Heard on the store intercom at Wal-Green's last night:
Woman: The store will be closing in 15 minutes. Please bring your selections to the front of the store and we'll be happy to ring them up for you. Thank you for shopping Wal-Greens.
*pause*
Man: John, we need more cowbell in aisle 2. More cowbell in aisle 2. Thank you.
Posted at 10:54:00 PM. |
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One of Those Weeks
I have the post-vacation crash. Blah to the world.
I was out of it enough today that I actually punched the security code for my alarm system into the microwave at work when I was trying to heat up my tea. Go me.
The week and its accompanying end vanished like the last blizzard's snow, taking with them my out-of-town visitors. Highlights:
- Kelbi had some minor surgery while she was here that went very well. She (and one or the other of her parents) spent a day in recovery at Children's Hospital before returning to the limelight for the rest of the trip. I did not take many pictures of her while she was here (between the inconvenient scheduling and her own Tylenol-muffled crankiness, the opportunity for formal pictures never materialized); I snapped some candids that I'll post when I have a moment.
- I saw some of the worst and rudest driving I've seen in years over the last four days. We're talking people passing me on the left (despite the lack of a lane) and then cutting in front of me and another lane to make an on-ramp and four cars in a row cutting across my lane when I had a green. It seemed to be a trend the entire weekend. I'm really surprised I didn't see any accidents. My stressed family (unaccustomed to this sort of traffic and trapped in a vehicle with me behind the wheel) tried to blame it on Omaha; I didn't point out that the majority of the cars around the Qwest Center where the awful behavior was most prevalent were, like my family, from out of town. ;)
- My cousin McCabe, last of the wrestling dynasty that has filtered through my family for decades, took fourth place at the tournament. Congrats to him. He marks the last of my generation to participate in a wrestling program, and to date there are no boys in the next generation. That probably means my family won't be visiting me as a more or less cohesive unit (yes, Linde, I know you weren't there and mom was stressed about it . . .) for a very long time (they don't really do family vacations). It also means my parents are going to have to find new hobbies (they've been involved with wrestling programs since I was 6 . . .). I imagine that's somewhat bittersweet.
- My brother and I both injured ourselves playing the Wii. Apparently you're not supposed to play Wii Sports and Lightsaber Duels for two hours straight without stretching. Who knew? Some of my family had never seen a Wii before, and were suitably impressed with the technological advancements. Haley was some sort of prodigy at Wii Baseball, Jeff ruled Wii Bowling, Shandra had some sort of super-power-forehand in Wii Tennis and I (amusingly) was the king of Wii Golf (despite never actually playing golf before), so everyone had fun.
- We took my grandmother to a Mongolian grill. She was . . . not impressed.
- I'm amused that my brother has grown up considerably since Kelbi was born. I've heard having a baby does that. He's quite responsible and affectionate (toward Kelbi, anyway) now. He was quite adamant that Kelbi is never coming to stay with me during the summer. I'm not sure if that's because "Omaha = bad" or because he's afraid I'll warp her mind with my evil liberal ways.
- My parents gave me detailed instructions on how to reach their motel . . . which turned out to be attached to the building where Meghan's dance troupe used to perform (so I knew exactly where it was). Omaha isn't as big as people think it is.
All in all it was a good trip. I've only found two of the notes my mother has hidden around my house, so I have a few days of searching for them yet. :)
Inspired by this site, my own take on chocolate arachnids: chocolate mini-cakes with pureed cherry filling (the "guts"), coated in hard chocolate and adorned with Pocky legs (32 pieces of Pocky individually cut and reglued at an angle), then decorated with eyes (and, for Lane's, fangs and a black widow decoration).
They only took two hours (partly because they have a lot of parts, and partly because I ruined an entire pan of melted chocolate and had to start the coating process over again).
The twins were thrilled (although Alec quizzed me very closely to make sure there weren't any *actual* spider parts in it). Lane about died in delight.
Shortly after that, Kyle thanked me by accidentally clocking me with a toy, leaving a hideous bruise the size of a 50-cent-piece in the middle of my forehead that everyone seems to find funny.
Posted at 11:17:00 PM. |
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Friday, February 13
Jumping the Lemon-Garlic Broiled Mako Shark
[Spoilers, Cris.]
I understand that Top Chef is a reality show. Despite this nefarious moniker, I've felt that the show stood apart from the banal, neuron-killing sludge that percolates through MTV, Fox and the rest of Bravo by making it a food show that happens to be reality rather than a reality show that happens to have food. While there is craziness on the show (some of the contestants are just plain nuts; go Andrew), traditionally the producers have allowed the personalities and the pressure of the show itself to be the sources of the drama.
This season's talent is not on par with the previous seasons, and to make up for that the producers have used more of the "traditional" reality show fare. The camera crews now peek in the windows to secretly spy on the contestants in their apartment, put contestants on the spot about cheating on their significant others and open shows by staring down a contestant's shirt for 10 seconds while listening to her voice-over about how much she loves cooking. I'm sure there are a lot of viewers who like this direction. I find it distracting from the thrust of the show (promising young chefs looking for recognition for their creativity and skills).
