Category Archives: Travel

Winter Driving

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Winter has finally arrived in Southwest Michigan. We received a really good few inches of snow last night and finally the world appears now as it always should have. There are of course some issues which I would like to share, mostly as a matter of public education, but also to honor St. Whinge’s Day which was yesterday1.

First, Good Morning Michigan! I hope you rested well and are ready to take on the challenges of WINTER DRIVING because from what I can see, you aren’t. The most important rule that you have all collectively forgotten is PROPER FOLLOWING DISTANCE. Remember, for each multiple of 10 miles per hour of your speed you should put that car length distance between you and the car in front of you. So if you are going 10, you put 1 car length in front of you, 20 – 2, 30 – 3, and so forth. When it snows? Double that number! So at 10 you put 2 car lengths in front of you, 20 – 4, 30 – 6. See? It isn’t that hard to do! Now why oh why would you put so much space in front of your car? I’ll tell you. Not only is the ground you are traversing now lack any traction at all, but snow changes how your tires and transmission move your vehicle! Not only can’t you start properly but you can’t stop! Oh and something else, you or I might accidentally slide backwards so keep your front bumper in mind, okay?

Second, and this comes down to not risking your stupid worthless lives, but DO NOT MAKE RIGHT ON REDS IN FRONT OF ONCOMING TRAFFIC! Yes, it seems safe, there may be room for your vehicle to fit in the flow and you might think it’s safe, but what if someone is coming downhill and hits ice? Their brakes will be meaningless and your impatience will be rewarded with a T-bone collision! Just don’t do it! Cities in the north ought to pass new traffic laws outlawing the “Right on Red” maneuver when ground traction is compromised.

Third, please for the love of all that is holy, if you are driving on bald tires please have them replaced! I understand that times are hard and money is tight, but when water comes out of the sky in a solid and stays that way, your tires, especially your driving tires really have to have tread on them! If you have non-driving tires that have tread but your driving ones do not, go and have your tires rotated properly. It costs very little and is an acceptable compromise. If you have four bald tires, at least buy two new ones with really kickass tread on them. Think of climbing the hills. If you have bald tires and you are on the roads, we will mock you!

I’m sure there will be more to whinge about as the season progresses. The one thing you can always count on is human stupidity and impatience. What’s the most meaningful proverb of the season? Haste makes waste.

  1. St. Whinge’s Day is a fictional holiday for whinging, or complaining in a whiney fashion. It was coined as far as I know by David Malki at Wondermark.  ↩

Eight Ball

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I’ve about had it with gasoline companies. The prices change daily and nobody is very clear as to why that has to be. I suspect it has more to do with price fixing, gouging, and generally being nasty to the public than it has with supply and demand.

When prices are this variable, to say nothing of being this high, I start to think about ways I can manage my money when it comes to buying fuel. I often times will drive on an empty tank using the range metric from the cars computer as a gauge to determine when I should buy fuel or not. Last night while driving home from the gym it struck me. I allocate $40 a week to gasoline in my budget and I can make it from week to week quite well on that money. Instead of buying fuel in one $40 transaction which today would only really get me three quarters of a full tank from empty I have decided that I am going to buy gasoline in $8 increments. That gives me five opportunities to fuel until I hit my budget cap. So, the last time I fueled, which was last night, I bought $8 worth of gasoline. That won me about 100 miles in the range metric, but since I refuel around 30 miles on that metric it’s actually about 70 miles. Of course the metric is based on a LOT of highway driving so the minute I go back to city driving the MPG will drop through the floor and this mythical 70 miles worth of gasoline per stop will actually turn out to be around 30-40 miles.

With this plan, I don’t have to feel like I got gypped by the variability in gasoline prices. I don’t care about credit card transaction fees on small purchases hurting the vendor. I lack sympathy for the devil.

Up Up and Away!

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The flight from Albany to Chicago went exceptionally well, despite the carrier being United Airlines. The flight boarded on time, took off on time, and we arrived about ten minutes early. The only issues with the flight was the heating system was stuck at 80 degrees making the aft section uncomfortably warm. I commented that we were actually in steerage class and a few passengers around us chuckled at that. Titanic jokes never go out of style.

Getting from our gate to Parking Lot E was more of a challenge. O’Hare’s signage for the economy parking lots leaves a LOT to be desired, eventually we got to where we needed to be but we took the scenic path too far, which tested everyones sense of patience. We got to the car, it was right where we left it, and $154 dollars later (parking is ass-pensive!) we left O’Hare.

Our next stop was to get to Joy’s Noodle Company which is in boystown, one block from Lakeshore Drive. After some ranging about looking for parking (a challenge in the Santa Fe) we eventually found a spot and had a wonderful dinner with our friends Jeffery and Sean. After that we got back to the Santa Fe, got to I-90, then went from Chicago, via the Skyway, along the highway and just after we entered Michigan I felt my nemesis crowding around my consciousness.

