Anger Burger

Watch out, this is mostly about how I don’t like being a part of society.  So, wait, no.  Everything is normal.  Carry on

Click here to keep reading this tripe

You know, you try and catch a bus to the Hollywood farmer’s market, but there’s some silly contest happening and you end up walking the entire 3 miles in flipflops.   However!  Aside from the blisters and sunburned nose, there was this:

I can’t imagine what I want less, to meet David Hasselhoff or to eat one of Pink’s terminally mediocre hotdogs.

Quickly, and just to get it out of my system: last year my dad bought me a Dell Studio 14z laptop, a laptop marketed as a “student” model due to budget and lack of an optical drive¹.  Part of the deal with the laptop was that they’d throw in an upgrade to Windows 7 for free when it came out. Let me rephrase that, because that makes it sound too generous on their part.  What is actually the case is that the purchase for the laptop included the Windows 7 OS, but since it was not released yet, existed as a voucher.  Very important difference considering that I was waiting to get a new laptop in an effort to avoid using Vista.

Very long story short: I have been trying for two straight months to get that upgrade, and Dell just won’t send it.  It’s apparently a thing (I refuse to wade through message boards, but my dad did, bless him) where you log in, register your computer and then it’ll never let you back online to order your upgrade.  And you can’t re-register because, well, someone² has already registered that laptop.  I’ve exchanged probably a dozen emails now with Dell trying to get it sorted out, and each of them (even living people!) have answered: just log on to your account… At which point I start screaming I CANNOT LOG INTO THE FUCKING ACCOUNT, THAT IS THE ENTIRE POINT.

Then, this last Monday, I received a phone call at 8am from an unknown number, so I ignored it.  I get a lot of mistake calls, I think because I have a Los Angeles phone number.  15 seconds later the phone rang again, same number, and I briefly thought: perhaps I should answer it.  And then I remembered, no, if someone wants to talk to me they can leave a message like a regular human being.  Also, I was in the middle of dropping my in-laws off at the airport.  I get home and find an email telling me that Dell has made the outrageous effort of trying to call me, but since I didn’t answer our issue is now over.

Oh, fuck it.

All of this is now exacerbated this morning by an additional email warning me that I have until January 31st to get my Windows 7 upgrade and then the free offer will expire.

So, this boring lame post is all me just venting:

Dell, I like this laptop a lot.  It was a good purchase, for the price.  But this thing where you have to complete a mystical quest in order to get a piece of software that was promised?  Insulting.  And I am reporting you to the Attorney General for fraud.

Love,
Sunday

¹ This is supposed to be marketed as portability (which is true, it’s pretty light) but in reality just keeps the costs down.  Which is fine by me.
² You.

***UPDATE  1.27.10***
Well!  I don’t know if it is coincidence (probably), the Attorney General (probably not) or this blog (definitely not), but I received another phone call from Dell at a more reasonable hour, and had a long talk with a gentleman who deleted my previous registration account and sat with me through another registration.  It was successful, and the account shows the software is set to ship on February 10th.  The phone call itself was a positive experience with only a little of that call-center crap (you know: hard to hear, obviously scripted lines).  It doesn’t make up for the stupid experience up until then (anyone with a regular 9-5 job would have never been able to write the emails and make the phone calls I did), but I should technically amend this entire post to say: my problem been, I believe, resolved.  Sort of.  20% resolved.  The other 80% is waiting for the software to actually arrive.

Something awful happened to one of the writers I respect most in the world, Peter Watts, and it has led to a great deal of sad discussion around my household this morning.  First, the facts.

Peter Watts, a Canadian citizen, was crossing the border into the US returning to Canada from the US (from what I can gather he was helping a friend move), when for whatever reason he was punched in the face, pepper sprayed, kicked, left in a cell and then charged with felony assault on a federal officer.  If Watts did anything to provoke this attack, it wasn’t physical, and the assault charge is typical for when border guards want to hold someone overnight in a cell and make the rest of their border-crossing lives hard — in other words, it was petty.  There is a high likelihood that the spurious assault charge will be dismissed without Watts even having to be present, but there will unquestionably be complications.

So.  Watts is a writer, which means that he can’t afford the kind of legal defense that will come of this (another aspect of the guards’ pettiness that was likely intentional).  He was also physically attacked, remember, and he’ll get no recompense for this.

