So stopping after the 2nd martini makes me a stodgy Puritan, now?

I discovered an intriguing article in last week's New York Press. Intriguing because it concerns drinking in New York, which is more or less my chosen subject matter here:

DRY SEASON - Why aren’t we a town of world-class drunkards?

The writer, Mr. Bernstein, takes issue with the fact that, according to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (what the fuck is mental hygiene?), New York City has a lower rate of binge drinking (14%) than the rest of the nation (24%). Binge drinking "is classified as draining five or more drinks on any occasion every month." My first reaction was like his: Jeez, who doesn't do that? Are that many people straight-edge or pregnant!?

But in fact, these statistics are totally unreliable because in this Puritan-founded country, most people are probably lying about how much they drink. Space it properly and intersperse it with snacks, and many of us won't even get drunk on five drinks. Only idiots who don't know how to drink "turn the LES and E. Village into Dante’s Seventh Circle of Hell, reserved for sloppy boozers prone to high-fives, tequila shots and sidewalk vomit."

Unfortunately there are a lot of those idiots, because thanks to those Puritans, Americans have an unhealthy fear of and fascination with alcohol. Same with sex. Because of moronic conservatives with Puritan values, there isn't enough sex education, so you end up with the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in any developed nation, not to mention the spread of STDs. Because of Puritan values, liquor gets the same treatment and you end up with the highest rate of DUI/DWI incidents (for which, paradoxically, the penalties here are some of the softest anywhere in the world) and alcohol-related deaths of any developed nation. I believe that many of America's problems can be traced back to Puritan values. Why do you think the Puritans got kicked out of England? It's because they were nuts! Of course, they also practiced lives of ascetic frugality and considered money as sinful as anything else, but conservatives seem to have dropped that part. Free market y'all!

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that there's a stigma on the word "binge drinking." When you say that, you get an image of those NYU students and their tequila shots, not somebody who is perfectly capable of enjoying several drinks over the course of an evening without splattering vomit on a trash can. (Not that I haven't puked in the East Village...but I did it properly, hunched over the toilet.) So of course with a survey like that, no one is going to want to classify themselves as a "binge drinker" even when it's anonymous. That skews the results. People don't want to call themselves "world-class drunkards," either. (I prefer the term "lush.")

On the other hand, five drinks is enough to make some people quite sick. I rarely need that many to get good and tipsy. Maybe the rest of the nation is just fatter than NYC and can handle more drinks. The statistics note that men do "binge drink" more, but men generally have more body mass which means they can handle more drinks. So this "how many drinks" question as related to drunkenness is flawed to begin with.

Another issue, which Mr. Bernstein fails to address, is that drinks are fucking expensive here. If I have seven drinks out on the town in Manhattan, that's at the very lowest about $40. If they're nice drinks, and I tip properly, probably more than twice that. If I'm eating, too, and I'd better be if I'm going to consume that many drinks without falling over, that's another expense. Yes, everything is fucking expensive here and the reason for that is mainly real estate. And there are many people in the city who consider an $800/person bar tab to be quite reasonable. But maybe, just MAYBE those of us who can't afford bottle service are trying to get more bang for our buck, and enjoy 2 or 3 cocktails at a time instead of "binge drinking," which will damage our finances more than our livers.

I probably don't "binge drink" more than once a month. I didn't even do it in college that much. I'm a lightweight, and I try to watch my calorie intake as well as my budget. But that doesn't mean I don't get hammered frequently. It most certainly doesn't mean I don't like alcohol. And I'm insulted that Mr. Bernstein would question my status as a "world-class drunk" just because I don't fit the DoH's definition of a binge drinker.

Perhaps I shouldn't be insulted by what's clearly just an asinine attempt at a humorous tirade. But I do resent the implication that I must not like alcohol enough if I don't consume some arbitrary fixed quantity of it. On an empty stomach, it only takes me half a glass of wine to make a complete ass of myself. Okay, I can usually accomplish that sober, but you know what I mean.

So say it with me, folks: It's not the quantity of liquor, it's the quality of drunkenness.

Drink Drank Drunk vol. 1: Irish

I think I'll start a new feature, hopefully somewhat weekly, as follows:
One place where I would like to drink soon.
One place where I recently drank.
One place where I have been drunk in the past.

Of course, that order makes the feature title flow better than "Drunk Drank Drink," but it makes little sense to start out a post with something I haven't done yet, so in practice I'll write these in chronological order from past to future.

This time it's sort of an Irishy theme. Loosely.

Drunk: The Thirsty Scholar on 2nd Ave between 9th and 10th St. (East Village)
This place is so small, I'm not sure what the draw is, besides the Erin-inspired decor and the generally good music. This is usually a stop on the St. Marks Place grand tour after Village Yokocho or Kenka (which I'll write about another day, I promise). The Thirsty Scholar is loud and narrow, perhaps more of a Celt-themed dive bar than an Irish pub, the kind of place college students live for. But if I remember correctly, they can whip up decent coffee drinks, a necessary break from the sake carafes on a long night.

Drank: The Dead Poet on Amsterdam Ave between 81st and 82nd St. (Upper West Side)
This bar we visited last night has an awful lot of nice TVs for a literature theme. The walls were mostly covered with those kitschy old "My Goodness--My Guinness!" ads, along with a bit of vaguely Irish-themed decor. The only thing really literary that I could see was their motto, which they took from a Longfellow poem and framed with the words backwards so that it appears the right way in the giant mirror over the bar, and the cocktails, all named for--can you guess?--dead poets and writers. I ordered a Robert Frost and it was so overwhelmingly sweet I was inclined to think that a dentist or diabetes specialist came up with it rather than a bartender with an English degree. That makes me reluctant to try any of the other cocktails on the list. However, I imagine I'll be back, because the happy hour deal was good--$4 drafts with a decent selection--and they had some intriguing other beers. Oh, and don't be deceived by the "bar food" menu. The chicken sandwich my companion had was totally non-greasy and quite delicious. Not even the fries were greasy--non-greasy by fry standards, anyway, which is to say they had been made properly and weren't soaked in oil. Rarely does a bar kitchen neglect to smother the food in oil, but the Dead Poet achieves this feat. Excellent.

