I plead to the manufacturers of Christmas lights to remove the option for blinking or chasing lights.

This is America, and people should have choices.  But as was pointed out in Spider-man, with great power comes great responsibility.  And Americans have abused the power of having the option to have blinking or chasing Christmas lights.

I love a well-decorated house at Christmas.  I love the neighborhoods that get together and do something pretty.  It makes the season feel just that much more special — until someone thinks to themselves, “Hey, let’s mix it up a bit this year.  Let’s make our lights BLINK!”

And that is when things go terribly awry in the tacky direction.  Christmas should be a time of attractive, pretty decorations — not a time to decorate in a way that would make a Las Vegas casino owner think twice.

There’s a house down the block that is in desperate need of Christmas styling consulting.  Now, I give them credit for trying.  But not too much credit.  They have a fence in the front yard, and the fence is covered in lights.  Done right, it can look all candy-cane-like.  Awesome.  But not this house.  This house just has these strings of lights haphazardly put up — and to make matters worse, one section is blinking, one section is steady light, and one section is chasing.  It’s upsetting.  I think we have a neighborhood watch — we should report this as a crime.

This holiday season, I encourage everyone to go out and do something in the spirit of the holidays that makes you feel good about yourself and makes others feel good too.  This does not include implementing blinking Christmas lights outside your home.

Light manufacturers, help us all out here.  It’s time to retire the option for the blinking lights.

Me, I chose boxers, for the most part.  I’ll sometimes do boxer briefs, or even briefs, for athletic activity — but even then I often don’t bother and just hope for the best while playing basketball in boxers.

I’m happy with my choice.  Which brings me to ladies.

Ladies have underwear choices too, but their choices are granny panties, thongs, and standard panties.  At least, I think those are the choices; I’m no expert.  And I’m at work right now so I’m not going to load Victoria’s Secret for reference purposes.

All of their choices are form fitting, though, which I’m cool with.  But it’s bantied about as common knowledge that women will often wear a boyfriend’s boxers and tshirt to sleep in, because it’s more comfortable.  So that brings me to my question: why don’t women wear boxers?

I realize that anatomically, men and women are different.  I realize that one reason men wear boxers is medical — it’s better for the troops to have their barracks a bit away from the warm body.  And I realize women can have chafing issues — or so commercials for personal daily lubricants have told me.

But I’m still not totally clear on why boxers aren’t a choice in women’s everyday underwear decision-making.  Yes, their clothes are more form fitting, leaving more visible panty lines, or boxer lines.  But women don’t always wear form fitting clothes.  But they do remain committed to the panty.

Is there some medical reason here that I’m just not aware of, as an ignorant male?  Is it a tradition thing?  For my money, if women want to wear boxers, society shouldn’t tell them no.

1. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.
2. a. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium. b. The study of these activities. c. The product of these activities; human works of beauty considered as a group.
3. High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value.

I like the first definition.  It’s not overly dictionary-ish and makes you stop and contemplate.  I think it might be overly vague, though — “supplementing” the work of nature could mean anything.  As an example right off the top of my head, nature sends me my shoelaces untied — well, more specifically, the Nike corporation does — essentially string that is straight.  Am I supplementing the work by tying my shoelaces?  Is an act so common (but decidedly human) as tying shoelaces an art?

I decided to try to come up with my own definition of art.  Feel free to critique it:

Art is the creation of an inanimate being that begets more art.

I’m sure your immediate reaction is “You can’t define the word ‘art’ with ‘art’, you nimrod!  Weren’t you an English major? And how can a being be inanimate?  Isn’t that a contradiction?  You’re a moron.”  And you’d probably be right on all counts.

But, I was also a Computer Science major!  And we computer science majors realize the import and beauty of recursion.  We don’t have circular arguments, we have recursion.  Work with me here.

Many times that I see something that has been well crafted, be it by nature or by man, I feel an urge to try to create my own work.  Not necessarily a derivative or related work, just a desire to use my own hands and mind and create.  You could argue that this desire reflects back on the American Heritage definition, but I’d counter that the desire is one of inspiration, not imitation or augmentation.

For example, when I witness language manipulated in a brilliant way in a movie, or a play, or a book (and language is a decidedly human construction, not nature), I’m struck by a want to integrate said line into a song.  Songs are reflective of nature in their intervals and harmonies, and words can describe nature, but are words themselves the work of nature?  I’d say no.  And their imitation is grounded in the desire to be as moving, not in an attempt to “imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract.”

