Scarlet Panda

Triumph!

2009-03-29T15:13:00.006-05:00

B. and I did our first race today, and it was awesome. It was only two miles, which was a nice distance for the first time out. I ended up running about 0.3 mph/faster than I normally go. That may have been because of the excitement of running with other people, or it may have been because I feared hypothermia, given that I was severely underdressed for our freakishly cold weather (mid-30s and snow on the ground after weeks of 60s & 70s). I'm looking for a 5K to do next.

Elf dreams

2009-03-25T21:41:00.009-05:00

Over the last four nights, I have had several nightmares. Here's a sampling of what my brain is thinking about while I sleep:

-Osama bin Laden throwing knives at me in my parent's backyard (and hitting me several times).

-A shampoo bottle (somehow) exploding and causing massive destruction at my wedding reception. (Also, my wedding reception in this dream was in a 1970s-style rec room with brown shag carpeting, which is not the current plan.)

-A tornado destroying my house (I am saved by hiding under a pool table).

-Having a screaming match with my parents, complete with profanity, about how I find unreasonable their request that I microwave their pizza rolls at my house and bring them over to their house.

-Greg Kinnear trying to strangle me in my sleep.

-Having a conversation with Barack Obama in the back of a taxicab, in which I realized that he does not actually understand my concerns.

These may sound funny now, but when I woke up from each, I was terrified (or at least, as in the case of the last, severely disappointed). Anyway, because I have been thinking about the word "nightmare" more than I have since I was five years old, I started wondering about the etymology of the word.

Supposedly, the "mare" part of the word "nightmare" is derived from the Old English word "maere"--a demon or incubus that stands on your chest as you sleep, suffocating you. Similarly, in traditional German mythology, nightmares are caused by elves sitting on one's chest; the German word for nightmare means "elf dream." (Incidentally, these elves also steal newborn babies and replace them with deformed elf children.)

Read more here, here, here, here, and here.

Somehow this research has not really eased my mind.

Snug

2009-01-27T17:18:00.002-06:00

If you are, like me, a fan of bad and/or late-night television programs, you have probably seen this commercial. If you have not, watch it--you are in for a treat.

I tend to want everything I see on infomercials (or infomercial-type commercials), but usually I am able to control myself. Not this time. This commercial spoke to me as none had before. I spend a great deal of my time sitting on a couch in a freezing apartment, watching tv, reading books, or doing things on the computer. I typically have one or two fleece blankets on top of me, but every time I have to get out the remote control or turn the page, all of the precious heat leaves me. So I ordered a Snuggie (actually two, because you get a second for free).

I have been mercilessly mocked by Fuzzy and others ever since I announced this decision. But I have been vindicated: my Snuggies arrived today, and they are as awesome as I could possibly have hoped. I'm sitting here blogging, as toasty and comfy as can be.

I admit that there are two things in the commercial that seem to me to be a bit misleading: (1) you can't really walk around in a Snuggie, because they are crazy long, and (2) I don't see how on earth it would make sense to wear them to a sporting event, because in addition to making you looking like a huge freak, Snuggies don't close in the back, so your back would be freezing. But these are, as far as I can tell, the only downsides to this product.

This blog has a pretty funny analysis of the Snuggie phenomenon.

NFP

2009-01-21T21:22:00.003-06:00

My church requires that before people get married, they attend a session on "Natural Family Planning." This method basically involves learning to track your fertility using temperature and other physical symptoms, then abstaining from sex during your most fertile periods as a means of controlling family size without using artificial birth control.

Much of the session was devoted to statements about how incredibly effective this method is. Which, ok, maybe, if you actually follow it. But the likelihood of anyone actually being able to follow it regularly enough to maintain a typical family size was undermined a bit by two facts: (1) Our NFP teacher was pregnant with her 7th child; and (2) A guy in our class mentioned that his parents had taught NFP. He later mentioned that he was one of 12 (!) children.

Artsy

2009-01-19T15:38:00.003-06:00

A couple of days ago, B. and I went to a store to set up a wedding registry. The saleswoman talked to us for about ten minutes about us, our wedding, and what household items we needed, taking notes during the conversation. When we left the store, she handed us a bunch of papers, most of which informed us of our need for several dozen types of obscure dishes and kitchen gadgets we had never heard of. Along with these, presumably by mistake, the saleswoman included the page with the notes she had taken on us:

Couple only has about an hour to spend in the store today. Couple is very artsy. [Panda] is a lawyer and [B.] is a data analyst. Couple does not need luggage. Couple has not registered anywhere else. Couple not needing formal dinnerware. Couple is very artsy.

"Artsy"? "Very artsy"? Artsy enough to mention it twice? We were mystified.

Square

2008-12-03T06:59:00.004-06:00

I stayed in a hotel last weekend where the bed pillows were like this. Square. You know what shape bed pillows should be? Pillow-shaped. Square pillows are for decoration.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T03:48:00.004-06:00

I'm about to leave for the airport to spend Thanksgiving with B's extended family in Florida. Getting up at 3 a.m. was no fun, but meeting the family will be. Also, I'm looking forward to some warmth and sunshine--my year in Texas did not help my tolerance for the cold midwestern weather.

Enjoy your holidays, everyone!

Dropout

2008-11-20T17:24:00.005-06:00

A little while back, after a tough week at work, I started thinking, "You know what I should do? Drop out of society." My plan was to join a commune and live off the land with like-minded people, or at least people who would not make me do any legal research. Fortunately for my student loan provider, I've gotten over that feeling. But if any of my readers are unsatisfied with their paper-pushing lives, I offer some resources I came across.

Here is a surprisingly reasonable essay about how to drop out of society.

If you want to explore your options for communal non-mainstream living, check out this directory of intentional communities. And if you think you'll have to move to California to do this, think again. Even within a couple of hours of my mid-sized midwestern city in my McCain- voting state, I came across several options. Some examples:

East Wind Community: an established, pleasant-sounding community in the Ozarks that runs businesses, shares income and vehicles, and cooks communal meals.
Nasalam: a spiritual community based on the power of sex. "People who are polysexual and polyamorous individuals make the best community members, but at the present time we do not require specific sexual practices for general members."
Metro Cohousing: a community of private residences in the city grouped around shared common spaces and involving several shared community meals and activities (this actually sounds kind of good to me)
Shepherdsfield: a 100-person "Christian fellowship that tries to live as the early Christians did and as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, including the 'sharing of all things in common.'"

Enjoy!

Flyers and polls

2008-10-21T19:07:00.003-05:00

Today I got a glossy flyer in the mail. It had a photo of Barack Obama's face next to a giant quotation reading, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Small print informs the reader that the quotation is from William Ayres, and William Ayres's photo is also on the page. But it's clearly designed so that at first glance people will attribute the quote to Obama. The back says "This is the story of William Ayers. Terrorist. Radical. Friend of Obama."

The mailing is not from some fringe organization I've never heard of, but from the Missouri Republican Party. Yuck.

Anyway, I clearly need to adjust my group memberships and magazine subscriptions so that I get off of whatever mailing list I'm on where they think I'm susceptible to this sort of thing.

In other news, I got polled today! I wonder how many points Barack Obama's Missouri poll numbers will go up due to my answers.

Public Service Announcement

2008-07-16T22:56:00.009-05:00

If you haven't had a tetanus shot in ten years or more, you might want to think about getting one. You never know when you might get scraped by a rusty piece of metal, as I did tonight. (As I read on the FDA website when I was researching whether I needed to go to an urgent care clinic last night, "The connection between a wound caused by a rusty/dirty nail and the necessity for a tetanus shot is fixed so firmly in the public mind that even the television cartoon character Homer Simpson knew he had to get a tetanus shot after stepping on a nail.") Plus, you might get a cool Scooby-Doo bandaid out of the deal, as I did.

Cutest. Story. Ever.

2008-07-16T14:03:00.003-05:00

If you only read one blog post about baby ducks this year (in addition to the one you're currently reading, I mean), let this be the one.

Hometown foods

2008-07-11T00:45:00.001-05:00

There are several foods popular in St. Louis and not available in many other places. Here are my thoughts on some of them.

Things I grew up eating regularly and like:
Gooey Butter Cake - A super-sweet, gooey coffee cake made of yellow cake, eggs, sugar, and butter, and topped with powdered sugar. Yummy.
Toasted Ravioli - Deep fried ravioli, typically with seasoned beef filling. It is delicious.
Provel cheese - A processed cheese product. It's an acquired taste, and one which is apparently difficult to acquire as an adult--most people who didn't grow up in St. Louis hate it for its flavor, its texture, or both. I love it. It's most often found on St. Louis-style pizza, but it can also be found in salads or melted on almost anything.
Ted Drewes concretes - Frozen custard (basically ice cream made with eggs) mixed with candy, fruit, and/or nuts. They're sort of like extremely thick milkshakes. I grew up eating them in the Ted Drewes parking lot on hot summer nights, and they are wonderful. Some say the concrete was the inspiration for the Dairy Queen Blizzard (the Blizzard was apparently invented by a St. Louis DQ owner).
St. Louis-style pizza - A super-thin crust topped with sweet tomato sauce and provel cheese. It inspires strong feelings in natives and visitors alike--I think it's great, but I've heard others compare it to "Velveeta and ketchup on a cracker." Imo's is the most popular purveyor.

Things I have not eaten (and may never eat):
Slinger - Eggs, hash browns, and a hamburger patty, covered in chili, onions, and cheese. Sounds disgusting.
St. Paul sandwich - Found at some St. Louis Chinese restaurants. Egg foo yung on Wonder Bread with lettuce, tomato and mayo. Sounds disgusting.
Fried brain sandwich- Calves' brains on white bread. It became popular when St. Louis had a lot of stockyards, but it's not very popular anymore, in part because of mad cow disease. Sounds disgusting.

How is it possible . . .

2008-07-09T18:00:00.000-05:00

that in this day and age, companies are still issuing TV shows on DVD that lack a "Play All" option and/or a chapter skip after the opening credits? HOW???

