Merry *urp* Christmas

You think it's easy being Santa, what with the bitchy elves, the bratty kids, the job stress? Can't really blame the guy for a little post-holiday overindulgence. I only wish he hadn't taken Rudolph down with him.

TV Rules

See, this is what I've been sayin':

Television, the class act

And as long as we're on the subject, I advise you to check out Project Runway. Immediately. Designers have bigger egos than rock stars, and the challenges are actually cool and inventive. You don't even have to give a crap about design. Trust me on this one!

Aloha!

I’m back from Hawaii, the land of beautiful, forest covered mountains, breathtaking vistas, fabulous fruity drinks, sparkling beaches, and mosquitos. Lots and lots of mosquitos. Also? Rain. Lots and lots of rain. Itchy red bumps and water-logged Tevas aside, the trip was fantastic. Fun was most definitely had, and my liver is just a little bit more pickled than it was pre-trip. Oh who am I kidding? A lot more pickled. Anyhoo, I will have some pictures up shortly (though not of my liver—you don’t want to see that), but for now, here are some highlights:

• Swimming and snorkeling on the beaches of Kauai
• Hiking in Kauai
• Swimming by a waterfall in Kauai
• Mojitos in the condo hot tub
• The Thanksgiving luau
• Shave ice (it’s not dirty, it’s delicious!)
• Fabulous dinners courtesy of my fabulous friends
• A tour of the USS Arizona Memorial in Honolulu

There’s much more, including one extreme kayaking adventure, one doggie rescue on the aforementioned extreme kayaking adventure, one very trippy hike, quite a bit of public nudity, and a very disturbing condo pole dance, but in the interest of protecting the privacy of the parties involved, I’ll refrain.

Mahalo!

Don't F**k with Lappie

Sometimes, we get bored.

"Y'all Ain't Ready." No, really.

I honestly didn't think Hollywood could claim a bigger idiot than the obnoxious cave troll who goes by the name of Tom Cruise. I was wrong. Mea culpa. Mea MAXIMA culpa.

Tara the Turtle

I've been inspired by all the lovely blogs of friends (and friends of friends) to commence with the picture posting. Here's a photo Roger took of our turtle, Tara. Isn't she a cutie? She's shy but very photogenic. She likes bananas, crickets, sunlight, and frequent water spritzes. She dislikes greens (bad girl), excessive handling, and sudden movements.

Office Waste

Work is retarded.

Anne Rice Is Crazy

Once upon a time in a red red state, I was a huge Anne Rice fan. I voraciously read every single one of her novels (including her erotica), many more than once. I subscribed to her newsletter. I went to booksignings and stood in line for hours just to get her to sign my dog-eared copies of her books. I visited New Orleans on a regular basis, and during each visit I made a trip to the Garden District to check out her amazingly beautiful home (come to think of it, I wonder what its status is post-Katrina?).

As I got older, I slowly began to lose interest in dear old Anne, partly because I outgrew her, and partly, well, because her novels started to stink. I think maybe the outgrowing and the stinkage kind of happened simultaneously. I still maintain that the first three vampire novels, the Mayfair Witches saga, The Feast of All Saints and a few other early books are quite good, even if the prose tends toward a garish shade of purple. In later years, however, her novels became virtually unreadable; ego-soaked, way-over-the-top, meandering, and in desperate need of an editor.

But even after I stopped reading her novels, I still regarded her rather fondly in spite of myself, mostly because I encountered her books at that awkward, hyperaware age when you're just discovering that your parents won't have you pinned under their thumbs for much longer and your once-miniscule world is about to burst wide open. Her books, especially the early Vampire Chronicles, really moved me, and for better or worse they left their mark (pun really not intended). For me, they were seminal; they represented everything that was not ordinary, not dull, not pedestrian, and not about life in hot, muggy, decidedly un-gothic suburban Houston.

