Month: June 2006

i do not look like anita mui

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whoever the hell she is.

myheritage.com is a cool-ish new (new to me, anyway) geneaology website that has face-recognition software that, i suppose, is supposed to be useful in tracking down just who the hell that person in the back of that old photo is, or something.

but to attract mass amounts of users of the interweb, they let you upload a picture and they compare it to a database of celebrities, so that you know which famous person you resemble.

hypothetically speaking.

here are my results.

i do not look like anita mui. but, having read the title of this blog entry, you already know that.

i also do not look like dolph lundgren. or mustafa sandal, or kareena kapoor, if you ask me.

but i didn’t ask me. i asked myheritage.com–which is, if you ask me, sorely in need of an upgrade to their facial recognition software.

i guess the theory is that, as people upload and compare pictures, the software learns and gets better or something. i certainly hope, though, that some poor schlub doesn’t get told that he looks like jamie howard, queerspace.com’s famous webmaster.

nice try, myheritage. but no cigar from me.

music, back in the day

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

ever wonder why, in your memory, music on vinyl records seemed to sound better than digital cds do today?

assuming, of course, that you are old enough to remember what vinyl sounded like.

as it turns out, you haven’t lost your mind.

it’s not old-fogeyism creeping in, although i find myself saying things like “back when i was young” far too often anymore. there’s a technical reason for it, in addition to the ones you may already know about the wonders of analog and rattle-and-hum.

in an effort to make digital music louder, which is what uninformed consumers who can’t control a volume knob and an equalizer apparently want, labels are mastering music in a way that boosts volume but clips out the highs and lows of the music.

where the detail is. there are physical limitations to all this, and sound detail is lost in the process. there’s an amazing graphic at the linked story which compares the waveforms of a red hot chili peppers song on cd and on vinyl, and that image tells it all.

and, (who knew), some of those crazy younguns like vinyl better anyway.

i may have to go home and listen to my original master recording of pink floyd’s “dark side of the moon”, if i still have it.

pretty cool that vinyl records are on the cutting edge, technologically and socially.

good for the supremes

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the supreme court has blocked president bush from ordering military war crimes trials for detainees at guantanamo bay in cuba. it’s a major blow to his so-called “war on terror” which thus far has caused more worldwide terror than it has stopped, if you ask me.

and the result was 5-3, meaning that even though chief justice roberts sat out the case, his vote either way would not have changed the outcome. too bad justice scalia doesn’t have the same set of ethics as does roberts–scalia, as he’s proven time and again, would never have recused himself even if he should have.

and as i’ve said so many times, the supreme court ends up being an independent institution, no matter how much effort presidents put into stacking the deck in their favor.

those people are independent cusses, and, if you think about their decisions impartially, they get it right nearly all the time.

good for scotus. go scotus.

not colorblind

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well, i am colorblind in that i do not care about the color of the skin of my fellow man/woman and all that politically correct happiness and light.

but i am not colorblind in the physical sense. you can go here and see if you are. i can see all the numbers in the dotty circle things, so i guess i’m ok. and i have better than 20/20 vision, uncorrected. there should be a job for me there somewhere, with my perfect eyesight.

anyway, today i ran across a fascinating link to a reverse colorblindness test. there are pictures there that test the color perception of people without colorblindness. if you are colorblind, you see the “hidden” image right away.

if you aren’t colorblind to some degree, you won’t see the image at all. i didn’t.

i like things like this–things that give you a different perspective on the “normal” take on things. i like that there’s a test that makes the “normal” person understand how a colorblind person feels.

here’s another cool link along those lines–a colorblind webpage filter. you can put in a url and a type of colorblindness, and the site will render the page to show you what that page would look like to a colorblind person.

the internets are a wonderful place, aren’t they?

the national priorities project

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here’s a page that will get you fired up and cranky for sure. at least it got me fired up and cranky.

it’s the national priorities project. there you can, for instance, find out how your tax dollars could be better spent, either nationally or in your area. ever wondered how many cops could get put on the street in your state if bush didn’t waste so much money on “star wars” missile defenses? if so, this is your place.

