Tag Archives: Life

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White Christmas?

Within the confines of the hovel at my new gig I can hear music played lightly by the gal next door. This is a new concept for me as at the last place playing music without headphones was banned under penalty of confining one to the cubicle overnight while a merger of Bieber and Kanye was played via massive loudspeaker for eight straight hours. Needless to say, nobody violated this regulation. But here it’s considered okay.

This doesn’t bother me as much as I would have expected. Half the time she plays classical music which is soothing to hear as I grind away and contemplate what’d be like to actually one day have a job I enjoy. Sometimes she plays weird pop rock or whatever and I have to break out my headphones to drown it out with music of my own. This is fine too. But being the season, she’s progressed to the occasional Christmas music.

I’m not sure if I can handle this. Christmas is a long 12 days away. A lot of Christmas music is great, classic stuff. But when you really think about it a whole bunch of Christmas music is terrible. The ones where somebody whines about their relationship during the Christmas season are the worst. Nobody cares people, dating is just as much a wheat thresher in May as it is in December. Live with it.

But also, to me Christmas music is an intensely personal experience. At the height of its powers, it evokes memories of childhood where we would all pile into the van to drive to Grandma and Granddad’s place. In the dark, cold Christmas night my Dad would invariably switch over to Christmas music on the radio for the length of the drive. These are nice memories. All my grandparents and my Dad have moved onto the next realm, so the music is especially poignant. As it is, Christmas music almost becomes kind of sad for me, like a requiem.

Lots of people aren’t in the Christmas spirit either this year I guess. Go ahead and read anything online or in the papers recently and apparently the universe is over. Earth is finished. Christmas is cancelled. You’re a walking bleached skeleton. By June of this year, machines or aliens (or both) shall be our masters, dogs and cats will have lived together and procreated creating a master race of pet, The Walking Dead will have somehow become a good television show, and Trump will have become that guy in Star Wars with the wrinkled creepy monster face.

Gee wiz, I had no idea we were that doomed? Though I sadly suppose it’d be the same hysteria regardless of what loser won this last election. Hey you know I didn’t vote for either of them, both of them were terrible, but I never (and still don’t) had it in my mind that either one of them could actually destroy anything. Go read the Constitution, or contemplate how little Obama has been able to accomplish after eight years.

The way I look at, is to default back to my Grandma and Granddad. For you see, they did four Christmas days at war. Think living under Trump or Clinton would have been bad? Trying living through Christmas Day 1942. Unless you happen to live in Syria, we cannot comprehend the struggle and terror of those Christmases where whole cities and countries were being swallowed whole. My Granddad did Christmas Day 1944 under fire at the front within the Battle of the Bulge. Merry Christmas! Signed, your friend, Adolf.

This was a war that killed 300K Americans, probably around 100 million worldwide. One in nine Americans served in uniform. The equivalent number today is if four years from now 30 million Americans were in the military. This is beyond our comprehension.

So later on in their lives I have this idea that Christmas 1956, 1972, or 1986 was always very special for them. They could go back and look at their kids and grandkids and remember just how bad it’d been. Instead of all that nightmare, they could lean back on the couch, sigh deeply, and truly appreciate the joy of Christmas that surrounded them. More than anything, that war defined a whole lifetime’s existence.

Of this, I offer as further evidence the 1954 movie White Christmas. If you haven’t seen this movie, gather the kiddies and those you love, and watch this movie. It’s just too wholesome good not to watch. It’s got a great fun plot, decent music, good dancing, and is basically just an enjoyable time. But at its heart this is a movie about two guys who got shelled together doing everything they can to aid their former general and his failed business. And they get hundreds of their war buddies to help out. It’s a story where memory of the war bleeds through.

white christmas.jpg

I think that White Christmas connection lasted about seven decades. In an equally godawful presidential election of 1972, you could have voted for Nixon (liar, lunatic) or McGovern (dreamer, lunatic). But regardless of who won, you would have remembered that after Christmas 1943, it couldn’t be much worse.

And indeed, Nixon rightly got his ass kicked out of office and the country somehow didn’t implode. And if your neighbor in 1973 had voted for the other guy, then that was okay because they’d been 19 miles to your left on the front lines and so they were an alright dude regardless of who they voted for.

Now, 75 years later that type of deep societal connection is just about gone. There is literally nothing holding the vast majority of the American psyche together. This is another bother for me with Christmas music. All the good ones were written with this 1956, 1972, or 1986 mindset. These songs were written for people who’d literally been through hell, and could fully enjoy the Christmas meaning and spirit.

angry trump.jpg

“Merry Christmas, Motherfuckers!”

Who would write an appropriate hit Christmas tune today? No Kanye rapper or Bieber-like-man-child has it in them. Even if they did, would anybody listen or would people just hear it and get sad because they’re too mentally wrapped up in what Trump said about the percentage of glycerol in Twinkies on Twitter?

Do you hate your neighbor and fellow human? Maybe you should. Let’s hate everybody! Christmas spirit? Nonsense! Christmas is yet another day on the calendar to contemplate how awful everything is.

happy hilary.jpg

“Hmm, 60 million have had Christmas ruined because I should never have run.  Hmm, eh, fuck it.”  [lights cigar with $1K bill inside $27.3M mansion]

I have in mind, to write this Star Trek episode. It’s a Christmas episode special. In it, Kirk, Picard, Spock, and Data roll down to some waste planet accompanied by four Red Shirts. They go exploring around. Red Shirt 1 accidently blows himself up with his own phaser. Red Shirt 2 dies from food poisoning after last night’s failed turkey mole dish (true story). Red Shirt 3 gets dragged behind a rock by what the audience sees as a crab-like shadow.

