06.21.10
For Want Of A Number 10 Wood Screw
posted by Absinthe | 10:54 AM
So we’ve moved into a new house. Like, actually new, with no residents before us save some ants that – no offense, ants – I am currently bombing the shit out of. I try to be respectful of indigenous cultures, but this is some manifest destiny shit here. Ants have to GO.
“Moved in” is overstating the case. I’ve been in the house the last two nights. The first night I slept on an air mattress in the master bedroom. Then somebody came in and ripped out all the carpet, because carpet, like ants, has got to GO. Manifest hardwood destiny. I thought I was going to have to spend last night on the linoleum somewhere, but it turns out the guy accidentally left the carpet in the master closet. (This closet is bigger than the room I was living in when I met my wife, so that’s progress of a sort.) So last night I slept on an air mattress in a closet and was happy for it.
I forgot the box of random bits of dishware and silverware, which makes eating in a tough proposition, but it’s not really a big deal because I also lack refrigeration. Or a chair to sit on. It’s pointless to spend money on those things because they’ll get here sooner or later. But there’s still plenty to spend money on. Never had to buy a plunger before, nor a stepladder, nor a family-size mega bonus pack of ant bait. I’ve been a hunter-gatherer since I took up residence here to oversee some contractors and get a few things ready around the house, the latter of which invariably take ten times as long as they should, because my ever-changing shopping list is comically, persistently one vital object short of what I need to get a job done.
“I know! I’ll install this light fixture!” is the thought. Because if you’re a new homeowner with a handiness quotient in the low single digits, the first thing you should tackle is an electrical project – succeed and your triumphant ass can handle anything, fail and you’re dead and don’t have to do anything else. I’ve got a wire stripper, a ladder, a current meter, and a light fixture and mounting hardware, I figure I’m all set. Put out the ladder. Get the hardware neatly organized. Set my tools in easy reach. Shut down the power to the appropriate circuits, double-check to make sure they’re not hot, start reading the directions. Get to the part that involves electrical tape and say, “Shit!” in a voice that echoes through the empty house. Electrical tape. Add it to the list.
“Okay, shower curtain rod, that probably won’t involve electricity.” I’ve got a choice between drywall anchors (included) and wood screws (not included). But! I read the directions ahead of time on this one and picked up some wood screws just in case. Get my cordless drill out, lay out the hardware, cut out the templates, find some non-electrical tape, pop open the cheap stud finder/level combo pack I picked up on my last trip to Lowe’s, because I’d rather anchor the rod into a stud than the froth that passes for drywall these days.
(I don’t know shit about drywall. I just know that hanging stuff on your walls, technology-wise, has devolved from the days when you just hammered a peg through the banner and right into the castle wall.)
Okay, got the stud finder, I – hmm. Feels a little light. Here’s the … battery … cover. Requires a 9-volt battery. “Fuck!” I think, and a cascade of echoes makes it clear that I did not just think it. Nine-volt battery. Add it to the list.
All right, fine. Childproofing. I’ve done that before, it’s easy. I bought some long pieces of foam with Velcro tabs to attach to the raised hearth, because it is at a perfect fall height and has corners that can cut through skin, which I know because I already did it to myself once, and though I am clumsy, I still have a little more grace than our three-year-old. I cut the foam and lay it out, then look at the directions to make sure there’s nothing counterintuitive that I’ve missed. Lay out foam, check. Cut foam to appropriate length, check. Clean all surfaces with rubbing alcohol and “Oh, fuck YOU.”
Rubbing alcohol. Add it to the – no. Here, I am drawing the line. I am attaching this fucking foam to this fucking hearth after cleaning the surfaces with nothing more than a brush and a wiping cloth and that is IT. I press the adhesive strips down with extra vigor, lay the foam around all the edges, and vow not to disturb the hearth for much longer than the 24 hours required for curing. Which will be easy because, what, am I going to build a fire? The only source of wood currently at my disposal is my house, and I am becoming fond of it rather quickly. When we’re done it will be clean, well-lit, and – oh, hey, genius? When you’re thinking back to this post, later on, because you thought you finally cracked that light fixture problem, and you’ve wired the right wires together and turned the power back on and step inside to gently nudge the rocker switch from off to on? Try to remember how this ends.
LIGHT BULBS.
You’re welcome.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Topics: Human Interests | 4 Comments »
05.18.10
Death Of A Livetweeting, Or, Killing The Frog
posted by Absinthe | 9:52 AM
“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies of it.” = E.B. White
So I took the boy to Disneyland yesterday, because our lives are about to get crazy busy and our passes won’t be good most days for the next couple months anyway. We headed straightaway to the Buzz Lightyear ride, which is what you do when your child’s favorite toy is a Buzz Lightyear and he tends to go around insisting that he’s Buzz Lightyear and you are Emperor Zurg, except when it’s the other way round. The line was mercifully short and the ride hasn’t yet lost all its charm for me, so the day was off to a good start. When we exited (through the gift shop, natch), he looked up at me and said “What are we going to do next?”
