Suntory, You're The Divil

A while back I read an article about Japanese single malt whiskey being the shit these days, so when I stumbled upon a bottle of Suntory Yamazaki 12 year-old single malt whiskey in a liquor store recently, I went ahead and plunked down the requested $35. First a little interesting trivia: The Suntory brand is famous for using big name (mostly Western) celebs to shill for them -- this is the inspiration for the fantastic Lost in Translation. You can find some of the old commercials at Japander if you have the patience. Good stuff...

Now back to the booze: It's really friggin' good! The Suntory site refers to a "smooth, honeyed taste", which I think is the perfect description. I presonally like to describe it as sitting right on the line between good small batch bourbons and proper Scotch. At least one other reviewer liked it a lot, too.

Try it. You'll like it!

[Slightly Related Side Note: I have yet to lay hands on a bottle of Jinro brand soju. 'Round these parts I have only tracked down Kyung Woul Green Soju, which is sweet potato-based and is completely awesome. It tastes like slightly sweet water. Yum. Still gotta get the Jinro, though...]

Another Movie List

Kottke points us to this list of 102 movies every movie buff should see. I'm not sure I buy the list, but I was curious how I stacked up: (Films I've seens are marked with *. Favorites - those which I have seen multiple times or own - are marked with **. The ones I think I've seen or that I've only seens bits of are flagged with ~.)

* 2001: A Space Odyssey The 400 Blows 8 1/2 Aguirre, the Wrath of God * Alien ~ All About Eve * Annie Hall ** Apocalypse Now * Bambi The Battleship Potemkin The Best Years of Our Lives ~ The Big Red One The Bicycle Thief The Big Sleep ** Blade Runner Blowup * Blue Velvet * Bonnie and Clyde Breathless Bringing Up Baby * Carrie * Casablanca Un Chien Andalou Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis * Chinatown * Citizen Kane * A Clockwork Orange * The Crying Game The Day the Earth Stood Still Days of Heaven * Dirty Harry The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie * Do the Right Thing ~ La Dolce Vita Double Indemnity * Dr. Strangelove * Duck Soup * E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial * Easy Rider * The Empire Strikes Back The Exorcist ** Fargo ** Fight Club Frankenstein The General * The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II * Gone With the Wind * GoodFellas ~ The Graduate ~ Halloween ~ A Hard Day's Night Intolerance It's a Gift * It's a Wonderful Life * Jaws The Lady Eve ~ Lawrence of Arabia M * Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior * The Maltese Falcon * The Manchurian Candidate Metropolis * Modern Times ** Monty Python and the Holy Grail Nashville The Night of the Hunter * Night of the Living Dead ** North by Northwest Nosferatu ~ On the Waterfront Once Upon a Time in the West Out of the Past Persona * Pink Flamingos * Psycho ** Pulp Fiction * Rashomon * Rear Window ** Rebel Without a Cause Red River Repulsion The Rules of the Game ** Scarface The Scarlet Empress * Schindler's List The Searchers ** The Seven Samurai * Singin' in the Rain ~ Some Like It Hot A Star Is Born ** A Streetcar Named Desire Sunset Boulevard ~ Taxi Driver The Third Man Tokyo Story Touch of Evil ~ The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Trouble in Paradise ** Vertigo * West Side Story ~ The Wild Bunch * The Wizard of Oz

So, 49 go into my "seen it" list and 12 more have at least passed before my eyes at some point.

Killer Chimps on the Run

Police Hunt Pack of Killer Chimps

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (April 24) - Armed Sierra Leonean police are hunting up to 20 chimpanzees which killed a local taxi driver and injured three American visitors after they broke out of a wildlife sanctuary, officials said on Tuesday.

...

''Maybe the visitors panicked and threw sticks and stones. Chimps mob people. If you try and defend yourself you can get hurt,'' he added. He advised any humans attacked by chimpanzees to ''be submissive, lie on the ground.''

Bad killer chimps! BAD!

(Thanks Matt!)

Good, Clean Fun

So far I'm loving the first round of the NHL playoffs, and not just because my Avs went down to Dallas and took a 2-0 series lead, either. There's also the fact that the NY Rangers are getting trounced -- always a good thing in my book. Then you have the scrappy Edmonton Oilers managing to hold their own against the mighty Detroit Red Wings. (Avs fans always root against the Red Wings except when they play the Canucks.) The Buffalo-Philadelphia series is extra fun for me, though.  As much as I love Peter Forsberg, I just can't get behind the Flyers, so to see them getting stomped into mush by a Sabers team featuring former BU players Chris Drury (team captain, no less!) and Big Mike Grier practically makes my eyes well up.

In the games I've managed to catch so far, there have been blowouts and nail-biters, but certainly nothing boring.

Hypersensitive Much?

