Mallory's Camera

The Big Snow was… big!

But also fast!

There was one moment yesterday when I was staring out my window, and I actually saw the sleet turn into snow.

That was pretty cool!

I decided not to risk life or limb on behalf of those taxpayers insane enough to venture out in a raging blizzard just to render unto Uncle Sam what is Uncle Sam’s.

(This whole “rendering unto Uncle Sam” thing is seeming increasingly pointless to me anyway since Uncle Sam never seems to do anything worthwhile with the ca$h. The poor get poorer! The rich post on Instagram.)

I puttered a bit. I did some Useful Work, though this whole “Useful Work” thing is also seeming increasingly pointless: Like if the world is really gonna end in a nuclear winter some time very, very soon, shouldn’t I be maxing out my credit cards on travel to exotic places? Or maybe trying to hunt down some fentanyl-less heroin?

###

I inched closer to my current life goal, which is to watch every single episode ever made of the original Law & Order.

I must say, the cop team of Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson) and Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto) is very, very good!

I may like them even better than Lennie Brisco and Mike Logan (although I gotta say, the young Chris Noth was eye-candy supreme even if he did prey on innocent young wannabe starlets.)

Alana De La Garza is not bad either as the second-chair DA with cheekbones to die for.

I kinda have issues with Linus Roache, though. His American accent keeps slipping.

###

What else?

The current meme making the rounds on FB is a picture of a guy who’s had the whole Ugly American makeover—which is to say, he’s fat, wearing a MAGA hat, etc, etc etc—standing next to a gas pump. We are to understand he’s been interrupted mid-rant in lamentations over the recent $1.50 hike in gasoline prices.

Yes, gas prices are high! says the accompanying text. It’s printed on a blue and yellow background. We can choose to travel less. We can choose to carpool. We can choose to bicycle. We can choose to walk. We can choose public transportation. UKRAINE CANNOT.

And I am thinking, Buh?

This is kind of cousin to the logic behind, Eat your vegetables! The children in India are starving!

The real world is just completely nutso right now. Which is why I’m seeking solace in the comforting serial killings, sex crimes, drug deals gone wrong, etc etc of the Law & Order universe.

More busy, busy, busy.

My To Do List is now two post-its long!

I see now that I neglected to account for the effect that 25 hours of selfless TaxBwana-ing on a weekly basis would have on everything else I have to do. The more fool moi, but hey! it is what it is, and what it is is not the end of the world.

Fortunately, I’m so obsessive that I give myself weeks, sometimes months, when planning, so wiggle-room is there in galores. The bed gets made, the bills get paid, the floor gets vacuumed on a daily basis. If everything else slows down, so be it.

###

Word on Reddit and Twitter is that Russia will disconnect from the global Internet on March 11th.

The source document would appear to be this:



I don’t read Russian, so for all I know, this could be Catherine the Great’s Secret Brownie Recipe.

I post it for the sheer joy of rumor-mongering.

###

What else?

Yesterday was an exceptionally trying day for many reasons. I did not finish the current Remunerative Project but I definitely will finish it today.

I could have finished the Remunerative Project yesterday except that L noticed how dejected and sad I looked, and so dragged me out to dinner with her and BFF Brenda.

I am very fond of L but our ideas about what constitutes interesting conversation are not the same—meaning the meal could easily have turned into an ordeal. So, I decided to interview Brenda on the topic that has obsessed me for at least a decade now: Why is Poughkeepsie such a shithole?

Brenda is a Poughkeepsie native. Grew up here, never saw any point in leaving.

“Well, the town used to be a manufacturing hub,” Brenda told me. And began listing. The glove factory. The carpet factory. The ball bearing factory. The factory where they used to make Smith Brothers Cough Drops. The two breweries.

Savona’s Trattoria where we were eating is in Arlington, across the street from the Vassar College campus. Its walls had been stripped down to trendy brick; the shape of the moldings by the windows made it obvious that it had once been a storefront.

“Oh, yes,” said Brenda. “It was a very upscale dress shop. Too upscale for me! My dad worked on an assembly line. Did you notice all those two-family houses we drove past to get here?”

I had.

“Well, that’s the only way anyone could afford to buy a house back then. You lived upstairs, you rented out the downstairs. Anyway, when the factories went under, no one could afford the mortgages anymore.” She shrugged. “So they all moved.”

Right.

(stash of cheap housing) + (gentrification in the nearby Big City) = South Bronx.