Personal Dork Assistant

Be Very Afraid

Mom is thinking about buying a karaoke machine.

The newly federalized airport security

The newly federalized airport security screeners seem to be an improvement. They're at least pretending to look at the X-ray images for a second before passing the luggage through. Although I don't understand how I can walk right on by with my backpack packed with the GameCube, its accessories, plus sundry electronics and wires without arousing suspicion. Maybe next time I'll have to squeeze in some fertilizer or some other nitrogen-rich compounds.

Good to see that Southwest has dispensed with the plastic boarding cards and went to a printed boarding pass. The boarding pass is mostly taken up by a super-sized "A", "B", or "C" depending on your boarding group, whereas with the plastic boarding cards you had to know how to divide your card number by 30. Unfortunately, the new cards are unrecyclable waxed thermal card stock which will go straight into the landfill, but now you can get your boarding pass at the same time you check in your luggage, instead of having to line up twice. Not that it would help me any since I hardly ever check bags on Southwest anyway. Oh, well.

Snacky Goodness at Trader Joe's

It's always fun to wander into TJ's without a shopping list. There's always the staples like milk and pasta. Does frozen calzone count as a staple? Grab a prepared salad or sandwich for lunch the next day. Then it's whatever random stuff that'll fit in the basket.

TJ started stocking those mochi-covered ice cream things. I like the mochi-covered ice cream balls, since they come in six perfectly convenient bite-sized portions, unlike pints and the temptation to eat the whole damn thing.

Blue tortilla chips are always fun, but they need to be dipped. Really like the Terra Red Bliss Olive Oil, Roasted Garlic & Parmesan potato chips. Thick-cut chips with 30% less fat than other leading brands. It's kinda salty (115 mg of sodium per ounce of chips), but the parmesan and olive oil give it loads of flavor compared to regular potato chips. Excellent for a little snack. The hard part is to stop eating before you inhale the whole bag and the salt dessicates your entire mouth.

On the healthier side of the aisle, the frozen baby green beans is a handy item to have the in the freezer. A bit of salt, a minced clove of garlic, and a dash of olive oil plus a few minutes in the microwave makes for a quick serving of vegetables. The green beans survive the freezing process surprisingly well, and they stay crunchy and green even after going directly from the freezer to the microwave. Nice.

Knowledge

There are some simple things that can be surprisingly hard to do well. Everyone assumes that you can do it because you're an intelligent person and it's a simple thing, after all. Thanks to the World Wide Web (and Google), one can ferret out these useful little nuggets. So to make the world a better place, I would like to share the recipe for perfect hard-boiled eggs, thanks to the Food Network.

1. Place eggs in a pot of cold water. Add salt.
2. Bring water to a boil.
3. As soon as the water is boiling, remove the pot from the heat. Cover and let it sit.
4. After 13 minutes, remove the eggs from the pot and place them into an ice water bath to stop the cooking.

Walla!

Revelation

Bought Rogue Squadron II on the same day as my GameCube, but I haven't played it much because I can't even get past the first level, the attack on the Death Star. Specifically the Trench Run, where I either faceplant into one of the crossbeams or get shot down by the pursuing TIE fighters. If I slow down to avoid the barriers, I get chased down by the fighters. If I speed up to get away from the fighters, I run into something very solid. Finally gave in and peeked at the walkthroughs on GameFAQ. Turns out that I had to brake when the fighters are incoming and let them overshoot me. Was that in movie? Because I don't remember anything like that in the movie. We need Episode IV on DVD, damn it. Of course, now that I got past the first level I'm breezing along through the levels, although the Star Destroyer is proving to be a bit of a challenge to take down.

Dangerous Trend

Courtesy of the Open Season column in the SF Chronicle.

Bob Cullinan of San Rafael asks:

What do these NFL players have in common? Kurt Warner, Jerome Bettis, Terrell Davis, Donovan McNabb. All have sustained serious injuries in the past year. And all have appeared in TV commercials for Campbell's Chunky Soup. If I were Brian Urlacher and Michael Strahan, the latest Chunky pitchmen, I'd cancel my contract with Campbell's -- now.

