wedding day

What are the odds that the satellite was over head on my daughter's wedding day.  This is so cool.  The artistry of Lisa and Ryon's work with the tables and chairs is breathtaking.  You can only see this version of the map on the ASK website.   Just click this ASK link and you go directly to it.  The chair and table design reminds me of the the land etchings of the southwest.  You do not need to be up in the air to design something cool on the ground.  I think you need mind altering drugs to accurately perceive it.  It all looks so orderly.  Illusion is art. 

The other major thing to notice on this photo (if you go to the MSN Bing maps, there is a good flyby bird's eye view ) is the ESTATE look of the whole mess.  It is kind of like hot dogs or Cameron Diaz, they look nice and tasty but do not ever watch them being put together.  Enjoy the photo and some day I will own the orange grove to the east.  I can dream.

Dishwasher Part 2

An unorganized dishwasher is as the Bible says "Better to live on the corner of a cold, wet roof than to live with a quarrelsome woman."  Yes, a shambled, random, poorly planned loading of a dishwasher is as a quarrelsome woman.  I cannot go to sleep serenely if I know the dishwasher,( which I rarely use because it is a constant source of aggravation) is improperly loaded.  I have stated before it is not an effective hiding place for dirty dishes for more than an evening.  Pizza in the back of a car smells great compared to three day old dishes in a dishwasher.

Time saving?  Lets do the math.  Rinse off the dishes (which is so so close to washing them why not just finish them) and place them in the dishwasher.  But wait, I have to unload the dishwasher first unless there are only a few clean ones left in there then they just get washed again.  I have a porcelain coffee cup that has been in the dishwasher since the year 2003.  It has very little paint left on it and the porcelain looks like something from the Parthenon.  Unload means putting the dishes and flatware, commonly called silverware but only by commoners, away properly.  Do not get me started about the forks making out with the spoons.   Now that the dishwasher is empty, load the three glasses, four forks and eighteen plates.   I did not know there were eighteen plates that matched in the entire galaxy and where did they come from.  Was there a party and I missed it?  I am in to this loading the dishwasher thing with about twenty minutes now.  I could have washed, dried, put away the dishes and cleaned the kitchen in that amount of time and not had to listen to the beast (or the dishwasher).  I would not have to screw with the soap and his satanic dispenser or the cycle settings.  HOT, COLD, Dry Heat, Wet Heat, Seasonable Heat, Short, Not so Short, and my favorite, Energy Saver.  This tree hugging lie from the pit of hell does not clean anything except the plastic blob stuck to the drain but this cycle only cost you half as much because the lights were off on the dial during the cycles.

I put dishwashers in the same category as a fancy coffee maker.  Coffee is boiled water and some burned, ground up plant.  You do not need a machine to get a good cup of coffee.  You do not need a dishwasher to have clean dishes.  I have seen some new versions lately.  Australian homemakers have some really spiffy options.  They have two small dishwashers in the same space as our American automobile version dishwasher.   These inventive Aussies do not empty the dishes to a cupboard each cycle.  They keep a clean dish side and a dirty dish side.  Cool mate.  I have seen a small top loading dishwasher in the space of a sink.  I washed golf balls in one once but it is just too bad the club did not fit inside.  Those golf balls really looked impressive taking that left turn into the swamp.  Dishwashers are for dishes if you choose to use them.  As Bartleby says "I would prefer not to."

Smoke

Yesterday, work was cancelled because of smoke.  In Florida we have these interesting phenomenon called "controlled burn" where the Forestry department decides based on plant growth, wind direction, wind speed and humidity, whether or not to torch a field and scare the bejesus out of the critters living in the burn area.  The theory is that development has screwed up the natural fire patterns for the still vast forests and wild areas of Florida.   It is another case of Man trying to fix what Man has already screwed up. 

The key word is "controlled" and should never be used concerning forest fires in Florida.  The fire breaks and barriers rarely stop a fire.  They do give the fireman and chance to drive the dirt hog thingy that cuts as path of dirt through the palmetto field.  Palmetto burns like oil with thick black smoke.  I am sure it could make a good crop for a power plant.   The smoke sticks to the inside of your nose.  The only people left working at the Kennedy Space Center were the contractors repairing roofs with tar.  They all have Black Lung from breathing sooty tar anyway so they  may as well keep them working. 

The reason we had to leave work  was because the Carbon Monoxide levels were above acceptable levels.  Moderate levels of Carbon Monoxide can cause drowsiness and headaches.  High levels will block the lungs ability to process oxygen.  Since half the people at work are fighting to stay awake during meetings anyway, it would be impossible to know if these people were overcome with oxygen deprivation or overcome with sleep.   "Either way,  lets cancel the entire mess and go to the beach."  I laughed at the security guards wearing those paper filter masks that look like codpieces.  I blasted "Smoke on the Water" on the way out the security gate.

