stevengharms

No, this is not a “She Bop” moment.

My co-workers measured me and they told me I am six feet tall.

I always thought I was more of a 5’10” 5’11” kinda cat. I’ve never wanted to say that I was six feet tall owing to the fact that a more scientific measure might come along and assert that I was merely 5’11” or 5’10” and 3/4 or something.

I will take my co-s’ words on this one, I think I am really six feet tall.

But what does it mean?

Well, I can weigh four more pounds and be at my “ideal weight”. I’m sure there are other advantages.

w00t

I would like to apologize to the steak I cooked tonight. After a good yoga workout I was hoping to leech every ounce of protien out of a steak that I had bought at Whole Foods (this is no run-of-the-mill cut mind you).

I prepared onions and peppers and tobasco.

I put the steak in the Foreman Grill o’ Doom and 8 minutes later i had

gray steak.

Ugh.

The flavour was — disappointing. It would have been OK for a Dave and Buster’s Philly Cheese Sandwich — but it was an insult to all that sirloin could have been. Dear meat, I apologize and tell you that as i drowned you in Tobasco, I made a promise to never overcook a steak like that again…

They’ve got a pepper bar!

AMC - American Movie Classics is showing Army of Darkness

No Sam Raimi film should be an American Movie Classic.

Least of all any Raimi film with Bruce Campbell.

No, these films have nothing in common with Citizen Kane, Dr. Kildare, and the like.

It is an insult to the rogue, karo-syrup-splattered genius of Raimi and Campbell to put it on the AFI top 100 loving channel..

…And any AFI top 100 loving channel should know its place and show nothing edgier than Blazing Saddles.

Within the last week I’ve seen two movies (Secretary and Thirteen) that feature girls with the “cutting” obssessive-compulsive behavior (self-mutilation).

What a horrible, horrible (day I say again, “horrible”) affliction. I’ve been reading up on it and it’s so foreign, incomprehensible, and strange. At least bulemia or anorexia or agoraphobia all have a place where I can understand where the afflicted is coming from…this, no, no point of reference. There be no maps of those territiories.

I also heard that Garbage chanteuse Shirley Manson was a sufferer as well - simply beyond me.

Ex-girlfriend and reportatrix EC Barnett and I discussed it and I was counting her double X chromosomes to fill me in and explain the female psychology behind this (for it arises far more often in women than men) and she was likewise stymied.

:: shrugs ::

In the parlance of Internet Relay Chat:

/me Addendum: I realize I used the word “horrid” to describe the sickness. When I say horrid I mean it’s something that’s shocking and terrible and foreign. By all means if, for some reason, you are afflicted with this sickness, and you are searching on the web for help and for some cosmic reason came to this site, please, please get help.

Note, Self-Abuse is not the Catholic euphemism

S.A.F.E (Self-Abuse Finally Ends) http://www.selfinjury.com/ Alternative Information Line 1-800-DONT-CUT Provides information on dealing with self-abuse and self-mutilation and treatment options.

So I woke up this morning and found out from Bob Edwards that almost 200 people had been killed in Madrid in what is suspected to be an attack by Basque sepratists.

I was a bit worried because my sister is studying there and I am planning on visiting in 3 weeks.

The good news is that my sister is fine and dandy. Like me, she has a great deal of sangfroid on matters such as these and is simply taking it in stride. I suppose she must feel like the tourists who were in New York City on 9/11/01 (actually, one of my co-workers and her family were tourists during the events — they had gone to the WTC on 9/10/01 - imagine that!).

I checked out my new favourite meta-blog bOING bOING and they had this really nice graphic.

And my upper back muscles are spasming left and right.

I think it’s a good sign, too much tension and knotting up in those computer-guy shoulders. I have a chronically tight and irritating left shoulder, i think that muscle has even given into my instructor’s lumbar workout.

I’ve really been needing the class all day. I’ve just been so distracted at work for the last couple days — I think this will help get my focus in gear. I’m also planning on making myself go in early (like i used to when commuting) — somehow too much sun in the morning is ruining my focus.

