Still Untitled

I have been using Twitter for Identity Theory (@idtheory) and Fluency (@FluencyBTV), which is taking up the time I’d have otherwise spent on this blog.

Usability is really important to creating web content, and Twitter’s interface for creating content is about as easy as it gets. No worries about formatting whatsoever, and brevity is encouraged. Therefore, it’s much easier for me to send a tweet than post to this blog.

Also, there’s not as much performance anxiety involved in tweeting as there is in writing a blog post. Blog posts require planning and editing and also need to have a clear purpose, whereas tweets can (and should) be incredibly simple.

Finally, tweets can get immediate feedback and form conversations easier than blog posts can (especially blogs as obscure as this one).

So, it’s easy to understand why I’ve been “twittering away my blogging time,” but I still plan on ramping up my blog-post production with more meaningful and developed writing in the very near future.

About six years ago, I made a hideously ugly mock “fan” website about Kato Kaelin called “Can I Get a Witness?”

The page featured several banal quotes from O.J.’s famous houseguest as well as a “Kato vs. Plato” section.

I put  it on an ad-laden free-host service and did not place my name or email on the site, and then I pretty much completely forgot about it for several years.

Due to my natural prowess at search-engine optimization, the site became a top-five result for “Kato Kaelin” on just about every major search engine.

A couple of years ago, Ask.com did the above commercial featuring Kato Kaelin, and as you can see, the title of my “Can I Get a Witness?” site played a prominent role as a front-page result for the pseudo-celebrity’s name.

Put that in your 25 random things and smoke it.

Bush and Cheney are no longer there to help me come up with easy blog posts...or are they?

As much as I’d like to be freezing in Chicago with the literati right now, I’m instead shockingly not freezing in Burlington, where a spring-like, mid-February rain gave me a free winter carwash this afternoon.

Coming up with ideas to post to a non-themed blog is difficult because of the complete lack of “topic fences.” You’d think I could just find something that makes me really angry and write about that. But I don’t know what to be mad about right now. I simply don’t feel significantly peeved about anything in the world. It used to be much easier to come up with stuff to get riled up about because I could just type “George W. Bush” into Google News and instantly feel completely incensed. But now he’s gone, and he’s taken my anger with him.

Certainly, Bush’s exit didn’t magically make the world a better place, but I think over his eight-year reign of anti-terror-terror he gave many left-wingers the opposite of compassion fatigue. Call it anger fatigue. Now that Obama’s in charge, the blue staters seem to be relaxing because at least for the time being, they are sick of boiling their blood over unjust wars, declining civil liberties, faltering economies, and so on. They’re still mad, yeah, but not mad enough at any one particular individual or cause. Case in point: Bernie Madoff screwed people out of billions of dollars and is still not in jail.

Now, clearly, the world is not short on causes and topics of outrage and actionability, so this lack of anger is somewhat troubling. How does that saying go… “If you’re not mad, you’re not paying attention”?

The United States, like much of the world, is probably more rife with critical issues than ever before—and shorter on time to act on them. The economy is falling apart and people don’t have health care and the pandas are dying off and all of that stuff, but the big picture is even more grim: how are we going to feed and house our booming population and run all these fancy machines when we have such a limited amount of space and a rapidly decreasing supply of nonrenewable energy?

This is an obvious point, but worth meditating on: anxiety over the dire state of the world should dwarf any distress you felt over the last eight years when you watched Bush stumble over the lines of a speech force-fed to him by his friends in the oil industry.

Of course, while the urgency of creating a more sustainable world is great, the difficulty of overcoming the forces that made it unsustainable in the first place are even greater. So, it’s no wonder liberals focused their anger on Bush for so long—he was an easy target who personified their struggle. But now that he’s gone, it’s vital that people don’t trap themselves by thinking that the non-green forces he represented somehow scurried away to rural Texas with him.

So, I suppose what I’m trying to say is, it’s well past time to stop celebrating Obama’s victory; it’s now time to get down to the business of saving the world.

David Letterman tried to ease his conscience the other night by airing this clip of comedian Bill Hicks that Letterman cut from his show about 15 years ago.

During the Presidential election cycle, you heard Barack Obama say it at least a few dozen times: “We’re facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the housing market, and recent unemployment figures provide about as much inspiration as the thought of a George W. Bush worldwide speaking tour. (In case you’re wondering, we’re not expecting W’s version of the Clinton Global Initiative to launch anytime soon.)

