Andrew Taylor Recommends

Faith or no faith: Killing the Buddha is a must-read

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:02:00 +0000

From the manifesto page at Killing the Buddha:

The idea of “killing the Buddha” comes from a famous Zen line, the context of which is easy to imagine: After years on his cushion, a monk has what he believes is a breakthrough: a glimpse of nirvana, the Buddhamind, the big pay-off. Reporting the experience to his master, however, he is informed that what has happened is par for the course, nothing special, maybe even damaging to his pursuit. And then the master gives the student dismaying advice: If you meet the Buddha, he says, kill him.

Why kill the Buddha? Because the Buddha you meet is not the true Buddha, but an expression of your longing. If this Buddha is not killed he will only stand in your way.

Why Killing the Buddha? For our purposes, killing the Buddha is a metaphor for moving past the complacency of belief, for struggling honestly with the idea of God. As people who take faith seriously, we are endlessly amazed and enraged that religious discourse has become so bloodless, parochial and boring. Any God worth the name is none of these things. Yet when people talk about God they are talking mainly about the Buddha they meet. For fear of seeming intolerant or uncertain, or just for lack of thinking, they talk about a God too small to be God.

Killing the Buddha is about finding a way to be religious when we’re all so self-conscious and self-absorbed. Knowing more than ever about ourselves and the way the world works, we gain nothing through nostalgia for a time when belief was simple, and even less from insisting that now is such a time. Killing the Buddha will ask, How can we be religious without leaving part of ourselves at the church or temple door? How can we love God when we know it doesn’t matter if we do? Call it God for the godless. Call it the search for a God we can believe in: A God that will not be an embarrassment in twelve-thousand years. A God we can talk about without qualifications.

Killing the Buddha is a web magazine about religion for "people both hostile and drawn to talk of God," as they put it. It's a collection of articles, essays, news stories, analyses, book excerpts and other work that places an emphasis on thinking one's faith. Don't ever take God for granted. Don't ever take your holy book at face value. Don't ever mindlessly follow the protestations of your imam, preacher or rabbi. After all, if there is a God, wouldn't it follow that he gave us brains for a reason?

As a little introduction to the intoxicatingly intelligent and thought-provoking prose at KtB, I've made a few selections for you:

- Jeff Sharlet wrote a long piece in 2000 about a revolutionary corner of Anglicanism that seeks to disavow both secularism and fundamentalism in order to reunite the world with God, so to speak.

- An excerpt from Frank Schaeffer's "Patience With God" explains the ruinous fascination with The Rapture and the disastrous politics born from it. The money quote: "The bestselling status of the Left Behind novels proves that, not unlike Islamist terrorists who behead their enemies, many evangelical/fundamentalist readers relish the prospect of God doing lots of messy killing for them as they watch in comfort from on high. They want revenge on all people not like them — forever."

- The blog highlights an uproariously funny Stephen Colbert bit about a gay couple who was tackled to the ground by Mormons for holding hands walking on the sidewalk by the temple in Salt Lake City. Those who trespass, indeed.

Osso & Sufjan Stevens - Run Rabbit Run

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:36:00 +0000

My reviews tend to have a pattern like this: I open by explaining that I'm not a big fan of X, but Y company/artist/musician has put its own twist on X, making it Z and Z is wholly enjoyable. And I think this says something about the nature of ATR. ATR is quality, it's value, it's something perhaps a bit different from the mainstream (sometimes, though, it wallows gleefully in the shallowest parts of the mainstream), and more often than not, it's a pleasant surprise.

Sufjan Stevens' largely electronic "instrumental" album "Enjoy Your Rabbit" was not something I ENJOYED all that much (get it?) the first several times I heard it. And then I stopped hearing it because clearly I wasn't going to "grow" into it, nor was it going to grow on me. But then on a whim I grabbed "Run Rabbit Run," billed as a collaboration between Sufjan and Osso, an all-female string quartet signed to Sufjan's Asthmatic Kitty label and based partly in NYC, partly in Berlin. My interest, shall we say, was piqued.

And then, after listening to a few of these powerful and artfully arranged strings-only pieces, I looked at the tracklist again and it dawned on me: These ladies are "covering" "Enjoy Your Rabbit." And when I say "covering," I mean they're tearing it apart, stripping it down to its musical DNA, and building it back up with pure, intimate, orchestral awesomeness. I would go so far as to say it's unrecognizable, but if you'll recall, I didn't listen to "Enjoy Your Rabbit" very many times, so I'm not sure I'd recognize those songs in string form even if they were note-for-note re-dos.

Sufjan's involvement in this is almost beside the point: This is fantastic string music, whether it's based on anything familiar or not. Here's an interview/performance that two dudes and the two domestic members of Osso (apparently that's their touring configuration) did for WNYC's Spinning On Air last February if you'd like a taste of what they're about, or you could go to Osso's Asthmatic Kitty artist page to download an MP3 of "Enjoy Your Rabbit."

Catch up: 14KT does his best Dilla

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:54:00 +0000

If you were involved in the Michigan hip-hop scene when J Dilla died, chances are you couldn't help but hit the studio to either remix old Dilla flips or rap over Dilla instrumentals and work out your grief. How do I know this? Well, in the 3 plus years since my favorite producer's passing, I've accumulated at least 50 mixtapes and collections of Dilla beats, Dilla freestyles and Dilla-inspired mixes. And if I was really aggressive about it, I could have easily topped 100 of them.

In the winter of 2006, though, Detroit-bred producer 14KT went into the lab to work out his grief, but he didn't put the results of his efforts out ... until just recently. As an homage to Dilla's last beat tape, "Donuts," 14KT named his collection "Nowalataz," after the nickel-store candy called Now & Later.

