April 2005 Archives

got a statement for my amazon.com visa with a 9.95 charge from "az business products calgary ab".

my amazon visa has been lost in a drawer for 6 months. i have forgotten my password for their website. i have no idea who this person is or how i could have charged it.

so i did some research and found no leads as to who this could be.

called up the CC co, and in less than 8 minutes they'd written it off and credited my account. very cool.

i owe it all to the deadlifts.

and the hiking probably helps a lot too.

oh, and the self-discipline and the runs.

now that i made it, what am i gonna do?

i'm going to disneyland!

or not.

i'm kidding! i love everybody and everything!

nothing to see here.

i'm well mediated and damn well intend to have it both ways.

and that's the problem.

that's why i can never take a vacation, never take a break, never enjoy any "time off".

there is no "time off", probably not even with sedation.

wherever I go, there I am.

i need a break from myself, not from the place where i live or the people i work with. that is why all vacation spots are euqally unpalatable.

that's why i always go to the same two places, to the complete befuddlement of my coworkers.

i've got three weeks mandatory consecutive vacation that's about to expire in a couple of months because in five years i couldn't manage to think up a vacation plan for those three weeks. i'm supposed to have a bright idea of when to take it and what to do with it by this monday.

wherever i go, there i am.

when i think of vacation, i think of sleep in a sensory deprivation chamber. no email, no internet, to phone, no memory, no dreams, no past, no future, not even a present. rest.

i enjoy my day-to-day grind, as much as i allow me to enjoy anything. i alternate between having a routine and breaking it, but i always seem to settle into a new routine.

i dread the idea of a 12 hour plane flight.

i dread the idea of complete personal and cultural isolation. i've been there, done that, and i finally pulled myself out of it. i don't want to go back.

everyone tells me i should spend a month in europe, or india, or hong kong, or viet-nam, of all places.

wherever i go, there i am.

it will be the same old story, only the numbers will change: poor, hungry, miserable, uneducated people; dazzingly wealthy, privileged, fattened, miserable, uneducated people; and me somewhere in between. still having the same old thoughts, the same old feelings, the same old reactions. still imagining what it would be like to spend the rest of my life in this new place, and still coming to the conclusion that I'd be just as uneasy and maladjusted here as anywhere else. still coming to the conclustion that wherever i go, there i am.

i'm easy to please, and hard to please.

i will enjoy a good sunset or a nice tree. if i want, i can crank up my enjoyment-amplification circuits and experience orgasmic or spiritual levels of bliss. i can't imagine that i'd need to go overseas or out of the county or out of my chair to have a new experience. to enjoy... things. people. life.

but maybe i just lack imagination. do you believe that?

"see how other people live," they say. ugh. why would i want to? other people live better than me, which is depressing, or far worse than me, which is depressing. "go see some poor people to appreciate what you have," say my luxury-car-driving jet-setting pocket-pc-holstered (just like me!) paly-wals. trust me, enis, i appreciate what i have. more than you can possibly imagine. do you think i need to see starving babies or suicide-bombed israeli bus patrons or bulldozed palestinian protesters to know that the world we live in is a horrible, horrible place once you pull back the curtain a little?

i know it. possibly more than those who grew up in it but pulled the curtain up tight once they arrived in the land of the free from responsibility. i know it and i appreciate it. i pulled back the curtain and then put put it back where it belonged. i put my head back in the sand. a coward's retreat? perhaps. cowardice begets worm-food just as surely as heroism. my happiness is a conscious choice, a choice that is surely subconscious for the vast majority of those who have such a choice. we are all born with our heads in the sand, and if our lives afford us the opportunity to see the world -- up close or from a distance, it's all the same -- our lives will teach us as well whether we can be happy out of the sand or whether we must return to self-delusion to find peace.

so what's the point? i'm approaching 30 and i've done nothing in this life yet i feel like i've seen it all. i whine and complain and do more about it than you'll ever know, dear reader. it is a fight that i will not ever win, yet cannot surrender.

again, what's the point? to evoke some new set of emotions in myself, i suppose, and to gain new memories. to have experiences. i should go have those experiences and consume those memories "somewhere else" -- otherwise it's not a vacation, yes? i mean, if i experience awe and smallness and appreciation of beauty and a bit of chill contemplating the glaciers of alaska or the mountains of antarctica or the view from everest, that awe and smallness and beauty and chill is somehow different than the awe and smallness and beauty and chill that i can get three and a half hours from here at one of my two vacation spots, right? right? the magnitude is different, eh? maybe an extra emotion thrown into the mix for that added "oomph". no doubt.

ah, but the memories. those would be different. the memory of a sunset over some famous river or another in france or standing in line at customs in argentina, those would be unique and special, unlike any other memories i currently have. right? right?

who needs new memories? i've got enough to think about already without remembering more places that i'd rather be, more things that i touched but had to let go. i'd rather work on creating an appealing present-tense than a misty nostalgia to pine for in decades to come.

