Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Fractured French - Mise En Scene

Another find from the scary-good Dinosaurs And Robots blog. This is a great photoset of vintage cocktail napkins on Flickr.

I like the French ones.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Peri Peri

My new favorite song.



This is a keychain toy that mimics the sound and feeling of pulling the tab on a cardboard box or envelope.

The song has a lot of onomatopoeic words, which are particularly Japanese. For example, it rhymes "peri-peri," the name of the product (after the sound of opening a box tear strip) with "doki-doki" which is the canonical sound effect word for a pounding heart. In the Kansai airport on the way home I bought some cider soda that said "With KiraKira Sparkle" which was ironic because "kira-kira" is the canonical sound effect for sparkling (like light reflecting on water). Yes, they have a "sound effect" for something that's not a sound.

I found this video while Christmas shopping, but while in Japan I did buy the sibling product, Bandai Mugen Edamame, which is a rubbery soybean pod that you can pop the beans out of over and over again. You can find these wondrous things and many more at Strapya World, (http://www.strapya-world.com).

More and better Japan stories are in my brain for you, but I had to start on Christmas cleaning and such and I got distracted. That part might be getting under control now.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Not Japan, But Worthy of Note

We interrupt my vacation stories to bring you two relatively unrelated items of news.

Muslim Scientist Leaves US Over Security Clearance


How often do you get to invoke Cartman's catch phrase to describe a serious news story? Basically this guy, a physicist and a naturalized US citizen, suddenly lost his security clearance and his job because the acting deputy energy secretary decided he was a security risk. The evidence was never presented and he never had a chance to refute it. 

Here's the story:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08333/931314-82.stm

He has appeals pending, but he also has a new academic job in Egypt. Too bad "home" is probably actually Pittsburgh, where he's lived for 28 years (longer than he lived anywhere else).

Awesome Glass Sale Next Weekend


Riverside Design Group, which makes many awesome things, is having its annual warehouse sale. We went last year and bought many beautiful glass things (and some metal ones, I think). Some are seconds or discontinued, but lots of stuff is quite fine. The sale is a benefit for Persad Center, which is a counseling center specializing in queer issues (sexual orientation, gender expression, HIV disease). Some other artists are selling things too. The sale is at Riverside's studio in Lawrenceville. Details here: http://www.persadcenter.org/events3.htm

One hint, though; if you buy gifts at the sale you might want to re-wrap them if you don't want your mother wondering why the newspaper on her dishes is advertising mens' dating services. (Though she thought the photos were scenic.) (No, this was not my mother, who I think went to the sale too and would have known why.)

Thursday, November 27, 2008

The Amazing Onigiri Wrapper Trick

Onigiri (rice balls) are a staple convenience food in Japan. You can find them in all the convenience stores and they're relatively cheap ($1 to $1.50, depending on the filling). When I told my beau that we could eat out of the convenience stores for lunch he was thinking microwave burritos, but these are much better. Most shops have a pretty good selection of noodle bowls and ready-to-eat food; a lot of stores have actual cooked food too (hot tofu balls and korroke and those cakes with bean inside) though it didn't look that great....

When you can't read a lot of Japanese it's sometimes a gamble as to what's inside the rice ball, but we did okay.

The trick about prepackaged onigiri is that you want the nori (seaweed wrapper) to stay crisp. If you wrap it around the rice it absorbs moisture and gets gummy after an hour or so. (Personally I don't mind it gummy, but crisp is the ideal.) So they wrap the nori in its own layer of plastic wrap. When I was in Japan in 1995, only some companies packed the nori separately, and if they did you had to wrap it up yourself. But now there's this great packaging innovation that wraps up the rice automatically when you open it.

Here's how it works:



P.S. Ebi = shrimp.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

On Slurping


Udon Man
Originally uploaded by erink
Japanese slurp their noodles. On the trip we ate a lot of noodles (I think it's a stereotype that tourists eat nothing but udon, soba, and ramen - but they are good!) and I think I finally got the hang of it.

As a good American kid, I grew up eating spaghetti without slurping. At least in polite company. I also learned that if you did suck the spaghetti into your mouth the fun way, the end of the noodle whips around and spatters sauce on your shirt. So that fear of staining had also influenced my attempts to slurp in the past.

Turns out I was missing a key point. In Japan, all became clear. And here's why:
When Japanese serve things hot, they are really, really hot.
The tea is really, really hot; the soup is really, really hot; the bath is really, really hot.

You have to slurp the noodles to cool them down. Otherwise you'd be there for hours.

To cool the noodles, you have to slurp them with your mouth open. If you close your lips around them, your lips get burned.

This explains the sound, too. The sound is close to that aeration gurgle you use for wine tasting. It's a lot louder than that squeaky little slurp you'd get at the end of a spaghetti strand.

The other advantage of slurping with your mouth open is that the noodles don't spatter.

The disadvantage is that it's a little gross hanging your mouth over the bowl and shoveling stuff in, but if you control the amount of noodle you pick up you can pretty much get one mouthful in without a lot of back and forth. Though, in my experience, you will have to bite. Some noodles are very long.

So, that's my journeyman take on noodle slurping. I've probably got lots of things wrong still, so don't take this as the high authority on Japanese table manners.

