Tag: #fowc

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The Art of the Con

It’s too easy on a sunny afternoon to entertain a bit of whimsical fallacy; It’s so lovely. How could winter ever come again…it’s just a bad dream. Of course, we know this is a delusion, but the burgeoning summer afternoon is so soft and comforting that it’s much easier to live in the dream.
It is much easier to lie there rather than bustle about stacking the winter firewood, canning, freezing, and drying the garden’s bounty.

My almost friend John, the con man, assured me that this little parable was the basis of many of his best cons. People didn’t want to face the consequences of inaction. And would gladly support the dream even when common sense said the whole thing was a con. Then he’d snicker and mention that Mark Twain had pointed out that common sense was not too common.
Eventually, he decided that politics was the ultimate con. The delusion was that politicians were elected to “do the people’s work.” First, he went to Washington as an aide to a congressman; then, he was elected to two terms. He later decided that the safe money would be working as a political consultant. He did well at it for many years before retiring.

John caught up with me over the holidays when things were slow. He mentioned that he wished that social media and Fox News had been around in his time. But he said that there was a tremendous amount of artless idiocy out there. You had to work a bit at making people believe your lies in his time. Now it was as though they’d believe any old BS. He shook his head and told me there is a particular pleasure to be taken from a well-executed con. But now all you had to do was have a bad hair job, be pugnacious, and repeat the lie often enough that people took it as truth.

There was no art in it anymore. No art. Sad.

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Lettuce

Around here, we seem to forge ahead with spring earlier and earlier each spring. Some of that concerns our gradually warming climate and the rest to devices extending our growing season earlier in the spring. But while it is technically spring here in New England, you wouldn’t know it. Friends in more salubrious climates laugh when I say it’s spring. More like late winter, with a few warm days thrown in. OK, but you have to work with what nature gives you. This is why many of us resort to artifice to get a lead on the growing season.
I use fine spun fabrics like remay, low hoops covered with greenhouse plastic, classic cold frames, and the device you see in the photo. It’s a large plastic tub with a plastic greenhouse tub top. My wife bought it at one of the job lot discount stores. It did not work out for the purpose she had in mind, but I used to grow lettuce all spring and again all fall.
I’ve already started my early spring lettuce crop indoors, but yesterday I decided to push a bit and planted some seedlings into the plastic tub cold frame. After all, as usual, I had planted too many, and they’d only need thinning anyhow.

The lettuce is not the only thing out in the spring rain this morning; garlic is too. Specifically, this was the garlic that I had seeded two years ago. This year it should result in harvestable bulbs. The garlic planted from bulb sets last fall is just barely popping up. My wife will have much more garlic this fall than we can use. If things go as expected.
But as you know, let’s not count our garlic bulbs before we pull them. Anything could happen between now and August to wallop our expectations. Last spring started with poignant beauty, but a series of late frosts hit just as the fruit trees were flowering.


Every spring, I have at least one experiment. I don’t think the early lettuce is going to be it. I’ll have to come up with something really fringe for New England – sugar cane?

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Sci Fi Monsters

I’m not sure that the concept of a “stable genius” predates modern political asininity. But the idea of the unstable genius certainly has a history – particularly in the genre of B science fiction movies. Many of these movies are now in the public domain and are available for showing on our local (here in the USA) public access television stations.

Have I mentioned that I run one of these TV stations? Yes, I do. And I love to salt the late night hours with titles like it came from beyond time or Creature from __________(insert your scariest place here!).

This is a canny marketing move for me. I know there are people who, tired of Netflicks, are roaming the channels for the unusual at three in the morning. What could be more uncommon than a demented scientist out to spawn test tube creatures on an unsuspecting world while stealing a succulent heroine from the buff hero? The hero needs to quell the hordes of slimy things with only the hamfisted help of the Army, the local reporter, the heroine, and a jar of mayonnaise. Mayonnaise? Yes? The creatures are allergic to the stuff.

So this is the stuff that I run after midnight for the insomniac crowd. And, of course, there is almost always some unstable genius daring to do what no stable genius would do and open the floodgates of creation to demon spawn. The problem is that with all the ecological disasters, political insanity, and stable and unstable geniuses running around, it’s gotten a bit hard sometimes to tell the difference between some news reports and the B science fiction movies. So one or two of my insomniacs have emailed me and asked for old westerns. 

But I don’t know, running old John Wayne stuff where First Nations folks get robbed blind, cattle destroy prairie, and unstable idiots shoot up entire towns for fun seems just a bit too much like real life. I prefer science fiction.

