God Bless America
Say ‘allo to my leetle fren’, Shockwave. He’s a Peterbilt mounted with three Pratt & Whitney J34-48 jet engines (angled slightly downward so it doesn’t launch itself directly into the stratosphere). Zero to 300 mph in 11 seconds and burns 400 gallons of fuel per mile on a speed run. And THIS, my friends, is why we simply must drill in ANWR.
Yep. I went to the RI Air Show this Saturday. The British Red Arrows (the RAF’s version of the Blue Angels) were there. They got here by hopping from England to Scotland to Iceland to Greenland to Northern Canada to the civilized world. Uncle B sent me a Red Arrows t-shirt last year, so I had to wear it. Turned out to be a collosal mistake, since they weren’t selling Red Arrow merchandice at the show (pff! Brits!). I nearly got mugged for it, when I wasn’t being mistaken for Red Arrow support staff.
There were some fantastic stunt pilots there, but Weasel’s into the milporn. And there was plenty and plenty of it. Quonset was once our main Navy pilot training base (it’s a peninsula, and the wind from the ocean apparently simulates a deck landing especially well). It’s an aviation museum now, so it’s all over the place with the decommissioned aircraft.
Sadly, the planes on the ground were covered in children, and the ones in the air were too fast or too far away for me to catch properly (a few pics on my Flickr page. Please to ignore all the typos and sorting errors I just noticed).
It was awesome.
At one point, a stunt pilot flew in low, raised the nose until the belly of the plane faced the crowd, and waggled it side to side in a maneuver I cannot begin to wrap my head around the aerowotsis of. The woman next to me said, “wow! But…I can’t help thinking about all that wasted fuel.”
Liberalism really is a mental disease, isn’t it?
June 30, 2008 — 2:57 pm
Comments: 40
Dead monkeys and self portraits
One of my mom’s best friends was a carney. We called her the Monkey Lady, on account of she had a monkey act. Duh. When Mother adopted her, she was old and retired and lived in a burnt-out bar down by the river, and her five big evil monkeys spent every waking minute working at the bars of their cages in an effort to free themselves and — she devoutly believed — chew through her jugular vein while she slept. Shitting you not. But they were still her precious furbabies.
Well. I didn’t like her, either.
Somehow, Mother got guilted into arranging to have these beloved psychotic homicidal monkeys gassed. I’ll tell you the whole horrible story some day, but you’ll have to get me drunk first.
The general plan was, the Monkey Lady would leave the house and come back some hours later to a peacefully monkey-free zone. Only, when she came back, she found one of the vet’s assistants had left a choke harness behind in the middle of the floor.
Dun-dun DUNNNNN!
I feel a bit like that. I went through all the stuff in my studio, picked through thirty some years of old letters and bad self portraits and selected only the juiciest morsels for posterity. I fully expected to come back and find all the rest had been whisked away while I rolled about the countryside, madly gay, roasting champagne and drinking chestnuts.
And so it did come to pass, I thought as I arrived home late last night.
Until I left for work this morning and found the lot, neatly packed and stowed in the garage. I guess my ragpicker couldn’t believe anyone would give up such awesomely fantastic junk.
Albatross? WHAT albatross?
January 8, 2008 — 7:30 pm
Comments: 49
Happy belated birthday, Mad Jack
John ‘Mad Jack’ Fuller (1757 — 1834) was an impossibly rich, batshit crazy English squire from Brightling on the South coast. He preferred to be called “Honest John” — but that didn’t happen, for reasons that will shortly become obvious. He is famous for building a slew of follies — a tower, a pyramid, a greek temple, an obelisk and other assorted wonders — in improbable, not to say stupid, locations. Like mostly, out in the middle of sheep fields.
His motivations were reckoned to be everything from legacy building, to creating ‘jobs for the boys’ to settling bets. I’m guessing that batshit crazy thing was a factor, too.
But he also built a lighthouse, funded the local lifeboats and saved beautiful Bodiam Castle from demolition. So, you know, it was a good crazy.
We tried to visit all his follies in a day, one beautiful September day last year. Nearly managed it, too. We missed the Greek temple for sure (which was WAY off the road, and we couldn’t see an obvious place to park) and maybe one or two others. It was a fine adventure..
His actual birthday is in February, but next Saturday, Brightling is observing his 250th birthday. I’ll just miss it.
The Sussex Bell Ringing Association will go up against Brightling’s own bell ringers in a head to head contest of…umm…bell ringing. Plus, there will be a barrel organ and a drumming band. And dancing, liquor and barbecue.
