Blog Challenge: 25/25 - Documentation

Because I live with a smart person I wind up watching a fair number of documentaries. Many are just interesting and fun, but many also fall into the "Michael Moore: Let's Stir Up Some Liberal Fury" category. I'm not saying these documentaries aren't good: they are. I just really wish they didn't deliberately try to be so polarizing.

They always create three types of people: the poor mislead victims, the evil greedy military/corporate/political overlords, and the outraged intellectual who is the assumed audience.

Most people who watch this type of movie are thoughtful and well-adjusted, but how many times have you sat next to some self-righteous douche bag at a dinner party who's entire conversational repartee is something like this:

"Well I saw a documentary about the pillow farming industry, and I couldn't believe how awful it really was! All those poor pillows being raised in cages while their natural habitat is destroyed by cellphone farmers! There were all these studies that show how North American pillows are going to be extinct by 2036, but congress won't do anything because the pillow industry lobby has them all in their pocket. Elected officials are so stupid. Don't they have any morals? Don't they care about what's going on. That's why I vote for Nader."

Blog Challenge: 24/25 - Take it away, you fool!

Every once in a while you're in a crowded place with a lot of background noise, and you wind up having to speak a bit loud to be heard over the background noise. On rare occasions you do this right as the background noise drops to a whisper. That's a bit embarrassing, but understandable.

Recently I've discovered a new for of this incident that should be avoidable. I'll be riding on a bus where many people are listening to music. The bus gets on a highway, the background noise gets louder, and so everyone turns up the volume on their players. Sometimes, you're really into the song so you REALLY crank it up.

Then later when the bus gets off the highway and is sitting at a stoplight you're still rocking out, but now everyone on the bus can hear the music leaking out from your ears. They all turn an watch you lip sync along, but you don't notice because you've got your eyes closed and are really whipping that head around.

Then you notice.

Should you find yourself in this situation, just pray that the song you were rocking out to is something respectable and not say... Mmm, Bop! by Hansen.

Blog Challenge: 23/25 - Evil, Thy Name is Jet Lag

Do you know what time it is? I've been back in the states for two days and my inner clock is still screwed up. People have given me a number of suggestions on combating jet lag. A choice selection:

-Drink until you pass out. (Note: this may occur before you take your first drink)

-Wear a giant novelty clock around your neck a la Flava Flav

-Alternate between taking one hour naps and dunking your head in the toilet and flushing it (known as a 'swirly')

-Drink vast amounts of coffee mixed with NyQuil

-Never leave your current time zone

Blog Challenge: 22/25 - Practical Italian

Should you ever get a chance to go to Rome I highly recommend it. If you don't already speak Italian then you should know a few basic words (yes, no, hello, goodbye, please, thank you) before you go. If you really want to ensure you have a great trip you should also learn how to say the following:

-Those sunglasses, that hairdoo, and those tight jeans make you look like an androgynous housefly.

-This thing with all the people in it that you just walked by? Its called a line. Why don't you get in it before I knock you vital bits up into your abdominal cavity with my knee?

-Is clasping your hands behind your back an essential part of walking so infuriatingly slow, or is it just for style?

-What skillfully applied makeup! I just wish your face had a coinslot so I could leave and offering in memory of Tammy Fay baker.

-I wonder how the sideview mirror of your car got all scratched up? I suppose it might be because you drive thirty miles an hour down windy Roman streets filled with pedestrians.

-Oh goody, more eighties music from the states. I feel twenty years younger!

Blog Challenge: 21/25 - How to park a car in Rome

Should you ever visit Rome you should not under any circumstances rent a car. You won't need it, and it will be a huge challenge to park. If you do need to park a car in Rome, here are the heuristics I have seen used by Roman drivers

If there is a space on or near the road you are on that is approximately the size of your car then park there.

If the space is to narrow for your car to fit lengthwise then just part perpendicular to the street.

You should try and get at least two wheels up on to the sidewalk. Four is ideal. Three is also pretty good.

