10.31.2006

My Political Endorsements

With the election one week away and most voters unaware of who's running or what they're about, I've risen to my civic duty to educate the public. And as with most of my civic duties, I will not take this seriously.

For those you not in Minneapolis, you can still learn from the votronic lessons I am about to teach.

You all know about your senate and governor candidates and crap. Those aren't important. But you don't know about who's running for Soil and Water Supervisor or who's doomed to be re-elected to the Apellate Courts. So here's everything you need to know!

Note: These are all taken from the ballot in my precinct and probably do not apply to the rest of you wonderful citizens!

Soil and Water Supervisor in District 2
The ballot as given on the internet says all these candidates are non-partisan, so it's like choosing which kind of unflavored oatmeal you want. Your options are Dan Flo, Phil Willkie, and Ernest K. Lehmann, and none of them offer any information about themselves. Usually I'd pick my guy by who has the most interesting name, but the only interesting name here is too weird. I'll be excercising my write-in option. Please join me in electing Glen Mason.

Soil and Water Supervisor in District 4
This race belongs to John Crampton. Or maybe Steven Jenkins. Just please do not vote for Ryan Wilson. He graduated from Edina (strike one) a year after me (strike two), and he looks doughy (strike three). Also, his most recent job was at a grocery store, so I'm pretty sure he's running as a joke.

Judge for Appeals Court 11
Interesting Minnesota tradition: since the inception of the appeals court in 1983, all appeals judges have been appointed and have to run for re-election for the following term. I assume that's why the vast majority of these guys run unopposed. Dan Griffith, however, opposes incumbent Christopher J. Dietzen and could be the first person elected to this position instead of being appointed. Of course, no one cares.

Judge for 4th District Court 44
I actually sort of care about this race because challenger Dee Rowe graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison law school.

That's it for actual races, but I would like to encourage all of you to use the following write-in names for candidates who are running unopposed:

JUDGE - COURT OF APPEALS 6: Nigel Tufnel
JUDGE - COURT OF APPEALS 7: David St. Hubbins
JUDGE - COURT OF APPEALS 12: Derek Smalls
JUDGE -4TH DISTRICT COURT 6: Seymour Butz
JUDGE -4TH DISTRICT COURT 16: The Keebler Elves
JUDGE -4TH DISTRICT COURT 17: Mars, god of war
JUDGE -4TH DISTRICT COURT 22: Back to the Future
JUDGE -4TH DISTRICT COURT 35: Kit (the car from Knight Rider)
JUDGE -4TH DISTRICT COURT 39: I know you are, but what am I?
JUDGE -4TH DISTRICT COURT 40: Takes one to know one
JUDGE -4TH DISTRICT COURT 45: Lead
JUDGE -4TH DISTRICT COURT 50: Churches
JUDGE -4TH DISTRICT COURT 52: Very small stones
JUDGE -4TH DISTRICT COURT 55: A duck

Happy Hallowhen Can I Leave?

When I was drunk in college, I liked Halloween. For the months leading up to Halloween this year, I hated Halloween. Today I'm indifferent.

My attitude toward Halloween changed when somebody at work suggested that we all wear Casual Friday costumes, also known as jeans. I took it one step further and wore a hoodie. I still don't like the idea of Casual Friday, but I like that I don't have to wear stupid khakis. To make matters better, nobody noticed that we're all wearing jeans, so I might just wear jeans tomorrow too.


Other cadidates for the title of this post:
Happy Hallowaste of Time
Happy Hallowhat?
Happy Hallowant Some Popcorn?
Happy Hallowait Here While I Bring the Car Around
Happy Hallowax Museum

10.30.2006

Public Relations

It finally happened. Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe broke up. I saw it coming. We all knew from the beginning that she was too good for him. When they had a kid, I thought for a while that they might make. I thought they'd prove to the world that some Hollywood couples can stay together. So much for having faith in movie stars.

The most interesting part of this for me, though, is that their publicist made the announcement of their separation. That seems a little weird, a little artificial; and what if the publicist just decided to mess with people? If I was a publicist, I think I'd do that every now and then.

