Tag: Anti complaint

80 Years of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez turns 80

“He was born in Colombia, but all of us who speak Spanish have in him a referent of perfection and the creation of beauty,” Colombian Ambassador to Spain Noemi Sanin said in Madrid.

A referent of perfection.  If I ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which is on my list of things to do, I hereby promise to to close my acceptance speech by screaming, “I am a referent of perfection!  You will all grovel at my feet!”, and then drop the microphone and walk off stage, where I will pull a flask of very expensive scotch from my pocket and proceed to get very, very drunk.

Seriously, I read 100 Years of Solitude in college, and I really liked it.  My Spanish isn’t strong enough to appreciate the original, but my translation was enjoyable.  I’m sure it loses something, so that means the original must be really, really good.

I mean, the guy is the father of magic realism.  Anyone who’s ever taken a Spanish class has probably heard their Spanish teacher gush about “realismo magico”.  This dude started all that.  That’s pretty cool.

So, go read on of his books.  I’ve only read the one, but I figure the rest are good, too.

Another reason to love Nine Inch Nails

NIN Year Zero: Too Much for the RIAA – Gizmodo

Oh my gosh, he’s realeasing free MP3s!  Now all the artists will starve!

Oh, wait, what?  The free tracks are creating tons of buzz for the upcoming album?  That can’t be!  That flies in the face of everything the recording industry has told us.

Could it be that the RIAA is wrong?

Things are getting back to normal

A little while back, I moved this blog to a subdomain, breaking RSS feeds, and confusing the spam robots.  I’m happy to report that my spam comments are back up to the numbers they were at before I moved the blog, which I suppose means that people have more or less figured out that you have to come to the blog subdomain.

I haven’t been posting much lately because I still don’t have internet at home, and I can only spend so much time doing this at work.  I have to say that because my team lead reads this.  In reality, I spend at least 6 hours a day working on Complaint Hub related things.  Just kidding, Andy.

Anyway, word from the condo association is that Comcast may be out as soon as tomorrow to install something or other, which means that we should be able to make appointments to have cable/internet hooked up on Thursday.  This is excellent news.

So, I hope that, by next week, I will be online at home, and everything will be right with the world again.

Look at me, being helpful

Complaint Hub » Blog Archive » Things every guy should know

Anyway, every guy should know basic garbage disposal maintenance. You never know when your wife will spill half a can of Quaker Oats in her purse on the way home from work, then dump a penny down the disposal as she’s cleaning it out.

Awesome.  Someone found this entry searching Google for “remove penny from garbage disposal”.  I hope I helped him or her out.

I love looking through my referrals and search term results.  It would be even cooler if I had more visitors.  But it makes me happy that searching for “whatever” + “complaint” often brings people to me.

New Nine Inch Nails single

You can hear it on the NIN MySpace page.  I’m really not sure whether I think a Nine Inch Nails MySpace page is one of the great things about the internet, or one of the signs that it’s all ready to come crashing down.

Nine Inch Nails is one of the few bands whose cd I will buy without hearing anything from it.  It’s a pretty short list, especially after Garbage’s most recent cd refused to let me rip MP3’s and they fell off the list.  Actually, the list may just be Nine Inch Nails at this point.  Cake’s most recent cd was pretty mediocre.

Anyway, hearing that the new cd is coming out in April is the first time I’ve been excited about music in a while.  I haven’t listened to music on the radio in a long time.  When HFS went away, leaving us with only DC101, I mostly switched to NPR.  I’m tired of the RIAA, of copy-protection, of DRM.  And I’m tired of the same old crap music being played over and over.

But I should have a new cd on April 17th.    I’m looking forward to it.

What is art, really?

Inhabitat » URBAN CURATORS PROJECT In Downtown Providence

Passing residents were pleasantly bewildered when they stumbled upon a series of gold-painted frames haphazardly taped to graffiti-covered walls and the crumbling exteriors of abandoned sites.

This is pretty cool.  Up in Providence, they just stuck frames on random spots of wall and whatnot.  For anyone who has ever wondered what makes something art, this seems to suggest it’s just the eye of the beholder.

Look, I was right

First, I’ll gloat for a minute because I went 8-3 picking winners, and the Colts even covered like I said they would.  Rex Grossman played badly, but it was the Bears defense that really disappointed.  They gave up 190 yards on the ground to Rhodes and Addai.  You don’t win Super Bowls giving up that kind of yardage on the ground.

Then, I’ll complain that Peyton didn’t deserve the MVP.  True, no one had a really standout game, and typically when that happens they give the MVP to the quarterback of the winning team.  But I would say the Colts offensive line deserved it more than Peyton, and I would say that Addai, with 10 catches on top of 77 yards rushing, deserved it more than Peyton.  But I don’t expect the NFL to actually give the MVP to someone who deserved it.  Everyone was expecting all week that Peyton would get it, and they couldn’t go back on that.

I’ll also complain that the commercials were terrible.  CareerBuilder should go back to the monkeys instead of this Lost/Braveheart mistake they offered up yesterday.  I think Ford made a dumb move pushing their new Super Duty behemoth pickup just as GM is bringing hybrids to the market, although maybe they were just trying to fight off the challenge from Toyota and keep sales of the F-150 ahead of the Tundra, which is probably a losing battle at this point.

And I will finish by complimenting Prince on a nice performance.  I don’t know who the woman in white was, and she was weird, but she didn’t ruin it.  Covering the Foo Fighters was surprisingly cool, and I wish I could pull off the outfit Prince was wearing.

Mmm. . . delicious cupcakes

Strict Vegan Ethics, Frosted With Hedonism – New York Times via Accidental Hedonist

“Punk taught me to question everything,” Ms. Moskowitz said. “Of course, in my case that means questioning how to make a Hostess cupcake without eggs, butter or cream.”

Should we be eating animal products? I mean, you can’t tell me that it’s nice to the animals to kill and eat them. I think it’s a natural part of life – human beings evolved as omnivores. But it’s not a necessary part. I like the attitude here that the focus shouldn’t be on meat substitutes. Some of the best vegetarian stuff my wife cooks doesn’t have any meat substitutes.

I don’t know that I could give up meat, though. I’ve pretty much given up red meat and poultry at home (I was never that crazy about chicken anyway), sticking to vegetables and seafood. But could I give up the occasional bacon cheeseburger at a restaurant? Could I give up sushi? I don’t think I could.

But tasty vegan cupcakes? I’m happy to eat those.

We got the house

Our front doorThe wife and I are now proud owners (Pending closing in a few weeks) of a new condo in Columbia Heights.  We have the first floor.  It’s absolutely gorgeous.  I’ll have more pictures next time we’re able to get inside.  We’re obviously very excited.  Columbia Heights is a late-transitional neighborhood, new stuff going in all the time.  It’s walking distance (If you really want to) to Dupont Circle and the zoo.  We can walk to the trendy U Street Corridor.  It’s going to be awesome.