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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Author: Karel Kerezman

  • Out Of The Food Rut

    Over lunch today, I considered my eating habits of yesteryear and that led me to consider how far I’ve come recently in breaking out of certain ruts I used to gleefully adhere to.

    When I was a young boy, eating out meant dining on grilled cheese sandwiches. It didn’t matter where we were, I wanted my grilled cheese sandwiches. Mind you, our little family didn’t exactly enjoy haute cuisine at the best of times. Small-town Washington state, living on welfare most of the time, you know the drill. At home I learned to make two things: grilled cheese sandwiches and baked mac-and-cheese.

    One magical day (which wasn’t, of course, magical enough for me to actually remember now) someone introduced me to the French Dip. I never looked back. I would only eat roast beef sandwiches dipped in au jus from then on when dining out. At home, of course, I stuck with grilled cheese sandwiches and mac-and-cheese.

    Au jus wasn’t the sort of thing Mom would pick up from the store, you know? Nevermind the roast beef and the sandwich rolls.

    The story of dining out is, for me, a slow series of these discoveries. In almost every case, someone had to browbeat me to the point where I would “just try it.” To say that I’m not the most adventurous soul on the planet may, in fact, be a gross understatement. By adulthood (or thereabouts) I amassed a small collection of dishes I was willing to eat, and would usually eat the same thing whenever I went to a particular restaurant.

    Okay, that part hasn’t changed too much in the last few years, but I’m getting better. Part of the “new me” process I began a half dozen or so years ago involves trying new dishes. More and more often I make a point of ordering something from the menu that I haven’t tried previously, and even when I’ve narrowed a restaurant’s menu down to “here’s what I like, to heck with the rest” I generally rotate through those options so I’m not just doing the same-old same-old every visit.

    It’s possible that I think too much about food. Or I think too much about what I think too much about. Maybe I just think too much about what other people think. Whatever the case, I think I’m glad that I’m branching out, however slowly and slightly, as I grow older. It’s better that than to calcify in my ways, right?

  • I rather doubt that they were.

    One of my coworkers pointed me to this CNN article about Iran test-firing some missiles. Here’s the bit that gave us pause, with my emphasis in italics:

    “Iranian experts have made some changes to Shahab-3 missiles installing cluster warheads in them with the capacity to carry 1,400 bombs,” state television said. It did not say whether the unarmed missiles fired were carrying warheads at the time.

    “It” probably didn’t need to, did it? The mind, it boggles.

  • Seals Of Violence

    If you look at the NaBloPoMo page, you’ll notice that some of the seals are a bit… forceful in the message they convey. “We here at NaBloPoMo enjoy nothing more than a good aggressive logo, apparently. Oooh, just wait until next year.”

    I can certainly play along with that spirit. Witness the following:

    Perhaps I’m just a total weirdo for finding the Seal Generator so darned amusing. I can live with that…

    (Note: Permission to use, granted. Permission to hotlink, denied. Be nice, kids.)

  • The Kickoff – NaBloPoMo Post Number One

    Wait, what? It’s November already?

    Well, it would hardly do to botch the challenge on the very first day, would it? So, let me tell you about the fun things going on in my world lately:

