Random "garner" sighting of the day.

I'm reading "No, bad tourist, you can’t touch the hot springs at Yellowstone/Omnipresent warnings and scalding temperatures do not stop park visitors from testing the waters" (WaPo):

Photos from nearly a century ago show visitors peeking their heads into geysers. This summer, more examples have been captured on social media or posted to YouTube, fitting into a larger pattern of rule-breaking tourists emerging from the pandemic. A few months ago, a woman garnered national attention after dipping her foot and fingers into a scalding Yellowstone hot spring as well....

"According to witnesses, a group of approximately 50 people were within 5-10 feet of the bison for at least 20 minutes before eventually causing the bison to charge the group."

Said the news release from the National Park Service, quoted in "'Never approach animals': Video shows 9-year-old girl tossed in the air by charging bison at Yellowstone," a WaPo article about a video that went viral in social media.

I'll just add the text of the highest-rated comment:

I grew up about an hour outside of Yellowstone and have spent many happy years in the park. I now live on the east coast, but try to go back every few years. Every single time I'm in the park, I see people doing the stupidest, most dangerous things. The last time, I was leaving the Old Faithful Inn after supper and noticed a small herd of bison hanging around. (A very common sight) Not being a complete idiot, I decided to take a different path back to our campground, a path and would not take me near the bison. Then I noticed a man with his small child heading toward the herd. I stopped him and warned that he might want to stay away, particularly with his child. He told me to f-off and kept walking. I watched as he got very close to the first bison and then saw him pick up his child and start to try to put the kid on the back of the bison. A bunch of other people started shouting and I ran for a ranger. Thankfully, the ranger managed to stop the idiot before tragedy. Unusual? Not really!

Live stream of bears catching salmon in Katmai National Park.

Via The New Yorker, "Bear Cam’s Captivating, Unedited Zen":

On a recent afternoon, there were around ten bears on the cam, using a variety of techniques to stalk the salmon. Some stood downstream of the falls, upright and staring straight down into the water for fish to grab, almost as a person might do. The most dramatic were those that perched on the rocks at the top of the cascade, grabbing at the airborne salmon attempting to leap over and continue upstream. It’s innately satisfying to see a bear grab hold of a salmon with its mouth and trundle off into the shallows with the fish still flapping in its jaws.

Not so "zen" for the salmon, but it's amazing how many salmon a bear lets go by and makes no attempt to catch.

That reminds me, are any of you watching the "Yellowstone Live" show on National Geographic TV? It's not much like the bear video above, because there's kind of an idea of covering the park like you'd cover the Olympics, jumping from venue to venue, with enthusiastic "sportscasters" telling you what to be excited about seeing. But Forbes has "Why You Should Watch This Live Show On Yellowstone National Park."

"One group of scientists analyzed bear scat and revealed that a foraging grizzly could gobble 40,000 moths in a day."

"At that rate, the bear can consume about one-third of its yearly energy requirements in just 30 days..." (Yellowstone Gate).

Hillary Robison extensively researched army cutworm moths as part of the grizzly bear diet while a doctoral student the University of Nevada in Reno.... Robison hiked and horse-packed deep into the backcountry to find the steep, rock-strewn talus slopes favored by moths. The heat of the day drives the moths to seek cooler, moist shelter under large rocks broken off of headwalls and other rock formations above timberline. However, the sheltering rocks pose little obstacle for hungry bears.

I'm turning over this rock this morning because moths suddenly appear in the last few lines of the previous post and it reminded me of something from a documentary Meade was watching on TV the other day.

If you can get that wrong, what are the chances you're getting the actually difficult stuff right?

A correction on an article titled "A Surprise From the Supervolcano Under Yellowstone" in the NYT "Science" section:

An earlier version of a home page headline for this article misstated the location of a supervolcano that drives geological activity. It is beneath Yellowstone National Park, not Yosemite.

The article went up yesterday, and the correction is dated today.

