strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Apr 26 03: get well soon, silver potato
Okay, now we’re back home. Sari did manage to score tickets to Kaiju Big Battel, from which I have just returned. It is now an appropriate time for sleeping, and I am glad of it. I promised some dear friends I would post a review immediately, though, so here it is:
That show was one of the most aggressively weird things I have ever seen. I think this is a good thing, but I won’t be sure until tomorrow at the earliest. I have been up for nearly 24 hours straight (again) and everything feels pretty surreal at this point.
Oh, and Kung Fu Chicken Noodle has really nice arms.
I’m going to bed now. Further analysis will have to wait.
Apr 19 03: excellent friday
We’re in England now, avoiding talk of war and despair and instead spending quality time with the extraordinarily charming Peter and Robin. Greetings from Oxford. I don’t have long, so I’ll have to gloat quickly about our yesterday. Our plane got in at about 7am, and we took a bus west to Oxford. It broke down about two blocks from our intended destination. In the morning we walked into town and then along the Thames, where we enjoyed the sunshine and ogled the rowers as they sculled past. Lunch was at a picnic table overlooking the river at a local pub. Yes, Guinness is better in England than in the States—you know that steel-wool-and-copper-pennies taste it always has? you wouldn’t if you were English—and I am assured that it’s even better in Ireland. After lunch we allowed ourselves a nap of about an hour, because Paul and I couldn’t keep our eyes open, let alone converse coherently. Neither of us can sleep on planes: the best you can really do is this dreamy meditative state that can be entertaining but is never restful.
And then? Punting.
Indeed. Punting on the Cherwell. The late afternoon was golden; the birds sang in the sunshine; the grass was green on the banks; other boats full of laughing punters young and old drifted by. Most of them seemed to be bound for a pub upstream, or returning therefrom. When we passed the pub’s landing everything grew more tranquil. I got a turn at the pole. Fun fun fun, and the physical exercise woke me back up.
This may well be my last report from this trip: we don’t intend to take a laptop to the rental in Exmoor. I hereby avow that if the rest of the trip is as pleasant as the last 36 hours have been, I will be very sad to go home.
cross-cultural tidbit
Here’s a thing to know: on British keyboards the ” and the @ are reversed. The # and the ~ share a key to the right of the right-hand shift key. Why? Who knows.Apr 12 03: back at the front
Our leaders are trying to downplay the chaos we’re leaving in our wake. The charming Mr. Rumsfeld, for instance, has
…dismissed the chaos as a “transitional” phase, born of “pent-up frustration” after 24 years of oppression. He accused newspapers of exaggerating the unrest and said television stations were showing the same footage over and over again “of some person walking out of a building with a vase.” [article]But we know otherwise, don’t we?
It appears that the micromanaged, less-is-more invasion strategy Rumsfeld and other civilian officials imposed on the Pentagon is going to succeed. Bully for Rumsfeld. But if we’d gone in with the sort of ground troops the military brass desired, we might have had the manpower to prevent the wholesale collapse that seems to be in progress at this point: every hospital reduced to a howling bedlam robbed of drugs, supplies, and equipment; stores looted; government records in flames.
For some reason, though, the thing that has finally sent me into ranting full-throttle disgust is the sacking of the National Museum of Iraq. In which priceless works from the dawn of human civilization were carried off by the wheelbarrowful. The same thing is happening in Mosul, where the university’s famed collection of ancient manuscripts has been picked clean. Maybe it’s because it’s no longer just the local nest that’s being fouled: the loss we’re facing here is the pillaging of our common history. We’re never going to see most of this stuff again, Mr. President.
Do I accuse the American forces of doing the looting? No. I’m furious that so many would choose such mindless, short-sighted violence for the inaugural moments of the future we have thrust upon them. But you cannot convince me that the possibility of this kind of chaos was never considered. Our failure to prepare for it makes us as culpable as the hooligans we’ve allowed to run amok, and don’t think that the Arab world will soon let us forget it.
tansy
I tell you, Louise. I am so tired of Rusty. Him and his “I’m the dog so don’t mess with me,” his “I keep the foxes away, so don’t make me regret it,” his “don’t bother me when I’m napping, chicken.” Such a no-fun meanie. That Rusty. I was just heading for the road? You know, that big flat thing with the big loud things on it? Because you know that I’ve always wondered what the bugs tasted like on the other side of it. I’m so bored with the bugs over on our side, and besides it just seems like it could be a good way to spend an afternoon, going over there. I just want to go! And you know what? Rusty did his whole “how many times have I got to tell you, chicken, to stay in the yard” thing. I swear, he’s even worse today than usual. His eyes are kind of funny. Anyway, I’ve had enough of that Rusty. There are some mushy tomatoes out in the garden, and I’m going to get some. Yes, Louise, I’m going to throw tomatoes at the dog. I’m going to teach him that just because I’m a chicken doesn’t mean I don’t deserve a little respect. Are you with me?
