Before I get into today's post, I'd just like to make a quick entertainment comment. Does anyone else get the feeling that everyone in Hollywood thinks that Sean Penn actually is retarded and gives him more credit because they love the story of how the kid with the low IQ has been able to make it big in a city full of people who really think they're smart? I get it, his beady eyes, tendency to foam a little at the mouth even when he's not angry, and the way he sounds vaguely toothless when he speaks are all quite endearing qualities, but he's only a good actor, not great. This isn't a commentary on Milk because I haven't seen it (and I think I may have accidentally offended Courtney with a similar crack in a comment on her blog) and I'll admit that I've enjoyed many of his performances. It's just that I have more respect for an actor who lets me forget they're playing the part. Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, and others do this incredibly well despite being superstars or even annoyingly overexposed. Penn is always Sean Penn as so-and-so. Sometimes that really works, but only because he was already good for the part.
Now, on with the sacrilege.
Have you ever thought about the Biblical story of Adam and Eve? I don't mean thinking of it as you ridicule believers for what they believe or thinking of it as history or a cautionary tale against pride and defiance against God's law. I'm talking about thinking of it as just a story. Doesn't it seem a little weird that the snake seems to get all of the blame here? After all, even if you were used to animals talking to you in the Garden of Eden, wouldn't you think you'd go with what the giant disembodied voice told you over what was told to you by the thing with the really bad case of eczema? After all, at least in Adam's case, they'd seen that voice create life out of close to nothing. Pretty impressive.
Now, we know they were pretty stupid back in that paradise. After all, it wasn't until they ate from the forbidden tree that they realized they were naked. For me, I can figure this out without really applying any significant thought processes to it, but if I did, it'd probably be charted out something like this:
1. Can I see my genitalia when I look down? If yes, go to 5a. If no, go to 2.
2. Is my bulbous abdomen or other body part blocking my view of that region? If yes, go to 3. If no, go to 5b.
3. Do I feel a draft "down there"? If yes, go to 5a. If no, go to 4.
4. Am I having sex or otherwise too distracted in that region to notice any drafts? If yes, go to 5a. If no, go to 5b.
5a. I am naked.
5b. I am not naked.
It's not exactly rocket science or even answering the question of what I want for supper tonight, so obviously these were pretty dimwitted humans. Still, I think they would have been bright enough to know that (dude who creates life) > (snake) in a trustworthiness problem.
To fix the problem of the ambiguity in Adam's and Eve's choice to defy God in this regard, I've developed a theory that solves this problem beautifully. Sunburns.
That's right, I said original sin was caused by a sunburns, although I'm guessing these were a couple of really wicked sunburns. Here's how I came to this conclusion. It's safe to assume that the pair were naked because the story says this pretty explicitly. It's also safe to assume that they were white because every painting I've ever seen of them portrayed them as being pretty pale, not even a swarthy Mediterranean type, but more like someone from the north of France. We also know that pale skin only occurs in peoples with a heritage linking them to countries of the north where there was less solar radiation to deal with and that people with darker skin are less likely to burn in the sun or develop skin cancer. Finally, we know that the Garden of Eden was someplace warm. God wouldn't stick a couple of hairless hominids in Canada, especially when he knew they were too stupid to know they were naked. They'd freeze to death before the end of October. The only places that are warm enough year round to house nudists without shelter are relatively near the equator where solar radiation is much more of a concern.
Therefore, by the time the second sabbath rolled around, these two would have been fried worse than a couple of Irish dudes hitting up the beaches of Florida during a sunblock shortage. Plus they were naked, meaning some of their most sensitive regions were burned and blistered. Adam and Eve weren't working on full human brainpower, but they probably were smart enough to know they needed more smarts to figure out a way to stop the pain, so Eve jumped at the opportunity to raise her IQ a few points even though she knew this would end her tropical vacation a few eons early. I'm also sure Adam wasn't hard to convince to join her. After all, pants would make it possible for him to get into hers without the friction leading to excruciating pain from his sunburned member.
So there's my theory. I think it's obviously the most logical interpretation of this holy story, unless of course Adam and Eve weren't so pale skinned after all, but that would mean that generations of artists were lying to us, and we know that artistic talent always comes with a side order of integrity.
Of course, when I broached this idea to Hank during this post's development phase, he suggested that the Garden of Eden was supposed to be a perfect place and therefore would probably have had the possibility of sunburns removed from the list of realities. To that I say: I hope you die of old age so you can suffer the humiliation of having to wear adult diapers and getting colonoscopies.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Charleston is the Best Thing to Come out of Charleston Since Stephen Colbert
This is about a week late, but I've finally got a little time to spend getting the photos ready for the post. Last week, K and I spent a couple of nights in Charleston, SC, and it's now my second-favorite city in the South. Asheville, NC, still gets top billing with it being set in my preferred topography (the mountains) and the fact that it has a huge art/music/food/beer scene that is unmatched by any city of its small size outside of the Pacific Northwest, perhaps. Charleston's known for good food (although we didn't get as much time to sample that aspect as we would have liked), but it's a bit lacking in the beer and mountains, although there are a few exceptions to the beer part I'll get to later. Still, there's something to be said about a city infested with homes that, if they were described as Antebellum, the bellum part would refer to the Revolutionary War and not the Civil War. I've never seen so many buildings that old.
The first evening we rolled into town, we had reservations for Cypress: A Lowcountry Grille, a much more high-end restaurant than the name would imply. We were seated in a booth along the restaurant's wine cellar, something that towered over us for the entire height of the building. We asked our waiter (who was very good at his job) how many bottles were in that wall of wine, and he said it was around 4,000 bottles. Impressive. We split a half bottle of Petit Syrah and had the Chateaubriand as our main entree. My lobster bisque before the meal was pretty incredible.
