It's my dad's birthday today. In honor of this momentous occasion, I feel he should be recognized for a few things.
Life skills training, starting at age 6
Where life skills are defined as pool, poker, and fish gutting, among other things. Both my parents still outclass me in all three, but in college I showed up to a hold 'em tournament that I didn't know about until fifteen minutes before it started, lost all my money at the first table, and came back to win. It was the second time I'd played hold 'em, and I was able to buy a new hard drive with the profits.
Transfinite number theory, age 10
It was a master stroke, really. Instill in your daughter a penchant for the truly abstract and mentally vexing, thus ensuring that she's too nerdy to be popular, but too brainy to be a target on the playground. I'm not being sarcastic here; all the popular kids are in drug rehab now. And my birthday present was a DVD on string theory.
All the conversations that started with "Don't tell your mom, but..."
For example, "Don't tell your mom, but I think you should have your own computer." I think I was about 14 or 15, the internet was just becoming interesting, and I was just learning to be dangerous with the system settings on the family machine. This resulted in a G4 desktop that hung out under my desk in high school, went to college, served as a stand in machine for 3 housemates when their machines died, and is in perfect working condition to this day. There are more recent instances but they're protected under a statute of limitations, because my mom also reads this blog.
Predicting my career choice really early.
I think I was about 11 during this exchange, and very skeptical.
"You know, I think you'd really like learning how to program computers. You could learn a language and write applications."
"Learn a new language? That sounds really hard..."
The Burger Recipe
I get begged for this by name regularly. The name is "Your Dad's Burgers."
"You what?"
Every so often, he'll give me a story that's just completely out of left field and generally leaves me speechless.
"I used to hang out with a guy who did reloading, which is where you take empty bullet shells and repack them yourself with gun powder and a payload. This was when I was a teenager, and I used to go watch this guy as he reloaded all his shells. He had everything spread out on a table: the powder and the shells and the lead, and ya know I never thought about it at the time, but the whole time he was doing this he'd be smoking, right over the powder."
So, Happy Birthday Dad! You've done a good job.
Love,
Your daughter
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Some people...
There's nothing like uprooting yourself from your home of 20 years, moving 3000 miles away, and starting a new job to teach you a thing or two about preconceived notions. It has been a little over a year and I'm sure you'll all be shocked and amazed by the revelations I've had since I've moved here.
Some people just don't read.
The guy who sits next to me at work has been riding motorcycles for about ten years, and at one point he asked me if I had read a particular publication on the subject of maintaining a bike. He didn't quite remember the title, but he described the content sufficiently for me to realize that he was talking about the venerable Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. When I gave him the correct title, he was all set to go out and buy it until he realized that it was a book. A novel. With multiple hundreds of pages. And apparently that ruled it out. It was "too long."
I come from a literary household, and I've been spoiled by parents who wholeheartedly support the love of reading in their children. My neighbors also all read prodigiously. My mom was in a book club. And in college, my housemates traded books back and forth so often they were almost a form of currency. The only time before now that I ever encountered anyone who didn't read was when I was in high school and one of the football jocks who loved nothing more than making fun of me caught me reading a short novel and said he had never read something that long in his life. But he was pond scum anyway and I didn't really count his existence as part of the human race.
So to come across a highly successful, master's degree-holding professional who refuses to tackle books... it just doesn't bear thinking about. And yes I'm a snob, and I think less of him because of it.
Some people make it to adulthood without knowing how to use medical tape.
This one is probably just a product of my own childhood love affair with dangerous and punishing sports, but really... how on earth does anyone go through life without ever abusing themselves to the point-
...If I were to be completely honest with myself, I might admit that it is...unusual...to grow up with a father who has both a very strong first aid background and a penchant for creating situations in which he needs to take advantage of it (somewhere we have an unopened VHS of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was a gift to my dad after a series of these "situations"). And maybe, just maybe, gymnastics isn't a normal childhood sport (although it was in my neighborhood). Critics might further submit that taking up track at the same time as competitive gymnastics might be unhealthy. Whatever.
One of my very good friends just got a scooter, and he recently mentioned that he's having a lot of wrist problems because of the angle of the handle bars. So one day I dropped off a roll of tape at his desk. And he sent me a very nice message thanking me and also confessing that he had no idea how to use this mystical roll of white sticky fabric. I schlepped back over to his desk, wrapped his wrist, showed him some wrist stretches, and marveled at the fact that he had heretofore kept his body in such pristine condition.
Some people write books that are only meant to be read once.
I've spoken before of my bookshelves. The reason they're so full is because I've still got books that I bought ten years ago, and the reason I still keep them is because I still read them from time to time. This is just the way it is with me and books. If it's good enough to read once, it's good enough to read again. And again. And maybe once or twice more for good measure. And then, you know how it is, you remember some point that Heinlein made about why we laugh at pain in Stranger in a Strange Land, but you don't remember what it was and you're pretty sure that the second half of that paragraph is really important, so you keep it on hand to reference from time to time, even though you've grown up a bit since the first time you read it and you realize your former literary hero was actually a rampant chauvinist and homophobe (and then you were in Italy and you had brought along his The Book of Job because, hey, it's Heinlein, and you were so disgusted you left it in the hotel).
This is why I have no problem sinking small fortunes into books. I make them work for their keep.
The point is that I read a lot of fiction, and typically it's fiction that is not set in the present. It's just as relevant (or irrelevant, I suppose) now as it was the day it was published. And it will continue to retain a constant level of relevance for the next ten years.
I've begun to tentatively stick a toe into the pool of non-fiction, and I have a really hard time with it. I'm reading things that are barely important now, and in two years will be kindling. One read sucks the book dry of any useful properties, and there's no reason to keep it around beyond that.
...although I secretly suspect that these books, so glutted with the here and now, will be amusingly instructive in about seven years time. I've got The New New Thing keeping company with a few other literary snapshots of the present, and I think I'm going to create a small book time capsule.
I don't know if anyone still reads this, but if you do, I really want to hear about what sort of eye opening experiences you had along these lines.
Some people just don't read.
The guy who sits next to me at work has been riding motorcycles for about ten years, and at one point he asked me if I had read a particular publication on the subject of maintaining a bike. He didn't quite remember the title, but he described the content sufficiently for me to realize that he was talking about the venerable Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. When I gave him the correct title, he was all set to go out and buy it until he realized that it was a book. A novel. With multiple hundreds of pages. And apparently that ruled it out. It was "too long."
I come from a literary household, and I've been spoiled by parents who wholeheartedly support the love of reading in their children. My neighbors also all read prodigiously. My mom was in a book club. And in college, my housemates traded books back and forth so often they were almost a form of currency. The only time before now that I ever encountered anyone who didn't read was when I was in high school and one of the football jocks who loved nothing more than making fun of me caught me reading a short novel and said he had never read something that long in his life. But he was pond scum anyway and I didn't really count his existence as part of the human race.
So to come across a highly successful, master's degree-holding professional who refuses to tackle books... it just doesn't bear thinking about. And yes I'm a snob, and I think less of him because of it.
Some people make it to adulthood without knowing how to use medical tape.
This one is probably just a product of my own childhood love affair with dangerous and punishing sports, but really... how on earth does anyone go through life without ever abusing themselves to the point-
...If I were to be completely honest with myself, I might admit that it is...unusual...to grow up with a father who has both a very strong first aid background and a penchant for creating situations in which he needs to take advantage of it (somewhere we have an unopened VHS of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was a gift to my dad after a series of these "situations"). And maybe, just maybe, gymnastics isn't a normal childhood sport (although it was in my neighborhood). Critics might further submit that taking up track at the same time as competitive gymnastics might be unhealthy. Whatever.
One of my very good friends just got a scooter, and he recently mentioned that he's having a lot of wrist problems because of the angle of the handle bars. So one day I dropped off a roll of tape at his desk. And he sent me a very nice message thanking me and also confessing that he had no idea how to use this mystical roll of white sticky fabric. I schlepped back over to his desk, wrapped his wrist, showed him some wrist stretches, and marveled at the fact that he had heretofore kept his body in such pristine condition.
Some people write books that are only meant to be read once.
I've spoken before of my bookshelves. The reason they're so full is because I've still got books that I bought ten years ago, and the reason I still keep them is because I still read them from time to time. This is just the way it is with me and books. If it's good enough to read once, it's good enough to read again. And again. And maybe once or twice more for good measure. And then, you know how it is, you remember some point that Heinlein made about why we laugh at pain in Stranger in a Strange Land, but you don't remember what it was and you're pretty sure that the second half of that paragraph is really important, so you keep it on hand to reference from time to time, even though you've grown up a bit since the first time you read it and you realize your former literary hero was actually a rampant chauvinist and homophobe (and then you were in Italy and you had brought along his The Book of Job because, hey, it's Heinlein, and you were so disgusted you left it in the hotel).
This is why I have no problem sinking small fortunes into books. I make them work for their keep.
The point is that I read a lot of fiction, and typically it's fiction that is not set in the present. It's just as relevant (or irrelevant, I suppose) now as it was the day it was published. And it will continue to retain a constant level of relevance for the next ten years.
