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January 22nd, 2010

02:50 pm - Need dentists, drugs and money - the shit has hit the fan. Calling all potheads, acid freaks, coke hounds, and assorted other drug enthusiasts!! Question: What in the hell do you enjoy about being lit up? The long-fought saga of my rear molar flared up again this week. I had a root canal re-treated yesterday, and as part of that process, I got a prescription for Endocet -- basically oxycontin plus acetaminophen. I am absolutely fried out of my gourd right now, and I have zero idea why people enjoy this. I'm spacey. Everything feels all tingly, when I can feel at all. I'm certainly not stressing about some of the things that I'd normally stress about -- I rather lack the mental acuity to stress about them. But I just absolutely hate this feeling. It's both physically uncomfortable, and mentally distracting. Those of you who know me, know that I have something of a troubled past with drugs. Not troubled in that I was addicted to them -- rather the opposite! I'm actually allergic to pot... Even second-hand pot smoke will give me a screaming migraine that lasts for ~6 hours. I'm anesthetic resistant, to the point where dentists need 3 ampules of novocaine to even do a filling, and the one time I was hospitalized in serious pain, it took intravenous demerol to even chill the edge. The only time I was ever given a prescription amphetamine, I got incredibly horny for about 5 minutes, followed by a burning stomach ache, and then I fell asleep. The one mushroom I (involuntarily and unknowingly) ate in Australia made the world turn bright blue for a couple hours, before I vomited into a hot tub. I do not recall the episode with fondness. So what the hell is the big deal about drugs? Or, more to the point, why can't I derive anything but discomfort and annoyance from them?!? I feel left out of some kind of party, at the same time that my prior experiences (and an overwhelming fear of needles) pretty much ensure that I will never experiment with anything in the future. Now that we've established that I'm as clean as the driven snow, we get to the subject that led me here: Dental procedures. I think health care in the US is pretty good -- I'm certainly not one beating the drum of health care reform, though I think that we'd be far better off with changes in insurance regulations, tort reform, patent reform, and a fleet of other barriers to truly exceptional health care in America. But dental care, on the other hand, is about as freaking awful as they come. If you have surgery on your finger, it's a health care issue and you call your doctor. If you need surgery on your tooth, it's a completely separate ballgame. Dental insurance is either measurably more expensive than the procedures themselves, or inexpensive and so riddled with exclusions that you end up paying out-of-pocket for anything other than routine checkups anyhow. If you join a health plan, and have a heart attack the next day, you're covered. If you join a dental plan, you can't have a root canal for 12-18 months? I shelled out $1200 yesterday to re-operate on a tooth that I already shelled out $1900 for ~6 years ago. The best prognosis that the specialist I was sent to could give me? "Well, I hope this will fix it." Success rate for root canal re-treatments is apparently about 75%. If it fails, I'll be paying him another $1000 to pull out the tooth that we just invested $1200 in. I could jam a disease-infested oyster shell directly into my jugular, and there's at least 3 institutions within 5 miles of where I'm sitting who could fix me up right as rain by the end of the month. Have a chip in a tooth, and even a specialist can't speculate on whether or not his procedure is going to be successful for "3-6 months, and we'll take a look at it again." WTF people? Maybe this is why people take drugs. Their dentists drove them to it!! Somebody call Nancy Pelosi and insist that the American People need Dental Reform. Current Mood: confused

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January 19th, 2010

04:31 pm - Populism and the Balance of the Universe There's an unexpected horse race happening today in Massachusetts, and whatever the outcome, I think we've all learned something important about ourselves over the last year. 1) No matter how much "the people" want change, they will almost always reject it because it's not enough. 2) No matter how much "the people" want change, they will almost always reject it because it's too much. 3) The majority is never anything more than the ones with the biggest targets on their backs. and 4) Political life isn't about the outcomes, it's about the game. Of course, none of this is a surprise. But in the age of Information Ubiquity, the game has been to a whole new level. Few people who count themselves as "worldly" can just sit back anymore and count that their interests are their neighbors' interests. If you're not spinning your position, someone else will be out there spinning the position that hurts you most. What does surprise me is that, at least in my social circles, the level of engagement in the game seems to be increasing. I'd have expected that the more ridiculous things got, the more people would disengage and fort-up to protect their own interests, no matter what happened. Instead, the more ridiculous things get, the more average, everyday people are crawling out of the woodwork to pile more invective onto an already-oversized heap. And not in a productive way... revolutions may start with the pen, but they never succeed if their adherents aren't willing to go any further. My political views are an awful lot like my religious views when you come right down to it. To me, religion is like bowling: It's a vital part of a lot of people's lives, though I've never understood why. They do it every week, or more. It's the subject of epic battles, but there's at least as many people who participate regularly for the beer and camaraderie as for the activity itself. And while I own two sets of ugly and slightly-uncomfortable shoes for it (different brands), it's ultimately just not that important to me. I'll go every once in awhile in a social situation just to see how the game has changed -- though it rarely does. The difference between religion and politics, however, is that there aren't that many people who participate in the latter because it's fulfilling for them. In fact, politics tends to attract the sort of Spanish Inquisition-grade personalities who do bad things because they believe they have to, and any good things they might do are means to an end that they'd intend to achieve anyhow. Whatever happens in Massachusetts, America is once again poised for a sea change of opinion, propaganda and activism. There's been too many of those already, of late. The ultra-Liberals who were encouraged last year are very likely to be smacked down into a bit more silence, 'lest they sink the whole ship. The ultra-Conservatives who were discouraged last year, are likely to be more vociferously pompous in their demands, and they'll push for increasingly unpalatable policies that don't actually benefit anyone. Those in the middle will be courted with ever-more outlandish compensation to support agendas that say very little, but lay the framework for the most outrageous of future events. The "Hope and Change" message will die... we had the hope, we got the change, and it was most fecklessly squandered by those to whom it was entrusted, when they had the chance. I'd expect things to quiet down. I'd expect the wheels of politics to grind slowly to a halt, and for bureaucratic gridlock to ensue. I'd further expect the overly-enthusiastic among the population to become disillusioned, even as the terminally-lazy get the message that maybe they need to take a bit more interest in their own futures, because nobody else is going to. In short, I'd expect things to drift towards the middle, and hang around there in an overall atmosphere of apathy. And yet, I don't think it will. The quiet, secular days of the 21st century in the West haven't dampened the overall enthusiasm for religion in America, any more than the demise of Wide World of Sports in prime-time dampened the enthusiasm for league bowling... (that is to say, they're both a bit diminished but not in danger of going away anytime soon!) The quiet, uneventful days of gridlock in government ought to shut up the Obama-hounds and the Tea Partiers alike. So why am I convinced that tomorrow morning, things will only be worse? Current Mood: depressed