These are real sweet beats, too. He definitely put on his old soul hat and went digging for some uplifting vocal samples to pull apart, cut and pull apart again in the search for that perfect break. And as you might expect, most of the vocals come from Motown legends, but I'll let you figure out who is who. After all, it's a free download, and it could be one of my top 10 albums of the year.

Catch up: Flaming Lips hits me in the brain

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:46:00 +0000

I admit I'm not the biggest Flaming Lips fan you've ever met. I have to be in a certain mood to enjoy any of their albums, including the fun and fan-friendly "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots." They're purposefully weird and avant garde and that's fine; I'm just saying I have to be in the mood for it.

But "Embryonic" isn't even really that weird. Or I guess more accurately it's still quite weird, but it's actually weird AND good music all on its own. I don't even really need to be in the Flaming Lips mood to listen to this thing. If you ONLY like Flaming Lips when they're dense and purposefully weird, you'll probably think this is one of their weaker efforts. If you like music in general, though, and you thought that one tune off "Yoshimi" that got major radio play was good, I think you'll love this.

Lipton has a hit: Pure Leaf Extra Sweet iced tea

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:45:00 +0000

Most commercial iced tea makers seem to be whiffing entirely on the sweet tea market, and until recently, I'd have included Lipton, with their range of subpar fruit-flavored teas, in that statement. But with their Pure Leaf line of bottled iced tea, they have a sweet tea that accurately reflects what I want in a sweet tea: It's very sweet but also light and refreshing. It's not at all sticky. And it's made with real sugar, not high fructose corn syrup.

If you're looking for sweet tea on the go, I recommend this one and, for an even cheaper and widely available option, Arizona's giant cans/bottles of Southern-style tea aren't too bad. But this one tastes better.

The beauty of RFID

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:38:00 +0000

To be quite honest, I'm a bit of a tin-foil-hatter when it comes to radio frequency identification technology. The idea that we'll have these tags with sensitive information on them that can be read passively and at a distance by silent and innocuous machines is somewhat disturbing, not because I fear what government or even companies will do with my info, but rather, how easy is this technology to hack, how simple would it be to expose everyone's info to the laptop of that 17-year-old dude on that park bench over there?

Over the last few months, I've sort of inadvertently learned a lot about the mechanisms behind RFID and the kind of security measures built into the transmit/read systems. One of the inherent security measures of systems is that it's the reader and not the tag that initiates a data transfer, and thus each reader has its own radio field of a certain size. It's not until you willfully put your tag or device into the read field of a specific type of reader that it transmits whatever data (usually encrypted numbers that correspond to some information in a database the reader is set to search through) it's meant to. And so the type of tag must match the type of reader, and if you've got just a generic reader with a giant read field, you may be able to draw out a bunch of randomly generated, encrypted codes from nearby tags, but without access to the databases that hold the keys to those codes and without knowledge of what sorts of tags you're drawing that information from, there's literally nothing you can do with it.

So feeling a little less nervous about the potential exploitability of RFID, I came across this neat video about researchers finding ways to "measure" the invisible read fields that surround RFID reader devices. It's a rather simple trick, but it's got real-world applications, as the people in the video explain.

Immaterials: the ghost in the field from timo on Vimeo.

The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's grandest vision

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:23:00 +0000

A radio address by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 laid out a Second Bill of Rights, a foundation for a war against poverty and for securing the true liberty on which America was founded. "For unless there is security here at home," Roosevelt says, "there cannot be peace abroad." A man who is hungry is not truly free. A man who is indigent is a building block of despotism. These are the bedrock principles of Liberalism at home and abroad, a socioeconomic bill of rights. And in these times of crushing corporate power in our Republic (and indeed our planet), it's a good time to remember these rather self-evident truths: People in poor health, people without jobs, people pinned down by poverty can't truly be free.

Crazy cat guy: Talking to the Roosevelts

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:23:00 +0000

My cats, Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, tend to be talkative. Meowing, yes, but also telling me I sleep too late, that they want more things to scratch, that the food is too dry or too wet or whatever the case may be, that maybe something smells kinda funny out in the hallway (and Eleanor can smell it under the door [it's the neighbor's dogs]).

So while I collect my thoughts on various things I'm planning to recommend, I thought I'd sit down and talk with my cats between romps through the livingroom about stuff that they're fans of.

Andrew: So what have I bought lately that you're into? I know what you don't like so don't bother talking about that.

Eleanor: Well I like that you've mixed in that really pleasant Tidy Cats Premium Scoop for Small Spaces with that plain-Jane Petco litter; it smells nice.

Franklin: Unfortunately though, the nice smell can't completely eradicate the odor of your worst bowel movements.

Eleanor: *drops teacup* How uncouth!

Franklin: That's what I say.

Andrew: Frank, what about you? We recently had an episode with your allergies swelling your face up rather embarrassingly.

Franklin: Well, yes, I suppose it was unsightly. We determined I'm allergic to corn filler in my food, so you were kind enough to throw away that other stuff and buy more Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul, which contains no corn.

Andrew: That's right, and you even acted excited to eat it for about five minutes, so that was nice of you.

Franklin: Yes, I'm a man of discriminating taste.

Andrew: So I suppose your butt must taste exquisite, judging by how often you taste that.

Eleanor: *snicker*

Franklin: That's a matter of hygiene and you know it.

Andrew: So what else? What of that wet food I just bought you, the Wellness stuff that's also grain-free so as not to inflame your kitty face?

Eleanor: That's quite good so far, I must say. This first flavor, chicken and lobster, is so decadent! I appreciate it, at any rate, even despite the fact that it's a pate.

