Lots of Monkeys

The elderly lady that walks her grey poodle in the morning. The two kids that run school, ten feet ahead of their mother. The woman who always collapses her side mirror when she parks her car before having a cigarette and can of pepsi for breakfast as she walks to the Metro.

They are strangers that I see every day, and they’re almost like temporal landmarks. For instance, I know I’m late to work if the car with the collapsed mirrors is already parked.

Sometimes you hear about them secondhand, like the Korean on the Red Line that used to sing Christian Hymns in between stops, although I haven’t heard about him lately.

I never knew his schedule, either.

Back in the neighborhood. Things were a little different. Playtime was on the street, with frequent shouts of “car!” I wasn’t there, but I heard that Denver once broke the tree in the Ruiz’s front yard. They had hit a tennis ball into the lone, spindly tree. Despite their best efforts, the tree refused to let go of the ball. Denver, in his exasperation, started shaking the tree violently. It broke at the trunk (it was a young tree) and the ball managed to stay in the branches, even though Denver was now holding the remains of the Ruiz’s tree horizontally.

“Uh oh.” I imagine Denver there, the only one of us that had to shave on a regular basis, holding a tree in his hands. The image makes me laugh, on the inside.

When he turned around, everyone was gone. Of the dozen or so kids playing in the street, they had all managed to turn into ghosts. Denver turned around in time to see one of the garage doors closing, the ankles and feet of his friends disappearing beneath the lower edge of the garage door.

I never did find out what happened after that. I never got around to stopping by the Ruiz’s place since they were further away. That, and I might be forced to tell them what I knew about the incident.

There was another time, I almost lost an eye. One of the older kids had rigged up a rock throwing rifle out of a dowel, a loose board from his fence, a clothespin, and a lot of rubber bands. All I remember is turning around and a small piece of gravel hitting me just above my right eye. I think it was the same kid that taught us all how to make switchblades out of three popsicle sticks and two rubber bands. I don’t know why we sharpened sticks on our concrete. We just did.

We had knife fights with those sharpened sticks then, saying that we’d stop as soon as someone drew blood. Nobody got hurt though. At least not that I know of.

It was a little odd coming back from the desert. Disembarking the plane, I found the air cool and damp, even what little I could feel from the tiny gap between the plane and the platform. Dulles airport seemed quiet, and it’s not quiet at all.

I found that I missed neon lights and ringing slot machines. I missed outlandish, near stereotypical representations of real world places. I missed television screens six blocks long. I missed buffets.

Where were the pirate ships? The indoor canals with singing gondoliers? The fountains of chocolate? The floral displays in my lobby that change daily?

On the other hand, I’m now far, far away from men who wear too short shorts with black socks and middle aged women that bare their midriffs. Far from the masses of poorly highlighted hair, miscreant children, and people that proudly wear mullets and mesh ballcaps.

On the other hand, perhaps not so far away.

At least Vegas had that chocolate fountain going for it.

Here’s the stuff you want to see about the xbox 360:

Short Gist video from Our Colony. If you have five minutes to spare, this is a good watch.

Official fact sheet. This is the scary part.

Three 3.2 Gigahertz core processors.

Insanity.

Xbox live for free out of the box. Every single console.

With these specs, it’s hard to argue that it has the brute processing power to make things look nice. The user interface you see in the video doesn’t look horrible either. Notice that the specs point out that the hard drive is upgradable. Maybe we’ll see an 80 gigabyte drive down the road.

MicroSoft is selling the 360 as the Unified Box of Entertainment. They want you to do everything with this box. Listen to your music, watch your movies, and play your games. Then, you can get game invitations when you’re doing any of the other things.

Videogames are already a push technology. Every single game on the 360 supports HD Televisions. The push to HD television looks like it’ll be led by MicroSoft.

Also, kudos to MicroSoft for wireless controllers as the standard. It’s about time.

So I’m looking at teapots. And I find one thats. . .

Yes.

I know.

So anyway, teapots.

This teapot looks great. The wooden stand is nice, and the teapot itself is aesthetically pleasing. The idea of a candle lighting up the brown liquor is also appealing.

But I have to ask what’s wrong with a real teapot and maybe a cozy?

Besides, you should be pouring boiling water into your teapot, swirling it around to warm it up, dumping that water, then steeping your tea. I do a variation of this with mugs at work. It does keep the tea warmer longer, since it’s not spending all of its heat warming up the mug.

The candle is a nice touch, but I kind of have my doubts. I just imagine my condo in flames.

That, and well—it’s ninety-two dollars.