After much thought and deliberation, there seems to be no better way to pass along holiday cheer and to ring in the new year than with kazoos. So, here's my holiday gift to you... the patient reader who stuck around as I didn't write anything for weeks on end... A bunch of kazoo songs.
Metallica on Kazoos
The Final Countdown on the KazooKeyLele (Which, if my math is correct, is only 33% kazoo. But 100% awesome.)
For the more traditional of you, here's Handel's Messiah on kazoos.
Eleanor Rigby on Kazoo
This is especially for my cousins who text me every time they hear Billie Jean...
Rocky on kazoos.
Finally, a tribute to John Williams. With no kazoos.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
The Ultimate Nacho Bowl and The Ultimate Nachos
I received this email a week ago from Jonny O. He writes about "The Ultimate Nacho Bowl". The story brings a holiday tear to my eye...
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So... the end-of-semester potluck in my ceramics class. The anticipation was building for several weeks. Many asked as I was crafting the thing what purpose it could possibly serve- such a massive beast of a thing. What could justify such effort and magnitude? Such devotion. So I explained to them in bits and pieces my long pedigree in nacho making: The triumphs. The tragedies. The hours of study. The adulation. The fame. The women. Had my tales run thin? Was I all talk and no action? The class demanded proof, I sensed. "Fine, you shall have it!!"
I was a bit worried, to be honest. It's sort of my magnum opus, my A-Game,these nachos. It's something I've perfected and re-perfected over years and years. How many Super Bowl parties? How many 4th of Julys? And each time, trying to make things truer and wiser and more perfect. But this was a whole different crowd. These were "artsy" types. I fully expected the other offerings at the table to be of the "cruelty-free, fair trade tofu" variety. How would my display of ostentatious machismo play out? My dish, which basically says, "screw calories, screw fat and cholesterol. This is about the EATING." How would it go? Would they turn their noses up at it? Politely say "thank you, that's nice"? Would it sit there untouched, unloved, as I slunk into a corner and made polite conversation? So with worry in mind, I put special attention to dialing in the seasoning just right: Paprika, onion, garlic, chili, several peppers, half a beer and others.
I tasted it at the edge of its last bit of reducing and knew I had hit some magic luck. It was just right. I knew, from one taste, there was no way of making it better. Nothing to add, nothing I could take away. It was just damn right. Rare perfection. That gave me confidence. As I entered the studio I surveyed the spread and realized I overestimated my foes. Many brought in store-bought cookies. Trader Joe's fare was abundant. A few brought in simple homemade goods. One brought a decent pasta salad. Still others brought in heartfelt endeavors, such as fresh baked breads (which were quite good, I must say). But they were all token gestures to this magnanimous occasion. In fact, the whole spirit of the thing was to "bring a dish in your DISH" - make a dish in the class - forge something by your own hand - and then bring something equally delicious to fill it. And looking over the plastic Trader Joes containers of hummus, the collection of store-bought crackers and soups, and otherwise petty endeavors, I chuckled inwardly. I was the newbie, and yet they didn't have the spirit of the thing. I pulled the cover off the ultimate nacho bowl to a collective hush. And they knew, oh my brothers, it was the main event.
The total package had arrived. They'd never seen anything like it. And the combination of the Ultimate Nacho Bowl with the Ultimate Nachos in it, well, they were utterly powerless. I sat back in somewhat fascination as they descended upon it. Like ants. The class made those nachos gone in short and decisive order. GONE! The bowl scraped clean! All I had to do was rinse the sucker out at the end of the night. I inwardly reveled in my nacho-dom, my confidence restored, my nachismo intact. All in all, another victory for the greatest food of all time. And another victory for your's truly, the king: I am the Ric Flair of the Nacho.
peace, love and nachos
- j
Sunday, December 14, 2008
12/14/08 Active Ingredients
I got this Lip Balm from Trader Joe's. One of its selling points is "50% Organic Ingredients". Then, under the active ingredients, there are two: Octinoxate and Oxybenzone. So, your Venn Diagram of active ingredients and organic ingredients do not overlap. Which, to be technical, doesn't really constitute a Venn Diagram at all. All that aside, I am a fan of this Lip Balm.
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It's weird not writing on this anymore. The strangest part is that I often save webpages and links to remind myself that I want to write about a certain topic. Over the course of the past month or two, I've collected dozens of "favorites" that were intended for here. The options were to 1) Erase them all 2) Post them all in a brain dump or 3) Organize them and post them in some sort of logical manner over the next week or two. I've decided to go with Option #2. I'm just going to post stuff until I get tired of it. This can be your go to page for the holidays when you need a new link or game or something when you're bored at work. Or not work as the case may be for 6.5% of the US Population and rising.
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You never really put much thought into the allure of video games. One of the assumptions you probably don't think much about is that you get to do things in video games that you probably couldn't in real life. You get to play a professional sport, fight a war, be a rock star... You're hard pressed to find a game in which you're better in real life than you are in video game land. Until now. Try this Running Game. You use the Q, W, O and P keys to control the guy's thighs and calves. After at least a dozen tries in the 100 meter dash, I maxed out at 5.5 meters before I fell. (Warning: For the competitor in you, this could quite possibly be the most frustrating gaming experience of your life).
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I made my first contribution to Wikipedia today. There's a List of White Sox Players' Nicknames. I added one. I rule.
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The Quake Catcher Network is asking for your help if your computer has an accelerometer. The detector comes standard on Macs - Its purpose is to save your hard drive if your computer falls. However, the Quake Catcher Network wants to collect simultaneous data from those sensors to warn and analyze earthquakes.
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100 things you should eat before you die. I'd guess I probably still have 50 to go.
------
Bored again? Play just about any Original NES Game here. I suck at Baseball Stars.
