http://www.theforeignembassy.com/ en Copyright 2009 Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:24:47 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss ]]> http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2008/03/redhead.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2008/03/redhead.html pictures Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:24:47 -0500 I'm moving stuff over from an old server. Don't be alarmed if things look skewy. http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2007/07/on_the_move.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2007/07/on_the_move.html Fri, 27 Jul 2007 22:25:34 -0500 Twitter. For the uninitiated, Twitter allows you to post online quick, soundburst-style updates of your current activity/mood/sexual position/etc. from your mobile phone, IM client, web browser, or whatever. I kept seeing Twitter links on blogs I would visit, and it seemed like the cool kids were doing it, and apparently the rumors that it was insanely addictive and just a gateway drug to the more lethal forms of web communication were just total rumors, and, well, I wanted to give it a try. Basically, an explanation of Twitter to a standard friend of mine (FOM) would go thusly: ME: So, I've started a Twitter account. Want to be my friend? FOM: What's Twitter? ME: It's a website where you post updates of what you're doing. FOM: Like, that you're still alive? ME: No. Like, what song I'm listening to, or what I'm eating, or... FOM: [uncomfortable silence] ME: ...or, what I'm watching on television... FOM: Why would I care? Therein lies the rub. As a Twitter user, you basically have to assume that someone, somewhere, would care about what you're doing ALL THE TIME. I could see this being useful to an astronaut or a Navy SEAL or someone else with a life approximately ten thousand times more exciting than mine. But for me...honestly, I barely care about what I'm doing the vast majority of the time, and unless you're chained in a deep dungeon somewhere with the only enjoyment being the mental dialogue you maintain with the rats in your cell and my Twitter page on regular refresh on your computer monitor, you (with you being the World Wide Web at large, not you in particular, though the same probably applies) could almost certainly care even less. Having already had an online presence here at the battered, neglected Foreign Embassy, my thinking when I created a Tumblr account was that I could use it to post and keep track of various links and photos that wouldn't warrant a full entry here. And it's worked for me. Twitter, following the same reasoning, would work similarly, but instead of hyperlinks, it would be for random thoughts. But the analogy falls apart with the sad, brutal truth that my random thoughts are either (a) not fit for public consumption, (b) completely nonsensical, (c) utterly boring, or (d) all of the above. I just can't be captivating in 140-character soundbytes (to which Statler and Waldorf shout from the balcony, "How many characters does it TAKE?"). Many Twitter users employ it as a means to maintain an online, ongoing conversation with multiple friends, but seeing as how the above conversation example would be pretty much spot-on for the vast majority of my friends, that doesn't work for me, either. So farewell, Twitter, I hardly knew ye. Mayhap we'll meet again. ADDENDUM: Well, we met again: last night, I sat down with a glass of wine and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and suddenly went all apeshit on Twitter with my iPhone. Go figure.]]> http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2007/07/on_this_twitter_thing.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2007/07/on_this_twitter_thing.html Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:54:52 -0500 I got one. There was never really a question of my getting one, much as I denied it to myself and others. Sure, I planned on going up to the Fifth Avenue store on Launch Day after work, but as I insisted to my rightfully skeptical colleagues, I was just going to LOOK, to soak up the atmosphere. And once I got up there and saw the media circus and the line a block long, well, forget about it. Just forget about it. An impossibly quick fifteen minutes later, I was being handed an eight-gigger (Four gigs? Puh-LEEZ.) by the sprightly young thing behind the counter. Whoever was doing crowd control at Fifth Avenue must have had previous experience coordinating large-scale troop deployments, because I've never seen a line move so fast or so orderly. And once you were in the store, well, forget about browsing, 'cause that line was headed straight to the register. They knew, just as my snickering colleagues knew, that you don't wait in a line a block long, no matter how fast it moves, just to soak in the atmosphere. Poppa came to buy, and you better believe Poppa BOUGHT. What can you say about this thing that hasn't been said? Easily five years ahead of the next most advanced cell phone or PDA on the market, it is, undoubtedly, the future. It's beyond slick. The touch interface is blindingly cool. When whipped out in public, it's a total showstopper: everyone wants to lay hands on it. Waiters, tablemates at weddings, salespeople at Banana Republic, EVERYONE. And rightfully so. It's beautiful. It's awe-inspiring. It's the glistening ejaculate of a techno-god from the next millennium. Okay, that last one was a bit of hyperbole, but I swear, that's what I felt when I first held it in my hands. It's not without some drawbacks, the