Drink: Pat O'Brien's on 2nd Ave. and 88th St. (Upper East Side)
You don't get much more stereotypically Irish-pubby than that! I quite literally never go to the Upper East Side, which is why I haven't been here yet. But I hear it's a Sox bar. So at some point, I must go. My understanding is that the neighborhood is pricey and the residents of it are loaded, so it may be too expensive to be a viable game-watching venue, but we'll see.

Mmm, plastic manufacturing byproducts!

China is fucking scary.

Not that I think China is more scary than the US. But I don't think anyone would argue that they're dominating the global economy, and when they're doing stuff like this--putting poisonous filler material in animal feed which goes not just to our pets, but also to animals in the human food chain--well, that's pretty fucking scary.

Melamine is "not believed to be particularly toxic," according to that article, but..

“I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”

It's okay until people die from it! (and probably even after they do.)

Actually, the laws in most places are like that, but this manager at a Chinese chemical company doesn't even know if there's a regulation. Do the people who are putting it in the food know? They don't care, they're just saving money. Do the people who are feeding it to animals know? They probably don't care either. This is from a place that has sold FAKE BABY FORMULA.

China is one of those places (okay, maybe the only place) with an amazing history and enormous global influence where I never want to go. The things they do there in the name of economic growth make me as scared and angry as anything perpetrated by the US government in recent years.

That said, why am I always getting hits on this blog from China? I figured it's spy robots, but if I have any readers from China, I certainly would like to hear your comments/counter-rants/vicious flames.

Just some pictures, dude.

Work is INSANE--or more specifically driving me INSANE--or most specifically driving me MORE INSANE--so um, just flickrness for today. None of these photos are mine.

Though hopefully I will have some new bar reviews this weekend.

Two of my favorite things!

Puppy And Books by Tom Maisey

There is much rain today here too, and I feel similar about it.

Puppy in the rain by m2*

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHH!"

Chance! by jlcrawford2105

"WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Flo Running by duckberry

Oh please mommy can I have one please please please pleaaaaaaaaaase?

A puppy by Kyran2005

Click on that last picture-taker's link. They're all pictures of Aussie Shepherds, and they are beautiful! Ohsosweet!

So big and strong!!!! and cuuuuuuuute

So big and strong!!!! and cuuuuuuuute
Originally uploaded by ny_dionysia.

Eeeeeeee! The sweet baaaabies! They're 2 weeks old in this pic. Look how much bigger they've gotten!! Their eyes aren't open yet but their noses are turning a healthy black. But their eyes should open this week. I really need to get home and see them again soon!

(Pic by my dad.)

Rudy has syphilis

Well, he probably doesn't, but his brain either has holes in it, or it's been hijacked by Cheney and Rove.

Apparently Rudy Giuliani is trying to get on voters' good sides for his presidential campaign. How?

By blatantly using 9/11 as a threat, with all the callousness and talking-out-the-anus-ness of the worst of the White House!

I imagine that if I had been living here in 2001, this would make me even angrier than it does. I can't imagine what people who lost loved ones that day, or are struggling with illnesses caused by the dust, would feel when they hear their once-popular ex-mayor say this:

Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.
...
“If any Republican is elected president — and I think obviously I would be the best at this — we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.

O RLY? You didn't stop it the first time. And what have Republicans done besides give people in the region more reason to support or join al Qaeda? STFU, Rudy.

Where I drank tonight.

I haven't made a bar post in far too long.

I was out with a darling girl friend tonight, and we went out around Columbia turf. Omitting our girly-girl conversations, here's a summary:

We ate at Tokyo Pop, on Broadway at 104/105th. Not to be confused with the manga company, this place has yummy Japanese (food and waiters, heh heh) and awesome cocktails. It's a little pricey compared to other things in the area, but, dude, ginger ice cream. There's live music on some nights, and I think this is the best J-cuisine within easy walking distance of Columbia. The internets agree that delivery is a total ripoff, though. Definitely eat in.

Then we had cocktails at Sip, at Amsterdam and 110th. After seeing the cocktail called Monkey Gland, which according to the description contains absinthe--isn't that illegal here?!--we decided the place was inspired by Hunter S. Thompson. I used to go here all the time last year before I started working. It's got free wifi and is a lovely quiet tea/coffee shop during the day. Back then they had just opened the kitchen; now they have a full menu of food, too, and I think it's pretty good. Cocktails were interesting, but they're all overpriced, and the bartender was an idiot.

Finally we stopped at Caffe Swish, directly across from the Columbia gate at Broadway and 116, for some sake. There isn't a huge selection of it, and I've heard mixed reviews about the food, but it serves its purpose. They served the sake in the bottle rather than in carafes, as we'd expected, and we received more than we thought we would. Obviously this is to their credit, but my companion had to catch a bus. Since we'd paid for the drinks, though, I snuck out the unfinished bottles in my purse. w00t!

Hmm, gotta go back to Sip and try some absinthe when it's not a weeknight... Always did want to try it. If Oscar Wilde drank it, it must be cool! But in the US, it's probably just fake absinthe-flavored liquor. Although Sip is 6 blocks from Columbia and they weren't carding...so maybe they do serve the real stuff! One can always hope.

