Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • My Little Internet People

    Max and Brian dressed up as Pip and Kitteh from the Laugh Out Loud Cats

    I’m not sure what to say about the boys’ costumes this year, other than, I think I’ve broken my children. Did they want to be characters from mainstream popular culture? Nope. They wanted to be the main characters from the very funny, but very internet-y Laugh Out Loud Cats. Did anyone in the neighborhood have the slightest clue who they were? Nope. I don’t think that bothered the boys a whole lot, but I do worry that I’ve done irreparable harm to their pop culture repositories by showing them funny stuff on the internet like Homestar Runner instead of more mainstream fare. I don’t know, but they’re so damned cute as niche web comic characters, I kind of don’t care.

  • Mark It Zero, Dude

    me dressed as Walter Sobchack from The Big Lebowski

    I haven’t dressed up for Halloween for years, at least since Max was born. This year, for some reason, I decided that I should be Walter Sobchack from The Big Lebowski this year. Why? I’m not sure.\
    I grew the beard just for Halloween… that’s how seriously I took it. And again, I’m not sure why. But, here we are, and I think it came together quite nicely. See?

    me as walter vs. john goodman as walter

  • Spare Eight Minutes

    Lawrence Lessig provides a great argument against Proposition 8. It’s reasoned, has a sound legal backing (because, he’s Lawrence Lessig), and is profound in its simplicity. It perfectly echoes my own feelings on it, and does a great job of dissolving the rationale for the proposition without insulting those who support it. Great great stuff. Please watch it.

  • It’s In Every One of Us to Be Wise

    It’s in every one of us
    To be wise
    Find your heart
    Open up both your eyes
    We can all know everything
    Without ever knowing why
    It’s in every one of us
    By and by
    It’s in every one of us
    To be wise
    Find your heart
    Open up both your eyes
    We can all know everything
    Without ever knowing why
    It’s in every one of us
    By and by
    By and by

    from It’s In Every One of Us by David Pomeranz

    I should be going to sleep now, but I started watching Big Bird singing It’s Not Easy Being Green at Jim Henson’s funeral, which led me to the Muppet’s Tribute to Jim Henson, and then to Frank Oz’s lovely eulogy. In the second video, I heard a song I don’t remember, the one above, and it got me thinking (and yes, crying a little) about my heroes, and why they hold that position.

    I love Jim Henson. He’s one of my heroes – a man of amazing creativity, warmth and love, who created so many great characters. More than that, though, he opened up imaginations by sharing his, and everything he created has at its core a gentleness, decency and humanity. You can tell right away that there’s a piece of him in everything he did. He died long after I’d outgrown Sesame Street (I was fifteen), but I still got choked up whenever anyone played Rainbow Connection (still do).

    My second hero is Mr. Rogers. I used to watch both shows as a kid, but didn’t really understand who Mr. Rogers was as a “real” person until much much later. Mr. Rogers was seemingly without guile, someone totally in touch with their emotions and with the emotions of those around him – and like Jim Henson, the adjective that jumps to mind when I get past the things they created – the artifacts of their professional lives, is “gentle”. I love that Mr. Rogers dedicated his life to speaking softly to children without speaking down to them, to teaching them about the world without fear or cynicism. I told this to a friend today and she looked at me like I was crazy, but I think Mr. Rogers may be the most Christ-like person to live on the earth since, well, Jesus.

    And last, but certainly not least, my dad. I certainly don’t tell him this enough, but he is my hero. He is the most patient person I’ve ever met, and set a great example of what a husband and father should be – one that I don’t measure up to, but aspire to. He is kind, and gentle. I think the only times I heard him raise his voice were either on the golf course or home repair “mishaps” with heavy tools, and they were never directed at us (the only reasons my brother and I ever went golfing with dad were: to hear him swear, and to drive the cart).

    It all comes back to being gentle, something I’m not very good at, but want to be. All three of my heroes are good men: creative, smart, compassionate and charitable gentle men , who leave those around them better for having known them. They are who I aspire to be.

    Thank you, dad, for being there when I need you. And thank you, Mr. Rogers and Jim Henson, for being examples of where imagination and decency can take you in a sometimes dark and always imperfect world.

    And to get back to the song, it is in all of us to be wise. It’s in all of us to be better than we are, to aspire to being more like our heroes and to choose leaders more like we aspire to be instead of those that feed on our fears. I saw a sticker today Love More. Fear Less (you can get your own), which is what started this whole train of thought.

