They say that the age of novelty websites is over, but yesterday I found a beautiful counterexample. Observe the 8th wonder of the world:
Elite Web Design In Action
I came upon this diamond in the rough while weighing my lunch options, and instantly knew I was in the presence of greatness when I saw their page title bravely set to "Page Title" (the thing you see up top on the browser bar, like "Gmail - Inbox 6,091,018" is what HTML-freaks call the 'page title'). It takes guts to do that, kind of like rhyming a word with itself in a poem - only authorized badasses do it with impunity.
Now, this is an Asian food restaurant as evidenced by the Big Words on the home page. However, these appear to be Asians of the Latin variety/persuasion as the Aboutus and Contactus menu items indicate. ...Hmm, the joke seems to lose power in retelling, they did it much better... Actually, it's almost proof that they're authentic Asians, as in Chinese and Japanese there are no spaces between words in a sentence. What better advertisement of hole-in-the-wall-Asian-restaurant authenticity than English illiteracy. Anyway, no more needs to be said. Go get some food there, and learn some of the latest tricks in web design.
I walked a couple of hours in Natasha's shoes today. Their lack of duct-tape to seal holes is neatly balanced by a lack of holes, so I wholeheartedly pronounce them wearable. That is until I put them on and had to duct tape them shut. But back to not being side-tracked, the shoes were actually figurative as you so cleverly guessed. I accompanied Natasha to one of her classes, and hung out at her department observing the local wildlife - nerdy graduate students who actually care about what they're studying, a species I long thought to be extinct. The class was up to the boring-class standards at MIT, and though I didn't fall asleep, I was the only one to not do so. MIT 1 - Dartmouth 0.
Then we went to the store and bought some food on the math department budget because today is Natasha's turn to buy food on the math department's budget. The food is intended for public consumption. During checkout, despite Natasha's threats about the Green-Earth Nazis at the bagging station forcing you to use the dreaded handle-less paper bags, after answering "do you prefer paper or plastic?" with "meh," I received a plastic one. I'm sure Natasha holding a semi-automatic Colt M1911 to each of their heads is just an irrelevant coincidence.
When we came back and served the food to the hungry math dorks, I was treated to the rare spectacle of a young woman single-handedly devouring an entire package of hummus in about 23 seconds. And now I must go throw up because I once again hit the replay button on that memory.
Ellen: how r u?
Ellen: warm?
Mark: yes
Ellen: buy yourself a hat
Mark: will do
Moral? She's (whoever she is) going to say it (whatever it is) no matter what, so be flexible in your perception of her flow of logic. And agree with her for Chrissakes, don't you have any self-preservation instinct?
Showing posts with label Natasha. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Natasha. Show all posts
Monday, January 5, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
New Hampshire exists! That's 23 confirmed states!
Yesterday Natasha and I drove to Dartmouth, though technically she did all the driving. It took five and a half hours and I received my usual rate of $0/hr for it, totaling roughly $0. We got in around eight, unpacked Natasha's entire house worth of stuff from her car-sized car and by midnight we were sitting in the cozy kitchen devouring her mom's more edible gifts.
Then we watched Leatherheads. Now this is a movie which has absolutely no idea what it's about. Most movies are pretty transparent and straightforward, even the bad ones: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is about proving to you that there are things in the world that make even a well-balanced ridiculously good-looking individual like myself contemplate suicide from boredom, namely watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Last Orders is about British people doing absolutely nothing in realtime. For two hours. 27 Dresses is about the estrogen injection you forgot to take before you watched it. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is about a two-hour long kick in the balls, not my favorite thing to experience even vicariously.
Leatherheads puts these all to shame. After all, why go for one topic, when you can go for all of them? Football, mud wrestling, unrequited love, male bonding, fat people, the Great Depression, the Prohibition, betrayal, lies, Renee Zellwegger's oily face that's so slippery your eyeballs can't hang on, George Clooney's loony O Brother Where Art Thou character, broken telephone and World War I are just some of the broad range of topics which would take almost as long for me to list as for you to just watch the movie yourself. Anyway, each topic from this veritable zoo of plot devices gets about two minutes of play. As a result it feels like you're watching two-minute-long episodes of some show where the characters stay the same, but each new episode has only minor relevance to the previous 17. I give this movie an "eh." (with an audible 'h')
Today we went to have lunch with one of Natasha's friends here at Dartmouth, Seth, whose buoyant gregarious personality belies his terminal case of astronomy/physics dorkiness. We chatted for a while on some innocuous subjects that leave no memory imprint while munching on veggie pseudo-Mexican burritos. After lunch Seth felt sick (I sometimes have that effect), and had to depart in a hurry, looking over his shoulder every so often with that look Sam Neil gives the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Another good first impression by me.