Red Shirt 4 whilst walking upon a ledge gets scared by a monster neither he or the audience can see, and he falls off the cliff to his death. So then there are Kirk, Picard, Spock, and Data investigating the ledge where Red Shirt 4 fell.

Data scans the area and he’s like, “Captain, my scans show there to be zero evidence of alien activity in this sector. It is thus reasonable to conclude, that Ensign Timmy was alone here. Before he fell.”

Data_with_pipe.jpg

Spock nods, and he’s like, “I agree, Captain. Fascinating. It is thus logical to conclude, that whatever Ensign Timmy saw, was contained solely within the confines of his mind.”

spock-speaking

Then Picard, looking straight at the camera, earnestly, with campy Christmas music playing, in a scene worthy of 1979 says, “Why, it would seem, that even in this Christmas season, our darkest fears can overcome us, blind us, and lead us across a fatal line. Perhaps, it is time, during this season above all, to look deep within ourselves. For our own optimism, our own guidance, our own Christmas joy.”

picard_asks_for_help

And all four guys nod happily at this revelation as the music reaches its crescendo.

Then, out of nowhere a giant crab monster jumps out from behind a rock. It attacks Kirk and rips open his shirt.

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Then the crab pulls a knife.

sword-fighter-crab-__-knife-attacl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ9FdpLfL98

Kirk spends four and a half minutes going hand-to-hand with the crab monster, ultimately beating him to death with a rock. And Kirk’s screaming and panting over the mangled crab monster corpse. Picard, Data, and Spock are just looking at him, like, “Dude, calm down.”

Eh, either way.

White Christmas? My friends, it is your choice. In the next 12 days you’ll be bombarded with the black, the dark, the unpleasant. Choose the White. Choose optimism, to love your neighbor, to be kind even to your enemies. This is what it’s about. We need more of it. Now more than ever.

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never talk to strangers

I’m kind of an introvert, and go on my merry way.  But nobody can know this if they’ve never met me.  So when somebody gets in my face out of the blue I kind of wonder what planet they’re living on.  They could be talking to anybody.  Why would anybody want to talk to me anyways?

What if I had a medical condition?  What if I turned out to be a salesman and wasted a half-hour of their day hocking ties to them?  What if I was a closet serial killer?  What if I could care less what these people had to say?  What if I let them in on the gig that Santa isn’t real?

I guess they don’t care.  It’s like they’ve got this ‘on’ switch inside their brains.  They can’t help themselves.  They instinctively interact with their fellow human without any coherent thought.  This can be a neat thing sometimes, I guess, but it can also get very weird very quick.

Today as I’m getting in my walk during lunch (I take my lunch break for exercise and eat at my desk) a guy steps in front of me and stops me.  He then proceeds to ask me a bizarre obscure question about why a downtown building is located in one place instead of the other.  Like why the builders chose that one spot.  Eh?

I’ve got no idea what he’s talking about.  He doesn’t look like he’s criminally insane, he appears a perfectly normal person.  But him stopping me like that, and the weird question were rather off the charts.  So I told him I didn’t know and was on my way swiftly.

And what was it, some day earlier this week, I can’t remember which.  I’m walking through the grocery store parking lot.  I’ve got my one big reusable bag.  I’ve also got a fist full of plastic bags which had reached end of service life.

Once upon a time you could put those old plastic bags in the local curbside recycling.  They banned that in my town, so you have to put them in the plastic bag recycling bin at the grocery stores.  I mostly use the reusable bags at the grocery store.  But will occasionally get plastic bags because they have oh so many uses other than carrying groceries (eat it bag tax politicians).

So I’ll use the plastic bags until they are unserviceable and then recycle those at the grocery.  I suppose the grocery store could just put them in the trash later, for all I know, but it’s all I can do.  Recycling is such a crap shoot.  If you doubt this, just do some reading online to find out how much of that glass you recycle is actually not currently recycled today.  This is why you should get canned beer and box wine.  They’ve fixed the can / box quality issues folks, it’s cheaper, and cans and boxes are 100% recyclable.

Anyways, so I’m strolling through the grocery parking lot with both types of bags.  A car viciously pulls right up next to me on the passenger side.  This guy is shouting at me from behind the steering wheel.  In the 1.5 seconds of mental processing time, I’m wondering where I can run, hide, or fight.

But eventually I determine that he’s shouting at me about how awesome it is that I’m recycling.  I guess he saw me carrying the old plastic bags, I guess?  I keep walking, all I offer in response is my most deadpan, “Okay.”

Then he peels out like he was escaping a robbed bank.  There was no mocking or irony in this dude’s voice.  He was dead serious.  Guy actually did an aggressive drive by on his fellow man just to voice his approval of supposed recycling.

If a brick had been at my feet, I’d have picked it up and chucked it at his car.  You can’t recycle broken rear windshields, the planet is worse off now, and it’s all your fault.  That would’ve been my robotic / lame 1986 action movie line to this idiot.

