Books Lying Open
¤ Middlesex, Jeffery Eugenides
¤ DAW, The Best Fantasy of the last Thirty Years
¤ The Color of Magic, Terry Pratchett

Soul-Devouring Worry:
¤ Random displays of temper.

Answer of the Day:
¤ Because no matter how iconoclastic and creative your other stir fry ingredients are, they still won't work with black olives.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your ice cream be served with insufficient toppings.

n Sunday, Malaya and I hit the mall. We were there for some shopping, but mostly for late lunch/dinner at Todai. Malaya had some really good sushi a few weeks ago, and ever since then she's been jonesing for cold fish, and finding the sushi offerings at Trader Joes and other stores less than satisfactory.  Todai is a Japanese buffet, but they have a lot more than sushi, so I was amenable to eating there, especially since she was so eager to go that she wanted to treat me. It's about $24 a person too, so it's a pretty nice treat.

Besides preparing maybe 40 types of sushi, Todai has tons of cooked seafood, tempura, miso and other types of soup, excellent desserts, fruit, good rice and noodle dishes, etc. Basically everything you can get at a Japanese restaurant, and all you want of them.  The single best thing there, oddly enough, was the Pepsi. They had some sort of special going on where the drinks were free, and since we were pigging out on a big lunch we figured what the hell and got our free Pepsi. They brought out two drinks from the soda fountain, and I took a sip while Malaya was off to pick her first place of sushi... and I almost choked. I don't think I've ever had such good soda. Ever. It was like I was 7 again, when everything sweet is impossibly good and you simply can't get enough of it. The first sip of Todai Pepsi reminded me of my first sip of a good Jamba, where the incredible sweetness of it is almost narcotic; like I can't quite believe it's legal to drink something so potent.

Sadly, I don't know why the Pepsi was so good.  Most of the time when I get a fountain drink it's flat, or the syrup is old. Having worked at the stadium for so many years in San Diego, I am familiar enough with the function of industrial soda machines to tell what's wrong with them. Usually the CO₂ air bottles are low and need to be changed, or the box of syrup is old and low.

So yes, the best part of my $24 lunch was the sugar water beverage.

A lot of the food was very good also, and I even tried half a dozen types of sushi. I don't dislike cold fish, but I don't much like cold rice, and while it's not bad, it's nothing special either. I tried the things Malaya liked best, and they weren't bad, but I also think they'd be better hot and with more spices. Perhaps sushi requires a more sensitive palate than mine, since I tend to think all fish tastes pretty much the same, and like it best in deep fried form on a fish taco.

Before Todai, we did some shopping, or whatever you call it when you walk around the mall for an hour and buy virtually nothing. Our only purchase was, not surprisingly, by Malaya. She picked up a nice suit at Macy's, since it was on end of the season close out sale for $50, with a usual retail price of $280. The really ridiculous part of the price? You know they're still making money off the $50, so imagine their profit margin when people actually pay full price for the item?

While that suit was the most ridiculously overpriced item we saw, it was far from the only thing with a price tag to make your head hurt. I've been wanting to get a new belt, since I have three now. A black one with metal eyes all down it that I wear with jeans, a plain black one that's old and worn, and a black one with some brown etching that's equally old and worn. The plain black one is just plain ugly, and while it holds my pants up admirably, when my waist is skinny enough to require help in that endeavor, it's a bit ugly to wear with my shirt tucked in. The black with brown one is less ugly, but the brown seldom matches anything else I'm wearing, since I tend to embrace more of a black with green/blue/purple/silver color scheme. So I want a plain black one, or better yet one with faint accents of blue or gray or something subtle like that.

We looked in about five stores for belts, never saw any with the color scheme I wanted, and were appalled by the prices for just plain black leather ones. $30, $40, $25 at best. For a thin strip of leather!  I could understand if I wanted it with rhinestones sewn in, or even metal rivets or the like. That takes some workmanship, or at least a machine to punch the holes and stick in the inserts. But how can just a plain length of leather be $40, when you can buy an entire leather jacket, with multiple pieces stitched together, a lining, zipper, buttons, sleeves, etc, for $75?  The jacket has about 20x the material and 50x the sewing work... and it's less than two belts? True, a good leather jacket is $200 or $300, but still, the construction difficulty of a belt is like making a snake out of clay.  It's got to be the easiest thing the factory ever turns out.

I thought maybe belts were just overpriced at The Gap, the first place we checked, so we looked at Wilson's Leather as well, and even at Target later that night, where the cheapest leather belts were still $16. The whole system of prices is so odd, for most consumer goods.  I know it's mostly based on what people will pay, rather than what something costs, but it seems so arbitrary for so many items. Take electronics: A new CD or DVD player, an object made from dozens of microchips, tiny motors, circuits, molded plastic and metal parts, little lights, a power supply, etc, costs almost nothing. Cheap ones are $30 or $40 at Fry's or Wal-Mart or wherever. Someone had to build a huge factory in China, hire thousands of workers, install dozens of robots, set up delivery of all those parts, etc, and that's just to build it. They've then got to package it, put it on a boat, ship it to the US, truck it to a store, unpack it, stick it on the shelf, and sell it for a price that ensures everyone along the entire production process makes some amount of profit. I honestly don't see how cheap DVD players aren't $300.

