doodledee

Joseph Stiglitz has an article in The Atlantic that provides an excellent insider's view of the economic boom of the 1990's. It touches on everything: unemployment, inflation, deregulation, tax breaks, bailouts, and funny accounting. He's dumbed it down enough that even those of us with no money left in our 401k's can understand what he's talking about. It's a wee long, but it's a good read.
On a fun note, if you haven't seen it by now, here's the frickin' greatest optical illusion ever made by anyone ever. >poof< I just blew my mind.

This morning Libby and I went down and watched the Twin Cities Marathon run by. We started by riding our bikes down to Lake Harriet and watching at the 6-mile mark. Later, we drove over to St. Paul and set up camp at the 24-mile mark to cheer people to the finish.

It's really neat to watch the race in person. As you stand on the side of the route - sipping coffee and bitching about the weather - a river of runners rolls past you. And it rolls. And it rolls. And it rolls. Even in the early stages of the race, it can take a good hour for the bulk of the field to go by. Not that it feels like a long time, it's just that big of a river.

Beyond the runners themselves are the enormous crowds of people that come out to the watch the race. Some ring bells, some beat drums, some hold signs, and some just yell and scream. The Southwest High School pep band stood and played at a water station. They sucked, but it didn't matter. This one lady stood at the 24-mile mark and yelled encouragement to anyone that stopped to walk. (One girl in particular walked by in tears. Most of us felt bad and looked away. This lady looked right at her and told her she 'looked strong' and that she was gonna make it. If that's not a good person, I don't know what is.) An older lady on the other side of the street from us stood and banged on a cowbell with a big stick for 45 minutes without stopping. I don't think she said a single word.
People do all this to support of a bunch of strangers out for a run. That's pretty damn cool.

While watching it all, I again realized how huge of a kick I get out of seeing so many people genuinely trying their best at something. And what's more, so many other people genuinely wanting them to succeed at it. It's like a collective mentality of kick-ass-ness. I wish more stuff in life worked like that.

Tim Pawlenty's new political ad is a hoot. It's an education themed ad, which is one of the biggest hot-button issues for Minnesota voters. While standing out front of his old high school in St. Paul, he looks at the camera and says:

A lot of people ask me: Do I support every child having a good school?

A lot of people ask you that? Really? Then they must be your friends, because that's a pretty stupid question to ask of anybody, especially a gubernatorial candidate. Do those same people ask you if you're in favor of clean drinking water or - and I don't mean to draw you into a big scandal here - if you're opposed to kicking puppies? If they do, then you should probably find somebody else to make commercials for you, because these people are asking the wrong questions.
They're leaving out the hard ones.

I bought one of those giant cans of Slim Jims the other day. I was walking through Target and I saw they were on sale and I figured they'd be a good snack at work so I just threw them in the cart. It was a classic impulse buy, and I when I got home I laughed at myself for thinking I needed 500 Slim Jims.
Some people feel that impulse buys are the root of all consumerism evil. I think they're just kind of silly and harmless. Like purchasing a rabbit for your kids at Easter, which, according to this article, is frequently an impulse purchase:

Rabbits purchased around Easter time are often impulse buys, bought because they are cute and cuddly. Many of these rabbits are under the age they should be weaned at and are soon sick due to the stress, improper feeding, too much handling, etc.
The ones who survive the trials of Easter morning... grow up, outgrow kids and cages and welcomes. Many are dumped on the streets by people who figure rabbits can survive in the "wild". They can't and they don't. These rabbits die. Rabbits are domestic, not wild. If put out on the streets or in the woods, they rarely survive more than a few weeks. It's also highly illegal to just abandon an animal.

