cheston

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE, The Answers: Part 3 of 4

September:

1. I danced near a window in a tie-dye shirt.
   
   TRUTH!
   This one's not false whatsoever. The annual Labor Day dance on Cushings Island had a Woodstock theme, so my cousins and I made tie-dye shirts. The actual dancing happened on a porch, and a few of us did intentionally "fun-looking" (absurd) dances by the dining room window to entice anyone inside to join.
   
   
2. I saw a fake German theater burn to the ground while in a real German theater.
   
   LIE!
   If you figured out how this one would be possible, then you easily deduced that what I watched burn to the ground was a fake French theater full of Germans. That's right; I watched Inglourious Basterds in Germany, and it indeed felt surreal.
   
   
3. I mistakenly thought "lovey" was a word.
   
   TRUTH!
   An old school chum of mine is further educating herself at MIT, and we met in a small cafe to catch up and play Scrabble. I won the game, but I probably shouldn't have, given the points that came from the non-word "lovey". Due to a strange alignment of celestial bodies (or of human bodies in Somerville), the couple at the table next to us were also playing Scrabble. I guess everyone carries boards around these days.
   

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE, The Answers: Part 2 of 4

August:

1. On average, the yard sale cassettes I bought during August cost 10 cents each.
   
   LIE!
   That would be pretty impressive if I had purchased cassettes that cheap. Instead, I purchased them even cheaper! When I arrived on bike at my third or fourth sale of the morning, I thought I might leave with a few choice tapes in each cargo pocket. As fate would have it, though, the man offered me his 100 cassettes for a total of four dollars. I had to return later in my car.
   
   
2. I went drinking in New York City with a lady who worked on The Venture Bros.
   
   TRUTH!
   One of the benefits of everyone I know dropping the ball on buying tickets to the Ponyo pre-screening in NYC was that I was free to converse with others in the ticket pick-up line. The lively woman behind me worked as a producer on The Venture Bros. We chatted about Miyazaki and about her current company, which was potentially seeking people who know Flash. It hasn't led to a job, but it did lead to some social libations after the movie.
   
   
3. I drove my car for six hours without wearing shoes.
   
   TRUTH!
   After digging a giant hole in the dirt (in grand LiveJournal tradition), I left my shoes outside for the night. Thunderstorms started and never really stopped. My options the next morning were to either drive to my cousin's Connecticut wedding in soaking wet shoes or without shoes at all. My fancy shoes (the non-digging pair) were in the trunk, and there was no easy way to extract them without the world thunderstorming their decency away. If you tack on some construction to account for the added hours, you begin to see how this went down.
   

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE, The Answers: Part 1 of 4

July:

1. I intermittently wore a fleece at the second "Freedom Fest" I attended this year.
   
   TRUTH!
   I'm not sure why the same county is allowed to have two completely unrelated events both called "Freedom Fest" within weeks of each other. The first was a lame event fraught by karaoke and age maximums on inflatable giraffes. The second was a sweet fair that occurred on a strangely chilly July 3rd.
   
   
2. I won a stuffed turtle by aiming water but promptly gave it (the turtle, not the water) to a nearby child.
   
   LIE!
   I wish this happened, but the nearby child had the nerve to win the water game himself! I don't recall what variety of stuffed animal the boy won, so I combined this story with the time I won a turtle in a dart game and gave it to my dad for Father's Day.
   
   
3. I watched a friend perform her self-written two-woman play at a winery.
   
   TRUTH!
   This particular playwright is the one who borrowed my fleece during item #1. The winery's event was called "Women Helping Women," and the play involved a high-powered exec talking about relationships to her neighbor in the next restroom stall! Other entertainment included poetry, Commedia dell'arte, and belly dancing.
   

No posts since June?

Let's play TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE for each month that has happened to completion since then.

Your job is to either guess the lies or just read these lists and feel uncertainty.

July:

1. I intermittently wore a fleece at the second "Freedom Fest" I attended this year.
2. I won a stuffed turtle by aiming water but promptly gave it (the turtle, not the water) to a nearby child.
3. I watched a friend perform her self-written two-woman play at a winery.

August:

1. On average, the yard sale cassettes I bought during August cost 10 cents each.
2. I went drinking in New York City with a lady who worked on The Venture Bros.
3. I drove my car for six hours without wearing shoes.

September:

1. I danced near a window in a tie-dye shirt.
2. I saw a fake German theater burn to the ground while in a real German theater.
3. I mistakenly thought "lovey" was a word.

