Well, tried to do a Wordpress update to 2.6. It seems to have worked but not only is Wordpress telling me to download 2.6 when I already have, but the Wordpress iPhone software that requires 2.6 doesn’t seem to work.
How about that?
The fact that the baristas in my local Starbucks know me and my drink and start making it as soon as soon as they see me enter the coffeeshop means one of two things. Either a) I have an addiction to caffeine, or b) I am a true capitalist, doing my part to support my local economy. One is bad, and one is good (depending on your personal socio-economic viewpoint). In that respect the two cancel each other out, and I become karma-neutral once more.
I can justify anything.
The Bahamas seems to be in a frenzy about a certain Mr. Barack Obama. Everywhere I go I see bumper stickers on all manner of vehicles - high priced luxury cars, taxis, cement trucks, etc. It seems that many Bahamians are 100% behind Obama for president.
But frankly, I wonder how much this is to do with Obama’s colour instead of his political policies.
For those who may not know, The Bahamas is roughly 90% black. Since independence in 1973 the leader of The Bahamas has been black. The last white leader of the country was Sir Roland Symonette as the Premier of The Bahamas in 1964. A few years ago his son, Brent Symonette who is a white Bahamian was contemplating running for the leadership of the Free National Movement, one of the two major political parties in the country (which if it won the election would make Mr. Symonette prime minister). On many of the radio talk shows the primary topic of discussion was, essentially, “should a white man run The Bahamas” (the insinuation that The Bahamas is a ‘black country’ went unspecified, but not ignored). Callers seemed to be divided between those who felt that only a black person should be leader, and those who supported Mr. Symonette as, black or white, he is a true Bahamian. Both ideas were present across the entire populace - there were wealthy Bahamians supporting him and poorer Bahamians against him, just as you had poorer Bahamians supporting and wealthy Bahamians opposing.
The point is that for the first time a black man has a very, very good shot at being the leader of the U.S.A. His entire race for the White House has been extraordinary - he’s young, a first term senator, black - all so-called “obstacles” he would have to cross when compared to the traditional Washington machine, or so it seemed. Generally speaking it’s only natural that many Bahamians would support a black candidate for the White House, even more so if the candidate is as inspiring and eloquent as Obama.
Now, colour and race aside, Obama is a liberal Democrat. He supports abortion rights, stem cell research, supports homosexual civil unions, etc. These are all things that the conservative Christian country (or so it considers itself) is usually against. After the recent spat of gay murders here people called into a radio show with the almost unanimous idea that the victims “got what they deserved”. That’s the kind of conservative fundamentalist attitude that’s present across the spectrum of the populace.
For what it’s worth, I’m in no way defending that idea, nor even the conservative nature of The Bahamas. I’m all for liberal attitudes, a secular government, etc. But that’s another blog post for another time.
My point is simply that if Obama was a white man, with all of the same left-leaning ultra liberal tendencies, would the conservative citizens of The Bahamas really be as supportive of him as they seem to be?
Oh man, you have no idea how long it took me to get that new banner image sorted out. Jeez.
I figured that I need to start personalising my blog instead of simply changing the template every now and again, so this is the beginning of my effort. I’d say that I’m turning over a new leaf, but this is probably the 7th time I’ve said that, so take it with a grain of salt.
So, plenty has happened since I updated back in… goodness me, May?
1. I’ve continued going to the gym at least semi regularly, which is very unlike me. My arms are getting bigger, my chest is getting tighter, yet inexplicably my middle section is getting even softer than it was. I don’t understand. At this rate I’ll look like a pregnant bodybuilder. Which is not a good look.
2. I was part of a photo exhibition! That’s probably the most exciting news. I’ve wanted to have an exhibition for a while, but haven’t really been sure how to pull it off. Luckily, I was more or less invited to join a group exhibition which meant I got the experience of being a part of the show without having to prepare and organize myself. It was a lot of fun, a good deal of people came and I even sold this photo for a couple hundred dollars, which was utterly shocking.
3. Other stuff has happened, obviously, but it’s been so long I can’t remember it. Therefore, it must not be important. And if it’s not important to me, it’s certainly not important to you.
On that note, Ashley out.
…god, I did not just say that. I apologize.