But this got me thinking. What personal information would I prefer to disseminate through my publicist? Here's a list of candidate bits:

-my new allergies
-my fantasy football record
-my dog's death (only if he died of natural causes)
-when I'm going to the zoo
-the fact that I didn't go to the zoo when my publicist said I would
-the kind of tea that I am currently drinking
-how well I slept last night
-words that I like

I feel like these are all important enough for everyone to know but too sensitive for me to share with everyone myself.

What would you have your publicist say about you?

10.27.2006

Tried to Post This Yesterday

Aren't elephants cool?

This guy's from Africa:
Great posture.

And this one's from 'Nam:
He's sad, but that makes him cute.

I don't really have anything to say about elephants. Um...they can crush things. Oh, here's a joke: what time is it when an elephant sits on your fence? Time to get a new fence! I think there's also a joke about elephants and hot chocolate.

10.24.2006

Life-Changing Event #2

As of twenty minutes ago, I no longer have internet or television reception in my house. I am free, free from the shackles of entertainment and distraction (though I do still have 800 CDs and a large number of movies and TV shows on DVD)!

This was mostly about me saving $60 a month, but I feel like it means more than that. Maybe it means I can do something more with my life than sit on a chair or a couch. I am excited to take advantage of that opportunity.

So now it's like I traveled back in time to the 1920s, though I'd need one of those giant radios to complete the illusion. And then driving to work every day would be like traveling forward in time some 80 years. That would put some strain on the brain. I wonder if I can take it.

10.23.2006

It Is Done

I finished writing my book.

It took two years, and now it's done. A complete story spanning 158 single-spaced pages in Word.

I still have to read it over and make some minor adjustments, but the story is done. The book is done.

I remember when I finished my thesis a year ago. It was a very similar feeling. It's like giving birth (minus the physical everything), I imagine. You spend so much time with this thing inside of you, and when it's out, you feel simultaneously like a better, stronger person and like you're missing something.

But the point is it's done.

10.21.2006

Once-in-a-Lifetime Late-Nite Post

It is nearly 1:30 AM, and I have just arrived home from a triumphant conversation that I must share with the world.

On the drive back from Jodi's house, Corey, Kia and I began a simple conversation about Thai food and how Corey likes it. Then I make my random comment as follows: "I think you can understand a person's development by which variety of Asian food they prefer." Much laughter ensued before we got serious and realized this statement is true.

Let's explore.

People in general enjoy different varieties of Asian foods. There's your Thai, your Vietnamese, your standard Chinese, your Japanese, and your more obscure Mongolian (I'm sorry, we have to exclude Indian because it's a separate subcontinent and a somewhat unrelated taste). It seems that one prefers one variety over another at different stages of life, as each variety thus illustrates that a person is at a specific point of development.*

Here is what we concluded**:
Vietnamese: childhood. It's a generally mild flavor, often sweet, and easily appealing to the undeveloped and immature palate. It goes down easily and presents very little challenge to the digestive system.

Chinese: adolescent. It's one step above Vietnamese as it gets slightly more bitter and textured. The flavor still lacks the fullness of much Asian cuisine, but it opens one's taste up to further development.

Thai: young adult/twenties. The adventurousness of the food coincides with the adventurousness of the individual. The food is not only more spicy, but the flavor is also more robust, vibrant, and varied. It is very similar to the difficult but ultimately fulfilling road to adulthood.

Sushi/Japanese: adult. This is more sophisticated and calm to coincide with the settled or settling mindset of the adult. The restaurants are often more subdued as well. The food befits a very advanced palate and digestive system and often requires a well-traveled eater.

Buffet: senior citizen. We are all familiar with the Chinese buffet, and though it is a necessary part of our diet at any age, it does not become the signature of one's Asian eating until the taste for more authentic food has long since disappeared. The lamp-heated, plastic-looking chicken probably reflects how our seniors feel.

We performed the same experiment with varieties of Mexican restaurant with similar results (children don't eat Mexican, adolescents begin with Taco Bell, young adults graduate to Chipotle/Qdoba, adults end up at Don Pablo's). I may not be a sociologist, but I'd say this discovery is groundbreaking. Bring on the Nobel Prize!


