October 28, 2003

Netflix Is Starting to Suck

I've been a Netflix subscriber for almost two years and have recommended it to all my pals. Lately, though, their service has disappointed me.

When I first subscribed under the "three movies out" plan, the turnaround time was consistently prompt. If I put a movie in the mail one day, the very next day they received and acknowledged the return and shipped the next movie in my queue. That meant that I received the next movie exactly two days after sending back the previous one. They even processed my queue on Saturdays!

This summer, the turnaround time has slowed considerably. Now they never process my queue on Saturdays. It takes up to two days for them to acknowledge a returned movie, then another one to three days to send me the next one. Aside from being mildly frustrating to a cinephile, this also reduces the value of their service.

Netflix charges a flat monthly fee: $19.95 for the "three movies out" plan, and $29.95 for my current plan, "five movies out". The price per movie (PPM) depends on (a) the rate at which you watch the movies and (b) the rate at which Netflix processes your queue.

I did some math to find out how much more expensive Netflix has become since they've become slack. Assuming that I watch all movies the night they arrive and return all of them the next day (the best case, though obviously not realistic), here's how it works out:

Plan             Old PPM          New PPM
3 movies out      $.78           $1.02-1.28
5 movies out      $.69           $.92-1.15

Since I have other hobbies and even some friends, the PPM is actually a little higher (and still pretty cheap), but you can still see that it's increased as a result of the decline in service.

Now I'm considering switching to Greencine, a similar service based here in SF. Their rates are identical to those of Netflix, and they have some great features that Netflix lacks: many more esoteric titles, user profiles, discussion groups, user reviews, and local events. Those alone might be enough to lure me away from Netflix, even though I haven't yet determined whether Greencine is more prompt.

October 24, 2003

Sifakas for Sale!

Walgreen's has plush sifakas--only $5.99 or two for $10! As an unpaid spokesbeing, I wholly endorse this product.

October 22, 2003

Intruder Alert

One of the neighbor-cats has infiltrated our apartment and peed on my yoga mat. Suspects include Buster, Jack, and "Bad Kitty". Sasha complains about the various intruders, especially when one of them has peed, but doesn't chase them away.

October 21, 2003

Dinner in Oakland

Periodically, Erin and Aram throw a fabulous dinner party. Last night's menu featured meatballs that taste like doughnuts, thanks to the addition of chopped dates. Krispy Kreme's business will suffer now that we know how to make a meaty equivalent! From left to right in the second image below are Sylvia, Erin, Eden, me, Renee, Colby, Mindy, Alicia, and Aubrey, with Aram behind the camera.

We also performed some consumer testing on a fancy vaporizer I received for free from a generous employee of the Vapir company, with disappointing results--surprising, since this is a $400 model. It's very high-tech, though, so it's possible we simply didn't understand how to operate its Trek-like computerized interface. For now, I'll continue to recommend the Vapor Doc, which looks like a simple wooden box, operates with only a switch and a knob, and costs less than half as much as the Vapir.

October 20, 2003

LA LA LA

Shout out to my LA peeps! I had a leisurely weekend down south, where it's way too hot and there's too much damn traffic. There are, however, some great things about LA: cheaper rent, yummy restaurants, classy clubs, historic architecture, the occasional celebrity, and of course plenty of movies. (It's official: Kill Bill is a kickass movie, easily on par with Tarantino's earlier Pulp Fiction.) Those who've moved down there from SF swear they don't miss the Arctic breeze, the fog, the astronomical rents, the complete absence of parking, or the techno-hippies. Whatever! I love it up here.

October 17, 2003

Tyrannosaurus Update!

The Tyrannosaurus alert level is now ORANGE:

Unmated and obviously angry female tyrannosaurs have been sighted running amok during late afternoons in the Duboce Triangle. The SFCTC (San Francisco Center for Tyranosaurus [sic] Control) warns handsome gay males and even handsomer lesbians wearing phermone [sic] colognes to stay clear of Noe and Castro Streets to avoid the wrathful attentions of frustrated females in heat. Unless you are into that kind of thing.

Warning: Status will switch to red alert in the Duboce Triangle sometime in late October when egg clutches hatch, and parents are feeding hungry nestlings.

October 17, 2003

The Art of Arnoldry

This was at the corner of Oak and Webster. The complete quote is as follows:

I was always dreaming of very powerful people, dictators and things like that. I was just always impressed by people who could be remembered for hundreds of years.

I'm not sure there's anything wrong with being impressed by power, even evil power. Power is impressive, even in forms we'd rather avoid. I feel similarly about enormous fires; they're gorgeously awesome, though horrifically destructive.

There are lots of other things I don't like about Governor Arnold, but I don't think he's a villain for being impressed by villains. Cool illustration, anyway!

