DID YOU KNOW? American chemical engineer Thomas Midgley both invented chlorofluorocarbons and pioneered the use of tetra-ethyl lead as a gasoline additive. Wikipedia muses that he is therefore responsible for more environmental damage than any other single organism in Earth's history.
I don't think this entry will be very useful, because I don't think any of my California-based acquaintances other than Michael J and Mitra read this blog. Actually, I know that this one grad student Ashley has read my blog at least once, because at the 90's party I was all, "Ashley, you are so good at Connect Four. I don't know how you are so talented. You are so amazing." She was like, "Oh, you have other talents... like... blogging." I was all, "You read my blog?!" Oh, I was so excited, I could have passed out on the bathroom floor.
But, anyway, Devotchka is coming to San Francisco on April 28, and I'm looking for anybody who wants to go with me. They did all the music for Little Miss Sunshine, so if you liked Little Miss Sunshine, chances are that you'd also like Devotchka. They're doing a limited presale with $23 tickets before releasing them on Ticketmaster, which will no doubt gouge your wallet like an ancient Olympic wrestler might gouge your eyes. Yeah, it's a school night, but I've kind of abandoned the idea of there being different things I should do on weekdays and weekends, especially when I get e-mails like this one:
First, for the Catholics in the class, an important announcement:
Second, for everyone else: we have a transport exam on the morning of Monday the 17th of March. I propose Bear's Lair immediately following. Oh yeah, and wear green. Bean
"Immediately following" the transport exam means hitting the Bear's Lair at 11:00 AM. Oh, grad school.
When I'm pressed to name my favorite band, I usually say Devotchka, even though I go through phases, and the current answer is probably New Pornographers. There are two reasons for this. The first is that Devotchka make some seriously awesome music. I've tried a lot of different ways of describing it to people over the past few years, but I think the most apt description is the title of their first album, SuperMelodrama. Seriously, all their songs are just totally overdone, overorchestrated, and pretentious, but not really in a detached progressive rock kind of way, more like, well, a super-melodramatic, really sincere kind of way. Like, they describe their most recent album as a rock opera that tells "the story of a young Ranchero who survives going to war, only to find his childhood sweetheart has married a rich man for the love of money." And it's awse, because, well, Nick Urata is screaming kind of stupid lyrics like "I have given my body to the Mexican army, but my eternal soul belongs to you, my love!" as if he is actually a ranchero, or at least he successfully approximates what I imagine a lovelorn ranchero must sound like.
To entice any of my readers to go, here's a video featuring a Devotchka song played over a montage of clips from Lost. I don't know why anyone made it, but I figure that everyone I know likes Lost, so I'm going for kind of a subliminal message here.
And here's what might be my favorite cover of all time; Devotchka doing a Velvet Underground song. It might even beat Aretha Franklin's "Eleanor Rigby," and The Ramones' "What A Wonderful World." Seriously, if you can think of another cover that's competitive, let me know.
I was also going to write about how Devotchka helps me win indie cred battles, but when I read back what I had written here (like I do 10-15 times for every blog entry I write, because I am in love with the sound of my own voice), I realized that I kind of sounded like a jerk. Not that sounding like a jerk has ever stopped me from publishing a blog entry before, but seriously, I don't want to turn people off of Devotchka. To give you an idea of what I wrote, here's the last line from my original entry.
God, reading back that description, I kind of feel like this guy. I promise that I only punish the wicked. I like to think of myself as a Boondock Saint.
DID YOU KNOW? The voice of K.I.T.T. in the new Knight Rider series was not provided by G.O.B. from Arrested Development, as I had reported prviously. G.O.B. was unable to voice the car because Knight Rider is a Ford Mustang and G.O.B. has an existing contract with GMC trucks. K.I.T.T. is now voiced by Val Kilmer, which does not provide for any acronym-related humor.
Speaking of breakfast, I might have mentioned before that I signed up to coordinate a breakfast for ChemE grad student recruiting this weekend and next weekend. Actually, I signed up to coordinate a breakfast and poster session, but I didn't know that at the time. I just heard "breakfast" and I was all "Meowth, that's right!" But the poster session turned out to be pretty easy to plan; basically you just get some people to volunteer to move easels, and send out an e-mail to all the labs saying "make a poster, or all the prospectives will think your lab is full of total losers."
We had an organizational meeting for recruiting weekend yesterday afternoon, and we spent some time discussing whether it would be more cost- and quality-effective to buy groceries from Costco or to just grab whatever's on sale at Safeway. Because seriously, Safeway has some pretty good deals if you make a special effort to buy whatever's on sale. I usually save between 30 and 42%. I can never break that elusive upper bound, though.
Saving money on groceries is one of my obsessions, so I know the price of pretty much every possible breakfast item at Safeway just off the top of my head. I didn't realize until today, though, that buying a bunch of five scallions for a dollar means that each scallion costs me twenty cents. Thanks, Nate. I've never been to Costco, so I went online to the Costco website to see if they had any information on pricing that I could compare to my encyclopedic knowledge of Costco prices. But I got immediately distracted because it turns out they have all kinds of stuff at Costco. Computers, Decor, Electronics, Fashion, Floral, Food & Wine, Funeral, Furniture, Gifts... Wait, hold on a second, did I just hear...
Funeral? Really? You might be thinking, "Oh, yeah, funerals, you know, people always send meat platters and stuff as condolences, or large floral arrangements. It's a Greek thing, kind of. I guess that's the kind of thing Costco would be really awesome at putting together." But, no no, actually...
They've got quite a selection of vessels in which to convey your remains into the earth. You might be asking yourself, "Why is Costco wholesale selling caskets?"
Luckily, they have a FAQ to answer that question.
Remember that when I die, I want to be buried in a Costco coffin with a pallet of Welch's Fruit Snacksby my side. Now it's on the internet, and Google never deletes anything, so you have no excuse if you forget.
DID YOU KNOW? When asked what advice he would give to his younger self, Brian Wilson responded, "I would tell myself to make the chorus of California Girls a little catchier. Other than that I have no regrets."