*This is not to say that if a person eats one of these kinds that they are at that level. It goes by general preference. For instance, I may eat Vietnamese, but I prefer Thai.
**The following does not apply to Asian people.

10.19.2006

An American Halloween

According to a bunch of idiots, pirate costumes are going to be hot sellers this year. I'm disappointed. Are there no better ideas out there? Is our culture so depleted, so dull and uncreative that we have to rely on pirates to wow our friends and neighbors?


Probably.

How I Found This Picture of a Cake

Not very appetizing.
As you may have guessed by looking at this picture, I'm very bored today. What you may not know, though, is how I found it. To be honest, I'm not too sure either. I just started clicking on random links through wikipedia. I don't know what I started with, then I got to radioactivity, then something, then something else, then fractions. I probably could have continued and ended up with the Bronx Zoo, but I liked this picture a lot. Mostly cuz it's ugly, and those quarters are uneven.

This gives me an idea for a new game: see how long it takes me to get to the Bronx Zoo from random starting points on wikipedia. We can call it Six Degrees of Bronx Zoo. First try took me almost 20. Went from Nirvana to kilograms to the Cuban Missile Crisis before I finally worked my way to the Bronx Zoo. I wasn't really trying.

What a seriously gross-looking cake, though.

My New Best Friend

My new best friend is named Gary. I don't know what his last name is, but he said his parents named him after Gary Coleman. I laughed when he told me that. Gary frowned, so I kicked him in the shin.

Gary went to community college. He applied to three schools: Harvard, some school in Canada, and this community college. He did it as a joke, but nobody thought it was funny. Now he's really pissed off that he ended up in community college. He said he could have gotten into Ohio State, and I agreed because Ohio State only lets douchebags in. I laughed again and kicked Gary in the shins.

Gary is in a wheelchair.

Gary's favorite movie is The Wizard of Oz. His favorite part is when the Tin Man sings. When I told him the Tin Man was a robot, he had a temper tantrum. It's true, though. He is a robot. There's nothing you can do about it, Gary.

Yesterday Gary went to Spain to visit his brother who's studying abroad, but I switched his ticket to Mongolia and didn't tell him.

10.18.2006

New Blogger Disaster

Blogger's in the process of converting all its functions over to Google Accounts and making it many ways more like wordpress. Unfortunately, only a few blogs are being invited to this new option at a time, and the one of mine that made the change was Flipper's. I brought Flipper back to life yesterday only to screw everything up.

What frustrates me--and I publish this because I need to vent about it--is that I accidentally used my real Google account for my fake blog. Even though I have a fake Google account for my fake blog. And it won't let me change it. And since it's permanently attached to my account, I won't be able to import the real blog to the real account on top of it.

For now, everything's fine (I guess). I guess it just means I'll have to export Flipper's blog and delete it. That'll keep me busy today.

Catholic Disaster

Last night I dreamt that I went to a Catholic mass. I went with somebody who was not Catholic and had no idea what was going on, and that made for some seemingly bizarre incidents. Like when we prayed, this person insisted we all hold hands (which, upon reflection, I realize I've done with actual Catholic people).

The communion was the strangest part, though. Instead of wafers and wine, the communion was given with Teddy Grahams and boiling water served straight from the pot. I used a styrofoam cup for the water, though.

THE END.

10.17.2006

Get Me Out

Today my coworker turned to me to talk about last night's football game. I didn't see it because I don't have cable, but she told me about it anyway. That was fine. But then she started telling me how cute quarterback Matt Leinart is.

This is a problem. I must have been here far too long if my female coworkers think they can chat with me about what football players are cute. Granted, I can discuss the manly charms of Tiki Barber with dudes, but I'm not going to be put in that girlfriend role. That's just weird.

10.16.2006

Melt

I've been hoarding paper clips almost since the day I started working here. I have a decent number--not enough to completely fill my desk drawer but still far too many for me to ever use, especially since I never use paper clips here.