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December 28th, 2009

04:57 pm - The expensive consequences of complex systems There was a time when you could go to Store X, and buy Widget Y. All of the parts for Widget Y were produced by company X, assembled by company X, and supported by company X. When a problem occurred with Widget Y, you called Company X. End of story. Today, you can't hardly buy anything that hasn't been outsourced, insourced, cross-sourced, bi-sourced and re-sourced. Anything in your possession probably has bits and pieces that have changed hands 20 times by the time it landed in your pocket. In general, the net effect of this is that prices have declined and variety has increased. But sometimes it backfires. Toyota, for instance, has started manufacturing vehicles to a specification that no parts supplier wants to pick up. For a company that was recently lauded as the top car company in America, this is a decidedly consumer-unfriendly move, particularly on some of their higher-end vehicles. When you outsource parts, and suddenly there are no parts available, the system tends to break down. Earlier this year, I bought a 2008 Toyota Highlander Hybrid. It came with a set of expectedly-crappy Toyo Open Country A20 tires, but the real surprise was their size. They're a 245/55 R19, which is a size that fits no other vehicle on the market in North America. That size is apparently common in Japanese vehicles, but no manufacturer aside from Toyo and (formerly) Bridgestone would pick up the bid to manufacture them for North America. The volume is just too low to make it worth their while. As a result, there's suddenly an awful lot of Highlander Hybrid owners, with < 2 year-old cars, who are going out to buy replacement tires and finding that their only options are: 1) Horrible, badly manufactured tires from Toyo, that are suicidally awful on snow, reviewed in the bottom 5% of all tires in their class, and yet sell at a massive dealer-markup premium. 2) Spending the money to buy new rims and go to a completely different sized tire, at a cost that will run well into the 4-figures until all is said and done. 3) Putting tires on the vehicle that aren't the exact same size, and therefore cause a variety of issues with everything from the speedometer to the hybrid system. Whoops. Of course, Toyota disclaims all knowledge of the fact that there is any issue here. Dealers won't talk about it. But 3rd-party tire retailers are all too happy to tell you how massively screwed you are, and to outline what few (expensive) options are available to you. I'm in the process of going through #3... a 1.5% error in my speedometer and ABS system is well within any reasonable safety tolerance, by all accounts, and so it seems like the most palatable option. Palatable, if you consider $225 per tire, for a slightly-less-boutique size of tire, as a palatable option. This is my first seriously negative experience with Toyota. I'm going to have to call shenanigans on them for this one... providing tires on a new vehicle that wear out in less than 20,000 miles, manufacturing to a spec that no supplier is willing to pick up, and then refusing to even acknowledge that there is a problem? For shame, Toyota. The case that I should have bought the Honda Pilot is beginning to pile up, as winter progresses. *sigh* Current Mood: annoyed

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December 22nd, 2009

05:31 pm - The penultimate announcement of a pending return at some point in the future, maybe. Are you there LJ? It's me, Darlox. I feel the urge to post something here, since LJ exacted its annual tax of $19.95 for the privilege of not being bombarded by advertising on this site. But honestly, my heart just isn't in it. I'm 24 hours back from Japan, and I feel like someone has drugged me and then beaten me about the shoulders with a baseball bat. My mountain of piled-up work at the office seems neigh insurmountable. The preparations necessary for the holidays loom large and imposing. But all is not woe and despair. Some interesting things have happened, and I shall doubtless blog about them at some point in greater detail: 1) I've experienced a 5.3 magnitude earthquake. The epicenter was about 50 miles from where I was at in Yokohama, but it was strong enough that I was woken up in the middle of the night by my hotel bed slamming against the wall. (In fact -- no joke -- when I first woke up, the rhythmic "bang-bang-bang" of the bed hitting the wall made me think that my neighbors were having a bit of midnight recreation. Only after the rest of my nervous system woke up, did I realize that it was MY bed going bang-bang-bang against the wall, and that the rest of the room was going with it...) 2) My FBI file has probably become noticeably thicker. I met with high-ranking officials of more foreign governments in the last 7 days, than in my entire life until that point. Mayors of a Japanese and Chinese city, a provincial government (of, reportedly, the most corrupt province in China), and the CEOs/heads of several Asian government-affiliated entities. I'm glad I don't have to do that again for awhile... 3) I have a new Motorola Droid. Bad experiences, and even worse press, with AT&T kept me away from the iPhone. But when my old flip-phone finally died its final death, it was time to try something new. So far? LOVING it. My only regret is that I'll probably not be able to fix this one past its natural lifespan with a soldering iron and superglue... the way that I managed to keep its predecessor alive for almost 2 years after it wanted to die. And now I'm off to take care of some holiday tasks, and get an early bedtime. Jetlag is a cruel, cruel mistress... Current Mood: exhausted

