New Order: RETRO box set

One of the latest additions to my CD collection is New Order box set "Retro". I was able to get it from my CD club for even less than half of its retail price. That's better than anything I could find on eBay.

"Retro" has 4 discs with each one having its own "personality" which comes from being compiled by 4 friends of the band and showcasing some aspect of their songs. The first disc features the band's greatest hits, or at least as many as could fit on one disc. The second includes fan favorites, but I must confess I never did learn how this was determined other than that these songs were the favorites of the person compiling it. The third disc included dance remixes and extended versions of New Order's songs, and finally, the fourth disc contains live versions of various hits.

While I already had "The Best of New Order" and "Substance" compilations, it was the third and fourth discs, the remix and live collections, that prompted me to get "Retro". With a solid reputation and tradition of "keeping one foot in the rock and the other in the club", New Order has released numerous singles containing various versions and remixes of their hits. And all this was done often alongside the release of an album. While singles for many acts function as promotional tools for an album, New Order's singles have consistently served as stand-alone documents of the band's work that are worth owning and listening to in their own right. But by not being able to get the singles when they were released and not having the resources to pursue them on eBay now, where they are actively sought out and bid on, I was at a loss for a way of listening to them and selecting my favorites. Until now, that is.

The fourth "live" disc was a real treat as I didn't know they were touring again after re-forming. When I was a kid I couldn't have seen them live even if I wanted to. But the fourth disc is a great addition to their live DVD's, and they sound incredible on it. That I was spared the agony of having to pick and choose such tracks from any of the assorted bootlegs out there is, I believe, a gift to the fans.

The liner notes of the box set are a great read and feature commentaries on all the songs by Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morrison. In addition, there are contributions from each disc's respective compilers and other friends of the band. The reader truly gets a sense of what times were like for the band in their transition from Joy Division, their subsequent musical growth, and their progressive impact on music and musical culture. This is something especially significant for fans outside the UK who may not have had access to journalism about New Order through out their career.

At a time when I'm scraping by, I know I should't be blowing money on stuff like this, but for New Order's "Retro" I have no regrets.

I'm Just Tired

No pics today. Not even a true blog entry, really. As the title above says, I'm tired.

I'm unemployed, overweight, have a knee injury that I can't afford to fix and don't have the time to fix because I live alone and need to look for work, and I'm unmarried.

I'm not whining. Just the facts.

I'm also the only son of a mother who calls me twice a day EVERY DAY. She calls me when she knows I'm asleep to "log the call" and in doing so inform me that she wants me to call her. If I don't answer when she calls, she performs an audit of my whereabouts when I do call. I'm 32 and pathetic, yes. But none of that is relevant when she starts crying.

We basically talk about the same things: my weight problem, my injury, whether any of our relatives called me, what my relatives and I talked about, whether I revealed any of her self-concocted "family secrets" to my relatives, and my weight problem again. She just nags me. Usually I can handle it. After about 19-21 days of 2 calls a day, though, I generally lose it and start screaming. She apologizes profusely and after a day of radio silence she calls me again and avoids the topics for about 2-3 days before the cycle repeats itself.

I'm unemployed and living on a tight budget. But I have a decent food budget because after she calls I get really depressed. And when I get sad and depressed, I eat lots of junk food. I eat to feel happier, relatively. Then she calls and depresses me with her nagging. So I go eat some more. And I'm a little happier.

But you know what makes me really happier? Seeing my double-chin recede and my pants feel a little more comfortable. And that happens when I cut down on the buffets and the drive-thru. And not eating a lot at night before sleep. Walking more and doing 30-45 minutes of simple exercises that don't stress my knees. And I don't want to jinx it. Why make a mountain of a proverbial ant-hill's worth of progress? One pizza here or there and I could be back at square one, and then I really wouldn't hear the end of it.

In spite of my less-than-zero circumstances right now, my mom is ever the match-maker and has been after me to call this girl who's a family friend. There is nothing wrong with the girl, for the record. But she is so way out of my league it's not funny. But I called her every other week or so for the past few months. Polite conversation. I elicit a laugh from her here or there. But it's blatantly obvious that she's not into me. And frankly, I have so many problems of my own right now that could not invest the time or money to pursue any further courtship let alone maintain a long distance relationship. I've seen people IN a relationship lose it all when one has to move far away. What chance do 2 strangers who aren't even looking to get together have?

Wanna know how I know she's not into me? She never calls me back when I leave a message and she never returns my email, even when I ask her to. No problem at all.