There is a method to the tail's madness!

wag
Originally uploaded by rgottorff.

Naturally, people would rather read about how puppies' tails wag in the New York Times rather than, say, the Middle East or how extremely special our president is. The article about puppies' tails is #2 on the most-emailed list, seconded only by the newest installment in the Mystery of the Disappearing Bees--which is also a real problem, of course, but I'll be the first to admit that I'd rather read about puppies.

The article concerns something I'd never noticed: a dog's tail wags more to the right when he's happy, and more to the left when he's scared or angry. It's due to the different sides of the brain processing different emotions, and similar phenomena are also observed in other species, including primates and humans.

See how far that yellow lab's tail is to the right in the picture (not mine)? Looks like he's happy to make a new friend.

I wonder if this is not just a subconscious phenomenon for dogs (domestic and wild) and actually figures into their communication. The height at which a dog carries his tail, facial expressions, and ear position are all part of a dog's "nonverbal" communication. Some of their body language is more obvious (rolling over in submission, that about-to-pounce stance when playful) but other cues, like the direction of tail wagging, are subtle enough to escape humans' attention. If this data is conclusive, there should really be more education about this, because we are all taught that when a doggy is wagging his tail, he's happy. But, based on this information, if a dog with aggressive tendencies is wagging his tail toward the left, he could be seconds away from deciding to attack. Of course, it's the owner's responsibility to keep an aggressive dog out of situations where he could attack a non-threatening person or animal, but unfortunately not all dog owners are responsible. Or intelligent. So I hope there will be more studies and education regarding this find.

Meanwhile, are there really 1,800 Wiccans in the armed forces!? Seems like the military culture wouldn't be very welcoming, but that's just a guess.

Edit after midnight: Puppies have now surpassed bees on the Times most-emailed list. Yep. Everyone wants to read about puppies. However, the title of that article is completely idiotic. What drunk, lonely editor slapped that on there?

Oh, I miss Japan.

red bridge
Originally uploaded by pink_emmie_bat.

The weather is still beautiful here. (It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but we won't talk about that.)

The apple blossoms are blooming, and there are a couple of cherries blooming in Central Park, and I know there is a Hanami Festival in Brooklyn sometime (probably missed it again though), but oh! The cherry blossoms are blooming in Kyoto! (I studied abroad there for 8 months a few years ago. I freakin' love it.)

This picture, which is not mine, is of somewhere in Tokyo, but oh how I would like to walk down Tetsugaku no Michi and stop for some matcha...

But probably the best I could do over here is--and why have I not posted about this place yet?--a Japanese cafe called Cha-An. I never would have found it if I hadn't been scouring the city for a place that might have matcha (a kind of green tea) pastries. The sign isn't conspicuous, making it easy to miss; it's on the second floor at 230 E 9th St, near 2nd Ave, around the block from Village Yokocho. It's quiet, calming, with the perfectly sweet and tranquil feeling I love so much about Kyoto cafes. There's a little tea ceremony room right in there and they'll perform one for you if you make the reservation! The menu is wonderful--endless varieties of classy tea, lovely entrees, snacks, tea sets, desserts, fine sake... It's fantastic, really one of the jewels of Little Tokyo. (Jewels don't exactly come cheap, but you get what you pay for.) I'd like to skip out on work and walk down there right now... Mmm, matcha milk. The only thing missing is the Japanese garden.

Le sigh. Kyoto, my far-away love!

Looooooogo!

You may not have noticed if you're using a reader, but I finally made a logo and managed to make it into the header. It's none too original, but hours messing around in Photoshop does not a graphic designer make.

Think it's cute and campy? Think I'm a no-talent hack? Go'head and comment!

Spring has arrived!!

What a stunning, beautiful, lovely day! And three of them in a row--on the weekend! It's almost more than one could ask!



I walked all over the UWS. Mostly just to enjoy the weather, but also to shop for shoes. I like Nine West, but they didn't have what I wanted this time. I wandered up and down looking for something that had better shoes than Payless but not as good as Barney's Co-op. At last, down past the AMNH on Columbus Ave at 80th St., I found Medici with some fine selections that wouldn't dip into my drinking funds. Now I have a flashy, trendy pair of silver ballet flats so soft it feels like I shouldn't wear them out of the house. For less than $50. The staff was nice and unintrusive. I will be back there next time the feminine impulse strikes me.

After that successful venture, I was hungry, but I discovered something. Every single eatery was crowded! On such a beautiful day, every last family had brought out the strollers and were parked in every last decent-looking cafe/restaurant/bistro/brasserie, vivaciously chatting and bowing to the whims of their whiny, sunburned children, while good-looking couples occupied every last 2-person table. Perhaps if I'd dressed nicer, I might not have been so reluctant to edge in asking for a table for one, but as it was, everyone had at least one companion and I felt that I would be turned away in favor of the next (more lucrative) couple. Or else I just didn't want to be the only one at that classy bistro seated by myself in my gaucho jeans and manga-illustration shirt. (And Boston hat, of course.)

I wandered on, refusing to give in and have a fruit plate at Starfucks. (All the Starfucks were jam-packed too, anyway.)

Enter the Hampton Chutney Co. This Indian-inspired sandwich shop, on Amsterdam Ave between 82nd and 83rd, was, for some odd reason, almost totally empty. I had foolishly passed it by before because I thought the appelation "Hampton" gave it an automatic air of snobbishness. Nope: it's inexpensive (for Manhattan, as always), unpretentious, clean, charming, and delicious. The lovely afternoon light came in, but without the entire front of the shop thrown open, the street noise didn't. Hankering for cheese, I ordered the mushroom-onion-goat cheese-arugula sandwich on black bread (they were out of 7-grain, but that worked out just fine) and was pleasantly surprised. And that cardamom coffee--fantastic! Why have I not seen this concoction at more coffee shops? Does it have to be an Indian-inspired place? The only problem was the Indian chant music, which, in the manner of Indian chants, went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, etc. and got very annoying. But I assume it won't be on every time I'm there. Understated decorative details like this really make the atmosphere.



