Cracking

So on my recent trip to Taiwan and Indonesia, I picked up various kinds of electronic equipment for friends and for myself: a microSD card, a reader for said card, a portable hard drive. This being Asia, invariably there were stands nearby selling all kinds of pirated DVDs, music, and video games. (On one of the occasions, I was wearing a suit, so it was a little weird walking through.)

I'm not going to talk about the benefits and evils of pirating. I'll make one quick comment and one long observation. First, quickly, Taiwan has really cleaned up its piracy issues. I remember several years ago walking along the night market outside my grandma's house as seeing DVDs everywhere. Nothing now.

Second, and longer, the experience in Indonesia especially got me thinking about some recent developments in video games. It's very difficult to copy-protect DVDs - sooner or later someone cracks it. But I wonder whether the recent trends of online play, constant updates and upgrades, and occasionally half-finished game releases aren't in some way tied to anti-pirating efforts. On several of the games, I saw disclaimers (in English, surprisingly) that you could not use the DVDs to play online. In addition, the ones where that was possible (I haven't obviously tested whether this is true) appeared to be older games that came out a minimum of 1-2 years ago.

And the reason online play is blocked is because the game developers can constantly check up on the legality of your copy. Most cracks to play games illegally require invasive changes to the executable file or core game files. That kind of thing is pretty easy to suss out. Similarly, constant file updates also make it very easy to catch crackers and force them to reinstall. Cripple your initial release just enough, string out your updates long enough, and you'll likely get all the people who were going to purchase the game to do so legally.

So, how plausible is this? I'm sure it's not the only reason behind buggy releases and constant updates with limited tweaks. But it could very well be a contributing factor to why certain types of games - especially single-player, offline ones - are increasingly being packaged with specific online features.

Crunchiness and Granola

I've just come back from the cultural/spiritual center of Java, and while I can't say that I've learned any more or crystallized my thoughts on Indonesia, I did discover a few things about myself. For example, there's a reason I don't backpack anymore. It was all fun when I was in India and maybe even a little after I started working in Taiwan. But comparing my hotel room to the places where some of the Westerners I met were staying - well, there was no comparison. I was invited back to their place for some drinks (remember, it's Ramadan, so alcohol is hard to find) and quickly came to the conclusion that I would not be spending the night there under any circumstances. The fact that my 3-star hotel room was all of 300 meters away really wasn't an important factor in this decision, and I realize how much I've grown to enjoy my creature comforts. Like an actual seat on the toilet.

Also, I've become more firmly convinced in my disinterest - bordering on distaste - of Western tourists looking to find themselves in the spiritual centers of Asia. Yogjakarta (shortened to Yogja and pronounced "jog-ja") has loads of Hindu, Buddhist, and historical sites, as well as a cultural asthetic marred only by the commercialism that has crept in because tourism is a primary driver of the local economy. As a result, you get lots of people doing the extra-crunchy granola backpacking thing, something which - while I respect it - I'm not sure how much it's based in a realistic understanding of the people's lives.

I suppose that's partly the point - you go to these places to escape the rigors and stresses of the world. But at some point, I do wonder whether the travelers are mistaking the spirituality and "hush" lent to a location by virtue of it being a past religious center with the spirituality that in some sense should emanate from the people living in the location. It's hard for me to square the spirituality of the location with, say, the commercialism I mentioned earlier. So, India never struck me as the spiritual place that many of my friends thought it was, except in the Tibetan monasteries, where spiritualism was a way of life (the human element joining with the location). The same was in Yogja.

All of this is really me trying to say that multiple times, I felt very old. In a far different place than a lot of the college and post-college kids I met: much more firmly established and far less able to join in their conversations about things that, frankly, didn't seem at all interesting to me. This was even the case with some of the older individuals I met there. It makes me wonder about my time backpacking, and whether I was really as idealistic, perhaps even naive, as the individuals I met.

As for the city itself, it's a very pretty place with some great sights to see. The Borobhudur temple in particular is quite simply massive, and a monumental achievement for the Buddhist religion. I'll post pictures when I get back to the U.S. But like any heavy tourist spot, there were innumerable touts and people looking to sell overpriced handicrafts. This was a great contrast to Turkey, and I found myself longing for a place that is firmly used to the idea of tourists. So, as GF and I are planning a vacation next summer after I quit, it's a race between Southeast Asia and a Mediterranean tour. I think you know which one I'm going after.

