Maybe We Need a Safe Word

ThinkGeek, purveyor of geek cultural accessories, always puts out a nice April 1 edition of their advertising newsletter. It gives us such wonderful products as the Lonely Guy Dream Vacation Photo Frame, the USB Desktop Tanning Center, and many more that I can't find on their website any more.

So today, safely in mid- to late April, I get their latest newsletter. The first product is something called a Flying Alarm Clock. Supposedly, it's an alarm clock with a little helicopter thing on the top. When the alarm goes off, the little helicopter thing flies off, and you have to get out of bed and find it and put it back to turn the alarm off.

Yes, it's very similar to Clocky, which I hear is now on the market (http://www.nandahome.com/).

Ridiculous, maybe, but apparently the Flying Clock is an actual product. So how can I tell when they're serious and when they're joking?

Worse, one of their joke products from this year, the 8-Bit Tie, was apparently so popular they're now making it.

I mean, in a world with LED faucet lights and the Personal Area Network (PAN) fleece pullover, and the USB Aquarium who can tell?

On the other hand, this is just really cool.

Links (these will open in this window):

April 1 2007 newsletter - http://www.thinkgeek.com/edm/20070401.shtml

April 25 newsletter - http://www.thinkgeek.com/edm/20070425.shtml

Flying Clock - http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/lights/9171/

Wipes

Presumably there's a GL on there somewhere but I can't see any. Either way, a streak-free shine seems like a win.

Wildlife Service Says Mullet is Not Endangered in Pittsburgh

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the US Fish and Wildlife Service just denied a petition to add the Monongahela Mullet to the Endangered Species list. Apparently they were talking about a fish, though. I suppose it's hard to sell a fish called the "bottom-feeding longneck sucker."

From the Post-Gazette:

If you thought a mullet was a hairstyle for bottom-feeder guys stuck in the 1970s, you're half right. It's also the commercial name for the bottom-feeding longneck sucker. This week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied a petition to protect longnecks in the Monongahela River drainage under the Endangered Species Act. The petition, filed in 2002 by the Pennsylvania Biological Survey, cited water quality concerns and asserted that Monongahela longneck suckers are a distinct population separated from the rest, qualifying them for special treatment. The FWS ruled, however, that while Mon longnecks are geographically separate, the petition didn't prove they are genetically distinct.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07070/768524-358.stm

"Yume o Taberu"

I was at a Japanese language conversation group on Saturday discussing animal names. The discussion leader had brought in a picture from the back of a box of Japanese animal crackers, and it had a long list of animal names in Japanese and English. But some of the names were odd. There was "peafowl," and "fur seal." There was parrot, which is common, and macaw, which is not. And there was a really strange term for rooster - can't remember it just now. I pointed out "tapir," which I'm not sure I've even seen in most zoos. I asked the Japanese people at the table if it was a common animal in Japan. You never know what's trendy.

So we were talking about tapirs, how big they are, trying to figure out if we're all thinking about the same animal, and the one Japanese man says to the other, "Yume o taberu."

Now, I wasn't having the greatest day for hearing Japanese, and a lot of Japanese words sound like other words - but those words are pretty easy. Yume - dreams. Taberu - to eat. It didn't make any sense, so I thought I'd misheard the words. I guess I was just staring at him, so they asked if I'd understood. I had the words right, they just didn't make sense. "It eats your dreams," he had said.

Turns out there's Japanese folklore about tapirs that eat dreams. When a child has a nightmare, the tapir can come and eat it to make it go away. You can put pictures of a tapir on your pillow. One of the men at the conversation group said it can go the other way too, if you're having a nice dream the tapir can come and eat it and make you unhappy.

Tapirs, huh? Who'da thunk.

Wikipedia entry for Baku

A Mean Pinball

Tales of the Arabian Nights,
originally uploaded by erink.

