and also

the four-fingered hand from Total Recall
and from my dad, "it's a mad mad mad mad world"

meta b-m phenomenon

I mentioned the b-m phenomenon to my dad the other day, and apparently todd mentioned the same thing without knowing the name. weird thing was that dad forgot i had told him about it. but its meta b-m.

also
the rizzuto/rirruto scene from billy madison came up twice today

yes, a baader-meinhof phenomenon blog

no time to write blog; fewer readers of blog. but i am going to record my encounters with the baader-meinhof phenomenon, starting the week of Dec 14, 2009:

fansnap.com

O M G

I won't spoil the renegade ending ... but it's pretty Electric [Youth].

#AmazonFAIL

it appears that someone from amazon.com decided to strip the rankings from books with gay and lesbian themes. it is unclear why, but we really need to let them hear from us --everyone-- that this is not OK. for example, http://www.amazon.com/tag/gay%20and%20lesbian/forum/ref=cm_cd_dp_rt_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx39DAA9C1KY5TT&cdThread=Tx16656YD9JUTLW

what's wrong with them?

good song, remixed with something awesome

If you don't know the Ting Tings song, you should listen just for that. It's uber-catchy. But this particular remix of the video has a guest star to interpret how you are feeling inside. its amazing.



Also, if you feel like a girl who's probably kinda rich and probably lives in miami, you'll probably think of it this way...

iTunes

HOW OFTEN MUST THEY CHANGE THE FREAKIN' TERMS OF OUR AGREEMENT?

i can solve the AIG dilemma

this whole kerfuffle about AIG bonuses is just political theatre. the problem is the term "bonus." if payment of a sum of money to an employee is guarenteed in a contract, that doesn't really seem like a bonus, does it? it's just part of their salary that happens to be paid at the end of the year. people who want to make a big deal of this seized on the word "bonus" as a great way to make hay, but I think the answer is clear cut. pay an employer-voluntary sum to an employee -- aw, hell no. honor your contracts -- yes.

i guess the details are a little unclear about whether, in the first place, the writing of the contracts to guarentee the poorly-named-"bonus" was legal. See story linked above. It doesn't both me if democratic Attorneys General and congresspersons and the President want to pursue that angle. But that's not what they're using to attempt to score political points with regular folks.

But to say that AIG was mistaken for deciding that they were obligate to honor those contracts even under a bailout scenario is stupid. As a society, we want employees and employers and governments and parents and spouses and even dogs to honor whatever their contracts are with other beings on this planet.

the idea that they wrote contracts that were not in the interest of shareholders should not be surprising -- generally speaking, we aren't bailing out the companies that have a history of making prudent decisions! so if ANY company is likely to F up like this, i would argue its much more likely to be one of the ones we are bailing out!

I said many months ago (though not on my blog... probably a mistake) that I believe that no company should be too big to let fail. To be clear, you could interpret that statement two ways:

1) we should let any company fail no matter how big or important it is -- there is no company that could possibly be too big or important to let fail.
2) it IS possible for a company to be too big or too important to let fail -- WE JUST SHOULDN'T LET COMPANIES GET THAT WAY

if you believe in the market system OR if you believe that ginormous corporations do bad things, you can get behind me on this. I believe the market system usually works, but there are exceptions. For instance, we already force companies to disband when they have a monopoly. Nearly everyone accepts this intervention in the free market. It also seems clear to me that the free market doesn't work when companies do not fear the consequences of their decisions.

companies that are "too big/important to let fail" do not have to fear the consequences of their decisions.

therefore the free market doesn't work.

I say we pass a law to cause structured breakups of companies when they reach a certain ceiling of bigness/importantness. Defining that ceiling will be hard, but worth it.

michigan, my michigan

i have apparently really acclimated to michigan. even though it's three days until spring and the weather has been 50s and 60s, my dreams last night were (1) a weather forecast for 6-7 inches of snow and (2) the red wings getting into a fight with some other team with graphic profuse bleeding.

seriously though, last thanksgiving jeff daniels ended his ensemble concert with a polyphonic rendition of this song michigan, my michigan that was really wonderful.

i could stay here if it were closer to the west coast.

an observation

i think the new trader joe's toilet paper is narrower, ie, the roll cylinder is shorter. this is a way to avoid raising prices, i guess? i wonder if anyone else who notices will care. fewer trees, more profit, and still just as functional. i'm for it.

a great winter turkey ham cucumber onions pepper sandwich

i'm vaguely inspired to try to blog more again, partially so i can rekindle my blog relationships with melibers and porter and fourmiles and beyond3d and september's scourge, and partially because i had better have something besides whining about movies if i submit to the tbtl metablog.

so back to my roots. a great new sandwich today.

