Angst-Free Zone

Yarr, so I haven't posted in months, I know. 'Tis awful of me, just awful, but I still be here! I admire all of ye landlubbers who keep up with it. Regrettably, I can't say that I'm really ready to get back in the habit yet, but since it's Talk Like A Pirate Day, I figured I would commemorate th' occasion by reposting my entry from a year ago. I thought it fitting, as it be containin' expert advice on all things piratical:


Yarr!  Ahoy, ye scurvy landlubbers!  The date be the 19th o' September, so ye know what tha' means!  It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day!  Today be th' day when all men, women, children and parrots throw grammar and spellin' to th' winds and embrace their inner buccaneer.  (Should ye have no earthly idea of what 'tis I be talkin' 'bout, know that ye be clearly behin' the times.  Go here and gain a prop'r nautical eddikashun.  If ye should ignore this warnin', ye'll be getting a taste o' th' cat later!) 

If'n ye not yet be knowin' how ta adopt th' proper pirattitude, allow me ta furnish a few suggestions:

1. Get a pirate hat.
        Even the lowliest swabby knows that t'be a pirate ye must dress the part.  The pirate hat is oft'n seen as an integral part o' the pirate look.  While ye could certainly adopt a pirattitude without any traditional headgear, th' hat has been shown to help channel one's energies into a proper pillaging state o' mind.  Ye can also come up wi' variations on th' hat, such as a gaily printed bandana or scarf, braiding showy ribbons inter yer hair or wearin' a crown o' yer enemies gold teeth.  An' don' ferget ta accessorize!  A billowy shirt and cutlass can do wonders for yer appearance, and even arrrrgyle socks'll work in a pinch.  Jus' remember, th' possibilities are endless!

2. Swagger.
       No self-respecting buccaneer would ever let his reputation be soiled by anythin' so low as a mincin' gait.  A real pirate swaggers.  Ye be one o' th' fiercest and feared creatures in all the seven seas, an' the rest o' the world should bloody well know it!  After years on a ship, yer feet ought ta be swift, cocky and sure, with a casual, drunken sway in yer hips.  If'n you be havin' trouble with this partikuler step, aid might be found in my third suggestion.

3. Obtain rum, in any way possible.
       Rum is the lifeblood o' th' pirate.  Ta part a pirate from his rum is like ta parting a wee baby from its bottle, a cruel action that should never be undertaken lightly.  A wee baby might cry like bloody hell, but a pirate might well keelhaul ye fer yer meddlin' ways.  If'n ye be one o' them queer teetotalin' pirates, strongly brewed iced tea'll suffice, but never reveal it ta th' crew.  An' if'n ye be of an underaged sort o' pirate, keep yer runty lil fingers awa' from me rum!  That sort o' drink'll stunt yer growth, ye crusty bilgerat.

4. Squint with one eye and/or grimace when ye speaks.
       I don't rightly know what it is about th' contortions o' th' face tha' make speakin' like a pirate so effective, but it always seems ta work.  Methinks this mi' explain why there be so many pirates missin' an eye.  'Tis an easy way ta acquire a piratical flourish ta one's everyday speech.  Try it fer yerself!

5. Eliminate non-essential consonants.
       Ag'in I don' righ'ly kno' wha' 'tis abou' this tha' is so successful, bu' i' always seems ta work.

6. Practice insertin' "yarrr" where appropriate.
       Ev'n if ye only be drivin' ta th' marrrrrket in yer carrrr, a sparrrr momen' can always be put to productive use by practicin' the proparrrrrrr use of arrrrrrr.  Just let 'em roll off yer tongue on a darrrrrk nigh' while yer lookin' up a' th' starrrrrrrrrrrs while settin' on a parrrrrrrrrk bench.  It's marrrrrrrrrrrrvellous stuff once ye've master'd th' use.

Once ye've got all these down, as well as th' trick o' colorful cursin', there's no stoppin' ye!  So get out there, me hearties!  Find some buried booty, down a tankard of grog, bounce a buxom beauty a two on yer knee, and show the world yer fearsome new pirattitude!