I've begun to tentatively stick a toe into the pool of non-fiction, and I have a really hard time with it. I'm reading things that are barely important now, and in two years will be kindling. One read sucks the book dry of any useful properties, and there's no reason to keep it around beyond that.
...although I secretly suspect that these books, so glutted with the here and now, will be amusingly instructive in about seven years time. I've got The New New Thing keeping company with a few other literary snapshots of the present, and I think I'm going to create a small book time capsule.
I don't know if anyone still reads this, but if you do, I really want to hear about what sort of eye opening experiences you had along these lines.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Ta-da!
That is my new Ninja. It's a 2005 250cc. According to my coworker who drove it home for me, it was probably crashed at some point, the front blinkers are poor aftermarket jobs, the front fairing was replaced with a substandard imitation, the clutch is fairly soft, and overall he wasn't impressed. The seller said she was the third owner, and it had been a learning bike for all three. I took it for a ride today and the trip odometer has a stiff dial, the suspension seems jangly, and I need to tighten the mirrors a bit more. It needs a good once-over from a qualified mechanic, some routine maintenance and lubrication and the idling speed needs to be adjusted.
ANYWAY...
IlovethisbikeIlovethisbikeIlovethisbikeIlovethisbikeIlovethisbikeIlovethisbikeIlovethisbike
I got it yesterday after months of waiting to take the safety class, then rescheduling the class, then waiting another month, then getting the license, then trying to find the most popular starter bike in the country during the most popular riding season of the year, then finding one, then waiting for the title to be officially transferred to the seller from her roommate, then waiting for the seller to come back from vacation, and NOW IT'S MINE.
I took it out for a ride today. I think I went a grand total of 2 miles and never once made it above 20 mph. It's terrifying. It's like when I learned to drive and thought that speeds over 15 were suicidal. But it's also really fun. Really Fun. One might say, addictive.
That's the whole story, but there is a post script.
When I came back, I flipped on the TV to a program on MTV called "Made", in which teenagers decide they want to acquire some skill completely outside of their experience, such as a drama buff becoming a cheerleader. MTV hires a highly skilled coach, buys a bunch of high end gear, and tapes the 6 week transportation. It's reality TV at its worst (high school students don't have the most endearing personalities), but tonight's episode chronicled a self-proclaimed girly-girl who decided she wanted to get into motocross.
This girl is one of those teenagers that really make you question their contributions to the human race. Task one was riding a bicycle and giving up the car. She didn't even make it out of the parking lot before she'd thrown the chain, at which point she decided the bike was broken, called her mom for a pickup. When her mom got there, she wouldn't help load the bike into the truck. She threw a hissy fit instead.
The next step was to clean off a well used motocross bike, covered in mud. I'm pretty sure she'd never washed a car before. I think she managed to do the whole wash with the hose only, completely forgoing sponge and soap.
A solid hour of whining about doing hair, makeup, and being a spoiled little brat. It taught me that there are people in this world of voting age who:
- have never washed a car by hand
- refuse to touch mud
- feel that sweating is uncouth and base
- drive Mercedeses without knowing how to change the oil or possibly even put gas in the tank (unconfirmed. I'm just making guesses now. But she did drive a Mercedes.)
Friday, June 06, 2008
The more you know...
- Main Entry:
- 1pil·lion
- Pronunciation:
- \ˈpil-yən\
- Function:
- noun
- Etymology:
- Scottish Gaelic or Irish; Scottish Gaelic pillean, diminutive of peall covering, couch; Irish pillín, diminutive of peall covering, couch
- Date:
- 1503
1 a: a light saddle for women consisting chiefly of a cushion b: a pad or cushion put on behind a man's saddle chiefly for a woman to ride on 2 chiefly British : a motorcycle or bicycle saddle for a passenger
That's the whole post, right there. A dictionary definition. Your homework is to learn this word. Use this word. Love this word. Teach this word to other people. Because I am *sick* of being asked what it means when I use it in conversation. It's not a hard word. It's a great word, in fact. It's ever so much more convenient to say "She rode pillion" than "She was the other rider... you know... the seat behind the driver." And yet no one has ever heard it before. It got so bad that I had to look it up to make sure I wasn't just imagining a new term.
So there's the proof. The word exists and I'm going to keep using it. Be warned.
- Main Entry:
- 2pillion
- Function:
- adverb
- Date:
- 1926
chiefly British : on or as if on a pillion "ride pillion"
That's the whole post, right there. A dictionary definition. Your homework is to learn this word. Use this word. Love this word. Teach this word to other people. Because I am *sick* of being asked what it means when I use it in conversation. It's not a hard word. It's a great word, in fact. It's ever so much more convenient to say "She rode pillion" than "She was the other rider... you know... the seat behind the driver." And yet no one has ever heard it before. It got so bad that I had to look it up to make sure I wasn't just imagining a new term.
So there's the proof. The word exists and I'm going to keep using it. Be warned.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
The YouTube Awards, part 2: The Bad
I have a three day weekend, so I'm posting like crazy because otherwise I'd be cleaning.
A while back, I wrote a post about music videos I liked. I'd been meaning to do something like that again anyway, just because it's fun, and then I was reading Fark this morning and found this thread on bad song lyrics. First of all, you should read the thread. It's got some great examples of truly wretched poetic license, but the best parts are the posts where people explain just how angry they get when they hear some of this drivel.
This time around, the YouTube Awards looks through my music collection for the worst offenders of sub-par wordsmithy (yes, I'm being ironic by making up words), bad music, and bad everything, and links them to videos where ever possible. And last time, commenter Krista went above and beyond by submitting her own collections of YouTube nominations and it was awesome. So you should all do that.
Worst use of woefully incorrect speech pattern found in common parlance: Imogen Heap: Clear the Area
"But your eyes
Tell a whole nother story"
A whole nother? A whole nother? Are you kidding? That offends me on every level. That's right up there with irregardless*. And the sad thing is I really like the song. It's a gorgeous song. It's a beautiful song. It absolutely would not suffer at all if she sang "A whole other" instead. This isn't poetic license, this isn't flow, this is bad English at work. And even the people who transcribe the lyrics are annoyed, because they made the corrections themselves.
The video for this one is bad. The first verse is cut off and it's some guy with a camera at a concert so it sounds like it's being played through a tin can. Sorry.
*Pointless aside: In high school, I had a boyfriend who prided himself on being extremely smart, and most importantly, smarter than me. And then he used irregardless in a sentence one day. I called him on it, and he thought it was correct. And then I laughed at him. We don't speak anymore.
Worst pandering to the audience for undeserved applause: Art Garfunkel: A Heart In New York
Twice a week, I go to tumbling practice. My train starts underground, toils through the downtown stops, and then emerges victorious into the light in the Sunset district, where the first thing to greet my eyes is this. It's a really impressive mural, and I'd love it, except the artist decided to paint in a street sign referencing a nearby street. And it seems like every city mural I see does this. I hate this. There is no reason to put a street sign in this painting. None. And there are plenty of reasons no to. First of all, it's text. The eye is drawn to it, and away from the rest of the piece. Out of this whole painting spanning multiple hundreds of feet, the focal point is the single most boring bit. Also, it's a cheap, unskilled way to introduce context. It's like the artist is afraid that no one will recognize the area, even after all his hard work, so he puts in a street sign just to be sure. In this particular work, there is no danger of that. In a more general sense, if you're hiring a mural painter to do a context specific piece of work and he needs to put a street sign in so that people recognize the area, hire someone else. Because that guy has no business painting city murals.
The video I linked to is a clip from Simon & Garfunkel's Concert in the Park. This was a huge, landmark event. In Central Park. And they had the nerve to play this song, the lyrics of which are as follows:
New york, to that tall skyline I come, flyin in from london to your door
New york, lookin down on central park
Where they say you should not wander after dark
New york, like a scene from all those movies
But youre real enough to me, but theres a heart
A heart that lives in new york
A heart in new york, a rose on the street
I write my song to that city heartbeat
A heart in new york, love in her eye, an open door and a friend for the night
New york, you got money on your mind
And my words wont make a dimes worth a difference, so heres to you new york
There was no reason for this song to even have been written. Everyone writes songs about New York, and everyone has done it better than this. This looks like it belongs on a greeting card or a tombstone. That bolded bit is, predictably, where the audience bursts into applause. Why? Because it's about Central Park. Where the concert is. Where the audience is. It's not a good line. It looks like a filler line, actually. There is nothing in this song that hasn't been said thousands of times before, and if it's the instrumentation you're after, look no further than The Boxer. Same album, same concert, same general idea, but better.
Wikipedia says the blame for this waste of song writing effort belongs squarely at the door of Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle. Guys, what were you thinking?
Worst "the band has failed me" moment I've ever experienced as a fan: "Metallica": St. Anger
Metallica was the first metal band I was ever into. I was introduced to them when I was about thirteen, and I really loved them. I bought all their albums and I wore out one of their tapes (yes, tape) and then I bought it again on CD. I was all about Metallica in my teen years and so I know a bit of fan trivia that is relevant here.