Franklin: Yes, we generally prefer meaty chunks in gravy, but this is quality stuff, regardless of its consistency.

Eleanor: Of course, we also like the little bits of bread and cheese you sometimes throw at us when you're eating a sandwich ...

Andrew: Because you won't leave me alone?

Eleanor: More or less.

Andrew: Speaking of that, why is it you insist on coming into my bedroom and scratching/biting on everything you can find if I'm not awake by about noon? You know I work strange hours.

Eleanor: *shrugs* I guess because I'm bored?

Franklin: Yeah, that's why I generally endorse her mischief, then you get up, we get food and we get somebody to crawl around on.

Eleanor: Oh! We really like those Petco donut beds you got for us too, we actually sleep in them despite the well-known fact that cats don't actually sleep in/play with the things you buy FOR us to sleep in/play with.

Andrew: That's true, I see you in those a lot, they look extremely comfy. And they were only like $8 a piece.

Franklin: How much was that weird expandable wireframe cube toy thing that we continue to play with months on end?

Andrew: Oh yeah, that was just a $3 cheapie job I got at Walgreens one time. I really appreciate that you guys continue to show that thing so much love.

Eleanor: We aim to please.

Wipe out: The battle for TP supremacy

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:27:00 +0000

Let's get serious for a moment: butt hygiene is extremely important. An unclean patootie can lead to pain, inflammation, itching, irritation and, at the very least, unpleasant aromas. I even try to keep some wet wipes on hand for ... let's call it gastrointestinal deviance. Whatever you don't flush, you wind up taking with you.

But on the other hand, what you flush and how much of it you flush is also of some importance. Buy cheap toilet paper and you have to use several fistfuls of it to get the job done -- buy overly expensive toilet paper and you're literally flushing money down the toilet. For a long time now, the ATR principles of value and quality have applied to my TP purchases, and generally what I end up with is either Quilted Northern or Angel Soft, depending on the sales on any given week. Both are perfectly fine toilet papers, with a good balance between economy (in number of sheets per roll) and comfort.

Then a couple weeks ago, something rare happened. Charmin, long the Coca-Cola of toilet paper brands, was on sale at Kroger and was actually the same or less money as some of my old reliable brands. And the Ultra Soft variety specifically advertised "Absorbent Cushions: So You Can Use Less!" Well what am I if not a consumer scientist; a grocery adventurer?

I still had a couple rolls of my Quilted Northern left so I decided I'd swap out to the Charmin after the next roll expired, then switch back to the Quilted Northern to finish out that stock while getting a good set of data for wipe-evaluation. Here are some of my observations:

Quilted Northern Soft & Strong 2-ply Double Rolls
Reasons I bought it:
- Cost. As you can see from this product shot, it's generally among the lowest-cost "name" toilet papers in the aisle, aside from the store-brand, single-ply abominations.
- Economy. Not quite the same as cost, I look at the amount you're getting per roll and per package. QN boasts 300 sheets per roll and 450 square feet of quilted goodness, both of which are among the highest totals in their categories you'll see in the TP aisle.

Wiping experience:
It's completely fine, just fine. I do note that despite the 2-ply thickness and vaunted "quilt" texture, I seem to have to pull off a lot of it to fill my hand for a pass. It's hard to quantify the amount I use in each round of hinder upkeep, but I know it when I feel it. It has to fill my hand just so. QN also seems to tear/fray a bit on the wiping surface in certain situations, which isn't catastrophic in itself (in fact it's something I figured was part of the territory ... you are dealing with really soft paper, after all), but is perhaps a bit of a bummer, particularly after I noted that Charmin -- well, let's get to Charmin, shall we?

Charmin Ultra Soft 2-ply Big Rolls
Reasons I bought it:
- Advertised strength and absorbency. If QN had a tendency to fray and force me to use more, perhaps the Cadillac of butt-wipes would fray less and allow me to use less per ... incident.
- Reputation. Admittedly, Charmin's generation-spanning success in this arena did sway me to try it again. And I say again because I know I used Charmin (and Cottonelle and Angel Soft, etc.) as a child, but back then I lacked the consumer science instincts to notice a difference, except between the cruddy one-ply stuff at school and the 2-ply stuff at home. But a baboon could tell that difference.

Wiping experience:
I wouldn't dare exaggerate about something this essential, so when I say Charmin's Ultra Soft lives up to its advertising, I mean it. I use FAR few sheets to get the old handful, and I have to use fewer handfuls to do the job. And, as became painfully apparent when I switched back to the QN last week to finish off that package, the fraying is almost nonexistent. Little bits of TP left on the caldera of the butt are NOT a necessary part of life.

Charmin has fewer sheets per roll, less square footage and even slightly smaller squares (though it's hardly worth mentioning except to note how it does more with less) than Quilted Northern and it really is hands-down better in every mission-critical aspect. I could see using QN or Angel Soft or whatever if money is a bit tight and that extra couple of dollars for Charmin would be better used on food or some other thing, and as I said, QN is a perfectly fine product.

But Charmin spoils you. It's so evident that my mom, unbidden, made a comment last time at the grocery store that she was glad the Charmin was on sale because she noticed it was much nicer than what she was using before. She had no idea I was executing my own scientific examination of toilet paper quality, she just wanted to express her happiness with the product.

So take my mom's word for it if you're looking for an upgrade to your wiping efficacy: Charmin's better.

My feet reborn: Vibram Fivefingers Classic

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:46:00 +0000

I'd heard about Vibram Fivefingers "shoes" (for lack of a better term) about a year ago and was intrigued by the concept: They're shoes that serve only to protect your feet from sharp bits, and other than that, they get out of the way of your foot's anatomy. Each toe has a pocket of its own to grip the earth as you move, as Darwin intended. I saw in my Googling about the concept an article that pointed out the massive difference between the podiatry of Papua New Guinea natives (who go barefoot their whole lives) and Western white people, who cram their feet into wingtips for three quarters of their lives. Here's the image pairing from a 1905 study that caught my eye.

