I Am Leaving, I Am Leaving But The Fighter Still Remains

I have no idea why I'm back on this blog. I'm hungry, tired, and trying to kill time waiting for the dealership to finish with my car. Overdue inspection times wavy brakes plus recall has meant that I'm spending far more of my Saturday than expected sitting in the dealership waiting room and quasi-paying attention to the 'Good Times' marathon on the TV while other people buy cars. I've had exactly one lemon-lime Gatorade, one Monster Slim Jim, and one cup of passable dealership coffee and also a splitting headache. I expected to be on the road by noon and it's 1:30. Also also I'm killing time by and I have no idea why but I'm rereading both my blog and Drew Mackie's 'Back Of The Cereal Box'. Maybe that's why I unhid the Blogger app. I haven't felt like writing in I don't know how long. The link list was the only truly complete post I had handy so I just stuck it up there. And I'm obviously out of practice for this because I'm having trouble concluding this essay. 

It's been three years. I thought I'd finally given up on this. I can't tell anymore. 

When Did I Bury My Dreams Of Running?

Y'know, it's funny how things change. The following playlists are New Stuff CDs 9 and 10, which, heh heh, have never been commited to an actual CD (as is true for about half of these playlists of mine) thanks to iPods. Specifically, my iPod which no longer functions. I mean, it plays just fine and everything, but the controls are completely shot. Poor thing. I got it during Tekko 2012? 2013? Somewhere around there. Now it sits aside my computer desk gathering dust - and I use my phone to listen to music.

But it doesn't stop there. I'm working in Cranberry, I drive a Ford, I pretty much officially quit smoking, I've lived to see B&LE 643 preserved (somehow) and instead of moving to the South Side I've taken over my grandfather's house. He passed away in 2017.

So yeah, things are not the same as they were when I started this blog, and furthet changed from the blog's heyday. But somehow, I have ended up with some new music. It's one of the few things that hasn't changed - I still manage to find some interesting stuff out there, even though it's less from WYEP these days, and often just random stuff from online - either YouTube or especially Bandcamp these days. And yes I'm still picking up stuff on vinyl. 

So I guess I could play some catch-up. 

New Stuff 9
1. Dancehall Domine - The New Pornographers
2. Break! Break! Tic! Tac! - Satellite Young
3. Only Time - LoFi Delphi*
4. Digital Witness - St. Vincent
5. Lemon Eyes - Meg Myers
6. The Great Unknown - Jukebox The Ghost
7. Light Will Keep Your Heart Beating In The Future - Mike Doughty
8. Science Of A Situation - Pet Clinic*
9. Sedona - Houndmouth
10. 4th And Roebling - The Districts
11. Trying - Bully
12. Kismet Kill - Haley Bonar
13. Pretty Pimpin' - Kurt Vile
14. Outta My Mind - The Arcs
15. Avant Gardener - Courtney Barnett
16. Bury Our Friends - Sleater-Kinney
17. Archie, Marry Me - Alvvays
18. Wildfire - The Mynabirds
19. Shelter Song - Temples
20. Heaven Knows - First Aid Kit

New Stuff 10
1. Big Train - Mike Watt
2. It's A Hit - Rilo Kiley**
3. Something New - Nevada Color*
4. Lightning Bolt - Jake Bugg
5. Gardenia - Iggy Pop
6. Seether - Veruca Salt
7. Ex's & Oh's - Elle King
8. The Party Line - Belle & Sebastian
9. Hitohira No Hanabira - Stereopony
10. Happy Alone - Saintseneca
11. Vaporize - Broken Bells
12. Holiday - Happy Mondays
13. The Distance - Cake
14. Numb - Gary Clark Jr.
15. A Little Evil - Phantom Blue
16. WHat Kind Of Man - Florence & The Machine
17. Into The Black - Chromatics
18. Ambulance Chaser - Triggers*
19. Long Time - Blondie

* All local bands - although I'm having a problem tracking down any official site or anything for Triggers, so if someone could drop a link that would be helpful.
** Ahura Mazdah, is this a blast from the past. I remember watching this in the cafeteria at Penn-Ken. Unfortunately it's mosly an anti-Bush screed, but the music is pretty and the musc video was kinda cool. Oh well. 

All Around The World I've Been Looking For A New

WOR(L)D ASSOCIATION TIME!

Canadian:
bacon

British:

sketch comedy

Scottish:
whisky

Welsh:
coal

Irish:
either whiskey or writers (possibly both at the same time)

French:
resistance

German:
philosophers*

Spanish:
reconquista (suck it, terrorists)

Portuguese:
explorers

Italian:
food

Swiss:
neutrality**

Belgian:
waffles

Nordic:
Trac

Swedish:
murder mysteries

Finnish:
folk metal

Austrian:
arch-dukes

Greek:
more philosophers

Polish:
look, if it weren't for pierogi, Pittsburgh would have half-starved by now

Russian:
fighter jets

Czechoslovakian:
communists

Romanian:
more communists

Bulgarian:
even more communists

Yugoslavian:
different communists

Latvian:
again with the communists

Lithuanian:
shit, i dunno, communists, i guess?

Slovenian:
railfans***

Estonian:
more folk metal

Belorussian:
Really? That's the adjectival form of Belarus? It looks too much like... well, y'know, Russian. Who decides this crap?

