The Patterson Film

2011-08-17T12:55:00.001-04:00

Wouldn't "No Bike Parking" suffice?

2009-06-20T12:18:00.003-04:00

This was on a fence in front of a World Bank building. Overplaying their authority a little, or just an overenthusiastic sign maker?

On to Richmond!

2009-02-23T15:24:00.004-05:00

Yet again, I will heading down to Richmond for the annual Old Dominion Open modelfest. If her lungs hold up, Merujo will be accompanying again, possibly against her better judgment. Although I neglected to put up any photos from 2007, I have shots from 2006 and 2008 in case you're even remotely interested.

You can see photos from the 2006 trip here (along with a side trip to the house where Stonewall Jackson died). Enjoy.

Actual headline: Brain-damaged woodchuck missing in Omaha

2009-02-23T15:13:00.006-05:00

Is it considered cruel to laugh at this? (I mean the headline, not the actual state of the animal in question.)

Here's the story, in case you want more details (and I want to avoid violating NTV's copyright):

Brain-damaged woodchuck missing in Omaha (February 23, 2009)

TSA question: Which is it? 3 ounces or 100 ml?

2008-11-10T18:12:00.003-05:00

According to the TSA website, the amount of liquid you're allowed to bring on a plane is "bottles 3 ounces or smaller (or 100 ml)."

Here's the interesting bit:

3 fluid ounces are equal to 88.72 ml, not 100 ml

So which is it?

If I bring a 100 ml container to a U.S. security checkpoint, is some security person (in his newly-minted and freshly badged-up uniform) going to hassle me? It may sound like a petty question, but to date I have yet to be all that impressed with the level of knowledge possessed by the TSA's front lines.

I just want to know before I go, as they say.

Every time I travel by air, I'm sure the face police (aka the Behavior Detection Officers) have been tempted to pull me aside, because I always find myself gearing up to go through security. It's certainly a mental challenge, trying to hold it together as my Fourth Amendment rights slowly disintegrate.

If the TSA is trolling blogs for mention of their august institution, I would actually appreciate a real-deal clarification of the "3 ounces doesn't equal 100 ml" issue.

RIP Neal Hefti (1922-2008)

2008-10-15T11:47:00.003-04:00

It's not often that someone composes a TV theme that absolutely everyone knows. He wrote the "Odd Couple" theme, too. Oh, and he used to play with Woody Herman and Charlie Spivak, and did arrangements for Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Harry James, and Steve Allen. Not bad for a Nebraska boy.

Get the full scoop on the man here. His legacy is only as far away as any countless YouTube videos and garage bands.

Biff!

From CNN.com this morning

2008-10-08T11:51:00.001-04:00

This must be one awesome cnidarian...

How many houses does it take?

2008-08-21T14:19:00.002-04:00

How many houses does it take before you forget how many you have?

Today Politico reported that it asked John McCain how many houses he and his wife owned. His response, according to Politico: "I think -- I'll have my staff get to you. It's condominums where -- I'll have them get to you."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Is it funny that he's a little doddering and can't quite remember how many properties he and the Stepford Wife own? Or is it pathetic and sad?

The mother of a very good friend of mine is 71. She says that she doesn't have the mental stamina to be president, and for this reason (among others, probably) feels that McCain is too old.

I think she's right. But she also needs to factor in the money. He's too old and perhaps too rich. Oh, wait--it's his wife who's rich (estimated worth of $100 million).

Whether he's rich or not, he's certainly one thing: out of touch. When you have too many houses, I tend to doubt you can relate to ordinary Americans.

Some may argue that Obama can't relate either, but at least he's only got one house.

A little culture on the train

2008-08-13T09:42:00.008-04:00

Sometimes culture appears in the most unexpected places.

Last night on my way home from work, I got on the Red Line train to Shady Grove as I am often wont to do. As soon as the train started moving, the odorific homeless guy standing in the opposite doorway began to sing:

"I got chills! They're multiplying!"

I wasn't sure he was singing what I *thought* he was singing. But then he went on.

"And I'm looooosing control! From the pow-er...you're supplying."

And then the big finish:

"IT'S ELECTRIFYING!!!!"

I tried to bury my face in my magazine, because I didn't want him to see me failing to stop giggling. It was hilarious. It was actually so funny that I moved to the next train car at Dupont Circle because I thought I would burst out laughing any second.

As I was switching cars he followed up with:

"We take the pressure and we throw away....conventionality belongs to yesterday...."

He wasn't Frankie Valli, but he was in tune. You can't really ask for more than that.

A moment at Farragut North

2008-08-04T10:26:00.002-04:00

Last week, while on the escalator leaving the Farragut North Metro station, I heard a trumpet-playing busker. When I got to the top of the escalator, I saw that it was a young guy, probably a junior or senior in high school. He had excellent tone, good technic, and was playing a cornet, not a trumpet. The open backpack at his feet had a sign that said "$$ for college." As I went to drop in a few dollars for him, there was a copy of Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet. It is the trumpet player's bible. It's huge, heavy, and a lot of work to get through. I never finished it, but then nobody ever truly does. While his copy of it was red, mine was (and still is) blue. The cover colors notwithstanding, I felt an immediate kinship with this kid. He stopped playing for a second to thank me for dropping in the money, and I told him that I used the Arban book when I was a student. I asked him about the Clarke and Schlossberg studies, and he seemed to know all about them. I wasn't surprised, frankly. We chatted a little more about horn playing. He then told me that he usually didn't play cornet--his trumpet had been stolen when he left it outside the band room for 20 minutes a couple weeks ago. He had picked up the cornet for $20 at a pawn shop, and was hoping to make enough money to buy another "Strad." For the non-trumpet-playing public, this is a sad enough story as it is. But when he told me he wanted another Strad, I was quite moved. I've been lucky enough to have a Vincent Bach Stradivarius trumpet since the tenth grade, and I can't begin to imagine what it would feel like to have it stolen. If I see this kid again, I will definitely give him more than $2. He deserves another Strad.

Heading to Virginia Beach

2008-08-04T10:10:00.003-04:00

I won't be there to take in any rays, or cavort on the sand (although I may come close to cavorting--you never know).

I will be attending the IPMS USA 2008 National Convention. This will be my first national IPMS convention, and I'm looking forward to it. I will be awash in plastic and plastic geeks. These guys bring their A game, so the quality of the models that will be displayed is going to be extremely high. Given my lack of building over the last two years, I will not be entering any kits in the contest. However, I will be photographing the heck out of everything, so you'll have that to experience when I get back.

Psych up. No, really.

NoVa IPMS Model Classic 2008

2008-04-27T19:39:00.013-04:00

OK, because I was a slug and didn't get my photos up here from February's trip to Richmond for the Region II ModelCon, I thought I should atone a bit by posting my photos from yesterday's adventures in Fairfax.

I attended the NoVa IPMS Model Classic, which is a lot like Richmond's but not at a NASCAR track and not as big. Everyone running it was enthusiastic and friendly, though, which made it an enjoyable day all around. (They're friendly in Richmond, too. Don't get me wrong...)

Hopefully I will be able to attend the National Convention in Virginia Beach this summer. Then I can let you know if they're friendly, too.

Now on to the photos... (CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE)

Holy crap! Look at the size of that 1/16 Panzer! How much paint do you think that thing needed?

An excellent diorama of an 88 emplacement

A little more detail...

A Churchill Crocodile — it's tank that pulls a trailer full of fuel and nitrogen propellant, thus turning it into a highly-armored flamethrower

The Crocodile as seen from above

A StuG III--nice job on the airbrushed camo

A Soviet KV1-E--note the attention paid to the toolbox

A Panzer IVD--good weathering and interesting display

A Japanese Type 3 Medium Tank Chi-Nu. It was supposed to contend with American M4 Shermans. Right.

Another Panzer IV

An excellent example of the Lend-Lease Act in action...

An excellent natural-metal finish P-47 in 1/32 scale--that's a lot of plane to model

An He-111 Zwilling in 1/48 scale

A B-26 that (in my opinion) has been a bit over-weathered. If it were Japanese it would be another story...

A view of the 1/48 scale bomber. Note how the Enola Gay B-29 dominates the competition (in size, anyway)

The 1/48 scale single-engine entries

Racial profiling at Subway?

2008-04-16T18:14:00.002-04:00

I went to lunch with two of my colleagues. One is Latino, the other African-American.

I ordered my sandwich, got the meal deal, and then waited for my colleagues to get theirs. We took our meal deals back to the office, where I was surprised to find I only received two napkins. I complained to my Latino colleague, whereupon he produced three napkins. He and I began to formulate a theory of napkin-based racial profiling (the guy manning the cash register was African-American). When my other colleague finally entered the room and then opened up his meal deal, he found that he had received *four* napkins. Without any prompting, he said that we had been victims of napkin-based racial profiling. I tried to save face by telling him that he probably needed that many, but overall we just thought the whole thing was pretty funny.

The sandwich was good, though.

And now for something completely different

2008-04-06T17:07:00.001-04:00

According to certain readers, my content has grown stale.

Sorry. I'll be posting some better stuff shortly.

Keep the faith.

Flash...«aaaaa-AAHHHHH»....He will save every one of us

2008-01-15T22:52:00.000-05:00

I am desperately trying to teach myself Flash CS3 Professional. I have to create an ActionScript Flash movie by Sunday night. If you see a story on CNN about a guy whose head spontaneously exploded in a well-to-do Washington suburb, you'll know what happened...

My 40th Anniversary

2007-10-20T02:05:00.001-04:00

Today marks the fortieth anniversary of my film debut. Please, check out the film and judge for yourself. But I look pretty real, don't I?

RIP Brett Somers (1924–2007)

2007-09-17T15:23:00.000-04:00

From CNN.com:

Actress and comedian Brett Somers, who amused game show fans with her quips on the "Match Game" in the 1970s, has died, her son said. She was 83.

Somers died Saturday at her home in Westport of stomach and colon cancer, Adam Klugman said Monday.

Hosted by Gene Rayburn, "Match Game" was the top game show during much of the 1970s. Contestants would try to match answers to nonsense questions with a panel of celebrities; much of the humor came from the racy quips and putdowns.

Shows from the 1973-79 run, featuring regulars like Somers, Richard Dawson and Charles Nelson Reilly, are still seen on cable TV's GSN (formerly Game Show Network).

Somers married actor Jack Klugman, the future star of the television shows "Quincy" and "The Odd Couple," in 1953. The two separated in 1974, but never divorced.

They made many television appearances as a couple. Somers appeared on several episodes of "The Odd Couple," playing the ex-wife of Klugman's character.

In the summer of 2003, she appeared in a one-woman cabaret show, "An Evening with Brett Somers," which she wrote and co-produced. She continued to perform after being diagnosed with cancer.

She was born Audrey Johnston in New Brunswick, Canada, and grew up in Portland, Maine. She ran away from home at age 17 and headed for New York City, where she settled in Greenwich Village. She changed her first name to Brett after the lead female character in the Ernest Hemingway novel "The Sun Also Rises." Somers was her mother's maiden name.

Her son said she was caustic, irreverent and a self-declared bohemian.

"She maintained her independence till the end, and her irreverence," Adam Klugman said. "She died very much at peace." In addition to Adam Klugman, Somers is survived by another son, David, and a daughter, Leslie.

Spotted at my workplace

2007-08-28T23:28:00.001-04:00

OK....

MoCo AGRICULTURAL Fair

2007-08-25T20:01:00.000-04:00

In my fruitless quest to keep up with Merujo, herewith I post the best of my photos from the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair, which we both attended...

CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE

These boots were made for staring

Sometimes blurry is better

"Heeeerrrre fishy, fishy fishy!"

Sasquatch gets meta...

I like the guy's arms sticking out like wings

Unclear on the concept

2007-08-16T16:58:00.000-04:00

An exchange I had today with a new client:

Client: What about this area on the banner that's just gray?

Me: That's white space. It lets your eye breathe.

Client: But it's not white. It's gray.

I just keeping telling myself not to kill them. So far it's worked…

Any idea what kind of spider this is?

2007-07-18T17:41:00.000-04:00

This little guy lives on the island of Borøya, off the southern coast of Norway. I was experimenting with my macro lens and found him on the eaves of the cabin I was living in.

I have no idea what kind of spider he is, but he looks good in the picture. I really like how his legs stick pretty much straight out rather than bending a lot (think daddy longlegs). If you're an entomologist (or just play one on TV), let me know if you can help me out. Thanks.

Short-fingered vulgarian?

2007-07-17T16:50:00.002-04:00

I know that's what SPY used to call Donald Trump, but I wanted to use it again. Take a look at Chuckles' fingers in the photo below. Are they stunted? Or is it just me (who thinks they're stunted, not that I'm stunted)? CLICK THE PHOTO TO ENLARGE

But what about Helen's saddle?

2007-07-14T00:45:00.001-04:00

Lame. I know.

Back from Norway

2007-06-25T11:25:00.000-04:00

Iceland, Day 6: The flea market, the pearl, and the art

2007-05-21T00:04:00.001-04:00

CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM

Surprisingly, it was raining. We slept in and just picked up breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Happily, nobody was pawing the bread with their bare hands this morning.

I had wanted to visit the famous (sort of) Reykjavík flea market, Kolaportið. There was also reported to be a great fish market there. Lots of photo ops, I hoped, too. I am a big fan of flea markets, estate sales, garage sales, and auctions. A? Not so much. But she was a good sport and tagged along anyway. Turns out it was a good thing that she did. Overall there wasn't really all that much to see at the flea market (unless you read Icelandic, in which case there were tons of bargain books you would enjoy). We did stop at the shop space of a woman who had really cool knitted goods for sale. We tried talking to her, and it turned out she had lived in Norway. So we chatted for a while in Norwegian, and then bought a pair of gloves. Overall the flea market was disappointing.

We walked over to the 66˚ North store so A could get the inventory control tag removed from the hat she'd bought a few days before. They hadn't even realized it was still attached when they sold it, which doesn't exactly speak well of their loss prevention methods. Still, they believed her when she told them about it, and were happy to detach it.

Perlan is the shiny building to the right

Again—in the rain—we took a cab over to Perlan. Perlan used to contain the hot water used by Reykjavík, but now it's this wild exhibition center thing that was having a huge shoe sale while we were there. There's a restaurant on top, and a wax museum where the water tanks used to be. (I'm a sucker for a good [and bad] wax museum.) The statues tell the story of the Icelandic sagas, and were modeled on citizens of Reykjavík. Because A is the way she is, she needed to get a look from outside the restaurant (it's on the top floor). Never mind the fact that it was raining and gusting winds something like 40+ mph. She went for it. Just fastened her furry hat to her head and made a complete circumnavigation of the building. Outside. Not my thing, but good for her. I'm just sorry I didn't get a shot of it.

