You can see this guy talk! He is a legend!

Does anyone want to see this guy (that is, David Byrne) talking about his new book which is about bicycles? Of course you do. It is in Seattle, September 28, and I will make it that much easier for you by providing this link that goes to the ticket-buying page. Yeah it's $30, whatever. It's David Byrne and bicycles! And books, which I guess I like too. Triple convergence!

In another unlikely triple convergence, I was just reading a book about why modern America is so screwed up (short answer: no communities), and the guy (in one chapter!) referenced Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, "The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing", and "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads (which video I linked you to before in this post). Wow! But then, talking with Daniel and Jared and Katie, I realized that me trying to explain this guy's book is just all over the place. The book is pretty scattered and I'm not a great unifier of points. So I won't talk about it any more.

Still, that's two triple convergences involving David Byrne in two days. As they are triple convergences, they must come in threes. I am excited to see what tomorrow's unlikely coincidence involving David Byrne and two other things I like a lot will be.

The New American Dream

This post starts as just a repost of a couple things from Good:

New American Dreams

New Young People's Lives (if you only have time for one of these read this)

Is this just a cyclic thing? Our parents grew up and got big houses in the suburbs and lived private lives, so we want to grow up and get small apartments in cities and have a lot of friends? (you could certainly explain my opinions by that...) Will our kids want big homes on the range again? It is tough, as the article hints, to be 5-15 and think "well my parents are successful, someday when I am successful I will be just like them" and then be 15-25 and think "I can't live the same lifestyle as my parents, nor do I want to... what's next?" There are a lot of contenders that I've heard about, but most of them are either poorly defined or suck a lot:

- get a bunch of humanities degrees

- be a bankerman, let your I-banking job suck you up and spit you out a depressed millionaire, retire at 30

- join the peace corps, and then ...?

- be a nerdman, let your computer job suck you up and spit you out a burnt-out half-millionaire, retire at 40

- do exactly what your parents did

- get depressed or angry or something, drink a lot

- I guess party a lot? I don't know, a lot of people do that, right? And then join a rock band or something, and end up kind of burnt out or die tragically?
These all seem boring or ending in burned-outness, or both.

I mean, then there's the obvious answer:

- just live your own life, do what's reasonable, don't get burnt out at all, and don't worry about it so much, it'll be okay.

But that's very vague and hard to strive for. And it seems like the kind of thing that, if you don't plan, you'll just sort of drift until you're 40 and then be in a life you don't want and say, well I hate this, midlife crisis!

It might be easier if I had more experience with life. I don't know how people's lives really are. For all I know, everyone agrees that your 30's are the best decade of your life. Or maybe it just keeps getting better. Or maybe life only gets good once you move to a different country five times, or maybe most people are miserable most of their lives and only a few holymen have figured it out. I guess it's not been a problem for previous generations, because we have more choice than most of them. Well, this sword is double edged, at best.

Whoof. I'm all over the place. I swear, one of these days I'm going to quit thinking so hard about living my life, and start actually living my life.

What a peculiar day.

I worked for 14 hours today!

Now, in itself, working 14 hours is nothing to brag about. But I'm genuinely pretty happy about it, because the reason I stayed so late was because I wanted to. (I mean, if I didn't want to, I wouldn't have; the Goog is pretty utopian in that sense.) I was enjoying work.

I got to write code. Write-run tests-debug-write-run tests-debug etc. I didn't spend the whole time looking up documentation or wondering if this was "the best" way to be doing it or trying to comprehend some obscure production system. It was great! The limiting factor was that my eyes were drying out. Whew.

In other news... no, there is no other news. I am a boringman who goes to work and then comes home and sleeps. I saw a concert of YACHT and Bobby Birdman (I would recommend the second for sure, the first maybe) and a movie of The City of Lost Children (I would recommend that for sure too).

I have had a lot of weeks that have been better than this one.

Anybody know any good video games? (uhh, for a mac?)

Speaking of video games, if you have an iphone, I highly recommend Tyrian. If you have a computer, Jared recommends World of Goo (I haven't played it yet).

Low-commitment games would be nice, because I'll probably lose patience soon and then embark on trying to become a rock star or whatever, like I do. But for now, I am wanting to do something that is easy and fun and simple.

Why Seattle elections are great (and Dan's endorsements!)

There's a guy running for King County Executive named Goodspaceguy (just one name), who has a blog (note the title) in which he continually refers to himself in the first and third person.

That said, if you're in Seattle, you should vote, because then you can be self-righteous about voting. Who to vote for? I'll tell you, based on recommendations I can gather. (the "voter's guide" you get in the mail is useless.) If you disagree on anyone, let me know; I'm by no means well-qualified or very knowledgeable here. I read local blogs. Here's what I've gathered.

Let me also say that I think the biggest issue at stake is the deep-bore tunnel. We have a crumbling Highway 99, AKA the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The plan, as of now, is to replace it with a $4.2 billion tunnel. Problems:
1. it's way too expensive
2. it's underfunded (even at $4.2 billion)
3. will this be another Big Dig (like that thing in Boston which sucked)? Okay, nevermind, that's not a logical argument, it's just an attempt to elicit fear.
3. (most importantly) it makes Seattle car-friendlier. Furthermore, it makes it sprawl-friendlier by making it easier to get through downtown, without ever actually going downtown.

This is a big issue, because it's a lot of money. I'm afraid of getting mired in this plan for a decade, raising taxes higher and higher and cutting other stuff because we're so out of money for it. So my #1 criterion for a candidate in this election is "is he/she against the tunnel?"

And I'll put these races in ballot order, with bold if I particularly care. If you only vote in one race, vote McGinn for mayor.

King County Exec: Dow Constantine. Sierra club (and other environmental groups?), the Stranger, Cascade Bicycle Club, some Eastside democrats.

Court of Appeals, Division 1, District 1: Anne Ellington. Seattle Times, Stranger, and I don't care enough to dig deeper.

Port of Seattle Commissioner, positions 3 and 4: Rob Holland and Max Vekich (Stranger likes Albro but he has a lot of big-business donors). Stranger, Publicola, Eat the State (hard left group; I'm stretching here)

Seattle Mayor: Mike McGinn. (this is in big letters, for all you facebook readers) Publicola, Stranger, Hugeasscity, Friends of Seattle, and he's the most (only?) anti-tunnel.

Seattle Council position 4: David Bloom. Seattle Weekly, Eat the State, Publicola, and he actually said something in his voter-guide statement. This race is interesting. Apparently the Seattle Transit Blog hates Bloom, but the far-left loves him, and he's an activist. Dorsol Plants seems good too, and I like young people because I am one.

Seattle Council position 6: Jessie Israel. Cascade Bicycle Club, Friends of Seattle, Seattle Transit Blog. Apparently Nick Licata's been around for a while, and a pretty good standard lefty who votes "no" on bad ideas. But Israel seems likeable and full of good change ideas, and better for transit.

Seattle Council position 8: Mike O'Brien. A big "no downtown deep-bore tunnel" in bold letters sold me. If that's not enough, how about the Stranger, Publicola, Cascade, Friends of Seattle, and the Seattle Transit Blog? Thank goodness one of these races is easy.

Plastic bag tax: oh my god vote yes. Everyone agrees. Except the $1.3 million from the chemical lobby.

Seattle School District No. 1 Director District No. 5: Mary Bass. I guess. Publicola and Eat the State are behind her. Seattle Times isn't, but I tend to disagree with the Times, really. It's the newspaper for the suburbs. Publicola has a good point: if the schools are going to get shaken up soon (likely) good to have someone with experience there.

Discuss! You have a few days to convince me if I'm wrong on anything here, and then I'll mail in my ballot.

Je comprend un peu le francais

So, speaking of Al Gore and the Frenchpeople, I'm learning French now. Daniel and I debated at great length about whether to learn French, Russian, Arabic, or Japanese. We played the voting game and came out with a 4-way tie. In the end, they're all super-useful for getting around the world (maybe Japanese the least so, but Japan is cool); they're all very cool languages (maybe French the least so, whatever); and they're all apparently very difficult (except French).

The bit about difficulty tipped the scales. If it's pretty easy, it'll give us some momentum, and we'll be all like "hey this is fun let's do another one."

Oh yeah, how are we doing it? Audio tapes. (well, mp3's, really.) At some point I'll have to get some reading/writing/speaking-with-other-people in, or my spelling will be tres mal. But it's a start, anyway, I'll let you know how it goes.

Fair prices, Frenchpeople, and tennis

Well, tennis first. I saw a real live tennis match last night. The "Bank of the West Open" was going on at Stanford U., where I was visiting my parents (my dad was teaching in a "trial academy" there last week). My dad likes tennis a lot, so he took us to the match that was going on last night, which was a semifinal match. It's an all-women's tournament. The match was between Samantha Stosur (an Australian who beat Serena Williams the day before) and Marion Bartoli (a Frenchperson). We rooted for Stosur, because Bartoli is apparently kind of a jerk, and also a Frenchperson*. She lost, 6-3, 1-6, 6-1.