We attemped a language experiment today. Natasha and I agreed not to speak Russian or English for what ended up being about an hour and a half. We had at our disposal a combined total of a couple of years of Spanish, French, and a semester of Chinese, the last of which unfortunately lying entirely on one side of the conversation. The first couple of minutes were full of inauspicious silence, Hitchcock style. Then awkward first words were breathed, mostly "..." and "uh..." But then, breakthrough, after fifteen minutes or so, we were chatting in a language I would hesitate to call Spanish, but which definitely was neither English nor Russian. A success by any standards, as long as they're really really low.
Lastly, I was thinking about blindfolds earlier today because Natasha was crocheting something that had the potential to become one, and I was wondering, does anyone purposely make a blindfold? Seems like blindfolds are usually items that have an alternate intrinsic purposes, like scarves or shirts or hands. There are precious few people in the world who (when you catch them crocheting) reply to "whatcha makin?" with "oh, it's a blindfold, can't you tell?" Let's just acknowledge that there's a demand for blindfolds and start making them and calling them what they are eh?
Then we watched Leatherheads. Now this is a movie which has absolutely no idea what it's about. Most movies are pretty transparent and straightforward, even the bad ones: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is about proving to you that there are things in the world that make even a well-balanced ridiculously good-looking individual like myself contemplate suicide from boredom, namely watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Last Orders is about British people doing absolutely nothing in realtime. For two hours. 27 Dresses is about the estrogen injection you forgot to take before you watched it. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is about a two-hour long kick in the balls, not my favorite thing to experience even vicariously.
Leatherheads puts these all to shame. After all, why go for one topic, when you can go for all of them? Football, mud wrestling, unrequited love, male bonding, fat people, the Great Depression, the Prohibition, betrayal, lies, Renee Zellwegger's oily face that's so slippery your eyeballs can't hang on, George Clooney's loony O Brother Where Art Thou character, broken telephone and World War I are just some of the broad range of topics which would take almost as long for me to list as for you to just watch the movie yourself. Anyway, each topic from this veritable zoo of plot devices gets about two minutes of play. As a result it feels like you're watching two-minute-long episodes of some show where the characters stay the same, but each new episode has only minor relevance to the previous 17. I give this movie an "eh." (with an audible 'h')
Today we went to have lunch with one of Natasha's friends here at Dartmouth, Seth, whose buoyant gregarious personality belies his terminal case of astronomy/physics dorkiness. We chatted for a while on some innocuous subjects that leave no memory imprint while munching on veggie pseudo-Mexican burritos. After lunch Seth felt sick (I sometimes have that effect), and had to depart in a hurry, looking over his shoulder every so often with that look Sam Neil gives the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Another good first impression by me.
We attemped a language experiment today. Natasha and I agreed not to speak Russian or English for what ended up being about an hour and a half. We had at our disposal a combined total of a couple of years of Spanish, French, and a semester of Chinese, the last of which unfortunately lying entirely on one side of the conversation. The first couple of minutes were full of inauspicious silence, Hitchcock style. Then awkward first words were breathed, mostly "..." and "uh..." But then, breakthrough, after fifteen minutes or so, we were chatting in a language I would hesitate to call Spanish, but which definitely was neither English nor Russian. A success by any standards, as long as they're really really low.
Lastly, I was thinking about blindfolds earlier today because Natasha was crocheting something that had the potential to become one, and I was wondering, does anyone purposely make a blindfold? Seems like blindfolds are usually items that have an alternate intrinsic purposes, like scarves or shirts or hands. There are precious few people in the world who (when you catch them crocheting) reply to "whatcha makin?" with "oh, it's a blindfold, can't you tell?" Let's just acknowledge that there's a demand for blindfolds and start making them and calling them what they are eh?
Thursday, November 27, 2008
One Hour of My Dream Life
This morning, three hours after the morning I went to sleep on/in the comfortable chair at the Hatten hacienda, Mario shook me awake with a laser-guided stream of words: "Mark, wake up!" Since the phrase contained my favorite syllable in any language, I shot up like a bolt, only to hear "Do you want to go back home to sleep?"
Being a pushover, a genuinely nice person, and not wanting to walk the twenty miles back, I acquiesced to his request. So Mario drove us home, and I crashed immediately upon entry. I wasn't in any condition to do push-ups or pull-ups after the Thanksgiving feast, so I took advantage of the well-placed floor in the louge. For the next hour, I went through dreams at an unprecedented pace.
