Typical Silliness

Sentence I uttered at breakfast this morning:

“Perhaps my patronus is a plectranthus.”

Posted by seaking on 12-18-2011 at 11:12 pm
Posted in Humor, Surreal with 0 Comments

LV=XS

Continuing where my previous post left off, here are things I saw as I headed back south on Las Vegas Boulevard (aka The Strip).

I don’t recall for sure which hotel/casino this belonged to, but it may have been the Riviera:

Here’s the front of the Riviera:

Here’s a ship at the casino Treasure Island:

It is floating in actual water.  Near it, “carved” into the “rock face” is this:

Then at the other end of the Treasure Island lagoon is another ship:

As I was leaving the sphere of influence of TI, I passed these statues, which I believe are related to TI:

It seemed to be popular for tourists to be photographed with their head in the lion’s mouth (I saw at least 2 people pose that way).

Soon I came upon Caesar’s Palace, which I think is one of the larger casino complexes.  It has a lot of statues and fountains:

Here are the main fountains, with a couple of the buildings in the background:

Around this point, I took a picture looking south:

One thing I found fascinating about walking around this area is that it looked like everything was very close together, but then it would take quite a while to walk to a landmark that I’d been able to see for the whole time.  I suspect the reasons for this are the large size of some of the buildings, as well as the flatness of the area (so you can see a long distance.

Here are some features of the Flamingo:

Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall:

Here is the Bellagio:

This place has famous fountains (at least I’d heard about the fountains).  Specifically, there are water jets submerged in their lagoon/moat/whatever, which put on a show every 15 minutes.  I waited a few minutes and got to see it:

I took some video of that show as well, so you can see what the motion of the water is like:

While I found the show impressive, I can’t help but wonder about all the water usage in an area that’s essentially desert.

Back down at Tropicana Blvd., kiddie-corner from the MGM Grand is the Excalibur:

I continued south from there, and came to the Luxor.  That’s the one that’s basically a big pyramid:

With its sky-polluting light on top.  They also have a sphinx and an obelisk sign:

Near the base of the obelisk:

South of the Luxor is the Mandalay Bay, which had one feature worth photographing – these creature statues:

The big casinos peter out at that point, but a ways further south is the Las Vegas welcome sign:

That’s the side you see if you’re headed north.  Going south, you see this:

By this time, I’d spent a few hours walking, and my feet and hip were hurting.  I headed back north to get back to my hotel room.  On the way I passed a motel that had this statue:

Before I made it back to the Tropicana, I spotted a cat:

I had to bump up the brightness on that picture to show something besides the cat’s eyes.  I moved to take a picture from a different angle, and another cat jumped up on a nearby cinderblock wall to get away from me:

I think these cats were feral, as this one jumped into a nearby tree when I got a little closer to it:

I then left them in peace, and ambled back to the hotel.

The following morning I got on the computer and mapped the distance I had walked.  I had spent a total of 4 hours walking and taking pictures, and I had actually travelled nearly 9 miles in that time.  Taken together with the walking I’d done during the day at the conference, it was no wonder my feet hurt.  It took 2 days for them to feel normal again.

Next post: what happened Tuesday night.

Posted by seaking on 11-19-2011 at 11:11 pm
Posted in Surreal, Travel with 0 Comments

Stripping

Visiting the Las Vegas Strip, that is.  It’s a long section of Las Vegas Boulevard where most (I think it’s most) of the big casinos and attractions are located.  On Monday night I had a the evening free, and decided to go walking up and down the Strip.

I started from the MGM Grand, which is at the intersection of Las Vegas and Tropicana Blvds.  Just across Tropicana Blvd. is the Tropicana itself, which has these light-wrapped palm trees:

Right next to the Tropicana is this place:

Who knew they operated a hotel or casino?  Not me.

I also noticed this set of signage:

With its helpful electronic portion, better seen in the darker picture below:

I think it read the same the whole time I was in town.