A feeling of financial panic–encouraged both by our hysterical hypermedia and the cold, hard reality of the markets–seems to be enveloping the entire industrialized world, with no shortage of complaining and begging-for-bailouts going on, much of which is justifiable, but some of which is ridiculous.

To allow this temporary downswing in the financial markets to control your mental well-being is not going to help you during the crisis and will definitely continue to take a toll on you after the economy corrects itself. I say, don’t call it a “recession.” A “recession” is something that happens to you. Don’t let yourself become the beat-up stepchild of Wall Street fat cats and George Bush economics. I say, take ownership of the situation, and call it a “vow of poverty.”

Complaining about rich capitalists getting the best of you is neither graceful nor appropriate when you choose to live in a capitalist society. Conversely, taking a “vow of poverty” is both noble and cleansing. You’ll cut out the fat from your lifestyle, free your mind, and reassess your entire value system. And you’ll probably have more fun and possibly learn some valuable life lessons.

If you feel like you are a little too deep in love with your shopping and dining habits and need a helping hand, check out a few inspirational films, such as:

Into the Wild: A young idealist gives his money to OxFam, cuts up his Driver’s license and walks the Earth alone, meeting interesting characters all over the American West and going to Alaska to live off the land. That’s what I call traveling on a budget. And it’s not just a movie, it’s a true story, so I don’t want to hear you claiming it’s just a Hollywood fantasy. (Yes, the kid meets and unfortunate ending, but surely you can learn from his mistakes and get by just fine.)

Fight Club: Not a true story, but what better way to get inspired to take ownership of your poverty than to watch someone quit his job and blow up his own apartment? AND with his spare time and mental space, he starts a national organization of extremely loyal followers! You won’t see Tyler Durden whining about the housing markets or Dow Jones Industrials anytime soon. (Okay, I know what you’re thinking: this one’s totally fiction, and you don’t want to wake up with a broken jaw, bleeding organs, etc.–to which I respond: stop being a wuss.)

Life is Beautiful: If that Roberto Benigni guy can make a good time out of a friggin’ concentration camp, what are you complaining about?

Office Space: Bummed that you got laid off? Stop whining! Watch as the main character in this classic of American cinema gets himself fired from his office (er, cubicle) job on purpose and discovers the joy of manual labor.

If that doesn’t help, you can always watch Survivor. That should give you some tips on how to deal with the next phase of this crisis.

I did not conquer racial division this weekend. In fact, I hardly made it out of my apartment. (Twenty-below-zero temps have that effect on me.) However, I did learn a couple of culinary lessons that people of all races and creeds may find helpful.

1. Quinoa needs to be washed. A lot. The Incas called it “the mother of all grains,” but I call it “the mother of all pains.” It’s incredibly healthy, tastes good (in a very unique way), and has a hip-sounding name, but as far as preparation goes, it is definitely no Minute Rice. (Fortunately, many quinoa companies sell their grains pre-washed.)

2. Granola is fun and easy to make, after all, as long as you don’t burn it. I made about a month’s worth of granola this weekend using these tips from How to Cook Everything author Mark Bittman, who says, “You don’t have to be a hippie to make granola, but it helps…”

I also had a few dreams this MLK weekend, but you really don’t want to hear about those.

I’m working on gradually upgrading the look and functionality of Identity Theory as well as this blog and some other projects, so I’ve been reading a lot more articles on web design lately. The following posts and/or resources have proven exceptionally interesting:

1. Smashing Magazine discusses Textures in Modern Web Design.

2. The always insightful Jeffrey Zeldman offers Recession Tips for Web Designers.

3. NETTUTS gives you The 20 Most Practical and Creative Uses of jQuery.

4. A Flickr Creative Commons Search enables you to sift through thousands of photos that will usually be reusable in some way for free.

5. DesignMag features 40+ Inspirational Non-Profit Website Designs.

It’s always fun to watch ESPN the morning after your alma mater wins its fourth major national sports championship in three years. That’s pretty much all I’ve been doing today, listening intently to the talking heads as they continuously lavish praise upon the University of Florida Gators football team and their great, fearless, immortal leader, Tim Tebow.

“Does Tim Tebow now belong at the top of the list as the greatest college football player of all time?” they argue, some believing it to be true, others holding off judgment for another year.

“Tim Tebow carried his whole team on his back and willed them to victory,” others proclaim, turning this 21-year-old man into, as one woman put it, a “demigod.”