There’s a reason you tell kids not to talk to strangers.  Even us adults end up dealing with folks who in one way or another, just don’t seem wound right.  I mean, I’m a lunatic, but I’m pretty sure if I stop somebody on the street cold, my reasons and demeanor are legit.

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why does your luggage need to do your laundry?

I remain an outlier on many things, mostly because of my deranged nature. For luggage, ditto. On all my flights I figure 95% of fellow travelers are wielding the soft-side-roller-bags. I’ve still got me the 47 year old soft-duffel-bag. My prior-existence-ghost bought it for me from the Sears catalogue in 1969 and shipped it to my future self, Back to the Future style. It showed up on my doorstep one day about a decade ago with a short note saying, “Here you go,” written in blood red marker (at least I hope it was marker). The note also included various unwarranted written expletives and a big frowny face.

This bag is an awful shade of dark green, and as of about six months ago has a growing hole in the side of it. When the hole gets so big a pair of socks could ferociously escape my plan is to replace it. This bag has been kind to me. When that dark day comes, I’ll dispose of it in some kind of fitting ancient ritual involving fire, beer, and a worthy accelerant. That way, the bag’s spirit can live forever in Valhalla where a drunk thug will use it to hold his clubs and mead.

For its replacement, I won’t go with the roller bag though. I’ll still go get a fully soft-duffel-bag. Why?

1) I hate the way a roller bag constricts tight packing. The one roller bag I used for one or two trips could fit a pair of shoes, an outfit or two, and a toothpaste tube. That was it. By contrast, I can viciously cram 127 pounds of non-refined-coal into my soft bag if I so chose.

2) Poor maneuvering quality of roller bags. You could not imagine a more ridiculous design for moving forty pounds of cubic mass around a crowded airport. It’s easier to steer a canoe without an oar then turn a roller bag in traffic. I think the gross turning radius for your average rolling bag technically carries you directly through the nearby airport window and onto the tarmac. And the big baggage guy would just be standing there over your crippled frame, frowning, shaking his head, with his arms crossed.

3) Laziness. As best as I can figure, the primary advantage to using a roller bag is you can carry a lot of weight without having to hoist it upon your shoulders. In other unrelated news, 37% of American adults are chronically obese. I’ve never understood the acceptance to lose mobility, just so you can avoid throwing forty pounds on your back. Especially because people do this all the time. For example:

a) Hoist your five year old upon your shoulders through the airport.

b) Carry a bag of mulch from your car to the backyard, repeat twelve times.

c) Swipe a big bag of cat food from the till, running fast so you can get out the door before they notice your heinous crime.

d) Carry your laundry up and down the stairs, up and down the stairs, with a sock attrition rate of 17%.

e) When you were a little kid, you carried the equivalent ratio weight of forty pounds of books on your shoulders given your size at the time compared to today.

But now, all of a sudden we are incapable as a human race of carrying forty pounds for a 1/2 mile through the airport? Our future alien Overlords find this an appealing trait.

4) Carryon luggage. I’m just going to go ahead and say this (it’s okay if most of you or nearly all of you disagree), if I met the guy who invented the concept of overhead compartments, I’d punch him in the stomach repeatedly until I was physically restrained by a pack of elves. In order that the traveler may avoid an average of 11 minutes wait time upon arrival to said airport baggage claim area, the rest of us have to endure:

a) 17 extra minutes to departure time as people cram their trash into the overhead.

b) 23 extra minutes upon arrival time as people slowly and methodically retrieve their bags from the overhead.

c) Dummies trying to shove their bags into areas where a two year old would say, “won’t fit Daddi,” but they become aghast and angry at everyone when they keep trying to fit it, and it still doesn’t work.

d) Ultra-dummies who actually fight over bin space as if it were meat in a caveman world.

The only time I’ve used the overhead was when I did a whole four day trip using nothing but a small soft backpack. I had that thing so bulging there was nowhere else for it go. Otherwise, I have my small bag which goes underneath the seat, and the duffel gets checked. That’s it. Total inconvenience time towards fellow humans = less than zero.

I suppose you could make the argument that the airlines force folks’ hands due to the checked bag fee, and I kind of get that. But, I contend the overhead bin thing is not necessarily a checked bag fee fault. I mostly fly Southwest, which charges no fee, and yet I still see the same overhead bin insanity described above.

But hold on there, there’s more! Oh my, don’t you wish this post was over! Oh please, do kindly end this.

I have recently noticed, and this Post article confirms, the growing trend of hard-sided-roller-bags.

This is (apparently) to ensure the bags can take damage, you can stake your belligerent overhead bin claim like an Overlord, and a hard case allows introduction of technology. You heard me right, the tentacles of the tech world Giant Octopus aren’t content hooking up your toothbrush to the grid. Your luggage needs to get in on the action too. For whatever reason.

And so, for several hundred $ you can have luggage that contains USB ports, self-weight assessment, remote locks, does your laundry while stored within, possesses linked Wi-Fi options, location tracking, anti-squirrel defense net, battery charging, and the option to mind link with the nearest zoo animals.

Why does your luggage need to do your laundry? Bags exist to carry your stuff from one place to another. That’s it. Why is any of this technology needed in luggage? Except perhaps, as a means to separate $ from your wallet and deposit it into the account of a private equity firm.

Please do, please do join me. Return to your travel roots. Soft bags only. Fight the power, or whatever, I can’t think of a decent motto for my non-existent movement. Soft bags only. Just do it. Or else.

