cherry blossoms

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

via kottke, a story about an artist whose project illustrates our disconnect with the terrorism that so many other countries live with every day.

from alyssa wright’s site:

The project starts in a backpack outfitted with a small microcontroller and a GPS unit. Recent news of bombings in Iraq are downloaded to the unit every night, and their relative location, to the center of the city, are superimposed on a map of Boston. If the wearer walks in a space in Boston that correlates to a site of violence in Baghdad, the backpack detonates and releases a compressed air cloud of confetti, looking like a mixture between smoke and shrapnel and the white blossoms of a cherry tree, completely engulfing the wearer. Each piece of confetti is inscribed with the name of a civilian who died in the war, and the circumstances of their death.

genius.

and everything art should be.

smell yo dick

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reading the sunday new york times (which is huge and very sensibly comes on saturday to give you additional time to read it) i ran across a blurb about riskay, a rapper from bartow, florida.

my dad lived in bartow, so it caught my eye. also, riskay looks like a drag queen, so that caught my eye too.

anyway, of all places to learn about a new rapper, you’d think the new york times would come in last. but they were dead on target this time. she’s brilliant, and her big myspace-popular song is called “smell yo dick”. head over and listen…it’s fantastic on many levels. catchy tune, risque subject matter, slightly satirical, and boldly feminist in a reclamatory kind of way.

the times thinks she should clean up her act and try for mass radio play.

i think she’s fine the way she is.

still liking that obama guy

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

i haven’t weighed in on this as yet, but i’ve been keeping my eye on obama. i’m on his mailing list. liked his last book. and with his victory last night in the iowa caucuses, things are looking good for him.

from the article:

Mr. Obama’s victory in this overwhelmingly white state was a powerful answer to the question of whether America was prepared to vote for a black person for president. What was remarkable was the extent to which race was not a factor in this contest. Surveys of voters entering the caucuses also indicated that he had won the support of many independents, a development that his aides used to rebut suggestions from rivals that he could not win a general election. In addition, voters clearly rejected the argument that Mr. Obama does not have sufficient experience to take over the White House, a central point pressed by Mrs. Clinton.

that addresses two of my biggest concerns. i want a winner, and i want a leader. perhaps obama is both.

i’ll vote my conscience in the primaries…i always do. but it would be nice to see a democrat back in the white house.

keeping my eye on you, obama.

updated wordpress theme

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just installed the 4.0 version of scott wallick’s plaintxtblog theme, which in layman’s terms is the file that makes this blog looks like it does. the change should be invisible to you, but the underlying functionality is better for me. i tweak it a bit to make it my own:

» i edit the styles.css file so that everything except the blog titles are in lowercase. pretentious, i know, but a queerspace.com tradition dating to 1998.

» i edit the header.php file to use the optimal title plugin (a better page title for the search engines) update: this plugin was deprecated and the functionality has been incorporated into wordpress. now all you have to do is make this change:

wp_title('»',TRUE,'right')

to the header.php file (take out the php the title at the end and the various slashes, so it looks like “post title » queerspace.com”)

to the style.css file add this to make the “search for” text go away:
.widget_search .screen-reader-text {
display:none;
}

» i delete the <meta name="description"> line so i can use the head meta description plugin (a better page description for the search engines). update: no longer necessary with plaintxt 4.6

now you know.

and now it’s in writing, so the next time i upgrade i’ll remember what to do.

and if you see anything odd or something i’ve forgotten, leave me a comment.

update: i also changed the way that the category dates display by editing “wp-includes/general-template.php” using a tip from wordpress.org. this is an edit to the wordpress files, not the theme, but as this post is serving as a repository for my edits, what the hell. also, updated the footer to include the creative commons license and other info. and also, edited “wp-includes/default-widgets.php” so that “select category” and “select month” are lowercase.

update: also, when you update your wordpress version, you should delete the readme.html file so that your wordpress version isn’t easily accessible.

getting caught up

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with the holidays upon us, it’s been a while since i posted. here’s what’s been going on:

» we had a holiday/housewarming party. tremendous fun, attended by ~30 of our friends at one point or another. we had it on saturday 12/1 from 5pm until ???. the ??? turned out to be about 1:30am. old friends actually schlepped to riverdale, and given the number of manhattan-centric friends we have this was no small feat and a testament to the strength of our friendships. we also had quite a few new friends from the building. food cooked by us, some catering from the garden gourmet and mike’s deli at arthur avenue, lots of wine and spirits, duck fart shots (jack daniels, bailey’s, kahlua) courtesy of our friend suzanne, great conversation, good music, and some spirited wii competition.