maybe you are completely happy with the way that the government is collecting and spending your tax dollars. if you are, then don’t bother clicking. but i have a feeling that, no matter what your political persuasion is, you’d be happier if your money was spent more wisely.

and anyway, who the hell is happy with the government? certainly no one i know, republican, democrat, or otherwise.

nothing new at apple

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

the online apple store was closed for an hour or so earlier today.

sending mac fans everywhere into paroxysms of delight. usually this means there’s a new product being sold. was it a new ipod? the video ipod? upgraded computer hardware? something no one had guessed as yet?

unfortunately for them (and me, by proxy) it seems to be nothing more than routine maintenance.

we’re a sad lot sometimes, apple fans are. but when the products are usually so good, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype.

birds do it, bees do it…

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have homosexual sex, that is.

and more than just birds and bees. evidently bighorn sheep, giraffes, bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, west indian manatees, japanese macaques, and hundreds of other species are getting their same-sex jollies.

that’s been a known fact for some time, though. but the scientific community, through their outright homophobia or maybe just their squeamishness, has not thought through the impact of this.

but now joan roughgarden has, and the implications are staggering.

staggering as in shaking the very foundations of darwinism.

as the article says, “For too long…biology has neglected evidence that mating isn’t only about multiplying. Sometimes, as in the case of all those gay sheep, dolphins and primates, animals have sex just for fun or to cement their social bonds. Homosexuality…is an essential part of biology, and can no longer be dismissed. By using the queer to untangle the straight, Roughgarden’s theories have the potential to usher in a scientific sexual revolution.”

this article is an absolute must-read…one of the most fascinating accounts of divergent thinking that i’ve run across in some time. the kind of article that not only forces you to consider what you think of ms. roughgarden’s thesis, but also to reconsider the basic tenets of what you’ve believed to be true all your life.

like this, for instance: she believes that there is proof that bisexuality is the norm in the animal world (we are animals too, you know), and that “the hetero/homo distinction is a purely cultural creation, and not a fact of biology”.

or this: “At this point, we have thousands of species that deviate from the standard account of Darwinian sexual selection. So we get all these special case exemptions, and we end up downplaying whatever facts don’t fit. The theory…clearly has the trajectory of a hypothesis in trouble.”

she’s currently being shouted down by much of the entrenched scientific community for what are ostensibly valid (to them) reasons, but behind their official objections, there’s the fact that ms. roughgarden used to be mr. roughgarden. unofficially, they think that colors ms. roughgarden’s conclusions.

maybe it just takes one to know one?

in the front row

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well, not the exact front row, but damn close. at the mets game last night.

kirk and i buy tickets for a lot of mets games. usually we end up going to at least 5 or 6 games, sometimes more. and when we buy tickets we always get the upper deck. not because we are cheap.

but because i am cheap.

and we also, truly, like the view. i like the upper deck directly behind home plate. you get the best view of the game there. you can see it all, all at one time, and in the proper perspective.

but now and then i get free mets tickets from vendors through work. and the vendors of course have box seats in the best locations, and they give them all out to their clients, and they filter down to me because in new york, everyone wants yankees tickets, and i am one of the few mets fans around.

so last night we had field box seats, section 30, which is directly behind the visitors’ on-deck circle, about five rows back. i could have spit on ken griffey if i had wanted to. the mets were playing the reds, you know. but i like ken griffey just fine, so i didn’t. all the best people don’t spit on other people at baseball games. it’s just not done.

anyway, it was a rare treat. and there was actual waiter service at your seat, and a menu of better ballpark food from which to choose, and so kirk and i got our mama’s of corona’s sub and smoked chicken wrap and nathan’s french fries and diet coke and root beer delivered to our seats.

at great expense, but sometimes in life you splurge.

and we were there with my friend from work, and her daughter. and her daughter got a baseball that the guy next to her caught, which was a total thrill for her. and she got to see david wright up close and personal–she has a big crush on him. good taste, that girl has. can’t argue with her logic there.

but, try as i might, it was hard to concentrate on the game. there are too many places to look at one time, and it was hard to keep track of everything that was going on. in the upper deck, you can see the shifts the defense puts on, and you can tell if a ball is a home run or not, and your eye can follow the ball around the field much better.

it’s fun to live the high life on field level every now and then, but i’m basically an upper deck guy.

not going to find it here

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this site is registered at google.com, so i can get lots of info about my site there. one of the most interesting pages is a list of the top search queries for my site, and where my site ranks in that query. when i need a laugh, i go look at the list. it amazes me what people search for.

here are some of the top search queries for my site. the link for each will click through to the google search.

