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memories

Friday / Ireland / memories / photo / video — Comments Off
27
Mar 26

Not every idea is marketable

I didn’t step outside, or even poke my head up from the computer, until the sun was going down. Meetings and emails and work and such. Here’s the view from the front porch. We face the west, but we turn wherever the best views are to be found.

A home on a lazy Susan. There’s an idea. I imagine one person standing out at the corner, squatting low, putting their back into it, slowly spinning the house. It’d be like a pushing a dead car, difficult at first, but you’d build a little momentum. The trick would be stopping at the right time. You wouldn’t want to overshoot the sunset or whatever you were aiming at.

The next trick would be managing the electrical connections. There are a lot of wires and pipes and things.

OK, so we build in some flexibility. Use that silly straw technology.

We’d need giant ball bearings. I suppose we’d need a giant ball bearing plant. The plant, itself, would need to be rather large. We’ve also got to figure out a way to transport those. That’s certainly doable, but would be costly. And replacing those, when the time comes, would be a chore.

Then you’ve got to keep leaves out of way of the things. This is starting to become a rather involved idea.

But only a few steps after we’ve invented a giant ball bearing plant.

This million dollar idea might need a little more work.

I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I’m sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won’t you?

This was one of the windier places you’ll be that doesn’t involve a storm. I left in the nat sound to prove it.

That is the view from Sky Road.

Ireland / memories / Rowan / video — Comments Off
26
Mar 26

Sports and sheep

We discussed sport consumption as a ritualized practice today in Rituals and Traditions.

It is a focus on entertainment value, collective group influence, and self-enhancement, but we overlook the ritual aspects, which potentially offer individuals a chance to maintain and to celebrate cultural meanings embedded in the consumption. There is a formalism to all of this, and also symbolic performance. For example, what do you do at tailgates? We also talked about the social interactions.

Ritual, I reminded them, is a means through which individuals embody the power, authority, and value of society. And we talked about research that shows that consumers cherish ritual experiences because securing cultural sense from mass-marketed consumer goods is not straightforward. Ritual makes it real for us, basically.

We talked about “ritual specialists” which is a concept I love. These are the elders, cheerleaders, band, media, supporter groups that have socially recognized authority to judge the importance of ritual and the performance’s correctness. These are the people who can legitimize the social importance of the ritual and give us the correct way of performing it. Then I got to use one of my favorite lines. “Because this is a communication studies class I have to occasionally sneak a theory in on you.” And I talked about disposition theory — basically our enjoyment is driven by our evaluations of the characters involved. This is part of why you think the traditions you like are good and important and the stuff that other people do is dumb. (You’ve evaluated them and found them wanting.)

In Criticism we watched It’s Time. For my money, it’s one of the best bits of storytelling you can get in a sport documentary. It’s also quite intense.

The only problem with it is that the runtime takes the whole class and we’ll have to wait until next Tuesday to discuss it. That’s a long time to wait, even for such a gripping and emotional story.

We won’t talk just about the emotion, though, but also the media aesthetics, like the music and some of the shot selections, and a few of the quotes from the people that were there.

I miss the roadside sheep already.

Ireland / memories / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
25
Mar 26

New book alert

Phoebe would like to let you know about a book that you should add to your bookcase. Look carefully at the authors.

It’s nice living with an expert. Her consultation fees, however, are rather steep.

It was cute how she played this off. I told her she’d gotten a delivery today. “Oh? Hmmm. What’s in that box? I don’t recall ordering anything. Oh! This came out! And ahead of schedule!”

How do you think I should play it, when I read this book? Should I pretend like I found a typo? Take issue with some key point inside? Say they spelled her name wrong somewhere inside? Carry it door to door? Talk about it in every class next semester? So many choices.

Trá an Dóilín.

Ireland / memories / photo / Rowan / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
24
Mar 26

Back to campus

Back to school today. Last week was spring break for the students and we’re all now trying to figure out how much enthusiasm everyone still has for the rest of the term. There’s a bit of rah-rah involved in that, but the weather is warming up, sporadically, and the days are getting longer and summer is calling.

Today in Rituals and Traditions we talked about sport as spectacle. This would be the aural expressions, the songs and chants, the visual displays, the stadium choreography and performances. This is about how seating works, fireworks, the music that’s played for us, the fancy digital court that we’re seeing in some college basketball tournaments, and so on.

In Criticism we talked about MLB labor: How fight over salary cap will shape negotiations:

There was something about the four-year, $72 million contract given to left-hander Tanner Scott in January that infuriated fan bases in every market outside of Los Angeles — even the only one that dwarfs it.