Damn my eyes! Some days, I swear, it's as though I deliberately set out to overload my brain.  Watching Firefly while staring at food porn is too much for any reasonable person to handle.  I've decided.  When I grow up, I wanna be a space cowboy zippin' 'round the 'verse making cupcakes! With dragées!

Failing that, I would settle for a summer picnic, maybe with a little kite-flying, although probably not until The Boyfriend gets back (Just 4 more days! Whoo-hoo!). Anybody want to come along? Or maybe have some yummy menu ideas to share? I've been staring at food blogs and cookbooks for the past hour or so, silly me. Too much delicious and the brainpan is like to get a mite scrambled while the stomach growls its low and rumbly tune.

The saying calls for "spilt milk", but in my case, I think I'm going to substitute "spoiled milk". Admittedly, I'm not the most fastidious of cooks.  I've picked up and cooked with things I've dropped on the floor by accident and used eggs that were days, even weeks past the "expiration date" (haven't died yet!), but I'm usually pretty wary about using old milk. Something about even marginally old milk makes me feel a bit yick, but this was the last day before the "Sell by" date, and I had thought it smelled fine. Maybe I need to get my nose checked, because the rice pudding I just made now makes me feel a bit queasy just smelling it. I don't think the milk was well and truly spoiled, just enough to make it...questionable. As it is, I'm a little disappointed that what I'd hoped would be warm pudding is now just a sodden mess. Phooey.

So I made a very satisfying discovery in my kitchen earlier. Tucked away at the bottom of my dry foods drawer were these neat, little packages with Japanese writing all over them. Dried miso soup! I'd forgotten all about them, but with great delight, I emptied one into a mug and added hot water. In an instant, this dusty little brown cake was transformed! I now had steaming, tasty soup with bits of seaweed and even tiny little clams to round it out! Heaven!

Awhile back, my mom had given me a handful of these in various flavors after someone gave her a whole box full, and this was the last of the lot. I only wish I had more of them. The flavor and convenience of this wonderful snack only made me lament the fact you can't really find these packets in the U.S. With a variety of different ingredients instead of a flavor packet to make up the tasty-tasty goodness, they beat the hell out of Top Ramen, let me tell you.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about what kinds of "just add water" treats there are out there. I mean, there's Top Ramen, of course, but unless you've got other ingredients on hand to gussy it up, it's not going to be very satisfying. Jello? That's usually decent, if a trifle pedestrian. Instant oatmeal? Less satisfying that Jello, but I can live with it. Anybody else got a favorite "just add water" treat?

Rather than apologizing once more for not posting, I figure it's about time I sit down and actually write something of interest for all you poor souls who actually watch this space. Writer's block is a bitch, but I'm prepared to fight dirty. Ahem, so without further adieu, let me share with you some things that've been turning around and around inside the cluttered recesses of my mind.


A few months back, The Boyfriend introduced me to the the Syberia computer games. Now, I love these kind of point and click adventure games, so I thought Syberia and Syberia II were great, stuffed with gorgeous art, awkward voice-acting and lots of sweet puzzle solving, but they also prominently featured automata, self-operating clockwork creations. In fact, the games were pretty insistent that they were automata rather than robots. Who cares, you ask? Well, if someone had told me the game featured robots, I'd probably assume there would be talking computers and blinking lights as you voyaged through space, but 'automata' has entirely different connotations.

