So my new LG enV² cell phone arrived today. I got home a few minutes ago, all excited to activate it (it was already charged and ready to go.) I decided to do it online - it’s late, I have to wake up early… this is easiest, thought I.

I went through the three easy steps and got to the “click here to accept the user agreement” page. Well, because I’m just that way, I decided to actually read a bit of the user agreement. I’m used to the usual, “you can’t sue us, we’re not responsible for X, Y, Z, you have to pay your bill, early termination fee” etc. But I’ve had this same account since 1996 so I’m fairly certain I’m still OK with whatever rights they’re taking/leaving.

What caught my eye was that in the second or third paragraph, it mentioned some company (not Verizon - let’s call them “United Sprocket Co.”) and said that by checking the “I accept” box, I was verifying that I was working for them as an independent agent of “United Sprocket Co.” (which I’m not) and allowing them to monitor my phone calls (in the immortal words of Whitney, “Awwww, HELL TO THE NO!”).

I checked to see if there was any relationship between “United Sprocket Co.” and the company I work for; there is not, nor did I think there would be. I do get a small discount (something like 5%) on my cell phone service because my employer is signed up for it (one of those corporate incentive thingies), but my company does not pay my cell phone bill, so I really don’t think they’d reserve the right to monitor my phone calls in exchange for my getting a measly 5% discount. If that’s the case, I would gladly pay the extra 5% so I could have a little less Big Brother in my life.

So, I’m guessing that my account info for the renewal is somehow tied to a corporate phone account for someone employed by “United Sprocket Co.” My regular account page contains no mention of the other company, so that’s reassuring. Of course, dialing the 800 number didn’t help at all since their hours of operation are 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. (What’s this? I thought you were all outsourcing to Bangalore so that there could be someone on the other end of the phone 24/7. I guess not!), but I’ll call from the train in the morning or when I get to the office.

It’s just weird and I don’t want to assume that it’s a glitch in their system until I talk to someone and have this straightened out.

So I have an awesome new cell phone that I can’t use yet because I actually read the small print and thought twice. Grrrr. Ignorance would be cell phone bliss, I guess.

I’m putting together a list of books I plan on buying so that I don’t end up buying three previously unplanned books next time I go to the bookstore. This list is being placed in my new Moleskine notebook (softcover this time) since that way I know I’ll have it with me.

Some would say, “Eva, you’re not a technophobe or Luddite. Why don’t you just save them as a memo in your cell phone?” You know, I could do that. But I like writing things down in my notebook. I like being able to flip it right open and know what I’m looking for instead of navigating through the phone menus and whatnot.

So far on the list:

• Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker
• The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
• New Moon or Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (this series of vampire novels is HUGE young adult hits. Movie coming soon. I need to read one and see if they live up to the hype)
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy - NOT THE OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB EDITION. Seriously. I might end up ordering the British version through abebooks or alibris if I can’t locate an untainted copy.
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (paperback 9/2/08)

I’ve also got a few good recommendations which I’m writing down (The Outcast by Sadies Jones and A Summer of Hummingbirds by Christopher Benfey), but I’ll wait for the paperbacks on those. I prefer trade paperbacks. It’s a thing (charming quirk?) I have.

While the point of this list is to prevent me from buying far more books than I need, I want to be easy on myself. The whole magic of bookstores (which doesn’t exist in the online environment) is the chance you’ll find that unplanned purchase… the serendipitous discovery that introduces you to an author you didn’t know before or helps you find your new favorite book. That has only ever really happened for me when I’ve let myself get lost wandering the fiction section (though it’s happened in others, too).

The point is that seeing an interesting title or cover will prompt me to pick the book up off the shelf or table - and that’s something that just won’t happen on Amazon. I won’t spend an hour looking at EVERY SINGLE BOOK on the site. I WILL, however, spend an hour looking at EVERY SINGLE BOOK on a bookstore shelf written by someone with a last name beginning with M, N, O or P (for example).

And that’s how I end up with far too many books. I need to start going through my collection and unloading the retired books (I dare not call them unwanted) from my library and getting them out into the world where they might provide happiness to others. I won’t do the BookCrossing thing yet, either since some might be OK for a library and with a large quantity, bookcrossing might be difficult to do. I’d like to just fill up a shopping bag and bring them somewhere and say, “HERE. FREE!”

