Movie Review: Borat

I went and saw Borat over the weekend with my mom, and I have to say we were pretty disappointed. Not that it was a bad movie per se, but really I expected a lot more. The movie relied a lot more on locker room humor than anything particularly clever, and generally seemed to be firing off ten jokes a minute in the hope that one of them stuck. I have to admit though, I will be humming Borat's version of the Kazakh national anthem for the rest of the week...

Kazakhstan greatest country in the world
All other countries are run by little girls
Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium
Other countries have inferior potassium...

The Queen of Clean

Ugh, I'm running around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off so I'm not getting around to finishing any post of substance. I have learned one thing that I can share quickly though. I've been finishing painting my living room/kitchen* and discovered some rust stains in my (stainless steel) sink from tin cans I was using to soak paint brushes (plus there were some old ones, I think from soaking old baking pans. Anyway I scoured the net for advice and found this article. The "recipe" called for making a paste from lemon juice and cream of tartar and letting it sit in the sink for several hours. I was a bit skeptical at first, since this sounds more like something you would serve with fish, but it worked extremely well. I will check out more articles to see if I can find some other useful advice.

*I'd call it a great room but I wouldn't want to upset Mindy's delicate balance of humors

Gobble, Gobble

Well, true believers, I'm headed home for Thanksgiving on Wednesday so I probably won't put up any posts until I get back. Apparently some of you are too wrapped up in your own lives to make smart ass comments anyway, so perhaps this is not quite the loss it might seem. Hopefully my Fafarazzi team won't suffer too much from my absence.


Anyway, I'm hopping the Greyhound Wednesday morning and heading back to Madison. I think my uncle John is driving up from Illinois, and I'm sure there will be a couple mystery guests as well. As always our holiday plans include the following:


1. Cooking and eating a large Thanksgiving meal, mainly comprised of about 1,500 calories worth of turkey, with some mashed potatoes and corn on the side.
2. Busting out the festive Thanksgiving decorations, which basically involves salt and pepper shakers in the shape of acorns, napkins with turkeys on them, and the infamous Ziggy Thanksgiving decorations.
3. Watching football.
4. Watching an artsy-craftsy movie with my mom (I think she checked out Transamerica from the library, but I've already seen that one).
5. Visiting some sort of exhibit at the Historical Society.
6. A little bit of Christmas shopping.


Also on the docket this year will be discussions about some large purchases that I am thinking of making sometime in the near future (automobile, flat-screen TV, dining room table and chairs).

PAINTING UPDATE: Although I didn't have time to get it all finished, my great room (living room/dining room/kitchen) is now about two-thirds painted. Condos are somewhat obnoxious to paint, because there are a lot of doors, windows, and an air conditioner (hence wood trim) to paint around, plus cabinets and the kitchen island, not to mention an excessive number of nooks and crannies. Also, there isn't a lot of room to move furniture to. So far I've painted the entrance way, the long wall, most of the "window wall," and most of the island. I still have to paint the kitchen, the short wall, and the closet. I am not sure what I'm going to do about the space behind the refrigerator since it's very hard to reach and probably quite dusty. Then on to the bathroom.

OTHER NEWS: I also learned today that Blogger Beta allows you to import symbols from Word. I'm not sure if I was doing something wrong before, but BlogSpot used to either not paste anything or give me one of those generic squares. However, now I can write words with accent marks, such as élan or pièce de résistance, and use symbols such as the always useful pilcrow sign (¶). You might not be able to notice the change, but rest assured when I read my own blog I will do so with a thick French accent.

Oh Salvation Army Bell Ringers, How I Loathe Thee

For the most part, I really enjoy the holiday season. Fun presents, parties, friends and family, good cheer, that kind of stuff. However, there are a few parts of the holiday season that bug the crap out of me. My old nemesis used to be the Holidazzle Parade. When I first moved downtown, walking home from the Target Center when the Holidazzle was going on was a nightmare. It was almost impossible to cross Nicollet on foot, the skyway was always wall-to-wall packed (plus the skyway was less built up back then), and to go around it meant an additional eight blocks or so. Fortunately, between a couple additional skyways and a cordoned off path, the Holidazzle is no longer the impediment it used to be.

Now my main holiday annoyance is the ubiquitous Salvation Army bell ringer. In general, I am somewhat ambiguous towards the Salvation Army. Certainly they do a lot of good charity work, and I usually donate a lot of clothes, etc. every year. On the other hand, they do things like promote George Bush's faith-based initiatives in exchange for being able discriminate against homosexuals.

