It’s been about six weeks since my last “I will not eat out at every meal” fit which translates into a big day at Trader Joe’s.

I bought a bunch of stuff (celery and PB sticks, Salt and Vinegar chips) but while there I had the kah-razy (thank you Strong Bad) idea that I should try to make “Zatar.”

Zatar is a middle eastern sauce that goes over flatbread as a dipping souce. It’s very tasty and can be had in Sunnyvale, CA for dinner at “Dish Dash”, a Mediterranean place on Sunnyvale Ave. I highly recommend the dish, “Mo, King of Kebab.”

I snagged some baking supplies at the triple-B and left the 9th street center.

Now, TJ,s did not have my necessary spices so I headed over to the Safeway.

There I got everything except for this sumac. Now, if you’re thinking like me, sumac == ‘poison sumac’. Not so! Much like most nuts and berries, a non-toxic sumac exists and is a reddish berry that can be purchased at middle-eastern stores.

Needless to say, Safeway carried no sumac.

So i headed out to the Rainbow Grocery Cooperative and lo and behold they had it. The co-op was a lot like my collegiate co-op, the Wheatsville Co-op off of Guadalupe in Austin.

How is it that all co-ops all smell the same upon entry?

I then came home and followed this recipe. I made the bread and the Zatar and made a big doughy lunch. It was quite tasty and I was pleasantly surprised. I don’t think that the sumac was the definitive ingredient, so if you can’t find it you can probably go without and still get the flavor

I’ve been catching up on movies this weekend including Minority Report and Barfly . I really liked MP and thought that, while there was the Spielberg tacked-on ending at the end, it did not detract from the quality of the film.

Today I hung out, yet again, at Farley’s in the afternoon and made my traditional one and a half chapters of progress in After Virtue. Ethics is not really my bag (much more interested in Metaphysics) but it’s a challenge and that’s why I”m doing it.

Interlude

Interlude:

We live in an Emotivist culture characterized by the bureaucrat.  It was not always this way, contrary to the Emotivist claim.  It broke in the enlightenment era where man became conceived as independent from his social roles and where he became regarded as no longer a function object.  From this cascades a difference between is and ought, and the belief that factual premises cannot lead to evaluative conclusions.

The manager appeals to effectiveness, a myth.

We threw off the Aristotelian conception as a limiting factor to our development and awaited the day when social science would overcome the vagaries of our existence.  This science will never appear, moving from neo-Kantianism and utilitarianism to the Emotivist end.

So here we are, without any moral direction.  We are liberated of the telos, but are without the ability to speak objectively of morals, except in the forms of excuses (rights, unmasking) and fictions (effectiveness) which serve as fake moral guideposts in the Emotivist morass.  Currently, we have entered a period where we trade in referent-less moral symbols, without the tools for achieving moral success.

What sort of we are we to be?  Where do we go?

Epilogue to Yesterday

First things first it’s Steve Martin’s birthday today. I must have tuned into that psychic wave or something. Happy Birthday Steve. All the comments about you making crappy movies were merely meant as encouragment to keep doing stuff like Shopgirl and stop making movies that fail the Poster Test.

Family Branding, Family Ties (Tie-Ins)

Recently, when going to rate my buddies on AOL (more and more of whom are having professional photo-resumes and Playboy-quality spreads versus a Coolpix snapshot at a birthday), there was an article about how Ashlee Simpson is stepping out of the shadow of teen superstar sister Jessica Simpson.

It seems as if there is a real trend of pushing family ties as family brands… (more…)

In this entry I chronicle my feelings about Steve Martin and introduce the Steve Martin Poster Test

Steve Martin: SNL, “The Jerk”, “The Man with Two Brains”, “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” - pure comic genius.

After this foray he did some interesting meta-film films: “Grand Canyon” and “LA Story”. These films marked an interesting - and definitely NOT BAD turn in his career. I mean, he could have done more of the same, but I support a creative person’s right to expand into new directions. I would even include “Leap of Faith” in this grouping, although that definitely was a bad movie (although interesting in concept).

