Sunnyvale hops

Yes, it’s an acknowledged fact that I am a complete sucker for a flash mob. Being in one is high on my bucket list.

So for Funky Friday I give you a flash mob in my very own current city of residence:

I go to this Farmers’ Market often—as you can tell from the establishing shots, it has great summer produce, & I don’t know what I’d do without the Acme Bakery for bread.

What I also like about this particular mob is that a couple of months ago I was at a party in Mountain View where probably 80% of the guests were dancers. That is, they took ballroom dancing classes & they regularly dance up a storm at various venues around the Silicon Valley. All kinds of people, just like you’d find in Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School. These people literally danc five to seven nights a week.

I bet some of them were in this mob.

Conquering the masters with the most thugs

This is a great story from NPR’s Ofeibea Quist-Arcton in Harare: poets are rallying the people to vote in the national elections to be held next year.

Yes—you heard me correctly: poets.

You have to listen to the audio, because, for one thing, Robson Isaac Shoes Lambada’s “Politicians and Governancy” is very reminiscent of Gertrude Stein’s…well, anything of Stein’s, but certainly “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso”, which you absolutely have to listen to aloud to get.

There’s also a hip-hop feel to Lambada’s work, and it’s marvelous to listen to.

This is poetry in life—using language and rhythm to call the people to action.

And it beats the hell out of any political ad I’ve seen in the past 20 years.

Power to the poets, baby; power to the poets.

Watching brief

As you know, social media is just a weird, weird place. On the Twitter-dot-com you can follow pretty much anyone. Unless they’ve got a “private” account.

But that also means that anyone can follow you (unless you specifically block them; or you have a private account). & let me just say that there are some weird, weird people out there.

No more than in the real world, I’m guessing. It’s just that in the real world your access to them is limited by how many weird places you can get to in a 24-hour day. That limit doesn’t exist on the Internet.

Anyhow—there’s the usual complement of spam-bots, & people who’d follow a ham sandwich in hopes that it would follow them back. But if you don’t follow them back, they usually dump you like yesterday’s sushi, so that’s not really a problem.

However, some weeks ago, this chick showed up in my followers queue, in much the same way that the occasional chick named Svetlana or Tatiana appears in my email, assuring me that she’s only waiting for me to click on her link to make her eternally happy.

Somehow I’ve been disinclined to follow Anna. That XX in her Twitter handle makes me kinda nervous about what I might discover.

But what I find interesting is that, even though I’ve not followed her back, in the nearly two months since she followed me, she’s not bothered to unfollow.

Perhaps she’s too busy. Watching. & being watched.

Not going there.

Wherever you need to go...

My friend The Pundit’s Apprentice sent round an essay by Michael Gartner about his parents’ driving history. It’s a nice recollection and an easy read, so I recommend it.

Part of the essay includes Gartner’s father’s advice on how to live a long life: don’t make left turns. You can turn right three times and get where you would have gone had you tried turning left.

The Pundit’s Apprentice commented, “Three right turns to make a left is true of a lot of French secondary highways.”

And that got me recalling one of the things I love the most about driving in France: every town large enough to get lost in has “Toutes Directions” signs to help you get out of it and headed towards wherever it is you want to go.

This has to be one of the country’s greatest contributions to civilization; along with Montaigne, Daumier and Champagne.

Think about it—you’ve been driving about in some rabbit-warren of medieval streets that were claustrophobic 700 years ago, and you’re on your way to the next historic stop on your itinerary and worrying if signage is one of those secret weapons in Europe the way it is in Northern Virginia, and wondering if you’re ever going to manage to blow this croissant stand.

And then you see it—the “Toutes Directions” sign. And you know that—no matter how lost you’ve been or what boneheaded maneuvers you’ve made—you’re going to get to where you need to go. You can get there from here.

Because it’s telling you that all directions are possible. It’s like starting out on the Yellow Brick Road in Munchkinland. Wherever you need to be, you’re going to get there.

In practicality it means that there’s a ring road of some sort, and that once you’re on it you’ll find whichever road required to go to your destination. That removes all stress from driving, because—even if you miss the exit you need, just stay on the damned road. It’ll come around again, like “Alice’s Restaurant” does on the guitar.

I once drove a couple of times entirely around Caen; first because I went past the exit to Bayeux, and then because I, you know, could.

It was so liberating.

And it beats the hell out of three rights make a left. Although, of course, that works, too.

Gratitude Monday: Texas crazy

I know you aren’t supposed to express affirmations (of which gratitude is a form) in the negative, but in the light of the past couple of weeks, on this Gratitude Monday I am profoundly thankful that I do not live in Texas.

Because, as idiotic as most politicians are, the Texas Lege is sui generis in achieving the nadir of pig-ignorance combined with the kind of arrogance that only white male Republicans can master completely.

The latest example of this is the ban Friday on women bringing feminine hygiene products into the Senate gallery as the new anti-abortion bill was being debated. They didn’t want to risk being pelted with tampons—yes, that’s what they said; tampons could be used as weapons, so they were collected at the entrance.

Two interesting things about this that pretty much tell the whole tale:

Women’s bags were searched and tampons and maxi-pads were confiscated, but if you had a concealed weapon and a carry permit, you were waved through. ‘Cuz, it’s Texas, after all. A woman has no right to control her own body, but she does have a by-God entitlement to pack the most heat she can cram into that pretty little Gucci knock-off she’s toting.

Men were not searched. If they were packing Tampax, they made it through the gauntlet.

Apparently, if you have the XX chromosome configuration you’re considered more dangerous with a maxi-pad on your person than a Glock.

At least to the Lege.

I am down-on-my-knees grateful I do not live in that crack-brained state.