Yeah, sure. It's all fun and games until your sandal melts...

I'm not exactly sure what is going on in this video, but it sure looks cool...or stupid depending on your point of view:

Tell and Show

We all pick up certain things from family. I would say some are due to nature and some are due to nurture. Heck, we even get some things that come from both nature and nurture combined. What is even better is when those things coincide with your interests.

My family seems to have quite a few artisans. I am sure that way back down the line it was from necessity, but those traits have survived the testing of time and can still be found within both my mom's and dad's side. Stitching, quilting, jewelry making, and woodworking to name a few.

I have always had a creative side that I have toyed with in drawing, cooking, writing, and other stuff. Sometimes the creativity comes out looking beautiful (or tasting wonderful), but most times it feels like it comes out significantly short of what I feel inside. Recently though I think I seem to have found a medium for combining the creativity with the artisan in me.

Last fall I took a class on woodworking which was a much friendlier environment for my personality than other woodworking classes I had in the past. We started with a simple box. Through the ten week class the teacher had commented that I seemed to have a natural feel for woodworking. He then asked me if I was interested in building anything else, and I didn't hesitate to say yes because I was enjoying it so much. As strange as it may seem I can get lost in the beautiful meandering of a piece of lumber's grain. I even find that it is often the undesirable portion of wood that has the most beauty in it. Come to think of it, this probably isn't all that strange for the Kool-Aid Gang because I know certain members who can easily get lost in their stuff too - painting, sailing, etc. I digress. Since the class I have built a coat a rack. It is something I have wanted to do for a long time, primarily because I wanted to use a lathe. The funny thing is that I used the lathe for a very small portion of my coat rack. The process was fun, and I have made a really good friend in the process.

Here are some pictures. They aren't the best lighting, but they will suffice. I carved the hooks by hand, and fell in love with them in the process. The stand is walnut, and the hooks are curly maple. The horizontal stripes you can sort of make out in the hooks is a phenomenon called figure, and I think it really makes them pop.

I don't think 15 years is quite enough...

These are the types of stories that make you doubt the existence of God:

AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- DNA tests have confirmed that Josef Fritzl fathered six children with his daughter, whom he kept imprisoned under his home for 24 years, police in Austria said Tuesday.

The more you read about the case, the more horrific it gets.

No, this isn't a scene from the new Speed Racer movie...

Check out this crash from a recent Le Mans race. The driver in this car apparently walked away with nothing more than a broken ankle!

A curly slide would have been even funnier...

This video sort of reminds me of when Firecracker George put my dog on the curly slide at the school playground. Of course, he wasn't a Jack Russell, and probably wouldn't have been this persistent to run UP the slide.

Happy Monday, everyone!

Who knew that "oh so clean feeling" could be SO GOOD?

If only my dog's poop would have been a good storage element for heat...

Perhaps if Firecracker George and I weren't so busy annoying my old and now long deceased dog with burning his little fuzzy butt using the concentrated energy of the sun via magnifying glasses on bored Sunday afternoons, we might actually be rich today.  

Previous technology to harness the endless radiation eminating from the Sun has focused on solar panels that convert energy into electricity.  This, of course, could provide endless amounts of free energy on a sunny day.  The problem is trying to store up this energy for later use when sunlight isn't in quite such abundance (i.e. at night or in Seattle).  Batteries are highly inefficient and often times rely on materials that are, themselves, somewhat harmful to the environment.

The solution comes from a rather simple idea (from The New York Times):

The idea is to capture the sun’s heat. Heat, unlike electric current, is something that industry knows how to store cost-effectively. For example, a coffee thermos and a laptop computer’s battery store about the same amount of energy, said John S. O’Donnell, executive vice president of a company in the solar thermal business, Ausra. The thermos costs about $5 and the laptop battery $150, he said, and “that’s why solar thermal is going to be the dominant form.”

Solar thermal systems are built to gather heat from the sun, boil water into steam, spin a turbine and make power, as existing solar thermal power plants do — but not immediately. The heat would be stored for hours or even days, like water behind a dam.

A plant that could store its output could pick the time to sell the production based on expected price, as wheat farmers and cattle ranchers do. Ausra, of Palo Alto, Calif., is making components for plants to which thermal storage could be added, if the cost were justified by higher prices after sunset or for production that could be realistically promised even if the weather forecast was iffy. Ausra uses Fresnel lenses, which have a short focal length but focus light intensely, to heat miles of black-painted pipe with a fluid inside.