October:

1. I won "weirdest costume" in the office by wearing a dollar store item for the second year in a row.
2. I wished my dad happy birthday from a turnpike rest stop because it was almost midnight.
3. I bought a painting without knowing anything about the artist, flipped through a graphic novel in Barnes & Noble three weeks later, and noticed it was by the same artist.

Do you think paper promotional mailings to "go paperless" net positive?

Like, does the message directly cause enough people to choose paperless billing that the company saves more paper than is used to promote the system?

If not, what do you think is the reasoning behind the mailings? Are they to create buzz? Does creating the illusion of paper-consciousness put the company in better public favor?

If someone's computer were otherwise disempowered, how would the environmental impact of booting it just to pay the bill compare to the paper used for paying it ye olde skool way?
I guess it may depend on whether enough people switch that it eliminates an entire mail truck... unless two mail trucks are added to deliver the "go paperless" promos.

"I never calculated this data without going paperless during the process. Ask Mr. Owl."

Can we go back to calling them walkmen now?

I get why we switched to "discmen". We needed to differentiate.
New technology demanded that we stop walking; otherwise the laser would skip.
I suppose we didn't start discing—or at least I personally didn't play frisbee more often—so there was a bit of faulty parallel structure, but "ridethebusman" would have been inelegant. I cannot fault the discman era nomenclature.

We've had iPods for a while now. Well, I've had mine 6 months, society's had them 8 years, and you probably have a Zune or something (an "MP3 player"). What a horrible way to go through life!

Clearly we've regained the ability to walk.
So, let's call a spade a spade... uh, a digman.
If you have an iPod Video, that's a watchman.
The Touch is a touchman. The iPhone is a talkman (hopefully also a listenman).
Technically, they'd all be multitaskmen, but I'm not being technical. I'm being serious.

I accept today for what it was.

I rode my bicycle, which led me to a ninja/pirate-themed yard sale.
You may reread that sentence if you'd like.

The items for sale were not connected to the theme. It was just two young guys, each in a costume, having a yard sale. The ninja gave me a free paper throwing star.

The majority of their items were awesome to look at, but unjustifiable to own. Unopened Star Wars BendEms, a nice plastic Charmander, and at least three boxes of Jyhad cards graced their tables. They also had lots of unique pinball bumper caps, due in part to the pirate's mother who works as a pinball machine refurbisher. One had the Starship Enterprise on it. See what I mean? That's awesome to look at on a table and know it exists, but if you bought it, what would you do with it?

I bought Total Recall on DVD for a dollar. It fit in my cargo pocket, and life resumed as I biked away.

Ever since buying wiimotes with company money at Target and learning they have a Pizza Hut Express, I've made sure to leave the office for occasional breadstick lunches there. It's nice to have a change of scenery in the middle of the day. Sometimes after eating I stroll near the woods behind the building, which are unfortunately chained off. Other times I walk around the store.

These are the days in which I overhear humor.

#1

---

A child, maybe five or six years old, wanted to check out Target's toy section.
"Okay, five minutes," his mother governed.
"This is five minutes?" the boy asked in cuteness and confusion, holding up three fingers. The mother, it seems, was also only extending three.
She looked at her hand and revised, "Oh. Three minutes."

The boy learned a valuable lesson about asking dangerous questions this day.

#2

---

I didn't hear the question, but the response of the employee in the computer aisle was, "I couldn't tell ya. My wife is more computer-savvier than I am."

What an excellent premise! I hope this guy typically works in that department.

Even if he doesn't, shouldn't his recommendation be a "more computer-savvier" Target employee?
Who cares about his wife? If he gave me that line, I'd demand her number.

#3

---

"Can I help you with something?"

I'm in the video game aisle at this point, and much to my elation, the question is coming from the less computer-savvier employee.
He's not talking to me, though. A large-nosed woman says, "Sure. Do you know what Mario Kart is?"

"Do I know what it is, or do I know where it is?"

Then there's a small pause.

"Well, all I know is that it's a racing game," he finishes.

The woman then found Mario Kart herself.

EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH! I insist.

I forgot to post about the time in the park.
I walked past a seated woman on a bench and her dog.
The dog neither moved nor barked.
"That was a good boy," said the woman.

I hope she was talking about me.

Amidst the hustle and subsequent bustle of the holiday season, lots of folks were getting arrested for drunken revelry. At least one drunkard tried to hide from the police in the "garden warehouse" section of a store where I was shopping.

