Thursday, September 30, 2004
Name That Image
An aerial photo of dead forest, wiped out by human pollution?
Or just marble?
Or maybe faux marble, done by a so-so faux finisher?
No, silly, it's the patterns created naturally by rust and pine resin on a dull old circular saw blade.
I ♥ found patterns and textures.
You can always click on the images for a larger image, if for some reason this makes you happy.
~
9/30/2004 10:42:00 AM
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Grilled Cheese Snadwiches and Dryer Vent Ramblings
That's a typo: snadwiches. But it sounds better that way anyhoo. Say it, it's fun: "Snadwiches! Snadwiches!" Whee!
Stealing my own material from my MeFi comments, I suggest to you this recipe:
Grilled cheese:
After you flip the cheese sandwich after browning the first side, pour in a little soy sauce and put a lid over it. The soy sauce will steam-melt the cheese and add nice flavor. Feed this to friends and attractive members of the opposite (or same, if that's your inclination) sex. Always tell people that Shane told you to do this. It was my idea and I'd like to seek a copyright. Maybe not. Maybe just Creative Commons.
Have a good day and always enjoy your cheese.
Organic cheese is good and possibly from happy free-range cows, but it's still expensive. Vegan cheese is cool but a bit oily.
I don't think you can cook a grilled cheese with the hot air coming from your dryer vent. Not hot enough. But you can buy a nifty inexpensive plastic guard at most hardware stores that will prevent chipmunks, birds, etc from climbing down into your dryer. I recommend this.
If you're really into the alternative grilled cheese cooking thing, it might be possible to do a grilled cheese on your car engine. I saw someone heat up a sandwich like this in the film Shooting Fish, with Kate Beckinsale and Stuart Townsend and Dan Futterman. It's a really fun movie, although the ending goes a little overboard with the schlocky feelgood vibe (in my opinion, just a little too much cheering and champagne and happy music.) The soundtrack is nifty too. You could do a lot worse than watching it for free on IFC, if you get IFC Channel.
Beckinsale looks cute with a tomboy haircut in Fish. Between this and Cold Comfort Farm (see it now if you haven't!) she has done some excellent flicks. Too bad the writing was urgh! and the pacing terribly slow on Underworld, as the premise (werewolves in a war with vampires!) is a little kid's dream. The hypothetical conversation, between youngsters playing in a sandbox, would have gone something like this:
Me: "Wouldn't it be cool if there were, like, this just total war between vampires and werewolves!"
Scotty Marshall: "Yeah! Kickass! And wouldn't it be cool if it was, like, all underground, and mortals didn't know it was going on, and they had to keep it a secret?!"
Me: "Yeah! Cool!"
Unfortunately the film featured a plodding, overly-complex plot. But the action was well-done, and the Special Features are some of the best parts of the DVD, watching Kate and the wonderfully hip Bill Nighy (too cool as "Billy Mack" in the also-fun Love Actually) flip around on wires and harnesses. Also flippin' fantastic: the first scene of Underworld, in which Kate (formerly a ballet dancer) jumps from the top of a high building, hits the ground in a crouch, and perfectly gracefully and with almost comic nonchalance jumps lithely up and walks down the street as if nothing happened at all. Great scene. Bootifully done.
The moral of all this: Cheesy is good. Respect the cheese, and the chipmunks too.
~
9/29/2004 01:33:00 PM
Two New Words and a Potentially
Ugsome, Lothly Doodle
Loathsome. The adverbial terminations -some and -ly were applied indifferently by our old writers; thus we have lothly for loathsome [and] ... ugsome in a sense not very remote from ugly....quoted in last weekend's entry to Jeffrey Kacirk's wonderful Forgotten English Calendar. It would be fascinating to read some of that Ancient Poetry, as well as many of Kacirk's original sources.
-Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, 1886
Ug-ug-ug-UGSOME!
~
9/29/2004 10:20:00 AM
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Long Killer Phillips, Easy Come/Go
I found a long Phillips screwdriver once, really long, maybe sixteen inches. It was brilliant. It looked almost like a weapon, maybe a main gauche capable of parrying blows and, indeed, even impaling an unlucky attacker all by itself. But that's not the best part. The best part was unscrewing stroppy, stubborn, rusted screws and bolts with it. Sixteen inches created enough torque to make the labor a breeze, reducing wrist fatigue to a whisper, easy go like spinning a well-oiled ballbearing effortlessly.
The ethics of finding it initially confounded me. Should I keep it, or would its owner return to pick it up? Or would someone else, no more deserving than me, find it and immediately take it away? After all, this was no simple old discarded tool, this was a flawless gem.
Or was it? Who would be so careless as to lose something so valuable? Perhaps it was a weapon, used in some random stabbing or even a murder plotted with malice aforethought. Maybe it had impaled someone painfully on the blunt four-pointed star of its blade, the killer then wiping it clean and discarding it in a parking lot. The perfect murder weapon, as it would surely be picked up by someone like me, thus hiding the "smoking gun" from the police and covering the killer's tracks...
Oh, the irony, I thought, if the killer were named Phillip! "Phillip the Phillips Screwdriver Murderer Apprehended", the headlines would read.
So should I call the police? Could I live with myself through all the manual chores I'd perform with this miraculous but lethally tainted tool, or would my nervous mind always wonder, would the angel on one shoulder tell me the Phillips had pierced someone's heart, while the devil said "Ah, SCREW IT!"..?
