Todd Stadler's blog

pain is trendy

For dinner, we went to Country Station in the Mission for sushi. Why, just writing that sentence earned me ten cool points!

Potential trendiness aside, this is a great place. It was recommended to me by some friends of mine. It has a squatty, homey look to it, as with our napkins, which were stolen from a 1984 Super Bowl party, I believe. But that is parte de su encanto, as the Spanish say. I do wish they'd speak English, those darned Spaniards.

Anyhow, it's not just the nice, somewhat kooky family that runs this place, or the odd musical selection (when we were there, it was something reggae-ish) playing on a boombox in the back. This place makes good sushi.

One roll of theirs that caught my eye is called the "eye scream". I may not be a sushi expert, but that's not Japanese. Neither is the roll, probably. Jalapeños, cucumber, and lots of wasabi. It's designed to hurt.

Naturally, I got it. I wouldn't be much of a chilehead (or a man!) if I avoided pain and the glorious endorphin rush that accompanies it. It wasn't all that tasty, but it was uniquely, wonderfully painful. It's rare to have your tongue and your nasal passages burn at the same time.

Unfortunately, I forgot that my tolerance for such pain sometimes exceeds that of my friends. After Julia tried an eye scream roll at my urging, she looked as if she might die. Or kill.

I think we all learned a little lesson tonight.

cool and seething in san francisco

I'm in the Bay Area now, visiting wonderful girlfriend Julia. I got here all of yesterday.

Today was spent wandering around the city, indulging in trite-site-seeing with the disaffected pain only a Gen X'er could evince. Just kidding. Sort of.

It's hard visiting a different city. You want to do cool things, but cool things are by definition those things that not so many people know about. And all you know about are those things you've heard of, which are, ipso facto, not cool.

So like any good young person, you go and do these hackneyed things, but you remove yourself from it all, step back and watch the crowds. You entertain yourself. You convince yourself that you're better than all these lowly tourists.

I am talking about you, not me, you realize. Myself, I had a good time because I was hanging out with my girlfriend. What's your problem, anyhow?

Poser.

sticker? i don't even know her!

I broke down today and decided to decorate my monitor. Perhaps I had been too influenced by attitudes at work, where I wouldn't have dared to "deface" Intel property, but it always seemed wrong to mar the perfectly boring tan surface of my computing equipment.

That was then. No longer encumbered by the rigid rules (or salary) of Intel, I can be free to, say, stick a "biohazard" sticker on my monitor. My girlfriend Julia gave that to me. I'd like to think that it reminds me that I am constantly being bombarded by electromagnetic radiation, and maybe I should get out some time. If so, I constantly ignore it, but hey.

Much cooler, though, are the "Degauss Squirrels". They're frolicking around on the lower part of my monitor, reminding me to get rid of built-up magnetic charge by pressing certain buttons. Helpful, and cute! Don't you wish your girlfriend sent you squirrel stickers now?

I feel like some kind of sticker wunderkind! No, no, a wunderking! Yeah!

salsa - the forbidden condiment!

Today's lesson is about salsa. The first part of the lesson is that "salsa" is just Spanish for "sauce". Accordingly, ignore any distinctions certain large-britched companies artificially create between salsas and picantes sauces. They are the same, at least to me.

("Hot sauces", though, tend to refer to those products in smaller bottles like Tabasco, Busha Browne's Pukka Sauce, and Sontava, or so say I.)

The problem with most salsas (and hot sauces, for that matter), is that they try to get you to buy them based on gimmickry, not taste. Accordingly, they advertise how crazy hot they are, when in reality, they're not all that hot to us chileheads.

If you're looking for a tasty salsa, then, and one with a decent amount of heat in its "hot" form, there is only one company whose products I can recommend, at least out here in the Tex-Mex desert that is Oregon.