Firstly, this band was getting steadily better with every album they put out. They got better and better recording engineers and as a consequence they had three albums which encapsulated collections of great songs with amazing recording quality. The sound was heavy but clean and it showcased some pretty decent musicianship. Then something went wrong and the band stopped writing songs. They released an album of covers of other stuff, and then they released an album of a concert they did with the San Francisco symphony which was basically them covering themselves, and then they stopped for a while.
Secondly, this band has issues with bassists. They've had the same vocalist and drummer since the beginning, they swapped out one guitarist (who went on to form Megadeth, so I'm not complaining) and they're on their fourth bassist, who was brought in from Ozzy Osbourne's band after that symphony album.
So, to reiterate, things I used to love about Metallica:
This is a band that I listened to nonstop for almost ten years. In that time I never got to see them live, and now I don't even want to. This isn't just bad music, this is flat out betrayal.
Worst unnecessary use of video animation to cover up band member aging: Dream Theater: Forsaken
I was recently asked what it would take for me to consider a guy gorgeous. And it's a pretty simple answer. For a guy to be gorgeous he needs to be generally good looking and at least as intelligent as I am. Looks aren't usually enough for me, but looks and brains are a lethal combination that will prompt me to do phenomenally stupid things like play Magic for 7 hours at a stretch just to watch someone else play and maybe have a chance to oppose him myself.
If we're going on looks alone, the bar gets set higher. I am firmly in the "tall, dark, and handsome" camp. I don't make any racial requirements, but long hair is a must. These traits are exemplified in this Dream Theater video by lead singer James LaBrie. (Sorry, I couldn't find photos). Sadly, this video shot in '92 or '93. Fifteen years later, James LaBrie looks like this, which isn't the same thing at all.
Now, about that Forsaken video. It's entirely animated, and the animation team decided to strip a good 4o or 50 pounds off James and give him a more lean muscled build than I ever saw him possess. What makes it really dumb, however, is that through the whole video, the James LaBrie character never speaks or sings along with the song. He doesn't open his mouth at all, other than to express a Keanu Reeves-esque confusion at life. I submit that there was no reason to make the main character resemble any member of the band. None. If they were looking for a dark, sickly figure, they might has well have modeled it off Trent Reznor, pre steriods.
Worst example of a band taking themselves far too seriously, allowing us to laugh at their expense: Kamelot: The Haunting
Good lord I wonder what this video design session sounded like.
"Our sound isn't goth enough. Our street cred is in danger. What ever shall we do?!"
"Let's shoot it in a church."
"Ooooh. Church. What will we do in a church?"
"Just walk up and down the aisles. That should be good enough."
"Really? Are you sure?"
"Fine, we'll make it blurry."
"What are we wearing?"
"Vinyl bodysuits, duh. This is a goth video, remember? Oh and that female guest vocalist has red hair. Let's put her in red vinyl."
"Oooooh."
"By the way, how long is this song?"
"At least five minutes. You want the singer to just walk up and down a church for five minutes?"
"Hrmm... Let's put a swing in. And four costume changes for the sexay female singer."
"Uhhh..."
"Oh, and lots of face lip-sync closeups. YEAH! "
"That still doesn't get us anywhere near five minutes."
"Your girl is good looking, we'll just shoot her on a white background and she can vamp like an idiot for three of them. No one will ever notice."
"Ok, but the girl is a guest singer. How about some focus on *our* singer?"
"Fine, closeups of him too. But only if he shaves his beard like Paul Jr. from Orange County Choppers."
"But...but... won't he look like a scrawny motorcycle guy singing dumb lyrics in a vinyl body suit in a blurry church?"
Yes. Yes he will. Oh my god.
A while back, I wrote a post about music videos I liked. I'd been meaning to do something like that again anyway, just because it's fun, and then I was reading Fark this morning and found this thread on bad song lyrics. First of all, you should read the thread. It's got some great examples of truly wretched poetic license, but the best parts are the posts where people explain just how angry they get when they hear some of this drivel.
This time around, the YouTube Awards looks through my music collection for the worst offenders of sub-par wordsmithy (yes, I'm being ironic by making up words), bad music, and bad everything, and links them to videos where ever possible. And last time, commenter Krista went above and beyond by submitting her own collections of YouTube nominations and it was awesome. So you should all do that.
Worst use of woefully incorrect speech pattern found in common parlance: Imogen Heap: Clear the Area
"But your eyes
Tell a whole nother story"
A whole nother? A whole nother? Are you kidding? That offends me on every level. That's right up there with irregardless*. And the sad thing is I really like the song. It's a gorgeous song. It's a beautiful song. It absolutely would not suffer at all if she sang "A whole other" instead. This isn't poetic license, this isn't flow, this is bad English at work. And even the people who transcribe the lyrics are annoyed, because they made the corrections themselves.
The video for this one is bad. The first verse is cut off and it's some guy with a camera at a concert so it sounds like it's being played through a tin can. Sorry.
*Pointless aside: In high school, I had a boyfriend who prided himself on being extremely smart, and most importantly, smarter than me. And then he used irregardless in a sentence one day. I called him on it, and he thought it was correct. And then I laughed at him. We don't speak anymore.
Worst pandering to the audience for undeserved applause: Art Garfunkel: A Heart In New York
Twice a week, I go to tumbling practice. My train starts underground, toils through the downtown stops, and then emerges victorious into the light in the Sunset district, where the first thing to greet my eyes is this. It's a really impressive mural, and I'd love it, except the artist decided to paint in a street sign referencing a nearby street. And it seems like every city mural I see does this. I hate this. There is no reason to put a street sign in this painting. None. And there are plenty of reasons no to. First of all, it's text. The eye is drawn to it, and away from the rest of the piece. Out of this whole painting spanning multiple hundreds of feet, the focal point is the single most boring bit. Also, it's a cheap, unskilled way to introduce context. It's like the artist is afraid that no one will recognize the area, even after all his hard work, so he puts in a street sign just to be sure. In this particular work, there is no danger of that. In a more general sense, if you're hiring a mural painter to do a context specific piece of work and he needs to put a street sign in so that people recognize the area, hire someone else. Because that guy has no business painting city murals.
The video I linked to is a clip from Simon & Garfunkel's Concert in the Park. This was a huge, landmark event. In Central Park. And they had the nerve to play this song, the lyrics of which are as follows:
New york, to that tall skyline I come, flyin in from london to your door
New york, lookin down on central park
Where they say you should not wander after dark
New york, like a scene from all those movies
But youre real enough to me, but theres a heart
A heart that lives in new york
A heart in new york, a rose on the street
I write my song to that city heartbeat
A heart in new york, love in her eye, an open door and a friend for the night
New york, you got money on your mind
And my words wont make a dimes worth a difference, so heres to you new york
There was no reason for this song to even have been written. Everyone writes songs about New York, and everyone has done it better than this. This looks like it belongs on a greeting card or a tombstone. That bolded bit is, predictably, where the audience bursts into applause. Why? Because it's about Central Park. Where the concert is. Where the audience is. It's not a good line. It looks like a filler line, actually. There is nothing in this song that hasn't been said thousands of times before, and if it's the instrumentation you're after, look no further than The Boxer. Same album, same concert, same general idea, but better.
Wikipedia says the blame for this waste of song writing effort belongs squarely at the door of Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle. Guys, what were you thinking?
Worst "the band has failed me" moment I've ever experienced as a fan: "Metallica": St. Anger
Metallica was the first metal band I was ever into. I was introduced to them when I was about thirteen, and I really loved them. I bought all their albums and I wore out one of their tapes (yes, tape) and then I bought it again on CD. I was all about Metallica in my teen years and so I know a bit of fan trivia that is relevant here.
Firstly, this band was getting steadily better with every album they put out. They got better and better recording engineers and as a consequence they had three albums which encapsulated collections of great songs with amazing recording quality. The sound was heavy but clean and it showcased some pretty decent musicianship. Then something went wrong and the band stopped writing songs. They released an album of covers of other stuff, and then they released an album of a concert they did with the San Francisco symphony which was basically them covering themselves, and then they stopped for a while.
Secondly, this band has issues with bassists. They've had the same vocalist and drummer since the beginning, they swapped out one guitarist (who went on to form Megadeth, so I'm not complaining) and they're on their fourth bassist, who was brought in from Ozzy Osbourne's band after that symphony album.
So, to reiterate, things I used to love about Metallica:
- lyrics. They were good. Not poetry quality, but they weren't always singing about women and I appreciated that. There was always a little bit of the Epic Metal writing in their work.
- Sound. Like I said, clean. Easy on the ears. I could hear singing. I could pick out separate instruments.
- Overall maturity. For a while it really was about the music. Not about putting fake heads on spikes for concerts or putting out albums just so they could say they were the loudest and fastest out there or (ahem) shooting an album in San Quentin prison just so they could look tough.
This is a band that I listened to nonstop for almost ten years. In that time I never got to see them live, and now I don't even want to. This isn't just bad music, this is flat out betrayal.
