December 2011
1 post
5 tags
August 2011
1 post
Yeah, that would have been nice...
Via Wikipedia:
Yum! Brands Chairman David C. Novak is credited with introducing the Crystal Pepsi concept. In a December 2007 interview,[10] he stated:
It was a tremendous learning experience. I still think it’s the best idea I ever had, and the worst executed. A lot of times as a leader you think, “They don’t get it; they don’t see my vision.” People were...
July 2011
4 posts
In which I thwart Adam.
Me: a problem with Buffy season six--if Warren could build sophisticated robots, why wasn't he just making legitimate millions?
Stephen: Or freeze rays. I feel like this is a common issue with super-villains.
Me: This is true. But all the other Buffy villains were supernatural and operated in those worlds.
Me: Or, like the Mayor, had actually achieved material success.
Stephen: I think he's in the Lex Luthor mold- a legitimate genius motivated by obsession to kill the hero.
Me: One way of looking at it I suppose. Though the obsession seems to come later in the season.
Me: After he's already decided to go down this not as profitable as it could be path.
Stephen: maybe there's a deleted scene that explains his descent into crime is really a critique of patent law.
Me: curses, you win again.
Stephen: And thus Adam turned to super-villainy.
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On Girls, Boys, and Appearance
I went to a dinner party at a friend’s home last weekend, and met her five-year-old daughter for the first time.
Little Maya was all curly brown hair, doe-like dark eyes, and adorable in her shiny pink nightgown. I wanted to squeal, “Maya, you’re so cute! Look at you! Turn around and model that pretty ruffled gown, you gorgeous thing!”
But I didn’t. I squelched...
June 2011
1 post
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May 2011
3 posts
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San Francisco Food Recommendations
I love San Francisco, but I lived there so briefly that most of my friends know it far better than I do. When my friend Adam asked for dining recommendations, I turned it over to them, and I got a lot of good responses, but my other friend Adam’s response was epic:
So if I were visiting from DC, I would focus heavily on Asian food because it’s several notches above almost anything...
April 2011
8 posts
3 tags
Congratulations to my little brother.
My little brother passed the bar exam, making him an official law-talking-guy. Congratulations, James!
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Around The Margins
I know a guy that complains about a TV show he’d like to watch. It looks like a good program, he says, but there are gay characters and “they shouldn’t be allowed to show that sort of thing” on television. He’d like a law that would allow him to watch a show about a high school glee club without worrying that he might see someone gay.
The show would apparently be...
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On Doctor Who
My first experience with the Doctor came relatively late in life, on Christmas Eve a few years ago. My then 11-month old daughter had a nasty respiratory virus that required us to sit up with her through the night, and I needed something to keep myself awake while I rocked her. On a whim, I decided to watch the new Doctor Who series.
I’d never watched the classic series, but I’d absorbed...
4 tags
Life and Death - a brief note
I learned last night that an acquaintance passed away suddenly. I’ve offered my condolences elsewhere, and I don’t want to cheapen the grief of those who knew him better, so I won’t dwell on him except to say he was someone that I liked and respected, and I wish I’d had a chance to know him better.
He was thirty years old. I’m thirty-four.
He was engaged. Today is...
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On Pete, Which is Not His Real Name
Pete must have been about thirty-five years old, and he terrified me. We worked together as waiters in a little tourist town restaurant that served decent Italian food and overpriced wine. On summer nights, when the dinner rush came late if it came at all, we’d have several idle hours together, and I got to know him pretty well.
I’m sure he’d been good looking once, but now he was middle-aged and...
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Flattery Gets You Linked
I’m running on a killer sleep deficit, and trying to be productive anyway, so I don’t have much time to comment, but over at Cloud Culture, Time-traveling Super Blogger™ Adam Gurri offers some thoughts on friendships, digital and analog, and makes some nice comments about yours truly.
Check it out.
7 tags
My Book Diet
I take a perverse pleasure in quitting things. For me, the smug satisfaction of self-improvement nearly always mitigates the feeling of loss and sacrifice. Among other things, and at various times, I’ve given up meat, red meat, drinking, smoking, and dating. Of these, only smoking cessation really stuck, and that came only after many false starts (false stops?). I’ve found that by quitting...