The one plate plan

2008-07-08T12:40:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, B. and I signed the lease on a charming, spacious, and affordable apartment in a neighborhood we like. It is perfect in every way but one: the lack of a dishwasher. To prevent us from allowing our kitchen to fill up with dirty dishes, we have come up with a plan: we are going to place all of our normal dishes in a difficult-to-reach cabinet and reserve them for entertaining. For everyday use, we are each going to select and purchase one each of the following: plate, bowl, glass, mug, knife, fork, and spoon. We're going to choose weird, interesting, mismatched stuff based solely on how cool we think it looks. Then we are each going to use those dishes to eat on.

This means (1) there will be no opportunity for a building-up of dishes that would necessitate a lengthy dishwashing session, because we will be forced to wash dishes at every meal (or we won't have anything to eat on), and (2) if one of us leaves our dishes lying around, there will be no question about whose it was, because we each have our own (I don't really anticipate the two of us fighting over who leaves dishes out, but accountability of this sort would have been very helpful when warmfuzzy and I were growing up).

I'm actually kind of excited about going to thrift stores and looking for interesting dishes that I think are awesome but which I wouldn't want to (or be able to) buy a whole set of.

If the Catholic Church really wants to protect and promote heterosexual marriage

2008-06-29T17:13:00.001-05:00

One way they could do so is to return the phone calls of heterosexuals who call them to ask what they need to do to get married. Just a suggestion. Though I'm sure fighting against gay marriage is also a really good way.

Tips for stalkers

2008-06-29T12:43:00.005-05:00

I came across this website today, ZabaSearch. It's useful for cyber-stalking people whose names are so common they are un-googleable. It's not perfect--the free search doesn't give out my current address, for example, but it does have my last several addresses and names several of my family members. It is fairly creepy. You can also get e-mail alerts when someone searches for you.

The weirdest part of the site is that you can check to see if anyone has left a message for you on the web. For example, someone the following message for me:

Hello, i am looking for the biological father of [John Panda], now John _____ born in ___, 19__. If you know someone or are someone who could provide assistance please e-mail me.

It's odd.

Sometimes I love George Will

2008-06-17T10:15:00.004-05:00

George Will, a very smart, conservative columnist with whom I usually disagree, has written a good piece on McCain's reaction to the Supreme Court's recent decision in Boumedienne. In that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that detainees at Guantanamo are entitled to seek habeas corpus review (basically, to ask the government to either release them or show, through fair legal processes, why they should be kept in prison).

McCain says this is "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." George Will points out, among other things, that

(1) there have been many decisions far worse, so stop being ridiculous.

(2) this decision DOES NOT LET ANYONE OUT OF PRISON, so stop being ridiculous.

(3) if you're supposed to be a conservative, maybe you should have a little more respect for a right that has been at the heart of the centuries-long struggle to constrain governments.

Read it.

I don't understand online flight check-in

2008-06-09T13:43:00.002-05:00

On most airlines, you can now check in online for your flight up to 24 hours prior to the scheduled departure time. I thought checking in was a way of telling the airline, "I have arrived at the airport, and I am a mere few hundred yards away from the gate. My plans have not changed, and I have not been delayed by traffic. Rest assured, I will be ready to board that plane when my row number is called. So please do not give my seat to a standby passenger." Those are not things you can confidently tell the airline the day before your flight. Am I missing something, or does online check-in largely defeat the purpose of checking in?

How I spend my time

2008-06-02T17:45:00.004-05:00

I've been spending a fair amount of time commenting/arguing on internet forums lately, and this makes me laugh.

John Hagee

2008-06-01T12:02:00.003-05:00

In light of keychainfroggy's recent post on inflammatory pastors, I thought I'd post this.

For those who don't know, John Hagee is the pastor of a large megachurch and the head of an televangelism company that broadcasts his sermons across the world. John McCain sought his endorsement and got it, but later rejected it when some of Hagee's more controversial statements about Catholicism and Judaism came to light. The quiz keychainfroggy posted describes him as follows:

Rev. John Hagee -Your friends think you’re pretty intense, but as far as you’re concerned, Hitler was a hunter who was sent by God to hunt down the Jews and send them running to Israel. Additionally, you think the Catholic Church is a “great whore,” though it’s not clear whether you mean “big whore,” or “very skilled and attractive yet reasonably priced whore.”

Anyway, I recently realized that John Hagee's Cornerstone megachurch is about 10 minutes away from my house, so naturally, I decided to go. The church was enormous, and it seemed more like a modern concert hall than anything else. Everyone was super-nice; I think about 17 people shook my hand on the way in. There was singing for what seemed like forever (very good singers, lame lite-pop-style music). Then John Hagee spoke. The sermon was fine, but disappointingly innocuous for someone interested in controversy; the topic was "Stop worrying." There was one line that was questionable, where he seemed to suggest that the Jews made a career of worrying because they wandered in the desert for 40 years, whereas Jesus was more of a problem-solver because he only did so for 40 days. Other than that, pretty inoffensive.

But when I got to my car, I noticed someone had placed some flyers and newsletters on my windshield from this guy, who believes the Pope and the U.S. are part of a Satanic conspiracy. (One contained this headline: "Evil International Roman Catholic Government Agents Are Claiming To Be United States of America Government Agents.") I guess he thought Hagee's church members would be a friendly audience.

Also, here's a story from a reporter who went undercover at a Cornerstone retreat, and it was way more interesting than my experience.

Be a meanie, go to jail

2008-05-24T21:03:00.005-05:00

Largely as a response to the horrible Megan Meier incident, the Missouri legislature recently passed a bill expanding the definition of criminal harassment to include the following:

[E]ngaging, without good cause, in any other act with the purpose to frighten, intimidate, or cause emotional distress to another person, cause such person to be frightened, intimidated, or emotionally distressed, and such person's response to the act is one of a person of average sensibilities considering the person's age.

If the perpetrator is 21 or older and the victim is 17 or younger, or if the perpetrator has committed this crime before, it's a felony that could result in four years' imprisonment.

The Governor hasn't signed the bill yet, but he's expected to. This law is ridiculously overbroad. Is there anyone, ever, who has not intentionally caused emotional distress to another person without good cause? I fear that Fuzzy alone could identify enough instances to get me imprisoned for life. (But she should not mention them in the comments section, because to do so would cause me emotional distress and could land her in jail too.)

Welcome, keychainfroggy

2008-05-05T19:21:00.003-05:00

Let's welcome keychainfroggy to the blogosphere! I think you will find that she is extremely hip and with it.

We had the $240 . . .

2008-04-13T10:19:00.004-05:00

and we had to have the pudding. As some of you know, I love sketch comedy. I just came across this: Nerve's list of the 50 greatest comedy sketches of all time. It's a great list because it has full videos of almost every sketch. So unlike the usual top whatever list, where you read it and say, "Oh, yeah, I've been meaning to watch that movie" or "Maybe I'll download [/buy/steal] that album sometime," you can just watch everything right there.

I was happy to find many of my favorites on the list (Argument Clinic! Porcupine Racetrack!) and troubled by a few of the choices (I know people like the chicken lady sketch, but as Kids in the Hall sketches go, it's just not as good as girl drink drunk, the bad doctor, the axe murderer, Gavin painting a chair, or anal probing aliens, just to name a few). I also found some sketches I'd never seen that were quite good.

Enjoy!

I never get tired of fake memoirs

2008-03-10T23:40:00.003-05:00

Most of you have probably seen this, but in case you haven't: a 33-year-old white woman named Margaret Seltzer recently wrote a critically acclaimed memoir, Love and Consequences, about growing up in a black foster family n South Central Los Angeles and getting involved in drugs and gang life. Except that she wasn't ever in a foster family, in South Central or elsewhere, and she didn't get into drugs or gang life. She grew up in the suburbs with her biological family and went to the same private school as the Olsen twins. She was found out when her sister called a reporter and said Seltzer was lying. Here's the story.

This takes some guts. This isn't James Frey embellishing and adding details to a real-life story; it's totally, completely made up. Just imagine what it must take to go on book tours and interviews, telling person after person all of these lies. How could you do it? And how could you think that you wouldn't be found out? Think of all the people who know you--all it would take is for one of them to see your picture in a book review or media appearance, and it's all over. I would like to meet this woman.

Notes on hotels

2008-03-10T23:01:00.006-05:00

Last week, for reasons beyond my control, I stayed for a few nights at a hotel that is far nicer than I am used to--one of the best and most expensive in the city where it is located. The hotel was extremely elegant, the rooms lovely, and the service excellent. However, I barely noticed any of this. Instead, I spent my stay there in a constant struggle to obtain cold Diet Coke. This was caused by the fact that the hotel has no self-service ice machines, no vending machines, and no in-room refrigerators. Perhaps this is comforting to patrons who turn up their noses at the vulgar idea of consuming food and drink not presented on an actual silver platter. To me, it was annoying.

At this hotel, a person who wishes to enjoy a Diet Coke in her room must either (1) pre-purchase some Diet Coke, store it warm in the room, call down to room service, request that ice be sent up, wait up to 20 minutes, allow a person into her hotel room, and give them a tip; or (2) call down to room service and request that a can of Diet Coke be sent up for the reasonable price of $3.50 plus an 18% gratuity and a $2.50 delivery charge. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Particularly when you want to do it two to four times per day.

Also, a hotel that costs $60 a night can give me a free buffet breakfast and phone calls, but the hotel that's hundreds of dollars a night charges $12 for a bowl of Cheerios and $1.50 for a local call? Stupid.

It's two stars max for me from here on out.

Happy 30th Birthday Fuzzy!

2008-02-09T10:54:00.002-06:00

Dewey Defeats Truman

2008-02-06T00:21:00.001-06:00

In an effort to avoid some of the intrusive graphics and over-the-top commentary of the cable news channels, I tried watching campaign coverage on PBS tonight. Two things happened:

(1) PBS, apparently relying on the AP, called Missouri for Hillary Clinton pretty early in the night. When it did so, most of the precincts had reported and Hillary had a three-point lead. But St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and Columbia (home of the University of Missouri) still had nearly all their precincts outstanding! Unsurprisingly, the call ended up being wrong. It's not good when a news outlet makes a prediction that anyone with access to the county-by-county vote totals on cnn.com could tell was wrong.

(2) PBS cut away from Obama in the middle of his speech to show us a bunch of random pundits blathering on about the same things they'd been talking about all night.

