The internet is hard! Here's another attempt to share my album cover. I've honestly spent more time working on this image than I've spent listening to music all year. That may not even be an exaggeration. It's just really hard to find music I like. Except Industrial Piercing. I don't know how I would have survived those early difficult years if it weren't those guys.
Even if they do steal away our chefs and their founder is allegedly a big doofus (I'm told he makes Larry look like Sergey...), I'm still trying to give Facebook a fair chance and not hate them. But sometimes they make it so hard.
The Make Your Debut Album Cover meme looked cool and a lot of my friends were doing it, so I made one too. But once I had it, I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to share it. Who knows the difference between posting a note, writing on my wall, adding a photo to my profile, super poking a friend, and all the other crap on the site? No matter what I tried, nothing showed up on my news feed nor Kathy's. Meanwhile, all day long, I get updates that Somebody I Don't Even Know tagged Somebody Else I Don't Know in Bobby Who the Fuck's photo album.
First, the setup. A few days ago Kathy and I were doing a crossword puzzle and one of the clues used the word boeuf-- French for beef. The following day Kathy decided that she was sick of beef and wanted nothing to do with it for a while. No causal relationship implied-- just laying out the facts for you.
Yeseterday Kathy was going to meet me for lunch at Google and, in order to decide which cafe to bring her to, I asked her what she wanted to eat. "Whatev," she IM'ed me. "I'm anti le boeuf, but anything else is fine." To which I replied, "Don't you mean you're" <<wait for it...>> "shy of le boeuf?"
Maybe not that funny to you but it slayed in Kathy-ville. I guess it's just rare that anyone can combine her two great passions in life: young Hollywood and foreign words for meat.
I hate when I'm out at a restaurant with people and I get up to go to the bathroom, either to pee or wash my hands, and it's one of those places where they have only one bathroom for one person at a time, and there's someone in the bathroom already plus another person waiting ahead of me. That adds an extra 6 or 7 minutes to what should be a 60 second adventure. When I come back to the table I feel like I know what everyone else is thinking and I just want to yell out, "I wasn't pooping! There was a line!"
Wouldn't it be wild if I posted to my LJ once a day in 2009? It's a nice thought, except it's already 2 hours into January 2, 2009 so I'm not off to a particularly auspicious start. I was thinking though-- on January 1, 2009 no less-- that "Scott" is a pretty common first name, and "Free" is an unusual but not totally implausible last name. So it's totally reasonable that someone might in fact be named "Scott Free".
That would be a pretty sweet name to have. Because who else could pick up girls with the line, "Have you ever gotten off Scott Free?" No one else. Only Scott Free. Lucky bastard.
If you expect to receive a holiday letter from Kathy and me you might want to stop reading now so as not to ruin the surprise. Otherwise, I guess we don't like you enough so this is all you get. For the full experience complete with photos, download the PDF version here. Text only version starts now:
Here's 2008 (and December 2007) in Mark & Kathy land...
December Mark starts a new job as a software engineer at Google. It's a web company. You can look them up on Yahoo. This is also the last month that Google offers all employees a big credit towards the purchase of a Toyota Prius. Impulsively, we buy one the night before we drive down to San Diego to see Kathy's family. Our impulsiveness is tempered by the dealer's 300 mile, no questions asked, full refund return policy. Sixteen hours later the policy expires as we cruise past Bakersfield on I-5 at 90 mph. (Note to self: replace 90 with 65 in version of letter for parents.)
January Nothing happens. No joke. Consequently we make plans to hibernate throughout January 2009.
February We sign up for Netflix and watch The Karate Kid III. It's horrible. Imagine January 2008 plus karate. Squared. In a sign of the pre-the-economy-is-imploding-around-us-times, Google rents out Disneyland and flies the entire company down for a 2 night vacation. Mark has a great time. Kathy stays home and contemplates the deeper meaning of The Karate Kid, Part III. It turns out that the film is actually a subtle yet incisive condemnation of the patriarchal oppression of East African colonies at the turn of the century. We have our Valentines Day dinner at Google, complete with a tablecloth and candle brought by Kathy.