» kirk and i flew to tampa to visit my mother. she’s in assisted living in sun city center, and it was a quick in-and-out short weekend, so please all my florida friends, don’t get upset that i didn’t visit you! she’s doing well, and it was good to see her, my sister, and meet my nephew’s new s.o. sherry. they just bought a house together. i know how they feel!

» kirk and i saw “the belsnickel scrooge” at genesius theatre in reading we visited kirk’s parents for the holidays this past weekend. kirk has to work the day after christmas, so we’re just staying home for the holidays this year. but we did want to visit them, and we had tickets for the aforementioned show, so two birds with one stone. the show itself was marvelous — it’s a pennsylvania dutch adaptation of “a christmas carol”, complete with the belsnickel. the belsnickel only visits bad children and beats them with a stick. talk about negative reinforcement. anyway, it was lots of fun, even for a non-pennsylvania-dutch-person.

» the apartment is pretty much finished. kirk did the last bit of painting (mainly window frames, and the bathroom). someday soon we’ll have the tub refinished, and at some point we’ll just redo the whole bathroom, but the big projects are done. let the myriad small projects commence.

» we saw kiki and herb at carnegie hall. last time they were there, we had tickets and forgot to go. not this time. it was a good show, with old classics and new material. nothing’s ever going to touch small intimate joe’s pub shows with kiki climbing over the tables, but it was thrilling to see them on that stage nonetheless. saw old friends as well — our friend jared, the show’s producer; and john cameron mitchell. saw alan cumming as well — what a cutie.

» we saw the radio city christmas show. it’s the 75th anniversary, and they’ve beefed up the show considerably. it’s a rockettes-fest — they are everywhere in the show, much more than normally. lots of new numbers, all good, along with the classics you want to see. and they are selling fantastic souvenir martini glasses with rockettes’ legs instead of the stem. we see the show every year, but this year was special. if you have any inclination to go, it’s a must-see year.

» we sent out our annual holiday cards. this was my year to send them, and i wanted to ratchet down a bit due to last year’s “kirk and jamie sing holiday songs” extravaganza, which was great fun but very time-consuming. it was a simple but elegant card printed on silver paper. if you didn’t get a card for some reason, and you think i would have sent you one, let me know. and if your cd is not playing correctly, let us know. we’ve had some reports of cd-burnout (i think the ones you burn yourself don’t last as long), and we’re happy to replace your old copy.

that’s the major stuff. happy holidays, everyone.

thanksgiving plans

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

first of all, a day early, but i won’t be blogging tomorrow — happy thanksgiving!

our plans?

usually, they involve lots of yummy pennsylvania dutch starchiness when we visit kirk’s parents, but this year we’re staying home. kirk’s parents had a previous commitment (on thanksgiving? whatever.) and it’s our first year in our new apartment anyway. so instead of a food network thanksgiving, or a southern-ish-style thanksgiving, we’re having a martha stewart living thanksgiving. the turkey recipe from the november issue, to be specific. here’s what’s planned so far, with more probably to be added:

» brined turkey and stuffing, a la martha — we got a fresh turkey from our local farmer’s market, and we’re soaking it in a spiced brine for 24 hours prior to cooking. yummo, as rachael ray would say to martha if they weren’t blood enemies. the turkey will be stuffed with some kind of yummy stuffing, the details of which i can’t remember. the most important stuffing note, though, is that the recipe calls for the stuffing to be placed in cheesecloth before placing in the turkey. that way, you can take out the stuffing when the turkey is done, and cook the stuffing longer so you don’t get salmonella or whatever. this is a major victory for me. kirk always worried about the ill effects of stuffing a turkey, so he’d never let me put stuffing loose in the turkey. never mind that i lived my entire life doing it, and never died as a result. ah, compromise.

