Origin Story: The Tapioca/Mineshaft Connection

The aphorism ‘Never throw tapioca down a mine shaft’ is only weird if you don’t know its origin story. So let’s unweird it right now.

Here’s what happened: Gordon Flaherty was down his mine shaft at the Wounded Moose Gold Mine, which is currently for sale, back in August 1896: The Yukon Gold Rush. It was light out 24 hours a day and nobody knew how to handle it. Gordon was on a roll and had been down there for 36 straight hours. He was getting a little delirious. Meanwhile, his wife, Geraldine, was sick and tired of waiting for him to come up and eat the tapioca she had made 35 hours ago. She made the best tapioca north of the 60th Parallel. It was long since cooling down, it was starting to spoil. Much like Gordon’s mind down there in the shaft.

Geraldine heard Gordon holler something so she walked over to the shaft opening and hollered back “Pardon? I din’t hear ya!” Gordon hollered again: “Don’t throw down the tapioca!” With the little bit of sanity Gordon had left, he realized Geraldine might be angry at how long he’d been down there and that she might just want to send that tapioca down the shaft right into his face. Gordon also realized that the combination of his burning oil lantern, the mine’s natural sulfuric fumes, and the sulfuric-like smells coming from his armpits, mouth and especially his behind, the air was a little bit unstable already. Add in some spoiled tapioca travelling at 9.81 m/s, it might just result in something of a spectacular chemical event.

However, when Gordon yelled “Don’t throw down the tapioca” what Geraldine heard was “Throw down the tapioca” so she did. It is still to this day noted as the largest explosion in the Yukon’s history and is why you need a license to own tapioca in any of the Canadian Territories. You can pick one up in Whitehorse as long as you can prove a basic standard of personal hygiene. So there you have it. The Great Tapioca Explosion of 1896. #tdc1531

No Coffee :(

Daily Create #1530: Create a GIF from classic silent film The Great Train Robbery from 1903. Directed by Michael Bay I think. First step for me, I don’t know about you, was to watch it. My overall impression was that people back then were way too loosey goosey in their movements. Like they had longer ligaments and were all just kind of held together in a less specific way than we are these days. You know what I mean?? Me neither.

Then it hit me: they probably were not as culturally committed to the ultracaffeination of their bodies as we are now in the future. I couldn’t see a single Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts or Tim Horton’s in the background of the film. Those poor things. Then that thinking got me thinking that I hadn’t had my third cup of coffee yet so I was inspired to use a clip from the film to show how that made me feel. And voila! the gif below was created using giphy (which was awesomely easy and luckily so because I had only 2 cups of coffee in me). Now if you’ll excuse me I gotta make a run to the Horton’s.

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Weekly Round Up, Now in Monthly (or more!) Form

lookitoverSo like, I last did my weekly roundup, for week 3, in week 4. Now it is week 75 or something like that. I am a true open participant. I love it. But it is now this time of year and it’s hard to do stuff.

Also, the path I am taking through this course has changed. I realized I needed to dig in to the bigger picture before doing what I thought I would be doing at the outset. Which is to do stuff in the assignment banks and learn technology thingies and be able to do all kinds of crazy GIFing and photoshopping super cool propaganda posters etc. I love that stuff, I want to learn it, I want to to do it. But I know the assignment banks are there and the tutorials and all the stuff so I can get to it when I get to it. Just not necessarily on the same wagon train with this Western106 crowd.

The big ideas beckon. So right now I am following the blog path back in time and future in time and left and right in time through all of these people I newly admire and want to learn from: Alan Levine, Jim Groom, Audrey Waters, Garder Campbell and all the places reading their stuff leads to. It’s a rabbit hole and I need to get my bearings because I think these open ideas are going to be pretty foundational for me. Thanks for sharing your thinkings and doings!

Although I will of course continue to daily create all over the place that is too much fun. I am looking forward to getting focus back on getting good at audio and video and giffing, but right now for me openness and community are bigger fish to fry, bigger pieces of the puzzle, bigger puzzles to fish and fisher catches to big.

I guess what I’m saying is that y’all are right, #DS106 is #4Life yo!

 

Sideways Spooky Faces

Daily Create 1528  If you look at this picture sideways, you will notice it is a B. Signifying, subtly, the B wing of our building. This B is on the stairwell in font size 587 900.But if you look at it sideways, you see a spooky mask face! It looks like the phantom of the opera and one of the Super Mario baddies from a castle level got together and procreated. Stay away from B Wing! B warned!

DS106 Will Pump You UP!

Daily Create #1527. If anyone has been here from the start, they’ve done upwards of 1527 daily creates and their brain would definitely have a six pack on the right hand side. I am coming off a maintenance week from DS106 Training. It’s a fancy term meaning I didn’t do much for a spell. So now it’s time to get back to the brain gym and start to pump it up again. So here’s my Daily Create Poster. Get pumped!

A Nugget of Life Haiku: Is There Hope?

TDC1517. Life, A User’s Manual, by Georges Perec. I haven’t read it. I’m just winging it. I’ve been advised to throw out the manual.

This little nugget below is probably in there though. I’ve been worried about this forever. If we are constantly finding and skipping all the good stones, the nice round flat ones, they’ll all be gone and there will be none left to skip for future generations. You all know the feeling of victory and the promise of many bounces that you hold in your hands when you find a great one. Every one of those beauties you find and skip diminishes the world’s potential for skips. That is saddening. Even worse if you throw it and eff it up and only get like two skips.

Maybe someone with some entrepreneurial spirit should get a snorkel, jump in the lake and start bringing some of those little pancakes back to shore. Maybe all hope is not lost.

Skipping Stones

One Story/ Four Icons

One Story, Four Icons, A DS106 Design Assignment. Take four symbols or icons to represent a film. These four symbols here should remind you of a memorable film. What do you think it is? Click here to find out. Just kidding, this is the answer.

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Impossible Dogs

Is it impossible, though? Grandpa may have been from Siberia, but this Husky is all about Libraria. Inspired by Grant Snider’s Impossible Dogs artwork, Daily Create 1516 has asked us to create an impossible new breed of dog. Here’s your new buddy, who doesn’t get you in trouble when you bring books back late: The Librarian Husky. He’ll even lick your stamps for you. It’s a side job of his.

 

Tree Seed The Stars

When you’re a silly person, Daily Creates (TDC1515) like this one, that obviously call for some response on a deeper more meaningful level, are trouble. This Daily Create is not asking for something trite. But I’m all about the trite! So I’m embracing the trite. Make a drawing with a tree, a seed and a star joining to create an image together. I look forward to other’s responses on that deeper more meaningful level. But for me and my MS Painting skills, that were cultivated over many years of very occasional half-hearted use, here’s what you get: A barely anthropomorphic tree who saw the stars. He did see them. He see’d them. And the tree’s happy little cowboy friend with the cool vest see’d them, too. Sorry.

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