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who gets to decide what’s fake?

We got through most of this entire lunatic campaign season without nary a word about fake news sites. I find this amusing as for the most part I consider Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc, etc, to all essentially be fake news sites. They don’t actually report news so much as they seek to shape public opinion to serve whatever interests they champion. There’s also the ever delicious The Onion which is usually a good place for a decent laugh, though even they have an obvious slant they push, but they’re obviously an admitted satire site.

But what folks are actually talking about are the sites that are totally off the deep end. They have no purpose except to play people for morons to move the election needle. Some of the examples I’ve heard over the last week were popular articles that said something along the lines (my paraphrase) of, but all of these were lies:

– The Pope had endorsed Trump

– Trump had commuted to Valhalla before the campaign ended

– Machines will not be our Masters

– Trump won the popular vote

– Going vegan makes you happy

– Trump was seen at Putin’s dacha alongside six former Olympic gymnasts (I too thought this one 99% accurate)

– The Walking Dead is a good television show

So now that the election is over a whole bunch of folks are stating that these fake news posts were in some way responsible for altering the course of the election. This point of view is mostly for those in the Hilary camp who ascribe some of the last minute push towards Trump as caused by said nakedly vicious pro-Trump fake news. Facebook, Google, and your local school newspaper are now thus under pressure to filter and delete said fake news stories from their feeds. The idea is that you the voter will no longer see this fake news so you can know the news you read online is legit.

First off, I feel sorry for Facebook and Google on this because no matter what they do everybody is going to hate them for it. One side will claim they’re not doing enough to police fake news or hate speech, the other side will claim censorship. Both sides will be simultaneously right and wrong. Facebook and Google will be caught in the middle of the broader cultural wars. Zuckerberg will become progressively more frustrated and insane, thus laying the groundwork for his impending slide into the oblivion of Bond villain darkness.

Because honestly who gets to decide what’s fake? As I understand what Facebook and Google are being asked to do, they have to hire somebody to edit their feeds. Then that person upon viewing some news they deem fake is supposed to delete it so folks can’t see it. Well, what’s fake?

– The Pope had endorsed Trump, fake, delete.

– Okay, what about The Onion? Well, that’s fake too, but that’s satire, so, do not delete? I guess. Well, what’s satire and what’s fake news? Who determines the difference?

– Okay, what about Salon or National Review? Well, they’re flamethrower sites for the acolytes, so it’s analysis and not technically news, so, do not delete? I guess. Who gets to determine the best way for remembering where you put your keys?

– What about that random Facebook post by normal average human that becomes popular but is chock full of lunacy, lies, and opinion? Well, but that’s not from a news site, so, we do not delete? But it’s still fake, so shouldn’t that person be made to shut up? Even if that person is just an average person they’re still shaping public opinion, aren’t they? Who decides who is made to shut up?

– But what if somebody reposted that person’s post as if it was news? Do we delete them too? What about somebody’s random blog post, is that news? Who decides what’s a blog post and what’s fake news? Who decides if Lady Gaga is hot or not?

– What about a 1930’s Looney Tunes cartoon clip with Speedy Gonzalez, is that hate speech worthy of deletion? Who determines what is hate speech, what is stupidity, what is fake news, and what’s just normal average painful human discourse to resolve our problems? Have you contemplated your future bleached skeleton status lately?

– What about a scene from Frozen which falsely gives the impression via fake news that Elsa would not have been put to death by the Catholic Church for witchcraft in real life? Shouldn’t we delete that too?

And on and on and on.

Where does this end? Where do you draw the line on what should be seen and deleted? What is fake and what’s not? The answer always will end up being the opinion of some screener, likely guided by policy that a bunch of folks from Facebook and Google got together and wrote. And thus, a bunch of random people you’ve never met get to determine what you’re allowed to say and read. This is not healthy in any aspect.

Facebook and Google are private companies and can essentially do whatever they want within the law. For example, if Google decided it hated cats and deleted all cat content from its site I’m pretty sure there’s nothing anybody could do to stop them. But Facebook and Google are also so ubiquitous to society you could make an argument they’re becoming an intrinsic part of our culture, infrastructure, lives. Do we really want two of the global Internets backbone sites to be in the censorship business? For any reason at all?

I come down to two points on this:

1) I am an open season kind of person on free speech and thus to all the Internets. Facebook, Google, Twitter should not be in the business of removing content whether it’s fake, hateful, whatever. This means you can post fake Trump news, evil ISIS propaganda, incorrect tips for how to properly cook an egg, Tweet how much you despise [insert anything here], and so on. Dealing with all this nonsense is a price worth paying rather than living in an online society where strangers get to police thought.

2) Humans as free individuals are responsible for what they do and do not read and how they process information they acquire online, in newspapers, from ads, from their neighbors, from their imaginary friend, from their own fears, from their own dreams. If somebody read fake news and believed it, that’s their own problem and responsibility. Living in a free society is hard work. It requires you to think for yourself, do your own research, and make your own decisions. It’s not the responsibility of society to do that job for the citizen. Indeed, if society did, then said citizen would never be truly free.

And I want us all to live free.

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we prepare to do battle with the Moon

Apparently this large thing in the sky is called a “Supermoon”. I don’t really understand why it has to be Super. Other than that in today’s culture everything has to be epic. For example, I now generally hear on the news several different ways to describe various weather phenomenon or patterns when we used to simply say, “It’s going to be cold tomorrow.”

