Dragon*Con redux: Part Deux: The Recap

 

Thriller creep

Originally uploaded by N-Sai

So just a few days ago, I made my third expedition into Dragon*Con. As usual I was overwhelmed by the schedule, the possibilities and my own physical limitations. It is difficult to stand up for hours and wander around. Heaven forbid that you are wearing a sweaty Klingon outfit and carrying a bunch of memorabilia around. I’d hope these folks have a hotel room that they can retire to.

The impression that I get is the 2009 event was the largest ever. It was super-crowded. We got to do a few things and it was fun, but we had to fight a little and be smart about it. No doubt, the fact that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were making appearances must have drawn in the crowds by the thousands. It was, by all accounts, a magical exchange. I was at work, but I was there in spirit. Now, if only I cared about all these newfangled shows the kids are watching. Im an old-school Trek and TNG fangirl. Buffy, Babylon and Battlestar don’t really do it for me. And the new Star Trek movie? I have to admit, it was a bit of an affront.

I managed to get myself up for the parade (my second year doing this) and enjoyed it, although it was much harder to see than last year. After that, we objectified ourselves by looking at wings, masks, corsets, bellydancing suits and other geeky and nerdy thingamajigs. It was good because one of our non-Con-membership-$$$ friends was able to sneak in with us and buy some things, thus helping the tourist E-Con-omy — someone who otherwise wouldn’t go. That’s how we justified it; I think it’s just like how BART overcharges for travel to SFO airport — because tourist dollars are sought after more than resident dollars. When the Patrick Stewart line had gone through (our mouths were agape at the fact that it stretched through the Marriott and into Peachtree Center mall), I asked the ushers if I could get inside and we lucked out. Captain Picard was on fire, exchanging hot remarks with the Trek Trak show hosts with the sharp, barbed wit of a bald, Shakespearean science fiction actor. We sought coffee and were immediately besieged by geeks with cameras and horrible pickup lines. 

After that, we marched around some of the show areas where art is on display and went to see a concert by Abney Park that was right in the middle of the Hyatt ballrooms. The fire marshall was literally pacing back and forth like Darth Vader, and his D*C minions were adamant that people were to “keep moving” and not linger in the area around the concert. Clearly the demand exceeded supply. I don’t know why the fire marshall didn’t don a villainous constume, because it would have befitted his cretinous ways. I was tired at that point and could hardly see what was going on because the crowd of ewoks and other ridiculousness had gotten thick. I heard some clapping and cheering going on. Turns out, there was a marriage proposal during the concert. Too bad I couldn’t hear. But, congratulations to the lucky couple. We had run into a coworker who was working on a video piece about love and romance at Dragon*Con (not as much of an oxymoron as it seems) and we let him know about this as well.

The rest of the time around then is a little fuzzy. At a later point we were wandering around the art show. And at still another point, we attended a panel discussion by some people who worked at Battlestar Galactica (but were not key players like writers or actors). In the words of a friend, they “towed the company line” in regards to fans’ questions and disappointment about the series ending. I didn’t know what they were all talking about, but I enjoyed getting this sense of the kinds of reactions fans get to work that people put out, as well as a way NOT to act when receiving criticism and affection from devoted followers. It was enlightening nonetheless. I also remember we tried to sneak into the Leonard Nimoy panel just as we did with Patrick Stewart only to find that it was canceled. Oh well, at least we didn’t have to wait in line to find out.

And then, sometime later in the evening, we went to go get some food and had some geeky conversations, and then we attended a panel on skepticism (a bit baffling to me coming from a crowd of folks dressed in Spandex alien suits), followed up by a “filk” concert by Tom Smith. I always forget what filk is, but it’s basically a geeky version of folk music. The music guests that I saw were a lot better last year. Voltaire and folk duo Paul and Storm were there. I know the latter joined the likes of Jonathan Coulton and Wil Wheaton at Penny Arcade Expo this year. Hey, I can’t blame them for wanting to go to Seattle. In fact, I’m thinking if I do a Con again, I might seek out a change of pace by heading out West instead of looking outside my back door.