Meanwhile, on the subject of the NYT and science, there's an editorial with the headline: "Mr. Trump Nails Shut the Coffin on Climate Relief." It's just such an offputtingly dramatic title. I understand that they mean that the government effort to provide relief from climate change is dead, but death is not enough. It had to be "nails shut the coffin." Yeah, coffin metaphors seem scary — and perhaps seasonally apt (near Halloween) — but there's nothing that's a metaphorical body inside the coffin. Relief is an abstraction. And "climate relief" doesn't even make sense. We will always have a climate. We just have preferences about what kind of climate we like best.

Sorry, I'm just complaining about a headline. The editorial itself says "climate change." And it doesn't mention a coffin. It says "dead." Here:

In March Mr. Trump ordered Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to repeal the Clean Power Plan, which was aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Mr. Pruitt, a climate denier closely tied to the fossil fuel industry, was only too happy to oblige — boasting to an audience of Kentucky coal miners on Monday that the plan was dead and that “the war on coal is over."

So what's dead — ironically — is a war.  "War" was a metaphor, the other side's metaphor.

Kill war. That sounds like a slogan on a 1960s placard. But I don't think I've seen that slogan. I've seen "Killing for peace is like screwing for virginity."

IN THE COMMENTS: There's some discussion about how that 60s slogan was exactly worded. I've searched around a bit and I'm guessing that it all started with this image, for which I don't have any background information (other than the guess that the bombing in question was Nixon's bombing of Cambodia, which we heard about in 1970):

The news from Yellowstone.

1. Mapping what's underground: "This is really kind of a last frontier if you will, in Yellowstone, of being able to look at a large part that’s underground that people have not looked at.... There’s just a lot we don’t know, and this survey is really exciting because it’s going to be the first view of a large portion of the groundwater system, of the water underground that feeds all of these thermal features."

2. Getting closer to taking grizzly bears of the Endangered Species List: "At that time, there were approximately 136 bears in Yellowstone. Today, officials estimate that there are more than 700 bears.... [Yellowstone superintendent Dan] Wenk says, if the grizzly populations shrink, it could threaten Yellowstone tourism. While hunters cannot pursue grizzlies on national park land, hunting could be allowed just outside of the parks, and therefore impact the grizzlies that live in or near Yellowstone and other national parks such as the Grand Teton National Park."

3. A 23-year-old man who fell into a hot spring not only died — his body dissolved overnight: "An Oregon man who died after falling into a scalding Yellowstone National Park hot spring in June was looking for a place to 'hot pot,' the forbidden practice of soaking in one of the park's thermal features, officials said. Sable Scott told investigators that she and her 23-year-old brother, Colin, left a boardwalk near Pork Chop Geyser.... As Sable Scott took video of her brother with her cellphone on June 7, he reached down to check the water temperature and slipped and fell into a thermal pool about 6 feet long, 4 feet wide and 10 feet deep.... Search and rescue rangers spotted Colin Scott's body floating in the pool the day of the accident, but a lightning storm prevented recovery, the report said. The next day, workers could not find any remains in the boiling, acidic water. 'In very short order, there was a significant amount of dissolving,' said [Deputy Chief Ranger Lorant Veress]."

"A 23-year-old man who walked off a boardwalk and slipped and fell into a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park has died..."

"... rangers said on Wednesday."

The man, Colin Nathaniel Scott, of Portland, Ore., had walked about 225 yards away from established trails near Porkchop Geyser on Tuesday. His sister saw him slip and fall into Norris Geyser Basin, a thermal feature, and reported the accident, Yellowstone officials said in a statement.

I've been to Yellowstone. Here's a picture I took:

"Not all who wander are lost."

"Russia could detonate nuclear weapons over Yellowstone supervolcano and San Andreas fault to completely annihilate America..."

... says this Kremlin military analyst named Konstantin Sivkov, according to The Daily Mail.

BUT: Turn on the TV right now. I heard that Obama was solving the Iran problem.

At the Dragon's Mouth Café...

... don't get too comfortable.



(Photographed at Yellowstone National Park in the Mud Volcano Area. The man in the second photograph — who's nobody I know — is doing something that is absolutely forbidden and potentially fatal.)

Buffalo in the mist.

Yesterday, in Yellowstone.

Grizzly bear kills a man in Yellowstone Park.

