Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009 Elsewhere on the Web I figure now is as good a time as any to tell you about another project I've been working on. I took on a new paid blogging gig a while ago, writing for a thing called SparkLife. It's a humor blog that's a spinoff of SparkNotes, which in turn is run by Barnes & Noble. And I'm one of a group of writers, so you'll see a bunch of other names under a lot of the funny pieces. The best part is that it's aimed at high school and college students, which is perfect for me, because I used to be one. Never mind how long ago right now. The point is that now I'm all hip to what the kids are into these days. 23-skidoo! Of course, I'm wide open to ideas for entries. Anybody reading this in their school computer lab, feel free to pass along any ideas you think would be of interest to today's youth. Especially if you are a youth. * * * Just for an example, here's a piece I wrote for last week, that didn't get used because it kind of falls outside the usual brief, in the sense that we don't really get into TV. Nothing to stop me using it here, through. Will The Hills be the same without Lauren? Of course it won't, but then who ever thought a sequel series to Laguna Beach would ever work without Kristin? You remember Kristin, right? No? Well, trust us. Still, Lauren's departure leaves a gaping hole in the cast, and we at SparkLife know just the person to fill it. Actually, we know several. Now, keep in mind that you don't want somebody too much like Lauren, because this is all about an opportunity to make a big change. So here goes. Blake Lively. Everyone knows that The Hills is totally scripted anyway, so why not cast someone who actually knows how to act? The Gossip Girl star is an obvious choice, but maybe it would be too much of a shock to cast someone who can act too well. Maybe it would be better to raid the cast of 90210 Kim Kardashian. She's used to being in front of reality TV cameras, plus the famous bad girl could certainly spice up some of those boring stretches. Wait, is it Kim we're thinking about ? Oh, put one of the other ones in there. We don't care. Lauren Graham. Yes, she's a bit older than the target demographic, but we're so tired of those long scenes where nobody says anything. We want to hear some witty chattering, darn it, and nobody gives better or wittier chatter than Rory Gilmore's former mom. Bill Cosby. Let's face it, what these girls really need in their lives is some guidance. The Cos can not only provide that with humor, funny faces, and a sweater collection that would make Stephanie even more envious than usual -- he's also got a doctorate in education. And God knows someone needs to school Spencer. Julie Chen. She's got nearly a decade of experience making insignificant developments seem totally earth-shattering as the host of Big Brother. Would we ever get tired of her weekly declarations that something was "the biggest power play in Hills history" or "the biggest betrayal in Hills history?" We think not. Hang on, everyone, it's going to be a long night. Marilyn Manson. It's a show about the beautiful people, after all. And you can't tell us that he and Brody wouldn't be best bros forever. Okay, you can, but we won't believe you. posted by M. Giant 8:46 AM 1 comments 1 Comments:I would pay a kazillion dollars to see Bill Cosby take on Spencer. What a douche.
By Saturday, April 25, 2009 Injured List Let me just start by saying that I am not facing any kind of major health issue. But I always assumed that if I did, I'd be the kind of person who amazed everyone by defeating it with sheer force of will and determination. If I got cancer, I'd not just survive it, but beat it, because why just be a cancer survivor when you can be a cancer-basher? If I got a stroke, I'd do speech therapy until I made Ryan Seacrest sound like Dick Clark. If I were in a paralyzing car accident, I'd spend every waking hour going along between those parallel rails. And if nobody would give me a ride, I'd walk there. I really should have known better, because I've been trying -- poorly -- to deal with the minor health crisis of having a party ball where a six-pack is supposed to be for the past couple of decades. But now I have finally proved to myself, on a conscious level, how wrong I was. As I alluded to in my last entry, I took a fall a while ago. I was at the Science Museum with Trash and M. Edium, and I was running back to the car to get something. We'd parked some distance away, so I thought I'd try to take a shortcut back to the car. This shortcut involved a short embankment of barely-thawed mud at a forty-five degree angle. I thought I could make it, if I kept my feet moving fast enough, but there was no traction there whatsoever. You know how when people fall, you say they hit the ground? Well, the ground hit me. Harder than anything has ever hit me in my life. And yes, I have been in car accidents. I popped back up, thinking I'd be okay in a minute, but I felt like I'd been slapped all along my left side with a shipping container. The first clue that something more lasting than a bruise might have occurred came when I tried to pick up M. Edium inside the museum and discovered I could only pick up one side of him. For the most part, I was fine the next morning, except for some lingering stiffness in my shoulder, and the kind of one-sided ass cramping you get if you spent the previous evening bowling with the wrong hand, and even that last bit faded quickly. And then between one thing and another, I