Average Americano

The elevator at the Marriott Hotel in Minneapolis seems to expect a person in America to average 350 lbs. That's 159 kg. , 25 stone. .. Also notice the Health Club on the 7th floor! Things that make you go hmm.

Easter Candy.. A Little Too Happy

There's a candy store in the 6Quebec building right across Marquette from the Wells Fargo Building in downtown Minneapolis. In the window they have oversized (for some perhaps) replicas of candies in a display. I can not believe this was created and arranged innocently. Wouldn't you just love to get one of those in your easter basket?

The well laid plans of mice and sheiks

A week off and my failure at capitalism.

Japanese is over for the summer. I now have a week "off" until Fall semester starts next Tuesday.

The Japanese TA for my class recommended I look into working at the writing center at the U, and get paid for what I've been doing for friends and colleagues on many occasions, for free. 

So many little things I could be "not doing for free". Graphic design. Translation. Tutoring. Writing stories... music. Tooting my own horn. etc. but that wouldn't be me. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to think of asking for payment to do things I enjoy doing anyway. It would be like..  - "Can you please help me cross the street, young man?" - "Sure, but it'll cost ya!"

I guess I'm not a good capitalist.

Life after Death?... What?

  I often have extreme difficulty understanding how human beings process and prioritize the perceptions of their world. The concept of life after death, or rather, the yearning for such a thing, is puzzling to me.

  Our reality is made up of many dimensional facets, the perfunctory ones being length, width, height and time. We are a natural part of that construct, and we function perfectly well as such. As an individual; one of many, I occupy a finite portion of that construct. This is, of course, necessary to function properly. If any of my dimensional aspects were to be changed to a value of infinity, I would no longer function correctly in reality. Imagine a person infinitely tall or infinitely wide. That would entail immobility at the least. This is why a desire for infinite life, i.e. infinite time is not reasonable to me. It would be like wishing you were infinitely tall.

Given this information, my question is, why would human beings find immortality or "life after death" desirable?

Thanks for thinking with me on this.

I have been

I have been very busy... OK.. yeah.. I know.. everyone says that. Well. Here's my junk. I've been taking an intensive course in Japanese this summer. M-F, 8AM to Noon. It is really doing wonders for my abilities in that language. 

On top of that, I've been lucky enough to receive a FLAS [Foreign Language Area Studies] fellowship from the Consortium for the Study of the Asias, that will pay for the course. 

This means Yay.

Also.. I'll be teaching the third level Irish class at Gaeltacht Minnesota starting this Fall. I'm now proud to count myself among the stellar instructors there. Well... I mean to say.. The instructors there are stellar, and now they're getting me in the mix. We'll see how things fly.

This also means Yay.. but busy Yay.

Chikezie no likey Ryan touchy touchy

After Ryan went and grabbed ahold of Chikezie's head after one performance early in the season, it appears as if he's grown a bit wary of Ryan's roaming hands.

Cosmic Pedo

Yes, I'm evil. But this is an actual scene from 1958's The Cosmic Man with John Carradine.... OK.. well, maybe I remixed it a LITTLE bit, but the original scene is quite pedo-creepy.

Lapp?

I don't think the Saami people like being called the L word, and I was surprised to see this sign in the Mpls Ikea...

Clickity Clackity Clickity Clack

OK.. here's one of my pet peeves. 

I find those commercials very annoying, that use the sound of a keyboard clickity-clacking as letters are apparently "typed" on the screen to reveal the ad message. Do you know the ones I'm referring to?

I guess I should be happy. Those used to use the old-fashioned typewriter sound.

Completely off topic, but I just noticed something...

...O to the M to the G! What is up with Christian Slater's shiny forehead?! Is it coated with acrylic or something?!