Meme of the day: ever wonder what SWAT signals mean?
Pictured at right: “Aim for the ass”.
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Bob Smith and I were sitting in a nondescript diner just off of I-84 in Kingston, NY, when the lights started to flicker and go dark. “Ha!” joked the russian owner behind the cash register. “You see? I didn’t pay my electricity bill!” The lights kept flickering, then gradually died out, and the diner became very quiet when the salad bar stopped humming.
We finished our lunch as the diner got steadily warmer, then went outside and tried the internet. “Reuters: 8 minutes ago: Blackouts are affecting New York, Toronto, and Detroit, witnesses say. It’s currently unknown if the events are related.” Geez, that’s eerily doomsday-y.
I tried to refresh once or twice, waiting for the reports that aliens have landed in rural New Jersey, but the connection was dead. So we took stock. We each had about 100 miles of range on our motorcycles; not enough to get home. With power out, apparently, across the east coast, there’s no way to buy more gas. And, with the approach of night, it seemed likely that flesh-eating zombies would arise from the sewers, unleashing their unclean hunger on a panicky and well-marbled populace.
The solution, as always in catastrophe situations, was clear: immediately find a luxury resort enclave with its own generator system, a staff prepared to handle unusual situations, and a team of sharpshooters with high-powered rifles to keep the flesh-eating zombies at bay.
Fortunately, there was one such place at hand.
So, I’m writing this in the computer room of the Mohonk Mountain House, a Victorian castle resort enclave high in the Shawangunk mountains built by a Quaker family in 1869. With a diesel generator plant, gourmet chefs, a glacial lake for swimming, and a notable lack of creepy zombie manholes. Which is good, because Quakers believe only in non-violent zombie discouragement tactics. Though they may have experience dealing with the uncanny: Mohonk Mountain House, a fifth of a mile long after numerous additions, is the building that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining (even though he decided to set it out West.)
Our plan is to leave at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning, after recharging my laptop and our cellphones with precious, precious Quaker luxury electricity. As we roll through a post-apocalyptic landscape filled with burning taxis and feral youths carrying sharp-edged boomerangs, we will relive the worst thing that happened to us during this blackout:
Mohonk’s kitchen is out of lime peel! -
I’m selling two extra NYC 30-day metrocards. Fifty bucks each, two available (as of now).
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One of the first goals for my book project is to read my way through the entire canon of time travel fiction. I’ve got my work cut out for me — and a lot of books with embarassing airbrushed cover art to wade through.
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My friend and ex-colleague Kenneth Courtney IMmed me yesterday with a coding question.
After leaving [My employer] a while ago, Ken started a designer line called Ju$t Another Rich Kid. Featured items: “starfucker” shirts: vintage tees and Fred Perry shirts modded with mendacious Williamsburg one-upsmanship. Not surprisingly, the shirts are getting him all kinds of press. Now Ken’s selling the shirts for eighty bucks apiece in NY, Paris, London, Amsterdam, and LA.
I helped Ken with some code, so now he’s promised me a shirt of my very own. And about, time, too, since I’m now getting occasional SMS ridicule from grade schoolers calumniating the coolness of my Defend Brooklyn shirt.
Check out Ken’s current stock, then hit the “comments” link below and cast your vote for which one I should get. And who I should send it to — Ken’s shirts are one-of-a-kind, so if I get a small shirt, I’ll have to have a small person picked out for it. -
I’m reading a great book called What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist — the Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England.
There’s a bazillion books and self-satisfied magazine articles out there that will explain the quirkier customs of Georgian and Victorian etiquette (“Who goes in to dinner first — the wife of a bishop or the daughter of a Baronet?” [stupid author rolls eyes in a droll manner] “Oh, those cra-a-a-a-zy Victorians!” Feh.)
This book attempts to capture all the day-to-day facts of Victorian life, not just the upstairs/downstairs stuff. I’ve always skimmed over the details in 19th-century books. For example: Sherlock Holmes promises an urchine a crown to wait outside the opium den: is this a nice tip, or a Rodney Dangerfield “Get my bags, park my car, and put on some weight, will ya?!” bribe?
Voila, study material:
VALUE:COIN (nickname)
21 shillings : guinea
20 shillings (one pound) : sovereign (“quid”)
10 shillings : half sovereign
5 shillings : crown (“bull”)
2 1/2 shillings: half crown
2 shillings: florin
12 pence : one shilling
6 pence : sixpence (“bob, hog”)
4 pence : groat (“tanner, bender”)
3 pence : threepence
2 pence : twopence (“tuppence”)
1 pence : penny (“copper”)
1/2 pence : halfpenny (“ha’pence”)
1/4 pence : farthing
1/8 pence : half farthing
Considering that — checking the chapter on “occupations” — kids not employed in the mills could sometimes find work as mudlarks, raking the stagnant banks of the Thames at low tide for stray pieces of coal and bones — yielding, maybe, 3 pence a day, it turns out that Sherlock’s tip was of the Rodney Dangerfield variety.
I now know the difference between a curate, a rector, a vicar, and a parson (mainly, where their income came from) and how many companies make a regiment (8-10), and what the hell a costermonger is (victorian hot-dog cart), and why Victorian damsels were always succumbing to “a chill” (often tuberculosis). Also, the difference between a court, a manse, a grange, and a hall, and how a dog cart is different from a brougham (SUV:station wagon). Oh, and how big a hogshead is, and what honorific suffixes mean: “Wadley Pilkington, bart., R.A.”
Y’all better steer clear of me for the next coupla days. Bart, R.A. -
I’m back from a long weekend bike trip: Four days, twenty-five hours in the saddle, 1,1166 miles. (Some riders do that mileage in one day!) I had a vague idea that I wanted to go to the Adirondacks, or maybe Nantucket. Using the ancient principle of flipping a coin, then doing the opposite thing, I made a kind of big lopsided loop from the Catskills, through the Berkshires, to Martha’s Vineyard and back again. -
Go look at this right now:
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Link of the day: The Rotten Library. An extremely useful encyclopedia of stuff you’ll never find in the World Book Encyclopedia in a million years. Go to the “Sex” section and read Mark Twain’s essay on onanism.
tikaro.com 