Month: December 2005

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Goodbye, Bus

First let me say: I’ve never been to London, so I’ve got no nostalgia about the red, double-deck Routemaster buses beyond having seen them in pictures. What’s remarkable is the attachment Londoners seem to have to them. From today’s Associated Press story:

“… Its demise as part of everyday London life has triggered an outpouring of nostalgia. The British Broadcasting Corp. is running an evening of TV programs Saturday celebrating the bus. Composer Tom Smail has created “Requiem for the Routemaster,” an orchestral piece that evokes the throb of an engine, the tinkle of a bell and the zip of a conductor’s ticket machine.

“It’s actually more of an ‘in memoriam,'” Smail told BBC radio. “So you have the sadness, and you have the joy of being on a bus.”

Hard to imagine one of our TV networks devoting an evening of programming to anything related to public transit — unless it was for a drama about a terrorist attack on a subway, maybe.

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Holiday Gift Guide

As “the holidays” approach, nothing is more important than reflecting on the Value of Giving. Well, sure, there are a few things more important. But for once, reflect on the VoG.

Done? Good. Now back to watching Monday Night Football and, during commercial breaks, figuring out what you might give to those deserving few–people who after this year will rather get nothing than whatever it is you might give.

2006 Official RNC Calendar

Caption: “Fellas, let me tell y’all about My Pet Goat.”

Price: $25. Be able to answer, “Yes, sir!” when the Commander-in-Chief asks, “You know what day it is? You got one of them things with the dates and months on it?” Comes complete with graph paper to chart falling presidential approval ratings, rising casualty tolls in Iraq or free-form Oval Office-style doodling. Quantity limited!

W Jersey

Bushjersey

Price: $39.95 (XXL: $42.95). Replete with the mystic neo-Masonic symbolism of the Bush White House — “What in the world do all them symbols stand for?” — The George W. Bush Online Store’s always-appropriate jersey comes in a 50% cotton/50% petroleum blend in a dark color with writing and ciphering in a lighter color. Included: Our exclusive 47-page guide, “Interpreting the Bush Jersey: An Adventure in Letters and Numbers.” And if you act now, we’ll include free our recent Bush-inspired tome, “More Than Just A Twisted, Hard-Baked Piece of Dough: Eleven Pretzels That Changed History.”

Nut Twister

Nuttwister

Price: $24.95-$26.95. This implement from famed implement maker William Bounds is designed to reduce nutmeg to a fine, nog-friendly powder (please ingest responsibly). But, as its name suggests, it could have many other uses, and that’s why a cargo container full of them is headed for Gitmo right now.

Lurid Green Peeps/ Peeps Xmas Tree Ornaments

Peepstree Peepsornaments

Price: Varies. After singlehandedly eating a nine-pack of Lurid Green Peeps — they’re actually very healthful — it struck me what a great gift they’d make. Further investigation shows that the Marshmallow Peeps website, which sells Peeps gewgaws but apparently no Peeps, contains a number of craft projects and recipes designed to fill your home with merriment and holiday fun and urgent demands to know why the *&^% all the ants in the *&%$ county want to get at the Christmas tree.

Serenity: New Bad Girl in Town

Serenity

Price: $7.97. New from Buzz Dixon–screenwriting genius behind cartoon classics like “The Transformers: Carnage in C-Minor” and “G.I. Joe: Into Your Tent I Will Silently Creep”–“Serenity” is billed as “America’s Premier Inspirational Manga.” To quote the synopsis: “Meet Serenity, a lonely teen from a broken family who just wants to be accepted–but who tends to lash out at others with anger and obnoxious sarcasm. At her new school, the Christian prayer group takes Serenity on as a ‘project,’ showing her friendship and love. . .but will even that be enough to crack her hard shell?” Our answer: You bet! Just as soon as she’s gotten together with Skip, hunky president of the high school hunting club, and used her sarcastic wiles to to get him to spray the prayer group with a holy hail of Second Amendment-protected rifle fire.

Sand, Stone and Gravel Review

Gravelreview

Price: $48/year for members of the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association; $65/year for nonmembers. If a friend or loved one is given to frequent gravel-related reveries, you can consider (for them and/or yourself) Prozac, shock therapy, estrangement or this colorful magazine. Unofficially known by stone, sand and gravel insiders as the Unofficial Stone, Sand and Gravel Bible, this bimonthly journal highlights industry activities, tips, tricks, home remedies, trading cards (collect ’em all), and stone, sand and gravel personals. Order by Xmas and get a free one-year membership in the NSSGA Gravel Club: An 8-ounce sample of one of the world’s finest and rarest gravels, enclosed in a collector-quality resealable bag, shipped every month.