... and yet, for all my self-convincing that one place is just as dull as the next and that i'll be just as disappointed by one self-planned vacation as the next, i'm also plagued by the feeling that this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance that i'm about to flush down the crapper.

so what do i do? hold my nose and shell out a couple large for a trip to cavort across europe drinking espresso and beer and fattening up on sausage and croissants? live it up amongst the child molesters in thailand? take a tour of the states? stay home and watch jenny jones for three weeks?

i know what i need and i know why i can't get it. i know what i have to do and i know why i won't do it. i know me. and wherever i go, there i am.

current coffee equipment lineup :

GRINDERS
whirleybird blade grinder : on extended loan to coworker
krups $50 burr grinder : closeted and delegated to spice grinding only
zass turkish grinder : mobile grinding
zass box grinder : temporarily gathering dust on behalf of the solis
solis maestro plus : happy to be out of the box for non-espresso grinding duty
rocky : kicking ass for espresso, trying desperately to convince me not to buy a mazzer

ESPRESSO
silvia : recently got her crotch back just for kicks. i think i actually like the crotched portafilter a bit better. not as fun to watch, but seems to make a thicker bodied drink.
dama : hate it. never use it. gathering dust and taking up counterspace. bleah.
gaggia : sold it on ebay. what a mistake!

COFFEE
melitta clarity : rocking my socks. taking up a ton of space. making silvia jealous.
drip cones : can't beat their portability.
3-4 french presses : can't have too many
vacpot : really fun to use, but what with the FP and the clarity it doesn't get used much anymore
2 ibriks : gonna use one this weekend for camp-coffee, oh yes.
whatever else i forgot...

i recently got a melitta clarity 10cup coffee maker from QVC, of all places.

there was a deal a while back where it was < $25 shipped. after this deal depleted QVC's stock they doubled the price, but afaic it's still a good deal -- if you can find one in stock, which is tough.

it's my first electric coffee brewer ever. all my other non-espresso coffee brewers are manual.

i'm terribly pleased with my clarity. i fear that it may obsolete my french press, and it's putting a layer of dust on my vacpot.

it's so easy to use, easy to clean, and the coffee it makes is nearly as good as french press. now, dear reader, you probably are not impressed by my ease of use declaration, since you're likely well acquainted with electric brewers -- but as i said, this is my first.

i bought the thing intending to use it at work, but it's still too messy for that. i havent got a sink near my desk (for rinsing the pot) otherwise I'd take it. well, then there's the messy issue of grinding... bleah.

one of these days, i'll figure out a convenient way to have good afternoon coffee at work.

maybe it involves working from home :)

listening to the fight club soundtrack. excellent soundtrack.

i really hated that movie : it disappointed so deeply -- or perhaps i just missed the point.

"it's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything"

"this is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time"

tyler is saying these things in my ear right now.

"you are not your bowel cancer. you are not your grande latte."

"you have to give up. you have to realize that someday you will die."

the first parts of the movie were... resonant. i'm sure i haven't much to say about this movie that hasn't been said by the critics. re-masculinization, buddhist philosophy, nihilism, all rolled into a post-ikea philosophy that brad pitt fans could grasp.

but then it just got silly. blow up the credit unions? please. ever heard of off-site backups? no? okay, how about cowardice? the cowardice of making Tyler turn from bodhisattva to megalomaniacal paramilitary dictator and then to split personality illusion? that seemed like the easy way out until...

... until I got a bit older, wiser, and better read. even as i type this i'm more impressed with the plot.

the credit scheme is a red herring. project mayhem is a partial red herring. the point is not what Fuhrer-Tyler is doing, the point is that Fuhrer-Tyler exists. The transformative kundalini, left to its own devices, run amock. the Narrator has received partial illumination and now the illuminating force -- still active -- is undirected. Unfocused. A King of Edom. Unbalanced force. The transformative power directs outward and becomes a brainwasher of weaker minds.

