(Why Cereal Does Not Count As Dinner)

1. You’re not supposed to eat it after dark. I’m almost positive it’s a law. You’ll be sitting there, hunched furtively over your kitchen table, the room moodily lit by a single bare bulb and suddenly the cops will break down the door. Milk spilling everywhere, spoon flying, and you’re totally caught red handed. “But officer! I ate it out of a mug instead of a bowl! Surely that counts for something?”

2. I am opposed to dinner that can be purchased in a box. This also includes, but is not limited to, Hamburger Helper.

3. I’m not saying dinner has to have meat in order to be acceptable (which would be difficult at best to reconcile with my vegetarianism, anyway) but seriously, dehydrated fruit with little grainy bits does not an evening meal make.

4. There’s no cooking involved, not even in the loosest sense of the word. Pouring doesn’t come close to qualifying. Dinner should require things like boiling water or baking, or at least microwaving something. And there should be ladles or really large spoons.

5. Dinner should not be soggy. Moisture is certainly acceptable in some circumstances - I am opposed neither to sauce nor indeed to all-out soup, but sogginess is just not appropriate. It’s one thing in the morning when you’ve just woken up and are too groggy to know any better, but there’s honestly no excuse if you’ve been awake for more than an hour.

6. Most damning of all, I just had a bowl of this wretched crap and I’m still hungry. I could eat more cereal, yes, but I won’t. I’m making a stand in the name of all that is holy: CEREAL IS NOT DINNER.

<arpee> The KGW satellite imagery shows no major cloud cover over Oregon. (KGW)
<arpee> ‘”It is toasty, let me tell you,” said KGW meteorologist Bruce Sussman after venturing around the Willamette Valley. ‘
<arpee> clearly this guy is a pro
<arpee> i wonder how many complex measurements he took to declare it ‘toasty’
<qat> he had to consult the Toastometer
<arpee> you know, all those scientific and meteorologic procedures
<qat> and the Toastal Doppler
<qat> it’s not as though you can simply look out some sort of “WINDOW” and see what the weather will be like

I’m in a rare mood today. I’m finishing up one freelance project, which is always great, but I’ve also got two more taking its place and plenty of other projects on the side. It feels really good to be working constantly again. I’d toyed with the idea of taking a couple extra classes this summer, and while I’m sure that would have been great too, I’m just glad that I’m doing something. I don’t really like summer vacations, in general, because my productivity goes completely down the drain when I don’t have something to focus on, and it’s frustrating.

Last summer was about as irritating and pointless as they get; unemployment insurance meant that while I was applying for a lot of things and interviewing occasionally, I managed to get away with not accomplishing much of anything until I went back to NYU last semester. I hate wasting time. It pisses me off like few other things, and I wasted quite a bit of time last summer.

This year things are going a little better. I’ve got work keeping me busy and the money doesn’t hurt anything, either. With a friend of mine starting at Apple just today, new hardware is once again floating around my mind. I’d love an iBook; they’re quite cheap now and would come in awfully handy what with my commute and whatnot. The Ti G4s are, of course, sexier still - but I’ve already got a desktop that’s powerful enough for doing real work and my secondary machine (I don’t think poor old Ingrid even counts anymore) doesn’t have to kick quite so much ass. I’m starting to save up; we’ll see how long it takes me or if I give in and get a console instead.

My Sundays tend to fall in such a way that I have about an hour or two in the middle of the afternoon with nothing particularly to do, which is perfect because that’s when Thirteen has all their non-irritating cooking shows. My current favorite is Nigel Slater on Great Food. The whole thing is much more engaging than any of the other cooking shows I generally watch, and the recipes of his that I’ve tried have all been perfect. This probably isn’t a surprise to anyone but me, but I guess he also does a column that I’m currently catching up on.

There’s something peculiar about watching shows on how to make all these fantastical elegant meals and then whipping something together with yesterday’s Mexican leftovers and whatever’s in my fridge (not much), but there it is.

I’m becoming more keenly aware of exactly how shitty my kitchen actually is; my oven is temperamental and usually doesn’t work at all, leaving me to make do with the stovetop. Don’t get me wrong, you can do plenty with a stovetop, but it’s a shame because baking is one of few things I’m actually quite good at. I’m also totally lacking in counterspace; anything requiring multiple bowls or whatever forces me to work at the kitchen table, which is endlessly irritating. I don’t have any particular desire to move but whenever I think about it, I end up picturing these vast palatial kitchens with islands and endless cabinets and drawers and ghblrugh.

