Photo of the Week -- Traveling 27 Dec 2010

4:45AM wake-up. SeaTac Airport. And I feel like passing out like this dude next to me. Though perhaps I would not be wearing the powder blue sweatshirt or the skinny jeans. And I would be drooling on myself.

(I guess I shouldn't be complaining, as I am really just traveling on my way to more vacation...just can't sleep on planes...)

Happy Monday, all. Hope you have another nice short week.

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Weekly Selects #40

Christmas coming up, so let's do this:

--Via Gchat from Ben:

Holy cow. We had corndogs yesterday. They were AWESOME
You are so lucky that we gave you such an awesome wedding present...
You see. Every corndog you have ever had has been budget dog and batter

Exhibit A

Ben, of course, is a frequenter and skulker of woot.com, a website that sells items for cheap because most people do not want them. This is where he stumbled upon (hunted for? waited expectantly for?) the Corndog Maker (see Exhibit A), a device I didn't even know existed. Admittedly, I love corndogs, but their true value has always been in the fact that you never have to actually prepare or make them -- they always come frozen. So while I may have never considered owning one, it looks like I will be putting the Corndog Maker to use for years to come.

--Via Google Reader, a news article about another Samurai Sword attack:

a man was inside his home when he became upset that headlights from a car on the street were shining into his bedroom. That's when police say he got into a fight with the man in the car.
  
The man from the house eventually picked up a wooden club and then investigators say that's when the man from the car pulled out a samurai sword.

What??

According to detectives, in the middle of the fight, the man with the sword sliced off three fingers from the man with the club.

Police say that the man was sent to an Indianapolis hospital to reattach his fingers...

Police are still hoping to talk to more witnesses and get a clearer picture of exactly what happened.

I'm nowhere close to where this happened, but I can paint a pretty clear picture for the Police: Samurai sword trumps wooden club every time, son.

This sounds like a scene out of Highlander or something. Can't you see the guy with the sword, silhouetted by the car's headlights and issuing some challenge? This only makes me more curious about the number of people roaming around with samurai swords. I fear I'm missing out on some trend.

--Via Email from JMill:



That was Tasmanian Devil-like. I guess that's what happens when you try to run hurdles that are taller than you. (Burn on the Chinese dude)

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The Nation's Worst?

If you're from the DC Metro area, seeing a Maryland license plate should reflexively fill you with some mixture of hostility, frustration, and most importantly, that old familiar sensation of overwhelming and uncontrollable road rage. This is inextricably programmed into my autonomic nervous system. MD drivers are the absolute worst. I guess I can't rightfully assert that all bad drivers are from Maryland, but I CAN tell you that every car that I've seen bearing a Maryland license plate contains a bad driver.

Just something I was thinking about the other day as I got cut off -- once again -- by a Maryland driver.

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Photo(s) of the Week -- Blaming "Them" 20 Dec 2010

Well, I went and supported Mrs. RoSA and some friends at a combined 5K/10K run this past Saturday called "The Christmas Caper." (We're all familiar with the reason I don't run anymore.) It was early, it was cold, and it was icy on the running path -- which, fortunately for my half-frozen self, made for an amusing experience when compared to other running events that I have spectated.

Ben H ran the 10K in a full Santa outfit. I personally like this one, which shows off the Santa Mullet in all its glory, flowing in the wind.

As awesome as this was, the more entertaining and/or confounding spectacle was this creepy guy, who stood, unmoving and sentinel for at least 25 minutes, about 50 yards from the start line, with an enigmatic shirt:

"They" are such convenient scapegoats for everything, aren't they? "They failed to forecast rain, so I didn't bring an umbrella to work today and now I'm soaked."  "They are doing nothing but advancing the left- / right-wing agenda."  "They climbin' in your windows, snatchin' yo' people up, tryin' to rape 'em, so ya'll need to hide yo' kids, hide yo' wives,...and hide yo' husbands."

Awesome. Happy Monday and an upcoming Merry Christmas to you. Enjoy your week.

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The Compound: Big Brother is Watching

So, Mrs. RoSA and I have a new apartment, which, of course, required moving into. (And more epic battles with the Swedes of IKEA. But more on that at a later time.)

As far as my list of "I like" activities, I think "moving houses" ranks somewhere between "being dragged to the bottom of a pond in the jaws of an alligator"* and "camping out to watch a Twilight movie opening night, surrounded by screaming teenage girls." Yup. It is a long, torturous process that requires manual labor -- something my callous-less, gentrified hands are not used to; and, quite frankly, something I look down upon.

*I watched entirely too much late-night Animal Planet at college.

