On Chicago, part II

Jeez, it's been a week since I updated. That's not good. Is there anyone that still reads this, or have you all given up on me?

I'll continue with my trip to Chicago, even though it was a while ago. Obviously I didn't actually sneak into the All Candy Expo. I really really wanted to, but it just didn't happen. Certain persons (not me, of course) were too chicken to go through with it. My new goal in life, however, is to someday attend a candy convention.

What I did do on my second day in Chicago was say goodbye to my parents and meet up with my friend Lauren. We walked around downtown for a while, looking at the million or so sculptures that dot the spaces between skyscrapers and picking up free samples of mate flavored scum and cherry Dr. Pepper. Then we went to the zoo.

I love a good zoo visit. At the same time, zoos can be the absolute saddest places on earth. The Chicago zoo is on the sad end of the spectrum. Some highlights of the zoo:

• I got to see an aardvark wiggling around inside of a barrel
• one of the chimpanzees was named Optimus Prime
• a woman, upon seeing a cow in the "dairy farm" area, loudly exclaimed "Cook that mother****er!" to my immense enjoyment

Some lowlights of the zoo:

• I managed to pour my free cherry Dr. Pepper all over myself
• all of the animals looked very unhappy

After the zoo, we walked approximately 138.5 miles to a store called Uncle Fun.

Uncle Fun is your typical kitschy retro odds and ends shop run by a weirdo wearing a pork pie hat. There used to be a store on Lake Street in Minneapolis called Sister Fun where I used to buy all of my stickers (yeah, I use a lot of stickers in my day to day life). Apparently there is a whole chain of "______ Fun" stores around the Midwest. At Uncle Fun I picked up some stickers and candy cigarettes. I also use a lot of candy cigarettes in my day to day life. Almost all of my friends are smokers, and so I always feel left out at the bar. Rather than picking up the habit, I buy candy cigarettes as often as I can. They're a great conversation starter.

Lauren then took me to some sort of hipster ping pong bar where we played pornographic matching games. That sentence might not make a whole lot of sense, but I don't know any other way to say it. She also had something to show me in her neighborhood. It was a fountain. She said I had to see it.

Yep, it's exactly what it looks like. I didn't understand why Lauren felt I needed to see this particular piece of Dada-ist excrement. I really didn't understand why it was designed and built in the first place. I really super didn't understand why it was placed in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Just one of the mysteries of Chicago, I guess.

The next day I was left to my own devices before my big train ride home. I spent a long time just walking around downtown. Half of my time in Chicago was spent walking. I walked to a bookstore, where I picked up a few books: The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret, Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski (I've heard that it isn't that good, but it was only $6), and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. I will post my thoughts on these books later, but so far I can say that Etgar Keret is an amazing writer and that I still find Jane Austen boring.

I also took the mandatory trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. It's always a fun museum, what with the piles of free candy everywhere. Not as good as a candy convention, but close enough I guess. I had seen and experienced the museum in great depth before, so I didn't feel the need to take the whole tour. To be honest, the only reason I went was to see once again my favorite painting of all time: Time Transfixed by Rene Magritte.

It's hard to describe exactly why I love this painting so much, so I won't bother trying. I just love it is all. After the museum, I walked around a whole bunch more and got lost trying to find the train station. I eventually got directions from a nice young man who then asked if I wanted to buy some crack cocaine. No thanks buddy, I only smoke candy cigarettes! And occasionally a little black tar heroin.

As for the train ride: boring. It was relaxing for the first couple hours, kicking back and reading The Girl on the Fridge from cover to cover. The next six hours were spent wishing I had taken a plane. Not nearly as romantic as I had hoped.

That's it for Chicago. There was more stuff I was going to talk about, but I can't remember now because it's been too long. The End.

On Chicago, part I

So... Chicago, huh?

As I previewed on Monday, my parents were kind enough to treat me to a nice midweek jaunt to The Windy City. It was the type of trip that would be a nice escape if I had anything to escape from. I have always felt that 2 or 3 day vacations were rather pointless, because it's not enough time to get settled in. For some reason I've always been big on "settling in" when traveling. I may be coming around on that, because this trip seemed like the perfect length of time.

