Via the miracle of the IPod, I can actually listen to the Dennis Miller Show. 

My new weekend project: figure a way to altern my DNA so that I can replicate both Miller and Jason Lewis.

DNA replication is, indeed, the sincerest form of flattery.

So now that I have a computer, I did some digging through the office, and found that I have about six old IDE hard drives lying around.  Some of them are stuffed with data (including probably six gig of music files).

Now, opening up the PC and plugging them in, one or two at a time, isn’t the worst way to handle things, but c’mon.  One at a time.  Dude.

So I’m wondering – is there something about IDE the prevents there from being more than three devices on a controller?  Or is there such a thing as an IDE controller and bus that allows more than three?  Say (allowing for a couple of squib disks in the pile) four or five?

The word Chad is looking for is “carbonated battery drippings”. 

If Red – she of the hilarious, manifold obsessions – and this person were to meet…:

A convent, 20 miles away from my house, with their own llamas. They harvest the wool. They spin the wool. They dye the wool. Then they sell the yarn. THEY SELL THE YARN!!! Nun spun wool, I couldn’t make this sh*t up if I tried! Well, I made up the name, because “nun spun wool” is just too perfect of a name…but that’s another story.

ANYWAY, so earlier this week I gave a shout out to the good nuns at the convent. You can’t just send them and e-mail. You have to actually call. I hate talking on the phone. I HATE calling people on the phone. It goes back to my fear of ordering pizza. But I overcame my fear for the yarn. For the sake of the yarn folks. The lady I talked to (Sr. Schwarzenflugenflagenfluagel or something like that) told me she only had a little in stock because she spins it up as they need it, but that she could spin me some if she knew what I wanted.

SHE IS GOING TO CUSTOM SPIN MY YARN!!! I’m thinking at this point that it’s going to be like a bajamillion dollars or something. Nope, they sell it by the ounce, and it’s only $2.00 an ounce. Which makes me feel like a drug dealer…with nuns…and yarn…but like a drug dealer nonetheless.

All of this to say, yesterday I went out to the convent and hung out with the head spinner. Not the HEAD spinner. The head SPINNER. You have to put the right emphasis on the right word. She let me play with the llamas. She let me touch ALL of the wool. She showed me the whole process and I got a back stage tour of the convent. It totally rocked. I bought all of the yarn she had on hand, and ordered enough to keep her busy until the second coming of Christ.

As I was leaving I asked her if she ever taught people how to spin. She said they have retreats every year, but this year they didn’t have a place to do it so she didn’t know if it was going to happen. I volunteered my house. She accepted my offer. So in January I’m going to have a house full of nuns who will teach me how to spin my own yarn. I’m so freeking excited I could actually spit back at the llamas!!!!

I know I’ve joked about becoming a nun at various points in my life. But had I known there was a convent where they played with llamas and knit and spun yarn all day I would have likely followed through with it by now.

…would the combined levels of obsession open a rift in the time/space continuum that would alter the state of matter?

Just curious.

…without lots of photos and the ability to indulge a major obsession?

As usual, ask Sheila.

Oh, yes, I am proud to hereby brand myself a dork:

And it works…

At 21 feet long and with a wingspan of over 19 feet it is, in fact, big enough to fly a kid in. However, knowing that it will be powered by solid-fuel rockets, they wouldn’t put a kid, dog, monkey or Gizmodo editor inside, even if it uses three full parachutes to land.

After drawing the plans using CAD software, Andy’s team and his friends at Polecat Aerospace (with the help of RMS Laser and Aerotech Consumer Aerospace) used laser cutting to make the pieces out of Baltic Birch wood. They also used solid aluminum for some parts, like the rods which are the pivot point for the wings

Well, it should work.

I’ll have to follow this…

Predicting Casey and Hung in the Top Three has been pretty much a given for the past few weeks, especially since Howie and Sara bit the dust.  Dale beating Brian into the final round was only a slight surprise, when you remember the formula for all of these Bravo “reality” shows; the final three must contain:

1. A hypertalented jerk; AKA “the Santino/Marcel role”
2. A hot babe (afficionados call this “The Chloe position”)
3. A loveable, often gay, guy (AKA “The Vosovic”)

Dale and Brian could both cover the three slot, and Dale is funnier.  So picking the final three was no great shakes.