After that, or maybe before that, my memory fails me, we had some time to kill and went in search of amusement. We found it in a tiny, dark room showing bizarre films. We watched the last act of “Black Sheep,” an apparently foreign film (Australian? I’m going to get myself in trouble here…) about evil mutant sheep that attack humans and try to turn them into additional members of their kind. Yes, I said evil mutant sheep. The film is a hoot. After that, we saw the beginning of a horrible movie about lesbian vampires. Meh. It was kind of entertaining, though.

We closed out the night with a rousing concert by Cruxshadows, a funhouse-mirror reflection of Depeche Mode; I would describe it as the band’s brooding, younger, goth-ier brother — the one who cuts himself for attention. No, but Cruxshadows rocked the carpeted ballroom floors in stylish fashion. The band isn’t all that well-known, so they were hungry to bond with fans. That made this a great show. The lead singer dude came into the audience right in front of us on a couple of occasions, standing on a chair in one instance and doing some sort of a dance in another. And then at the end, everyone jumped up on stage and the singer picked up a young child that had been sitting on someone’s shoulders (!) much to the crowd’s excitement. Everyone was singing along and it was awesome.

That was the conclusion of day one. Day 2 found me sleeping in, going to a brunch at Straits in midtown, venturing out to the Decatur Book Festival, and then heading back intown just in time to join the world’s largest thriller dance. It was chaos when I got there and I almost didn’t get to dance. They were only going to let the first 1,000 go in, and they weren’t giving out any more ribbons. I was lucky that someone in the gift shop heard my pleas for a ribbon and mentioned that her pelvis hurt too much (or something along that line) and soon I found myself with three ribbons in the 400 group. And thus I had admission for my friends as well. It was a good time. The way I see it, the count is MORE accurate this way, even if it’s not the same person.

The dancers included a giant Michael Jackson single shiny glove, Cookie Monster in an orange jacket, storm troopers, zombie Elvis and some other colorful folks. It was a good time. The dance was more involved than I thought. I tried to recreate it for my coworkers the next day when we went wading in a fountain near the office, but was not very successful. That MJ. So talented was he. And such a great zombie.

And then more dinner and talking and a little more gawking and soon I was back at home, celebrating and mourning the end of my Con experience at the same time. Maybe next year I’ll go to PAX in Seattle for a change of scenery. Maybe not. I’m certain that there’s something magical about Dragon*Con and I hope it stays that way.

Working in the middle of a tourist attraction

 

Order like an Egyptian

Originally uploaded by N-Sai

You never know what you’re going to run into in the CNN Center since it’s such a popular stop whenever a big event comes to town. People stop by to eat, to chat and to grab a cup of overpriced Joe.

The junior robot builders competition is always a real treat because the participants wear festive costumes to identify their team. This group really took it to the next level by dressing like pharaohs from Egypt. Good times.

The value of civility

Honor and civility have their place in this dog-eat-dog world we live in. I firmly believe that you must keep your head high no matter what, and you can’t stoop to any level. Sometimes it’s hard to live up to this ideal, but you have to try. Conflict is a chance for communication and greater understanding.

People on the Internet, and in many facets of society, often fail to realize that others are just like them. Some are just trolls. But in many cases, a would-be enemy can be turned into a friend.

Case in point, a few days ago, I received a heated comment on one of my flickr images expressing offense and disappointment at the title. My first urge was to retaliate. How dare he? Upon closer examination, it seemed that the person was probably reaching out (in their own way). As much as I wanted to give this person a piece of my mind, I decided to change the title and then initiate a conversation with this fellow. I think now that I have made a new friend.

This was a strangely profound experience for me, however miniscule in the scheme of things.  I wish more people would just calm down and take a second to listen to each other, and that goes for myself too. Indeed, by being understanding and assertive, we can turn enemies into friends and the opposition into allies. This is not to paint a rosy view of the world (as I am extremely well aware of the many inequities this world brings), but only to emphasize that even when it is difficult, the only way we can move forward is together.

Waiting for the world to change

I guess the frustrations that I’m feeling (and the world collectively is feeling) about the state of newspapers, journalism education, media literacy and academia have got to come to a head sometime. Maybe now. The tensions have always been there, and this bad economy is merely the tipping point that will catalyze further change.

