Author: Aaron Weber

Makeover

Behold the power of a macro lens at the beach in Maine: kelp and slime.

Rejiggered the colors a bit. I’m sure you care deeply. It should still be legible in most browsers; I’m sure the colors are not what you’d call websafe, but they’re still shades of grey. I played with green for a bit but it was too bilious even for me.

Webheads note that when setting a background-image property on a div, there is no “size=100%.” In other words, you just have to use an image as large as you feasibly can, so it won’t end early even for people reading fullscreen on big monitors. Note to those of you who open my page more than fourteen hundred pixels wide: can I have your monitor?

I thought of editing the links list a little more but for now I’ll leave it as is. It’s always touchy. I try to just keep the ones I really do read a lot, because I can’t fit everyone I know in there and I don’t want to be rude about it. Still, it hurts to be excluded or delisted, even if it’s because your page doesn’t fit into the list of “comics” or “economics” or “worth reading.”

Crazy Hat Night

We started at the Enormous Room, then went to The Good Life, The Cellar, The People’s Republik, Hong Kong, and Charlie’s. Anna was wearing a stunning pink cowboy hat. Cynthia wore a variety of hats. Che appeared at People’s, and Dana said I should buy him a drink. This proved awkward because he arrived and started drunkenly hanging on to Cynthia. She tolerated his revolutionary rhetoric and broken English a few minutes, and then we were off to the next destination. Duncan just turned 21 recently, and it was fun having him out at the debauched proceedings.

Avoiding the obvious line about foul language

Are you a leg person, or a breast person, when it comes to chicken? Southerners, of course, know that the way to avoid saying words that sound dirty like that is to talk about a meat preference in terms of white or dark, or perhaps Darko, seeing as how the director’s cut is coming out. I think if chicken has a director’s cut, it probably comes cut from heirloom or rare varieties of birds like the ones Would You Like A Cup of Tea? is trying to raise in Detroit.

I am tempted to mail her some chickens, just because it seems so delightful to get chickens in the mail. I want some of my own, but the cats would eat them and besides I can’t imagine that Somerville zoning allows livestock. Apparently there’s plenty of farming space in the burned-out husk of Motor City.

High School Reunion

Last night I was in a bar with some friends and there was this sort of familiar looking woman there who mentioned in a roundabout way that she was a friend of Nat’s from high school. I said, I know Nat from high school. She looked at me closely and I didn’t know who the hell she was, and it took her a second to recognize me. Only after being prompted did I realize it was the girl I held hands with for three days in fifth grade, who of course looks nothing like she did at the age of ten, or for that matter seventeen.

Na-na-na-na Leader! Leader!

Disjointed notes on the theme of superheroes:

Awhile ago, Fafblog noted disappointment in the Kerry/Edwards ticket, wishing instead for Kerry/Batman. I told my father about it, and he responded that he actually met someone named Batman while he was in Australia. You know, Jeff Batman.

You know, if my last name were “Mann” I would totally name my kid “Super” and not “Bat.”

Earlier this week I woke up in the middle of the night mumbling about how Batman had been impersonating me and going on a murderous rampage. I don’t remember this dream or telling Bookdwarf about it, but I think it means either a) I am worried that my subconsious will force me to do something I’ll regret later, or b) I am afraid of someone else doing horrible things that will affect me. Can it be both?

Regardless, if I had a superpower, it would totally be x-ray vision or invisibility or the power to stop time– anything that would let me know things I couldn’t normally know. I would use it to spy on naked ladies, and also for securities fraud. The delivery of next week’s Wall Street Journal would work, too.

God Bless the USA

Why the best cardiology departments are in the southern US: Deep. Fried. Cheeseburgers. “Ochsner clinical dietitian Eve Dansereau reacted with astonishment that a deep fried cheeseburger existed, and I didn’t even tell her about the one that’s stuffed with bacon, hot sausage and two kinds of cheese.”

Melodrama

I come back again and again to Romance Sonambulo. It’s melodramatic, which I normally hate, but that’s part of the appeal for most of Lorca’s work. He was an incredibly melodramatic person, but the world really was out to get him, and sooner rather than later it did. Here’s the part where the bleeding highwayman comes to the house of his beloved seeking refuge and is turned away:

Compadre, quiero cambiar
mi caballo por su casa,
mi montura por su espejo,
mi cuchillo por su manta.
Compadre, vengo sangrando
desde los puertos de Cabra.
Si yo pudiera, mocito,
este trato se cerraba.
Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.
Compadre, quiero morir
decentemente en mi cama.
De acero, si puede ser,
con las sábanas de holanda.
¿ No veis la herida que tengo
desde el pecho a la garganta?
Trescientas rosas morenas
lleva tu pechera blanca.
Tu sangre rezuma y huele
alrededor de tu faja.
Pero yo ya no soy yo.
Ni mi casa es ya mi casa.

Eventually, You Find One You Can’t Resist

I generally hate those little quizzes. but this one describes me so well:

You are an SEDL–Sober Emotional Destructive Leader. This makes you a dictator. You prefer to control situations, and lack of control makes you physically sick. You feel have responsibility for everyone’s welfare, and that you will be blamed when things go wrong. Things do go wrong, and you take it harder than you should.

You rely on the validation and support of others, but you have a secret distrust for people and distaste for their habits and weaknesses that make you keep your distance from them. This makes you very difficult to be with romantically. Still, a level-headed peacemaker can keep you balanced.

Despite your fierce temper and general hot-bloodedness, you have a soft spot for animals and a surprising passion for the arts. Sometimes you would almost rather live by your wits in the wilderness somewhere, if you could bring your books and your sketchbook.

You also have a strange, undeniable sexiness to you. You may go insane.

Blogworthy

The other day I was talking to bookdwarf about how I should do more structured activities– take a class, maybe join a book club or something. She thought maybe we could start one together, but I wasn’t too enthusiastic– I’d feel too competitive and intimidated, and I’d want to be the one with the most insightful comments or whatever. So she said, fine, we can each start our own book clubs, and we’ll see whose is better.

Hers, obviously.

At that point, I thought, damn, I should put this conversation on my blog. And I looked at her, and she was thinking the same thing. And we realized we’re a couple of great big nerds.