*You should know that the Frenchpeople are out to get my dad. Their leader is Al Gore. It's like a gang of villains. Al Gore and the French. See, as bears are to me, Al Gore and the French are to my dad, in that they're things we hate and are terrified of, while everyone else thinks we're nuts. (I'll let you draw your own conclusions.) I should draw some cartoons about this sometime.

I had only seen a tennis match once before, I think. It was fun to watch. It's very different: everyone is quiet the whole time! I mean, if you made a loud noise, I guess you'd startle the tennisers. The stadium is pretty small. It's kinda genteel, but my game of "count the not-white people" actually turned out a pretty high number. And tennis itself has a lot of quirky rules and stuff, which is kind of fun. (for the record, I think I'd enjoy 43-Man Squamish.)

Also, I can't post a thing without linking a few times, so here's a Good article about fair-priced ipods. Would I pay more for a fair-trade ipod? Super yes. See, consumption is difficult nowadays (I mean buying stuff, not tuberculosis). Either you consider not only price and surface attributes but also all the effects of your purchase (which is hard), or you just add to the problem (which sucks). If you had the option to know that you're not adding to the problem, that would be really nice, and it would make buying things easy.

Which sort of leads into my Grand Theory of Economics, which is slowly congealing: markets are The Best, but you shouldn't be allowed to "cheat" (where I will define "cheat" myself in a bit). I mean, I believe a free market would give us the best mp3 player for the best price, and the best company would win. This is great. But then, if one company starts using sweatshops and another isn't, the sweatshop one can offer mp3 players cheaper, and they'll win, even if their mp3 players are worse. Eventually this will lead to everyone using sweatshop labor or else going out of business. This is bad.

What does "cheat" mean? Do something unsustainable to the environment or dehumanizing to people. Sweatshops: obv cheating. Using unrecycled paper when recycled paper will do: also cheating. Dumping toxic waste when a non-toxic option exists: cheating.

Okay, arguers: yes this leads to a ton of super gray areas. And no, this will probably never happen. I can't refute either of these arguments. But I will refute the "but poor people can't afford things if they get more expensive" argument here: people being poor is a separate problem. Things (and particular food, if you couldn't already tell that this was part of the argument) should cost what they cost to produce ethically, cleanly, etc. If poor people can't afford food, we should give out more food stamps or whatever; solve poverty separately from the food supply. If poor people can't afford mp3 players, tough.

I'm a little caffeinated right now (bought a coffee from an airport stand where "small" meant 16oz. what.) so my argument is a little jumpy and I'm a little idealistic; and I don't want to continue this post now. Just, you know, throwing out some sustainably-produced food for thought.

I'll vote 5 on "programming the voting game"

Hey you know how sometimes I don't ever do stuff? Sometimes I do stuff! Here's a stuff:
The Voting Game (yes you must sign in with a google account. sorry that's kind of annoying, but it's fun to play with the super-easy users API)
And
The Voting Game Source Code
The technology stack is like this: App Engine, Python, Django templates (I guess), and HTML forms. So if you know anything about App Engine or HTML forms, or simple web app programming at all I guess, I would REALLY REALLY appreciate your comments on the code. Really. I would like send you a nice thing or cook you dinner or something.

Also: people always stamp some kind of license on their code. I don't know from licenses. What's a good license for "I did this for fun, I don't ever want to make any money off it, please use it if it helps you at all (for fun or profit, whatever)"?

But even more importantly, always be happy to vote!

(for info on what the voting game is, ask beej, or read the README)

Disclaimers: yes I know the buttons should get grayed out if you've already voted on a thing. I don't know how to easily do this without passing dumb extra variables into the HTML template. It's not flashy. It's not really authenticated/access-controlled the right way (I could vote on your game and vice versa). There's no great way to tell if everyone's done voting. And if you don't know how the voting game works, it's kind of hard to figure out what's going on. Maybe I'll improve these things later. Don't hold your breath.

Side note: about App Engine. Things I like:
- the users API. I can use Google Accounts with like 3 lines of code!
- the datastore API. I can put data in a persistent layer by creating an object and calling put().
- I don't have to have a server to build a web app!
- the admin console and launcher are great
- 1-click deployment
- python seems pretty okay (you can use java too I guess)
- they have a host of features (monitoring, cron jobs, etc) that I haven't even touched yet

Things I don't like:
- how are you supposed to build a UI? HTML forms? HTML forms are kind of crap! For example, greying out the buttons if you've already voted on a thing is hard.
- if you get more than like 1000 things in a query, I guess you have to do some fancy paging or something. (but then, I guess if your query returns more than 1000 results, ur doing it wrong.)
- it makes web 1.0 apps easily, but web 2.0 apps difficultly. Hmm... I guess I could do it all with javascript maybe?
- python might not actually be pretty okay. I find it hard to organize my code. I guess I'm used to the java model; I shouldn't knock the python one until I actually try it.
- the datastore is actually rather tricky, when you have entities that have relationships to other entities. I don't know if I'm doing it right. I guess we're trying to get away from the SQL world and into the BigTable and friends world; it would be nice if anyone ever taught a class about new non-relational data models.

It's a good thing Rian Johnson spells his first name with an "i"

because that way, I can remember it.

He's a filmmaker (writer/director I guess) and he made Brick and The Brothers Bloom. Highly recommend. The first one if you're in the mood for something serious, the second if not.

Internet says: our world is weird in our 20's

I mean, no kidding, right? I offer the following:

First link from a parenting blog I've ever posted here. About quarter-life crises.

I like this lady's blog (please please try to get past the fact that the second post right now is about Sarah Palin). I got linked to a post about how much she hates Tim Ferriss, so that's enough to get me interested right there. But anyway, this post about "what do you do?" is interesting on its own, and and and quarter-life crisis!

If there's a wikipedia article, it must be true.

And, semi-unrelatedly, here's an article about happiness I want to save to read the second half tomorrow, but I don't want to bookmark it, so it's clearly easier to post to the entire world.

Well, I bought a ticket to Burningman.

This ought to be interesting.

I guess I should start saying things like "see you on the playa" now.

In other news, today I am accomplishing very little, as part of my overachieving detox. I'm still itching and anxious, and I will probably be bugged tomorrow that I didn't do more today. Well, it's a step, anyway.

Music news recently:
First, I'm not twittering about albums. I have too much to say.
Second, here are some things I like:

Amadou and Mariam- Welcome to Mali. I was expecting another one of these world-music albums that I listen to so that I can be cool at cocktail parties but that I don't actually like, but then the synth kicked in and I was all over it. Sometimes it's in French. Sometimes it's in a language that I don't understand. Try "DJama", track 4. Sometimes it's in English, unfortunately. ("I follow you" at 12 is kind of comical.)

David Bowie- ... Ziggy Stardust...- I guess David Bowie is not like the Beatles, where after you listen to their hits and kinda go "meh", the deep tracks really surprise you and you love them. But I could still listen to "Suffragette City" and "Starman" all day. The concept is kind of fun, and "Five Years" as a concept album opener is epic! ("that's all we've got!") See also: "8.5 Minutes" by the Dismemberment Plan.

Eluvium- Copia- Recommended by my Uncle Jim who usually likes things that are longer and louder and stargazier than I like. But this is really epic, kind of weighty, yeah, but real movie-soundtrack stuff, and I can listen to it while I work, no problem. Why do I like, say, "Prelude for Time Feelers" (which is just a piano and a cello or something) but not most classical music? Discuss. And put this on in the background.

TV on the Radio- Dear Science- ugh, can I just let every other critic do the talking on this one? I'll say one thing: "Dancing Choose" is my second favorite song featuring the lyric "He's a what? He's a what?"

The Dodos- Visiter- did I not blog about this yet? It's Animal Collective meets Death Cab. ... meets... Dismemberment Plan? "Jody" is great for the more experimental of you, "Undeclared" is a great acoustic song.

Royksopp- Junior- okay, so I caught on to these guys about one album after everyone else, but they're excellent "electronic popsters" (to quote allmusic). And guest vocals from Karin Dreijer of The Knife! (the more music I listen to, the more often I just wish I were listening to The Knife.)

Shugo Tokumaru- Exit- This is some Zelda stuff. Fun to listen to once. The fifth time, you're like "are we in the clockmaker's house again?"

Air France- No Way Down/On Trade Winds EPs- straight off a p4k recommendation, they're the Broken Social Scene long lost relatives, except they actually finish songs sometimes and don't just play for 19847893 hours.

Telepathe- Dance Mother- it's like Tegan and Sara, but more grandiose and electronic. Devil's Trident wins for being the song that made me stop working and listen up. The sort of half-spoken word stuff I just adore (see: Cake, Dismemberment Plan, even various emo stuff I'd hear on the radio)

Junior Senior- Hey hey my my yo yo- These guys are so fun. Even though they already made their best song ever ("move your feet") I guess they've got another album in them. It's nothing deep, but pretty catchy.