My driving nemesis is night driving along dull interstate roads. I tend to get worn out quickly with these straight stretches of nothing, no conversations, nothing to do but drive and listen to whatever was on the radio and interminably wait for us to reach our destination. I am renowned for dozing at the wheel, and so far the rumble strips and terrified passengers are enough to keep me going – but what really scares me, even more than the dozing is trance driving. It’s different than simply being narcoleptic, my eyes are open but nobody is home. I’m conscious but wholly unaware. It’s a huge source of concern for me because I can so easily imagine myself dying at my own hands because I was in one of these situations.

A few months ago I made a pre-new-years-resolution that I would have my car always stocked with a number of “5 Hour Energy” shots. I’ve tried other chemicals before, sugar, caffeine, sugar bound with caffeine, food, brisk walks around the car, jogs, you name it. They all help temporarily but I almost always fall into the same trap I always do. The sugar gives me a huge lift and then I crash even harder when my system burns through it. The caffeine eventually starts to hurt my stomach (caffeine pills), and when I try to bind the two together, like in soda pop I find myself okay for a time but need to use the facilities a LOT, as caffeine keeps me awake and then acts as a diuretic. Sugar, Water, Caffeine, and damn it all to hell, I have to pee again.

I can’t express how happy I am with the 5 hour energy shots. They are loaded with massive quantities of B Vitamins, some caffeine and very little sugar. It’s the magic brew that keeps me up and at ‘em for as long as I need to be running a motor vehicle. So when I drive, like I did tonight, and I start to yawn a lot and feel the power start to fade and my eyes start to get heavy I peel the security plastic off a 5-hour, unscrew the cap and down the entire shot. I’m sure there is a placebo effect also at play here, if I believe that the shot will help then it will, even if the chemicals in the shot cannot make their way into my system within say 10 seconds of taking the shot. My brain, in anticipation of what the shot does for me must give me a wee boost right up front, so it hits me pretty much right after my last swallow is complete.

That feeling of having heavy eyelids, the tiredness in my neck, and my yawning cease almost instantly. I am awake, I am alert, and so far I’ve never sensed an instance of trance driving while hopped up on a 5-hour. So this is my solution. These little shots are the way I can cope with my body telling me that at 10pm after a whole day of flying around creation that it’s time to sleep and SLEEP NOW. I can take a shot and subvert it, at least temporarily.

So now I have a new rule. I cannot operate a motor vehicle without at least one available 5-hour energy shot somewhere in the car with me. I almost never need it, but for those times when I’m driving along and I feel that droopy feeling coming on out it comes. If I don’t have a shot handy, then it’s time to stop at a rest area or a gas station to tend to the supply problem.

I think that every state, in rest areas should have a 5-hour-energy vending machine in operation. Set it to $2 a shot and impress upon motorists the dangers of accidental unconsciousness and what these 5-hours can do for them. A life saved by not passing out at the wheel is worth a measly $2.

So here I am, still a little lit-up from my 5-hour shot, writing a blog post and cradling a very needy cat. Thankfully he has forgiven me for being away so long, it can be challenging to blog while your cat is trying to brace himself against your hand with his paw. Life is hard. 🙂

Flitting Away

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Here I sit at Albany International Airport, Gate A5 waiting for my flight. I went through the TSA security checkpoint. It appears as though Albany has elected to only use the backscatter scanners to secure passengers. After requesting to pass through the magnetometer, a passive scanner that I am comfortable with, and then being denied that, I elected to pursue “Enhanced Patdown” which was a Code 22 in the TSA. I had to wait only a very short while and a man approached me, took me over to a staging area and proceeded with the enhanced patdown.

I don’t really see how that is upsetting to anyone at all unless you are violently touch-sensitive. It was very tame and wholly not-upsetting. I have a longstanding issue with the backscatter scanners, cutting to the chase, I don’t trust that technology. It wasn’t cleared by the FDA, there aren’t thousands of studies that tell me it’s safe, so I assume it’s hazardous to my health. It’s important to understand that I have a special sensitivity to being exposed to ionizing radiation. I have a huge risk factor for prostate cancer and the last thing I want is to expose a prostate cell to any radiation that I don’t actually have to endure. It’s the difference between a cell that lives and dies naturally and a cell that gets damaged, goes on a bloody rampage and kills me with prostate cancer. Would a backscatter scanner do that? Chances are 99 out of 100 that it would not and that I’m simply acting beyond rationality in regards to this. But if I can elect to follow a path that doesn’t require me to walk into a machine I don’t know and don’t trust and do something else, a simple act that allows me to skip the risk altogether, why not? I can sleep at night knowing I didn’t consciously expose myself to something harmful and I don’t have to live with the weaksauce spectre of the headline that might be “Backscatter Scanners Cause Cancer” which may or may not be a New York Times headline. I just skip it altogether.

