And A Fuck You Too

We bank with Bank of America. This really wasn't our choice. We had enjoyed Fleet's services for a while, mostly becuase branches are located in areas important to us: New Jersey, Philly, New York, Boston, and on Cape Cod. The other reason we liked fleet is that we thought its size would keep us from being gobbled up by an even bigger bank; so much for that. Bank of America really enjoys testing our relationship.

This morning we pulled into a drive-up ATM just as two ATM service people were getting out of their Loomise Fargo armored car. Since we were getting ready to use the ATM, our window was open. The guy said to his female co-worker, "let him go through first." Her response was an audible, "he can wait." She then proceeded to shut off the ATM and take it out of service.

Hackensack is a city that has been struggling with transportation for quite a while. The other two Bank of America's don't have customer parking, and the customer parking attached to this branch was on the other side of a no left turn sign. The result, not only were we unable to use the drive-thru atm, but we then had to leave the parking lot and circle the block in morning rush hour traffic simply to park to use the ATM's inside the branch.

This was not a matter of laziness, but rather, a matter of time. Walking ten feet from the car to the bank and then back again is not really 'exercise,' especially considering this morning we went power walking at 6am. But a trip through the drive up ATM should take 90 seconds. Parking, walking to the bank, getting in the bank, and getting back out of the parking lot takes two or three times as a long.

As we said, the drive up ATM would have been a 90 second transaction. The very large woman from Loomis Fargo was presumably being paid by the hour, or at the very least on salary: she was getting paid for her 90 seconds waiting for us to take out 40 bucks. On the otherhand, we were not on the clock, and running late.

Dear Bank of America,
Fuck you and your customer service.
Thanks.

UPDATE: We filed an official complaint with Bank of America. We'd like to think the woman will spend the next year at home unemployed thinking about how she probably should have just let us take money out of the ATM before closing it down.

Lemon Chicken

For lunch we had leftovers from last nights dinner: Lemon Chicken with angel hair and ceci peas.

Lemon Chicken
Two chicken breasts
Garlic
Two lemons
1 can Ceci peas
1/4 stick butter
Salt, Pepper, Parsley, dill
We started with two cloves of garlic, finely diced and threw that in with some melted butter. We wanted to add chicken broth but forgot that we were out. So instead we poured in the ceci peas including their juices, and then added a can of water. We seasoned with parsley, dill, salt and pepper.

We zested two lemons and added their juice to the pot. Then added two large chicken breasts and let simmer for about 30-40 minutes. We had some left over angel hair, which we added in the last five minutes to reheat. We served the chicken with a dolup of riccotta cheese alongside the angel hair with lemon sauce and ceci peas.

Steamed Brocoli
Brocoli
Garlic

Meanwhile, we chopped two more cloves of garlic to steam with the brocoli along with some olive oil and salt. Steam to desired tenderness.

Yellow Squash
Yellow Squash
Onion
We sauted the onion with a little olive oil for about 10 minutes, or until the onion was clear. Then we added yellow squash with a pinch of salt and pepper, covered for about 20 minutes.

A History Of [my] Email

My very first email account was ianmac@bellatlantic.net, now defunct. This was a major victory for me since my brother was also intended to share the account. Somehow though, it was my name that was on there.

ianmac@bellatlantic.net was all over the web for some time as my primary email address dating back to 1998 or 1999. That was before spambots really innundated email addresses found online while trolling webpages. At about the same time I found out about hotmail, and of course I signed up for an account.

Sadly, some other Ian Mac-Something already had ianmac@hotmail.com, so I had to add a number. Hotmail's suggestion was 1981, my birth year, which I thought was the stupidest idea ever. So about the 47 attached to my internet handle and email addresses: there are three possible explanations, you decide which one is real. [a] 47 is a prime number and I dig prime numbers because you can't divide them, and since I'm kind of pathetic at math, not being able to divide a number is ok with me. [b] 47 is Renton's London apartment in Trainspotting. [c] Star Trek writers have a thing for the Number 47.

So in either case, after not getting ianmac@hotmail.com, and settling on ianmac47@hotmail.com, I pretty much decided I should go out and get ianmac47 for everything before someone else came along and stole if from me. [This is sort of like cybersquatting for email addresses]. So anyway, I got an ianmac47@yahoo.com, ianmac47 became my AIM screenname and so on.

