Let me lubricate my mind

[austin_dern]

The place I most often get lunch midway through my day of extruded office product is a nice little grocery shop not quite a block to the west, which has a merry proprietor who makes sandwiches and keeps up a level of banter with all the customers -- learning their names, getting into running jokes with them, that sort of thing -- that would make my father delighted. Even I'm enchanted despite my perennial shyness. It's a convenient place to eat: it's nearer than anyplace else, it's right by the post office in case I have to post something (I haven't yet, but you never know), and he has the twenty-four-ounce bottles of soda (I've been slightly dehydrated since birth). The Chinese restaurant next door tops out at twelve-ounce cans.

He's also quite recently developed a leak in the ceiling. I wasn't put off by that to start with since the occasional leak is a common hazard to the modern fad of enclosing spaces against the elements. He had a couple of the acoustical tiles removed and the ceiling fan not spinning so that the fluid could drop more nearly straight into the cans and old newspapers he'd spread out. This also revealed that hidden by the acoustical tiles are some lovely ceiling mouldings, the kind they made up until acoustical tiles made it convenient to give rooms unattractive ceilings. He said he'd gone upstairs to try finding the source of the leak, but the guy who rents the apartment from him wasn't in, so his ability to do anything was limited.

The peculiar thing is that it wasn't a water leak. At least it didn't look like water; it looked like oil. There's not really many natural explanations for oil leaking through a ceiling, though, not for hours on end. I'm hoping there's an interesting explanation soon, or at least that he also springs a vinegar leak. Luckily I'd gotten there early enough he hadn't heard that joke to many times. Yet.

On an unrelated note there's a fair chance you saw that bit about a double-nosed dog. I'm just alarmed by the final paragraph of the BBC News report about it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6940289.stm (I hate giving URLs I don't control out in my entries, but they seem to be reasonably stable at least), which I haven't seen anyone else particularly notice: The explorers also carried with them a church organ from Dorset as a gift to local Bolivians in order to secure their help with finding the meteorite. Even in context that's an unsettling combination of words to share a sentence.

Trivia: The BBC's first television broadcasts, in 1929 using John Logie Baird's mechanical television system featuring a 30-line screen and twelve and a half pictures per second, were without sound. Source: Please Stand By, Michael Ritchie.

Currently Reading: Rhode Island: A History, William G McLoughlin.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Of course, the 24 ounce bottles are only better if their price is less than double that of the twelve-ounce cans...

As work provides me with free water, sodas/coffee/juice/etc on break.. not much of a concern for me except on days off. I'm actually selling beverages at work- energy drinks they don't see fit to provide, and those being in demand, I can turn a $2 profit a week finding sales and reselling them.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, and in this case the larger is cheaper per-volume. (Even if it were just the same cost per-volume it'd be fine since having a bottle cap instead of a tab is convenient when you're spreading the soda over a couple hours.)

It's the jugs of iced tea that are questionable, as the half-liter size is about three-quarters the price of the one-liter size. Even if you only want a little, it's hard to justify buying the smaller instead of putting the rest in the fridge.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

True. Eventually, convenience will win over price, but I drink beverage in enough volume I'm usually going for value. (I'm also cheap enough to wait for sales for beverage at home, and enjoy a diverse range of brands. But on a day off at a minimart, I'll happily break the system becaus e ooh, there's new Diet Dr. Pepsi Purple, I must try that..)

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Ah, now, if only they'd get the versions like 7-Up Ice out here ... That'd be something different.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I loved the bit about the church organ. It's like some odd detail from an account of a Victorian scientific expedition.

The double-nosed dog himself is pretty cool, but I'm skeptical of all the hype about breeding them to find drugs, etc. It looks to me like the cleft that's normally there in a dog's nosepad has just deepened until there are two single-hole nosepads instead of the usual double-holer. I'd be surprised if he has anything more inside the nose than a normal dog.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I don't buy that the dog has any particular powers of smelling; I think it's just trying to make an entertaining novelty look as if it were practical. It does bring out some memories of an old Sonic fan fiction Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, though ...

The thing I'm really curious about is, did the people in Dorset know they were donating a church organ to the cause? Or did they wake up one Sunday to general consternation and have they been spending months trying patiently to ask Philip, who closed up on Saturday, if he's really quite certain that he locked even the basement windows? And how did they react to finding out this was tied into a dog with two noses?

[patchoblack.livejournal.com]

o/` Slide some oil to me, let it trickle down my spine. If you don't have STP, Crisco will do just fine.... o/`

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

And if there's another song that fits thematically to ``oil'' ... well, it took too much time to track one down at all, much less a better fit.