The enhanced patdown was actually quite a non-event. Perhaps it’s the fact that I have a rather loose sense of propriety, in a way that I’m just a big old slut that means that being touched, all the way to what amounts to a kind of non-sexual petting. It’s really not that thrilling at all. The TSA has stopped exploring all the parts of a mans body, so you don’t actually have to worry anymore about junk-handling. I was half looking forward to some junk-handling personally. The fact that the procedures changed makes a whatever event into a complete non-issue. Oh well. At least the fellow doing the enhanced patdown wasn’t attractive otherwise I’d have lots more to write about. “Do you have anything in a 6’6” blond otter?” If only you could select the TSA rep who gave you the pat-down, that could be a pseudo-non-sexual Top 10 TSA award. 🙂 Yeah yeah yeah, I’m a big old slut. Yeah yeah yeah.

The TSA apparently doesn’t think that my 1L stainless steel Hydroflask is worth commenting on or asking to see the inside of. They missed it in O’Hare, and they missed it in Albany. I think they’ll always miss it. What’s in my Hydroflask? Nothing. I threw out the water before I left for the airport, but what if I didn’t?

This only reinforces my original precepts that the TSA is performing security theater to make us feel better. That there really isn’t any security actually being secured, but actually just people from the federal government who are there to give the impression that we are safe. Either way, they catch some things, and they miss a few others. As for the enhanced pat-down, whatever it was supposed to detect is quite silly. It’s just a procedure to impress upon me how safe my flight is going to be.

Whatever.

Christmas Redux

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Christmas never ends. That’s the trick with having family in far-off places. We travel and end up having multiple iterations of the holiday. It would be one thing if we shipped Christmas and concentrated on our families but so far we’ve been meeting up and there have been little explosions of Christmas over and over again.

This Christmas had a definite theme. I am becoming thoroughly French. Scott, in the guise of Santa gave me Rosetta Stone Francais, the full shot which should give me basic fluency with a level commensurate with emigration if I so choose, not that I would. I really enjoy the french way of life, the language, the cuisine, and that second part, that’s another part of Christmas. I have a Crepe Stand, a pan, several tools and a crash course with a french chef in Chicago to make french crepes. I am definitely cruising towards a fate made of crepes. There are worse things. Waking up in the morning and making a fresh crepe and filling it with Nutella – yeah, what punishment that is going to be. How ever will I cope. 🙂

Other members of my family gave me money to buy gifts I wanted on my own. With the money so far I bought two pair of Levi’s 501 jeans in my newer smaller size. My waist is about 36.5, these two jeans are 38’s and they are shrink-to-fit, so they fit wonderfully well and the style of the 501’s really appeal to me because they are button-fly, something very different from the tyranny of the copper-colored zippers. There is a part of me that doesn’t like the idea of sharp zipper teeth in that region of my anatomy. I know there isn’t any risk of anything happening, but it’s a matter of principle.

So I have lots of cash on hand and a huge number of iTunes tracks on my wish list there. That’s something that I really don’t understand. Apple enables their customers to make a wish list, but they don’t enable you to export it or build a list, or even export it socially so that other people can see your list and perhaps surprise you by buying the music and then leverage iCloud on Christmas morning to an iPod which is magically chock-full of music that you wished for. We’ll have to see if some of that will be in the plan for my Christmas cash.

Western let us know before the holidays that they would be making a one-time-payment to us employees as a kind of bonus. It was in lieu of not getting a COLA, having our health insurance premiums increased, and a factor of other reasons that are only really attractive to the accountants. I got my $400, but thanks to the IRS, I only got to have $256 of that. It is more than I would have otherwise, so I don’t complain too loudly, but still, it is a little source of irk. I’d rather have it the other way around.

So Christmas has come, and come again. When we get back Santa will eventually swing around AGAIN. I liken it to the idea that Santa has an odd case of retrograde amnesia. He visits over and over again, spreading Christmas cheer well into mid-January. It’s a theme we’ve all fallen into, we dwell in the Christmastime afterglow and then we announce with mock surprise that we found something that Santa left under the tree that the elves forgot to place properly. In a way, Santa gets the last word, even if he has to visit on Saint Swithins Day to win.

Trip to Albany

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We drove from Kalamazoo to O’Hare airport yesterday morning and there was absolutely no traffic to contend with. Parked and got in, got our tickets, passed through security and both legs of our trip went without an issue.

One telling bit was the security at O’Hare. I have to admit that it was mostly security theater. I say this because I had stored my empty HydroFlask 1L bottle in the base of my backpack. The HydroFlask is made of stainless steel and should be very opaque to X-Rays yet the TSA scanners elected to not ask to see it opened up and demonstrated that it was empty. One thing I dodged this time was having to walk through the backscatter scanner. For some unknown reason we were shunted off to the magnetometer instead of the backscatter scanner. I was actively going to request an enhanced pat-down if I had no choice but to go through the backscatter scanner.

