Bang and Whimper

Well, it’s shaping up to be a wonderful day. After having a delicious breakfast at Pete’s Grill [ed: all that is Good in Baltimore embodied in a greasy spoon], my good friend and I wandered around the farmers’ market, buying baguettes from the French woman and delicious dried fruit rolls. Why is it that in America one has to find a French baker to get decent bread?

We then drove downtown a bit to the wonderful Charles Theater to watch a noon showing of The Wizard of Oz. It was great fun to finally see it on the big screen, in all its Technicolor™ glory, with the children laughing and crying (and switching back and forth with alarming rapidity), and a rather cute girl with a pixie laugh sitting in the next seat… But having seen the movie countless times before, I found myself from time to time paying too close attention to the technical details of the movie. When the Wicked Witch of the West leaves Munchkinland, the smoke machine and trap door are clearly visible. The wire holding up the Scarecrow: clearly visible. The wire controlling the Lion’s tail: clearly visible. The set paintings were clearly distinguishable from the foreground in a disconcerting lack of perspective continuity. And perhaps most disturbing were the words the “brainy” Scarecrow spews upon the conference of his diploma:

The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side. Oh, joy, rapture! I’ve got a brain! How can I ever thank you enough?

Need I point out the distinct lack of brains displayed in such an utterance? Oh, but strangely enough, I now find myself amazed that such a poorly made movie could hold such magic for me as this one has since I first saw it, and love it all the more for it.

Now, I take a break to sip a cup of Irish tea and read a bit before heading out to wander through Spring Fair, Hopkins’ annual gathering of food and knick-knack vendors in an attempt to distract the locals from the dreariness of life in Baltimore. I picked up a new book two days ago: a psychological analysis and biography of Nietzsche, written by a woman to whom he once proposed marriage—Lou Salomé. I’m giddy with anticipation.

NP: Billy Bragg, The Only One

[Photo courtesy 3BP.com]

Sometimes I feel as if any turn I make will be a mistake. Sometimes I feel like running away to Monaco. Sometimes includes today.

NP: Monaco, What Do You Want From Me?

To people named Teague:

This is a (failed) test. My clever CSS idea wasn’t so clever. Quelle surprise! [ed: actually, it does work in compliant browsers]

To everyone who is not named Teague:
Ignore this update. You know, like you normally do.

NP: The Anniversary, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

I had my first BK Veggie™ from Burger King tonight. I ate in the dark (in my car), so I can’t speak authoritatively about the constitution of the veggie patty, but if I were to venture a guess, I’d bet that mushrooms and olives are about the only visually identifiable ingredients. In that respect, as well as in flavor, it closely resembles the Subway Veggie Max™ sandwich. Subway, however, asks you the customer how you would like the sandwich to be prepared. At Burger King, the default prep mode for the BK Veggie™ involves a rather large glob of mayonnaise to glue the top bun to the onions and tomatoes resting ever-so-peacefully atop the veggie patty. Who puts mayonnaise on a veggie burger? Doesn’t that defeat half the purpose of eating a veggie burger? And isn’t mayonnaise the most disgusting product that’s been passed off on the public as food, anyway? Seriously. One might as well just chew on bacon fat. They’re practically indistinguishable, except that bacon fat tastes better…

All that aside, I’d like to thank Burger King—not for trying to reduce their environmental footprint of destruction, not for caring about animal welfare (or human welfare! the Whopper is second only to the Big Mac for the World’s Worst Food Crime award)—but for acknowledging my existence and the existence of the millions of others like me who don’t eat meat. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a movie or TV show with an openly vegetarian character. I’m sure there have been some, but none comes to mind. SO I offer the very first JoAT.com Trivia Contest. The first person to email me with (verifiable) instances of both an American-made TV show and Hollywood movie in which a principal character was vegetarian will have a full day on JoAT.com devoted to their greatness. I’ll post praises, pictures, requests for money, etc. Think about it. And send your answers to Michael@jokeofalltrades.com. Good luck.

I’m feeling generous, so before I go to bed I will reveal to you the best source for old, used, rare and out-of-print books to be found on the ‘net: The Advanced Book Exchange. What a great service. I’ve ordered all sorts of books from around the world through the ABE; anytime I have found a book I wanted elsewhere (e.g., eBay, Amazon auctions), I’ve found it cheaper through ABE. You’re welcome. Good night.

NP: Alkaline Trio, Queen of Pain

Oh, so that’s what justifiable homicide means!

The best band in the world today is: the Alkaline Trio. They’ve (temporarily?) disabled .mp3 downloads, but you can get a few songs at their label’s page (along with songs from Operation Ivy, Screaching Weasel, the Mr. T Experience, and a ton of other great bands). Lookout! Records kicks all kinds of heine.

NP: Alkaline Trio, Hell Yes

I have added a login form to each newly designed page on the site below the [MENU] sidebox. I will be removing links to the separate email page as the page has become unnecessary and has always been quite an eyesore. I will keep the page up for a while still, in case you have it bookmarked, but it will be deleted in about a month. Please update bookmarks to the main page.