I think we can all imagine this scenario – it’s the kind of thing I think about each time I go through Security Theater at the airport.  A guard takes a special dislike to you.  You say something, maybe smart-assed, maybe just rational – things escalate.   And suddenly, this guard, this pent-up imbecile who has entirely bought into the bullshit his superiors have fed him about how important and powerful he is, he punches you in the face.  He physically attacks you.  You automatically defend yourself, an animal response, you lash back while moving away, call out for help.  Except you’re surrounded by more of these douchebags, and all they can think is fight! fight! And they’ve trained and trained for this and they have no idea what’s happening, but the pepperspray is out and you don’t have a chance.

Anyway, in the end, Watts has a felony charge against him.

So I tell Mike about this and he says, “Sounds like something that would happen to me,” and I realize that is why I feel so intensely upset over this.  It does sound like something that would happen to him.  Or me.  Or my dad.  Or anyone who is intelligent enough to question what people in arbitrary positions of authority do.

The discussion inevitably led into what we could do to help.  The problem for us is that we are broke, the poorest we’ve been in our adult lives.  Living without a savings for the first time since we started making money as teenagers.   Instead, all I can offer¹ Watts is my earnest attempt to get someone else to help him, so here I am: will you help him?

If you go to his website and donate to the PayPal account called “The Niblet Memorial Kibble Fund” (which was originally for Watts’ predilection for taking in stray cats) and send an email to donate (at) rifters (dot) com specifying that it is for his legal defense, it will get to him..  You can also help by supporting his normal route of income, his books.  I recommend Blindsight very highly.

¹ Well, I can offer a soft bosom to weep upon, but I don’t think his ladyfriend would like that. Or my gentleman friend.

Sometimes the stars align and the universe conspires to drop a bombshell in your lap — hopefully not literally — and you’re left wondering what just happened to you.  Take for example that I had never before heard of Suzie Templeton’s interpretation¹ of Peter and the Wolf, which she made into a 30-minute stop motion animation.  And which then blew my fucking mind.

Replace the cat with an Atmo and you have my dad.

The film is, in brief, a revelation.  Having come from a generation that solely associated Peter and the Wolf with Disney’s roly-poly version, I found myself overwhelmed with the complexities and layers of morality that surround the tale.

Don’t get me wrong – Templeton’s Peter and the Wolf is rich with nuance and warmth.  She eliminated dialogue in favor or saturating every character with spirit and grace, where Peter’s minor shoulder hunches convey an instantly identifiable mix of sullen wistfulness and where Grandpa’s every endearing wobble reveals his gruff mannerisms as not cruel, but protective.

But there’s an adult level to the story that is so often missing in contemporary retellings (see: aforementioned Disney version), an unwelcome invitation for reality and all its ugliness to come in.  Templeton handles the reminder with real skill: Peter and the Wolf is about the relationship between predators and their prey, and while much of the film is charming, the meat of the story is one of menace and power.  Perhaps the most surprising is Templeton’s final gesture at finding our own boundaries for hate, an unexpectedly moving twist.

Anyway!  Get on it, for reals!  It might not be appropriate for very young children, but the story is true to the original and I’d hate to see someone avoid it just because they didn’t want to explain to their kid that indeed, wolves eat other animals to stay alive.  If you have a Netflix account, the film is currently available to stream online (or Xbox, or Playstation3, or whatever else they’ve invented since I started writing this post).

¹ Did I mention it won an Oscar? It won a 2008 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

I hate writing this word because I feel like I should have the skills to communicate this feeling with actual words, but I can’t, so: sigh.  Once again, my web hosting service is totally bjorked and as near as I can tell, they plan on continuing with this “service” model.  It’s pretty discouraging, and I don’t have the faintest idea of how to migrate services (and I don’t want to bug my WebNerd, Dan, because I bug him non-stop already), so instead I’ll just mope around my own website.  Dramatic!

Here is an unrelated series of asides:

• Television, having had a few years of greatness there (see: Battlestar Galactica, House, Bones, The IT Crowd, etc.) has taken a turn for the ‘tarded.  V, for which I had high hopes, feels like a high school class on scriptwriting.  FlashForward, for which I had high hopes, is mysteriously and deadeningly boring.  It has John Cho!  And a big budget!  And science mystery!  And yet, each time I watch it I black out for 45 minutes, after which I have the memory of an event that hasn’t happened yet set 9 months in the future, where I’m watching a different TV show.