It’s almost cliche now but Clay Shirky’s article about the uncertainty and possible troubles ahead (thinking the “unthinkable” so to speak) is a pretty sobering view of the challenges ahead. I’d like to think that things won’t be quite that bad, but we can definitely expect that things may never be the same. When I was studying journalism and walking the hallowed halls of academia, I always felt a little uneasy. Sort of like I was traveling back in time and not really in step with what was going on outside the newsroom and journalism classroom. (Granted, they were trying as hard as they could, and none of us really had the answer. We’re still learning.)

Especially in light of what you can see happening now, I can certainly relate to Shirky’s concept of being a “barking madman” about the future, although I can hardly blame my contemporaries for resisting in a time when finances weren’t so dire and there wasn’t such a stark division between success and failure. But going into college, I was terribly undecided and uninspired whenever I examined the reams and reams of schools and majors at my university. I simultaneously wanted to everything and nothing. So little information about what to do with information.

The job I do now didn’t exist then, and I couldn’t have conceived of it as I sat at desks listening to old war stories of reporting about criminals and city councils. Sure, we discussed the Web and experimented with it and did internships and made online magazines, but we viewed it with a certain distant reverence and simultaneous grateful pity toward the people making it happen. “Web producer” jobs at that time weren’t terribly exciting — little more than shuffling content from print to online. We knew that was the future, but we had horrific visions of being reduced to moles working odd hours to cut and paste someone else’s stories — nearly going blind from wading through a sea of poorly conceived HTML tags.

Overall, I am thrilled with the education I got. It steered me where I needed to go. But I got lucky, too, and I wonder if the time has come for everyone to think differently about things. (It’s not just me wondering.)

I remember how we used to think back then. Focus on the basics and then the technology will fall into place afterward. Turns out things are changing so fast that the basics themselves have changed.

What about the future? We all knew deep down the current newspaper model was unsustainable. I’m surprised it worked as long as it did. Are people really going to pay for what is essentially old and outdated news that wastes trees, when they can get the same thing for free? I love reading a newspaper and being able to hold it in my hand, but I don’t like dealing with the waste of paper or the mass of it, and I don’t want to pay for it every day. And this idea that newspapers should withhold news until the morning… that worked then, but what about now, when the rumor mill is so much more active? It will only be more so in the future. Sure, the “hold-for-release” concept has its appeal and its need, but for crucial information and breaking news, old news is no news.

Some folks from the now-beleaguered East Valley Tribune, once heralded as a great Phoenix-area paper, are trying to start online-only publications. Same with people who left the shuttered Rocky Mountain News. Lots of people are starting up as citizen journalists, and will be doing it. Heck, dealing with that stuff is my job now. Could we have imagined that someone like me would make a living like this just a few years ago? I never would have fathomed and yet here we are.

So… we’re certain now that the future is uncertain and people won’t have the big conglomerations that we once had. Things are going to be individually driven. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The question is, if it’s not your full-time job, will you have time to do the reporting? Will your employer allow you to be a reporter and can you maintain the distance required? Who’s going to keep an eye on City Hall?

From my limited experience doing traditional news reporting, I recall attempting to gain respect from sources and the community (and my editors) by building a sense of trust among people and having good relationships with area stakeholders. That’s not a whole lot different from what I’ve seen while experimenting with social media. You build a following on one of these sites by captivating interest, putting in work and reciprocating with other members. In other words, you “join the conversation,” one of the most overused phrases ever as of late. But that ain’t no bull.

Conversation and community give you something that content cannot. One important thing Shirky notes is that people on Usenet were making copies of Dave Barry’s work back when the Internet started, and publishers’ immediate guttural reaction was to attempt to stop the sharing and stifle human nature. It is human nature to want to share and even to take another’s idea and spread it around both because you like the idea and because you want a piece of that attention for yourself. In short, trying to fight this urge is counterproductive.

Content is reproducible in many cases, but you cannot take a human interaction or experience and replicate it.

At the same time, you well know that people tend to develop great interest in certain kinds of content and high levels of traffic can go to these places. Sites are very good at delivering this content. So this can be capitalized upon and even discussed. If you are the source of this discussion, all the better. But chances are you won’t be, given how information is shared at light speed. Take, for example the idea of people Twittering while in the middle of a plane crash. You can’t beat the speed of that.

