Scarlet Panda

Triumph!

2009-03-29T15:13:00.006-05:00

B. and I did our first race today, and it was awesome. It was only two miles, which was a nice distance for the first time out. I ended up running about 0.3 mph/faster than I normally go. That may have been because of the excitement of running with other people, or it may have been because I feared hypothermia, given that I was severely underdressed for our freakishly cold weather (mid-30s and snow on the ground after weeks of 60s & 70s). I'm looking for a 5K to do next.

Elf dreams

2009-03-25T21:41:00.009-05:00

Over the last four nights, I have had several nightmares. Here's a sampling of what my brain is thinking about while I sleep:

-Osama bin Laden throwing knives at me in my parent's backyard (and hitting me several times).

-A shampoo bottle (somehow) exploding and causing massive destruction at my wedding reception. (Also, my wedding reception in this dream was in a 1970s-style rec room with brown shag carpeting, which is not the current plan.)

-A tornado destroying my house (I am saved by hiding under a pool table).

-Having a screaming match with my parents, complete with profanity, about how I find unreasonable their request that I microwave their pizza rolls at my house and bring them over to their house.

-Greg Kinnear trying to strangle me in my sleep.

-Having a conversation with Barack Obama in the back of a taxicab, in which I realized that he does not actually understand my concerns.

These may sound funny now, but when I woke up from each, I was terrified (or at least, as in the case of the last, severely disappointed). Anyway, because I have been thinking about the word "nightmare" more than I have since I was five years old, I started wondering about the etymology of the word.

Supposedly, the "mare" part of the word "nightmare" is derived from the Old English word "maere"--a demon or incubus that stands on your chest as you sleep, suffocating you. Similarly, in traditional German mythology, nightmares are caused by elves sitting on one's chest; the German word for nightmare means "elf dream." (Incidentally, these elves also steal newborn babies and replace them with deformed elf children.)

Read more here, here, here, here, and here.

Somehow this research has not really eased my mind.

Snug

2009-01-27T17:18:00.002-06:00

If you are, like me, a fan of bad and/or late-night television programs, you have probably seen this commercial. If you have not, watch it--you are in for a treat.

I tend to want everything I see on infomercials (or infomercial-type commercials), but usually I am able to control myself. Not this time. This commercial spoke to me as none had before. I spend a great deal of my time sitting on a couch in a freezing apartment, watching tv, reading books, or doing things on the computer. I typically have one or two fleece blankets on top of me, but every time I have to get out the remote control or turn the page, all of the precious heat leaves me. So I ordered a Snuggie (actually two, because you get a second for free).

I have been mercilessly mocked by Fuzzy and others ever since I announced this decision. But I have been vindicated: my Snuggies arrived today, and they are as awesome as I could possibly have hoped. I'm sitting here blogging, as toasty and comfy as can be.

I admit that there are two things in the commercial that seem to me to be a bit misleading: (1) you can't really walk around in a Snuggie, because they are crazy long, and (2) I don't see how on earth it would make sense to wear them to a sporting event, because in addition to making you looking like a huge freak, Snuggies don't close in the back, so your back would be freezing. But these are, as far as I can tell, the only downsides to this product.

This blog has a pretty funny analysis of the Snuggie phenomenon.

NFP

2009-01-21T21:22:00.003-06:00

My church requires that before people get married, they attend a session on "Natural Family Planning." This method basically involves learning to track your fertility using temperature and other physical symptoms, then abstaining from sex during your most fertile periods as a means of controlling family size without using artificial birth control.

Much of the session was devoted to statements about how incredibly effective this method is. Which, ok, maybe, if you actually follow it. But the likelihood of anyone actually being able to follow it regularly enough to maintain a typical family size was undermined a bit by two facts: (1) Our NFP teacher was pregnant with her 7th child; and (2) A guy in our class mentioned that his parents had taught NFP. He later mentioned that he was one of 12 (!) children.

Artsy

2009-01-19T15:38:00.003-06:00

A couple of days ago, B. and I went to a store to set up a wedding registry. The saleswoman talked to us for about ten minutes about us, our wedding, and what household items we needed, taking notes during the conversation. When we left the store, she handed us a bunch of papers, most of which informed us of our need for several dozen types of obscure dishes and kitchen gadgets we had never heard of. Along with these, presumably by mistake, the saleswoman included the page with the notes she had taken on us:

Couple only has about an hour to spend in the store today. Couple is very artsy. [Panda] is a lawyer and [B.] is a data analyst. Couple does not need luggage. Couple has not registered anywhere else. Couple not needing formal dinnerware. Couple is very artsy.

"Artsy"? "Very artsy"? Artsy enough to mention it twice? We were mystified.

Square

2008-12-03T06:59:00.004-06:00

I stayed in a hotel last weekend where the bed pillows were like this. Square. You know what shape bed pillows should be? Pillow-shaped. Square pillows are for decoration.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T03:48:00.004-06:00

I'm about to leave for the airport to spend Thanksgiving with B's extended family in Florida. Getting up at 3 a.m. was no fun, but meeting the family will be. Also, I'm looking forward to some warmth and sunshine--my year in Texas did not help my tolerance for the cold midwestern weather.

Enjoy your holidays, everyone!

Dropout

2008-11-20T17:24:00.005-06:00

A little while back, after a tough week at work, I started thinking, "You know what I should do? Drop out of society." My plan was to join a commune and live off the land with like-minded people, or at least people who would not make me do any legal research. Fortunately for my student loan provider, I've gotten over that feeling. But if any of my readers are unsatisfied with their paper-pushing lives, I offer some resources I came across.

Here is a surprisingly reasonable essay about how to drop out of society.

If you want to explore your options for communal non-mainstream living, check out this directory of intentional communities. And if you think you'll have to move to California to do this, think again. Even within a couple of hours of my mid-sized midwestern city in my McCain- voting state, I came across several options. Some examples:

East Wind Community: an established, pleasant-sounding community in the Ozarks that runs businesses, shares income and vehicles, and cooks communal meals.
Nasalam: a spiritual community based on the power of sex. "People who are polysexual and polyamorous individuals make the best community members, but at the present time we do not require specific sexual practices for general members."
Metro Cohousing: a community of private residences in the city grouped around shared common spaces and involving several shared community meals and activities (this actually sounds kind of good to me)
Shepherdsfield: a 100-person "Christian fellowship that tries to live as the early Christians did and as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, including the 'sharing of all things in common.'"

Enjoy!

Flyers and polls

2008-10-21T19:07:00.003-05:00

Today I got a glossy flyer in the mail. It had a photo of Barack Obama's face next to a giant quotation reading, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Small print informs the reader that the quotation is from William Ayres, and William Ayres's photo is also on the page. But it's clearly designed so that at first glance people will attribute the quote to Obama. The back says "This is the story of William Ayers. Terrorist. Radical. Friend of Obama."

The mailing is not from some fringe organization I've never heard of, but from the Missouri Republican Party. Yuck.

Anyway, I clearly need to adjust my group memberships and magazine subscriptions so that I get off of whatever mailing list I'm on where they think I'm susceptible to this sort of thing.

In other news, I got polled today! I wonder how many points Barack Obama's Missouri poll numbers will go up due to my answers.

Public Service Announcement

2008-07-16T22:56:00.009-05:00

If you haven't had a tetanus shot in ten years or more, you might want to think about getting one. You never know when you might get scraped by a rusty piece of metal, as I did tonight. (As I read on the FDA website when I was researching whether I needed to go to an urgent care clinic last night, "The connection between a wound caused by a rusty/dirty nail and the necessity for a tetanus shot is fixed so firmly in the public mind that even the television cartoon character Homer Simpson knew he had to get a tetanus shot after stepping on a nail.") Plus, you might get a cool Scooby-Doo bandaid out of the deal, as I did.

Cutest. Story. Ever.

2008-07-16T14:03:00.003-05:00

If you only read one blog post about baby ducks this year (in addition to the one you're currently reading, I mean), let this be the one.

Hometown foods

2008-07-11T00:45:00.001-05:00

There are several foods popular in St. Louis and not available in many other places. Here are my thoughts on some of them.

Things I grew up eating regularly and like:
Gooey Butter Cake - A super-sweet, gooey coffee cake made of yellow cake, eggs, sugar, and butter, and topped with powdered sugar. Yummy.
Toasted Ravioli - Deep fried ravioli, typically with seasoned beef filling. It is delicious.
Provel cheese - A processed cheese product. It's an acquired taste, and one which is apparently difficult to acquire as an adult--most people who didn't grow up in St. Louis hate it for its flavor, its texture, or both. I love it. It's most often found on St. Louis-style pizza, but it can also be found in salads or melted on almost anything.
Ted Drewes concretes - Frozen custard (basically ice cream made with eggs) mixed with candy, fruit, and/or nuts. They're sort of like extremely thick milkshakes. I grew up eating them in the Ted Drewes parking lot on hot summer nights, and they are wonderful. Some say the concrete was the inspiration for the Dairy Queen Blizzard (the Blizzard was apparently invented by a St. Louis DQ owner).
St. Louis-style pizza - A super-thin crust topped with sweet tomato sauce and provel cheese. It inspires strong feelings in natives and visitors alike--I think it's great, but I've heard others compare it to "Velveeta and ketchup on a cracker." Imo's is the most popular purveyor.

Things I have not eaten (and may never eat):
Slinger - Eggs, hash browns, and a hamburger patty, covered in chili, onions, and cheese. Sounds disgusting.
St. Paul sandwich - Found at some St. Louis Chinese restaurants. Egg foo yung on Wonder Bread with lettuce, tomato and mayo. Sounds disgusting.
Fried brain sandwich- Calves' brains on white bread. It became popular when St. Louis had a lot of stockyards, but it's not very popular anymore, in part because of mad cow disease. Sounds disgusting.

How is it possible . . .

2008-07-09T18:00:00.000-05:00

that in this day and age, companies are still issuing TV shows on DVD that lack a "Play All" option and/or a chapter skip after the opening credits? HOW???

The one plate plan

2008-07-08T12:40:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, B. and I signed the lease on a charming, spacious, and affordable apartment in a neighborhood we like. It is perfect in every way but one: the lack of a dishwasher. To prevent us from allowing our kitchen to fill up with dirty dishes, we have come up with a plan: we are going to place all of our normal dishes in a difficult-to-reach cabinet and reserve them for entertaining. For everyday use, we are each going to select and purchase one each of the following: plate, bowl, glass, mug, knife, fork, and spoon. We're going to choose weird, interesting, mismatched stuff based solely on how cool we think it looks. Then we are each going to use those dishes to eat on.

This means (1) there will be no opportunity for a building-up of dishes that would necessitate a lengthy dishwashing session, because we will be forced to wash dishes at every meal (or we won't have anything to eat on), and (2) if one of us leaves our dishes lying around, there will be no question about whose it was, because we each have our own (I don't really anticipate the two of us fighting over who leaves dishes out, but accountability of this sort would have been very helpful when warmfuzzy and I were growing up).

I'm actually kind of excited about going to thrift stores and looking for interesting dishes that I think are awesome but which I wouldn't want to (or be able to) buy a whole set of.

If the Catholic Church really wants to protect and promote heterosexual marriage

2008-06-29T17:13:00.001-05:00

One way they could do so is to return the phone calls of heterosexuals who call them to ask what they need to do to get married. Just a suggestion. Though I'm sure fighting against gay marriage is also a really good way.

Tips for stalkers

2008-06-29T12:43:00.005-05:00

I came across this website today, ZabaSearch. It's useful for cyber-stalking people whose names are so common they are un-googleable. It's not perfect--the free search doesn't give out my current address, for example, but it does have my last several addresses and names several of my family members. It is fairly creepy. You can also get e-mail alerts when someone searches for you.

The weirdest part of the site is that you can check to see if anyone has left a message for you on the web. For example, someone the following message for me:

Hello, i am looking for the biological father of [John Panda], now John _____ born in ___, 19__. If you know someone or are someone who could provide assistance please e-mail me.

It's odd.

Sometimes I love George Will

2008-06-17T10:15:00.004-05:00

George Will, a very smart, conservative columnist with whom I usually disagree, has written a good piece on McCain's reaction to the Supreme Court's recent decision in Boumedienne. In that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that detainees at Guantanamo are entitled to seek habeas corpus review (basically, to ask the government to either release them or show, through fair legal processes, why they should be kept in prison).

McCain says this is "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." George Will points out, among other things, that

(1) there have been many decisions far worse, so stop being ridiculous.

(2) this decision DOES NOT LET ANYONE OUT OF PRISON, so stop being ridiculous.

(3) if you're supposed to be a conservative, maybe you should have a little more respect for a right that has been at the heart of the centuries-long struggle to constrain governments.

Read it.

I don't understand online flight check-in

2008-06-09T13:43:00.002-05:00

On most airlines, you can now check in online for your flight up to 24 hours prior to the scheduled departure time. I thought checking in was a way of telling the airline, "I have arrived at the airport, and I am a mere few hundred yards away from the gate. My plans have not changed, and I have not been delayed by traffic. Rest assured, I will be ready to board that plane when my row number is called. So please do not give my seat to a standby passenger." Those are not things you can confidently tell the airline the day before your flight. Am I missing something, or does online check-in largely defeat the purpose of checking in?

How I spend my time

2008-06-02T17:45:00.004-05:00

I've been spending a fair amount of time commenting/arguing on internet forums lately, and this makes me laugh.

John Hagee

2008-06-01T12:02:00.003-05:00

In light of keychainfroggy's recent post on inflammatory pastors, I thought I'd post this.

For those who don't know, John Hagee is the pastor of a large megachurch and the head of an televangelism company that broadcasts his sermons across the world. John McCain sought his endorsement and got it, but later rejected it when some of Hagee's more controversial statements about Catholicism and Judaism came to light. The quiz keychainfroggy posted describes him as follows:

Rev. John Hagee -Your friends think you’re pretty intense, but as far as you’re concerned, Hitler was a hunter who was sent by God to hunt down the Jews and send them running to Israel. Additionally, you think the Catholic Church is a “great whore,” though it’s not clear whether you mean “big whore,” or “very skilled and attractive yet reasonably priced whore.”

Anyway, I recently realized that John Hagee's Cornerstone megachurch is about 10 minutes away from my house, so naturally, I decided to go. The church was enormous, and it seemed more like a modern concert hall than anything else. Everyone was super-nice; I think about 17 people shook my hand on the way in. There was singing for what seemed like forever (very good singers, lame lite-pop-style music). Then John Hagee spoke. The sermon was fine, but disappointingly innocuous for someone interested in controversy; the topic was "Stop worrying." There was one line that was questionable, where he seemed to suggest that the Jews made a career of worrying because they wandered in the desert for 40 years, whereas Jesus was more of a problem-solver because he only did so for 40 days. Other than that, pretty inoffensive.

But when I got to my car, I noticed someone had placed some flyers and newsletters on my windshield from this guy, who believes the Pope and the U.S. are part of a Satanic conspiracy. (One contained this headline: "Evil International Roman Catholic Government Agents Are Claiming To Be United States of America Government Agents.") I guess he thought Hagee's church members would be a friendly audience.

Also, here's a story from a reporter who went undercover at a Cornerstone retreat, and it was way more interesting than my experience.

Be a meanie, go to jail

2008-05-24T21:03:00.005-05:00

Largely as a response to the horrible Megan Meier incident, the Missouri legislature recently passed a bill expanding the definition of criminal harassment to include the following:

[E]ngaging, without good cause, in any other act with the purpose to frighten, intimidate, or cause emotional distress to another person, cause such person to be frightened, intimidated, or emotionally distressed, and such person's response to the act is one of a person of average sensibilities considering the person's age.