PBS is now dead to me, campaign coverage-wise.

Also, MSNBC is now noting that a Missouri statute provides for a recount in elections as close as this one, but wouldn't that be incredibly silly in a state with proportional delegate representation?

Vote!

2008-02-04T14:31:00.000-06:00

Those of you in Super Tuesday states should go vote tomorrow. Or, if you're lucky, caucus, because caucusing is awesome.

My state's primary isn't until March, so I will be sitting at home and watching punditry all night, flipping between the sane, thoughtful commentary of Mark Shields and David Brooks on PBS and the enthusiastic, incoherent ranting of Chris Matthews on MSNBC.

New Hampshire thoughts

2008-01-09T08:39:00.000-06:00

What the hell goes through your head when you talk to pollsters, New Hampshirites?
Everyone needs to stop being mean. Obama and Edwards, no more ganging up on Clinton, because it's hurting you. Bill and Hillary, no more calling Obama's vision a "fairy tale," because it's pissing me off and making me hate you.
McCain's speech (boring, long, read with his head down the whole time) was the worst of the night. He made Huckabee shine by comparison, and he even somehow made Romney seem like an authentic, likable idealist.
Clinton is sort of growing on me, but she's no Obama.
This is the greatest primary season ever for political junkies. There is no front-runner in either party after Iowa and New Hampshire!

Happy caucus day!

2008-01-03T10:37:00.001-06:00

The Iowa caucuses are tonight! Coverage starts at 7 pm EST on CSPAN. Never have I been more sorry I didn't focus my job search on the Des Moines area.

Some stuff to get you in the mood:

A really excellent article by Andrew Sullivan about Why Obama Matters.

A David Brooks column about why Romney's old-school Reagan Republicanism could make him unelectable in the fall (NY Times free registration required)

In case you haven't seen it, Mike Gravel has given us the single greatest political ad ever made.

Microloan

2007-12-20T16:07:00.000-06:00

I guess this has been around for a little while, but I just heard about it, and I think it's cool.

Kiva is a website that lets you lend small amounts of money ($25 or more) to small entrepreneurs all over the world to help them grow their businesses. The website has profiles of the entrepreneurs, including descriptions of what they want the money for. Most of the people are only trying to borrow a few hundred dollars. When you lend to someone, you get updates about how the business is doing, and as they pay the loan back, you get paid back. (Kiva's repayment rate to date is over 99%). Then you can cash out or reinvest in another business. Right now, you don't get any of the interest the borrowers pay, so it's a charitable act and not an investment. Here's how it works.

I've only heard bits and pieces about microfinance, and I know there are downsides. But for the most part, I think Kiva's model is really interesting. The loss of the interest on $25 or $100 for several months is not something most middle-class Americans would even notice, but that money could make a massive difference in someone's life. And unlike most traditional giving programs (which I also support), it could help build economies and sustainable occupations. And it's easy. And it encourages people who might not otherwise give to get involved.

Automatic Take-my-money Machine

2007-12-20T08:56:00.001-06:00

Today, I pulled up to the ATM with some checks to deposit, put them into the envelope, and stuck the envelope into the machine. It made that grinding sound that it does when it's sucking in your envelope, and the envelope disappeared into the machine. But the grinding sound did not stop. The ATM screen asked if I needed more time to complete my transaction. More time? My envelope was already gone--what more did I need to do? But there was no way to communicate this to the cold, inflexible machine. It told me that my transaction was incomplete, gave me a "receipt" that in no way reflected the fact that it had just received $1000 worth of my checks, and sent me on my way with nothing.

For years, I have resisted making deposits at ATMs. I figured that if I was going to hand over my valuable negotiable instruments, I wanted some human person to see them, take them, and give me a receipt. But everyone told me I was being ridiculous. "I make ATM deposits all the time!" they said. "It works fine!" they said. Well, I've done it four times now, and one in four times it has taken my checks without giving me credit. I don't like those odds.

Christmas Pandora plug

2007-12-07T14:24:00.000-06:00

As most of you know, I love Christmas music, and commercial Christmas radio stations sort of suck. So I've taken to listening to Pandora. I think someone (fuzzy?) may have posted about this a while back. The way it works is, you type in a song title or artist, and it generates a custom radio station for you with stuff it thinks you will like. You can guide it along the way by giving thumbs up or thumbs down to certain songs, and you can skip ones you don't like.

It is amazingly effective for Christmas music. I typed in "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," selected a version by a choir, and since then have been treated to a beautiful series of traditional carols. There's not a "Christmas Shoes" or "Holly Jolly Christmas" in the bunch, and the well-known songs are mixed in with lots of lesser-known but awesome songs like "Once in Royal David's City" and "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming."

You have to register after you listen to a few songs, but it's free and easy and worth it.

Romney's faith speech

2007-12-06T16:14:00.000-06:00

I heard Mitt Romney's speech, and I think he gave the best possible speech he could have, given his audience of Christian conservatives. I also respected that he basically said that he was a Mormon and he wasn't going to distance himself from that to get elected.

Two problems, though:

(1)Disturbingly, there was absolutely no suggestion anywhere in his long speech that he has any respect for non-religious citizens--their rights, their potential contributions, or their morality.

(2) A key component of his message is incoherent. He thinks:

(A) it is illegitimate to "have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines" because doing so "would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution"), yet
(B) it is legitimate for a candidate to proclaim in his campaign speeches that he believes that "Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind." (as he did in this speech).

He won't answer questions about his Church's doctrines, but he will answer questions about what he believes about Jesus? The implicit message is that a belief in God and Jesus is not a "doctrine"--rather, it's the baseline faith we all agree on, the standard. But to many people--Buddhists, Wiccans, animists, Shintoists, people who consider themselves "spiritual," agnostics, atheists, doubters, questioners, and adherents of traditional American Indian and non-Western religions--even the belief in God is a distinctive doctrine, not a given. When he talks about God and Jesus, Mitt IS talking about the distinctive doctrines of his church. So I don't see how he can get all self-righteous if people ask him to get more specific about what he thinks about Jesus and God.

Mitt wants to draw the line between "faith" (what a you can ask a candidate about without it meaning you're imposing a religious test) and "doctrine" (what you can't) exactly where it best suits his political goals: right next to Jesus. I don't see that as a principled position.

Note: I just found this article by Andrew Sullivan and this one by E.J. Dionne, which make essentially the same points as I do. And David Brooks has a really good piece too.

Whiny Wednesday

2007-12-05T19:22:00.000-06:00

Things that bother me:

1. People who walk around at night in neighborhoods without sidewalks or streetlights, particularly when they wear road-colored clothes. Every day on my drive home I come close to killing many, many people.

2. The word affidavit. I misspell it as "affadavit" 99% of the time.

3. The shape of footballs. You know how virtually every other ball in the world is round? There's a reason for that. Round balls are easy to throw and bounce predictably.

4. Vending machines with weird selections. I'm looking at you, work vending machine that does not have pretzels, regular potato chips, or M&Ms, but does have have multiple types of Fritos.

5. The common practice of that saying "I just do not understand how someone can believe X" as if it's an argument against "X." There are obviously reasons someone believes it--why do you think your proclamation of your own failure to grasp those reasons is an argument?

The fatted calf

2007-12-05T10:49:00.000-06:00

I know I don't exactly have the ideal body type for clothes-buying. But not until yesterday did I believe that I was grossly deformed. Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I decided I needed some boots (non-hiking/snow variety) to wear with skirts in winter. I thought this would be simple. Go to the shoe store, pick out a pair of tall black leather boots in a size nine, and move on with my life. It didn't work that way.

After multiple shoe stores and about 20 pairs of boots, I still had not found any boots. Not because I was being picky, but because out of 20 pairs of boots, zero would fit on my body. We're not talking, "hmm, that's a little snug." We're talking, I could not physically move the zipper more than a couple of inches up from my ankle because my calves are so gigantic. I even tried some size eleven boots too see if the calf size would be large enough. No luck. I even tried on boots at a plus-size store that caters to women up to a size 32. No luck. I am a freak!

Mitt Romney and religious questions

2007-12-03T11:25:00.001-06:00

I think Mitt Romney's upcoming "JFK speech" on his faith is likely lead to more discussion of the LDS church in the media and more questions for Romney about his faith. So, what should Romney say when reporters ask him about specific questions of Mormon doctrine?

Several months ago, George Stephanopoulos asked Mitt Romney, "In your faith, if I understand it correctly, it teaches that Jesus will return probably to the United States and reign on earth for 1,000 years . . . Have you thought about how the Muslim world will react to that . . . . ?" Mitt's response was "Well, I'm not a spokesman for my church . . . that doesn't happen to be a doctrine of my church . . . Our belief is just as it says in the Bible, that the messiah will come to Jerusalem, stand on the Mount of Olives and that the Mount of Olives will be the place for the great gathering and so forth. It's the same as the other Christian tradition." Then ABC contacted an LDS spokesperson, who clarified the LDS belief: "One appearance will be to the new Jerusalem and another will be to the Jerusalem of the old world . . . It is our belief that the new Jerusalem will be established within the state of Missouri."

I know nothing about this doctrine or the accuracy of George's description of it. But given the LDS church's statement, Mitt's answer looks dishonest and evasive. If a Catholic politician were asked a basic question about a strange but well-established Catholic doctrine (say, transubstantiation), and he answered, "I'm not a spokesman for my church" or "We celebrate Christ's sacrifice in communion. It's the same as the other Christian tradition," I would be annoyed. Those answers suggest either ignorance or shame. It's a basic tenet of the religion--own it.

Now, I don't think issues like this affect a candidate's qualifications, nor do I think a candidate should have to be a spokesperson for his religion. But given that Romney is inevitably going to get these questions, how should he be answering them? Some options:

a. "If you want to talk about the specifics of my church, you'll have to ask the church."
[but can he really do this if he IS willing to talk about the easier-for-Protestants-to-swallow specifics of his religion, like the Mount of Olives stuff above?]
b. Answer honestly, explaining if necessary how the reporter has the doctrine wrong.
[but it could be politically risky]
c. "I'm not sure."
[my sense is this would work only for an obscure or debatable doctrine]
d. Evade and pretend that your doctrine is "the same as the other Christian tradition."
[makes you look like you lack integrity; plus, wouldn't this make LDS supporters mad? Also, if arguably the most publicly visible member of your church is saying it's just like other Christian denominations, why should anyone convert to it?]