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November 6th, 2009

12:20 am - An incredibly dorky art project... I'm cranky. For the 4th time in 2.5 years, our hot water tank has gone belly-up. This time, the flame won't stay lit. I will not have a hot shower tomorrow AM, and I'm ready to go after GE and Rheem with a torch and pitchfork... So, by way of stress relief, I decided to engage in one of my long-term art projects. If such can truly be called "art." You see, I got into a conversation about 4 months ago about Internet memes. Conventional wisdom is that such things are fleeting and ephemeral. They show up, everybody laughs, and then they fade into nothingness. By the time next year rolls around, fully 90% of the Internet won't even know they ever existed. I disagreed. While, true, memes and the copycat works they inspire are meant to be cultural throw-aways, so too were more traditional art pieces in the past. A Rembrandt portrait, hastily done. A still-life found buried under old boxes in a French apartment. How many artists never achieved fame until long after they were dead? Someday, something that started as an Internet meme might become art. An image that lasted for less than 2 hours on 4chan, might end up hanging in the Louvre. To demonstrate how this might be so, I took a famous work of art and started incorporating some Internet memes into it. Just as a gag... but then every once in awhile, someone would resurrect it and I'd go home and add something else. Well, 4 months later, and I have something that's actually pretty funny, IMHO... Click on it to see the large version, which is kind of necessary to really spot all of the details thus far: Appropriate responses may be: 1) Ha! Win. 2) WTF? I don't get ANY of this. 3) I see what you did there... you should add X to it. 4) Dude. Too much free time, apparently. You suck. Internet statistics would suggest 90% will go for #2, 6% for #4, and maybe a 2%/2% split between #1 and #3. #4's, you can bite me. My water heater is broken again, and this is stress relief. I don't need your pity. ;) Current Mood: bitchy

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November 5th, 2009

02:52 pm - Joining the fray on gay marriage... I have no idea why I'm compelled to post this, given that I'm very likely to get flamed to little tiny bits. But given that my social circles, my Friends' list, and the Interwebz at large, are all a'twitter with the Maine gay marriage vote, I feel some compulsion to chime in. Here's the thing, kids... I am PRO gay-marriage in theory, and ANTI gay-marriage in implementation. How is this possible? Well, because I'm actually anti straight-marriage in its current implementation as well. As zoethe and others have correctly pointed out, marriage is a social compact. It's not some right given by [G/g]od, nor some inalienable birthright granted by nature. You can believe what you want, hang out with whom you want, and yes, sleep with whomever you want -- even if you have to do so discretely in some parts of the world if you wish to remain upright. But when you take advantage of certain social compacts, you have to play by the rules of the society who created them, and who are ultimately responsible for bearing the costs and imposing the responsibilities that they entail. So what does this have to do with heterosexual marriage? Well, our system is broken -- especially at those times when things go wrong. In response to the progress made with womens' rights in the last few decades, we have now massively unfair and inequitably-applied alimony and child welfare standards. Abusive heroin-addicted fathers would never see their children again, while abusive heroin-addicted mothers get joint custody (NOT a theoretical situation here, given that a colleague is living through this right now.) We have ridiculous tax structures that benefit some couples while penalizing others. Our society as a whole has all sorts of operational problems that result from name changes by marriage -- or occasionally even worse, NOT changing names as a result of marriage. Even when things are going very well in a marriage, the social systems that it's built upon are inefficient, inconsistent, and occasionally downright broken. As we progress with new Homeland Security initiatives (read: Secure ID and Secure Flight programs), impose new restrictions on medical care (read: HIPAA laws), and turn our schools into hardened bunkers, even the "traditional" trappings of marriage become a burden for anyone who isn't in a One-Man-One-Woman-Same-Last-Name-and-Address relationship. So now we expand to gay marriage. When things are going well, married gay couples will probably have about the same level of hassle as your average straight couple with different names. But when things go badly? (Bearing in mind that the US divorce rate is currently around 50%...) How will US courts -- bearing in mind that the laws are all set up with an assumption of the traditional marriage structure in mind -- deal with child custody issues? How about alimony, and who gets it, and why, and for how long? How about even tax issues, given that millions of dollars in IT that run the machinery of this nation don't have the ability to have two 'M' or 'F' check-boxes on the same form? Percolate that down to customs forms if you travel abroad, or FAFSA forms for a kid's college aid? What about disputes with family when one spouse dies? I am not in any way saying that this is fair, or just, or that the problems cannot be overcome. What I am saying, however, is that gay marriage in the USA will be a fantastically expensive, convoluted, and technical process to implement. Then you complicate all of those tractable problems with the intractable problems of a significant portion of the population (and government functionaries) believing that gay couples are an affront to capital-G God, and re-igniting decades of the same kind of social discord we saw in the racially-based civil rights movement. As a married straight guy, I suppose it's easy for me to say this. But I think that the gay marriage movement is reaching a little high right now. Atomic one-step change would be great, but it's not realistic. Instead, the gay-rights organizations should be focusing on fixing the problems with marriage in general. Fix the tax system, fix the HIPAA laws, fix child welfare processes, fix estate law, and fix ID standards and practices. It's a big, big job. But if you do that, then there wouldn't be any reasons not to let ANYBODY who wants to get married, get married. Then it's a social contract with a tractable meaning. Right now, the meaning and implication of marriage is widely open to interpretation -- city to city, state to state, and even department-to-department at the federal level. We spend zillions of man-hours on entitlement programs, making sure that anything breathing American air has a valid Social Security number, but somehow nobody can get a grip on a social entitlement like marriage?? It's just not a priority yet, and someday hopefully it will be. At the end of that day, the only barrier to gay marriage will be the religious one. And ultimately, despite the wailings and demagoguery that goes on about religious nut-jobs, America is fundamentally a secular nation. But presently, it's the religious nut-jobs leading the charge against gay marriage, and most of the rest of the nation honestly just doesn't care enough to sign up for the turmoil it would likely bring. I would love to attend the weddings of some of my gay friends. (And I'm pretty sure that I'd also bear witness to the divorces of a few other gay friends, should their own weddings ever occur...) But when that happens, I don't want their happy event to be responsible for making a fairly-dysfunctional legal and administrative system fall entirely into disarray. (Not to go off-topic, but it's the same reason why it isn't going to work to fix Health Care in this nation by just opening the flood gates to another 47 million people, without fixing the harder problems that created this situation in the first place. Throwing more bodies into a broken system doesn't make the system better. Fairness alone cannot be the ultimate goal of any functioning society.) It just doesn't seem like a good idea to make things slightly happier for some, at the expense of everybody being a lot less happy in the end. So we have to do this correctly the first time, and not just hope that by calling something a "right", that an entire society will make a million overnight adjustments to fall into line. Especially when that "right" really isn't anything other than a mutually agreed-upon set of rules and responsibilities by society as a whole. Our society as a whole has rights too. And it has the responsibility to fix things that are broken so that those rights can be justly exercised. Gay marriage is not an issue of rights for gay people. It's an issue of our society as a whole failing in its responsibility to effectively implement and maintain social contracts. Current Mood: disappointed