Coming around the corner onto Las Vegas Blvd., I saw a corner of the MGM that isn’t really visible from other angles, and where there is a large lion statue:

As John Linnell might say, “I pale before the monolith that towers over me.”

Across LVB is the casino New York, New York:

There’s your visual summary of the island of Manhattan.

Next I headed north on LVB.  Here’s a view up the street in that direction:

I soon encountered a guy dressed like Gene Simmons of Kiss, who was being photographed by others.  I went to take his picture, and he held up a sign saying that he appreciates tips for photos.  So I gave him a couple of bucks.  I would soon realize that there are a lot of such people on the Strip, some of them in pretty impressive costumes.  Anyway, here’s “Gene”:

The sign in the background reads, in the Kiss font, “Kiss Me, I’m Jewish!”

In a glass case was this statue of – I’m not sure.  Maybe it’s a Yak?

The casino called Paris has this balloon:

And some sort of tower:

That thing seems sort of familiar…

The Harley-Davidson Cafe has an unsurprising theme to it:

I ran into several more costumed folks, most of whom I didn’t take pictures of because I didn’t want to tip them.  However, I couldn’t resist when I ran across a stormtrooper.  When I handed him some money, he said “You wanna be in the picture?”  So he handed me a lightsaber, and I handed my camera to another passerby to take pictures.  Unfortunately, the passerby didn’t wait for the camera to focus:

Besides the costumed people, there were also occasional regular panhandlers.  One of them I gave money to who had a cat with her, sitting in a short sack – the cat looked like it might be recovering from injuries, as it seemed to have bandages around its midsection.  I didn’t ask what was up with the cat, but thought later that I should have.

Continuing up the street, I came to the Venetian, which has a “canal” with gondola rides:

They also have a fancy fountain:

In Vegas, even Mickey D’s is glitzy:

Also, while there aren’t many billboards on the strip, I couldn’t fail to notice this one:

Courtesy of the website World Net Daily (no link, as I don’t really want to send them the traffic).

Another thing you run into a lot on the Strip is these people:

They have shirts saying things like “Hot girls direct to you in 20 minutes”, and they attempt to hand out cards or flyers to anyone walking by.  If they have cards to hand out, they make noise with them such as slapping one card against the rest of the stack before proffering it, or flicking the card edge with a fingernail as they hold it out.  I assume the noise is to get people’s attention.  Curiously, none of them say anything to passersby, though a few times I heard a couple of them talk to each other, or on a cell phone headset (these conversations always seemed to be in Spanish).  I didn’t take any of the cards or flyers, but I’m assuming that these are for escort services or the like (prostitution is legal in Nevada, after all).  The workers who do this (mostly men, but there were some women) are pretty expert at hitting just about everyone on the sidewalk moving around a lot to get people going in both directions (the constant motion is why my pictures of them tended to be blurry).

As I got near the Northern end of the Strip, I saw the casino Circus Circus (which I’ve heard of before):

Sometimes I wonder how the themes for different Vegas establishments originated.  I suppose I could look at the websites of the different venues at some point (I haven’t been linking them all here simply because I’m lazy, but they should generally be easy to search for).

Not long after this, I came fairly close to the Stratosphere, which looks like Seattle’s Space Needle:

At that point, I think I was near the end of the Strip, and started heading back south.

I took more pictures of other things on my way south, which will be detailed in my next post.  Stay tuned.

Posted by seaking on 11-18-2011 at 11:11 pm
Posted in Surreal, Travel with 0 Comments

Las Vegas: Fly by Night

So I flew to Las Vegas yesterday to attend a conference for work.  When was hunting around for fares, I found the best price on Southwest airlines, which I haven’t flown in a very long time.  I was surprised to discover that I could get a direct flight from Connecticut to LV.  The flight out was 6 hours long, but that didn’t bother me much, as the leg room was okay.  Also, they did beverage and snack service more than once (and were generous with the snacks – initially letting each passenger take however many snacks from a box that we wanted).