March We visit Toronto. In Toronto Kathy meets Mark's grandmother (Bube) for the first time and we see a lot of other family members too. At night, Kathy accidentally steps into a nearly frozen puddle and one of us finds it pretty funny. We go downtown, see Kensington market where Mark's grandparents used to have a store, and also watch the Ontario Parliament in action. It's obvious even then that this is a government teetering on the brink of collapse. (Seriously, Canadian government is going bonkers right now. Look it up.)
April From Toronto we continue to New York City. Excitement ensues as we take turns spotting members of the liberal elite. We visit the Google office on 9th Avenue for a free lunch and attend a taping of Late Night With Conan O'Brien. We receive a long-planned wedding gift from our friends Jason and Jennifer, Famous Fat Dave's Food Tour, in which the eponymous former cab driver takes us on a 6 hour tour of his favorite eateries around the city. High points include incredible deep dish pizza from Spumoni Gardens (literally at the end of the subway line, but that doesn't stop us from going back the following day on our own). Low points include Belorussian pickled watermelon. Terrible. Imagine The Karate Kid, Part III with seeds.
May Continuing her bizarre but no longer unexpected streak of winning odd prizes in equally odd contests, Kathy wins five 4GB USB thumb drives with faux alligator-skin exterior from a wedding website ("Something old, something new, something borrowed, something reptilian"). Each drive has enough space to store 20,000 copies of the United States Constitution or one copy of The Karate Kid, Part III DVD. Kathy opts for the latter. In other non-karate related news, Kathy's brother Michael and Kathy's father come to visit for one night.
June Kathy's mom comes to visit and we circle the entire bay including stops at Union Square, Chinatown, and Larkspur in Marin County. Mark volunteers along with Google coworkers to help remove non-native plant species from San Bruno Mountain. Engineers, poison oak, and hand axes combine to make an exciting day. We flashback to old times as we attend the openings of 2 new Chevys Fresh Mex locations. Nothing funny happens all month.
July Kathy is interviewed by the local CBS affiliate for the show Eye on the Bay. Her segment features her talking about, and eating at, her favorite "cheap eat" in the Bay Area, Gourmet Express. Sadly her segment never airs, possibly because at one point she chews with her mouth open. We celebrate Independence Day by playing a new board game called Pandemic (and renaming the occasion Inde-Pandemic Day). The object of the game is to save the world from a global pandemic. Ironically the United Kingdom succumbs but the United States survives. USA! USA! USA! Unrelated to this, Kathy sprains her finger in her sleep and her "doctor" has her make a splint with masking tape and a broken popsicle stick. Speculation abounds that the doctor may in fact have been a homeless person. Kathy later wonders why the Kaiser Permanente check-in counter was made of plywood and shopping carts.
August We visit Seattle and Alaska with Mark's siblings and parents to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. In Seattle we visit Pike's Place where the excitement of fish throwing is overshadowed by the awesomeness of witnessing some random kid jump onto a famous statue of a pig and audibly split his shorts. We watch Titanic on hotel cable the night before the cruise departs. On the cruise our time is divided between on-board trivia contests, great meals, and spectacular ports of call. Highlights include dry land dog sledding in a wheeled sled pulled by a team of huskies, riding zip lines through the rain forests of Juneau, and snorkeling off the coast of Ketchikan. Mark sets and achieves a personal goal of eating Baked Alaska for dessert every night.
September Mark strains his neck and consequently misses out on a charity swimming relay race. The doctor prescribes muscle relaxants which Mark affectionately calls "horse tranqs". The neck strain eventually heals although the horse tranqs have no noticeable effect on this process. Mark insists on eating all of his meals out of an oat bag.
October We drive to the famed Pumpkin Coast on the San Mateo County shore to visit pumpkin farms and corn mazes. We enter a particularly sketchy looking corn maze, but not before handing $5 each to a guy in a pickup truck who gives us zero indication that he is in any way affiliated with the corn maze. It takes us 45 minutes to escape from the corn maze. Before leaving we try to warn others not to enter.