We had actually gotten to Charleston a couple of hours before our reservation, so we took a walk through the Market before heading over to the restaurant. After walking through the Market's seemingly endless stalls of Gullah sweetgrass baskets, clothing and other tourist trinkets, we noticed a "winery" sign just across the street. We still had a while before we needed to head back to the hotel to get ready for supper, so we stopped in. I honestly had fairly low expectations. Southern wineries aren't always the best and you'll often end up with wine with a few off flavors. The fact that this place was a store front with a couple of fermentation tanks in along the wall didn't raise my expectations.
It turns out that this place, Market Street Winery, was pretty good (and that the small tanks in the store front were mainly for test batches and the main workings of the winery were out of sight). For $5 you could get five samples of their wines and we got a sample of the Cabernet Sauvignon and four of their fruit wines. The Cabernet was only okay. There were no off flavors and was a perfectly acceptable wine, but it didn't really have much depth of flavor (and this is coming from a guy who is far from an experienced wine snob.) The fruit wines, on the other hand, were quite tasty. We had the blackberry (our favorite), cranberry (a huge surprise, but would perhaps turn off people who dislike tart flavors), raspberry, and elderberry. The guy behind the counter gave us a sample of the strawberry too, but it was just too sweet. The rest of the wines were lightly sweet with bright fruit flavors. Several of them would make for great summer evening tipples. They probably aren't going to impress any wine snobs, but I think anyone else would really enjoy these. K and I bought a half case, partly as thank you gifts for my mom and sister (who paid for most of our trip as a Christmas present) and partly for us to have at home.
After supper, we wandered East Bay Street and some of the nearby streets looking in some of the shops and peering into the windows of some of the closed artist galleries. There was one guy who did a lot of nudes who had a painting of a woman in a pool from the perspective of being under the water. Really cool painting, but I'm not sure how I'd pull off having it in my house without looking like a giant pervert. Sure, as a heterosexual males with no pretenses of not like the sight of a naked woman, the boobs were quite the attractive feature of the painting, but it was honestly a really cool work. You'd kind of have to see it to understand, I think. After that, it was back to our hotel, the Andrew Pinckney Inn, and off to sleep.
The next day was overcast, rainy, and a little chilly. We didn't really have any plans. We actually made tour reservations for Sunday, but we knew that there was a Dock Dogs competition at one of the Charleston parks as part of the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition. We had planned on getting tickets for to see the leaping labs later in the day, so we just started wandering around town that morning looking for something interesting. All of the sudden, we walk into an upscale shopping center and suddenly find ourselves in the middle of a huge crowd of people and a bar serving bloody Marys. Turns out that the mall was actually part of a large hotel and we had accidentally stumbled into one of the main locations of the SEWE. We went ahead and bought tickets and walked through the exhibits in the hotel. This location was the fine art hall. In other words you had really good painters and sculptors exhibiting their wildlife and nature inspired works of art. Some of these people were incredible and creating stuff that I would have loved to have if I could have afforded anything they made. Others were making more realistic works that looked like the cover of a Cabela's catalog. Still good stuff, but not my style.
There was also the guy who made bird paintings by slathering paint onto women's breasts and pressing them to the canvas. He took an odd interest in K for some reason. Just so you know, she'd be good for painting turkeys.
After finishing our wandering through the fine art hall, we caught the shuttle to another location, this one more of the arts and crafts part of the festival. The best thing I saw at this spot was the guy who made stone knives by knapping obsidian and flint and lashing them to wood and antler handles. Some of those were incredibly beautiful works of art, although I'd doubt they'd be all that practical.
Finally, it was off to Brittlebank Park for the Dock Dogs competition. If you haven't seen these on TV before, it's basically dogs jumping off a dock into a pool. Sounds really lame, but it's oddly captivating. Some of these dogs are amazing, making leaps of more than 20 feet. We saw a couple of the early rounds, meaning we saw a few dogs who jumped poorly or, in one case, refused to jump at all, but we also saw a couple of dogs make the pro-level finals with jumps of 22'4" and the like.
We finished off the afternoon wandering around a new (for us) section of Charleston, where we found Cupcake, one of those gourmet cupcake bakeries that features HUGE mounds of icing. I'm usually not a fan of icing, but this stuff was good. The vanilla icing was specked with vanilla beans and actually tasted like ice cream that wasn't cold. I only had to scrape off the top half of the icing instead of 3/4 of it. This place is worth the visit if you have a sweet tooth while in Charleston.
Unfortunately, there were no photos from our first two days. K had put the camera in the back of the car instead of where she had thought it was so it was locked away in our car in the parking deck the first two days. We didn't get back to the car to check for it until it was too late on Saturday to get any photos. We did get a few good photos on Sunday, however.
We started the day off with a trip out to Fort Sumter, the target of the first shots fired in the American Civil War. The place is in ruins today, but then so it was for the majority of the Civil War. Construction on the fort was begun in the 1820s and it was still incomplete several decades later when the war started. Within a year, the fort, which originally towered more than 50 feet over Charleston Harbor, had been reduced to mounds of earth and rubble by the regular attacks. Even though the Confederate Army overwhelmed the undermanned fort on that first attack, the Union Army never was able to retake it even though the original structures had been destroyed. The fort was only abandoned by Confederates when Sherman sent word from Savannah that he was on his way to take the city after burning a large swath across Georgia. The rebels ran and Sherman went to Columbia instead.
The Charleston skyline from the Sally Port of Fort Sumter.
These were once storerooms in the original fort. This is about all that's left of the original structures, except for the lower section of the wall that faces the harbor. After the original structure fell, the Confederates brought in great loads of earth to build protecting mounds and the original remains had to be dug from under as much as 20 feet of dirt when the fort was finally being restored as a historical monument.
The big black section was added to the fort during renovations after the Civil War in preparations made for the Spanish American war. It currently houses the museum, restrooms, and gift shop. There are a few really cool artifacts in the museum.
Looking down the barrel of a Civil War cannon.
