Happy Halloween

I hope everyone has a great time tonight, whether you're out trick-or-treatin' or partying (or both)! Though I'm not a fan of animals in clothing, here is the greatest costume you could buy for your dog:



'nuff said. Happy Halloween.

An open letter to Visa

Dear Visa,

Yesterday I was watching Monday Night Football, which did you see, by the way? That pass by Brett Favre in overtime was amazing, who says he's too old to still be playing? But I digress...

During the commercials, I noticed one of your new ads in your current campaign (which I've come to dub the "Use Visa" campaign, clever, eh?). This one features football fans buying Saints merchandise.

Overall, my feelings on this entire campaign are, to put it succinctly, that it blows, since the commercials do everything in their power to imply that if I pay with cash, I'm doing a dis-service to the people waiting behind me in line AND the cashier (God forbid they do math).

Until now, I've let these commercials slide without comment (at least, not public comment, though I can frequently be heard saying, and I quote, "These commercials blow" to anyone within earshot while they are airing), but this latest commercial took the cake.

Why was I offended? Not because you chose to make the one person paying with cash as "different" (pink shirt, tied sweater, buying tennis merchandise), but because of the look on the cashier's face. Pure contempt.

Seriously, if I ever went to a store to purchase an item and the cashier gave me that kind of look, I would leave the item and walk out. Fucking ridiculous.

The thing is, I have one of your cards, Visa, and though I use it occasionally, I tend to pay with cash more often than not, so it's not as though I'm anti-credit card, but I find these ads of yours insulting.

You make the use of cash out to be worthy of contempt and your commercials themselves are a thinly disguised ploy to further enable the use of credit cards as a default currency so that you can continue to rake in billions of dollars in interest.

Current statistics imply that overall, Americans have close to $880 billion in credit debt (that counts both principal and interest) and the number continues to grow, so I hope you're happy. Which, let's face it, you probably are.

So fuck you Visa, it's you and your ads I find contemptuous.

Jim

The Last Supper

Ever wanted to see Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" up close? Well here is your chance as you can now view it at a super zoomy 16 BILLION PIXELS. Enjoy!

#60 - Visit Adi in England

First picture on the camera, taken outside the Piccadilly Circus in London:



(l to r) (mystery man) Adi, myself and Tamsin.

On my way to Greece, I was flying with British Airways which meant a stopover (a NINE hour stopover) at London Heathrow. Since I had that much time, I told Adi about it and he & Tamsin got tickets and made the two hour train ride down from Leeds to meet me in London.

We had a fun time just wandering around London town, catching up, eating Thai food and having drinks at a little coffee bar called Sacred. We also hit up Hamley's, one of the world's best toy stores where I ended up buying a few things (more on that later).

Anyway, the day really flew by and I couldn't think of any better way to have spent my time, I'm glad Adi & Tamsin made the trip down and I hope to one day visit Leeds properly. Until then, this will have been just fine!

Predalien

No, no, you see, it's an ALIEN that bursts forth from a PREDATOR, thus it's a PREDALIEN.

*sigh*



From the forthcoming (because NO ONE demanded it) AvP2.

Does that mean the aliens who burst forth from the humans in all the movies were HUMALIENS?

Sad.

Admiral Akbar

I'm back from my trip and slowly getting caught up. I'll post some pictures and more soon, for now, back to my (ir)regularly scheduled blogging, starting with this cool piece of knit awesomeness - Admiral Akbar - courtesy of Jann Jones and her mad skillz:

Greece Is Sweaty (and other observations...)

I'm sitting in a brand-new, smoke-filled internet cafe that has opened just a couple blocks away from the apartment here in Greece. It's reasonably cheap to use the internet, with a half hour clocking in at about 1 Euro (about $1.40).

It's about 6:30pm on Friday night and I've got a bit of time to kill before heading out to dinner with some friends, so I popped in to check e-mail, which went quite quickly, so I figured I'd post.

I don't have access to any transfer cables that I can get any pictures off my camera, so this post will be image-free, instead I'm just going to share my observations about Greece.

Before I begin, let me start with the title of this post: HOLY SHIT is it warm here! It's been in the mid/high-70's to low 80's the entire time I've been here. This is unusual weather for Greece (thanks Global Warming :), by this point the temperatures should have been in the low/mid-60's.

Considering that I (along with most of the populace) walk almost everywhere, this means that roughly everyone here spends a good amount of their time being sweaty. Rock.

Random quick observations:

• All bus stops have names (my favorite so far: "Laimos" or "The Neck")
  
• The Metro system built for the Olympics is still great, and ticket prices have only gone up $.10 Euro since I was here a year and a half ago, making the cost $.80 Euro ($1.15) per ride, no matter the distance
  
• It is dry and dusty everywhere
  
• Everyone smokes. I swear I saw a woman with a cigarette in her belly button so her kid could get started early.
  
• 90% of women between the ages of 14 and 60 dye their hair. Most popular colors? Red and blonde
  
• There are roughly 15 different TV channels total, all available free (with antenna or rabbit ears).
  
  
  
  • The music channel here (MAD) is like MTV used to be, almost always showing videos - a good mix of English and Greek videos.
    
  • One channel opens up at night and advertises a phone chat line. The only difference is that while they're flashing the number at the bottom, the woman strips naked.
    
  • All channels repeat. You could be watching ANT1 (the oldest channel here) and it could be on channel four, but also on seventeen, twenty six and forty.
    
  • Foreign informercials with subtitles? Entertaining as hell.
    