Being in The Second City was exciting right from the get-go. On the subway line from the airport to downtown, a guy came into our car and yelled about Jesus for twenty minutes. The guy wasn't crazy or homeless or anything, and it was actually a very coherent and passionate sermon, but it was strange that he even bothered to do it. Counting me and my parents, there were five people in the car and zero people paying attention to him. It seems like if you are going to bother proselytizing on a subway, at least wait for a bigger audience.

The main idea behind the trip to The City on the Make was to see a baseball game between the beloved Twins and the loathed White Sox. The weather was absolutely perfect, and it was great to be in an outdoor stadium for once. U.S. Cellular Field was a lot nicer than I had expected. Maybe it's just because I hate the White Sox, but I kinda expected their stadium to be really grimy. I was very pleasantly surprised. It was also fun to be a visiting fan, to stay proud amidst the scorn of all the Sox fans and find solidarity amongst the scattering of other Twins fans. I was only directly heckled one time, when some yokel made a comment about the Metrodome being lousy. And it's not like I was going to disagree with him, the Metrodome really is lousy. The whole experience made me even more excited for next year when the new Twins stadium opens. The Cell is nice and all, but I think that Target Field is going to make it look like a pile of rotting corpses by comparison.

Unfortunately, the game itself was nine of the most lackluster and forgettable innings I have ever attended. Absolutely no drama or excitement whatsoever. There was also a dude sitting right behind me who loudly talked about mortgages the entire game. Literally, the entire game. He didn't cheer or clap once for the game, just blabbed about financial nonsense to the unfortunate people sitting next to him. The only times he stopped talking were when he was chugging the seven or so beers he purchased, it was amazing.

Despite the shoddy play of the Twins and the annoying guy behind me, it was a very fun experience overall. Far superior to watching the Twins lose at home.

I tried to take a masochistic picture of the "Sox Win" graphic on the big screen, but I guess I mistimed it. Oh well. Outdoor baseball is nice.

After the game, it was back to downtown City of the Big Shoulders and the hard rocking Hard Rock Hotel where we stayed. Except it didn't actually rock all that hard. I was looking forward to a whole bunch of zany stuff, like maybe the rooms would be painted all black with graffiti on them and there would be music playing and it would be all kitsch-ed out with crazy bedsheets and themed soap and a shower head shaped like Ozzy Osbourne's face. I was a little disappointed. The Hard Rock Hotel is just another hotel, albeit a very nice one. And instead of a tacky landscape painting hanging above the bed there was a tacky painting of John Lennon.

The hotel did have some nice views.

That's it for this edition. Coming soon in part II: the unbelievable daredevil story of how I snuck into the 2009 All Candy Expo!

On Inter-Midwest Travel

 Dear Knowledge Dropped readers,

I know, I know, I'm not posting much. I haven't fixed my computer yet. It sucks, I know, not having the freshest knowledge dropped on you several times a week. I'm working on it.

There will also be no Memory Day post this week, because tomorrow I am going on an exciting and action-packed trip to Chicago to watch the Minnesota Twins hopefully take their pent-up frustrations out on the suddenly hapless White Sox. Then I am going to bomb around Shy-Town for a day Ferris Bueller-style, going to candy stores and toy stores and possibly going to one of the shockingly hostile hot dog places. Then I am going to take the train home, which takes eight hours. Seems like a train should go faster than that... it's only like a six hour drive, right? But I'm looking forward to it regardless, I haven't been on a train in a good long while.

It promises be an epic adventure, and I will do an absolutely breathtaking write up of the entire journey once I get back. So you have that to look forward to! It's going to blow your mind!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love,
Ian

Memory Day: Computer edition

I mentioned before that I have a very tenuous relationship with computers. Well, my Sony Vaio finally died, and it appears that I murdered it. A few days ago my frustration with it restarting randomly reached a peak, and I gave it a good whack. It suddenly began working fine again, and I thought I was a genious. When it went back to its old restarting trick, I gave it another good whack thinking that if it worked once it would work every time. Instead of booting up and restarting again, it stopped booting up altogether. It was then that I realized that the spot where I had been hitting it was right where the hard drive was located. Apparently if you smack the hard drive, it breaks forever. Who knew?