I love Edgar's, but not much natural light makes its way inside--the coziness is more suited to gloomy weather--so the Hampton Chutney Co. may be my cafe of choice on sunny days.

But it will compete with Cilantro, where we went for brunch yesterday, and where they do throw the whole front of the shop open. Beautiful. And I had the most amazing omelette ever. (Except for the chive flower one my mom makes--secret recipe.)

See my flickr page for more photos of today. Man, I hope the weather stays this way for some time!

This is a wonderful post.

How am I like Cho Seung-Hui?

As the insightful Mr. Keating says:
We all need to take responsibility. We are all a part of this world in which individuals are driven to commit such horrifying acts. We need to ask ourselves not “how could he do something like this?” but “How could I do something like this?”

Mike reminds us to watch the rhetoric being tossed about:
in the early articles i read on the subject, the killer was referred to as a "south korean national" and "legal permanent resident alien" more times than as "student." ... in this case, the language chosen to describe the Other equally serves the purpose of identifying the self, and these labels demonstrate a clear nationalistic and xenophobic objective.

Xenophobia. For a country built on immigration, don't we already have enough of that? Doesn't the world already have enough of it?

We all need to watch our words and our actions, lest we allow this tragedy to generate more.

I don't intend to soapbox--I need to watch myself as much as anyone else.

Tiny babies!

Pillow2
Originally uploaded by ny_dionysia.

I went home over the weekend to see Booboo's baby puppies. Of course, I took a metric ass-ton of pictures.

They're sooooooooo sweet, and mom and all 8 babies are all healthy! They're less than a week old in these pictures; they won't open their eyes for about another 8 days. I cannot contain my enthusiasm for this event and am prone to fits of ecstatic squealing.

This is very sad.

Wow, way to take more steps in making all the music we hear completely homogenous and manufactured!

If this ruling holds, internet radio broadcasters will have to pay triple the current royalties on songs they broadcast. That's going to put many sites like the amazingly wonderful Pandora out of business. And it's retroactive so it'll put lots of sites out of business instantly. Listeners like you and me will have a harder time finding new music to enjoy, and new artists will have a harder time getting themselves heard. So everything will sound like Nickleback and Jessica Simpson. Hooray.

So I don't know what to do besides post this link:



And yes, I already emailed my representatives. For whatever good that will do. But Senator Kerry did play a role in getting the DirecTV-MLB exclusive deal tossed out, so maybe there's hope. (Well, my Senator is Hilldog, so I dunno...)

The pinnacle of inappropriate

I'm really sick of writing rant posts today, but some horrible things have happened.

The Virginia Tech massacre has, like these killing sprees always do, sparked new life into the debate on gun control. Meanwhile, someone at the White House is apparently jealous of all the attention Imus has received for his inappropriate remark, and has countered with this response to the awful events:

On this afternoon of national sorrow, President Bush offered his prayers to those who are suffering as a result of today's enormous tragedy at Virginia Tech, as well as his support for a full investigation.

His statement of grief came shortly after White House spokeswoman Dana Perino had voiced this sentiment, "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed."

-from Katrina Vanden Heuvel on the Editor's Cut blog at The Nation.

Wow. I don't think I've been this angry before at one single statement from the White House. I'm not the only one who thinks that's NOT OKAY, right? To blather on about the Second Amendment immediately after 33 people have been killed?

Now maybe this is Ms. Perino's grand faux pas, or that of whoever told her to make such a statement, not Dubya's. Or maybe it's been taken completely out of context and it wasn't a general statement, but a response to a reporter's question, like "Will this incident change the president's stance on gun control?" I'm trying to research that but I'm not finding much yet. And I like to at least pretend to have informed opinions rather than visceral responses. But I'm not so far removed from being a student, and it's hard to bottle up that primal, visceral response.

There's just so much about this we don't know yet. We don't even know who the attacker was--he blew in his face.

The slow response that ended up allowing 29 more deaths is perhaps the most infuriating part. But, as the campus po-po chief said, "We acted on the best information we had at the time."

Right. Why do you think these guys are campus security, and not actual law enforcement? Utter ineptitude.

But I guess they tried. What else can people do?

Living here isn't as awesome as you think.

Apparently I'm not done for today.

Just when you think everything is cool, something like this happens and scares you back into your mom's basement.

Oh, and not to mention this. I...don't know what to say.

Except that, seriously, I think I'll grab all my video games and move into my parents' basement. They have a big-ass projection TV down there.

The buzz is the bottom line

This post on the New York Times blog Diner's Journal is quite interesting.

The fact that she didn’t turn him down flatly confirms something we all suspect or know: the “entirely booked” restaurants that turn away a regular caller are seldom entirely booked. They have tables in reserve, because they don’t want to have to turn away a celebrity, a corporate titan, anyone who might be — or be connected to — the sort of diner who lands the restaurant a mention in Page Six or convinces the other diners in the place that they are supping at the very epicenter of fabulousness.

The comments are fun to read, too.

there is a guest where i work that had over two-hundred visits to us in the last year. if we re not saving a table for him when he wants it, then we are beyond foolish.

sometimes it s not about “buzz”. sometimes it s about the bottom line.

So aren't "buzz" and "the bottom line" the same thing here? Or at the least, very interconnected?