Ukranian:
sovereignty

Turkish:
coffee

Syrian:
bread

Lebanese:
actors

Israeli:
self-defense

Egyptian:
walking

Libyan:
terrorism

Tunisian:
Carthage used to be here. Then Rome fucked their shit up. Also George S. Patton was there. Twice, actually.

Algerian:
desert

Moroccan:
Fun Fact: Casablanca, the greatest movie of all time, was set there.

Mexican:
tacos, burritos, chimichangas, etc.

Okay, I'm done.

* With the exceptions of Hegel, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. Utterly clueless, that lot.
** Cheese was a close second.
*** Okay, half-Slovenian. On his dad's side. Hi Matt.

Am I The Only One In The Only World?

The grass is always greener on the other side of the DMZ.

Does The Karate Kid count as a kung-fu movie?

There was that time Jesus told a dumb joke, and it was soter-rible. (It's ok. The Buddah got it.)

A pickpocket's worst fear is a ticklish person. 

You're so lazy you don't even make sense!

Where's that sandbar? I could go for a dry martini.

Cable network WGN should change its callsign to WTR. I mean, all they ever show is Walker, Texas Ranger.*

Ask a question, get a stupid answer.

Why doesn't Sheetz sell schwarma? It would fit in just fine!

I'm unable to decide whether I deserve to be exiled to a monastery or a nude beach.

* That is, when they're not showing the Jason Bourne movies. 

I Felt The Pressure In A TV Way

I have what I consider to be a major quirk. I have this irritating craving to hear the ending of every story I run across on television. And I don't like it.

Eat your heart out, Ned's Atomic Dustbin. 

Here's why: most of what I bumble into, on the sliding scale of depressing to clever, tends to sit on the depressing side (e.g. Law & Order SVU, the various CSIs, Blue Bloods and NCIS are interesting but occasionally go there) and I just can't take much of that without it affecting me. It's really best if I avoid it altogether. It's like vodka in a plastic bottle. You know there's nothing good there, it's not going to leave you feeling any better; but, y'know, it sure is an EXPERIENCE. Yeah. (Spoiler Alert: it's not gluten free either.)

Somehow I've noticed that television is a bigger culprit than movies. Something about the neat one-hour format is both somewhat predictable and simply too neat and tidy for me. Movies (if not edited for time, content and formatted to fit your TV) tend to leave such things more flexible. It might be due to this fact that the scraps of the Jason Bourne movies I've seen seem comparatively more interesting despite only seeing bits on WGN here and there. With a TV show, I can tell if Grissom or Gibbs or 21st-Century-Holmes-And-Watson-Played-By-The-Always-Attractive-Lucy-Liu really have the suspect cornered by looking at the clock. Movie? Fuck me, I lose track of time when I don't have commercials at regular intervals. And that's a good thing.

I wonder if the fact that there's more freedom to choose precisely what you want to watch when selecting a movie over plopping down for a TV episode that's effectively been selected for you makes any difference in how I feel about it. (I mean, for years we've all been told - yes, you too - abut what junk TV beams into our homes, and I tend to agree in general. The cadmium age of reality television pretty much codified that for me.) And that's actually another thing: I get tired of murder for after dinner every night. Murder in a movie doesn't bother me near so much. A good murder mystery movie - like one of my personal favorites, the 1974 Murder On The Orient Express - is a complete experience, something to set aside a serious chunk of time to enjoy, experience, and savor. What use is a meal without SOMETHING to chew on? There's always a loose thread, something that just gnaws at you. And sometimes that thread turns out to be a descending whip - a plot twist that breaks everything you thought you knew to be reliable and solid. Hitchcock knew. Every movie of his has something to make you want to see the next scene. Commercial breaks utterly spoil the flow of a theatrical movie; TV shows are made with them in mind. They are in effect pre-spoiled for your convenience (I love this turn of phrase. Sorry if I overuse it in real life).* I've always felt that having to work around commercials somehow makes the work compromised; kills the flow, forces shortcuts, makes it easy to slouch into routines defined by those very breaks and just become the dreaded phone-in that everyone loses interest in.

I think another thing that contributes is the need for closure. Since the beginning of time, humans have yearned to have their questions answered. How many people went off to war, or to find work, or whatever, and simply disappeared from the lives of their families, never to return? Not even with the grim uncertainty of being recorded as missing in action? No grave, not so much as a sliver of evidence they were there besides fallible memory? Sure, that may not have been the same relationship as it is today; but even so, any emotional connection would lead one to wonder just what happened. If a TV show can get just one hook into your reserve of emotional interest, of course it's going to drive you to find out. If a writer and an actor and a production team can distill an emotional connection with a face on a TV screen to a strength addictive enough that just ten seconds of NTSB-delivered presence can drag you in front of the screen by the feels and keep you there; there's obviously something inside you that's been prepared, over the course of human history, to respond, to follow along. It's a part of you, if you're not a sociopath (y'know, like the villains-of-the-weeks on Criminal Minds, especially).

Another thing is that with SO MUCH screen time devoted to finding the murderer within an hour(ish); you know, you just know that somewhere along the line, plots are going to be reused. Maybe not by the same shows, or even on the same network, but eventually, some writer is going to stumble on a used idea. A good writer should be able to use it in a unique way, or at least put their own unique stamp on it; but some core element is going to turn out to be suspiciously similar to one previously aired. At least South Park once pointed out that The Simpsons already did it all. Which, ironically, was kind of original, actually.

