Tag: life

Stupid federal holiday

I’m at work today, despite the fact that it’s Presidents’ Day.  Or is it President’s Day?  A day for all the Presidents?  Or a day for the office of President?  I don’t know.  But all you should know that, if “Presidents’ Day” is wrong, it means I got the the name wrong.  It’s not a grammatical error.

In any event, the point is that no one is here.  More importantly, Caribou Coffee is not opening until 8AM.  That’s 15 minutes from now.  I know it opens at 8AM because I just walked down there in the cold to find them closed.  I’m so mad I briefly considered not going back after 8.  That’s how mad I am.

If we ban it, it will go away

WIStv.com Columbia, SC: AMA asks for movies showing smokers to get “R” rating

The [American Medical Association alliance] says their research shows that smoking in movies recruits close to 400,000 adolescent smokers each year, eventually killing over a third of them.

Okay, I’m totally on board with trying to keep kids from smoking.  And frankly, I think we’re well on our way – with more and more places banning smoking in bars, I think we’ll soon reach the tipping point where we really start to make progress towards getting rid of cigarettes completely.

But R ratings for showing people smoking?  Why don’t we just take children from their parents at birth and raise them in sanitized cocoons where they’re only exposed to purified air and educational material until they turn 18.  Obviously human beings are inherently incapable of raising children, so we should just outlaw that.  While we’re at it, people eat too much fatty foods.  Let’s ban eating.  You can get your nutrients from an IV in the hospital.  It’s safer there anyway.  Otherwise you might go out and drive somewhere in your SUV and talk on your cell phone or adjust your iPod and crash into a farmer’s market.

I’m sure most of you have seen the movie Demolition Man, where Stallone goes to “cryoprison” where they freeze him for 70 years and he wakes up in a place where kissing and salt are illegal, because exchanging body fluids and eating salt can be bad for you.  This is funny because it’s so ridiculous.

It’s not looking so ridiculous any more.  They start with fois gras and trans fats.  Eventually they’ll get to something you care about.

Things every guy should know

Actually, women should know, too, but that wouldn’t segue into my post so well.

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.   The first thing you should do is turn off the power to the disposal, although I didn’t bother.  The second thing to do is unhook the thing, turn it upside down over a big bowl and dump out the penny.  If your disposal is like the ones I’ve worked with, there are two hoses coming in – one to drain the water, and one that hooks up to the dishwasher.  The dishwasher one is very important – make sure you remove the plug so there is actually a hole for water from the dishwasher to pass through.  If you’ve never run your dishwasher before, and it won’t drain, check the connection to the disposal.  If yours is like mine when I moved in, someone has forgotten to remove the plug.  Removing the plug is not trivial, either.  You probably have to bang on a screwdriver with a hammer or something like that.  Then you have to dump the piece of plastic out, because it won’t go down the drain, and it will take approximately six years of running the disposal to chop it up into little bits.

Another important thing to know about disposals is that they have a little screw at the bottom that takes an allen wrench.  You should always know where this wrench is.  If your disposal stops working due to large amounts of whatever you’ve put in there, get the wrench and turn that screw back and forth for a bit, then try the disposal again.  The only thing I’ve put down a disposal that made it stop working that wasn’t fixed by turning that screw was a shot glass.

It is also important to use your disposal.  If you have one, you must run it occasionally, or else you need a screen to keep things from falling down there.  I can’t tell you how awesome it is to have congealed chicken fat and six month old onion peel sitting at the bottom of the disposal.  Actually, I can.  Because I know.  It is not awesome at all.

A bunch of stuff

Bad timing for some big news items. I haven’t had a chance to write about Gerald Ford, even though I flew out of an airport named after him last week. I haven’t had a chance to write about Saddam Hussein, in part because I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole thing, which is puzzling. I haven’t written about New Year’s, which contains a small complaint about the cab companies in Annapolis, Maryland, who were woefully unprepared for the demand.

So, either I’ll get to all that, and whatever else I missed, or I won’t. That’s the nice part about not doing this for a living. You can always complain yourself if I’ve missed something really glaring.

All you needed was a cat and mouse

Cartoon Pioneer Joe Barbera Mourned – washingtonpost.com

But I felt that in any country you wouldn’t need dialogue to understand the plot. All you needed was a cat and mouse, and everybody knew what was going to happen.

I saw yesterday that he had died, but I didn’t post anything about it because I didn’t know what to say.  I didn’t really know anything about him, but his cartoons were such a big part of everyone’s childhood for so many years.  I wonder about the kids I’ll have eventually – will they appreciate the things I loved when I was little?  I think it would be cool to watch “Tom and Jerry” with my kids.  You know, in between playing outside and doing their homework and going to museums and family game night and all sorts of constructive behavior.

By the way, the article mentions that “Tom and Jerry” won seven Academy Awards.  That’s pretty impressive.

