lickhaven

Headline: “What is the meaning of life? 15 possible answers…”
C’mon. Isn’t it obvious that life has no meaning? It just is.
Live it.

• * * *
  Linda and I went to a concert of the Williamsport Orchestra last week, the first classical-music outing we’ve attended in several years. I’m not sure why I was keen to go, since the program was all dance-related pieces, which don’t, in general, attract me. But the closer was Ravel’s “Bolero,” a big whiz-bang-whoopee of a piece, always fun.
  Also, the Williamsport conductor is Gerardo Edelstein, who has done terrific work in the past, especially with Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony.
  The first half was mostly Borodin and Brahms dances, bouncy enough and familiar. The second half included some Johann Strauss waltzes. Strauss has always struck me as elevator music composed before there were elevators.
  A women’s dance group spun to the Bolero and other pieces in massive, elaborate costumes, but with what Linda and I felt was a lack of underlying spirit. Most of the audience seemed to love them.
  But the highlight for us was the opening performance after intermission, selections from “Swan Lake” conducted by Rebekah O’Brien. This may have been the first time I’ve actively enjoyed anything by Tchaikovsky, and it was because O’Brien, through her soaring conducting, became the music. I’ve never before seen anyone so completely embody the rich, unfolding sound she was drawing from the whole orchestra.
  Bravo to the nth power.
• * * *
  Have you noticed that whenever hydrogen sulfide is mentioned, its odor is always compared to that of rotten eggs? In these days of overpriced eggs nestled quietly in their cartons, which of us has smelled a rotten egg in our lives, unless we work on a chicken farm?
• * * *
  Another old-guy throwback: When I was growing up, Lipton’s tea ads credited its supposedly glorious flavor to its “tiny little tea leaves.”
  Years later, I visited a tea shop in Bala, a Philly suburb. The owner had an immense tea-taster’s table – a massive round of wood with an outer rim that revolved, so each taster could pick up the next cup presented, after they had tasted the current sample and spit it out, so as to avoid conflating the flavors.
  What he also told me proved enlightening as to the quality of American tea. Lipton’s, Tetley and our similar bagged swill is tea that is not even bid on at the European auctions. In other words, it’s exactly what it tastes like – floor sweepings.
• * * *
  I’ve come up with a weird way to clear the waking depression that floods my head many mornings. It doesn’t work every time, but often enough to be helpful.
  I find that I can overwrite the negative thought-assault by closing my eyes and allowing a splatter of random images to race across my eyelids. Where do these images come from, and why? No idea.
  Sometimes they appear as a ticker-tape rattle of printed words in boldface type, like isolated bits of headline or caption. They flash by so rapidly that it’s hard to tell how many are even complete words.
  Good god, do they indicate that my brain stores every read image that I’ve encountered in the last week? If so, why is it wasting it’s time with such semi-literate hooey? Maybe to keep it handy for exercises like this?
• * * *
  Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is one of the top 2 or 3 research hospitals in the country. But where did that name come from – a health-care merger? As it stands, it reads like celebration some mahoff named Brigham, with a bunch of women tossed in as a quick sop.
• * * *
  Did you hear about the guy who was madly looking to buy a new fedora? But when a hat was placed on the counter, he shouted, “Bah, homburg!”
• * * *
  Despite the monumental blunder of he US intelligence and military leaders releasing top-secret info to the entire world, it does reflect one major success that our fearless leader Chump can point to.
  After what must have been an especially grueling search over many months, he actually did manage to assemble a group of underlings who are even dumber than he is!
  Would you have thought that possible? Me either, but he persevered.
  The only remaining question is how one of them, national suckurity devisor Mike Waltz, was able to add the editor of Atlantic magazine to the listeners. Did he suggest, “Hey, we need a Jew on here, there’s this guy Goldberg, whoever he is, has to be a Jew, huh? Let’s toss him in.”
• * * *
  To change the country’s mindset, we need to target the individual voters, not our political “leaders.” Once again, Lump has triumphed. He’s destroying the lives of every one of his voters. Way to go.
• * * *
  What our poor hemlock trees have to deal with up here. First of all, they are beset by the hemlock woolly adelgid. “This tiny aphid-like insect attaches itself to the base of hemlock needles and inserts specialized mouthparts to feed on the tree’s stored starches. Covered in a protective white, woolly wax that resembles cotton balls, a single adelgid can lay up to 300 eggs. The insects gradually drain the tree’s energy reserves, causing needle loss, branch dieback, and eventual death within four to 10 years.”
  Poor bastards. And this is just one of 3 diseases out to get the tree species that covers more than half our local forest.
  But wait! 300 eggs? Get these guys turning out product in our grocery stores.