october 2004
Photoz
“Here is proof that I am a positive and uplifting person that enjoys life.”
Check out the rest of the site too. I don’t have the words to describe it.
31 october 2004 ~ 17:43 
Personal injury
Last night, I scalded my arm quite badly while draining the boiling water from a pot of spaghetti (don’t ask). Today, the burn looks uncannily like a birthmark.
About a month ago, I forgot to put my shoes on when I went outside to dispose of the trash. In the front yard, I stood on a one-inch nail, which went all the way into the sole of my foot, leaving just the rusty head visible, flat with my skin. I gritted my teeth and pulled it out. There was surprisingly little blood, but it hurt to walk for almost a week. (I got a tetanus shot the next day, to be on the safe side.)
A month or so before that, I was testing out an ultra-sharp new knife, and sliced right between two of the fingers on my left hand. There was a lot of blood that time, and it was damn painful. You don’t realize how much that part of your hand moves until it feels like someone has just squeezed lemon juice into an open wound every time you so much as lift a finger.
None of these injuries, however, come anywhere close to the horror of those suffered by two friends of mine recently:
- One friend (and co-worker) threw his back out while, er, romancing a rather large woman, and simultaneously sprained one of his testicles. He could hardly lift his leg for days.
- Another friend, who was (for reasons best left to your imagination) “exposed” in a public park by the freeway in La Jolla, got the highly irritating oil from the Poison Oak plant (Rhus diversiloba) on his you-know-what, which, over the course of the next few days, underwent enormous swelling, and turned bright red. An unpleasant side-effect of this deformity was micturition at an angle of approximately 90°.
These sort of things always go in threes. I’m being sure to stay away from unnecessary zippers, refrigerator doors, and bacon slicers. You can’t be too careful!
31 october 2004 ~ 00:28
Education in reverse
Well, Friday’s Bad Movie Night and trash potluck went swimmingly. It was perfect: the movie sucked, the food was ghastly, and the drinks were - well, I’ll get to that later. In many ways, the event was a learning experience for me, in that I had to unlearn all the rules of healthy eating, and put myself in the shoes of those for whom canned goods are actual ingredients in cuisine. So, what did I learn?
I learned that cooking food that tastes just like school dinners is really easy with the aid of Campbell’s® condensed soup, cheap mixed vegetables, and poor quality frozen goods. This is what I ended up with:
This is Tater Tot® Casserole, and it was absolutely appalling. I had some more for lunch the next day, and ended up with stomach cramps all afternoon. I’m not joking. The mere thought of all the goop and salt in the soup (two cans in this casserole alone) is enough to make my intestines spasm in disgust right now, a day later.
I also learned how not to make a Twinkie® Torte:
In short, this consists of 16 Twinkies® arranged in layers, sandwiched together with Reddi-Wip® aerosol cream, with more Reddi-Wip® on top. A whole can of it, in fact.
I learned that there is not nearly as much cream in one of those cans as you would think. In fact, I was kind of disappointed when it ran out after only just covering all of the Twinkies®. I also learned that it doesn’t actually contain that many calories (about ten in a tablespoon), probably because it’s mostly air.
I learned that when making a Twinkie® Torte, one should use toothpicks to hold it all together while it freezes, otherwise it completely collapses, as you can see in the photo above. But it was surprising to learn that canned, aerated cream freezes quite nicely, solidifying while still fluffy to form something not unlike vanilla ice-cream. In fact, the Torte really tasted quite good, like a sort of ice-cream sponge cake. With freezer burn.
During the rest of the potluck, I discovered that it is impossible to get anything more than a slight buzz from Coors Light®; instead, the more you drink, the worse your headache gets. I also learned that there is actually a market for “wine blender” beverages such as Arbor Mist® Strawberry White Zinfandel, whose first three ingredients are - and I quote from the label - White Zinfandel, water, and corn syrup. It really did taste like Kool-Aid®.
Finally, I learned that Mariah Carey is not nearly as bad an actor as one would expect. Not good; just not heinous. The script of Glitter was as bad as could be expected, though. Cliché after cliché, with a heaping spoonful of maudlin sentimentality on top for extra sticky sweetness.
There’s nothing like having one’s eyes opened up to a whole new world of crap. Now, where’s the Cheez Whiz®?
24 october 2004 ~ 10:40
Get some
Need to pop your nut? Look no further than the snack aisle at your local grocery store!
