mattamir

Congratulating someone on a pregnancy.  They successfully used their factory issue reproductive system.  Is that an accomplishment?

"Well, usually they put you in handcuffs, but since I made a domestic assault..."

Tonight I had dinner with Katy, whom I've been in contact with off and on for three years, but have never met.  She held the title of person I'd known for the longest time without meeting.  That record now goes to my friend Chanel, who, unfortunately may hold it for a while yet as I have no current plans to go to Washington State.

Katy is a geologist (or almost one).  She just earned her Masters Degree and is moving straight to her Doctorate.  She's a student in Los Angeles, and was doing this summer's field work in Vermont.  She decided the fun experience would be to drive there and back and I managed to meet her on the way back.

We met for sushi at Peking Palace.  I was there way, way too early as I misjudged what would be a good amount of time to wait and she underestimated the time it would take to get to Lincoln. 

We had a very pleasant conversation.  Her last few days have been interesting as they've been on and off the road.  We also discussed her fieldwork in various places (8 she could count, going back to high school).  We drifted through environmentalism, religious skepticism, life goals, and Chinese policy.  I was very glad about the chance to meet her.  She also coyly joked about my coming to visit, so I suppose she enjoyed herself.

I got my eyes checked the other day.  It turns out that I have very good vision, but a few problems with long distances.  I was given a prescription for glasses which I might fill at some point.  I'm looking for trendy, subtle, rectangular frames, like those used in Doctor Who:



Though I notice that every pair ended up making me look like this:



However, I balked at the price at the optometrist's office.  The cheapest I could get frames with anti-glare and transitions minus insurance was $150 or so.   America's Best, which I assumed would be cheapo bottom of the barrel, doesn't take insurance and was about $200 minimum.  Does anyone have a better solution or should I go back to my optometrist?

My plan for every Saturday morning is to visit my dad, do some laundry, and run some errands.  I didn't expect to be able to do the first as he was planning to work today.  When I pulled up to his house to use his facilities I was a little surprised to find the massive cottonwood in the front yard was now knocked over and leaning on the house. 

My dad did elect to stay home today, given events.  The tree had been knocked over at some point during the thunderstorm last night.  My dad actually slept through it, but all of the neighbors heard the crash and were stunned. 

The damage to the house is a little more than superficial.  One tree branch punctured the roof, but narrowly missed the exhaust chimney.  My dad contacted his insurance agent and, aside from a $1000 deductible, won't have to pay for anything.  (expect to see that form, Glitter) 

So today some gentlemen with a crane, bobcat, and power saws came out to promptly remove the tree.  Sometime in the next couple days, an assessor from State Farm will inspect the house in and out, and within the next 90 days, my dad will have a new roof.  In this way, this event was very fortuitous.  My dad had planned on getting a new roof, but was putting it off due to cost.  His 25-year roof is now at least 22 years old.  Now he's going to be getting a 50-year roof free of charge-ish.

Anyway, other plans after this are to help my dad clean out his attic (where there's currently a hole) and then check out my friend and ex-co-worker Gunter play at Crescent Moon.

"How about you?  Do you need any prayer?"
"Oh, not right now, but thanks for asking."

 

This ended up being media consumption weekend.  90% of it was new to me, which is usually nice.

Friday – Hung out with PFH at his place and watched things that were on his shelf.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Lovers Walk – I haven’t seen this episode since it was originally broadcast in 2000 or so.  It was nice to actually watch this with a better idea of the context.  In this episode the cockney, impulsive Vampire Spike returns to town.  I hadn’t remembered that he was distracted, emotional, and mopey most of the episode, which was consistently funny.

An Inconvenient Truth – I’d been interested in this documentary by Al Gore for some time.  He’s able to present his evidence in a way that satisfies an intelligent individual on a purely intellectual level while also visually stimulating the audience.  I feel that he pulled back at the end.  The conclusion he ended with was that climate change would cause change to basic human life based on weather, disease, and supplies.  He didn’t follow the data to its conclusion, which would be the destruction of the human species.  It seems pretty evident if we have unchecked carbon emissions for the next 100 years.

X-Men – We felt like ending the evening with adventure and this seemed like a good choice.  I think X-Men is an excellent movie.  I love Bryan Singer and what he can do.  I had this odd train of thought the entire time I was watching – did the actors find this incredibly silly?  The entire movie they’re talking about powers, codenames, and costumes with dire seriousness.  I sort of wonder what Famke Janssen thought, who has admitted never reading a comic book in her life. 

Saturday – My scifi club got together on Saturday for a movie day, or tv shows on DVD day as it turned out.

Red Dwarf – Gunmen of the Apocalypse – I haven’t seen much Red Dwarf, so I don’t know where this fits into the storyline of the show.  Most of the series takes places on a derelict mega-vessel called Red Dwarf, while this episode had the main characters trailing in another, smaller vessel.  This was a pretty simple episode where the characters went into a virtual reality western in order to fight a computer virus.  I suppose that in itself isn’t simple, but it was made to seem pretty basic in the show.