The main difference, as you can see, is the toes' natural posture. The people who use their feet naturally have splayed toes and a wider base, where the boots and shoes folks have toes that curl under to form a point; the result of years of the body growing into a mold.

So having been somewhat disciplined in my finances the last month or two (hey, baby steps, pardon the pun), I had a bit of money and a bit of motivation (back pain, mainly) and took the plunge. It was extremely difficult to find the shoes I wanted (the black on black Classic style pictured at top, sans straps and such things intended for kayakers and rockclimbers) in my size (41 in their measurement, based on a 10 and a quarter-inch-long foot) online. They were out at the official site, out on eBay, out at several outdoor supply sites ... I finally found a pair at retail (some on eBay were like 40 bucks above MSRP -- a markup of about 50 percent) through a seller at Amazon Marketplace.

I got the little shoes today from the UPS man and put them on to go run some errands. It was certainly a different feel: I could feel the loose pebbles on an asphalt parking lot. I could feel the brake/gas pedals clearly in my car. I could feel the chill of the tile floor in my local grocer. And most of all, I could feel the impact of a poorly placed step -- striking your heel carelessly on a hard surface is somewhat jarring, but to be honest the adjustment wasn't too hard to make on the fly. It's a bit more of a subtle motion, rolling from heel pad to pinky toe along the outside and pushing back with your big toe. And it's certainly different from walking barefoot or sock-footed on carpet in one's home: The strides are longer and more purposeful. In the few times in my life that I've shed my prissy instincts and run barefoot on grass, the feeling was distinct from shoe-running, and not just in the feel of the grass underfoot. This is like that, only without the fear of stepping on a bee and getting stung or some other hazard.

My cat Eleanor even likes them!

Unfortunately for most of you, these probably don't fit into your workplace dress code, whether for sartorial or safety reasons, but I plan to wear mine to work fairly regularly. I've read many many testimonials from people (barefooters and Fivefingers converts both) saying that natural walking eases back and leg pain, strengthens the legs and feet, increases agility and balance and even makes it possible to run comfortably (read: no shin splints, etc.) for longer distances. So insofar as your lifestyle could accommodate something like this, I heartily recommend these shoes.

Pom POW!: Pom iced coffee is a kick in the pants

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:49:00 +0000

The folks at Pom Wonderful, purveyors of exhilarating pomegranate juices and teas, wanted to send me some samples of a new coffee product, which I thought at first might mean pomegranate-flavored coffee. But the lady at Pom said no, she's not sure the market is ready for such a thing.

Which is too bad, because I think that could be a king-hell mindscrew for a lot of people who enjoy pomegranate and coffee: What happens when those flavors unite? But what Pom has produced in the meantime is definitely noteworthy. It's a little grenade-sized bottle of iced coffee infused with the antioxidants and nutrients of pomegranate but none of the flavor. They refer to it as a Healthy Buzz.

And as a coffee drinker I can assure you that this is a STRONG coffee product, particularly in the Cafe Au Lait flavor. It's not much different from the flavor of Starbucks' Frappucino beverages they sell in the little glass jars, but it is stronger-tasting. And whether it's a placebo effect or not I can't say, but I definitely felt more alert and energetic for a few hours after imbibing the Pom stuff.

The iced coffee also comes in vanilla, which I haven't tried, and chocolate, which doesn't so much taste like iced coffee as it does really high-end chocolate milk. But that's certainly not a bad thing.

I haven't even seen these in stores yet in my Indiana enclave, so I can't tell you how widely available they are, but keep an eye to your grocer's produce section, where the rest of the Pom drinks (and several other high-falutin' fruit/veggie beverages tend to be sold) for these.

Best of Elkhart: Lucky's Donut(s)

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:46:00 +0000

Whenever I go to a big city, I'm always amused at how many tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants there are with menus that span seemingly the entirety of human culture. They'll sell BBQ ribs, hamburgers, pizza, Thai, fried chicken, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, etc. etc., all in a kitchen that looks like it can't be larger than 8 feet square. When I'm in Chicago or someplace like that, I don't really even dream of going in one of those places, because my mind reels at the sheer luck involved in ordering something A. the cooks there are good at making and B. won't give you food poisoning.

But here in my hometown, we have one of those kind of places right across the street from my apartment complex. It's called Lucky's Donuts (though it says "Lucky's Donut" on the sign) and it offers a WIDE variety of food, from the titular donuts (and crullers and fritters and éclairs) to Pad Thai to hot wings, chicken gizzards and Chinese and Vietnamese cuisine. Our local food critic, Marshall King, did a review of their Pad Thai a couple years ago, saying he was happy to find such a delicious version of the dish so close to home.

When I walked in, a few of the first things I noticed were some Hindu statues on the top of a nearby glass counter with a U.S. flag and a Cambodian flag, and a large picture of Angkor Wat above the entrance to the restroom (after I saw that, I was able to identify the flag as Cambodian ... it has the historic temple in the middle). The owners of the place, Roeum Dim and Soh Hou Kou (a.k.a. Lucky) escaped Cambodia during the American invasion and met each other in a refugee camp in Laos. When I went to the restaurant tonight just before closing time, Soh was there taking orders along with a few other younger people who could very well have been family members or friends of the family. I'm not sure who was in the kitchen but I have to assume it was Roeum herself whipping up big batches of delicious food at top speed for the last-second shoppers like myself.