October 15, 2003

Jimi Hendrix: The Action Figure

My office building is six stories and includes, in addition to my company and a few others, the headquarters of The Gap. The Gap is staffed by 100% cotton khaki-clad Marina district yuppies, while my group consists mainly of goofy engineers in tshirts and worn-out jeans. The behavior of Gap employees in the building elevator is a never-ending source of amusing anecdotes among our engineers. Gap employees say the darndest things!

Our elevators have little video screens which display a rotating selection of current headlines, weather forecasts, and entertaining factoids. As I and other passengers watched the monitor, two Gap employees had this exchange:

Gapgirl: It says there's going to be an action figure of Jimi Hendrix. That's weird. Who would be the demographic for that?

Gapboy: Yeah, cause kids that age, who play with action figures, probably don't know who Jimi Hendrix is....

Suddenly I realized there's a whole world of young grownups who do not collect action figures and play video games, and I don't seem to be part of their world. It's not that I collect action figures per se, but I've been known to own one or two cool ones as an adult, notably The Tick. Is there something wrong with that? And most of the boys I know wouldn't think twice about buying action figures. Is that why I keep calling them "boys" and not "men"?

October 15, 2003

This Movie Rules

Bubba Ho-Tep, starring the comically brilliant Bruce Campbell, rules. It turns out that Elvis is alive, and languishing in an obscure rest home. His best pal and fellow resident is John F Kennedy, a black man who claims his shotgun-muddled brains were replaced with sand as part of the coverup. "I'm thinking with sand," he says.

These two are almost undead, and their rest home is plagued by another kind of undead, an Egyptian mummy wearing urban cowboy duds. He's "Bubba Ho-Tep", and his entourage consists of chocolate-loving scarabs "the size of a peanut butter and banana sandwich". The mummy sucks the souls of the elderly out of their assholes, and much is made of his disrespectful pooping-out of human soul-residue into the visitors' toilet. The mummy also vandalizes the restroom stall with rude hieroglyphic phrases such as "Cleopatra does the nasty". He must be stopped.

The final showdown kicks ass Evil Dead-style. Elvis and JFK are both dressed in their snazziest duds from their respective heydays, Elvis stumping along behind a walker in a sequined leisure suit, JFK regal in his business suit and electric wheelchair.

The line "Thank you very much" is almostoverused, but not quite. Nobody could have pulled it off gracefully except Bruce Campbell, which also goes for the line, "Ask not what your rest home can do for you, but what you can do for your rest home". Cult movie fans must see this one.

October 15, 2003

This Movie Sucks

Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht is a very, very bad movie. Don't confuse it with the original 1922 Nosferatu, a horror classic much creepier than the 1931 Tod Browning movie Dracula.

Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht is boring and ridiculous. Harker is married to Lucy instead of Mina, for no discernible reason. As Lucy, Isabelle Adjani has apparently never acted before in her life; she glides around in white dresses and goth makeup, looking bug-eyed and making stiff gestures with her hands. The actors' method of making the dialog seem dramatic is to strike stilted poses, speak urgently yet slowly, and give each other piercing looks.

Meanwhile Klaus Kinski as the vampire is super-creepy, but kinda gay and stilted like the other characters. The ending is silly: Lucy saves the day by lying supine and allowing the vampire to molest her while sucking her blood. This is so much more enthralling than regular blood-sucking that he forgets to go home before sunrise. The end.

The silly part is that Lucy considered this strategy briefly and discarded it, then waited for hundreds more to die before she finally implemented her brilliant and heroic plan... to lie down. Remember, kids: lying down while looking pretty is the surest way to kill a vampire.

The DVD version of this movie has the further disadvantage of being dubbed in English, so it's possible that the original dialog wasn't quite as lame. Netflix claims it also has a German voice track with English subtitles, but that didn't appear to exist in the menus.

October 15, 2003

Bite The Water

This is my cat-friend, Sasha. He's decided that the best drinking water comes from our drippy bathtub faucet. He watches the drip for a couple of minutes, licks the drops off of the faucet as they slide down the metal, then stares at the drip some more. Between the licking and the staring, this can easily take ten minutes or more.

Today he tested the strategy of noisily snapping his jaws at the mid-air stream of water-drops, hoping to bite off a gulp of water. He actually complained to me when this proved inefficient. He believes that water ought to be more biteable.

October 13, 2003

Nerd Shirt

People keep nagging me to take pictures of the clothes I make. Here's the Nerd Shirt that I made last night! You see, my favorite vintage Nerd Shirt was becoming ratty, so I cut it apart. From the pieces, I made a pattern. From the pattern, I made a new Nerd Shirt. And now I can make as many Nerd Shirts as I like! That'll probably be quite a few Nerd Shirts. This is the first shirt I've ever made with a proper collar and a zipper, so I'm fairly proud of myself.

Note: Shirt in JPEG may be shinier than it appears.

