Sunday, July 27, 2008

Massabloggachusetts, Pt. 2

Massachusetts, we need to talk.

Your pastramis and reubens are amazing. No other place in the world has come close to your mastery of sandwichcraft. But please, for all that is holy, do not call a cucumber a pickle. A pickle has been soaked in brine for several days. A cucumber has not. A pickle has not been swirled around in brine before handing it to me with my dinner. If you'd point out that you serve cucumbers with your sandwiches, that's fine. But do not call it a fucking pickle and expect me to think that what is going in mouth is one when it is very clearly not.

Thanks.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Massabloggachusetts, Pt. 1

Vacation... here we are. There's no more work for a whole week, which perhaps is the nicest part of it all. It's nice to be able to settle into days that peak somewhere in the 80s and have more or less zero humidity. It's so nice here, the family (my mom's best friend since first grade) doesn't even have air conditioning. And yet, it's more or less the same temperate feeling that Virginia has, without the pains of the average summer. Granted, the winter will be god-awful, but hey, I'll be back in one-inch-cancels-everything Virginia.

The drive itself was fine. Whatever, it's a long car ride. Final Fantasy 4 on the DS, Stephen Colbert, and tons of music kept me surprisingly occupied for all 11 hours. Colbert's book isn't all that great, to be honest. It's more or less a more comprehensive look at the character on The Colbert Report than anything. Fans of the show aren't missing out, but then again, they're the ones who bought the thing in the first place.

But anyway, we spent our first day at the beach. On the ride over there, my brother said that he saw a frog in a lily-padded pond off the road. I looked out... and it was a turtle. Strike one, dummy.

Being at the beach was a bit blah when you're the only person your own age that you know. You also notice how pale you are, how out of shape or fat you are, and many other physical deficiencies to top off the lovely ice cream treat that made you look like that in the first place. But I combated the first one, didn't worry about the second, and defeated boredom with a camera in the tide pool (see the photos here) and a good, healthy dose of Sarah Vowell.

Vowell makes me proud to be a nerd - so what if you're visiting Salem to learn about witch history (witchtory?) and mocking that tourist trap, too (we haven't done that yet... this year)? So what if Al Gore is a nerd? So what if the guy walking past your little beach campground has a stunning babe around his arm, which, by the way, is twice the size of an average baby? Nerds rule.

Sarah Vowell quotes a post on Slashdot.org:
Geeks tend to be focused on very narrow fields of endeavor. The modern geek has been generally dismissed by society because their passions are viewed as trivial by those people who "see the big picture." Geeks understand that the big picture is pixilated and their high level of contribution in small areas grows the picture. They don't need to see what everyone else is doing to make their part better.
Maybe that explains why my mom yells at me for not seeing the big picture. The big picture is made up of big pictures. So while it may not matter that some girl sitting across from you on a beach that you'll never see again may not be into you, it lends itself to a whole world of issues and ideas and problems. That's not to say I'm letting it affect me, but that's just how it works for me... unfortunately.

Of course, maybe there's a reason why I'm the only one in the family who goes to the library to get reading material for vacation. And it's not required material, either! It's for fun! It may escape my siblings, but hell, I love it.

One other point: after watching the horrifically-depressing-but-advertised-as-a-laffapalooza film "The Bucket List," I think I actually understand a famous Vonnegut quote beyond its face value: "If I should every die, God forbid." It was running through my mind throughout the entire movie, because it humanized death (as if it weren't human enough already). Death is something that happens. Don't make it out to be such a big thing... have fun with your life, it's the only one you've got (maybe).

Friday, July 18, 2008

Hey, two digits in my age changed.

Today's my birthday. The big 20, except everyone considers 21 to be the important one since you can drink and everything. I don't really care, though. I did promise one of my friends that for her 21st, I would try it. I don't think I could get her a better present, to be honest. There'll be a post about Batman and Jim Gaffigan soon!


