65 Million Year Eraser

I must not be the only idiot wondering whether humans really were the first species on the planet for whom culture and civilization became a natural outgrowth of evolution, though unfortunately I'm probably the most sober.

Background to my question:
We carry on with a certain arrogance and vanity, secure in our knowledge that we are the pinnacle of biological evolution; that nothing on this planet has ever approached our sophistication, and after we're gone nothing will again.

But consider:

• Endothermic terrestrial vertebrates rocked up at the end of the Triassic, and then partied for 135MY before the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event
• 135MY could contain 27 independent monkey-to-moon cycles given the rate of Hominini progress these last 5MY
• If a Chicxulub-sized event stuck April 24th, 1616 CE (the day after Shakespeare died), what traces of humankind would be available to our cockroach overlord archeologists 65MY hence?
• How advanced must any civilization become before imprinting itself permanently on the planet?

Now, clearly dinosaurs were never driving around in Teslas, and we won't find their footprints on the moon. BUT, 400 years ago you wouldn't have seen us doing that either. We did, however, have Calculus, Romeo & Juliet, and ice cream.

The question:
Is the fossil record granular enough to describe an "intelligent species", or could some small population with the following characteristics come and go, many times over, and be lost permanently over the intervening 65MY?

• Are self aware
• Possess conceptual thinking
• Practice agriculture / hedge against scarcity 
• Create expressions analogous to poetry / philosophy / allegory

If culture is fundamentally more advantageous than non-culture, why would it arise only now, after 200MY?

Adventures in Car Buying - Lexus CT200h

The first car I brought home for an overnight test drive was a 2012 Lexus CT200h. A compact hatchback based on the Toyota Prius, the CT200h does a couple things outrageously well, and one thing quite poorly.

But before I get into any of that, I feel compelled to discuss two topics that I myself have spent years trying to digest:

On badge engineering

In short, badge engineering is the ubiquitous practice of borrowing a model from another manufacturer and then slapping your name on the outside, often with little or no additional customization.

Examples of badge engineering

• Acura ILX = Honda Civic
• Lexus ES350 = Toyota Avalon
• Lincoln MKS = Ford Taurus
• ad nauseam

I approve of the concept on principal; if your blue-collar model is refined enough for your white-collar consumer, well done you. Everybody wins. But the smaller the difference between these two models, the more closely must the buyer examine his motivation behind choosing the more premium brand. Especially when a non-trivial cost difference is involved.

There are myriad ways to justify that cost difference without ever addressing egoism, but I think this is disingenuous at heart, so I won't list them here.

Which leads neatly into the next topic:

On premium brands

Premium brands exist entirely along the segment of the diminishing return curve where total return on investment as a proportion of the total investment decreases. Put another way, when you buy premium you're getting less for more, relative to a non-premium counterpart.

In reality the core value proposition of premium brands is that they are out of reach of a given percentage of the population, and so by extension are those who buy them.

So ultimately, would I buy one?
Yesssssssss.

Why?
Because we can afford to right now, and all the ugliness that implies.

On the intersection of premium brands and badge engineering

The CT200h, henceforth referred to as the Lexus Prius, really is a lovely little thing; but it is defined by the contradictions it holds within the whisper quiet cabin.

The Lexus Prius is chic but not sexy. Isolating but not numb. Exclusive but not unattainable. The Lexus Prius is Helen Hunt in As Good as it Gets.

Drive the Lexus Prius and ambient noise fades away, like the moment before a pressure induced yawn on an airplane. Front seats are perfectly sculpted with excellent mid-back lumbar support. You'll have to fight to get fewer than 40 highway MPGs because the car will always default to Eco mode.

This is the perfect car for two people on a cross-country adventure. This is not the perfect car for three people on a cross-county adventure. Back seat room is a bit confined, as per usual in this class.

So why didn't this one work? At the end of the day, this is still a Prius, and that means reigning in fun to boost fuel economy. And Nura wanted something a little bit hotter.

Adventures in Car Buying - Backstory

I am addicted to cars. And trucks. And motorcycles. And occasionally bicycles, modern and vintage wrist watches, tablet computers, cell phone cameras, running shoes, dog breeds, airline tickets, jackets (rain, winter, and leather), hi-fi stereos, or anything else I happen to desperately need in that moment.

My addiction is fed, but indeed never sated, through endless searching; stating and restating requirements describing vague and fleeting moods with the goal of either identifying the perfect thing, or determining at what cost that thing should be bought.

Stimulation and pleasure are found in the hunt, and then in the kill, rather than from hanging a trophy on my wrist or parking it in the garage.

But I now find myself in the position, and oddly uncomfortably so, of needing to finally commit and transact on a car for Nura.

