Important things for New Years Eve

On Saturday, I shoveled the snow even though it wasn't my responsibility because I felt bad about the people sliding around and could use the exercise. Of course, in my first foray into manual labor in years, I acquired myself a nice wound:


This doesn't bother me, except that on Sunday, for whatever reason, a friend of mine decided that we should do a tequila shot, another thing I haven't done in years. I don't mind this either. But by some outstanding coincidence, I had a wound on my hand and did a tequila shot at the same time, and so I PUT SALT ON MY WOUND. I really should've squirted some lime on it for good measure.

So first thing I am going to remember for New Years Eve (and beyond) is to not put salt on my wounds. Literally! (and figuratively.)

Secondly, in addition to shot glasses, this is a reminder to everyone to get 2009 new year's glasses:


This is important because it will be another 91 years before there will be two consecutive zeros again.. They will probably still make new years glasses, but it won't be nearly as elegant.

Kris' Match.com update

I am unfit to give advice, but I dispense it freely anyway. To my roommate, I said: you have to treat her visit like dates eight through twelve. You don't have time for that beginning stuff, you covered all of that on the telephone conversations. You have to go straight for the heavy stuff and figure out if this is going to be worth 2000 miles of separation. And Kris thinks about it and agrees.

So she comes and they hang out basically for four days straight without any real pause. I observe them when I see them, and they seem to get along, though it did not appear, to me, like there was a lot of crazy laughing and fun. Of course, I don't see them the whole time together. She leaves yesterday amidst the crazy snowstorm, and when Kris returns from the airport, he says that it was weird, but that he really liked her. However, he pointed out that it seemed like the whole thing felt very heavy the entire time, that maybe it was because she was in a new place, but she wasn't quite as chatty or spontaneous as he thought she should be.

And it occurred to me that the problem is that they were on dates eight through twelve. You're already settling in a little bit, becoming more comfortable, but the explosive curiosity is over. It's dates one through five that are fun and exciting! So I think my advice was faulty. I said, what you need to do is go to Duluth Minnesota and have a first date. Good thing I figured this out in case I am ever in such a situation.

The Two.

My roommate is meeting a girl he met on Match.com tomorrow. She "winked" at him a month ago today, and she is flying in to Seattle from Duluth, Minnesota tomorrow. It's all quite fascinating, and my roommate and I have discussed and dissected the whole thing to an irreducible state. None of this really matters because she is coming tomorrow, so the only thing left is for the hypotheses to be proven true or false. The upshot, basically, is that if she is not "the one", then he (and she) will probably be disappointed. There have been a lot of strange coincidences concerning this girl (made up, or fate, who can tell?), and although I am vehemently anti-spiritual, I am very pro-perfect girls. Maybe she is perfect. Maybe she is the one. Someone has to be, after all.

However, I was telling my roommate that if she's merely "the two", he really should keep her even if he's initially disappointed. I mean, being able to find the two is pretty amazing. The chances are pretty slim. In the grand scheme of things, the two is pretty damn good. But we all want the one.

I was thinking I, or someone, should write a cautionary allegorical tale, about a guy who is searching for "the one", and he searches really hard, and he finds the three, then he finds the two, and he finds the one, he really does, but he is so into this all-consuming search, that he rejects the one and finds the zero and is left with nothing.

trick me once, shame on you, trick me twice, shame on me, trick me thrice, go to jail.

I am intrigued by three strikes laws because we have decided to model our legislative system after the game of baseball. It seems rather arbitrary to me, but I suppose whoever invented baseball had good reason for choosing three.

But what about four balls? I think we should all get something if we do four good deeds. We should be given a free bass.

Pizzeria Practice.

We are having a pizza party on Saturday because it is my roommate Aaron's birthday. We are expecting between 40 and 80 people. I am in charge of the pizzas, or at least the dough, and am pretty excited about the first chance to make a large amount of dough at a time. It is good practice for when I one day will have my own pizzeria and need to make dough in massive quantities.

I am going to document the dough making. Usually I make enough dough for about five pizzas. This time I am making enough for thirty. So I got a large bucket with lid. Also, I still have the big sack of bread flour I got from costco. First I made a sponge:



I am unsure how important this really is because the dough ends up sitting around for a week to develop anyway, but I have my routine so I just made my sponge. I have no idea how much of anything I used. I eyeball everything when I make small amounts, but it is hard to eyeball things inside an unfamiliar large bucket. The sponge got nice and yeasty smelling and bubbly the next day. Then I added more flour, water, salt, and yeast:



As you can see, I like to use a ladle to scoop flour out of the sack.

Usually when I make dough, I make the sponge a day before, then in a new bowl I add flour and water together and let it sit (autolyze) for awhile, then add yeast and salt and put it in the mixer to knead for five minutes, and then I throw the sponge in, knead for a couple minutes, and then add water/flour until the consistency seems right to me (pretty wet). Then I separate the dough into the size I want and throw them in the fridge in individual tupperware.

This time, since I don't have a big commercial Hobart mixer, I decided that I don't really need to knead, and I'll just let the yeast do it for me. Also, I decided to just throw everything into the bucket and hope for the best since I only had one bucket and can't do things separately. So into the bucket I added yeast, salt, flour, and water, and mixed it up with my hand. Here it is:



I put the lid on and put it outside to chill and rise and do its thing. Hopefully nobody steals it. I'll check on it in the coming days and have updates...

I don't know how my pizza dough always comes out pretty good, but it does, even though I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm basically banking on the same thing this time. I used to measure everything out with great precision, but my pizzas sucked. So I don't think measuring is very important anymore. I think you just have to wish hard enough for it to be good.

If this works out, I think I'm going to start having dough in a bucket going on all the time. Then I can go pinch off a piece anytime I want pizza. Or I can make bread with it.

Grape Nuts and Carl Jung

I have started to eat Grape Nuts. Every few years, I decide to give Grape Nuts another shot because I keep thinking I'll like them, but then I really don't because they don't taste that good. They still don't taste that good. Additionally, I am reminded that they are difficult to eat because unlike most cereal, they don't float to the top for easy access, and I am just pushing them around on the floor of the bowl with a spoon.

