I ceased shaving two weeks ago. If a man is to be unemployed he should play the part. My work visa expired last Friday and I have to wait a maximum of six weeks until my immigration situation rights itself. This isn’t a big shock, it was only an 18 month visa and I knew from the start that I’d have to face a certain period of downtime.
Prior to reentering the working world it will be obligatory to no longer resemble Rashers Tierney. It’s not that beards are unwelcome or that sporting one would prevent me from being hired. No, the problem is that I am short and don’t fancy being known as the new guy who looks like a garden gnome. I’ll enjoy my bum beard, but when it’s time to work again I’ll have to shear her off. What a perfect opportunity to fulfill a life long dream though? I’m talking about a hot towel shave here.
My dreams last night were strange, such is the nature of dreaming I suppose so there is no reason why this particular dream should be anymore noteworthy than those of Thursday night or Wednesday night... A mysterious figure took me to the top of a stone tower on the edge of the city. Looking down I observed a complete absence of urban sprawl eating into the land, consuming the trees and substituting farms for gas stations and fast food restaurants. Instead of all that crap there was a sudden and definite point where the city ended and the land began. Maybe the city was contained by walls. Or maybe the city had come ready made and was just dropped onto the landscape and prohibited from extending beyond its original size. In an aerial photo the scene might look like a grey and brown version of the Japanese flag. Its perfectly circular perimeter was hard to comprehend. From the top of the tower I was able to see all the way north to the Canadian border, a distance of nearly 300 miles. One vast field of soy beans stretched from here to there. My eyes had a high zoom capability and I was able to see individual soy plants anywhere within that 300 mile expanse. Had there been civilization I would have been able to count freckles on the faces of folks living in Duluth, International Falls, Fargo and other towns, but there were no towns at all, only soy beans.
Our baby is due to be born this week. Today I made building blocks for her from some rough and dirty 2” x 2” oak pallet lumber. The blocks are chunky and deceptively heavy for their size so if I get one flung at me I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up in the hospital. I sliced the boards to produce cubes of 2” side. Each face was then skimmed to liberate the beautiful grain hiding beneath the surface. The rich, dark, almost aristocratic smell of the freshly cut end grain is such a reward.
And so unemployment, tea drinking, beer drinking, photography, woodworking, beard maintenance and eager, possibly amateur parenting will fill my days until mid April rolls around. Good times.
26 February 2006
21 February 2006
Chislers
"Kids are great. You can teach them to hate the same things you hate and they practically raise themselves, what with the internet and all."
Homer Simpson
Homer Simpson
12 February 2006
Eye in the sky
I discovered Google Earth (LINK) this morning while avoiding housework. First of all, I don't think Google would have built in a "Save Image" option if they didn't want me to export images for my own use, so here (LINK) goes. The intersection of the gray lines is our house. To the north is my playground, the grain elevators and train tracks.
Second of all, good God! Yes, satellite photography has been around since the 1960's and aerial photography since the earliest cameras were taken up in hot air balloons but this technology is something else.
In the space of five minutes I was able to visit all three capital cities of the Axis of Evil. Tehran and Baghdad (still a member of the axis?) were vaster than I had imagined, and particularly close to the ground in terms of average building height, possibly a function of the materials used to build structures in those countries. From an altitude of 5,000m both cities looked like some highly viscous tan colored liquid that had been poured into the desert.
Pyongyang, capital of North Korea was the most intriguing axis city. From above it looks like a decent western city with its parks, stadiums, museums, galleries and a freeway system that Ireland would be lucky to have by the year 2106. But here’s the somber bit, there are virtually no vehicles (LINK) to be found on the People's roads.
Second of all, good God! Yes, satellite photography has been around since the 1960's and aerial photography since the earliest cameras were taken up in hot air balloons but this technology is something else.
In the space of five minutes I was able to visit all three capital cities of the Axis of Evil. Tehran and Baghdad (still a member of the axis?) were vaster than I had imagined, and particularly close to the ground in terms of average building height, possibly a function of the materials used to build structures in those countries. From an altitude of 5,000m both cities looked like some highly viscous tan colored liquid that had been poured into the desert.
