I just had another virus scare--Firefox getting hijacked and suggesting that I download what I'm sure would be a VERY helpful bit of software to deal with it. It looks like Norton actually took care of it, but I need my computer to work for work, so I think I'm just going to drastically limit the amount of time I spend on-line for entertainment purposes, including this blog....

Current Mood: worried

OK. I realize that change happens, especially in the retail sector, BUT. Years ago, I discovered a body wash by H2O Plus called Mint Ice. I tried it after I read an article about it, which was written because the body wash had so much menthol in it that showering with it was, well, a very interesting and unique (some would say erotic) experience. It would actually give you chills when you showered, plus your sinuses would be clean as a whistle afterward.

So when a friend told me that her son liked mint soaps, I was like, a-ha! I know exactly what to get him for Christmas! Except...not so much. They don't make it any more. All you see if you Google it is a bunch of old reviews, that all read something like, "*****!!!! Mint Ice is AMAZING!!!! There is nothing else like it!!!!"

So you know, why wouldn't you discontinue it?

Current Mood: annoyed

The life sciences department at PSC has a blog! It's really cute and a fun read!

Current Mood: pleased

I have these kiwis from my CSA (I've mentioned that not everything they give you is local, right?), and I ate one and realized that the truth is, I don't much care for kiwis. So then I had two left that I had no particular desire to eat, and I thought, I know! I'll make a fruit pizza with them!

You know fruit pizzas--a cookie crust, a sweet cream cheese spread for the "sauce," and slices of raw fruit for the toppings. I had cream cheese because--miracle of miracles--I found a decent bagel at the grocery store, so I was ready to go. I couldn't find a recipe in my books, though, so I went on-line.

And I was quickly disturbed. The first recipe I came across was pretty much what I was expecting: Here's a sugar-cookie recipe, beat the cream cheese with sugar and vanilla, throw on some fruit. But then, like 90% of the other recipes (and these were all from individuals--way to regurgitate corporate recipes and claim them as your own, guys) were like, Open a can of CORPORATE BRAND NAME sugar-cookie dough! Mix your cream cheese with a vat of your favorite floor wax/dessert topping! Be sure to "glaze" your fruit with some mysterious gelatinous substance that could be alive!

Jesus Christ. Remember when cooking used to involve actual food? I'm amazed those recipes even bother with fruit--Sunkist Fruit Gems are so much more convenient, don't you know? They last forever, and kids love them!

Anyway, I wound up using a recipe for refrigerator cookies from How To Cook Everything (cookie dough is not hard--it took me all of five minutes, and I didn't have to go to the store), and since I had used some of the cream cheese on what had, to my delight, turned out to be a good bagel, I eked the rest out with plain yogurt. I topped the pizza with unadorned kiwi slices. It is very good--kiwis are quite tart, but that works well with the sweetness of the cookie dough and the cream-cheese mixture. The only thing I would alter for next time is that I would halve the amount of cookie dough: Right now, it's more of a Chicago deep-dish fruit pizza, and I prefer the New York thin crust. (I will give Chicago the edge when it comes to hot dogs, though.)

Current Mood: full

I have mentioned that Harvard's alumni magazine is deadly dull, and last week I finally figured out why: Much like most boring people (and to be honest, this blog) it's too self-absorbed to be really interesting.

I realized this when I got the Harvard and NYU alumni mags at that same time. The NYU one is, alas, only quarterly, while the Harvard one comes every other month, whether you want it or not. NYU's is thinner, has shorter articles, and more pictures, but I think the main difference is the approach. Most of the articles put a social phenomenon first--for example, there's a brief article on a new class about developing iPhone applications. But the first two sentences of what is only a two-paragraph story are dedicated to explaining why iPhone applications are interesting. It's a fundamental of good journalism--you start by telling the reader why they should give a crap. Why read this article? Because iPhone apps are kewl! OK!

Would that Harvard magazine took the same approach. No, the magazine seems to feel that alumni have nothing better to do with their lives than fixate on every last little thing that would be of profound interest to a university administrator who is actually paid to care. If Harvard did a story on a new class on iPhone apps, rest assured that the information about the apps themselves would be regulated to the last two sentences of the story--the structure would be: Here's what our computer department is doing. Here's what they've done in the past. Here's what Yale and Princeton, and maybe some other Ivy League schools, are doing in the same field. Here's why it matters in the larger world, WHERE OUR ALUMNI ACTUALLY LIVE.