» organic green bean casserole — they had a display of organic fried onions and organic green beans and organic cream of mushroom soup at whole foods, and the concept of organic green bean casserole cracked me up so much that i had to buy it. maybe we can have organic jell-o salad for dessert, to complete the ’70s vibe.

» cranberry salad — my family historically makes the standard cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries. one bag cranberries, one cup sugar, one cup water. boil. kirk this year made his aunt marcia’s cranberry salad, which has nuts, and oranges, and chopped fresh cranberries, and sugar, and oysters, and chopped chives, and other stuff i’m forgetting. well, not really oysters and chopped chives. but it’s far too busy a recipe for me. and nonstandard thanksgiving fare to boot. and he made at least 18 pounds of it. i’m skeptical. we’ll see.

» cope’s corn — no thanksgiving would now be complete for me without it. see, i can change.

» potato filling — this is mashed potatoes with celery and onion and bread and 11 herbs and spices according to the colonel’s secret recipe. actually, kirk’s mother’s recipe. but it is yummy. i’ve adapted to this, as well. great comfort food.

» gravy — lotsa lotsa gravy. made from pan drippings and roux, the right way.

» steamed broccoli — there has to be something green, right? or i may open a can of mustard greens.

» pumpkin cheesecake — a bit of a twist on tradition, but one i can handle.

i think that’s it. i’m probably forgetting something. but you get the gist.

here’s hoping your thanksgiving is as blessed as ours will be.

our wii media center

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who needs an apple tv? not us.

we have a mac in our “home office”, which is in fact a shallow closet. elsewhere in the apartment, we have a wii, and we have the wii hooked up to the hdtv, and we have the wii hooked up to the home theater. and the mac and the wii are on the same network.

enter wii transfer.

for a $19 shareware fee, which i paid and so should you when you use shareware, this little program feeds music, movies, photos, and browser bookmarks from your mac to the wii’s internet browser. so if i want to listen to itunes music through the stereo, or watch a downloaded video file on the hdtv, or watch a slideshow of my iphoto pictures, i can now just fire up the wii, use the wii’s browser to pull up the content, and bob’s your uncle, as they say in paraguay. it installed easily with practically no configuration, and worked perfectly out of the box.

there are a couple of minor drawbacks. you can’t play purchased drm-encoded video, so all my wonder showzen episodes bought in itunes stay on the mac. and audio files don’t stream yet (they are copied over to the wii on the fly), so you run into wii memory issues with large audio files. no radioshift yet.

but those are very minor quibbles. quibbles i can put up with when spending $19 for wii transfer, as opposed to $299 or even $399 for an apple tv. we listened to itunes playlists all weekend.

great stuff.

unsolicited recommendation: homedecorators.com

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

for years, kirk and i just left our liquor bottles in a disorganized clump on the floor. with our holiday party coming up, we thought it might be nice to have a small liquor cabinet to put the bottles in, something that had a top that could double as a small dry bar.

so kirk found this lovely and well-priced corner cabinet at homedecorators.com, and he ordered it.

the website was well-organized and very informative, the ordering process was straightforward, and the shipping was expedient (delivered less than a week after the order was placed, good for such a large object).

we were especially pleased with the quality of the shipped product. it was partially assembled, and the pieces were clearly labeled, each with its own letter of the alphabet. the assembly directions were clear and literate, and it was fully together in about 20 painless minutes.

since our entire kitchen came from ikea, we are not strangers to furniture assembly. the homedecorators.com assembly experience was much better than the ikea experience, and considering how happy we were with ikea, that’s saying something. the parts were of superior quality. no pressboard, all hard wood, better hardware (bolts, screws, etc.).

for a price comparable to ikea, we got a higher-quality product and a better overall customer experience. we’ll be repeat customers with homedecorators.com, without a doubt.

your creation museum report

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via daring fireball, a tour of the creation museum, from just the right perspective.

here’s a sample:

Let me say this much: I have to admit admiration for the pure balls-out, high-octane creationism that’s on offer here. Not for the Creation Museum that mamby-pamby weak sauce known as “Intelligent Design,” which tries to slip God by as some random designer, who just sort of got the ball rolling by accident. Screw that, pal: The Creation Museum’s God is hands on! He made every one of those animals from the damn mud and he did it no earlier than 4004 BC, or thereabouts. It’s all there in the book, son, all you have to do is look.

i had to stop reading, because i was at work and in danger of laughing so hard i’d disturb the nearby cubedwellers.

this one’s a classic.

entertainment on strike

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

the world of entertainment is on strike. and how is it affecting me?

not much, i have to say. at least not directly.

first there’s the writer’s strike in hollywood. i guess that if you were a big tv watcher, you’d be upset about this. no new episodes of csi or lost or letterman or whatever, and all. but, having given up television (no cable tv, and our tv doesn’t have a tuner, so no over-the-air broadcasts either), i could care less. if the strike goes on long enough it could eventually affect the movies, and i’d care marginally more about that, but there are enough movies on netflix to last a lifetime. if they stopped making new movies tomorrow, i’d still never get to watch all the movies i’d like to see.

second strike is the stagehands on broadway. we don’t go to as many shows as we used to, so this doesn’t directly affect me in that sense. however, it definitely affects the economy of new york city, so in that sense i’m at least indirectly affected. but again, there are plenty of live entertainment options in new york — some broadway shows, off-broadway, off-off broadway, concerts, cabarets, and so on.

in general i support the concept of unions — we wouldn’t have much in the way of benefits and rights as workers if they hadn’t fought for them. and there are many jobs that i wouldn’t take unless there was a union to represent me. and when i taught school, i always belonged to the union — even though i agreed that they promoted and tolerated incompetence, i still saw the overall value in membership.

i think the writers have a valid point. everything’s going online, and if something they wrote is rebroadcast on the internet or sold via itunes, there should be some payment for that. of course, if the strike continues, there may not be much of an audience left for their product, given people’s limited and continually fracturing attention span. but they have a point, and they should press for a solution if they think the risk is worth it.

i don’t think it helps their image, though, to have big stars on the picket lines, and jay leno bringing them donuts, and so on. i’ll bet the vast majority of striking writers are middle class folks with middle class incomes, and all those big stars do is leave casual observers with the impression that all writers are wealthy people looking for even more wealth.

the broadway stagehands seem to me to have less of a point. i’ll be the first to admit that i’m not fully informed, but from what i can gather, one of their main demands is to retain the right to tell producers how many union members each show must hire.

i’m guessing that most people would think that an unreasonable demand. i know i do.

i’d love to have the contractual right to tell my company that they had to employ a set number of my co-workers. who wouldn’t? but that’s not reasonable. and while i’m sure greedy producers drive up the cost of broadway tickets, having to hire union employees regardless of actual need isn’t helping either.

for the sake of the economies of new york and los angeles, i hope both strikes are settled soon.

personally, though, i don’t care much either way.

update: with the broadway strike, what’s at issue is controlling how many workers are present at the load-in for the show (when all the sets, etc., are brought into the theater). i have less of a problem with that — i dont think the producers should be telling the union how many people that takes.

for the grammar nerd in you

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via daring fireball: Philip B. Corbett, who oversees language issues for the [NY Times] newsroom, is answering readers’ questions this week.

this is by far my favorite NY Times article in recent memory. you may think that odd, given that i’m posting about it on a blog that has no capital letters, but it’s true.

update: here’s what mr. corbett says about the phrase “in recent memory”:

A small sample of other words and phrases that my colleagues and I have identified as overworked and deserving a bit of rest:

in recent memory — An almost meaningless phrase.

it’s a long article, and obviously i posted the link before reaching the end of it.

sometimes i just can’t win.

not going to dubai

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

i’ve never thought much about going to dubai. it seems to me like las vegas in the desert, except that it costs much more to go there, and you can’t gamble. there’s shopping, but if i want to go high-end shopping, which i don’t, i have a whole nyc full of exclusive shops. there’s, i suppose, seeing the desert.

you get the drift.

anyway, after reading this article in today’s ny times, i’m quite sure i will never go. from the article:

Alexandre Robert, a French 15-year-old, was having a fine summer in this tourist paradise on the Persian Gulf. It was Bastille Day and he and a classmate had escaped the July heat at the beach for an air-conditioned arcade.

