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Find him before it’s too late!

My mom was watching NCIS: New Orleans earlier tonight, a show that my brain fights against every time it’s on TV. It might be good, but Scott Bakula is the main character and I just can’t make the mental shift away from him on Quantum Leap. Plus his southern accent is pretty terrible.

In this episode, an old friend came to visit him at the NCIS office, who revealed that he’d been poisoned, he’s going to die and there’s no cure.

“I need you to find out who did this to me…”
“Before it’s too late.”

Sure, it builds an appropriate amount of suspense right before the first commercial break, but it also brought up something else that my brain started fighting against:

Too late for what?

“Too late” suggests there’s a deadline, a point in time when you have to have solved a problem. If someone wants $1,000,000 by midnight or he’ll kill the person he kidnapped, get him the money by 11:59 or it’s too late. If a bomb is set to explode in ten seconds, disarm it before the timer reaches zero or it’s too late. You can prevent something from happening if you accomplish a task before that point in time.

Conversely, Scott Bakula’s friend has been poisoned and there’s no cure. His death is inevitable. So what’s the problem to be solved before the deadline? What danger can be averted? There’s no “Find a cure to the poison or I’ll die”, no “We won’t catch the culprit if I die”… it’s just a request for help to find the bad guy. There is no “too late” in this scenario.

If the threat had been “I’ve been poisoned, there’s no cure and if you can’t fake a decent southern accent by the end of this episode, you’ll never work in television again”, well, that’s another story. That’s definitely something he could do before it’s “too late”, but whether he could realistically solve the problem… I suppose he could always hope for a Quantum Leap reunion.

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“Yo quiero Taco—” SQUISH!

I spent most of the weekend in a small town called Sartell, MN, which has some decent restaurants. One is a Mexican place called Añejos Restaurant where I had dinner with a couple other people. Tasty food and it has a big wide-screen TV by the front window that plays a slideshow with factoids about Mexico and tequila, pictures and descriptions of some menu options, etc. I could see the TV from where I was sitting and one of those slides caught my eye, mostly because of the final ingredient listed: Chihuahua cheese.

First thought: “Do they smoosh a tiny dog to make the cheese?”
Second thought: “Who milks the dog?”

I was too curious to wait for the server to tell me, so I did a search for “Chihuahua cheese” on Google and found a website that explains it got its name because the cheese (made from cow’s milk) originated in the Chihuahua region of northern Mexico. The description also included a sentence that didn’t use the word “cheese” and is awesome when taken out of context.

“Chihuahua can be used for fondues, breaded fried cheese dishes (queso frito), egg dishes, enchiladas, or simply for snacking.”

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Beauty and the Geek is 10 years old

Officially, the first episode aired on June 1, 2005. However, today marks the 10th anniversary of the day the producers brought us through the front gates of the mansion and turned on the cameras.

My blog entry from January 6th that year was about getting the call that I’d be flying out to L.A. the following weekend, Jan. 13-16. Most people went home straight from the hotel on Sunday. Those of us who stayed got into a van the next morning and rode in many, many circles until we finally arrived at what would become our not-so-humble abode for the next two and a half weeks. Well, that long for the ones who made it to the final episode. The rest of us who lost in the elimination room left the house immediately (yes, immediately—I accidentally left my shaver in the bathroom and never saw it again), spent the night in a hotel, then flew home the next day.

One of my favorite memories from the first day was when they filmed us seven guys coming up the driveway in two Mini Coopers. They wanted me to drive the one in back, but I’ve never been any good with a stick shift, so they put Bill behind the wheel instead (he was the Vice-President of the Dukes of Hazzard Fan Club, so that seemed more appropriate anyway, if you ask me). I don’t recall which one of us was responsible—we were both sitting in front—but one of us totally screwed up one of the takes because we cranked up the radio as we headed up the driveway. The director did not approve.

Many, many fond memories… and some really shitty ones, too… but reflecting back on it after a decade, I’m still glad I was picked to be on the show. If nothing else, it taught me to look more carefully in the bathroom when I’m packing my stuff to go home.

