nerdmeyr & K

As some of you already know, this blog started as a chronicle of Nerdmeyr’s adventures in the Midwest. After keeping the blog for several years, she graciously allowed me to piggyback on her fame and write my own esoteric posts that consisted mainly of cultural criticism.

One summer day, I hit upon the idea of giving our blog a theme as a way to generate threads between posts and as inspiration for future posts.

That theme is order and since order is everything, the theme did not radically alter the content of our posts as much as it made explicit what we were already up to.

And what were we up to? The same thing everyone is up to all the time: constantly cataloging ourselves in an effort to make sense of our lives. Order, after all, is what gives things meaning. We tend to think that meaning comes first and determines order, but such is not the case. Taxonomies first; meaning second. We place ourselves in pre-existing categories in order to understand our relationship to others. We keep running lists of our likes, peeves, preferences, and wishes so as to distinguish ourselves from others. We classify our daily experiences under so many proverbs (found yourself in the check-out line without your wallet? - In every life, a little rain must fall). We incessantly map people and places and routes to better know the thing at hand by placing ourselves in relation to it.

Just this past weekend, someone told me that their favorite past time is to describe places around town and chart their history. And while visiting Mikel in L.A., he told that he and his sister are obsessed with mapping the best route to any given destination and when together, spend all their time swapping routes.

When I first came up with the theme, I also had the idea of documenting people’s daily ordering habits. The idea was to interview people via email about their housekeeping and classification practices and then post the interviews. Clearly, that hasn’t happened. But I haven’t given up on the idea! In fact, I’m hoping this post nets a few stories, especially from those who maintain particularly unusual ordering systems. Alphabetize your clothes by designer? Eat everything on your plate in the order in which it was introduced into the New World? Collect only those DVDs once analyzed by your favorite film scholar? (If that last one rings true, we actually don’t want to hear from you.) Send details!

In the meantime, I’ll be searching for possible interview candidates.

A plotz of greasy black dust

a partially ground-out wing

Or, if its too late,

(for you, certainly) (but for me, also)

irradiating droplets of blood

like pollack gone mad

It didn’t have to be this way

This enervating tango of buzzing and near misses.

We could have been friends.

Well, if not friends,

Acquaintances, then.

Acquaintances who share a love of the trees

slagging sideways with their mantle of leaves,

weather of the warmer persuasion,

and long days that reluctantly handshake with night.

It didn’t have to be this way.

But you,

you,

you always go for blood.

My limbs are looking more chewed-up than a bacon-flavored dog bone, thanks to the blood-thirsty fiends who have absolutely no regard or care as to my relative happiness out-of-doors.

Mosquito Lemon-aid

Compliments of Jerry Baker.

1 cup lemon-scented ammonia

1 cup lemon-scented dish soap

Put the mixture in a hose-end sprayer and spray all over the yard - grass, walls, fences, shrubberies, small pets, and anybody passed out in the grass. (Hey, its all natural!  And they’ll smell …. interesting afterwards!)

Works esp. well if you give a middle-finger salute as you’re spraying.

…a sign that you might want to rethink an issue is that Dick Cheney …err….comes out and agrees with you on it.

Cheney backs gay marriage, calls it a state issue

I guess the gay daughter card finally got played. Or maybe Cheney’s having some sort of delusional episode? He also says he still thinks that Gitmo is housing criminals so dangerous, they would blow up the entire united states (yes, even wyoming! and alaska! and hawaii!) if they were allowed to step foot on our soil.

I

heart

Adam

Lambert

Dear Nicolas Cage,

Remember when you made Face Off? Remember how you played irredeemable and evil-for-evil’s sake Castor Troy and also played uncorruptable and good-to-the-point of boring Sean Archer playing Castor Troy? Remember how you penetrated the one-dimensional caricatures of each to reveal that the one’s passion was passion-less, while the other’s dispassion burned passionately? And remember how you were smart and sarcastic and larger than life and sublime?

