beancounters

Renting the homeless

File this one under "must be a culture difference":

A public library in Holland has been swamped with queries after unveiling plans to "lend out" living people, including homosexuals, drug addicts, asylum seekers, gipsies and the physically handicapped.

The volunteers will be borrowed by users of the library, in Almelo, who can take them to a cafeteria, and ask them any questions they like for up to an hour, in a scheme designed to break down barriers and combat prejudice.

Renting homeless people to library patrons for a kaffeeklatch? Mwheh-heh. Yeah. Good luck with that, Holland. All I know is, it'd never work in America. Because if this were an endeavor in an American public library, a whole lot of things could go wrong very quickly. Two days into the experiment, there'd be hundreds of complaints about panhandling, bad language, inappropriate touching, confidence schemes, propositions, drug use … body odor … then the human rights groups would get involved ... Jesse Jackson would arrive to lead a prayer at the circulation desk ...

Americans! I love us, you know I do, but we're a suspicious lot with a finicky sense of smell.

They all seem to blend into one ...

Another vacation?

Bush will cut short his vacation and head back to Washington Wednesday to coordinate efforts to respond to killer storm Katrina, the White House announced.

Oh sure, I bet it's just chaos at the Washington command center right now, without Dubya at the helm.

Exercise in racial semantics?

Over at Grace's, they're discussing an example of built-in stereotyping from a couple of news blurbs. The situations are identical - hungry and desperate New Orl/eans residents are wading through chest-deep water in search of food. But according to the writers, the black guy "looted" a grocery store, while the whites merely "found" their bread and soda there.

I know the captions were written by different news agencies, but still. Everybody in N.O. is trying desperately to keep from going hungry and thirsty during a natural disaster. The whites, when described, get a slice of compassion, but with the black guy, the seriousness of his motivation is automatically escalated to a criminal level. In my opinion, it's a symptom of a prevaling attitude.

Comin' down the track

Who's on his way to Chez Bean? My dad!

He and his wife are making a stop in California as part of a lengthy vacation. They'll travel by train, by way of Chicago and Seattle. In Vancouver, they'll meet an Elder Hostel tour group, recognize each other by their scary gang tattoos or something, and do lots of sightseeing. Then down the coast to Sacramento. The trip will take two weeks by the sound of things. No, more like three weeks; there's the train trip back to W.Va to include.

A vacation by train sounds does like groovy deal. Maybe not that long of a trip, though. Three weeks? Dude. There's a reason air travel was invented, and it probably has something to do with the maximum amount of time a human being can be comfortable sitting down.

Anyway, they'll be in the area four or five days to see my brother and me. And Dad will be in shock at how big and beautiful the grandkids are.

The lonely dozen

Though I wrote this true (!) one-sentence story for Scrine, yesterday, it's oh-so-much more appropriate for a Monday.

“There are probably only a dozen people in the State of California who are deeply concerned about this type of fraud,” said the author to the public servants gathered around the conference table, “and we eight, are eight of them.”

A what?

Woke up my daughter this morning, and got the following surprise:

Me: Time to wake up. It's Monday, it's a schoolday for you ... it's the first day of the semester for me ...

Bunny: No, it's not. School's over. You forgot that you graduated.

Me: I did?!?

Bunny: Yes. And you got your Master card.

Me: Well, isn't that a relief. And do you know what I do for a living nowadays?

Bunny: I think you're a waitress.

Me: Gaah!

Bunny: Yeah. Or a bus driver.

Blessed are the hippos

For they shall be touched by his noodly appendage. [via Robert]

New look

The stars finally aligned, down here above my basement workshop - I came up with a banner and theme I like pretty well.

Just because I can quote movies ...

Modern, Cool Nerd
60 % Nerd, 52% Geek, 47% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.

Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

Congratulations!

Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

[Via Badger - allegedly less of a dork than me] [I know the percentages don't add up - I deleted the part of the code that explained the percentiles.]['Cause I'm a geek.][Slightly.]

