You know that super cute emo chick you're scoping on MySpace or that hottie coed on Facebook or the sexy lawyer on Match? You think "Wow, her face is really pretty--I can't see the rest of her because it's cropped out...but it can't be that terrible." Think again.
Viewing entries in
Personal
I wrote a while back about an email I received from my father about a bear that was tearing up a moose near my house. These sort of stories help reinforce outsiders, aka YOU, stereotypical perception of my home state of Alaska. My fellow Alaskan Clay has an even better...letter from home (with a MUST-SEE photo attached).
Check out this amazing new blog created by an occasionally brilliant, infrequently handsome, and sporadically witty blogger. I'm a bit biased considering that I'm the creator and writer on this blog which is an outlet for a rather esoteric personality quirk of mine: Basically I always get a bit of a thrill, a nonerotic pleasure, out of coming across a typo online when I read NYTimes.com (along with other news sites). If you share this passion then come check out my new blog "New York Times Typoss" (http://nytimestypos.wordpress.com). Also if you come across typos on the Times online please send me the link right away!!
Rememberr, boys and grils: Spell Checkws!
Butter floor. [Thanks Clay!]
GOOD LUCK TO ALL THOSE TAKING THE NY BAR EXAM!!
And if you don't pass the first time, it's not the end of the world: many a distinguished people have failed the bar. [Thanks Kristy!]
Update: Thanks PETE for sending the link to Kristy (who in turn sent it to me) that reminds stressed law students that, "Yes, Virginia, people really do fail the bar."
The Times recently posted a set of 101 simple recipes that can be prepared and ready to devour in 10 minutes or less. Anyone that is somewhat familiar with me quickly learn that in a kitchen an armless person or even a rat is more able than I am. With this caveat in mind, I glanced at the article hoping to find an equivalent of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or Ramen recipe. Instead, I found myself reminded of why I can't cook. Apparently the Times' definition of "simple" is different than mine. 1 Make six-minute eggs: simmer gently, run under cold water until cool, then peel. Serve over steamed asparagus. Simmer what gently? The eggs? How the hell do you do that? And when do you know "steamed asparagus" is done?
2 Toss a cup of chopped mixed herbs with a few tablespoons of olive oil in a hot pan. Serve over angel-hair pasta, diluting the sauce if necessary with pasta cooking water. How the hell do you "dilute" sauce? And what sort of mixed herbs?--Can I just buy "mixed herbs" at the grocery store?
3 Cut eight sea scallops into four horizontal slices each. Arrange on plates. Sprinkle with lime juice, salt and crushed chilies; serve after five minutes. How do you cook sea scallops? And to crush chilies, does this mean I just cut them up finely?
4 Open a can of white beans and combine with olive oil, salt, small or chopped shrimp, minced garlic and thyme leaves in a pan. Cook, stirring, until the shrimp are done; garnish with more olive oil. How much olive oil, etc do I use? How do I know when the shrimp is done?
Clay came up to NYC weekend from DC looking appropriately snazzy. Regular readers should recognize those glasses from a previous entry where it was the hit of the party. He came in late on Friday night, but conveniently the bus dropped him off by K-Town, so we hit up some delicious late night Korean food.
Saturday morning, after Bergen Bagel deliciousness, we headed over to the Met to check out one of my favorite sections, the medieval arms wing. Clay demonstrates his incredible balancing on his toes ability here.
Obligatory jumping photo. A rule of any visitor of mine is, "Sure, you're always more than welcome to stay in my apartment, but when I say jump, you better say how high!"
Some artsy photos in the museum.
More artsyness. Are you sensitive enough yet for all this?
Clay reflecting on an avant exhibit exploring "art" at its most reduced, fundamental and organic state. The result? Nothingness. WOA.
Matt is wondering what to eat for lunch.
It looks like Theodore Geisel snuck in one night and planted a musical instrument from his wonderful imagination.
You know JFK had a potty mouth. And the chicks digged that about him.
On the steps of the Met.
Afterwards we headed towards Central Park. Along the way, Clay spotted a neat sculpture and attempted to take a photograph of it. As a good friend, I tried to ruin the photo.
We met up with another friend from our Alaska days, Mark. It's so obvious but I love his shirt.