If two people arrive at a spot at the same time then the spot goes to whoever has the tightest pants. If both pairs are equally tight then both cars may be parked in the same spot.

Parking on top of a beggar is not ideal, but is acceptable if there are no other spaces.

If there are absolutely no spaces, then you may start a second line of parked cars on the street side of the existing line.

Blog Challenge: 20/25 - Jeff, the God of Biscuits

I went to the Vatican today without causing a major international incident. I was really impressed by all the statues, particularly of some of the lesser-known saints:

St. Perry - Patron saint of lounge singers and bottled water

St. Rohnda - Matron saint of bowling alleys, arcades, and diners

St. Mervin - Patron saint of polyester and accountants

St. Phil - Patron saint of bureaucrats and standing in line

St. Concetta - Matron saint of housekeepers and scuzzy boyfriends

St. Eddie - Patron saint of hair care products and bad moustaches

St. Duran - Patron saint of 80s music

Blog Challenge: 19/25 - Let's do lunch

We saw ancient Rome today. It's pretty much a bunch of bricks all spilled everywhere. We also saw some Catholic artifacts. Whoopdeedoo.

The real highlight of the day was the realization after my third drink of the evening that it was about lunchtime in Seattle, and that rather than being halfway through my work day in Redmond that instead I am more than halfway to being drunk in Rome.

Tomorrow we go and tour the Vatican. In an effort to maintain diplomatic relations between the USA and the Holy See I'm trying to get all the inappropriate stuff out of my system tonight.

Let's just be glad that the Pope is still in Africa at the moment.

Blog Challenge: 18/25 - Ronald Ceaser

I was wandering around Rome today trying to do the right thing. This largely consisted of me walking up to strangers, asking them if they were a Roman, and if they said yes then I spent the next hour mimicing everything they did. It wasn't very fun. I would change the saying to be 'When in Rome, do whatever the hell you feel like.'

It is very beautiful here. Every other block is a temple, a ruin, a church, a plaza, a fountain, or a McDonalds. There are more McDonalds here than Starbucks and churches combined. I can't figure it out. My current theory is that all those donation boxes for the Ronald McDonald house have actually been buying houses in Rome.

Blog Challenge: 17/25 - ___ and Vinegar

When I get a new piece of clothing that will touch my skin directly I usually wash it once before wearing it. This is a policy that I put in place after the waistband on a pair of shorts gave me a rash.

Today I broke with that policy as I got a new T-Shirt that I really needed to wear today, but forgot to put through the wash. I've had it on for a couple of hours and am rash-free. Unfortunately, the shirt smells faintly of vinegar and it's driving me crazy.

So now I'm faced with a tough choice: do I cowboy-up and just deal with the nasty smell all day, or do I take of the shirt and risk being mobbed by lascivious women who cannot control themselves in the face of my pasty-white naked torso?

We'll keep it on for now... just in case.

Blog Challenge: 16/25 - fcuk this siht

The first time I saw a black shirt with the letters fcuk on it I figured it was just another geek shirt that was supposed to be funny because it had a deliberately misspelled naughty word on it. What struck me as odd was that the person wearing the shirt was not a slovenly technology professional, but rather a well-heeled hipster who I would definitely file under fashion conscious.

I asked someone about it and they explained that fcuk stands for French Connection UK - a clothing store that seems popular with Europeans.

It just goes to show how the clothes do not make the man, but rather the other way around. If you put your average Systems Administrator in a black shirt that said fcuk it would look distasteful, but put some waif in ridiculously large sunglasses in the same shirt and it's suddenly chic.

This is why I don't give a crap that most of my pants have a hole in them.

Blog Challenge: 15/25 - Extra! Extra!

The oldest newspaper in the town where I live is producing its last print edition today. Yes, that means I live in Seattle, Encyclopedia Brown. This has filled me with nostalgia and guilt. Nostalgia because of all the editorials they've been writing about all the history that they've been around to cover. Guilt because while I read the paper almost every day I've never once bought one.

I read all my news online. Perhaps someday online news will require you to pay a modest subscription fee, and when it does I'll probably fork over the cash, but until then I just can't see buying a bulky paper that needs to be recycled when I can just read everything I'm interested in on my phone.

