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February 22, 2007

Wind Up Birds Play Saturday!

Wind Up Birds are playing this Saturday at Kelly's Olympian at 9 PM or so. The Hot Toddies open, and they sound adorable.

Anyway, it should be fun, and hopefully I'll see you there!

Posted by mary at 12:36 PM | Comments (1)

February 21, 2007

Spinster Safety Soups

Ever since I saw that episode of "Six Feet Under" where the woman living all alone chokes to death on her TV dinner and no one finds her until she's kind of rotten and covered with ants, I've been paranoid that it might happen to me. Not that I'd have much of a chance to rot -- I think Pica would dig in before that -- but I do see choking to death as one of the hazards of living alone.

There are products for single people afraid of slip and fall accidents, intruders and the like, but you can choke to death in a matter of seconds -- far too fast for anyone to come and save you. So the solution needs to be preventative.

I think some manufacturer should therefore market a line of soups addressing this concern. I don't think most men really like soup all that much, so we should focus on selling soup to women. (Maybe you could have He-Man Hashes, where all the food was chopped up really small?)

"Spinster Safety Soups" would feature soups with only really really small chunks (if any), so that nothing could get caught in your throat. You'd find some quack doctor to testify that the chunks were scientifically designed to be safe.

The ads would have to be really scary -- e.g.,

Shot of woman choking at her dinner table ... grasping for the phone ... slowly falling out of frame ...

Voice: "DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!!! ... Play it safe ... with Spinster Soups."

Maybe the serving suggestion would be a really shallow bowl so that you didn't accidentally pass out and drown in it like in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Posted by mary at 1:00 PM | Comments (10)

February 14, 2007

Reduced to getting my content from random generators ...

You Are "Tearful"

Posted by mary at 12:19 PM | Comments (2)

February 12, 2007

Chasse Lawsuit

On Friday, the family of James Chasse filed a civil lawsuit against the City and county people who killed him either through violence or indifference. (Also named in the suit is AMR Northwest, the ambulance company that allowed the cops to take a hog-tied James into custody after he'd been brutally beaten).

Many have anticipated this lawsuit, but it hadn't occurred to me (probably because I'm ignorant) that a civil lawsuit could go so far beyond punitive fines.

Among the demands (I'm lifting from the Oregonian here, which isn't always prudent, but I think they've done pretty well on this story):

• Change the police bureau's use of deadly force policy.
• Create an independent citizen review commission to investigate deaths caused by police and in-custody deaths.
• Change police anti-discrimination policies to better protect people with mental illnesses and disabilities by requiring officers to treat them fairly.
• Create an early-warning system to identify police officers with high use-of-force rates and take appropriate action against them.

The complaint itself is available as a PDF at the Justice for James Chasse website.

The complaint contains some poignant details, such as the contents of James Chasse's backpack on the day he was killed ("several vintage books, comics, and a sandwich"). I also didn't realize that what Humphreys publicly identified as "cocaine", in fact, bread crumbs.

My sense is the Chasse family is pretty private. I imagine that continuing to be the public face of the issue of police brutality and accountability must be hard and painful work. I'm sure it would be a lot easier to focus on their personal grief and and healing than to work with attorneys and make statements to the press. So I'm grateful to them for their continued work for our city. Their proposals would make us all a little bit safer on the streets, and that would be a fitting legacy for James Chasse.

Posted by mary at 8:22 AM | Comments (0)

February 8, 2007

Chris Higgins is Blogging for Cash!

Check it out -- Chris Higgins got himself a blogging gig over at MentalFloss! As he noted recently, I've long felt he should maintain a regular old blog in some capacity -- you know, like a log of the websites he visits and finds interesting.

If you're a friend of mine who enjoyed the kind of nerdly trivia and news I used to pass on from Higgins, you will probably enjoy his blogging there.

And who wouldn't like to know more about "Atari 2600 Cartridge Source Code as Art" or a "Nerdcore Hip Hop Documentary" or "Advertising Slogan Generators"?

You may enjoy the entries by the other writers, as well. It's all pretty nerdy.

I'm still a little confused by the concept behind Mental Floss the magazine ("where knowledge junkies get their fix"? doesn't that potentially cover, like, everything in the world?), but I have been enjoying the blog.

Posted by mary at 8:07 AM | Comments (2)

February 2, 2007

Personality Type Theme Restaurants & The Question of Theme vs. Cuisine

I finally had a chance to go to the new vegan pirate restaurant on St. Helen's road.

How was it?

Well, it was sincere, and interesting, and the beer came in really big mugs. And there were games. And the "chicken" patty was fairly convincing.

I'm personally impressed with anyone who has an idea that sounds like a "great idea" (TM) and actually follows through with capital and effort. (Impressed, but also a little bit concerned.)

I do love theme restaurants. There just aren't enough of them in Portland. I was trying to think of how you can distinguish between a theme restaurant and super cuisine-specific places like the Rheinlander. It's subtle. They both might feature costumed wait staff with real or fake accents, and heavily narrated menus and extravagant decor. Tikki bars and Medieval Times? Clearly theme, not cuisine. Hooters? I vote theme. (I think maybe if a restaurant features lots of music on its website, it might a sign of theme, not cuisine.) But maybe I'm just ignorant about the gastronomic aspirations of coconut shrimp and mead.

Here's a definition of theme restaurants from wikipedia along with a link to this interesting article on the business end of theme restaurants.

Well, in any case, a restaurant that picks a theme with no clear relation to cuisine is clearly theme not cuisine oriented.

My idea for a theme restaurant is one with menus based on personality types.

You could choose from different personality typification systems: Myers-Briggs, astrology, Chinese astrology, etc.

Dave P. suggested it would be a good idea to have personality tests available at the restaurant or even within an online reservations system that you could do at home that would tell you your personality type, in case you didn't know, and then develop an order for you based on your response and the stars and the tide and stuff like that. That way, you wouldn't even have to make a decision, which would be great for personalities like mine.

So, since I'm a EN-- (sometimes an ENFP, sometimes an ENTP, and sometimes an ENFJ -- but always an EN), Goat and Leo, I'd get something like goat cheese fondue, since it's social and goatee and fiery.

You'd have a team of crackpots develop the actual menus.

It would be good entertainment and possibly even a learning experience. Taking the personality tests over cocktails would be great for people who were flirting, and discussing the results over dinner could be productive for families in trouble.

It would be kind of like the Blood Type Diet only it would be the personality type diet and it would be a theme restaurant.

p.s. The photo is from the Superfund site -- not really related to the post, but oh, well. I still haven't heard anything about my camera.

Posted by mary at 3:37 PM | Comments (4)