June 2010 Archives

This is not a Muppet. No, this is a very young Eastern Phoebe, born to the clan of them (affectionately known as the Renfields for their insect-eating habits) that has occupied the nest atop the light fixture in our carport for the last three summers.

Say hi to the nice people, Baby Renfield. And don't sign anything Disney offers you until we go over the fine print with our lawyers.



This is also not a Muppet. It is a wicked, evil potato of indeterminate age that Kelly discovered during its attempt to roll away under the pantry shelf in an insane bid for freedom.

You have the right to remain silent, Bad Potato.




12:24 AM

I've got the day off--no responsibility for ferrying anyone anywhere, entertaining any guests, running any errands, or getting anything in particular accomplished. I'm nursing a slightly sore right shoulder, either from overdoing the upper-body work at the gym yesterday or just sleeping on the thing badly, but other than that, I'm pretty much free from complaints.

Naturally, this gives me time to consider the issue of coffee.

I'm a coffee drinker. Hell, in any realistic sense I'm a coffee addict. I want/need multiple cups of coffee every day, and I typically put away three or four. I get other caffeine, typically from iced tea (unsweetened) and diet colas (which I'm trying hard to kick), but the vast majority of my caffeine intake comes through coffee. During the work year, I may get a cup at home, but the majority is the industrial-grade stuff supplied by the Woodberry food services department; it's caffeinated, and if you make it right it's a reasonable shade of brown, but that's about all there is to say for it. It's fuel, nothing more, nothing less.

It's not an addiction I worry much about, though, because I know I can kick it. I know this because I had to. Back in 2005, the requirements for the Outward Bound course I took included breaking any addiction to substances that would be unavailable in the woods. These substances included tobacco (no problem) and caffeine (uh-oh). I wasn't stupid enough to go cold turkey, which would have resulted in pounding headaches and a general decline in quality of life, but as soon as exams were over, I started weaning myself. For one week, I limited myself to two cups of coffee a day; for the next week, I was down to ONE cup a day; the week after that I drank only decaf--getting trace amounts of caffeine, I know, but in effect cutting myself off. Once I made it to Asheville, I was ready to face the worst nature could throw at me--forty-five-minute lightning drills, rattlesnakes, three straight days of rain--nothing could be any harder than going without coffee, right?

I'm not a coffee snob, though. I couldn't tell you the difference between a latte and a venti, or even if they're comparable. (I think one is a size.) I'm fond of cappuccino, certainly, and will recommend the Dante Trattoria just across the Arno from downtown Florence as the place to get the best one you'll ever taste, but I've seen no real need to get snooty with labels or roasts or other such games of coffee provenance. I mean, jeez, if I wanted to do that kind of crap, I'd drink wine. The standard brew at our house is totally declasse: Eight O'Clock Blend, cheap and right there on the shelf at Food Lion. Heck, it's usually the hazelnut flavor, too, which totally freaks out the purists.

Oh, I'll experiment. I'll give most sorts of coffees a whirl now and again, just to see if there's anything new and good out there. Free-trade and shade-grown beans are the ones I sample most often, since I do have a long-standing concern about neotropical migrant species. I've tried roasts from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Colombia, you name it. I've sampled the Kona coast's wares, and on several occasions have been the recipient of the legendary Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. It's nice for a change, but there's nothing I've tried that has made me sit up and say, "Right--that's what I'm drinking from now on."

At least, not until recently.

The loss of our local coffee shop, Not the Same Old Grind, has forced me to travel a few miles to get the same kind of ambience--you know, the one where there are fresh scones, and Putuyamo world music CDs, and copies of the Sunday Post and the NYTBR and a couple of chess boards, but most people seem to be working on their laptops, writing novels about the alienation of the individual in an age of incessant social media intrusion. But that's what I like, at least sometimes, so I'll haul my laptop to Culpeper for a fresh scone and a big ol' mug o' java at the Raven's Brew coffee shop. Raven's Brew offers a variety of coffees under the slogan "The Last Legal High," and the coffees all featuring unusual and amusing names, which is always a good way to get my attention: the exotically unconventional Dharma Beans... the alluringly aboriginal Skookum... the mythically resonant Wicked Wolf... the cheekily irreverent Resurrection Blend... and the uniquely alarming Three Peckered Billy Goat.