This was the first year in quite some time, possibly ever, that I had seen more than one of the movies nominated for Best Picture, and I therefore am, perhaps for the first time in my life, qualified to say that tonight was a total load of crap. Seriously, I can appreciate No Country For Old Men as an artistic movie, and yes, Javier Bardem did haunt my dreams with an oxygen tank for like two months after I saw it. But it was just so slow. It was slower than Lost In Translation, which I thought set some kind of record for lethargy of plot exposition. Although Lost In Translation did end up being pretty good, too. I was impressed by No Country, but I would never see it again, for any reason. Also, it would have been improved with the addition of "Fuck the Pain Away" by Peaches to the soundtrack.
Seriously, was there a soundtrack to that movie? I was surprised that Bill Conti had anything to play when the Coen brothers accepted their three awards, because I don't remember there really being any sound in that movie except gunshots and dogs barking.
But Juno. Man, I don't know anybody who has seen Juno who isn't like, "Have you seen Juno? Wasn't Juno amazing? I loved Juno. Do you want to see Juno again with me?" It's kind of like the Barack Obama of 2007 films. Actually, I would say it's more like the Ron Paul of 2007 films, but that doesn't seem entirely complimentary. Sorry. So, I mean, yes, perhaps I can see how someone could consider No Country to be a greater piece of art, maybe, but I just think making a movie that can best be described as "slow" and "creepy" is a lot less challenging than making a movie described as "heartwarming" and "universally-beloved."
Yesterday I grabbed some brunch with Nghi, which you can once again read all about on Yelp. According to Yelp, there is some way that I can pimp Yelp out onto my blog, so you can read all my new reviews right here, in real time as I compose them, I guess, and then rate them as "cool" and "funny" to increase my yelpularity. However, because of my fascination with portmanteau words, I feel like I would use terms like "blagoyelp" and "yelpoblagomastery" so much that Turkey vs. Spam II Turbo would quickly become unreadable.
I like catching up with people. Anytime. Particularly people I haven't seen in a while. The more awkward, the better. Catching up with Nghi was not awkward, but it was still pretty cool. I think the best catching-up I had was when I went back to Boston and grabbed a few beers with this guy who was possibly my best friend in 8th grade before he left Susquehanna Township to go to Vo-Tech. I was all, "Oh, so you're married? Oh, no, I can't get married. You can't have children? Oh, I'm sorry I asked."
No, that actually happened, I'm not just thinking of Debbie Downer.
So, yeah, I like catching up. Especially over breakfast. I really like breakfast. Which is strange, because I'm otherwise not a morning person. I think the best evening I could possibly imagine would involve doing something awesome all night, and then at 6 AM cooking omelets for breakfast, possibly accompanied by waffles or biscuits. It doesn't matter what the thing is that keeps me up all night, although bonus points if it involves Shakira and/or Judge Judy.
DID YOU KNOW? Trader Joe's has started a raffle where you get a ticket to win $25 in groceries if you bring in your own reusable bag instead of taking paper bags from their store.Seriously, way better than saving the rainforest.
I read somewhere (not here), maybe it was an Amy Sedaris book, that you can tell a lot about a person from what they have in their cart at the supermarket checkout. Like, you know, if it's 10 PM on a Saturday and you see a guy in a rumpled business suit with no tie buying six packages of sushi, you can guess that it's an investment banker stocking his office refrigerator with dinner for the rest of the week.
Man, I wish I knew where I got that from.
I was thinking about that at Trader Joe's this afternoon because the guy behind me in line was advising the pregnant woman behind him not to buy sushi, fearing that high mercury levels therein could harm her unborn child. After she had replaced the offending sushi with a vegetarian option, the guy went on about how he was actually no expert on the subject, and he didn't really eat much sushi anyway, because he has some sort of reaction to shellfish. He figured it must be one of those protein things. But he really likes California rolls.
Yeah, I didn't really get it either, but it kind of seemed appropriate given the fact that he was buying nothing except four bottles of Charles Shaw Shiraz.
The guy in front of me had completely filled his grocery basket with whole milk, yogurt, and butter, really making me wonder what kind of insane dairy jamboree was going to occur when he got home.
And me? Well, I bought two different kinds of Trader Joe's frozen peas. One regular and one organic.
DID YOU KNOW? Tracy Morgan was required by law to wear for 90 days an ankle bracelet that tested his perspiration for alcohol vapors. This development was written into the Ludachristmas episode of 30 Rock.
My umbrella broke on the way to class yesterday, which I guess isn't the worst possible thing that could have happened to me today, but it certainly seems like it could be. Definitely in the top five. You can read my old MITblogs entry about my most recent quest to find a new umbrella that meets my impossibly high standards. The good news is that I got to add a new entry to the "things I obsess over" list.
In case you were wondering, or contemplating an early birthday present, this is the only brand of umbrella that it is possible for me to use. I'm just going to wear a raincoat until I find one. Because I cannot accept mediocrity.
But that isn't even really the worst thing that happened this week.
There were no donuts yesterday, and I was inconsolable. Seriously, I know colloquium was canceled unexpectedly last week, and this week I guess they just never bothered to find a speaker, but they still could have put out a donut spread for us. So it was 4 PM on a Wednesday afternoon and I had been in lab since 10 AM doing actual lab work. I mean, usually I just spend the day reading Slog, but yesterday I spent like four hours spin-coating some silicon wafers with cellulose so that I can do some flow ellipsometry later this week. I mean, seriously, I did work. Pretty much only because I would have otherwise felt guilty about taking free donuts.
So it was 4 PM and I had no donuts, and I needed to stay in lab until about 7 to finish up the prep. I decided that I needed to get a buzz somehow, so I decided to head down to the Gamestop on Telegraph to drop $50 on Super Smash Bros Brawl.
Call it taking a page from the Book of Ruth. And, really, I did feel better, knowing that I'd be guaranteed a copy of Brawl when it's released in just 19 short days. Oh man, I'm totally going to own you as Ivysaur. So I was energized enough to sit around for another three hours, waiting for my silicon wafers to finish washing.
So I spent $50 on a video game because I didn't get free donuts one afternoon when I was expecting them. I mean, whatever, I really wanted Smash Bros. Brawl anyway.
But let's put this into perspective a little bit.
Now, I've been on kind of a long distance runaround of campus for the past three days trying to secure the funding that my project so richly deserves, and I have to say, I'm about eight inches away from doing that. I mean, it's allocated, somewhere, but we just can't start using it yet, because EBI has like 20,000 projects and one person who handles paperwork. And I mean, given that fact, she's super nice about it. But I finally managed to locate her yesterday and thrust some forms at her as she ran off to a meeting, and today she called me back and promised that she'd speak with EBI's accountant today and have us up and running by Monday. Awse.