Bullshit – The End of the World – Penn and Teller host a pretty rudimentary examination of the nutballs who scramble about in fear of the imminent apocalypse and the opportunists that profit off of them.  Good fun complete with a fundamentalist randomly calling Hillary Clinton a sinful lesbian.

The Young Ones – Bored – I have not seen enough of the Young Ones to properly distinguish this from other episodes.  The general idea is that 4 British slackers hang around their house with enough odd throwaway bits and song numbers to classify the show as a variety show.  I’d seen the last 20 minutes of this episode at some point.   Near the end, a demon established at the beginning is summoned and causes minor havoc.  I was a little disappointed that he was actually introduced at the beginning because otherwise it would have been completely random.  I’m fond of non sequitor.

X-Files – Humbug – The first comedy episode of the X-Files.  The main characters investigate unexplained murders surrounding a side show community in Florida.  Good fun.  I had never noticed a moment before where a man checks out Scully’s breast while she checks out his conjoined twin.

Doctor Who – City of Death – A Tom Baker Doctor Who episode shot partially on location in Paris.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a complete Tom Baker adventure, at least not in the last 2 decades.  The Doctor has to investigate why an upper class twit is using alien technology to steal the Mona Lisa and why he has six of them to begin with.

Harvey Birdman – Identity Theft – My contribution to the day.  This was a typically manic episode of the series which featured Lewis Black as the villain.

Saturday – A group of friends regularly gathers for Bad Movie Night (actually many of these did suck)

Teen Loyalty – I think that’s what this was called.  This was a short film where Christian teenagers are brow beaten and shunned out of pursuing healthy, secular activities.

They Saved Hitler’s Brain – This film was cobbled together from a 1963 film called “The Madmen of Mandoras” and god knows what else.  I assume the production company needed to add additional footage for a rerelease, or the producer owed some people money and decided to put them on screen.  So outside of the main plot, we have 25 minutes of two secret agents who both suck at their jobs and acting in general.  The main plot is actually capable of being followed, but, at least with the footage shown, it sure as hell wasn’t expertly crafted.

Found Footage Festival – Definitely the highlight of the evening.  A showing of found footage at a club in Minneapolis I think.  Bizarre combination of poorly thought out instructional videos, jarring slice of life videos, Celebrity vanity projects that were a bad idea, a few entertaining bloopers, and much more, such as horse cock.

Robo CHIC – Holy Christ did this suck.  It was assumed this movie was softcore pornography given the title and the fact that the stars included a playmate and Burt Ward.  In that way, we could forgive the bizarre acting, piss poor writing, and painfully unfunny humor.  About halfway in, everyone realized that it was, in some way, intended to be a legitimate movie, which left me and others wondering “Why the hell does this movie exist?”   Fun fact:  the star walked off halfway through filming causing the production to replace her with an unnamed, non-lookalike.

So I forgot my camera on Saturday (that works because I can only take 10 photos of even remedial quality)  Could people post entries with photos?  I have friends that want to see them and I can't help directly.

I'm in no hurry to write this, so let's see if I time out. 
I invited glitter and theatre nerd to dinner last night.  The menu was Chile Rellenos Casserole with Butter Beans as a side.
Beans didn't turn out so well.  They ended up being, um, crisp.  I'll save them for later.  They're mostly cooked so I can finish cooking them in a new recipe.
The casserole turned out pretty well.  I started by cutting up bell peppers and placing them in boiling water for 3 minutes.  In a seperate bowl I then mixed 3 eggs and 1/4 cup milk.  Once combined, I added 1/3 cup flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder, and 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper to the batter.



I removed the peppers from the boiling water and spread them across a well-sprayed pie dish (I don't have a casserole dish right now).  I spread 1 cup of shredded cheese and then poured the batter on top of it all.  I set the oven for 350 degrees and set the casserole inside for 15 minutes, uncovered.



Once done, I spread shredded cheese on top of it, covered it, and waited for guests.  Here are the two dishes as done as they got:

I guess it's been 32 weeks since I last made an entry on here, which is pretty impressive.

I don't have too much to say that isn't neurotic right now, so I'll talk about dinner.

I made 'microwaved asparagus' tonight.  The recipe was specifically entitled 'microwaved asparagus'.  My first step was to take a dinner plate and douse it with a couple tablespoons of saltwater then a pat of margarine in the middle.  I chopped the woody bits off of my asparagus, washed it, and placed it on the plate.  I gave the mess a couple spritzes of lemon juice and covered the plate with plastic wrap.  I microwaved the asparagus for 3 minutes and then another minute.  This process was notable as the plastic wrap turned into a small balloon on the plate.

In the end it was indeed asparagus.  It cooled quickly, so I wonder if I should have zapped it for another minute or if that might have killed it completely.

I was going to take a photo, but I realized it's pretty much just a plate full of asparagus.

Just got a job offer from the University.  Hot goddamn.  Fuck you old job.

It's been just about a month since I've posted anything, so I should probably put a little something up here.