    • Even when I get enough sleep, I don’t get enough sleep. Last night was not an example of my getting enough sleep, however. You’d think that traipsing up and down our designated annual Halloween street in the chilling wind would have made me tired enough to sleep like the (un)dead, but no. Never underestimate my ability to fail at the simple task of losing consciousness for anything close to seven hours a night.
    • Speaking of All Hallow’s Eve, I think the kids had a good time last night. Alex’s costume turned out to be something on the order of a Rorschach test. He was supposed to be a “bookworm,” with painted on glasses and a big book in his hands, open for reading as he absentmindedly mumbled “Trick or treat” from door to door. Yet, nobody really picked up on that. Several people assumed his costume was “devoted student,” including a couple of suggestions that he was a Reedie. Two suggested he was either portraying or reading Harry Potter. One actually recognized the book in his hands, namely the massive, complete Hitchhiker’s Guide volume. We had a number of good laughs, anyway. That’s the whole point. Well, that and candy. We mustn’t forget the candy.
    • Apparently I’m the go-to guy for doing nigh-impossible things with fussy laptops. Unfortunately, unlike the last two times, this time I think I’m stumped. I can’t sync a 200 MB Outlook data file over an ISDN connection, at least not within a couple of hours. And since I told the laptop to try exactly that, now I can’t make anything else work. That’ll teach me to do what I’m told, won’t it?
    • How’s the job in general? I’ve entered that wonderfully awkward phase in which I sort of know what I’m supposed to do, but actually learning all of the fiddly bits (such as: which clients behave like what, the accepted method of creating logins, best practices for service request creation and management) is completely defeating my poor little brain. I don’t feel like my coworkers think I’m a total waste of oxygen (yet), but I’m quite keenly frustrated nonetheless. I spent nine years in one kind of job, and this is… something else entirely. I’m not terribly confident in my ability to adjust to this style of doing things.
    • Cohabitating with Kyla has reduced many of the negative aspects of our relationship while exacerbating a few others, though much of that can be chalked up to a general lack of funds in addition to living in a fairly confined space. My room has all of my stuff in it, which makes working with our combined stuff rather entertaining at times. It’ll be a big relief when she has a place that’s truly her own. Not that I mind having her around so much of the time, to be clear, but my room just isn’t big enough for the both of us.
    • My energy levels in general have been very, very low since about… oh… June? I’ve enjoyed brief periods of recovery in the last couple of months but it never lasts. Enjoyment itself is at a loss lately. I don’t have the drive to do very much, and often when I can work up the energy I don’t end up satisfied with the results. (Wow, this could be read in an entirely naughty fashion, couldn’t it? Well, don’t. I’m not talking about that, at least not specifically, so get your mind out of the gutter.) I don’t know what to do about this. The multivitamins may be helping, but who’s to say? I don’t want to end up the lifeless, apathetic loser that I was in my early teens, so, what do I do? I don’t know, and I’m trying to care.

    Let’s hope that I haven’t used up my allotment of words for the entire month just on this one posting. I have at least twenty-nine more entries to write, after all!

  • Obsessed with Christianity?

    Taken from James Randi’s weekly commentary, the following bit of amusement… if you find this sort of thing funny, which I tend to do. These are the “Top Ten indications that you’re over-obsessed with religion,” and by “religion” I assume Mr. Randi means “Christianity.”

    Those with a Bible at hand and a poor sense of humor may want to skip the rest of this entry…

    #10 ”“ You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

    #9 ”“ You feel insulted and “dehumanized” when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that humans were created from dirt.

    #8 ”“ You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

    #7 ”“ Your face turns purple when you hear of the “atrocities” attributed to Allah, but you don’t even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the male first-born babies of Egypt in “Exodus” and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in “Joshua” ”“ including women, children, and trees.

    #6 ”“ You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods consorting with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

    #5 ”“ You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of the Earth (4.55 billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is about a couple of generations old.

    #4 ”“ You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs ”“ though excluding those in all rival sects ”“ will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering, and yet you consider your religion the most “tolerant” and “loving.”

    #3 ”“ While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor “speaking in tongues” may be all the evidence you need to “prove” your choice of religions to be the correct one.

    #2 ”“ You define .01% as a “high success rate” when it comes to answered prayers, and consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% failure was simply the will of God.

    #1 ”“ You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history ”“ but you still call yourself a Christian.

  • Mad (Scientist) Pumpkins

    I got a laugh out of the Cylon pumpkin, yes I did. However… I now wish I had the skill to make one of these.

    C’mon. You know you want one. Who wouldn’t?

    (I couldn’t resist that pun, either. Yes, I’m a bad man and should be punished.)

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