I really like non-sweetened cereals now. To keep my sugar intake low I look for cereal with no sugar. This eliminates nearly everything you’ll find on the shelves of most grocery stores, but there are a few brands out there, most of them of the puffed wheat variety (you know, the cereal that came in those gigantic plastic bags you could stuff the pet dog into). The one I prefer most is Grape-Nuts. I quite like its crunchy texture and nutty flavor — and I mean nutty in the sense of “it tastes like nuts” rather than “the flavor is clinically insane”. I have an occasional bowl with unsweetened soy milk when I get that breakfast cereal craving. The fact that it satisfies me, that I actually look forward to the bowl is somewhat remarkable considering I grew up on Cap’n Crunch (the shredder of mouths), Count Chocula and Lucky Charms (I always saved the marshmallows for last, so I’d have a bowl half-filled with pastel-colored milk and spongy yet still strangely kind of crunchy marshmallow bits at the end).
Kids really are amazing. How did I eat all that crap and not balloon up to 300 pounds? Oh yeah, metabolism, that thing that left me in a huff around the time I turned 20.
This is the best album R.E.M. has put out since the group became a trio with the departure of drummer Bill Berry in 1997 and a dramatic turnaround from the slow, keyboard-driven sound of their previous album, 2004’s Around the Sun.
Some of the tracks here recall the freewheeling performances on 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant, particularly “Man-Sized Wreath” and “Supernatural Superstitious”. On the former, Michael Stipe offers a cynical view of celebrity death, opening with “Turn on the TV and what do I see?/A pageantry of empty gestures all lined up for me – wow!/I’d have thought by now we would be ready to proceed/But a tearful hymn to tug the heart/And a man-sized wreath – ow!” putting particularly cheeky emphasis on the “ow” and “wow” as punctuation. The song captures everything that makes Accelerate work so well: the percussion is no longer buried deep in the mix, as if in deference to Berry’s absence; instead the drums drive the song forward. Buck’s guitar also returns to the front, aggressive but clean, unlike the muddy play and excessive distortion found in efforts like New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Perhaps the most welcome return is Mike Mills’ soaring background vocals (even getting a brief solo at song’s end). Unlike the sometimes labored and typically downbeat tracks of Around the Sun, the band here seems to be just plain having fun.
On first listen, the album is bound to leave you feeling a bit out of breath despite its short length (under 35 minutes) due to the relentless pacing of the bite-sized songs, but further listens reveal more texture and depth. “Until the Day is Done” is a mournful reflection on America, characterized by Stipe as “an addled republic” and backed by Buck’s acoustic guitar and “Sing for the Submarine” is a weird number that features call-outs to past R.E.M. songs and a suitably submerged organ playing behind the chorus, along with more of Mills’ terrific backing vocals. It is perhaps ironic that the titular song is probably the weakest on the album. It’s competent but never quite realizes the urgency of its lyrics, as if the music is stuck a half-beat behind what Stipe is framing with his words.
Despite its brevity and some quibbles with pacing, Accelerate remains a well-crafted rock album, a worthwhile addition to the R.E.M. catalog and an easy recommendation to anyone who enjoyed the band but may have been put off by its last few efforts.
As someone who has lived his whole life in the southwest corner of BC, I am used to rain and I really don’t mind it.
Come June, one expects mild to warm temperatures, more sun, some clouds and occasional showers. So far we have been seeing mostly the latter. If I was still running the Locarno concession I’d be in full panic mode now.
Dear Mother Nature: cut it out! Make with the sun. (Please!)
This is the conversation I had with my legs two days after my first run in 31 days:
Me: How you doing down there?
Legs: WE HATE YOU.
Me: Aw, you’re bound to be a little rusty and you were kind of slow, but that’s to be expected.
Legs: HATE. YOU.
Me: Pfft, it’s not that bad.
Legs: You remember those upper thigh muscles? I’m betting you do now because they are as stiff as roadkill at the North Pole.
Me: I’m pretty sure there are no roads or roadkill at the North Pole.
So yes, my legs were quite siff but today they were feeling a lot more limber so off I went on my second 5k run, my only real goal to improve on the sluggish time three days ago. Success!
With a light breeze, mild temperatures and a partly sunny sky I was able to shave 11 seconds off my average pace, bringing it from 5:45 down to 5:33. This is still pretty slow but it’s moving in the right direction. I again had a major drop-off at the 2km mark but it leveled off much more smoothly after that. The legs protested but not in a painful way, just in that “we’re not used to being exercised” way.
After swearing I’d never do another time travel story, I went ahead and did one anyway for the May 2010 writing exercise. You can check out all the exercises in this thread. My submission is my third story featuring the superhero group Chicago 8, not to be confused with the Chicago 7 or Chicago’s 8th album (I think they got up to 47 or so).