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The Weather

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite type of weather?
View all responses

The weather has ruined one or two promising relationships. One day you’re sitting at the coffee shop reveling in how your tastes seem to mesh, and after the weekend hike, you run over to her house to pick up the spare shirt and toothbrush you’d left at her apartment. She’s “not there” when you arrive, and your stuff is in a paper shopping bag with your name written on it in the precise architectural lettering you had found so enchanting just last week.
Why? A sudden realization that you detested the other’s favorite weather. She found misty, cool weather romantic. You found it to be suitable only for a muskrat on the prowl. You found a bright sunfilled day perfect for hiking. She preferred to lie in the sleeping bag till noon, masked against any sun intrusion.

You softly suggested that your taste was the prevalent preference for hiking. she rolled over and muttered something about what she had ever seen in you.
It was a chilly ride back to Boston, and the weather forecast called for precipitation.

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Flashbacks

Vivid flashbacks are something to avoid. However, I found over the last decade that a few movies and television shows tend to trigger some incredibly real flash temporal relocations; I feel like I’m in the process of being transported. One of these was an early episode of the Incredible Mrs. Maisel. Unfortunately, it was set in a New York City which was entirely too recognizable to me.
While watching, my mind filled in the blanks and recreated the streetscape from long-lost memories. Finally, I had to get up and leave the room before being ripped from the current time and dropped somewhere near Greenwich Village, where I might run into a younger version of myself.

Just thinking of this is giving me an anxiety attack.

Around the same time, a movie about a cat and a folksinger on the run came out. Parts of it are set in the Village. I started having evil Deja Vue watching it. It was popular, and I saw clips all over the internet. Friends, knowing my history, asked if I would see it. I just shuddered and said no.

It wasn’t that the times and scenes were so awful, but they were traumatic. As a result, I have no desire to “enjoy” the urges, fears, and joys of a teenage me. Part of the fear was knowing what was in store. The future held the Vietnam War, the drug overdoses of friends, bad relationships, and much joy.
Being an aficionado of Science Fiction, I couldn’t guess if I’d be able to change things or just tag along for the ride. Either situation scares me.

Time is the distance I’ve put between me and past events. So I think that in parts of my mind, I see those things as still going on; just I’m no longer there to take part.
Time is thin scar tissue that allows me to move on, but as Cormac McCarthy said: “Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”

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New and Traditional

Many trades and crafts have techniques rooted in centuries of precedence. For example, I’ve known boatbuilders who, while depending upon computer systems to draw and print out plans, still like the feel and physicality of an old-fashioned half-hull model in their hands. 

The set of gouges racked in my carving shop is not an anachronism. Their tool steel and tempering are improvements over the Roman models, but the lineage is apparent. 

But some tools don’t have old origins, and woodworkers use them daily. For example, the bandsaw was probably invented in the 1830s and, by the 1870s, was a regular feature in workshops worldwide. It’s found today in all but a few boatbuilders’ shops and is part of the tool kit of the traditional boatbuilder. Its invention was propitious for the building of the clipper ships, and an early ships saw ( a large bandsaw for cutting timbers for frames) was in use by the mid-1840s in Daniel Mackay’s shipyard. So it was adopted in a traditional trade because of its undeniable utility. It might have been a bit asinine not to use it.

I go back and forth on the concept of what is traditional partly because of its interest to me as an anthropologist and partly because of my trade as a nautical carver. At some point, everything was a new-fangled gadget, in the words of a mentor of mine. And although we don’t note it, many of those gimmicks and gadgets fail to catch on – take a look at some of the supposedly modern wonders issued patents but which failed to either work well enough or fulfilled a purpose for which there was little need.

The ones that do catch on fulfill some fundamental need, and while they make room for innovation, they are often used to create the strictly traditional as well.

Let’s cogitate on this while using the new chatbots and AI tools.

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Cretin?

What is one word that describes you?

Limiting yourself to a one-word descriptor is so out of one of those sad personality tests. Based on your response, all sorts of shallowness are revealed. So clearly, Portzibee Communications couldn’t use you as a class three interoculator for intra-corporate affairs ( 32 K per year).

Much better that you smile and walk away from their idiocy. The hamburger place is offering 42K.

But if you must simplify life in that particular manner, why not develop a plan in which you identify, over the course of the day, which word most epitomizes you at that moment? 

