Midaregami

My trusty Braun electric razor finally gave up the ghost a few weeks ago, and as my stubble grew beyond “rugged” into “vagrant” (bringing with it a marked lack of approval from She Whose Opinion Matters) the need became pressing enough that I finally started looking at replacement razors.

I recalled that my 5-year-old Braun had been in the seventy dollar range, so I warned Herself that it might well cost a pretty penny. “I don’t care,” she told me. “Just get one.”

So I investigated the Amazon reviews of various razors, and was introduced to an intriguing concept—the self-cleaning razor.

Cleaning my razor is something I don’t enjoy, so the idea of having it done for me sounded attractive. It had a certain Jetsons-style “Life… in the future” appeal. My razor would also be a robot—that cleans itself! Boss!

The new album? Orphans. Three discs: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards.

You know, when I first heard Tom Waits (ol’ Chris played The Black Rider for me), I hated him. Yet now I can’t imagine feeling that way; barely understand the person that wouldn’t have appreciated this art. Orphans is the flip side of Brian Wilson’s Smile—a dark, sprawling, smoky journey across America, through both time and space, with moments of joy, despair, and profound beauty.

You need to stop what you are doing and listen to this god-damned album. Put it on repeat. Love it. Live it.

Well, maybe don’t live it. That would be a hard life.

For the tiny percentage of people out there willing to pay for a web browser, I should point out that OmniWeb is now on sale. I paid thirty bucks back in the 5.0 days (it’s 10 through November), which is worth it for the vertical thumbnailed tabs alone, to say nothing of workspaces and per-site preferences. Oh, also it doesn’t have that insufferable brushed-metal look that Safari uses.

I finished off my career as a bike messenger, fittingly enough, with the Halloween Alleycat, in which I placed second to last, but that’s one place better than last.

I didn’t get any decent pictures, and the event itself was pretty unremarkable (Kendall won, of course, starting off by getting from Downtown to Waikiki and back in 15 minutes; the guy’s an animal, a wolverine or something) but I had a good time and got another spoke card, which is really all I was in it for to begin with¹.

My newsie costume was a hit, and I’m still vaguely irritated that I didn’t get extra points for coming in a costume. Next alleycat (in December, apparently), I’m going to shoot for finishing mid-pack. That’d be pretty sweet.

Finally, I have a couple more observations about messenger work.

• I don’t like security guards. They exist essentially to enforce extra rules and policies beyond the law, which is apparently not good enough for people. The whole of a messenger’s advantage (over other delivery methods) relies on the mostly unspoken but understood fact that we can bend the rules—chiefly the rules of traffic, the rules of what constitutes a legitimate cycling area, and the rules of where one can reasonable lock a bike. This places security guards and bike messengers and odds with each other, and just as I’m sure they wonder why I don’t just follow the rules, I wonder why they don’t understand that my very job is predicated on not following the rules.

• My urban riding habits have been totally ruined by messenger work. I split lanes, run red lights, pop curbs (both up and down), and generally ride like a goddamn maniac, and I don’t even mean to. I used to be such a polite rider and now I simply can’t be bothered. I know it’s a bad habit; it reflects poorly on cyclists in general (because, of course, to a motorist, I’m not just one rider, but all riders) and yet I can’t seem to go back.

• Although it seemed to annoy the other riders no end, I never tired of being asked of I was a bike messenger. When the answer was “yes,” their inevitable impressed response was always fun. And if they went to so far as to ascertain that I just worked downtown, their shock at the revelation that our range is anywhere between Kahala and the airport (essentially the whole of Honolulu proper) was doubly pleasing. I’ve never had people be flat-out impressed with what I do at any other job, and it was a singular pleasure.

I will need to figure out a regular riding schedule now, so as not to squander what meager level of fitness I’ve acquired. I recently rode up Tantalus, so I’m considering doing it two or three times a week, maybe even doing a couple of laps if I’m feeling, y’know, saucy.

¹ Spoke cards are visible markers of indie bike cred, plus this one has a totally wicked demon with a messenger bag riding a single-speed—I think it’s safe to say that that crosses over from “radical” territory into “badical.”

I have (finally!) had occasion to read The Tale of Genji with the sort of attention that the work deserves.

And because I apparently can’t help making these sorts of cross-media connections, It occurred to me that Apple Blossom from The White Stripes’ “De Stijl” album makes an eerily good Genji/Murasaki song.

What do you, the viewers at home, think?

 Apple Blossom [2:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We had an earthquake, but the only casualty was productivity, and the only consequence boredom.

Also, a short review of Gunbuster 2. To summarize: Stupendous. A++ would watch again.

 Hijinks Ensue Ep.7: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

See, it’s stuff like this that makes me feel like Ruby would be a neat language to use in a MUSH-like context. If only social/roleplay MU*ing weren’t a dying art…

Got this from Hunter, and have been meaning to link it ever since.

You get a separate Idol Card for each idol you start; it’s got her stage name on there, along with a little grayscale picture of her. The surface of the cards is completely re-writable; after each game, the machine refreshes the card with your current data, so that you can show your proudly show off your idol’s picture to your friends, family, and co-workers.

Horrifying and kind of awesome all at once.

 #!/usr/bin/env ruby -w
 # This tells me in no uncertain terms how many pages I need to 
 # get through in a given day in order to meet a deadline, and 
 # offers a Valentino Rossi-like GO!!!!!! by way of encouragement.

 # Require the fancy-pants linguistics library
 require 'rubygems'
 require 'linguistics'  

 Linguistics::use( :en )

 # Init constants
 SecondsInWeek = 60 * 60 * 24 * 7
 SecondsInDay = 60 * 60 * 24 
 Deadline = Time.gm(2006, "Dec", 15, 12, 00, 1)
 Today = Time.now
 TimeLeft = Deadline - Today
 TimeLeftAdj = TimeLeft - SecondsInWeek
 TotalPages = 403

 unless ARGV[ 0 ]
   puts 'What page are you on?'
   current_page = gets.to_i
 else
   current_page = ARGV[ 0 ].to_i
 end

 pages_left = TotalPages - current_page

 
 puts 'PAGES LEFT: ' + pages_left.en.numwords

 # Could just print the results of evaluation, but
 # that would be harder to write I mean read.

 ppday = pages_left / (TimeLeft / SecondsInDay)
 ppweek = pages_left / (TimeLeft / SecondsInWeek)
 ppweekadj = pages_left / (TimeLeftAdj / SecondsInWeek)

 puts 'AVERAGE PAGES PER DAY: at least ' + ppday.to_i.en.numwords
 puts 'AVERAGE PAGES PER WEEK: at least ' + ppweek.to_i.en.numwords
 puts 'ADJUSTED PAGES PER WEEK: ideally, ' + ppweekadj.to_i.en.numwords
 puts '-------> G O ! ! ! ! ! ! ! <--------'

I’m painfully aware that this is incredibly trivial, but it’s a big deal for me, so you hacker types can keep your derision to yourselves.

It’s hot. Avatar and arrogance errata, followed by tabletop role-playing games I’d like to play, but maddeningly, can’t.

 Hijinks Ensue Ep. 6 [4:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download