Apr 11 03: hack
War Requiem@Carnegie: mixed. General performance was fabulous, and if the Times comes through on that review I’ll link to it here. Personal performance, not so good. Due to the sudden intervention of a pesky phlegm blob, I produced a Horrible Noise early in the second movement (Dies Irae)—it was three octaves higher than any noise I ever made, and loud loud loud, and somehow polyphonic. I screeched an entire chord at once, and second-guessed myself for the remainder of the show. What if it happened again? Am I focussed enough? How is my technique? Wait, I have to pay attention to the conductor. What’s the next note?
Five days ago, I was ready to fearlessly take on that impossible, beautiful piece. Last night, I was timid, and tentative, and couldn’t get back into the zone. Phooey. But like I said, amazing show. The soloists were spectacular.
more cultural adventure
I really really really want to go see Kaiju Big Battel at the Roseland on the night we come back from England. And the opening act is the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players! How cool is that? I may just buy myself a ticket tomorrow, skeptical friends and premonitions of severe jetlag be damned.I mean, if anything is going to keep me up until a reasonable bedtime, this has gotta be it.
Apr 8 03: metropolitan moment
The MTA subway token is being phased out forever on May 4. You won’t be able to buy them after this Saturday, for that matter. I’m not one of the folks who sees this as a sign of the Apocalypse; I made the jump to the Metrocard almost immediately, and the whole flat-fee-for-30-days’-transit thing is a godsend. But I liked the tokens. They were tactile in a way that the Metrocard isn’t. They had old-fashioned charm. I bought a couple the other day, just for nostalgia’s sake. One of them is now on my key ring.
But, as the NY Times points out, the death of the subway token will also mean the end of a particulary scary form of urban crime: token sucking. (Requires free registration to read the article.) Sari sent me the link, with the one-line comment “This has got to go on the blog.” No kidding. Enjoy.
continued geekery
More on the Z machine, courtesy the BBC. It mentions that the tank is full of seawater, which is a lovely idea.
Apr 7 03: if you can read this
then it means that our cable modem continued to work long enough for me to post this. The nice fix-it man came today. Lo, even seven hours later, it is still fixed.
cri de coeur
Welcome to Winter II: the revenge. I am fighting off a cold at the moment, and it hurts to swallow, and I’m singing at Carnegie Hall the day after tomorrow. But the suffering of my body pales beside the suffering of my soul: it is snowing.Again.
Please, just make it stop. If I don’t get some warm breeziness soon I may perish.
oooh
Who says science isn’t beautiful? Anyone with a band broad enough to handle a 1.8MB image should examine the following: a picture of the Z machine at Sandia Labs, which is attempting to make fusion work. Is that Cherenkov radiation in the tank? So strange, so blue. A lovely shade.wait. what?
Cherenkov radiation. Think of it as a “sonic boom” produced when a particle goes faster than the speed of light. A “photonic boom.” Sure, light is the fastest thing there is when it’s travelling through a vacuum, but when it’s moving through water, there are some high-energy particles that will leave it in the dust. Therefore, submerged sources of high-energy particles (notably reactor cores) will give off Cherenkov light. Which is a fascinating blue color.Man, the universe is cool.
Apr 2 03: sign of spring #24,308
Spring is returning to the City. How can we tell? By the subways. By the subway train pulling into the station and one car, the car in front of you on the platform, has many many available seats in it even though the car ahead of it (which just rolled past you as the train was pulling in) was jam-packed. By the stepping onto the car and the door closing and the four seconds later your eyes start to water and you can taste this Seriously Funky Smell in the air. By the way you furtively look up and all the other folks are making eye contact with one another, the same looks on their faces, uh-huh, oh my god, that explains it, doesn’t it? Except for the one person, the one who is looking at his feet or into space or is asleep, the one who is wearing way too many clothes and has a shopping bag.
Stinky Bum Season has returned.
I’m not sure why this only happens now, as opposed to all winter. I think they must go somewhere warmer—and then return to NYC with the spring, only they come back too soon and they have to duck into the subways to stay warm. The one yesterday, he had a pong. Whoo. And he was the third in about a week.