August 2006 Archives
You know, you learn a lot about yourself cooking. For instance, I've learned that it takes me forever to do absolutely anything. Which means, I get home around 5:30 and we usually end up eating around 9:15.
On the positive side, the food has been outstanding. And pretty healthy as well. I've decided I need to get serious about my diet, and the only way that's going to happen is to start making things myself. Rule of Thumb: There's almost nothing you can make for yourself that isn't better for you than the best thing you can get at a restaurant.
To top that off, the Cub is living at the house full time. It's a struggle. He's got the attention span of a gnat on PCP, and if the homework is ever going to get done, you really have to keep your eye on him. Unless it's math. If it's math, you have to literally sit down four inches from him and stare at the page. (I'm not exaggerating.) Otherwise he'll just stare off. Like Peter in Office Space.
Every time I get frustrated, I just remember that I didn't really get an attention span to speak of until I was about 26. It's what goes around, you know?
The Fiancée has been awesome with that. Since she's the Type A person in the household, and I'm usually cooking and/or doing dishes. But I've have to fill in from time to time.
So the output is way down. But fear not! The wacky links keep building up, and I'll try to unload those in the next few.
Somewhere on my lifetime agenda, I'd like to write a book/play/screenplay about the McCarthy era where -- get this -- you find out that some of the people who were blacklisted were actual Communists, spying for the Soviet Union.
This would apparently be a serious revelation to some people. I suspect most people my age or any younger just assume there were as many Soviet spies in the US as there were, oh, let's say, witches in seventeenth century Massachusets. (Gee, I wonder where they might have gotten that idea.)
Anyway, this is James Lileks from a few days ago, talking about everyone's favorite bete noir.
The bravery of the scrappy idealists! The piggish philistinism of the anti-commie brutes! The smothering wet quilt of Conformity that held America motionless until it was thrown off by the undulating hips of Elvis! (Did you know they didn’t show him below the waist on TV, at first! True! It was horrible, the Fifties; no one had sex without weeping in shame afterwards. Sometimes during.) It's just interesting how Westerners think that that Red Scare was a historical event of such towering proportions it trumps the tales of the Soviet Union in the same period. US version: communist sympathizers frozen out of screenwriting jobs, justly or unjustly. USSR version: actual communists killed in ghastly numbers by a parody of a legal system underwritten by brute force and an industrialized penal system built on slave labor. Why is the latter ignored, and the former celebrated?Guess what I'm going to say next? That's right! Read the whole thing!
More tomorrow. For now, I'm off to sleep.
Apparently you're supposed to google the phrase "[your name] looks like", and see what happens. So, when I did the search, here's my favorite:
J looks like he has an armadillo in his trousers.Pointless, but amusing. Try it yourself. That's why God created the "Comments" section.
Update: Okay, I checked the second page:
j. looks like she just attended atlanta's premiere drag emporium and got her some show hair (big and unreal)
Oh, and if you don't know who Dan is, uh, never mind.
So, I saw Little Miss Sunshine this weekend.
I can't recommend this movie highly enough. I was thinking that if you liked Sideways, you'll like this movie, but that's not quite it. It's that kind of humor but it's a totally different (and much better) movie.
Everyone in the cast was fantastic, especially Steve Carell as the suicidal Proust scholar. The story was great. The soundtrack featured the great Sufjan Stevens. Everything about it was great.
Furthermore, I'll go out on a limb and say that it's going to win Best Picture. First comedy since Annie Hall, as they say.
So go out and see it! Right now! What are you doing? You're what? Working? Take a very long lunch! See it twice! You probably weren't going to get anything done today anyway.
I'll give it the highest-possible five puppy heads.
[Dog Head] [Dog Head] [Dog Head] [Dog Head] [Dog Head]
Note: The next dog is just around the corner. And then I'll have a head here, but for now, you'll just have to use your imagination.
The big three-one. I made it. Although, let's face it. After 30, there aren't a whole lot of exciting birthdays until 40. Or maybe 35, which is the official "You're Now Middle Aged" birthday.