In the end, my own greed won out. Blood on my hands? Maybe. But think of those bolts, swooshing out of their clingy nuts, like the selfish Romeo of Paul Simon's 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, joyously unencumbered and free.
Of course I lost the screwdriver several months later. Its time with me was brief but sweet like a short fling with a bad, bad girl. That's the way it goes. Perhaps it went on to blot out innocent life again in the hands of a second evil genius, or perhaps its new owner just carried it farther away from its original crime scene. Either way, I would never again know the slick spiiiin as a license plate came free from its oxidized screws, never again marvel at the ease with which I parted pairs of nuts and bolts fused together like the two halves of a peanut-butter-and-jelly-on-white-bread-sandwich (but petrified.)
Easy come easy go. At least my conscience is finally clean.
~
9/28/2004 03:18:00 PM
Monday, September 27, 2004
Chippy's (and My) Big Adventure Yesterday
Me:
Scritchy scratch!
Is that coming from the dryer exhaust pipe?
Scritchy scratch scritch scratch!
...there it is again.
Maybe one of the cats is sharpening its claws? No, the sound is too tiny. And it sounds as if it's coming from inside the pipe. Anything behind the dryer? Nothing there. Let's pull the dryer away from the wall. Scritchy scritchy scritchy! Yup, it ran down the pipe into the dryer. Well, there's no way it can get inside the dryer's barrell where the clothes go. Hm. The exhaust pipes are a mess, time to change them anyway.
Wow, these old pipes are clogged with lint. They all seem to be aluminum, so they should be recyclable. I'll buy one of those new one-piece flex tubes that clamps on in five minutes. Alright, the pipes are all off, now to stick my hand in the dryer ... Okay, I can't feel anything but lint. And nothing bit me. I'll rig up this box under the dryer exhaust hole. Maybe if something's inside and I get lucky it'll run into the box. It might even stay there, if it's a tiny little mole or a baby mouse.
But, geez, what kind of animal would run down a dryer exaust pipe? The pipe must smell so human, and so much like detergent soap. Doesn't it know human-smell means trouble?
Fifteen minutes later:
Oops, time to check the box! Uh oh, Widget and Boots are staring at the corner at the bottom of the basement stairs. Yeah, that's a sign. Two cats sitting perfectly still staring at something I can't see. C'mon, Boots, get outta there. I'll just move this sheet of plywood carefully.
Aww, there it is. Poor little chipmunk, huddled in the corner, hugging the wall like a baby hugging its mother. It can only follow the space between the wall and the plywood, like a long corridor, so I'll put this box here and catch it. "Aww, c'mon, let go of the wall. It's alright! C'mon, it's okay, I'm just going to nudge you into this box. Aww, you're okay, you're okay."
Wow, that's weird ... another chipmunk on the porch? Looked like it was waiting for me. "We're outside now, little chipmunk, it's okay ... and here's the garden, where all your little tunnels lead home to your den."
Wow! I never knew a chipmunk could leap ten inches straight up in the air! "You really wanted free outta that box, didn't you?" Okay, look around ... look at me one last time. Zip! There you go, down your little tunnel.
"It was nice meeting you!" Cool. First time I ever touched a chipmunk.
Thanks, man.
Chippy:
Aww, man, what the hell, what the hell ... I shoulda listened to Mom. She always told me, "Chippy, human-smell equals trouble. You smell that human-smell, you stay away!" Now I'm stuck halfway down this weird shiny vertical tunnel, choking on all this dusty stuff. When I get outta here, Mom's gonna give me hell! If I get outta here. Aaagh, I can't ... quite ... climb back up. Oh no! What's that sound, outside the pipe? Gotta get out!
Scritchy scratch!
Scritchy scratch scritch scratch!
Oh geez, oh geez, can't get up, gotta go down! There's another sound. Down down ...
Scritchy scritchy scritchy!
Oh gosh, I'm inside some kind of smelly cave. Whoa, the tunnel is coming apart! And something -- is that a hand, a huge bigbig hand? -- is feeling around in here ... Ha! You missed me! Missed me again!
Hmm, it's quiet now. Okay, if it's quiet for another fifteen minutes, I'm outta here ...
"Chippy, where the heck are you? Are you alright?"
"Mom? Is that you? I'm just, um ... playing. I'll be home right away! Is it lunch time already?"
How does she do that? She always knows what I'm doing, and I can hear her even when she's nowhere around.
"Chippy, you get outta there right away! Can't you smell that? THEY HAVE CATS!"
Oh shit.
"Don't worry, Mom, I'm making a run for it right now."
Whoa, gotta run, legs don't fail me, run run run ...
Clickety click click ...
"Chippy, that's the sound of cat paws coming down the stairs! Hide! Hide!"
Whoa! Here's a corner, cats can't get me here! Ha ha, cats! (Phew!)
"CHIPPY, ARE YOU OKAY!? THE CATS SMELL YOU!"
"I'm fine, Mom!"
But how the heck am I gonna get outta here? What's that noise? Something BIG coming down the stairs!
"CHIPPY! CHIPPY, STAY HIDDEN!"
"I will, Ma!"
Oh geez, oh geez.
WHOA, WHAT'S HAPPENIN'? WHOA, WHOA, THERE'S THAT HAND AGAIN! I'M IN SOME KINDA BOX, AND IT'S MOVING! OHGOSHOHGOSH!