Just after sunset, Alex says he was rushing to meet his father for dinner when he bumped into an acquaintance, a 17-year-old native-born student at the American school, who said he and his cousin could drop Alex off at home.

There were, in fact, three Emirati men in the car, including a pair of former convicts ages 35 and 18, according to Alex. He says they drove him past his house and into a dark patch of desert, between a row of new villas and a power plant, took away his cellphone, threatened him with a knife and a club, and told him they would kill his family if he ever reported them.

Then they stripped off his pants and one by one sodomized him in the back seat of the car. They dumped Alex across from one of Dubai’s luxury hotel towers.

Alex and his family were about to learn that despite Dubai’s status as the Arab world’s paragon of modernity and wealth, and its well-earned reputation for protecting foreign investors, its criminal legal system remains a perilous gantlet when it comes to homosexuality and protection of foreigners.

The authorities not only discouraged Alex from pressing charges, he, his family and French diplomats say; they raised the possibility of charging him with criminal homosexual activity, and neglected for weeks to inform him or his parents that one of his attackers had tested H.I.V. positive while in prison four years earlier.

nothing like institutionalized homophobic ignorance to attract tourists to your desert paradise, right? any glbt person who goes to dubai has lost their frigging mind.

correction: anyone at all who goes to dubai has lost their frigging mind.

happy halloween 2007

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

kirk’s pumpkin on the left, my pumpkin on the right. click on the thumbnail to enlarge the picture.

i’m a strict adherent to the “triangles and variations thereof” school of pumpkin carving. kirk believes in making his pumpkins look as much like ike from south park as possible.

i’m looking forward to actually having trick-or-treaters — we’ve never had them in all these years of living in new york, but in our coop we are guaranteed to have them.

trendspotting: music without earphones

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

i’ve seen this enough recently that i think it’s a trend-in-waiting.

after years and years of everyone wearing headphones and listening to their own music in their own world, i’m seeing a growing number of younguns going headphoneless on the subway. not with big boom boxes, but with small devices with a small external speaker.

i kind of like it, as long as it’s occasional and not too ubiquitous. i don’t mind listening to snatches of music that i’d never hear otherwise. and i like it when people figure out slightly subversive ways to buck the current trend. my biggest objection is that the speakers are of such crappy quality that the music sounds awful — i’m guessing that the volume is maxed out so the speakers sound blown.

now, if this ranges toward half the world carrying boom boxes on the subway and turning them up loudly, then i’m going to have a problem. and i’m most definitely in the minority on this, i’m sure. but on a small scale, i’m ok with the concept.

food on the florida trip

~ jamie ~ 4 Comments

kirk’s been doing a great job with the florida vacation recap, with more to come, so as promised i’m kicking in with a bit of a food overview.

dinner on landing was at a branch of the orlando ale house. big cheap beer and big cheap food — kirk had an extremely brown fried seafood platter, and i had a not-too-bad shrimp cajun fettucine alfredo thing, and $2 fosters on tap. slow service and a noisy atmosphere, although it was good to watch a bit of the tail end of the baseball game. food was edible but not much more than that.

friday of course was epcot food & wine festival day. yummo, as rachael ray would chirp. walk around the world showcase at epcot and eat appetizers all day. how can you beat that? while we didn’t eat absolutely everything, we put a pretty good dent in it all. each plate was ~$3, and kirk and i of course shared all plates.

in order of consumption, with occasional notes:

    » Peru: Cause de Cangrejo (crabmeat and sauce on a polenta-like cake); Arroz con Pato (rice with duck)

    » Canada: Canadian Cheddar Cheese Soup (cheesy and bacon-y); Maple Glazed Salmon with Roasted Corn and Arugula