Because the flight took off in the late afternoon, most of the ride was after dark.  The cool part about flying at night is seeing cities all lit up, and trying to identify them.  I was on the left side at a window, so I was looking south.  At one point, I saw a city that I thought might be Toledo or someplace in Indiana.  Then I suddenly saw a big blank area with no lights, closer to the plane, which I figured had to be water.  “Lake Michigan,” I thought, though then I doubted myself.  Maybe we hadn’t gone that far, and this was Lake Erie?  Suddenly, a member of the flight crew came on the PA and said we were just about to see Chicago.  So there you have it.

Here is a picture of Chicago, looking south:

That’s the lake off to the left, there.

Later I believe I identified Omaha, because after we passed it there were no other major concentrations of light until we got within view of Vegas.  Vegas itself has a lot of lights, but I didn’t take pictures as we descended because all gadgets had to be turned off.

As soon as I left the gate, I knew what city I was in:

Yes, there are slot machines on the concourse.  In baggage claim, too, as well as other places.

I took a city transit bus to the hotel (cheapest way to go), and checked in.  Didn’t take pics of the hotel itself yet, but I’ll get some tonight (it is a sight, as is just about everything in this town).  Also, I can only upload pics from my cell phone at the moment, as I forgot to pack my regular camera’s USB cable.

I headed for a late dinner around 8:30 pm local time, which is 11:30 where I’m used to, so it was a really late dinner.  It was tasty, though, at a Mexican place in the hotel complex.  As I was going over the menu, they brought chips with 3 kinds of salsa, and 3 salt blends:

Left to right are salsa verde, a smoky salsa of some kind, and salsa fresca.  The salt on the left has avocado in it, but I don’t remember what the others are (and I hardly had any of the salts).

All for now, as I have another conference session to get to.  More later!

Posted by seaking on 11-14-2011 at 04:11 pm
Posted in Surreal, Travel with 1 Comment

Internal Turmoil

The other night I was cutting up several leeks to make soup.  When I sliced one of them open, I found that there was some waviness inside:

I’m not sure what could have caused this.  It seems like something was pushing down on the middle of the plant, forcing those center layers to buckle.  Maybe it was the snowstorm of a couple weeks ago (this leek came from the CSA we participate in at the nearby Hampshire College Farm Center).  I could imagine a weight of snow on the leek pushing down in such a way as to cause this, and maybe the dirt would have provided enough support to keep the outer layers intact.  This is pure speculation, of course.

By the way, the soup I was making is a pretty common recipe – potato, kale, and leek soup.  My version is based on a recipe out of a cook book (the New Basics Cookbook, page 100, “Winter Vegetable Soup”), but I’ve made so many alterations and omissions that it’s really its own thing now.  Basically, I saute a bunch of leeks (sometimes adding celery in I don’t have a ton of leek) in oil for 10 to 15 minutes, add some thyme and tarragon and saute a bit more, then add salt and many (12-14) cups of water.  Bring that to a boil, and add cubed potatoes (about 5 pounds), and boil until the potatoes are near done, then add a pile of chopped kale, turn off the heat and set aside.  The kale will cook fine with the residual heat.  I soak and cook the chick peas separately (2 cups dried), and then add them after the rest of the soup is done.  The soup is great with a big slice of bread.

Oh, and there was no discernible difference in taste because of the waviness of the leek.

Posted by seaking on 11-12-2011 at 04:11 pm
Posted in Food, Humor, Surreal with 0 Comments

Strange Beings in the Backyard

I’m posting this from my iPhone, to make sure that I can do so on my ride tomorrow.

Below is a picture of some fascinating fungi in our backyard. They’re a ways from the house, but were easy to spot from the house because of the rather bright color.

Posted by seaking on 09-16-2011 at 07:09 pm
Posted in Surreal with 0 Comments

Shopping pitfalls

Computer software may be able to win on a quiz show, but can it be trusted to identify groceries?

