Some Words

I spend a lot of time, way more than is effective, getting angry about police taser abuses and run ins with cyclists. It is refreshing to see police men messing up in such a silly way.

I also like that some UK news agencies refer to the guys working on terror related cases as ‘terror police.’ It’s like calling the vice squad the sex police. You just get a whole different image in your mind.

So, K and I have moved to Portland, and I had the obligatory ‘revelation’ that I was totally hooked to the internet and get a little lost when I don’t have a connection to it. I also learned that there is no DSL available for my apartment. It actually ends on the other side of the street, so I’ve got a cable modem now, which I don’t know how to feel about. It’s not that I think cable modems are bad, but 1.5 mbps for about $33 a month is the price point and speed that I feel suits my needs. I don’t really need the 4-6 mbps that cable modems provide and I don’t want to pay $20 more to get it.

Today was the first significant interaction I had with fellow first year law students at Lewis and Clark. Two of them were from Montana, which seemed pretty impressively against the odds, as the whole state has a population of under a million. It also brought back memories of the trip through Montana, which seemed like it would never end. We drove from Bismark, ND to the edge of Idaho in one day and the Montana part dominated that. It was also flat, and pretty boring, getting really pretty only at the end, when things were getting dark.

The highlight of that was when I got to shout, “Look honey! A testicle festivle!” I got to shout this because we were driving by a billboard for a testicle festival. The billboard had a bull holding the spot from which some enterprising individual had stolen his nuts. At first we couldn’t believe the thing existed, but the signs kept coming. I was unable to snap a picture and worried that without one I would have no proof that people had such a thing as a testicle festival. The internet did not disappoint me though. Kudos to Rock Creek Lodge for having one of those small town festivals, but coming up with something better than another damn cherry festival or something.

So, I was working on the big project, and realized that I’ve been so focused on it, I haven’t really gotten a lot done on the short stories that I had planned to finish up. Well, that’s no good. I’m rapidly running out of time. I went back and didn’t like much of what I had planned, which probably means that several of those ideas weren’t very good to begin with. Ah well. So where does one find inspiration? Perhaps this absurd list of people who Barack Obama has supposedly had killed, much of which reads like synopses of D grade political thrillers?

No. But it was tempting… Change a few names, give it a little plot… It was tempting…

I would love to hear one day that the right had farmed out one of these bullshit conspiracies to a ghost writing John Grisham. At least then we’d get a couple of really creative deaths.

While randomly moving around the internet today, I found this lovely littler article about brides and the ‘beauty’ industry. Asking your bridesmaids to get breast implants? Very tacky. I am glad to be well and done with the wedding industry. There were some nice people, like our photographer and the woman who made the cake, but there are always those people who want to elevate their bridal experience to that of a J-Horror film.

I know that most of our fellow citizens live inside the chamber of silence when it comes to international news, but fucking eh! When one of your closest allies in your largest war front is releasing studies about how you’re full of shit and can’t be trusted for anything… When other people have to start distancing themselves from you on torture, it’s time to start some serious self appraisal. Too bad this one isn’t getting reported on CNN or anything. Also too bad we don’t have ‘British Fries’ or something we can rename to show our defiance in the face of international law.

Also, as a dual citizen, with family in the US and Canada, the next time someone tells me about how the Canadian health care system sucks, I’m pulling out this little anecdote. That’s a gem, that one. I love how people who argue this with me are always people who have a third cousin who they’ve never talked to who had to wait for an elective surgery like a face lift. I’ve had relatives die in Canada, and they sure didn’t want for medical care. I loved them, I was devastated by the loss of them, but I never wondered if they had been tricked into not being given care by the medical equivalent of DSL tech support.

K and I are moving out of our apartment. This has triggered the landlord to get to work fixing a few things up. She’s been good about the place, but now that we’re heading out, she’s got her eye on a few things, like improving the basement storage and such. So I hear her down stairs with some guy assembling shelves and it’s not a huge surprise.

What comes as a huge surprise, is that after a great deal of clanking and talking, in which I overhear the mention of shelves. Things sound like she’s finishing up, and the melancholy sound of a music box starts to quietly but insistently permeate the house. Two minutes ago it was all pipes and metal and wood, and now it’s the soundtrack to a childhood memory for some wrist slitter of a movie.

Looks like a little bit of data was lost from the DB, I’m reposting this one, but the post on the horrors of spoiled fish sauce will be consigned to oblivion, no one really needs that.