The beau was out looking at a pinball machine for sale, and I was thinking he had been gone a long time when I heard from him. He was on his way home and he needed help with two things. He had actually bought the machine and needed help getting it inside. But first, he had cut a big gash in his hand and needed first aid.

I was only slightly surprised that he'd bought the thing. His buddy from back home had come to help, and he has a new pickup truck and a lot of expertise in the field, so given the right price and condition there was no reason not to do it.

The gash was rather more surprising. Apparently the house they were moving the machine from had dogs, and instead of opening the gate the guys had just taken to vaulting over the fence. They each made it, once. The second time my beau tried it he hit something nasty on the fence and sliced his thumb open pretty good.

Did you know trucks come with first aid kits now? At least this one did. So they tied up the wound and drove home and it had not quite soaked through the 5 layers of gauze by the time they got here.

We washed it off and found some scissors to remove the 1" thumbprint-shaped flap that was hanging off - I would have left it, but it was pretty dirty and washing it wasn't very easy. Or pleasant. It was kind of still dripping, so we used most of the rest of the roll of gauze to wrap it so we could move the machine inside and get it set up.

If you have never moved a pinball machine, well, here are some things you might not know. The legs come off. It's fairly heavy. The top folds down onto of the playfield area. The standard procedure is to get a set of sawhorses to substitute for the legs while you're moving it. Once you get the machine pretty close to where it's going you put the legs back on. Being the smallest and weakest of the three, my job was to run around with the sawhorses while the guys carried the pinball machine up the steps to the house and up to the second floor where we keep such things. If we ever move the pinball room to the third floor we're going to have to hire someone. My job also included running back and forth between the second floor and the basement to get tools we needed, and actually measuring the spaces where we wanted to put it. So, you see, this way I get some sweat equity without doing anything hard.

We probably should put that door back on the hinges sometime.

While I was helping put on the legs I got a nasty metal splinter. We joked about how the machine wanted blood, but I felt it was only fair that it bite me too, since we were all going to be living together. And I actually didn't bleed, though I did need to take the splinter out before I did more work.

So, fine. The men tinker with the machine for a few hours and get it all set up. We get some dinner. We play a few games. It's fun. The buddy heads home.

We spend some time orchestrating high-tech band-aids for the long-term dressings on the thumb. Band-Aid makes these "advanced healing" ones now that are thick and you're supposed to leave them on for a few days at a time. On his thumb they keep peeling up after a day, but we figure they're probably the best bet. 3M makes some "Nexcare waterproof" bandages that are also good for hands because you can typically wash over them without getting them wet on the inside - these are the step-down plan.

So Monday comes, my beau goes to work, and Monday afternoon I lose a ball deep in the back of the machine. I'm a little intimidated about pulling the glass out (the glass is big, and breaking the glass is bad) and the machine won't play until it finds the ball, so I wait for him to come home. The first step in opening the machine up is to open the coin door and release the latch to take the glass off, so he reaches in front to open the door.

And then he says a bad word and goes to the bathroom. (I wanted to say "pulls back a bloody stump" but it wasn't really that bad.) He's got a deep cut in the side of his index finger, right on the side of the nail. See, the lock on the door is missing, and he reached in to the empty hole to pull open the door. There's a sharp edge on the inside and it sliced right in. It bleeds pretty good. Luckily we already have all the first aid stuff out....

So now we're both a little nervous about this new machine. How often will it demand a blood sacrifice? Why was the previous owner so eager to get rid of it? Are we secretly in a Night Gallery episode? (If we had bought the Twilight Zone machine we looked at earlier, would our mystery have a better script and classier themes?)

I hope you can see this, Mayor Menino

Because I am doing it as hard as I can.

Albuquerque

Hanging at ABQ. Among its amenities are free wireless and this workstation with a billion outlets. (Yeah, my cell phone camera sucks, but still it's cool that I can post from it.)

Another innovation is their "cell phone waiting area" where people can hover in their cars waiting for their travelers to arrive. In Pittsburgh we use the side of the access road, and some people even pull over on the highway before the exit (both illegal). I saw about 8 people stopped on the highway on my way home, and they hadn't even bothered to turn out their headlights.