I think more field work is necessary.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Following the Election from Afar

We were out of the country during the presidential election, and time-shifted enough that we couldn't easily get the results as they happened. When we left on vacation Obama was definitely leading, but his winning wasn't something you could feel really confident about.

On the other hand, I was a little annoyed that before I left, _two_ of my relatives sent me that funny customized video about how I didn't vote and cost the democrats the election - when I was, in fact, the only member of my family who had already voted! But it was amusing, at least the first time.


McCain Makeru

So we woke up on - was it Wednesday? - in Japan and got on the internet at our hotel to find out what had happened. Obama won. Yay. We looked a bit at the state-by-state reports and news coverage, but we didn't get the speeches or anything. I even forgot to get a newspaper that day (I hear they were hot commodities elsewhere).

And then we got dressed and got food and went out to tour Tokyo.

But later that day, we were in a Japanese government building to use the free observation towers. A man stopped us in the lobby and asked the stereotypical Japanese-to-foreigner question "where from?" (though he was a bit more sophisticated and I think he actually asked what country we were from). We said America*, and he said something about Obama's win. I told him we were happy about that. He seemed happy too.

At this point I'll say that he didn't look like a government worker - not only was he not wearing a black suit and white shirt, he wasn't wearing a suit at all, I think he had a khaki green canvas blazer. And he had a slightly wild beard. Perhaps an academic.

And then he told us this story. In Japanese, McCain gets transliterated as ma-ke-in. There's another word in Japanese, makeru, which means, as he delicately put it, "to not win." So ma-ke-in, ma-ke-ru was a popular slogan in his circle during the campaign.

We actually saw him again that day, on a subway platform at rush hour, but we were on the train and couldn't say hi.


* Actually I would normally answer "United States," since that's more precise (Canada and Mexico and all those southern countries are in America too) but you have to say "America" in Japan because that's the word they expect.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

America is Weird

Back from 15 days vacation in Japan. One of the interesting things about foreign travel is how strange your home country looks when you get back. So before that fades completely, you get this post.

Americans are big. Really, really big. Fat, yes, but tall too.

And we're sloppy-looking. I was really struck by how few people tuck in their shirts here (hey, I never do myself). And we wear oversized shirts and sweatshirts, and unfashionably faded jeans. (Japan has a high population of thin men in black business suits and white shirts at all times, so they really bring the neatness factor up on average. The Japanese men in suits on the plane to San Francisco with us didn't take their jackets off the whole flight - though I saw that one of the younger ones had loosened his necktie. Slacker.)

We eat everywhere. And we eat really big sandwiches, with lots of meat on them. At the Chicago airport the beau and I ordered a "large" soda to share, and it was like a liter and a half of root beer in a giant plastic cup.

We have lots of different color hair. We have no cell phone charms. We drink really big coffees.

Welcome home.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Halloween Frights

This is the scariest thing I've seen all week:


I mean, I knew she was running and all, but somehow it didn't really hit me until I saw it on the absentee ballot. They're actually letting her do it. That's ... messed up.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Sweet!


Tokyo Game Show, October 2008. Whoah, he should turn around and roll up all those newspapers.

Photo by Lisa Katayama for Wired.com. More at Wired.com.

katamari.namco.com

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Medieval Babes...Riiiight.

Just found this ad in an old newspaper I was throwing out (gotta make sure I've read Savage Love before I put it in the recycle bin).


To this, I can only say.... "Amateurs."
http://www.flickr.com/search/?s=int&w=all&q=sca+cleavage&m=text

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Oobleck?

Apparently there's a commercial product that has similar qualities to oobleck, the classic geek toy made from a saturated cornstarch solution. (Or is it a suspension?)
Post-Gazette: Zoombang Protects Teen Athlete's Insulin Pump

The company says its product, "Zoombang" (wowie zowie), is a "viscoelastic, shear thickening" polymer. It even references its corn starch relative in the explanation.
Zoombang Protective Gear: What's Zoombang?

They make custom garments for athletes who need extra protection because of injuries or whatever. The Post-Gazette story was about a gadget they made for a youth football player who needed to protect his insulin pump. Apparently it's the viscoelastic part that makes it protective - standard oobleck is quite rigid under stress and wouldn't protect anything from impact.

Oobleck, I just learned by Googling, is named after some goo in a Dr. Seuss book. To make it, mix about one part water with 1.5 to 2 parts corn starch. It's said to be a "non-newtonian fluid" which means it has variable viscosity. Oobleck flows and behaves like a liquid under gentle pressure (it conforms to the shape of a cup and can be stirred slowly) but under more intense pressure it becomes rigid, like a solid. Quicksand is another example.

Oobleck also made an appearance on network TV recently. On Big Bang Theory, the guys had wrapped a stereo speaker in plastic wrap and set a puddle of oobleck on it. There are lots of videos of this on YouTube, but they use a steady tone instead of music like the TV show had. So turn your volume down.

There's lots more fun with non-newtonian fluids on YouTube (including a bunch of British science videos featuring Richard Hammond from Top Gear - who knew!), but this one is probably the best:

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Unintentional Time Capsule Found in Lancashire, UK

Wow. Just, wow.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7664661.stm

Apparently someone went to investigate an abandoned building and found a boarded-up corner shop with fixtures and some stock intact. There's at least one magazine from 1971, but the rest of the stuff could be from the 60s.

