34

Because it's pretty cool having 34 posts in a single month. So many prolific-ness!

New York Times Amish understatement of the day: The reality television Amish are, to say the least, atypical.

In case you missed Barack Obama's speech at the DNC tonight, you can stream it (via the Internet ) from C-SPAN here . It's definitely worth watching.

Hey, Mike's uncle has a feature on Meryl Streep (and her political views) in the Times today. That's cool.

Rich, Beltway veteran that he is, makes this point: since our vote counts for shit anyway, and since Bill Clinton is the supremum of the set of living politicians, why not write him in on your ballot in November? The answer being, of course, that Clinton would win about 100 electoral votes and in the process deliver the election to Bush. And some questions of legality--not that legality has much bearing on our elections.

The fact that Jason Giambi very well might have a fatal parasite living in his large intestine isn't funny at all. Not even a little bit. Because, lookit, he might die. Due to complications arising from something living in his colon. And it's not like there are just a bunch of other Giambis floating around for Steinbrenner to buy. So, in summary, the whole Giambi situation isn't the least bit amusing. The fact that Kevin Brown's got it too is really fucking hilarious though. He's just a bad person.

I went running with Adam this past Tuesday, down the Promenade, and I think he did pretty well for himself, especially since he admits it was the first exercise he's had since senior year of college. I think he's prouder about the recent rim-job he performed, however. And yes, that's a technical term. No giggling. Given the fact that the weather forecast for New York over the next week or two called for torrential downpouring of rain, with some let up in the middle of each night when no one could enjoy it, I thought I'd go to the gym in my office today and work out there. This is all part of my continuing campaign of self -aggrandizement -improvement. The 2am Blue 9 burgers I had with Scott last night also had something to do with it. But the gym doesn't open until 2pm on the weekends, I learned, and the weather is actually not bad at all, so I went on across the Brooklyn Bridge instead. I can't figure out exactly how long the Promenade is and I really can...

I'm getting pretty involved in recruiting at work, specifically on the Columbia University team, which is, you know, fun. A good diversion from actual work, at least. It'll be nice to be on the other side of the table grilling the kiddies on why they want to go into I.T. We're looking to hire quite a bit this year, after a couple of down years in terms of hiring. I was telling someone (okay, it was my mom) this and she said that the economy must be turning around, and that must be a vindication of Bush's economic policy. And while some indicators aren't as miserable as they were last year, I think the uptick in hiring is somewhat localized to the financial services industry, which has benefitted disproportionately from Bush's pro-business fiscal policies, and is just a result of playing catch-up with staffing after a couple of exteremely lean years. But anyway, it's disheartening that something like a company's, or even an industry's, hiring strateg...

Are you male? Did you like Four Weddings and a Funeral ? Post a comment and let me know. There's a lot riding on this.

Did you realize that a bomb exploded at Times Square yesterday evening ? I didn't, and I was actually at Times Square yesterday evening. It's odd how this isn't really big news.

I was going to get all clever and start linking to all of D. Sloane's bloggings that link to 34 , thereby initiating a massive feedback cycle sure to overwhelm whatever algorithms Google throws at us. But Steak Cheval doesn't do permalinks . So misguided.

I did not go to Siren Fest , despite it being more or less in my backyard. I lack various flavours of "cred" necessary to attend such a gathering, plus anyway they had the 2003 band list posted the first time I looked and I got all excited about Modest Mouse, wham I enjoy, and then didn't care too much about any of the bands this year. From what I hear it wasn't very exciting save for TV On The Radio. The songs of theirs that I've heard are good. If I remember, the Times Magazine had something on them a few months ago, and perhaps the magazine has a slightly better record than the paper of Not Making Stuff Up. Except for William Safire, who is clearly fabricating words, and the Ethicist, who must be shot.

Fucking amateurs . All ya'll Spec-folk should be grateful that you had El Jefe.