And one thing I forgot to mention last time. Indonesia needs to cut off about three "0" off its currency. It's nice being a millionnaire, but the 9500:1 exchange rate - and the fact that things cost at least some multiple of 100, if not 1000, pre-tax - means that you get very large and unwieldy bills in your wallet.

Notes from Abroad

Just thought I'd share a couple of observations from my time in Indonesia. Since I've largely been shuttling between meetings, hotels, and restaurants, I don't think I have the best impression of the country, but - with that major caveat - here goes:

1. I've never seen worse traffic in my life. My coworker here gave an excellent piece of advice: always use the bathroom right before you go somewhere else. You never know when you'll get another chance. It took us 15 minutes to get to one meeting prior to rush hour. It took an hour and 15 to get back. That's happened EVERY DAY, without fail, on almost all the streets.
2. That said, aside from cars, Jakarta is nowhere near as crowded as I had thought. Like LA, there's no city center, so you don't get that crush of people in particular areas.
3. Also, the streets are very clean. The air is often terrible, but I have seen very little litter on the ground.
4. There's something of an identity crisis going on, despite the fact that everyone keeps talking about (and I'm going to butcher this spelling) panchasila - which is kind of like a national philosophy. Even so, I don't know how many people have really embraced the ideas of pluralism and diversity, enough so that they can celebrate their commonalities amid a strikingly diverse range of people, cultures, and languages.
5. And finally, there's a crapload of malls over here.

I take off for Java's cultural center tomorrow, so I'll hopefully have more insight later.

Why Save Craptown?

I spent a lot of time this week trying to catch up on the New York Times, which since we began subscribing about a month ago has turned into an intimidating tower of reading threatening to take over our living room. Anyway, last week there was this story about a mill town in New Hampshire called Berlin that's dying. Apparently paper milling is disappearing as an industry in the United States and its dragging Berlin down the drain with it. (Who makes paper now? Brazil?) With no industry and a rapidly dwindling population, the town is desperate to save itself and has therefore cooked up two new industries to attract and retain residents-- a prison and a off-roading truck park. I don't want to make light of the Berlin's new industries. Prisons have to go somewhere I guess, and why not in the middle of nowhere. But clearly, when you're counting on an SUV park to save your town, you've reached the point of desperation.

My question is: why bother saving the town at all? Why not let nature take its course and let the town die. Couldn't this just be better in the long run? Pull down some of the houses, dig up the concrete, bulldoze the strip malls and give the whole piece of land back to nature. Or give it to a Native American reservation.

Let it go. Its dead. Why is there this obsession with keeping this crappy town alive? There are thousands of dead end towns across this country, and, quite frankly, we don't need them. They take up space and occupy land that would just be better used in an ecosystem.

Any thoughts?

802

That’s the number of items rated on my account in Netflix. It’s a tally not so much from enjoying rating things (though click click refresh is a easy way to burn time and I do enjoy it), but the hope that whatever recommendation algorithm lurks behind may leads me to something interesting. Of course, with the inherent limitations of 5-star rating systems, the internet’s grade inflations, etc…

As I am of the anal and tedious sort, I’d like a two tier rating system for the quality of work and enjoyment factor. For example:

• Willow: 2, paint-by-numbers serial; 5, Mad Martigan earns undisguised love
• Lost in Translation: 4-5, good notes from the WKW class, great Bill Murray; 1, accomplished craft in the service of solipsism earns outright disgust
  

Well, maybe I do enjoy being judgmental more than most (and that’s why I’m anonymous on the internet). But Izicmo has mentioned something more useful. She advocates for the addition of a 2.5 rating. It’s meant for compelling mediocrity (Born Into Brothels, great kids, great story. Also, the Rough Guide to Poverty) or weakly received craft (Behind the Sun, possibly the prettiest movie ever. Thin as a sliver).

