Recently in Woftam Category
How was I supposed to know that my body was harboring such a horror? Luckily, Push Cafe, a Gramercy Park watering hole garnering a wide array of opinions (e.g. Yelp, Sheckys, Cityguide) was ready to provide both a warning and a remedy. A couple weeks back, it was nearly empty as we headed to Trader Joe's for grocery madness.
Also, note the use of devil horns as quotation marks -- pretty fabulous on multiple levels, and perhaps someday worthy of inclusion on The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.
Marking the passing of yet another crazed session of clock adjustment, the empirical research is starting to stack up against the institution of daylight saving time. The New York Times has a nice resource page on the institution (frankly preferable to the Wikipedia version), while the naysayers started last spring in analyzing the 2007 extension of DST in the United States (Ars Technica) and have picked up steam in the days leading up to today's "spring forward" (TreeHugger, Gizmodo).
Here's a more radical approach, born of my once-upon-a-time engineer's heart: why not abolish time zones entirely and switch to a single world clock? The British established Greenwich Mean Time as a de facto world standard back when the sun never set on the British Empire, while today we've got UTC (Universal Time, Coordinated) which conveniently bolts atomic standards onto the Greenwich system. The time zone I've inhabited most of my life, in the eastern United States, is variously UTC-5 (during standard time) or UTC-4 (during daylight savings). As the world becomes flatter and more interconnected, it seems far easier to schedule and plan in UTC, rather than playing the whole "how many hours ahead/behind are you" game.
Maybe I'm just reacting to the pain of scheduling cross-country conference calls in my day job, but I'm not all that attached to the "9 to 5" work-a-day convention. Would it really be that difficult to switch gears to just designate all scheduled actions in UTC? Or am I imagining some Star Trek dreamworld where time is even more arbitrary than it seems today?
Here's a brief musical interlude while I contemplate "ticking away the moments that make up a dull day" ...
Scrawl -- "Clock Song" (from Bloodsucker, Feel Good All Over, 1991 / Simple Machines, 1993)
Presaging a return to some longer-form content...
- Stuff White People Like -- Cringe in self-recognition after laughing your tail off. I particularly like #48, #13, and (of course) #41 and #23.
- The Scuppie -- similar to Stuff White People Like, but suspiciously close to being earnest instead of snarky... (Hat tip to Treehugger)
- A Carlsberg beer advertisement that pokes fun at both mandatory Irish language classes and the "attractiveness of the unusual" ...
Per An Spailpin Fanach, the concluding bit translates as "quiet road girl milk" -- which probably isn't too far from some of the gibberish I spat out trying to communicate in Paris... - Television Without Pity was once the unquestioned prime-time purveyor of snark. I can now admit that I was a total junkie for the Alias recaps -- it was really the only way to make any sense of what was happening. Anyway, they got bought out by Bravo a year ago and are now headed for reinvention with the three creators all making their way to the exits.
- And finally, a bar in New York City has the good sense to ban "Danny Boy" for the month of March. I'm all for live Irish music, but I have always despised that particular tune (even before learning the back-story) ... it epitomizes everything thats wrong with the "Irish Tenors" movement.
Yes, there's more content on the way shortly... but please don't hold your breath.
For those city dwellers (or prudent suburbanites and exurbanites) who lack their own fireplaces or can't find a neighborhood pub or friend with one to share, I'm happy to bring you the wonder and joy of the Yule Log.
If you're travelling this season, feel free to download your own from the fine folks at Tribune Broadcasting. I do remember seeing the Yule Log a few times on WPIX when spending Christmas with my grandmother in New York, but my current interest is more curious than nostalgic. I also prefer the sound of the logs crackling to piped-in carols, but feel free to poke around the interwebs for those variations.
And if you're within range of an Internet connection between 6:00pm on the 24th and 6:00pm on the 25th, I encourage you to stop by WPRB.com and listen in to the 20th Annual Jon Solomon Holiday Marathon, now in its 19th edition (with a hiatus in 1995 for the once-in-a-lifetime experience of seeing Northwestern University in the Rose Bowl). If I can plan to tune in from 6 time zones away after a 8-hour flight, then perhaps you can find a few minutes to share in the experience too.
Best wishes to all for a peaceful end of the year.