  • You just made your wife upset over some dumb thing? Penitent.
  • Complete the most fantastic game with a great score? Super.
  • Missed feeding time for the cat and dog, and the cat threatens a visit with Catzilla? Idiot,

So there you have it. Don’t be staid. Be creative! And now I must be off to open cans of food for the cat and dog lest I go from idiot to cretin.

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Cartoons

When the kids were little, the Simpsons were big in our house. The occasional use of the term embiggen was tolerated with a bit of judicious commonsense, ” Well, dear, there are worse things they could pick up from the TV.” Recognizing that the television would not do a fast fade from the house, we restricted watching to things we didn’t disapprove of. There were many public television shows, tapes, and later DVDs of series we found less objectionable than others. But we controlled the channel selection and refused to get a cable subscription.
No cable subscription; think about it. We were on tight budgets in those days and had other things to spend the money on with four kids. We did not save the receipts on what we spent for the alternate media but felt that it was a better deal than 365 channels of trash.

Then there was me. I worked in video. After a day of watching the screen, analyzing cuts, transitions, and writing scripts and storyboards, I couldn’t turn off at home. I’d find myself critiquing every shot held too long, every poor choice of a transition or dropped storyline. Needless to say, the kids picked it up from me. My wife could “drain the brain” in front of the tube, but not my kids. They were terrible critics.
Maybe it’s unsurprising that we like animation so much; scripting, budgets, and storylines are better supervised. There are fewer inane superstar personalities to follow along with, and they are made for entertaining in briefer bursts. Unfortunately, so much of what’s on cable is made as mere content filler for channels but has little value.

Well, that’s my piece for today. Or as Pinky, from Pinky and the Brain would say, “Naaarf!”

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Kale!

A few weeks ago, I started the kale, lettuce, and some tomatoes on a window sill in a burst of pre-spring enthusiasm. OK, it was desperation; I couldn’t take winter anymore. So now I have some young kale plants that will need to be clipped for mini-greens because there ain’t no way that the darn plants are going into a cold frame yet.
The problem is, of course, that now is when lots of other things need to be planted, and I am running out of room. There are windows downstairs, but they are already crammed with plants that overwinter indoors. Also, the greenhouse/carving shop has all the over-wintering plants in the way of carving projects, so that’s out.
I’ve cast covetous glances at the windows in my wife’s newly renovated office, but she has already nixed that. It’s hers! All that golden sunshine and no seedlings.
In desperation, I waded into what remained of last week’s snow to see how soon I might resurrect the cold frames. Unfortunately, one is a wreck, the other needs work, and the last one I can save with parts salvaged from the ruined one. On the other hand, these frames are about ten years old, and I am amazed that they’ve lasted this long, so having two still functional is fantastic. Looking back on the last six years, I estimate I should be able to get the frost-hardy kale into them by April one; if I add a remay blanket on top of the frame. For the non-gardener, remay is a lightly spun fabric that acts as an insulation layer on top of the plants. Here in New England, the combination of cold frames, remay, and low hoop tunnels of wire and greenhouse plastic can extend my spring and fall gardening seasons by as much as a month ( with a bit of care and luck).

But here I am on March 20th with too much time left on the clock for getting outside, but needing to start more seeds. If you are a gardener, you know the frustration that develops when your plants are subpar because you began them too late, and they are puny rather than lush and fruitful. In discussions with friends whose plants are vastly more productive, you feel wounded and frustrated and vow to plan carefully for next spring.
Well, here it is, spring, and you’re again behind the eightball.

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BS

How would you rate your confidence level?

Confidence is a tricky thing for a lot of us. For one thing, it can be situational. I can cook and bake but in a narrow range. So I feel confident within my comfort zone. My bad dream would be finding myself on the Great British Baking show. I’d run for the exit before the hosts could assign their first challenge.
Confidence can be dependent on how practiced the skills are. I could hand reef and steer quite well at one point. Add to that some coastal piloting skills and basic knowledge of celestial navigation. I was not an expert, but no slouch either.

Then we can enter the realm of things that never seem stale. Bullshit; I mean the ability to sling it, not the real stuff. My skills may be limited only by my sense of ambition, your gullibility, and my general knowledge of the topic area.
I have trained with some of the best: con artists, creative confabulists, professors of anthropology, master mariners, folk singers, journalists, and politicians. I have found that the more diverse your foundation, the better off you are.

So it’s no mystery that BS artists with significant confidence levels must study widely. I strongly recommend in-person tuition over watching movies, TV, or reading books. So much of the gestural and verbal nuance of laying it on with just the correct level of thickness only comes from personal, up close observance.

Good luck. And remember to practice lots!

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