Know Your Wood

Good furniture is not hard to find, but it is expensive.

Actually I don't know if it's easy to find or expensive; I don't have any good furniture (half true).

I do have shitty furniture in various grades (but also a few good pieces gifted to me by a now dead aquaintance). Here's a handy list to help you pick out your shitty furniture. They're listed roughly in order of how quickly they will fail and fall apart.

If you have furniture already and you don't know if it sucks or not, pick a joint and just wail on it with a hammer. Go to town. If it's a table you might try WWE-style falls from a ladder onto the table top. What you're looking for is smashing it really good so you can get a look at what's inside.

Particle Board

This is a two part entry, because there's this one thing that's particle board and another thing that isn't, but people kind of use them interchangeably.

The top image is particle board. It's that fucking garbage that IKEA makes all of their furniture out of unless it's a plastic chair or a metal desk lamp. I don't know the particulars of how it's assembled although I'm guessing it's kind of self evident. It probably involves a lot of particles and some glue. Particle board is cherished for its ability to swell up and fall apart like rotting fruit when it gets wet, and for the ease with which fasteners will just straight tear out of it.

The bottom image is Oriented Strand Board - OSB. People call it particle board because it's made out of particles of wood. But it's not particle board. It's larger pieces of wood that are layered with the grain running all whichaways (which resists warping) and it's all laminated and shit. OSB is handy for nailing over broken windows and possibly other things. The major drawback to OSB is that you will never get a very smooth surface without $50 of wood filler and hours and hours of sanding. It's strong, but very utilitarian (read: ugly). Good for building shit in your garage.

MDF

I don't know what the deal is with this. It's "Medium Density Fiberboard". I'm guessing it's Particle Board but it uses even finer particles, which is probably desirable in some way. Here it is:

It's heavier than an equivalent thickness of not-MDF. It's also got a ton of binder (glue?) in it which makes it harder on saw blades and makes the sawdust that much worse to suck down into your lungs. What's nice is that it's engineered to within an inch of its life and is basically ready for painting (or not) right out of the box. On account of there's no grain or any distinguishing features.

I think MDF sucks because it's all they ever build anything out of on Trading Spaces. Or that other show... with the surprise room makeover while the spouse is out of town? TLC? Nothing?

Anyway you were pretty much guaranteed a "new couch" made out of an MDF box with a piece of foam on top. That sucks. MDF sucks. I'm going to let my blind ignorance get in the way of professional carpenters making choices on a tight schedule for a TV show.

MDF also really drinks up paint if you do decide to finish it. It's available in pretty much any length and most thickness because, again, it's a completely engineered product. It's also quite strong. And heavy. I already said heavy but it bears mentioning again.

Plywood

Apparently plywood is kind of a big deal. Here's a picture of some now:

Plywood is actually not cheap. Good plywood - depending on thickness and quality - can cost close to $100 or more for a 4'x8' sheet. But here's the thing. Wood apparently has a bunch of annoying quirks that people have spent like thousands of years trying to combat. It has a grain, and it will split along that grain. It will expand and contract with temperature and humidity and that can do all kinds of awful shit to things that you built out of wood, like break them.

Also while you could conceivably get a piece of wood that ran the length of an entire tree, you're kind of limited on how wide it is by the width of the tree. And then of course the thickness and width of the board you've cut is going to have all kinds of other implications like more splitting and warping and all of the things you don't want it to do.

Enter plywood. Each layer alternates the grain of the wood. It comes in great big sheets and can be manufactured to a variety of consistent thicknesses. Thin sheets can be bent and thick sheets can be made into industrial strength countertops for movie theaters. Plywood can be used for big expanses of wood with little fear of warping or buckling. And it's usually got a finished side that's ready for paint or stain. That's handy too, since it would take a while to sand 32 square feet of wood.

If your furniture is made out of or contains plywood, don't hate it. It's okay. Leave it alone.

Conclusion

If you don't like engineered lumber then here's your alternative, you fucking vultures:

You get a loaf of wood that's roughly log shaped. Wonderful for you to have the time to get out your planes and jointers and build a solid oak conference table for $7,000. Also: Balls to IKEA for making me think at one point that it was well designed, well-made furniture sold cheaply. It's just well-designed furniture made and sold cheaply.

Remember - that crazy looking wood-sheet stuff you see at construction sites is OSB. The guts of your IKEA bookshelf when the screw tears out and you get little bits of wooden confetti everywhere; that's particle board and it sucks.

Plywood is good.

Dude, You Gotta Drink

If I went to college (I did) I would have been the guy in the teen comedy who is a nerd and wears glasses. And that nerd never got to play Beer Pong.

Do teen comedies take place in college? That feels inaccurate.

Let's just say in college, I wore glasses.

That means that in addition to the star quarterback dumping my lunch tray on my head and getting stuffed into lockers, I also had run-ins with the cool stoners who just didn't give a fuck but all the girls loved them anyway. And then when I got together with my friends (the fat one, the skinny one, and the one who hangs out with us for no discernible reason) we played video games and talked about Dungeons and Dragons and never got to play Flip Cup.