The great shoe sale, complete with Icelandic palm trees

After lunch, we decided to head to the Hafnarhúsið (Harbor House Museum). It turned out to be only half a block from the flea market! It's a modern art museum, which means that pretty much anything may be on display at any one time. Part of their permanent collection is work by Érro, an Icelandic pop artist. His gig pretty much consists of appropriating American comic book styles, occasionally adding social and political commentary to his drawings. There was also an installation consisting of a dark room, a strobe light, and a basketball in the corner. Your guess is as good as mine as to what it meant, but A and I had a lot of fun messing around in the strobe light. That probably wasn't supposed to be part of the exhibit, but we enjoyed it. There were also rooms of video art that showed pieces that were sometimes 20 minutes long. It was hard not to fall asleep, but they were occasionally pretty interesting.

Having sufficiently enculturated ourselves at the museum, we walked around downtown, where it had miraculously stopped raining for an hour! We stopped in at Apótek, where we sat in the café in front. As soon as we sat down it started raining again, so good timing for us. We were a little peckish, and I had a bowl of tomato soup that turned out to be really, really good.

A few views of downtown. Why is it so dark? This is even after using Photoshop to lighten it, so you can get an idea of how it really looked, light-wise...

After feeding, we grabbed a cab back to the hotel. As we pulled up to the door, it stopped raining. Typical. After the rain there was an amazing rainbow that actually made a complete 180˚ arc. We hung out for a while and then tried to figure out what to do for dinner. We walked around trying to decide, and ultimately ended up at the same Ruby Tuesday where I had my first meal on Monday. There were a couple rounds of "no, that's not what I ordered," but things eventually worked out.

Once we'd walked back to the hotel, there wasn't much left but to get everything packed and prepare for our departure the next day. As it consisted of going to the airport and spending 6+ hours on a plane, I will spare you a separate blog entry. Lucky you.

All in all, Iceland is a beautiful if somewhat spartan country, and is probably a lot more beautiful in the summer. It was good to see it in the off season, though. Fewer people, and probably a much more "real" experience than we would have had at peak tourist time. I would recommend it, but only if you bring wet weather gear. And earmuffs.

Ja, vi elsker...

2007-05-17T00:34:00.001-04:00

Iceland, Day 5: The South Shore

2007-04-22T23:53:00.000-04:00

CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM

We got up early so we could catch breakfast in the hotel restaurant. There were lots of rude people in the buffet line, and many of them were touching the bread with their bare hands as they cut slices for themselves. Ew.

As with the previous day, we hopped on a bus to BSÍ, where we transferred to a smaller bus. It was like an oven in there, and it stayed that way all day. If you're A, that's not much of a problem, but if you're the Human Furnace, it gets to be a problem pretty quickly.

We zipped out of Reykjavík fairly quickly, and soon found ourselves in the lovely village of Eyrarbakki. We saw exactly no people in the town, as they were all working, either in the frying-pan factory or the fish processing plants, but most of them were working in the nearby prison. Not exactly a garden spot. When the volcano erupted in the Westman Islands in 1973, lots of the people displaced by the lava moved to Eyrarbakki and never went back to the island. Not much of a trade-off as far as I could tell.

Skyr rocks. Note the convenient folding spoon.

We stopped for coffee and I picked up a blueberry skyr. I haven't mentioned much about the food, mainly because it's not all that good overall. The Indian restaurant was great, but for the most part the food was pretty lackluster. I must rave a little about the skyr, though. Skyr is an exclusively Icelandic dairy product, and is kind of like a really, really thick yogurt. But it's better than yogurt, and it's actually a type of fresh cheese. It's good and gloppy, and makes for an excellent breakfast addition, or a mid-morning snack. The packages also come with a convenient spoon attached to the lid. But I digress...

We then made our first real stop at Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall. If you look carefully in the photo below, you may be able to make out the pouring rain we were experiencing. It was like this for most of the day. I have a down coat, which is great for cold, but not so great for wet. I had intended to Scotchgard it before I left for Reykjavík, but I ended just paving the road to Hell. My coat took on water every time we left the bus, and never really dried out the entire day, which made for a fairly uncomfortable day. However, the bus wasn't full, so I was able to at the very least take it off and hang it on a seat whenever we were in between stops.

Seljalandsfoss. Can you see the raindrops?

We then made an attempt to get onto the Sólheimjökull glacier, which would have been extremely cool. However, the bus we were in was not designed for any off-roading, and as a result we were stymied by road conditions. We were able to get out and about for 10 minutes or so, but we were about an hour's hike away from the glacier and didn't have any sort of equipment to make the trek. It was a little disappointing.

My kingdom for four-wheel drive...

Getting wetter by the second

From the near-glacier experience, it was off to the black sand beach near Vik. This was the best part of the trip, I think, for both A and me. The beach was incredible. I say this despite being soaked to the bone. Out from the beach there were some basalt columns that have been worn away by the constant pounding of the ocean. They're really cool and kind of otherworldly as they jut out of the sea.

There's basalt on the moon, too...

When Clint Eastwood was filming his recent Iwo Jima-centered movies, he filmed a lot of the landing scenes in Iceland on the black sand beaches. I couldn't picture a more non-tropical setting, but it seems to have worked for him...

We had lunch in Vik with a New Zealander who has a thing for Arctic climes. Prior to coming to Iceland, he had been exploring Svalbard in Norway. He told us of seeing fresh polar bear kills, but no actual polar bears.

From Vik we headed to Skógar to the Skógar Folk Museum. It's more a collection of old stuff that the locals used to use. High points included a pump organ, a fishing boat, pillow covers, butter churns, spindles for preparing horsehair and wool, and an Icelandic dulcimer. There is also an old sod farm with original buildings surrounding it. An eccentric old local man gave us a tour of the museum and church, and had us sing along with him as we sat in the uncomforatable pews. He had us sing a couple of hymns from the hymnal, and then "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which I was able to sing along with (finally).

Sod house at Skógar

Once we left Skógar, we traveled along the coast, stopping at Skógafoss. We had the option to go behind the falls, but it was too misty and therefore too wet, and I had had enough wet for the day by that point. We could see the Westman Islands from the bus as we traveled, and A took a few photos.

The closest we got to the Westman Islands

Once we got back to the hotel and dried out completely, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant, the highly-touted Vox. Dinner was not bad, and the flounder course was fantastic.

We sat at the far end (circled, sort of...)

We were waited on by a "trainee" named Leifur. I asked him how long he had to be a trainee, and he answered "Three years." A and I were stunned. He was fun to watch, though, as he was very careful to hold himself correctly as he walked. I think he'll be quite good at whatever the restaurant has him do.

Iceland, Day 4: Le Cercle d'Or

2007-04-08T23:38:00.000-04:00

CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM

Thursday was "Golden Circle Day." Every tourist to Iceland worth his or her salt takes this tour. It pretty much hits the high points within a 2.5-hour drive east of Reykjavík. We took the Reykjavík Excursions tour. However, what we didn't know was that Thursday was the one day a week that tours were available in French.

If you're A, it just meant that after every English explanation there would be a lot of French-sounding noise. If you're me, it meant that after every English explanation there would be a corresponding French explanation that you would do your best not to listen to, but would fail to accomplish. So I more or less heard every explanation/description/overview twice. In the words of our tour guide, "Think about that..."

Once we cleared Reykjavík and got about 45 minutes out of town, we hit a town called Hveragerði. While the town itself had greenhouses and a little bit of industry, it was pretty much just a tourist trap for unsuspecting bus people.

The garden spot that is Hveragerði...

What was surprising to me, though, was that the paparazzi were waiting for A, who was not amused.

Once we cleared Hveragerði, we made a quick pit stop at a crater called Kerið that was formed 6,500 years ago. Once we left Kerið, we got to hear about Iceland's social structure. One of the things the guide said was that 80% of the women in Iceland were employed full-time, which contributed to the downfall of many marriages. Who knew?

Yep, that's a crater...

Our first real stop was at Gullfoss, Iceland's most famous waterfall. The wind was strong, the rain was coming down, and the path was incredibly icy. Good times. That being said, though, it was a pretty impressive place, and despite the elements it was beautiful.

This is the path to the falls. Note the raindrops on the lens...

Gullfoss

After a whole 30 minutes at Gullfoss, most of which was spent navigating the path, we traveled on to Geysir (pronounced GAY-zeer). Geysir was the original spouting hot spring—all the others around the world are named after it. Before we visited the geysers, though, it was time for lunch. We were given a choice of either the buffet with traditional Icelandic delights, or what our guide called "fast food." We opted for the buffet, because we could get fast food at home. We should have gone for the fast food, because the buffet was terrible. As it turned out, what the guide called "fast food" was actually just a cafeteria, and would likely have been a hell of a lot better than what we ended up getting. Live and learn, I guess, but it was annoying.

We ventured up the path to the geysers, where it was unlikely that we would see Geysir itself erupting, as it only happenS 10-15 times a year. Happily, though, there's a backup called Strokkur (the Churn), which spouts up to 35m every 5 minutes. The signage surrounding the geyser field is virtually nonexistent, and it's up to you to figure out whether you're going to get soaked by Strokkur as you work your way to it. The whole complex smells of sulfur, but I suppose when there's steam coming ominously out of the ground it's fitting that it is reminiscent of Hell.

The Earth letting off some steam

Strokkur erupting

The obligatory racist statue in the gift shop

From Geysir we went to Þingvellir (pronounced THING-vet-lir). We saw where the American and Eurasian tectonic plates are moving away from each other, currently at a rate of two inches a year. The weather got really bad when we were there, so we got maybe 20 minutes to poke around, which is a shame. If it were nicer, it would have been cool to really explore the place, as it looked as if it could be extremely beautiful. Sadly we didn't get to see the Lögberg where the Alþing convened over 1,000 years ago. However, when I couldn't feel my fingers or my face, it was time to retreat to the bus. I will come back some day in the summer to see the rest of Þingvellir...

Þingvellir—"...like cracks on top of a cake..."

After we returned to the hotel, we decided to partake in the local shopping, because the mall was actually open late (that is, until 2100). We grabbed a cab to Kringlan (although some signs said Kringla—I never did find out why the discrepancy) while our coats dried in the hotel room. After checking out the stores (and buying a few more t-shirts, because after so much weather-related shirt changing I was running out), we opted for dinner at Café Bleu, the most upscale restaurant in the food court. As we were sitting there, a woman bumped into my chair. She then excused herself in a torrent of Icelandic, never once presuming to use English with me. This was not a normal experience with the natives, because ordinarily they could tell I was American from 1.6 km off. However, I was wearing my handy (and extremely warm) Norwegian sweater that A got me for Christmas a few years ago. It enhances anyone's Scandinavian quotient, and obviously worked for me this once. Also, we didn't really see many tourists in the mall, so the woman probably wasn't expecting any.

After a quick trip to Ben and Jerry's (see, Iceland's not completely uncivilized), it was back to the hotel to plan our next day.

Iceland, Day 3: Hoofing it around Reykjavík

2007-04-08T13:00:00.000-04:00

CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM

Wednesday was our first day of actually exploring Reykjavík proper. The hotel provided a shuttle to the city center, which was very helpful. As was becoming fairly customary, it was a cold and windy day, and we were smacked around by snow and ice pellets for most of it. When it wasn't raining, anyway.

We hopped off the shuttle, and were immediately confronted with a Quizno's. We figured there were better places to stop and get our bearings, so we popped into a konditori to plan our attack. A's not a big map reader, but she's always a good sport when I go into Rommel mode and start looking at the map like I'm on my way to El Alamein.

After a quick chocolate-covered donut thing, we headed for main shopping street, which, conveniently, sports a large banner that says "Main Shopping Street." Our first stop was 66˚ North, an Icelandic outerwear specialist. A picked up a neck gaiter, as she didn't have a scarf and the wind was pretty brutal.

From 66˚ North, we headed up the street to visit Hallgrímskirkja, Reykjavík's signature church. (There's a statue of Leifur Eiriksson in front of it, looking like he's standing in the prow of a Viking longboat.) The steeple is 75m high, and the supporting structures are supposed to look like volcanic basalt columns (more on basalt columns in a few days). It took 34 years to finish building the church. There was a funeral going on, though, and we couldn't get in until later. I had passed a couple of churches on my first day in town and they were also holding funerals. The national flag was at half-mast both times. A says this is something they also do in Norway—I'd never heard of the custom outside of state funerals/mourning.

Leifur looking intrepid

So we then worked our way through the surrounding neighborhood, where most of the houses were covered in corrugated tin rather than traditional clapboards or siding. It's probably an effective method for keeping out harsh weather, but it's certainly not the most attractive option.

Note the siding (and the snowflakes)

We ended up at the water's edge, where we checked out the Sólfar sculpture, which I have seen described as a cross between "a Viking ship and a giant centipede." It's mounted on marble, which looks very cool until you set foot on it and start inadvertently skating...

Sólfar, so good...

Because it was so cold and wet, I had my earmuffs on, and my hood pulled tightly around my head and face. I nearly got hit by a car because I couldn't hear or see very well. That would have made an interesting (and pathetic) end to my Reykjavík experience.

After an hour of freezing, we returned to 66˚ North so I could pick up a neck gaiter for myself, and so A could pick up a sort of Elmer Fudd hat, complete with furry earflaps.

Enough time had passed that the Hallgrímskirkja was open, so we trudged up the hill once again. It was worth the trudging. We went into the main area and sat down in a pew for a few minutes, listening to the organist practicing. It was then time to make our ascent into the steeple. (If the whole church is shaped like that, is it really a steeple then?)

Looking toward the altar in Hallgrímskirkja

The pipe organ created magnificent sound

Leifur Eiriksson as seen through the clock face

The elevator lets you off in the area behind the clock faces. You can look through the plexiglass and have decent views of the entire city. It's only when you brave going up one more level into the open-air (and painfully cold and windy) section that you get the full effect of the view. The weather had cleared a bit while we were there, and there was even a tiny bit of sun shining through, which made the views even more beautiful. (Check out my phlog for more photos from the steeple—they'll be there soon if they're not already.)

No plexiglass makes a difference, no?

We stayed in the open-air part of the steeple as long as we could stand it, and then started off down the hill. We found ourselves at Reykjavík's City Hall (the Raðhus), a very modern and inviting building (especially inviting when it starts snowing). After a little sit-down with some hot chocolate, I was keen to check out an old cemetery that was nearby. As soon as we got outside, though, it started snowing even harder. So much for the cemetery idea—we needed to find some dinner. Ultimately we opted for Indian food (!) at a place called Shalimar. The Pakistani ambassador to Iceland has said that this is the best Indian/Pakistani food he's ever had outside of the subcontinent. He's right, I think. The food was fantastic.

The hostess asked me what I thought of Iceland. I think she was expecting the usual "I love it," but I told her I thought it was kind of bleak, and that I didn't think I'd be able to live there. She was surprised at my response, but I think she also found it a bit refreshing to hear something besides the cliché (at least I hope so, anyway).

We hopped back on the hotel shuttle after the driver grunted at us that, yes, this was the right bus for the Hotel Nordica. When we got back, A had a drink that the hotel bar had invented and for which it had apparently won some sort of award. We signed up for the Golden Circle tour going out the next day, and then called it a day.