never went to the doctor with it until it was time for my annual physical in mid March and I mentioned it then. My family practice doctor gave me a referral to a physical therapist the following week, and I went to the appointment, where the physical therapist watched me try to move my arm in ways it doesn't want to move any more, taught me some exercises to do, and gave me a little folder of handouts so I would remember them. The end. Seriously, that's it. I haven't opened that folder since I came home with it six weeks ago. I know I really should crack this thing open again, but it always seems like there's something more important to do. Work, recaps, M. Edium, Trash, housework, reading, napping, staring out the window, all of these things take precedence. I don't know why I'm avoiding it so much. Trash has been after me to get to it, of course. It's just that there's no deadline. And frankly, it's easy to forget. I don't even feel anything most of the time, unless I'm either putting on my jacket to leave, rolling over in bed, drying off after my shower, or rock climbing. And I never go rock climbing. Obviously none of those other times are ideal opportunities to get started on an arm workout. But I know I have to make time for this project. The longer I put it off, the less I'll be able to put off the reality of the likelihood that I'll one day be admitting defeat by something that's actually serious. But then, maybe living with it is the real victory. In which case, I am undefeated. posted by M. Giant 9:45 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:
I left a nagging injury (not really harmful; just kind of a drag) for way too long, and when I finally got it fixed, I realized how much it had been poisoning my whole view of life, making me kind of a miserable jerk, actually, without even knowing it.
By My husband slipped and fell in that same parking lot. I suspect something sinister at work here. Or something clumsy.
By I once sprained my ankle playing mini golf. And I wasn't even drinking! Stupid/embarrassing injuries plague me. And yet I can go sledding off a roof in a boat and walk away with no problems.
By Wednesday, April 22, 2009 Grounded Some of M. Edium's Christmas presents haven't even been played with yet, because they're more of the outdoor warm-weather variety. For instance, there's this little foam rubber toy plane that comes with its own spring-loaded launcher. The plane has a tube running along the bottom of its fuselage, and you thread the rod of the launcher through it, which pushes a spring back. Then when you pull the trigger on the pistol-grip-shaped launcher handle, the spring launches the plane into the air. "Up to sixty feet!" says the box. We don't have any rooms that big, so it was going to need to wait until he could do it outside. He had actually forgotten about it, but as we've been having more and more warm days lately, he dug it out and wanted to give it a try. One day last week I was just about to bring him outside to play with it, but then he launched it across my study. Two seconds after I told him not to. Obviously plane time was over after that. Over the next few days, there was reason after reason why we couldn't take it out for a spin. It was too cold again. Or the plane was misplaced. Or it was raining. Or the launcher was missing. Or he had to go somewhere. Or we busted him selling credit default swaps. It was just one thing after another. Then, this past Sunday, the stars aligned, and everything was in place for a maiden flight. The weather was nice enough, the calendar was clear, both launcher and plane were in his hands, and he hadn't recently misbehaved. So we went out to the back deck. I loaded the plane onto the launcher and was about to show him how it worked, but he wanted to be the first to send it up, and how could I deny him? So he pointed the launcher straight up into the air and pulled the trigger. Finally freed of its earthly bounds, the plane soared above our yard…where the wind caught it and dumped it on our roof. For him, it was the equivalent of "Oh, no! I shot my eye out!" Now, ever since we put in the addition a few years ago, this part of the roof has been out of my reach. It's a good 25 feet above the back yard, and the tallest ladder I have is a sixteen-footer. But was I going to give up the first time my kid lost a toy on the roof? I think not. While I got out the ladder in what would prove to be a futile gesture, M. Edium disappeared for a few minutes while he went in to tell his mom what had happened. "What did she say?" I asked him when he came back. "Am I serious?" he answered. So I did what anybody would do. I went and got the electric leaf blower and the push broom. We went up to Trash and my bedroom, where I took out the window screen, jammed the head of the broom through the handle of the leaf-blower, and leaned out with the whole assembly to reach around under the eaves and try to generate enough of a gust to blow the plane down into the driveway. I tried this a few times. In between each attempt, I would have to pull the remote wind machine back in, close the window to prevent a cat from making a mad leap, go downstairs, back outside, and up the ladder I had since leaned up against the attached garage because the garage roof was the only place where I could actually see where the plane was. I'm pretty sure that I made it rotate a few degrees at one point. M. Edium was avidly following me around throughout this process, and I was trying to keep him cheered up, saying I wasn't out of ideas