LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat 2022 FRIDAY

I woke to more snow, but not a lot. This one really underperformed. The streets were reasonably passable. BUT, we're told, if it had been as bad as advertised, it would have been worse.

Well, yes, that's often the case.

Meteorologists are saying that the excess warnings saved lives, inasmuch as people . . . didn't go out? Into a fairly average heavy snowfall? I understand why the schools closed. Snow day! Always happens. No, people are peeved because the storm predictions made the whole week seemed weird. Off. Dangerous! We were told the storm would start on Tuesday, then there'd be a lull - the eye of the storm! - then cold hell would howl. That was the Monday worldview. Hit the store, get supplies. Do we have enough toilet paper in case everyone contracts amoebic dysentery? No? Target run! My God, it's packed. This is hell! Sure enough, Tuesday it . . . it snowed. Ah, it's testing our mettle, softening up our defenses. We braced. Then, as advertised, it began: flakes. But no miserable winds, no white-out, no sundered limbs flying into windows.

I'm sure it was worse elsewhere and also better elsewhere. No one's complaining about not getting snow. It's the constant news and SERIOUS CONCERN FACES that irritate. Tell us what's expected and let us get on with it.

"Good evening. Our top story tonight is a storm set to hit the Twin Cities Wednesday afternoon. Up to thirty inches is predicted for the Metro, with low temperatures and strong winds. Travel is not advised on Thursday. We go now to our chief meteorologist, Skip Tethelue. Skip?"

"Nothing to add there, Donna, that's pretty much it. Do you want to see where it's coming from? I have some charts."

"Can't say it matters, does it?"

"No, it really doesn't."

"Thanks, Skip."

So, you say, any more pf That Color? Why yes.

Car ad about taking your kid to the beach instead of working.

I doubt that's the bridge's actual color.

Kohler plumbing ad:

Intuit:

Again and again. I will never stop noticing this.

And now, the weekly dream-journal entry, illustrated by artificial intelligence.

At the Apple store the clerk wouldn’t sell me the new thing they had, because it wasn’t needed. Just buy a hard drive and a bluetooth cord, he said, waving dismissively at the product. I was insulted, and asked him Why? Do you do any gaming? Yes, he said, in a way that suggested he was playing the original space war small round monitors via Arpanet, and anything else was just an embellishment on the purity of the experience.

I left in a huff, intent on telling the Apple Authorities about this, but he’d probably be fired and I didn’t want that. The store wasn’t even a real Apple Store. It was one of those places that sold Apple in the 80s and 90s and were staffed by old geeks.

As I left I passed through a large hall, where some sort of party was happening; I heard someone say “I haven’t introduced you to my wife yet” and they moved towards me, recognizing me as someone who needed to be introduced to the wife - a large, tanned gorgon of the sort I did not wish to meet, so I pretended I hadn’t heard them and went back to the shopping cart where the small suitcases were piled.

Ah. that’s right: I’d been trying to pack to leave a hotel room, and while I was done, Sara was still getting things together and taking forever, so I’d wandered down to the Apple store, and now I was here outside of this convention / shopping center with bags, convinced I would miss the plane. I pushed the cart to the end of the area, expecting a ramp, but there wasn’t one; as I pushed it to the other area I encountered a line of men in tuxedos on stilts.

Somehow this was understood to be a disability, which is why I felt bad when I bumped my cart into one and he fell down. Again, I pretended I didn’t know what had happened, and moved along. I did sneak a peak back to see if he was okay; his legs had folded up neatly beneath him.

The apartment building down the street from the office is now completely done.

It's . . . utilitarian.

I cut through the Baker building side entrance the other day, and noticed something I hadn't seen before, or registered:

You're looking at something from the original building, the way it was when it opened in the 1920s. What's unusual?

The caduceus. It wasn't a medical building. I think it had to do with the staff's connection to Hermes, Messenger of the Gods. Or Mercury. Sure enough, Merc was on the Post Office logo in the early 1800s, so there you go.

Pretty sure it's a Cutler box, since they seemed to have the lock on those. (Googling . . . yes, they did, although the monopoly ended in 1904.) There's no reason these had to look beautiful, but they did, over and over. On a whim I searched archive.org, and found a 1917 catalog. The factory floor:

There was also a 1960 catalog, which showed how utilitarian the design had become.

I think this week I'll start a search for all the ones I can find downtown.

Anyway. The renovation of the Baker building was done in the late teens Mismash Eclectic, a lousy style that said "we're all out of ideas, so let's just throw together a lot of stuff from the past.

This is not a trick shot or a montage.