That company would be Mrs. Renfro's. Their habañero salsa and salsa verde (not your usual salsa verde in that it's almost all jalapeños, not tomatillos) are both tasty and hot. And I should know, right? I'm from Texas! But maybe you can't find Mrs. Renfro's in your grocery store. What then should you do? Suicide is not, repeat not an option. Nor is wetting yourself. Listen, I can't hold your hand through the whole process, but I have some suggestions on how to buy a decent salsa. Avoid the following:

• Label makes claims of being "low fat". All salsas are low fat, but clearly these people are trying to appeal to health consciousness. Avoid!
• Label has the color pink on it.
• Is made by Heinz, comes in squeeze bottle (this is actually ketchup).
• Product refers to itself as "hot sauce", not "salsa".
• Salsa is made outside of southwest United States or Mexico. The best salsas I've had are usually from Texas (bias), but I give credit to its neighboring states, and begrudgingly, California. Still, if it's from New England, throw it away and just go suck on a ketchup bottle.
• Label makes references to crystals or other new age phenomena.
• Salsa comes in fancy jar. Any salsa worth eating comes in the same mason jar you've come to know and love. If they have their own proprietary shape, they're obviously too rich and getting too big for their britches. That means their product appeals to a wide market, which means it's watered down.
• Contains any of the following in the ingredients list: carrots, corn, peaches, mango, molasses, kale, endives, celery, parsnip, and so on.

Now you know everything I do. Good luck.

todd stadler's day off

Today was an unproductive day at the "office" (that is, my house), because the "network" (that is, my DSL connection), was down. So I took the day off, because my new "employer" (that is, me) has a really great "vacation policy", even if the "pay" really stinks (that is, I'm unemployed, but I didn't do what I had planned).

First, I spent some time pondering my new (lack-of-) job situation in a heavy-handed metaphor. But that quickly grew tiresome.

So I watched some videos lying around. Unfortunately, the only commercial videos I have in my possession are E.T. (a gift from my mom), a Chris Elliott video with two shorts on it (I think the only video I ever bought for myself, and one of the first things I bought on the Internet), and a DVD of Leprechaun 5: In the Hood (which I got free from work for embodying one of Intel's seven core values - don't corporations just baffle you?). None of those really merited watching again today.

So I watched some old videos of myself. I have one awfully edited video that tells the story of my junior high school band's trip to the TMEA convention in San Antonio, where we played that year as the CCC Honor band, whatever that means.

But it's not what the video is ostensibly about that interests me. It's video of myself in ninth grade that compels me to watch. A little bit of the events that shaped my life, captured in grainy VHS.

And it's not just me that I find so interesting. If anything, watching myself back then makes me cringe. I was so awkward, so goofy. But the others - the band directors and all my peers - seem so familiar to me. There are some I haven't seen since that video was made, and the images of them on the video are how I still imagine them to be, I guess.

Everyone else doesn't seem as awkward and goofy to me becuase that's how I remember them. That's how things were. It's frightening watching life as it was, replayed for you in unblinking detail, minus the edits, of course. And I'm not even trapped inside a house or in the Australian outback!

The other videos I have were made by a group of friends I had starting the summer after ninth grade. We would make up skits and do music videos. Inside jokes of dubious quality abound, as does an unrelenting fascination with cows.

It's like finding an old diary, only more embarrassing, as I do not have the ability to make myself look less gawky in my mind. No, there I am, skinny legs and all, wearing my then-girlfriend's bikini top (stuffed with socks) and Bugle Boy jean shorts, getting wacky to the lamest Beach Boys song of all time, "Kokomo".

I am so glad those days are gone.

If I ever have a child who thinks he is too cool for me, I will make him sit down and watch these abominable videos, however many hours of them there are. He will laugh at me. At the end, I will tell him, "that is you!" Then I will make him promise to never call Radiohead's music "wussy" again.

super fuzz, big muffin

I randomly stumbled onto Muffin Films today. Apparently part of someone's MFA thesis, it is a collection of films about, well, muffins.

