I had the recent pleasure of interviewing the blogosphere's own Paratrooper of Love this last Friday. This will be a bit out of order and, well, disjointed, but it's more fun that way. The later the entry, the more alcohol was consumed, and so on, and so forth.

It began as naming good drinking cities. It went elsewhere but stayed mostly on topic; we tried to hit all 50 states.

• Boston - "#3, home of Sam Adams."
  
  
• Chicago - #1 - great! [interviewer thinks he's biased]
  
  
• Milwaukee - [Has a #2 by it but my notes say that Brian says "no." I don't remember Matt giving it a #2...how'd that get there?]
  
  
• Philly - "#11 - "Claim to fame - beef with fried cheese - I love it." [Interviewer cringes again]
  
  
• Cleveland, St. Louis, Denver - [All get "ok" ratings.]
  
  
• Boulder, CO - "Big party town if you have a big trust fund."
  
  
• Ames, IA - "Not so horribly bad."
  
  
• Ann Arbor's "Great."
  
  
• Lansing - "Cheap."
  
  
• Arizona - "Nothing there." I don't think we ever even got to towns.
  
  
• Annapolis - "Top 20." [He has an ex-girlfriend there - Sherry (I gave her the nickname of "Cooking") who sings in a bar.]
  
  
• DC - "No, but Georgetown" [censored]
  
  
• Virginia - Richmond - "Too many Marines"
  
  
• Texas - [he transitions to food yet again] - "good BBQ"
  
  
• Austin, San Antonio - "Okay."
  
  
• Dallas - "Overrated. Cowboys suck. It'd be good for the sport if Troy Aikman" [censored]
  
  
• Tulsa - "Not such a bad drinking town." [Brian noted that "it's a slut backwards."]
  
  
• Tahoe - "Pretty good place." [censored] "But the lake is beautiful."
  
  
• Las Vegas - "Never been."
  
  
• Nona Rosa, San Francisco - "Great. Ask for Chris if you go there."
  
  
• Malibu, LA "Okay" [Interviewee ranks beer above random women in this conversation. He likes grills, though. Something was mentioned about Armorall and Salma Hayek. Matt said, "You can Armorall her, too." [I don't believe this was a euphemism; it would have to be censored then, and I don't have a notation.]
  
  
• Portland, OR - "#25. As weird as San Francisco, but not as expensive, not as big."
  
  
• Seattle's "Okay - good place." [Matt then went into tour-guide mode, mentioning Pioneer Square, Gasworks Park, Fremont Republic. He mentioned "diverse" and used the words business suit and Rastafarian.]
  
  
• Vancouver - "Great drinking town." [More tour guide stuff - buildings, cobblestone streets.]
  
  
• Missoula - "Kinda okay. Bottom 100. But if you're in Montana and you have to go somewhere, it's a good place to go. Helena, no."
  
  
• Wyoming? "No." [Somehow we digressed to a skiing tangent. I have no context.]
  
  
• Utah - "Mormons." [He'll pass. Maybe ski there someday.]
  
  
• South Dakota - Badlands "Okay."
  
  
• North Dakota - "All they can do is drink."
  
  
• Omaha - "Buddy was a Guinness distributor. Pull off the highway. $2 filet mignon. I'll take 6." [More toury stuff - historic downtown, 1850, 1860, saloons.] "Nothing else to do. Eat steak and drink beer."
  
  
• Kansas - "No."
  
  
• Indiana - "No. Mr. Green's from Indiana. Yeah, Indiana, no."
  
  
• Alaska - "Hmm."
  
  
• Mobile's - "Not too bad."
  
  
• Mississippi - "No."
  
  
• Georgia - "Hard drinking in Georgia."
  
  
• New Orleans. [censored] "Anywhere you go and they ask you if it's for here or to go - that's a good place."
  
  
• Charleston - "Great drinking town. If I can clean out all the scotch in one bar, that's not a good thing."
  
  
• North Carolina - "Okay if you like tattoo parlors and strip joints." [disclaimer: Matt wishes that the 82d Airborne not take offense.]
  
  
• Tennessee - "Every town in Tennessee is a good drinking town."
  