Any thoughts?

Día de los Muertos

2007-11-01T09:37:00.000-05:00

Happy Day of the Dead, everybody!

On November 1st and 2nd, Mexicans celebrate their dead relatives and friends. They gather in cemeteries and hang out there for hours, picnicking and reminiscing. They decorate home altars, prepare elaborate meals, make a special bread ("pan de muerto"), and make candies in skull shapes.

The holiday is derived from an Aztec celebration, but the Spanish later moved it to early November to coincide with the Christian holiday of All Saints Day. The modern celebration seems to draw heavily from Christian traditions, with lots of crosses and Blessed Virgin Mary imagery.

I think this is a cool tradition, though the skull-shaped stuff really creeps me out.

In hiding for Halloween

2007-10-31T19:30:00.000-05:00

I live in a guesthouse behind someone's regular suburban house. My guesthouse sort of faces a street, but it doesn't look like an actual house--more like some weird garage or studio. I figured I wouldn't get any trick-or-treaters, so I didn't buy any candy.

Moments ago, I heard a bunch of people come up to my door. There was a knock at the door, two feet away from where I was sitting. I froze, trying to keep as quiet as possible. I heard voices:

Mom: No one's answering; maybe we should just go around the front.
Kid: No, there's someone in there!
Mom: No, no one's answering.
Kid: But if there's no one there, why is there a light on inside?
Mom: Come on, let's just go around to the front. I don't think this is really where they live.
Kid [yelling]: But why is there a peephole in that door if there's no one living there?! And there's a light on!

I thought that kid was going to break in. I almost wanted to open the door, congratulate him on his logical skills, and offer him a can of chick-peas or something. But I did not.

I am now having the scariest Halloween ever.

iSad

2007-10-31T17:16:00.000-05:00

My iPod just started displaying this image. My own face looks much the same. The suggestions on the Apple website have not worked, so I am going to spend the evening on the internet looking for more advanced fixes. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

Wonderful Wednesdays, edition 3, one day late

2007-10-25T16:06:00.001-05:00

More good things:
1. Fountain soda from the gas station. 32 ounces of ice-cold Diet Dr. Pepper for $0.79 is hard to beat.
2. H.E.B. Central Market brand Indian frozen dinners, especially Chana Masala. H.E.B. is our local supermarket, and "Central Market" is their Whole Foods-esque line of products. Indian food seems to do pretty well in the freezing-reheating process.
3. Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers. They're a band. They're good.
4. Corner Gas reruns on cable. I was first introduced to this Canadian sitcom by Squishy Burrito, and it I loved it. Now I can watch it every day. If the information I give the Nielsen people has as much impact as I think it will, there will soon be several episodes of Corner Gas on every day.
5. Pre-washed spinach in bags (non-E.coli type). Healthy and easy.

Stephen Colbert and the religious blogosphere

2007-10-22T21:59:00.001-05:00

I came across this blog yesterday: The WORD: A Colbert Blog for Catholic It-Getters. It basically collects and discusses Stephen Colbert's references to his Catholicism on the Colbert Report. For those who don't know, Stephen Colbert is a practicing Catholic who teaches Sunday School and raises his kids Catholic. He talks about it in an interview with Teri Gross here.

Here is an awesome YouTube clip of Colbert singing (and dancing to) one of my favorite hymns from childhood. I also recommend this clip of the Colbert Report.

Some exploration of the links from The WORD revealed a couple of things:
1. Catholic bloggers LOVE that Stephen Colbert is Catholic. I sort of do too. I think there's a real lack of cool, smart, funny, and sincerely religious role models in the media, especially for the sort of people who enjoy things like the Colbert Report.

2. The Catholic blogosphere is very lame. As I looked for Catholic blogs, I saw page after page doing nothing but rehashing the same issue--can you be pro-choice and Catholic? Yes you can! No you can't! Boring. In my travels in the religious internet, I also came across the quite amazing and large Mormon blogosphere, a.k.a. the Bloggernacle (I especially liked By Common Consent, the first one I saw). I have no idea about the religious value or accuracy of the material on the Mormon sites, but they appear to contain the kind of thoughtful and diverse commentary on issues theological, historical, and social that I wish existed for Catholics.

I have so much power.

2007-10-21T16:41:00.000-05:00

Moments ago, I was offered, and accepted, an opportunity to become a part of the Nielsen Ratings System by recording my TV viewing habits for a certain period of time.

Finally, the American people will have the benefit of my near-perfect taste in television. You are so lucky! And I am going mad with power right now.

Breakfast Tacos

2007-10-18T16:06:00.000-05:00

You know how, in a most offices and institutions, if there's a breakfast event, people will bring bagels, doughnuts, or pastries? When I was planning to move to San Antonio, someone from here told me that here, people will bring breakfast tacos instead. I was skeptical--that is, until my boss showed up one day my second week with a big bag of breakfast tacos. This happens about once a week.

Also, just about every other restaurant here is Mexican, and just about every Mexican place (and some non-Mexican places) sell breakfast tacos. A breakfast taco is basically a (usually) freshly made soft flour tortilla, usually with two of the following: eggs, chorizo, potato, bacon, cheese, or beans. They can be pretty tasty.

According to this article in the Denver Post, San Antonio is the birthplace of the breakfast taco.

Aunt Panda

2007-10-18T15:07:00.000-05:00

My (and Warm Fuzzy's) little brother's wife had a baby yesterday, making us aunts! I am excited.

Wonderful Wednesdays, edition 2

2007-10-17T20:24:00.000-05:00

More things I like:
1. Dual computer monitors. We just got these at work. Westlaw on one screen, memo on the other. It doesn't get any better than that, people.
2. Rice cookers. I didn't bring my rice cooker with me to Texas. I discovered I couldn't live without one, so I bought a $9.99 version at Walgreens. Perfect rice every time, with no judgment calls. If you are cooking your rice in a pot to save $9.99, you are a sucker.
3. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. There's been a crime. You have the guy who did it. You know he did it. He may even admit that he did it. But we let him go anyway! What an amazing dedication to principle.
4. Suburban running tracks.
I have taken up running again. I do this about once a year. This time, I'm running on a track at the local junior high. It is wonderful! It's easy on my feet and safe after dark--I ran tonight after 8 pm without a single worry of being mugged. The suburbs are growing on me.

5. Altoids. They are curiously strong.

Chain restaurant!

2007-10-15T21:04:00.000-05:00

A Panera Bread (a.k.a. St. Louis Bread Company) just opened near my house. On my way to work, in fact. I am extremely happy about this. Being fairly alone and perpetually lost in a new town, it is very comforting to walk into a place that looks exactly like the place I spent many happy (and some unhappy) hours surfing the internet, reading newspapers, and studying for the bar exam. Plus, San Antonio has a bizarre dearth of free wireless internet in any places where you'd actually want to go and surf the internet. (My Chinese restaurant has wireless internet, as does the local Denny's-style diner place--who gets out their laptop places like that? It's bizarre.)

I do feel a tiny bit guilty about this--I typically try to patronize independent, locally owned businesses. I like supporting things that are a little different, to help slow our society's inevitable progress toward becoming a nation of identical strip malls with no local differences other than the content of the maps and street guides they sell at Barnes & Noble and the Shell Station.

But at least the profits on my $0.89 bagels are going to St. Louis and benefiting what will be my local economy in the future, so that's something. I just wish Panera had kept the name "St. Louis Bread Company" for its national expansion--my hometown could use some positive publicity.

Things I like

2007-10-10T20:30:00.000-05:00

Below is a list of some stuff I like. Maybe I will make this a regular feature--"Wonderful Wednesday"? If I'm in a bad mood, it can always turn into "Whiny Wednesday." Anyway, here it is:

Lint rollers. If you haven't used these, they're like giant rolls of masking tape, with the sticky side out. They're essential if you have a pet or tend to dress in black.

The book Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. It's the true story of a bright and educated young man who went, alone and ill-prepared, into the Alaskan wilderness and eventually died of starvation. The book does a fascinating job of exploring the mystery of what motivated the young man.
Vanilla Wafers. Simple perfection in cookie form. The best are the Nabisco ones, a.k.a. "Nilla Wafers." Under no circumstances should you try to save money by getting the store brand.
The Reach Access dental flosser. The greatest advance in dentistry to occur in my lifetime.
The song "If You're Into It" by Flight of the Conchords. It has been in my head nearly constantly for the past two months. The premise is that a guy is writing a song for his new girlfriend about how he'd do anything for her--climb the highest mountain, etc. When his friend points out that he wouldn't actually be willing to do any of that stuff, he writes a more realistic song about the things he would be willing to do, like hanging out.

Inauthentic

2007-08-30T20:53:00.000-05:00

People frequently praise particular ethnic restaurants as "authentic" and criticize others as "Americanized." I used to do this. No more. I have made an uncomfortable discovery: I often prefer the Americanized, inauthentic versions of cuisines to the authentic ones.

I've always suspected that I'd feel this way about Asian cuisines. Although I've probably never had truly authentic Japanese, Chinese, or Thai food, I would bet any amount of money that I would prefer Chicken Teriyaki, Beef with Broccoli, and Phad Thai over what I would actually be served in those countries. I always thought that was just because of my aversion to seafood and to animal parts not commonly eaten in the U.S.

But lately, I've been going to the authentic Mexican restaurants here (which use, at least in many dishes, ingredients I'm fine with), and I don't love them as much as I'm supposed to. They're good, but to be honest, I prefer mission-style burritos (think Chipotle) and taco salads to their enchiladas and tacos. The authentic Mexican dishes I've had are a little too meat-heavy for my taste, they tend not to have enough vegetables, and they favor corn tortillas instead of my preferred flour tortillas. But I am made to feel bad about my desire for burritos, which the Hispanic people in my office dismiss as "white people food." I don't see why I should feel bad.

