Laundry

None of us know what we are doing. The next day, much less week, may bring problems we haven't considered. Or, it may bring pleasant surprises. Or, it may bring nothing particularly new in either direction.

Regardless, Your Fearless Leader hereby Proclaims that doing Laundy never makes you worse off.

No matter what happens, by heavens, you will at least be able to deal with it without having to search around your room first for a clean pair of socks or a shirt that doesn't look like crap. This is why the cavemen invented laundromats. People don't realize this, but "Sir-Sudz-A-Lot" was an early hominid. He may have dated Lucy.

Sling the Daggers, oh dear ones

Dear Ones!

It turns out that a very good insult to use on someone is: "You put the 'pathetic' in 'sympathetic'". It is especially daggered because it punishes someone for trying to do something that is kind to you!

Your Fearless Leader shall Keep You Updated on its use and reception.

oh, Hark! The innocent days of Ice and High Speed

Dear Readers!

Yours Truly has a Hobby! Yes, a HOOOOBBBBBBYY. That looks like it says "hooby", which, for the record, is different.

The hobby is, after it has Snowed and there is Snow on one's Car, scrape off only the windows, and leave all other snow piled on top of it -- the hood, the roof, the sailboat you carry behind it, etc.

Then, drive at high speeds and enjoy the snow Rrrripping off the car in a giant cloud of danger!

More to the point: It is not that dangerous (don't tell Yours Truly otherwise), and it makes you feel like you are living a high school physics experiment. On ... erm... wind ... and Force! Wind and force, sir!

Note to self

Rule 1: On Monday mornings in Michigan, the Panera near the local shopping mall is filled with over-caffeinated super moms. They (the Panera people, not the super moms (as far as can be understood from the naked eye)) also turn off the fireplace, which is the only redeeming quality in the whole place.

Rule 2: Do not go there!

And, now, the first PARADOX of TWENTY-TEN! Major cities in California are one thousand times (approximately) warmer than most other cities in the northern half of the US. Yet, roaring fireplaces are de rigeur in the former, and de almost nowhere to be found ever in the latter.

This is a puzzle. There is very little research on this. Someone, for the love of things on fire and not wanting to freeze to death, fill this gap in the literature!

Proposal 1: Research agendas in the social sciences in this decade should be valued in terms of how much they contribute to the immediate personal comfort of the researcher.

fin.

I Feel Pretty!

We all get caught in photographs while we are making goofy faces, or staring blankly, or looking furious for no reason. But, I think if I were more famous (and by "more" I mean "at all remotely"), I would make a concerted effort to never not smile pleasantly.

P.S. This post is dedicated to my dear Brother, whose Birthday is Tomorrow. And Who Also is very Pretty!

Put Differently

Proposition 1: Unless you were going to follow what you just said with exactly the same thing, there is absolutely no reason to insert the phrase "in other words" into your sentence or paragraph.

Proof: Suppose I am tired. Suppose further I wish to express this. Possible ways to do this:

I am tired. In other words, I feel like sleeping.
I am tired. In similar words, I am tired.

Lemma 1: This is exhausting.
Lemma 2: I am not actually tired.
Lemma 3: Yours truly is violently misusing the lemma.

Q.E.D.

Red Meat Causes and Is Caused by Death!

I've said it before, I said it again (and again), but now I never need to say it again: "Daily Red Meat Raises Chance of Dying Early."

And not only that, but the meat is worse if you:

Cook it
or
Process it.

AND: It destroys the environment.

End of discussion. Good day, gentlemen!

Perfect Storm of Human Excellence

It's a collision of Olympics and Del Close and Your Fearless Leader is wildly overwhelmed by these things in which she is already unhealthily interested.  Among all the fanfare, I am  currently most obsessed with Becky Kim, and you should be, too.

But think about it!  Improv is thrilling because it's among the most raw and truthful human behavior one can observe.  As for synchro, as Steven Strogatz, another person with whom everyone ought to be obsessed, puts it: "in its most refined form, persistent synchronization can be spectacular" (SYNC, p. 2).  Thus, in one weekend we celebrate two intensely impressive feats of people in groups.

Thus, the intersection of one of the biggest weeks in synchronized swimming and one of the biggest weeks in Improv calls for something special.  Something REALLY special.  And that is ... the one and only Truly Reminiscent moment that will ever appear on this blog (we operate in a spirit of presentism over here, friends.  For more on that subject, read this book.  Incidentally, it was written by my undergraduate dance teacher's mother.  It's also set in China, so there's some Olympic Spirit for you).

On to the Truly Reminiscent:

Once in a synchronized swimming workshop at Michigan a prominent coach came and for an exercise had us do 15 minutes of Improvised Synchronized Swimming.  She played music and told us to do whatever "moved us". We all scattered around the pool and did random things until she turned off the music.  Most of us felt ridiculous, but trusted that she knew what she was doing.  I remember spending a lot of time underwater (they can't see you there).  Finally it ended.  She looked at us blankly, paused, then started talking about something else.  No one ever mentioned it again.

This means worlds shouldn't collide.  That's why Olympics and DCM are stressful.  That's also why I'm intensely grateful the Zebra F-301 Enthusiasts' Summer Spectacular was mercifully scheduled for the week after next.

Do this, actually

I just read about a website called FutureMe on my fine friend Daniel Leary's blog. It's a site where you can compose an email to yourself and then designate its delivery for a time in the future. (Interesting in itself, though I feel like regular old email has that function?)

BUT: I invite and encourage you, dear readers, to go this very instant directly to FutureMe and click on "view public entries". There, you can all experience for yourselves the stunning discovery that at the core everybody's problems are exactly the same. More evidence that our contexts are our only differences?

Deal with that!