November We watch the election results with some friends, including a Skype video appearance from our friend Rachel who is visiting Tokyo. After the election, Kathy and our friend Brendan go to an anti-Prop 8 rally where Brendan carries a sign reading, "If God didn't want gays to marry he wouldn't have made my boyfriend so dreamy." Brendan gets mad at Kathy when she blows his cover and reveals to a stranger that Brendan isn't even gay. We visit Mark's parents in Longmont, CO for Thanksgiving. Mark buys a waterproof coat for the occasion and derides Kathy's non-waterproof coat, also challenging her to traditional pilgrim games like Arm Under the Faucet and Dunk Your Arm in the Lake. Mark wins all the games by default. We play a new racket sport called Pickleball with Mark's dad at the Greeley Senior Center. It's our first time playing and we get destroyed by the seniors. Then as we leave one of them throws a cane at us. We get 1/2" of snow one night and go outside at midnight to make a snowman. By noon the following day all of the snow is melted.
We'll be spending the holiday season in Gold Country with Kathy's family. We wish you all happy holidays and a karate-free new year!
Q: What does Dakota Fanning call her vagina? [answer below]
Before I get to the answer, Kathy suggested that I post the following. Where I work (Google) we have an internal "for-sale" mailing list where people post messages about the things they want to buy or sell. A few weeks ago I posted this message:
Free: 100 yards Longs brand Waxed Mint Dental Tape, almost new
Recently my dentist suggested to me that dental tape, thanks to its larger cleaning area, was more effective than ordinary dental floss. So a few weeks ago, when my previous container of floss ran out, I went to Longs to bring my routine of dental hygiene out of the stone age and incorporate the modern marvel of dental tape. (Mike Nichols said in a recent interview that if he were making “The Graduate” today, he would update the iconic line to, “I just want to say two words to you. Just two words. Dental tape.” True story.)
Have you bought dental floss / tape lately? So many choices! Dozens and dozens of them. That’s what’s so great about this offer: besides being absolutely free, you have just one choice. One terrible (but free!) choice. The same terrible choice that I already made when I stared at the shelves at Longs, thought to myself, “What difference does it make?”, and reached for the most cost effective dental tape option available: 100 yards of Longs brand Waxed Mint Dental Tape.
What I am offering to all of you, absolutely free and with no strings attached, is one almost new container of unquestionably the worst dental floss/tape I’ve ever used. This dental tape is thick like packing twine, the sort you’d use to bundle up a bale of old newspapers before dropping them off on the curb to be recycled. To get it to slip between your teeth you’ll have to wiggle it back and forth ten times or more and pull hard enough to cut off the circulation in your fingers. Each time it finally grinds its way into the slot between your teeth, dropping into place with a stinging snap, you’ll yell to anyone around, or maybe just to your reflection in the mirror, “I hate this @#$% floss. This is the worst floss ever. I never should have bought it.” (Actually, since you’ll be getting this floss complete free of charge, you’ll merely yell, “I hate this @#$% floss. This is the worst floss ever.")
Did I mention the coarseness and sharp edge on the tape? The last time I tried using it, I got a paper cut behind my molar! And then I yelled at my reflection in the mirror and vowed never to use this dental tape again.
But maybe after reading this you’re just a little bit curious to feel the worst flossing experience on Earth? Or maybe you have widely spaced teeth which could benefit from dental floss thick enough to tie up a rib roast? Or maybe you simply can’t resist the word “free”? Personally I just hate to see anything go to waste, so whatever your motivation, I will gladly give you the remaining 98 yards of my dental tape without expecting anything in return. (Although if you want to drop me a line and tell me how much you hated it, I’d be happy to hear from you.)
To add further insult to considerable injury, I’m way out in 1950 [Ed.: this is a building on the outer edge of our campus]. Top floor! No elevator! (Okay, the elevator works, but you should punish yourself on the stairs anyway-- think of it as a masochistic prelude.)
