Aitch-Bar

Writing About (Mostly) Not Astrophysics

Monthly Archives: September 2012


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On Druuuuuugs

True to my Irish heritage, I’ve picked up some goddamned malady just days before I have to wedge myself into a metal bird tailor-made to destroy eustachian tubes. When you are, as one occasionally is, faced with the choice between flying with cold congestion and having a horse make love to your ear, you pause to consider the two options. Neither is ideal, but there is some computing required to determine exactly which is less mal. On the prevention front, I’ve done everything that the doctors recommended as a deterrent, including sleep deprivation, excessive alcohol consumption, and surrounding myself with hordes of incoming freshmen. I’ve started my typical regimen of buying every medicine that might potentially apply to my ailments, finding the maximum allowable human dosage, and taking double that. Because I am twice the man. And because the FDA is a frivolous liberal construct. I can fly now, but I am also covered in ants.

Thanks to that class I took in high school this only took like four hours to Photoshop. I look up and it’s dark out. Day well spent

I’ve been checking with Brown facilities management if I am allowed to spray Raid in the gym to get rid of the undergraduates swarming on the equipment. They said that I should not do that. They would prefer that I do something else. I counter with the point that the building is about six months old and they already have a brofestation. There’s at least one on almost every machine. The air smells of Axe and Natty Ice. It rings with the crack of high-fives and disparaging comments toward women. Am I using this bench? Yes. I am laying on it. Using it.

I guess swimming is an option.

A poor option.

For sad people.


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This Week in Teak

I'm on (wooden) boat!

None of that fiberglass bullshit

Our local supermarket gives off an unavoidable essence of upscale-ness. It caters to the part of the city where all the Volvo drivers live, but isn’t so unspeakably epicurean that they don’t have normal food, or charge significantly more for those normal things–it’s just that they also have fine cheeses and 20 different kinds of gourmet cured salmon. This isn’t my natural environment, so I often find myself noticing things that denote this understated opulence, and the aspect that best expresses it are the magazines. So I’ve been noting down the best magazine titles around the checkout, and I think you have to agree that they are incredible.

Decanter
Chilled
Discover Britain
Harvard Business Review
Wooden Boat
Nantucket
English Home
English Garden
Wallpaper
Newport Life
Newport Living
Maine
Jewelry Artist
Wine Maker
Luxury Pools
Cruising World
The Affluent Traveler
Ocean Home

As stand in line to check out, I wonder how Luxury Pools sustains a readership between the people who already own a luxury pool, and the people who simply envy the luxury pools in the magazine. But then I just pay for my frozen pizzas and think about where I would go if I were an affluent traveler.


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Overly Harsh and Pedantic Takedown of This Shower Curtain Map

Doesn't look good under harsh bathroom lighting either

The World, from the same people who brought you liquid body soap

Allow me to get this out of the way right off the bat: I am not a cartographer. Sure, I may have a particular affection for the “Geography” section of Sporcle. And yes, I can spell Kyrgyzstan and know that Toronto isn’t the capital of Canada (even though it obviously should be). And I may have even drawn a map of the world from memory (along with everyone else in my class) as an end-of-year project in 7th grade. But those days are long past, and I have something significantly more important to tell you about: the bathroom users of this country are getting puzzling and inaccurate geographic information from one of the most popular shower curtains on the novelty shower curtain scene.

Sentimental views of crushing poverty have never been this geographic!

I am referring to the curtain available here which is well known enough that I had already seen it once or twice before picking it up last year. It even featured in a few episodes of the US version of Shameless alongside Emmy Rossum’s boobs (no, that link isn’t to her boobs, pervert). If they ever reboot Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiago? as some kind of edgy, morally-ambiguous, heist drama on AMC it’ll be in their bathroom as well.¹

Unlike Amazon reviewer “E. Foster” whose primary complaint was “Really Smelly!” most of my criticisms are based on the bounty of geographical oddities contained upon its rubber surface. Sure, it’s just a shower curtain, but it is one of the most massively influential shower curtains on the market right now! Here are some of the things that are strange about it:

  1. The Mercator Projection. Widely considered the wrongest of all preposterously wrong map projections. It’s a wild distortion of the relative sizes of various parts of the world that says to your typical mid-17th century colonialist “Why OF COURSE it would make sense for Norway to rule over the southern half of Africa.” Continue reading →


