For once, I haven’t forgot to wear the little armband that comes with my sleep phase tracking alarm clock (I’ll write a review of it soonish) and everything worked perfectly: I was woken up right after a dream (and thus REM phase) was ending, well-rested and alert.
This also made me remember the dream that I was seeing. Believe it or not, all I did in that dream was look at modern art at the Guggenheim museum (the one in New York).
The ship named after the patron saint of bug fixing (her portrait hangs in my cubicle) is in the news for being buzzed by Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats. She could have of course harpooned their ass, but those things are like $700K.
Since the last time I compiled the list of megayachts, Larry Ellison’s very pretty 452 foot yacht slipped to 5th place according to Wikipedia’s list. My advice to the various oligarchs: private nucular submarine is the way to go. Man, do I wish I could afford a 27 foot fishing boat…
Remember those brave souls who implanted tiny magnets in their fingers in order to sense magnetic fields? Well, those who had doubts were right. Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. Cool idea though. Maybe with a different kind of coating they might make it work.
An exhaustive article about the “Brass Rat” – MIT class ring featuring the school’s mascot, a rat-looking beaver:
“The Brass Rat is traditionally worn with the Beaver “sitting” or “shitting” on the wearer until graduation. This represents the hardships imposed on students at MIT. In addition, the skyline of Boston is facing the student, representing the outside world awaiting. After graduation, the ring is turned around, and the Cambridge skyline is visible to the graduate, as a reminder of times spent at MIT.”
Fans of Harry Harrison can choose to order the Brass Rat in stainless steel instead.
This must be the ugliest class and overstated ring in existence. The Canadian engineer’s iron ring, by comparison is a marvel of good taste (even though technically it’s a pinky ring).
My favorite part of this trivia was the hack of welding the Brass Rat to the finger of the Statue of the Three Lies (as the model for the statue supposedly went to MIT).
I did not get much response to my previous installation of Bread and Circuses, the series of articles where I match my favorite books with my favorite food, but since I started already, well, I can’t chicken out now. You can read the first part here.
Ok, so let’s say it’s 22 century, agents of the corpocracy captured me, and are about to send me to the Litehouse. Michael-47, they say, what kind of a last meal and book would you like? I’d choose a David Mitchell novel and some pho, but they tell me that they are fresh out. What would my second choice be?
Korean BBQ and a novel by Mark Haddon, of course.
Korean food is spicy and strong smelling. It’s not subtle. It’s not refined. But it is the ultimate comfort food. It’s a bit like a little room in a Soviet communal apartment – dingy, smelly, but oh so homey. Also, I’m not sure I’m making myself clear, it’s very, very tasty. To me, the ultimate family meal is Korean BBQ (aka galbi).
Whenever I feel extra bad and I need a cheer-me-up meal, I drag my wife to K-Town. A typical meal involves frying bits of high and low grade meat over a special fire pit in the table, wrapping them in lettuce leafs and eating them. My favorite part is the little side dishes called banchan containing high quality kimchi (not the stuff you can find in a jar in a supermarket), various pickles, pancakes, salads, and many steamed, crunchy, slippery, tentacly things I don’t know the name of. In better places they replenish the little dishes as you consume them. A galbi meal rarely fails to lift my spirits.
Mark Haddon rose to prominence for his book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Once I finished Haddon’s bestsellers I learned that he actually started his career as a children’s writer. He wrote and illustrated a number of children’s books, culminating in the so-called Agent Z series. Oh, Agent Z. How I wish there were a few more of these left for me to read. Unfortunately the last one was written in 2001 and it does not look like Haddon is planning to write any more.
The Agent Z series is somewhat similar to the popular American tv show Malcolm in the Middle. In fact, I suspect that “Malcom” was inspired by “Agent Z”.
Agent Z is the pseudonym assumed by three British school kids who specialize in elaborate pranks. They are: Ben Simpson, the ‘handsome’ one of the crew, too smart and creative for his own good daydreamer from a lower middle class family; Barney Hall, a fat practical kid from an upper middle class family, who understands the adult psychology and is usually the brains of the outfit; and Jenks Jenkinson, a super skinny, wound up and ratty kid from a working class family who nevertheless has great fighting spirit.