But I’ve had several friends request that I provide them with a list of what I’m planning on chucking since they might want first dibs. It’s nice to know that they trust my taste even that much. It’s a bit dicey with reading since I’ll read almost anything (almost) and that usually means that my more genre-minded friends will end up disappointed, as will my more literary-minded friends.

YES, I enjoyed both The Satanic Verses and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban equally. Strange, but true. I recognize them both for what they are and enjoy them accordingly. Rushdie for his use of language and imagery and humor… Rowling for the enthralling world she created and her sense of the fantastical.

This is turning into a bit of a soapbox piece. I think I’m just hungry - and a hungry Polak is an angry Polak, as my mother oft quips at family dinners. I went walking after work with my friend/co-worker and I’m now ravenous. But I can only think about soup and toast since my stomach is a little uncertain.

In another two weeks, it’s new cell phone time for Miss Eva. I’ve been waiting for an update on the Samsung phone I posted about ages ago, and that’s the one now known as the Samsung Glyde.

It could be that, a Blackberry Curve or the LG Voyager.

c|net (my initial/trusted choice for such decision-making basics) reviewed the Glyde and gave it a 7.3 out of 10. That’s good.

They gave the Voyager 8.3 out of 10. That’s really good.

c|net doesn’t have an editorial rating for the Blackberry Curve yet, but the users give it a 9.0 out of 10. This I will take with a grain of salt since people get a little too attached - the Crackberry phenomenon.

I’m going to have to suck it up and go into a Verizon store (I loathe that part of the process) to play with them and see which interface is most eva-friendly. I’m pretty savvy with those things and can learn to use a new toy quickly - but the simple matter of how it feels in my hand will be part of the decision-making process, too. When the Verizon sales dudes come up to me to start pitching, I might pretend I don’t speak English. That should get them to leave me the hell alone.

I haven’t gone to a brick-and-mortar Verizon store in almost 6 years; I’ve done all my phone upgrading and plan changes online since I just hate the wireless store experience. It reminds me of the scene in Best in Show where the yuppie couple are discussing how lucky they were to be “raised among catalogs”:

I totally get that sometimes. Also, I love this scene and I adore Parker Posey.

I don’t even know how much time I’ll have to write in the next week. Seriously.

Today I drove my friend to the airport in the morning so he could catch his flight to San Francisco, and I will be flying out there to hang out with him next Wednesday. The seven days between now and then will be both interminable and far too short.

For example, I’ll be working every single day, including the weekend. That’s when I’ll be working the New York ComicCon to represent my company’s Shakespeare: The Manga Edition series. It should be pretty cool (if providing a little bit of geek overload - which I might even enjoy a bit if I didn’t get scared by people who are crazy hardcore about [insert comic book/graphic novel/manga/TV/movie series here] ) and the days should fly by since it will be busy.

Neil Gaiman is doing an appearance and signing sometime during the convention, but one part is a $500-a-ticket fundraiser for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the other (reading - $20 a ticket) is most likely going to have lines spilling out the door if it doesn’t sell out. Since I’m working Saturday and Sunday, Friday is my only free night this week (and I’d like to see my other friends before I disappear for about two weeks), I won’t be attending, as much as I enjoy Mr. Gaiman - and I do.

All that coolness doesn’t change the fact that I will have spent all the hours between noon and 8 pm (you know, hours when I could be taking care of things like laundry and shopping and packing) standing in a noisy convention center.

It just puts a lot more pressure on me to get things done in the evenings. My usual evening routine is to get home from work around 6/7pm, change into running clothes, run for 30-45 minutes or so, shower, eat, check email/RSS feeds, and then read or watch a movie until I fall asleep. Tonight, I was unable to adhere to that routine; I got home at 6:30, checked email quickly and then ran out to stores to get vitals like sunglasses, shorts, a couple of tank tops and such. I got home at 9:00 and ate some dinner (leftover spinach and a piece of toast - PATHETIC) then tackled email, checking tracking on some stuff I ordered for said trip (durable rock climbing pants since Old Navy cargo pants won’t cut it), put away purchases, did some cleaning… and now it’s 11:00. Where does the time go?