There is a two-page spread of briefs in NYU that tells you what the university is doing (that included the iPhone app class, so even with that stuff, they try to take a real-world approach), and a couple of short articles in the back among the class notes talking about what the alumni association is up to. Harvard has an entire section in every issue dedicated to telling you in mind-numbing detail exactly what the university and the alumni association are doing. In the latest issue, that section is about 15 pages long, not including the class notes, which are about an additional 15 pages. That is not atypical for the magazine.

If that wasn't self-absorbed enough, two of the three long features in Harvard magazine are about issues facing educational institutions like Harvard, or Harvard itself--namely, the overabundance of Ph.D.s, and the use of video and interactive media in Harvard classrooms. Because the 1,600 people who graduate from the college each year, plus the many thousands who emerge from the various graduate and professional schools, all think exactly like a university administrator. Of the three long features in NYU magazine, one is about education. Education in general--specifically, the use of video games as a learning tool. In all sorts of places. Not just NYU classrooms. Because, you know something? There's a big, wide world out there! And alumni care about it!

Current Mood: annoyed

Remember how there was mildew in my bedroom? It hasn't come back (aside from a little mold in a pair of shoes, which I cleaned up), but I've been keeping an eye out. Now that the rains have come back, it's obvious that there's some dampness back there where the cabinets and closet meet the wall--and it seems to be concentrated in the lower parts of the house. So I went out to cast a gimlet eye on the aluminum siding on that part of the house. There aren't any holes, but there is a seam that runs horizontally across the wall. That's the windward side of the house, and I think rain was being driven in through the seam.

I got some silicone and sealed that seam up, and the process only confirmed by suspicions--there were pine needles and the like jammed into the seam. Hopefully the silicone will do the trick for now (and I have often wished that I could encase the house in one giant blob of silicone), but really one of these days I'm just going to have to replace the siding. Replace the siding and throw in a bunch of new insulation--that would be excellent.

I have a small flight of stairs leading up from the carport to the kitchen that the previous owner painted yellow. The paint was wearing off, exposing the wood, so I figured I had better paint it. I was going to go buy paint, but then I was like, This doesn't have to match! And I've got a ton of half-full paint cans in the shed! Let's use that!

I pulled out the primer, which is indoor/outdoor, and then I pulled out the red paint that I had used on one of the interior doors, and I slapped a coat on. Now, there are some issues here: 1. It's indoor paint. 2. It's old and gotten very thick. 3. It was raining when I painted. 4. It was cold when I painted.

It's been about a week, and that paint--well, it's not exactly wet, but it's not exactly dry. It's oddly slick and oily. Today I pulled out polyurethane ("not recommended for use on decks"--but hey, at least it's indoor/outdoor) and slapped on a coat of that. We shall see....

Current Mood: busy

This is an interesting article about dog intelligence. I especially like the guy at the end, who points out that saying dogs are intelligent is quite different from saying that dogs and people have a similar intelligence.

I've written about Clever Hans, and I always make the point that Hans was indeed clever--he sure fooled the humans around him for quite a long time. He just wasn't clever the way people thought he was clever. Clever at reading body language, yes. Clever at math, not so much.

And that's how animal intelligence is. Hell, that's the way human intelligence is. I'm a big believer in Stephen Jay Gould's assertion that there are intelligences, not a single, measurable thing called intelligence--different people are good at different things, and all these different kinds of intelligence should be respected. (I also think that The Mismeasure of Man should be required reading for basically everybody.)

So when we say, "Dogs are intelligent," what are we saying? Dogs have something we can recognize as intelligence--and we may not even be recognizing it correctly, because a dog being able to anticipate a seizure may not be a mental process that is any more sophisticated than a bird being able to find magnetic north. We get hung up on this thing called intelligence (which can't really be defined even in people) when the truth of the matter is, from an evolutionary point of view, being smart is not nearly as important as being fast or having sharp teeth.

Current Mood: thoughtful

I just found out that Dollhouse is a goner. In a way that's too bad, because I do like my Whedon, but this season has been pretty weak (really weak up until this latest episode). It feels like they didn't know what to do with the show once it got renewed. The first season, it was really creepy and cool when it was revealed that the Dolls weren't really the way they were supposed to be, and there was a serious possibility that they could get killed for it. But now not only does the viewer know this already, but all the adversaries of the Dolls have been neutralized in one way or another, so there's a lot less suspense and interest there, and the show hasn't really been moving forward to create new kinds of suspense and interest.

This is Whedon, though, so probably he will pull it together in some really awesome fashion just as the show is canceled. Ah, well.

