Please Stand By

Well, I did eventually dig myself out of the snow.

But for a number of reasons, I don’t have anything this week. See you next time, space cowboy…

The Ghost of a Train Station

I now have LL Bean slippers. It is only a short time before I talk about “vacationing in Maine”. (Actually, it’s an attempt to find a pair of slippers than can last six months without me somehow boring a hole through the sole. Maybe a slightly-upscale quality brand might get us there. But my toes are merciless, apparently)

Anyway, new year, incoming winter storm, car won’t start (even before the storm hits), I landed on my ankle funny early on Saturday, and we’re all out of eggs in the area (one last betrayal by Biden, I’m sure). Overnight temperatures will nudge -20ºC by the end of the week and I’ve already eaten about 90% of the chocolate my family brought over. It’s an impending disaster!

It is definitely not a disaster at all, but I was a little sad standing in the ticket hall for the Cincinnati Museum Center on Tuesday morning. It once used to be a cathedral for trains, and it looks amazing. A masterpiece of Art Deco with a 100+ foot high ceiling that makes you think you’ve stepped into an episode of Batman: The Animated Series. It used to handle 15-30,000 passengers a day. Given that the entire complex could have been lost after it closed in 1972, it’s hard to be too churlish about its current state as a museum, but the sense of ‘this could have been the future’ hangs over you through every moment of being in the rotunda.

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Happily, the museum is a good one, if a little different to the ones I’ve grown up with over the years. The V&A does not have an artificial cave system, for instance! Nor does the Ashmolean have an expansive toddler area with Duplo stations and magnetic walls. I think we barely saw half of the museum proper, but not to worry as we have passes for the rest of the year. I haven’t even seen the giant mouth yet!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get my snow shovel ready…

Can We Have A Do-Over?

Well, here we are, all the lads. Right at the end of the year, and the house has tonight slimmed down from a surprisingly-still-comfortable six (admittedly, one of the six is very small, but she does make her presence felt) to a somewhat lost-at-sea one. I have spent the day by myself in the usual manner: ineffective tidying up, staring at a computer screen for more than I really should, observing model runs more than is strictly necessary on a day off, and wondering just what dark magic I pulled in November to get $1/gallon of petrol at Kroger this morning.

As promised, for once, the list of books I read in 2024 is up. You’ll see that it’s a list that is dominated at the top and tail by series, and feels a lot more genre-bound than the last couple of years. The year started with me finding out that Games Workshop was finally about to end the Horus Heresy after something like fifteen years, which meant I spent Christmas and the early new year going through the Siege of Terra cycle¹. And then there was a gentle couple of months going through Ballard books I haven’t read yet, finally finishing the Arthur Maclean collection, and the Rosemary Tonks reissues that are available in the US (I’ve had to grab hold of actual physical copies of the others from the UK). But then, aside from a detour into the Palin diaries, Stafford Beer, and Owen Hatherley’s wonderful journey around DC and New York, come August, I fell into a Donald Westlake-shaped hole.

I remember enjoying William Goldman’s adaptation of The Hot Rock, so the Dortmunder books were an easy sell. What happened was this: I’d get an email saying one of the series had been reduced to $2, and I’d buy the next in the series. This took me all the way up to the end of Good Behavior (I’m very surprised this hasn’t been turned into a film — breaking into a NY skyscraper to rescue a young nun who is under a vow of silence via a series of increasingly convoluted approaches seems a great mid-range film. Although those don’t really exist these days…). And then the offers dried up and instead it directed me to the Parker books…waves at November and December. Honestly, I’m not even sure if I liked them all that much; they’re absolutely taut, but possibly just a little too clipped and tight. But then you can read one in a night…and I often did. And then Amazon decided to offer the last 16 books in the series for $22 or so. I couldn’t really say no at that price. I have forced myself to stop at the end of Butcher’s Moon (after which, Westlake didn’t write any more Parker novels for twenty years), but expect January 2025 to be rife with them, particularly as I’m going to be flying to San Francisco at the end of January.

So that was the year in books. A decided lack of nonfiction. TV? Well, I have a half-written rant about Adam Curtis’ The Way sitting in my note drafts for most of the year. Did it feel like a CBBC drama from the late 80s with a few “Curtis trademarks” applied on top? Absolutely. The thing is that I think that’s a good thing, unlike almost everybody else. And while I really can’t defend the “Welsh Catcher” bits, the swingers opener in episode 3 I will absolutely die on a hill for:

“Why are there swingers? What does this have to do with the plot??”

• Why does everything have to be a telegraphed part of the plot? Have all these revivals and spin-offs rotted your brains?