yet. "We'll try 500 ideas," he said. I said I thought that we probably wouldn't have to. Which was true. If we hadn't gotten it down within 300 ideas, I was pretty sure we weren't going to at all. The next thing I tried was to tie a corner of a chenille throw to a clothesline and then heave it up onto the roof. This is trickier than it sounds, partly because a fall I took back in February means that my left shoulder doesn't have the strength or range of motion it once did, and partly because it required me to hurl a ten-pound bundle high in the air while balancing on a stepladder in our driveway. I actually did get the thing up on the roof a few times, but the ideal situation, where the blanket would unroll in such a way as to cause it to drape over the plane and allow me to drag it down, never materialized. Finally I realized I was going to have to suck it up and get up on the roof anyway. I think I've told you this before, but I hate our roof. The front isn't so high, but it's impossibly steep. The back isn't so steep, but it's impossibly high. I haven't been up there at all since the addition, but it looked like this was going to be the first time. Fortunately, Trash and Linda saw me with the ladder out the front window, and Trash stuck her head out the door just in time to talk me out of it. Thank God. Now I could move on to my next plan, which was to pull my car up next to the side of the house and put the ladder on the roof of the car. Actually, no, I didn't do that. But I might have, if not for the fact that we had some people due this week to trim some trees at our end of the block, and they were probably going to have a bucket truck. Oh, and then the wind blew the plane off the roof the next day. M. Edium was all excited to get back out there and give it another launch, but it was too cold and windy that day. Too bad. Today was nice, but we don't know where the launcher is. And the cycle begins anew. posted by M. Giant 6:17 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:
The funniest part was M.Edium's initial announcement of the problem, when he ran into the house and dramatically stood in front of me and Trash and said -- JUST like in a movie -- "BAD NEWS!"
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Really? Trash *and* Linda were both inside the house and neither thought to grab a video camera of this?
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My solution to similar problems? Stand and pitch a basket ball at the toy and try to knock it down. The basket ball is heavy enough and round enough that it won't get stuck on the roof!
By When it comes to landscaping and labor intensive work I always bring out the bad boy toys. After destroying two back ends in my truck I finally decided to purchase some heavy duty equipment to help me on my way. I have found my dump truck and bucket truck to be very helpful with trimming tall trees and removing the debris from my yard.
By Monday, April 20, 2009 Bag It II (The Baggening) Last Saturday, I solved several problems at once. The problems were as follows: 1. We had a bunch of leaves in our yard that fell over the winter, that needed to be raked and bagged up. 2. I didn't know where the leaf bags were. 3. We have all these goddamn plastic shopping bags in our house. When I started gathering up the leaves on Saturday morning, Trash asked me if I had found the leaf bags. "Nope!" I said cheerfully. "Oh, that's right," she sighed. See, the thing about big, black leaf bags is that they're awkward and unwieldy. The opening keeps falling shut on you, so you need four hands to hold it open and another three to shovel the leaves into it. Which you have to do quickly, because a pile of leaves does not last long in a yard where there's a four-year-old with eyes and feet. Then, when that's done, you've got a thirty-odd pound bundle of organic matter to haul to the curb, where it may or may not be picked up by the city, depending on what time of year it is. I call bullshit. Whereas, if you grab a bunch of shopping bags, it goes much quicker. A few single handfuls of leaves into a Target sack only takes a minute, plus it leaves you with a portable, pumpkin-sized bag to deal with. Genius! In fact, I think I may have actually solved five or six problems at once, depending on how you count them. After that was done, Trash and I moved on to M. Edium's fenced-in play area in the backyard, which had accumulated a dead-leaf bed roughly six feet in depth. Can you imagine how many plastic bags I could have gotten rid of back there? But the problem was that I had failed to take into account M. Giant's Law, which states that the fastest way to find something is to replace it. Yes, Trash had discovered the real leaf bags in the garage, and she was insisting on doing this the old-fashioned way. At least now we know where our leaf bags are, which is another problem I solved right there. The plastic shopping bag problem ended up not being as solved as I'd hoped, because despite getting rid of more than a dozen of them, the pile of them didn't seem any smaller at all. But I knew there were less than there had been; the proof was there in the trash bin. What, I was supposed to pile a bunch of Walgreens bags by the curb? I think not. And anyway, you can't solve that many problems without creating at least one new one. posted by M. Giant 1:49 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:You're supposed to put all the walgreen bags into the large black leaf bag out by the curb. Then there is no hauling of heavy stuff to the curb.