Italian Pane bread (yes, from TJ's), toasted lightly
mayonnaise to taste on both slices
on one slice, layer
fresh ground pepper, then
chopped green onion
rectangles of sweet pepper (i used orange)
romaine or green-leaf lettuce
1-2 slices honey ham
1-2 slices oven roasted turkey

now stop (hammer time)
slice up peeled cucumber medallions 2-3 mm thick, enough to [eventually] liberally cover your sandwich. from a yellow or white cooking onion (not sweet) cut a very thin medallion and chop. in a plastic baggie (the non-zip, foldover kind is probably best), put about half the onion and cucumber slices. pour some red wine and white wine vinegar in the baggie and work the vinegar onto all the surfaces of the onion and cucumber. add the rest of the onion and cucumber until everything is coated.

layer the cucumber on the sandwich. add the bits of onion on top (or onto the other slice of bread, if you find it more convenient). if you don't mind the mess, you can drizzle a bit of the vinegar from the baggie onto the sandwich. close sandwich and enjoy.

seriously, you'll really enjoy it.

saturday night :P

snl is really struggling. luckily i'm way too tired to watch must of this crap. and i don't know why i feel the need to say this in my blog, but man, abby elliott is gorgeous.

this is super cool, especially if you're a politics junkie

apparently a photographer used a robot to take many high resolution images from the side of the inauguration, then used his mac to stitch them together into a giant picture. his blog lets you look at the picture and then zoom in to remarkably high resolution.

i recommend you zoom in to get a good look at obama (keep zooming until the resolution ceases to improve, but that is pretty far!). Then, cruise around the seats behind him to see all the different politicians who were back there. and help me answer the question: what the heck is laura bush wearing? it looks like a mom sweatshirt. and could dick cheney look more evil (he's got a black cowboy hat on)?

http://www.davidbergman.net/blog/2009/01/22/how-i-made-a-1474-megapixel-photo-during-president-obamas-inaugural-address/

i have to get this off my chest

'slumdog millionaire' is really not that great. a more depressing forrest gump? in india? even more obvious than FG? sold!

two miracles in one week???

ok the 2nd miracle is old news but i didn't know it and it is awesome.

on the heroes

i'm still totally stunned by today's non-fatal plane crash in NYC. There's a lot of horrible stuff going on in the world today but you have to thank God for taking 150 people who should be dead and saving them.

For the record, I think the media are not giving enough credit to the non-captain crew. They got 150 people off a plane, after a crash landing, before it sinks??? Unbelievable. Hire that crew to redesign the regular-life airplane experience, too, so we can all get off a little faster.

Also one of the passengers mentioned that the women and children really did get off first. I've never once thought of that when envisioning a crash in an airplane -- seems to me, no matter who you are, "get out and get out of the way" would be most efficient. and yes, help the weak and the old, etc. But are we really in a world where women are "weak"? Not criticizing, just surprised. And very pleased that they made news with it so if it happens to me now i know to not be the jerk who jumps in front of the women.

this rocks my world, and not in the Rock way

so another story by way of tbtl, a writer for the Boston Globe enunciated the sensitive female chord progression. i knew i really had a soft girly spot for allegedly femalely music, but this was a little frightening. among the songs
one of us by joan osboarne (the originator of the progression, and still among my favorite songs of all time)
building a mystery by sarah mclachlan (weirdly, i liked her more before this song than after, but that's not to say i didn't go buy mirrorball when i heard this on the radio)
tonight and the rest of my life by nina gordon (which i was obsessed with and managed to also get our temporary roomate Charity to be obssessed with, and I still think is pretty great)
holiday by green day (which is probably the best song on one of the best CDs of all time)

those were the ones that shocked me; i had no idea why those songes spoke to me so profoundly, or that any were connected to any of the others. apparently the Offspring has used the chords in three different songs, and various people on the radio these days, TI, Rhianna, Beyonce use it also, but since i don't do radio anymore i had to be told this by a non-music radio show talking about a newspaper column.

i guess i say, own it, love your tastes. obviously this speaks to a lot of us and i say let's not be ashamed. and still i wonder, what would you say if you had just one question?

TJ's tries to sabotage the sandwich blog

You will recall that I highly recommend Trader Joe's Just the Leaves pre-washed green leaf lettuce. I found out today that this has been discontinued, now they are only doing romaine.

This is bullcrap. I can't tell you how much better my sandwich life got when i discovered the pre-washed leaves. Totally worth every extra dollar+ I spent on it.

Maybe its not true in the west. Let's do the math: out here, they don't have my favorite hummus, they don't sell sprouts in a bowl for $0.79, and now they don't even sell the lettuce.

You're on notice, east-coast-Joe. Don't make me move west and leave your ass high-and-dry in Michigan. Who's gonna drink all your Dead Guy Ale?

And by the way, i've been occasionally buying the Meijer pre-washed lettuce. for a few months now. yeah, and i stored 'em in your drawer. who's the lunchwrecker now?