But these aspects of modern communication and relationships escape my mom, who just nags me about calling her more and debriefing me on what we talked about. Call more often? I'm not a stalker and I'm not a fool. Then she nags me about losing weight and begins her rundown of the latest weight-loss tips she's heard. Then she nags me about how I should call my relatives more and email them more and wants a transcript of any and all communications. That's about when I lose it.

Fortunately, she never nags me about my job search. She is more than aware that I am a very good design engineer. She's seen my paychecks. She's seen where I work(ed). And she watches the news enough to know about how the war and the economy are really doing a number on the aerospace industry.

Right about now most you might be thinking that there's nothing wrong with a mom checking up on her son. But EVERY DAY and TWICE A DAY?!! It's been like this for the past YEAR! You've got to experience it before judging me.

I get so upset after the phone calls. I start breathing a little heavy and sometimes I get a lump in my throat. And then I go out and get some junk food. Or I eat vast quantities of what food I have at home. More so than what I intended to eat per meal. Then I just sit around and stare at nothing . I usually turn on the TV to take my mind off it, but it takes a while. All that time I could be looking for work or following up with recruiters. Or I could be exercising. Or getting coffee with a friend. Or go for a walk. But I can't. All I can do is sit there. At night after one of her calls, I used to order a big pizza or Chinese delivery comprising a large lo mein and a large General Tso's chicken. On a good night when she doesn't nag me (2-3 times a month) and we end the call amiably maybe not.

I don't even feel like typing anymore, but this blog is one of the things at night I'm trying to use to take my mind of of the phone calls. That and I've taken up reading at night more regularly. I need to break the cycle somehow in this way because she won't stop calling me. And any attempt I've made at making her NOT talk about the things she nags me about have been effective for 3-4 days at best. Theories of positive reinforcement and extinguishing bad behavior in a behavioral modification setting are worthless if the subject has a bad memory and has honed her nagging skills into instinctively natural behavior over the course of my lifetime.

I have to do something to break the cycle that's in my control, because I don't want to die young. I'm not that good.

The Parker JOTTER (pt. 1)

Whether it was the singular cause or a contributor to my obsession with writing implemets, the Parker Jotter has been a part of my life since I was 8 or 9 years old. It was a pen my parents had grown up with as well, and in my family it was a typical gift given to kids for some sort of scholastic achievement or related special occasion, like graduating the fourth grade. My parents gave them to me for such events and also gave them to their friends' kids. It was a clasy, relatively neutral, and inexpensive gift that you could hand out indiscriminately to boys or girls. Plus, they came with a snazzy little gift box.

While I was not yet a student nor practitioner of the scientific method or deductive reasoning, I just knew there had to be something special about a pen that sold for a whopping $3.00 plus or minus some change. After all, with that much money I could buy multiple 10-packs of Papermates or Bics and start my own pen-based bartering/monetary system with them. So these Jotters had to be the bees' knees, right? Right.

They wrote smoothly. And didn't get all stuttery in their ink flow or dry up in spurts and require me to give my manuscript an Indian burn in the margin to get them going again. They didn't quietly explode and leave little ink bombs for me to discover upon uncapping them. Instead they had a continuously open mouth from which the tip of the cartridge emerged. So sure was the Jotter of its stability that it dared you to pocket it uncapped. Speaking of the ink cartridge, it was cool in itself, resembling a rocket of sorts. A depleted one often turned into my G.I. Joes' doomsday missile and became the basis of many an action figure adventure.

But the Parker Jotter was still a "special occasion" pen, for me, to be worn as an accessory like a tie or cufflinks or to be used for signing "important" things like birthday cards or endorsing gift-money checks. They really didn't get that regular a use.

The Jotter, and ink pens in general, took a backseat in my writing tool use and collecting when I went to college. As an engineering student doing a lot of equations, graphing, and drafting, I quickly developed a fetish for mechanical pencils, which became my primary tools at that time because of the need to erase. The Jotter made a cameo or two. Once, when I was home for Christmas holiday, and helping my mom clean out a closet, I came across a stash of things she had hoarded to use as gifts for my cousins that she had never used. Among the sundry knicknacks and toys were 6 pristine in-box Jotters! In their stately maroons and navy blues, they were shiny and untouched. I seized them in the name of jealousy.

The Jotter didn't experience a resurgence in my usage or collecting until I graduated and got my first job. There was a drug store in the mini-mall across from work where I would stop on the way home for snacks and or the odd mechanical pencil. While looking for a Zebra M-605, I came across something I had never seen (or noticed) before: a stainless steel Parker Jotter. I had never seen anything cooler for the same price. I bought three. I couldn't drive home fast enough to open it and test it out. It looked awesome. It weighed and balanced in a way I liked. And it wrote as well as its chromatic counterparts. I had my new weapon of choice.

