| From the only consistently funny newspaper comic |
[Jul. 13th, 2008|06:14 pm] |
I've been reloading toothpastefordinner waiting for this to show up. I knew it would.
TFD Random Picture Generator |
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| shoulder cat |
[Jun. 27th, 2008|10:17 pm] |
Maddy, my shoulder cat, is very sick. The vets know the problem's with her liver, but they're unsure of the cause. They say it's something that cats get sometimes, and occasionally, but usually don't, survive...
She's trying to drink a little water, and my wife tries to feed her with a syringe, but she's throwing up a lot of the food and she's weak. She's always been such a tiny thing; she can't afford to lose any more weight.
Does anyone still have that rainbow wig photo? (Abby?) I don't really like how I looked -- I insist that I'm thinner and much less Karl Rove-esque now than I was a few years ago -- but she's really cute. Please post it here if you can. The only photo I can find of her on short notice (I'm still away from home until late Wednesday) has one of those stupid yellow camera dates that I hate, it required manual red eye retouching, and her ears are cropped....
( View more ) |
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| He's famous! He's famous! |
[Jun. 23rd, 2008|05:39 am] |
So my sister Nikki took Nathan the Guitar Nut (kid #2 of 3) to the Discovery World museum on Sunday to see the Les Paul exhibit, and got filmed. They interviewed him, but sadly most of it ended up on the cutting room floor. (I'm gonna have to hire that boy a media coach if the producers think the guys with pot bellies are more photogenic...)
The story's online Here, but you might have to sit through a Milwaukee weather forecast or a commercial to catch a couple short glimpses of my kid drooling over the guitar collection. He's the 11-year-old... ;) My sister's in there, too. |
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| Food labeling |
[Jun. 17th, 2008|09:27 pm] |
The China trip notwithstanding, I've been travelling a lot less with this new gig, compared to my old job. But tonight I'm back in a Holiday Inn Express in the middle-of-nowhere for the first time since May '07 for an extended stay. It feels just like old times. I skipped dinner with coworkers -- I felt like sleeping, I was up very early this morning -- so I raided the food stash in the lobby. It'll do until I shop for healthier stuff. Anyway:
1.) According to the warning on the can, my ginger ale might "spray or fizz while opening". Whew. Lucky I read the warning, I would have hated to be unprepared for that...
2.) The "breast shaped fillet sandwich" wasn't nearly as much fun as it sounds. |
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| So, anyway, |
[Apr. 2nd, 2008|07:29 am] |
There I was at work yesterday, browsing the Milwaukee Craigslist musical instrument listings, where I clicked on an ad -- "Fender Guitar, $200". A woman whose husband just died was trying to unload a Jazz Bass that's been collecting dust since they bought it in 1962 for their kid, who never played it.
A museum piece worth $15,000 or more, for $200.00 ...
So I write a long windy email response telling her to please please please withdraw the ad and consign it with a high-end music shop that might get her a better deal. I included links to Elderly Instruments' and Gruhn Guitars' websites listing similar items, and suggested she don't sell the amplifier for pennies, either, if she still has it. And of course I dropped the hint that I like to buy old woodworking tools.
But, yeah -- It was an April Fool's prank... |
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| No, I'm not dead. |
[Mar. 2nd, 2008|11:21 pm] |
Just preoccupied, and horrible at keeping in touch. Work is hectic for the time being, and when I'm at home I'm kind of obsessed with gathering guitar-makin' parts and info, and building a workbench. Long, boring photoessays to follow in a couple weeks.
And I still have books to mail off to WV, MI, and some place near the Gulf coast. Let me know if there are any mailing address updates I need to be aware of...
Speakin' of photos, Google Maps took pictures of my house: Let's see if livejournal likes embedding --
View Larger Map
If that doesn't work, click on the link
...I'm workin' on the landscaping and the dead spots on the lawn, okay??? |
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| China update |
[Jan. 6th, 2008|05:24 pm] |
1.) Gulang Yu island is incredibly charming. What little else I've seen of China is either colorful, clean, and ultra-modern, or it's the shabby charmless product of Mao's Cultural Revolution that hasn't quite fallen apart or been torn down yet. The island has lots of old colonial buildings and a real sense of place. I'm definitely going back there when I get the chance, so I can just walk around and explore all the narrow old streets. And I definitely need to bring a camera.