most annoying of which, for me, is the lack of an ability to do tabbed browsing at will: on the iPhone, links only open in new windows if they're coded that way, and there's no shortcut to force it to happen, no equivalent of command-clicking in Safari. Now, I LIVE on tabbed browsing; I usually limit myself to an absolute maximum of three open browser windows (Poppa likes an orderly desktop), but those browser windows can easily have a dozen tabs each. Going back to un-tabbed browsing is a hobbling experience, particularly with a browser that doesn't cache previously loaded pages, and PARTICULARLY seeing as how coding links to open in separate windows inexplicably became poor netiquette some years back. On the often slow-as-molasses Edge network, this turns my usual browsing experience into an exercise in agony: go to Daring Fireball, wait for it to load, read, click on an interesting link, wait for it to load, read, go back to Daring Fireball, wait for it to load AGAIN, repeat ad nauseam. The iPhone interface for using separate windows is already there, and like everything else, it's slicker than snot: why the hell couldn't they put in some kind of way (my own idea was a double-tap of a link to open it in a new window) to let you use it? Of course, no one else seems to be complaining about this, so maybe everybody knows something I don't. If you do, please God, tell me. One other thing has gone unremarked in pretty much every glowing, superlative-crammed review of the iPhone I've read, but it's a feature that's single-handedly changed my life in a way no piece of technology has since TiVo: I can now read the Internet on the crapper. See, I'm a bathroom reader. Always have been, always will be. My throne at home is stocked with a library larger than that of a small municipality. At work, I tend to keep a copy of The Onion (bathroom reading at its finest) or the Village Voice close at hand for what I like to call "private time." I have, on numerous occasions, resorted to printing out interesting articles (most recently, New York Magazine's profile of Steve Jobs at home and sticking them in my pocket to be used as bathroom material later in the day. When push comes to shove, I've been known to read the instructions on shampoo bottles. When I'm there, I need to read. Brother, I'm here to tell you, those days of wandering the desert are over. Now, I go to the porcelain throne with the WORLD in my pocket. I can look up Brother Power on Wikipedia. I can shop for a new Weber on Amazon. I can POST (you can guess where this entry was birthed, along with something else that was simply unspeakable). I reluctantly admit that I have in fact used it while URINATING. This could, at some later date, pose a problem. Viva la future!]]> http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2007/07/i_hold_the_future.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2007/07/i_hold_the_future.html tech Thu, 05 Jul 2007 19:35:40 -0500 offmango.com]]> http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2007/06/another_web_presence.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2007/06/another_web_presence.html web Fri, 01 Jun 2007 20:13:58 -0500 ]]> http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2007/03/cute.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2007/03/cute.html random Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:52:47 -0500 The instructions, passed on to the missus by the guy at the meat counter, were simple: grill for forty-five minutes. And so, I popped the cap on a Dos Equis and headed down into the back yard, where I fired up the grill, the threw on the seasoned half chicken that was to be the evening repast. And then, with forty-five minutes to kill, I went back up to play with the baby, because nowhere in the above instructions does it state that the grill must be watched carefully, lest you leave to play with your child for twenty minutes or so and return to find the whole goddamn thing on fire. The first indicator of a problem in the backyard came with the glance through the kitchen window that revealed a thin, but persistent, column of smoke rising steadily from the general vicinity of the grill. The second indicator was when I poked open said grill and found myself looking into what could have passed for a deleted scene in BACKDRAFT. Flames filled the grill and licked over the sides hungrily, and, stalwart fellow that I am, I threw myself on the ground to protect myself from the inevitable blowback explosion from oxygen flowing into the grill (I've seen BACKDRAFT at least seven times). When no explosion came, I hurried over and turned off the propane, then pulled the coal-black carcass of what had at one point been a fine-looking hunk of chicken off the seared white grill once the flames had died down. It had shrunk to half its size and now resembled an oddly-shaped lava rock. I cut into it, holding out hope that I'd inadvertently discovered a new recipe for charred chicken, but the inferno that had engulfed the interior of the grill minutes before had failed to penetrate through the crusty outer shell that had quickly developed, and the inside was a bright pink. So I threw it on a plate and presented it to the missus, indigninantly citing the deficiencies in the instructions she'd passed on to me, only to learn that said chicken had been coated in tequila, apparently a popular seasoning technique that happens to be as flamable as all hell. The missus, practical woman that she is, rightly chastized me for leaving a fatty chicken unattended on an open flame, then presented a backup meal of raw hamburger from the refrigerator. And so I returned to the grill, cleaned the blackened curls of fat off the grate, and did it up proper, watching those burgers like a hawk as I sat on the porch swing with the baby, instructing her in the finer points of grilling and waving off the planes carrying fire retardant and smokejumpers that had appeared overhead. http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/09/blackened.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/09/blackened.html random Fri, 08 Sep 2006 22:37:37 -0500