Yet on the next aisle over you can find a leather belt that costs $40. Or a t-shirt with some trendy label on it for $50. A t-shirt that cost about 4 cents to manufacture, weighs almost nothing, doesn't require any padded packaging, and is essentially identical to every other t-shirt made in the last 50 years.  When you think about it, why would anyone want to be in the electronics business?

Malaya and I often say "we're not ready" when we see some child being a pain in the ass and ruining their parents' lives, but it's never more true for me than when I think about buying them stuff. I got a GAP sweater for Xmas last year, and took it back when I had the chance since I never wear sweaters, and especially not turtlenecks. I feel like I'm choking in a tight collar, and since I'm always hot as it is, sweaters are just never something I put on. But it was fine as a gift, especially with the receipt, since it was good for store credit.

The problem is that I've gone into the local Gap at least a dozen times this year with Malaya, and I have never seen anything I was willing to pay for. Occasionally they have some cargo pants or shorts or t-shirts I might wear, but when I look at the price and see that they want $40 or $50 for an item that costs about $11 at TJ Maxx or Ross, I just can't justify paying that much. My store credit is for $20; if it's going to cost me that and then more money on top of it than I'm willing to pay for the item in the first place, I just refuse. And as Malaya said after our latest failure in The Gap, as we walked past other clothing stores on the way to Macy's, "That's just The Gap. You should check the prices at Abercrombie & Fitch. Hella higher."

Which brings me back to why I'm so not ready. I haven't cared about brand names on clothing since I was about 15, and from somewhere found maturity beyond my years. I certainly wasn't mature about anything else, but for some reason I was about clothing, as I realized how immature it was to care what brand name anything I wore was, and how many more important things there were to obsess over in life.  Since that day, it's been a blissful 14 years of clothes shopping. I hardly ever buy any clothing, and when I do I get what I want, for cheap. Jeans that are on clearance sale, shoes that are on sale, plain t-shirts or button up shirts in the colors I want, with no logos or words on them. The best part is that none of these choices are compromises; I'm buying exactly what I want. Why in the hell would I want to wear clothing with some company's name and logo on it? Why the hell would I want to walk around as a billboard for them? They're not paying me to wear that crap.

The problem is that I know my hypothetical kid(s) would be sucked into the fashion trends of the day once they were old enough to be vain and insecure. I remember what it was like to be 10 and 12 and walking around middle school in constant fear of humiliation. To live with the thought of someone making fun of my clothing. To see some new and trendy brand name or clothing design and realize that I would trade anything just to have a t-shirt or pair of jeans like that, since then I'd be cool, or better yet be just like everyone else, and thus not stand out in a bad way.

And frankly, I can't see dealing with that now. Even if I had money and could afford to piss away $40 on a $3 t-shirt just because it was some trendy brand that my kid swore every other kid was wearing, it would make me insane. I would lecture my kids, explain to them why brands didn't matter, why it was what they had inside that mattered, not what they were wearing, and even as I was lecturing I'd know how nothing I said made a goddamned bit of sense to them, at that place in their lives. And I'd end up handing Malaya my credit card and asking her to take the fricking kids "back to school" shopping while I sat home in the quiet house and beat my head into the wall.

And that's the best case scenario!  That's the scenario where I have money and don't care about how much they're wasting on meaningless vanity, and have a wife who's willing to put up with that bullshit. Imagining a more realistic scenario, where that same wife has to work and I've got the free time to take the kids shopping and we're got enough money to live on but not enough to throw around freely, and I have to stand there while the kid races from store to store, madly chasing trends that will change again in six months... that makes my head hurt.  And reminds me, once again, that I'm so not ready.

One last shopping thing, that I've noticed after some experimentation... I walk into clothing stores very slowly, generally trailing some distance behind Malaya, painfully aware of how sore my feet have suddenly become, and how much I don't want to ever be in another clothing store again.  It's not something I really think about, I mean I'm not walking slowly on purpose, it's just natural. And I follow Malaya around, glancing at the hundreds of things I would never, ever, for any reason, put on my body, until she's seen enough (this is usually pretty quickly, since she's not a big time wasting clothes whore) and is ready to leave. At which time I find myself marching along like the exit is downhill, often propelling her along in front of me like a small car being tailgated by an SUV, or simply passing her up and shooting out of the store before she's even reached the door. Again, this isn't intentional, my legs just get a burst of speed when it's time to leave the place I don't want to be, and I only noticed this after half a dozen mall visits, and finding myself lagging behind on the way in, and standing alone and waiting for her to catch up on the way out.