That being said here are some reasons a print paper is better than an online paper:

-You can do the crossword

-You have something to physically hit when you can't solve the crossword

-You have something to swat flys with

-You can give you neighbors something to steal off your doormat

-Smudges of ink act like sunscreen for your hands. Not terribly useful in Seattle actually.

-Apparently you can teach small animals to pee on it when you're done with it

-You can start a fire

-You can roll it up and hit people with it

-You can help Little Johnny justify asking for the bike for Christmas by being on his paper route. Unless you live downtown. Then you're probably allowing a hairy guy named Vinny to justify buying that gun he always wanted for protection on his paper route.

Blog Challenge: 14/25 - Stand Up Hot Dogs

I'm a huge fan of stand-up comedy. I've tried my hand at it, and learned three things

1) It's really, really hard
2) People who do it very well are few and far between
3) There are some really successful comics out there who work a lot less then struggling ones

The third point is the one that really surprised me. I've seen comics in clubs and on TV specials that tell an hour of solid material with the jokes coming fast and furious. When they tell an annecdote the whole thing is funny and typically contains more than one punch line. Some of them do dead-on impressions and characters (Mari@ Bamf0rd, Gabrie1 Iglesia$), some find brilliant ways to tie all the parts of their routine together (Eddie 1zzard), and some of them just get up and deliver a stream of really sharp non-sequitor one-liners that allow them to pack an amazing amount of comedy into a relatively short set ($tephen Wrigh+, Dimitr1 Mart1n, The late M1tch H3db3rg).

Then there are comics that I've seen with their own major comedy specials that spend ten minutes telling a story that leads up to a mediocre punchline. Its the kind of story that your friend tells every time you go to a bar and there's one person there who hasn't heard it. Perhaps the telling is decent, but its typically just the person being themself and not delivering well-crafted material.

It can be considered comedy the same way a hot dog is considered meat. If you can choke down all the filler you're techinically getting some protien. I'm not going to call out the comics I've seen do this by name, but you'll know this type of show when you see it. *cough*D@ne C00k*cough*

Blog Challenge: 13/25 - Neurovore's Diet

I try to avoid caffeine. Not because of my health: I eat crap all the time. The only reason I don't eat bacon with every meal that back in '98 the various systems of my body rose up, defeated my brain, and made is sign the Live To See Fifty Peace Accord.

The real reason is that I don't need it. My baseline anxiety is so high that if you struck my shoulders in various places with a wooden mallet you would probably get a serious of sounds not unlike a steel drum. The result is an overabundance of nervous energy that is spent as follows

25% Worrying about things that I cannot control

25% Worrying about things I can control, but not actually dealing with them

20% Bouncing my legs up and down while seated

15% Letting my mouth just run while my higher brain sits there with a net to catch the worst of the crap my subconscious throws out

10% Walking very quickly

5% Running the essential systems of my body. (Respiratory, circulatory, etc.)

Blog Challenge: 12/25 - Prepare for Air

I don't travel much, but when I do I like it to be as pleasant as possible. Some things are stacked against me: airplane seats were not designed with someone my height in mind, and I can't sleep just anywhere. I've got a transatlantic flight coming up, and here are the preparations

-Some really good reading material. I like to save up a book or two that I've really been looking forward to. For this trip I'll be reading The Watchmen.

-Good tunes. In the era of digital music players this is easier than ever. Sadly my headphones are always breaking so I'll need to go out and invest in some good ones.

-Logic Puzzles. For some reason I really enjoy logic puzzles and sudoku on planes. You can get magazines with puzzles in them at most airports, but then tend to suck. Better to pick up an issue that suites your tastes from somewhere with a better selection ahead of time.

-Something sweet to snack on. Gummy whatever's for preference. Even better if they're sour.

-Something salty to snack on. Variety is the spice of life.

-Extra layers of clothes. Not because I get cold on planes, but to use as padding for when my wife inevitably passes out on my bony shoulder.