Don't get me wrong-- I still think there is a benefit to authenticity. Just as I would enjoy visiting Tokyo once or twice to see how people live there, I would enjoy going to an authentic Japanese restaurant once or twice to see how people in Japan eat. But just as I would not want to live on a daily basis the way that people in Tokyo live, I don't want to eat on a weekly basis the way people in Japan eat. Bring on the burritos.

Veladoras

2007-08-26T17:20:00.000-05:00

These tall religious candles are EVERYWHERE in San Antonio. There are big walls of them at the grocery store, at Wal-Mart, wherever. They come with different saints on them (though mostly Mary), and they only cost $1-$2. Their low cost and wide availability suggest that a lot of people use them and that they go through them frequently.

I really like them. I bought one of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I haven't found anything online about their history or use, but I'm curious.

My new home

2007-08-25T18:48:00.000-05:00

As most of you know, I've just moved to San Antonio, Texas for a temporary year-long job. I'm starting to settle in.

Good things:
1. The low cost of living.
2. The abundant and delicious Mexican food.
3. My totally awesome furnished guesthouse, which has more space and nicer stuff than I have ever had/will have in the foreseeable future. Let me tell you that I will NOT be living without a washer and dryer inside my apartment ever again.
4. The Riverwalk downtown-a long walkway one level below street level that goes along the San Antonio River and has shops and restaurants.
5. The presence of a giant, pointless monument in the middle of the city (the Tower of the Americas, pictured above). I refuse to live in any city that doesn't have one.

Bad things:
1. The street system. Why are all the businesses on one-way access roads on either side of the interstate? Why does everyone expect you to get on the interstate to drive to the grocery store that's a mile away? Why are there no through east-west roads for 2 miles in any direction from my house?
2. The lack of coffeeshops with free wi-fi. Fortunately, a Panera is opening up nearby soon.
3. The bugs. All the apartment complexes I looked at advertised their pest control services. I have found dead bugs in my house. Grocery stores have entire aisles labelled "Insecticide." Yuck.

Reflections on moving

2007-08-18T13:31:00.001-05:00

Things that have gone up in my estimation during my recent move:
-The Magic Eraser cleaning tool (it is amazing)
-SMALL moving boxes
-Brown paper packing tape, because you can tear it by hand
-Housecleaners (they did in 2 hours what I could not have done in 20, and thanks to them I'm getting back a security deposit worth 8 times what I paid them)

Things that have gone down in my estimation:
-Book purchases (I am going to make friends with the library system in my new city)
-Poorly thought-out clothing purchases (I discovered clothes that I never even took the tags off of)
-Furniture of any kind
-Large moving boxes
-Refrigerator magnets (they can leave marks on a bumpy white fridge; see also Magic Eraser, supra)

Also: I'm never buying anything nonconsumable ever again.

What's in my backpack

2007-07-26T13:36:00.000-05:00

I'm going to another state for an apartment-hunting trip this afternoon, and I just packed my backpack to take on the flight. It's the same backpack I brought back from my trip to take the bar exam yesterday.

What I took OUT of the backpack:
-A book of Multistate Essay Exam problems
-A book of Missouri Essay Exam prblems
-The Missouri Bar/Bri lecture notes
-The book of practice Multistate Performance Tests
-Hundreds upon hundreds of flashcards containing phrases like "fee simple subject to condition subsequent" and "30 days after the trial court rules on the last timely filed authorized post-trial motion"

What I put INTO the backpack:
-The new Harry Potter book
-My iPod

It's a good day.

Happy bar exam week, everyone!

2007-07-23T09:33:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to wish all the bar applicants in my readership luck with the exam. The people of Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon, New York, and Pennsylvania will be lucky to have us licensed to represent them.

LALALALA-I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

2007-07-19T16:30:00.001-05:00

So, I'm not going to be able to read the new Harry Potter book until after the bar exam is over--a full 5 days after the book comes out. I am not sure how I'm going to make it through those five days without hearing how it ended. Specifically, I am concerned about hearing whether Harry dies or not.

Any thoughts on how likely it is that I'll be able to do this? Any suggestions? I'm thinking noise-cancelling headphones and a t-shirt that says, front and back, "Don't tell me how Harry Potter ends!"

"(C) is incorrect for several reasons."

2007-07-18T17:29:00.001-05:00

This is becoming a sentence I read far too often. Contracts law, why do you still elude me?

Big Love

2007-07-16T13:02:00.000-05:00

The new season of Big Love has begun on HBO, and I could not be more excited. As most of you probably know, Big Love is a show about a family of suburban polygamists.

I should note, as many people do when discussing this show, that the LDS Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church) does not condone the practice of polygamy, and these people are not Mormons. Some of them call themselves "Fundamentalist Mormons," a designation the LDS Church does not approve of. By the way, no one who watched the show could possibly come away from it thinking that the LDS Church approves of polygamy.

The show is great as a show, and I recommend it for the fascinating explorations of the wives' reasons for getting into polygamy and their reactions to the challenges it poses (which are many--intra-family jealousies, fear of exposure of their illegal lifestyle, disapproval from neighbors and relatives, psychotic relatives from the nearby polygamist cult, etc.).

But I also use the show as a jumping-off point for thinking about polygamy more generally. Is it a legitimate lifestyle choice? Is it inherently sexist or abusive? How many people really practice it in the suburbs rather than in some isolated compound? Would a sane woman ever choose it freely? How should it be treated by the law? How many of its problems are caused by its marginalization? Is it sustainable, what with all those extra men?

Some interesting links:

Here's an article about a real-life family of suburban polygamists. (link fixed now, I think)

Here's an interview with another former plural wife (and pro-polygamy activist) who still believes in the practice.

Here's a blog by a former plural wife who still believes in the practice.

Here's an interview with a writer who says she went undercover in a polygamist compound to research a book. (Some have questioned her credibility, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Go here to find the Television Without Pity thread for discussing polygamy in the context of the show.

The Salt Lake City Tribute has a plural marriage blog and a polygamy section.

Tapestry against Polygamy is probably the best-known anti-polygamy organization. Many of members are refugees from polygamous upringingings, and they REALLY hate polygamy. They're also critical the LDS church for not doing enough to stop polygamy in Utah.

Principle Voices is the best-known pro-polygamy organization.

I'm done

2007-07-16T12:55:00.000-05:00

That's it. My brain is full. I can learn no more new law. No more timing requirements, elements, standards of review, modern approaches, or exceptions to the general rule. My bar review materials indicate that there is going to be material tested that I don't know about, but I no longer have the capacity to care. I will be passing or failing based on material I have already covered. Let the reviewing begin.

Bear attack

2007-06-20T16:03:00.000-05:00

There was a fatal bear attack in Utah a couple of days ago. A kid was sleeping in his tent when a black bear grabbed him, dragged him away, and mauled him to death. Read more here.

Think there are no bears in your area? Think again. Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, and Pennsylvania all have bears. Here is a range map and collection of population estimates from 1994. In most places, conservation efforts have led to population increases; Missouri, for example, is now estimated to have more than twice as many bears as it did in 1994.

Paternity testing

2007-06-07T14:53:00.000-05:00

As some of you know, one of my great guilty pleasures is the watching of talk shows (specifically Maury Povich) on which paternity test results are revealed. These shows typically involve two distinct types of situations:

1. Woman swears she's 100% sure that a man is the father of her baby, and the man swears that he's not because the woman is sleeping with the whole town.

In this scenario, I'm usually on the woman's side. In part, it's because the men seem so idiotic (on the show I watched today, one guy said he was 100% sure he was not the father because "I've slept with three virgins, and I've didn't get any of THEM pregnant!"). In part, it's because I figure the woman is in a better position to know who the father is. What shocks me is how many women insist that there is NO WAY that anyone else could be the dad and then end up being wrong. That happened to both women today.

2. Young, happy couple has a kid (or one on the way), and the woman has brought the man on Maury to tell him a "terrible secret." The secret is that the kid might not be his (one woman on today's show was sleeping with 8 different guys around the time of conception). It goes without saying that if you're in this situation, going on Maury to tell your boyfriend/husband is a bad idea. But I'm torn about whether you should tell him at all. Who does it help? If he wants to be the father, and you want him to be the father, and he's a good father, is the DNA test a good idea?

The bears are coming for me

2007-06-01T22:14:00.002-05:00

For all those who laugh at me for being concerned about bears on my hiking trips (see my earlier post), I offer this terrifying article.

The elementary school where the bear's tracks were found is 36 miles west of my house, and the bear is moving east. Thank goodness I live in a high-rise apartment building.

Pizza guy

2007-05-29T18:31:00.000-05:00

Last night, after getting home from a road trip, I ordered a pizza. When the pizza delivery guy arrived at my door, he said, "Are you a doctor?" I sort of stared at him, confused, and said, "Uh, no," and looked at him quizzically. He said, apparently by way of explanation, "Well, you keep such a clean house."

I should note that my apartment was quite messy at the time--within the pizza guy's view at that point were an open suitcase, two empty diet coke cans, a tipped-over tote bag with stuff falling out of it, and some shoes. In no way was my house clean.

What was he talking about? What does house messiness have to do with being a doctor? And why would a pizza guy, seconds before I am about to decide on his tip, insult my housekeeping?

Promotional items, good and bad

2007-05-25T18:45:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, when you buy a product or donate to a cause, the company or nonprofit involved gives you free stuff to promote itself. Some of these items are good, and some annoy me.

Things I do not want to get any more of:

1. Travel coffee mugs. These are those metal mugs with plastic handles that are designed to go into car cupholders. I don't drink coffee, so I have never used these. Yet I have acquired 5 of them. They seem too nice to throw away, so I just continue to take up my extremely limited cupboard space by storing them. People who drink coffee already have them. Stop giving them away.
2. Jewelry. I donated to a cause once and was given a crappy plastic-and-metal necklace. Who is going to wear that?
3. Keychains. Everyone has a keychain already. Possible exception: value-added key-chains that have a bottle opener or (maybe) a flashlight.
4. Messenger bags. The free ones I have are poorly made, with a thin, uncomfortable strap. I'm not going to use them.
5. Buttons. What the hell am I going to do with a button?

Things I like:

1. Refrigerator magnets, especially if they're strong enough to hold up pieces of paper. They don't really take up room, but I see them every day, and I can use them. Very effective.
2. Pens. It's a little lame, but Ican always use another pen.
3. Tote bags. They're small and useful, and a cheap one works fine.
4. Tape measures. Best promotional item ever.

