...because only here in Merukuh can you get the Cruzin [sic] Cooler, which "combines two basic necessities of life, the ability to have cold food or a beverage handy along with the means to get somewhere, without walking." I mean, really, we wouldn't want to have to walk while we're hauling our thirty pack of Coors Light, would we?
So this winter I was going to join my wife and some friends in the snowboarding nation. We've all pitched in and rented a cabin in Tahoe City for the winter. Last weekend we got a foot of snow on Saturday and then the sun came out on Sunday. Hella sweet fresh pow-pow, bro.
For various reasons not worth getting into, I've decided to stay on two boards for at least the time being. Today I picked up some new boots and I can not wait to get out there and start shredding on them. The best part? The plastic shell is clear.
I've been griping for years about the relative insanity of eating a fancy dinner to end world hunger or getting your teeth whitened to cure breast cancer or even (no offense) colored bracelets. I mean, supporting good foundations are incredibly important, but spending $250 on a vain cosmetic procedure and then patting yourself on the back because $25 of it (or whatever) goes to a good cause? Just give the damn money directly to the cause. Don't even get me started on the designer scarves and ribbons you can buy -- "hey, look at me, I give lots of money to good causes (but I want to make sure you know that)". Put your money where your mouth is, I say.
The problem is that I've been doing not much beyond feeling kind of hollow as I write checks to friends' charitable endeavors. So, I'm getting off of my ass and doing something to raise money for a good cause. I've gone and registered for the AIDS Walk San Francisco on July 17th, where I will be walking as a member of the Pixar team. I'm most looking forward to using the walk as an opportunity to get back into the habit of regular exercise.
In the "you learn something new every day" department: I was mowing our lawn for the first time yesterday with our shiny new push mower (side note: nothing makes you feel like an adult like buying and using a lawn mower) and I noticed a distinct oniony smell. It turns out that over half of our backyard is populated with wild onions. They haven't flowered yet so I can't be sure, but I'm reasonably certain that they are Aliium unifolium [usda.gov PDF]. The wild onion is apparently pretty hard to get rid of since you need to dig out the bulbs to make sure it's really gone. I don't know how to feel about this: it's somewhat cool to have this wild vegetable that sustained native americans growing free in my yard but sometimes I just want to go on my back porch, drink some coffee and not smell onions, you know?
1) Elle peut avoir un nom français, mais Beyonce ne le parle pas....
2) I'm glad Million Dollar Baby won. OK, look: Scorcese has made some of the best films ever made (I remember being a dumbass college boy going to see Goodfellas and being floored - I kinda fell in love with film history through the followup research of watching Taxi Driver), but The Aviator is only getting the press it is because it's a Scorcese film. If anyone else had made it, it would be considered an over-wrought, sadly non-insightful look at someone whose life really deserves some attention. Cate Blanchette notwithstanding, of course. I'm glad it didn't win (and I think "Marty" is too).
Oh, and finally, it's weird being on the left coast and watching the Best Picture award not freaking out about needing to get to bed to sleep off the hangover (not that it helped).
You know what I hate more than anything in the world? The stupid low-end packaging that lower priced consumer electronics come in. I don't know the name of it, but you know what I mean: they take a clamshell-like piece of really hard plastic, fold it in half around the product and then heat seal all of the seams. The problem is that the plastic is so thick and tough that you have to use a really good pair of scissors to cut through it. This, of course, dulls the hell out of your quite expensive Fiskars, thus ruining them for their intended purpose of making nice clean cuts in wrapping paper or fabric. Once you find something strong enough to cut through the kryptonite, however, the fun really begins. Because you've had such a hard time cutting the plastic, you are left with a nice ragged edge that you must reach through and around to attempt to extract the product. This ragged edge is slightly less dangerous than the top of a can of baked beans opened with a swiss army knife. Call me crazy, but I don't like to gash my hands open for the sake of a AAA battery or a Pleather case for my mobile phone. I don't want to even think about what that stuff (and its manufacturing process) is doing to the environment.
When the historians come to ask me when I thought western civilization began its descent, I will point to this moment: when package designers stopped caring about the user's opening experience as a trade off to being able to save a few cents in the manufacturing process.
Gothamist and others are all a-flutter about the supposed spoiler ending to Million Dollar Baby. I've been studiously avoiding any hints on the distant miracle that I want to be surprised by the ending and don't have enough contextual information to figure it out anyway. I do find it it interesting that, with some films, the mere mention of the existence of a spoiler ending ruins the possibility of being surprised.
Got me to thinking about other canonical surprise twists from films. Some you need give only the barest details and everyone will know what you're talking about:
The parental types and some colleagues are in town for the next few days on business, so I'll be spending the evenings trying to find good places to eat near their hotel. Last night we tried a French place that had come well recommended. It was pretty good but not stupendous and, unfortunately, more expensive than I was expecting (which can be problematic when academics are paying out of a per diem).
