Adventures in Southeast Asia

...more commonly referred to as "shopping on Argyle Street." I was baking a coconut cake for a dinner with some friends, mostly because I had some leftover coconut milk and coconut flakes from two unrelated projects. The difficulty was that I also needed coconut flavoring, yet had none. I struck out at both Pakistani corner stores, then realized I should just go talk to the Asians, who have more experience with coconut-related food items than pretty much anyone else on earth.

I managed to find the flavoring display without any help, but to my dismay most of the small bottles contained flavors with which I was not familiar. I went to Foreign Food Plan B and started looking at the little pictures on the bottles, zeroing in on one labeled "Buco Pandan" that seemed to feature a green coconut and another plant. The liquid inside was virulent green. The cash register lady was pleased to answer my question of "Is this coconut?" "Yes, yes. And pandan."

"What is pandan, please?" At this point I was more than ready to make coconut pandan cake, but I wanted to be able to explain the exotic cake to my guests. "Pandan... pandan..." She was mentally searching for the words to explain the flavor of a fruit that this gringo had never even seen. (Have you ever had to explain what a pineapple or a peach tastes like? It's not easy.) She brightened up a little. "Pandan... it tastes green!"

I looked down at the bottle of green, looked up at the lady, looked back at the bottle, and figured I'd go for it.

The cake did have a bit of a green flavor to accompany the green cast given it by the flavoring. Nobody seemed to mind.

Downstairs Kids Update

Someone just farted, according to a recent high-pitched allegation.

This is not a repeat from 2005.

Bad Copy of the Day Award

Yay! It's been a long time, but I've finally been given the gift of a whole pile of terrible, terrible copy. This is from a marketing piece, created by another office, that my boss wants me to recreate for our clients.

"We look forward to sharing with you in this meeting our proprietary analytical tools developed by us for our clients perusal."

There's much more, but this was so tantalizingly clausealicious.

Greedy Genius

We saw this while we were walking to the new Target in our neighborhood. This gentleman is a self-proclaimed "Greedy Geniu$." "Show me da money," his jacket continues. "I am the king of sneakers." It's his kingdom, we're just living in it. He was, after all, wearing a fairly dope pair of Air Jordans.

Attention Insurance Professionals:

(specifically the ones that sit near me at my insurance job) Please stop saying "oh-nine oh-ten" when referring to the current policy year. You are making my brain bleed. I understand that it was a likely slip-up for a while, when you first had to make the mental switch from saying "oh-seven oh-eight" and "oh-eight oh-nine."

But still blithely rattling off "oh-nine oh-ten," with nary an embarrassed chuckle and correction? Now you just sound ignorant.

None of this would have happened if the world had adopted the elegant solution presented by me and my friends back at the turn of the century. We thought to replace the "20-" bit with "diggety," as in "the year of our Lord diggety-three." We would have sounded so smooth for the last ten years, and nobody would have had to struggle with the (apparently monumental) decision of whether to go with "two thousand three," "two thousand and three," or the teeth-grinding "twenty oh three."

Also, it's a tribute to Grampa Simpson, who gave us the idea to begin with. From "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish":

(talking to kids at school) "My story begins in nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say 'dickety' because the Kaiser had stolen our word 'twenty.' I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickety-six miles." (laughter) "What are you cackling at, fatty? Too much pie, that's your problem! Now, I'd like to digress from my prepared remarks to discuss how I invented the terlet..."

I am watching a woman with two-inch-long nails attempt to eat cheese corn from a paper bag. It's okay right up to the finger licking, then I get grossed out.

City Stories

The faceless hordes I pass on my way to and from work don't always stay that way. I try to notice people wherever I go, and sometimes a face will become familiar because the body it belongs to is on the same clockwork schedule that I am. There's Briefcase Guy, Good Morning Guy, and Hair Girl. I haven't seen Sad Shannon in a while.

My newest Jackson Street acquaintance is a guy who has an artificial arm, attached to his right elbow, that ends in a hook. The other arm is underformed, which means he's been putting up with "I'd give my right arm" jokes all his life. I do hope he's done Captain Hook at least once for Halloween, you know?

He seems like a nice guy, from what I can tell by passing him in the street. He's always pleasant-looking. But here's the thing. In his scrawny left arm, the one that I don't think has enough fingers, he's always holding one or two things. Things like books, or notepads, or... I don't know, really, I'm always just dumbfounded that this guy doesn't have a bag.