I ordered a large box of the "Mekatong" pork (basically the Vietnamese Mekong noodles with a Cambodian twist) based on a friend's recommendation and I was VERY satisfied. For $8.45, I got at least three, maybe four pounds of flat egg noodles, fried pork, peanutty-garlicky-spicy sauce, cabbage, spirals of green and white spring onion and broccoli. I ate two bowls of it and I still have at least that much left in the fridge (plus I'm full).

And the menu reveals all sorts of other deals: A dozen apple fritters is only $6.99, a medium (though the medium is still quite large, I saw the boxes they go in) order of Pad Thai pork or chicken is $5.50, a dish of 12 hot wings with fried rice, fries or mojos (think spiced-up, thick potato wedges) is $6.99. When I got my order, the young woman who handed it to me said "have a good evening and please come again for more!" And I cheerily replied, having eyed my bounty, "I live right over there, so I will definitely be back."

If you're ever coming through Elkhart on S.R. 19, stop by Lucky's at the corner of Bristol (S.R. 19) and C.R. 7. As Soh so aptly put it when he took my order, "oh that's the bomb!"

Spotted: Blueberry/Pomegranate ice cream at Walmart

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 05:20:00 +0000

A while back I'd written about the awesomeness of a Kroger-brand ice cream that combined blueberries, dark chocolate and pomegranate into a beautiful, wondrous, lovely treat, and how much I wanted everyone to go out and buy it. But then a funny (read: not funny) thing happened: Kroger stopped selling it. It'd been a "feature flavor" that I'm still not sure if they plan on bringing back.

That was in February of 2008. Now I can report that a chocolate-less version of that same ice cream is being sold under the Walmart generic imprint, Great Value. I know a lot of you have issues with Walmart as a corporate entity (and you're right to), but I think Walmart has made a lot of strides toward being a better company in terms of being the first to push CFL light bulbs, being the first to showcase lines of household cleaners with fewer toxins, improving relations with its labor force and trying to diversify its selection to reflect the various communities it's forever changed.

Full disclosure: My aunt has worked at a Walmart here for like 15 years and is now one of the highest-ranking managers at a Super Walmart. That cuts both ways, because I've heard some horror stories along with the good stuff. But I feel like it's something you should know. I report, you decide, etc.

All that said, if you dug the ice cream at Kroger (and I know at least one reader did because she contacted me to see if I'd seen it at any of my Krogers), and you aren't afraid you'll melt or combust upon entering a Walmart, plunk down $3 and try a 1.5 quart carton of this stuff.

The book on fun.

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:28:00 +0000

Nate Ruess, the former lead singer of 2006 ATR fave The Format and current singer for a band called fun. (with the period and everything, sigh), seems to want to be the new Freddie Mercury. And he's doing a pretty good job, save for the whole being gay thing.

Freddie had far better vocal chops, but the energy, the melodies, the falsetto ... Nate brings it to the table. There's no denying the passion he belts out with his lyrics about heartache and redemption through letting go. And if you've ever seen him live (as I have!), you'll know he is a bundle of kinetic energy on stage, like a tiny coil wound too tight under a little indie t-shirt and cardigan.

When I heard fun's first single off their forthcoming release, "Aim & Ignite," I wasn't incredibly impressed. The song is called "At Least I'm Not As Sad As I Used To Be," and my first impression was that it was no better than a Format cast-off, perhaps a vanity song Nate had penned while still with his old band that never made the cut for an EP or LP.

The song has grown on me, though I must say it's still not really No. 1 single material in my view. Today, though, I got an email from the band telling me that the entirety of "Aim & Ignite," due out Aug. 25, is streaming at their MySpace page. So I went over with an open mind and ... well I'm impressed.

There are four songs on the playlist before the aforementioned "At Least ..." and they're all better. In fact, I'd say "At Least ..." may be one of the weakest tracks on the album. I'm on my second spin through the album (which I pre-ordered this morning), and the tracks continue to warm up in my ear canal. The album does sound like a bit of a stylistic evolution from The Format's "Dog Problems," in that there's more instrumentation, more pomp and grandiosity (in that indie pop sort of way ... yeah I just said indie pop, deal with it). These songs seem well-suited for live shows and car drives, as all good music ought to be.

If you've been on the ATR train for a while and you enjoyed The Format, or if you just want to hear what I mean when I call Nate the heir to Freddie Mercury's mojo, feel free to hit the band's MySpace and listen for free for a while. If you're like me, you'll be looking for the pre-order link before long, and at $9 for the LP, it's also a pretty good value.

Links:
fun. [Official band page]
fun. [MySpace page]
fun. [Facebook page]

Politics, brought to you by Corporate America

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:06:00 +0000

I'm not a big fan of Keith Olbermann anymore. His show has mostly devolved into a self-parody, much as Bill O'Reilly's show did years ago, much as Lou Dobbs' show did over the last few years. I don't much care for clowns and unfortunately Keith plays the clown more often than not on his show.

But every once in a while he still says something worth hearing. Again, I'm not holding this up as an example of how great Keith is, but rather an example of just how ridiculous the debate on health care in America has gotten. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are so beholden to corporate interests for having supplied them the money to grab the power they have, that they're willing to lie, to yell, to throw temper tantrums -- to act -- in order to advance their corporate friends' interests. So it's with that in mind I present to you a special comment on health care reform in America.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

"The Hammer" hits home

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:16:00 +0000

I've been a fan of Adam Carolla since back in the 1990s when the syndicated love advice radio show Loveline was shown on MTV. Carolla, a carpenter/boxer cum comedian and radio host, was the off-color commentator (so to speak) for Dr. Drew Pinsky, the actual psychological expert. But as the years wore on, I recognized that some of Drew was rubbing off on Adam and vice versa: Drew was getting funnier, wittier and more irreverent, and Adam was getting more thoughtful and intellectual. But he still made a lot of dick jokes.