So I just came up with a plan: whenever I quit this job (please, Lord, soon), I'm going to take all the clips I've amassed and possibly some more and melt them down into a little silver ball. I think I'll throw a party. The Melting Party.

Maybe it'll become an annual event. People can bring whatever they want to melt, and we'll melt it all down in a ball. Or we can do a different shape every year. This'll be bigger than high school reunion.

Understanding My Readers

Today I decided to dust off the old site meter and take a look at who is reading Garbage: Left, Recycling: Right (which is becoming a more and more unsatisfactory title). There's not a lot that I didn't expect, aside from the one person who asked google, "Do you have any recycling bens?" and found me. To answer the question, yes I do. I have one. It is me.

Also of note, my popularity is rising in Unknown Country. In the last several days I have had a whopping 8 hits from this enigmatic nation, accounting for nearly one-tenth of my readership. I don't know if these people can speak or read English, if live on land or beneath the sea, or even if they're actually reading my blog. Nonetheless, I appreciate your presence here, anonymous apatriots, and I salute your invisible flag. Mazel tov!

Unspar Editorial: North Korea

A lot of people are talking about North Korea having nuclear weapons, and as my opinion is more valid than most (by virtue of having a blog with an orange background), I thought people should know what I think so they can change their minds.

Point One: Why are we not scared out of our minds? The North Korean ambassador to the UN said upon the approval of the sanctions, "If the United States increases pressure on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the DPRK will continue to take physical countermeasures considering it as a declaration of war." HOLY CRAP. Now I'm not one to take the threats of foreigners seriously (he didn't even bang his shoe on his desk), but we might have something to worry about here. Maybe we should bomb them first? That said, I trust President Bush's diplomatic approach and the increased pressure he continues to apply to the DPRK to solve this problem.

Point Two: Why can't North Korea have nuclear weapons? Why can't every country? Whatever happened to freedom and equality? If we really want to liberate these "rogue nations," shouldn't our freedom be an example to them? Sanctions cost this great planet its freedom: its freedom to indiscriminately destroy one another as certain madmen and tyrants see fit. Don't even mention how uncomfortable I am with how arbitrary we are with which countries can have nukes and which can't. I mean, if you want to put the kibosh on the Axis of Evil's nuclear capabilities, fine, I understand. But France? Do our leaders realize the risk their putting us in?

Point Three: Where is North Korea anyway? I couldn't find them anywhere on a map of the Middle East. Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough.

My Proposed Solution: In times of crisis like this, we need to look to the mainstays of our nation's leadership: Hollywood. I say we combine the lessons of Navy Seals, Back to the Future 2, Surf Ninjas, the Bruce Willis collection, and a couple zombie movies. We get Charlie Sheen in a building with Kim Jong-Il, give him a magic Game Gear that can see the future, and travel back in time to stop Biff from stealing the sports almanac, all while fighting off a growing army of zombies. If there's a better way to stop a nuclear apocalypse, I haven't heard of it.

Our Roads Are Ruined

Yesterday, on the outskirts of downtown Minneapolis, I saw a tumbleweed. It lay there in the middle of the street, ready to tumble onward with its metaphorical implications of desolation, while dozens of cars drove on around it. How it ended up in downtown Minneapolis, we'll never know (speculators guessed it fell off the back of a truck, but what would a tumbleweed be doing on the back of a truck?). Perhaps the Coen Brothers are back in town.

Then today on my way to work, traffic was really backed up. Unfortunately, it wasn't the tumbleweed holding things up, but there was "debris on the road" (that's what the big sign said). They closed a lane because of debris? A) We can probably drive on debris, and B) Did we get bombed? Then I discovered that a semi overturned and crashed into the median barrier and knocked chunks of pavement onto a lane. Hence the debris. So if anybody's taking 35W, watch out.

Notice Anything Different?

As of last night at about 10:10, I made a drastic change in my life. It may jar or frighten some of you, so you should probably sit down (but if you're standing while you're at your computer, we have different issues to discuss). Here it is:

I stopped wearing my "One" bracelet.