For myself, I avoid those "haute cuisine" places where reservations would be required. Unless someone else is going through the rigamarole...and paying. Because it's just not that much better than the cozy place down the street. Sure, once in a while I like a posh Frenchy place...but more often than not, it's the company that matters. And that means the people I came in with, not the glitterati three tables over. I don't understand what the hype is. Frasier is amusing, but what, exactly, would I get out of eating brunch at the same time and place as Kelsey Grammer? What appeal does "supping at the epicenter of fabulousness" really have? I'm more concerned about whether the place has real maple syrup or not.

Here's the irony: the cheap diner farther up on Broadway has it, but the more gentrified Edgar's doesn't. (That's okay, though, it keeps me from gorging on waffles every weekend.) So poshness isn't everything.

But where are these cozy places for regular people? Try Pisticci, a hidden gem of Italian at 125 LaSalle St, all the way up in Morningside past Columbia, and so worth the trip. It's crowded most nights, because it's really good, but you'll get a table within half an hour. And they don't take reservations. Save room for the chocolate amaretto mousse dessert. It's not cheap, but it's fair--less than half what you'd pay further downtown for Italian this good. There are a few bars in the area, too, and some other decent restaurants if the wait ends up being too long (but it shouldn't). Take a walk around. The student grass-and-watering-hole Toast is nearby, among other places we frequent. The area is nicer than you think.

...Which could bring up a whole 'nother gentrification rant, but I'm done for today.

Insert shriek of horror here.

What the hell is this shit!?

Well, okay, we know what it is. It's the design for the "New U.S. e-Passport." This one will have "updated security features" so the regime can keep more tags on us. Hooray. The question is: What exactly will this do for us?

...Besides make our eyes bleed?

The other question is: WHY IS IT SO FUGLY?

Look at this thing. It's got monuments and eagles and founding documents on every page! This isn't a passport, it's a clipart-happy right wingnut blog! Whatever happened to plain ol' utilitarian paper? It's good enough for the rest of the world. But nooo, not the glorious United States of America! Now our passports will make us look like asshats even more.

Even if these mysterious, unspecified "updated security features" are necessary, does it have to look like something John Ashcroft would tattoo on his ballsack?

Boy, am I glad now that I lost my passport last year. I had to renew it, so now I won't need to do so again for another 10 years or so. Hopefully, by then, they will have fired these sorry excuses for designers and gotten rid of this steaming pile of feces copy-pasted from Free Patriotic Clipart.

Or else, by then, we'll all just have microchips in our wrists, and I won't need to worry about involuntarily stabbing my eyes out when I renew my passport.

Today's puppy picture!

Dinner
Originally uploaded by ny_dionysia.

Another from my dad of Booboo and her sweet babies! "Iz it can be yum yums tiem now?"

Special Billy

Being a Mac-head (actually, I'm not sure what you call Mac fans...so maybe I'm not much of one), I was convinced for a long time that Bill Gates and MicroSoft were trying to destroy the world. I'm still convinced that the majority of the business world uses Windows because the IT departments keep it that way: Macs run so smoothly that if everyone used them, IT at most companies would be one person working part-time. By now, I'm grown up enough to know that Bill Gates isn't evil incarnate, but just a geek with a very good business model that has made him very, very, very, very rich. (The dubious honor of evil incarnate goes to pudgy old white guys like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rove.)

Whatever respect I might have had for him, however, is diminishing a little after reading this Times article about his imaging company, Corbis. Why is he hoarding all these images to himself like some kind of film-obsessed pack rat? Is he bitter that his business model (according to the Times, "Mr. Gates started Corbis in 1989 with the idea that people would someday decorate their homes with a revolving display of digital artwork") for Corbis, unlike MicroSoft, didn't work out? Apparently, Corbis has a collection of over 50 million photographs to which it owns the rights. Less than 1 million of these are digitally available and those that are cost an arm, a leg, and several souls. Corbis owns the rights to pictures that most of the world recognizes: Marilyn Monroe with the skirt malfunction, Albert Einstein making the goofy face. You know what I'm talking about without me linking to those, don't you? Well, I can't anyway, because Corbis owns them. Alright, well, most things are owned by somebody or other. However, there are millions of pictures that Corbis isn't even making available. To me that seems, paradoxically, both incredibly selfish and a bad business move.

Anyway, that's not the stupidest part here. This is the really special part:

"The prints and negatives from Otto L. Bettmann’s archive, as well as those from a few smaller collections, are kept 220 feet underground in a former limestone mine in rural Pennsylvania."

Let's look at that again.

Archives of film negatives and photographs... kept underground. IN A FORMER LIMESTONE MINE.

...Brilliant. Did Billy think of this all by himself?

Another corgi!

clover-6wks01
Originally uploaded by phobia.garden.

I can't stop thinking about puppies, so, um... MOAR!

(Pic not mine.)

PILE O' BABIES!!!!!!

PILE O' BABIES!!!!!!
Originally uploaded by ny_dionysia.

My brother sent me this pic from his cellphone, thus much improving my day.

BABY PUPPIES!!!!!!!!!!!

BABY PUPPIES!!!!!!!!!!!
Originally uploaded by ny_dionysia.

Gyp's puppies were delivered this morning!

There are 4 boys and 4 girls, all looking healthy! Mom is recovering from a C-section but she's doing fine too. My dad took this picture; they're just a few hours old here!

I'm taking Thursday and Friday off this week, and going home to my folks' house to see them! No amount of o(^v^)o smileys or exclamation points can do justice to my ecstatic spasticness. I can't wait to bury my face in a pile of puppies!!

For REAL football... and Kokopelli

I haven't been out to many new places lately. I'll have to write about a couple local spots (local being within walking distance of W 87th and Riverside).

