Monthly Archives: March 2010
Five Things for Friday, March 26th
1. I’ve been reading a lot about the idea that this health care reform bill is going to cost the Democrats a lot in November’s elections. The Republicans are planning on pushing the idea of repeal as a cornerstone of their election plank. The problem I see with that approach is the idea that health reform is going to be on the minds of the public in seven months. I think that overestimates the attention span of the American electorate by about six-and-a-half months at least.
Food Review: Redfire Grill & Steakhouse, Hockessin DE
On a recent date night, Lady Aravan took me to a place we hadn’t been before, Redfire Grill & Steakhouse. I love beef like hippies love patchouli, so I was eager to go and yet apprehensive at the same time. I cook steak a lot. I am good at it. Many times I’ve gone to a restaurant and ordered steak and gotten an underseasoned, or overseasoned, piece of meat at such an exorbitant price that it makes me well up in righteous fury. I am an overcritical judge of what I like, and when a place burns myeverloving steak and calls it “char” like I should pay extra for it, I can barely resist the urge to take their imitation crystal candleholders and set the place on fire. So, did I want to set Redfire on, well, fire?
Food Review: Domino’s Pizza
We’ve all seen the commercials: Domino’s Pizza solemnly intoning all the reasons why people think their pizza is pure shit. Ketchupy sauce, bland crust, yada yada. I personally never thought it was as dire as all that, but I also didn’t order Domino’s Pizza very often. The only time I did was to get a thin crust pizza, the only thing I thought Domino’s did better than Papa John’s. The commercials stuck in my mind, however, and like all effective advertising, convinced me to try to fulfill a need I didn’t even know I had. So, is Domino’s new recipe worth the hype and fuss, or even worth ordering at all?
Do It Today
Everyone wants to improve themselves. There is something about everyone that they’d like to change, whether it’s their health, their career, their outlook, something. Change, real change, is very difficult to do, however. It’s easier to rationalize or procrastinate than it is to follow through and try for various reasons. One is complacency, that pernicious voice that whispers that hey, things aren’t all that bad, so just sit down over here with a box of HoHos and we’ll get ’em next time, champ. Another is fear, like I talked about yesterday. The fear of failure is brutal, since the person you are failing is the same person you look at every day in the mirror. The self-loathing that accompanies it is crushing, which makes it harder to contemplate making the changes you want to make for yourself. Fear is the enemy, always. There is only one real solution to making changes: Do it. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next month. Today.
Feelings, and Why Men Don’t Know What To Do With Them
It’s often extremely difficult for a male to express their feelings, which isn’t exactly a news flash by any stretch. Much has been made over the last few decades about the reticence of men to discuss how they feel about anything or to express their emotions. Women’s magazines lament about it; men’s magazines glorify it; TV and movies mock it while propping up the practice. A lot of women will profess that they wish their man, or their prospective one, would be more open about their feelings. Unfortunately, society conspires against men and prevents them from doing just that.
Daylight Savings Time
I fucking hate daylight savings time. Just as your body clock is ticking along nicely, when the sun is rising as you get out of bed, allowing you to pour your coffee with actual sunlight coming into your windows, you’re arbitrarily forcede to move your clock for no good fucking reason whatsoever. It’s now pitch black as you stumble sleepily around the house trying to find the goddamn coffee filters and feed the dogs.
The Second Coming
I have a friend that I used to work with. Unlike me, he was a very religious person in the best meaning of the word (in my own opinion). His faith was strong, but he wasn’t a preacher or evangelist or pusher. Whenever I had a question or observation about the Christian faith, I’d sit down and talk to him. He was always open and patient and never took offense to the blasphemous questions or arguments I posed to him, and would always answer me honestly, expressing his beliefs as just that, never judging or condemning. He is a good man, who just happens to be quite religious. I wish I still worked with him, so I could ask him about something I started thinking about last night.
Go Elsewhere For Your Entertainment
Lady Aravan today wrote a thought-provoking post about the human obsession with time tracking. I, on the other hand, can’t think of a blessed thing to write about. Read that instead.
Terrorism, Close to Home
On the way in to work this morning, the folks on the radio were discussing the October arrest of a woman that lived near Philly. She was attempting to organize/join a terror cell with the aim of killing a cartoonist who depicted Muhammad combined with a dog. She was a convert to Islam and felt fervently enough about her new religion to attempt to kill another human being on another continent. It’s a piece of news that is all too common these days. Maybe it was the nearness of this woman to my own home that engendered the feeling that it did; I don’t know. All I know is, it impacted me.
Five Mass Effect Things for Monday, March 8th
1. I, along with Lady Aravan, spent the weekend playing Mass Effect. When some people say that, they mean they spent several hours doing something. What I mean is, we got home from work on Friday night and started playing, played until 2 am, got up Saturday and played from noon until 6:30 am, got up Sunday and played from noon til 11:30. I finished my second full run-through, including at one point going back 6 hours to an old saved game since I screwed something trivial up. Lady Aravan finished the game for the first time, threw in Mass Effect 2, and started playing until she realized that there was a bonus for getting level 50 in ME1 in the second game. So she reloaded a saved game and spent a good number of hours finishing nearly every quest in the game (she missed 1 that I am aware of, and couldn’t get it without going even further back) as well as finding pretty much every debris field and resource on every landable planet. When she finished the game, she was 50 and I was in awe, since even though I went back 6 hours and did the same shit another time through, I don’t have the fortitude to do what she did. Although I have to admit it bothers me that I’m 48. Moral: we like games.
Winter in Derenemyn 