Plenty of kitsch on sale, though. Some streets reminded me of Wisconsin Dells, only with no motor vehicles and less fudge.
2. I discovered something that Buddhists and Christians have in common: they both want my money.
3. Da Hong Pao tea is unlike anything else. I'm in love. And now I know well enough to a.) do my research before going to the tea shop so I know exactly what I want and how much I should pay, and b.) pay attention to the quoted prices and write down a running tally. I think the total got bumped up a couple hundred RMB somewhere without me noticing. Oh well, I gotta spend my $38/day per diem somehow.
4. When strolling down the outdoor pedestrian mall on your way to the ferry dock, and you hear a voice over your shoulder saying "hello? hello?", try to outrun them.
5. Text from the sweatshirts I bought my daughter --
On the one with the pretty pink and red valentine heart puzzle,
"corpse of skewr
and the notebook at night drops
the world that goes to ruin to light
the carred litle suitable one for hero
It repeats permanently qigeki of the death
the world that goes to ruin Is not led to light
of blood jing to whom delusion is possessed"
On the one with the cartoon monkey,
"SHALL ALUCA KJLLL
THIS IS VERY LOVEY MIDF WBO"
and on the back,
"HAPPY CHILDREN'S DAY" |
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| bi-monthly check-in |
[Jan. 6th, 2008|09:01 am] |
1.) I'm still alive; I kinda got sidetracked lookin' at other stuff on the web (more musical instrument making stuff, son #1 wants an electric guitar and I need something to do with my hands) and as a result I'm about six weeks behind on reading all your ljs. Expect a comment or two from me on things you've forgotten you've written.
2.) I'm typing this Sunday morning from a hotel room in downtown Xiamen, China. Luckily I can get access to livejournal and a few other sites (bbc.co.uk) that are blocked at the other hotel we stay at during the week. Wikipedia's still unavailable, however.
3.) 'Quail Egg and Fungus Dessert Soup' doesn't have any real flavor to speak of. Last night I had the opportunity to order the deep-fried beetle pupae, but I wasn't drunk feeling very adventurous.
4.) If you're a big pale oafish Westerner, you get stared at a lot. No big deal, I just pretend they think I'm pretty.
Later today I'll go shopping & walking around the Gulangyu historic district with my coworker Edgar. He's been instructed to buy purses for people back home. Evidently there are great bargains in purses, pearls, and golf clubs to be had here, but I'm told that clothes are much more expensive than they are back home in the U.S. ...
If anything interesting happens I'll report back. |
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| community pimping |
[Dec. 8th, 2007|11:56 pm] |
I just joined a new community tonight after seeing it mentioned in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) invertebrates -- it's called animania_daily. A new species every day (tonight it's Giant Cuttlefish,) illustrated with pics & video, and it's quite well done. Check it out if you're interested in animal life. I can think of at least two of you who'll enjoy this, chances are a few more of you will, too. |
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| Incomprehensible British Quiz |
[Nov. 21st, 2007|01:20 pm] |
...stolen from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) juno_februa
1) When was the last time you ate a pastie? This is one of the few questions in this quiz that I actually understand -- you can find these in Wisconsin, I guess some Cornish people settled nearby a century or two back and brought their food with them. I had one at least once. It was alright, but to my tastes it was missing something. Cheese. Delicious, melty cheese. Just a cup-and-a-half would have been enough.
2) Did the moomins freak you out as a kid? No. I think they were still trying to scare us with tales of the International Communist Conspiracy. Yes, I'm old.
3) Got any A-Levels? Does not apply. I did manage to pass an advancement placement test that allowed me to skip English 101, which was nice.
4) What's your favourite pub?: I'm the rare Milwaukeean who doesn't have one.
5) What's your favourite pub grub? You don't usually want to eat where you drink here. All they seem to serve are "Buffalo Wings" -- The least desirable parts of the bird apart from the beaks and the feet, deep fried and covered with an awful sauce that's both sugary and inelegantly spiced with enough chili pepper to ruin any concept of 'balanced flavor'. Er, 'flavour', Sorry.
6) How about curry, do you like it and what's your fave? Does Thai Panang Curry count? I've never found any 'curry' places in the states, apart from Thai and Indian restaurants. Indian places don't seem to like to use the c-word, though. "Curry Chicken" in Chinese restaurants is nothing special. It tastes like chicken soup, and I think it actually glows in the dark.