You may also feel free to wonder (1) why people elect to send themselves messages about bad things and not good ones, and (2) why people don't email themselves "big" questions. We wonder what colleges we'll get into, not why we all devised the institution of education in the first place. A survival mechanism, presumably. Questioning the status quo is difficult (and for a few good, solid reasons, at least in the short run).

As for not going back even further and wondering why we're all here in the first place to think about life -- much less eduation, much less what college we're going to go to, much less why we are bothering to email ourselves about it ... well ....

Once you're done with that, do this.

MOKA

Dear readers, do I have a new experience-and-a-half for you! And this isn't any new experience; in fact, it's an experience I have been long *against* doing, for fear I would ruin the magic of the actual outcome.

You guessed it: Andrea made espresso.

I'll allow that to sink in. Yes, making one's own coffee is one thing, but that's only because drip coffee is not a miracle. Drip coffee is the running of hot water through things that taste like coffee so that the water then tastes like coffee. Espresso and all espresso-based drinks, however, are the result of a combination of giant silver machines, levers left over from the 1930s, the banging of spoons on other spoons, and lots (and Lots) of steam. Crank it all around and, voilà, magical cups of glory are produced a la Willy Wonka-meets-the dark side of the moon.

Naturally, my making it at my current home (#10 in the past 12 months, for those counting) did destroy the magic, but -- and here is the crux -- the magic was destroyed only somewhat. The device I discovered in my kitchen and subsequently used to create this drink was at the start very mysterious, and, happily, still remains so, even though I did manage eventually to use it properly:

Have you ever seen anything more mysterious?

Next order of business:
New experience within a new experience: This blog just became multi-media!
New experience within a new experience within a new experience: Nested new experiences!
I won't keep going.

I will leave you, friends, with some new truths to take home to your loved ones:

1. The fact that it actually rains in April is very cliché on the part of the Weather.
2. Having to actually ask someone whether he/she remembers you is one of the saddest acts through which one can put oneself. (Advice-for-free: I recommend avoiding this at all costs.)
3. You will feel better in the last hour of 6 hours of hot yoga than you felt during the middle.
4. Raw ice cream doesn't melt.
5. Payphones in subways will come in handy someday.

Stand by

Here comes the grammar monster:

I notice with increasing frequency that people are using the phrase "waiting on line" instead of "in line" to describe the act of queuing (god bless the British) for something. I even saw it in print once.

Am I insane? There's no way that can be correct. Right? Or am I behind the times and this is some new fancy analogy that abstractly links the concept of the Internet to standing idly and making chit chat with the people behind you? Either way, I reject it. End of discussion.

Superlative for the day: Unexpectedly, the best mangoes in Astoria can be found at C TOWN TOWN TOWN TOWN grocery store on Broadway. If I am a self-appointed authority on any issue, it is this one.

Truth for the day #1: If weather.com tells you that the temperature it "feels like" is at all lower -- even by one degree -- than the actual temperature -- no matter how high that may be -- you will freeze to death.

Truth for the day #2: If you rent the "rating not shown in theaters" version of any movie, it will be worse than the theater version. There's a reason they don't show people getting stabbed up close on the big screen, everyone, and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is it.

Back on my high horse

Writing a dissertation is like going to the gym ---- Just kidding, dear readers! This blog entry is decidedly not about my dissertation (whew). Instead, it is about this article. But you are busy people, so instead of expecting you all to read the article, I will present the main points for your convenience, information, and discussion. First, here is the background:

1. The cost of food is on the rise around the world.
2. This is mostly because demand is skyrocketing as people in developing countries get wealthier.
3. The world's stockpiles of grain are the lowest since world stockpiles of grain made sense as a concept.
4. High prices of food are contributing to inflation in the US
5. High prices of food are contributing to social unrest and violence in many countries
   

Now, to be sure, farmers all over the place are responding to the demand by growing as much as they can. But it's all mostly wheat and grains. (Fun fact: there was a one-day pasta strike in Italy last year!) Apparently demand for bread is huge in a lot of places that don't traditionally include it in their diets:

"Between 1995 and 2005, per capita wheat consumption in Nigeria more than tripled, to 44 pounds a year. Bread has been displacing traditional foods like eba, dumplings made from cassava root." It's even gotten to the point where, if you think about it in terms of a substance, people are basically addicted to it. (On this subject, read this book.)

Add to this that demand for other American-style foods is also increasing -- In addition to bread, people all over the place now want things like pork, dairy, and beef. (I've belabored the point elsewhere about how eating all of these things basically makes our healthcare costs ridiculously high and probably is what gives us all degenerative diseases.)

It used to be that the Standard American Diet was the sort of thing that was bad for our health, sure, and, ok, also terrible for the environment. But at least the environmental impact was somewhat mitigated by the fact that it was mostly just Americans eating this way. Then our harmful and unsustainable habits spread to parts of Western Europe. Then they caught on in China. Now they're really ramping up everywhere.

Thus, in the midst of global concerns about overpopulation and global warming, the very lifestyle that contributes most to healthcare costs, costs of living, and environmental damage is spreading like wildfire. Or like a disease!

As if all of this isn't bad enough, the US Government is actively limiting the ability of local farmers in the US to (a) increase how much they grow, and (b) grow things that are not corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, and cotton -- which are the five federally subsidized commodity crops. For more on this terrifying story, go here.

How is it possible, you ask, that in the face of what looks to be a flat-out global economic, health, and food crisis, the US Government isn't changing its policies drastically to try to prevent it, or at least strongly minimize its effects? Alas, my friends, THAT is the subject of my dissertation.

Damn! But before I go, a piece of advice: Even if they tell you you can't have more than one Blockbuster account, you actually can.
Piece of advice #2: Don't incorporate in Nevada.
Piece of advice that I never follow: Brevity, friends, brevity!