------
A few months ago I saw a world map poster unlike any I had ever seen before. The dude told me it was a Gall-Peters Projection. He explained that most world maps you see inflate the size of the United States and Europe so that the powers that be appear more powerful. In this projection, Africa looks pretty friggin' huge.
------
In the best/only good move MTV has made in the past 15 years, they are offering up old school music videos online.
------
"Synesthesia is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway." I guess it's common that people see letters and numbers in colors. Personally, I think the number 6 has a hat. And convinced I once saw 6 wearing a hat in a kindergarten book or something and it's embedded in my subconscious.
I'm fascinated by the phenomenon, but would be frightened to have a severe case of it.
Speaking of colors, I had an intense dream a couple of night ago where colors played a blatantly obvious role. I won't explain the dream now, but the colors I remember were the girl in orange, and green and blue train lines. Perhaps I'll research it later and give an analysis.
------
"In 1993, the UK Science Minister, William Waldegrave, challenged physicists to produce an answer that would fit on one page to the question 'What is the Higgs boson, and why do we want to find it?' " Here are the best 1 page answers.
------
Some guy's list of the Top 10 Naked Gun Moments:
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I think this was from PostSecret. It's about playing RockBand.
-----
ESPN's SportsCenter Commercials throughout the years.
-----
In October, MSNBC wrote an article about how Americans have lost $2 Trillion or 20% of their retirement plans. Which got me to thinking. That equates to about $10 Trillion in total retirement savings beforehand. The national deficit is also right about at $10 Trillion. Where I'm surprised is that, if you took every single penny saved by every single American over the course of decades, it would barely equal the wasteful government spending, $5 Trillion of which has been accumulated this decade alone.
------
Here's a goofy site where you look at random photos of people and guess their age.
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Another game for you - It's called Factory Balls. It's a great thinking person's game.
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This game is like Tetris. Only being bad at Tetris helps you. 99 Bricks.
--------
The story of Oedipus. As written by some high school kid.
-------
Point: Pachebel's Canon in D rules
Counter-Point: Not so much
-----
It's weird not writing on this anymore. The strangest part is that I often save webpages and links to remind myself that I want to write about a certain topic. Over the course of the past month or two, I've collected dozens of "favorites" that were intended for here. The options were to 1) Erase them all 2) Post them all in a brain dump or 3) Organize them and post them in some sort of logical manner over the next week or two. I've decided to go with Option #2. I'm just going to post stuff until I get tired of it. This can be your go to page for the holidays when you need a new link or game or something when you're bored at work. Or not work as the case may be for 6.5% of the US Population and rising.
-------
You never really put much thought into the allure of video games. One of the assumptions you probably don't think much about is that you get to do things in video games that you probably couldn't in real life. You get to play a professional sport, fight a war, be a rock star... You're hard pressed to find a game in which you're better in real life than you are in video game land. Until now. Try this Running Game. You use the Q, W, O and P keys to control the guy's thighs and calves. After at least a dozen tries in the 100 meter dash, I maxed out at 5.5 meters before I fell. (Warning: For the competitor in you, this could quite possibly be the most frustrating gaming experience of your life).
-------
I made my first contribution to Wikipedia today. There's a List of White Sox Players' Nicknames. I added one. I rule.
-------
The Quake Catcher Network is asking for your help if your computer has an accelerometer. The detector comes standard on Macs - Its purpose is to save your hard drive if your computer falls. However, the Quake Catcher Network wants to collect simultaneous data from those sensors to warn and analyze earthquakes.
------
100 things you should eat before you die. I'd guess I probably still have 50 to go.
------
Bored again? Play just about any Original NES Game here. I suck at Baseball Stars.
------
A few months ago I saw a world map poster unlike any I had ever seen before. The dude told me it was a Gall-Peters Projection. He explained that most world maps you see inflate the size of the United States and Europe so that the powers that be appear more powerful. In this projection, Africa looks pretty friggin' huge.
------
In the best/only good move MTV has made in the past 15 years, they are offering up old school music videos online.
------
"Synesthesia is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway." I guess it's common that people see letters and numbers in colors. Personally, I think the number 6 has a hat. And convinced I once saw 6 wearing a hat in a kindergarten book or something and it's embedded in my subconscious.
I'm fascinated by the phenomenon, but would be frightened to have a severe case of it.
Speaking of colors, I had an intense dream a couple of night ago where colors played a blatantly obvious role. I won't explain the dream now, but the colors I remember were the girl in orange, and green and blue train lines. Perhaps I'll research it later and give an analysis.
------
"In 1993, the UK Science Minister, William Waldegrave, challenged physicists to produce an answer that would fit on one page to the question 'What is the Higgs boson, and why do we want to find it?' " Here are the best 1 page answers.
------
Some guy's list of the Top 10 Naked Gun Moments:
------
I think this was from PostSecret. It's about playing RockBand.
-----
ESPN's SportsCenter Commercials throughout the years.
-----
In October, MSNBC wrote an article about how Americans have lost $2 Trillion or 20% of their retirement plans. Which got me to thinking. That equates to about $10 Trillion in total retirement savings beforehand. The national deficit is also right about at $10 Trillion. Where I'm surprised is that, if you took every single penny saved by every single American over the course of decades, it would barely equal the wasteful government spending, $5 Trillion of which has been accumulated this decade alone.
------
Here's a goofy site where you look at random photos of people and guess their age.
------
Another game for you - It's called Factory Balls. It's a great thinking person's game.
-------
This game is like Tetris. Only being bad at Tetris helps you. 99 Bricks.
--------
The story of Oedipus. As written by some high school kid.
-------
Point: Pachebel's Canon in D rules
Counter-Point: Not so much
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