The oddest part is that I don't really mind the shopping. Malaya moves along quickly, and since I never watch TV commercials or spend much time around other people, I really have no idea what's currently trendy or in style or out of style. In that way the stores are somewhat informative, even if it's information that I never put to any actual use. 

One news item now, with some info and commentary on the political events of the day.

When Chris Matthews, a news man who is far from liberal, challenged Millar on a few of the lies demonstrably false statements he'd been slinging around, Millar got so pissed off that he started musing about the good old days when men could settle things with a duel. Literally, on air he was talking about how he'd have liked to kill a reporter, for the sin of asking a few semi-hard questions.  It's in the transcript and everything.

I don't want to put too much into appearances, but yikes. Does Cheney do that incredibly pissed off white guy look better than anyone alive, or what? You can see how much makeup they slathered on his forehead to keep it from glowing beet red as it usually does, but no cosmetic can help with those snarling lips and hate-filled eyes. Ordinarily he'd be a shoo-in for scariest guy on stage, but thanks to the zombie-like Zell, Cheney has to settle for the silver. 

Cheney's and Millar's speeches have prompted a ton of rebuttals and discussion today, and I thought this one, by the usually-useless William Saletan, made a very good point.

But the important thing isn't the falsity of the charges, which Republicans continue to repeat despite press reports debunking them. The important thing is that the GOP is trying to quash criticism of the president simply because it's criticism of the president. The election is becoming a referendum on democracy.

In a democracy, the commander in chief works for you. You hire him when you elect him. You watch him do the job. If he makes good decisions and serves your interests, you rehire him. If he doesn't, you fire him by voting for his opponent in the next election.

Not every country works this way. In some countries, the commander in chief builds a propaganda apparatus that equates him with the military and the nation. If you object that he's making bad decisions and disserving the national interest, you're accused of weakening the nation, undermining its security, sabotaging the commander in chief, and serving a foreign power—the very charges Miller leveled tonight against Bush's critics.

Are you prepared to become one of those countries?

Aside from the fact that we already are, and have been since Bush decided to use 9/11 for his perpetual political gain, it's an incisive and chilling observation.

I didn't pay much attention to the DNC, other than hearing enough of Clinton's speech in the rebroadcast on CSPAN to remember why he's the best public speaker of our era, and reading about all the love spilled towards Obama's speech. I watched it online a day later and thought it was good, but not spectacular. However, the general theme of the DNC, that America needs unity, needs to look to the future, etc, is certainly in stark contrast to the "we hate Kerry more than Satan" theme the RNC speeches are going for. I think the DNC strategy was poor; they wanted to stay positive and stay out of the gutter and be inspirational and such. And they were, and the people who watched it were impressed with their message, but it's now looking like they came to a street fight barehanded, and ran into the RNC guys in full riot gear.

Given that Bush's record is so dreadful, and his party's current style of politics so venal and nasty, would it have hurt to have at least one DNC speech full of fire and cruelty? Give the RNC guys a taste of their own medicine? Occasionally, a politician can take the high road and win, if he/she is able to get his/her message out there widely enough, and the voters are aware of how nasty his/her opponent is. You'd think this would be one of those occasions, as terrible a job as Bush has done for 4 years, but as dirty as politics and all public discourse has gotten in this media/tabloid age, I don't think Kerry's going to win campaigning on his positive message and optimism. Not when Bush has his minions slinging the most stinking, foul mud at every opportunity.

Adding to this pathetic state of affairs, now that Zell has had his slanderous say and done the Republican's dirty work... they're cutting him loose.

If you believe there was a word in Miller's speech that wasn't carefully checked over and approved by Bush's handlers, I'm sorry, but you're dumb as a sack of hammers.  They scheduled him in prime time, they egged him on, they made him their hatchet man, and now that he's got his thirty pieces of silver, he's dead to them.  Zell buddy, if watching Bushco in action for 4 years didn't teach you anything more than this, it's a good thing you're retiring, since you're simply not cut out for the modern world of cut throat politics. 

Yeti Sports!

I'm still enjoying the Yeti Sports event #5, the pengu whack, and I'm better at it; I almost always get over the 1250 tree on my 2nd shot (or 1st, on a very good game) and I very seldom score less than 3500 on a full game, but despite constant 4000+ scores, and at least 20 over 5000, I've yet to improve upon my first huge game of 5886.