Here's another video where they poke at some of the stuff: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7664369.stm

From my new favorite blog, Dinosaurs and Robots. Which is unfortunately flooding my tiny little Google Reader box with multiple posts a day and crowding out my friends' blogs....

Saturday, October 11, 2008

No Fun with Plastic


No Fun with Plastic
Originally uploaded by erink
Somehow, of all the plastic bags wrapped around the new computer parts, this was the only one with such a graphic warning.

I think the one on the left means, "Do not use for autoerotic asphyxiation." At least if you're a lefty.

The one on the right seems to mean "No matter how funny you think it will be, do not put this on your baby." Well, duh. It will be much funnier on the cat.

The one in the middle means you can recycle it at the supermarket. Which is to say that you can stash it in your basement for ages and ages forgetting about it, then get really annoyed and throw it out when you move.

Enjoy!

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Book Sale!

One of my favorite publishers, Small Beer Press, is having a sale. http://lcrw.net/special.htm

Among their products are the excellent Carol Emshwiller books The Mount, Carmen Dog, and Report To The Men's Club and other stories. I also recommend Maureen McHugh's collection Mothers and Other Monsters and anything by Kelly Link. I've also heard good things about Laurie Marks' Elemental Logic series.

For the cheap, they also have some free content available for download.

Go forth and shop!

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Look, Ma, No Bags!

Ikea took the next step in eliminating plastic litter today when it stopped offering disposable bags at its checkouts. Wow.

They started the bag reduction program a year or so ago. They started selling more inexpensive reusable bags at the checkouts and charged five cents per disposable plastic bag. The disposable bag fee was donated to an environmental charity. They'd hoped to reduce disposable bag usage by 50% - but they got 92% fewer bags instead!

Actually, it's probably much easier for Ikea to go bag-free than it would be for other stores. Usually when I go to Ikea I buy at least one box or basket that I can pack the other things inside. And a lot of their furniture comes flat-packed in cardboard boxes that don't fit in bags anyway.

On the other hand, I hear Whole Foods is going this way too. Not sure if they will eliminate disposable bags, but I think they are going to start charging for them if they haven't already.

I've been pretty happy since I started using reusable grocery bags. It's just much less guilt in my life. I used to reuse grocery bags for trash, but now we use big kitchen bags, and even when I used them I always had a big backlog of once-used plastic bags accumulating in my kitchen or basement. It took some work to get used to bringing the bags into the store, but I seem to have got the hang of it. Also I have a tiny nylon bag that fits in my purse for emergency shopping. Yeah, it happens.

Still, I am a little nostalgic about the Ikea bags. I remember when the store first came to town, those big yellow bags were always associated with good things. Even when they changed to clear bags, they had good design. Even if they did change the cinnamon rolls and make them crappier (okay, I still buy them, but not every time - the old ones were much better). There are still a few Ikea bags floating around my house, as dust covers for off-season fans and in bags of fabric I haven't used yet. So they'll be with me for a while yet. Better there than in the ocean!

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Best Seats in the House


Scouts
Originally uploaded by erink
I got to one of the open practices in Penguins training camp a few weeks ago. It was cool, as usual. They let all of us proletariat sit in one section of seats, the East Igloo and above, which left the rest of the seating area open for official business. I saw TV guys doing interviews at C-16, and a bunch of guys in shorts who probably were the injured players camped out in B-27 for a while.

But during the scrimmage I noticed a crowd gathering near my "home" section, C-21. A few at the right could be players or trainers, but up in the mini-box, that's clearly Ed Johnston, super-scout. And all the guys around him are wearing suits and holding papers. Scouts?

Seems the professionals know where to watch their hockey. And so do I.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

To Whom It May Concern...

Dear World,

If I ever am kidnapped by a crazy scientist who wants to harvest my pituitary gland, and during the last-minute rescue I go into cardiac arrest, and the bad guy you were holding a gun on has run away anyway, please attempt standard CPR.

Please do not call your father (who, despite being a research scientist and not a physician and also despite having spent the last 30 years in a mental institution seems to be completely up-to-date in the theory of modern defibrillation techniques) on your cell phone and ask him to help you use random lab equipment and 120v A/C current to construct a field defibrillator out of an oscilloscope and a pile of phone books.

Standard chest compressions and rescue breathing would be fine. Thank you.

That is all.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Ikea Goes Green...


Fancy Toilet
Originally uploaded by erink
...in the potty department.

My local Ikea recently remodeled, and expanded their first floor bathroom (which really needed it, because it's a long drive from Pittsburgh and those three tiny stalls weren't up to the job). Among other changes, they installed these "green" toilets. You're supposed to pull the handle up for "number one" and push it down for "number two" and it uses a different amount of water.

The handle is green - a green color, that is - because it's supposed to have some sort of anti-germ coating. So you should feel okay about touching it with your hand. Which I didn't (feel okay, that is). (I don't remember if I touched it with my hand or used the top of my foot.)

Here's a close-up of the documentation. I wonder who's got this on her resume.

Toilet Documentation

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Barnyard Cosmetology

Forget the politics, it takes real guts to get to the truth about putting lipstick on a pig.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94481288

Thursday, September 04, 2008

My Crummy Diet Vindicated!

I don't eat the best diet in the world. Too much fat, too much sugar, and not enough vegetables. But this week I got some unexpected good news.

