The Blogatron 2000

I beg your pardon

// March 9th, 2008 // 7 Comments » // Uncategorized

It has come to my attention that this blog has laid fallow for many weeks and months now. Intermittent posting at best.

I’ve looked into the situation and discovered that this correspondent is, in fact, responsible for said irresponsibility. The many demands of my rock and roll lifestyle do not leave adequate room for blog writing or reading. Twitter has served a paltry substitute (although i do love twitter very much).

Today i recommit myself to The Blogatron 2000. But it re-starts under new management. Same staff, new management.

With occasional exceptions, all posts must be written in 5 minutes or less. That’s the only the option. We ask your forgiveness in advance for anything that emerges as incomprehensible. Rest assured that these necessary measures are being taken in everyone’s best interests; for the love of the game.

Good day.

The next Daily Show correspondent

// January 13th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // Uncategorized

My buddy Jimmy. Easily the funniest guy I know. He has a dream job, managing and editing and producing content for Maxim and Stuff and Blender online. Which means that he gets paid to do what the rest of us desk-bound masses sneak off to do if we’re lucky: review the best new music, hang with rockstars and models, and cruise youtube.

Recently Jimmy’s been producing his own short satirical videos, all of which are pretty hilarious. Finally Maxim made their videos embeddable, so now i can share his latest:

Over at Blender, he has a great informal artist interview series going — here’s one he did with Justice:

my first yahoo answer, and not poisoning myself on lithium ions

// November 4th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Internet, Technology, Uncategorized

I just finished some impressive handiwork replacing my 3G ipod battery (so far, so good — it’s charging) and found myself with an old lithium ion battery which, the packaging said, i absolutely could not discard in the trash.

(Side note regarding my skillz: If you compare my hackery with the likes of tom’s breadboarding and sottering, based solely on appearances, i think I measure up quite well.)

Of course, Newer Technology made no effort whatsoever to tell me what i, or anyone with a conscience, was supposed to do with said battery that could not be tossed. After all, why should my kids be forced to swim with terrorists in lithium-coated waters just so that i can have the pleasure of listening to a couple more hours of emo?

So I asked The Internet and the internet delivered, as usual. After a few false trails on google, i was bopped over to Yahoo! Answers, where i found, “Discarding a battery?” Perfect! Well, almost. Everyone confirmed that I shouldn’t jettison it, but the majority told me to go the local recycling depot, which is a ridiculously impractical idea, since I have no idea where such a depot would be found along my commute to work.

I did, however, find through some pages linked from the answer page that you can take your battery to almost any electronics or phone store and they’ll take the weapon off your hands at no charge, which was exactly what I wanted to hear. So i logged in and added my very first Yahoo! Answer to the Yahoo! Question and hopefully someone will Yahoo! benefit soon from my goodwill. I was impressed at how easy it was and rewarding to post an answer.

Then, logically, i was smartly asked to take the next action (since I was presumably on a roll after answering my very first Q) and answer another question. Top of the suggestions list: Teen party dillema. Thanks, Yahoo. I help you save the planet and now you want to turn me into a child predator. I’ll pass.

massive, beautiful bike crash (CSI: Arlington — call me)

// May 28th, 2007 // 3 Comments » // Inhabiting DC, Life, Outside, Uncategorized

Short version: Me, cycling on two-lane Mt. Vernon trail along Potomac, traveling between 10 and 15 mph in slightly overcast 80 degree weather. The Unsub, a young, stupid male between the ages of 6 and 11 approaches from the opposite direction on a red bike in my lane, riding in parallel with his apparent friend at approximately 5 to 10 mph. Instead of returning to his own lane, the subject swerves off the path toward the grass to my right — at exactly the same time that I veered off my side of the path to avoid him. Bam!! HUGE collision — both of us on the ground, twisted up with our respective bike frames.

Despite the massive impact, we were both lucky. No major injuries reported. When i looked over at the kid, he seemed to be missing a big tooth or two, but there was no blood, so hopefully the teeth just hadn’t come in yet. After some minor bike re-tuning and a dust-off, I was back on the trail and the kid was up and gone before any useful words could be exchanged.

Long version: I’m in a bit of manageable pain at the moment, but the whole experience turned out to be a great rush. There was something amazingly poetic about that moment before impact. That moment when you’re completely lucid about the disaster that’s going to take place in the next millisecond, and yet you’re just one millisecond past being able to take any other course of action that could prevent this from happening.

So in this strange half-second, your only option is to surrender to the tragedy unfolding before your eyes, to accept the unraveling fate. The lack of needing to make a decision was surprisingly freeing.

And while the sore left half of my body may say otherwise tomorrow, the forceful collision of metal and atoms in that crash was also strangely satisfying. Sort of like the release of energy that comes from breaking a glass bottle against a brick wall, or even from experiencing a thunder and lighting storm. The sheer unpredictability of the whole event carried some intrinsic value for me, which I can’t completely explain. Both the collision and the unpredictability of the event are just so rare that they seem somehow precious.