]]> http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/07/radiohead_at_the_greek.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/07/radiohead_at_the_greek.html music Sun, 09 Jul 2006 21:00:54 -0500 A recap of the last couple days, since I tend to use this website as an online diary: The grandparents came in to town, and we had a lovely day walking through Santa Monica and down along the ocean. And I tell you true, if anything can beat holding my baby in my arms watching the waves break in the Pacific, it's watching the looks on my parents' faces as they truly discover their granddaughter for the first time. Nothing makes me happier, or more proud. We stopped in an art gallery selling paintings from children's books, and I immediately fell in love with a painting of Harry Potter, Hermione, and Ron Weasley sitting by the window in Hogsmeade Tavern, watching the snow fall and toasting Butterbeers on a cold winter's night. It pretty much summed up friendship to me, and I'll have to own it, sooner or later. Then the grandparents were gone, and it was back to work, in a grind that's been wearing more and more lately. But I spent my lunch hour this afternoon sitting under a palm tree staring up at the sky while listening to the soundtrack from THE THIN RED LINE, and enjoying the thought that, at that moment, I could have been anywhere, and that made quite a bit of difference. As did trekking out to Santa Monica this evening with a good friend to Father's Office and having, quite possibly, the best burger I've ever tasted, with some truly excellent beers, in a bar that could well have been created by an architect given the task of designing a drinking establishment for the sole purpose of making me, and me alone, happy as a clam. Warm wood, soft lighting, crowds strictly kept to a minimum, a multitude of the finest ales on tap, and Radiohead playing over the speakers. I haven't felt so comfortable outside of my house since moving out here, and while it doesn't rival McSorleys or the Moosehead for my favorite bar, ever, it makes the top five without breaking a sweat. And, following Lord Nelson's in Sydney, my memory of which is unfortunately hindered by consuming one shout too many of their house ales, Father's Office may indeed make it to the top four. Anyway, that was the last couple days. http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/06/butterbeer_burgers_bliss.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/06/butterbeer_burgers_bliss.html random Sun, 25 Jun 2006 00:07:32 -0500 listen to here), and I looked up at the dark sky and thought of Alec Wilkinson's recent, moving New Yorker article about Pete Seeger, the inspiration behind Bruce's current album and tour. In particular, I thought of its closing: Here is a story told to me lately by a man named John Cronin, who is the director of the Pace Academy for the Environment, at Pace University. Cronin has known Seeger for thirty years. "About two winters ago, on Route 9 outside Beacon, one winter day, it was freezing羊ainy and slushy, a miserable winter day葉he war in Iraq is just heating up and the country's in a poor mood," Cronin said. "I'm driving north, and on the other side of the road I see from the back a tall, slim figure in a hood and coat. I'm looking, and I can tell it's Pete, He's standing there all by himself, and he's holding up a big piece of cardboard that clearly has something written on it. Cars and trucks are going by him. He's getting wet. He's holding the homemade sign above his head揺e's very tall, and his chin is raised the way he does when he sings預nd he's turning the sign in a semicircle, so that the drivers can see it as they pass, and some people are honking and waving at him, and some people are giving him the finger. He's eighty-four years old. I know he's got some purpose, of course, but I don't know what it is. What struck me is that, whatever his intentions are, and obviously he wants people to notice what he's doing, he wants to make an impression預nyway, whatever they are, he doesn't call the newspapers and say, 'I'm Pete Seeger, here's what I'm going to do.' He doesn't cultivate publicity. That isn't what he does. He's far more modest than that. He would never make a fuss. He's just standing out there in the cold and the sleet like a scarecrow. I go a little bit down the road, so that I can turn and come back, and when I get him in view again, this solitary and elderly figure, I see that what he's written on the sign is 'Peace.'" And it could have been the setting, or the song, or the thought of that solitary man standing in the rain still, after sixty some years, trying to make the world a better place; but whatever it was, it moved me, and it moves me still.]]> http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/06/the_man_in_the_rain.