embarrassing food revelations

I newly, dearly, and enthusiastically love Soy Vay Teriyaki sauce.

What's embarrassing? Let me put it to you this way... I had never had it before until I bought the first bottle 2-3 weeks ago. I accidentally dropped it on the kitchen floor while unpacking groceries and it made a sticky, goopy mess. But it smelled so good I couldn't help but dab my finger in the broken-glass-strewn puddle and risk my tongue to have a taste. Delicious. So I bought another bottle. But that bottle, every time I take it out of the fridge for potstickers, or just on rice... well, I sneak a little swig of it.

Yes, I've come to terms with the statement: I do shots of teriyaki sauce. I'm not ashamed. I think.

The sweet and salty, with enough chunks of ginger, garlic, sesame to chew a little bit at the end.. This is a sickness, isn't it? I bought my 3rd bottle today. Not because I was out of it, but because was going to be out, and I don't want to not have any when the craving hits me.

The other revelation is about popcorn. I've always wanted a hot air popper, so I finally went out and spent the $22 on one, and now I'm stylin'. The thing is, I always thought "corn is corn". I mean heck, how big of a deal is dried out corn? Well, I have learned that the people I was scoffing at all those years buying fancypants dried corn kernels - well, that's me. I now see how the $1.99 2lb bag of crinkled, ugly kernels is not exactly a bargain. They pop all weird, small, and unsatisfying. When I'm out of this stuff, I'm buying the fancypants stuff.

it'll do for now.

Loyal and devoted readers will remember a certain broken bike from last season. Well, due my lack of disposable income and the simple existence of winter, that bike sat around something fierce. Not being able to put it down, not wanting to spend money to make it healthy. Something to be said for not throwing good money after bad.

But the thing is, it's getting really, really, reallllly pretty out, and the dirt trails have been calling to me somethin' fierce. So I gave in... I've got a crappy wheel that was just laying around, and it works. But the derailleur hanger, that was a different trick. Last weekend, I got by with a little help from a friend. M got a new TIG welder and would let me use it, so I went about fixin' me some bike. I had a loose replaceable derailleur hanger, access to TIG, a burning desire, a steady hand, and intentional ignorance of the possiblity of failure.

Now, former fellow bike mechanics and metallurgy professors of mine will surely be horrified to see that I welded a wrought alloy to a cast alloy. But you know what? It might not be kosher, but I really don't care right now. There is simply so much that is wrong with this bike that it's just time for something new. But I'm still not in a financial comfort zone (at least not for a few months) and so I just want to ride in the meantime. What other compelling reasons are there for the retirement of this bike?

- 125 mm rear axle spacing really limits wheel(hub) and drivetrain options.
- Limping along on a crappy junker rear wheel.
- Hardnose/hardtail (i.e. rigid, non suspension) frame... it's served me well, but the riding out in Arizona on the big rocks has shown me how keeping wheels in contact with the earth can be beneficial to traction... especially in those high-pucker-factor moments when pointed downhill at speed into The Chunky. I do, however, like passing the sissies on the $3000 bikes who marvel that someone can even ride on trails [gasp!] without the cushy boing-boing bikes. So I'll miss that part, surely. Of course, I'll be one of those sissies sometime soon, but only by half.
- Aluminum. I'm done with it. Great to make airplanes out of, I'm sure, but I'm a Clydesdale and honestly, I'm thinking steel. A bike with some chutzpah to it. Not a single-speed noodle-bar freak bike, but not something that's made 3 million at a time in a sweatshop somewhere.

So many things the bike needs, that I'm just not interested in throwing good money after bad:
- New middle chainring. Now that it's not single-speeded anymore, I had to put more chain on, so I put a new chain on, but the worn out ring made such a problem that I had to dig up old worn out chain, and that's what's on there now. Don't get me started that it's a Wipperman spliced with a section of Shimano in it. Yet another kludge-job to limp along on.
- New rubber. Tire sidewalls excessively crackly. But why spend $100 on tires when I'm in the market for a whole new ride?
- Aggravating U-brake setup.
- 7-speed thumbshifters on a banged-up short cage XT derailleur. Not so crisp with the shifting any more.
- I've already blown out 2 freewheels (i.e. broken all the pawls) in the life of this bike, and this one doesn't seem too healthy. But no one makes freewheels anymore, and besides, it's a 125 mm rear, so that's a problem too.

Anyway, why am I complaining? Just ride the fucking thing, I sez to myself.