7) Which national saints days do you celebrate? (eg: St Patrick, St George, St Andrew, St David) I think the only saint they worship in Wisconsin is St. Vincent Lombardi. Not that much of a football fan, American or otherwise, unless I feel like hassling friends in other cities for my own amusement, so I don't celebrate his feast day. But I'll give a half-hearted "yay" whenever the Bears or Vikings lose.
8) It's christmas day. Morcambe and wise or the queens speech? Wha...??
9) You are having a dinner guest over. You find out it's a SUN journalist, what do you do? The Sun is the one with page 3, right? Hmmm.... I could try begging for a job in that department, but I think my wife would stab me in the hand with the serving fork. Repeatedly. Then she'd work her way up my arm, and scold me for bleeding all over my clothes.
She'll probably read this and think about getting mad at me, but then she'll realize that everything I say is true...
10) What did you get up to last Guy Fawkes night? Nothing special. I was only dimly aware of it; I think Neil Gaiman mentioned it in his blog. |
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| Raves |
[Oct. 26th, 2007|10:50 pm] |
So, Yeah, the Nickelodeon network mostly has kiddie shows about sea creatures, genius boy inventors, what it's like to be in middle school, stuff like that. Sometimes the animators will throw in a sly pop-culture reference to keep the old people forced to watch these things amused, which is nice. But then...
Then there's Avatar: The Last Airbender, the show where characters, upon first meeting, trade stories about how their parents and loved ones died at the hands of a genocidal totalitarian war machine.
Where other shows are about the silly jokes, this one deals with more things than most adult dramas on television -- Love, death, grief, loss, beauty, coming of age, balance, wisdom, power, humor, mastery, the importance of tea, spirituality, science, ambition, friendships that last longer than one human lifetime, the hazards of selling cabbages from a push cart, morality, when a freedom fighter isn't a freedom fighter... and much more. Very large cast of characters, complicated back story, and just enough kissy-kissy-goo-goo stuff to keep 'shippers happy. Characters tend to be complex -- the good guys aren't always all good, some of the "bad guys" have interesting sides to them...
I hate the word 'amazing' - I'm trying to get it banned from the English language - but this is such an amazingly beautiful show. Brilliantly written, too, with an incredible eye for the smallest details -- an episode about swordsmanship training, for example, has the character make his own sword in a way that's not only metallurgically correct (that was my college major,) but parallels his physical and spiritual development in a really cool way. The writers and animators should get a truckload of Emmys for this show if there's any justice in the world.
It's now on its third season, and although it's nice to watch it in sequence, each half hour stands very well on its own. Dip into it wherever it's convenient -- seasons 1 & 2 are re-run during the week on one of the Nick channels. If you're overwhelmed by all the characters, Wikipedia can help.
Very highly recommended. |
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| What Do You Have To Say? - (like juggling chainsaws) |
[Oct. 21st, 2007|01:49 pm] |
Does learning Mandarin count as 'crazy'?? If not, then maybe that Scottish telephone-pole-tossing thing. |
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| a book meme |
[Oct. 3rd, 2007|04:40 pm] |
Stumbled upon this a little earlier today. (Didn't I see this on some of y'all's journals a few months ago? I forget...)
"The list is the 106 books most often noted as unread by Librarything users. Bold is for books you've read. Italics for books you've started but haven't finished. Strikethrough is for books you found unreadable."
( long list mercifully tucked behind the lj-cut ) |
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| Book Review |
[Sep. 25th, 2007|12:03 pm] |
I recently read American Born Chinese, a graphic novel that presents three stories - Asian boy growing up, white-bread suburban high school kid with embarrassing Chinese relative, a retelling of a folktale about The Monkey King - and ties the tales together in a very satisfying way. It's a book about feeling comfortable in your own skin. It's written for young people & won an award for youth fiction, but I'm a geezer and I enjoyed it. Highly recommended.
Don't read its Wikipedia article before reading the book, even if you usually don't mind spoilers -- knowing the ending in advance will ruin this one.