The description comes out:

Marylyn Matayoshi told park officials that she and her husband were hiking back to their car along the Wapiti Lake Trail about 11 a.m. when they saw the bear and two cubs about 100 yards away. [Yellowstone Supt. Dan] Wenk said the couple had just emerged from a dense area of lodgepole pines into a broad meadow where the bears were.

The couple backed away, and then turned in the direction they had come. When they looked back, the grizzly was charging them, Wenk said. Matayoshi yelled to his wife to run, and she took shelter behind a fallen tree at the side of the trail, according to officials.

Wenk said the sow reached Brian Matayoshi first, fatally biting and clawing him. The bear then approached Marylyn Matayoshi, and picked her up. Wenk said it is likely that because she was playing dead, the bear moved on.

It was the first killing by a bear in Yellowstone since 1986, and the bear was protecting her cubs.

As long as we're talking about Yellowstone, here are some lush photographs of Yellowstone. I especially like the ones of Grand Prismatic Spring. Generally, I prefer landscape photographs to photographs of animals. People get strangely excited about seeing animals in Yellowstone. I mean, a chipmunk begging for food? A coyote running through grass? You probably have these things in your home town. As for the bigger creatures... I'd leave them alone.

The Icelandic volcano is causing trouble, but how much worse would it be if Yellowstone erupted?

Haven't you been wondering?

To all my commenters, the best commenters in the blogosphere.

Yesterday, the day I saw "The Curious Life of Benjamin Button" and wrote that post, I conked out early.

Oh, I don't know if it was from the movie or from the pizza and one glass of wine I had afterward or just from being somewhat old. Most of the people in the movie audience were old, so old, that when Cate Blanchett reassured the getting-younger Benjamin by saying that we all wear diapers in the end, and the chuckle from the audience was unnervingly warm, I had to speculate that there was a high Depends-to-butt ratio in the theater at that very moment. And who knows? Perhaps young soda-swillers wear Depends to the movies, especially to 3-hour extravaganzas like "Benjamin Button." Especially with all that water imagery:

[W]ater is often seen as a symbol for birth/re-birth, and [I] thought they used it well. Spoilers: The dad nearly throws Pitt in the water in the beginning, Pitt takes the dad to sit by the water, Tilda Swinton swims the English Channel, all of the work Pitt does on the boat and the sailing, Daisy takes up swimming after her injury, Hurricane Katrina...anything else?)

And Benjamin fighting the Nazis at sea. Or should I say Ben or Ben-yah-meen?

Here's a weird-ass quirk of mine: For years now, anywhere and everywhere I see the name "Benjamin" used in a narrative (especially a grand, old one) I substitute plain old "Ben." Amazing, how well that works and the perspective it brings.

I studied Arabic one summer during college, and there was a white guy in the program named Benjamin who insisted we all call him Ben-yah-meen. That experience, I think, has much the same effect on Benjamin perspective.

The quote in that first block is from Zachary Paul Sire in the comments. The 2 in the second block are from reader_iam and Freeman Hunt.

See? This post is a tribute to all the commenters who kept an interesting conversation going all night on that thread that I conked out after writing. In the morning, it's my habit to reach for my iPhone before so much as sitting up in bed. Supine, I check the news, mostly to assure myself that nothing terrible happened during the hours when I wasn't paying attention. (The Yellowstone caldera has not exploded, despite the recent, strange swarm of earthquakes.) Then, I read blog comments for a while. Last night's post had accumulated 73 comments. The second one was from me, right before I fell asleep. I was responding to the first comment, from Zachary Paul Sire, who wanted to know if I liked the movie, a matter I'd considered beside the point of the post. I answered:

It was okay. It would have been much better if it were tightened up... and livened up. Like many high-budget, high-aspiration movies of today, it was embalmed. Its "I have always loved you" theme was very conventional, and I never felt much real passion between the 2 lead actors. And neither of them ever said anything clever. But there were some excellent special effects in aging and youthening Pitt and Blanchett, and there were some nice moments. Where to cut? You can cut all whole old dying woman and her daughter scenes, as far as I'm concerned. Reminded me of "Titanic," bringing in an old, old woman to tell the story of her big love to her daughter.