Subsequently I lost my ianmac47@yahoo.com address password, so that account is no more. About this time, the hotmail account became my primary address and I started getting spam as I signed up for lots of free things online. I also phased out the bellatlantic account because hotmail stopped allowing me to use it to check POP mail from my other accounts.

When I started at Rutgers, they kindly gave me a free email address. Foolishly, I failed to acquire ianmac47@eden.rutgers.edu. Instead, I used ianmac@eden, much like my bellatlantic account. I used ianmac@eden and the hotmail account concurrently for a while. This is about the time I lost of the password to the yahoo account [and I believe there was another account someplace else also that was lost]. In either case, I didnt really like using the eden account because at the time I was only able to access it through telnet.

As it turns out, its a good thing I kept that hotmail account, because as these things happen, I was to graduate rutgers and lose that eden account. Its sort of silly when you think about it, that colleges terminate student accounts. It would be a great way for them to solicit money from students: they would always be able to keep track of them.

Anywway, when Rutgers took away my email address I hadnt used the account in a long time*. So then I started ianmacallen.com, and of course, have an email address, ianmac47 -at- ianmacallen.com. Its rarely used, but for a while I was using it for large attachments or files that were too big to keep for a long time on hotmail, which was continually overflowing, mostly with junk.

I finally started using hotmail's junk filter when I was getting about 100 pieces of spam a day. That's not alot by some poeple's standards but it was too much for me. And now when rutgers sends me solicitations for money, it usually winds up right in the trash can.

Then Gmail came along. And yes, ianmac47 works there too. Gmail was great because it can store large files, or lots of small files, which I send through cyberspace often. So why still use the hotmail account? Well, its been with me so long I can't let it go. Really, my account at ianmacallen.com is the one I'm letting go for now, since its been months since I checked it. In theory all of my blog posts go there, but again, I havent checked that in a while. Its also the catch-all for email sent at ianmacallen.com, which means random spam sent to -webmaster- at ianmacallen.com goes there.

Anyway, that's a brief history of my email accounts. Fun, right?

* There were a few mass emails sent out to all eden accounts. Some shitheads kept responding to be removed from the list. One of the last emails I sent from eden account was a reponse telling everyone on eden who had recieved the message that they shouldn't be hitting "Reply to All" to get off the list since we were all getting the emails demanding to be taken off the list. Then more idiots kept replying to all and saying they weren't, when clearly they were. That was about the time I stopped using eden entirely. RIP Ianmac@eden.rutgers.edu

Some Summer Reading

We've been raeding Rats, a strangely fascinating book about rats and New York City. So far we've learned that rats like garbage, which may explain the days at the ally of 135.

We may have blogged this before, but we'll recap again just for fun.

While we were at Rutgers living at 135 Easton Ave, our landlord decided to sell the house. We were expected to clean the ally next the house where large amounts of trash had accumulated over time, though some of it from before we lived there.

In either case, we started cleaning and found a small rodent. Then another. We then demanded assistance from some of our housemates who were rather apathetic about cleaning up the ally. But eventually they showed up, and we found more rats. One was released "in the wild" in the ally next to a certain pizzaeria we detest. And then we saw the mother of all the little rats run off towards Prosper Street. Coincidentally, that street had a rat infestation by the end of the summer. Anyway, like we said, the lesson learned is to avoid keeping trash around.

But anyway, when we finish reading Rats, Amazon has put together A Collection of Books that might interest us. 1,082 books to be more specific. For $8,000, its quite a deal. We somehow doubt we have room for all of them though.

Karl Rove And All That

Some liberals have demanded Karl Rove apologize for some remarks he made at a dinner party. We don't want him to apologize. We just want him to admit he was lying. Here's what we think he should have said:

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and saw an opportunity to push their agenda; liberals saw the savagery of 9/11 and questioned why our government allowed this to happen. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives used fear to secure their power. In the wake of 9/11, liberals believed our government would take away the very rights and liberties and freedoms this country was founded on.

Karl Rove doesn’t owe liberals an apology. He owes an apology to the families of soldiers who died fighting for Bush’s little war while enriching the pockets of his corporate friends that receive government war contracts. Iraq was not about going to war to fight terrorism. It was a vengeful war waged to avenge the defeat of the President’s father.

If we wanted to fight terrorism, we’d be fighting in Saudi Arabia.