By You need one of these ( http://www.acehardwareoutlet.com/(tcrq2245zbpyoc45b33upy55)/ProductDetails.aspx?SKU=68617 ) - they slip inside the bag & hold the sucker open & upright.
By Next time you are going to Minnehaha Falls or Lake of the Isles, take your surplus bags by the dog park. There's a big bin by the entrance for clean bags, which people use to clean up after the dogs when they run out of their own/forget to bring some.
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If you send me your plastic shopping bags I will send you the brown paper handle-bags from Whole Foods and Trader Joe's my husband and I have stacked up in our broom closet. They're getting overwhelming.
By Friday, April 17, 2009 My New Schedule Trash wants to tell you about the joys of working two days a week. Meanwhile, I still have to schlep all the way to my office in the southeast corner of our house every damn day. My company recently went through a downsizing – a.k.a. layoffs, firings, restructuring, resizing, and whatever else they're calling it these days. The move wasn't a shock, as our employer had let us know in advance how the future was looking (shiny, of course) and also, I have been known to read the newspaper. Besides, my job is a research librarian – I am responsible for watching trends, staying on top of the current economic news, and analyzing sales and market movements. I realize that these are not the golden years. M. Giant and I discussed the possibility that I might lose my job, and tried to determine if it would be such a bad thing. If we could survive on only one salary, should we try? I love my job, so that wasn't a consideration. We would want to keep M. Edium in school at least part-time, especially since we decided to wait on kindergarten for another year, but this is our last opportunity to have extra Mommy-and-M days, as we currently call Fridays at our house. I already worked four days a week, so I could have an extra day or two with him. It might be our opportunity to expand the one-on-one time. Of course, living only on only one income is difficult today, if not impossible for many people. It can require a lot of budgeting and sacrifice on everyone's part. Also, I am not a good full-time at-home person. I'm just not. I was home directly after M. Edium was born, and I thought I might lose my fool mind. Of course, M. Edium was much less interactive – and much, much more likely to vomit in my hair – but still. Both M. Giant and I heartily respect those parents that can stay home 100% of the time and not 1) harm themselves or 2) go stark raving mad, but neither of us are those people. I'm great at part-time at-home parent, though, and we thought that a compromise might work for everyone. So I went to my boss in January and suggested the possibility of moving to two or three days a week, instead of four. I acknowledged the difficulty as no one else does the same work I do, but I stressed that people were going to be laid off, and this shift in my schedule might save someone's job (including my own). They went for it, and starting in March I now work two days a week. Of course, because life works this way, my boss ended up getting laid off, but I was able to keep my new schedule for now. It's been mostly wonderful, especially when we have friends in town and I don't have to adjust my schedule, or when M. Edium was so sick he missed a week of school. We changed M. Edium's schedule at school to Tuesday through Thursday, and he loves it. LOVES it. Interestingly, it has changed his entire outlook on school. He doesn't mind getting up as much, he does more work when he is there, and he is happier being home on Mondays and Fridays. It's like we accidentally stumbled onto his ideal schedule. He is happier at home, happier at school, and overall more content. So now that M. Edium is thrilled, I use Wednesdays to run errands and clean, and we get so much more done and have evenings free, guess who is going back to three days a week in June? Sigh. posted by M. Giant 2:33 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Photoblog A few weeks ago, M. Edium was home sick from school, and although he didn't want to get dressed, we were able to impose upon him to wear his bathrobe over his pajamas to keep warm in the house. This doesn't seem like a significant development, until you realize that the last time he allowed someone to put a robe on him, his limbs didn't work yet. Before:  After:  Luckily he was better in plenty of time for Easter yesterday. He's had his heart set on a Dinobot Transformer all week, and since there were only two of them at Target, he wasn't sure the Easter Bunny would be able to make it before they got snapped up.  