Author: Aaron Weber

Another day older…

Well, I’m a year older today. Getting older reminds me of the song sixteen tons, with the line “another day older and deeper in debt,” etc. It’s a song about the travails and poverty of miners. Searching for the song also pulled up a note that sixteen tons is equal to 14,514.9558 kilograms. That’s a lot of rock.

The song is a reminder to me that I am incredibly fortunate, and that for all your problems, if you are not working in a mine, you are probably lucky (although the NYT pointed out this week that taxi drivers also face a lot of on-the-job deaths and job-related illnesses, so take what you will from that.)

At any rate, I am thankful today that I am not driving a taxi in New York on the night shift. I am thankful that I am neither a miner nor a minor. I am thankful to have friends to eat dinner with, and another year gone past without tragedy striking me directly.

As Bleeding Gums Murphy might say, I play the blues pretty good for someone with no real problems.

Have yourself a jiggly little … oh dear lord

As I’ve said, holidays in my family usually involve a lot of food preparation in a particularly foodie-obsessive way: a different variety of exotic nut goes into the stuffing each time, that kind of thing. Then there is drinking of slightly too much wine, and people begin to argue about politics, and then someone changes the subject, and then people get tired, and go to bed.

Other people have Christmas parties that begin with Jell-O shots, and proceed to gunplay and chainsaws. Their fancy cookbook involves Jell-O Shots. (Note that the cookbook does not use the word “Jell-O” because the Kraft is wholesome and has nothing to do with liquor.)

Also I have discovered Diary of a Food Whore, which is a restauranteur/caterer’s diary of the indignities and hilarities of her trade. Her customers seem pretty evenly divided between people who are too lazy to cook, and crazy brides. All of them have guests who misbehave in one way or another, prompted either by an open bar or by an open buffet table.

Sitting around and waiting for the mail

Today is the earliest I could reasonably expect a response from the interviews I’ve been on. So of course I got up and checked my mail first thing to see if the employment fairy brought me anything.

The abortion-rights fairy and the restaurant fairy had emailed to remind me to preserve abortion rights and make New Year’s Eve reservations, but the employment fairy had not written me. That makes sense: the employment fairy wouldn’t write me til it was afternoon in California, probably. So I went to the gym and the grocery store and came back, because we all know that watched Gmail doesn’t boil. When I got home, the postal service had delivered me some paperwork about my retirement plan rollover procedure, but the job fairy had still not sent me email about a new job.

My new theory: the employment fairy is waiting for my birthday.

Literary Fashion

It has become fashionable in certain circles to discuss Philip Pullman as the anti-Lewis or as the anti-Tolkein. So obviously I had to read the Dark Materials trilogy this weekend.

It’s good. It’s better than Lewis. It’s better than Tolkein. It’s better than Mieville. It’s that good.

In other news:
It turns out the Feds are not spying on this one kid at UMass, although they may be reading other people’s library records.
We’re going to have a leap second.
Motorcyclist Magazine says that 2007 will be the year Honda breaks out the big guns and totally redoes its product line– look for new model announcements to appear as early as September 2006.

Coming of Age

This has been an entertainment-intensive holiday. I was kind of vague as to which day it was, and when people tell me, happily, that they have Monday off, they seem unsurprised when I say, “Hey! I don’t have to go to work Monday either!” But even though I never go to work, and even though I eat whatever I want all day long on regular days, this has been a period of chocolates, wine, cookies, and entertainment media products.

First I saw Kiki’s Delivery Service, which is a story of a young witch coming of age. It’s almost as sweet and cute as Cute Overload.

Then I read The Golden Compass, which is about a young non-witch coming of age.

Then I watched Sin City, in which Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, and Clive Owen kick a lot of ass, and nobody learns any heartwarming lessons.

Next, wine, pasta, and of course, cookies.

Merry Eczemas

Last night I engaged in the great American holiday tradition of going out for Chinese food on Christmas eve. The streets were emtpy, all the students had gone home, and the restaurant was packed.

Our new slogan

The current slogan, “I liked you better before I sold out,” is getting tired. So I need a new one.

I was thinking “Every day a fresh outrage” or perhaps “Pointless, incessant barking” (from a New Yorker Cartoon, in which a dog says to another dog that he used to have a weblog but just went back to barking…) might work.

But I’m going to go the route of the Holy Roman Empire– adding a disclaimer noting that this page is neither secret nor ironic.

Five Cool Things

1) I Am Caltrain, a Google Map crossed with a map of the Caltrain (SF-bay area commuter rail) schedule and maps.

2) GMap Pedometer, which lets you see how far you’ve walked by clicking points in a Google Map– then counts calories for you too.

3) Three cool shirts at Threadless: a funny, nearly sold-out shirt printed with Blue-footed boobies, a funny and seasonally-appropriate shirt featuring a Batmobile which has lost a wheel, and one nifty artsy one of a woman bathing in a wheelbarrow.