The frisbee I'm throwing here is the same one I had in high school. We started an ultimate frisbee club and got these glow-in-the-dark frisbees made up with the nuke warning symbol printed on it. It's still the best disc out there.
After dinner we killed some time in my apartment by Youtubing and Ted'ing.
Like we were REALLY killing some time. Haha, this photo amuses me for some reason.
I'm so pensive.
Mark is mesmerized by the Filipino Thriller re-enactment. Frankly I am as well still.
Clay mocking my vest.
This is what Alaskans look like, kids. Just less tan because you know, it's always dark there. And cold.
What's going on over there?
Chris going to town on his nails.
The subway was packed with all sorts of people coming back from the Siren Music Festival in Coney Island.
Clay is thinking, "I could kick that kid's ass with my pinkie....but I need to finish my delicious ice."
I title this photo, "A Study in Contrast."
Chris and some of his friends. Check out the DJ in the back. He looks like my 10th grade math teacher.
I'm doing my happy dance after the DJ slid over a free PBR ticket to me.
PBR and Blue Steel is a blue ribbon combination in my humble opinion.
I don't know why I look so freakin' tan here. Anyway, I think I'm continuing my happy PBR dance.
Peter!
It doesn't test whether you can actual make contact with a baseball thrown 90 mph--a major league fastball essentially--but this online experiment does test whether you have the reaction time to be able to theroetically hit a fastball thrown your way at 90 mph. My quickest reaction time was .21 seconds which is supposedly a hit! What's yours?
Update: I scored a home run on this with a .08.
Mark, Clay and I all went to the same high school in Alaska where much havoc, nerdiness, and bedlam occurred. Mark's an ah-tist in Brooklyn, Clay partly works for the man in DC, and I apparently did not get the memo about putting my hands on my hips for this group photo in my apartment.
(Photo credit: Clay)
Funkmaster Flex on July 4th played a commercial free five hour set on Hot97 of pure classic hip hop goodness from the 1990s (minus "Hammer and Young MC").
Some dude broke up the set into four mp3s which you can download here.
It's a must have for any hip hop fan or connoisseur. I've been listening to it all night (I doubt I'll be able to listen to the entire set considering it's five hours long in case you forgot) and it's simply hot, although a small minor complaint is that sometimes there's a little too much Funkmaster Flexing his big mouth. Nonetheless the songs fit really perfectly with the hot summer nights and it makes me want to get in a car with a couple good friends, nod our heads along to the beats, and just drive somewhere.
Boring Entry Warning. I've been having some pronounced knee problems [insert old man joke here] the past couple weeks to the point that I had to stop running because my knee would kind of pop out after jogging for just two blocks.
I'd never qualify myself as a "runner." In fact in the past I've always hated running and certainly didn't have any inherent abilities in that area. However, recently I've been enjoying it and so getting hurt was really annoying just as I was starting to be able to run a decent distance.
I was able to resume running again today and I'm excited that I can now run a full lap around Prospect Park. Hey, that's quite an achievement for this non-runner! My goal by the end of the summer is now to be able to do two full laps which will be exactly 6.7 miles.
Update: I self-diagnosed myself (thanks Internets!) and my affliction is apparently because I'm suffering from patellofemoral pain syndrome, otherwise known as simply "Runner's Knee."
You may feel pain toward the back of the knee, a sense of cracking or that the knee's giving out.
Yup, that's my knee! Explained it right to the dot.
1. There needs to be a permanent moratorium on the ensemble dance sequence in movies. You know what I'm talking about, right? The previously fractured family members, usually the women, celebrate their resolution over some past contrived disagreement or fissure by dancing. Yea, that scene. This ubiquitous scene needs to be retired to the graveyard of other bygone eras, such as silent films and communism. The only exception to this ban is Little Miss Sunshine. 2. Parents need to not bring their screaming, spoon banging child to a cafe where many people come to study or work.