I'm getting side-tracked, that's still high school movies.

The glasses: real. Also though I never really had occasion to play drinking games. I mean, none of the standards. I played like "Make a giant gin and tonic and drink it" or "split a quarter of a fifth (1/20 of a gallon for those keeping track at home) of Jack with a friend for $10" or later, "drink a bottle of Thunderbird".

All of those games lack the strong social aspect (peer pressure) that a good drinking games possesses. Drinking games - good ones - have rules. They're complicated enough to require "learning" but not so complicated that you can't remember them if you're drunk.

Drinking games also have consequences. Drinking is both the reward and the punishment, which is some kind of alco-sado-masochistic trip that I don't feel like digging any deeper into. Other than the obvious thing is that people just want to drink, whether they follow the rules (are good) or break the rules (are bad).

And it works!

A good drinking game will end up with everyone drunk whether they've flipped the thing into the party cup or balanced the thing on their nose for a full thirty seconds or whether all three throwing hatchets found their target.

Drinking to get plastered (alone) can be kind of boring so it helps to feel like you have a purpose and there's a framework in place to get you to you goal. Your goal is "too fuckin' drunk" and the framework is "do something with this red party cup" and the purpose is "don't be such a pussy, dude!"

That's the one though. It's the purpose that gets people into trouble. Drinking games must have a social component. If no one else is around then you're not taking a shot every time Marv gets technically killed in Home Alone. You're just getting drunk by yourself and thinking about how much Goddamn Christmas is on TV.

When there are people around, there are "rules". And to play the game and have the fun and get the drunk you have to adhere to the rules, otherwise you lose the game! And everyone will remember the one Friday (Tuesday) where you were totally supposed to take a shot because Harry had a toolbox fall on his balls and you totally didn't take a shot. And that's when you kind of cross a threshold.

You realize you're drinking far too much to really appreciate the labyrinthine twists and turns of Kevin's deadly machinations. Micro Machines on the floor! He'll be crippled from the waist down! You close your eyes and the room is spinning - but the situation dictates that you continue to follow the rules because otherwise, like, party foul.

Then, darkness.

It's a system, man. It all exists to get two or more people really fucking drunk. Drunk enough to do something and not even worry about it until oh my God what did I do last night and I think I pissed in the trash can and where are my pants? Better still, a lot of games have a smart-munition component, wherein someone [the girl] can be prejudicially targeted to drink so they'll [she'll] be more pliable. So in addition to the literal darkness you may experience as consciousness slips away there may be a deeper, figurative darkness lurking in your boning-decision making center that's waiting to make some terrible choices for you. Depressing!

The entire fabric of the drinking game tapestry is held together by the complex weft and warp of peer pressure. And I'm like some kind of word poet with metaphors.

All it takes is someone to say "I'm drunk enough I think - I acknowledge that Marv and Harry just drank a fatal amount of shellac (and I should technically drink twice because it's two kills) but I'm not drinking any more fucking Keystone because if I do it's all coming back up."

But then what happens? Everyone else is also too drunk and will not remember you not drinking and you can save all of your regrets for the results pages of your increasingly abstract conceptual porn searches.

But also if you're just lining up drinking games to score with the honeys (asleep, high five!) your soul may have actually died at some point and you might want to get an MRI or PET scan or whatever they use to check for the presence of humanity. Also you might be a date rapist.

The Majesty of Space

So I looked up this morning at the moon and I thought, "Wow. There's dudes walking around up there right now."

And then I realized that I was confusing the moon with Mars, and astronauts with a robot.

It was very early in the morning.

Bane's Workout Guide

I think any high-calorie, low-rep lifting plan would give you the "World's Strongest Man" look that Christopher Nolan's Bane has achieved.

Almost certainly no shrugs. Just squats and deadlifts.

And if you restrict your calories too much you'll end up looking really cut like Tom Hardy in The Warrior instead of looking like an all-around asskicker like Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises.

Full disclosure: Even thought I know this I still spent the three days after seeing TDKR looking desperately for the magic thing Tom Hardy did to put on 30 pounds.

Then my senses got the better of me and I remembered it was probably a secret combination of diet and exercise. Kind of like when any actor puts on muscle for any role ever.

Or when anyone gets in shape over a period of time anywhere. Diet and exercise.

I'm not really sure what I was expecting to find.

The End of the Internet

I haven't updated in... a while.

I think it's because I've already made all of the humorous observations that exist to be made.

If something funny happens, look for it here first - as this will always be the fertile crescent of funny things that happen.

Do You Know This Man?

I've found that when you watch something three to five times a week on your favorite cable affiliate and then you catch a new episode on a network, it's a total mindfuck.