Iceland, Day 2: The Blue Lagoon, or Ninety Minutes of Being Pelted in the Face

2007-04-08T01:16:00.000-04:00

CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM

As with most of our days in Iceland, on Day 2 it was pouring down rain. Tuesday was especially bad, as there was a strong wind and the temperature was hovering right around freezing (pre-wind).

Today was our Blue Lagoon day. Anyone who has ever been to Reyjavík swears by the Blue Lagoon. I'm not much of a spa guy, but I figured when in Rome...

I hadn't known it before I got there, but the Blue Lagoon is a geothermal spa that, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook,

owes its existence to the nearby Svarsengi geothermal plant, which is powered by superheated seawater drawn from deep bore holes in the lava. After the steam has passed through the turbines, huge condensers convert it back into water, which is channelled into a huge artificial lagoon that permanently hovers at 37˚–39˚C.

We hopped on the hotel shuttle and headed to the Reykjavík bus station (BSÍ), where we transferred to the Blue Lagoon bus. This is what it looked like pretty much all the way there:

The view from the bus

The first thing you have to do upon arrival is get hooked up with a blue, plastic wristband. The wristband allows you to use the lockers in the locker room. The lockers were really cool, if lockers can be cool. The next thing you do is get naked and shower. I had heard about "shower police" who were there to make sure you showered appropriately, but thankfully we were left to shower on our honor. (The shower is necessary because the water isn't treated chemically like a swimming pool, so they want to divest you of anything harmful before you muck it up for everyone else.)

The natural pools outside the spa campus

Duly bathed, I headed down to the entry pool, where I met A. This is an indoor pool that is warm and gets you prepped to move out into the outdoor lagoon. There's a door that hangs just above the water to keep the elements out. You could swim under it if you wanted to, but that wasn't any fun. A was wearing a dark blue fleece hat, which I thought was a little funny looking. I didn't think it was so funny once we headed out into the nearly freezing rain.

It's kind of wild when everything below your neck is toasty warm while your head is being buffeted by icy wind and rain. We were forced to move backwards into the wind, as the raindrops and ice pellets hurt our face if we turned around.

Floaters in the mist

We stayed in for about 90 minutes, taking in the entire pool. There was so much steam coming off the water that at times we couldn't see more than about 3 feet in front of us.

The water is kind of a milky blue, and even though the lagoon is only about 3-4 feet deep, I couldn't see my hand past six inches under the surface. It was a little creepy. The water is cloudy because it contains blue-green algae (cyanobacteria), mineral salts, and a fine silica mud at the bottom. The silica can be used to exfoliate your skin, so A and I both tried it. She had no problems with it, but I ended up getting it in my eyes. It's kind of gritty and uncomfortable, and for about 6-7 minutes I was completely blind. I tried to rinse my eyes out in the lagoon to no avail. So I turned my face into the rain and tried to let the fresh water pummel the goop out of my eyes. Eventually I was able to see again, but I stayed well away from the silica mud. (Besides, to get to the provided containers, you had to haul yourself halfway out of the warm water. Talk about a shock to the system when you stood up...)

A and I figured his was a lonely job...

Once we'd hit our limit in the lagoon, we headed inside, where we showered again (using TONS of conditioner to get the chemicals out of our hair) and then got ready to leave. We ended up missing our bus by two minutes, which meant that we had to stay at the Lagoon for another two hours. It wasn't exactly a hardship, but it would have been nice to get back to the hotel a little sooner.

A and I ended up having linner there. She got a sandwich of some sort, and I got to try out the world-renowned Icelandic hotdog (pýlsur). They are an institution in Iceland, and I was much more inclined to try them as opposed to putrefied shark (hákarl). The pýlsur traditionally come with raw onion, crunchy deep-fried onion, ketchup, mustard, and tangy rémoulade. It was really good, and is probably the cheapest food I ate while in Iceland. I also picked up some dried fish bits, but have yet to bring myself to try them.

The infamous Icelandic pýlsur...

Once it was time to go, we ended up on a smaller, shuttle-type bus. The driver stopped for gas on the way back, leaving the engine running the entire time. Very strange. At least we didn't blow up.

Ultimately, while I may not be much of a spa guy, I must admit that I enjoyed the lagoon quite a bit. It was interesting to be there in the off season when the weather was horrible. There weren't many people and at times it felt like we had the entire place to ourselves. While I'm sure the views are much better when you can see more than three feet in front of you, this was still a great way to experience the Blue Lagoon (as long as I stay away from the silica mud).

Iceland, Day 1: The adventure begins

2007-04-05T00:57:00.000-04:00

My flight was supposed to leave at 2045, but we ended up leaving BWI a half-hour late. We were never given a reason. It was actually fine by me, as I had about 11.5 hours to kill in Reykjavík until A arrived from Norway.

We flew over on a 757-200, which has a three-and-three seating setup. Thankfully I was in a row of seats all to myself, although I found out that I'm too tall to take advantage of them when I tried to lay down to sleep. So instead I sat up and watched the movie, 1982's Tootsie. They also showed the "Vitameatavegamin" episode of I Love Lucy. Nothing but cutting-edge entertainment on Icelandair, folks.

I arrived at Keflavík around 0700 GMT, only to find that I had to go through security again, after sitting on a plane for 6 hours. It seemed a bit silly to me, so I flat out asked a screener "Why are we doing this again, since we just did it before we got on the plane?" He responded with "Because we don't trust other countries' security procedures." Honest, but frankly a little insulting.

Sunrise over the lava floes

After a bit of confusion regarding the Arrivals signage (and the lack thereof), I picked up my luggage and made my way to the Flybus (airport shuttle). I got my round-trip ticket (which saved me a little bit of kronur), and then rode past the snow- and moss-covered lava fields on my way into Reykjavík. I got to watch the sun rise over the distant mountains, which was quite pretty. I'm sure I failed to appreciate it entirely because I was pretty tired, but it was still quite something.

After arriving at the Icelandair Nordica Hotel, I was given the keys to a very nice room on the fourth floor. Sadly, it was a smoking room and I had to return the keys for another room, this time non-smoking and on the third floor. It wasn't as good as the first room, but in many ways it was preferable. It was weird, though. The third floor was a non-smoking floor, yet they had this sort of phone-boothesque structure near the elevator where people could smoke. It kind of reminded me a bit of the Cone of Silence in some ways, but maybe that's just me.

The view from the better room

I crashed and burned for a little while, catching about two hours' sleep. Before I conked out, though, I turned on the TV. Let's just say you shouldn't go to Iceland if you're a TV junkie. However, on one of the Icelandic channels, they kept playing the same four music videos over and over. I am now the owner of the latest Robbie Williams track, "She's Madonna." When I was there, I couldn't figure out why I liked it. I just discovered that the Pet Shop Boys helped it along. That'll do it. (The audio clip doesn't really do the track justice, so check out the video here before you accuse me of having bad taste in pop music...)

After a quick nap, I set out to visit the Reykjavík Art Museum: Kjarvalsstaðir. Even better, the guidebooks told me that the museum had no entry fees on Mondays. So I set out from the hotel, only to find out that the city of Reykjavík (along with rest of Iceland, I would discover later) does not really do anything to get rid of ice on the sidewalks. The streets were bone dry, but the sidewalks were a fricking skating rink. Lots of little shuffle-stepping, trying not to become a casualty on my first day in the country. Before one can visit an art museum on limited sleep, one must fortify oneself. I did so at Reykjavík's own Ruby Tuesday. They haven't gone all upscale like the ones in the States, so it was a bit jarring yet endearingly familiar. Ordinarily I would have skipped the U.S. chain restaurant when traveling outside the states, but my Icelandic is nominal at best, and I was too tired to try anything more exotic. So sue me.

A view along the way

After a pretty decent burger, I worked my way to the museum, only to find out that the guidebook was wrong. Free admission day is now Thursday. I showed the guidebook to the woman at the desk, and she said she would get in touch with their marketing department to have it corrected in the next edition. Fat lot of good that did me 500 kronur later. The works on display were decent, and there was an installation dealing with waterfalls that I quite enjoyed. The fatigue was catching up to me, though, given the jet lag and shuffle stepping, so I decided to call it a day around 1500. I began working my way back to the hotel, but first I needed to stop and pick up some provisions (Kleenex, water, Hob Nobs, etc.). I nearly killed myself sliding down a stairway, but thankfully some spirited flailing and a vise-like grip on the railing saved me from face-planting.

There's not much more to report for Day 1. A arrived around 2000, and that's all I have to say about that. (I will mention that she brought me Norwegian chocolate...)

Back from Iceland

2007-03-26T14:32:00.000-04:00

Just got back from Iceland last night. I will post photos and brief overview of the trip over the coming days. Please bear in mind that SCAD's Spring Quarter also started this week, so I will have to pay attention to classes, too...

RIP Walker Edmiston (1926-2007)

2007-02-28T10:09:00.000-05:00

Enik. The Sleestak in lamé.

From CNN.com:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Walker Edmiston, an actor who was the voice of many cartoon and puppet characters, including Ernie the Keebler elf in TV commercials, has died. He was 81.

Edmiston died of complications from cancer at his home in Woodland Hills February 15, said his daughter, Erin Edmiston. He worked until becoming ill in January, she said.

Edmiston was born February 6, 1926, in St. Louis, Missouri, and moved to Los Angeles in 1947.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Edmiston had a children's show on local television, "The Walker Edmiston Show," which featured his own puppets, including Kingsley the Lion and Ravenswood the Buzzard.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he voiced many characters on shows created by Sid and Marty Krofft, including Dr. Blinkey and Orson the Vulture on "H.R. Pufnstuf" and Sparky the Firefly on "Bugaloos."

Edmiston also had acting roles in episodes of such TV series as "Gunsmoke," "Mission: Impossible" and "The Dukes of Hazzard," and performed for nearly 20 years on "Adventures in Odyssey," a radio series produced by the nonprofit group Focus on the Family.

My autobiography

2007-02-10T23:17:00.000-05:00

I'm not quite sure why I'm posting this. For my Art Criticism class, I was required to write a short autobiography in the style of Giorgio Vasari. I don't know if it was sufficiently flowery to qualify for "Vasari style" points, but it sufficed. Also, it's slightly untrue. Those of you who know me well or who were there for certain events mentioned below know this. Just go with it. It was easier to embellish than to go into the real details.

Anyway, here goes.....

========================

In the city of Omaha on the plains of Nebraska, a red-haired boy was born to Mom and Dad Sasquatch in 1968. This year marked a tumultuous time in the United States, and the proud parents wondered what kind of world was waiting to receive their child.

As a somewhat precocious gradeschooler, I dabbled in finger painting and macaroni art, even having my work put up on the bulletin board, to my eternal delight. Even at that tender age, though, I was not sufficiently foolish to believe that my art was necessarily better than that of my schoolmates. However, my art was good enough. Good enough was to become my rallying cry in the realm of the visual arts for a large part of my career.

Throughout my formative years, I learned about art theory--the color wheel, perspective, etc. While objectively I grasped the concepts, I was never able to execute any works that were truly great. They were good enough.

It wasn't until I received an undergraduate degree in political science and Spanish that my visual tides began to turn. In 1989, I used a Macintosh computer for the first time. From the moment I saw black pixels on a white field, I was smitten. Thanks to the geniuses at Xerox PARC and the questionably acquisitive nature of Messrs. Jobs and Wozniak, life would forever change for me.

After graduation, I didn't know how to tell my parents that I longed for a career in the applied arts. Instead, I continued my formal education in the stream I'd started, procuring a Master's degree in international policy studies. During the pursuit of this degree, I produced beautiful presentations and elegantly formatted research papers. They were better than good enough, but unnecessarily so.

Once I struck out to the East Coast to apply my newly-acquired degree, I realized that I had no network of contacts. So I temped, going from one dreary job to the next. One day in September 1993, my luck changed. The World Bank needed someone who knew how to use a Macintosh. From that day forward, I never looked back. I began teaching myself graphic design, not wanting to be a much-maligned "designer via software purchase." No, I devoured concept after concept--layout and typography, duotones and TIFFs--everything I could pour into my head. Finally, after 13 years I felt I had taught myself as much as I could (and, more importantly, had paid off my earlier student loans). It was time to pursue the degree I really wanted in the first place--a Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design.

Applying to and being accepted by the Savannah College of Art and Design in the Spring of 2006 changed my life yet again. No longer did I have any annoying free time. Instead, I spent my nights and weekends studying, filling my brain to capacity with subjects ranging from the cave paintings at Lascaux to digital art installations.

The circle is not yet complete, and I have seven more quarters to undergo before receiving my MFA. Hopes are high, though, now that good enough is no longer good enough.

Creativity is not a faucet

2007-02-03T00:28:00.000-05:00

I've probably ranted about this before, but I'm moved to do it again. Last week I received a request from a colleague (one for whom I don't work) to design some cover comps for a book he's written. He's already working with our External Affairs department, and they have already hired a designer. The problem is that the covers this designer has prepared are—to be kind—suboptimal.

If I were this guy, I would simply go back to External Affairs and then have them contact the designer they hired. Hopefully after a couple of iterations, provided my colleague has adequately explained what he's after, everything will be just fine. However, just because you're working with an external designer and you're unhappy doesn't mean that suddenly I'll hop to it. There was no warning, no meeting, no nothing. Just "I have this cover I'm unhappy with and would like you to come up with a version we like within the next four hours."

That kind of request/demand, aside from being unrealistic, is incredibly disrespectful, both of me and the creative process.

Creativity is not like some sort of faucet that can be turned on and off at will. Coming up with an effective design of anything requires inquiry, research, and time. I usually get cursory exposure to the first item and then never see the other two. For that reason my clients get what I like to call "lowest common denominator" design. It's good enough. Sometimes if I'm lucky enough to feel inspired in the confines of their often unrealistic timeframes, I'll come up with a piece I would actually include in my portfolio. More often than not, though, I don't. I prepare a piece that keeps them sufficiently happy and away from my door.

That's not how I'd like it to work. What I would really like would be to develop and implement an integrated branding and identity system for my group. A system that would tell the outside world that our products and services consist of high quality and a high level of design. This requires buy-in from the higher-ups, buy-in that I am unlikely to receive. I've been in meetings where I've been discussing an aesthetic and/or functional part of a design solution only to hear one of the management team openly scoff at my point. That is a discouraging response, but it wouldn't be the first time I've heard it or something like it.

Design is not valued by my clients to the degree it ought to be. Rather, it's an afterthought. Instead of incorporating the designer in the development of the product from the outset, the branding and overall presentation is the last item on my clients' agendae. Hence their tendency to bring me into the process close to the implementation date, which does not allow for a full exploration or treatment of their product's design requirements. It's incredibly frustrating.

Not more than a few days go by when I don't hear words to the effect of: "Your job must be fun. You get to work with pictures all day." Would that that were the case. O, would that it were. That's not to say that I hate my job. I love design, but I get annoyed when it's not given the respect or consideration it's due.

I have a few colleagues who read this blog. They may or may not recognize themselves here. If they do, maybe that will be a useful thing all the way around. Perhaps it will result in some awareness of the requirements of the creative process. It would benefit everyone involved. Everyone. Even them.