3. Overdraft fees suck.
Maureen "I'm a woman, R-E-S-P-E-C-T" Dowd and Thomas "Globalization is all good, baby" Friedman are the cynosures in the Grey Lady's editorial lineup, however I personally find Frank Rich's columns, visceral yet intellectual, to be the most enlightening and reflective of my own thoughts--often articulating ideas and opinions that are only inchoate in my head. His latest cri de coeur, that diagnose the recent commutation of Libby as symptomatic of a larger and more insidious disease afflicting Bush, is an apt example. As much as I admire Rich (the former Butcher of Broadway), I'm equally against the Times' online business decision to place him and his colleagues behind a paid subscription firewall(1) called Times Select, because in effect they are inhibiting and to a large degree removing their most influential voices from the "marketplace of ideas." When faced with an administration that is as secretive and a president who is as isolated from reality as our current one, it is all the more necessary that the public has access to all the merchants in that proverbial marketplace. Times Select should be Times Open(2). Therefore, as a public service, I've copied and pasted the entire article (A Profile in Cowardice) here in this entry after the jump.
THERE was never any question that President Bush would grant amnesty to Scooter Libby, the man who knows too much about the lies told to sell the war in Iraq. The only questions were when, and how, Mr. Bush would buy Mr. Libby’s silence. Now we have the answers, and they’re at least as incriminating as the act itself. They reveal the continued ferocity of a White House cover-up and expose the true character of a commander in chief whose tough-guy shtick can no longer camouflage his fundamental cowardice.
The timing of the president’s Libby intervention was a surprise. Many assumed he would mimic the sleazy 11th-hour examples of most recent vintage: his father’s pardon of six Iran-contra defendants who might have dragged him into that scandal, and Bill Clinton’s pardon of the tax fugitive Marc Rich, the former husband of a major campaign contributor and the former client of none other than the ubiquitous Mr. Libby.
But the ever-impetuous current President Bush acted 18 months before his scheduled eviction from the White House. Even more surprising, he did so when the Titanic that is his presidency had just hit two fresh icebergs, the demise of the immigration bill and the growing revolt of Republican senators against his strategy in Iraq.
That Mr. Bush, already suffering historically low approval ratings, would invite another hit has been attributed in Washington to his desire to placate what remains of his base. By this logic, he had nothing left to lose. He didn’t care if he looked like an utter hypocrite, giving his crony a freer ride than Paris Hilton and violating the white-collar sentencing guidelines set by his own administration. He had to throw a bone to the last grumpy old white guys watching Bill O’Reilly in a bunker.
But if those die-hards haven’t deserted him by now, why would Mr. Libby’s incarceration be the final straw? They certainly weren’t whipped into a frenzy by coverage on Fox News, which tended to minimize the leak case as a non-event. Mr. Libby, faceless and voiceless to most Americans, is no Ollie North, and he provoked no right-wing firestorm akin to the uproars over Terri Schiavo, Harriet Miers or “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.
The only people clamoring for Mr. Libby’s freedom were the pundits who still believe that Saddam secured uranium in Africa and who still hope that any exoneration of Mr. Libby might make them look less like dupes for aiding and abetting the hyped case for war. That select group is not the Republican base so much as a roster of the past, present and future holders of quasi-academic titles at neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute.
What this crowd never understood is that Mr. Bush’s highest priority is always to protect himself. So he stiffed them too. Had the president wanted to placate the Weekly Standard crowd, he would have given Mr. Libby a full pardon. That he served up a commutation instead is revealing of just how worried the president is about the beans Mr. Libby could spill about his and Dick Cheney’s use of prewar intelligence.
Valerie Wilson still has a civil suit pending. The Democratic inquisitor in the House, Henry Waxman, still has the uranium hoax underlying this case at the top of his agenda as an active investigation. A commutation puts up more roadblocks by keeping Mr. Libby’s appeal of his conviction alive and his Fifth Amendment rights intact. He can’t testify without risking self-incrimination. Meanwhile, we are asked to believe that he has paid his remaining $250,000 debt to society independently of his private $5 million “legal defense fund.”
The president’s presentation of the commutation is more revealing still. Had Mr. Bush really believed he was doing the right and honorable thing, he would not have commuted Mr. Libby’s jail sentence by press release just before the July Fourth holiday without consulting Justice Department lawyers. That’s the behavior of an accountant cooking the books in the dead of night, not the proud act of a patriot standing on principle.