Current Mood: sleepy

I just finished the first season of Veronica Mars. Hm. It's still a good show, but (and maybe this is because I totally spoiled myself by reading the Television Without Pity recaps for the season) watching cable and British shows does make me feel like the standard American television season is just too long. It's like, it's this pretty straightforward murder mystery, and it moves along pretty well, but the 87,543,673rd time Veronica asks, Who killed Lilly Kane? Was it YOU!?! I feel like the show is kind of spinning its wheels. Plus, some transitions just felt a little weird: The way the whole Kane family interacted didn't seem to jibe with what you find out about them, and Logan saying thing like "I just want to protect you"--I mean, please. What, he has two speeds, Smart Ass and Harlequin Romance? I suppose it's supposed to sound utterly fake so that Veronica can ask, Who killed Lilly Kane? Was it LOGAN!?! but it just seems sloppy.

The season finale takes a lot of its visual language from horror movies, and it's gotten a lot of criticism for being too derivative. What bothered me about it was that all of a sudden Veronica--a girl who usually travels with a taser and a humongous pit bull--is transformed into this helpless blond in a horror movie who is incapable of doing anything other than screaming, being chased, and getting caught by the bad guy. I guess I'm just too used to Whedon, but come on--you can't subvert that trope just a little bit? Not even for a character who always--always--has something up her sleeve?

Current Mood: thoughtful

Yeah, now I can catch up on my posting as well!

Anyway, I just wanted to note that I've eaten the carrot-green scramble a couple of times, and my, but it is good. (And I still haven't died.) I totally recommend it--the frying seems to take care of the bitterness somehow. My only advice is to not use the bare stems down near the carrot--those things are just outright woody and hard to chew.

I am baking a pear clafouti right now. I decided to make it purely because of the name. I'm pretty sure that after you eat it, you get clafouti booty--a condition that is either feared and loathed or welcomed and celebrated, depending on your culture's attitude toward the booty.

GoFugYourself has a lot of fun today with Halloween costumes: They spank a number of starlets for going, basically, as Slutty WTF? (Side note: I remember seeing some years ago a brilliant post--I can't remember where now--about wide variety of options woman had for Halloween costumes: Slutty Pirates, Slutty Teachers, Slutty Policewomen, etc. These were all linked to actual slutty costumes for sale. I remember being particularly disturbed by the Slutty Rainbow Brite costume, as well as all the various Slutty Animals That Were Not Cats Or Playboy Bunny costumes. Seriously, if your boyfriend is all like, "Hey honey, why don't you go as a Slutty Horse for Halloween," it is time to cancel his membership to the petting zoo.)

Where was I? Oh, yes--in addition to slamming the Slutty Whatevers, they also slammed Rachel Zoe for not trying at all. But I feel I can top them! On Halloween, when I was going to the library, I spotted a passel of young ladies who were slutty and not trying--going as Slutty Sluts, as far as I could tell. OF COURSE they were Slutty 1980s Sluts, because if you are a young woman in Seattle in 2009 who has absolutely no imagination, you couldn't possibly do anything else. They were running down the street, and their skirts were so short that you could see the undersides of their crotches as they ran.

It was pretty ridiculous. I thought about making a cranky post at the time (and I guess I did, but not about that), but then I decided that these were probably Halloween costumes, although it was hard to say for sure, because there weren't any other clear, costume-y elements to their outfits. Still, I didn't want to be a Grinch. But now I can be! Hooray!

Current Mood: amused

The problem with finally getting your computer up and running is that now you have to do all the fairly tedious stuff you haven't been able to do (which, if you're me, includes paying bills)--except that you get to do it in one big chunk, which makes it REALLY tedious.

Oh, and I have a new technical doohickey to wrangle with--a new cell phone. I have never been that comfortable with cell phones (they're a bit too much like radio collars for my comfort--I don't always want to be reachable, you know?), but my brother-in-law works in the field, so when I moved to the Seattle area, he got me what was essentially free cell phone service. But now his company has canceled that perk, and by this point I've come to realize that cell phones can be very valuable when it comes to finding people or whatnot.

