January 2, 2011

chowder is evil

That is all. Considering reviving the bivalve that walks, since enough time has now gone by that I am now completely obscure. Or obscure-r.

Update: Wow. 3 years silent. That is a lot of So-Called A-List scams and nepotism.

October 30, 2008

What I did on my summer vacation

People reading my Twitter presence may have noted that I exhibited a
slight obsession with pain and painkillers (characterized by one
person in particular as "whining") from the end of August through most
of September. Someone finally asked me what precipitated my new-found
passion for Advil by the handful, and having come clean in the social
networking districts,
I figure it's about time I mentioned it on my
blogs too. This is my gruesome story.

To get right to it: On August 12, I got thrown off my bike on Martha's
Vineyard and broke my left shoulder, specifically, my left humeral
bone.

We were headed back to our rental house in the late afternoon after a
ride out to Morning Glory Farm for some sweet corn and baked goods. MV
has a great network of bike paths, and we were riding through the
State Forest. Leslie recently got a new bike, and so she was up ahead
a bit seeing what it could do, while Daniel and I were moving along a
bit more slowly behind her. We had ridden about 16 miles total at this
point, and he was beginning to tire. I was hanging back with him,
encouraging him to keep up and telling him that we didn't have too much
longer to go. We were probably about 4-5 miles from the house at this
point. I was looking forward to getting back to the house, taking a
long outdoor shower, and then drinking a beer in the hammock before we
went to dinner.

While I was thinking about this I had dropped back behind him a few
yards, and he slowed a bit. I think we were moving about 10mph or so
at the time. As he did, his back wheel brushed my front. I tried to
slow further and asked him to pick it up a bit. At the same time, I
started getting worried that he was going to go down, so I turned to
the left to get clear of his wheel. As I did so his bumped mine, and I
was thrown from the bike.

I tried to roll as I fell, and I landed right on top of my left
shoulder. When I hit, I felt a distinct "pop" in my shoulder and
immediately knew I was in trouble. I skidded about another 5 ft on the
tarmac, getting some pretty bad elbow road rash, and finally came to a
stop.

Fortunately, Daniel had not fallen and was unaware that I had, so both
he and Leslie were about 200 yards down the path. I could see some
pretty nasty rash on the side of my knee, so I tried to sit up to get
a better look at it. However there was intense pain every time I
attempted to move my left arm. I yelled to Leslie and Daniel to come
back and that I thought I had broken my arm.

As it eventually turned out, I had broken my shoulder and fortunately,
there was only a small displacement. The impact had actually impaled the "stick" of the bone on the spongy "ball," stabilizing it and
making what I was later told would have been difficult, painful surgery unnecessary.

What was less fortunate was that this happened on the second day of
our annual 2 week vacation on the Vineyard. The doctor who treated me
in the ER was certain that the local orthopedist was going to send me
back to NY post haste to get some pins put in. Fortunately, the
orthopedist told me that it looked like I'd lucked out and wouldn't
need surgery; he also recommended that I stay around another week so
that he could take a look at it again. As it was, we did end up going
home about half a week early.

I'm in the fourth week or so of physical therapy now, which is going
well, though quite painful. I have not really slept well since the
accident. Most nights I wake at about 3am or so, trying to find a
relatively comfortable position for my arm. This happens consistently
despite the wide range of various pharmaceuticals I have been
prescribed. My physical therapist told me this week that shoulder
injuries are some of the most painful and difficult to recover from,
and that I'm probably in for another month or so of pain and
discomfort before I really start to feel better. If I can get through
that time without completely collapsing of exhaustion, I'll be a very
happy man.

UPDATE: I wanted to mention one other thing. The EMTs on Martha's Vineyard were extraordinarily nice and helpful. They got the ambulance onto a bikepath in the middle of the forest. They kept me reasonably calm and very well-informed during the entire time on the bikepath, which was remarkable since they decided to collar me and strap me to the board for safety's sake. Everyone was extremely professional and a credit to their professions.


Technorati Tags:
, , , ,


October 16, 2008

Holy crap

I was in a movie. That's why I haven't been blogging. I wanted to go back to my first love, fillum. You miss me?

Update: Karel! I deleted the wrong one! My joke won't work now! Crap. Comment again or something.

August 1, 2008

Can I touch the hem of his garment?

Joi Ito's Web:
Joi Ito has been at the center of critical movements to make technology, and creative freedom, available widely. He loves his profession, and he does it well. Mornings for him do not begin with the regret of who he couldn't be. But his success in these fields has also given him an understanding of the people in these fields. In the twenty-some years of his work, he has come to know the people of these industries (both commercial and non-profit) well. They are his friends (Ito has no enemies). He engages them as a friend, always concerned and giving, never short or impatient. He understands them by learning to see them in a certain way. He engages them with the love of friendship by learning to see them in the most beautiful, or distinctive way, possible. Digital technologies have now given us a way to see just how Joi sees the world. By lowering the cost of access and practice, the technologies have allowed Ito to become an accomplished amateur photographer. But 'accomplished' in this context means that he has learned how to capture the person he sees. And unlike the professional photographer, who ordinarily has 10 minutes to come to 'know' the person he photographs, Ito has had his whole professional career. He knows the people in this book. He has come to see them in their most beautiful, or extraordinary light, and he has perfected an ability to capture what he sees, and share it with all of us.
Jesus, what is this? Messianic 2.0? And this saccharine hagiography is from the introduction to a "limited edition" (I can just imagine the price) collection of "portraits." Note the usual technology has disintermediated photography bilge. The ironic thing: Joi Ito is rich. He could already easily afford both access and practice, I'm sure. But we get sold this usual crap about taking photography away from some vague "priesthood", and Joichi Ito gets to scrapbook on a global scale. What a racket. You unwashed not getting comped a copy can download the CC-licensed flickr images, though I'm unsure why you'd want to since it's the usual conference-roaming gang of technology "creatives." For the most part I've given up on shoveling shit against the tide of these people, but this one was just too much to let go by.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