America. Land of the stupid.

2007-01-29T16:03:00.000-05:00

I don't know about the rest of you, but seeing the American flag flying in another country (Iraq and Afghanistan notwithstanding) has never made me want to immigrate illegally to that country. However, I've appreciated seeing it as it is a generally pleasant reminder of home.

The fine people in Gainesvile, Florida, though--specifically the Board at Gainesville High School--ascribe a lot more power to flags. Apparently the display of a foreign flag will cause people from that country to migrate illegally to the United States. Who knew?

Anyway, I'm not going to bore you with a grand polemic about the stupidity or ignorance of some people in this country. I would suggest, though, that you read the story and let me know if you think they were right.

The story can be found here. Happy reading. Just try to control yourself if you ever see the American flag flying in another country. They *really* don't want you to move there.

She'll be slathered in mustard and carried down the midway

2007-01-29T10:15:00.000-05:00

From NCTimes.com:

By: PATRICK WRIGHT - Staff Writer

CARLSBAD ---- Fredrica Thode, Hot Dog on a Stick's president and chief executive officer known for her commitment to employees, died recently. She was 64.

Thode (pronounced Toad-ee) died Jan. 13 after battling an advanced case of Lou Gehrig's disease, or Amyothophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

Thode, a Vista resident, spent 27 years with Hot Dog on a Stick, based in Carlsbad. Often referred to as Freddie, she became president of the 61-year-old company in 2001. The company has more than 100 locations that serve lemonade and hot dogs on a stick dipped in cornbread batter.

One company employee said Thode believed that taking care of employees was the key to taking care of customers. She was also known for her garden containing 400 roses. In Thode's honor, Hot Dog on a Stick made a $10,000 donation to the San Diego chapter of the ALS association.

Dan Smith, the company's chief operating officer, becomes the company's new president. No one has been named chief executive officer, according to a release.

Contact staff writer Patrick Wright at (760) 739-6675 or pwright@nctimes.com.

Man, that is a scary headline...

2006-12-14T15:17:00.000-05:00

Proud Northern Scum

2006-11-05T22:18:00.000-05:00

Went with Merujo to see The Beautiful South play last Friday. Ahhhhhhh....

Here's the set list. Click on virtually any song to hear a snippet. It won't be as good as hearing it live, but it's your loss, not mine. (Apologies for the intermittent sound quality issues.)

First encore:

Second encore:

Woman in the Wall

===============
* Only on their greatest hits compilation. Sorry.

Quick question

2006-09-14T15:40:00.000-04:00

If you pull the wings off a fly, do you then call it a hop?

Be afraid

2006-09-07T10:45:00.000-04:00

I was reading this story on CNN.com, and was horrified to read the following quote:

"There are some people, and I'm one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord," Tomanio said. "I don't care how he governs, I will support him. I'm a Republican through and through."

I have no problem (OK, a little problem) with people thinking that God put George Bush in the White House. But people ignoring what he does when he's there simply because of a party affiliation is unconscionable and more than a bit terrifying.

Cry for the children...

Checklist

2006-09-01T00:51:00.000-04:00

Stolen from American Twentysomething. If you want to try it, just copy the text, paste it in your blog, and then bold the things you can answer "yes" to...

1. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
2. Swam with wild dolphins
3. Climbed a mountain
4. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
5. Been inside the Great Pyramid
6. Held a tarantula
7. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
8. Said "I love you" and meant it
9. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby's diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was wasted
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Posed nude in front of strangers
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River - or was it the Colorado River?
82. Been on television news programs as an expert
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Eaten fugu (pufferfish)
89. Had a one-night stand
90. Gone to Thailand
91. Bought a house
92. Been in a combat zone
93. Buried one/both of your parents
94. Been on a cruise ship
95. Spoken more than one language fluently - not quite, but close
96. Performed in Rocky Horror Picture Show
97. Raised children
98. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn't have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication - does my blog count?
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Petted a stingray
110. Broken someone's heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Petted a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad and The Odyssey
135. Selected one important author who you missed in school, and read something they wrote
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone's life

53 out of 150. Meh. Could be better. I'll keep working on it.

Delayed gratification

2006-08-27T00:45:00.000-04:00

I made the people at the Chevy Chase Bank on Old Georgetown Road annoyed with me today.

You see, they have a fee-free change counting machine. Nowhere does it say that you have to be an account holder to use it. I'm not an account holder, and I used it. I used it to the tune of $492.84. (That's a hell of a lot of coins, by the way. About 6-8 years' worth of pocket change.)

I walked into the bank carrying an extremely heavy box full of mostly-wrapped coins, and asked if I could use the coin sorter. They asked me if I was a commercial account holder. I answered "no." They then told me that I had to feed the coins in slowly or it would jam. I was about two thirds of the way through my stash when someone asked if I was an account holder there. I answered honestly: "No. I used to be, though." Then I was informed that I would never be allowed to use the coin sorter again, or I was welcome to open an account with them.

I kept feeding the coins in (stopping at one point to let a teller come replace three of the collection bags under the machine). When I'd finished after about 45 minutes of feeding and sorting, I gathered up my stuff, including the receipt that would allow me to claim my $492.84. When I went over to the tellers (who were not in the slightest bit busy), they dutifully retrieved my cash, the whole time trying to convince me to open some sort of account. I repeated that I used to be a customer, adding that I switched when I was able to join a credit union. One of them finally conceded that it was impossible for them to beat a credit union's benefits. I did ask for information on their CDs to be polite, but I'll never do anything with it.

Now I need to figure out what to do with my newly paperized currency. I think I'll use it to buy books for my upcoming Design Methodologies class. The reading list (with shipping) comes to around $400, and the other $92.84 can be my walking-around cash for the next few weeks. Works for me, anyway.

Finished (for now)

2006-08-24T15:46:00.000-04:00

Success!

Today I finished my second quarter in pursuit of my MFA at SCAD. Last quarter was Web Design I and History of Graphic Design. This quarter was Graphic Design Studio II and Typography Studio I.

I will be enjoying my relative freedom for the next two and a half weeks, until I get shackled to the oars again with Design Methodologies and Contemporary Art. It's quite possible that during this time I will actually post to this here blog thing. Seriously.

Ewwww....

2006-08-17T16:57:00.000-04:00

Insert your own comment here: __________________________________.

The standards keep getting lower and lower...

2006-08-05T22:14:00.000-04:00

...while the maximum age for enlistment gets higher and higher.

The Army has raised its maximum age for enlistment twice in the last seven months. First, they raised it in February from 35 to just under 40. In June they raised it to just under 42.

Man, they're getting desperate. Although it makes sense if they expect to have an army large enough to take on Iran in the coming months, no?

You can read the whole USA Today story here.

Word of the day

2006-07-17T10:34:00.000-04:00

The Word of the Day for July 16 is:

hirsute \HER-soot\ adjective
1 : hairy
2 : covered with coarse stiff hairs

Did you know?
"Hirsute" has nearly the same spelling and exactly the same meaning as its Latin parent, "hirsutus." The word isn't quite one of a kind, though; it has four close relatives: "hirsutism" and "hirsuties," synonymous nouns naming a medical condition involving excessive hair growth; "hirsutal," an adjective meaning "of or relating to hair"; and "hirsutulous," a mostly botanical term meaning "slightly hairy" (as in "hirsutulous stems"). The last three are not especially common, but are entered in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged.

Problem-solving à la Zizou...

2006-07-12T14:32:00.000-04:00

Birthday in Norway

2006-06-26T23:10:00.000-04:00

I turned 38 while I was in Norway. To mark the occasion, AH and I went to the zoo. It's not a great zoo, but it was fun. AH's not exactly an animal lover, so it was good of her to humor me with this little excursion.

It was early in the season, so not all of the animals were out and about. Disappointingly, this included Harald the moose. I really want to see a moose someday. (Amusingly, moose are called elg in Norwegian, and a Norwegian idiom for vomiting is "calling the elg." Apparently moose calls and hurling sound fairly similar. Who knew?) One of the animals we did see was a lynx. It was really cool, because it came pretty much out of nowhere, making lynx-y growls and working its way out of the woods. He walked right under us, and made AH a little nervous.

The zoo is really aimed at kids, and there are several kid-oriented activities and areas available. One of the more well-known is Kardemommeby, based on a popular children's story. I've never read it, but AH told me all about it as we wandered through the abandoned village. There's also a small auto run so kids can drive themselves onto a ferry and be transported across the 15-foot Skagerrak to Denmark. They then drive into a simulated Sweden and cross the bride from Malmö to Copenhagen. It was really pretty cute.

The most popular attraction at the park, aside from the animals, would have to be Kaptein Sabeltann (Captain Sabertooth). He's the white-faced pirate guy shown at the top, and he's huge with the under-10 set. I saw lots of kids running around with plastic cutlasses.

After we got home from the zoo and cleaned a up a bit, AH and I went to Lillesand to get dinner at the Hotel Norge. Traditionally, Hotel Norge has really decent food—nothing too foo-foo—with even better cheesy potatoes (known in Norwegian as fløte gratinerte poteter). I absolutely love the cheesy potatoes Hotel Norge makes, so I was looking forward to this with more than a bit of anticipation.

It turned out that the Hotel Norge now has new owners (despite the what the website says), and they are trying to update things in the restaurant, including both the menu and the décor. The building was erected in the nineteenth century, and the restaurant decoration has always reflected this with lots of crown molding, chair rails, and a light-blue-and-white color scheme. The new owners are trying a bit too hard to modernize things, adding taupe table runners and frosted glass votive holders. Another thing they've done to modernize the restaurant is to take the fløte gratinerte poteter off the menu. I was unhappy, to say the least. The meal was still good, despite the substitution of almond potatoes. I still enjoyed sitting with AH and sharing my birthday with her in Norway, which is a first for us.

We finished dinner and decided to partake of a small post-prandial constitutional (aka a walk after dinner—I just never get to use the word "prandial" in regular conversation, and I'm sure there are those of you who would say that's a good thing). We walked toward the harbor, past another restaurant. There was a window open to the kitchen, where we saw a massive tray full of fløte gratinerte poteter. Agonizing.

On the way home we stopped by Ulvøysund to look at the water. It was a little chilly, so AH stayed in the car while I took a few photos. (I'm going to put more photos from this section over on my phlog, so check there in a few days.)

My friends in Norway were very good to me on my birthday. AH took me to the zoo. AH's mom got me some fishing lures and a book on Norwegian fish. AH's friends Grethe and Ivar also got me some fishing lures and a book on Norwegian fish, along with some Norwegian chocolate. Have I mentioned that these people rock?

"Remember to check the water temperature"

2006-06-26T10:20:00.000-04:00

Ah, the many creative uses of the die cut...

Are they still boys?

2006-06-26T09:53:00.000-04:00

I had no idea they were even still together...

I found this funny

2006-06-24T01:02:00.000-04:00

Your mileage may vary.

A quick update and my appreciation

2006-06-24T00:28:00.000-04:00

Thank you, dear readers, for returning time and again to my blog, even though there's been precious little in the way of content over the last few months.

As you may know if you've been playing along at home, this spring I started an MFA program in Graphic Design (you know it's important if it's capitalized). I finished my first quarter on June 1. This, combined with end-of-the-fiscal-year pressures at work, combined to stress me out to the point that I acquired a case of shingles. They're pretty much vanquished at this point, but they were a pretty fair indication that I needed a break. Thankfully I was due to head to Norway for two weeks of doing absolutely nothing. However, this trip was taken with more than a tinge of guilt, given that Merujo's brother died just before I left. I felt terrible that I wasn't going to be here for her, and I still feel bad about it. She's off visiting family now, hopefully decompressing a bit herself.

That's about it, really. Summer quarter has started, but I'll try to regale you with a few tales of Scandinavia over the next few weeks. I took some photos that might be of interest, so even if you can't be bothered to read the squiggles on the screen, at least you can look at the pretty color pictures.

In other events, it's time to root for Brazil out of hemispheric loyalty. It's what I always do once the United States is eliminated from the World Cup. On the other hand, there's a tiny bit of me that would like to see Ghana take it. It won't happen, but I wouldn't be upset if it did.

That's about it. Stay tuned for future updates, and again please accept my thanks for sticking with me despite my lack of postings over the past three months. You rawk, and you know it.

Dolbyfest Spring 2006

2006-06-20T22:38:00.000-04:00

~~Details coming soon. Dinner's in the microwave. Please stand by. Over.~~

OK. Finally.

The Dolby weekend was fantastic.

Gonzomantis came out from Minnesota, and he, Merujo, and I traipsed all over Maryland and Northern Virginia on our own incarnation of following the Grateful Dead. Except in this case we didn't bum any tempe patties from people in the parking lot, and we were mercifully spared any patchoulli odor.

We were comped at the first show by the man himself. Can't thank him enough for that. It was extremely cool being on a guest list. It was even cooler when we found out that we were the guest list.

Dolby stopped by our table to say hello prior to the show, which was very kind of him and very unexpected. The opening performer, Carey Ott, was quite listenable and ultimately very patient (after I plied him with questions after Monday's show). His set lasted half an hour. Our man took the stage after about fifteen minutes, and was kind enough to turn his head toward me during the first chorus of "Leipzig," for reasons which are fairly obvious if you know the song. I was a total dork and kind of lamely waved, because I was so stunned I couldn't think of what else to do at that particular moment. Even though I'd met him before (and he even bought me a drink at the Willard here in D.C. a few years ago), I must admit to being slightly starstruck at that moment. He's a flipping genius, and it's always a bit disconcerting (in a good way) when one of those types pays even the slightest bit of positive attention to you. I can't say that I'd like to be on the receiving end if he were angry. I have a feeling that the whole "passionate artist" thing would not be a good thing at that point. But I digress.

Our seats were right next to Johnny DeKam's video rig, so we could see some of what he was doing along with Dolby's music. Awesome stuff.

I suppose I should touch on some of the show's content. I won't gush because that's not really my style. However, there were a few moments that had quite an impact. First, the air raid sirens that opened the show and then segued into "Leipzig." Massive chills, and then increasing appreciation as the calls of mourning doves were brought into the mix as well. Second, the additional chords in the intro to "Flying North." I discussed this with resident tour groupie StevieD, and he agreed that there are certain chord progressions/structures that can have a deep resonance, a resonance that will provoke an unexpectedly emotional response. And although I'd heard the song a gazillion times before, the raw and open approach to "Budapest by Blimp" was unexpected (as was the song choice, frankly).

Sunday's show was just as great as the previous one. Our table was about 8 feet closer than Saturday's, which was good, as I couldn't really see the video screen on Saturday. (We opted out of ordering the house special for the evening: "Thomas Dolby Salmon." No joke. His tour manager brought him the listing from the menu and he reportedly just raised an eyebrow.)

Finally, and sadly, we arrived early at the Birchmere in Alexandria. Of the two venues, this was definitely better. Louder, too, to my delight. (Air raid sirens only work when they're turned up to 11, you know.) We sat with a few people from the
thomasdolby.com Forum, which was cool.

