unsolved on are you electronichttps://www.areyouelectronic.com/tags/unsolved/Recent content in unsolved on are you electronicHugoen-USjustin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:13:09 -0700grab bag vol. 12https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/grab-bag-vol-12/Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:13:09 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/grab-bag-vol-12/<p>Hey hey club people, it&rsquo;s been a month so I thought I would trip through my photo roll and share a few pictures from July. As usual, I take quite a few pictures of random things that I see, but there are also a couple of sunsets. Enjoy!</p>Tags: #rss-club #photos #unsolved

Hey hey club people, it’s been a month so I thought I would trip through my photo roll and share a few pictures from July. As usual, I take quite a few pictures of random things that I see, but there are also a couple of sunsets. Enjoy!

A black-and-white view of fog pooling in wooded valleys between hillsides, distant ridgelines fading into haze.
Ladies and gentlemen, the marine layer.
A curved freeway overpass rising above a parking lot lined with palm trees and iron fencing.
Look, idk, I liked the frame, the balance of it. So what if it’s the freeway behind the gym.
The number 398 written in blue chalk on a concrete curb, surrounded by dry leaves.
Why is this number here on the sidewalk next to Ali’s community garden? One does not have to know everything. There were other numbers nearby, also unexplained.
A close-up of dark rock veined with pale lichen and mineral streaks.
Maybe it will look better if I print it the right size?
A dusty blue car parked at a curb, with panda plush toys and small figurines lined up on the dashboard.
Sometimes these things just find you.
A flock of dark birds scattered across a mowed lawn near a park pavilion and a purple-leaved tree.
There were twenty more a minute before.
A cluster of plastic pink flamingo lawn ornaments planted in a bare dirt garden bed.
Believe it or not this was shortly after the other birds.
A man wearing FPV video goggles holds a drone controller in front of a graffiti-covered wall.
We are living in the future. Wth.
Golden-hour light on dry, oak-dotted hills behind a tall cypress tree and neighborhood rooftops.
Just San Jose things.
A textured pattern of clouds glowing at dusk above dark, silhouetted rooftops and trees.
Sunset clouds are the best.
Two cone-shaped white bollards guarding a storefront's glass entrance on a sidewalk.
Finally, I now know that these are guard stones, and they do exactly what I thought they do. I noticed them in 1997. I never found out what to call them. I realized I had noticed them in 2010 and renewed my curiosity. Last month we found these and I remembered that I’ve wanted to know for almost 30 years and actually searched it up. Mystery solved; hypothesis confirmed.
A restaurant entrance for Bistro Maxine, with menus, a DoorDash sign, and a caution sign warning of the ramp's steep slope.
Sometimes things are just weirdly specific for reasons we cannot understand.
A barbershop window covered in signs, including a no-smoking notice and a tongue-in-cheek 'Attention Teenagers' flyer.
Believe it or not, this window is right next to the other one.
A nearly empty freeway at dusk lined with palm trees, with a 'right lane must exit' sign overhead.
The hues of the sky were better in the real thing, but I am still surprised at how well I was able to capture and edit them in this phone picture.
A dry, grassy hillside behind wooden fencing, with cut branches piled near the base and a chain-link fence along the ridge.
There is a story here. That big old oak at the top of the hill broke and rolled down the hill and broke the fences.
A large concrete pillar beneath a park pavilion's peaked roof, with a tiny stick-figure drawing near its top.
The park ranger said that the “the little man” had been there for a while. Don’t ever change, little man, don’t ever change.
The ornate entrance to a Cheesecake Factory restaurant inside a shopping mall, with shoppers walking past.
No explanation needed.
A yellow circular sign for Wushiland Boba featuring a flying fish balancing a boba drink, mounted above a payment terminal.
It’s like the freeway one. Sometimes the photos just make themselves. I have not had this boba, I cannot vouch for its quality.
A black-and-white photo of a broad oak tree beside a road, with dry hills and a wooden retaining wall behind it.
Just nice light on the tree in my front yard.