Do you know what I mean by a garden warehouse? They sell hoses and plants in a section that looks like nobody bothered preparing it for the public.

"Okay, time for a boat tour."
The problem with this boat tour was the ever-increasing number of penguins aboard the ship. It began as a harmless, albeit bizarre, coincidence of nature. Many a tourist photographed these penguins, and many a delighted child smiled at them.

One of my co-workers (Oh, I see, I work aboard this ship) expressed a concern about a fire hazard. The penguins were blocking all the doors and walkways, and their population boom showed no signs of abatement.
"I wouldn't worry about it," I said in placative dismissal. "I've seen this before. There are never really that many penguins." I produced a photograph of a previous boat trip with only a few penguins sitting on the benches.

Well, despite my irrefutable evidence, more and more penguins kept showing up, forcing us to return early. One simply cannot remain out at sea in the face of such a safety violation. Somehow the boat plowed its way through a nearby pile of garbage and started driving across the grassland.

Four thoughts crossed my mind:

1. Maybe the fishy smell of that garbage pile was what had attracted the penguins in the first place.
2. How is a boat traveling across grass?
3. Ah! It has wheels! Some inventor must have added them!
4. Oh my goodness! The inventor is one of the drunkards from earlier, and he's at the helm!

He was driving so recklessly that nearly everyone abandoned ship. Eventually he was zooming at top speed across active railroad tracks and through city streets. I stayed aboard because there was something strangely familiar about this drunken inventor. Just who was he?

We parked the boat at a house, and I noticed we were being followed by a cop. But then the cop hugged the drunkard and called him brother! They went inside to join the rest of the Cratchit family for Christmas dinner.
That's right! This mystery character was Bob Cratchit all along!

"A Christmas Carol!" I thought to myself. "Bob Cratchit's been re-imagined as a reckless drunken boat engineer. What a brilliant idea!" I didn't think this as words, of course. It was more of a sensation, joy combined with sudden understanding.

I was welcomed inside by the Cratchit family, and I made small talk with a visiting comics creator. Was it Alan Moore? Peter Milligan? I'm not sure who this guy was, but after our conversation he gave me a book about himself.

There was a brief section back at "home" with my Mom, but I forget the details. I got in late and she expected me to eat pizza.
"Mo-om, I just ate pizza at the Cratchits'!"
"Cheston, you need to eat! It's not healthy!"

The next bit that I recall took place on a bus departing from a Magic tournament. My seatmate was perusing the [Alan Moore?] history book from earlier, commenting how bad all the movies based on his comics had been. I agreed. Then he asked me how I fared in the tournament.

"Oh, I was doing pretty well," I explained. "4-1."

4-1.

4-1?

I still have a chance of winning this! Stop the bus!
I ran back to the building to play in Round 6.

Soft Chinchilla, Chapter the Second
in which images appear online

My Mom sent me pictures of my newly repainted former bedroom.
Are you curious how it looks?
( Possibly not! )

My bedroom is going to be soft chinchilla.
That is a color.

It will also not be my bedroom.

No, I'm not getting kicked out of my current place.
My Mom is repainting my childhood bedroom. She may rent it to a local college student.

I had to carry nine long boxes (the white ones that hold 300 comics each) down two flights of stairs to store them on tables in the basement. Such is life.

I hope the tenant likes soft chinchillas and basements full of comics.

When life gives you lemon syrup, make something way too sweet.

My initial plan at the Westborough Service Plaza soda fountain was to put a splash of lemonade in my Barq's, but it came out really slowly. "Huh, okay, I guess it's just slow. I'll wait."
It turns out if something seems odd, it is probably odd for a reason. In this case the lemonade was out of the water with which it mixes the syrup.
I probably jinxed myself by writing about kludgy beverage tastes earlier in the week. This one takes the kludgy cake... the kludgy, really lemony cake. I drank it all regardless and have no (related) regrets.

Hey, let's talk music for a moment.
Did I mention that I bought my first-ever iPod back in January? Errh, look at that. I didn't.
Well, I was a tad premature seeking Circuit City bargains, but I needed something for the flight to Florida (a trip implied here and here) and one nano had an "open box" discount. That was great at the time.

The recent repercussion of this purchase is that post-discman-breakage Cheston has a new device for connecting to his tape adapter during lengthy drives to and from Massachusetts. Nothing improves my quality of life quite like grooving to the Yesterdjur Yestermir Yesterday compilation.