It’s true that by Face Off, I was already in love with you. You were my favorite: funny, interesting, smart, and, yeah, sexy. Every film you made was gold: Valley Girl, Raising Arizona, Wild at Heart, Honeymoon in Vegas. Sure I would have paid to see Face Off anyway because it was directed by John Woo and starred John Travolta, but Con Air? Con Air was all you. It’s true that I was confused as to why you would play the poorer southern version of Sean Archer and let your disturbing shlongy hair do most of the acting, and don’t think I couldn’t see that film for the conservative fantasy it was of racially-motivated, sexually-depraved criminal minds that justify America’s out-of-scale, completely dehumanizing prison industrial complex. Still, you had me because you’re you and Red Rock West kind of sucked it, but that was forgivable because I knew the real you and what you were really capable of.

A few lemons couldn’t tarnish your canon and I figured everything evened out in the end. Bringing Out the Dead sort of made up for 8mm. Not really, actually, but I was willing to entertain the possibility that you simply hadn’t read the script that closely (or considered how ridiculous was the premise that the more evil the pornographer, the deeper under the earth they must reside, and so to pursue the most evil of evil makers of snuff films, you would literally have to adventure to the earth’s core) and maybe you needed the money.

To be completely honest, I was a little worried, after 8mm, that something had happened to you and that you making sucky morality tales not because you were merely a tool of the corporate entertainment juggernaut, but because, perhaps, you actually shared those views. But Gone in Sixty Seconds alleviated my fears and renewed my trust in you.

And that’s really the point, Nicolas: I trusted you. I trusted you enough to see a movie about which I knew nothing other than it starred you, and you abused that trust. You stomped on that trust and kicked it into the dirt and spat on it. What am I talking about? I’m talking, Nicolas, about a little film called Knowing. Maybe you remember starring in it? As a MIT professor of astrophysics who is a rationalist and has rejected the religious beliefs of his preacher father? That is until your son receives a fifty-year old letter that predicts, in code (which you break ridiculously fast while drunk), all the world’s major and minor catastrophes? And then smooth black rocks start appearing all over your house and aliens start visiting your son? I would sound the warning “spoilers ahead,” except that nothing, Nicolas, could spoil that film any more than what happens next, which is that you break the last part of the code and figure out that the ultimate catastrophe, the one that’s going to wipe out all of humankind, is happening the very next day, which doesn’t give you much time to fix the problem, but you could have, Nicolas, fixed it and you didn’t, you didn’t at all and instead you send your son and a white bunny off with the Aryan N-aliens (yeah, we’ll talk about that in a minute) and then you cry on the ground and then you drive to your parents’ house and you and your family Christian embrace while your father reassures you that this isn’t the end and THEN the entire Earth explodes into a ball of flames.

What the F!!!? What exactly about that plot line did you think was okay? The whole world dies, and that’s it? Please do not try to tell me that that’s not really all there is because also your saved son now lives on Planet CGI Grass and you’ve found redemption because, frankly, it will break me. It has broken me. It’s broken us, Nicolas. Nothing you could ever do will make up for this. Not a thousand Face Off sequels or even you teamed with Mos Def in a re-make of To Sir, With Love.

Where does that leave us? It leaves us nowhere because there is no more you and me. I’ll still turn on hotel TVs with the hope that Con Air is playing, but I’ve moved on and I think it’s best if you just go with your new life and leave me to mine and we’ll just remember things as they were, when your sarcasm cut like a knife and the awesomeness of your driving skills alone could move a plot line forward.

Your once adoring fan,

k.

Ostensibly, MSNBC’s Olbermann is a left-wing-nut, super friendly to progressives in general and gays in particular. In the below YouTube clip, Olbermann attempts to take down  RNC Chair Michael Steele over Steele’s assertion that gay marriage should be opposed not on moral grounds, but rather on economic grounds. Steele’s theory? That once gays have legal egress to get married, they will apply for health care benefits through their new spouse’s employer and thereby cost the employer way too much money.

Olbermann refutes the conclusion of Steele’s argument but not the assumptions that make such an argument possible in the first place.  In brief, Olbermann spends the bulk of his time listing all the ways gays would spend money if they were legally allowed to get married, via dresses/suits, catering, photographers, hotels, stationery, rings, honeymoons, etc. etc., to the tune of 6 billion dollars a year.

I hate Hate HATE HATE HATE Olbermann’s argument, and its presence and traction impugns the aims of the entire “gay marriage” project as its been shoved down our throats.