This time through the entire meat-grinder of airplane travel and TSA security we didn’t have any delays, nor did we have any hangups anywhere. It was unusually easy and straightforward. I have to be careful lest I harvest any sense of hope that it could be like this in the future. 🙂

Although the lapse in security at O’Hare was a concern. It’s a good thing I’m a good guy and not a bad guy. 🙂

While I was on both legs of my trip out to Albany I figured that my Nook Simple Touch wasn’t really an electronic device because of it’s eInk technology. While the page is being displayed, the device is technically in an off-state. So while we were busy climbing and descending in and out of 10,000 feet of altitude I decided it was meaningless to pussyfoot around with using the device so I went along and just used it while the stewardi was busy walking away from me and closing it down when they wander past. It’s stupid that eInk technology is classed with other devices, like iPads and iPhones. The Nook worked great anyways and I really was happy with how it helped me pass the time aloft.

Green Jade

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“What’s the number one thing you want for Christmas?” This question started me thinking on the nature of wanting things and the challenge of gift-giving during the holiday season.

When I was a kid it was easy, I wanted a toy or a gadget, something that I absolutely had to have. Over the years, as I grew up probably, this desire for things started to mutate. It went from wanting when I was very young to sometimes needful things as I got older. As I continue to age along my path I discover that I want things less and less. I think it’s partially because of the poor economy – I can’t really ask anyone to get me anything because times are tough, unemployment is high, and nobody should feel awkward about not being able to get that perfect gift for someone else. We are all bound to budgets and we either use our savings or we borrow to make sure that someone has a “good Christmas”. I have found that I’d rather send cards and holiday greetings, spend time with people that I want to spend time with, rather than receive some token object of affection. It’s an impossible road to tread, because the culture is so wound up in giving things to each other that you feel awkward making a list and then you feel even worse if you don’t have a list to give in the first place. It’s kind of like a trap, in that regard.

A lot of the old standbys just aren’t as attractive to me any longer. Music is mostly artificial flotsam and jetsam, pounded into shape by machines, delivered either by an object like a CD or virtually, on iTunes. Much of modern media follows this bend that music has taken. Most of it is utter crap, and while it’s nice to have things that are good and you do enjoy, the chances that you already have what you like is almost a certainty. The issue here is there isn’t anything really new or notable when it comes to a lot of modern media choices. It is best exemplified by how people make and enjoy the media. In the 21st century most media is faucet-delivered. This has two angles to it, not only is what comes out of the faucet kind of bland, dull, and uninteresting, but in many respects opening the faucet and leaving it run doesn’t cost anything. In music, you have Spotify. A free account with which you can listen to nearly anything at all anytime you like. Faucet Music. Netflix. Faucet Movies. GameFly. Faucet Games. I don’t seek out music any longer, the artists I like are dead or have moved on to survival employment and no longer make music. Movies? They are the essence of faucet media. You find a production company, a script put together in a crayon-by-numbers way and as long as it makes its initial investment back you’ll be on a permanent treadmill of meaningless sequels. I don’t really like going out to the movies anymore, there are so few movies out there that interest me. There is a very tender balance between how much bullshit I’m willing to put up with and how much that bullshit costs, all balanced on a fulcrum where on the other side is what I could be doing with my time if I wasn’t enduring said bullshit. So there is no point in buying a BluRay of anything and wrapping it up as a gift. Most of the dreck that Hollywood secretes is recycled monumental bullshit. Remember Avatar? Try Pocahontas, try Fern Gully. It would be one thing if this was an isolated example, but it isn’t. This sort of derivative bullshit soaks modern media to the dripping point.

So I stand back from all of this and think about what I really want. What do I want for Christmas? I want time. Time to do what I want to do. It’s the only thing I lust after these days – time enough to read, time enough to do whatever else it is that I want to do. Time is impossible to buy, and utterly irrational to try to wrap up for someone else. Really all that matters for the holidays is to be with the people you truly want to be with. Sometimes you can’t make it and you feel bad because there is so much space between you, and sometimes you don’t make it because life is better when it’s lived apart.

This entire line of reasoning is a terrible thing for retailers who make their money on selling things, and for that I am sorry. But things aren’t want-ful much anymore. Sometimes they are need-ful, sometimes they are like-ful, but only in a rare set of instances is a thing actually want-ful. In some ways perhaps, the faucet services like Spotify and Netflix have done more damage to their subject media than they ever intended to. By making everything available, the value of that everything drops to zero. Just leave the faucet running, it doesn’t matter.

Paris Day 3

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LiveJournal 11/29/2003

Paris Day 3

St. Chapelle – Sunday 10am Paris

The bottom chapel of St. Chapelle is plain enough for the worshipers it was designed to satisfy. Scott and I both got our souvenir coins for 2 euros. We then walked around the lower chapel, taking in it’s staid and plain order. We then ascended a tight spiral staircase into the upper chapel. The first thing I laid eyes on was the fabulously wonderful stained glass windows! It’s absolutely the most awesome display of stained glass that I have ever laid my eyes on. This is the same work that was taken down for World War 2 to prevent damage. Even thought today is overcast and rainy in Paris there is enough beauty in this chapel to take my breath away each time I look up. This sight has about the same awesome presence that the Mona Lisa had in Le Louvre.