In the end some girl named Kevin (for real!) took the floss. I should check with her and see how that's working out.
Now back to my joke...
Q: What does Dakota Fanning call her vagina? A: South Dakota
I was cleaning up around the house today and going through some old things on my bookshelf when I ran across this:
I'm sure you've all seen this before. It was once all the rage after its unprecedented twice selection for Oprah's book club. But just in case you missed it, it's a bunch of cardboard illustrations each with a hole through the middle like you (sort of) see in the image above. The idea is that you put your penis through the hole and then, "Oh look, that nice man is holding up a hot dog, but my penis is the meat." Or, "Oh look, that monkey is about to enjoy his banana snack... wait, that's not a banana at all!" Hilarity ensues at the turn of every page.
But what I find interesting is the small warning on the back cover of the book which states: "Once purchased, this book may not be returned to the retailer or publisher." It seems reasonable enough at first. They must be thinking, "We don't want to take back a book that you've put your penis in." Who could fault them for that. But if you think about-- stretch your mind and "think outside the penis hole"-- it really doesn't make any sense at all. I mean, I could put my penis in any book and then return it, right?
And besides, who is the publisher to dictate what a store can and cannot accept as a return? Someone do me a favor. Next time you go to Barnes and Noble or Border's ask them what their corporate policy is on returning books that I've put my penis in. Because I've got a whole stack of them over here.
I think I could write multiple posts daily if I simply focused my attention on all the reasons why I hate CNN. From peddling random t-shirts
to writing sensational headlines,
I'm constantly scratching my head wondering the 2nd 'N' in CNN really stands for.
This evening I took a look at their site and found this video (in addition to the above images which also came from today's news). You don't actually have to watch the video-- it's enough to look at this screen shot:
Those are two conjoined twins who were recently separated. What I like are the black bars over their faces, to protect the identities of the two boys. Because otherwise someone at home might watch it and be all, "OMG! I totally know those babies!"
In other news, I've changed jobs since my last post and now work at Google. In a week I will have been there for six months-- I guess I haven't posted much lately.
Not that I don't have more substantial things to post about (getting married, spending half of the last four months in Asia, etc.), but none of those would be as amusing as this (quasi-NSFW):
I've watched it at least a dozen times and it still kills me.
And yeah, that's right-- my marriage has been relegated to parentheses.
Kathy and I were staring at a photo of the late crocodile hunter and his family. (Strangely, it was the default photo in a picture frame being sold at a mall kiosk in Bangkok.)
Kathy: What's the name of that T.V. show his daughter's on now? Me: My Zero Dads?
I saw this article on CNN. Basically it says that if you consider all the work that a mom does as part of being a mom (cooking, cleaning, washing, driving, etc.) and if you consider how many hours she spends doing each task and the median salary for professionals who do the same, she should earn about $138,000 per year.
I guess some people find this sort of statistic interesting, but to me it seems very arbitrary. I mean, why limit the accounting to just mothering duties? Let's suppose I poop 300 times a year and, for argument's sake, let's further suppose I wipe my ass each and every time I do so. How much should I be earning for selflessly slaving away at the truly thankless job of wiping my own ass?
I couldn't find salary data on salary.com for professional ass wiping, but I spent a few minutes on craigslist and I found a dungeon mistress who charges $300 / hour for these sorts of things. There's also a two-hour minimum per session so, crunching all the numbers, I figure someone owes me $180K per year for wiping my butt.
I'm not sure exactly who that someone is, but I'm going to take a guess and assume it's Kathy.
After a certain number of prolonged absences followed by isolated posts, one can no longer pull the, "Hey, didja miss me?" or "No, I'm not dead!" schtick. So without further ado, check out this photo I took this afternoon of the odometer of our old Nissan.
I was telling Kathy as I took the photo that the only thing that could have improved it would be if I were driving 123 mph while I took it. (Or, as I realized later, if I'd had the foresight to dust off the freaking dashboard before I snapped the shot.)