Once the Narrator realizes this, he knows it's his job to but the genie back in the bottle. Shiva has destroyed the world but he must not continue destroying -- Brahma needs a turn.

Whether this was all there in the movie is irrelevant, that's the fun part about mysticism and symbolism, especially the esoteric kind. the mind makes connections on its own, illuminating symbology from one system with symbology from another, thus illuminating itself.

Okay, the Katamari soundtrack just came on, there goes my mystical bullshit.

a cool looking moth from last weekend's hike.

i had time to stop and smell the daisies with W along.

boo-yah?

indeed: boo-yah!

i found James Wolcott via WWdN. JW rocks your socks. Quote:

"Goodwin worships strong leaders in every high office, being one of those smug weaklings who identifies strength with manhood and manhood with unwavering conviction no matter what the people below might think or the facts might indicate. The important thing is to take a stand, plant your boots in cement, and peer nobly into the horizon."

i'll never say "shut up, westley!" again.

....

......

Okay, just this once:

SHUT UP WESTLEY!!!

All right, nevermore.

i love you even more than indian monsooned malabar AA, slow roasted to a light vienna just barely into second crack and carefully brewed at proper water temperatures with filtered water. that is how much i love you.

a longtime pastime, the pursuit and appreciation of beauty in all its various and hard to reach forms has brought me to many wonderful places, and last night, though unbeknownst to me, it brought me to a pool hall in san mateo.

who expects to find beauty in a pool hall? not i, until now.

whilst enduring the worst imaginable abuses of "open mic night", my co-workers (three married, one engaged, and one perpetually single) and I variously observed, appreciated, and ogled a girl who turned out to be no younger than I, though I had estimated her much younger.

a while back, i mumbled something about not knowing yourself until you've put yourself into a situation where you're forced to make choices. hanging out with coworkers in pool halls is a relatively new experience for me. doing so when a pretty girl is present is entirely new.

i like the way i reacted. my reactions were very much in line with my ideal self-image.

you're familiar, i'm familiar, we're all familiar with the phrase "I'm married, I'm not dead," but the attitude of the evening seemed to go beyond that, though my inexperienced discriminators were unable to distinguish between sly jest and actual lecherous interest.

we played 7 games, so we were there for a while. she showed up around game #2, I think.

there was much debate -- though i kept out beyond a nod, smile, or shrug -- of whether her hips were too wide, her bewtocks too meaty, her face too pointy, her hair too... whatever. there was much debate, and amongst the married and engaged, everyone put forth an opinion on whether they'd do her. i was amazed by the narrow defenitions of beauty held by my friends -- though perhaps "fuckability" is closer to what they were judging.

and this is where i was pleased with myself. i'd not been in a situation like this before. yes, unusual for someone of my age, but hardly unusual for me.

i was content to note and appreciate her form, perhaps submit a shy smile. i wasn't going to talk to her. i wasn't going to debate whether her ass was too big or her face not good enough. i wasn't going to imagine doing the deed with her and describe the lascivious details. i'm not asking for a medal.

when, after a couple of hours, her uncle came over and asked which of us was going to take his neice out, I felt rather bad for all the staring my group had comitted. and when my coworkers -- married, engaged, and ogling -- suggested that i, as the unmarried one -- should ask her home (not out), i searched my feelings (as Obi-Wan suggested) and smiled.

I checked again.

And I smiled again.

I was quite simply not interested.

She posessed a unique and individual beauty, like a sunset. Like a well made vehicle. Like bruce lee. Like a guitar player. Like everyone. I appreciate these things and move on. Sometimes I take pictures of them. I don't bed them, or obsess about bedding them.

She had nothing to offer me that I don't already have.

Now, this tale may seem quite pedestrian to you, dear reader. "He went to a bar and didn't talk to a girl he had no chance with anyway. Big whoop," you may think. And that may be the end of it.

But the point you may have missed is this: unlike my married, engaged, and possibly drunken coworkers (though I was no less soused than they at this point), I could entertain no thoughts of sleeping with or even approaching the pretty girl in the bar. My love for W left no room for such thoughts.

it was a swell feeling. not a matter of "supressing my urges" or "staying faithful" or even "shyness". those phrases imply some sort of option. in my mind there was no option. no question of what to do. i know. i checked because i'd heard there was supposed to be one.

I assumed such randy, locker-room impulses were the natural birthright of manly-men such as we. But I checked and I double checked and not only did I not have them, I was a bit put off by the experience of them in my pals.

