Had a humorous moment at The Knitting Factory tonight. Eric's brother Ryan had a gig at 8:15p, and the band before them seemed . . . well . . . inexperienced; as if the freshman class Chess Club decided to form a band, learned a few chords and emoted furtively on a stage. They were about to start a song - the drummer just started clicking his drum sticks together in a manner suggesting Grandma's muffled metronome and was on his third click of four - when some jams-wearing music lover up at the front of the stage popped open a beer. The sound drowned out the last click from the drummer so the song began without the band member standing nearest the beer can, the bass player. It took him a few bewildered bars to catch up. Eric and I howled in the back of the room; the timing couldn't have been better or worse (depending on who you ask).

NEW FRONTIERS IN DIETARY EXPLORATION!!

It's lunchtime here at wordinedgewise, and Heidi's just made me a delicious meal of curried chicken with cranberries and almonds, whole wheat naan bread, and spinach. So I thought, "What better to wash down that tasty treat than Shelf Stable Milk?"

Mmm mmm! Nothing like Ultra High Temperature (UHT) processed milk in a juice box to really bring out the subtle nuances of the curry. Supposedly, no preservatives have been added to make this milk shelf stable, and the nutritional information seems to validate this claim. The best-if-used-by date is Feb. 2008. That's a ways away - that seems impossible knowing what I know of milk going bad and all (and I know a LOT, let me tell ya). But why do I have this in the first place, you ask? Well, the answer may not be as simple as you think, assuming you think that I bought it at the grocery store. Because I didn't. I got it from the United States government by way of their military. But why are you getting food handouts from the military, you ask? It's because of a claim I made to a certain Lieutenant at Ft. Irwin; I said that In-N-Out Burger, besides having delicious fries, has the best milk in the world. Yes, you heard me: The Best Milk. He found this claim to be outrageous and demanded to be taken to In-N-Out in order to try their world-class milk. Plus, since he'd never been there, he took the opportunity to get a Double-double animal style and some fries. And he got a milk. After sampling the milk, he looked non-plussed.

"Eh eh?! What do you think?" I asked eagerly.
"Meh," he said. "Tastes like milk."
"oh nononono, but they keep it on ice so it's as cold as can be. It doesn't taste different to you?"
"Not really," he replied. "You know what milk I like?" (you can see where this is going)
"What," I said, disappointed.
"Have you ever heard of shelf-stable milk?"
"Huh?"

Between mouthfuls of french fries, he went on to explain to me that the military provides a variety of new and interesting preserved items for the dogfaces to field test. He asked me if I wanted a few MREs when we parted ways the next day and I said sure. For good measure, he tossed in a carton of milk.

"Give it a try and tell me what you think," he said. This was a month ago.

So now I'm trying it. The verdict?
It tastes like individually wrapped Kraft Singles in liquid form. Very processed cheesy. Milk should not taste processed cheesy. It should taste like the milk from In-N-Out. Well, let's see what they suggest I do with their cheesy milk besides drink it. On the side of the carton, the Gossner family suggests that one can use this milk for:

Breakfast
Hiking
Camping
School Lunch
Travel
Food Storage

My vote goes to the last option. I hope it gets stored indefinitely.

Accident Prone

Here's a rundown of a few of my clumsier moments from this last week:

1. The Grand Slam that Wasn't

At softball on Tuesday, I had a monster hit that sailed deep into center field with two outs and the bases loaded. The outfielders were still running after it as I rounded second, but this is the moment when I, normally sure-footed, chose to stagger. I nearly ended up on my face in the dirt, but I managed to keep my feet with some large, ungainly, thudding steps. This didn't help my top speed though, and I ended up having to stop at third; if I'd kept my feet, I could have made it home. That moment played over and over again in my head that night - I have no recollection of catching my toe on second base or anything. It's like my internal gyroscope chose that particular instance to reset, because I have no explanation for my loss of balance.

2. The Burning Calf

I broiled some Chili Lime Chicken burgers on Thursday. They're some of my favorite things from Trader Joe's. I eat 'em with Ortega chilis, fresh tomato, avocado, and spinach all on a sweet, whole wheat bun. My mouth waters just thinking about it. Well, I just finished broiling my second two (Heidi and Rachel came home from a shoot and ate the first two, the dirty thieves) and I was breaking down the little box that the burgers come in to toss it into our recycling bin when I nearly fell down. What the . . .?!! But that's when I felt it. My leg was touching the oven, and I didn't even know it until my spinal cord decided to launch me across the kitchen to escape the burning on my calf. I stared, puzzled, at the oven because I had NO idea that it got that hot on the outside. "Maybe my leg's just sensitive," I thought, and I reached over to touch the side of the oven. "OUCH!!" I burnt my fingers, too.