I think if less time were devoted to murder and ugly street crime (something many of us tune in to fiction for an escape from [and not counting alleged 'reality' TV, either, which is pretty ugly too]) I'd be more inclined to tune in; I actually miss Letterman, Leno, and Ferguson, for one thing (who'd a'thunk?). Sitcoms don't usually do much for me; Britcoms are preferable, actually. Original and interesting stand-up comedy may have died with Mitch Hedberg, unfortunately. And British sketch comedy is far better than what passes for the American variety these days - even old British sketch comedy. Canadian isn't too shabby, though. At least even Lost managed to contain enough of an element of mystery to keep people talking about it. Game Of Thrones? The Shanarra series now on (really?) MTV? I'll just take the original novels, thanks.

I know I've written some bite-size diatribes against television before; but that was typically in offense against some specific piece of televised waste. Not this time. I'm finally declaring to the world that I am officially done with broadcast and cable television. I just can't fucking tolerate it anymore. Paul Graham recently wrote that anything you find yourself saying that life is too short to contain, you should fucking jettison (paraphrased).

TV, consider yourself by-and-large jettisoned from my life. It was already too short for you once I stopped watching Shining Time Station and Walker, Texas Ranger. Politely fuck off.

* I should clarify that my dislike of commercials is not part of some diatribe against consumerism; rather it's because I find them personally irritating. Imagine if your TV suddenly got zits one day. I'm certainly no anti-capitalist; I just exult in the fact that the Information Age makes it possible to seek out the products one wants with far more... interactive interaction. Or maybe with more agency on the part of the customer. Something like that.

My City Had Been Pulled Down, Reduced To Parking Spaces

So you all know about the story behind the cover of Crosby, Stills & Nash's self-titled debut, right?

Oh.

Well, then I guess I'll tell you!

So, when it came time to pick the cover art for the group's self-titled debut, they hadn't yet finalized the name of the band. So they decided to get a jump on the art, and found a vacant house in West Hollywood outside of which a sofa had been left behind. So they plopped down for a seat to get the photo - Nash, Stills, and Crosby, from left to right.

As the album neared its release date, the group settled on 'Crosby, Stills & Nash' as the band's moniker; but realized that they were lined up backwards in the photo as a result! So they went back to retake the photograph, but when they arrived at the address, only a pile of lumber remained.

Also, I didn't know that Dallas Taylor, CS&N's drummer, wasn't there for the photograph, but was pasted in the back door window afterwards. Found that out at the CS&N (maybe Y, maybe not) website. I've always found the story an amusing piece of rock trivia.

But it's funny how history can repeat itself.

In 2004, The Black Keys used a vacant tire plant in their hometown of Akron as a studio to record their third album, Rubber Factory. The disc was enough of a success to break on to the Billboard album charts after release and increased their fanbase by an order of magnitude.

Seven years later, Pat and Dan were celebrating ten years of rocking together after some tough times; the smash-rock album El Camino debuted as a result in 2011, with the art reflecting their hometown and beginnings as a band. Thus the album itself featured the Chrysler and Ford vans they toured in very early on; and the singles had scenes from around Akron. The most curious of these was the single for 'Lonely Boy', which featured a bulldozer on a vacant lot, with rubble piled in the background.

Turns out that the band wanted a photo of the factory where Rubber Factory had been recorded, but it had been torn down not long before they arrived! Dan quipped in an interview in 2011 that "We keep stumbling into these profound artistic expressions. That's how we roll, though." Also, I was under the impression that the factory had appeared on the Rubber Factory sleeve, but I'm not sure what building it is, mainly because none appear to be suitable candidates. If someone could clear that little mystery up for me, I'd be grateful.

This Here's A Story 'Bout The House Rent Blues

"I'm terribly sorry, Toby old chap, but you're ineligible for unemployment being that you're, well... a locomotive."

So I was laid off from my most recent job (a temp assignment in Murrysville) a couple weeks ago. That's not a good feeling, especially with student loans to keep up with. Worse still, I had really gotten to like the place and especially the people there. But I will say one thing with certainty: Of the two jobs I had previously left behind, I will never go back to either of them under any circumstances.

Yes, I started out, like so many other vaguely fresh-faced young people working at McDonald's. One thing that was, however, different in my case was that I began after college. I left State College without having completed my degree, and without one jot of experience. (Looking back, a year of the place BEFORE college might have changed some things for me. I also think it would be wise to look for a small amount of job experience in college admissions, but hey - what do I know?) I think everyone can relate to the kind of suckage that such jobs seemingly consistently are, so I thin I'll pass on talking about most of it. My coworkers were the usual mix; mostly local high school kids and the like. There were some of the crew I liked and some I didn't; and the owners were good guys but with autocratic tendencies.

