turkey down, ham to go

So, what do 20 or 30 relatives who see each other about once a year have in common? Relatively little.

Ha!

Actually, the one thing we seem to all share in abundance is the desire to watch DVDs. Particularly sci-fi DVDs. (I suppose the medium is not really all that important, DVD just happens to be the most convenient format available.) My cousins have a wall-projection TV mounted to the ceiling of their basement, (where all of us minnesota cousins are sleeping for the duration), and the surround sound system down there is pretty kick ass.

Today I have watched: Reign of Fire, Ocean’s Eleven (ok, that was last night before we went to bed), Castaway and Death to Smoochie (which I bought on DVD for $10 at the video store), plus bits and pieces of 2010, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Spy Kids. We didn’t actually watch 2010, because I convinced people that if we were going to watch it, there was a perfectly good DVD downstairs, (and they happened to be surfing the cable channels and stumbled onto it.) We still saw about half an hour of it, in the middle somewhere. Remind me to watch the whole thing sometime.

I should have finished my book instead. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m reading Jeff Noon’s new novel, Falling out of Cars. It’s pretty weird. I love the writing style, but so far the story has gone nowhere, and not very fast at that. The premise is decent, but I’m afraid when all is said and done it may have been a better short story than it has been a novel. I’ll let you know when I finish it.

Oh yeah, and my cousin Rebecca has a couple of blogs. I haven’t pried the URLs out of her yet, but she’s got one on blogger and one on LiveJournal. I mentioned movable type, and she at least knew what it was. We have yet to sit down at a computer togetherÂ…

I read this popular science article about vole monogamy this afternoon. It’s interesting. Makes me wish we were that simplistic. Hell, maybe we are, and all the speculative stuff at the end of the article is just hot air. (That was kinda what I thought it was as soon as they stopped talking about voles, so who knows?) Now I just need to get my hands on some liquid oxytocinÂ…

thanksmas 2002

Every year at this time we head down to Iowa for thanksgiving to visit with the relatives, eat turkey dinner (in the middle of the day, usually after lunch would occur, but before I’d usually get home from work), and hang out. Then, the next day we put up christmas lights, the old plastic and wire tree, and open all the presents we would normally exchange at christmas, again, eating a nice big feast in late afternoon. We call this weekend Thanksmas. One year we even made shirts. I can’t remember what they looked like, but I know they had a turkey with a santa’s hat. Unfortunately, if I remember right, they were this horrible shade of light green. Needless to say, nobody wears them.

This year will be the first year I won’t be eating the meat because I’m vegetarian. In the past I’ve always had to make some excuse.

I’m leaving straight after work. (like in minutes, really.)

I don’t know how frequently I’ll update from IA, but anyone reading this is used to my slack already, so it hardly matters.

I was tempted to jump on the haiku bandwagon, but inspiration jumped ship about two paragraphs ago. ciao.

public appology to $14 socks

I don’t know if I should be making this out to Laura, or to to $14 socks everywhere, but I’d like to write up a formal public appology. $14 socks are not just for weak minded shoppers at outdoorsman shops like REI. Instead, it turns out $14 socks are really nice, thinner than my usual 6-pair-for-$6 socks, and warmer too!

I’m sorry for ever putting you down, $14 socks. I was wrong. Quality over quantity, always… always. I was a fool for ever straying from that old standby.

On a related note, our heat went out again yesterday. They’ve already fixed it, but I owe the safe non-frozen state of my ten very warm toes all to Laura’s $14 socks, which I am still wearing. I’m affraid she’ll make me take them off tonight… I never want to return to the land of $1 socks again.

post-party wrapup bedtime story

Well, it was just before 5:00 in the AM on a Sunday. All the lights in the house were still on, and the last guest has just left. AJ doesn’t count, he had just went upstairs to pass out on the futon.

In the thick of it, there were over 30 people packed into this de-house-party-virginized party-house. There were approximately 50 guests total, although I think only about 3/4th of the ~40 evite “In like flynn” recipients were in actual attendance. (I should do the actual numbers on that). I would have thought it would be more crowded with that many people, but only about 4 people ended up using the upstairs chill-out room — and only for like half an hour, max.

On ICQ this afternoon, Ryan agreed that the house was small, but “snaky”, so as to easily fit lots of people.

Toward the end there, Nate was getting pretty drunk. His “I (heart) my penis.” t-shirt wins the “best dressed” award.

I was in a daze the entire night. I had just tried some of the irish cream that was a housewarming gift. (someone else opened it, which was just fine, really.) My teeth were coated with the stuff. (It’s good, but I don’t think it’s quite as good as bailey’s.) What with all the house-warming alcohol gifts, I think we ended the party with more than we started. This is especially true of beer. Before party: 8 cans of Guiness. After party: nearly a whole fridge-shelf full of crappy bottled beer. (Laura exclaims: “What do you mean? There’s newcastle!”)

The party was decidedly a success.

We may do it again just after christmas. We probably won’t buy as much shit next time, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to clean for 7 hours straight again… ever.

Of course, we won’t have to unpack as many boxes next time either.

