Jon Ronson - The Men who Stare at Goats
Beginning with "This is a True Story" and we journey quicker and quicker down the rabbit hole of "Military Intelligence". In specific, the divisions that covertly employ psy and paranormal ops. Highly amusing, and (frighteningly enough) not even slightly implausible. Which it should be, given the absurd events and histories it narrates, but it's not. I've heard most of these things before, parroted as fact...While the miracles are uncertain, the witnesses are legion. Especially amusing is the narrator's (Ronson's) dry tone as he interviews his subjects.
A throwaway read, but worthwhile nonetheless. I'd give it 30 goats and 3 hamsters. All live.
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White Noise
3 weeks of the rock tumbler(s) echoing down the hall. At times I don't notice it, other times it grates upon you. It's remarkable the range of sounds, sometimes like a bathtub forever draining, like an overfilled washer, listening to it when you're trying to fall asleep you can hear music in the squeaking of the gears, distant, remote, distant muttering voices, melodies, gregorian chants played as if through an ancient gramaphone.
I'm down to one polisher, the other stopped working, the problem somewhere in the motor, intermittent, a victim of my impatience to process the hundreds of pounds of pebbles and fossils we've collected over the year. I've taken it apart as I'm somewhat handy and maybe I'll find time to repair it...
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Handy about the house....
A small celebration is in order, having finally replaced the inner tube in my bicycle.
Which for most people wouldn't even slightly be worth celebrating, but you need to know how my mind works....
Before anything gets done there needs to be a gestation period. Maybe I put it into a list, but writing it down just makes it stressful so I try and keep track of it in my head.
Usually I forget, until I realize I've no clean laundry or dishes or something cues my memory. Letters from the landlord enquiring about the rent. The internet getting cut off. The absence of hot water....In this instance it was the fact that my bike had a flat tire. And so I set out and made a small list (size of inner tube, 26" X 1.75) and purchased the inner tube.
Now usually this would be it. That's plenty productive for any one week. But I took it a step further and googled how to replace a bicycle tire inner tube. There were some instructional videos, and I thought "What the hell" and went outside with a wrench and took apart the bike (I was mortified to discover I'd have to take the wheel off the bike, but upon examination could see why it might be necessary....). And carrying the bike tire, $1.00 in change for the air pump and the new inner tube set out to the service station.
I watched 2 videos on how to replace the inner tube. It seemed simple enough, but I wanted to get it done quick. Probably I didn't need to watch any videos, because I'm pretty handy about the house, when I get around to it, but part of my handiness is my willingness to do a bit of research.
At the service station I spend my first 50 cents slightly inflating the tire as the videos said, then mounted it on the rim and tried to squeeze the tire over the tube. 30 minutes and several explicitives later I was wondering if I'd missed something, it was impossible to get the tube inside the tire and on the rim at the same time. And then I had a little epiphany and took the tire off again, placed the tube inside it, remounted the tire on the rim and was done in 2 minutes. I don't recall them doing that in the videos, probably they thought it was self evident or obvious, but to a handyman like myself precise directions are everything....Rather triumphantly I carried my wheel home, I didn't need the videos after all (because they didn't explain it thoroughly, goddamnit!), and remounted the wheel on my bike.
There were issues, of course, with the brakes (tire came off easily enough when it was flat, but now that it was full....), but I worked through them with my patented "push harder until they break off" school of troubleshooting and when done tested it on a brief spin about the neighborhood.
I'm mobile again.
There's some exploring I have to do, trips to the weaselhead, the Bow river..., but these are seperate posts....
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It'll rip your throat out...
I've been moaning about Pumpkin and how the cat's just don't seem to get along. He finds it kinda funny, politely gets the details, then reassures me with...
"They're just dumb animals, you know"
Now I've never really thought that about any animal, but if one was to persuade me it'd be Pumpkin...
He reflects for a moment.
"There was a case a few years ago, though, some 84 year old in the States, used to torment his cat with a water pistol until one night the cat went in his room while he was sleeping and ripped his throat out...."
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