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]]>tapehttps://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/tape/Mon, 03 Aug 2026 20:03:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/tape/There were a few small straggly bits, not much magnetic tape was missed. I looked for any other remains of the huge mess from last week along the center median of 85. Some few pieces of it fluttered and glinted in the breeze, but most had been cleaned up by someone, a highway worker or a good samaritan, or some unknowable party doing the good work to keep our city’s infrastructure at or below a threshold level of dirtiness. There was still plenty of other trash along the sides of the road: a five gallon bucket lid, pieces of blown apart tire, a flattened In-n-Out Burger paper cup, a pair of shoes1. All the usual things and just enough of them to look regular, look just as it usually does. I kept looking for the tape, and I really didn’t see much.

]]>Tags: #sketches #attention #places #unsolved

There were a few small straggly bits, not much magnetic tape was missed. I looked for any other remains of the huge mess from last week along the center median of 85. Some few pieces of it fluttered and glinted in the breeze, but most had been cleaned up by someone, a highway worker or a good samaritan, or some unknowable party doing the good work to keep our city’s infrastructure at or below a threshold level of dirtiness. There was still plenty of other trash along the sides of the road: a five gallon bucket lid, pieces of blown apart tire, a flattened In-n-Out Burger paper cup, a pair of shoes1. All the usual things and just enough of them to look regular, look just as it usually does. I kept looking for the tape, and I really didn’t see much.

  1. Brown-pink sneakers that I wasn’t even sure what they were at first, and close enough together to be tied but I didn’t see if they were or weren’t. ↩︎

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]]>magnetichttps://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/magnetic/Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:59:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/magnetic/There was about a half mile of magnetic tape strewn along the center median of 85, just past the Almaden Expressway. It was wide tape, VHS or even bigger, hard to say for sure even though traffic was crawling. You don’t see it like that anymore. Tape trash was a common thing to see on the side of the road, wrapped around and twisted and engrossing other bits of rubbish like seaweed. It’s been years, decades, since I’ve seen anything like this. The plastic-metal glinted in the road breeze and fluttered in some places, but mainly it held fast around the things it was wrapped. It stretched on and on while the congested traffic oozed forward. There was one boxy object, possibly the source, broken sheet metal enclosure mostly covered in the tape, and a green electronic board exposed. I didn’t see any broken VHS cases, large tape wheels, or any other tape holder; I don’t know what kind of tape this is or what information, video, audio, data, it might contain. Further up the highway I saw echoes, little bits more every now and then over the next couple of miles, more tape strewn along the center median but no more boxes, nor any other clue about the origin or contents despite my searching over every bit. The bits diminished, tapered out, ended, but I still wondered about it. Would it be there for weeks or only this morning? Was it video tape or audio masters, or just trash already on the way to the dump? It is unknowable.

]]>Tags: #sketches #unsolved

There was about a half mile of magnetic tape strewn along the center median of 85, just past the Almaden Expressway. It was wide tape, VHS or even bigger, hard to say for sure even though traffic was crawling. You don’t see it like that anymore. Tape trash was a common thing to see on the side of the road, wrapped around and twisted and engrossing other bits of rubbish like seaweed. It’s been years, decades, since I’ve seen anything like this. The plastic-metal glinted in the road breeze and fluttered in some places, but mainly it held fast around the things it was wrapped. It stretched on and on while the congested traffic oozed forward. There was one boxy object, possibly the source, broken sheet metal enclosure mostly covered in the tape, and a green electronic board exposed. I didn’t see any broken VHS cases, large tape wheels, or any other tape holder; I don’t know what kind of tape this is or what information, video, audio, data, it might contain. Further up the highway I saw echoes, little bits more every now and then over the next couple of miles, more tape strewn along the center median but no more boxes, nor any other clue about the origin or contents despite my searching over every bit. The bits diminished, tapered out, ended, but I still wondered about it. Would it be there for weeks or only this morning? Was it video tape or audio masters, or just trash already on the way to the dump? It is unknowable.

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]]>grab bag vol. 9https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/grab-bag-vol-9/Fri, 10 Jul 2026 17:34:24 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/grab-bag-vol-9/Hello once again RSS and Email club members! This week the grab bag is from my photo roll last month. I’ve upped the gallery on the site rendering recently, now with lightbox and (optional) captions. Take a look there if the captions don’t come through this time in the email or rss feed (and I’ll fix it for next time).