"CHIPPY, WHAT'S HAPPENING? I SEE YOU, HE'S GOT YOU IN A BOX AND HE'S WALKING AROUND THE HOUSE! OH, CHIPPY!"
THERE'S THE GROUND!
"I'M GONNA JUMP FOR IT, MA! OOH, I'M RIGHT CLOSE TO HOME! I'M DOWN A TUNNEL! I'M HOME, MA!"
"Oh thank God you're safe, Chippy."
"It's okay, Ma, I'm home now."
"AND YOU'RE GROUNDED! DON'T I ALWAYS TELL YOU HUMAN-SMELL IS TROUBLE?!"
"Oh, Ma, I'm alright. It was just so cold this morning and that pipe was so nice and warm. And it was dark and then I was falling."
"Oh Chippy, I'm just glad you're home..."
~
9/27/2004 10:33:00 AM
Friday, September 24, 2004
It's Friday.
So go!
"Go Speed Racer Go!"
-lyrics from the Speed Racer theme song.
...or, if you can't drive, maybe just stow away...
You probably already know this, but Speed Racer drove the Mach V, and "go" means "five" in Japanese (my own little ditty goes: "Ichi, ni, san, yon, go, that's as far as I can count in Nihongo...") Thus the lyrics were a sort of inside joke.
The new animated Teen Titans cartoon...
...picked up on this in their own theme song, written and performed by Japanese popstar duet PuffyAmiYumi:
"One, two, three, four, GO!
TEEN TITANS!"
As they sing the numbers, each of the five Teen Titans flash on the screen, until they get to "GO!" which means "five"!
..creating an homage to Speed Racer in an American cartoon that constantly tips its hat to Japanese-style animation and comics. Very cool. In fact, occasional episodes play Puffy AmiYumi's song with the lyrics in the original Japanese, in which case they literally count to five!
I've had a real thing for the Teen Titans 'toon ever since it came on, although I admit disappointment now that the initial novelty has worn off. Still, the episode "Mad Mod" is an absolute classic, full of hallucinogenic, trippy, psychedelic imagery and Escher-esque settings and '60s-ish Doors-inspired music as well as the bouncy pop tune "K2G" written by Andy Strumer and Puffy Amiyumi, performed by Puffy Amiyumi) and a Scooby Doo homage (not to mention a Josie and the Pussycats or maybe just '60s music reference?), a gratuitous Tyrannosaurus, fun art, and a voice performance by the legendary Malcolm McDowell (of Clockwork Orange fame) as Mad Mod himself:
Genius! Written by Adam Beechan and directed by Ciro Nieli. Gotta give credit, ya know?
If you don't believe me about "Mad Mod," or even if you do, I urge you to check out the page on the episode here and be sure to click on the images. Damn good fun.
My enthusiasm may have waned, but Teen Titans still has its high points. The music is often new, fun and refreshingly suited to the scenes it graces, and TT is an innovative (innovative for American toons, at least) mix of Western style and Animé tricks. For example, the Japanese expressive use of distorted facial features (especially when a character is angry) and large heads on cutesy small doll-like bodies show up regularly on TT:
It's no surprise Teen Titans is doing its best, though, as it was conceived under the direction of Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, both of whom have a penchant for making comics and cartoons that keep both kids and adults happy (as you can tell from the racy pics on Timm's site and from Dini's character Jingle Belle...)
Also personally endearing to me is the character Beast Boy, who has green skin, can transform himself into various animals, and is a vegetarian.
Wow. What I wouldn't give to have green skin and pointy ears and fangs and be a multi-faceted were-creature! Yup, good fun, with hilarity no doubt ensuing. And when another Titan tries to order a meat-lover's pizza, Beast Boy responds with "Dude! I've BEEN most of those animals!" There's something profound in there somewhere... Empathy, at the very least. I think we can assume Beast Boy is environmentally, as well as literally, green.
"Cosplay," or very detailed costume dress-up of all sorts, is very popular in Japan, and you might enjoy having a look at this Beast Boy and Cosplay fan's website here. Heh!
New episodes of Teen Titans are on Saturday night, followed by the Justice League Unlimited, which is okay too. But it's Friday, so I must tell you to go elsewhere, and that would be to Cartoon Network and Craig (Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory) McCracken's cool new toon Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, on (in the States, anyway) tonight at 7:00 (EST). "Check your TV guide for local listings," heh.
So...
Ichi, ni, san, yon,
GO!
~
9/24/2004 01:06:00 PM
Thursday, September 23, 2004
I'm too busy to post today, so I'll re-post what I already posted at MetaFilter:
The Art of Cats:
The Kattenkabinet (Cat Cabinet, the Cat Museum) of Amsterdam: a collection of objects d'art wholly centered around the theme of the cat, among which you will find a wonderful gallery including Picasso. Controversial social taboos are not avoided. Malaysia's Cat City of Kuching has a Cat Museum; more info on the Museum of Meows here (Ancient Egyptians shaved their eyebrows in mourning when the family cat died. Malays attached superstitions to cats believing they possessed supernatural powers...) The scullery of Kathleen Mann's Antiques in London's High Street has a "Purrfect Museum" too, with 250 exhibits from all over the world going back to the 1770s, founded by Kathleen and her mother ... Kitty. Not to be outdone, Lithuania and Russia have cat museums as well.There are many great things to see and read, especially in the Russia and Amsterdam links, but here are few random favorite images:
By SONJA DWINGER
By VERVAARDIGER ONBEKEND
(...from the Kattenkabinet.)