The problem is that I wanted to do work today. Today and tomorrow. You know, I'm restless. I'm passionate about science. And the big thing impeding my progress is that I don't have a lab notebook. Which, I mean, whatever, I've done a bunch of stuff that doesn't really require a lab notebook. But you know how if you're a child of the 90's, it's impossible for you to throw out an aluminum can in a regular trash can without feeling pangs of guilt? As a student of science, it's pretty much impossible for me to gather data without a lab notebook. Like, Janet Schrenk will just like pop out from under the sink and fail me on sight.
So yesterday I was on my way back from buying Smash Brothers, still kind of in the same heady rush, when I realized that the Cal Student Store was on my way back, kind of, so I said to myself, "Hmmm, I could use a lab notebook. I kinda wanted to do some ellipsometry tomorrow." I made my way down to the textbook- and lab-supplies-sub-basement and decided to check it out. Turns out that lab notebooks cost $13.99! Or $18.99 with spiral bindings. Which, like Totes umbrellas, are the only kind of lab notebooks that are really possible to use.
I had a lab notebook in my hand for about two minutes, just standing there in the store, staring off into the middle distance, holding my lab notebook, that I need to do my job, for which I am paid, and I decided that there was no way I could justify its purchase. I dropped it back on the rack and ran upstairs to buy a 99-cent lanyard, which I removed from its included keyring and threw out. I seriously needed a new keyring. My old one was getting so stretched out, and it was too hard to keep all my keys going in the same direction.
But my gross mismanagement of money for this week didn't end there. This afternoon I headed to the Farmer's Market with a mere $14 in my wallet, having forgotten to grab some more money from Bank of America's atrocious new ATMs. So I was really a little bit limited in what I could buy. Which is good, because local produce, along with Trader Joe's olive hummus and Cheeseboard Pizza, is my current crack. I actually had exactly the amount of money I needed when I got to the last stand to pick up a few watermelon radishes, some fennel, and a bunch of swiss chard, which helped me cross "learn to cook and enjoy dark greens" off of my to-do list.
...but you know that I collect only North Dakota state quarters, right? Seriously, is that not the most beautiful peace of currency you've ever seen in your life. Is that not the greatest symbol of American freedom you've ever seen? Did you know that Benjamin Franklin wanted the national bird of the United States to be the Turkey? I would have picked the buffalo, personally. Anyway, if you happen to have any North Dakota state quarters on you, I trade inferior quarters for them and pay a 25-cent commission.
It turns out that Phan Farms lady gave me a North Dakota state quarter along with my red peppers and arugula. Seriously, lady, is there anything you can't do? So I was standing there with my swiss chard and my fennel and my radishes, debating what to do, and somehow, "Spend a North Dakota state quarter" never occurred to me. I stood there for two minutes, staring off into the middle distance, and finally decided to put down the radishes and head home to figure out how to cook and enjoy dark greens.
And I increased the size of my coin collection by 50%.
DID YOU KNOW? The water bear species Echiniscus madonnae, discovered in 2006, was named after "one of the most significant [musical] artists of our times, Madonna Louise Veronica Ritchie."
I was kind of regretting having my MITblogging legacy end with an entry inspired by a Jordin Sparks performance, so today I wrote my totally, definitely last and final MITblogs entry, ever. So go over and read that one, and consider it your Sam Maurer blog explosion for today.
Speaking of blogs explosion, if you really know me, you know that my motivation for blogging is about two parts nostalgia and one part egomania. That being said, you have no idea how hard it was for me not to link to this blog off of my last MITblogs entry, if for no other reason than to watch the massive spike in hits to my blog and hundreds and hundreds of hopeful Estonian genius kids stumbled over here from the MITblogs website. Oh man, so many new readers.
But, in the end, I decided against that for two reasons: it might bring a crazy rioting crowd of "FIRST POST!" over here, which I have thus far avoided only because my readership numbers in the dozens. Or, more realistically, dozen. And because I was worried that it might reflect poorly on MIT if parents of prospective students read about an MIT graduate registering socialist as a joke and spraining his ankle while taking a poop.
DID YOU KNOW? The current governor of Idaho is named Butch Otter.
Seriously, that sounds like the name of a robot boss from Mega Man X. He's weak to the Shotgun Ice you get from Chill Penguin, but once you beat him you can use his Tummy Crusher attack to take out Launch Octopus.
So I'm a registered socialist. I'm not actually a socialist, but I'm registered as one. If that makes sense. Basically, I was standing in the DMV one warm October afternoon, getting my California driver's license and registering to vote, and I was looking at the form and all the different political parties I could register for, and I said, "Hmmm, Democrat seems kinda boring. I think I'm gonna pick another one, to keep things spicy." I've voted green before (in my defense, it was for Dauphin Country Sheriff), and I kind of think libertarians are hot, but in the end I decided to choose the Peace and Freedom Party, figuring that peace and freedom were two ideals that I appreciated. How bad could that be?
As soon as I got home, I looked up my new political party on Wikipedia and discovered that I had apparently become socialist, feminist and environmentalist. And really, I'm down with that. I mean, most of my friends know more about the principles of socialism and feminism than I do, but whatever. Also according to Wikipedia, the party (should I capitalize that?) has been having some trouble in recent years getting ballot status, and I guess having more registered voters is gonna help them out with that. And really, I'm all for everyone getting their fair chance to express their opinion and get represented on the ballot, even if they did nominate a convicted murderer for president in 2004.
Plus, look at our bad-ass emblem, featuring the world's strongest dove. The party color is apparently black. I mean, I wear black all the time! Clearly, we were destined for each other.
So life as a registered socialist in 2008 is pretty uneventful. The only time my party affiliation really affected my life was on election day a couple weeks ago, when they had to retrieve a special ballot out of some sort of hermetically-sealed safe so that I could cast my primary vote for Gloria LaRiva. Seriously, the Democrat, Republican, and Independent ballots were just sitting out there for you to take, but when it was my turn to vote, the 80-year-old ladies who were running our polling place had to yell, "Peace and Freedom! Peace and Freedom Party! Where did we put those ballots for the Peace and Freedom Party?" I was all, "Please stop saying that out loud." But other than that, yeah, my life had been pretty much without incident.