So I was dismayed to discover, just days ago, that after having left the Roman Catholic church at the age of 18, Ms. Rice has up and rejoined the faith. Now, that in and of itself wouldn't necessarily be cause for alarm. Despite my atheistic bent, my hatred of fundamentalism, and my dislike of people who use the guise of religion to achieve their own selfish ends, I don't disdain the institution entirely. I know Anne Rice has had a lot of tragedy in her life (the death of a child, alcoholism, diabetes, the loss of her husband of 41 years) and faith can soothe many a troubled soul. My problem is that Ms. Rice has declared, in no uncertain terms, that she now only intends to write about Jesus. That's right. Little baby Jesus. Novels about baby Jesus. Apparently, the first book, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, is narrated by a 7-year-old Christ. Granted, Ms. Rice has always been something of a weirdo, but this takes the cake. Freaky, creepy cake. I'm half hoping religious authorities will take issue with this and speak out against her, much as the Kabbalist rabbis have done with Madonna, but even if they did I doubt it would matter much. Anne Rice sells, even if she's shilling Crap for Christ. Saints be damned.

Do Not Smash the Cheesecake

This unusual piece of advice was uttered by a very tired looking woman supervising a rambunctious trio of toddlers at the playground near the wildlife sanctuary on Lake Merritt. I didn't see any cheesecake but I did see that the children were cavorting with/tormenting a frightened chihuahua. Anyway, now I can't stop thinking about cheesecake.

Conservative punk?

I just read in the September 22 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine that the recently deceased Johnny Ramone was a staunch conservative. Johnny Ramone! Man, I knew there was a reason I never really liked that band.
Scary.

Things I learned from TV, part I

I've always been fascinated with the bubonic plague, or as it's more romantically known, The Black Death. Somehow my Tivo figured this out and recorded an episode of a new PBS series called "Secrets of the Dead." This particular episode focused on a small village in central England called Eyam that's well known because several townspeople mysteriously survived the plague when it arrived in 1665. By order of the town's pastor, no one was aloud to enter or leave Eyam while the plague went about decimating the majority of its citizens, and the only food came from neighboring villagers who kindly left provisions at a well on the outskirts of town.

Oddly, I've been to Eyam. My family and I were in central England last summer and we drove to the small, gray little village one day at my mother's insistance. I remember mom and I tromping resolutely through a graveyard and several soggy pastures in search of the aforementioned well, but the signage was more than a little confusing and eventually we gave up and returned to our rental car, where my stepdad and sister were waiting grumpily (it was well past lunchtime).

While we were searching in vain for Eyam's well, mom related to me the story of the town's legacy as she knew it: the arrival of the plague via an infected bolt of cloth sent to the village's tailor and the fact that the town had quarantined itself in order to stop the spread of the deadly disease. I had no idea until I watched this show, however, that there had been survivors, and that for centuries scientists have been struggling to discover how this could have happened. Even more interesting is the fact that some survivors contracted the deadly bacteria and then recovered, while others never fell ill at all.

I'll leave the details to the experts, but apparently geneticists have only recently discovered that the survivors contained a genetic mutuation called d32 that saved them from the ravages of the plague. They discovered this by testing the DNA of the survivors' direct descendants, many of whom still live in Eyam. They all had one or two copies of the gene. The assumption is that survivors with one copy of d32 contracted the plague and recovered, while those with two copies never fell ill at all.

Now here's the amazing part. Scientists have recently discovered that some American men who are at high risk for AIDS, but never contracted the disease while their friends were dying in droves, also carry one or two copies of d32. It makes sense. Many Americans are the descendants of European plague survivors, and AIDS, our modern plague, is very similar to the Black Death in terms of the way that it attacks the immune system (although the plague is bacterial and AIDS is a virus, both infections enter white blood cells and render them ineffective). Apparently a man named Steve Crohn, whose lover was the 5th victim of AIDS in the U.S., has never contracted the disease. Researchers tested his blood and discovered he has two copies of d32.

Scientists are now trying to create pharmaceuticals that mimic d32 in order to stop the spread of the AIDS virus. And hey, if that doesn't work, there's always crocodile blood.

Error message redux

I tried to load a website a few days ago and encountered this message:

“The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process”

Okay then. Glad we cleared that up.

This bewildering little piece of internet prose immediately brought to mind those halcyon days in the late 90s when the Web was rife with files unfound, jenny middle america’s personal homepage was eternally under construction (not that we actually wanted to read about her award-winning collection of tea cozies) and some people really believed that Bill Gates would send them $1000 just for forwarding an email (yes, they really did).

It also reminded me of this article, which still gives me a chuckle.