This past week marks the 10-year anniversary of blogs and blogging. NPR ran a fairly decent series about blogs this past week. The link provides a history of the blog but, really, hasn't the essence of blogging been around for centuries? The "inter-webs" just provides another portal for people to campaign and to catalog, their ideas and thoughts. Is posting one's thoughts on a blog any different than spending a Sunday morning to go to Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park to expatiate on whatever random subject that seems important that day as people have been doing since the mid-1800's ? Of course, there's the anonymity a blog provides and comfort of being at home but isn't the idea of a discourse of the truth and speech still there? The blog is just another evolution of that ideal.
It's not lost on me that anything written in a blog may stay in cyberspace for an unknown quantity of time. Blogs are providing tomorrow's anthropologists with a treasure of data and information (along with a lot of crap --including my own blog). The Indiana Jones of the future won't be running around Egypt trying to find the Rosetta Stone but discovering obsolete computer code to decipher the secrets of primitive blogs.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Merry Christmas, everyone.
I went to my friend's house today for Christmas dinner and got home just a little past 10 p.m. I walked into my dark kitchen to feed my cat and just as I switched on my light, a blue flame caught my eye. I left a burner on low heat all day. I'm extremely lucky I didn't cause a fire. The last time I used my stove was this morning when I made some scrambled eggs for breakfast. I could have sworn I turned off the heat. I must not have turned the knob or accidently brushed against the stove and turned on the burner. Either way, this Christmas could have ended up much worse than how it did. I just wonder what my gas bill will be like now that a burner was on for nearly 12 hours.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Winter Solstice
Chicago received 49 minutes of more light during the Summer Solstice. Will Chicago have 49 minutes of additional darkness during the Winter Solstice?
Los Angeles
Sunrise: 6:56 a.m.
Sunset: 4:48 p.m.
Normal high: 68
Normal low: 48
________________________
Chicago
Sunrise: 7:15 a.m.
Sunset: 4:23 p.m.
Normal high: 30
Normal low: 18
It does seem L.A. wins the more daylight category by 45 minutes for the Winter Solstice but Chicago has an additional 4 minutes of light overall -- at least by these statistics.
Los Angeles
Sunrise: 6:56 a.m.
Sunset: 4:48 p.m.
Normal high: 68
Normal low: 48
________________________
Chicago
Sunrise: 7:15 a.m.
Sunset: 4:23 p.m.
Normal high: 30
Normal low: 18
It does seem L.A. wins the more daylight category by 45 minutes for the Winter Solstice but Chicago has an additional 4 minutes of light overall -- at least by these statistics.
Light Display
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) sponsors this outdoor light exhibit in Griffith Park every year. It's suppose to be this big deal -- at least judging by traffic it creates. Since I live so close, I decided to view it this year. Let me tell you it's a huge disappointment. You stay in your car and drive very slowly through the 2-mile(?) exhibit. It's like being stuck in traffic but having some lights to look at to pass the time. It's not all that different as any other municipal light exhibits -- i.e., the Lincoln Park light display. Most of the light displays were of iconic L.A. locales -- Griffith observatory, the Hollywood sign, the ocean, etc. It might appeal to little kids but in today's world of bright lights, big city culture, I'm not even sure if kids would be impressed.
The saddest thing of the whole display is that as I was driving to the exhibit, I saw signs that informed people that the light display was a 40 minute wait, a 30 minutes wait and so forth until you drove to the beginning of the display. There was no wait when I drove through it but I would imagine that on Christmas Eve, Los Angelenos will wait in traffic that long to view it.
And, there was no snow to help create the ambiance.
The saddest thing of the whole display is that as I was driving to the exhibit, I saw signs that informed people that the light display was a 40 minute wait, a 30 minutes wait and so forth until you drove to the beginning of the display. There was no wait when I drove through it but I would imagine that on Christmas Eve, Los Angelenos will wait in traffic that long to view it.
And, there was no snow to help create the ambiance.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Parade Preparation
I did something fairly unique and only native to Los Angeles --more specifically unique to Pasadena. I helped decorate a Rose Parade float last Saturday. My employer is sponsoring a float in the parade and I volunteered to help decorate it. All I can say is float-decorating is a long and tedious process.
At first glance the infrastructure of the floats seems like a huge paper machier project. In reality, the bodies, or chassis, of the floats are made from wood and chicken wire and then sprayed with a polyvinyl material. Then the floats are painted in the various colors of the flowers and organic materials which will eventually adorn it. Up to the last week of December, when the floats are decorated with the flowers and their fragrances scent the air, the media on the floats are just dry materials: lentils for orange, crushed lentils for a lighter orange, dried peas for green, grounded parsley for darker green. The hard part is painstakingly gluing the material onto the float. Some materials, such as the lentils, needed to glued on the float by hand. Other portions could be glued on the float by using a household sponge. A detailed-oriented personality is a must in this line of work.
Our float is being constructed in a large building just across from the Rose Bowl with several other floats. As of last Saturday, it seemed the decorating still relied heavily upon volunteers. Boisterous teenagers, probably to receive their community service credit now needed for college applications, seemed to make up the majority of the volunteers while some senior citizens sat quietly in a circle cutting up the petals of purple flowers that will eventually be glued onto the floats. Other volunteers manned the blenders which whirled on and on grinding the lentils, beans, bark or fruit into a colorful, mealy texture that give the floats texture. Others, like myself, began decorating the floats.
