This is a screenshot taken from a video uploaded to Trump's Twitter account only to show the green wall. I didn't even watch the video. He's talking about Socialism being bad, coming down harshly on Venezuela and Cuba. His supporters are thrilled by what they describe an exciting speech while his detractors find a million silly reasons to hate it.
I don't care. From my point of view he speaks plain simple universal truths to an audience inured against them. All I care about is that disgusting cheap ugly wall.
Every time a U.S. president stands in front of this green wall as backdrop my heart sinks. It's the same thing as standing in front of a samples wall at Home Depot. Even a coffee table made from these tiles would look cheap. Because they are tiles and not a full slab. They're on par with tile mirrors. A full mirrored wall, nice. A tiled mirror wall, cheap. It's just wrong.
I don't even want to denigrate trailer parks by comparison because mobile home owners actually have more sense than this. One look at these bizarre tiles and one thinks, "He must be talking to goofballs in a goofball place." And he is.
The cheap wall ruins the fake out. The wall is the tell that the entire U.N. is basic cheap nonsense.
Trump has a thing about walls. What they're good for, what they should do, what they signal, how they should look. We don't hear him talk this much about floors and about ceilings.
This is a screenshot of Trump's Twitter feed dated October 1012. (We had Twitter then?) It was found searching [trump twitter marble] boom, result right there at the top.
Thank you! And this is coming from a guy who builds things. Please, don't wait for them to ask. Just do it. They've always bothered me too. I bet they bother a lot of people. I bet they bother more people than they please. I bet they bother pretty much everyone who has ever noticed them. I bet the Arabs and Chinese laugh at them. Europeans too. Everyone laughs at this ugly cheap wall. Cheapening everything, everybody who stands in front of it, and everything that they say.
[Here's where we insert the joke, nowadays everyone has grand marble slab countertops we tend to take them for granite. But that's not funny. The countertops actually are granite. Granite is a better material than marble. More interesting patterns. Marble is too soft, too vulnerable to breaking, chipping, and especially vulnerable to stains.]
You can buy these tiles anywhere for $7.00 sq ft. They never were nice.
See, I'm thinking about granite slabs lately. Total change of subject, right here. The subject of cheap U.N. tiles is finished.
I need a slab much smaller than the U.N. needs.
Mine need only be 12" X 48" and that can be had rather cheaply.
I just now replaced a 50 gallon aquarium. The new one came with a very nice stand but I don't need that. Originally I thought I'd just toss it. But it turns out too nice a stand to be so dismissive. But it doesn't have a top. One granite slab of any color, any pattern will do just fine. I'm not picky about color. Even pink will work. And it will make a great long narrow table that can be placed pretty much anywhere including directly in front of the aquarium. I did put another table that same size in front of it before, and that turned out the best spot to fold laundry. The laundry machines are right there, the bedroom door is right there, and I can watch t.v. as I do it. But this table could actually go anywhere. It would be perfect to hold a model boat. Or plants in front of a window. Just as soon as I thought of how I'd dispose of the base, I also thought of half a dozen very good uses.
About that.
Yet another somewhat related issue. To aquarium bases, I'm not talking about U.N. tiles anymore.
The plan is coming together slowly. The idea is copy Takashi Amano's conceptualization of a nature aquarium best as I can. That means all natural elements. They're like regular outdoor landscaping sunken underwater with a definite Asian aesthetic. No toys. No gimmicks. Nothing cute. Nothing precious. Nothing sparkly. No glass, or glittery stones. No blue light paints. No SpongeBob SquarePants. No photographic backdrops. No bubbling tricks. No ornamentation. Nothing goofy. Just lavishly planted so intensely that fish schools seem secondary for calm movement.
And that requires a good fertile substrate.
It takes awhile to get this substrate in place. It's here now but it's still not installed. A 50 lb. sack is needed. A lot. The substrate was ordered from a landscaping company, not through an aquarium shop. The product is actually for ballparks, a clay that is colored and baked to porous stone-like particles used to repair baseball fields.
Look how this relates tangentially to public issues.
Every single day I come across articles online discussing toxic masculinity. Just this morning on Instapundit Glenn put up a link to UNC writing about how masculinity contributes to perpetuation of violence. Didn't bother to read it. Just noted, here's another piece denigrating masculinity.