The National Park Service flies six flags over the fort now. The tallest, of course, is the current US flag. Behind that, from left to right, are the 33-star US flag that flew over the Fort at the beginning of the Civil War, a Confederate flag, the South Carolina Flag, another Confederate flag, and another US flag, this one I'm guessing a flag from the Spanish American War era as it has a couple more stars.
Close up of the far left American flag.
Close up of the far right American flag.
Seagull flying over the ferry.
This is the USS Yorktown, now a museum at Patriots Point. I liked the contrast of the giant aircraft carrier providing the backdrop for a swarm of small sail boats. It was really windy this day. We didn't get a chance to check out the carrier. This is the view from the ferry heading back from Fort Sumter.
I skipped the rest of our tour, but we had no photos from the rest. We drove through the College of Charleston (outrageously gorgeous campus in the center of old Charleston), the Citadel (and the original building downtown that is now a hotel), Rainbow Row, and a few other really neat Charleston locations. I wish we'd gotten to town early on Friday so we could have done the tour then and been able to use parts of Saturday and Sunday to do more exploration on our own after we knew where everything was. This is the view out the car window on our way out of Charleston on the way home. Interesting fact about the Citadel: Even though the girl who made the big legal stink that forced the school to allow female students dropped out before the end of her first term, no female student since has dropped out of the Citadel despite the fact that hundreds of males drop out of every class.
This was a cool carving I bought in the Market. It's actually the bone that makes up the "sword" on a swordfish. The guy who makes them is a commercial fisherman and carves knives, swords, and letter openers out of the nose bones of the fish.
Now, back to that beer comment I promised earlier. The bars in Charleston are a little limited, at least compared to what you'd find in Asheville, or a much larger city like Atlanta. The Mellow Mushroom in town was probably the best beer bar around (and is perhaps the high end as far as the Mellow Mushroom chain goes). It's a beautiful bar with the best music selection playing that I've ever heard in a bar. However, I wonder a little about the wisdom of putting the bar upstairs when the bathrooms are downstairs. It seems like there'd be too many drunks falling to serious injury down those stairs. I was a little ticked that I missed Coast Brewing's Blackbeerd Imperial Stout by one day at Mellow Mushroom. It had gotten great reviews on the beer sights and I'd been looking for it all weekend when we stumbled across the pizzeria about 10 p.m. on Saturday night during one of our rambles. The beer was on the menu, but had been drained the night before. So sad.
Charleston does have one shining star in the beer scene, however. There's a beer store just off of East Bay Street not far from Rainbow Row called the Charleston Beer Exchange. This place was amazing. The best beer store in Georgia is Greens in Atlanta, and I think the Beer Exchange is better than that. I honestly can't think of a store I've ever visited that would put the Exchange in too much of a shadow. It's a tiny little store, but they put the space to the best use possible. There's not a crappy beer in the store and they even have a few taps to sell fresh growlers, something that's not even legal in Georgia. That is especially nice given that many craft breweries make some of their best beers as keg-only offerings. You can buy the beer retail here instead of having to pay bar prices by the pint. It shows that this store is run by beer geeks who really know their stuff.
The first evening we rolled into town, we had reservations for Cypress: A Lowcountry Grille, a much more high-end restaurant than the name would imply. We were seated in a booth along the restaurant's wine cellar, something that towered over us for the entire height of the building. We asked our waiter (who was very good at his job) how many bottles were in that wall of wine, and he said it was around 4,000 bottles. Impressive. We split a half bottle of Petit Syrah and had the Chateaubriand as our main entree. My lobster bisque before the meal was pretty incredible.
We had actually gotten to Charleston a couple of hours before our reservation, so we took a walk through the Market before heading over to the restaurant. After walking through the Market's seemingly endless stalls of Gullah sweetgrass baskets, clothing and other tourist trinkets, we noticed a "winery" sign just across the street. We still had a while before we needed to head back to the hotel to get ready for supper, so we stopped in. I honestly had fairly low expectations. Southern wineries aren't always the best and you'll often end up with wine with a few off flavors. The fact that this place was a store front with a couple of fermentation tanks in along the wall didn't raise my expectations.
It turns out that this place, Market Street Winery, was pretty good (and that the small tanks in the store front were mainly for test batches and the main workings of the winery were out of sight). For $5 you could get five samples of their wines and we got a sample of the Cabernet Sauvignon and four of their fruit wines. The Cabernet was only okay. There were no off flavors and was a perfectly acceptable wine, but it didn't really have much depth of flavor (and this is coming from a guy who is far from an experienced wine snob.) The fruit wines, on the other hand, were quite tasty. We had the blackberry (our favorite), cranberry (a huge surprise, but would perhaps turn off people who dislike tart flavors), raspberry, and elderberry. The guy behind the counter gave us a sample of the strawberry too, but it was just too sweet. The rest of the wines were lightly sweet with bright fruit flavors. Several of them would make for great summer evening tipples. They probably aren't going to impress any wine snobs, but I think anyone else would really enjoy these. K and I bought a half case, partly as thank you gifts for my mom and sister (who paid for most of our trip as a Christmas present) and partly for us to have at home.
After supper, we wandered East Bay Street and some of the nearby streets looking in some of the shops and peering into the windows of some of the closed artist galleries. There was one guy who did a lot of nudes who had a painting of a woman in a pool from the perspective of being under the water. Really cool painting, but I'm not sure how I'd pull off having it in my house without looking like a giant pervert. Sure, as a heterosexual males with no pretenses of not like the sight of a naked woman, the boobs were quite the attractive feature of the painting, but it was honestly a really cool work. You'd kind of have to see it to understand, I think. After that, it was back to our hotel, the Andrew Pinckney Inn, and off to sleep.