That said, what I got tired of fast was the customers. Most were fairly indifferent; and really, if any were outright nice people, there was no time to find out. But the bad ones, holy fucking shit. Typically the bad customers were just miserable, clueless (one time the nearest Wendy's had to close their drive-thru because some idiot managed to wreck into it, and so their customers came to us - and ORDERED WENDY'S MENU ITEMS.), or expected to get stuff for free (e.g. the wad that canceled his order because there was a 50-cent charge to add lettuce to his sandwich, and said rather loudly that he'd go to Wendy's because he'd get it for free, not factoring in that Wendy's is pricier...). But let me tell you, we had some real lunatics come though. Like the cranky old biddy who complained about yellow crap in the vanilla milkshake we served her. It turned out to be VANILLA SYRUP. Y'know, the actual FLAVOR. And she went on this rant about how we were all terrible at running the restaurant and how supposedly her 30s-ish son sitting there in the dining room right then could do better. Or the people who got MORE disappointed when we fixed their complaints. Yeah. That actually happened.

I finally got fed up with this crap, and found another job. In hindsight, the better option might have been politics, or maybe guerilla warfare. Mainly because said job turned out to be Leed's. What a beyond worthless, entire-family-fucking piece of ass crap waste-of-time company this turned out to be. Spoiler alert: I eventually walked out. I managed to piss away four years there on 50+ hour weeks and sometimes weekends. But worse - remember my complaints about the customers at McDonald's? Well, now I WORKED WITH THEM. Sure, I had some good coworkers, but all in all, most of them were lucky enough to move on or unlucky enough to get fired by the time I was done. And you wouldn't believe what it took to get rid of the bad ones. Especially when some of them were friends with a supervisor. I have said that I would refuse to go back even at gunpoint, and I mean it. Surely getting shot would be less painful.

But fortunately, there's a happy ending to this story. Sort of. For the time being, at least. I'm employed again and have returned to the job I lamented losing at the start of this essay (read: rant). I was ready to go to another assignment elsewhere in the Valley; everything was in by last Friday and we were just waiting on the company to respond. Monday, I get a call that the company that laid me off was looking for someone in a different department. I really struggled with such a short-notice decision, but in the end, I elected to return.

They Just LOOOOOVE To Watch Her Strut

I blame that stupid civet coffee.

All I thought I was doing was telling my coworkers that I'd prefer to stick with my favorite coffee. And the one guy, who shall remain nameless, starts LAUGHING.

Let me start at the beginning. When I got to work on Tuesday, a couple of my coworkers were talking about that really expensive coffee that's reclaimed from some cat. It's horrible. Yes, after that cat has eaten the coffee beans. No, I'm not making this up. It's too dumb to be bullshit (as it were), sadly.

It's very costly coffee, wherever it comes from. There's maybe half a ton made every year going for $600/lb; that's in comparison to 2.6 million tons of ordinary coffee in a year from Brazil alone at around $3 to $6 per pound. When they started talking about who could afford to drink this crap, I mentioned that I'd not be tempted to give up the dark roast brewed up by the Beehive coffee shop on the South Side. And my apparently easily amused coworker starts cracking up, barely restraining himself. 

Now, such a thing would make sense had I expressed interest, rather than disgust, at the idea of fiendishly expensive cat poop coffee. But there was something else going on. He wasn't even thinking about the aforementioned coffee, but rather the name of my favorite coffee shop, and those of you who often drive US-22 between Delmont and Blairsville may see the problem. I had forgotten that there are two 'Beehives' in the area.

Yes, his first thought was not the funky little neighborhood coffee shop caddy-corner from Starbucks on 14th and East Carson; but rather the, shall we say... 'erotic venue'... just east of Delmont that shares the name. The one that I've been informed is not really all that great, actually. My coworker certainly derived quite the afternoon of amusement by imagining me drinking coffee while surrounded by scantily-clad ladies. It's pretty funny, actually, if you're not imagining the place as an utter dump. 

But If You Wanna Win You Gotta Learn How To Play

"It's the Ore Whore of the Hour!" said the Clock That Ended The Great Depression.

Welcome to Pen-And-Pencilvania.

Ladies, don't go half-assed and ask for 'one panty please'.

Top o' the morning, bottom of the ninth.

It's the difference between the numinous and the bituminous.

This Pistol Range Is Clothing Optional. You May Encounter Nude Recreators With Concealed Handguns.

"Mr. Spector, tear down this wall!"

Once you calm down, don't forget to leave yourself a Post-Snit Note.

Give me some aspartame, baby.

WARNING: The mind, heart and soul subsystems contain no user-serviceable parts. Please return to manufacturer for qualified service.

I think Ludwig Wittgenstein would be impressed. F.A. Hayek, not so much.

But I Guess Until I Get MY Car Back This Will Do

Self-driving cars suck.

No, I mean it. I guess I'm officially some kind of luddite for this, but a future of Google-type self-driving cars sounds like the most sterile and soulless thing I've ever heard short of Communism. Either that, or it sounds like the revenge of the Parry People Mover. (Note to self: great movie idea right there.)

And yes, I can see some advantages to self-driving cars. People who need to get around, but have a disability that prevents them from operating a conventional vehicle, or an elderly person who may have to give up their license could benefit from such a technological advance. But you will never see me pop into one of these things. I object to the idea from beginning to end. 

For starters, just look at this thing. 

It looks terrible. It looks absolutely derpy. This is the Nerdmobile 9001, even more so than Rick Moranis' solar powered van from Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. Google has other prototypes based on the Toyota Prius, and Audi and Lexus vehicles as well, but I'm still not impressed. Principally because the goofy thing you see above is supposed to be the production model. The modified vehicles have, so far, been used as system testbeds, rather than representing any self-driving version of their manufacturer's product. Of course, one would wonder why Google hasn't decided to try modding a Tesla electric sports car, or dare to automate a '68 Dodge Charger. 