Now Carolla, who had his own radio show in the LA market for a couple years, has reprised his brand of dick/fart/sex jokes for his near-daily podcast, plus the new CarCast, in which he and his gearhead buddies talk combustion engines with celebrities. I've been listening to the podcast since he started it, and it's everything I love about Carolla's brand of comedy. It's certainly not PC, but he's got a sort of wisdom that reverberates with me. It's hard to explain.

I didn't realize Carolla had made a movie until I started listening to his podcast, when some of his celebrity guests made mention of how good it was. Now, normally, when a celebrity has his celebrity friends on and they praise each other's work, you can take it with a grain of salt. And at first I did, but people kept bringing it up, how nobody had heard of it, how it was such a small-budget project, how funny it was ... and so I had to see it for myself.

It's called "The Hammer," and it's very loosely based on Adam's life as a broke guy making ends meet by taking construction jobs and teaching boxing at a local gym (which is what he was doing in real life until he met Jimmy Kimmel and got into radio/TV). In the movie, Adam's character, Jerry, has just turned 40, just quit a crappy construction job, and just got dumped by his live-in girlfriend. He catches the eye of an Olympic-level boxing trainer while he spars at his local gym and gets invited to try out for the 2008 Olympic trials.

Along the way, Jerry meets another woman, makes friends, makes enemies, learns lessons, imparts wisdom, builds decks, loses weight, eats tacos, etc. In many ways, this is an extremely clichéd movie about the Underdog making one last grab at glory. But here's the thing: So was "The Wrestler," which I considered one of the best movies of last year. Sometimes the well-worn plot skeletons are well-worn for a reason. They work.

And they especially work when you hang some new skin on them, for lack of a better analogy. Adam, co-writer Kevin Hench and his motley crew of underpaid and underexposed actors and extras tell an old story of the loser who rises to a new level with a surprising level of craft and wit. For all the overt comedy in the movie, there's also a lot of subtlety. There are smaller jokes and tidbits that other films might linger on to make sure you get them, but "The Hammer" presents them in a rewarding way; when you see them, the belly laughs come extra hard because you've kind of earned them. I personally appreciate it when a movie doesn't treat me like an idiot. This movie knows I'm a grown-up with two eyes and a full set of brain lobes.

The plot is not by any means groundbreaking, but the tightness and earned laughs feel groundbreaking by today's film standards. The movie was shot and edited with an eye toward not wasting moments or glances or feelings. It's the kind of movie that leaves you feeling refreshed and happy without feeling like you've been pandered to.

In short, it's a movie about boxing and love and life in LA and growing old and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you're not a Carolla fan, his constant presence (comedically and physically) might grate on you, but otherwise, it's the kind of movie just about anyone with a sense of humor can enjoy.

Links:
The Hammer [DVD on sale at Amazon]
The Adam Carolla Podcast

An amendment to kill Medicare? No, just a political point.

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:35:00 +0000

Democrat Anthony Weiner represents New York's 9th District, which includes Brooklyn and Rockaway. In true Brooklyn fashion, Mr. Weiner put forth an amendment on Thursday, the 44th anniversary of the creation of Medicare, that would eradicate Medicare. The reason? As so many of the rank and file Republicans have argued lately, they're completely opposed to government-run health care. But in Medicare, you have an efficient, government-run health care program that has existed for four decades. So, Weiner says, for those who spout off about hating government-run health care, here's your chance to vote against government-run health care. Put up or shut up, GOP.

Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership apparently got cold feet and made a deal with Weiner: withdraw the amendment and we'll put single-payer up for a floor vote with the full House. Weiner was stunned, but did withdraw the amendment to hold up his end of the deal, because ultimately, he said, the important part is to have this debate in a serious way, not to score political points. Will speaker Nancy Pelosi and chairman Henry Waxman keep up their end?

Bill Shatner makes art from Palin's mouth poo

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:16:00 +0000

Conan O'Brien invited William Shatner on The Tonight Show to give a poetic interpretation of a few of the exact words Sarah Palin barfed out during her farewell address in Alaska. It's only a minute or so, but it's intense. And hilarious.

Oh however will we pay for health care? By paying the true cost

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:39:00 +0000

I'm presenting this section from the July 17 entry on The Daily Howler fully and without comment, other than to say it's mind-boggling that more people don't see the ridiculousness of the current "debate" about health care in America.

The atrocity in the room: How much extra will we rubes have to pay to get what everyone else already has? Sorry: To get what everyone else already has--at half the price we're already paying? We're not sure what the answer will be. But bowdlerized versions of that question have been in the air all week.

Yesterday, the AP began explaining the $1.5 trillion price tag (over ten years) it had put on the current House health reform bill. (For their explanation, click here.) This morning, the Washington Post leads page one with the CBO's latest gloom:

MONTGOMERY (7/17/09): Congress's chief budget analyst delivered a devastating assessment yesterday of the health-care proposals drafted by congressional Democrats, fueling an insurrection among fiscal conservatives in the House and pushing negotiators in the Senate to redouble efforts to draw up a new plan that more effectively restrains federal spending.

Under questioning by members of the Senate Budget Committee, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose "the sort of fundamental changes" necessary to rein in the skyrocketing cost of government health programs, particularly Medicare. On the contrary, Elmendorf said, the measures would pile on an expensive new program to cover the uninsured.

Though President Obama and Democratic leaders have repeatedly pledged to alter the soaring trajectory--or cost curve--of federal health spending, the proposals so far would not meet that goal, Elmendorf said, noting, "The curve is being raised." His remarks suggested that rather than averting a looming fiscal crisis, the measures could make the nation's bleak budget outlook even worse.