71 comments ensued. I can't reprint them all. But I intend to frontpage much more than usual this morning.

Chuck b. said:

I always enjoy the Althousian disdain for sentimentality (or is it a midwesterner's disdain? or maybe it's just very lawyerly), although I myself enjoy many sentimental films.

Actually, I'm not very good at recognizing sentimentality when I see it. I just let myself get played.

... although I don't cry as much during commercials and sentimental television things as much as Althouse does. Actually, that's interesting. A'house report tearage not infrequently. Does that have something to do with her negative reactions toward...ineffective sentimentality?

Am I midwestern? The most midwestern thing about me is that my mother grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Second is: I went to college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Third: I've taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, Wisconsin since 1984 (since I was 33 years old). So: 1. My formative years were not spent in the midwest, and 2. My time in the midwest has entirely been in these 2 university towns that don't really represent the region.

As for crying and sentimentality... 1. I might cry about something sentimental the way I might sneeze in the presence of dusty black pepper. It doesn't mean I admire the cause of the reflex. Quite the opposite. 2. I am cold to some emotional manipulations and susceptible to others. I might get judgmental and resist everything, but I might indulge and enjoy the easily won emotions of sentimentality. There is some good sentimentality. "The Bill Cosby Show" always made me cry. (And I do mean "The Bill Cosby Show," not "The Cosby Show," which I never watched.) 3. There are some things I regard as real art. I keep these separate, whether they provoke crying or not. The Kubrick movie "Lolita" caused me to cry profusely, but only after it was over, when I was trying to talk about it. That meant something.

Palladian said:

["Ben Button" s]ounds like a miserable Oscar-bait remake of "Big".

"Big" was much more fun, but like "Big," it gave us a chance to see an adult woman in love with a little boy — without all that nasty guilt that comes from awareness that we are witnessing pedophilia. Unlike "Big," it gave us a chance to see an old man in love with a little girl. Ah, but he's only 7! He's her age. And when an old woman tells him he should be ashamed of himself, we sympathize with the old man. I mean the little boy. And I bet pedophiliac old men believe that at heart they too are little boys.

And Brad Pit and Cate Blanchett? Can there be two more overexposed, boring actors on the planet?

Zachary Paul Sire said:

I love Cate Blanchett (anyone seen "Notes On A Scandal"? Now that's a good movie)...but Brad Pitt has never, ever been interesting to me. I can't think of one movie he's been in that I've enjoyed. Maybe "12 Monkeys," but that's because he was a supporting character. He and Cate, like Althouse said, had absolutely no passion or believability. Lifeless. Boring.

I love Brad in "12 Monkeys." Also in "Fight Club." In fact, I have a lot of respect for Brad Pitt. He picks some artistic projects, and he doesn't just rely on his pretty face — though perhaps he uglifies himself in part for the purpose of sending the message that he is so gorgeous that even uglified he's divine. In "Ben Button," he puts on that old age makeup, but then he emerges from it, so that Brad Pittifulness seems astoundingly new again. He then gets to progress to his "Thelma and Louise" level of insane male beauty. There's a scene in "Button" where he returns to the (old) Cate Blanchett in this form and she exclaims "You're perfect!" and I wanted her to say "Oh my God! You're Brad Pitt!"

Titus said:

For the most part I hate almost every movie that comes out because I find them too boring and too much made for "normal America". I also hate sitting in a movie theater for two hours with other people....

On a seperate [sic] note I have a fear of the dentist. I am only able to go once a year because I literally freak out 24 hours before I go. I have to be sedated, gased and anything else to go. I go every year in January but I now have a toothache so I have to go tomorrow and I am freaking out....

The only good news about going to the dentist tomorrow is he gives me good drugs.

He is a big liberal. His wife works at the front desk and his dog runs around the office.

My dentist is a straight queen. Every time I go in there he shows me one of his new Yoga poses that he has just conquered.

Chuck b. said...

"My dentist is a straight queen."

I loathe heterosexual gay men. What's the phobicity for that?