Today,  Kennedy Space Center is on a Carbon Monoxide watch.  If the wind picks up and changes directions, this smoldering fire could start up again and we can go home again.  Safety is taken very seriously and quite ridiculously.  Lawyers I guess.   All those years of not smoking cigs down the drain.  It turns out this portion of the forest had not been burned in twelve years.  That is a lot of tinder and with the winds kicking up in the afternoon, there is only one real possible outcome.  Get out the hot dogs and the round, white sugary things. They will have a bunch of meetings, a lessons learned action and accomplish absolutely nothing.  People in charge will be content in assuring that the people in charge looked at the situation and are sure it will not happen again until the next time it happens.  That is for sure. 

Cutlery

Did the fork evolve from a stick?  Did a spoon evolve from a sea shell?  Is generic silverware the same as a utensil?   And what of the lonely knife?  It really has not evolved much.
  There are many types of knives.  And what of that spelling.  Knife was once derived from the Vikings word knif.  Boy, that explains a lot.  There is a french term, canif which makes me assume that in old English and Norse they sounded the "kn".  I mean, why would they write it if it was not so. 

Stuffed Goat Stomach-Haggis

Fork from old English comes from Latin furca, to divide in branches.  I think a forked stick could skewer haggis much surer and later some genius tried three, ten and then twenty five tines and came up with the rake but that was not used very often at the dinner table.   There is nothing like a fork to stick a sheep's stomach full of hearts and stuff.   It is called haggis and derived from the sound one makes after eating while running to the toilet, "Oh, haaaaggggus."

The spoons is from the word spon which means splinter or chip of wood.  Spoon fed is an old term for feeding helpless people or children with a thin  piece of wood to help them.  An indentation was morphed later.  Now we have sporks with serrations on the edge for cutting away gristle.  Reminds me of many a tongue I have seen and heard.

Much of the world still does not use utensils to eat.  Hands work great.  Chop sticks help with the spearing but not with soup.  Chop sticks with a hole in the middle like a straw would be most cool for soup.  Chopsticks sort of translates into "quick little bamboo fellas".  Although it is probably a reverse  translation from a derogatory "Chop Chop" used to mean "quickly" Drinking form a bowl is customary in many places.   Why not have chopsticks with a hole in it like a straw.  No more spoon soup mess. 
I have some silverware, stuff made of silver and some silver plated spoons and such.  I guess I have cutlery, go figure.

Colors

I have been thinking about color quite a bit lately.  I look at the sunsets and see pinks, reds, blue, gray and yellow.  I saw green clouds the other day.  The world order seemed content.  Then I remembered that if you mix all the colors on picture, the color you get is close to black.  If you mix red light, blue light and yellow light and shine them overlapping on the wall, you will see a white light. I cannot deal with that effectively.  It is like fiction and non fiction.  Observe the irony of this next interlude.

Officer Hernandez:  "That boy's story was a complete fiction!  I do not believe a word he says."
Sargent Wilson:  "I know, when will he ever start telling non-fiction?"
or
Officer Hernandez:  "That boy's story was a complete lie.  I do not believe a word he says."
Sargent Wilson:  "I know, when will he ever start telling non-lies?"  Non lies?  There is word for that, truth!  When will he start telling the truth.

Who talks like that!  It is negative logic.  color is like that.  Mix all the colors in a crayon box and you get black but if you mix then as light you get white.  If you mix yellow with red, you get orange.  Blue with yellow you get green, Blue with red you get purple.  If you mix blue with red and a little yellow, you get my favorite Crayola color, periwinkle first introduced in the twenty four pack of crayola crayons in the Nineteen sixties.   I learned a great deal about multiplication from crayola boxes.  The number of crayons and additional colors were increased in multiples of eight.  I found those metrics helpful in looking at numbers.  It was sort of a spacial application of sets of numbers and of course, colors.  Math has negative logic.  How about dividing fractions, "just invert and multiply".  I am not sure but standing on my head and multiplying is not going to help.
Many of the Barbizon and Hudson River painters did not use black paint in their pictures.  In nature, there are very few examples of black color.  Coal and charcoal are black.  Human hair can be black although to paint it would not require black paint.  There are no black plants.  The black skin of even the most black Nigerian is not black.  The skin shade is almost blue.  A crow or a grackle is not black, not even a black bird. 

I remember, out west, in the mountains about Cedar City, the sky was so blue it hurt my eyes.  The thin air and low humidity enabled the blue to be dark yet bright.   Similar to the blue waters of the Caribbean.  In Florida, the greens are so rich you can smell them.  There are five hundred shades of green in Florida.  The Grand Canyon has six thousand colors all changing with the angle of the sun.  There is so much color in the canyon you have to cry in order to breath again.  The yellows of a sunset in the Appalachians are sinfully vibrant and cannot be painted accurately.  Many have tried. 

The colors of my dreams outdo any in my life.  They are hauntingly pure.  Yes, colors.