And this brings me to my more important point: there are some of us that just enjoy driving. The Telsa roadster and the '68 Dodge are fun to drive, to operate by hand, to actually control with two hands on the wheel. It's that feeling of control that is going to trip Google up, I think. Sure, there are some people who just view driving as a chore, and would probably be perfectly open to traveling by autonomous vehicle. Maybe they will, in fact, be a majority. But there will always be those of us who prefer to drive ourselves. 

Besides, it just might make it harder to take a trip without much of a plan. It certainly seems like the interface is all about plugging in your destination and away you go, end of story. I can't imagine going railfanning in one of these, where the idea is in fact to stop at places along the tracks to watch and take pictures. That's far easier to do manually. A Sunday drive with an impulsive stop at a yard sale or two? Can you just hit a big red button and stop the car? I have my doubts. Try taking a road trip - again, the destination is vague and the itinerary is flexible in the extreme - can the Googmobile handle that? What if Junior has to use the facilities on a longer trip? That's going to be a real problem in more ways than one. The freedom and control of the automobile as we know it even today is a plus, and I worry that autonomous cars will take a big chunk of that away. 

Maybe, though, we're safe for the time being. The Atlantic has a story that details the technology and its vast scope, pointing out that it's not yet possible to plop one of these cars down in, say, Pittsburgh, and have it start driving. And when they come to Pittsburgh, I want to watch one of these things try to tackle Penn Hills, or the South Side on a Friday night. Meanwhile, Slate takes a more pessimistic view; hell, their subtitle even says it 'may never actually happen'. 

I don't know about you, but I'm perfectly happy to sit behind the wheel for the next fifty years. I guess we'll see if they're still making actual cars then. 

From Wikipedia

Sure, why not. 

Questions, Questions I Can't Answer

Maybe you can help me with these. I'm at a loss.

What is that spice you find every once in a while in certain brands of pepperoni that tastes like licorice?

Hey, Colin Meloy - what is Decemberism, anyway?

What would happen if, instead of anesthetic, you were given a synesthetic before surgery?

Who else has the irresistible urge to pronounce the frequently asked questions page (FAQ) as 'fuck you'?

Is Husker Du considered heavy metal? I can't tell just from listening.

Whenever I watch one of the new Star Trek movies, why do I keep wanting to call Lieutenant Uhura 'Princess Uhura'?

How come every time I say something crazy, people take it to mean I'm normal? (Or, by what standard do they judge such outbursts?)

Why does my job give me heartburn? (It's not like I'm eating it. [Oh, wait, I know the answer to this one.])

Robot Minds Of Robot Slaves Lead Them To Atomic Rage

Well, that's cute. Another dream to report. This was over a week ago.

I was in a warehouse somewhere, and for some reason I was handling items removed from nuclear reactors (no apparent protective gear either).

There were two pairs of items. The first was a pair of dense metal plates, about the shape and size of an eight inch long chunk of yardstick. They were black with a red stripe, and I thought they were out of a German reactor.

The other two were plastic shells, black with blue highlights, shaped somewhat like a Tamagotchi (holy shit, remember those?), but about the size of the palm of my hand. There were magnetic tape reels inside, like you'd find in a cassette tape. One was damaged and the tape was trailing out. These seemed to come from a British reactor.

Why the shapes, and what purpose these... items had is lost on me. Equally strange is the association of the shape, color and apparent national affiliation of each pair. It's been a heck of a couple of weeks for dreaming.

The Jingle, The Rumble And The Roar

As a longtime railfan and model railroader, I'm inclined to notice trains-not just where they're normally found, on the railroad itself; but also in popular culture. I mean, I went and saw Unstoppable (and pointed out all the technical mistakes) and managed to enjoy it.

But I also take in the cultural, less railroad-centric depictions of trains and rail travel, and one of the more mind-boggling trends I've noticed is that the cultural icon for trains, for rail travel and transportation is the steam locomotive. 

The problem is that I, as a railfan, know that this idea is horribly out-of-date. Steam traction hasn't been used by a Class 1 railroad in the USA since 1960, and by Britain since 1968. Other parts of the world may have varied (China used mainline steam until the late 2000s, but some Chinese industries and tertiary lines still operate steam locomotives to some extent) but the public's eye hasn't turned away from the hulking, hissing, steam-belching machine that ruled the rails from the first time that machines were created to power transportation. I've primarily collected examples from my hometown of Pittsburgh, but surely others exist elsewhere. The following ad that appeared for a while on East Carson St. is a prime example. 

The Love Train is apparently a 2-8-2 Mikado-type. Therefore, love is freight?

The impetus for this discussion was actually the music video for Scottish-American singer Sheena Easton's hit '9 to 5 (Morning Train)'; the song came out in 1981, thirteen years after British Railways laid its last steam locomotives to rest. 

