Yeah, my heart’s about a size and a half larger, now. —Fuck tha Western canon!

Posted January 20, 2008 10:58 AM by Kip Manley

Wow. Just .... wow. I still say I'm gonna like this century. Pachelbel with Korean break dancers just tells me I'm right.

Posted January 20, 2008 10:59 AM by Michael Roberts

Damn, Patrick, the second one's way better -- it explicitly makes the point that it's deriving modern creativity from our rich cultural heritage (instead of just doing it.)

Well. I actually like the dancing better in the first one, though. It's a toss-up.

Posted January 20, 2008 11:03 AM by Michael

Hybrid vigor in the arts.

make it so.

Posted January 20, 2008 11:11 AM by ebear

I saw Ginsberg in, I guess, '76, at the Rolling Thunder concert at CSU (the one they filmed for TV). He read something that I presume was his poetry. I say "saw" rather than "heard" because I was walking around at the far end of the stadium at the time, and all I could be sure of was that somebody was standing and saying something. "Ginsberg," somebody said.

I had similar luck with the streaker, a wiggly little pink blob that ran across the mud-paved field in front of the stage, climbed a sound scaffold, and vanished. I had my monocular handy and could determine that it seemed female.

I kept wondering when Dylan would come out, but finally realized that the unfamiliar-sounding voice coming over the amps was, indeed, the headliner.

Posted January 20, 2008 11:30 AM by Kip W

This post was a work of art. Part anthology, part expression, intellectually engaging and utterly soulful. Thanks for this. I spent a half-hour reading the links, reading wikipages that referred to the references, and experiencing an increasing sense of awe.

It feels like we are at the cusp of a dawning awareness in this country that change is here, that change happened so much faster than we expected it to, that we're living almost in a post-change culture, which is why the candidates don't know what to talk about.

The wheels came off their economic models, their wars, and their culture, all at once, and confusion for once has replaced anger as a reliable political hot button.

That last line in your post, about the joy of those commercials is, in my opinion, the deep down DNA of a progressive. A conservative feels the disorientation of change and reacts with fear. A progressive feels that same uneasy dislocation, and finds joy in it.

In different times, each has its failings, but I'm firmly in the progressive camp for better or for worse. I loved those ads too, and I'm also bracing myself for the change that CDOs, rising oil prices, and foreign policy catatrophes have wrought. There's a strong headwind, and it's as exhilarating as it is terrifying. Thanks for this fantastic meditation on globalism.

Posted January 20, 2008 11:36 AM by Sean Sakamoto

Ah, much love for Teresa's explanation of anarcho-capitalism!

It is another of those names that seem silly if you think about them: anarcho-capitalists are effectively aristo-capitalists, because their anarchism is a hierarchy in which wealth wins. But then, that's also true of the Libertarian Party, which proposes that all libertarianism is right-libertarianism and believes the greatest liberty is to be found in the purest plutocracy.

Posted January 20, 2008 12:04 PM by will shetterly

A conservative feels the disorientation of change and reacts with fear. A progressive feels that same uneasy dislocation, and finds joy in it.

Sean, something similar has been noted before, in grimmer tones:

It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

At this point, I don't know which worries me more, the ones who want to break the barometer, the ones who want to hide the barometer from the rest of us for their own advantage, those who imagine they can build a better barometer that will give them information they like better, or the ones who want to say the barometer just doesn't matter.

But not only are the Koreans making commercials using Pachelbel's Canon in D, they're making telelvision shows inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen--because, you know, they can. It's not the same story, but it's a story that might not have appeared if the people behind it hadn't had Andersen's work to think about.

Posted January 20, 2008 12:30 PM by fidelio

Patrick!, referring to an unlinked phrase in your post, Inside the Whale and other Essays (with this cover (ah, nostalgia)) was one of the most influential books I read (& re-read many times thereafter) as a child — sometime in the first part of High School, aged 12-15 years.

It's packed in a box somewhere, but the thoughts are still in my heart & mind, a base & foundation for my beliefs. Probably a good exchange for not being introduced to the Narnia stories, tho' I wouldn't have minded knowing Dr Seuss when young. I don't think I've ever heard anyone else refer to that title when not specifically discussing Orwell's essays.

Still a highly recommended book.

[And English, she is great because she is the exemplar of hybrid vigour, a mongrel 'rifling the pockets of other languages'. These Korean ads (& other things, I'm sure) may give hope for something similar in other fields. Thank you, Patrick.]

Posted January 20, 2008 12:51 PM by Mez

Actually, the canon is in D major, not minor.

Posted January 20, 2008 12:54 PM by Martin GL

Arrgh! My comment on Inside the Whale and other Essays (see also online) only had 4 links, but was held over.

I want it mentioned ASAP, so I'll just put in those two links with a strong recommendation, and also say that the Pachabel/Asian/Breakdance is another example of Teresa's "fanfic, force of nature". From my experience of reading archaeology and art history, the 'filking urge' is one of those basic human characteristics along with 'narrative' or story. Probably one of the things that brought us a lot of advances over time.

Posted January 20, 2008 1:11 PM by Mez

Is it worth pointing out that many felt the whole invention of "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" was itself part of a capitalistic ploy to sell IDIC-themed trinkets, or was that part of the point being made here? It's still early morning in the America of my mind right now, so my synapses might still be in bed.

That said: "Hi, all!" I was just validating links for my Blog Glob, and saw that the lights were on (even if mine might not be), so I figured I'd do one of my periodic brief random reappearances.

Things are still what they are for me; our current cat count is nine (oldest, still, Aurora, at 15; youngest, Mercury, at 1.5), and current family count the same as before. After the slow-motion crash-and-smolder that characterized the whimpery end of the perhaps presumptuously-named group blog I found myself in charge of, I finally decided to get back up on the rocking-horse, and opened my own new blog, because I certainly can't fail any worse on my own than I already did as part of a team.

I began by moving over all of my old SFBlog posts; but copying them and re-checking and re-formatting the old links is exactly the type of thorough, detail-oriented work that really is medically proven to make my brain switch off and my body break down, so I stalled out on that several months ago, somewhere back in March of 2005. Coming to the realization that, if I waited to move over all of the old archives before posting any new material, there would never be any new material, I decided to throw confetti to the winds and plunge back in with all-new material here in 2008 (as a partial validation of that approach, I have found myself with the renewed enthusiasm to get me through the end of April 2005 now in my archive move).

If I can browbeat my brain into coughing up some serviceable thoughts on the subject, I intend to post a review of "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," the first episode of season two of Torchwood, which has already aired in the UK (and in my living room), but won't hit BBC America until next Saturday (short, non-spoiler version: "Yummy").

