Dental Hygiene

Bactrian dentist at work

Update #11

You see that pic?? After careful inspection & study, I have concluded that 99.9% of women have to apply makeup with their mouths open.

I am not sure what the connection is between the eyes & mouth (other than the obvious skin) that forces all women to automatically open their mouth when their hands near their eyes or lips.

I have also seen that there is one notable exception to the rule. When women put blush on their cheeks, they close their mouth.

Go figure...


Big Brother is Watching
For those of you that are thinking of moving up in the world and buying a color laser printer. Beware! Did you know that there are codes that the laser printers print on each and every page that you produce? And these codes are hidden within the images themselves? This means that each and every document that is produced by the printer can be tracked back to it's serial number.

Now you not only have to worry about your emails & IM's haunting you but also anything you print!

Read the details here!

Being paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you...

Mid-Week Update

I begin this post while eating a PB sandwich while listening to Collective Soul's song 'Giving'

Adventures in Dining
As a few of you know, there have been shakes in the employment scene of my loyal readers (which currently number a whopping 9...C'mon now, let's break out of the single digits!). We had the usual farewell dinner at an unusual location compounded with a very unusual dietary ethnicity.

We went to the Design District (VERY transitional neighborhood) and ate at Sheba Ethiopian Cuisine. Apparently, in contrast to popular media opinion, the Ethiopians actually do have food. The food is actually pretty good, once you get used to using bread that has a distinctly unpleasant feel of cold rubbery skin to eat your food (the bread tasted great but I could not escape the feeling that Gollum had been skinned and served).



I get to the restaurant and open up the menu. Yeah, now that's a true Ethiopian experience...nothing on the menu!

I got the distinct feeling this was going to be a very short 'meal' of lettuce (see paragraph below).







I scrounged the table for another menu and they actually did have items on it for consumption. I was under the impression that there was going to be many items primarily composed of lettuce. Why is that? Well, Ethiopian cuisine is really popular with the dieting crowd and lettuce is the favorite item of dieters. Why is it the favorite food of dieters? It's the next best thing to nothing, of course. Why is it the next best thing to nothing?

Think of it. What's the best thing for a dieter! Lettuce? NO! Nothing! But of course dieters don't like eating nothing, so they eat the next best thing...lettuce!

But I digress...

We had a few people not show up but the ones that did present themselves had a great time and ate good food.

If I close my eyes, they'll all go away!

Uhh huh...you really think we believe you?

How did a chicken bone get in my lamb?

A picture of a picture of a picture

How do you use this defibrillator?
I need to wipe that smug smile off his face.



Bright, shiny stuff!
Can't...resist...oooohhhhhh...ahhhhh

War of the Worlds - - Vindication

An interesting post on the movie here.

GREAT point that the aliens are drinking human blood without the (perceived) benefits of pasteurization!

Update #10

Mortgage
A recap of events related to my mortgage:

1. I wait like an idiot for a payment booklet that was never going to arrive
2. I call 17 customer service reps in India to help me
3. I get the correct lady and she tells me to cancel my first payment (even though it said completed)
4. She walks me through setting up the correct payee
5. I pay the first month's mortgage
6. I wait a few days until my next pay period and I pay the next payment

Now I'm caught up with my payment right? Right! All this ended amicably on the 12 of July. I check my bank account on the 13th and imagine my surprise when I see that the first payment I made that I was told to cancel WAS POSTED TO MY ACCOUNT! I ended up making THREE mortgage payments in two days. I am soooo overdrawn the tellers are actually calling me at work to laugh at me. I am starting a non-profit foundation to help me out of this fiduciary hole that I have fallen into. I accept Paypal, Mastercard & Visa. No AMEX please, the fees are too high.

Fashion Show
I went to a fashion show on Monday. Yeah, surprising isn't it?

It was a very interesting experience. The girls are definitely unhealthily thin. I think I saw Gandhi & Karen Carpenter running around. I tried my luck at being a fashion photographer but I failed miserably. The real photographers needed too much light for my rinky dink camera phone to deal with. However, there were several interesting characters there!

Here's a picture of the goings-on as everything is getting set up. As you can see, there's a lot of hustle & bustle and lots excitement (apparently diseased thinness is now exciting).

Notice the girl at the bottom left? She is what we call an 'outlier' in the fashion industry. She is neither hustling, bustling or even excited. Honestly, I wasn't that excited either, but I hid it well.






I then saw this girl walking around. I wasn't quite sure if she knew a bird was currently, or had recently, nested on her head.