But all that’s a massive tangent bulking up the one item I wanted to blog. After you return something to Netflix, if you haven’t rated it, the website will ask you to rate the sucker and get two recommendations. The first result seems to actually be tied directly to the rating, the second's relationship probably being more diffuse usually results in a generic rec. I returned the first disc of Freaks and Geeks and gave it a 2 when asked.* Thusly, computron said, seek ye Red Dwarf and Band of Brothers. The first is pretty spot on, sloppy black humor being something of the opposite of Apatow’s verve. I decided to like and love the thing instead, but sadly failed to note what should’ve been my heart’s desire (Sunset Boulevard is the agreeable second pick). No, not 40-year-old Virgin. I did note what hate wrought. What am I guaranteed to love with the certification of hate to 70’s high school misfits? This. Ha!

* It’s well made, and has a lot going for it (even as I think it’s obvious why it didn’t hit). Man was I bored.

Good Riddance

I'm not a religious man, but Thank God.

For whatever reason, the flouting of the rule of law has become a real issue for me, such that I was considering not voting for any candidates in the last election because they all supported some legislation stripping FISA of any oversight power. That, combined with the frankly disgraceful search to find some kind of legal justification for the conduct at Guantanamo, black sites, and Abu Ghraib, makes me really glad to see the major architects of these policies kicked out.

They serve the law. You forget that, and you forget the idea
of justice.

Now there was an interesting discussion on Gonzales' resignation yesterday on the NewsHour. However, what really got to me was the comments of a conservative legal theorist - and the general lack of remorse by anyone within the administration or its supporters about Gonzales' blatantly inappropriate actions. The commentator was arguing that Gonzales should be supported for really reorienting the Justice Department on an "anti-terrorism" footing and essentially blaming the Democrats for dragging Gonzales' name through the mud.

This misses several things:

1. You don't want your Justice Department to be on an anti-terrorism footing. That's for the military to handle. It involves pre-emption. It involves lack of evidence. It is not a judicial process: it's a mode of war. And while investigation into terrorist cells is necessary, the procedures to do that should be kept under the rule of law for fear of damaging civil liberties. After all, what will you do in the absence of these protections? Offer reparations to victims of government abuse? There have been no reports of that happening. Provide apologies? From this administration? And that is the exact problem. The role of war is political: it seeks political ends for political purposes. The role of law is social and systemic. It is meant to be above politics and provide a framework for participation. Once you start confusing that, as Gonzales, Yoo, and others have done, you've completely missed the point of the law.
2. Many Republicans were calling for Gonzales to step down, and many Republican appointees were contradicting Gonzales' statements.
3. The anti-terrorism bit, even if valid, wouldn't apply to the firing of U.S. Attorneys. What does that have to do with anti-terrorism? If the firing offenses weren't conduct or performance-related, then what was the issue? Anti-terrorism doesn't cover this scandal, and no one should feel any sympathy for Gonzales screwing himself over in his testimony.

This all goes to the separation of the political and the legal. Gonzales and all the "loyal Bushies" (Goodling, etc.) made the mistake of thinking they serve the President. They don't. They serve at the pleasure of the President. But they serve the law. You forget that, and you forget the idea of justice.

Don't Drink That Water

Elizabeth Economy has a fascinating article on China's environmental crisis and its impact on the economy. Doesn't mention the 50-mile long benzene slick that went to Russia, but it points out that levels of certain heavy metals along the Guangdong cost are 2000 times the regulation limits, the shrimp catch has declined 90 percent in the last 15 years, and around 190 million people suffer from respiratory illnesses.

It's all pretty staggering stuff, but there's relatively little hope that the Chinese government - both in Beijing and especially in the local areas - will take the necessary steps to ensure not just one-off improvements, but a long lasting system of monitoring and evaluation. The economic incentives just aren't there. A case in point: one factory owner said he was ignoring environmental regulations because the upgrade would equal 15 years worth of penalties. And while the central government is concerned about the environment, they're even more concerned about economic development. Unfortunately, that's just not the political environment for protecting the natural one.

EDIT: Additional articles and multimedia on the subject from the New York Times can be found here.

Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad

That’s better than any opening lines I could come up. Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad is a manga cum anime that exemplifies the breath of the import flood of Japanese-created diversion that has my homegrown sorts of entertainments offsides lately. In brief, it’s coming of age time for Yukio (aka Koyuki), as an encounter with the bizarre dog Beck finds hi befriending its owner, Ryuusuke Minami. And adventurous hijinks later, in a band named after the dog. And what about Ryuusuke’ss sister Maho? See, interest piqued.

A pretty great premise I think, for a serial of any sort. I’d opted not to pick up the manga before as the art wasn’t for me, but read an interview* with the editor that talked about adapting it to an inevitable anime. A hard sell with manga, what with audio not being a sense that pages can convey, but the music seemed chosen with care—and the 30 volumes (6k+ worth of pages, probably) got compressed to one(!) season. Worth a shot.

And it does have a lot going for it. The characters are rounded, and the story grows naturalistically, if slightly cramped at times. I imagine a smoother revelation of the Olympic class swim coach also being a rock fan and guitar teacher, but maybe it’s just awkward because Yukio learns guitar in one summer, or one episode. But I’m happy not to read the 6 volumes it probably took. It pulls off a pretty hard feat of not being a melodramatic and subdued anime. There’s a moment when Koyuki is having a phone conversation with Ryuusuke early on in their relationship, and maybe because the latter was raised in America (or Holland, I can’t tell) he asks Koyuki not to add –kun and just say it suffixless. He says it’s because he doesn’t want to sound like a kid, and of course he’s all grown up, and Koyuki sits on the stair with the phone silently for a bit, and smiles. And if you know using a name without attachments indicates the closeness of family or lovers in Japan, it’s a pretty sweet scene.

Mind you, pauses don’t always work. Paul Gravett says that the financial constraints of Japanese cartoons sometimes makes animation less than fluid, and quiet moments could just be the studio being cheap. (He says cheap moments can have gravity actually, but I’m of the mind they’re just cheap here). So when longhaired figures mutter things sullenly in the rain, their eyes are covered by sulkiness—well, whatever, they’re teenagers, let’s let that go. The problematic part is the engrish (see: intro song). It’s one thing to have “Coko” instead of “Coke” and the cringe inducing “41nd street” or Ramonne Johnny—trademarks being what they are—but since they decided to “hit in America” and opt for lyrics in english, the misuse of language starts being a liability. The manga can’t do it, but here the music should be a star and not a misfire. I can ignore them in the joyful bop of the intro, but end of the day, some of the music sucks. “Full Moon Sways” (typing this out, I made a little vomitty sound).

Could be that this is just cultural misapprehension, or lack of effort—which is frankly a global game—but they don’t need to be complete sentences. Just you know, make more sense.**

In general, they sound like cheerful grunge, though doubtless the future holds more grand stylistic experiments with blues or punk, which I'm terribly frightened of. (Cowboy Bebop integrated music well, too, but “Real Folk Blues” was neither folk or blues--and that was the succesful anime. Samurai Champloo and Furi Kuri are a mite more successful. ) I don’t think the creators were shooting for the jovial Pearl Jam sound they ended up with in the Beck proper, but they seemed influenced by the biggest bands of the nineties mostly. (Ideally, I think they should go for a cleaner Dinosaur Jr., personally).

Well, I say it's worth watching.


* I’ve lost the link to it.
** I also question the use of foreigners for two incidents of gaijin related tomfoolery in four episodes: One a dangerous encounter with drunk marines(?); another two propositioning tourists (possibly it’s about the angry teen girl, but I dunno), but that might be a bit of national pride on my part. And as always, foolishness abides. Though the first scene is about more than plain idiocy.

Having a Good Time at a Bad Movie

I saw Rush Hour Three last weekend. Yes, the same movie the New York Times called "soul-crushingly bad" or something to that effect. Yeah, it was. But luckily I was able to enjoy it with the use of Ninja mind control techniques. I know what you're thinking. There's only one white man in America who knows the way of the Ninja, and that man is American Ninja, Stephen Hayes.

No, there is another. Me. And I use Ninja mind control to watch Jackie Chan's Hollywood productions. Here's how it works. Ten minutes before the movie starts, you need to free your mind of all thoughts. ALL THOUGHTS. You can't think about anything more complicated than sitting there and/or deciding whether or not you want to go to the bathroom. Any stray memory, emotion, or shopping list, is something that you may subconciously compare with the movie. The movie will not come out of that comparison favorably.