The recursion then works — because in theory, the art created by the inspiration of other art will inspire more works, ad infinitum.

The other half of my definition categorizes art as an “inanimate being.”  Another contradiction that makes perfect sense to me — art doesn’t breathe, isn’t cellular, etc. but still evolves, changes, and adapts as living beings do.  If you assume that art does inspire art, it even reproduces as beings do.

I’m sure if you tried hard enough, you could easily poke holes in my definition — but I rather like it.  I’d love to hear what you all think!

• I have this burning desire to go to a McDonald’s drive-in and in my best Bono impression, order a “Sundae, Bloody Sundae.”
• Driving in to work today, I saw a man in a BMW playing the harmonica while driving on US75.
• I can’t stand Barry Bonds.
• I’m rooting for George Mason to go all the way, no matter how badly they messed up my bracket.
• The Mavericks need to get all their players healthy.
• Google Finance is awesome.  If only it could help SYMC get back to what I paid for it.
• I hate feeling like I’m being left out — and I have a feeling the MySpace train has passed me by.  I’m on Facebook!  How many social network websites to have to be on?
• I’m addicted to Linez.
• Whoa.  That’s a lot of video games.

• Our first case study will be an awesome guy that I’ve known for a while, I’ll call him “Andy Kaufmann.”  Andy is currently single.  He has received one Valentine’s card so far, from a nice mother of two named Cindy that is in the next cube.  The card had a lollipop attached to it.  At first, thought the “from” field said “Andy” — which would have made for a disappointing Valentine’s Day — the only Valentine coming from a dude.  Luckily, it was pointed out to him that “Andy” actually said “Cindy,” meaning that his Valentine and lollipop came from an actual female.  Outside of that, his day is going as most days do, with the perk of having found a leftover packet of hot chocolate mix in the break room.  The downside of this perk is that he just burnt his tongue trying to enjoy this hot chocolate.
• In a study of contrasts, a different coworker lady had flowers delivered to her cube from her boyfriend.  Oh yeah, and he also got her a Mercedes.  Not a base model, either — a $65,000 Mercedes.  That might be a little cooler than a lollipop.
• I talked to one of my buddies on the phone this morning on my way into the gym, and, for his protection (and it will soon become obvious why he needs protection), we will refer to him here only as “Snike Myder.”  When I asked him if he and his ladyfriend had big plans for Valentine’s Day, he responded, “crap, that’s today?”  But then he shrugged it off.  I have a feeling he’ll be playing Civilzation III tonight.
• Talking to a buddy at the gym, he was pretty excited about being single today.  “I don’t have to buy some chick some expensive gift just because the Hallmark Company told me to.  I just have to go down to any local bar or club, have enough money to buy a girl a drink, listen to her talk about being single for a little while, and then go home with her.  Chicks want to get some tonight.  Best day of the year!”
• Another co-worker is making his wife a mix CD.  I don’t think he should mention the Mercedes to her. 

All in all, Valentine’s Day is a great day for people watching.  Keep your eyes open today, and if you see any cool stories, share them here!

That’s a longstanding complaint, and it’s probably true globally. But here’s what really baffles me:

Why do some people turn their windshield wipers on high during a drizzle?

I’m the type of driver that turns on my wipers at the last possible moment — I hate the sound of windshield wipers on overly-dry glass, so I’m more apt to wait too long to turn them on a slow intermittent setting rather than turn them on too early. During yesterday’s drizzle, my slowest intermittent speed was too fast — so I just did a single manual swipe every now and then.

In contrast, there are drivers that during this driving rainstorm of a drizzle had their windshield wipers set to full-speed fast as a blur wiping. Doesn’t this drive them crazy?

I suppose its possible that these people (I think I counted three, but I wasn’t really counting) have windshield wiper problems, and there’s only one speed available. I’ve never seen or heard of that happening, but perhaps it’s possible. Even if it were possible, though, I’d still much rather have to use my wipers manually than listen to the wipers rub furiously on dry windshield for my entire commute to work.

If you’re a super-fast windshield wiper in slow rain driver, please explain to me how you can drive without that driving you crazy. Thank you.

• Oatmeal cookies are totally underrated
  
• Raisins in cookies are totally overrated, though
  

Turns out several people agree with me. Why is it so dang hard to get an oatmeal cookie that isn’t loaded up with raisins? I don’t like the raisin taste and I don’t like the raisin texture. But I love the oatmeal cookie. And the oatmeal chocolate chip combo is a true taste explosion.

At what point did the raisin become inexorably intertwined with oatmeal, and vice-versa? Can we begin taking steps to break this bond? Society will be the better for it.