And y’all wonder what the attraction is…
September 14, 2007 — 5:55 pm
Comments: 4
Behold, the power of a burnt out hippie chick
Saturday, I visited Block Island, a green dab of land an hour’s ferry ride from the coast of Rhode Island. Never been there, but it’s been on my “before you move away” list forever. It was great.
We managed to pack five of us into a rented PT Cruiser. The Cruiser is apparently the rental car of choice on The Block; there were so many of them toodling around, the place looked like a midget undertaker’s convention. We drove the whole perimeter of the island, stopping at various nature trails and beauty spots and historical markers to hike and gawp and take pictures.
There’s something about a group of middle-aged persons on a day trip — a certain feckless, enthusiastic incompetence — that made me want to pin notes to everybody’s shirt and make sure I had phone numbers for all their moms.
Though I don’t know what I’m being so snarky about; I was the only one who came to grief. I snagged a toe in a tree root and did a spectacular flying faceplant-slash-bellyflop in the dust. I didn’t break anything but I bent a few of them pretty hard. At least it was the last hike of the day. How’s come I never make it home in clean pants?
And you’d think somebody would’ve mentioned I was getting sunburnt. All my upturned surfaces toasted a nice Coca-Cola logo red (which is, for those of you interested in graphic design, Pantone 485, the only true red in the Pantone Color Matching System). Today, my face is tighter than a gnat’s and redder than a baboon’s respective bottoms.
Anyhow, just before we quit for liquorses and scallopses at the ferry landing, we spotted this gigantic expanse of cairns by the side of the road. It seems unlikely that they were all stacked by that one hippie chick (they extend way down the beach in both directions), but she looked capable. She stacked rocks and took not the slightest notice of anyone.
And so ended a wonderful day in weirdness.
September 10, 2007 — 8:27 am
Comments: 12
Where Connecticut kept her ham
Field trip! This here’s Gillette Castle in East Haddam, Connecticut. I toured it yesterday. It is, I feel sure, the tackiest private home I have ever seen — which, when you recall that I grew up in Nashville, is impressive.
William Gillette (1853-1937) was an American stage actor. He wasn’t the first Sherlock Holmes but he was far and away the most famous of his day. He must have been tolerable good at it, or the American public tolerable easy-going, because the guide told us he cleared $200,000 in an era without income taxes, which would be something along the lines of a squillion dollars in 2007. I didn’t know stage actors made that kind of scratch. Hence this expensive, lumpen folly of 1919.
This isn’t a stone building. It’s made of iron girders and wooden members with stones stuck all over the outside of it. With cement. Stone doesn’t so much provide a structural element as an unstable crust. The ones on the ceiling of the entryway looked especially eager to break free and smite me.
It looks less like a castle than the set of a dinner theater production of Bride of Frankenstein. ‘Bout right; Gillette had stage paraphernalia like curtain pulls and moving screens all over the place, and strategic mirrors so he could see people moving around and make dramatic entrances at them. This point was hammered home by a senile old coot in a deerstalker hat and briar pipe, who leapt out periodically and exclaimed, “huzzah! I’m a senile old coot playing William Gillette playing Sherlock Holmes!”
Gillette designed a lot of this himself. Like, his desk chair and the dining room table, which are on rails and slide back and forth, absurdly. And the ‘stained glass’ windows and light fixtures, which are often not made of stained glass at all, but hunks of regular glass painted bright colors and glued to stuff. Every once in a while, a chunk cuts loose and beans somebody. And check out the door locks, at right. He designed them. No two are alike; they’re hewn out of blocks of wood by a master carpenter using an adze. I’m not being rude — they really used an adze. See the adze marks?
He was a huge train buff, too. He had three miles of narrow-gauge railroad tracks snaking around the estate, with tunnels and bridges and stations. Albert Einstein was once a passenger. So was Calvin Coolidge. Ahhhh…picture that with me. The tracks are long gone now, alas.
Now, I enjoy a joke as much as the next mustelid. This place is pretty neat, in a glommy, make-believe way. If it had been built in the spirit of good fun — a sort of architectural costume jewelry — I wouldn’t be so snarky about it. But I have a bad feeling Gillette thought hisself some kind of Einsteinian sooper geeenius renaissance man and this, his stately country home. In his will, he declares how unhappy he will be if he returns from the dead to find his house has been sold to “some blithering saphead who had no conception of where he is or with what surrounded.”
As it turned out, he lost that bet. No other blithering saphead could be found who wanted the place, so the government bought it in 1943.
September 3, 2007 — 4:53 pm
Comments: 8
What I Did on My Summer Vacation, by S. Weasel
I’m back. And I don’t have anything in particular to say for myself, so let’s get right to it.