...and I finally joined the late 20th century & created a Skype account. Kinda had to, it's how the department keeps in touch with each other when we're traveling around Asia 'n stuff. I'm christopherotto.53223 in case you have your own account & can't resist pranking me... |
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| I won! I won! |
[Aug. 23rd, 2007|11:58 am] |
So I checked out the eatcurds.com website the other day, a Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board site devoted to cheese curds. It's a Wisconsin thing, essentially nuggets of cheddar that are best eaten on the day that they're made. This usually means finding a cheese factory, or if you're lucky, your local grocery store might get a shipment a few hours after they're made. Sendik's in Milwaukee gets 'em on Fridays and Saturdays around lunchtime. When they're fresh they have an addictive, buttery flavor and they squeak when you bite them. (Keep 'em around a day or two and they mutate into ordinary cheese.)
Anyway -- I entered a contest, writing a lame recollection of when I worked on cheesemaking equipment for a living and got to snack on some right out of the vat when I was stuck working overnight in lovely Luxemburg, Wisconsin. (Interestingly, Luxemburg was settled by Belgian immigrants while the Luxemburgers found homes in Belgium, Wisconsin. I've never heard a good explanation for this.) It's difficult to tell a coherent story in only 600 characters, but they picked my entry anyway. In a few weeks I get a free apron and bumper sticker that read "Who curd eat just one?". Maybe I can plaster the bumper sticker across one of the few remaining George Bush bumperstickers on strangers' cars, and if I ever need an apron I could always wear it inside out...
If you're a legal resident of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan or Minnesota (exactly three of you on my flist meet this criterion) you can enter, too. They don't appear to get a lot of entries. You have until the 31st, so get busy if you want that apron... |
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| news |
[Jul. 25th, 2007|09:43 am] |
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In brief -- I have a job offer. I'm tempted, for ego-stroking purposes, to hold off on a decision for a week or two while I go through another few interviews, since having several offers in hand is good for the soul. However I think I'll accept this one. It's the place that would send me to China once in a while... |
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| My Free Will Astrology horoscope - week of 7/19/07 |
[Jul. 20th, 2007|02:56 pm] |
"The modern English word "weird" is derived from the Old English term wyrd, meaning "destiny." By the late Middle Ages, wyrd had evolved into a concept similar to the Eastern notion of karma. It implied that the momentum of past events plays a strong role in shaping the future, but that human willpower can nevertheless also have a hand in creating upcoming events. In some uses, wyrd could even mean "the power to control destiny," as exemplified by the three Weird Sisters of Shakespeare's MacBeth. I bring this up, Scorpio, because your Wyrd Factor is pretty high these days. While the consequences of your past are certainly impinging on your present to some degree, you've rarely had a greater ability to override them through the force of your intentions."
- from http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/scorpio.html and an alternative weekly paper near you.
...and boy, is this ever the right week for that one.
And this just supports my incessant assertions that there is no such thing as fate. Ha! |
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| obligatory harry potter comment |
[Jul. 20th, 2007|10:23 am] |
In the past, I've always enjoyed the little subtexts she's thrown in the books, referring to the real world we live in -- you know, her way of planting ideas in the minds of young readers to help them make sense of some of the messages we're bombarded with.
Examples: You can't trust the media. Your Minister of Magic/Prime Minister/President may very well be wrongheaded, incompetent, or a doofus, or all three, and can't necessarily be trusted simply because he's an authority figure. There are more, but those two immediately come to mind.
Now the whole globe's a nastier place than it was when she started writing this series in the early '90s. Since I generally share her outlook - I guess you could call her a liberal humanist moralist, to pull a label out of my ass - I'm sure I'll be in fairly close agreement with whatever 'op-ed' commentary she will put in that alludes to the real world. If she's eloquent, this silly little fiction book could transcend mere entertainment & be a force for good. Shaping young minds, and all that. I hope so, anyway.
... and I still think Snape's in it for himself & thinks he can be a better dark lord than Voldemort ... |
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| Recommendation |
[Jul. 13th, 2007|01:19 pm] |
cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com
I just saw this mentioned in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) officialgaiman where Neil described it as "...a blog of essays and pictures of things I either know a bit about and wish I knew more, or about things I know nothing about and really really needed to. Everything from Ossuaries to astrolabes, automata, orreries and shadow-puppets, and even short films of stop motion beetles...Start back in March and come forward, or just poke around the coolness..."
I'm thinkin' saila_snitram and tgabbycadabra will enjoy the link, maybe the rest of you will, as well. |
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