Kinetic Loop

“The undying scenes we can all see if we shut our eyes are not the scenes that we have stared at under the direction of guide-books; the scenes we see are the scenes at which we did not look at all–the scenes in which we walked when we were thinking about something else–about a sin, or a love affair, or some childish sorrow. We can see the background now because we did not see it then. So Dickens did not stamp these places on his mind; he stamped his mind on these places.” G.K. Chesterson

A quick shot from the other side of the train.

My husband and I spent the previous weekend in Woodstock, IL, and I’d like to point out a few discrepancies between the marketing text and the actual place.

They say, “Woodstock, IL has a unique and beguiling character.” I say (with apologies to Fear), Woodstock’s all right if you like disaffected teenagers and cars with loud bass. They say, “breathtaking 1890’s town square.” I say, poorly-maintained town square, surrounded by bass cars that pass every few minutes. And what is the correct noun of assembly for disaffected teens? For girls it’s a bevy; for boys, a horde is appropriate. Both nouns would get frequent use in Woodstock — especially in their town square.

Perhaps the best thing about Woodstock was the bowling alley that dates back to 1941, making it McHenry County’s oldest operating bowling center (or possibly the second oldest). The alley has been using automatic pins since the 1950s, and is one of the few in the country with an above-ground ball return.

I’m going to the Ray Bradbury-esque Woodstock (IL) for the weekend. I’ll leave you with a coffee heist and Gary Shteyngart on Bangkok: “Woe to a hairy man in the world’s hottest city. Bangkok: where the three so-called seasons—Hot, Wet, and Why are you doing this to me?—are a furball’s primordial nightmare.”

In “creatures at airports” news…

A shipment of sundry creatures — including scorpions, turtles, tarantulas and frogs — were abandoned at the Mexico City airport.

Also, jackals, raptors and large monitor lizards crowded a New Delhi airport runway.

Moving on….

Conceptual designer Martí Guixé is making food more user-friendly.

PingMag goes to Vendex Japan, the vending machine manufacturer’s exhibition.

All-female roller derby is gaining legitimacy as a sport. I found it interesting that leagues are structured as skater-owned, skater-operated LLCs, with bylaws and boards of directors. Condy Rice should add that to her post-White House roster of board seats.

Whence the name Jennifer?

The Fisher-Price Zen Collection: Over-designed and disturbingly un-Zen, especially the Gliding Bassinette, which looks like Liberace’s teapot.

Lastly, this outdoor ad for Taste of Chicago (see pic below) is just embarrassing. “Taste’s Better Every Year”? No one caught that?

“Think of it. On the surface there is hunger and fear. Men still exercise unjust laws. They fight, tear one another to pieces. A mere few feet beneath the waves their reign ceases, their evil drowns. Here on the ocean floor is the only independence. Here I am free!”

“A spider monkey used a garden hose to scale the wall of a moat at a Michigan City zoo before being captured at a nearby boat dealership.”

“…which, when the correct ones were used, yielded drawers containing acrylic letters and a table-size cloth imprinted with the beginnings of a crossword puzzle, the answers to which led to one of the rectangular panels lining the tiny den, which concealed a chamfered magnetic cube, which could be used to open the 24 remaining panels, revealing, in large type, the poem written by Klinsky.”

“If humanity vanishes, science writer Dougal Dixon predicts, the world may be ruled by ‘rats, rabbits, moles, crows and seagulls — animals we regard as pests.’ For those who prefer crows to people — my wife is one of them — there may be something comforting in this vision.”

The “Don’t Go Messing With Our Telescope” song.

“While he was working a day job at Microsoft, he once spent several hours every day for a week neatly wrapping every object in his supervisor’s office in green tissue paper to surprise her upon her return from vacation.”

“If you were asked to describe a cup of coffee, you would most likely refer to its macrostate—its temperature, pressure and other overall features. The microstate, on the other hand, specifies the precise position and velocity of every single atom in the liquid.”

From Macy’s Handy Book for Boys, 1933.

I’m pretty good at making conversation with anglers, though it’s been a long time since I’ve collected earthworms from under logs to take fishing. The anglers always ask, “Do you fish?” and I say no, but I used to as a kid. And after a few conversations at the lake or random places like the market, I know the types of fish they’re going for in the lake or the river.

But I had no idea I lived so close to a “primo setting” for these monster-movie (”Carp!” a Sci-Fi original movie), 4-H-worthy fish that look like an amateur geneticist’s cross-breeding triumph. According to a post on Stray Casts, “The area on the south bank of the Chicago River downtown around Columbus and Wacker is considered one of the primo settings in the world for carp fishing.”

I’m now quite enamored with this blog, because the following post is about crows stacking bread.