How many 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis? How many were Saudis? But Saudi Arabia pumps out oil for us, over producing OPEC quotas more than any other nation. So of course we aren’t fighting in Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, instead of having a national debate about social security, or about cleaning up the environment, or about education, Karl Rove engineered his president’s reelection campaign to scare the American people. Fear of terrorists. Fear of war. Now Rove’s agenda can be pushed through this country because everyone was too scared to talk about these issues during the election.

Flying Sucks, So WhyTF is Everyone Still Doing It?

So we don't really like flying. Our childhood fantasy of becoming an astronaut sort of ended when we watched the challenger blow up sky high. Despite being 5 years old, we do in fact remember post crash reports about how some engineers at NASA had said the shuttle shouldn't fly, and that it was the President's encouragement that the special flight carrying a teacher go ahead anyway. We never liked Ronnie anyway.

But anyway, when we were 16 we read
Airframe. We know its a book of fiction, but Michael Crichton has been known to base much of his fiction on fact. The important lessons to be learned: mechnical crews aren't paid enough to care whether a plane flys or falls; airlines have insurance, so they don't really care either.

So in either case, we don't really like flying, mostly because of the take-offs and the landings. This hasn't entirely stopped us mind you. We've flown a number of times, twice to Europe, plenty of times to Florida, from Nebraska to Boston, Boston to New York. Anyway, all of that fear of falling out of the sky aside, we still don't understand why people fly now.

We tend to think flying is overpriced; not by the airlines that seem to give you a pretty cheap flight, especially compared with say flying 50 years ago. Its the taxes, fees, and other things that airports charge, in some case half or more of the actual ticket price. Ok, so fear and price aside, why the fuck are people still flying?

Airlines are getting rid of free food, which is absurd since they trap on those tin cans for hours at a time. And the food you can buy sucks; no cookies or that sort of thing here, just fancy overpriced trail mix. And then there is the whole security thing, with strip searches and taking off your shoes and confiscating keepsakes and car keys. Three hours to check into an airport just to have your car keys taken away? WTF?

So like we said, price and fears aside, both of which we have and would overcome, we still can't understand why anyone is flying. What we think should happen:

All those high priced "security fees" should go to better, faster, less invasive security procedures. That is to say, a passenger should be able to show up five minutes before their flight and get on board their airplane. There should be no such thing as a security line: if there is a line then the government, the airport, or the airline should hire more security personel. Airports know how many passengers are flying on any given day, the least they can do is have security personel accomodate them. Also, instead of having 30 different kinds of security measures, figure out one that works best, and use it.

Hire people who can do the job. If McDonald's fired them, they probably shouldn't be working the security line at a major airport. What are we talking about? Car Keys are not a fucking switchblade!

Stop confiscating things that no one anywhere else in the world could be used as a weapon. Car keys, for the love of fucking christ, are not a weapon. In NJ, somebody can be charged with assault with a deadly weapon for punching someone else. So should we cut off every passengers arm from the wrist down? No. Are somebody's car keys going to allow them to hijack an airplane? No.

For all the talk about how safe this country is now, we sure seem to be a little overly cautious.

Also, what we'll say is this. If airport security is going to continue to be as foolish as to take away people's car keys, why hasn't someone come up with a better solution then simply hoarding all these personal affects in a giant government warehouse? Why not have a fedex envelope waiting for people who's $300 car keys are going to be taken away? A $15 dollar overnight postage fee is better than replacing expensive computer operated car keys. Or better yet, why not have the USPS mail it for free, since its a government agency and its the government taking these items away.

And as for airplane comforts: why take away in flight meals and replace them with mediocre sandwhiches and bags of trail mix? Many of the airlines have said that often they end up with uneaten food. So why not offer a menu to passengers to buy a meal before they get on an airplane? Surely somebody somewhere would be able to develop a system to let customers choose from a limited menu weeks before they got on an airplane, have the food prepared, frozen, and delivered to the right airplane. Or maybe not, since they still can't seem to keep track of people's luggage.

So in either case, we think everyone who puts up with this bullshit at airports is retarded. We'll be waiting for your hate mail.

Cooking Alone

Our better half was walking in New York last night during a corporate walkfornoreason-athon. So we set out to make some dinner and lunches. First there was turkey meatballs.

1lb ground turkey
a few mushrooms
garlic
half an onion
bread crumbs
1 egg
chicken stock

Diced up some garlic, the onion, and mushrooms. Dumped in the meat, and mixed it up. Added salt, pepper, basil. Mixed again adding bread crumbs. Added the egg. Mixed again until the mixture was even. Formed gumball size meat spheres. That sounds dirty, yes. Then the meatballs were coated with a final layer of breadcrumsbs so they would stick.