The fashion industry is notoriously fickle, and things change very quickly. They have very little tolerance for errors or lack of excitement.

The un-excited, un-hustling girl was quickly replaced by a marginally more excited, yet still un-hustling fellow.

I'm not sure what was going on at the right side of the stage but in both cases the girl & guy were fascinated by...nothing.

Also note that the lady in the front row wearing the black & white striped shirt has not moved her head in half an hour.



I was curious about the state of the fowl that may or may not be in the girl's head. I snuck up behind her and took this shot.

Maybe she was confused and has one of those new cellphones.

"Excuse me, my bird is ringing. I have to answer this call."
Maybe she waiting for a call and tilting her head that way (as she did in both pics) helps get a good reception.



In the News




Who would've thought the muppets were predicting the future? Pigs in spaaaaace!!!

Mid Week Update

Sum Yum Gai

This place is:
a) A new partnership between Michael Jackson & The Catholic Church
b) Chinese gay bar
c) Something you would never want to eat without thoroughly washing first

Update #9

Movie News
We watched a few movies the last couple of weeks. We first saw War of the Worlds. I was looking forward to seeing this movie because I had heard of the commotion the radio broadcast made back in 1938. I also read the original novel written in 1898 and I wanted to see how the novel and movie compared.

At first, I was pretty ok with the movie as it seemed to stay true to the original novel. Even though the movie takes place in the 21st century, the plot still seems very 19th century. The aliens, who have planted ships under the Earth for 1 million years (more on this later) decide to return and exterminate all humans.

I'm making an assumption that since these aliens have been around for over 1 million years and have mastered traveling the vast stretches of space, that they are much more civilized than humans. Assuming, that is true, don't you think they could have thought of a slightly better way of getting rid of us? We're the stupid ones and we have figured out a better way to kill ourselves off. Three atomic bombs and that's all she wrote. However, these aliens have to steer several thousands of mechanical robots and shoot beams at all of us so we can get vaporized. For all that work, it seems like the human extermination was more sport than duty.

I let those details go since the novel was written a while back and such machines would've seemed far beyond human capabilities in the 1900's. THEN the screaming started. Spielberg decided to put a family in the movie (this wasn't the case in the novel) and the little girl has some serious issues. Apparently, when she is under stress she vents by wailing like a banshee. The first time I thought it was a good dramatic effect. Since this is an action/thriller movie, she ends up screaming A LOT. Very very annoying. For a brief period of time, I was rooting for the aliens. Chomp off her head!! Then I felt like a traitor to my genus so I decided that maybe she should live after all.

The rebel son causes grief for poor Tom until they have a inappropriate tender moment in the middle of a battlefield. Tom lets the son go fight with the soldiers (who never asked for his help in the first place) and the entire valley gets blown up in a raging inferno. If I were an alien, I would also like my humans well done. Do you know how many diseases they carry? (More on that later)

So the humans are hopelessly outgunned and we have no way of defeating these alien machines. Just like the novel, the aliens start to die off. Why? Apparently, the aliens did not have the biological defenses needed to combat all the germs in the Earth so they slowly began to die off. The novel played the deaths of the aliens MUCH better where the main character would hear these howls of pain until there was only one left, then he figured out what happened.

The major flaw in the movie was that Spielberg made the aliens plant their machines 1 million years ago and then they come over to kill us. 1 million years. That's a long time. Don't you think that they could've had some time to, I don't know, maybe PLAN THE INVASION OUT? Maybe a little alien brainstorming session on what could go wrong? Maybe? Not one genius alien scientist had ever thought of disease? What about giving out some homework problems to high school aliens over in system Zetacrom 4? Let the kids figure it out. Nope. No such forethought on their part. They came, they conquered, they died of VD.

We watched another movie that I own (I own very few) called Following. This is a movie by the same director of Memento (which I also own). This director likes to make you work to understand his movies. Both Following & Memento are told in a very effective but awkward style that keep you paying attention to the plot so you can figure out what's going on.

The movie is in black & white, only 1 hour long and tells the story of how one guy, who is a writer, gets into the habit of following interesting people on the street for a little while so he can have material for his stories. He gets caught following one guy who ends up being a burglar. They both start of teaming up going into peoples homes and taking small stuff. Not burglars for pure profit but burglar for discomfort. They do take some valuables but they also take certain personal effects in order to make the victim feel more violated.

The movie is very good and things get much much more interesting after that but I don't want to give it away. Here's the trailer.