All the films there are worth watching, if only because your life has been drastically lacking in muffin-related animation.

But those that stand out are Pssst, The Muffin Tree (be sure to catch the moral), M, The Muffinless, Bluebirds in Spring (oh, this does remind me of so many foreign films I've seen), and of course, the "tie it all together"ness of Muffinale.

I'm sure there's lots of other wonderful animation and film shorts out there on the Internet, but that's what I found today.

kids will be kids, if they're allowed

I think I'm going to cry. Again.

This is just too much, people. I don't want to read about children's lives being ruined because they were not allowed into the "right" kindergarten.

I don't want to read about it because it shouldn't happen in this world. I'd like to think that it's not happening in this world - that it's happening in New York, which is, in fact, part of a different planetary system than where I live.

But it's more like a harbinger of things to come, I fear.

Hmm, rather than bemoan once again the stupidity of humanity, I will make a pointless pledge, officially witnessed by no one that I know of, and with no legal or moral backing to it:

If you ever see me acting like anyone in the above-linked article, you have my permission to push me into the grass and give me noogies until I promise to stop bugging my kid.

If I'm going to have a smart child, it'll be because he was born that way and wanted to be smart.

But at the rate things are going, maybe I just won't have a kid at all. I think he'd be smart enough, but the world he'd inherit is getting dumber all the time.

judge, jury, and estimator

Ooh, ooh, ooh! I hate selling my CDs at Everyday Music. They have a way of making me feel so stupid.

I wanted to sell some CDs I really don't listen to very much, so I could indulge myself in some new CDs I would hopefully like more. But it's like some test of one's self-worth or something.

Of course, I wasn't so fond of the CDs I was selling. Otherwise, I wouldn't be selling them. But they weren't bad! I was really happy to own them at some point in my past. And I'm sure some reasonably cool person somewhere would still be happy to own these tunes.

But you wouldn't know that from the people behind the counter at Everyday Music. With a grim face, they accept your CDs for evaluation, dubious that anything much could come from your music collection. After all, they work in a record store or whatever.

So while I was being ranked on a scale from one to ten, one being the owner of 4 Non Blondes' Bigger Better Faster More! and ten being something I can't even guess at, I perused the stacks of new and used CDs, hoping to find some good music to fill in the holes I'd recently left.

I found some old Aphex Twin, and the latest from Radiohead and the Chemical Brothers. I need more computer-working music for my copious free time at home, and these records filled that need.

I also looked at some other stuff on my "to buy" list, listened to some tracks to see if I really wanted to purchase it, or if there was only a few good songs. It turns out I needn't have bothered.

For the nine CDs I decided I could part with, I was offered eighteen dollars. Two dollars a CD at a store that will pay up to four. That hurts.

So I asked what the breakdown was. He told me what each CD was worth to the store. Five of the CDs were worth seventeen dollars, for a respectable average of over three dollars a disk. I could deal with that, since much that I was selling wasn't exactly popular.

But that meant that the other four CDs were worth a quarter each. A quarter! That's practically the chemical value of the CD, what with the aluminum and all.

And who were these purveyor's of this land's most worthless rock? Morella's Forest, Danielson, and Spookey Ruben. Sure, you may not have heard of them, but I don't know much about you, either.

Still, it's not like I was trying to sell a Celine Dion CD, or Creed, or other such drivel. And yet in a twist so ironic, it seems plucked from a Home Improvement script, those artists would probably be worth more to the Most Esteeemed Estimators at Everyday Music, because someone wants to buy those albums.

In addition to being highly annoying, this fact is how I eventually comforted myself as I walked home with three new CDs and a wounded ego. I'm simply too esoteric for your average music consumer.

After all, a little self-righteousness makes us all feel better.

they got nothing but the genes

I found a wonderful site about the human genome today. You can go there and look at these very pretty pictures of our genetic makeup and find out which of your personal problems correspond to which chromosome.

