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Andrew Lindemann Malone's Internet Playpen |
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Friday, 1/23/04: Mad About Cow Well, I defended our beef on this blog, and now I'm going to defend it on the front lines. On Sunday, I take off for Yakima, Washington, where the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Task Force has taken up residence. These are the best vets in the nation, eminent in epidemiology, talented in traceback and devastating in diagnosis, but unfortunately they are weak in writing. That's where I come in: I will collect nuggets of info from our vets and put them into an easily comprehensible form for wider dissemination. For twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for two weeks. I didn't have time to get the Weekly Movie Preview itself or its new graphics done this week, because I had some other, paid work to do in addition to preparing to go out to Washington (I'm trying to figure out how to work this government cell phone, a completely foreign experience to yours truly) and trying to get my apartment building's management to be responsive to my plight (no luck yet). But I am sympathetic to the fact that many of you depend on the Spam-O-Matic to help you while away the hours. Until February 8, you should check out these sites instead:
That should about do you.
Sunday, 1/18/04: Shut Up, Beavis Yesterday morning I had an electrical fire in my kitchen. Specifically, one of my outlets in my kitchen exploded, and I addressed the situation with the fire extinguisher from the hallway. (Kids: Always check that your fire extinguisher is certified for electrical fires before actually using it on an electrical fire, like I did. Otherwise you'll just aggravate the conflagration. When I narrated the events later, my dad assumed I had not checked, but he underestimated my safety-consciousness.) Because the fire extinguisher was certified for electrical fires, it shot not foam but a fine yellow powder, which currently is coating most of what I own. I spent about six total hours today "reclaiming my kitchen," which is a space maybe five feet by eight feet including the cabinets, by removing as much of the powder as I could so that things I cook do not taste like fire-extinguisher powder. Then I made pizza. Mmmm…pizza. Nevertheless, I am in a bad mood. The fire should not have happened, and it wasn't my fault. I'm not going to say anything more in case I need to take legal action against my management company. That's (a) how sure I am that they screwed up royal and (b) how pissed I am about it. Excuse me while I try to regain my sense of smell.
Thursday, 1/15/04: Ob-Li-Vee, Ob-Li-Va, Life Goes on While walking home from Fresh Fields today, I saw a worthy gentleman named Chris Lewis, who I know from my stint as an intern at Jazz Times. Or rather, he saw me, and called out a greeting, which I barely heard, and then strode the fifteen feet that separated us while I was still trying to figure out what was going on. I take in plenty of sensory input while I'm walking, but conversational input almost never fails to elude me; if I had a nickel for every time someone at Maryland told me they had said hi to me and I had just kept on walking, I could buy a Quarter Pounder, not that I would want to. I wish I had had some of those conversations. Some. Today, I did recognize Chris as a JT employee, and was happy to see him, because my molasses-slow brain immediately connected his face to the "worthy gentleman" part above. But I forgot his name, making this the second time this week that I have recognized a worthy gentleman and forgotten his name completely in the process. After a brief hi-how-are-ya and a furious scan of my memory banks, we parted, and then after walking not fifty feet I said "Chris Lewis!" as if the fact had never existed before. So I hope Chris reads this and knows that I do know his name and it was indeed nice to see him, regardless of how distracted I must have looked. I'm not too distracted to get this week's Weekly Movie Preview up, though. Robert and Mark won the contest, but I have to do some actual graphic design work and a drawing to do justice to their concept, so the New Feature will go unrenamed for another week.
Monday, 1/12/04: Providing a Service So far Spam-O-Matickers Robert Kahn and Mark Knoblauch have combined to submit the best idea for naming the New Feature. The polls are still open if you want a moderately priced dinner, ladies and gentlemen! People I don't know continue to send me e-mails thanking me for identifying a song featured in the movie "Double Take." I have received four messages, I think, expressing gratitude for featuring this nugget of information. Providing this nugget and discussing Carmen Electra's ass seem to be this website's primary services to the wider Internet community. The best-laid plans o' mice and men. Because my cube neighbor at work and my sister are getting married in May and June, respectively, I'm hearing a lot of wedding talk. This has led me to make the following decisions about my wedding, should I ever start dating and realize that the relationship has become serious and decide to make a committment and then successfully propose:
This sounds a lot less complicated and cheaper than the weddings my cube neighbor and my sister are preparing for, even if it is also substantially less classy. Of course, my potential wife may have something to say about this too, but as long as she's an unknown quantity I'm going to do as much planning as I can.