Just get a bag. You are making me worry that you're going to drop your book(s) on the street and have to pick them up with your hook and kind-of-arm. Just get a bag.

Ambassadog

And now, for no particular reason, I present a highly unscientific breakdown of what people first ask me about my dog Maggie.

Affirmation

Seen on the third-floor balcony of the building across the street:

I understand that the photo would have been sharper were my windows cleaner. Until the weak, watery light streaming through them can be best described as "Dickensian," I most heartily do not intend on cleaning them.

It's gotten worse

It's as bad as it always was, but Erica, my Portland Correspondent and author of sheseescolor, has brought the level of terrible to my immediate attention. That level turns out to be very high.

I'm not sharing this with you because I like you and want to bring you wonderful things -- on the contrary, I'm sharing this with you because I can't be the only one who has to live with the burden of the existence of this... thing.

Remember the fishperson? Of course you do, it's the next post down. Go ahead and scroll down there, or click on the link. Have you got that inscrutable image burned firmly into your retina? No you don't. Go look again, and now take care to seek out its "raging tiny boner," as Art Major Erica points out in such a scholastic fashion.

*shakes fist heavenward* WHY, GOD??? WHYYYYYYY??

Like I said before, the fishperson is located in the waiting room of my doctor's office, so now I'm faced with the inevitability of being drawn towards this thing every time I go in there.

What the hell is this

1. It's life-size (and by that I mean like, large toddler-sized, I guess?)
2. It appears to be made of wood
3. It's in the waiting room of my lady doctor
4. It appears to be wearing pajamas
5. Its head is a fish, it is holding a fish, and there are fish coming out of a gaping jagged hole in its chest.

Other than that, I can't even begin to surmise what this is supposed to be, let alone the ever-more-prized question of WHY.

Why do webinars bring out the worst in people?

I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with being forced to read and use the word "webinar." If I have my way, the guy who coined that one will be among the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes.

But aside from that atrocity, there's something about a webinar that makes people do terrible things, like un-mute their phone and put the webinar on hold. For them, this is an easy solution to the brain-melting alternative of actually listening to a man named Dave describe how to save email to a folder.

For the rest of us, that action results in Dave describing how to save email, accompanied by the uplifting strains of hold music. Right now it sounds like Enya, though I'm pretty sure Bette Midler had a say a few minutes back about how Dave was the wind beneath her wings.

Happy 4th, y'all!

We had a wonderful four-day weekend, which we kicked off by watching the Cubs lose 0-12 to the first-place Reds. *sigh* It's always nice to be out at Wrigley Field, anyway. Keeping in mind that Wrigley represents most of what's right with baseball, I'd like to present a reminder of what's wrong with baseball: groupon.com (recommended by Funundrum, by the way) was offering $7 tickets to a minor league game being played at Wrigley, and they had to accompany their offer with the following disclaimer.

Note on Cubs.com fees: Fees and tax are not included, so customers will have to pay a per-ticket convenience fee ($2.73), per-order processing fee ($3.75), and an optional print-at-home fee ($6.25) on top of the Groupon price. Free ticket pickup is available at will call.

That means that MLB is charging fees that effectively double the cost of two people wanting to go watch baseball that's low on big salaries and probably higher in sincerity and skill than that afforded by your standard Cubs game. Lame. Now back to your previously scheduled holiday weekend wrapup.

Saturday saw a great day at the beach with our friends, followed by a BBQ at Ed's place. Once there, we organized an impromptu BBQ for the next day at our house. It was attended by some long-standing friends and a couple of new ones, including a German guy named Marcus who happened into our little mess of a group by way of renting out Ed's spare room for the summer. Two days in and he'd already attended a couple of cookouts, a beach thing, and fireworks. We're going out with him on Sunday for the World Cup final -- Marcus is our Designated Exotic Foreign Friend for the summer. Pictured above: Designated British Friend Justin, apparently willing to set aside centuries of unrest between his country and that of Designated Exotic Foreign Friend Marcus. We are also not yet sure how many soccer jerseys Marcus owns. So far he's two for two.

