When in Rome, Do as the Vaticans Do: October 17, 2006

Your imagination will have to provide
the organ music and the choir chanting
to the glory of god.

Continuing the recycling of old posts from a 2006 cruise with my parents, but now with 100% more snarky comments!

Yeah, about the pictures? I lied. Didn’t have any time in the morning and forgot my camera in the rush to get to the train. I’ll take them tomorrow. In the meantime, my dad took some pictures, which I will eventually obtain.

This has become a trend. I tend to let people with more megapixels do the photography. Then I get copies of the pictures, edit them, and give them meaning, like here. So if you've promised me pictures, and haven't given them to me yet? I'm coming for you. Oh, and I hate getting pictures off Facebook. They're low quality and fb completely destroys the metadata.

It’s just a 20-minute ride in, if that, to the station right by the Vatican. There’s plenty of trains, they come reasonably often, they’re fast (top speed I saw was 140 kph, around 90 mph), and they’re well-used by commuters. Didn’t get a chance to ride the subway or muni buses, though we did take one of those bus tours, which was not only pretty damn good but also could serve as a convenient day pass (your ticket is valid for 24 hours).

90mph, eh? How about that. Hey, CalTrain? BART? Yeah, that's right you friggin' underperformers, I'm looking at you.

Piazza San Pietro

The bus tour drove by a huge amount of interesting spots, and there was narration, though I couldn’t understand or wasn’t paying much attention most of the time. It was hard to connect the spoken narration with what I was seeing, without someone pointing at what the hell they were talking about.

Oh, god, History! Why? And you were just an innocent bystander... how tragic, to die in a drive-by sightseeing!

"We repel terrorist cavalry charges with
our pikes and garish outfits!"

Before the bus tour, though, we went through the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. 

The line for the Sistine Chapel was like a treadmill. Basically, at the back of the line, some tour group assistant would recruit you to be part of a tour group with the promise that the group was way up ahead in the line.

So then you’d go way up ahead in the line, cutting ahead of hundreds and hundreds of people, and you’d join a group. Except, here’s the thing - all those other people at the back of the line, and the new people who arrive, are also being recruited.

Not big believers in blank spaces.

The end result was that though you had jumped ahead, there were tons of other people jumping ahead of you. After a while, you find yourself back at the back of the line hoping another tour group will recruit you, and round and round you go.

This is, of course, highly but not totally exaggerated.

Anyway, nice city.

Pizza Party Sunday October 9th at Noon.

Hello Bay Area Friends!

Many of you are refugees from the embattled municipality of Berkistan.

Some of you are not. But even so, you may have heard murmurs of the legendary collectively-owned eatery. Maybe rumors of their exceedingly fine gourmet ingredients have reached you through the tendrils of the (organic) grapevine. Perhaps you've overheard former wild-eyed hippies holding forth on how Bezerkeley, back in their day, was a hotbed of activism, even in food, and how the co-op and Chez Panisse led the charge for orgasmically delicious food everywhere, or at least in the place that came to be known as the Gourmet Ghetto.

photo credit: keenduck on flickr

They're called the Cheeseboard Collective. You may have heard of their pizza.

Our phallic tower is bigger than yours.
That's why you don't get Cheeseboard.

That's right, folks, we're making the fraught, eldritch, as-yet-unconnected by BART journey up to Berkeley, and we're coming back down with an epic stack of succulent Cheeseboard pizzas.

We deal with the:

• Death of Independent Bookstores
• Damn Dirty Hippies
• Absence of Nuclei
• Odors of Patchouli, Pot and Poop
• College Kids, and their
• Sense of Entitlement
• Also, They're Ten Years Younger Than You
• Shit! Well, Back in MY Day...

so you don't have to!



Your intrepid Pizza Retrieval Team:

Dunk

Tony

RGL-22

You should show up at:

photo credit:
ingridtaylar on flickr

The Dunkenpad* - with the possibility of sidling over to Cupertino Memorial Park next door, weather and logistics permitting - at 12:00 PM on Sunday, October 9th. But leave your pistols at home.

Instead of your pistols, you should bring:

$5 for the pizza, unless you'd like to gorge yourself in a fit of freshman 15 nostalgia (Highly endorsed! It's Cheeseboard, so it's, like, healthy. More so than West Coast's artery-clogging cheesy stix, anyway. Mmmm.) in which case we'll accept 10 bucks. Additional contributions of beverages - alcoholic and not - as well as alternative, non-pizza food, are very welcome.

Respond Soon Very Pleasure to
Tony at aweiss42@gmail.com or Dunk at rincewind@mac.com
so we can adjust for the optimal person to pizza ratio.

*my car is still there on street view! if only. *a single, lonesome tear falls*

Disc Golf Might Not Suck After All

If you have heard me hold forth on the subject of frisbee* disc golf before, you may be aware that I do not endorse it. Quite to the contrary, in fact. Playing ultimate frisbee* is all about the frenetic motion, dashing, catching the frisbee* disc at the utmost limit of your abilities - the dive, the leap into space.

It turns out just trying to throw a frisbee* disc with precision and accuracy is also lots of fun. Who knew?

Which one of these looks just like the other?

I happened upon this stunning revelation entirely by accident. The cover of a Tupperware container needed to be in the sink, but that was all of three steps away, and damned if I would bestir myself to go all the way over there just to put something in the sink. Upon further contemplation, it occurred to me that the cover was light, round, and mostly flat.

Suspiciously like a disc.

Shocked by this unexpected discovery, I theorized that, having a disc-like shape, it might travel through the air in a disc-like fashion if I gave it an initial acceleration in the way that I might a frisbee* disc. To paraphrase: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, if I throw it like a duck, it should fly like a duck. Right?