Good news for anyone who's ever lost their keys in a black hole: your keys are still fucked, but it's possible to receive informational updates on exactly how fucked your keys are.

I now have a New Yorker bag , courtesy of some lovely lass (or grumpy gus) in the Condé Nast promotions department. However, I don't want a New Yorker bag. Please tell me that you'd like it, and I'll give it to you (not necessarily in that order, depending on how desperate I am to unload it). Features include: superior hangability-ness, straps of some variety, ummm, pouches? There might be hidden pouches for gum and stuff, though if there are, they're insanely well-hidden. You could put back issues of the New Yorker in it, which I wouldn't do, but maybe you'd want to. I think it's homeomorphic to a pair of pants, thought probably not. I'm at a loss. Take my bag.

Um, what the fuck was up with tonight's Six Feet Under ? In other, slightly dated news, Arrested Development has been picked up for another season, so we're all happy about that.

The Texas Rangers have the third-best record in the majors right now, and the second-best non-evil record (or first-best, depending on your views of the St. Louis Cardinals). They've somehow managed to allow less runs this season than the Yankees--despite legitimately having no pitching, unlike the Yankees, who have plenty of expensive pitching that sucks. They lead the majors in runs scored. I'd argue that their infield of Teixeira/Soriano/Blalock/Young/Bajaras is the best in baseball right now, edging out Giambi/whomever Steinbrenner buys to play second/A-Rod/Jeter/Posada and Pujols/Womack (who, I suspect, is in the starting lineup just because the Cardinals' owner's kid has him on his fantasy team)/Rolen/Renteria/Mathaney. They've got 5 solid young outfielders, and I think Laynce Nix is going to be an all-star next year. I'm writing all this so I have something good to link to when the Rangers collapse in September.

I've made chili a couple of times this summer, and it's turned out well enough. Normally I make it with meat of some sort, but it's just as good veggie. - one can pinto beans - one can pink beans (if you feel like buying dried beans and soaking them instead of going canned, yeah, enjoy that) - an onion - a few cloves of garlic - a hottish pepper of some sort. I've been using the long green hot italian peppers, but I'm sure there are more appropriate choices - a few cans of crushed tomatoes - maybe a couple of fresh tomatoes? That would be nice - corn starch - sour cream, hot sauce, and a decent cheddar (or even Pepper Jack, Ryan) for garnish Dice the onions. Use a good knife to do this. Don't fuck around. Mince some of the garlic, and put some in a garlic press, which you have. Sauté the onions and garlic in a large stock pot-type pot with a neutral vegetable oil. Once they're nicely cooked, drain and rinse off the beans and add them in, along with the hot p...

Times Martha Stewart quote of the day (though something tells me it probably was reported elsewhere as well): "What was a small personal matter became over the last two years an almost fatal circus of unprecedented proportions." Take a few seconds to parse that.

Do you live in New York? (Or, I guess, California, which are the two places where people who read my blog live?) Do you think your vote in the upcoming ( ed: I assume it's still upcoming ) election will have any impact at all on determining who is elected President? It won't. At all. If you wanted to quantify the impact of your vote and compare it to the impact of the vote of someone in, say, Ohio, it would be a tiny, tiny fraction. I could probably come up with some formula to calculate the relationship between the current degree of uncertainty regarding which candidate will win a given state and the influence on the overall election of a single vote, but you get the idea. If our vote made any difference at all in New York, they'd be spending millions on advertising here. And some of the Bush adverts are outrageiously funny. But I care about who wins the election just as much as the average person in Ohio or Florida or whichever swing state you want to name, and I definite...

There is a Double Happiness: the happiness of scallops and the happiness of shrimp. Water chestnuts are indifferent.

If you didn't catch tonight's episode of The Daily Show , try to watch it Tuesday at 7pm. Jon Stewart just, like, goes off on Wolf Blitzer re: the failures of the media leading up to the war. Thank goodness for Jon Stewart.