I think there is also something about the travel to Sydney jacking up my circadian cycles, it was getting darker darker (winter approaching) then BANG full-blast summer, come back BANG full blast winter, then this week BANG freakishly spring-like weather. I think my pineal gland’s internal regulators are torturing me.

Soon though I will be back in Europe where I noticed my city on the Dam is varying between -1 and 4 degrees Celsius. It will be fun picking her up at Schipol and taking her to my favorite Indonesian haunts off of the Leidseplein.

I’m yoga-tired, time for bed (yes it is only 9:30).

I’ve always resisted putting in entries that are links to things that I saw on other blogs (but isn’t that the whole point?). I suppose I always thought it more apropos to my interest to treat this site more like a journal and less like a blog qua blog function.

Today I ignore this precept.

Here are cool links: iGod

Reasons:

• James Dedman loves you! Or if he proofreads your work he might suggest you use the word “gasconade”
• Someone wrote The Tragedy of Marioland
• The Pixies were once, and might be once again
• You are not a woodcrafts project, and if you are you are not one of my woodcrafts projects
• Catatonia once were, Cerys still is, and why I still can’t forget this band is a mystery you are free to figure out
• The Cardigans released “Gran Turismo” and it still should be able to make you believe all Swedes are Ingmar Bergman clones
• The guys that wrote Kazaa are going to destroy telecom as we know it and nothing can stop them
• La Mer - You know, over the sea, but in French
• Your perfect soulmate is out there somewhere

Now, my faithful readers, I have already told you how my mother was in tune with the genius that is the half-pint performer of brilliance: Prince.

Now where was my father? Let me tell you, Dad was demonstrating the future revolutions in commerce!

How so you say?

Well there is a certain point where a young man starts to wonder about the world outside. The gentleman learns that the best way to get in communication with this bigger, wider world is to check the mailbox. This truth was canonized in “A Christmas Story” where we see Ralphie check the mailbox daily for precious treasures from beyond.

I suspect the mailbox has become virtual in these times.

Oftentimes when most people visit the mailbox they find a few bills, a magazine, the weekly neighborhood gazette, etc.

Not so at my childhood home.

The aforementioned things were there, to be sure, but at a gross weight comparison, approximattely 80% of the mail was comprised of catalogs.

I’m not just talking J. Crew and LL Bean here. I’m talking shoelaces for tall men, pants for tall men, epicurean food preparation utilitensils, et. al. Dresses, Victoria’s Secret Catalogs (w00t!), ads for the penny for 12 CD, People Magazine.

Now to be fair, Dad is 6’7” - pret-a-porter n’existe pas for him.

Now the golden score in the mail is the PARCEL key. You see, if there were parcels that wouldn’t fit in our communal mailbox, the mail worker would put the parcel an one of two larger bins and put the key in your box.

I suspect my family’s box (#5) held the yearly record for ownership of the parcel key. You see, it wasn’t just that my dad received a lot of catalogs, he ordered tons of stuff from them!

In the mathematics that the world came to know from spam email, Dad’s penchant for purchasing from periodicals assured our address would get circulated amongst all the legions of distributors of CARAT-sort mail.

I recall one of our neighbors who checked our mail while we were out on vacation saying that we received more catalogs than anyone else they ever knew. They had to put our mail in 3 paper grocery sacks instead of their customary one sack.

Oftentimes I recall heading down to dad’s mail-hideout (sic intended) and finding him lounging in his underwear tearing open the parcel packets neatly open (so that he could return items that failed to satisfy).

Now this was in the late eighties, early nineties. I ask you, my readers of the amazon.com generation, is it not one of the finer pleasures of life getting your web commerce ordered loot at the end of a day of work, slipping into something more comfortable, and trying it on / slotting that eBay won DVD / curling up with that Amazon book?

What dad had hit upon, was presaging, was the notion of customized product being demanded nay, expected.