Maybe they have some kind of point.
And maybe they don't.
When I spoke to the man on the phone I visualized a small Mexican middle-aged man. He sounded that age, warm, kind, helpful, eager to assist for this rather small purchase, no business too small to engage fully, as if I was installing a full sprinkler system and full landscaping. He spoke as if glad to engage. When I got there he turned out to be mid-twentys Caucasian, somewhat heavy lumbering body type, a bit overweight, fairly opposite of what I had visualized. He walked away and retrieved a large box. Opened the box and discarded it. Inside a large unwieldy shifting uncooperative bag of gravel. I dreaded even the idea of picking it up. I had parked some distance away so I told him I'd go get my truck.
"Don't bother. I'll take it out there."
I didn't want him to do that. The bag is too heavy, the truck too far away.
Fifty pounds is not obscenely heavy, soldiers carry that much on their backs in Iraq, a hike that would lay me flat in five minutes. I told him, Seth is his name, that I used to handle 40 lb. boxes of copy paper, 10 reams each all the time, every week. I'd load up a 2-wheeler and deliver them constantly. The women at the bank, the men too are all soft, wouldn't touch the boxes when full. To a person they're all fully against blue collar type tasks. Anything that takes physical exertion, they're against it. Just lifting one of those boxes is a drag. I wouldn't carry one very far. Just on and off the cart, or 2-wheeler, and that's it. He reiterated, "That's okay. I'll just carry it." He slung that sack like a dead body over his shoulder and we walked together at my pace back to my truck then he tucked it inside. The ease in which he handled the heavy shifting sack is deeply impressive. That's masculinity. And it makes the world a fantastic fun place.
10 comments:
I used to carry three 96 pound bags of cement at a time while unloading a box car full of said items on a railroad siding on the Mississippi Delta in the summer of 1967. I also used to be a lot taller.
As for tiles, you can't take them for granite these days.
empress green is very dated. Still, why spend the money? push the UN building into the east river and build a homeless shelter.
The homeless can build their own shelter. Let 'em work.
good idea. But still - UN in east river.
we could even do it quietly
I would prefer that it go out with a bang. But it is the end result that counts, right?
I've hung a lot of faux stone wallpaper. A few rolls of that should be sufficiently insulting and I'd make sure the seams showed.
Gross.
One time Doug Merrill, Ed's identical twin, wanted to tour a house for sale directly across Spear from Denver Country Club. It's an expensive and exclusive area. Their sister lives in there. Doug was interested in the house for its storybook appearance. One time he tried to finagle his way in under the cover of Halloween. That gave him an approach. He asked the owners if they'd consider selling but they said, no way.
Then they got divorced and the place went up for sale and we all went inside to explore it. This is my least favorite activity. Second to coat shopping with my m-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-t-h-e-r. But I did enjoy hearing Doug knock down the place room by room. His critique was brilliant. Their great room was fashioned in the style of a castle. You could walk right into the fireplace. If you wanted to.
Doug reached down and picked up a small table that was completely out of place in design. The base was scrolled metal, too small for the room, and the top was wood, painted as home crafts to appear as marble. When a marble slab that size would be next to nothing to buy. There is no point in imitation. Doug said to me directly and flatly, "I hate all imitation things."
*ding*
"I agree, Doug." The scene lodged in my mind because I rarely hear anyone express my own feelings exactly. There was imitation crap all over the whole house. And it really did cheapen the place dramatically. All she had to do was leave all that shit out. But no. It was the woman's artsy-crafty indulgence. And she wasn't very good at it. And there was no point to it. She thought she was enhancing the place where every point of her adjustments made it worse and never improved anything. Nothing she did contributed to its original innate beauty and thoughtful adornments. To the extent that I thought I felt the cause of her divorce. Because we'd be fighting about all of that kind of crap.
(The one thing that I really did like, though, were all the stools provided for children. In the children's bathroom, for example)
Chip you might want to call your local granite countertop company and ask if they have any 12" x 48" remnants for sale cheap.
The tile behind Trump looks like old school linoleum squares. Now those babies were meant to last.
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