Whoa. Maybe impulse buys aren't just silly. And maybe they aren't just the root of all consumerism evil... maybe they're actually the root of all evil! Slim Jim = Impulse buy. Impulse buy = dead bunnies. When you buy a pack of tic-tacs in the check out line at Target: bunnies die. Or if you pick up those 3/.99 Nut Rolls at Fleet Farm - that's right - bunnies die. What a dilemma.
Evil or not, I gotta believe that 90% of Slim Jim sales are impulse purchases. I mean really, who takes out the time to sit down and write out a grocery list that includes Slim Jims? I bet nobody, that's who. And since somebody is buying them, that only leaves the dorks like me who think that salted mystery meat sticks will make a good afternoon snack for the next 4 weeks to impulse buy them.
So anyway, I bring the Slims to work this morning and around mid-afternoon I go in for a snack. As I'm opening the can, I notice the nutritional information. After careful study I see that a 'serving size' for a Slim Jim is 7 slims. Whaaaaa!? You're supposed to sit there and unwrap 7 beef sticks for a snack? You'd have wrappers piled all over your desk! You'd look like a total pig! As I see it, they should either increase the size of the jim or modify the nutritional information so that a serving is a single slim.
I'm giving ConAgra until the end of the year to resize their product and modify their marketing strategy to discourage impulse purchases. If nothing changes, expect me to launch a 'Save Rabbits, Boycott Slim Jims' campaign sometime around the middle of January.

Today's new word is whoseval.
whos·e·val (hooz ee val)
 v whos·e·val·ing, whos·e·val·ed
 noun whos·e·val·er

1. Evaluating who will be attending an event before deciding if you will attend. Commonly preceded by the phrase "who's all going?".
2. One who inquires about other attendees before deciding if he/she will attend themselves.

Sample usage

• Tom is such a whosevaler, he always has to know who's coming before he decides.


• Hold up, Tom is whosevaling before he decides if he's gonna come along.

Lately, I've been eating the occasional fig newton for a snack at work. They're a little sweet, but unlike a cookie, they're almost kind of good for you. They are, after all, not cookies, rather, fruit and cake.
So anyways, yesterday afternoon I reach for my newtz and notice that the one on top is a little hard because the package wasn't sealed properly over the weekend. I take it out and put it on my desk and forget all about it. It's just a dumb cookie, right? Or is it?
This morning, I notice it sitting there, so I decide to try and feed it to Colin. Being unaware of the newton's history, he picks it up and starts munching. Gross, right? Apparently not. He said it was all crispy on the outside, like it was toasted. Toasted, you say? That gives me an idea... Why not toast all your newtons?
I took my 3 remaining cookies and headed to the lab, errrr, toaster oven. What I found is that with an even, medium toasting on both sides - achieved by flipping halfway through the toasting process - the newton did indeed get all crispy on the outside and yummy gooey on the inside. Eureka! I immediately sent a note to the elves at Nabisco to let them in on the discovery. I'm sure a massive marketing campaign is just around the corner, but while you wait for that, start toasting your newtons!

I heard a few minutes of that Casey Kasem Top 40 radio show while driving home from Rochester this morning. I think it's been 10 years since I heard it last. As luck would have it, I tuned in right before the 'long distance dedication' song, so I got to hear the sappy letter from some 17-year-old girl who had broken up with her boyfriend only to realize it was all a mistake and that she still loved him. I can't remember the song she requested, but I think it may have been that Brian Adams song 'Everything I Do, I Do it for You'. It was touching... In a Jerry Springer kind of way.

So here I am, driving my Jeep down a windy highway on a lonely Sunday morning, bawling my eyes out. Ok, ok, there wasn't actually any bawling, but it was kinda windy. Windy like that annoying kind of highway wind that tries to push your car into the ditch as soon as you manage to work yourself into one of those bleary-eyed highway driving trances that make the time go by faster. Stupid wind... I hate that wind. Anyway, as soon as the song started playing, I changed the station in search of more likeable tunes. And that's when it hit me.
I have missed every long distance dedication that has ever been dedicated.
We've gotta be talking hundreds, if not thousands of dedications over the years. What are the odds that I wasn't the target of [at least] one of those dedications? And I missed them all. It's just not fair.

