| Top 4 places I daydream about visiting |
[29 Jul 2010|12:34am] |
1. Berlin - capital of the art world
2. Beijing - capital of everything else
3. South Korea - for the food
4. North Korea - for the newspapers
I miss traveling.
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| Fuckin' creases, how do they work? |
[22 Jul 2010|11:19pm] |
What is a crease?
A permanent fold
Is a wrinkle a crease?
Dunno
How does paper folding work at a molecular level? When you run your fingernail down the length of a fold, to make it stay, what's happening exactly?
Dunno
[UPDATE: I googled around to no avail. Did realize that "crease" is not the right word-- a crease is a mark left by a fold. What I'm asking about is the fold itself]
[ALSO: What do you even google to figure this out? Good luck searching on 'paper folding.' It's as bad as looking for a SHIRT shirt.
Is there a word for 'foldability,' meaning how easily something folds / stays folded? I'm thinking something like motility, viscosity, ductility... is it ductility?]
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| X marks the spot |
[21 Jul 2010|08:11pm] |
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Aliza went to the park today and dug up her phone. Some guy had buried it there. (True story.)
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| Two delicious beers you really must try |
[17 Jul 2010|07:04pm] |
- Dogfish Midas Touch
This recipe is the actual oldest-known fermented beverage in the world! It is an ancient Turkish recipe using the original ingredients from the 2700 year old drinking vessels discovered in the tomb of King Midas.
- Lagunitas Undercover Investigation Shut-Down Ale
Undercover Investigation Shut-Down Ale takes its name from an incident in 2005, when undercover California Alcoholic Beverage Control agents busted the brewery on charges of "disorderly house" and "moral turpitude" when they found people smoking weed on brewery premises. The organization revoked the brewery's license, and they ended up enduring a three week suspension (during which they installed a new bottling line).
Lagunitas refer to all of this as the "2005 St. Patrick's Day Massacre." This beer is a nice little middle finger the California ABC, and yet somehow won label approval from them.
Trust me, both of these beers are DELICIOUS. They are both high alchohol though and will knock you on your ass. But so good.
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| extra action marching band @ the eagle |
[16 Jul 2010|03:46pm] |
went to see the extra action marching band last night. the first and only other time i'd heard them was at burning man 2002, first year i went. it was right after the burn. me and elio were wandering agog at the chaos, when suddenly i heard a tuba. "holy shit is that a marching band?!" it was. i still smile at the memory.
last night's show took place at the eagle tavern, which is easily the gayest bar i've ever been to. it was hilarious. random details:
1) huge metallic engine-penis behind the bar
2) hardcore porn on the ceiling (haha how often do you look up and go "oh look it's a guy sucking cock")
3) boxer shorts hanging from the rafters
4) outrageous mustaches galore. SO many mustaches
5) when the concert started there were transvestites dancing on the bar (huge blond wigs)
6) there was also a gimp (naked save for short-shorts, complete face mask)
7) bathroom has mirrors above urinals so you can check out other guys' equipment (i didn't take a leak so this one's 2nd hand but dav/sean saw it)
8) bartender is shirtless with nipple piercings
9) countless "bears" (oh i forgot to mention, it's a bear bar)
10) red lights
the show itself was fun. i value live music a lot more these days for a variety of reasons. among other things, it sounds much better than on my crappy speakers at home. especially with a funky marching band. at times i closed my eyes and just savored the live sound of horns. they also had a ton of dancers in skimpy outfits moving through the crowd, stirring shit up. all the jostling/rambunction was threatening to spill my whiskey, so i drained my glass in a hurry. right in the nick of time, cos seconds later one of the dancers careened into me!
later on the place got super packed. feeling claustrophobic, i moved back to get some air. who was there but tamale lady! i ended up wolfing down a chicken tamale while watching the show on one of the bar's numerous closed circuit black and white tvs. that was a nice touch, you don't see it in many bars of this size.
i looked on youtube for videos from last night's show. this is the only one i could find. crap quality but it does convey the general atmosphere.
APPENDIX A: INTERESTING THINGS THAT CAME UP OVER DRINKS BEFORE THE SHOW
1) lizzie's cousin is one of the bikini dancers for extra action marching band. i would not have predicted that. apparently her cousin's one of the founding members. (but wait she wasn't playing an instrument she was dancing. maybe she founded it as a dancer? or maybe she used to play then switched to a bikini dancer role? i'll have to follow up on that)
2) prior to the concert mike scanlon had just completed a 4-mile race out at lake merced featuring 100 other runners (entry fee $1). he was very casual about it! if i paid a fee to enter a race with 100 other people you can be damn sure you'd hear about it for the next several weeks. according to mike, there's a whole scene of people racing for fun in SF (and probably everywhere) -- almost every weekend one happens. they shut down streets, the whole shebang. i love how the city contains 1000 worlds you might never come across
3) dav y. loaned a LARGE amount of money to this tools cooperative, and as an early adopter he gets a lifetime membership for him and his fam (so tesla too).