Even though I'd played fanboy in the past and had a few things signed by him, when I was clearing out some stuff at my mom's house I found this, and couldn't resist:

I felt a bit lost on Tuesday, as there was no Dolby gig to attend. However, Gonzomantis got to see one more show in St. Paul about week later. Lucky bastard. What makes him an even luckier bastard is that he got to hear "The Flat Earth" performed in its entirety, when the rest of us schlubs only got to hear the intro.

Although this is being posted fairly late in the game, thank you, Thomas, for a fantastic weekend. I'm looking forward to the tour DVD. Big time.

Does this make you feel safer?

2006-04-01T11:11:00.000-05:00

Ah, the TSA. On the job in Denver, keeping us safe from fragile, 83-year-old women. Good on them!

I have very little faith—just like the woman's daughter—that anything will
happen as a result of her letter. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some sort of retaliatory action on the part of TSA, frankly. They don't like it when you assert yourself or fly in the face of their aw-THOR-it-eye. If nothing else, I would like it if they would just come right out and tell me that I have to take my shoes off to go through the security checkpoint. Don't tell me it's optional. Don't hold out that little glimmer of hope that I can go through the metal detector with a shred of dignity. Just don't. Just tell me that I have to take off my shoes—not that it's "recommended."

You know, just because you took the screeners out of their blue blazers and put them in nifty maroon sweater vests doesn't make them any better than they were before. Actually, I'd argue that the public may be a little worse off, because now there's no market force regulating the behavior of the screeners. When they were a private entitity, you could complain to the airport, who in turn could put pressure on Wackenhut or whoever. Now, thanks to federalization, these people possess what is essentially carte blanche to push you around, yell at you, and make your life generally very difficult. The arbitrary nature of this agency is truly disturbing. There's no common sense, and very little adherence to stated policy (when that policy is openly stated, that is).

Sorry for the rant. I just hate seeing those individuals with no real power in their actual lives establish petty fiefdoms at work and then proceed to cause innocent people pain. I'm funny that way.

My airport encounter

2006-03-30T11:45:00.000-05:00

On my way home from Nebraska, while I was getting ready to clear security, I managed to say hello to this man:

For the three of you who don't know who he is, he is Mick Foley. My mom and sister were there with me, but neither of them noticed him until I said "Great book!" to him. My mom didn't know who he was, but my sister did. She was really excited to see him. She also seemed surprised that: a) I was so casual with him; and b) that he seemed just like a regular guy. If any of you have seen "Beyond the Mat," then you know that he pretty much is a regular guy. Except for one thing that separates him from the rest of humanity: he has a superhuman tolerance for pain. (For the faint of heart, you should be aware that the preceding link contains a photo that some might find disturbing.)

Celebrity sightings in Omaha are rare. It's not like DC, where you can pretty much find famous people most anywhere (although often they're only famous for DC, meaning they're huge here and unknown anywhere else). The only other famous people I can remember seeing in Omaha (wthout having paid to see them in some sort of performance) are Chuck Hagel, Ben Nelson and his hair, and Laura Dern. All of these happened at the airport. Hmmmm...

The only down side is no dorm room

2006-03-25T23:32:00.000-05:00

Finally, after many administrative hiccups, I am now a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I will be pursuing an MFA in Graphic Design. I will not be moving to Savannah, though. It is an online course, and if everything goes according to plan it should take 2.25-2.5 years. Woohoo!!!

Switches (or at least changes)

2006-03-22T23:11:00.000-05:00

This is a light switch in my mom's house. Not the house I talked about before, but the house where *she* grew up. This house was built in 1885 by her grandfather. His son took it over in 1933. My mom was born there in 1944. She effectively lost the house in 1962 when both her parents died within three months of each other. She was 17 and couldn't keep it. When I think about how she lost her childhood home, it puts my own situation in a bit of perspective. I'm still unhappy about losing it, but I know it could have happened under considerably worse circumstances.

NB—This switch makes the greatest "ka-CHUNK" sound when you push the buttons...

You kids get off my lawn!

2006-03-21T09:50:00.000-05:00

After five years of neighborly harassment, Charles Martin couldn't take it any more. He and his lawn had to defend themselves. So they (he, really) shot a kid. Hopefully that little upstart had the decency to collapse on the sidewalk and not on the fescue.

Just say no to spec work

2006-03-20T18:27:00.000-05:00

Occasionally people will ask me to design something for them, and that if they like what I've done, they'll hire me. This appalling practice is known as spec work, and it is a BAD THING. In the words of the No!Spec website, spec work "devalues the potential of design and ultimately does a disservice to the client." Amen to that. Usually what happens is the "client" (I use this term loosely, as to be a true client you would have to have actually hired me in the first place) takes a look at whatever you've created, tells you s/he doesn't like it, and then proceeds to steal your idea and use it as if it were his/hers in the first place.

Susan Kirkland has an excellent piece on why spec work is a BAD THING. Creative Latitude presents a cogent rationale as to why spec work is actually a bad idea. See also ad-rag.com and the response of a bunch of Canadian designers to a shoe company's "cattle call" for designers.

This isn't a completely coherent entry—I just wanted to vent a bit.

You think your job is bad?

2006-03-20T00:14:00.000-05:00

If you think things are bad at your current job, go take a look at Merujo's current post. You may start to count your blessings....

Check out my phlog!

2006-03-20T00:10:00.000-05:00

I have set up a photoblog over at http://sasquatchphlog.blogspot.com. There's not a lot there yet, but there will be. Enjoy!

Memories of Macalester

2006-03-16T18:06:00.000-05:00

A man ahead of his time

2006-03-16T17:59:00.000-05:00

Behold! The only sports award I ever received:

It's amazing, the things one finds when cleaning out one's mother's house. Just point me toward the Lido Deck...

Attention, people at Job X

2006-03-16T15:55:00.000-05:00

People at Job X: You made your bed, now lie in it.

Search all you want. The only thing you might get from me will be a sworn statement to the Inspector General of your institution that reaffirms that all Merujo did was to read me an article about a man in England. I may also comment on the extreme mental anguish that your so-called leadership caused. The rest of the situation was caused by your inability to listen, see logic, or do the right thing.

You caused a great deal of pain by both your actions and the distinct lack thereof.

You should be ashamed of yourselves. All of you.

Maybe you had to be there

2006-03-16T00:47:00.000-05:00

As you know, this past weekend I went back to Nebraska to help my mom get her house cleaned out so she can move into a condo. I have to do it again next week. (It's the same house--she just has lots of stuff.)

In the delirium of the constant digging out and deciding whether to throw something away, I happened upon a Muppet book I had enjoyed as a kid. There was a section devoted to Fozzie's jokes, and this one made me actually laugh out loud:

Q: Where did the flea take his girlfriend?
A: Upstairs to see his itchings.

*I* thought it was funny, anyway.

A rite of passage

2006-03-07T21:51:00.000-05:00

I'm going to Nebraska this weekend to help my mother clean out her house so she can move into a condo that will be much more comfortable for her. This house also happens to be the house where I grew up.

I'm not sure just how much I really want to delve into the ramifications of "no longer having a home" in such a public forum. Actually, I don't really want to at all. This space is for my own mental onanism, so I suppose I can say or not say whatever I feel like. I will say that the concept of "home" has always been one of great import to me. When I was a little kid, I would cry inconsolably at the thought that Dorothy might never get home again to Kansas. Even though I'd seen the movie before and I knew she would, the idea that she would be forever denied the possibility of seeing her home again was just too terrible for me to bear. I'll start crying during the trailer for "E.T." because all he wants to do is go home—even though I know he makes it. Not exactly the manliest behavior, I know.

I grew up in that house, and watched my father die in that house. I can show you where he used to pick up baby rabbits for me (until one peed on his hand, which put an end to the rabbit shows). I can show you where we drew our initials on the cement slab in the back yard. There's a great place in the back hallway where you can crouch behind a cupboard and scare the crap out of anyone walking toward the bedrooms. If you are in the front bathroom, remember that anyone in the back bathroom can hear you through the heat register, so try to do whatever you're doing quietly. I can show you the small basement storage room where I nearly passed out from paint fumes while building models. I can tell you how the living room used to be a breezeway, and that there was a six-foot square hole in the roof for a twenty-foot-tall pine tree to stick through. I can also tell you how my parents used to host lobster parties in that breezeway, and how much fun I had watching our schnauzer cautiously get to know the main course before it went into the pot. I can show you the stone in the hearth that looks like Nebraska. I can show you the doorknob where we've hung a Christmas ornament my mom made for me when she was a kindergarten room mother. I can show you the whiskey barrel planter where we would bury my sister's neon tetras when they invariably died.

Many of these things will still be there once the house is sold. But I will never get to see them again, because it won't be my house any more. I am really bad with the concept of "forever." For example, I will see something on TV and think "I should call Dad and tell him to check this out." But then I realize that I can't do that. He's been dead for ten years now. Yet the urge to call him has never faded. He's gone, and will be forever. My rational brain knows that, but it usually places a distant second to my emotional brain. How does this relate to the house? He always said he would only leave that house feet first. Well, he did.

Knowing that someone else will be living in "my" house as of April 15 is a concept that will take some getting used to.

I feel a little foolish now. I may take this post down tomorrow.

Plastic geekery redux and a pilgrimage

2006-02-26T01:05:00.000-05:00

So I convinced Merujo to come with me to Richmond on Saturday for the IPMS Old Dominion Open. She was a good sport last year, too. This year the event was held at the Richmond International Raceway, which was much better than previous years. There was a lot more space and it wasn't nearly as hot.

"Welcome to the raceway.
As a public service, the modelers are being kept out of sight..."

It was simultaneously inspirational and depressing. There was even a ten-year-old competing in the adult category with his Panzer IV. I've been doing this for nearly ten years and still wouldn't dare to enter any of my models in a contest. So, like I said, it was inspirational and depressing.

LVT from the Pacific theater. The detail on this was outstanding.

The Webelo's Panzer IV

I was able to find a few resource materials I'd been after for a while, as well as MiG Productions thinner and some resin British Mark II helmets (with liners). I also found a great Bersagliere figure to go with a planned Semovente M40-75 diorama.

A Soviet BT-5 light tank

A Sherman M4A1—note the excellent use of weathering powders

A Soviet KV-1 heavy tank

A BF-109 with an incredible natural metal finish (if you've ever tried to create a convincing natural metal finish, then you understand how good this one looks)

I love this hobby, because I usually only get to work in two dimensions. Combining a love of history, detail orientation, and surprisingly uncoordinated fingers, I'm able to do something I enjoy immensely. I get to do research, work with paint, and occasionally even finish a model (which, I'm given to understand, is fairly commonplace among modelers). Seeing a three-dimensional representation of history wrought by one's own hands is really pretty satisfying. The main drawback of building models, though, is actually *telling* people that I build models. The initial response tends to range from polite bemusement to outright disdain. I find I'm somewhat judicious in revealing this particular hobby to some people. Paintball tends to garner the same responses that modeling does, so I find that it's usually safest to stick with golf. On the plus side, I've never been called a barbarian for building models, which makes it slight different than paintball... (Atomic Editor, I know I still owe you a model; I haven't forgotten you.)

An SBD Dauntless. Merujo's uncle flew one of these in the Pacific

A herd of F3Fs

Up close and personal with an F3F. Check out that rigging!

All in all, the IPMS event was a great success. Merujo even ended up purchasing a Flight magazine from 1943 that was chock-full of all sorts of interesting articles, photographs, and advertisements. I'm sure she'll have her own recap of the day, so you should visit her blog and learn about women and the US Air Transport Command.

Once we left Richmond, we headed up I-95. We deviated from our course, however, and ended up following Stonewall Jackson Road to the Stonewall Jackson Shrine.

Can't beat free admission

The house where Stonewall Jackson died

Put succinctly, the National Park Service maintains the house where Stonewall Jackson died, and we went to see it. It was very simple and quite touching, really. The area is still very rural and quiet, and the house is open for touring. We saw the waiting room where his staff officers conferred, and the room where he died. The bed he used was there, and the clock put there by the house's owner is still there, keeping time just as it did in 1863. I found the clock's ticking to be very soothing, and it reminded me of sleeping in the living room at my great aunt's house in Iowa.

Stonewall Jackson' deathbed

The clock

We also went upstairs to see the room where Jackson's servant Jim Lewis slept, as well as the room where Jackson's aides-de-camp slept. Original pieces from the owners' house were there, along with dozens of ladybugs on the windowsill.

The window in the officers' quarters

"They talked about the high price of furniture and rugs/
And fire insurance for ladybugs"

The ranger working there knew absolutely everything there was to know. I got the impression that he would have wanted to be there whether or not there were people coming to visit.

Sasquatch gets artsy near the I-95 corridor

Merujo and I took a few more photographs, and then we hopped back in the car to finish our trek northward. The rest of the trip was uneventful, and we made excellent time. Now if I can just get back to the modeling table...

Images from the weekend

2006-02-13T21:43:00.000-05:00

Mongolian tsam mask

Snow dome

Awakening in the snow

Shutting the power down

2006-02-13T09:57:00.000-05:00

From today's Los Angeles Times:

Phil Brown, the veteran actor best known for his brief role as Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen in the 1977 hit film "Star Wars," died of pneumonia Thursday at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, said his wife, Ginny. He was 89.

Although he had worked in stage and film for more than 30 years, his availability to play Luke's protective guardian came through some unusual circumstances.

Brown had been blacklisted during the McCarthy period and had moved to London with his family in the early 1950s to continue his acting career. A longtime progressive, Brown always denied being a Communist.

In London, he found work on stage and in such films as "Tropic of Cancer" (1970) and "Twilight's Last Gleaming" (1977).

In the mid-1970s, George Lucas was filming interior scenes for "Star Wars" at a London sound stage and needed an actor with a strong American accent.

After getting the role, Brown spent a month or so in Tunisia filming fewer than a handful of scenes.

As Luke's uncle in "Star Wars," he is trying to give the teenager a normal childhood and keep him from knowing he has Jedi roots. But Uncle Owen and his wife Beru meet an early end at the hands of imperial storm troopers.

It was, Brown later told the Baltimore Sun, "a very small part by comparison to the roles I had previously played. To be quite frank, I never gave it a thought again."

The son of a doctor, Brown was born in Cambridge, Mass., graduated from Stanford University and was accepted in the Group Theatre in New York in 1938. His first job on Broadway was as a dancer in the play "Everywhere I Roam."

According to a biographical sketch on his website, Brown was also interested in humanitarian causes and became involved in campaigns to send medical supplies to loyalist Spain and help in Russian relief efforts.

Despite its critical success, the Group Theatre folded in 1941, and Brown moved to Los Angeles to seek work in film.

Along with other former Group Theatre members, he formed the Actor's Laboratory, which produced critically acclaimed works in Hollywood. At the theater, he directed plays by Arthur Miller, Nikolai Gogol and Arthur Laurent. In 1948, he moved to London and played opposite Helen Hayes in "The Glass Menagerie."

Returning to Hollywood in 1949, he found work as a director and two years later finished his first feature film, "The Harlem Globetrotters," starring Dorothy Dandridge and members of the famous basketball team.