So I guess the point of all this is that if you dedicated a song to me and never heard anything, please don't be offended, I never even heard it. Please feel free to rededicate or to stay unjustifiably pissed forever. If, on the other hand, you've never dedicated one to me, and you feel the time may finally be right, why not bypass Casey's bureaucracy and just email your letter and song suggestion directly to me?

Song suggestions available upon request.

Another opportunity has passed and I still don't have tickets to NYE. Frickin' ticketmaster. I have now officially accepted the fact that I won't be going to the show. Inner peace washes over me like a velvet wave... I am a grasshoppa. A grasshoppa who still wants tickets, though.

At least Rat Dog was way better than I expected them to be. Who would have thought that I could like a 'Hell in a Bucket'? Not me, that's for sure.

And at least it's Friday and even though the weather sucks outside, it's shaping up to be a pretty fun weekend.

And at least the gubernatorial campaign is finally starting to get really nasty. The Republicans have started to call Tim Penny 'The Waffle Man' and they even dressed some dude up in a waffle costume and sent him to one of Penny's speeches. That's too sweet.

Rat Dog is at 1st Avenue tonight. Should be fun to see Bobby in such a small venue. I hope people remember to bring plastic for when he spits, otherwise it could get pretty ugly. Kinda like Gallagher, only it's not watermelons, it's rock and roll, baby!

And as a Thursday bonus, there's supposed to be a B2 bomber flyover for the opening of the Solheim Cup today. I hope I get to see it, but seeing as I'm not sure what time it's at or where exactly it's supposed to be, I'm thinking I won't.

The 'political' show Hardball from CNBC was taped tonight at Northrup Auditorium over at the U. Since neither of our spouses were interested, Jeannine and I went over and checked it out. Chris Matthews - who has his own blog, by the way - interviewed Jesse for the entire hour. It was really neat to watch, what with all the action going on during the breaks and all that. Lots of yucks from the stage and from the crowd. All in all, I thought Jesse did a pretty good job.

Highlights:

• Jesse going at it with some dork in the audience who booed when Matthews asked the audience if they would like to see Jesse run again. Ventura just ran the kid over. The kid, like most of the other dorks there, didn't really know why he was booing, only that it seemed trendy to do so. When he finally took the mic to defend himself, his rationale for not liking Jesse had something to do with Jason Lewis. You're gonna win with the old 'conservative talk show host defense'? Sure you are, dude.
  
  
  highlights
  
  • Jesse correctly pronouncing the word 'nuclear'. Potential pet-peeve avoided.
  
  
  • Jesse carefully choosing his words when asked for his opinion on women being involved in combat situations. Basically, he said that it's men who would have the problem with women in combat, because men would tend to want to protect the women fighting along side of them. He put the blame on the dudes, all the while saying that women don't really belong in combat situations. It was one of the few things he said that I honestly felt he had taken the time to reflect on.
  
  
  • Meeting another Falguni.
  
  
  • "Just because people don't like the United States doesn't mean we can eliminate them."
  
  
  • The whole crowd singing an a capella version of rouser during one of the breaks.
  
  

Tony Hawk is bringing his Boom Boom Huck Jam to the Xcel and - big surprise - Libby won't go. Most of the time I like my wife to be all girly and stuff, but sometimes I wish she was more like a dude. What is it about skateboarding, BMX bike jumping, and loud [bad] music that 9 out of 10 wives find so objectionable? Is it the gnarly tricks? The overpriced beer? The traffic jam caused by thousands of parents waiting to pick-up their kids after the show? Come on ladies, if you don't tell us, we'll never know.

On an appeals-to-everyone note, the new Real World started tonight. As has become standard on the show, all the dudes are chiseled-up studboys and the women are all foxes. (Does anyone say 'foxes' anymore? I'm such a dork.) Sometimes I like to close my eyes and pretend I'm on the Real World and all the doofs I work with are studboys and foxes. I really don't think it'd change my daily routine all that much. We'd still eat at the food court at the mall and spend our free time debating the merits of different persistence strategies, but instead of sitting at a desk all day, we'd have computers floating in hot tubs and every few hours somebody would cry and say they hate somebody else. So basically the hot tubs and my made for TV bod are the only real differences. Bring on the cameras!