They've now eliminated all of the contestants I liked, so I'm kind of ambivalent about who wins. I know Cris still has a favorite, so I hope he gets his wish. :)
An introduction to the "Daft" viral world, for those of you left out. Daft Punk is an electronic music band that has been around since the early 90s (most famous in the U.S. for the songs "Around the World" in 1997 and "One More Time" in 2001). Also included on the 2001 album was a song called "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," which most of the U.S. missed. It was re-released as a live version in 2007 (where I found it on iTunes) and subsequently bastardized into a hip-hop song by one of the numerous rappers I can't tell apart (where it saw wider U.S. airplay, so if you heard that version first . . . I'm sorry).
The "Daft" viral videos took off in mid-2007, beginning with the original "Daft Hands." The videos are an example of musical kinesthesiology, of a sort; the motions of the performers create the lyrics of the song, and as the lyrics speed up, the performers speed up into more intricate patterns. This works because the song has a grand total of 19 words, and several of them share most of their letters (our/hour, ever/never) which lowers the total number of letters required even further.
"Daft Hands" was the original and most popular (with something like 28 million YouTube views). It spawned dozens of "hands" copies (all of these start slow, by the way; the impressive choreography isn't until later in the song).
It was followed about four months later by "Daft Bodies," which featured two women with silver boxes on their heads (which were later parodied in numerous other viral videos). A plethora of other "bodies" videos appeared not long after.
The next step, of course, was multiple people. A rugby team did a presentation of it and posted it online, followed by a student council somewhere (which has my favorite choreography):
I find the interplay of music and motion and the translation of motion into music an interesting subject and I think this is a good example of it. I'd have done a choreography like this in school as a presentation.
Just in case you needed something to make you feel smart today:
I don't necessarily disagree with her point (that we've polluted our environment to the point that the effects are noticeable), but perhaps the specific details of the pollution should be left to people with slightly more training in the scientific fields.
I'm finally caught up with this season of Top Chef (guess what I did instead of watching the Super Bowl . . .). As is usually the case, watching Top Chef makes me want to cook, so last night I made pan-seared bananas, which were edible but not fantastic enough that I'll make them again any time soon. I suppose they might be better with ice cream, but my limited fondness for ice cream discourages me from keeping it on hand.
I'm disappointed in this season of Top Chef. The talent levels just aren't there (especially compared to the previous two seasons). The food they're making isn't innovative or creative and rarely takes risks. There is only one clear front-runner (the guy who has won about 70% of the challenges), and he's a jerk; the remaining members could be eliminated at any time and I wouldn't be surprised. I think the producers recognize that the talent isn't there, and to compensate they've made the show more like other reality fare (something distinctly unpalatable to me, as the emphasis on food rather than drama has always been a selling point for me); rather than interviewing contestants on their food philosophies and the finer aspects of their dishes, the cameras are (voyeuristically!) peeking in the windows of the contestants' shared apartment to spy on two of the (already in relationships) chefs making out on the couch and focusing on *that* for the rest of the episode. That's a bad sign for the quality of the show.
On a note of personal preference, there is no equivalent to Richard on the show this year, which not only means I have no one to root for, but also that molecular gastronomy is completely unrepresented (no foams, no liquid nitrogen, no hi-tech gadgets, no discussion of how different flavors interact in terms of chemistry). That's not a staple of cooking, so there's no requirement to include it, but I miss it.
I read an article on some of the practical consequences of quantum mechanics today. Consciousness is a common example, but in addition the article discussed how the antioxidants in green tea may use quantum tunneling to eliminate free radicals. The most interesting example to me, though, was the suggestion that photosynthesis may utilize quantum mechanics to achieve 95% efficiency when transmitting collected solar power from the surface to the inner cells (in comparison to our own power transmission methods, which lose 20%).
Then came the revelation: Instead of haphazardly moving from one connective channel to the next, as might be seen in classical physics, energy traveled in several directions at the same time. The researchers theorized that only when the energy had reached the end of the series of connections could an efficient pathway retroactively be found. At that point, the quantum process collapsed, and the electrons' energy followed that single, most effective path.
I actually blinked after reading that paragraph and said "Holy crap" out loud at Cici's. To clarify, the paragraph suggests that a plant or bacteria collects solar energy at the surface and then sends that energy in terms of "probability" down every *possible* path at the same time to the core cells, and once the most efficient route is determined, it drops all of the inefficient routes and *all* of the power goes the most efficient route, as if the organism knew the most efficient route to begin with and the less-efficient routes were never even considered. This is *phenomenal.* As an analogy, imagine if you could drive every single possible route to work each morning, determine which one took you the least amount of time and then go back in time and drive *only* that route.
One post of annoyance:
As I was finishing reading this article, I heard a crash and was suddenly splashed with a shower of pink lemonade (which splattered my pants, my magazine, my table, my glasses and the wall behind me), caused by a small girl knocking her glass off the table across the aisle and one booth back from me. It was an accident. Things happen. But the parents' reaction? Complete apathy as they continued to watch the Super Bowl on one of the wall-mounted televisions. They ignored the staff member who came to mop it up and never said a word to me. My god. I wish I could revoke parenting rights.
