Dinhternet

We were talk­ing about my old Ring scare (can’t find the orig­i­nal post, but I’ll update when I do) the other day, and it put me in the mood to watch some scary movies, so I just saw [Rec] and [Rec] 2. Here’s a trailer for the original:

(If you fol­low to YouTube or else­where, be care­ful, spoil­ers abound!)

The first one in par­tic­u­lar was amaz­ing. It’s very sim­i­lar in style to Para­nomal Activ­ity and had every­thing I loved about PA (par­tic­u­larly a solid start­ing premise that I feel could hap­pen in real life) and noth­ing I hated (the cou­ple, and the boyfriend in par­tic­u­lar, was annoy­ing as hell to me, because they acted in ways that I felt they shouldn’t). The [Rec] sequel was OK, but I felt like I would have like more sus­pense and less expla­na­tion. Ori­gins for hor­rors shouldn’t be explained — mys­tery just makes them scarier!

If you’re into scary movies at all, you should check them out. Oh, and I haven’t per­son­ally seen it, but I hear that Quar­an­tine, the Amer­i­can remake, pales in com­par­i­son. Oh, and there’s a third movie on the way, supposedly.

Also, I won­der how the PA sequel is going to be… I’ve heard a lot of hype over this banned trailer of theirs.

So I was read­ing ran­dom arti­cles on the inter­net today when I came across this post. Funny stuff, reminds me of the old “Look at these fuck­ing pep­pers!” pic­tures.

Then I noticed that one of the links is to a pic­ture of a savory Jell-O salad. That’s right. I can’t tell what exactly is in it, but looks like at least olives, cel­ery, and yel­low bell peppers/cheese slices. Eddie C thinks that the cel­ery is shrimp. This mon­stros­ity could likely be one or more of the lay­ers of the Eric­son Fam­ily salad. Who knows?

Any­way, appar­ently fine Amer­i­can cui­sine went through a phase where every­thing was jel­li­fied. Gelatin sal­ads and aspic meats. They used to have cel­ery, mixed veg­etable, tomato, and Ital­ian fla­vored Jell-O.

I was ini­tially put off, but I have to admit a cer­tain (mor­bid?) curios­ity about the whole idea. Eddie C says he’s down to try it. I guess I’m going to try to re-create this for his birth­day trip down in Pismo. (Fair warn­ing to every­one else going… you may want to make back-up din­ner plans.) I looked around a found a cou­ple of inter­est­ing recipes. Maybe I’ll try to pair with a good meat Jell-O recipe, too.

The last time I made any­thing Jello while on vaca­tion was TAK Retreat, when we tried to make Jello shots with Ever­clear and it wouldn’t set, so we a thin Jello cap over a Dixie cup full of rub­bing alco­hol. This has got to be bet­ter than that, right?

Oh, and accord­ing to this web­site, (not Wikipedia, though) Jell-O used to make an offi­cial whisky fla­vor! How did I miss out on the best era ever?!

I had read about War­ren Buffett’s “Ovar­ian Lot­tery” before, but a reminder always helps.

Here’s the meat of it, for those of you who don’t want to click on the link -

It’s 24 hours before your birth, and a genie appears to you. He tells you that you can set the rules for the world you’re about to enter — eco­nomic, social, polit­i­cal — the whole enchi­lada. Sounds great, right? What’s the catch?

Before you enter the world, you will pick one ball from a bar­rel of 6.8 bil­lion (the num­ber of peo­ple on the planet). That ball will deter­mine your gen­der, race, nation­al­ity, nat­ural abil­i­ties, and health — whether you are born rich or poor, sick or able-bodied, bril­liant or below aver­age, Amer­i­can or Zimbabwean.

This is what Buf­fett calls the ovar­ian lot­tery. As he explained to a group of Uni­ver­sity of Florida stu­dents, “You’re going to get one ball out of there, and that is the most impor­tant thing that’s ever going to hap­pen to you in your life.”

Accord­ing to the world’s third-richest man, that’s a good per­spec­tive to have when set­ting the rules for our world. We should be design­ing a soci­ety that, as Buf­fett says, “doesn’t leave behind some­one who acci­den­tally got the wrong ball and is not well-wired for this par­tic­u­lar sys­tem.” He points out that he is designed for the Amer­i­can sys­tem — and he was lucky to be born into it. He can allo­cate cap­i­tal, and he lives in a place and at a time when those skills are well rewarded. (His pal Bill Gates is quick to point out that if Buf­fett had been born in an ear­lier time, he’d be some animal’s lunch because the Ora­cle of Omaha can’t run fast or climb trees.)

When Buf­fett talks about this lot­tery, he often con­cludes by asking:

If you could put your ball back, and they took out, at ran­dom, a hun­dred other balls, and you had to pick one of those, would you put your ball back in? Now, of those hun­dred balls … roughly five of them will be Amer­i­can. … Half of them are going to be below-average intel­li­gence, half will be above. Do you want to put your ball back? Most of you, I think, will not. … What you’re say­ing is, “I’m in the luck­i­est 1% of the world right now.”

Everything’s about per­spec­tive. When­ever I think I have it rough, I think about if I would trade it for one of those hun­dred other balls, and things don’t look so bad. Espe­cially today, Black April. It’s the anniver­sary of the Fall of Saigon, when Amer­ica pulled out of the Viet­nam War, a defin­ing moment for three gen­er­a­tions of my fam­ily. I think of all that my par­ents and grand­par­ents did to give me a bet­ter pick in the lot­tery than what they had drawn, and I won­der if I’ll be able to do the same for the next generation.