Numbers are going to move around, and Elmendorf's testimony will be read different ways. For ourselves, we'll just marvel again at our society's Ongoing Agreement to ignore the atrocity in the room.

What's the atrocity in the room? It's the astounding amount of wasted money involved in our current arrangements. Yesterday, the Post referred to "President Obama's ambitious drive to overhaul the nation's $2.3 trillion health-care system." We don't offer what follows as a criticism of Obama. But let's consider what that amazingly large number means:

Let's assume that our society is currently spending $2.3 trillion per year on health care. Since we're spending twice as much per person as other developed nations, about $1.15 trillion of that money is essentially "wasted" spending. Some of it goes to pay the middle-class salaries of middle-class people engaged in (useless) paper-shuffling at insurance companies. Some if it goes to doctors who perform useless procedures. Some it goes to insurance and pharmaceutical companies in the form of large profits.

But, in the larger sense, it's all wasted/misspent. And let's enjoy a bit of straight talk: That much misspent money is an utter social obscenity. And yet, that remarkable sum rarely gets discussed as we try to figure out how much more we'll have to pay--to get what everyone else already has. That astounding amount of misspent money thus becomes the atrocity in the room.

It's isn't Barack Obama's fault that this obscenity goes undiscussed. The liberal world has taken part in this gimmicked discussion for many years. But that misused sum does represent a true social atrocity. And alas! When it gets discussed at all, it tends to get discussed in the manner which follows.

Chrystia Freeland (The Financial Times) appeared on last night's Ed Show. She said more than is normally said:

FREELAND (7/16/09): This president likes to talk about the best being the enemy of the good, and is very much someone who is focused on achieving what is achievable. Having said that, I agree with you that the public option is really essential for true health care reform.

One of the nightmare outcomes that you could have is some sort of reform which is a half measure and ends up making things worse. I think the way you could get to that would be maybe to have coverage extended, but not to have action taken to bring down the costs, which is one of the things that the public option could do.

One of the really the ridiculous things about the American health care system, if you look at it from the outside, is America spends more on health care than other western industrialized countries, significantly more, but actually has equal or, in most cases, worse outcomes. So you should be able to have reform that gives more coverage and costs less money. I think it has to be the target that the president aims for.

Freeland, a Canadian, correctly noted that our system is "really ridiculous" ("if you look at it from the outside"). Well guess what, rubes? The situation Freeland describes remains deeply ridiculous if you look at it from the inside! But almost no one ever does. Freeland herself understates the insanity a tad--and her host, Ed Schultz, moved directly to a different consideration.

In that presentation, Freeland offers a bit of obvious logic. If the US pays twice as much as other nations for similar health care outcomes, "you should be able to have reform that gives more coverage and costs less money" (our emphasis). In the short run, it wouldn't be easy to accomplish that outcome; any actual "overhaul" of our profoundly ridiculous system would involve economic dislocations. But it's rare to see anyone make the obvious case Freeland offered last night. When she did, she understated the lunacy a tad--and Schultz moved instantly on.

Classicist Norman O. Brown got very hot in the mid 1960s. In his very hot book, Love's Body, he described how societies die:

BROWN (1966): I sometimes think I see that societies originate in the discovery of some secret, some mystery; and end in exhaustion when there is no longer any secret, when the mystery has been divulged, that is to say profaned...And so there comes a time--I believe we are in such a time--when civilization has to be renewed by the discovery of some new mysteries, by the undemocratic but sovereign power of the imagination, by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of all mankind, the power which makes all things new.

We don't recall what that means any more. But we will say this: Societies die when they can no longer see, or discuss, what is standing right before them. A ludicrous, deeply disordered discussion continues in today's Post.

Got $10? Go get some Root:1 wine

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:02:00 +0000

The last few years, as I've honed my wine snobbery, I've taken to looking outside the traditional winemaking regions of the world to find wines with something to prove. Wines that have to be good, otherwise they'll just disappear, along with the vineyards. And as it turns out, I'm not alone in this quest; it seems you can't swing a bottle of Kendall Jackson in a grocery store without hitting a nice red from Spain, a whole rack of Australian and Kiwi wines and a selection of fermented beverages from a handful of states at least.

And the more I look, the more I read and listen to what people are saying about wines, the more I hear a steady drumbeat of praise for South American wines, particularly those from Chile. Apparently Chile, with its vicinity to the extreme cragginess of the Andes mountain range, has ideal climatology for several kinds of wines and somehow the original rootstocks from European colonists have survived all these years untouched, whereas rootstocks from Italy, France and the other renowned wine hotspots have been damaged by disease, necessitating manmade grafts with newer, less mature rootstocks.

And somehow the Chilean wines seem to be affordable -- nay, cheap -- even though they consistently garner top praise from wine critics. I've had a few Chilean wines (all red, all from 2003-2007) and I've liked what I've tasted, but it wasn't until I had Root:1's Sauvignon Blanc that I decided to raise the alarm.

This is seriously good wine. I have a bottle of 2008 vintage that cost me $8 at Meijer and it's blowing my mind. And I'm not even a fan of white wines. It's crisp and tart and refreshing with an extremely clean finish reminiscent of granny smith apples, strawberries and fresh-mown straw on the nose. This is a wine for summer.

And it's got a screw-cap bottle, which I just decided needs to be implemented on all wines ASAP. I hate having to recork or use one of those little "wine-saver" vacuum spigots for my bottles. Just give me a cap and I'll be fine. Also, as you can see, the bottles are kind of gorgeous and tell the story of Chilean wine and why it kicks so much butt.