1. Steele’s argument and Olbermann’s refutation both position gays solely as consumers, not as citizens who deserve rights because they’re citizens. Steele criticizes gay marriage because of his assumption about our shopping habits within the medical industry; Olbermann lauds us because of his assumptions about our shopping habits at Bed, Bath and Beyond.
2. Speaking of assumptions, Olbermann’s clearly assumes that gays getting married will behave exactly like straights getting married (e.g., spending a shit ton of money, “bridezillas”, destination weddings, etc.) is obnoxious, offensive, and depressing. Obnoxious and offensive because it assumes queers want to act like straights as much as they want the legal/social benefits of marriage. Depressing because it says to me that even left-wing-nuts like Olbermann say, “We’ll give you gay marriage as long as you assimilate into straight culture and behave as we do, accept our mores and modes of behavior, and so on.”  A false, terrible bargain to be had, gay people…wise up!!!
3. As usual, straights like Olbermann support the gays when we’re reaffirming the desirability of their unsustainable, messed-up, broken-ass habits (e.g., the general unworkableness of modern marriage as its currently defined, death-to-us-part, etc. AS WELL AS solving our economic difficulties through endlessly increasing consumptive habits). We’re only going to get to have a national conversation about how individuals establish legal rights/responsibilities with other individuals once in a  generation. The gays  are WASTING it on trying to keep up with the straight-Joneses.  Helllllo, peeps - the Joneses are living off Natty Ice in a crumbling dilapidated house with sewage running down the middle of the yard… and the best we can come up with is that we want that, too?

Alright, alright. I know- the above points are a lot to expect from a talking head.  But even if Olbermann wanted to have a conversation about the economic impact of health care for a subset of the population, he could have done it differently. What he should have argued is that if we just had government-sponsored health care for everyone, then health care costs would no longer be an issue for any small, medium, or large business owner, regardless of the marital status of their employees, straight or queer. Nor would health insurance be an issue for the 46 million Americans, straight and queer, who don’t have health insurance at all right now. And I don’t have statistics to back this up, but I would guess 90% of childless gay couples already have both people working outside the home, which means that very few will be hopping on to their partner’s health insurance anyway.

Olbermann, you are no friend to the queers.  Screw you - we have a lot more to offer you and straight society than our over-extended credit cards.

It’s a bad day for allergies. As I write this, the badness is manifesting in two ways: 1) my throat hurts and my eyes are itchy, and 2) Sienna the Cat keeps sneezing on my stuff.

Just wanted to direct all readers’ attentions to our recently updated blog roll. I’ve added links to the small chlorinated pool of web awesome-ness in which I swim. And - this is the crazy part - from each of those blogs, you can link to more blogs! It’s like this wild free-form inter-connected network.

NOTE: The byline to the contrary, this post was jointly written by both K and Nerdmeyr.

NOTE 2: This will probably be a long post with enormous amounts of painful details. So, grab a tea or mug of beer.

Last night, K and I accompanied our friends M. Valliant and Julia to Dinky’s Amish Auction House in Daviess County, about a forty-five minute drive from our town. M.V. and Julia offered to take us after their first visit when they came back with 75 cabbage plants ($10) and an old-school drinking fountain ($1).

Perhaps it was the overly long winter, perhaps it was K’s and my relative sequestering of ourselves in our house over the overly long winter, perhaps it was the first day of sticky hot weather, but I (Nerdmeyr) was overwhelmed upon arrival. And I don’t mean arrival inside the auctioning areas, but rather our arrival in the parking lot. We, in a station wagon, were dwarfed by the hundreds of giant full-size pickups in the packed parking lot.

Oh, and back up for a second. Part of the reason I was overwhelmed by the parking lot and trying to find a space in it is that we had picked up a passenger along the way. Not knowing the exact way to Dinky’s, we had stopped at a gas station and Julia asked a person, John W., who looked as though he (by way of dress) might know the way.  A ride for him and directions for us worked out for everyone!  And, after passing time amicably conversing the way that strangers converse, we were at Dinky’s.