Somewhere I can’t see. And the reasons for my blindness may vary.

But I’m glad to know that the title of a mix CD I made provided the possible title for a story my friend is writing, that I am basically guaranteed to have non-stop fun during my vacation which makes everything coming up to it worthwhile, that the stress I’ll be feeling at work will be productive stress because I’ll be getting lots of things done, and that I’m going to go rock-climbing tomorrow and it will feel good.

A week or two ago, I heard a short interview with Harold McGee on my local public radio station - WNYC. The audio is available online here. McGee is a food scientist; his book “On Food and Cooking” is sort of the bible of molecular gastronomy and general foodie craziness (it’s been around for 20+ years and was completely revised and updated in 2004). I was fascinated by that short clip (where he spoke with my favorite public radio host, Soterios Johnson) about the chemistry of forcing water into rice and pasta, cooking sous-vide, and the window of time to cook something to perfect doneness.

So I ordered it from Amazon because it seemed right up my alley. It arrived earlier this week and it just makes me feel all powerful flipping through the pages (which, incidentally, feel really nice. Good paper choice, production folks at Scribner/Simon & Schuster!)

I’ve been flipping around and reading the chapters/sections that capture my interest: the milk and dairy section gave me a better understanding of cheeses and the differences between ice cream, custard (ice cream + egg yolk) and gelato (custard with more butterfat). The chapter on eggs opens with the answer to, “What came first? The chicken or the egg?” (appropriate for today, I suppose). His answer: eggs existed long before chickens did—he sides with Samuel Butler who said, “a chicken is just an egg’s way of making another egg.”

Interesting stuff on muscle fibers and how they determine whether meat is light or dark, judging doneness of meat by feel, the chemistry behind the onion’s tear-producing skills (a sulfur compound known as the “lacrimator”—lacrimose means tearful) which is essentially a molecular bomb that hits the nerve endings of our eyes and breaks down into hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid. Yes, the same sulfuric acid that we would add to sugar in high school chemistry class to create a pillar of stinky black carbon in a beaker. It’s also the same stuff that will burst into flames if a 100% pure piece of it comes in contact with air - it reacts violently with water, so the moisture in the air does that. A 98% pure piece of it will burn through paper just by touching it. Fun stuff. And that’s what makes us cry when we’re cutting onions.

I skipped past the fruit chapter for now and am about to start Chapter 8 –”Flavorings from Plants: Herbs and Spices, Tea and Coffee.” Mmm.

Easter breakfast with the family is finished (I made a kick-ass Asparagus and Leek Frittata - except we didn’t have leeks or shiitake mushrooms, so I used scallions, onion and red peppers instead. It worked out OK.) Yay, food!

Tomorrow is my catch-up day - for running, reading, knitting, RSS feeds, and blogging.

I’m woefully behind in all things of this nature. But I will share this comic from xkcd. I sent it to my expectant friends and they enjoyed it.

The rollover caption reads:  We are sexy, sexy Von Neumann machines.

I’ll admit - despite my geek status, I didn’t know exactly what a Von Neumann machine was/is. I extrapolated/inferred from the context that it had something to do with a machine for making things. Well, I was sort of right; a von Neumann machine is also known as a self-replicating machine. According to your friend and mine, Wikipedia, a self-replicating machine is:

… an artificial construct that is capable of autonomously manufacturing a copy of itself using simpler components or raw materials taken from its environment. The concept of self-replicating machines has been most notably advanced and examined by, Homer Jacobsen, Edward F. Moore, Freeman Dyson, John von Neumann and in more recent times by K. Eric Drexler.

That struck me as pretty cool. So, I think one thing I’ll have to do is go over to spreadshirt.com and create a t-shirt that proclaims the wearer (who will be a pregnant woman) a “sexy sexy von neumann machine” and get a copy made up for my friend. I think that would be geeky and awesome.