Time marches on. Until suddenly you realize the drill sergeant has called for "double-quick", and then it just flies by. Well, that's where I am now. I suspect that the next 70 years of my life will seem to be about as long as the first 30 or so.
Speaking of the next 70 years, as longtime readers know, I'm anxious for the day they perfect the robotic exoskeleton. Well, the day is getting closer.
An exoskeleton that can be worn by a human is a new type of robot under development at Tsukuba University. It's called Hybrid Assistive Limb, HAL for short, and anyone who wears it has potential to lift up to 10-times the weight they normally could.To quote Jonah Goldberg quoting Michael Ledeen, faster, please.
This is the coolest video I've seen in a long, long time.
Way cooler than that Separate Ways thing I posted a few days ago.
If I were one of those four guys it would have taken about 7000 takes for us to get it right.
File this one under "Count Your Blessings You Weren't Born 100 Years Ago".
Valentin Keller enlisted in an all-German unit of the Union Army in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1862. He was 26, a small, slender man, 5 feet 4 inches tall, who had just become a naturalized citizen. He listed his occupation as tailor.A year later, Keller was honorably discharged, sick and broken. He had a lung ailment and was so crippled from arthritis in his hips that he could barely walk.
His pension record tells of his suffering. “His rheumatism is so that he is unable to walk without the aid of crutches and then only with great pain,” it says. His lungs and his joints never got better, and Keller never worked again.
He died at age 41 of “dropsy,” which probably meant that he had congestive heart failure, a condition not associated with his time in the Army. His 39-year-old wife, Otilia, died a month before him of what her death certificate said was “exhaustion.”
As I've alluded to, I've been seeing someone. She's awesome. I think the term "perfect" is subjective. You know, perfect for one guy might be utter misery for someone else. Well, I think she's perfect for me.
And just when I thought "there's no way she could possibly be any better", I find out that she can be better. Because I asked her to marry me and she agreed. So on top of everything else she has going for her, she has impeccable judgement and exquisite taste in guys.
So, congratulations to us!
This was the funniest thing I've seen in the last several weeks. I had tears streaming down my face.
This is apparently the Japanese comedy team Down Town. The setup is that they have to do a tongue twister. Hilarity ensues.
Today's term from Game Theory is the Dollar Auction.
Read the description. It sounds like several of my past relationships.
So it was good times this weekend. I went to a wedding. It was, well, I have very low expectations for weddings. I say as long as both the bride and groom show up, it's a successful wedding. (By that criterium, I've actually been to a failed wedding, but that's another story)
Anyway the wedding was at the Jewel Box in Forest Park, which was a lovely place for a wedding, although the temperature could have been a bit more, um, balmy on the inside. And the outside.
The ceremony finished with only a few hitches, and the Ladyfriend (who was the Maid of Honor) took to the party trolley for pictures around town while the Cub and I went back to my house for a quick nap, some World Cup 2006 for Xbox, and the chance to soak in the air conditioning.
Then it was off to the beautiful city of, um, Lemay for the reception. Now, I defer to no one in my love of Google Maps. In general, it does a top-notch job. But whatever heuristics set they use to map out how to get from A to B doesn't include things like "this is the heart of the ghetto" or "if you go this way, there's a 30% chance someone will carjack you and use the chop shop money to buy meth" or "someone has stolen the street sign for the second-to-last turn".
So, despite having seemingly good directions, me and the Cub ended up getting lost and wandering through Methville, USA in a very nice car. Unfortunately, I don't think it's so nice that people would assume I'm a drug dealer who's packing enough heat to ventilate anyone who comes near it.
Well, after 20 minutes of that (which seemed like two hours to me), we made it to the reception hall. It was good time, I suppose. Although I'm an introvert, so I'm good for about two hours of people and then I'd rather just go home and read a book.
Big announcement tomorrow.
There was supposed to be a big announcement tonight, but I got sleepy all of a sudden.
Oh well. It'll wait.