There is a certain nostalgic appeal to the portrayal of railways in the video that justifies the use of steam; the views of the signalboxes, the traditional architecture of the station, and other elements of rail infrastructure point to a 1950's-era setting, when steam traction would be appropriate. Even in the 1980's, British Rail's infrastructure was still using elderly - albeit time-tested - facilities and equipment for a surprising portion of their daily operations, modern though their motive power and rolling stock would be. Wikipedia relates that the video was indeed shot at the Bluebell Railway, the first heritage railway in the UK to open for the preservation of vintage railway equipment. Similarly, American country musician Josh Turner found himself at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum for the video accompanying his hit 'Long Black Train', in 2003. Tennessee Valley 2-8-0 number 610 played the role as the titular train. 

But trains and music have a long history; quite a long list of traditional, folk, and country songs from the previous two centuries revolve around trains. In the time before the automobile and the airplane, it was the fastest and most efficient mode of transport. Country music certainly did its share of idolizing the steam locomotive, but that's not where we're going with this. What the meat of this essay will be is the headscratchers, the out-of-place iconography, the non-rail-centric subject - like our above ad.

Here's one: this logo used by the Paul Simon Job Corps Center of Chicago.

The Job Corps program doesn't seem to have a railroad curriculum, so this one is kind of a mystery. 

The Starlite Lounge in Blawnox, PA has this mural on their wall, depicting Grand Trunk Western 4-8-4 6325 in its Ohio Central guise, as a 'Hoboken Line' train. One would think trains of New York City would first call to mind the subway. 

Perhaps an equally valid question would be why refer to a 'Hoboken Line' in a Pittsburgh suburb.

Here's the logo of a restaurant at the Snowshoe Ski Resort in West Virginia that we almost dined at during our trip to the Cass Scenic Railroad. It's called 'The Junction'. 

This is not so unjustified an example, actually; as the locomotive in the logo is a Shay. These were geared locomotives built for rough terrain that a typical reciprocating locomotive would have had trouble with. The nearby Cass Scenic is one of a very few heritage railroads operating these unique locomotives. The Junction was a little bit pricey for us, so we ended up eating at another place we liked better two nights in a row. 

This billboard advertising a child care center appeared on East Carson St. near the Waterfront mall. 

This one is somewhat appropriate, since the train depicted is a toy. 

And these are just the few I've seen recently. There must be others out there. If you find one that fits, send me a picture. If I get enough, I may have to post a sequel. 

This Bulkhead's Made Of Fallen Brethren's Bones

Something that always confounded me - when you look at the word 'predecessor', you realize that it seems to mean 'the one who died before'. That's weird right there.

Does that mean I get to live forever?

But what really baffles me is that we use this word in everyday conversation to MEAN 'the one who came before'. As in, 'Oh, yeah, he's the guy who worked here before you and then DIED, and also I'm saying this as casually as can be.' Seriously, how awkward is that? It's not like everyone who's ever had to be replaced died first.

All The Other Kids With The Pumped Up Kicks

I want to talk about the end of an era. Not anything that's been on the news, but something I do want to remember. It's this pair of shoes.

Thanks to Jake for the arm.

If you look closely, you'll see that they're completely destroyed. That right sole is half peeled away from the rest of the shoe, they're riddled with holes, and it's a miracle that the original laces are still in any useful condition.

When I first began pounding the pavement on the South Side after work or whenever the hell I felt like it, I found that the best shoes I could wear were these elderly Chucks. I'd been given them sometime during college and rarely wore them; but as I began to enjoy the Pittsburgh nightlife, I kept preferring these over my Reeboks for some reason. Somehow, the Chucks were far more comfortable for the bar crawling I was doing, and when it comes to hitting the hipster bars, they looked about right (even though Stuff Hipsters Hate claims that Chucks are out. I disagree). 

But it didn't end there. These shoes have been to two or three states and picked up mud on numerous railfan trips. Parties and family gatherings saw them out; and I'm certain that a lot of beer, liquor, barbeque sauce and pipe tobacco ash have pelted and rained upon them while I wore them almost everywhere I went. They didn't make it to Puerto Rico as I was worried about wearing them through airport security and didn't quite have space in my suitcase for them. And they've only been worn to work once, when I had a day off and had forgotten something in my locker. 

Sadly, though, they began to take on the epically beaten appearance you see on them in the photo I've posted. That right sole began to peel so badly it was folding over and dragging when I walked. They had hit a level of lifetime mileage that would finally put them out of service. 

Fortunately, I received a replacement pair for my birthday recently; this pair is red, rather than the original pair's black with red lining. And they're a little bit different from their predecessors, but in the long run I don't mind that at all. (I wanted green but that's another story.)

Should I bury them or give them a Viking funeral?

(Hum Beethoven's Fifth Symphony While You Read This)

Who else has seen The Longest Day? Possibly my favorite movie set in the Second World War, it tells the improbable tale of the Allied landings on the Normandy beaches, beginning the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe.

One of the plot elements of the movie, and which was a real operation by the Allies through the BBC, was the broadcasting of secret messages to French Resistance groups behind the lines. The messages were nonsense in and of themselves, but to the Resistance fighters, they were the go signal for prearranged operations against the German occupiers.

Even today, it is suspected that the so-called 'numbers stations' heard around the world on odd frequencies and seemingly broadcasting nonsense or otherwise incomprehensible content are actually a way for governments to broadcast instructions to spies and other operatives around the world.