3. A Race for Tempura

Last night, I decided to bake some tempura vegetables for dinner. I preheated the oven - the nasty, cruel oven - placed my tempura inside, then went to the living room to check my email until they finished cooking. At the appointed time, I jumped up and zipped toward the kitchen; my habit is to do a series of juke moves that gets me through my small, Z-shaped hallway in the quickest way possible. However, Heidi and I just bought a new armoire so the contents of the old armoire are strewn about in piles all over the place. Our TV is sitting on its rolly pedestal in the tail of the Z; it's big enough to take up most of the hallway and this threw off my juke. I slid past, and rather than having to bounce off of my left foot, I had more of a straight shot to the kitchen than usual. HOWEVER, I completely forgot about the sharp edged speaker stands that were sitting to the side in the hallway and I barreled right into them. I crashed into a painful heap cursing my stupidity for putting them there. When I staggered to my feet, I discovered that I was bleeding in many places. My right hip had a small gash in it, but my right forearm came out the worst - I have about five inches of missing skin near my wrist and several cuts from landing on the edge of the speaker stand and bouncing a couple of times. I bit it HARD!
Despite all of this, I didn't forget about my tempura. Lifting my bleeding arm above my head, I dashed into the kitchen, grabbed my food from the oven - the despicable oven - tossed it on a trivet, then bolted into the shower. Yowch! Serious stinging action. Moments later, I found my first aid kit in the closet and dressed my injuries. The tape's gonna hurt like the dickens when I remove it today to redress.

4. Lapping Milk

And now for the straw that broke this clumsy, bumbling camel's back. I usually breakfast at my computer since there a few blog sites I like to visit first thing in the morning - sort of the modern equivalent of reading the paper at the breakfast table. This morning's breakfast option was cold cereal - the Safeway version of wheat chex. As I lifted the bowl to drink the leftover milk, my spoon slipped and I made a spastic move to keep it from falling out of the bowl. This produced an effect in the milk not unlike a wave pool; the milk sloshed backwards, gathering itself for the rush forward. I watched it all in slow motion, helpless to keep it inside the bowl; the wave came forward, crested and broke over the lip of the bowl, splashing down onto my crotch with a wet slap. "Aww MAN! What's my deal?!" I yelled.

And then I wrote this (after I mopped up the milk, of course). Seriously, it's as if I'm making up for lost time with the amount of pratfalls I've condensed into one week.

The only thing that could make the tube slide at Hyland Park worse

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Mmm. Coffee. My first cup of the work week, and it's in my hand right now. Well, not right this red hot second. In between sentences, I'm sipping on it. Literalist! See, I've had this massive head cold all week long and the last thing I want during a bout with the lurgie is coffee. Not that I don't crave it on a visceral level while I'm sick - the massive, burning headaches don't help matters - but the last thing I need is for my nose to be running and my body to be exhausted while I'm struggling to suppress the desire to jump up and bolt out the door. So I drink tea, many cups back to back. Chain sipping. I've got one of those boxes of Irish Breakfast from Trader Joe's that has something like 100 bags in it - I put a serious dent in it this week. Why is tea ok during a cold? Everyone says it's supposed to be stronger than coffee; I even leave the tea bag in the water long after it's fully brewed which makes the water somewhat bitter like coffee . . . kinda like a tipsy frat boy's impersonation of Arnold Schwartzenegger. It gets laughs and all if everyone's sufficiently sauced themselves, but no one laughs when Arnie's actually in the room. Yeah, just like that. ':-/ I don't seem to have any limit to the amount of tea I can drink. After a cup and a half of coffee, though, I'm done until the afternoon. Being a reheater, I brew one large pot in the morning and then nuke it whenever the afternoon doldrums ooze in.

This morning, my alarm went off at 6:50 and I still had a sore throat. I thought, "When is this going to end?" Sometimes these things can hang on and on and on for a week or more, so I decided to get a couple more hours worth of the snoozin under my belt to see if I couldn't kick the last few straggling germs outta my system. I awoke at around 9, got some water . . . and felt pretty good actually! Then came the lactic acid test - cold cereal and milk. Verdict? No excess phlegmage due to dairy ingestion. That's a hopeful sign. Ok ok ok, let's try coffee! Quick quick. I picked up the can of beans and had a brief surge of panic - almost empty! How could I have let myself get to this point! Oh yes, the cold. How quickly one forgets. But who cares! Grind, brew a few measly cups instead of the usual 8, and drink. Ah. Mmmhmm. Fabulous.