The journey happened more or less as predicted, with the interesting bits under the heading “or less.” Like the prop plane that flew the last leg across Tennessee. We were directed out on the tarmac, where half a dozen small twin engine planes were buzzing lazily in the sun. Ours was gray and grubby, without livery. I’m sure it carried ordinance in Dubya Dubya Eye Eye.
We had to walk up to it and climb steps, just like the old days. Huh. I just thought. The last time I flew into Tri Cities airport it was in a plane exactly like this one. I had an explosive nosebleed, which I usually did at altitude. It produced gratifying response in stewardesses, as they were called in another era. I was going to see my grandmother. I was seven.
Anyhow, after that — hey, did anybody spot the flaw in my master plan? We showed up boozeless and planned to buy liquor on the way up. On a Sunday. In rural Tennessee. The horrible realization that this was EXTREMELY unlikely didn’t dissuade us from driving to several liquor stores in panic and leaving greasy noseprints on the front door. The rest of the party weren’t expected up until the next morning, so there was nothing for it but…beer. You can buy beer in the grocery stores any time.
Now, I like the occasional beer, but as an inebriation vehicle, it sucks. The ratio of booze molecules to pee molecules is severely whack. I bought two six packs and only managed to down four beers. I was horribly sober after, but Jesus — that’s more liquid than it generally takes to bathe my person. I fell asleep at last and all night long I dreamed of urination. Everywhere I went in the dreamscape, I had a delightful, satisfying whizz. I didn’t pee the bed, but I gave the idea serious consideration.
So anyway, there wasn’t really time to go stand on my own grave. My cousin was like, “do you want to drive over and…you know. The usual?” And I’m like, “nah. We can just wave as we go by.”
The rest was fine. I guess. The liquor stores opened next morning and I don’t remember much after that.
July 12, 2007 — 5:56 pm
Comments: 10
…and then came home again…
Last day, but this one’s going to hurt.
Booking flights via little airports means the occasional bad connection day like this one: five hours sitting in the airport in Memphis. If I’m lucky, there will be free broadband and you and me can catch up and shoot the shit and stuff. I don’t feel lucky. Boston Logan charges for wifi; I have to assume it’s a trend.
Between the layover and the change in times zone, it’s going to be late-late-late when I get home.
Memphis. Feh. I once got kicked out of boarding school in Memphis, you may recall.
I’m not even getting fed on this flight. Nothing at all at stage one, and something called a $5 snack on stage two. According to the (surprisingly interesting) website airlinemeals.net, this is an example of the $5 snack.
You know what, though? I totally don’t mind buying food, if it means a major reduction in ticket price. I’ve often wondered how much it costs to provide those absurd and unpleasant hot meals, what with the ovens and the carts and the logistics and everything. On the upside, though, I suppose it gives the flight attendants an excuse to walk up and down checking on us, in case somebody goes all loop-de-loo at 35,000 feet.
See you in the morning, Insha’Allah.
July 11, 2007 — 1:26 am
Comments: 40
Escaped!
Hello! I am not here! I was here when I wrote this, but now you’re reading it, so I must be gone! Yes, through the miracle of deferred posting, I can communicate with you, my minions, even though I’m four days in the past and/or nowhere near a wifi access point!
“Nowhere near a wifi access point!?” you exclaim, wetting yourself with terror and confusion. “Wherever can that be in this modern age of instantaneous digital communication?”
I am at the family cabin, way, way back in the hills. If I visit the folks while they’re here, I can wear nothing but jeans and t-shirts and they don’t make that “L is for Loser” sign at me.
So four days from now, which will be yesterday by today, I flew into the Tri-Cities airport and met my cousin, who drove up from Alabama. We do this every year, so I can tell you exactly how it went (will go) down.
We drove into the tanktown where I was born to visit my grandparents’ house. We agreed that it looked quite small compared to our memories of it, but that the current owners are taking good care of it. Only, they really shouldn’t have cut that tree down.
Then we went and stood on my grave and I said, “ha ha! Get me! I’m standing on my own grave!” My grandfather sold the old family farm to a cemetary and got a family plot and first dibs on the location as part of the deal. He chose a hillside he used to plow when he was a teenager. He and my grandmother and assorted Weasels are there, but somehow their headstones are jammed up against the headstones of the neighbors, so it looks like they were buried standing up. I hope they don’t bury me standing up; I suspect I’ll be awfully tired.
Finally, we head up into the mountains. Along the way, we stop and buy liquor. It’s not that there won’t be liquor at the cabin. There will be a very great deal of liquor at the cabin. But if you bring your own, nobody can tell how much you drink. Plus, I can get Jack Daniel’s Green Label here, and I can’t back home. I like it. It hurts.
My folks won’t get here until tomorrow, which is today now. I’ll tell you about that in a minute, four days ago, which will be tomorrow by then.