But hell, I’ll go along with this. It’s a Supermoon. Got it. It’s harmless, right? Wrong. For you see, the Moon is not to be trusted. It has powers. Super powers. Why else would they call it a Supermoon?

This is the closest the Moon has been to Earth since 1948. The thing about astronomy is it has the power to cause you to briefly consider your own forthcoming bleached skeleton state. The Moon won’t be this close again until 2034. Think of all the things you could endure between now and then. Halley’s Comet won’t be back until 2061. Which means just about every person alive on this planet today has (at most) one more shot with Halley’s before their pending commute to Valhalla.

Last night said Supermoon was in the rise phase as I drove home at dusk. It certainly did look bigger. But according to the BBC, this is mostly an optical illusion:

“To observers, it will appear about 7% larger than normal and about 15% brighter – although the human eye is barely able to discern that difference.”

I tend to give us humans a little more credit than that. The Moon doesn’t just look bigger because folks are calling it a Supermoon. I think our brains and eyes can inherently detect that it’s 7% bigger and 15% brighter. We look at the Moon all the time. When it’s that different, our brains will tell us, even if it’s subtly.

I was thinking, that it looked so close and clear last night you could almost reach out there and touch the darn thing. That from my eyes to the Moon’s surface was one clear line, one straight shot. 221,524 miles is a long way, unless you can imagine that it’s not.

The Moon’s always been up there like that while we humans mess around down here. Some Roman Senator or Chinese Imperial bureaucrat pretty much saw the same thing. Some of us have actually been up there. When you really think about it, it’s quite special that a few of us have actually reached out there and touched it. We’ve made that journey. And it really does say something about how little we dream anymore or how much we’ve lowered optimism in our collective psyche that we haven’t been back in five decades.

Where’s our promised Moon colony or Bond villain Moon Base? I mean, technically I guess the Moon Base could have existed without us knowing it. And Bond already blew it up. But I’m betting that didn’t actually happen.

Anyways, either way, I’ll do battle with this Supermoon tonight. I’ll arm myself with a decent coat, a beer, and my camera. My dogs will wield a knife, handgun, or belly full of kibble, whichever they prefer. And we’ll get a shot (camera) at taking on this Supermoon. Moonrise is shortly after my return from work. So it’ll play out well.

If I survive, I’ll try and remember to post a picture on this degenerate blog. I might get distracted, because I have to do a ton of work for second job after I get home tonight. But I’ll try and make it happen. But if I don’t make it, make sure to take your revenge on the Supermoon for me. For you see, the Moon is not to be trusted. It has powers. Super powers.

Update: The Moon was obscured by clouds and light rain.  We couldn’t get a shot.  What does this Supermoon have to hide?  We’re on it.  We’re on the case to find out.  We’ll get right on it.  [cracks beer]  [sips]  [stares blankly at bare wall]

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Nautilus Kitty revealed

I’ve been trying to get a shot of this cat for years.  I don’t know exactly how long, but it’s been a long, long time.  Then for whatever reason cat sits down next to the car and decides not to move.  This is after continuously running away from me forever.

No idea why.  Didn’t care.  But rather than snapping this with the phone, which has a megapixel count worthy of the original Nintendo, I pushed my luck and got the camera.  Kitty was still there.  Somehow it worked out.

All Hail Nautilus Kitty.

Nautilus Kitty.JPG

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the rarest of foods and the future non-rareness of Star Wars

South of my remote office that works has me travel to is a quaint town that deserves the title of village.  It’s like something out of a time warp where restaurants, antique shops, Andy’s office, a small town non-evil lawyer, town hall, Skip’s Hammer & Nails, and the local fire station all surround an open park that families play in with their children.  I’ve not seen this kind of thing much in all my travels.  I’m not sure this idyllic existence was ever that common to the human race.  It sure seems pretty sweet though.  Everybody in this village is very friendly, if they do still possess a little bit of arrogance.  But hell if I lived like that I’d probably think I was awesome too.

Anyways, one of the restaurants around this park I’d been to before.  I got their tasty Asian themed burger last time.  It was great.  So naturally they no longer offer that.  Instead, the chef seems inclined to go high end.  And so a whole bunch of fancy and/or rare foods were on the menu.  I normally don’t go down the road.  I likes what I likes.  But the menu was short (which is fine) and so I decided to try things I’d not had before.  I cook all the time, but for the most part it’s just basic stuff.  I don’t usually buy or use too many fancy ingredients.  So all of this was new to me, in particular: black truffles, duck eggs, and bone marrow.

The result: I basically shrugged.  People I greatly respect in the food world talk up this bone marrow thing like it’s the nectar from the Sinai.  It was different, it was good, but it wasn’t something I’d have again over say, a good steak.  Maybe this village joint just didn’t do it right?  I’m not sure.  What I do know is that I didn’t understand the hype on any of this.  It was rather unfulfilling.  The night after I went to another town and a place I’d been before and went the burger route.  That worked out well.  I was satisfied.

bone-marrow.jpg

I will say, mine didn’t look like this.  So maybe they did indeed not do it right.