Despite all this, I am going to persevere and eat Grape Nuts. This is because it is part of my new elaborate plan to attract women. Let me explain: in olden days, Grape Nuts were a real man's cereal. A father's cereal. And there is some girl out there who will see me eating Grape Nuts (in public), and be flooded with memories of her happy youth and gallant father. And according to Carl Jung, who gave us the psychological phenomena of both the Electra Complex and Transference, she will fall hopelessly in love with me. Clearly, my plan is foolproof.

Then again, maybe the more palatable and tasty plan is to connect via shared food interests, and Miley Cyrus doesn't like breakfast cereal at all. She prefers S'mores flavor Pop Tarts. Pop Tarts!

Five Different Kinds of Brothers

1. Male siblings.
2. Black guys.
3. Anyone to whom Hulk Hogan is speaking.
4. Frat boys.
5. A devoted Christian man.

We hate it when our friends become successful.

My crazy friend Jason Rohrer, about whom I have written and told many stories (testicle dipping, roulette cheating, UFO watching, natural meadow cultivating, etc), is in the December issue of Esquire magazine, one of their 28 geniuses of 2008. The article is here: http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2008/future-of-video-game-design-1208.
You should probably first play Jason's five-minute art/video game Passage.

I'm not surprised because Jason's smart and naturally curious; but more than that, he is a man who executes, and follows through on his ideas. I remember once thinking if I just followed him around, I'd have great stories for life.

Brian Hurley, I think you're next.

Writing and stuff.

Wow. I was just reading Arts, Briefly (I only have time for brief things these days), and noticed that my first creative writing teacher at Cornell had won a Writing Prize. I should write him and congratulate him. I wonder if he remembers me. If not, I recall that he took a picture of the class in order to have a memento, as he said he'd done with all the classes he taught, so I can tell him I'm that short Asian kid in his Fall 1998 Creative Writing class. I was the only one.

Note: Holy crap, that class was ten years ago.

Pizzas

If you notice up there, the subheader of this blog says "reading, writing, and pizza-making." Admittedly, this is a bit of an exaggeration. I don't write nearly enough, and read even less. But I do make pizza. The best pizza in Seattle, as I like to say. I really need to open a pizzeria...

I made four pizzas last night. There were only three of us: me, Erin, and my roommate Kris. But we were able to finish it all mostly because my roommate is the most voracious person I know. (He routinely eats two Chipotle burritos for lunch!)

First up was a margherita:



Next a potato pizza:



The main event was the Obama (Victory) Pie (Arugula, gruyere, caramelized onions, prosciutto, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, parmesan):





And finally, another basic margherita, except with ricotta and tomatoes this time.



Yep. I'm hungry again...

Cookie #1.

I saw the The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companionon sale last week and picked it up because The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companionis one of my favorite cookbooks.

This weekend, I got started on my plan to make every cookie in the book. My roommate was going to Costco, so I tagged along and bought a really large sack of flour. I think you cross some sort of threshold when you buy a "sack" of flour rather than a bag or a box or a cup or a teaspoon, because I felt like a real baker, not a wussie fake one.

We got home and I could barely lift the 50 pound thing, so I let my roommate carry it into the kitchen for me. I rolled up my sleeve and made: Magic-in-the-Middle Cookies, or chocolate cookies with peanut butter in the middle. They look like this:




And everyone likes them. Tada.


Which reminds me, I really need a nice cookie jar. Also a cake stand. I feel like my sad cake-baking rate is undoubtedly due to my lack of a cake stand.

A kind of great possibility.

I thought of a kind of great jersey recently. Here's a mockup I spent the last hour doing instead of working:



Both McCain and Obama supporters can enjoy it alike: McCain fans are all, Yeah! He is a Maverick! and Obama supporters can snicker. Everybody wins!

taking city hall

Apparently, "town hall" meetings are really popular everywhere in the country except the places I've lived. I mean, this is how to really speak with the people; the town hall style is the preferred format of the masses. I don't think I've ever even been to a town hall. It is no wonder I am so out of touch with America.

Also, I have an ant problem in my home. What to do?

law enforcement

You may not register to vote if you are:

* Presently denied your civil rights due to a felony conviction.
* Judicially declared mentally incompetent and ineligible to vote.

---

It sure seems like a large number of people slip right past that second rule...

They're creepy and they're crawly

I went to see the last Mariners game of the season today, and they played all the usual baseball tunes: the CHARGE ditty, take me out to the ball game, the star spangled banner, call to post, the Addams Family theme...

And it made me wonder, how'd the Addams family theme become such a baseball staple? Who thought, let's change the snaps into claps and it'd be perfect?

I don't like evangelicals.

I think we should start calling Islamic terrorists Islamic evangelicals. Osama Bin Laden is their chief (tape-delayed) televangelist and suicide bombers are aerovangelists.

I'm losing my edge.

I dislike people who decry gentrification. People who say this would never live in a place that wasn't at least partially gentrified. It is exactly the same as people who don't like it when their favorite indie band has gotten too famous. A friend was complaining about condos recently, and I have no sympathy. People complain about the lack of neighborhood, and I have no sympathy for that either, because these people walk around with their cellphones glued to their face. But even disregarding that, I don't see anything wrong with it. When I lived in Central Square (which was great because it was like this gentrification process that got stuck and you have homeless people hanging out harmlessly outside the Gap) there were "locals" who sat around on their stoop all day chatting with each other, whom I walked past when I left for class, and were still there five hours later when I got back, and if this was what the kids like to pretend is now missing in their gentrified neighborhoods, then they are crazy because all I could think was why can't they do something productive with their time.


But I was there!

Phrases I enjoy.

I really hope I get to say "Unhand me!" at some point in my life. I like to envision scenarios in which I may get to say this, say, when I accidentally stumble into a whore house and am mistaken for a regular patron.

The PAT.

When Democrats talk about how Sarah Palin is unqualified to be vice-president (and therefore president) because she's only been mayor of a small town and governor of Alaska for a couple years, Republicans correctly point out that Barack Obama has been a senator for only a short period of time.

