Oh wait, here's a redeeming thing about the Newark airport: you get to feed toxic muffin crumbs to pigeons at the gate. Lucky pigeon didn't even have to take off its shoes to go through security.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Postscript
Oh wait, here's a redeeming thing about the Newark airport: you get to feed toxic muffin crumbs to pigeons at the gate. Lucky pigeon didn't even have to take off its shoes to go through security.
A blogger in the armpit of airports
I have given Newark International multiple opportunities to offer me something redeeming to write about it, but I fear it is the armpit of airports. That's being generous. Even the helpful airport employees agree this is an awful place. "Oh no, ma'am, not in July, nuh-uh. You don't want to fly through Newark in July."
Want to check your bag? Stand in that line over there. Once you reach the front of the line, you'll be told you need to go to that other line, over there. From there, you will be sent to another line in a different terminal, where they will pull you out of your next-in-line spot and tell you to sign in at the kiosk, over there. When the machine tells you your data is invalid, the cranky people-mover will tell you to stand in this other line, over here. No, not that one for our elite customers, the one to the left for the plebes. When you finally reach the front of that line, and they say, "oh, I don't know why they keep doing this, they shouldn't be sending you over here, you need to go back over to the other terminal," and you burst into tears and say you can't take it anymore [sob], you've been back and forth between both terminals multiple times [sob] over the past 12 hours and [sob] you can't stand in any more lines because [sob] no one in this airport knows what they're talking about--why, then you will be sent to another line.
But now, having cried, you know how to work the system. You skip the other line, walk to the front of the elite counter and burst into tears again. When the bored employee (totally unfazed by your outburst because she sees people crying in the Newark Airport all the time) says she doesn't need to see your boarding pass, she just needs $25 for the suitcase, and you sob that you f*cking aren't going to pay for the suitcase that was supposed to be checked in for free, she will say, "well, I didn't know you were coming from somewhere else. Let me see your boarding pass." Then, rather than doing things properly, she will pretend your 51-pound suitcase is an infant car seat so she can print a free sticker for it, which doesn't exactly make you feel confident about airport security.
Speaking of airport security, plan to be shocked when a male TSA guard makes an offensive joke to his female coworker because she will shortly be asked to feel up an overweight elderly woman ("look at that bulge," he mouths, smiling, raising his eyebrows, and pretending to wipe his hands across imaginary love handles). Instead of calling him on it (because surely you will just burst into tears again, plus you don't want him to decide to interrogate you), you ponder how much money this man managed to bring in when he sold his soul to Satan.
Ah, now you have made it through to the gate. You are hungry because you haven't had any breakfast. Look at all of the overpriced, plastic-wrapped, preservative-infused muffins and bagels for sale at the "Whole Grains" shop, and pine for the fresh baked Semmel you recently mocked Germans for loving so much. Settle on a scone, then burst into tears when the cashier asks, "may I help you?" When she says, "I hope the rest of your day is better," realize you've finally found something to appreciate in Newark.
Curse you, Continental Airlines, curse you!
Want to check your bag? Stand in that line over there. Once you reach the front of the line, you'll be told you need to go to that other line, over there. From there, you will be sent to another line in a different terminal, where they will pull you out of your next-in-line spot and tell you to sign in at the kiosk, over there. When the machine tells you your data is invalid, the cranky people-mover will tell you to stand in this other line, over here. No, not that one for our elite customers, the one to the left for the plebes. When you finally reach the front of that line, and they say, "oh, I don't know why they keep doing this, they shouldn't be sending you over here, you need to go back over to the other terminal," and you burst into tears and say you can't take it anymore [sob], you've been back and forth between both terminals multiple times [sob] over the past 12 hours and [sob] you can't stand in any more lines because [sob] no one in this airport knows what they're talking about--why, then you will be sent to another line.
But now, having cried, you know how to work the system. You skip the other line, walk to the front of the elite counter and burst into tears again. When the bored employee (totally unfazed by your outburst because she sees people crying in the Newark Airport all the time) says she doesn't need to see your boarding pass, she just needs $25 for the suitcase, and you sob that you f*cking aren't going to pay for the suitcase that was supposed to be checked in for free, she will say, "well, I didn't know you were coming from somewhere else. Let me see your boarding pass." Then, rather than doing things properly, she will pretend your 51-pound suitcase is an infant car seat so she can print a free sticker for it, which doesn't exactly make you feel confident about airport security.
Speaking of airport security, plan to be shocked when a male TSA guard makes an offensive joke to his female coworker because she will shortly be asked to feel up an overweight elderly woman ("look at that bulge," he mouths, smiling, raising his eyebrows, and pretending to wipe his hands across imaginary love handles). Instead of calling him on it (because surely you will just burst into tears again, plus you don't want him to decide to interrogate you), you ponder how much money this man managed to bring in when he sold his soul to Satan.
