The Triplets of Belleville can be read as a commentary on hyperreality.

OK, yes, I'm full of myself today because I learned that word this week. Bear with me.

The cyclist is at the center of a moral drama, in which his mother seeks to protect him and others seek to abuse him; both sides profit from his labor. But he is oblivious to all of it, because the landscape unspooling before him constitutes his reality, whether it is actual or a projected film. He is not aware of the difference. He does not know how close he comes to disaster.

This is the core notion of hyperreality— the state in which consciousness cannot distinguish the real from the virtual. In a technological society, there is a risk that we will all be enabled to inhabit our fantasies to such an extent that we ignore what is transpiring in the real.

There are those who would say this has already happened.

Ok. Generally speaking, I don't even bring up my birthday and I've honestly had years where I would have forgotten it (quite literally) if I hadn't been reminded of it.

Add to that the fact that I now live a life where calling me a minimalist is an understatement, and I find myself leary of bringing it up at all.

So, says I, how can I offer folks who want to do something nice for me on my birthday - remotely and without cluttering up my life with 'stuff' and free?

That's when it hit me. I spend a lot of my time in my Contacts list these days. Whether on my phone or in GMail, I stare at a lot of faux silhouettes instead of my friends' faces.

So - if you feel inclined to do something nice for me for my birthday, don't worry about buying me something. Just send me a selfie that I can use in my contact info for you.

Silly, sexy, fun, goofy, or artistic. Whatever you want to represent you.

I do have one request though: I'd prefer it be of you.

A lot of folks make their FB profile pic a photo of their kids or their dogs or their company logo, and that's fine - but this is for me, and I'd like to see you when I look you up.

The best way to send it is probably to my email address (first initial . last name @ gmail .com). Please do not send it to me via MMS - I do not have data on my phone while I'm working in Canada. Anything beyond that, let me know and I'm sure we could figure it out.

Thanks folks. You rock.

Random Side Note: This is my first public post on One Post Wonder. If you would like to read what else I've posted here, and we're friends - ask me and I'll send you an invite. It's the new hangout where the cool kids are playing.

OPW editor is not very. Especially as LF is handled.

Language Salesman    

Have you thought much about language, Mr. Banks?

Joe

No, I never really have.

Language Salesman

It's the central preoccupation of my life.  You travel the world, you're away from home, perhaps away from your family, all you have to depend on is yourself and your language.

Joe

I guess that's true.

Language Salesman

I believe I have just the thing.

Joe

Wow.

Language Salesman

This is our premier dialect.  All handmade, only the finest metaphors.  It's even hyperbole-tight, tight as a drum. If I had the need and the wherewithal, Mr. Banks, this would be my method of expression.

Joe

I'll take four of them.

Language Salesman

May you live to be a thousand years old, sir.

(Thanks, John Patrick Shanley)

A classic from the vault:

2 cups almond milk

1/4 cup brown sugar, maybe a little more

1/4 cup peanut butter (the real stuff, not the hydrogenated oil crap)

1 tsp vanilla

Mix well. Fire up the ice cream maker. Pour it in. Wait. Yum.

Makes 1 pint. (I halved the recipe tonight, because I knew I was gonna eat it all. Mmmf.)

Peanut butter stands in for dairy fat much better than most things do. Everybody's afraid of peanuts now which is a shame because most of us aren't allergic and they are yummy.

This recipe stands well on its own. You don't have to smother it in chocolate or extra sugar. You do have to like peanuts.

It's Orientation here this week.  This mostly means that there are zillions of identically-t-shirted young people chanting out slogans and being forced to learn synchronized dance routines.

I hate it.

When I was a freshman, 23 years ago, MIT's orientation week was combined with the period when you picked your housing.  You were assigned a temporary dorm (mine was MacGregor, which is entirely made up of singles), and then there was a four-day frenzy of fraternity rush, sorority rush, "independent living group" [aka ex-frats that had gone co-ed, largely] rush, alongside a more low-key period to check out the dorms and rank them, if you decided not to join a frat/sorority/ILG.  And there was also Orientation. 

