Several Thoughts

A couple of things have occurred to me, none of which is large enough to make a full post out of.  I guess this is what Twitter's for, but I can only manage so many Web-2.0 life outlets at once.



I'm currently in Nice, CA, a town on the beautiful Clear Lake, for Xmas.  While I always enjoy coming here, these trips usually start with a rude awakening when we stop in at the grocery store.  To wit: this place is pretty rural.  To witter: there are some serious hicks around here.  To wittest: in the parking lot there was this guy standing around by his truck wearing a red long-sleeve shirt with the word "FRISCO" on it.  I wonder if that's where he's from, or if he's just visited.

While in the store I surreptitiously took this picture of some giant cans, next to a bottle of Bubba Stubb's for scale.  The part of the rack shown here is about one tenth of the impressive whole.

I also took a picture of myself in a surprisingly excellent pork-pie hat, anomalously for sale in the office of the place we're staying.  I took several pictures actually, but believe it or not, this is the least blurry and terrible of them.

At some point in the near future I will be reviewing Doorways in the Sand, by Roger Zelazny.  A preview: the book is excellent if you've taken the precaution to read up about stereoisomers first.  The word stereoisocar happens in this book, but thankfully only once.

My dad and I have played a game based on our shared hatred of Jingle Bell Rock for a number of years now.  The goal of the game is to go from December 1 through Xmas Eve without hearing the song.  The only rule is that you can't do anything differently in order to avoid hearing it, so the only strategy in this game is to hope really hard.  I've only won once, last year, although I'm having cautious optimism for this year too.  The game got a lot easier once I started grad school, as I don't go out nearly as much as I used to, and shopping at Trader Joe's helps too because they don't have music.  I can still remember losing the game during my freshman year of college: I was walking into the dorm, past the desk, just at the end of some jolly Xmas tune or other, and when the song stopped there was a longer pause than usual.  I thought, "Wow, wouldn't it be terrible if this pause were to presage me losing the game utterly?"  And sure enough, after about 5 seconds Jingle Bell Rock started up, and without breaking stride I converted my normal walk into a walk of shame (the differences are subtle) and despondently returned to my room.

Flying yesterday out of Detroit, I was subjected for the first time to the full-body scan.  I will say this only: when they say you need to take everything out of your pockets, they aren't kidding.  I got a nice little pat down because I didn't bother with my driver's license and my handkerchief.  Guy didn't even offer to buy me a drink afterward.  Oh and also, I overheard one of the other security people reassuring a passenger that "it's not radiation".  I'm making a face as I type this.  Nitpicky, I know, but here goes: of course it's radiation, damn it, it's just not ionizing radiation.  High-frequency radio waves (an oxymoron if ever there was one) are radiation, by God, just not the bad kind.