It was a lot of fun but because of my bum knee, I had to force myself into some extremely awkward positions. And, it was dirty. I wore a grey cashmere hoodie but took if off shortly after decorating. It was a good thing too because by the end of the day, my hair was littered with yellow flower petals because this kid was gluing petals to the top portion of the float, which happened to be directly above my head. My jeans and Chuck Taylors were covered in rice dust and lentils. (In fact, I just flicked a lentil off my shoe tonight.) My fingers stuck together because of all the glue which dried on them. All-in-all, it was a fun time and I did get to meet some fellow co-workers.
My first true memory of the Rose Parade (besides that it was just on TV every New Year's Day) was in 1984 when Illinois went to the Rose Bowl. Now, 24 years later I'm helping to build a float for the Rose Parade. BTW, which Big Ten team is playing in the Rose Bowl? Illinois is and making its first Rose Bowl appearance in ...24 years. I never would have thought as a 14-year-old living in Sullivan, Illinois watching Mike White take his Illini team to the Rose Bowl that I would be living in L.A. the next time Illinois makes an appearance. Funny, how things work out.
If you happen to catch the Rose Parade on New Year's day and see my employer's float, just know that I helped decorate it. The portion I did will be the clumsily glued together part.
At first glance the infrastructure of the floats seems like a huge paper machier project. In reality, the bodies, or chassis, of the floats are made from wood and chicken wire and then sprayed with a polyvinyl material. Then the floats are painted in the various colors of the flowers and organic materials which will eventually adorn it. Up to the last week of December, when the floats are decorated with the flowers and their fragrances scent the air, the media on the floats are just dry materials: lentils for orange, crushed lentils for a lighter orange, dried peas for green, grounded parsley for darker green. The hard part is painstakingly gluing the material onto the float. Some materials, such as the lentils, needed to glued on the float by hand. Other portions could be glued on the float by using a household sponge. A detailed-oriented personality is a must in this line of work.
Our float is being constructed in a large building just across from the Rose Bowl with several other floats. As of last Saturday, it seemed the decorating still relied heavily upon volunteers. Boisterous teenagers, probably to receive their community service credit now needed for college applications, seemed to make up the majority of the volunteers while some senior citizens sat quietly in a circle cutting up the petals of purple flowers that will eventually be glued onto the floats. Other volunteers manned the blenders which whirled on and on grinding the lentils, beans, bark or fruit into a colorful, mealy texture that give the floats texture. Others, like myself, began decorating the floats.
It was a lot of fun but because of my bum knee, I had to force myself into some extremely awkward positions. And, it was dirty. I wore a grey cashmere hoodie but took if off shortly after decorating. It was a good thing too because by the end of the day, my hair was littered with yellow flower petals because this kid was gluing petals to the top portion of the float, which happened to be directly above my head. My jeans and Chuck Taylors were covered in rice dust and lentils. (In fact, I just flicked a lentil off my shoe tonight.) My fingers stuck together because of all the glue which dried on them. All-in-all, it was a fun time and I did get to meet some fellow co-workers.
My first true memory of the Rose Parade (besides that it was just on TV every New Year's Day) was in 1984 when Illinois went to the Rose Bowl. Now, 24 years later I'm helping to build a float for the Rose Parade. BTW, which Big Ten team is playing in the Rose Bowl? Illinois is and making its first Rose Bowl appearance in ...24 years. I never would have thought as a 14-year-old living in Sullivan, Illinois watching Mike White take his Illini team to the Rose Bowl that I would be living in L.A. the next time Illinois makes an appearance. Funny, how things work out.
If you happen to catch the Rose Parade on New Year's day and see my employer's float, just know that I helped decorate it. The portion I did will be the clumsily glued together part.
Monday, December 3, 2007
T-Joe's
I have a love/hate relationship with Trader Joe's -- and lately it's been on the downside. As a concept, I LOVE TJ's. It's a poor man's Whole Foods -- the two-buck chuck, the trendy foodstuffs, the healthy and organic options, and the ethnic foods which are just on this side of being too exotic. Mostly affordable. Mostly yummy. Truly, what's not to love?
Except for the fact that no matter what time of day or day of the week, there are 100 cars vying for 25 parking spots. Inside the store, it's even worse. To get to those yummy, trendy foods every self-pretentious hipster wants so badly, one must knock down three other customers to get to them. It's not that TJ's isn't well-stocked, it is. It's just that the check-out line queues well into the cramped and narrow aisles.
This isn't just life at the Silver Lake TJ's. It's the same at any Trader Joe's. Urban or suburban. Los Angeles or Chicago. I can imagine the new store requirements for the the TJ's location scout: Small parking lot? Check. Building is just a tad too small for a grocery store? Check. Yuppies and hipsters live nearby? Check. Perfect stage-setting for the the TJ experience.
Now, I need to go make the delicious cioppinno I found at Trader Joe's. It's the perfect winter seafood stew.
Except for the fact that no matter what time of day or day of the week, there are 100 cars vying for 25 parking spots. Inside the store, it's even worse. To get to those yummy, trendy foods every self-pretentious hipster wants so badly, one must knock down three other customers to get to them. It's not that TJ's isn't well-stocked, it is. It's just that the check-out line queues well into the cramped and narrow aisles.
This isn't just life at the Silver Lake TJ's. It's the same at any Trader Joe's. Urban or suburban. Los Angeles or Chicago. I can imagine the new store requirements for the the TJ's location scout: Small parking lot? Check. Building is just a tad too small for a grocery store? Check. Yuppies and hipsters live nearby? Check. Perfect stage-setting for the the TJ experience.
Now, I need to go make the delicious cioppinno I found at Trader Joe's. It's the perfect winter seafood stew.
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