Things I don't so much like:
Devotchka- a Mad and Faithful Telling- I love the Eastern-Europe sound, but I find I don't often like much of the music. Same reason I don't really like Gogol Bordello.
Robyn- Robyn- a blatant rip off of The Knife ("who's that girl") and a bunch of other pop that would be blasted by the same critics who love her, if she were American.
Dosh- Wolves and Wishes- never really goes anywhere. Which is too bad, because I guess he's responsible for Andrew Bird's "Fake Palindromes" and "Simple X"? Boy! If he made an album of songs like that... although I guess you need Andrew's dreamy voice, face, and whistle.
High Places- 03/07-09/07- weird and Unicorns-ey, I think, but a little high-pitched to continually listen to. Flighty and never that gripping. It's like the Luna Lovegood of albums.
The Tallest Man on Earth- Shallow Graves- just not my thing. I should have known after three seconds of hearing his grating voice and acoustic guitar.

I can't decide if I like:
Dan Deacon- Bromst

Fin for now. Anything you've liked recently?

God DAMN it, cheesecake factory.

Cheesecake factory! God!

Point: it tastes good.

Sorta-counterpoint: it kinda does taste good. But it's weird.

Sorta-counterpoint part 2: it's a lot of food.

Flat-out counterpoint: It's god damn gross.

My counterpoint: God DAMN it! God! Who lets this happen?! What kind of ... what kind of brave-new-world-inspired bland-pleasure-dome is this? What the hell! Who runs this company? Who runs this world? STOMP STOMP STOMP aarrrghhh (pounds walls) who decided that their primary virtue would be BEING BIG?! garhg grr arrggh! Gaaaaarrrgghh!

For sale: $57.40 in Best Buy gift cards

$45 OBO. You paypal me or send me a check, I'll email you the codes.

And I have to know you. After getting burned by trying to trade a 27% Mara's for an Annihilus and having some jackass swoop through our trading site in the Kurast Docks and pick up my amulet, I'm not taking any chances.

Oh, also, you have to promise to use them someday. Because when you use a gift card, Best Buy loses. (when you buy a gift card, Best Buy wins. Sadly, they've already won from some of my relatives. But if you can find a use for them, then stick it to the big-box man!)

STP no longer stands for "Stone Temple Pilots" in my head

or Swords to Plowshares. And that's the second time I've used "Stone Temple Pilots" in a title line of a post.

I rode my bike to Portland last weekend! It's 202 miles away! It's not really that impressive, 9500 other people did it too. But it's kind of impressive. Whatever, I don't care whether it's impressive.

I'm not so good at thinking right now. Here are a few jumbled thoughts:

It was sort of fun. Part of the time was miserable, part of the time was just slightly painful, part of the time was pretty good. I went with friend Nick, acquaintance (I mean he's a cool guy but I'd only met him once before so I don't think it's fair to call him friend; what do you call people in this situation?) Kevin, and new acquaintance Andy. Kevin and Andy were fast, Nick was a little bit fast but I could keep up with him. This worked out well. And we all camped in Chehalis, about halfway there.

It rained overnight. That makes camping significantly less fun. Luckily Nick had woken up and put the rain cover on the tent, just in case. Also, my backpack is apparently waterproof. Hallelujah.

When you ride a long way, you eat EVERYTHING. That's kind of fun. Props: Dave's Killer Bread. It's quite good. Slops: Clif bars. Those things are just as fake as anything. It's like eating a plastic brick, but it tastes like a cookie, but not as good.

Now that I've ridden 200 miles, I could ride hrair miles. That's neat. Gives another boost to the idea of just going off and traveling someday. How cool would that be, just go off with a bike and bike from town to town (or town to field, camp, go to next town)?
Subtopic: screw Daniel Burnham. He's the one who's credited with saying "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized." As I was riding home today, I was going to make another big plan (ride across a continent for charity sort of thing). But when I make big plans, they tend to never come close to being realized. That's demoralizing. If I can't even make a big plan, I kind of have to start somewhere, right?

Sandals are great! I didn't get wet socks. I'm still not super-sold on the clip-in pedals. Seems like more trouble than it's worth. But I should have brought bike gloves...
oh, and another layer...

It was full of bicycle folks. I feel as out-of-place with them as anyone. It's so white rich male. I think I saw one black person the whole time. I feel like, after you get a certain level of intense, like the level where you must have clip-in pedals and drop handlebars, draft off other riders, and take ibuprofen to survive, it's not real anymore. It gets to the point where only white rich males can do it. (and not even most of them. see: ibuprofen.) It's like bodybuilding... lifting weights so you have muscles to carry things or whatever is cool; lifting weights for its own sake gets really weird. And damaging (see creatine for bodybuilders, or ibuprofen for bicyclists).

As a result, I never ever ever want to be in a bicycle race.

Also, I can't sleep.

All those times I sincerely thought I was joking...

Google Chrome OS.

What!

Quarter-life crisis

I guess you could also call it the "real world" crisis.

Hey everyone in college and high school and so on: why do you build us kids up so much? Everywhere you turn it's "you're going to change the world" and "you'll do great things" and "here's a 24-year-old entrepreneur who started (internet company x)" and "this guy is a (senator, footballman, mayor of Pittsburgh, whatever) at 26". And then we get out and there's no way we can do that. We can't possibly measure up, because nobody can, unless he/she is very lucky and very very good. This year has been a fun voyage of convincing myself of that.

But the world needs us to be very lucky and very very good! Right? Fading into obscurity and carving out your own little niche would be fine, except that if everyone does that, the world implodes. Even if your little niche includes you contributing $100 to the stop-hunger-in-Africa fund, using reusable shopping bags, and driving a hybrid instead of an SUV.

I've heard all the soothing "you just have to do your best"s and they ring really hollow. Everyone's been doing their best, and our world is still hosed. (or else, everyone so far hasn't been doing their best, but I don't buy that either. Is our generation really the first one that's going to turn the world around with our wonderful unselfishness? Are we that much better than the Boomers and the Xers and whoever else? ... are we any better at all?)

I guess I figured that, even if I fizzle out someday, at least maybe during my wild, carefree, rocking 20's, I'd take out my giant boots and stomp a big Dan Tasse footprint into the side of the world. Or not even my footprint, just a footprint, that anonymously or nonymously leaves the world a better place. And hell, maybe I still will. But how to reconcile the "I don't need to do so to be a good person" with the "somebody needs to"?

How are your 20's going? Are you having a quarter-life crisis too? Or have you gotten over yours?

Finally, in my happier times, I tell myself that I'll always put a disclaimer on any really cynical things I think during my sadder times. So take everything I'm saying here with a grain of salt, and if you're feeling pretty good about things, don't let me harsh on your parade.

Hey, that game theory thing is actually real

I guess it's called "Braess's Paradox" but CS students everywhere (and math, polisci, etc students too I'm sure, but I'm not one so I don't know) know it as "that simple application of Nash equilibria that blows your mind. No, not the prisoner's dilemma. The other one. You know, with the roads that are in a diamond shape and you add another one and it makes everything worse."

It's actually real!

(okay, so not quite. the deal in real life is that fewer roads makes people drive less, not that it makes them route differently. either way, I like it.)

Also, highway interchanges are so cool. I mean, besides the whole "destroying the world and particularly the United States" thing.

So, I still hate musicals, BUT

"A Chorus Line" is a meta-musical, right? A musical about musicals?

Then that means... Every Little Step is a meta-meta-musical? Okay, no. False alarm. Apparently it's a documentary about a musical about musicals. Not quite meta enough for me to actually want to see it.

Then again, the last meta-musical I saw ("Title of Show") was pretty great. Someone just needs to make a musical about making "Every Little Step," and I'm so there.

Good is so good.

And by Good I mean Good Magazine. I am actually thinking about subscribing to an honest-to-god paper magazine for the first time since approximately forever, because every article they write is exactly a thing I want to read.

A couple things on my mind:
Don't travel, because you're just an obnoxious tourist. Plus a link to a story about a guy who was an obnoxious tourist. Now, my party line has always been "I don't agree with anyone who says this." But do I really believe that some people are obnoxious, but oh no, not me? (and regardless of whether I believe it, is it true?) I mean, there's something messed up about tourism. I've been over this a few times (in real life if not on my blog) but the point is, it just feels wrong. The tourist industry is a way to get money from foreigners. There's nothing about it to encourage, you know, friend-making between people of different cultures.

How do I know I'm not just a nuisance? Look, if someone came to Seattle, hardly spoke English, and wanted to chat, and I was at a restaurant or something with him, it'd be fun. But we wouldn't become good friends- there's nothing to talk about, especially with a language barrier as thick as it always is. You end up with a lot of shallow connections. (granted, the few deeper ones I've made have been awesome...)

But in between that, you're gawking at the Eiffel Tower or stomping around Angkor Wat or climbing up to Machu Picchu or whatever, and you're probably not having fun, and you're eroding a world heritage site, and you're making it worse for everyone else there. Think about it: when's the last time you were at a tourist site and didn't wish for fewer people? Or hell, when's the last time you saw tourists anywhere and didn't just want them to disappear?

And maybe sometimes you say screw it, I just want a little comfort, and then you make everything even worse by patronizing the tourist industry, be it a hotel or a restaurant or whatever, and rewarding people who get rich by selling up a fake version of this country. You bring your whiteness to the world, offering nothing but your tourist dollars and (hopefully) a friendly conversation, bringing the world one step closer to all-English-all-the-time, and carboning up the atmosphere horrendously with your airplane while you're at it.