What the Democrats really want to say is that Palin isn't educated, or learned, enough to be president. (Though I don't doubt she's a pretty smart lady.)

I think what we need is the PAT, the Presidential Aptitude Test, administered by the Educational Testing Service, with an array of multiple choice questions, and a high score of 1600. (Or should it go to 2400? I'm old, I don't know how standardized testing scoring works anymore.)

Just as Harvard wouldn't accept* a student who scores 500 on the SAT, nor should the American people accept a president who scores a 500 on the PAT.

Here is a sample page of such a test:


These are really easy questions. These should be the giveaways at the very beginning of the test, with questions becoming increasingly difficult. Frankly, most Americans who give a shit should be able to answer at least these eight questions. Still, if you had to bet against one of the four presidential/vice-presidential candidates...

* Harvard sometimes makes nepotistic exceptions for, say, the son of the institution's former president. The American people, on the other hand, are far more uncompromising.

Canada, with pictures

I went to Canada with my parents:


We saw mountains, lakes, and glaciers:




Then I came home and the economy was dead.

glaciers and shit

I am going to Canadia for a week. Be back with pictures.

On the move..

I am moving again for the seventh time in five years, but only six blocks away. This time I am running away from a crazy roommate. It is possible that I am flighty.

My father is a poet

date Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 11:46 AM
subject Happy Birthday

Hi! Andy,

This morning, I whispered my greeting in my head, hoping that the electronic field, the light, the wind and any other super-natural power will deliver instantly to you my best wishes and sincere thoughtfulness.

Happy Birthday to You. All the Best.

Love,
Dad

I have become very lax in my blogging. Alas.

Yesterday I was thinking that working 9-5 should really mean leaving the house at 9 and getting back at 5. I should attempt to convince my employers of this new definition.

In the past few months, I spent a lot of money trying to buy happiness. I purposely did this to test the old adage. Turns out you really can't buy happiness. Or at least I didn't. Photography equipment, video cameras, scooters, clothing, and expensive food didn't work. But maybe I was just buying the wrong things and should have been spending my money on prostitutes.

But I guess almost all my happiness and depressions have nothing to do with money. The only purchased thing in my life that really made me happy was my car. And crashing it was the only really truly depressing thing that was caused by a material good. (I am still in mourning, and in year eight of my self-imposed vow to not have a car for ten years.) But then I guess the car had nothing to do with it. The car just represented the only time in my life I got what I wanted.

Big, Bigger, Biggest

At the corner coffeeshop, coffee drinks come in three sizes: Short, Tall, and Grande, in increasing size.

Short is smaller than Tall. This makes perfect sense. But why is Tall smaller than Grande? Tall means big. Grande means big. Is an Italian big bigger than an English one? I think they should take the idea further, and just use the word for "large" in all different languages, and distinguish between them based on the average size of that country's people. So Okii (Japanese) would be smaller than Big (British accent) would be smaller than Big (American southern accent).

Bad business strategies

"Hey, we've got extra-large!"

I have a friend.

I had a visitor this weekend, the first one not named Cathy Lin:



I'm not the best tour guide, but we scooted around Seattle and that is pretty much fun no matter what.

true multitasking.

When I go for a run, I usually listen to whatever is randomly populated in my ipod shuffle by itunes. I never skip any songs because I have something like 400 GB of music and have probably only listened to half of them, and I am trying to listen to more of it.

Quite accidentally, yesterday as I ran, a track came up that began: "Chapter 9: The Arrow of Time." I thought this was some sci-fi nerdy hiphop track intro, and as the monotone voice spoke, I kept expecting some bass and beats to kick in. In fact, I thought it was the Deltron 3030 album, which by the way is great, and has just such intros and lyrics, including lines like: "Perusing my 21st century classic comics, the fun is astronomic / I figured since I'm here I'll renew my galactic passport / So I'm not persecuted by no galactic assholes." Honestly, the album is really good.

But anyway, the voice kept going and 30 minutes later, I realized it was an electronic book and when I got home, I plugged my ipod in to see that it was Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. (Sadly, it is not read by Dr. Hawking himself.)

And it occurred to me that audio books are the perfect running material, theoretical physics or not. I really felt like I was multitasking. Now I have eliminated the whole, "I have too much to do, no time to run" excuse for not running. Also, in my recent attempt to rein in my myriad of projects, of which there were too many, I crossed off "reading" as something I had time to do. But now I get to put it back, and I should be able to finish A Brief History of Time in no time at all.

beep beep

I got a:



I am busy scooting!

Ohhhh, we're halfway there.

The half-marathon is a good running distance saddled with a really terrible name. I think it is unpopular solely because of its name. No one wants to do a half anything: it sounds like it's for people with half the energy, half the will power, half the talent; it's a race for half the person. They don't call the 5k a half-10k. They don't call an EP a half-album, a B cup a half-D, the WNBA the half-NBA.

So with that in mind, I will fix the ill-named half-marathon. The marathon is supposedly (but not really) the distance the Greek messenger Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to tell the Senate that they'd defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. Consulting a map, it looks like the town of Nea Erythrea is about halfway between Athens and Marathon. And so I declare the half-marathon dead, the 21,097.5-meter race to be henceforth referred to only by its new name, the Nea Erythrea. Catchy!

Speaking of which, I think I'm going to run the Portland Marathon this year. Nea Erythreas are for wimps.

Bill Clinton made me poor!

I had a pretty indistinct upper-middle class upbringing: there was always food on the table, I got most of what I wanted; I never thought about finances, that we had too much money or too little. At Stuyvesant High School, they groom impressionable young kids to become Wall Street lackies, doctors, engineers, and grown-up rich kids. It seemed pretty clear that if you followed a six-point algorithmic agenda, you would enjoy monetary success in the future, and, by being kept busy with an inundation of schoolwork, there was no time to question any of it. So when I went to college during America's economic heyday, I was presented with a few choices. In my senior year, I could take three more classes and finish a computer science major, take four more classes and finish an economics major, or take three classes and finish an English major. I figured I could do either of the first two and make good money when I was done or I could do the latter and still do all right. How that Bill Clinton economy tricked me! Little did I know the economic boom would die and now I sort of muddle along middlingly in the current economic clime. Alas! It occurs to me that had I grown up in a lower/lower-middle class upbringing, I might have kept a more careful eye on the monetary bottom line of my college decisions because of an omnipresent awareness of financial prudence and responsibility. Maybe there is a swap of the lower-middle class and upper-middle class during a time of economic shrinkage directly following a time of economic prosperity.