"Did Jackie Chan try to speak jive in the last scene? It is gone."

It goes without saying that you need to empty your mind of all preconceptions. Any hopes or fears you have about the movie will taint your perceptions when you begin to watch it. You need calm. Crystal clear empty calm.

Don't think. Feel. When the movie comes, you should be in such a mind state that you will not be guessing what happens next and will not think about what happened even 10 seconds before. Experience each second as it happens. Don't follow the plot. Every scene should feel unique and new. Did Cris Tucker sing and ham up for the camera five minutes ago, and now he's doing it again and again? It doesn't matter, becuase those previous scenes are gone. Gone. Gone from your mind and gone from existence. With your Ninja mind, each Chris Tucker lip synch is new, fresh, and vital. Did Jackie Chan try to speak jive in the last scene? It is gone. Already forgotten. Characters go to France for no logical reason? That would bother you if you were watching the plot, but you are a Ninja and have no need for plots.

See how easy it is? When I came out from Rush Hour Three, I didn't feel frustrated or angry. I felt liberated. If was the liberation of the Ninja. I recommend it to you.

A word from our sponsor*

Well, I haven't really gotten to what I wanted to get to lately...if it means anything to you three, I've finished the freelance assignment, so we're back in intermittent business here as well. To trumpet and herald the possible return of posts, I bring you something that's here because, to the best of my knowledge, it has never been remotely covered here despite inspiring the blog's name.

Announced at the best reason to go to Minnesota, GenCon: AD&D 4th Edition. It's got rules changes!

But much more importantly, it is Wizards of the Coast incorporating online play, which is ample reason for me to point out the real highlight of the article. Ladies and gentlemen, if it's not online, we're in meatspace. Couldn't have dreamed of a better term myself.

*Edited to make more sense. The whole post that is. I maintain that within 24 hours, wholesale changes may happen without notice to fix things. After that, they aren't mistakes. They are stylistic twitches that make things more better.

In the Incubator

So, I've been mulling this issue over for some time, so this post is a little dated. Anyway, Washington, DC recently bid farewell to another scion of spin. I had once been asked why politics in the U.S. was so polarized. At the time, I (naively) said it could be the collapse of the Cold War consensus, or perhaps the fact that, with the proliferation of interactive communications technology, the ability to disseminate and enforce message has increased dramatically. That has led to a hardening of political identities, as pundits have been quick (kind of) in using the new media. And of course, there's Penny Arcade's take.

But now I understand the error of my ways. It's not some grand sociological or demographic shift. It comes down purely to the country-dividing and, indeed, soul-corrupting anti-Christ that is Karl Rove. And I must admit that the slew of biographies that have recently emerged have been a fascinating look into his personality, particularly this piece in the Atlantic. The explicitly divisive nature of his politics and strategy, and the impact that has had on the country, is astounding.


All of which makes me wonder why really hard-core conservative Republicans feel that it's the Democrats who are splitting the nation. And not just in hallmark issues like Iraq. No, I'm (or actually, they are) talking about No Child Left Behind and tax cuts. Those bills were pretty much steamrolled over any opposition or, really, meaningful discussion and debate, and it's astounding to me that they feel that there is no room to compromise or just talk things over.


While obviously partisanship has long predated Rove, I think what gets to me is not that the level of partisanship, but the nature this time around. This administration has a curious unwillingness to face the realities of their policies and politics more generally, and it's amazing that they can keep claiming victory when all the signs point to...well, not victory at least. And for that, we can thank Rove, who has been a master of tactical political surprise, even as he leads the nation and the President down to partisan hell. And it's that inability to admit mistakes which, I think, fuels this feeling among the conservative base that it's everyone else's fault. Which is surprising since so many Republicans talk about personal values, responsibility, and owning up to your faults.

Anyway, I really, REALLY want to be able to blame everything on Rove. But that would be wrong. Well, inaccurate more than wrong. It's not completely his fault, but I am not sad to see him go.