Worst unnecessary use of video animation to cover up band member aging: Dream Theater: Forsaken
I was recently asked what it would take for me to consider a guy gorgeous. And it's a pretty simple answer. For a guy to be gorgeous he needs to be generally good looking and at least as intelligent as I am. Looks aren't usually enough for me, but looks and brains are a lethal combination that will prompt me to do phenomenally stupid things like play Magic for 7 hours at a stretch just to watch someone else play and maybe have a chance to oppose him myself.
If we're going on looks alone, the bar gets set higher. I am firmly in the "tall, dark, and handsome" camp. I don't make any racial requirements, but long hair is a must. These traits are exemplified in this Dream Theater video by lead singer James LaBrie. (Sorry, I couldn't find photos). Sadly, this video shot in '92 or '93. Fifteen years later, James LaBrie looks like this, which isn't the same thing at all.
Now, about that Forsaken video. It's entirely animated, and the animation team decided to strip a good 4o or 50 pounds off James and give him a more lean muscled build than I ever saw him possess. What makes it really dumb, however, is that through the whole video, the James LaBrie character never speaks or sings along with the song. He doesn't open his mouth at all, other than to express a Keanu Reeves-esque confusion at life. I submit that there was no reason to make the main character resemble any member of the band. None. If they were looking for a dark, sickly figure, they might has well have modeled it off Trent Reznor, pre steriods.
Worst example of a band taking themselves far too seriously, allowing us to laugh at their expense: Kamelot: The Haunting
Good lord I wonder what this video design session sounded like.
"Our sound isn't goth enough. Our street cred is in danger. What ever shall we do?!"
"Let's shoot it in a church."
"Ooooh. Church. What will we do in a church?"
"Just walk up and down the aisles. That should be good enough."
"Really? Are you sure?"
"Fine, we'll make it blurry."
"What are we wearing?"
"Vinyl bodysuits, duh. This is a goth video, remember? Oh and that female guest vocalist has red hair. Let's put her in red vinyl."
"Oooooh."
"By the way, how long is this song?"
"At least five minutes. You want the singer to just walk up and down a church for five minutes?"
"Hrmm... Let's put a swing in. And four costume changes for the sexay female singer."
"Uhhh..."
"Oh, and lots of face lip-sync closeups. YEAH! "
"That still doesn't get us anywhere near five minutes."
"Your girl is good looking, we'll just shoot her on a white background and she can vamp like an idiot for three of them. No one will ever notice."
"Ok, but the girl is a guest singer. How about some focus on *our* singer?"
"Fine, closeups of him too. But only if he shaves his beard like Paul Jr. from Orange County Choppers."
"But...but... won't he look like a scrawny motorcycle guy singing dumb lyrics in a vinyl body suit in a blurry church?"
Yes. Yes he will. Oh my god.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
I do my housework in heels.
I have my reasons, and they're good ones. I should point out that when I say I do my housework in heels, I do mean just heels. No skirts and blouses and 1950's curled bob. Just heels, PJ bottoms, and a sweatshirt. But, the bottom line is that cleaning time is spent vacuuming in high heels, and I'm a bit disgusted with myself for it.
I don't actually wear high heels often. Never to work, and rarely out on Saturday nights. I'm not conditioned enough. Within two hours my feet are sore and I end up either limping with blisters or carrying my shoes while walking barefoot on the street. (I've decided that a great guy is one who, when I decide to forsake my shoes in favor of stocking feet in the rain, has nothing to say other than a concerned comment about how my pantyhose may not survive the night. I really didn't want to talk about how much my feet hurt. I just wanted to get where we were going.)
I didn't always do this. It all fell apart about two months ago. I sprained my ankle. Badly. There was crying and screaming and hysterics and shock, and then a lot of swelling and funny colors. It's still swollen and still weak and I desperately need to exercise it. So, along with the toe raises and the ice and the stretching and everything else, I've started putzing around the house in heels.
I mentioned this to The Coworker recently, and he immediately wanted pictures. He was envisioning me "all done up in Anne Taylor", Stepford-wife style, and he viewed it as photo-worthy. I explained about the PJs and sweats while at the same time doing an inner victory dance.
The Coworker couldn't have known this, but his comment hearkened back to high school, when I used to dress up in "normal" clothes for Halloween. I'd been worried lately that even with the carpet skates, I was viewed as mainstream and boring. Fortunately, those fears have now been allayed. No normal person in Anne Taylor is seen as a photo op. And these days, normal people probably don't clean their houses in high heels.
I have my reasons, and they're good ones. I should point out that when I say I do my housework in heels, I do mean just heels. No skirts and blouses and 1950's curled bob. Just heels, PJ bottoms, and a sweatshirt. But, the bottom line is that cleaning time is spent vacuuming in high heels, and I'm a bit disgusted with myself for it.
I don't actually wear high heels often. Never to work, and rarely out on Saturday nights. I'm not conditioned enough. Within two hours my feet are sore and I end up either limping with blisters or carrying my shoes while walking barefoot on the street. (I've decided that a great guy is one who, when I decide to forsake my shoes in favor of stocking feet in the rain, has nothing to say other than a concerned comment about how my pantyhose may not survive the night. I really didn't want to talk about how much my feet hurt. I just wanted to get where we were going.)
I didn't always do this. It all fell apart about two months ago. I sprained my ankle. Badly. There was crying and screaming and hysterics and shock, and then a lot of swelling and funny colors. It's still swollen and still weak and I desperately need to exercise it. So, along with the toe raises and the ice and the stretching and everything else, I've started putzing around the house in heels.
I mentioned this to The Coworker recently, and he immediately wanted pictures. He was envisioning me "all done up in Anne Taylor", Stepford-wife style, and he viewed it as photo-worthy. I explained about the PJs and sweats while at the same time doing an inner victory dance.
The Coworker couldn't have known this, but his comment hearkened back to high school, when I used to dress up in "normal" clothes for Halloween. I'd been worried lately that even with the carpet skates, I was viewed as mainstream and boring. Fortunately, those fears have now been allayed. No normal person in Anne Taylor is seen as a photo op. And these days, normal people probably don't clean their houses in high heels.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
It's pronounced "wuddah"
It was unseasonably hot last week, hitting a high of 95 on Thursday. It is also the beginning of tourist season, and the area right near my office is packed with people all day. The combination of the Ferry Building, the farmer's market, and the ferry port itself create a huge tourist draw all day every day. The Ferry building is also a favorite lunch spot of the people who work in the area, and it has a gelato shop.
Gelato appears to be the primary defense against heat in this city, and this week there have been gelato trips after lunch, gelato imported into meetings, meetings in the Ferry Building by the gelato stand, and so on. It's still a relatively new thing for me. I can remember one gelato shop in the Exton mall which I never went to. I didn't have gelato until I went to Italy last summer, and then I got spoiled on the stuff.
By Thursday, I had had my fill of gelato for the week. It was too rich for that kind of heat. So...
"Hey team, are there any water-ice shops around here?"
"What?"
"Water-ice."
"What?"
There were actually two things going on here. The first is that apparently my accent gets completely out of control when I say "water-ice" and I'm hard to understand if my listeners aren't used to the short-voweled, blue collar sound.
"Oh, wah-ter ice. I heard wuddah ice."
And then, once we got past that hurdle...
"What's water-ice?"
With some difficulty, I refrained from making comments about the uncultured heathens of the west.
"It's sort of like a snow-cone, only softer. Softer than gelato, no cream."
"So it's like sorbet, then?"
"No, softer than that."
"Like a slushie?"
"No, definitely not like a slushie. The flavor is better, you eat it with a spoon, it's a less homogeneous texture..." A lightbulb goes on in my head. "Slush! It's exactly like the slush you get on roadways when it's almost melted but not quite." A sea of polite but confused eyes stares back. I can almost hear the inner monologues. We must humor the crazy woman. She is talking about eating 'slush' off the road. It's the heat. She's lost it. "...except you don't have slush here, so you have no idea what I'm talking about." Ignorant, uncultured heathens.
"It sounds like sorbet. That's not that exciting."
"It's different than sorbet."
"Well it sounds boring."
Ignorant uncultured dirty hippy tree-hugging foodie-wannabe heathen savages....
I've had a few of these East-West culture clashes, and they always leave me wondering if I'm really just crazy. Fortunately, I do have one ally: my PM, who grew up in New Jersey, and who happened to be walking by at the right time.
"PM, do you know what water-ice is?"
"What, Italian ice? Sure."
"Is there any to be had around here?"
"Hmm.... no."
So if you were just waiting for the opportunity to move west and make millions, you've got it right here. Just open a Rita's next to the ferry port on the bay. You'll have no competition from anyone.
Epilogue: The next day was better. I found a real, honest-to-god, cheese steak place behind my office. They use Amaroso rolls and Cheez Whiz.
Gelato appears to be the primary defense against heat in this city, and this week there have been gelato trips after lunch, gelato imported into meetings, meetings in the Ferry Building by the gelato stand, and so on. It's still a relatively new thing for me. I can remember one gelato shop in the Exton mall which I never went to. I didn't have gelato until I went to Italy last summer, and then I got spoiled on the stuff.