  
  
• All garbage is communal. There is a dumpster on every corner and that is where you take your trash.
  
• Copyright laws? Please. More on that some other time...
  
• You can buy lotto tickets from people on the street whose sole job is to sell tickets.
  
• Loukoumades: Like donuts, but awesomer
  
• If you live in Athens and own your place, you are living in a condominium, there just isn't room for houses - it's all apartment or condo buildings.
  
• Cars don't give a shit about pedestrians, but everyone jaywalks too. Crossing the street is a real life or death game of Frogger.
  

Anyway, my time is up, more when I can...

Final trip

I'm taking off today for my final trip of the year, though it's probably the one I've most been looking forward to - Greece! I'm headed off for almost three weeks, which will count as a real honest-to-God vacation. It's also pretty much the last trip I'm taking for six months (I think I have to go to SF in March), which is nice, a long stretch of being home will be great - I want to settle work stuff down, finally buy a place (Housing Market, we'll chat soon) and just get back in to a good groove.

This go, since I have the extra time, I want to actually do some touristy stuff outside of Athens, like check out the Meteora, ancient Olympia, Delphi, etc. Some are on the 101 list and a lot are not, but hopefully I'll get to see a lot of really cool places. Many a picture will be taken.

I'm also taking my sketchpad with me for the first time in a while, hopefully something decent will come of it, if so, I'll make sure to share.

I'll likely still have access to the Internet a couple times a week, so I might get a chance to post but I wouldn't count on it.

So, until I return, be good!

Michel Gondry commercial

No secret that I'm a Michel Gondry fan, he just directed a new commercial for... well, I won't say, can you guess the product? Enjoy! (Runtime: 1 minute, work safe)

Work Music

I've had a few people ask me recently what music I listen to while working. I pretty much just put iTunes on shuffle and whatever comes up. Sometimes if I'm doing a lot of writing, I'll put on a soundtrack specifically, otherwise I just listen to a mix. Here's a list of what I've listened to since this morning (band, then song).

CCR - Who'll Stop The Rain
Dirty Three - Ever Since
The Orb - Towers of Dub (Ambient Mix)
Death Cab For Cutie - Soul Meets Body
LCD Soundsystem - Disco Infiltrator
MRE - The Deep Edge
Norah Jones - Wake Me Up
Q-Tip - Breathe and Stop
Brian Eno - Don't Look Back
Fatboy Slim - The Rockafeller Skank
The Flaming Lips - The Spiderbit Song
The Wallflowers - Josephine
Elbow - Ribcage
Bryan Adams - Cuts Like a Knife
Atlantic Ocean - Cycles of Life
Orbital - Time Becomes
Daft Punk - Harder Better Faster Stronger
The Roots - You Ain't Fly
Art Thugs - Art Thugs Part 2
Smoosh - Massive Cure
The Chemical Brothers - Hey Boy Hey Girl
Amon Tobin - Yasawas
The Tears - Refugees
Ceasfire - Trickshot
Craig David - Let Her Go
Mos Def - May-December
Basement Jaxx - I Want You
Telepopmusik - Smile
Dirty on Purpose - Fake Lakes
Aceyalone - All Balls
Katie Melua - Blame It On The Moon
Billy Joel - New York State of Mind (Live)
John Legend - Alright
Pascal Vegas - I Know You Like It (Original Mix)
Weezer - Keep Fishin'
Dane Cook - The Chicken Sangwich, The Heck
Kool Keith - Master of the Game
Richard Marx - Don't Mean Nothing
The Streets - Blinded by the Lights

My current iTunes list has 8696 songs totalling 54.34 GB, so the above is just a small sampling of what I'm listening to. I'll try to post a list every so often just for fun...

Football (American)

Growing up in Seattle, I was actually never a Seahawks fan even though I was a football fan. I would always root for the Seahawks because they were the home team, but they were by no means my favorite.

As a kid, I had those little Starting Lineup figures, remember those? They were basically inaction figures of football players. I sold mine years ago, but here's a picture from Google:



Anyway, we moved to Seattle from Montana when I was seven, so having not developed any favorite teams, I glommed on to both the Giants and the Redskins, both of which remained my favorite teams for a long time (hence the original #1 on my 101 list - See the N.Y. Giants play in NYC).

Over the last couple years, I have decided to take a more active interest in sports as I was always a Mariners fan but neglected any football inklings.

As I analyzed my adult feelings regarding the Giants and Redskins, I found that aside from my childhood enjoyment of their uniforms, I really had no connection any longer to either team. This became even more apparent when I actually went to see the Giants play the Seahawks last year and really didn't have the enthusiasm for the Giants that I thought I would seeing them live (though the game was awesome and it was my first live game ever at Qwest). I really instead wanted to root for the Hawks.

All that, plus hanging out with the Seattle contingent in Las Vegas during the Super Bowl a few years back and now having watched all four games this year so far has officially mentally completed my transformation in to finally being a true fan of the Seahawks.

I'm not claiming I'm the biggest fan, nor am I denying that I wasn't anything more than a casual fan for years, but as of now, I'm a Hawks fan, win or lose. And with that, I'm also changing my #1 on the 101 list to "Go to a Seahakws game @ Qwest" so that I can catch a live Seahawks game this season. Since I'm gone for most of October, but here's the four home choices:

Monday, November 12 - 49ers at Seahawks
Sunday, November 18 - Bears at Seahawks
Sunday, December 09 - Cardinals at Seahawks
Sunday, December 23 - Ravens at Seahawks

Anyone interested in going with?