Zelda's Inferno exercise: "not in the traditional sense"

Posted on: Sun, 11/07/2010 - 18:36 By: Tom Swiss

Zelda's Inferno exercise: free write based on one of the following phrases, selected at random (more or less) from the Urbanite:

invites you to discover
increased from one decade to the next
they get only a fraction of that amount
not in the traditional sense
reduce their perception of pain

not in the traditional sense
not in the sense of tradition
no sense in traditional
traditional nonsense! nonsensical traditions!
all I want is simple hardware store fare
a sledgehammer and a can of Liquid Wrench (don't ask why) but
I am assaulted with giant inflatable Xmas decorations
in the aisles of Home Depot the first week of November

not in the traditional sense
do I celebrate your holidays
not in your traditions, anyway

when I talk about my visits to Japan, people ask if I felt out of place
if I'm in an honest mood, I tell them, no more so than I do here
in a land of giant inflatable holiday decorations

November has always made me melancholy, I've attributed it to the shortening days, the change of clocks
but perhaps all this time it's been the culture
the pathology of consumerism that comes around every year around this time
like hayfever in the spring, a seasonal affliction
cultural rather than biochemical but no less real for that
causing congestion, inflammation, and hypervigilance of the immune system

do you celebrate Xmas?
not in the traditional sense...
perhaps I celebrate its passing more than anything
the ending of this seasonal irritation

Rally to Restore Sanity causes record Metro ridership

Posted on: Mon, 11/01/2010 - 15:33 By: Tom Swiss

As I mentioned recently, the Metro was way frickin' crowded on Saturday. And it turns out that's not just me whining: Metro set a new record for Saturday Metrorail ridership. They estimate 825,437 Metrorail trips were taken -- average Saturday ridership is about 350,000. The ridership for the rally on Saturday broke the previous record of 786,358 set by the June 8, 1991 "celebration" of Gulf War I (a.k.a. Desert Storm).

vote, dammit, vote

Posted on: Sun, 10/31/2010 - 19:14 By: Tom Swiss

Some words of wisdom from Hunter S. Thompson:

"Politics Is The Art Of Controlling Your Environment"

By HST

That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that "it doesn't matter who's President" has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World -- or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property -- or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons -- or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you have voted.

Earthlings

Posted on: Sun, 10/31/2010 - 18:17 By: Tom Swiss

I enjoyed this fellow's sign, which on the other side said something like "I'm an Earthling too, so we probably have something in common." The side visible here is James W. Cadle’s Earth flag -- I don't recall seeing it before, but its symbolism is immediately obvious to the science geek. I'll be getting one soon. I also liked that the guy with this sign was wearing a Carl Sagan-esque brown corduroy jacket -- whether coincidence or part of a subtle Halloween outfit, I'm not sure.

I also like the "Not All Georgians Are Redneck Republicans" sign.

line at the Greenbelt Metro station

Posted on: Sun, 10/31/2010 - 17:42 By: Tom Swiss

This is the line at the Greenbelt Metro station on Saturday -- it curves off to the right out of frame. When we arrived and saw the full parking lot and the long line, we almost gave up on making it downtown...I suspect many people did.

Between the crowds, scheduled track maintenance, and a security alert farther down the line, Metro was totally overwhelmed -- it took an hour and half for us to get on a train after we got to the station. They started turning people away for lack of parking, and we only managed because I used to live across the street from where the Metro stop is now, and knew that we could park at a shopping mall a mile away. (While walking to the station from there, we met a woman who'd come all the way from San Francisco at the last minute, flying into Philadelphia and couch-surfing in Baltimore -- so comparatively speaking, I didn't feel that inconvenienced.)

Despite the overloaded Metro system, we made it down, but not until after all the performances were done. Still, we were on the Mall there before the 3pm "official" end time, so I'm counting it as attendance in my book. Many people snapped photos of my "Radicals for Moderate Discourse" sign.

The crowd was amazing. Attendance is estimated at 215,000 based on aerial photos. (The same source estimates that Beck's recent gathering drew only 87,000.) But if that's only counting the maximum number of people on the Mall, it's a gross understatement; many us of arrived late due to the Metro being overwhelmed, and many people arrived, saw the crowd, and realized they weren't going to be able to get anywhere neat the stage and either just hung out in the streets, or stayed for a bit and headed out early. So there was a lot of flow in and out. And had Metro been able to handle the influx, I think attendance would have been even higher.

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