-Sedatives. Sometimes the old sleep schedule needs to be coerced.

Blog Challenge: 11/25 - Fortune Cookie Interlude

Eating Chinese take-out the other night a Canadian friend of mine got a fortune saying that "You will soon have happiness in your heart." I mentioned that this explained why someone had recently given me a box of bullets with smiley faces on them.

Another person at the meal asked if they happened to be silver bullets. I patiently explained that silver bullets are for werewolves and not Canadians.

Though the two groups are easy to get confused.

Blog Challenge: 10/25 - For Those About To Rock...

The economy is really depressing, but for some reason I find that a lot of the major incidents and people involved with them lend themselves really well to band names:

-Bernie Made-Off and the False Profits

-Young America and the New Depression

-System of the Dow

-Hank Paulson and The Cronies

-No Pensions For Boomers

-George W. Bush and the Blind Eyes

Blog Challenge: 9/25 - Moving with the times

Despite all of technology's wonderful powers, its strange how we cling to the past. I discovered that my library has a large number of eBooks you can 'borrow'. I say 'borrow' because rather than just letting anyone who wants one download it and read it they have a fixed number of virtual copies and a new person can't check one out until someone returns theirs. Considering this is all free I find that insane. Here are some other potential examples of old business models limiting the possibilities of technology:

-Sites having two "proceed to checkout" links where one is only for people with less than 15 things in their cart

-Travel sights showing you a video of someone typing at a keyboard for five minutes while you just sit there watching for no discernable reason

-Shopping sites streaming you crappy music while you shop

-MP3 sites forcing you to buy nine crappy songs for every two good ones

-Porn sights showing pictures of less attractive people/animals/things during off-peak hours

Blog Challenge: 8/25 - Bad Bad Teacher

I crossed a new threshold in bad teaching yesterday.

Do you remember having a class in college where the professor was so useless that by the middle of the term almost no one would show up to lecture? It was pretty pathetic. Well, I discovered yesterday that a teacher can sink even lower: I had no students show up for class. Sure the class is free and sure the weather was bad, but still: that's a sorry state of affairs.

I decided to make the most of it and get some other work done during the two hour time slot. Just when I started feeling good about that decision one of the students showed up and hour into it. If it had been any other student this would have been a great chance for me to really help them one-on-one, but this particular student is an oddball conspiracy theorist who not only spent the hour asking pretty insane questions about radiation and Bin Laden viruses, but also took FOR-EV-ER to get out of there, and I couldn't close up the room till they left.

Moral: Nature abhors a vacuum, and it really f***ing loathes an ineffective teacher.

Blog Challenge: 7/25 - Spring Forward

I always forget about daylight savings time. Before I owned devices that update themselves automatically I would just have to show up early or late for a few days before I figured out what was going on.

I'm still not sure why we bother - I suppose more sunlight during the latter part of the day is nice, but what else do we get. Here are some possible benefits:

-Ensure that people who really love their routine are inconvenienced at least twice a year

-Give digital watch owners one more reason to feel supperior to their analog nemesi

-Mess with the heads of pets who had been figuring out when you wake up to feed them based on the amount of daylight

-Let those weirdos down in Arizona have their little rebellion

Blog Challenge: 6/25 - Eight Month Old Perks

We have an eight month old baby staying with us this weekend. Here are some of the obvious benefits to being that age that I have observed.

-You can almost always get what you want just by crying a little

-You can nap whenever and wherever you want

-You can fart whenever you want to and no one will look at you funny

-Actually, all of your bodily functions are considered charming for some reason

-You're allowed to get so fat that your knuckles turn into dimples

-People carry you everywhere even though you're so fat

-You can get to second base at will... even in public places

-You can smile at a stranger and they will actually smile back rather than calling the cops

Blog Challenge: 5/25 - Pay Your F***ing Taxes

Like 99.9% of Americans I would rather not pay my taxes(*). However, because I am no longer a child I understand that my desire to not pay taxes is secondary to my desire to live in a world that at least ties to give everyone a fair shot at happiness, which means I will pay them so that our elected officials can try and find a way to make that happen.