But the thought arrived in my crude brain, is rarity a delight in its own right?  Why yes, I think it is.  Sort of.  Let’s take these few belligerent examples.  To understand where I’m going, pretend for a moment that you’re a pretentious asshole.  As in, imagine you work for Goldman Sachs (offers finger to gilded palace level):

1) You are offered an omelet made of endangered condor eggs

2) You are presented beer brewed with water from The Moon

3) All the forces of science were used to cheat nature by recreating the dodo, just so they could kill it and you could eat it

dodo bird food.jpg

Coming soon to a plate near you.  Seriously, in your lifetime, somebody will attempt to do this.

We don’t have to necessarily go down this weird road though.  How about:

a) You drink a microbrewery’s beer.  It’s fairly decent, but nothing exceptional.  But you come back a month later and they’re out of business.  You will never be able to drink that beer again.  Was it that more special?

b) In your travels you experiment with a dish that cooks pork in a unique way you’ve never seen before or will again.  It’s nothing crazy, it’s just freaking pork, but it’s different, it’s good.  Will you miss this rareness a decade down the road?

To me, rareness or uniqueness is more along the lines of (a) and (b).  This kind of thing appeals to me.  (1) through (3) or bone marrow, eh, not really.  Not sure what that says about me, but that’s my take.

So then, the thought also crosses my feeble mind of what occurs when rareness disappears.  Even if you think bone marrow is liquid life, what happens to you if you have it every single darn week?  I suspect it loses the edge.

Everybody is once again on the cliff’s edge about Star Wars.  Yesterday, I saw a guy driving a Nissan Rogue where he had stenciled in cursive handwriting the word “One” after the Rogue lettering.  This means he’s even more of a loser than I.  A brief aside, how has Nissan gotten away without the evil corporate stigma that VW has?  Nissan has openly admitted to cheating fuel standards recently too, but nobody cares?  Whereas VW is the devil?  Eh, maybe folks just love to hate the Krauts?

Anyways, soon Stormtroopers and Darth Vader will be everywhere again.  You’ll stroll out toward your car in the dark of the morning and Boba Fett’s going to be standing by your mailbox smoking a cigarette.  And you’ll just shrug and start your engine because you expect it.  Here’s the thing though, I think it’s going to die down.

star wars admirals.jpg

These two dudes are going to show up to cut your grass.  You’ll shrug and give them the check.

Star Wars 1977 to 1983 was special.  Then George destroyed it.  So when Force Awakens appeared folks were just begging for some kind of victory.  They mostly got it, the world stopped for it.  Now everybody is looking for the ride to continue with Rogue One.  But, what happens when that rareness disappears?  Disney has 17 Star Wars films in development as we speak.  I suspect that rarity’s going to disappear.  You can only swallow so much bone marrow or Star Wars before you can only shrug.  It’s human.  In the best of our nature, we love to try things that are different.  We seek the adventure.  Things we eat or watch repeatedly can become less special, less unique.

Or maybe I’m just an idiot.  Maybe I’m wrong.  For example, I do love those burgers.  You can make a burger exactly 2,748 different ways.  I’ve only tried 73 of them.  I want to try the rest.  So maybe, just maybe Star Wars has 135 films left in it before everybody stops caring.  I assure you, Disney has it in them.  So we’ll find out, one way or the other, whether I’m right.

red shirts.jpg

Most if not all of these Red Shirts are going to die.  They told us so in the original movies.

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make sure you remember to unplug

I tend to be among the last to hear about trends.  In high school or at work I’m pretty much the last one to hear or realize that two people happen to be dating.  I guess part of the issue is I typically just don’t care.  I’m kind of set in my rhythms, as shall become apparent once again as I lay out this stuff here today.

Only in the last week or so have I become aware that this Amazon Echo trend thing exists.  For the uninitiated, the Echo is a new piece of technology that can respond to your voice, like that Siri lady does.  Only it’s not a phone, but a weird black cylinder that you can either put on your kitchen table, take into the shower with you, or snuggle under the covers with.

By giving the Echo voice commands, you can get it to play music, tell you the weather, call a cab, order explosives from a Belarusian junk dealer, check local traffic, compile a list of your favorite mustards, buy stuff from Amazon, construct an enemies list, and so on.  Much to my surprise (and apparently that of business insiders as well) the Echo has sold quite well.

amazon-echo.jpg

Oh no.

I don’t understand why this is a thing.  Why can’t people take out their mini-computer smartphones and check the weather using that instead?  Or why can’t folks just look out the window?  Is there really a benefit to one’s life by saving six seconds to audibly ask a machine what the weather is instead of doing it ourselves?

The Echo is also supposed to interface with other smart devices in your home.  So you can play music via other speakers, or have the Echo talk to your smart thermostat.  That way, instead of walking up to your thermostat to change the setting, you can just have the Echo do it for you thus saving you the nine seconds it would take you to get up off the couch to walk over to your thermostat to do it yourself.

Oh man, this Orwell cat had no idea when he wrote 1984, dude was totally clueless.  In his world, Echo would be used by the Giant Eye to enslave humanity.  In Amazon’s world, the Echo is a means to separate money from your wallet.  Here is how the brave new world is supposed to play out in the globe of Amazon:

1) Your smart refrigerator has sensors to determine what’s inside.  The fridge detects you’re running short on mustard.

2) The fridge tells the Echo that you are short of mustard.

3) Based upon your personal settings, the Echo either automatically buys more mustard or audibly asks you if you’d like more mustard.

4) Amazon sends you mustard and charges you for the trouble.

