Category: stardate

Saturday we had our annual Columbus Day party, and Diane made a huge amount of food over the previous week, including six kinds of Parisian macarons, two lasagnas (including a sweet pumpkin lasagna) five different kinds of hand-made pizzas!

Sunday we finally made it into the San Francisco Columbus Day parade in North Beach, after years of being too exhausted of getting to it. It was pretty cool, the streets were packed and the parade lasted several hours. We saw some local prominent SF families there – I think I saw the Aliotos reserve an entire table at a restaurant on the street. Pretty cool!

I was watching Walt & El Grupo on TV, a documentary about Walt Disney’s trip to Nazi-sympathetic South America in 1941.

Randomly, one of the people reminiscing about Walt Disney showed a letter sent to them… it had an address of 711 Hanover in Palo Alto. The writing was a bit smudgy, it may have been Homer.

While it looks like 711 Homer is a home off Middlefield, 711 Hanover no longer exists – the street ends at 2000. But! The street comes to a “T” at Escondido Elementary… Which was built in 1960. So the address of this person may have been bulldozed to build the school.

Sort of random but interesting.

BRAIN: gaypon?
SHAC: you heard me
BRAIN: why do gays need their own coupons
BRAIN: there’s a hook up app for gay men
SHAC: holy
SHAC: why didnt i think of that?
BRAIN: grindr
SHAC: i wish you had stopped short of telling me the name
BRAIN: lesbian friends complain there is no equiv for ladies
SHAC: what would you call it?
SHAC: liqr?
BRAIN: you are a marketing god
SHAC: oh man that took all the creative power out of me

BRAIN: churros aren’t seasonal are they
SHAC: not really
SHAC: but in my opinion they have a certain comfort aspect
SHAC: when served warm
BRAIN: so maybe valentines day
BRAIN: “you’ll die alone. Have a churro!”

I was just reading a great post on Millenial rebranding, and an emergent problem – many people can no longer buy “just” strawberry ice cream. It’s always some weird flavor hybrid.

Many of us have the “strawberry ice cream problem,” and frequently it’s not just about a product that is no longer popular… or imagined to be popular. How many times have you seen a film that was very very expensive, but just not that memorable? Most summer movies nowadays will never ever be someone’s “favorite movie.” The problem has to do with the conundrum of marketing to the mainstream – as pointed out in The Tipping Point, even when remarkable coffee will be tart or black or some other memorable quality, POPULAR coffee will be bland and sweet.

I think the answer is in Long Tail thinking, as a consumer – we as consumers are now expected to specialize, to search out products that match our aesthetics. Thanks to the internet, this is now not only possible but pretty convenient!

As for the actual strawberry ice cream problem – think of it as an opportunity. Other people will want strawberry ice cream near you; you can sell it to them. In the San Francisco Bay Area, we don’t have a lack of strawberry ice cream – you can get it at any ice cream shop, especially small independent shops like Fenton’s or Preston’s Candy & Ice Cream.

DANH: did you read about SFPD shooting
BRAIN: this thing?
DANH: yeah
DANH: new development!
BRAIN: jeez
BRAIN: SF citizens suck
DANH: that guy wasnt from SF
DANH: also
DANH: did he shoot himself
DANH: then run
BRAIN: the cops shot a guy while searching him for weapons, they found a weapon on him when they stopped him for not having a ticket
BRAIN: so the protesters want no police on the trains
BRAIN: which seems like the opposite thing that should happen
BRAIN: like, there are dudes on the trains with guns
BRAIN: “quick get rid of the police!”
DANH: oh i agree with all that
DANH: the story is very strange now though!
DANH: when was he supposed to have shot himself?
DANH: totally bizarre
DANH: if you’re a fugitive felon on parole from another state
DANH: carrying a concealed weapon that you’re not even old enough to have
DANH: you should pay your fare
BRAIN: I agree
BRAIN: it’s just common sense
DANH: ‘he shot himself’ is totally weird though
BRAIN: yes
BRAIN: also there’s this person who lifted the gun from the crime scene

The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza parlor and says “make me one with everything.”

The actual Dalai Lama didn’t get it, but was pretty cool about it.

One commenter mentions:

the REST of the joke is,,,, after handing the clerk a $20 bill against his $12.00 tab, the Dalai Lama says, change pleae. the clerk replies,”” change must come from within””

I like the hot dog version better – also, my more koan-like variant is:

A zen monk asks a hot dog vendor,
“Make me one with everything”
And the vendor says
“Mu”
And the monk is enlightened

I guess I should find a way to make that into a haiku or something.

Netflix tries to come up with categories of movies based on my rental history and on my registered “taste preferences.” The more elaborate these are the more I like them:

Quirky Independent Comedies
Visually-striking Mind-bending Foreign Movies
Mind-bending Independent Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Cerebral foreign dramas
Emotional 20th Century Period Pieces based on a book
Dramas Featuring a Strong Female Lead
Violent Suspenseful Movies
Classic Dark Movies based on classic literature
Scary Foreign Thrillers
Cerebral Independent Gay and Lesbian
Gritty Movies based on contemporary literature
Exciting Cult Movies
Witty Biographical Movies

I don’t think “Priscilla” or “Hedwig” were all that “cerebral.” Maybe it’s keying off of “I Shot Andy Warhol” and “Happy Together.”

According to the Haunted Pittsburgh Ghost Tours, there’s a library donated by Carnegie that was built over a mass grave. The library is, of course, haunted, notably by the image of a young boy. The ghost has been identified with a boy who died many decades ago, whose headstone was on display.

BRAIN: you ever notice how all the paranormal investigations emulate a “scientific” approach rather than an “engineering” one?
KIRBY: how is that?
BRAIN: I mean usually there’s these guys running around with sensors and recording equipment… trying to quantify the ghost, or an effect or something. And it never works.
KIRBY: Definitely
BRAIN: But in engineering, you’re not so concerned with the “why” of it – you just take a known effect and employ it to get a desired outcome. So what if instead of trying to research the mechanism of ghosts, you just use what you know…
KIRBY: with the boy’s headstone?
BRAIN: yeah, like if one headstone on display makes the library kinda haunted… I bet fifty headstones would make it much MORE haunted. Two hundred even.
KIRBY: You could put the headstones in certain patterns, and make a “ghost gun.”
BRAIN: …what would a “ghost gun” even do?
KIRBY: I don’t know, but it would be awesome!

Well I hope you’re happy boys, this library is completely unusable now

SHAC: …but after watching it she sounds like she was pretty unprepared and didn’t do any homework either
SHAC: i expected her to tell a story about how groupon screwed her over but it seems like it was only 1/2 their fault
BRAIN: or 1/4 their fault after markup
SHAC: holy hell i just realized i only watched part 1 of 5
SHAC: f this
SHAC: attention span done
BRAIN: your attention span is discounted to 20%
SHAC: sigh