October 9, 2003

Paki Package

In case you're wondering: A medium-sized, 22-pound box, shipped by USPS "global economy" from San Francisco, California to Lahore, Pakistan, costs $65 and takes six and a half months. We thought we were allowing sufficient lead time by mailing it three weeks before our pal Faried's birthday!

Anyway, at last The Box has arrived, and Faried, a.k.a. "grunge", says:

<grunge> maybe it's because it took so long to get here, i forgot what
<grunge> the contents were going to be. it was all amazing!

The package had been opened by Pakistani customs, but Faried happily reports that the original inventory is intact: 20 books, five CDs, three comic books, two magazines, a flip book, a cap, a set of cat-themed coasters, a bottle of Torani root beer syrup, Penguin mints, Bazooka bubble gum, postcards, sci-fi-themed magnets, stickers, little plastic monkeys, and a birthday card. The only casualities were a packet of chocolate-covered coffee beans (crushed and ant-infested on arrival) and a couple of plastic monkey-tails.

My photo gallery is still in limbo, but there are pictures of me and my three co-conspirators having our little Paki-packing party.

October 8, 2003

Pump Your Vote Up

About a month ago, I decided to spend every Tuesday and Thursday night at the gym--without fail. Even if Johnny Depp asks me for a date or I'm vomiting blood, I eschew both the hot celebrity and the vomitorium and go to the gym without excuses. Having a fun workout partner is also helping a lot.

Finally I've gained enough workout momentum to see real progress. Instead of bench-pressing the bare bar, I'm pressing ten pounds. Not much, but it's ten pounds more than a few weeks ago. In fact, I'm steadily increasing the weight on all my exercises. My ass is beginning to resemble J.Lo's. (Well, if you squint at it, that is.) And, there's a subtle contour to my arms and shoulders that wasn't there before.

The best part is feeling my body rise to the challenge. Whereas my muscles used to feel resistive to the weights, now they seem to relish the exertion. It hurts in a good way, a way that makes me want to keep lifting more. Soon I will be strong like Arnold!

What are people thinking, anyway? Arnold is not qualified for the governorship. It takes more than money, fame, and some ass-grabbing to be a successful politician. Is this a joke that California is playing on itself? Personally, I don't think I want a governor whose penis I've seen. If you haven't seen the governor's penis, you can rent Red Heat.

Despite his political buffoonery, I do admire Arnold as an athlete. I recommend his New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding for comprehensive information about muscles, nutrition, bodybuilding, and even competition. You need to know how to properly tan, shave, and oil your body, how to pose effectively, and how to choose the most flattering trunks for your physique. About the pose at left, Arnold says:

"You can't call this a triceps pose, an abdominal pose, or a chest pose. It is an in-between pose used while going from, for example, a side chest to a twisting double biceps, which allows me to flex the abs and triceps, show the small waist, and then go to the next pose. This is the kind of pose you have to play around with to see if it suits you or not."

So far, his gubernatorial pose is pretty weak. Or maybe I'm just annoyed that he's never grabbed my ass!

October 5, 2003

Bad Bush Poetry

President Bush needs to please refrain from writing any poetry, or if he must write poetry, from publishing it. This is a poem he wrote for Laura:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Oh my, lump in the bed
How I've missed you.
Roses are redder
Bluer am I
Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy.
The dogs and the cat, they missed you too
Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe
The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier
Next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier.

*Groan*

Red roses and blue violets ought to be banned from poetry. Who is he calling a lump--Laura or himself? Is that romantic or something? He's awfully whiney considering Chirac only kissed her hand. Poets have slaved for centuries to arrive at subtle and complex metaphors for physical separation, and the best that Bush can do is a cloddish "barrier"? I suppose he needed something to rhyme with "carrier", since we haven't heard enough already about how fun it was for him to land on a flight deck, A-Team style.

Step away from the pen and paper, Mr President!

October 4, 2003

Brunch at Zeitgeist

My pal Lamont invited me to brunch at Zeitgeist, where the grill is excellent. We were joined by John, Alex, Alicia, and a strange dog who kept us company for the apparent purpose of snapping his jaws at the flies and bees that pestered us for our food.

Because Lamont is a regular there, the barista makes him a special bloody mary--special because it is enormous, requiring a large Mason jar to contain it. And because Lamont hates me, he ordered one for me, too. This was the first bloody mary I'd ever had. First thing in the morning, a giant bloody mary colors the whole day, even when it's tempered with a delicious three-egg omelette and home fries.

Afterward, I stumbled toward Mission Street, where I caught the 14 down to Darlene's Fabrics. As it turns out, tipsy fabric-shopping can be expensive, even at the cheapest fabric store in town. I think I can still taste that bloody mary, six hours later. Curse you, Lamont!

More pictures from today's brunch are here. Yes, pretty soon I'll put up a proper picture gallery!