Okay, so I was wrong . John Kerry clearly isn't (the muppet) Guy Smiley, as demonstrated by this photo of them together belting out a duet of the Food Emporium jinlge. Because if they were the same person, how would you explain the picture of them singing together? There's just no explanation. In other news, Reagan is apparently endorsing Kerry from beyond the grave. He's aging well in his mausoleum. And in other other news, John Edwards is actually Grover, Dick Cheney is actually Oscar the Grouch, and G. W. is actually Bird Bid, except evil. Even more so than Big Bird really is.

Adam cleaned the fuck out of our bathroom. It is now, literally, fuck-free. Thanks, Adam!

I was right in that the pictures of the firewerken aren't really anything, but still. Here's about the least inspiring burst, which for whatever reason is the one I decided to photograph. Here's the traffic on the BQE; it was hard to tell if the people attached to those cars were there intentionally, hoping to get stuck at a point on the road where they had a view (34 feet ahead they would have been wedged between buildings). You can kind of make out some of the people on the roofs of their cars. The second the show ended the honking began. And here are the dinosaur things that live year-round by the docks in Red Hook. Just for the sake of completeness. I also discovered a few pictures from the Form-Bartels' sheva bracha that I'd never copied to the computer. Poland Spring vodka, for those not in the know, is about $7.99/liter and is truly what it means to be from Maine. Here's Sharon before and after , as well as Dave , who, in all fairness, has got many ...

Well, I'm no longer sworn to secrecy: I was on the short list of potential Vice Presidents. My Southern charm, boyish good looks and intelligence would have made me a formidable candidate to pair with Kerry, and they go and choose fucking Edwards . So short sighted.

After being sized up for a tuxedo, I ate quite a bit at Scott's parent's place. Grilled foods, which is what you have to do on the holiday weekend, so I'm perfectly justified. But I ate way too much. I went running this evening to make amends. I'm happy with the progress I've made as a runner. I still don't do it more than four times a month (but hopefully that will change; if you see me, ask me if I've run recently and start chasing me if I say no), but I'm building up some endurance. I ran up the Promenade and over to the Brooklyn Bridge, and did maybe a quarter of the bridge before I had to segue into walking. Then I mixed it up with running and walking quickly-ish across the bridge and back to the niceties of Brooklyn. The BBQ ribs and especially the hot sauce with which I smother the ribs proved more of an impediment than actual exhaustion. Towards the end of the run I passed a large man with a shaved head sitting on a bench. I was very much tempted...

Times quote about time of the day (part two of an ongoing series [of quotes, if not days]): "They [the railroads] didn't invent time, obviously," said Mr. Haviland.

Because I somehow feel compelled to write about wham I'm reading nowadays: I finished Paul Auster's New York Trilogy a few days ago. I started reading it last year after Boone mentioned it in a reading thingy she gave at Barnard, and I very much liked the first story, City of Glass . I.e. it was good . Then I never got into the second story, and picked up whatever I happened to pick up a year ago. But I started reading the second story recently, and enjoyed it (though not as much as the first). It's set in Brooklyn Heights. I think Auster's from somewhere in Brooklyn, and still lives there. Not sure why I know that. And the third story was similarly enjoyable. I missed out by not reading them contiguously though. They're subtly (or not so subtly) intertwined. The third story had mention of the Templars, which was a kick after reading Foucault's Pendulum . Now I'm reading Don DeLillo's Underworld . It is my massive summer reading. I loved White Noise wh...

This is what was absolutely lovely, for those keeping track: the Macy*s fireworks, as seen from my roof. They were about 34 feet away. Very, very sparkly. I haven't checked yet, but I think all the pictures came out as uniform darkness.

God, I miss Nash already. And if they fucking trade Dirk for Shaq, man, I'm going to start rooting for some other Texas team. I don't care if they can't win a title with last year's team (or better yet, two year's ago); they were right.

From the Times : ...Saturn, the faraway planet of serene beauty embellished by an exquisite array of encircling rings.