I ran for the first time in 31 days today. I had neatly skipped the entire month of May.
The good news:
– it was actually sunny, a rare thing of late
– I finished a full 5 km
– while I could feel the ghost of my injured left leg, it never actually hurt during the run
The bad news:
– slow as all get-out
– cramps
– did I mention slow as all get-out?
The trail was damp from recent rain but no puddles, so conditions were fine. It was breezy but it’s been freaking windy all spring, so nothing new there. I had optimistically planned on a 10K run but after a few km knew I’d be better off starting with a 5K instead.
What’s funny is how my first km is actually pretty decent — 5:03 — but it absolutely plunges by the second km to 5:21 and keeps falling off a cliff after that. I guess after a month off I had exactly 1 km of energy in me. 🙂
Here’s a little table showing how this 5K run compares to the last one from April:
Distance
June 1st
April 30th
1 km
5:03
5:03
2 km
5:21
5:06
3 km
5:33
5:09
4 km
5:40
5:12
5 km
5:45
5:16
On the all-thumbs part: After initiating the Nike+ sensor, I put the iPod into the left pocket of my shorts. The first few attempts at this seemingly simple task resulted in me accidentally swiping the click-wheel with a finger and turning the volume up to Spinal Tap levels. I finally got it to a point where it wouldn’t burst my ear drums, but I’ve never had that kind of trouble just putting the thing in my dang pocket. I guess after a month off, even my hands are rusty. 😛
Recently I recounted how I had dreamed that I was thrust back into working at the Locarno Beach concession, something I last did 12 years ago. My brain or more specifically, the subconscious part of it, has apparently decided to use sleep time to revisit all of my previous jobs in chronological order.
Last night I found my dream-self back at the store I used to work at. At one point I asked about the schedule, to which the assistant manager of the computer department gave a coy, non-commital answer I did not care for. I had visions of barely getting enough hours to make ends meet. And Ramen noodles. I suddenly found myself outside, in a gravel parking lot, looking toward the ocean, except blocking the view was the Locarno Beach concession, with the stand opened up facing toward the road and not the beach as one would expect. It was clear that I was still working there, too. The joy of 11 hour days covered in grease and the happiness of working a low-paying retail job, together at last!
I woke up shortly afterward. If things keep on track my next dream job will take me back to my days of telephone technical support. I can’t wait!*
* yes, in fact, I can wait. More to the point, I would like sexy dreams of daring adventure and not the dregs of my past jobs. Dear Brain, please comply. Thanks.
How can you look at an image like this and not get goosebumps over the simple, raw fury of nature? As a kid, there were a few things I could never get enough of — fire trucks, sharks (thanks, Jaws!), dinosaurs (original, I know) and then volcanoes.
This is the Tungurahua volcano, which has begun erupting in Ecuador. Story and image in this cbc.ca article.
Today the iPad went on sale in Canada, the base unit going for $549, $49 more than south of the border, as is the way with Apple’s pricing.
Apple describes the iPad as “a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.” I believe this is the first time Apple has referred to one of its products as magical.
magic:
The art that purports to control or forecast natural events, effects, or forces by invoking the supernatural.
The practice of using charms, spells, or rituals to attempt to produce supernatural effects or control events in nature.
The charms, spells, and rituals so used.
The exercise of sleight of hand or conjuring for entertainment.
A mysterious quality of enchantment: “For me the names of those men breathed the magic of the past” (Max Beerbohm).
I’m going to assume they’re going with #4 here, though who knows, perhaps the iPad runs on pixie dust and mystic rituals. Of course, it’s all too easy to bash Apple these days, as they have become a big, juicy target with the popularity of the iPod, iPhone and Macbook. Wait, Macbook? How’d that one slip through? There’s no ‘i’ in there anywhere! (Ironically, the Macbook replaced the iBook.) I’ve walked by local cafes that appear to have an ‘Apple notebook only’ policy in effect, where you may be forbidden entry should you enter without some flavor of Macbook tucked under your arm. When I ride the bus, a good number of people plugged in to portable music players are wearing the telltale white Apple earphones. The company’s products are everywhere.
Popular companies are popular targets and people love tearing down the big guys, perhaps to allow the little guys to rise up so the process can start all over. A circle of life thing for the petty and jealous, if you will.