By SHAHARDINA LUDMILA
By SERGEY ERMAKOV
(...from the Russian Cat Museum.)
~
9/23/2004 04:40:00 PM
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
The Mushroom-Cutter
(A Cautionary Tale)
"I gave a mushroom-cutter to my hair stylist" is what she said as she leaned against his cubicle wall. "It's the most fabulous thing and she loves it!" He wanted to ask her what a mushroom-cutter was, but she was chattering too fast for him to get a word in. So, instead of imagining this mushroom-cutter as something that cuts mushrooms, he instead associated it with hairstyling, since the recipient of the mushroom cutter was a hairstylist and hairstylists cut hair.
Her voice faded off into the distance as he imagined the mushroom-shaped haircut that a mushroom-cutter would surely create. Eventually he was lost to her completely, nodding politely and automatically at each break in her speech, but comprehending not a word of what she said as she finally explained how wonderfully a mushroom cutter diced a mushroom in one easy snap of its wired jaws. It was, indeed, a fabulous little ingenious invention, but this fact was wasted on him.
For by now he had journeyed to the land of the mushroom people.
In his mind, he would remain there for the rest of the day, carousing happily with his new friends.
~
9/21/2004 04:23:00 PM
Friday, September 17, 2004
BRILLIANT! (?)
The secret of Guinness Draught revealed: It's watery because it's "Guinness Lite," with 125 calories per bottle, in keeping with the new low-carb diet fad.
Wonderful. Now uppity UK-ers and Canucks can claim that Irish beer, similar to American, is "like making love in a canoe."
By now, in North America at least, you've probably seen the TV adverts featuring the mad mick scientist/inventor and his friend who declare Guinness Draught, suntan lotion and sliced bread to be "BRILLIANT! BRILLIANT!":
You can preview one of the Python-esque animated commercials at the Guinness site here.
"BRILLIANT!" "BRILLIANT!"
"BRILLIANT!"
"GLUGGLUGGLUGGLUG!"
The nuances of the word "brilliant," currently a popular catch-phrase in the U.K. and Ireland, came up in discussion on AskMetafilter recently, where someone pointed out a teenage character on the comedy TV series The Fast Show "who thinks everything is 'Brilliant!' He marches around many diverse locations bigging things up with boundless energy."
"Amongst the things Brilliant thinks are brilliant are: shelves, gravity, the Mafia, holes, yesterday, Ronnie Corbett, sequels, holidays, echoes, several different types of natural disaster, paint, kids, pavements, the sky, mams, microwaves, old people, sex, the Romans, shepherds, Jesus and golf."
This reminded me of my old Dubliner friend "Eamon," who has a similar philosophy. For example, Eamon's sister put a colored stone in their fishtank, and somehow it just looked perfect, setting off all the colors of the fish and the gravel and water. And he looked at it and said, "That fookin' rock is BRILLIANT!"
Obviously the rock wasn't a genius, and in fact had no I.Q. at all. It had the I.Q. of a rock. But it was brilliant as if the whole scheme of the aquarium were somehow planned out in advance (it wasn't), and was a brilliant idea.
Brilliant most often came to mean a situation that, although haphazard, had all the makings of a divine plan:
"You mean we can use the car for the Friday night, and we have three cases of beer that we can fit in the boot with ice?!
"FOOKIN' BRILLIANT!"
As much as I love the word BRILLIANT! in all its meanings, now that it's so popular I think I'll lobby for a replacement. I'm thinking something less obvious than GENIUS! ...like maybe:
"EINSTEIN ON A BIKE!"
Or in Eamon's case this would be:
"EINSTEIN ONNA FOOKIN' BIKE!"
...which might be even better.
Conversely, we need something new to describe things negatively, and I'm nominating "BAD SAUSAGE!"* It's especially useful for things that may at first glance seem good, but in reality are rotten beneath the skin. Perfect for politics, as in "What is this BS the [president/prime minister/MP/congressman/etc] is feeding us? It's BAD SAUSAGE, man!"
And to describe something with which you're fed up, had enough, the hell with it, that's all, you're done, observe, if you will, the following potential scenario:
"I gave up on this Gunness Draught shite...
"I SAID MAN YOU IS WACK AND LEFT WITH MY GRANDMOTHER!"
~
*(For more good usage of the term BAD SAUSAGE! see Nicholson Baker's novel Checkpoint, where I first heard the term.)
9/17/2004 04:43:00 PM
Just fooling around with plastic and paint for some faux stained glass. But I kinda like the pattern and arrangement, I think it has a certain abstract movement within it, maybe. I'm still fiddling with the real glass. (Will canola oil work in my glasscutter?)
~
9/17/2004 04:01:00 PM
It's Friday and a steady rain is drizzling down and making me too sleepy to do anything but post these images of Peter Sellers without even an excuse:
*Yaaaawn*
~
9/17/2004 01:53:00 PM
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
"I said man you is wack and left with my grandmother."
Someday, if you haven't already, you'll get a call from a "recruiter" who says s/he thinks you have what it takes to be taught (and they will provide the classes for you to be certified!) to become a Primerica "personal financial counselor." This call will happen sooner or later because Primerica, like Amway, aims eventually to contact everyone in the world.
The similarities between Primerica and Amway don't stop there, though. Technically you can't call them "pyramid schemes" anymore, but the polite and non-libellous term for "pyramid scheme" is now "MLM": multi-level marketing.
