Back by Popular Demand

The CrankyPM is back on line -- healthy and still employed.
She is also back in the blogroll at left, in the headliner spot.

I am honored and humbled to have CrankyPM respond to my worried post about her, and feel a little blog connection. (subliminal message that you should hire me, CPM, when you form your own company. Spec samples available upon request)

I want to comment, too, on the disturbance this sudden disappearance caused in our intersecting sets. Perhaps this sort of thing occurs on MySpace all the time, and I don't know it because I am a grown-up. I was touched by the threads that started on other sites looking for evidence that the sudden shutdown was only a technical glitch, and only temporary.

Everybody back to your keyboards. We're ok again. Nice mobilization, people.

And call me for drinks, PMs. We'll meet at the place by the thing where we went that time.

Pilgrimage to Lowell

It's a tough go down at the Mill these days -- not tougher than usual, I suppose, but an accumulated toughness that has become hard to rise above. Like a seige. Where the commodity being withheld is good sense.

But I've mixed my metaphors again.

During this week off, I have been "calling in my people," as we say in my circle of friends, including the real mill girls themselves.

At the national park in downtown Lowell, I sat outside the replicated dormroom in the French St boarding house and listened to the voices of the girls as they prepared for bed. This is not a metaphysical statement - they pipe it in.

This photo is Eliza Adams, who really worked in the drawing in room and left letters and scrapbooks of her time in the mills. I couldn't read them; I could only stand this close to a trunk behind glass, bearing her initials.

A block away from here I found St Joseph the Worker shrine, and said a quick prayer for Eliza's soul, and for Harriet Robinson, and Lucy Larcom, and for all working women. I lit a candle for us all (that is, I clicked the button on top of the candle, which lacked some of the ceremony). I didn't know this prayer then; I have only found it now.

I have also begun reading The Lowell Offering again, which contains prayers of its own.

.... an answer to the question, why we work here?
The time we do have is our own. The money we earn comes promptly; more so than in any other situation; and our work, though laborious is the same from day to day; we know what it is, and when finished we feel perfectly free, till it is time to commence it again.
~~ Josph. L. Baker, 1845

From the girls who brought you the 10 hr work week. Amen.

Modern Jackass

My favorite radio show is This American Life; my favorite episode of TAL, of all time, is a segment called "Modern Jackass." You can listen to it on your own -- it is the opening segment of the July 2005 show linked here. Listen to the whole thing if you want, especially if you have never heard TAL before.

Once you have an understanding of Modern Jackass, you can appreciate the week I just spent trolling through museums unfortunately close to people who visit museums in order to spew jackass at docents.

Come with us to Fruitlands (I fondly refer to it as the Museum of Failed Utopias). The collections are displayed in a neighborhood of outbuildings on some beautiful property in Shirley, MA. To protect the collections, a series of Yankee ladies are also installed, and they delight (delight!) in telling the visitors what they know.

Unfortunately, so do the visitors.

So let's call this couple David and Randall. I have made the names up entirely. David looks exactly like this cartoon except his sunglasses are AMBER and have that Centerfielder aerodynamic shape to them. If you are picturing Ali G, you are almost there. Randall is arm candy, and a foreigner, who is learning America history the Modern Jackass way.

We first encountered them in the Shaker House, where David interrupts our guide several times to demonstrate various ways he does not know the Bible or the basics of christianity. Real transcript:

Sarah the docent: "I just love the man's name: Shadrach Ireland."
David: Shadrach Abednego?
Sarah: No, Shadrach Ireland
David: What is that from? Shadrach Abednego?
My Sister and I: the Bible. (ok, we sort of italicized it, so "You Ass" could be heard.)
David: Where is that in the Bible?
We: Daniel. (we refuse to look at him, and just smile at the docent, who has now completely lost her train of thought)

Fast forward through several other asinine moments of David naming other towns in New York he has heard of because he has not heard of Niskayuna. ("Is that near Albany? Utica? Syracuse?")

Sarah begins talking about the Shakers' precept of celibacy, which is easy to understand if you let her explain the life of Ann Lee, but hard to understand if you are saying, "But that's basic Old Testament, be fruitful and multiply. Isn't that what fruitlands was all about?"

No, but thanking you for reading up to Chapter 8.

Later, we could hear him pointing out to his companion, "This is a Shaker chair" and reading him a map of New England. We went over to a computer and blasted some Shaker music just to drown him out.

They were everywhere we went. It was so drastic my sister ducked into an off-limits room just to escape them. Apparently, some wicker baskets were in danger, based on the way we were shoo'd away.