Don't Trust the Government

Essentially, that's the whole message of the Bourne Ultimatum. Several images, as the New York Times review recounted, were reminiscent of Guantanamo, and I got chills from hearing David Straitharn talk casually about "rendition" (although I don't think many people heard it for some reason). All in all, slick set-up and choreography of action sequences that really makes you believe Jason Bourne is plotting everything out ten steps in advance, even while dodging punches.

"It puts me in the mood
to go puke."

But my one substantial disappointment from the second movie (also directed by Paul Greengrass) is present in the third (and final?). That man really needs to get a steadicam. As an avid consumer of martial films, I've come to expect steadier camera work so as to appreciate the nuances of the fight itself. Yes, I can certainly understand why directors think a shaky camera "puts you in the action". But they're wrong: it puts me in the mood to go puke. That of course detracts from my appreciation of the scene and overall plot. And the best fight scene in the movie was the one where the camera is held much more steadily than in all the others to allow the audience to witness the brutality of the fight (this was also emphasized by the lack of music). This is in contrast to, say, Children of Men, where there was certainly "shaky camera" work and you felt like you were standing right next to Clive Owen. But the long shots and wider frame mitigate the motion sickness.

But I don't want to go too far here. All in all, a solid movie with a nice, though simplistic, political core.

stupid nerds.

I like to avoid link blogging and said like filler, but I also like to waste time today, so...Dirk Deppey at the Journalista blog had an entry today (under comics culture) that referred back to a New York Times article that is the very definition of filler for the paper which discusses nerdiness as an expression of hyperwhiteness and nerds as specifically "refusing to exercise the racial privilege upon which white youth cultures are founded." Some of the weaknesses in that vein of argument are in called out in Deppey's piece. I'm personally trying to figure out if I've misread my childhood and becoming a nerd was some sort of active rebellion as opposed to a defensive posture. And while joining any group while young is partly a defensive move, I don't recall "I want to be a nerd" being a rallying cry the way even preppies might have had it. Of course, that means that every exclusively white youth culture is either an absorption of African-American culture or a rebellion from absorbing it.

I'm especially thrilled that this racial reading of subculture (not inherently a bad mode to be) involves deracinating Asians as a group (oops). Possibly, our nerdlike cultural typing has either having been absorbed as whiteness or is not counted outright. I know our nation discusses race in black/white primarily...but you spring up from California with this stuff then you got to cast a wider net. I'm sure I'm leaving folks out too, but then, I haven't written a book yet. So, filler, and embarssing academia. Awesome.

EDIT: Someone other then me's actually coherent response to the article.

In Dubious Battle

So, for Duvall, Jonny, and I, this article might strike a chord. Of derision. I trust that at the least it will inspire snickering.

An Old New Yorker Comic

I find myself thinking about this one New Yorker comic a lot recently. Two people are walking down the street, with one of them shivering and saying "I feel like I've just been Googled." Well, in the interests of narcissism, I tried Googling us.

Obviously, there's us. Then there's Warren. Then there's a Chinese girl called Marylu whose page is down, but you can find it cached. Her cached page is apparently the closest description of our site from the search results. "Three collaborators blogging about love, democracy, and Chinese labor." (By the way, Marylu, if you're around, it should be four collaborators - and thanks for your interest in the blog).

Edit: re: Duvall's comment, I will modify my meaning on this last line:

In general, it was a little weird googling the blog itself. I mean, I've certainly googled my own name, but there was something surreal about seeing our names in the virtual lights. Or really, not seeing it up there.

ciencia del cohete

August 10th

Food and Sleep

If there was one moment when I could say that I felt like I was finally beginning to settle back into my USA life, it would have to be the day I got my gym membership. That was back in March. At that time I had been working for a month, I was basically finished setting up my apartment, and I really needed to settle into some kind routine that was completely unrelated to work. Exercise was a good bet for me because I have always been interested in physical fitness, and I know how to set up an intro routine having been in and out of shape about a dozen times over the last 15 years.

With my longish commute in mind, there was really no way for me to combine a strength and an endurance program. I only have 45 minutes of time to spend every morning, so it had to be one or the other. The lack of runable parks around here made my decision easy. I joined a gym and began a strength routine.