The next day was overcast, rainy, and a little chilly. We didn't really have any plans. We actually made tour reservations for Sunday, but we knew that there was a Dock Dogs competition at one of the Charleston parks as part of the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition. We had planned on getting tickets for to see the leaping labs later in the day, so we just started wandering around town that morning looking for something interesting. All of the sudden, we walk into an upscale shopping center and suddenly find ourselves in the middle of a huge crowd of people and a bar serving bloody Marys. Turns out that the mall was actually part of a large hotel and we had accidentally stumbled into one of the main locations of the SEWE. We went ahead and bought tickets and walked through the exhibits in the hotel. This location was the fine art hall. In other words you had really good painters and sculptors exhibiting their wildlife and nature inspired works of art. Some of these people were incredible and creating stuff that I would have loved to have if I could have afforded anything they made. Others were making more realistic works that looked like the cover of a Cabela's catalog. Still good stuff, but not my style.
There was also the guy who made bird paintings by slathering paint onto women's breasts and pressing them to the canvas. He took an odd interest in K for some reason. Just so you know, she'd be good for painting turkeys.
After finishing our wandering through the fine art hall, we caught the shuttle to another location, this one more of the arts and crafts part of the festival. The best thing I saw at this spot was the guy who made stone knives by knapping obsidian and flint and lashing them to wood and antler handles. Some of those were incredibly beautiful works of art, although I'd doubt they'd be all that practical.
Finally, it was off to Brittlebank Park for the Dock Dogs competition. If you haven't seen these on TV before, it's basically dogs jumping off a dock into a pool. Sounds really lame, but it's oddly captivating. Some of these dogs are amazing, making leaps of more than 20 feet. We saw a couple of the early rounds, meaning we saw a few dogs who jumped poorly or, in one case, refused to jump at all, but we also saw a couple of dogs make the pro-level finals with jumps of 22'4" and the like.
We finished off the afternoon wandering around a new (for us) section of Charleston, where we found Cupcake, one of those gourmet cupcake bakeries that features HUGE mounds of icing. I'm usually not a fan of icing, but this stuff was good. The vanilla icing was specked with vanilla beans and actually tasted like ice cream that wasn't cold. I only had to scrape off the top half of the icing instead of 3/4 of it. This place is worth the visit if you have a sweet tooth while in Charleston.
Unfortunately, there were no photos from our first two days. K had put the camera in the back of the car instead of where she had thought it was so it was locked away in our car in the parking deck the first two days. We didn't get back to the car to check for it until it was too late on Saturday to get any photos. We did get a few good photos on Sunday, however.
We started the day off with a trip out to Fort Sumter, the target of the first shots fired in the American Civil War. The place is in ruins today, but then so it was for the majority of the Civil War. Construction on the fort was begun in the 1820s and it was still incomplete several decades later when the war started. Within a year, the fort, which originally towered more than 50 feet over Charleston Harbor, had been reduced to mounds of earth and rubble by the regular attacks. Even though the Confederate Army overwhelmed the undermanned fort on that first attack, the Union Army never was able to retake it even though the original structures had been destroyed. The fort was only abandoned by Confederates when Sherman sent word from Savannah that he was on his way to take the city after burning a large swath across Georgia. The rebels ran and Sherman went to Columbia instead.
The Charleston skyline from the Sally Port of Fort Sumter.
These were once storerooms in the original fort. This is about all that's left of the original structures, except for the lower section of the wall that faces the harbor. After the original structure fell, the Confederates brought in great loads of earth to build protecting mounds and the original remains had to be dug from under as much as 20 feet of dirt when the fort was finally being restored as a historical monument.
The big black section was added to the fort during renovations after the Civil War in preparations made for the Spanish American war. It currently houses the museum, restrooms, and gift shop. There are a few really cool artifacts in the museum.
Looking down the barrel of a Civil War cannon.
The National Park Service flies six flags over the fort now. The tallest, of course, is the current US flag. Behind that, from left to right, are the 33-star US flag that flew over the Fort at the beginning of the Civil War, a Confederate flag, the South Carolina Flag, another Confederate flag, and another US flag, this one I'm guessing a flag from the Spanish American War era as it has a couple more stars.
Close up of the far left American flag.
Close up of the far right American flag.
Seagull flying over the ferry.
This is the USS Yorktown, now a museum at Patriots Point. I liked the contrast of the giant aircraft carrier providing the backdrop for a swarm of small sail boats. It was really windy this day. We didn't get a chance to check out the carrier. This is the view from the ferry heading back from Fort Sumter.
I skipped the rest of our tour, but we had no photos from the rest. We drove through the College of Charleston (outrageously gorgeous campus in the center of old Charleston), the Citadel (and the original building downtown that is now a hotel), Rainbow Row, and a few other really neat Charleston locations. I wish we'd gotten to town early on Friday so we could have done the tour then and been able to use parts of Saturday and Sunday to do more exploration on our own after we knew where everything was. This is the view out the car window on our way out of Charleston on the way home. Interesting fact about the Citadel: Even though the girl who made the big legal stink that forced the school to allow female students dropped out before the end of her first term, no female student since has dropped out of the Citadel despite the fact that hundreds of males drop out of every class.
This was a cool carving I bought in the Market. It's actually the bone that makes up the "sword" on a swordfish. The guy who makes them is a commercial fisherman and carves knives, swords, and letter openers out of the nose bones of the fish.Now, back to that beer comment I promised earlier. The bars in Charleston are a little limited, at least compared to what you'd find in Asheville, or a much larger city like Atlanta. The Mellow Mushroom in town was probably the best beer bar around (and is perhaps the high end as far as the Mellow Mushroom chain goes). It's a beautiful bar with the best music selection playing that I've ever heard in a bar. However, I wonder a little about the wisdom of putting the bar upstairs when the bathrooms are downstairs. It seems like there'd be too many drunks falling to serious injury down those stairs. I was a little ticked that I missed Coast Brewing's Blackbeerd Imperial Stout by one day at Mellow Mushroom. It had gotten great reviews on the beer sights and I'd been looking for it all weekend when we stumbled across the pizzeria about 10 p.m. on Saturday night during one of our rambles. The beer was on the menu, but had been drained the night before. So sad.