Finally, it has come to my attention that next month, members of Netflix will be able to rent.....Kontroll!!!!

Site Traffic
As I have mentioned before, I know my readership will plunge after Update #10 but I am not above asking for you guys to refer me to others! I need an audience. Speaking of audiences, I took a look at some of the visitors to this blog and I wanted to see how they came to the website. Imagine my surprise when I saw that one guy came here as a result of a Google search. Do you have any idea what search term led him to my page. No lie (I simply am not creative enough to make this stuff up) but this guy was searching for

El Monstro de Babahoyo

WHAT??? ME? A MONSTER? BABAHOYO??? Well, the phrase, disturbing as it may be, did ring a bell. Further research showed that this 'Monstro de Babahoyo' was a serial child rapist & killer. The reason, that I showed up in the search was that this was the subject matter of the movie Cronicas which I had previously reviewed. Phew! I thought I was being framed...

The Kitchen Diaries
Time for an update on the status of my survival & its close relationship to the contents of my fridge. Here is the latest photographic sighting:

As you will see there have been several substantial changes to the refrigerator situation.

1. Of great interest to the dieting crowd (you know who you are), you'll see that the two boxes of cookies are now gone. The dieting crowd will take joy in the fact that these items were of a fat free nature and had Net Carbs of 0. For the rest of us, remember that gustatory pleasure is directly proportional to the quantity of Net Carbs. In other words, Cookies with Net Carbs of 0 taste exactly like unwiped donkey ass (aftertaste included)!

2. The spinach is also gone. Please note that the spinach and the cookies did not end up in the same place. Spinach doesn't keep as well as the 'Net Carb = 0 = Net Taste' cookies. I decided to give up the pretense that I was ever going to eat that particular batch and dumped it.

3. The milk spoiled.

4. The bagels are still there but since I ran out of PB, I wasn't able to consume any more of them.

5. The spaghetti sauce is also still there but on strike on account of non-use.

6. The mashed potatoes have been relocated to the freezer. They have adjusted well and have been there for 2 weeks now.

7. The bread is also gone, much to the relief of the Atkins folks. I make it a point to buy whole grain bread. The last few slices had some funky residue of indeterminate origin. It could've been whole grain related or mold. I decided to play it safe and threw it out.

Epilogue
It has come to my attention, through sources that I have refused to name to the Federal Justice System, that the bread & spinach are now co-habitating in an area near my home. Since we parted on extremely strained terms, I have decided to raise the food borne terrorist threat level in my household to mauve. Although operating under an increased level of alert, I have communicated to the rest of my household (I found a spider in my bedroom this morning) that we should under no circumstances, change our daily routine or let the threat of terror govern our lives. The color coded threat assessment system has been carefully calculated to show the exact colors that strike fear into the bosoms of terrorists.

Epilogue #2
Marvin, the name of the short lived spider found in the corner of my bedroom, is no longer an inhabitant this household. Unfortunately, he met his demise at the business end of a paper napkin which was at the business end of my hand. No more moochers in this home!

Truth is Stranger than Fiction
I'm reading this news article about Gary McKinnon, a guy who broke into NASA and the Department of Defense computers. He rummaged around in there before he got caught. I thought that was pretty ballsy of him to do and also took a great amount of talent. Then I kept reading and he apparently made some pretty amazing discovereies as he was searching around. It's a two page article but pay close attention to the second page.

The guy says the US already has an antigravity device. You think so? If they do, you know what that means? TONS of plastic surgeons will go broke! NO MORE SAGGY BOOBS!! YAY!!!

Update #8

The Kitchen Diaries

I have come to the conclusion, based on my recent experiences that DEFROSTING SUCKS!

This past week, I have eaten peanut butter on whole wheat bread for dinner twice (I don't think jelly keeps...see a previous comment). Luckily, my main source of nutrition comes from my lunch so I am not suffering from any ill effects.

You guessed it. The mornings in question, I forgot to defrost my dinner. In the morning, I got things to do. I don't have time to waltz around the kitchen taking out frozen meat to eat about 12 hours later. My mind is preoccupied with my current objectives, which include but are not limited to, brushing teeth (mine), shaving, finding clean socks, putting on contacts, remembering to put on deoderant (how many swipes are enough? I always put one more, just to be sure!), figuring out what to wear (it's more difficult than you may think since my wardrobe is severely limited and my abilities to match colors are equal to those of a blind man without a seeing eye dog (well, even seeing eye dogs are color blind, so you get the drift)), making sure all the lights are off, etc. You see? Every morning is pretty busy!