But who’s gonna win?

I’m not so much concerned about the actual food they do on the grand finale tonight, as I am trying to parse the various clues the producers (who are, in the end, the only “judges” that matter on the show) have dropped. 

Am I nuts, or have the producers been showing Hung to be much more…fallible than he used to seem, lately?  About the same time Casey moved from perpetually-on-the-bubble to constant contender, about five weeks back?

Prediction:  tossup between Casey and a late dark-horse surge by Dale, either of whom would make a much more telegenic personality for the show’s next few seasons than the almost-Teutonically-perfect cooking machine Hung.

No fair peeking…

Is it A):

The dialectic of Christo’s “Gates” is a reflection of the post-9/11 zeitgeist, absent the schadenfreude qua nervousness that has gripped the American populace in this world of “now-more-than-ever.” The semiotics of the saffron (en)robes serves an ontological function in re-animating and re-introducing the humanity of New New York to their perceptions of the orange joy of being – the being you felt as a child, vis a vis a pinata. The Gestalt bespeaks a Foucauldian Weltschmerz, a sumptuous feast of post-Derridian brio-cum-angst. It’s in this context that “The Gates” covers, even metastasizes, over Central Park like a vast dollop of neo-maternalistic, neo-Marxian mayonnaise.

The panels, a touchstone of familiarity to the bourgeoisie (nursing at the paps of American Idol), emanate as immense labia beckoning, even taunting the onlooker to become, to be the phallus penetrating into Mother Nature – the maternal yin imprisoned in the mechanistic yang of the city and yet floating above the concept of restraint – the “Gates” welcome yet repel; they silently ululate like a shtetl of schmatte-clad yentas and yet remain silent with the deafening-yet-voiceless torment of the ur-mensch; metaphysical yet material (or rather neo-material), smug in its tangibility yet internally, silently, futilely screaming in horror at its immateriality. The “Gates” are, in short, of a piece with and yet utterly discontiguous from the fundamental leitmotifs of our age.

Or is it B):

“Pedagogy requires a hermeneutic ability to make interpretive sense of the phenomena of the lifeworld in order to see the pedagogic significance of situations and relations of living with children.”

OK. You may peek.

(more…)

Sometimes advertising just cheeses me off.

Yesterday, while standing in the checkout line at Target, I read the back of a case of Coca Cola (r) that someone was buying. 

Two bits of background here:

1. While it’s very difficult to avoid processed sugar in your diet, unless you get very serious about watching everything that goes in your mouth, I consume very little processed sugar by American standards.  I don’t add it to things, I use it very sparingly, and I don’t as a rule eat things that are total sugar bombs, like donuts or especially pop.  Coke Classic (R) is, to be blunt, way too sweet for me to drink.  At all.  I really don’t even drink much diet pop these days; my daily allowance of caffeine comes from my one cup of DunnBros coffee, from across the street from my office, most mornings. 
2. I also drink a lot of water; like, two liters or so every day at work, and more outside.  Part of it is the biking; a bigger part is that I just plain feel better.  Jou Soucheray may ridicule the idea – but there’s a 50-50 chance that any idea Souch ridicules is probably a good one.  Of course, modern medicine and exercise science have been pushing “hydration” for quite a while, now.

Now, the back of this Coke case said something to the effect of “Coke promotes good hydration!  With every sip, you’re taking in water!”

Um, yeah.  You’re also taking in caffeine, which is a diuretic that leaches water from your system.  You’re also getting a ton of sugar – probably close to half the weight of the beverage – which takes even more water for your liver to purge from your system.  Hydration my ass; I’d be amazed if drinking a Coke doesn’t leave you dryer than you started.

Speaking of sugar, I hate those new ads for Sugar, with the “naked” guy standing in a store talking about how natural sugar is.  Oh, the ads are kinda funny – but let’s be clear about something; Table sugar is “natural” in the same way that plastic, heroin, E85, vodka or a car tire are “natural”; they start with something that comes from nature (oil, poppy seeds, high fructose corn syrup and oil, potatoes and more oil, respectively), and then refine the bejeezus out of it until it turns into something that is utterly unrecognizable compared to its original state.  Go take a bite out of a sugar beet sometime – it’s about 15% sugar, and it tastes like a raw turnip.  A bag of table sugar is about as “natural” as a line of cocaine.