The lost art of doodling

2007-05-25T12:24:00.000-05:00

In my bar review class, they give us a fill-in-the-blanks workbook, and we sit there for 3 1/2 hours every day, filling it in. There's really no legitimate need to bring a computer to class, so screwing around on the internet to combat the inevitable boredom is not an option. Instead, I have taken to doodling in the margins of the book. However, I find myself at a loss for good doodling ideas--three years of taking notes exclusively on computers have made me forget what I used to do. I am open to suggestions.

Things fall apart

2007-05-23T18:08:00.001-05:00

Today, within a span of two hours, the following happened:

1. My cell phone fell apart. Miscellaneous external parts of the phone began falling off, followed shortly by the snapping in half of some sort of important-looking electronic-type component.

2. The power cord for my computer fell apart. Where the cord meets the big square thing, the plastic (rubber? I don't know) came off, and broken ends of wires are now sticking out. A replacement power cord for my computer costs eighty dollars. Eighty dollars! I think I can get a non-Mac-manufactured version online for less, but still.

What is going on? Have my inanimate possessions decided to self-destruct because they sense that I am done with school and should be able to afford technological items that are less than four years old? If so, they are jumping the gun by least four months.

A new addition to the blogosphere

2007-05-23T18:03:00.000-05:00

Welcome, Perma-Three Seat! This moment has been a long time coming.

Shattered Glass

2007-02-04T09:28:00.000-06:00

Last weekend, Fuzzy and I watched the movie Shattered Glass. It tells the story of Stephen Glass, a rising star at The New Republic, known for his extremely interesting and colorful stories. It turned out, though, that many of those stories were made up. We're not talking about a doctored quote here, a made-up source there; we're talking about people and companies that never existed doing things that never happened. He made stuff up out of whole cloth.

Take for example, the Hack Heaven, the story that got him caught. Read this story. The people in it don't exist. The software company doesn't exist. The conference didn't happen. The legislation he said had been proposed in 21 states had not been proposed in any. The New Republic supposedly had an extensive fact-checking system, yet he only got caught after another reporter at Forbes online tried to write a follow-up story [warning: very spoilery if you might see the movie] and couldn't find any of the people mentioned. A Slate article addresses some of the reasons he wasn't found out sooner. Another Slate article discusses the film.

In addition to Hack Heaven, Glass fabricated dozens of other articles, indexed here. After looking at this list, I realized that I had probably been fooled by him too. One of my favorite This American Life stories is in the episode "How to Take Money From Strangers." It's the story of former phone psychic; he tells us really moving and compelling stories about his callers, his interactions with them, his guilt over lying to them about his psychic abilities, and his guilt over bilking money out of people who can least afford it. The former phone psychic? Stephen Glass. I feel so betrayed.

Glass has since been interviewed by CBS [also spoilery], and he acts all contrite, but I don't buy it.

Anyway, see the movie. It's a fantastic story.

Scrabble report

2006-12-28T00:13:00.000-06:00

To start my new hobby (see post below), I just (1) e-mailed the director of my local Scrabble club to ask for advice, and (2) spent a couple of hours playing a computer Scrabble game. Among the words the computer suggests are my best plays after I play much lamer words:

fixt (past tense of "fix")
jivey (jazzy; lively)
pice (a former coin of India & Pakistan)
weel (well)
odea (theater or concert hall)
vinier (more covered in vines)
coelome (coelom-a type of body cavity)
umiaqs (umiak-like a kayak)
jo (a sweetheart)
mazedly (the adverb form of "maze"--to daze, perplex, or stupefy)
inarm (to encircle with the arms)

I am mazed. Clearly I have much to learn.

Hobby

2006-12-27T19:24:00.000-06:00

I have always wanted a hobby. I envy people who cannot wait to get off work and do . . . whatever it is that people do when they're not working, watching movies, reading, chatting, or watching tv.

An incomplete list of hobbies I have tried and discarded:

knitting (I got bored with my projects before I finished them)
sailing (I have no gross motor skills, and I fear open water)
running (I broke my foot)
candlemaking (messy)
photography (I never wanted to bother carrying my giant camera around, plus I kept forgetting how to load the film)
cooking (I got tired of spending $30 and two hours to make something I could get for $6 at the Thai place on the corner)

The one hobby I do enjoy is backpacking, but it's hard to make it a daily or even weekly thing because it requires (1) a couple of free days, (2) a hiking partner who has the same couple of free days, and (3) decent weather.

Anyway, now I'm considering a hobby I half-heartedly thought about getting into a couple of years ago: competitive Scrabble. Yesterday I reread Stefan Fatsis's excellent book Word Freak, which is all about the colorful characters who populate the highest ranks of the competitive Scrabble scene. I love their weirdness and their dedication. I love the massive levels of concern over the composition of the official list of legal words. I love that it's a small enough world that I already know many of the major players and have favorites. I love that it requires no motor skills.

My city appears to have two Scrabble clubs, each meeting weekly. I'm going to go as soon as I memorize the legal 2-letter words. I don' t plan to abandon gainful employment so I can spend my time memorizing word lists, but I think I could become a decent intermediate player.

Inappropriate

2006-12-12T19:51:00.000-06:00

I just got a mass e-mail with the subject line "sex acts." Normally, I would have assumed it was just one of the fifty spam e-mails my school's spam filter lets into my inbox every day. But the "From" line named someone who frequently sends official school e-mails, so I opened it. I learned that members of the university cleaning staff have been complaining about something: the fact that they keep coming upon people having sex in the law school. When discovered, these couples do not even stop what they are doing; they just continue and assume the cleaning staff will return later.

So, yuck. Can people not take a break from studying long enough to go home for this? And have I been studying on tables where people have been doing it?

Anyway, if anyone in my readership is one of the culprits here, STOP HAVING SEX IN THE LAW SCHOOL. It's gross.

For more stories of inappropriate public behavior (and other stuff), check out True Porn Clerk Stories, a pretty wonderful online diary of a clerk who works in a video store with a porn section. I wasted hours reading it yesterday. Not appropriate for children or work.

Happy Birthday, Nell!

2006-12-02T21:40:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving 2006!

2006-11-23T02:01:00.000-06:00

Good, wholesome family movies

2006-11-22T20:58:00.000-06:00

It's Thanksgiving weekend--a time for hanging out, cooking, chatting, eating, and (at my parents' house, at least) watching movies with family. It can be tough to find movies that are inoffensive enough for 8-year-old kids and 80-year-old grandmothers, yet awesome enough to entertain hipster youngish adults. Here are two such movies I've seen recently:

The Parent Trap (Hayley Mills version). This is a classic from 1961. Two 13-year-olds are sent to summer camp, where they discover that they are twins separated at birth. Everything about the story is satisfying, from the gradual discovery of their twinhood (Hey, we're identical except for our haircuts! Hey, we have the same birthday! Hey, you only have a mom and I only have a dad! Are you thinking what I'm thinking?) to the clever scheme involving them switching places to get their parents back together. The movie is relentlessly positive and feelgood--they don't even get mad at their parents when they realize the parents never told them about each other. It's fantastic.

Akeelah and the Bee. This is a inspirational movie about a kid from a bad neighborhood in L.A. who tries to get to the National Spelling Bee. It's on the formulaic side, but it's based on a good formula. Very enjoyable.

Happy birthday Matt!

2006-11-15T16:03:00.000-06:00

Blue state

2006-11-09T22:01:00.000-06:00

I would just like to commend my home state for not embarassing itself during this election season by passing anti-gay constitutional amendments, nominating racists, or banning stem cell research. Way to go!

My voting experience

2006-11-07T14:24:00.000-06:00

I voted this morning, and it was a good experience. It was in a public library, and there was a lot of indoor waiting space, so I didn't have to stand out in the cold as I have in elections past. I had no voter registration card, and no one gave me a hard time about it. Still, there were a few kinks that caused me to have to wait for about 20 minutes even though there were only 5 people ahead of me.

Some suggestions to make things go more smoothly:

1. If you are a voter who fears technology, do not opt for the touch-screen voting when you have the paper option.

2. If you are the sole election volunteer capable of helping people with the touch-screen voting, do not take a break and disappear when there are multiple octogenarians who have just stepped up to the machines.

3. If you are in charge of flipping through the a hundred-page book to find a name that begins with the letter G, and the book is currently turned to the page with names beginning with "V," you can probably go ahead and flip more than one page at a time.

Feel free to comment on your own voting experiences.

Vote!

2006-11-07T09:33:00.000-06:00

It's election day, and most of you are in a serious battleground state, so you should vote.

My predictions for the most-talked-about issues here:

*Proposed Amendment 2 (amending the state constitution to allow stem cell research to the extent allowed by federal law) will not pass. Even though a good-sized majority of voters polled are for it, the grassroots effort against it is incredibly strong. Drive around looking at yard signs in the suburbs or walk into one of the bazillion Catholic churches in the area, and you'll see what I mean. I think some will vote against it because of true disagreement with the cloning & destruction of pre-implantation embryos, some because they're uncomfortable addressing these issues by constitutional amendment, and some because they have been misled into thinking it will lead to clones walking around.

*Jim Talent will beat Claire McCaskill, in part because of the high conservative turnout on Amendment 2.

*The tobacco tax will pass (despite record turnout in the smoker demographic) because nonsmokers really hate smoking.

*The minimum wage increase will pass, because the positive effects are easy to understand, while potential negative effects are based on boring and relatively difficult-to-understand arguments about ripple effects in the economy. I'm voting for it.

*Nationally, the Democrats will take the House but remain a couple of seats short of taking the Senate. For the Democrats to take the Senate, just about every close race would have to break their way. I don't see that happening.

I hope I'm wrong about some of this. In any case, though, I love election day. Turn on some NPR and CNN and enjoy yourselves, nation!

Two podcasts

2006-11-04T16:36:00.000-06:00

Two things I love have recently been put into free podcast form, and I want to promote them.

1. This American Life. I discussed Ira Glass's brilliant radio show in an earlier post. Downloads used to cost money, but now each week's show is available for free download on iTunes the week it airs. Just subscribe, and you'll get them automatically. I am extremely excited.

