the hypothetical wren

The former Blimpie on Central Avenue at Terrace has been turned into a donation drop-off station for the Salvation Army, but, still, traces of the building’s Blimpie-ness remain. Saturday, I was walking through the alley behind it, when I noticed that someone had dismantled the drive-in menu. The lighting fixtures inside the structure were missing, so I assumed that was the target of the disassemblers. In the aftermath, bits and pieces of the menu board were everywhere. Some parts were whole, others not so much. The names of dozens of submarine-sandwich and salad choices lay in the gravel and asphalt of the alley. Above are several topping and sauce options that one could order, if one trusted the PA system at this former Blimpie enough. Somehow, I imagine that the nuances of procuring the proper dressing could get lost in the ordering process.

Don’t think that I didn’t wonder, for a few minutes, whether I should bring this thing home. It’s the sort of thing I’ve always collected out of alleys. But then, I had to think of where, exactly I would put it and what I would do with it. This might be the definition of me at 33 versus me ten years ago.

So many short entries! I’m trying to catch up on the backlog tonight, since my arm and shoulder feel a bit better, and being behind (on blog entries as well as numerous other things) was seriously demotivating. Now I’m caught up to….last week. Better than the alternative, I guess.

Above: the red model of my favorite pair of shoes, which was discontinued last year before I could buy myself a pair. On eBay, they’ve been selling for very enthusiastic amounts, but I managed to win an auction for this NEW! IN BOX! pair for less than I would buy them new. I now have three pairs of these shoes, in black, cordovan and red. This might indicate some sort of problem, especially since I now think, hey, I don’t have the brown pair.

The accumulated wisdom to share here is: don’t try to take pictures inside at Kelly’s. This is a good adjunct to other life lessons I’ve learned. Don’t drink the beer at Kelly’s, no matter how tempting it may sound. It will be flat. The next one you try, thinking that the first was an outlier, will also be flat. And so on. Also, no matter how hard you wish, you won’t get more than three sweet-potato fries in the pile of fries that comes with your sandwich. Still, it’s not a bad place to celebrate friends defending their dissertations and to watch endless college basketball games. The key here is to accept these limitations, and enjoy yourself despite them.

(I was trying to take a picture of the bright yellow no-trans-fats sign hanging from the ceiling. You can see how well that turned out. Still, I think this picture is interesting in a blurry, accidental kind of way.)

Quite the hailstorm of these “Free Lunch” flyers around, both last week and this week. Of course it’s an incredible deal! Years of credit-card debt in return for a free personal pizza (the Thai chicken model, if you’re nice to the guy in charge) — what could be a more equitable exchange?

Oh well. I haven’t really seen people lined up to take advantage of this offer.

The best part here is the baggie the flyer distributor used to protect this flyer from the rain, the wind, and the other elements. That’s some serious forethought. Creativity has also been deployed in the placement of many of these flyers. Several Ziploc-clad flyers were reported taped down to the sidewalk on Yale, and there have been other sightings of them taped to the ceilings of overhangs at UNM. Tenacity….

I bought these Tintin and Snowy figures in San Francisco, at a fairly pricey shop near Union Square that sells all sorts of goods related to European comic-book characters. More proof, I guess, that good things come from Belgium (other examples? beer. frites.). Here they are, posed on the bookcase in my office at work, next to some books given to me by a faculty member cleaning out their office, and an autographed picture of some old, unknown guitar player. This was a gift from my officemate D. My office becomes more and more of a crap repository the longer I stay in academia. I know few people in my department who don’t have a serious book and paperwork clutter problem. This is how you end up giving random books to grad students innocently passing by in the hallway. Desperate clutter calls for desperate tactics.