I want one of these. Yesterday. He changes his dance every few bars. Kinda like having your own private Muppet.




I guarantee you, if I had this guy, I'd play "Mah Na Mah Na" on a weekly basis.

Manamana (aka Phenomenon) (Full Version).mp3

Check this comic out.


If you'd like, you can see it better at

http://xkcd.com/c255.html

Unfortunately, this hasn’t been my life experience. Preconceived ideas of bigness met and exceeded? Yes (The Grand Canyon, the Sequoias, etc.). Memories of forests and hills and slides retaining their epic proportions for my adult eyes? Negatory. Well, maybe the Hyland Lake Park Reserve in Bloomington, MN. That's a huge playground.


This is a photo of one corner of the park. They didn't have those crayola colored cupolas when I used to play there, but take note of the massive steel slide. That's a tamed-down version of the slide that was installed in the original playground. That thing was a beast! Kids would fire out the end of the slide like bullets from a long-barrel rifle, usually with the same amount of accuracy and spin, too; woe to the child who got up too slowly from unconciousness because there would usually be another kid, oftentimes thirty pounds heavier than you, who was hurtling down the tube like a meteor mere seconds after your ride. Not only did the slide feel like it was a mile high, but during the summer, it would get as hot as an exhaust pipe. I'd hop in there with my shorts on and my sweaty little hair-free legs would adhere to the surface like raw bacon. And then you'd feel like you were trapped - trapped! inside a sizzling hot death tube where one false move would send you careening to your doom, but to slow down meant a roasting, oven-like demise.
Most of the time, the park system would keep the entrance to the slide chained shut. They must have wondered how on earth they could have been convinced that a 50 yard, mirror-polished, steel tube slide was a good idea. Kids would crawl along the top and sides of the slide like ants after the colony's hill collapses - searching . . . searching. Hoping there was a chink in the armor that we could squeeze through.

Last time I visited that park (I think I was in college), they had removed it entirely and installed the less steep version you see in the picture. The beast has been declawed and domesticated. Oh to ride the original again!

Yet another video for your perusal. Fun with perspective!

I think this pretty much sums up my day.

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Saturn's got some strange weather.

How strange is this? 

There's a hexagonal storm swirling around on Saturn.  I don't even know how this is possible, and the article I read didn't have any physics to explain it.



Of course, then there's this on the other side:







As the article says, this is "freak, one-eyed monster storm" that's raging on the opposite pole from the hexagonal storm.



Truly, this is a bizarre planet.

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My wife is a good person. She lets me talk her into doing things like this:

I thought it'd be a funny picture to have her straddling the miniature tracks like a giantess. You can tell by the tilt of her head that she's nonplussed. Here's the photo:
See? Funny, right? Imagine being a train and you saw her standing there and . . . aww, never mind.

Once again, I am given scintillating, soul-stirring advice by my choice of underarm deodorant. If that ain't inspirational, I don't know what is. It's especially gratifying to wipe that slogan in my pits. I mean, if that hadn't been carved into the stick, I might've forgotten to "lead the way" today - and that's unacceptable.
In all seriousness, having slogans on my deodorant has the reverse effect than what I expect was intended. Products that are pushy like this make me mulish; I'd just as soon do the opposite than know that I was following the advice of my smell-good. In this case, I wound up becoming opinionless and wishy-washy for the day. Hopefully, I'll never get one that says "Make Money" or "Take a Deep Breath."

Yes. I may be a bit behind the times, but I do so enjoy Twitter.

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This site is fabulous. It's a flickr photostream with shots of someone's little boy playing his Gameboy at various historical sites in Europe and around the Mediterranean.



I remember doing something similar when I was his age (or at least his size . . . como se dice "late bloomer" en espanol?), except it was a novel, not a video game device. As my family traveled around Europe the summer following my 7th grade year, I found myself engrossed in "Team Yankee" by Harold Coyle.