What else? Let's see: My monitor has decided that "GB" is just as good a display format as "RGB," so I won't be posting any pictures to Flickr until a new one appears on my doorstep (I already gave James Marsters the complexion of an Oompah-Loompah once when using an unreliable monitor to prep my photos when posting from Dragon*Con; that's quite enough of that for me, thank you). I finally got Fedora 8 installed and running on my computer, as a replacement for Fedora 7, which never did achieve the second half of that combination when I installed it. Oh, and I have successfully delayed cleaning up my computer room long enough that the local drought has caused all of the nearby divertable rivers to dry up. Hah! Take that, heroic chores!

Oh, and as part of my "Don't Call It a Comeback" blogging tour, I managed to get not one, but two different "Recommended" diaries on Daily Kos, out of the three that I've written since ending my nearly three year long diary drought there. As I have been known to say: Woo, woo.

Posted January 20, 2008 1:11 PM by Ray Radlein

Ah, crap. One major problem with only occurring here once every third blue moon is that I have so much verbiage to spill as a result that I wind up with enough URLs to trigger the "delayed gratification" filter here when I post.

So let that serve as notice that there is a long thingie of text from me lurking in the cache somewhere.

Keep watching the skies!




(That way I can sneak up behind you and steal your wallet)

Posted January 20, 2008 1:16 PM by Ray Radlein

Oops! Canon title fixed. Also, the blocked comments have been released.

Posted January 20, 2008 1:44 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

will shetterly #7: I second that. Teresa summarises very neatly everything that's wrong with anarcho-capitalism.

The idea that liberty needs nothing but wealth and private space to sustain it is one of the more extraordinary delusions of the modern (or post-modern) world.

Posted January 20, 2008 2:19 PM by Fragano Ledgister

...you know, I think I'm finally old enough for Auden. Thank you for the epiphany, Patrick!

Posted January 20, 2008 2:33 PM by TexAnne

Mez #11: the Pachabel/Asian/Breakdance is another example of Teresa's "fanfic, force of nature"

Wait, if it's fanfic it can't be Canon!

Posted January 20, 2008 3:26 PM by Avram

Patrick, did I tell you about Korean breakdancing, or did we stumble upon it simultaneously? If the latter, it's not as astonishing a coincidence as you might think. If you're idly browsing "Hard Gay" in YouTube, Korean breakdancers are only a couple of related videos away.

(There's a game to be had there. I never saw much point to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but tracing related video linkages in YouTube might map something.)

My current rules for working in this new world:

1. Make something other people can use.

2. Respond to existing conversations.

3. Buy real.

4. Use your best material.

5. The neighbor you beggar is a customer you've lost.

6. You own a share in the world, your country, your government, your laws, your economy, your community, your public discourse, and in the well-being of its citizenry. Do not let yourself be tricked into despising it. The share you abandon will be snatched up by the same people who are telling you it's worthless.

Posted January 20, 2008 5:08 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

For me the Paillard arrangement of the Pachelbel Canon is the definitive version, and I distinctly remember the first time I listened to it. Up on the third floor of the UMCP undergraduate library (whose abbreviation in the course catalog in those days was UGLI, I kid you not) was the media library for the whole campus, and one of the things they had there was a slew of carrels, each with a little Advent cassette player. So it was that one day I checked out the cassette for the Canon and was listening to it while in a room nearby, I could see some black and white samurai movie being screened. The juxtaposition was ineffably surreal, particularly during the scene in the film where the cherry blossoms were floating down the stream.

I have to say that I was disappointed in the clips. There's not much of the canon in them, beyond the bass line. I think it would have been far more effective without all the percussive filler.

Posted January 20, 2008 5:16 PM by C. Wingate

When I got out of bed this morning, my husband asked, "Do you know what day this is?" I thought. Eventually I said, "Inauguration Day." "Yep." So mote it be.

Posted January 20, 2008 5:52 PM by Brenda Kalt

Ray, that's you and Steve Brust both starting new weblogs, so best of luck and we'll put you in the list.

Posted January 20, 2008 6:04 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Huh. I'm a progressive, and scared to death. Where do I fit in?

(Not scared by the Pachelbel/Korean breakdance combo, no, but by climate change; by the increasing gap between us and our food and energy supply; by the widening distance and suspicion between rich and poor, between white and brown, between Christian and Muslim; by the resurgence of racism and sexism as acceptable public behavior; and by the crumbling of our already-inadequate systems for health care and mental health.)

Posted January 20, 2008 6:26 PM by Lila

Teresa at 18, Respond to existing conversations.

Oooh, I like that. As opposed to, for example, having shouting matches over topics no one real is talking about, like John Edwards' haircuts, and whether Hillary Clinton is laughing or crying and What It Means.

Posted January 20, 2008 6:48 PM by Lizzy L

Teresa:
I never saw much point to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but tracing related video linkages in YouTube might map something.

I think the value of the Kevin Bacon game, and why people relate to it, is that it helps us realize that all of us in this lifeboat Earth are more closely related than we think.

(BTW, while it's not in the same league with your discovery that your mother was marrying Linkmeister's uncle, I just realized recently that he used to work directly for my best friend Kit Grant.)

Posted January 20, 2008 7:03 PM by Clifton Royston

About ten seconds into the first dancing video, having not clicked on anything else for fear of losing a night to brainmelt, I thought, "I am stealing this for a story."
That was about half of exactly what I needed tonight. Many thanks.

Posted January 20, 2008 7:08 PM by Diatryma

Ah, yes. `Borrowed masks, and lenses for a peering Eye', indeed. That gave me the impetus to read those last few astonishing paragraphs of that otherwise somewhat disappointing book: I think I see what they were driving at, now.

(And, wow, what writing: overblown but excellent. If only the whole book had been written with that hat on.

I suppose we have something like that, now: Hal Duncan's _Vellum_ and _Ink_.)

Posted January 20, 2008 7:29 PM by Nix

I feel like you do, Nix. Up until its end The Difference Engine is far from my favorite novel by either author. Then the the last chapter kicks my ass so hard I'm in the next county.

(Note that I'm a big fan of both writers, and indeed I think they've both done their best work since that early collaboration.)

Posted January 20, 2008 8:13 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Damn, I'm distressed to see that a correction I made shortly after posting this...somehow didn't take. The "borrowed masks" line was supposed to link to this. Fixed for real now, I think.

Posted January 20, 2008 8:18 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Lila, I think there are some things that ought to scare, or at least worry, anyone with a lick of sense. The things you mention are among them. Can we get out of the way of our own folly? Can we patch things together well enough to muddle through while we work on the Big Fix-up? How bad will it be while we do this? How many will suffer?