The closest bar to our humble abode is The Parlour, a stereotypically Irish football pub on W 86th just west of Broadway. And by football, of course, I mean what we Ugly Americans call "soccer." You can stop by here in the morning for brunch and UK football games. And they make a mean Irish coffee. Seriously. The coffee drinks here are just to die for. I can't speak for the food; not being a fan of either proper or American football, I haven't sampled a meal there. For me it's the perfect spot to get a drink when I want to get out of the house, but not too far. The crowd seems pretty tightly knit, though, enough that it's slightly uncomfortable to go alone. Bring a friend or a passel of fanatic British Islanders. And, if you can keep yourself from quaffing Guinness the way the atmosphere expects you to, definitely have a coffee drink.

Over at W 83rd and Columbus Ave, Cilantro serves up fine Southwestern fare. Not Mexican! Don't call it Mexican! It's Southwestern! But you won't make the mistake once you see the charming Anasazi and Navajo-inspired decor. For the less spicy-inclined there are also plenty of New American classics. The array of huevos rancheros, omelettes, french toast, and belgian waffles (which I really need to try) make this a wonderful place for brunch. There are some tasty cocktails too; the friendly service and well-rounded menu have made me eager to try each meal of the day here at some point. And the prices aren't too bad either. The place lives up to its namesake, a yummy herb.

More chocolate!

Jake
Originally uploaded by selfishlyspoken.

You never can have enough chocolate.

(Pic not mine.)

Chocolate!!

Puppy!!!!
Originally uploaded by Gail Johnson.

Just like Valentine's Day and Halloween, Easter is clearly all about chocolate.

This kind of chocolate, known as the chocolate lab, will save you lots of calories. You don't eat it, you snoooooogle it!

(Pic not mine.)

Bigger bitrate ≠ better sound

This is another rant post. Until the weather stops yelling "Psyche!" and actually gets warm enough to be outside, I'm not going to have much else to say. Anyway, The Slate addresses what I had been thinking before.

With the deal between iTunes and EMI, the DRM-free EMI music available will be 30¢ more per track than other music on iTunes. I thought that was just a jab at the consumer by charging more for DRM-free music, but Kevin pointed out that in addition to no DRM, the bitrate of the tracks is twice as high. That is, it's 256kbps as opposed to the standard 128kbps.

My first thought when I read that was: does that really make a difference? The Slate has answered my question. Their verdict is that there is a difference, but not a very perceptible one. Going from 92 to 128 kbps makes a much bigger difference to the human ear than does doubling a compression rate of 128kbps. By the time you get to 128, anything above that isn't a very noticeable improvement. It's the same as JPGs. When you have a low quality JPG, it's very noticeable. Make the compression rate higher, and you increase the file size by adding more information to the picture, giving you better quality. But you get to a certain point where it looks enough like the original Photoshop document that no matter how much more you increase the file size beyond that point, it's not going to make a noticeable difference.

The Slate also makes an interesting note that it's the codec--or the method of encoding an audio file into MP3 format--that makes the difference in sound. Before the MP3 format, audio files were unusably huge. (Now, with iPods designed to carry around video as well, we could easily tote around the raw AIFF files ripped clean from the CD, but I don't know anyone who does that.) Encoding into an MP3 simply throws out most of the sound information that the human ear doesn't actually notice. This effectively makes the file small enough to use. It's the codec that decides what information to keep and what to throw away. A sucky codec will throw out too much good information: Even if you encode at 512kbps, a sucky codec will give you a tinny, nasty MP3. This is why some of my oldest MP3 files that I downloaded on Napster back in the day sound crappy on my 2005 iPod. They were made with old codecs and the shiny new(er) iPod reveals the crappy sound. But those masterpieces of 90s J-pop have the exact same 128kpbs bitrate as the Keane album I recently bought on iTunes. The new stuff just has a better codec, not a better bitrate!

So it's as I thought. Increasing the bitrate is just an excuse to charge more for DRM free files. So not only are they charging more for something that should be a feature of the product in the first place; they're also attempting to disguise that fact by adding a bogus "increase in quality." Most people will look at that and think double the bitrate means twice as good sound quality. Well, unless your ears are as good as your dog's and you and dropped several hundred dollars on your headphones, you won't even notice. I believe this is a deliberate attempt by EMI to confuse the consumer into believing they're actually paying more for a better product rather than for usage rights that The Man doesn't want us to have. How to beat this dick move? Don't pay those extra 30 cents per track--only buy entire albums that you want!

That's what I'll be doing. Of course, to show The Man that it is definitely preferable to have my music without DRM, I'll try to buy more EMI albums than other stuff. Regardless of how many dick moves surround it, it's still a good move to do away with the DRM.

Corgi post!

Willow
Originally uploaded by jeffronicus.

Welsh corgis are quite adorable. Something about the ears and the short little legs, I think.

(Pic not mine.)

Thanks, Senator Kerry!

He may not have been accessible enough to win the election in '04, but Senator Kerry has redeemed himself as an ally of the common man. Or rather, the common fan.

Earlier I complained about how Major League Baseball had signed with DirecTV to only offer their Extra Innings package, pretty much the only way to see games if you don't live in your team's area, exclusively through the News Corp.-owned satellite service. Cable tried to keep up but MLB was asking that they match what DirecTV paid--$700 mil. Steep, right? Negotiations apparently stalled. This meant that we would no longer be able to see the all-important Sox games on iN Demand, and we would have to go to Standings pretty much every time we wanted to see one. Not a terrible prospect, but expensive. And not so great for weekdays.