They take their revenge on bullies, boring teachers, nasty neighbors and relatives. Being kids, they don’t always stay anonymous under the cover of Agent Z organization, but usually get away with enough dignity to triumph over their tormentors.
These books are infused with British culture, and I learned many interesting things. For instance, it turns out that the Brits call ballpoint pens “biros” – honoring its Hungarian inventor (I guess that theory about Hungarian Martians is not that far from the truth).
I also learned about chip butty (one of Ben’s favorite foods). Believe it or not, a chip butty is a sandwitch made out of two white (!) buttered (!!) pieces of bread, french fries (!!!) and ketchup (!!!!).
Why am I so hung up on the Agent Z? Well, in my youth I had two friends, a good looking one and a crazy one, and together we formed the XYZ secret society. We did pull off a few pranks. MIT is home to a very powerful and very secret society that specializes in pranks, I followed their fine work for years. Hacks and pranks are ingrained in the souls of all engineers.
One of my favorite parts of the books is the illustrations that the author drew himself. Haddon is a very talented illustrator.
Agent Z Goes Wild is hard to find for some reason. I got my copy at abebooks.com.
I haven’t written about the subways for a while. My commute changed somewhat and after years and years of seeing the peeling paint at the 47-50th street station, I am now instead being watched by the mosaic eyes of the Chambers Street station.
Those remind me of Sauron, his eyes and his “chambers of doom” (I think I encountered that particular expression in LOTR somewhere). By the way, MTA’s “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign has a new poster, that claims that last year 1,944 new yorkers saw something and said something. As my former co-worker Gur rightfully noted, this is a rather crappy PR move (and Gur knows a thing or two about PR). 1,944 does not seem like such a great turnout, especially considering that trains and bus stations were plastered with the ads imploring to IYSSSS. If I understand it correctly, those 1,944 people saying something did not foil 1,944 terrorist acts. If they did, it’s not very clear from the ad.
Besides the eye mosaics, my new subway station has another interesting feature. Some of the trains arriving and departing make a very strange, I would even say haunting sound. I’ll try to record it somehow and post it then. My guess is that the “singing” trains are the R142 on the IRT 2 line – they have induction motors that are said to produce a weird sound when accelerating and decelerating.
NYC Subway is a stage to many performers of various level of annoyance. I’ve seen many hip-hop acrobats and gymnasts who dance, and jump around to the headache aggravating boombox. The kids I recently encountered demonstrated a very interesting move. After an impressive, but not uncommon gymnastic routine in a semi-crowded train, one kid announced – “ladies and gentlemen, please do not try this at home.” The other kid took a running start, somersaulted, and then vaulted off the third team member into the air. He positioned himself parallel to the floor and reached the ceiling of the train car, slamming into it with a loud bang, then proceeded down for a controlled landing. I wish I recorded that on my Treo camera.
Man, this was a tough year. I haven’t blogged much and you haven’t commented much, so I guess we are even.
A lot of things happened. The little tree that I grew out of a pine cone from Rockefeller Center tree that was featured in 2006 card is growing fast. So does Natalie E. I grew 30-40 pounds or so. With a little help from the Joel I found a new job and left Rockefeller Center (you should really check out his job board). I am at World Trade Center 7 now. I am slowly but steadily switching to Linux. I am hoping that 2008 is going to be my annus mirabilis because this one was more anus than mirabilis.
Happy New Year!
You can see the old New Year’s cards are here.
Let’s talk about what me and every other plebeian cares most deeply about: bread and circuses. Like many of my fellow semi-autistic software developers and primitive cave people I fear the unknown in both food and entertainment. I have to make conscious efforts to try out new stuff and turn it into a source of comfort. I’d like to share with you some patterns I discovered for myself.
Anthony Bourdain, the author of the awesome Kitchen Confidential
At the top of the list is Vietnamese cuisine and novels by David Mitchell. Vietnamese food has explosive flavor, amazing variety of textures and is at the same time very light, fresh and very filling. Same is true about Mitchell’s novels.