Why is it that Hot Chip is so much better live than on their albums. I mean, I expect people to be good live acts, but the mix is always better too. Maybe they’re a little more sloppy, but the album cuts are often just slightly… hollow sounding.

I mean, sure it makes me want to see the show, and I’m not nuts about the guitar solo, but come on… That’s a pretty big difference.

I went to a Punch Pizza tonight for dinner. As I never seem to decide before they take my order, I took one of their menus home, in the hope of not holding up the line next time. Looking over it a moment ago, I realized that on the front it says:

Less is More
Because More is Better

Now where have I heard that kind of reasoning before?

The girlfriend came home from Iowa today with two “grapples,” apples that have been bred to smell and taste like artificial grape flavor.

The wonders of modern technology.

Some school in the area of her home town signed on for a grant program that has their elementary school at the forefront of testing exotic fruit experiments. The remainders make it to the store.

Now, I have no idea if this was a GMO, or just a breeding accident that someone realized tasted like fakey grape. I don’t really care. All I know is that it made me uncomfortable. I felt old. Some things just shouldn’t be done. The fact that these two apples made the entire dining room reek of jolly rancher only exacerbated my fear.

But, remembering that all good technology is used to piss off old people, I decided to soldier in and taste the damn thing.

Really, I have to wonder about the thing. It doesn’t really taste like grapes, or even fake grapes, when you bite in. Mostly you get apple flavor, something close to a honeycrisp, maybe a braeburn. Hidden somewhere in the front of the flavor is grape jolly rancher flavor. I don’t know how they do it, but it’s like when you looked at crystal pepsi and it tasted different. I’m not sure I would have tasted anything, if I hadn’t been told this was a grapple.

So, really there is only one use for these things. Here’s how you get the most out of a grapple.

1) Find a grapple and some form of powerful hallucinogen.

2) Drug a friend.

3) When your friend is high, feed him the grapple. Don’t tell him that it’s been engineered to taste like that. Tell him that an army of tiny gnomes, carrying miniature grape jolly rancher candies, rubs the apple down before each bite. If he looks fast enough, tell him, he can see them rush in just before the apple reaches his mouth.

Science at work folks. We are at the forefront of a brave new world, where we take real food, and make it taste like fake food. The children at the school, I hear, were fans of this apple. Who can blame them? It tastes like what they know.

So, it has come to the time in my life where wedding DJs are a thing I must consider. Last weekend, I went to the wedding of my good friend Brad. At this wedding I saw many old friends who I don’t see enough. There was booze, two wonderful people got married, a good time was had by all. Only one thing marred it. I did not like the DJs. I gathered that the groom was not nuts about them either. Specifically there was one point, or rather set, which stood out.

The DJs were doing there thing, and the whole event was moving along smoothly, when what do I hear? Are those the dulcet tones of “Baby Got Back?” Now, this is a fun campy song for college parties, but I found it to be a little out of place at a wedding. Undeterred, I continued to talk to my friend Ben. “Baby Got Back” then segued into “Wild Thing.” The set was taking a turn for the worse. “Baby Got Back” had camp appeal, as did the Grease medley they had played before. While I don’t listen to it at home, it has broad appeal, and doesn’t generally offend me to the point of caring. A song about a run in with a prostitute seemed a little less fitting.

Now, it turns out that Brad stepped out sometime during “Wild Thing,” possibly around the time the hooker asks for “fifty dollars to make you holla.” He returned to hear the opening of Black Eyed Peas, “My Humps,” which rounded out the three song set. Lest you think these DJs were not about class, that song Won a Fucking Grammy. Not that that means much of anything. I thought about linking the song, but I listened to it again for about two seconds and closed the tab in fear.

Brad, it should be said, has been in Japan for most of the last couple of years. He was spared the whole “My Humps” thing. So, he comes into the room, and it turns out he thought that the lyrics has just been something Will Ferrell had made up for the Blades of Glory trailer. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it probably wasn’t the highlight of the night for him. It is a testament to how fantastic Brad and Hana are that even Sound Productions, who DJed our high school mixers, could not get in the way of their night.

In other news, if the girl and I hire a DJ and that happens, they will find the body in the river.

Against my better judgment, I just motored through the last Harry Potter book. Spoilers and stuff below.

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It seems that the police, forgetting that these are not the 60s, and that tragically few people give a shit about poetry, set out to bust some dangerous insurgents of the Chicago poetry scene. The vagrant criminals? Publishers, notoriously the move vicious of the lot. I hear those guys will cut you for a ream of paper.