    We, I, have been afraid too long – driven by fear to compromise our dreams, our futures and to choose leaders who feed those fears. It’s time to be led by love, to stop being afraid and embrace the future as a challenge to be better, to live our ideals instead of preaching them to others and doing the opposite behind closed doors when we think no one is looking. I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of hearing politicians claim that the people who disagree with them aren’t “real” Americans. I’m tired of the pandering and the lies. Anger is fear turned outwards, a blind response to things we feel powerless to control, and anger is not love. I’m no hippie. I know I’ll still be angry when I wake up in the morning and catch a glimpse of the news, but I’m going to try to be wise. I’m going to try to love more and fear less, and I will keep my heroes that embody those qualities.

    I don’t know that this makes any sense at all. It’s late, and I should have been asleep two hours ago, but I couldn’t go to bed with all this trapped in my head.

    “It’s in every one of us to be wise. Find your heart, open up both your eyes.”

  • Kevin’s OMFG Kabobs

    There was a crazy sale on whole pork tenderloins at the grocery store, so Jen stocked up. We’ve cooked two so far, and I think we have at least four more in the freezer. Tonight’s pork-speriment was to make kabobs out of them… and they were so good, I have to share. Since Brian likes squirting the lemon juice bottle, there had to be citrus involved, and I like things a little spicy, so there was a bit of Cajun seasoning. Here’s what I did.\
    h4. Ingredients

    * 1 sweet onion (I should have used 2 – I ran out about half-way through assembling everything)

    * 2 green bell peppers

    * 1 bag tiny “dutch butter” potatoes

    * 1 pork tenderloin

    * 5 lemons

    * 5 limes

    * 1 small package of baby portobello mushrooms

    * 1 small package of white mushrooms

    * 1 pork tenderloin cut up into a billion approximately half-inch cubes (no smaller than that, some of them were much larger – it’s a lot of work, so do what you can – larger than a sugar cube, smaller than a Rubik’s cube).

    * salt, pepper, and cajun spices

    * 1 quarter cup of olive oil

    * 1 quarter cup lemon juice

    * 1 quarter cup lime juice

    * 1 big ass ziploc bag\
    h4. Directions

    1. Quarter the lemon and lime and put it into the ziploc bag
    2. Combine the lemon and lime juice, salt, pepper, cajun spices, pork cubes and olive oil in the ziploc bag with the lemon and lime wedges and mush them around until they’re all well mixed and looking evenly covered. Seal the bag well and put it in the fridge for a couple hours (I left mine in for 2 hour – just enough time to watch Mythbusters with Brian and then chop up the veggies). I know it sounds like a lot of citrus, but a whole pork tenderloin is a lot of meat.
    3. Chop up the onions and green peppers into kabob-appropriate sizes (if the green peppers and onions pieces are too small they’ll split when you try to put them on the skewers).
    4. Clean both packages of mushrooms and cut off the end of the stems (leave the bit in the middle – I cut the protruding stem bit to make more room on the skewer).
    5. Before you’re ready to start assembling everything, boil the little potatoes for fifteen minutes.
    6. Now, assemble your skewers. I usually start with some order to things, but get bored or run out of an ingredient halfway through and start assembling franken-skewers. I ended up with one at the end that was just pork and lemon and lime slices (but, damn was it good), and a couple that were just pork and potatoes.
    7. Grill ’em. Mine took about 20 minutes total.
    8. Eat ’em.\
      I’d never used potatoes on kabobs before, but they were great. They got a little charred on the outside, but were perfectly done on the inside. The best part was that they really picked up the flavor of whatever was next to them on the skewer. The second best part was not having to make rice or anything else because you had almost all the food groups (except bacon and peanut butter) on a single kabob. The only problem with all the veggies is that sometimes you didn’t get quite enough meat on a kabob… but that was a good excuse to eat more, and I guess we ate more veggies that way.\
      I think we ended up with a good 20 kabobs, including the weird ones at the end. We have plenty of leftovers for tomorrow night… but you can’t have them. They’re too good. That’s why I’m giving you the recipe so you can go make your own.

  • How I Use Evernote

    I mentioned on twitter the other day that I love Evernote and use it to keep my daily to-do list and keep track of what I work on. A couple people said I should write a blog post about it. Since I’m just waiting for my Tylenol PM to kick in, I figured… why not.

    If you’ve never heard of it, Evernote is a note-taking app that is accessible from anywhere. They have desktop applications for OS X, Windows and the iPhone and a really nice web interface too. I clip things I’m reading to it all the time to either save for later or because I know I’m going to want to send it to people and might not be able to find it again. I put quotes in it I want to save, put URLs to things, and even jot notes down on the iPhone if I come up with an idea while I’m out. It’s fine for that, but I didn’t become a heavy user of it until I started keeping track of my to-do list. I’d tried implementing GTD (Getting Things Done) several times before, but it never stuck, until now.