Shopping for music can be a pain when I don't have anything in mind. To be honest, I should've just purchased "Empire of the Sun" at Borders and moved on, but no, I felt like buying a CD, too. So I ended up agonizing over their collection for an hour or so. Oh, I've heard them... but the song I heard sucked. Do I even like Elvis Costello? I'm not buying another Beatles album until they remaster them. I want to buy something impulsively, but it'd be nice to be able to sample everything in the store. That cover is nice... it'd be nice to listen to something nice and summery and sweet and nice. Oh wow, they actually have XTC... "Skylarking" is a great album.

Phone rings. Can I pick up some Coke on the way home? Sure.

I wander through the store, poking into the discount bins and the CDs that are on sale... nothing. I start to wonder why I'm even at Borders when this 30%-off coupon I have still won't save me as much money as buying "Empire of the Sun" at Best Buy. I might as well, though... but I still want music, since it's been a while, and I want something new. Arrrgh.

I walk back over to the music section and come to the "S" section and see Paul Simon's "Graceland." You know, everyone seems to compare Vampire Weekend to this album. His son's album (The Heavy Circles) sucks total ass, though. Eh, I'll buy it. And I do. After all that agonizing and part of it wasn't over this album at all. I hate myself, ugh. I'm an idiot. Whatever, at least I actually have money now.

So far, I'm getting more and more into it. Not a total loss.

Friday, July 11, 2008

A glimpse into the past, made easy with the internet

One of the reasons that I love Richmond is that a lot of the old architecture still stands and is still being used today. I saw Speed Racer last night in the Byrd Theatre, which opened in 1928 and sells tickets to recent movies for $2. How can you beat that?

That just inspired me to write a post about the theatre or maybe Richmond itself, but then I remembered that "The Times" in London recently put all of its newspapers online from 1785 to today for free (you can register for free or use login_hater@mailinator.com and login_hater) . I haven't found much out of the ordinary, but others have! A personal advertisement from November 13, 1832 reads:
INSANITY - Mr. OXLEY, surgeon, begs to inform the public that he has a few
VACANCIES in his ASYLUM for respectable patients. No paupers taken. Terms
moderate. Nurses wanted.
There's also this review for a show in 1970 in which Nick Drake opened:


The other really interesting internet time machine that I've come across is the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Archive. The sheer diversity of what you can find is staggering. The images are (usually) in a wickedly-high resolution, so you can print poster-size copies for yourself!

Departure, S.S. Chalmette from Havana Harbor

Chalmette Refinery, American Sugar Refining Company, New Orleans, La.

Tommy Atkins

Federal Theatre presents "Trojan incident" (heh)

And of course, there's always Archive.org, but I've never found too many interesting things, except for entire Soul Coughing live shows that are too large to fit onto a CD. It's weird to think that the internet can be the both information superhighway and the gateway to Jamie Spears' kid, too. You've just gotta look.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

A place where piranha and salmon coexist

I'm back to playing Animal Crossing, a 2002 Gamecube game. The object of the game is to live. Yes, I play a game in which I go outside, talk to friends, explore nature, and become an interior designer. The odd thing is that, somehow, it's often more fun than real life here.

I may have my own room here, but do I have the money to furnish it with all kinds of weird, interesting stuff? Where can I buy a statue of a boy with water streaming out of him? Can I unearth a Gyroid that dances and makes bizarre sounds, often in sync with whatever is playing in my stereo? What about a frog-shaped chair that doubles as a whoopee cushion?

The thing with Animal Crossing is that you can constantly find and make money ("bells") in order to buy furniture, clothes, and a remodeled house. The best part is that there are no money syphons at all (food, rent, maintenance fees) and the resident shopkeep and tanuki, Tom Nook, isn't breathing down your neck for a minimum payment on your brand-new basement. He's always got something new and different in his small, little store, and yet, he's able to have more interesting items on sale than a Target.