Every week I look through the sale items at my local supermarkets.  I do this online, and generally go looking through by category.  This week I noticed interesting placement of some items on one store’s site, which led me to believe that a robot of some kind is categorizing the items in the company’s database.

To wit:

Of course, these things are all in proper places in the physical store, but then it’s humans who place them on the shelves.  As things get more automated, it wouldn’t hurt to keep this kind of thing in mind, lest we end up drinking a loaf of bread, sautéing with 10W30, or spreading toy trucks on top of toast.

Posted by seaking on 02-27-2011 at 07:02 pm
Posted in Humor, Surreal with 0 Comments

If you can imagine it…

So this evening well after dinner, as often happens in our house, I was cooking a meal that we’ll eat for dinner the next few nights.  I was criticized for the fact that it smelled good, but was not to be eaten right away.  The conversation turned to the suggestion that perhaps I should make things that are unappetizing, so as to avoid this situation.

Among the ideas we came up with were things like franks and beans (somewhat unappetizing even to those in the household who aren’t vegetarians).  This ended up morphing into pieces of hot dog in sloppy joe sauce.  We quickly dubbed these Sloppy Dogs, and had a good laugh.

Then, we thought to check Google, and found that they already exist.

(and, dare I say it, some of them sound kind of good)

P.S.:  In related news, I saw this post this evening on the blog Cookrookery, and couldn’t resist adding some suggestions in the comments.

Posted by seaking on 11-11-2010 at 11:11 pm
Posted in Food, Surreal with 0 Comments

Birds on the Edge

Short post today, as I don’t have much time.  Back in the mid to late summer, I happened upon two instances of livestock birds sitting on fences.  The pictures were taken with my cell phone, so please excuse the blurriness of some of them.

This is one of our neighbors’ laying hens:

And this is a turkey at the Maple Farm Foods store:

Posted by seaking on 11-10-2010 at 10:11 pm
Posted in Humor, Surreal with 0 Comments

Monkey Men All

I got a chance this summer to do something I had been wanting to do for 2 decades – go see DEVO perform in concert.  They’ve always been one of my favorite bands, and I heard early in the year that they’d be releasing a new album and touring, so I was on the lookout.  They didn’t end up playing any dates in New England, but they did come to the Albany area, which is only 2 hours drive from where I live, so I jumped at the chance to pay an inflated ticket price (plus nearly another 25% in fees to TicketBastard).

Fortunately, the show was on a Saturday night, so I drove out there in the afternoon and got some dinner before heading to the venue.  They played at a large club called Northern Lights, in the suburb of Clifton Park.  The place is in a strip mall – here are some pictures of it that I took after the show:

I had arrived there at 6:30 (while it was still light out), and got in line outside, as the doors wouldn’t open until 7:00.  While waiting, I had to get a picture of this guy who was just a bit behind me in line:

He had an energy dome logo on the hat, as well as heavy, “Oh No, It’s DEVO” eyebrows on his glasses.  Fun!

I got inside pretty quickly, and immediately made my way to the stage.  This was a rare opportunity, and I wanted to be right up close.  Fortunately, I was early enough to get a spot right in front of the stage, or as close as possible anyway, as there was a barrier between the stage and audience, creating a narrow area for photo and video people to do their thing during the concert.

I had thought that the band was going to take the stage at 8:00, but it turned out that they weren’t going on until 9:00, so I had 2 hours to stand and wait (spoiler: it was worth it).  I talked a bit to some other fans nearby me, and got a pictures of things like this equipment case:

Also, the stage was located in a back corner of the club’s one huge room.  Just over to the right of the stage was the back door of the building, which was being used as a stage door, with the band getting ready in their tour bus outside:

At one point, a car pulled up next to the bus out there, and out of the car emerged the brothers Mothersbaugh.  Mark headed into the bus, but Bob1 initially walked into the building, and he was immediately greeted by a fan yelling, “BOB!” with a bunch of cheering from the rest of us.  He laughed and went back outside (unfortunately I didn’t have the presence of mind to snap a picture at that moment).