Wednesday, 1/7/04: The Dangers of Democracy Freaking Lyndon LaRouche is on my TV now instead of "The Simpsons," having apparently purchased the time to give voice to his, ahem, views. The LaRoucheketeers (as I call his supporters) camped out near the University of Maryland's Stamp Student Union for my entire thre years at that institution; I often see them blocking traffic to pass out material at 16th Street and Georgia Avenue. (Lyndon LaRouche: Causing Gridlock in Your Community!) Now he's taken away one of my day's simple pleasures. If I could vote to have his ass kicked, I'd pull the lever with gusto. So far (I'm listening as I type this), the special has been pretty scattershot, as LaRouche says that the world's debt cannot be paid, that Kennedy was not assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, and that LaRouche's candidacy should be respected. After all, he bought out "The Simpsons" on Fox 5! He hasn't mentioned yet that the British monarchy still secretly controls everything, which is the working thesis of his newspaper, but I'm sure he's working up to that revelation. I am not going to watch this further to find out, though. In other news, click here to see why I have canonized myself in the banner above. I'm glad someone finally saw the light and gave me my halo (well, in advance; I believe I have to die to get to the claims desk). In other news that may be more relevant to you, I have begun a new feature called the Weekly Movie Preview. It is what it sounds like it is. Therefore, suggestions for a catchier name for this fine feature are welcome. So far I came up with Cinedish, Cineouija (I just like seeing all those vowels in a row), Reply Hazy Ask Again Later, the Celluloid Prognosticator, The Swami (Not Chris Berman), Film Threat Forecaster, and of course the Cinematic Intelligence Agency. If I don't hear something better from you all, I'm going to go with that last one. If one of you supplies something better, I'll buy you a reasonably priced dinner! (I and I alone determine what "reasonably priced" means. I have very little shame.)
Sunday, 1/4/03: Convalescing I have been sick for the past few days, which is why I have not put on the Internet a message giving everyone who reads this my best wishes for a happy New Year. I've been pretty out of it a lot of the time, and I'm still hoping for some improvement this evening so I can go to work tomorrow. Notes:
Anyway, I hope you all are having fun. My New Year's Eve was really nice, and NYD with the bowls was as satisfying as fun as only a gathering of young men eating coffee cake, bacon, chips, salsa and beer can be.
Wednesday, 12/31/03 My plans for New Year's Eve are already playing out: eat homemade pizza (peppers, onion, tomato and bacon — mmmmmmm), eat cranberry sauce (nice and sour), and chill. I might go grab a piece of pie at the Tastee Diner later, but that's about it, festivities-wise, and that's not much. It just felt right this year to sit back and relax in my own company, and I have to make sure I'm awake and alert for the Gator Bowl tomorrow. (12:30 PM EST! NBC! Terps, baybee!) The resolution for this next year writing-wise (which is the only -wise that concerns most of you) is to do lots of things besides reviews of things, especially when I have ideas for such items. I'm tossing around a few ideas right now. We'll see how long the resolution lasts, but it sure makes sense — I'm not getting paid to write movie reviews, so I shouldn't make myself do it unless the spirit moves me. I should make myself write the things I'll never get paid for but that I might still enjoy. (I know "make myself" sounds bad, but after a long day of writing regulations, it takes a little mental kick in the pants to begin writing more, no matter how much I end up enjoying it.) Getting back to important matters, a couple days ago in an e-mail I referred to the Gator Bowl matchup of Maryland versus West Virginia as "Terps vs. Inbred Banjo-Plucking Troglodytes" and made some rather unflattering references to "Deliverance" in the context of the gentlemen from Robert Byrd's home state. Spam-O-Maticker Robert Kahn has informed me that if I keep talking smack about West Virginia, Jennifer Garner, an improbably lovely native of that state, will probably come to my apartment and kick my ass. So: West Virginia's bucktoothed, moonshined residents not only can't spell their state's name, they can't count the number of letters in "West Virginia" without taking off their shoes. Bring it on, Jenny. I'm waiting.