And if you're wondering, yes, I had to reset the trip odometer exactly 789 miles ago.
On a related note, any grammar freaks want to tell me what's wrong (if anything) with the first sentence after the photo? This isn't a test-- it sounds wrong to me but I don't know exactly why.
2. We made our annual Christmas trip to San Diego to visit Mr. and Mrs. Kathy. Thanks to item 1, which occurred a few days before item 2, I managed to avoid all sorts of uncomfortable conversations with Mr. and Mrs. Kathy about my "intentions" with their daughter.
Just before we left, one of Kathy's co-workers gave her a Christmas gift of a 20 Questions Ball which, despite beginning every round with the dreaded Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral? query, actually proved to be quite entertaining. We played a fair amount of Twenty Questions while in San Diego but eventually developed our own specialized version of the game where all chosen items must be part of, or at least resident in, Mr. and Mrs. Kathy's House (Casa Kathy, for short).
Regular readers of this journal may remember the previous mention of Casa Kathy and its infamous falling ovens. Then it won't be especially surprising that the opening question of every game of Casa Kathy Twenty Questions is: "Dirty, Stained, or Broken?" (For the record, this was Kathy's idea, not mine.) What makes this a novel twist is that, unlike the classic game where a chosen item may be an animal, or may be a vegetable, or may be a mineral, in CK20Q, a chosen item may be (and often is) dirty, and stained, and broken.
Here's a typical game CK20Q, along with some editorial comments:
Kathy: Dirty, Stained, or Broken? Me: Dirty... and broken. Kathy: Is it covered in ants?
[ed: This may seem like an odd question, but within Casa Kathy, no question could possibly be more natural or expected. Indeed, to put this into chess terms, "Is it covered in ants?" is pretty much the pawn-to-king-four of CK20Q]
Me: Yes! Kathy: Hmm, that doesn't help very much... is it upstairs? Me: Yes! Kathy: Is it in the bathroom? Me: Yes! Kathy: Is it in the area of the sink and countertop? Me: No! Kathy: Is it the shower? Me: No! Kathy: Right, of course, you said "dirty and broken" not "stained and broken". Is it in the shower? Me: Yes! Kathy: Does it have pubes on it?
[ed: Another textbook question.]
Me: No! Kathy: Really? Me: Is that your question? Kathy: No! Hmm... [ed: She's obviously stumped by the idea of something in the shower not covered in pubes.] Are the ants dead? Me: [ed: She's onto me.] Yes! Kathy: Is it the shampoo bottle? Me: Very good!
I never cease to be amazed by Kathy's family's ability to break durable items. I'm sure it doesn't help things that Mr. Kathy is genetically three-quarters oaf (his mom was half oaf and his dad was full oaf). In case you crave details, the shampoo bottle once had its plastic top ripped off by some nimble-fingered hulk and now contains a secret mixture of shampoo, water, and dead ants. Still this is nothing compared to the sliding shower door (stained and broken). As long as I can remember the little rollers that let the door slide on its track have been missing. To open or close the door you have to push the full weight of the metal-framed door as it grinds along the metal track. But in case you ever find yourself showering at Kathy's house, I'll give you some tips to opening the door: get low before you push, let your legs do the work, and for god's sake watch out for pubes.
Just saw this teaser on the front page of a news website1:
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak says carrying out [Saddam Hussein's] death sentence 'will explode violence like waterfalls in Iraq'.
I swear, if it's not streets running red with the blood of infidels, it's exploding waterfalls of violence. The entire Middle East is like a bad high school poetry class. No wonder they get so emo about everything.
1Ok, fine, it was foxnews.com, but not because I like them, only because I wanted to see how they were presenting the election results.
My parents are in town visiting this weekend. A few days ago, before they left, my mom asked me if I wanted her to bring me anything from home. I told her no thanks, because I haven't lived at home for about ten years and by now I've pretty much taken anything of mine that I care about. Then she mentioned that, if I wanted, she could bake some something and carry it on the airplane for me. She's always made good cookies and brownies so I said, "Sure, that'd be great." And so for the last couple days I've been really looking forward to tasting some fresh baked cookies.