I'm not posting about that game today though. I'm posting about the new 6th Yeti Sports event, Big Wave. It's a fun one too, and by far the most action game styled of any yet. In this one our intrepid yeti is surfing, and you control his board action with the left/right arrow keys. It really plays more like skate or snowboarding on a 1/4 pipe, since you go up, get air, come down, turn, go up, get air, turn, etc, but they're calling it surfing so we'll go with that. The object is to keep going fast, go lots of jumps and land them cleanly, while picking the various flying and hovering penguins out of the sky. I've done about five games and have yet to bother trying to get a good score; it's much more fun to just surf and try to keep the speed going and get big air. The game only went up yesterday, and the high scores are in the 36000 range at this point. Since I just got 19,500 while not really trying, I wouldn't think 25k+ would be too hard, but I bet the highs will be in the 50k+ range by Monday, once people spend the weekend optimizing their performance.

I could care about score, I just like going big, and trying to get the bonuses for neat 180º, 360º, and 540º spins. I suppose a 720º would be good as well, though the game info doesn't mention it, and I don't think it's possible to get that much air.

Speed is generated by turning as far towards the bottom of the screen as possible (you'll routinely vanish entirely from the screen, but don't go too far or you get out-of-bounds restarted) and going as straight up and down the wave as possible. You get a bonus for every leap based on how high you go; the one pictured here is a 335 bonus for height, and the green 360 is a bonus for the perfect 360º spin I just made. The faster you go, the higher you go, and the more pingus you can rack up. Your base score per leap has nothing to do with how much you spin; you can go straight up and back down and get the same score as you would with a perfect spin.

With good timing you'll score 400-500 per leap, with 550 or so about the limit. You can easily do a 180º with almost any amount of air, and easily do a 360º bonus with anything more than about 300 air. To do a 540º though, you need much more air. I tried to get one for about a dozen games and never got close; I could get past 360º easily, but to do a 540º required substantially more air.  Eventually I discovered how well carving worked for a speed boost, and started nailing 600+ airs, until I finally managed a 540º on a 707 leap. It's possible to do one and a half spins on anything over about 600, though you'll come down a bit short. 650 or seems to be the requirement to turn a relatively clean 1.5 spin, one where you don't come down a quarter turn short and lose all of your speed, though I've never gotten the 540º bonus on less than a 700. I figure 800 or more is possible, with perfect turning.  I still don't think that would be high enough to pull a 720º bonus, if there even is such a thing, but you're welcome to try for it. Even at 650 you are completely flying off the top of the visible screen, which is, of course, half the fun.

To carve, turn sharply just before you reach the peak of the wave. You want to come as close as possible to jumping without actually doing so. If done correctly, you'll shot back down the wave at super speed, and probably get an out of bounds.  However, with practice you can learn to prepare for the speed and manage it, and if you manage to carve, go straight down, make a very low turn, and go straight up... you'll get some huge air. Like off the top of the visible screen air.  Don't be too surprised to start turning the instant you clear the wave, and if you're able to get over 700 or so air, you might turn one and be a happy little dude. I know I was.

It's hard though, since you can't keep going that fast back to back. You'll power a 711 air, then do a nice turn on the wave and go back up... and just do a 601 air on the next one, and a 493 after that. You have to carve first, setting up your big leap, so it's a sacrifice in air time and points, and probably not a real good idea when playing for a high score. But if you just want to have fun, like me, go for it, dude.

I should also upgrade my height for repeatable airs, as stated earlier, since while trying for the big carves I've managed to do several back to back 540 spins, of which maybe 1/3 are clean enough to score the 540º bonus. You need about 600 height to turn 1.5 times and not lose all of your speed, once you are used to the game enough to come down straight, carve very low, and go back up with huge speed. It's a blast.  I still haven't made any effort to get a high score, since I enjoy carving (try just going in circles sometime, you'll get an idea of the timing and speed boosts from that) and big air too much, but perhaps by Monday I'll have gotten enough happiness from blasting off to work some pingu points into my game as well.

In other Yeti Sports news, Donnie wanted me to point out (some weeks ago, when it was new) that they've now got a Yeti Pentathlon, in which you compete in the first five Yeti Sports events in sequence, and get a total tournament score based on your performance in all of the events. I don't play it myself, since I find the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th events deadly boring and the 1st only fun once in a very long while, but if you enjoy all of the events you might want to give it a try.

I'd link directly to these games, but they've got their site set up to make that impossible. So just go to the main page, click "play online" and scroll down. All of the games open up in a pop up window, and depending on your machine's power you might want to close a lot of other things first; I can't happily play the 5th event if I have a lot of other windows open, since I get too much slow down as the pingu is rolling and spinning. But my computer is 2.5 years old, so YMMV.

Anyway, this screenshot will mean something to you if you play D2, and if not don't worry about it. I'd just like to point out how unbelievably happy this item find would have made me 4 years ago, or 3 years ago, or 2 years ago, and how many thousands of hours I played with very high MF characters looking for it, or other comparable items. So of course I find it now that I'm playing SP, and no longer care.  *sigh*