Author: Derek Mueller

52 Givers

/ Derek Mueller

For Rhetsy, a five2 list of givers whose giving has thinned.

  1. Zenmaster is all out of meditations to give.
  2. Anesthesiologist is all out of sedatives to give.
  3. Basketball referee is all out of whistle blows to give.
  4. Late-season bee is all out of pollinations to give.
  5. Higher ed administrator is all out of tuition hikes to give.
  6. Maple tree is all out of helicopter seeds to give.
  7. Flock of geese on campus sidewalk is all out of bird shits to give.
  8. Pancake maker is all out of spatula turns to give.
  9. Tar pit mastodon is all out of valiant but fruitless struggles to give.
  10. Restauranteur is all out of pickle chips from a big can to give.
  11. Airline pilot is all out of seatbelt sign illuminations to give.
  12. Owner of infant pet monkey is all out of diaper changes to give.
  13. Dry cleaner is all out of wrinkle steamings to give.
  14. Dental hygienist is all out of overzealous flossings to give.
  15. Honorary first-pitch thrower is all out of effortful tosses to give.
  16. Mixologist is all out of Maraschino cherry juice to give.
  17. Once-angry bus driver is all out of resting stern-face horn honks to give.
  18. Dishwasher is all out of soap suds to give.
  19. Local gardener is all out of weed pulls to give.
  20. Hernia repair surgeon is all out of hernia repairs to give.
  21. Bored, lazy rhetor is all out of bawdy tropes to give.
  22. Medical marijuana dispensary desk clerk is all out of open-late snack shop directions to give.
  23. Freshly poured cement vandal is all out of anonymous handprints to give.
  24. Donut chef is all out of old-fashioned glazes to give.
  25. Listmaker is all out of ordered list items to give.

I realize the call invited lists of five; this one, rules tweaked, turned out five-squarish because there are just too many givers giving in the world.

“Your Head Will Pop Off”

/ Derek Mueller

Feedlied across this snapshot of John Feathers’ vast collection of maps, city guides (mostly from Los Angeles), and pamphlets–an innocuous archive or impressive case of cartographic hoarding, I don’t know. The archive, its unusual ordinariness, its scale, its discovery, all of this is interesting, or passingly so for map enthusiasts, the sharpest thumbtack of this piece for my thinking is from the video, the note near the end about the memorial function of maps, their capacity for temporal-affective relocation, their dormant-until-brightly-lit teleportation function: when-where, an interlacing of spacetime. After the pragmatic, what do maps want more than this?

Michigan Beer Fest

/ Derek Mueller / 1 Comment

Along with @stevendkrause, I attended the Michigan Beer Fest on Friday evening in Ypsi’s Riverside Park. Sold out venue opened at 5 p.m. The line looked like this from the bridge over the Huron River, near Depot Town.

Riverside Park Opening Line

For thirty-five bucks, you get a five ounce cup and a plastic baggy with fifteen tokens, each good for a three ounce sample. They provide a map, but it’s an ambling scene, more wandering than purposefully itinerant. The only factors affecting my thinking as we went in were 1) need to get some food, 2) want to stop by Original Gravity’s booth, 3) prefer IPAs, and 4) venue closes at 9 p.m. I’m not so excited about the wildest experimental brews, but I sought to intermix the stuff I thought I would like with the stuff that was funky and offbeat. Here’s the list:

  1. Rad 2 the Max from Pike 51 (top three of the night)
  2. Belgian Saison from Bob’s Brewery (came with bratwurst)
  3. Reclamation IPA from Ore Dock, only representative from UP (forgettable flavor)
  4. Root Down Ginger Beer from Original Gravity, Milan, MI
  5. Coconut Cream Ale, 51 North, Lake Orion (terrible; coconut cream pie and bud light, as if sipped from Hawaiian Tropics bottle)
  6. Sassafras Dark Day IPA from Olde peninsula in Kalamazoo (odd vanilla scent; sassafras note, pleasant)
  7. Cheboygan Brewing Co, Blood Orange Honey (too fruity for me; light and summery)
  8. Mistress Jades Hemp Ale, Sherwood (p good)
  9. Spiney Norman IPA, Right Brain Brewery, Traverse City, MI, (top three of the night; a good, hoppy IPA)
  10. Also tried Mangalista Pig Porter from Right Brain (bacon; brewed with pig heads; sip is plenty)
  11. Ol’ Dale, Mountain Town Brewery, Mt. Pleasant
  12. Twice Licked Kitty from Rupert’s Brew House
  13. 4C’z Slam IPA from Farmington Brewing Co. (never again)
  14. Low End Theory black IPA, Batch Brewing Company
  15. Barrelman English IPA from Shorts
  16. Hop in Yer Rye from Saugatuck Brewing Co. (top three of the night)
  17. Figpa IPA from Dark Horse variety station

Not much else to add, besides these photos:

Brewed in Mt. Pleasant

Hippie Drum-Bagpipe Band

Variations on Lovingkindness Meditation

/ Derek Mueller

May you be happy.
May you be well.
May you be safe.
May you live with ease.

May you drink whiskey.
May you have ice.
May you dream sweetly.
May you walk without pain.

May your headphones stay in.
May Pandora surprise you.
May mosquitos prefer your neighbor.
May stars above pierce cloud cover.

May Comcast customer service be serviceable.
Oh, you’re still on hold?
May your heart be lovingkind capacious-enough for programmers of phone bots.
May there still be ice cream in your freezer.

May the antibiotics do their thing.
May your inbox empty.
May we meet again.
But not too soon.

May you get the ratio of ketchup and mustard exactly right.
May your hearing notice what are those bullfrogs?
May your breath fall steady and centered.
May your mind’s fog clear to begin again.

Overlooking

/ Derek Mueller

I thought of a dream related by Leibniz, in which he found himself at a great height overlooking the world–with provinces, towns, lakes, fields, villages, hamlets, all spread beneath him. If he wished to see a single person–a peasant tilling, an old woman washing clothes–he had only to direct and concentrate his gaze: “I needed no telescope except my attention.”

Oliver Sacks, “Bull on a Mountain,” from A Leg to Stand On

1977

/ Derek Mueller

1977. The galvanized skirting. Needing a haircut. Windows plastic-sealed; one open. Bib overalls. Mid-Michigan sand-yard, burrs and ant lions. A galloping form-molded plastic horse, wind-ridden, the gaping, ragged hole in its side (BB gun blasted?) blocked from view. And that sweet puppy whose name I don’t remember, a short-lived friend too tightly squeezed, only ever half-recalled in faded family lore as having been poisoned off by neighbors who rented the next trailer over. An almost of rural childhood. #tbt

Alt Bracketdemic Careen

/ Derek Mueller

Time for the EWM Yahoo! NCAA men’s basketball tournament pick’em – 12th annual. Like last year, we’re using Fibonacci scoring (2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21). Everyone is welcome to join this pool, which will include some of the surest, most over-confident pickers of all time. There’s no time for worrying your picks, no time for calling your fortune teller, reading your horoscope, or consulting your constellations. Sign up! Free, free, FREE to you: join this year’s group on Yahoo!,
Alt Bracketdemic Careen (ID#23161). If you have questions, knee me gently in the sternum with an email at dmueller at earthwidemoth.com. Invite your friends, frienemies, faux-frenemies, neighbors, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, bots, posthuman colleagues, hystericists, bracketoricians, Jimmie Johns addicts, discount tattoo artists, children at the bus stop, etc. The group has space for the next 49 who sign up. Pride-ish stakes: reputations are made (and ground to coarse dust) right here.


Yahoo! Tournament Pick’em
Group: Alt Bracketdemic Careen (ID# 23161)
“Makes no difference to us what you studied in college.”

Firm up your selections any time between the selection show on Sunday evening, March 15, and 1:00 a.m. EDT on March 19.