List(less)

Five things we have misplaced in this house:

1. BB's electric razor
2. My cell phone recharger
3. Bunny's friend's phone number
4. The dog harness for the car
5. Our motivation

After much serious talk about what housekeeping and yard maintenance must be done on a Saturday, BB and I suddenly ran out of steam. We both blearily stumbled back to bed with our books. Bunny was disgusted with us. Then I told her she could watch TV during our recuperation. She found a new reason to go on.

This is the life of a child with middle-aged parents. Waiting around while her grown-ups take naps. That, and she's probably the only kid in her class who is conversant on the subject of 70's album rock.

But we've discussed this before, haven't we? I digress.

If anybody has a clue where any of our missing things are, let me know. In the meantime, the laws of employment only gave me two days off, and it's a crime against the Protestant Work Ethic to spend much of this precious time nursing a headache. We'll start on the house. But first, Bunny and I must drive to her friend's house and apologize that we didn't call ahead, due to the unfortunate loss of the number. Bleah.

Generations

Have you ever seen three generations of bloggers? I'd like to introduce you to first set I've ever seen.

The Bunny Express - my daughter's online diary

Beancounters - defies description

The Poodle (And Dog) Blog - taking advantage of TypePad's trial period, my mother is venturing into the medium with a blog about her dogs. How about that? Please go and pay a visit. She's covered a lot of our favorite family dog stories. If you read anything about a certain "PJ", I can explain. The, um, the power was out at the grocery store, and I couldn't read the Purina labels. Yeah.

Open letter

Dear Global Weather:

Well, I have my school ID card, my parking pass, my financial aid, and my books and other reading materials. School starts Monday, which means ... you only have only four days to produce a freak ice age and completely bury North America under crushing glaciers. Hurry up! Time's a-wastin'! Thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

Pam

They grow up so fast!

M-Diddy's catchphrase?

This will be the show I can't miss this fall.

Martha Stewart promises to make you forget Donald Trump's signature line when she stars in a new spinoff series, "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart," this fall. Showing off a sunnier persona, America's most famous ex-con says she has come up with her own way of handing out televised pink slips - but you'll have to watch to find out.

"What I really wanted to say is, 'Your ass is grass!'"

And yes, I will drag you along with me.

Future of daydreaming

Oh shoot. It was bound to happen. One of those out-of-left-field medical studies finally hit me where I live.

A new Washington University study shows the part of the brain used to daydream is the same where Alzheimer's disease develops — in some people — later in life. It suggests the normal brain activity of daydreaming fuels the sequence of events leading to Alzheimer's.

In elementary school, I was the worst-case daydreamer. I don't know how many notes I took home to my parents from exasperated teachers. They all warned me of dire consequences. Heck, what if they were right?

Fast times at Chez Bean

This week, BB and I are having one last wild fling before my semester starts next week. You know what that means ... film festival!

The Day After Tomorrow - Never saw it before. It was excellently done. No surprises whatsoever, which is unusual in the action/adventure genre, but I still highly recommend it.

I did think it was supposed to be a disaster movie. Didn't you hear it was a disaster movie? Odd. Because in disaster movies, you usually worry about the people, the situation, all the way through. But all I did was cheer. Yaaaay, ice age! Go, weather, go, cover England and all of New York with salty ice! Turn L.A. into a pile of matchsticks!

In spite of the fact that I'm sure my own family and I would not have the wherewithall to get out of the way of a global disaster, and would undoubtably wind up some archaeologist's frozen discovery in 10,000 years, I think it would be outrageously cool to have another ice age hit this planet, right about now.

Maybe it's the semester talking.

This evening I met up with my fellow students at the start of term pizza party. Just like last year, the "party" wound up being a lot of pizza boxes on one picnic table, and all of us milling around eating off of greasy napkins, tucking our water bottles under our arms. Scandalous. We're policy majors, for corn's sake. Big-picture people. Aren't we supposed to show up better prepared than this? The department chair is not setting a good example. You'd better believe this is going in his end of term evaluation. :-)

I was reunited with an old friend from my prereq days. Joyce had sat next to me in econ at the community college, about 2 years ago. We were both trying to get into the same graduate program. Each of us took a unique path through the stats prerequisite! But she's finally starting the program this year. It was nice to catch up.