My favorite Vietnamese dish is Pho, which is basically a clear beef broth with herbs and spices topped with noodles, thin slices of meats, onions, fresh cilantro, mint, basil and bean sprouts. You can add some hot chili sauce and lemon juice to taste. Good Pho broth is simmered for 6-8 hours, and the meat from the broth bones is reserved for other dishes, but never Pho itself. The main part, the spiced broth is umamiest thing ever. It’s like the explosion of beef on your tongue, the substance of the dish. It’s the toppings that add interest to Pho. When you order it, you get a wide variety of choices of thinly sliced meats. You can stick with traditional steak, flank, and brisket. I very much like cheap cuts and organ meats because they have better flavor and texture – tendon, tripe, liver, navels etc. There’s something called “omosa” – I am not sure what it is, but I’ve had it many times and it’s way tasty. Then you have another level of texture and flavor – noodles, cilantro, crunchy bean sprouts, fresh onions, basil and mint. All the topings are added just before eating. It’s a meal in a bowl, meaty, but not greasy, and oh so fresh. It’s kind of like eating a very good steak and a very good salad, but better.
Mitchell’s novels are literary Pho. His books are both light and serious reading. The primary example of his work is his masterpiece, Cloud Atlas. Mitchell has a rare talent of flawlessly mimicking a wide spectrum of genres and styles, and he does not hold back. Also, he likes to play around with the physical structure of his novels in subtle and not so subtle ways. He shaped Cloud Atlas from six stories that range in style from Victorian travel journal to a post-apocalyptic science fiction story. Furthermore, he sliced the five stories in half and wrapped them around a central story in a matryoshka doll fashion. At first it is rather jarring to find that the short story you are reading is cut in the middle and a new one is starting coitus interruptus-style just as you adjusted to the places and people. But then you notice, that everything is connected and interlocked in various subtle and elegant ways. First of all, in every story there’s a character with a birthmark that looks like a comet. The first story is a found and read in a book form by a character from the second story. The fourth story is watched in a movie form by the character from the fifth story. A character mentioned in the second story is… well, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but there are many, many hyperlinks in Cloud Atlas. Everything is further tied together with common themes: loss of freedom, violence, pacifism, betrayal, civilization vs barbarism, reincarnation. Mitchell even uses cheap subconscious tricks: certain words and expressions are repeated in different contexts in his books almost in every chapter (I’ll let you find out which ones).
For some weird reason I am very attached to some Mitchell’s characters. He does this strange thing, where the characters reappear in different books, sometimes making an important contribution, and sometimes playing the most insignificant role. My two favorite characters – Mongolian hitman, weapons dealer and all-around villain Suhbataar, and publisher Timothy Cavendish make two appearances each in three different books. Suhbataar reminds me of the hitman in the murder that happened on the sidewalk which I wasn’t on during lunch only because I wanted to finish a piece of code before eating. Timothy Cavendish – I met a few people very much like him. One’s a villain, another – well, morally gray, yet strangely endearing. Both very, very real to me.
I finished all of Mitchell’s other novels – Ghostwritten
In short, go read some David Mitchell and go eat some Pho. I might like that Japanese gangster showdown in number9dream and that tripe in Pho, but you might find other things that will become your favorites.
Tomorrow I’ll try to write the second installment, about Korean BBQ and Mark Haddon’s Agent Z series. The last one is going to be Japanese smelts and Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder series plus uni roe and Gideon Defoe’s Pirates! series (a two-fer!).
Also, let me know what dishes and cuisines you’d pair with what authors and books (but no Harry Potter and Discworld – in my mind they go together with califlower and boiled onions – other people might like them, but I just don’t have the taste for them).
Some people stood in long lines to purchase a shopping bag created by some famous bag designer who kinda recycled Magritte’s “this is not a pipe” idea in the name of recycling.
Others paid ridiculous amounts of money for it on eBay because the bags were made in small quantities. Now, I noticed the street vendors who usually sell those ugly copies of other ugly bags, now copied this one too. You can buy you own I’m not a I’m not a Plastic Bag bag.
It would have been funnier and more environmentally sound to make the bag out of tough recyclable plastic as the “carbon footprint” of the original bag was not entirely kosher.
Speaking of bags. In some web design firms “bag” is shorthand for Big Ass Graphic. At some point in my previous job I had to write a piece of software that created a slideshow of “bags”. Everybody referred to it as the “bag rotator”, and I got to listen to every single pun that involved every slang meaning of the word “bag” in existence.
Barack Obama’s midichlorian count is off the charts, although not as high as Randy Pinkwood’s.
