Artful Scheme of Happiness

Cold, Day II
or, How I Almost Died

My commute was a real treat this morning, let me tell you. My bus managed to jack-knife on the only remaining patch of ice on the streets of Magnolia. (This ice looks suspiciously like it originated from someone overwatering their plants. Perhaps it was just made to look that way, and actually the Russian government is trying to bump me off? Anyhoo.) So my bus driver decides to stop on this patch of ice, and when he does, the bus starts sliding down the hill. So then he decides to gun it a little and the bus slides some more and actually starts to kind of tip over.

Now, I've lived a very long and relatively colorless life, and I'm ready to go whenever the good Lord sees fit to call me home. The only thing is, given my history with buses and bus riders, I would seriously prefer to die anywhere but on a bus.

Well, but I didn't die. Instead, I disembarked and waited for a second bus to take me to a place where I could wait for a third bus with a bunch of moaning, wailing Seattleites. "It's freezing!!" "What will happen to us?!" "Is this the apocalypse?"

Oddly, what with all this drama, my commute took only ten minutes longer than usual.

posted by art @ 1:35 PM

Walking In A Winter Wonderland

I woke up this morning in a snowy Alpine village (Magnolia, the neighborhood of Seattle where I live). I meant to take pictures of the snow but I woke up late and had only 20 minutes to get ready. People run late on snowy mornings, what can I say?

The streets of Seattle are deserted, all the less intrepid souls having stayed home. Of course, downtown Seattle is entirely free of snow and ice, so they're all just home having fun, pretending that their neighborhoods are much too dangerous to leave.

Anyway, my whole reason for posting is that it's well below freezing here, and Seattleites have cobbled together the most amazing outfits to try to combat the abnormal cold. Matronly women are wearing wool caps advertising things they've probably never heard of. Punk girls are wearing as many pairs of garish tights as they can fit over their legs. And then there was the gentleman whom I saw through the bus window today: he was sitting in a cafe, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. He was wearing a tuxedo.

I hope it stays cold for a good long time!

posted by art @ 11:24 AM

Let's Build A Monument To Hatred

Another reason why Dahlia Lithwick is my hero.

posted by art @ 10:39 AM

Under The Sea

I am fairly sure that my friends think I am crazy when I start ranting about how people shouldn't eat fish. My usual speech starts out with the fact (FACT) that we don't know very much about the world's oceans. We know how many pigs and cows there are in the world and we know how to manage them (even if we don't always do a very good job of it). But we don't know how many fish there are in the world, and we really don't know very much about how interconnected and interdependent the ocean ecosystems are. I've heard people say that we know more about outer space than we do about our own oceans. Odd, huh?

You can imagine my joy when this article started popping up in newspapers yesterday.

It sometimes seems like people are reluctant to make environmentally responsible changes in their lives unless they are forced to. (Further proof of this can be found here.) I sincerely hope that this won't be the case with the world's oceans. Of course, it doesn't help that doctors now recommend that people eat a serving of fish once every thirty seconds. I'd like to hold doctors liable for the environmental ramifications of their recommendations, but I suppose that's too much to ask.

If you don't think it's important to act in an environmentally responsible way for yourself, or for the sake of the planet, maybe you'll think it's important to do it for your grandkids?

Sigh. Probably not.

posted by art @ 2:17 PM