If I could, I would have worn a bandolier of the stainless steel Jotters. Their all-metal exterior construction inspired me with all sorts of MacGuyver-esque ideas. I used my SS Jotter to stab open the tape on the seams of packages. I figured I could use them to slay the undead via some sort of modified crossbow (yeah yeah, silver, just let it go). Choking of food and the Heimlich maneuver proves ineffective? A properly placed SS Jotter, with cartridge handily removed of course, could be used to perform that impromptu field tracheotomy AND serve as a windpipe until the medics arrive.

I'll never understand why the Swiss Army bothers with those glorified letter openers when they could have this pen!

To be continued...

Buffet TO-GO Tactics (Buffet Tactics 2)

It all comes down to how comfortable with your food touching. Are you a culinary segregationist who believes that the peas belong in one quadrant, the mashed potatoes in another, and the gravy be damned? Then a buffet to go may not be for you. But if you're on a budget and trying to curb your take-out tendencies, then a buffet to-go box may be something that could work for you.

A small digression: I oppose buffets that charge by the pound for to-go orders. Especially if they charge a flat rate for dining-in. It's simply criminal, and to me it's their way of saying, "We know you're pressed for time and would still like a variety of foods, and so we'll just exploit that." Forget that, I say.

So from my last Friday food post "Buffet Tactics" you'll recall why I prefer the to-go buffet: lower cost, lower quantities (or more optional quantities, really) than take-out, and, most importantly to me, greater variety than any "blue plates" offered by many restaurants for lunch. Oh, and there's also the avoidance of having to eat solo at a buffet which is a peeve of mine I expound on in my previous food post.

Maximizing the effectiveness of a buffet to-go requires an in-depth knowledge of the buffet layout and its contents. You want to plan your path around the buffet to avoid backpedaling. Unlike when dining in, you can't go back and get something you missed after your to-go box is full. There ain't no coming back. Unfortunately, this requires that you've eaten at said buffet enough times previously to acquire such intel. From the Buffet Tactics post you'll know that, sadly, I have such intimate knowledge. But for the uninitiated this advice should not go unheeded, or you could take home a big box of diasppointment whereas while dining in any corrections or omissions could have been made.

So after getting the "lay of the land" and planning the "retrieval route", the next element of buffet "to-go-ing" is "stacking". From the pictures of the Chinese and Mexican to-go boxes above, you'll see that I apply stacking principles to boxes that do and don't have dividers.

The first part of stacking involves deciding which "wet" dishes you'll be eating. The "wet" are usually the main food items one eats, such as General Tso's chicken, or a meatloaf in gravy. After picking your wets and assigning them locations in your to-go box, it's time to pick what "sponge" or accompanying starch you'll have with each wet and begin lining the bottom of the box with them. In the Chinese to-go box I did this in the large compartment. I lined the left half with pancit noodles and the right side with vegetable lo mein.

Now, I could go on a whole other tangent about avoiding "filler" foods like salads, rice, and bread when dining at a buffet either "in" or to-go, but I'll leave it to someone else to write the Unified Buffet Theory. I'm pretty sure it's in the works out there. Moving on.

After lining the bottom of that compartment, I added the wet layers mentioned earlier. In the Mexican to-go box pictured second, I divided the container into upper and lower halves. My "sponge" for both halves was a thin layer of nachos that they serve in thin layers covered in taco beef and cheese. To the top half I added more taco beef, red sauce, and white cheese sauce before topping it off with steak fajita meat and vegetables. In the lower half I added seasoned rice, a different red sauce, and topped it off with chicken fajita meat and vegetables. For the Mexican to-go it's evident that that there were a few kinds of sponges employed from base-layer nachos to intermediate beef and rice. FYI, the final swath of wet was a line of salsa along the upper-lower border.

The third and topmost layer of the to-go container stack is the "dry" portion. There's only so much of the wet you can layer on top of the sponge and carry around without spillage or a complete fallout. It can be hassle while transporting your food and downright embarrassing in the restaurant. You definitely don't want to draw any negative attention from the staff. Besides, they work hard enough as it is without any hit-and-run messes. So the dry tier of the stack fills that empty upper portion or "dry space" of the typical rectangular styrofoam to-go box (pictured above) above the sponge and wet layers. For to-go boxes or other containers lacking dry space on closure I guess one has to contend with full or partial submersion of the dry elements as the container is smushed closed.

For the Chinese to-go pictured at the top of the post I took a conservative approach with a row of spring rolls, but other times I've mixed it up with crab rangoon, fried shrimp, and on-stick beef and chicken teriyaki. Though you can't really see from the photo, there are actually seven of the quesadillas pictured in the Mexican to-go. I've also had taquitos, tamales, chicken tenders, and fried shrimp, too, coincidentally.