Discuss.

Okay, another thing that's on my mind: I would love to see more facts about this guy who predicts stuff. Granted, it's the real world, so the truth is probably more in-the-middle, he's pretty smart but he's not actually so crazily accurate about everything, etc., and the Good folks only think he's so great at predicting because they've seen a limited sample of his picks. And you know, game theory blah blah, sounds really neat because "it's theories about games" or some nonsense and John Nash loves it but it's actually kind of boring, doesn't actually solve the world like you think it will.

BUT: he sounds cool anyway, and I'd like to learn more before making up my mind.

And people are saying "ooh he predicts stuff, then do we really have free will?" answer: yes. But my (sort of related) question is: how much free will do we really have? And how much of it is chemicals?

Sidetrack: cereal again. I've recently started eating cereal with more or less reckless abandon. I haven't been eating it until I felt terrible, but I have been feeling kinda ehh. And poor Jared- I think I ate about 3/4 of the last box of Quaker Oat Squares he bought. Why do I do this? I know my life would be better if I never ate cereal. Somehow, every time I think about eating cereal, I come up with a way to rationalize it. It doesn't help that every cereal box screams how healthy it is (even if you don't believe something, hearing it a million times makes you start to believe it) and I keep hearing about the benefits of whole grains blah blah.

So why do I eat cereal? Maybe I (and all of us) have less free will than we thought. Or we have free will in the sense that you could do a lot of things but you probably won't. Maybe I should be less judgmental towards {fat, nerdy, financially-careless, addicted, etc} people.

<3 weekends

Hey, hey, last weekend I totally did the coolest thing. My friend Nick, his friend Kevin who is a cool guy, and I went on an all-night bike scavenger hunt around Seattle. We did about 40 miles of biking up and down Seattle hills. Down a big twisty dark hill into Carkeek Park, maneuvering through downtown streets to find Dank Bags stickers, searching searching searching in vain for Olympia Beer (hey Nick, I saw a can on the ground today. Where did they get it?!), totally loving free donuts and coffee at 3AM, and above all, seeing a city in a way different light (or lack thereof). This thing seriously kicked face. Coming home (at 5 AM, after watching it get light really early) and falling asleep felt so good.

No, wait, I mean this weekend we did the coolest thing. It involved Miracle Fruit. Citrus was great, vinegar was great, plain yogurt was great, I mean, everything that people say is pretty much true. Plus, I really like hosting parties! Note to self: do this more.

Also, in between all this I've gotten to start doing some web programming a bit! I'll send you a link when I have something presentable.

And cooking Japanese. To the extent that I can learn from a book.

BUT, more importantly, Greg and Missy are now here for good; I just found out that their friends who are cool*, Liz and Laser, are here too; Ram was here for a while but now is not but will be again soon. Rob will be here this weekend, as will Henry and Killian. I am really happy that these people I like have found this city a pretty ideal place to live in or visit, as I have, because it means I get to see them now.

*I've used this phrase twice in this email. What I want to say is, I'd call them friends, but we haven't ever like actually hung out much, but I wish we did. People that I respect, although I do not know them very well.

Crafts, screams, music

More stuff about that essay about fixing motorcycles instead of investment banking. And more. My new take on this? It's not about whether you're fixing motorcycles or proving theorems or buying stocks; it's about ownership. If you were fixing motorcycles, but you could only fix the lug nuts on the front wheel, you would probably feel just as dissatisfied. People aren't robots, etc, etc.

Unrelatedly, I found myself wanting to scream at the top of my lungs today, and realized I couldn't. Even if I wanted to. There is no place I could go that would be far enough away from other people that I'd be sure that I wasn't frightening other people or making them think I was hurt or something. Isn't that weird?

Finally, maybe I'll start twittering my albums. The iTunes-sort-by-date-added is not necessarily going to be a good long term solution, but if I twit a little bit about each one, I'll remember when I first heard them and how I liked them. Plus, instant recommendations for you. It's one good use of Twitter, I guess, and then I could finally justify having an account.

Hyland Software Poem

or, using Google Analytics to help other people.

A useful Google Analytics feature: you can find out what people are searching for and then landing on your site. My #1 query, for a while, has been "sedate snail." That makes sense. #2 is "Hyland software poem."

I can only imagine that Hyland Software (where I worked for a summer ... 4 years ago?) has not changed their employment application in the last 4 years. It's a standard application, all the normal questions, but then there's one question that says "write a poem." I have to imagine a bunch of potential interviewees are filling out the application and then they get to that question and they're all like "what do I do?" so they look up "did anyone else write a poem? what did they write?"

Pro tip: nobody cares. Sort of like how there's a slide at Hyland, but nobody ever rides it. You can't transplant "fun" into a company just by cosmetic tweaks here and there. I wish them all the best, but I think they're a pretty conventional company that saw the fun of the dot com boom (or was part of it? I dunno, when did Hyland start?) and tried to inject it into their own place. Maybe I'm a little spoiled. (you know, just a little.)

BUT, for your own fun's sake, you ought to write a poem. The more epic, the better.

(post script: I used to be a lot less politically correct on this blog. huh. balance of "I don't want to be a jerk" and "hasn't bitten me yet." I also used to be a lot more hyper. well, your sense of humor changes.)

Way to go, this guy.

Guy wins Sufjan song, holds listening parties of strangers to listen to it. It's just one song! And yet, now it has some real value. I found myself thinking, I would like to go to this guy's house and listen to this song. It's so true- offer it as a free download and it could get lost among the internet. In fact, upload it to anywhere, once, and it'll instantly be everywhere.

He's created something unique out of just one song. It reminds me of Atlas Obscura (down for maintenance now I guess): cataloguing those really singular places/times/things in the world of everything being everywhere. Or Josza Corner, a Pittsburgh Hungarian "restaurant" that doesn't even have a website and is kinda just a guy's house. Or this site. Why is it that, even though we have so much these days, none of it seems to mean anything? The only way you can make something that does mean something is by going smaller. I mean, I doubt that "The Lonely Man of Winter" is any better than, say, "Chicago", (or "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." Oh my goddddd!) but having heard the latter 23870784 times, it doesn't mean much to me now.

As someone in the article said, at least approximately, "I can't believe that I'm hearing a song that I will never hear again."

Real values of things

A dozen eggs costs $6-$8. If you're paying less, it's because the chickens were stuffed in battery cages. Note: it's pretty hard to get cruelty-free (/disgustingness-free) eggs at a grocery store.

A pint (not a pound) of strawberries costs $4. The big red pretty-but-tasteless ones are cheaper because they come from fields where the guys who spray them wear haz-mat suits.

Milk costs maybe $5 for a half gallon? (don't have farmer's market prices on hand, but the point is, it's more expensive than $3 per gallon) There's of course antibiotics and grain feeding and so on to blame, but also industrial agriculture shadiness?

Finally, and perhaps most frustratingly, food from small producers costs more because the law is skewed towards big producers. (scroll down to the "workman's compensation" if you're in a hurry)

Ooh, I'm going to get an argument on this one...

Internets roundup

First of all, three people can convince you to do something. I had thought it was two. Like "Hey, you all want to do ______?" "Yeah, let's do ______!" and then it's a done deal. Either way, depending on who you are and what you're proposing, I will probably enjoy being your second or third, even if I'm not totally into it, because there's nothing that helps an idea more than a good second or third.

Fish chart fish chart fish chart. This is harder to carry, but easier to use, than the Monterey Bay guide. A few things to note:
- salmon is either The Best or The Worst. (farmed is bad. like fish in general. most farmed fish is worse than most wild fish. Also, Atlantic wild caught is bad. If you're on the East Coast, don't eat salmon unless it's specifically Alaskan wild salmon. They'll probably love to tell you, if it is.)
- all the tastiest tunas: pretty bad.
- most shellfish are okay. except those big fancy sea scallops.
- unagi is no good! sorry, sushi fans, I'm probably killing your buzz. Try the lesser-known fish, you're probably better off in terms of the environment and your brain. and smaller fish, in general, are better than bigger fish. don't know which is which? learn! fish do not grow in small blocky meaty pieces!

Names make things, and the name "foodie" makes a bunch of us sound ridiculous. Come up with the next name and a bunch of people who care about what they put in their bodies will beat a path to your door.

Ooh ooh hey I got a great idea for a new country

Or I guess I mean a new form of government. It's a republic, kinda like we have now, except votes are different. I guess I really mean a new form of voting. See, our current system is pretty good, except that it doesn't take into account how much people care. If I thoroughly research the issue and vote for candidate A, and some shmoe votes for candidate B because he likes his name better, great, we've just canceled each other out. Furthermore, it can be manipulated by richmen, because they just send out a huge advertising push or smear campaign or whatever in favor of their candidate.

Here's the fix: When there's an issue up for a vote, or a race between candidates for a position, it's not decided by "whoever has the most votes wins". Instead, it's "whoever logs the most hours wins."

Instead of polling places, we set up government-controlled voting rooms. There's nothing in the rooms. You can't do anything. You go in, you sit there for an hour, you come out, and your candidate gets one vote. You can do this as much as you want.