Tonight Kathy and I met my parents for dinner and, even on the drive over, I was thinking about that little tin of cookies she'd be carrying. It was gonna be tasty! So we pulled up to their hotel and my parents were waiting outside, but I didn't really notice because the parking lot was crowded and I was trying to weave my way through it. And then I stopped and got out of the car and I saw my dad and I saw my mom, but she wasn't carrying a tin of cookies. She wasn't carrying a plastic container of cookies nor even a bag of cookies. She was carrying a suitcase.
A mother-fucking suitcase of mother-fucking cookies. (And, yes, I know it's awkward to be using the word "mother-fucking" when I'm actually talking about my mother, but seriously, how else do you describe a mother-fucking suitcase of mother-fucking cookies?) Sometimes, my mom just rocks.
Since moving to my new apartment, my outlook on ice has totally changed. Three months ago, if you'd asked me what I thought about ice, I'd have said that I hated it. Well, actually, I'd probably have said, "Why are you asking me about ice?" But assuming that I then went on to actually answer your question, yeah, I'd have said I hated it. And maybe "hate" is too strong a word, but ice was definitely at least a real pain in the ass.
I guess I'm a victim of circumstance. Everywhere I've ever lived, from my parents's house to the various apartments I had during and after college, we always had the world's worst ice trays. I'm sure you know what I mean: the kind where you flex the trays back and forth but nothing comes out and eventually the trays just crack from being bent so much and you've still only gotten out that one weird little half-ice cube that that must have suffered some sort of genetic mutation in the freezer.
Digressing slightly, I've always thought that it's funny that there's a cliche about "building a better mousetrap". Because as far as I know, mousetraps work pretty well as it is. The mouse tries to eat the piece of cheese and then he's dead-- what's the problem? Is the capital outlay required to keep the trap stocked with cheese too much to bear? I don't think so. And besides, do people even use mousetraps anymore? I thought that was an old-timey thing from the era of damsels tied to railroad tracks and those bicycles with the enormous front wheels?
Anyway, getting back to the point, the apropos cliche would be to "build a better ice tray," because this is clearly a serious problem for our society. How else can you explain the fact that some people have to actually go to the store to buy a bag of ice despite having all the necessary ingredients at home? After all, I don't see people going to the store to buy bags of dead mice. Case closed. Eat that, Matlock!
Fortunately for me, my perspective on ice, along with the rest of my world, was turned on its head when I moved into an apartment whose freezer has a built-in ice maker. Oh, what a joy. No more bending crappy plastic trays for this guy. ("What has two thumbs and loves built in ice-makers?") Now I have a basin full of ice available at my beck and call, instantly accessible and constantly replenished.
And here's a little secret about ice: everything tastes better with ice. Everything. It doesnt' matter if it's been in the fridge all day and is practically freezing cold already-- add some ice to your juice or Coke and it's automatically that much better. Sometimes people come over and I might even offer them a drink, and then I'll ask, "Do you want ice in that?" And they'll say, seeing that I took the drink out of the fridge, "No thanks, it's already cold." But that's like-- I'm trying to think of a good analogy here-- that's like going to a massage parlor for a hand job and when she starts to perform, you're like, "Oh, you don't have to do that, I already have my own hand."
So next time you have a drink, give it a try. And always remember this handy little aphorism: "A cold drink without ice is like paying to give yourself a hand job"
All the Solar System's a reality TV show... and Pluto just got its ass voted out!
Said Jupiter, "We all knew that Pluto and Neptune had an alliance. I mean, come on, their orbits overlap! And Pluto's a real threat to win the competitions, so we had to strike first. I just hope this doesn't focus too much attention on my alliance with the Red Spot."
There are now 8 planets left in The Solar System which airs nightly on the sky. The finale will be shown live in ten billion years.
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