• Does the opener serve a purpose? Why yes, it allows a relatively natural conversation to talk about what’s going on rather than an infodump between just two characters (i.e. the sister and her husband)

• It also uses the swinger scene in an attempt to be clever. How successful the attempt is, I’m not sure: but yes, it’s an adult post-watershed drama on BBC1. But it’s a ‘sophisticated’ drama, so we’re playing with more risqué themes…but as well as having that cake, the show knows despite all the ‘sensitive’ filming in the world, the scenes in something like Sense8 are really at a core level just as salacious² as Barbara Windsor’s bra popping off, so it tries to eat the cake as well. And hence the juxtaposition with Carry On Camping and Benny Hill. It knows, you know, and it’s generating an auto-critique of itself while also building on the AI theme of the programme. It is at least trying!

• Also, everybody standing outside the big sod-off Grand Designs window staring in at them is funny.

Anyway, even if it was terribly uneven, I will go to bat for a show that explicitly rejects its premise and ends with a demand for new stories³.

Right, I will spare you all from my retrospective on Reality Bites, except to say that Ethan Hawke’s character totally voted for Trump in the 2024 election and nothing you say will convince me otherwise. Happy new year everybody…

21st Century Dentistry

Your old dentist retires and eleven months later, you go to the one he’s transferred you to. I was always fond of my old dentist. Now, I had chosen them simply because they were in my network and they were really close, but every time I went, I’d be charmed by the late 1970s/early 1980s vibe of the entire place. They did have computers and modern dentist tech, but the intercoms were chunky 1970s numbers with Eurostile typesetting, the interiors were vintage Midwestern, and they had a massive bank of active pigeon holes stuffed with patients’ details. It was an interesting time-capsule.

Contrast this with my new dentist, where everybody wears a uniform, the average age of staff skews about 30 years younger, LEED lighting and white surfaces everywhere, and “AI assisted” X-Ray scans, plus a full 3D model of your teeth built with a very rectangular wand shoved in your mouth. Very different.

But…while my previous dentist didn’t complain a lot about what was going in with my teeth, the new group has some opinions. Quite extensive opinions. Like “we’ll need to work on your mouth one quadrant a time over the next year, things are so bad” sort of opinions. I had rocked up at 12 noon, expecting a quick-ish 20 minute appointment…and I didn’t leave until 14:00. I was so hungry. But also afraid of eating anything ever again.

(the worst part is them all nodding sagely as they hear my accent, and that sinking feeling as I realize I’ve conformed to the British stereotype of terrible teeth. But I didn’t know! I’ve been going to dentists in the US since 2011 and not one has really said anything until now!!)

Anyway, trying to put all of that aside for the next nine days. The family is here, Maeryn is having a great time, work is over for the year, and we’re settling in for Christmas and the new year. Next week: probably an overview of books read this year to wrap everything¹

Why not just eat the butter without all the baking?

I made my first batch of mince pies this weekend¹. Which means, as I think about it, I’ve have eaten an entire 227g block of butter this weekend. It’s…probably best not to dwell on that.

We’re entering that quiet lull; a Saturday spent trying to clean up the house a little, then I’ll be on my own for a couple of days as I clean carpets and make up a new set of beds…and then my family arrives on the 18th. Which means I’m basically considering myself on holiday from that evening, even if I do have two more days of work left. Admittedly, on the last day, I plan on reviving the old British school custom of “Bringing in Games on the last day of term”, which is a bit more of a challenge when you work for a remote company.

Back to tidying up…

The American Equivalent of 'Which Was Nice'

This week, another little part of my Britishness fell away. The dressing gown from British Home Stores that I’ve had for an indeterminate amount of years (probably at least 15), described by Tammy as “looking a bit ratty when I first met you,” has been replaced with a brand new gown. From L.L. Bean. You honestly can’t get more “middle class liberal American dad” than that. I might as well just tear up my British passport.¹

One thing I didn’t mention about Thanksgiving last week is that it is also Lucidwork’s busiest time of the year. We power the search behind some surprising big brands, and my goodness, did we facilitate a lot of sales over the sale period. I probably shouldn’t yet put a figure on it, but we’d be in with a shot at a cabinet position in the next administration if it was all ours. I had somewhat forgotten just how much I like being involved with search — sure it’s not saving the planet, but the idea of actually making the Internet navigable and giving you what you want to find? It ties back to me getting onto the net back in 1997 and finding all the tricks to make Infoseek and AltaVista produce good results…and now I’m doing it behind the scenes²

All this and reconnecting with an old university friend? Not a bad week at all, to be honest…

Big Box Fun

Yes, yes, Thanksgiving. But first, THIS.

From this article in Atlas Obscura. And yes, apparently, the breakaway wall slid back into place when the shop was shut. Hardly anybody seems to do this sort of thing any more, and it’s a big shame. I get that a lot of commercial and residential architecture has just devolved to big boxes and some sort of mistaken Poundbury aesthetic (see also: Poundbury itself), but why can’t we have fun? I’m not asking for total Archigram¹, but maybe we could do something a little differently every now and again?