Tuesday, 12/30/03 "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" is now up in Movie Reviews. Hail Frodo and Peter Jackson! I can't remember when I've felt more satisfied coming out of a movie than I did when I came out of "Return of the King." Admittedly, satisfaction is not the condition all art aims to inspire, but I think it's actually a lot harder to make a really, honestly satisfying movie than a disturbing one. Lots more in this vein in the review. I changed the splash page again. No one bothered to guess the song I quoted from last time, so I'm quoting from the same song, which is "The Symphony" by Marley Marl featuring Masta Ace, Craig G, Kool G Rap and Big Daddy Kane. Actually, both quotes have been from Craig G's verse.
Monday, 12/29/03 So: beef. Currently, scientists have not found the prion that causes bovine spongiform encephalopathy (and, in humans, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) in any muscle tissue of any infected cow, ever. Muscle tissue consists of the parts we eat, that give us steaks and roasts and hamburger and such. In Britain, brain sausage used to be popular. It ain't now. There have been some warnings that we will find the prion there eventually, but these have been disputed by a lot of people, not all of them representatives of cattlemen's associations. Right now, our best evidence indicates that the prion only infects the central nervous system, meaning that delicious beef continues to be safe to eat. (Even the Center for Science in the Public Interest, whose primary mission seems to be attempting to put me off food I like, agrees.) I gave this evidence my personal endorsement: I ate my family's standing rib roast on Christmas Day with confidence that I was not going to get vCJD from it, and look — I'm still alive! One of the human behaviors I have become impatient with over the past few years is the way many humans take extensive action to avoid truly remote risks and just wander around into much higher risks without thinking about it too much. The most dangerous thing most of us do on a routine basis is drive a car. You're hurtling a two-ton lump of metal around at 50 miles an hour; that's never going to be a low-risk activity. Yet some of the same people who are now freaking out about the remote possibility that some part of the one known infected Albertan cow's central nervous system somehow got smeared on their ribeye not only happily purchase and drive rollover-prone SUVs but talk on their cellular phones or read the paper or [insert your favorite horror story] while doing so. The best things you can do to improve your life expectancy are (in order of increasing importance) driving safely, exercising regularly, and eating healthfully, and that last one is the only one where beef poses a real threat. (I know nothing as good as that standing rib roast can be good for me, but that's the last one for a while.) The rest is noise by comparison: things to take precautions for when appropriate, but not to freak out over. Lay off the cow spines, sure, but the actual risk that you will get vCJD from a BSE-infected cow and die is nothing that should put you off cheesesteaks. For your continuous BSE update needs, check out this page, where you can get raw unfiltered pure organic info from the USDA.
Sunday, 12/28/03 After a helpful reminder from eminent Spam-O-Maticker Mark Knoblauch, I added the proper accents to "théâtre" in my theater guide's title in order to make it truly Frenchish. I also changed "Spam-O-Matic" to "Spam-O-Matique" because I felt like it. It occurs to me, in the morning of this new day, that if I really want to be like the Guide Michélin I should assign star ratings to these theaters, but fulfilling such an ambition would require graphical machinations that I can do but don't wanna. That's how it is. I realize I wrote earlier that I would write about how safe your beef is. I promise to link to something apposite later today. I'm too wrapped up in writing a bunch of other crap to get to something I don't understand as well as other people at my workplace.