The first dream was a series, with a two-out-of-three victory for happy endings:
I dreamed I bit something, and suddenly felt a tooth go to pieces. A tiny metal ball came out, as well as another metal part, leaving me a useless crater/thimble. I would need to add toothpicks to my already overlong brush-floss-mouthwash-pray-to-God-of-Teeth routine. But then I realized with great the joy of waking that this was just a dream, and fell back asleep full of gratitude to this practical joke for being just that. This time I dreamed that I bit something and my tooth pretty much vaporized, if such a term is applicable to teeth. It is definitely applicable to dream teeth. I once again fell into misery and self-pity, and woke myself up with my funeral dirges dedicated to my tooth. I may have woken the neighbors as well. Anyway, happy again, I rushed to tell Mario about the experience. I told him about both dreams, and then, just before he could reward my story with a quote worthy of posting here, I woke up again.
That wasn't the end for me though. This was an hour long nap after all - three twenty-minute Uberman REM cycles. As soon as my head hit the floor, I was hanging out with Natasha in NY. Now, Natasha is a pretty impulsive person, even in reality, but don't worry, this was a PG dream. If you are imagining otherwise, that is your poetic reading license, and good for you (and write to me about it). My version was unequivocally clean.
So Natasha decides she needs to pee, and I don't question her. She gets on her back, tucks her legs in and assumes the Dreamed Natasha Peeing Position (to be featured in the next six Stephen Chow movies). Being a gentleman of outstanding wisdom, I say "I'll cover you," and sit on her knees with my back to her.
A second later, I feel warm jet washing my back. "Not cool," I think, followed by "where is your sense of professionalism?" But my thoughts do nothing to ward away the warm jet. It continues to polish the already smooth surface of my latissimus dorsi. I get up, because I have no wish to be more than the already 89% soaked with urine. I start running around like a boy playing pterodactyl, but with more practical reasons. To my astonishment, the warm jet pursues me. Knowing for a fact, or at least a damn good theory, that Natasha is not a guy and can't possibly possess such proficiency in the sniping arts, AND being too much a gentleman of outstanding wisdom to look her way and find out, I suddenly find a light bulb in my head and turn it on. And I realize that it's the two open water bottles I have in my jacket, upside down, left over from a previous dream. I dare anyone to say now that dreams are useless to remember! If I had remembered those water bottles, I would have kept Natasha safe from the everpresent NY spectators, instead of sacrificing her privacy to my undying love for dinosaurs.
Believe it or not, there were another two dreams during that hour. The first:
I dreamed that I was at Barnes and Noble's, but in some faraway land called dreamland. Some guy walks up to me and asks me if I'm the author of The Time Traveler's Wife. Stupidly, I say "haha no," though I undoubtedly had praise coming had I said "why yes, I'm Audrey Niffenegger." I don't remember the details of the rest of this encounter, just the vague feeling of being insulted with one of the more strange American children's-section-unprintables (CSU's).
And the second, otherwise known as the last dream, is unfortunately a CSU to its very dreamsoul. Or at the very least, the intent to commit a CSU. It never got past intent because Mario stepped in at that right/wrong moment, shook me awake with a cattle prod from the year 2312, and demanded whether I wanted a pillow. Are we sensing a trend? Count on Mario to ruin something that can only happen in a dream. And that leaves nothing to tell that wouldn't end on a cliffhanger, so I will spare you the unresolvable suspense.
Being a pushover, a genuinely nice person, and not wanting to walk the twenty miles back, I acquiesced to his request. So Mario drove us home, and I crashed immediately upon entry. I wasn't in any condition to do push-ups or pull-ups after the Thanksgiving feast, so I took advantage of the well-placed floor in the louge. For the next hour, I went through dreams at an unprecedented pace.
The first dream was a series, with a two-out-of-three victory for happy endings:
I dreamed I bit something, and suddenly felt a tooth go to pieces. A tiny metal ball came out, as well as another metal part, leaving me a useless crater/thimble. I would need to add toothpicks to my already overlong brush-floss-mouthwash-pray-to-God-of-Teeth routine. But then I realized with great the joy of waking that this was just a dream, and fell back asleep full of gratitude to this practical joke for being just that. This time I dreamed that I bit something and my tooth pretty much vaporized, if such a term is applicable to teeth. It is definitely applicable to dream teeth. I once again fell into misery and self-pity, and woke myself up with my funeral dirges dedicated to my tooth. I may have woken the neighbors as well. Anyway, happy again, I rushed to tell Mario about the experience. I told him about both dreams, and then, just before he could reward my story with a quote worthy of posting here, I woke up again.