Not that I haven't tried to defrost something at night but the laws of physics refuse to help...damn you Shrödinger!! I have tried to cook THE SAME MEAT PATTY ALL WEEK!! It does not defrost before my hunger gets the better of me and I have to stick it back in the freezer. That thing was possessed by Hod!! Then I resort to my true, readily available, no defrosting needed, always there friend...peanut butter.

I finally got the patty to defrost and put it in the pan with some olive oil (I'm sooo European!!). Yes, I know you don't have to put oil when cooking meat but the last time I tried that, the fire alarm went off. I also took this opportunity to reheat the frozen instant mashed potatoes I had in the freezer. They looked pretty nasty as they defrosted, sort of like rotten, coagulated milk but it was food. REAL food.

As the meat was cooking, once again I did something that I have NEVER done in the kitchen. I decided to SIMULTANEOUSLY cook the meat AND reheat the potatoes in the microwave!! As many of you know, I have a hard time multitasking in general, but when it comes to multitasking in the kitchen, were talking about 3rd degree burns, fire alarms and calling FEMA. But in this case, this particular combination of tasks really made me nervous. Not that I was unfamiliar with the microwave, that is an appliance I can actually use. The thing is that I have NEVER used the range & microwave at the same time! I thought that wasn't possible. In my previous apartment, this, this, this, inter-appliance romance would have been unthinkable. Each and every time I tried to do such a seemingly simple task, the breakers on ONE ENTIRE SIDE OF THE APARTMENT WOULD BLOW!! Of course, I thought that the mixture of a range with a microwave oven would just short out a home's circuits and maybe cause a fire. Then again, it could've been the quality of the electrical work...but you never know.

I did it and the circuits held under the increased load!!! As both things were going on, I noticed that I really really really had to go to the bathroom. I am under no illusion that my presence in the kitchen would prevent any mishaps but leaving the scene was not a good idea. I seriously had to go though.

I rushed to the bathroom (it's about 4 feet away). In a flash of inspiration, I decided to save a few seconds of precious time and I flushed the toilet just as I began to pee. My thought was that the flushing would end with the peeing and I could just, you know, tap tap tap and go back to the kitchen. That plan was pure folly, I now know that my pee cycle is longer than my toilet's flush cycle.

I decided to solve the issue of remnant pee in the bowl later and I went back to the kitchen. The meat was cooking well and the potatoes were almost done. I nuked them a bit more and waited for the meat to finish. I try not to mess with the cooking meat too much as I haven't yet mastered how to flip the meat over without causing olive oil to splash everywhere, including over me.

When it was done, I lifted the meat with the spatula and carried it to the plate. I didn't notice that, this was not the most efficient use of a spatula, plate or pan. More on that later. I settled down on my couch for dinner and that's how I finally beat the meat (pun intended...I live in a violent household huh?) & ate it with relish (not the condiment, but the verb). By the way, if you are interested in how the dinner appeared, look at the post with last week's dinner. It's the exact same dish, ON the same dish.

After dinner, as I walk to the kitchen I notice there are some long, light brown, faintly meat-scented streaks on the floor. I did #1 not #2 and anyways, food doesn't go through my system THAT fast.

"WTF???", I think, "Who did this?"

I go to the kitchen and there are more of them. What happened?!?! I figured out that in my inefficiency, as I turned around to put the meat on the plate, several globs of oil & partially cooked meat had fallen to the floor. I nonchalantly stepped in them and tracked them all over my place. More cleaning...

I am also sure that Einstein was correct and that time is relative. Time must move faster for those living on their own. It seems like I bought a half gallon of milk two days ago and I look at the expiration date this morning and it's already past the date! I always make sure to buy the latest date I find so the only logical conslusion is that time is moving faster for me. Damn relativity.

Mortgage
I remember at my closing that I had prepaid certain items related to my monthly home expenditures. I am almost certain that my mortgage was included. As I was getting used to my new home, I was not too worried about the mortgage payment. I mean, I was waiting for my bank to send me the payment booklet.

I get a letter from my bank the other day and I thought this was some informative letter. I read the letter and guess what? I am already late on my mortgage payment!! My very first payment and I'm late!!

I called my bank and spoke to a very nice, polite Indian guy (not the same guy I talked to from Earthlink, but similar, eerily similar...) who then told me they don't send out payment booklets. That's why I was now late! Apparently my bank's policies and procedures do not include letting it's customer's have a convenient way to remember when to pay! Their reminder process consists of sending out a late payment letter. This letter reminds the client of two things:
1 - The late payment
2 - The late charge

Yes, I got charged a late fee!! A $37.85 late fee! I don't think that counts! I had no warning!
All told, for the next three paychecks I will be making a mortgage payment in order to catch up. Guess who's not going shopping anytime soon?