I'm not ready to stimulate (nay, rub the the nipples of) the economy, but when I am, it's going to be with a bike, not some stupid fucking iPhone. (we'll ignore for the moment that I'm actually shopping for a new phone these days too)

Hardy's "Apology"

I've had it laying about and been meaning to get to it, and tiny little thin wisp of a book (not much more than an essay) called "A Mathematician's Apology" by G.H Hardy. Written 70 years ago, in a British style that sometimes takes my American eyes a second glance to adjust to, there's all sorts of nuggets that I latch onto as an expression of something similar to what I was trying to say, sometime, in some conversation, to someone, at some point or other.

Hardy regards the comparison between the nature of chess (or puzzles) as problems/questions of mathematics, and the proofs of mathematical theorems:

In the first place, the superiority of the mathematical theorems in seriousness is obvious and overwhelming. The chess problem is the product of an ingenious but very limited complex of ideas, which do not differ from one another very fundamentally and have no external repercussions.

This, I like. Specifically, on seriousness. It's one thing to think an idea important, or fundamental to a topic of study. But is it serious? Not how stern it is, nor whether it lacks whimsy, but the scope of "external repercussions".

How art or poetry are patterns, like mathematics, but constructed of colors and words rather than ideas and that it is ideas that have permanence greater than objects or languages or colors or sounds. That a prime number is always a prime number - across generations, eons, cultures, and (at the risk of sounding too poufy) across space and time.

A painting may embody an 'idea', but the idea is usually commonplace and unimportant. In poetry, ideas count for a good deal more; but as Housman insisted, the importance of ideas in poetry is habitually exaggerated: 'I cannot satisfy myself that there are any such things as poetical ideas... Poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it.'

And as this sudden sleepless morning draws on for me, I leave off with this little bit that I keep touching back to:

There are many highly respectable motives which may lead men [sic] to prosecute research, but three which are much more important than the rest. The first (without which the rest must come to nothing) is intellectual curiosity, desire to know the truth. Then, professional pride, anxiety to be satisfied with one's performance, the shame that overcomes any self-respecting craftsman when his work is unworthy of his talent. Finally, ambition, desire for reputation, and the position, even the power or the money, which it brings. It may be fine to feel, when you have done your work, that you have added to the happiness or alleviated the sufferings of others, but that will not be why you did it.

2 things right, 1 thing wrong... I'm calling it *win*

Have I mentioned I really enjoy FailBlog? No, I haven't. I haven't mentioned much lately. Anyway... whoomp, there it is.

But more importantly, can you put your nerd hat on and spot the two things right with this picture?


The first one is easy - it's in the upper left hand corner, it's starts with "b", rhymes with "eer", and is dark and delicious.

The second thing that is currently judged as most awesomeness is the USB-powered 5MHz digital oscillioscope, datalogger, spectrum analyzer, and arbitrary function generator, for only $250. Picoscope, you fucking rock. For all the nerds out there that deal with integrating disparate systems and the wacky questions that come up about line noise, dropped encoder counts, and any of a billion ponderables (but not-easily-answerables) there's halfway decent o'scopes out there for about the same price as your trusty Fluke 77. Picoscope isn't the only one out there making products like this, but I just got one, and it looks like it's gonna come in really handy in the ol' bag-o'-tricks that you don't always need, but comes in really handy when you do.

And so you're wondering - what one thing is wrong with this picture? Count it as 3, maybe... location, location, location. What kind of fucking dork brings instrumentation into a bar and plays with it while drinking beer? Well, tonight... it was this particular dork, thank you very much. Whatever. I don't care. The box arrived with the widget, I wanted to play with it, I wanted a beer. So that's what happened.

I'm still calling it a win.

irrational fears

Whenever I'm walking with my keys in my hand, I'm always on the lookout for drains, sewer grates, and other sorts of crevasses with abysses below. Why? Because the simplest lapse of attention or fumble means that the keys disappear, never to be seen again, and I'm locked out of my car, stranded somewhere, locked out of my house, etc. etc. Especially troubling is the 1-2" gap on the floor as I cross into an elevator. Somehow, that abyss is a more perilous abyss than the sewer grate. Don't get me started about my key and wallet security concerns when leaning over/against a railing over a bridge...

So I put my keys in my pocket all the time, even if it's only for 15 seconds.

I wonder - is this some sort of subconscious mistrust in my own ability to hold on? Or putting too much importance on self-reliance? Or fear of the unknown? Or fear of lack of control? All rhetorical questions, but just what I'm wondering to myself at the moment.

On Sincerity.

The other day during a momentary break in the rhythms of the day/hour/moment of the project, in one of those space-filling conversations at the table between me and two other guys (both of them about 10 years my senior, we'll call them Stretch and Stripey), Stretch makes an offhand comment-ey question asking "can you explain how your generation got so cynical about everything?" Now, I don't recall any particular cynical talk that preceded it, but Stripey chimed in with some agreeable mutterings, so apparently the opinion is not an isolated one.