Until today.
I was in the middle of baking Alton Brown's stunning chewy chocolate chip cookies when I happened to look at my phone and notice that I had a missed call. I was pretty upset, because my ringtone is the Pete & Pete theme song and I'm always looking for excuses to listen to it. But anyway, I didn't recognize the number, and I had just put a fresh batch of cookies into the oven, so I turned down Bombs Over Baghdad and gave them a call back.
Take a look at the Peace and Freedom Party website and the website of the primary candidate I voted for. Like, they're kind of scary. I mean, even Hillary Clinton is smiling on the splash page of her website. Basically, I just never felt like my party puts forth a terribly welcoming image. More like... ominous.
"Hi, I have a missed call from this number?" I said. Since 3 PM, I've been trying to think of a way to describe the voice that responded to me. Basically, you remember Zordon from the original Power Rangers? If Zordon had an evil clone, that would pretty well approximate the voice on the other end of the phone. I mean, regular Zordon has a pretty distinct voice. But this guy was just a little more... ominous.
So Dark Zordon said "Hi, this is Jim from the Peace and Freedom Party. We need your help today." You know Shelley Duvall in the last 30 minutes of the The Shining? That was me. Like, I almost pooped myself, I was so afraid. I managed to squeak out, "Um, okay, yeah, how can I help?" There was a crazy dude yelling in Sproul Plaza yesterday about having intercourse with iPods and SUVs. I don't know, I feel bad about it now, but I kind of imagined that would be the kind of help that was needed. My mind raced. I was so thankful that I had just put cookies in the oven. I mean, how many times in life do you get to say, "Sorry, I can't help today, I'm baking some cookies." and it's actually true?
Luckily, Dark Zordon reassured me that all they needed me to do was to sign some petition so that they could get their chosen candidate on the ballot for State Senator. And like I said before, I'm down with that, you know, promoting dialogue and whatever. Dark Zordon said he would send someone over to my apartment. Shortly after hanging up the phone, I realized that means that the Peace and Freedom Party knows where I live.
So I guess I should call the petition guy that came to my door Dark Alpha, but he was actually a really nice, charming dude who reminded me, as most people in Berkeley do, of Dennis Hopper from Apocalypse Now!. Except this guy was a lot less manic and a lot nicer. Dark Zordon was probably super nice, too, but I never got to meet him in person. As I signed the petition, we had a nice little chat about Massachusetts and ballot politics in general. I found out that they needed to get 20 signatures or else they'll have to pay a $2,000 filing fee, which would be hard because they don't really have much money, and they already use most of it to "distribute propaganda." Those were his exact words. But anyhoo, they were pretty optimistic about being able to get 20 signatures. Mine was number 6. Make it work, Peace and Freedom Party!
And that was my experience in feminist socialism for today. I have to say, I'm kind of digging being a Peace and Freedom-er right now. Not enough to become knowledgeable about the party's current positions on anything, but I think I'm going to actively encourage all of my friends who are moving to California to join too.
DID YOU KNOW? Czech runner Emil Zatopek won a three gold medals in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. Most extraordinarily, he won a gold medal in the marathon, despite never having previously run a marathon in his life. He decided to compete at the last minute after winning the 5K and 10K and paced himself by talking to the leaders during the race.
This morning I had a pretty awkward moment in the elevator, because I was greeted by a Japanese man and his bicycle, both of whom were heading down to the ground floor. Mostly this was weird because I live on the top floor of my apartment building. Also awkward because we had to fit both of our bikes into the elevator. Anyway, I know, elevators can be both challenging and unforgiving. One time I was on my way back from the LLARC and standing in front of the building 56 elevators for like two minutes, before some dude came by with some test tubes and pressed the "down" button, which I had forgotten to do. But that time I didn't actually ride the elevator, I just turned around like nothing had happened and walked down six flights of stairs. Because that was the less awkward way to respond to that situation.
In my attempt to organize every awesome thing I encounter in my life into twenty thousand tiny jars, jars which I in turn store permanently on my external hard drive, I've started using OS X's awesome Shift+Apple+4 command to take pictures of interesting things I see on the internet. Here's some things I checked out yesterday.
Much like Liz Lemon is uncomfortable hearing the word "lovers" unless it comes between "meat" and "pizza," I'm not used to hearing the words "John McCain's daughter" unless they are interrupted by "illegitimate" and "biracial." So, I mean, the photo above surprised me, for a couple reasons. As if John McCain hadn't already sold out enough between his 2000 and 2008 campaigns, now we find out that he lets his daughter wear berets. For shame.
Also, the first word of her blog tagline is "musings," which, like "rants," is just inexcusable.
Speaking of "lovers," my attitude toward Valentine's Day this year was pretty well summarized by Fry from Futurama: "Oh crap! I forgot to get a girlfriend again." I was able to keep my mind on other things for most of the day, except when I had to use Google Docs to sign up for some stuff for recruiting weekend. Google Docs yesterday was the most disgusting barfed-out explosion of pink I have ever seen, and this is coming from someone who painted his room to match a pair of bright pink polyester women's pants from Garment District. Anyway, most of the sites I had to visit yesterday managed to stay pretty much valentine-free, except for Pirate Bay, which featured the preceding graphic. That graphic also pretty well summarizes my attitude toward Valentine's day this year.
I accidentally bought 3 pounds of cabbage at the farmers' market last week because, once again, I'm bad at estimating the weights of things in my head. So I found this advertisement while looking up okonomiyaki recipes (inspired, of course, by Gustavo's blog entry). The idea of a fried cabbage pancake with mayonnaise sounded enticing, but never having tried them before, I decided not to press my luck and instead Yelped some nearby places to sample them. In the end, I ended up just frying some pierogies and sauteing them with onions and cabbage. As a result of this new adventure in Polish cookery, I've managed to eat a pound and a half of cabbage in the past two days. Seriously, I don't know where to go from here.
But, yeah, aboutcoloncleansing.com will probably not be the first place I look.
(Man, what kind of google hits am I gonna start getting now?)
DID YOU KNOW? The 26.2-mile length of the marathon was not standardized until the 1908 Olympics in London, when 385 extra yards were added such that Queen Alexandra could have the best possible view of the finish line.