    » Greece: Spanakopita

    » New Zealand: Lamb Slider (awesome gravy and scone-y roll)

    » Oklahoma: Three Sisters’ Soup (corn, beans, squash); Seared Buffalo with Scalloped Wild Onions

    » Morocco: Bastilla (like a samosa, with middle eastern flavors and phyllo dough), Walnut Baklava

    » Italy: Insalata Caprese, Lemonato

    » Germany: Debriziner Sausage with Sauerkraut in a Pretzel Roll

    » Turkey: Meze (can’t remember the specific ingredients, but this is definitely misnamed. meze means “appetizer” in Turkey, so it’s a generic description rather than a specific dish. come on, epcot. step it up.); Manti with Yogurt Sauce (a kind of turkish ravioli — this is a specific meze)

    » South Africa: Durban Spiced Chicken on a Skewer (nice Asian flavors); Bobotie with Mango Chutney (spicy minced meat with an eggy topping); Spice Cake with Marinated Fruit (best dessert of the day).

    » Ireland: Boxty (a potato pancake) with Bacon Chips and Kerrygold Garlic and Fresh Herb Butter; Irish Cheese Plate and Brown Bread with Apple Chutney and Kerrygold Irish Butter; Bunratty Meade Honey Wine (far too sweet for me but still tasty).

    » Chile: Shrimp con Pebre Salsa (like gazpacho with shrimp minus the liquid); Tomaticán with Manchego Cheese (tomato and corn stew). Both were outstanding.

my favorite was, surprisingly for me, oklahoma. they were there to celebrate their 100th anniversary of statehood. the three sisters’ stew was the most flavorful dish i had all day — absolutely delicious. and the buffalo was tender and tasty, and the onions were really strong and balanced the slightly gamy buffalo well.

that evening, we had tickets for the south african wine event, basically a big tent with about 25 south african wine producers, each of whom had 2 or 3 wines to taste. definitely took advantage of the spit buckets on that one. i like the wines but found them uniformly too alcohol-tasting (their wines averaged 14% alcohol, strong for wine). kirk is the wine guy, so maybe he’ll give details of the ones we liked. the food was buffet style — good but basically an expanded version of what we had sampled from the south africa nosh stand.

lunch saturday, with momfla, was at the festival de sabor in ybor city. big plates of asada-style pork, moro (black beans and white rice), yucca, and platanos (fried plantains). it was a booth run by a local restaurant, and unfortunately i don’t know which one, but the food was amazing.

dinner saturday was a papa john’s pizza in the room. we were exhausted, watching the baseball game, and craving convenience. not a bad pizza as chains go, but totonno’s has nothing to worry about.

lunch sunday, again with momfla, was in ruskin at by the bay cafe — mom and i had been before, but kirk hadn’t been. they specialize in real maryland crab dishes — soup, authentic crab cakes, etc. we had crab dip as an appetizer, along with an order of battered and deep fried portobello mushrooms. crab dip worderful, mushrooms ok. momfla had a small plate with broiled salmon (i think), kirk had crab cakes (all crab and practically no breading — good stuff) and i had blackened grouper (perfectly cooked, moist and flavorful). there were sides of coleslaw and potato salad, the choices we made from the list of sides — both were great in that mayonnaise-y, southern way. you never know where you’ll find quality food. this place is definitely worth the trek.

kirk and i wanted to have a great last-night-in-florida meal, just the two of us, preferably romantic, so we asked the desk clerk at the holiday inn express in bradenton for a recommendation. she chose the beachhouse on bradenton beach, and she could not have made a better choice. it’s old florida — they have a stretch of undeveloped beach, and you sit on it outdoors at a table, watching the sunset and the moonset, listening to an acoustic guitarist playing island-ish but not jimmy buffett music, drinking boat drinks, and eating wonderful food. kirk had never had conch before, so despite his aversion to bouncy food, we split an appetizer of conch fritters. the conch in conch fritters is ground, so he didn’t have to avoid the bounce as it wasn’t there. light, not at all oily, and delicious. next stop for kirk: gator tail. for the entree, we both had surf and turf. the steak was just ok (ribeye, not the most flavorful cut, though it was tender and well-prepared) but the grilled lobster was remarkable. perfectly cooked, unadorned except for the drawn butter. we had dessert (can’t remember what — kirk?) and coffee. service was attentive and friendly — our waitress gave us a customized list of local beds-and breakfast that we’ll probably check out come winter.

