Pipe Cleaners and Psychedelics

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, have you ever thought about pipe cleaners? Specifically, does anyone ever actually clean pipes with them? I think of them mostly as a material for kids' projects and maybe crafting. Offhand, I can't think of another item that states its purpose in its name, and yet has outgrown that purpose and turned into something else entirely.

And that's my random thought for the day.

Our landlord's managing agent sent around an inspector to visit the apartment Thursday evening, in preparation for our lease renewal (which isn't for another three months). He came in and made a cursory tour of the place, taking pictures with his iPad. I wish I'd cleaned the bathtub first, but oh well. He said we need caulking around the kitchen sink and I showed him the steps in the alley at the side of the house, which are kind of coming apart. Otherwise I think we have no maintenance issues to speak of, which is pretty amazing.

Needless to say, no deliveryman showed up last night to collect Mrs. Kravitz's package. So now I'll probably have to live with that thing in our foyer for a week while Mrs. K gallivants around wherever. (I think she's gone out of town.)

Olga, meanwhile, has a routine vet appointment this morning, to get her booster shots. We lead exciting lives around here.

Last night, in lieu of my planned ecstasy-fueled rave, I watched a documentary on Netflix called "The Miami Showband Massacre," about a bombing that killed three members of an Irish music group in the '70s during the Troubles. I'd never heard of this particular event, at least not that I remembered, and it was a fascinating (and of course tragic) story. The Troubles have always been mysterious to me as an American -- that there would be such a level of violence and hatred among people whose differences don't seem, from my outsider's perspective, to be that great. I hope we're not rekindling that tension with Brexit, given the question of the Irish border.

After my joke about ecstasy yesterday, one of my commenters asked if I've ever taken it. The answer is no. The only drug I've ever done (aside from alcohol) is pot. I might have tried ecstasy if the right circumstances arose (i.e. I was out with friends and someone had some) but I never found myself in that situation. I've never tried any kind of hallucinogen either, and always sort of wished I had. I want to read Michael Pollan's book about psychedelics, "How to Change Your Mind." Maybe then I'll take the plunge! (Probably not.)

(Photo: A discarded chair in Charlton, South London.)