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So self-indulgent, I simply must play along | helenacomplexity and chaos don't need no lists... | brad
Ed's List of Discord | edward
yes | edward
Everybody sing along w/ S&O | dwight
indeed | helena
s and o | brad
So I was reading Real Simple the other day. After my initial crush on the design—so clean, so white, wise and simple font choice—I found myself disappointed. Unlike ReadyMade (whose design and subject matter is cool enough to have actually gotten me party invites from girls on the Metro) it doesn’t really feel committed to its project. Some of the advice was good, but a lot of it seemed overly complex or odd (the 10 uses for olive oil would have made my house a sticky mess). And the recipes looked damn hard.
But I myself have been on a drive to simplify my life. Moving to my new place in November helped a lot, though I’m still fighting with the detritus of my previous lives. And now my new life is getting complicated. So it’s going slowly, and I keep backsliding…but it’s beginning to work…I think.
So here are some of the practices I’ve come up with. I'm not doing this to be vain—though today is my 27th birthday: Worship me, mortals!—but as a confessional...since these practices necessarily reveal much of what is poor and slipshod about me. Plus I'm also really interested in your practices.
Note that many of them have to do with my forgetfulness, sloth, and packrat tendencies (this is the part of the post where I apologize again to Forrest for having had to put up with me). Note that I also don’t count the things I’m doing to improve my life, since many of those things (exercise regularly, write more, contribute to the ‘Werkz, buy t-shirts at funky artist coöps, and use umlauts in the style of The New Yorker) complicate my life even as they improve it.
So, my personal rules:
Grooming & Style
- Shave every day if possible. You look better and not doing so doubles your time the next day.
- Clothes (dirty and clean) go where they belong immediately. (I’m actually worse about putting away the latter—I do laundry then fail to put the folded clothes back on shelves/in the closet).
- Try, try, try like hell to make your bed before you leave for work.
- When you get your hair cut, schedule the next appointment. (I know for girls—and even most guys—this is a no-brainer. But as a former teacher—“Can I come in today? Yes, 2:30 is fine”—it came as a rude shock to me how hard it was to get a haircut on a 9-5 schedule.
Food & Shopping
- Buy milk every time you go to the grocery store.
- Buy stamps every time you think of buying stamps. Because you won’t remember to buy them when you need them.
- Buy 6 days of lunch food for work, not 5. So when you forget next week you get a day of grace.
- Use the dishwasher. (I mention this because my roommates for some reason hate the dishwasher, one of the most glorious inventions Man has ever created. They handwash. Freaks.)
Bookkeeping & Maintenance
- Attempt to have a one-touch policy on mail. In other words, if you pick up a bill from the mail pile, you open it, you pay it, and you file the papers immediately.
- If you read a magazine cover-to-cover, actually read it cover to cover, so you know it’s read and done. (Exception: I save the fiction for last in The New Yorker.)
- Throw away magazines you’ve read. If a review or something caught your eye, cut it out. (A clipping takes up less space, and less space is simpler).
- Put magazines you’ve read but you don’t want to throw in a place were you will never, ever be tempted to touch them again until you’ve read the rest of the magazines you need to read.
- Index, bag, board, and box your comics immediately.
- Index and catalog your CDs immediately. (I’m currently out of shelf space and I get a lot of compilations, so this is a huge problem for me right now.)
Leisure
- If you have a regular show, check the listing (I’m assuming cable and/or Internet access here) early in the day (say, while you’re working out) so you don’t schedule time for something that’s being rerun or preëmpted.
- Only one “serious” read (novel, short story collection, etc.) and one “frivolous” read (comics, Terry Pratchett novels, D&D books—shut up, I like them) at a time.
- The Internet is an evil timewaster and complicater, which is why it is great at work and to be shied away from at home.
Yours?
And sometimes, simple isn’t really.
Well, not only was yesterday one of the best Tuesday Salons ever (introducing Colonel Ronald's Special Chicken was a brilliant addition to the evening), but I also had the chance to stick it to the man beforehand, regarding my broken TiVo.
How? Well, let's just say that if you plan to stick it to the man (in all his forms), count on being baffled by a complex phone system. After a full hour of calling various folks in India and Winchester (and explaining, patiently, that there was no Mrs. Edward, that the person in question was my mother and that, no, they didn't list their telephone number, and that no, i didn't have the original receipt) I finally may have been able to get my TiVo repaired. And by "repaired" I mean "replaced", which means all my old episodes of ATHF, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Sealab 2021, etc. will be shortly terminated. Which is somewhat sad....but not when compared to the ability to watch one show and record another.
Did I happen to mention, in the past, that last week I found all my old Sifl-n-Olly episodes on a cd? They sure took me back...
It's all described right here. Finally, a solution for cranks and ranks, years after Srinivasa Ramanujan came up with the original idea.