Albuquerque airport has distributed security checkpoints - one for two sets of gates. I had a nice short line. The coffee stand sells zip-top bags for 50 cents in case you forgot to bring one for your carry-on toiletries. All their rental car agencies share one site - and one shuttle.

I even found a bathroom near the ticket counter with stall doors that open out. Posh!

Dozen

Cupcakes!

The cupcake store has opened. Film at 11.

So for a couple weeks this hole-in-the-wall shop in Squirrel Hill (local urban shopping area) has been remodeling and promising something about "premium cupcakes." I parked near there Thursday and they were open, so I went to check it out.

Apparently there are "premium cupcakes." This is a new thing that any classy city is supposed to have, like $4 coffee and Ethiopian food and hookah bars.

Dozen cupcakes is apparently an independent business. They sell froofy cupcakes. When I was in they had four or five flavors available, like mocha, peanut butter chocolate, and vanilla. A little small for my cupcake taste, but with a big swirl of buttercream icing I'm sure they make up for it in caloric density. The staff recommended I try the day's special, which was something called mint meltaway.


Mint Meltaway

It was pretty darn good. A dark chocolate glaze, mint buttercream filling in the middle, and nice cake. The only problem was that it was pretty intense. I split one with my beau and he had to run downstairs for an emergency glass of milk. Bring a friend.

I think I can get over thinking the icing on top of the regular cupcakes kind of looks like a dog turd.

The funny part was when my beau came home from work. We were chatting and he said "Did you know about premium cupcakes?" And I got to say "Did you see what's on the counter downstairs?" Apparently a friend at work had brought some in and they were fabulous. (I swear we'd been talking about this in our social group for months before, but he somehow missed it.)

Whatever.

I just don't know. A week ago it seemed like everything was going to work out for the Penguins to stay in Pittsburgh. A new owner, a wealthy young Canadian digerati hockey fan from a town too small to have its own NHL team but close enough to commute to games. The prospect of a new arena, whether via the Isle of Capri casino proposal or Plan B, which the new owner had finally somewhat endorsed.

Now it's all gone to shit. Jim Balsillie pulled out of the deal suddenly last week. The announcement came at 6 p.m. on a Friday, just an hour and a half before a really good home game (and tuque night!). Supposedly it had to do with the NHL wanting him to agree to never ever move the team ever. Stupid NHL.

Did I trust Balsillie not to move the team? No, but I believed that keeping it here was going to be a better business decision than moving it. I trusted him to give us the benefit of the doubt if other factors were equal.

At least they get to keep his deposit.

Second strike, today the gaming commission awarded the one license for a slots casino to the Mystic Star group. You might wonder what this has to do with a hockey team, but one of the competing applicants, Isle of Capri, promised to build a nice new hockey arena for free as part of their casino complex. Free. Gratis. At no cost to you. The Penguins made a deal with IOC that included the fact they could negotiate only with them as long as the proposal was valid, so there's no back-up plan.

And really, Lemieux Group has given us a fair shot to get them a new arena already. They've been telling us for years that the team is for sale and it needs a new arena to stay in Pittsburgh. What exactly did we think was going to happen?

On the other hand, you kind of have to wonder if there was something really crummy about the IOC casino proposal and they felt they needed to give us a free hockey arena to make up for it. If so, it wasn't obvious - I didn't see any problems in what I read about it, and the politicians who evaluated the plan seemed to say it was fine.

The one bright spot in the casino deal is that if it's located on the North Shore I'll never have to see it.

So, where does that leave my team? It's for sale to the highest bidder and the arena lease expires this spring. We obviously don't deserve an NHL franchise. Maybe they'll move to a nice city and I can go there. I'll have to change the blog subtitle, but that's just a few electrons. I guess 40 years of history doesn't count for much with local politicians.