I just received an e-mail this morning where the greeting is just "Sam Maurer." As in "Sam Maurer, I am forwarding your request to Bill Flounders..." I always worry a little bit too much about how to start my e-mails. I usually start with "Dear ______" in the most formal cases, or "Hello" if I don't know who I'm talking to. I use "Hi ______" when I'm friendly but uncomfortable, which is often, or "Hey ______" when I want to sound youthful and carefree. And with my best friends I use "Yo ______" because they already know that I'm all tragically hip like that.
Occasionally, with Professor Radke, I'll just use his name. "Professor Radke, [break] I got the x-ray diffraction results you wanted; they are inconclusive. [break] Sam." So I guess this isn't unprecdented. But seriously, starting an e-mail with "Sam Maurer, I am forwarding your request to Bill Flounders..." is just kind of weird. It gives me THE SHIVERS, and I'm not quite sure why.
Anyway, that's not important, because also in my inbox right now is the greatest e-mail I have received all month.
Dear Students,
The colloquium for today has been canceled.
There will be donuts between 3:30pm and 4pm today.
Thank you, Trish
We have colloquium every Wednesday. Basically it involves all the first-years sitting in the back four rows of an auditorium and all the professors sitting in the front two rows, and like five postdocs sitting in the middle. Unless it's a biofuels speaker, then the entire auditorium is packed and people are hanging upside-down off of the rafters like intellectually-hungry Conor Obersts. There's a dude up front giving a presentation. Sometimes it's pretty interesting, sometimes it's not. In any case, Professor Radke always asks really challenging questions that are never quite answered to his satisfaction. Then we all go home. The top three most interesting ones were:
1) A guy who somehow related randomly-induced mutations in enzymes and the corresponding changes in folding rate to the molecular structure of glass 2) A guy who illustrated the sensitivity of a bioreceptor his lab had designed by showing one gram of cocaine in his hand next to an olympic-size swimming pool, and then told us that Fox News had picked up this story and claimed that he actually dumped cocaine into a public swimming pool in the name of science 3) Last week's, where some dude from Shell came and told us of their plan to extract oil from oil shales by creating 1 m thick perimeters of coolant in the ground and heating all the ground inside them to 300 degrees Celsius for a period of 3 years, until oil was formed. Seriously. That's what he said. They filed a 600 page patent describing how they planned to do this. Then he said that he couldn't tell us anymore for copyright reasons and would talk about azeotropes for the remainder of his presentation, which are the most boring topic in all of chemical engineering history.
So, anyway, they get you to go to colloquium by giving you free donuts from 3:30 - 4:00 and then having colloquium from 4:00 - 5:00. The donut reception is also attended mostly by first-years, but we go freaking crazy about it. Like, we'll be sitting at Beckett's on Tuesday for trivia night and someone will be like, "Oh my God, Hannah, tomorrow is.... [makes a donut with her hands and looks through the hole]." And Hannah's like, "What?" And everyone else yells, "DONUTS! I'm so excited for donuts! What is wrong with your face? DONUTS!" Which makes it even weirder that only first-years go to the reception. Really, I dread the implication that there will come a point in my life when the prospect of free donuts 50 yards outside my building is not sufficiently enticing to make me leave lab for one hour.
So this week, the speaker is stuck in Madison, Wisconsin because of inclement weather, so he can't get out here to present at colloquium. But, apparently, the show must go on. And to get donuts without heating the earth to 300 degrees Celsius for 3 years? Well, that's just icing on the cake. Or icing on the donut, as the case may be. I usually go for the sour cream donut with chocolate icing. I always hope there will be a chocolate-filled donut, but there is never a chocolate-filled donut. In that sense, I am disappointed every single week.
But, in any event, beggars can't be choosers. Yahoo!
DID YOU KNOW? Swedish Actor Dolph Lundgren, who portrayed Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study chemical engineering at MIT. He quit after two weeks to pursue his fledgling acting career.
So I use the iSafari add-on for Firefox, which gives me all the convenience of Firefox (until recently, Google spreadsheets didn't support Safari) with all the Mac-a-licious prettiness that I've become accustomed to. I spent an entire afternoon last semester downloading Firefox add-ons, and as a result, I periodically receive notifications such as this one.
So, if that incremental adjustment has remained constant, there have been more than 100 updates to PimpZilla. I think I'm going to take my chances with version 3.49 for now.
You can tell how badly I want to write the 1,000-word paper that I have due in 13 hours.
The only problem with doing short entries is that I have to waste a DID YOU KNOW? on them. Those take a lot more time than you might think.
DID YOU KNOW? There exists a baseball that was signed by both noted slugger Hank Aaron and prolific mathematician Paul Erdos.
I was leaving a comment on Ruthie's brand-spanking-new blog today and I noticed that if you're not signed in to blogger, you have to look at an image and type the letters on the image into a text box. I guess it's officially called a CAPTCHA. You know, I just sat here for two minutes trying to figure out how to punctuate "brand-spanking-new." I finally came to the realization that "spanking" was an infix, after meditating for a while on what kind of action "brand spanking" could possibly be.
Anyway, I guess the word verification test does help prevent blagospam, but it's always really bothered me. Like, back in 1997, they just used to use everyday words or sequences of 2-3 numbers. But I guess spambots got smarter, because now they have all sorts of crazy distorted text with stars around it, underneath a grid of logarithmic graph paper. There have been three or four cases when I haven't even been able to read what I'm supposed to be entering, my credit card applications only going through as a result of some lucky guesswork.
Back when we were getting tons of spam on MITblogs (I mean, they still do), we asked Ben Jones if we could set up something like this, but Ben Jones noted that 1) it's super annoying and 2) it discriminates against blind people. I mean, I knew the former, but I had never really thought about the latter. A few weeks later, I was filling out some kind of form on Google and I noticed that it now had a handicapped button next to the stupid text box.
I thought that was cute. Oh, Google. You're so dreamy. I've seen it on a few more forms since then, but I never thought anything of it, until today, when I finally clicked on it, just out of curiosity. This is what you get.
This isn't actually what I got. But I can't directly link to what I actually got. If you want to hear it, go to the comment page and check it out for yourself.
Okay, first of all, is spam technology really so powerful that someone's going to write a script to automatically click on the "handicapped audio test" button, play it through their speakers, analyze it with voice recognition software, and then type in the numbers, so the message has to be totally garbled, just so there's no way for the real-time voice recognition software to unscramble it.