On medium heat, filled a large sauce pan with oil and pat of butter. Just after the butter melted, placed neatly the meat spheres in the pan and covered for about ten minutes, or until the bottom of the meat spheres begin to get crispy. Then flipped them over and added a half can of chicken stock, covered again. Took the lid off, added another small pat of butter and topped with some extra bread crumbs; should have used panko bread crumbs to top, and should have baked for about 5 minutes to crisp them, but did not.

1 can ceci peas
1 can kidney beans
1 can navy beans
1 potatoe
1/2lb Ditilini pasta
handfull of grape tamatos
garlic
half of onion
a few mushrooms
chicken stock

The potatoe, onion, garlic, and oil simmered in a large stock pot for a few minutes until the onion began getting clear. Added sliced grape tomatos and large slices of mushrooms, covered for another five minutes. Then added the three cans of beans including juices, left covered for another 5 minutes. Then added can and a half of chicken stock and pasta, covered until it came to a slow boil. Uncovered and let cook until pasta was ready.

Served with a meat sphere and parmesean cheese. Ate alone. Packed the rest up for lunches.

All Left Turns

So we were confused for a while while our morning commute is so much shorter than the afternoon commute. Specifically, why when we take local roads does it take so much longer since our top secret back road extravaganza is rarely impacted by large amounts of rush hour traffic. Then while we were waiting at a traffic light it occurred to us: left turns.

In the morning we usually make only right hand turns; almost exclusively. In the afternoon however, we tend to make only left turns. Even with traffic lights, left turns can be tricky.

Morning commute: 3 Left turns, 9 Right turns
Afternoon commute: 12 Left turns, 6 right turns

[while for the most part we travel the same route home as to work, there are slight variations due to one way streets, parking lots, and super top secret short cuts to avoid particularly bad left turns]

Ocean

We were down the shore this weekend without much incident. Sadly, the water was too cold for swimming. Since we've spent a lot of time on Cape Cod where the water is normally very chilly, for us to say the water is cold, believe it.

But we did finish reading Tom Perrota's The Wishbones. The book wasn't bad, although not his best. We definately preferred Little Children, but was quite amused by the many references to locations in New Jersey. Also of interest was the use of "Hipster" to describe people in Brooklyn.

Who's Watching You?

We knew there were lots of camera's pointed at us when we did simple things like go to ATMs. But now we're even more creeped out after seeing maps of cameras.

So we tend to dig maps and things like that, especially transportation maps. And so we like the idea of someone walking around cataloguing all the cameras in New York, but we also think if we had to do it, we'd shoot somebody.

Opera

We just returned from The MET's performance of Samson et Delilah in central park. Last year we had attended a similar performance of Madame Butterfly in Buccleuch Park in New Brunswick.

Major differences: We were drunk in New Brunswick. We could hear the opera in New Brunswick. We did not have food in New Brunswick.

Overall, having food made everything better. However, most of the crowd on the Great Lawn were gossip girls there to talk about who was dating who in the office circle while drinking boxed wine. While we couldn't exactly hear the opera, we certainly heard about someone walking in on someone else making out with someone.

To those peopole: we sort of kinda heard your secret about someone.

A Taste of London

Last night we met up with some folks at A Salt and Battery, a Fish and Chips place. We were at first expecting something fancy and boutiquey. We were pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't. And we thought there was going to be a line, since we were going to a place with a fun name and fancy logo and the kind of food we dream about: Deep Fried. It wasn't that busy.

But it was everything we wanted and more. We had Fried Cod and Chips and a Pint of new Castle, in a bottle. But if we wanted there was also Bangers and Mash and beans on Toast. As Rachel Ray would say, Yum-O. Coincidentally, the original A Salt and Battery was on FoodTV at some point, we just don't remember when or where.

Finally, if all that imported food wasn't enough, all the folks behind the counter had accents. If they were real, which maybe they were, maybe they weren't, they had us fooled.

Annyhow, we can't wait to go back.

The A.C.

Its no O.C., but at least you can go in the water. Which we did. We lost $50 on double down joker poker; but one of our mates won $1,000. Also, to the dude in the red and white striped shirt that was calling our name at the parkway rest area outside of Tom's River, we didn't hear you. In fact, the only reason we know you called out to us was because the fellow who won some good money heard you, but was too busy not buying the fish fillet sandwhich he ordered to tell us. And to the Burger King lady who has an extra fish fillet still waiting for someone to claim it: cook that shit faster next time. Also, stop telling old men looking for a small french fries that don't have a small, when clearly you gave a small to the yuppie in front of us.

