Category Archives: Personal

A Short, Curmudgeonly Rant About E-Cigarettes

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(Inspired by the article “E-Cigarettes Can Churn Out High Levels Of Formaldehyde,” h/t Lynn.)

I’m gonna churn out high levels of whoop-ass if I hear the word “vape” again.

Here’s the thing, though: The most passionate defenders of these things (I hate the term “e-cig” almost as much as I hate the word “vape”), at least in my circles, are the people who were finally able to quit smoking actual cigarettes thanks to these things (I’m just gonna have to suck it up and say “e-cigarettes,” aren’t I?)

I can absolutely respect them for helping smokers to quit, but we’re not talking about Nicorette here. It’s a replacement for smoking that precisely mimics the act of smoking, and it’s introducing a whole new concept of how it’s “cool” to suck on a stick and exhale some sort of mist. Plus, people think it’s okay to do indoors and they have douchey new words for it.

Wes + Tony [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/)], via AmazingSuperPowers

Via AmazingSuperPowers

On the other hand (overshare of personal information alert), I will say that cigarettes were just about the only thing that kept me on my feet during my brief time in the retail business. If there’s a way to give people that sort of energy boost without the associated particulate matter, I guess that’s good. We sure as sh!t aren’t about to reconsider whether people ought to be working such insanely long hours with only two 15-minute breaks, which would be the actual sane thing to do under these circumstances.

As long as I’m being ranty, I support marijuana legalization in part because I never want to hear idiotic slang like “420,” or metaphorical uses of the term “herbal remedies,” ever, ever, ever again.

Image credit: Wes + Tony [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US], via AmazingSuperPowers.

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Is It Cold Out?

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Today is a ridiculously cold day in Austin, Texas. The last time I checked, it was about 28 degrees F outside. It might be warmer now, but I ain’t moving to find out. Is this actually cold, though? (h/t to Mike for inspiring this pontification.)

I remember two people that I met during my freshman year of college, when I moved from San Antonio to Houston and, pretty much for the first time in my life, met people who didn’t think of air conditioning as something that every building obviously has.

First, there was the girl from Minnesota who, whenever the temperature dipped below 40 (which it seemed to do more than a few times), proceeded to get in the face of everyone she saw demanding to know why they thought this was cold when it was -10 degrees where she was from, and who then proceeded to run around in the quad in shorts and a t-shirt yelling “THIS ISN’T COLD!!!!” (I may be amalgamating multiple distant memories into one Nordic ice queen, but my point stands.) She ended up catching a really bad cold, but I’m sure that was entirely coincidental.

Then, there was the guy from the Fort Lauderdale, FL area. When spring arrived, and the temperature was a brisk and delightful 72 degrees and the wind wasn’t out of the east (people who have lived in Houston know what I mean), I decided to go outside to enjoy nature’s bounty to its fullest. He immediately went inside to put on a sweater, cursing the cold.

My final observation is that -40 degrees is the point at which human skin will almost instantly freeze if exposed. Due to a quirk of the conversion tables, -40 degrees F and -40 degrees Celsius are the same temperature.

My point is that unless it’s -40 degrees out, “cold” is mostly relative. It’s freaking cold in Austin right now, so shut up.

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Here’s an Important Thing I Learned this Week

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If you spread grass seeds in your backyard without first checking to see if any old plush dog toys are still on the ground, you can make your own chia pet.

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Also, old plush dog toys that have been laying in the mud since at least August look an awful lot like real animal hides.

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Long Break from Regular Blogging

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I had to go AFK for a bit because of hand and elbow surgery, but that was now more than two months ago, and I’ve been back at my regular writing job for a while. My lack of regular blog updates might have upset my reader(s), so I am committing to [trying to] do better.

In the meantime, I found this GIF of Olivia Munn saying “boobs” in an Imgur folder:

That’s in honor of the series finale of The Newsroom, where she played Sloan Sabbith and was awesome.

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A Thought for NaNoWriMo Participants

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We are eleven days into November, and I haven’t actually started on National Novel Writing Month yet. That doesn’t mean I’m out, just that I procrastinate proudly.

For those who are actively participating, and who might be feeling sone frustration, this bit of wisdom from Chuck Wendig might not make you feel better, per se, but hopefully it will remind you that all creative endeavors are painful at some point.

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I’ll be AFK for a bit

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“AFK” means “away from keyboard,” right? The reason being that I’m having a minor procedure tomorrow that will most likely prevent me from typing anything for a (hopefully) short while.

I say “minor” because it’s an endoscopic procedure that they say will only take 20-30 minutes, but it’s really just good ol’ carpal tunnel surgery.

About two years ago, I noticed that I was having numbness in my pinky finger and half of my ring finger on my left hand. My doctor referred me to an orthopaedic specialist, who sent me for nerve testing. I was diagnosed at the time with cubital tunnel syndrome, which involves the “funny bone” nerve that runs through the elbow and affects those 1.5 fingers I just mentioned. We decided not to do anything at the time because it wasn’t that bothersome, and the tests showed that the condition was mild.

Earlier this year, I began to notice that the rest of my left hand was going completely numb at times, especially in the morning, possibly because I was sleeping on my side with that hand folded up under the opposite arm (it’s hard to picture, so I’d recommend you not try.) I went back to the orthopaedic doc (spell check is telling me “orthopaedic” is spelled wrong, but it just looks so dang cool with that “a” in there), who sent me for more nerve testing. The tests involve electrodes and tiny electric shocks. I don’t recommend it. Continue reading →

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500

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I just noticed that I have exactly five hundred drafts of unpublished blog posts saved here, ranging from mostly-finished posts to a title with one or two links.

Surely I have raised procrastination to an art form by now.

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No More Saturday Morning Cartoons

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I just learned that this morning was the first Saturday morning in at least fifty years with no cartoons on broadcast television. While I don’t think I have personally spent much time watching regularly-scheduled animated programming on Saturday mornings since we all wondered if the Smurfs had any sort of copyright claim against the Snorks, I can’t help but feel wistful that an era is ending.

I also can’t help but realize that I actually remember the PSAs that ran during commercial breaks better than the cartoons—this is almost certainly due to repetition, since I would’ve seen the “hanker for a hunk of cheese guy” way more often than any one episode of The Herculoids or Turbo Teen. (Okay, seriously, how f—d up was the basic concept of Turbo Teen? What happens if one of the headlights gets smashed? Does he lose an eye???) Anyway, since I don’t seem to have anything else to do this morning—I’m certainly not going to be watching any cartoons!!!—here are a few old memories for my fellow Gen-Xers who maybe thought the nostalgia segments of Reality Bites were ahead of their time.

Of course, we have the “hunk of cheese” guy:

I don’t know if anyone remembers the singing bean and grain of rice: Continue reading →

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