In a fit of pique is a phrase I've used, and fairly recently, too!  Probably describing myself canceling my cell phone service or something.  It's funny that we both pondered this word, manta.  We're aligned, and only 3 hours apart!

I have seen sentences on the internet, fairly frequently, that use the wrong spelling (it's a homonym).  As in, Hearing Osama Bin Laden had porn on his computer peaked my interest.  That;'s wrong on so many levels.

snook that biker bar never piqued my interest.  I did like to go to the Rusty Nail, and Someplace Else.

Went to a cocktail party tonight, and tomorrow is an ALL DAY symposium on Saarinen's Miller House - with Steven!  And other designey friends!  Yay for days not scrunched behind my computer!

Oh, and manta the other word I've been thinking about and using lately is accoutrements.  Saying it out loud the first few times was a bit nerve-wracking.  Do you use it?

thats way too posh to say without a smile and wink ;-)

That makes me think of is the phrase 'accoutrements of dope life' from Paula Scher's interview in Helvetica.

paula scher is one of my heroes. so is donna sink and i won't use her real name...mantaray.

so i have come across this mcm house down here in the delta. it was a well designed little jewel box of a home. but, it is some bad shape. looks like a tree branch fell on it as part of the roof is badly damaged. don't know when this happened. there is vizqueen on the roof but, i would bet that there is some serious mold developing in the studs. roof is a goner and i think the entire roof would need to be reframed from the top plate up. anyway, has anyone ever had experience with de molding and if so could you describe the process and the caish money involved?

Slartibartfast  i didn't realize you were also Philarch

hi all, one last wekeend of working and then done. tryign to get my entry for a second Pecha Kucha finalized also.

vado - from what I understand typically they come in and spray some kind of bleach solution on hard surfaces and will sand the studs down or completely replace them.  I don't know about cost, but I hear it's kind of expensive and you don't want to do it yourself.

thanks.

Careful Nam, there is also archiphil, and there was mass confusion a while back.

and architphil now goes by his real name...

I'm totally confused.  Did vado just call me mantaray?!

Another lovely word: albeit.

OK, should I start this thread or not: Deborah Berke is absolutely delightful and lovely in person and her work is lovely and amazing too.  Discuss.

I guess there's not much to say beyond the thread title.  I could explain how I had lunch with Deborah and Steven Ward today and it was wonderful in every way?

what? Really? You had lunch with Steven Ward... uhm I mean Deborah Berke?

Hi all... it's another long weekend here. Labour Day.... Manta, Donna the words you mentioned are popular words in my lexicon.. I'm fancy like that. Though the use of the word pique to explain irritation has rarely if ever left these lips. I remembered watching some catwalk show in the late 90s on the Fashion Channel.... yes there was a channel for that... and Karl Lagerfeld spoke about the folds and fenestration of the dress... I popped my head up expecting to see windows... sadly there were none

Yup. I changed my name a while ago from philarch to slarti (same account, different display name), but now that architphil is no longer going by that I figured I could change it back. but wait there is an archiphil?  Bah.

Taking another ARE next week... if we're all still around after "the end of the world" that is.

So, just when I thought I could go 12 hours without something terrible happening... I've come to learn that my walls are filled with bees.

So your house buzzes?

Just drove Deborah Berke to the airport and honestly she's the most lovely, smart, fun person, dedicated to her work, generous in conversation, just all around delightful.  I'm glad to have met her before we all get raptureized today!

Good lord you guys I leave for Italy in one week.  I have way too much to do before then!

thanks for a fun day yesterday, donna. glad it didn't end up being work for you. 

the symposium to which donna invited me was wonderful - a full day of geeking out about a fabulous saarinen house that is just being opened to the public! i don't know that i've attended an event before in which recognized designers talked about - not their own work - but their admiration of the work of other designers. it was pretty special.

Man, I would love to be described like that. And James, bees can smell, but I bet they're decent insulation, and they make honey!