By refining my stacking skills I actually bring home more food than I can eat in one sitting. I usually save the dry portion of the stack for later at night since they microwave up pretty well. That usually tides me over without making/ordering a dinner and fits in with my revised eating habits, which include eating less towards the end of the day. As something I make into an all-day event, a to-go buffet run is something I'm so good a that I don't have to do as often, and that saves me money and take-out food calories.

The WORST Mechanical Pencil Ever

In the lower right hand corner of the photo of The Cluttered Desk you might be able to discern a black Starbucks Networker mug with rubberized handle and base. It used to be the mug of pens I kept on my desk at work, and it now functions as the "boneyard" of my fleet of pens by being the home for many past and present All-Stars and old veterans. Many are weathered and some are even disabled in that they don't work too well in delivering ink or lead/graphite, but they can still work in spurts or for some specific uses like tracing or sketching. Some of them I'm keeping for spare parts. But there's one in the bonetard that's just plain dumb.

I bought the Sanford Clear Point in green with a 0.5mm point in a Staples in Annapolis, MD on a whim. To me it looked so grotesque it was beautiful, and I wanted to see how it handled. Right out of the blister pack it looked and felt like an amateur design job. Basic tubular design and axially symmetric contouring for low cost production. Really brittle and slippery clear acrylic was used for the body, and some rubber ribbing texture was added at the grip almost as an afterthought apparently.

There was a huge and unwieldy eraser housing at the top of the pencil that, to its credit, housed an impressive rotating eraser advance mechanism but made the pencil so top-heavy it really unbalanced the pencil for me. The pencil clip was also attached to the eraser housing. A critical design feature of the eraser housing is that it's held onto the pencil body via a "male" peg on it that attaches to a slot on the the pencil body. Either this slot will loosen after repeated openings and closings or the peg will wear down, but I can already see scotch tape in the future. A really good example of a twist-advance mechanism for a large erasers on a mechanical is on the Pentel Twist Erase III, where the whole upper half of the pencil is twisted to advance the eraser and attaches to the lower half by sliding the upper half onto the lower half. There's so much more surface area friction working with this method that the chances of the pen body loosening up are much lesser.

The Clear Point features a side click button to advance lead, but, unlike the Pentel Quicker Clicker's, it's loose and feels sluggish in response to the touch. The most disappointing feature of the pencil's lead advance mechanism is that whatever prevented the lead from sliding out loosely failed completely after after only a few clicks. So now my mechanical pencil was basically a very thin-diameter lead holder. And one that broke more lead than it retained when I tried to push over-extended lead back in. All aesthetics aside, this broke the proverbial camel's back.

I've got one or two mechanical pencils in the boneyard with similar lead advance defects, but at least they look a whole lot prettier than the Sanford Clear Point.

STORMSHADOW bust

The latest addition to The Cluttered Desk has actually been "sitting on the bench" for a number of years. It's a 6" tall resin bust of Stormshadow, the enigmatically cool Cobra ninja from the G.I. Joe franchise. It was made in a very limited run by Palisades Toys of Ellicot City, MD, and is probably one of the coolest mini-busts of its kind. That's saying a lot since there have been a lot made between Marvel and DC Comics and the burgeoning number of other entertainment franchises' characters.

I bought Stromshadow off eBay for what I can only remember was so reasonable amount that I bought two of him. When I received them, they were so pristine in their packaging, that I promptly buried in my small storage unit. My intent was to acquire one of the Snake Eyes busts and display the two together, but for some reason I could never find the Snake Eyes bust either for a reasonable price or at all. And so the Stormshadow bust didn't resurface, and receded to the back of my memory.

And during that time, something happened to the busts' boxes. The glue holding it together began to fail. When I uncovered them last week during my archaeological dig of my storage unit to find stuff to sell on eBay, their boxes had come unglued and terribly warped with the cardboard itself in a stated of bloated brittleness that comes with age and or exposure to drastic temperature variations. With all my OCD concerns for pristine preservation dashed, I felt free to unbox the bust and display one of the damned things.