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/06/the_man_in_the_rain.html music Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:44:20 -0500 A concise primer on child rearing, in the unlikely event that my friends should ever be so unfortunate as to ask me for advice on rearing a child. First, a word about the small, pink creature that we will call, for simplicity痴 sake, Baby: Baby is, from birth, a master negotiator. Baby痴 preferred tactic, frightening in its simplicity, is to scream, at a volume you previously would have thought unreachable for so small a creature, until she gets what she wants. Baby can not be bargained with, bribed, cajoled, or intimidated. Offers of money, future leniencies, automobiles, and the like will be disregarded without consideration; statements such as, 的t痴 okay,� 撤lease stop crying,� 展hy are you unhappy?� and 擢or the love of God, PLEASE STOP CRYING� will receive no response. Cessation of the referenced crying will not occur at their repetition, no matter how desperate and filled with longing said repetition may be. Baby does not listen to reason or abide by rules of logic. Explaining to Baby that Baby has absolutely no reason for crying, in that Baby has been fed, changed, and burped, perhaps even all at the same time, in the last fifteen minutes, and thus does not have a leg to stand on in this whole negotiation, will not weaken Baby痴 position. Subtle pleas for sympathy along the lines of, 的 certainly wouldn稚 mind being waited on hand and foot all day, and if you really think about it, you致e got a pretty good thing going� will not appease Baby. Baby does not accept the fact that the cheeseburger you致e been thinking about all day was just delivered and must be eaten while piping hot as a reasonable excuse to cease negotiations (i.e. stop crying). Do not attempt to handle Baby and eat the aforementioned cheeseburger simultaneously. Baby, like the cheeseburger, is awkward to hold single-handedly and easily breakable. No, Baby does NOT want a bite of your cheeseburger, and under no circumstances should such be offered. On crying Baby: dealing with crying Baby is akin to being a bomb disposal technician. Like a bomb, the task of defusing (i.e. calming) crying Baby can at first seem overwhelming and impossible. Stay calm. With each successful defusal, the task gets easier and your confidence grows. However, do not get complacent, as even the slightest slip can cause Baby to explode, killing you and everyone else in a thirty-foot radius, and driving your partner, the hot-head, refuse-to-play-by-the-rules bomb disposal technician-in-training, to go on a manhunt for the mad bomber who brought about your death which climaxes in a fight to the death on an out-of-control train on the Los Angeles subway system. Upon review, appears the bomb disposal technician analogy has some flaws. Disregard. There is a little known addendum to Einstein痴 Theory of Relativity that he drew up after a long weekend with his newborn niece and which he tended to refer to as Einstein痴 Bylaw of Screaming Baby. Said bylaw says, basically, that time spent with a screaming baby moves way, WAY more slowly than normal time spent with, say, a beer and the Tivo壇 episode of last night痴 SOPRANOS. Over the long weekend in which the bylaw was created, Einstein managed to scribble the following formula down on a paper towel with a Sharpie: B = XT In which T represents the normal duration of Time, B represents the corresponding duration in Baby Time, and X is a variable drawn from a number of factors, including the decibel level Baby痴 screams are currently reaching, the volume of bodily waste Baby currently has in its diaper, and whether the Baby has managed to urinate all over itself in the process of Einstein痴 attempting to remove said diaper. Einstein also observed that, when X ? 10, severe anxiety, depression, and visions of sprinting to your automobile and fleeing to a remote beach in South America can result. Rest assured, however: terrifying as it may seems, Einstein痴 Bylaw of Screaming Baby can be used to your advantage. For example, should your wife/husband/partner request that you run out for diapers, and should you return three hours later smelling of alcohol and singing old Broadway showtunes, your partner may well assume, with the aid of Einstein痴 Bylaw and your slurred assurances, that only fifteen minutes have passed, clearly nowhere near enough time for her mate to have gotten sauced at the local tavern. On teething: teething, I have been told, can be a hellish nightmare of an experience filled with agonized cries and many, many sleepless nights. Be prepared. Always keep a duffel bag with at least a week痴 worth of clothing, toiletries, and several hundred dollars in cash readily available. Do not be discouraged by any of the above, however. Baby is not without her positive aspects. One is that Baby will treat everything you have to say as the most enthralling thing ever heard. When you are speaking to her, Baby will give you complete, undivided attention unlike anything you have ever experienced. You can read Baby The New York Times Style section, and Baby will stare at you with wide, fascinated eyes as though you are passing on the secrets of the universe. And when Baby is showing The Love, you will feel as though you can move mountains, as though you are the recipient of the emotion that is Love in its purest, most unadulterated sense, and you have never tasted anything so sweet. Baby will stare at you like you are, hands down, the greatest friggin� thing she has ever seen, and at her tender young age, that may well be the case. Of course, if Baby is hungry, disregard the above: Baby will want nothing to do with you unless you happen to have a pair of lactating breasts. On coolness: Baby should not be treated as your second chance to 澱e cool.