I read Nutrition Action Healthletter, which is the monthly publication from Center for Science in the Public Interest. They've got publicity in the past for "exposing" restaurant foods that have way more calories than anyone would have guessed.

The September issue's cover story is about diabetes. It talks about obesity and inactivity, which are the most important factors that predict who will get type 2 diabetes, but it also talks about a lot of other dietary factors that seem to relate. For instance, refined sugar seems to increase the risk, and vitamin D seems to decrease the risk.

Now we get to the good part. Coffee reduces risk of diabetes. Even decaf.

In one study of 88,000 nurses, the risk of diabetes was 13 percent lower for those who drank one cup a day, 42 percent lower for those who drank two to three cups a day, and 47 percent lower for those who drank at least four cups a day than for those who drank none. Tea didn't raise or lower risk.
They think that it might be because the ridiculous amount of antioxidants in coffee protects the pancreas from damage. According to the article, coffee has more antioxidants than anything. Even broccoli.

What else is good for you? Alcohol. Drinking "in moderation" (two to four drinks per week for men) was linked to a 25% lower risk of diabetes. The risk kept going down with more drinks, up to seven (43% lower!). Though I can't imagine drinking that much would be good for your liver. And they said you're not supposed to start drinking to fix your health, because "alcohol has other risks."

But here's the best bit of all. Peanut butter. See, trans fats (vegetable oil with some of the bonds filled with hydrogen to make them more like saturated fats) raise the risk of diabetes, possibly because they increase inflammation or because they tend to lead to belly fat. Polyunsaturated fats reduce inflammation, and they might alter cell membranes and reduce insulin resistance.
Polyunsaturated fats may help explain why women who reported eating nuts or peanut butter at least five times a week had a 20 to 30 percent lower risk of diabetes than those who almost never ate those foods.
Yay! I eat peanut butter at least three times a week.... I win!

Monday, August 25, 2008

How Can You Not Make Fun Of That?

West Virginia is my home state's much-maligned neighbor to the south.

Perhaps it's the isolation of the Appalachian mountains, the coal mining traditions, and now the post-industrial poverty that gives West Virginia its bad reputation. But for whatever reason, West Virginia is known as a land where duct tape is suitable for repairing cars; a lawn chair, six-pack, and wading pool is how you spent your summer vacation; and to figure out how many dogs or children you have you have to look under the porch. A land where Monongalia County was named by a governor who couldn't spell Monongahela.

It is quite beautiful, actually. A lot of my outdoorsy friends spend their weekends driving out there to climb or bike around on their mountains and frolic in the woods. They even have Bridge Day, where they close the bridge over the huge New River Gorge to let people base jump off it. And at some point in American history, West Virginia was progressive enough to forbid slavery, which is why we have a West Virginia and a Virginia in the first place.

But I digress. The reason for this post was this article in the Post-Gazette today: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08238/906798-455.stm. Turns out, Weirton, WV, has a problem with feral chickens. Feral chickens.

Feral chickens. And they seem to live on Wall Street.

Now, how can you not make fun of that?

(Photo above copyright 2008 Bob Donaldson/Post-Gazette)

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Olympic Fencing Brush with Fame

At about the last national fencing competition I went to, I was chatting with some folks in the over-40 division. I had pretty much realized it wasn't worth traveling to national tournaments any more since I could only ever enter one event. And I wasn't all that good at that event either. So it's lots of trouble and expense for a half day of fencing. But I was 38 or 39 at the time, and I realized that once I was over 40, I could enter the masters category events too.

But before I could make it over 40, I lost interest in local competitions and pretty much chucked the fencing thing. But I do plan to get back to it, still.

One of the people I was watching fence in the over-40s foil was a Canadian woman. There were a lot of reasons she caught my eye. First, she was a pretty kickass fencer, and I wondered why she was in the masters competition instead of one of the open divisions. (She might have been entered in multiple divisions.) Also, she had a Chinese accent but her jacket said she was Canadian. And she was pretty: long black hair, graceful and powerful looking. She made a nice contrast to the slightly nerdy older guy who was chatting me up trying to talk me into how cool the over-40 division was.

Earlier this week, I checked out the Olympics for the first time and found out the women's Foil competition was live online. So I go to the website, watch some video, and cruise through the earlier results, and there's a familiar name. Luan. Who is this woman I saw at the tournament years ago. She's 50 now, and on the Canadian team. She made it through the first round of eliminations in the women's foil competition, which is not too shabby.

Turns out Luan Jujie won China's first and only fencing gold medal in 1984. When I saw her she was probably getting back into shape to make the Canadian team.

There's even a human-interest article on the NBC website about her. (OMG! She's old! And female! And she fences! And she used to be a Communist!)

So I guess over-40 fencing might not be so bad after all.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Just for Fun...

Well, I had some deep topics I wanted to blog about, but apparently I've lost all ability to focus. I'm thinking it's a combination of the heat and brain atrophy from watching 5 hours of the Tour de France every day for three weeks.

So instead, I bring you this:

Two-legged dogs!



Actually there are two interesting things to learn from these videos. First, dogs really don't seem to care much when they lose limbs. They just get up and get about their business. Second, the biomechanics are pretty cool; they use their core muscles to adjust their balance and it's pretty interesting to watch.

So. Better content later, I hope.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Hey, I Paid for That!


In case you were wondering, this is what shows up in your dryer filter if you pre-wash and dry 10 yards of white linen all together.