Furthermore, I understand that in the current "economic climate"(**) that a lot of people are having a harder time with the aforementioned shot at happiness, and so I'm glad to hear that the aforementioned elected officials are trying to take said tax money and help them.

So when I hear someone like Bobby Jindal get up on TV looking like Jim Henson's attempt to re-create Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock, and say that what America really needs are tax cuts and not programs designed to create jobs I have to assume one of the following things

1) He thought it was CNN's Open Mic night and he's trying out some jokes that he wasn't sure would work.

2) He's just posturing to try and gain some recognition for a presidential bin in 2012. Good luck with that.

3) He knows some secret technique by which paying less income tax will help people with no income.

4) He only cares about his wealthy constituents. Where's New Orleans again?

5) He's just some crazy guy who thinks he's a governor.


* - There are some strange fetishes out there. If paying taxes is yours then god bless you.

** - I love this phrase. If I had to liken the current economy to a climate then it would be a tobacco field in North Carolina on a 100+degree day in August right after they spread manure.

Blog Challenge: 4/25 - Bacon-Wrapped Blogging

Here are a list of things I would like to be eating right now:

-A rare steak

-A medium rare steak

-A slightly undercooked steak that was ordered as 'medium'

-Bacon-wrapped scallops

-Scallops stuffed with bacon

-Bacon-wrapped shrimp

-Bacon-wrapped dates

-Dates stuffed with blue cheese

Blog Challenge: 3/25 - The Mean Streets of Toronto

Walking in to work today I was looking at two Canadian Geese doing what geese do: pecking and defecating, when I saw something odd. A crow hopped over to where they were and started cawing at them. They responded by hissing and eventually the crow flew away.

Mentally I likened this to a racially charged exchange between rival gangs of different cultural backgrounds. The hard part was you had to assume one of the gangs was Canadian, and that's not a group that lends itself well to gangster bravado.

Try to imagine someone with a thick Canadian accent saying "This is totally our turf, eh? You'd best take off now. I'm aboot to put my size-negative-ten webbed foot in your backside!"

Blog Challenge: 2/25 - Going to Ground

Have you noticed that doors don't work anymore?

In theory they should prevent people from going through what is (at some times) an opening in a wall. Sadly, it appears that most people have evolved the physical ability to open most doors, and the emotional confidence to not worry about the consequence of walking through the door uninvited (for example: me leaping from my chair, wrapping my legs around they torso, wrapping my hands around their neck, and screeming and squeezing until they stop struggling).

So I have a modest proposal: hiding is the new door of the 21st century. If you don't want someone to come into a room and bother you then don't be in the room. Besides, you can always train an orangutang to do the jumping and squeezing bit.

Blog Challange: 1/25 - A Tale of Two Bathrooms

or "Sometimes it pays to do some exploring"

The mens room on the floor of the building where I work is disgusting. Picture the toilet that Renton dives into in the movie Trainspotting. Better yet, picture the bathroom from the original "Saw" movie.

It's cleaned every morning, but somehow by noon it becomes a post-apocalyptic wasteland of used paper towns, unidentifiably liquids, and hair.

The smell is also noteworthy. Imagine a skunk with dysentary. That's about it.

The sounds are also pretty disturbing. The constant 'tap-tap-tap' of people communicating with other human beings while commiting hygenic atrocities serves as a surreal counterpoint to what can best be described as a vaccum cleaner with its hose stuck in a bucket of pudding.

Get the picture? Good.

A few weeks ago I found myself one floor up and had to use the mens room. I walked in expecting pretty much the same seen. Instead, here's what I saw.

A clean, (relatively) pleasant smelling room that somehow seemed to have better lighting. The people who work on this floor has brought in a tasteful number of fake plants to make the place seem a bit nicer. The real kicker (and I am not making this up) is that someone has donated a CD player with a number of light jazz CDs that are played on endless look to help drown out the other noises that you would otherwise hear.

Moral: Never gamble in an alley when the casino is within walking distance.