The city of Chicago canceled the downtown fireworks this year, instead holding slightly smaller shows at three locations along the lakefront. The northernmost barge was moored directly to the west of our place, which is immediately next to the park bordering the lake. Our fortuitous placement influenced the impromptu BBQ -- once we were all stuffed with teriyaki burgers and coconut cake, we simply walked east with our adult beverages until we couldn't go no mo. Getting back home was just as easy and pretty much cemented our house as Independence Day party central from now on. I might have to give up the idea of our annual Christmas parties, but this should be good enough. I'm just happy to know enough people that we can have anyone over to begin with. This year it was just four others, but Chris is betting on closer to 30 next year. We'll be able to look back on this post and see, won't we?

These are actually very large pictures, which I'm posting 1) for my two readers' benefit and 2) so I can grab them at work and use them as desktop pictures.

Seen on a bus ad for Wisconsin: "If Ferris had the week off, he'd come to Milwaukee."

Best football (global kind, not ours) coach name ever

Nigeria's coach is named Lars Lagerback.

Yeah, I know. So awesome.

Awesome hats I've made... and lost.

One time*, I made this really awesome hat, and I wore it around Chicago, smug with my warm head. Then I left it in a cab. So I had to make a replacement one. I am still bitter about losing the old hat, as evidenced by my terse sentences. However, the new one kicks at least 3 kinds of ass, and will pick up a further 7 types of ass-kicking once I sew a fleece liner into it. Boo yah.

*early last winter

Here's the first awesome hat, as modeled by me. That's Chris, as you may know by now (wearing another hat I made, what do you know?) and Sarah Marie, who visited us pretty much for the opportunity to eat at Hot Doug's, which Funundrum highly recommends. This was somewhere in the middle of our 1.5 hour wait for encased meats. Mmmm. I am sad to note that the large button on my awesome hat is only partially visible. I assure you, it was a really neat button.

And the new awesome hat, modeled by Shannon at our mid-May Cubs game. Why is it always so damn cold when I get to go to a Cubs game?

I haven't yet lost this new hat, nor am I planning to, but I figured now was the time to immortalize it on the internet. Just in case.

Wow, yeah, how does that work?

Who wouldn't want a massage fort?

Vince Vaughn's "Cheaters" filming on my street!

Our neighborhood blog, aka the "Busybody Blog," tipped us off that Vince Vaughn would be filming a movie on our street today. Sure enough, on our way to work, we saw some traffic cones, yellow tape, and a security guard in front of a restaurant that has been closed since we got here. We peeked inside, and saw the whole place done up all tacky 70s style. I took this picture from the El station when I got home. Sadly, the action had long ended -- I hear they've moved down a couple of miles to the infamous Wiener's Circle hot dog joint for filming overnight. All this picture really shows is the yellow and green "Chi Thao Massage" sign they put up in front of the filming location. Get it? "Chi-town?" I thought it was pretty clever. We'll probably have to see the movie just to see how seedy they make our hood look.

Anyway, movie stars aren't that impressive -- especially not Vince Vaughn, who is a card-carrying walrus now -- but what is awesome is stuff happening in my neighborhood.

I'm a-runnin'.

Remember when I said I had started training for a 5k? Of course you do, because you're one of my two readers. Congratulations on having excellent taste and good short-term memory!

It's two months later, and my "race" is tomorrow. It's a 3.5 mile charity run benefiting a food drive, and I put race in quotes to indicate that the likelihood of me being able to gear up to cruising speed in a crowd of a brazillion people is, well, unlikely. The important part is that I get a t-shirt, and an official number with a little timing chip in it, and Chris' company (with whom I am participating) is feeding and beering me afterwards. Yay!

Even if I don't get to run the whole way due to other meatbags being in the way, I am happy knowing that I can actually run 3.5 miles and have been doing so for a couple of weeks now. The awesome podcasts I've been using to train also has programs for 8k and 10k, which is kind of tempting. Kind of. Running sounded a lot more fun when temperatures were in the 60s, which was right up until three days ago. So I don't think it will become a new hobby, but we'll see.

Photos of me with my official timing chip number thing will be uploaded as soon as possible.

Attention parents: click on the map and it will open bigger, allowing you to better see my race route.

Update: I ran! I managed to keep up a jog the entire time, though the massive crowd of 20,000 people did slow me down a little. It was really cool running through Grant Park, past Buckingham Fountain and the Art Institute. The President even flew by in his helicopter and backup auxiliary helicopter! He was coming home for the weekend. How is this not the greatest city ever?

Ephemera

We made these awesome bowls out of some old "learn Spanish" records that belonged to my Grandpa Gil. My dog destroyed them less than two days later. I'm starting to think that carpe diem is Latin for "this is why we can't have nice things."