    Evernote has the idea of notebooks and notes. I have notebooks called Stuff – for everything not work-related that’s not a to-do list, Journal – for all my daily to-do lists, and Work – for work stuff I want to remember.

    Here’s how I use it for keeping track of my daily to-do list:

    • I have the desktop application open all the time. It’s never closed unless I’m rebooting, so my to-do list is only ever a couple keystrokes away.
    • Either at night before I leave work, or first thing in the morning, I create a new note in my Journal notebook with the date as the title.
    • Then, I just start creating a list of to-do items I want to get done that day. They’re usually always work-related, but sometimes they’re not (lthis week, one was: “Call doctor about the whole not-being-able-to-breathe thing” – and I did… check!).
    • Then, as I go through the day, I’ll either just check them off if they’re simple, or add details about exactly what I did and approximately how long it took. The details are the important thing, since I can now remember the steps I went through to do something and have much better recall when I need them again.

    This sounds really anal, I know, but it’s really helped me concentrate on my productivity, and how much time I spend doing things other than the stuff I really need to get done that day. I also remember more of what I do during the day just by writing it down.\
    The to-do items in Evernote are still a little buggy. For example, until recently, you could only add them in the desktop application and you couldn’t mark them complete in the web if iPhone apps. I just checked and you can’t mark them done in the web interface… oh well, nothing’s perfect (and it’s still in beta).

    There are some great web apps out there that are all about to-do lists, and I’ve tried most of them (I got the farthest with Remember The Milk). I think Evernote is sticking because I use it for more than just the to-do list, and I can get to it wherever I am.

  • The Power of the Commons

    Creative Commons Moon
    \
    [Creative Commons Moon](http://flickr.com/photos/denverjeffrey/301014978/) by Jeffrey Beall

    In the past two days, people have e-mailed me to ask if they could use photos of mine for:

    • A short-run calendar (Downtown Boston At Night)
    • An illusion as part of a mentalists’ stage show. (not sure why he wants to use this one, but he does)\
      In the past, people have asked to use my photos in:
    • a history textbook (it might have been a different one)
    • several websites
    • a cookbook (he wanted to use a couple of my beach pictures)
    • presentations
    • several news stories on Now Public\
      In every response I send, this is pretty much what I say:\
      bq. Of course you can use my photos in insert use here. All my photos are licensed under Creative Commons, so as long as you provide attribution and your work is also licensed under Creative Commons, then you’re free to use any of my photos however you want.\
      I’m surprised how many people that surprises, but I probably shouldn’t be. Creative Commons is a great tool for creative people to share their works while maintaining some control over how they’re used. I love that Flickr allows people to choose from several different licenses and displays it alongside every photo. They were a big influence on our choice to make all the stories on ficlets Creative Commons licensed as well.\
      Now, when people don’t want to release their work under the same license as my photos, we can talk. And, in the case of the calendar, I sold my first photo! They’re actually paying me to use that picture, which I think is crazy (awesome, that is). I’m not a professional by any stretch, and that picture was taken with my crappy old Kodak point and shoot. Honestly, I think they should use one of my aerial Boston shots, but whatever.\
      So, thank you, Creative Commons for giving me an easy way to license my content that encourages sharing, and thank you Flickr for giving me an easy way to share my photos. You’re awesome!

  • Max’s Birthday at the Oatland Wildlife Center

    Max is excited about seeing some alligators!

    Today is Max’s 9th birthday. To celebrate, I took the boys to the Oatland Wildlife Center to see some alligators and other wildlife. Little did I realize that it was a two mile hike around the center to see everything. And we did the whole thing. I, of course, took pictures which are up on flickr if you want to go see the rest of them.\
    And just because it’s maybe my all-time favorite of Brian, here’s a bonus pic!

    Brian wants more food for the fish.

  • How’d I Do On “The Omnivore Hundred”

    A challenge is afoot! Very Good Taste created a list called the Omnivore Hundred and challenged people to post it to their blogs and bold the things they’ve eaten. So, here’s mine, most of them with commentary and I linked to the Wikipedia entries for the ones I’d never heard of:

    1. Venison
    2. Nettle tea
    3. Huevos rancheros – Many many times. I used to stop at Filiberto’s in Tucson on the way to work a couple times a week and get either huevos rancheros or a breakfast burrito.
    4. Steak tartare
    5. Crocodile – I had alligator sausage in Charleston, SC, so I’m counting this one.
    6. Black pudding – A couple times in Dublin. I prefer white pudding with fried eggs. Not a huge fan of black pudding.
    7. Cheese fondue
    8. Carp
    9. Borscht – My friend Becky had a Russian dinner after she got back from her LDS mission and we had borscht with sour cream. It was good.
    10. Baba ghanoush – Not a huge fan of eggplant, so this probably won’t be a repeat.
    11. Calamari
    12. Pho – Yesterday for lunch.
    13. PB&J sandwich
    14. Aloo gobi – In Bangalore and at a buffet in Herndon.
    15. Hot dog from a street cart
    16. Epoisses
    17. Black truffle – Not all by itself, but I’ve had several sauces with black truffle in them.
    18. ~~Fruit wine made from something other than grapes~~
    19. Steamed pork buns – Thanks to Cindy Li and Dim Sum Sundays!
    20. Pistachio ice cream
    21. Heirloom tomatoes – Several times from Great Country Farms and other places.
    22. Fresh wild berries – We used to pick our own on the side of the road when we lived in North and South Carolina.
    23. Foie gras – Oh yes. At my favorite restaurant in the entire world in the South of France, L’Hermitage du Riou
    24. Rice and beans
    25. Brawn, or head cheese
    26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
    27. Dulce de leche
    28. Oysters – Yes, hated them, and now with my shellfish allergy, no more.
    29. Baklava
    30. Bagna cauda
    31. Wasabi peas
    32. ~~Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl~~ – Again, with the shellfish allergy, not going to happen
    33. Salted lassi – I love mango lassis from Shalimar, in Mountain View, CA. I’m not sure if that counts. I had a weird cucumber one, that I hated, so I’m assuming that was salted.
    34. Sauerkraut
    35. Root beer float
    36. ~~Cognac with a fat cigar~~ – Don’t drink or smoke.
    37. Clotted cream tea
    38. ~~Vodka jelly/Jell-O~~
    39. Gumbo – In New Orleans even, but again, stupid shellfish allergy, I can’t eat it again.
    40. Oxtail – In Germany as a kid. One of the strongest tastes I’ve ever experienced, I can still remember it twenty-something years later.
    41. Curried goat
    42. Whole insects
    43. Phaal
    44. Goat’s milk
    45. ~~Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/\$120 or more~~
    46. Fugu
    47. Chicken tikka masala – Once in India even, but I prefer Butter Chicken.
    48. Eel – as sushi, not a huge fan, but I’d try other kinds of someone served it.
    49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
    50. Sea urchin
    51. Prickly pear
    52. Umeboshi
    53. Abalone
    54. Paneer – At least three or four different kinds.
    55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal – I used to get them occasionally as a kid, but I don’t like the sauce anymore, and since watching Super-Size Me, I rarely eat fast food.
    56. Spaetzle
    57. ~~Dirty gin martini~~
    58. ~~Beer above 8% ABV~~
    59. Poutine – No, but after hearing my brother describe it, I want to!
    60. Carob chips – Mom used to “secretly” replace the chocolate chips in cookies with carob chips. We always knew.
    61. S’mores
    62. Sweetbreads – In Paris at an amazing dinner with Daniel Glazman, Jen and his wife. Amazing.
    63. Kaolin – The only mention I can find of Kaolin is a clay or Kaopectate. If it’s Kaopectate, you betcha I’ve had it.
    64. Currywurst
    65. Durian
    66. Frogs’ legs – Max and I tried them at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Sterling. He liked them. They were OK.
    67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake – All four!
    68. Haggis – In Edinburgh with Arun and a whole host of awesome W3C people. One of my all-time favorite dinners. The haggis was actually pretty good too.
    69. Fried plantain
    70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
    71. Gazpacho
    72. Caviar and blini
    73. ~~Louche absinthe~~
    74. Gjetost, or brunost
    75. Roadkill – Not that I know of… but I have lived in the Deep South, so who knows.
    76. ~~Baijiu~~
    77. Hostess Fruit Pie – Not in years, but I remember going through a phase where I loved the cherry ones.
    78. Snail – Several times, once in France.
    79. Lapsang souchong
    80. ~~Bellini~~
    81. Tom yum – I’ve had it at least once, but can’t think of where at the moment.
    82. Eggs Benedict – Jen gets this whenever she can when we go out for breakfast. I know we both ate it at least once on our honeymoon.
    83. Pocky – My sister introduced me to this one.
    84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant – I don’t know how many stars L’Hermitage du Riou has, but I’ve eaten there at least 8 times so I’m counting that.
    85. Kobe beef – At the Microsoft cafeteria in Mountain View during a CSS Working Group meeting as a hamburger. One of the best burgers I’ve ever had.
    86. Hare – At L’Hermitage du Riou – baby hare wrapped in bacon – the best meal I’ve ever had.
    87. Goulash
    88. Flowers – My brother and I ate dandelions once, and I know I’ve had edible flowers before.
    89. Horse
    90. Criollo chocolate
    91. Spam
    92. Soft shell crab – But not anymore… sigh
    93. Rose harissa
    94. Catfish – All over the South, fried in filets, on a sandwich, as nuggets. You name it, I’ve had it.
    95. Mole poblano
    96. Bagel and lox
    97. Lobster Thermidor
    98. Polenta
    99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
    100. Snake\
      Of the hundred, there are a few I won’t do because they involve smoking or drinking, but I’ve tried 59 of the hundred, which isn’t too bad.\
      Things I’d add to the list:
    101. Ankimo – Monkfish liver, introduced by Alex Mogilevsky at a CSS Working Group dinner at my favorite sushi restaurant, Satsuma, in Mountain View. When it’s good, it tastes a lot like foie gras. Ask for it at your favorite sushi place. It’s rarely on the menu, even if they have it!
    102. Pylsurs – James McNally reminded my of them with one of his Iceland pics. We used to get them whenever we went to town when we lived in Iceland. Lamb hot dogs… yum.
    103. Club Orange – The best orange soda, hell, just best soda, on the planet. Like Orangina but with real flavor. You can get it imported from Food Ireland or just go to Dublin.
    104. Fanta Grape – The European version with real sugar.
    105. Sarsaparilla – Birch Beer would work too.\
      So, how’d you do?

