Category Archives: Over the Transom

Improve Your Manroot

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This morning I started getting a large volume of unwanted, unsolicited email in the account I use most. I’ve always gotten some, but for some reason the count swelled suddenly – and all of it promised to help me swell myself. Why now? Can’t say. And who is it that answers email like that, much less spends money because it? I especially can’t fathom that mystery.

I would use the conventional term for this kind of mail, which is the same as a famed canned meat product well-loved in Polynesia. But immediately after I used that word in a posting in 2012, the previous BTST started to go haywire. Probably a coincidence, but I’m not going to press my luck.

So I set the s-filter for the first time, though I’ve had the address for years. I’ve been reluctant to do that because I don’t want useful correspondence caught in the filter. But the latest deluge is ridiculous. The settings didn’t give me the option of blocking anything with certain words in the subject line, such as “penis.” No useful email is going to have that in the subject line, I think.

There’s Snow on Them Thar Suburban Lawns

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The only reason I’m using a “them thar” headline today is because one of my editors – again – removed one of my headlines with a “There’s X in Them Thar Y.”  Sure, it’s a hoary old cliché, but it’s got an honorable pedigree, at least if its association with the antebellum gold rush in Dahlonega, Georgia, is true. It’s been removed from my articles more than once. Here, no one can remove it but me, no matter how silly it is.

Anyway, we woke up to snow this morning, the day of the equinox. (“First day of spring,” they say on TV and the radio. Oh, really?) It was a light coating, and by 10 a.m. had already started to melt, except in the shadows, and by afternoon most of it was long gone. So it wasn’t the serious snow of the days of the polar vortexes. Still, the weekend is forecast to be plenty winter-like.

I got a scanner in 2000 when I bought my first iMac, since it was thrown in with that machine for only $10. I scanned a lot of things for a number of years. Including items I have no idea why I thought they were worth scanning. Such as:

LaMasRicaI have an interest in package art — my roommate and I maintained a “Package Art Gallery” in a closet in our dorm during my junior year in college — but I don’t know that this one is all that interesting. (My favorite from the Package Art Gallery was a muffin mix that promised the muffins would be “the most very blueberry anythings you ever ate.” We hung items, with thumbtacks, for verbiage as much as design.)

A few child-produced items are in the scan collection.

LillyPaintFeb02One of Lilly’s, according to the label, dating from 2002. And of course there are scans of the kids themselves, such as this one from some years ago, which may be among the last pictures I took with a film camera.

Lilly-AnnFinally, a few scanned items from nature. The Acorn, for instance.

AcornWhich somehow reminds me of this 7-baht Thai postage stamp.

AcorncapI assume that’s the king of Thailand. I’m not sure that I got the stamp in Thailand — 7 baht seems like a small denomination  — so maybe it came with a grab-bag of cheap stamps I bought once.

Acme Klein Bottles

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How can the rising generation possibly appreciate the marvel of the Internet as much as those of us who remember when there was no such thing? Probably they can’t, but then again it doesn’t remotely matter.

That occurs to me because I found a site the other day that promises to satisfy one’s Klein bottle needs. Acme Klein Bottle, which says:

Need a zero-volume bottle?

Searching for a one-sided surface?

Want the ultimate in non-orientability?

Get an ACME KLEIN BOTTLE!

I might misunderstand these things, but I think they’re actually selling models of Klein bottles, since an actual one isn’t doable in only three dimensions. No matter. A Klein bottle for the mantle would be cool indeed, though I’m not in the market for fragile household oddities right now. I prefer more durable items.

A Ride on the Paternoster

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Here’s a term I’d never heard before: paternoster elevator. Or, as Wiki defines it, in part: “a chain of open compartments (each usually designed for two persons) that move slowly in a loop up and down inside a building without stopping.” The site has a helpful illustration.

The term was new to me, not the thing itself, because Yuriko and I rode one in Prague almost 20 years ago. We were astonished to find such a contraption. I never knew it had a special name, but I didn’t forget it.

This YouTube posting gives something of the sense of riding one, and since it was filmed in Prague, that might have been the very one we rode on. Here’s one in Copenhagen that I would have ridden if I’d known about it. I’m astonished that they’re still around even now.

As usual, I came to the term in a roundabout way. After proposing a coffee table book about dirty ice mounds, I remembered another one I came up with years ago, Great Elevators of Europe. For fun, I Googled that term, and the video about the paternoster came up.

The Day of the Trivet

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More snow last night. Getting a little tiresome, eh? Most of the nation is probably getting tired of the Winter of ’14 and its polar vortices and cancelled flights and icy Southland.

But spring is nigh. I know that because in the mail today I got the first circular of the season advertising better lawns through chemistry. Maxi-Green Lawn Service, or something, promising a lawn as green and monocultured and uninteresting as the surface of a billiard table. It’s a little hard to imagine any kind of lawn under those feet of snow, but I know it’s down there. As usual this year, I’m going to promote biodiversity in my lawn and survival of the fittest for the flora.

Here’s a word you don’t see all that much: trivet. I’m thinking of it because I also got a MoMA catalog in the mail today, as always full of artful bric-a-brac that I don’t order. In includes the Bakus Trivet, by Brazilian designer Tati Guimarães.