Cold, dry winter air wreaks havoc on my skin. I feel all alligator-like and am constantly searching for a lotion that works well as an after-shower moisturizer that:

a) won’t be totally greasy and gross

b) won’t feel watery and immaterial, and…

c) doesn’t cost a fortune because moisturizing arms, legs and back requires much lotion

Well… Trader Joe’s to the rescue! The moisturizing cream at left - Trader Joe’s A Midsummer Night’s Cream Moisturizing Cream, Extra Dry Formula - meets all these criteria. It comes in a regular version and this extra dry formula. It’s unscented, but it still has a very faint herbal scent which is not at all unpleasant. It’s quite rich and thick, but not greasy or slimy. It absorbs into the skin quite quickly (at least for me) and lasts quite a long time.

I was wearing a thick and itchy cowl-neck wool sweater earlier in the week and it normally irritates the hell out of my neck (while keeping the rest of me warm and toasty) but the irritating effects were greatly lessened by being moisturized beforehand with this stuff. I sometimes use Aveeno, but it isn’t as rich as I would like and I find myself having to reapply a few times before I really feel the effects.

Later today, I’ll be going to a Trader Joe’s location I’ve never been to before and I’m willing to bet they will have larger selection of TJ’s craziness than my smaller local TJ’s. Excitement!

As a point of curiosity, this lotion shares its name with a porno flick (A Midsummer Night’s Cream) but that’s a connection very few people are going to make. And I am one of those weird people because I read too much.

There was an article in Reason magazine several years ago about controversial porn studies courses in universities. The piece mentioned that film, which is an actual retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (safe proof from IMDb!):

One needn’t be a prude or a hidebound academic traditionalist to roll one’s eyes at the earnest assertions of porn studies champions. Amherst English professor Richard Burt, among others, has said that pornography should be treated no differently from any other genre of film or literature.

In a way, this is a reductio ad absurdum of the postmodernist creed that no “text” is truly superior to any other. In a 2001 article in the Los Angeles Times, Burt boldly declares that no study of film adaptations of Shakespeare can be complete without a look at hard-core porno flicks like A Midsummer Night’s Cream.

If porn studies and events like “Revolting Behavior” take intellectual content out of the academy, they also take human content out of human sexuality (and perhaps sexual content as well). “Transgressive” acts and identities are celebrated for their defiance of social norms.

Honestly, I don’t have a problem with it. If such a course was offered back in my college days, I probably would’ve signed up for it. What people fail to realize is that pop culture analysis has become a part of most college course workloads and the work that results from these studies is legitimate and just as labor-intensive as writing a paper on Proust or Nietzsche. One thing my college education taught me was to look at EVERYTHING as a “text” -whether that text is a movie, a television commercial, TV show, book, play, poem, painting, sculpture, photo, song, opera, etc. It can all be taken apart, analyzed, deconstructed and viewed in that way. You can do a close reading of a porn flick just as seriously as you can do a close reading of a paragraph of Hegel.

I took a (straight-up serious) philosophy course my freshman year at NYU that looked at philosophical ideals and tropes in dramatic works–a few Greek tragedies, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, but also the movie Blade Runner and episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We discussed those works in terms of what they say about being human - what makes us human. Deckard from Blade Runner (who at that time had not yet been revealed to be a Replicant by director Ridley Scott) and Data from Star Trek were the subjects of a paper in which we had to answer the question, “According to [Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzche], is [Data, Deckard] human?” based on their statements about humanity, morality and ethics.

Interesting stuff.

One of the benefits of not being wealthy, not being involved in a multitude of investment opportunities and not being a homeowner/married person/parent is that my taxes are so easy to do. Really. I used TurboTax this year and last year because it makes it so redonkulously easy, but I’ve done it the old school way, too. And an even older school way before I knew any better — going to an alcoholic accountant/family friend who used to do my taxes until the fear of an audit made me think better of such things.

I guess I’m a reluctant fan of TurboTax. The end part of the process (just before you file) is annoying because they try to sell you on their professional tax review, audit-proofing, etc. (all at an additional cost) but I have to appreciate that - it’s the cross-sell. The rest of it is pretty painless so I can’t complain overall. However, I do not use them for the state taxes. While they include one free state tax return with the software, they charge an additional $17 or something if you want to e-file the resulting return through TurboTax. Ha ha. There’s the catch.