Well! I blame all the commencement speakers who say "Do what your heart tells you." Bastards! Commencement speakers are that point one percent that defied odds to achieve success. That's why they're commencement speakers. Clearly they are not statisticians or jilted romantics: they don't know that the heart mostly leads you astray.

232 years old tomorrow.

I was planning on updating this blog a lot more, but then the weather got really nice so I got lazy and hung outside instead. But I will try to persevere from now, and take an hour every day while at work to write an entry here. Of course, I've said this before so I am probably lying.

Here, a picture of Chloe Lin:



Chloe isn't really my dog. and her name isn't really Chloe Lin. But I was dogsitting last month and I am a bad dogsitter so I dropped Chloe and took her to the vet to make sure she was fine (she was.) When I got there, I filled out the form as though I were the owner. When I got the bill, it said: Chloe Lin. So now I call her Chloe Lin. (But I say it like Chloe Lynn, as though she were Southern.) Also, I filled out "Andy Lin" for my name, and yet on the bill they'd changed it to Andrew Lin. ?

My name is...

Usually, but not always, I can tell how much someone likes me based on what they call me. If they call me "Andy," then either I have just met them, or they are fond of me and are good friends. If they call me "Andy Lin," then they harbor secret ill-will towards me or are merely an acquaintance or are angry at me. If they call me "Lin" then they are racist. If they call me "Guh," then they are my sister and like me the most.

Global warming and the law of averages

It's been, by all accounts, a spring in Seattle that has been colder and wetter than usual. Last year, I am told, it was unusually warm. The year before that, in Boston, it was an exceptionally hot summer having just followed an unseasonably cold winter.

It is inevitable that I will one day experience weather that is perfectly average. I will greet my neighbor and say, "My, this is exactly the climate I was expecting." And she'll say, "Yes, Andy. Do you have something else to complain about?" "Of course."

Spiritual, but not religious

Turns out someone already wrote a whole book about this, though he doesn't seem quite that critical about it (from the excerpt, anyway). The book is called Spiritual, But Not Religious and it is published by Oxford University Press (Hey Brian, get me a free copy!) It has somewhat middling reviews.

An excerpt is here: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/109/story_10958_1.html

It basically makes the distinction between the public worship of religion and private worship of spirituality. He is able to give demographics (though he does not cite his sources in the excerpt):

"A large number of Americans identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious." It is likely that perhaps one in every five persons (roughly half of all the unchurched) could describe themselves in this way."

"We also know a few things about today's unchurched seekers as a group. They are more likely than other Americans to have a college education, to belong to a white-collar profession, to be liberal in their political views, to have parents who attended church less frequently, and to be more independent in the sense of having weaker social relationships." (Fruity liberals!)

But though Fuller doesn't seem as critical as I, he notices the same contradictions:

The "spiritual, but not religious" group was less likely to evaluate religiousness positively, less likely to engage in traditional forms of worship such as church attendance and prayer, less likely to engage in group experiences related to spiritual growth, more likely to be agnostic, more likely to characterize religiousness and spirituality as different and nonoverlapping concepts, more likely to hold nontraditional beliefs, and more likely to have had mystical experiences.

and:

The confusion stems from the fact that the words "spiritual" and "religious" are really synonyms. Both connote belief in a Higher Power of some kind. Both also imply a desire to connect, or enter into a more intense relationship, with this Higher Power. And, finally, both connote interest in rituals, practices, and daily moral behaviors that foster such a connection or relationship.

My crusade against the spiritual.

I have a lot of distaste for idiotic fruity liberals, by which I usually mean hippies and their ilk. Not all of them, of course, but a vast majority, or at least the ones I seem to come across. People with whom I am ashamed to identify with as a liberal, because they are idiots and say stupid things like I am voting for Obama because in my gut I just feel he is the right person. It almost makes me want to be a conservative, but two weeks ago I spoke to a random girl who wore a utilikilt but was defiantly red, and she was even more aggravating. And I'm sure there are much worse than she.

Anyway, my crusade against the spiritual basically comes down to the fact that being spiritual is just an easy way for people to pretend they aren't religious even though they really are. Now, I hate religion with a passion. I see no difference between Scientology and Catholicism. (Scientology only seems more silly because it is newer. Older religions have the benefit of being spoon fed at an early age. Too bad for Suri Cruise.) There are differences, of course, between the spiritual and religious. They're spelled differently, for one. Religion is organized (outside of Yoga parlors), for two. But really, they're both illogical beliefs, rooted in absolutely no proof, and, if anything, proof to the contrary.

Science can't explain everything, but it attempts to with a rigorous and evidence-based method. Scientific knowledge is continuously accruing, and there is simply no excuse to be religious these days anymore. There probably hasn't been for at least the past century. Perhaps there was a time when religion seemed worthwhile as it provided a means to an end. But as the great Mencken said: "It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities." Mencken also said: "The only way to reconcile science and religion is to set up something which is not science and something that is not religion." And Einstein wrote: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

Idiotic fruity liberals will, of course, as per their presented image, decry such things as creationism. They will be pro-science and get their news from NPR. And yet they will accept astrological bullshit (just for fun, they swear), become "one" with nature, and tell people they're "not religious, but they're spiritual," as though believing in spirits was somehow an enlightened and advantageous state of being, more than the average atheist and certainly more than rudimentary religious folk. They spew faux-intellectual thoughts (which, no doubt, they heard on NPR that same morning or read in some tract or pamphlet) without having considered what they're saying themselves. They read about issues without reading into them. They are bandwagon liberals who want to appear smart but don't really know what they're talking about.

