Il pleut comme vaches qui pissent

It has been raining for the better part of the last three days, including strong wind all day yesterday. This usually has meant flooding here in Speedbumpville, but so far there hasn't been any.

After a fairly thorough search of sources available to me through the university library and the Internet, I can safely say hardly anyone has pursued a Husserlian phenomenological account of taste. There have been mentions of taste in plenty of discussions of Husserl's discussions of perceptual experience, but I have found nothing that extensively considers taste. I spent several hours working on it yesterday, developing a bit from Husserl's analysis of "sense-bestowing" intentionality in Ideas I. It's been long enough since I last slogged through Ideas I that I hadn't quite remembered what a slog it is. Next up is a similar slog through Ideas II.

Then I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening under this apocalyptic weather. By bedtime I was wondering about the future, specifically, whether it makes much sense to go on under the assumption that life in 20 years will be much like it is now. The trends seem to be toward (a) extremely limited and fantastically expensive energy resources, (b) rapidly changing, more volatile, more destructive weather patters, (c) more expensive, poorer quality food, (d) more expensive, less reliable, possibly dangerous water, and (e) a more dangerous, warlike world. I started to feel like a dope for buying a car whose gasoline I may not be able to afford in 6 or 7 years. I started to feel like a dope for buying a laptop whose usefulness is contingent on something like the status quo of available resources. Heck, I started to feel like a dope for drinking coffee every morning. In sum, this is some nasty weather to feel oneself to be under.

Then I had nightmares through the night (which I've forgotten). I woke around 7, absolutely freaked out. I tossed, turned, hid my head, and fell asleep again, to dream of visiting Pittsburgh and driving around the city streets and parkways on scooters - which is at best a foolhardy proposition. But at least we got to Duquesne in one piece (or, if you're thinking about this clearly, two pieces), to look down off the Bluff at the river and watch people stroll along the (nonexistent) white sand beach in the rain.