Please don't just pass them by and stare

[sovay]

Still off-kilter. Still cold and grey. I hate dreaming about people I know who do not behave like themselves in waking life. Have some links.

1. Joan Baez effectively retired in 2018. She just recorded herself performing "Hello in There" for John and Fiona Prine, the songwriter who is critically ill with coronavirus and his wife who has it also. So I cried the whole way through.

2. Courtesy of the same friend who provided the wholesome weasel content: Lego Bazalgette. Please check out the entire blog; the footnote on Lego Horatius at the Bridge is a thing of beauty and I had honestly never expected to see one Lego Chartist Rising, much less two. "This scene was built by James Pegrum because he wanted to build a mammoth."

3. I really respect this story for being funny even before the neodymium gets up anybody's nose: "I accidentally invented a necklace that buzzes continuously unless you move your hand close to your face."

4. I never saw the relevant episode of Doctor Who, but this job application is indeed magnificent.

5. I find this poem haunting: Joseph Fasano, "St. Vitus' Dance." ". . . the body gone mad in the last blaze / of being here, the body blossoming into music."

Comments

[dewline]

3. That's a flaw that should be easy to fix, right? Once it is, I'm going to need a pair.

4. I bet that someone at the retail chain's personnel office actually called UNIT - which was still active and funded at that point - on a dare or a bet, and after about 15 minutes on the line with the UNIT office, hung up and said "let him do the job. Safer that way."

[sovay]

3. That's a flaw that should be easy to fix, right? Once it is, I'm going to need a pair.

I hope further experiments will be undertaken under somewhat more controlled, or at least less bored circumstances.

4. I bet that someone at the retail chain's personnel office actually called UNIT - which was still active and funded at that point - on a dare or a bet, and after about 15 minutes on the line with the UNIT office, hung up and said "let him do the job. Safer that way."

That's a charming thought.

[cynthia1960]

I refer to otters as water sausages so weasels should be land sausages, yes?

[sovay]

I refer to otters as water sausages so weasels should be land sausages, yes?

They seem so lithe for sausages!

[asakiyume]

Yours was the post that finally got me to read the magnets-in-nose story! I'd seen it and smiled and thought, cute, yes, and thought that really the headline and photo, with the sheepish scientist, said it all, but now having read the story I feel like you get an extra dose of delight from his very self-effacing, wry way of telling the story. It was great!

The poem in Rattle was haunting.

[pameladean]

The astrophysicist deserves a lot of credit for the way he pokes fun at himself. Raphael tried to read me the story aloud but had to stop when the narrator's girlfriend took him to the ER so her colleagues could laugh at him. We were both whooping and breathless. I haven't laughed like that for a long time.

P.

[sovay]

but now having read the story I feel like you get an extra dose of delight from his very self-effacing, wry way of telling the story. It was great!

Yay! Honestly, the thing that's astonishing about that story is that it's a Guardian article rather than a ruefully hilarious Twitter thread. The narrative voice really does sustain it. (The picture of his discharge report doesn't hurt: "Denies further magnets.")

[sovay]

The astrophysicist deserves a lot of credit for the way he pokes fun at himself.

Absolutely. "At this point I ran out of magnets."

(I was not able to keep a straight face reading it to spatch.)

[sartorias]

Oh, gosh. Joan Baez. Just the first few notes chokes me up.

I remember some grad school friends telling us about her showing up at a prof's house for some political gathering in the late sixties, five or six years before I knew this particular set. She sat on the couch and sang and sang for everybody who was there. That was such a beautiful room, airy, many windows looking out onto gardens, the two walls full of books. I, a twenty-something at that time, sat where she sat, easily calling up her lovely voice.

[cynthia1960]

So are otters!

[sovay]

Oh, gosh. Joan Baez. Just the first few notes chokes me up.

*hugs*

Her voice had changed and it was still hers; she was still herself.

I, a twenty-something at that time, sat where she sat, easily calling up her lovely voice.

I bet she's still echoing there.

[thisbluespirit]

♥

4. It's what happens when the Brig isn't around to sigh in a long-suffering way and do the paperwork for the damned fellow. (Seconding the thought that someone probably phoned UNIT for a reference. "So, when did he work for you?"/ "Well, sometime in the 1970s or 80s..." :lol:)

[cmcmck]

Not to mention the tarantella


Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar:
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the Halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far Waterfall like Doom.

[choco_frosh]

OH GOD, 2,3, and 4.

(I have never even seen that particular Doctor. However, I now have a headcanon that the shop manager was in the habit of making people fill out the application (because that was The Policy), but then not bothering to read it, especially if he had a vacancy to fill)

[choco_frosh]

Also, recommended for your amusement if you have not already seen it: Otters and Orangutans.

[cynthia1960]

Thank you!

[sovay]

It's what happens when the Brig isn't around to sigh in a long-suffering way and do the paperwork for the damned fellow.

"1107 40ish? Is that too high? 28. Male so far."

Seconding the thought that someone probably phoned UNIT for a reference. "So, when did he work for you?"/ "Well, sometime in the 1970s or 80s..."

I understand it's a perfectly good noodle incident, but now I do kind of want at least brief fic of these events.

[sovay]

Also, recommended for your amusement if you have not already seen it: Otters and Orangutans.

I hadn't seen that!

[sovay]

Not to mention the tarantella

I don't think that's a plague dance, although I know several very nice ones.

[sovay]

OH GOD, 2,3, and 4.

I mean, I would like humanity not to wipe itself out (or be majority-wiped by a dreadful minority), because it comes up with these things, and then it does that.

(I have never even seen that particular Doctor. However, I now have a headcanon that the shop manager was in the habit of making people fill out the application (because that was The Policy), but then not bothering to read it, especially if he had a vacancy to fill)

(Now I want to read all the rest of the applications in that forgotten stack.)

[thisbluespirit]

I'm sure I used to have one of him having to do paperwork at 1970s (80s) UNIT, or the Brigadier needing to sort it out afterwards.

Tbh, UNIT, was led by Kate Stewart at the time, she probably just said, "Yes, give him the job," adn advised them to remove anything flammable.

Re: Dr Who Job Application

[nodrog]

It's often worthwhile to check the Archives of something like that.

“Rosetta Stone for Extreme Chomping!”


https://pedanther.tumblr.com/post/614255834750500864/i-was-walking-through-the-toy-aisle-at-target-when