I explained to them that I was unmarried but certainly not single. I didn't think further elaboration would be fruitful with married and engaged guys behaving as they were.

Perhaps I'm less manly than they.

Perhaps I'm more.

Whichever it is, I'm happy with what I am, and even more happy with what I have.

so i've been "wetshaving" with the new gear (badgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadger brush and safety razor) for about a week now. thoughts and observations :

the way a ristretto should be.

oh me oh my.

i've got the PID cranked way up to 234 and i'm having great results. I used to think anything past 228 was awful but my SC/TO roaster really likes the higher PID values -- or maybe I just underroasted these beans. The SC/TO encourages underroasting. Or maybe it's just my fear of fire ;)

about merkins.

Q: Why do Scotsmen wear kilts?
A: Because sheep can hear zippers.

It's Frobuary 1, YOMHC 07.

I tried to go to a barber-pole shop for this one, but for some reason, I always get my haircuts on Sunday, and the only barbers open on Sunday are "Great Clips".

Got a relatively poor cut today, but it was free. The story goes a little something like this:

At GC they want you in their database. Really badly. The stylist bugged me all through the cut: "you get a free haircut after 10, and we won't mail you anything, blah blah blah". No thanks, said I.

Now, because Corporate Central can't conceive of the possibility of anyone not wanting to be in their database, the stylists are required to "login" a customer before giving them a cut. But they don't want to turn you away if you haven't got an account and don't want to create one, so if you refuse to be in their database, they log you in as some random customer -- sometimes as whichever customer was just there a moment ago.

At the end of my cut today, the stylist informed me that since it was my 11th cut, it was on the house.

I boggled.

"Uh, you know that's not me, right?" I reminded her, though I thought it should be unnecessary to do so, since she had bogus-login-ed me no more than 20 minutes earlier.

"Yeah."

"I want to pay," I said, because that's the kind of guy I am.

"Can't," she said. Evidently, once The Wheels have been put in motion, there's no turning back. I was Joe Random User, and JRU was owed a free haircut, and I was going to get it and there was no other option. She would not accept my money and it was obvious that (for some reason) she was not motivated to try and get it.

Okay then. Hooray for automated bureaucracy.

So I got some person's free haircut. Presumably, when he comes in next time and asks for his freebie, they'll tell him he had it last time. The time he had two haircuts the same day.

The stylist then printed out something and gave it to me. "What's this?" I axed. "It's your haircut guarantee," she replied. "Oh, so if I don't like my haircut, I can get my money back?"

She didn't laugh.

I tipped her generously (a lot more than 20% of $0) and left to go shower my free haircut off the back of my neck.

it really is true, 42 is what you get if you multiply six by nine.

c.f.

#include

#define SIX 1 + 5
#define NINE 8 + 1

int main() {
printf("%d times %d is %d\n", SIX, NINE, SIX * NINE);
}

maury_cohen : you silly christians
maury_cohen : *today* is the sabbath man
maury_cohen : do the math
maury_cohen : god's wagging his finger at you
b********m : european calendars, the weeks start with monday
maury_cohen : "i said SATURDAY beeyotch!" he's saying
maury_cohen : God's jewish, not european

So. As I've mentioned several times, I'm reading this fascinating book, Mediated.

I've been reading it forfreakinever even though it's short because I read hella slowly and I haven't got the time any more to read for hours on end. Still, I've got the gist of it and I'm nearly through.

The gist is this (but please read the whole thing, it's a swell book) : we no longer live our lives directly, but via representations (media -- plural of "medium": middleman) of our lives -- via the middlemen we use to express ourselves and learn about ourselves.

It's the opposite of what Tyler says: you really are your job, your khakis, and the car you drive.

you picked all those things out because of what you think they "say about you".

The author gives example after example, and they all hit home.

We take pictures of nature because now the pictures are more real than the nature itself. There is no more nature, only Nature Preserves.

I was thinking about this as I drove home from my hike today, my camera digitally laden with digital photographs of Preserved Nature.

Blogging, of course, is the ultimate in Mediation. I go out and do shit so I can blog about it. I have two tee-shirts -- both gifts -- that say "I'm blogging this" and you can bet that when I'm wearing them I'm not joking. I take pictures and think up the captions that will accompany them on the blog. I take pictures because I plan to post them on my website that nobody will ever read.

The thing is -- just as the Mediated author points out (in what he calls the Justin's Helmet Principle) -- despite the fact that it's fucking lame, this is really all a good thing.