Some of my favorites include:

Chromosome 1

• cutaneous malignant melanoma/dysplastic nevus - this sounds like a track title from a Tourniquet album.
• maple syrup urine disease, type II
• Zellweger syndrome - causes you to make bad movies
• fish-odor syndrome
• rippling muscle disease - many people at the gym have this, I think

Chromosome 2

• obesity, adrenal insufficiency, and red hair - one out of three ain't bad
• wrinkly skin syndrome
• precocious puberty, male
• micropenis - too little, or too soon, this chromosome is trouble

Chromosome 3

• Moebius syndrome - you have no insides
• Usher syndrome (Finland) - I was given to believe that genetics didn't recognize international boundaries
• 3q21q26 syndrome - makes you talk like a robot, maybe

Chromosome 4

• cherubism
• phenylketonuria - the disease made famous by Diet Coke
• hair color, red - but without the obesity this time, apparently

Chromosome 5

• X-ray repair - but don't tell Senator Kelly, okay?

Chromosome 6

• Char syndrome - slowly replaces body parts with plastic and silicone, makes voice degenerate into computerized mumbling, and ... oh, Char syndrome. Never mind.

Chromosome 7

• hand-foot-uterus syndrome - some sort of genetic sexual perversion
• lunatic fringe - this doesn't sound like a disease so much as a fashion malady
• polydactyly - wasn't this a Pokemon or Power Rangers character?
• chloride diarrhea, congenital, Finnish type - is there something about Finland we should know?
• human ether-a-go-go related gene - I do believe they're pulling our leg on this one

Chromosome 8

• scurvy - avast!

Chromosome 9

• lead poisoning, susceptibility to - hmm, I imagine we all have this one, then
• amyloidosis, Finnish type - that does it, I'm not going to visit Finland, ever

Chromosome 13

• enuresis, nocturnal - snicker
• dementia, familial British - you know, this explains a lot

Chromosome 14

• defender against cell death - well, that sounds cool, doesn't it?

Chromosome 17

• radical fringe - Libertarians and cool 80's jackets, maybe?

Chromosome 14

• bleeding disorder - "but what are the symptoms?"
• leprechaunism - um, really?

Oh, aren't genetics just fun?

another way to advertise

There was a sticky note on my car this morning as I tore off to the concert. It was the same note I've gotten before.

"Please call me about your car 503-XXX-XXXX L.A." Handwritten, on a little green sticky note.

The last time I got this note, I thought someone really wanted to talk to me about my car. Maybe it was the big numbers I stuck on the windows. Or my giant bumper sticker. Lots of people ask about those.

So I called the number. And I was told that "L.A." wasn't there, but I could leave a message. When I told the message-taker about the note, she proceeded to tell me about the windshield-repair service they offer.

Argh. See, my windshield has a crack in it. Apparently, some clever businessperson goes around looking for cracked glass and putting sticky notes on the cars.

Well, that was last time. This time, I called up and asked for "L.A.". It became apparent that there is no one working at this company with those initials. It's just a codename to alert the person taking the call that I'm calling about a sticky note they left.

This time, I left a message with "L.A.", saying that she'd better not leave any more stupid sticky notes on my car because I'm tired of her annoying marketing scheme. The person on the other end thanked me for my input.

Whee! Consumer rage! Like a freakin' adbuster, yo!

euphorious euphony

The Mates of State show really colored my world for the rest of the day. I hadn't really been to a show in a while, and perhaps not coincidentally, I hadn't been excited about music in a while.

Hearing the peppy sounds of organ, drums, and catchy harmonies changed all that.

As I drove home, it seemed to me that the world was an interesting place. Every person I saw seemed to hide a wealth of information that was worthy of at least one song. Every time I closed my eyes, I imagined I was taking pictures of the world, and it seemed so beautiful. You'd almost have guessed I was on drugs.