That wasn't the end for me though. This was an hour long nap after all - three twenty-minute Uberman REM cycles. As soon as my head hit the floor, I was hanging out with Natasha in NY. Now, Natasha is a pretty impulsive person, even in reality, but don't worry, this was a PG dream. If you are imagining otherwise, that is your poetic reading license, and good for you (and write to me about it). My version was unequivocally clean.
So Natasha decides she needs to pee, and I don't question her. She gets on her back, tucks her legs in and assumes the Dreamed Natasha Peeing Position (to be featured in the next six Stephen Chow movies). Being a gentleman of outstanding wisdom, I say "I'll cover you," and sit on her knees with my back to her.
A second later, I feel warm jet washing my back. "Not cool," I think, followed by "where is your sense of professionalism?" But my thoughts do nothing to ward away the warm jet. It continues to polish the already smooth surface of my latissimus dorsi. I get up, because I have no wish to be more than the already 89% soaked with urine. I start running around like a boy playing pterodactyl, but with more practical reasons. To my astonishment, the warm jet pursues me. Knowing for a fact, or at least a damn good theory, that Natasha is not a guy and can't possibly possess such proficiency in the sniping arts, AND being too much a gentleman of outstanding wisdom to look her way and find out, I suddenly find a light bulb in my head and turn it on. And I realize that it's the two open water bottles I have in my jacket, upside down, left over from a previous dream. I dare anyone to say now that dreams are useless to remember! If I had remembered those water bottles, I would have kept Natasha safe from the everpresent NY spectators, instead of sacrificing her privacy to my undying love for dinosaurs.
Believe it or not, there were another two dreams during that hour. The first:
I dreamed that I was at Barnes and Noble's, but in some faraway land called dreamland. Some guy walks up to me and asks me if I'm the author of The Time Traveler's Wife. Stupidly, I say "haha no," though I undoubtedly had praise coming had I said "why yes, I'm Audrey Niffenegger." I don't remember the details of the rest of this encounter, just the vague feeling of being insulted with one of the more strange American children's-section-unprintables (CSU's).
And the second, otherwise known as the last dream, is unfortunately a CSU to its very dreamsoul. Or at the very least, the intent to commit a CSU. It never got past intent because Mario stepped in at that right/wrong moment, shook me awake with a cattle prod from the year 2312, and demanded whether I wanted a pillow. Are we sensing a trend? Count on Mario to ruin something that can only happen in a dream. And that leaves nothing to tell that wouldn't end on a cliffhanger, so I will spare you the unresolvable suspense.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Giving Guests What They Deserve
Boris and Natasha came over today to help us put a dent in our groceries, and to give Dad a chance to expound on his favorite topic- "what you're (all of you) doing wrong in your life." This encompasses most things, so there was no shortage of conversation material.
Boris is a fairly quiet guy with a bald head of low to medium shine. He and Dad used to work together. Natasha is Boris's woman, and owns the rights to all of the voiced opinions in their relationship. The conversations at the table were naturally between Dad and Natasha, and occasionally between Natasha and Dad. The others sat back, listened, and restricted themselves to occasional nervous quasi-giggles so as not to deflect the stream of preaching onto themselves. I wasn't present at the sermon, having retreated to my sanctuary upstairs, but judging by the suffocating silence that ensued upon B & N's departure, many wonderful things were said.
Michelle came back today and proceeded to unleash a torrent of camp songs onto my poor ears. Having feasted on 24-bit silence for 5 days, sticking a fork up there probably would have felt better.
Saw a Korean romantic comedy yesterday called My Little Bride, pronounced Eorin shinbu. It was more than less tolerable, and a couple of scenes were quite funny. The main source of entertainment was the extensive repertoire of facial expressions exhibited by the main actress. It also explains why the movie is rated moderately high - white people have a hard time telling Koreans apart unless there's some artificial disambiguation factor - in this case facial antics of a caliber usually reserved for emoticon upgrade packages.
The story is not too elaborate. A 16-yr old high-school girl is forced to marry an older (~25) friend because otherwise her beloved trickster grandpa refuses to have a pulse. The newlyweds then spend the next 2 hours falling in love with each other, while pretending to drive each other up the wall in the neoclassic Korean way.