Most states offer a free e-file option through the official state website - and most state taxes are simple-simple -simple. No itemized deductions, no craziness. Just “How much did you earn?” and “Did you buy a house or spend insane sums of money on medical care?” then “OK, well you should’ve paid this and you paid this. Your return/amount owed is _____. Have a nice day.”

In any event, I’m all e-filed for state and federal and should be seeing my moderate federal return magically appear in my bank account in the next 9-14 business days. My whopping $1 return from the State of New Jersey should appear even sooner.

Guess who’s going to be putting that mad-cash-money towards a new tube of lip balm?!??!

Checking my RSS feeds… eating pizza at my desk… and saw THIS:

At Toy Fair, this company had a full mini Nightmare Town from The Nightmare Before Christmas. My favorite movie blog, /film, took the initiative and posted photos of it. And I love it.

Yes, I might be getting too old for this, but I love it all the same.

Last Sunday night, I finally took myself to see “There Will Be Blood.” No plot synopsis here, just some observations/impressions - and perhaps details you might not want to know. Ah, well. At this point, I’ll just go with it.

First thought: It was far quieter than I expected. Then again, this is from the man who brought us “Magnolia”, which was also a fairly quiet film in a similar way. But it was very quiet. I feel this must have some connection with a certain character’s deafness later (where sound disappears entirely from certain scenes); or perhaps it’s simply a device they’re using to accentuate how vast and empty the world was (and to this man in particular) and the various things he did or was willing to do to fill that emptiness (which never abated since that type of greed can’t be “met” or fulfilled).

Second: Yes, Daniel Day Lewis was good again. For very superficial reasons, this role (Daniel Plainview) reminded me of his performance as Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting in “Gangs of New York.” Both characters possess incredible charisma which they use to manipulate people into doing things they might not do otherwise. That said, there were still moments I wanted to like him and see some good within him, despite his being a manipulative, greedy oil man. The limp he affects elicits part of that response, I think (oooh - flawed! Human!) I got over it by the end of the movie, though.

Third: I understand that for the time period and subject of the film (late 1800s/early 1900s - the wilds of California and the American west, with oil prospecting as the centerpiece), the relative lack of female characters is fitting. It was just a bit strange for the biggest female parts to be little girls who either a) run and fetch things for the men or b) look cute when someone needs a prop to appear sensitive and family-oriented.

Fourth: The depiction of religion and the role of religion in the various characters’ lives was fascinating. You have “dueling charismas” when it comes to relationship between the young minister and the greedy oil man. They’re like two sides of the same coin, and I think that’s pretty heavily suggested throughout. It’s not exactly a doppelganger set-up, but I think seeing them as more alike than different is key. Things like the sarcastic use of “brother”, the fact that the minister is/was a twin, their similarities in terms of showmanship and the ability to manipulate people to their way of thinking… and the way they play each other, competitively and maliciously—these all play into it.

Fourth (ancillary): The names. A minister named ELI SUNDAY? A greedy liar named DANIEL PLAINVIEW? And throw in the fact that he tosses around, “I believe in plain-speaking” to everyone he meets… and, here’s a curiosity. The name Eli means “ascension” or “my God” in Hebrew; the name Daniel is also derived from Hebrew and means “God is my judge.” Interesting.

Fifth: I need to see it again to make any larger-scale big-picture comments. Because it was so quiet, you’d think I would’ve focused quite clearly on what was said and what was shown; but it’s a long movie. And I wasn’t feeling all that hot on Sunday, anyway.

Sixth: Now I’ve seen the new movie catch-phrase du jour in action. There’s a site. Probably several.

But I will call your attention to this one, Idrinkyourmilkshake.com, since it’s billing itself as a discussion board about the movie or a place to play the line over and over and over. Movie folks on the blogosphere are saying that line is either the new “show me the money!”, “say hello to my little friend” or “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. (slurping noise).”

Hrm. Well, I’ll consider the last two, but there’s no way you can compare a line from “Jerry Maguire” to the lines from those other films.