If you're interested in what it's all about, read on further. If you're not so interested, just read the next quote, from a wise fellow who turned down Primerica's attempt to exploit him:
This guy tried to give me high pressures car sales guy technique. He said the things like "Don't you ever want to be successful in life? Aren't you tired of failing?" and "As a friend, I cannot let you leave this office without doing something better for yourself." I said man you is wack and left with my grandmother.-From badbusines bureau.com.
I work at the Zooper Burger on the east side and he offered me a job while I was working at the register. He gave me his number on a peice of paper from his to-go bag. I called him within a week later when I remembered about him.
He seemed pretty spiked, but I've been working at Z.B. for over 6 years and it's not fun anymore. The recruitment "interview" consisted of mostly hispanics and other colored persons while the "making money trainers" were all white. I don't understand why they did not allow any ethnic peoples to become trainers.
Worst of all my grandmama had to wait there with me and listen to the screaming guy until I left because she was my ride.
I best be going now. Bye
George - Des Moines, Iowa
If you say yes to your "recruiter" and go to the first special "small group" meeting, two or three people will give you quick motivational speeches, mostly about what a huge successful company CitiGroup/Primerica is/are, and about how much money they've made working for them. You won't be able to ask questions, though. They'll set up a "second interview" if you want to ask questions.
That's right, I checked this out. It was interesting. The whole affair had the vibe of any other pyramid -- sorry, MLM -- scheme. There was one fellow at the meeting who sat with the rest of us but clearly was already part of the company. He answered questions loudly and positively like a holy roller at a church meeting. "YES, I want to be financially independent!" That type of thing. At one point one of the speakers referred to this fellow, the "plant," the "shill," saying "Now THAT'S the guy I wanna party with!" But of course the shill didn't stick around to get information from the recruiters after the meeting like everyone else. He just wandered off, his job done.
A few things about Primerica:
1. They tell you that they must be careful and ask you for SIX references who are close to you, not job- or supervisor-type references. They didn't get my references and aren't going to. Then, of course, they use these references as sales leads, attacking them with phone calls asking to do a personal financial evaluation so they can sell home-equity consolidation loans, life insurance and investment strategies. They ask that YOU, also, fill out a financial evaluation, because you're not just a potential employee, you are a sales lead as well.
2. They're in the recruiting business, like Amway. An employee is pushed to recruit as many new employees as possible. There's a huge turnover rate, so most employees don't stick around or get anything out of the deal. BUT, every potential employee provides at least six sales leads, seven including him/herself, and more if s/he sticks around for any amount of time. Like a Kirby vacuum salesperson, the Primerica candidate is going to practice that sales pitch on every friend and family member they have, hopefully making the company a few sales before they give up and move on. Every employee gets a percentage of the money brought in by anyone they recruit, so the people making the real money are mostly the full-time recruiters, not the people selling term insurance and loans. Amway anyone?
3. It's not likely that you're going to "help" loads of families selling Amway -- sorry, Primerica -- financial analyses that result in CitiGroup financial packages. (Primerica's stated "mission" is "to help families become debt free and financially independent." "Primerica is in the business of changing lives," says their website.) Any family you try to help needs to own a home and have a fair amount of income for you to "free up" with a consolidation loan, and then you need to convince them that they should take all of that "freed up" money and invest it with CitiGroup plans, switching their life insurance over to CitiGroup at the same time.
Basically, you're not likely to become a real financial analyst. You're going to be used up for as many contacts as you can provide before you burn out and leave the company. Or you're going to go into the motivational business of recruiting other disposable employees, as many as possible.
I'm not saying some people don't succeed with Primerica. I have read testimonies of Primerica employees who refuse any part of the recruiting scheme, and only sell insurance and investment packages (which are better than some on the market and worse than others.)
But, here's #4: They also don't tell you at first that they're going to charge you $199 for classes so you can get your insurance certification. The $199 is refunded if you become part of the company.
"I best be going now. Bye"
C'mon, Grandma, we're outta here.
~
9/15/2004 01:58:00 PM
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Aaagh!
Blech!
Ugh.
It's not Guinness Stout, it's: "Guinness Draught, not to be confused with Guinness Extra stout. Draught is a thinner less stout version of it weightier cousin. Good in it's own right, this one has the nitrogen widget in it and is made to be dunk [sic] out of the bottle" (according to Liquid Solutions.)
It's not, like, draft-style Guinness Stout but in a bottle. It's Guinness-flavored water.
Beware.
Yuck.
Addendum:
Actually, after three of them they taste not bad. Think maybe I'll "dunk" one more. Well, you didn't expect me to throw them out, did you? And it might be thin and weak as royal blood, but they have succeeded in wiping out the bitterness that usually occurs when you pasteurize the Irish Juice and cram it into bottles or cans. Then again, I find myself missing that bittery tang...
It's just a shame that anything labelled "Guinness" should not have the cojones to hold it's own in a black-n-tan. Guinness Draught might stand up to, say, a Keystone Light from Nazi Ol' Man Coors, but it is almost overpowered by an unassuming little vegan bottle of Rolling Rock.
This is just wrong.
Guinness should be thick, not just good for you. It's motor oil made from grain, fer chrissakes. A watery bottle of Guinness is not to be forgiven just because it has a little carbonater-thingy and gives a good creamy white head. Is it?
Like all Guinness, though, when poured into a glass the bubbles flow down. Ever notice that? Watch for it the next time you pour a pint.