Charleston does have one shining star in the beer scene, however. There's a beer store just off of East Bay Street not far from Rainbow Row called the Charleston Beer Exchange. This place was amazing. The best beer store in Georgia is Greens in Atlanta, and I think the Beer Exchange is better than that. I honestly can't think of a store I've ever visited that would put the Exchange in too much of a shadow. It's a tiny little store, but they put the space to the best use possible. There's not a crappy beer in the store and they even have a few taps to sell fresh growlers, something that's not even legal in Georgia. That is especially nice given that many craft breweries make some of their best beers as keg-only offerings. You can buy the beer retail here instead of having to pay bar prices by the pint. It shows that this store is run by beer geeks who really know their stuff.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Geeks of a Feather
You know how certain friends get to see a side of you that others rarely do? For me, K is definitely in that category. She knows stuff about me that know one else on earth does. I honestly don't know if I have an intentionally-kept secret in our relationship. I probably didn't tell her about my last bowel movement, but if she had asked, I surely would have described the event in great detail for her.
Actually, I know I didn't tell her. It was this morning and I haven't seen or talked to her since then.
Another one of these friends, although to a lesser extent, is Hank, a frequent commenter here. With Hank I feel no need to censor my geekier side. The reason I say "to a lesser extent" is that I don't feel the need to hide my inner geek with K either, but she merely listens politely while I rattle on about brewing science, obscure livestock varieties, linguistics, and the the political climate during the Qin dynasty. Hank actually participates, something that K dreads sometimes. When Hank and I hang out the conversation usually jumps the tracks, heads out into a surrealist meadow of esoterica and leaves K wondering just what in the hell we're talking about and why we seem to find it so interesting.
Although, let's face it, my inner geek isn't really all that hidden. I just try not to rub it too hard in other people's faces. Hank, on the other hand really likes it when I rub it in his face.
As proof that I am weird and that Hank actually encourages these trains of thought, here's an excerpt from a Google chat discussion we had today. The bold portions in blue are comments and background written after the conversation. The chat is presented unedited except for format.
me: Did you know that the kinship classification system that we use is officially called Eskimo Kinship? (There is no context for this. This was my opening line. We had briefly discussed Hank's Project Euler posts over on his blog, which ended with him accusing me of being a number racist. This comment was sent more than an hour after his accusations.)
Hank: I did not
I hereby move we begin referring to it as First Nations Kinship
me: Wouldn't work. Three other of the main kinship systems are named after other native groups (Iroquois, Crow, and Omaha)
And that's ignoring that Hawaiian is also a kinship system but not what we consider Indians.
But Eskimos aren't Indians either.
And you would suck at trying to impersonate any of those three groups. (I apparently use a lot of dependent clauses as sentences in casual language.)
Hank: I don't even know what a kinship classification system is, man (And he doesn't like using periods. This line would usually be considered a polite request to change the subject. However, Hank is simply indicating his intellectual inferiority (said the sad little English teacher about the Computer Engineer).
me: It's the way a society classifies their relatives.
For example, we don't really differentiate between our father's brothers and mother's brothers.
They're all uncles. The same goes for their children, all cousins.
One of the other kinship systems considers the Father's sisters as second mothers and her children as siblings instead of cousins and the same for the mother's brothers. Only the same-sex siblings of the parents are considered aunts and uncles and their children cousins.
Another system is the exact opposite of that.
Hank: And how did these wind up with the name of various American Indan tribes? (See, I told you. He's actually asking relevant questions instead of offering monosyllabic niceties.)
me: Another system classifies only by generation. Your mom and dad's siblings are all mother and father and all first cousins are siblings. (This part was being typed before he asked his question. I'm not actually ignoring him to ramble on unaware of his presence.)
me: Probably because the guy who was the first to formally identify and publish the systems was an American and several of those cultures had good examples. The non-North American names are Dravidian and Sudanese
Hank: So none of the Chinese or European systems are still around? Or they overlapped with the ones used by the tribes?
me: They all overlapped.
Rural China often used the Iroquois system until recently
Modern western societies almost always use Eskimo like we do.
Although the Romans, Chinese and early Anglo-Saxons used the Sudanese system
That one is freakish. The Sudanese example has 8 classifications for first cousins. Each relative gets a classification based on both side (mother or father).
The really funny thing is that I learned all of this over the past hour.
And it started by clicking a link to the wikipedia article for deuterocanonical in a Slate article. (Seriously, how does K put up with this shit? I do have to say that our conversations are usually less one-sided than this, but this post was supposed to make fun of me, not him.)
Hank: first five books of the bible
me: I think the chain of links was Deuterocanonical - Biblical Apocrypha - Bel and the Dragon - Culture Hero - Dualistic Cosmology - Moiety - Kinship. (Again, this is a timing issue from the fact this was a text chat. I don't usually ignore questions to continue my story like an autistic savant. This was, however, the exact path that led me to learning the main kinship systems used by humans. My Internet surfing often resembles my conversational style. Seemingly random, but entirely linked.)
me: Actually, no.
Hank: Dang (Stumped twice in the same conversation? I wasn't even trying. He's actually significantly more intelligent that I am, so I take great joy in these moments even though I never try to stump him.)
me: They're the books in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles that weren't in the original Hebrew book.
Protestants call them apocryphal. The Great Schism-mates call them the second canon. (Yes, I just made a little joke about the Great Schism.)
Books like Judith.
Which is a great A Perfect Circle song.
Hank: Isn't Wikipedia great
me: Yeah. It's dreamy.
Actually, I know I didn't tell her. It was this morning and I haven't seen or talked to her since then.
Another one of these friends, although to a lesser extent, is Hank, a frequent commenter here. With Hank I feel no need to censor my geekier side. The reason I say "to a lesser extent" is that I don't feel the need to hide my inner geek with K either, but she merely listens politely while I rattle on about brewing science, obscure livestock varieties, linguistics, and the the political climate during the Qin dynasty. Hank actually participates, something that K dreads sometimes. When Hank and I hang out the conversation usually jumps the tracks, heads out into a surrealist meadow of esoterica and leaves K wondering just what in the hell we're talking about and why we seem to find it so interesting.