But that promising start ended quickly with the Red scare and the government focus on some members of the Actor's Lab. Brown and his wife left for London and stayed for 40 years.

When he returned to California in the early 1990s, Brown discovered that his small role in "Star Wars" had made him a celebrity. He became a popular figure at science fiction conventions.

He is survived by his wife of 65 years; a son, Kevin, of Hawaii; two grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

A little trademark infringement, Scarecrow?

2006-02-04T12:47:00.000-05:00

While driving around the streets of L.A., we passed a Starbucks. At least, it *looked* like a Starbucks until you actually focused on the logo a bit more carefully:

I reckon the Cleaning Baron may get a cease-and-desist letter from some attorneys in Seattle one of these days. Maybe not, but I think they would have a fairly strong case. I just hope the Baron didn't pay his logo designer all that much. He'll need the rest of the money for legal fees.

L.A. Story, Part II

2006-02-04T00:22:00.000-05:00

Saturday

Coming off the high that was the Dolby gig, we were set to meet Javi for brunch at the crack of 1000. Apparently this is quite early in L.A. time. No matter—we were working on Central and Eastern Time, so our internal clocks had no problem making it up. Our bodies, on the other hand, may have differed with us at the time, considering how late we were up the night before.

Javi et alii

We met Javi at the King's Road Café on Beverly. The orange juice may well have been the best I've ever had in my life. I just had to get that out.

Javi's a great (and surprisingly normal) guy, and regaled us with many tales of his adventures in Hollywood and Marshalltown, Iowa. He was even kind enough to present me with Volume 1 of his comic (or should I say graphic novel?) "The Middleman". Great story with dynamic artwork. I'm a big fan of grayscale halftones, and Javi's illustrator and co-conspirator Les McClaine has a thing for them, which really works for me. On top of the stories and the comics, he had the audacity to buy us breakfast. Of course, he allowed us our "requisite five seconds of protest," but he was not to be denied.

Javi returned to his regular life, and we headed for the La Brea Tar Pits. I'd only seen them from a distance back in the early 90s when I had come to L.A. in a fruitless attempt to join the Foreign Service. We decided to visit the museum adjoining the tar pits, and were pleased to find out that Gonzomantis has prehistoric ancestors:

Check out the chins!

As we have a history of doing so, it was necessary that Gonzo and I (and this time, Merujo, too) compare our heights to whatever animals are being displayed in the museum. This time, it was bears:

Da bears

According to the guide shown above, Gonzo is slightly shorter and I'm slightly taller than a short-faced bear, and Merujo is the same height as a polar bear. Who knew?

Probably not Gonzomantis' ancestors

We then toured the grounds of the museum, and ended up sitting outside in the sun, soaking up as much Vitamin D as possible. It was 68F, with a decent AQI and without a cloud in the sky. A rather welcome change from the 22F we dealt with prior to leaving DC. I flopped onto the lawn and just exulted for a little while. I was reminded of going to school in Minnesota and that feeling I got when it was finally warm enough to go outside without a coat. Unbeatable, really.

Sloth hug!

We then headed for the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Three people (who don't know each other) recommended this museum, so we had to check it out. Maybe I'm just a Philistine, but I just didn't get it. Merujo and I thought that it might just be an elaborate piece of performance art, or possibly a colossal practical joke on par with Barnum's "This Way to the Egress." I suppose there's also the possibility that the idea is that anything can be put on formal display and be considered worthy in one way or another. We weren't alone in being baffled, though. A guy sat next to Merujo at one point and flat out asked "Do you know what this is supposed to be?" Perhaps I'm not sufficiently intellectually evolved to grasp the concept being presented, but I feel like I was being duped. Who knows? Perhaps if any of you have been there and understand it, you can enlighten me.

After we spent an hour being puzzled, we went to Venice Beach, which was much more readily understood by all. I hadn't seen the Pacific since grad school, so it was great standing on the shore smelling the sea air and listening to the waves rolling in.

They grow them tall on the West Coast

Merujo on the pier, either before or after some guy offered her vodka

Geeks on the beach

The sun was setting, and it was lovely. We never heard it sizzle, though. We left Venice Beach and headed north on the PCH toward Sunset. Then it was a right turn and a pleasant if somewhat curvy drive through the hills to our hotel.

Sasquatch by taillight

After a brief rest at the hotel, it was time for food. Mexican food. Good Mexican food. Merujo's friend AJ had recommended El Coyote on Beverly. From the look of the crowd, AJ had recommended El Coyote to everyone west of the Mississippi. We were not in the mood for a 45-minute wait, so we ended up going to Acapulco. It may be a local chain in L.A., but the service was great and the food was plentiful and not cost-prohibitive. Gonzomantis had a margarita that was big enough to swim in. He also bought us dinner, which was very kind of him.

A margarita with an undertow

After dinner, we decided to visit the Griffith Park Observatory to take in the quintessential L.A. skyline view. We were denied, however. The observatory has been under renovation for nearly two years now. So instead of taking in the view from above, we just cruised around Hollywood for a while. Then the tired grown-ups in us took over, and we called it a night.

Sunday

Once more into the fray

Sunday morning we were off to drop Gonzomantis at LAX. Of course, we took full advantage of the breakfast bar before we left. I managed two muffins, two glasses of orange juice, and a banana within about six minutes. Thankfully I was alone as I stuffed my face.

After throwing him out to see how far he'd roll, we jumped on the 405 and zipped to Long Beach. There was no traffic to speak of, and we returned our rental car, checked in for our flight, and cleared security in no time flat. It could have gone better, perhaps, but I'm hard pressed to figure out quite how.

Real life reared its ugly heard shortly after we arrived back at Dulles. In our haste to get to the parking shuttle on Friday morning, I had only remembered to write down the lot section number, not the color. I recalled that we were in the Gold Lot, and Merujo thought we were in the Green Lot. After an extremely uncomfortable (and rude) shuttle ride to a parking lot stop we didn't recognize, we hopped out. Of course, it didn't help that the driver insisted that we were in the right place when clearly we weren't. So we walked through the Green Lot, looking for section 23C. As it turned out, we were actually parked in the Gold Lot. Thankfully it was a relatively short walk to the other section. After a quick stop at Wendy's for some protein, we went home.

It was a fantastic trip, and I'm glad we did it. We got to see the Dolby perform, we met a really cool guy, and got to soak up some sun and stare at the ocean for a while. You can't beat that with a stick.
———————
NB—I wish I could have made the end bits of the trip more interesting for you, but it was pretty straightforward and blissfully uneventful (except for the great Gold vs. Green controversy).

Dash it all

2006-02-02T18:59:00.000-05:00

OK, native speakers of Spanish. Now's your chance to shine (and help me win a bet).

I do a lot of work with typography, and one of my recent projects was in Spanish. I had to use hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes throughout. However, when I asked the author what these particular typographical elements were called in Spanish, only one word came up: guion.

After some research (and much insistence on my part), I found that the hyphen is called guion, and an em dash is called either raya or guion largo.

I maintain that there has to exist a word in Spanish to account for the en dash, even though they're not used in Spanish. The whole point of the en dash (in English, anyway) is to denote range (for example, "1000–1500 patients"). The only thing I've been able to find is "guion de la anchura de una letra 'n'," and that's just not cutting it for me. This may be enough to win my bet, but I'd really like it if a specific term (and not just a description) existed in Spanish.

If it's any help/interest to you, I had a slight rant on the topic of the various dashes back when I first started blogging. Enjoy.

Ayúdenme aquí, por favor, o me voy a morir de la vergüenza...

L.A. Story, Part I

2006-01-31T00:25:00.000-05:00

I went to graduate school in California, and hadn't been back for nearly 14 years. All of that changed last Friday.

Merujo and I went to L.A. for the weekend. If we lived in Reno, that might sound like a perfectly normal thing to do. Spending a weekend in L.A. when you live in Maryland is another story. Covering 6,000 miles in 48 hours had never really sounded all that appealing before. However, I was sufficiently motivated by the prospect of seeing Thomas Dolby play live in L.A. Coupled with a screaming deal on JetBlue and excellent company (Merujo and Gonzomantis), there was no way I could pass it up. (Her version of the tale appears here.)

Friday

I got about 3 hours' sleep, and then I was up to face the trek to Dulles. Merujo was due at my apartment at 0500. I was her wake-up call, so I knew I would definitely be up and about on time. Our flight was leaving at 0720, which meant we had to be at the airport around 0530. Thankfully there isn't much Beltway traffic at that time.

The ride into the airport from the economy parking lot was enlivened by a woman on the shuttle who was applying pressure to a profusely bleeding head wound. She wasn't screaming in pain, and she wasn't passing out, so I figured she'd live. I was so tired I didn't really care.

Once we got checked in and cleared security, it was off to Mordor (otherwise known as "Walking to Concourse B"). When I remarked to the TSA guy that this was the quickest I'd ever gone through security, he said that between 0900 and 1100, you could fire a shotgun at the security checkpoint and not hit anyone. I thought it was a curious choice of image, considering his job. Maybe that's just me...

We schlepped our carcasses onto the plane (an Airbus 320), where we'd both intended to catch up on our lost sleep. Fat chance. Oodles of channels of DirecTV and an MP3 player made that a lost cause.

After 5+ hours of winging our way across the country, we arrived at Long Beach. The airport there is decidedly old school, and smells like it. While I made a brief pit stop in the also decidedly old school men's room (think grade school of 1950s vintage), Merujo saw a guy from Project Runway. It figures that she would have the first celebrity (or quasi-celebrity) sighting. She's that way.

Cool, no?

We picked up our rental car (an awesome Chevy Impala) and then headed north to LAX, where we were to fetch the lovely and talented Gonzomantis. On the way, we passed the Goodyear blimp. It was on the ground, which is the first time I'd ever seen it that way. Also, I got to experience road cookies again, which made my day. If you live in a climate where snowplowing is a regular occurrence, then you don't have road cookies. In California, though, they're everywhere.

What's orange and sleeps four? A CalTrans truck

Gonzomantis' plane was about 45 minutes behind schedule (due to technical difficulties in Minneapolis), so Merujo and I sacked out in a parking garage while we waited for him. In this case "sacked out" should be read to mean that we chatted and ate Hershey's bits and listened to music. I had left G a message on his cell phone that told him where we were, and he eventually made his way to us. (Part of me wants to say that "there was great rejoicing," but that would be cheesy.)

La Cienega, our salvation

Due to regular traffic on the 405 (note the proper Californian usage there—it's not simply "405," but rather "the 405"), we bailed out onto La Cienega ("The Swamp") for a much more interesting drive (and one that was actually moving) to our hotel on Sunset. On the whole, navigating through L.A. was very straightforward. Normally I tend to get rather tense when driving in unfamiliar territory, but that was not the case in California. Again, maybe I was just too tired to care at that point.

Thankfully I'd just had my aura cleansed and my chakra ballanced [sic] before I left Washington

We made it to our hotel at bit early, but no matter—we went for Uzbek food. Uzbeks may be the weak link in the Communist chain, and quite possibly you shouldn't give them money or matches, but they make a mean plov.

Once we got checked in, I was looking forward to an hour's nap. However, I was dismayed to find that a bottle of Lectric Shave had exploded in my suitcase, rendering a good portion of my clothing unwearable—unless I wanted to reek of "soothing green tea complex" the entire trip. So I ended up washing a good portion of my clothes in the sink and shower, eating up 45 minutes of my nap time. After 15 minutes of power dozing, it was time to head down the Strip to the House of Blues for dinner.

After taking a risk with the HoB jambalaya, M, G, and I made our way to the "pass-the-line" line. If you have dinner at the HoB, you can get into a line ahead of the regular line, and you get into the main room first. We were the second group in line. While we waited, we could hear Thomas making final adjustments. When the doors opened we ended up right in front, slightly to stage left. It was the first time I'd ever been in the front row for anything, and it was fantastic. What wasn't so fantastic was the gig hadn't sold out, so the HoB was trying to milk as much drinks revenue as possible out of its captive audience by delaying the show start by an hour. Dolby hit the stage at 2130, fully an hour behind schedule. I don't really know what I was expecting, but I was thrilled to be there for it.

Dolby's set consisted of:

Leipzig
I Live In A Suitcase
Flying North
Europa and the Pirate Twins
Science
Hyperactive (his ~~purportedly~~ ad libbed encore)*

The man

While I'm not a huge fan of "Science," I did appreciate his intro: "Now I'd like to play you a medley of my hit." Classic. I would gush a bit more, but suffice it to say that the entire trip was worth it to hear him play the six songs he played.

The headliner was Dramarama, and the English Beat were supporting. However, the next band to play was Dramarama, much to our dismay. (Headliners should go last. It's a fact.) Dramarama sucked, and sucked hard. It was bad enough that the ambient music prior to and in between bands was loud enough to require earplugs, but I regretted that I was going to be wasting my hearing on these yahoos. They had their fans—several people nearby knew every word to every song. Fair enough. However, conventional wisdom has it that the headliner plays last, which was exactly what I wanted. Dolby, *then* the Beat. We survived the Dramarama experience, although this meant that the Beat weren't going to take the stage until well after midnight. We listened for a while, managing to hear "Mirror in the Bathroom," "I Confess," and "Rough Rider." Good stuff. But the fatigue finally began to take its toll, and we ended up leaving before the set ended. Those who soldiered on and heard the end of the show reported that Dolby came out to play "New Toy" with the Beat. It's not my favorite song, so I don't feel like we missed out on all that much.

To be continued with Saturday: Brunch with Javi; Into the Pit-t-t-t-t-t; An Hour (and $5) I Want Back; The Western Sea; A Margarita With A Lifeguard; and An Observatory Unobserved...

——————
* I have been informed by the man himself that the encore was indeed built on the fly, and that the word "purportedly" should be stricken from the record. Consider it done. I was hoping that it was built on the spot, as it made it all the more impressive.

The Western Sea (or, An L.A. story with details to follow soon)

2006-01-30T16:30:00.000-05:00

Don't call us, we'll call you

2006-01-25T16:33:00.000-05:00

This Friday, Merujo and I are off to West Hollywood (known as WeHo, if you're a local, apparently). Merujo, being the logistics goddess she is, scored us a fantastic deal on airfare, so we are going to make a 48-hour visit to California. After we land at Long Beach, we'll pick up friend Gonzomantis at LAX, and then we're going to see Thomas Dolby and the English Beat play the House of Blues on the Strip. There should be lots of photos (but not from the HoB—they're Nazis about pix in the club), some of which may end up posted here. Stay tuned...