So then Senator John Kerry (perhaps a maligned-feeling out-of-town fan himself?) stepped up to the plate (yeah, I went there) and urged the FCC to start an investigation. Obviously, offering the package exclusively through one service smacked of antitrust violations. He didn't just leave it up to the dubious mercy of the FCC, though; Kerry also pushed MLB to continue negotiations with the cable companies and iN Demand. And it was just announced tonight that they were able to strike a deal: MLB lowered their asking price for the Extra Innings package, which benefits both DirecTV (who will also pay the lower price) and all the fans who would have been deprived. Score!

The article says the deal has yet to be officially signed, but games will be shown on iN Demand starting tomorrow! (Should have been tonight but it took time for the cable to get it back into the system.) Of course, my dad won't be happy until somebody offers NESN in HD outside of Boston. After all, what good is an HD TV, if not to see guys in uniforms scratching their nuts in glorious digital detail?

Now if only Matsuzaka's first game wasn't in the daytime, dammit! Still considering playing hooky from work tomorrow to watch it. Sure feels like I did enough work today to deserve it.

I really want to see this game. Daisuke Matsuzaka is a right-hand pitcher who until this winter was on the Japan League's Seibu Lions, to whom the Red Sox paid $50 mil for the right to talk to him--so he must be something. He's the first Japanese pitcher since they had Hideo Nomo in 2001, and seriously, this guy's so cuuuute! Not like hotpants-cute, more like puppy cute. Adorable. Here's some more stuff on him, complete with cute manga graphics and informative graphics. ソックス頑張れ！

Warm and fuzzy.

Puppy
Originally uploaded by a0k1.

Watch the news, read a non-fiction book, the world seems like such a horrible, disgusting place.

But when you see something like this, don't you feel like maybe things are okay?

I do.

(Pic not mine.)

White wall

White wall
Originally uploaded by ny_dionysia.

I don't know why I like this picture. The composition is nothing special and I can't even really figure out what the subject was supposed to be. The light, I guess, because what I really like is the light... in the sky, off the windows; and in the bottom window you can see the reflection of the building across the street, which the sun was hitting directly at the time.

My reactions to various and sundry

So it looks like the recording company EMI Group will be selling DRM-free music on iTunes. That's awesome. That's not just a step--it's a huge leap in the right direction. A leap forward and a leap for consumer rights.

I'm not disputing that. But the price of a non-DRM song owned by EMI will be $1.29, while pretty much all songs in the iTunes store have been $.99. Am I alone in thinking that paying an extra 30% for the right to fully use something I purchase is a tad, well, absurd?

No, it's not as absurd as CD prices. It's not as absurd as DRM to begin with. And the absurdity is certainly mitigated by full albums being offered at iTunes's standard $9.99. But paying 30 cents more per song for no DRM when I only want one or two tracks feels like the leaping is being followed by sniggering all the way to the bank. "OK, you can have your music without DRM. But guess what? We're still The Man, and you're still the little guy, so pay up."

And it's ridiculous that they're offering everything in their catalog EXCEPT the Beatles' work without DRM. Cute, real cute. "You can have all our stuff without DRM ... BUT NOT THE MOST POPULAR STUFF EVER. NOT YOURS." As if anyone who listens to music doesn't know at least several Beatles songs by heart--are you going to start charging us for having it committed to memory, too? When I read about this, I thought the Beatles' stuff should start going public domain soon, but I erred: apparently it'll be 70 years after Paul or Ringo, whoever survives longer, shuffles off this mortal coil; unless of course EMI files a copyright extension, which they certainly will, and which I'm not sure should be legal. But anyway.

Well, I'll be trying to avoid not buying full albums (or any Beatles music ... but my dad already has it all on CD, and on vinyl) to show what I think of that. And I'm enjoying imagining the looks on the faces of the record execs when they got wind of that news. Probably something on a spectrum between "Another massively devastating terrorist attack on American soil?" and "Did I just shart myself in a shareholder meeting?"

Meanwhile, all the movie companies still want YouTube to die, or at least change its policies, despite the fact that seeing a movie on a 400 or so pixels square on my laptop, broken up into 12 or 15 downloads, is not the same experience as watching one on my TV. Or even better, my parents' wall projector TV. And guess what? My parents, and even I, are still willing to pay for that. So are a lot of other people. Get a clue, Hollywood. Why don't you stop buying your lawyers beach houses and use your money to make some good movies? Or is that too much to ask?

In other news, this is pretty amusing. It's funny because soooo many people think it's not funny. The meaning is so obvious it's hard to understand why anyone would be offended by it, besides the so-called Obamamaniacs. For some reason this is hard for people to understand, but it's not making fun of Jesus or Jesus freaks, or even conservatives. Michelle Malkin obviously doesn't get it; otherwise she'd quit it with her cutesy patronizing sighs, and recognize it as the cynical remark it is--one she should agree with, in fact. This doesn't even have anything to do with the "My Sweet Lord" (which itself was obviously a comment on the commidification of Easter by candy companies, and by extension consumerism at large, et cetera) beyond the Jesus-sculpture part. (Was people's problem with the chocolate Jesus mostly with the Naked Jesus Penis part? Anyway...)

Clearly, "Blessing" is making fun of the people who see Obama as this Chosen One who will step in come 2009 and become the country's savior. Maybe Hercules would have been a more apt metaphor: like the upteenth bastard of Zeus with the barn full of shit, he'll magically clean up the mess that the current regime has made. Yeah, he sounds like he means to do some good stuff if he's elected, but to live up to some of these hyper-optimists' expectations he really would need supernatural powers. Well, I'm only rephrasing the artist:

"All of this is a response to what I've been witnessing and hearing, this idea that Barack is sort of a potential savior that might come and absolve the country of all its sins," Cordero said. "In a lot of ways it's about caution in assigning all these inflated expectations on one individual, and expecting them to change something that many hands have shaped."