Although, let's face it, my inner geek isn't really all that hidden. I just try not to rub it too hard in other people's faces. Hank, on the other hand really likes it when I rub it in his face.
As proof that I am weird and that Hank actually encourages these trains of thought, here's an excerpt from a Google chat discussion we had today. The bold portions in blue are comments and background written after the conversation. The chat is presented unedited except for format.
me: Did you know that the kinship classification system that we use is officially called Eskimo Kinship? (There is no context for this. This was my opening line. We had briefly discussed Hank's Project Euler posts over on his blog, which ended with him accusing me of being a number racist. This comment was sent more than an hour after his accusations.)
Hank: I did not
I hereby move we begin referring to it as First Nations Kinship
me: Wouldn't work. Three other of the main kinship systems are named after other native groups (Iroquois, Crow, and Omaha)
And that's ignoring that Hawaiian is also a kinship system but not what we consider Indians.
But Eskimos aren't Indians either.
And you would suck at trying to impersonate any of those three groups. (I apparently use a lot of dependent clauses as sentences in casual language.)
Hank: I don't even know what a kinship classification system is, man (And he doesn't like using periods. This line would usually be considered a polite request to change the subject. However, Hank is simply indicating his intellectual inferiority (said the sad little English teacher about the Computer Engineer).
me: It's the way a society classifies their relatives.
For example, we don't really differentiate between our father's brothers and mother's brothers.
They're all uncles. The same goes for their children, all cousins.
One of the other kinship systems considers the Father's sisters as second mothers and her children as siblings instead of cousins and the same for the mother's brothers. Only the same-sex siblings of the parents are considered aunts and uncles and their children cousins.
Another system is the exact opposite of that.
Hank: And how did these wind up with the name of various American Indan tribes? (See, I told you. He's actually asking relevant questions instead of offering monosyllabic niceties.)
me: Another system classifies only by generation. Your mom and dad's siblings are all mother and father and all first cousins are siblings. (This part was being typed before he asked his question. I'm not actually ignoring him to ramble on unaware of his presence.)
me: Probably because the guy who was the first to formally identify and publish the systems was an American and several of those cultures had good examples. The non-North American names are Dravidian and Sudanese
Hank: So none of the Chinese or European systems are still around? Or they overlapped with the ones used by the tribes?
me: They all overlapped.
Rural China often used the Iroquois system until recently
Modern western societies almost always use Eskimo like we do.
Although the Romans, Chinese and early Anglo-Saxons used the Sudanese system
That one is freakish. The Sudanese example has 8 classifications for first cousins. Each relative gets a classification based on both side (mother or father).
The really funny thing is that I learned all of this over the past hour.
And it started by clicking a link to the wikipedia article for deuterocanonical in a Slate article. (Seriously, how does K put up with this shit? I do have to say that our conversations are usually less one-sided than this, but this post was supposed to make fun of me, not him.)
Hank: first five books of the bible
me: I think the chain of links was Deuterocanonical - Biblical Apocrypha - Bel and the Dragon - Culture Hero - Dualistic Cosmology - Moiety - Kinship. (Again, this is a timing issue from the fact this was a text chat. I don't usually ignore questions to continue my story like an autistic savant. This was, however, the exact path that led me to learning the main kinship systems used by humans. My Internet surfing often resembles my conversational style. Seemingly random, but entirely linked.)
me: Actually, no.
Hank: Dang (Stumped twice in the same conversation? I wasn't even trying. He's actually significantly more intelligent that I am, so I take great joy in these moments even though I never try to stump him.)
me: They're the books in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles that weren't in the original Hebrew book.
Protestants call them apocryphal. The Great Schism-mates call them the second canon. (Yes, I just made a little joke about the Great Schism.)
Books like Judith.
Which is a great A Perfect Circle song.
Hank: Isn't Wikipedia great
me: Yeah. It's dreamy.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
This Man Is Not Actually Homeless
In reality, he's Kyp Malone, a member of the critically acclaimed band, TV on the Radio, but damn if that isn't a ridiculously luxurious beard. I'd be willing to take a nap in it. Anyway, I've got his band's latest album on my MP3 player and I digs it. I really do. I have to in order to keep my music hipster cred, but I saw them on Saturday Night Live last week and holy brother of god did they suck. I haven't seen a band tank that badly live since I saw the Smashing Pumpkins play a live spot on TV back in high school.Perhaps to make up for their shitty SNL performance on Saturday, the band played on the Colbert Report last night and did a much better job. Plus, the woman who plays the baritone sax was wearing a short dress and long boots, perhaps the sexiest combination a woman can wear outside of total nudity. (Or perhaps nothing but a bow tie and vintage gym shoes.) And (because I like starting sentences with and) she plays the bari sax. I played the bari sax and I was freaking good at it. In fact, if I'd ever practiced the damn thing I could have really gone somewhere with it. Perhaps it could have been me playing the Colbert Report while wearing a short skirt and long boots. I've got the legs for it, anyway. Sometimes I get pissed off at myself for being such a damn underachiever, but that's why I drink. It makes me forget the pain and think about greasy food stuffs instead.
But getting back to bari sax lady. You play bari sax while wearing a hot outfit. I could probably still play bari sax if I could afford to buy one and would look good in the same outfit. We should have sex. Seriously, if you're out there reading this while on tour with the band, look me up and give me a call. We should bump uglies sometime.
This really turned into a bigger post than I had intended. That beard is fucking inspirational.
Monday, February 09, 2009
I've Been Resenting my Students More than Usual Lately
During the past couple of weeks, I've been disgusted more than usual with my students. It's not their behavior; I actually have classes this semester that behave better than usual. Instead, it's the fact that I've recently been unable to see my students as little more than Ebola monkeys, carrying their personal collection of communicable diseases with them wherever they go.
