stun a small poodle.
Trivia: was crowded. It was “League Night”, so we had people from the Sceptical Chymist as well as Fibber’s, all competing for the 12-week Pub Trivia crown as well as other prizes. There was a question about the Olympics that we really wished Trevor was there for, because none of us knew it and he probably would’ve. Spencer and Patty said they saw me in the morning several times a week as I crossed Mill and waited for the bus. I said I’d look out for them in the future. And it looks like most people want to do the “get together for dinner” thing sometime on Dec. 26..28.
Updates will be less frequent over Thanksgiving since I won’t have easy access to my home machine.
Opposites. Even in the world of captioned cats, there are epic clashes between fundamentally incompatible ideologies.
You should never let the domestic animals make budget decisions, no matter how cute they are.
Bunday! Of course, this particular bunny disapproves heartily.
The grocery store had none of the more expensive tasty ramen that I usually buy. So I bought this, and didn’t notice the “low fat, low sodium” labels on the package until I was in the checkout line. “Oh well, it’ll be something new,” I thought. Yeah, if flavorless noodles in an insipid broth is what you want, these will make you jump for joy. Nissin Choice Ramen may be healthy, but it tastes like wet cardboard. Scratch that, it tastes like it has negative flavor. You could dump a pot of this stuff in a full portion of insanely hot lamb vindaloo and end up with something that tasted vaguely like curry powder. I had to force myself to finish the pot. And I had put in vegetables and chopped-up cooked chicken pieces, as I usually do when making ramen. I hesitate to think what it would taste like without any additions at all.
Look at the worked stone and high arched windows in this building. They just don’t make things like this anymore. That’s probably a good thing, since this building probably predated air conditioning, but there has to be a way that you can have modern climate control and nice stonework.
More architecture. Again, you don’t see this sort of thing on modern buildings.
More old architecture. While balcony this looks nice, it’s awfully shallow, and was probably never used very much. And of course it was probably a total pain in the butt to clean this whole structure.
You just don’t see balconies, arches, high windows, and worked stone spires in modern buildings. It’s a shame; modern architecture is efficient, but almost all of it has the look of what P.J. O’Rourke called “the Brobdingnagian Lego Block”. I think most of it must be that human labor is comparatively much more expensive now. In 1900, a skilled stonemason was relatively cheap. Now, a skilled stonemason is relatively expensive, so instead of rococo ornaments, we get blank slabs of concrete.
Saturday, as I was walking, a woman pulled over and asked me how to get to the IKEA store. “Oh yeah, you can’t get there from this street. Get to Priest, go south to Ruby, turn right on Ruby, go a half mile or so and you’ll get there.” I guess she hadn’t looked the place up on Google maps or something.