Le Cathedral de Notre Dame –

I just lit a candle for my paternal grandmother and added it to the rest of the candles. This cathedral defies easy description in that it steals the breath and leaves you in awe.

Le Tour Eiffel – 1:30pm

I am writing this entry from the first stage of the tower. I have scaled it, taken my pictures, bought my trinkets, and fed the resident pigeons that live in this tower. Being an acrophobe I can’t believe I actually did it!

Le Catacombs –

Hundreds of thousands of dead Frenchmen staring up at me from their bones, neatly stacked in a macabre manner. It made my skin prickle and it felt as if I was being smothered with a dullness on my thoughts and an overwhelming sense of depression from the sight of so much mortality.

Sacre Coeur – 6pm

The song on the Moulin Rouge soundtrack goes “The view from the Butte will make the wretched sigh…” and boy, did it ever! The view from the roof of Paris is absolutely fabulous!

On the dawn of the third day we decided to take on Ile de Cite, which was the place to find the bird exhibit, St. Chapelle, and Notre Dame.

Later on that day I stood beneath the Eiffel Tower and debated with Scott about whether I would be brave enough to scale it. When I was back in the states, before our trip to Paris I made a pact with myself that I would scale the Tour Eiffel just because I didn’t want any regrets on this trip – to let my fears override what could be a wonderful experience. Standing beneath the Eiffel I initially wanted to touch it, to make a physical contact with such a historical object. When I had walked down the promenade and under the tower I decided that my fears be damned and headed for the West Leg. I walked up, ordered my tickets to ride the elevator, and stood in the vestibule with Scott waiting for the Eiffel towers elevators to arrive on the ground level. During this time I cracked a joke that after this I should write “An Acrophobes Guide to Paris”. I was terrified in the elevator but once we were underway I was amazed at how quick and relatively painless the first escalation was. When we reached the first stage of the tower Scott walked along the outer edge and I made do with walking around the inner core area and we eventually stopped in the shops on the first level and bought our trinkets and had a snack, and took our pictures.

After the Eiffel came the Catacombs, where Paris interred it’s bursting graveyards in an underground Ossuary titled “The Empire of the Dead”. The entire journey required going down about 100 feet or so, traversing 1.7km of twisting tunnels under Paris, then up 100 feet and out to street level. The experience was very disquieting – seeing reminders of mortality in such profusion brought my usually airy thinking right to the ground. I felt as if my thinking was getting stuck in the mud, being shackled. The area is very well treated and it felt sacred and sanctified. There was a distinct lack of vermin in the tunnels which surprised me immensely, I suppose not even rats want to hang around this much assembled mortality. Both sides of the tunnel were edged with a wall of bones, femur bones mostly laid lengthwise along the ground with the knob where the knee is facing the people walking down the tunnels. Throughout the entirety of the Catacombs human skulls line the floor, half-way up, and the top of the pile of femur bones, making a three-lined wall. Behind all the legs were tossed odd shaped bones and broken bones, so hands, feet, ribcages, vertebrae and shattered assorted bits were tossed between the leg-wall and the rock-wall. Every 5 feet there was a bright incandescent light mounted on the wall, giving the entire area a very pale and dim illumination. There were several sections where the people who assembled the ossuary approached mortality with a sense of art and Christian grace – there were several sections where short squat crosses were cut from the stone of the walls and made into little altars and nearby the bone-wall had a series of skulls arranged in a similar cross pattern. It was both awesome in it’s sheer immensity and awesome in it’s depressiveness to be one of the most memorable things about my entire Paris trip.

Sacre Coeur –

The second time we went to Montmartre we decided to run up to the Butte of Montmartre and enter Sacre Coeur, a Catholic basilica. This church was more restrictive in it’s forbidding the use of photography and talking so we weren’t able to do much tourist appreciation while inside the church. Sacre Coeur shares an awesome ceiling with Notre Dame, only in Sacre Coeur, the ceiling is a huge frieze of Christ’s passion. We eventually left Sacre Coeur after being set upon by aggressive parishioners and a very particular building manager who instead of simply pointing to the exit we should have used pushed us instead. We left Sacre Coeur feeling that it was best left to the Christians inside and that while it was pretty inside it wasn’t really a great place to go. Next time we go to Paris I would feel dandy in forgetting Sacre Coeur – let the horde have it’s pleasure dome.

An example of the birds on sale at the Sunday Bird Exhibit on Ile de Cite in the heart of Paris. These little friends were moving so fast and I didn’t use a flash because it would have given them heart attacks, each picture came out a little blurry – especially for the more nervous birds in their cages. On the whole tho many of these birds, heck, even the surrounding wild pigeons were rather tamed and used to people so walking up and looking close didn’t cause a blur of feathers and a chattering of squawks and peeps.

This stained glass window was the upper part of a two-part picture. St. Chapelle has these windows, 12 on a side depicting the books and stories of the bible. The day was overcast so the windows were simply stunning, not as they are during a clear day – when they are notably mind-blowing.