There are so many benefits to this! Who wins the election now? It's the one who has the highest product of (number of supporters) * (how much they care). Only the people who care would vote, and everyone has the power to make a huge change if they really want to. Instead of going door-to-door for a candidate soliciting money to indirectly make a change, you can sit in a room and directly make a change.

Flaws:
- so many people would try to pay you to sit in a room for them. And so many people would accept those payments. We'd have to solve that.
- we'd still be disenfranchising the poor, a little bit. If you're working three jobs to pay the bills, you can't sit in a room. But then, if you're working three jobs to pay the bills, you can't donate to a campaign or hire lobbyists, so it's not any worse than it is now.

Still, I think it's a good idea. Maybe when I found Dantasseland, that'll be the system of government. Who's with me?

Is it just because I want everything to be just so?

My dad really doesn't like Dennis Kucinich. I know he's recently made an effort to be a respectable politician, but back in the 70's he was apparently a pretty bad mayor of Cleveland. Though, given that my dad and I disagree on everything in politics, if he says Kucinich was a bad mayor, maybe I'd think he was a good mayor. But then, Cleveland has been pretty crummy in the past couple of decades, so we sure didn't have Abraham Lincoln at the helm in the 70's.

God! Who cares? Politics is not the point of this post. The point is that my dad purposefully calls the guy "Dennis Kuspinich". The joke here is that "spinach" is a bad thing (something I just straight up believed for like 16 years until I actually TRIED it... but that's a *sigh* for another post) and so morphing a guy's name to make it like "spinach" is mocking him. It's not a very good joke. But my dad will never call him Dennis Kucinich.

This quite bothers me. I have no idea why. I'm trying to construct alternate scenarios in my mind to see what would and wouldn't bother me. (what if he called Obama "dum-bama"? what if he called the green movement the "green bean" movement? what if he called toothpaste "moosepaste"?) but I can't quite place it. It's not that I like Kucinich. It's not that it's a terrible insult. Maybe it's because it's kind of cutesy and has gotten old, but he still gets some satisfaction out of that and I'm annoyed at the bad joke? I don't know. It bothers me, I don't know why, and it bothers me that I don't know why.

Maybe I should start calling him "dard" instead of "dad" as retaliation. But then always deny having called him "dard". Mu-hahaha.

I'm getting to the point where I'm posting for it's own sake, which is a bad sign

Your houses are more important than your cars

Your community is more important still

I stretched that to make it into a connection. The second is not really so much about community as about booze, although maybe you'd say the reverse. And it'll either read as a tour de force about wine, the universe, and everything, or a boring screed that duh we already know thanks.

The first one is pretty true though! Instead of whining about 35 mpg or 37 mpg, let's talk about making our buildings more efficient! (or better, let's do both. Cars do need to be fixed.)

Names

"We're constantly creating our world by naming, categorizing, applying value judgments to things." -not quite a quote from Foley Ah Doo, but as close as I can remember.
(I posted this back in 2005. Give yourself 10 bonus points if you know what Foley Ah Doo is. Otherwise, lose your next turn, and then we'll tell you it's a play by Ram.)

This is a phenomenon in cooking. Well, in the world in general, but it's easiest to explain in cooking. What if I told you I made a great dish: it's this thing with beans, peppers, avocados, cheese, rice, tomatoes, onions, in a tortilla? You'd probably think you're eating something that's pretty, and then forget it. What if I told you I made Jim Smith's Original Burrito (from the original Jim Smith recipe, winner of the best burrito in Texas contest)? You'd notice it more while you're eating it, think it's great, and remember it. Maybe even next time you'd say "hey Dan, can you make those Jim Smith Burritos?" Maybe it'd be a thing you remember about my cooking style: "he makes good burritos."

It's the same dish, but I gave it a name! All of a sudden it's memorable. Similarly with the internet: do you think Twitter would have caught on if it were called "Quick short message broadcasting service"? Or like in nature. You could be in a place that's pretty, but then you leave and it was just another place. Or you could be in Yosemite National Park, and all of a sudden it's a thing, and you've been there, and you're raving to your friends about all the amazing trees and mountains. Names make things.

I guess what I'm saying is not really revolutionary. Here's another point I'm trying to get at: you can remember things with names sometimes and not others. I mean, remember this list:
Pink Floyd, a grapefruit, citations at the end of an academic paper, STALAGMITES, gumby!
and then remember this list:
G, P, N, R, Z

Done? Now, say I tell you the second thing in each list is the best, and the fourth is the second-best. You'll probably have an easier time remembering that "a grapefruit" and "STALAGMITES" are good than "P" and "R". The list of "things" is heterogenous, the list of letters is homogenous. It's easier to differentiate among the "things."

(okay, disclaimer: I'm basing this on no actual science at all. I'm really mostly saying this stuff because it's a hypothesis of mine and I'd like to see some data backing it up.)

So this means that if there are restaurants in your neighborhood called "John's", "Barry's", "George's", and "Bill's", your new restaurant would be instantly memorable if you called it "How To Cook A Wolf". Or rather, if you were a restaurant critic, it'd be easier to remember a lot of different things about different places if they were all named way different things than if they were named similar things.

I'd love to find the best structures to represent things in our minds. I wonder if there's a memory trick involving mapping similar things to a very dissimilar space. Like if the restaurants are all called John's, Barry's, etc... what if I tried to remember them as like John's, Buried Alive, George Washington's Restaurant of Liberty, and Duckbills? Memory tricks memory tricks.

I'm too tired to think about this more unifiedly.

Jorbs

Wow, read this. It seems very appropriate.

I mean, not for me. I am thankful that I don't particularly have to doublethink to enjoy my job. I do, a little bit, sometimes. Like "we shouldn't be doing things like this" and also "really all I'm doing is making the company money" but those are both kinda false and I only feel that way when I'm particularly whiny. My work is kind of tangible, for being such an over-the-wire skill. But our economy is going more and more this way. I kind of hope we don't get too detached from doing anything ourselves. The world is getting a little too specialized, and it's like that because it's a little too big.

I postpone the Mr. T's Birthday Letter to this weekend

I had a date with Tom Robbins tonight.

Something else interesting: I organized all the areas in my life that I want to make sure I'm making progress in. Of course it's a work in progress. But here's what it looks like now, no real order, with subgoals preceded by a - and notes about them or how to accomplish them by a ---.

Cooking
- master specific worldly cuisines
--- this will structure my cooking so that I am learning something definite.
--- Japanese or Indonesian first
--- make sure to cook dinner at home sun mon tue?
- make fine food
--- higher quality, smaller quantities?
--- this was spurred by Ram's friend Pat's ability/enthusiasm for the "5 dollar 50 dollar meal". I realized I always make food that would cost $10 in a restaurant. It'd be great to be able to make food that would cost $50.
- always be able to make something good, given any ingredients I happen to have around
--- this will come with structured learning
- develop my own recipes
--- so when someone asks me "what do you like to cook?" I'll have an answer

Food advocacy
- organize my theory of food
--- to do on a project day
- make it available online
--- another project day, future?
- help other people learn to cook
--- this is a long-term goal. this is also what my youtube cooking show idea was about.

Exploring Seattle
- get to know all the neighborhoods (or at least all the interesting ones)
--- along with bike rides?
- be an awesome tour guide
--- this will happen, as long as I make sure to get out often.

Languages
- get as good with Dutch as Spanish
--- 30 minutes, 3 days a week. "Language or meditation."
--- why Dutch? Because I've got the biggest jump on it.
- pick up a new language every few yrs
--- this will happen if I keep up.

Traveling
- go places with a purpose, many times each year.
--- this year (india and japan) has been a pretty good start. it'll be important to keep that up.
--- burningman, and then ...?
- ski at least 4x next year
--- make skiing friends, ask them.

Computing
- get good at making things happen
--- python, then what? make my own web app?
- regularly program for fun
--- I like programming! really, I do!

Enlightenment
- suffer less
- enjoy life more
- develop a meditative habit
- make progress towards enlightenment
--- Wednesday talks will probably help, I should keep going to those

Friends
- keep in touch with everyone I want to
--- this is going well. technology helps a lot.
- make 8-10 great friends in my new life
--- this is the awkwardest goal, because it makes it sound like I'm just making friends to satisfy a goal. I mean, this is really the least arbitrary of most of my goals, because I need these people to really succeed and be happy. but it's not even just "I need friends", I mean, it's just what you do, right? you make friends! that's a thing that you do!
- make cool casual friends too

Creativity
- keep making projects happen
- get in a creative group
--- project day monthly

Biking
- ride the STP
--- biweekly training rides, then weekly

End of list. You may have noticed me mentioning "project days". The idea would be, once a month, we all (who? anyone who wants to!) get together and you bring something you want to work on. We just hang out and each work on our own projects. At the end of the day, you display/demo what you have to show for the day. I also mentioned "languages or meditation". This is a plan I have. Every day except Sunday, work on languages or meditate for 30 minutes. Ideally alternate days.

So that's the plan, anyway, we'll see how it goes.

