04.15.10: the dirty dozen, part I {making it}

boy, who knew vacationing while poor makes you really, really poor? we'll while away the weekend picking oakum and dreaming. dreaming is free.

01 alec wilkinson has a piece in this week's new yorker about s.a. andrée, a swedish engineer who tried to fly over the north pole in a hydrogen balloon in 1897. (the expedition failed, but as wilkinson blogged, a french explorer completed the trip just this weekend.) he calls a photo of andrée's downed balloon "desolate" - but it's utterly beautiful, i think. on the five-story "balloon house" the engineer built for his vessel:
The front wall of the house could quickly be pulled down when the balloon was ready to lift off. The floor, as well as every part of the house that might touch the balloon, was covered with heavy felt. The windows were made from gelatin and the roof was cloth.
this is how people turn steampunk.

02 from tara ariano, miami medical inspires our list of 10 other cities in which to set hospital shows. a local spinoff would be something like

Series Setting: Lower East Side, NY
Series Title: "Crossing Delancey" "LES ICU"
Location-Specific Medical Situations: A malfunctioning Shabbos elevator precipitates dozens of exhaustion episodes in a stairwell on the East River; a deadly riot at Doughnut Plant leaves tourists bruised, iced; I sucker-punch a dude in gladiator sandals.

03 on my walk to the office, the local wafel truck:

those imaginative belgians

questionable fiction, to be sure, but the fates could summon something tasty to follow that conjunctive adverb. it is friday.


imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 how does that balloon photo make you feel?

02 what location-specific medical situations would a hospital show in your town crank out?

03 a story made of comments sounds awfully involved, but how about a comment haiku? 5-7-5, to keep things orderly, and one word apiece. for a first word i give you astronauts; please to be adding a word if you so choose.

9 comments:

Amanda said...

01 Like sometimes it is hard to fly. Also, yes.
02 Mine would involve only strollers, large dogs, and hat hair. (The UWS would have been more amusing.)
03 blunder

furiousmuse said...

3: astronauts blunder
cranberries

east side bride said...

sometimes your blog posts make my brain hurt.

in other news, could the "wafel truck" have anything to do with why the gossip girl writers insist on throwing a waffle reference into every new episode?

kidchamp said...

hat hair can be lethal, A. ESB, i've missed several weeks, but wasn't there something about banana pancakes as well? i smelled a gravity's rainbow reference (which would lump my enemies together quite helpfully) until i realized it was a jack johnson thing. waffles...are just rufus being lame? recurrent nonsense worked with the oc, but this show has no seth. i have no idea.

LPC said...

02 couch butt, liberal guilt rash

Milkmaid's dumb friend said...

01: Overwhelmed.
02: From TV Guide:
Denver Generally
8:00pm KWJN ch:3 60min 2010 TV-PG
Episode Info >
All’s Fair: Denver General’s acrimonious transporter Jo (Shannyn Sossamon) is dating Daisy (Rose Byrne), a hippy-dippy graduate school co-ed busy californicating CU Boulder’s campus. After a lover’s spat, and with Nurse Gus (Delroy Lindo) fanning the flames of revenge, Jo proposes a reconciliation dinner at Denver’s oldest restaurant The Buckhorn Exchange. The unthinkable happens when, emboldened by a recent slate-dot-com article on the ethics of oyster eating and Peter Singer’s almost tacit conceding therein*, Daisy, the world’s most credulous vegan, flagrantly eats an entire basket of The Rocky Mountain’s most ignominious variety unawares. Minutes later at the ER, both Jo and Daisy discuss food ethics and whether such a betrayal can ever be forgiven. Special guest Dan Savage. New (CC)
*http://www.slate.com/id/2248998/
03: I propose, with my presumptuous out of sequence ampersand:
Astronauts blunder
Cranberries & gossip
Gravity’s couch butt
Also, busting it freestyle:
Astronauts ancient
While Socrates* pontificates
Sip tang and correct**
*Make note this haiku’s success depends on the pronunciation of the philosopher’s name put forth by Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Theodore Logan in their scholarly recitation History Report (later transposed into book form by Wyld Stallyns Press).
**Ancient astronaut theories are silly outside of H.P. Lovecraft. …right?

kidchamp said...

cruelty-free salves for that rash are hell to track down, LPC.

the mashup is more than acceptable, MDF, ampersand and all - but wouldn't we have beat issues in line 2? i count six, but i misspelled my own name on the PSAT,* so.

ditto denver generally, provided you can work in a cameo with young audio science and/or santorum.

on the second haiku, for my money, bogus journey has always trumped cellar door - and really, who would want to be outside lovecraft?

*lau ren was subsequently offered a number of prestigous scholarships for asian-americans.

Hannah Mae said...

That balloon photo is working in serendipitous tandem to the lugubrious piano music (???) which just came on the jukebox to make me feel like running away from home. Drawing series coming right up!

wabes said...

i finally got to that article last night, and my only word, after, was melancholy. in a traditional, 19th-century sense.