That is all.

Top Chef is falling right into place with my predictions: the supernaturally-arrogant (and, given his arrogance, the appropriately-named) Hung, the improbably cute Casey, the chick-eye-candy (I presume) Brian, and the wild card, the lovable, talented, gay Dale.  Remember; my formula calls for three finalists; an arrogant but blazingly talented jagoff, a cute and talented woman, and a personable, talented, and often gay guy.  Bingo – in advancing Brian and Dale, we got both.  Bases covered. The formula is upheld. On to the finals! 

As to predicting the winner – I’ll rely entirely on clues (inadvertent or otherwise) supplied by the producers earlier in the run. 

Coming next week.

(And, for the record, Howie’s mushroom risotto recipe rocks my world, and I’m trying the unjustly-maligned asparagus and prosciutto phyllo cigars this weekend…)

Probably.

(Foot, by the way, gets the gestalt of the show pretty dead-on)

Roosh points us to a bit that, the one time I saw it way back when, had me laughing so hard I nearly stroked out.

 Apropos not much.

That is all.

The municipal wi-fi fad seems to be suffering network difficulties:

“Wi-Fi woes everywhere you turn,” says Russell Hancock of Silicon Valley Network, a troubled Wi-Fi project for 40 towns in California’s high-tech corridor.

Wi-Fi allows laptop users to work anywhere, making some jobs portable. It also is essential to mobile devices, including iPhones, enabling such emerging technology to perform complex online tasks fast.

Chicago couldn’t reach agreement with service providers after offering free use of street lamps for radio transmitters in exchange for a network built, owned and operated by providers at no cost to the city.

Minneapolis’ net got a lot of good publicity after the 35W bridge collapse – but has had other problems.  Saint Paul has been noodling with the idea for years, and is no closer to a solution than ever.

Maybe that’s a good thing.

I never really thought that America had a problem with badly-made grilled cheese.

That’ll show me.

Dunn Brothers does by far the best coffee-shop coffee in the Twin Cities and, probably, wherever you’re from, too.

And it’s cool to see they are driving their enemies before them and hearing the lamentation of their women.

Bit by bit, my predictions for this season of Top Chef seem to be coming true. 

Although Brian gave us a bit of a scare last night, CJ was duly ejected (hahaha) from the airplane elimination challenge, as I suspected.

Remember – as I noted last week, these Bravo reality competition shows have a formula; by the final round (in TC’s case, a Final Four), they will always have:

• One highly-talented, frequently gay, guy.  (In Project Runway Season 2, which is my template for this theory, it was Daniel Vosovic, the blazingly-talented guy).
• One jerk.  In PR2, it was Santino, the imperious egomaniac with the Kim Thayil hairdo.
• One babe – Chloe Dao, in the case of PR2.  Dao was the eventual winner.

So I reiterate my prediction:

1. Brian will be the Talented Guy (with a possible, but I think unlikely, Dale upset).
2. Casey will fill the Babe role; indeed, I figured she was a lock once Camille and the long-shot (too girl-next-door-y, although I’d totally get her phone number) Lia got booted.  If I want to wax conspiratorial, I’d say that’d be why she won last night (remember – the producers play a major role in determining the results of each week’s competition, judges notwithstanding), even though Hung’s dish got arguably better reviews; the buzz among TC fans has been that Casey’s been eye candy, and she’d need a win or two to have some cred behind her trip to the finals). 
3. The Jerk?  Hung.  Doy. 
4. The fourth role in the Final Four?  Gotta be Sara, although I can see Dale squeaking into this more easily than the Talented Guy.

So that’s the big question for next week; does Dale upset either Brian or Sara and get to the finals? 

While I watch very little TV, I’ve become mildly interested in the endless, dare I say “cookiecutter”, bunch of Bravo “reality” shows – Project Runway, Top Chef, that hair salon show whose name eludes me, and the like – that involve taking a group of people in a very competitive, haute kind of craft career and winnowing them down, a la Survivor, to a championship over the course of a couple of months.