“It’s difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kinds of things they’re doing,” New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner told the YES Network a week after the Scott deal.

That the Yankees — the most valuable franchise in baseball, the game’s foremost revenue machine, owners of the highest payroll each of the first 14 years this century — had joined the chorus typically reserved for smaller-market teams questioning the game’s fairness was no accident. Even if formal discussions about Major League Baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement are half a year away, the campaign to capture the hearts and minds of the paying consumers has already begun.

And also this story, Watershed moment as Russia’s sporting exile ends. These are both explainers, the latter is like a richly done FAQ, and so it worked out well that the class picked these two stories to discuss this week. Sometimes the stars lineup, where we can discuss complimentary themes.

At home, the sun is coming in through the back door. It’s just a plastic cat toy, but I like that we have enough attention to detail to see it casting a shadow.

Poseidon is fascinated by light, shimmering and reflecting light. If I ever need to move him in the evening a shadow puppet always does the trick. But they never notice long shadows in those parts of the day.

This was from Silverstrand Beach.

memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
3
Feb 26

A well of a tale

Out and about yesterday. Errands had to be ran. I ran errands. Errands were run. Nothing to it, really. Out and about to do the things that need doing. Already I have overstated it. Oh, all right.

No. They’re errands and unremarkable in every way. No one cares.

Except to say this. I stopped at a gas station. As I was going inside, a man was coming out. He had a bag of ice under his arm. He seemed a man fixed on his business and going about his way. Passing one another in the doorway it wasn’t the time to strike up a conversation. But I wanted to have a quick chat. I wanted to ask about that ice. I bet he felt silly, since everything, everywhere, looks like this.

That’s our driveway, and this was eight days after the snow and the sleet turned into ice. It isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And today I spent a bit of time widening it out a bit more. Just a car could narrowly pass, but you shouldn’t need to demonstrate your best driving skills leaving or returning home.

Plus we had a great big truck come by yesterday. We had a great big truck visit because of the joys of home ownership.

Let me back up. In November of 2023 I called the well company to do a regular tank maintenance. That was a first for me. I’ve never lived on a well before. The appointment was made. During the time between scheduling that visit and the guy showing up, the well start failing. Imagine a pipe spewing water like a low-stakes submarine movie scene. The guy came with his two workers and squatted down and looked at it and started moaning and sighing and muttering and I honestly thought he was having a medical episode in our basement.

Turns out he was fine, but the tank was at death’s door. We could leave it as is — and I’m still not sure why that was even presented as an option — or we could replace it that day. We chose the later, because I like things to work, and not sopping up my floors.

The new tank, he said, was a fiberglass tank. And it’ll never rust out, which was a big sales point at the time. Perhaps you can see why.

(What is that green stuff underneath the well tank?)

They put in that fiberglass tank and everything was just peachy keen. About three weeks ago, though, I started hearing a surging sound in the walls. Taking a shower, flushing the toilet, running the washer, you’d hear this sound. It was soothing, or it would have been in any context that didn’t suggest your house was about to implode.

So I called the well company again and explained all this. Talked to the owner, an older fellow who could do 10 or 12 minutes of comedy on most anything, I decided. He said he’d come on out, but could we wait until after the storm because he was backed up. He assured me that I wasn’t hurting anything by waiting, because the things that were bad weren’t getting worse.

The fiberglass tank. He had me tap on it and that’s how he knew.

His son came by yesterday, same guy that put this thing in just 27 months ago. Sure enough, the tank was done. Just as his father told me on the phone, these tanks were terrible and they were never buying and selling those again. His dad said they’d bought six, had to send four of them back. We had one of the other two. The owner said he’d been taken it in the teeth on these things. And ours was under warranty. I apologized that he was going to eat another bite of lemon, but I was glad that we weren’t buying a new one. We’d be in for labor, and that seemed fair.

So the son was here with an assistant. They took the old tank out, and put in this new one. We’ll see how susceptible it is to rusting.

Also, the new tank has a five-year warranty. And we did not pay for it, because it was a replacement for the fiberglass failure. Initially he tried to charge me for that, but we worked it out, saving about a grand in a quick and easy conversation.

I hope they don’t have to replace tanks often, because I don’t want to watch that guy lug the thing up and out of the basement, but they seem like fine fellows. Which is good, I suppose, now that we will have them back for yearly inspections.

This, just writing about yesterday, is already threatening to get long, so let’s have a few days of writing in arrears. Today is Tuesday, but I’ve written about Monday; tomorrow is Wednesday, I can write about Tuesday. Tuesday, if you can believe it, was almost as riveting as this tale. Come back and see.