But the brew whose beans have me rethinking my allegiance to Eight O'Clock Hazelnut Flavor? It's named for a stretch of water off the Aleutian Islands (not that far from Raven's Brew HQ in southeastern Alaska), and it comes with a slogan guaranteed to appeal to the undercaffeinated: Deadman's Reach.

I'm not saying I'll be giving up the Eight O'Clock, since for one thing Deadman's Reach runs about twice the price, at $12.99 a pound, but I'm giving serious thought to laying up a supply of DMR for those occasions when I've got time to actually enjoy my coffee, as opposed to those when I'm streaking out the door to work.


10:15 AM

No, here at petercashwell.com world headquarters, I don't sit around saying "Cashwell Cashwell Cashwell" a la John Malkovich, but I do think about my name frequently. This may or may not be healthy, I suppose, since it does require a big dish of self-absorption, but what's the point of blogging if not self-absorption?

My first name has of course been the subject of other entries here, and not just because it's a common synonym for "penis." My last name I haven't gotten into as much, partly because it's just a little odd. And I mean that "just a little." It's one letter away from "Caswell," a far more common surname, especially in North Carolina, whose first governor was Richard Caswell, and which today boasts a Caswell County. But "Caswell" is common outside NC as well; Google turns up 2.86 million hits for it, while "Cashwell" produces a much more modest 97,000. (Note: the online journal you're reading is the #6 result for Cashwell, just behind Cashwell Appliance Parts and Elizabeth Cashwell Elementary School, both in Fayetteville, NC.)

Indeed, I realized how common the name "Caswell" was until I picked up a copy of Thunder Bunny #1 and found that the anthropomorphic rabbit's secret identity was young Bobby Caswell.

But "Cashwell" still isn't all that weird a name. It's decidedly simple, in some ways, being a portmanteau of two common words, and it's extremely easy to pronounce, assuming you notice the "h." It's still misunderstood by people on the phone, and people who haven't looked at it carefully will sometimes read it as Caldwell, Carswell, or even Cashman--no "Cartman" yet, thank god--but if you spell it for an English speaker, odds are good that it'll be pronounced correctly thereafter. I'm grateful that I don't spend enormous chunks of my life correcting people, the way my colleagues Jay Gnanadoss and Mike Szydlowski do, but I'm also kind of glad to be my own person, nominally speaking.

It's not necessarily bad to share a name, mind you. Kelly has discovered a number of other Kelly Daltons out there, some of whom are male, and at least one of whom is a bass player in a punk band. On the other hand, I pity my old Chapel Hillian comrade Mike Brown, who's a talented muralist from way back:





The poor guy has all this artistic ability and civic pride, but he has to share a name with not only the fired coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, but the incompetent GM of the Cincinnati Bengals AND the legendarily incompetent Mike "Heckuva Job, Brownie" Brown of Bush's FEMA. How is that fair?

Anyway, I got to thinking about the whole name business by reading this piece by Ezra Klein, a blogger whose name recognition is a wee bit greater than my own, after coming across the link to it in the blog of Matthew Yglesias, another BWNRIAWBGTMO. The key question was why both Klein and Yglesias blog under their own names, rather than naming the blog something catchy, like Obsidian Wings, or Crooked Timber, or Whatever. I've certainly enjoyed reading all three of those blogs over the years, but I've so far ignored the temptation to provide a snappy title for my own blog. I supposed there are obvious candidates:

Verbing
Wanton Freaks (a line from Keats that I used as a chapter title in TV2B; I still love it)
PC on PC
The Verb 'To Blog'

Or I could get a bit more creative and/or obscure:

84,000 Different Delusions (song title by Shawn Colvin from he wonderful album A Few Small Repairs)
A Fish in the Percolator (a favorite nonsensical line from Twin Peaks)
Just Lines on Paper (R. Crumb's famously dismissive comment about the medium of comics)
This Life Is for Squirrels (a lyric from Pogo's Walt Kelly)


7:03 AM