me: you loaned HOW much?!
him: but they pay it back over 5 years
me: but what if they fold?!
him: but they won't
the cooperative is basically like a gym except with power tools. he's pretty excited about it, in part because they're gonna stay up to date w/ state of the art stuff like CNC lathes. you can go there and use whatever you want to build all kinds of stuff. dav sees this upcoming trend in society where a lot of info workers feel the urge to work with their hands and return to the days of crafting physical things. i buy it, i mean i've had that urge for a while now. it's cool that his daughter will get the membership down the road. but still... lotta faith. he says the previous things he was early adopter of were tivo and netflix. those both did well, so maybe he's right about the tools coop thing too.
4) lizzie is doing an internet fast for a week. same idea as me giving up my iphone. she said it's going ok, she's focused on reading deeper and can still get mike to look up directions if need be. i have aliza as my backup plan as well. i can call her and be like 'quick, i need you to look this up on wikipedia'
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| Best / worst animals to have in a fight |
[09 Jul 2010|10:56am] |
Best animals to have in a fight
1. Bear
2. Tiger
3. Electric eel
4. Wily mongoose
5. Stinging poisonous jellyfish
6. Rattlesnake
7. Black widow
8. Voltron
9. Magneto
Worst animals to have in a fight
1. Kitten
2. Pony
3. Turtle
4. Common garden snake
5. Worm
6. Scooby Doo
7. Penguin
8. Worm that got dried out in the sun
9. Grimace
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| A bit of the ol footy |
[08 Jul 2010|04:15pm] |
Googled "soccer field san bruno," found one at a middle school, just a few blocks from the office. Spent the last 1.5 hrs kicking around. It was sheer bliss. The weather was sunny with a cool breeze, not too hot not too cold. The field was empty except for a few kids practicing softball (not in the way). They had a full goal set up. Much bigger than it looks on TV.
I really struggle with fundamentals. Need to get some coaching. I vaguely recall you're supposed to kick with the side of yr foot but I can't make the ball get any air unless I involve the front of my foot as well. I can't kick for shit with my left foot-- it feels like operating an instrument not attached to my body.
The field was open enough to let me drop kick to my heart's content. Sometimes I'd get a good one off but more often it would go flat. At one point I'd been messing up the kicks, and in my head I thought:
Don't think. Just do. Clear your head. Don't think.
I let the ball drop, swung with my leg and COMPLETELY whiffed it. The force of the missed kick jerked my knee in a weird direction, causing spasms of pain.
Don't not think THAT much. Think a little.
I spent some time trying out (and mostly failing at) various maneuvers such as heading the ball into goal, pivoting while dribbling, penalty kicks. It was basically soccer practice. Kind of funny given that I previously stated soccer practice is a fate worse than death. I guess it all depends on whether you're choosing to do it or being forced to.
Is the relationship between solitary kicking around and playing an actual game like masturbation to sex? Yeah but imagine you hadn't had sex since the 5th grade and back then you were so bad at it that everybody laughed at you. Makes masturbation sound pretty good by comparison, doesn't it?
Nevertheless one of these days soonish I'm gonna will up the nerve to at least sub in at a pickup game. Mike & Lizzie & those guys seem to be playing all the time.
Some of the world cup goals have come from super long range. In Argentina vs Mexico Tevez scored from 25 yards out.
I wanted to see from how far away could I reasonably kick the ball into the goal. I don't have any sense of distance but I measured by paces. My range is about 30 paces. Assuming each pace is a foot (?) that means my range is 10 yards. Kicking something in from 2.5 times that distance is impressive! Of course compared to my stats most things are impressive.
What part of your head are you supposed to head with?
Go Netherlands
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| shite |
[07 Jul 2010|11:37pm] |
Germany vs Spain was so boring today. Crazy boring. I had a moment of doubt about soccer in general. What if it's actually quite a stupid game? Why can't anybody use their hands? It seems like shooting a basketball or catching a baseball takes more coordination than kicking a soccer ball, at casual levels anyway. I can kick a ball if it's on the ground, but if you throw a ball at me I scream in terror and run the other way.
Go Netherlands anyway. Hopefully in Spain vs Netherlands something will actually happen. If it's gauche & American to moan about boring soccer than wrap me in a flag and call me Apple Pie
Russian River was a blast. It was interesting sussing out Izzy's state of mind. I think she enjoyed it. She was super chill the whole time just taking in all the people (not to mention the river). I guess you can be happy without grinning like a maniac
I'm reading this book by the guy from KLF who burnt a million pounds (quid? guineas? wotever). He also left a dead sheep at the foot of the door at some British music awards show. That's not such a big deal but burning money? It's the last great taboo. If you want to be shocking that's a good way to do it
He was in Echo & the Bunnymen. Who cares.