Last week's City Paper (you know, the one they can't give away) featured a cover story on Dock Ellis, the Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher who, reputedly and infamously, threw a no-hitter against San Diego while under the influence of LSD. But it also contained a regular horoscope feature, and this is a selection from the Leo entry (my sign, of course, he said in a leonine fashion... and nobody was amused).

"...I surmise that you are now in a position to launch a project that could follow a similar arc. It would be more modest, of course. I don't foresee you ultimately becoming an international corporation worth billions of dollars. But the success would be bigger than I think you can imagine."

First off, no (stereotypical) Leo would have much of an ear for being told that the chance to be kinda-sorta neato, in a small way is not to be passed up - the sign is named for the traditional king of beasts, after all. But also, who, me? Maybe it's just me not paying attention, but nothing's coming to me as far as project ideas. And even though the past few weeks has seen readership on the blog mysteriously explode, this would be a project already started. I don't understand what this is telling me. Surely there's someone else who could capitalize on this surely timely advice.

Maybe, though, that's the key. Maybe the arcane advice of a daily horoscope is somehow akin to the signals broadcast to alert the patriots of France that their liberation was about to begin; there are messages being sent to everyone, but only the right people will react to them - in the right time, and in the right way.

It makes sense to me.

I'm Packing My Bags For The Misty Mountains

As of late I've been obsessively re-reading The Hobbit, The Lord of The Rings, and The Silmarillion. While beginning The Fellowship Of The Ring, I noticed a line that seemed out of place for Tolkien. It occurs during Bilbo's birthday party, in describing one of Gandalf's fireworks:

"Out flew a red-golden dragon - not life-size, but terribly life-like: fire came from his jaws, his eyes glared down; there was a roar, and he whizzed three times over the heads of the crowd. They all ducked, and many fell flat on their faces. The dragon passed like an express train, turned a somersault, and burst over Bywater with a deafening explosion."

As far as I can recall, this is the only simile Tolkien uses of an anachronistic nature. Whenever I read the line, it draws me out of the story ever so slightly, but it's not that big a quibble.

However, I'm not so excited about seeing the final installment of the Hobbit movies as the above may indicate. I was by and large pleased with An Unexpected Journey. At the time, my opinion on the changes made to the story were largely favorable.

One change in the overall story made this chapter for me: the flashback to the battle with Azog before the gates of Moria and the origin of Thorin's surname of Oakenshield. It's not in The Hobbit; rather, it's additional material included in the appendices to Lord Of The Rings, which are included after the conclusion in Return Of The King. Scenes of Gandalf, Elrond, Saruman and Galadriel debating their courses of action against The Necromancer - they make up the 'White Council' mentioned in Rings - helped give some sense of the epic scope of Tolkien's legendarium and linked the two trilogies. Bilbo's riddle game with Gollum was well and truly done. There was one pair of riddles exchanged that wasn't in the movie, but the omission seems to have harmed the movie little if at all.

I'll admit that the appearance of Radagast in both movies was a little bit on the goofy side, even though his introduction is also a setup for The Necromancer and the perils of Mirkwood. I guess I was also mostly comfortable with the addition of Azog as an additional antagonist pursuing Thorin and his companions, and I had figured that The Desolation Of Smaug would treat the story just as well. I wasn't as impressed.

One of the things that I missed was the introduction of the dwarves (as well as the wizard and hobbit) to Beorn. I liked how, in the original novel, Gandalf uses a clever tactic to open Beorn up to aiding the party. Instead of introducing everyone at once, Gandalf and Bilbo begin the introductions; and they continue with the dwarves coming two at a time, intentionally interrupting Gandalf's tale of their journey so far. This effectively keeps Beorn on the edge of his seat, and gradually opens up the idea of helping out so many of them. It also demonstrates Gandalf's wits to complement his wizardry, and that's why it's one of my own favorite events in the tale. That said, I was impressed with Gandalf's investigation into the return of Sauron, right until the reveal - and the somewhat cheesy Eye manifestation. Cutting that down to just a foreboding flash would have been less annoying and a bit more startling.

Also, one of my obsessive re-readings of Return Of The King took me into the appendices again. I was reminded that at the end of the battle before Moria, when Azog was defeated, he was beheaded by Dain Ironfoot - the same character that leads the dwarves in the Battle Of Five Armies - and his head placed on a pike before the gates. To a purist fan, the addition of Azog to the story involves an act of narrative necromancy (ironically enough) and would likely end up grating. I'm kind of unhappy with it myself. Since Bolg, alleged son of Azog, is the orc captain in the climactic battle, the writers could have used him instead. Revenge would not be an unreasonable motive for the crooked goblins of Middle-Earth.

I was interested by the glimpse we get of Bard - a well-rounded family man - and I was intrigued by the reinterpretation of the 'black arrow' as a bow-fired artillery dart instead of a typical arrow. That said, one of the most important parts of the climax, ostensibly to be seen in The Battle Of The Five Armies, is Bard's downing of Smaug. The plot thread of the hole in Smaug's gold-encrusted underbelly,  Bilbo's discovery of this fatal weakness, and the eavesdropping thrush passing the information to Bard at his last stand is supposed to be a key part of it. I guess this isn't necessary, with the apparent change to one loose scale in his hide as Smaug's weak point. The idea of a dragon who is wise to his one weakness - his soft underbelly - and does something about it - lying on the hoard so that the treasure embeds itself into his skin - is such a fantastical element and a treat for the imagination. I cannot fathom why nothing was made of it at all.