Fear is normal, and can be healthy; cowardice is hiding under the bed and doing nothing, or trying very hard to pretend there's nothing wrong, or refusing to change anything, because it's easier to give into the inner two-year-old screaming "Don't wanna!"

Maybe it's better to say the progressive faces fear, and goes forward, trying to make things better.

Posted January 20, 2008 8:30 PM by fidelio

Lila, this is small comfort, but see Growing class gap divides black Americans, which "asked whether blacks "can still be thought of as a single race." Fifty-three percent said yes while 37 percent said no."

The race gap is narrowing within the classes, and the class gap is widening within the races. People are increasingly seeing the real problem, and that's the first step to finding a real solution.

Posted January 20, 2008 8:33 PM by will shetterly

Teresa @ 18... I never saw much point to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Well, it's a reasonably fun workout for one's memory. But yes, YMMV. Besides, it could be useful if one wanted to write a story about someone who jumps throughout human history and human space by hopping a ride from one person's timeline to another's, the only requirement being that they were in close physical proximity at some point.

Posted January 20, 2008 9:15 PM by Serge

Will? You know that notion of yours, that race is not actually an issue in the United States, and that people who think it is are really arguing about class issues?

With all due respect -- no, with more than all due respect -- can we please not have that argument again? Not here, at any rate?

Posted January 20, 2008 9:44 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I agree that a ton of anarcho-capitalists (well, if there are enough out there to weigh that much) get very starry-eyed. Their political philosophy goes from being the "fairest" or "most just" or "most effective" system, to being the "perfectly fair and just and flawless" system.

That said, I used to self-identify as one. I wouldn't now, but that's only because I haven't worried much lately about applying a label to my political philosophy--it's been tinged with some "left-libertarianism" over the past few years, but it's still way out there in the land of Nuts (TM Penn Jillette).

Not trying to start any back-and-forth on issues with this comment--but not discouraging that, either. Just saying my piece.

Posted January 20, 2008 10:15 PM by Robert Hutchinson

Teresa - your post at #18 on "My current rules for working in this new world" sounds good to me, except for #3,

> 3. Buy real.

which I cannot parse.

Help?

Posted January 20, 2008 10:46 PM by Steve Taylor

Mez, #9, you might have also wanted to link "and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary".

Posted January 20, 2008 11:14 PM by Marilee

The Korean videos gave me much the same glorious feeling that these two boys dancing Lindy together did, which was "here are people who are really enjoying what they are doing!" and the urge to run out and find my own happy activity.

Posted January 20, 2008 11:28 PM by Tamago

#36 Tamago: ...these two boys dancing Lindy together...

That was brilliant. Thank you.

Posted January 20, 2008 11:39 PM by Michael Weholt

I'm just sitting here giggling because of the way the Lindy boys used the music. I can't believe the cameraperson was able to hold it steady.

Posted January 20, 2008 11:46 PM by Diatryma

FYI Patrick at #28, as of when I first checked this post around eleven AM CST today, the link you intended is what was there. Didn't recheck the links later to tell you when things might have reverted to something unintended.

Posted January 21, 2008 12:12 AM by anaea

Teresa, I have never said that race is not an issue in the USA. If I misremember, I would be very glad to have that pointed out.

Posted January 21, 2008 12:16 AM by will shetterly

Clifton @ #24, "to work directly for my best friend Kit Grant"

Well, no. Kit was Art Director, I was DP Guy. I worked for the Controller. We sat in endless meetings together, though, and we got along fine.

I left when the company couldn't decide to act after 9 months of my evaluating possible computer systems and recommending one.

Posted January 21, 2008 12:35 AM by Linkmeister

Tamago, those guys are brilliant! I loved it.

Posted January 21, 2008 12:37 AM by Clifton Royston

Teresa, in the hope of clarifying this, let me put it very simply: race is still an issue in the USA, and racism is still with us, and racism is wrong. I get annoyed when people claim I think race is not an issue. My parents could not get fire insurance because the word was out that the KKK would burn down their business. That's left me a bit sensitive to suggestions that I'm blind to racial issues. Please note that I only said the racial divide is narrowing. That hardly means that race is not an issue.

Now, it is true that I think class is a greater issue in the US. It's why I keep wishing people who focus on race would notice the Pew report on race and class. But since you'd rather not have that discussion here, I'll pursue it elsewhere.

Posted January 21, 2008 12:41 AM by will shetterly

Steve, #34: I'm not Teresa, but my interpretation of that was, "Eschew artificial substitutes where possible." Buy clothing made of cotton, silk, wool, or linen* rather than polyester; buy food that you can recognize as being meat, vegetables, fruit, or dairy products instead of things like "pasteurized process cheese food" and "potted meat product"; buy furniture made of wood rather than particleboard; things like that. It could also be extended to, "Support locally-run businesses and locally-produced goods when you can" -- instead of buying mass-produced goods from sweatshops in China and India at giant chain stores.

* I consider rayon in the same category because it's made from cellulose, but some people don't.

Posted January 21, 2008 1:18 AM by Lee

Teresa @21: Ray, that's you and Steve Brust both starting new weblogs, so best of luck and we'll put you in the list.

Ah. Me and Steve Burst both? So, no pressure at all then.

:-)

PS - I actually went to post this early enough that it wouldn't have needed the back-pointer, but our internets was havin' none of it, and then there was the football, and then my dad called to tell me that I was officially the only Ray Radlein in the world now (as far as we or Google can tell), as his brother had passed away up Chicagowards (Palatine or Des Plaines? How can I not keep these things straight?) last night.

Which, well, it is the very whale, isn't it? Albeit a smallish one.

At any rate, thanks for the kind links; now I really have to get cracking on that Torchwood review.

Posted January 21, 2008 1:26 AM by Ray Radlein

Steve Burst? All die. O the embarrassment. I shall ritually mangle my own last name now in penance.

Posted January 21, 2008 1:29 AM by Ray Radlien

#26, #27. My favorite part of The Difference Engine is the flash forward to Rqjneq Znyybel'f qlvat rcvcunal, zbzragf nsgre frrvat fxrgpurf bs sbffvyf sebz jung jr pnyy gur Ohetrff Funyr.

Posted January 21, 2008 1:54 AM by Stefan Jones

Ah, OK. I knew she was directly supervising operations at one point, and I made a mental leap. Lion had so much going for it, but (from my outsider's perspective) Jim D. was just a bit too nuts in how he approached decision-making.

Posted January 21, 2008 2:40 AM by Clifton Royston

Allow me to chorus slightly about the Hip-Hop Lindy. (yay!)

