Some Words

Watching the Detectives

Bottle Imp — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:10:59 +0000

Waiting for law school to start up, and pottering around around getting moving stuff done, I’ve ended up watching a fair amount of History Detectives on PBS. The show is about people investigating artifacts from the past to see if they have any historical significance. You questions like, “Was this rifle owned by Herman Goering?”

The show, once you get into it, can be fun, but I don’t understand why they chose “Watching the Detectives” by Elvis Costello for the theme song. On the surface, sure, it makes sense. Yet, when you look at the lyrics of the song, you start to wonder. I’ll just grab a scrap.

They call it instant justice when it’s past the legal limit.
Someone’s scratching at the window. I wonder who is it?
The detectives come to check if you belong to the parents
who are ready to hear the worst about their daughter’s disappearance.
Though it nearly took a miracle to get you to stay,
it only took my little fingers to blow you away.

It seems a little dark. The show often borders on goofy. Even when the story is about something dark, they keep it light. Every time the heavily edited theme comes on, mangling one of my favorite Costello songs, I can’t help but laugh.

Police Board Games

Bottle Imp — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:42:17 +0000

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.

Now in Portland, Testicles

Bottle Imp — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 08:27:05 +0000

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.

How to Spice Up Your Fiction

Bottle Imp — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:59:03 +0000

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.

The PEZ Cocktail

Bottle Imp — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 01:18:29 +0000

So, I am moving to Portland soon, and this entails shipping a large number of bottles across country, some of which I don’t really think I’ll ever buy again. One of those? Mathilde Pear Liqueur, which I got for the pear cocktails competition a while back, and didn’t use much of since. It’s pretty damned sweet, and I spent much of the time mixing with it wishing I had something that I could use in larger quantities without things getting thick and syrupy. So now I have just a little bit of it left, and thought I’d try playing with it, so I didn’t have to take it with me.

I came up with a cocktail that tastes like PEZ candy. Drink at your own risk. Personally I hate PEZ and have always figured that only the little dispensers keep them in business. Ah well, such is life.

The PEZ Cocktail

1 1/2 oz. Gin
1/2 oz. Mathilde Pear Liqueur
1/2 oz. Benedictine
2 dashes of Fees Orange Bitters

Stir over ice and strain into cocktail glass, repent.

Can’t say as I really recommend it, unless you like orange PEZ more than I do.

Our Messed Up Society

Bottle Imp — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 01:08:48 +0000

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.

The Appletini is Dead

Bottle Imp — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:17:28 +0000

The Appletini is dead. They held a funeral and everything. This is not some sort of king is dead long live king formulation. That green syrup in a glass? It’s six feet under.

Two Thoughts

Bottle Imp — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:04:13 +0000

First: This is not good when you are a candidate who has been getting mocked for a lack of knowledge about the internet. Blocking ‘net’ in words hardly seems a sensible filtering policy.

Second: Twin Cities Public Television has a channel for children, which I don’t get as I don’t have cable (yeah…). At 12:30 in the A.M. they are showing Curious George, which seems to me to be more than tacit admission that they think of the channel a the stoner at night. I’m probably reading into this too much, but while I’ll buy that kids want to see the adventures of a curious monkey, I don’t think they do it after midnight.

Extra bonus side association: Has anyone fed George after midnight? I’d be interested in the results, though he probably just flings poo.

News You Can Use

Bottle Imp — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:58:00 +0000

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.

Yesterday

Bottle Imp — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:38:44 +0000

I had achieved a level of non productivity that I had previously thought impossible. So, yesterday, I determined to not try to read, write, or handle any of the little chores that I had been telling myself I would do each day. This left me with very little of my regular routine, and it was soon exhausted. Normally, at this point I would play some video games, but a while ago I cut video games out of the picture because I tend to play them for absurd marathon lengths of time. Lacking something actually installed on my computer, and having played desktop tower defense to death the last time I felt like this, I went looking for something new.

The guy who does DTTD has a new site with flash games and I checked that out. What I found was that I lacked the patience for many of those games. Maybe I have seen through them, and now want more sophisticated games, or maybe I just can’t concentrate on anything anymore, but I played several games just long enough to learn the mechanics and then quit.

It was frustrating, and made me contemplate getting a copy of Civ IV, but I fear what that will do to me. The last time I played a Civ game, it was for an entire two day stretch. Obviously, that’s not something you want to get into just before grad school.

minus

Bottle Imp — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:48:50 +0000

I thought that I would take a moment to point people in the direction of minus which is a web comic that recently ended. The fact that it ended is bittersweet, because it means that there will be no new strips, but it also means that people can, in relatively short order, read through the entire archives. The comic is beautiful but with fairly frequent cruel tinges. The main character has almost limitless power, and being a small child often uses that power in ways that an adult would not consider proper. This sometimes leads to the suffering of others. I like that the artist was willing to go there. Childhood is often cruel. The comic gives me a sort of misty nostalgia for my childhood and the belief in the imagination that goes hand in hand with that time. If there wasn’t the cruelty, things might come off saccharine.

Shudder to Think

Bottle Imp — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:24:22 +0000

Slowly, slowly the email is catching up and the big project is getting finished. This is not at the rate that I hoped, but it is happening.

Shudder to Think is back on tour soon. This makes me unbelievably happy. I still remember staying up late one night in 1995, watching MTV, back when it seemed to have some semblance of relevance. (Isn’t it nice that it doesn’t anymore?) These weird guys came on the screen, there was jarring crunchy guitar, and I was hooked. The lead singer had this strange creepy voice and the video involved elevators and a weird basement scene. I was never able to explain to others what I loved, loved so much, about this band. Lacking the ability to attach any tangible explanation to it, I just assumed that they would take over the world eventually. Needless to say, that never happened. But I never stopped loving them. Pony Express Record remains one of my favorite albums, and one that is directly responsible for my love of rock.

Then the band broke up, and while I thought the stuff they did afterward as solo acts was ok, the big creepy magic and edge were gone. It felt a little too friendly, a little too bedroom or sitting at your breakfast table the next day over a cup of coffee. These guys had a video banned for “unnecessary cannibalism” and even their love songs were creepy. I missed that. I still got the new stuff, but I missed the band that thought re-envisioning the Atlanta Rhythm Section’s “So Into You” as a slow almost violent creeper was a good idea.

Later, STT became like a handshake for me. When someone started talking about 90s rock, we would sound each other out for a while, and then I would drop STT as a reference point. If they got a big grin on their face, I knew we would get along musically. Of course this didn’t happen very often, but STT fanhood always felt like being in on a very special secret, that came with decoder rings. You have a decoder ring, right?

And now I might be able to see them, which I never did get to do while they were together, living as I did in tiny town. What’s more, that video, the one that hypnotized me at the age of 14, is now on Youtube.

New album please guys and come to Portland. Please please please come to Portland.