By Thursday, I had had my fill of gelato for the week. It was too rich for that kind of heat. So...
"Hey team, are there any water-ice shops around here?"
"What?"
"Water-ice."
"What?"
There were actually two things going on here. The first is that apparently my accent gets completely out of control when I say "water-ice" and I'm hard to understand if my listeners aren't used to the short-voweled, blue collar sound.
"Oh, wah-ter ice. I heard wuddah ice."
And then, once we got past that hurdle...
"What's water-ice?"
With some difficulty, I refrained from making comments about the uncultured heathens of the west.
"It's sort of like a snow-cone, only softer. Softer than gelato, no cream."
"So it's like sorbet, then?"
"No, softer than that."
"Like a slushie?"
"No, definitely not like a slushie. The flavor is better, you eat it with a spoon, it's a less homogeneous texture..." A lightbulb goes on in my head. "Slush! It's exactly like the slush you get on roadways when it's almost melted but not quite." A sea of polite but confused eyes stares back. I can almost hear the inner monologues. We must humor the crazy woman. She is talking about eating 'slush' off the road. It's the heat. She's lost it. "...except you don't have slush here, so you have no idea what I'm talking about." Ignorant, uncultured heathens.
"It sounds like sorbet. That's not that exciting."
"It's different than sorbet."
"Well it sounds boring."
Ignorant uncultured dirty hippy tree-hugging foodie-wannabe heathen savages....
I've had a few of these East-West culture clashes, and they always leave me wondering if I'm really just crazy. Fortunately, I do have one ally: my PM, who grew up in New Jersey, and who happened to be walking by at the right time.
"PM, do you know what water-ice is?"
"What, Italian ice? Sure."
"Is there any to be had around here?"
"Hmm.... no."
So if you were just waiting for the opportunity to move west and make millions, you've got it right here. Just open a Rita's next to the ferry port on the bay. You'll have no competition from anyone.
Epilogue: The next day was better. I found a real, honest-to-god, cheese steak place behind my office. They use Amaroso rolls and Cheez Whiz.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
In defense of the mess
I'm supposed to be in Vegas right now. I'm not there, and I won't be there in the foreseeable future, and there's a long story behind all of this which is too boring for words, but the point is that I was supposed to fly out tonight and not come back until Saturday and even though that is no longer in the cards, I still have tomorrow and Friday off.
I was also supposed to be taking motorcycle lessons next weekend. See that past tense back there? That insidious 'was', which until about 2pm today was an 'am'? Reader, you are smart and logical, and I have faith that you can see where this is going.
My parents, however, are still arriving a week from Saturday to visit me for a day or two before heading up to Yosemite. So it is, in fact, very good that all my plans for the next few weekends are wrecked and I have some unforeseen time off which will be spent at home cleaning in preparation for the arrival of my parents.
I have a bit of a history with cleaning, the way my dad has a bit of a history with Rubik's cubes and Oscar has a bit of a history with Felix (although my walls are spaghetti-free for the moment. Antipathy is a learned skill).
My room was never clean growing up. It just didn't seem like a useful way to spend my time. There was enough stuff in my room that even when it was clean, it was cluttered, and it never stayed clean anyway. On one particularly memorable occasion, a neighbor complimented me on the sculptural qualities of the clothing spilling out of my bureau. Occasionally, I'd reach the pile stage, in which the surface area of the stuff on the floor exceeded the surface area of the viable walking space. At this point, Words were exchanged.
I'm sure that my mom offered up more than a few arguments in favor of keeping my room clean, but the one that I remember was, "It's impossible to walk in here!" This was an interesting one because it wasn't entirely true. It was only impossible for anyone else to walk in my room. I managed it quite well because I always knew where everything was. Even at three in the morning in the dark, I could navigate quite well among the hazards that my bedroom floor held for the unwary.
(It occurs to me now that I should clarify the difference between messy, which I am, and dirty, which I am not. Mess equals clutter, and dirt equals life forms. There is no mildew in my bathroom and my kitchen is safe to cook in, although there might be a suspect tupperware in the fridge.)
The big difference between living in my parents' house and living in my own place is that I had basically one room back home. It was a constant wreck, but I kept the door closed, and I tried to keep my clutter out of the rest of the house. But now I've been allowed to spread out. I can't just close one door to hide my homemaking flaws, because all the stuff in this apartment belongs to me. It's all my mess.
In terms of severity, it's not at the pile stage. Not event close. Just cluttered. But you know how it is when the parents visit. You want to give them some sort of reassurance that you can take care of yourself at least adequately, if perhaps not as well as they did. So I will spend some of my long weekend with a vacuum and mop as I try to resolve my cleaning initiative with the other problem of living alone:
Strange noises.
Let me just say that I don't do well with the unknown. I give irrational, baseless fears a lot more credence than they really deserve and when it comes right down to it, I am absolutely spineless, especially in the dark. Strange noises at night will have me lying wide awake in bed, terrified of what might be going on just 2 rooms away. And getting up to go check on things is absolutely out of the question because I might find something. No good. I can tell myself all I want that that creak was just the house settling, or the random tapping is the bush being blown against the window, but I don't actually know this for sure because I just don't know the place well enough. And I live on a very quiet street. There isn't any ambient noise, so I hear everything. I've found the solution is, since my rational mind knows nothing is wrong, to put another pillow over my ears so that I stop hearing things and freaking myself out. But I'm pretty sure the only reason that works is because my apartment is cluttered enough that no actual trouble could happen without me knowing about it. It's like stacking cans in front of a door as an early warning alarm system, except that my defenses are *everywhere*. You might avoid crushing a game system or getting your ankles all tangled up in the laundry I was sorting in front of the TV, but that just means you'll stub your toe on the easel or go face first into my magic cards when you miss the step in the library.
In deference to my parents, and to any other guests who might show up, I'll clean this weekend. I'll do it well. Chemicals will be involved. But you best watch your step coming in the front door, because I probably left a shoe or three scattered around as a trap for the unwary.
I was also supposed to be taking motorcycle lessons next weekend. See that past tense back there? That insidious 'was', which until about 2pm today was an 'am'? Reader, you are smart and logical, and I have faith that you can see where this is going.
My parents, however, are still arriving a week from Saturday to visit me for a day or two before heading up to Yosemite. So it is, in fact, very good that all my plans for the next few weekends are wrecked and I have some unforeseen time off which will be spent at home cleaning in preparation for the arrival of my parents.
I have a bit of a history with cleaning, the way my dad has a bit of a history with Rubik's cubes and Oscar has a bit of a history with Felix (although my walls are spaghetti-free for the moment. Antipathy is a learned skill).
My room was never clean growing up. It just didn't seem like a useful way to spend my time. There was enough stuff in my room that even when it was clean, it was cluttered, and it never stayed clean anyway. On one particularly memorable occasion, a neighbor complimented me on the sculptural qualities of the clothing spilling out of my bureau. Occasionally, I'd reach the pile stage, in which the surface area of the stuff on the floor exceeded the surface area of the viable walking space. At this point, Words were exchanged.
I'm sure that my mom offered up more than a few arguments in favor of keeping my room clean, but the one that I remember was, "It's impossible to walk in here!" This was an interesting one because it wasn't entirely true. It was only impossible for anyone else to walk in my room. I managed it quite well because I always knew where everything was. Even at three in the morning in the dark, I could navigate quite well among the hazards that my bedroom floor held for the unwary.
(It occurs to me now that I should clarify the difference between messy, which I am, and dirty, which I am not. Mess equals clutter, and dirt equals life forms. There is no mildew in my bathroom and my kitchen is safe to cook in, although there might be a suspect tupperware in the fridge.)
The big difference between living in my parents' house and living in my own place is that I had basically one room back home. It was a constant wreck, but I kept the door closed, and I tried to keep my clutter out of the rest of the house. But now I've been allowed to spread out. I can't just close one door to hide my homemaking flaws, because all the stuff in this apartment belongs to me. It's all my mess.
In terms of severity, it's not at the pile stage. Not event close. Just cluttered. But you know how it is when the parents visit. You want to give them some sort of reassurance that you can take care of yourself at least adequately, if perhaps not as well as they did. So I will spend some of my long weekend with a vacuum and mop as I try to resolve my cleaning initiative with the other problem of living alone:
Strange noises.
Let me just say that I don't do well with the unknown. I give irrational, baseless fears a lot more credence than they really deserve and when it comes right down to it, I am absolutely spineless, especially in the dark. Strange noises at night will have me lying wide awake in bed, terrified of what might be going on just 2 rooms away. And getting up to go check on things is absolutely out of the question because I might find something. No good. I can tell myself all I want that that creak was just the house settling, or the random tapping is the bush being blown against the window, but I don't actually know this for sure because I just don't know the place well enough. And I live on a very quiet street. There isn't any ambient noise, so I hear everything. I've found the solution is, since my rational mind knows nothing is wrong, to put another pillow over my ears so that I stop hearing things and freaking myself out. But I'm pretty sure the only reason that works is because my apartment is cluttered enough that no actual trouble could happen without me knowing about it. It's like stacking cans in front of a door as an early warning alarm system, except that my defenses are *everywhere*. You might avoid crushing a game system or getting your ankles all tangled up in the laundry I was sorting in front of the TV, but that just means you'll stub your toe on the easel or go face first into my magic cards when you miss the step in the library.