Of course, we can talk about misleading statistics and all that, but what would be the fun in that?

Looks like Apple is

Looks like Apple is trying to cover all the demographics with their Switch commercials.

• Yo Yo Ma
• De La Soul

Best line ever: "I'm Yo Yo Ma. I play the cello."

Hey, I love animated tentacle

Hey, I love animated tentacle rape of (almost) underage girls as much as anybody, but I don't try to attribute cultural significance to it. Well, I could, but that would be lame and pathetic. Lame and pathetic anime fans? Enter another winner from Slashdot:

When I see some sexy female ninja or spaceship captain in a hentai flick, I feel attracted to her in a much different way than I do to the bimbos in American porn. This hentai woman actually has skills and capabilites. She's compatent! And her face and body is at least as sexy as those of real women. For me, that's a great combination. I'd rather fuck hentai girls than the sluts in American porn.

Somebody needs to do something before the term "geek" becomes congruent with "loser." At least as of now, a "geek" usually denotes some intellectual talent. The Slashdot cesspool is dispelling that image in a hurry. Of course, I still read the site, but then I read FreeRepublic, too.

Woo hoo, my new

Woo hoo, my new pot of oregano just germinated, and the basil is taking hold nicely in the larger flower pot. I'll have to figure out some way of watering them when I go away, though.

On the 44th day of Christmas...

...my Visa gave to me

• Band of Brothers DVD Set
• U2, The Best of 1990-2000
• Alison Krauss and Union Station, Live
• Bjork, Greatest Hits
• Wallflowers, Red Letter Days
• ...and half a pound of Peets coffee (Holiday Blend)

Hey, the CDs were on sale at Best Buy, and I price-matched BoB at Best Buy against Fry's. With double points from their Reward Zone program, that should add up to a $5 coupon easily. Too bad Reward Zone is still only in SoCal and Arizona. Sure would be nice to use the Reward card at home on Black Friday.

Words of wisdom on Chinese iconography in Spirited Away

Editor: Stolen shamelessly from people smarter than I.

In the depiction of the spirit world, the music, the tone of visual representation (especially the composition of color of the bath hall, the architectural design of its ceilings, and the vases outside Yu-ba-ba's room) seem to evoke elements of Chinese culture (the Tang dynasty in particular, a moment, according to "authoritative" historical accounts that I was taught in highschool, the Japanese culture in general and architecture in particular were marked with significant Chinese influences). My impressions might be shaped too much by stereotypical visual representation of Chinese and Japanese cultures in the mass media and predicated upon the false essentialist assumption of the mutually exclusiveness of these two cultures. However, the music, which at least to me is unmistakably more "Chinese" than "Japanese," does seem to suggest Miyazaki's deliberate choice of "not-so-typical-Japanese" elements (especially in the context of his filmic vocabulary) to depict the spirit world.

So, my question is: if my observations are not too far off, how much of this would you say has to do with the ways in which the spirit world is commonly perceived in Japanese culture , and how much of it is Miyazaki's creative invention. Of course, as mathematically inclined as I am, I would prefer an answer with the exact percentage of each.

I think a lot of the visual representation has to do with the thematic preoccupation with tradition/modernity. The spirit world is strongly linked with the premodern (Japanese notion of "modernity" began in the 1860s with the Meiji Restoration, a major component of which was the move to suppress cultural references to the mythic/folkloric past), and a visual shorthand imagery of making reference to the past is by using Chinese iconography. One example that springs to mind is the Japanese TV show "Go Sei Sentai DaiRanger" ("Five Star Task Force DaiRanger"), in which a tribe of ancient Japanese warriors have their powers passed down to the present (well, it was 1992 then!) generation. The ancient warriors are clearly rooted in Chinese symbolism, basing their costumes on Chinese mythological creatures -- I don't know how you pronounce these names properly in Chinese, but these are the Japanese pronunciations: Ryu (dragon), Shi Shi (lion), Tenma (winged horse), Kirin (giraffe with a horn) and Hou Ou (phoenix). They even went so far as to hire stuntmen who could do Chinese style wu shu, rather than the usual Japanese shotokan karate you usually see in these shows. I always think it's nice to see such an admission (that Japanese culture sprang from Chinese culture), as opposed to perpetuating these ideas that Japanese were descended from the tengu (mythological goblins); that the Emperor was a direct descendant of the gods, etc., which can lead to bizarre forms of Japanese nationalism and "Nihonjinron" (usually translated as "Japaneseness").