]]>Tags: #rss-club #photos #unsolved

Hello once again RSS and Email club members! This week the grab bag is from my photo roll last month. I’ve upped the gallery on the site rendering recently, now with lightbox and (optional) captions. Take a look there if the captions don’t come through this time in the email or rss feed (and I’ll fix it for next time).

A weathered wooden bench against a plank fence, strips of bubble wrap draped over its back, dry grass on the slope behind.
This bench was on the ‘free corner’ of our street for a day or two. San Jose provides.
Looking up a narrow stairwell to a ceiling of exposed silver duct insulation, a wall below reading "Physical activity will add years to your life, and life to your years."
Just normal things at the office.
Two wild turkeys on a suburban street corner, one crossing the road and one by a brick-edged flower bed, houses and parked cars behind.
One of the benefits of our neighborhood’s proximity to open spaces is the wildlife. 😁
An older man in a cap crossing a street with a green walker frame, an "S. Bascom Ave" sign and parked cars around him.
First time I’d seen one of these. This guy was mobile!
A dim, narrow hallway with pale padded walls and a wood floor, a single globe pendant lighting a grey curtain at the far end.
Similar to the elevator a couple of months ago, I noted this unexpectedly intense restaurant hallway.
A floor of cream marble tiles laced with dark natural veining and fine cracks.
Entropy finds a way in, no matter how carefully curated a place tries to be. The history of existing just wears.
People at the open edge of a parking garage watching an orange sunset over a treeline, a man in a straw hat and linen jacket walking toward them.
This picture turned out more liminal than I planned!
A person in a denim jacket holding up a huge napa cabbage, its ruffled green-and-yellow leaves splayed open, a grocery aisle behind.
Flat cabbage? This is the reverse, if you’re curious.
A grocery cooler shelf stacked with clear "Ice Cup (Big Ball)" cups, soft-serve cups on the shelf below and a $1.99 price tag.
Can someone explain to me what is going on here?
A halved napa cabbage and enoki mushrooms on paper towels in a terracotta bowl, a plate of sliced fish behind, on a slatted table.
Totally different cabbage.

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]]>daft punkhttps://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/daft-punk/Mon, 06 Jul 2026 20:25:47 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/daft-punk/I remember the first time I heard Daft Punk, and saw it too. It was in Gianfranco’s parents’ living room in 1997, in the summer. Almost thirty years ago. The room was dark, the shutters were drawn or it was night. Hard to tell sometimes in a memory. “Around the world” was playing on MTV Europe, and I had no idea what I was listening to. There were neon outlined astronauts doing a weird march on a circular staircase, and other electric pink and green and yellow people playing instruments and doing other dance-y/music-video-y things. I wasn’t really watching it, I didn’t make any sense of what I was seeing. The electronic sound, the looping “around the world” lyric, it infected me that day. I think I knew then that I liked it but had no idea what to do with it.

]]>Tags: #music #essays #platforms #unsolved

I remember the first time I heard Daft Punk, and saw it too. It was in Gianfranco’s parents’ living room in 1997, in the summer. Almost thirty years ago. The room was dark, the shutters were drawn or it was night. Hard to tell sometimes in a memory. “Around the world” was playing on MTV Europe, and I had no idea what I was listening to. There were neon outlined astronauts doing a weird march on a circular staircase, and other electric pink and green and yellow people playing instruments and doing other dance-y/music-video-y things. I wasn’t really watching it, I didn’t make any sense of what I was seeing. The electronic sound, the looping “around the world” lyric, it infected me that day. I think I knew then that I liked it but had no idea what to do with it.

All throughout high school I was solidly in the heavy metal camp; Metallica (seen in concert), some Megadeth, Pantera, Tool, and others. Then the rock and roll, and classic rock; AC/DC, Aerosmith, Tool. Electronic and dance music was way out of my scene.

It took me a long time to admit that I liked Daft Punk. The next electronic encounter was a remix CD of White Zombie. I found it on the red bricks of Western, scratched but playable, no idea what it was for a while. This unknown mystery CD was one of my favorites.1 I think I still have it, but the scratches and age finally got the better of it and it stopped playing years ago. I couldn’t find it just now, but I’m pretty sure it’s out there somewhere.