And I met a professor whose writings I had read extensively during my econ midterm last semester. I had looked forward to meeting him - but he turns out to be, well, quite a bore in person. Oh well, maybe he's still a good prof.

Off his trolley?

I would so buy one of these. Doesn't it look comfortable? Plus, you already know if it once held your weight in, say, beer. It can certainly hold you! [via Robert]

'mouse gets his own house

I find this quite endearing - 'mouse, a guy who is well-loved in our little community just for the quality of his comments on other people's blogs, was recently coerced by Keith into accepting a page of his own. Which is only fitting. After you leave over 200 comments and 140 entries on Scrine, and you spend this much time on blogs? You must be given your own little piece of the internet to fuss over. It's practically a law now. Sweetie-darling, take heed.

Regrets, I've filmed a few

Now, if this were on the level, and not satire, I'd definitely show up to The Bantarist's NY Regretable Film Festival. Here are some of this year's "highlights":

I AM SUCCESS FORCE! (55 min)
Japanese comedy ensues as Myoko delivers her grandmother's famous dumplings to the wrong house, or something like that.

HIDE AND SEEK (31 min)
A young girl sits behind a rack of clothes while her mother goes in and out of focus.

HOMECOMING (67 min)
A young man returns to the scene of his sister's murder, only to realize the writer didn't really figure out where this was all going.

HIDDEN SECRETS (73 min)
An effeminate Marine enters the scene out of nowhere and arrests a terrorist with a water pistol.

DECEMBER'S FOLLY (89 min)
An overweight actor/director inserts a love scene so he can kiss an aspiring actress.

Anthony and I wish we were famous movie producers, so we could re-make Hidden Secrets into the summer blockbuster we know it could be. It has it all, right down to the innuendo of an alternative lifestyle. All we'd need is a few car chases, some action sequences atop the Space Needle ... I'm picturing Jessica Al/ba as the female lead ...

The salsa beat

It is I, Pamela, your blog hostess, fresh from a trip down Hwy 99 to visit my family. I bring you much tomato-related good news.

1) Tomatoes are flourishing in my mother's yard. I'm convinced it's the soil. In fact, I would go so far as to declare that tomatoes, if you will, can't not grow in California's Central Valley. If tomatoes began to grow there, and you didn't want them to, you would have to take specific, drastic measures to stop them, like a neutron bomb or a giant meteor. As proof, I give you

Exhibit A: This is one of many, many trucks with crates on it, rollin' south on Highway 99 toward Tri-Valley Growers, a very large local producer of canned fruits and vegetables.

And what is in the crates? Tomatoes! And where did the tomatoes come from? The farmlands of the Central Valley! QED!

Exhibit B: A bowlful of Romas from my mother's garden. This was only one of four bowls of Romas and Celebs I picked in one day.

2)  I suggested that we do something constructive with the crop, rather than a lot of brainless marveling (which is always my first reaction). So we put together a sh-tload of salsa. Never made this before. It was easy. Here's the recipe we used:

* Sh-tload of tomatoes (OK, OK, probably around 10 - 12 largish Celebs, skinned, diced, and drained)

*1 white onion, 3 jalepeno peppers, 1/2 bunch of cilantro, salt and black pepper to taste.

Chop 'em up and throw 'em together.

We only produced half the batch with cilantro, because my brother does not like it. The cilantro side was strong-tasting, but I have to tell you, the cilantro did mellow overnight and isn't as raucous today. I recommend using more than you think you'll like in the batch.

3) I was going to announce that, given the fact that Nature favors the lovely tomato in locations convenient to me, I won't be trying to grow a pathetic crop of my own in my backyard ever again. BB, however, remains optimistic that if we prep the soil and start a month earlier, we could have a better harvest. Time to explain to him that the I part of we is no longer convinced!