Air Conditioning

We've grown up in a house that was constantly set at 60 degrees. So we really like air conditioning. Not to mention, three floors up, its gets pretty scorching. We're debating between 8,000 BTU, 10,000, and 12,000 BTU. Since we're primarily cooling the front room, kitchen, and hallway, we think 10,000 is probably more than adaquate.

But then we have the far back room to deal with: do we go with 12,000 and hope it can cool that room too, which while not too large a space to keep cool, is down a narrow hallway and through a nook? We already have a 5,000 btu unit, more than large enough for our bedroom. Could working in tandem with the 10,000 btu unit be enough? These are all the questions we've been asking ourselves.

We stopped at home depot, but they only had Maytags with EER of 9.7. We were hoping for a Frederick with 10+ EER. This isn't just because we want to save the environment, but also because we think in the long term it always cheaper to pay more for more efficient AC. Then we went to Target, and they were completely sold out; so much for that. We're hoping to find a Home Depot in a better area today that will have higher end models. But we'll see; they might be sold out.

Japan Has Hipsters Too

Japan has their own brand of hipsters: Geeks.

On streets once packed with housewives or couples shopping for refrigerators and microwave ovens, hundreds of thousands of nerds -- mostly men between about 18 and 45 -- now wander through the area's multi-story comic warehouses and elaborate game arcades.

Is this Tokyo or Brooklyn?

Otaku behavior is also being blamed, along with social disillusionment following Japan's protracted recession, for the increasing numbers of Japanese youth who have no apparent career ambitions. Instead, many are choosing to work part time -- or not at all -- so they can spend most of their time pursuing their hobbies.

Like we said, Hipsters.

How We Survived The Far West

We spent much of our day yesterday at a local Panera reading and surfing the free wi-fi. We visited the public library so that we could piss. We passed by an old steal mill which looked interesting but we had no way of photographing from a moving vehicle. We did get this picture though:

Overheard: Bethlehem PA

In what is a temporary exhile, we continue from our post in the far west:

"What did I say? Trust in Faith"

Oh, Jesus, WhereTF are we?

Begger's Signs

Often we see folks begging at traffic lights for spare change. Sometimes they have 'help me because I have a shitty life' signs. Sometimes they have honest 'need money for beer signs'. Sometimes they have funny 'ninja's killed my family, need money for kung fu lessons' signs. But what we really don't get is where do these people get black magic markers from? These people are begging for pennies and have money for a $3 dollar magic marker? We don't get it.

First Supper

Tonight we prepared the first dinner in the new apartment.

Chicken:

Marinate thin sliced boneless, skinless chicken for an hour in Orange Juice, garlic, pepper and salt.

Heat on mediam burner a pan with splash of olive oil. Cook for three minutes on each side or until done.


Orzo With Mixed Vegetables:




Slice portobello mushrooms. Toss into a low heat pan with splash of olive oil, salt, garlic, and pepper. Cover. Toss in finely chopped onions.

Boil chicken or vegetable broth in a seperate pot. Add orzo when the water broth comes to a boil.

Slice grape tomatos in half. Add to mushrooms and heat for an additional two minutes. Turn off heat or risk soggy tomatos.

Combine orzo and vegetables. When cooled, add slices of mozzerrella or your favorite cheese.

Paper Cuts Can Kill

In case you need a good scare, there is a list of Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries chosen by a panel of 15 Neo-Nazis posing as scholars. We've never heard of someone bleeding to death from a paper cut, so we still aren't sure what they mean.

No. 1: The Communist Manifesto. "The Evil Empire of the Soviet Union put the Manifesto into practice." Either these scholars never read the Communist Manifesto or never read their Soviet History. While Lenin had read the Marx's manifesto, and borrowed the term Communist, the Soviet Union was by no means a working model of Marx's book. The Revolution will be blogged.

No. 4: The Kinsey Report. Sex is an essential part of the human experience. Just ask the Shakers, if there are any left, what life without sex is like. We think its something that probably deserves some study. "The report...said that 37% of adult males had had at least one homosexual experience" We're left wondering, only 37%?

Honorable Mention: On Liberty. Yes. The last thing we need is more liberty. We don't need liberty, just frey-dom.