Mr. T's Birthday is in three days

Which means that if you'd like a detailed recap of the last year of my life, in three days I will be sending out my first annual (shut up) Mr. T's Birthday Letter. Email me and I'll put you on the mailing list.

I figure this email gives me a chance to reconnect with some of you. I tell you everything about my life, then you can say "I didn't know you like to ride bikes now" or something, and we can start up a conversation. Or even "I forgot you existed, but I like you. Hi!" Plus, if you've been kinda skimming but not really reading my blog (understandable... I talk a lot), this will be a nice summary.

Now I will continue to talk a lot.

I've had two very interesting visitors in a couple vivid dreams over the last couple days. First was an unknown girl; we were dancing, and very well. This was notable because I'm not known to dance well. Second was one of my high school theology teachers, Mr. Prokop. He was known for bluntness. I liked him. He was kind of a jerk, and he was very sure the Catholic church was always right, but he did also teach World Religions, maybe the only theology class I took that was worth it. In my dream he said "What's your religion of choice these days?" and I stammered something half-assed about "well I kinda like Buddhism but I'm not like an actual Buddhist but I kinda think they have some good ideas and ..." and he goes, all smugly, "Well, how's that going for you?"

Argh! I said something weak, again, like "it's okay, I guess", but I should have said "It's fine. What did you want to hear, that I was lost because I didn't have a crucified Jesus Christ on a rosary around my neck? Listen, I'm doing pretty well, and having issues too, but that's because that's the way the world works. I'm not sure of anything because the world isn't so black and white, and the more you see things in black and white, the more goddamn destructive you become. And no, the truth isn't objective. Or, it is, but it sure doesn't include a Jesus rising from the dead and ascending into the sky. I've trivially got more reason to believe against resurrection than you have to believe in it. But you don't hear me smugging at you about it, do you? No, because I realize that everyone's climbing the same hill, and all their routes will get them there exactly as fast as yours."

So! That's how my dreams have been going. Speaking of things in black and white, I think my environmental footprint in the last couple years has doubled, and here's why: I read "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. It's a book about how we shouldn't believe all that the media tells us because they just try to fill us with fear all the time. (hello, swine flu!) However, it uses as an example global warming, and the story is about how global warming isn't actually happening.

I questioned this for a while, and then came back to the side of believing in global warming. First of all, it's not like the experts are split 50/50... it's like 90/10. (source: I don't know. Go ahead, prove me wrong.) Second, even if global warming isn't happening, we are screwing up the environment in a lot of other ways, so we should do whatever we can to stop it. Third, I read another book by a global warming denier who took the position of "yeah, it's happening, but it won't really be so bad", which was not encouraging. Fourth, "State of Fear" is a novel. Fifth... argh! Pascal's wager! Believing in it, acting, and being wrong is much better than not acting and being wrong. (That's weak, I know. I'll just take the first 4 arguments then.)

Anyway, so I mentioned this book in passing to my dad a couple years ago. Since then, he's taken up the global-warming-denier banner, slagged environmentalism any chance he gets, made fun of everyone who happens to admit he/she might not hate Al Gore, and started listening to books like this. (side note: oh my gourd.) Dad, if you're reading this, the point I liked in "State of Fear" was that the media/government/etc has become a fear machine, not that global warming doesn't exist!

So! As a pro-environmentalist dude, my total track record for positive environmentalism in this world is -1. Le sigh.

Nap, a jlan, a canal: Japan

First of all, pictures are up!

Holy cow they took our temperatures with a camera. That was my first impression of japan, and it happened before we even got off the plane. Okay, swine flu blah blah, they have to take our temperatures before we get off, so I'm picturing little disposable thermometers. Nope. They came around with this thing that was for sure a camera, pointed it at us, and moved along. Ladies and G, the future.

My second impression, after a vending machine experience: this green tea tastes like tea. You can't find sweetened Liptonesque junk if you try. I was stoked! The next day I discovered that you can also buy said green tea hot in a bottle. Fantastic.

Food in Japan: is great. I can't figure out how it all comes together- I mean, sushi is a thing, and so are soba, udon, and ramen, and so is this izakaya tapas-like thing, and so is just eating a big eel, and then there's okonomiyaki and monjayaki, and etc. I guess it's just that I'm actually getting the full breadth of it. I mean, I used to think Indian food was just curry and naan, but then, there's really a lot of diverse kinds of dishes there too. Japanese food is a huge category!

I think I like it more than most, though. First, it's healthy (hey, longest life expectancy in the world; can't be too far wrong...). Lots of seaweed, seafood, miso, and other things that we generally think are healthy. The flavors are pretty unique- not as distinctive as India, say, but it just kinda tastes clean. And finally and maybe most importantly, they seem to care a lot about it. I mean, you can see that in sushi; it's food-as-art, or art-as-food, or something. Quantities are sometimes small, but quality is usually high. I'm all about that.

Notable things I ate:
- inari (those tofu skin things around a ball of rice)
- udon with lots of funny looking things that were probably all fish cakes in one form or another
- a terrible drink that this bar we went to just made up. They called it the "DOS", which was short for something that translates to basically "drink for assholes." It featured frozen pickled plums and gin. Actually, the first one was really good. The second one was a very bad idea.
- awesome sushi! and mostly nigiri; it seemed the thing to get, moreso than rolls. great squid, eel (of both kinds), a giant clam I think?, some things I don't know what they are, and the famous otoro, which really wasn't as transcendent to me as to some people, which is good because it's not great, generally, on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Sustainable Seafood list.
- monjayaki, a do-it-yourself grilled pancakey thing that I'm sure we messed up, but it was tasty anyway. Note to self: miso is great. start using it a lot.
- takoyaki, octopus balls!
- tayaki, an unrelated pancake-in-a-fish-shape that has a sweet red bean paste filling
- steamed buns in Yokohama Chinatown
- yuba, which is translated terribly unappetizingly as "soy milk skin" or "bean curd skin". ('s good though!)
- four kinds of ice cream from Ice Cream City. This includes sesame gelato, turkish tea ice cream (both of which were forgettable), edamame ice cream, and cheese ice cream (both of which were not). But really, any time I'm eating ice cream, I'm pretty happy.

If you're still reading, you're into long posts, so you might like this slapdash list of things I did that I'm really putting in here for my own sake so I don't forget them:
Saturday- izakaya in yokohama, bar in aobadai
Sunday- kamakura, government building, golden gai, karaoke, albert Nietzsche, tsukiji, sushi.

Wait a minute, hold up. This day was epic and requires further explanation. So we go to the Golden Gai, a district in Shinjuku (which is a part of Tokyo) that is full of tiny bars. It was mostly closed up, but we went into one that had about 8 seats and Ram struck up a conversation with the folks. Later, some other foreigners were looking in, and we waved them in too. A few silly conversations later ("you're from seattle? do you like rock music? do you like Fleet Foxes?"), and we all decide to go karaoke. At this point it's about midnight, and the trains in Japan stop running at midnight, and start again at 5. So if you're going out, you're out till 12 or till 5. So we were going big. (I couldn't possibly go home!)

Then at about 12:30 our newfound Australian friends bugged out. I do not know why. Lame. So we hang out with this Japanese guy whom we later named "Albert Nietzsche" because we couldn't remember his actual name, he looked like an Albert, and he liked Nietzsche. We are tired. We go to his house and take a nap. We wake up at 5 and go to the Tsukiji fish market. This was neat.

Back to the listing of things:
Monday/tuesday- staying out late and karaoking again (this time with people we actually knew), visiting some Shibuya staples like Tokyu Hands.
Tuesday- Yokohama Chinatown, trick art museum, Ram's friend's shop with a dysfunctional Tarot deck, and the very unique aquarium
Wednesday- Asakusa, Kappabashi-Dori (the cooking supplies street! I bought a knife!), conveyor sushi, the music supplies district and the bookstore district whose names I forget, and then Shimo-Kitazawa, a hip cool neighborhood that Ram and I like a lot.
Thursday- Hokane and Ice Cream City. A lot of trains this day.
Friday- Viking!

And finally, some funny things:

At one point before I got there, a guy came up to Ram and his friend Pat and greeted them by brandishing his fist and shouting (of course) "FIST!"

Ram taught me a drinking chant that you can say when someone's taking a shot. It translates kind of like this:
What have you got?
You've got it because you're not drinking.
(sound that's supposed to represent masturbating)
(sound that's supposed to represent masturbating)
(different sound that's supposed to represent masturbating)
Tea-bag-gu! (and then on the "gu" you drink the shot.)

My coworker Tyler has a t-shirt that has some funny pictures and says "Spartan Mother." I met a guy in Japan wearing the same t-shirt.

A step had a warning sign that said "be careful of a level difference." I found that particularly amusing. If I were playing Dungeons and Dragons, I'd put that as a warning on a dungeon.

After noticing a sign for "Bar April Fool", Ram and I were joking about what such a trick bar could be. He suggested "it's not a bar, it's a barber!" where you come in for a drink and leave with a haircut. Then we saw a sign for a place that said exactly that: "Bar-ber."

What an anticlimactic way to end this post. So it goes.

God, this is going to be embarrassing if swine flu DOES become a big deal

Still, it's not.