[[MAJOR ASIDE NUMBER 1: When I say that we all conversed in the way that strangers do, I mean that we discussed where we all live, where we come from, and what we do, assuming (at least it seemed to me) that we would have little in common or that we expected to have to explain ourselves to one another, so best not to go into too much detail. This didn't really turn out to be the case. M.V. and Julia discussed their respective fields of study, which led us to the topic of hormones in meat. All of us agreed: hormones = bad, but none of us could say for sure why. In the nanosecond after I (Nerdmeyr) realized how surprised I was by this point of commonality, I was struck by how stupid was my assumption. Our passenger lives in a rural area and is probably faaaaar more up to speed on the evils of modern agriculture than I, hippie city dweller, will probably ever be. Either way, that point of commonality was less surprising than finding out that we all buy meat at grocery stores. My surprise probably is due the fact that my knowledge of the Amish is limited to Witness, produce purchases at the farmer's market,  and a family-style restaurant in Shipshewana.  [[[[END MAJOR ASIDE NUMBER 1]]]]]

Parking lot: Where I’m suddenly uncomfortably aware of how much space all the trucks (I’m assuming owned by the English) take up compared to the horse-n-buggies off on the perimeters of the parking lot. Why do the trucks get the middle area?  Why are the horse-n-buggies  - at an AMISH auction - shoved off to the side?  It’s as if at a gay bar, the gay people must be off to the side in order to make room for the bachelorette parties.

Once inside, you must first go to the central accounts counter. The central accounts counter is manned by both Amish and English; while the division of labor is unclear, it did seem like maybe only the English use the computers. To get a bidding number, you provide some form of ID. You only have to do this once and Julia had already done so the last time she came, so we got two bidding cards on her account. Then, once the bidding card complete with 3-digit number in 100 pt font is procured, you wander the various auctions.

But to say that “you wander the various auctions” doesn’t quite capture the experience. The whole enterprise is impressively vast in scale, and yet remarkably sparse in infrastructure.  A good way of describing it (via nerd-terms) might be a co-located array of giant tin-roofed buildings. And also interstitial open areas where large pallets of building products like corrugated tin and lumber and also decrepit cars - hoods opened up like women in the Amsterdam red-light district - were being sold. We would witness several hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff sell over the course of the evening; everything from a dollar’s worth-box of fake flower arrangements tossed in with a Polaroid camera to a $650 Angus steer.  Mysterious, amazing, wonderful stuff of worth sometimes understandable and other times unclear all sold by men (yeah, we mean that pronoun literally) who have the gift of unintelligible gab that is the hallmark of all amazing auction sellers:

{trying to sell a mysterious Rube Goldberg machine labeled “Lollipop” which featured clear plastic walls to better see the interior guts involving plastic gears, ramps,  and some sort of american coin acceptor that last saw daylight in a trucker’s gas station on a major interstate}:
“LOLLIPOPP MACHINE! WOW! LOLLIPOP MACHINE! LOOKIT THIS LOLLIPOP MACHINE! gitcherlollipop fivefivefivefivercanwehearafivefivervfiverfivefourfity
fityfityfourfityfityfourfourfourfourYEP!fourtwentyfiveYEP!fourfityfityfityYEP!fourseventyfive fourseventyfive fourseventy five DO I HEAR A four seventyfive five fivefiverfiveityfive five five doihear another fiveity fourseventyfiverty five fivety GOING GOING SOLD!”

[[MAJOR ASIDE NUMBER 2: On the ride home, someone suggested that Lotus World Music Festival procure an auctioneer to perform, as the more awesome auctioneers definitely incorporated melodic intonations to their auctioneering, often turning the timbre of their voice down or up at the end of statements.  I (Nerdmeyr) thought that the better auctioneers shared many characteristics with Tuvan throat singers, but maybe that's just me. K thought that maybe the up/down intonations were to help the auctioneers remember at what price point they were at, as I'm sure by the end of the evening one bin full of socket wrenches might blend into another. I (K) also think that the rhythm helps let you know how long you've got to make any additional bid, like a clock counting down. I've no doubt both auctioneers and buyers use that time to control the direction of the sale, but how one might go about doing so completely escaped me. [[[[End of Major Aside #2]]]]

At any rate, the auctions take place in huge rooms filled with everything from live stock to antique cabinets to hanging plants to manually-operated butter churns and Budweiser mirrors (the latter of which was, surprisingly, not such a hot commodity with the Amish). These wildly varied items emptied out of the building by the end of the night under minimal oversight. And by “minimal oversight”, we mean, “none at all”. As soon as you win an auction, you can grab up your parcel of schtuff and take it out to your vehicle before the thunderstorm that’s threatening Vigo County gets to Daviess County. Everything large and furniture-like is marked with a numbered piece of masking tape representing the seller’s ID; we never saw how they marked the smaller animals like rabbits and guinea hens, much less the horses, cars, and old-school electric generators.