But more importantly, the Korean Breaking videos are just another straw of proof... No matter who you are, where you're from, or what you're normally into, when it comes to "Pachabel's Cannon in D", the D is for "damn good music."

Posted January 21, 2008 4:39 AM by Scott

Patrick@27, it's odd, because the `last chapter' of _The Difference Engine_ isn't exactly a chapter at all: it's a collection of historical snippets. But *what* snippets!

Stefan@#47, that was a nifty bit, too. (The demonstration of the power of 'line-streaming' was fairly good but not up to the standard of those two pieces, both of which are fairly surreal, now I think of it. How many books describe an event in detail, ending in the protagonist's death, and then say 'That chain of events does not occur' and proceed to describe something quite different, ending in the same thing?

I'm fairly sure that a lot of effort went into the narrative voice used in that book: it's just a shame that I don't quite understand what they were driving at, other than a distancing effect. Perhaps if I understood what they were trying to do I could figure out why it's so oddly inconsistent.)

Posted January 21, 2008 6:01 AM by Nix

An interesting commentary on the economic argument of Ezra Pound's Canto XLV is this piece by Daniel Davies.

Posted January 21, 2008 9:28 AM by gdr

I'm pretty sure either Teresa or I have in fact linked to that Daniel Davies piece in the past. (Short assessment: Davies is right.)

Posted January 21, 2008 10:29 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Will, my apologies for misrepresenting your position. Thanks for not getting upset about that.

Ray Radlein, I thought Burst/pressure was intentional.

Steve Taylor (34), "buy real" was first taught me by my grandmother, who had a semi-hardscrabble upbringing, no pretensions whatsoever, and a great eye for art. For instance, she started collecting Navajo blankets and Santa Clara pottery back when they were still priced for tourists. Her rule was that a small specimen of the real thing is still good, still the real thing; but a cheap knockoff is never going to be anything else.

I meant something broader, something I've also learned from shopping in discount stores when we lived in poor neighborhoods, and from stoop sales and thrift shops and watching what New Yorkers leave out on the sidewalk for anyone who wants it. Which is: many consumer goods are only made tolerable by the purchaser's habitual and unconscious assumption that later on, they'll swap it for something better. We are kept poor by floodtides of marketing-driven crap consumer goods.

Look at photos of domestic interiors in the 1960s and early 1970s. Whatever you think of the objects they contain, the fact is that there are far fewer objects overall.)

(Tat, trash: goods which are signifiers and stand-ins for the goods we really want. The resemblance is superficial. What we get for our money is little value, and less satisfaction.)

Lee got it right at #44. Discarded particleboard furniture goes begging on the sidewalk, unless it's an especially good piece and hasn't broken, which it usually has. Solid wood furniture gets snapped up, even if it needs some repair. A good wool coat lasts years longer than fake fur. Real materials stay real.

When I was a kid, we had Main Street, with its one haberdashery, one five-and-dime, and two drugstores. Then a mall opened near our house. For a while, it seemed like an Aladdin's Cave of retail. Then, gradually, I realized how much duplication there was from store to store, and how much of what got sold there wasn't very good when you looked at it all by itself. On one memorable occasion, when I'd saved up to buy myself a winter coat, all the stores had trashy plush and fake fur and machine-embroidered tat -- the rich hippie/retro peasant look had just come in -- but no solid plain wool coats. I refused to buy anything there, and later found the coat I wanted in Goldwater's, which was the upscale department store in Phoenix. It lasted years, of course, which meant that in terms of cents per wearing, it cost far less than the coats at Tri-City Mall.

So much of what we're offered these days isn't meant to last. At bottom, it will always be tat, and the cumulative cost of replacing it again and again with other tat will eat up our discretionary budgets. Meanwhile, we have systems like the annual change in fashionable colors to guarantee that even if we buy something solid and long-lasting, we won't be able to match it a few years down the road. (And the fashion industry wonders why they can't pry us away from basic black.)

A second-hand Coach bag outlasts five or six purses from Wal-Mart, looks better, and cumulatively costs less.

There are whole catalogues devoted to tatty seasonal decorative items for your home. The prices they charge aren't far below the cost of a piece of art glass, a good piece of pottery, a small print or tapestry.

And so on and so forth The only point at which I differ with Lee is that I don't care if the thing you buy is made India, as long as (1.) it's real, and well-made; and (2.) the person who made it gets a significant fraction of the price you pay for it. That's a part of being real: that the profit is made by producing something of value and selling something of value, not by generating hype and hot air for specimens of "this year's styles" that only pass muster if you don't look closely.

I hope that works for you. I have no time to make it more coherent. I'm late for work as it is.

Posted January 21, 2008 10:41 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

TNH @53:

A second-hand Coach bag outlasts five or six purses from Wal-Mart, looks better, and cumulatively costs less.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they manged to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, where they were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the carboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kinds of boot Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.

Posted January 21, 2008 11:40 AM by abi

Teresa, re "buy real": oh yes. And the availability of "real" in secondhand and thrift stores is actually pretty good, though it violates your rule about the maker's receiving a share of the purchase price. I wear much, much nicer clothes than I could afford to buy new, thanks to Goodwill.

Posted January 21, 2008 11:49 AM by Lila

Spot on.

Posted January 21, 2008 11:50 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

On buying real, in general:

We have nothing* on our walls but original art. Paintings, letterpress printing, photographs, limited edition lino and woodcuts. No reproductions, no prints of famous works.

Some of our paintings are art factory works, but even those are genuine oil paintings. The majority of our art is unique or limited edition.

We've spent some money on art, but not very much. Most of what we own is gifts: my parents both paint in acrylics, my father prints, Martin has a photographer friend, I know a couple of professional painters, we got some as wedding presents. Some are trades for hand-bound books, from various artists I've met over the web.

Some of it is, artistically, more naive than great. But I'd rather have real second-class work than a copy of the best, just as I love live music and stage drama. Some things just don't survive the copying process.

-----
* One exception: a small print of cute bunnies in the kids' room.

Posted January 21, 2008 11:52 AM by abi

Teresa, I try to follow Al Gore's example: on the internet, some people will keep saying you said you invented the internet, and not even snopes.com can stop them, so you should just ignore them and keep doing what seems right. But I slip up now and then.

Posted January 21, 2008 11:59 AM by will shetterly

The list in #18 immediately made me think, "Teresa for President! (Or presidential advisor.)" But I know those jobs are really for politicos, not the completely sane.

Posted January 21, 2008 12:19 PM by Faren Miller

In re: buying real.