Enjoy the denouement of summer with this wine, and with the price as low as it is, you should enjoy a lot of it.

Read more at Root:1 Wine

Why the GOP is dead: It opposes something 8 in 10 of us want

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:30:00 +0000

Political author and snarky blogger Bob Cesca has a giant, sprawling, fantastically sarcastic missive on the Republicans' uninformed, ignorant and stubborn refusal to even consider the fact that American health care as it currently exists may NOT be the best system that's ever existed.

While I spent a few moments of my holiday weekend revisiting the irony of anti-socialism protests taking place on socialized park land, it occurred to me that the proposed government-run public health insurance option probably won't cost nearly as much as the CBO is suggesting.

Because clearly there won't be any Republicans signing up for it.

I mean, no Republican would dare sign up for inexpensive, easily portable health insurance. Not when red, white and blue All American for-profit health insurance is available. After all, free market private health insurance will probably continue to be the more expensive option, so that must mean it's the finest insurance, right? Expensive equals good, no? (No. More on that presently.)

And of course none of the Republicans or Blue Dogs in Congress are covered by a government health insurance plan. Except for all of them.

Please explain, conservatives and wingnuts, why you wouldn't seriously consider switching to the public option if it turned out to be more affordable and portable from job to job -- not to mention the fact that you wouldn't be turned down for a preexisting condition; you wouldn't be randomly booted from the plan as soon as you needed it most; and you would never have to worry about health insurance coverage ever again. Employed or unemployed. Sick or healthy.

I find it hard to believe that you, Mr. and Mrs. Wingnut, would defiantly pay more for less reliable insurance if offered a better deal. To pay more for less would be outstandingly backwards. Palin backwards. "Quitter" equals "fighter" backwards.

The facts: We spend more health care money per capita than any other country on the planet and we're not getting the return. We already spend more than enough to care for every man, woman and child in the United States (plus the illegal ones, in all likelihood), so any doomsaying about "paying for" public health care is misinformed at best; misleading at worst. We're paying for it now, and we're not getting it. The Republican party as we know it -- the party as it's existed since at least the Reagan administration -- is dead, and the battle over health care is just the straw that's broken the trust-fund baby's back.

California's marijuana consumers say "Tax me, please"

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:49:00 +0000

This is for real. I'm not a Californian, but in a time of financial crisis the likes of which we're seeing right now worldwide, legalization and regulation of marijuana seems like one of the most no-brainer steps to help raise revenue for just about any state. Keep in mind, FDR ended Prohibition of alcohol in the United States in 1933, which just happened to be the beginning of the end for the Great Depression.

Get mauled by Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:19:00 +0000

I really really really liked Grizzly Bear's first album, "Yellow House," for all of its solemn beauty and especially after I heard some of the group's a cappella interpretations of some of their own songs and realized "holy crap, these guys are a secret doo-wop group!"

With their sophomore album, "Veckatimest," the boys from the boroughs lose the secrecy and step a bit more fully into their neo-doo-wop/freak-folk skins and come away looking even better. For instance, revel in the sweet glory that is "Two Weeks," the (very smart) choice for first single.

And "Southern Point" may be one of the best track ones I've heard in a while in terms of setting the table for its album.

I can understand this kind of thing not being everyone's cup of tea, but for people who already like certain inferior acts in this genre (*ahem* Bon Iver), this should be a homerun; a shutout; a hat-trick; a wicket; a 92nd minute, game-winning goal; a slam-dunk; a six-length Derby win. Buy in digital or physical form via the boys' Web site.

Shake and drank: Ocean Spray On the Go Cran-Pom

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:23:00 +0000

Every once in a while I dabble in the single-serve drink mix powders because let's face it: This is on some futuristic, astronaut type stuff. Keep a couple in your pocket/purse/desk and turn any container of water into a delicious juice; it's Jetsons come to life.

OK that's a stretch, but it's still a pretty brilliant, simple, convenient concept. Unfortunately, most of the flavors I've tried have been subpar at best. They're either too bland or too grainy-tasting or the flavor doesn't quite match what it's going for, plus they're generally too expensive (10 or 12 packets for more than $2.50 = gyp).

But I gave Ocean Spray's entry into this product pool a try because I generally like Ocean Spray's juice and it was on sale at Kroger (I think $1.80 or so for 10 packets, not terrible). It came through for me. Cranberry and pomegranate are both strong, influential flavors and they're well represented in this mix. Each serving has 5 calories and 100 percent Vitamin C for your day, plus it's delicious. Definitely worth a try if you can stand cranberry and pomegranate juices.

WOW! Mountain Dew Game Fuel has returned

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:33:00 +0000

WoW, World of Warcraft, get it? Before, when the excellent Game Fuel hit the shelves, it was in conjunction with the release of Halo 3. Now it's back for a promotion for the well-aged MMO World of Warcraft and it's brought along a new flavor.

Before, the lone electric red colored soda had a nice cherry citrus kick to it, like Code Red but a little less syrupy sweet. That flavor has come to represent the Horde, which is one of the sides in the overarching battle in the game. The new flavor, a bright blue wild fruit punch citrus soda, represents the Alliance, which is sort of the "good" side in the battle. I don't play the game, so don't jump down my throat if I'm misrepresenting here.

At any rate, the company has a Web site set up where you can enter codes from your bottle caps for whatever side you choose, earn tokens and play for prizes, including in-game prizes. What's more important, however, is that the new addition to the Game Fuel lineup is a worthy competitor to the old one. It does indeed pack a nice fruit punch flavor with the traditional Dew citrus kick with not too much syrupy stickiness. I recommend both flavors and I genuinely couldn't care less what you play in WoW.