My dentist is a feisty latina and I am devoted to her. As a regular flosser and non-drinker of sugary beverages, my teeth are always clean and my gums are "tight". I love it when she tells me my gums are tight. Noone else tells me that.

Beth — who lives in New Orleans, the city featured in the movie but not the Fitzgerald story — said:

The more days I am from having seen ["Ben Button"], the more little "hey, that didn't add up" moments I think of. I too could have done without the entire mother/daughter hospital plot. I kept dreading possible outcomes, and that was a distraction.

And no, there's no real chemistry between the leads. There were much more appealing relationships -- b/w Benjamin and the folks in the home, mainly. And the tugboat captain was a favorite of mine.

But I am a partisan for it still; there are lots of movies shot in New Orleans, and this one made such wonderful use of places I love. The bandstand where Daisy does her nighttime dance is one where my friends and I would perform late at night, running wild in the park as teens. Lanaux House, the setting for the Button household, was also the setting for the nasty Gallier sibling household in the 1982 version of Cat People. Overall, I just loved our streets and houses and streetcars and greenery. It all looked so good.

Chuck b. said:

I was in N'awlins once for a week, drunk the whole time. I ate every meal at Paul Prudhomme's place (spelling?!) and marvelled at the cockroaches on the sidewalk that came out when the sun went down. I walked all the way back to my hotel stepping on one cockroach after another, like stepping stones. God, what a great town.

Palladian said:

I cry at the end of "It's A Wonderful Life"....

"It's A Wonderful Life" is a perfect movie. I know that some people think it's commie propaganda and that some douchebag at the New York Times (natch) trashed it this year, but still. Brilliantly detailed, perfect performances. Sob, sob.

Zachary Paul Sire said:

I've actually never watched the entire "It's A Wonderful Life" from beginning to end. I've also never watched an entire episode of "The Simpsons" from beginning to end. Some things just don't appeal to me.

Chuck b. said...

I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life, even a little bit of it.

LoafingOaf said:

I'm also sorry I don't find life so wonderful. Will the movie change my mind? I still smile through most days, though. Life is depressing but you may as well life at it.

Sometimes I come to Althouse blog and the prof's life seems so perfect, and I've never been able to detect any terrible, or even messy, things going on beneath the surface. She's even chummy with her ex, and her sons seem way too well-adjusted. Does she keep it hidden, or is she for real? She seems so "together" I feel if I browse her blog enough it will rub off on me a little. But I do wanna determine whether she just keeps it hidden or if her having her shit so "together" is for real.

You should read what they say about me on those other blogs — where I'm a decrepit, crazy drunk. Obviously, I control the message here. But, in fact, I don't lie about myself. Even though some of my antagonists think I'm outrageously self-absorbed, I rarely reveal anything about my real-world life. Haven't you noticed? My topic selection and various opinions and attitudes may seem idiosyncratic and distinctive enough to give the impression of a window into my life. And my photographs, by physical necessity, show my point of view. But I'm not telling you about any sorrows and struggles that may afflict me. Yes, I have a job that immensely benefits me, but it is exceedingly rare for me to write about my colleagues or students. If they were giving me trouble, you wouldn't know. I'm very lucky to have 2 sons — but I'm not going to say anything bad about them, and I mostly don't write about them. And you see my occasional chumminess with my ex-husband, but we separated more than 20 years ago. You have no evidence at all of any post-1987 love affairs that I may have had and how I may have suffered.

LoafingOaf said:

Oh, well, at least Sarah Palin's life and family turned out to be a mess.

Beth said:

LoafingOaf, I'm just making a guess here, so cut me some slack if I'm offbase.

You might find life a little less depressing if you cut back on the hating, just a bit. Take Palin, for example. She's not running for anything right now. She lost. Why bother looking for a Palin thread anywhere? I know, I know; there are scores of conservatives who can't get through a day without hating on Algore or blaming Bill Clinton for today's crappy economy or holding out for Obama's super-secret African birth certificate -- but they're not good examples for you to follow.