If I were crafty, I could make a really small quilt. (Maybe Barbie-sized.)

Whoah, I'm blogging about lint. Have I really sunk so low?

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Reduce, Reuse, Re-read


Reduce, Reuse, Re-read
Originally uploaded by erink
At a garden center near Pittsburgh.

Friday, July 04, 2008

In related news....

This appeared on the home page of my local newspaper this afternoon.


I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

More Evidence that Hockey Players are Not Normal

Hell of a game last night. This morning.

Actually, it was more like two games, since it took six periods to finish.

The Penguins can definitely play with the Red Wings, but they keep forgetting that. In game four, they came out flying and kicked butt - including a breathtaking penalty kill where every time Detroit brought the puck across the blue line they lost posession within three seconds. Then the Pens gave up a goal - and it really was just a lucky shot, not an especially great play - and their whole outlook changed. They couldn't pass, they couldn't set up an attack, and every time a Detroit player skated near them they lost the puck.

I'm particularly happy that Maxime Talbot got the game-tying goal. He's one of the guys who is least susceptible to this performance funk. He always plays hard and never gives up. It's one thing to say that, but it's another thing to watch him behind the net in what everybody thinks is the last minute of their season, chopping at the loose puck - not once, not twice. Three times. And the third time, it goes in.

I came across this bit in the Post-Gazette story about the game. As I said before, hockey players are not like other people.

The power play that led to his goal was made possible when Detroit forward Jiri Hudler smacked Penguins defenseman Rob Scuderi in the face with his stick and received a double-minor.

"I was just praying for blood," Scuderi said.
He got his wish, and a nice scab on his chin. It matches the one on his upper lip where he got hit by a teammate in game two. And what did he say then? "It's unfortunate that it wasn't [Detroit], because it would have been four minutes."

Stoicism is pretty much a requirement in the NHL, but the playoffs do bring out remarkable feats of pain tolerance. Sergei Gonchar helped set up the Pens' winning goal. Gonchar crashed hard, head-first, into the boards at the end of the second period and left the game at the beginning of the third. But by the start of the third overtime, he said, he was feeling better. So he suited back up and thought maybe he'd try taking a shift if they got a power play (he had the most power play goals of any defenseman this season).

So Wednesday night we get our last home game of the season, win or lose. I can't complain. Hell of a season.

Though the cup would sure be nice.

Monday, June 02, 2008

Venture Bros is Back! Yaaaaaay!!!!

I happened to be up late enough last night to catch the first new episode in a year and a half when it aired. It was pretty sweet, despite the near total lack of Brock.

The "murderous moppets" did unleash some Brockworthy kickass moves on the Monarch henchmen to assert their dominance. That was fun.

This episode was all Monarch/Dr. Girlfriend. They even redid the opening credits to be all Monarch instead of the Ventures. You do get to see some of the other characters, but they don't speak. Except for Helper.

Excellent line: "I am not interested in doing a theme based on my voice!"

Which leads into this little scene:

Watch (guild henchman): Then let's work on a mutation. The Ocelot Woman! Basically, a mutated ocelot. We let it bite you and bang: ocelot powers!

Guild Henchman 2: They are fierce and super-territorial. Form-fitting costume with ears and a tail that, uh, grabs ... things.

Lady Au Pair: Uhh, no.

Watch: Okay. [Opens door number two.] Mink DeLovely. Take a quick dip in a vat of boiling minks. They have been skinned, pureed, and belted with gamma rays.

GH2: Verrrry sexy costume with this option.

LAP: I was thinking of something that plays off my abilities more than my sexuality.

Watch: Say no more. You want to number two for a woman. [To GH2: ] The feminist type. Done!

GH2: [The den of ?] murderous Betty Rage!
And also this:
Phantom Limb: Shadowman Nine!

Shadowman 9 (secretly the Monarch): Quit shoving! What? Oh, am I 9? [Looks down at number on uniform.] I thought I was Shadowguy 6.
And there are t-shirts! For every episode they're releasing a limited-edition t-shirt based on the episode; you can order it for one week only. This pushes my buttons on so many levels ... and the first shirt is one I've wanted ever since I first saw the Guild logo (was it in Fallen Arches or earlier?). So of course my order is in already.



You can get yours here. Dude.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Revenge of the Orange Crush

Pittsburgh 6, Philadelphia 0
Next up, the Stanley Cup!


Revenge of the Orange Crush
Originally uploaded by erink

Friday, May 16, 2008

Maybe the bible really does have all the answers...

I found this very modern bit of reassurance at the end of an e-mail announcing the birth of my cousin's daughter:

Psalm 139:13-14

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
No virus found in this outgoing message.
...

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Adventures in Good Writing

The TV was tuned to Cartoon Network when I turned it on this afternoon, and I heard this line on the Mr. Men show:

"Hello, Miss Calamity. Exciting news. You are the grand prize winner in the Dillydale sweepstakes. You win a collection of extremely breakable glass animals."

Sweet.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Kasparaitis Tough

I figure I should get around to posting something about the hockey playoffs. It's kind of a big deal in my life, I've been scheduling around the games for weeks, and watching them has been pretty exciting.

But I hadn't been inspired yet. I mean, there was the miracle of the pretzel in Game 1 versus the Rangers, but you kind of had to be there.

