Consumer Review: MyVu!

Every once in a while, electronics clearinghouse woot.com runs an event called a woot-off, which is a good way to make me buy stuff, because it makes purchasing needless electronics into a game, with timers and sirens and competition and congratulatory messages. Recently, I got swept up in the madness and got the MyVu Personal Media Viewer, a purchase based on overcaffeination and the promise that I would look like Geordi LaForge. It plugs into an Ipod 5th Gen and gives a floating, Viewfinder-sized video image from your Ipod in glasses. I got it for fitty bucks, and am pleased to see that the parent website offers it for two hunnert, because that makes me look like slightly less of a sucker.

First thing: obviously, they look awesome on. As I put them on during my train ride this morning, I was slightly self-conscious plugging in the attached earphones and started singing from The Who's Tommy: put in your ear-plugs, put on your eye-shades, you know where to put the cork.

The video screens on the inside of the glasses are about the size of a fingernail each, and in a dark room, it looks like you are watching a small screen in a theatre, but in the light, you can see through your glasses on either side, so you can see if you are being surrounded by technology-hungry thugs. If you need corrective lenses, there is a site where you can order them to clip onto the inside of the headset, but why don't you get robots to burn your eyes with lasers instead, high-end leisure electronics consumer?

The video quality is the same as the Ipod. This toy would make most sense to use to watch vids on a long car or airplane ride. I like the privacy of it. The two screens made me feel a little cross-eyed upon first wearing, but I got used to them. I would really like to see these hacked to use with a laptop!

(People keep commenting on my gloves, but I swear they're just to wear on my bike!)

Now I see this clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. There never has been a choice for me. I am a nerd. I know it, Jackie Kashian knows it, and woot knows it. The first video I watched on it? Weird Al Yankovic's "White and Nerdy."

In my madness for personal items, I also bought this "Personal Hand Massager" during the woot-off, because of all the cramping I get in my hands when I use the computer. I think that this particular item will bring a whole new meaning to the term, "woot-off."

POSTSCRIPT: ZOMG, Woot found my post and linked to it from their blog- so if I link back to a blog linking to my blog, will the universe implode? Let's see!

POSTSCRIPT PART DEUX: Well, the Woot.com link was interesting, as I watched 800 people traipse through my blog over the next couple days, leaving neither comments nor footprints, just like they were never here at all. Maybe there's a lesson there about the internet. Et tu, page hits?

The real thing I wanted to mention was the danger of wearing the MyVu Personal Media Viewer in public. I wore them on the train one day and realized that an ex-boyfriend was in kicking distance and I had to pretend not to be myself, or if I was myself, absolutely I was not wearing wack-ass glasses.

The very next day, I was wearing them (watching Blade Runner, nerd!) on the train and became aware that a kid was begging for change, which caught me off-guard and I said no, I'm sorry, and he asked, wow, are those little video screens? And I had to admit that they were- so, although he thought they were cool, I felt bad admitting that 1. not only do I not hand out cash to kids on the train, 2. I am wearing ridiculously un-needed consumer products. Yes! I am an asshole.

And you absolutely should not use the personal massager in public.

BikeMath

Some observable trends in Portland bike commuting:

5 degree increase in temperature: 10% increase in ridership
5 degree decrease in temperature: 25% reduction in ridership
First Rainy-Ass Day in Awhile: 50% reduction in ridership
Gas Costs More Than Beer: 60% Increase in ridership, 10% increase in drunk ridership
5 cent reduction in price of gasoline per gallon: 35% reduction in ridership
Tour De France with Lance Armstrong in it: 20% increase in ridership
Tour De France without Lance Armstrong: no discernible change

Where can you go for pithy observations of bike commuting trends and minutiae? That's right, Badinia.com!

Well, it's available at no cost to you, at any rate.