I'm not saying you should be Mary Sunshine, but a small adjustments might be in order. If you just keep your targets of anger current, you'll cut back on a lot of unnecessary bile. And that will increase the room for a bit of wonder in your life.

See how we help each other here?

Chickenlittle said:

She's even chummy with her ex, and her sons seem way too well-adjusted. Does she keep it hidden, or is she for real?

My ex-girlfriend is chummy with my wife. She's coming to visit next weekend--with her husband. We all laugh and joke about the past.

My point is that you can choose to get past horrible hurts in the past--or not. It all depends on the parties involved (and their will to party)

Palladian said:

"Oh, well, at least Sarah Palin's life and family turned out to be a mess."

A mess? She was nominee for vice-president. She has a beautiful family. If you want a mess you should look to yourself and figure out why this woman drove you crazy, why this woman turned you from an interesting commenter to a bitter, twisted loser. Take Beth's advice, Mr Sullivan, and chill out.

Reader_iam, quoting me in the original "Ben Button" post, said:

the old story is crisp and unsentimental

Indeed.

Finally, some love for Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald.

And that's the end of the line in this paean to commenters.

Happy New Year, everybody. Let's sing "Auld Lang Syne":

Yellowstone, in bleakness.

Big Horn.

Yesterday, I drove from Teton Village, up through Teton and part of Yellowstone National Parks, toward Route 90, which is the long last leg of my drive back home to Madison. It was nice having the very easy and fast driving of Route 90 for the last 300 miles of Wednesday's drive, but to get from Yellowstone to 90, I chose Route 14/14A, the Big Horn Scenic Byway.

Here, Silvio takes a rest:



And here's the view from the vertiginous height of 9430 feet. Look closely to see the distant horizon.





Climbing this mountain by car was challenging and scary. There were beautiful views that I could barely stand to look at, because of the height and the unguarded drastic edge. In this picture, there's some solid ground next to the road, but much of the time there was not. Only a flick of the wrist would send me plunging into death -- I kept pushing that thought out of my head.

I remembered that movie monologue -- the first time we ever saw the sublime creepiness of Christopher Walken, as Annie Hall's brother Duane:

Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist. I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving... on the road at night... I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The... flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.

Don't drive with Duane on the Big Horn Scenic Byway. Think life-affirming thoughts if you're the one with the hands on the wheel. And if you're the passenger, don't say a thing or make the tiniest move that might jar the essential, steely calm of your driver.

Hot water.

A view into the depths of West Thumb -- Yellowstone:



The long view:



Do you see the horrific danger?

"They are making me crazy. They have ruined my life."

It's those terrible not-ladybugs. Remember when you were all ooh! cute! ladybugs!? We know so much better now:

Unlike domestic ladybugs, the multicolored Asian variety likes to keep its polka dots indoors in the winter. In older rural neighborhoods, where houses are not knit tight, only insecticide can hope to keep them out. They swarm by the tens of thousands. Unlike the domestic ladybug, the Asian variety leaves a yellow stain. It can bite. Worst of all, it stinks.

As Michael F. Potter, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, explained: "When the beetles are handled or disturbed in any way, they emit this yellow substance from their leg. It's lady-bird blood. It has a noxious odor."

Or, as Lorene Bowling of Olive Hill, Ky., put it, "They stink something terrible."...

Ruth Hopkins, who lives in Mount Vernon, about 40 miles from Lexington, said she got up several times every night last winter to get her hand-held vacuum and sweep the bugs off the sheets and off her ailing 89-year-old husband.

"I would just take that sweeper and sweep all night," said Mrs. Hopkins, whose home is near the Daniel Boone National Forest. "All winter long, we got no rest. They would drop off the ceiling everywhere."

We have them in Wisconsin, but not anywhere near that bad. They seem to be energized by a warm day after it's been cold, on certain days in the fall and spring. I guess in the south, there are days like that all winter. I suppose with the onset of global warming, we'll be seeing more of these horrible bugs. Is there any solution other than insecticide?

In Asia, the bugs do not winter in dwellings, but land on tall, light-colored rocks and find their way into warm, damp recesses in the stone. When the beetles got to the United States, the white vinyl siding on small buildings and granite or light stone walls on larger ones may have beckoned the same way their native rocks had.