I wanted to know what it's like to be braceletless again. It's been probably almost two years now, and I can't remember what my right hand looked like without a white band around the wrist. But now that era is over. Now begins the era of liberty! My wrists will run wild and free!

I think my wrists are already growing. Pretty soon I might not be able to touch my thumb and middle finger around them. After that, I might be able to lift things! This is gonna be great!

10.10.2006

In the News

I hear North Korea has nuclear weapons. I find this darkly ironic. Though I find it slightly less ironic when I remember we had a war with them some 50 years ago. Does this mean Iraq will finally have nukes in 50 years? Assuming there's still an Iraq (or an Earth) to speak of at that point, I wouldn't doubt it. If I had a glass of champagne, I would raise it to toast enriched uranium. Cheers.

Apparently there's a study on how women wear more fashionable clothing when they're pregnant. Considering how the vast majority of women at any given time are not pregnant, I don't see how could this could be true. But there's a study. I guess that means I better start shopping at the maternity store. I'm thinking mumu. (Correction: that's fertile women, not pregnant ones. But there's only a small difference, so I'm still getting that mumu.)

And YouTube sold out. I'm surprised Google didn't own it earlier, really. I'm half-expecting Google to travel back in time buy the whole internet. I wonder: How long before Google starts buying the rights to people? Or if not people, meta-people, meaning individual blogs. The bidding on Garbage: Left, Recycling: Right starts at $250,000. That's pretty cheap if you ask me. And it won't be long before I start artificially inflating the value, so better get while the gettin's good.

The Ghost of Myself

Everybody [in the blog world, so nobody real] is talking about what they did this weekend. I feel like I should join in. After all, it's Tuesday, and the weekend is becoming a distant memory to many of us.

Have any of you heard the song "Our Weekend Starts on Wednesday" by Hey Mercedes? I like the song, but it's pretty standard as far as guitar music goes, and by the time it's over you're mostly thankful that only two minutes have passed, but for once I could identify with it. My weekend started on Wednesday.

I took Thursday, Friday, and yesterday (Monday) off because I hadn't taken a day off in what seemed like years. It was a much needed break, during which I did almost nothing. While other "people" had ragers at apple orchards and ate family dinners and lived their tumultuous lives, I watched movies and slept on the couch. I also went to a wedding, planned a bachelor party, and dropped a grand on some new bling, but that stuff isn't important. The sleeping and movies part was easily the highlight.

And that's why I haven't had an entry in five days. Maybe now that I'm awake, I can start talking about interesting things. Unlikely, but we can always hope. I suggest you start engineering interesting things to happen to me. I've never had a dead pigeon thrown at me from a moving car....

10.04.2006

Emergen-C

'Tis the season to start getting sick again. I almost have my first cold of the season, but I might have caught it early. Right now it's just an itch in the back of my throat, so if I use the right combat tactics, I'll feel fine tomorrow morning.

My first attack was this little powder packet of vitamin C called "Emergen-C." All you have to do is mix it in water and drink. Pretty easy.

The thing that amazes me about this thing is the nutrition label on the back. This little packet has 1,000 mg of vitamin C, accounting for 1,667% of your daily value. I have enough vitamin C in me now to last me almost 17 days! It also includes 500% of B6 and 417% of B12. I'll be sure to have another before I go.

10.02.2006

Parallel Lives

Unfunny October has begun, and after Day 1's horrifying racist jokes, Day 2 brings confusing birthday coincidences.

October 2nd is the day on which we celebrate the birthday of both Gandhi and Groucho Marx. They were born a mere 21 years apart, though I doubt Gandhi was getting drunk with his bros while Groucho's bespectacled, mustached, and cigar-chomping mug emerged from his mother's womb.

Just think about it. While Groucho was making Duck Soup, Gandhi was on a hunger strike. When Groucho said, "I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member," Gandhi was probably on another hunger strike. And while Groucho was celebrating his birthday, Gandhi was celebrating his (though he had to abstain from cake, I assume).

Monumental world figure and crusader for independence born alongside a comedian. It's fitting in a post-modern, 21st-century way. Too bad they were both born in the 19th century. And if they were alive today, they'd be very old. Together.