It's a pretty big bummer to have a hard drive crash. Believe me, I know, this is the fifth time it has happened to me. I have owned two computers in the past five years, and the hard drives have crashed five times. I have lost countless pictures, stories, schoolwork, music, etc. Luckily I do have an external hard drive now, so this time about 85% of my computer was backed up. I wish I had used it more often though, because I still lost a lot of stuff.

I still think that computers just hate me, and I still trace it back to when I ruined my family's computer in high school. At the time I played a lot of computer games, mainly one called Diablo II. It was a game where you're a little guy who runs around and kills monsters with swords and magic spells. It was pretty fun, but to make it more fun I tried downloading a couple programs to help me cheat at the game and get all the best weapons and armor and whatever. Then I read somewhere that such programs often came with viruses and spyware and whatnot. When the computer became sluggish and unresponsive, I was convinced that I had downloaded something bad. I used the one computer trick I knew (pressing ctrl+alt+del to see what programs were running) and discovered that something called rundll32.exe was on all the time. I mistook the lowercase L's for uppercase I's, and figured that d II meant Diablo II. It was one of the programs I had downloaded! It was evil spyware!

Well, it turned out that rundll32.exe is actually one of the most important files in Windows. I still don't know what it does, but I guess it's integral to the whole deal. So when found it and deleted it, the computer immediately stopped working. Whoops! After that, my actions were reported to the massive artificial intelligence network located at the center of the moon. Its name is Moon Brain One, and it secretly controls every computer on Earth. It is guarded by an elite coven of robot witches. Moon Brain One decreed that in light of my heinous crimes against the computer race, any machine in my possession shall sabotoge itself in order to teach me a lesson. The End.

Anyways, posting might be even more sporadic around here as I now have to borrow computer time from others. I'm probably going to try buying a new hard drive and installing it myself, but who knows how that will work out. But I will figure out a way to keep this blog moving.

On bad television

I managed to finagle my computer into a position where it wouldn't restart for a while, so I was just over on Hulu watching the latest episode of Fringe, a show that I know is stupid and yet watch it anyway. If you aren't already familiar, Fringe is basically a lukewarm X-files knock-off with some good production values. Unfortunately, the writing, the characters, the plotlines, and especially the acting all range from mediocre to bad. But it can still be mildly entertaining from time to time, and so I watch it every week. It can also be the source of some mind blowing stupidity. Literally! In one episode, minds are actually blown. It is the most ridiculous, most unbelievably preposterous episode of anything I have ever seen. If you want to follow along as I illustrate why, here is the link to watch on Hulu: linklinklinklinklinklinklink.

As an unabashed X-Files clone, Fringe deals with government agents investigating various zany scientific and/or paranormal crimes perpetrated by some vast conspiracy. "The No-Brainer" is about with a mysterious computer program that kills anyone who downloads it. An abstract series of images appears on the screen, then the victim becomes hypnotyzed, then a spooky hand comes out of the screen, then their brain literally melts and they die. Now of course I realize that nitpicking the realism of science fiction is quite possibly the lamest thing an individual can do, but nevertheless, I feel obligated to say something. Here is my litany of complaints:

1. First of all, as creepy as it may be, it's just more unoriginality coming from an unoriginal show. It's an obvious ripoff of The Ring, which itself had a preposterous story.
   
2. The computer program does not just kill people. It causes the victim to hallucinate a hand coming out of the monitor. Then the victim's brain actually melts. This is explained in the show by the program "trapping electrical impulses into an endless loop" with "subsonic audio" or something. Electrical impulses, which already course through the body naturally millions of times a second, somehow produce enough energy to melt brain tissue but cause no other physical damage. Brains don't melt when a person is struck by lightning, or even put to death in the electric chair with thousands of volts repeatedly pumped through the body. I would understand (maybe) if they explained the brain melting as a chemical reaction caused by some combination of enzymes or something, but neurons firing? It just doesn't make sense.
   
