Up and Down

Hello again. Sorry about that last post. That was me bordering on the very edges of sanity. While I was spinning away into a parallel universe, though, I caught a glimpse of something that needs to be discussed: Elevators.

I don't think we give elevators enough thought. Can you imagine life without elevators? Maybe in most places it doesn't make much of a difference, but in some places life would cease to exist without elevators; or at least people wouldn't go out as much.

A couple recent experiences have reminded me of just how creepy elevators can be sometimes. Today as I was returning from my fritter run, before I'd even pushed the elevator button, an elevator opened right in front of me--and nobody got off!

It's creepy to see an elevator just spontaneously open like that. Was there someone on it at the beginning of the ride, and they've met with a mysterious end during the ride? I didn't know, and because of that I was a little hesitant to get on. Then, when I did, and pushed the button, the elevator immediately closed its doors and it started moving.



That may not seem strange unless I tell you that usually after you push the button the elevator sits there until someone passes in front within arm's reach, then it starts to close its doors, just in time to let the person squeeze on. Then it'll wait again until someone else walks by. So, needless to say, to have an elevator immediately leap into action is pretty strange.

Then a couple weeks ago I was waiting for the elevator (probably also when coming back from a fritter run) and the elevator doors opened revealing a swirling blue fissure in the fabric of space and time. Okay, so it wasn't that bad, but the lights were all burned out.

I don't know what it is, but it's difficult to get in a dark elevator. It's like a Coke machine with a burned out light in the front; you know it's working because the little display on the dollar bill slot is lit up telling you how refreshing the product is, but you still hesitate to put your money in because something's just not right.

It's that same way on an elevator with no lights. It's not going to kill you. You won't end up in another dimension (let's hope). But, regardless, it's creepy.

It did, however, bring back some good memories of riding around in elevators in Italy. Over there the elevators were usually an afterthought, being stuck into whatever small space they had available. That meant that they were usually big enough for 3 italians or 1 1/2 americans. They're all about the size of phone booths, often with doors that open inward (and don't expect the doors to open for you; what do you think this is, America?) They're driven by lawnmover engines up on the roof and their speed is inversely proportional to the weight on board.

Most of the elevators smelled like urine (gangs over there don't spray paint to mark their territory... oh wait, they do that too). The only elevators that didn't smell like urine were the ones that required payment. It was only about 3 cents to ride them, but if you didn't have change you were out of luck.

My favorite elevators were in the government-subsidized housing outside of Napoli. The buildings were 14 floors tall and had 2 elevators - only one of which ever worked. More often than not the lights were burned out, the sensors were weak (so you had to jump up and down when you got to your floor to trigger the doors to open), and not only did it SMELL like urine, you could usually SEE the urine on the floor.

Good times.

My real point to this post is that elevators are kind of creepy sometimes, and often inefficient, but they sure save us a lot of climbing up and down stairs. Please share your own elevator horror stories, or just discuss how much you enjoy riding in elevators.

What would you do with eternity?

Irony

I've never much cared for the Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" song. Actually, I like the song as long as I don't listen to the lyrics. Maybe it's ironic that in a song about irony, there's actually nothing mentioned that is, in fact, ironic.

So I've been planning to critique each line, one at a time. But with a simple google search I was able to save myself a lot of time by finding someone else who took on that challenge already. I guess I'm not the only one that has a problem with the song.

So here is what some other guy came up with to make each of the lines ironic:

An old man turned ninety-eight. He won the lottery and died the next day... of chronic emphysema from inhalation of the latex particles scratched off decades' worth of lottery tickets.

A black fly in your Chardonnay... poured to celebrate the successful fumigation of your recently purchased vineyard in southern France.

A death row pardon two minutes too late... because the governor was too busy watching Dead Man Walking to grant clemency any earlier.

Rain on your wedding day... to Ra, the Egyptian sun-god.

A free ride when you've already paid... all of your money to the good-natured cab driver when you mistook him for a mugger.

The good advice that you just didn't take... after reading Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking and resolving that the key to success is making your own decisions.

Mr. Play-it-Safe was afraid to fly. He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye. He waited his whole damn life to take that flight. And as the plane crashed down, he thought, Well isn't this nice... now I'll never make it to the National Association of Aviophobics conference in Reno, NV.

A traffic jam when you're already late... to receive an award from the Municipal Planning Board for reducing the city's automobile congestion 80 percent.

A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break... at the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco corporate offices in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife... with which to kill your spouse for sleeping with the young soup chef who works at the Au Bon Pain.

Meeting the man of my dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife... who happens to be the psychiatrist I recently hired in hopes of improving my luck with the opposite sex.

Brasil

I've heard that some of the clothes the Olympians are wearing this year are getting so technologically advanced and complicated that they have to print what each piece is so the athletes can put it on right.

That may only be true for the Brasilian athletes, though.

Jingle Jingle...

Since I have no originality or creativity today, I'm going to provide a list of advertising slogans/jingles that you might remember. You can point out the products they are/were for if you'd like, but any participation on your part is completely voluntary. I may also comment a little on some of the slogans.

1. The One and Only (I'll give you a hint: it's Cheerios. I don't remember it, either.)


2. Breakfast of Champions (I often use this phrase during awkward elevator rides while carrying my Diet Mountain Dew in one hand and my Raspberry Fritter in the other.)


3. Gotta Have My Pops


4. Kid Tested. Mother Approved.


5. The Freshmaker (I've been known to use this as a self-imposed nickname.)


6. Makes Mouths Happy (and tummies huge!)


7. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't (I never do. It is odd, though, how Almond Joy and Mounds are the only set of male/female candybars out there.)


8. Taste the Rainbow (Did Skittles change their marketing plan to appeal more to homersexuals, or did homersexuals change their marketing plan because they really liked Skittles?)


9. Wake Up With the King (advertising slogan and cheesy pick-up line all in one.)


10. Home of the Whopper (see #9)


11. Where's the Beef? (Which is much better than their other "Do What Tastes Right" that just sounds like a line from a 1980's afterschool special.)


12. When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight (I've noticed they've backed away from this as gas prices are climbing...)


13. We Love to Fly and it Shows (which, for some reason, in the recesses of my own mind, always sounds like: "We love to fly up your nose", which doesn't even make any sense.)


14. Grab Life by the Horns


15. Like a Rock (I've still never understood this simile: wouldn't you want to compare a mobile piece of equipment with something that actually moves? They had a pretty catchy tune with it, I guess (from Bob Seger).)


16. Zoom Zoom (A lot of slogans seem really stupid out of the context of the commercial. I can't get the picture out of my head of a 3 year old pushing toy cars around; the kid in my head is pushing one of those that you can pull back and it moves forward automatically, except the kind just keeps pulling it back, never letting go, and it's making that horrible clicking sound and I know it's just shortening the life of the car but I can't say anything 'cause it's not my kid or my car.)


17. Do you have the bunny inside? (No, it's not advertising a colonoscopy.)


18. We bring good things to life. (Even with the mention of "good things" it still conjures up images of Dr. Frankenstein (or Better Off Dead)).


19. Can you hear me now? (I was sure this would backfire on them. It seems akin to advertising some sort of food with the slogan, "Now does it taste okay?")


20. Rip. Mix. Burn. (This is a slogan for Apple Computers, apparently, though I've never heard of it. It seems like it's giving advice on what to do with the product.)


21. Raising the Bar (I still don't understand how geese flying in funny formations is supposed to increase my level of service.)


22. I have good news. I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to GEICO. (It still never gets old to use when you tell someone you have good news.)


23. Are you in good hands? (This slogan serves as a bitter reminder that I'll never be able to get a job as a hand model due to all the scars on my hands...and the hitchhiker's thumb on my left hand only...)


24. Eat Fresh! (Subway has the dubious honor of being the place I've gotten sick at the most (with Burger King a close second. Apparently, it's not always fresh enough.)


25. Once you pop the fun don't stop. (Actually, I think that's the very definition of the time when the fun stops.)


26. Leggo my Eggo. (As a kid, I was never sure if these commercials were for Eggos or Legos, but I was always impressed at the lengths to which people would go to get their hands on someone's Eggo. Sort of like Barney in the Flintstone commercials, or the Trix bunny. The Trix bunny never got to eat the cereal (although I cheered for him each week). Barney always got to eat the cereal; he just had to eat it while running.)


27. Milk. It does a body good. (I admit it: I only drank milk as a kid because of these commercials. They never said I'd be 27 before I was big enough to beat up bullies; I hoped it would only take a week or two.)


28. Make 7-Up Yours (The guy walking around with the T-shirt with the really big letters (so big, in fact, that he had to split up the slogan, putting "Make 7-" on the front and "Up Yours" on the back) was a classic. I still want one of those shirts.)


29. Only YOU can prevent forest fires. (Every time I saw these commercials I wanted to put on my moon boots, go out into the forest, start a fire, and stomp it right out.)


30. Take a bite out of crime. (I never understood this one.)


31. Give a hoot, don't pollute. (To this day I hoot like an owl whenever I drop bottles in the garbage can at a city park.)


32. This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions? (Yeah, this was WAY overused for decades, but I think it's set for a resurgence!)


33. Don't Waste Utah. (I still really want one of those cars.)


34. Friends don't let friends drive drunk. (But it's funny to watch strangers try to walk home.)

I was going to do 35 (okay, so I was really only planning 30), but can't decide on the last one. What's your favorite advertising slogan? And why?

Olympics...

So has anyone else been watching the Olympics this year? Good stuff. The Chinese are really going all out to host everybody, except for the random killings and all.

Annie has turned into an Olympics junkie, and she's starting to drag me down, too. I've decided that I'm okay with it, though. It only lasts two weeks or so, right? It's too hot outside to do anything anyway, right? It reinforces national pride and all that stuff, too.

I've gotta say I had a hard time staying in my seat Sunday night when the US Men squeeked out a win in the 4x100m relay. That was about as good as it gets.

In other news, there's not much news. I have an interview for my manager's job (he retired a couple months ago) on Wednesday. I'm definitely the underdog--but, then again, Underdog (in the cartoon) always seemed to win...

My carpool is working out well. With the change to 4-10s I would have had to catch the bus at 5:30am (and would need to wake up at 4:30) and I wouldn't have gotten home until 6:30 at the earliest. That's a long day. With the carpool, I leave home at 6:15 (instead of 5:20) and get home at about 6:05 (instead of 6:30). By driving in once a week I'm saving 6 hours of commuting time a week! Even with gas prices as they are it's a great deal.

I weighed in at 295.5 today. A whole tenth less than last week! And that was after a big Sunday evening meal (including cake!) I'm hoping I can keep losing (I don't feel this good when I lose at other things, though).

Grass grows faster than my hair, but only where it's been fertilized. I'm not going to rub "fertilizer" into my scalp, so don't ask.

My Name is Dan, and I'm a Fat Loser

I know most people don't typically tell people what they weigh, especially when they weigh almost 300 pounds, but I'm pretty excited about this reading. This is the least I've weighed in almost 3 years, and it's just short of 25 pounds less than I weighed in January. It works out to be about 2/3 of a pound per week, which doesn't seem like much, but over time it can add up pretty quick.

I wish I could say that I'm doing some magical diet and exercise program, but I'm not. I'm just paying more attention to what I eat and how I spend my free time.

Ever since high school I've consistently gained weight; never much at a time, and I'd fluctuate a lot, but the trend was always upwards. It seemed like no matter what I did I'd continue to gain weight. Just a pound or five a year, but year after year it adds up.

When I got married I weighed 270 pounds. Annie claims I weighed nearer 290, but I think she's thinking about how much I weighed when we returned from our honeymoon cruise. (Yes, I probably gained 10-15 pounds on the cruise...and don't regret it!)

My weight peaked around 320 a couple times and I felt helpless to reverse course. But then, this last January, we started a weight loss competition at work. I started watching what I ate (and by that I mean that I ate good things, not that I watched all the bad things go into my mouth). I switched to diet soda (which I'd vowed never to do, but I can't drink regular soda anymore now). I put more effort into getting out and at least walking around the neighborhood, or running a little if I could. Nothing big, just little changes.

I'm certainly not a perfect example of what someone should eat (wait, did that come out wrong?) In fact, I'm planning to go downstairs and buy a raspberry fritter in about 30 minutes. Mmm... Fritter... I still eat at McDonald's, and still order a double quarter pounder with cheese most of the time (you gotta get the cheese). Occasionally I have a milkshake or ice cream (like last night). But, generally speaking, I make better eating choices than I used to.

For years and years I thought that my weight was out of my control--it still is, to a point--but now I know that if I make smart choices (even amongst all my bad choices) I can regain control of my weight.

Here's a song that describes me pretty well--except for all the healthy stuff.

Cristo Velato (not to be confused with "Fresco Gelato"

I'm reminded of a commercial back 10 years or so ago when Jurassic Park came out. The commercial was for a different movie (I can't remember which) and simply said, "If you only see one movie this summer, see Jurassic Park. But if you see two movie, come see ours." I thought that was pretty clever marketing.

Why do I take this stroll down memory lane? To get sidetracked onto another stroll down a different lane ("Via della Rimembranza", oddly enough translated to "Memory Lane").

I know I talk about Italy a lot, but there's a dan good reason for it: it deserves to be talked about. I'm not sure there's anywhere in the world with a better mix of history, natural beauty, culture, food, and anything else you'd like in a place. It's just a good thing I married someone who had also served a mission in Italy or I would have driven her nuts years ago (well, just for the one specific thing. I still drive her nuts about other things).

Well, to get right to the point (4 paragraphs in), there's a little church in Napoli (Naples, if you didn't know) that has some of the most amazing sculptures in the world. You never hear anything about it, and they don't advertise it, and it really doesn't even look like a church from the outside. In fact, it may not even be a church; I've heard it's a masonic temple, but I'm too lazy to actually research that.

If you go to Italy and can only see one thing, see St. Peter's Basilica. But if you can see two things, see this church.

It's called the "Chiesa di Santa Maria della Pieta'" ("The Church of Saint Mary of Mercy"), but it's also known as the Sansevero Chapel. Anyway, here's the inside:

On the left, at the far end (on the corner), is a statue called "La Pudicizia". I can't remember what it means or what it represents, and I'm too lazy to do a google search, but it's pretty neat.

On the far right corner, opposite the Pudicizia, is a statue called "Il Disinganno". I can't remember much about the meaning here, either, except that "ingannare" means to trick or fools, so a "disinganno" means something about unfooling someone, pulling the wool from their eyes (or the net from their face). In 20 seconds you could google an answer, but I don't feel like it.

Instead, I'd just like to point out how amazing that net is. It isn't a fossilized net; it's a sculpted net, sculpted out of a single piece of rock. How did he do that?

As if those weren't amazing enough, in the center of the room is the masterpiece. In my opinion, it surpasses the beauty of anything Michelangelo sculpted. You don't get the full effect from a picture, though. You have to see it to really get a sense of its power.

It's called "Il Cristo Velato", the "Veiled Christ". It's carved to look like there's a veil covering the body of Christ as he's laid in the tomb. The crown of thorns is there at his side and you can see the holes in his hands and feet. The sculpture itself is slightly larger than lifesize and draws your attention to it the whole time you're in the room.

Like I said, if you only see one thing on a trip to Italy, see St. Peter's, but if you see two, you won't regret a trip to the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Pieta'.

There's a good video here. It's in Italian, but that's half the fun.

Rocks

If you're a long-time reader of my blog, you may remember my discussion of rocks. Many of you thought I was crazy--and you were probably right--but I found some evidence to support my claim that the rock moved into place on its own (rather than being carried there by a hobo).

In Death Valley there's an area where rocks move all by themselves. Nobody has ever seen them move, but move they do. They can tell by the long trails they leave. And these aren't just little rocks; they're hundreds of pounds each, and they move all by themselves around a big, flat ancient lake bed.

You can check out a video of it here.

I still like the idea of hobos carrying rocks around with them wherever they go, but I think it might just be a little more believable that the rocks are moving themselves.