2. Savage Love. You may be familiar with Dan Savage's fairly raunchy syndicated sex advice column Savage Love, which appears in most cities' weekly alternative newspapers. The author has recently started a free, 15-minute podcast version of the column, in which advice-seekers call and record questions, and he responds to a few of them. He admits that the first episode kind of sucked, but says he hopes to make future episodes less sucky. Even with some suckiness, I find him consistently charming to listen to. Worth a listen. It's available on iTunes too.

Can't get enough of Dan Savage even with the podcast? He's also the author of a wonderful book, The Kid, a memoir about the process by which he and his boyfriend adopted their child. He is also an occasional contributor to This American Life--you can search the site for his pieces.

Five places that make me happy

2006-10-23T19:29:00.000-05:00

1. The front yard of the house where I lived from ages 2-10. There was a giant oak tree that shaded the whole yard. I spent many happy hours playing there. I don't really remember what I spent my time doing, but I think I sometimes made acorn stew.

2. The main quad at Notre Dame (aka "God Quad" because that's where the Basilica is). The golden dome towers over one end of it. The interior of the quad is an arboretum with tons of different trees. It's gorgeous and serene, and it's where I first fell in love with Notre Dame.

3. The kitchen of my grandparents' farm house. The best time was in the morning, with my grandma making eggs and bacon, homemade bread in the toaster, and my aunts and uncles from down the road stopping by for a morning chat.

4. The courtyard at my law school. You can sit in the courtyard's clean, comfortable chairs and tables for hours, enjoying the weather, studying, and chatting with the many passersby. Also, I made most of my law school friends in the courtyard, so it holds many fond memories.

5. Broadway Avenue in Capitol Hill in Seattle. This is the sort of hip shopping/restaurant district in Seattle. What made it great was that in addition to the abundance of Thai food, feather boas, and used books you typically find in such neighborhoods, it also had two major grocery stores and a small Target-type store, so you could actually live there. For six years, I lived within two blocks of it, and I rarely needed to go anywhere else.

What places make you happy?

Helium shortage?

2006-10-22T11:59:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, I went to the grocery store and tried to purchase some helium balloons. I was informed by a sign that the store was out of helium and that "This is a nationwide problem." So, I got to wondering about some things: Where does helium come from? Is there really a nationwide shortage, or did my grocery store just forget to pay its helium bill?

As best I could figure out, here's what's going on: Although helium is very common in the atmosphere, its concentration is too low to be usable. Most usable helium is found in pockets of natural gas in Texas, where it has been trapped after being produced by the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. The federal government extracts the helium from the natural gas deposits and sells it to private plants to be processed.

The current shortage is probably caused by a combination of scheduled maintenance (fall is a low-demand time of year because of the lack of baloony holidays) and problems with processing plants in the middle east. Here is an article about it.

Ironing boards

2006-10-20T13:49:00.000-05:00

I have an ironing board like this. Most people do. They are big, they take up closet space, they're kind of a pain to put up and down, and they make a sound when being set up that scares the cat. Also, they can tip over, causing irons to fall on small children or set fires.

Several years ago, I lived in an apartment in Seattle where I did NOT have to have an ironing board like the one above. The apartment had an ironing board built into the kitchen wall, much like this:

The Seattle board was even better than this because the storage box was actually recessed into the wall instead of sticking out. The board flipped down out of the wall, right in the kitchen. The iron was stored right there. It was an ironing paradise.

Note that this was not a fancy new apartment. It was a studio apartment in a building so old that the kitchen had an icebox (the system by which stuff was kept cold before the invention of refrigeration.) Clearly, the ironing-board-in-the-wall idea has been around for a while. So why are we moving backward as a society?

Welcome, Scarlet Panda reader #8

2006-10-20T10:32:00.000-05:00

I noticed yesterday that someone has been coming to my webpage repeatedly from a blog called Barrington. I checked out her blog, and found THIS amazing shout-out. I am so proud. I encourage my other readers to check out her quite excellent blog.

I fear she will stop reading if I don't start updating more frequently, so I'm going to make some effort in that regard.

Why Studio 60 Sucks

2006-10-15T21:39:00.000-05:00

I love Aaron Sorkin, but Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip sucks. Five reasons why:

1. The SNL-type show-within-the-show is not funny.

Aaron Sorkin's shows (The West Wing, Sports Night) are about brilliant, passionate people who have completely dedicated themselves to their work. When Sorkin characters have a problem to overcome, they use their dedication and brilliance to work on the problem, and sometimes they emerge triumphant. Then the audience goes, "Wow, they're awesome!" It's satisfying.

On The West Wing, this formula works: Toby pulls off a political maneuver, the bill gets passed, the audience can see that something great has happened. The bill was passed against all odds! Wow, they're awesome!

On Studio 60, here's how the formula goes: the challenge the characters face is to pull off a funny show in light of some obstacle. Someone writes a sketch. All of the characters talk about how funny it is. We see the sketch. The studio audience laughs. We are all supposed to go, "Wow, they're awesome!" Except that they are not awesome, because the sketch was not funny. Not at all. It was a tired Gilbert & Sullivan parody or a dated Juliette Lewis impersonation. There is nothing to satisfy the audience.

2. The characters are not sufficiently dedicated to their work.

As I said in #1 above, the essence of a Sorkin show is dedication. On Sports Night, Sorkin managed to make us care about whether a sports show was good because we felt like the characters would do anything for the show. Here, it's not clear to me that the characters give a crap about whether the show gets cancelled, so why should I care?

3. The writing is too much about how smart Aaron Sorkin is rather than being smart itself.

Literary allusions are great if they are understood by a good portion of the audience and serve the story by providing a shorthand that helps illuminate the plot or characters. More obscure allusions are fine if they are quick references that can be appreciated by those who get them and ignored by those who don't (The Simpsons does a lot of that). Studio 60's allusions meet none of these criteria.

For example, in the last episode, we had to watch two characters spend a scene basically saying, "Hey, our subplot sort of follows the same simple plot as this Strindberg play, so let's have several minutes where we talk about the Strindberg play and how it's similar to our subplot. Strindberg Strindberg Strindberg." We get it, Mr. Sorkin. You know about plays.

4. Sorkin is under the misapprehension that simply repeating some variation on "Christians are bad" is either a joke or somehow instructive.
There are constant references to "Crazy Christians" and how they don't like science and believe in creationism. There's a Christian character on the show, and most of her interactions involve the other characters talking about how they disagree with her. There's no humor or depth. It is almost too boring and pointless to even be offensive.

5. It tells rather than shows.
There's an actress on the show who is supposedly really talented, well-liked, and funny. How do we know? Because the characters constantly announce it. We have never seen her be particularly talented, likeable, or funny.

I suspect that this show is on the fast road to cancellation.

The Cult of Trader Joe's

2006-10-03T19:51:00.000-05:00

Trader Joe's annoys me. It's not the food they have, some of which is good. I like the little pretzel things that are filled with peanut butter. It's the bizarre, cultish devotion it seems to create in its patrons. You know the people I am talking about. You're sitting at a work lunch or at a party, and they offer you a weirdly spiced cashew or some ginger snaps. Then, inevitably, they feel the need to tell you, "They're from Trader Joe's." When they tell you what they had for dinner last night, it wasn't just stir fry, it was "stir fry from Trader Joe's." They read Trader Joe's newsletters. Everything is Trader Joe's this, Trader Joe's that. It is unnatural.

I bring this up today because I happened upon this newspaper article today in my local paper that recognizes the Trader Joe's cult phenomenon. Among the many articles and sites devoted to Trader Joe's, I found blog devoted to tracking Trader Joe's-related news and an account of one person's recovery from the obsession.

You can't even buy an individual piece of fruit there!

Llama llama cheesecake llama

2006-10-03T19:46:00.000-05:00

I love this video of The Llama Song. Watch it. Listen to it. Love it.

I don't think it plays music until you hit play, but just in case, you shouldn't click on the link if you're currently in Federal Jurisdiction or something.

Bear Shock

2006-09-24T10:17:00.000-05:00

Can you imagine this happening while you're asleep in your tent? Well, I can. That's why I have never had a decent night's sleep on any of my many camping trips in bear country. It's also why I always thought I would never be able to go camping in grizzly-infested places like Glacier National Park. But that may be changing: in Backpacker magazine yesterday, I I read about the Bear Shock electric fence. It's a portable, 3.7-pound electric fence that runs on two D batteries and allows you to enclose a 30 ft X 30 ft area. When a bear touches it, it gets a 6,000-volt shock. During testing by the National Outdoor Leadership School, it was extremely effective at turning back bears coming into camp for food.

Of course, this not as good as my idea of fencing off an entire state or two for those hikers who want to remain bear-free. Still, it means we're moving in the right direction.

Baggage claim

2006-09-22T13:48:00.000-05:00

Now that you're not allowed to carry toothpaste or mascara onto an airplane, almost everyone checks bags. This is good news during the flight, because there is more room in the overhead compartments. It is bad news at the baggage claim.

There are two ways a flight full of people can deal with the baggage carousel:

Approach #1: Everyone stands back from the carousel about a foot, forming a large circle or oval whose circumference is large enough to accommodate everyone from the flight. Everyone can stand comfortably, can easily see the all bags as they come by, and can step forward when their bags come.

Approach #2: Everyone can try to cram themselves right up at the edge of the carousel, forming a small circle or oval whose circumference is NOT large enough to accomodate everyone. Half the people on the flight have to stand on their tiptoes or peer around people to see the bags coming. If they actually do see their bags, they have to squirm through the mass of people yelling "excuse me" and trying to get to their bags before the bags move on.

I have yet to see any flight full of people choose approach #1. Even if a few bright people are standing back, once some morons start in with approach #2, everyone else has no choice but to join in.

I encourage everyone to write to airport managers and designers and encourage them to paint some kind of lines on the floor around the carousels to tell people where to stand.

The most depressing songs ever

2006-08-05T16:15:00.000-05:00

Someone has written a book entitled I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard. There's a review of the book here.

The list of depressing songs includes "One" by Metallica and "Seasons in the Sun" by I don't know who. The #1 most depressing song? The Christmas Shoes. I feel so validated.