And things have been going so well, you don't want to jinx it. (See, as soon as I finished that sentence the Rangers scored and went up 2-0 in game 4. I might have to finish this later....)

Things changed today when I learned that two of our players turned up this morning wearing boot casts from blocking shots with their feet on Tuesday.

Which put me in mind of the 2001 playoffs.

It was game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals, and the Pens were battling the New Jersey Devils to get to the Stanley Cup round. Darius Kasparaitis, who hits harder than anyone I've ever seen play hockey, blocked a shot with his foot in the first period. It hurt, so he went to the locker room. The doctor told him he had broken bones in his foot. And he put the skate back on and went out and played the rest of the game.

I can't find this version on the InterWeb anywhere, but I distinctly remember Kasparaitis telling the story this way:

I took off my skate, and it started to swell up. I didn't want to leave the team with five guys [on defense], so I put the skate back on.
In the versions I can find, he talks about how the skate is like a cast, and skating keeps the swelling down. He didn't rule out playing the next game until after the morning skate that day. It was even reported that he skated at practice that day, though I'm not sure how since there are quotes from his teammate Jaromir Jagr about how his foot was too big for a human-sized skate.

But maybe he was riding a high streak. A few days earlier, he'd scored a goal - a very rare event for him. And it was a game-winning goal. In overtime. In game seven. Against Dominik Hasek.

I still have that goal saved on my old TiVo.

Found this quote from him.
If I can get the boot on, I will play. A normal person couldn't do it, but hockey players are not normal.
Thanks, Darius.

Vintage Kaspar:
http://www.dariuskasparaitis.com/articles/art74.html
http://www.dariuskasparaitis.com/articles/art120.html
http://www.dariuskasparaitis.com/articles/art79.html
Post-Gazette: Kasparaitis will attempt to play in Game 3 despite broken toes
Modern Kaspar - do you read Russian?:
http://darius-kasper.livejournal.com/

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Tougher Dog Laws

Found this on a memory card I swapped out at Christmas time and never unloaded until today. This was the (front page of the) newspaper we found in the coffee shop on the way home from visiting my pseudo-in-laws.

The wiener dog photo is completely unrelated to the "tougher dog laws" story. Somebody at the Oil City Derrick was having a fun time working on the holiday.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Advice from Writers

I'm not a writer, but I do occasionally associate with them. They're always getting asked for advice. This week Neil Gaiman posted this great story on his blog about the best advice he ever got from another writer:

In the shower today I tried to think about the best advice I'd ever been given by another writer. There was something that someone said at my first Milford, about using style as a covering, but sooner or later you would have to walk naked down the street, that was useful...

And then I remembered. It was Harlan Ellison about a decade ago.

He said, "Hey. Gaiman. What's with the stubble? Every time I see you, you're stubbly. What is it? Some kind of English fashion statement?"

"Not really."

"Well? Don't they have razors in England for Chrissakes?"

"If you must know, I don't like shaving because I have a really tough beard and sensitive skin. So by the time I've finished shaving I've usually scraped my face a bit. So I do it as little as possible."

"Oh." He paused. "I've got that too. What you do is, you rub your stubble with hair conditioner. Leave it a couple of minutes, then wash it off. Then shave normally. Makes it really easy to shave. No scraping."

I tried it. It works like a charm. Best advice from a writer I've ever received.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Advances in Toaster UI


Dream Toaster
Originally uploaded by erink
Came across this toaster in a shop window. It has the functions you actually want when making toast: "Lift and Look" and "A little More" are groundbreaking.

Well at least they're pretty darn cool.

One problem, the shop was Williams Sonoma and the toaster is ridiculously expensive.

But it sure is pretty.

Breville Toaster

Monday, April 14, 2008

Pretty Important

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

Todays' random quotation on my Google homepage.

Yes, I am avoiding finishing my taxes, why do you ask?

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Missing the Point

When making a recent ThinkGeek order, I noticed they had these OpenX package opening gadgets for pretty cheap (like $2 or $3) so I got one. It's for opening those horrible plastic clamshell packages that won't tear and then cut the shit out of your hands when you do get them halfway open.

So I was pretty surprised when I got the gadget and it was packaged in one of those horrible plastic fused clamshells. What were they thinking?


I would like a bit more of an apology - instead they're actually kind of smug:


Oh well. If I ever get it open I'll let you know how it works.

The ThinkGeek order, by the way, was inspired by their April 1 newsletter, which is always awesome. Check out this year's version at http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/2008.shtml

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Magically Delicious


My parents didn't let me have crap cereals. We would beg and beg, but no go.

Mom did let us pick out cereal at the grocery store but there was some rule that we had to find ones that didn't have sugar as the first ingredient. (Although, looking back, I can't believe those existed, so it must have been sugar as the first or second ingredient.) Sucrose and corn syrup and all that stuff count as sugar too, of course. Somehow, King Vitamin and Frosted Flakes passed, but no Frankenberry or Fruit Loops or Coco Puffs.

That last bit might have had something to do with the fact that my dad liked Frosted Flakes....

So I had to learn about sugar cereals in college. The dining center had these huge bins of breakfast cereal available at every meal. (I remember a bet at my table once that you couldn't distinguish different colored Fruit Loops by flavor.) That was how I discovered Lucky Charms.