Second of all, seriously, that is one of the scariest things I have ever heard in my life. I never actually saw The Ring, but from the previews, that's what I imagine you hear when you pick up the phone in The Ring. Haven't blind people already suffered enough? Do I really have to subject them to that too, just so they can comment on my blog?
Answer: after this entry, I do not have any more blind readers.
DID YOU KNOW? William Shatner sold one of his kidney stones for $75,000 to benefit Habitat for Humanity.
Oh man. So the other day I was on gmail talking to Ruthie and this recipe for caramelized tofu came up. Since reading journal articles about cellulosomes all day is super boring, I'm on gmail basically every three minutes. So I kept seeing this recipe for caramelized tofu over and over and over. Finally I got curious and clicked on it. The only other time I've ever clicked on a Google AdSense web clip was when it featured this article about how certain public restrooms in Finland now require you to send a text message in order to use them.
So I hate brussels sprouts, and I didn't have any brown sugar. But I did have some kohlrabi that I bought last week as part of my "buy one new vegetable per week" self-improvement program, and I had some dark molasses that I bought for no reason other than the fact that it was 60% off at Safeway a few months ago. So I kind of followed the recipe. Basically I just fried some strips of tofu, added some molasses, tossed it with walnuts and cilantro, and then served it over brown rice and stir-fry kohlrabi. It was fantastic.
So I signed up for Heidi's mailing list in the hopes of getting some more awesome recipes like that. And yesterday I did. I got one for split pea soup. But I had, like, none of the ingredients. Smoked paprika? Seriously? It was tragic. I usually eat lunch around 12 PM and spend the rest of my afternoon in lab thinking about what I'm going to eat for dinner, and reading one paper. I think the other day's PhD comic summarizes it pretty accurately. So I sat in lab for five hours thinking about nothing except for pea soup.
Then, while I was running up to the Brazil building after work, I had the greatest idea. Ina Garten! Which, I mean, is the solution to most problems that I encounter in the course of my life. Like, when I chopped the hell out of my finger the other day, I was all, "What do I do? What would Ina Garten do?!" The answer was, of course, "Chop a little bit slower, because Jeffrey isn't coming home until next week anyway."
Of course, my SIGNED BAREFOOT CONTESSA COOKBOOK has a recipe for "fresh pea soup" in it. And it uses frozen peas! Frozen peas are my biggest convenience food ever, and if Ina Garten says it's okay to use them, then how bad could that be? Answer: not bad at all. Fabulous. I didn't have all the necessary ingredients for this one either, but working with what I had, I was able to make some reasonable substitutions, and just 25 minutes later I had come up with this:
Oh man. Oh MAN. I talked a lot yesterday about historical produce that has made me cry. I think, by this point, I am so used to food in California being amazing that when I tasted this, I just rolled my eyes back into my skull and watched my brain literally melt and ooze out of my nostrils. I was a little skeptical making it, because Trader Joe's vegetable stock is browner than I remembered, and I was really worried that it would end up a barfy shade of breen. But, no, it ended up pureed into the lovely bright green color that you see above. It looked so delicious when it was finished that I changed out of my running clothes to eat it, anticipating that the odors from my sweaty shirt would have otherwise ruined my soupy experience.
There's a song, I think it's by Kelly Clarkson, or Beyonce, called "My Grown-up Christmas List." I think that this year I made a pretty good grown-up Christmas list. I was pretty focused. I asked for socks, a bike reflector, Super Mario Galaxy, and an immersion blender. Although Super Mario Galaxy was fun, at this point I think I've gotten the most entertainment out of the immersion blender. God, I love immersion blenders.
And last night really confirmed this, because without an immersion blender I never would have even thought to make pea green soup last night, and I would have finished my transport pset before 2 AM. I know this isn't Gustavo's blog, but I'm going to share the recipe with you anyway.
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped 1 leek, washed and finely chopped 1-2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth 10 oz frozen peas, rinsed 2-3 tbsp thai basil, finely chopped salt and black pepper
Heat a pot over medium heat. Add the oil, then add the onion and leek, then add a lot of black pepper and a little salt. Let it sweat for about 10-15 minutes, until the leeks are tender and the onions are slightly brown. Add the vegetable stock and turn the heat up to high. Scrape the bottom of the pot to get all the brown bits off. Add the frozen peas and cook for 3 minutes. Take off the heat and add the thai basil. Pour the soup into a separate bowl or blender. Pulse it a few times to make sure that it won't gather too much momentum. Then blend on high for a very, very long time, until it's a resplendent shade of green. 2 servings, or 4 sides.
I served it with homemade croutons and some toasted walnuts, but, surprisingly, both of these just distracted me from the deliciousness of the soup. I'm definitely not even going to bother making them the next time. And I love walnuts! You can cram it with walnuts, ugly. Anyway, the greatest part of this soup is probably that even with all that junk in it, it's still totally vegan. I'm not actually vegan, nor could I ever be, but I always fantasize that my friend Dugan will ask me to cater his wedding, and that I'll have to come up with an entirely vegan wedding spread in order to please him. This is going to be the next course after the arugula and walnut salad with balsamic tofu.
Seriously, if you went to Cafe Gratitude, they would charge $12 for this soup and name it "I am PEAS-FULL!" or something stupid like that. I mean, that's actually not so impressive, because they charge $6 for like one shot of wheatgrass. You know, I always liked Brunching Shuttlecocks growing up, and one of my favorite observations on that site was from its rating of the seven deadly sins. Author Lore F. Sjoberg wonders, regarding the sin of pride,
Is plain old everyday pride sinful or do you have to get into the realm of hubris before you're in trouble? Do you go to hell for saying "this is a pretty tasty three-bean salad I've made, if I do say so myself," or do you have to say "why, I bet this is a better three-bean salad than GOD could make"?
You can guess what the last line of this entry was originally going to be; suffice to say that I don't like to keep conspicuous public records of my blasphemy or criminal history.
DID YOU KNOW? In the new Knight Rider TV movie/series pilot, the voice of K.I.T.T. the talking robot car is provided by G.O.B. from Arrested Development.
I'm not sure of the preferred spelling of G.O.B., but I couldn't resist the symmetry with K.I.T.T.. I guess calling the actor by his actual name would solve this problem.