I think I do own a copy of Homework, the album that “Around the World” is from; I remember listening to the house party opening track, “Stop the music and go home” is the opening line, but I don’t remember when or where I would have bought it. I don’t think it was during college; sometime after I had moved to the east side of the mountains. My branch out, musically, was classical. There was still a lot of alternative and classic rock in my musical catalog during those years. Maybe I got it from BMG; I fell for that a couple of times.

I looked but I didn’t find a copy of Homework. By the time I accepted my taste we were well into the streaming or at least the mp3 and burning CDs phase of music consumption. The only Daft Punk album I have is “Random Access Memories,” and I never even opened the CD. It came with download codes.

I would say that surely by 2008, eleven years later, when I went away to grad school, that I had admitted to myself that I liked these sounds and had gone searching for them. I’m certain that podcasts and Bob Boilen and NPRs All Songs Considered would have had something to do with it. Their relentless search through new releases and latest tracks and festival set lists gave me a high hit rate for interesting songs in those early years. Particularly the SXSW songs. But it petered out after a while, and I wasn’t finding so much stuff that way. I had found Passion Pit that way (I’ve moved on), and almost made it to a concert in Boston. It was a long drive and we decided against it; too much school work to do that weekend. I found Hot Chip too (still with them), and saw them in Santa Cruz. And Chromeo (yes). Glad I’ve gotten to see them, in the Fox Theater. Royksopp (definitely) is another, and Air (when they make something), and so many more that I’m glad to be able to hear.

I never saw Daft Punk in concert; it was years too late by the time I figured it out.

But, the evolution, the archaeology, the history of my listening tastes and how I got here, that is lost to my memory. We stopped making mix tapes in about the year 1999, and stopped burning CDs around the year 2010 or 2012. Everything went digital and into playlists on iTunes or YouTube or Spotify or some other service that has been deleted from the world. My oldest playlists in YT is called “music” but there is no date associated with it, no edit history. I have a playlist in YT Music titled “08-oct” that is apparently corrupted; it has 4 tracks repeated twice. It includes a Girl Talk song from Feed the Animals (good stuff). I found some burned CDs in the garage, unlabeled.

Newer finds (but still not that new) include Kavinsky, The Knife & Fever Ray, and Empire of the Sun. Fever f*cking Ray. I’m not sure what to call this collection, my genre, but it’s something like electronic dance. Meditation through repetition and noise. Not so much emphasis on the vocals, more on the textural soundscapes. It’s all because of Daft Punk. I’m sure I haven’t ever seen the whole “Around the World” music video, or any of their others. Would I have found my way here anyway? Probably. But it was that song on the TV in Gianfranco’s living room that started it, planted the seed that I heard over and over in my head during the dormant years, the searching years, the years of finding. All that wandering should be in the mix tapes that never were and the as-yet-unburned CDs still waiting in the tower. The bits, they just don’t hit the same.

  1. It is “Supersexy Swingin’ Sounds,” if you want to know. ↩︎

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]]>quicksilverhttps://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/quicksilver/Mon, 29 Jun 2026 20:27:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/quicksilver/Ali and I went for a hike yesterday, the first time for her in years. We went along with friends on their usual weekend route. I had never been into Almaden Quicksilver park from the east before, the New Almaden town side. It used to be a mine, which is what “Almaden” means and is named for, a famous mine in Spain since antiquity. The hike is up a road grade, wide and even and well maintained. Mountain bikers (several passed us) and horses (didn’t see any) can use it too. These mountain bikers were quite polite, honestly the first ones since moving to California that I’ve met that followed the etiquette of announcing “on your left” with enough warning and “two more” as they pass. We saw a few other hikers too.

]]>Tags: #nature #dispatches #unsolved

Ali and I went for a hike yesterday, the first time for her in years. We went along with friends on their usual weekend route. I had never been into Almaden Quicksilver park from the east before, the New Almaden town side. It used to be a mine, which is what “Almaden” means and is named for, a famous mine in Spain since antiquity. The hike is up a road grade, wide and even and well maintained. Mountain bikers (several passed us) and horses (didn’t see any) can use it too. These mountain bikers were quite polite, honestly the first ones since moving to California that I’ve met that followed the etiquette of announcing “on your left” with enough warning and “two more” as they pass. We saw a few other hikers too.