Vote

So I went to the polls (heck, it was only down the street) and did my part in turning California into a one-party state. All the electronic voting machines are fun and all, but I like punching holes in paper ballots, darn it. When I flipped on the TV, the results from the east didn't look very good, and it got worse from there as the Democrats lost every single toss-up Senate seat except South Dakota (by 500 votes or so). When the GOP candidate who never served in the military can beat a Vietnam vet who lost three limbs in action over the defense issue, that pretty much set the tone. It's depressing when Gray Davis ends up being the best news of the night. Even then, he ran such an ideologically bankrupt (but logistically brilliant) campaign that he torched any hopes of moving up to the national scene. Well, the folks should love the big tax cut that's coming, anyway.

Berkeley, of all places, had the most sensible vote of the night, when they rejected the Measure O requiring fair-trade coffee to be served at coffee shops. I'm not big on corporate lobbying, but if there's any corporate lobby that I might listen to, it's Peets, even if they have succumbed to the evils of flavored coffee.

You've Gotta Be Kidding

The Sports Guy is leaving Boston?

To work in Hollywood?

Hollywood!

Writing for Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show on ABC?

Jimmy Kimmel!

To anybody aware of mid-brow American culture, "late night talk show starring Jimmy Kimmel" is one of those ideas that just screams DOA like the girl who wanders off by herself in a horror movie. Which makes this all the more surprising because Simmons won himself an audience by selling himself as the ultimate mid-brow American male. Quotes from Swingers, fantasy sports, Celtic season tickets, weekends in Vegas. The guy with a wisecrack for everyone and everything (except Red Auerbach), and his synopsis of Jimmy Kimmel?

"He has an innate knack for making people comfortable, regardless of the situation, which is the best possible quality for a talk show host. He has the good sense to surround himself with quality people. His energy is amazing -- there isn't a second of the day when he isn't trying to make somebody laugh, only there isn't the same desperation like there is with someone like Conan O'Brien. And it's humanly impossible to dislike Jimmy -- he's the proverbial Guy's Guy, only he's funny enough and creative enough to get paid for it."

Jesus H. Christ, someone crowbar his head out of Kimmel's ass already.

Of course, that's what all his readers are saying, speaking as mainstream American sports freaks. But it's actually a savvy no-risk career move for The Sports Guy. Thanks to the ABC-ESPN corporate synergy, he keeps his column on ESPN.com and ESPN Mag (drumming up interest for the show all the while). The whole BostonSportsGuy-in-LA angle is good for about a million columns. If the show tanks, he goes right back to where he was, no worse for the wear, really. It's almost enough to make me think that they hired the guy as a token celebrity-writer to pick up some buzz from the right demographic.

To build buzz with a different demographic, the NY Times Magazine also has a piece on the Jimmy Kimmel and his upcoming show. The New York Times has better writers than The Sports Guy. Jimmy Kimmel is narcoleptic. Insert your own joke here.

Misleading Ad of the Day

"No burger from McDonalds has won it."
...
"No burger from In-n-Out has won it."
...
"The Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Burger, winner of the 2002 Restaurant Business Association's Best New Burger Award."

For one thing, the burger doesn't even look that appealing in the commercial, and food never look as good as it does in the commercial. And of course In-n-Out hasn't won the Best New Burger Award, since they haven't had a new burger in about 50 years. Mostly because the good old In-n-Out burger kicks the crap out of all other fast-food chains. So there.