1. I have a specific recommendation. Columbia sportswear seems to be immune to entropy. In 1989 I bought a pullover for about $50. Not only has it not faded or ripped after 19+ years of regular use, it may actually be healing itself. I clearly remember ripping the sleeve slightly sometime during Clinton's first term, but I can find no sign of that rip today. (Actually, I'm wearing it now.) I fully expect that when the heat-death of the universe finally arrives Death will bring Tim Hunter my pullover so he doesn't get chilly.

2. Art. I take your point, but there are limits. An ersatz Van Gogh is a lot easier on the eyes than an original velvet Elvis.

Posted January 21, 2008 12:20 PM by Scott H

me @ #60:

s/faded or ripped/faded or frayed/

Posted January 21, 2008 12:23 PM by Scott H

A brilliant post Patrick. Thank you so much.

Re: A Difference Engine, I couldn't believe that it took until the end of the book to get the damn thing self aware. The suspense was good, sure, and the portrayal of politics pretty great (ooh, also I loved the deadly air in the coal-powered subway), but I wanted a bit more of clackety steam-driven intelligence.

Teresa you are, yourself, spot on. Quality still can be inherent in an object itself, rather than just as commodity. Something-at-all is no replacement for something actually worth having. And yes, New York streets can be miraculous when it comes to getting some few things of worth on a bookseller's budget.

I'm reading Anne Carson's meditation on Simonides and Celan Economy of the Unlost right now, and Marx's discussion of reification has come into it quite a bit. I recommend it to any and everyone. Some of the only literary criticism I've ever honestly loved rather than just admired.

Posted January 21, 2008 12:36 PM by Gursky

Also, watching the Korean B-boy commercial, two desires kept lindo-ing through my brain:
I wish i could hear what those stringed instruments actually sound like,
and
I wish I could pull off those muscular hopping windmills.

Posted January 21, 2008 12:40 PM by Gursky

Argh. Lindy! The Lindy! Maybe if they were doing it under a pole it would be the Lindo.

Posted January 21, 2008 12:41 PM by Gursky

Clifton @ #48, I'm not sure if that was Jim (and I'm sure Kit knows better than I) or Adrienne. In my 9 months inside Jim seemed pretty hands-off; it always looked to me like it was Adrienne's screwy management theories that held sway.

We should probably have a cup of coffee somewhere and take this out of Teresa and Patrick's comments section.

Posted January 21, 2008 1:08 PM by Linkmeister

Apropos of Teresa's post #53, I found this blog post when trying to track down where this quote in question had come from:

"Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate.
- Victor Lebow, 1955"

The blog post has the original article, available in libraries! (Yes, places with paper books)
http://www.whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2007/12/victor-lebows-complete-original-1955.html

Posted January 21, 2008 1:20 PM by guthrie

It is better to end then to mend.

Posted January 21, 2008 1:43 PM by Stefan Jones

Stefan 67: If memory serves, that's n ulcabcbrqvp cyngvghqr sebz Oenir Arj Jbeyq, right?

Posted January 21, 2008 2:07 PM by Xopher

Gursky @63: Those instruments look like the eastern harps the Japanese call koto, so I imagine that this will give you a good idea what it sounds like without the break-dancing beat.

Posted January 21, 2008 2:50 PM by NelC

Teresa at 53 talks about buying real, which leads to a cascade of land use thoughts about the results of buying cheap tat:

One of the most common commercial developments near me is the storage rental unit blob- each around an acre in size, on average, hundreds of garage size units. Random dead bodies and stolen antiques and garage bands without other contex rehearsing and writing songs aside, what those things mostly contain (according to people I know who clean them out when the renters stop paying for them) is worthless tat: acrylic blankets with pictures of wolves, particle board chests of drawers full of seasonal table linens of the "dry clean only" sort, gaudy Christmas sweaters with light-up LED Rudolph noses, fragile, poorly fired life-sized ceramic squashes, gaudy resin turkeys and rabbits and red-white-and-blue stars. Miles and miles of Christmas lights neatly stored in plastic containers. An acquaintance of mine admits to paying rent on four different storage lockers, full of old Christmas decorations and cheap patio furniture, in four different Army post towns.

Of course the downside to buying real, especially if you're the sort of bargain hunter that I am, is that eventually you have a large amount of Perfectly Good old clothing which is boring and out of fashion, but luckily St. Michael's has an active clothing bank. I'm getting better at donating stuff that I won't wear again, even if it is silk or wool and the only thing wrong with it is I'm sick to death of wearing it.

Posted January 21, 2008 3:58 PM by JESR

JESR @ #70, I am paying rent on one now. It contains stuff we moved out of my mother's house a few months before she died, and I haven't had the heart to go through the stuff.

Posted January 21, 2008 4:16 PM by Lila

Faren Miller @ 59

Teresa for Éminence Grise?
(With all due respect, plus a bunch, Teresa, I'm white-bearded and gray-headed myself.)

Posted January 21, 2008 4:22 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

abi @ 57

Mostly I agree with you about buying real art, except that it is possible to buy reproduction art that is high quality* and where the sale benefits the original artist. Forex, I have several prints of Michael Parkes' paintings and lithos (not struck directly from the stone), which can only be purchased from dealers who buy from the artist, guaranteeing him his return.

But then again, we have a lot of ceramic work, mostly pots, plates, and figures, that we have bought directly from the artist or from a gallery dealing directly with the artist; and each of them is a unique and individual piece.

I think it should be much more common for people to make their own art, too. There's no magic or mutant ability involved; most people can learn to draw or sculpt acceptably, and adults love having their work admired just as much as school children love to see their drawings on the refrigerator door.

* If it was made with the artist's consent and cooperation, it will often be a much better reproduction than if the original was bought for a few dollars and reproduced as cheaply as possible.

Posted January 21, 2008 4:43 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Lila, that's an honorable purpose; we rented one when we were having a house transplant fourteen years ago (the wonder of mobile home living: stay at the same address, get a different house) and it kept us from imposing on relatives for storage of stuff too delicate to put in the barn.

On the other hand, I listened to a woman in a grocery-store check out the other day complaining that she had to rent another storage unit because "my Christmas Village stuff won't fit in the old one;" she had a cart full of 80% off Christmas decorative objects, including a set of giant (10inches to a foot each) mercury glass or equivalent ornaments.

I'm in one of my "going to sell everything and live in a tent" phases, though, so I may be an unreliable measure of how bad the situation has gotten.

Posted January 21, 2008 5:07 PM by JESR

Guthrie @#66: Could that article, or something similar, have been the inspiration for the Midas World stories? ISTR the timing being about right....

And yes, I agree with the "buy real" sentiment too (indeed, Teresa's whole list there).

Posted January 21, 2008 5:11 PM by David Harmon

#68: Yes.