This is normally just a hazard of the job. I take a few days off each fall and again each spring with strep throat or some other fever-inducing disease brought on by my time spent closed up in small classrooms with the revolting progeny of other people. I can't get sick now, though. More than a month ago K and I made the reservations for our two-night stay in Charleston, SC, for this weekend. If I get sick now, we'll miss out on a fun weekend I've been looking forward to for weeks now. My pestilent pupils have already robbed me of some of my enjoyment of a stay in Savannah last fall. The lingering symptoms of pneumonia left me winded after even short walks through the historic district.
My students, however, have no respect for my plans. They still come to school with diagnosed strep throat, or hack, wheeze, and drip their way through the school day. They stand too close when they ask for a note to the nurse so they can call home sick for the day, and they're not faking for once. I just hope my immune system can hold off the hordes of microscopic barbarians long enough for me to get through this weekend. After that, I'll be perfectly happy to suffer a little fever and congestion to be able to skip a couple days of school.
This is normally just a hazard of the job. I take a few days off each fall and again each spring with strep throat or some other fever-inducing disease brought on by my time spent closed up in small classrooms with the revolting progeny of other people. I can't get sick now, though. More than a month ago K and I made the reservations for our two-night stay in Charleston, SC, for this weekend. If I get sick now, we'll miss out on a fun weekend I've been looking forward to for weeks now. My pestilent pupils have already robbed me of some of my enjoyment of a stay in Savannah last fall. The lingering symptoms of pneumonia left me winded after even short walks through the historic district.
My students, however, have no respect for my plans. They still come to school with diagnosed strep throat, or hack, wheeze, and drip their way through the school day. They stand too close when they ask for a note to the nurse so they can call home sick for the day, and they're not faking for once. I just hope my immune system can hold off the hordes of microscopic barbarians long enough for me to get through this weekend. After that, I'll be perfectly happy to suffer a little fever and congestion to be able to skip a couple days of school.
Friday, February 06, 2009
A Post Gets a Second Life
For some reason, a post of mine from last year has seen a recent surge of commenting activity during the last couple of months. My post about what "real white people like" has gotten a bunch of comments lately, mostly from idiots. I've actually had to delete a couple of racist posts that I didn't feel comfortable with. I'm all for freedom of speech, but that doesn't apply to my website. Just like I've asked my resident white supremacist student to stop writing about the horrors of miscegenation and how Hitler wasn't really so bad on his vocabulary quizzes, I'll ask you not to clutter up my posts with racist comments. I've got a reputation to uphold here for decency and kindness to my fellow man, and some of people are just idiots. I'm not sure why we bother to teach some people to read and write.
Anyway, in reading some of the new posts, I got to thinking about that old post. I think Chris was the only one who really got it. Most of my regular posters grew up as suburbanites and didn't see as many of the type of people I was describing in their formative years. Seriously, the original blog I was satirizing often does describe me fully well, but those same qualities that make me sound like a "Stuff White People Like" poster boy make me stick out like a sore thumb in most of the places I've lived.
I didn't really have anything to say, but I still am curious about why I've had a smattering of comments to that one post almost a year since it was published. What's bringing them here? I do think it's funny that some thought it was offensive though. To me, it's so obviously a satire that it can't be taken seriously at face value.
But like I said, some people are idiots and should probably be forcefully sterilized to improve the human gene pool.
Anyway, in reading some of the new posts, I got to thinking about that old post. I think Chris was the only one who really got it. Most of my regular posters grew up as suburbanites and didn't see as many of the type of people I was describing in their formative years. Seriously, the original blog I was satirizing often does describe me fully well, but those same qualities that make me sound like a "Stuff White People Like" poster boy make me stick out like a sore thumb in most of the places I've lived.
I didn't really have anything to say, but I still am curious about why I've had a smattering of comments to that one post almost a year since it was published. What's bringing them here? I do think it's funny that some thought it was offensive though. To me, it's so obviously a satire that it can't be taken seriously at face value.
But like I said, some people are idiots and should probably be forcefully sterilized to improve the human gene pool.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
I Wish I Had a Bad Case of Internal Parasites
A recent study has led some researchers to think that the possibly modern phenomenon of allergies has been created by something humans living in the last 100 years lack that almost every human being in previous centuries has had plenty of:
Worms.
That's right, there is a hypothesis being tossed around that in species that evolve with constant contact with a common parasite, the parasite and host species may evolve a body chemistry that actually needs both organisms present to function properly.
In other words, last week when my sinuses were manufacturing enough mucus to supply the entirety of the third world, and my throat was threatening to shred under the constant traffic of postnasal drip, all I needed was a good case of hookworms. The modern obesity epidemic? A lack of tape worms. Overpopulation on the Indian subcontinent? Eradication of the malaria parasite. The domination of east African athletes in long-distance running? A deficit of guinea worm infections.
Actually, the evidence suggesting that allergies could be caused by a missing parasite is interesting, but I wouldn't go out and get myself infected just yet. After all, even if we are missing some parasite that completes the part of our body chemistry needed for a perfectly functioning immune system, we'd have to decide if allergies (including the increasingly common killer reactions like those some have to peanuts) are worse than whatever the worms do to us. After all, we got rid of the worms way back when for some reason. I just don't know what that reason is. I've never actually had them to really understand it.
Worms.
That's right, there is a hypothesis being tossed around that in species that evolve with constant contact with a common parasite, the parasite and host species may evolve a body chemistry that actually needs both organisms present to function properly.
In other words, last week when my sinuses were manufacturing enough mucus to supply the entirety of the third world, and my throat was threatening to shred under the constant traffic of postnasal drip, all I needed was a good case of hookworms. The modern obesity epidemic? A lack of tape worms. Overpopulation on the Indian subcontinent? Eradication of the malaria parasite. The domination of east African athletes in long-distance running? A deficit of guinea worm infections.