It flew more like an egret. Maybe because I threw it like one. I would not dare to claim perfect duck-throwing skills, after all.

Nevertheless, fly it did, though ultimately it landed in the dish-drying rack rather than the sink. Enthused by this discovery, I retrieved the projectile and attempted again. Due to the air currents, (I theorized) it tilted contrary to the initial curve that I gave it. I persevered, however, and after perhaps 10 tries, I was finally satisfied with my throw. Some of those throws had actually ended up in the sink, but only because it had bounced off of something else. I wanted it to go in perfectly.

portrait of the blogger as a young duck-thrower

Elated by this simple diversion, it suddenly occurred to me that this was actually frisbee* disc golf writ small. Throw the disc, pick the disc up, throw it again. But I hate disc golf! How could I possibly be enjoying myself?

This has led to a profound re-examination of my life and opinions and prejudices and, like, all sorts of stuff. I would like to actually go to a course (is that the right term?) and try it out.

Fortunately, there is one nearby, so who knows? It might even actually happen.

And if it it turns out I do like it, what's next? Running? Curling? Synchronized swimming? Actual golf?


I am frightened of what I might become. Hold me.

*god damn it, Wham-O.

The Waffle House Rules

Caution: not actual WaHo waffles. However,
canned fruit, whipped cream, hash browns
and eggs give a good approximation.

When other eateries are closed for reasons as feeble as 'no electricity' or 'structural damage,' Waffle House keeps on truckin'. All they need is gas. Gas! Gas is all they need.

How to Measure a Storm's Fury One Breakfast at a Time Disaster Pros Look to 'Waffle House Index'; State of the Menu Gives Clue to Damage

Although pecan waffles require electricity, or at least a generator. Damn.



Once upon a time...

I was on my way back down from Orlando with D and we decided to stop at a WaHo for breakfast, or lunch, or whatever the appropriate meal was for that time of the day.

Unfortunately, there was a car in the Waffle House.

Literally. Because it's Florida, an elderly couple got mixed up between drive and reverse, gunned the engine, and put the car in the WaHo. I hereby grant permission to use that phrase as euphemism for sex.

Alas, we did not arrive in time to see it happen. But we arrived in time to see the panicked emergency evacuation, which consisted of people calmly eating their breakfast (lunch? whatever.) and new arrivals lining up to wait for tables. So we followed the emergency evacuation procedures and got in line.

Yes, that wall section is several feet inside the store.
No, WaHo does not usually have that sort of open-air feel.
Yes, the dude at the counter is happily finishing his meal.

It gave people something interesting to talk about while eating (or waiting), at any rate.

Eventually firemen and cops arrived. They were flabbergasted at the ill-considered and rash emergency protocols.

"Y'all in line need ta git. The folks eating their breakfast... er, lunch... their meal, git when ya finish eaten."

D and I were crushed. What were we gonna do without our pecan waffles?

Envious of the privileged who remained, placidly chewing their cud, we allowed ourselves to be herded away by the stern and burly firemen.

So we got back on the highway.

Then we got back off two minutes later, at the very next exit, and went to the WaHo there.

And then we ate happily ever after.
The end!

Fregene: October 16, 2006

Part two of the exciting walk on the wild side - a stroll through my mind for two weeks that I spent on a boat in the Mediterranean. Actually, it's part three, but part two was so devastatingly boring that I've done you a favor by skipping it. To give you an idea, it was about waiting at the airport to be picked up. See? We're all better off.

It’s the name of the city I’m in. It’s, maybe, a half hour out of Rome? Not even that.

It’s a little town, by the beach. There’s several bed & breakfasts around, and the advertising on the street for local restaurants suggests that tourism is reasonably significant.

I probably don't need to say this, but the food was good. It's Italy, right? If I could only pick one country's cuisine to eat for the rest of my life, it'd be a toss-up between Italy and Japan.

Now, though, it’s pretty quiet. The weather’s pretty decent, though - I was able to get away with just wearing a t-shirt during the day.

I’m in Europe. People are speaking Italian on the street. It still hasn’t sunk in yet, though. Unfortunately, my Italian is nonexistent - I can understand it pretty well, but when I try to form sentences in my head they’re some bastard mixture of Spanish, Portuguese, and even Japanese. I don’t even bother trying to speak it.

The next time I was in Italy, I found Italian to be really easy. Getting languages mixed up is still a problem, though: last year I had an Argentine visitor. I spoke with her in Spanish just fine - up until, as part of the conversation, I pointed to a map and said "Shibuya." The next sentence came out in Japanese. I paused, and tried to start again. Still Japanese. I apologized, shut the hell up, and had to take a few deep breaths before I could get back to Spanish. 

Hopefully I get more comfortable with it over the next week, so I can get around in Venice and maybe Torino after the cruise. Greek is a lost cause. French, well, I should be able to get by with some combination of English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and I won’t be there for long anyway.

Ended up not going to Torino. I had met a super hot girl who was from there. I barely knew her, but hey, a boy can dream right?

I’m writing this from the front patio of this 2-bedroom house that we’re staying in for 2 nights. It’s hideously nice. The garden is small, but it’s full of all kinds of plants and fruit trees. Grapevines are growing above my head. I’ll take pictures in the morning, I suppose.

I'm going to post this for now, and update it with pictures later. I'm doing some major reorganization of my photos now that I've got better hardware, so finding appropriate pictures will be easier. But I want to get a post up. But I've been spending time tagging rather than selecting pictures. Meh.