It was confusing.  By the time we got to the Orientation part of the week, most of us were exhausted.  I'd decided ultimately to live in the dorms (I think 30% of people, most of them men, joined FSILGs, which meant that the gender ratio in the dorms might even have been more women than men?), in part because I had met someone who was one class ahead of me who eventually became one of my closest friends.  (We're not as close nowadays, but really, who of us is as close nowadays to the people we met in our first week of college?)  Sharon had run an event at Random Hall (yes, that's its name) where we made gnocchi, and it seemed far more authentically fun than most of the BS that was happening at all of the other dorms/FSILGs.  (Unfortunately, I still can't make gnocchi that don't fall apart.  Perhaps I should email her and get her recipe.)

After all of that, Orientation was just exhausting.  We'd not slept for days.  Many of us (including me) had been told "no" by an FSILG.  (This is a really terrible thing to happen during your first week of college, I should note.)  And then they wanted us to get into groups of strangers and do trust falls and learn about cultural diversity and do physical activities and Make Friends.  They called it MOYA, for Move Off Your Assumptions (God, I want those brain cells back.)

I fled. 

See, there's nothing stopping you from just...walking away.  And while lots of Orientation was "mandatory", it's not as though it's, you know, mandatory.  So I left.  I wandered Boston.  I went shopping.  I read along the Esplanade on the Charles River. 

I did bits and pieces here and there of Orientation, and I remember my MOYA group leader being really frustrated with me.  But I thought then, and still think now, that Orientation is fundamentally misguided, because it presumes that by taking a group of culturally diverse (and neurodiverse!) people and pretending that they're all extroverts with lots of common ground, everyone will have fun and make friends.

What is actually true is that for some people, including me, it's basically the psychological equivalent to having people shout at them for four days.  And I didn't sign up for Boot Camp, I went to nerd college.

At times, I have tried to improve Orientation here, but the other big problem with it is that Orientation reproduces itself.  The people who lead Orientation are the people who love Orientation, and who see nothing wrong with acting as though our class of Math and CS students, which is roughly 60% non-Canadian-born, is actually made up of a bunch of culturally unified extroverts.  Year after year, this structure reproduces itself.

I hate Orientation.

I like frozen treats like ice cream, but I do try to stay away from dairy as it sometimes ... well, that's not important. At least not to you. 

RIGHT so

Ice-cream-like frozen treat without dairy, which pretty much means sorbet. Which is frozen fruit juice. But instead of buying fruit juice in a jug, which is too thin really, buy it in the little cans of concentrate, generally in the freezer section of the grocery store.

Here's the tools you need.

• Ice cream freezer
• Stick (or other mechanical) blender

So here's the recipe.

• One can of frozen concentrated fruit juice. Any kind will do.
• One can of water (same can, just fill it up)

Just dump those in a big mixing bowl, and in a separate small container add

• 1/4 cup of white granulated sugar
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of xanthan gum powder

The xanthan gum is important as it takes the place of the milk solids and dairy fats which, in ice cream, get in the way of large (unpleasant) ice crystal formation. With xanthan gum, you get bajillions of tiny entrained air bubbles, which do about the same thing and makes the end product almost fluffy. If you want a more solid product, use less, but probably not less than 1/4, which is about where it starts having a useful effect. 

The trickiest bit is mixing in the xanthan gum, because as soon as you drop it in water it turns into goo. What seems to work pretty well is adding the gum powder to the white sugar granules and stirring that up really good, then adding a little water to the sugar and then stirring that up, then scraping the resulting goo into the juice and water. Use a blender to mix it all up real good. (I don't think hand mixing is going to properly disperse the gum.)

Pour it into your ice cream freezer and let the magic happen.