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November 1st, 2009

10:41 am - Halloween 09 gieves and I had a fantastic Halloween again this year. There was much screaming and possibly a few ruined pants among the children of our neighborhood. The frightful festivities were then followed by a visit to Ferrett's house for the Post-Bachelor/ette-Party-Party of yuki_onna and justbeast. Best experience of the scare-fest: Me leaping out of my concealing pile of leaves (behind the tombstones) at a group of ~13 year-old kids, and a few of them shrieking loudly enough to blow out everyone's eardrums for miles around. Then, after I sat back down in my pile and said "Happy Halloween" to them (in my trademarked spooky-voice), they called down the driveway to their friends: "Hey - you have to come up here and see this! It's like motion-activated or something!" We were laughing about that one for the rest of the night. Because we have a professional photographer as a houseguest this weekend, I will not punish your eyes with my own photos of our Halloween display. Instead, you can read (and see) all about it HERE on the LJ of kylecassidy. Happy Halloween!! Current Mood: amused

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October 27th, 2009

01:27 pm - Neighborhood politics A week away from Election Day here in Cuyahoga County, I would strongly encourage all of you locals to bone up on Issue 5 versus Issue 6. Other than the billboards and lawn signs that have started popping up around town, I think these issues are being buried in the line noise of the casino and animal-rights debates. They are the most important issues on the upcoming ballot, bar-none. For years, I've lamented the fact that Cleveland-area voters clamor and protest for change, but then continue to elect the same old corrupt (and now indicted) local leaders that have tanked this region for the last 25 years. So long as there is no forward-looking vision in NE Ohio, there will never be progress. Issue 5 is the hastily-thrown-together proposal by the incumbent County Commissioners. It forces the creation of an elected study commission to investigate changing county government sometime in 2011 or beyond. For now, it retains the 3 commissioner positions who are pretty much unanswerable to anyone. It keeps the existing power structure in the county in place, and shelters the jobs of the current batch of officials -- many of whom, I will reiterate, are under indictment or investigation for the widespread Cuyahoga County corruption probe. Issue 6 is a fundamental change to county government, making the region more like Pittsburgh or other reformed rust-belt areas. Starting next year, it creates a County Executive and a board of council members representing the entire region. It creates boards for economic development and education, and eliminates a bevy of elected positions that NOBODY in this area (and I mean NOBODY) has enough information to intelligently vote for at present, like Cuyahoga County Sheriff or Coroner, by making them council-appointed. Vote NO on 5, and YES on 6 if you have any hope of changing this area. Why do I say that? Well, not only does Issue 5 pave the way to retaining the current structure, should the committee decide (on their own) that's what's best, but it creates a whole fleet of NEW elected positions for the committee itself. When you go to the polls on election day, how often do you know the pros and cons of candidates for County Recorder, or Coroner or Engineer? If you, yourself, are boned-up on the issues, how about your neighbors? Or the elderly around town? Or the folks who live down on East-55th? Is there even enough information out there in the public domain to MAKE such a decision wisely? In most cases, these positions are running un-opposed anyhow -- so is it really democracy in action to "elect" a person who cannot be removed from office by anything other than a referendum vote when nobody knows who they are, most of them don't campaign, most of them have been pointed at the position by the incumbent county power structure, and (at present) many of them are under investigation??? How many of you even know the platform of a single candidate running for this new study commission? Do you think you can knowledgeably vote for 15 of them?? Issue 5 is status-quo. Issue 6 is change. What happens if we pass them both? Well... nobody is really sure, quite frankly. The one thing that is clear is that county government would change next year. But then the commission would have power in 2011 to tear down that structure all over again after only 1 year, and re-stack the deck however they like. However you slice it, passing both spells turmoil for years to come. "But we'd be the only county in Ohio to have a structure like this", you say? Mostly true -- since only Summit County has a similar structure. But Ohio is the only state in this region, and one of only 6 in the nation, that has a current centralized-power structure like what we have at present. The more common form is an elected council, with local reps, and a charter government. Whatever else you do on election day, make sure you know what's going on here. If you believe in Issue 5 -- fine, vote that way. But for god's sake, whatever you do, don't vote for both!! And only vote for either after you've read up on the issues. Cleveland is dying, and the last thing it needs is more of the same medicine we've been feeding it for decades. Current Mood: worried

