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Garage Sales 2010 - Week 6
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2210
The May long weekend.
It's cool and depressing Saturday morning, and all of the listings are for either the deep south of the city or the far north.
A brief walk around the neighborhood turns up a single sign, following the arrow I end up nowhere. And that's garage sales for week 6. I go home and nap until work.
Sunday morning I found another sign, pointing at the same sale, and so I looked further - there's something just not right about a weekend without garage sales, and eventually, after much alley walking, found it. A sampling of comic books, some good antique typewriters (but I don't need a "good" one, I need one that's decrepit beyond repair...), some good movies (A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, Miyazaki), but on VHS and I'd pick them up for the people at work, but they don't have VCR's. There's a giant agricultural scale, weighs up to 1600 lbs, but it weighs (in itself) 120 lbs and while it'd be a great ornament for my bathroom I have to be real....
All in all a bust.
Ex Voto
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 1788
I'm a big fan of magic realism. Any of the novels of Márquez, the South American novels of de Bernières, the short stories of Borges.
And so trawling eBay in my search for religious kitsch and related treasures you can imagine my delight in discovering these:
They're ex-voto, or the fulfillment of a promise to certain saints for services rendered. Now you go to eBay and do a search for ex voto, or just click here. Some of them offer translations, but it's more fun to speculate. For example, above, the beloved Saint has obviously saved the poor family from a gang of voracious squirrels.
Above we have thanks given for saving a girl from a rain of frogs.
Or thanks for assisting my jailbreak. Why not? God's for everyone, not just the damned law abiding or self righteous...
Thank you for saving me from the giant octopus. Or for introducing me to my new lover....
Try thank you for helping me to save my cats from these rather fearsome dogs. Personally, I'd want saving from the flying ghoul carrying her head and spewing blood from the bloody stump, but apparently that's the saint and she's a good guy....
I don't speak Spanish, but I'm guessing she's thanking the Saint for bringing the devil to her bed. It's looking like there will be some spicy action there tonight...
I need a life like that, where the exceptional is commonplace, where it rains frogs and there are plagues of killer squirrels, where giant Octopus regularly seize and terrorize swimmers, where the Saints will bring you your demon lover....
This is only the smallest of samples, there are new listings all the time, no end of inspiration, a thousand possible novels in a few short pages...scroll through and see if you can guess what they're giving thanks for....
The Mechanization of Prayer
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1910
In some cultures, prayers are held to have an intrinsic meaning.
It is not the telling, or reciting of the prayer, the prayer exists on it's own, separate from the prayer (prayer, the recitation or written expression thereof, exists separately from the one who tells it...).
And this existence, the intrinsic existence of the prayer, influences the universe for the better, it can be replicated, multiplied and even mechanized.
The most notable examples are the Tibetans, with their branch of Buddhism that allows for prayer flags (prayers are carried from the flags by the winds), prayer wheels (spinning the wheel releases the prayer contained on both the outside and wound round the shaft of the wheel), there are other examples as well.
In Catholicism the saying of the rosaries would be equivalent, but only very roughly, for the church has not given sanction to machines to say rosaries, they must be said by the faithful, and the repetition of them, while apparently mechanical, is also contemplative and meditative. Whereas the blowing of flags by the wind, or spinning of unseen wheels by machines or people could not be said to be either.
I find this curious.
Help Wanted
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2036
We have a standing "Help Wanted" ad.
We're forever hiring.
In the front of the house it's not so bad, maybe we go through a dozen waiters, then one of them stays a few months, moves on, the cycle begins again.
There were different issues with the waiters, a couple were obviously lazy, a few obviously incompetent, we had one that was sort of working out but decided to pursue another opportunity closer to home. You couldn't really blame him, although they did, there was a lot of loud name calling in the back, pettiness, squabbling over tips, the threatening of fisticuffs, it was embarassing to be near and so I just left....
We interview for his position.
There's a list of questions we should be asking - things like "Do you have any hobbies?" or "Do you have any outside interests or family members" because any of these things are signs they'll be leaving us. We're really looking for someone who'll be happy to work 5 and 6 days a week, 8 to 14 hours a day, for eternity.
An addictions problem would be nice, it'll help them to cope.
There's no end to applicants. One or two a day. They talk to us, the owner, have coffees, cappucinos, it's an informal interview, he trots out the Italian ladies in the back, they've been there for 20, thirty years, the waiters 10 and 20 years, they know a good thing when they see it, they're living proof of how great he is to work for, his easygoing temperment, maybe the new employee decides to try it out, shows up for a shift or two, then vanishes. They found it wasn't for them, decided to go back to school, discovered they were pregnant, tired, busy, the list of excuses is unending but the results are the same: sooner or later they don't come back.
Some never even make it in, confirm the job, when they'll be starting, then never show up.
In the kitchen it's the same. We've been hiring for a sous-chef as long as I've been there. They don't show up, or show up for a couple of shifts, call in sick, disappear. The record was not even2 weeks.
There are everywhere the proofs of the dead, the waiters and chefs that came and then left, old photographs on the wall, phonecalls, customer enquiries for staff long gone, automated doctors appointments calling the restaurant, mail comes to them c/o the restaurant but they're no longer here to collect it and they've left no forwarding address.
They are the disappeared.
There are more of them in this restaurant than there are in all of Chile or Argentina.
And the ad goes up again: "Help Wanted"...
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