3. The killer in this episode was not part of the shadowy consortium of evil with unlimited resources seen in other episodes. It was just some guy. A computer programmer who had petty grievances against a few people. Some random dude sitting in a basement somewhere just happened to know exactly what specific sequence of images would not only paralyze a person, but cause them to have a  hallucination of a hand grabbing them and cause human tissue to spontaneously dissolve. In addition to his computer skills, he would have to be an expert in molecular neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, sensory integration, biochemistry, and probably countless other fields. It would take years and years of research and clinical study, and endless periods of trial and error. Instead, some dude just randomly figures it out.
4. This is the real kicker: In the end, the bad guy kills himself by looking at his own evil program. He says something like "I want to see my own creation." Apparently he had never looked at it before. He put together a series of images, specifically sequenced to paralyze someone, make them hallucinate a hand, and cause their brain to melt, without ever looking at them. Some guy, working in his basement, who was not only a genius computer programmer but a master neurologist, master biochemist, a master of audio and visual stimuli, and a master of biochemistry, created this program with his eyes closed! 

They could have made the character some sort of wunderkind who was an expert in all manners of neuroscience, and I would have accepted it, but they didn't bother. They could have given him a set of goggles that allowed him to look at the screen without dying, and I would have accepted it, but they didn't bother. They presented him as some average disgruntled computer programmer who just happened to made a brain melting computer program while wearing a blindfold. I really don't know why it bothered me so much. Why did I waste all this time analyzing a show in which the writers were just a little lazy? Because it was stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything.

Memory Day: The wedding I went to on Saturday edition

So one of the reasons I haven't been posting as much lately is because of my computer. I have a history of computer problems. When I was in high school, I accidentally deleted a file and ruined our family computer. I don't think it ever forgave me. Computers have hated me ever since. My laptop in college crashed four times and went through three hard drives in two years before I gave up on it. I gave the broken husk to my sister and it immediately started working perfectly. My current laptop has already been sent to the manufacturer once for repairs after it quit starting up last year. The sound only works when I have a paper clip jammed in the headphone jack. Now it has developed a habit of restarting itself every ten minutes or so. It's very frustrating, since each restart takes about 4 minutes to load. Sometimes instead of loading it will just keep restarting and restarting. It restarted while I was writing this, right after "I gave the broken husk to my sister." It's hard to write anything when it is continually interrupted.

So anyways, I'm cheating on this Memory Day. I'm just going to be talking about Saturday, which I was going to write about anyway. It was the big wedding day for my friends Joel and Maggie, so congratulations to them. It was a very nice ceremony, a sort of amalgamation of Catholic and Jewish traditions. The reception was a lot of fun too, with kegs of Newcastle beer served in plastic cups with the couple's portrait on them, a soundtrack CD for each guest, and the obligatory dancing to the Isley Brothers. I think they liked my gift of a dinosaur muffin pan with a cupcake decorating set. It was a great time, and it made me proud to be friends with them.

And that's it. That's all I can think of to say. For the past few days I have been trying and trying to think of something more meaningful to say. I wanted to write some heartfelt and maybe slightly wistful thing about how going to my friend's wedding was a turning point and how it was a transformative experience or some bullshit like that. I wanted to give my friends a nice tribute. I couldn't do it. I don't know if it's one of my shortcomings as a writer, or if it's one of my shortcomings as a person, but I just didn't have it in me to write anything sentimental. It always came off as either trite and insincere or cheap and maudlin. I also tried to write about it in a funny way, to say more about the cups with the pictures on them and talk about the various post-reception shenanigans. I couldn't do that either. It invariably sounded stupid and immature, which normally I'm fine with but this time it just didn't feel right. It was all very frustrating, for someone who considers himself a writer to struggle to find the right words. So yeah, I'm glad to move on to other things.

On nothing

I am posting something tomorrow for Memory Day, I promise. I will talk more about why I haven't posted the past few days. Things are realllllly getting l-a-x around here, and I'm not talking about an airport in California*!

*If, after that horrible joke, you feel like never reading this site again I completely understand.