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Got Damp, Didn’t Sleep, Ate Chinese

My return to the east coast has been five Magic School Bus books’ worth of self-discovery. All but two of these discoveries relate to how difficult it is to carry out my life whilst entirely submerged in water. Normally I love humidity because it means I don’t have to perm my hair and I can grow mold directly in my sinuses instead of having to snort it out of the vegetable crisper. But, after returning from a place with lunar aridity, I feel overpowered. Holler at me if you enjoy moist, because you’ll fucking love every goddamned floor, wall, and table surface in my apartment. You’ll be mashing your body against them like you’ve taken a double hit of ecstasy while singing Marvin Gaye and bathing in rainbows. I’ll be in the corner, wearing shoes.

I’ve slowly been replacing “sleep” with “writing.” I have a lot of buffer here, thanks to the past twenty-seven years where I slept a few extra minutes each day. Those minutes were stored somewhere safe, or invested wisely in some Roth 401A, from which the return dividends are then tax advantaged with subprime deposit withdrawals and rollover minutes. It’s going well, words are moving. The time and manner of the inevitable endgame is less clear; I can tell that eventually I will simply owe the world an apology.

Monday was the first annual Labor Day dinner outing at P.F. Chang’s. Between the three of our group, we had it from an estimated 0 people that this was a worthwhile endeavor, and one person told us literally five minutes before our arrival that we were all going to contract what was made to sound as some form of Montezuma’s revenge. But we pressed on, as we had just donned our supper jackets and the private reservation had already been made. What was most impressive was the restaurant’s dismissal of the idea that food was actually requisite for our enjoyment of their establishment. Over the next six hours I observed the same tray of eight wonton soups delivered over and over again to the same distant table, to a man whose face was never seen, by a boy who has never aged and knows nothing of greed or petty jealousy. I had a Coke that must have refilled at least twelve times. And then at one point I looked down and discovered that, not only was there food, but there was food no longer. I opened my mouth in wonder, and it was blocked by something. That something is known as The Great Wall of Chocolate; it is an admixture of the darkest cocoa, lead, and original sin. Two of the really real actual Terracotta Army knelt behind us in silence, a twinkle in their eye that bespeaks having just watched three souls eat product containing horsemeat soaked in brine. We checked in with one another after twenty-four hours. Ryan reports an overall decrease in his desire for food of any sort. My atrophy is more universal; I could go either way on nutrition, motion, and breathing under my own power. And Chris is gone as far as I know.


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I Have To Get These Hungry-Man Dinners Into My Freezer Before They Thaw, and You Will Not Stop Me

Oh. Shit. Look what’s back in stock. Hungry-Man. It’s been a long time, my friend. I’ve been eating two half-pound frozen dinners in one go, waiting for your return. Your commercial had me convinced that I would get blown away by carelessly-aimed hair dryers if I didn’t gorge myself at every well-preserved meal.

Hold the phone. I wasn’t even aware of some of these options. Home-style Meatloaf? Mexican Style Fiesta? Way to make Boston Market look like an asshole. Popcorn Chicken with Spiced Rum BBQ Sauce? Let me stop you right there. Sold. No way that’s going to make my night end badly. Let me just help myself to one of each. Better beat the rush.

Let me just carefully read the fine print, like I do on all my freezer products. Do not thaw? Jesus. Let me pull out my calculus. We’re starting at 0°, it’s 82° with 36% humidity outside right now, my car can get down to 68° with full A/C over a period of 5 minutes, the house is 15 minutes away, plus 1 to get through the garage where it’s undoubtedly over 98°, and each meal is 1 lb and 150 in2 with a heat capacity roughly that of ice. So there’s maybe eight minutes of contingency here. T0 was 30 seconds ago, while I sat here calculating. We are running the clock.

Well. This just got extremely fucking real.

Pardon me, old lady perusing the Birds-Eye products. Impressive, the way you managed to wedge your cart sideways in the middle of this narrow aisle. I assume that this is part of some master plan too grandiose for me to comprehend. Dare I not disturb this careful arrangement, in case you’ve positioned it in the middle of some space warp and it’s holding the universe together like an episode of Dr. Who. Let me jam myself sideways against the freezer and squeeze around. That’s fine, don’t even notice. The structural integrity of these delectable chicken bits hangs precariously in the balance and I’ll parkour over you as if that’s what it should be like to live in modern society.

