Cocoposts

Global Warming Snowbird

Unpredictable weather could alter migratory patterns of modern homo wanderosis. 

 

My Shitty Novel

The task was to write 50,000 words in the month of November.  (NaNoWriMo) I was counting pages instead of words, believing this to be more practical and figuring that about 6 pages a day would be manageable at 250 words per page.  But I've been typing single space all month.  Snap.  SO I'M DONE with a first draft anyway.

 

 

Edward Abbey's Cadillac For Sale

1975 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible No Min. No Reserve!

  eBay Motors.

The Danger of Cosmic Genius

Kenneth Brower's piece about Freeman Dyson in The Atlantic is a thorough dissection of Dyson's brand of genius-but-crazy.

In the range of his genius, Freeman Dyson is heir to Einstein—a visionary who has reshaped thinking in fields from math to astrophysics to medicine, and who has conceived nuclear-propelled spaceships designed to transport human colonists to distant planets. And yet on the matter of global warming he is, as an outspoken skeptic, dead wrong: wrong on the facts, wrong on the science. How could someone as smart as Dyson be so dumb about the environment? The answer lies in his almost religious faith in the power of man and science to bring nature to heel. (...)

What the secular faith of Dysonism offers is, first, a hypertrophied version of the technological fix, and second, the fantasy that, should the fix fail, we have someplace else to go.

Somewhere else being into space where, magically technology enabled, we will escape the mess we've made of this rock.  Read the whole thing.  

We've built a long thick asphalt runway in the New Mexico desert with our tax money to prove we believe in the space fantasy that we've got someplace else to go - someplace better to be.*   

 

*Or was that what someone said to me at lunch?

Why Not Cruise?

Chapter next in that book:  Stuck on 950' feet with 4500 other people and no flush toilets.  Having to eat Spam.  Both prospects nauseating alone but together?  Unspeakable.  Which is good because there's no internet or phone either.  I would have to be heavily medicated.     

Carnival Splendor cruiseship had a fire and lost power which happens. (New York Times)  They're getting towed back to San Diego after officials reconsidered logistics of getting thousands of Americans home from Ensenada.  Mexican buses suck.  This and more from Cruise Bruise who claim to have uncovered an earlier unreported fire on another Carnival ship.

NaNoWriMo and Darkness

I'm trying to write 50,000 word draft this month for this National Novel Writing Month challenge thingy.  

I'm finding all sorts of things to distract me.  The 2008 Sparkman Syrah from Yakima Valley and a neato wine aerator beckon.  I dragged them back in my suitcase as gifts from my generous and loving friends. who owed me big time for putting up with their kids. The wine is called Darkness.  It was 10:00am.  

Distractions like dog walking and taking flowers to graves are perfectly justified because the weather is so darn nice.  But I'm also strangely compelled to find out everything about the dancer Lola Montez.* 

Everything is more interesting than sitting down and punching out a story.  In spite of myself I've written thirty pages. Now excuse me while I go learn how to use twitter.

 

 

*The woman at the old hotel in Nevada City, California, home to this portrait of Lola Montez, thought she looks like Mickael Jackson in this rendering.

A Grand and Pleasing Prospect

I beheld the grandest and most pleasing prospect which my eyes ever surveyed.

William Clark on viewing Tilamook Head in today's Ecola State Park, Oregon 

 

A Radical Pessimist

From the Globe and Mail,  Douglas Coupland provides his guide to the next ten years.  And you thought I was dark.  Here's a snip:

9) The suburbs are doomed, especially thoseE.T. , California-style suburbs  This is a no-brainer, but the former homes will make amazing hangouts for gangs, weirdoes and people performing illegal activities. The pretend gates at the entranceways to gated communities will become real, and the charred stubs of previous white-collar homes will serve only to make the still-standing structures creepier and more exotic.

I View

Small house.  Big views.

Less is Still Too Much

After moving into my I-House I was struck by how much furniture I own.  I struck my head, toes, elbows on all this stuff.  I couldn't even find space to put the yoga mat down.  

So after consulting my interior designer friend, who tactfully remarked about the number and diversity of end tables in my collection, I went into a spasm of divestment and called a non-profit to take all Mama's antiques away. 

This enabled me to pull yet more furniture out of the shed and that afternoon I went to the antique store and  bought another table.   And bookshelves.  But things are really looking up.  I can see out the windows now. 

Interesting story in the New York Times about going on a clothes "shopping diet" and people who voluntarily limit themselves to six items of clothing (sixitemsorless.com). 

I can do that.  Since packing and moving most of my clothes are still in bags beneath book boxes in the back of the shed.  I wear a fur to do laundry and sleep in an evening gown.