Local Seattle supermarket chain Metropolitan Market used to be known in these parts as Thriftway. A makeover or a takeover in the past few years brought a new name… and a new logo.
Is that a mutant ‘m’ there? Might not be the best symbol for a grocer in these days of genetically-modified foods. When I look at the logo I see Blinky, the three-eyed fish of Simpsons fame.
I just got a call from a telemarketer:
ME: Would you please remove my name from your call list?
HIM: Sure, if I can just save you some money, though…
ME: Please just remove my name.
HIM: Sure, but have you ever been open-minded?
ME: surprised laugh
HIM: See, it’s funny, huh? Let me just…
ME: click
And then I had a disturbing thought. I’ve been getting a lot more unsolicited sales calls recently. And I didn’t sign up for the national “do-not-call” list. If all those millions of people who did sign up are off limits, who are the telemarketers going to call? I’m guessing those of us who didn’t sign up are going to be getting a lot more calls.
Here’s a quintessentially Alaskan story, courtesy of my sister’s friend, Michelle:
A few years ago, at a music festival held in the small (very small) town of Hope, Alaska, a problem arose with the Porta-Potty facilities. A collection of the portable toilets had been trucked into town for the dramatic increase in the town’s population during the festival.
On the second day of the festival, with the Porta-Pottys filled to capacity, the crowds became restless. A festival organizer took to the stage to announce that, as good festival organizers, they had anticipated waste management needs correctly and that fresh Porta-Pottys had been on their way by truck from Anchorage. Unfortunately, the truck had hit a moose en route, so fresh cans would not be arriving that day.
It’s a fairly common occurrence in Alaska for cars — and occasionally trains — to hit moose. And the results are generally not pretty, especially for the vehicles. When I was a child, living in Denali National Park, my family signed up on a list that offered free moose meat. All you had to do was wait your turn for a moose to get hit (or killed illegally). We shared ours with another family, butchering the moose and packing it away in the freezer. Road kill that feeds a family.
But I don’t know how I’d feel about getting a moose that was hit by the Porta-Potty truck.
It’s summer in Seattle — there’s no time for silly things like work and responsibility. It’s sun time, and that usually means as many afternoons as possible spent at Madison Park beach, on the shore of Lake Washington. My other favorite location is the grassy area on the tip of Luther Burkank Park on Mercer Island.
The blues and greens in Seattle are even more vivid than I remember. It’s a welcome change from the constant summer haze that obscures what’s left of Japan’s natural beauty. And the amount of greenery in Seattle amazes me after a year spent in the concrete jungles of Japan.
Of course, the downside to all this green will come in October when the skies turn gray for the following nine months or so. All the more reason to leave my computer…
I bought a six-pack of Asahi Super-Dry beer at a Seattle supermarket tonight, and — it’s crap! Don’t be fooled by the label, it’s not the same beer that you find in Japan. The tiny print says it’s bottled by Molsons in Canada, where they apparently don’t leave well enough alone. So disappointing.
My second night back in the States and where do I end up? A karaoke bar. I fucking hate karaoke. This is some sort of punishment…
It’s good when body trends swing in the right direction (outward, in this case). Combine this sexy belly trend to the growing re-acceptance of body hair and I’m in the right place at the right time.
Is the potbelly the new gay ideal?
Guardian Unlimited
If you are a man coming to terms with the fact that all his trousers are too small and are destined for Oxfam, you are now not only a style icon, but a sex symbol. Tell your gay best friends of our general potbelly rule of thumb: a 36 inch waist is acceptable, 38 is just greedy.
Of course, the sexiest thing of all remains the ability to not care a whit.
Often while I’m reading, my mind will wander from the text at hand and I’ll end up thinking about something else. But I never stop reading, which strikes me as a bit strange. I usually have to go back over the section I just read but didn’t pay attention to.
It’s almost like a train that reaches a split in the tracks. Instead of continuing along just one track, some sort of freaky parallel dimension opens and the train is able to travel along both tracks. But only one train continues to carry the conductor.
I was reading an article on autism tonight, and this happened. But rather than just snap myself back into the reading material, as I typically do, I started to ponder what was going on — probably because I was reading something about how the brain works. And then I started to think it was something I could write about on my blog, so in my mind I started to form what to write. And suddenly I was another full paragraph further along in the story.
Immediately following these episodes, I’m conscious of the fact that I have read every single word of a section of text, despite the fact that nothing has sunk in to my brain. And I wonder, why do I continue reading? Why not just stop to think about something else? Is the information I’m reading but not remembering going somewhere in my brain — perhaps to a place I’m just not able to access? Are there people who are able to do this — have a completely separate track of thoughts while reading — but who remember everything they’ve read?
Um, okay. Back to my autism article…
I scored three correct answers out of a possible 18 in the All Look Same test, where you try to identify people in a series of photos as Chinese, Japanese or Korean.
Contrary to the title of the test, none of the subjects look the same.