Here in the Land that We Wish Irene Had Forgotten, the cleanup continues, with gawkers and scavengers haunting the neighborhoods of those still putting their ruined belongings out by the curb and the usual post-disaster scams cropping up already. Meanwhile, another storm is starting to look like it's gong to have to do a 90-degree turn soon if it's going to miss us, my electrician is I'm sure going to charge a multi-thousand dollar premium to get a wired generator setup in here before she hits, and I'm starting to think all this is Mother Earth shaking us off like a dog with a really bad flea infestation -- our just reward for treating her so shabbily.
Today I was in Springfield, NJ and took a side trip to World of Tile, a place I've gone past many hundreds of times in my life, most of them as a child, returning from a trip out to Route 22 to Harmony House to buy records, and perhaps a side stop at the Dairy Queen for a Buster Bar. World of Tile is out on that stretch of Route 22 in Union County that is now a sea of strip malls and megastores like you see on every other highway in the universe, with a few remnants of my childhood and businesses that advertised on AM rock 'n' roll radio still standing, like the Flagship (which is now a P.C. Richard store) and, yes, World of Tile -- a store I hadn't even thought about until I read about it on Retro Renovation. So the extra black wall tiles that I had hoped to get in case I want to replace the American Standard Ming Green bathrub with a shower pan are $12 each, because they are the original 1950's tile, so it's better to just either leave the tub alone or use the Home Depot tiles. But in one of the "showrooms" in the back, it's a cornucopia of retro bathroom floor tile, even an almost exact duplicate of the hideous green quasi-checkerboard pattern that all 1950's bathrooms have. And they have it in many, many colors, at $12.99 a square foot (though why anyone would want to replace one of these floors with the same thing, I have no idea). I was, however, happy to see that they have white 1" hex tile sheets and also black hex tile so that it's possible to do borders and flowers and other cool things with hex tile, and I will definitely go see them again after we recover from certain Generator Sticker Shock, assuming you can get near the place, because now that it's been linked in the New York Times Style section, this quirky little retro store in Springfield is going to become the hottest thing around.
Anyway, it's Labor Day weekend in a country that has been doing whatever it can go eliminate the protections and benefits that 100 years of organized labor brought us. I'm sure that out in the flyover states, where they worship people like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, they're going to fly flags and grill hamburgers and "celebrate" Labor Day and shake the hands of their legislators who are gutting unions in a state of complete cluelessness as to what it really means.
So let's take a trip around the blogroll for some perspectives on some of the fresh horrors that this week in Year Three of the American Racial Freakout saw.
Karen Garcia gives a well-deserved smack to that shandeh far di goyim Eric Cantor.
How does this differ, really, from Obama's allegedly proposed "worker training program"?
If you were hit by Irene, maybe you'll start listening to Kindly Old Uncle Bustednuckles, finally.
Katherine Haenschen at Burnt Orange Report has the top Google searches for Rick Perry.
Cool historical Labor Day stuff at Ramona's Voices.
Driftglass: The Big Jobs Fuck.
You'll never hear about this on your local network news, but Oil is resurfing again not far from the location of the BP Macondo Well.
Gossip or truth? Go read this at Mudflats and decide. I'll tell you this much: whether Sarah Palin runs for president or not, she is definitely going to have a very hard time when the looks start to go -- no matter how much botox or surgery she has. Time bows to no surgeon. We're seeing it already. You could almost feel sorry for her if she wasn't such a bitch.
Helen Philpot, as always, cuts to the chase.
The Perry Platform is the new Shit My Dad Says.
And now I'm going to go pay some bills and wonder if I'll be able to get fresh corn tomorrow. After all, what's the point of making a quinoa salad with summer vegetables if I have to use frozen roasted corn from Trader Joe's?
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire