Monday, October 7, 2013

Box

9 comments:

Trooper York said...

Wine.

Trooper York said...

Sorry wrong blog.

Carry on.

JAL said...

Nice to see you back Troop.

JAL said...

Lem -- I was wondering -- don't you have a day job?

Where do you find this stuff?

;- )

Trooper York said...

He has an important day job.

But the Red Sox didn't play so he didn't have to fluff David Ortiz.

Chip Ahoy said...

Ace. Me gusta mucho.

Just think, these guys were sitting around, "You know what we could do? We could reflect a bunch of box images on a screen and move them around."

"Yeah man, we could use two of them."

"Yeah, and we could incorporate an outer light show with the inner light show."

"Yeah, and we could have robots shifting them around!"

"Awesome!"

*high fives*

That reminds me, I have a little plastic cube with a window. I saw it at Toys я us. It is a coin bank. The window shows an object, I forget what, a toy, like a plastic figure. When a coin is dropped you hear it, and feel its weight, but cannot see it through the window. How in the h-e-double-hockey-place where Virgil gave Dante a tour does that figure stand up in the middle of the box without the coin showing?

I'll have to look for it, maybe the object is just floating in space. I have to clean out that storage anyway. You wouldn't believe what they're charging me each month and I haven't been in there in two years. It can all go and I wouldn't feel it. Except perhaps for those infrequent moments when I find my self fleetingly nostalgically recalling a toy bank.

Mirror. On the diagonal. Figure cut in half. You see half the real figure and half its reflection no matter how you hold it and peer in. Coins behind the mirror.

I saw a similar idea once with an aquarium. Divided in half diagonally with a pane of glass, not a mirror. Bird in front, fish in back. See, that right there is starting because you think, aw, poor bird should be drowning. The aquarium is only half the tank, but diagonally. They were very clever with the gravel matching at the glass, or the way the bedding turned into aquarium gravel, they disguised it some way, that was the tell, but nothing was obvious.

Chip Ahoy said...

Today I was walking down the street and saw a woman in the distance standing in the sun outside a shop next to some flowers in a wheelbarrow. The flowers, not the woman. From a distance I said to her,

"They have the best of both worlds."

"Huh?"

I caught up, "They're taken inside at night. Mine suffer the cold. Like those *point* These have full sun all day.

She didn't put it together. Didn't know I was referring to the brightest things around, the flowers, she thought I was a weirdo.

But a harmless one. She decided she liked me and in 10 seconds opened up about plants. I told her how surprised I was to see cactus on the railroad tracks. I took some and they blew my mind how they bloomed like crazy from starting as trashy scraps.

She kept right on talking as I indicated I was walking away. Walked with me as I did. She whipped out a cloth hat she had folded up, the shape of a fisherman's hat with a flexible rim, but hers is pink and the rim exaggerated to cartoon dimensions and I realized as she donned the gigantic hat and it framed her pleasant face as she accompanied me farther down the block chattering away about xeriscaping and excitement about native plants, that I was conversing with a proper baglady. She walked a full block with me happy to encounter a friendly neighbor and asked me if I was aware of the nearby coffee place at the street level of a nearby high rise.

Perhaps a hippy. I'm not sure.

"I cannot drink that. It does a number on my nerves."

God, I love living in Liberallandia. The stupidest-ass excuses work like magic. She was so gracious as we split off, helping me with my excuse, extending it with knowledgeable herbal-body balance related platitudes.

Immediately after that I met another woman and struck it up with her. We were both waiting briefly. Without any insistence, all natural conversation. I overheard her ask,

"Are you guys selling pizza today?"

Guess what. I can talk about almost anything. It's a gift.

Right there. BLAM. I just ate one of those five minutes ago. She could have one right now if we wanted.

Is that awesome or what?

Turns out, she said she just recently received sourdough through the mail but could not remember the name of Carl's 1847 Oregon Trail. When I told her I have that, It was how I learned, it she became sharply interested. Delighted to encounter someone who related to that. Because it's a bit odd. Right there was an eagerness to go further with that as central interest.

Both those encounters happened within 9 minutes. I'm telling you, on a nice day it is very easy to meet pleasant people around here and invite them right up if there is time for that. You can tell when people are receptive and could do something more, both these people wanted to continue.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Where do you find this stuff?

Mostly Reddit. I don't have a lot of time to monitor it, but when I do, sometimes I get lucky... no, not that kind of lucky trooper.


Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I detest Anthony Bourdain.