The shows all have the same kind of formula; hosted by an otherworldly-hot woman (Heidi Klum, Padma Lakshmi) assisted by a lovable-in-an-irritating-a***ole-kind-of-way guy (Tim Gunn, Tom Colicchio), with a series of guest judges and tons and tons of product placement, yadda yadda.

But the key part of the formula; the shows all focus toward the “Final Three” or the “Final Four”, on the last episode or two.  And that final group, in all of these Bravo “reality” shows, always consists of:

1. The blazingly talented, usually gay, guy
2. The improbably hot, very talented woman
3. The highly-talented a***ole.

The prototype, of course, was Season 2 of Project Runway: after a few weeks, it became obvious that egregious a***ole Santino was being carried along, prevailing over many better designers even though he frequently deserved to be tossed; he made such a compelling a***ole and the show’s story arc (if not actual clothing design) benefitted from the chaos and drama he provided. 

This week?  It’s Top Chef.  I figured I’d try to get the formula figured out bright and early, but leave myself some wiggle room.

My predictions on week one:

Talented Guy: Tre (backup:  Brian) (Sorry, guys – Dale, the loveable gay guy, is being kept around for a late-round sympathy toss)

Cute Talented Woman: Camille (the way hot Puerto Rican chef) (backup: Casey) (Although I rooted for Brooklyn’s Lia, she was just too girl-next-door from the very beginning). 

Token übertalented A***hole: Howie, the New Yorker from Miami (backup: Hung, the gratingly-arrogant but incredibly talented Vietnamese guy)

 So – as of the Final Six, all of my first choices are gone – all of my backups are in the running.

Sort of like my system for betting horses, now that I think about it…

People ask me all the time – “Mitch?  Is there any subject on which you agree with Jeff Fecke?  And by “anything”, I mean other than “Radiohead sucks?””

Well, that alone is significant – indeed, pivotal. 

But no.  There is at least one other thing.

Ferraris and Bentleys too blase for you? 

A wealthy Russian tried to buy a U.S. B-52 bomber from a group of shocked American pilots at an air show near Moscow, a Russian newspaper reported on Friday.

 

The forces of attraction and repulsion are skittering back and forth almost at random, for me at least, in contemplating this bit of news:

Actress-comedian Janeane Garofalo, an outspoken liberal, is set to co-star on the conservative-leaning real-time drama, whose co-creator/executive producer Joel Surnow jokingly describes himself as a “right-wing nut job.”

On the one hand, how could it be worse than Day Six (short of hiring Suzanne Sommers to run CTU)?

On the other…

does not compute

Speaking of which; if Terry Keegan’s Thursday Night Trivia ever asks “What are the words to the Dutch National Anthem”, I’m totally covered:

Wilhelmus van Nassouwe ben ick, van Duitsen blut!

Den Vaterland getrouwe, bleif ick tot in den doet.

Een Prinze van Oranjen bleif ick, vrij onverveert.

Den Konink van Hispanjen heb ick alltijd gheert!

And no, I didn’t effing Google it, either. I had to learn it 25 years ago. I can still sing the baritone harmony part, to say nothing of the words, from memory.

Bring it on, Keegan.

According to this survey (via Sheila), I’m totally down with Gryffindor:

GRYFFINDOR:
[x ] You’ve never done drugs.
[x ] You have a lot of friends.
[x ] You get along with everyone.
[ ] You love football.
[x ] You love baseball.
[x ] You’re into writing and art
[ x] One of your favourite music genre is rock.
[ x] You believe in “innocent until proven guilty” theory.
[ ] One of your favourite colors is red or gold.
[x ] Good grades at school.
[x ] One of the worst things you can do is lie.
[x ] You plan on going to college.
TOTAL: 10

