More is Less Sometimes

I have three blogs now. Journals, whatever. I'm kind of old school. I guess they are blogs because I use the software instead of making HTML and uploading it myself. I like the dating, labels, tools. Although sometimes I wish I'd chosen WordPress because they seem to have a little calendar widget that is cool. But I digress. And sometimes digressions make things lose their punch. More is less.

Anyway. Besides this rather specialized journal (wherein we examine what happens when we are thinking about something else) I have my classic blah, blah, blah this is my life in too many sentences: The Visible Woman. And my spousal unit really wanted to join the Photo-a-Day family. So we started Austin, Texas Daily Photo. Now we have sleepy conversations of a morning, as we did today.

"Do you want me to put up a picture or do you want to do it?"

He returned an uncaffeinated, puzzled look.

"Austin Daily Photo."

"Oh. I wanted to put up a picture of the Avenue B," says he. (The link is to his original discussion of that place on our old WEB page.

"OK," says I. And I wonder if I will post anything on another space.

So that's where the car comes in. I posted some art cars on the daily photo: here and here. Well one was a truck. Still. I was flipping through photos on the computer and came up with the one shown here. I could 'save' it and exhibit in on the Photo-a-Day site. I specifically set ground rules there that the photos didn't need to be particularly current. (Although I'd try to identify the when and where. This one is from December 2005. Downtown on Second Street.) But I decided to show it here. Because it so clearly illustrates my 'more is less' theme of the day. Notice they had to (or accidentally) painted over a bumper sticker. Change of Heart? Too exuberant with the paint? Notice that the license plate got a bit of paint. That might be a problem, too. See here.

Gee I seem to have come up with a bunch of links for this puppy. So if you aren't convinced that this post just has too many words in service of its thought (more or less) then you are now reeling from following all those links. Do you do that? Do you have ADD? Me, too.

Not Quite Imploded

Today the shell of a building the Intel Corporation stopped building in 2001 in downtown Austin was imploded. When this concrete and rebar structure was being built there was a downtown euphoria. That evaporated and later reignited. This shell sat awaiting its fate. Dancers danced (and rapelled) on it. People mocked it.

We got up early this morning and stood around downtown with hundreds of others for an hour until the booms went off. Folks drifted by with signs indicating 9/11 conspiracies. A policeman with a bullhorn made an announcement that no one understood. Marc Katz came by and with no amplification said: "Listen up folks! Intel Imploses, but, I gotta tell you: Katz's Never Closes!"

There were a few false alarms with sirens. Or maybe they were preliminary warnings. The workers started moving away and water cannons started blasting away.

Finally big booms, some flashes, more booms, dust. Then you'd expect to see an after picture that was nothing much to look at. But maybe it's just me or did this not work? The officials say the parts left standing "was as expected" according to local News 8 Austin. But to me it looks like something that might not have been as intended. The part remaining shown in the bottom picture well after the collapse was complete and some dust was settled looks like it might be hard to demolish. But what do I know? See my you tube video for all the noise.

Still...when you start building something this isn't the end you imagine. In the top (before) picture you can see buildings under construction on the left and right of the shell. The ten or eleven story one to the right is, in fact, a condo tower we hope to live in one day.