Pimp Tax

2006-08-04T20:55:00.000-05:00

At a work lunch yesterday, someone mentioned that a congressperson had recently introduced a bill to impose a "pimp tax." My coworker described it as an attempt to discourage prostitution by taxing the pimp's proceeds. Of course, as I pointed out to my coworker, a pimp's income is already taxed, since gross income means ALL INCOME FROM WHATEVER SOURCE DERIVED, including illegal income. So we looked it up online, and found that it is apparently not a new tax at all, but an imposition of increased criminal penalties for pimps who don't pay their taxes.

It's not that interesting, but the phrase "Pimp Tax" makes me laugh.

toothpaste for dinner

2006-07-30T14:58:00.000-05:00

This is one of many awesome installments of the webcomic toothpaste for dinner. It's darwn by a research chemist named Drew who lives in Columbus, Ohio. It's really hit-and-miss, but sometimes it is hilarious. Slate featured it in a Slideshow Essay. Check it out.

Looking for Scarlet

2006-07-13T22:22:00.000-05:00

The other day I got an awesome e-mail. Here's the essence of it, some quoted and some paraphrased:

"To some of you I am going to come across as being crazy and to some I may be viewed as being romantic and I'll deal with however I'm judged if it means finding the girl who took my breath away." I'm looking for a woman named Scarlet from University X and this was my only hope of finding her. We met at the airport in City X while waiting to board a flight to city Y, and we also talked when the plane landed. Scarlet had an "electric personality," "amazing eyes," and "long straight brownish blond hair." I should have asked her for her number but I was too afraid. "If you're not her and don't know her, I apologize for wasting your time but I had to make an atempt to find the girl of my dreams."

The "To:" line of the e-mail included dozens of addresses, all of women with the first name "Scarlet." Apparently he went to the University directory, typed in "Scarlet," and e-mailed everyone who popped up.

Creepy? Or has someone just seen too many romantic comedies?

My problem with myspace

2006-07-13T21:51:00.000-05:00

The career services office at my school recently reminded my fellow students and me that potential employers, in addition to reading our cover letters and resumes, might research us on the internet. They warned us to clean up any myspace accounts or blogs that might place us in an unfavorable light.

I don't have a myspace account, and I'm pretty anonymous here. Someone truly dedicated, like a stalker, could probably figure out who I am, but a potential employer would be unlikely to put in the required effort. Anyway, there's not much here that's embarassing.

So what's the problem? When you google my name (in quotation marks), you get eleven hits. Ten of them are me--my name is unusual. These hits all correspond with my resume in a way that would say to an employer, "There's only one Scarlet Panda in the world." One of the hits, however, is a myspace page that belongs to the world's only apparent other Scarlet Panda. In addition, the google listing for this page shows a, shall we say, "off-color" poem involving my (her) name. I will not repeat the poem here. Those who know me (or any stalkers) can find it for themselves--you have to click on the Google's "cached" version to see the whole thing.

I find this upsetting. What can I do? Can I sue someone? Get my own myspace page so that it's obvious there are two of us?

Backpacking

2006-03-19T14:31:00.000-06:00

This weekend, I went on a lovely two-night backpacking trip with warmfuzzy, fishfrog, and nell. It was a bit cold, but the trail was a good level of challenging and the company was good.

Backpacking is one of my favorite activities, and one I should make the time to do more often. It's cool to know that you can survive (even in bad weather) with just what's on your back. It's fun to play in streams and identify trees with nature books. Most important, it's great because it's such a complete vacation from my normal life. The normal things I deal with--e-mail, school books, driving, television, phones, clocks--are absent or irrelevant. My only worries are things that I don't usually have to think about too much--whether it's light outside, how close I am to a water source, what the weather is like, how to protect my food from animals. It's such a completely different way of life that I really feel refreshed when I get back.

Listen to this band: The Vacation

2006-03-05T11:00:00.000-06:00

I saw a great show last night by a band everyone should listen to: The Vacation. I went to high school with the lead singer and guitarist, twins Ben and Steve Tegel, respectively. (Ben's in the middle in the photo; Steve's on the right.) Even if I hadn't, though, I would be a fan.

Their music is pretty simple, really catchy rock. It's very easy to like. If you're interested in such things, their influences include the Velvet Underground, the Sex Pistols, Guns 'N' Roses, and the Rolling Stones. I recommend "White Noise" as a starting point, but all the songs are good. Their first album is available on Amazon and iTunes, and it's being rereleased by a major label soon.

A review from the BBC is here. An article from Filter magazine is here. Their official website plays music automatically when you go there, so I am not linking to it, but it's http://www.thevacationmusic.com/.

Enjoy!

Adrian Mole and Karl Pilkington

2006-02-27T20:15:00.000-06:00

I've been re-reading a very entertaining book over the last couple of days: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4. It's a fictional diary kept by an English teenager, and it's hilarious. If you're in the mood for a quick, light, entertaining read, I highly recommend it and its sequels.

I believe the Adrian Mole books are quite well-known in Britain, though I don't know too many people here who've read them. Fans of the Ricky Gervais podcast may be interested to know that Karl Pilkington thought the diaries of Anne Frank were "an Adrian Mole sort of thing." I've also seen the character of Karl compared to Adrian Mole, though I don't think they're really similar. Adrian is much more of a go-getter than Karl.

Listening to the podcast (which includes Stephen Merchant reading excerpts from the diary of Karl Pilkington) has affected my reading of the book. As I read the Adrian Mole book, I hear all the lines as read by Stephen Merchant, which makes them even funnier.

Out There TV

2006-02-27T19:15:00.000-06:00

Thanks to superelectric, I have just discovered an awesome TV show: Out There TV. If you enjoy my posts about reptilian shapeshifters and contrails, this is the show for you. In the first 15 minutes of the show I watched, they mentioned tons of standard conspiracy stuff: aliens at Roswell, Bohemian Grove (a place where world leaders gather for strange rituals and planning the New World Order), the possible fakeness of the moon landing, a recent UFO sighting, David Icke (reptilian shapeshifter theorist), and evidence that the September 11th attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government. They also had some more timely information, such as a theory that controversy in the Muslim world over the Danish political cartoons was orchestrated by the U.S. to promote the "clash of civilizations" that it needs so the New World Order can take over the world. It's must-see TV.

The show also addresses some pretty mainstream stuff--secret NSA wiretaps, surveillance cameras and facial-recognition software in public places, and the administration's suckering of the American people into an unnecessary war with Iran. One thing I find interesting: conspiracy theory types are generally thought of as extremely right wing, due to their distrust of the federal government (and, sometimes, anti-semitism.) But they have a lot of overlap with today's liberals in their views of war, privacy, and civil liberties. And man, do they hate Bush. The two groups should team up somehow.

You can find out where to watch it here. Most of my readers can see it on channel 51 (not cable). Enjoy!

Switcheroo

2006-02-16T22:45:00.000-06:00

You know what's the greatest plot device ever? The body switch. Two characters, typically with very different personalities, switch bodies. Hilarity ensues. I defy you to watch a movie or TV episode involving a body switch and not be mesmerized.

At the moment, I'm watching an old episode of Angel. Angel has, against his will, switched bodies with some old guy who doesn't know Angel is a vampire. It's awesome. The old-guy-as-Angel is having totally inappropriate interactions with Angel's friends and acquaintances--hilarious! And there is drama too--what if the old-guy-as-Angel goes out in the sun, and Angel dies? How will Angel get his body back? I love it.

While TV can do a good body switch story, the best examples are in film. Here are my top five:

1. Freaky Friday (Jodie Foster version)
2. Vice Versa (starring Fred Savage and the brilliant Judge Reinhold)
3. Freaky Friday (Lindsey Lohan version)
4. Big (not quite a "switching" movie, but the same idea)
5. Like Father, Like Son (starting Kirk Cameron)

Other suggestions are welcome.

Wasted effort

2006-02-16T20:47:00.000-06:00

I went to my apartment's gym yesterday. I biked for miles but went nowhere. My fellow gym-goer repeatedly picked up heavy objects, only to put them down again. At all hours of the day, all across the country, millions of people are doing this. I got to thinking about what a ridiculous waste this useless expense of energy is. We need to do something about it.

Instead of running on a treadmill for an hour, why not run to work? Or run errands for people who don't have cars? If you want to pick up heavy stuff, why not pick up some boxes or rocks or something that someone needs moved?

Even if this would be too difficult to organize, it seems like we should at least hook up the nation's treadmills and elliptical machines to some sort of generator. Am I wrong?

Happy Birthday, Warm fuzzy!

2006-02-09T09:02:00.000-06:00

Immortality for $31, shipping included

2006-02-08T11:00:00.000-06:00

Today's topic: Alex Chiu, inventor and general crazy person.

Alex Chiu is most well-known as the inventor of "Eternal Life Rings" ($31), devices which grant the wearer immortality and cure a variety of diseases. The devices work using magnets to alter your circulation somehow. He has gained a great deal of notoriety from these inventions. Interestingly, in addition to selling the rings, he provides instructions on how to make them yourself.

But the immortality rings are not all there is to Alex Chiu. There's really no way to organize a description of this guy, so I merely provide you with a sampling:

On religion: He believes completely in the Jewish religion but is not a Jew. He thinks the Bible was a big astrology chart, and he's a big fan of finding Bible codes. He has proven, using stock charts, that God is a mathematical formula.

On biology: Animals are living magnets. Once you get this, biology and evolution are easy to understand--he explains them through animated GIF's--"A must study for all scientists." Also, if you want to make your own cells, he provides instructions (it involves boiling a few vegetables and leaving them on the stove for three days.)

On the future: In the future, food will be free (like air) because it will be farmed by robots in skyscrapers. We won't have an illegal drug problem because everyone will use debit cards instead of cash and no one will dare buy drugs with a debit card.

Miscellany: He hates Confucius. He loves Alicia Silverstone. He loves his cat and would choose him over Hilary Duff. He thinks anyone from Taiwan who doesn't consider himself Chinese doesn't deserve to be immortal.

I encourage all of you to browse Alex Chiu's extensive website. Also, here's an interview with him from slashdot.

Enjoy!