21 october 2004 ~ 21:37
All that glitters
So, it’s official: this Friday is the first “Bad Movie Night,” which my friend (and fellow student, and ex-co-worker) Kat and I have been planning for a while. The inaugural bad movie is Glitter, starring Mariah Carey.
I haven’t seen Glitter yet, but I do own it. Yes, I saw the DVD in the bargain bin ($5!) at a local video store, and could not resist it. Kat and I, who share a love of Andie McDowell’s acting “skills” in Four Weddings and a Funeral, had already brought up the idea of a Bad Movie Night, and this seemed perfect. I’ve given the movie a quick scan, and at first sight it does seem pretty abysmal. I just hope that it’s laughable and cringeworthy, instead of merely lame.
The evening will also include a white trash potluck dinner (I’m not yet sure what I’ll be making, but it will probably involve Velveeta and/or canned mushroom soup), trashy drinks (Southern Comfort?), and appalling music (oh, so much choice).
A terrible time will be had by all!
20 october 2004 ~ 11:16
Here comes the rain again
It just started pouring with rain again. It began Saturday night at three in the morning, the hammering on the roof waking me up and sending the dog into a conniption fit. It has been raining on and off since then, torrentially at times.
This is amazing because it's the first time it has rained since I moved into this house - in April. Yes, San Diego reached 181 days without rain (a record) one day before the déluge began. So, the sound of it in the night was nothing short of astonishing. Before writing this, I stood by the back door for about ten minutes, watching and listening to the downpour, still mesmerized by it.
It’s supposed to rain most of the day tomorrow too. I’ll have to get to work without an umbrella, somehow. Bugger.
Who Is It, the first commercial single from Björk’s latest album Medúlla, was released yesterday. Visit the single’s official page and follow the links to check out the video, filmed on the black sands of Hjörleifshöfði, Iceland. It contains several campanologists, and features Björk in a weirdly shaped dress covered with tiny bells. Still completely mad then, obviously.
I’ve added a bunch more photos to flickr, and rearranged the menu here a little. The menu now also displays thumbnails of three random photos from my flickr.
Here’s a blog in which every post is actually a completely separate blog. Hilariously, and probably deliberately, missing the point.
19 october 2004 ~ 22:33
Where it’s at
So, what’s new? Thanks for asking. Not much. Robbie has been gone over a week, on a cruise in the Caribbean, so I’ve had a lot of time at home with just the dog and cat, which has been relaxing, but a little weird. Been feeling rather unfocused, pottering around without getting anything major done, then cursing myself for my lack of productivity. Have gone for several very long walks with Beaver. Went out a couple of times this past weekend, for the first time in ages. In one bar, the following conversation ensued:
Abercrombie Club Twink (ACT): You’re cute! How old are you?
Me: I’m 33.
ACT: Like, wow! I hope I look like you at that age!
Me: Jeez, thanks ... how old are you?
ACT: 29.
Me: Well, you’re not very far away from “that age.”
ACT: [offended, looking away]
[awkward pause; beer is sipped; ACT bobs head to bad Cher song]
ACT: You know, you can’t be cute any more after 30, just handsome.
Hmmm, looks like bitchy is the new snarky.
In other news, I’ve been checking out stuff like Ear Wax Candy, Pen Island (great URL!), and Hong Kong’s Fuk Hing Stationery, and thinking about buying a pair of Horse Pants. Damn, what can’t you find on the net?
17 october 2004 ~ 22:02
Filth
So, I went to see the new movie from John Waters, A Dirty Shame, on its opening weekend, and, as anticipated, it was pants-wettingly hilarious. Like everyone else around me in the cinema, I was laughing so hard I was crying.
A Dirty Shame is essentially a one-joke film, but it’s a very good joke. The sheer volume of filthy language is staggering, more than I’ve ever heard in a single movie. Other than that, I don’t really know how to even begin describing it, so you’ll just have to find out for yourself. All I can say is - spoiler ahead! - if you’ve ever wanted to watch David Hasselhoff grunting and straining to pinch one off in an airplane lavatory (something he never did in Baywatch, to my knowledge), then this is a must-see!