Fights at Parties

My friend Pete, owner and proprietor of Disko Warp records, mentioned to me the other day that his single, Oh Oh Oh Sexy Vampire, had gotten a lot of attention because people thought it might be connected to the teen novels by Stephanie Meyer, the "Twilight" series. I hadn't heard of it, when I was a teen we went to Anne Rice for our sexy vampires. I went to a party moments later and wound up getting into a discussion with a group of girls that were obsessed with the selfsame series aimed at teens, but read by adults, as all too often tragically happens. I pointed to an article that posited that vampires had to be fictional, because mathematically they are impossible- if every vampire created a vampire every day, in five days we'd all be vampires, like some sort of bloodsucking Ponzi scheme. And then I mentioned that by day 4, none of us would be going to parties, because we'd all be locked in our houses wearing neckbraces and garlic necklaces, because holy shit, there are fucking vampires out there, and this girl got REALLY MAD and refused to laugh at any of my hilarious jokes. People suck, and that's why I'm becoming a vampire. At least then the sucking will have some sort of purpose.

Pete will be at table 17 at Kumoricon in Portland over Labor Day weekend, check him out!

I swear, I never do this...

I hardly ever use this space to tell bitchy stories- but.

I was in a meeting yesterday and the fire alarm went off. It's 100 dB's or somesuch, right on the threshold of being painful.

Now, we get a false alarm every couple months, so I am perfectly willing to wait five minutes or so to see if it abates, but then it was still going off, so I left the building.

The rest of the meeting KEPT GOING, I guess they were just yelling over the alarm. I decided, I have two dogs who depend on me, and my life is worth more than sports product, and I went downstairs with the other, normal people. It was a sunny, beautiful day, and it's not bad at all to stand around in the sun, waiting for the hook and ladder truck to show up.

The Happy Valley/Tualatin fire department pulled up in their heavy fire gear, went in and looked around, and then took their gear off and reset the alarm, and I went back upstairs, and was greeted by one of women from the meeting with:

"You didn't come back to the meeting?"

I said, I'm coming back now. The alarm's off. Now is the time for coming back.

"Oh, we thought it was probably a false alarm, did you not hearing us call after you?
Oh, you probably had your headphones on."

I DIDN'T HEAR YOU BECAUSE THE ALARM WAS ON! IT WAS A FIRE ALARM! THAT MEANS GET OUT!

I knew it was probably a false alarm, but if I die because I didn't evacuate during a fire alarm, I'm the a**hole, you know? Nobody ever said, she was a real hero. She burned to death trying to help Asia get their line to market on time.

I called a friend to tell her about the incident, and she said, man, I’m sorry. I asked, why are you sorry? She said, I burned popcorn and it set off the fire alarm.


So, in other news, I need a new friend!

Life is Weird.

I am hosting for the fantastic Troy Thirdgill and feature Darrin Meyer at Portland's Harvey's Comedy Club this weekend, and last night who stopped in but They Live star "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, as handsome as ever with a titanium hip.

Knockout at the Fez, Part 2!

To those who were interested in last night's Knockout finals at the Fez:

At the opening, host Dylan K. announced that instead of random matchups, comics would be called upon to CHOOSE their rivals in reality-show style, which left us all atwitter. Should we pick the strongest opponent and try to knock 'em out? The weakest, that we hope we can pick off? Our heads swam with logistics and nausea. The first round results: (winners in BOLD)

Tristian Spillman vs. Virginia Jones

Cody Cooper vs. The Dan Cossette (reinstated to sub for Gabe Dinger)

Richard Bain vs. Kyle Harbert

Nathan Brannon vs. Russell Parker

My name came out of the hat for the next round. I picked Cody Cooper because he had beaten me to win the last Knockout at the Vegan Pirate Restaurant that became the Vegan Pirate Strip Bar, and is now the Unoccupied Building. And then, Cody Cooper ate my lunch.

Virginia Jones vs. Cody Cooper

Richard Bain vs. Russell Parker

Richard accepted the loss with grace and aplomb and left, wiping his ass with the microphone on his way out, leaving Cody Cooper to battle Russell Parker.