  
• Louisville - "Good town. A lot of colleges nearby. Cool pubs and breweries downtown. Good place to raise a family. [Matt contrasts with North Carolina and then censors himself.]
  
  
• South Carolina - "SC pride - bumper stickers. You buy them in bars. Women in South Carolina wear stuff with Carolina on it, and they don't mean North Carolina. Charleston - more pubs than any other town in the south." [See previous section about scotch.]
  
  
• Alabama - "I don't want to piss anybody off in Alabama, so we'll just skip Alabama."
  
  
• Minneapolis - "Good. Nothing else to do except freeze your ass off. They drink a lot of vodka. Good Indian restaurants. Closing time is midnight. This is a problem unless you start drinking at 3 or 4."
  
  
• Newport, Rhode Island - "Take a ferry out to Block Island. 45 minute ride. Great place. Lots of bars."
  
  
• Connecticut - "Ex girlfriend there." [She drove him to a lot of drinking.] "Bethel is a good place. Good ice cream. Meg Ryan's from there. This is bad; she left Dennis Quaid."
  
  
• Buffalo - "Buffalo Wings - Tin Lizzie's. Quite a few others. What the hell else are you gonna do?"
  
  
• New York, New York - "Too expensive."
  
  
• Portland, Maine - "#99. Not a bad place."
  
  
• Santa Fe, Albuquerque - "Fun place." [Heather challenged to accurately spell Albuquerque correctly. Bluffs. Takes a drink of water instead of wine.] "Good restaurants and all of the restaurants have good bars. Really, really nice. Could raise a family there, but your kids couldn't spell Albuquerque." [Further, this spelling of Albuquerque is much simpler while sober.]
  
  
• Boise - "Great frickin' town. Skiing, weather, mountains, beer - underrated. Raise a family there. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore."
  
  
• New Jersey - Jersey Shore - "Right before Desert Storm, couldn't buy a drink there - always covered with a blessing."
  
  
• San Juan, Puerto Rico - "Lots of Tequila. Brings out the evil twin."
  
  
• [Interviewer cannot read her last bit of notes about the University of Illinois area - something about grills, not girls, drinking, no skiing, and the food sucks - Olive Garden being the best you can get there.]

Posted by: hln at 07:56 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Thanks to Susie, I'm a cookie.


What Kind of Cookie Are You?
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hln

Posted by: hln at 12:14 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It's 10:23 p.m. I'm just now blogging, and I have given myself 7 minutes to complete this post. 5 a.m. comes early.

Do you recognize the lyric? Are you one of those people who can't sit still - who can't relax until exhausted? I am. It explains the cycling, the weight lifting, the volleyball. I think with inactive people they call this ADHD. And give them drugs. Actually, it's probably just the Type A personality. Or programmer's leg.

You've seen it, haven't you? The leg that bounces up and down. It's usually my right leg moving in some silly way. Often, it's the left tucked under the right and the right leg swinging. Motion. Gah! Must have motion.

Brian named it, and it's a habit I've seen with many in my profession. I don't think I've noticed it with the guys I work with, but I've seen it. Really, I have. We sit for such long periods of time. So often, I just can't deal. I have to get up and get more water. Shake the leg while standing. Just do SOMETHING. And when I'm in a hurry, oh, look out. Frenetic motion, pushing others aside; parting the slow flesh-colored seas. I'm on a MISSION, people; doncha see? The grocery store can stress me out. I have to suppress the "Rarr!" emotion and subsequent actions.

Why do people move slowly anyway (I'd best wrap up - 2 mins left)? I just don't get it. I mean, if you've already pulsed yourself into an exhausted heap and are melting in your own sweat, okay. But this languid sloth that overcomes most, uh, probably normal folk, I just don't get it. That being said, I'm going to go shake a leg in my sleep. Or something. And please tell me you can hear Simon LeBon, right?

"She's moody and grey, she's mean and she's restless..."

With editing, it's 10:33.

Good night. Rarr!

hln

Posted by: hln at 10:34 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Michele at A Small Victory has a post about Volvo (you know - They're Boxy but They're Good) designing a car with women in mind. She says:

So Volvo got a bunch of their female workers together and had them design a car with women in mind. This prototype will include such innovations as a valley down the center of the headrest for ponytail wearers, and an hood that can only be opened by a mechanic (who is contacted by some wireless thigamajig) because women just hate to be bothered with mechanical maintanence of a car.