What it comes down to is a complex dance not unlike to two awkward birds preparing to mate — not so much audience-performer but more like different voices talking to one another. At least, that’s what my college experiences eventually taught me.

The trouble with New Year’s Eve

Happy New Year and welcome to 2009! Yay!

Look, I dunno what it is, but New Year’s Eve is the most problematic holiday ever. I would like to strike this day from the calendar, because rarely has any good come of it for me. (2007/8 being a rare exception to that rule!) I take it I’m not alone in that feeling, because others have expressed similar sentiments.

So, what happened over New Year’s Eve this year, you ask? I hope yours was better than mine… I worked that night, which honestly was the best part of the night. Kathy Griffin cracked me up, particularly with her highly inappropriate comment about our man Sanjay. I tried to make it a little more festive by wearing an ornamental hat and having an embarrassing Sock Monkey drop witnessed by a whopping one other coworker who was unlucky enough to be walking by on the way OUT THE DOOR (see my flickr for the shameful “after” pic).

But it was downhill from there. I had assumed I could take MARTA home but I left work about 30 minutes too late and got snagged. I live like 2 miles from work but couldn’t get a decent cab ride. There were people prowling the streets and piling up in hotel motor pool areas trying to mob any cab coming nearby. I’ve never seen such a thing. MARTA used to run 24 hours on NYE, but I guess times are a-changing. As luck would have it, I saw two guys get into the back of a cab and I immediately jumped in with them. It was a pretty desperate move. They were going a few blocks from my apartment, so I rode with them and continued on to my destination. The fare came out to $9, which wasn’t bad, considering, and that’s only because I was being generous in contributing to the guys’ fare. They totally stiffed the driver and gave him $11 (including my $4 contribution) instead of $12, and no tip. Dang college kids. And then I got home and heated up my delicious flatbread from Urban Flats (or tried to) and started opening up a bottle of Sangria. As I broke the seal (on the bottle), the entirety of midtown went dark. The power was out! And so was my Internet for the next day or so. As soon as the lights shut off, the generators started kicking in around town and pretty soon it sounded like a helicopter was hovering over my apartment. Good times. So I finally fell asleep around 6 a.m. and then stumbled in to work the next day around 1 p.m. The end.   

Well I mean, I talked to several other folks and they all indicated that letting your expectations get up too high is problematic on this troublesome holiday. A few had mishaps occur. Some didn’t even try to have fun, saying they always find it disappointing. What is it about New Year’s? Is it the fact that it’s not a “regular” night and thus it’s hard to get people together because they have something *better* to do which isn’t really better at all? That’s what I’ve always thought. It’s time someone did something about that. And of course a few people had a blast, but we don’t like them, do we?