I let him choose. I’d call it a rookie mistake but my undercaffeinated state was a more likely culprit. Once I said “What ride would you like to go on?” it was all over. I looked him straight in the eye and tried to establish a telepathic link. Tiki Room, I thought. Say you want to go to the Tiki Tiki Room. You love it there. He looked back at me, quirked up the corners of his mouth, and said, “Maybe S’all World?”
So much for my vaunted mind control powers. So much for making it through a trip to Disneyland without sitting through a hundred choruses of “It’s a Small World After All”.
You see, Small World, it’s not really a ride. It’s a trap. You sit down in these miniature barges that – well, they move, but it’s not like they’re going anywhere. It’s a trip around a world of empty-eyed dolls that shiver and float in a spastic parody of dance, while an endless loop of the song you’re already humming to yourself burrows into your brain. And it lasts somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 minutes, which by mere coincidence is about as long as it takes your average human to get the bright idea of chewing through the restraints.
On the other hand, I love my son, and he’s at an age where he still gets joy out of the sorts of things banned in the Geneva Conventions.
So I decided to make a game out of it. I’d kill the soulcrushing aggravation by fighting back – or, perhaps, spreading the pain around. I’d turn off my internal editor and tweet every single thing that came into my mind on the ride, no matter how bizarre or unfunny or banal. I’d bleed it out to my friends. Of course, then Wil picked it up, which meant that my mental anguish was distributed to the kabillion people on his Twitter feed, who then retweeted it. It was like a million voices cried out, and were suddenly drowned out by a tacky orchestra and chorus. So, good job, me. Sorry about the song virus, everyone.
The depressing part, if you’re me – and I’m reasonably sure that I am – is that when I look back over the messages I sent in those fifteenish minutes (short line!), they strike me as funnier than anything I’ve written in months. Turns out a forced, real-time brainstorming session can be good for the soul.
But I like to look gift horses in their mouths, which is why I am never happy and frequently bitten. When I find something funny I often try to break it down – why is it funny? Why does a semantically inconsequential change of words sometimes turn a chuckle into a guffaw?
So I’m going to kill this frog. Exegetically. Here’s a few of the things I wrote yesterday, why I wrote them, and why they’re funny (or not). First, for background:
In order to stave off braindeath I will now livetweet the #SmallWorld ride at Disneyland. Starting with the line.
OK, I’m just laying groundwork here. But there’s a tiny bit of setup for:
Ok we are in line now #SmallWorld
… which is purely a timing joke, since the two Tweets should have arrived almost simultaneously. (Sidebar: a good part of the reason I put the SmallWorld hashtag into each message was to lower the chances of Tweet B arriving before Tweet A, since that would muck up any sequential/timing jokes I had in mind, or make anything longer than 140 characters nonsensical. More nonsensical. Anyway, I’ll edit them out from here on.)
Lots of topiary animals and one actual duck. I bet it feels all superior to the topiary.
Live animals intruding on the territory of manmade facsimiles. See this duck? This duck does not give a shit about your Imagineering or your handsculpted landscaping. This duck is here because there is water and there are suckers with popcorn. That was a little much to get down to 140 characters, however. Smug duck was more succinct.
Shitload of pennies in the water. Pity Kim Peek’s dead, he could tell me how much a little swim would be worth.
Rainman jokes: never actually as funny as you think they are at the time. This one might possibly be saved by the mental image of me grubbing pennies out of the stream while hordes of parkgoers in a hurry to be bored grumble angrily at my disruption.
Our long national nightmare of waiting in line for #SmallWorld is over.
See that molehill over there? That’s a mountain, son. Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?
There are safety warnings in many languages, but nothing for the deaf.
Seriously, people who can’t hear are just on their own? Multilingual admonitions to stay in the car, keep all your limbs in the car, do not drink the water, DO NOT SMILE OR THE DOLLS WILL GO FOR THE THROAT. From all the clicking and popping I heard, either one of the speakers was on the fritz, or there was a warning in Xhosa. If you can’t hear, though, well, it’s a wonder the ride isn’t frequently jammed by their bruised, drowned corpses.
(Too much?)
Oh hey some dolls
Foreshadowing! It’s like Tippi Hedren tweeting “Oh hey some birds”. Also a setup for a callback later.
If I get out of here alive I am going to kill the next glockenspiel player I meet.