In deference to my parents, and to any other guests who might show up, I'll clean this weekend. I'll do it well. Chemicals will be involved. But you best watch your step coming in the front door, because I probably left a shoe or three scattered around as a trap for the unwary.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
That word... I do not think it means what you think it means
A few weekends ago, I got invited to a... get ready for it... tea party. No joke. A friend from work is a member of a gossip blog which was having a gathering for its San Francisco chapter. They decided to have their event at a combined polo shop and tea house near my apartment. J and I had never been and didn't quite know where it was, but fortunately the shop owners had placed a fake life sized horse outside the door. It was a bit of a tip-off.
The party was enjoyable. We were in an enclosed outdoor garden in back with sun umbrellas, tea, wine, and tea sandwiches for a good 4 hours. And I met quite a few interesting people. The vast majority of the attendees were women and I got to talking with one in particular. I never caught her name, so we'll call her SciFi Sally, because she and I share a lot of tastes in books, scifi and fantasy in particular.
Sally was probably 40ish, which encompasses the range from 35 to 55, because I'm a terrible judge of age. She seemed fairly normal, other than her taste in books. She was a professional of some sort, she dressed well, she spoke with eloquence, and she could discuss literature with more than a modicum of intelligence.
It turns out that I have no patience for people who try to impress me without doing some research. Sally made this mistake. We were talking about restaurants. I love going out to eat at high end restaurants. It's not about pretending to be important or rich for a night; it's about the food. There are very few more satisfying ways to end a work week than by going to Boulevard for some braised short ribs and good wine.
I guess this didn't come across to Sally though. Or maybe it was the rock and roll jeans I was wearing. Or maybe she is really just like this all the time and it wasn't about me at all. Her contribution to this conversation was: "Oh yes, I love going to nice restaurants. I love going with my subversive friends and just being subversive in the upscale places." And I gotta say, I had some trouble with this. Her thought process seemed to be along the lines of "Ooooh young person. Must impress the young person with how cool and hip I am."
I'm not averse to being impressed. I love being swept off my feet, and never more than when someone blows me away with how smart they are. Her statement begs the question, "So, when you say you're subversive, what does that mean?" Unfortunately, the answer was, "Oh, we're just there. Just the act of us being there is subversive." Oh really?
(You know how you get to a point in a conversation where you're so disenchanted with what the other person is saying that you start needling them out of sheer boredom? "I gotta say, I'm not really into the subversive thing anymore. I mean, it was cool once, but I've outgrown it. It's a little immature, don't you think?" Sorry Mom, Dad, and Miss Manners.)
That's not subversive.
Getting a good chunk of your coworkers to equip themselves with Carpet Slides? That's subversive.
I was surfing the net on Monday and found this article and video. They amused me. I sent them to a coworker, saying "We need these." I was half kidding. Only half kidding, but there was a definite joke element there. I got back a "HELL YES!!"
Long story short, the video went around the office, and we bought all of Amazon's stock (they had next day delivery, and we needed them RIGHT NOW). And now, we have carpet skates.
I know you're all waiting for a video, but the time line looks like this: Monday -- order carpet skates. Tuesday -- carpet skates arrive. Monday night -- sustain horrible ankle sprain, severely limiting my ability to test the carpet slides. I'm getting better though. Hopefully by next week, I'll have some tricks worked out.
Unfortunately, there were not enough pairs at Amazon to satisfy the needs of the office, and I think one of the guys who couldn't get a pair was jealous. He's started a tally of Carpet Skate WipeOuts. We're up to 4, the most spectacular of which occurred when a Carpet Skate newbie (even newer than the rest of us) decided that for his first jump, he'd try to clear a trash can. I think he was going for 360 degree rotation as well. The resulting crash was amazingly dramatic.
Up until now, you've been thinking, "Yes Hal, this is cool, but this is what software developers do anyway. It's not subversive. It's just sort of dumb and cute." Firstly, I entreat the naysayers to trust me just a little bit. You've seen some of the more dramatic tricks, but you haven't seen the subtleties of movement that these suckers offer. With barely a push off one toe, you can do a casual sideways slide for about 3 feet. Now, you don't just go to meetings, you arrive at meetings, Arthur Fonzarelli style. You are just that cool.
Secondly, y'all don't know about the pocket bikes and the crazy PM with the toolkit.
One of the other teams has a pair of what they call pocket bikes. They are electric motorcycles, probably 1/4 scale, and they're actually ride-able indoors. They don't emit exhaust, as far as I can tell. Occasionally you'll see people zipping up and down aisles on the bikes.
Except that right now, the bikes are both broken. One was working up until a few days ago when someone got all macho with the throttle and broke the handle.
Also, we have this PM, who is, for lack of a better descriptor, an experience. He's very upbeat and happy and likes to get his hands dirty. He looked at the Carpet Skates and looked at the pocket bikes and immediately envisioned a motocross/waterski scenario. Upon hearing that the bikes were out of commission, he immediately vowed to bring in his own toolkit to fix them personally so that we can have carpet skiing competitions.
The lesson to take away here, obviously, is that if you're going to talk to me about being subversive in restaurants, then I want to hear stories about you not only carpet skiing through the dining area, but then subsequently convincing the wait staff that all meals should arrive via carpet skiing waiter.
From Merriam Webster:
subvert (transitive verb): to overturn or overthrow from the foundation
The party was enjoyable. We were in an enclosed outdoor garden in back with sun umbrellas, tea, wine, and tea sandwiches for a good 4 hours. And I met quite a few interesting people. The vast majority of the attendees were women and I got to talking with one in particular. I never caught her name, so we'll call her SciFi Sally, because she and I share a lot of tastes in books, scifi and fantasy in particular.
Sally was probably 40ish, which encompasses the range from 35 to 55, because I'm a terrible judge of age. She seemed fairly normal, other than her taste in books. She was a professional of some sort, she dressed well, she spoke with eloquence, and she could discuss literature with more than a modicum of intelligence.
It turns out that I have no patience for people who try to impress me without doing some research. Sally made this mistake. We were talking about restaurants. I love going out to eat at high end restaurants. It's not about pretending to be important or rich for a night; it's about the food. There are very few more satisfying ways to end a work week than by going to Boulevard for some braised short ribs and good wine.
I guess this didn't come across to Sally though. Or maybe it was the rock and roll jeans I was wearing. Or maybe she is really just like this all the time and it wasn't about me at all. Her contribution to this conversation was: "Oh yes, I love going to nice restaurants. I love going with my subversive friends and just being subversive in the upscale places." And I gotta say, I had some trouble with this. Her thought process seemed to be along the lines of "Ooooh young person. Must impress the young person with how cool and hip I am."
I'm not averse to being impressed. I love being swept off my feet, and never more than when someone blows me away with how smart they are. Her statement begs the question, "So, when you say you're subversive, what does that mean?" Unfortunately, the answer was, "Oh, we're just there. Just the act of us being there is subversive." Oh really?
(You know how you get to a point in a conversation where you're so disenchanted with what the other person is saying that you start needling them out of sheer boredom? "I gotta say, I'm not really into the subversive thing anymore. I mean, it was cool once, but I've outgrown it. It's a little immature, don't you think?" Sorry Mom, Dad, and Miss Manners.)
That's not subversive.
Getting a good chunk of your coworkers to equip themselves with Carpet Slides? That's subversive.
I was surfing the net on Monday and found this article and video. They amused me. I sent them to a coworker, saying "We need these." I was half kidding. Only half kidding, but there was a definite joke element there. I got back a "HELL YES!!"
Long story short, the video went around the office, and we bought all of Amazon's stock (they had next day delivery, and we needed them RIGHT NOW). And now, we have carpet skates.
I know you're all waiting for a video, but the time line looks like this: Monday -- order carpet skates. Tuesday -- carpet skates arrive. Monday night -- sustain horrible ankle sprain, severely limiting my ability to test the carpet slides. I'm getting better though. Hopefully by next week, I'll have some tricks worked out.
Unfortunately, there were not enough pairs at Amazon to satisfy the needs of the office, and I think one of the guys who couldn't get a pair was jealous. He's started a tally of Carpet Skate WipeOuts. We're up to 4, the most spectacular of which occurred when a Carpet Skate newbie (even newer than the rest of us) decided that for his first jump, he'd try to clear a trash can. I think he was going for 360 degree rotation as well. The resulting crash was amazingly dramatic.
Up until now, you've been thinking, "Yes Hal, this is cool, but this is what software developers do anyway. It's not subversive. It's just sort of dumb and cute." Firstly, I entreat the naysayers to trust me just a little bit. You've seen some of the more dramatic tricks, but you haven't seen the subtleties of movement that these suckers offer. With barely a push off one toe, you can do a casual sideways slide for about 3 feet. Now, you don't just go to meetings, you arrive at meetings, Arthur Fonzarelli style. You are just that cool.