Saturday, 12/27/03 "Le Guide Spam-O-Matique de Théâtres de Washington," whose name's Frogophilia is basically pointless but whose content regarding movie houses competing for your distinctive-film dollar is invaluable, is now up in the "Consumption Reporting" section of The Rest of Our Culture. I have spent a lot of time this weekend updating this and getting the contact info correct and such. Much of it ran in the Diamondback on September 12, 2001, which of course was a huge moviegoing day in Washington, D.C., and the Dback's Web archives betray no hint of its existence, and the old one had become out of date anyway. Of all the pieces of content on this here site, I think this is the most useful. Consider it my holiday gift to Spam-O-Matickers, or at least those Spam-O-Matickers in the Washington area. Soon enough we will be back to aimless time-wasting.
Thursday, 12/25/03 Happy holidays from the Spam-O-Matic to all of you, whether you're reading this or not. May your holidays be filled with the special joy of this season. I have to cut this off so I can get to my parents' to find out about whether some specific joys are residing under a tree, but I'll write later today about why your beef is safe, dammit.
Monday, 12/22/03 It's 4:17 am. I went to bed at 1 and can't get back to sleep. This is why I hate staying up late: Something bizarre always happens when I try to get back in the rhythm. After three hours of hoping against hope for additional rest, I have resigned myself to a spectacularly unproductive day at work today and took advantage of the downtime to make the old updates archive into three separate, much smaller files. You can see the results here. I also have a great idea on what Saddam's punishment should be, now that we have rousted him from his spider hole and thoroughly checked him over for lice. Some people (President Bush, for example) feel that Saddam should be killed for his crimes against the Iraqis, but that would really let him off too easy. He'd only have to feel their fear for the length of the trial, whereas the Iraqis dwelled in the certain knowledge that they could be killed at any time for any or no reason. No, Saddam's punishment should be an ongoing one, and it should force him to endure the hopeless, dreadful absurdity of the existence he forced upon Iraqis. Then the perfect solution hit me, and it is so perfect I am going to indent it:
Everyone I have proposed this solution to so far has been rendered speechless by its brilliance (or from resultant laughter; sometimes, it's hard to tell). While we can't hang the threat of death over a man who's been imprisoned for life, we can hang the threat of making himself utterly ridiculous over and over and over again, and furthermore doing a decent job of it. I realize that Saddam is eminently eligible for the death penalty under the standards I proposed here, but sometimes death just isn't enough. Watching Charlie Sheen take on Saddam Hussein His Damn Self in "Hot Shots Part Trois," however, is something I would pay to see over and over and over, just to watch him squirm. (Watching Charlie Sheen squirm would also be fun, I suppose.)
Wednesday, 12/17/03 There are still two weeks left in the year, but I feel confident in declaring that the funniest thing that happened or will happen in 2003 was C-Murder's arrest on a second-degree murder charge and subsequent conviction. C-Murder, for those of you who do not know, is a nondescript Tupac-biting Dirty South rapper whose name is the same as the crime he was charged with. Now, I am the first person to declare that there is nothing funny about people being murdered, even if it is allegedly by the man whose name is C-Murder. All the same, I laughed out loud every time I read headlines like "C-Murder Charged With Murder." And can't you just see his defense lawyer?
Which is, in fact, what happened. Except for C-Auto Insurance Fraud, who remains at large and may well dump a hoopty into your local river and collect $5000 from that sucka insurance company.
