randomlife

How to Clean Your Toothbrush

I have an odd way of cleaning my toothbrush. I do it two or even three times per day. First I run a little water on the bristles and then I add a little dab of toothpaste. Now, here is where it gets a little weird, so try to stay with me.

Next, I actually rub the bristles of the toothbrush against my teeth. I know it sounds odd to use my teeth to clean something, but I find that it actually works really well for toothbrushes. Because teeth are arranged in nice little semi-circles on both the top and bottom of the mouth, I can easily clean my toothbrush from just about every possible angle. It's important to rub the toothbrush against each and every one of my teeth, because this keeps the bristles from wearing down in any one particular direction.

Also (and I kind of discovered this accidentally) toothpaste actually has kind of a nice, minty taste! I've hardly ever come across cleansing agents that don't taste like soap. Do not try this with Comet! Most brands of toothpaste are pretty good for this method of cleaning.

Next, I run the toothbrush under water to get the excess toothpaste off of it. This usually involves rubbing the bristles a little with my thumb, too, because sometimes there may be some food particles from my teeth that accidentally make their way onto the brush. I should probably clean my teeth before cleaning my toothbrush, but I rarely have time for that.

Lastly, I make sure that I rinse the toothpaste out of my mouth. It tastes okay, but I'm not exactly sure it's edible. It is technically a cleanser, after all.

Next week: How to clean dental floss. Also with your teeth!

Georgia vs. Ossetia

I haven't been able to figure out why Georgia doesn't want to let South Ossetia be independent (or part of North Ossetia in Russia). But I guess I've never understood it in Taiwan or even The South during the Civil War.

It seems to me that if a bunch of people living in a certain area want to claim to be their own country or part of another, why shouldn't they be allowed to?

Fruit Salad Instructions

When I eat fruit salad, I eat the pieces of fruit in order of height. Whichever piece is highest in the bowl, I eat first. Then the second highest, and so on. Sometimes pieces shift and change order as I'm eating. That's okay.

Food-Time Awareness

If I set out chips and dip for a party and then don't put them away before I go to bed, when I awaken the next day I usually throw them out because they're probably "bad". However, if I stay awake the whole night, I'm fine with eating them all night and even the next morning. It's almost as if the food stays good as long as I'm there to monitor it. But if I leave the food alone while I'm asleep, only then will the microbes and bacteria sneak out and destroy the food.

You'd Think I'd Be in Favor of Random Voting

I think that people should have to explain their votes on their ballots. If they just say, "I picked the one on the top," their vote shouldn't count.

I don't understand the whole momentum phenomenon. How can momentum be a deciding factor for a voter? And yet if a candidate starts emerging as a winner, it does seem that people start jumping on the bandwagon. Sometimes it seems that it's of utmost importance to some people to have voted for the winner. It's almost like a bet. They consider their vote to be a guess of who's going to win, not an endorsement of a candidate that represents their values.

"I picked him because I saw a lot of his supporters jumping up and down with signs today." Nope. Disqualified.

"I voted for him because a lot of the early states seem to be going his way." Sorry.

"I voted the way I did because I want the war in Iraq to end, I believe that every adult should have the right to marry the person they love, and I want universal health care." Okay then.

That's Entertainment

Deputy fired 30 shots from rifle in killing 6, officials say

I was reading the above article on CNN about a sheriff's deputy in Wisconsin that shot and killed six people, when I came across this part of the story:

Is that something that we really need to watch? Obviously the woman consented to having her grief videotaped, so maybe it's just the wording of that link that gets to me. Gather around, everyone, and be entertained by grief!

Why Do They Call It the Blues??

A prisoner of the musical tastes of the carpool driver, I had a chance to listen closely to the lyrics of Elton John's "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues". Bizarrely, he doesn't actually explain at all why the color blue is involved.

More Burning Man Memories

Brina wrote some really sweet things to both me and Steven on the Temple.
I saw a woman at the Temple drawing pictures in the sand. I told her that her drawings were beautiful. She looked up with a smile and tears in her eyes and thanked me.
We saw a camp with a giant-sized version of Settlers of Catan set up. There were no commodity cards, but instead they had actual physical representations of the items. For example, they had little stuffed sheep and pieces of wood.
After first 24 hours, I wasn't really sure I could handle the heat for five more days.
There was a lot of drama with a camp-mate's dehydration problem, involving being helicoptered out and Brina and I having to stay a night in Reno.
During that night in Reno we had a shower and Pizza Hut! Ah!
Beautiful double rainbow on the way to the hospital in Reno (photo by mr_nightshade)
Brina made us some wonderful food -- fried rice, pasta salad, bee cakes (mozzarella, olive oil, garlic, and herbs on a cracker), pancakes, mimosas
"Happy Birthday" was constantly playing in a mystery port-a-pottie
Our shade dome blew over in the biggest dust storm
Steampunk Treehouse (photo by pixietart)
I really came alive after the sun went down each night. The heat really sapped my energy during the day.
I heard "All Over the World" by ELO playing somewhere, so I sang along with it as I passed on my bike.
I heard a Tetris remix playing from a camp as I biked by, so I stopped, but found no one inside. So I just danced by myself like a crazy man. I heard people commenting as they walked by. After the music stopped, I got back on my bike and continued to my destination.
I wanted to play Dance Dance Immolation, but it was too crowded.
We climbed to the top of the 90-foot Crude Awakening tower and were treated to a wonderful view of the playa. (photo by john curley)
Pictures of our camp's adventures taken by Steven: Burning Man 2007

I keep remembering more things, so there might be more memories to come!

