Rhythm and Gravy

Online Defamation Law establishes that the elements of libel (when the plaintiff is not a public figure) are

1. a publication to one other that the person defamed;
2. a false statement of fact, which is understood to be both (a) being of and concerning the plaintiff, and (b) tending to harm the reputation of the plaintiff.

Unfortunately, while provable truth is a valid defense, a statement is considered libelous if is possible to be taken as an assertion of fact; i.e. it doesn’t have to be provably false. So, all I can say here is that the past few weeks I’ve been frustrated, sad, and angry, and I’ll save my words regarding the plaintiff (my sister’s ex-husband) for a non-publishable medium (”Feeling too chipper? Want vitrol?” Dial 1-800-ASK-JAKE).

It being tough to go out and be social, I’ve been trying to distract myself with the media — books (Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck), and Netflix (Bottle Rocket, Cashback, Heroes, Delicatessen, This is Spinal Tap). But a wise character in a movie once said, “if you don’t make it yourself, it isn’t fun. It’s entertainment.” So, yesterday, I took Uncle Synapse up on his offer to run around in the woods and shoot my coworkers with paintballs. Running around the woods like a chipmunk on acid screaming and yelling and getting all muddy: nice. Shooting coworkers: meh. Welts: not so nice. Props to Dylan for wearing his drum major costume to play.

I’ve been putting my new Netflix subscription to good use. I think that watching Heroes on “real” TV would have driven me nuts; it keeps you constantly fired up to see what happens next. It’s bad enough when an episode ends, or worse, when you finish a DVD and have to wait for the next one to arrive.

I just made it through season one, all too quickly. The ending was unfortunately anticlimactic, given how much it was built up, but with the strength of the characters and the general feel of the show, it didn’t matter too much. Heroes manages to bring together most of what I’ve ever liked about comics. They do a great job of with settings which have the surreal feel, but retain their realism, as if they hired set designers from both Sin City and Driving Miss Daisy. They avoid the traditional “underwear pervert” superhero. Instead, their heroes are conflicted, confused, disillusioned, or (in the case of Masi Oka’s Hiro) inspired by their powers.

Of late, graphic novels are starting to make printed comics hip (as opposed to “popular”) for the non-nerds. This show seems to be doing that for TV.

For a sci-fi novel, there’s not much sci-fi in this book (one ambiguously immortal character named root being the exception). Cryptonomicon could be better classified as nerd-fi. It speaks to Neal Stephenson’s talent that my decidedly un-nerdy, quasi hipster cousin is loving it — it’s just a really good yarn, in which the nerdy characters are in touch with their bad-ass sides, the bad-ass characters are in touch with their nerdy sides, and the protagonist gets the girl.

I re-read it for what must be at least the fifth time last month, and it’s managed to stay engaging, which places it way up there with my all-time favorites.

…in which our hero’s life has been crazy lately.

September has been hectic with life’s hijinks, and correspondingly low in posts, for reasons which abound, not the least of which is that the Top Pot Donuts by my place started closing at 9pm, and when have I been home before 9pm lately?

The early part of this month was consumed by a major project at work, which found me up nights and weekends. I’m sorry that details can’t be posted here, but the client is paying the big bucks…

This past week was invested towards our company’s entry in the Red Bull Soapbox Race which was held in Fremont this last weekend. Our car, Din and Tonic was designed to be a gravity-powered noisemaking machine. In the words of my officemate Jed, “most teams build their cars to look like something, like ‘check us out, our car looks like a chicken!’ Well, our car doesn’t look like a chicken, but it does a lot of stuff, and that’s what sets us apart.” We had a belt, chain, and pulley system which powered a kick drum, a pair of 100Db air-raid sirens, and a cymbal-clapping monkey. Dope.

We sweated nights and weekends welding, forming, gluing, painting, and decorating. We tested it up to 25mph. Then, we pushed the thing down Fremont Ave, the chain fell off, we hit 30mph, all four tires came off, and we crashed at full speed into the chicane. Dope!

In the end, fun was had by all, and we’re looking forward to flugtag.

Meanwhile at the Hall of Justice, my shoulder rehab is going well, and I can raise my hand in class again. Still not cleared for riding the bike. I want to ride my bicycle.

My first game at Safeco field, in which the Mariners kick ass over the White Sox 11 to 5.

Love the stadium. Felix Hernandez was a bit slow, but Ichiro delivered on the hype and I was impressed by Andre Beltre and Jose Guillen, whom I hadn’t really known much about before (but then, I’m not much of a baseball fan…).

I think it was about my sophomore year of high school: my mom had recently given up on forcing me out of bed in the morning, and I had grudgingly trained myself to actually wake up to the blare of my cheap Radio Shack alarm clock. I’d placed it across the room, forcing myself to physically get out of bed to shut it off and drag myself to the shower. Up to the point of actually standing on running water, my mind would be engaged in no other conscious task other than coming up with some semi-valid reason why I could get back into bed. Well, one Friday night I failed to turn the alarm off, and the next morning was just about to turn the shower on at 6:30 am, thinking to myself “dear God, what day is it and, since I’m mentally incapable of doing math right now, how many days until I can sleep in?” When it hit me: it’s Saturday.

