I have bad timing.

I know I like to complain about the weather, but I would like to point to this easy-to-reference comparison chart:



This is exactly what happened last time I went back east. Furthermore, when I got back, it rained for a month straight. This is destined to happen again, and I will prove it when I get back.

Inauguration had better be fucking awesome.

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.