Of course, my outlook would probably be a lot different if I was writing this from a hospital bed… I guess it’s just nice to be reminded of your own vitality now and again.

sleeping

// May 21st, 2007 // 6 Comments » // Inhabiting DC, Life, Uncategorized

is not going well for me these days… which is bad, cause i’m a damn good sleeper.

between the CSI / Criminal Minds / 24 episodes that reveal exciting new forms of torture moments before bedtime and work/travel-induced anxiety, i either find myself standing up in the middle of the night trying to catch a plane or starting a meeting, or i’m anxiously killing TV terrorists and villains until i’m even more exhausted then when i first went to bed

ambiden or ambien, or whatever your name is, i’m not ready for you yet, but i see you in my rearview mirror. i’m going to pull from the thorson playbook and start with some whiskey before bed me thinks.

other ideas?

Fire the World Wildlife Fund’s direct mail firm

// April 22nd, 2007 // 6 Comments » // Consuming, Environment, Uncategorized

Going through a bunch of mail just now, I opened a full letter-sized envelope from the World Wildlife Fund — the people with the black and white panda logo working for years to save wildlife habitat around the world. On the envelope: “Your free all-occasion gift wrap is enclosed.”

Normally I receive address labels or a free calendar to guilt me into making a contribution, which seems wasteful, but at least these items are mildly useful on a regular basis. This was the first time a charity sent me a small stack of colored paper to use on the few occasions I have to wrap gifts — and, apparently, to replace the old newsprint wrappings that had been working just fine for me. But the uselessness of wrapping paper isn’t the point.

The point is that this short stack of heavily inked paper came to me from an environmental organization which seems to be confused about its mission. The enclosed letter cites logging as a top reason why WWF’s own mascot, the giant panda, is under the threat of extinction. So its answer is to fire up the paper mill for millions of sheets of additional paper to send this message to [tens of?] thousands of individuals, more than 95% of whom are likely to toss this straight into their trash (assuming a successful response rate of ~3%).

Sure, the wrapping paper is printed on recycled stock (percentage not shown, but it’s unlikely to be 100%), but why is WWF adding unnecessarily to the increasing global demand for paper? Surely they had alternative options for this solicitation. I can’t imagine that the bloated landfills where half of this wrapping paper is going is working to save wildlife habitat, save for some seagulls. And let’s not even venture to guess how much carbon dioxide was released to print up the paper used for this mailing. The first victims of global warming will be those creatures living in the habitat that WWF is seeking to protect in tropical, developing nations around the globe.

I don’t care how many people use the gift-wrap to send a message to their friends and family about the importance of supporting WWF or how many new gifts it encourages. There’s no way that WWF wins with this mailing.

President Carter Roberts, I can’t imagine you’re as short-sighted as the vendor who produced this piece of mail for you, so I suggest you take a closer look at what’s going out under your name.

Happy Earth Day!

UPDATE: You can send a message to WWF via their ‘pledge to make change’ Earth Day campaign if you’re so inclined. Here’s a screenshot of what i just posted:

on the hook, off the hook with The Man

// April 1st, 2007 // Comments Off // Inhabiting DC, Uncategorized

No jury duty for me, sadly. After seven days of being on call for the scooter libby court, they’re not doing the stupid trial as of Thursday. So I will not be serving my country. Most likely the defense discovered that i was a potential juror and opted to settle out of court.

But when I got home on Friday, I received a letter notifying me of a 3.5% rent increase, pursuant to “Section 208(h)(2) of the Rental Housing Act of 1985.”

Correlation? I think not.

perhaps my favorite nonprofit of all

// March 31st, 2007 // Comments Off // Politics, Travel, Uncategorized

i’ve now been a member for almost two years. everytime i get something in the mail from them i want to do what they say because it usually boils down to, “Save the trains!” and who can argue with that? after all, they just want to preserve the most efficient mode of transportation and hold on to the sweet smell of yesteryear. count me in.

oh look, they even have a train blog!

A great, funny word: Charrette

// March 11th, 2007 // Comments Off // Uncategorized

Matt found this after hearing about a “design charrette” on a client call late last week. It really is an impressively underutilized word. The fact that it sounds weak and Victorian may have something to do with that.

A charrette (often spelled charette and often called design charrette) is an urban planning technique for consulting with all stakeholders. Charrettes are typically intense, possibly multi-day meetings involving municipal officials, developers and local residents. A charrette promotes joint ownership of the solution and attempts to diffuse traditional confrontation between residents and developers. …

Karbon Killas

// February 11th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // Environment, Internet, Uncategorized

Watched it three times on Thursday, then had to stay up and blog about it…

Between Focus the Nation, Step It Up, and Bright Card, I don’t see how the big enviros are going to have a chance of surviving this new wave or stay relevant… These grassroots, internet-enabled efforts have so much more heart and potential.

Congrats to the students in Jon Isham’s winter term class who produced this, and who i’m sure had a blast in the process. Ahhh, College…: