Tag: california

Do you know what won’t cause spontaneous human combustion?

For the past month or so, I’ve been enjoying “Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap“, a podcast by ursulav and alchemist. Each week they review a variety of pre-packaged foods; some cheap, others too pricey for their quality. And each week, “[They] eat it, so [we] don’t have to.”

And I’ve been having a wonderful time. It’s great listening for my bike rides or when I’m doing the dishes, and of course, because of a quirk of timing I now associate podcasts with California, so it’s nice to listen to something that’s based back East. I really enjoy listening to them, and I love trying to figure out how the various food products will get rated at the end. Some of my favorite through-lines include “Is this made of food?” and “Oh god, why do we do this to ourselves?”

But the best has to be the odd questions and ramblings that lead into the sponsor’s spots each week. Over the years they’ve had three and a bit sponsors, and are currently sponsored by Dash Systems and SofaWolf Press.

While I’ve been listening, I’ve been noting down the lead-ins they use before the sponsor spots. And I collected them all into a single spreadsheet. While they’re all great, I’ve listed a few of my favorites below. See if you can guess which lead-in went with which sponsor, without looking at the whole spreadsheet.

* Do you know what has a really good crust and a really good assembly?
* You know what won’t make you violently ill, feverish, and full of chills?
* You know what won’t attack you and eat your head?
* You know what won’t give you botulism?
* You know what will provide you an orgasm per meal?
* You know who does pay us to mention the brand name every time?
* You know what won’t raise your bad cholesterol?
* Do you know what you will not block out of your memory?
* Do you know what texture is not distressing?

BoingBoing Ingenuity

This past Sunday Gillian and I headed into San Francisco to attend BoingBoing Ingenuity, sort of a TED like meetup for readers of the BoingBoing blog. I won my ticket in the first giveaway, and Gill managed to score hers in one of the latter ones.
It was a really fun day. Early day; we had to leave the apartment at quarter to eight to catch the BART into the city, and we were lucky enough that the first train was a couple minutes late so we didn’t have to wait around. On the train ride in we saw a Ringling Brothers circus train just before we went under the Bay.

The event was held in the old Masonic Lodge on Sutter. We took a ride in the original elevator, which still has an operator, up to the third floor and the big stage. Beautiful room. Apparently all 31 backdrops are original, and they had a scene from hell on stage, complete with devils tormenting damned souls.
BB_ingenuity-Masonic_backdrop

While we were waiting for things to get started the lady sitting in front of us turned around to introduce herself, figuring that the kind of people to get invited to this kind of event had to be interesting. She was pretty nice, she makes props and scenery for photographs with her art partner.
There were a lot of great speakers, and a few okay ones. I liked the opening speaker, Ferdanando Buscema, a
BB_ingenuity-me_and_gillian

Between speakers, and during some of the breaks the organist kept us all entertained with a variety of sci-fi tunes. I recognized the Eleventh Doctor’s theme, and the original Star Trek, and I think bits of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”.
BB_ingenuity-organist

The final block of block of presenters was a mixed bag for me. Up first was the music duo Barn Owl, who did electronic drone music. If it had been about a third the volume, or if I hadn’t had the first stirrings of a headache, I might have enjoyed it. As it was I rushed out of the room clutching my stomach, nearly ready to vomit. I stood in the lobby by an open window until they were done, and I think I may have loosed the tide because I saw several other people leave and hang around the lobby until they were done.
After Barn Owl finished Adam Savage came on to give the closing talk. He gave a brief rundown on his career as builder and then outlined his ten tips

BB_ingenuity-swag

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Who wants a postcard?!

So we’re mostly settled in to the new apartment (update coming soon), and now we need to send out new address cards. If anyone wants a postcard or greeting card (not sure which yet) from sunny California, leave your address in the (screened) comments below.

California interlude 1

Took the afternoon off yesterday to go catch a movie at the nearby movie theater. Andy by nearby, I mean I can see the building from my bedroom window (so weird). Saw Red 2. Eight bucks for a matinee, that’s just nuts. On the plus side, concessions seem to be cheaper than they were back in PA.
The movie itself was okay. Not as great as the first one, still a lot better than most action flicks. It looked like everyone but Bruce Willis was having a great time getting together again & making the movie and he was only there because he had to be.

Safeway’s store-brand Cheerios taste pretty good, but they have texture of Captain Crunch. I never expected to tear up the roof of my mouth to the taste of nuts and honey.

And the best part of apartment living out here is that we get a constant stream of mail for previous tenants. So far I’ve been marking it “Return to Sender” and “No longer at this address”, hoping it’ll stem the tide over time. I know we still got mail for the prior tenant at our old place for years.