Half-demolished Kitchen of the Soul

Not her fault

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The design trilogy

These three films are about the world I work in. Rather, the world I labor at the edges of, longingly gazing at the white hot core.

Helvetica is about the world's most used, overused and often badly used typeface. But it's also a trip inside the heads of the pros who think about this stuff all day.

Objectified is about the design of objects and our relationship with them. Every manmade thing around us was designed by someone, sometimes with great thought and skill, often not. 

I mentioned Art & Copy before, when I saw it in the theatre. It's about advertising. Really good advertising. It's what I aspired to before the system beat the idealism out of me and turned me into an ardent pragmatist, a.k.a. bitter old hack.

Some say designers worry too much about minutia and trivialities. The shape of a serif, the texture of a plastic case, the shade of white paper (did you know there's more than one white?). But someone has to, or the world would be an uglier place.

Music Video Monday: Pomplamoose

The two people featured in this video sang and played every track of this song. In fact, the video captures the actual performance of each layer. No lip synching, no dubbing in later. And hurray for Granny!

What now?

This season of "Mad Men" has ended. It doesn't look like anything interesting is happening over at HBO on Sunday nights. What am I supposed to do? Watch more football?

Digital service will be installed this week, increasing the odds of something good being on. However, there will also be an even greater selection of things that don't interest me.

Did someone say, "Books?"

Bad timing

The weather over the past few weeks had me convinced the motorcycle season was over. Sure, there are those who bundle up and ride as long as there's no snow on the roads. I'm not one of them. 

So it seemed like time for winter tear down, service and modifications. Here's what the bike looks like right now.

 

Of course, today is perfect riding weather.

The power of observation

They say necessity is the mother of invention. I think laziness has a lot to do with it, too. How many inventions started with, "There must be an easier way to do this."

Being a cranky old fart probably accounts for a number of discoveries as well. It works for me, anyway. I was muttering to myself (because there was no one there to listen) about the door on my new dryer. I liked the way the old door dropped down. Not only does the door of the new dryer swing to the side, it swings to the wrong side. 

But then I noticed little caps in the opening that corresponded to the hinges on the other side. And there was a small cover  opposite the prong thing that holds the door closed. Wait, is the door reversible? Why yes it is. A little work with a screwdriver... and presto.

If I'd bothered to read the documents that come with appliances, I probably would have made this discovery the day the dryer arrived. But real men don't read instructions.

Don't fear the pig

The swine flu is coming! The swine flu is coming! It's the end of civilization as we know it! It's the aporkalypse, for cryin' out loud!

Or not.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there have been about 22 million cases of H1N1 in the US since April. Less than ten percent of the population, meaning more than 90 percent haven't. In most cases, people had a few days of feeling crappy, and that was it. Some had a rougher time. 

But what about the deaths? The CDC estimates about 36,000 Americans die each year of seasonal flu. Thirty-six thousand out of 300,000,000. About one-eight-thousandth of the population. Death from H1N1 so far? About 4,000. One seventy-five-thousandth of us. You're as likely to die of drowning, twice more likely to die from poisoning, three times more likely to die from a fall. Oh, and ten times more likely to die in a vehicle crash.

CNN becomes instantly more credible

Lou Dobbs quit today.

Patriotic dilemma

Protocol says not to fly the flag in the rain. But it's Veterans Day and it's raining. Oh, what's a little water?

As I stepped out to snap the flag for this post, Andrea from AT&T happened to be there. She successfully talked me into ditching Time-Warner Cable, if for no other reason than the cable folks never came out on a cold rainy day to offer me anything. And she had a nice, genuine smile.

The amorality of money

The first half of this video clip is about big business's usual opposition to restraint. That's not news. The second half, though, shows how utterly self-serving and amoral the quest for wealth can be. 

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It's okay, I'm a professional

Tasty

My dreams are usually only visual, aural and tactile, but last night I dreamed I was having fish at a fine restaurant. I think it might have been the first time in a dream that I actually had the sensation of flavor. Yum.

Music Video Monday: Manu Dibango

Odd state

In North Carolina many counties and county seats share a name. Gastonia in Gaston County, Lincolnton in Lincoln County, Durham in Durham County. Sometimes a county has no city with a similar name. But the oddity is when a city isn't in the county with a shared name. 

For example, the city of Davidson is a couple of counties over from Davidson County. The same is true of Cherokee and Cherokee County. 