I have some friends who are of Irish descent, and I come from mostly Scottish roots myself. I seldom pass up a chance to rag on the English for historical misdeeds perpetrated on my Celtic ancestors. That said, though, I have to call bullshit on all the uproar caused by Ben & Jerry's naming a flavor "Black & Tan". They were just copying the name of a drink, ferchristsakes. And don't give me the "half & half" nonesense. For one thing, it's a different drink, and more to the point, most people wouldn't recognize that name as readily as they would "black & tan".

Yes, the Black & Tans of the 1920's were right bastards, but you know what? It's time to let go. Besides, before it was a drink and before it was a nickname for the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force, a "black & tan" was a dog.

Domestic Fool

Hey Jake, what'd you do this weekend? I'll tell you:

  1. Friday, I called in sane and ended up spending the day moving a sprinkler head and getting my sprinklers fired up. Sadly, I'm already well behind the Joneses as far as the green lawn competition goes. ;)
  2. In the evening I met up with Holzie and some folks from work for one of his many sendoffs. (He joined the Marines...)
  3. Saturday, I tried really hard not to die from the allergic attack I suffered after spending so much time in the Spring air Friday.
  4. Over the course of Saturday and Sunday, I worked on a pair of desks for our office.
  5. We also found a paint color for our office (so someday soon, we'll have to remove the desks we just set up in there).
  6. Did I mention allergies suck? Gotta say the Benadryl Dreams were entertaining, though.
  7. Caught up on seven or eight TiVo'ed episodes of Veronica Mars. I don't care if it makes me a girl; I love that show.
  8. I think I went to Home Depot four times over the course of three days.

The Book/Movie Meme

Well, well... I guess it's meme time. (All the cool kids are doing it... Or something.) Kottke posted a link to the Guardian's list of 50 (51, actually) best film adaptations of books. Now folks are marking which they have read and/or seen.

I can dig it...

  1. 1984
  2. [M] Alice in Wonderland (Disney)
  3. [M] American Psycho
  4. [M] Breakfast at Tiffany's
  5. Brighton Rock
  6. [M] Catch 22
  7. [M] Charlie & the Chocolate Factory (Both)
  8. [M] A Clockwork Orange
  9. Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
  10. The Day of the Triffids
  11. Devil in a Blue Dress
  12. [M] Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
  13. [M] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
  14. Doctor Zhivago
  15. Empire of the Sun (I think I have seen bits of the film)
  16. The English Patient (The movie put me to sleep)
  17. [BM] Fight Club
  18. The French Lieutenant's Woman (Seen parts of the movie)
  19. [M] Get Shorty
  20. [M] The Godfather
  21. [M] Goldfinger
  22. [M] Goodfellas
  23. [M] Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now) (Seems like I've read at least some of this)
  24. [M] The Hound of the Baskervilles (I also bet I've read this -- I think I tore through Doyle's collected works when I was young, but I can't say for sure.)
  25. [M]Jaws
  26. [M]The Jungle Book
  27. A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
  28. [M] LA Confidential
  29. [M] Les Liaisons Dangereuses
  30. [BM] Lolita
  31. Lord of the Flies (Only seen part of the movie)
  32. [M]The Maltese Falcon
  33. [M]Oliver Twist
  34. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Seen parts of the movie, but not all. I own it though...)
  35. [M] Orlando
  36. [M] The Outsiders
  37. [M] Pride and Prejudice
  38. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
  39. The Railway Children
  40. Rebecca
  41. The Remains of the Day (Seen parts of the movie)
  42. [M] Schindler's Ark (aka Schindler's List)
  43. [M] Sin City
  44. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
  45. [M] The Talented Mr Ripley
  46. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
  47. Through a Glass Darkly
  48. To Kill a Mockingbird
  49. [BM] Trainspotting
  50. The Vanishing
  51. [M] Watership Down

As with the others, I marked it if I'd seen any movie adaptation of the given title. I'm a little embarassed by only having three books checked off, but I will say they are three of my faves.

I'll Systemize Your Systemization

So... Remember the Autistic Quotient thingy? Well, that post got a trackback from this post discussing it in comparisson to a couple of similar personality tests called EQ (empathizing quotient) and SQ (systemizing quotient). I took those, and here's what I got:

Here are your EQ SQ results: EQ: 33 SQ: 86

The important factor to consider is not your absolute score, but the difference between the two. This indicates whether you have more natural ability as an Empathizer or a Systemizer. If your scores are about the same for your EQ and SQ, then you have well balanced empathizing-systemizing capabilities.

Holy crap, yo! I guess I'm about as lopsided as I thought all along, eh?