The automata in Syberia have this fantastic steampunk vibe to them, lots of rivets and worn metal. In fact, most everything in the game depends on a key to wind it up before you can get anywhere. Your primary transportation is a huge key-wound train, conducted by a sweetly neurotic and anal-retentive automaton conductor (think the love-child of the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and Woody Allen). Seeing so many neat wind-up creations piqued my interest. Later, as I was lost in a Wikipedia chain, I was delighted to learn how much automaton-magic exists outside of the digital realm.
Ever heard of Hisashige Tanaka? Neither had I until I found myself at the Wikipedia entry for Toshiba. That's Tanaka up there. The son of a tortoiseshell crafter, Tanaka was the founder of Toshiba and a brilliantly gifted inventor, responsible for the first Japanese steam engine and a famous clock (known as the 10,000-year clock or myriad clock) which seamlessly combined Japanese sensibilities with European technology. Cool, huh? But what does this have to do with automatons? Well, in addition to founding a company which has been in existence since 1875, he was also an avid enthusiast of karakuri ningyo, beautiful automata which retain the aesthetic sense of traditional Japanese dolls.
These are meticulously crafted clockwork creatures that can turn somersaults, serve tea or even shoot a bow and arrow. When I was small I thought the Chuck E. Cheese robots were fascinating in an ugly way, but these little dolls, developed lifetimes ago, could do probably do as much while being infinitely more attractive.

Today, I could go into a toy store, pick up a Sneezing Suzy doll and never give a second thought to what kind of effort goes into making it. Some kid might love it to pieces, but it's still going to be a mass-produced lump with individual elements assembled far away from wherever the raw materials were gathered or the design conceived. But the karakuri inspire a much different reaction. I'm not even that handy, but when I look at them, online and from an enormous distance, I get this itching in my fingers. I want to take them apart, learn how they work, and put them back together again. I want to understand why the springs spring, how the gears turn, and what I have to do to make my own.

I think on some level, those little automata seem somehow more real to me than the electronic brain humming in my laptop, but looking at the karakuri makes me want to understand both that much better. I find it wonderfully strange and amusing that I should be so inspired, not by the wonders of our time, but by the creaky, little clockwork creations of yesteryear, but if the Syberia series is any indication, somehow, I don't think I'm the only one.

So The Boyfriend left for some kind of advanced summer program on Sunday and won't be back for about a month.  I'm very happy for him, since it means he'll have a chance to display his glorious brilliance in a whole different state for awhile, but it's my birthday tomorrow, so his timing sucks.  Bleh.  That said, he did take me out for a lovely dinner before he left and gave me an early birthday present of The Absolute Sandman Vol. 1.  Amazing, if ridiculously heavy; I could kill someone with the heft on that thing.  Ahem.  But have I mentioned that I want to bear Neil Gaiman's children?  It was one of the best birthday gifts I've ever received, since it was a complete surprise and I'd been wanting it for ages.  Score one for The Boyfriend!  Alas, even that isn't quite enough to keep me from being a little glum over the prospect of celebrating my natal day alone, so does anyone have any thoughts on how I can shake my birthday blues?

So I'm now a university graduate. Go me.

Feels rather anticlimactic, honestly, and that's not just because of my lackluster punctuation.  I've now reached the stage of my life where I'm expected to make something of the massive potential that's been bubbling out of me since day one.  Unfortunately, I have no idea what.  It seems that B.A.'s in English have all the potential in the world and absolutely no direction.  At least, that's the general consensus I've gotten from fellow grads who don't aspire to be a teacher/doctor/lawyer, and even them I question.

I really enjoyed my college years, and I'm sorry they're over with, but I'm still optimistic for the future.  Couldn't for the life of me tell you why.  I think it's because I still have this naive trust in my bright and shiny, new EDUCATION to pull me out of whatever quandary I've landed myself in.  Never mind that I don't have any solid health insurance on the horizon.

My parents want me to start thinking about grad school or law school, probably more law school than grad school.  I'm sure they fear I'll become a starving academic otherwise.  Can't say that I blame them; PhDs in the liberal arts have it tough.  I'm guessing them folks either got more brains or balls than me to travel that road.  Of course, I still secretly want to be just like them, but not until I'm dead certain I'm prepared to give up most of my living space to books.  Law school provides a different set of considerations.  My parents, The Boyfriend, and the rest of my extended friends and family all seem to think I'd make a decent lawyer; I'm just not convinced I'd be a happy one.  Some of the worst people I've known were lawyers, but, then again, they were also some of the best.  With that kind of range, maybe lawyers are more human than we give them credit for.

Of course, all of these concerns are essentially moot, since any further education won't be for at least a year or so, but I like thinking out-loud.  Right now, what I really need is a job.  Nothing fancy.  Just something I can get out of bed for that won't make me miserable.  For whatever reason I missed the big career week on campus, so now, post-graduation, I'm combing job boards wondering exactly what the hell kind of "skill set" I have to offer.  I know, I know, I'm hopeless, but, hey, I'm a university graduate.  Go me.

Okay, so I know I haven't posted in awhile, and I promised fingers to those who cared to claim them.  In my defense, school's been busy as hell, it's finals time, and I'm graduating this week.  Yeah, that's right, graduating.  I'm actually going to have my delightfully practical B.A. in English.  I'd tell all the naysayers to quit their jeering, but I know that the piece of paper they hand me during the ceremony isn't legit, since I have to go pick up my diploma however many weeks after the actual graduation.  But I digress.

Given that my parents are coming to witness me sailing across the stage dressed up like a Hogwarts student in a couple of days, I make no promises that regular blog entries will resume anytime soon.  What I can promise is a picture of an adorable puppy butt:

I'm willing to bet that a fascinating psychological study could be made about the embedded advertisements Google has on some of their pages.  I'm still trying to get my head around what kind of algorithims they must be using to select some of these things.  I just sent myself a paper I wrote on a Freud article, and when I opened up Gmail the ads were as follows:

Study Sports Psychology
Argosy University Psychology Program - Learn More Today!
www.ArgosyU.edu

Sigmund Freud Archives
The Premier Site for Freud Scholars Original Correspondence & Works!
www.FreudArchives.org

Moleskine notebooks
ShipTheWeb offers the entire line of Moleskine notebooks for less
www.shiptheweb.com

Breastfeeding Bracelet
Milk Bands™ show left/right, what time & how long - all on one wrist!
www.milkbands.com

Okay, so the Freud Archives, that makes sense, so does the sports psychology ad.  I was writing about Freud, hence, making these utterly reasonable advertisments to encounter.  Score one for the ad algorithm!

Now, Moleskine notebooks?  That one took a little research for me to make sense of.  I was familiar with the notebooks, of course, having stood in many a bookstore line where there was the inevitable tidy display, touting it as the notebook of choice for such luminaries as Vincent Van Gogh and Oscar Wilde, but I didn't think Freud was anywhere on that list.  Carrying around a leather-bound notebook?  That would've given him loads to psychoanalyze, I'm sure, but after doing some hunting, I found that his great-granddaughter, Annie Freud, is a featured artist on the Moleskine website.  It's a stretch, but I'll buy. A for effort, ad algorithm.

Which brings us to the breastfeeding bracelet....What???  I mean, I suppose that this might tie in somehow to Freud's general pronouncements about infant libido, the Oedipus complex, and who knows what, but come on now, seriously, how in the world is someone going to casually connect the two?  For shame, ad algorithm!  No cookie for you! 

It boggles the mind, but it makes my crush on Google a little stronger for giving me little bits of extreme weirdness in the most unexpected places.

So for those of you who may not be aware, The Boyfriend is a consumate a cappella nerd.  He's a member of two groups, music manager for one, and constantly singing as a consequence.  Since I'm not a singer, refuse to be a groupie, and don't really want to be an a cappella widow, I've done the next best thing and become the unofficial member of his all-male singing group, Noteworthy.  What does this mean?  Well, besides the unfortunate consequence of knowing their music better than they do, I get roped into doing things like writing their shows, helping with choreography, and making flyers.

Now, they have a new show coming up in a couple of weeks, so I've been hard at work preparing, and while I have just about zero design experience, this hasn't stopped me from cobbling together what may be the single, greatest student flyer in the history of all flyers. Behold!