» paolo nutini lyrics and its corollary, lyrics paolo nutini. there are no paolo nutini lyrics on my site. sorry. i saw him at the new york pops benefit, and i barely even remember what he looked like, let alone what he sang. i remember liking him, though. it’s odd to me that this is far and away the number one search result on my site. it’s even scarier that it’s the number one clickthrough as well. what must his fans think upon arriving at this particular little outpost?

» jamie’s lemon tart. i’m sorry. i don’t have a lemon tart. i must have eaten one and written about it, or at least mentioned “lemon” and “tart” in close proximity. but no recipes around here.

» jamie’s scottish evening. ooooooh la la. i’ll never divulge the secrets of my scottish evening, especially on the internets. seriously, i’ve never been to scotland, though kirk is dying to get me to edinburgh.

» jamie far. poor guy from m.a.s.h. nobody knows how to spell his last name. here’s a link, for you spelling-crippled queerspace arrivistes: jamie farr.

» jamie’s palm beach. this one confuses me a bit. is there a jamie somewhere who owns a beach laden with palms? is there a bar somewhere named “jamie’s palm beach”? is there a side to the city of palm beach that only a certain jamie is aware of?

» who sang da do ron ron recently? darlene love, according to my blog about the pops benefit. but i think she sang it originally, so that’s a bit misleading if you want to know anyone who sang it in the intervening 45 years. i should blog more about the new york pops, evidently.

you get the idea. i guess if i provided actual content instead of insane ramblings, my results would be better.

pd, useless no more

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pd is my cat. actually she was kirk’s cat, and now she’s our cat. and actually i have two cats, pd and morgan. but pd (the black and white cat in the sidebar picture) is today’s subject.

pd is useless no more.

i wrote about pd previously, and it was very facetious. let me stress that pd is lovable, and cuddly, and affectionate, and doesn’t scratch anywhere except the scratching post, and can’t meow more than a peep so makes no noise, and eats very little and is in perfect health.

the perfect pet. unlike morgan, who is a bulemic pain in the ass, though lovably so.

so pd has always been useful in the sense that she does what a cat is supposed to do in the affection department. but she has (i thought) always been useless in the mouse department.

as we live in an old new york apartment building directly on the park, we get the occasional mouse. little tiny field mice, once or twice a year, find their way in. the last one lived under the fridge until he/she wandered into the hav-a-heart trap to eat peanut butter, and was subsequently relocated from under the fridge to the nearby park.

but the cats, other than staring at the fridge, really did nothing. one time (years ago) we came home to find a dead mouse in the middle of the floor. untouched and immaculate. the cats (three at the time) were seated around it, staring at it.

i swear that mouse died of natural causes in our living room. i guess we’ll never know.

you’d think that the presence of cats would at least be a deterrent. it didn’t seem to be the case, though.

but last night, we heard unusual cat movements, and kirk got up to go to the bathroom, and then yelled “gross!” i got up, and there was pd.

and a mouse.

a dying mouse that she had caught and was torturing slowly.

now this was the smallest mouse imaginable. not including the tail, i don’t think it was even an inch and a half long. i wrapped it in paper towels and flushed it.

and praised pd repeatedly.

i have newfound respect for pd. go pd, you mouse-catching tyro.

bbq block party pt. 2

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we went back yesterday for day two of the bbq block party–we had nearly $90 left on our stored value card so getting more bbq was not a problem.

except for my stomach, of course.