I really like Lucky Charms. They're oaty and sweet. Not too sweet. And they have two flavors that you alternate back and forth: oaty cereal and sweet marshmallows.

In college I learned the marshmallow trick. I never liked Lucky Charms much because the dehydrated marshmallows were chalky and squeaked on my teeth. In college I discovered that if you made sure to get the marshmallows all wet right away, they soften up and don't scrape your teeth so much.

The marshmallow shapes have got totally out of hand, though. When I was a kid they had "pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers." Then in a media blitz they introduced a new marshmallow: blue diamonds. Soon it was "pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers, blue diamonds, and purple horseshoes!" Then they realized they could do "special editions" with different marshmallows. Now the marshmallows are all multicolored (new technology from a few years ago), and much bigger than the originals. Of course, Wikipedia has an exhaustive article on Lucky Charms' "marbits" through history....

As an adult, I buy Lucky Charms every few months. Whenever I open the cereal cabinet not knowing what I want, I see it and get all enthusiastic about having Lucky Charms. I don't know why. But you have to go for those small moments of joy.

There is one thing I never understood. The oat cereal pieces are shaped exactly like dry cat food. Does General Mills make cat kibble too?

Monday, March 31, 2008

Creepy Products I Have Known

Better Than Ears

I found these at a grocery store years ago. They're supposed to replace the boiled pig ears that you can buy in huge bags to feed your dogs (which are another creepy product themselves). Which is worse, ears or pseudo-ears?

But you get 50% more free!




Wee Block

I'd heard of these when I was with two new moms who were talking about baby products you shouldn't buy because they were stupid. This is a cup-shaped sponge you put over your baby boy's weenie while changing him so he can't squirt urine very far when the diaper is off. I'd never seen one for real so when I was shopping at a local baby superstore (site of a relative's shower registry) I sought this one out.

The other one I heard of had a better name: "the pee-pee teepee"

But the "tinkle tinkle lil' star" embroidery is a creepy touch....

Resurrection Eggs

This was in the Easter section of the Mississippi Sprawl-Mart where we went to buy camping supplies. (I held out on buying stuff there as long as possible, but when you're stranded in the south and on a time budget it's difficult....)

These are plastic eggs with mysterious symbols inside that somehow are supposed to teach the story of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection.

Yeah, we're really supposed to believe that this kid is happy to find a bloody crown of thorns in that egg instead of a chocolate?

Over 1 million sold!

Oops! Disposable Panties

Almost forgot the creepiest one: emergency panties.

"Ideal for camping and travelling[sic]!" it says. (Actually, I've seen normal undies at way less than $2/each, and since this two-pack cost $3.99, I think the cotton still wins out.)

"Keep a pack handy for those Heavy Flow days!"

It could have been worse - I found these in a hotel gift shop (where I suppose I was buying "emergency" hosiery, since I was getting a foot blister and the drugstore was several more blocks away), not in a nightclub toilet or highway rest area.

They're ingeniously packed into a compressed disc about 2" diameter and less than an inch high. And the sizing? "Free size," it says. But not so free as you could be.

Monday, March 03, 2008

Statistically Improbably Phrases

My best one for this week:

"That's a cross-check, you piece of poo."

According to Amazon.com, "Statistically Improbable Phrases" are phrases that occur in the text of one book but not very frequently in other books. The phrases don't have to be rare in that particular book, just in books in general.

Which kind of makes sense, because I'm pretty sure I've said something close to that before. But hey, it was a 3 p.m. game. You have to tone it down.

P.S. Here's everything you need to know about hockey penalties

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Classy Leftovers


My dinner from a couple weeks ago - all out of the fridge and reheated in about 10 minutes prep time. My beau started the Japanese cooking experiment a few weeks back, and it's getting pretty good.

Clockwise, we have: plain rice; a miso-based soup with mushrooms, tofu, and fresh watercress; and pickled cabbage (two colors). The green stuff sticking out of the pickles is kombu. (And it's probably been used three times before it went into the pickles, because kombu gets recycled a lot in this cuisine.)

The inspiration was the book Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen by Elizabeth Andoh. A friend gave it to us for Christmas last year. So the beau finally cracked it open, studied up, made lists, and we headed out for ingredients.

It turns out, Japanese home cooking is pretty complicated. The food is simple, but you have to make all these broths and such from scratch. There were some misfires in the beginning - I think he accidentally skipped a step where you leave the broth overnight and then take half the ingredients out before adding the soup ingredients - but even the mistakes weren't too bad.

We did get props from the clerk at the local Japanese food store. She saw the dried anchovies, asian mushrooms, and fresh yuzu (which were like $7! are they ever in season?) and said "what are you making?" We explained we were learning to cook Japanese food. As she rang up the large bag of flaked bonito, she said "This is good. The young people don't use this any more, they just use the powdered dashi."

I have to say, after seeing how long it took to make dashi from scratch (not to mention smelling that bag of bonito when it was opened), I can understand that!

And I finally tried umeboshi, which is one of those Japanese foods that foreigners aren't expected to like. Ume are a small fruit that's like a plum. They're pickled in salt. So the result is salty and sour and pretty intense. Here's how it went:

  • Umeboshi 1: Uh, eeew. Ack. Whoah. But the saltyness is kind of nice with my head cold.

  • Umeboshi 2 (days later): That's not as salty as I remember.

