Very true. I’ve sailed on U.S. flag ships heading to Asia, and that is the case: Mostly empties.
Chiz! The first half is pretty humorous, but the latter part tailspins into grimness. A very honest portrayal of a sailor’s life. B. Traven did sail as a merchant seaman.
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The animal skins: rawhide. Stinking, spooge-leaking, fly-attracking containers full of rawhide.
One of my favorite scenes in all of Kipling is in The Light That Failed, where a painter, asked about his best work ever, says it was on a bulkhead of a decrepit tramp steamer. Here’s an excerpt from chapter 8, the books available on Gutenberg.org.
I went into the lower deck, and did my picture on the port side as far forward in her as I could go. There was some brown paint and some green paint that they used for the boats, and some black paint for ironwork, and that was all I had."
“The passengers must have thought you mad.”
“There was only one, and it was a woman; but it gave me the notion of my picture.”
“What was she like?” said Torpenhow.
“She was a sort of Negroid-Jewess-Cuban; with morals to match. She couldn’t read or write, and she didn’t want to, but she used to come down and watch me paint, and the skipper didn’t like it, because he was paying her passage and had to be on the bridge occasionally.”
“I see. That must have been cheerful.”
“It was the best time I ever had. To begin with, we didn’t know whether we should go up or go down any minute when there was a sea on; and when it was calm it was paradise; and the woman used to mix the paints and talk broken English, and the skipper used to steal down every few minutes to the lower deck, because he said he was afraid of fire. So, you see, we could never tell when we might be caught, and I had a splendid notion to work out in only three keys of colour.”
“What was the notion?”
“Two lines in Poe—
‘Neither the angels in Heaven above nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.’
It came out of the sea—all by itself. I drew that fight, fought out in green water over the naked, choking soul, and the woman served as the model for the devils and the angels both—sea-devils and sea-angels, and the soul half drowned between them. It doesn’t sound much, but when there was a good light on the lower deck it looked very fine and creepy. It was seven by fourteen feet, all done in shifting light for shifting light.”
“Did the woman inspire you much?” said Torpenhow.
"She and the sea between them—immensely.
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What did those animals die for?
So you could blog and get grants so you don’t have to actually work a cube job and maybe later get a good university job teaching 101 performance art 3 days a week telling kids to melt down green army men in a pot for ‘art’ on stage with the padding of your resume.
And if you’re really lucky…you’l get tenure.
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Do you mean Tiffany?
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Timely:
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Floating-homeless-shelter-could-be-game-changer-9206351.php
After prodding by the South Korean government, Hanjin Group, Hanjin Shipping’s parent company, will spend $90 million to get things moving, although that’s not enough to cover all the port fees, etc.
Hanjin ships are being ordered to go to a limited number of key ports where South Korean government officials will be ready to arrange protection from creditors. (Incidentally, one of those ports is Hamburg, where the Hanjin Geneva is registered.)
“Officials appear set on a consolidation – without committing huge sums of public money – of Hanjin and its smaller rival, Hyundai Merchant Marine, which already is being restructured.”
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Any surplus aircraft carriers on the market right now?
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You’ve missed the deadline for registering interest the former HMS Illustrious by a few months, but you might still be in with a chance.
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Price for everything, value for nothing
at what point is the artist “distinguished” from his work, and why even bother making the distinction.
There’s a difference?
You’ll probably have to get in line for that.
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Wow. Way to bring the sexist BS. Congrats.
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How well do you think one would cope with being buried? How much difference would it make if you coated the thing with a heavy sealant (bitumen, truck bedliner paint, etc) first? How much weight can they support on top?
I’ve long had a vague dream of using shipping containers as the basis for an earth-sheltered hobbit house. Dig hole, drop container in hole, grow a lawn on top, dig a tunnel for an entrance.
Sounds a bit like part of Ozymandias’ plot in Watchmen (the novel - left out of the movie IIRC).
Hats off to you, you magnificent basterd.
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I have no personal expertise here, but have read that they would collapse under a small amount of fill.
And the metal would rust. However people have tried similar techniques of digging a hole, building or lowering a structure and then filling the top back up. One can also partially bury a house, where the front is exposed and one builds up a hill that covers the back and/or sides. It’s supposed to help insulate the house and can even protect it if one were to live in a tornado prone area.
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