Images from Norway

2006-01-22T00:44:00.000-05:00

The view from my bedroom window

Lista fyr

Lista

Sasquatch gets artsy I

Sasquatch gets artsy II

Sasquatch gets artsy III

The utility of English

2006-01-17T16:15:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I was sitting in the Hvileområde (Quiet Waiting Area) of the Copenhagen airport. While I was sitting there, a couple in their 60s came in and sat down in the comfy chairs. After about five minutes, a man a few seats down from them began chatting into his cell phone. The man in the couple said loudly "Turn it off!" (This is one of the few areas in the Danish airport where cell phone use is forbidden.) "Turn it off!" he said again, this time with a bit more volume. No go. So he got up and walked over to the chatting man, and snapped his fingers in his face. "TURN IT OFF! YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO USE THOSE HERE!" Then the gentlemen had a few words with each other, although I couldn't make out exactly what they said. When the initial annoyed man returned to his seat, he turned toward Cell Phone Guy and said, quite clearly, "GO F**K YOURSELF!" The offender replied equally snippily with "I DIDN'T KNOW, STUPID."

Isn't that simply beautiful? Two people—total strangers, in fact—making themselves understood to one another. English is such a useful language.

Fear not

2006-01-14T13:36:00.000-05:00

For the 4.5 of you who actually check here periodically, rest assured that some new content will be forthcoming in the very near future. I've been enjoying the weather in Northern Europe for the past few weeks, and will share a few photos and regale you with tales upon my return to the homeland. All is not lost.

No, really, I'm American

2005-12-09T22:12:00.000-05:00

There's a discussion I've had from time to time. It goes something like:

Interlocutor: "What nationality are you?"

Sasquatch: "I'm American."

Interlocutor: "Well, I'm Mexican, which means I'm American, too. You should call yourself 'a United States citizen.'"

Sasquatch: "Well, I'm from the United States of America, so I'm American. The official name of Mexico is Los Estados Unidos de México, but you don't seem to have a problem with calling yourselves Mexican. So why shouldn't I be allowed to call myself American for my nationality. What gives?"

The conversation then devolves into an "am too/are not" and ultimately goes nowhere. In Spanish, the descriptor for someone from the United States is estadounidense, essentially "unitedstatesian." If someone is from the United States of Mexico, then why isn't he/she estadounidense as well?

If you're native Spanish speaker who can shed some light on this seeming inconsistency in the application of estadounidense, I'd love to learn more about it. If you don't speak Spanish and have a theory that might hold some water, I'd love to hear that, too.

Don't let this happen to you

2005-12-06T15:34:00.000-05:00

Rocky and the Art Museum (Part III of Sasquatch's Southwestern Sojourn)

2005-12-04T12:45:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, I went with RM and Mrs. RM for a horseback riding lesson. Those of you who know me can stop snickering already. This wasn't a typical trail ride situation, where they basically stick you on a horse and send you down a path the horse has traveled a million times. This was an honest-to-god, start from scratch lesson.

RM rides Western style, and Mrs. RM rides English style. Considering that the saddle is much larger in the Western style, I chose it because I figured I would need all the help I could get to stay on the horse.

I'm scared to death of horses, so I was looking at this morning's activities as a challenge that needed surmounting. (Get it? Horses? Surmounting?) I figure that any animal that can look me in the eye without any effort is an animal worth a bit of respect (or fear, in my case).

Aside from knowing that I feared them, I knew really nothing much else about horses, so this was turning out to be quite an adventure. First, we retrieved my horse from his paddock. His name is Rocky, and he's 22 years old. This is a good thing, because I needed a horse who would be compliant and not up for any sort of mischief. We (the trainer and I) led Rocky from the paddock to the prep area (if there's a technical name for this part of the stable, please let me know). Once we got him attached to the fence in the prep area, I had to slide my hand down his legs and use a hoof pick on his feet. This is to make sure there are no rocks stuck between the shoe and foot, and also to check the status of the hoof. Next, I had to brush him with a curry comb, and then with the body and face brush. I brushed this horse for nearly half an hour, and he still had dust coming out of his coat. I think he manufactured it, frankly.

Once he was brushed, it was time for the application of the saddle. RM had an extra, so he was kind enough to let me use it. I put on the saddle blanket, the pad, and the saddle. I'm not all that mighty, but the stable owner seemed a bit impressed that I could just hoist the saddle up and over the horse in one smooth motion. Good for me. I got it in the right position, just behind the withers.

Then it was time to apply the bridle, which I wasn't about to attempt. I asked the stable owner to help me with this, because I didn't fancy putting my hand very close to the horse's mouth. Also, he had lots of green foamy stuff all around his lips, which made him look like Nort the Weedeater. Creepy. Once he was bridled, we walked over to the ring where the exciting stuff would take place. Not to sound horribly negative, but I think one of the worst parts of the entire experience was just walking the horse from place to place. His head was right next to mine, and it made me really uncomfortable. He was pretty low-key about the whole thing, though, so the transit occurred without incident.

I made it on top of the saddle, and just sat there for a few moments, just taking in the view and the realization that I (more or less) had gotten this animal ready to do this, and that I was actually doing this. Up to this point, I have failed to mention that it was only about 35F outside, so everything we did was COLD. Riding a horse in this weather just makes you colder, unless you're the horse. RM and Mrs. RM did their thing, while I was given basic instructions by the stable owner.

RM looks a little chilly, no?

My heels are down, just like they're supposed to be...

I was instructed how to hold the reins, and not to put my other hand on the saddle horn. I did the "click-click" thing with my tongue and squeezed my legs together, and we started moving. This was so cool. We walked around the perimeter of the ring a couple of times, and then I was told we should trot. Trotting, in theory, sounds wonderful. In practice it's something completely different. Because I don't know how to post (that is, stand in the stirrups and bounce gracefully with the rhythm of the horse), I just caromed off the saddle repeatedly. My theory is that you start riding at 6'2" and end up at 5'8" after your spine compresses from trotting.

We trotted around the ring, and then made circles at a trot. Rocky was a bit lazy—after we would take a corner at a trot he would automatically slow down to a walk. While my spine appreciated it, it didn't make the whole "you're supposed to slow down when I tell you to slow down" part of the relationship work. So I would click again and squeeze again and we'd commence trotting again.

The coolest thing for me (and I'm so simple-minded that this was cool for me) was the overback maneuver. Essentially, you're sitting there on your horse, but you want the horse to face the other direction. Simply by pushing in with the outside knee and just laying (not pulling on) the reins on the outside of the horse's neck, the horse will turn 180 degrees and stay put. Also, you have to turn your head in the direction you want the animal to turn, because although it doesn't look like it, horses can see pretty far behind them. The head turning is the visual cue they need to complete the maneuver. I did this overback thing probably 20 times or so, just because I was amazed that a knee and a skinny piece of leather could make a half-ton animal do what I wanted him to do.

I'm an old cowhand...

After about 90 minutes of being amazed and spinally compressed, the lesson was over. I walked Rocky back over to the prep area, where I unsaddled him and then brushed him again. I helped take his bridle off, because that's something he actually *wanted* me to do, so he didn't fight it at all. I gave him a carrot and then took him back to his stall. I was freezing, and covered in dust, but it was fantastic. I just hoped that my four-times-over great-grandfather, who was in the 4th Iowa Cavalry in the Civil War, was even slightly proud of me.

Never would I have thought that I would be able to pull this off.

From the stable, we went for coffee (highly necessary after two hours outside), and then to the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History. We saw a great temporary exhibit ("Prelude to Spanish Modernism: Fortuny to Picasso"), to which RM was able to add great value and insight, as he is quite the accomplished painter himself. The history of Albuquerque is also presented, and there are lots of artifacts from the conquistadors. Absolutely fascinating. We took in a quick (and cold and windy) tour of Old Town Albuquerque, and then went for dinner and one more round of Scrabble. I'm pleased to say that I won the last game.

This little guy is in front of the museum.
He looks so happy for someone who's going to be dinner shortly...

The next day I was at the airport at 6:00 a.m., saying goodbye to RM. It went very quickly, and it was great to see him and meet his wife. Hopefully it won't be another six years before we get together again.

El Morro and the Zuni Reservation (Part II of Sasquatch's Southwestern Sojourn)

2005-12-02T22:38:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, I was up before the dawn (just like in the Supertramp song). The Colonel gave me a ride to RM's house, where Mrs. RM was making blueberry pancakes from scratch. Fantastic pancakes. Did I mention that Mrs. RM cooks really, really well?

Sufficiently stuffed, RM and I then hit the road for El Morro, also known as Inscription Rock. It's about a two-hour drive there from Albuquerque. We had a supply of water and roasted piñon nuts to keep us from starving. Piñon nuts are pine nuts, but they're not the same ones that you'd find in commercially-available pesto. Because this particular breed of pine nuts isn't commercially available, there's a cottage industry built around them. They have to fall from a piñon tree and be harvested off the ground—it's a fairly labor-intensive task as I understand it. Before I had one, I asked RM what they tasted like. He said the most accurate description he could come up with was "creamy." As usual, he was right. You eat them with the shell on and they're really good, even if you still have tiny bits of shell floating around your mouth 20 minutes after you've finished. According to a few sources, you can make a really good pesto out of these if you're willing to put in some effort...

On the road to El Morro

El Morro is a National Park Service site. It's 200 feet tall and made mainly of sandstone. There's a waterhole at the bottom of it, which made it a popular stopping point for travelers. Starting in the late 1500s, the Spanish—and later Americans—passed by El Morro. Many of these travelers would carve their names into the soft rock at the base of the bluff. Well ahead of them, the inhabitants carved various petroglyphs. Don Juan de Oñate, the first Spanish governor of New Mexico, made the first European carving, saying "Passed by here the Governor Don Juan de Oñate, from the discovery of the Sea of the South on the 16th of April 1605." Depending on whom you believe, he either made it or didn't, and may have been hedging a bit by making this grand pronouncement in the rock.

Oñate's CYA inscription.
Note the care he took to avoid carving over the petroglyph...

El Morro from the back side.
That thing looks like it's going to fall off, but the Park Service is keeping a careful eye on it.

After a two-mile hike to the top, RM and I saw the box canyon formed by the bluff (I kept thinking of Roland and the thinny from Book IV of the "Dark Tower" series), as well as the ruins of an 875-room pueblo. The view from the top of El Morro is fantastic, even when the weather isn't cooperating (we were freezing). Once we hiked back down, I bought a copy of "The Pueblo Revolt."

The view from the top of El Morro

A few of the 875 rooms

The intrepid explorers having summited El Morro

We had a quick lunch of apples, piñon, and Mrs. RM's ginger snaps, and then headed off for Zuni. The Zuni Indians* are one of the Pueblo peoples, with about 6,000 population. This was the first time I'd ever been to a reservation before, excepting a brief pass-through in South Dakota when I was 14. I didn't really know what to expect—it was quite an eye-opener. The land surrounding the pueblo is beautiful, especially the principal mesa just outside of town. It's considered sacred, and RM told me I shouldn't photograph it. No problem. I was there to be educated, not to offend anyone. (I found out later that a photo permit is available for purchase. Apparently a bit of commerce will mitigate any offense that might be taken, at least regarding the natural splendor. You still aren't allowed to photograph anything that deals with ritual, and that makes perfect sense to me.) The thing that was most striking to me was the poverty that seemed to prevail throughout the pueblo. I've done a little research, and found that around 43% of the Zuni live below the poverty line. We stopped in at the Zuni Visitor Center to look at the various fetishes and silverwork. Once we got back to the car, a guy in his mid-20s came up to my side and asked us for money. We gave him around $5 or so, but it made me uncomfortable—not the guy himself, as he didn't seem threatening—that it was somewhat de rigeur to hit up the tourists for cash like that. I asked RM about it, and he said that he didn't really mind it, considering the hospitality he'd been shown by the Zuni when he was there for the Shalako Ceremony last year.

The Shalako Ceremony is the most important event of the year for the Zuni. The Shalako are the gods' messengers, and run back and forth all year long with messages, as well as bringing moisture and rain when needed. When they leave, the carry the Zunis' prayers for rain. As I didn't see the Shalako Ceremony, I can't really do it any justice. If you can ignore the cartoon at the top of this page, the text below will outline the ceremony for you. RM and Mrs. RM have been invited back this year—they'll be there this weekend, in fact. I'm looking forward to hearing about it.

From the Zuni reservation, we went to the Navajo reservation to visit the parents of one of RM's friends. They weren't home, so we headed north to Gallup, which is along old Route 66. We stopped for gas, and visited one of the myriad Indian artwork/jewelry stores there. Some of the pottery is absolutely amazing, but I have a real thing (not a good one) about the texture of unglazed pottery, so I probably couldn't have most of it in my home. After being subjected to a bit of the hard sell by the woman working there, RM and I made our way east on I-40 through a torrential downpour. I was glad he was driving.

Again, there was much Scrabble played once we got home, and again, I lost. Grrrrr....

The final installment of my New Mexican adventure will appear shortly

* Before you take me to task regarding the use of "Indian" rather than "Native American," I am using the same rationale used by Fergus M. Bordewich in his book Killing the White Man's Indian. On pages 19–20, he says that

...the more formal "Native American" feels strained and unsatisfactory, and implies that other people born in the United States are somehow less "native" than, say, a Yaqui immigrant from Mexico or than someone who may be only one-thirty-second Cherokee by measure of "blood quantum" but who nonetheless meets the criteria for membership in that tribe. "Indian" has the virtue of clarity; it remains by far the most commonly used term among natives themselves and the established form for organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians, the radical American Indian Movement, and the new National Museum of the American Indian, for such agencies as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Services, and as part of the official name of most modern tribes.

Thanksgiving in New Mexico and a visit to Quarai (Part I of Sasquatch's Southwestern Sojourn)

2005-11-30T22:26:00.000-05:00

I arrived in New Mexico on Wednesday afternoon. The first thing you notice about Albuquerque is that the airport is covered in stucco. I don't think airports should try to look rustic. However, I was not there to gawk at the airport, so it wasn't a big deal. A bit weird, but not a big deal.

I saw a great T-shirt while I was waiting for my ride: a photo of a bunch of Apache (I think), with the text "Homeland Security—fighting terrorism since 1492." *I* thought it was funny, anyway.

Renaissance Man (RM) and his wife, Mrs. RM, picked me up and spirited me off to their house in southeastern Albuquerque. Lovely little house, built in the late 1890s for railroad workers. Mrs. RM has filled it with antiques—they're really quite nice. She's also filled it with four cats, which are not as nice, only because they are cats. (I'm a dog guy, despite having been ripped apart by one when I was seven—more on that in another post.)

RM and I drove north for a walk along the Rio Grande, where we saw sandhill cranes, a great horned owl, and blue heron. We only found the owl after it started hooting in the near-total darkness. RM moved into the tree cover to find it, and, although I didn't see this happen, it flew right in front of my face. We saw it on a branch where it made a really cool silhouette. We then returned to the house. After a lovely dinner, RM's dad, the Colonel, drove me up to his house in Corrales, where I was to sleep for the duration of the trip.

The view from my bedroom window—those are the Sandia Mountains

The next day, I woke up with a split top lip. I didn't think anything of it until it happened three mornings in a row. Then I found out that the humidity in Albuquerque is something like 3%, which could have something to do with the lip cracking. I was totally Carmex-dependent from then on.