• But!  My utterly embarrassing penchant for Legend of the Seeker (which I inevitably call Legend of the Legend for some reason) has returned with season 2, and with Charisma Carpenter guest starring!  Ms. Carpenter is possibly better recognized as Cordelia from Buffy and Angel, as well as having a reoccurring role on the epically and tragically mistreated Veronica Mars.  I can’t in good conscious actually recommend that you watch Legend of the Legend Seeker, but it appeals greatly to the 13 year-old Sunday who still misses Covington Cross, an early 90′s dramedy TV show about a family in the Middle Ages that no one ever watched but me.  True!

• Furthermore, the new Stargate Universe has me totally hooked.  It’s not that it’s good, but it certainly isn’t bad, and I feel like it has the potential to get its legs under itself.  And I miss BSG and Farscape so badly that I’m willing to pretend, at a distance, and mostly drunkenly, that I’ve found a new show I will love.

• Okay, so, feminine napkins¹.  Here’s the thing that I will never in my lifetime understand: why do they change their product every 6 months?  It’s fucking true.  And if they don’t change the actual product itself, they change the packaging so that you can no longer quickly identify what you want.  THIS IS FUCKING TRUE.  Here’s an example: I’ve used Kotex brand pads for years now, and before that I wore Always but had to stop when Always switched to inferior materials.  A few years back Kotex had what I thought was actually a great idea: they were going to have a different kind of flower (gag) on each package so that you could quickly grab your preferred product.  Say you want regular pads, unscented.  Well, they had an orchid on the package.  Easy!  Overnight pads had a daisy on the package.  Easy!  And then, one day, all the packages had orchids on them.  Wait, what?  And then more recently, none of the packages have orchids on them, but all of them have small stylized daisies on them.  What kind of foul trickery is this?  Either way, I have to carefully read the package every time so I don’t end up buying some scented monstrosity that makes your ladyparts smell like damp laundry.  I can think of no other products that are so determined to confuse and anger their customer base.

• My totally bullshit diet continues and is working.  I feel better after having purely just cut back on sugar and outrageous fat intake (i.e., no more beer steins of eggnog).  However, it’s starting to get cold here in L.A., and all I can think about is junk food from Trader Joe’s, like their Brandy Beans, which are basically just cocoa butter and sugar.  And this brings up my whole weird psychology with “dieting” which is that I don’t believe in it.  I mean, I believe in eating healthier for a specific goal, i.e. feeling better, lowering cholesterol, etc.  And my eating healthier has been done specifically with feeling physically better, part of which, I must admit, was how my pants were getting too tight.  And how to Brandy Beans fit into that scenario?  Not well, I assure you.  I think I’m closing in on convincing myself that 1 or maybe 2 a day is just fine.

¹ How great is this term, anyway?

**Note: all the TV shows mentioned (with the exception of Covington Cross, RIP) can be seen for free at Hulu.com. I don’t have broadcast television, I just watch stuff on the internet.

I’ve been writing exactly 100% less than I expected to, and for that I apologize.  A small army of reasons is at my call, but I’ll spare you.

Should you be bored — and I would be if I were you — I recommend you head over to Project Waldo, which I’m adding to my link list.  It’s a new site started by Nathaniel Simpson, who is taking a sabbatical from doing game concept art in order to teach himself how to make comics.  The caveat?  His comic art is the most fucking amazing, complicated, beautiful art I’ve seen in recent years.  I’m a devoted fan of Moebius and Enki Bilal and Simpson is like some fucked up beautiful linework baby of the two.  I’m also addicted to watching other artists’ process, and Simpson is logging his in spades.  It’s slow going, but add it to your feed and enjoy your hard work.

“I don’t mean to sound funny, but I feel like this is the future.  I mean it.  I feel like in 2020 everyone is going to be smoking electronic cigarettes.”

– Mike

One of the decisions that we¹ made for the trip was Mike’s transition to an electronic cigarette.  The long story is that he’s spent the last 30 days researching and deciding on whether they were something he would use, how safe they were and what brand he’d purchase.  Between him and his friend Sean (who also did a hefty share of research and experimentation), I feel they’ve come to some excellent and educational conclusions.  I’ll go ahead and get to the end of the story now: Mike couldn’t be happier with his purchase, and hasn’t smoked a old-style cigarette since he got his e-cigarette.

Since we both wanted to share with people the things he’s learned, here’s a breakdown of the whole shebang.

1)  E-cigarettes are way, way safer than old cigarettes.

