Urban Boy Diggin' Country...

Country music, like all other genres, is subject to Sturgeon's Law, but when you run into one of those songs which falls into the good 10%, you're in for a treat. The new single by country (or is it alt-country?) artist Caitlin Rose is fantastic. All I can say is, "What a voice!" I imagine you'll be just as smitten as I was when you hear this melancholy but sweet number:





I hope this becomes a big breakout single, but the Balkanization (WTF, Google spellcheck?) of radio may keep it off the "rawk" or "pawp" stations. Sturgeon's Law obviously applies to radio here in the 'States.

High Water Mark

I always joke that my job is cushy, except when it's not. Today was firmly in the "not" column. I drove to work in a downpour- driving on the local roads was like riding in a log flume, my car was throwing up quite a spray. When I got to work, the basement was flooded as badly as it was during Hurricane Irene. My first order of business was getting a pump in working order to reduce the water level outside the basement doors (I don't know if the "day shift" even knows the pump is still there, but I almost never forget anything). Thankfully, I had picked up a pair of "water shoes" in the supermarket a couple of weeks ago in anticipation of at least one kayaking trip this summer. I joked to the Director of Operations, who was on site to assess the situation, that I usually packed for work as if I were on a camping trip but that today, luckily, I had packed as if for a boating trip. Once again, I found myself calf-deep in dirty water, making sure the drains were clear and assessing the pump operation. I also hastily dug a drainage trench in a slope behind to building to re-route a rivulet that was pouring off the roof into the basement. I'll have to point this problem out to the head of grounds and maintenance (my boss), and talk about a more permanent solution to the drainage problem. Currently, there is a team from a cleaning contractor using wet vacs and industrial dryers to "unswamp" the basement.

As if the flood and the subsequent unpleasantness weren't enough, one of my beloved on-site mulberry trees is beginning to be uprooted, and is currently blocking the footpath to our employee parking lot. Tragically, it's impinging on some of the overhead wires, so it'll have to come down. It wouldn't hurt so bad if the tree wasn't chock-full of green fruits which would have been utterly delicious in a month or so.

While I was puttering around trying to mitigate the flooding, I found a little friend who was swimming in water above its head- I grabbed it and let it loose in a nice patch of pachysandra:





Hey, buddy, you're a terrestrial amphibian, you'd be happier on dryish land... for that matter, so would I.

Post Lecture Laziness- Consciousness Copout

Last night, I headed down to the beautiful Bell House in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn for the latest Secret Science Club lecture, featuring Dr Heather Berlin of Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr Berlin's talk was focused on consciousness. John Searle defined consciousness as "what goes away when you fall into a deep, dreamless sleep", another definition is "what if feels like to be you" Dr Berlin attended a conference in which the consensus was that consciousness is "first person subjective experience".

I have to confess, I forgot to bring my notebook to the lecture (and I drank a whole lot of beer, and I have to deal with a lot of people going in and out of the workplace tonight, so my attention is focused elsewhere)- luckily, I found a video of Dr Berlin's presentation which is virtually identical to last night's lecture. Crack open a beer and watch Dr Berlin lecture on perception, subliminal stimuli, and dissociation:





For those pressed for time, here is a short version of the talk:





One amazing bit of data from her lecture is that the unconscious tends to play more of a role in major decision making than in minor decision making- buying a phone tends to be more of a "conscious" choice, while buying a house tends to be more of a "gut" decision. In my gut, I know that I am slacking off in the recap of yet another top-notch Secret Science Club lecture.

Ugliness is Contagious

Mrs. Polly and Betty Cracker have done a bang-up job covering the hypocrisy regarding disaster relief in the wake of the horrific Oklahoma tornado. I am cycling through anger at the Republicans voting against Sandy relief, disgust at the antics of Oklahoma's congressmorons, schadenfreude at the "punishment" felt the dupes who voted in these anti-disaster relief and global warming denier assholes, and self-disgust. Coburn and Inhofe are ugly, ugly people, and I find myself catching a bit of that ugliness when I feel that schadenfreude. The cruelest thing you can say to a conservative is, "I hope you are forced to live under the policies that you espouse."

That being said, a trip to Brooklyn for a beer and a science lecture will have me feeling better in no time. I'm sure I'll snap out of this cycle of ugliness and end up making a donation to the Red Cross... I'm surely not proud of the negative feelings I'm experiencing, but I can't lie about them.

Mom Is Cooler than I Am.

Mom called from Dulles International Airport. She's flying to Italy to hang out with my brother Vincenzo and his family. She's taking a side trip to Switzerland to hang out with my brother Sweetums and his family. She'll be in the Old World for three weeks. Before she hung up, she told me, "Don't work too hard!" Mom sure is enjoying her retirement.

I wish I were as cool as she is. Bon voyage ma mère!

Expanding the Menu

Live and learn, that's what I say. Imagine my surprise when, after spending much of my childhood living in a house which had a gorgeous Wisteria climbing the telephone pole guy wire in front, I finally find out that Wisteria blossoms are not only edible, but delicious- they have a slight sweetness that compares favorably to the flavor of redbud blossoms. The rest of the plant is iffy, and the raw seeds are toxic.

Anyway, having found out that Wisteria is delicious, I decided to check out the most magnificent Wisteria I've ever seen. When the museum docent asked me what I was doing, I told her that I figured my admission price should include a taste of the flowers.

The mark on the side of my head from her shoe should fade in a couple of days...

From the "I Think I Shall Now Be Sick" Files

Via Crooks and Liars, we have the sordid tale of a right-wing nutcase threatening to shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina. To me, the combination of warped sexuality and wanton violence is particularly depraved. It's one thing to lambast one's political opponents, but it's an entirely different thing to fantasize about performing acts of sexualized violence on them, and to watch them die in agony.

There is an infection running through our society, a melange of rage, sexism, and cruelty that periodically erupts into boils in places like Cleveland and Steubenville (sorry Ohioans, I know it happens everywhere). While right-wing nut Peter Santilli most likely hasn't engaged in acts of sexual violence against women, his screed indicates that, mentally, he is capable of it. While his internet rant isn't the pus-filled boil that erupted on live television, it's the pathogen coursing through the patient which ultimately results in the boils, a slightly more virulent strain of the pathogen which results in verbal attacks on women almost invariably involving a sexual component. While the dismantling of Rape Culture is going to be an ongoing exercise in social engineering, I can only hope that sexualized death threats against a former high-ranking government official will merit a visit by the Secret Service.

In the meantime, I think I shall now be sick.