We don't have hypnopoedia, but crappy, cheap, and rapidly unfashionable clothes seem to be the mode.

Posted January 21, 2008 5:32 PM by Stefan Jones

I understood "buy real" even though I have more than my own share of tat, plus deep storage (not all of it paid) in at least three off-site locations.

I learned "buy real" from watching my mother in thrift stores. She would walk down an endless rack of cloths, trailing her hand along the edge of the fabrics and not even looking. Only when she felt "real cloth" (wool or cotton, no blends) would she look.

She clothed four children on mostly thrift store bargains, and she made quilts (with anything 100% cotton she found in pleasing colors) and braided rugs (with anything made of real wool that wasn't wearable by the family). We slept warm, had warm floors, and dressed warm, but if anybody in the family ever got a *new* article of clothing she did not thrift or make from thrifted cloth, I don't remember it (blue jeans excepted).

Posted January 21, 2008 5:37 PM by Daniel

Lila (55), the only retailer that makes money off Goodwill is Goodwill, plus the occasional vintage clothing reseller. Besides, any system that emphasizes good products well made has to have mechanisms for transferring items from one satisfied owner to another. People change sizes, homes, jobs, and climates. If you've permanently retired to Tucson and will never wear a small again, your size 10 heavy sheepskin coat needs a new home.

Further remarks on buying real:

Here's another way to model the notion: imagine that you can never get rid of anything you acquire unless someone else is willing to take it from you, and they're similarly obliged to keep whatever they buy or accept. You can compost stuff, but only if you do it in your own backyard. Dead gadgets have to be disassembled and the parts sorted in order to be recycled as glass and metal. Plastic, you have with you always. You can only burn stuff if you burn it in the middle of your living room, with the windows closed.

I started using that scenario as a way of thinking about the problem of waste. We live on this planet, in company with everything we've ever made. If we burn garbage, the smoke and gases and ash go into our air. Our current waste disposal methods are best modeled as throwing our trash into the yards of whichever neighbors aren't in a position to complain.

However, the scenario also works as a way of thinking about the value of consumer goods. A while back, Patrick and I were GoHs at Vericon, Harvard's annual SF convention, and were put up in rooms that are normally used for visiting scholars. Everything in the bathroom was large and sturdy: towel racks, claw-footed tub, shower curtain support cage, et cetera. I noticed that at the spot where you naturally grab your towel off the rack, the chrome or stainless steel had worn off, and that underneath it was heavy-gauge brass.

It takes many long years of towel-grabbing to wear fixtures like that down to their underlying brass. I don't know whether those towel racks were older than my grandmother, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they were older than my mother. And then I thought about the wall-mounted towel racks I've known all my life: shallow, ill-made things (you get your choice of pot metal or plastic) that always break, and always pull out of the wall. They undoubtedly cost less, on a one-time basis, than fixtures comparable to the ones Harvard used. They don't cost thirty times less.

Why do we buy the cheap towel racks? In some cases, because we have to have a towel rack and can't afford anything else. For others, it's because it'll do for now, and we don't think we'll have to live with it forever. But suppose we did? Suppose that even if we're renting, or we sell the house, we'd have to carry all our old towel racks with us? I think we'd make different decisions.

In our current retail universe, it's hard to be conscious of the stuff we purchase. Shopping is a light trance state, and store and mall designers know it. If you're shopping for a specific thing, you're supposed to make your choice from the versions of it on offer at that location, even if none of the options are what you really had in mind. What gets you past that moment of disappointment, makes it tolerable enough to keep you from walking out of the store, is that background assumption that you and this object are not entering into a permanent relationship.

This is the moment to imagine having to spend the rest of your life with the broken and unrepairable carcass of a piece of particleboard furniture (particleboard always breaks), or cartons full of grubby, broken-down plastic appliances. It 's exactly the wrong thought for the delicate retail moment they've created, and disrupts the shopping brainwooze.

Escape! Run away!

Posted January 21, 2008 5:39 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

JESR at 74, I spend a lot of time in that mode of thought. The older I get, the more stuff I seem to be willing to throw out. Some of that has to do with having had to dispose of my mother's belongings, after she died. She was not particularly a pack-rat (unlike my dad, who was) but after spending weeks getting rid of her stuff, I formed the firm opinion that less is better.

Don't want to go live in a tent, though. Too cold. I hate cold.

Buy real is good. To it I append, Buy less. Leave less. Live lightly.

Posted January 21, 2008 5:45 PM by Lizzy L

Shopping is a light trance state, and store and mall designers know it.

I wonder if the awful fluorescent lights help here? (I know I'm largely immune: the trance state combined with the population density crush just makes me feel sick and stressed, not the condition the designers were aiming for!)

Posted January 21, 2008 5:51 PM by Nix

Funny you should ask that, Teresa. I just bought a cheap towel rack bar a few days ago. Plastic. It was what they had in the store, and I could cut it down to size myself with the saw blade on my Leatherman. And it was lightweight, easy to carry home.

I wouldn't even know where to go to get a brass one.

Posted January 21, 2008 5:54 PM by Avram

Re shopping: people use accumulation to make themselves feel better. I ward off a case of the icks by going to a bookstore. These days it's a used bookstore, but it wasn't always. I can make myself feel really good by giving myself permission to buy a new book. Expand this to many many people giving themselves permission to buy stuff they can't afford, have no place to put, know will break, will hate in a month, etc. etc. and you have present-day American consumerism.

Posted January 21, 2008 5:55 PM by Lizzy L

Bruce Cohen, I share your love for the Michael Parkes. What a lovely body of story and character that artist has given the world! We have the one with the gargoyles chasing the soap bubble above our hearth. It makes my heart happy to look at it, regardless that it's just an expensively-framed poster. (And regardless that I have some minor quibbles with the way the main gargoyle's front limbs are drawn--shouldn't they be reaching out to their full extent, not half tucked in like that? But I digress.)

The art is real, even in reproduction. Heck, we can't all own the original manuscript of our favorite book; what's wrong with art reproductions that isn't wrong with mass-market paperbacks?

Posted January 21, 2008 6:21 PM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

I have Entirely Too Many stuffed animals, in part because, as Lizzy notes, we buy* things to make us feel better. Sometimes I look at one six months later, think, "what was I thinking?" and give it to the local toy drive at Christmas. Others make me smile every time I look at them; those are worth every penny.

*I make them, too, which doesn't help.

Posted January 21, 2008 6:30 PM by Mary Aileen

Lizzy L. @ 79 -- Quite so.

One thing that will move you in that direction is clearing out a parent's house after their death. Some things either my sister or I wanted, but there was a lot to dispose of. After that, especially if you have no children of your own, you want to get rid of it yourself and not leave it to strangers.

