We should have known better
Ah, the 70’s. It almost seems like piling on to make fun of the home decorating horrors of that era, but this article brought it back for me. I was born in ’75, so I just caught the end of it, but I got my share. I remember being a kid in Blackfoot, Idaho, and having rainbow shag carpet in my bedroom, along with busy orange and brown wallpaper with drawings of people on it. The people on the walls used to scare me (I was, what, 5 or 6?), so we replaced that wallpaper with something much more tasteful—blue sky and clouds. It was fabulous with the rainbow shag.
I also remember, later when we moved to California, a couch and chair combo that was upholstered in fuzzy brown with orange flowers and featured heavily lacquered oak armrests. The kitchen had a wall covered in plastic bricks. I should point out that this was a rental, so we had no control over the bricks.
But back to the article, it is a review of a book called Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes from the Horrible 70’s by James Lileks.
My favorite quote:

Another foyer boasts a curved stairway with vertical, abstract printed paper he likens to "a close-up of one's intestinal lining. . . . You can be sure the designer chose this scheme because it 'drew the eye upward.' Of course, one could say the same thing about the Hindenburg disaster.”

Good times, good times.

Update: Mom has a correction: "brings back memories ... but the couch was brown and ivory, no orange!!! but I did hand crochet that variegated orange table cloth which didn't have a lot of use past the 70's!"

  ¶ 1:09 PM 2 comments

  Terrorist Threat in a Blue State? You Betcha.
There’s a new terrorist threat to the Boston area. Six people, four Chinese and two Iraqis, reportedly crossed the US/Mexico border carrying nuclear weapons and heading for Boston. This may be a hoax, or nothing serious, but what made me want to write about it was this post from a favorite blogger of mine, Feeble Knees. The post is entitled “He must have mixed up his red and blue states.” Money quote:

I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone in Al Qaeda would want to target Boston. It just doesn't make any sense to me. It seems more likely they'd instead use it as another staging ground. There aren't that many people here (as compared with the US's larger cities) and a large percentage of them are more against the US war on terror than Bin Laden himself!

This was disturbing to me. As though somehow terrorists are going to distinguish between Democrats and Republicans. Hello…they hate AMERICANS! And they hate westerners in general. Just look at the people they’ve kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq! Remember that British woman who was there doing humanitarian aid? They killed her, regardless of the fact that she was there to help.

There isn’t evidence right now that this latest threat is Al Qaeda based, at least not that I’ve heard. And hopefully this will not turn out to be a big deal. But thinking that somehow if we are just nice to the terrorists, they’ll leave us alone is deluded. What is the logical conclusion, that we should call off the war on terror, apologize to Osama, and huddle in our houses, hoping for the best? If we show weakness, we encourage attacks, we don’t avoid them. We saw this with the way Clinton dealt with Mogadishu. Bin Laden said that our pulling out of Mogadishu showed him that America didn’t have the will to defend itself.

Terrorists don’t care if they are killing liberals or conservatives, or even undecideds. They just want to have as much impact as possible, so that they can spread terror (hence the term “terrorist”) whether it be in a red, blue or purple city or state. Ok, I’m done now. Just had to make that point.

  ¶ 10:36 AM 1 comments

  A simple request
If you are a project manager that likes to micromanage to the Nth degree, and you call your victims far too often, asking them questions to which they've given you answers numerous times before (but you don't seem to remember those conversations), and you expect them to meet unrealistic deadlines, even when their particular part of the project is driven by getting information from other people who do not yet have such information available, and you talk to grown adults like they're four years old because you sorely lack people skills, then seem innocently shocked when those same people are not very nice to you...
CAN YOU PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE?!!

thanks.  ¶ 3:54 PM 0 comments

  Satan's Laundromat
Satan's Laundromat is a really cool photo log, posting pictures mostly of urban areas, and interesting signs, mostly in New York City. This post features signs in San Jose, most of which I'm well acquainted with. Erick and I have always gotten a kick out of "Mr T's Liquor Locker".
I don't know where the name Satan's Laundromat came from, maybe he says something about it on the site. I haven't checked.

Update: .This site also has some classic San Jose signage.  ¶ 3:39 PM 0 comments

  Thought for the day
Show me a man with both feet planted firmly on the ground, and I'll show you a man who can't get his pants off.  ¶ 4:55 PM 0 comments

  Meetings give me a headache
Really, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's everyone talking at once. Or it could be the going around in circles over an issue, or that the right person to answer a question never seems to be there, or the fact that nothing has changed since last week, and yet we're still having a meeting.
Whatever it is, I've had two meetings this morning, and I feel like crawling under a rock. Or even better, crawling back into bed.
Yep, it's Monday all right.   ¶ 1:08 PM 0 comments