I was talking to my roommate a few days ago about my new crusade. Now I'm not talking about my annoying, crazy, vegan roommate, who of course is exactly one of these idiotic fruity bandwagon liberals, but the one that I like who is generally thoughtful and reasonable. Anyway, she said that she wouldn't loudly announce it, but that she'd consider herself spiritual. So I asked her what she meant by this. Do you believe in God? Do you believe in spirits of trees and animals? And she replied that she simply thought there was a higher being than humans. Like god? No. You know, life is so complex, it's not just randomness. And I said do you know what that is? that is intelligent design. And she denied it. But that is precisely what it is. Spirituality is the belief of something superhuman and supernatural. It is supersilly. I don't know why the spiritual get a free pass. It is as intellectually squalid as religion.

What is strange about all this is that I think the hardest things for people to believe are things they cannot see (hear/feel/smell/etc.) with their own eyes (senses.) People can read and grasp Einstein's theories of relativity, and yet they won't really believe that a moving clock ticks slower than a stationary one. It is natural to be skeptical of things that you can't see and seem illogical, and yet most of this world is willing to blindly follow babbling psychopaths go on about gods and higher authorities and heavens and hells.

To all the spiritual people, I say, stop being so disorganized; arrange neatly and be horrified to discover yourselves no different than the religious.

Spammers know me so well.

I got spam the other day. It wasn't advertising anything but merely making a statement:



In other gossip, Ariel is cheating on Eric:

What more in the name of love?

"We are a proud people."

The Mayans, Japanese, Iraqi, Iranian, Batswana, Latvian, Georgian, Uruguayan, Antarctican, Danish, Chilean, Vulcan, Bolivian, Australian, French, American, and certainly the Monagasque ("We are small but proud!") are all proud people. Is there a nation of the non-proud? Even countries that are officially ashamed are secretly proud. (The hippies and idiot liberals (not all liberals) of the United States are outspokenly ashamed of our country, but damn proud of themselves for being so loudly ashamed. They like to talk about moving to Canada but they will never actually do it.)

(In something of a contradiction, most religions view pride as a sin. But this is generally ignored. Gluttony, in the US at least, is also widely ignored.)

So perhaps all people are a proud people, but not everyone can be equally proud. Usually it is the downtrodden, war-beaten, raped, and indigenous that speak up most about being proud (we're willing to give them that much after we take away their land), but that doesn't make them any more proud than anyone else; it just happens to be all they have left.

What I would like to do is develop a measure of proudness (dealing specifically with National Pride, as opposed to proudness of ethnic, cultural, or familial groups, or of the personal variety.) Voluntary military participation is probably a good starting point; people who are willing to die for their country are probably prouder than people not willing to die for their country:

National Pride (Pn) = Voluntary Military Participation (M) / Population (K)

This is imperfect, however, because a country with a more technologically advanced military doesn't need as many people to keep their country from being taken over by another. So we should control for military might, by multiplying by the amount of military spending per capita:

Pn = (M/K) x (Total Military Spending (S)/K) = MS/K^2

This result is skewed towards countries that are less populous, lack natural borders, and fight a lot. In other words, it is too pro-Israel. To adjust for this, we should adjust based on amount of war activity:

Pn = (MS/K^2) x Wadj = MSWadj/K^2 , where Wadj is the War adjustment factor .

Next, in addition to fighting, there is also a cultural element to National Pride. I think we can reasonably measure this by the amount of flags sold per capita:

Pn= MSWadj/K^2 + Flags Sold (F)/K = MSWadj/K^2+F/K

You might argue that I should adjust for aesthetic quality of the flags, but frankly, if my country had an ugly flag, I'd have less pride as well.

So there you have it. The unit of measure for pride should be Lions. So. By this measure, we can see that the proudest people are the Irish. They have 17,844 Lions of Pride. Plus one Bono.

One year.

Date	Flt	Depart	Arrive	Stops
09 May 07	83	New York, JFK 7:20pm	Seattle, WA 10:51pm	0

I went to Vegas and all you get is this lousy blog post.

I went to Fabulous Las Vegas for the first time and liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Actually I expected to like it: It's a big party, what's not to like? I was armed with a paycheck, and spent all of it.

The Vegas strip is like the most extravagant strip mall there is. They have other towns in miniature there. It feels like a city as an amusement park. Vegas is full of fake boobs. I've never seen so many fake boobs before. (I've never been to LA.) But they weren't all fake, and I tried to chat up the cute hostess without fake boobs at Stripburger and she let me take a (sadly blurry) picture of her.

I went back to Stripburger another day to try to find her but failed.

In Rome, I was amused by a headless angel:

and though I haven't been back to New York in awhile, I did get to New York, New York:


I dislike gambling in theory because it is designed so that you will always lose in the end (how is that legal?!). But in practice I enjoy it. And how brilliant casinos are to change all your money into these colored chips. I'd have a hundred dollars on the craps table at any given time and think nothing of it at all. I'd toss five dollar tips to the dealers, ten dollar throw-away bets here and there, and it felt like nothing until I took stock at the end and realized I was really quite a bit in the hole. After realizing how much I was wasting, I decided to just go ahead and not worry about it. Like spending money on food, or Cirque Du Soleil shows or whatever else. I didn't feel rich, but money seemed really trivial. Those people there are geniuses. At the buffets, I parked myself and ate massive amounts of food. I figured that this was my one chance to beat the house: the odds weren't quite in my small-stomached favor, but if I persevered, I thought I might have control of the outcome and win. I believe I did.

Funnily enough, my favorite hotel/casino was Hooters. It is somehow the most family-friendly place there. I don't know why but it is. Families would roam around. Kids ate at the restaurant. (great wings!) There's something nice and warm about it. And when the scantily clad dealers took all your money, they were somehow warm and apologetic about it. Not cold and clinical like everywhere else. Ah Hooters! I give a hoot...

When I was finished with Vegas with time left before my flight, I walked to the airport to prove that it could be done. It can. I was starting to think there was an airport admission fee because airports all seem blocked by a big maze of highway and appear only accessible by vehicle. But if you follow a very narrow sidewalk, cross some large streets that have no intersections, disregard the fact that there is no one else walking, and have an hour or so to spare, the airport is indeed pedestrian-accessible if not quite pedestrian-friendly. This test should be done at every airport. Maybe I'll give JFK a shot next time.

