Unexpected

Strange to hear multiple songs by the band Man Man in an episode of Weeds. Or, anywhere. However, an absolutely awesomely fun show to see live.

Bic Motorcycles

With picture instructions. And all I did when I was a kid was make crack lighters and blow them up.

That Kind of Day

Seriously........

This is why America is fat

Starbucks new Trenta size is larger than the average stomach capacity. Imagine a White Chocolate  Frappuccino Blended Creme in this size. It would be over 1200 calories. When I worked there people got the biggest drinks for their kids all the time.

Chronic City

These guessing words I find junked in my brain in deranged juxtaposition, like files randomly stuffed into cabinets by a dispirited secretary with no notion of what, if anything, might ever be usefully retrieved. Often all language seems this way: a monstrous compendium of embedded histories I'm helpless to understand. I employ it the way a dog drives a car, without grasping how the car came to exist or what makes a combustion engine possible. That is, of course, if dogs drove cars. They don't. Yet I go around forming sentences.

Such a great quote. Jonathan Lethem, you always make me love you, for you describe how I always think.

I am a Gemini

So it seems that astronomer Parke Kunkle has come forth saying that your zodiac sign is most likely incorrect due to the precession of the Earth. NASA has a section on their website for kids released in 2005 that shows there are actually 13 constellations in the zodiac instead of the standardized 12 and everyone has been using the wrong ones all of this time.

What I have concluded is that rather than being a very awful Cancer, I am now a very awful Gemini. Of course, I put as much stock into astrology governing my fate as I do unicorns really being horses that have had cosmetic surgery. Or, you know, real, and changing overnight.

Law & Order: UK - Lessons in British Justice

I have never watched Law & Order, but I found this amusing. Plus, you have Apollo from Battlestar Galactica and Martha Jones from Doctor Who as characters. Wonderful assessment of a show; I am sure the same could be done for lots of shows. Better than whatever montage of that dude taking off his glasses and making bad puns any day.

Places I'd Like To Be

A bungalow, warm weather, good company. Escape.

Things I Want #204

The X100 uses an 12.3 megapixel APS-C sized sensor, the same size used on most full-size digital SLR cameras. While it doesn't offer as high a resolution as the latest pro SLRs, the sensor is paired with a newly designed 23mm f/2.0 Fujinon lens. The prime lens, which has the same angle of view of classic 35mm lenses for 35mm cameras, includes an aspherical element optimized to deliver light rays perpendicular to the sensor. This optimization produces sharp images from edge to edge with no noticeable light fall-off.

The lens also incorporates a nine-bladed aperture for smooth bokeh and a high-speed leaf shutter which allows flash use up to the maximum 1/4000 shutter speed. A built-in neutral density filter can also be turned on for up to three stops exposure adjustment, allowing use of larger apertures and or slower shutter speeds than typical under bright lighting conditions.

List price around $1000, due March 2011. Man.....if I could only afford this, I'd be all over if. Gorgeous.

Netflix Allows Me to Watch Dumb Shows

Things depicted in the television show Supernatural in Richardson, Tx. that just aren't right:
1. Richardson has haunted farm houses in the woods with dirt roads leading to the old farm.
2. Said haunted house has a root cellar
3. Kids in this area hang out at a large warehouse style 'Rodeo Drive-In'. As said in the show "where do you think kids hang out in a town like this?"
4. Richardson cops all wear cowboy hats.
5. There is a trailer park in Richardson.

Actual Richardson:
1. Bedroom community that is almost fully suburban pre-planned cookie cutter houses. There isn't much of Richardson that isn't built up. The only place I know of that has that much wooded area is the the nature preserve. And while it totally has a rather large hidden graveyard in it, farm houses it is lacking.
2. This area of North Texas doesn't have cellars. The ground is clay and shale. We hide in our bathrooms during tornadoes, not in our cellars.
3. Rodeos are in Mesquite, not Richardson. Only a small distinction if you're not from the area, but a large one for people here. Not everyone in Texas has boots and loves cheesy clichés.
4. From my experience in getting pulled over and watching the cops outside of my local work Starbucks, the cops wear shorts. And half of them seem to be volunteers.
5. That's Plano. And the one depicted is way too pretty to be real.

Yes, it is a ridiculously stupid television show, and I shouldn't except reality. However, I'd hope for the millions used to produce a series, a teeny-tiny bit of research would have been done.

I Drink Therefore I Exercise

"Results. For women, current drinkers exercise 7.2 more minutes per week than abstainers. Ten extra drinks per month are associated with 2.2 extra minutes per week of physical activity. When compared with current abstainers, light, moderate, and heavy drinkers exercise 5.7, 10.1, and 19.9 more minutes per week. Drinking is associated with a 10.1 percentage point increase in the probability of exercising vigorously. Ten extra drinks per month are associated with a 2.0 percentage point increase in the probability of engaging in vigorous physical activity. Light, moderate, and heavy drinking are associated with 9.0, 14.3, and 13.7 percentage point increases in the probability of exercising vigorously. The estimation results for men are similar to those for women."

via The Consumerist via Gawker via IM conversation.

Macro Eyes

Suren Manvelyan's beautifully close shots of irises showing all of the different valleys and hills. I have supreme camera/lens envy and I can only imagine what it must be like to be able to produce a shot like these.

Oh, Come On!

Seriously, heater? You decide on a holiday when it is currently 38° (feels like 31°) and the weather is supposed to drop to 21° to stop working? Now I have to make some poor guys day crappy because he has to leave his family to come fix my heater so my apartment will heat up to above 56° and I will no longer be a Nicole-shaped popsicle. I'm used to freezing at work, but at home is not cool (well, actually I guess that's exactly what it is).

Hope this isn't some sort of foreshadowing for the coming year.....