The (sad?) inescapable fact is: before I had this blog, I was a shut-in. A loner. A people-avoider. I never did anything.

Now I'm having the time of my life, and whether it's because I'm blogging it or the other way around is irrelevant. The two coincided in time. I mediate my life by blogging about it, and that act has improved my life immeasureably -- or not, it can probably be measured: it's certainly all been recorded!

Blogging looks to you like self-indulgent narcissistic self-flattery (this description brought to you by the department of redundancy department). But (for me) it's not. It's motivation. It's mediation.

This unread blog is the medium by which I choose the adventures that will be extraordinary enough to warrant being recorded for posterity.

This unread blog gets me off my arse and into the world. And it's all because the words I spew here are more real than Reality (tm). I'm creating reality here. I blog about a hike and it goes from a walk in the forest to a Grand Adventure. More real than reality.

Which version of events do you think remains in my head, motivating me to go out again next week? Motivating me to generate enough excitement in description of hiking to get my gf to join me?

But blogging isn't the only way I'm mediated. Example: I'm obsessed with boots. You should know that by now. The real reason I keep hiking: I like wearing my boots. They're waterproof (really???) and I like to jump in puddles with them. I wear them because they make me feel like a tough guy. They're combat boots, made in the USA by a DOD contractor.

Is that lame?

Did you go on a really fun hike today?

I did. Because I've got some kind of weird boot-fetish? Who cares?

I express myself -- to myself as much as to others -- via my footwear. It's weird. It's pathetic. It's cute. It's beside the point.

It's mediation.

And it's a good thing.

so.

so so so.

I went on a hike today.

For the last... five? weeks, this has been a weekendly event. I like that. I like that a lot. A couple years ago I went on a hike when I visited my parents hoose. At the time, I vowed to go on lots of hikes on the weekends because I liked it so much. I bought some boots. I bought some more boots. I wore them to work. I did not hike.

So now I'm hiking. Often. And enjoying the hell out of it. And thinking of extending my hiking into backpacking and overnighting. I'm fuckin rugged now. I shave with a safety razor, beeyotch.

The most extraordinary thing aboot this week's hike, though, didn't happen this week. W wants to join me next week at the same site:

despite the fact that I warned her of its relative difficulty. My girlfriend likes to hike. She didn't hike much before she met me. I like that a lot, too. I'm going to buy her some fancy-schamncy hiking socks tomorrow so she won't get blisters this time.

(aside: I asked W this morning which coffee brewing method she thought would be best for a lightweight backpacking trip. She suggested pourover drip, which I had considered. I had come to the conclusion that turkish coffee would be good. I think it would involve the least amount of gear, assuming I wasn't taking a mug already -- turkish coffee is drunk from a demitasse which is considerably smaller (hmmm.... though not necessarily lighter) than a mug. my lovely girlfriend knows more about coffee than most gits, and she doesn't even drink the stuff.)

I told her that she'd probably like this hike because of the isolation from civilization and the abundance of nice scenery.

i also told her about the banana slugs. I thought i was special because I saw one on my last hike. But this time, I saw more banana slugs than trees, and I was in a freaking redwood forest all afternoon. Here's a particularly gross one. Check out the slimetrail, like jabba the hutt or a beltway politician. Keys included for scale reference. I didn't want to put them too close in case he jumped. This wasn't the biggest banana slug I saw today, but it was the biggest one up until the point that I took the picture, if that makes any difference, which it doesn't, but I thought you'd like to know anyhow, and if you didn't want to know, you know it now, and, as they say, you can't Un-Know it. Hah!

I was in the Santa Cruz mountains, it seems, even though I wasn't especially close to Santa Cruz. Based on the abundance of Banana Slugs in the SC mountains, it seems clear why UCSC has the BS as its mascot.

Speaking of forests, did you know that I am allergic to forests? I'm allergic to cities, also. I'm allergic to everything. I brought some kleenex, but most of the nose-goo ended up on the sleeves of The Green Shirt. The Green Shirt was originally The White Shirt, many years ago.

I am not a pleasant sight on a hike, or during any sort of physical activity. I sweat a lot. I have me paw to thank for that. If I'm outside or inside, I also get a runny nose. I have me maw to thank for that. But I'm a pretty physical guy, now. I have me self to thank for that.