  • Not Again… Love Thy Neighbor

    Here we go again. My Church has come out again and said two different things, and it’s driving me crazy. On the one hand, the church released a statement saying that the church is neutral in political elections but encourages members to participate in the process. On the other, they come out in favor of bigoted legislation that narrowly defines marriage in order to exclude other people from the legal rights we enjoy.

    Why? What’s the point? Just like in 2006 when the constitutional amendment was in front of the US Senate, this is an election year ploy meant to drive evangelicals to the polls to hate on some gay people. That’s all. There’s nothing moral or ethical about it. It’s hateful election year tricks meant to build up people by tearing others down.

    I can’t stand it. We didn’t go to church for almost two years after the last time a letter like that was read from the pulpit, and now people are being threatened with excommunication for being against Prop 8. Why does this have to come back up now just when we’re going back to Church and although I adamantly don’t agree with the Church’s position, we’re attending again.

    So, if this gets me excommunicated for thinking for myself, fine. I’m all for gay marriage. It has not effect on my marriage. I don’t think homosexuality is a choice. I don’t think we, as Christians, should be persecuting anyone for things they can not change about themselves or judge them. I know enough gay and lesbian couples to know that they love each other in the truest sense of the word and denying that love, pretending it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t fit into our small definition of it is wrong and un-Christlike.

    It was only a hundred years ago that Mormons were persecuted for our unpopular ideas about marriage. For us, even after all these years, to persecute others (and make no mistake, that’s exactly what’s going on) is hypocrisy plain and simple. It’s hate, bigotry and the worst part of ourselves, and I’ll have no part of it.\
    bq. Thus did Alma teach his people, that every man should love his neighbor as himself, that there should be no contention among them. — Mosiah 23:15\
    Marginalizing people is not love. It’s contention for political ends, a cheap trick to rile people up and get them to the polls – nothing more.

    Update: I’ve been thinking about this pretty much all last night and this morning, and a single phrase keeps coming back to me from The Declaration of Independence (emphasis mine):

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

    Throughout our history, we’ve not done a very good job of living up to the ideals laid down in our founding document (the one that kicked off our struggle for independence). Whether it was slavery, segregation, women’s rights, internment or meddling in other countries’ affairs, we’ve obviously still got some work to do to fulfill those ideals. I can’t stomach the idea that we’d take a step backwards by denying our fellow citizens’ “pursuit of happiness” and liberty just because we don’t agree with it. The divorce rate is over 50% and has been for years. It seems we have some work to do on our own marriages (one might say we have a “beam in our eye”) before we go meddling with others’. I don’t know why people think this will “save” marriage. If we spent as much time worrying about our own marriages as we did about denying the rights of others to marry, we’d probably all be a lot happier.

    And that’s what this is about for me – happiness. I can’t judge someone else and deny them their pursuit of happiness. Gay couples being allowed to marry doesn’t infringe on my rights or anyone else’s. It doesn’t somehow degrade my marriage – only I can do that. It doesn’t make me any less married or any less in love with my wife. It brings happiness to the world and to the people who are finally able to enter into that covenant with the person they love, and I’m all for it. Mazel tov.