A wooded canyon dropping away toward the hazy valley floor and its distant city grid, with red-tinged brush in the foreground.
There are sometimes views into the Santa Clara Valley.

There were lots of plants, native ones like monkey flower and non-native ones like spanish broom, and toxic ones that we argued over the colors useful for identifying them like poison oak that is sometimes red and sometimes not, but “leaves of three, leave me be” and so on. And regular valley or live or some other kind of oak mixed in just to throw some of us off.

When we got to the top, I could see out over the part of the park that I had been to numerous times before,1 the west side, the Wood Road entrance. You can see it in the photo below. We rested a while there, at the highest level that the trail (road) attains. There is a horse watering trough, and a picnic bench.

Forested ridges receding under a clear blue sky, a small square structure atop the farthest peak and dry golden grass in the foreground.
Mt. Umunhum in the distance, and the Wood Road park entrance is at the right side, middle ground.

The road skirts the back side of the ridge for a bit, and while we were crossing the saddle, if it could be called that, a large turkey vulture crested the hill, barely higher than our heads, did a double-take at our unexpected presence, and continued over to the east side. Might have been the closest to one of those that I’ve been. They’re big! Especially with their wings open. For a moment it was one of those times when something that is usually just an abstracted concept of an animal becomes very real and detailed and a strong presence. Then it continued its aerodynamic path and receded back into the hypothetical and symbolic realm that turkey vultures and most other wildlife normally occupy.

A bare silver-grey dead tree with broken branches beside a green live oak, standing over dry golden grass.
A large and now dead tree that overlooks the aforementioned picnic table. There was a red-hatted woodpecker up there for a little while.

The route down is past some of the mining ruins. They’re ok, I guess. It’s all kind of underwhelming for being the most productive mercury mine in North America. They extracted nearly 84 mega-pounds of it out of the ground over the life of the mine. So many people lived and worked and I’m sure died here. I don’t understand why these ruins don’t engage my interest as much as the desert ruins do. Those are often much smaller or much more wrecked. Much less likely to have produced much of anything. Maybe the fences have something to do with it, the more museum-like presentation. I shall have to ponder it some more.

But the landscape has lots of interest, and feels very close and intricate and there are a lot of very real things to see around every next corner. Birds and trees, and sticks and stones. Rocks are cool, man. Even the lost gouges in the ground, filled with old forest matter, are interesting and surprising when you find them; must be some forgotten mining things. The unprepared, the not set out, the natural as nature stuff, that’s what I want out of these tiny adventures. Unexpected birds that change rapidly from an idea to the incarnate and back just as quick into a symbol, receding over the saddle into the other valley yet still eyeing us over its shoulder.

A couple of other resources:

  1. I even made a (not that great) field recording there with video a few years ago. ↩︎

  2. Another new term. It’s just always like this, isn’t it? ↩︎

  3. It is via this link that I wandered to this site and a) returned to the bubbly waters and also b) continued clicking on to ask WTF is ECV? ECV, or E Clampus Vitus is the dog latin2 name for an apparently legit historical preservation society in the Southwest. They put up plaques, or just initiate new members, or somehow preserve the history of gold mining. Or something. Mark Twain was a member of the earlier iteration of the society. ↩︎

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]]>grab bag vol. 3https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/grab-bag-vol-3/Fri, 29 May 2026 18:59:30 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/grab-bag-vol-3/Hello once again RSS Clubbers, and welcome email subscribers! This week I am sharing a few open questions that I have pondered lately. Please enjoy this week’s grab bag, another peek behind the curtain.

  1. What is the source of the infrasonic rumble? You may or may not know that I have a hobby of making field recordings, especially long playing ones. This one, from Quicksilver-Almaden park, is especially boring (which is ideal), and if I remember correctly I tried to mitigate the low frequencies with a high-pass filter, yet the lowest frequencies are still there. At the time I recorded that one, I thought it was “just San Jose” off in the distance. But in the Butano posts, I mention that there is a noticeable low frequency “rumble in the distance”. Maybe it’s two different sources, waves crashing on the coast for one and city noise for the other. I do not know.

    ]]>Tags: #rss-club #dispatches #learning #unsolved

    Hello once again RSS Clubbers, and welcome email subscribers! This week I am sharing a few open questions that I have pondered lately. Please enjoy this week’s grab bag, another peek behind the curtain.

