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This fellow gets fined an undisclosed amount for tagging a boulder in Joshua Tree. When the story is reported, you always see this photo:

Mr-Andre-Boulder

These folks are just super upset about this. As are these. Holy cow! Some furriner tagging the natural landscape in a national park!

Get a rope!

Of course there is no comment that the landscape actually looked like this [1]:

contact-mine-1

Yes, that’s right. The boulder that was tagged was brought to that location by a NPS frontloader. All those boulders in the parking lot have in fact been vandalized by the NPS originally to demarcate… a parking lot. After the NPS bulldozed the desert to install a fucking parking lot. And interpretive fucking signage.

But no, let’s not question the NPS destruction of natural features in order to build a parking lot for Priuses. Let’s hang the dang Frenchman [2] for marking one of these already un-natural boulders with art.

I’m not actually in favor of tagging in the desert (even though, chyeah, right, try and stop it), but the hypocrisy of the National Fucking Park Service fining someone for painting a boulder that the NFPS already desecrated by moving it from its original location [3] to be a marker for a… parking lot… for fucking cars… that drive in on roads paved through bulldozed Joshua trees… is just rich beyond belief.

I hope the tagger becomes another Banksy and the NPS can take credit for destroying a one of a kind artwork.

It’s the same kind of chutzpah that forbids bolts in the wilderness because you might be able to see them from the Winona Tunnel turnout for chrissake.

[1] Well, they show the picture, but don’t actually look at it to see what it represents. An already altered landscape.

[2] I think actually Swiss, but they’re all furriners aren’t they.

[3] Because that’s not its original location. I have in fact found JT monzonite boulders used for parking markers as far away as Barstow. The NPS hypocrisy, unlike Doc Hollidays’, knows no bounds.

PotD 14 April 2015

Flint Mountain Fire

Scratch

Will the Apple Watch not scratch the bezel of my MacBook Pro? Because my Tag-Heuer does. That's the reason I stopped wearing it. Because I kept taking it off to work, and that, my friends, is a recipe for me losing an expensive bit of kit that I love, but no longer wear on a daily basis. Other than perhaps with the declasse Sports band, I don't see how the Apple Watch is going to solve this problem. The way cool stainless link band is still going to scratch my (also very expensive) MBP bezel.

POTD 4 April 2015

Highland Theatre

Caught up

I am finally up-to-date on New Yorkers. One in the gym bag for boring knee-induced elliptical sessions, and one on top of the toilet. And that’s it.

This is the first time since two weeks after the first issue arrived.

That’s it. No back stash for plane trips, no pile for taking on climbing trips.

Also caught up on climbing mags, except for those darn Alpinists.

POTD 26 Mar 15

Hobbyhorse

POTD 25 Mar 15

mitten

POTD 24 Mar 15

Flint Mountain 14 Mar 15

POTD 23 Mar 2015

spiderweb

Birds

I have an alarm clock (which I love) which wakes me up by turning on a daylight spectrum light, dim at first, then brighter, and then by playing the sounds of birdsong, quiet at first, then louder.

But in a completely foreseeable turn of events, now I wake up whenever it begins to get light, or hear the sound of birds, so it’s impossible to sleep late.

And I’m pretty sure the birds have started imitating the birdsong on the alarm…

The only naturally occurring equivalent of the alarm on the clock radio my aunt gave me for high school graduation is the back-up beep on a garbage truck. Which occasionally wakes me up. But not often.

Can’t wait for the Apple Watch

I remember the time I was shamed for glancing at my watch (once!) by someone who spent the entire evening checking their phone.

TIL

that even if you have a Ph.D or call yourself a “system administrator” in your email sig, you can still be stupid enough to reply-all to an all-hands email without a suppressed recipient list [1]. And then have 15 other people reply-all asking to “be taken of this list”, “”stop replying-all”, and “I think you meant someone else”. And the best, “Why are you replying-all” with a reply-all.

Seriously, these people are literally rocket scientists. I frankly think it is only because of the painstaking procedures that we can get anything launched. I wonder if this happens at SpaceX.

[1] yes, it’s the fault of the person who sent out the email, ironically titled “Sent by mistake, ignore this email”. But one can’t expect someone with the title of administrative assistant to understand how email works, can one. Well, I guess maybe.

QOTD 1 March 2015

But I think that it’s certain that one doesn’t only photograph with the eyes but with all one’s intelligence.

Brassaï

POTD 25 Feb 2015

lacma lamps rain

POTD 24 Feb 2015

rubber ducky