Notre Dame. It was so vast and high that I had a seriously hard time getting the right frame for the pictures I wanted to take. Much like a lot of Paris, in order not to disturb the people in mass, flash photography was forbidden, but non-flash photography was allowed. I was musing to myself that Notre Dame is grand enough to restore anyones faith, be they Christian or Pagan – it was just that beautiful.

Here is a perfect example of the bone-wall in the Catacombs. Here you see all the legs and skulls, behind this wall were all the assorted bones that couldn’t be stacked properly. The best I can say is that this experience was stunning.

The Eiffel Tower. I got to the first stage and I’m glad I did, because I don’t think I could have lived with the regret if I chickened out on such a wonderful experience.

Proof positive that I was in the Eiffel Tower. 🙂 Here I was terrified of what was behind me and how high up I was but at least I was calmed by the fact (which they proudly display) that in gale-force (180km/h) winds, the Eiffel’s top only displaces 18cm. If we go back we hope to do it when there isn’t so many clouds and maybe with a better camera so we can catch the panorama of Paris that you can just make out behind me in this picture as I try to hold up the display case with my hand. 🙂

Paris Day 2

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LiveJournal 11/23/2003

Paris Day 2
Nov 15th 7:50 AM

Yesterday was a challenge due to the 6 hour difference in time zones but we were able to get to Le Louvre in time to really explore and get lost several times. We got a chance to see the most famous pieces of artwork on Earth, The Mona Lisa, The Winged Victory, and Aphrodite. The thing I wasn’t prepared for was how surprisingly small The Mona Lisa really is. For some reason I always thought it was larger. Yesterday we enjoyed our lunch at Le Louvre, Scott and I both enjoyed a chicken & mayo baguette and a bottle of water. For dinner we stopped at this wonderful little shop in the heart of the Latin Quarter, where we had a wonderful meal and got a chance to exercise our spoken french. Everyone here is either not-bothersome or very friendly. Our waiter was wonderful and definitely re-affirmed that if you scrabble at the french language that they will honor you and let you converse later in English for speed and accuracy. It just turned 8am and I think I just heard a giant set of bells ring announcing the new day. Paris functions like every other immense city, after midnight only the most awake Parisians are out and about, and the city gets wonderfully quiet at night.

Nov 15th 10:36 AM – Musee Picasso & The Marais

In The Marais, water runs in the streets constantly. I’m noticing that my ability to understand simple french is increasing. At the Musee Picasso I saw a picture of the artist himself and I’ve noticed that his art appears to be more playful than meant to be clear to the subject. In one piece “L’Arbre” I don’t see a tree, I see fish. I think how funny it is that this entire place was constructed because of Picasso’s unpaid tax lien to France. Pablo worked in wood, boxwood, pencil, oils, and photography. I can’t help but wonder what he could have accomplished with modern implements of art-making.

Walking through the downstairs sections of the museum, I couldn’t help but notice how dark Picasso’s work became right after the war. Everything he did got blacker, more gaunt, and more desolate – as if the war was shining through his art.

Nov 15th 12:25 PM – Musee Carnavale

Touring through the relics of old Parisian artwork and associated objects I’m moved by just how over-the-top the gaud is that surrounds nearly every object. While browsing the 16th and 17 century artifacts there really isn’t any surprise why the french fermented their revolution.

Nov 15 2:40 PM – Le Benjamin Cafe

Stopped for a bite to eat and were wondering what the rest of the day holds for us. Scott is busy searching out restaurants after we do the Pompidou Center.

Nov 15th – Centre Pompidou

Some of the weakest hand driers in existence are here. The center itself is physically vast however the 1st floor is composed primarily of functional components, the second and third level are off limits while the fourth level is open to the browsing public. The fourth level provides quite a stunning quantity of modern artwork and I was very pleased with what I saw. I have to admit that my suspicions that modern artists are merely collected and prized because they are insane, dead, and wholly inexplicable. Their artwork must have some deeper meaning, but since they are dead we can only assume that they were all plugged into some higher muse and that their works should be collected, displayed, and valued.

Nov 15th – Montmartre

Shortly after the Pompidou Center, Scott and I made a quick trip around the Hotel de Ville. Then we went to Montmartre to snap a picture of the Moulin Rouge. I actually prefer the reality of the Moulin Rouge as portrayed in the past to the reality of the 21st centuries shell. Scott and I couldn’t agree on where to eat so we left Montmartre and headed back to the left bank. We had dinner in this little Italian place across the street from our hotel and while we were eating Scott told me that “Le Chat Noir” was the famous restaurant and I made the mistake of thinking it was a cover for a nookie palace because it was between a peep show and a dildo shop. While in Montmartre several guys tried to convince us to check out their all-female sex revue. HA! Anyhow, we are sitting here refusing to let our Saturday night just evaporate in Paris.