Anyway, let me first give kudos to Target Corp. for banning the geuzen from panhandling in front of their stores. It took a lot of balls to do that. I'm sure they knew they were going to catch a lot of grief, so obviously they must have had a good reason for doing it. And they did - most people hate the bell ringers. First off, that damn bell ringing is incredibly annoying and gives me a headache if I have to listen to it for more than a minute. Can you imagine working in a mall store that had a bell ringer stationed right outside of it for six weeks? I would go nuts. I can't quite decide where the bell ringer falls on the spectrum of beggery and shame-based extortion. Stop staring at me and trying to make me feel bad for not giving you the spare change in my pocket. Personally, I think I'm going to save that change up and buy some food for the local food shelf; you know, the one that DOESN'T try and shake me down ten times a day for a month and a half or spend half of my donation on administrative expensives?

UPDATE: Salvation Army bell ringers have hit a new low. In the IDS Tower, the bell ringer's bell does not have a ringer. The guy just stands there waving the bell back and forth with no sound because, well, there is no ringer. The first time I passed him I thought I was going deaf. Apparently the stores must have complained about the noise.

The Trials of Snake Boy

Some of you know that I went to India last January as part of a study abroad program for grad school. I've always wanted to go to India, in large part because I've had a lot of Indian friends my whole life. Plus, I like to travel to places that are really different from what I'm used to. If anyone wants to go to Thailand let me know, I hear it's very nice in January...

Anyway, I thought I would share some of my more memorable moments with you. Perhaps one of the best known stories from the trip involve our encounters with a kid who is only known as 'snake boy.' One of the most discomfiting things you will encounter if you go to India is the begging (bathrooms come in a close second), although Bangalore is not particularly tourist-ey so it isn't nearly as bad there as it is in places such as Delhi. Well, some people apparently know how to take this to the next level.

One day a couple of us were walking back to our hotel after visiting the HP campus and a kid, probably five or six years old, carrying a wicker basket, runs up to us all excited about something. He didn't speak English so we couldn't understand was he was saying. Anyway, he takes off the top of the basket revealing some long, brown coiled object. I didn't know what it was right away (honestly, my first thought was "why is this kid showing me a gigantic piece of poo?"), but upon closer inspection it had scales and was obviously a snake of some kind. The girls of course ran away screaming, but I was more bewildered because at the time I couldn't figure out what the hell he wanted.

It turned out that this kid apparently "works" this strip near the Leela Hotel, a rather swanky Indian palace looking place with some very upscale shopping, not far from our nice but not quite so swanky hotel. We concluded his gig was to basically extort money out of foreigners by scaring the crap out of them with his snake. We ran into him a number of other times, usually he would see us from a block away and come running with a huge shit-eating grin on his face. He must have been doing this for some time, because a lot of the security guards seemed to know who he was and tried to chase him away, and one of the locals came up and slapped him in the back of the head. I felt sorry for the snake though (a cobra, presumably de-fanged), because the kid kept trying to agitate it to make it more menacing-looking I guess, and the snake always had this "leave me alone, I want to lie in this basket" look on its face.

I don't think he ever got any money out of us, but we can only hope that not all Indians are this doggedly persistent, otherwise they are going to take over the world.

(NOTE: This is not an actual photo of snake boy, just a wannabe I pulled off of Google Images; however, if you can imagine him with the aforementioned shit-eating grin, chasing young women down the street, that should give you a rough picture of snake boy)

More Crap From the Bachelor: Rome

Sorry about the delay, but this week's Bachelor: Rome was even dumber than usual so I couldn't think of much to say. No surprises here, Lisa got the boot. In addition to her five year plan we also learned that she broke up with a long-term relationship three weeks before she applied for the show. That didn't bother me as much as her comment about how important it was that Lorenzo got her dog's seal of approval. In my experience, unless you've drop-kicked it across the room, I would say it would be quite a feat NOT to get a pug's seal of approval.

The show also tried to manufacture a lot of drama about Sadie accepting the apparently infamous "fantasy suite card," but the whole virgin thing is so last week.

Now we are down to Jen and Sadie. The smart money is on Jen, because through five episodes Lorenzo hasn't mentioned religion once.

God I can't wait for this show to be over. I'm kind of upset that the upcoming season of The Real World is on Wednesdays. That looks to be a much more interesting "reality" show. I have class on Wednesdays this semester and in the Spring. I have no idea why they picked Denver, they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel. I mean, was Toronto not available? Portland? Somewhere in Australia? This cast looks like a bunch of serious nutjobs, though, so they will probably make up for the locale.

