Tag Archives: wave

What I learned this week, October 22, 2021

Posted on by Bill Chance

Cedars Open Studios 1805 Clarence Street Dallas, Texas

We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage

A  lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears. 

The Great Resignation Is Accelerating

Who is John Galt?

How to Develop Mental Toughness

An expert’s guide to sticking it out through pain and suffering

The Wave that Washes us all
The Wave that Washes us all

After The Wave

When I was eight — I think — I drowned. Oh, no, not really. Not even to the point of stopping breathing and needing resuscitation. But … Let me explain.

They promised to destroy Big Brother. They became him

I actually am old enough (I was 13 in 1984) to remember this commercial live. In the decades since I have always been confused/suspicious/annoyed by the independent freedom-loving spirit of the ad and the locked-down hegemony of Apple itself. Every Apple product I’ve tried has frustrated me because there was something I wanted it to do… that I knew it could do… that it wouldn’t let me do.

That’s why I run Linux.

The PC Guy and the Mac Guy
The PC Guy and the Mac Guy
PC and Mac guy meet Linux Godzilla
PC and Mac guy meet Linux Godzilla

The ‘untranslatable’ emotions you never knew you had

Have you ever felt a little mbuki-mvuki – the irresistible urge to “shuck off your clothes as you dance”? Perhaps a little kilig – the jittery fluttering feeling as you talk to someone you fancy? How about uitwaaien – which encapsulates the revitalising effects of taking a walk in the wind?

Giant Eye Sculpture, Main Street, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

The Great American Eye-Exam Scam

Why is it so difficult to get a new pair of glasses or contacts in this country? It’s easier pretty much everywhere else.

After attending the start of construction – I rode my bike by here to check up on the progress. It’s going surprisingly fast. Which is good – I want to live long enough to cross on the bridge.

Short Story Of the Day, Just After the Wave by Sandrine Collett

Posted on by Bill Chance

 

But now this is driving him crazy, this ocean creeping closer, especially at night when no one can see it, at dawn the sea surprises them with its silent waves, ever higher, and the hens squawk because there is hardly anything left to peck at on the last bit of land that is holding out—for a few days the children fed them potato peels, but now there’s nothing left.

—-Just After the Wave, An excerpt of the novel by Sandrine Collette, translated from the French by Alison Anderson

 

Trinity River
Dallas, Texas

Read it here:

Just After the Wave, An excerpt of the novel by Sandrine Collette, translated from the French by Alison Anderson

from Guernica

 

The Thud of a Great Beast Stamping

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The waves broke and spread their waters swiftly over the shore. One after another they massed themselves and fell; the spray tossed itself back with the energy of their fall. The waves were steeped deep-blue save for a pattern of diamond-pointed light on their backs which rippled as the backs of great horses ripple with muscles as they move. The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Children’s Waterpark, Waxahachie, Texas

Oblique Strategy: Would anybody want it?

There’s a button on a stand. The button doesn’t do anything at first – but then the water, a little bit at first, then more and more and more until torrents are spewing from pipes and nozzles. A plastic bucket fills, tilts, and dumps it’s cargo of dihydrogen monoxide out in a foamy amoeba into the hot Texas sun.