March 2011
6 posts
4 tags
On My Home
I’m in Alabama. It’s six o’clock on a morning in late March, and I’m sitting on the back patio of my wife’s parents’ house. I’m wearing pajamas, but I’m not wearing shoes. The Gulf Coast is lovely in the Spring. Allow me to forget for the moment that it’s a bitch in Summer.
I grew up in Alabama, suffering most of my education and waiting out the better part of my twenties within its borders. I...
6 tags
Happy Birthday Carson Hope Harred
Dear Carson Hope,
It’s your first birthday today. That’s why we all stood around your crib singing at you when you first woke up this morning. I hope you enjoyed it. We sure did.
Parents aren’t supposed to compare their children. It’s impolite and possibly damaging, but it’s also inevitable. We humans are sorting machines, and our brains demand that we tick off a...
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Cory Doctorow on Perfect Strangers
It’s worth noting for historical purposes that popular science fiction writer Cory Doctorow offered a capsule review of the 1980s Miller-Boyett sitcom Perfect Strangers:
The stories are read by Bronson Pinchot, whom you’ll remember from his role as “Balki” on the sitcom “Perfect Strangers.” This wasn’t the greatest TV ever produced, and Pinchot’s...
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On Blog Comments
I changed the default theme of the blog and accidentally disabled commenting, and I think I’m going to leave it off for a while (or possibly permanently).
I’ve considered removing the comments section for a while, but I hesitated because it seems unfriendly to speak without seeming to listen, and because there’s the Internet truism about building readership through community.
...
4 tags
Passports, Diabetes, Poverty
BoingBoing posted these two maps comparing passport ownership for different US regions with prevalence of diabetes:
I thought I’d go one better. Here’s a poverty rate map:
It’s obviously no coincidence that our unhealthiest regions are often our poorest and that fewer people there are going to be interested in international travel.
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Practical Advice
“Need to boil water? Cover the pot.
I know some of you are like, “A-duh,” but I didn’t know until about two years ago that a covered pot comes to boil much faster than an uncovered one.
see more tips from Cheap. Healthy. Good.
And no, I had no idea.
February 2011
6 posts
3 tags
How to Fold a Fitted Sheet
Via Charlie Stross:
“Like any new thing you learn, it might feel awkward at first.”
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A Word on Egypt (but not mine).
From a good friend’s Facebook status:
“I hope every parent in Cairo takes their child to Tahrir Square tonight. One of the best things my parents ever did for me was to take me to the Opera Square in Timisoara the day Ceausescu ran away. It’s a once in a lifetime chance to see what collective effervescence really feels like.”
Once in several lifetimes, I think....
4 tags
Batman and Robin
via Tor.com
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Brief Review: Temple Grandin
I’ve been interested in animal behaviorist (and slaughterhouse designer) Temple Grandin since I first read about her in Oliver Sacks’s An Anthropologist on Mars, and last night we finally watched last year’s HBO film about her.
The script does a good job, but it’s pretty biopic-y, and I was annoyed by the extended “door opening” metaphor. On the plus...
January 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Strangetastic Relaunch
FYI - I recently re-launched my other website, Strangetastic, as Tumblr blog devoted to ghost stories and other spooky tales.
This is the third or fourth iteration of the site, and I’m hoping this version proves sustainable. If I had time, I’d write a long post about the previous failures, but I don’t so I’ll just summarize: it didn’t work, so I’m trying...
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This Morning's 5 Stages of Grief
Why is the breakfast taco place so dark this morning? They can’t be closed.
What do you mean you’ve stopped serving breakfast? I spend $25 a week on breakfast tacos.
I bet I can make breakfast tacos at home.
Eating these homemade breakfast tacos makes me feel like my dog died.
I guess I’ll never have breakfast tacos again.
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Tweeting Your Epitaph
On Friday, I joked that people should have to spend one day a year wearing their internet comments on a sandwich board. On Saturday, a man walked up to a United States Congresswoman and shot her through the head. He shot an wounded 17 other people, and killing six. Among the dead was a 9-year-old girl who’d wanted to meet the politician because she’d recently been elected to her...
There's only one rule.