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October 25th, 2009

09:24 pm - An infusion of inspiration About 5 weeks ago, gieves and I quietly embarked on a project with an uncertain outcome. We started infusing liquors. Most cooking experiments have outcomes that are known in minutes, occasionally hours, or at very worst, days. Your successes and failures are based upon your own skills, techniques and the quality of your ingredients. With infusions, quality certainly matters, but patience... weeks and weeks of patience... are essential before the magnitude of your success (or failure) will be known. Skill only involves being able to throw things in a jar, and swirl it once in awhile. The hard part is figuring out what's going to happen with an assortment of complex flavors a couple of months down the road. Today, we un-batched the first of our 6 experiments: Vanilla & Fig infused Canadian Whiskey If this is an indication of future success, we're in for a very good fall!! The liqueur is sweet, aromatic and unctuous. The smooth smell of vanilla comes out immediately, followed by the thick sweetness of figs before the warm burn of the whiskey works its way down your middle. On urging from gieves, I made a martini for our first mixed, home-infused treat. Loosely based on the conglomeration of drinks or martinis we've had at three different restaurants -- Crop here in Cleveland, a bar in Portland Oregon, and a little restaurant in Sonoma CA. A sort of figgy, vanilla, apple cider martini... * 2 oz Vanilla-Fig infused whiskey * 1 oz VSOP Brandy * 1 oz Apple Cider * 1/4 oz Grand Marnier * 1 spoonful infused fig paste Yes -- the figs that had given almost their all in the infusion were removed, mixed in the blender with simple syrup and some water, and whipped into a paste that will probably be excellent on toast. 80-proof toast... Shaken and served with a piece of brown sugar-caramelized bacon from a batch of fresh Gibbs' bacon that I cooked up earlier today -- albeit with this drink partially in mind. Oh my god is this good! I'm pausing in my typing every minute or so to take another tiny little sip, and nibble some of the sweet, now-liquor-infused bacon. We might be organizing a small gathering in the near future for heavy hors d'oeuvres and infusion drinks. Details to come... maybe... probably... Upcoming experiments to report on: - Home made cucumber-thyme gin (I'm excited about the potential of this one) - Apple-Lemon Liqueur - October Surprise (an apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, clove, pie-in-a-bottle experiment...) - Fresh-picked blueberry infusion - Fresh strawberry infusion (well... fresh-picked in the spring, but frozen since then.) Current Mood: blissed

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October 3rd, 2009

12:48 am - Cultural satire applies even when it shouldn't... So for those of us born into the Queen's Good English, it's easy (and fun) to visit sites like Engrish.com and Engrishfunny.com, and laugh ourselves sick at the mangling of our mother tongue. Some instances are the fault of Google Translations-like tools, while others are problems with homonyms or synonyms that don't entirely apply. As I sit here in meetings in Tokyo, I must admit that I was shocked. Some of the most devoted fans of Engrish mockery? Asians. The Koreans laugh at the Chinese's feeble attempts, while the Chinese laugh at the Japanese, while the Japanese laugh at the Koreans. Of course, they admit that sometimes they don't understand why certain examples are funny. Those are usually generated by their countrymen. But they more than compensate with the delicious schadenfreude derived from making fun of the distinct Engrish dialects of their Asian peers. As a devoted Engrish fan myself, it was rather surreal to watch while a Korean woman tried to explain to a Japanese man why "Hambuggers" was funny. Sometimes the world is a crazy place. =) Current Mood: amused