The money for all of this comes from selling things - fruit, insects, fish, and more - to him. Your town comes with one common fruit; it is your task to find the four other exotic fruits and successfully grow the seeds into trees. The insects and fish are caught in the wild and sell for often exorbitant amounts - stag beetles fetch about 2,000 bells, while the coelacanth (a "living fossil") goes for 15,000. To compare, the basement sets you back 50,000 bells.

These can all be donated, in addition to art and dinosaur fossils, to the local museum, which is addictive as hell to fill. It's amazing how quickly and easily you can improve the quality of your town by yourself. That's not to say the inhabitants of your town, animals, don't. They provide much-needed relief from the constant grind of fishing by making you laugh, giving you items, or playing games with you. While there are only five main personalities shared between the 100+ possible animals, it's interesting enough for you to find a favorite townie.

Animal Crossing also utilizes real-world date and time, so that events happen throughout the year and different insects and fish visit your town during different seasons. K.K. Slider, a dog with an acoustic guitar, sings songs on Saturday nights and gives you the music, which you can play in your stereo. New Year's is celebrated with confetti around the town's lake. The sheer fun of just being at these events can pull you away from real-life obligations and friends (thankfully, you can cheat by manipulating the time in the game's settings).

Even worse is that, should you NOT play, weeds grow, the town's citizens miss you, and cockroaches infest your house. At one point, however, I stopped caring about the daily grind of Animal Crossing, which may explain my attitude towards Richmond now. I've picked it back up after a few years and it's as fun as ever... hopefully that experience may cross over into the real world. Otherwise, I'll just have to hop on a train with only 1,000 bells in my pocket and my dreams of a new and different life.


Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Dispatches from an office desk, just beyond the bathroom

I need a creative outlet, to be honest. I'm a journalist, and yet I haven't been able to freely write by my own accord, even though I was in the features department at a fairly large newspaper. Of course, I was only an intern there and as soon as my university-owned apartment lease ended, I was out of the best job I've ever had, work, money, food, you get the idea.

Fast-forward a week later or so, when I'm walking my dog in the twilight hours when my mom calls me and says that I can't say "no" to a job that just opened up at the place that she works. So now, I get to do press release materials for an education center. Let me tell you about my short time in PR - it's bullshit. First of all, it's news writing, which can be fun, but I get a lot more out of features writing, simply because I can use colorful, expressive language and am able to do all sorts of amazing, fun things (go on roller coasters, be an archaeologist for a day, see my favorite radio show AND talk to the host while I wet my pants).

Second, PR is biased. PR benefits the place that you work for. You are not allowed to provide your reader (a newspaper editor, not an actual reader) a full view of everything that happened at the event. The place that you work for can do no wrong in its beautiful march towards improving the lives of everyone in the entire world.

I was optimistic at first, even though I had no clue as to what I was working on. The actual work that I've done here is quite minimal and most of my days are spent online and with an iPod (currently listening to "The Wheel and the Maypole" by XTC).

But what horrified me was when the director, an already creepy lady that smiles randomly during conversation (and I do mean randomly) and reminds me a bit too much of Professor Umbridge, gave a PowerPoint presentation on the Center's vision. While it seemed ambitious, the whole speech, and her demeanor, reeked of a power-hungry attitude that frightened me a bit. Professing your desire for America to once again be #1 is okay, but the way she described the need for the Center to influence and have a hand in education curriculum seemed a bit extreme.

Enough about that, though. Let's talk about my office. The room that I'm in is shared by mom and a coworker. If you walk past them, you come to a small hallway within the room itself. This leads to a bathroom with a yellow light and a toilet built for midgets. Past that door is my desk, which I stole from someone that I think still works here. Sticky notes extol various motivational sayings:

- "2 wrongs don't make a right, but 2 Wrights make an airplane!"

- A "Pluggers" comic, and under that is written: "It's time to start Round 2 of our Health Club!"

- A worm looking at a cow's tail and professing his desire for its consumption

- A rather sad-looking drawing of a young great horned owl

Thankfully, I have a dentist appointment today, so I get to leave about two hours early! Hurray!