tom recommended this book, to further my enquiry about electricity. nikolai was pleasantly surprised when i told him that i was reading this. he’s read it before, and recommended it to jasmine last year.
quotes from the book:
I hate acknowledgement pages. They’re always just too darn sweet for me.
No one really understands electricity. But no one wants to admit it. Once I realized that truth, it became easy to learn about electricity.
It’s Little Greenies. That’s right. Little Greenies. It’s not electrons at all. Electrons are a myth, a superstition. They don’t make sense, they’re boring, and they’ve never been proved. Shoot, I’ve never seen an electron, have you? Of course not. No one has. Sure, the electron theory seems to work a lot of the time, but so did the Flat Earth Theory. The theories of Aristotle, Newton and Euclid appeared to work pretty well, too, for a few hundred years. Now they seem childish. All because bold and adventurous thinkers like you and me were willing to consider alter natives. Elegant and innovative alternatives, like The Greenie Theory. I developed The Greenie Theory while fishing at a lake in Utah. It was one of those rare and special times when you have a whole city’s water supply all to yourself. One of those days when the fish won’t bite, but the sun is hot, the water is cool and clear, and you don’t care. Cynics will try to convince you that the beer I was drinking provided most of my inspiration. I’m sure they said that about Einstein, too.
on voltage:
“Greenies like to party,” Mike said. “It’s what we live for. And a party means girls, beer, and rock ‘n roll. If there’s a bunch of Greenies cruising down a wire, you can bet we’re headed for a party.” ‘Am I supposed to be writing this down?” I asked. This was a new role for me. Mike and I were sitting by the lake fishing. He had somehow come up with the neatest fishing pole I’d ever seen. It was long, glossy black, and made a low whirring sound whenever he cast. “Nah,” said Mike. “You can’t write and fish at the same time. Let’s just mellow out and get on the same wavelength. Let the heavy stuff slide for a while.” “Right,” I said, suppressing an urge to either say, “Like right,” or “Right on.” “Anyway,” he continued, “When Greenies party, it works like this: the chicks buy kegs of beer and turn up their radios. The brothers hear that rock ‘n roll, get in their little green cars and motovate toward the music. Works every time.” “Don’t the girls ever drive toward the guys?” “No, man, that’s not the way it works. The chicks buy the beer and we chase ‘em. We hear that music and the urge comes over us. We call it the “need-to-party.” Suddenly he put down his pole, went over to the boulder he had appeared behind, and came back with a book. “It’s a Greenie- English dictionary,” he said. “You know, for translating. Let’s see, need-to- party … Oh, yeah, here it is: ‘voltage.’ We call it the need-to-party, you call it voltage. Does that make sense to you?”
Say you got a flashlight battery. On the positive side of that battery you got a bunch of Greenie chicks. And, I mean, some of those chicks are very positive. On the negative side, you got some Greenie dudes. Those chicks, they buy a couple kegs and turn up their little boom boxes. Us guys, we hear the music, and right away we feel that need-to-party. The more chicks there are, the more little boom boxes they got, which makes that music loud. That means more dudes hear it and feel that need-to-party. If there’s a way for us to get there, we’re gonna cruise. If all the bridges are down and the roads are closed, maybe we can’t get there. But we’re still gonna feel that urge. That’s what voltage is: It’s boy Greenies feeling that need-to-party and girl Greenies playing rock ‘n roll. Voltage is that hunger to be movin’ on down the road.”