Speaking of symmetry, I was going to write an entry entitled "Colin Cerretani is awesome" to celebrate his recent updates to the Radke Lab website. Seriously, considering that all I gave him was a picture of myself standing in front of a 900-pound butter sculpture, it's pretty impressive that he was able to come up with this encapsulation of my life, which I happen to think is pretty accurate.
But then I remembered what I had originally intended to write in my "A little too perfect" entry, which I referenced here. I wasn't hoping to melt Ina Garten's skin off at all. Rather, I was going to describe some of my suspicions about the organic locally-grown farmers' market that springs up across the street from my apartment on Thursday afternoons. And since I was just at said farmer's market about three hours ago, I thought that today would be a good opportunity to blog this.
I'm not all super proxitarian, or locavore, or whatever that word is for people that have to eat only food that is grown in a 60-mile radius of them. I mean, I do think that the usually knowledgeable Joel Stein is just making stuff up in this article, when he says that "shipping food in containers is often more energy-efficient than a local farmer trucking small amounts." But, ultimately, it's not any environmental concern that drives me to shop at the organic locally-grown farmers' market across the street from my apartment on Thursdays. Mostly it is because the first time I went there, I bought an heirloom tomato that was so delicious that it made me see God. Like, seriously, it was a small little one-inch diameter tomato that I put in a salad with some balsamic vinegar, and yet tears were streaming down my face as I ate it. So, I mean, since then, the quality of the produce has kept bringing me back there, even though it's a little more expensive than Safeway; that and the possibility of openly weeping again, this time over a kabocha squash or something.
So, even though I don't care about the environment or the history of my food, and I really only shop at the farmer's market because I want to find some particularly revelatory kohlrabi, I've always been a little disturbed by one of the vendors there. Most of the vendors just sell one thing. There's the stone fruit vendor, who puts out a spread of free samples that will successfully convince you to pay $3.25 per pound for peaches. There's the guy who sells amazingly sweet, crisp apples that he somehow transforms into kind of nasty apple cider. There's the stand that sells heirloom tomatoes, hot peppers, and cucumbers for $2 a pound, but nothing else, and doesn't even bother coming in the winter. There's the stand that sells only dark greens, who I generally try to avoid, since I just don't understand how braising greens work yet.
Then there's Phan Farms. Phan Farms has everything. I mean, everything. Potatoes. Yams. Squash. Green beans. Dark greens. Persimmons. Garlic. Tomatoes. In December. Eggs. Eggs, but no chicken. It's run by this middle-aged lady who speaks in firm, yet welcoming broken English. And, I mean, dang, their vegetables are usually pretty good. I avoided them at first, because they didn't seem as offbeat as some of the other vendors, and I thought it would make me look lame if I went there. Like, I don't think this lady has even one piercing.
But, one fateful day, the arugula at my preferred arugula vendor looked like crap, so I headed over to Phan Farms and grabbed a bag, because they were the only other people selling arugula that day. I went home that night and made a salad, and I'm pretty sure I spent the entirety of my dinner just talking to the walls, or Judge Judy, or whatever, about how this arugula was the greatest arugula that I had ever eaten in my life. Yeah, I sound like a crazy person even when Michael J isn't home. Probably more so. I mean, arugula has always been my favorite green, but this stuff had such a crisp texture and such a strong peppery bite that it was seriously like eating fireworks. Fireworks drizzle with Trader Joe's olive oil.
And so I've been getting most of my produce from Phan Farms since then. I think that the tofu peanut noodles I made last night contained mostly Phan Farms stuff.
That was just an excuse to use more pictures in my blog. Anyway, that's the thing. All of Phan Farms' produce is amazing, and comparable in price to any other stand at the Farmer's Market. And they have so much more variety than any other stand, it's really rare for me to hit up more than two or three places any more. Plus, they're super environmentally-conscious; they use only the smallest bags available, and they put them in really inconvenient places and act all surprised when you want a bag to hold the twelve potatoes that you're buying. Like, every aspect of Phan Farms pretty much stomps a mudhole in all of the other farmers. But the more I shop there, the more I wonder if Phan Farms isn't a little too perfect to have set up shop at an organic locally-grown farmers' market.
So I don't really care where my thai basil comes from, but everybody else who shops at the Berkeley organic locally-grown farmers' market does. So if you're going to set up shop there, you'd better know every regulation associated with the sale of organic produce in the state of California and every step in the supply chain of where the seeds for your apple trees came from, and, just to be safe, you'd better buy a hydrogen-powered truck to transport your groceries. Seriously, these shoppers are intense.
I've seen many farmers stumble upon interrogation by environmentally concerned vegan shoppers. Did you wash your kale before bringing it here? What did you wash it with? Really? Oh, that's worth an eye-roll, and a very deliberate walk away. Looks like you just lost another customer.
But Phan Farms? Phan Farms Lady never stumbles. She is one of the three greatest public speakers this country has ever seen. It won't be long before people start making music videos on YouTube set to her descriptions of produce. But much like her produce, Phan Farms Lady's descriptions are always a little too perfect.
How were the chickens raised that produced these $4/dozen eggs? Oh, we let them run around outside, and then in the evenings, we bring them inside the house with us if it's too cold. It's so expensive because we only let them lay the eggs when they're ready, but it makes the eggs so much better. What do you feed them? We chop up all the produce that we don't sell and feed that to them. They like it! How do you grow tomatoes in January? Inside! We have a greenhouse! It almost blew down in the wind storm last week ! Do you have any of that awesome arugula this week? Yes, but make sure you wash it, because I just picked it this morning myself, and it's a little sandy.
Okay, I mean, I did ask that last question. And my arugula was sandy. Like sandy fireworks. The point is, that everything about Phan Farms is a little too perfect, and it's really unsettling. The produce. The variety. The answers. I'm onto them, and one day I'm going to get to the bottom of this, if it's the last thing I do.
I mean, knowing Phan Farms Lady, it likely will be.
DID YOU KNOW? Chef Gordon Ramsay completed the 2006 London Marathon in 3 hours, 46 minutes, and 10 seconds.
I sometimes wonder about the choices I make and how they affect the life I lead. I also wonder a lot about when to use "affect" and when to use "effect," but somehow that doesn't seem so important when viewed in this broader context.