One interesting feature of the stage was the background screen.  They had a video screen actually made up of a bunch of large LEDs.  They were difficult to photograph when off, but here’s a close-up of a small portion of the screen:

They did take the stage at 9:00 sharp, with intro music and video playing:

The band were initially wearing their new light gray outfits with masks.  I had seen pictures of the outfits before coming to the show, but I didn’t know that the suits were highly reflective, so when you take a flash picture of the band, they glow:

Here’s a picture without the flash:

I captured a picture of the setlist before the show, though my view of the first few songs was blocked:

Once they played the first 3 songs, they caught up to where I could see the list.  Here’s all of the songs they did, in order (the first, third, and fifth are from the new album, Something for Everybody):

• Don’t Shoot, I’m a Man
• Peek-a-boo
• What We Do Is What We Do
• Goin’ Under
• Fresh
• That’s Good
• Girl U Want
• Whip It
• Planet Earth
• Satisfaction
• Secret Agent Man
• Uncontrollable Urge
• Mongoloid
• Jocko Homo
• Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA
• Gates of Steel
• Freedom of Choice
• Beautiful World

The setlist shows a few dividing lines.  The first two denote costume changes, and the third marks the planned encore.

Some pictures from the first group of songs:

Mark and Bob2 during “Peek-a-boo”:

After “Peek-a-b00″ they took off the masks.

The first costume change involved taking off the jackets and adding blue energy domes:

They played like that for 3 songs from the album Freedom of Choice.  Note, the shirts have blue energy dome logos on the sleeves.

Their second costume change involved putting on yellow radiation suits (and they all grabbed guitars) for a set of songs from their first two albums:

During “Uncontrollable Urge,” Mark demonstrated his urge by ripping his suit, as well as those of his bandmates:

A few pieces of suit got thrown out into the audience, one of which was grabbed by the guy next to me.  He tore off a part of that and gave it to me, so I have a small bit of Bob1′s yellow suit.

Dancing in unison at the end of that song:

For the song”Mongoloid”, Mark would crouch at the edge of the stage with a pair of pompoms, and would jump up and shake them.  Here he is crouching just a few feet in front of me:

and here he’s at the other end of the stage:

Back at the keyboard, shortly before they removed the suits entirely:

They ripped the suits off and threw them into the crowd.  None of them came near me, though I was happy to have the piece I’d already received, even if it doesn’t say ‘DEVO’ on it.  This left the band wearing just the black t-shirts and black shorts (and kneepads).

Mark then jumped down into the space in front of the stage, to get a bit intimate with the audience:

Sadly, he didn’t get close to my position.

I don’t recall why Bob1 was covering his ears here:

Shots from “Freedom of Choice” during the encore:

Jerry with his bass:

Mark had a few towels stuffed in the back of his shorts.  During the song, he would take each one out, wipe his sweat with it, then rub it on his armpits, butt, and crotch (outside his clothes) before throwing it to the audience.

Yes, at age 60 he’s still an edgy weirdo.

Their final song was “Beautiful World” – one of my favorites of theirs.

The song featured a special appearance by Booji Boy on lead vocals!  (for those not in the know, that’s pronounced ‘boogie’.)

In the middle of the song, during a long instrumental part, Booji told a story about getting to go the the Neverland Ranch to hang out with Michael Jackson.  I kept expecting the story to take a creepy turn, but that didn’t happen.

All too soon, the show was over.

The above shot shows “DEVO” in silver letters on Booji’s back.

And that was that.  They were only on stage for an hour-and-a-quarter, but I do feel like I got my money’s and time’s worth.

Posted by seaking on 08-29-2010 at 08:08 pm
Posted in Arts/Media, Surreal with 3 Comments