In buying real, someone already mentioned real food. This means you learn how to cook, and if you cook now, learn more. I am shocked by the number of people I know who are frightened by an unpeeled potato. That goes with the recent news that cookbook writers now have to dumb-down recipies because too few know, for example, what "fold" means. Cooking has been a basic survival skill and it remains one now.

Good pots and pans last all but forever. (Not an exagerration -- archaeologists might wonder about the fashions for a particular age, but we almost always know what people cooked with) We inherited many of the pots, pans, implements and plates we use today. Most of the less expensive stuff we picked up on our own has worn out. On the other hand, we have to figure out who we will leave the set of pots to.

Posted January 21, 2008 6:35 PM by Claude Muncey

Just to add to Avram's comment at 81: we have the ceramic mounts for the towel bar embedded into the bathroom wall, so he was constrained in what he could purchase even if something better was available for sale.

Posted January 21, 2008 7:14 PM by Chris Quinones

I want to praise a book: Michael Pollan's new one, In Defense of Food. Fine, fine book. Main thesis: Eat real food; not too much. Mostly plants. And then he tells you why.

I am not much of a cook, but over the last few years I made the decision to avoid fast food of any kind, and I try to eat very little processed food. (No, I don't make my own noodles.) Pollan says: Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. I'm following that advice as best I can.

It's a good book...

Posted January 21, 2008 7:16 PM by Lizzy L

Claude @85, they don't make iron skillets like they used to. Perhaps the best $30 I ever spent in an antique store was on a skillet with a surface as sweet to touch as a lover's skin.

Posted January 21, 2008 7:40 PM by will shetterly

The art is real, even in reproduction. Heck, we can't all own the original manuscript of our favorite book; what's wrong with art reproductions that isn't wrong with mass-market paperbacks?

Because no method of reproduction existing today can reproduce the paint surface of a painting accurately.

A mass market paper back is identical in essentials - in the text - to the original. In the peripherals - typography, etc. - it's probably better than the original manuscript.

That's just not true of a reproduction of a painting, even one which is true to scale, and everything else. Short of a working fabricator, the paint surface won't be there, and for many artists that's a loss.

Still, I'd personally prefer a reproduction of Guernica or Whaam! to anything I've a hope in hell of buying, because those works are so much better, even in reproduction, than any originals I could afford. Better a reproduction of a Mondrian than a real Kinkade. One is utterly brilliant no matter what; the other is tat no matter how authentic.

Posted January 21, 2008 8:24 PM by Keir

Pachelbel, one could argue, strikes us so deeply not because of the ornamentation but because of the chord progression. That particular chord progression can be found everywhere

Posted January 21, 2008 8:59 PM by shadowsong

I find Pachelbel much more tolerable with a lot of action going on above it. I've been idly looking for years for the recording my first Spanish teacher had, which was quick and bright with trumpets.
I have a thing for brass. We have been over this.
So far I have a string quartet and a chamber bit with a harpsichord. Very swaying, very restful, but no energy.

Posted January 21, 2008 9:16 PM by Diatryma

Diatryma, 91: The best recording I've found is by Hesperion XXI, on Ostinato. The whole thing plus its associated Gigue takes about 4 minutes. It's incredibly dancy!

Posted January 21, 2008 10:07 PM by TexAnne

I made a cross-stitch "painting" in 1989 (I just went to look) that's now on my workroom door. It says:

Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
Do without

I've tried to work that way for a long time.

Unfortunately, I can't cook anymore so my food is not as real as could be, but I can't afford a cook, either.

Posted January 21, 2008 10:37 PM by Marilee

This was originally formulated for media fandom rather than for music, but (with suitable apologies to Ogden Nash's l(ll)amas):

The two-N canon, that's official.
The three-N cannon shoots a missile.
But any more goes far past fanon;
There isn't any four-N cannonn.

Posted January 21, 2008 10:51 PM by Julie L.

Julie L, #94, the first half of that is nearly identical to one I wrote a back in '99:

One-N canon, that's official.
Two-N cannon fires a missile.
I've not seen, nor do I plan on
Seeing any three-N cannnon.

(Yeah, I know, the final N, blah blah.)

Posted January 21, 2008 11:06 PM by Avram

my most agonizing music event ever was at a friend's wedding, long ago in Tulsa (OKC? it was in Oklahoma).

String quartet was main music at start, the Canon, and they were all off a quarter note. From one another. All a different key slightly. And whether they realized it or not, they didn't stop, regroup and start over, they just soldiered on with the agony. It was like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Considering all the different music I've seen and played in in my life, that was the absolute worst.

Posted January 21, 2008 11:30 PM by Paula Helm Murray

Because no method of reproduction existing today can reproduce the paint surface of a painting accurately.

A mass market paper back is identical in essentials - in the text - to the original. In the peripherals - typography, etc. - it's probably better than the original manuscript.

That's just not true of a reproduction of a painting, even one which is true to scale, and everything else. Short of a working fabricator, the paint surface won't be there, and for many artists that's a loss.

OK, I'll buy that argument. I'll even throw a sheepish "err... I knew that" grin into the bargain.

I'll also agree with you that an original [insert respected artist here] is far out of the price range of most admirers, which is why we have a few poster reproductions of beloved artworks in our house rather than bare walls.

***

I would love to hear a little expansion on Teresa's Rule #6, if there is time and inclination. I've been thinking about it all day, applying it to various scenarios in my head, and finding it a full, rich, worthy thing to meditate on--but not something that's particularly amenable to soundbytes.

Posted January 21, 2008 11:34 PM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

Teresa, #53: We don't even really differ on India, hence my reference to "sweatshops". I'll happily buy direct from an India merchant, or at one step removed by patronizing a direct importer. (Living in Houston, the latter is easy -- any shop along Harwin is probably a direct importer!) What I don't buy are "Made in India" products in chain stores.

Lila, #55: I found a London Fog heavy raincoat at Goodwill... for $20. There was another one there in my partner's daughter's size, so we called her and told her about it. Shopping in thrift stores near the upscale part of town yields tremendous bargains.

Gursky, #64: How lo-o-o-w can you go?

Lila, #71: My deepest sympathies. We helped a friend go thru one of those after the death of her husband, and it was traumatic in multiple ways. Not least of which was her eventual calculation of how much money she'd paid, over the course of about 15 years, to store all this stuff that was now going straight into the trash. (Which is politely to suggest, don't put it off for too long.)