Maybe even a dishwasher. I’d like a dishwasher.

Hey, it looks like my brother’s Fourth was considerably more excitement-filled than my own, although I’m not complaining about the air conditioning and cherry Icee-filled afternoon I myself enjoyed. Seriously though, the thing about living in New York - and not knowing anyone who actually has a car - is that I don’t think I have any friends with whom I might up and drive to Montreal. Which is, I suppose, a shame.

The ever-vivacious denizens of #caoine engaged in a spirited discussion of Minority Report earlier, and I’m not sure we came to any particular consensus other than that most of us need to see it again - either to soak up the goodness for a second time or to throw things at the screen, depending. I’m going to get a little spoilriffic here for a moment, if I may. Here’s the thing - I liked it, I really did, but the more I think about it, the more it begins to really irritate me. There are what seem to be some pretty serious plot holes, and they’re not even the standard paradoxes you’d expect from this whole seeing-the-future thing (although there’s plenty of that). Even stretching my generally quite flexible suspension of disbelief to its very limits does not allow me to accept that Cruise’s character is going to be able to get back into all these high security areas just by waving an eyeball around. Why on earth would he still have been cleared for access, especially after he was imprisoned? I suppose fifty years from now the Department of Precrime will be specializing not only in precognition but in hiring the world’s laziest sysadmin. I’m tempted to go see it again because I still feel it was better than a lot of films I’ve seen recently - I want to like it, honestly, it’s just that the little inconsistencies are pissing me the hell off.

Bag of Ass comments, re swallowing pills: Anyway, when I was a kid I couldn’t swallow pills either. So my dad used to put the pill in a piece of banana and I’d chew on it until it went down. Then for years thereafter every time I ate a banana it tasted like medicine. I couldn’t eat bananas again until about a year ago (I’m 22 now).

Mighty BoA, I share your sorrow. Until I attained my current mastery, I used to swallow pills in lumps of frozen yogurt, which was so tainted by the experience that I avoid it to this day. Mind you I was never a devout fan of frozen yogurt in the first place so it’s no huge loss, but there it is.

<drew> t joel why do you need a cell phone anyway <drew> is it so you can call your wife while at the grocery
<drew> YEAH I’M IN THE CANNED VEGETABLE AISLE NOW WHAT WAS IT
<drew> YEAH
<drew> YEAH OKAY
<drew> OKAY I’M LOOKING
<drew> THEY DON’T HAVE THEM
<drew> NO I LOOKED THEY’RE NOWHERE
<drew> WELL I’M STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE GREEN BEANS AND I DON’T SEE THAT KIND!
<drew> WEL–
<drew> W–
<drew> LOOK CAN I JUST GET THIS OTHER BRAND IT PROBABLY–
<drew> YES
<drew> YES I KNOW
<drew> OKAY WELL
<drew> OKAY I’LL GO TO THE OTHER PLACE (SIGH)
<drew> OKAY BYE (FOLDS UP AND PUTS IN POCKET)

Watched Blast from the Past on the dubious recommendation of a friend; my only comment was along the lines of “Hey, Venice Beach really does look like the Tony Hawk 2 level!” The New York level vaguely resembles New York, I suppose, but not that closely.

Today the heat finally broke and it’s cool enough to wear clothing, at least for the next few days. As my productivity goes completely down the drain when the temperature approaches 100, I’m doing a lot of catching up at the moment. I owe many, many, many of you email: I’m getting to it, I swear. I’ve gotten quite bogged down the past couple of weeks but I’m slowly making my way through my inbox.

Finally submitted something to one of waferbaby’s projects. Check out my desk here. I realized I never finished taking photos of NYU, either; If the rest of the weekend is cooler than the past few days have been, maybe I’ll do that. A couple people have requested Coney Island photos, too, since I live so close. I haven’t been down there since my parents came to visit last summer, but there’s no reason I couldn’t go.

I know this started happening to other weblogs months ago, but I’ve finally joined the club - certain news and gaming sites have actually started pitching me via email to post about their articles and features. It’s one thing if you read caoine anyway and you happen to have written an article relating to something I would be interested in, but these are the same form letters other webloggers have been getting and they don’t really have anything to do with my content. A whole new breed of spam, I suppose.