What's that you say? If I'm going to talk about Swedish electronic music I've enjoyed recently, you'd rather it be something you can find in stores? Well, there's Fever Ray... but I already kind of blew my facebook choosin'-five-things load on Fever Ray.
I originally felt like it was miscategorized (shut up, spellcheck) in the Dance section at Best Buy, but I guess the motions of this freaked out girl qualify as dancing. I rescind my internal complaint.

More music talk:
A trio of teenaged girls played an excellent live cover of Paper Planes. The shots were tambourine shakes and the reload/cha-ching was a single xylophone note. Sheer brilliance.
Once I've listened to their album (sans Paper Planes, unfortunately) some more for quality assurance, I'll reveal their name and link to something or another.

Even more music talk:
I was going to splurge on a bunch of iTunes Store downloads this Wednesday in honor of their DRM removal, but I can't find decent confirmation of the exact date. I know the majority of tracks have already made the switch, but I like the idea of an official day that I can be happy about. Wikipedia mentions that the conversion should be done by Q2 2009, which is why I'm considering Wednesday. However, their variable pricing scheme doesn't begin until April 7^th. Are these events meant to coincide?
Will the tracks I want go up or down in price?

I'm leaning heavily towards a Psilodump album. Yes, it's Swedish and electronic.

No one prides themselves on individuality quite like everyone.

I have an unrelated question.
Does anyone know what kind of effect shampoo for color-treated hair has on natural hair?
My mom buys it, so it's what I use whenever I visit home. Is something on my head being preserved in stead of dye? Is it locking hair oils into place? How am I to go about my daily business?

Each moment spent in repose grants you the courage to move through time.

On Sunday I gave my first bike of the season.
I used Slime^® for inflation; then I rode before the onset of thirst.

I'm a little worried that someday I'll understand Vitamin Water.
I'm already at the point where I understand Gatorade. In my youth its watery nature had been a joke to me. Soda's great for such youngsters, energetic and blessed with smooth operations, not the least of which is mirth. Even All Sport (Mk1) was a haven of flavor in those days, being all like this: "RAAAARGGH! Carbonation! B-vitamins!"

Nowadays I prefer something a little less kludgy.

It's a shame that the 7-Eleven, whose chain link fence I fastened my bike chain upon, did not stock Powerade. Powerade's 32-ounce bottle is a lanky animal, nicely suited for bikey drink-holding things (you know the ones). However, the good folks at Gatorade, not unlike a pile of idiots, made their larger size fat. It won't fit!

Every person you encounter gives you unrealistic expectations for the next.

I was trying to catch a bus.
I had just finished visiting the small, carpeted apartment of an old college friend when I realized I might miss its departure. I hastily clambered through an absolute maze of stairwells, full of young girls, trying to find the exit. Several of them burst from one door I opened and told me not to go that way. The next door revealed a long snout that sent me reeling in shock. It belonged to an anxious dog that promptly ran in circles and jumped out the window.

When I finally made it outside, I had no clue which bus contained my field trip group. There were so many buses! Then I woke up.

In another recent dream, I was back in Massachusetts and learned about a foundation that paid good money to introduce a squid to Boston Harbor. I tried to warn everyone that it would grow into a giant squid and battle all our whales.

Why do compact fluorescent lamps (known as energy-saving bulbs in lower echelons), seemingly the Gaia-friendly option, come packaged in plastic while landbulbs* come in cardboard?

Just who do they think they are (answer: some bulbs), and what do they think they're doing (answer: making a poor packaging decision)?

Tangentially related:
If anyone's curious about how best to avoid our life-place's mercurial contamination upon disposal, I've learned that Home Depot has a recycling system for these bulbs. Hopefully they'll still have it in several years when they reach expectancy, hee hee har har har.

Uh, where was I?

Oh right, asterisk explanation time!

* landbulbs = my impromptu satirization of the (derisive? condescending? harmless?) slang "landlines" that emerged only once there was another type of phone with which to compare them. Think of the way comic books can now be called "pamphlets" or "monthlies" to distinguish them from collected graphic prose. Is that an analogy my readership understands better? To be honest, I'm not sure I have a readership, much less one that understands things. Chick a dee dee dee.

Verdicts, I hardly knew ye.