“There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
-Kurt Vonnegut
7 tags
Shootings
A 9-year-old girl died today because she went to meet her congressperson. I can deal with everything else that happened today because it’s all happened before. We expected it would happen.
But a little girl getting gunned down at a town hall meeting? That’s fucked up.
I’m going to kiss my daughters goodnight and go to bed, thankful that I still can and heartbroken for parents...
6 tags
Review: Toothless
A confession: I have a near allergy to the sword-and-sorcery branch of the fantasy genre. There’s no good reason for this, some of my favorite books are firmly ensconced in the tradition, but I never buy them and I have to be forced at sword point to read them, so I doubt I would have picked up J.P. Moore’s Toothless on my own. Not that Toothless is even properly part of the genre,...
8 tags
Two Years of "Pay Attention"
I started this blog two years ago tonight. It’s a measure of the kind of man I am that I not only started a blog on New Year’s Eve, but I continue to be available for anniversary posts.
At the time, I was still reeling from a year of massive change in my life. I was new to fatherhood, relatively new to marriage, and I’d just moved halfway across the country from the place where...
December 2010
5 posts
6 tags
Film Review: True Grit
The first thing you need to know about True Grit is that it really is a Coen Brothers film. It is every bit as arch and precious as Fargo, and like that film, True Grit is meant to be brutal and funny at the same time. In fact, most of the humor comes from the brutality. The message being that life in this Western-era of America was nasty, brutish, and short and isn’t that hilarious.
...
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Blood Type Silliness
I’m churlish enough today to point out that Andrew Sullivan is prone to silliness, and this post from his blog is a perfect example:
David Zax interviews Israeli venture capitalist Jacob Burak, author of bestsellers “Do Chimpanzees Dream of Retirement” and “Noise.” Here Burak explains the demographic make-up of successful entrepreneurs:
“Blood type B is found...
5 tags
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Repealed
I’m happy about this news. Congratulations to all of you who serve our country with honor despite being treated as a second class citizen or as a ticking time bomb. For those of you for whom this comes too late, I’m sorry.
The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is the first gay rights issue I can remember being aware of. I was in high school when President...
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Film Review: "Cropsey"
Cropsey isn’t a great documentary, but it is a really good one. As a work, it exists somewhere in the continuum between a cable news “true crime” special and a self conscious film school project.
The title refers to a variation of the familiar “homicidal maniac” urban legends specific to Staten Island. Like all legends, there are as many versions as there are...
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Another One Rides the Bus
Because I love Weird Al, and I loved Tom Snyder.
November 2010
8 posts
4 tags
About Brandon
Today is my friend Brandon’s birthday. Let me tell you about the time he saved my life.
I’ve known Brandon for an astonishing 27 years. We met on a Sunday night in church when were both seven years old, and we’ve been friends ever since. Our lives have diverged at times, and other times they’ve seemed almost identical. Through it all, he’s been the single constant in...
5 tags
Deficit? Solved!
Hey guys, thanks to the New York Times, I’ve totally solved the deficit! You’re welcome.
Seriously though, this tool isn’t perfect, but it’s a good exercise and makes clear some of the painful choices we may face in the future. If you follow the link above, you’ll find mine. I’m sure no one will be surprised that I opted to cut military spending while leaving...
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Happy Birthday, Cloud Culture.
My friend Adam’s blog turns 2 years old today. Since we met via a post he wrote, I’m very happy to celebrate Cloud Culture.
UPDATE: And because he’s a time-traveling super blogger, Adam has another blog that’s celebrating a sixth birthday.
Jeez.
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Carl Sagan: Pale Blue Dot
In honor of Carl Sagan’s birthday:
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Lookin' Out My Back Door
Because I am in a good mood. Have a good weekend:
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Review: AMC's The Walking Dead
There’s a term for the pacing of modern comic books: decompression. If you read a comic book any time before the mid-90s, you’ll find it’s paced at breakneck speed with page after page of small frames full of text and dialogue. Since the mid-90s, the trend has been toward slower pacing, less text, and more full page images.
All of this allows the writer/artist to develop mood...
5 tags
Some Halloween Snapshots
I hope your life is as good as mine.