Secondly, y'all don't know about the pocket bikes and the crazy PM with the toolkit.
One of the other teams has a pair of what they call pocket bikes. They are electric motorcycles, probably 1/4 scale, and they're actually ride-able indoors. They don't emit exhaust, as far as I can tell. Occasionally you'll see people zipping up and down aisles on the bikes.
Except that right now, the bikes are both broken. One was working up until a few days ago when someone got all macho with the throttle and broke the handle.
Also, we have this PM, who is, for lack of a better descriptor, an experience. He's very upbeat and happy and likes to get his hands dirty. He looked at the Carpet Skates and looked at the pocket bikes and immediately envisioned a motocross/waterski scenario. Upon hearing that the bikes were out of commission, he immediately vowed to bring in his own toolkit to fix them personally so that we can have carpet skiing competitions.
The lesson to take away here, obviously, is that if you're going to talk to me about being subversive in restaurants, then I want to hear stories about you not only carpet skiing through the dining area, but then subsequently convincing the wait staff that all meals should arrive via carpet skiing waiter.
From Merriam Webster:
subvert (transitive verb): to overturn or overthrow from the foundation
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Balance Beams: Composure-shattering floor substitute or convenient unit of measurement?
It was a big weekend in San Francisco for me. Yesterday I did battle on two fronts simultaneously, and I was victorious in both.
The first was the dreaded San Francisco driving. When it came time to find an apartment, my mom came out for a week and rented a car, and she and I spent a few days driving around all of San Francisco, visiting apartments and buying brooms and mops and a bed, and I very carefully refrained from posting about any of it.
The thing is, driving as a whole didn't go so well that week. Stop signs and traffic lights came out of nowhere. There was a lot to pay attention to, and a lot of new dynamics, such as cable cars and bicycle lanes, that just aren't part of driving in Malvern. San Franciscans also have a terrifying propensity for double parking, often for hours at a time. It took 2 of us paying full attention to everything in order to drive safely. We didn't get into any accidents but it was thrilling nevertheless.
The only reason I'm willing to bring this into the public light now is because it turns out it's not just us. A few months ago, an old housemate (who grew up in the Northeast) was out in SF for a few weeks, and he and his girlfriend and Chris and I spent a day in his Zipcar doing a scenic drive around the city. And it was like house hunting all over again. Stop signs were missed, wrong turns were made, and I'm pretty sure we went down at least one one-way street the wrong way.
All of this had me scared enough that I had no desire to drive in the city whatsoever. I didn't think I'd be able to do it. But Zipcar memberships are free, and oddly enough, I felt slightly more confident about my abilities after reflecting on the housemate driving experience. Because, from my vantage point in the back seat, I'd seen all the stoplights and signs miles away, even though no one else did.
This all brings us to yesterday, when I got invited to a party in Mountain View, which is about 40 - 50 minutes south by car, or 2 hours by public transit. I decided it was time to try out my Zipcar membership and dig up my navigation skills and drive down to the party rather than suffer through the public transit commute.
I am both old fashioned and minimalist when it comes to navigating while driving. I glare with disdain upon GPS navigation systems, and I have a well honed take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards maps if I'm not going more than an hour away. Armed with nothing more than a scrap of written directions, I set out.
(The car review: I was in a Mazda 3 automatic with that fake manual "Tiptronic" transmission, should I desire to shift "manually". Great car, corners beautifully, fast acceleration in automatic mode. However, the driver's seat is low and it did absolutely nothing for my back, and it doesn't have the anti-rollback feature that some automatics do. It started sliding backwards when I started from a stop sign on a steep hill, and then I gunned it and then there was tire screeching, but that only happened once. Also, it's really really quiet. Overall, quite a pleasant little sporty sedan.)
And the trip down was uneventful. After I'd gotten used to driving in general (it's been a while) and driving in SF (didn't take as long as I feared) I made it to the party with only one wrong turn and subsequent phone call to the host. I proclaimed victory over driving and enjoyed the party, until it came time to leave.
One of the other people at this party joked that Zipcar is an especially wonderful thing when visiting the in-laws, because the driver has a deadline by which the car must be returned, on penalty of $50/hr late fees and a membership suspension that could last months. "Oh we're so sorry, but we just can't stay any longer. Our Zipcar reservation is about to end." etc. So I had diligently studied the trip time and set my phone alarm accordingly.
The trip down only took about an hour, door to door, but I gave myself a luxurious 3 hours to make it back because I realized that right near the party location was...an IKEA. With bookshelves.
A short recap of the bookshelf scenario: when I moved out here, I brought all my books along with 2 sets of shelves to hold them all. I didn't have any extra shelf space, but it worked. Then one set of shelves collapsed, and then I went to a used book sale and went nuts and bought 30 books. I was in serious bookshelf debt, and it was getting slowly worse (well I'm not going to let a little thing like lack of storage space stop me from buying books. That would be wrong). Anyway, the problem has been growing since September, and yesterday I figured that as long as I had a car and I was going to be near the IKEA, I should really do something about it.
I knew exactly the shelf unit I wanted before I ever walked in. I'd had my eye on it for months. So many months that since I first glimpsed it, the price has dropped 20 percent. It's real wood, not particle board, and it's dark and masculine and gorgeous (and it looks like this: Markor).
I arrived at IKEA, wandered down to the self service furniture section, pulled the box onto my cart, and headed for the check out. And then I froze. I thought of the books lining the walls of my library. I'd put them in a neat little line against the baseboards when the rebellious shelving unit had collapsed. And then I thought of the box full of books in the library. I'd pulled some of the volumes that don't get read as often off the remaining functional shelves so I'd have room for some new additions. The anxiety steadily mounting, I recalled the books under my TV (which arrived after the big book sale). And when, finally, a vision, unbidden, arose of the pile of books next to my bed, which threatened to dwarf the bedside table*, I was faced with a heart stopping, rictus-of-terror inducing prospect: What is one set of shelves isn't enough?
I stood motionless with indecision for a full 5 minutes, contemplating the possibilities. I wasn't averse to owning more shelves, but buying more shelves was a little different. That was a far more expensive proposition, to say nothing of the dicey-ness of getting both sets of shelves in the car. I wasn't even positive the first would fit. And the more astute readers might have noticed that the unit I'd picked out came in a single 87 lb. box which would have to somehow be transported up a full flight of stairs to get to my apartment. (I'd known this going in. And I'd tried to recruit some grunt help at the last minute, but it didn't happen. I was trying to remember if I'd ever attempted to carry something so heavy. "Hmm... 87 pounds... Balance beams! I used to carry those around the gym, they're about that weight. Oooh, and canoes. Canoes are what, 75 pounds? I can handle those without too many problems. I'm tough, I can do it. RAR!" Yes, girls too can do the macho shithead thing when pressed.) Even the macho shithead in me wasn't at all jazzed about having to do the stair climb twice.
The economist in me wasn't too keen on dropping another 40 or 50 bucks to rent another Zipcar and drive back down to IKEA for another set of shelves if it could be avoided, however. So, figuring there was no real way I'd get these beasts in my car, but willing to try anyway, I grabbed the second set, checked out, and headed for the car.
Amazingly enough, both sets fit without problems. Even more astonishingly, my body lived up to my bravado and I got the stupid things up the stupid stairs and in through the stupid door with minimal issue.
I assembled one set last night and the other this morning. And yes, I needed both. There were only two hiccups in the shelf experience. One is that I haven't had to use a screw driver on real wood in years, and I'd forgotten how much more resistance solid birch offers than particle board. And these shelves have a ridiculous number of screws. At the end of the first set, my whole right arm below the elbow was sore. And now that I've done the second set, I'm worried I'll have blisters on my hands.
The other issue is that I'm missing a shelf. One of the sets was short a piece of wood that would normally form the bottom shelf in one of the shelf compartments. Fortunately, installing those is the last step of the shelves so when the replacement gets here in about a week, it will be easy enough to fix. I won't have to take apart the whole thing to do it.
The whole bookshelf experience gives me cause to reflect on living alone. It's strange, not being able to yell up the stairs for assembly assistance. And I was really concerned that I wouldn't be able to actually get the things in the house and put together without help. But I did nevertheless, and since I can't go out and kill a buffalo barehanded, this will have to stand as my testament to my ability to take care of myself. Be warned: my ego is back.
*My bedside table is cooler than yours. It is a Mongolian chafing dish, I think. I found it in a furniture store while I was solving the problem of the dining room table. It's copper and beautiful and it has gorgeous and ornate handles. So there.
The first was the dreaded San Francisco driving. When it came time to find an apartment, my mom came out for a week and rented a car, and she and I spent a few days driving around all of San Francisco, visiting apartments and buying brooms and mops and a bed, and I very carefully refrained from posting about any of it.