– LATER –

Well, we certainly didn’t let the night evaporate! Instead we did the gay bar jaunt and ended up walking all over Paris. We ended up at Le Pied de Cochon where we had the best French Onion Soup either one of us has ever had. At about 5:30AM we decided to walk back to the hotel since the metro was closed. The hotel opened at 6:30AM so we toured our local neighborhood. We got in finally, showered, I rested my aching feet and then planned the upcoming day. On our late night return trip back to the left bank we noticed a solitary green balloon floating down the road with us, as we were approaching Pont Neuf. Later on it appeared to cross our path on purpose so we grabbed it and took it home with us. It suddenly started to take on great meaning so we left it in the hotel room as a symbol of good luck while traveling Paris. Scott was successful later on in properly untying the balloon and safely deflating it for travel, it came with us back to the United States.

Saturday marked the first time Montmartre “kicked our ass” as it were. It took us three visits before we could discover some of the hidden beauty in that part of town. The whole time we toured Paris I realized that my sneakers weren’t quite up to the task of all that walking and I was damn lucky to have packed an extra set of gel insoles to avoid the sheer agony of all that walking about with nothing more between my feet and the hard pavement (or sometimes cobblestones). As always, we captured pictures of our journeys through Paris…

statuary

This statuary was across the street from our hotel, on Rue des Ecoles. Neither Scott nor I could determine what it meant or what its purpose was for however I did notice that this particular statue never seemed to exist without flowers being constantly stuffed in crevices and cornices surrounding the statue itself.

jardin

After walking across the river to the right bank we started our walking tour of The Marais. The streets in The Marais are very windey and narrow, harking back to an older Paris, before the grand boulevards. As the street progressed all of a sudden we discovered this little garden stuffed in a courtyard between a host of buildings. While it looked open for public use we had a determination to get to the Musee Picasso, so all we did was snap these pictures of the natural scenes deep in the heart of Paris.

street

This is a perfect example of the narrow streets we were walking while in The Marais section. It was during the taking of this photograph that I realized that I can’t hold a candle to the awesome skill that is Parisian parallel parking.

arbre

This is “L’Arbre”. One of the first pieces of art in the Musee Picasso that we saw after walking in the front door. All art is subjective by design, the person who sees it brings their own set of perceptions to the work and can sometimes radically alter the entire design of what was intended. In this piece I see fish, Picasso, by the title, saw a tree. It was a tie between this one and “The Guitar” that caught my attention and became my favorite pieces of artwork in Musee Picasso.

guitar

This work, “The Guitar” really caught my attention. While browsing Picasso’s work I was actively engaged with thoughts about what the art might mean and trying to hack away at a little bit of art appreciation. I instantly started creating deeper meaning to this work the minute I laid eyes on it. I saw the whole of the guitar in the wooden rod behind the canvas, the canvas itself the physical representation of the anticipation of the sound the string will make and the string in perpetual displacement as the note that can be, but will never be. I also considered that maybe the canvas was a surface between the guitarist who hides behind his instrument and the music that the string makes when the pluck is allowed to release, painting sound on a canvas and linking the visual art here with the art of the music of a played guitar. Damn Picasso for dying on us all without explaining his work! 🙂

carnevalet

This is the Musee Carnevale, an exterior view. This is where Paris keeps many of it’s own pieces of antiquity and artwork. What gripped me most of all here was all the gaudy gilt antiques and opulence which clearly defined the surface between the 18th and 19th centuries in Paris and why France went through a revolution.

hedge

Near the end of the tour inside Musee Carnevale is it’s beautiful courtyard garden. The sculpted hedge is visually stunning and the buildings are covered in a wonderful creeping vine. If it was possible to sneak food into the Musee, this would make for a fabulous picnic spot.

staircase-scott

The Musee is like a lot of other Parisian art attractions, completely filled with art. This staircase is a perfect example of the art that surrounds you all the time while in Paris. Again, with many other Musee’s in the area, flash was verboten so many of my pictures had to be adjusted or amplified, which really trashes lots of the colors but brings out the finer details, such as Scott standing on the staircase.

Nook vs. Kindle vs. iPad

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I’ve been watching a lot of the press surrounding the brewing three-party war between Apple, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, and Amazon over the tablet space for the past few months. I was one of the first people to be in line two Aprils ago when the first generation iPad was released by Apple. I bought it without hesitation, knowing that it was exactly what I had wanted and dreamed of all this time – a much larger version of my beloved iPod Touch. As I’ve had some opportunity to use different devices I’ve discovered that at least for me, each device that I own serves a particular purpose. Here’s a handy list of the device and what I use it for:

  • 24” iMac – General computing, work and writing.
  • 13” MacBook Laptop – General computing, work and writing.
  • First-Generation iPad – Convenience browsing, game playing, reading comic books, cookbooks
  • iPhone 4 carried by Verizon – Telephone and 3G data access with the HotSpot feature. I use it for mobile data access, taking pictures, scanning prices and comparing retailers and writing down notes and ideas for my writing. Sometimes inspiration strikes when you least expect it. Also enables me to play Foursquare, as well as many other location-aware games and activities that my family has come to enjoy.
  • iPod Nano 6th Generation – Contains my entire music library and is the device I use when I want to play music. Also has a very useful pedometer that I use to track my steps and calories burned while I work.
  • Nook SImple Touch – Contains a giant book library and is the device I use when I want to read.