Watching the weather forecast last night, I was already sweaty and sticking to the sheets and cursing my finally-dead air conditioner when the cheerful bastard on channel eleven predicted today would be just as vile. I decided to take preventative measures, and acquired an abundance of ice cream and cold beverages including but not limited to things that can be mixed with Skyy.

My preparations did not end there, however - I decided that two hours total on an air conditioned train plus an additional two or three hours in an air conditioned movie theatre would be well worth the ten fucking dollars they’re charging now, and I finally went to see Attack of the Clones. Since - oh yeah - it’s also the Fourth, almost everyone else was out being patriotic and I had the better part of an entire digital theatre to myself, complete with arctic air conditioning and a gigtantic cherry Icee.

Regarding the movie, I’m going to chime in with everyone else and admit that it was definitely leaps and bounds beyond Phantom Menace, but that’s not saying much. Visually it was stunning - I haven’t seen it before so I can’t say whether the digital projection was a huge factor or not - and it wasn’t boring in the way that Phantom Menace was, but the acting was characeristically strained and the dialogue at times actually painful. I enjoyed it, but I’m curious how much of that is due to it being a Star Wars movie and the fact that my expectations were so drastically lowered by Episode I that it would have been harder not to exceed them. It’s exciting to see everything beginning to connect to A New Hope, but I wonder if I’d watched the movie as just a science fiction film in and of itself whether I would have gotten anything out of it at all. I suppose it doesn’t matter, since it is in the context of the other Star Wars episodes, but still. I’m glad I went, though, if only because I can look forward to the next one with at least a modicum of enthusiasm that I couldn’t begin to muster after Phantom Menace.

Tonight? Cold showers, cold drinks, ice cream, and possibly fireworks. I suppose it is a holiday, et cetera.

<qat^2> emma i told you to see bourne identity
<emma> qat i tried to sneak into bourne after clones
<emma> but they asked for my ticket :/
<qat^2> =(
<emma> i pretended i could not find it and then ran away
<qat^2> haha
<qat^2> really?
<emma> well
<emma> there was an escalator
<emma> so i GLIDED AWAY

Last night ended up as something of an accidentally Robert Rodriguez-themed evening - MrTails and I watched Desperado followed by From Dusk Till Dawn. The former reminded me of something - before Minority Report the other night was a trailer for the truly alarming Spy Kids 2. The film itself looks to be abysmal, but what caught my eye was a scene where good old Antonio Banderas is combing a kid’s hair in front of a mirror, telling him he looks cool now. This is what startled me - I’d definitely seen that exact scene before, but I had to think about for a while before I remembered where. It’s straight out of one of the segments in Four Rooms (also starring Antonio Banderas), which is well worth seeing if you haven’t already. Antonio is, again, standing in front of a mirror combing some kid’s unruly hair and telling him how cool he looks, while the kid in question makes known his discomfort with almost identical expressions.

A little quick Googling this morning confirmed it - both that section of Four Rooms and the new Spy Kids 2 were written by (you guessed it) Robert Rodgriguez. He does, as MrTails noted, really get around. If you’ve seen Four Rooms and want to compare, the full trailer for Spy Kids 2 with the snippet in question is right here. However, while I like Robert Rodriguez, I don’t think that alone will be enough to convince me to see Spy Kids, much less the sequel.

In other news, I think New York is seriously trying to kill me with this weather. With the heat index today it rose to a sweaty 104 F, and my air conditioner has essentially given up trying at all. I’m taking cold showers and not bothering to get dressed between; that and a constant supply of Smirnoff Ice is keeping things barely tolerable, although I seem to be living out the flimsy premise for either a porn flick or an ad for Smirnoff Ice.

I’m not in any particular condition to be conscious, much less posting, but I will say this: after finally catching up with James over drinks this afternoon, I headed to the home of the intrepid MrTails where at last I sampled the much-recommended Mike’s Hard Cranberry Lemonade, and it was damn good. I may be biased, having a fondness approaching lust for all things either cranberry or lemon; the two in conjunction are almost too much for me to bear. I might just melt into a puddle right here, in my comfortable yet economical IKEA desk chair, and not solely because of the ever-pitiful state of my air conditioning. In short: seek out this cranberry concoction, and consume it.