That's rough, JJR. Bees? You have to call a specialist, a bee coaxer for that, they can lure them out. That happened to my friend last spring.

It was nice knowing all of you. See you in the afterlife! Unless somehow there is a "mathematical error" in the prophesy and we are all blessed with more time on this lovely earth!

i'm sort of curious about the mechanism for this thing. are all of the saved going to be sucked up to heaven like in a great big vacuum cleaner? 

seems to me that 168 days down here with those of us who are left behind could be pretty fun.

AND, though i can only imagine what a post-christian politics will look like in america, i think i might like it! 

"i can only imagine what a post-christian politics will look like in america, i think i might like it!"

i KNOW that i would LOVE it...

i've been hanging out / working with linda taalman for the past two days (she's in philly to brainstorm on a new book project with the prof. that i'm a research assistant for this summer) and much like donna's description of deborah berke, linda is a "lovely, smart, fun person, dedicated to her work, generous in conversation, just all around delightful."

The rapture starts at 6 pm local time right? Jump, since you're ahead of us, can you let us know if anything happens? Thanks.

So your house buzzes?

I have not found the hive in question. I have found bee corpses and live bees everywhere inside. They seem especially fond of my laptop.

I'm with you Philip and Steven!

seems we did not explode Sarah.  might not notice though, since there are not many Christians in this part of the world.  Korea could be depopulated.

just had another earthquake as i am writing.  maybe that is a sign?

As the corner Italian store owner in my old Brooklyn neighborhood used to say:

"Rapture this....."

So, just when I thought I could go 12 hours without something terrible happening... I've come to learn that my walls are filled with bees.

Are you sure they're not locusts?  :-)

no donna he meant that he wasn't going to reveal my name :-)  thank you, vado, that was very sweet of you to say!

I can't say I use the word accoutrements - I tend to stay away from French cognates in English due to some previous unfortunate reactions on the part of my conversation partners. 

As a side note... and not to single out the eminent Mr. Ward whom I deeply respect... but I am very tired of people (in general) using "christian" as a shorthand when really they mean to say something more like "far-right proto-fascists".  These people may call themselves christian, but truly christian they are not, and due to the unfortunate fact that there is no other way yet devised to differentiate oneself from them if one happens to actually be christian... well, one gets a bad rap by association.  

I'm just tired of reading casually intolerant anti-christian stuff everywhere.  Must we sink to the level of the fake-christos? (aka the far-right-proto-fascists, or F.R.P.F.s).  Can't we hold ourselves to a standard of more complex thought?  Can we be specific about what we abhor in the F.R.P.F.s without casually indicting an entire group of loving folks who completely disagree with them, and agree with you? 

I am that rare breed around these parts, a christian, and i happen to also be a socialist (an actual one, who actually votes that way), and I hold a number of views that are VASTLY different from the Hater Brigade currently sullying the name of christians everywhere.  Must I not only watch my country slip into their vile chokehold, but watch my identity go that way as well?

i think it may be a regional difference, manta, and i'm sorry. down here on the buckle of the bible belt the religious and the political are pretty darn close! 

besides, i wasn't really only talking about the freaks (which is less unwieldy than f.r.p.f.s). presumably every self-identified christian would have been rapted, right? sure, some reasonable people would be sucked up, but the number of freaks would go to zero! thus the "post-christian" comment.

jump, your earthquake and our strange yellow-sky thunderstorm = some things mr camping can surely use to save face. he'll have his people cataloging every natural disturbance around the globe!

lol prolly so steven.

i'm from canadian version of bible belt.  agree with steven about politics and religion, though i think more complicated than america seems to be (at least in the news)

it is a pity that christianity is now seen as a religion of extremists just as much as islam is.  scratch that, it is a pity that ANY religion is seen as the domain of extremism.

i was talking about the rapture thing to me mum and she thought it was all silly because no man can know when the rapture will come.  an interesting answer.

omg Donna, I used to stare at Bongo's Dream House for hours as a kid - just absorbed and enraptured by all its ins and outs!  I haven't thought of that thing in years!  Wow, flashback.