Depressing Post-Gazette coverage:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06354/747594-100.stm

Better article (but still depressing):
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06355/747842-336.stm

Wrath of God

stray leaves,
originally uploaded by erink.

Or possibly just a real aggressive weather front.

Today it's dropping from 70 degrees (yes it's December 1) to the 20s. It's a little windy.

I found out the downstairs PC wasn't connected to the UPS properly when the power went out. Hey, but the printer stayed on, that's important. Right.

There was an exciting moment when I tried to close the kitchen window. It was blowing pretty hard, and as soon as I slid the window down it blew in at the top, the whole bottom pane tilted toward me. Okay, so gotta keep that one latched.

The part that pissed me off, though, was the leaves. On Monday I did my "last" leaf cleanup of the season - around here you are actually supposed to sweep the leaves into the street. Then the street sweeper picks them up. So I went out Monday afternoon and cleaned off the last few leaves of the season. This afternoon I went out and the leaves from the neighbor's oak tree have freed themselves and they're all over my yard again. I swear, none of those were there the other day!

Ah well. Time to go find my trash cans before it gets dark.

Safety First?

I don't care if it makes me a Luddite, some things just should not talk.

No.

Not ever.

Eeeew.

Bomb Dogs Sniff Out Human Cannonball

I love this story.

The circus was in town through Sunday, and since we have homeland insecurity now we apparently do routine searches of our arenas. Sunday morning, a bomb-detector dog alerted on a trailer in the parking lot next to the building.

Turns out the trailer belonged to the Human Cannonball.

It was empty, but I suppose the dog actually detected explosive residue.

I guess it's getting dangerous to be shot through the air in this political climate.

The full story:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06310/736106-100.stm

Trader Joe's Comes To Pittsburgh

And gets full.

Painting on 'Ludes

I was happy to discover that my local PBS station is running something called "The Best of Joy of Painting." It's been ages since I encountered the soporific tones of artist Bob Ross, using housepainting brushes to magically conjur trees and fields and mountains from thin air.

He was working on a mountain waterfall, so I didn't see him paint any "happy little trees," but he there was a trippy moment when he told us to "begin thinking about all the mist that would happen down here" at the bottom of the waterfall. "It would hit and splash and churn and carry on. Probably make a lot of noise, too," he said, coincidentally drumming the canvas with the brush, just "a little bit of titanium white on the corner."

It was all so fascinating, the dark studio and the hypnotic voice and the stupid, coarse paintbrushes - and even palette knives - laying on smudges of paint that suddenly turned into such realistic images. I remember sitting on the wall-to-wall carpet in my grandmother's living room and watching this weirdo paint, wondering vaguely what my grandmother (an amateur oil painter herself) thought of him, and why all painters didn't work this way since his technique was so effective.

This particular episode broke up the painting with some strange video footage of two squirrels Bob said he'd raised and released. He said they were brothers, but for some reason they kept mounting each other.

And by accident, I also discovered a great new trick for watching the show: with TiVo you can watch it backwards. All the trees disappear!

My Trip to Venus

After passing this place for years, I finally got a chance to go in last month. (I stopped on the way back from my corn-picking trip near Mars, PA.) It's frequently closed when I'm out here, and I'm usually only there on the way to or from visiting relatives, so I don't get to stop for food.

The Venus Diner is on Rt. 8 north of Pittsburgh, near the PA Turnpike (Butler Valley exit?) and a few miles south of the town named Mars. I heard there's also a town near there named Venus. Various websites say it's from 1957 or 1959.

The exterior has seen better days, but the design is lovely, especially around the entrance.





I'd filled up on pastries on the way out that morning, so, uncharacteristically, I ordered a lunch dish - hot turkey sandwich. I know it's not how you're supposed to eat, but it's kind of fun when everything on the plate is the same color.



The diner makes its own pies. But I overheard the waitress telling another customer that they had to stop selling cream pies. Apparently the health department decided their built-in refrigerator cases aren't cold enough to store cream pies legally. "Everything was fine for 30 years," she said.