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September 25th, 2009

09:55 am - More friendly fire... Since I bothered to post yesterday about the doings of the UN General Assembly, I figured I might as well give an update... * Col. Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi: Short Bio: Absolute leader of Libya, leader of the "Revolutionary Sector", publicly ordered assassination of dissidents living abroad by Libyan hit squads, sheltered known killers and terrorists throughout the 90's, self-appointed "King of Kings of Africa." "I congratulate our son the president, Obama ... we'd be content and happy if Obama can stay president forever" * Hugo Rafael Chavez: Short Bio: President of Venezuela, leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, coup-leader against President Carlos Andres Perez, expropriated private businesses in multiple sectors resulting in severe shortages and 30%+ inflation, decimated Venezuelan economy, changed Venezuelan constitution to eliminate his own term limits. "It doesn't smell of sulfur here anymore, it smells of something else. It smells of hope. ... May God protect Obama from the bullets that killed the late president [John F. Kennedy]." Wow. We've really changed our standing in the world. And just in case you've not yet bought into the Cult of Personality, how about a video of New Jersey public schoolkids taught to sing a song of praise to Obama during class time, set to the tune of "Jesus Loves the Little Children". ("He said red, yellow, black or white/All are equal in his sight. Barack Hussein Obama.") Seriously?? "Jesus Loves the Little Children"??? Of all the songs you could have picked to propagandize, that one? It's almost like they're trying to sling arrows at the Administration. I actually feel bad for Obama on this one, since at least a couple of his supporters are just complete boneheads. Current Mood: annoyed

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September 24th, 2009

09:46 am - Judged by the company you keep I wish I had the time for a full-bore political post right now, but unfortunately I do not. Nonetheless, I cannot help but comment upon yesterday's visit of President Obama to the UN General Assembly. He gave a speech. He received a soaring round of applause. I'm sorry, but this is a problem. It's not that anything in his speech was overtly Marxist or damaging. He continued to beat the drum of a waning America, which is unfortunate, but nothing that cannot be reversed (because nobody in the rest of the world is going to step up to the plate anytime soon...) The problem is how the rest of the world sees him, and that they're willing to applaud him roundly. George Bush got jeers and a mini-walkout from the UN General Assembly. Bill Clinton got jeers and a mini-walkout. So did George Bush I, and Ronald Reagan. Superpower leaders always get lukewarm welcomes from the General Assembly. That august body is essentially made up of petty dictators. For every elected first-world leader in the room, there's two representatives of Asian despots, or South American junta generals, or African dictators, or middle-eastern warlords. Hugo Chavez gets ovations at the General Assembly. Robert Mugabe gets rounds of applause. American Presidents do not. And that's because we're a direct and justifiable threat to 66% of the self-appointed power-mongers in that room. We're supposed to be a goal-oriented, unified front against the sort of single-point, autocratic nations who comprise the majority of that body. For pete's sake, Andrei Vyshinsky nearly started a nuclear war in that room in 1948 by calling for world defensive preparations against the USA, and he got a round of applause. Being popular in the UN General Assembly is like being popular on the streets of Bogata. You're excessively open with your largesse, and there's probably a pile of bodies behind you somewhere... The fact that our President has earned the respect and support of the world's most infamous and unstable leaders is not something I'd be proud of. With friends like that, we really don't have any need for enemies. Current Mood: distressed

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September 15th, 2009

04:18 pm - A Dirty Mind I'm sorry... I don't really have a FILTHY mind. But it's fairly well down there in the gutter most of the time. But if you ran a business whose name was the initials of a well-known carnal act, would YOU run an ad like this? Was there ever really a wrong time to try one of those? (And I'll point out to the advertiser, that the best way to "Get Started" generally doesn't involve continuing to click on things on the Interwebz.) Since apparently some people really don't know, we're talking about BJs Membership Warehouse here... the Costco competitor. And honestly, the only reason I knew it wasn't an ad for some new male-inflating product was because there weren't any puppies or middle-aged women running through grassy fields in the ad. "Now's the time to try BJs. And that's why there's new Fellatix breath freshening tabs..." Current Mood: amused

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September 9th, 2009

03:49 pm - Mad Skillz Have you ever taken out the trash, mowed the lawn, or fixed the car? Have you boasted about this to your friends or family, only to be asked: "What do you want? A friggin' medal?" Yes. Yes I do want a friggin' medal! And now I can have it! Thanks to the World Skills Competition, which was going on while gieves and I were in Canada. It's a biannual competition that brings over 900 competitors from 47+ countries together for a no-holds-barred, Olympic-style throw down. There are judges, there are medals, there are national anthems, and the Prime Minister of Canada opened the 8-day event noting that the "world's eyes are on Calgary" in the most significant way since the 1988 Olympics. Raise your hand if you've ever heard of the World Skills Competition. Go on. I'll wait. Right. But my friends, you have NO idea what you've been missing. Re-branded from their former name as the "Skill Olympics", they've captured the imagination of the world. You could defend the honor of your nation and win a global medal in high-stakes competitions like: * Metal Roofing * CNC Milling * Floristry * Restaurant Service (Waiting) * Refrigeration ... or my favorite: * the Team Caring competition "On your marks competitors... get ready... aaand... CARE!"** The host nation took gold in Cabinetmaking, Restaurant Service and Graphic Design, only to be narrowly defeated by the brutal Australians in the Beauty Therapy competition. But their spunky newcomer's strong Silver showing in the Aircraft Maintenance competition, beating out the crowd-favorite UK competitor, really pulled at the heart strings of the Canadians and made front-page news in the Calgary paper. The demonstration competition in Plastering and Drywall Systems went to France, with Switzerland and Japan close behind. The WSC committee is currently in hot debate whether Plastering will be a mainline sport when the games go to London in 2011. The US team was a shameful boil on the rump of our fine nation. We took silver in Automotive Service and Welding. Consolation prize "Medals for Excellence" were taken in Printing, Car Painting, Cooking and Hairdressing. I blame the schools. But how can anyone resist signing up?! You can "battle it out against the clock, and against difficulties commonly encountered in the workplace." Grrrrr!!!! The 2011 HP Printer Paper Jam competition is MINE, bitch... do you hear me? MINE!!! I don't much like my chances in London, against the crushing speed and power of the Japanese and Norwegian Information Network Cabling teams, though. Those guys can plug in Ethernet like nothing I've ever seen before. Golly... No. Freaking. Joke. (** - I really do have to wonder... Do they like bus in a bunch of invalids from the nearest nursing home, dump them into the ring, and send in the national teams to try and sort things out? Are you judged on your compassion? Do you lose points if the diapers are all full before you finish changing all of the TVs over to Maury?? The website is unacceptably vague!) Current Mood: laughing unstoppably