Ah, now you have made it through to the gate. You are hungry because you haven't had any breakfast. Look at all of the overpriced, plastic-wrapped, preservative-infused muffins and bagels for sale at the "Whole Grains" shop, and pine for the fresh baked Semmel you recently mocked Germans for loving so much. Settle on a scone, then burst into tears when the cashier asks, "may I help you?" When she says, "I hope the rest of your day is better," realize you've finally found something to appreciate in Newark.
Curse you, Continental Airlines, curse you!
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
A blogger abroad
A combination of business and pleasure has brought us to Spain and Germany for the next few weeks, so I'm returning briefly to my old blog stomping grounds, wadlstrumpf.blogspot.com.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Simple Gifts
I'm learning a great deal about clay whistling technique by watching myself play. I'm pretty sure it's poor form to cross one's ring fingers over one's pinkies, and that double-jointed bit with the bird finger on my right hand needs some straightening out. Fortunately for me, no one has composed any Hanon or Czerny-esque finger exercises for chicken whistles yet (and I'm not going to fill that gap).
On the to-do list: a whistle with an octave range, and a whistle with two resonance cavities to allow playing in harmony (say, a simple tonic/dominant egg coupled with a five-note chicken). A potter-musician can dream, anyway. And I think it's time to finally set up that extruder and try my hand at making some penny whistles...
Race for the Cure 2011
Here are JM and I in our sweaty post-race glory. On our team of 20, we were the sole competitive 5Kers this morning at the Raleigh Race for the Cure. Other Team Amazing Us members did the recreational 5K or the Sleep-In-for-the-Cure. J didn't beat her personal best, but she did manage to sleep until a respectable 9:30am, while L stayed in bed until an impressive 10:30am.The advantage of doing the competitive 5K is the same as the disadvantage: it starts at 7am. Starting early means cooler temps, no lines for parking, no lines for the shuttle bus, and being surrounded by a sea of runners rather than walkers; but it also means leaving Durham around 5:45am.
Next year, I plan to organize an environmentally-friendly Durham satellite team: rather than getting up pre-dawn and converting gasoline into exhaust by driving all the way to Raleigh, we'll get up with the sun and go for a 5K run/walk on a local trail. Alas, we won't bond with 25,000 other runners/walkers, but we'll bond with one another. And planning a year in advance to stay local, as opposed to wearily suggesting it the night before, will mean we're being intentional about it rather than bailing at the last minute.
Our team raised $2,700 this year, thanks to numerous generous donors, and 33 chickens found new homes.
Unfortunately, the list of friends for whom I run grows longer every year. This morning's run was in honor of CB, BC, TS, LF, JdM, JK, FO, CL, LC, and JF.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Radiolarians
I belatedly learned about diatoms over a year ago, but it wasn't until just the other week that I learned about radiolarians. I was leafing through some junk mail--the Dover catalog of children's books--when I came across Haeckel's Art Forms from the Ocean.* Thank you, junk mail! The Dover blurb states, "The tiny single-celled organisms known as radiolarians (or radiolaria) develop beautiful, intricate mineral skeletons that cover ocean floors throughout the world." Radiolarians? Spherical skeletons with lacy holes and spikes? Whoowee! Diatoms gone wild!Naturally, I googled "radolaria[ns]" and found a wealth of swell images (most of which are copyrighted, of course, so, ya know, click on the ones below to see the original sources):
I also googled Haeckel and learned that he faked illustrations of embryos in order to support his ideas about evolution, and that those fake illustrations have made their way into assorted contemporary biology textbooks. Perhaps he faked a few radiolarians as well; indeed, it's hard to believe he had real life sources for such fantastic microscopic skeletal remains as these:
While much radiolarian art on the interwebs is created using 3D printing (which, I dunno, kinda seems like cheating), one Bavarian ceramicist, Gerhard Lutz, hand builds exquisitely delicate porcelain radiolarians that put my wheel-thrown ones to shame.*I'm not quite sure how a CD-ROM of an 1862 atlas of microscopic oceanic lifeforms got mixed in with Dover's At the Beach Fun Kit and Something's Fishy! Undersea Designs to Color, but I'm glad it did.
**I also gushed about the Pythagorean Cup, a.k.a. the Cup of Tantalus, a classical Greek wine goblet that punishes gluttony by siphoning out its entire contents when overfilled. It turned out no one in the class felt a need for an anti-gluttony cup, so we didn't try making any.
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