DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Buried 290 feet below our driveway is an iron mine. It’s called a “well” but in fact it pumps more iron than water.

Pictured is the impeller after nine years of service. It had choked itself with iron mud and burned out the pump motor.

This is the myth of drinking water. The stuff that comes out of the kitchen faucet has an aura of purity. But at its source, our water isn’t fit to wash socks in.

Our well-water gets pumped through an air injector, which like the ozone injector at the old house attempts to expose the ferrous iron to air in order to drop it out of solution. Then it sits in a small offgassing tank for a few minutes, from where it’s pumped through a “berm filter,” which I believe is a big box of dirt. And then it goes into a 1200 gallon holding tank.

To peer into the tank is to begin questioning the myth of “drinking” water. Our tank is not exactly sterile. There are four or five float switches suspended inside; the cables are black with slime. Iron bacteria? Grease? I don’t know, but I’m drinking it.

If there’s more than two feet of water inside the tank, I can’t see through it to the bottom. Your pool water is cleaner — but you’re not supposed to drink that.

As gross as this iron well is, though, it’s nothing compared to the horror buried in the back yard.

Last weekend I started getting ready to finally track the dulcimer part for Ode to Soup. You can see how far I got.

Hint: those are not wireless microphones.

You know, I should write some really short songs. Maybe then I’d have time to record them.

Chuck found a link to these on the TapeOp message boards…
drum outtakes from John Bonham.

Track 22 is Fool in the Rain, one of the great half-time shuffles ever recorded (along with Jeff Porcaro’s Roseanna).

Listen to Bonham grunt his way through on Track 17… he reminds me of Glenn Gould.

[A]an obscure section of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act requires that all schools receiving federal funds (virtually all public schools) provide the phone numbers and addresses of high school students to military recruiters.

The Executive Summary of the No Child Left Behind Act mentions recruiting teachers, but not infantry.