I can’t help but notice that this line is taking a long goddamned time. Contingency is burning. Excuse me, sir up at front, buying fruits and shit. Good for you. A hearty bounty from the cavernous bowels of Nature herself. Here’s a proposition for you. Add these two Hungry-Men to your inventory, check them out, give them back, and we will all be better for it. Here is some money. You seem to be spending your life savings on organic melon, I fear these TV dinners would topple you into financial ruin.

No. What is that card. Put that card down. Thermodynamics doesn’t rest because you made a bad gamble that the world would suddenly join hands and embrace American Express. The Nickelback of credit cards. Here’s a fifty. This ought to cover your plants. Look at me. Take the fifty. Buy these Hungry-Men. Buy them now.

Let me explain to you how science works. If even one molecule of the chocolate splotch that magically hardens into a brownie thaws before it starts absorbing micro-rays or whatever, it’s game-fucking-over. That’s not me talking; that’s chemistry. It will leak over onto the corn and form a colloidal shit matrix. That corn is second to none but I will not force down maize brownie. That is sick. That is where typhus came from.

Yes, Officer Dawdles, I was doing 96. Probably because I have somewhere extremely important to be. Does God Himself have a hit out on these mashed potatoes? They are pre-gravyed. The gravy is already on them sir. This is a truly volatile mix of poorly understood ingredients and proportions. If this pile reaches liquid phase in an uncontrolled environment there is a nonzero chance of it coming alive and gaining sentience. It will debate us. It will gain a seat in Congress. It will levy taxes on hand-made jewelry and smiles. It will destroy our way of life. Or I can get to my freezer. I am putting this car in drive. You can shoot me and then lose the battle in November, or you can choose freedom.

Yes, hello son, that is a very nice plastic bag space helmet and matching santoku-knife-turned-laser-gun. Is that our toaster with forks sticking out of it? Ah, his name is Robotron. You know what, son, go play with your robot, maybe show him your aqueous bath tub space capsule, or your fortress in the dryer. No, I did not know we had super juice in a leaky bottle under the kitchen sink. I’ll come try some in a bit.

First, there’s something I need to get done.


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Wedding Reparations

20120901-111256.jpgChicago is exactly how I left it six weeks ago: Tropical, with a haughty disdain for conditioned air. Upon arrival at the hotel, Jacob and I immediately set about a terraforming operation. Our success is shown at right. The fact that a thermostat even goes that low is simply stellar. That the room can actually start to approach that goal is incomprehensible. But comprehense one must; it is goddamned cold in hurr. Were I to make advertising for this hotel, it would be something direct like “Red Roof Inn. Go Ahead. Freeze Your Balls Off.®” For the first time in recent memory, I’ve gotten to use a comforter without having to peel it off in the morning. I don’t think I’ve slept so well in years.

And while I was laying in bed, surrounded by stuffed animals and half-eaten, stolen Dunkin, I considered the past. I can think of no greater gift on the day of Isaac’s wedding ceremony than reparations. Thus do Jacob, Preyas and I formally apologize to said Isaac for the following, in approximate chronological order:

  • Tying your hair to a chair
  • Getting you stuck under that row of desks and then keeping you in there after Mr. O’ Malley showed up
  • Carrying you around in that trash can and bolting when Mr. Curtis showed up. There is no defendable answer to “Explain why you are in a trash can”
  • Characterizing your handwriting as “seismograph barcode” even though that was dead-on
  • Stealing your iPod for like three years and returning it when its market value had decreased substantially
  • Putting you in the overhead compartment of a Coach bus
  • Repeatedly using you as a suicide bomber to get through Halo on Legendary difficulty
  • Treadmill launching
  • Not properly conveying how much fun driving is. It’s a lot of fun, actually
  • More or less everything Preyas has ever said or done
  • Possibly spilling beer on you at your rehearsal dinner and then, non-consecutively, telling you to “suck it”
  • Not getting you a better wedding present than this

Our adolescence was truly some insane crucible. Good thing we’ve matured.

We love you, we miss you, we wish you and yours the best. I’m excited to finally be able to use this in close to proper context: Mazel Tov.