This weekend I ...

Hiked up a mountain with Kate and Andres:
Made Gnocchi with Ragu Bolognese:


I forgot to take a picture of the finished dish, but please note that I am the only person you know that owns a gnocchi board. That is because I am a True Italian. (As is clearly shown in the photo at top. Also, I am getting fat.)

Platonic solids

Why isn't the food pyramid called the food triangle? Is there a hidden backside of cellulite, transfats, and monosodium glutamate?

Tricks of the mind.

Sometimes you hear about people for whom it was love at first sight, or that they knew right away he/she was "the one." I wonder if anyone has ever said this about someone ugly. This love at first sight thing, I think for me, really just means I saw a pretty girl. It's all a trick. But if I one day think this about an ugly person, then I would be sure it were really true.

My inner hunger.

I have an inner hunger. It speaks to me in a hushed but stern tone: French Fries.

I am mute.

Here is my phone bill from last month:


I averaged six minutes of phone usage a day!

Four Star Hotness!

Ordering (substandard) food here in Seattle entails a new system that I was hitherto unfamiliar with: Waittress: "How spicy you want? One to five stars." Sometimes the scale only goes up to four stars, but it always seems to be in stars, even though stars have absolutely nothing to do with spiciness (why not just one to five?), and if it does, it would have more to do with the quality of the spiciness than the quantity. Anyway. I am used to the east coast method of answering "How spicy?" with "A little."

The whole system is messed up because there is no frame of reference. Even when you get accustomed to the scale of one restaurant, it's all lost at another place. One place's five stars is another's three. And maybe they adjust for the customer. If a white person walks into a Mexican place and asks for five stars, the chef might snicker and make it pretty spicy, but not too spicy. But if a Mexican walks into a Mexican place and asks for five stars, he might get the whole enchilada. (Sorry.) And if a woman walks in, the rating might automatically be halved.

Anyway. If I really wanted to be an asshole, I should answer in Scoville Heat Units. I think I prefer about a thousand. In the mean time, I'm sticking with non-spicy foods.

Awkward thing no. 242112392 I dream of saying

Random salesgirl at store: Can I help you?
Andy: I'm lonely.

I'm just a boy with a new haircut and that's a pretty nice haircut

When I get a haircut, I always say, "Do whatever you want," and I always get a similar haircut.

And what is it with hipster girls and mullets?

Appreciation Inflation

Every morning, when I get off the bus, I say thank you to the bus driver. I do this because everyone else does it and I don't want to seem rude, but I am not going to do it anymore; not because I want to be rude, but because it is inaccurate and a degradation of language.
We've become overly polite and thank people for doing things they're supposed to do. Like thanking the postman when he brings you mail. It's his job to bring you mail and he gets paid to do it! And these are good jobs. It's not like they're doing us a favor, or performing a job that is difficult/underpaid/or doing something no one else wants to do. From now on, I might say Good Morning or Good Afternoon, but I'm not thanking them anymore. I'm not apologizing to the homeless anymore, either. When they ask me if I can spare any change, I am going to say no.

Do Not Pass Go.

New five dollar bills with more color were introduced recently:



Apparently, the US Dollar has become so worthless that the Treasury decided to just go ahead and make it interchangeable with Monopoly money.

Put your clothes back on young lady!

A friend once said to me, with some disgust, that many of the girls I pointed out as being attractive while we were walking around were slutty looking. I denied this at first (vehemently), but then realized it is absolutely true. Slutty girls ARE attractive. That's the whole point. If slutty girls weren't trying to attract men (if not specifically me) with their provocative clothes and pouty looks, then they wouldn't dress that way at all. Who am I to deny them success after all the trouble they went to?

My most awesome dream.

In the hour between after being briefly woken up by my roommates being loud getting up and when I actually got up, I had the most narratively cohesive dream I have ever had. It is like a mish-mash of various folk and fairy tales and flowers for algernon, and someone should tell me if it is lifted entirely out of something. But anyway:

By some scientific process, which involved cells or sperm or something, I invented a half animal that could speak. This part of the dream I forget a little, but I am sure it is scientifically sound. I paraded my new pet to my friends and we drove around, and it was pretty cool. She started growing and looking more and more like a girl, though I knew she was still part animal, and we hung out a lot because she had no one else. She had shoulder length dark hair, cut at a severe angle rising towards the back, and was easy to take around because she was unfamiliar with everything. I didn't quite trust her though, and by the time she was my height, she was growing at such a fantastically fast rate, I began to get scared that she'd become much larger and then eat me.

Because of my fear, and my innate greed, I resolved to take her to the zoo and sell her for a lot of money. So I told her we'd go for a walk, and she trusted me of course, and somehow this was a really really long walk to the zoo. She continued to age, but without getting taller or bigger, and halfway to the zoo her hair had gone gray and she had become tired from the walking, and I had become guilt-ridden about my awful plan to sell her to the zoo, so I brought her back home.

I realized I loved her, and we had a brief moment as she was lying in bed, and then she died of old age.

And then I woke up and I was sad because it seems inevitable that I am going to lose anything good that might ever happen to me.

Giving Bush the finger

I should really take my economic stimulus tax rebate and donate it to the Democratic presidential nominee.

Speaking of Lint

Am I the only person who finds it immensely satisfying to clean the lint filter in the dryer?

bulletin to self

HOLY SHIT I'M 28 YEARS OLD WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING WITH MYSELF

Some speech some guy made a hundred and fifty years ago

I decided to rewrite the Gettysburg Address to see if it was any good without the fancy language:

87 years ago, a bunch of guys made a new country on this land. They thought that independence was a good idea and that people were all basically the same.

Now there’s a bunch of people fighting because not everyone agrees with that. Some of them died here so let’s just bury them here.

We can’t make this land sacred, though, because the fighters already did it. Even if everyone forgets what we say here, they’ll see all the tombs and remember the big fight. So let’s remember why they fought: a) independence is a good idea worth revisiting, and b) our government that we all contribute to should continue to exist.

A misreading of personal ad cliches.

