Dave's Blog

...And Another

Prolific

This guy's (or gal's) work has been popping up everywhere around Minneapolis over the past year or so. At least I assume it's the same person. Anyone out there know anything about this artist?

Boston

One of the many cool things about Boston is the house-that-jack-built nature of the city, the infamous "Big Dig" being only one of the most recent examples of architectual mutation working around pre-existing urban constraints. Boston is, after all, a bunch of little villages linked by cow paths that grew into roads, along which the villages grew together into one big, messy whole. If you're not from here, good luck getting around by car. You might have your 30 story hotel in plain sight, and yet drive around for an hour trying to get to it. Such a hapless chap using language less refined than my own might justifiably- and loudly- call it a clusterfuck.

But on foot or bicycle, it yields surprise after surprise. 300 year old cemetaries next to gleaming modern glass buildings, narrow-streeted colonial villages that are now dark-skinned ethnic neighborhoods, old men playing speed chess in Harvard Square with a bunch of nerdy students spectating, a cattail swamp next to community vegetable gardens next to the Green Monster of Fenway Park.

This was one little delight, right next to our boring old vanilla Sheraton. My question is, did they build the parking ramp around the bar, or build the bar into the parking ramp? Either possibility makes me happy.

Butt Messaging

We're in Boston for an Art Supplies trade show (our new Words & Crafts line is really doing well, especially in the scrapbooking market). Saw this cryptic butt, and wondered what 1892 has to do with it. Anyone?

Heavy Balls

So, I was out for my bike ride, trusty camera in my pocket, when I came upon this scene in the parking lot next to the new Guthrie Theater. A bunch of mostly middle aged people standing in a line, holding heavy looking balls with handles, getting yelled at by a drill sergeant. Yes, a real (looking, at least) military guy, commanding a bunch of schlubby-looking, well-washed white people! He's second from the left in the first picture; you can't see that he's actually dressed in a sleeveless camoflage getup, with menacing looking tats on his meaty biceps. I apparently came right at the end, just as he yelled "...all right you bunch of weaklings, let's get this nightmare over with... single file out of here, MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!"

Is this some new kind of workout, like Spinning or Pilates or Tai Bo? Some sort of corporate team building exercise? Drop me an e-mail if you know the answer. In the mean time, I'll just sit here scratching my head...

Poor, Poor Pitiful Pete

Actually, poor poor pitiful me, after spending $900.00 to have his knee fixed... and in six weeks he needs the other one done! I guess I should be thankful that he wound up with a family that could afford his procedures.

Two Views of Spring

...one pastoral, one raging. The grass is greening, the river, rising.

Maundy

Having been raised agnostic, I'm sort of a retard when it comes to Church stuff. But "Maundy Thursday" is a totally new term in my lexicon. You Christians know that "maundy" means mandate, and refers to Jesus' command to his disciples (during the Last Supper) that they love each other as he loved them, symbolized by the washing of the feet of the poor.

To get a little political as this holy day approacheth, I will venture the opinion that by and large the Christian right in this country has forgotten the lessons of Maundy Thursday, doing things like working for sanctions against gays and devoting less and less time, money and energy to helping the poor.

I'm reminded of Al Franken's line: "If you were to cut out all of the passages in the Bible that talked about helping the poor, you'd have the perfect container for Rush Limbaugh to smuggle his drugs in."

Wordy Absurdity

From The Simplified Spelling Society's website, a bunch of pretty funny poems showing the absurdities of English spelling and pronounciation:

...Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt)...

Suddenly, I feel for my boy, in the fourth grade, taking a spelling test every Friday...

Ice Out

Well, it's not quite out yet, but it will be in a week. Gorgeous day; bye bye, DeLay!