strange, strange world

abandoned-wonders-of-sssr1-1297943852Had I been in NYC this would have been, interesting. Margret Atwood and DJ Spooky on the same venue. http://vanuatu-atwood-tannatalks.eventbrite.com/

I have a love affair with urban decay. I love seeing what happens to man’s creations when they are abandoned and left to decay. So, needless to say, the website EnglishRussia is one of my favorites. It has glorious galleries of abandoned Soviet era sites. It features buildings, military bases, even cities from the old USSR, now vacant and rusting. Today it ran a best of list for the 7 Abandoned Wonders of the USSR. Pretty images, you should go look now. But, what really caught my eye was this quote about an missile base:

now abandoned and partially occupied by tourists.

Some how the idea that the cold war is over, and the tourists have won! These tourists are now occupying decaying missile bases across Russia, like an army of tourists in bad shorts and the wrong type of shoes. Though it also, some how leaves me empty. The worst of the ugly traveler stereotypes disturbing these grave sites of a dead nation is kind of sad.

Though, the irony of it all leaves me with a smile on my face.

Some things should be sacrosanct, crosswalks, handicapped parking, HOV lanes and, a newer one, quiet car on trains. Having done a bit of traveling by train in the last year, I completely understand the need for theses cars.

When riding on the train neither I nor any other passenger care not about the girl on the phone nor Bobby nor if he liked you or that skank Rachael more.

Even less does anyone care about what your doctor had to say.

Both of those actual conversations I heard on the Acela from Boston to NYC.

In fact, I will take it one step further and say that it is not just on trains where there are problems with people abusing their cell phone privilege. I think cell phones, and especially talking on the cell phones, should be the social equivalent of taking a dump, no one wants to see it and no one really wants to hear it!

Of course being a iPhone owner, I need to work on this since I am always checking something on that pretty, pretty object.

New album by Brendan Perry formerly of Dead Can Dance. (Guess it is not that new, just new to me.) Sadly, since they broke up I have found the releases of the founding members to be a bit underwhelming. Yes, I am admitting that I just don’t like Lisa Gerrard’s solo stuff. She is an amazing talent, but I just never clicked with her solo work. Anyway this new one from Brendan Perry, mixes old DCD sound with some new sounds, a lot of electronic music, for something stronger than his last release. Not a new DCD album, but none the less a good listen.

As I was getting Anna-Sophia up this morning, I tried to sneak into her room. Needless to say the 6 and 1/2 foot tall me was not able to sneak all that well. Just after I went in the door slammed behind me, and I looked at her and said, “did ghosts just close your door?”

She looked at me wide-eyed and whispered “Daddy, are there really ghosts in the house?”

Fearing that the wrong answer would lead to months and months of nightmares and interrupted sleep for my wife and myself, I went to my go to for imaginary creatures my goblins. After I was disallowed from having imaginary princesses, like Anna-Sophia, I made up some goblins (goblins of various colors, two brown, one green and one black). And the last we played Anna-Sophia had taken my goblins away and they had been retrained as goblin police. (Her princesses used to be police, of course.)

Anyway, so I said, “maybe it was my goblin police?”

She thought for a second and said, “it was my princesses, they were not keeping out your goblins, but were keeping out the aliens from outer space, we don’t want them getting in here.”

And I was worried that mentioning ghosts would cause her some concern.

Luke W. McCullough | lm3m @ msn.com | 05/26/2011 | the new House of Chaos, Arlington, MA

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