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.