The feeling of that moment, when one realizes he can, without consequence, get back into a warm bed and go back to sleep, ranks in my top five feelings ever. In the years since, I’ve been known to deliberately set my alarm on the weekend, just to get that feeling of being able to go back to sleep.

Having shoulder surgery did not feel quite that good. But at least it went okay.

Surgery feels like this: annoyance that the anesthesiologist, who only is interested in when you stop talking, can’t come up with a better topic of conversation than the stupid thing you did to injure yourself, a poke in the arm, and a spinny feeling. Then it’s over, and you wonder why the nice lady is staring at you. It turns out that it’s her job to stare at you, so that someone will notice if you die. They sit you up, and you freak out because you can’t move your arm anymore. Then you remember the anesthesiologist told you he was going to to stick a needle in your neck for that very reason, and you remember thinking that didn’t sound very pleasant, and now you’re a little pissed that he told you at all, since he knew you weren’t going to be awake for that part anyway. But now they’re handing you various bottles of pills which counteract the effects of the surgery, or counteract the effects of the pills which counteract the effects of the surgery, and you get dressed, at which point you realize just how much it’s going to suck that you didn’t have the goddamned foresight to injure your non-dominant shoulder. You call mom to tell her you’re alive, they wheel you out to your car, and your cousin drives you home.

You’re actually feeling pretty good, considering. You feel good enough to walk up to the video store and rent some movies, and you take them home and fire one up. By the end of the first movie, you’re getting pretty tired of not being able to move your arm — it’s really a frustrating feeling to have those motor cortex signals so rudely ignored — but around the end of your second movie, you start to get some sensation and you can twitch those major muscles. By then end of the third movie, you’re cursing the pharmacist who gave you sugar pills instead of painkillers, and you’re highly interested in knowing the LD50 of oxycodone.

But after a night of poor sleep, you’re finally able to get a nice painkiller groove going, and the next day isn’t so bad. Mom comes up and takes you to Target and buys you a broom for your new apartment. You sleep better that night. Next day, you even go into work for a couple of hours. You drop the narcotics for Ibuprofen, and a few days later, you’re fully up and about, only you can’t move your elbow away from your side.

The worst part of this is that the weather is incredibly beautiful in Seattle right now, and I can’t even ride a bike. But, surgery went okay.

The aforementioned surgery is tomorrow. Wish me luck. Give me a call tomorrow or Thursday if you want to talk to me while I’m doped up on pain meds.

The occasion calls for the following movie quotes. Name the source for jakey-points, redeemable for dry comments or cheap booze. Bonus jakey-points for naming the character. Negative jakey-points for using the internets.

1. “Beautiful isn’t it? It took me half a lifetime to invent it. I’m sure you’ve discovered my deep and abiding interest in pain. Presently I’m writing the definitive work on the subject, so I want you to be totally honest with me on how the machine makes you feel. This being our first try, I’ll use the lowest setting.”
2. “Remember the game plan. First you win a point, then you lose a point. Keep the score at zero-zero. Pulverize him for the full three minutes. Then in sudden death you get the point, we win. I want him to experience pain. First he suffers.”
3. “This bowling ball isn’t human! It doesn’t feel pain! It can’t be reasoned with!”
4. “Oh we have a delivery, a special delivery of pain!”
5. “You mark that frame an eight and you’re entering a world of pain.”
6. “This shit is between me, you, and Mr. Soon-to-be-livin’-the-rest-of-his-short-ass-life-in-agonizing-pain rapist here.
7. “Oh stewardess? I speak Jive.”
   “Oh, good.”
   “He said that he’s in great pain, and he wants to know if you can help him.”
   “Alright, would you tell him to just relax and I’ll be back as soon as I can with some medicine.”
   “Jes’ hang loose, blood. She gonna catch up on the rebound on the med side.”
   

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My sister is a jock. Last weekend, she took second place in the Whiskey Dick triathlon in a time of three hours, twenty minutes.

All of my photos are on Flickr.

After almost two months of apartment hunting, I finally landed a nice place to call home. Seattle turned out to be pretty competitive when it comes to finding good apartments — at least when compared to Pittsburgh. It came down to keeping a close eye on Craigslist and trying to get an application in as soon as possible. I was beaten out of two nice places before this one.

The Sir Lancelot Apartments are in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district. It’s an older building, and came with a free informational brochure on the dangers of lead-based paint. The apartment is a large studio with a separate bedroom, hardwood floors, and just enough character to make me feel like a real human being. Most importantly, it’s just right up the hill from downtown, so I can sleep in another half hour in the morning.

I should be all moved in by the first. Want to help?