I've already got all the girlfriend I want so I really don't care how icky or goofy I look out there on the trail. I saw someone goofier than me, and he was with a big group of fellow Asian hikers pimped out with the latest fashions from REI and Sportmart. He was laying on the ground stretching his legs before his hike. He had to put down his Trekking Poles first. Heh.

I brought more water this time : 4 times as much as last time, in fact, for a shorter hike. But it turns out my water requirements rise in proportion to the amount of water that I bring with, to the effect that I again was thirsting mightily by the end. I consider it good form to end a hike with water to spare, so I had several mouthfuls left in my hiking-jug when I got to the one-galloner in the blahmobile. I fear that I will never be able to do a true "lightweight hike" as I shall always be hiking with three gallons of water strapped to my back. Wilderness overnighter? There'd better be a crystal geyser vending machine.

This hike was informational. I found out what banana slugs eat.

The resemblance to beltway politicians is truly stunning.

Heh.

Heh heh heh. Heh heh heh heh heh.

I contemplated the redwoods. I considered how old they were and thunk to myself that I'd rather see a centuries-old redwood than the canals of Venice -- one being Creation, the other merely a creation. I did the At-One-With-Nature thing and I was digging it. Then I saw this (click it to get the big version) :

I thought, "Wow. A second chance." This is something the canals of Venice will never do.

I saw lots of other cool stuff but didn't take many photos. Here's the last one for today: fallen redwoods. The photo doesn't even begin to do them justice. They were truly massive.

On the way back home I got a bit philosophical, as I am wont to do. You can read about it in a subsequent blog entry. This one needs to end. I think from now on I will rate my hikes. Rating follows.

Hike Rating:
- Length : 7 miles : B
- Banana Slugs : A+
- Pants-Tucked-Into-Boots : A-
- Hills to Run Up Like A Von-Trapp : D-
- Redwoods : A-
- Secluded Off-Trail Locations : A
- Distance-From-Civilization : A
- Scenic Drive : A
- Dorks with EA shirts : F(ack those guys)
- Dorks with Tevas : F(ack those guys too)
- Proof-of-Waterproof-Boots : B
- Steep-Forest-Banks-To-Scale-And-Slide-Down : A
- Horse-Crap-To-Step-In : A (not much)
- Variety of Climates/Ecosystems : B
- Scenic Vistas : A
- Holy-Crap-Oh-Wow moments : A-
- Wait-A-Minute-This-Isnt-A-Trail-After-All-Is-It? moments : B+
- Girlfriendability : A (this may change next week!)
- Gloves Required : B-
- Dirty Pants : C+
- Kicked My Ass : C-

Overall : A-

... but so infrequently that in between repetitions i often forget why it is that i swore never to do it again.

example:

i stopped at a particular army-navy store along HWY1 today. the last time I was there (a year ago? more?) the proprietor attempted to sell me a pair of army boots. they were just what i was looking for at the time, only these were old, crusty, cracked, smelly, *used*, and looked as though they'd been alternately sitting out in front of his store for days at a time or buried in a dusty old chest inside his store for days at a time. plus they were the chinese civvy versions -- cheapo knockoffs -- not the real deal Made In USA milspec versions.

in other words, they sucked.

but the price he was asking was the *same* as the price for a brand new pair of boots from the manufacturer!

gimme a break.

so today he wanted thirty bucks for some used, abused, crappy satchels. some of them were kinda nice, but i could get equivalents for fifteen over at the berkeley surplus.

bleah.

i like surplus stores, but it's tough to find good ones. it's even tough to find good ones where the owner isn't too creepy -- though, to be fair, i'm a bit creepy myself.

W thought maybe the bite on her arm was a brown recluse.

which led me to this article.

i wonder what he's trying to say?

"be my guest", you said... score! i'm glad i didn't ask the first time around, otherwise there wouldn't have been... a second time around.

you found... something. something i didn't know i had. something even cooler than a third nipple! i have a hunch you'll be exploiting it again soon. yay and boo, all at once. heh.

i was kidding about the 'stache. I like yours. um... unless you deny having one. in that case, i don't like them. that is, I wouldn't know if I like them or not, since you haven't got one.

right.

and then... and then...

i asked: you know what you get more of when you underroast coffee, right?

i was joking, i didn't expect you to know. the answer i was looking for: caffeine.

that's not what you said, though. you said "acidity", which is not only also correct, but much more technically obscure. i can't have mentioned it more than once.

that woman listens to me!

let that be a lesson to all you other peckerheads.