obviously, we ate very well on the trip. but extravagantly. i must admit that the excess affected me negatively — physically, emotionally, and spiritually. and on my return, i did a three-day brown rice fast and haven’t had meat since, except for using up some chicken broth in a weekend soup kirk made.

and then i read the omnivore’s dilemma, which kirk had bought and was lying about the apartment.

sometimes the signs are all pointing a certain way. i’m going to be vegetarian again for a while. we’ll see where it leads.

sioux city sux, not gay

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from my yahoo! home page this morning:

City leaders have scrapped plans to do away with the Sioux Gateway Airport’s unflattering three-letter identifier — SUX — and instead have made it the centerpiece of the airport’s new marketing campaign. The code, used by pilots and airports worldwide and printed on tickets and luggage tags, will be used on T-shirts and caps sporting the airport’s new slogan, “FLY SUX.”

make lemonade out of lemons, and all. were they given any other options?

Sioux City officials petitioned the Federal Aviation Administration to change the code in 1988 and 2002. At one point, the FAA offered the city five alternatives — GWU, GYO, GYT, SGV and GAY — but airport trustees turned them down.

my god, how could you turn down “gay”? think of the glbt tourist dollars that could be coming your way. sioux city: the new p-town. key west of the extreme north.

you can’t make this stuff up if you try.

real advice from fake steve

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

fake steve jobs on why to avoid business school, and school in general, if you want to truly be successful.

from the article:

Business school dude, listen up. Forget shadowing me. You’ll never be like me, because I’m one of a kind. I came out and they broke the mold. But if you want to learn how I operate, do the following. Quit business school. Go work at some shitty electronics company and learn how to source components. Travel to India and seek enlightenment. Grow your hair down to your ass. Take LSD. Smoke pot. Live on a commune. Sell your van and start a company. Put yourself in danger. Create a situation where if you fail you’ll be unable to pay your rent and you’ll be out on the street. Struggle to make payroll. Get screwed by suppliers. Learn to screw them back. Bounce checks. Run out of money. Go hungry. Be scared.

wow. i really wish i had the guts to do that. but i’ve resigned myself to the safety of dronedom.

The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory

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via daring fireball, a wired story about one man’s quest to beat the decades-old cannonball run cross country driving record.

from the article:

For nearly two years, Roy — a pale, shaved-headed, independently wealthy ectomorphic veteran of the Gumball 3000 road rally — has obsessed sleeplessly over every detail and thrown money at every possible electronic connivance. His mission is intended as a triumph of the mind over the base adrenal impulses of common speeders. His route is nothing like the careless line a spring-breaker might plot across a Rand McNally — it’s a painstakingly GPS-mapped and Google Earth-practiced manifest desti-document, waypointed mile by mile for detours, construction, and speed traps.

it’s an amazing piece of writing that hunter s. thompson would have been proud to hang his name on.

those demonic black-clad youth

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

from a news article about the school shootings in cleveland:

Coon, who was white, stood out in the predominantly black school for dressing in a goth style, wearing a black trench coat, black boots, a dog collar and chains, she said….Police believe Coon, wearing a Marilyn Manson shirt, black jeans and black nail polish, targeted the two teachers he shot Wednesday.

why is it that all these kids who shoot people in school are always dressed in black?

it isn’t, that’s why. it just sticks out in your mind that they are, because the press always notes the clothing and style of the kid when it doesn’t conform to their perception of societal norms.

what does dressed in black have to do with his motives for committing the crime? absolutely nothing. maybe, however, this has something to do with it:

The Department of Children and Family Services was called to Coon’s home in 2000 because he had burns on his arms and scratches on his forehead, the newspaper said.

maybe someone should have spent more time on that. but why bother, you know. the weirdo dresses in black and listens to marilyn manson. try to ignore him.

it’s easier.