Sunday, 12/14/03 One of the more fortunate things about my life is that I know a lot of very talented people. One of these is Susan Abbott, who has just opened up a Web store to sell giclée prints of some of her more printable watercolors. I've liked Susan's work ever since I became aware that my friend Nate's mom was an artist, and now I can actually afford it, and not due to a substantial increase in my income! If you like your arts visual, check it out. Another fortunate thing about my life is that I am a white male, which in our society means that my earning potential is higher than that of equally skilled women and minorities for no good reason. But this is not enough psychological sustenance for T.C. Williams High School's white males, at least according to Patrick Welsh, who has written a piece for today's Outlook section in which he spends most of his words quoting vague generalizations from students and himself before proposing an even vaguer solution. In that course, he takes the time to hit on a couple intelligent points — schools have pathologized typically male behavior and taught parents that boisterousness cannot be controlled without medication, and many parents seem to view wild behavior as not only a rite but a right of adolescence. He also makes an idiotic point about white males no longer being able to make the sports teams, which begs about five million questions, so that's even. I wish the Post would make Welsh do his pieces with at least a semblance of rigor: Either be conscientious about limiting his conclusions, because boy is he working with a small sample size, or do some actual research to provide context. And I wish Welsh would realize that white males who are feeling lost should suck it up and think about all the times their car didn't get stopped by police at 2 in the morning for no reason, or all the times they got to hang out with other males who only felt comfortable excluding females from their society. I occasionally feel sorry for myself due to a lot of things, but being a Y-chromosomed honky sure as hell ain't one of them.
Thursday, 12/11/03 The fun thing about a win like the one I described below, besides the fact that it is awesome, is that it gives you this sense that anything can be accomplished, that the barriers in our lives are not so forbidding as we believe them to be, that we too can contend with giants and gain the advantage. This lasted for about two hours of today's workday. Man, that was an excruciatingly long workday. A new In My Changer is up in The Rest of Our Culture. The Rest of Our Culture is probably going to get a lot more regular attention than Movie Reviews over the next few months, since that seems to be where my energies are directing themselves. I had forgotten how much fun it was to write In My Changer, and I hope to do it a lot more in the near future.
Wednesday, 12/10/03 TERPS WIN! TERPS WIN! TERPS WIN! I'm glad I was able to watch the whole thing instead of dying of a heart attack several times over during regulation, which is what I thought was going to happen. So what if Florida turned out to be a thoroughly mediocre #1 team? We were the ones who proved it to the nation, proved a lil' sumthin-sumthin about ourselves as well, and got Gary Williams his 300th win at Maryland in the process. John Gilchrist is my new favorite player, except for his propensity to foul out just before the start of overtime. He crashes the offensive boards fearlessly, he plays with intelligence, enthusiasm and inexhaustible effort, he makes pretty-looking shots in traffic. Nik Caner-Medley is my second-favorite player because he scored most of our points in overtime to beat the previously #1-ranked Florida Gators. Travis Garrison is my third-favorite player because he represented PG County by hitting the game-winning shot in overtime to beat Florida's coach, Billy Donovan, who is eminently dislikable. But really, I love all our Terps and would gladly buy any of them beer. In other news, though I cannot find a link to this anywhere, the owner of the Carolina Kitchen was on the news and said he had insurance and would rebuild. Yay! I have updated the Gentrification Diary accordingly.
Sunday, 12/7/03 Whenever I see firetrucks completely closing off a six-lane road in beautiful downtown Silver Spring, that means it's time for an update to the Gentrification Diary. Unfortunately, I may have lost a favorite restaurant to this one. The snow yesterday was very mild. The ground is covered but the sidewalks are clear, and I was out driving yesterday at 10 am with no problems. (Got a bunch of winter holiday shopping done!) It's the best snow: it covered the world for a bit and made it feel as if everything were wiped clean and could start fresh, and I didn't have to fight it to go to work. Now, when the wind whips the snow that melted and refroze overnight, swirls of crystal briefly form and then vanish outside my window. It's like magic except that it keeps recurring, to my delight.
Friday, 12/5/03 This is a red-letter day for the Spam-O-Matic: Searches related to Carmen Electra are no longer among the top three searches leading Internet wanderers to this site! The top ones are "barker's beauties," "kayne west" and "afi silver theater." The next three are "carmen electra," "carmen electra's ass," and "carmen electra makeup," but I'm glad our nation's search engines can now boast numerical evidence that the Spam ain't porn. Now we just have to find a way to let people who actually search for "spam o matic" know that we don't have bulk commercial e-mail here either.