Things that make me happy:
This essay about how transit-oriented development is not just liberal wackiness. (augh, I said no politics, I know... maybe this can slip by because it's about uniting behind a cause that will help everyone and not just "left is right and right is wrong"?)
"Undeclared" by the Dodos. This album ("Visiter") is RIYL Death Cab meets Animal Collective, and this song is fully on the Ben Gibbard side of the spectrum, and if you don't like it you probably have no feelings. (a song I like without electricity! shocking!)
Biking biking biking!
Ignite Seattle. This was the coolest thing. First, there's a contest for how to build the tallest tower out of five sheets of paper, plus tape, in like a half hour. Recalling my 8th grade science class failure, I shied away at first, but eventually decided to try it anyway. (with Sarah, Daniel, and this other guy named Adam who needed a team). Our result: 37 inches. It looked like a sad giraffe.
But then like 20 people gave 5-minute talks on pretty much just "something that is cool. (and nerdy.)" Everything from "how mitochondria work" to "how we'll manufacture things on small scales in the future" to "people geek out about legos a lot" to "stick maps of the Marshall Islands". Super great stuff. They say they're having this quarterly, and I'm going to the next ones for sure.
Japan tomorrow! (well, I will arrive on Saturday. But I'm leaving tomorrow.)

Dear The National Fearmongers, ahem, The Media

You have made someone I care about very worried about swine flu.

Getting swine flu is like getting the regular flu.

Under 2000 people have caught the 2009 swine flu and under 100 have died. We're still talking a death rate comparable to being struck by lightning. (756 deaths / 13 years = 58 deaths per year.)

In the best case scenario, you're actually very concerned about this, which just means you're all gullible or you don't understand statistics or there are other psychological things going on inside your heads. In the likely scenario, it's a slow news week and you need to sell papers. In the conspiracy-theory scenario, you're all in cahoots trying to keep us afraid so that we channel all our energy into fighting Eastasia or something else sinister.

Whatever. Just shut the hell up.

Hunger challenge: recap

In case you missed it, I was doing the Hunger Challenge last week. Dramatic as that sounds, all it amounts to is feeding myself using only $7/day (which is the maximum food stamp benefit). No food from other people or anything either. (That means no Google food. I did drink their coffee and tea, though. Call it necessary medication for the office lifestyle. If you really want to split hairs, next time I'll buy a bunch of cheap tea for a dollar.)

I went to QFC, to prove that any of you can do this too at your local grocery store. I could probably do better at Trader's Joe, maybe I could do better at the Pike Place Market, and I could definitely do better at an International District Asian grocery store (a small one, not Uwajimaya). I only charged things that I actually ate, and if I used something that I already had in the house, I approximated how much it would cost.

Here's how my expenses turned out:
A honeydew melon: 2.23 (on super sale, 40c/lb)
1/2 dozen eggs: 2.89/2 = 1.45 (not the cheap eggs, these were somewhat "free range" or something- whatever, if you're at QFC you're not going to get humane eggs anyway. you can pay more, but all you get is "organic" or "omega-3".)
1 1/2 lb onions (about half a 3-lb bag): 1.99/2 = 1.00
Tofu: 2.69 (why is tofu so expensive at QFC?)
1 green pepper: 1.50
2 apples: 1.01
1/2 bulb garlic: 0.72/2=0.36
about 5 carrots: 0.88 (fact: actual big carrots usually cost about half of the "baby-cut" kind)
2 broccolis: 0.89 (on sale)
1 c. brown rice (1/50 of a huge $20 bag): 0.40
2 c. groats, barley, quinoa, and millet: about 2.00
3 c. whole wheat flour: 0.70
1/2 bunch spinach that we already had: 1.00
1/2 cabbage that we already had: about 1.50
1/2 stick butter: about 0.50
about 1/2 c. peanut butter throughout the week: maybe 1.00? I didn't track the peanut butter so well...
1 tsp caraway, 2 bay leaves, some marjoram, thyme, and an occasional glug of soy sauce: about 1.00
1 package whole wheat orzo: 4.00
2 more apples: 1.30
maybe 1/4 c. tahini? 0.50?
3 beers (rolling rock/henry weinhard): 3.30
1 beer at a bar (rainier): 2.00 + 1.00 = 3.00
= 32.34.
We'll call it even at $35, to allow for error in the spices and stuff.

Things I made out of all this include a loaf of bread, orzo and broccoli soup, a tofu scramble, cabbage and spinach with eggs (which was great), and a big thing of mixed grains (like oatmeal but better). I did pretty well for 4.5 days.

Friday, work was rough. (To be fair, Thursday, Wednesday, and Tuesday were also rough. To be even more fair, it was I who made them rough. But still, no fun.) So by Friday, they announced at work that they were bringing in ice cream because we (previously) donated the most to a food bank, and goddamn if I'm not going to eat ice cream. So I had that. And then I drank more beer that night too which was not in the budget. So I guess I didn't quite make it.

But the point is, you can make it. You can eat cheaply and not eat crap. You will probably eat more cheaply if you don't eat crap. Also, it doesn't really take that much time: I cooked on Monday for a few hours, and then made the tofu on I think Wednesday. AND, I'm not a super chef blogger. This goes out to all you "starving" college students. (not to actual poor people. I mean, I hope they can eat well and cheaply too, but if they don't, I'm not going to say it's their own fault. being poor is not easy.)

And the further point is just that! Being poor is not easy! $7 per day doesn't sound so bad, but then it's $2.33 per meal. No other food. (maybe your grocery budget is less than that, but what about restaurants and takeout?) And when you're looking at that, even a teaspoon of a spice can become a significant fraction of the meal. I did eat a little grainier than I would have liked, and not so vegetableful. And a couple times, I was actually hungry (imagine that). I guess 4 beers/week fits in with this budget, or maybe like a thing of ice cream instead or whatever, but there is not much room for luxury.

That's all! Enjoy your food, and maybe pause for a moment and be like "it is nice to have this."

If you were 1000 years old, what would you do with all those years?

First, let me just do one thing:


Hey? Hey? You can see the rest on jluxenberg's photostream.

Topic switch.

I had a funny dream last night. I was hanging around with Luke Skywalker, and we were going to fight some big villain, like a big showdown thing, and we both knew it was a big showdown, and we were walking into the villain's lair, but the villain and his henchmen thought that we didn't know, so they disguised the whole place as an airport. We were like going down underground and it was all "okay, here's the concourse, here's the gate, we'll check your bags". At one point we stopped by some lockers and picked up our lightsabers. Uhh, you know. Eventually we got to the room where the big showdown was supposed to happen, and it was a big stadium, like a basketball arena, but we couldn't fight yet, because a girls' college basketball game was taking place. We could hear the announcer saying "she's going up for a slam dunk, and... holy shit!" as the girl herself ended up in the basket somehow. But I was bummed because I knew I wasn't going to be asleep still when the fight happened, and I wanted to beat Darth Vader. Or whomever.

The interesting thing is, though, I had a real sense that time went all wonky. I knew that I was going to wake up before the fight happened, even before I woke up. It's like at the very instant I woke up, a huge flurry of brainwave activity happened, and I only later "remembered" it as a sequential story. Maybe that's what people mean when they say time is just an illusion, or that it's as bendy as the other three dimensions, or that the afterlife is outside time, or something.

Topic shift.

I got hit with a blast of rampant existentialism on my bike on the way home. I was feeling particularly like "what's the point of existing?" (oh my god disclaimer don't get me wrong i'm not all depressed and jumping off a bridge or something oh my god) I mean, I used to say "my life exists to make things better for other people," but now I'm not so sure. I was all about "making life better" but in a pretty impersonal way, like if I could develop better routing algorithms to get food to starving people or something. All this "I want to do great things," it's all kind of just so I can feel better than thou, or at least as good as thou. Not that I don't want to do great things; just... it seems like the whole mountain climber thing, like I'd have to keep climbing higher and higher mountains and I'd never be satisfied, so why bother climbing any mountains at all?

You know "It's a Wonderful Life"? Where, if this guy never lived, his town would be Pottersville, taken over by the rich evil tycoon, and his brother would be dead, or whatever? If he never lived, things would be worse. If I never lived, well, things would be different. My spot at CMU, say, would have been taken by another kid. So my friends there would have met another person instead of me; maybe they would have gotten along better, maybe worse, whatever. Some people might be sadder because they had one less fun guy to goof around with; some people might be happier because they got one of my roles in a play or they weren't shunned by me so hard. Google Analytics might not be so pretty. Or maybe it would have; Google's not hurting for applicants, they could have just hired someone else.

Nevermind, it's the whole voting argument. "You have to vote, it really does make things better!" Similarly, "it's good that I exist, I really do make things better!" I've convinced myself of both of these at one point, and I've convinced myself unimpeachably, like "if you ever think these things are false, you're wrong", or at least "you better really rewire your head really friggin hard if you're going to try to convince me that those are false, and to do so, you'll probably be moving in a direction that you don't like, so you probably shouldn't."

Pity party pity party! Maybe it is. Maybe I should accept more sympathy, and give out more sympathy too. My party line has been, if you're feeling like this, "shape the fuck up, Charlie Brown" (inside joke with, err, one friend from high school) but maybe that's not a good way to live.