If you are properly amazed by this phenomenon, or if you happen to take your drink (or your physics) very seriously, then click on this fascinating link:
Technology Settles Longstanding Debate: Do Bubbles in a Glass of Guinness Go Down?Genius! The wonders of technology (and stout) never cease...
Simulation Software Proves Once and For All, Bubbles Go Up...And Down!
"Bubble tracks show that
the 1 mm bubbles (yellow) move
steadily upwards while the 60
micron bubbles (red) are dragged
downwards near the side of the
glass."
Cheers!
~
9/14/2004 02:54:00 PM
Poor Natasha
I feel sorry for Russia since the fall. The place is a mess. Poverty and organized crime seem to be the two main features. Prostitution skyrocketed after the fall, and there's still a glut of amateur porn on the 'Net featuring women who have taken (or been given by their "producer") the pseudonym "Natasha." Natasha is a very common name in Russia, but if Internet porn is any indication, every woman from Russia is named Natasha, and Natashas constitute a major percentage of nudey pics and nudey flicks on the In-tar-web.
And then there's Chechnya. Russia already had one Vietnam back in Afghanistan, where standard military tactics didn't work and it was impossible to tell the civilians from the Mujahideen who kicked Russian ass with outdated weapons from the United States, guns that jammed more often than worked and grenades that carried a high probability of being duds.
Now, Russia should know better, but back before Afghanistan they were inexperienced and naive. At one point, in the early stages, Russia parachuted psi-ops into Afghanistan to distribute friendly leaflets encouraging the Afghanis to support the Russians. The Afghanis cheerfully killed the parachuters and quite probably used the leaflets as toilet paper.
Of course, the same U.S. money that supported the Mujahideen in Afghanistan also set up Osama bin Laden, and now terrorism is a Vietnam the U.S. will never get out of.
There is a laughable popular fiction that Muslim terrorists, the "Evil Doers," hate America because they "hate freedom." Sure, right. A bunch of Muslims were sitting around, bored, playing gin rummy one day, when one of them piped up and broke the apathetic, dismal, blasé silence:
"I hate freedom. Don't you?"
"Yeah!" his colleague replied, grateful for something to talk about to distract his friends from the fact he was about go out and cut throat on them with a quick rummy. "Freedom sucks ass!"
"Yeah!" They all chimed in now. "Hey!" -- one of them had a sudden brilliant idea -- "We all hate freedom so much, let's all hijack a plane, kill hundreds, maybe thousands of people, and commit suicide in the process!"
The others shrugged. "Okay, why not? Freedom really sucks."
"Sure, okay, but first: Rummy! Ha ha, you losers!"
News flash: It didn't happen that way. 9/11 didn't happen because Muslims are jealous of McDonald's cheeseburgers, SUVs and cable TV. It has been repeatedly pointed out (and mostly ignored) that the U.S. has given Israel billions and billions of dollars with which Israel, ignoring potentially more peaceful concessions and solutions, has stomped on the Palestinians. While most of the American public is legitimately ignorant of U.S. foreign policy, the rest of the world is not. Also, the rest of the world is, to a large degree, ignorant of the fact that the American public is ignorant of what its government does abroad. They think the population of America knows what its government does, they don't realize that it simply elects father-figure leaders and then allows them to do whatever they want.
So Osama was friend, and now he is foe. America has made enemies that never give up and never forget and can never be completely crushed.
Not that the U.S. wants to crush terrorism. Terrorism is the new Cold War, better than the old Cold War because terrorism never ends the way the old Cold War ended with the fall of the former Soviet Union. There's always one more person, one more homemade bomb. The first Political Science course I ever took was a "101" lecture class taught by a prominent professor at the University of Rochester. The instructor, a cheery Canadian, took us through a textbook list of the benefits that all major governments recognise as coming from a state of war. I believe the list came from U.S. government documents. The benefits include economic boom and population control.
The informal benefits, of course, are that the U.S. President during war sets himself up as the protector of the people, rallies patriotism and encourages the competitive Us-Versus-Them mentality that America loves, and if he plays his cards right he is virtually guaranteed re-election. Military spending is justified and the military-industrial complex gets a boost, and in turn supports the President and helps him get re-elected. It also helps if the "enemy" is a people who appear culturally or even physically different than WASP America, as the lowest common denominator of American culture is racist. Don't bother telling me anything different. A huge, ugly percentage of the population rejoiced when George W "bombed the towelheads," and I got to hear about it.
These are the hard, sad facts.
I took a couple junior-level Poli Sci courses at the U of R too, with a woefully depressed but brilliant professor who had taught the same courses for years. He would tell a joke with the most hilariously deadpan manner, then proceed to tell us how our reaction compared to when he told the same joke the previous year, five years before that, and in 1969. He usually got the best results out of the 1969 class, and he looked back nostalgically on them. They cared. They were concerned. Some of them showed up with beer and pot and stood in the back getting stoned, but even this part of the class asked questions, even cheered and jeered at the things he told them about their government.
Now: apathy rules. This particular professor, it is insightful to note, also taught ONE non-poli-sci class: a course on the movies of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. I never got to take that class, but I wanted to badly, just to witness him as he presumably chattered on about his passion for musical films that allowed him to escape from the cynical world of politics and world affairs. I always pictured him shedding his usual chronic air of despondency and even, occasionally, doing a quick dance-step across the lecture hall stage, perhaps kicking his heels in the air like a bearded and bespectacled Bojangles. I can't help but think he might even have smiled, something he never did in Foreign Policy and World Affairs.