Thursday, 12/4/03 Hey, people who are around Silver Spring a lot more than you used to be! Wondering whether any Silver Spring restaurants are worth your hard-earned cash? Should you just save your nickles and dimes to line the soon-to-be-open pockets of the food merchandising conglomerates that'll be sitting pretty in the heart of downtown? I've got the answer in "Silver Spring Independent Restaurants vs. Soulless Corporate Invaders." I may have a little ax to grind here, but I also know where you can fill your gullet not only satisfactorily but happily. Check it out.
Sunday, 11/30/03 A video available here (in Windows Media Player format) has created quite a stir in the nerd community: In it, someone identified in the characters of an indeterminate Asian language beats Super Mario Brothers 3 in 11 minutes. In real time. You think I'm lying, but I'm not. (Actually, most of you think I'm lying; some of you think this is one of those crazy generational artifacts, which is correct. Leave the rest of us alone.) Remember the article Seth Stevenson wrote for Slate in which he discussed his amazing talent for a Dance Dance Revolution-type game and told us "how beautiful was my gift" for this game? Seth Stevenson's gift for that game is like unto a Medusa compared to the gift of this man whose name I cannot even begin to read for the greatest video game of my childhood. (I assume the player is a man because on the levels in which Mario's speed is limited by the scrolling of the background, he occupies his time by jumping on things in succession so that he acquires a truly sick number of 1UPs. Only a man, I contend, would think to while away such dead moments by showing off his virtuosity in such a manner.)
Friday, 11/28/03 Depsite the fact that the holiday season "officially" begins today, you may well already need relief from it, especially since WASH-FM ("The Station Whose Blandness is Never Offensive") started playing holiday music before Halloween. The more cynical of you will want to park yourselves in your local cinema and see "Bad Santa." It worked for me! I also saw "The Matrix Revolutions" recently, but I can't for the life of me think of anything interesting to say about it. It has one cool fight and a couple cool battle scenes, and if you saw the first two you'll be happier if you see "Revolutions" than if you don't. That's all I got. The hole in the reviews section is looming at me, though. Maybe I'll try to pound out 400 words on it tomorrow.
Thursday, 11/27/03 Happy Thanksgiving! As always, among the myriad things I am thankful for is that people actually read this site. To the original Spam-O-Matickers, strangers who've taken a shine to my writing, Carmen Electra and Bob Barker enthusiasts, bored people referred here from more interesting sites, and especially editors looking to pay someone a truly vast sum of money to churn out characterful copy on the arts and issues of the day, I give my gratitude. To everyone not reading this, you suck.
Wednesday, 11/26/03 My consumer tip of the day: At my 7-Eleven, tubes of garishly brown caramel corn dubbed "Two Feet of Holiday Corn" have now appeared by the cash register, partially blocking one's view of the Lotto machine. (I assume caramel corn becomes "holiday corn" sometime around November 25.) They might even be longer than two feet, though I haven't brought down the yardstick to measure yet, and they're about five inches across. Curious as to whether anyone finds this product appealing, I asked the 7-Eleven cashier whether he had sold any (after buying my Junior Mints, of course). "It's $9.99," he said. Trying not to bug my eyes at the price, I said, "No, have you actually sold any of these yet?" "Yes," he said, smiling. "I can tell you that I have sold one." So apparently one person at least has decided that two feet of caramel corn — excuse me, "holiday corn" — is worth ten bucks. I just don't know what you would use it for. As a holiday gift, it's not even December yet. For personal use, it's a weight-gain mechanism par excellence, I'm sure, but for taste it looked terrible. And two feet by five inches' worth? Whatever. The worst thing is that we'll see worse soon. The tip: Just remember to ask yourself before pulling our your wallet: Would this product seem completely idiotic were it not December?
Tuesday, 11/25/03 Today we had a 5K at work. I ran it in 25:34. That's just over 5 minutes per K! Or to put it in American units, it's damn close to 8 minutes a mile. I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now. When I have time to write something, I promise I will write it and then put it up here. Promises are all you're getting until someone shows up with the dough. I'm fine with it like this, though.