� Making Baby listen to the Arcade Fire or the Vines will not ensure 田oolness� and freedom from torment in the formative grade- and high-school years for Baby. Long-term studies have conclusively shown that babies brought up listening to the Arcade Fire and the Vines are just as prone to adolescent awkwardness, poor dress sense, feelings of isolation and insecurity, and the inability to say the exact right thing the moment the cute girl from Biology walks by in the hallway as children raised listening to John Denver or Barry Manilow, if not more so. That said, Baby is, at the tender baby age, extremely acceptive and non-judgmental regarding your taste in music. Baby will not mind if you just have to play that Peter Cetera song from KARATE KID 2 over, and over, and over again. In fact, Baby, if sufficiently fed and rested, can appear to enjoy said song in equal measure, with no hint of sarcasm or disdain. And if Baby is clearly not enjoying said song, well, until Baby has the facilities to verbally request the cessation of the song and the deletion of Peter Cetera痴 entire catalogue from your hard drive, Baby will just have to deal with it. While on the subject of coolness: you are currently, secretly, harboring the hope that you will be the coolest dad ever, perhaps because you still wear Converse All-Stars and listen to the Vines. You are not, in fact, the coolest dad ever, and attempting to be so will just result in disappointment and missing out the patently not-cool things you can do with Baby, such as gaze awestruck at her, speak gibberish to her, read to her from The New York Times Style section, pop wheelies with her stroller, and generally do all the things that a love-struck dork can do. In particular, don稚 think you look cool with the Baby Bjorn. Even Bono on his Coolest Day Ever, which is probably around the time ACHTUNG BABY was recorded, would not look cool wearing a Baby Bjorn. Bono could be carrying a miniature Natalie Portman in his Baby Bjorn, and he would still look seriously lame. You, mere mortal that you are, don稚 stand a snowball痴 chance in hell. http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/05/baby_101.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/05/baby_101.html random Fri, 26 May 2006 22:54:35 -0500 These days are long. I tend to wake up exhausted, plowing through my day job and struggling to carve out hours to write. But these are also days that include slow-dancing with my daughter, her head nestled against my chest, to the sounds of Bruce Springsteen singing "O Mary Don't You Weep" as the late afternoon sun fills the room, as I stroke her soft brown-going-on-blonde-going-on-red hair, as she sighs contentedly into my shirt, as tears well in my eyes for no reason whatsoever and my heart expands so much it hurts. These days are long, but over too quick, and they are sprinkled with moments that make the other less enjoyable hours pale and inconsequential in comparison. http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/05/these_days_1.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/05/these_days_1.html random Wed, 10 May 2006 21:16:18 -0500 she's here.

]]> http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/03/finally.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/03/finally.html random Sun, 05 Mar 2006 15:55:57 -0500 2005. To tell the truth, I've no idea how to sum up 2005. It was a non-year, in almost every respect, with no major changes (save that BIG one, which is getting bigger with each passing day) and no real ground gained; it's telling that, job-wise, I ended up the year back where I started. No, 2005 will not go down in my books as a year of great consequence. 2006, however, started the way the best things start. It started with an idea. Happy New Year to you all, friends, family, and strangers. http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/01/new_year_2.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2006/01/new_year_2.html random Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:53:19 -0500 Gubnat," has proven to have excellent taste in music, as she began excitedly jumping around in the belly as soon as she heard both the Radiohead and U2 live concerts I watched on the telly. • The house, for the first time, knows the smell of a real live Christmas tree. After refusing to abide the abomination of a fake tree for a second year in a row, the missus and I took a drive to the Valley (of all places!) and picked ourselves up a fine specimen of pine. The smell of a real time puts me in the season as surely as if there were frost on the window panes and snow mounting on the sill. • I've noticed that, while there are a number of tomes for women on what to expect from pregnancy and parenthood, I've had to suffice with my friend Dave laughing maniacally and blasting Queen's "Waiting for the Hammer to Fall" when I ask him what I'm in for. (Well, the laughing maniacally is true, but if you know Dave, you know he wouldn't know Queen if Freddie Mercury bit him on the ass). • Meanwhile, as the aforementioned Dave has pointed out, the MIAMI VICE trailer is live, complete with the obligatory Driving-at-Night-with-Cool-Music scene, and all is right with the world.]]> http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2005/12/bits.html http://www.theforeignembassy.com/2005/12/bits.html random Thu, 15 Dec 2005 21:39:57 -0500