But, back to the Russians. Younger people today may not remember the old Russia, the U.S.S.R. I remember reading Hedrick Smith's book The Russians back in 1984 and feeling something of a kinship with Russia's troubled masses. "Stoics" they were, for whom there existed two types of people in the world: trusted friends, and everyone else. Later in the '80s a friend of mine visited the Soviet Union through his college, and he described to me a place I would have enjoyed. My friend wandered about meeting people on his own, away from his school's routine, far off the tourist track. The people he met were slow to trust him, but once they did they welcomed him, sharing their vodka and bread selflessly and joyously. He reciprocated by buying a bag of marijuana, and they all joined in getting stoned, even a couple of the local police.
He was doing fine until the day he left his dorm without his visiting documents. My friend, who is half Japanese and half Mexican and wore his hair back then in a long Chinese queue braided down his back, was stopped and questioned for an hour by military personnel who thought he was Russian, maybe of Mongolian descent, as chummy as he was with the locals. One of his school mates finally came to his aid with passport and papers, proving he really was American and the terrible Russian he spoke was not an act.
The whole experience summed up the old Russia for me: Good times, bad times. Good people, bad people, evil bureaucracy.
So now Russia is entrenched in Chechnya. It goes on and on, leading one to wonder if they have some reason for wanting to remain entrenched. But how is this possible? -one wonders. The Chechans are taking their toll against the government and civilians, and the military, the Guardian reports here, are resorting to new levels of barbarism. Chechnya has become an anything-goes playground.
What got me started thinking about all of this was a martial arts class I sat in on a few years back. The teacher, nicknamed "Darth Vader" in local circles, was a brutal proponent of Silat and Kun Tao, and he advocated attacking at the first sign that someone might attack you, a radical concept for the martial artist who may see his art as "self-defense" or who may wish to turn his attacker's strength and momentum against him. Perhaps to express the necessity of his views, the teacher turned to one of his better pupils, an affable, easy-going, ex-military recent immigrant from the former Soviet Union. "You lived in dangerous situations," he asked. "What would you have done if you saw someone walking towards you, looking menacing and possibly reaching in a coat for a weapon?"
Completely seriously and without a hint of irony the student replied, "I would have pulled out my gun and shot him."
The class broke into laughter and the teacher looked angry but amused and said "WELL WHAT IF YOU DIDN'T HAVE A GUN," which was what he had meant all along.
It's an amusing anecdote, but the point remains: Russia is a mess.
~
9/14/2004 09:17:00 AM
Friday, September 10, 2004
Three concise summations of large parts of Bill Bryson's
brilliant book A Short History of Nearly Everything:
___________________________
We know so much! We have so much knowledge, such an incredible, amazing, vast amount of knowledge...
And we understand practically none of it!
___________________________
The relatively brief period of interaction between man and the (now extinct) dodo illustrates that, if one subscribes to a certain line of logic, the dodo may have been the most immensely stupid animal ever to walk the earth ...
... next to humans.
___________________________
What silly monkeys are we...
___________________________
~
9/10/2004 10:25:00 PM
Friday Excuse to Post a Classic:
The weekend is almost here, so be careful for the rest of the day at work.
The genius of Buster Keaton.
~
9/10/2004 01:15:00 PM
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Rolling Roll of Duct Tape:
The Duck Tape Speaks
Woo hoo! Someone wrote a post for me. Actually s/he posted it in the comments section of Rolling Roll of Duct Tape: It's Goin' Places, but it deserves to be an actual post. So here it is. Tear Duct tells its story:
Yeah. It was me.Thanks Tear Duct! Who could hate you? Come back and tell us your adventures anytime!
Normally, like most duct tape, I like to stay put. But in her youth my Mom once held together the suitcase of a poor but passionate traveller, and thereby saw the world. And now, in her old age, she is stuck holding some guy's thumb on - or she actually is the thumb... I don't know; I can never really get that straight.
But the point is that she filled my head with stories of all her past adventures, and somehow the whole idea just stuck - I have to roll! I have to move! Which is a kind of heresy for most of our kind, so I'm pretty much an outcast with the A-list "adhesive" set. Still, I feel like I have to stick with this crazy idea of mine, and see as much of the world as possible before I'm old and gummy and stuck in one place forever.
Please don't hate me! Deep down I'm very dependable, and some day I'll make someone a great house tape. But right now every fiber in my being says I have to follow my wandering heart!
-Tear Duct
duct@theallpurposeallknowingstickything.com
Other notable and famous Duct Tape:
Duct Tape against War, sighted at the Joe Says NO! weblog.
Colonel Duct Tape, who may or may not be anti-war.
Duct Tape impersonates a person at fursuit.org. Inevitable, no? Duct Tape has personality, after all.
A Rose by another name is Duct Tape, according to octanecreative.com.
Is the all-purpose nature of Duct Tape a cliche? Maybe, but it never gets old.
~
9/09/2004 11:12:00 AM
I don't have much time to type at the mo', but I still wanted to express my belief that most of the Aussies and all of the Tassies (Tasmanians) I've (virtually or otherwise) met are some of the coolest people on the planet.
Possibly even cooler than Trilobites.
I'll explain more later.