I’m going to tell you a story about my mad cooking skillz. See what I did there with the ‘z’ on skills? That’s because they’re mad, yo. Does mad have one ‘d’ or two? I forget. Shows how urban I am, huh?
Anyway, I digress.
On the few occasions that I cook I quite enjoy it. I feel all fancy chopping the onions and cooking the meat, and I get pleasure out of people eating food that I’ve cooked. It’s usually also quite good, which is an added bonus for me, and for those eating it (I suspect they’d get less pleasure out of badly cooked whether I enjoyed making it or not).
One anniversary, or maybe just a random night or birthday, I decided to cook Iona homemade lasagna. I didn’t care that I could buy a delicious frozen lasagna for less than the cost of making one, I was going to be a man and make my own supper, damn it.
I found a recipe online at the Pioneer Woman’s cooking website which looked utterly scrumptious. It called for the usual players: lasagna noodles, cheese, meat, etc.
So I went shopping.
Now I have a very, very bad habit of shopping when I’m hungry and/or thirsty. I end up with tons of crap food and bottles upon bottles of liquids. And then I complain about how I spent $100 on groceries when there’s nothing to eat.
This time I tried to be careful, and smart. The smart was my downfall, as you’ll see. I found these lasagna noodles that cook quickly. Great, I thought… that’ll save some time. I didn’t realise that quick cook noodles require quick cook EVERYTHING… they didn’t work on their own. They wouldn’t cook perfectly and then wait for the rest of the meal to catch up.
If that wasn’t enough, the recipe called for sliced Mozza. To save time I bought some handy pre-sliced Kraft Mozza. Except it wasn’t sliced cheese. It was sliced plastic, known also as “processed cheese”.
So to sum up, in my delicious lasagna recipe I was going to use quick-cook noodles and processed cheese. While everything else remained normal.
I cooked for an hour or so, the cheese felt a little soft but I wasn’t concerned. After all, I have mad cooking skillz.
I checked the lasagna after an hour (or whatever the time should have been) in the oven and something just didn’t seem right. The noodles were still hard (which thinking about it is very odd. Maybe they were slow-cook… who knows?) and the cheese was… well… again, not right.
I waited a while and decided I was hungry, so screw it. Hard noodles and weird cheese wouldn’t stop me from eating my masterpiece. Then I tasted it.
I’m the kind of guy who can eat a quarter of a chicken pot pie in 3 minutes. Seriously, I did tonight. I’m not joking. But it took me 20 minutes to eat half a piece of lasagna before giving up. Iona was quite the trooper too, but she only managed half of what I did. In short, it was NASTY.
The rest of my lasagna, which cost me $50 plus a whole bunch of time to make ended up in the garbage.
I can cook though, I promise.
Last post I talked about joining a gym.
As I mentioned, that in itself is nothing special - I’ve joined gyms before, but I’d always end up going for a day or two before losing interest. I found that if I skipped a single day, then I may as well just stop.
But I’ve survived a week. A week of gymming. It’s true, I wouldn’t lie. And I feel good. Junk food doesn’t taste nearly as nice anymore. I’m counting calories and am shocked at how my foot-long Bacon Chicken Ranch Subway meal was 1900 calories. No, I didn’t add an extra zero by mistake. Seriously, 1900 calories. Screw that.
Even though I enjoy it, and I enjoy the hint of possible results I may see, I still recognise that the gym is, well, stupid. I was going to say something witty about it, but Mr. Jason Mulgrew says it much better than I ever could:
“Fundamentally, when you work out, you are doing something physically taxing that you are not required to do. Can you imagine trying to explain working out to someone from the past? “So, let me get this straight - you’re going to take this really heavy weight and keep lifting it, over and over again. Then you are going to get on this machine and run, though you are not running anywhere. And no one is forcing you to do this with the threat of physical punishment, starvation, or torture. Am I missing something? Because it sounds kind of stupid to me.”
Human beings have evolved to this point in time mentally so that we do not have to make our bodies work as hard as our ancestors did, because our brains are much more advanced. For example, no longer do we need to spend hours hunting for our food in the hot sun, fighting off big-ass fucking tigers and other monsters, because Festival Mexicano will bring it to your door and it will be delicious (and reasonably priced). I needn’t get too into details of evolution (mostly because I don’t really know what I’m talking about), but when we force ourselves and our bodies to perform such equally strenuous and unnecessary activities, it is an affront to evolution, and, as such, to God Almighty Himself. [I know that the theory of evolution and the Judeo-Christian story of creation don’t exacly mesh, but the point is you don’t want to piss off God]”
Makes sense, doesn’t it?