From the Amazon page for the book:
Harold Coyle's Team Yankee: A Novel of World
War III (Presidio Press, 1987) was published a year after Red Storm
Rising's triumphant debut in hardcover, and although it is thematically
similar (Soviet forces invade West Germany after a series of crises
escalate into an all out conventional war), Coyle's approach is very
different from Clancy's. Instead of creating his own possible scenario
for a NATO vs. Warsaw Pact confrontation, he asked for, and received,
permission from British author (and retired General) Sir John Hackett
to set Team Yankee within the scenario created in Hackett's two
"speculative fiction" books The Third World War: August 1985 and The Third World War: The Untold Story.
Team Yankee takes place within a two-week period in an August in
the late 1980s. Since late July, a series of crises precipitated by the
Iran-Iraq war has morphed into a clash between U.S. and Soviet naval
forces in the Persian Gulf region. By August 1, word comes that NATO is
mobilizing and ordering their armed forces, including Bannon and Team
Yankee, to their wartime positions. Soon, the Soviets and their Warsaw
Pact "allies" cross the Inner German Border in force. Team Yankee and
the rest of NATO's forces in West Germany must then fight the invaders
and stop them before the Red Army reaches the Rhine River. After that,
assuming the Soviet attack bogs down, the mission will change from
merely defending territory to taking offensive operations and pushing
the invaders back. The question Coyle poses is, can American soldiers,
using their weapons and tactics against superior numbers of Soviet and
Warsaw Pact soldiers, defeat Russian weapons and tactics?

Readers familiar with Hackett's macrocosmic World War III will know
the big picture, but first-time readers will be turning the pages to
see who wins, who loses, who dies...and who survives in this
outstanding first novel by a true master of the military fiction genre.


The only flaw, and this is not Coyle's fault, is that reality -- in
the shape of the fall of communism and the end of the Cold War -- has
made the novel's setting extremely outdated. Some of the then-modern
weapons, such as the M1 main battle tank, have been since updated to
M1-A2 standard, older weapons have been retired, and obviously there's
no more Warsaw Pact.

All in all, it's an entertaining read.

I felt justified in reading it, though, since the setting for the book happened to be Germany. As we sped down the Autobahn, I'd occasionally glance out the window to take a look at the land. This made the book all the more immediate to me (so that's what the Black Forest looks like! Whuddya know?), and I finished it in record time. The book, in turn, spawned a phenomenon in my entertainment for the next couple of years. The diagrams in "Team Yankee" were very appealing to my young mind with their grids and topographical lines and symbols representing armored units; I decided to create a game with my pal Kyle Dahlen that utilized those same markings.

The game required:

• Grid-lined paper
• Pencils
• Lots of erasers
• A ruler
• Honesty

Essentially, it was "playing war" as young boys do with the whole "I shot you first. Nuh-uh! I shot YOU first", except it was on paper, which is what young nerds do. There would be agreements made ahead of time regarding the range of artillery (six grid spaces), the speed of vehicles (2 grid spaces for humvees per turn, 1 for trucks and tanks, etc.), the damage caused by said vehicles (a humvee, unless it was equipped with anti-armor missles, was unable to take out a tank), and the inability for your units to "see" around hills even though you, as the player, could see the massive armored unit lurking on the other side of a large hill plain as day. Discovering hidden enemy elements required scouts and helicopters which couldn't be intentionally sent to the other side of the hill; the movement had to have the appearance of routine and unintentionality, and we would call each other on moves that looked too suspicious.

All of these unspoken rules made the game a tad on the subjective side and not unlike Calvinball in some respects . . .



. . . which is why we quit playing the game around the time one outgrows playing "war." We turned our attention, instead, to other, more age-appropriate pastimes.



What?! You thought we'd play something that wasn't on paper? Hardly.

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I had a dream a couple of weeks ago that affected me a bit more than I expected so I might as well write about it. See if I can't get it out of my system.

I dreamt that I had an opportunity to visit Angel Falls.

Now who wouldn't want to visit the tallest falls in the world? Especially if you're of the same mindset as me; I want to see the biggest, baddest, edgemost, best places and things and Angel Falls fits into that category. So, with that in mind, you might possibly understand my excitement at the prospect.
My dream fast-forwarded to my arrival at the falls. I hopped out of my vehicle and raced toward the walkway that would lead me to the great wonder. As the walkway led around the corner of a cliff, I realized that I wasn't actually looking at a natural cliff-face. Rather, it looked more like a dam. In fact it was! It was a big ol' cement wall . . . with a thin, pathetic rivulet dribbling down its face. "Odd," I thought and then I saw a sign in front of me. The sign looked like any of a number of National Park informational signs and it read "Angel Falls." Disappointment descended upon me like the world's largest sponge after it had filled itself with the world's largest falls but I tried to make the most of it.

"It's so bee-yoo-tiful," I said to my companions, and I clasped my hands together and held them to my chest.
"Isn't it though?" they replied. "Truly a wonder."
"Oh yes," I said through my teeth. "It truly is."