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Back to my nothing-even-vaguely-resembling-regular broadcasting schedule

It’s been several moons since I posted anything on here, but not for lack of ideas. It’s just something I wasn’t making time for, which is a terrible excuse, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

A small part of my brain thought I should make a New Year’s resolution to write in here more often. The rest of my brain knew that would be a terrible idea. For me, resolutions tend to have nasty consequences: screw up once and the entire system collapses, you spiral down into a deep, dark hole of shame and misery, then wake up three weeks later in a stranger’s house covered in cake frosting and soaking in a puddle of your own urine. But even if breaking resolutions have consequences a little less severe than that, I’d still feel shitty afterward. I feel kinda shitty now after not writing since… October, I think. That’s how long it’s been—I don’t remember how long it’s been.

It also occurred to me that the last time I wrote in here was just before my trip to Thailand back in October. I thought the idea of e-postcards was really cool and it might have been if not for two things.

1) The trip was more exhausting than I thought (probably because of the constant heat and humidity) and the sweet siren song of sleep was just too strong to resist at night.
2) It’s really awkward to talk to a webcam while your mother is sitting in the room with you. Just an FYI.

But because it’s been so long, as far as any faithful readers know, I might have been shanked by a Thai hooker for skimping on a 100 baht blowjob. Which would be really sad, given that the 30-1 baht-dollar ratio means it would have cost me a little over three bucks. But that should be expected when she’s only got three teeth and open sores on her… never mind. I didn’t get shanked, that’s all you need to know.

So I made it home safe and sound, the trip was fun and I may be able to motivate myself to post some pictures and stories on here. No promises because I don’t like wasting cake frosting. In the meantime, I hope you all have a wonderful time celebrating the beginning of 2015. I’m sure I’ll be writing to you again soon.

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Introducing e-postcards!

I was thinking about making another video for YouTube today to explain this blog entry with audio-visual aids, but it’s a little too late for that now: I’ll be leaving for the airport in less than 12 hours and the webcam is packed away for the trip.

The biggest reason why I bought that webcam… well, the microphone on the laptop is complete shit. There’s a strong echo, it makes everything sound metallic and it really sucks a lot. (Oddly, Mom and I brought it back to Best Buy to find out what the problem was and it turns out that all of their ASUS laptops had that problem. Some worse than others, but still all of them. Just an FYI for anyone out there who might want a new computer this Christmas season for recording videos.)

Anyway! Aside from keeping the online journal, I’m planning to send “e-postcards” to people during our trip. If a hotel has internet access, I can send emails and attach a digital photo plus a short video. The “front” has a picture, the “back” has a message to the recipient, no postage fees… yay for technology! (If I’m feeling really crazy, I can send e-postcards to individuals. If I’m feeling really lazy, I can send them to a bunch of people at once and start the video with something generic like “Hey there!” Come to think of it, I might start the individual ones with “Hey there!” so that everyone can think I made any given e-postcard just for you.)

So that’s the current plan. I’m not sure how many people’s email addresses I have or how many people might want to get messages about the trip from time to time, but you can still follow my trip to Thailand for the next few weeks by checking out videos on my YouTube channel. Be forewarned: none of them will be made just for you, even if I start the video with “Hey there!”

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Vaccines vs. “chicken pox parties”

I found a page on Imgur that’s “An Open Letter to Non-Vaxxers”. The short version is that the author has a son with cancer. Chemotherapy damages the immune system, so even though the son had been vaccinated, he still had to rely on herd immunity to prevent those diseases. Thus, parents who think it’s a good idea not to vaccinate their children make Dad pretty upset. They’re not just putting their own kids in harm’s way; they’re putting his kid in harm’s way, too.

I should know better than to read the comments sections on the Internet (aside the ones on here, given that they’re usually spam that I have to delete), but I went scrolling down and found that the responses were almost universal: anti-vaxxers are stupid and selfish.

However, one comment intrigued me: “She I was young my mom took me to a chicken pox party that way I wouldn’t need the vaccine, cause once you’ve had it you won’t get it again”

Strange, but it kinda makes sense. It might keep half the kids in your class out of school for a week while they all have chicken pox at the same time, but now they only have to worry about shingles as they get older.

But that’s not the first thought that popped into my head. The first thought was “If this is meant to justify not getting vaccinated, try throwing a polio party and tell me how that turns out.”