I own two iPods (the classic and nano) and they work well enough as music players. iTunes isn’t as horrible for me as it apparently is for others and it’s nice that Apple finally abandoned that horrible brushed metal look on its interface. I was worried they would be adding wood paneling in a future version. I do not hate Apple, even if I don’t embrace their vision of a closed-off, proprietary future where all content is vetted by Apple on your behalf but the iPad is a pretty big meh. For me it fills a niche I don’t need filled. I simply have no pressing need to check my mail, view photos or surf the web in a portable format, especially for $549. I’ll admit if it had supported a pressure-sensitive stylus for input I’d have been mightily tempted, though. Having a portable electronic sketchpad is probably too sexy for me to resist, so I should thank Apple for saving me an “unbelievable” amount of money.
There are a few glitches with the Canadian rollout. One of the selling features of the iPad, shown in the image above, is iBooks, Apple’s answer to the Kindle and other ebook readers — except the iBook store in Canada doesn’t have anything you can actually buy on it yet. Oops. I’m also not sure if I’d want to read a book on an LCD screen, even a really nice one, but if someone wants to loan me an iPad, I’d be willing to run some tests, though. In the interest of science, of course.
I was downtown today and while I was in Pacific Centre I went upstairs to see if there might be a line-up at the Apple store. This was around 3 p.m. and indeed there was a line-up. And security! They had (velvet?) ropes to keep people orderly and a big sign for one line-up labeled “iPad purchases”. The other line, not worthy of an actual sign, may have been for iPad lookie-loos or people just wanting to grab some ear buds for their iPods. The reports of the thing selling out will be arriving shortly, no doubt, so kudos to Apple for another successful product launch. Who’d have thought the same company that put out the Newton, the Macintosh “Portable” that weighed 17 pounds and the original iMac mouse which was designed for hands that have never appeared on humans would end up so blazingly successful?
I do wish they’d stop with the whole iName thing, though. It’s as outdated now as the brushed metal look.
I knew something was up when Environment Canada issued its national spring forecast that called for warmer and drier conditions across the entirety of the country this spring. You know how those things go. They forecast sun, it rains. They predict overcast skies, it rains. They predict rain and it rains.
This is the forecast for the remainder of the month:
Allow me to translate:
Friday: rain
Saturday: rain
Sunday: rain
Monday: going out on a limb here — rain!
When I worked at Locarno Beach back in 1996-98 I was understandably obsessed with the weather. Even now I occasionally recall the days of yore when I prayed for sun so I could open the concession and earn a few meager dollars, even as I loathed opening the concession and actually having to be there.
The other night I dreamed I was back at Locarno, arriving rather suddenly, it seemed, and the scene was one of barely-contained chaos. A guy at the counter laughed at me while explaining he was the one who always had some difficult order. It seemed to be whatever it was he wanted — one of those energy bars or something like that — was in one of many boxes in the back. I tried to explain that I didn’t know any of this because I wasn’t there the previous year (or ten). A line-up started to form and I went to the till. An order was rung in for something but I didn’t know what. There was a $20 bill on the counter. I asked the guy if it was his, so I could make change. There was also another separate pile of money on the counter, a bunch of 20s and 10s. Things were cooking. My staff was running about, except they weren’t my staff, they were a bunch of strangers, presumably the staff that had worked there the previous summer. All that was missing was for me to look down and see I was only dressed in my underwear. Just before the dream ended I remember thinking to myself, “At least I’m making some money!”
It was awful. Yech. Dear Brain: No more Locarno dreams. Thanks!
I have a Saitek Eclipse keyboard and the main reason I got it was for the backlit keys. They’re cool in a geeky sort of way and practical in low-light conditions. However, I discovered over time that I preferred not working in low-light conditions on the computer, so the backlit keys seemed less necessary. What was worse, though, was the lettering on the keys being obliterated by my apparently acid-spewing fingers. The E, O, P, A, S, H, L and N keys are all smudged to the point of being nearly unreadable. Awhile back I had bought the Microsoft Digital Media Keyboard 3000 which, as the name implies, comes with a hojillion multimedia keys that do everything but iron your clothes and walk the dog. I pulled it out and remembered why I had not taken to it when I first tried it. The keys are ‘low travel’, which is fancy keyboard talk for the keys not sticking up as much and being scrunched a little closer together. The idea is you don’t need to press down as far or stretch as much, thus saving wear and tear on your fingers, whether or not they spew acid.
I find it makes me more prone to make typos because it feels funny. However, this seems as good a time as any to do battle once again with that unforgiving shrew, Mavis Beacon. Stay tuned!
The mascots for the London 2012 Summer Olympics have been unveiled. You can read something about them here. They are unique, all right. Apparently Kang and Kodos were unavailable.
I like this quote from the above link:
“What we’ve got here is two giant, damaged teeth, each with a massive, psychotic eye and razor sharp claws. And the blue one seems to be using bright, friendly colours to draw attention to his genital area.
“So these things – designed specifically for children – are basically lobster-clawed pervert monsters that remind them of the dentist. Bravo.”