I felt I had to respond, especially since I take great pains in my personal life to Give A Shit about certain things. Frankly, I fear for the minds of the trendoid hipsters with their wallet chains and skinny jeans and adoration of 80's fashion that have tried to make Irony the meta-fad. Like that marginal 20% of undergraduate art students who have no talent, or eye, or skill, or intent and try to use kitsch as some sort of statement... In both cases (irony and kitsch), what it shows is simply laziness, and even worse, dishonesty about that laziness. Trying to disguise that laziness in some sort of mumbo-jumbo about Lo-Fi this or "weaving a narrative of unspoken voices from the debris cast off from a throw-away society" that.

... blah, blah, blah.

But back to Irony. The thing is, I've been thinking about it lately... about how criticism serves only organization, and never creation. That derivative work requires a steady stream of original work. That while there are very few Truly New Ideas, attempting to find that daylight between centuries of Prior Art can, while bouncing against them, actually create its own daylight. Good ideas are easy - doing them is where it's at. Web 2.0, 3.0... 17.x might be great strides for blogging, twittering, or whatever-comes-next, but advancing biology requires petri dishes. Google Earth is a wonderful toy/tool, but the construction of bridges will always require someone to have taken a core sample or place survey stakes. And art will not just make itself.

I've started to see others similarly rejecting Irony. Like bacon, Irony has jumped the shark. Hipster/Mod/Fad Irony, that is. (there will always be irony just like there will always be tragedy, comedy, and satire.)

... but as I'm starting to explain that I sincerely think that Irony has jumped the shark and that Sincerity Is The New Black, they interrupt me with their laughter - about how crafty I am, responding to observations of my generation's cynicism with a cynical description of sincerity painted in an ironic way. ("AHA! I know, that you now, that I know, that you know, that...")

But see... I was being sincere. About sincerity. Circular, but sincere nevertheless.

So whither and whence the origin of yonder cynicism and irony? Maybe it is so ingrained that I can't even see it as it subconsciously leaks out. Or maybe it what I've learned to do because the previous generation expected it, so I learned to deliver it. Maybe it's all they could hear when I opened my mouth because that's what their ears are trained to hear. Or maybe the source of it, the handing down through the years, is what has brought it so strongly to its current height of fashion.

wow.

just... wow. I want to fly too now.


wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

oh yeah, well fuck you too...

Yeah, I've been out of blogging mode for a while, and while part of that has to do with just being busy, part of it has to do with internal dialogues about sharing too much vs. not being interesting to read. I guess I'm in one of those transitional areas where I'm skittish about potentially sounding like just a complainer, but also not interested in being boring or composing something eminently disposable.

Well, it kind of pushed me over the edge, this day of mine. That which, over the course of the day included:

- Day 3 of getting through a cold/flu.

- Having to listen to constant, yet subtle insinuated and veiled racist, sexist, homophobic chit chat among people working in the SE Michigan auto industry. Yes, I'm talking to you, Big Three/UAW. You have a huge culture problem among your mid/high-seniority people - they are a bad example to the younger generation of workers, and offensive to anyone with a decent bone in their body. It's not one incident, it's not "just a few bad apples". I'm so tired of it, but like many people these days, I need the job, and that means not being "difficult" about such things, so I just keep my mouth shut and my blood pressure down.

- Noticing multiple, clearly intentional scratches on my car that indicate that I got the "key those fuckers" treatment in the parking lot at a GM site. I don't drive a GM vehicle, and in your actions, you've ensured that I never will. You can't intimidate people into buying your cars. It's not surprising that Toyota & Honda are kicking your ass in sales and quality. I have no sympathy for you, or your austerity measures caused by your bailout. The only power consumers have to negotiate with is their wallets and feet - walk away or not. So fuck you - my dollars will go elsewhere.

- Getting home to a message on the machine from the fraud prevention division of my credit card company about suspicious purchases on my card, which turned out to be good that they called me. Seems that someone wanted to buy some World of Warcraft and other computer gaming crap, as well as a hotel room in the UK, with my card. Well, I'm glad they (fraud prevention people) caught it, but I'm not happy about it, for obvious reasons. Having my card declined last night now makes sense, and now it's canceled and chopped into tiny pieces.

- Idiots commenting.