Now, three months later my results have been frustratingly modest at best. Sure, I went through the initial two-month surge. Most exercisers see significant gains throughout the first few months of exercise because lazy muscles respond to just about any stimulus. But, three months in I have already plateaued and I don’t see myself breaking through it. Why the pessimism? Because I know that my intensity is not the problem. Even though I hate it, I have been able to drag myself out of bed every morning at 6 am to go throw the plates around for an hour. The real culprits in my overmodest gains are my uneven diet and sleep patterns.

Sleep is a panacea for many ills and it can really hurt you when you can’t get enough of it. If you are trying to exercise (or sit through boring lectures), then don’t expect to improve unless you can get enough sleep. This was a serious problem in high school when I suffered from insomnia. I remember then hitting a certain exercise wall that I couldn’t go past. The problem I’m facing now is that I can’t go to bed early enough. 10 pm should be my absolute ceiling for bed time, but I’m lucky if I can be in bed by 11pm. Not only does this make getting up at 6 am bloody murder, but it just sucks the life out of a workout and it kills recovery. While recovering from a strength workout, every hour of sleep is precious. If you can’t get enough sleep, then your body cannot keep up repairing the damage that you are doing to it. This is when you plateau and you notice your strength gains start to dip.

My dietary habits have not been so hot either. I tend to make three good healthy meals for myself every day Monday through Friday. Sound good? It isn’t. There should be at least five meals a day to keep my insulin levels fairly even and my metabolism up. But frankly, I can’t keep up. One solution would be to split my lunch in two, eating part of it around 10 am and the other part around 2 pm, but my work schedule does not really allow for this. What happens is I end up tanking three large meals a day, and this has not been beneficial to my waistline at all. Also, weekends have proven to be killers with frequent trips home and meals out. As tasty as it is, Mexican food is a fat bomb and Chinese restaurants use too much oil (I am not singling out Chinese restaurants. Most restaurants up the oil/fat content of their food to make it taste better. I just happen to eat Chinese a lot.) Even at home, I tend to snack around on sweet things on the weekends. We still have a full cake in the freezer that I haven’t touched. That’ll have to go somewhere soon. We also have honey-covered almonds, candy, chocolate, and other stuff just sitting around. When I go home, my mom unloads this junk on us and temptation is too much to refuse.

So that’s the way it is. Strength gains are hugely reliant on consistent diet and sleep. Does this mean that you need to measure your food out with a measuring cup? It sure does. Otherwise you end up eating too little, not recovering, and wasting an hour in the gym.

Well, what else is there to say other than life improves with better time management. Something I definitely need to learn.

Incredible Rats

What can I say? After a month or more of not writing, Duvall's inspired me to pick up the electronic pen again. That, and I'm a bit tipsy.

Anyway, I've been meaning to write this post for some time, but my thoughts don't seem to coalesce meaningfully. GF and I saw "Ratatouille," which was absolutely great. Excellent animation, which then recedes as you get absorbed by the plot. As a sign of all this, I actually felt hungry after seeing a movie about rats in the kitchen.

But, I was wondering if the director, Brad Bird, was softening on his somewhat Objectivist tone laid out in "The Incredibles." There, the catch phrase was "when everyone is special, nobody is", which is oddly depressing for a Disney venture (except for the fake ending at the end of Pirates 3 - which, by the way, don't see). In Ratatouille, the phrase is "anyone can cook", but as none other than Peter O'Toole intones, the meaning is not that anybody can cook. Rather, it's that truly great cooking can come from anywhere.

A softer tone to be sure. But I wonder if Brad sells the power of learning and practice too short. After all, the "natural endowments" of the brain are increasingly being shown to be a product of application and hard work, not "natural" abilities. But Bird tends to cast these things as significant, but perhaps not important. *spoilers* Remy, the main rat, has a natural gift, it is implied. But the female sous chef - who has worked her ass off to get where she is - is several times upstaged by Remy or him controlling his human puppet. And while I don't doubt that genius can be a matter of inspiration, it's also very much a product of knowing enough to do something with that inspiration.