Position still open, send c.v. and salary requirements!
oh hey more dolls #SmallWorld wtf, some of them are BLINKING
Most of them are blinking, actually. The ones that are close to you, you can hear them blinking, even through the din of that song. Almost forgotten about the song, hadn’t you?
Two: number of children I could throw overboard before anybody stopped me, in my estimation
It was a pretty adult-heavy distribution in my particular car. I think I’d usually set the line at 3.5 kids and take the over, but I was committed to honesty in the moment. Maybe I sold myself short, as we were in the back row.
(Three if you count my own, which I don’t, because that would clearly be insane.)
See? I’m not a monster. Just a horrible, horrible person.
I wonder if the Chinese dolls brutally repress the Tibetan dolls at night
The most-retweeted line, probably for good reason. What happened was, I looked up to my right and saw a panda. Creepy panda with long, shimmery eyelashes. And I couldn’t figure out what a panda was doing in what looked like Mexico. (Walt’s vision: all foreigners look more or less alike, right?) Oh, China, I realized. Then I looked left and saw some dolls riding a yak. Interesting geopolitical statement, I thought. China over here, Tibet over there. I wonder if the Chinese government knows about this. I bet the Dalai Lama would be tickled. I bet he’d like this ride. Why am I wasting all this time thinking when I have a perfect opportunity to make a joke about doll-on-doll violence?
Interesting note: In the heat of the moment, I wrote “repress” instead of “oppress”, the latter being probably more appropriate. Nobody called me on it. Where have all the English majors gone?
WTF STILL MORE DOLLS AND WHY ARE WE STOPPING
The camel, his back is breaking. It turns out being stuck on a ride that doesn’t really go anywhere is just as maddening as being trapped on a runaway roller coaster. Fortunately the breach clears and we’re underway again shortly.
50% of these verses are about tears and fears. The song is dichotomous. I don’t actually know if that’s an adjective.
It is.
Seriously, though, half the song is about how the world is full of pain, sadness, and terror of the mortal coil. Happiest place on earth my philosophical ass.
OH GOD I DIED AND WENT TO LAWRENCE WELK’S HELL
Near the end of the ride the celebration of world culture disappears and everything becomes white. The variations on the “Small World” theme are all obliterated in favor of an overbearing, triumphal big band and chorale that recalls Welk’s “champagne music” sound. If you get this joke, you are almost certainly born before, say, 1976.
Sign says FAREWELL dare I live in hope?
Throwaway. Shouldn’t have bothered.
Pretty sure I just saw a flamingo being strangled by a panda
At the time it seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation. I had a bad angle.
Just now noticed seats in our boat are red. I thought they were blue. #SmallWorld. FUCK DOLLS FOLLOWED US OUTSIDE THEY’RE COMING FROM CLOCK
It really was the ol’ villain coming back to life for one last scare bit. Phew, we’re outside, it’s going to be okay, then the clock went off and a parade of giant dolls came streaming out. Well-timed, Imagineers!
And then, later:
Note to self: Round-the-park train ideal for drive-by on#SmallWorld clock dolls. Then flee and take shelter in Tiki Room? Get timetables!
We took the train around the park from New Orleans Square. At the Fantasyland stop the boy looked up at me and said, “S’all World?” And then I knew: it would never stop, unless I took action. To save him, save myself, save us all. Plus, you know, faint Kennedy assassination reference. For the laughs. Because, let’s face it, once you’re talking shit about amusement park rides, you’ll do anything for a laugh.
Please don’t blame me. I was driven to this. Well, not driven. Floated.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Topics: Experiments In Terror, Human Interests, I Heart LA, Random Thoughts, The New Math | 3 Comments »
05.17.10
Dicks
posted by Absinthe | 8:54 AM
Titular Dicks, as it were. Everyone’s favorite donkey/reality producer Shane Nickerson, and fellow traveler Christian Duguay (who I once saw take down a $5k+ win at Let It Ride at the Imperial Palace), have a new web pilot that a) is funny and b) is not The Guild. (I have nothing against The Guild. I just want to avoid confusion. Usually I fail.)
It’s available via the Zune Marketplace, or as I call it, the Mandatory Xbox 360 Upgrade Experience. Download it and have a look. It’s free! I’d give you a direct link but since I’m on a Mac the Microsoft web page won’t even let me get that far, and Google is no help at all. (Nickerson: next time, maybe a title a little more SEO-friendly than, uh, DICKS?)
Popularity: unranked [?]