Being an old Twin Peaks fan, I ordered cherry.

I've always hoped that the diner was doing well - from the outside it looks pretty run down. Inside is another story - all shiny and beautiful. Next time, breakfast!

The rest of my Venus Diner photos are on Flickr.

Greetings from the Pacific Northwest

My first day in Seattle, I'm walking down the street where my friends live and I see a bumper sticker that says "Consider Karma." It's on a big, gas-powered SUV.

Local Food Week

It's "Local Food Week" in the Burgh. This is a new event organized by the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture to focus attention the local food culture and how to be a part of it. You don't even have to cook, since several restaurants routinely use local products.

PASA's website has a nice local food guide. You can search for farm markets, you-pick farms, CSA (consumer-supported agriculture, or farm share) programs, and businesses that sell local foods. If you're jealous of my veggies from last post, you can use the search to find your own farm share! (Mine is Kretschmann Farms.)

I started celebrating a little early by volunteering to pick corn with the local food bank, out at a farm near Mars. The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank has a gleaning program, which means they get crop donations from farmers, they just have to go out and pick them. These fields have been picked already by professionals, but there is still food in them - I guess it ripened late or just was missed the first time around. So the food bank gets volunteers to come out and harvest it, and then they get fresh produce.

Somehow I lived in Pennsylvania almost 40 years without ever having picked corn. You can tell people who grew up around corn because they become corn snobs. They won't eat certain types of corn, no matter how fresh it is. One of the volunteers said he used to pick a few dozen before breakfast growing up, he had pretty high standards about what was worth picking. As a city kid, I had pretty low standards about what was worth picking.

When corn isn't ripe, the ears are flexible and a little squishy. If you open them to look, the kernels are little squares, kind of folded in on themselves. Ripe kernels are hard and round, which you can feel from the outside. The ears also have a different shape when they're all plumped up. The kernels develop from the bottom to the top. The riper ears also are easier to pick, they break off better than the younger ones - I already knew this about tomatoes and berries from my youth.

In the field we picked, all the ears were about waist level or lower, which I found surprising because I think I'd seen corn plants with ears at the top. I don't know if it was the type of corn or the fact that we were gleaning.

The food bank had a panel truck with big metal bins inside. We each got an orange plastic utility bucket and two rows to work. Runners worked the margins, swapping out empty buckets for full ones and taking the corn back to the truck. It was pretty easy, and the weather was good (overcast with sprinkles before and after we worked). We got a lot of corn and finished in only a few hours.

I didn't think to bring my camera out into the field, which I regretted because there were plenty of cool things to photograph. There's a weed version of Morning Glory that wraps itself around the corn plants, it's got wonderful white flowers. It's a bitch to cut through to get the corn out. There were amazing bugs, big bees and spiders that liked the flowers. There were groundhog holes along the rows two to three feet across. There was corn smut, a type of grey/black fungus that looked like it was pretty gross if you accidentally touched it, but sometimes it made fabulous, flowery extrusions off the top of the ear.

So it was pretty cool.

On the way home I finally got a chance to stop at the Venus Diner on Route 8, which I've driven by for years. But that's another post.

This Week's Veggies

The box is getting heavier.

Random Internet Goodness

Because some things are worth passing along:

How to Be a Ninja:
homepage.ntlworld.com/philbooth/How_To_Be_A_Ninja.jpg

The Best Diet Coke & Mentos Video:
eepybird.com/dcm1.html
It's like the freakin' Bellagio in some dude's back yard.
Here's some science stuff about why it happens (via the Post-Gazette and Mythbusters): www.post-gazette.com/pg/06220/711813-237.stm

Ergonomic Keyboard for Pirates:
www.craphound.com/images/piratekeyboard.jpg

Yum?

From a Mexican grocery in Pittsburgh. They have to know, they put it in the window.