Waitresses and Depression

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Lyle Verbilion

a real dishWhen I was a teenager I was diagnosed with depression. Imagine my shock and surprise. I wanted to tell the doctor, “You’d be depressed too if everyone were out to get you!” But I was afraid he wouldn’t get the joke and lock me away forever. They do that sometimes.

How can any conscious, rational, aware individual not be depressed? Life sucks, and that’s what it’s all about.

The Buddha said “All life is sorrowful.”

Biologists say that by definition life is painful. For the biologist life is defined by “irritability”. If you can be hurt, then you are alive. Take a hot needle and put it next to a virus. It does nothing for a while, then suddenly whithers and melts. That’s why viri aren’t alive. Put a a hot needle next to an amoeba. It starts undulating in a desperate attempt to ooze away. It’s hurting, so you know it’s alive.

Pain is life. Most of our senses exist to give us pain, so we’ll run away from whatever’s causing it. And joy is so very temporary. Like life.

Which is why you need to watch Waitress. It’ll make you happy. Briefly.

It’s about a waitress who makes awesome pies. Andy Griffith is in it, saying things that you never thought you’d hear Andy Griffith say. And Captain Tightpants from Firefly and Serenity plays a love interest.

The writer and director, Adrienne Shelly, is also one of the waitresses in the movie. She is just awesome. This is really someone to look forward to in the future. I can’t wait to see the next movie she directs, or writes, or acts in. Yo, Adriennnne!!!

A double feature for this film might include Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. But I don’t really know because I haven’t see that one yet. It’s in my queue. (I saw the TV show with Linda Lavin, but it was just called Alice because TV couldn’t afford all the letters in those other words.) You can compare Diane Ladd’s character Flo to Shelly’s Dawn. If these were Joss Whedon movies those names would probably be symbolic, and maybe they really are after all.

Just don’t get all depressed about it. Unless you have to.

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It’s Not Easy Being Me

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Lyle Verbilion

It's Not Easy Being Me

And I have to do it all the time!

Luckily, I’ve got this handy t-shirt that keeps it all in perspective.

You can have one to! Just come on down to Lucky Lyle’s T-Shirt Trading Emporium and Happy BiBimBap Store! How do you like your eggs?

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Bazaar Disappointment

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Lyle Verbilion

Recent Shelves and Recent BooksCommercial regret is a common fixture of WalMart. But you expect that. Their suppliers are the lowest bidders. And next year, they’ll charge less or WalMart will not continue doing business with them. After a while, these suppliers end up paying WalMart not to sell their products! Or at least that’s how it worked for my uncle’s company.

And I guess I shouldn’t expect any difference from Target. Except for a slightly more stylish demographic.

I’m just getting tired of feeling used.

I ordered 4 sets of bookshelves from Target. They were having a sale. Not only were prices reduced, but for most furniture there was free shipping. Except for my choice. $20 apiece. Which brought the shelves to $55 each, which was their pre-sale price. But if you look at it that way, it magically turns into free shipping, but without a sale.

Unlike WalMart, Target doesn’t let you order stuff over the Innernet, avoid shipping charges,  and pick it up at a store. This was an Intertube-only purchase.

When the 4 sets of shelves arrived, one set was broken into pieces. The Target website made it clear: they don’t replace damaged goods. You have to return it for refund, and order another in a separate transaction. And the original shipping cost is not refunded. But you can avoid the cost of shipping it back by taking the damaged item to your local Target store. So I did.

When I ordered the replacement shelves, they were no longer on sale. If you add in the shipping on the original broken shelves, I paid about $95 for my 4th set of shelves. The first 3 were $55 each (shipping included).

The replacement shelves arrived today. I’m afraid to unbox them. If these are broken and I order another set, the price goes up to $115. That’s just too much, even if it does mean I no longer have a matching set of folding, stacking shelves.

I think that Target has missed an opportunity here to have a happy customer. And they are set up to do this by default. It’s like they don’t realize how self-righteous and vengeful people can get when they start feeling a little bit ripped-off.

Which reminds me of the local appliance store charging me $18 for a thermal fuse for my dryer, that you can buy online for $3. I was expecting them to charge me maybe $7.  They must have really got ripped off by the shipping charges!!!

I’m not even going to mention buying that $28 loose-leaf Bible, only to find that there’s an extra $25 charge for the 5-ring binder that will fit it.

Oops.

UDATED 2011-04-18

Unpacked the new shelves. Yup, they’re broken. The screws in some hinges split a big hunk of wood off. But since I can’t afford to send these back and try another set, I glued them. Then I noticed another crack that someone had put some wood putty in, and didn’t do too good a job with it.

So my advice is: don’t ever order anything from Target.com unless it has free shipping, or it’s just not likely that it’s going to be broken in transit. Small plastic items should be safe.

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Unethical Immoral Moneysaving

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Lyle Verbilion

a home with good lightA coworker was telling me a story of someone he knew who lives in a city hard hit by the exuberant housing bust. At the peak in the market they’d bought this big beautiful house. It cost a lot. Really big mortgage. Huge monthly payments due for thirty years.