About a week ago, mom-bot got a couple of children's books by Sandra Boynton, Rhinoceros Tap and Dog Train, and told me to pick one.  Now, Boynton's a pretty famous illustrator and Rhinoceros Tap came out before I was born, but until my mom handed them to me I'd never heard of these before.  The books are great and all, but it's the cd you really want, trust me.  With song titles like, "I Love You More Than Cheese" and duets performed by such pairs as "Weird" Al Yankovic and Kate Winslet, to call them anything less than pure genius would be an insult to mankind.  Suffice to say, I never managed to pick a favorite.  In fact, I went back to the store just so I could get the third one, Philadelphia Chickens.  They're currently being sold for $5 a pop at Kohls department stores, with all proceeds going to charity, so it's not a bad deal.  She has another song related book, Your Personal Penguin, which wasn't there, but The Boyfriend managed to find this for me online, which has lifted my spirits immensely:
I'll be your personal penguin, if you'll be my hippo.  Let me tell you, that hippo knows where his towel is.  And Davy Jones, man...he just became infinitely cooler in my eyes, and I was already fascinated by The Monkees. 

What?  Not a fan of The Monkees?  C'mon now, how many well-known fictional bands can you really remember? The Blues Brothers?  Spinal Tap?  Jem & the Holograms?  The Monkees were in a class of their own.  Not only did they have a bajillion number 1 hits, they won two Emmys, were the first popular band to use a Moog synthesizer and were the first male tv stars to sport long hair!  Manufactured bubblegum pop-rock not withstanding, these guys packed quite a cultural kick in the ass.  And that's not even talking about the individual members, which included a guy who could play 12 different instruments, the heir to the inventor of White-Out, the current voice of the Snuggle Fabric Softener Bear, and my personal penguin.  Still you doubt their awesome powers?  Face it, after watching that video, you know that Davy Jones is the man.  David Freakin' Bowie changed his real name (David Robert Jones) so he wouldn't be confused with him, and we wouldn't have had Mr. Chekov on the original Star Trek series if not for Walter Koenig's uncanny resemblance!

Okay, I've managed to include references to Weird Al, a Moog synthesizer, and Star Trek.  I've officially reached my geek quota for the day.  Now it's time to turn off my brain and go watch some more pengi-potomous action.

I will post soon, but at the moment, I have reading to do, a show to write, sundry family members milling about in my living room, and I'm running on three and a half hours of sleep.  The end of Spring Break is always so refreshing, no?

Today, as is fairly frequent whenever I visit my parents, I got pulled into working at their office for a bit.  I've worked there on and off since I was a kid, and one of their receptionists had called in sick, so could I maybe...? Yeah, sure, after all, I am Super-Tracy of the many useful skills! But I didn't really bring down any work-appropriate clothes for the trip.  I mean, it's kind of cold, I'm a college student, and I'm on spring break, so, in my suitcase, t-shirts and jeans are reigning supreme.  Luckily, I also have a younger sister who lives at home, so I took advantage of this prime opportunity to raid her wardrobe. 

Now, my sister isn't a naturally tidy person, but she does have a habit of arranging things a certain way.  When I opened up her closet, I found that she's taken the time and effort to go and arrange her closet chromatically.  I'm the type to categorize things based on function rather than form, so I had to admit that her little textile rainbow was kind of neat to me.  For so few items, it struck me as a perfectly reasonable system, but then I was reminded of this:

Yeah, yeah, okay, I know.  I stink.  I haven't updated in weeks, but I swear, it's not my fault!  Well...okay, maybe it is my fault, but I'll be better now, honest!  If not, each of my readers has the right to hunt me down and break one of my fingers.  Given the number of people who actually watch this space, I run the risk of injuring...I dunno, four fingers?  Please, feel free to leave me a comment if I'm mistaken or you would like to stake a future claim on one of my fingers should I lapse again.

To make it up to all of you, here's a picture of a kitty:

When not writing fairly innocuous blog entries about geckos, I find myself getting sucked into things like puzzling, and this weekend was chockful of puzzle-related goodness, two glorious days of carefully controlled geekery.