I watched some of that pyramid show on Fox tonight. Apparently there are a couple of small tunnels in the great pyramids that nobody can explain. They rise from the inside of the pyramid for about 40 feet before ending at what appears to be a wall, although I guess scientists think it's a little door or something. During the show, this kick-ass little robot climbed up the passage and drilled a hole in a wall to see what was on the other side. After waiting like 45 minutes for the proboscis of the robot to penetrate the hole it had just drilled -- which, by the way, was one of the most innuendo loaded images I've seen on TV in a long time -- all that we millions of home viewers got to see was yet another stupid wall, 6 inches further up the tunnel. Huge disappointment. I want my 45 minutes back.

It wasn't a total loss, though. It was fun to watch the Fox people try and spin the crappy outcome into one of the greatest discoveries in the history of Egyptian archeology. Ok, it was fun for a while, and then it got kind of sad.

Here's an article about the whole event. It even has video.

On a non-related note, we have a new flavor of toothpaste in our medicine cabinet all of a sudden. At first I thought the Colgate had gone sour or something, but then I looked again and it had just turned into Crest. After using the same brand for years, switching brought a much bigger shock than I would have expected. I also had a headache for most of the morning, which I'm thinking may not have just been a coincidence.

Yesterday, Libby and I celebrated our 4th anniversary. Our real anniversary was last week, but we figured waiting until the weekend made more sense for an all day event. This year, instead of leaving town, we decided to do some of the touristy stuff that there is to do in the city but that we don't do because you're never really a tourist in your hometown. Neat idea, eh?

Libby made most of the plans, but since I was included, before we did anything, we stopped off for coffee. (As you can see, I took my new stupid little camera, which, by the way, I'm still infatuated with, even though it's been 3 whole days since I got it.) After coffee, we toured the Purcell-Cuts house, which is this old home in Minneapolis that is one of the nation's best examples of the Prairie School style of architecture. It was bitchin'. Lots of attention to detail, especially with respect to the use of space. My favorite parts were the windows and our little old lady tour guide, who was a total hoot.

Later, we went on a trolley ride down at Lake Harriet. After the ride, I got all worked up thinking about how the automobile lobby basically prevented good mass transit in countless towns across America. The it kinda started to sprinkle, so I just let it go.

Finally, that night we went to a great dinner at this fancy seafood place downtown called The Oceanaire. It was great. I think it's my new favorite restaurant. I want to go back now.

Fun day.

I got my tiny new camera today! It takes way better pictures than I thought it would. Here's a snapshot of my (newest) desk location at work. It's very dark and the camera did a pretty good job. For reference, here's a picture of some of the dorks I work with, and their desks are much closer to the sunlight, so the room is much ligther. Schweet.

---

Reasons why I'm happy today:

• At work, the latest wave of crap has finally passed


• Last night I saw some bitchin' cabaret jazz and danced and got all sweaty


• I am not in violation of any UN sanctions


• I'm golfing at Hazeltine on Sunday

Paris Combo are kicking off their North American tour over at the Cedar Cultural Center tonight. I really dig their studio stuff, but I've never seen them live. Should be a good time. If you're not doing anything, come on down and see some jazz.

It's been a year.

There are ceremonies, moments of silence, and flags at half staff. There is complete and total saturation in the mass media and probably every blogger in existence is documenting what it all means to them. You see women at the food court handing out little flag ribbons to wear, and the Bridge Patriot playing his bagpipes for the commuters on 494. At the office, my client told their employees that anyone who wanted to could go home and spend the day with their family -- but nobody did. You hear a lot of the 'where were you when' type stories and even witness the occasional somber moment. And through it all, you do your best to squeeze in some foosball, just to make sure the terrorists know that they didn't win squat.