Coincidentally, we spent a large part of Saturday at a ridiculous supermarket that has a monorail. Why does it have a monorail? Because the owner thought it’d be cool (and one was going cheap). It helps that it’s a shop where you can get anything from actual three feet sugar canes to Cadbury’s chocolate directly important from the UK, but the sense of over-the-top Midwestern excess in the interior and exterior decoration makes it like no other supermarket you’ve ever been to.

Anyway, Thanksgiving! Perhaps the most subdued Thanksgiving I’ve had since emigrating, maybe? Fewer people, no guests at all, and a low single-digit number of desserts. Am I ill? Yes, actually, we’re all ill. But we put together a solid dinner, even with a little, Official Agent of Chaos running around, demanding to be entertained, preferably with the Stick Song². And, although the hazelnut aero filling collapsed, I know exactly why that happened, so I’m still on track to create The Aero Bar That They Said Shouldn’t Be Made this Christmas.

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I think that’s the best bourbon pecan pie I’ve ever made, too. Thin crust, filling thrown together at 22:00 Wednesday evening without a recipe…not bad at all. Of course, without a recipe, I can never truly recreate it…sigh

December awaits. The temperatures have started plummeting to -8ºC as if to get us in the festive season…snow on the ground too!

starts playing Slade at 00:00:01

The Unstoppable March of Time

I feel like a good 80% of my posts this year have had the theme of “isn’t this year going quickly?” This is…yet another. With Thanksgiving coming up so soon, it made me realize that I hadn’t yet spent a weekend for a month coming up with Christmas card designs…and I needed them this week to get all the posting underway. But when I actually sat down with Flux and Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large, I found myself completely lacking any inspiration¹. Also, it turns out Flux is terrible at stylistic prompts, so my first attempt at reusing some prompts from last year all failed miserably.

What I ended up with is a bit of a cheat. But then the whole thing is a bit of a cheat, so…anyway, what many of you will get this year is a variation on a theme. One prompt, different scenes. So you’ll see a coloured pencil version of the Yorkshire Moors covered in snow, but it’ll be utterly unique to everybody else’s. You’re welcome².

We’re having a quiet Thanksgiving this year, with a drastic reduction in numbers. Consequently, I’m also drastically reducing the dessert count. It may have been as high as 20 in the past few years, but this week, it’s going to be dialled back to three. I know. It feels wrong. I’m also under orders to keep Christmas down to an acceptable number too. Terrible! I will be lucky to get into double figures even when combining both holidays! All the molds just sitting idle! Maybe I can get away with six or seven…

New Glasses Time

I have braved the optician for the first time since 2021, got complimented on my 20/20 vision (I mean, with glasses, but at least they actually work…) as well as my accent and walked out without having to wear bifocals for the next two years. Hurrah!

(meanwhile, I’m reduced to “are we upset more about the one with white nationalist tattoos, the utterly insane one, or the nonce?", so that’s going well)

Live through this and you won't look back

Stars’ third album, Set Yourself on Fire, is now twenty years old. I remember listening to it, on the streets of Chapel Hill in 2004. The day after. The day before, we started out at the infamous 112 N Graham St shared house, watching the returns come in and laughing along with Jon Stewart. Indecision 2004. And then the night turned. The laughter and chatter stopped and the party broke up and we slithered away.

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I took a picture of this sign as I walked down Franklin Street the next day, every single person on the street looking shell-shocked and ruined. How could the country re-elect this person, this administration, given all the disasters of the previous four years?

What I didn’t know is that one day, I’d look back on that walk with something approaching nostalgia. That I’d watch returns coming in and see the country vote for an insurrectionist and mass internment camps. And not just in the places you’d expect. The entire country covered with red shift arrows, that they’d taken a long hard look at the two candidates and decided they wanted the one that gleefully talks about the execution of his enemies. This Is What They Want And By God Take Away Our Healthcare While You’re Dragging People Off The Streets.

Maybe it won’t be so bad; after all, 2004 gave way to 2006 and 2008. But I then read about the coming attempts to completely wipe out what’s left of the 14th Amendment and I start wishing for Robert L. Booth.

Meanwhile, all of my social media feeds have turned into the standard Democratic circular firing squad, although my ire is most reserved for the people shitting on the Democrats for the past year now telling people to get their passports renewed before the coming further assault on trans rights¹.

God, that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend
Smiled and said, "Yes, I think we've met before"
In that instant, it started to pour

Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain
And all of that time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name

Back in 2004, I could not wrap my head around this lyric. How could you not remember? How could you not remember that name? A feeling made more acute by never having had a name to remember. Twenty years on…and I understand a lot better now. Some names stay, but many do not. That’s okay, because there will be names that last forever.

I’ve also been thinking about this speech again.