Tuesday, February 27, 2007

On Rubik's Art and Salmonella Sandwiches...

Q: What did the leper say to his girlfriend?
A: I'll never forget the day you caught my eye.

Here are some things around the interweb catching mine today...


- I don't know why, but I'm always more impressed by art that takes longer and has a built in level of difficulty. There's nothing especially beautiful about this Rubik's Cube sculpture (sculpture?, mosaic?, building?, not sure.) aside from it's nostalgic subject matter. In fact, it's actually somewhat ugly and ungainly. Yet somehow I find myself in awe of it, as if the effort itself is praiseworthy despite the end result (The means justify the ends?). It's the same reason I hold stop motion animation in such high regard, and possibly eating competitions. By the way, what's up with the lower left cube? It's as if he/she/they made an extra "top of hand" piece and just set it there for no particular reason. Am I the only one bothered by stuff like that?

- "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" debuts tonight after Idol with Jeff Foxworthy hosting. In case you were wondering how you stack up check out the Trivia Quiz at the official site. I got 9 out of 10 and was told that I am as smart as a 5th grader. If someone on the street told me this, I would think I was being insulted, yet somehow I'm proud of this fact. In the end this show will likely be less about how smart you are and more about all the things you have forgotten because they ended up having absolutely no practical meaning in your life. But that probably wouldn't have fit as nicely into a show title, so I'll forgive.

- Former Idol contestant Matt Buckstien (the cowboyish guy who made Hollywood last year and made it to the last cut this year) had the clever idea to keep going in Idol by running his own voting on his Myspace page. Each week he uploads a video of a performance in line with the Idol week and people are encouraged to leave comments and vote on whether or not he would have been eliminated. It's a great idea, but Idol sent Mr. Buckstien a cease and desist, banning him from using the word "Idol". It's an interesting story and you can read more on Matt's take at his Myspace, as well as his humorous video take on the whole thing.

- Finally today, I was getting ready to make the boys some PB+J recently and happened to notice that the jar of peanut butter was Peter Pan. If you can remember back a couple weeks, there was this big Peter Pan recall of jars that might contain Salmonella. After checking online for the info and then crosschecking the lid of said jar, I came to the startling conclusion that this half eaten jar of peanut butter's lid did indeed have a code number with 2111 at the front (2111=Bad.) Every one is fine, and I don't remember any unexplained illness in the family recently, but it was just kind of shocking that this Peanut Butter sat in our cupboard two weeks before checking. All of the sudden I felt like child services was going to break down the door and steal the children of the neglectful peanut butter parents. The truth is there is always a lot of peanut butter in the house o' Dice and so we just pushed the Peter Pan to the back when the recall was in the news, but still. When things like this happen (Taco Bell E Coli, Broccoli contamination, etc) my usual stance is to say that our fear addled culture goes crazy over nothing. But from here on out I think I might be a little more diligent about at least seeing if it applies to me. Lesson learned.

I'll check back in tomorrow with some Idol thoughts, and I'd like to do a two month Wiiview here soon so keep dropping by!

Comments? Questions? Heard any good leper jokes? All feedback welcome below :)

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