Take that, Osama.

I don't know why a link to a bunch of pictures of elementary school lunches made me laugh so much, but man, it did. I think it mostly had to do with the fact that each picture has those little abbreviations on it, like 'GCS' for grilled cheese sandwich. It's almost like each one is an element on some sort of twisted period table that defines the basic building blocks of a cafeteria lunch. Only this periodic table is packed in plastic trays, photographed under bad lighting, and then served with a smile.

Strangely, unlike the real periodic table, the evil cafeteria table seems to allow any base element to be mixed with any other elements without fear of a runaway chemical reaction. Take, for example, chicken fajitas (CF). Sure, no restaurant on earth would think to serve green beans and fries with a chicken fajita, but in our linoleum-lined universe, anything goes. At last, science made simple!

And getting back to GCS, is that the saddest grilled cheese you've ever seen or what? Is it even grilled? It looks they took a cheese sandwich and just dipped it in butter. They should change the abbreviation to CSDIB and stop trying to fool our kids. Lies and deception have no place in a cafeteria. Maybe in the classroom, but not in the cafeteria.

Man, a CSDIB sounds pretty good right now.

I'm not normally a big techno guy, but as a rule, I try and keep my ears open to different types of music. Occasionally, I'll check out the new beats coming from the pacifier and ecstasy crowd. Last weekend, late night KDWB introduced me to the new single from uber-DJ Paul Oakenfold, 'Starry Eyed Surprise'. It's great stuff. Sweet rhythms, good hook, and it even has that tattooed dude from Crazy Town singing on it. Download it, turn it up, and dance. Who cares if you're at work? Not me, eh.

On a non-related note, I think I'm gonna buy one of those pencams from Aiptek. They're neat.

I read about this cool website, Longbets.org, in a recent article in the New York Times. It's a place where philanthropists can wager their generous charitable donations on whether or not their vision of the future will be proven correct. Basically, some dude prognosticates some crazy idea and then bets [at least] $1000 that it'll come true. Eventually, some other dude comes along and bets their money against the prediction. All proceeds go to the charity selected by the eventual winner of the bet.

Some of the bets are a hoot. Ted Danson bet $1000 that the Red Sox will win the World Series before the United States national team wins Soccer's World Cup. Ray Kurzweil bet $10,000 that a computer will pass the Turing Test before 2029. (Sorry, Ray, seeing as Alice is apparently the best we can currently do, I don't see that happening.)

Of all the ones I read, however, this was my favorite:

Defense classes? What good will that do? When a robot grabs you with those metal claws, you can't break free... because they're made of metal, and robots are strong. They should just skip the classes and give each kid some robot insurance.

I was thinking I should follow-up that bet with one that predicts that by 2190, people will look back on the robot defense classes as being as ludicrous as another noteworthy civil defense initiative from our past. Unfortunately, I'm too into instant gratification to wait around and see if I'm right or not, so I think I'll pass.

Well, I'm number 583888. I'm not sure what that really means, but I think numbers started at like 500000, so it could mean that over 80,000 people already are fighting over something like 10,000 tickets. And there's still more than two days to enter the lottery. Where I come from, those aren't good odds, which is why I leveraged the posse to help. We'll see how that works out.

>fingers crossed<

Today I called and changed my next blood appointment be at the Veterans Affairs hospital. I decided to move there because it's way closer to my work than the downtown location and a friend told me the ladies there are nice. I hope she's right, because mean ladies with needles would be pretty scary. So anyways, I'm on the phone with the lady at the Red Cross and she's asking me all the standard questions about diabetes, travel, medications and all that. I keep saying 'no' to all of them, and she's all "Great!". She's starts wrapping up the call, so I add, "Oh, I did have sex with a monkey a few weeks ago." She gives me the, "Dave, I don't even want to go there right now" and then she laughed. I thought that was pretty cool for a little old lady down at the Red Cross.