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September 2nd, 2009

12:28 pm - The Silent Takeover "We will breed with their women, and in time, our differences will be forgotten." ~ Peter Griffin In this divisive political age, many pundits have chosen to dig up old Karl Marx quotes, predicting that the Communists will eventually take over America from within. Yet little notice has been paid to the fact that America is silently and insidiously taking over Canada. You see, due to an enormous shortage of Canadian sperm donors, at least 80% of babies conceived in Canada with donated sperm actually have American fathers. Due to health policies put in place by Canada in 2004, there are (fact) only 33 sperm donors for the entirety of Canada. So they're importing baby batter from us uppity Yanks. Most of the frozen goo comes from southern Georgia and northern Florida. So to all you fertility-assisted Canucks out there: keep an eye on your baby's neck. See that red? That's America taking over. I predict Nascar crowding out professional Curling in Canada within the decade. Current Mood: amused

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August 24th, 2009

11:26 am - Update and 2009 Spot the Spirit I have a rant all stored up, but alas, lack the time to type it up just now. I will sometime soon. For now, updates: A) Thanks to everyone who came to the party on Saturday! No firm headcount yet, but we blew through our estimates easily -- all but about 5 pounds of the 45 pounds of beef were consumed, as were 9.5 liters of rocket fuel!! The last guest left a few minutes before 2 AM, which isn't a record, but still a pretty respectable showing. B) LAST CHANCE THIS SEASON: Weather-dependent, anyone want to go see the Lake Erie Crushers on Wednesday night @ 7:00 PM? (They have games tomorrow, Thursday, and Labor Day weekend as well, but gieves and I can't do those days, so it's our last chance, at least...) C) The 2009 Spot the Spirit Contest This is the third-annual incarnation of our attempt to guess at when our Lords and Masters of Capitalism will deign it appropriate to start cramming Christmas Cheer down our gullets. Before we know it, those end-of-season swimming pool sales will vanish in favor of early-bird sales on pre-lit aluminum Christmas trees. Maybe we'll get a few weeks of Halloween in there, if we're lucky... Da' Rules: 1) By the end of this week (8/28/2009 @ 5:00 PM EDT), comment on this post registering your guess for when the first in-store display or hard-copy printed advertisement will appear from a retailer, for a fully-fledged holiday sales drive on Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/etc accoutrements. Make sure to include a name if you're a non-LJ user posting anonymously!! 2) Advertisements will be defined as materials printed, broadcast, or otherwise displayed in a public area where any odd person off the street could view it. Some liberties may be granted (such as inside an admission-gated location), but it must be generally publicly accessible and not at some private event. No tupperware parties or stamping events, etc... 3) Signs with simply the holiday name on it do not count -- it must be a specifically holiday-targeted advertisement or decoration for commercial products or services, using applicable imagery for the holiday being pimped. It should be that store's official holiday sales kickoff, in a format that at least implies it will be around and replenished from the time you see it through the end of the calendar year. 4) Year-round locations such as "Christmas Stores" or other such permanent or semi-permanent operations also do not count. This includes craft stores or places that start selling the make-your-own-decor bits pretty much as soon as last year's holiday ends. 5) LJ comments making a guess CANNOT be revised. I will use whatever date is submitted as your original guess. How to win: There are two ways to win: 1) Grand Prize: Guess the correct date, or be the closest to the date within 7 days +/-. If nobody guesses correctly within 1 week of the first spotting date, there is no winner. 2) Be the first one to Spot the Spirit. Send me a photo or copy of the advertisement with verification of the date it appeared -- or at least the date you saw it. If there is no winner, per method 1, you will be declared the Grand Prize winner. If there IS a Grand Prize winner, your consolation prize will be a round of drinks at a happy hour or other social event sometime. Grand Prize: As in previous years, the grand prize will be one lavish home-cooked meal for the winner and a guest, at our home. Example menu from at least one previous win can be found here. Your food preferences and tastes will be considered when composing a menu for the award feast. Happy Guessing! Current Mood: tired