Home Decorating 101

Well, my decorating spree continued last night as I revisited Pottery Barn and Hirshfield's. I had my friend Mindy (no, not that Mindy, the other one, from school... with the blog... no, I mean the blond one... no the other blond one, from North Dakota... no, she's cute and oh fuck off) come over to help me go over some color combinations because apparently when I try and find the color I want it ends up looking like French's Mustard when it's on my wall. Besides not wanting a color scheme that asks "do you want fries with that,"* I've noticed that if I want to use yellow I have to go a lot lighter or a lot darker because a neutral yellow doesn't seem to offer any contrast to my couch or most of the wood.

Anyway, the plan is slowly coming together. I've got a quart of a color called Montgomery White, which is not really a white or even really an off-white so I don't know how it got its name. It's a little hard to describe (somewhere between cream and tan?), so I'll upload a scan of the swatch later. I also got a sample container of Audubon Russet for my bathroom, which is currently a sky blue which looks nice but doesn't really match my (non-adjacent) bedroom. Anyway, I hope to get some of this paint slapped on this week so I'll let you know what it looks like once it's up.

Anyway my redecorating plans have changed somewhat. Besides moving some of the furniture around, the plan now is to get a dining room table and chairs and, to make up for the lost space, replace my TV stand** and tube TV with a wall mounted flat screen and a low book shelf. One other change that has to happen soon is my bed spread and duvet, which are light and dark blue respectfully and don't match my bedroom walls either. Plus, my cover sheet got caught on something in the washing machine and now has a rip down the center about a foot and a half long.

Of course, there are a lot of other things to do but those are the major ones. Besides picking up the paint, we also stopped at Pottery Barn and I exchanged the alarm clock I bought a week ago for one that actually works. Plus, after getting the Mindy seal of approval, I bought the dried artichokes I had my eye on last week. I still need a bowl to put them in, but with Pottery Barn prices I figured I would shop around.

*There is a similar story involving the paint in my bedroom, which I'll tell you another time
**By TV stand I mean an old desk. However, I was planning on replacing it with an actually TV stand but not any more.

The Smart Money Is On "Yes"

What Not To Wear: Pete Edition (Part IV)

I was continuing on a lot of my projects this weekend (redecorating, reloading my wardrobe, early Xmas shopping), and was out shopping this weekend, including a trip to the Mall of America. Besides picking up a lot of good stuff, my little adventure also reminded me of a number of pieces of fashion advice.

There are only two situations in life in which earnestly* wearing a bow tie is acceptable. The first is if you are a wearing a tuxedo, and even then a bow tie is a little passe - most modern gentlemen have appropriately substituted a black or white necktie instead. The second is if you are an old dude who wears a suit every day. I love these guys, they can get away with almost anything, as an example see the entry for Fedora, wearing. If you are not one of these guys you will look like a fool, or at best a candidate for the president of the campus Republicans. I have seen too many of these around the office lately. Please make it stop. For crying out loud, even Tucker Carlson has hung up his bow tie. In a related story, please also get rid of your bolo ties.

Speaking of fedoras, I give a cautious thumbs up to cute women wearing fedoras. This is one of those fashion statements that can go horribly awry pretty easily so caution must be exercised. There should probably be some kind of fedora licensing agency. First off, you must believe that you actually look cool wearing a fedora. If you feel really uncomfortable people will pick that up, and it will ruin the outfit. You may need to wear your fedora around the house for several weeks until it starts to feel natural (unfortunately, the fedora trend will probably be over been then). I would also recommend having several of your friends vet the look before you wear it in public. If you are a guy, wearing a fedora will make you look like a prick so just don't go there.

One thing I was reminded of at the Mall was how bad lip rings look. Normally, I'm fine with most body piercing, tattoos, etc. but lip rings just look awful. I personally find them painful to look at, like you got some kind of fish hook stuck on your face.

Another disturbing trend I found was that men's athletic clothes have somehow gotten worse. Unless you want a plain gray shirt, pretty much the only thing you can buy nowadays that is made out of cotton is socks. I am not sure why major athletic companies have declared war on cotton clothing,** but my guess is that is has more to do with the profit margins on cotton clothing rather than a desire to keep me free of sweat. Besides being expensive and usually ridiculous looking, there are two problems with all of these synthetic fabrics used in athletic clothing. Although they do help get rid of sweat nicely, unfortunately they are all too good at retaining smell. I had one tank top a couple years ago that after a while just smelled like ass and there was nothing to do but throw it out. The other problem with a lot of this stuff is that it is tight and stretchy which, unless you have a six-pack and no body hair, is not a good look. Also, you may be tempted to run around yelling "We must protect this house!"