Watch out for a fantastic turn by bankrobber-turned-actor Patricia Hearst, who almost steals the movie with a hilarious speech parodying twelve-step programs (“First you have to admit to God that you’re a whore...”), where she actually outdoes her own excellent performance as the juror who wears white shoes after Labor Day (“Fashion has changed!”) in Serial Mom. Oh, and the three bears (“Woof! Grrrr!”) were a total riot. Here’s an interesting interview with one of them, David A. Dunham, who was also in Pecker and Cecil B. Demented.
Can’t wait until this one comes out on DVD!
7 october 2004 ~ 12:18
Feed me
This evening I finally got around to doing some research on Atom feeds, and quickly threw one together for this site, as an experiment. So, all hail the pleonasm.com Atom feed, which validates (at least until I start messing with it again), and formats nicely thanks to a stylesheet I slapped up, borrowing heavily from the feed of Google Blog. Much nicer than mere XML, à la unstyled pleonasm.com RSS feed, I must say.
I’m going to think about it for a few more days, before deciding whether or not to ditch RSS in favour of Atom. However, I can already see how much more powerful and flexible Atom is, and I’m already getting ideas for other uses for it. Keep ’em peeled!
6 october 2004 ~ 21:45
On the menu
Two new items (and some reorganization, which I’m still not quite sure about) on the menu:
- my flickr: I opened an account at the amazing flickr, and have already uploaded a few photos; there’s also an RSS feed
- my delicious: I have so many saved links that I have no idea how to even begin organizing them, but it looks like del.icio.us might be the way to go, so I’m trying it out; it certainly makes it very easy to post public bookmarks, and it too has an RSS feed
I’ll be keeping an eye on the del.icio.us news and announcements blog, and publishing the many bookmarks I have sitting in folders on my computer, as well as sorting through thousands of old photos for flickr ... in my abundant free time.
5 october 2004 ~ 13:29
In the pink
So, today I took a city bus for the first time in absolutely ages - five months, by my reckoning. Nothing has changed in that time. The Metropolitan Transit System of San Diego is still used exclusively by freaks of every persuasion. For example, in one short journey today, I travelled with:
- an old man in a wheelchair which had - I kid you not - a full-length bar stool strapped to the back (why?!)
- a young woman conducting a conversation on a cellphone, using its speakerphone feature, so that everyone in the bus could hear the person at the other end, in addition to her shouting
- three Mexican children seated in a row, all crying their eyes out for no discernible reason
- a very large white lesbian eyeing up an even larger black woman in a very unsubtle fashion (I thought her eyes were going to pop out of their sockets)
- a teenager who seemed to have chosen pink as his accent colour du jour: pink beanie, pink bandana (yes, a beanie and a bandana), pink sweatband on his wrist, pink keychain, and pink shoelaces in his sneakers; what really got me was that he was carrying pink snacks too (a glass bottle of pink lemonade, and a tube of strawberry candies)
- two very drunk, very smelly men in “Vietnam Veteran” ballcaps, one of whom accidentally stamped on my foot as he exited the bus, and didn’t even seem to notice
Public transportation may be slow and inconvenient, but at least it’s entertaining!
3 october 2004 ~ 20:52
Spotted
I was in a store that sells British goods yesterday, perusing the shelves (goggling at long-forgotten confectionery delights such as the Curly Wurly, the Penguin, and the Murray Mint), when I found this:
The name is funny enough, but some genius at Heinz made the packaging even better by including in the cooking instructions a section that begins: “To prevent spurting...”
Millions of British people have grown up with this (actually quite good) pudding, or “dessert” to my American readers. (In the US, the word “pudding” refers to what Brits call blancmange or custard, roughly speaking. It’s all very confusing.) Spotted dick is a sponge pudding containing raisins and golden syrup, and is often served piping hot with custard.
As I paid for my spotted dick, I related to the cashier - a middle-aged British woman - a story I had recently read in the news, concerning a major supermarket chain in the UK that recently decided to rename its version of the pudding, claiming that people nowadays are too embarrassed to be seen buying something with “Spotted Dick” on the label. (I can’t find the link now - that’ll teach me to bookmark.)
By way of rejoinder, the cashier told me that an old folks’ home in England had tried renaming it on their lunch menu, and that the geriatrics in question didn’t think much of that idea. Touché!
Oddly, I felt far less embarrassed standing in line with a can of Spotted Dick than I did a couple of months ago with a packet of Cock Soup. Soon I’ll be buying things like this without even batting an eyelid.
Anyway, I can’t wait to eat the Spotted Dick. I haven’t had any in ages!
2 october 2004 ~ 23:43