My spirit lifted, I once again entertained thoughts of finally doing something with all the musical instruments and ideas I've been collecting. I may not act on that anytime soon, but it was good to feel I could. I was in my über-creative mode again. So what if all that came of it was a journal entry and a mild euphoria?

going to a show, meeting people

In other news, I went to see the Mates of State today at Jackpot Records. Apparently the MoS aren't playing any real shows in Portland, but they stopped in to say hello on their way up to Seattle. So that was nice. I duly bopped my head along with each song, as if I was conducting them from the back of the store or something.

After the show, I said hello to Jack Saturn, whom I'd never met before. I'd read that he was coming to Portland via his website, where I also read that he'd be going to the MoS show.

That's probably all I have to say about that. I mean, he's just a guy, but I think it's kind of odd that I knew of him only through the internet. I suppose things like this will continue to be more frequent. Of course, I've already met two girls by virtue of my having a website. So I'm, like, the king of internet sociability or something.

death to the white anglo-saxon protestants!

Yesterday I did battle with the wasps. The kind with six legs and a body clearly designed for evil. Why, they're nothing but wings, head, and stinger! No messing around with potentially nice functionality there.

I hate wasps with a vengeance. At least when they're in my room. If I see one outside, I at least have the option of running around like a little girl, screaming at the top of my lungs and waving my arms like I was trying to fly. But when they're in the same enclosed place where I sleep, one of us clearly has to die.

So I lose all rationality. A visceral fear takes hold of me. I am become The Wasp-Killer.

It all started when I realized that the buzzing I heard was not my friendly (or at least non-pain-inducing) neighborhood fly. Gripped with fear, I ran to the cabinet where we keep chemicals. Surely somewhere among the bottles of outdated (and possibly recalled) bathroom cleaners, there was something lethal I could lather these hated hymenoptera in.

I found a nasty old bottle of something claiming to kill some kind of insect, and figured that was good enough. I ran back to my room and soaked the window with its nasty-smelling liquid. Although the wasps didn't seem too disturbed by its chemical contents, I eventually seemed to have drowned them by sheer force.

But in order to defeat the wasps, you cannot triumph in winning just one battle. No, I knew they would be back, and this time, they would be angry. So I went out to Fred Meyer and bought some poison that was more wasp-centric. It also happened to come in a more powerful spray form. I had upped the munitions ante.

I'm ready for you, wasps. I know you're coming back, and I'm waiting for you, with my wasp spray.

Until then, I will have wasp-themed hallucinations, because all this wasp spray in my room is making me light-headed. You'd think I would open the window to let in some fresh air, but that's just what the wasps want me to do, see? That's how they and their hordes will get inside. Just like the Trojan horse. I'm no fool. I'm just going to wait here and seethe.

have you taken your soma yet?

Today, I have just one question: will there ever be a time when we stop explaining every problem as some psychological disorder that must be treated with therapy or drugs?

I realize that we've come a long way in treating the many problems of life. We don't have to worry about drought or a pack of wolves killing us and our friends. The ravages of many diseases no longer fill us with fear. Our main choices in a given day deal with what, not if, we will eat, and how we will entertain ourselves.

But does that mean that it's come down to us expecting to rid ourselves of nervousnous or worry? Do we believe that a drug exists for every problem? Or that every problem in life is, in fact, bad?

I realize that I might be called callous and risk being beaten by those who suffer from such phenomena, but it's all too much for me.

Kids are rowdy, relationships are tricky, there's lots to worry about, people are irrational, life can suck sometimes. Was anybody promised otherwise?

the worst of the worst

Submitted for your perusal: the ten worst sitcoms ever. You may argue over the order, but you'd be hard pressed to find even worse shows. Although I try to never underestimate the lows to which humans can sink.

I'd pretty much forgotten about It's a Living, one of those shows that always appeared on weekday afternoons right before dinner. But I apparently watched it, as their plot summary seems mighty familiar to me.