For example, when you see Tim "The Toolman" Taylor adressing the importance of honesty with young JTT and even younger Mark and then the other one who's name I think was Brad, that shapes your view of Home Improvement. When you see it on whatever channel airs syndicated sitcoms you form the picture in your head of a cast eternally frozen in a three-ish year span. Plot lines are never resolved, nothing is in chronological order and no one ever ages.

Then when you accidentally watch Home Improvement in its prime time slot (no longer possible as it is badly off the air) everyone is old and everything is serious and Jill kisses another man and there's drugs and sadness and you think maybe it was another show entirely.

That's kind of how I feel about Law and Order: SVU. I don't know if you've had a chance to catch an SVU marathon -- they run them several times a month -- but they're mostly "Olivia has short hair" and "Stabler exists". Richard Belzer isn't yet old enough to only show up periodically back at the station and District Attorney Alex Cabbot is an asshole and has not yet been fake-killed.

Importantly, Liz Lemon's future boyfriend Dennis is not on the show (first season) and the go-to psychiatrist/FBI Guy is not the professor from Farmers' Insurance commercials (also, the Nazi from Oz).

The role of the team's go-to FBI pscychologist is played by none other than a Bradley Darryl Wong; credited as BD Wong.

His character's name is Dr. George Huang -- which to my mind shows a certain lack of imagination.

Trust me, I'm a doctor.

BD Wong shows a tremendous range as an actor. You may recognize him from the new breakout hit on NBC's Awake. 



Dr. John Lee

He's traded up the sweater for a vest. Also interesting? He's playing a doctor.

Digging deeper we see that in All-American Girl, a mid-nineties Margaret Cho TV vehicle, BD Wong spread his wings a bit:



Dr. Stuart Kim

Actually no, that's a doctor again. But his hair used to be way long! Let's step back a bit further.

Did you know he was in Jurassic Park? Had you perhaps forgotten?


Dr. Henry Wu

According to the Jurassic Park Wikia, Henry Wu was the park's chief geneticist and at this point to the surprise of no one, a doctor.


Not all of his roles were large enough to be easily Googled (which for me is synonymous with research) so I'll just throw some cherry-picked screencaps from imdb in here:



Those all say "Dr."

 

Is BD Wong a real doctor? No, BD Wong is not a real doctor.

Why does BD Wong continue to play doctors on screen? Unresolved. Unless...

Let's suppose though that you, as a young actor, were approached to do a film with Martin Short and Steve Martin. You'd say yes without reading the script, right?

If you did, then that would make you the guy on the right:

One of these charcters is Howard Weinstein. It is not Martin Short.

So way back in 1991 you play a buffoon and spend the rest of your life playing the Serious Asian Doctor to atone for it.

Right? Maybe he has a good doctor voice. I don't know.

Wanted: Bass Player

I don't understand politics, and in the grand tradition of hating things we don't understand, I also hate politics. Hate is a strong word; it's more of a passionate disinterest.

Often I feel like I'm being forced to choose between vanilla and tapioca (although that's not fair because tapioca wins every time because it's great and his has a unique texture). Also as Kodos and Kang pointed out, voting for a third party is tantamount to throwing away your vote. So maybe a better metaphor is choosing between vanilla and vanilla?

I feel like I should list the names of the current Republican nominees in here a bunch of times with links so I can pull in clicks but that seems... unethical. But damn though, that's a fine idea.

Anyway, of the entire field of republican nominees over the last something years there's only one that stuck out in my head:

The guy that played bass.

That's pretty cool. Les Claypool plays the bass as well and if this guy (Mike Huckabee, as it turns out) is anywhere near his calibre then I would definitely vote for him as President of the United Bass of Rock. But I probably wouldn't vote for Les.

That's a total lie. If Les Claypool was running with the reanimated corpse of Jaco Pastorius as his VP I would vote for them both because of the necromancy implicit in bringing Jaco back to life (Les as a dark wizard?) and also because I'd like to guarantee entertainmening, technical bass playing for four solid years.

Back to Huckabee, though. In all honesty I couldn't even remember his name; just his stance:



First of all I'm ashamed to have used Bing for anything besides a punchline.

But also, how awesome is it that he played bass? Obama smoke(d)s and that's pretty cool but it's not as cool as if he was frontman for Black Flag.



Someone else already did that.

Bill Clinton played saxophone. This was addressed in the theme song to Animaniacs and in probably one thousand Tonight Show monologues but the sax isn't a very cool instrument. I feel like it's been done, ya know? If Bill Clinton played jazz vibraphone then I don't think anyone would have made fun of him, and then Monica Lewinsky joke!

There isn't really a point here, I don't think. All I'm saying is that if I heard "Newt Gingrich something something tons of divorces prog rock drum solo," then I'd say "I dunno maybe I'd vote for that guy who I heard played the drums?"

But also, if Obama announced that he was working on his two-hand tapping chops for guitar, and that his band was called "The Echoing Halls of Democracy" and that on his next vacation he was actually going on a mini-tour of the American Southeast with Mike Portnoy filling in on drums (because Mike seems to do that these days) then he (Obama) could pretty much guarantee four more years in office.