The thing is formidable in appearance. The picture I posted truly doesn't do it justice. From the trim of his tunic to the sculpted folds of fabric to the detail of his sash and strap buckle, everything is crisp and cleanly detailed. His muscle sculpt is also impressive as it reflects an actual human physique wearing fabric, which is much more impressive than a lot of sculpts that just paint a costume onto what is, for all purposes, a nude sculpt. Stormshadow's head is also finely done, showing a mask with actual stitching seams and trim over a face tha has a nose, ears, cheekbones, an eyebrow ridge, and flexing forehead. It's been a pet peeve of mine to see characters loose all facial features when donning a full head mask (think Spider-Man or Deadpool). Stormshadow's head sculpt reminds me of the old 50's Italian comic book anti-heroes like Fantomas or Diabolik who later made their way to films and Beastie Boys music videos.

Maybe I'll look for that Snake Eyes bust...

Buffet Tactics

A major factor in my drastic weight gain over the past few years has been the lunch buffets available for all types of cuisines where I live. Please observe how I didn't use the terms "cause" or "reason" or "culprit". I realize that I am solely to blame for my weight gain and also for my failure to lose weight. I'm not looking for applause for making these distinctions either. I'm just setting the stage for this post which isn't going to be about maxing out the buffet the experience in as much as it'll be about preventing the buffet the experience from maxing you out on the scales. Let's move on.

Buffets were what you did for lunch where I worked. Pay your $7-9 and take trip after trip at your pace. Appetizer course. Main course. Dessert course. Substitute and or repeat as needed. It was great. But as others maintained a consistent regimen of work and exercise outside of work, I ate even more fast food and prepackaged food on beteen work, night school, and the time I spent plopped in fron t of the TV. Shame on me.

And that's how it went for years for almost every work day. Chinese buffet, Mexican buffet, Ryan's, Shoney's, and even a Pizza Hut buffet were part of my office's lunch clique's regular rotation. Looking back, it was all so sinister.

And as I mentioned at the start, the buffet was not the only factor involved with my weight gaine. If it were, I would have lost the weight for the two years I lived/worked in another state. But I didn't as I had plenty of other bad habits.

It was no surprise to me that when I moved back to town after two years that all my buddies wanted to meet up at a buffet during their lunch break. Just like the "good" old times. A new restaurant this time but a buffet nonetheless. And a Chinese buffet at that, which was my weakness.

And so I went, and then I knew I was fat. Even the mousiest waitress there took a half-step back and stared as I lumbered into the joint. The host hesitantly asked if I needed a table for one. Now, there's nothing sadder than a fat guy eating at a buffet by himself. Simply eating at a restaurant by yourself, excluding eating at a diner counter, is sad to me, but to be fat and to eat at a buffet, well, it's sad. And I had been mistaken for that guy by this host. So I guess I was that guy. It implies so many things. For instance it could mean that you have no friends at all, none that can tolerate eating the same things you do, or none that can tolerate being around you when you eat. It also means that you might have an eating disorder such as one where you eat large amounts very often. In short, solo buffet dining could be likened to solo alcohol consumption.

But I digress. The host look glad to hear me say that I was meeting some friends, and my friends waved me over almost instantaneously. I promptly placed my beverage order (Diet Coke, for the taste of it) and proceeded to confound my friends with just one visit to the buffet.

And that's my new buffet tactic: ONE VISIT. That's it.

It simply involves changing one's attitude towards the buffet meal. Contrary to what some restaurants say when they condescendingly post those insulting "All you CARE to eat" signs, I've never seen a buffet as an invitation to test my consumptive mettle. And I've never seen two people engaged in an eating contest like those with pies, buffalo wings, or hot dogs at the fair. What a buffet does for me is trigger my natural human foraging/gathering instinct that has propelled the species forward through time as we know it. It all goes back to the first time man thought to himself, "I better eat as much as I can while I can because who know what the future holds?" The one-visit tactic involves reminding oneself that in this day and age, if you can afford to go eat at a buffet, then there's probably a good chance that you have either the food or the resources to get said food later on in the day or in your life.

And so, I approached the buffet with the mindset that it was one pass and I'd better get a little bit of my all-star favorites. I should note that I used a soup bowl to hold about a cup od steamed white rice also. I loaded up my plate, which did look ridiculous, but the amount of food on my plate was far less than my usual 2-3 plate trips combined. I usually don't get dessert.

I threw my friends off their pattern. I think out of politeness they were waiting for me to finish my current plate and go back up together like the "good" old days. Finally, one friend just kind of announced that he was going up, and then I cheerfully said, "Oh yeah, sure, don't let me keep you, I'm good." And that cleared up any confusion. They cheerfully rallied their forces and attacked the General Tso's with extreme prejudice. I still had food to eat.

The new tactic has allowed me to not be completely anti-social and still get my Chinese food fix. But what can you do when you don't want to eat out at a Chinese buffet and don't want the expense and over-sized portions of delivery? Well, there's a "buffet-to-go", and that's another post. Coming up...