Why are single girls single? They do not know. They think they are "awesome." I am going to examine this issue by attempting to find a common thread among personal ads. After all, girls who post personal ads are single, and if we can find traits that unite them, then we will have found our answer. My research yields:

Hypothesis no. 1: Girls who are single are not very bright and/or are boring.
Evidence: Girls who are single often claim, in personal ads, to like "the simple things in life." The simple things in life are boring and lack entirely in sophistication. There is little respect for simplicity
Solution: Doing nothing is the simplest thing in life. Doing everything would be the opposite. At the very least, express interest in the complex, show some passion for the complicated and extraordinary.

Hypothesis no. 2: Girls who are single are criminals.
Evidence: Single girls are constantly looking for a partner in crime.
Solution: Give up the life of crime and find interesting, legal things to do. Legal doesn't have to mean boring or simple. In fact, there are many wonderful legal things to do: like dancing or sports or spelunking.

Hypothesis no. 3: Girls who are single are not fun.
Evidence: "Not into games" the ad proudly declares.
Solution: Not into board games? Fun games? Olympic games? Any games? Games are fun. Learn to have some fun; guys like fun girls.

Hypothesis no. 4: Girls who are single are unable to write well.
Evidence: Single girls write ads that claim to like the simple things in life, are looking for a partner in crime, and are not into games. (Also they like long walks on the beach.)
Solution: No clue.

Hey Andy Lint. You're a piece of lint.

Hillary will never escape Clinton. Her biggest political mistake was taking her husband's last name. Take that, feminism!

Sadly, Barack Saddam Hussein Osama Bin Laden's going to lose the general election because of his name, too.

The incorrect mix cd to give a girl you like

1. Morrissey - You’re the one for me, fatty.
2. Radiohead – Creep
3. Mr. T Experience – Even Hitler had a girlfriend
4. Moldy Peaches – Downloading porn with dave-o
5. Faith No More – Naked in front of the computer
6. Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – Here comes the snake
7. Sufjan Stevens – Size too small
8. Selecter – Three minute hero
9. Magnetic Fields – I don’t really love you anymore
10. Squeeze – goodbye girl
11. Mariah Carey – Hero
12. Abba – gimme gimme gimme (a man after midnight)

(there's a narrative here, honestly)

The deflationary pressures of idiotic peers

I caucused yesterday for the first time in my life (New York and Boston, the two places I've voted before, both hold primaries and not caucuses) and it was an interesting experience; you and all the people in your district meet in this big room and it's like this big party, with (mostly) similar political viewpoints, and no punch or pie. I got a good look at my neighbors, and realized I not only knew none of them, I never even paid enough attention while walking around to recognize anyone.

Anyway, I signed in and wrote down Obama. I was pulled by opposing peer pressures: as a young person, I was supposed to vote for Obama, as an Asian person, I was supposed to vote for Clinton. I actually don't have a strong preference either way; I think they'd both be good nominees and I was there to observe the process more than anything else. In the end, I guess I thought the country was broken in a fundamentally cultural way that couldn't be fixed by policy but might be fixed by Obama's secular preaching. Or maybe I just felt a bit more misogynist than I did racist.

But then I went to the big party room, and there's a debate that goes on where the supporters of any candidate could speak for a minute and explain why they thought their candidate was better and try to convince people to change their vote. My god, the Clinton supporters were much more intelligent and articulate. The Obama supporters were idiots. One guy actually said, "In my gut, I just know Obama's the right guy," and people applauded???? I almost spoke up and said, "No one gives a shit about your gut." I had a real sense of anti-peer pressure. Were these my peers? If so, I wanted to reject them. They made me feel stupid. I thought, maybe I am looking at it all wrong because how could the two of us have come to the same conclusion? Is your gut really some oracle?

So I got upset and left without changing my vote. I had some Kentucky Fried Chicken and felt sick the rest of the day.

Times New Romanoff

California was so much fun! I went to a strange wedding, and I ate lots of great food, and I hung out with my friends and family. It reminded me again how things have not gone quite as I'd expected or hoped in Seattle, but that's probably my fault for being Seattle-resistant. So I am shifting strategies. I am going to embrace Seattle more, and I will do so by walking right out there in the rain, unumbrellad and unhooded, and take everything it's got.

Then I will catch a cold, and be bedridden for a week.

California here I come.

Yes sir!

Meat pie, please.

As I sit at my desk at work, it occurs to me that the only reason I do not have today off is that there are no black people at my office. If there were even one, I'd be home right now. As the lone representative of colored people here, I really ought to pipe up. Piping up is how holidays happen.

I finally saw Juno and it is great. A friend said she was slightly annoyed that it seemed like a big ad for American Apparel but I didn't notice that. I was slightly distracted by all the Moldy Peaches. But all in all, it is the best movie I've seen in a long time, and even slides in under a hundred minutes like all great movies do. I have a huge crush on Ellen Page. I'm pretty sure she is a lot smarter than me, though, and she wouldn't stand for my idiocy.

If I were on double-dare, I'd take the physical challenge every time

Adventures are one of my favorite things. When Karl asked me to ride the Burke-Gilman trail so he could write about it for his magazine, I obliged and so this report is for Karl to pilfer as he sees fit.

Karl's suggested story angle was that I ride the trail as someone new to Seattle. This is true but I am not only new to Seattle, I am also new to urban trails and, frankly, new to biking in general.

On consecutive weekends, I carried out the riding of the Burke-Gilman. Last Saturday, I rode the first "half" from the U-District to Ballard.

It was not much fun. Admittedly, part of it could've been the cold drizzly weather. But the trail was undergoing renovation here and there, and there were parts that were unintuitive; I even lost the trail a couple times.

I was unfamiliar with the idea of urban trails entirely, but they seem useful. There was no sharing the road with cars:

Only cyclists and pedestrians are allowed, each having their own side of the road to prevent tragic fatalities. As the name of Karl's magazine (Rails to Trails Conservancy) would tell you, the Burke-Gilman was originally a railroad that was abandoned and converted into a trail. This first half between the University District and Ballard runs along the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Across the canal is downtown, and the ride afforded decent views of this:

It is often cloudy in Seattle, as you have heard and can clearly see.