Laundry Fiasco
Stardate - July 5, 2005.
Today I decided to do my first load of 'color' laundry. That sounds soo 1950ish...
I separated my laundry 'units' by color and I knew it was not going to be a good day. Most of my clothes didn't have the little laundry instructions that saved me last time.

I carried the stuff over to the laundry room and began the wash cycle. I kept peeking in the washer so that I could put in the detergent when there was enough water in it. I put in the detergent at the appropriate fill level and stuffed my clothes in there.

Once again, Fate intervened! (Another lady, not Louise. Hmmm, as a matter of fact I haven't seen Louise since our last encounter. I really hope she's ok.) Another one of my neighbors was also washing clothes (hers, not mine). As I was stuffing all my clothes in the machine, I knew I was in trouble. She gave me that look. You know, the one where your eyebrows cannot go any higher without having them surgically removed and then stitched on either your cap or the back of your head. Yeah, THAT look. I asked her, 'What? Que?" (This was a new neighbor so I wasn't sure what language she spoke or didn't speak). She said, "That's too much clothes for a single load, you need to split it up".

OK so since the machine hadn't started I quickly took out some clothes and put them in the next machine over. I was trying to keep them on the same schedule so I plopped in the quarters and THEN I noticed the sheet of paper where, in RED BOLD LETTERS it said, "DO NOT USE, BROKEN (NO TRABAJA)". Great. I just wasted 3 quarters. No, the coin return didn't work!

I went to my truck and got more quarters. I put in the quarters in machine #2 and then I noticed that although machine #1 was full of water, it wasn't doing anything! I waited around like 10 minutes and nothing! I think I must've chosen the wrong wash cycle. I had to go BACK to my truck to get MORE quarters to re-wash the clothes in machine #1. I just wasted 6 quarters...

The wash completed without further incident and that's how my coloreds got done.

July 4th Weekend Adventures
Since it was a long weekend and we had several places to go and we were running low on gas, we decided to stop off at a gas station on 163rd to fill up. We were in Jeanne's car and she was doing the filling, I stayed inside the car. She comes back to the car after a few minutes and she was annoyed. I asked her what was wrong and she says she tried to pump gas a few times but nothing happened. She had to go inside and the attendant told her that the computers were down. No gas could be sold.

She's telling me this and we start to drive away. We then hear a very LOUD noise near the back of the car and we stop and look to see what happened. What do I see? The handle of the gas pump attached to our car and the other end attached to....NOTHING! We had driven away from the gas pump but forgot to replace the nozzle!!! No there wasn't gas spilling everywhere. Apparently, the oil companies have foreseen this and put in some safeguards.

As we get off the car to see what happened, a VERY annoying guy in a yamaka started yelling,
"OHHHHH MY GAWD, THERE"S GOING TO BE A FIAHHH!! YOU BETTER CALL THE ATTENDANT!!!"
The attendant comes over.
He looks at us.
We look at him.
"OHHHHH MY GAWD, THERE"S GOING TO BE A FIAHHH!! YOU BETTER CALL THE ATTENDANT!!!"
All three look at the hose, then at the nozzle.
"OHHHHH MY GAWD, THERE"S GOING TO BE A FIAHHH!! YOU BETTER CALL THE ATTENDANT!!!"
Jeanne gets fed up with the repetition and says, "HE'S HERE ALREADY. CALM DOWN!!!!"
The guy drives off and the attendant calls the other attendant who was cordoning off the other pumps that couldn't dispense gas because of the PC problem.
As attendant #1 turns around to find attendant #2, I motion to Jeanne and we jump in the car and speed away. I guess we left the guy holding his nozzle...

We get to another gas station down the road and we had to get in line since all the pumps were full. We then see this taxi driver wearing a shirt that is about 3 sizes too small for him. He's out in public and looked ridiculous! It was too much of a temptation so I had to ake a pic (yes, I got a new PDA/phone and it has a camera attached). If you look closely you'll see that his belly is actually trying to escape his shirt by forcing open the space in between the two bottom buttons...reminds me of the movie Aliens....




And for the 4th of July we went to the Biltmore Hotel for a buffet, concert and fireworks! What a buffet!! The food was amazing and I had several servings of dessert...