And, of course I don't think anyone is surprised by the inclusion of such staples of Gen X conversations as Mama's Family, Three's a Crowd, or Step by Step.

But it's Unhappily Ever After I'd like to think about for a second. I had never heard of this show until I became unemployed. I guess I started watching TV late at night when I fall asleep, and I found this show on around 2am.

It's a strange show, following in the footsteps of Married With Children, and brought to you by the same people. The dad is callous and stupid, and the girl is really hot. Except the girl is smart this time.

Oh, and there's this highly annoying stuffed rabbit ( or pile of mold) that seems to be the embodiment of the dad's psychosis, living in the basement. The dad and the rabbit, who is voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait, natch, have these talks in which they make fun of other TV shows which, it should be noted, are generally not as bad as Unhappily Ever After.

The conversations come across as hastily composed, thinly-veiled rants against the object of some writer's ire. In fact, much of this show seems quickly thrown together, such as the opening credits, set to the song "Hit the Road, Jack" for some reason, with the main characters all dancing and lip-syncing rather poorly, except the rabbit.

Did I mention that the rabbit always gets enormous amounts of applause from the studio audience/laugh track? He's a riot.

Still, I have to wonder about the show. Is the fact that it insults crappy pop culture a sign that it may be more intelligent than it lets on? Many have suggested that Married With Children was a satire of bad television. If it failed by being taken seriously (as many satires of stupidity often do), then maybe Unhappily Ever After was an attempt to me more obvious.

I mean, for heaven's sake, half the episodes I've seen star Kato Kaelin. They can't have hired him because of his skill!

the soul of a new machine

I spent some time today making my computer more personalized. You know, because I have time to do that now.

My computer background now shows the earth at night as seen from a satellite.

While waiting for particularly long downloads to complete, I can ponder the material wealth of the United States, Europe, India, and Japan. I can marvel at the visible effect of the trans-siberian railroad. I can think about mankind's propensity to live near water, especially around the Mediterranean Sea, and in Australia. And I can wonder at the disparity between North and South Korea.

All that from my computer background. It's a very philosophical thing.

But wait, there's more! I created a Pictures at an Exhibition sound theme for my computer.

Don't you wish you heard Samuel Goldenberg umd Schmuyle every time you got mail? Yeah, well, maybe I won't either by the time I get a few notes from my friends. But it's the thought that counts.

odds and ends

I just found out that my friend Amar has a webpage up now. Which is good. It's more fulfilling to read the online diaries of people you know than those of complete strangers.

I have been trying to take control of many aspects of my life since I left Intel. There is much that needs to be done, and I have been keeping track of it all.

In answer to one of the problems I've been looking into, I just wrote down "possible solution: just wait a couple of years". I don't know, that seemed funny to me.

lousy salary, great vacation time

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise - being unemployed is full-time work. Or at least it is for me.

Maybe it's just that in my previous allotments of free time, I didn't get much done, and am only now able to contemplate getting all those tasks done that had heretofore been ignored, weekend after weekend. I certainly can't fathom being bored right now.

And I definitely am not pondering a career with ITT Tech between reruns of Hogan's Heroes.

Why, cleaning my room alone would take a week or something. Or that's my hypothesis, at least. Not that I'll be testing it anytime soon.

Still, I decided to start getting the newspaper again, since I would now have the time to read it. And yet already I'm a day behind. Every day, I seem to be reading yesterday's paper. I ask you, where does the time go?

everybody else is still working for the weekend

Today was my last day of work at Intel. Three years, three months, two weeks, and one day after I walked into that giant suburban monolith and watched some really boring training films, I gave up the engineering ghost in exchange for a decent sum of money.

I can't say I really comprehend what it all means now, or what it will mean for my future. But that doesn't matter. I'm happy.

I mean, who wouldn't be? I'm looking at a several hundred-day weekend here!