Memories from Burning Man 2007

In no particular order:

In a drugstore on the way, we heard that the man had already been burned down by an arsonist.
Packing the two vehicles was kind of nightmarish because we had so much stuff.
Brina and I had hours in the car in which we organized the songs on the iPod. Useful and fun!
Brina always yelled "Cow!" whenever we crossed a cattle grate.
Prius navigation systems rock.
I ran behind the water truck a couple of times to cool off. Watertruck! (not me pictured). And yes, once I was completely naked.
Most of the time I wore only a sarong on the lower half of my body. Very comfortable and cool.
Brina was a truly fabulous camper. She made us all comfy and happy and I can't imagine doing something like this without her.
Monkeys!
I should bring a camera that I'm not afraid of breaking.
I biked by someone's camp that was just displaying a big neon "Y" out front. I yelled "Y!" as I went by and someone inside yelled "Exactly!"
I'm not used to riding a bicycle.
I loved meeting and talking to Devon, Hannah, Nathalie, Adam, Adam, Parham, Mark, Whitney, Don, Lynn, and several other people who's names I can't remember.
It was great to hangout with friends I already knew, too: Ryan, Darby, Devin, Laura, Mark, Lois, Frederick, and Eve.
Conversations with Keith can be surreal at times. Which is an excellent thing.
Steven looks great with a grizzled beard and a straw hat.
I wrote Blossom's name on the Temple and watched it burn. Blossom is a co-worker of mine that died a few weeks ago.
Getting a crowd of 40,000 people to sit down is difficult.
I've never seen a higher concentration of generous, caring people.

More later...

Spelling Lesson

Brina likes how I explained to her how to remember how to spell the word "Berkeley". I said, "Just put an 'e' everywhere you think there might be one."...

Postcards from the Edge

For the past couple of weeks I've been receiving a lot of spam emails with this type of subject line: "You've received a postcard from a Friend!" Or: "You've received a greeting from a Family Member!" The From line usually says greetingcards.com or postcards.com, etc. Going on the assumption that if these were legitimate they'd have more accurate, personalized subject lines, I've just been deleting them.

Today I got one from greetingcards.com with the subject, "You've received a postcard from a Worshipper!"

Pshaw. My worshipers never send me postcards.

President "Getting In To" Executive Privilege

WASHINGTON, DC (AP) -- Late Monday night, claiming executive privilege, President Bush ordered that the heads of the twelve jurors in the Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial be brought to him on silver platters. Early this morning, the heads were seen on wooden stakes on the White House front lawn. During a brief press statement at 9:00 am, President Bush said, "They were warned... I mean, had they been warned, they would have known that returning a guilty verdict in this trial was just plain stupid."

In the past week, President Bush has cited executive privilege for numerous reasons ranging from requiring Nancy Pelosi to cut the crusts off of his sandwiches to changing Iraq's name to "Americaraq".

Asked if he is nervous about punishment for crimes he may be committing, the president stated, "It's not a problem. I'll just commute my own sentence. I don't know why they didn't tell me about this executive privilege thing during my first term."

Diversity

Forced desegregation of schools is supposed to ensure that the racial mix of a particular school reflects the racial mix of the neighborhood it's in. Isn't it? That makes sense to me, but I feel like that's not actually how it's defined.

It seems to me that if students were allowed to attend any school they want, and not be barred because of their race, then schools would automatically take on the racial mix of their neighborhoods. And I think that's a good thing. Forced segregation was a problem because black children were not allowed to attend certain schools because they were black -- even though they may have lived in the school's neighborhood. Clearly wrong.

But I think it's too big of a task to force schools to have more ethnically and racially diverse makeups than their surrounding neighborhoods. The real issue is that neighborhoods are rarely diverse. If we want to have truly multicultural schools, then we need to solve the problem about where people live. The school thing is just a symptom of that problem.

You Can't Go Wrong with G4

As I was heating my mattar paneer in the lunch room, a couple of guys that were doing construction work on our floor went up to the vending machine. One of the guys put some money in it. After staring at it for a while, the other guy said, "You can't go wrong with G4."

After they left, I went up to the vending machine to find out what G4 was. It was a roll of Lifesavers.

Don't Make Me Come Back There

Couldn't we pull the troops out of Iraq, see how it goes, and then go back if needed? Sure there's a cost of moving the troops around, but there's also a cost associated with leaving them there. What's the ratio? Maybe it's something like bringing the troops home and then redeploying them later costs as much as leaving them there for a year. Right now the war seems kind of open-ended -- it could go on for another 4,5, or even 10 years as far as I know.

To lessen the costs of moving the troops around, maybe we could leave all the equipment there. Let the Iragis use it for a while, for themselves. When things calm down, we bring the equipment back. Or they can rent to own.

Using this method, when we leave we should have explicit reasons laid out for going back. An example might be an exact amount of casualties. Let's say that after we leave, violence escalates. Maybe the rule would be something like: When the average amount of daily casualties increases by 100% after the date of withdrawal, we go back. There could be several different reasons. The point is that they should be explicit. They should be the things that people are worried about happening if the troops all left today.

One criticism I've heard about withdrawing from Iraq is that the bad guys will think that they've won. They'll think that they scared America away. So what? Let them think that if they want. Why can't we just say: "Look, this has been going on for a long time and no one is really getting anywhere. We're tired of all of the killing, and we want to bring our people home. If that's 'winning' for you, fine. You win. Oh, but we'll come back if things get out of hand. So if you want to live your lives in peace like the rest of us, you'd be smart to just let everyone get back to their daily lives. Thanks."