machination.org

Christmas is the only time my wife lets me pipe jazz over the household Sonos without objection. I make a playlist and sneak in some things that aren’t on swinging Xmas streams—sometimes tracks that aren’t at all seasonal.

Or I let SomaFM do it for me—they love to play.

The spookiest thing about my son’s Halloween costume—a monster truck—is the carbon footprint of both the imagined thing, and the construction of the costume itself (so much plastic—but we are re-using a cousin’s costume, so there’s that).

It is, literally, an electric powered thing with a battery pack to light-up the headlights and simulate engine revving noises.

We’ll have fun tonight tearing up and down the sidewalks tongiht during this seemingly (and increasingly) rare reprieve where the weather is appropriately seasonal.

Happy Halloween and welcome to Samhain!

Maybe someday I will again travel solo (and not for work). As it stands, it’s before dawn in Seattle. I am “awake” with my very East Coast time-zoned toddler watching the nth episode of Super Kitties. This has been true for a while already this morning. And sure, I’m still grateful if bleary-eyed.

I believe in truth and reconciliation, full accountability of each and every one of those with power or who exercise violence, and in a zero state solution.

Maybe someday we’ll learn.

On what little patch of Earth will be left that we hope to sustain.

The LEGO bricks are still on the floor this morning. This is a compliance failure and an enforcement failure. I fetched the child’s first yogurt of the morning and issued a warning.

“LEGO that doesn’t get picked up gets sucked up into the vacuum cleaner!” It just happens. I’m not trying to do it. I just can’t guarantee that if you don’t put your LEGO back that we can get all of your LEGO back. That’s your job, son.

A gasp and then a shrug of denial. Quick, change the subject! “Daddy, can I watch some TV?”

I snag the Apple TV remote, waking the device, and notice that Disney+ is already launched. “How about some Bluey?”

The child accedes and the episode already queued up is entitled “Housework.” Karma.

As with all Bluey episodes, whether or not the episode is substantially focused on the topic in the title is kind of beside the point. To oversimplify: Bluey and Bingo are asked to participate in housecleaning—see, child, they have to do it too—and ultimately distract their parents with their silly walks which they then teach their parents. (And ultimately everyone does their fair share of housework. I try not to compare that to us.)

And then I see it, the crucial evidence: a knobby plastic brick in the vacuum cleaner Bluey’s Dad is running! (Rewind. Freeze frame.) There, kid. Consequences are everywhere.

A solemn nod. And then he dove back into his own LEGO pile.

It is time to go to school.

I will pick up the LEGO today when I do all the housecleaning by myself on my island of solitude and LEGO and who the hell knows what else is underfoot?

I have forgotten, if I ever knew, about how coffee rings form. And Google sucks.

Nearly every morning I pour myself a cup of coffee. Hot, iced, whatever — into a clean vessel, a mug or glass, often straight from the dishwasher having been run the night before. Every time (or every time I think to look) there is instantly a small ring puddle, a footprint of the vessel, on the counter.

I did not spill.

I am not including times when I spill, those times when there’s a splash that hits the counter or when I miss more closely and some hits the rim and flows down the side. You can see it when it happens, and there’s other trace evidence — spatter, traces of rivulet. You might even hear unexpected sounds of unexpected impacts if you’re otherwise attentive in a quiet setting.

I’m supposing some minor mystery of science on which much has been said. One that I am sure I was taught about by Mr. Hall in my 8th Grade Science class (mostly a physics class, where, if nothing else it seemed everything was fair game for a Newtonian force vector diagram).

Off to Google.

The Google results are shit.

The only thing close to an appropriate result is a Quora thread, where someone asks the same thing I am asking and everyone seems to suggest he actually spilled and didn’t know it. Or there was a hairline fracture in his mug. I know I didn’t spill. And I use a wide variety of vessels, none (let alone all) have a hairline fracture. Pigfucker Quora trolls are gaslighting this poor man and me.

There’s some seemingly bullshit answer about condensation, but water from the air would condense on the outside when I have a cold drink. Not coffee. And not with a hot drink in a cold room.

There are a lot of other interesting articles, adjacent but still seemingly irrelevant, about the actual nature of the coffee ring itself: how it’s thicker at the edges and capillary flow and evaporation being the cause. Fine. Many of them specifically suppose one spilled their coffee or describe the effect on the inside of a coffee mug. (Some allege an impact on flavor and enjoyment? I did not check to see if these web sites also had guidance on which crystal to deploy next to my coffee maker or to pair with my eggs.)

Many of these articles seem to appear around the same time as each other because some scientific paper on capillary flow came out or something (I don’t know, I didn’t go that far down the rabbit hole). They have headlines like, “Ever wonder why spilled coffee dries to leave a ring?”

NO! I don’t spill my goddam coffee. I’m wondering how the coffee got there in the first fucking place and I don’t wonder about the actual nature of the ring left behind I always intuited it was something like a capillary effect without so many words Jesus fucking Christ.

Breathe.

I don’t know, maybe I spilled my coffee.

Far up the river, 22 years ago, daydreaming and looking out the window “that’s not how you land at Albany,” or a thought to that effect.

Well that is not where it landed.

I will not forget that, and all the hell that ensued that day and for decades to come. It isn’t over.