July 18, 2008

Burrito of Doom 2.0

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » No, Taco Bell, you come here:

"And then I am permitted only 250 words to tell them about how I used to love Taco Bell but how I’m not feeling well now after having two bites of frijoles that were soupy and strange and how I had to go back to the counter twice to get them to remake a simple grilled burrito that was falling apart and disgusting and how the employee clearly didn’t give a shit and that was why I decided I really didn’t want him feeding me today so I demanded a refund and probably won’t go back to Taco Bell for a decade or two."

One sometimes wonders whether the real allure of the Internet for people like Mr "In This Our New World" Jarvis is in its excellence as an amplifier making it possible for him to scream "This is an OUTRAGE" at the top of his virtual lungs on BOTH a hyperlocal and global basis. The man has a slight detector set to 12. He gets one bad burrito in a Taco Bell and it warrants this big of a "I am SO blogging this" snit? If he acts anything in Real Life like he does on the web, I'm astonished you can get anyone to wait on him at all. One would advise another glass of citizen sommelier-sourced Merlot to wash down a nice, horse-sized chillpill with your next Stufft [sic] Whatever.

As my sainted Mither used to say "Do you really need to make a Federal case out of this?"

PS: JJ, if I were you I'd start checking my entrees for evidence of recent expectoration.

June 6, 2008

Oxymoronic foodies and "compassionate meat"

Big City - How About Slaughterhouse Tour Before Supper, Food Lover? - NYTimes.com:

"But the tour, for now, stops short of bringing visitors inside. Knowing the slaughterhouse is there is one thing — seeing what happens inside is another. ‘No, that might be too much,’ said Mr. Barber, who confessed that the first time he visited a slaughterhouse, he experienced the same visceral revulsion that non-foodies often do.
It may be that for some people, seeing it might do just the opposite of enhancing the dining experience. Just how much of a connection to his or her food is anyone willing to make? But then again, to think that seeing the outside of a slaughterhouse would strengthen someone’s connection to the food coming out of it is a little bit like thinking that standing outside a church could bring spiritual enlightenment — isn’t that supposed to come from wrestling with all the messy, improbable, challenging stuff that’s happening inside?
Mr. Barber is clearly taking it one step at a time, and the farm is still considering how it might (safely) open up the slaughterhouse to interested individuals or groups (for now, slaughter day happens on Tuesdays, when the farm is closed to the public). He’s just relieved that the existence of the slaughterhouse hasn’t ‘grossed people out and made them not want to order here,’ a concern that suggests how little he senses his organic-friendly clientele truly understands about what goes on at a farm.
The slaughterhouse, he said, is just as much a part of the farm’s reality as the baby lambs that were born last week. ‘It’s about life and death and disease, and that’s part of what it means to live in an agricultural community,’ he said. ‘We’re not Disneyland.’ "

This is the most sensible thing I've seen on this subject in the media: an actual discussion of the cognitive dissonance buzzing between the antennae of happy, grass-fed animal hype, replete with faux primitivist "respect" - and the cold hard reality of dead animals. If you really want to make this more than a gimmick, have the customers come down on Tuesday, introduce them to Thursday night's dinner, and then have them kill it. We'll see how "connected" they feel when they get served a beautifully presented plate of roast victim, maybe with some of that visceral emulsion - er, I meant "revulsion."

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

March 14, 2008

Too bad it doesn't render it unfeasible

Digest - Features: The coming food storm, activists with cameras, bee breeders:

Downergate was a box-office hit: Animal-rights activists have discovered that downloadable video can be the most potent weapon in their arsenal, as long as their footage doesn’t contain so much violence as to render it unwatchable. Apparently we empathize more with large mammals, too. (New York Times)

"Unwatchable," as in don't show me where the candied bacon ice cream comes from.

(Via The Ethicurean.)

Technorati Tags: , ,

January 2, 2008

Slate on Pollan

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. - By Laura Shapiro - Slate Magazine:
In their view [Pollan's] got a bully pulpit and should be using it to rally a mass movement against Big Food, instead of encouraging people to believe that having an organic soyburger for lunch puts them in the front ranks of political activism.
If only it were an organic soyburger instead of a "grass-fed" dead animal. I pretty much agree with this otherwise - most of the locawhatever movement is pretty much "better living through shopping" - but given Dilemma's sloppily thought-out dismissal of vegetarianism, this sentence is no more than an attempt at tarring with the "dirty hippie" brush.

Technorati Tags: , ,

September 25, 2007

Takes one to know one

From the careerist locamogul-wannabes at the Ethicurean, the defenders of such meat-friendly euphemisms as "harvesting" and "humane meat," the people who think that paper-wrapped pig heads confront the reality of slaughter, the folks who like to talk about "happy pigs" but never, ever show you to which very unhappy end those poor pigs come, from those apologists for death we get:

Sticks and stones and spin: Stop talking about “debeaking” a chicken — that bothers people. Instead, let’s call it “beak conditioning”! (NWAnews.com)
Pot? Farmer Kettle from Hypocrite Gulch Farms on line 2. Says he wants to sell you some local grass-fed black.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

September 11, 2007

Good boy, Rex! (4 in a series)

From Twitter:
@davewiner - I'll be in SF later this week. I'll be happy to drop by with some chicken soup.

Technorati Tags: ,