Lastly, I also give my seal of approval to Kuhlman's. They apparently have a number of locations in the Twin Cities now - I've been to the ones downtown and in the Galleria, but they also have outlets in Calhoun Square and the Albertville Mall. Although a lot of their clothes can only be described as hipster dofus (ala Kramer), you will find a lot of clothing at Kuhlman's that is unique, fashionable, and reasonably priced. You won't get that "I've seen this all before" feeling, plus they change their stock with relative frequency. The European sizing takes a little getting used to, but the cuts are much leaner than typical American dress shirts, so you won't have that huge swath of fabric to tuck into the back of your pants (which will inevitably turn into a huge poof). Also, most of their dress shirts are french cuffs so you will probably need to pick up some cuff links as well but the silk ones are pretty inexpensive. You can't get your entire wardrobe there, but I would definately add Kuhlman's to your shopping list. Ladies - any opinions on their women's clothing?


*Wearing it as part of a Halloween or other costume is also acceptable, such as a Chippendale's outfit - not that I know anything about that
**Under Armour actually had a display that read "cotton is the enemy"

Stephen Colbert - 2006 White House Correspondence Dinner

In case you haven't seen it, here is Stephen Colbert's address at the 2006 White House Correspondence Dinner. It's long, about 20 minutes in total so I wouldn't try to watch it at work.

People with Bad Bathroom Etiquette

Hello gang, I've been working a mega-post so I haven't been blogging too much the last week. Anyway, I thought I would get back to my ongoing series, The Seven Habits of Highly Annoying People. Today's topic: poor bathroom etiquette. Although Mindy seems to think that women need some help as well, men are clearly winning the battle of disgusting bathroom habits. We've already covered the topic of bathroom reading materials, but today I was reminded of several other of these annoying habits at once, which brings to my first topic which is...

When you need to use a stall in a bathroom that has more than two, please use one of the stalls that is NOT next to the one I am in. Obviously during certain periods of the day, this cannot be helped. Most of the bathrooms where I work have four stalls. Is there really a compelling reason that even though all the other stalls are open, you chose the one right next to me? I picked the one on the end for a reason; namely, so that it is not next to you.

Besides trying to avoid the inevitable olfactory assault, I also have to take issue with some of the sounds that a lot of guys make while using the bathroom. The most mysterious one is the grunting and heavy breathing. I mean, did you just run up five flights of stairs to use the bathroom on my floor? Are you passing a kidney stone? Do you need medical attention? What the hell is going on that you are so short of breath, that's what I want to know. The other source of unwanted noise comes from what I can only describe as your explosive bowel movements. I mean I know we all get backed up every once and a while, and I'm sorry if you have Crohn's Disease of IBS or something, but seriously maybe you should think about changing your diet or seeing your doctor or something.

Then of course there is the ubiquitous problem of not washing your hands. Fortunately, this is not as prevalent as one might think. At work, I'd give the men about an 80% pass rate for hand washing, although it is probably much lower in public bathrooms at say, the Mall of America. One trend I can appreciate is restaurants (e.g. Chino Latino, Azia) who have finally realized that putting the washbasins OUTSIDE the bathroom will greatly increase the likelihood of men washing their hands. Shame is not always a bad thing, people. Even a giant slob is going to wash his hands if a bunch of chicks are standing there. Unfortunately, not all bathroom engineering goes so well. For reasons unknown, most bathroom doors seem to open inwards, meaning you are forced to use the handle when leaving. If you ever find yourself designing a public bathroom, please either use outward-opening doors or (if you have enough space) do the one thing that airports do right: just don't use a door.

There is another bathroom habit that bothers me, although this might be a quirk particular to me. Am I crazy, or is it just plain weird when someone pulls the entirety of their pants down below their ankles? This just seems, I don't know, very Forrest Gump or something, kind of like buttoning the top button of your shirt.

In other news: I know the waste basket looks pretty full, but the paper towel you just used does not belong on the floor.

Similarly offensive behavior has also been spotting in men's locker rooms. Therefore, I am forced to issue the following decrees:

Decree 1: When you shave in the locker room, please make an attempt to clean out the sink. As much as I enjoy seeing an entire sink filled with your used shaving cream and stubble, others may not appreciate it as much.