The picture up top is of a system in Spain.  Dozens of mirrored panels reflect sunlight to a central tower that collects all the thermal energy and transfers it to a tank of molten salt below for storage.  It looks like something out of a James Bond movie.  Actually, that would make a pretty cool ending--diabolical villain trapped in the tower and burned alive by the the focused light of the sun.

My wife just gave me permission to look at videos of jiggling boobies!

Rather than referring to her as "the wife" on this blog, I've decided my significant other needed her own official alter ego.  I've chosen the picture to the left as her avatar, taken from her favorite web comic strip character, Angry Little Asian Girl (and yes, she is flipping you off). And my wife's name on this blog will now be Liz Lemon. Given my wife's quirky love for humidifiers, Mentholatum, and the game of Uno, it seemed fitting that she be named after Tina Fey's character on 30 Rock.

Anywho, I bring this up today because she gave me a great topic for blog posting today.  It's a bit humorous, a bit practical, and could be deemed a bit NSFW.  This all begins by a realization that I had about how seemingly mundane interests of mine have changed since I got married. In the mornings as I get ready for work, I'll often turn on the TV and tune in to one of the morning shows like Good Morning America or The Today Show.  It's typically mindless stuff. Celebrity chef cooking up a meal you'll never remember the recipe to or brief interview with latest kid surviving grizzly bear attack.  One particular morning, though, a segment on The Today Show about the perfect sports bra strangely caught my interest.  It's not like I've been searching for the best fitting bra all my life, but I know Lemon has obsessively looked for that one perfect brazier that will somehow make exercise fun and enjoyable.  And that's what's odd about married life.  Things you probably never would have been all that interested in as a single person suddenly become shared obsessions with your spouse.

So I told Lemon about this segment, which led her to get reobsessed with bra shopping.  This then led her to a website that sells all kinds of practical women's undergarments.  And somehow, shared interests come full circle when she gives me permission to view bouncy boobies on the Internet because it was just so damn funny to watch.  

The website, HerRoom.com, has their trademarked "Bounce Test" videos so women can see how much support they can expect while running in the bra they're considering for purchase or in case they had plans to try out for the opening sequence of Baywatch. Such a practical idea for women, yet so titillating (pun intended) at the same time for men, and outright hilarious at 3:00 in the morning for women and men alike.

I guess this is one way to get rid of your children...

No one quite knows how this kid got into this claw machine, but me thinks if he actually figures out how to get out of these types of predicaments, he might have a bright future as a cat burglar in the future. That, or this may be the new way of putting up orphan kids for adoption--give wanting parents a few tokens, and hope they can grab the one they want before he/she drops back in the pile:

Sonic textures from the land of the frogs...

I've been a bit lax in trying out new music, recently I've been listening to this new album Saturdays=Youth by the French band M83 after reading about it somewhere on the Internet.  I can't say I was familiar with their earlier work, but I have a feeling Wander has been a fan for years and probably has their entire discography (including rare imports from Zimbabwe and Thailand).  ;-)

Anywho, it's really good.  Kind of hankering back to all those New Wave bands from our youth, yet sounding entirely modern at the same time.  "Kim and Jessie" reminds me a bit of Thompson Twins.  "Couleurs" is like an extended New Order instrumental mix.  And my favorite song on the album, "We Own the Sky," is like a mish-mash of all those alternative 80's bands.

My Vote For The New Olympic Sport

And this guy would get the gold.

Even the Cookie Monster may be diagnosed with an eating disorder...

Here's a hilarious introspective essay from McSweeney's written by my hero--the Cookie Monster! Here's a small excerpt:

Me love cookies. Me tend to get out of control when me see cookies. Me know it not natural to react so strongly to cookies, but me have weakness. Me know me do wrong. Me know it isn't normal. Me see disapproving looks. Me see stares. Me hurt inside.

When me get back to apartment, after cookie binge, me can't stand looking in mirror—fur matted with chocolate-chip smears and infested with crumbs. Me try but me never able to wash all of them out. Me don't think me is monster. Me just furry blue person who love cookies too much. Me no ask for it. Me just born that way.

And to end, a song that will be stuck in your head all day long, but isn't all that bad:

Damn pornstars making us men feel inadequate...