Topics: Human Interests, I Heart LA, The New Math | No Comments »
05.09.10
Ancient Nerdfights, Applied
posted by Absinthe | 9:33 PM
So you’re at your local cardroom, killing time in whatever fishy game, where the stakes are boring but you know all the players too well to lose any real money to them without a serious cold-decking. You’re peeking at jack-ten offsuit and trying to decide if it’s worth playing against the rocks to your left, when you realize that nobody’s paying attention to the game anymore. The cavernous room has gone as quiet as it’s ever going to get. You follow the stares, craning your neck around to get a look at the high-limit section, which is currently host to an unusual sight: two hulking men, one dressed in form-fitting black leather of some kind, a cape, and a black cowl, the other wearing what looks like a brightly colored spandex bodysuit with a big ‘S’ on its chest.
Yep. Superman and Batman, sitting down to play poker.
They’ve commandeered two seats at the biggest game in the casino. The other players find other places to be, those with outstanding warrants a little more quickly than the rest. One guy, he hangs around a while, clearly thinking: what the hell, I’ll be the guy who played with Batman and Superman. But Batman just stares at him for a minute. Doesn’t say anything, just riffles and cuts a stack of chips over and over, effortless despite those massive, gloved hands. Click-whrrrrr-CLACK. Click-whrrrr-CLACK. Finally the guy gets up. Superman looks a little embarrassed; “Enjoy your night, sir,” he says, but the guy’s already most of the way to the cage.
And with that, Superman and Batman start to play cards.
Usually a game this big would have railbirds, but every time someone comes close to the game, they get that look from Batman. Click-whrrrrr-CLACK, and then a pivot on the heel and a slow saunter over Somewhere Else. Still, nobody really seems interested in playing cards anymore; there’s only one game in the room tonight. But people still want to be in action. The rock on your left, the prototypical crusty old guy who’s spent his whole life waiting for sure things, offers you two to one for five hundred bucks; he wants to bet that Superman takes all the chips. “Done,” you say, grabbing his hand and giving it a quick up-and-down pump before he can think better of it.
A few hours later Superman stands up from the table, nods to Batman, says “Mr. Gotham, I’m afraid I have to let you go,” and heads out to the valet stand. He tips the valet a redbird for no particular reason, then leaps into the sky, flying off to Metropolis or wherever. Batman doesn’t even rack his chips, just leaves them on the table in great towers. Who’s going to fuck with his chips? He’s Batman. He stalks off into a dark corner and vanishes.
As you’re riffling through a fresh stack of $100s, the regular bemoans his bad luck. “How’d you know to bet Batman?” he says. “Superman’s got X-ray vision. He can hear Batman’s heartbeat, to know when he’s bluffing. He’s so fast he could catch a card in the air and replace it, and you wouldn’t know it.” To all of which you shrug and say, “Felt lucky.”
What you don’t tell him is what should be obvious. Yeah, Superman’s got all those powers, and Batman’s just a guy. But while Batman may be a little bit crazy, he’s not stupid. He knows all these things too. If Batman’s still sitting in the game, it means (at least) one of two things:
1. Batman has developed ways of neutralizing Superman’s natural advantages, and/or
2. Batman is fucking cheating.
Almost nothing in this world is “all things being equal”. Sometimes the surest thing is the sucker bet. Helps when someone offers you odds.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Topics: Poker, Random Thoughts | 4 Comments »
05.05.10
Toe In The Pool
posted by Absinthe | 11:51 PM
I drove out to Commerce on a whim – suddenly realized there was a super-donkathon day 1 today and managed to make it happen. Two levels later I got it all-in with 8d5d on a Th9d7d flop, got called by QsQc, missed everything. At least the dealer had the decency to peel off a red queen on the river (hearts, natch) to let me know I’d have busted with a set, too. Bunch of dead money in that pot, too. Alas. So I made a quick side trip to pick up a birthday gift for the boy, came home, realized I was registered for the Mookie, played that, got down to 3-handed from 99 runners before losing a race. Considering earlier on I was dead to running trips it’s a happy result, but I CAN HAZ TOC SEAT NOW PLZ?
Two worthwhile links:
Charles Stross on why he’s (mostly) cool with fanfic. Stross is a great modern SF writer and an incredibly nice, sensible guy; I’ve never had the urge to write any fanfic (ok, maybe I wrote a Cheers-related story when I was twelve), nor really read any, but it’s a big thing for some people and it’s nice to hear a witty, clearheaded set of rules for those who might be interested.
From the BBC, a must-read for anyone fascinated by ghost towns: Ireland’s got a bunch of new ones. Such a beautiful country, such a lousy run of luck.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Topics: Poker | No Comments »
04.16.10
Prepare To Qualify
posted by Absinthe | 9:57 PM
I’m not sure this qualifies as a blog any longer, much less one about poker, but: AlCantHang has once again does what he does best, which is convincing Full Tilt to inject an insane overlay into a bunch of low-buyin bragging-rights events. Which, I should add, I never, ever win. Y’all have my number. So, what the hell, I’ll donate.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Topics: Poker | No Comments »