Maybe it is a regional difference, I don't know; but here's a thought -

Whenever you're about to say something about christos in general, try replacing the word "christian" with "muslim" or "jew".  Would you still say what you were about to say?

AND, though i can only imagine what a post-muslim politics will look like in america, i think i might like it!

AND, though i can only imagine what a post-jew politics will look like in america, i think i might like it!

Sounds a little iffy now, eh?  I understand that many self-labeling "christians" have caused harm and hurt over the years and there are many vile bigots labelling themselves as such that are wreaking havoc in our politics currently.  But can we not condemn them as extremists without condemning an entire group of people who abhor them same as you do?  We're very careful not to do this when talking about muslims - instead saying "extremest" or "jihadist" muslims - and same for jews - saying "militant zionist".  Can we not take the same care when condemning our own local extremist fanatics?

I know this is a little like a white man claiming racism - people will want to scoff and say "well really, you've been on top for millennia, how dare you try to claim discrimination now" - but the fact of the matter is that we should be watchful and careful about bigotted language and hurtful sweeping generalizations wherever they come from - including our own mouths.  I don't intend to be provocative, or condemnatory, but I would like to provoke a little more thoughtfulness on our part about what we say.

I have been thinking about this for a long time and I have never felt comfortable enough to speak up.  So hopefully you all won't mind me speaking from the heart.  Again, I don't mean to call you out, Steven - I have seen much more egregious examples over the years around here - but I suppose I only finally worked up the courage to speak and your comment, though mild, happens to be the most recent.

That's why I like the term christianist so much - combination of christian and extremist, and implying that christian views have been perverted somehow.

tornado sirens just went off - no correlation with the end of the world, just normal spring-time weather in minnesota.

it's christian views that permeate american politics, often, and not necessarily extreme ones. there has, so far, been nothing in the muslim or jewish faiths that rises to the level of damage to our internal discourse. 

i agree that there are exceptions, manta, but it's still the generally christian which i resent at this point in my life. the freaks are more universally recognized, but the christian bias is what's causing us to drift in alarming directions. i'm sorry. 

my discrimination - and i agree that's what it is - isn't based on what someone believes as much as the effect those beliefs have when foisted on the culture at large. if the unitarians weren't a nearly negligible minority, if there were more christians who limited their faith to the 'greatest of these...' and shed the rest, maybe i'd see things differently.

Donna, there's two phrases that exist that pretty much describe that— evangelists and hard-liner Christians. Evangelism is a pretty apt word because there's evangelists in almost all variations in Christianity. What I do find mildly interesting is the correlation between Eastern Orthodoxy and Judaism. Both of which are pretty steadfast regarding proselytism— neither actively or even passively tries to convert others.

One other interesting note regarding the persecution of Jews and early Christians happened approximately around the time of the writing of the gospels and the foundation of Christianity. Circa 120, Hadrian banned proselytism or the act of conversion by religious 'cults.' Interestingly enough, Christianity and Judaism did have protected status (including rights to rule of their own domains) within the Roman empire. But the conflicts and incompatibility of the two eroded what was an amicable relationship.

Oddly enough, I would say that the particular person who really put Christianity in 'hot water' was Paul. This becomes particularly apparent in 1 Corinthians. There's some hint here at the difficulties of founding a Christian church— albeit this was about 18 years prior to the first persecution of the Christians under Nero. So, the religion had already become problematic in an empire known for its pluralist and cosmopolitan nature.

Most Romans couldn't even tell the difference between Judaism and Christianity. It was assumed the Jesus was a more or less insignificant arguing point in two seemingly identical religions. However, Paul took it a little too far while in Corinth. 1 Corinthians reads like a political manifesto— allegiance to God, church to collect 'taxes,' and mob punishment. You can see where the Government of Rome might take exception to this. Not to mention, the individuals supporting Paul at the time were not common people.