I locked the door, headed upstairs, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. The end.

pre-party disaster scenarios

well, the party is tomorrow. The mouse smell has, inextricably, disappeared. The house is much cleaner than it was (although we anticipate spending all day tomorrow cleaning). It’s friday afternoon, close to quittin’ time, and I just ate (a very late) lunch. I feel good.

I’ve been feeling jittery about the party. I shared this with at least one of you already (sorry peter), but this morning I woke up and started imagining disaster scenarios. Maybe this is a sign I’m not suppose to host parties, I don’t know.

Basically, I was walking around upstairs in my room, which has a creaky floor. I suddenly had this vivid scenario run through my head where the “breaking the elevator by trying to see how many people we can fit in it” thing happened to our house. My room was full of people, and suddenly it collapsed. (Strangely, I didn’t imagine all the people in the kitchen downstairs crushed and dying, just the ones upstairs falling to their deaths. But even more chilling was the rest of the horrific fantasy, where we lived out the rest of the winter with giant opaque plastic sheets between the livingroom and the snow outside. *shudder*

I have to clarify that I was not consciously fantasizing about this. It was more like one of those dreams you have while just waking up. After you’ve opened your eyes, but before your brain makes that jump into consciousness.

futurists and the cyborganic now

I feel dumb for not remembering where, exactly, but at least twice in the last week, (I think once was in this month’s Wired) I’ve read articles about individuals making technology predictions. In both instances, the individuals were referred to as futurists.

Well, along about 2 years ago, I was calling what I wanted to be when I grew up a futurist. I wanted to be the one making these spectacular predictions about the future! (And then I wanted to write novels based on those predictions, which I still want to do, but that’s for another blog entry.) The point is, I found a webpage about the futurist movement. When you call someone a futurist, by dictionary definition (one of them) you’re calling them an adherent of that movement. Unless you’re a racist, chances are you do not want to be associated with that movement. I stopped calling myself a futurist.

Consider this a segue. (But not a segway.)

I’ve been reading Steven Johnson’s blog this last week, and he linked to two different future-predicting articles today. Connectland got me all worked up about seamless technology and transparent UI. I’m a sucker for that transparent tech argument. I can’t wait until all that’s left is to think about what I want to do, rather than how I want/have to do it. The other one was Doug Miller’s blog post about his library of the future. It made me want to buy a palm or something, just to read e-books! The point is, I now have two new blogs to read regularly.

flibbertigibbetting

I’ve managed to dress the same as two other co-workers today, so at our boss’s insistence, we took pictures. Of course, even if I had access to these pictures, no way in hell would I post them.

The office is being shaped-up (read thrown into disarray) due to impending visits from big clients. For some reason, this involved shuffling everyone’s seating arrangements. My new cube has a window that faces south (instead of east) and now I can’t leave the blinds open without squinting. Oh yeah, and they’re also incapable of moving my phone, so now it’s the only thing at my old desk, and I go over there every few hours to see if anyone has called me. (ETA on the phone move is Friday. :P)

At a co-worker’s recommendation, I’m listening to The Pizza Tapes, which is the last recording session with Gerry Garcia. It’s pretty good folk, actually. Not really what I expected, but then I was pretty open to whatever. (I’m not a big fan.) Believe it or not, I needed a break from Lali Puna. (six tracks later, I think my break is nearly up — this is a long cd.)

I won tix to see the new Bond movie tonight. Nobody really seems to trust my taste in movies but me, so I’m not promising to post a review or anything, just stating the fact. (or e-babbling.)

One of my favorite words is Flibbertigibbet. I’ve particularly admired it since I first saw it used in the movie Joe vs the Volcano. I don’t know what this has to do with anything, but if I were a female, and I could verb the word, I’d be flibbertigibbetting right now.

Lali Whona?

I was a bit disappointed that there were only 15 or so people at the Lali Puna concert, when I showed up 45 min after doors opened. But by the time they got on stage 2 & 1/2 hours later, the place had filled out some… Still not one of the fuller shows I’ve been to at the 7th street entry, but they managed to kick some major ass anyway.

I don’t know why my reviews generally end up comparing one artist to another, but for some reason one of the only illuminating thoughts I had during their set was that they’re like an electronic jam band. I couldn’t help but think they had a lot in common with Five Style or Critters Buggin’, both of whom I love.

All three acts for the evening were on the Morr Music record label. The first two were just guys with laptops and various analog knobs. (Opiate, and Styrofoam) All three of the acts relied on Apple laptops, btw, which I found quite illuminating. I was only a wee bit discouraged to catch a glimpse of one and find it was still running OS 9.x.

I picked up 4 CDs at the concert, and so far, I haven’t been disappointed in the least. The CD of 5 bomb the bass remixes has been particularly exceptional.

I wrote this stream of conscious poem while watching Opiate, the first (and I felt better) of the opening acts:

=====

Standing in cigarette smoke,
smelling the beats,
nodding to video feed.
Thought of starting a band,
tasted obnoxious talking fans.
All the while, my feet
were swallowing my heart.

=====

I really did fantasize about starting a band.. I need to start doing music on my laptop first, but then I could advertise in coffee shops and stuff. I’d want to be able to perform live, but keep a very electronic sound… I also brainstormed some band names. Supernut or perhaps Supernaught was my favorite.