I hope they don't flag my file as a troublemaker's now. I'm just trying to help-out and give some blood. If they think I was joking when I said I'd go back to Memorial, they should think again.

The lady on the phone also told me that they're super low on blood right now, so get out there and donate people. You get karma and free cookies, what more could you want?

There are lots of things I'd like to do or say that I don't because I can't or simply shouldn't. To be fair, sometimes I'm just too lazy or maybe unmotivated, but more often than not, that's not the case. Either way, it can be frustrating; it can also just be a bummer.

It's the first day of school here in Minnesota and I'm jealous. I'm jealous that I don't have a new backpack and that I didn't get to ride to work in a bus with a bunch of my friends. I'm jealous of the tater tots in the cafeteria, the afternoon naps in Walter Library and the frisbee games on the mall. I'm jealous that I don't get cheap sports tickets and that I don't get to loft my bed or have a crush on the girl at the desk next to mine. (Sorry, Colin, you're not my type.)

To be sure, there were plenty of things about school that sucked, but I won't poison the nostalgia with reality.

Heard on MPR and verified on his website:

"My name is Richard Klatte and my campaign slogan is 'I'm a tree hugger with a gun'"

My name is Dave Cecchi and my sneaking suspicion is that you're a wacko and you won't get many votes.

A couple of people wrote to me saying they were having problems watching the Triumph video from the other day. It's way easier if you save it to your machine first and then watch it. Do this by 'right-clicking' on the link and choosing 'Save target as'. Real good, then.

I found an interesting commentary by Camille Paglia where she discusses how her take on the crisis in the Middle East have changed in the post-9/11 world. Before the attacks, she wrote a piece for Salon - where she's a frequent columnist - which was decidedly pro-Pal. After the attacks, she's clearly reconsidered many of her original positions and has more or less committed to supporting Israel as much as is needed.

That's all interesting, to be sure, but what really caught my eye was this:

When the Lewinsky scandal broke, Democrat big wigs should have muscled Clinton out the door and let Al Gore assume the presidency. [...] Had Gore taken power, he would have grown in office and, with his military background, probably paid far more attention to geopolitical tensions. I believe that, had Gore replaced a dethroned Clinton in 1998, this nation might well have avoided the unspeakable horror of last year's attack on the World Trade Center.

I've read a lot of stuff over the last year about if so-and-so would have been in such-and-such a position, that 9/11 would never have happened, but his was a first for me. If you can get past the reference to Gore's [questionable] military experience, it's neat to think about the basis of her argument, which is that the media is partially to blame for focusing on the stupid Lewinsky scandal instead of more important global issues.

The other night on the VMAs there was this sweet confrontation between Eminem and Moby. They have this long standing feud, which I think all started a few years back when Moby said something about how he thought Eminem's lyrics preached homophobic and misogynistic values. (Good listening skills, Moby.) So then Eminem, in hip-hop tradition, rapped naughty words about Moby in one of his new songs.

So anyway, the other night at the awards, Triumph the Insult Comic dog comes out and kind-of interviews Moby in the audience. I'm a huge Triumph fan, so I was pumped to see how the whole thing would go down. Right away, Triumph starts digging Moby about the Eminem stuff. Moby plays along, laughing about the whole thing and taking a few pictures. Then Triumph gets up and tries to get a comment from Eminem. Right away, Em's posse jumps-up and starts pushing the puppet dog away.

It's gets crazier. Eminem wins the next award and goes up on stage. He takes a shot at Moby, calling him a 'girl' or something. Moby boos, then tons of other people start booing. It was totally sweet. It was also the story of the night.

I later found out that Moby has a blog and that he blogged about his experience at the awards. He also posted a bunch of pictures from that night, including some that he took while Triumph was interviewing him.

To make-up for the lack of quality Triumph at the Mtv awards, here's a copy of my new favorite Triumph bit. [It's frickin' huge, like 17MB, so have patience while it downloads.]