Which is not to say that I didn't find the movie compelling, funny, and entertaining. And yes, I choked up a little at the penultimate scene. But, what is Bird thinking? What is going in his head? How has his thinking evolved between these two movies? And what does this bode for the third? I like his movies because he doesn't pander to the Disney crowd. It's no original Transformers movie, but it's a far cry from Cinderella. I don't want him to lose his edge, but I'd certainly like him to be a bit more introspective about what his message is and the wider context it plays in. That may be too much for a cartoon, even one being directed by as skilled an individual as Bird, but it is one thing which, for me, would move his films from "good for adults, but you can take your kids to it" to "good for both kids and adults."

Slumming in Shanghai

I never truly grasped how much puff there is in newspapers until I started reading them regularly. If mistake reading a trend piece looking for news, I mostly shrug, with the occasional shake of the head at a particularly poorly constructed segue. Now it’s evident that the advent of blogging that diarylike pieces has provided a new arena for fluff to appear. The New York Times is running some sort of series about people making homes in foreign countries, a interesting enough start point.

Not so much for the commentary about China or Shanghai, (despite the red state label)—though the broker stuff is kinda interesting to me—I was struck by this piece. Well, by about a page of this piece, before I got bored and skimmed the rest. I’m struck by the weird blinders on the writer, the lack of self-awareness combined with the sense that the writer is thoughtful. And don’t mean her interaction with China, and I actually don’t want to discuss China in this post, but the strange dissonance in the article.

She’s moving out of New York, tired of boutique shops on Bleecker and the $20 hamburgers.* The fear of terrorism is certainly real, but a good of her motivation to move seems to be related to escaping being surrounded by conspicuous consumption, even while marveling at the ease for finding a 2k sq. foot space plus for 1,500 a month (a couple hundred less than per capita in China). The experience of finding her newly renovated rented family house in old middle class neighborhood (the sort getting plumbing while developers force out tenants) with an oven, ac and heater is likened to finding a $150 a month apartment in New York back in the day. I tell you I can find an apartment in Shanghai right now for $150. It might come with a bucket.

So she’s leaving New York to Shanghai to escape conspicuous consumption, and I wouldn’t begrudge that, and I know this Home and Garden**, but what the hell? The theme in the piece that keeps coming is the energy in the new gold rush Shanghai is like living in early 70s New York. Target audience or not, what kind of dissonance is required to decide that's a good notion? Now, I didn’t live in New York in the seventies, but presumably she’s excited for the economy to bottom out and all the attendant crises. Much to look forward to. But her neighbors are thrifty and not wasteful. And the middle class and poor, they live near by. And I guess living next door to that might assuage whatever ill-defined (not even necessarily necessary) guilt she might feel.

Anyway, good luck to Shanghai, hopefully not actually beginning to feel the greatness of New York in the seventies, or it has an absolute shit decade to come.

* There is that foi gras burger though that’s bound to be more than twenty, but I still don’t know where to get a $20 burger other than in hotels.
** There’s always the occasional article about young people happy to be independent in soho and with the parents paying for freshdirect.

A dog, a pig, a chicken, and a horse. And not one of them makes money.

I've been playing Harvest Moon: Magical Melody of late. You play a m/f new landowner in Flower Bud village (I suggest the river estate and farming for income first, livestock's not worth it). And then you proceed to farm, mine, fish, or what have you. Or, there's some boondoogle about ressurecting the Harvest Goddess or something--but growing corn, that's where it's at. It's video game farming, more or less as close as I'm going or wanting to get to that sort of exertion.

You make money by shipping items, and what you ship attracts people and businesses to the village. Ship ore, a blacksmith might come, and so on. The trouble is, people move out if they're not happy or get no business. But you are the lone supplier and customer it seems. I spend all my time watering crops, brushing my animals, and giving gifts to the lovely ladies of the village (in hopes of getting married and getting farm help). And the fisherman, the mayor, the atelier(!). And mean, androgynous Jamie. Only Woody the old woodsman seems happy enough not to move away.

I feel put upon. Why am I alone, the economic lynchpin of this whole town? Responsible for everyone's emotional well being? Isn't there some sort of incentive zoning the mayor could pull? Can't the people form a bridge club? My horse doesn't even pull a plow, and I got fields to water too. A scrappy, young go-getter like myself should be off to the big city, but all the opportunities there are related to crime or raising fighting cocks. Ah well, the big city's just not ready for me yet.