Fortunately for me, the Burke-Gilman is a Drug-Free Zone. Thank god I was off the regular streets that are rampant with recreational drug use. The trail has a very impressive flatness despite the topographical eccentricities of Seattle:

There were not too many people out that Saturday, I imagine because of the weather and the day. It seemed to me that this part of the trail was mostly useful for commuters -- students and professors and staff that needed to get to and from the University of Washington. The trail runs through two trendy and residential neighborhoods, Fremont and Ballard, with a stop at Gasworks Park in between.

As I made my way along, I was reminded of New Years Eve, when Andres and I were stranded in Fremont and ended up spending New Years with random frat boys and sorority girls at assorted bars. Then we walked home, and I didn't realize we were on the Burke-Gilman, but I remembered the exact spot I spoke to the 18 year old girl, and also the other spot where I stopped to pee.

By the time I reached Hale's Brew Pub, I was nearing the end.

And here is Mile 0. I half expected to see the thing measured in smoots. Alas.

I turned around and went back to the U-District. This took twenty minutes, including one part where I got lost near the Fremont bridge. The whole trip was generally disappointing. I could not see how it differed much from riding streets, except it lacks the whole excitement factor that goes with possibly being run over by a car.

A week later...

This past Sunday, on a balmy 50-degree, clear and sunny day, I rode the other "half" and my general feelings about it could not be any more different. Still, there were no cars, and still it was generally flat, but what ended up being an approximately twenty-two mile ride (40 miles round trip!) from urbia to suburbia, I saw more of Seattle than I ever had, and began to understand this strange love of the "outdoors" everyone keeps writing about in, among other places, myspace profiles and personal ads, that I had hitherto shrugged at.

Here is a map of the route I took, including from my house to the trail itself:

Notice I end in Hollywood. Fame and fortune did not await me there.

Again I began at the University. This part of the trail was smoke-free, to prevent lung cancer, but not drug-free, to promote creative thinking.

The skies were clear except for a few of those blob-like water-vapor thingies. This first mile or so, alongside the university, felt mostly like being on a suburban campus. Around me were mostly young kids, pursuing knowledge, or something.

As the school faded behind me, the stream of students peeled off and the trail settled into its natural state. That is, it looks exactly like what I pictured a trail (or maybe even path) to look like, except with concrete:

It was often shaded, clearly marked, and just wide enough that there were no problems when I had to pass walkers and runners, or when every other bicyclist had to pass me.

On the trail, a cross section of Seattle could be observed: here we had the competitive runners and healthy joggers, elderly couples walking, families on an outing, couples bicycling side by side, couples tandem bicycling, runners pushing along a stroller, bicycles with a back toddler seat, the overweight doing their best, the rare hippie (or lumbar disadvantaged) on a recumbent, dorks in full cycling gear, rollerbladers, and me, in my ridiculously heavy but superawesome cruiser.

The scenic view was mostly beautiful and slightly obscured, interspersed with repetitive foliage, and the slightly less beautiful and even more obscured. The trail runs northeast along the periphery of Lake Washington and on a clear day like Sunday, the mountains come out and the bustle of the city recedes the further out you get on the trail.

One of my complaints of the U-District to Ballard part is its grit, its indistinguishability from riding on a city street, save for the cars. On this second half, owing possibly to the pleasant weather, and probably to the fact that I did leave the city, I experienced a noticeably distinct calm coming over me. I wouldn't say I felt one with nature, but I felt its embrace, and it was a calming and welcoming one. I perambulated at my leisurely pace with little mind (or ability) to go faster. A couple passed me and I shouted out "everybody is faster than me," and they started laughing allowing me to take the lead until they repassed me ten feet later.

I cannot remember exactly what I thought about, but it was a juxtaposed excitement and calm. I smelled the air a few times to see if it was really different, or if it was just me. I wasn't more than fifteen miles from home, but it felt much further than that. I do not know suburbs well. But as the trail briefly ran alongside a main street, I noticed its strip-mally nature, and I looked at the road signs that exited to towns like Everett, and I knew this was not Seattle. (And I often complain about how suburby Seattle is!)

The Burke-Gilman ends, according to King County, in Kenmore. I was unaware as the trail simply turns into the Sammamish River Trail, and when I saw the sign for a new trail, I had flashbacks of the week before when I got lost.

I stopped a father and son walking on the trail to ask if I had lost the Burke-Gilman somehow, and the father replied that I had not, that it became the Sammamish River Trail, extends another ten miles, and that everyone calls it the Burke-Gilman, anyway. Then the young son chimed in and said, "Daddy, can we go yet?"

I had neither map, nor odometer. I had a bagel with cream cheese earlier for breakfast, and ReeseSticks in my pocket; my fuel efficiency was off the charts. I kept going and kept my eye on the sun while it did its thing. Eventually I reached a rest area, five miles later, where there was a volume of people resting.

It seemed a good place to end the adventure. I was ridiculously tired. I used the restroom, and ate my ReeseSticks, with its four grams of protein. People told me how awesome my bike was. It was around three; I had left my house at twelve-thirty. I texted Emily and let her know I was all the way in Woodinville, and she said I should at least go to the wineries. Making inquiries, I was but a mile away from them. Additionally, I was told, I wasn't too far from the Red Hook Brewery. Remembering Hale's Brew Pub from a week ago, I realized I had no choice but to finish at Red Hook, for symmetry's sake.

I enjoyed a nice ale (and felt it on my empty stomach):

I left the brewery in good spirits at around three fourty-five. At three fourty-eight, I realized my legs were dead. I always seem to forget that the out-and-back trip requires the foresight that wherever you end is only halfway there. But I was already done!

On the way back, I made careful note of where the Burke-Gilman starts. It starts here:

The darkness came quickly, along with its chill, and I labored back the twenty miles. To my left, a sunset:

And then it got dark, and if there is one real complaint about the trail, it is that it is not lit. Disregarding the fact that I really should have my light fixed, I still think there should be some lights, for safety's sake. There were few people left; everyone had gone home. Other bicyclists passed me. Blinking lights came the other way. Joggers here and there. To let people know I was there, and because I had such a fun day, I rang my bell the entire way home.