So I decided to get a pay-as-you-go phone. Sounds great, doesn't it? You just pay for the minutes you use. Except that's not quite true. With this phone, you have to put on $25 at a time, and those minutes expire after three months (you could put on $10, but that would expire after one month). So, basically what you're getting is a cell phone service that costs a little under $10 a month, which is cheap, but not exactly pay-as-you-go, and I feel like there's a little false advertising going on there. (It makes me very happy I didn't decide to put a bunch of minutes on there at the outset.) And you're totally treated like a second-class citizen when you call customer support--it's kind of funny, if annoying, and I still haven't succeeded in setting up voice mail. The coverage isn't as complete, leaving me just hoping that if I'm stuck out in the boonies and need to dial 911, the machine will comply before the wolves eat me.

Still, this cell phone works in the house, which the old one didn't. So now I'm wondering if it's not worth it to drop my fancy-schmancy cable-phone service. I'm of two minds about it: I switched to the cable phone service because the regular phone service was so damned unreliable, and if I dropped it I would also drop the cable TV, which means I wouldn't get any reception. Of course, with a working cell phone, the reliability of the regular land line would be less of an issue. I'll have to look and see if the savings would be significant....

Current Mood: busy

The Geek Squad guy came today--he had to wipe the computer, so I am reinstalling everything and updating everything. Very time consuming, but of course it beats the crap out of not having a working computer.

And I ponied up for Norton AntiVirus. I get McAfee for free with my Internet service, but obviously relying on that has not served me well. The Geek Squad guy likes Webroot, but I feel like the problem with many software companies is that they tend to have the best product today, but tomorrow, not so much. So I'm going for a big name in hopes that they'll still be around down the road.

Current Mood: relieved

I am celebrating from my sister's house, where I finally managed to finish and send in some freelance work. Yes, I am old and boring and a workaholic, but it works for me, especially since my computer is still D.E.A.D. (The repair guy is supposed to come tomorrow; let's hope the healing power of All Saint's Day will help revive the dead, because it's not like I can wait until Easter.)

Anyway, I'm just going to throw out this, because once again people seem hell-bent on reviving the really annoying and stupid looks from the 1980s, in this case someone dressed as a heavy-metal groupie, wearing a T shirt about punk rock.

This used to annoy the HELL out of me when I was a teenager: HEAVY METAL IS NOT PUNK ROCK. You'd see this kind of crap on really lame television shows aimed at the very old (think Matlock)--you know, a guy in a heavy metal band with a mohawk. PLEASE. The music is not at all similar unless you are sufficiently ancient and cranky that it all qualifies as "loud." And at least where I grew up, the punks and the metalheads would beat each other up, much like the mods and rockers of an earlier era. Probably the only thing that could possibly have united the two groups was the opportunity to kick the tar out of one of those confused mish-mosh people who appeared on Matlock.

Current Mood: accomplished

So, that virus wasn't entirely off the computer, and now I can't turn the damned thing on. (I'm posting this from my sister's.) I have to take it to a repair shop now....

Current Mood: exhausted

We're having an election for a new county executive, and to me this is a classic example of how I tend to vote: Barring really egregious behavior, what sways me is who I think can actually do the job.

So right now, we have two candidates for county executive, the "insider" candidate and the "outsider" candidate. And of course with the economy and county budget the way it is, the "outsider" candidate has a lot of appeal to a lot of people, including the editorial board of the Seattle Times, who basically decided that if you hate unions, you are good enough for them.

But--and this is why in my opinion it's a mistake to put ideology first--even if you accept at face value the notion that all the county's problems would go away if the county executive would only tackle the unions, I think the current "outsider" candidate is just waaaaaay too "outside" to have the slightest notion even where to begin. I mean, yes, she's fresh! and new! and has no relevant experience! at all!

And now she's cropped up with this beauty, which just kind of makes my point. When the people she's going to have to work with are saying things like, "She is where we were probably four to five years ago" (and her reply is a huffy, "I find it hard to believe that an organization that has spent billions over what was promised to taxpayers would not want to find the best alternative, even if it meant switching gears or ideas midstream"--um, maybe because they don't want to spend many more billions over what was promised to taxpayers?), there's a problem. And she's getting bonus demerits from me because the light rail has been a very big project in the county for a very long time, and she obviously has not yet bothered to learn very much about it.

Current Mood: pessimistic

My computer got a FEROCIOUS virus last night--once again I wasn't doing anything dumb, just going on-line to the regular sites.