Eat more fish

TIME.com Daily Rx: Choose Your Fish Wisely

While Americans are eating more fish on average today than at the turn of the century, we’re not eating the healthiest kinds of seafood. The most popular form of seafood, shrimp, is high in cholesterol and contains low levels of omega-3 fatty acids. And that cafeteria staple, fish sticks, contain very low levels of methylmercury but are equally poor sources of omega-3 oils

You, undoubtedly, should eat more fish.  What I recommend you do is go to the store and purchase some fresh tilapia, a lemon, some broccoli, a few tomatos, garlic, vegetable broth, olive oil, black pepper, and oregano.  Come home and put the fish in some tin foil, drench it in lemon juice, sprinkle with oregano and black pepper, and then seal the tin foil.  Preheat the oven to 400 and bake for 10-15 minutes, maybe more, depending on the thickness of the fish.  If you don’t know how to tell if fish is done, consult someone who does.

Meanwhile, saute the garlic in the olive oil.  If you don’t already have olive oil, you really should.  I know, it’s expensive.  But a bottle lasts a long time, and it’s good for you.  Anyway, saute the garlic, then add the tomatos.  Make sure you throw the juice and squishy stuff from the tomatos in to the pan, too.  There should be a layer of liquid covering the pan.  If not, add a bit of vegetable broth.  Once the tomatos are simmering, toss the broccoli, turn down the heat, and cover.  Do NOT stir in the broccoli – it should be sitting on top of the tomatos.  You’re basically steaming the broccoli with the tomato juice. If you’ve timed it correctly, your fish will be done right as the brocolli gets nice and tender.  If you have, let me know, because I’ve never managed to do it.  When it’s all done, throw the fish on a plate, add some of the broccoli/tomato mixture (I think it should go on top of the fish, but that’s just me), and enjoy.

I think the problem with fish (It was my problem, at least) is that people are scared to cook it.  It’s really easy to cook.  Yes, you should be careful and make sure you’ve cooked it all the way through.  But other than that, it’s very easy to cook, and I find it delicious.  And it’s good for you.

OH NO! Family values are dead!

For first time, unmarried households reign in US – Yahoo! News

Unmarried couples gravitated toward big cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, while the farm states in the Great Plains and rural communities of the Midwest and West remained bastions of traditionalism, according to the survey.

Interesting survey, maybe, except Yahoo doesn’t really provide any numbers.  Their main point is that in 2005, for the first time more than 50% of households were not a heterosexual married couple.  The gist of the story is, “OH NO!  The family is going out the window!  Soon the evil gays will run the world!”  You have to read between the lines a little bit, but that’s all there.

I don’t think this points to any sort of decline in family values.  In fact, maybe it points to a growing financial intelligence among young people.  Nothing in the article supports that, but it’s not my fault that Yahoo’s reporting is not very thorough.

What I’m talking about, though, is that they don’t take into account people cohabitating because it makes financial sense.  For example, about three years ago, I was living with two roomates.  We were renting a house because none of us could really afford a place on our own.  The two of them, encouraged by our landlord/realtor, decided to buy a house.  They were both tired of throwing money away in rent, but we live in Northern Virginia.  It’s really expensive to live here, and most single people in their mid-twenties have a little trouble buying.

So, they bought a house.  They signed some contract so they used both of their incomes as co-buyers.  I rented from them because I wasn’t ready for that kind of financial commitment.

Now, a few years later, I’ve moved out, bought my own place, and gotten married.  One of the roommates is currently renting with his fiancee, and the other just got married a few weeks ago, and he and his new wife are moving somewhere together.

My point here is that we were a household that didn’t involve a heterosexual married couple, but it wasn’t because we’re bad people or we hate family values or anything like that.  It was because we were unmarried and didn’t want to spend three quarters of our income on housing.

I have no idea if there’s anything in the survey to support an increase in situations like that.  But this shows the danger in showing partial statistics.  If you can pick and choose which numbers and which relationships to show, you can support just about any hypothesis you want.

How am I going to explain this to my daughter?

Boing Boing: Fake beauty, video about transhuman tricks used on models

That is, when I have a daughter.  But the likelihood of me having a daughter is pretty good.  I mean, the first kid has about a 50/50 chance of being a girl, right?  So if I plan to have multiple children, which the wife currently is on board with, I have a better than 50/50 chance of having a girl.

Anyway, the point is, how would you explain this to a little girl?  The video shows an attractive but perfectly normal woman, and the process to make her face into a billboard.  Makeup, which isn’t surprising, but then the digital manipulation of her face is a little shocking.  They make her neck thinner and longer, raise her eyebrows, make her lips fuller.

I can’t imagine explaining that to my (As yet unborn, or even conceived) little girl when she’s six and asks me why.  There’s a long time in a kid’s life when they understand enough to ask hard-to-answer questions, but they may not understand enough to hear the real answer.  Assuming there is one.  I mean, I don’t know why we’ve built up completely unreasonable expectations of beauty.

I’ve heard the arguments that some of it is based on propagation of the species, and the claim that a fit woman with wide hips is well-suited for reproduction.  But what do full lips and a long, slender neck have to do with reprodcution?

Absolutely nothing, that’s what.

How accurate is your forecast?

Weather Forecast Accuracy for Falls Church, Virginia via Lifehacker This website not only gives you a current forecast, but it also tells you which of the other forecasting sites are most accurate. If you haven’t lived under a rock your entire life, you probably know that weather forecasters are generally regarded to be on about the same level as used car salesmen in terms of honesty. I’m often surprised at how angry people get at the weatherman, as if it’s his or her fault that either the weather is bad, or that the prediction was off.

What I’m really curious about, though, is how accurate the accuracy-checkers’ forecast is.