I have to be very clear here, I am an Apple fanboy. If Apple makes it, I’ll use it. Over the years all the Apple devices have worked exceptionally well and over time they have gotten better. I still love using my iPad and my iPhone. There are four devices that I simply cannot go without whenever I travel, my iPad, my iPhone, my iPod, and my Nook. The iMac is a work-only machine and I leave it at work all the time. My MacBook I use from time to time, but I actually prefer to work on my iPad to my MacBook unless I’m writing something very long. The iPod Nano fits in my pocket so easily, or clips to my shirt so well that carrying it everywhere I go is a non-issue. My phone keeps me in touch, mostly over SMS and iMessage, and secondarily by the voice service itself. The majority of this post isn’t about these other items that I find indispensable, but rather about the tablets.

I can speak for the iPad and the Nook Simple Touch. I was absolutely sold over the iPad, especially when it comes to reading comic books. As for reading “regular” books, the glossy display and backlit nature of the iPad does start to wear down the eyes plus the native book app in the iPad, which is iBooks, doesn’t support the font I like the most, which is Helvetica Neue. I was a little dubious about the Nook Simple Touch at first, but the device won me over with it’s eInk display and it’s expandability via a microSD card port on the upper right corner of the device. The Nook Simple Touch has a lot of really compelling features going for it which made it’s purchase a sure thing. Here’s a list of what I like about my Nook Simple Touch:

  • Size – It’s perfectly sized. It feels a lot like a paperback book, this size really is a sweet-spot for me because this device can fit in my front and rear pants pockets when I want to carry it without having it in my hands and it can be easily stowed anyplace a book can go.
  • Weight – It’s surprisingly lightweight. Even with the microSD card, which only adds maybe a gram or two to it’s total weight, the whole package is very light.
  • Textured and Contoured Back – The rear of the Nook Simple Touch is contoured to fit my hands and rubberized so that I can keep a nice grip on it without having to strain.
  • Interface – Ever since the 1.1.0 Nook Firmware upgrade the device has been surprisingly quick on display updates and the touch sensitivity has also been tuned and I notice it. You can either use the side navigation buttons or a tap or swipe on the display to advance pages. It has a built in dictionary and wifi, with some social features but so far I haven’t explored those enough to report on them.
  • Compatibility – The Nook Simple Touch (as well as the iPad) both can open and display ePub format books. There is a special place in my heart for the ePub format. it’s open, it’s well understood, and there are tools like Calibre which I can use to convert PDF or DOC or MOBI format (actually there are a huge number of formats that Calibre understands) and convert them all to ePub. I bought a 4GB microSD card and was able to store thousands of free eBooks on my Nook without even a second glance. I know the books will work, I know they are configurable, it’s perfect for me.

So now I’m witnessing this war brewing between Apple, B&N and Amazon. I’ve never really used a Kindle, but I assume it’s most like the Nook devices. The latest device to be released, and is shipping now is the Amazon Fire. I’ve heard a lot of people going on about how the Fire may be Amazon’s answer to Barnes & Nobles Nook Tablet and may compete with the iPad. Out of curiosity I went to Amazon’s site where they describe the new Kindle Fire and as I was reading along several alarm bells went off in my head all at the same time. Here’s a list of issues I have with the Kindle Fire, even before laying my hands on it:

  • Eight hours of battery life – Even my iPad can beat this rating. I will hand it to the Kindle Fire that they were able to squeeze such a battery lifetime out of a device that was smaller than the iPad, but when you are watching video I will bet real money that end users never see these eight hours of battery life, let alone their hedged-bet of seven and a half for video playback.
  • Incompatible with ePub format! – This one took my breath away! Any device should at least be compatible with the ePub format, but Amazon has elected to support their own format called AZW instead. There are other formats supported, but ePub is not on that list and my library is configured to support ePub and I prefer it that way.
  • Prime Membership – If you want the most bang for your Kindle Fire buck, you’ll have to spring for an $80 a year Prime Membership. This could be useful if you do a lot of Amazon.com purchases but I don’t. It’s a little creepy that Amazon sells you a device and then charges you over and over again to use it fully. Feels more like a cash-grab and/or a gyp to me.

I don’t really believe the Kindle Fire will pose much of a risk to the iPad and iPad 2 class devices. I haven’t gotten a chance to hold either of the more relevant competitors devices in my hands to give it a right and thorough review. Based on just the description from the manufacturers alone, and even considering the Nook Tablet costs $50 more than the Amazon offering I can say just from the start that the B&N device is the one to get. Better battery life, better storage, better hardware, ePub format, that’s the one that I would get if I didn’t already have an iPad.

Keep your eyes peeled on this blog. I doubt I’ll ever get my hands on a Kindle Fire, but I’m pretty sure I’ll eventually be able to review the Nook Tablet.