In 2008 the pharmaceutical industry (and surprisingly to a lesser extent the tobacco industry) started to get pretty worried about the mass-production of the first viable electronic cigarettes and wasted no time calling up their buddies over at the FDA who promptly issued a string of “studies” and warnings about e-cigarettes, most of which still persist in the form of rumor.  Unsurprisingly, FDA has withheld the practical interpretations of their studies.  For example, they grimly point out that e-cigarettes contain nitrosamines, a known carcinogen.  Well, guess what?  It is the same amount found in Nicorette gum, and approximately 1000% less than is found in tobacco smoke.  Another big warning is the dread diethylene glycol, or anti-freeze.  However, your toothpaste probably has diethylene glycol in it, let alone the question of how much diethylene glycol is in an old cigarette (answer = a lot).  Did you know there’s a maximum safety standard for diethylene glycol’s use as a food additive?  It’s not much (.2%) but it’s some.  And to be sure: we’re not claiming e-cigarettes are totally safe, only that they are incalculably safer than old cigarettes.  The key is to question who is opposed to the use of e-cigs, and then things start to become clear: how can Big Pharma wean you off cigarettes 8 times (the average number of serious tries it takes a person to quit) with their expensive Chantix if you’re happily puffing away?  (EDIT: Additional comment at bottom)

This was right around the time we realized there was not going to be a ‘cool’ smoking shot.  It’s pretty much all pen fellatio.

2) E-cigarettes are cheaper than old cigarettes.

This one is easily demonstrable: a set-up kit from a generic importer will run you about $40 – that’s for the base atomizer and a recharging pack, along with a few nicotine refill cartridges.  The cartridges, on the other hand, run about 40¢ each – and each one is equivalent to 1/2 a pack of cigarettes.  That’s 80¢ for a pack of cigarettes. Some quick math shows that the average smoker will have the e-cigarette paying for itself in about a month, and after will be saving about $1500 a year.  Dang, yo!  Of course, there are accessories (if you get the mini e-cigs, which are closer in size to an old cigarette, you’ll most definitely want a portable charger to take with you every day) and they are an electronic device that can break.  However, replacement parts for the atomizer and the rechargeable batteries are still about the cost of a single pack of old cigarettes.  Lastly, you can save even more by refilling the nicotine cartridges yourself with “E-Juice” (blech, those guys need some copywriters).

3) The e-cigarette is often marketed as a way to quit smoking, but you might find you smoke less with the e-cigarette even if you don’t intend to.

Everyone knows there’s a lot of psychology to smoking.  There are the physical motions, the stepping outside, the social aspect.  The strange thing that Mike noted is that once he no longer needed to go outside, his smoking habits immediately rearranged themselves.  Now he finds he smokes much less, but more frequently.  One or two puffs is enough to sate him for about an hour, whereas before he’d finish an entire old cigarette, and why not — you’re already outside, you’re smoking, you finish your smoke.  If you are trying to quit, early studies are showing incredible results, something like 80% success rates versus the 5% standard of nicotine gum.

4) There is no danger to others.

The second-hand smoke factor for e-cigarettes is almost nill.  The nicotine is carried in water vapor that rarely gets past the smoker’s own mouth, something I can attest to directly.  Even more, many people on the forums note that “courtesy” e-smoking makes even less vapor – they discretely draw in, hold their breath and exhale nothing at all.

This was with the vapor totally uninhaled, just immediately expressed into the air.  For science.

5) There is no flavor/odor unless you want there to be.

The manufacturers for the e-cigarettes boast just under 50 flavors (!) for their refills, a fact that those against the e-cigarette have latched onto as a factor in the potential appeal to children.  I admit that the e-cigarette will be more appealing to young people for a multitude of reasons — not the least of which is that a lack of odor means no detection from teachers and parents — and that perhaps making peanut-butter flavor isn’t entirely moral (or tasty?).  But kids will be kids, and if they’re sneaking smokes I for one would much, much rather they were sneaking e-cigs.  As a note about the flavors, Mike didn’t realize he ordered “Marlboro” flavor until afterward, he believed he had ordered “tobacco.”   For the first time the other day I smelled it when some of the vapor wafted under my nose as we sat outside together and it smelled good, like a fresh cigarette pack smells (I’m not a smoker myself).  I’d be interested to know if the different “brands” of flavor (Camel, Marlboro, Turkish, etc.) do actually taste different.  As a more personal and gross note, Mike and I made out like teenagers the other day in large part for me because his mouth tasted spring clean.  Sean already reports a having better sense of smell.

The 510 manual e-cigarette compared to his obsolete bretheren.

6) The e-cigarettes may nor may not be allowed indoors and on airplanes.