Thanksgiving was nice and understated. I played nine holes of golf with The Colonel, who ended up beating me by six or seven strokes. Mrs. RM, who is a vegetarian, was kind enough to cook a turkey for the three human and four furry carnivores at the table. Along with a salad and dumplings made from her grandmother's recipe, she also baked an incredible apple pie from scratch. The apples were nice and tart—outstanding. Muchos kudos to you, Mrs. RM!

On Friday, RM and I headed out to the ruins of Quarai, east of Albuquerque. We went through all sorts of terrain within a relatively short amount of time: scrub plain, light forest, and mountains. According to RM, New Mexico contains 7 of the 8 different types of biome found in North America. The only thing it doesn't have is a rain forest (there's one in Washington State). We drove through Chililí, which is one of several land grants found throughout New Mexico. Thanks to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which officially ended the Mexican War and established New Mexico as part of the United States, "property of every kind now belonging to Mexicans now established there shall be inviolably respected." What this means is that you see a sign that says "Chilili Land Grant" before you drive through the town. There's a sign in the town that states that photography is not permitted anywhere in the town. There's not a lot there that you'd want to photograph, really. You can see for yourself here.

We got to Quarai and parked the car. When we got out, RM said, "What do you hear?" After giving it some thought, I replied, "Nothing." "Exactly," he said knowingly. It was a welcome change from the ever-present ambient noise of my neighborhood. Although it sounds like a cliché, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Anywhere. It was a brilliant blue and went on forever.

We headed for the National Park Service Visitor Center, where a woman had just gone in with her dog. The people running the center told her she couldn't bring the dog in with her. As she left in a huff, she informed the dog that "maybe we weren't appreciated by everyone." After getting a brief overview in the Visitor Center, we picked up a guide and started out for the ruins. According to the plaque at the entrance to the chapel, the stones are "brooding." That's debatable. They were brick red—and ruined—but not all that brooding.

The supposedly brooding stones at the chapel entrance

RM played tour guide, reading aloud the descriptions for each section of the chapel. The tour was pretty straightforward until we got to the sign discussing the Inquisition. Yup, *that* Inquisition. I never really thought about it happening on the American continent, but I was wrong. (Go ahead, say it: No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Feel better now?) Indians were not subject to the Inquisition, but they were often called to testify. If there was enough evidence to proceed against someone, that individual was bound and sent to Mexico City for trial.

Sullen, maybe, but not very brooding. Was I right about the sky or what?

On our way back to Albuquerque, we stopped at an antique store. Fortunately for me, there was a TV with the Nebraska-Colorado game on. Neither the Colonel nor the RMs have TVs in their houses, and I was dying for a little Thanksgiving weekend football. Nebraska was winning, 20-3, and went on to win 30-3. I love seeing Coloradans being depressed (my down-the-hall neighbor excepted, of course).

The evening was capped by a rousing round of Scrabble. I had indulged in some pre-trip Scrabble smacktalk, and was made to eat what was not to be the first helping of Scrabble crow of the trip.

More on the remaining days of the trip to follow shortly...

Off to the Land of Enchantment

2005-11-22T01:07:00.000-05:00

For those of you interested in this sort of thing, I will be heading off to New Mexico on Wednesday to celebrate el Día del Pavo. My host tells me that we will be involved in something horse-oriented, so that should make for good stories upon my return. Wish me luck. I'll try to take some decent photos, too.

Mmmmmmm.....mesas.....

The Stone at Tel Zayit

2005-11-09T10:35:00.000-05:00

According to the New York Times, this past July archaeologists found a stone embedded in a wall at Tel Zayit, Israel, that contains the earliest known specimen of the Hebrew alphabet. According to the lead archaeologist, "all successive alphabets in the ancient world, including the Greek one, derive from this ancestor at Tel Zayit." One of the more interesting bits is that the alphabet had the power to ward off evil. I knew it...

No, I'm all right. Aaaarrgh!

2005-10-29T20:03:00.000-04:00

William Hootkins passed away last weekend. RIP, Lieutenant Porkins.

MirrorMask

2005-10-27T00:56:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I posted. Sue me.

This evening Merujo and I went to see "MirrorMask." Big mistake. Not the hanging out with Merujo, but rather the movie.

I don't know how it ended, as we ended up walking out of it. If you want to hear the instantaneous review of the film, you can hear my audioblog entry at Merujo's blog here.

The film was beautiful, and displayed excellent production values, especially given the shoestring budget the filmmakers had. However, it would have been nice if there had been more than a shoestring's worth of plot to keep me engaged in it. There were some really interesting bits, especially when the Good Prime Minister gave his overview of the current political situation (I loved the little band in the red box), but moments like that were few and far between. The protagonist's drawings were fairly compelling, too. The funniest part of the entire film actually took place in the second row of the theater. A homeless guy had come in halfway through and began snoring. Very loudly. Philistines that we are, Merujo and I both found it hilarious, but our sense of humor was not shared by the other patrons (of whom there were maybe seven or eight).

I wanted to be able to recommend this film. Really. But I suppose I can't do that if I walked out of it early, can I?

The Queen of Darkness—My, what large pupils you have

Public lettering in London

2005-10-03T15:08:00.000-04:00

I am a typography guy. As such, it is my self-appointed job to evangelize whenever possible on the beauty of typefaces and their various fonts. (For those of you who use those terms interchangeably, you ought to know that a typeface is a design for a set of characters, while a font is a combination of typeface, size, pitch, and spacing. For example, Helvetica is a typeface that defines the shape of each character. Within Helvetica, however, there are several fonts from which to choose—different sizes, bold, italic, small caps, etc.)

In 1997, an instructor named Phil Baines developed a city walk for his London-based graphic design students. This walk focuses mainly on larger examples of public lettering and doesn't really go in for what he called "incidentals," but it's still quite the project. If you've ever been to London and had a chance to walk around, you will recognize a few of the stops on the tour. If you haven't been there, I suggest you stop reading this and call your travel agent right now.

This time it's personal

2005-09-24T02:46:00.000-04:00

I disagreed all along with sending our troops into Iraq. Now my 20-year-old cousin is there, an Air Force ground vehicle mechanic working for the Army, helping uparmor convoy and patrol Humvees against IEDs. She'll be flown from base to base all around Iraq, but will not spend any time in Baghdad.

I was the last member of our family to see her before she left on Tuesday. I think I may have cracked a couple of her ribs when I hugged her goodbye. I'm really looking forward to hugging her hello in February. More than she knows, most likely.

They all look alike, right?

2005-09-12T14:49:00.000-04:00

In yet another stunning coup for international relations, a New York City firefighter yesterday attacked a man running a newsstand because the man "looked like al-Qaeda." Of course, I'm sure there are lots of al-Qaeda members from Bangladesh. This, after Bangladesh donated $1 million in relief aid for Hurricane Katrina. As if Bangladesh has enough spare cash lying around to be profligate. Gratitude, indeed.

Four years ago today

2005-09-11T00:24:00.000-04:00

Four years ago today, I got to evacuate my Pennsylvania Avenue office and walk for several hours to Bethesda. My building was on the possible flight path of Flight 93, the plane that was shot down in Pennsylvania. (Despite what the administration and recent films may tell you, I still don't think the passengers brought that plane down.) On my trek home, I looked back and saw the smoke rising from the Pentagon. Everything was unearthly quiet, except for the fighter jets and occasional helicopter overhead, all of which made everyone look up and cringe slightly. The mass pedestrian exodus from the nation's capital was something to behold. It was also something to behold the general level of civility, which is generally unheard of in these parts, but that is another post. Suffice to say that I was never happier to see the people I loved than when I finally arrived in Bethesda.

There's probably a lot more I could ramble about regarding 9/11 right now. One of the questions would be to ponder "what have we learned since then?". However, given the seemingly unending conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with recent events along the Gulf Coast and the American government's demonstrated ineptitude, I'd say the answer to that question would be: "Very little."

Turned tables

2005-09-07T16:03:00.000-04:00

I'll admit that in the past I've complained about the conspicuous lack of assistance offered to the United States when natural disasters have befallen us. However, I cannot do that this time, I'm pleased to say.

According to a State Department spokesman, 94 countries and international organizations have so far offered aid to the United States in light of the tragedy along the Gulf Coast. Here is its partial list of nations from which the United States has received support:

Afghanistan: $100,000
Armenia: $100,000
Australia: $7.6 million
Azerbaijan: $500,000
Bahamas: $50,000
Bahrain: $5 million
Bangladesh: $1 million
Belgium: Medical/logistics teams to Red Cross
Canada: 2 helicopters, 32-person rescue team, Air Canada evacuation flights, medical supplies
China: $5.1 million cash and relief supplies
Djibouti: $50,000
Finland: 3 logisticians to Red Cross
France: Tents, tarps, Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), water treatment supplies
Gabon: $500,000
Georgia: $50,000
Germany: MREs and high speed pumps
Greece: Cruise ships, private offer of an International Committee of the Red Cross Web-based tracing system
India: $5 million
Israel: Tents, first aid kits, baby formula
Italy: Generators, water pumps/purifiers, tents, medical supplies
Japan: $1 million cash, generators, tents, blankets, bottled water
Kuwait: $400 million in oil, $100 million cash
Maldives: $25,000 cash
Mexico: Bedding, MREs, baby care items, personal hygiene kits
NATO: Coordinating European assistance offers
Norway: $1.54 million in relief supplies
Organization of American States: $25,000 cash
Qatar: $100 million cash
Republic of Korea: $30 million cash and in-kind donations
Saudi Arabia: $255 million from Aramco
Singapore: 3 helicopters
Sri Lanka: $25,000 cash
Taiwan: $2 million cash, medical supplies
Thailand: Large amounts of food
United Arab Emirates: $100 million cash
United Kingdom: MREs
U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: U.N. Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team and logistics support
U.N. World Health Organization: Public health officers and logisticians
Venezuela: Up to $1 million to Red Cross

The larger, Western countries I can understand—they can afford to give assistance. But Djibouti? Gabon?

I'm not from Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama, and I've never been to New Orleans. However, I still want to say thank you. Although I hope you never need it, I hope the United States can be of similar assistance to you some day.

FEMA: No photos of the dead

2005-09-07T14:01:00.000-04:00

So FEMA has decreed that there should be no photos of the dead being recovered in New Orleans. The reason stated is to ensure that the recovery is "being treated with dignity and the utmost respect." Part of me believes that. The other, considerably more cynical part of me believes that the Feds are trying to spin whatever they can from their botched response to the hurricane thus far.

They managed to prohibit access to the photos of the dead coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan for the most part. However, thanks to The Memory Hole, there are some photos from Dover AFB. No individual soldiers are identified in any of the pictures. In fact, I think it pays them more homage than covering it up. If you're going to send them into harm's way, you should be prepared to look at the results. I can direct you to much more graphic results from the war if you'd like, but I'd rather not post the links here. Leave me a comment if you want more information.

Not that I particularly want to see pictures of dead people in New Orleans, but I think FEMA's over-reaching if it thinks they can completely control media access to the situation. After all, the media was there for the entire disaster, unlike FEMA. In fact, members of the media were more immediately helpful there than FEMA or the Feds ever were. Clearly the government just didn't quite grasp the enormity of the situation. For an example of federal cluelessness, check out Anderson Cooper's encounter with Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (you'll need QuickTime to view this—even if you can't see it, listen to the sound).

If you want to help, I suggest donating to the Mennonite Disaster Service. They have the lowest administrative costs I've seen—your donation goes to purchase necessary supplies, and the people who respond to the event are volunteers. I'm not particularly religious, so it's not exactly typical for me to advocate donating to a religious charity. However, they don't proselytize when they go out in the field—they go in and make a difference.

Ewwww

2005-09-01T00:57:00.000-04:00

Vain individual that I am, I just checked my StatCounter log, only to find that someone got here via a search for "nipple enlargement." I sincerely hope he/she was just searching for it for the shock value.

«shudder»

Ancient writings now visible (but what about the fonts?!)

2005-08-26T16:28:00.000-04:00

Just saw a story on DiscoveryChannel.com that covered the use of x-rays to view ancient, carved text that had been heretofore unreadable due to wear and erosion.

I realize that the x-ray technique will be used by historians for historical purposes, but hopefully it will also help inspire type foundries to come up with some "new" ancient fonts. In 1989 Carol Twombly designed a font called Trajan that was based on chiseled Roman writing from the first century A.D. Trajan rocks (get it? carving...rock...never mind), but it would be nice to see a few other ancient-history-based fonts that aren't all Herculanum.

I thought I was the only one who did this

2005-08-24T10:55:00.000-04:00

I always wanted to redistribute my ear cartilage, and this just seemed the best way...

Nipple Enlargements: Now More Common

NEW YORK (Wireless Flash) — Breast implants are one thing, but some folks are so unsatisfied with the size of their nipples that they're having them surgically enhanced.

It sounds like "nip-picking," but according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 501 women and 40 men had "breast nipple enlargement" surgery last year.

New York-based plastic surgeon Bruce Nadler performs the procedure on half a dozen people a year and says most do it because they want the "teasing look" of an erect nipple at all times.

Still others — mostly men — are nipple fetishists who want their nipples to be the biggest, most desirable nipples possible.

The "super-sizing" is done with injections of collagen or silicone, cartilage taken from the patient's ear or implants.

Dr. Nadler says still more common is nipple reduction surgery, which is done by men who feel their chests look too feminine and women who are self conscious about looking nippy in cold weather.

And she's not even white!

2005-08-20T12:52:00.000-04:00

The national media actually reported on a missing 24-year-old pregnant woman who wasn't perky and white! Check it out at CNN, MSNBC, and ABC News. Shocking, isn't it? Sure, the actual crime, but also that anyone outside Philadelphia actually got to hear about it.

I still don't feel safer

2005-08-17T11:21:00.002-04:00

From a source I wouldn't normally consult, Human Events Online:

A map of the Washington Metro subway system was posted last Thursday on a [password-protected] Internet site that has been linked to Al-Qaeda. The poster noted that a chemical weapons attack in the Washington subways would bring “amazing results” and advocated attacks in the U.S. on the scale of the one executed by Muhammad Atta.

This following on earlier comments by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that the country can't afford to waste precious dollars trying to stop attacks on America's transit systems:

"A fully loaded airplane with jet fuel, a commercial airliner, has the capacity to kill 3,000 people. A bomb in a subway car may kill 30 people," Chertoff said. "When you start to think about your priorities, you're going to think about making sure you don't have a catastrophic thing first."

So the solution, I guess, if you live in a metropolitan area with a subway system, is to try not to be one of the 30 people. Easy to recommend if you're driven to work every day in an armor-plated sedan.

Duck and cover, people. Duck and cover.

A little Hell, anyone?

2005-08-13T15:19:00.000-04:00

Today's items of note:

high temperature: 97F (36C)
heat index: 105F–110F (40.5C–43.3C)
Code Red AQI (also known as "chewy")
Excessive heat warning (as if it were even necessary) until 8:00 p.m.
delays on the Red, Yellow, Blue, and Orange Lines
four lanes of the Inner Loop cut down to one lane due to the Wilson Bridge construction, resulting in a 15-mile backup on the Beltway

Ahhh—D.C. in the summertime....