last saturday i had a cold.

what's a good thing to do when you have a cold?

that's right: go on a hike. also, don't bring enough water. then, go off-trail and get slightly lost. finally, prance around in the mud and get your favorite jeans all stained with mud.

that ought to make your cold... um... worse.

but i was pretty sure it was gonna get worse anyhow, and i was right!

when i say lost, of course, the park i was in wasn't big enough to get really "lost" and my sense of direction and my boy scout skills are good enough that i knew what direction to go in -- also, I had a map. also I could periodically see redwood city. so I wasn't lost in the sense of will robinson. but i didn't know how many meters until i returned to my car. that's a problem that will be solved when/if my GPS arrives...

so, the part that you're all waiting for: pictures.

yes, virginia, it's a banana slug. i looked at this critter -- 5 inches long if he was a centimeter -- and said to myself, "self," I said, "I've never seen a banana slug before -- aside from the UCSC mascot featured on John Travolta's teeshirt after the scene with Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction -- but if ever there was a banana slug, this thingy right here is it. It's a slug. It looks like a banana. It's gotta be a banana slug." And so it was. So it was.

if you're a tree, erosion is not your friend. if you're a tree, you probably don't have many friends at all. except for the Lorax, I understand that he speaks for the trees. I'm not sure if he's on friendly terms with them, however.

ah, so that's why they call it "eagle trail". neat.

that's where I was, and it was aptly named: there was a hill (which I was too tired to ascend -- it was near the parking lot and I planned to climb it when I got back to the car, but by the time I did, I was too tired, dehydrated, and full of cold-eze to attempt it.) and there was a breeze. I had to don the infamous Green Shirt, the second time in 7 months, perhaps no more than its third use since I came to the bay. The Green Shirt was washed this evening, and has now returned to its proper home in my trunk, to be called into active duty whenever it is once again needed. Whenever the weak cry out in despair or the hungry croak in... uh, hunger. The Green Shirt will be there, ready to spill old kleenex from the frayed pockets and instill despair in nearby fashion critics.

leaves come in many colors. i saw several of these colors. now you have too.

I got a new pair of boots after the previous hike. the new ones are waterproof. how do I know? I don't just trust the ad copy, no sir. I ducked off trail to go cavorting in a stream. all parts of my boots were fully submerged -- some parts remained submerged for minutes at a time, the tops were doused only for seconds. But unlike my previous boots, no water at all came inside. Stream wading was fun. Especially slipping off of rocks and stuff. The traction isn't so great in mud with these guys, though. Oh well.

so, I read this article, that I found here.

the idea of joining the (imaginary, perhaps) ranks of wet shavers intrigued me, for several reasons:

- it appeals to the DIY in me, a part of me that's increasingly making itself shown
- it appeals to the pseudo-rugged me, another part of me that's expressing itself lately
- i'm sorta running out of mach3 cartridges
- i like learning new skills. wet shaving is definitely a skill.

so i found myself here, confronted with a sales pitch straight out of Mediated. No matter - the pitch amused me and I was entertained by its earnestness and the attempted elitism of the sellers -- an elitism that I aimed to soon share.

i wasn't ready to slice my arteries with a straight razor so I picked up the bottom-of-the-line safety razor plus some supporting gear. it arrived today. so i hopped in the shower and set to work.

impressions :
- i didn't cut myself, to my great surprise. nose and adam's apple are still attached. i did find myself pushing on the razor a bit, which is a definite no-no with this gear.
- the badger brush is not as soft as I expected, but then, I did get the cheapest one.
- the shave was uneven and very-not-close. this is not surprising for my first time out.
- the shaving soap smells really really nice.
- the post-shave stuff burns like a mofo.
- afterwards, i looked like richard nixon, or perhaps my grandfather on my dad's side. well, not like them, but as if they'd taught me to shave.
- it didn't take nearly as long as I expected.
- i didn't feel very elite afterwards. i didn't even feel british. but i smelled like an italian, that's for sure.
- iritation upon my neck seems milder than with the mach3

as i mentioned, it's a skill (just like shaving with a mach3), and as a beginner, i aim to improve. unfortunately, i seem to keep picking hobbies that can only be practiced several times a week rather than for hours on end. the suspense is killing me.

all right.

truth hurts

well, it sucks by design. what i mean to say is that it does a poor job of cooling the beans.

i think so, at least. i was pretty sure, now i'm less sure. when i did the cleanup, i saw lots of broken down chaff in the bottom, which implies that it may have been cooling better than i thought. at least, it had some decent air flow.