Thanksgiving bullets

• Happy Thanksgiving! It’s been pointed out that I don’t update this blog nearly enough and I’m making an attempt.
• I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but one of the most posted items you will see on the Internets is an image of … well, Thanksgiving on Sesame Street.
• That image is going around faster than a case of [insert disease here] at Manzy Hall. (Bad ASU joke)
• Come on ASU, that wasn’t a good loss to the Trojans. Oh well, this team still has a lot of growing up to do and you have to admit, winning the games you’re supposed to win is still quite an achievement in a season like this with so many upsets and weird games.
• Dear reader, you will note that I am, as per is to be expected, on a Thanksgiving trip to Phoenix
• Visited a historical reenactment on Sunday that had been going on last weekend.
• Throughout the week we’ve just been kind of taking it easy and driving, eating, etc., and I”m trying to mentally remap the neighborhood that I grew up in.
• Watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for the umpteenth time. I don’t feel right if I don’t see at least one teenage pop star I’ve never heard of lip syncing to ’80s pop songs on a giant pirate ship while cheerleaders and evil muppets gyrate around them.
• Bob Saget’s helicopter flyover segment was refreshingly jarring in such a sugary sweet event, given his penchant for blue humor.
• It’s a great way to learn about hot new shows on Broadway, like Young Frankenstein. I might go see that. The dancing Igor is what did it for me. Not to mention Frankenstein’s monster.
• It’s a common confusion, by the way, that Frankenstein is the one with the arms sticking out and the bolts in the neck and stitches and whatnot. In reality (or my interpretation of it given some crappy Internet research), Frankenstein is just a dude. It was his monster who was “aliiiive,” and the popular image we have is actually a product of a 1930s movie adaptation. I think.
• Dinner at Avanti’s at 27th Street/Thomas and it was good.
• I mean we’re talking about Thanksgiving at an Italian restaurant. There were some other folks there who were intrigued by this idea.
• This is one of those places where you see mirrors on the ceiling and guys with a mildly mafioso style… where it’s not odd to see a vintage Bentley parked outside.
• You look inside and there are signed pictures from all manner of local celebrities.
• A little pricey but nice for a special occasion.
• The lamps hanging from the ceiling are actually blown-glass sculptures with a little notch carved into them for a candle.
• I learned what a “Waldorf Salad” is. I hadn’t really known before. I mean I knew there were apples involved… yikes.
• The catch is this Waldorf salad has either bleu or gorganzola cheese in it and I’m not sure if that was the norm. It was a bit of a twist I must say. I think it was gorganzola, and it had a pleasant stink to it.
• My attitude toward stinky cheeses is that they look and smell rotten because they basically are. But, the food connoisseur points out, they are not rotten, they are merely aged. Just like all the other fungus-covered stuff in my fridge?
• I suppose stinky foods are not dangerous, unlike the festering mess that always seems to surprise me upon returns from long trips, despite my best efforts to clean out any potential offenders beforehand.
• I had pumpkin soup, spinach-stuffed turkey rollatini, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans and garlic bread as well. Plus a slice of yummy pumpkin pie.
• A heated debate started about the commonness of grit in your pumpkin pie. Such grit is, I asserted, fairly common in less-processed pies. I don’t know where it comes from, but it seems like it’s probably just a little sand or other material that gets stuck in the pumpkin when it is cut.
• Anybody shopping like a freak at 5 a.m. tomorrow? Count me out! Any savings will be badly offset by my typical habit of going waaaay too far and spending less to spend more.

Lengthy List of Observations

1. I’ve discovered one key issue with social networking sites: they require some form of socialization with a network of some sort, and we’re not necessarily talking about Cartoon Network. This can be a tricky affair, even for someone as super awesome as myself.

2. Stone Mountain Park = Piedmont Park + Mt. Mount Rushmore / Cracker Barrel

3. As mom points out, Stone Mountain is a lot like the Grand Canyon, albeit slightly less grandiose: It’s that one symbolic thing that you have to see, and yet many people have yet to see it. I finally saw it on Saturday, and it was, you know. Interesting.

4. A coworker attempted earlier today to explain the difference between a “block” and a “trap.” I still have no idea what he was talking about.

5. Then again, if we’re talking about any kind of subject matter relating to No. 4, you can bet for absolute sure that I have no idea what we’re talking about.

6. Everything closes so dang early on Sunday, man. It’s such a DRAG! I guess I might as well be working.

7. My phone gets so hot when I talk that I feel like I’m going to melt on one side of my head.

8. I’ve mentioned a few times that I have this issue with bees who slam into the front window, thinking they can pass right through it and then SMACK! Down they go with a little thump on the glass. I like to leave the blinds open and just watch this scene play out over and over again. OK, not really, but that’s what I see when I try to catch a little sunlight. It can be a little weird to hear that when the blinds are closed, but more often than not, they can tell that it’s an impassable surface.

9. I’ve also hinted before at a possible war of pests. The bees and the spiders are rising up now that the cockroaches have subsided and the rats are pretty much superfluous. Who will be next in this battle of bugs?

10. Doing laundry is like the worst thing ever. There’s a term for it: “Mount Wash More.” I prefer … there’s no play on Stone Mountain. Drat!

11. I’m gonna shoot up outta bed at 4 in the morning like “Aha! I must … go … to the … computer!” in my crappy Capt. Kirk At 4 a.m. voice.

12. I LOVE to slowly bite the heads off gummy bears before devouring their bodies whole.

13. ASU is ranked at No. 8 in the BCS poll and No. 12 in the AP poll. Why I care about this is beyond me.

14. I’ve been really getting into the whole standings race, because of all the incredible upsets this season. The drama! The excitement! The exasperated sports writers pulling puns out of their literary arses!

