Propaganda Remix Project ©2006 by Micah Ian Wright

Cars in Southern California have become so ubiquitous, when I see more than two adults in a car, I actually think to myself, “That’s odd.” It seems much more commonplace, if a group of adults is going from one place to another, for each couple or individual to take their/his/her own car. Sadly, I suppose that’s why traffic is so bad here.

Image courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org

Every time someone in my family mentions Shoppers Drug Mart (a Canadian drug store chain), it sounds like a funny name to me. It seems like it has one too many words in it, and you could rearrange the words in any order and basically have the same store. I think that there should be competing stores called “Druggies Mart Shop” and “Martyrs Shop Drug.”

All these soccer games got me thinking about what a great invention the rubber (née animal-skin) “ball” was, especially since every culture seems to play some kind of sport or game involving a ball. I can only assume that it was invented concurrently in many places (not by one person or even a group of people in one specific place) and must have been preceded by a coconut or gourd. Still, I think that when even a coconut or gourd is used for the purpose of playing a game, it is a ball. Clearly the ball has been around for a very long time, and yet it basically only serves one purpose: recreation. Still, I think it’s safe to say it’s the greatest invention since the wheel.

Then again, I’m only assuming that the wheel was invented first. In fact, I doubt that’s true. Perhaps someone out there can correct me because I’m not about to start researching it. But the more I think about it, it seems to me that cavemen may have played with a ball before ever having any use for a wheel.

Meanwhile, saying that it’s “the greatest invention since…” also got me thinking about how people say that something is “the greatest invention since sliced bread.” Now, I have a huge problem with that cliche. Think about this:

Bread was a terrific invention. It’s an easy way to get grains in your diet, it’s useful in many different ways (put it around meat, make it into pudding, pour soup inside it), it doesn’t get your fingers messy when you’re holding it, and it generally tastes good. It took a lot of time and effort for people to invent bread, and it comes in many different shapes, sizes, textures, colors, and can be made from many different ingredients.

Sliced bread, on the other hand, was an incredibly lazy “invention.” Someone just took bread, which already existed, and decided to slice it and package it. Before that, people sliced it themselves. It took all of half a minute with a good knife. The invention of sliced bread maybe saves you half a minute each time you buy a loaf of bread, and it doesn’t really solve a problem (unless you were without a bread knife, but even then you could still tear the bread with your hands).

So if something is only the greatest invention since sliced bread, I would argue it’s not a very imaginative or useful invention. Conversely, if something is the greatest invention since “ball,” well, that’s actually quite impressive!

I’ve upgraded the blog software on this site to WordPress 3.0. I figured I should get used to it on my personal site as soon as possible, because at some point we’re going to have to upgrade the blogs at work too. The new version has multi-user (and multi-site) capabilities built-in by default (instead of having a separate multi-user version), so it’s more useful for businesses now. It has a host of other new features, so hopefully I’ll either implement some of those here (if applicable) or at least learn to use them for the blogs at work.

One of the best new features: wp.me links! Just like the blogs on wordpress.com, my blog now has a “short link” for each blog entry, which is especially useful for Twitter posts. For example, the short link for this entry is http://wp.me/pYpK0-fM.

In other news, my Twitter feed in the right column is periodically not working, but that’s Twitter’s fault. If you’re a Twitter user, you may have noticed frequent “fail whale” appearances. Apparently they’ve been having server troubles.

I think it’s a brother’s duty to make fun of his brother once in a while. I found this picture of my brother at my mother’s house, and I think it’s funny-looking. Meanwhile my mother was pestering me about updating my blog, so I decided to take care of both responsibilities at once.

I have no idea why my grandfather has this hanging on the wall in his kitchen. We’re not even remotely Irish. I’m assuming it was a gift, but it still seems very odd. Anyway, this is the one day of the year when its presence makes sense. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

As a registered Starbucks cardholder, I received a birthday coupon for a free drink of my choice. Now I’m sitting in the Starbucks on the east side of the Orange Circle, where I can easily judge the suckers who chose the Starbucks on the west side of the Circle. Those fools! Their Starbucks may be open later, but it’s not in a historic building.

Using my phone to type this post, I’m reminded of an Android app that I’d like to see: an app that automatically logs me into WiFi hotspots with web-based authentication, like Starbucks or Coffee Bean. It’s annoying to have to launch the web browser to log in and use the WiFi. Then again, unless I’m doing something particularly intense like watching YouTube videos, the 3G is fast enough.

So anyway, I got a white mocha.

Ash and I were both eligible for phone upgrades as of December 24, so we went out that morning and used our “New Every Two” credit to get two free (after rebate) Droid Eris phones.

The phones take a little getting used to since we’ve never had smart phones before. For instance, it automatically downloaded all my gmail contacts into my phone book, and I had to figure out how to stop that from happening. So there’s a learning curve. But it’s nice to finally have a device that I think is every bit as useful as the iPhone, yet on the Verizon Wireless network so it can make phone calls inside Friday’s at the Block, or at Rainforest Cafe, or at any other place where we’ve seen the iPhone fail at being a phone.

Friday we arrived in Paris after a very long journey. We met the owner of our vacation apartment and got the keys and the lay of the land from her. We had dinner at Le Sketch, a place we found next to a fountain called “Le Fontaine de Mars” on the corner of Rue Saint-Dominique and Rue de l’Exposition. Ash had the magret de canard au poivre (duck in pepper sauce). “C’est magnifique!” David had the veal. For dessert we shared an excellent tarte tatin. It was good because it was “just a little tart.” Then we walked to the base of the Eiffel Tower and looked at souvenirs.

Saturday we had pain au chocolat and café crème (which was trés bien) at Le Den on the corner of Rue de Grenelle and Rue Cler. Ash was able to get our train tickets for the week in French, and we went to Parc Disneyland for Halloween. It was crowded. We liked the architecture, the dragon lair, and the castle, but the only ride we went on was Phantom Manor. “Trés frighteningue!” (I don’t know how to say “scary” in French.) We saw Ash’s friends Erinn, Christina, Carlos, and Casey in the “Once Upon a Dream” parade. We also saw the “Fantillusion” parade, which David called “the electrical parade part deux.” We bought some souvenirs for the nieces before we left.

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I’ve noticed that a lot of new GPS devices are “widescreen” (i.e., 16:9 ratio instead of 4:3 ratio). Call me crazy, but… isn’t a GPS interface actually better in the traditional full-screen aspect ratio? I’d rather see more of what’s directly ahead of me on the map than what’s directly to my left and right. For both televisions and computers, the wide aspect ratio makes sense: Movies are filmed that way, and documents can be viewed side-by-side. But I think they need to draw the line somewhere—based on the actual use of a screen—and that line should have been drawn before GPS devices.