27 July 2014

[print] It's Always Tuesday In The New Fun Size™ Oregonian

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Changing calendars is nothing new, of course. The Julian calendar was upgraded to the Gregorian calendar, an in Ethiopia, they use a version of the calendar that includes leap days once every four years regardless (instead of omitting it in years evenly divisible by 400, as we do), resulting in the oddity (to us, anyway), that New Years Day, 2000, didn't happen for residents of Addis Abebe until September 11th, 2007. It is currently 2007 by the Ge'ez calendar.

However, in the West, we still keep to the Gregorian calendar, but here in the Beaver State, we've upgraded again … to The Oregonian Calendar.

It was revealed to us during our usual visit to the library. The Wife™goes through the week's Fun Size™ Oregonians which, as I've mentioned before, we never seem to have trouble getting, and she's frustrated, wondering where last Wednesday's paper was.

At last she lays it out day-by-day.


Oh, wait, what's this then?


Now, on my calendar, things don't run that way.



As our friend, the vintage Casio PV-S400 Pocket Viewer PDA will tell you, Monday the 21s is followed by Tuesday … the 22nd. The 23rd isn't supposed to come until Wendesday. 

Unless …

They've decided to upgrade our very calendar? Could that be? I mean, the modern The Oregonian is working hard to redefine our very idea of a newspaper as something to be read. Why not? But this isn't a calendar upgrade so much as a modern calendar levelling up, introducing new days in new sequences, without warning to the general population.

Kind of like reality until you find a Konami cheat for it.

But more research is called for. Stabilizing the test subject on the examining table, the patient is opened to examine the interior makeup … and IT'S STILL TUESDAY …


No need to panic. It was Tuesday, the 22nd, all along … they just hid it inside.

Of course, now Tuesday the 23rd follows Tuesday the 22nd. Mayhap Tuesday the 24th, after that, Tuesday the 25th, ad nauseam …  it's always Tuesday in Portland now. 

And it just stands to reason.

Tuesday is, after all, Soylent News™ day. 

08 July 2014

[liff] No Message Other Than This Sunset

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Have had little in the way of words to share latterly, but much pictures.

So be it.

This is the sunset tonight over Home Base, with the salmon color I've seen so much of latterly. There seems to be a different quality to it. Or maybe I've just not noticed it before.


Sailors' delight, so they say.


07 July 2014

[liff] Buttermilk Sky Over Outer East Portlandia

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Inspiration's been hard to come by the last week or so, but all one has to do in this glorious, not-to-be-duplicated Oregon environment, is … well, look up.


This is what I call a buttermilk sky, not so much because it looks like buttermilk, but the texture leaves an impression upon the psyche that my latent synesthetic sense converts into a the feeling that I had drinking buttermilk. I get a palimpsest-like impression in the mouth.

Funny thing is, I never liked buttermilk much. Wife™ loves the stuff. Never got that, never will, but then, I can't comprehend why some people are so avid about crustless sandwiches.


I don't know if the clotted cloud cover specifically heralds any sort of weather, but it will be noted, in the record, that the weather was quite warm and very fair and pleasant (well, if you're a sunpuppy, maybe. Along with buttermilk, one thing I'm not terribly fond of is hot humid weather over about 85F, which is our lot these June and July weeks).


While they weren't dramatic, the textural experience of looking in the clotted blue was impossible to resist. It was also impossible not to make fantasy geographies out of them, something I used to do all the time.

Earthsea? Here's skysea for you.


The Pig'n'Pancake … long time landmark at NE 122nd and Glisan. An old-school breakfast-and-lunch place, open in Outer East Portlandia until the mid-afternoon only … but breakfasts and lunches there are to die for.

They have a Mexican-style omelette that contains black beans. Along with buttermilk, too-hot too-humid days, and crustless sandwiches, black beans are something I don't understand not neither … but they can get me to eat them. So there's that.


Also under the buttermilk sky is what was Jody's Bar and Grill. it is, as the sign says CLOSED FOR NOW, only how now is defined is left open to interpretation. It's a Portland strip club, of which we are terminally over-endowed, so, maybe, oh, I don't know … more naked ladies in the near future? Who knows? Really, who cares? For now, PDX is down one strip club. I think the city will sustain itself on the more-than-50-less-one clubs that are here now compared to the more-than-50 we had then.

I mean you could go out to the Spearmint Rhino and tell us all if you actually spot one.


The character of the clouds, illuminated differently as you looked east, made them less ethereal if not loss dramatic. The above is looking east on Glisan from 122nd; that grove of trees in the distance is the approximate location of the Glendoveer Golf Course.

And another sunset; lately I've noticed a preponderance of this ruddy, salmon hue. Again, not sure if it presages anything at all, but it is impressive, and delicately beautiful.


Keep looking up.

02 July 2014

[pdx] Lava Lite Sunrise, Industrial NE Portland

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Now that we're out of the Easy Bake Oven (103F in our back yard? OUCH) the sunrises from my part of the world look lovely.


I'm not 100 per cent pleased with that one above. I had only a few seconds, a few minutes, to get the shot, and I wasn't able to get the skill I needed together to make it happen. That clipped ziggurat on the horizon is Mt. St. Helens, and the sunlight reflecting on the clouds made it look positively Infernal. There were wisps and curlicues in the clouds that are lost. Sad.


The electric neon color's a winner, though, sure enough.