  • Umeboshi 3: Mmm, umeboshi!

Monday, February 04, 2008

Knee Update



Greetings from week 11.

Turns out I did get to walk at my four-week appointment, but it was seven days before Christmas when that happened and I was just too busy to blog about it.

Or take pictures. These are from week 9, and it's been looking pretty normal as far as musculature goes. I should have got some pictures at four or five weeks when the thigh was all skinny and caved in on the sides. I stepped on the scale at some point and I had lost about six pounds. I am pretty sure I didn't have a huge fat loss by lying on my couch for five weeks eating peanut butter sandwiches and Chef Boyardee ravioli for five weeks!

So, back on December 18 I went to see my doctor. My surgeon, who is known even among surgeons for being brusque, breezed into the room with his fellows and put me through the paces: Show me your quad set, show me your heel slide, show me a straight leg raise. I guess I did everything right, because he basically pronounced me healed. He said to stop using the brace completely, go to 100% weight bearing, and use the crutches for another week or so. And I could bend my knee as far as I wanted.

It was actually pretty weird, because I walked in to the doctor visit feeling all disabled, trying not to put any significant weight on my leg and worrying about overflexing my knee and busting out the stitches - and then an hour later I was supposed to walk out not worrying about that stuff? I sat in the room for a little while thinking about that and then decided to put the brace back on to walk out. After all, it would be troublesome to carry it. And I ended up wearing it for a few more hours, because I wanted to go out to Ikea and I only had one stocking on, and that would just have been weird without the brace for context.

The MD also said the next two months would be when I did my most intense physical therapy. Too bad my insurance only covers 15 visits per calendar year! On the bright side, I got to go two or three times a week in December. But I've been doing pretty well with once a week in the PT gym and lots of homework. It takes about an hour to get through all my home exercises, and I do that twice a day (occasionally feeling guilty because I'm not doing three sets a day). It's pretty annoying that it takes me an extra hour now to get out of the house after I get up.

So, a lot of things work now. Going up stairs is okay; going down stairs is a little harder but not too bad. I can walk almost as much as I want - a few weeks ago my knee started aching after walking in the park for 45 minutes, but I haven't tried anything like that since.

Still forbidden: running, jumping, mountain biking, falling, and any activity that could result in an unplanned descent. Road biking in a controlled environment I could probably do, but I haven't tried it yet. I might try climbing on a top-rope too, if I get a sports jones before the weather gets nice.

Oh, and limping, limping has always been forbidden. Apparently it's hard to retrain a limp, so they really want you to walk normally. Which I still don't do 100%, but I try hard!

So now I'm just impatient. I feel okay, but I have to keep doing PT. I have to do all these boring exercise but I'm not allowed to do fun sports. Sucks. But I have to be good if I want to play outside this summer....

Monday, January 28, 2008

I hate cats...


But this, I like.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

The Return of the King

King amazed the world when on November 2nd, seven days after awaking from a 30-year coma, he showed up to vote in the 2000 presidential election. He was turned away due to voting irregularities.
- The Boondocks

I'm rewatching the Boondocks animated show episode The Return of the King. They seem to play it every year around the King holiday. It's f'king brilliant.

In the episode, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was injured in the 1968 assassination attempt, but survives to wake up from a coma in 2000. Despite his discomfort with modern "urban" culture, everything goes moderately well for him - until September 2001, when he says on a talk show that we should love our enemies and turn the other cheek. Shunned as unAmerican, he ends up staying with the Freeman family, where Huey encourages him to restart his activist career.

Partly it's cutting social commentary, and partly it's funny to hear King say things like "I'm staying at a Holiday Inn Express. I feel smarter already."

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

How I spent my Winter Vacation


Winter Classic post-game revelry Originally uploaded by erink
Or, outdoor hockey is a really good reason to visit Buffalo in January.

The game was great. It was hard to follow the action (we could hardly hear the announcements and the video screen was on the opposite side from the rink for us), but I'll get to watch it on my TiVo later. It wasn't too cold, but I was getting a bit wet by the end - somehow, it only stopped snowing during the period breaks. The snow was pretty. Score-wise, it couldn't have gone better - Crosby wins in the last round of a shootout? Unbelievable.

We sat in a section that was mostly Penguins fans - I used our season ticket holder code when I ordered them, so I expected that. But the guy next to me was a Sabres fan, and he was a real jewel - kept saying the players should break more guys' legs and threatening to "come up there and fuck up" the guy behind him when he heckled back. He quieted down after a while - apparently he had snuck in beer in in his pants but he somehow lost all but one can on the way in.

The "title sponsor" was this Amp energy drink (which I don't think I'd ever heard of before - but after a poor experience with guarana in the 90s I haven't really followed the energy drink market). But we saw an Amp Energy Airstream trailer on the highway home, which gains style points in my book, and they played this awesome ad on the stadium screen a few times:



The Sabres goalie is Ryan Miller, who's played very well (but lost) both times we've matched up this season. Judging by fan jerseys, he's pretty popular. The Kings man is former Pens goalie J-S Aubin, nice to see him again.

Another moment at the game was when a Pens fan was coming back to his seat. He yelled to his buddy from the aisle: "I went looking for Superbowl trophies and I couldn't find any!"

Back to the arena on Saturday (we sold our tickets for the 3rd). It won't be the same, but my toes will be warmer!