But the big rabbit pulled it off. Trash and I are being careful not to lose the instructions to this one, because without them, we can sort of transform the toy T. Rex into a kind of lumpen combination of Nite Owl and Quasimodo and that's it. One of our favorite things about being adoptive parents is having his birth mom come over every Easter morning. And not just because she brings him a lot more loot so we don't have to come up with nearly as much.  Just look at this little angel. He must be an angel, because that's the only explanation for what happened after the Easter egg hunt and breakfast: he said, "We need to go to church!" We were actually kind of amazed that he remembered the concept.  But with twenty minutes left before service started, what could we do besides put on decent clothes and head over there? Unlike the last time, he's since been to enough movies that he gets the concept of sitting quietly. Even if he can't quite pull it off. Ah, well. The first thing every child learns in his or her spiritual education is that church is boring. In that sense, we're right on track. posted by M. Giant 9:22 AM 5 comments 5 Comments:Good god, I've been reading you since before there was even an M. Tiny, and now he's M. Edium! And so freaking CUTE!
By OMG He is all grown up, isn't he? V. Cute.
By Is someone punching M. Tiny in the first picture? I love how he's all dubious about the robe, even then.
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Ha! It does look like I am punching him. I have no idea what I was actually doing - M. Giant?
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Holy crap! That last photo is one of those where you can see the 20-year-old guy, waiting in the future. People in 2025 will look at it and say, "whoa, he looks just the same."
By Friday, April 10, 2009 Dig It This is an entry about one of those things you think about sometimes, but never would have gotten around to actually doing if you didn't have a kid. No, I'm not talking about taking M. Edium to see Monsters Vs. Aliens last weekend. I'm talking about gardening. Not our usual kind of gardening, where Trash sticks some seeds and bulbs in the ground some weekend afternoon. I'm talking about growing food in our back yard. Obama-style. Except our backyard is much smaller and we don't have nearly as many sharpshooters on our roof. Some time after the annual Science Expo at M. Edium's school a few weeks ago, he started talking about growing some vegetables in our garden this summer. We like to encourage his scientific curiosity, especially when it helps us save money. After all, if we can grow a tomato or two of our own, that's money we don't have to spend buying those tomatoes. That's free produce, right there, all for the nominal cost of sunlight, seeds, some water, potting soil, fertilizer, gardening implements, gardening books, gardening lessons, gardening research, a couple of those little seed-starting beds, a plant mister, some grow lights, a composting ball, and a motorized rototiller. Now that gas is cheaper it'll be totally worth it. But I think the most expensive thing that's going into this new project is our almost total ignorance on the subject. You know at the end of WALL-E, where the Captain is excitedly telling the passengers about farming and how it will allow them to grow things like vegetables and pizza? We're too stupid to be able to find pizza seeds anywhere, even online. But we're going ahead anyway. A couple of Mondays ago, Trash and M. Edium sat down at the kitchen table with a plastic seeding bed they'd gotten from the hardware store. It has individual plastic cells a little larger than those in an egg carton. I made little signs out of popsicle sticks while the two of them opened seed envelopes and buried the contents in the little soil cells. You know what's surprising? Cantaloupe seeds look exactly like those little things you see when you cut open a cantaloupe. Same with tomatoes, pumpkins, green peppers, and watermelons. I can't speak to the parsley seeds, because I've never cut open a parsley. So after planting and watering them, we moved the seed bed up to M. Edium's playroom, which is out of the way but gets lots of direct sunlight in the afternoon. I