5) Amazon delivers mustard (and whatever else) to your doorstep via drone.

And thus, the end state is that you would always have mustard in your fridge.  All without ever thinking about it.  Without ever having to take any action yourself.  To some folks, I suppose this sounds liberating.  To me, this is quite weird.  From my perspective, I can just open up the fridge before I go shopping and realize I need more mustard.  Then I write that on a list and go get it.  It’s pretty straightforward.  Yeah, it does take some time, and going to the store can be a pain in the ass, but that’s called life.

I’m not entirely sure how humanity benefits from all this.  It’s not like people who are liberated from ever having to think about buying mustard again are going to use that extra time to solve groundbreaking math equations.  Folks would probably just use it to binge Netflix more or Snapchat friends.  I’d probably just play more video games.

In short, I don’t think the human race needs a tool like the Echo.  But Amazon is more than happy to provide it as extra credit to your life, for a price.  It’s the very definition of excess.  You don’t need this.  But you will buy it.  Please don’t resist.  Amazon thanks you for your cooperation.

palpy and vader.jpg

Palpy:  “For you see, Lord Vader, I’ve determined that the replacement Death Star is obsolete.  Instead, we’ll place Echoes into every home within the Empire.  Once the masses can get mustard without even thinking, our circle will be complete.  Our rule unchallenged.”  [cackles]  Vader:  “Yes, my Master.”

Then there are the privacy concerns that come with hooking up your fridge and Echo voice box to the Internets.  I’ve hit the dangers of this concept on this degenerate blog many times.  But I’ll go there again, thank you.  For example, just take a gander at the Wikipedia verbiage on the Echo.

Even though some of this text is clearly ghost written by somebody in the employ of Amazon, it’s still rather stark at what the Echo does:

a) “…can identify who is present in the home and who is not…”

b) “…though the device is technically capable of streaming voice recordings at all times, and in fact will always be listening to detect if a user has uttered the word…”

c) “…Amazon retains digital recordings of users audio spoken after the ‘wake up word,’…”

In other words, the Echo is a listening device that is always on, never turns off, and stores certain parts of what it hears in the Amazon Cloud, aka Amazon Web Services.

And since our Internets is always vulnerable, somebody can hack these things too.  Although I’m sure Amazon has tried rather hard to prevent that.  But whether folks are risking hackers, or happy to turn over things they say in their own home to the Amazon servers?  Either way, I guess I’m just surprised that millions of folks are perfectly comfortable putting a live listening device in their own home.  Just to make their lives a tad bit easier.

I guess I’ll make two closing points.  Both along the lines that we should all make sure to remember and unplug.

– Even if you go down this Echo, automated, smart route, please remember to unplug and do things the old way.  Just to keep life exciting and maintain an active brain.  For example, just for the hell of it, instead of using your smartphone to guide you on your next car trip to an unknown location, use your own brain.  Look at a map (an online one is fine) and write out your own route using a pen and paper.  Then use said pen and paper while you’re in the car to drive yourself there.  For those who can’t remember pen and paper, here’s what my own pen and paper look like:

quill-ink-pot-and-poetry-book.jpg

Or even if you use Echo to get mustard from now own, every once and a while just go buy it yourself.

– Make sure you unplug your wireless router at home when you’re not using online devices.  I do mean actually unplug it from the wall.  So when you’re cooking, reading, walking your dog, at work, asleep, etc, etc, physically go and unplug your router from the wall.  This saves power and makes it virtually impossible for any part of your life to be hacked.  You can afford to spend some time unplugged.  You’ll live, trust me.  And your brain and body will thank you for it.

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Busan – hiking and the monk’s car

Some of the best days are the ones where you wake up and have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.  I’ve gone through these phases.  I used to plan nothing for trips, then I planned everything, and now I’m back to planning almost nothing.  Busan was the early days.  It was Korea, that was enough for me.  So we scheduled nothing in advance.

We wake up one day and the rest of the group doesn’t want to do much of anything.  Probably because they were hungover.  I’m sure I was too, but I was young then and didn’t need to lay around suffering.  So Tim and I decide we’re just going to leave everyone and go, somewhere.  I think we just picked some random temple off a map in the suburbs north of downtown Busan.  It was December, but not a completely freezing typical Korean winter just yet.  So we bundle up and roll out.

We had to take the train and then the bus to get there.  Neither of us spoke anything above bare bones Korean.  We quickly got lost and are just standing there on some random suburban street corner trying to figure out what bus to get on.  Then this middle aged woman walks up and in halting English asks us where we want to go.  We show her the temple on the map and she agrees to help us.

But she refused to give us directions.  Instead, in one of the most generous things I’ve ever seen in my life she decides to ride the buses and escort us to this temple.  Then she says she knows a good place for lunch next door to the temple.  So she walks us there and explains to the owner in staccato Korean probably how these two American idiots didn’t know what they were doing.

The two women essentially shrug and our kind escort wishes us luck and carried on with her day.  We couldn’t thank her enough but she treated it all very matter of fact, smiled, and was gone.  The lunch was incredible.  In the Korean style we each had the ten or so little bowls of various meats, vegetables, and sauces.  It’s probably in my lifetime top ten of meals.

shrine

I think this is the temple, I’m not so sure.  The shot is logged wrong by how my memory remembers this trip.  So who knows.  But I’m pretty sure this was it.