After the housing market collapsed, they found another house a block away with the exact same floor plan. They bought it for a small fraction of the price of the other one. Small mortgage. Tiny monthly payments for twenty years.

Then they let the first house go into foreclosure. Sure, it dings their credit rating for  seven years, but they’re tens of thousands of dollars ahead.

How much is 7 years of bad credit worth to you?

My co-worker pointed out that he would never do such a thing himself. He believes it’s immoral.

If you’re the CFO of a corporation that owns that first house, however, it’s your fiduciary duty to turn it back to the bank. Investors can sue you for wasting their money otherwise. For corporations, sticking banks with bad debt is not unethical. It’s good business.

All I can say is, Vote for Giant Robots!

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I Eat My Vegetables

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Lyle Verbilion

I Eat My Vegetables

Before they eat me!

You think all those Brussels Sprouts are just cute & tasty?! They’ll take over the world if we don’t take them out first!

Grab the garlic and butter!  ¡Vámonos!

Oh, and don’t forget to buy this as a t-shirt while you’re at it.

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Expensive Noises

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Lyle Verbilion

vw beetle bugToday when my wife came home, she said “Take a ride with me.” She got into our pickup and started it up. I ran after her. “I thought you said we weren’t going to WalMart today!”

“Listen to this,” she said as we were driving. “What do you think it is?” Popping, crunching noises came from the direction of the front end.

“I have no idea what’s causing it, but those noises sound expensive.”

Suddenly I was a teenager sitting on the floor of my parents’ garage, my head next to the open hood of my 1969 Volkswagen Beetle.  In my lap was a book: How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot. It’s author, some guy named John Muir, was telling me how to grok my wheels so I could feel what was going wrong before it actually needed to be fixed. Groovy!

This is the best written how-to book ever.

The pictures were hand drawn, with amazing detail, by Peter Aschwanden. So much better than photos for illustrations, and funny too! This was long before Where’s Waldo?, but many of the pictures have to be scoured over to see all the funderful detail.

My original copy was spiral-bound and laid flat. Later copies showed up as a large-sized paperbacks. I have at least 5 copies around here somewhere, all different editions. The latest is the 19th edition. It’ll probably be the last. Who works on aircooled VWs any more?

Most importantly was the philosophy of working on cars. Sit down. Take a good look at everything. Listen to the sounds. Put your finger in the carburettor, then take it out and look at it; smell it. I see that Amazon suggests a companion volume would be Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. Well yeah, but the Idiot book doesn’t pound on your head so much to make the same points.

Mr. Muir died not so long after writing this book. Other folks took up the cause. I salute them too. Amazon tells me he wrote another book, The Velvet Monkey Wrench. It’s his “common-sense ideas for creating a world based on peace and harmony”. It’s from the 60’s after all. Back when cars were made of steel, and ideals were more idyllic. I’m getting me a copy of that one too.

 

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Mmmm… Waffles

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Lyle Verbilion

WafflesSo I’m an invertebrate baker, and my wife is allergic to grain. Not just wheat like your average celiac sufferer, but to all things that are seedy. Not just grains, but even beans. Even non-grainy, non-beany things like quinoa. So what’s a spineless person like me supposed to do?

I use sweet potatoes. And lots of eggs.

Technically speaking, palm trees are just large grass plants. And coconuts are just their seeds. So double-technically, coconuts are grains. So they shouldn’t work either. But coconuts are the exception that proves the rule, so they’re OK. So I am proud to use coconut flour. But you don’t want to use very much coconut flour. A little goes a long way, and absorbs a lot of liquid.

I plug in my 2 waffle irons and set the oven to 200 degrees F. After the waffles come out of the irons, I put them in the oven, wrapped in a floursack dishtowel, sitting on top of a baking sheet. Waffles take a long time, and this keeps them warm and firm till they’re all done and you’re ready to chomp on them.

According to the Good Eats guy, you need to choose a round waffle iron. They warm more evenly. Square ones end up with cold corners. I got a couple made by Oster from the local el Cheapo Depot. Waffle making is slow going, so having 2 waffle irons is no luxury. Be sure to plug them into 2 separate electrical circuits in your house. If you blow a fuse, you didn’t plug them in far enough apart…

Mainly Grainless Sweet Potato Waffles

  • 1 cooked sweet potato (we bake 6-8 in the oven for 90 minutes at 400 on a shallow pan covered with foil, as they leak sugary stuff that’ll ruin your pan or your day or both)
  • 4 eggs
  • 1/4 cup milk, coconut if you like it
  • 1/4 cup orange juice
  • 1/3 cup coconut flour
  • 1/3 cup sweet potato flour
  • 1/3 cup almond flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp vanilla

You may not need all the sweet potato and almond flour. Or you might need more. You don’t want it so runny it escapes the iron. But too stiff is too bad too.

And re-heated in the toaster the next morning, they are still scrumptious.