There was more... more that made today bad. And I was soaking in it, riding it somewhere mushrooms would grow. Somewhere with dark, and damp, and stone, and shit. Imagining all sorts of this or that - wishing bad fortune, imagining revenge, darkly fantasizing here and there. But the The Clash came on, and a little ska is something that it's hard to maintain a hateful spiteful attitude through. So I'm done... I'm sure it will come back to me, but tomorrow starts everything over again, and I'm just going to move on through another cycle of night and day.

http://robotcomix.net/

revelations

No, it's not the End Times or anything. But I had some laundry issues that reached critical mass. One pair of clean underwear left. No clean towels. No clean dish towels. So I go to the laundromat, take up a whole row of washers, and do 8 loads of laundry. But what do I come home to?

This.

A closest that's... well, basically full already.

And I ask myself... what am I doing with all these clothes? The issue is not that there is a set of clothes here. The issue is that there is a whole other set of clothes over there that I just finished washing. And I'm just one dude. And I'm not even fashion-conscious.

Too many, too many.

I counted 17 pairs of jeans, but only 4 or 5 make it into the regular rotation, some too small, some un-presentable to decent folk. And don't get me started on the number of T-shirts. What you see here is only the remainder. I suspect there are Aleph-0 ("al-eff-naught") of them - infinite in number, but countably so. Not because they're interesting, but just because they've accumulated.

I'm feeling a purging coming on.

It's time to thin the herd. Lot of that going on in other places... I'm wondering why I have 2 shelves of fiction paperbacks that are already read... I'm not likely to re-read them any time soon, and the library has so many wonderful other books available, right?

And what do I need with 21 coffee mugs? I'm one person. And I'm annoyed that I don't have enough cupboard space, but it seems that I'm the cause of my own problems.

Slowly, slowly... the realization, she comes.

superglue, dammit.

Had a little "bagel incident" this morning, cutting a bagel the dangerous way, and slicing my finger a little bit. Nothing bad, just a deep papercut kind of thing that won't stop bleeding, but in the worst place - right on a bendy spot. So with a band-aid I go, but over the course of the day, the flexing results in needing 3 band-aid replacements. Annoying.

By the time I get home from the laundry adventure, I'm fed the fuck up. I've heard you can use Super Glue/Krazy Glue as a medical adhesive ("bonds skin immediately" and "non-toxic") for things like this, so I give it a try - hold the cut closed, a drop on the top, and POW! it's all good. No sting, no waiting, no fuss, no muss. Waterproof, secure, perfecto.

I am here to testify, people: it works. When you try it, you will become a believer.

the bumper sticker I want to see...

My kid's art was censored for obscenity
at Springton High School

wishful thinking, downtowning

Another grand debate of downtowns - a meta-issue, if you will. It should come as no surprise that I'm a fan of downtowns. Cities. Urban. Busy, doing... there-ness. Over the holidays in Evanston, the new fresh (well, to me) development... buildings rising to 15, 20, 25 stories downtown where once it was rare to be more than 10. You can see the in-vogue intentionality of the downtown planning in place - the mixed use, the "wedding cake" architecture to keep streets and pedestrian areas "at human scale".

But I wonder to myself... do I really see the connections and community that dense urban downtowns promise? Sure, there's activity, and more people - but are those people actually connecting to each other? Cafes strewn with singly-occupied tables. But all that just seems to be like Apple and Dell swooped in and shat out a bunch of laptops with people hunched behind them.

Apartment buildings, condos, etc. etc. tightly clustered together, but do people actually know their neighbors? I'm wondering how much of this is wishful thinking, how much of it actually happens, and how long it will take to really know one way or the other. Some of the streets I walked down seemed pretty sterile, even in the midst of the Christmas Shopping Season. I don't think you can Manufacture Community.

And my cynical brain is wondering how many of the cutesy shops are going to survive the recession, what with the disappearance of the almighty consumers, and the tightening of belts and all. Debating how much we really need artisan handcrafted dog bowls and fair trade organic vegan chew toys.

not the kind of transit I'm in favor of

that bacon thing sorta happened for me

No, not a grand revelation. Not a sudden overwhelming falling in love. Really, it was more of a falling out of love with bacon. Not that I was ever in it, per say.

It's just that I found out through adventures the other day... I thought I'd try my hand at making Candied Bacon, and what I found out is that it's just not as dreamy as one would think. I went for it a couple different ways, but in the end, even the best result (which ended up looking exactly beautiful like it does in the picture) was sticky and greasy at the same time, didn't develop a hard candy shell, and just was not really fulfilling expectations. And after it all, I has a bunch of bacon, and I really had no enthusiasm for it. It was there, salty and snacky, but I had no real connection to it. I ate it because it was there, not because I cared very much for it.