HUFFLEPUFF:
[ ]You’re content with mostly everything in your life right now.
[x] You laugh a lot.
[ ] You like to follow trends.
[ ] Politics suck.
[x] You love to swim
[ ] Water polo is awesome.
[ ] Pink is one of your favourite colours.
[x] Black is morbid & depressing.
[x] You’re an optimist.
[ ] You’re very emotional.
[ ] You believe in going steady at a young age.
[ ] You haven’t made fun of anyone this month.
[x ] Loyalty is the MOST important thing in a relationship.
TOTAL: 5

RAVENCLAW:
[ ] You’re depressed to a certain extent.
[x ] You love to read.
[x ] You appreciate theatre & arts.
[ ] Sports suck.
[x] Hate is completely unneeded.
[ ] Indie is one of your favourite genre of music.
[x] Every once in a while you have little anger outbursts.
[ ] Lying is sometimes okay.
[ ] Blue is one of your favourite colours.
[ ] Knowledge is the key to power
[ ] Sarcasm is the best kind of humour
[ ] People should know what they’re talking about before they talk.
TOTAL: 4

SLYTHERIN:
[ ]There’s at least one person you hate.
[ ] Basketball is a good sport.
[ ] Football is amazing.
[ ] Black is a cool color.
[ ] You’ve lied about something serious
[ ] You’re a very deep person
[ ] You are not very loyal.
[ ] You like heavy metal.
[ ] You make school seem more important than it is.
[ ] You’re scared to grow up.
[ ] Anger is one of your primary feelings.
[x] You have trust issues.
[ ] Guilty until proven innocent.
Total: 1

Not sure what significance that has, but if it means I get to hang out with Alan Rickman, I’m cool with it.

Katie at Yucky Salad had a revelation at her 20th…

…you’re kidding, right?  Katie?  20th?  No way. 

Anyway, Katie at Yucky Salad had a revelation at her “20th” high school reunion:

Last Saturday was my 20th high school reunion.

20th? Never! It can’t possibly have been twenty years; you don’t look a day over, um, over …well you look just perfectly acceptable for a woman your age. You really do, I’m not just saying that.

Flatterer.

Twas was a blast. A blast, I tell you! The last one was really fun, too, but the fact that we’re all older and wiser now also means we’re all just more willing to cut loose and have fun. I got there late and the open bar (open bar: veddy veddy dangerous) was juuuuust about to close, but thanks to the deep generosity of my fellow classmates and their seemingly endless supply of drink tickets, I still managed to guzzle my body weight in chardonnay. Is there anything more cliche than an almost 40-year old woman from the ‘burbs tanked on white wine? I think not, but I care not, either. And that, my friends, is what separates us from the apes.

After a week of Nick Coleman acting like a junior engineer, I’d wondered if anything did anymore.

If you’re attending the Millard Fillmore Golf Tournament and/or the Post MilF party next month – or even if you’re not – I need to draw your attention to something of utterly dire importance.

Learned Foot is taking votes to determine which type of sausage will be served at the party.  The choice is between Beer Brats and Italian Sausage and Chorizo (which belongs only on omelettes anyway).

I need you to go to Kool Aid Report and vote for Italian Sausage, if you please (the poll is on the right margin).

Because beer brats are edible, but…c’mon.  Italian Sausage.  Yum.

It wouldn’t be a major issue, but there’s guys from Wisconsin in on the vote.  You never know what they’ll do when the word “beer” is involved.

So, hypothetically, if someone wanted to:

1. Take a piece of digital video, and…
2. …want to remove the audio track, and then…
3. …record a new audio track and…
4. …dub it onto the video from Step 2

How would one do this?

Leave a comment, and thanks in advance.

I’m passingly familiar with Gerald Beck of Wahpeton, ND; plane geek that I am, I knew that he restored old warplanes.

So his death at the Oshkosh Air Show on Friday was a dual tragedy;

Gerald S. Beck was killed in the crash of two P-51 Mustangs, single-seat fighters used in World War II, said Dick Knapinski, a spokesman for the Experimental Aircraft Association, which puts on the weeklong air show called AirVenture.

The other pilot involved in the crash, Casey Odegaard, 24, Kindred, N.D., suffered minor injuries…Witnesses said one plane was behind the other, and when its propeller hit the tail of the other plane, it flipped up and over the other aircraft, landing upside down in a fireball.

Ugh. 

My condolences to the Becks.