Looks like we don't have to feel all that inadequate in comparison to Sting's all night long sexual exploits after all. A new study finds that the optimal amount of sexual intercourse is actually only 3 to 13 minutes (not including foreplay).

Dr. Irwin Goldstein, editor of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, cited a four-week study of 1,500 couples in 2005 that found the median time for sexual intercourse was 7.3 minutes. (Women were armed with stopwatches.)

It's difficult for both older men and young men to make sexual intercourse last much longer, said Marianne Brandon, a clinical psychologist and director of Wellminds Wellbodies in Annapolis, Md.

"There are so many myths in our culture of what other people are doing sexually," Brandon said. "Most people's sex lives are not as exciting as other people think they are."

Granted, this was all based on surveys of prior experiences. It's not like they gave the people in the study a night with Joe Two-Pump and a comparison night with someone who could last for hours.

Now you've got a whole other bone to worry about breaking on the slopes next winter...

Later this year in August, Burton will be teaming up with Playboy to release this provocative line of snowboards.  

I heard on NPR that the number of deaths at North American ski slopes spiked up a significant amount this year, raising thoughts that speed limits on certain dangerous runs should be enforced to enhance safety.  Me thinks boards like these will not help matters.

My dog died.

So about two weeks ago, I noticed that my dog wasn't eating. I had been feeding him a lot of people food, so I thought he might just be getting finicky. I waited for him to eat his dog food, but it wasn't happening. He also wasn't drinking his water from the dog bowl, but was drinking out of the toilet (which he normally didn't do) and from his big bucket outside. Anyway, I decided that I needed to take him to the vet. I had to wait a few days, because the vet schedule, and by the time I finally got him there he was lethargic even for him. He wasn't excited about milkbones or going on walks, or anything that he used to love. The vet checked on him and I found out why. He had a malignant tumor in his heart and lungs. It was so large that it was pressing on his trachea, which is probably why he couldn't eat or drink out of his bowl (I had been giving him lunch meat every so often, which he lifted his head to eat.) He had also lost eight of his fifty-eight pounds (they weighed him in February the last time he was in), but I didn't notice because he had his full coat. (The picture left is from August, when his summer buzz was beginning to grow out a little. I know how Swany wants to keep our anonymity, so I put a black bar over Firecracker Rover's eyes to hide his identity.)

Anyway, by the time the vet looks at him and x-rays his chest to find the tumors, he tells me that treatment is unlikely to do anything but prolong his suffering. That was the last thing I wanted, so I went to the vets and petted him while they put him to sleep.

The whole thing has been like getting grazed on the nuts. It starts off not too bad, but then the pain gets worse. I'm just now starting to get used to him not being around. I'm just now starting to get up in the morning and not worry about stepping on him. I'm just now starting to not think it's him every time I the zipper on my laptop bag jingle. He was already ten, but I was hoping that he'd live a little longer than he did.

My brother has chided me for "making too big a deal about it," but he has a family. My dog was my family. He was the closest thing to my own kid that I had (which I'm sure is not very close at all once you have the real deal.) Anywho, this house seemed too big with the two of us - now it seems ridiculous. I'm going to move to a new place soon. I'd already planned on it, but now it feels more urgent.

I just know that I'm going to miss him for a long time to come. He was my bud.

How ridiculous Destro's metal head looks could make or break this one for me...

Here's the second promotional picture for the upcoming G.I. Joe flick.  It's not Scarlett's usual green and khaki colored outfit, but this movie version doesn't look half bad.  

I'm slowly beginning to think this movie may actually be kind of entertaining.  

I'd like to buy the world a bag of Cheetos, and live in harmony...

Here's a somewhat enlightening article in The Washington Post today as an example of how Asian racial slurs are sometimes overlooked by the general American public.

A cheese steak shop in Philadelphia has been in business for over 50 years and has a loyal clientele base.  But recently this popular eatery has stirred up quite a bit of protest from Asian-American groups. Why? Because of it's name--Chink's Steaks.

The restaurant was opened by Samuel Sherman, who was nicknamed "Chink" as a child because of his supposedly slanted, Asian-looking eyes. "Nobody ever called him Sam," said Groh, who started working at the eatery at age 15 and later bought it after Sherman died. "That was his name from the age of 6."