We now live in a nicely landscaped, overly-secure, and regulation-heavy gated community that is inhabited by what I suspect are mostly old people (I say "I suspect" because I've hardly seen anyone actually wandering the hallways. They're all shut in their apartments watching "Murder She Wrote" reruns. Or possibly dead). I know that these apartments were very nice -- perhaps even elite -- at one point, as their front office has award plaques for "Best Community Association" for Northern Virginia; however, because the last award they received was from the early 90s, it kind of makes it feel like The Compound is the Uncle Rico of apartment complexes: desperately grasping on to past glory and taping itself clumsily throwing footballs. This is all a metaphor.

Anyway, the aged population, combined with the excess of security gates and security guards -- who are nice guys, but who are on constant patrol as if we were at war with the neighboring apartment complex -- make the apartment complex feel like a cross between an assisted living center and secure government facility.** These atmospherics are why I've begun referring to our complex as The Compound.

**Seinfeld standup referring to retirement communities in Florida: "I don't get these minimum security prisons. Are old people trying to escape? Are people stealing old people?"

The Compound adheres to the concept of "the Rule of Law" and order, which I am down with in principle, but they have taken it to an oppressive extreme. When I signed the paperwork to move in, they gave me a handbook of the association's rules, which are so many (the thing is thicker than some of the phone books that Shigeko used to fashion a makeshift booster seat for her car) and encompass every aspect of everyone's life ("No hammering after 5 PM or on weekends or holidays" <-- I kid you not, this is an actual rule) that I am probably unwittingly breaking some association bylaw by charging my iPod in my computer right now.

Sometimes I think to myself: "So this is what it was like to live in East Germany with the stasi..." The difference, of course, being that the stasi weren't waiting to kick down your door because you dropped your garbage in the trash chute between the hours of 10PM and 7AM. I mean, the association officials tell me all these rules are for our own protection, but doesn't that ominously sound like the type of rhetoric that totalitarian regimes use to placate the masses while they slowly take away their freedom?

The dormant iconoclasts in both of us now want to purposefully break as many rules as possible so we can be the rebellious young couple who all the old people wish they could be. Nothing radical, mind you. Just the standard guerilla tactics, e.g. not parking in designated spots, not sorting our recycling, capsizing cars and errantly tossing a molotov cocktail or two, etc. The funny/sad thing is that, no matter how many rules we purposefully break, we will always end up breaking more rules just out of ignorance. Or, as Mrs. RoSA just observed: "We're rebels without a clue." Our Broken Association Rules (BAR) Tally sits at a healthy and subversive 6. (That we are aware of.) Will keep you all updated as we continue to raise our fist and resist against Big Brother.

A Note From the Mrs:

By way of introduction, if any of you are wondering if I married Mr. RoSA just so I could get the chance to be a guest writer on his blog, you are wrong.  I married him to be the beneficiary on his life insurance policy, what else?

I do not think we are cut out for life in the Compound.  Spiky gates at the periphery and speed bumps every twenty feet; floral wallpaper and sickly sweet aerosol air fresheners in the hallway; invisible neighbors who are either too old to move or up to no good; one neighbor (either a bouncer or a chronic clubber) who leaves a potent trail of perfumed stench through the entire stairwell when he descends every night around 10pm; and ever vigilant security guards.

One of what I'm sure will be many experiences with the security guards occurred the day our couch got delivered.  I met Ryan, the slow-talking, gap-toothed, smooth-faced young security guard when I burst into the front stairwell, broom and dustbin in hand, after the deliverymen had managed to get the couch wedged and break the hall light into a million pieces.  There was our monolithic couch, hamstrung over the railing, and there were the small but remarkably agile deliverymen, slithering under the couch on broken glass, trying to extract overstuffed pillows. And there was Ryan--looming, watchful, considering.  He turned his discerning gaze towards me and immediately launched into a phlegmatic recitation of my infractions:

 

"You've already broken three rules.  [1] Their truck is parked out front, and they're blocking in about 4 cars.  Delivery trucks can never be parked in the front of the building. [2] Deliveries can never be made through the front lobby or front stairwell.  [3] All deliveries must be made using the elevator in the downstairs garage."

 

I chose abject humility as the best way to get out of this scrape.  I claimed ignorance, apologized, offered to pay for the light, promised him my firstborn child, etc.  He muttered a bit as he deliberated: "Have to assess the damage . . . write a report . . . she didn't know . . . not really her fault . . ."  

 

Well, Ryan will get cookies this Christmas from two Compound rebels who appreciate his magnanimous, roguish, kindred spirit:  "Just get them out of here really quick.  And don't worry about the light.  We have tons of extras."

 I guess the point of this entire entry, with anecdotal support from Mrs. RoSA, is that we really don't fit in here at The Compound.

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