More amusingly, isn't the artist out of the same school who did that piece where you walk on the American flag and write in a book? Something like "The proper way to show respect for the flag"? I can't find a link for it because I don't know the artist or the title. But it makes me want to go to the School at the Art Institute of Chicago ... though I'll be the first to admit I couldn't art myself out of a paper bag.

Well, that was enough ranting. I promise to post about bars, puppies, or weird photos next time.

It's WTF time!

There's a lot of neat stuff out there, so I've joined Technorati.

Technorati Profile

Procrastination, baby.

Aaaaaaaaand... Puppy post!!

Puppy love
Originally uploaded by dshearer.

It's Monday, we all need puppy love. (I know it's Monday because I've spilled liquids on my desk at least twice today.)

(Pic is not mine.)

Caption'd!
"CHOMP I has ur face!"
".........K" *lick*

Memorial

Memorial
Originally uploaded by ny_dionysia.

The weather was nice a couple weeks ago. It was nice last week too, but then decided to go back to winter. It's quite enough to drive one insane.

This pic has been on my flickr page for a few days but I still like the effect I got in Photoshop, so I'm posting it here. (Mostly, I'm bored at work...) The straight line of the flagpole messes it up though... I keep thinking it's a glitch in the photo. But it's kinda cute how you can only see the edge of the flag. Anyway, this is a memorial in Riverside Park around 90th St. but I'm actually not sure what it memorializes. WWII dead, I think, maybe a previous war.

The presence of the flag in the picture urges me to make a political comment, so: What we really need is a memorial to our civil liberties and the government's checks and balances which have fallen to this administration. ...Administration? More like "regime." Seriously, I think that all the time--isn't "regime" a more apt word to describe the W years? Of course, it's just a coincidence that when you say the word "regime," a phrase that comes to mind is "fascist regime." Just a coincidence.

/end stereotypical East-coast liberal bitchiness.

Bonus discussion question: If such a memorial as I just mentioned were to be built for real, what do you think it should look like?

A lonely pursuit

I live in New York; I was born and raised upstate. But my dad is from New Hampshire and my significant other grew up in Boston suburbia. If I was anything other than a Red Sox fan, the former would disown me and the latter would dump me. Do I object? No. The Yankees are overpaid whores.

I'm not one for in-depth analysis (talk to my man if you want a bottomless well of that) but I like baseball because it's a great excuse to drink and yell. And the rules are easier for me to comprehend than those of (American) football.

Supposedly you can find anything in NYC, but it's harder than one might think to find Red Sox bars. There used to be a perfect one called Harrison's at Amsterdam and 79th—good food, decent beer and full bar, and really close to us—but to my utter chagrin and extreme dismay, it closed last summer and moved to the Financial District, of all places. One would think that it closed because they were priced out of the area, but then why would they move to Wall Street? I can only assume they said SCREW YOU to the "poor" UWS and went downtown to serve the more lucrative clientele of Harvard Business School graduates. Well SCREW YOU right back! Yeah, I'm still really mad about that. Do not go to a bar called Harrison's. Unless you live in that area, I guess, and in that case, shouldn't you be spending your Goldman Sachs bonus instead of reading my lame blog?

Anyway, we've found a suitable substitute in the East Village. Standings is at 43 E 7th St., around the west corner from 2nd Ave. It's easy to miss; look for it on the right of Burp Castle (which shares the owners). It's far away, but fun. The crowd gets rowdier than in the relatively tame Upper West Side, and the bartenders are super friendly. There are good happy hour deals on a changing selection of tasty brews. (I think there's also wine, but no liquor or food. However, there are plenty of delis and takeout joints in the immediate vicinity. They even have a pile of delivery menus for you, and don't miss the free pizza on Friday nights and free bagels on Sunday!) And there are always game events. It's a Sox bar, but that doesn't mean it's unfriendly to fans of other teams. Unless, of course, you're partial to the whores in pinstripes.

But to date that's the only decent bar we've found where Sox fans feel welcome (that hasn't closed). There are people from all over the world here, not excepting Red Sox Nation by any means, but it sometimes seems lonely and futile... only seems that way, until we get over to Standings. The location is relatively far from our place, but quite near Little Tokyo, which does end up being convenient in a way.

We were planning on going there tonight to see the opening game, actually, but the other people who were to accompany us ended up having other things to do, so we are staying in. With the 6-pack of Magic Hat #9 I found on sale at Gristedes, this is the much more economic option. I'm not sure how healthy this is going to be, since Joe Morgan is one of the announcers so we have to drink every time he says something stupid, which probably means I should have the ambulance waiting outside like they do for frat parties.

Seriously, you cannot bash this man (Joe Morgan) enough. He's as dumb as Karl Rove is diabolical. This is a guy who, commentating (is that a word) the Baseball World Classic game between Japan and the Dominican Republic (or another Caribbean nation, I could be mistaken there), described the Japanese players as "cool and calculating" and the Latino players as having a lot of "fire and passion." Way to generalize with racial stereotypes!

But I'm getting off topic. Like I said, I'm not one for in-depth analysis, so I can't go on and on bashing him based on actual numbers like they do at the above linked blog FJM, but you can bash him enough just by listening to him talk; he contradicts himself enough. Why am I bashing this guy so much when this isn't even a baseball blog? Read FJM and this SF Weekly article to see why, if you dare.

Now I've got to keep from getting drunk long enough to help my man's little sister edit an AP English paper on The Great Gatsby. We'll see how this works out. I may turn her paper into a treatise on the mint julep.