If the perpetrator is 21 or older and the victim is 17 or younger, or if the perpetrator has committed this crime before, it's a felony that could result in four years' imprisonment.

The Governor hasn't signed the bill yet, but he's expected to. This law is ridiculously overbroad. Is there anyone, ever, who has not intentionally caused emotional distress to another person without good cause? I fear that Fuzzy alone could identify enough instances to get me imprisoned for life. (But she should not mention them in the comments section, because to do so would cause me emotional distress and could land her in jail too.)

Welcome, keychainfroggy

2008-05-05T19:21:00.003-05:00

Let's welcome keychainfroggy to the blogosphere! I think you will find that she is extremely hip and with it.

We had the $240 . . .

2008-04-13T10:19:00.004-05:00

and we had to have the pudding. As some of you know, I love sketch comedy. I just came across this: Nerve's list of the 50 greatest comedy sketches of all time. It's a great list because it has full videos of almost every sketch. So unlike the usual top whatever list, where you read it and say, "Oh, yeah, I've been meaning to watch that movie" or "Maybe I'll download [/buy/steal] that album sometime," you can just watch everything right there.

I was happy to find many of my favorites on the list (Argument Clinic! Porcupine Racetrack!) and troubled by a few of the choices (I know people like the chicken lady sketch, but as Kids in the Hall sketches go, it's just not as good as girl drink drunk, the bad doctor, the axe murderer, Gavin painting a chair, or anal probing aliens, just to name a few). I also found some sketches I'd never seen that were quite good.

Enjoy!

I never get tired of fake memoirs

2008-03-10T23:40:00.003-05:00

Most of you have probably seen this, but in case you haven't: a 33-year-old white woman named Margaret Seltzer recently wrote a critically acclaimed memoir, Love and Consequences, about growing up in a black foster family n South Central Los Angeles and getting involved in drugs and gang life. Except that she wasn't ever in a foster family, in South Central or elsewhere, and she didn't get into drugs or gang life. She grew up in the suburbs with her biological family and went to the same private school as the Olsen twins. She was found out when her sister called a reporter and said Seltzer was lying. Here's the story.

This takes some guts. This isn't James Frey embellishing and adding details to a real-life story; it's totally, completely made up. Just imagine what it must take to go on book tours and interviews, telling person after person all of these lies. How could you do it? And how could you think that you wouldn't be found out? Think of all the people who know you--all it would take is for one of them to see your picture in a book review or media appearance, and it's all over. I would like to meet this woman.

Notes on hotels

2008-03-10T23:01:00.006-05:00

Last week, for reasons beyond my control, I stayed for a few nights at a hotel that is far nicer than I am used to--one of the best and most expensive in the city where it is located. The hotel was extremely elegant, the rooms lovely, and the service excellent. However, I barely noticed any of this. Instead, I spent my stay there in a constant struggle to obtain cold Diet Coke. This was caused by the fact that the hotel has no self-service ice machines, no vending machines, and no in-room refrigerators. Perhaps this is comforting to patrons who turn up their noses at the vulgar idea of consuming food and drink not presented on an actual silver platter. To me, it was annoying.

At this hotel, a person who wishes to enjoy a Diet Coke in her room must either (1) pre-purchase some Diet Coke, store it warm in the room, call down to room service, request that ice be sent up, wait up to 20 minutes, allow a person into her hotel room, and give them a tip; or (2) call down to room service and request that a can of Diet Coke be sent up for the reasonable price of $3.50 plus an 18% gratuity and a $2.50 delivery charge. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Particularly when you want to do it two to four times per day.

Also, a hotel that costs $60 a night can give me a free buffet breakfast and phone calls, but the hotel that's hundreds of dollars a night charges $12 for a bowl of Cheerios and $1.50 for a local call? Stupid.

It's two stars max for me from here on out.