As I said, the infrastructure is simple; the overwhelming aspect to it is the scale of the event: at least six auctions going simultaneously, some in the same room and the sheer volume of stuff for sale is what really impresses. More overwhelming than the parking lot was figuring out how to jump into the bidding. It was like an enormous, multi-tiered, sped-up game of double dutch that never stopped. There was no telling (at least on our end) what items would be hotly contested, or by whom. And the vernacular of bidding was intimidating, too. Nobody waves their hands about; rather, its all about making eye contact with the auctioneer or his helper,  and nodding “yes”.  Or making an abrupt up/down motion with the hand that’s carrying the bidding card.  Subtle head nods, esp. when there’s a bidding war going on, also seem to be acceptable.  (M.V. warned us against superfluous motion before we went in for this reason.)  Also interesting was the sad, ashamed “no” head-shake by a bidder when the bidding had gone past their top price point - as if the auctioneer was asking “Have you not killed multiple people in acts of rage?”, and then the person has to hang their head, downcast their eyes, and then shake their head, “no. no, i _have_ killed multiple people in acts of rage, and thus I do not deserve the vintage child’s hobby horse currently being auctioned for $12.75.”

In some cases, you could communicate your interest in particular items and thereby steer which things were auctioned at what time. In most cases, though, there were just clusters of people hovered around waiting for the auctioneer to make his way to an item. You could also figure out which stuff you were interested in and estimate how long it would take for the auctioneer to make his way over to that item, and then wander to another room and bid on something else and come back.

The fact that somehow, magically, the stuff that fills these room replicates every Friday night, begs questions like: Where does the stuff come from? Who brings their stuff here? Why are the Amish, who make their life not following English ways, peddling popcorn machines and clock radios? This auction serves a relatively finite and stable population (compared to say, oh, Ebay). For it to maintain a customer base, I would think it would have to be the only place that most folks purchased anything ever. Think about it: imagine purchasing all your groceries, household items, major appliances, and frivolous knickknacks all on one night only, once a week. But, the stuff for sale isn’t new, so it must either continuously circulate through the auction house, or perhaps people acquire it with the specific intention of auctioning it? And if this is the primary, or exclusive, shopping site for most people, then is it really a deal for the buyer? The only sense you would have of an item’s market value would develop in the 30 seconds it takes to auction it off. This would be economical only if the auction was truly an isolated economy unto itself.

The more pressing questions is: How exactly did Mountain Dew secure its monopoly on the Amish market? We’re thinking it probably wasn’t the ads featuring extreme snow boarding. We have never seen so much Mountain Dew consumed in a single space, ever. Everyone - man, woman, child, silver marten jersey wooly rabbit - seemed to be sucking down a 20 oz. of Mountain Dew. In general, there was a remarkable amount of junk food available.  Not necessarily crappy-shitty-but-oh-so-tasty-state-fair-food either; we’re talking giant bins of potato chips and melting candy bars sold 5/$1.00.  And there’s something not right when at 11pm, herds of kids running are about and screaming at the tops of their lungs [what Nerdmeyr means to say here is: "I was not allowed to run wild on sugar highs at 11 pm and I wasn't even raised in a strict religious community...what gives?"].  Having said this, Nerdmeyr certainly enjoyed a chicken finger (with mustard and BBQ sauce) as well as a chocolate soft-serve sundae so splendiforously provided, it spilled over the sides of the styrofoam cup [all of which tasted particularly good due to my strict "unstrict" upbringing].

When you’re ready to leave with whatever you’ve won, you settle your account back at the central desk. Besides the bidding price, there’s a 7% bidding tax (to help pay for the auctioneers and the space), and the state sales tax.