Boris is a fairly quiet guy with a bald head of low to medium shine. He and Dad used to work together. Natasha is Boris's woman, and owns the rights to all of the voiced opinions in their relationship. The conversations at the table were naturally between Dad and Natasha, and occasionally between Natasha and Dad. The others sat back, listened, and restricted themselves to occasional nervous quasi-giggles so as not to deflect the stream of preaching onto themselves. I wasn't present at the sermon, having retreated to my sanctuary upstairs, but judging by the suffocating silence that ensued upon B & N's departure, many wonderful things were said.
Michelle came back today and proceeded to unleash a torrent of camp songs onto my poor ears. Having feasted on 24-bit silence for 5 days, sticking a fork up there probably would have felt better.
Saw a Korean romantic comedy yesterday called My Little Bride, pronounced Eorin shinbu. It was more than less tolerable, and a couple of scenes were quite funny. The main source of entertainment was the extensive repertoire of facial expressions exhibited by the main actress. It also explains why the movie is rated moderately high - white people have a hard time telling Koreans apart unless there's some artificial disambiguation factor - in this case facial antics of a caliber usually reserved for emoticon upgrade packages.
The story is not too elaborate. A 16-yr old high-school girl is forced to marry an older (~25) friend because otherwise her beloved trickster grandpa refuses to have a pulse. The newlyweds then spend the next 2 hours falling in love with each other, while pretending to drive each other up the wall in the neoclassic Korean way.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Breaking News
Saw In Bruges yesterday. It's quite the menagerie of plot devices: There's a 30-year-old retarded child played by Colin Farrell, a midget, a global midget war between white midgets and black Vietnamese midgets, a priest who can't stop bullets, a gun-toting Lord Voldemort, a league of principled hitmen, and a handful of dead children. Ironically there's very little plot other than a parade of the aforementioned items, and some witty dialogue. It was enough to keep me entertained, as I also had some popcorn, but my dad didn't ration his portion well and began whining less than half way through the movie. The ending, SPOILER ALERT, is one of those unsatisfying "Everyone died. Wait did they? I think I saw an arm move! Credits roll, and now we'll never know."
Mom offered me to help her cook dinner today, and I suddenly realized how much I missed grandma, so Mario, my sister and I visited her for dinner. We visited, but karma caught up to me, and I ended up having to help grandma fix her Cablevision after a storm knocked out the electric power. This included some quality time on the phone with Liz from Cablevision Customer Service. She must have been following a script, because the first words I heard from Liz were long-winded flaccid assurances about how anxious she was to be of help to me. Then she made me do all sorts of ritual dances around the TV and Cablevision box, and read her the codes from all the barcode stickers in the room. Despite Liz's help, I eventually managed to figure out where the DVD player's power button was.
On another note, a new song was born today, to commemorate yesterday's failed hang-out with Natasha. She was to go on a morning hike with her parents, and then call me so we could decide what we were doing. I ended up calling her at 7PM, and she blew me off. I cried a little from loneliness, and held a short funeral service for the $1.50 she cost me in text messages. When I woke up this morning with red-rimmed eyes, I decided to devote a song to yesterday's tragedy. The song's done, but I haven't recorded the vocals yet so it'll probably be up tomorrow. Meanwhile, Mario and I decided to write some more songs about other girls, so Anna, Lucy, Tina, watch out, our lyrics are rarely completely complimentary.
Mom offered me to help her cook dinner today, and I suddenly realized how much I missed grandma, so Mario, my sister and I visited her for dinner. We visited, but karma caught up to me, and I ended up having to help grandma fix her Cablevision after a storm knocked out the electric power. This included some quality time on the phone with Liz from Cablevision Customer Service. She must have been following a script, because the first words I heard from Liz were long-winded flaccid assurances about how anxious she was to be of help to me. Then she made me do all sorts of ritual dances around the TV and Cablevision box, and read her the codes from all the barcode stickers in the room. Despite Liz's help, I eventually managed to figure out where the DVD player's power button was.
On another note, a new song was born today, to commemorate yesterday's failed hang-out with Natasha. She was to go on a morning hike with her parents, and then call me so we could decide what we were doing. I ended up calling her at 7PM, and she blew me off. I cried a little from loneliness, and held a short funeral service for the $1.50 she cost me in text messages. When I woke up this morning with red-rimmed eyes, I decided to devote a song to yesterday's tragedy. The song's done, but I haven't recorded the vocals yet so it'll probably be up tomorrow. Meanwhile, Mario and I decided to write some more songs about other girls, so Anna, Lucy, Tina, watch out, our lyrics are rarely completely complimentary.
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