After two applause breaks, the judges could not come to a final decision between Cody and Russell, so they became co-finalists, receiving one golden glove and $75 apiece. I just made $75 at work in the time I've wasted on my blog today, so it's no skin off my nose, believe!

(sob!)

Fatty Carbuncle- Another Repost From I Could Kill Her

Dear Elaine;
Listen. I know you’re concerned with your weight. How do I know? Because you’re a girl and because you’re alive. Our friend, the ever- sensitive Auggie, wondered to me why most women think they’re fat when they’re perfectly lovely, and I think it might be because when we go to the clothing store, the only items that fit us have a silhouette of a whale on the label. In general, if the size number is greater than the age at which we lost our virginity, we start getting concerned that we’re either hideously fat, or else that we’re a hideously fat nun. I just read the touching book about funnyman Chris Farley, and evidently I weigh the same as Chris Farley at a "good" weight. So we’ve gotta do something.
Sidebar- you know, you only really see fat girls drinking Diet Coke. Do you suppose they’re lying to us, and it’s just made of nasty chemical flavoring plus high-calorie corn syrup?
A lot of people say they just don’t know how to get in shape. I know how. It’s just that it’s hard work. I was watching a show about weight loss, and how it’s just an equation- if you take in fewer calories than you put out, you’ll lose weight. I said, thanks a lot, TV- you think I’m fat *and* bad at math.
The last time I lost a lot of weight, women would ask me all the time how I did it, and as I explained that I was training for the Portland marathon, running 40 miles a week and eating healthy, I could see their eyes glaze over with disinterest, and they would say, oh, well, my friend’s been sleeping in a hydraulic tube, wrapped in Saran Wrap smeared with lard and beeswax, and I was hoping it was something like that.
I’m not working hard anymore. This time I’m working out smarter. This time I’m gonna lose weight in a fast and easy way!
What are my options for nutty-ass, health-endangering fad diets?
I do know a guy who is the last living Atkins dieter. I am not a good candidate for that, because I don’t eat meat, so I am not swayed by the magic of eating bacon smeared with butter. As far as I can tell, all that would be left for me to eat is celery and dust. Also, I read that carbohydrates are not just the fuel for your body, they’re what powers your brain, which is why every Atkins aficionado I have known has had beef ketosis breath and the attention span of a potato-starved gnat. Liposuction’s out, as it’s surgery and it maxes out at ten pounds, and that’s just the tip of my buttery iceberg. I was curious about Alli, the little blue diet pill that makes you shit fat*. There is a helpful booklet that comes with Alli that reads: There are some side effects, which include “oily spotting” and shitting when you hadn’t planned to. Don’t be a baby, Elaine - it’s all the same symptoms as you get from eating at Taco Bell.
The book also says: the excess fat floating on the toilet water may look like the oil from a cheese pizza. See that? Already Alli has helped me! I’ll never eat cheese pizza again! Blarg! And it’s classic Clockwork Orange-style reprogramming: instead of feeling watching violent films and feeling nauseous, you’ll grow to associate eating a doughnut with the very real possibility of crapping a stick of butter on the subway.
* This is not their official motto- yet! I have helpfully emailed it to them and am patiently waiting for a response.
All the skinny bints at work go on about the Master Cleanse diet. A couple of years ago, it gained some popularity because Beyonce went on it so that she would not be mistaken for the fat, talented girl in Dreamgirls. Apparently, the difference between this and real-life anorexia are the duration and hot lemonade, which has just enough maple syrup in it to keep you alive- and it’s supposed to turn you inside out with the mastery of its cleansing. There is some sort of zen bullshit component of it also, but instead of dwelling on one’s navel, it centers on the rectum. It seems that when people are not worried about the size of their ass, they’re concerned with what’s inside of it. A very similar diet is the cabbage soup diet, which is the same thing except you pretend you’re eating soup, and then you fart yourself thin. I guess I’m not clear on the details.