Whatever.

Volvo hopes the prototype will send a message to female buyers, who have long felt neglected by male designers and disrespected by dealerships.

Beyond that, Volvo wants to shake up the male-dominated culture inside the company, something found at virtually all automakers. Ultimately, Volvo says, the project might help attract women employees as well as women buyers.

Posted by: hln at 11:11 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 Groan....

Posted by: Susie at December 20, 2003 11:35 AM (0+cMc)

2 The fact that Volvo's engineering is dominated by men wouldn't have anything to do with the vast majority of engineers being male, do you think? This reminds me of a project the Army undertook probably 15 years ago, wherein they strongly encouraged female recruits to become mechanics, because they were "under-represented" there. Basically, within a year or two most of them had transferred into different jobs. Dogmatic liberalism, which sees ANY difference as evidence of discrimination, ultimately has to destroy free choice in order to get the result it wants. Who was it that said with the French national motto -- liberty, equality and fraternity -- that you destroy the first when you try to enforce the other two.

Posted by: Discoshaman at December 21, 2003 12:03 AM (ardxO)

3 I love that you have a "whimsy" section. The bywords of my own blog are "fear and whimsy."

Posted by: Discoshaman at December 21, 2003 12:05 AM (ardxO)

4 It should be called Dolores.

Posted by: Victor at December 21, 2003 09:05 AM (16A49)

5 Just stopped by to second Susie's groan...

Posted by: Harvey at December 21, 2003 01:11 PM (ubhj8)

6 Oh no - triple that Groan!!!

Posted by: Teresa at December 21, 2003 04:49 PM (nAfYo)

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Yeah, I rigged it, but oh well.


You are the the Swedish Chef. You are a talented individual, nobody understands you. Perhaps it's because you talk funny.

FAVORITE EXPRESSION: "Brk! Brk! Brk!" (it's BORK you sillies!)

HOBBIES:
Kokin' der yummee-yummers

FAVORITE MOVIE:
"Wild Strawberries...and Creme"

LAST BOOK READ:
"Der Swedish Chef Kokin' Bokin'"

QUOTE:
"Vergoofin der flicke stoobin mit der brk-brk
yubetcha!"

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Found all over Munuviana! Ambient Irony and Jennifer's History and Stuff.

hln

Posted by: hln at 07:17 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Wow, I seem to have a pretty serious Aristotelian bent, according to this test, found via The Evangelical Outpost.

My top matches:

1. Aristotle (100%)
2. Aquinas (89%)
3. David Hume (86%)
4. Ayn Rand (79%)
5. St. Augustine (75%)
6. Plato (71%)

I'm not sure Aristotle, Sir Thomas, and Mr. Skeptic Hume would get along very well if kept in a warm room for 6 hours without a door and/or windows. So how's that work in my head?That's my first thought. Do I contradict myself? I don't think I do. No, wait, I do. Naa.

I am pleased to note that Utilitarianism never made an appearance. It's hiding under the dust ruffle in my guest bedroom.

hln

Posted by: hln at 06:54 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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And, yes, I'm going to make you click the link to get to it. Worth it. I nearly choked on lunch.

No wonder I'm fearful of men with beards.

hln

Posted by: hln at 12:33 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Yes, really. Type that into MSN, and you get me. Of course, you also get Slashdot (uh, of course), Log Cabin Crafts, and then three CHOICE porn sites. Don't worry - just screenshot pics of the first pages, so you can click the link, but I'd suggest you not do this at work.

To searching person, sorry. Nothing about me bespeaks bunny or busty. I can tell you how to avoid manboobs, though. Drink up.

hln

Posted by: hln at 03:00 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Get your minds out of the gutter!

I hadn't seen this yet, so when I opened the e-mail from my friend Tim, I had a good humor day starter. And if you haven't seen it yet (likely you have), it's worth five minutes of your time.

I present to you "Internet Help Desk." I have so been that guy.

hln

Posted by: hln at 05:55 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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