it's based on the shop-vac/paint-bucket/strainer design, only mine's a dust-devil/protein-powder/deep-fry-spider design. in other words: smaller capacity and less power.

when it felt to me (i stirred with my hand instead of the recommended wooden spoon) that the beans were not cooling, i dumped them into a strainer and did the two-strainer-cooling dance. back and forth and back and forth until i felt they'd had enough.

this had the added benefit of removing much of the chaff and also revealing a little piece of concrete or stone that would surely have made rocky very, very sad.

irs sent back my tax return. they can't process it because i forgot to sign it.

i suppose i will also be getting back my state return -- or maybe not. the feds owe me a refund, i owed the state sixty bucks and i know i signed the check. i'll bet that as long as the check is signed CA doesn't give a flying dingo's kidney whether i signed the return.

okay, so i'm a retard.

but so is the signature requirement. come on now. W e-filed but still had to print something out, sign it, and send it in.

come on now.

what the hell does a signature prove?

my signature looks nothing at all like my "official" signature on my SS card and my driver's license. In fact, nowadays I sign things either "wavy line" or i make up a name. nobody cares.

signatures are ridiculous. they prove nothing, not even that i signed my tax return.

just send me my fuckin check you bastiges.

well, i feel like crap, i can't sleep, my throat burns, my eyes hurt, i'm bored and lonely, and i probably won't go on the hike i was looking forward to.

but i made one niner three! huzzah.

why cant i ever be sick on a weekday and miss work instead of being sick on a weekend and missing .... the weekend?

if(d->flags & CFG_FLAGS_DELETED)
{
/* TODO : do something */
ASSERT(0) ;
}

now i want to read the NT.

i haven't even finished the OT, tho to my credit, I got thru the PT (the important bits), and good portions of it in hebrew (before i forgot everything i knew about the language).

need to pick it back up.

need to... so many things. blargh.

... sort of.

way back when i was a young, budding coffee snob -- a senior in college -- i drank peets coffee. i bought the stuff whole bean, ground it in my whirlyblade grinder, and french pressed it until it had had enough.

i considered myself a snob because i drank only peets, brewed it myself, and drank it from a fancy thermos.

ah, the proto-snobbery of my departed youth. how little i knew, then.

i bought some peets beans over the weekend, for reasons that will not become clear in this missive. a pound of "colombian". in the store, that felt a little weird. i'm no longer used to beans being described simply by their origin country -- i also want to know from which farm they originate, which lot, when they were purchased, and so on. still, i figured the colombians would be the least charred of the beans. back in my youth, i liked the dark dark dark roasted coffee that is now what americans -- weaned on *$ -- expect "good coffee" to taste like. but for the last 2 weeks i've been drinking very lightly roasted panama and yirgacheffe and mysore. i like my coffee lightly roasted now. i like the acidy flavors that you won't get with a peet's roast.

my purchase entitled me to a free cup of whatever the coffee of the day was that day. it was one of their blends, I don't recall which. it was awful.

it had good body, nice and heavy, which I like. but it tasted like charcoal, not coffee. I couldn't believe that I used to like this stuff.

today, when I finally got around to brewing a cup of the "colombian", I was not as offended. as I had guessed, it was a slightly lighter roast (only slightly), and the charcoal was not as prominent. sadly, neither was any other flavor. it was weak and bland and none too fresh. fresher than the *$ i once brewed, but not anything compared to the day-old roasts that I'm now used to.

i used to consider peets as a "backup" source in case my roaster broke (which is sort of the case at the moment). they have a rep for "picking beans that stand up to their roasts" and a decent standard of freshness.

sadly (or happily) my quality standards have risen so high that peet's can no longer meet them.

i'll have to find another backup.

maury_cohen : http://www.sainttoad.com/blog/archives/2005/04/a_friendly_remi.html
b........m : you're a bastard
b........m : LOL
maury_cohen : heheh
maury_cohen : that picture is so freakin funny
b........m : is he really batting for hte other side?
maury_cohen : bwahaah
b........m : or is that just the hubbub cuz he had to wear tight pants for chips?
maury_cohen : he's pointing at *you* my friend
b........m : well he was actually pointin at you before he was pointing at me
maury_cohen : ...
maury_cohen : shit!

it's fantastic

sitting on a bench near bort

uh... the mountain lion did it.

reminder

nyuk