Sphincterine

Sphincterine

Price: $6 for a half-dozen minty-fresh towelettes. And while you’re at it, don’t forget the Rearasil ($6.98 a bar; “say goodbye to acne, backne, and crackne”). For more in the same vein, check out the PoopReport Gift Guide 2005.

And added by popular demand:

Does This Gum Make My Ass Look Big?

Assgum

Price: About $1.35. Available online here, here, and from fine retailers nationwide (see the “where to buy” directory at Blue Q, creator of Does This Gum Make My Ass Look Big? and many other fine products, including George Bush’s Dumbass Head on a String air freshener, Boss Lady body wash, Tainted Love soap, and How About a Nice Big Pack of Shut the Hell Up gum).

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On the Bike

Today: A 106-mile or so ride with 10 others from the Grizzly Peak Cyclists, from Livermore (about 40 miles southeast of Berkeley), across the last range of hills (near Altamont Pass) into the Central Valley (more exactly, the San Joaquin Valley), then south to a town called Patterson, then a long and mostly very gradual climb to the into the isolated ranch country between San Jose and Livermore, then back to Livermore.

No matter how you cut it, 106 miles is a long way and means you have to spend a long time on the bike. I didn’t suffer much, except on the steepest part of the climb back west from the Valley (about a 9 percent grade that last for maybe a mile and a half; enough to make you work in any circumstances, and more painfully so when you’re not really fit and carrying more weight than you maybe ideally should. Ah, but that’s another story.

We started out just after 8. By Chicago standards, the weather was balmy; about 40. By Bay Area standards this was akin to setting out to the South Pole a la Robert Falcon Scott. But the day was mostly bright and sunny and there were even points headed up the long canyon into the hills that it felt too warm to be wearing all the cool-weather gear I had on.

I’m not really great at taking pictures of bike rides. Mostly I tend to look at landscape, and it’s almost impossible to meaningfully reproduce with my level of skill and the little camera I generally have at hand. If I had brought my camera, I would have tried to capture something of the brilliance of the day, the long visibilities, and the striking way the coastal hills front the edge of the valley. Coming from a place, Illinois, where landscape transitions are gradual and subtle when you can detect any at all, the sharp division between hills and valley always fascinates me.

Late. Tired. Bed. More on the trip, maybe, tomorrow.

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Twenty

I had lots more to say about the occasion, in a reminiscing vein, a year ago. Now I can’t seem to put the right words around it. So all I’ll say is: Happy anniversary, my Kate. Twenty years? Living inside them, they have seemed like only days or hours, and hardly as many as twenty.

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There Comes a Yes

Most days, I don’t read the poem that comes in The Writer’s Almanac email. Simple reason: It feels like a commitment to engage with the poem, to take it seriously, to hear what it has to say. There may be other reasons I’m pushing down, but that’s the main feeling. But I read the poem for yesterday, December 1. It’s “The Well Dressed Man With a Beard,” by Wallace Stevens:

After the final no there comes a yes

And on that yes the future world depends.

No was the night. Yes is this present sun.

If the rejected things, the things denied,

Slid over the western cataract, yet one,

One only, one thing that was firm, even

No greater than a cricket’s horn, no more

Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech

Of the self that must sustain itself on speech,

One thing remaining, infallible, would be

Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing!

Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart,

Green in the body, out of a petty phrase,

Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed:

The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps,

The aureole above the humming house…

It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.

For all I know, this is a poem with which every American lit major grapples. But that one phrase — “douce campagna” — throws me. Even though I feel like I’ve got the drift of the thing, that phrase cames at an important point. What does it mean? This is where I could use one of those humongous college anthologies on ultrathin paper with the footnotes telling you the meaning of all the words longer than a syllable. But being mostly monolingual, I have to guess. “Campagna” is Italian for country or countryside, I think; douce is close to dolce, which is sweet. So: “Sweet country of that thing”? OK, I’ll make do with that. But if anyone wants to help me out here, or point to some explication of “The Well Dressed Man With a Beard,” your correspondent would be much obliged.