Friday, 11/21/03 Is it bad to see a film just to review it? I'm talking, of course, about "Cat in the Hat." On merit alone, I'd likely eschew it, but this review proves there's more to it than that. On top of that, I'm now reading The Golden Gate, a novel that's written in Pushkin-form sonnets, the first effort by the now-famed Vikram Seth. (Yes, that rhymes.) I'd try to improve upon it, but given the constraint of coming up with a plot and characters who have traits other than mine, experience proves that I probably cannot. On the other hand, I've done just fine with rhyming reviewing other times in the past, and writing the review, regardless of my verdict, would likely for me be a mind-blowing blast, just finding the proper way in which to word it. For more Seussian play, check out the Daily Quickie, ESPN.com's news summary by Dan Shanoff. His metrical flow gets a little bit sticky, but in rhyming he has some fun getting his brain off.
Thursday, 11/20/03 My man Jordan Baker and his website pastepunk.com got dissed by some punk on the Internet. I am declaring here and now that I officially have J-Dawg's back. Why have I taken this controversial position? Let's break it down:
Status of parties to dispute with respect to me:
Motivation:
Site design (the quantity at issue)
The choice of whose back to have is obvious. My gigantic biceps are now at J-Dawg's service, should he choose to open a can of whoop-ass.
Sunday, 11/16/03 "How the State Can Just Kill a Man" is my explanation of the conditions in which, if I were in charge, I would direct the state to execute criminals, as applied to John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. I do not actually think I am in charge. I've just been thinking about this a lot lately, and when I sat down to write it I found it was mostly already written; I just had to transcribe. Your thoughts on this one especially are welcome. If the record-setting traffic of the last coupla days is because of human beings and not bots scrambling over my sexy links, I admire your dedication and thank you for your attention. (On Friday the Spam-O-Matic sent 806 pages to interested Internet parties, which is about two-and-a-half times the number of pages I actually have on the site, and yesterday it sent 615, which would otherwise have been the record.) Wasting your time is my continuing goal, and if interested Internet parties have a lot of time to waste, I will do my best to step up and meet your needs. If you're bots, pretend those last few sentences were written in binary.
Tuesday, 11/11/03 I changed the old-school rap parody on the splash page. A prize goes to the first person who correctly identifies the song from which I am borrowing! (Disclaimer: Prize may be utterly valueless.)
Sunday, 11/9/03 Pissed at the world and looking to splurge, I went into Fresh Fields (which is actually Whole Foods, but which I call Fresh Fields even though it is manifestly not a Fresh Fields and Fresh Fields doesn't even exist anymore) and came out with $4.99 worth of Bone Suckin' Mustard. I'm hoping the name means that I don't have to make even the most basic efforts to make myself attractive to women anymore, at least until the jar is empty. Perhaps I will slather my thick, crusty baguette with Bone Suckin' Mustard when I go to Teton Village for the Jackson Hole Tasting. I feel much better about the world when it allows me to make junior high-type puns. • My site reports (here, in case you care) show the 30 most popular search queries that led people to the Spam-O-Matic. One of these is "due where's my car," which has brought in 11 people. The Spam-O-Matic is popular with people who can't spell! Of course, one then notices that the HTML file linked to in the previous sentence is titled "dudwheresmycar.html," but no one really sees that, unless the creator of the site points out the error. Maybe I'm getting the traffic I deserve. This is one of the most depressing articles I've ever read. Sometimes I have ideas for 300-400 word arguments about things: not the length of a normal article as such, but too focused and light on links for the blog. I think I've decided that these should go in their respective sections on the site and just be the length they are. So there may be more content soon. Or maybe not.
