Timeless

Posted on September 15, 2023 by d4vid

The clock at the hotel gym was missing both of its hands.  But that’s how all time at the gym feels for me.

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Humidity

Posted on September 15, 2023 by d4vid

The condensation from my water bottle overnight

My room feels like sitting in front of a swamp cooler:  cool but damp.

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Hospitality

Posted on September 14, 2023 by d4vid

Trying to check in to the Holiday Inn in Alpharetta, GA.  My travels are off to an inauspicious start.

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Road II

Posted on September 14, 2023 by d4vid

The Road Goes Ever On and On

Embarking on my first travel adventure since the Before Times.  (Other than my Excruciating Neck Pain Christmas in Portland & Road Trip Home™, of course.)

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Galaxy

Posted on July 23, 2023 by d4vid

My brother Johnny & I still have a deep and abiding love of our childhood toys.  He gave me this updated version of the classic Galaxy Explorer as a gift but with all the moving around I never had a chance to build.  I finally did and also captured the highlights of the included booklet.

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Jab

Posted on April 11, 2021 by d4vid

One dose down, one to go.

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Lockheed

Posted on April 5, 2021 by d4vid

I start working (remotely) at Netflix on Monday.  Supposedly, Netflix will be consolidating their Animation operations in the office complex at The Empire Center in Burbank.

When I was growing up, Burbank was a two industry town:  aerospace (Lockheed) and entertainment (Warner Bros., Disney, and NBC.)

What is now the Empire Center used to be Lockheed’s old Plant B-1 where they built P-38 Lightnings during World War II.  Lockheed was a critical plane manufacturer for the Allies, just as the Nakajima Aircraft Company in Burbank’s sister city of Ōta was for the Japanese.

Lockheed continued to be important throughout the Cold War, it’s Skunk Works program developing the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the F-117 Nighthawk.
The Blackbird is the most graphically interesting plane in the history of aviation.  It’s so sexy, that the great Chris Claremont (father of the modern X-Men) wrote it in as the team’s plane.  And this is how Kitty Pryde ended up naming her tiny alien pet dragon Lockheed.

Posted in Stamford | Tagged | 3 Comments

Out

Posted on February 25, 2021 by d4vid

As Americans talking about America, we always seem to use “back” when we talk about the East (“back East”) but we use “out” when we talk about the West (“out West”).  Some vestigial frontier mentality, I expect.

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International

Posted on February 10, 2021 by d4vid

I cooked spicy Xinjiang lamb by carving the meat off the bone and then put the bones to good use by making lamb broth for cooking a traditional Scottish winter soup.

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Goat

Posted on February 8, 2021 by d4vid

Human communication is so beautifully weird.  I love how the term “Greatest of All Time” evolved into “G.O.A.T.” which, in turn, evolved into just an emoji of an actual goat.

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Anonymous

Posted on January 14, 2021 by d4vid

If I were Lawful Evil, I would write a tome debunking the QAnon connections with the Star Wars mythology and, thus, cement the QAnon connections with the Star Wars mythology.

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Dawn

Posted on January 1, 2021 by d4vid

Dawn on January 1, 2021

At the risk of dating myself, the words of Adam Duritz come to mind:

And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe /
Maybe this year will be better than the last

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States

Posted on December 28, 2020 by d4vid

I love this map Mansfield University geography professor Andrew Shears cobbled together from various historical paths-not-taken of possible state names & boundaries.

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Suburbia

Posted on November 28, 2020 by d4vid

Inspired by Frederic Jameson‘s Archaeologies of the Future, I’ve been rereading a lot of books as well as trying to fill in gaps in my knowledge of utopian & dystopian writing.

In doing so, I stumbled on this damning quote about the suburbs by American historian & sociologist Lewis Mumford:

In the suburb one might live and die without marring the image of an innocent world, except when some shadow of evil fell over a column in the newspaper.  Thus the suburb served as an asylum for the preservation of illusion.  Here domesticity could prosper, oblivious of the pervasive regimentation beyond.  This was not merely a child-centered environment;  it was based on a childish view of the world, in which reality was sacrificed to the pleasure principle

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Redrum

Posted on October 20, 2020 by d4vid

The Mohonk Mountain House rising from the fog atop the Shawagunk Ridge in the Catskill Mountains looks just a liiittle too much like the Overlook Hotel for me to feel entirely safe.

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