“An ideal way to collect and repurpose corks from special occasions,” the catalog says. “This stainless-steel frame becomes a trivet when you add bottle corks atop the 36 bent spikes. (Corks not included.) Made in Spain… $48  MEMBERS  $43.20”

Some cork-collecting friends of mine in college could have used one of these trivets, provided it wasn’t that expensive. They collected corks for some years, and wrote on each cork who was with them when the bottle was opened, and when. As I participated in wine drinking with these lads, my name too ended up on some of the corks, which were kept in a wooden box.

These days it would take a long time for me to accumulate 36 wine-bottle corks. And we don’t need any more trivets, since we have two cast-iron objects that serve that purpose. Still, it seems like a clever little item.

Somebody’s Lying

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At 5:12 on Tuesday (my answering machine tells me), we got our first robocall of the election season. Since it’s an off-year election, the volume probably won’t be as high as in ’12, nor as entertainingly daft.

Still, I’m recording it here. The candidate is in the Republican primary. Regardless of who wins that primary in the Eighth Congressional District of Illinois, incumbent Rep. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat, is odds-on favorite to win the general election.

Anyway, the call went as follows: “This is Hugo Z. Hackenbush, and I’d like a few seconds of your time to set the record straight. Over the last few weeks, my opponent for Congress has smeared my good name, and has lied about my residency in Illinois.

“The truth is, I was born and raised in the Eighth District, and the only time I left was to serve my country in the United States Marine Corps, which included five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s clear that my opponent’s attack on me and the military aren’t just wrong, they’re unpatriotic. Please send a message for freedom, and vote for me, Hugo Z. Hackenbush on March 18. Thanks for your time.”

Desk Debris

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The other day, an old friend mentioned a paperweight she has on her desk, one that she acquired when we worked together in Nashville in the mid-80s. I didn’t remember the item, but it did inspire me to take a look at some of the debris on my desk even now.

Desk Debris

The largest item is a plastic durian. A contributing editor at a magazine I once worked for, a woman who lived in Singapore for a while, gave it to me. I think because it came up in conversation that I knew what a durian was. The dog chewed on the stem not long ago, but I got it away from her.

The medallion is a Vanderbilt souvenir. Not sure when I got it, but it wasn’t when I attended school there. It’s a sturdy bronze object, weighing 9 oz., with Cornelius Vanderbilt on the obverse. Made by Medallic Art Co. of New York, according to the rim of the medallion. Maybe the company was once HQ’d in New York, but according to the web site, it’s now a division of Northwest Territorial Mint, which is headquartered in Federal Way, Washington, and has no facilities in New York.

I got the Maple Leaf bouncy ball at a store in Canmore, Alberta, in 2006. It was just after Canada Day, and Canada-themed items were at a discount.

The green item is a glass egg I bought at the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum in Neenah, Wisconsin, last year. A pretty piece of glass, but also inexpensive and hard to break.

Moon of New Orleans

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A day above freezing. I’m always surprised on such days how much snow melts. Most of the roof is uncovered, for instance. None of the ground is. It wasn’t that warm. Besides, we still have a deep covering left over from a slow accumulation all winter.

Something I learned today: former New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu is still alive at 83. Good for Moon. I thought about him because I read about Sen. Mary Landrieu’s bid for re-election, and remembered that he was her father. I can’t claim to know much about the Landrieus (Landrieux?) or Louisiana politics, except it’s inordinately colorful and rare is the governor who avoids indictment.

But Moon Landrieu has long been a favorite politician name, ever since I heard of him back during high school. That just sounds right for a N’Orleans pol, tripping right off your tongue. According to Wiki at least, he was born Maurice but at some point changed it legally to Moon.

Shiny Lincolns

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Yesterday I noticed an oddity in my loose change, a shiny Wheat Cent. Nothing particularly valuable, since it’s a 1957 coin, but still unusual. I scrounged around until I found a shiny Lincoln Memorial Cent, which isn’t that easy to find either, and a Union Shield Cent, which are practically all shiny. I put them together and preserved their shininess for posterity, if any. A fitting thing to do to mark Lincoln’s 205th birthday.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAVictor D. Brenner designed the Wheat Cent, obverse and reverse. The obverse, at least, has proved remarkably durable, from 1909 to the present, and will probably last until the sad day the U.S. retires the penny, as Canada has. It’s also gone where no coin has gone before – I think – namely Mars.

Frank Gasparro did the Lincoln Memorial Cent. Nice enough, with intricate detail, I suppose, but I never thought it compared to the Wheat Cent.

Lyndall Bass did the Union Shield Cent, a fine design. Doubt that it will make it to 2059, but at least it’s a good way to end the denomination.

Hugo Z. Hackenbush For Congress

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The first vote-for-me postcard of the next election cycle came in the mail on Saturday. Our primaries are sooner than they seem: March 18. The card touts the candidacy of a fellow running for Congress, with an emphasis on his military background. He once was a marine.

All well and good, but what are — let’s call him Hugo Z. Hackenbush — his core beliefs? Why, the postcard just happens to list some of them: Get Americans Back to Work; Traditional American Values; Peace Through Strength. Just to name a few. Glad Hugo cleared that up.

Notably absent on the card: any reference to an immediate family, which is unusual for this kind of card. There’s also no mention of the perfidy of the incumbent or any other opponent. Maybe he’s saving that for the general election. Still, that’s no fun, Hugo. Get out there and sling some mud. Illinois’ 8th District has seen that before.