When the furor followed Mr. Bush from Kennebunkport to Washington despite his efforts to duck it, he further underlined his embarrassment by taking his only few questions on the subject during a photo op at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. You know this president is up to no good whenever he hides behind the troops. This instance was particularly shameful, since Mr. Bush also used the occasion to trivialize the scandalous maltreatment of Walter Reed patients on his watch as merely “some bureaucratic red-tape issues.”
Asked last week to explain the president’s poll numbers, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center told NBC News that “when we ask people to summon up one word that comes to mind” to describe Mr. Bush, it’s “incompetence.” But cowardice, the character trait so evident in his furtive handling of the Libby commutation, is as important to understanding Mr. Bush’s cratered presidency as incompetence, cronyism and hubris.
Even The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, a consistent Bush and Libby defender, had to take notice. Furious that the president had not given Mr. Libby a full pardon (at least not yet), The Journal called the Bush commutation statement a “profile in non-courage.”
What it did not recognize, or chose not to recognize, is that this non-courage, to use The Journal’s euphemism, has been this president’s stock in trade, far exceeding the “wimp factor” that Newsweek once attributed to his father. The younger Mr. Bush’s cowardice is arguably more responsible for the calamities of his leadership than anything else.
People don’t change. Mr. Bush’s failure to have the courage of his own convictions was apparent early in his history, when he professed support for the Vietnam War yet kept himself out of harm’s way when he had the chance to serve in it. In the White House, he has often repeated the feckless pattern that he set back then and reaffirmed last week in his hide-and-seek bestowing of the Libby commutation.
The first fight he conspicuously ran away from as president was in August 2001. Aspiring to halt federal underwriting of embryonic stem-cell research, he didn’t stand up and say so but instead unveiled a bogus “compromise” that promised continued federal research on 60 existing stem-cell lines. Only later would we learn that all but 11 of them did not exist. When Mr. Bush wanted to endorse a constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage, he again cowered. A planned 2006 Rose Garden announcement to a crowd of religious-right supporters was abruptly moved from the sunlight into a shadowy auditorium away from the White House.
Nowhere is this president’s non-courage more evident than in the “signing statements” The Boston Globe exposed last year. As Charlie Savage reported, Mr. Bush “quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office.” Rather than veto them in public view, he signed them, waited until after the press and lawmakers left the White House, and then filed statements in the Federal Register asserting that he would ignore laws he (not the courts) judged unconstitutional. This was the extralegal trick Mr. Bush used to bypass the ban on torture. It allowed him to make a coward’s escape from the moral (and legal) responsibility of arguing for so radical a break with American practice.
In the end, it was also this president’s profile in non-courage that greased the skids for the Iraq fiasco. If Mr. Bush had had the guts to put America on a true wartime footing by appealing to his fellow citizens for sacrifice, possibly even a draft if required, then he might have had at least a chance of amassing the resources needed to secure Iraq after we invaded it.
But he never backed up the rhetoric of war with the stand-up action needed to prosecute the war. Instead he relied on fomenting fear, as typified by the false uranium claims whose genesis has been covered up by Mr. Libby’s obstructions of justice. Mr. Bush’s cowardly abdication of the tough responsibilities of wartime leadership ratified Donald Rumsfeld’s decision to go into Iraq with the army he had, ensuring our defeat.
Never underestimate the power of the unconscious. Not the least of the revelatory aspects of Mr. Bush’s commutation is that he picked the fourth anniversary of “Bring ’em on” to hand it down. It was on July 2, 2003, that the president responded to the continued violence in Iraq, two months after “Mission Accomplished,” by taunting those who want “to harm American troops.” Mr. Bush assured the world that “we’ve got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.” The “surge” notwithstanding, we still don’t have the force necessary four years later, because the president never did summon the courage, even as disaster loomed, to back up his own convictions by going to the mat to secure that force.
No one can stop Mr. Bush from freeing a pathetic little fall guy like Scooter Libby. But only those who paid the ultimate price for the avoidable bungling of Iraq have the moral authority to pardon Mr. Bush. -- Frank Rich 1. Free memberships to Times Select is available to those with an access to a ".edu" email address.