Saturday, 11/8/03 I just saw the Daedalus Quartet, which consists of Spam-O-Maticker Jessi Thompson on viola and three people I don't know on the other instruments, play Beethoven's String quartets Op. 135 and Op. 59 no. 2 and Hindemith's String quartet, Op. 22. The quartet played extremely well. Unfortunately, these works are three of the most neurotic in the string-quartet literature (a literature that is well supplied with neurotic works), so Jessi and company's extremely good playing reduced me to a quivering mass of psychological troubledness before the night was over. I mean, Op. 135 has enough in it to keep my mind in turmoil for the rest of the night, and they played it first. Jessi compared it (after the concert) to getting really drunk at the start of a party, which is a good analogy. Nevertheless, these are some fine players, especially Jessi, and you should pony up the dough for a ticket next time they come to your town. For example, on February 6th, they will be at the Grand Teton Music Festival in Teton Village, Wyoming, which should sound like a good time to anyone who enjoys juvenile humor. Heh-heh. Tetons. Happily, the Jackson Hole Wine Auction 2003 is associated with this festival, which geometrically expands one's opportunities for immature puns. But I shouldn't make fun: The Daedalus Quartet holds the key to world peace, according to someone from Canada, and don't they know a lot about that. Specifically, this is what a reviewer in the Toronto Globe and Mail said about one Daedalus concerts:
Bush did invade Iraq to rid the world of all those plentiful WMD after this review was written, but he had probably not attended a Daedalus Quartet concert in the interim.
Wednesday, 11/5/03 Last night I dreamed that Denzel Washington and Clint Eastwood were teaching a literature course in a lodge somewhere in the mountains. In the course of our lesson, I gave an impassioned speech to the effect that all white people are racist, not due to conscious intent but to the effects of a society that deals in stereotypes rather than people. (For the record, I believe that strongly when I'm awake, too.) Denzel applauded, after which a couple female students paid flirtatious attention to me in order to ingratiate themselves with Denzel. I have no idea what Clint was doing there. Anyway, that wasn't an improvement mood-wise on dreaming of co-workers, but after dragging myself through my subsequent hour-and-a-half of exercise I felt much better. Today I hauled ass from work a couple minutes early after someone came on the building-wide intercom and informed us that a Severe Thunderstorm was bearing down on us and a tornado had been wreaking havoc elsewhere. All I ever saw was rain. Not even that much rain. I should have known better, because this announcement came from the same Safety and Health staff that previously produced e-mails essentially telling us:
If this is safety and health, I'm going to be rash and sick, and I'm going to plant my behind in the path of any future storms my office alerts me to.
Tuesday, 11/4/03 A progression of thought I had this morning: 6:23 am (while making sandwich): I hate when I have dreams that involve people at work and then I have to go to work and interact with them again. It's oppressive. To the extent that I can read and capture personalities, they seem exactly the same in the dreams as they do at work. What fascinates my subconscious so with these people? Why can't I dream of strange and wondrous things instead of hunting lodges filled with my co-workers for some reason? 6:25 am (still making sandwich): You know, it's incredibly strange that we go to work and spend the majority of our waking hours hanging around with people we don't, for the most part, like all that much. Time with people we actually like is a special occasion, part of that precious time away from all the people we either dislike or are indifferent to. Is this what Jean-Paul Sartre and Mobb Deep were thinking of when they declared that hell is other people and we are living in hell on earth, respectively? 6:28 am (cutting up carrot): But it's not like that's new with work. In school, we mostly had to deal with people we didn't like all that much. And before school, I was in daycare, and I had to try to make friends with the neighborhood kids… 6:31 am (brushing teeth): And you know, it's not particularly surprising, because most people in the world don't like each other all that much. I mean, when you go to parties, what generally happens? Everyone's trying to be nice to strangers to see whether they might like each other. That's not what happened at your birthday party, of course; at your birthday party everyone freestyled incompetently and sang over songs they barely knew. It was fun. 6:40 am (putting on socks): Admit it: You like most people. At least at the level you have to interact with them at work. And you're going to work real soon. 6:47 am (leaving apartment): Let's think about the classic hip-hop song "La Di Da Di," by Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh, instead of that crap about not liking everybody: La di da di We like to party We don't cause trouble We don't bother nobody… I had a bunch more mood caroms ("swings" feels like an understatement) thoughout the day. This Indian summer is nasty for my tender psyche. I'll do what I have to.
Saturday, 11/1/03 Quote of the Week:
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