P.S. The first publishing of this post was… written badly. My good friend Ciara was kind enough to tear it apart for me and show me the error of my ways. “Were you drunk when you wrote this?” she asked. No, Ciara, unfortunately I wasn’t.
the rest of my life.
That’s such a stupid thing to say. Every day is the first day blah blah blah. But I do have reason for saying this. I started going to the gym today. Again.
As most people who know me realise, I’m not exactly one for physical activity. Soccer I have a passing interest in. Swimming for me consists of splashing on the beach a little bit while sipping on an ice-cold beer/rum and coke. The only way I’ll run voluntarily is if someone’s driving away from me with a 32-oz steak/Apple computer/camera gear hanging off the back and cycling seem to be a silly substitute for motorcycles.
Needless to say, I’m hardly an active person. The problem is that I am even less active (if that is possible) than I ever have been before. At university I would walk to class, walk to the bar, walk everywhere. While I was in England I walked a lot and didn’t really eat (that got me nice and slim). Now that I’m home and working, I sit down to drive to work. Sit down at my desk and type. Sit down to drive home. Sit down to eat. Sit down to watch TV. Lie down to sleep. That repeats at least 5 days a week. Sometimes 7.
So I joined a gym. It’s not my first time inside a gym, I’ll have you know. I went to this same gym for a couple of months before, a few years back, and while I was at MTA I went to the gym there for about a month. 1 month. Out of 4 years. Not too bad, huh?
I’m tired of being the… slightly chubbier one of my friends. It doesn’t need to be this way. I build muscle easily, and have a swimmers build (with some extra padding) so I could be in shape if I wanted to be.
I think now is the time. Wish me luck.
Man, it’s been a long, long week. Worked from 9am to 9pm yesterday for a major event we were having. It was fun, and went very well, but was absolutely exhausting. I can’t wait for the weekend.
No, I don’t mean myself. I look the same (aside from varying lengths of hair), and I have the same attitude. This may be a good thing, it may not. Depends on who you ask.
I mean my blog. I know I’ve said this more times than I care to count, but I will update more. I will, I will. If I say it enough I may even convince myself. So, my blog has a new template (wholly unoriginal I’m afraid. I wanted to remove the copyright notice but there are nasty warnings posted on the home page of the guy who created it… so maybe I’ll leave it be). With this new template will come a new spell of regular postings. Seriously. Ok, you’ll just have to see to believe I suppose. I see how it is… ye of little faith.
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So, the Beijing Olympics. Or, more specifically, the adventures of the torch (and torch bearer) as it (they) cross cities filled with opposition, danger, violence, and protest. Man I feel sorry for those torch bearers. They’re world class Olympians making the ceremonial and traditional journey to the site of the Games, aiming to inspire the people and spread the message of the Games (which, by the way is cooperation between peoples of all races, faiths, nations, etc.). Yet they get pelted with verbal abuse, attacked by crazed protestors trying to grab the torch and sprayed with fire extinguishers. Sucks to be them. Don’t get me wrong - I wholly empathize with the protestors. China’s Human Rights record is abysmal, their treatment of the Tibetan people horrific and their entire propaganda filled attitude towards these games offensive. But still, there is a way to protest, and violence isn’t it.
Make more pictures for your blog
Oh, that crazy John McCain.
I know I’ve said this before, many times, but I NEED to keep updating my blog. It’s inconceivable that someone who gets paid to write won’t write for himself. Actually, maybe that’s not so silly. I write all day, every day (for the most part) so when I get home all I want to do is veg out in front of the TV/computer. Still, while I’m on this machine I may as well be slightly productive, right?
The captioned photo above is from Pundit Kitchen, from the makers of I Can Has Cheezburger. Yes, that’s spelled correctly. If you hate cats please don’t click the “cheesburger” link as it will only serve to irritate and enhance your hatred. If you love cats, on the other hand, please click and your life will be forever changed. Seriously.
Anyway, Pundit Kitchen is a number of user-captioned political pictures, with some very humorous results. If you’re at all interested in politics take a look. It’s a lot of fun.