Today I got a random email from my friend Lynn.  She's wondering how I'm doing and being very sweet about it.  It was a nice light to a dreery and overlong workday.  I first met her about 3 years ago when I started my current job.  She was the nicest person and my best friend there and that slot was never replaced.  She moved to Iowa about 2 years ago.  We tend to get together whenever we're in the same town, though we missed the chance while I was 20 minutes away in Des Moines last month.

I just realized some of the borders of my anxiety.  There are a lot of things I just feel I can’t do.  I was reading a ‘Savage Love’ column about an 18 yo taking a trip to France alone.  In the back of my mind, I was always thinking ‘I’m incapable of that’.  But I’m most certainly capable.  I fear catastrophe so I don’t like to put myself in situations where I’m stretched from my base.  I limit myself like this in a lot of ways.  I assume that I can’t move, survive, or make friends in other cities.  How would I overcome that?  How can I find new experiences that would challenge those boundaries?  How can I stretch my vision of capability?  Furthermore, could I do any of that for free?

What's with simplified names for actual foodstuffs?  Cayenne and scallions are respectively only called red pepper and green onion in a lot of places.  That is mildly confusing.  More importantly, why did those names develop when they already had perfectly good names before which albeit weren't comparisons to other items.

I tried typing an umlaut at work today.  I thought the hotkey combination was shift+alt+ctrl and 2-5-2.  I don't what the umlaut hotkey is but that turned my screen upside down.  Took a little exploring on my own (I sure as hell wasn't going to call IT), but I managed to turn it rightside up by using some orientation options by right clicking my desktop.  That was fun, but I guess I won't be addressing properly spelled letters to Gunter.

I met someone at the bus stop today.  We had a nice little go nowhere conversation about jobs and weather and such.  In the course of it, she mentioned that she's only taking the bus because her license was revoked for a DUI.  My respect for her dropped more than a tad when she said that.

I can't judge the totality of a character from a single action, nor can I judge the totality of an action by the fact it happened.  For all I know that was the only time this girl had drunk in her entire life.  That said a DUI, or at least the breezy tone she mentioned it in, certainly bespeaks that she has very little control over her own impulses and little concern for the long term consequences of her actions.

I contrast this with a couple friends that almost got DUIs and how I don't feel a similar way about them.  For a little bit I questioned whether it was just the act of conviction that made me feel disrespect.  I realized, however, those people actually gave a damn about what they'd done and actually regretted it.  That at least is a way to temper transgressions after the fact.

I met an online friend for lunch today.  It was extremely pleasant, even if the conversation was never truly profound.  We went to YiaYia's and sat outside.  As we're both low talkers we got to be drowned out by trucks every 2 1/2 seconds.  I hope we can do this again sometime.

Cynically, I also hope we communicate in the future.  I have a very murky track history meeting people from online.  All but one or two have been complete failures and, really, always for different reasons.  I usually just stop communicating with the people I meet and there really isn't a rhyme or reason to how this happens.  I've experienced profound boredom, disillisionment, moral repugnance, and mutual disrespect, all of those in one or both parties.  The oddest so far was when I met a very good friend of 3 years, had a lovely visit, 2 months later had a knockdown arguement, and are only now getting over it.

So it's been really awesome out and this morning my body reminded me I have hayfever. 

I just finished watching Michael Caine's "Italian Job".  Spiffy little movie.  I find it pretty goofy for a heist movie, but I can't disacknowledge its charm.  Caine is a bit of a working actor now and always has been.  I recall he even acknowledges that he's made some pretty mediocre movies and thought so at the time.  He's still a good actor, and I almost feel its generous of him he'll work on crap like "Bewitched". 

This is the most recent in a string of nice movies I've checked out lately.

Friday I saw "Idiocracy" which I'd call moving.  Mike Judge made an absolutely brilliant satire of our current lowest common denominator society.  I'm kicking around the idea that maybe the reason Fox surpressed the movie was because he was so dead on in his satire.  He rips at corporate culture, instant gratification, puerile entertainment, self centered behavior, and a smidge of politics.  Somebody might not have found it all funny.  Certainly wasn't me.

Last Saturday I saw Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" or as much of it that exists.  Maybe I'm not as cultured as I should be, but I'm shocked that such a brilliant, beautiful, and thoroughly modern movie could have been made in 1927.  I wish there was a way that movie could receive more recoginition and broad appeal in the modern day.  I don't really want to think about that too hard, because it ends coming to the conclusion it would just be remade by Bruckheimer.

I will not include "Star Odyssey" on this list.  It was a very bad movie.  I however kinda like it.  I have a big soft spot for Italian scifi movies made for about $30.  It's sort of like throwing your guts up the morning after drinking really good scotch.

I'm taking my computer in to be serviced tomorrow.  I'm timing it so I'll miss it as little as possible.  I am rather tied to the internet at this point.  I'd equate it to an addiction the same way I'm addicted to eating and breathing.  I lead a fairly spartan existence and high speed internet is the only entertainment luxury I afford myself and very close to my only way to grasp current events.