we had ubon’s bbq from yazoo, mississippi. it was a shredded pork sandwich in large chunks. the end bits were burned and crispy and tasty, but the taste got a bit lost for me in the long striated strips of meat at the other end. it might have been better chopped up more finely…just a personal preference for me.

we had brisket and sausage from the salt lick bbq in driftwood, texas. going head to head with brisket and sausage from southside market in elgin is risky business for me, but it held up surprisingly well. a nice smoke line on the brisket, and the sausage was juicy and delicious. still, second place behind elgin for me.

i of course made a return trip for more southside market brisket and sausage, just to make sure. as i suspected, my memory hadn’t failed me. it’s still my favorite bbq of the weekend. kirk may have liked the 17th street ribs a bit better, and we would have tried more of that, but they were sold out by the time we got there in mid-afternoon.

we finished up with more smoki o’s rib tips and, god bless that woman, they still had some pig snoot in reserve so i got more of that. and it was still just as good as it was on the previous day. just the best version of pork rinds you’ve ever had.

we never did bother with dinosaur or with blue smoke. not that they aren’t good–they are–but they are in new york so why bother. we still had $30 on our card after all that, and our stomachs were crying uncle, so we got two $15 t-shirts and called it a day.

if you look for me at the gym, i’ll be the one in the black smoki o’s t-shirt.

if you didn’t go this year, you had better get there next year. it’s my favorite weekend of the whole year. love it love it love it.

bbq block party 2006

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southside bbq from elgin, tx
perfect brisket

smokios bbq from kansas city
smokios goodness

my favorite day of the year is bbq block party weekend. which is, of course two days. i can’t decide if the first day or the second day is my favorite day, so i’ll just call it a draw.

the first picture above is the brisket from southside market in elgin, texas. oh. my. goodness. the picture doesn’t do it justice. there’s the clearly defined smoke ring, the succulent juicy meat, and the generous layer of fat at the bottom. you can’t even begin to imagine how good this was. and it came with a sausage link that puts any sausage you’ve ever had to shame. and very good coleslaw, and potato bread to mop it up. there were two sauces, one hot and vinagery and one mild and more tomatoey, but you really didn’t need them.

and, to whom it may concern, you know who you are, mr. show-off cut the line with my media pass foodie expert, elgin is pronounced with a hard “g”, not like the watch company.

definitely going back here today for more.

my other favorite stop (and my first stop, first in line yesterday) was smoki o’s bbq from kansas city. every year she has pig snoot. that’s right, snoot. the nose. and it is so good. this year they had rib tips and told her not to bring snoot, but she brought a little bit anyway and i got some. it was even better than before–it’s like pork rinds only this time fresher and better. and the rib tips were great too–some crunchy and some tender and all marvelous. and good baked beans too.

we sampled rub bbq, which has an outpost in new york now. it was brisket–ice cold with the worst cole slaw (basically just shredded cabbage) you have ever had. and their new york bbq restaurant is the most expensive bbq place you will ever see. the brisket might have been decent when hot, but no way would it rise to the level of the elgin southside market bbq. if i ever had any thoughts of paying upwards of $100 for a bbq dinner at this place, which i really didn’t anyway, there’s no way i’d do it now.

we had 17th street bar and grill baby back ribs–it’s memphis bbq. best ribs i’ve had in a long time. chewy and tender and flavorful and crusty and fatty all at once. and they win, once again, for best baked beans. it’s a mixture of several different types of bean in a perfectly balanced tangy sauce. not too sweet. i’d go to memphis just for the beans. and the perfect ribs are just a bonus.

we had pulled pork shoulder from big bob gibson in decatur, alabama. i love coming to this stand every year, because he brings his genial neighbor who pours the sauce on your sandwich at the end, and he’s a very typical southern gentleman who i really like a lot. we always have a little conversation and he’s a great guy. i’d like to buy him a beer sometime. the sauces were mild and hot, and i liked both. good coleslaw too, but a little too vinagery for kirk.

as good as the pulled pork shoulder sandwich is here, my favorite is still the whole hog from mitchell’s bbq in wilson, north carolina. no you don’t get the entire hog, just a portion of it. but your sandwich is filled with meat from everywhere in the hog, so you get a wonderful mixture of different types and textures of meat on your bun, which is so so yummy. and their “sauce” is basically vinegar with spices, which to me is the best sauce in the place. it perfectly complements the meat and makes for the best bbq sandwich you’ve ever had. and i have a sneaking suspicion that ed mitchell is a cool guy, because he cooks his whole hog and when it’s gone for the day, it’s gone and there’s no more bbq. he’s not bringing out the backup tupperware full of meat from home. so you have to get there early if you want it. good for him. don’t compromise your bbq integrity for these demanding new yorkers.

and his coleslaw was the best. just enough yellow mustard, but not too much.

we skipped blue smoke and dinosaur. it’s great bbq, but they are from new york and i can get it anytime, so why wait on the lines, even if they are much shorter than the others. today we’re going back to get salt lick brisket and sausage, which isn’t usually as good as southside market for me but is still much, much better than you’ll get at, say, virgil’s or dallas bbq in the city. and we’ll get ubon’s pulled pork shoulder, which if i remember correctly is very good as well.

we bought the bubba fast pass again, which is basically a stored value card that lets you skip the main lines and get in what are supposed to be shorter “vip” lines. last year they sold far fewer of them i think, because i don’t remember any lines at all, or at least very short ones. this year the avereage wait in the vip lines was about 45 minutes, which i’m betting is still much quicker than the main lines. and half the time the registers don’t work, so they just give you bbq. with all the “free” bbq, for two servings of most of the bbq listed above, we paid a total of about $35, which is i think what rub bbq charges for their iced tea.

i could almost forget i was in new york, except for the whiny man and his limousine liberal girlfriend/wife behind us for 45 minutes in the mitchell’s line. god were they annoying. and the woman who stormed to the front of the line and screamed at the 17th street bbq people because her “fast pass” wasn’t fast enough. the 17th street bbq people are the most laid-back people you can imagine, and their shirts all say “peace, love and barbecue”. this woman clearly didn’t get the concept. but otherwise, everyone was very laid back. we’d get food from one place and eat it in line for the next place, and everyone asked you about your food and where you got it and how did you like it and such. it was a lot of fun.

and we ran into our friend suzanne who was, of course, waiting to ask about pig snoot at the start of the whole thing, just like we were. we’re very predictable people that way. great sharing snoot with you again, suzanne!

we’re gonna end up having tons of stored value left on our card, and we’ll probably get more merchandise to burn off the value just like we did last year. which is fine…i like having a stack of t-shirts around and the various bbq joints have pretty cool ones.

all the money goes to the parks conservancy or something, so it’s good for the karma as well.

or at least as good for the karma as eating pounds of meat can be.

bigots? in congress? nah.

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

the senate is preparing to vote, yet again, to write discrimination into the constitution. will it happen? not a chance. but the republicans see it as a sop to their religious faithful (people whom, to my mind, are actually neither).

from an ap news article on the subject:

“The Republican leadership is asking us to spend time writing bigotry into the Constitution,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) of Massachusetts, whose state legalized gay marriage in 2003. “A vote for it is a vote against civil unions, against domestic partnership, against all other efforts for states to treat gays and lesbians fairly under the law.”

Hatch responded: “Does he really want to suggest that over half of the United States Senate is a crew of bigots?”

do i really need to respond to hatch? or is the answer to his supposedly rhetorical question self evident?

update: as expected, the proposal failed. with 48 senators voting for passage, hatch is technically correct. instead, just under half of the senate is a crew of bigots.

nothing worth defending?

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the nimrod head of homeland security, michael chertoff, has basically announced that there are no monuments in new york city worth defending, and has disproportionately cut new york city’s homeland security funding.

actually, he’s not a nimrod. he’s an asshat. or an asstard, if you will.

anyway, new york’s senator hilary clinton has come up with the bright idea to send michael “asshat” chertoff postcards from the various monuments he’s not choosing to protect.

i think this is brilliant and witty and subversive in just the right way. i’m going to send a few postcards, and i think you should too.