2. I am of course aware of the exasperating tension between the newsroom and the boardroom, as the former is focused on providing a public service as an integral component to our democratic process while the latter is interested in driving up stock prices and increasing profit. In addition, the corporate consolidation of traditional media outlets as well as the simultaneous fragmentation of audiences further complicates this situation. People are increasingly relying less on their local and national newspapers and evening TV network news as their primary source of news and information. As a result, traditional news media, such as newspapers in particular, are forced to adopt awkward revenue generating sources, such as the Times Select feature.
We're suppose to be joyful today, the Fourth of July. Independence Day. And yet I find it difficult to celebrate as today's symbolic holiday only serves to underscore the mess our country currently finds itself in. But then I find hope for the future of our country in the inspirational words of former President Thomas Whitmore.
“Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. “Mankind.” That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it’s fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom… Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution… but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: “We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight!” We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”
It seems like every girl I meet or know wants to and is planning on getting a nose job. Is the nose job the new "Rachel" haircut?
Some photos from my summer so far that I haven't gotten around to uploading and posting (mainly from the Museum Mile fair).
A crazy long line for free entry into one of the museums.
It was so hot and humid this day that I know this snazzy motherfucker was sweatin' like a pig underneath that suit.
I finally went to the Guggenheim. It's much smaller inside than I was expecting. What a gorgeous building though.
I dig this kid's art here.
Watermelon!
Ooh, artsy.
Central Park + Sun + Beer + National Geographic = Fawesome! ("Fawesome" being an amalgamation of "Fuckin" and "Awesome." Also see "Feet!"--Fuckin' Sweet!--Feet!) Thanks Pooja for your linguistic invention!
Warning: This entry is pure narcissism. Remember that scene in Jerry Maguire when Jerry's sole client Rod has a fantastic game on Monday Night Football and after the game Jerry tells his 'wife' Dorthy that they had a huge day. Well my humble blog yesterday had a huge day.
I was randomly checking my blog stat yesterday and I noticed that there was suddenly a huge upsurge of visitors.
My entry about the UPS guys unloading the iPhones got picked up by Boing Boing in one of their entries about the iPhone which was driving all these visitors to my blog. Personally I was extremely stoked by this because that website is easily in my top three of favorite websites. I've been rather diligently blogging for the past four years and when this happened I had a slight Sally Fields reaction. "You really like me! You really like me!"
The other cool thing is that as a result of these visitors my entry was also listed on the Wordpress front page for awhile as the number two "hot" post.
And in addition, it is currently the number three most popular entry.
Lastly (as if any of you are still reading this self congratulatory recap), my iPhone entry finally topped my entry about a celebrity nipple slip (seriously, I wrote this months ago and it's still the most popularly read story on here) as the top read entry on my blog.
Oh right, you sick perverts are probably wondering "Damn! What's the link again to the nipple one?!" Here it is again. Sickos.
Anyway, yesterday I was kind of a big deal.
IPHONEEEEEEE
Anyone know of a place other than Century 21 that sells decent quality, but cheap gym shorts in Manhattan (preferably near Soho)?
In the past twenty-four hours, I've consumed four 16 oz smoothies courtesy of Jamba Juice.
Why? A few weekends ago I was heterosexually roaming Soho with Kaizar and we stopped into Jamba Juice for smoothies. I highly recommend the Strawberry Surf Rider. Shit is crazy delicious. After paying I dropped my business card into a jar they had near the cash register and then thought nothing of it.
A week later I received a call at work from someone at Jamba Juice.
"Congratulations!" she said.
"What?" I replied. I had no idea what she was talking about.
"We drew your card here at Jamba Juice and you've won an office party hosted by Jamba Juice!"
"SWEET!"
She said they will bring up to forty-five smoothies. At most our office consists of twenty employees.
"Should I bring forty-five?" she asked.
"Uh, sure..."
They arrived yesterday afternoon carrying sure enough, forty five or crapload so of delicious ice cold smoothies. After inviting our building's maintenance guys, our PR agency's girls, and a couple friends working around the area, we still had 15 or so smoothies remaining. We put those in the freezer.
Today I discovered a tasty new way to consume them. I took one out of the freezer and I scraped at it like frozen ice cream. So eye-rollingly yummy!
I think I'm going to go to Chipotle and drop about 50 business cards in their jar.