Thursday, May 29, 2008

Manu Ginobli has a family to feed

The NBA owners have announced that, starting next season, players will be fined for flopping.



Imaginary sources say that Manu Ginobli reacted by saying that this was a "personal insult" and the he has "a family to feed."

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Saturday, May 24, 2008

M83, Doug Fir, 5/23/08























OMGWTFSYNTH

Thursday, May 22, 2008

My ears are burning.

from BarFly's Review of Beulahland:

"Spiritual home of a certain sort of Portlander - overeducated, underpaid, studied-casual fashion, fey badinage bumping up against unreconstructed punk ethos..."

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

It grows as trees, not on trees — right?

Nintendo has lost me. Sort of.

A better way to put it: I'm down to three franchises. Mario. Zelda. And Animal Crossing.

I dropped Metroid after the original Prime bored me to death. Would never play another first-person Metroid (although I'd still give a 2D Metroid a shot).

I've realized I hate Smash Bros. I actually knew that after the Gamecube version, but decided to get the Wii version anyway. You know, the Wii version in which anything I did like in the older games was taken out and replaced with a 10 hour torture porn mode... I mean Adventure mode.

And really, what else does Nintendo have to offer?

Not much.

The worst news. I'd rather I bought a PS3 over the Wii, but my money tree still isn't growing like Logan and the Goldsmiths told me it would. I was supposed to plant a hundred in the backyard and water it with Cristal under a full moon, right?

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Sunday, May 18, 2008

Little Beirut

75,000.

On the ground, it was hard to gain an adequate perspective. A figure that could only be subjectively measured in sore feet and fraying patience.

But then you see the photos from the sky and 75,000 takes on an entirely different meaning:



Friday, May 16, 2008

Energy S_lut____ Arena



What else can I say about such a horribly officiated series?

Monday, May 12, 2008

"Not a quarter. Arr, he'll be dancin' for hours."


















The Simpsons 20 Questions game is pretty damn good.

I stumped it a few times with fairly obscure characters that nobody should bother to remember (Mr. Mitchell, for example), but the clutch Handsome Pete guess put a smile on my face.

Speaking of which: I am now up to Season 9 in my quest to rewatch all of the Simpsons episodes and despite popular opinion that the series suffered from a continual decline from Season 5 onward, I would argue that Season 8 is better than 7. I think part of what contributes to this misconception is that Sideshow Bob, who starred in some of the most classic episodes imaginable, is in some of the most abominable ones by the later seasons. "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming" and "Brother From Another Series" look terrible when juxtaposed with "Cape Feare" and "Sideshow Bob Roberts" and contribute greatly to perception of the Simpsons fall from comedic grace.

In retrospect, I think it is the meta Itchy and Scratchy episodes which are my favorites. Particularly, Season 8's "The Itchie Scratchy and Poochie Show", which demonstrates that the even in its twilight, The Simpsons was always one step ahead of the game.

Now let's see if the 20 questions game can correctly guess Annual Gift Man.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Goodbye Beef Feast?

Tiffany, the so far fantastically amazing girl I'm dating, is vegan. "Which," as Jules (Sam Jackson's character) from Pulp Fiction puts it, "more or less makes me a [vegan]." When the two of us eat together I've eaten vegan every time, but even without her present I have eaten vegetarian for about three weeks. I gotta be honest, it feels kinda good. I have more energy, I feel better, I sleep better. . . . Granted, many of those effects could have been achieved by simply eating healthier, with or without meat and dairy, but so far I don't have much of a desire to eat either. I know three weeks isn't very long, but I wanted to share a few things that have made it easier for this meat-lover to go meatless.

Eat as little fake meat as possible. The right way to eat vegan in my opinion is to eat vegan things that are good, not vegan wannabe non-vegan things. To put it another way, it should be "good food" not "good vegan food." For example, the worst thing I've had so far was a "Philly Cheese Steak" sandwich from the Vertical Diner. At the suggestion of my (telephone) server I got it with the imitation chicken. I probably should have gone with the portabello mushroom, cuz the "cheese" sauce was actually pretty good. Why does vegan food have to pretend to be other food? It doesn't, and I don't think it should.

Pick somebody's brain. Find someone who has been vegan or vegetarian for a while and ask them questions. Better yet, date someone who has been vegan or vegetarian for a while, this makes everything easier. Also, it doesn't hurt if your persons works at Mazza and used to work at Sage's. Or any other delicious vegan-friendly restaurants.

Cook. A lot. You'll eat healthier and cheaper, and you'll know better how much protein etc. you're getting. Tiffany and I have made some kick ass meals, spring rolls with peanut sauce, stuffed pasta shells with homemade marinara, mole, some blueberry muffins.

Diversify. It seems like a lot of vegans eat a lot of soy. (Literally, a shit-load.) For proteins choose mushrooms, non-soy tempeh, beans, whatever - I mean, man cannot live on tofu alone. Also rice, almond, and oat milk are good alternatives to soy milk. I'm gonna say it again, cuz it's important for new-comers to vegan eating like me, make sure you don't eat too much soy. Not only will it mess with your digestion, but I understand you can build up a weird sort of tolerance where your body starts to reject soy proteins.

Thanks for humouring me on this one, this is by no means a comprehensive list of things to keep in mind, just a few that have made a transition pretty good for me. I have no idea where I'll go from here, whether I'll cut out dairy all together or how long I'll stay meatless. But this experience has definitely changed my perspective, it has made eating vegan a joy rather than a burden.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

iSpeculation

I heard a recorded marketing message while on hold with AT&T customer support this morning that fanned the flames of an old suspicion of mine. I've speculated about this with others in the past (if memory serves, they remained skeptical) but this recent discovery has lead me to think that...well...here's a bit of background first:

One of my first thoughts upon seeing images of the iPhone last January was, holy crap, they put an iSight in the front of the phone. That wasn't the case, obviously, but it really looked that way. Apple is very deliberate about the shapes and footprints of their products and they clearly marked the iPhone back button with the shape of the iSight.

The ability to use an integrated iSight to video chat with Sam is what first led me to buy a MacBook--I had been a staunch PC user prior to seeing the first incarnation of the Intel MacBooks. Video chatting never seemed that cool to me until it was as easy as clicking a button, and it was never practical for me to lug around a camera until it was a tiny component built into my laptop. Now I use it all the time.

It just makes sense that Apple would swing the camera around to the front of the iPhone to allow for video chat. It would be like the Dick Tracy watch, only better. The hardware is there, the (3G) network infrastructure is there, the feature would be totally groundbreaking and surely lead to even greater success of the product, and now there's even an existing live(ish) video sharing feature within the AT&T network (the one I heard advertised today). Considering it's a network exclusive, they've rolled this feature out unusually quietly.

Goldsmith prediction: The next iPhone will support video chat. And I will buy it. Promptly.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Price of Gasoline

Rank / Country / Price.gal

1. Bosnia-Herzegovina $10.86
2. Eritrea $9.58
3. Norway $8.73
4. United Kingdom $8.38
5. Netherlands $8.37
6. Monaco $8.31
7. Iceland $8.28
8. Belgium $8.22
9. France $8.07
10. Germany $7.86

111. United States $3.45

151. Swaziland 54 cents
152. Libya 50 cents
153. Saudi Arabia 45 cents
154. Iran 40 cents
155. Venezuela 12 cents

Friday, May 02, 2008

Finals are Hard Enough. . .

. . . add a suddenly serious (in a good way) relationship, serious transmission trouble, and a seriously needy boss; I barely made it through.

Eight credits left.

Stimulation