Actually, the evidence suggesting that allergies could be caused by a missing parasite is interesting, but I wouldn't go out and get myself infected just yet. After all, even if we are missing some parasite that completes the part of our body chemistry needed for a perfectly functioning immune system, we'd have to decide if allergies (including the increasingly common killer reactions like those some have to peanuts) are worse than whatever the worms do to us. After all, we got rid of the worms way back when for some reason. I just don't know what that reason is. I've never actually had them to really understand it.
Monday, February 02, 2009
I've Seen the Future, and It Looks like Paris Geller
Is it just me or is Hillary Clinton basically the real-life version of what Paris Geller would have been had the television show Gilmore Girls lasted another 20-30 seasons? Clinton is about the right size and shape for a middle-aged Geller, and they're both brainy and driven blonds. Neither seem to be quite comfortable in their own skin and they both seem to want to succeed just a little bit too much to the point that it comes across as being a little scary. I'm also not sure either is entirely comfortable with the normal human range of emotion. Did you notice how awkward Clinton seemed during the primary campaign when she was trying to be more personable? It was a bit painful at times. As for Geller, her having been the first legitimate female candidate for president wouldn't have been a long shot at all in the Gilmore universe.
Of course, if Clinton is the real world's version of Geller, then she needs to be surrounded by people who also resemble Gilmore characters. Figuring out who Bill would have been on Gilmore Girls was pretty easy. He'd have been the slutty blond friend who was always with Paris in the Chilton seasons. It's a change of gender, but I can think that's a very minor change compared to the similar motivations between character and former president. I think Chelsea would have been the nicer black-haired girl who always seemed to forget she was supposed to hate Rory in the first season.
The part of Rory has to fall to Barack Obama, and he fits the bill better than expected. First, he and Clinton had a very tense and heated rivalry early on in their relationship only to find mutual respect and understanding in the end, at least in public. Sure, in real life Clinton is just using Obama as a stepping stone for her own ambitions while Paris genuinely admired and loved Rory, but that's all out of the public eye and can only be assumed. Obama also shares a much less intense personality with Rory, although I can't really see him being the anal list-maker that Rory was. He comes across as genuinely laid back while Rory just seems that way when compared to Paris. There are also the similarities in intelligence and being able to be driven without becoming unbalanced. However, I find it hard to believe that Rory would ever be a smoker. The main problem is that Obama is also not, nor has he ever been, a cute young girl. I didn't say this was a perfect metaphor, but I think I was able to stretch it farther than you thought I could.
I tried to take it out past this point, but it just didn't work. Our current first lady resembles in no way any of Rory's boyfriends and I can't really find a way to force Rahm Emmanuel into Lane Kim's fictional skin.
But you couldn't imagine how hard I tried.
Of course, if Clinton is the real world's version of Geller, then she needs to be surrounded by people who also resemble Gilmore characters. Figuring out who Bill would have been on Gilmore Girls was pretty easy. He'd have been the slutty blond friend who was always with Paris in the Chilton seasons. It's a change of gender, but I can think that's a very minor change compared to the similar motivations between character and former president. I think Chelsea would have been the nicer black-haired girl who always seemed to forget she was supposed to hate Rory in the first season.
The part of Rory has to fall to Barack Obama, and he fits the bill better than expected. First, he and Clinton had a very tense and heated rivalry early on in their relationship only to find mutual respect and understanding in the end, at least in public. Sure, in real life Clinton is just using Obama as a stepping stone for her own ambitions while Paris genuinely admired and loved Rory, but that's all out of the public eye and can only be assumed. Obama also shares a much less intense personality with Rory, although I can't really see him being the anal list-maker that Rory was. He comes across as genuinely laid back while Rory just seems that way when compared to Paris. There are also the similarities in intelligence and being able to be driven without becoming unbalanced. However, I find it hard to believe that Rory would ever be a smoker. The main problem is that Obama is also not, nor has he ever been, a cute young girl. I didn't say this was a perfect metaphor, but I think I was able to stretch it farther than you thought I could.
I tried to take it out past this point, but it just didn't work. Our current first lady resembles in no way any of Rory's boyfriends and I can't really find a way to force Rahm Emmanuel into Lane Kim's fictional skin.
But you couldn't imagine how hard I tried.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
One From the Cuz
My cousin David recently won a campus film festival at Georgia Tech. I saw him at the Atlanta Cask Ale Festival yesterday, quite unexpectedly. Last year, K and I invited him and his girlfriend Hilary to the ACAF and they apparently enjoyed it. The day tickets went on sale this year, I bought four and then got a call from my friend Larry who was stuck at a high school football game and needed tickets. These things usually sell out in hours, so I told him I already had him covered, but if he could get to a computer in time to buy his own to let me know because I already had someone else I knew who would take them. Larry didn't get home until after the fest sold out, so I ended up just not telling David that we ever had tickets for him. I was a little surprised to see the two over next to the cheese table about fifteen minutes after K and I rolled in looking for beer to fill our sweet new Terrapin India Brown Ale pints. Sucks that they didn't come hang out with us in the bars of Decatur like they did last year. Of course, we didn't really hang out with ourselves in the bars of Decatur like we did last year. I ate sushi with frequent commenter Julie and her hubby and friends while K ate Tex-Mex with our friends Larry and Amal before we decided to go back to the hotel and go to bed while walking to The Brick Store.
Anyway, after a couple of samples, David happens to mention that he should be considering these his celebration beers after winning the campus film festival earlier. He said that he'd been taken by surprise with the announcement because he'd thought several of the other short films had been excellent, leaving him no chance.
I just watched it though. It's pretty funny. I have no idea how crappy the other movies were, but this wasn't half bad. Congrats, David.
Anyway, after a couple of samples, David happens to mention that he should be considering these his celebration beers after winning the campus film festival earlier. He said that he'd been taken by surprise with the announcement because he'd thought several of the other short films had been excellent, leaving him no chance.
I just watched it though. It's pretty funny. I have no idea how crappy the other movies were, but this wasn't half bad. Congrats, David.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)