A Recent Scene

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Feb 182012
 

“Are you finished?” the grandmotherly proprietor of the Greek restaurant wants to know. My half-eaten shrimp gyro lays on the plate. It turns out I don’t quite like the strong taste of olives.

“Yes, thank you,” I respond politely.

“Look at this,” she motions at my plate. “Why you waste so much food?” Her accent still has a strong hint of her Mediterranean homeland despite years of living in America, which also means she’s likely still got some of that famous Mediterranean temper in her, too. Not good. Seriously, have you seen the news? Athens is literally burning right now because the Greeks are furious that they have to get their finances in order.

“I’m sorry! It was good! I just had a big breakfast.” I’m lying of course, but I’m looking for the diplomatic way out.

“She finished her food!” Grandma motions at my lovely lunch companion, who ate all of her Greek fries and the vast majority of her beef-and-lamb gyro, leaving only a few bits of pita bread on her plate. I had ordered the shrimp at the last moment, wavering between that and the traditional gyro. I really should have gone with the traditional.

“I’m sorry. I just wasn’t that hungry.” This is getting uncomfortable. I think I’m starting to squirm. The LLC looks amused. It’s been decades since a grandmother has chewed me out. I sort of forgot how helpless you are in those situations. When your parents chew you out, it’s almost natural to lash out. It’s the age-old tension between parental authority and filial rebellion. But when grandma chews you out, you just feel terrible.

“Think of all the starving people, and you waste food,” Grandma says, not letting me off the hook. I have nothing left, so I shrug my shoulders in defeat. Grandma takes the plate away and goes to the kitchen. The LLC waits till Grandma’s out of sight before she has fun with this.

Grandma comes back with the bill. She shoots me another look when she realizes that I’m not picking up the LLC’s share. I’m totally disappointing her on so many levels right now. Strangely enough, I still leave a decent tip. The LLC and I get out of there.

Time to turn lemons into lemonade. “New idea for a startup,” I say. “Grandmotherly disappointment on demand, for those who need to feel guilty. I forgot just how devastating it can be.”

You laugh now, but you won’t when it makes millions. Grandmas are fearsome things.

 Posted by jason at 11:52 am

Pithy, Pity

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Feb 082012
 

Am I too verbose? I may need to shorten my ramblings. This is a tumblr world we live in, after all, and I’m still stuck in WordPress.

 Posted by jason at 8:59 pm

Down The Hatch?

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Jan 312012
 

I’ve had this unopened bottle of Glenlivet for years. I’m serious, this thing was featured in one of the old cribs spots we did for GameSpot back in the day. My ex-roommates will no doubt chortle when they learn I still have it. I keep wondering when I will actually drink it. At this point, it’s almost a point of principle; I’ll just buy a new bottle, drink that, and keep my old friend around a bit longer. It’s not even the really old Glenlivet, either.

I do think Scotch is weird. Or, more appropriately, Scotch makes us weird.

 Posted by jason at 8:51 pm

The Historical Tidbit That’s Blowing Me Away

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Jan 262012
 

John Tyler was born in 1790, during George Washington’s first term as the first President of the United States. Tyler would later become the 10th President of the United States, from 1841-1845. He was originally elected vice president to William Henry Harrison, who, as The Simpsons song goes, died in 30 days. (Technically it was 32). After Tyler’s first wife died early in his presidency, he married a 24-year old a few months later. Tyler himself was 54. (You can imagine just how that would fly in today’s media.) Tyler would father seven children off his second wife, including Lyon Gardiner Tyler, who was born in 1853. Lyon Tyler became a noted educator and historian, but his wife died in 1921. And, like his father, he would, late in life, take a young woman as his second wife. She bore him three children, including Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., and Harrison Ruffin Tyler, both of whom are still alive today.

So, the grandsons of the 10th President of the United States, who was born in the 18th Century, before the Napoleonic Wars and when George Washington was president, are alive, today, in the 21st Century.

Crazy.

 Posted by jason at 6:10 pm

Winter Has Arrived

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Jan 152012
 

That may not look like a lot of snow, but it’s almost enough to pretty much cripple the Puget Sound region. Having lived in Vermont and Michigan, I can deal with snow. It also helps that I drive a modern Volvo with all-wheel drive and electronic stability and traction control (the Swedes know a thing or two about snow, too.)

To be fair to my fellow Puget Sounders, snow is a rarity around here, so many drivers don’t get practice and there aren’t a lot of snow plows. Then there’s the fact that this region is pretty damn rugged. Seattle rests atop seven steep hills on a vary narrow isthmus, and much of the Eastside across Lake Washington rests on foothills to the Cascade mountains. In comparison, much of Michigan is flat as hell, and what Michigan folk would call mountains Washington folk would call knolls. To compound that, since we’re right next to the Pacific, we get a very moist snow that’s harder to drive on. Combine all of that with trying to go up and down a 20-degree slope on narrow city streets and you’ve got the recipe for an instant nightmare.

Then there’s another issue. One of my professors at UW spent his undergrad years at Michigan State, and during finals week a major blizzard was about to hit Seattle. He told us not to sweat missing the final if snowfall shut down the city (it did), as he explained that he had observed two kinds of Seattle drivers. The first abandon their cars by the side of the road at the first sign of snow. The second still think they can start and stop on a dime just because they’re in an SUV. He then called us out as amateurs, and that we had no business being on snowy roads. And, honestly, he was right.

 Posted by jason at 11:35 pm

Papyrus > Digital

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Dec 142011
 

The problem with the digital age is that archiving is a bitch. A thousand years from now, we’ll still have Egyptian hieroglyphics written on ancient papyrus. And there’ll still be a dozen or so bibles that Gutenberg himself churned out. But good luck that any of our magnetic storage lasts a generation, let alone dozens of generations.

What I’m basically trying to say is that the previous iteration of this blog is lost. Lost because I really didn’t back it up, and even if I had, the pain and hassle of updating it to the latest version of database software/WordPress was more effort than it was worth. I suppose some of it still lives in the Internet’s Wayback Machine, but I imagine most of it is gone, like so much of my work. That’s a troubling thought.

 Posted by jason at 12:53 am
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