So, what did we come away with? A seriously sturdy, well-made clothes drying rack. That we got into a bidding war with M.V. over. For $17.50. M.V. and Julia made much more efficient use of the auction, bringing home 5 boxes of Mason jars, a pitchfork, a giant stoneware crock, and 2 former xmas lawn decorations that will be repurposed for a pea trellis.

A Note on the pictures: All procured from Google, as I (Nerdmeyr) thought about bringing some sort of recording device but then decided against it in the name of Not Being A Touristic Asshole For Whom Poore Country People Are Just a Good Blog Poste.  A good decision, as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure Dinky’s gets its fair share of summer tourists, but I definitely felt in the distinct minority of outsiders. I felt like I had travelled to another country but then felt like an asshole for feeling so (”Are Not These But My Country Brethren In This Time Of Economic Depression”)… then felt slightly less atavistic when M.V. also said that he felt he went into “world traveller mode” when he was there. I (Nerdmeyr) commented early on that the place seemed ripe for some sort of community activism, as the people there seemed of a common cloth, Amish and English alike - of rural experience, of rural living, of common challenge to make a living without being poisoned by hormones or pesticides, and (biggest point of commonality): not on anyone’s minds, not, it would seem, the current presidential administration. yet, who would do that work? To what ends?

Everywhere else in the country, today is Bike-To-Work Day (in our town, somebody in Parks and Rec screwed something up, so Bike-To-Work day here is _next_ week Friday. Whatevs. As long as I get my free bagel and schmear.)

I’ve heard lots of reasons why people don’t bike commute, some of which make a lot of sense:

• distance - I wouldn’t commute by bike if I lived 50 miles away, either
• schlepping multiple kids to various places

…others of which I kind of have to roll my eyes at:

• the sweaty/stink factor (get over your crazy OCD sense of hygiene)
• but I like going shopping/home/etc. at lunch and if I bike I won’t have time (really? every day of the week you have to go to panera?)

And another which I try and be sensitive and respectful of, but sometimes fail:

• “its too dangerous to bike” , which, depending on the day,  sounds to me like:
  • an argument along the lines of “I need my SUV in order to ensure that in the event of a crash, I/my family will be fine because we will crush and destroy the person/vehicle we collide with.” (e.g., its too dangerous for _me_ to bike, but its OK for _you_ to risk life and limb everyday. And, in fact, I will help contribute to the risk you take everyday.)
  • “Yes, there’s a serious and fucked up issue in this country where all of our infrastructure has been made to support gas-powered vehicles that we can no longer support in any sort of sustainable way, but rather than helping to change that by biking or using some other method of transportation, I will just throw up my hands and drive three miles every day to work.”

Most of my ire on the aforementioned points has to do with where we currently live, which is a small college town. There is no earthly reason why people who live within 5 miles of their destination should drive. The traffic is not bad, there are plenty of small side streets with low traffic, and the weather is overall quite temperate. And yet, and yet.

While there are many things that would have to be done both in terms of infrastructure, societal mores, and people’s psychology to remove all of the aforementioned blocks to bike commuting, there is one issue that I think might help immediately: information about what makes a nice, commuter-friendly bike and make sure that stores like Target and Walmart will sell it. Every time I see somebody trying to get up a hill on a crappy 45-pound dual-suspension Huffy “mountain bike” with a chain that hasn’t seen lube since Clay Aiken was a contestant on american idol , I cry a little. Not really, of course,  but I think people think biking is harder/sweatier/more frustrating  than it is because they bought something that’s slow, heavy, ill-fitted, unresponsive, and plain ol’ not any fun. If the only car available was a Ford Pinto with three cylinders and concrete seats,  nobody would get excited about driving cars, either.

I’m focused on this aspect of commuting because I just got my poor ol’ bike overhauled. After a winter of lots of salt/snow/ice/etc., it was not a happy camper… but I didn’t even realize the extent to which it wasn’t until I got it overhauled (dang, bike, use your words!)  Wow!  What a difference!  I can’t even describe it, other than that it feels like the carriage is super tight/solid/not shimmery-or-shaky-or-rattle-y while the ride is like velvety homemade chocolate icing -silky, smooth, and easy going down.  Warm sunshine on the arms, wind through the hair, and feeling fast after hours under flourescent lighting in front of a computer - that’s why I love bike commuting!