This one is constantly changing.  Most airlines, it appears, do not directly forbid the smoking of e-cigarettes on planes, though there are lots of anecdotal reports that individual flights have asked users to stop.  The reason for stopping people is entirely one of confusion; there is vapor, it is an electronic device, what the hell is it?  Some e-cig fans encourage open, vocal use by referring to them as “nicotine inhalers” and covering the LED light as they smoke.  Still, Mike and I wonder why one wouldn’t just smoke in the plane’s restroom, as it eliminates the weirdness factor altogether.  I think of it almost like an insulin shot – you can do it in the open, but it seems easier for everyone if you can find a more discrete way.  A similar condition is indoors, in a restaurant or a store.  Because the technology is so new, it seems you are inviting confrontation.  On the other hand, people have to get educated sometime, right?

LED end.  Sort of silly, sort of Logan’s Run.  And they sell “crystal” versions!  TOTALLY Logan’s Run!

Lastly, the devices themselves.  There are a lot to choose from, and a to keep a long story short less long, Mike chose the 510.  Do your own research on size and automatic vs. manual, and feel free to ask us questions here.  The biggest tip we can give is to order from a place called Heaven Gifts.  They are well-rated by other users, and Mike and Sean had excellent service with them.  They provide everything you could ever need for your e-cigs, including the refill fluid should you choose to save even more money (we’ve yet to experiment with this, it might be a pain in the ass).  Also note that Heaven Gifts will be closed for 8 days starting October 1st, and until then are offering double reward points on orders.  Mike, Sean and myself are not associated with Heaven Gifts at all, just happy customers.

So those are the basic facts as regurgitated by us.  You are, as always, encouraged to do your own research.  Pretty much all you’d ever want to know can be read over at the electronic cigarette forums and also gives an idea of how big this thing has gotten already.

¹By which I mean Mike made all by himself.

EDIT: Leesa pointed out something very poignant, which is that states get about 80% of the price of a pack of cigarettes you purchase in the form of taxes and e-cigarettes are totally untaxed.  It is very likely that states are going to either ban or tax the e-cigarettes as they gain popularity, and know that if they ban them?  They’ll claim it is for health reasons.  Sure.  And not that $5 you used to make off every single pack of old cigarettes sold.

I have to precede this whole thing with a side note: I was just reading an article about Henry Nicholas, the CEO of Broadcom (it was interesting!  he had sex caverns under his mansion!) and it mentioned that Nicholas was a rare “Mastermind” in the Myers-Briggs Jungian personality profile.  Since I had a little time to kill this morning (I was waiting for moneybags to wake up and write me a check) I took the test online myself.  AND GUESS WHO ELSE IS A MASTERMIND? That’s right, yours truly, which proves that there’s something wrong with the test.

But now the business.  For the next 5 weeks, things are going to be a little off-kilter here at Anger Burger.  A little upside down.  A little mirror-world.  A little… kiwi?

We’re going to New Zealand!

Oh, how cute is 25 year-old me?  Also: nice grease-face, kid. (2004)

We’re going to be visiting (and house-sitting) for an old friend of mine¹ in a town outside of Wellington. In 2004-2005 I spent some time in NZ by myself and must have gotten a chunk of tree-fern stuck in my heart or something, because it has been on my mind ever since.

Much of my time was spent huddled over a pile of fish and chips such as this one. (2004)

Unsurprisingly, its the food that I keep thinking about.  For a long time I suspected I was secretly English (I say Asian in a past life because, well, look at my features, but I could conceivably be secretly English in this life), at least until I went to New Zealand.  And discovered the holy grail of all foods:

It’s like a nation of food specifically designed for people staying in hostels. (2004)

Behold, the meatpie.  Delightfully tasty, eminently portable meatpies.  The government even has a minimum meat-content standard for them to ensure you get the meat you are paying for. Can you imagine?  If the government made taco trucks in Los Angeles comply to a minimum meat standard?  Hilarity!

And the countryside!  Somehow New Zealand has a spectrum of green that we don’t even have in America.

All of this is to say: I’m delighted and awed that I get to go back, and Anger Burger is going to serve as more of a travel blog than a food repository for the next month.  Well, I think we all know it’ll mostly be about food anyway, but you get my drift.  Starting tomorrow, sit back and enjoy the hijinks.  You don’t have to sit back, though.  I mean, you can stand if you want.  Or lie down.  Whatever’s comfortable for you.

¹ She’s not old, our friendship is.

It’s my birthday.  I drew a picture:

Click on photo to link to Flickr image, which will be larger and actually legible.  I’m too lazy to make a pop-out right now.  Viva la birthdays!