I'm amused at the fall of "
The News of the World." Rare to see a Murdoch media property suffer the consequences of its morally bankrupt administration. I doubt anything could sink Faux News -- although who knows?
Speaking of ignoring reality (tip of the hat to global warming, which scientists agree is happening, which the weather is bearing out, but which remains somehow controversial in the US, captive as we are to the petroleum industry), the storm that blasted through here yesterday was pretty intense -- it knocked out power for ~600,000 people! By last night, 490,000 people were still without power. That's one serious storm! I was amazed at how dark the skies got, how quickly, and how fierce it was. Of course, I had left my apartment windows open, so things got soaked that were near the window. D'oh!
We actually had a proper power outage in our building (and/or neighborhood, I couldn't tell), like for about 45 minutes. I have flashlights for the boys and me, so we went into the hall and talked with neighbors, and then the boys and I went upstairs to the deck, where a number of the neighbors had gone to wait out the outage. That was fun, as it was nice and breezy up there, and everybody was in bemused good spirits about the outage (since those happen rarely in my 'hood -- this is the first one I recall in at least five years; other 'hoods in the city are less fortunate, have power outages more frequently). Anyway, the boys and I sat on some lounges and just enjoyed ourselves. I'd already called ComEd to inform them of the outage (as had others, clearly), so we just had to wait it out, and 45 minutes later, the power was back on. It's all good.
I had planted some seeds with the boys a month or more ago, and was pleased to see a tiny lemon tree seedling sprouting in B1's planter. B2 was, of course, flummoxed that nothing had grown in his planter. I told him it happens sometimes, you can't predict whether a seed will grow or not, but can only plant it and water it and hope it grows. But it was nice to see the seedling -- now my Clementine sapling will have a buddy. I can't even remember how long I've had that Clementine. I'll have to dig back through this blog and see. It's been a year or two, at least. It's now about 5 inches tall, I think.
Saw a variety of buskers on the Mag Mile -- some hippie-looking guy with a purple guitar, playing Hendrix-on-Quaaludes groovy jazz kind of stuff (think the opening of "
Little Wing," but not as good, of course. He just kinda meandered musically. Then another block or two down from him were a couple of chicks, one with a violin, one with a cello. The cellist looked like a refugee from a Tim Burton movie -- bright red hair and black-and-white striped stockings. Couldn't hear their music, as I was on a bus, but that was an atypical pair of buskers (there is an Asian father-daughter violin duo I used to see, very Suzuki Method kind of thing, the girl sawing away with mechanistic virtuosity while father/grandfather accompanies her). Also, there's this cowboy-hatted guitar guy who frequents one of the tunnels and plays an augmented guitar thing (like he's got one of those miniature karaoke machine things that "accompanies" him). He looks like a cross between Stanley Kubrick and my old school principal Vaclav, which is kind of disarming when I pass that guy. I've been meaning to photograph him at a distance, as his presence in the tunnel in silhouette, leaning against the tunnel wall, looks kinda cool.
Amazed how deep into July we are. How quickly this summer is going by.
Speaking of culture jamming,
this piece is interesting. The section on aesthetic brutalism (and the sound clips) particularly amused me.