resolved to spray them once or twice a day, and expected never to see them again. But amazingly, little green shoots began poking up less than a week later. First the tomatoes, then the pumpkins, then the parsley, cantaloupe, and watermelon. Still no sign of the green peppers. Trash doesn't like green peppers. I'm sure that's a coincidence. It's surprisingly gratifying, but also worrying. I mean, at some point, we're going to have to release these things into the wild (read: our back yard), right? And I don't know exactly when that's supposed to happen. I do know that it's still getting below freezing at night here in Minneapolis, so it's not time yet. We forgot to get snow peas, after all. So how did we deal with this anxiety? By planting another crop, of course. Into the second of the two seed beds just this Monday went seeds for peas, onions, peas, carrots, spinach, and more peas. The only seeds I got a good look at were for the peas. You know what pea seeds look like? They look suspiciously like peas. But they're already starting to peek up into the daylight, so there must be something to that. I should point out that I didn't pick the seeds. I can do without most produce in general, but if it had been up to me, I would have picked up some potato seeds and some banana seeds, since I like both those things and can never find the seeds inside them. Mushroom seeds would be nice. Maybe even some corn seeds, if we can make them promise not to grow too high. And if we got garlic seeds and other spice seeds, we'd be able to grow all our own ingredients for our vegetable foil packs (a.k.a. space pillows). Except butter, but I draw the line at planting a cow. It's probably good to start small anyway. We'll begin with a little plot in the back yard between M. Edium's fenced-in play area and the clothesline pole (the latter of which we may also start using this year for the first time). I'm kind of excited to see just how locavore we can get. Of course, since I'm talking about doing this in soil that can't even grow grass, perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. posted by M. Giant 8:10 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:Sssssssspace pilllllloooooooows. I want them.
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From someone else with more enthusiasm than actual talent, welcome to the fold!
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What KKB said, plus:
By Another first time gardener from Minnesota here! I've got peppers, tomatoes, broccoli and a few other things already started indoors. They're doing so well that I'm afraid to move them outside because I am sure that if the weather doesn't kill them I will manage to do it by over watering, under watering, stepping on them or just flat out forgetting I even planted them. I'm sure all this angst and tension will be worth it when I'm eating home grown tomatoes. Too bad I hate tomatoes and I'm not really sure why I planted them to begin with.
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I just starting gardening for the first time myself a few years ago. The two biggest tips I have:
By Tuesday, April 07, 2009 WTF Photos When I started thinking about what I might want to discuss next on my husband's blog. I wasn't sure what topic to choose (and no, thanks for the encouragement, but I have no desire to have a blog of my own. I would then feel obligated to write, which would result in pissy postings that stressed how little I wanted to write. I am not a writer. I am a filler-inner. I don't really want to be a writer, but I do want to force my ramblings on others from time to time. This way I can write when I want to and run in the other direction when I don't. It's best for all of us, really). Where was I? Oh, what to write. Initially I intended to write about M. Edium's garden project that he has roped me into assisting, despite my total lack of experience, knowledge, or green thumb. I planned to include pictures of the hatching plants (or whatever you call them) and then take recommendation on what exactly to do next. Don't think you are off the hook or anything. I will simply write about that problem next week, when the plants are that much taller and the problem more dire. No, today I want to discuss WTF pictures. You know the kind I mean. You're looking through old photo albums, or the photo section of My Documents on your computer, and you come across a folder or a picture that you can't remember