So, usually on warm, sunny autumn afternoons after a hard frost, beetles light on the western and southwestern sides of buildings, favoring light-colored buildings over dark ones, and showing a particular affinity for surfaces with contrasting dark vertical lines - like vinyl siding. When they crawl around in search of warm recesses, they end up inside, in light fixtures or attics for the winter.

I'm going to take that into account the next time I have my house painted. I want to know how dark I need to go to make my house not remind them of a rock in China. The poor darlings are just homesick.

UPDATE: Wouldn't mosquito netting work better than a DustBuster? I'm really disturbed by the idea of repeatedly vaccuuming a sick, old man.

Earthquake-inspired thoughts

The recent earthquake has led to articles reviewing the other calamities the earth might one day unleash upon us. I was particularly struck by this passage in an editorial in the Times of India titled "Violent Planet":

Yellowstone National Park in Montana is a mega-eruption waiting to happen. When it last blew, two million years ago, it created enough ash to bury New York state to a depth of 20 metres. Forget nations, our entire species might not survive such a cataclasmic giga-event — which for our planet is but a twitch of its skin. Such stupendous forces beyond conception can inspire only awe. And ultimate humility in the face of a mysterious creation which, to make itself complete, must inevitably contain the seeds of its own eventual dissolution.

Things I bought at Border’s today and why.

1. Decasia: The State of Decay. A film by Bill Morrison. Because I read this article by Herbert Muschamp in today’s NYT, I remembered reading about this film before, and now it’s out on DVD. Because it’s got a sticker on the front with a quote from Errol Morris saying “Haunting, Mysterious and Incredibly Beautiful. A definitive work of art” and I love Errol Morris and am a sucker for art as long as it doesn’t trigger any of my many objections. Even though Muschamp wrote:

Already a cult classic, the movie is a time capsule of the postmodern obsession with decrepitude. What a space saver! Just pop this disc in the player and you'll have all the putrefaction you could ask for. Watch the Master Narratives Crumble! Entropy Now! Pomo's Greatest Hits!

2. The Four Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows Featuring The Beatles and Other Artists Including The Original Cast from "Oliver!", Cab Calloway, Cilla Black, Frank Gorshin, Soupy Sales, Gordon & Sheila MacRae, Tessie O'Shea, Myron Cohen, Mitzi Gaynor, Allen & Rossi, and many more ..." Because I love a historic mishmash that is likely to give me all sorts of weird mixed feelings of delight, anxiety, regret, nausea, horror, and general sublime awareness. Because tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the first of the four shows and the DVD empowers the consumer to mark the occasion. Because I want to rethink how I felt when I was thirteen and had to face the reality that not everyone was as much in love with The Four Seasons as I was. (Oh, how sadly they have fallen out of the culture! A search for "Four Seasons" in Amazon did not show them at all on the first page of a list that began with: The Most Relaxing Classical Album in the World...Ever!, Sex and the City - The Complete First Four Seasons, Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long, and Montbell Ultralight #2 Sleeping Bag.)

3. The audio version of Yann Martel's "Life of Pi." Because years ago I learned how to solve my terrible insomnia problem by listening to spoken word. Audio books last years for me, because I can only hear a couple minutes a night. Because I think the elements of the story involving animals and floating in a lifeboat will harmonize well will sleeping and dreaming. Because I've listened to "A Short History of Nearly Everything" for the past year and some aspects of it are not harmonizing well with sleeping and dreaming (e.g., Yellowstone is a supervolcano due to erupt and destroy life as we know it, a large asteroid could suddenly kill us all something like a second after we became aware of it).

4. Sam Kashner's "When I Was Cool, My Life at the Jack Kerouac School." Because there's the adorable Sam Kashner on the cover wearing what William Burroughs called "suspenders of disbelief." Because I opened the book up at about twelve different places and read one sentence and every sentence passed my personal test of goodness (some combination of specific/surprising detail and an arrangement of words that charms me in some way ("I graduated 'in the Earth Horse Year,' whenever that was.")).