Decree 2: Please stop walking around the locker room naked. Nobody wants to see that.

Decree 3: Please do not leave your anal toys in the sauna. In fact, please refrain from any kind of sexual activity in the locker room. Thank you.

Decree 4: If your used, bloody band-aid comes off in the shower, please throw it out. Picking it up and putting it on the soap dish does not count as throwing it out.

Decree 5: When I am taking a shower, please do not stare at me.* You are standing one yard away. I can see you. Really.

*For you ladies, in case you didn't know, men's locker rooms never have individual showers with curtains. We have one big room with some shower heads.

From the Mouths of Rappers

I felt like I had some Deep Sea scroll or shit.

- Rapper Busta Rhymes, describing how he felt about Robert Greene's book The 48 Laws of Power

If Not Now, When? (Update 1)

Well, three weeks into my If Not Now When? program I know a lot of you are dying for an update.

Yesterday, I weighed in at 193.5 lbs, down from 199 lbs. three weeks ago. I don't think I've actually lost 5 1/2 pounds, some of that is probably bloat. I've noticed that when you switch to eating healthy foods your body kind of freaks out. At first you have some problems digesting all the fiber and you retain water for a while, and then you adjust to smaller, more frequent meals. My next step is tell my mom to hide all the junk food when I go home for the holidays.

This weekend, I also got moving on Project Redecorate My Place. I picked up some paint supplies and started moving on my "earth tones" theme, but my fall-leaves-yellow turned out to be closer to French's mustard - so it's back to the drawing board. At least having an ugly wall and tape all over the place will prevent me from sitting on my laurels for too long. I also found a really nice clock on sale at Pottery Barn, but I have to exchange it because it won't let me set the alarm.

Part of being healthy is having a lot of different foods to eat, otherwise you get bored and start eating food out a bag. It's not easy to cook a lot when you live downtown by yourself (ladies - feel free to invite yourself over) but you learn to make due. Right now, I'm working on perfecting my turkey chili recipe. It's good bachelor food because it can be eaten over a couple of days and still taste good. Here's my recipe:

Turkey Chili

Ingredients:
1 1/4 lbs. lean ground turkey
1 can dark red kidney beans
1 can black beans
1 can tomato paste
1 can tomato sauce
Several dashes of Cholula hot sauce*
Freshly Ground Pepper**
Cumin
Crushed Red Pepper
Garlic
Onion
Basil
Oregano

Preparation:
1. Grill the ground turkey until it starts to turn lightly brown
2. Mix the rest of the ingredients into a large pot, add the turkey, and cook at a low heat.
3. Leave on the stove for about 20 minutes, stirring frequently.
4. See, wasn't that easy?

This will make about four large bowls of chili. I would not recommend eating them all at once, because it's something like 1800 calories, 195 grams of protein, and 65 grams of fiber.

*The best hot sauce on the market today.
**Seriously, once you start to use freshly ground pepper you won't go back. The crap pepper you get from the store is mostly filler.

Lord of the Nerds

Recently, I discovered to my delight (or horror, whatever) that I am not the only huge nerd who organizes most aspects of his life on Excel spreadsheets. During a recent discussion of class schedules for grad school, it came out that both Becky and Mindy both have their class schedules mapped out nicely on an Excel document. I haven't gotten many details out of Mindy, but according to Becky her Excel doc is "color coded" and calculates the number of credits in each department (finance, accounting, strategery, etc). I do that manually, but besides the normal number-of-credits-left type calculations, I also have an automated GPA calculator that uses a vlookup table.

Besides using a lot of Excel documents at home (although most of my "list" type Excel documents have been migrated to a blog format for easier remote access) I also make a lot of Excel spreadsheets at work. Most of them are actually pretty simple in Excel terms (formulas, vlookup tables, references, charts, simple macros, etc.) but you would be surprised how mystified some people are by things like conditional formatting. One thing about Excel and computer programs in general is after a while you get a good feel what what the program is capable of doing. The program on the left was something I created to disaggregate a long string of data into its component parts, so that it could be sorted properly without having to do it manually. As the finishing touch, I assigned one of the macros to a picture of Mindy's dog Otis (Min: you thought I was joking didn't you?). Now all you have to do to run the macro is simply click on Otis.

Anyway, feel free to share your Excel nerd stories, or maybe your Excel-related questions.

Update: apparently Trish also possesses a color-coded spreadsheet for her classes at grad school, earning her the rank of Lt. Nerd, 1st Class.