For example, if there hadn't been a power outage on Sunday morning, and if I didn't accidentally set my alarm clock 6 minutes late because of that, and if I hadn't been in a hurry and cavalierly ignored the orange "WARNING TREE WORK" sign that blocked my usual bike path to school, I never would have seen an actual monk walking down the street, and I never would have heard the following exchange between him and a man wearing a deerstalker cap:
DEERSTALKER: Hey man, nice bathrobe! How much did it cost you? Twenty dollars? Twenty-five dollars? MONK: Sorry, you've got to give up your life to get this one. DEERSTALKER: Aw, come on man! Who are you kidding?
I have wanted a deerstalker cap for the longest time, after seeing Rufus Wainwright on the cover of some magazine wearing one. I don't even listen to Rufus Wainwright very much, but it was a truly excellent picture. Anyway, now I am reconsidering my commitment to finding a deerstalker cap.
The weirdest part was that I didn't see the monk until I had turned the corner onto Scenic Ave, so for a few seconds I was just left wondering why a strange Berkeley man in a deerstalker cap was yelling "Hey man, nice bathrobe!" around the corner. Now I am left wondering if there is a monastery somewhere within four blocks of my apartment, and contemplating my brief glimpse into the inner sadness of monks.
DID YOU KNOW? Much of the score for Big Love was written by David Byrne.
I started this blog entry instead of watching the Super Bowl. I don't know why I was so apathetic about watching it this year--especially because I watched the World Series of my own free will this year, just because of the Red Sox.
Some of the ChemE's were having a Super Bowl party in El Cerrito, and I was contemplating biking down there on account of the unexpectedly nice weather this afternoon. In the end, I just couldn't figure out any reason to go down and watch it especially after I found out that Jordin Sparks was singing the National Anthem. Mitra and I were talking earlier this weekend about irrational hatred of people. The only example I could produce for myself at the time was this crazy girl on a treadmill at the gym who kept adjusting her hair. But Jordin Sparks should definitely go at the top of the list. And Rami from Project Runway, after he made Sweet P cry. I would tear his still-beating heart out of his chest if I ever saw him on the street.
Oh man, and Wayne Brady. Man, I can't stand Wayne Brady.
In the e-mail invitation to the Super Bowl Party, the inviter notes, "Even if you don't like football, the commercials are very entertaining." I've heard this kind of thing a lot over the past decade. No offense to the generous invitation, but I think that the only type of people that say this are people who like football anyway. Like, I've never heard anyone actually say, "Oh man, football is boring, but I'm so excited to watch the Super Bowl commercials!" It's kind of like when someone says, "You don't have to drink to play beer pong! It's just as much fun if you use water!" The person saying that has never actually used water to play beer pong, but they think it might be fun, and they're nice enough not to pressure you to drink, because they know that you're already uncomfortable just being at a party where people are playing beer pong.
Even if real people have started watching the Super Bowl just to see the commercials, I'm pretty sure that the whole "Super Bowl commercials are awesome" thing is just a myth started by advertisers to make sure that people who aren't watching the game anyway are still watching the commercials. Like, it's actually better for them if people watch only the commercials! Okay, I mean, that's kind of an obvious conclusion, but it took me 30 minutes sitting in the pan-Asian restaurant at Hersheypark to figure out that "Wok & Roll" was a pun. So I'm still proud to have figured this out all on my own, in under 30 minutes.
Just call me the Rachael Ray of logicians.
Anyway, I did end up seeing one Super Bowl commercial this year, and it involved an anthropomorphic, still-bleeding heart exploding out of a woman's chest and a prolonged view the resulting crater in her chest cavity. It was by far the most troubling commercial I've ever seen, and that includes the recent Comcast commercial that features the gingerbread man from Shrek eating himself. I was so offended the heart commercial that I'm going to take the opportunity to link here to severalof theircompetitors, so my dozen daily hits can be redirected to more wholesome enterprises.
Bleeding hearts aside, it was a pretty darn good weekend. I spent most of yesterday in San Francisco with Mitra, celebrating my moving birthday. You can read about basically every aspect of it on my Yelp review page, except for the crazy lady on the bus, and our rain-soaked morning run, which would have been totally unbearable without Mitra by my side. You know, I go to accuweather because it ostensibly has the word "accurate" right in its name. I stopped going to weather.com because I became convinced that they only describe the concept of "weather" in the general sense, and make no claim regarding the relationship of their description to actual weather conditions. Like, "Do you want to hear about weather? Uh... there's rain. Sun. Snow. Smog. Hail with frogs in it. Those are some examples of weather." So I started going to accuweather, and had pretty good luck with it in Boston. But after yesterday's "soaking afternoon shower at 2 PM" turned into a steady drizzle from 9 AM to 5 PM, and today's 60 percent chance of rain turned into two brief sunshowers within a generally sunny afternoon, I think the "accu-" prefix in accuweather actually stands for something else, like "accursed" or "accusatory."
We also saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. People tell me I'm a good listener, but that's because I'm good at nodding for long periods of their time as they describe their problems; I actually have terrible listening comprehension skills. So, although Mitra told me several times, I didn't realize that the movie was a) about a dude that can only move one eyelid for the entirety of the movie and b) is entirely in French. Well, French and blinky-language. But, in any event, the movie was totally haunting, beautiful, and not something I ever would have seen without Mitra's enthusiastic recommendation.
Another thing I never would have seen this weekend without enthusiastic recommendations was Big Love, which I watched with Adam and Hung after making this awe-inspiring squash salad with an equally awe-inspiring overripe kabocha squash that I had picked up at the Farmer's Market. When I was buying it, some crazy hippie lady was all, "are those any good?" I was like, "I have never tried it before." Now I can be like, "Oh yeah, try it with some tomatoes, olives, and feta cheese! I mean, soy feta. That guy over there sells it." But, yeah, Big Love was pretty impressive. It might be because I'm just not used to watching scripted programming that I've fallen in love with shows like 30 Rock. I mean, seriously, the last scripted show I watched prior to this year was probably Xena: Warrior Princess. And, really, it's become my benchmark for television quality. I refuse to watch any scripted television program that is not at least as entertaining as Xena: Warrior Princess.
Anyway, this is what you get when I don't blog often enough. I'm gonna go for every two to three days. Cajun style.