I like writing 'Who cares.' as a statement not a question. Dave Barry roach any subject/question, only to immediately dismiss it with 'Who cares.' I don't know why, it just always makes me laugh in my head. I have a lot of mental jokes like that. "You have to be yr own best audience" that's what I'll tell Izzy when she's old enough to feign interest
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| Core dump |
[30 Jun 2010|09:46pm] |
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I bought a buncha books the other day. It's nice to have books lying around. Kindle deez nuts
Looking fwd to Russian River this wknd. Last summer on the river was fantastic. I realized the best possible thing to do on a hot summer day is jump in the river. Going to the bibimbap salad bar with Angi on Friday... a journey into the unknown. Korean food on the 4th of July is where it's at
I'm gonna miss the World Cup when it's gone but I will be glad to have my life back. How can people be sports fans like this all year round? It's exhausting (not to mention my child is an orphan). I'm glad it only happens once every four years. Makes you anticipate & when it happens, feels like history. And having the teams be countries seems like a logical extension of the absurd tribalism of sports fandom anyways... you only like a team cos your dad did or you're from there, so why not take that all the way? Normally when someone says "we" in relation to a professional sports team ("We're really doing great this year") I laugh at them, but it feels legitimate to say "we" during the World Cup.
Listening to Ariel Pink at moderate volume. I hate the quiet nights sometimes. I want to crank it up to 11 at a mansion in the middle of nowhere.
He's playing w/ Flaming Lips soon, gonna be a good show. Music these days feels ubiquitous, abundant and worthless. I have a lot of frustrations with my relationship w/ music in this digital age (crap ipod speakers, messed up metadata, scratched cds I'm too lazy to burn) and it has the effect of making me hear less new stuff than I used to. But if this makes good new music rare, maybe it invests it with some of the meaning thats been lost. Live shows are as exciting as ever now that I hardly go to them. In 2010 improvisation & live experience seem more important than ever and 'ambient music' (which increasingly is all music) has become a dead end
I was flipping thru my "Transactions of the ACM" and noticed that several of the specialist comp sci books resembled supplemental manuals from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd edition. They should create some hot new subfield of CS and name it "Psionics"
fig. a: C.R.E.A.M.
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| Longest Tennis Match Ever Still Not Over |
[24 Jun 2010|08:38am] |
Longest Tennis Match Ever Still Not Over
Not an Onion headline. Watching this grim spectacle on espn3 as we speak.
To me, just having to WATCH a tennis match for 10 hours straight (let alone PLAY one) seems like a fate worse than death.
I'd have guessed this would have ended by now, by one or both of them throwing down their rackets in disgust and limping off the court muttering "fucks sake it's just a game."
I wish David Foster Wallace were still around. Would've loved to see his take on this. He was obsessed with tennis, and his writing on the topic was so good that it made tennis seem fascinating even to those with no interest in sports whatsoever. Check out his excellent Roger Federer profile from NY Times Mag to see what I mean. R.I.P. mayne.
update June 24 8:45 AM: it appears to have ended
"Hit yourself on the head with a hammer and it feels so good when you stop"
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[20 Jun 2010|09:20am] |
I have been giggling over this non stop for days. It's Dennis Bergkamp's famous goal against Argentina in the 1998 WC Quarterfinals. From ESPN World Cup Companion: Famed Dutch commentator Jack van Gelder all but spontaneously combusted. His screams of "DENNIS BERGKAMP! DEN-NIS BEEEERG-KAAAAMP!!!!!!" were followed by a sound previously emitted only by dolphins that went something like: "WWWWHHHHOOOOOAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!"
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| Slovenian player names are hilarious |
[18 Jun 2010|10:30am] |
- 6 Branko ILIC
sounds like the 'scandanavian coal miner' on the cheat's fake id
- 13 Bojan JOKIC
you must be joking
- 10 Valter BIRSA
you mean WALTER? vhy not learn how to spell
- 18 Aleksandar RADOSAVLJEVIC
rado-slava-lava-vic
- 7 Nejc PECNIK
hahaha can't think of any commentary, the name just cracks me up
- 9 Zlatan LJUBIJANKIC
- 14 Zlatko DEDIC
the other day i had to email this guy zoltan that i work with. i didn't know his address offhand so i just sent it to zoltan@google, cos how many can there be right? turns out there's SIX zoltans working at google! god knows how many zlatkos and zlatans there might be.
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