NP: VAST, I Don’t Have Anything

A few weeks ago, my brother Matthew published an article in the Boulder Daily Camera entitled Invisible In Boulder County that explores some issues faced by illegal Mexican immigrants working in Boulder. I highly recommend reading it, and not just because Matt’s my brother. It’s quite an interesting article.

Burger King is marketing a Veggie Burger!!! [editors note: I’d link to the BK site, but it’s SLOW, full of Flash crap with no text-based navigation, and has no information about their food products. What’s the point? HEY, BK, HIRE NEW WEB DESIGNERS. Incidently, I’m looking for a job.] Whodathunk? I’m betting they remove it from the menu within a month—any takers?

I had a good talk with a great friend today as we sweltered in the 90 degree heat. Thank you, Jacques.

NP: Candyflip, Wonderland

I’m back from Seattle, still alive. What a great town. At least, the small part of it that I saw in my drunken stupor was great…

I sat across from John Astin (Gomez Addams from TV’s The Addams Family) on the flight from Baltimore to Chicago. Everyone left him alone—except for the flight crew, who took every opportunity to sit next to him and chat him to death and show him pictures of their kids and generally just be star-frigging idiots. It was embarrassing to watch.

NP: The Anniversary, All Things Ordinary

WELCOME AGAIN TO JoAT v2.1!!!

Today is Q & A day at JoAT

Why, you might ask, a Q & A day? Well, that’s an excellent first entry:

Q. Why a Q & A day at JoAT?
A. Why not? Besides, I’ve a ton of time on my hands, and I need to remind myself to fix a few things. Additionally, it gives the (albeit, incredulous) illusion that I actually get visitors to the site, who then ask questions about it. It’s a big lie, I know (and you do, too), but it somehow feels more respectable to me to have these conversations with myself on a webpage rather than, say, aloud in the coffee shop with a really cute girl sitting at the next computer over.

Q. Your site sucks. Big time.
A. That’s not a question. NEXT.

Q. Your site sucks. Big time. Did you know that?
A. You clever boy. Yes, I did know that. But I’m working on it. Give me some time. And some charity. I’m an economist, not a graphic artist or programming guru.

Q. No really—it sucks. I appreciate the effort, but you totally half-assed the redesign. I mean, most of the pages still have that crappy old design, so even though the main page looks marginally better, in addition to still having sucky pages you now lack internal consistency of design.
A. Again, NOT A QUESTION. NEXT.

Q. Right. Re: that stuff above: Why is that?
A. All I can say is: I’m working on it. Actually converting display formats shouldn’t take too long (I’m doing everything with templates, surprise!) but at the same time I’m trying to arrange the content in a meaningful fashion. I’m quickly realizing that I don’t have enough to say to justify one page, much less all the crap I put up last year, so the overall organization is causing me a bit of mental anguish. But I’m working on it.

Q. You know your new page looks horrible in [browser version x.y], right?
A. Sort of. It looks okay in MSIE 5.5+ and Netscape 6.x, which are the only browsers I have at home to check my designs. Even these new browsers fall far short of supporting HTML/CSS standards, but the old browsers were/are absolutely dismal. This means that (1) their display behavior is unpredictable without a lot of research into their specific display bugs, (2) to make things look pretty in old browsers, I would have to use a lot of bad HTML/CSS workarounds the prevalence of which inhibit growth and development of good code and practices among other designers and browser developers, and (3) would suck up a lot more of my resources than I am presently prepared to devote to this project. Netscape 4.x sux. MSIE 4.x sux. They don’t support standards that any self-respecting browser should. I’m working on designing different layouts for different browsers, but in the meantime: put your old browsers out of their misery. If you have any choice in which browser you use, upgrade to something with better standards support.

Q. Whatever. You know, you could make yourself useful and upload some .mp3s or Blümchen videos or something. Oh, this needs to be a question—please?
A. No. I’m an up-right, law abiding citizen, and that would be Wrong. Besides, I’m on a dial-up connection and I don’t have any spare webspace. Feel free to send donations to rectify either of those problems…

WELCOME TO JOKEOFALLTRADES (JoAT) v2.1!!

I’ve finally done it. I’ve gotten rid of that horrid page I designed a year ago and have replaced it with something slightly less horrid. I hope you like it. At least, I hope you dislike it less than the last version. Over the next few days, I’ll convert the rest of the site to conform to the new format, with a few additional changes in places to keep things lively. Oh, I do hope you like it!

JoAT v2.1 offers the following advantages over its predecessor:

• It looks prettier
• It’s more customizable
• It’s easier to maintain
• It makes me happier

I don’t know if you care about any of that, but I certainly do. And since I’m probably the only person who reads this page, I’m the one I care about.

If you absolutely must use the old page, I offer you a last look here. However, JoAT v1.0 is no longer supported, so use at your own risk. Caveat Emptor.