That's why I say it's charged— Christians see unfair persecution for their beliefs while Romans see a potentially threatening cult blurring the lines between civility in  governance.

"the christian bias is what's causing us to drift in alarming directions. i'm sorry"

this is like saying that lack of morals is the primary reason this country is failing

both statements are less than accurate and show the bias of the observer.

Yes, the observer has a bias. As acknowledged.

hello all,

after 20 days on I had today and have tomorrow off. Trying to catch up on correspondence and writing.

Ignorance (often willful), greed, and desire for power/control are what's causing us to drift in alarming directions.  Claiming that this is "christian bias" is just as reactionary and reductive as those who claim that Obama is a socialist and that socialists and unions are ruining this country.

Most of the people who support the power-hungry, greedy pigs who exploit the ignorance of the poor and middle-class in the name of lip-service to "real american values" haven't read the bible themselves and have no idea of what it even says, nor do they make any attempt to live the life it proscribes.  You know as well as anyone does that these people ignorantly subscribe to a party that exploits them in favor of more power and more money.  How can you look at politics today and find the (supposed) christian values to blame?  Greed and selfishness are to blame.  Look at Paul Ryan, look at the governor of Wisconsin, look at GE's tax returns, look at Big Pharma & the deal Obama cut with them, look at the extraordinary rise in the descrepancy between rich and poor, look at the collapse of the mortgage industry - all this, all and more for the interests of the rich over the poor.  I'm sorry but the christians are not your problem, the "every man for himself", "I must amass as much wealth and power as possible before they put in in the ground" is the problem.  We used to have fail-safes against those people but they've infiltrated every little bit of govt now and we're screwed.  They are changing their own laws to protect their actions - rewriting our society out from under us.  Citizens United?  Fuck that shit.  There's your problem.  The ignorant, supposed "christians" are just pawns.  I don't like them any more than you do but there are bigger fish to fry.

I'm about half a page behind with TC, but Donna, I'm glad that other people recognize that in Deborah. I spent approximately a week working with her at Ghost Lab and she was fantastic. That was a great summer.

nicely said manta.  i agree. my biases align with steven though.  it is all just wonky complicated.  that said, i really don't like the way religion is used in politics in usa or canada.  it is really intrusive and hurtful when it doesn't need to be, and so many will just accept it because of the packaging. 

am sure it will all change in another 15 years. this stuff is cyclical.  as long as we don't become a theocracy ;-)

Well said manta.  BTW - have you read Infidel?  I'm about 100 pages in and I have a hard time putting it down, even when my eyes can barely stay open from exhaustion.

I have some of those crazy christians in my family, the kind who allege that Obama is muslim who is working from the inside to destroy the US. We are holding off having another family reunion until further notice. The last time we all got together there were not-so-nice-words exchanged.

Donna, well said!

Abram locked my iphone.  I had to do a full restore to unlock it, and in the process lost all my contacts, dates, photos, and even some apps.  I think the world is indeed coming to an end.

What a crappy day.

work seems to have picked up around here... anyone else notice an uptick?

Steven, manta, jump: my perspective is that what is wrong is that people are self-centered. Not just in the greedy money-and-power-grubbing way that manta describes, but the worrisome thing to me is the willingness of most people to turn their personal beliefs into legislation that forces other people to live the way they do. You're Christian? ok, why not. Don't make me be one. And not making me go to church and call myself a Christian only goes so far, if your'e legislating Christian values.

i guess it is about feeling weak, erin.  somehow gayness and other religions and foreign-inity scare enough people that laws are made to keep those things out.  christians are in power but feel threatened on all sides so they lash out.     maybe...pop psychology is not so easy to check up on, but i'll go with it for now.

i am totally on the edge of over-worked lately  i need at least an 8 day week.  where can i order one?

Sarah, sorry to hear about your phone.  That's a bummer.  Not to make light of it, but maybe you should post it on Shit My Kids Ruined?