Sure, bacon is funny. And bacon mania has been sweeping the land. But I'm starting to fall into the bacon backlash category. It's just really not that big of a thing for me. I'm not going so far as to say that it's jumped the shark or anything, because there are plenty of fine people that have it as a part of their identity. But for me, I guess I've just... moved on.

It was there before me, it will be there after me, it doesn't need me to survive.

And this has nothing to do with the fact that I'm more curious about Zen-type stuff than Hindu-type stuff. Really, I swear.

HAL says...

HAL9000: "I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do." (Clarke, by way of Kubrick, by way of Quotegeek)

I punch the scrabble board into Quackle and ask it to analyze... apparently, it is pulling CPU resources across dimensional boundaries and unfolding space and time in the process. Either that, or Apple fucked up and doesn't know what 100% means. (oh wait... is this what they mean by "giving 110%"? Damn, that's some hard-working software)


And just... for the record for anyone I might be playing an online game of Scrabble with now or in the future, I swear (cross my heart and hope to endo) that I commit my play before I consult Quackle or anything else. Really, I swear. I just want to know what I'm missing. I can quit any time, I just like the taste.

it makes me greedy and lazy

This wave of virtual information that is immediately accessible and constantly on - free WiFi, Wikipedia, Google, video on demand in a browser window... it's so one-sided. Conditioning myself subconsciously to expect instantaneous results. That every whim can be indulged with a click of a mouse and instant response (if not instant satisfaction). If only it went the other way as easily. That the idea, the project, the result were instantly translated from a want to reality, through the power of a fingertip. No effort, no thought, no struggle, no work.

From the mouth of Sir Ben Kinglsey in The House of Sand and Fog:

Do you understand? Do not feel bad. Americans they do not deserve what they have. They have the eyes of small children who are forever looking for the next source of distraction, entertainment, sweet taste in the mouth.

ah yes... to recalibrate reference, to re-set expectation. Re-see priorities and make conscious choices. This is my hope. It's what I want for a New Year's present for myself.

vaporlock

So long without a post, I feel like I've abandoned some...thing. Some idea. Some what. Well, there were these big notions that felt like huge essays, and the formidableness, formidability, formidity, form of them got in the way of saying anything." That mountain is sooo high to climb, I can't possibly finish it today, so I might as well not even start now." Yes, this is problematic thinking. Whatever.

Expect musings ... on the question of very large people in very small places (obesity, airlines, and the "rights" of everyone involved). ... on the problem of vision and utility (how abstract desire gets in the way of effective results, and how effective results gets in the way of abstract desire) ... on the question of "peace vs. annihilation" (and how we take a pinch of each to create equilibrium and structure, just like the chickens and gorillas).
But in the meantime, just remember... no matter how fringey and immune to counter-culture shock you think you are, the person walking down the street with the pink mohawk will always catch your eye and prove that there's always someone fringier. (this would be the equivalent of "no matter how badass you think you are, there is always someone out there who can kick your ass" OR "if you think you're a hot-shit fast bike racer winning races all the time - upgrade a category and then think again")

it... comes in cans!

oh, delicious...

traveling leftovers

In the airport on the way back from California...

The Bizarro-World effect of hearing "If I were a man, I would wear a tie with the Constitution on it" in that weird everything-sounds-like-a-question sorority girl voice coming from a very caffeinated 20something woman talking to her friends. Hear it in your head "If... like... I was a man, I would, like, TOTALLY wear a tie, with, like, the Constitution all OVER it". I'm happy that young people embrace the Constitution and such, but it's surely weird to hear that in such a voice.
----------------
And on the TV at the gate a little while later, Wolf Blitzer interviewing people on his jumbo-tron regarding the financial implosion and layoffs in the auto industry: "What jobs are safe?"

My question for Blitzer - exactly what kind of question is that? I mean seriously... there is no such thing as job security. And it's not like people are going to change careers based on today's CNN broadcast, so really the question and answer don't inform, theey just instill fear that the people in jobs not listed *aren't* safe. But since they can't do anything about it in the moment, all they can do is tune in to the next Blizter broadcast to find out, with breathless anticipation, whether the next danger has passed. Vicious cycle, indeed.
----------------
On the plane - they're charging $1 for coffee, $2 for bottled water/soda, and $7 for cocktails... at what point does someone realize that the lack of sales (no one was buying anything from the refreshment cart) means that simply carrying the weight of the cart and containers of beverage on the plane is a money-losing proposition? That is, the amount of fuel that is required to keep that extra 50-100 lbs aloft in flight costs more than the profit from the sales from the cart? Just give it up... clearly people can do without tiny portions of non-food, so just give it up. I'd rather have the ability to walk to the bathroom down an aisle not blocked by a cart than have the option to buy a $2 coke.