About two and a half years ago, I posted something about the birthday cake I was making for sosoclever. The basic concept was that since all my baking lately has the consistency of masonry, I would set out to create a cake based on the concept of masonry. So I made a red velvet cake in a 9"x13" pan. I cut the cake into "bricks" and frosted them with a simple butter frosting. I used undyed frosting for the mortar and pinkish frosting to color the bricks. The result was less than spectacular. Not only did I need more frosting, but because the cake was thicker in the middle than at the edges, perhaps, my basic masonry was less successful than ever before.

( Ugly cakeCollapse )

Well, crap. Ray Harryhausen died today. He was 92.

In 1978, I was taking swimming lessons at the Somerville, NJ YMCA. After a couple years of swimming in the ocean off Salvador (I'm not sure that's the actual beach where we went, but it's close enough) all weekend every weekend for two years and living in Lake Stockholm all the other summers, I don't know what I was expected to learn in an indoor pool. Form? I didn't. But on my way out one morning, I passed a dark room with flickering lights on the far wall. The Monster Club, which got together Saturday mornings to watch movies, had their door propped open. I walked in and was introduced to a world in which Ray Harryhausen was a demigod. When we acquired a super 8 camera, every single movie we made included stop-motion animation, no matter how awkwardly we had to shoehorn it into our sorry scripts. And I was the best and most patient of us, moving every Micronaut (a staple of our scenes) minutely and smoothly and photographing them one frame at a time.

CGI just can't measure up.

Most of you are quite familiar, by now, with my opinion of Wikipedia.¹ Their latest stunt does nothing to improve that, and everything to reinforce it. They're pissing and moaning about legislation they say is horrible without (typically) suggesting any alternatives. No, their main points are that they might have to do work to check their sources — unlike journalists and academics³ — and these bits of legislation might hurt the access to free information that is their invention and gift to the world⁴! Once again I learn from Wikipedia that everything I knew is wrong⁵.

Seriously, though, this is just more crappy slacktivism. If they're not going to suggest an alternative, they should shut the fuck up. Too many of their supporters oppose copyright enforcement, and as an aspiring writer I want my money just like any assembly line worker, data entry drudge, or street sweeper.


¹That, or you're relatively new here.^2
2Or that brick did more damage than anybody thought.
³That was sarcasm.
⁴So was that.
⁵And that. Okay, I'll stop now.

The best thing about this holiday season so far has been a song. Lady Gaga released a song that's nothing but acoustic guitar, drum machine and vocals, and except for getting a little silly at the end it's great! It's not anything you'll be hearing on the radio any time soon, either!

I'm stuck in a room with a very small child. She's watching Elmopalooza! I've seen/heard it a million times. I like Lauryn Hill, and I knew she was in it, but I'd never really listened to her (their) song. Today I accidentally did. I was doing something unpleasant and time-consuming when I heard, "Not trying to be different, just doing they own thing."

I like the way that was phrased!

Never too old to learn from Sesame Street?

Okay. So sosoclever and I did a little shopping on Tuesday. I got a new belt. We found Eddie and the Cruisers marked only $5.00 and paid -$5.00² less than that for it. We picked up pickles and soda and probably beer or wine. Just normal little things. And, of course, being us, we were out later than we intended to be.

We were hungry. We had 16 miles to go.

I knew we were hungry while we were still in the grocery store and excercised awe-inspiring self-control, not throwing entire fried chickens into the cart. Instead, I carefully checked prices, setting an arbitrary and entirely fictional ceiling on how much we would spend on food for NOW³. sosoclever got a candy bar or something, I think, but I don't remember exactly what⁴.

We were back out in the van, and I reached into the World Market⁵ bag, saying something humble like, "Have I mentioned that my amazingness knows no bounds?"

sosoclever said nothing. She must not have heard me.

I used a damp napkin to clean my pocket knife⁶, then broke out corn tortillas and havarti.

There was no not hearing me when I mentioned my amazingness now!

When the havarti was gone, I used the aforementioned napkin to clean a nice big honeycrisp apple and then to clean the cheese from the knife.

I sliced deeply around the apple from top to bottom, twisted it in half, and set about trimming away the seeds and stem, then handed half to sosoclever and kept half for myself. Somewhere around that time I noticed that I was bleeding from a small (≅1/4" long and 1/8" deep) cut on my fingertip. Since the knife was pointing in the other direction, the sensible conclusion is that I cut myself on the apple.

Well, nothing I could do about it, right? So I sat back and ate my half of the apple. It was good, but sweeter than I expect from a honeycrisp and not nearly as sharp.


¹Flaming Carrot!
²sic
³Then now, not now now.
⁴And it's not important.
⁵Not the store where we were.
⁶A cute little thing, something like this but smaller and with brass bolsters.

Striptease ended. This makes me sad. Fortunately it's being rerun from the beginning with commentary and came to an actual conclusion instead of just tapering off!

Penny & Aggie, too. (The ending part, and with an actual conclusion, but not, to the best of my knowledge, with reruns!) But T Campbell and Jason Waltrip are apparently starting a semi-sequel!

I hate my job.

Let me clarify.

I'm not just imperfectly happy with my employment situation. I don't just have a job that isn't quite the one I would like to have. I'm not just grumbling about having to get up every day to go in to work. I have a demeaning job for one of the three companies with which I have the strongest ethical qualms in the entire world.

Well,country. I imagine there's something outside my experience in Africa or Asia that could top them.

Anyway, I hate my job and the company for which I do it. In other words, if I was smart I wouldn't go out of my way to protect them.

A week ago the company brought in some outside contractors. One of the employees of said outside contractors . . . identifies outside the gender binary. Never mind in what way(s). Not important. A few of the ignorant redneck inbreeders with whom I work started very vocally expressing their amusement at her expense, but not, yet, while she was in the vicinity.

I figured I had two realistic options.

1) Go to management and point out that she could easily charge the company with harassment if she picked up on this shit,or

2) Start stabbing the stupid fuckers with the pointy end of the crowbar we keep tucked back in the steel.

Despite not being the sort to go to management about interpersonal problems, and despite being more than happy to contemplate the prospect of the company being sued for discrimination/harassment, I went with option #1.

I've quietly corrected a couple of my co-workers in minor matters of etiquette with direct bearing on the situation since then, including last night.

The worst part? She pisses me off! She has no authority to tell me how to do my job, doesn't listen, and freely invites herself to use equipment and materials from our section!