Posted January 21, 2008 11:39 PM by Lee

Watching the chaos progressing around the globe from east to west as stock markets tanked one by one while Wall Street remained closed for MLK, I realized that I either had to rewrite the ending of "The Nine Billion Names of God," or turn once again to my favorite well of inspiration, all things related (however tangentially) to "To His Coy Mistress," namely "You, Alan Greenspan":

And here face down upon your desk
Watching through the waiting night
You feel the coming of a test
The gathered rising of a blight

Posted January 22, 2008 1:57 AM by Ray Radlein

Claude Muncey @ 85:

Good pots and pans last all but forever. (Not an exagerration -- archaeologists might wonder about the fashions for a particular age, but we almost always know what people cooked with)

Yes, because they made so damn much of it. Up through the middle ages, most cooking was done in pottery vessels, which would break, or get saturated with food. They'd have to be replaced every couple of months. Disposable goods are not an invention of the modern age.

(Also, of course, they tended to make their clothing out of more perishable material than their cooking vessels. Note that non-perishable material =/= non-perishable object. See also, plastics.)

Posted January 22, 2008 5:46 AM by Naomi Libicki

Naomi Libicki @100:
Disposable goods are not an invention of the modern age.

Amen.

On what was the southern edge of ancient Rome there stands a hill, not one of the Seven*. Its modern name is the Monte Testaccio; in Latin it was the Mons Testaceus. It's a good 100 feet tall and over 250 feet in diameter at its widest point.

It's entirely artificial. It stands on what was a piece of waste ground behind the warehouses that lined the bank of the Tiber, receiving shipments of wine, vinegar, olive oil and honey from all over the Empire. The amphorae in which these were carried would become saturated with their contents, which would then spoil. Pottery soaked in rancid oil and sour wine doesn't make for good containers. So the vessels were broken up and piled in a heap that became, over the centuries, a hill in its own right.

Waste is not a modern thing.

-----
* by any of the reckonings; the list of seven hills varies by source

Posted January 22, 2008 6:09 AM by abi

Abi @ 101... Another reminder that all knowledge (or a large part of it) can be found in the blogosphere. Say, what does 'testaceus' mean?

Posted January 22, 2008 6:16 AM by Serge

Serge @102:
what does 'testaceus' mean?

Made out of pottery. A pot is a testa (whence the French word for head, tête).

Posted January 22, 2008 6:29 AM by abi

Abi @ 103... Thus my tête is a pot.

Posted January 22, 2008 6:36 AM by Serge

abi, 103: And the really cool thing is that "teste" was the slang term in Old French--the proper term was "chief" or "chef," from "caput."

Posted January 22, 2008 6:49 AM by TexAnne

Only now I want to learn to breakdance, to learn to tell gravity to sod off.

Posted January 22, 2008 8:05 AM by dichroic

Diatryma @91:
Have you heard The Canadian Brass's version? It may very well be the version from your memory. They're very playful, and as their name implies, they're all brass. It's on their "Best of..." CD which is full of other good playful brass versions of... stuff.

Re. cookware:
Coating metal in heat-intolerant plastics for COOKWARE just still doesn't make sense to me. I mean... I still use teflon (or something like it) for frying an egg, but other than that... *shudder*

I have 1 piece of cast-iron cookware (a wok with about a 3-inch flat section (the flat-part I could do without, but I bought it when I was young and foolish?)) and even though I almost lost it to rust before I really figured out how to care for it, it's easily my favorite cooking instrument. A well-seasoned iron skillet it a useful and wonderful thing. I'll get around to it eventually...

Posted January 22, 2008 8:13 AM by Scott

TexAnne @ 105... "teste" was the slang term in Old French--the proper term was "chief"

Dare I say that it all comes together?

Posted January 22, 2008 8:53 AM by Serge

JESR @ #74, ah yes, the "being crowded out of your house by your stuff" phenomenon. I have come dangerously close myself.

Daniel @ #77, I've used that technique before. Saves time and eyestrain.

Teresa @ #78, the other thing about "buying real" is that when you no longer want/need an item, it still has some wear in it for someone else. Also, re shopping in a light trance state: I have noticed that retail stores play whiny depressing music ("Ugh, I feel crappy. I'll buy something to make myself feel better.") while thrift stores tend to play more cheerful stuff ("Oh, who cares if it's missing a button, that's easy to fix!"). I'm willing to bet this is not a coincidence.

Lizzy L @ #87: I second the recommendation. For those without the money or time to buy / read the book, it boils down to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I also recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma, also by Pollan.

Lee @ #98, the best example of "shop the rich people's thrift stores" from my family was my sister's find of a Victorian silk velvet crazy quilt in a thrift store in California (San Diego?). Several hundred dollars, but still way less than its actual worth--and she did manage to get it home on the plane without damage.

Re "testaceus", I have that associated with oysters for some reason. Is there some kind of oyster shell-pottery link, or is it the resemblance of oysters to, um, mountain oysters that's to blame?

Posted January 22, 2008 9:23 AM by Lila

A test is a shell, so 'testaceous' also means 'having a shell' or 'associated with shells'.

My main problem with cast-iron cookware is that I was raised Teflon, and it is intimidating. It seems like the kind of thing you can't learn without screwing up horribly, and I'm not willing to spend three days soaking and washing and scraping at a pot because I did it wrong the first time. I have read about seasoning and why you can't wash cast iron at the same time as everything else you eat from, but I have no incentive to try it. Why buy cookware I am afraid to use?

Of course, when it comes time to inherit the old Dutch oven and its companion broken-handled pot, I expect there to be blood. Three siblings. Two pots. Fight's in the kitchen, so access to all sorts of interesting weaponry.

Posted January 22, 2008 9:37 AM by Diatryma

Avram @95: Oh dear. Great minds get stuck in the same rut?

WRT thrifting, I cannot for the life of me figure out how the shops around here determine their prices. Lately I've been poring over the sweater racks, where nasty pill-strewn acrylic things may be priced twice as high as pure cashmere in perfect condition; the only sense I can make of that is that the multicolored acrylic looks flashier than the monochrome cashmere. Not that I'm complaining, esp. since this way I don't worry nearly so much about tossing the cashmere into the washing machine (in a mesh bag on gentle cycle)-- a considerable "hidden" factor to a garment's original price can be whether it demands to be professionally dry-cleaned. But after all, cashmere has been around a lot longer than dry-cleaning, and I'm not going to panic over something that only cost $5 to start with.

Posted January 22, 2008 9:57 AM by Julie L.

Ray Radlein @ 99

Sun shows wrack from market fray,
and finds Bernanke deep in shock.
Reaction before end of day:
put 75 basis points on the block.

Posted January 22, 2008 10:13 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Diatryma @ 110, cast iron is not nearly as scary as it seems.

How to