15. What a season it’s been … Stanford vs. USC was up there with the greatest upsets of all time, marking the point at which we could confirm our suspicions that there were Achilles’ heels afoot in Troy. LSU just got unexpectedly pawed… Clemson was stung by Georgia Tech… there’s really too many upsets to list. The one team I think is giving off that “unstoppable” aura this season is USF: University of South Florida. Those young whippersnappers seem like they can do no wrong. Whether that will last is anybody’s guess. They’re awfully new to this.

15. Anyway, go Sun Devils!

16. Seriously, I love reading all the crazy search terms that are bringing people to this site. It’s so awesome.

Roachology

I think I’m starting to think like a roach, as you’ll see from this entry.

So I called for extermination last Wednesday and I assume they came, although they left no evidence of having done so other than leaving my door unlocked so that I got a little freaked out when I returned to my abode that night. When I peeked in and saw that my stuff was all still there, I figured it was OK to go inside. Since I NEVER leave my door unlocked by mistake except for very short periods of time and even then only in weird situations where I consciously postpone the locking process, i.e. virtually NEVER, I can only assume that the exterminator came.

That probably explains the sharp drop in the number of roaches I’m seeing, in conjunction with the greater effort I’m making to keep my place clean. That said, there are probably still roaches living inside the walls and around my hot water heater, which is locked away and inaccessible to me. And then the major problem is the same as it always has been: outdoor roaches coming in through the front door. So tonight I saw one of those big outdoor ones. It was crawling around in all the filth in the places I can’t clean, and walking all over the Baits Motels that have been set up along the baseboards. But it was also kind of stupid, so after whacking a broom at it several times, it finally died a painful and suffering death before being flushed down the toilet. Thank goodness for the stupidity of Georgia’s roaches. Now I jinx myself…

One of the problems is my building is a bit older and IMHO the construction isn’t the most solid, and there are cracks and openings aplenty. Plus, the doors don’t fit properly in the jambs. And then like a lot of other complexes around here, there is a lot of pine litter around the base of the buildings, plus shrubbery and trees are close to the foundation. It makes the place look nicer and lusher, but it also attracts bugs because they don’t see much of a delineation between natural and manmade areas and it’s harder to spray. (I live on one of the upper floors, by the way). And the outdoor hallways and tight spaces and frequent changes of occupants mean lots and lots of roaches. If one person sprays, the roaches go to the next apartment owner until they spray. UGH.

But I’m getting good at predicting their behavior so I can kill them. They tend to be stupid and try to come back out to the place they were when you tried to kill them. Rarely do they have the tenacity to stay in one place for long, and that makes them easy to kill — so you figure out a way to weaken them, block their escape routes and then go in for the kill. And then BAM! They’re dead. Think like a roach and YOU will be the one prepared to survive nuclear holocausts. (I should start my own infomercial-type thing.)

Injured list

I believe I detailed this in other online locales, but I have some kind of annoying pain going on in my left thumb. It’s hard to type even though I’m hardly using that thumb. I blame the iPod click wheel for this. Beware, all, of the dangers inherent in modern devices!

Come on people

Easy on the inappropriate Harry Potter searches, will ya?  Look, I don’t want to sound creepy, but I like to look at the stats for this blog and find out what’s bringing people here. A lot of it is to find out the dirt on Harry Potter. You ain’t gonna find it here, folks.

Anyway. I updated my family blog. I forgot to add in there a tiny highlight of today, for family members reading:  After visiting the post office again (read below) I snuck out for dinner at the Fanous (or Fanoos) Persian restaurant. Man, that place is awesome. I didn’t take an photos since I didn’t want them to think I was a restaurant reviewer or something. My plate of food was beautifully arranged and tasty too. I can’t recommend this place enough.