    1. What is the source of the infrasonic rumble? You may or may not know that I have a hobby of making field recordings, especially long playing ones. This one, from Quicksilver-Almaden park, is especially boring (which is ideal), and if I remember correctly I tried to mitigate the low frequencies with a high-pass filter, yet the lowest frequencies are still there. At the time I recorded that one, I thought it was “just San Jose” off in the distance. But in the Butano posts, I mention that there is a noticeable low frequency “rumble in the distance”. Maybe it’s two different sources, waves crashing on the coast for one and city noise for the other. I do not know.

    2. Does Virginia Woolf always use so many new-to-me words? Is this unique to her or is it a historical remove thing (i.e. has the common vocabulary diverged in the ~100 years between me-the-reader and her-the-author)? Last week I read The Death of the Moth. Jeff pointed out that there were quite a few unusual words. I had noticed this in the reading and simply moved on, but it is worth pondering a bit more. In the first paragraph alone, I counted four unfamiliar words: benignant1, share2, down3, and vociferation4. There are only five paragraphs in the whole piece. Is this normal? I love it!5 I should read more Woolf to find out. Luckily there are two other essays in my edition of The Norton Reader, so I can get some signal with minimal effort or investment.

    3. Is the fork the most likely object in the dishwasher to hurt you? The only time I have been injured while unloading the dishwasher was by jamming a fork under my fingernail because I didn’t see its edge-on appearance. Like Abbott’s Triangles,6 forks disappear when viewed from certain directions. Knives are another leading candidate for injury-causers, even butter and table knives can cut you. But, forks go up and knives go down in the dishwasher’s silverware rack thing, so knives are in the safe direction. I was not being as careful as usual that day; it hurt! How common is this injury? Is something else more likely to send you searching for a bandaid, and we just don’t put that thing in out dishwasher? Who keeps this sort of statistics?

    4. I observe that traffic seems to slow down significantly on Fridays and Sundays. Is traffic really slower on those days? Everyone sure takes their time around the SFBA when getting from point A to point B, especially on the freeways. On the other hand, it’s probably just me, I’m the one still in a hurry, just 5% more than everyone else. Do you see this in your neck of the woods? What’s the reason, what is driving this phenomenon?

    A few thin strips of rubber scattered on wet ashphault. A bright white parking strip line bisects the frame vertically.
    Seen this week, during the very unusual for late May rain.

    1. Two things: I am linking to Websters 1913 dictionary because a) it’s a good dictionary, b) it’s public domain, c) the website doesn’t have ads, d) it’s got an easy to remember url websters1913.com, and e) it’s contemporary to Woolf. Second, I was able to guess approximately the meanings of some of these words from context or familiarity with alternate suffixes on the same root,7 others I had to puzzle out, and yet more I simply moved on and triangulated back to them later in the piece. I think it was good for my brain. ↩︎

    2. I had always interpreted “plough share” to mean something about a portion of land. And to mean the blade of the plough. Woolf uses “share” here bare, without directly referring to the plough. That’s plow in Americanish, I think. I interpretted Woolf’s usage to mean that second one, but it could also mean the row that has been freshly cut by the plough. ↩︎

    3. The phrase Woolf uses is “…and the down beyond…”. Does she mean the hills on the other side of the fields? Does she mean the “way out there beyond the land I can see before me”? I’m pretty sure the former, maybe it was a common usage in rural England. Because the imagery in the paragraph surrounding this is very diverse and vivid I was even considering feathers for a moment. I settled on hills, like how Tolkien uses it. ↩︎

    4. This is obviously just a different suffix on “vociferous”. Yet I had never seen it before. Neither had Jeff. ↩︎

    5. I am a dictionary nerd. I have, like, so many dang dictionaries. ↩︎

    6. I am unsure of the political correctness / cancelled status / et cetera of the Flatland book. It is a satire written in the 1800s. I neither vouch for or against it, it is a historical document that has some interesting geometrical analogies and thought experiments. That is all. ↩︎

    7. Such as: benignant is obviously related to benign, and vociferation is obviously related to vociferous. But I am getting ahead of myself and possibly you too. ↩︎

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