~
9/09/2004 10:47:00 AM
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
You might have noticed that I posted this little "Flickr Zeitgeist" thing on the sidebar. Thanks to Katgyrl for the idea. It's kind of a miniature slideshow of stored images, which is what Flickr does: stores and shares images. Flickr is still "beta", but if anyone wants an invitation, let me know and I'll send ya one. You can check Flickr out here.
"Zeitgeist" shows off the tiles of Mrs T.A.Z. of CitrusMoon really beautifully, and I'm trying to convince her to put all of them in a Zeitgeist on her own site. Anyway, below is what is already on the sidebar, in case you missed it:
[Here are] ARGY'S IMAGES
...and other pics I've used while playing on the 'Net
(and many many of CitrusMoon's tiles).
Is this fun? Should it stay? Personally, I find it kinda hypnotic and fun to stare at, but I'm weird (a fact we've established repeatedly). It's a pity some of the images don't show up well, and those are often the images that repeat most often.
I wish I knew why I get such a kick outta Tricky Dick Nixon's face fading up then fading out again, kinda like his presidency: Easy Come, Easy Go, but the image of his perpetual three-day stubble and the memory of his comical cocky attitude ("I AM NOT A CRIMINAL!") and his daily afternoon drinking tiffs lasts forever ;-)
(It's also fun seeing Ben Franklin's scowl and pursed lips; he really doesn't approve of Nixon, nor does he approve of the state of United States Government on the whole.)
~
9/08/2004 01:05:00 PM
Ooglala!
Sorry, I've been saying that a lot today.
This morning one of my cats replied, "MeeOOW? Meeow. Mow."
I'd translate for you but it wasn't all that interesting of a conversation.
~
9/08/2004 10:20:00 AM
Monday, September 06, 2004
Rolling Roll of Duct Tape:
It's Goin' Places
Ehh, it rolled away here. More power to it, Toronto's a nice place (and so is The Shore, a very cool place indeed).
9/06/2004 09:27:00 PM
Friday, September 03, 2004
Basil Rathbone, the quintessential Sherlock Holmes.
~
9/03/2004 11:28:00 AM
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Fish Updated for Modern Times
1. CHRISTIAN
2. MEAN CHRISTIAN
3. CANNIBAL CHRISTIAN
~
9/02/2004 11:07:00 PM
Art by Tom Otterness
Crying Giant
Large Bear
Kindly Gepetto
Click HERE for more of the whimsical sculpture of Tom Otterness.
9/02/2004 11:51:00 AM
Style is a terrible thing to happen to anybody. As Miss Stein has already remarked, "the way to say it is to say it." Any attempt to devise a way of "saying it" that will tinge the subject with the writer's personality results in obscurity, mannerisms, originality; and Mr Eliot tells us that whatever is original is under suspicion. In particular it is what might be called "comparative originality" that is so awful. If a man were to look over a fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by a look to the right and left.--Quentin Crisp, from The Genius of Mervyn Peake, his introduction to the collected Gormenghast novels.
So here's to style, and to original originality.
~
9/02/2004 08:40:00 AM
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
The New Yorker reviews Aliens Vs. Predator
Twentieth Century Fox goes for the quick bucks with a franchise-damaging rip-off. Directed with monstrous incompetence by Paul W. S. Anderson, this counterfeit sci-fi adventure about an ancient pyramid that provokes a showdown between the two classic movie aliens should have been acid-slinging fun. Instead there's endlessly boring exposition, by-the-book characters, and dimly-lit set pieces that mask the low-end production budget. Fans will shed a tear when they see how the frightening and wondrous alien designs by Stan Winston and H.R. Giger are thrown around like so much garbage.C'mon, Bruce, it's frivolous fun. The Alien films, which I love, have a long and proud tradition, but this isn't really an Alien film. It should not be held to the same standards as the rest of the "franchise."
--Bruce Diones
You're right, though. I should revise my tastes back up a notch. I mean, what kind of hoighty-toighty filmgoer am I? I have my standards...
...so naturally I'll cheer on Ash, not Freddy or Jason, in the next big crossover movie:
ASH VS FREDDY VS JASON!
It hasn't been confirmed yet, although at least one person claims to have read a treatment of the proposed script. Freddy vs. Jason's New Line Cinema is pushing the project, and has been looking for a sequel to Freddy vs. Jason since at least last August, well before Aliens Vs Predators hit big at the box office.
The bad news: the brilliant Sam Raimi, creator of Ash and the Evil Dead trilogy, won't be directing.
The good news: Ash has gotta kick ass, right? Of course. He'd better.
I can think of plenty of other characters I'd love to see Ash square off against, but I'll be shelling out to see Freddy Vs Jason Vs Ash. So Ash just better kick ass. And wisecrack. A lot.
~
9/01/2004 02:21:00 PM
Missing Images
Photobucket, the free service where I store most of the images on ArgyBarple, seems to be down at the moment. I should listen to my web host Katgyrl, who is always telling me to FTP my images and store them properly (one "I toldja so" is probably on its way from her as I type this.)
In the meantime, please imagine your own image wherever one is missing. I'm sure you'll come up with something fantastic, and feel free to tell me about it.
ADDENDUM: Obviously PhotoBucket is back up. They actually rarely go down. If you're looking for a good image-hosting company for quick, easy uploading, especially when you can't or don't have time to FTP, I recommend PhotoBucket. 100 megs free, uploaded images automatically have a URL for linking, and the owner seems to be a nice guy.
~
9/01/2004 09:13:00 AM