Local
The book itself is a really nice item, thick and nice to hold, with good colors on the cover and a firm binding.
The contents are pretty artwork and a nicely conceptual narrative.
However, I'll be so bold as to fault the quantity of story. It just feels like too little happens for such a big production.
Verdict: That's one fewer comics I have to read. Actually, I quite liked it.

Blink
It's a book that endorses snap judgments and discusses a bunch of seemingly contradictory anecdotes. The early examples, such as gut reactions spotting fake art more accurately than expensive research, send a much different message than the section with cops shooting a black man who tried to show them his I.D. (they assumed he was pulling a gun). I just don't know what to think. Thanks, Malcolm.
My favorite chapter is the one about "Warren Harding Errors." It's a little frightening that if you try typing that into Google, one of only three suggestions is "warren harding error obama." Crap, did we not learn from history?
Verdict: Highly fascinating. Highly recommended.

my hand-crank juicer
Navel oranges don't give very much juice, but oh, Valencia-a-a... with blood oranges on the ground...
Verdict: a fitting response to life giving me lemons

The Bridge
This film of folks jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge was underwhelming. I know agendas can be unhealthy for documentaries, but it would have been nice to include a message discouraging suicide. I see a lot of reviews calling it "honest," but wouldn't it be more honest to point out the value of life?
Verdict: dishonest

Mario Kart Wii
Mario Kart Wii is an excellent game? That's not News. Man bites an excellent Dog Kart Wii? There's your News.
Verdict: It rules, surprising no one.

sulfamethoxazole
Gosh, this did even less than the fluoroquinolone.
Verdict: ineffective

3 sweaters
The stripey one is pretty nice. It has that "new chapter" feel to it. The wool one is classy and warm, but caring for it is like monitoring a child; you can't just leave it in the dryer. The third sweater is functionally sound, but it enters my wardrobe with little fanfare.
Verdict: A, A-, and C-

Slime brand tire inflator
It does the trick! It plugs right into the cigarette lighter (I had no plans to light cigarettes anyhow) and has a long enough cable to reach all my tires. It also includes a flashlight for nighttime impromptu inflation parties.
Verdict: devoid of any actual slime

Who I am

After a dinner in Florida, Dad had us tour some resort he thinks is nice. I commented to Jess that I'm not impressed by things that are wealthy just for the sake of being wealthy.

Then somehow Alex discussed a scenario in which I infiltrate the inner circles of Florida's wealthy elite. They've all accepted me as one of their own until it comes time to order the wine. "I'll have a bowl of Frankenberry," I tell the waiter, and a pile of comic books spills out of my suit coat. Whoops!

This is very tempting!
I now want to be rich just to create this scene.

Oh, and the comics can't be Maus or Sandman or even Archie Digest.
What I need are some Infinity War tie-ins of Quasar.

Duplication Dreams
I've had my share.

In one I was trying to obtain a key from a desk staffed by my high school calculus teacher.
Once I had the form filled out, she was like, "Okay, I need to go make a duplicate of this."
We walked through a classroom to a backdoor that led into a science lab. A new invention called the duplicator was being housed there, and we used it to make an exact copy of the form I had filled out.
When I awoke, I didn't understand why a photocopy wouldn't have sufficed.

A few days later I had a dream wherein I used similar technology to duplicate myself. I forget what my reason was. Was it scientific curiosity? Vanity? Either way, I had figured it would be no trouble to just eliminate the duplicate once I was done.

Imagine my horror when I tried to kill my duplicate and felt anything and everything I did to him.
I wouldn't be able to "eliminate" this duplicate without killing the original as well!
This is an interesting message about shared souls. In a way, when we hurt any living being we are hurting ourselves. If you believe in reincarnation, an oversoul, or just about anything that ties us all together, then you can see how doing wrong to your fellow chap operates like the pain in this dream.

Non-duplication Dreams
I've had my share.

Perhaps inspired by my recent entry about car technology and ducklings, I dreamt that my brother and I drove by a beach with a lot of loons on the shore. Many of them were what I called "big babies" in the dream... adolescents that looked neither like chicks nor full-grown loons. If you've ever seen birds at such an age, you know they're charmingly awkward. I've encountered medium-sized Canadian geese that look half-yellow, half-gray. They always remind me of being a mutant teenager.

Anyway, I suggested that Alex take some pictures of these birds, but he was like, "Oh, my car is constantly taking pictures in every direction. I'll check them out when I get home." It's like the very body of his car was a lens and it was constantly recording multi-angle details, akin to Google Street View.

Lame.