I like making sorbet from the cans of concentrate rather than from ready-to-drink fruit juice because I get a much stronger flavour. 

I've made most of the flavours (punch, berry, lemon, lime) available in the stores, except grape and orange. I haven't gotten to orange yet, and I dunno about grape sorbet. Maybe you'll take that chance, and report back, for the good of society.

I think it's interesting how in the West we often pigeonhole people based on what they "do" -- like "oh, Bob's a Dentist" -- and I think that's really kind of unfair. 

So, at the risk of seeming douchey, here's a list of things I do with reasonable competency. Basically what things I either have or would be comfortable accepting money to do.

• Computer programming, including analysis and architecture. 
• UX and visual design, typically for printed communication or UI purposes.
• Systems analysis and solution synthesis in a broad range of arenas.
• Homebuilding stuff, including construction, trim, plumbing and electrical.
• Cabinetmaking, furniture building and wood turning; chunky but functional.
• Vocal performance, both spoken (books/VO) and sung.
• Theatrical performance, both on stage and in front of a camera.
• Writing, both original (essay length) and adaptation.
• Event, portrait, landscape, architectural, art and repro photography. 
• Digital image processing and retouching, as in "Photoshop".
• High end hardcopy photo production (gallery quality prints).
• Instruction of many (but not all) of the above skills, 1-on-1 or group.
• Managing people in doing many (but not all) of the above tasks.

There's a longer list of things that I do at a novice level or just to save paying a professional to do; stuff I wouldn't do for someone else for money. 

Anyway --- what do you do?

Considering this a "getting to know you" kind of shared discourse, feel free to post your answer in your own journal -- you don't have to answer in my comments, though you may want to say "hey read my journal!" 

Hey, I made it! Nice place you got here, Tom. I admit I'm spoiled and missing the instant drop downs when hovering and clicking, etc. But I remember how to use my back button, so all is good. Most importantly, I can see the posts I want to see from the people I really care about. Dear Fb, please take note!

p.s. - Tom, is there a favicon for OPW yet? I keep my most important shortcuts together w/o text to save space and I'm getting a generic icon. I did not read through your posts yet, so I apologize if this has been brought up already. xoxo

p.p.s. - Cat picture.

Yesterday my kid needed an escort to a summer camp reunion in Central Park. So we hopped on MegaBus and I faded away once she found her peers at Columbus Circle.

Columbus Circle is also home to the Museum of Arts and Design. Which is home to all sorts of things.

High points for me included Orly Cogan's "bittersweet obsession," an embroidery piece exploring the relationship between food and drug addiction. There is something compelling about edgy work in this medium.

Similarly, Stephen Dixon's "21 countries" is a series of dinner plates, each of which "commemorates" an invasion carried out by the United States in the 20th century. When I look at these, I see the ceramic tiles of the stations of the cross that hung in our kitchen when I was growing up. It's hard to look away.

The museum also currently features the "MAD Biennial," in which several floors display the works of "makers" from all over the city. I found a lot of that work less than intriguing, with some notable exceptions, particularly the musical instruments and turntables, most of which were intended to be played as well as seen. I would have loved to stumble upon a concert.

Probably the biggest clinker for me is Rafael de Cárdenas' "nightclub" that took up much of a floor. It's a nightclub with deep blue lighting and terrariums full of fake plants. Okay, I guess I get it, but the trouble for me is that I already know a nightclub with nobody in it and the lights on is just a cave. I've stayed until last call before, after all.

Apparently there are performances in the nightclub at certain times, and maybe it takes on a whole new aspect then.

After the museum I rented myself a bike and orbited Central Park. I attempted to rent a CitiBike; the kiosk took several minutes to walk me through the process, then rejected me with no explanation. I wound up renting from the more traditional place just inside the park. Which gave me a bike whose right-hand gearshift didn't work at all. Which I figured out while climbing hills to get back again, through the north woods. But I still had a blast.