The two gripes I have that stick the hardest are the subplots concerning the elves and the social unrest in Esgaroth, and the overblown 'battle' between the dwarves and Smaug. To me, the subplots are unnecessary and therefore distracting. While I had expected a likely appearance by Legolas to visually connect the two trilogies, I wasn't enthralled by the Legolas-Tauriel-Kili love triangle. It simply felt like it didn't belong. Just a glimpse into Thranduil's realm would have been enough. That's all we get in the book. And we didn't need to see the spectre of class envy dragged into Esgaroth. It was all unnecessary talk, and added nothing to the core story, the one I paid nine bucks to see. The 'battle' was too implausible, even for a fantasy story; and it dragged on, no pun intended.

None of these additions came from Tolkien-authored source material, as far as I know. And Tolkien's story is what I'm missing. Somehow, Peter Jackson forgot how he made The Lord Of The Rings, and it shows in the prequel trilogy. I would have been happy with two movies, with truer additions and interpretations, and less fanfiction. So, yeah, maybe when this winter comes and the last movie comes out, I'll stay home and read the book instead. I'm sorely tempted to do so.

Snapshot Image Froze Without A Sound

As an aside, I should explain something about my photography approach in case I end up posting photos focused on people.

I'm used to photographing trains.

There's no way to pose a moving freight train exactly where you want it; it's more of a challenge of geography and timing and initiative. It's what I call the 'shoot what's really there' approach, with the resulting documentary atmosphere. No preparation, no touch-up, not even clearing the weeds, Lance. As soon as an interesting subject is found, I shoot as I find and move on. I also have a preoccupation with taking a good image, regardless of subject.

As a result, I suck at photographing people. I find myself trying to take the same approach as I do in railfan photography, and I top out at the level of candid photographs. I end up freezing their image as they are, rather than when they're ready to present themselves. There's not much preparation that twenty thousand tons of steel and cargo moving at fifty miles per hour can do to 'smile for the camera', in comparison. Taking photos in this manner could be off-putting for some people, I've since realized. It might be that my method presumes a familiarity with the people in the viewfinder that I may not really have, catching them in such casual (perhaps intimate?) moments.

It reminds one of the stories of African tribespeople who thought that a photo taken of them would steal part of their soul. Maybe there's something to that.

Is She Promised To The Night, And Her Head Has No Room?

I just realized something. We're using a word in two surprisingly opposed senses, given that both senses involve gender. We're talking about racks, people.

We refer to these as such:

Sama-style

It's the antlers that we're concerned with. Antlers, or horns in sheep and cattle, are a giveaway that the animal is a mature male. Meanwhile, we also refer to this with the same term:

Thanks, Wikipedia...

Yes, we're talking about boobs. Again, they're a sure biological sign that we're looking at (and quite distractedly, I must add) a mature woman. So somehow, we took the term the term for the second most distinctive male physical characteristic in the animal kingdom and used it as a slang term for the second most distinctive indication of human femininity. 

Is this a current thing? Is the meaning of rack as slang-for-breasts a recent development, or does it have more of a history than I would guess? The internet doesn't have a clear answer so for the time being I'm at a loss. 

This confuses me, if I think too much:

Uh... nice rack(s)?

Now I Don't Know How To Feel, I've Got Bulldog Skin

I don't understand it.

I'm vacillating - oscillating, really, between two sets of feelings - One shining and pure, the other a sense of waste on many levels and in many interpretations. In order, the last few books I've read (and this might give a clue as to the source of my emotional pinballing) are: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Hobbit, The Fellowship Of The Ring (only so far as Frodo's arrival in Rivendell), and Generation X by Douglas Coupland. The last I just picked up today for 99 cents in a thrift store on the South Side (along with a fistful of oldies on their original labels, natch) and interrupted my revisit to Middle-Earth to check it out. I'm still not finished with the novel, but it's a strange tale of Southern California hipsterism, apparently published just before it was cool. And it's a vividly shitty and emotionally empty view of the world.

My reading list has turned into the emotional equivalent of the liar paradox, almost; and I sit here emotionally supertasking for almost no discernable reason. I can only guess that the sense of depression I got from reading the first Larsson novel and following up a few days later with the second needed healed with Tolkien's fantasy world, about as richly and glowingly conceived as the Sweden of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist seems to be dulled and darkened by filth and sex, the SoCal of Dag, Andy and Claire weatherbeaten and warmed-over (or cleverly hand-distressed to appear as such?). I'm bewildered and depressed, yet again, by Coupland and his knack for picking apart the lives of twentysomethings who feel equal parts smothered and abandoned by the (post-)modern world. Strangely, I feel as though Tolkien gives to the hobbits returning home at the end of The Return Of The King the same chance to remake their world in their own image as the disaffected youth of Coupland's novel seem to long for. Saruman as mass marketer? A strange instance of applicability, especially as opposed to the disavowed allegory alluded to in Fellowship's foreword.

Cut away the garbage, the hype, the careers, the fads and the fast food, and you get to what makes people, well, human. Somehow, tragedy and challenge make characters, make strong and real ones; and comfort and plenty and reward, bizarrely, will in like fashion unmake them. I still don't get it, but I think I know what it is I'm not getting.