 

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Skeleton Trespass

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Lyle Verbilion

It came from the sky!Over the last couple of years, both Amazon and Netflix have been telling me that I need to see Alien Trespass, a film that pretends to be a science fiction movie from 1957. It stars that guy from Will & Grace. No, not that guy; the other guy. It’s not really a comedy. There are a few funny moments. My favorite is when he puts that huge steak on the grill. Mostly it’s played straight. Even with a goofy monster.

Talk about an homage! It captures the feel of several 50’s movies. But they’re not B movies. It’s more Forbidden Planet, Destination Moon, and The War of the Worlds than Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, Rocketship X-M, or Cat-Women of the Moon. For one thing, it’s in glorious super-colour. Every red is pure red. Every green is pure green. Every black and gray is kinda blue-ish. And the plot mainly makes sense. Except for the very end where somebody saves the planet from a terrible fate by giving a corny speech. And it’s not really the kind of speech someone would have given in 1957. It’s much more of a post post-9/11 speech. One that we’ve haven’t been hearing much of lately. So it really is an important speech, in an “It’s a Small World” sort of way.

As a 1950’s Science fiction movie, it’s almost as classic as The Blob. Since it wasn’t made in the 50’s, though, that really doesn’t count. It’s still a fun movie. Which brings me back to The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which is more of a take-off on B movies. And it works as a B movie, which really isn’t saying too much. But it also works as a commentary on B movies, and also as a commentary on the audience of B movies. Yes, it’s making fun of B movies and the people who enjoy them. And that’s what pushes it past Alien Trespass, even though Alien Trespass has all those great Canadian production values. Weird, huh?

Also in this weeks news, the Best Independent Film award at this years Rondos went to, (wait for it), The Lost Skeleton Returns Again/Dark And Stormy Night DVD double feature! (And also The Aurora Monsters, a documentary about plastic model kits. It was a tie.) So hurray for Dr. Paul Armstrong and Animala!!!

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Fear & Rango in Las Vegas

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Lyle Verbilion

where's all the water?Don Knotts. John Huston from Chinatown. Threatensome inbred bumpkins from Deliverance. Clint Eastwoods’ The Man with No Name. The yodeling from Raising Arizona. What else do you want from an animated movie? Oh, yes, Johnny Depp! And a cameo by Hunter S. Thompson, which makes it into a sort of sequel to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. There’s even BATS!

What other movies do you see them paying homage to?

Spoons’ face is so emotive and looks so real. It felt like looking at a real human face! And it’s just a cartoon!!! AMAZING!!!

But it’s not really for kids. Just like most of the movies it homagenates or homagenizes, or however it is that you make an homage. With cheese, au fromage?  If you use eggs, is that an omegage or an omagelette??

Sorry. I regress.

Anyway, go see Rango. Many times. Tell me what it all means.

 

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Scooby Who?

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Lyle Verbilion

I have a talking dog, but I can't understand what he's saying.I used to be a Scooby-Doo expert. That is, there was a time when I could say that I’d seen every Scooby-Doo show multiple times, and was knowledgeable about every single story.

But somewhere along they way, they lost me.

It wasn’t when they introduced Scooby Dum or Scooby Dee. It wasn’t Scrappy Doo. It wasn’t the Harlem Globetrotters or the Laurel and Hardy episodes.

My relationship with Scooby started falling apart when the adventures became irrational and paranormal and supernatural.

In the original formula, the bad guys were always human crooks. There were never any real ghosts or ghouls or goblins. Sometimes part of the mystery wouldn’t be solved, and it was easy to blame it on some supernatural entity, but that assumption was left up to the audience. It was suggested by the story tellers, but never legitimized.

Then all of a sudden there were real UFO aliens and ghosts and zombies and such showing up in the show. And Scooby died a horrible death and was replaced by a cruel clone.

But that’s the way with pop culture, especially stuff made for kids. It keeps getting diluted and polluted with inconsistencies and fallacies because, after all, even if some kid does notice, what are they going to do about it? Are 5 year olds going to start a write-in campaign to the advertisers?

When the big budget movies started coming out, I was excited. I was sure that they would reboot the show and do it right. Needless to say, I was disappointed by the first one. But Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed wasn’t so bad.

Then in 2009 the Cartoon Network created a direct-to-DVD movie called the The Mystery Begins, which was pretty OK. The guy playing Shaggy was trying a little too hard at times, but hey, don’t you *want* the guy playing Shaggy to try too hard at times?! And the bad guys were bad guys, not bad ghosts. So I liked it.

In 2011 Cartoon Network released Curse of the Lake Monster, another direct-to-DVD movie. It’s OK, but the “real” ghosts are back. As the bad-guy ghost is “dying” she says “And I would have got away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids and that dog!” How just plain WRONG is that?!!!

I guess that I’m getting old and easily disappointed. (Get off my lawn!) But what’s wrong with the original formula for Scooby? Why do they have to keep going One Step Beyond? Isn’t there enough Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings and The X-Files stuff out there already?

Why can’t Scooby Doo just be about human crooks?

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