Southland Whiskey Kitchen

Daring daughter flew in from B.A. last week and younger son arrived on Monday, so we all went out to dinner at Southland Whiskey Kitchen on oh-so-trendy 23rd Avenue in downtown Portland. The boys and I had the large brisket dinners. They were great, and at $12 a real deal as well. Lunch at Buster's runs $12 and you don't get half the meat you get here. Buster's $12 does include iced tea, and our drinks at Southland cost more than the food. I was drinking something called "Bubbles and Bourbon", which is basically champagne and Bourbon, which reminded me of a drink my mother-in-law made out of champagne and Cognac that she called a "French 75".
    The boys left for a holiday in Berlin yesterday. I tell you, kids these days, jetting off at the drop of a hat. It was kind of nice to have them all home for a bit, though it was just a bit. A few hours on Monday and a few hours on Friday and that was it till who knows when.

Monaconda

Mystery thing near Warm Springs, Montana. It's five and a half miles away from me on I-90.

On our way East to Iowa a couple of weeks ago, about two hours out of Missoula, I spied this thing. What the heck is it? It's a ways away, so it has got to be big. It looks kind of like a smokestack, but there is nothing else there. I know! It's a monolith, left here by ancient aliens! We're saved! Oh hallelujah! Now wait a minute bucky, there might be a more prosaic explanation.

Anaconda Smelter. C. 1950

A week later, on our way home, we stopped overnight in Butte, with dinner at the Montana Club. I'm wandering around after dinner and I notice this picture hanging on the wall. Golly gee, could that be the same alien monolith we saw on our way east? Yes, it could, and no, it's not an artifact of an ancient civilization. It is the smokestack from the Anaconda Smelter that used to be in Anaconda, Montana, just down the road from Warm Springs. The smelter was demolished in 1981, but the stack was saved. It is nearly 600 feet tall. The Washington Monument would easily fit inside.


Montana Mosaic 10: The Rise and Fall of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (2006)
    Anaconda built Montana. They were an industrial powerhouse. The Anaconda company is gone from the state, but the poisonous legacy of it's mining operations remains. Montana has the largest EPA superfund site.

Update November 2021 replaced missing video.

Games

I've been spending a fair amount of time playing games lately (0h h1, Spider Solitaire, Mahjong, 2048) and I got to wondering about why I am doing this. I looked at a couple of articles, and then I came across this line:

Why are gamers so obsessed? Because playing gives people a sense of purpose, and winning them makes them feel heroic.

... and I realized that our perfect American lives are killing us and our only relief is found in playing. Hardly any jobs are what you might consider fulfilling, and heroism is only found when something very bad is happening, and since we have gone to great lengths to make our world safe, bad things seldom happen and so opportunities for heroism are few and far between. That's why the news is all bad, all the time. The good stuff is boring, and our lives are already horribly boring. I'm going to inch out on a limb and say that Islamic Jihadists are grasping life and death with both hands. Their actions may get them killed, but meanwhile they have a chance at real life.
    I have heard reports from some soldiers that they never felt so alive as when they are in combat. Boosting corporate profits pales in comparison.

Unpowered Industrial Exoskeleton

Exoskeletons Will Make Work Weightless with Adam Rogers from Wired
No batteries or electronics of any kind, so it is not going to work for people who are in wheelchairs, but it also means it might be cheap enough to succeed in the marketplace. It does make operating heavy power tools much easier.

Posthip Scott sent me a link to an article on the same subject from ARS Technica which also has a video, but that video didn't come with an easy-to-use clip of embed code.

Previous exoskeleton posts.

The Frozen Ground

Vanessa Hudgens as Cindy Paulsen in The Frozen Ground

The film stars Nicholas Cage. I wonder how many movies of his I have seen. Must be in the dozens. He does a workmanlike job here as the state trooper investigating Robert Hansen for a series of murders . It's a pretty horrific and intense story. It also does a pretty good job of portraying the sleazy side of life. Nick is on the straight and narrow side and Cindy is not and while he tries to communicate with her, their worlds are just too different.  For example, she has no problem turning tricks, but is afraid to get up on stage and dance. No, you don't get to see her naked, or even topless. She is, after all, a respectable actress. There are plenty of other naked women parading around the strip clubs and brothels, so you are not left completely frustrated.

    It's a little weird how strongly I react to images of pretty women, and from the evidence, I would say it's not just me but most men react the same way. There is one school of thought that says naked women, whether images or in person, tend to sexually arouse men. There is another that says their appearance is relaxing. I think both are true. Your reaction depends on you and the situation.

    Killers, now that's another matter. Perhaps they are broken, or damaged. In any case we are lucky there aren't more of them.

Girls and Cars

Driving Wheel T Bone Burnett
randall benson
The second season of True Detective has started and we are enjoying the heck out of it, even though it's very frustrating to have to wait a week between episodes. The main appeal of this show is atmospheric, the look and feel. There is a plot and there are characters and they may be very good, but they pale in significance compared to the feelings the show conveys.
     I'm looking for a music video to put in this post and I'm not finding much, some teasers (which are short) and some tunes, but only still images. So I start looking for something by T Bone Burnett on account of he gets credit for some of the music, and I find this. While it may not be a great song, it's got some great shots of cars. I think I've seen some of these scenes before, and here too. Oh yeah, there's some girls in there, too.
    T Bone also produced Man of Constant Sorrow  (for the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?) which was written by Dick Burnett. I suppose if you wander around long enough you are bound to cross over the same track.

Update February 2021 replaced missing video.

I'm 64

When I'm Sixty Four (Remastered 2009)
The Beatles
Happy Birthday to me. Haven't listened to the Beatles for a long time, but today it seems appropriate.

Update July 2022 replaced missing video.