Johnnyweed

Michael Pollan's excellent "Botany of Desire", a Christmas gift that I am only now getting a chance to enjoy, is a work that immediately leaves you wet in the mouth and burning to start-up a garden. However doomed that latter enterprise would be, for me personally, it does not distract for what is ultimately Pollan's thesis, that humans are much more domesticated by the plants we enjoy than the other way around. Pollan gives us an eye-opening reductionist survey of illusion of human control, and begs essential questions about our own adaptability and coevolutionary fitness.

Up against the apple, a being of wonderful genetic diversity, our own germline makes all of us look like inbred jackasses. That every conserved variety of apple can trace it's lineage back to a single tree that had the luck of making itself delicious to humans speaks to the inexorable way in which specie interdependence plays out. Otherwise, apples would proliferate in varieties that we would find alien - it is only the varieties that we desire that make it to cultivation.

Pollan then examines the tulip and how a fairly ordinary flower brought the 17th Century global economy to its knees. His full account of the cultivation and speculation into the flower are masterful, from it's diversity of bright and hardy colors to the inflationary froth that halted global commerce once the tulip-bubble collapsed.

Likewise, with the cultivation of marijuana, and Pollan's own white-knuckled gardening adventure with the weed, we see how a hemp regulation and the constant desire for altered states has consumed thousands of man-hours in regulation and lost time over what was once considered a miracle fiber.

But Pollan's opus concludes on a high note when he looks at the humble potato. Well, humble might not fit - glorious, rainbow shades of potato, home grown with nutty and explosive flavors that most Americans will never taste. Instead, we eat a genetically modified potato that holds several patents and is grown exclusively for mass consumption in fried form, devoid of all the properties that make potatoes so nutritious. They stand as witness to the mass cultivation and marketing that goes into so much of the food we eat every day. With the potato as microcosm, we get a larger look into how we eat everyday.

This is a splendid book, and I've now picked up The Omnivore's Dilemma which I am really looking forward to. Without writers like Pollan, we risk losing the last remaining threads to the earth that tolerates us, and to not read him is to further our species peril.

I piss here too!

Fuck me if it isn't tough finding a proper toilet at 5:30 on a Monday evening. I know, I know, Nate you say, I've been drinking all afternoon to forget my problems and I forgot to go behind the dumpster where I stash my fifths of Barcardi. Drunk friend, I dig! You have nothing to explain to me!

The cops however, will want an explanation. Especially after you shed your clothes, whip out your dong and write your name on the disabled passenger seats. I know! If they're disabled they have their own seats, the ones with wheels, so by all means, dump your pisser there. So what if the police don't understand. So what if they make you put on your clothes and a pair of handcuffs. You went out of your way to show us working tool-bags that we too could be wrecked at 5:30 and naked down to our socks if we wanted to. Friend. America and I salute you.

Red State Hangover

Oh man, awesome. The canker sore that's blown up in my mouth is truly a sight to see, so calloused from rubbing up against my rotting molars that it looks like the bottom of my worn-out foot. When it comes up for air, it bears a striking resemblance to Rudy "noun, verb, 9/11" Guilianni, who yesterday had a bad day to end all bad days.

Also, go read History of Love, and if you can ignore the fact that Krause is married to Jonathan Safran Foer, you'll really enjoy it.

Oops, I moved

Wound up in Brooklyn, Park Slope neighborhood where I come to find that YES! The MTA B Line is my closest subway stop. Huzzah. The cat and the missus survived the journey. For the record, the move to New York was the right decision. The sushi alone is worth the trip, no matter if you turn into a mercurial tunnel beast from over-eating the yellow-fin.

Read a book about a president.

8 Degrees

That's the high today in Boston, MA. I had to take the T this morning, against all my better wishes, as there was almost no physical way I was going to be able to make the 6 mile walk to Chinatown this morning, where I had to go to get my license renewed (away on business next week).

8:00 am and all of 6, count 'em, 6 degrees outside the coldest day of winter so far. I knew this was going to be the walking test, whether or not I could really balls up and walk in the New England cold, and sure enough, with my long-john suit on and some good layering, I was pretty warm.

Only, I would be warm if I was moving - no, instead, I got the pleasure of waiting 15 minutes for an inbound Greenline; those of you who don't know Boston, the MBTA above-ground trolleys have a maximum of two cars per train service. Imagine being in NYC where each subway car was only an eighth to a quarter as long as it needed to be for efficient service. Now take away one of those cars, for, due to some unimaginable reason, the second car sat in the dark, not accepting passengers. Why even have a second car?

In such, the first car was so packed that no one could get on, and the OrangeJacket trying to maintain order shrugged with sheepish impotence as he collected the recently increased T fare.

I'm not getting on, as I see another T cresting the hill behind it. By the next stop (and I live pretty far out along the subway lines), the train was overfull and remained that way until I completed my grim commute the DMV - like out of the frying pan and into the fire right?

I would be remiss though if I didn't compliment the Mass DMV - they are actually, and efficiently run, pleasant group of people, willing to make strange exceptions for idiots like myself who let their license expire and need something to pick up a rental car.

Oh, and the ride back involved 7 D-line trains in a row. How many people are headed out to Riverside?

I don't even know what to say about this

Here's today's must read.


I mean, holy Christ, this is a major metropolitain transit system and we are relying on fucking BLACKSMITHS? After we get done turning the Wayback Machine to 1910, perhaps we can all mount our trusty steeds and see if, on horseback, we can beat the B Line from Packard's Corner to Kenmore.

...Blacksmiths.

Ain't Working

This goddamn job. A man with a shopping cart full of yellow books rattling past two pro-lifers who were genuflecting in front of planned parenthood just about made my morning.