Last time it was a fairly simple fix for the virus-protection guy, but this time--wow. He had to keep downloading stuff (with names like "Avenger" and "Ice Sword"), and he'd delete stuff, only to have it pop up again. It was just far more sophisticated than the last one--again, they were trying to scare you into downloading something evil, but the virus also did things like screw up Explorer and block all browser access to the virus-protection company Web sites to make it that much harder for you to get real help. The virus also made it so that if you restarted the computer in safe mode or in last-working-configuration mode, it would freeze up and not work at all, so you were forced to let it download a few more delights just to get it up and available for the remote connection. As the guy was unraveling it all, I mentioned that this seemed really complex, and he said, Yeah, how long have you been having this problem. I said, "Since last night," and he said, "Oh" in this total I'm so screwed, I'm going to be doing this all day, aren't I? tone.

Anyway, so much for getting any work done, plus it cost a pretty penny to get rid of the virus--I don't know what motivates the fuckers who make these things, but they're really causing me a lot of trouble for not much of a gain on their end. I've stopped using Explorer in hopes that will help. If this keeps up, my next computer is going to be an Apple--they're more expensive, but if I have to keep shelling out for fixes and missing days of work, it's not going to make a difference.

Current Mood: stressed

I should probably stop mocking the drug-legalization people, but today I saw a great big old sticker stuck on the bus stop where I hadn't see it before. And you know what it said? "STOP ARRESTING MEDICAL MARIJUANA PATIENTS!!!"

Do you think they even know?

Current Mood: amused

This was true about everything in NYC.

Current Mood: amused

(OK, we were speaking about Transformers 2, but that link is to Go Fug Yourself, so there's fashion there. And it's bad fashion, which is even more relevant!) Anyway--this '80s thing. It's all the rage here. And it's...troubling me.

What specifically is troubling me (and has always troubled me, because someone is always doing this--at least they were in NYC) is when people (women, usually--men don't often do this, because it's more likely to be call "flashing" and result in an arrest) seem unclear on what to me is one of the primary purposes of clothing: To cover your genitals. I mean, we all love our genitals (or at least I hope we all love our genitals, God knows they do good things for us), but in my mind, you should love your genitals the same way you love a baby: You swaddle them up and protect them from the world.

Unfortunately, some people love their genitals in the same way some dysfunctional parents love their children: They want to show them off to everybody in order to validate their own existence. Plus some people, especially younger people, are just deeply clueless.

In the summer, the issue for me was the spandex microdresses, which were indeed worn in the 1980s--by prostitutes. In fact, the first time I saw a woman in one of these it was in the restroom of an office building, and my first thought was, Oh, look, someone in one of these offices hired a prostitute--how unfortunate. But then I saw another woman in the downtown library, who other than the dress, really didn't look like a prostitute, but instead looked like a relatively clueless young lady who was trying to be fashionable. The thing is, the downtown library is Scary Homeless Men Central, and believe me, they just got scarier when they saw her, so I wound up fervently hoping that she made it out of there without getting sexually assaulted.

Can I throw out a fashion rule? When your choice in clothing causes significant mental distress in the people around you, that is not a good thing. I mean, I'm not a Puritan--I still have short skirts, and I think it's fine if you want to show off some leg. But that's leg, you know, not coochie. If those dresses were one inch longer, you'd still see plenty of leg, and you wouldn't feel like you needed to cover your eyes.

Anyway, now it's colder and the microdresses have been put away...only to be replaced by leggings. Now if you lived through the 1980s, you know that the issue with leggings is that the fabric needs to be thick--certainly thick enough that you can't see through it.

Yesterday, I was walking down the street behind a young woman who was wearing what were essentially grey, sheer-to-the-waist tights, without pants, shorts, a skirt, or anything that would have provided any sort of coverage of her naughty bits. It was doubly insane, because she kept adding layers to the top half of her body--she pulled on a jacket (which was cropped above the waist, of course), and then pulled down one of the two shirts she was wearing so that her waist was doubly covered. She was wearing socks and boots. Meanwhile, she was for all practical purposes, naked between the waist and knees. Rest assured, I was not the only person on that street who was more than a little flummoxed. (And she was with a guy! Don't tell me he didn't notice. He gets about a million Bad Boyfriend points for not making her tie one of her many shirts around her waist.)

Again--COVER YOUR GENITALS! We're women--it's not hard! They aren't large, they don't pop or flop out of things. It's easy, and it's simple, and it will make my perambulations through town so much less upsetting.

Current Mood: distressed

This contains a very funny rant about Terminators 2 (and YAY! now that I am no longer floor staff, I no longer have to watch that kind of of crap), plus it has a link to another very funny rant about the movie, which itself contains hilarious quotes from very funny British rants about the movie. So, it's like three very funny rants in one, and I'm not even counting the fact that they are dead-on about Isabel Lucas.

Current Mood: amused