Pyongyang, capital of North Korea was the most intriguing axis city. From above it looks like a decent western city with its parks, stadiums, museums, galleries and a freeway system that Ireland would be lucky to have by the year 2106. But here’s the somber bit, there are virtually no vehicles (LINK) to be found on the People's roads.
08 February 2006
The city
For reasons unknown I feel an almost magnetic allure to the gritty, industrial, smoke stack cities of America. Non tourist traps such as Indianapolis, Cleveland, Billings, Trenton, Gary, Detroit, Cheyenne, Bozeman, Milwaukee, Boise, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia have stories to tell.
Minneapolis (LINK), where we live, has a distinctive whiff of grain, oil, grease and human sweat. Less evident these days for sure but downtown buildings like The Lumber Exchange, The Grain Exchange, the freight railroads that criss-cross Minneapolis like slash marks from the paws of a ferocious bear and the grain elevators that make their home without public protest in the midst of residential neighborhoods all point to a past where human effort and the infrastructure of man’s toil; brutalist architecture, came first, conventional aesthetics and appearance second. But time has rusted the steel, yellowed and cracked the paint, crumbled the bricks and rotted the wood. However, beauty has become the by-product, an accident, of a city that doesn’t concern itself with the maintenance of a once unsullied exterior. Do it once, do it right seems to have been the manifesto.
We’ll not discuss the strip mall and fast food franchise (LINK) epidemic that dooms both rural and urban America to an identically and disorientating future. For now cities like Minneapolis are safe as developers have their eyes set on the suburbs whose population’s insatiable appetite for “stuff” perpetuates a spread outwards, not inwards, leaving the heart of the city beating strong, but slowly decaying (LINK), much to my pleasure.
Minneapolis (LINK), where we live, has a distinctive whiff of grain, oil, grease and human sweat. Less evident these days for sure but downtown buildings like The Lumber Exchange, The Grain Exchange, the freight railroads that criss-cross Minneapolis like slash marks from the paws of a ferocious bear and the grain elevators that make their home without public protest in the midst of residential neighborhoods all point to a past where human effort and the infrastructure of man’s toil; brutalist architecture, came first, conventional aesthetics and appearance second. But time has rusted the steel, yellowed and cracked the paint, crumbled the bricks and rotted the wood. However, beauty has become the by-product, an accident, of a city that doesn’t concern itself with the maintenance of a once unsullied exterior. Do it once, do it right seems to have been the manifesto.
We’ll not discuss the strip mall and fast food franchise (LINK) epidemic that dooms both rural and urban America to an identically and disorientating future. For now cities like Minneapolis are safe as developers have their eyes set on the suburbs whose population’s insatiable appetite for “stuff” perpetuates a spread outwards, not inwards, leaving the heart of the city beating strong, but slowly decaying (LINK), much to my pleasure.
03 February 2006
Kitchen tales
We were bored and hungry last night so we got creative in the kitchen. The hunter-gatherer, breadwinner, soon to be sole provider for a young family went to the supermarket and bought ice cream, milk and chocolate biscuits/cookies. I got back to headquarters and Martha fired up the new blender to make a McFlurry for herself and a vanilla milkshake for me.
A sugar buzz and the excitement of watching the kitchen lady so naturally crack recipes too often and too greedily safeguarded by large corporations killed my boredom.
This domestic scene reminded me of my youth, back in the old country (excuse me while I wipe an immigrant tear from my eye), watching with awe as my mam made McDonalds like chips/fries for us kids. She cut those spuds into strips as thin as shoe laces and flash fried them into perfect strands of golden starch and oil. Such an example of selfless devotion can never be forgotten and sits high on my list of ways to be a great parent.
And in a totally unrelated vein here (LINK) is some recent shitehawkery.
A sugar buzz and the excitement of watching the kitchen lady so naturally crack recipes too often and too greedily safeguarded by large corporations killed my boredom.
This domestic scene reminded me of my youth, back in the old country (excuse me while I wipe an immigrant tear from my eye), watching with awe as my mam made McDonalds like chips/fries for us kids. She cut those spuds into strips as thin as shoe laces and flash fried them into perfect strands of golden starch and oil. Such an example of selfless devotion can never be forgotten and sits high on my list of ways to be a great parent.
And in a totally unrelated vein here (LINK) is some recent shitehawkery.
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