July 9, 2007 — 1:11 am
Comments: 38
Mooshi-Mooshi, Lord of Ticks
I went to the University of Rhode Island’s Tick Awareness Event on Saturday. My friend the nurse dragged me along. She was like, “it’ll be fun.” And…it was. There were doctors and microscopes and a picnic and giant inflatable ticks and everything.
Seriously, peeps…Lyme disease scares me juiceless. I’m out in the woods all the time, and we’ve got hella Lyme around here. It’s not the big dog ticks you have to watch out for, either — it’s the little teeny bastards. The deer ticks. Usually in the nymph stage, when they’re the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
You might notice the tick. Eighty percent chance you won’t. You might get the tell-tale bullseye rash. Seventy percent chance you won’t. You might test positive, but the tests are very unreliable. My doctor gives me a fight every year when I ask for one. He thinks they’re useless. No matter — there’s no medical consensus what constitutes a true positive, anyway. And, if you test positive, there’s no medical consensus which drugs to use or for how long.
At first maybe you get something like the flu. It goes away soon. A few years down the line, you might (or might not) develop a mysterious arthritis. If you pass that milestone without anybody figuring out what the hell is wrong with you, then you have a shot at tertiary Lyme, which is a lot like tertiary neurosyphilis. No, really. They’re both spirochete diseases.
Symptoms may include fatigue, muscle pain, joint pain (with or without arthritis), inflamed nerves, rash, cardiac arrhythmias, tachycardia, adrenal disorders, immune suppression, urinary disorders, muscle twitching, polyneuropathy or paresthesia, Bell’s palsy, encephalitis or encephalomyelitis, vision problems, severe sensitivity to sound and vibration, balance problems, seizures, myoclonus, ataxia, panic attacks, anxiety, depression, short-term memory loss, sleep disturbance, hallucinations, depersonalization, neurocognitive impairment or psychosis.
If you get there, you’re fucked. You have worms in your brain. You will not get better. The best possible outcome is to avoid getting any worse. This guy at work spent several years battling mystery symptoms — fatigue and weight loss, mostly — before they figured out it was Lyme. Now he’ll have to take fistsful of antibiotics every day for the rest of his life just to tread water.
The best plan: avoid ticks. Deer don’t carry Lyme (mice do), but deer carry the ticks that carry Lyme. In experimental settings (islands and the like), researchers have discovered that eliminating the deer does for the ticks, too. Sadly, eradicating all deer is not considered a viable option. I blame Disney.
So here’s the deal: ticks don’t live in the grass. Too dry. They don’t fall out of trees, either. They live in the moisty undergrowth, down low, latch onto anything that swings past, and start crawling UP. So treat your outdoor clothes from the bottom up: shoes and boots, then socks, then pants. Also gloves then shirts, if you garden. Okay, your hat, too…in case you fall face-first into the rhododendrons. Because we’ve seen you do that.
DEET is great for mosquitos, not good at all for ticks. You need permethrin for ticks — it flat out kills the little bastards. Curl up and die. The spray is okay for boots and gloves and the occasional touch up, but you really need to soak your outdoor gear, inside and out. Remember, ticks crawl up…your pantlegs, your sleeves.
This is the deal the URI people (and the military) recommend: roll up your outdoor pants, shirt and socks and put them in the bag provided. Add the bottle of dilute permethrin and two bottles of tapwater, squoosh it around and let it sit and soak for a couple of hours. Then take the outfit out and air dry it. Once dry, it’s odorless. You get a small fraction of the permethrin dose the FDA thinks is okay. Good for six weeks, including laundering. I wanted to ask how long it would last if you didn’t wash, but I didn’t want to sit alone at the picnic.
I know, I know…a total scary downer of a not-funny Monday post. But I’m all about the minions. Goodness knows the last thing you people need is more brain damage.
June 4, 2007 — 5:41 am
Comments: 6
Weasel has piles
Piles of emails. Piles of bills. Piles of phone messages. Sad, disconsolate piles of soiled and crumpled socks and shirts and underpants, waiting to be laundered. It’s heartbreaking.
I made a bunch of stupid promises to clients today, just to make them shut up and go away. “Be off, little man! Your foolish ‘job’ and ‘deadlines’ do not concern Weasel.” S’okay. My mouth has been writing checks my work ethic can’t cash for nigh on half a century now.
All this could have been avoided if only one of my rich old aunties had left me a little something on her way out the door. But no. I’m all out of rich old aunties now, and it turns out I wasn’t nearly as popular as I thought.
Oh, well. I’m tired of posting about me and my travels. Tomorrow, I’ll post about…me and some other thing. Enjoy!
May 30, 2007 — 6:38 pm
Comments: 6