I say uncomfortable because for me the perfect car changes not on a yearly or monthly basis, but on a daily and occasionally hourly cadence. On Monday morning at 9:00, the most perfect car in the world; the quick and quiet, capable and reliable, sexy and understated machine that will literally bring about world peace is a clear and unconscionable error in judgement well before noon.

Normally I would simply defer to Nura to pick out the car. It will be her daily driver after all. But few things in this world register as less appealing for Nura than car shopping.

List of things Nura would rather do than shop for cars:

• Hang out at Wal-Mart
• Volunteer customer service
• Putting down pound puppies
• Talk to vegans

And so the task falls to me: Identify a car befitting of her current and potential future needs, is exciting for her, and fits the budget.

I'll try to talk about the process and the findings here until we finally buy.


List of potential cars for Nura:

Pontiac Aztek

Trix Donk

Nissan Juke

Toyota Prius

Sayulita, Mexico

Recently I've been pretty garbage at celebrating the things that ought to be celebrated in this marriage. You know what I did for Nura's 30th? Flowers and a late Italian dinner. And for our second wedding anniversary? Sushi. No flowers.

My head just hasn't been in the game. I blame work, and I hope that's really what it is. Too much work, not enough thinking about other things.

So to take a break, and celebrate ourselves, and to get a little sunshine, Nura and I decided to follow friends' advice and bang it down to Mexico for a week.

A few hours of travel later we stepped into the kind of sunshine that leans on your back and shoulders. A heady mix of street food and diesel fuel pushed past us in hot blasts, and everybody was selling tequila or timeshares.

The following conversation is heard when speaking to a Seattleite on any subject:

Seattleite: "We try not to talk about how perfect our summer and fall is because we don't want anyone else to move in. Seriously, we never mention the sunshine to outsiders. It's our best kept secret that we don't talk about. Ever."

Outsider: "Dude. I asked you about legalized pot."

Sayulita was an easy choice once we heard about it: Sleepy little surfing village on the Pacific coast, quick and easy to get to, stocked with hammocks. 

Ah, but there's a contradiction here that should have been obvious to us; By the time we hear about it, it's no longer sleepy little. So there were probably a few misaligned expectations on our part.

But little Sayulita (AKA the University of Miami's south campus) still sated, if not quite in the flavor I was hoping for. My itinerary for the week was conspicuously empty: I wasn't looking for a history lesson, I had no intention to hike my feet off. I just wanted to sit and sweat and think and read. And I wanted to do it out of the country.

And I did that. A lot of it in fact. I made some excellent itinerary headway:

• I decided to start going for a few triathlons per year
• I finished an Iain M Banks novel and started a Robert M Pirsig novel
• It would be good to cut back on sweets even more
• I need a hammock - Oh shit! I have a hammock! 
• I need a place to put my hammock.

"Misaligned expectations" is a corporate born euphemism. It means "the fucked up thoughts you got rattling around the old coconut".  

Here it is used in a business setting:

 "Oh I see, your impression was this would be ready by Wednesday. Sounds like the issue is misaligned expectations."

Nura was most(ly) accommodating of my leisurely cadence though she was often bored to tears. But something happened to me that was unexpected and at odds with everything Nura stands for. You see, my appetite evaporated almost the moment we arrived.

Cobblestone streets were outlined by awnings, and giant umbrellas protected sun bleached tables and chairs in front of dozens of crowded restaurants. Fresh tortillas sizzled in cast iron pans, skewers of carne asada sat marinating on every corner. But I wasn't hungry. In fact, I might not get hungry until 3 or 4 in the afternoon.

Nura, bless, would wait for me to want food before she ate. And by the time I did, more often than not she was well past hangry and deep into murder country. So as the day's heat would begin to ease we would set out to find breakfast.

There's only one kind of food served in Sayulita, but it comes in two different varieties. First the type, then the flavors:

The restaurants serve exactly what Americans think Mexican food is. That is to say, they serve American food wrapped in big flower tortillas, covered in melted cheese and salsa. 

Each joint's menu being identical to the next - differing only in cover art and occasionally variety of deserts. However, restaurants would offer a unique twist to their margarita. So you wouldn't go someplace in particular to eat so much as to drink.

You could decide how much you wanted to pay though: If you wanted to pay a lot, you could go to a restaurant owned by an American expat and sit in big, beautifully sculpted gardens with a canopy of zigzagging stringed lights. If you wanted to pay less, you could go to a restaurant owned by a local who converted the front of their house to a restaurant, and kept the back for themselves.