David Brooks is a heartbreak for many liberals, because he appears to be such a anti-Republican every now and again that one can believe the rest of the time he's just a bit misguided, or naive, or just scared than William Kristol will punch him in the nose. His most recent column is a perfect case in point. Brooks says, amongst other things:
Back in 1995, when Republicans took over Congress, a new cadre of daring and original thinkers arose. These bold innovators had a key insight: that you no longer had to choose between being an activist and a lobbyist. You could be both. You could harness the power of K Street to promote the goals of Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich. And best of all, you could get rich while doing it!<
Brooks skewers Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay's old chief of staff Ed Buckham for offering the influence they wield over their often motivated and extreme constituencies. Now, of course, who reads the Times and doesn't realize such things.
I would hope that his sentiments would be an early indicator that the public will become disillusioned with the current crowd of conservatives, who are greatly distressed over the fate of a brain dead woman but are seemingly less perturbed that millions of Americans do not even have the requisite health insurance to get them to a similar hospice, but it is difficult to imagine.
This article is a must-read. The first two paragraphs certainly start the ball rolling:
During the past fifteen years, Republicans have consistently held a rosier view of economic conditions than Democrats, but at no time has this perceptions gap been greater than in the past year, according to a historical analysis of weekly data from The Washington Post-ABC News consumer confidence survey.
The overall Consumer Comfort Index currently stands at -9, matching its long term average. Among Republicans, the index rises to 28. Among Democrats, it is -35, more than 60 points lower.
Wow. That's a huge gap. Staggering, really.
This evening. Come if you can...we'll be busting out the new mandoline and Ronald might make some General Tso's.
- eating lots of salmon: good and fun for you
- going to the gym: good for you, not so fun
- eating lots of salmon and then going to the gym: not good or fun for you
as one of a privileged few, i figured it was my duty to both watch and brag shamelessly about watching the new film from the dude who brought you akira. that's right - it's steamboy - and right off the bat i'll just say that i'm not going to make any puns such as 'well in the second half it ran out of steam...' like half the reviewers i've heard.
this is clearly a great film which is not exceptional, which kinda reminds you of akira, doesn't it? the regular animation is vintage otomo - whose pen seems more at home sketching cool modes of transport than people. which isn't a knock, because if ever there was a movie about locomotion, this baby is it.
the plot at first seems simple, then adds a few layers of complexity, and finally settles on cool action, which is fine by me. protagonist is a young boy who comes from a long line of inventors, two of which return from abroad with a mysterious new type of ultra-capacity steam. naturally there are bad guys, and cool weapons, and everything is in a quasi-victorian england so you get bizarre philosophical rants mixed in with political treatises on how best to maintain an empire.
it kinda is a kick-ass version of laputa except there's absolutely no magical quality about it, and humor, um, well akira wasn't funny, was it? in the end i highly recommend watching steamboy just for the mechanical beauty of so many cogs and gears powered by steam...
One day stories like this one will seem too plebeian to mention. For now, though, enjoy!
This is just too cool for words.
All we need now is some decent nanites (for analyzing blood pH levels inside the body, etc.) and you've got a solid needle-less system for monitoring and injecting patients. No cutting required!
Talk about fast:
The students were able to control the jet velocity of the MicroJet from 33 meters per second up to 140 meters per second. The amount of liquid they were able to eject ranged from 45 nanoliters to 140 nanoliters. They tested the MicroJet on agarose gel to mimic human skin and found that they could vary the penetration depth of the liquid from 1 to 8 millimeters.
Damn. Sign me up. Maybe I can now get that UV tat I've always wanted...
I accomplished a great deal over this weekend including, in no particular order:
- enjoying the best day dc has had, weather-wise, this saturday
- finishing the ninth hornblower book
- lunching outside in the sun on some delicious chipotle food in my new GR shirt
- seeing the 3 hour long "Judgement at Nuremberg" with more classic a-list actors than any film save it's a mad mad mad mad world
- acquiring a pair of powder-coated iron benches for outside
- starting and finishing the second season of angel
- grilling salmon and eating it next to the firepit on a perfect evening
- acquiring a new shiny stainless steel trash-bin for the kitchen
- cleaning the house up
- visiting tyson's corner and picking up some new cds in the process
- learning a few facts about maoist rebels in nepal
- acquiring a mandoline
- finishing the latest giant robot
- receiving an incorrect cd from san francisco which means i'll get a new one shortly
- getting promotional materials to move my office to asterisk.
- snapping a few blurry pix
- finally completing seymour hersh book purchased months ago
Now if only the clouds clear up in the next hour, I'll be as happy as I was on Saturday...
You know that feeling when you've saved tons of money? By getting a great deal on something?
Well, this weekend I saved hundreds of dollars. On a variety of items. The small chink in the armor is that in order to do so, I had to spend vast sums of said money, on credit. So at the end of Sunday evening, I found myself with several new objects, of all sorts, but red as far as I can see financially. Weekend recap later.
For a long time, I resisted putting any images on the site. I felt that they were simply fluff, and not necessary. Little by little, my position changed. I remember at the time thinking that if most sites were text-only, the internet itself wouldn't have to increase in speed much to offer a rapidly better user experience.
As you may have noticed today, the background image has now changed, from a super-small ruscha-esque gradient to a much larger GRIN image. I expect I"ll rotate the image a bit, but not as often as I do the header image.