Asheville and Ashe County are five counties apart. Rockingham city is almost in South Carolina while Rockingham County is on the border with Virginia. 

Henderson is the seat of Vance county in the northeast, not Henderson County in the southwest, where Hendersonville is the seat.

Hmmm, that was... interesting

I pulled the California Pizza Kitchen single serving barbecue chicken pizza from the microwave and sprinkled on some red pepper flakes. Except I'd grabbed the cinnamon.

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is from:

(A) The Declaration of Independence

(B) the Constitution of the Untied States

Easy, right? Unless you're House Minority Leader John Boehner speaking Thursday to the assembled opponents of health insurance reform. While he claimed to be holding a copy of the Constitution. Which he is sworn to uphold. Though he might not have actually read it in a while.

Or maybe Boehner knew he was quoting the Declaration rather than the Constitution. Citing the preamble to the later might have caused distress among the hardcore conservative throng. "Promote the general Welfare?" Eek! And the protesters weren't in the mood for any "domestic Tranquility" either.

Now he knows

I was with a cluster of vehicles driving just a hair over the speed limit. One after another, drivers would zoom past on the left, only to slow down because the way was blocked by us slower vehicles.

One impatient guy pulled into the HOV lane even though he was alone. A couple of seconds later he swerved quickly back into his previous lane because he saw what the rest of us already knew. There was a State Trooper at the head of the pack.

Return Glenn Beck's appendix

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In what way?

This blog headline could have been worded differently. Someone who opens fire on a crowd probably isn't "stable."

Now I remember...

...why I like living alone and working at home. I don't like dealing with this kind of stuff.

Encouraging election news

Charlotte, North Carolina, hasn't had a Democratic mayor in 22 years, even though there have been Democratic majorities on the city council and county commission most of those years. That changed yesterday. 

Some Republicans around here, particularly a certain obnoxious county commissioner, believe they are actually the majority, or should be. But the numbers tell a different story. The Board of Elections published two interactive maps of yesterday's mayoral race. One shows the margin of victory for the candidates precinct by precinct. As expected, the most Republican precincts show wide margins for the Republican candidate. The pro-Democrat margins of victory were lower in the other precincts, but there are more of them. The other map shows precinct turnout, which was greater in the Republican districts. So even though a higher percentage of Republicans voted, there weren't enough of them.

Meanwhile, the Democrat majority on the city council grew to 8-to-3. The city and county are divided into seven districts that were carefully gerrymandered to assure perpetual Republican victories in three and perpetual Democrat victories in three others. In fact, some years opposition candidates don't even bother running, as was the case in the three city council races this year. 

Besides the districts, there are four city- or county-wide at-large seats. The top four vote getters out of a field of seven to nine candidates win. This year, three of the four were Democrats. Republicans haven't won an at-large majority in a decade or more. Yet the delusion they're the majority still persists.

Can't get there from here

Since there's talk of sending me to far-flung parts of the world (other than the usual, "Get out of here! Go far, far away!" sort of thing) I got wondering how long it takes to fly to Australia.

I figured rather than doing it all in one butt-numbing ordeal, I could break it up by flying to California first, spending a couple of days, then heading Downunder. Okay, how much more would that cost?

I went to a travel site that searches all the other travel sites. The results also show travel times. The shortest one I found was 13.5 hours, but only on the return leg. Flights to Australia ran from 17 to 28 hours. I clicked for details. The 17-hour flight from Los Angeles went through San Francisco. 

Okay, what if I were to make San Francisco my jumping off point instead of LA? I plugged in SFO and searched again. The flight was 18.5 hours, because they want to fly you through Los Angeles first—via Palm Springs. Doh.

Okay, low fares are about suffering inconvenience. I get that. So you can get the shortest direct flight by paying more, right? No. In fact, the flights got longer as the prices increased.

It's okay, I'm a professional

Funny coincidence

I spent part of Sunday watching clips of Craig Ferguson on the computer because he's on too late for me. He got me thinking, "Hey, what about that other Scottish comedian, Billy Connolly? So I watched a bunch of his clips too. What a fine way to spend a cold rainy day.

Last night I couldn't get to sleep. Taking a two-hour nap in the late afternoon might have had something to do with it. After some futile tossing and turning I switched on the TV. Ah! Craig Ferguson. Excellent. And who should be his first guest? Billy Connolly. Super excellent.

I suspect my Scottish ancestors were the wool underwear and haggis type rather than the comic type.