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I work at a place where your level of cool is directly proportional to the level of Apple products owned.  There is some debate about the residual cool of say, owning 4 different models of ipod.  I tend to de-crap immediatly while my cast offs are still useful to others.  In fact my ipod touch was engraved “Stolen From: Kevin”.  I believe the guy that bought it found this too be at least a $20 value add.

I’ve had an explosion of apple at my house in 2008.  As you can see from my not-to-scale graph above, I’m getting pretty damn cool.  The quality and sophistication of my charts, graphs and other technical illustrations was been called ‘questionable’… So I chose tools fitting my level of expertise for this task.

Nothing is ever equal. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s also true that everything changes. I had a realization a few months ago, that most of my friends have blindingly cool spouses, who over time seem to get cooler. There are exceptions to every rule but I give you this chart as gospel truth.

Does anyone know what causes this phenomenon? I can think of a small handful of counter-examples, but they may be errors in judgement.

I’m not catholic. I actually have no religious beliefs of any kind (aside from a deep believe that 8 spaces don’t make a tab). However, the catholics are no sillier than any other faith – particularly the Irish Catholics.

They celebrate the feast of St. Kevin on the Third of June.  I’m going to start celebrating annually.

I work for a small company – it’s no where near as uptight as some of the large publicly traded places I’ve worked.

The contrast is best shown with this snapshot from a tiny company’s employee potluck.

Marx, originally uploaded by kbb.

Mr. Little guy has never steered me wrong. Ever. For those of you from out of town if you have a burning question, I’ll drop it off for you.

I’ve asked this guy many things… But I lost most of them.

There is something seriously wrong with the Minneapolis city water lately. Our fridge has a filter that takes care of it, but every restaurant in town has fishy nastiness in the water. For those members of my vast readership from out of town, imagine the smell of Amy Winehouse’s crotch on a hot day. It’s that bad.

At least there is no need to drink water – the current Summit seasonal is the best of the year.

I’m giving away my crappy old TV on craigslist. I’m kind of amazed at the responses – even if this thing worked perfectly it’s near worthless.

So far, only one starwars fan

I love the paper. I prefer the actual physical paper in all it’s dirty smelly glory.
I grew up with it, I often remember my father as the disembodied voice behind the Star Tribune:

“We’re furious with you! Aren’t we!?!”, Mother shrieked.
“furious.”, deadpanned Dad.

I know now that he had no clue why I was getting berated was about, he was just glad it wasn’t him.
The paper paper is intransitive – it’s not fluid like news on the web. I’ve often noticed that the best humor in the paper gets ‘corrected’ in the online version, usually after I sent it to some friends.
Something seems wrong to me about a continually fluid news stream. The optimistic would point out that accuracy would be increased. I think we’d lose something though, errors and journalistic lapses themselves are part of the news as well as being funny as hell.

Nobody else I know reads the paper – so I often have find what I’ve read online to share it. Sometimes the online version is much cooler, as in this fascinating graphic
The print version had one year instead of 20.

In other highlights from the weekend paper:

Everyone onstage dances like hell, and when we get to hell, it will be full of ballets like this. Its loud rock score, by David Rozenblatt, sounds like a refrigerator copulating with a hot tin roof.
— Alastair Macaulay

This quote disproves the inverted pyramid – the most important sentence in the article is the last one.

Soup Bone, originally uploaded by kbb.

This is the highest value treat in Ira’s known universe. Its the only thing he ‘guards’ .
If someone tries to touch the bone, he panics and tries to slink away with it. It entertains me to watch him get the marrow out – he’s too small to break the bone, and his tongue isn’t quite long enough.

I think of him every time I’m at a French restaurant that serves marrow.

I live in Minneapolis, a cute little town. It’s pretty straightforward getting around. Things get a little wonky across the river and in SE downtown but more often than not you can count on Alphabetically named avenues running north/south and streets in numerical order going east/west. 2367 Lyndale Ave S is on the East side of Lyndale Ave between 23rd and 24th streets.

I started working in St Paul. A few years ago then governor Jesse Ventura quipped on Letterman, “Those streets in St. Paul must have been designed by drunken Irishmen.”
This was insanely funny at the time. Like most people, I don’t get to St Paul all that often. Today I learned that those drunken Irishmen had a plan. Even a formula:

Where:
N is the house number
H is the highest established corner number
L is the lowest established corner number
D is the distance (in feet) from the door of the house to L
B is the length of the block (in feet)
From The Street Where You Live: A Guide to the Place Names of St. Paul
Clear as mud? What this really means is that if you want to go to 973 you shouldn’t pull over and park at the open spot in front of 901 – you may have a longer walk than you think.
Minneapolis and St Paul both have character – sometimes this makes it a pain to find places, but the alternative is pretty stark. It would be easy to get around if the river, the bluffs, the parks, the streams where gone. But then there wouldn’t really be anywhere to go.

St Paul is cool. A long time ago a friend of mine was lured there…. it took a while for me to appreciate it.