We walked around the temple for a bit and then Tim being the far more adventurous of the us simply states we should stroll up the nearby mountain.  So we point ourselves toward the hill and just start walking.  As we got higher we realized we’d stumbled upon a routed hiking trail and so we continued to follow it on up the mountain and across the peaks.

It’s hard to describe how mountainous a good chunk of Korea is.  Cities are perched precariously along the coast with ribbons of suburbs rolling out in the valleys.  The inclines of the hills are quite steep and it’s rather sobering to think that when Busan was the last holdout against the Communist siege in 1950 that these mountains held hundreds-of-thousands of young men who would decide the fate of Korea.

Looking Back.jpgLooking back toward Busan from the hills.

valley

Ribbons of suburbs and the Nakdong River.

back-downhill

We walked for miles and miles, probably at least over ten miles.  It’s a blast, the weather cooperates, the trails are dotted with other friendly hikers, and oh, ah, it’s getting into the late afternoon.  We’re in trouble.  There’s no way we can go back the way we came in time.  We have no desire to hike back on the trail in the dark lest we fall off the darn mountain.  Fortunately we happened upon a temple nestled up there that’s near the trail.  We figure if nothing else we can call a cab from there to take us back downtown.

Temple From Above.jpg

Temple Gate.jpg

I walk around a while admiring the temple while Tim somehow strikes up a conversation with a monk who speaks immaculate English.  Decked in pristine Buddhist orange and thick glasses he says there’s no need to call a cab because he’s driving downtown anyways and he’s glad to give us a ride.  He asks us to wait for a bit while he gets ready and he’ll go get the car.

I’m raised in the Catholic Church, and so I have this idea of poor Trappist monks on a farm like my Dad used to visit.  I expect this to be a hair raising ride through twisting mountain roads in a Yugoslavian knockoff beater.  Instead, the monk rolls up in a pristine black BMW that easily cost north of $50K.  Tim and I were just cracking up.

It was nearly dark as we set off for downtown.  Tim sat up front with the monk while I dozed in the back.  Tim and him chatted away about everything.  I wish I remembered more of their conversation but I was exhausted.  I do recall the monk was headed downtown to party with his friends.  I never did catch the reasoning for the dichotomy between the wealth, partying, and religious lifestyle of the monk.  In retrospect I just find it hilarious.

Back downtown, we managed to link up with our friends again.  I don’t remember the rest, probably for valid reasons.  But I do remember the hills well, and that monk and his crazy car.  It was quite the day not worth planning.

temple

 

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how not to make a vinaigrette

As part of my continuing back to basics cooking push I’ve been doing a lot of simple salads lately.  You get those bags of green things, throw in some vegetables, make a quick dressing and you’re good.  It takes three minutes.  I’m getting hooked on this.  Salads are now more of a regular part of meals no matter what else I’m making.

So for this round it ended up being a half-spinach / half-arugula bag, a box of grape tomatoes (both generic store brand), a ball of mozzarella, and one avocado.  This will give you like four or five regular bowls of salad.  So I can make it once and eat it over two or three dinners.

The fun part is to make the random vinaigrette.  This takes about minute but invites you to customize.  I like red, white, or balsamic versions, it’s all good.

So here’s how this went down by exact brand picture, if you doubt my portion choices, just ascribe that to my own personal taste:

olive oil.jpg

1/4 cup

vinegar

1/8 cup

horseradish-mustard.png

2 Tbsp –  I love all kinds of mustard, I’ve tried like six different kinds in vinaigrettes lately

pepper.jpgsalt.jpg

Dust to taste

So far so good, right?

rogue.jpg

Oh no.

High River Rogue.  So I love spicy food.  Some of my Indian dishes glow radioactively.  But I wasn’t going down that road here.  What I had in mind was to put a few drops into the jar to add a nice, even kick, and maybe some neat color.

I’ve used this hot sauce before on many things.  I know what it’s capable of.  I also know it has a completely open top.  There’s no dropper up there.  If you pour, it comes out quickly.

But as I grabbed the bottle to add those few drops into the jar, I think I tricked my own brain.  I think because I wanted to add just a few drops, I defaulted my brain into falsely remembering that there was a dropper on this bottle when there was not.

I turn that thing over and am shocked by the output.  I reflexed and stopped, but not before several tablespoons of this delicious fire liquid had made it’s way into the vinaigrette.  I knew this was not good.  I knew the power of this Rogue.

So my first thought, eh, dump it and make it again.  But I hate, hate to waste food.  And I’m going to be a bleached skeleton one day.  So whatever, I decided to run with it.  I closed the jar, shook it, and decided to roll as is.  The vinaigrette ended up as a light red.  This color greatly amused and pleased me.

Eating it was not as spicy as I thought.  It was relatively mild.  My lips tingled a bit, but it didn’t burn my mouth like this sauce usually does.  I figure that’s because all the vinegar and oil evened it out.  I thought I was good.  I was not.  What my mouth could handle my stomach could not.  You try sleeping with this level of heartburn.  It’s not fun.  Especially when the dogs think you’re fully awake at 1am and thus decide they can ram the bed and ask to go out.

So this did not go well.  This is not the way to make a proper vinaigrette.

So, why, why oh why do I want to try it again.  If only I dialed down the spice level, I’d still get that neat red color, without the partial poisoning.  I can make it work the next time, honest.

Eh, what’s wrong with me?