There's a lot of stress in suggesting restaurants, especially when you don't know the area and some of the diners very well. Makes me want to go grill some salmon.
Anyway, tonight's experiment will be Brindisi Cucina di Mare. Italian seafood tapas should be interesting.
Someone apparently hijacked the West 4th St. subway station LED sign to make it read "PRETTY GIRLS DON'T RIDE THE SUBWAY". My favorite quote from the article:
"'That's horrible,' she said of the sign. 'I'm pretty, and I take the subway every day.'"
OK. I'm, like, half jock. I'm not likely to walk around wearing a football jersey, but I do enjoy watching a good dramatic game now and again, especially if friends are in to it.
That said, I went to bed smiling, with visions of pissed-off Yankee fans dancing in my head.
Update: I don't know how long this will be up, but some might enjoy this "collector's item".
The US basketball team was soundly beaten by Puerto Rico today. Good. I relish seeing arrogant, spoiled "professionals" get their commupance. I think the whole "Dream Team" thing is pretty embarassing. Maybe now the American NBA players will stop being such cocky dillweeds and check their egos a little.
It saddens me to see states adding hateful, discriminatory measures to their constitution [reuters.com]. With all of the positive civil rights progress the United States has made in the last fifty years, we as a nation really ought to know better.
What really boils my bottom, though, is that I see this as a cynical ploy by ultra-conservatives to galvanize the right. Every voter who is worried about "homahsekshuhls" destroying their marriage (how someone else's marriage is a threat to yours I'll never know) isn't worried about how mismanaged the war on terror or the (apparent) war on our country's fiscal health has become. The "institution of marriage" is under a far greater threat by Britney Spears getting married as a lark or this country's cultural pressure to get married because it's the right thing to do.
The divorce rate in this country isn't pushing 50% because a few same sex couples got married in Massachusetts.
My roomate Todd and I were ordering some takeout tonight and we realized that neither of us could remember our home phone number. This led to a conversation about the negative impact of mobile phones and other technology on our data retreival memory. These days, if I need to call someone, I scroll through my phonebook until I find their name. I only know the phone numbers of friends and family who have had the same phone number since before I got my mobile. Kind of sad, really.
Oh, we eventually figured it out without needing to look it up.
So it looks like the terror alert level is going up again.
How conveniently close on the heels of the Democratic convention.
[update] So I'm sitting here watching Tom Ridge's press conference. As he lists all of the wonderful things the goobermint has done for local law enforcement, I can't help but feel like this is just a campaign speech. He's using flowery language and talking generally about the war on terror leaving all sorts of sound bites. "A weapon infinitely stronger than the kinds used by those who mean to do us harm?" What is that? Well, at least he's taking questions.....
My roomate and I watched two documentaries tonight. The first, Dark Days, is a very interesting look at some of the people who built homes in Amtrak's train tunnel system on Manhattan's West Side. Dark Days is a non-judgmental depiction of some interesting lives that depicts some of the ravages of crack addiction without being condescending.
The second documentary, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, is a documentary about the appeal process of Aileen Wuomos, the woman on whom Monster is based. Most of the documentary is not particularly insightful -- a fair portion of it centers around the testimony of the director, Nick Broomfield. It does get interesting towards the end as it focuses on the question of whether or not Aileen Wuomos was mentally competent. As she is screaming about the police knowing that she was killing men and not acting so that they could sell the movie rights for more money, I started to wonder about it myself.
I think the death penalty is one of the great tragedies of a free society. There is no evidence that it acts as a deterrent and, it seems to me, all too often people with political ambitions put or keep people on death row so that they can look "tough" on crime. The recent spate of acquittals and clemency grants based on DNA evidence only further strengthens my opposition to it.
Amnesty International's library of reports on the death penalty. All you need to do is look at the list of countries that performed or sentenced the death penalty in 2003.
So I'm doing a lot of overtime at my job these days. While I don't mind doing the overtime -- it did just pay for my new Nikon D100 -- the food is really starting to be a drag. I do appreciate the fact that work is supplying dinner for everyone who stays, but eating baked ziti out of a tin pan warmed by a can of sterno gets old. The winner of tonight's mystery meat contest is Jeffrey Corbin who correctly guessed "chicken in a generic brown sauce." I think we had it once last week, but the sauce may have been a different brown sauce.
At least I'm not a vegetarian.
On the right column, I'll be adding the standard blog gab stuff that won't necessarily relate to any specific photo I post. Comments will be allowed on most posts unless the comment spam grows to be too much.