He then moved onto these family movies. I didn’t mind “Parenthood” too much (the “electric ear cleaner” scene still cracks me up) and (shameless Romantic that I am) “Father of the Bride” was very funny in that family-safe funny sort of way.

Steve has lately gotten into writing. Shopgirl received very good reviews and is soon to be a feature film with Claire Danes (although I always saw the Shopgirl as a Gwyneth Paltrow) as the girl, and Jimmy Fallon (a funny guy who is surely awaiting the loveable clod role that will help him break the SNL curse/blessing). I liked Shopgirl as it blended the Romantic Steve with the LA cultural critic Steve. Yay Steve!

Steve also got a big “Yay” for his recent mastering of ceremonies. He was lively and far less annoying than other MCs (anyone who hosted Comic Relief).

Alright, but since when did he become grist for hackneyed comedic pablum? Did he make a deal that in exchange for writing acumen he would sell his comedic soul? (more…)

Today at Farley’s again. I’m sure that the patrons and the staff must think that I am insane as I mutter and pace about as I hack and slash though this book.

I think that someone should have given this book to an editor. As a master of the recursive sentence, I can appericate what MacIntyre is doing, but dammit man, sometimes your points are simply lost!

I also get irritated when philosophy writers think that they have to hide what they’re really getting at to keep you interested. If you want to string the suspense out over a paragraph or two, fine, but this novel format of philosophical treatises grows taxing quickly.

I can only hope that the internet’s effect on writing (the hypertext metaphor, specifically) will change the structure of texts for the better.

…or it may just make them ramble aimlessly like weblogs

I need some time to synthesize the chapter. I’ll get the notes up posthaste.

Lawyers are now ethically allowed to turn in clients that are stealing from the company or cooking the books. It’s funny to think of the health of a corporation as being tantamount to the health of another person who might fall victim to harm by misdeeds of a client.

I suppose this goes to show that the much hated “joint stock company” of Adam Smith is, in fact, as important as a human life in this hyper-capitalist society of ours.

I think I’m done writing about lawyers for the moment. (more…)

Notes for Chapters 1 and 2

For more data follow the link:

1. I thought that i would share my notes on the development of understanding of some texts - in particular, philosophy texts. A weblog seemed like a pretty good tool for keeping track of my updates - and a good way to share my interpretations with others - maybe even get some worthy comment from time to time. Thus i give you: Philolog. Check it out!

2. The American Bar Association is in town. They have a new president (the first African-American, notably) and are reviewing new rules under which lawers would be ethically obliged to inform law enforcement of their client’s misdeeds.

I have immense respect for the ABA as they even asserted an anti Bush Administration position on the ship-em-to-Guantanamo policies. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-Bush Policy per se, but when it comes to civil liberties I get really, really protective. It’s the Jeffersonian ethic in me.

Such gutsy assertions by the ABA make me feel a little less anti-lawyer (as such a sentiment is a strong in the US, especially in CA).

Then again, that may have something to do with divorce rates, if 50% of the population gets divorced, close to 100% of them have to deal with lawyers. That means that at the very least 50% of that total feel they got screwed by lawyers ( at the very least). As such, I’m not surprised if 25-33% of the population takes a great deal of joy in lawyer hating.

All that said, I’ve been writing about lawyers lately. I think it must be because they and their organization were probably blitzing my news sources in the run-up to their descending on SF.

I’ll not be going downtown during their visit though, wouldn’t want to bump somebody wrong and find myself in court. Or, worse yet, I wouldn’t want to get trampled in a stampede of chasers when one of the ambulances goes by (couldn’t resist a bit of a dig). (more…)

Last night mirth and merriment were to be had in the heart of the Mission. Tasty tapas were eaten, litres of sangria were drained, and then the high-class lowlife a-go-go mecca the 500 club was patronized.

So this morning while I was recovering I finished off Silent Hill 2 (PS2). I got the “In Water” ending. I would say that Silent Hills are a pretty good series of game - apparently falling into the genre of survival horror.

The new one just came out, but I’m not going to pick it up yet as I need to get the imprint of my butt out of my futon.