34

Arthur Cash, upon encountering a bottle of hard cider: "Fuck that." On an unrelated note, Arthur's next book will be on John Wilkes.

I don't know. I had a Thanksgiving meal, watched some football (fuckety-fuck), and now I'm kind of tired. But every single commercial indicates that I need to be out at 6am tomorrow morning at the stores (5:30am for Best Buy) or else... something. Then I think there are those that say we're supposed to boycott everything tomorrow, too. They don't run too many adverts, though.

Yay! I'm going to patent 34 before anyone else gets their greedy hands on it.

iPod jacking sounds neat. If I didn't find approaching strangers so terribly distasteful I'd participate. A larger problem is that my ears are freakish in some unknown way and the distinctive white iPod earbuds don't mesh well with them. No one would be able to identify me as a potential jackee from the generic headphones I sport.

I love Jamba Juice and I love In-n-Out, but I wasn't to keen on the idea of recalling elected officials. Still, Hertzberg makes some valid points in his Talk of the Town piecelet in defense of Cali. Specifically, having a larger field of potential candidates (ideally more than 2, but fewer than 134...) would move politcal discourse ever-so-slightly past the current non-stop mudslinging, since presumably it's not possible to run separate attack ads against each of a multitude of people. Key to ensuring that the larger playing field is full of candidates that have some chance of being elected is adopting an alternative voting system , such as the instant runoff voting method that Hertzberg advocates. Moving away from simple majority voting would of course be a huge blow to the established political parties, so how the hell will there ever be any sort of reform? There won't ever be.

Taking a radical departure from the hetero-orthodoxy of string theory, he managed to prove that we (and the rest of it all) are not in fact tiny 7 dimensionsional strings vibrating in 11 dimensional space-time-misc., but rather one dimensional lines scully-wagging around in a sea of cosmic jello. It was beautiful physics but troubling ontology, so we're hoping that he just let off some significant digits or something.

Well, the news is getting old already, but I remembered that I never mentioned Sharon & Dave Form-Bartel's impending bliss, weddingly. Suck it, Only Simchas . But I am going to do everyone one better and propose on this blog. Sometime soon. So keep checking in case you're the chosen person/persons.

There does appear to be something screwy with the code that handles comments on this ol' blog. I shall investigate further, and I expect a ton of joyous comments when I get it fixed!

Oooh, they published my Letter to the Editor in the Spec , written in response to this nonsense . And I don't even own the place anymore.

On the off chance that I haven't told you about the donut store on 86th & Lexington yet: there is a donut store on 86th & Lexington, up from the uptown 4/5/6 exit, and the donuts are, well, Formulaic, in the Platonic sense (not in the Law & Order sense). The circumference conforms to the standard donut dimensions, but these are thick donuts. And fresh. I had a cocoanut and a custard-filled. They really made me happy.

A game: go in to a Barnes & Noble's (if you're on West 86th St., there's one; if you're on East 86th St., as I was tonight, there are two within two blocks; if you're anywhere else, at all, there's one nearby as well), stroll over to the Romance section, and try to find a book authored by someone male. If you win, post a comment and I'll give you a cookie.

Here's the picture of oncoming cars taken on the Brooklyn Bridge that I promised . For those who care.

This is why Texas (and, really, the South) is a bad idea: someone can arrest half the black population of a town on fabricated drug charges and almost get away with it, while a white millionaire who was already wanted for the disappearance of his wife can hack his neighbor to pieces, put them into garbage bags and throw them into a river, and get off on self defense .

(This is from Form. I must admit to not having seen the actual commercial, but I'm sure the commentary is apt.) Inspired by Viagra's tasteful use of sports figures in their advertising, I have determined that the Livetra ad with the guy throwing the football through the tire would be infinitely more entertaining if the guy was Dan Marino. Just a thought.

When I pay for my groceries at the local Pathmark with a credit card, the cashier gives me a little computer printout of a slip to sign and thereby validate the purchase. Perhaps you've some experience paying for goods via credit as well. On that slip, somewhat below where I sign, are the words "Begin Franking Here." This really confused me, until I looked up the definition of the word franking , which mostly clears things up, but still, doesn't that sound just ridiculously dirty?

Well, this is what I did today: I mashed root vegetables and served them topped with a sauté of spinach. And that's really all I did today (okay, that and some dishes), but I guess that's all right, as root vegetables are pretty sexy. At least the way I do them. Radish-style. For the mash: - 3 turnips - 3 potatoes - 1 clove of garlic - half a cup of whole milk - sprinkle of butter - salt 'n' peppa Peel the turnips and potatoes and cut them into 1" cubes (like squares, but three dimensional). Put them along with the peeled clove of garlic into a suitable pot and fill it with enough water to cover the veggies. Bring that to a boil, cover it, and let them cook for around 25 minutes until they're pliant. But don't ply them! Instead, drain the water and put the cooked tubers/bulbs/roots into a large bowl. Add the butter, whole milk, salt, and pepper. Mash with your masher. For your spinach sauté: - spinach Sauté the spinach with something tasty. You can handle ...

Well, it is/was election day across the U.S.A., so that's something. Or not really, as the only thing that I thought sounded interesting on the N.Y.C. ballot, proposition 3 , turned out to be some sort of scheme on Bloomberg's part to help the Independent party in return for their help in getting him elected. Or so the liberal media says, and I believe 'em. What I thought the proposition was all about, and what I am convinced is the only way democracy has any shot (no hyperbole there, honest), is some sort of real election reform. As in an entirely different voting system that makes some sense from a game theoretical standpoint, and would perhaps both break the stranglehold that the major political parties have on this country, and allow people to truly express their opinions about whom they'd like to have as leaders--without having to perform a ridiculous calculus involving the electability of the candidates they'd like, the closeness of the race, etc. See Nader in...

I am writing this from the very centre of the Brooklyn Bridge, where I get much better cell phone reception than in my house. The view is a lot nicer, too. It's beautiul as fuck out, and I decided to walk from work to Casa Formatica in the Village. Some things of note about the Brooklyn Bridge: - it is the world's oldest extant naturally-occurring bridge - it was built so that people from Manhattan could escape to Brooklyn, not vice versa - the pedestrian walkway (which I smartly decided to traverse) is made of wood planks, like the boardwalk in Coney Island - it's a kick-ass bridge I attempted to use my photo-camera cell phone attachment to snap some pictures o Lower Manhattan, but nothing came out. I took a sweet picture of oncoming traic that I'll link to just as soon as I get home.

Okay dokay. The blog segue has been completed. Hopefully this has been as exciting as other server backend upgrades in which you've participated. The nice thing now is that you can go to http://thirtyfour.blogdns.com/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi to get to 34 ; you no longer need that annoying :3434 in the address. Though the :3434 still works, if you liked it or something. Anyway, I'll try to post something of substance soon. You want to hear about fatalism? It's cool.