Either way, it seems as though they're all buying the same meats and cheese, fruits and veggies, and grains. So the flavors were mostly indistinguishable (and none were truly outstanding if I'm being honest). 

The best meals were from street carts and back alleys, as they typically used the fewest ingredients. If we're eating BBQ chicken, let's celebrate it. Not drown it.

Oh and speaking of drowning, Nura nearly died on the first day. I literally took Nura by the hand and fed her directly to an undertow. She was rescued by vigilant paddle boarders, no thanks to me, and spent the rest of the day draining half the Pacific Ocean through her sinuses. My bad, Nura. My bad.

Below are a few additional points from the week we were gone. This was by no means an exhaustive list of the strange or memorable things that happened, but were probably easiest to write down.

Of the nearing drug war: 

Something that should be mentioned now, mostly because nobody told me about it earlier, is the escalating drug cartel violence that has traditionally steered clear of tourist havens. Well, I say nobody. I guess the "US Consulate General" had advised "US Citizens" against traveling to exactly where we went, exactly when we went there. But nobody wrote it in a letter with my name on it.

EVIDENTLY, the New Generation Jalisco Cartel, an upstart paramilitary outfit currently battling at least three other gangs, shot down a Mexican military helicopter on a dare. Alright, I guess I don't know for sure it was a dare. Anyhow, six soldiers died and the Jalisco governor pretty openly declared war on the NGJC.

The NGJC is currently fighting for control of about 80,000 square miles containing nearly 20 million people. The area "in dispute" - that is to say, the area that not even the Mexican government or military has complete control over - is almost the size of Minnesota, and has more people than the combined populations the following US cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Phoenix.

It should also be mentioned that this is by no means the largest or bloodiest turf war currently raging in Mexico.

Lucky for us, all we saw of the "war" were half a dozen Ford Raptors with 50 cal machine gun turrets bolted into the beds, roaring around by the airport while we waited for the bus. We also passed through a checkpoint where 20 soldiers in balaclavas pointed said machine guns at the cars and busses as we passed.
Did we think anything of it, beyond a healthy show of force to keep the cartels out and the tourists feeling safe? Nope. Bliss.

Of the jingoists in the next hotel:

If there was a lowlight to this trip, it probably was the group of fratbros staying in the next hotel over from us. Ugly Americans. Loud motherfuckers. Luckily they had a pretty packed itinerary so were gone most of the day, and too exhausted to be bothersome at night. Unfortunately they still found time in the early morning (always awake before 8:00) to get themselves revved up in the most uncomfortable way.

This was clearly the first time any of them had left the country, and for some reason they were confused about what their role as Americans abroad was. I've compiled a few possibilities explaining their "misaligned expectations".

• They were worried sick that anyone within earshot might not know where they're from
• They thought there was a fair chance they might forget where they're from
• Someone told them that where they're from was license to be nauseatingly unpleasant

Anyhow, this is how their jingoism manifested itself; On Monday morning, the alfabro, very aptly named Brody, woke up his crew by loudly fucking up "You're a Grand Old Flag", but it's OK because he quickly recovered by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The rest of the boys joined in.

I can't remember what song he played on his little travel speakers the second morning (Jesus those things have gotten loud), but I do remember it dissolving into the good old fashioned "USA! USA! USA!" chant that lasted way too long.

At some point between the second and third day, someone complained to their hotel management (wasn't us). I know this because Brody didn't reveille his troops on Wednesday morning, but one of the betabros did by turning Springsteen's Born in the USA to 11. 

He only got through the first chorus before we could hear Brody hush "shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up!!" Poor confused little betabro.

But it was too late. Wednesday was our travel day, so I had Bruce's four words echoing endlessly through my head all the way from Sayulita to Seattle.

100 Day Challenge

I’m not sure why I’m starting this challenge. I have a plausible excuse floating around in my head, but I know that’s not it. Not really.

Plausible excuse:

About 3 months ago I sprained my ankle pretty badly playing soccer. I folded over the outside of my left foot and very distinctly heard a “pop-pop”. It was somewhere between a Grade II and III sprain, which means the ligaments were at least partially torn, if not completely. I was off my feet for a week, on crutches for another week, in a brace for 2 more weeks, and unable to walk for more than half an hour for several more weeks. Balls. For the 3 months after the injury I participated in exactly zero exercises that could have been considered truly challenging cardiovascularly or muscularly.

12 weeks after the pops, last Thursday, I gingerly ventured back onto the field to mixed results. I was able to play the full 90 without pain and with minimal swelling (hooray!); but in my time away I lost acceleration, top speed, endurance, and most of all, touch (aww). More importantly, I was at the top of my game when I went down, and I’m afraid I’ll never get it back. I am getting old, after all.