Going to work, I drive north — so I was driving into the wind, and averaged about 16 miles per gallon for the trip to work. Going home, I drove south — with the wind, and averaged about 23 miles per gallon. Traffic was more or less the same each way — possibly a little heavier going home.

That’s a huge difference. So here’s what I’m thinking: let’s go back in time several hundred years and take better advantage of our friend Mr. Wind. How? With sails.

Now, I’m not talking huge, giant sails that would go bumping into overpasses. I’m talking small, subtle, yet still effective in a kite-like way sails. When you want to look cool, you could hit a button on the car to fold the sails in, sort of like on a convertable. When you want to try to harness the wind, you hit the button, the sail goes out, the car adjusts the mast to go with the wind as best it can. I don’t actually know how masts and stuff work, I’m a city boy. But I’m sure the idea will work. Brilliant, yes?

For example:
- “Careful! I don’t do well under pressure.”
- “When I grow up, I want to be a waterbed.”
- “Hello.”
- “Hurry up! I’m burning up in here!”

I found this to be brilliant. My favorite is the waterbed one — if you look at the little packet, it really does look like a miniature waterbed.

At any rate, I want to be the guy that writes the clever little things on Taco Bell hot sauce packets. Of course, I wouldn’t continue with the status quo — I’d make some changes. For instance, all three of the types of hot sauce (mild, hot, really hot) have sayings picked from the same pool. So, both a mild packet or a hot packet had “Hurry up! I’m burning up in here!” on them. Really, that’s not appropriate for a mild packet. Those aren’t spicy at all. If I were in charge, there would be three pools of statements to draw from, so that any packet could want to grow up to be a waterbed but only really hot packets could have the burning up statement.

If not me, someone needs to make this happen.

But when I was on Greenville, a few blocks south of Mockingbird, I saw quite an image — one that will haunt me for quite a while, I will imagine. It was a man, I’d say in his late 50s or early 60s, jogging. Now, I hope when I’m in my 50s I can still walk, let alone go jogging. For that matter, I quite respect people with the mental drive to get up at 7am to go jogging at any age. But this particular man was wearing blue tight shorts that were about… a foot long, at best. And a pair of shoes. And that’s it. To make matters worse, he clearly forgot to shave his back this month. It was tough times.

I do want to reiterate that I’m cool with joggers. And I’m cool with people with hairy backs — you can’t choose where your hair grows. Where I get a bit weirded out is when you wear next to nothing in public and show off almost all of your body parts and those parts’ hair for rush hour traffic.

• At work, the industrial strength spam filters keep me from getting hardly any spam whatsoever. But at home, and with an address that I don’t really hide from the world (andrewk@lunaradventures.net — email me. See? Not hiding it!), I get a ton of spam.
  
  What’s most annoying, though, isn’t just the high volume of spam. It’s that I get boring spam. Pretty much all of my spam can be plopped into two buckets: phishing scams, where someone thinks I’m dumb enough to give them my username and password to important accounts by pretending to be PayPal or whatever; and foreign spam.
  
  At least with regular spam, as I delete them I can chuckle at what lamebrained scams someone is trying to pull on me. Donate money to Joe Random Ruler of Country I’ve Never Heard Of and I’ll get a 500% return on my donation, increase the size of my penis, have more hair. (For the record, I need neither of those two products. OK, so I’m starting to lose my hair. But that’s a story for another day.) But phishing scams aren’t fun to read, they’re just boring fake notices. And foreign spam, always in an Eastern language I can’t even guess at the meaning of, is just as boring. I long for the glory days of spam.
  
  
• Why is it so trendy to merge two movie stars’ names into one when they’re dating? This is stupid. Bennifer was OK at first because it sounded like this two-headed monster from the deep. “ROOOOAR, I AM BENNIFER!” But the latest is “Brangelina”, a melding of Brad Pitt and Angelie Jolie. For the record, Brad, I think you did better with Jennifer Aniston. (I have it on good authority that Brad Pitt reads this very blog. OK, that might be a lie.)
  
  Anyway, Brangelina doesn’t sound like a monster, and it doesn’t flow off the tongue. It’s just mushing two words together. There are very good reasons to do this, etymologically, when there is a need for a word that does not exist that contains two similar yet disparate objects. But there’s no reason to go inventing words like “Brangelina” to discuss a celebrity relationship. I feel strongly about this.

UPDATE: (06/20/2005) STOP. THE. COMBO. NICKNAMES!!!