Why the super-large image? Well, simply put, on a large screen with a high resolution, it looks really amazing. So there.
If you're rich enough to own a computer with a high enough resolution and a large enough screen to see the entire image, you win a cookie. I'm not even halfway there....
So, last night, which I might explain more later, I remember having a very brief snippet of a conversation in which I said I disliked computer people. It's true: I cannot stand to talk about computers for very long. Why? Because most computer people will never write something like this.
I'd blockquote some of the post, but that would detract from reading the entire thing. If more computer people were like Dan Benjamin, I suspect I still wouldn't enjoy talking about technology all that much, but the world would at least be a better place.
Today, coincidentally, is a near-perfect day. Great temps, almost clear skies. In a few minutes I'll be at lunch, outside, enjoying it. I cannot wait.
This is pretty cool.
Of course, in my mind I have an image of Heath and Helena, chilling on the West Coast, suddenly deciding to go crazy, Godzilla & Mothra style, pulverizing the White House and the Capitol in the process...
Man, that'd be fun.
in a year of unrelenting sadness, unrepenting hostility, and unthinkable events, the death of kennan stands out. like all men, he had flaws, but his ability to understand both our hopes and our hubris set him apart. i may miss hunter thompson, but i mourn george kennan...
Paul Wolfowitz will make an excellent director for the world bank. Despite the bad reputation neoconservatism has engendered in recent years, Wolfowitz, one would imagine will stress respect for property rights, transparency and local democracy in states in which the Bank will work. These classic liberalism tenets will do more to end the conditions the Bank seeks to eradicate. Those who blame Wolfowitz for poor decision making in US foreign policy deserve credit for being critical in his applications of his world view, however the Department of Defense is less of an ideal venue for the types of changes he would hope to effect than the Bank will be. Further, anyone familiar with Mr. Sach's track record in improving economic conditions in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union in the early 1990s would presumably be wary of his ability to criticize someone for such a post.
There have often been times that, while the arc of my life was spiraling downward, my day-to-day existence was good. Much of the middle period of grad school, for instance, operated that way: I wasn’t getting enough accomplished and was slowly losing much of what I valued about college-Dwight, but each day had its little pleasures—pizza for lunch on the picnic table outside my apartment, Johnny Bravo on TV, a beer with a lemon in it with my friends, etc…
Lately I’ve had the opposite problem: life is good, but my day-to-day existence has gotten incredibly exhausting and difficult. In January it was popped tires, in February two weeks of flu, and this month a bum tooth (now hopefully fixed). Plus, the same day I found out my supposed email-for-life is getting shut down, my phone died and killed a year’s worth of stored numbers. (Speaking of which, those who know me outside my Dwight nom de plume should please call me so I can get your numbers again, and email me at my firstname.lastname at Gmail from now on.) I’m idly wondering if others have had the same experience…
Happily, everyone’s favorite punk comic, Nothing Nice to Say, is back! In a more indie rock/emo vein, I’ve really been enjoying the humor and slow relationship growth in Questionable Content. Go read it from the start, even though the art started out terribly.
Do you like cute cartoons about cats? No? Are you sure?
I recommend everyone in the Baltimore-Washington area hit Center Stage. My parents have spoiled me with season subscriptions since I moved back to the area. CS puts on a wide variety of genres, do a lot for young writers (including at least one world premiere a year), and their programs are so great I can’t even look at those insipid and flimsy Playbill pamphlets other theatres hand out. I recently saw a rock musical adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona that was first done in the early 70s (with music by Galt MacDermot, the guy who did Hair). It was a wise way to handle what is, to paraphrase my Riverside Shakespeare, the Bard’s shittiest comedy. Since the adaptation was done during Vietnam, there’s some anti-war material as well; what’s scary is it seems like nothing has changed in 30 years. The nice surprise of the evening: realizing Kirsten Wyatt (who I saw as Little Sally in Urinetown) was in the cast.
Slint is one of those bands who put one album in the early 90s, broke up, and were subsequently canonized to the nth degree by college DJs. Now they’re reforming. I admit to knowing little about them, but just mentioning them will probably up Edward’s clicks, so I might as well contribute to the hype. If you care, go here.
You can tell it's spring and I’m dating because I’ve been playing a whole lot of dub and dancehall. (By comparison, spring ’04—nice weather, flirting—was all about girl-fronted synth-punk, and spring ’03—constant rain, no prospects—was an alt country extravaganza.) So today’s Track You Should Be Listening To Right Now has some beat to it. Daddy G (of Massive Attack) has put out a mix CD that’s a “Best of” of the chill Bristol UK sound (names to drop are Tricky, Portishead, and of course Massive Attack). The whole thing makes for a nice soundtrack to your day; I pick the Dubplate Mix of “Signs” by Badmarsh and Shri as one of the standout track. Accents, references to Babylon, heavy drums for groove, horns, and sirens—what’s not to love? (Listen to “Signs” here or request it here.)
Finally, I wish, I so wish, that I had received this as a student paper when I was teaching. It’s long, but if Atticus Finch could shoot that rabid dog, then you owe it to Scout and Jem to watch.