“Tim Tebow is beautiful inside and out,” gushed Steven A. Smith.

Yes, Tim Tebow…he’s been compared to everyone from Chuck Norris to Jesus Christ. He’s won the Heisman Trophy and two national championships. He spends his spare hours saving lives in Bangladesh and counseling hard-time prisoners at Starke, the hellhole down the road from Gainesville where Ted Bundy was executed. He’s a 21-year-old legend who doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the words “quit,” “lazy,” and “beer.”

I will never get sick of hearing about him.

But as person who loves to criticize the American news media, I am inclined to point out that they give him way too much credit for the success of the team.

Tim Tebow wasn’t the one who intercepted Oklahoma on the goal line to prevent a touchdown. That was…hmm, I don’t remember who it was, but I’m pretty sure it was Major Wright or Joe Haden. I’ll have to look it up, because no one in the media is mentioning it.

Tim Tebow wasn’t the one who tackled Oklahoma’s running back on the one yard line to prevent another touchdown. That was Torrey Davis, but I haven’t heard his name mentioned once this morning.

What about the guy who stole the ball from Oklahoma on an interception, preventing a likely score? Oh yeah, that was Ahmad Black. No one’s comparing him to Superman this morning.

Percy Harvin, without whom the Gator offense would have been almost entirely stagnant, did eke out one interview on ESPN.

If you take away any one of those four players, Florida loses. Just like they lost four games last year despite Tim Tebow’s Herculean efforts.

There are probably 100 players on the Florida football team, but Tim Tebow gets almost all the credit in the media when they win, because Americans love to believe that one person can single-handedly be responsible for a large group’s success. That’s why CEO’s make so much money and why presidential elections cost so much money. Instead of baseball, maybe our national pasttime should be switched to “Follow the Leader.”

I love Tim Tebow. (Though I almost killed him in a parking lot in 2006 when he took a corner too wide on his scooter while not wearing a helmet and I simultaneously took the corner a little too tight in my car.) But I would bet any amount of money he wishes that more people would get acknowledgment for his team’s success.

Cooking is a basic human activity dating back thousands of years. I’m not a very good cook. So, my major resolution for 2009 is to train myself to become a top vegetarian chef. I’m not looking to head up a restaurant in Beverly Hills or sell a line of overpriced cookbooks or anything like that; becoming great at preparing a wide variety of vegetarian food from a bunch of different cultures will suffice.

Before the new year started, I had the cutesy idea of trying to cook something from a different continent every day of the week. (Get it, seven continents, seven days?) That proved to be an unrealistic goal since the ingredients don’t overlap enough–I’d have wasted way too much leftover quinoa and couscous.

So, for now I’m trying to come up with one item a week that I really want to cook (or that my girlfriend demands I make) and then form a chain of meals throughout the week linked by the ingredients of that dish.

I started this week making veggie quesadillas, black beans, and cilantro-lime rice, which I’m already well versed in preparing. (It was so good that I almost changed my middle name to Jose.) This caused me to have leftover onions and spinach. So the next day, I incorporated the onions and spinach into a Hungarian knockoff dish inspired by famed Vermont chef Marta Pauer, sauteeing the onions, adding a tablespoon or so of paprika, and tossing in some carrots, spinach, tofu, and peppers. Good stuff! That left me with half a block of firm tofu, half a bag of carrots, and a swelling food ego.

“Why not go Asian?” I thought. Tofu, carrots, onions–that should fit pretty much any Asian dish. I even had sesame seeds, Soy and Teriyaki sauces, and ginger sitting around the kitchen. I typed some of those ingredients into Google, found a soy-ginger tofu recipe that had gotten rave reviews, and gave it the old post-college try.

Yeah, that did not go well. With all the soy sauce and ginger the recipe required, plus a couple of ill-advised substitutions, it came out tasting like pure iodized salt. I ate just enough to satisfy some basic nutritional requirements and cut my losses.

So, it looks like the major obstacle in my quest to become a top veggie chef is going to be the continent of Asia, which is sad because I really like Asian food and there really aren’t any good Asian restaurants within 100 miles of Burlington. (I thought I found one last year, until it gave me food poisoning.)

I’m sure in the end the struggle to learn to make Asian cuisine will work out. Maybe then I can find a nice open lot somewhere near Spago and set up shop. For a name, how does The Burmese Snowman sound?