What was 2008 about?
Dec. 8th, 2008 05:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanIs it too early to look back at 2008 and try to figure out what it was all about? Nah, let's take a look at the first text posts of each month and see if it adds up to something.
January: Michael Pollan, the man who made many people think about the food they eat with The Omnivore's Dilemma continues to contribute to the collective consciousness as regards to the modern American diet with a new book In Defense of Food. I heard his seven word summation of what a proper diet should consist of on NPR this morning: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
February: I haven't posted too much since I've been back from vacation. I'm kind of depressed in general; I think the vacation had the opposite of its intended effect.
March: Obnoxious jackass to dangerous animal ratio still unbalanced at San Francisco zoo. Many zoo patrons just want the animals to wake up, or pay attention to them. I say, an animal that is trying to kill you is paying attention to you. Are you surprised that the person in this story is a young man?
April: The kid discovered, through her internet connections, a love song written from the point of view of a supervillain toward one of his captives ("Skullcrusher mountain"). The lyrics "I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you / But I get the feeling that you don't like it / What's with all the screaming?" are pretty darn charming. A little investigation shows the singer-songwriter to be Jonathan Coulton, who has staked out some musical territory between Flight of the Conchords and They Might Be Giants.
May: This is a pretty cool tool. You just type in an address, and it tells you how "walkable" the area is, in terms of how close different services and stores are. My neighborhood scored an 86, which is pretty good but makes me wonder what neighborhood could possibly get a 100. Maybe if you lived in a shopping mall, or in certain parts of New York.
June: I haven't posted about any controversial topics lately, but I just read an article about seal hunting (best headline ever: Cute, cuddly, edible) that got me interested. I've read posts from people on my friends list from people that were passionate about the topic, from pro and con perspectives. I'd love to hear discussion here, but let's keep it civil and above the belt, okay?
July: One of the lj communities I belong to was created/is maintained by Russian speakers. I translated the profile page using Babelfish, to see the community rules. This is what I found.
August: I again another voice closed this time because my computer while on my last day of my vacation this screen just stopped working just sort of texted it out and whispers(?) by callers and it was like it's going to the matrix except nothing cool happened after that I just couldn't use my computer and so anyways I've got another appointment at the Apple store to see what they can do about it probably out pay them as much as that would cost to buy new Dell to have them fixed whatever magic chips that is that makes the screen work or I left this thing that maybe they screwed up last time they did $800 worth of work on the damn thing and maybe put in a chip in wrong or maybe I'll be open it up and looked at it.
September: I celebrated the long Stupid Day weekend by going out every night and having fun. Haven't done that in ages. I'm left wanting another weekend to lay around the house with the wife.
October: My old friend Kelly Link has a new collection of "weirdly wonderful" short stories for young adults called Pretty Monsters, and she's reading from it at the Harvard Book Store tomorrow evening at 7. If you don't know her work, but are a fan of Neil Gaiman, magic realism, or "the grotesque and the ethereal," you should definitely check it out.
November: I'm no longer a member of wtf_nature (I found the community attitude to be irritatingly adolescent), but I bet someone there has posted about the Calyptra moth. Assuming this wikipedia entry is true and not some kind of hallowe'en season hoax, this is a very interesting animal that I can't believe I just learned about.
December: Today was one of those freakishly warm winter days where you see people jogging in winter coats and shorts. Fifty five degrees on the first of December is a very different feeling from 55 in July. It was a nice change from the sleet I experienced when I visited my dad.
Most surprising to me is the lack of political content. I seem to remember writing something about the election once or twice. It's nice to see the utter gibberish of the autotranslate preserved, and to pinpoint the precise moment I became a Jonathan Coulton fan--has it only been 8 months? Disappointed to see me twice moaning at the end of a stretch of time off that I want more, but good to see a few posts that are actually about nature and urban nature.
January: Michael Pollan, the man who made many people think about the food they eat with The Omnivore's Dilemma continues to contribute to the collective consciousness as regards to the modern American diet with a new book In Defense of Food. I heard his seven word summation of what a proper diet should consist of on NPR this morning: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
February: I haven't posted too much since I've been back from vacation. I'm kind of depressed in general; I think the vacation had the opposite of its intended effect.
March: Obnoxious jackass to dangerous animal ratio still unbalanced at San Francisco zoo. Many zoo patrons just want the animals to wake up, or pay attention to them. I say, an animal that is trying to kill you is paying attention to you. Are you surprised that the person in this story is a young man?
April: The kid discovered, through her internet connections, a love song written from the point of view of a supervillain toward one of his captives ("Skullcrusher mountain"). The lyrics "I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you / But I get the feeling that you don't like it / What's with all the screaming?" are pretty darn charming. A little investigation shows the singer-songwriter to be Jonathan Coulton, who has staked out some musical territory between Flight of the Conchords and They Might Be Giants.
May: This is a pretty cool tool. You just type in an address, and it tells you how "walkable" the area is, in terms of how close different services and stores are. My neighborhood scored an 86, which is pretty good but makes me wonder what neighborhood could possibly get a 100. Maybe if you lived in a shopping mall, or in certain parts of New York.
June: I haven't posted about any controversial topics lately, but I just read an article about seal hunting (best headline ever: Cute, cuddly, edible) that got me interested. I've read posts from people on my friends list from people that were passionate about the topic, from pro and con perspectives. I'd love to hear discussion here, but let's keep it civil and above the belt, okay?
July: One of the lj communities I belong to was created/is maintained by Russian speakers. I translated the profile page using Babelfish, to see the community rules. This is what I found.
August: I again another voice closed this time because my computer while on my last day of my vacation this screen just stopped working just sort of texted it out and whispers(?) by callers and it was like it's going to the matrix except nothing cool happened after that I just couldn't use my computer and so anyways I've got another appointment at the Apple store to see what they can do about it probably out pay them as much as that would cost to buy new Dell to have them fixed whatever magic chips that is that makes the screen work or I left this thing that maybe they screwed up last time they did $800 worth of work on the damn thing and maybe put in a chip in wrong or maybe I'll be open it up and looked at it.
September: I celebrated the long Stupid Day weekend by going out every night and having fun. Haven't done that in ages. I'm left wanting another weekend to lay around the house with the wife.
October: My old friend Kelly Link has a new collection of "weirdly wonderful" short stories for young adults called Pretty Monsters, and she's reading from it at the Harvard Book Store tomorrow evening at 7. If you don't know her work, but are a fan of Neil Gaiman, magic realism, or "the grotesque and the ethereal," you should definitely check it out.
November: I'm no longer a member of wtf_nature (I found the community attitude to be irritatingly adolescent), but I bet someone there has posted about the Calyptra moth. Assuming this wikipedia entry is true and not some kind of hallowe'en season hoax, this is a very interesting animal that I can't believe I just learned about.
December: Today was one of those freakishly warm winter days where you see people jogging in winter coats and shorts. Fifty five degrees on the first of December is a very different feeling from 55 in July. It was a nice change from the sleet I experienced when I visited my dad.
Most surprising to me is the lack of political content. I seem to remember writing something about the election once or twice. It's nice to see the utter gibberish of the autotranslate preserved, and to pinpoint the precise moment I became a Jonathan Coulton fan--has it only been 8 months? Disappointed to see me twice moaning at the end of a stretch of time off that I want more, but good to see a few posts that are actually about nature and urban nature.
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Date: 2008-12-09 02:30 am (UTC)