The problem is that the term "chink" is every bit as racist and hurtful to Asian Americans as "the n-word" is to African Americans -- so much so that some have taken to calling it "the c-word."

"It's definitely a derogatory term," said Ginny Gong, national president of the Organization of Chinese Americans, one of several groups pressing for the restaurant to change its name. ". . . Maybe there is this feeling that Asian Americans will not express some degree of outrage. But we are outraged that there is this comfort level."

For Groh, 45, the name remains part of his restaurant's tradition. When his mother suggested he change it to "Joe's," he said, he told her: "Why would I? This is Chink's."

I'm not quite sure what to think about this. Part of me says the nickname, and hence, the restaurant's name, wasn't really meant to be derogatory, so why get all worked up about it? Yet another side of me wonders if I shouldn't be a bit more sensitive to such terms. I mean, if a guy had some African-American features, I'm sure we wouldn't be calling him and his place "Nigger's" in public. This is yet another example of how the Asian-American is kind of in limbo as far as race is concerned.

Yu and others said that the groups learned from the failed experience, and that they recognize that part of their efforts must be to heighten sensitivity and educate non-Asians about the term and why Asian Americans find it offensive.

They are in some ways battling entrenched stereotypes. Among them is the perception that Asian Americans are, for the most part, affluent, educated and well assimilated, and should therefore have no complaints -- the "model minority."

"We have not done a good job at sensitizing the general population," Yu said. Many Americans, she said, "generally don't associate Asians as a minority facing discrimination."

Grace Kao, director of Asian American studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said part of the problem is the way race is still defined and discussed in the United States. "In this country, race is still largely a black-and-white issue. Asian Americans and Latinos are largely left out of the conversation," she said. "In public dialogue, you can't say certain things about African Americans, but it's still okay to say things about Asian Americans."

I'm not quite sure I agree, though. Perhaps being too sensitive about racial terms isn't such a good idea. Just the whole ___ - American terminology seems to have done nothing more than make people a bit more uncomfortable about talking about race. Do I call you black or African-American? Can I call you Chinese or Chinese-American? Maybe you're Asian-American. Crap. You only look a bit Asian (or is it Asian-American), but actually you're Tiger Woods and you're African-American.  But isn't your mother Asian?  No, she's Thai.  Oh wait.  That's Asian.  But she's an American citizen.  That makes her Asian-American.  Or is that Thai-American?  Wait. What?  It's all so confusing.  Please don't hit me.  Here--have a sack of Cheetos.

In the end, though, I think they should leave Chink's alone if for no other reason then to spark a bit of controversy and continue the discussion about race. And in the meantime, I'm starting up a pub in Asia called "Honkey," not to be confused with it's sister bar called "Crackah."

Idn't That Someth'n? Idn't That Somth'n!

With all of us a little busier lately, it has been no surprise that the blog has slowed down. I have been busy and my life in another couple of weeks is going to get even busier. The Kool-Aid gang should never fear, though. If I ever come across our staple source of humor, I will make sure to spend the time to post about it. Enjoy!

Liberty City Gun Club

And speaking of guns, here's a little video from my pick for most anticipated game of all time "Grand Theft Auto 4". It not only shows off the games incredible graphics engine, but also the tongue-in-cheek humour that makes the GTA series my pick for best games of all time. April 29th will not get here soon enough!

I guess we can confiscate his guns now...

Whatever you thought of his political beliefs, you have to admit that Charlton Heston was quite entertaining on those rainy weekend afternoon days when you had nothing better to do than lie on the couch and watch an old movie on TV.

And The Ten Commandments will never be the same knowing Moses is actually dead now.

R.I.P.  1923-2008

I guess it's still a bit too early to start building those Star Trek Constellation class starships...

Here's a bunch of pictures showing how they assemble a space shuttle together for a mission, from the external tanks being delivered via barge to the final lift-off from the launch pad.  Hard to believe NASA will be retiring these things in only a couple more years.  

(via kottke.org)

If you ever thought about a career change...

This is some paparazzi photo of some guy getting to rub oil on supermodel Giselle Budchen's ass during a photo shoot. Suddenly, my work seems so boring.

And here you though they were just leading us on with no idea of real conclusion...

Reminder: The final season of Battlestar Galactica starts tomorrow. If you haven't watched much, or just can't remember what the frak is going on, check out the eight minute synopsis on scifi.com.