taking. Moreover, you can't imagine why anyone would ever want to take the picture, much less keep it for others to enjoy later. Sure, in 1890 when you were lucky to ever have a photo taken of the ones you loved, you couldn't complain of a bad hair day. But today? With digital photos able to be erased in a second? It seems as though you might want to erase a shot or two. Recently M. Edium was asking to see pictures of me when I was in school, and instead of digging through storage boxes in the basement to find photos of my younger self, I pulled up some pictures within the last 5-10 years of me and my grad school buddies. No, most of the pictures weren't taken while we were in school but on subsequent trips and vacations when we would get together, but I figured he wouldn't know the difference. Besides, he has met my closest friends from grad school, Chao, CorpKitten, Babo (a.k.a. Surly Asian), and Rockhack - or as our professors called us, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Yes, there were five of us, and no, I am not kidding. Anyway, I found a folder or two of pictures entitled Horsemen and pulled up a bunch taken on our trip to Vegas when we finished grad school (literally just finished. At least three of us had either a final or a paper due within hours of catching our planes). Upon seeing the pictures I was quickly forced to ask myself a serious question: Why would you ever feel the need to keep this photo?  No, seriously, why? There were dozens of pictures taken that day - I still have most of them in the same folder - and most of the others are either cute or make sense. This shot is neither, and it isn't flattering to anyone, really. That's Chao on the right, auditioning for the International Male catalog. That's me in the center, obviously pretending to be in a music video for Whitesnake. And that's Babo on the left, who is either blind and can't see what his friends are doing, or he is pretending not to see us. Regardless, why would you take this picture? (Corpkitten? Rockhack?) Moreover, why would I keep it? It's not like I can use it to blackmail someone. I mean, look at me. I don't exactly blend. Perhaps you might argue that I would keep that particular photo because it reminds me of an awesome trip with some of my closest friends. OK, sure, perhaps the 500 other photos of the trip weren't enough, and Babo at least looks normal. So why keep this one?  Or this one?  There isn't anyone in our party in the shot, just some random abdomens that I apparently cherish. What about this one:  I think I am putting on lipstick. Yes, I certainly need to keep that picture forever. Otherwise, how will I remember how to do it again? There are others (oh lord, there are others) but I love my friends and fear their wrath. It just makes me wonder. I am sure at the time it all made perfect sense, but in retrospect? Perhaps it's time to cull. And just in case you think we can't ever take attractive pictures, we do clean up sometimes: 
posted by M. Giant
7:27 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Ah, yes, the WTF pictures. I am familiar with these, and the corollary 'WTF Cell phone pictures.' These are the pictures that have accumlated on my cell phone, until I look and say 'WTF! 284 pictures? Where TF have THESE come from? Is that my neice's chin?'
By My eyes! Oh, my eysabadsjhfgadfg
By It was WINDY, Febrifuge! Seriously gale force winds and I'm wearing a silk hawaiian shirt (not made by the Amish, so the buttons wouldn't stay closed). I'm a pasty white guy, so I've got no business intentionally wearing an unbottoned shirt of any sort. It was mother nature having her way with me!
By I don't argue the wind - I mean, look at my hair - I argue that the picture is insane, and I can't imagine why we didn't erase it post-haste.
By You guys are so cute! Not in the top picture, but in the bottom one. So who is Corpkitten and who is Rockhack? Also, Chao and Trash look exactly the same. How many years ago were these pictures? Do you guys ever age?
By I want to see the rest of the pictures. How scary can four college friends be?
By How scary can they be? Well, Trash and I were viewing said old photos with M.Giant last night, in fact. We found out how scary they can be. Trash was not at all happy with the collection of "unfavorable" photos I have collected over the years, not just of her, but of many of our friends (including an ewwwww photo of M.Giant himself). There were threats of physical violence...