For reference, here are the average scores:

  Males Females
Average EQ: 39.0 48.0
Average SQ: 61.2 51.7

It's interesting to note that my EQ test answers mostly fell in the middle of the grid (agree/disagree slightly), whereas I had much stronger feelings about the statements on the SQ test. It almost felt like the thing was rigged: the EQ test is shorter (obviously, because that empathy junk is dumb!) and the SQ test has all kinds of questions about my CD collection (I swear!)...

Where's my tinfoil hat...?

GCal

Google Calendar is out and it's good. Compared to 30 Boxes, the only thing it seems to be missing is tags. The behavior of the interface isn't as fun either. It's still got single box entry (which even seems smarter than 30B's), and the sharing is way more powerful (except for the lack of tags - that's one of the best things about 30B, you can share events with certain tags with certain people).

After more playing, I've found I am unable to add my Upcoming events to the Google Calendar, even though I should be able to...

Get the monkey!

Our dog, Mingus, plays a game we call "Get the kitty!", which generally consists of Mingus snapping/pawing at our cat, Chuck, until Chuck comes after him. From there it usually degenerates to Chuck lying on his back swinging an occasional paw at the dog if he comes close.

This dog plays "Get the monkey!" and the capuchin seems to play by Chuck's rules. The monkey even looks a little like Chaz.
Curious...

(Thanks Shay.)

What Should I Do with My Life?

For the record, Po Bronson's book by that title doesn't really provide any answers. It just tells you about some of the lucky bastards who have figured out an answer to the question. So, yeah... This is something I'm thinking about a lot these days. Unless something changes drastically and some switch gets flipped in my head, I don't see myself doing what I'm doing now for more than, say, another five years.

So what do I want to do instead? I have absolutely no idea.

It's a hell of an exercise to try to figure out where your passion lies and what work would make you happy day-to-day. Lately, I've been asking myself the lottery question:

What would I do if I won PowerBall today?

The thought is that even if I had buckets of cash falling out of my ears I would do something to keep myself busy. I figure that if, I can find the answer to that question, I might be able to translate that into something that would actually pay the bills. As of yet, the answer hasn't come to me. I have no effing clue.

And aside: For those of you who might be thinking "Why is he all freaked out about this now? He's in his early-mid-thirties, shouldn't he be settling into a groove right about now?" Well, maybe / maybe not. Let me just use my darling mother as an excuse: While I was in college studying to be the rocket scientist I never became, she took the opportunity to go to Tufts and become a veterinarian. Total mid-life (a bit early) career change. This is the precident I'm working with.

One option I've long carried in my hip pocket is the posibility of becoming an architect. It's what I wanted to do before I got distracted by airplanes and went into Aerospace. It would take me three and a half years of full-time school to get a Masters Degree, after which I'd be starting at basically zero. Not that it's really the part that matters to me, but the salary would probably be about 50-60% of what I'm making now. Truth be told, I have no real idea if I would enjoy the work, or if I'd be any good at it. It's a scary gamble.

Then there's the idea of making things and earning a living with those creations. Right now, I always think of furniture when I go down this path. Problems with this idea include the fact that I'm really not that skilled at the woodworking yet, and I really don't want to be in the position where I have to beat the streets to self-promote (If you're making furniture, you have to let people know somehow, right? I'm doubtful that I'd be any good at that part. And then I'd starve.).

(The self-promotion angle comes along with the architect idea, too.)

Friends and I have talked about refurbishing houses (with custom furniture and all that jazz) and flipping them, but it doesn't seem realistic to me. Especially since we'd have to start out doing it part-time while coninuing to crush our souls at the office (that's a joke, it's not all that bad). It's be cool though - and might even work, because these people are talented in areas where I am not.

Maybe I should just come up with a few more t-shirt designs or something...

Now that I'm petering out a bit, let me say out-loud that I really don't hate my current job. I love the people I work with, and we solve extremely interesting problems every day. This career path was a complete accident, and I am grateful for it.

I just don't think it's the path I want to follow for the rest of my life.

No Doubt

Are germs good for children's health?

Now some immunology experts are beginning to agree that germs that many parents bleach and disinfect out of existence might help children.

"Hygiene hypothesis" holds that when babies are exposed to germs, it helps them fight allergies and asthma later.

I easily start to sound like an X-Files wackjob conspiracy theorist when I start talking about anti-bacterial foo-faw. I compare it to ArmorAll -- the more you use it, the more you need it.

Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker, right?

Huh...

Massachusetts Set to Offer Universal Health Insurance

Massachusetts is poised to become the first state to provide nearly universal health care coverage after the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill today that Gov. Mitt Romney says he will sign.

The bill does what health experts say no other state has yet been able to do: provide a mechanism for all of its citizens to obtain health insurance. It accomplishes that in a way that experts say combines several different methods and proposals from across the political spectrum, apportioning the cost among businesses, individuals and the government.

Just posting real quick for The Wife to see... Haven't read it, so no opinion. Perhaps our New England libertarian correspondents have some info?