I can hear the Stone Temple Pilots from my balcony

belting out "Lady Picture Show." What.

Showing up somewhere with only the bags on your back is a challenge! I've been on a real spending spree this weekend, some good, some not so good. Like my bike: good! I got a Marin Larkspur, and I will not link you to info because I'm typing this on my iPhone. It is so smooth! I like it! (My bike, not my iPhone.) Mattress: okay. Mattress shopping sucks. They're all a bunch of snake oil salesmen, and whenever you balk at an upgrade ("oh, you have to get a Swedish Pillow-topped Mattress Protector") they give you the hard sell. ("well, if you enJOY dust mites crawling in your eyeballs...")

This was all written two nights ago, but not finished, because I have no internets yet and I was typing on my iPhone. The iPhone has been not a real life-saver but at least a partial life-maker-easier. Still, now I'm at work (compiling!) and it's nice to have a real screen and keyboard.

Bumbershoot yesterday rocked. I only saw two shows: Strange Fruit and Dan Deacon. Both were fantastic! I meant to see Battles/Del the Funky Homosapien/Human Giant, but they were all at the same time, and I went out to dinner with Jay and CMU friends instead, so I missed them all. Also, I meant to see Death Cab for Cutie, but by the time I got back, all the gates were "exit-only". What! Does this big purple stamp on my wrist mean nothing?! So I stood in the parking lot with my bike to listen in, wistfully tearing up as dreamy dreamy Ben Gibbard crooned "Transatlanticism". (no, seriously. It was pretty sad. Shut up!)

Also, I bought some sweet posters. I am so excited about them. Not as excited as I am about my bike, though.

Topic shift! I was thinking about blind taste tests. Say, for example, Coke vs. Pepsi. Say I think I like Coke better, but in a blind taste test, I pick Pepsi. Well! What do I know? I know that, with no context, in a blind taste test, I like Pepsi better. But real life is not a blind taste test! If I then go to the fridge, should I reach instead for a can of Pepsi? No. The whole experience, of tasting the Coke, looking at the Coke can, thinking "I am drinking a Coke," is better than the corresponding Pepsi experience. Clearly, here I should drink a Coke.

So why do blind taste tests at all? I don't know. In one sense, it's nice to dissociate your mind from the advertising monster that runs our world. Maybe you only like the Coke better because Coke has better ads, and you'd like to instead reward Pepsi for making a superior product. I guess in the Coke vs. Pepsi case, there's no difference. Okay, what if you're comparing El Cheapo orange juice with Super Organic orange juice? Say you thought you liked El Cheapo better, but after a taste test you found Super Organic tasted better... then you'd change your buying habits to reward the healthier/environmentally-friendlier company. Well, that's good. Still, you'd get more enjoyment out of drinking El Cheapo, and you knew this beforehand. You're sacrificing your enjoyment to save your health and the environment, no taste test required.

Okay, test case #3: to develop your palate. Say we're talking Crummy Wine vs. Le Super Wine. Are you trying to find out which you like better? Great, go for it. Maybe you like Crummy Wine better. Is there a reason you should drink more wine to eventually prefer Le Super Wine? (assuming they're equally healthy)... I don't know. Oenophiles would say that, if you have an awesome palate, you really totally enjoy awesome wines an awesome amount. I guess that's true too. Hmm. I feel like I'm tackling many different issues here. I'll leave this idea kinda half-baked. Let's just say that I'm now thinking that blind taste tests are a lot less great than I once thought they were.