The thing is, driving as a whole didn't go so well that week. Stop signs and traffic lights came out of nowhere. There was a lot to pay attention to, and a lot of new dynamics, such as cable cars and bicycle lanes, that just aren't part of driving in Malvern. San Franciscans also have a terrifying propensity for double parking, often for hours at a time. It took 2 of us paying full attention to everything in order to drive safely. We didn't get into any accidents but it was thrilling nevertheless.
The only reason I'm willing to bring this into the public light now is because it turns out it's not just us. A few months ago, an old housemate (who grew up in the Northeast) was out in SF for a few weeks, and he and his girlfriend and Chris and I spent a day in his Zipcar doing a scenic drive around the city. And it was like house hunting all over again. Stop signs were missed, wrong turns were made, and I'm pretty sure we went down at least one one-way street the wrong way.
All of this had me scared enough that I had no desire to drive in the city whatsoever. I didn't think I'd be able to do it. But Zipcar memberships are free, and oddly enough, I felt slightly more confident about my abilities after reflecting on the housemate driving experience. Because, from my vantage point in the back seat, I'd seen all the stoplights and signs miles away, even though no one else did.
This all brings us to yesterday, when I got invited to a party in Mountain View, which is about 40 - 50 minutes south by car, or 2 hours by public transit. I decided it was time to try out my Zipcar membership and dig up my navigation skills and drive down to the party rather than suffer through the public transit commute.
I am both old fashioned and minimalist when it comes to navigating while driving. I glare with disdain upon GPS navigation systems, and I have a well honed take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards maps if I'm not going more than an hour away. Armed with nothing more than a scrap of written directions, I set out.
(The car review: I was in a Mazda 3 automatic with that fake manual "Tiptronic" transmission, should I desire to shift "manually". Great car, corners beautifully, fast acceleration in automatic mode. However, the driver's seat is low and it did absolutely nothing for my back, and it doesn't have the anti-rollback feature that some automatics do. It started sliding backwards when I started from a stop sign on a steep hill, and then I gunned it and then there was tire screeching, but that only happened once. Also, it's really really quiet. Overall, quite a pleasant little sporty sedan.)
And the trip down was uneventful. After I'd gotten used to driving in general (it's been a while) and driving in SF (didn't take as long as I feared) I made it to the party with only one wrong turn and subsequent phone call to the host. I proclaimed victory over driving and enjoyed the party, until it came time to leave.
One of the other people at this party joked that Zipcar is an especially wonderful thing when visiting the in-laws, because the driver has a deadline by which the car must be returned, on penalty of $50/hr late fees and a membership suspension that could last months. "Oh we're so sorry, but we just can't stay any longer. Our Zipcar reservation is about to end." etc. So I had diligently studied the trip time and set my phone alarm accordingly.
The trip down only took about an hour, door to door, but I gave myself a luxurious 3 hours to make it back because I realized that right near the party location was...an IKEA. With bookshelves.
A short recap of the bookshelf scenario: when I moved out here, I brought all my books along with 2 sets of shelves to hold them all. I didn't have any extra shelf space, but it worked. Then one set of shelves collapsed, and then I went to a used book sale and went nuts and bought 30 books. I was in serious bookshelf debt, and it was getting slowly worse (well I'm not going to let a little thing like lack of storage space stop me from buying books. That would be wrong). Anyway, the problem has been growing since September, and yesterday I figured that as long as I had a car and I was going to be near the IKEA, I should really do something about it.
I knew exactly the shelf unit I wanted before I ever walked in. I'd had my eye on it for months. So many months that since I first glimpsed it, the price has dropped 20 percent. It's real wood, not particle board, and it's dark and masculine and gorgeous (and it looks like this: Markor).
I arrived at IKEA, wandered down to the self service furniture section, pulled the box onto my cart, and headed for the check out. And then I froze. I thought of the books lining the walls of my library. I'd put them in a neat little line against the baseboards when the rebellious shelving unit had collapsed. And then I thought of the box full of books in the library. I'd pulled some of the volumes that don't get read as often off the remaining functional shelves so I'd have room for some new additions. The anxiety steadily mounting, I recalled the books under my TV (which arrived after the big book sale). And when, finally, a vision, unbidden, arose of the pile of books next to my bed, which threatened to dwarf the bedside table*, I was faced with a heart stopping, rictus-of-terror inducing prospect: What is one set of shelves isn't enough?
I stood motionless with indecision for a full 5 minutes, contemplating the possibilities. I wasn't averse to owning more shelves, but buying more shelves was a little different. That was a far more expensive proposition, to say nothing of the dicey-ness of getting both sets of shelves in the car. I wasn't even positive the first would fit. And the more astute readers might have noticed that the unit I'd picked out came in a single 87 lb. box which would have to somehow be transported up a full flight of stairs to get to my apartment. (I'd known this going in. And I'd tried to recruit some grunt help at the last minute, but it didn't happen. I was trying to remember if I'd ever attempted to carry something so heavy. "Hmm... 87 pounds... Balance beams! I used to carry those around the gym, they're about that weight. Oooh, and canoes. Canoes are what, 75 pounds? I can handle those without too many problems. I'm tough, I can do it. RAR!" Yes, girls too can do the macho shithead thing when pressed.) Even the macho shithead in me wasn't at all jazzed about having to do the stair climb twice.
The economist in me wasn't too keen on dropping another 40 or 50 bucks to rent another Zipcar and drive back down to IKEA for another set of shelves if it could be avoided, however. So, figuring there was no real way I'd get these beasts in my car, but willing to try anyway, I grabbed the second set, checked out, and headed for the car.
Amazingly enough, both sets fit without problems. Even more astonishingly, my body lived up to my bravado and I got the stupid things up the stupid stairs and in through the stupid door with minimal issue.
I assembled one set last night and the other this morning. And yes, I needed both. There were only two hiccups in the shelf experience. One is that I haven't had to use a screw driver on real wood in years, and I'd forgotten how much more resistance solid birch offers than particle board. And these shelves have a ridiculous number of screws. At the end of the first set, my whole right arm below the elbow was sore. And now that I've done the second set, I'm worried I'll have blisters on my hands.
The other issue is that I'm missing a shelf. One of the sets was short a piece of wood that would normally form the bottom shelf in one of the shelf compartments. Fortunately, installing those is the last step of the shelves so when the replacement gets here in about a week, it will be easy enough to fix. I won't have to take apart the whole thing to do it.
The whole bookshelf experience gives me cause to reflect on living alone. It's strange, not being able to yell up the stairs for assembly assistance. And I was really concerned that I wouldn't be able to actually get the things in the house and put together without help. But I did nevertheless, and since I can't go out and kill a buffalo barehanded, this will have to stand as my testament to my ability to take care of myself. Be warned: my ego is back.
*My bedside table is cooler than yours. It is a Mongolian chafing dish, I think. I found it in a furniture store while I was solving the problem of the dining room table. It's copper and beautiful and it has gorgeous and ornate handles. So there.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
He Never Returned
I never did the bar thing in college. I couldn't stand them. I didn't like beer and I didn't like trying to have conversations that sounded like shouting matches. And the cigarette smoke. I really REALLY didn't like the smoke.
However, I am no longer in college. I can order non-beer drinks. San Francisco has a smoking ban. And last weekend, my fashion consultant taught me how to get around the volume problem.
I call her the Fashion Consultant because she makes me look good. She owns a consignment shop near my house, and I go in on the weekends and play dress-up, and she gives good advice. So I buy my clothes from her, and occasionally we go out.
Last weekend, we were bored. We were both in our own separate funks and sick of winter and restless. We decided to solve the problem with dinner at a mediterranean grill down the street. And then the Fashion Consultant suggested we go to a bar in the Castro. But not just any bar. A piano bar.
We walked in and it was pretty great. There was a grand piano covered in brass plate metal, with chairs all around it. The pianist was taking requests, and occasionally a spectator would sing. And this was not karaoke bar drunken warbling. This was practiced, well honed beauty.
The thing that sealed it for me though was the song being performed when we arrived. It's a song I hadn't heard in at least 20 years. I don't know who wrote it or who performed it or what the instrumentation was. I do know it's possibly called "MTA" and my dad used to sing me to sleep with it.
However, I am no longer in college. I can order non-beer drinks. San Francisco has a smoking ban. And last weekend, my fashion consultant taught me how to get around the volume problem.
I call her the Fashion Consultant because she makes me look good. She owns a consignment shop near my house, and I go in on the weekends and play dress-up, and she gives good advice. So I buy my clothes from her, and occasionally we go out.
Last weekend, we were bored. We were both in our own separate funks and sick of winter and restless. We decided to solve the problem with dinner at a mediterranean grill down the street. And then the Fashion Consultant suggested we go to a bar in the Castro. But not just any bar. A piano bar.
We walked in and it was pretty great. There was a grand piano covered in brass plate metal, with chairs all around it. The pianist was taking requests, and occasionally a spectator would sing. And this was not karaoke bar drunken warbling. This was practiced, well honed beauty.
The thing that sealed it for me though was the song being performed when we arrived. It's a song I hadn't heard in at least 20 years. I don't know who wrote it or who performed it or what the instrumentation was. I do know it's possibly called "MTA" and my dad used to sing me to sleep with it.
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