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August 18th, 2009

12:44 pm - You've been reading Epicurious too long when... If you're not familiar with the foodie site Epicurious, it's a food magazine, recipe archive, and foodie community centered around an extensive database of higher-end recipes. One of the hallmarks of the site is the tendency for members to post comments on recipes, extolling the wonderful virtues of the meal, but recommending "tweaks". In many cases, these tweaks change the very nature of the recipe into something else. Sort of like taking a recipe for "Garlicky Roasted Chicken", and saying "I LOOOOVE this recipe, and so do my kids! But I refuse to cook chicken, so I used a Rump Roast instead, and substituted shallots for the garlic. Great recipe - delicious!" *stare* Garlicky Roasted Chicken != Roasted cow haunch with shallots. So it was with great amusement when gieves and I sat down to breakfast this morning. Last night, she made a spiced Apricot Tart, which is pretty good. It contains stewed fresh apricots, corn meal, several eggs in the batter, and reduced poaching syrup drizzled on top. But the crust is a little weird, and the filling is complicated to make. Our analysis? You know, we could use dried apricots -- or better yet, plums -- for this. The corn meal is a little weird, but if we substituted oats and used more butter, the crust would be less crunchy and pretty good. The eggs make it a little dense, so maybe if we just used egg whites and beat them into a foam first, and then folded that in. We'd have to sprinkle spice and sugar on top, since we couldn't use the poaching liquid or it would make a light fluffy top crust collapse. That'd be pretty good! Make a note on the recipe. But we loved this Apricot Tart recipe. Highly recommended? *stare* Current Mood: amused

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August 14th, 2009

09:43 am - The addiction returns There's something about the moist heat of mid-August that seems unwelcoming to NFL football. It's a game best played in mud and snow. But that didn't stop us from driving 3 hours last night to go see the Steelers play the Arizona Cardinals in the first preseason game of the year. Loge suite seats in beautiful Heinz Field, catered with all of the junk food and beer a football fan could want. The only down-side was having to get up at 5:30 AM this morning to drive back home in time for work. Steelers won 20-10. I lost my voice screaming at the action. Damn, I've missed football. I need to turn in my Nerd card now or something... my love of Steelers football is unseemly in one who is otherwise pretty geeky. Current Mood: exhausted

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July 27th, 2009

12:39 pm - In sickness and in healthcare By now, all of you have managed to read the 2000+ pages in the Universal Health Care bills that our leaders are trying to ramrod through Congress, right? Of course you have... (just like the politicians supposed to vote on them.) Well, for those who have not, an interesting article popped up on CNN's "Most Popular" list today. If you haven't been keeping a first-person interest in the health care debate, well... now's the time to start brushing up. And I want to point out a few things about this article before you read it: 1) It's on CNN - not Fox News or Newsmax or some other source that makes a habit of trashing the current president's policies. And it's even written by one of the Editors of CNNMoney. So don't accuse me of shopping my sources. 2) It's clear that the article has pissed someone off, because while it's #2 on the "Most Read" list at present, it's all but impossible to find on the main site. Anywhere. Can we say "burying a story" boys and girls? (Let's hear it for automatic content aggregators that don't succumb to editorial control of pages!) 3) It's the only source I have yet seen to, basically, come out and call the President a liar on this issue. Obama keeps saying "You have the freedom to keep your current plan." As it turns out, the bills don't say that. They say the precise opposite -- and the article explains why. I'm not even going to editorialize on this. Just read the article. I've been railing against Universal Health Care, in the form they want to create it, since the very beginning. There's nothing more to be said, except that it's about time somebody in the major media had the balls to stand up and blow the whistle on this crap. Current Mood: annoyed

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July 16th, 2009

01:48 pm - The case against community agriculture This is still a post that I'm not quite happy about yet, but I feel it's time to release it into the wild. If for no other reason than I've been promising it to a number of folks for awhile, and have been getting gently hassled about when it might see the light of day. It's unlikely that I'm going to be able to do much more on-the-ground research in the near future, so consider this more of a very long abstract than a paper... It has become very hip and trendy to talk about CSAs -- Community Supported Agriculture operations -- and similar non-profit organizations like City Fresh, who function in a similar manner. Right off the bat, I can say that they serve a very noble purpose, and their overall goals are pure. They want to help people eat better by providing inexpensive, high-quality produce to everyone. By using ideological marketing and a bit of grass-roots ingenuity, they're cutting through the clutter of mass-market consumer product marketing and encouraging people to pay more attention to what they eat. That's great. But are they really a benefit to the food distribution chain, and/or our society as a whole? Do they serve a purpose beyond being an audible voice that makes people think a little harder about the Food Pyramid? Or are they actually self-defeating enterprises, whose proliferation endangers the very goals they set out to achieve? I would argue that they are rapidly becoming, if they are not already, the latter. Because this is going to be another long research post, it is... ( ... cut for Friends List kindness. ) [1] - Bradford, JC. (2008) Energy Farms Network, Reliable Renewable Energy for a Post Carbon World: "Can My County Feed Itself? Part 3. The Available Land-base" [2] - Tegtmeier, Erin & Duffy, Michael (2005) Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, "Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in the Midwest United States: A regional characterization" [3] - US Department of Agriculture, "2007 Census of Agriculture - State Data", Table 44: Selected Practices, 2007. [4] - Oberholtzer, Lydia (2004) Small Farm Success Project, "Community Supported Agriculture in the Mid-Atlantic Region: Results of a Shareholder Survey and Farmer Interviews" [5] - Vallianatos, Mark (2009) Ecology Law Currents, "Food Justice and Food Retail in Los Angles" [6] - Zajfen, Vanessa (2008) Occidental College, Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, Center for Food and Justice, "Fresh Food Distribution Models for the Greater Los Angeles Region" [7] - Rubin, Sarah; Weinmann, Sophia; Williams, Laila (2009) Oberlin College, Food Access Group, "Community Food Systems" [8] - Cleveland State University, Urban Studies Exit Project, "Regional food System Assessment for Northeast Ohio", 2002. Current Mood: tired

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