To take one more mental leap which makes perfect sense to me but might just be so many words on my blog, this line of thought leads me to something I've wondered for a while. How do you be loving to everyone but still maintain the ability to pick and choose your friends? If I read the stuff on this blog post, and I didn't know who wrote it, I would say that's fine for that person, I'm sorry he feels that way, and all the same I don't want to be this person's friend because he sounds whiny. But if one of my friends wrote it, I mean, I would feel supportive to my friend. It's not like I'd want to end our friendship. But if he/she was always like this, maybe I would. So I don't love that friend unconditionally. But if I did love everyone unconditionally, like you're supposed to, how could I make time for the people I like the most? How could I even like anyone the most?

Topic shift.

I might sign up for Twitter.

Blogging: way down; a lot of great food; and the Hunger Challenge.

Things have been quiet around here. First I decided to cut out politics, because it wasn't doing me much good. (for the record, I feel a lot better politics-free.) Then I decided to cut out even food-politics, because that'll all go in another site I make someday. (I'm making slow but sure progress.) Then I slowed way down on that because I realized I don't have to save the world immediately. I'm working on the whole happiness thing, but when I say that, it sounds like I'm just moving right along like I have been the rest of my life. It's different; I feel like I'm doing better than before. A few key points, and I'll try to make it not sound sappy, because it doesn't feel sappy to me, but it might come across that way: (if you want, jump down for info about Portland or the Hunger Challenge.)

- I am a great person. Self-worth is intrinsic. It doesn't depend on what you think of me, or what dumb things I do.
- To believe that, I have to believe that YOU are a great person too, whoever you are, and that's a little harder for me to believe, but I'm getting there. One hangup is "if everyone is so great, how can you decide not to hang out with someone?" I don't mean the people who are mean to you (it's easy to avoid them; just say "I like you but you don't like me, that's your problem"), but what about the people who are kind of annoying? The people who might want to like you, and you can like them back as a person, but you don't want to be around them for whatever reason? This seems like a minor problem. It's just a "social graces" sort of thing.
- So I'm already great, so I don't have to save the world in order to be worth other people's affection, so there's less pressure. Even if all I do is go to work to earn some money, then spend it on housing and food, and you know, love people n'at, that's enough.
- Given that there's less pressure, it's not so bad to just take time out sometimes and say "I am having fun now!" or "that tree is pretty" or "boy it feels nice outside." (formerly I would sometimes think "man, I hate how it feels nice outside, because it makes me feel guilty to be inside"... that is ridiculous.)
- Oh, speaking of how I'm great, I have feelings and stuff. Yeah, really, even though I joke about being a robot because I dig the logics a lot, I am an all-around human being. 's true. So I can use those sometimes. That's okay.
- Plus Buddhism! I got in a traffic jam today. There was nothing wrong with that. I was in no big hurry to get home. I was with Sarah and Daniel. So I tried mostly successfully not to attach suffering to it, and that worked pretty well.
- and by the way, I can be happy. All this idealism isn't just another failed bid that will end in disillusionment. My life is pretty good.

So day-to-day life is more or less the same as it ever was, but I'm shifting my focus bit by bit. I'll keep you posted. When I reach enlightenment and attain complete control over mind and body, I'll post "omg totes levitating right now" or something.

Speaking of life, went to Portland this weekend! Stayed with Daniel's friend Henry and his roommates. Cool folks! Cool city! Cool comic convention! (does it make me a super dork if I went to two comic conventions in the same month?) But this was less nerdstock and more "I draw a comic online." I liked the comics here more. Also, unrelatedly, cool Saturday Market!

And cool food. Man. We ate at four places there, all of them stellar for 22-year-oldsmen. First night: Hopworks Urban Brewery, with a great Belgian-style Dubbel for $3.50. (also a "pint of pretzels", which means three meter-long freshly-baked pretzels in a beer stein.) Second day: Pine State Biscuits, which will clog your arteries for sure, but man biscuits are maybe my favorite white bread. Plus, a lot of interesting-sounding topics for said biscuits. (big sandwich plus coffee: like $9) Second evening: Saburo's sushi. The biggest and tastiest nigiri I've ever seen, and rolls the size of small burritos. Had a great squid nigiri (2 pcs, $3.50) and an eel roll. (thing I've unfortunately found out since: you shouldn't eat unagi (freshwater eel). another site agrees. anago is a "maybe". if you just order "eel" and you don't know which one you're getting, it's probably unagi.) Third day: brunch at Gravy. Literally enough food for two generous meals. Three would be reasonable. Including super good french toast and a scramble with tofu.

In short, thanks Henry for the choices, thanks Portland for being cool, I'll have to visit again. (but nope, not moving there, I heart Seattle, which is nice)

Finally, it's time for the Hunger Challenge! The plan: to eat for $7/day. To see what it's like to only get $7 food stamps and have to feed yourself with it. My viewpoint: whatever! That's easy! One rule I've made in addition to the other rules: I can use existing food that I own, if I count out how much it would cost. I'll let you know how it goes. (and hey, join me if you want!)

(for the record, I think it's ridiculous that having $7/day for food is the "hunger challenge." sheesh. how about a handful of rice per day? that's hungry and challenging.)

Finally finally, in the category of things that make me happy and corporations not always being evil, shouts out to Cigna, for covering me for one doctor's appt I made without realizing it would not be covered (b/c it was in cleveland, derf) and to Zipcar, for not hitting us with a late charge when we drove back late and another person had rented the same car.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

That I haven't posted photos yet from last weekend or even elaborated much besides "I bought a coat and then last weekend was cool."

So Seattle has conventions, you know, like big cities do, right. Last weekend was the Emerald City Comic Con. Sarah and Daniel suggested that we go, because they've read a couple of the webcomic authors who will be there. (I have since too, and I like them too)

So it'll be like nerdfest, right? (I mean, I say this in a self-mocking way, not like "I'm going to go hang out with all the nerrrrddss"... even going to a comic con makes you lose all rights to make fun of people for nerding. Besides, who am I trying to kid? Thank god there are no pictures online of when I went to see the Matrix Reloaded dressed as Agent Smith. On second thought, that was hella fun, and I don't care what you say.) Now, when you're going to a nerdfest, you can act all hip and above-it-all and like "oh, I'm just cultural slumming" (or "I'm going LARPing to write a story about it"), or you can geek the hell out. And Sarah and I, we go big or go home.

Now what's nerdy that we like? Hint: it's British, the villains have plungers for arms, and the spaceship is a police box.

Yes, we were Doctor Who and Rose Tyler. Sadly, Jared has most of the good pictures. In the meantime, here's this:


EDIT: hi-res here. you know, because you'll probably want a poster of this for your wall.

A coat story, in which I posit 10 as the next funny number after 3

On Saturday Sarah and I set out to find a coat. A trench coat, really. Any long brown coat would do. A suit would be nice but not necessary, cheap Converse All-stars would be nice too but we knew where to find those so no problem, but the trench coat was the tricky one. I had done some investigation beforehand and found maybe like 12 long coats at the Value Village, but they were all way too big and not the right style, so I didn't buy any. I figured I'd spend about $20 at a thrift store somewhere.

So we started at the Crossroads Trendy Resale Shop near my house. No long coats. Up to the U District (where soulja boy and electric six hang out) to the Buffalo Exchange Trendy Resale Shop. Again, no long coats, but some pants that looked promising. Over to the Red Light Vintage and Resale Shop; some kinda neat suits but they were priced at like $100-150 and had rips and stuff. Goodwill had a similar lack of long coats. Argh! Despair starts to worm its dirty little fingers into our minds. Express bus downtown to the Ross Discount Clothes store; no winter coats. Out of season. Duh. H&M Trendy New Clothes: again, out of season.

At this point, we are standing outside Nordstrom. Well hey, a department store, right? They'll have some coats, anyway, even if they're out of my price range. We waltz in, past the pianoman (because you see it is classy), down to the men's department, and I stride confidently up to a salesman and proclaim "I would like a trench coat!" He points me over to the wall a little bit like the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. Aha! Look at those coats! Perfect! And now, mind you, my price range had crept up steadily with each failure, from $20 to $40, to $60, and was at this point pushing $80.

I pick a coat and look at the price tag. Eight hundred ninety five dollars! Harh! I am off by an entire order of magnitude! This is funny! Because, you see, had the price been $100, I would have bought it; $200, I would have wishy-washed a lot; $500, 'fraid not. But being off by a factor of 10: that's funny.

The thrilling conclusion: we leave, wander around and look for some more thrift stores that aren't there because they're not the best at making sure their Google Maps listings are up-to-date, we almost fight, Sarah suggests we go to Macy's, I say no way they won't have anything we want for sure, she says let's try anyway, I agree to take a quick look, I ask a man while she looks around, the man says they have no coats but Sarah finds some anyway, there are exactly three styles left on a clearance rack and exactly one coat that fits a man as small-chested as I, and that coat is the brilliant shining paragon of coat-that-I-wanted for 75% off and I walk home $100 poorer but 1000% more awesome the next day.

What happened the next day? Stay tuned, dear reader...