The Game is coming, and we're been prepping for our ticket to glory. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, you can either go here, read my write-up from last year here, or just take my word for it and assume it involves a big group of nerds doing what we do best. In order to participate in this yearly event, you have to get a team of 6 or so together, send in an application, and be prepared to go without sleep for a couple of frantic days in the San Francisco Bay Area. This year, the application is asking for a video either of a reenactment of our favorite spy movies or a working Rube Goldberg machine. Despite not having any real engineering skills or mechanical knowhow, my team, S.P.I.E.S. (Sidney Poitier Is Extremely Sexy), decided it was a good idea to spend last Saturday constructing a Rube Goldberg machine.

It was amazing. I think I was probably on the brink of heart attack throughout the entire filming process, but it worked! Hopefully at some point, the video will be edited and we can put it online to share our monster baby with the world, but for now, just understand that besides using all the usual marbles, levers, and pulleys, we also had a rubber ducky, canned air, and fire. Setting it off for the first time was the most satisfying 6 seconds of my life. It took us all day and God knows how much duct tape, but we got that sucker to ring the bell, and it's all on camera, baby!

That said, Sunday was much quieter, and I could forget about puzzling and inefficient mechanisms. Yes, Sunday, the day of rest, perfect for doing homework or...playing Gateway II. *hangs head in shame* Oh, Anders Gustafsson...why do you do this to me? It looks like an innocent little game, with all kinds of shiny design awards pinned to it, but no, it's yet another little bundle of clever, soul-sucking puzzles. Haven't you put me through enough?! No more puzzles!

*sob*

Ex-excuse me...I...I have to go do a crossword...

This commercial is from Thailand, advertising ceiling tiles of all things, and I think it's just about the greatest thing since sliced bread.  If not for the completely unnecessary ending, I would say it's an example of a perfect ad.  It seems like an exaggeration, I know, but think about it, I now know the name of a ceiling tile company on the other side of the world, and I want to buy their product, despite having no need or particular desire for it.  It's a brilliant exploitation of lizard death.  Having said that, I should probably be evaluated for some kind deep-seated psychological imbalance.  I mean, there's no good reason why anyone should take such gleeful delight in the intense emotional sufferings of geckos, is there?

The Japanese are awesome. Admittedly, I'm probably more than a little biased, but how can you doubt the truth of that statement?  These are the people who gave us Nintendo, Kurosawa films, and sake!  Without the Japanese, I would never have spent hours upon hours of my life playing Wii Bowling or have fallen in love with a mustachioed plumber with a penchant for red.  Without the Japanese, I would not have learned about the joy of sushi.  Without the Japanese, I would never known that it was perfectly acceptable for people to have blue hair and eyes that take up about a third of their head.  Throwing aside all stereotypes of oversexed geisha girls and sword-swinging samurai, I think there's more than enough evidence to prove that the Japanese rule.

The weird thing is, there's also a long-standing fascination of English-speaking culture in Japan.  It's a crazy circle of obsesssion, I tell you.  Don't believe me?  Check out this video of Ayaka Kimura, a former J-pop star, giving guerrilla English lessons to fellow J-pop stars.  There are tons of these, but I think this is the best one.
"I'm...I love you." 'Nuff said.

And if that's not enough for your twisted Japanese fascination, you're in luck, because I've saved the best for last.
I have no idea how old this video is, but I think it's useful for thinking about how foreign cultures are perceived, besides being totally and absolutely hilarious.

Rather than promoting alienation or depression by posting something oozing with saccharine ickiness, I bring you the musical stylings of Armi and Danny.  Chances are you've already seen it, but if not, you're in for a treat.  Theirs is a message of love they've been sharing with the world since 1977.

Earlier this week I had posted a bit on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I mentioned the kick-ass pizza mobile I had as a kid.  I couldn't find a decent picture of it anywhere, so I hoped that at least some of you knew what I was talking about.  Thankfully, Neatorama came through for me and found a YouTube video of the commercial for this amazing contraption. 

Seriously, between this and the Ghostbusters firehouse, I'm sure you can get a sense of just how amazing playtime could get at my house.

His name is Perky, and he's so cute, I can't stand it!  Argh!!