Sunday, July 24, 2011

Summer Sunday afternoons mean

I get to cut the grass. I say "get to" without irony, it is a reward and a rewarding activity for me. We have enough land in grass to justify a riding mower and I'm enough of a peasant dipshit to like the fact that ours is configured to look like a tractor. I enjoy driving tractors, have since I was 14 and worked for Harold Turner and Eddie Wheeler back in North Reading. I also enjoy fantasizing to myself that I'm actually engaged in some sort of physical labor that links me to my ancestors (one G-Granddad a lumberjack in Quebec, another an iron puddler back in Sheffield and Glasgow). No farmers there but something makes me think they weren't all that far separated from their own G-Granddads who probably migrated to the cities from their own ancestral farms.

And the tractor has a cup holder just right for a cold Long Trail Double-Bag Ale.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Sometimes my iPod knocks me out.

As I think I've mentioned, I've reinvented my commute from Hampstead to Nashua & vice-versa by eschewing news and commentary a la NPR and have plugged in to 'GBH's all classical outlet (which used to be WCRB and I guess it still is only now it's public radio), and my iPod, which, though it's teeny, has a capacity of 16 gigabytes which means I have pretty much my entire music collection on it and room for another year's worth of discoveries, etc.

SO anyway I play it on shuffle, and sometimes really nifty stuff comes up (and sometimes something comes up that just puzzles me entirely) and sometimes it just lands on a gem.

This morning's gem was from a compilation album called "Benny Goodman-1935-1936 - Rare Recordings" and featured The King of Swing, plus Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, and Gene Krupa playing "My Melancholy Baby" - the solo breaks were amazing. Another smile-inducer (BG often makes me smile)

Sunday, July 17, 2011

So Austria's reputation for dour inability to get a joke

was cited in one report I heard yesterday about the Pastafarian in the piece below. I happen to think they (the "authorities") not only got the joke but turned it back on the joker.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/07/15/137824732/austrian-man-wins-right-to-wear-pasta-strainer-in-license-photo?sc=nl&cc=es-20110717