They were in front of us on the route. Behind us was a larger party -- 2 middle-aged couples and someone's miserable teenage children. One of the couples had recently purchased an old home, and were using this opportunity to find out how one treated wide-plank floors, and what would "authentically" line a chimney. The woman in the other couple recognized someone else on the tour who didn't recognize her, and that was just awkward for everyone. In the art gallery, the man with the floors (who had already smacked his too-tall forehead on the door of the Shaker House) read the name of the paintings and agreed with them, like this: "Mt Lafayette. Yep, yep, that's Lafayette."

I pulled out my "things to do in retirement" list and scratched off "volunteer at museums."

Shortfall

Remember my argument with poor Marbio Manka from Verizon? He failed to talk me into his cheaper phone plan because the taxes and fees, including Remembering the Maine, would still be the same.

UPDATE: Marbio missed the dealbreaker point. He didn't have the shortfall.

Verizon has been charging me for not, in fact, using my phone enough.

The list of fees I was willing to pay, even though they added up to about $10 every month, and included rebuilding New York (though I know where $455B could be had... link to this site. Jaw-dropping. you may not come back -- I almost didn't -- so do that after), giving the internet to Appalachia or some such, tone tone service (which...don't even...) a special fee just for the joy of living in Massachusetts....

Today I discovered a $10 shortfall fee. If my long distance service is not at least 9.99 per statement, I am charged the difference. They are guaranteed their $10.

I don't know how this costs them money, but Joe the service boy advised that the unlimited service -- which I clearly don't need since I made 3 phone calls last month -- would service me better. The monthly fee was less and there was no shortfall. The fees are the same, of course, you silly Amish girl.

Plenty of people are blogging about this. The last few topics I have raised here I have discovered on other people's blogs. Which means I really should finish the commentary on Dietrich Bonheoffer, but I think I might lose Neilson points.

But because so much other research has been done, I can draw it all in, and save you the time and advertising exposure. Here at BankAmerica-Staples Drawing-In, we remain blissfully ad free.

FCC approved

I hate you, FCC. So do these people. Somehow you are getting a kickback, and we know it.

How long have I been paying this?

I am afraid to look. Only since April 2007. I will give you one shortcut. When you get into the voice-activated menu (any voice activated menu) do not tolerate the impatient computer woman. No matter what prompts she gives you, say "Customer Service."

It will work. Ask for Marbio, if they didn't let him go.

Our Kind of Research

Some time ago, the Drawing-In Room went on and on about pie. You thought it couldn't get deeper than that.

Neither did Miss Bender, until Faithful Reader forwarded us a link to purchase the 2007 Report on Pancakes and Briddle Scones: World Market Segmentation by City. You need this in your life. Like the show cat scrapbook found at the antique store, you want to read it more than you want to own it. The cat book price was quoted by the vendor as a "WHOLE lotta money," so you know I didn't pay the $795 for the pancake report.

seven hundred ninety-five dollars and no/100.

You'll be pleased to know Amazon has it in stock.

Ok, let's break it down. What can $800 buy me? It weighs a pound and a half, so factor in more than $5 for shipping.

330 pages of 2000 cities with "the economic potential for ... pancakes and griddle scones for the year 2007." This blog should not praise the world's (potential) fascination for flap...jacks as much it will celebrate the man behind the graphs: Philip M. Parker.

Philip Parker, you have Googled yourself, and we know it, and we want you to know that you have fans and admirers in the room. In fact, you have friends in other rooms, and ought to send Amazon a nice big thank you for the way they are promoting you.

Things Parker knows about that make us love him all the more:

Diseases (the fascinating ones)
Tourettes, Bells Palsy, Marfan Syndrome, Lou Gehrig's, and some diseases that aren't even named after people.

Life Information (all stages)
head lice, teen violence, insomnia, gonorrhea, anxiety, menopause, hairloss, chocolate...

Food (it's not just for breakfast anymore)
wheat gluten, ice cream, brined fish, "food animals" (as in...pets or meat), blanched nuts (shocked by pet eating), and of course, the griddle scone.

Languages
linguistic culture, crosswords. Buy this one for the nightstand where your father-in-law will stay when he visits.

How did he get so smart?
Wharton School. But he did have 3 BAs and 2 Masters before the PhD, so maybe Warton can't claim it all.

Is he real?

It does appear so.



How old is he? He looks like Dick Cavett.

He is 47. Insert your mother's voice saying, "You know, Mrs. Parker's son has really made something of himself."

And by the time John Keats was your age, he was dead.
this article ends here because I ran out of ambition. again.