OK, maybe I’m moving towards the real reason for this challenge after all.

The Challenge:

Starting today, and for the next 100 days, I will do 100 pushups and 100 sit-ups per day. At the end of the 100 days, on September 23, 2014, I will have completed 10,000 pushups and 10,000 sit-ups.

Rules: 

• The 100 are due on a daily basis; I cannot roll incomplete sets over to the next day
• Extra sets not paid forward; if I complete 120 pushups today, I still owe 100 tomorrow, not 80
• Sets do not need to be paid in full in one sitting; Each 100 may be completed throughout the day

Metrics:

• 100% success is defined as 100 consecutive days with a minimum of 100 pushups and 100 sit-ups performed each day.
• However, taking reality into account, successfully completing this challenge will be defined as missing no more than 5% of the challenge days, and completing all 10,000 pushups and sit-ups.

Accountability:

Check-ins with pictures will be made in 10 day increments, starting with day one (today), for a total of 11 entries.

Baseline:

I’m starting from pretty close to zero. Today I did 20 pushups, and then 10 sit-ups in my first set. I did more pushups than I expected, but far fewer sit-ups. I always considered my core to be pretty strong, but clearly it isn’t.  I guess it’s better to know how pathetically weak I’ve become, rather than remain blissfully unaware.

I ended with 60 pushups and 45 sit-ups before showering and leaving to jot this down. Tonight I owe another 40 pushups and 55 sit-ups.

Goal:

The goal as of today is pretty clear; in addition to completing the challenge as defined by the success metrics, I want to be able to complete 100 consecutive pushups and sit-ups with no breaks. I imagine I will be able to do this before the challenge is over, so the goal may be modified to include a time limit. But first things first, for sure.

Unintentional Assault, Intimidation, and Attempted Puppy-Napping

Leaving the apartment this morning on my way to get coffee, I walked past a girl and her brand new puppy. They were training; practicing commands like “sit”, “stay”, and “heel”. The puppy saw me and got distracted. I asked if I could pet the little thing, and she happily obliged.

He waggled his whole body while I scrunched and unscrunched his face and thwaped on his side. Becoming more and more excited, he ran between my legs, pulling his leash and moving his owner's hand quickly towards my "mid-section". I swung my leg over the leash to get unstuck and kicked her oncoming hand, hard enough to crack knuckles in her fingers.

I tried to acknowledge and apologize for what I did, but in a little panic I said something absurd, like “oops, popped your snappers there, didn’t I".

In my own mortification I turned away from her, groaning deeply and wearing an “I’m-so-embarrassed” look. And came face to face with her boyfriend and his own “what-the-hell-did-I-just-witness” face, which quickly changed into a good old fashioned “is-he-about-to-hit-me” face.

Confident in having inflicted sufficient damage to their morning, I skedaddled.

In a just world, the story would end here. This is not the case. When I kicked her hand, she dropped the leash, and the puppy trotted off in the direction I was about to start walking. Any reasonable person would try to grab the leash, but I'm still a little gimpy and I can't move quickly yet. So from their perspective, in 5 seconds I kicked the girl, growled at the guy, and helped the puppy abandon his owners. 

Class.


These are my neighbors. They live in my building. And while I may not see them again today or tomorrow, I will see them again eventually. All I can think to do is be ready with my low growl and the same face I gave that poor fellow.

Hawaii

There are countless lovely, wonderful, crushingly beautiful things about the islands and the people who live here that won’t be repeated at this time. Instead, I’m trying to work out what has been bugging me about this place. Trying to bring into focus what keeps slipping away from me out of the corner of my eye.

There is no quicker way to set unreasonable expectations than by calling someplace paradise. It makes you vigilant; ready to find and tear at the seams to see what’s behind the manufactured curtain. Maybe it’s better that way though, nobody admires the oblivious.

The marginalization, fetishization, and then commercialization of natives and native culture is nowhere more apparent than in Hawaii. Observe the gentrified hula ʻauana, available for your viewing pleasure at malls and boardwalks, distilled to coconut bras and grass skirts for easy printing on postcards and beer bottles.

Consider the beachfront high-rise; built to enable the literal stratification of wealth, top level units are bought at a premium by those who fail to recognize that proximity to sand and surf is desirable, and not the inverse found in their city high-rises counterparts. Moreover, they foster an ironic immobility and incomplete isolation, their façade of exclusivity shattered every time you set foot on the street with the rest of us human detritus.

The dichotic standard of beauty of skin tone for whites and others; the general shallowing that a universal focus on physique has (though I may be projecting here); ABC Stores. 

You know what more than makes up for all that though? Poke. Holy fuck that shit is delicious.