They cast some sideways glances at me because they knew I was being insincere. I'd had my fill of "Angel Falls."

"Let's see what else is around," I prodded.
"But we came all this way," they complained. "Don't you want to spend some time with the falls?"
"I've spent plenty of time. It's manmade!" I shrieked. "I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS MANMADE!!" I ran back to the parking lot, sobbing.

I woke up in a sweat; this is not your typical nightmare what with its lack of werewolves and public nudity, so I felt a bit confused at how rattled I was. Since then, I've given it a lot of thought and I'm pretty sure that I know its meaning, but if any of you want to give it a go, feel free. I don't remember my dreams much anymore.

Oh, and by the way, the other night I woke Heidi up by talking in my sleep. I said, "That's why they call it the weasel dance!" followed by deep, jolly belly laughs. Heidi then proceeded to wake me up because she was laughing so hard.

As a kid, I used to watch nature documentaries like empty-nesters watch soaps. Cheetahs chasing down gazelles in super-slo-mo, old men wrestling anacondas in the Amazon, bighorn sheep butting heads, great white sharks devouring huge chunks o' meat - their eyes rolling back into their cartilaginous noggins with bestial ecstasy: All of this served to instill a need to see the animals at their most active. Zoos were disappointing - the animals just sat around or slept most of the day - so I spent much of my time in the woods, hoping to catch a glimpse of nature going about the business of survival. I did get to see many things in the forests of Minnesota, but we don't have any of the romantic animals other than wolves and no one ever sees those unless they live way up North. You know, the lions and killer whales and spitting cobras and gorillas - all those unique and exceptionally dangerous animals with a flair for the dramatic.

Well, my dreams came true this last week. Luckily, I had a camera with me. When you see this, if you were a true fan of nature docs, you'll know exactly what was going through my mind as I recorded the event. Why, I've even included the appropriate music (to add to the effect). I give you . . .

"The Elephant Seals of Piedras Blancas"!

I received a link to this from my brother; it's for the BBC2 show "Top Gear," and this has got to be their most ambitious project to date. I don't know who gives them the money to do this stuff, but it makes for great TV so go make some popcorn and enjoy.

Visted Gus's BBQ last Friday with some pals:

Great exterior signage!

But it's not exactly the manliest of BBQ joints when you first walk in.


Gus's BBQ lives on Fair Oaks Ave. in South Pasadena, CA. If you're ever interested in visiting a place that isn't a scene in the Los Angeles area, go to Gus's. Between the pink neon, the porcelain pigs heads that adorn the wall above the kitchen, and the horse-racing-themed etchings on the mirrors behind the bar, one can slip in and out unnoticed and unjudged for one's lack of coolness. Pink neon tends to level the playing field, giving everyone who steps into the restaurant a wash of "unconcerned with fashion."
Gus's seems to be a bbq joint/diner/bar/pool hall that exists outside of any particular time period unless that time period is called "Reno" or "Truck Stop on I-80."

. . . which is why their logo seems so out of place.
(actual napkin swiped from bar)


What a fantastic typeface! You can practically hear the bbq-ready animals bleat as they're hooked by that massive, shepherd's crook of a "G." But why such an amazing, antique typeface when the rest of the place seems so . . . well . . . tacky?

According to their website, Gus's was originally established in 1946 by three Greek brothers. However, many of their ads say "Since 1929." So which one is it, fellas?


I'm inclined to believe the 1929 claim (considering the typeface), and after a bit of googling around, the jury's still out.

So, all this talk about a bbq joint and no mention of the bbq food? There's a reason for that.

"The Food is Horrible"

and yet it fits perfectly with the decor. So if you're ever catching a midnight showing of "Superman 2" or "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" at the Rialto, be sure to stop by Gus's for a quick dip into the Stardust culture. At least it's cheap.

I spent a good twenty minutes guffawing at webpage called ROFLCATS! and lemme tell ya, Heidi was debating whether I'd completely lost it when I showed her some examples.

Whereupon she immediately became a fan. Many of the captions on the photos look like the same type of stuff one might find on Cute Overload minus the commentary. I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. Give me furry fuzzballs in peculiar situations and I'm good to go for a while.

A-like so.

Re: My post on the 8th of January "The Wind"

I now know why the Whole Foods folks ask you if you want your stuff "For here or to go." Because they have an eating area, if you ask for it "for here" you will be charged tax. If you get it "to go," there's no tax. I knew that worked with coffee shops but grocery stores introduce a whole new paradigm; the phenomenon didn't register with me while I was at the . . . um . . . register.