It’s a Persian “tea house,” which translates roughly to “Hookah! Hookah!” in English. Still, the food is the main reason people go there. It’s a lot like the Darvish tea house, but with (I dare say) lower prices and better food. I ordered a chicken kabob with iced tea and hot tea for a total of $18, including tip. It sounds like a lot but consider this: The price also included a nice appetizer selection including crisp pita pieces, Shirazi salad (cucumber, tomato and onion in a salted lemon sauce), mustokhiar (sp — yoghurt sauce with pieces of cucumber and mint), and a dip that I believe is called borani-e bademjan (zesty seasoned eggplant drizzled with yoghurt). The kabob came with basmati rice and a grilled tomato. In short, I loved it. I couldn’t finish it and I didn’t want to take leftovers with me. Which means it probably won’t last. Heck, I like this place way better than Darvish, and it’s got a pretty nice location in a strip mall on Roswell Road. But it seemed like it didn’t have the same kind of popularity that Darvish has, and it didn’t have as thick of a crowd as the other restaurants in the strip mall. Still there were definitely people there and I know from the research that was done that it has some loyal fans. All in all, the Persian Tea House model is quite different than the quieter, more intimate and more low-key kinds of Persian food you will find in the Phoenix area. It’s more aimed at the younger crowd, which I think is something that would be good to have in Tempe, AZ. If you come to visit me, family, I will take you there.

Yeah, so I had to go to the post office again to see if they would give me my mail. I guess the postman got sick of stuffing my mail in there; I let it go for too long and it was the finally last straw. Now, he isn’t delivering to my box anymore. He left a note saying it was at the USPS postal store, but I went there this evening (after the Gosh-awful heat/humidity combo settled down) and they told me I should just call at 8:30 a.m. to find out what happened to my mail. They think he might have taken it to the warehouse down the street. I’m thinking they probably threw it away or lost it. The best I can hope for is to convince him to deliver my mail again, if I promise pretty please with a cherry on top that I’ll check it more regularly. This is so stupid!

No answers yet, for now. This better get fixed soon so I don’t miss getting my birth certificate from Iowa. Anyway the USPS visit seemed like a good excuse to get the Persian food while I was out, and to get a little minor grocery shopping done at Whole Foods. (There’s a Kroger too.)

I’m also tired of dodging crappy traffic and seeing people give each other the finger for stupid reasons. On the plus side, there are fewer of those road-rage shootings in the ATL than the PHX. I suppose I’ll take middle fingers versus guns. I’m also tired of lousy intersections and broken “walk signal” buttons. I swear people break them on purpose. Also, I’m tired of the lack of sidewalks on some streets. Con(des)truction on the sidewalk leading to one of my favorite OTP shopping centers has made a trip there far more hazardous than it should be. I’ve actually stopped going there altogether since there are other plazas with the same stores that are less dangerous. And closer, too.

ALSO: Bus routes here are sometimes complicated, which is why I rarely ride the bus. I’ve only done it a few times and it’s sucky. It’s often easy to get somewhere, but hard to get back because you don’t have the option of taking multiple buses at some destinations. The stops are spaced apart from each other and the drivers won’t stop at the stops for the other route to pick you up. Frankly I think it’s pretty lame that two bus drivers drove right past me at stops because I wasn’t at the exact stop they were looking for.

And by the way, just a thought about dealing with people in general (and not to single out bus drivers, if that’s what you’re thinking — this is a generic comment): I’m tired of lousy customer service. There are way too many people out there who are making it obvious they hate their jobs. Look, I know you hate your job. Frankly, I would hate to have your job too. (Is that cruel to say?) I might even hate my life altogether. But for Pete’s sake, and we love Pete, let’s not show the world how miserable we are. Instead, let’s try to find some pleasure in life. I’m not saying sing the “happy happy joy joy” song all the time. But I firmly believe that if you can sap some tiny bit of joy from your miserable, slug-like existence, you may find your existence isn’t so miserable anymore. If that makes sense.

OH and ATTENTION ALL BURGLARS AND TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA MENU INSERTION FREAKS AND POSTAL POSTFOLKS: I be goin’ to Phoenix next week. Flight is next Friday.

Oh, and I just killed a flying cockroach in my living room! Just now. Go me. They love the crappy humid weather we have right now. I think since it has (had) been a drier, cooler summer than last, roaches haven’t been much of an issue. Now that it’s hotter and humider again, I think I’m going to see more of these fellas. Still, probably not as many as last summer.

That is all folks… time to go back to living. And sleeping. Over and out.