By Sunday, April 05, 2009 Washed Up There are a couple of things about our new dishwasher (actually installed in February) that take some getting used to. I don't love the configuration of the wire dish racks, especially on the top rack. We should be able to line up our pint glasses neatly in rows, but the shape of the wires makes them look kind of snaggletoothed. And one of the nice things about having to do dishes by hand was that our sink was clean all the time without us having to even do anything. Even better, our dishcloth never got that mildewy smell, by virtue of the fact that it was pretty much constantly in use. Now that we have a new dishwasher, the dishcloth sometimes goes as long as two or three hours without anyone picking it up, which means you have to always remember to smell it before wiping the counters or your hands could end up smelling like the laundry room of an underwater dungeon. (Actually, you don't have to smell it. You can simply use it to wash M. Edium's face and gauge its freshness by how outraged his reaction is.) But there have been things that are easier to get used to, which include: • Not having to do dishes more than once or twice per day. • Not having to arrange the dishes on the bottom rack around a plastic scale model of Devil's Tower. • Knowing the dishes will be clean when we open it. • Not having the dishwasher fall out every time we open it. • Not having to replace water-damaged basement ceiling tiles on a weekly basis. • Being able to hold a conversation in the kitchen without the noise of a mid-90s model filling the room like a jet engine. • Being able to run the dishwasher and the microwave at the same time without ending up in the basement shining a flashlight into the fuse box. But most of all, our favorite thing is: • Not having to do dishes more than one or twice per day. Just in case I hadn't mentioned that. It's really quite amazing what a decent dishwasher can do for your quality of life. And we didn't even get a fancy one. When we were shopping around, I priced some of the high-end models, just out of curiosity, to see how much we could pay, if we wanted to. I didn't see anything steeper than a couple of our mortgage payments, but we didn't want to stimulate the economy quite that much. I mean, we're fine, but it's an unpredictable world, and if something had gone pear-shaped, we didn't want to end up with an awesome dishwasher and no house. In retrospect, I'm not sure that would have been so bad. posted by M. Giant 4:57 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, April 02, 2009 The Quarter in Movies, Part 2 Continuing with my take on the movies I saw in the 1Q09 2.0: The Wrestler Also saw this with Chao and his out-of-town nephew. They said they could see how Aaronovsky kept the budget so low: there didn't seem to be a single camera tripod on the set. Instead, it looks like he would just stick the camera in a wagon and have the actors pull it around behind them for long stretches of the film. Good cast, though. Good at acting. Good at pulling wagons. Audition I've walked out of two movies in my life. One was The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, and I left that because I was with Trash and she'd had enough. This one, I walked out on my own. Barely. This was another Saturday midnight movie at the Uptown with Chao. I knew almost nothing about it going in except what I'd read on the blurb at the theater's web site. It starts out as a deliberate, slow-moving romance between a widower and a young woman who's clearly got some issues. Turns out she has a whole subscription. After ninety minutes of romance and talk, I was so not prepared for this to turn into Japanese torture porn. Maybe I could have made it to the end if I hadn't stuffed myself at Fogo de Chao that very evening. It's an all-you-can-eat Brazilian meat restaurant, and I had filled myself up clear to my epiglottis. I wasn't hungry again until Monday. So maybe that had something to do with my reaction to some of the shit that went down in Audition's third act. Or maybe there aren't any circumstances under which I would be okay with seeing a mutilated dude who is kept prisoner in a laundry bag and lives on his captor's vomit. Whatever the case, tunnel vision and nausea set in, and I believe I actually passed out in my seat briefly. When I came to, I stumbled out to the bathroom, spent some quality time in there, then waited in the lobby until the gagging and choking sounds from the auditorium (most of them from the film, I believe) came to an end and Chao rejoined me. So I don't know what actually happens at the end, but what makes me feel better is that neither does Chao. Coraline It's becoming a tradition for Tara and Dave to come to town and let me drag them to something they've already seen. They could avoid this by not seeing anything for two months before they get here. A longtime Neil Gaiman fan, I enjoyed this movie a great deal. Even if I did think the casting of Teri Hatcher as a pretty lady who slowly transforms into a bony, spindly spider-bitch was a little on the nose. Watchmen Dick. Dork Dong. Penis. Bits. Dingly-dangly. Cock. Shaft. Bone. Main vein. I'm only doing this because every review, article, and Tweet I read about this movie made reference to the distracting power of Dr. Manhattan's big blue wang.* Why always "wang?" Is it unconscious alliteration? Whatever the case, it was nowhere near as distracting, nor was the movie itself as bad, as I had been led to believe. I didn't have high expectations, so I was able to enjoy it like an "Illustrated Classics" version of a illustrated classic, if that makes any sense. Another movie I saw with Chao, who had never read the graphic novel. He also dug it, but was aware of not being up on all the backstory. "Like coming in on the second season of Friends," he said. I'm sure Alan Moore would appreciate the comparison. So that's what I've seen as of this quarter. We'll pick this up again in three months, or maybe six, or maybe next week. It's entirely up to me. *Except Sundry, who came up with "Dr. Manhattanhood." FTW! posted by M. Giant 8:49 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:Ow. My ass, you are kicking it.
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