Painting

This shows the trails of some specks of color as they emerge from the members of a binary star. The stars attract the specks of color with forces that diminish with the square of the distance: the blue star attracts the specks of red and the red star attracts the specks of blue. No other forces act on the specks of color, but each fades as it moves.

http://www.sevenextraeyes.org/andy-social/binaryjpg.jpg

Reflection

Who else has had this experience?

Sunrise finds you drinking coffee from a teflon-coated saucepan. As the line of coffee slips down, the teflon becomes a mirror, so that in slow stages, line-by-line a beard-man drinking coffee from a saucepan appears, looking back at you. This can prove a moment of sharp realisation.

Greeting passersby

Since March, I've made a point of saying hellow to people on the street. When out walking, if I pass someone, I say, "Hello!" or, "Good afternoon, Sir!". People hate it. They become uncomfortable, as if I've invaded their personal space. Moreover, they resent having to reply. At best, they mumble back the reciprocal greeting as if discharging an irritating obligation. Almost nobody looks pleased to do it.

A Chinese woman to whom I said "good afternoon" flinched and moved over to the extreme margin of the footpath. A Sikh family recited back "good... afternoon... sir" in unison, looking pained. A gent in a sleeveless shirt told me to bugger off, and then quickened his stride. A woman in a purple jumpsuit said "good afternoon to you too!", but her dog pissed on me. A little, rolling fatman at the bus stop said, "hey now?" confused, and then eyed me until I rounded the corner. And a heroin dealer told me he'd found himself, "about to ask you the same thing, mate", which I thought cause for concern.

I've seen people greet passersby in old movies. In those movies, the other person sings back, "Good morning!", or waves over their head. But when I try it, the other person reacts as if I've pulled them over and demanded to see the receipt for their jacket. Has anyone else had this experience?

Letter from the authorities

This tells a story about a letter from the authorities. Please let me know if it doesn't play.

http://www.sevenextraeyes.org/andy-social/unghk.ogg

Funniest thing I've seen

Spring found me ambling down Clayton road with a coffee cup in my hand, in the calm of the middle of the night, when for no reason at all a group of teenagers smashed the front out of the bus shelter across the street.

I caught sight of the ringleader a second before it happened, reeling back with a hammer in both hands. A second later the glass exploded out into the street. I started laughing uncontrollably. Minutes passed before I could breathe again properly. To start with, I enjoyed that they had a hammer. Either they kept one with them in case they saw something gratifying to smash, or else they'd noticed the bus shelter earlier and framed plans to come back later with a hammer. And there existed no reason for them to do it. They couldn't have had a complaint against the people who had built the bus shelter. They did it for no reason at all, and the glass exploded like a grenade into the street.

Coat hangers

In more recent times at the same supermarket, I asked the woman at the front counter if they sold coat hangers. I don't think I asked in any strange way,

"Hi," I said, "do you have coat hangers?"

She didn't look tired or distracted, but something went awry.

"What does it look like?" she asked, now confused.

I started to get that knotting feeling in my stomach; has it happened again?

"A wire triangle with a hook at one corner," I said, "You hang your clothes on it."

She looked at me as if I'd described the Antikythera mechanism.

"No," she said, laughing, "we haven't got anything at all like that!"

I started to think I should just flap home to my cave, when the guy next to me turned and asked me, "Do you just mean coat hangers, mate?"

"Yes," I said.

He turned back to her,

"Do you have coat hangers?" he asked.

"Oh! Coat hangers!" she exclaimed with sudden realisation.

Andysocial

Andysocial records the moments, when in the midst of conversation, I've discovered that I can't communicate. The conversation has cruised along with as much smoothness as you could want, and then I ask something, in what seems to me the plainest possible way, and the other person stares at me with amusement as if I've asked some bizarre question. "Oh, god, has it happened again?" I think. And for a minute, I feel like Oliver Sacks' Anthropologist on Mars. I just can't work out what I need to say.

The problem comes from me. Of course one sometimes catches people tired, paying too little attention or too busy with something else to strain for understanding, but this hasn't occurred just once or twice. It strikes twice a month and my involvement obtrudes as the obvious feature that unifies the occasions. Please help me out. Write a blog comment and tell me what I've done wrong.

Visible details of the scene

When I reached the supermarket, an electrical pole stood burning near the parking lot. Firemen shot water at it while one of them gabbed with a policeman. I asked a security guard, whom I found watching, what had happened and he just reported the visible details of the scene.

"That electrical pole has caught fire," he said, "Firemen have started spraying water on to it. A policeman stands next to them."

When the firemen initiated spraying the water in bursts at the cables he said,

"Now they have started spraying bursts of water on the cables."

As a second fire engine arrived he said,

"Now a second fire engine has arrived."

At that point a squat lady, whom talking seemed to have drawn, rushed up to us and stuck her head under my arm so close she pressed against my ribs.

"Whoooodoooo weeeeeya!" she shouted. "Yeeeeeor! Them peoples cars going to get burned up, burned up! Woooohoooooh ooooheeeee! With the fire electricity! Wheeeeeooooooooooyeeee!"

What happened here? I didn't do anything except to try to talk to someone in public.

Why did the security guy just report information that his interlocutor must already possess? Instead of explaining how the fire started (or speculating about it if he didn't know), he seemed to respond as if I'd administered a test of his eyesight. Help me out; what did I do wrong?

Tradition

Autumn finds me here in Isolation Psychosis, Tennessee: the Inland Station. Here at Heart of Darkness Distilleries they brew pure, bourbon whiskey the old fashioned way. A weathered man hammers the rim on to a barrel, while two extras from the film Deliverance play chequers. In spring, Great Dagon will call them home to the ocean. But for now, they brew pure, bourbon whiskey the old fashioned way and interbreed with Deep Ones, because they know that some traditions remain worth preserving.