Adam Schwabe

This big guy came over to say hi while making a quick pitstop near Hohenschwangau (just after leaving Neuschwanstein Castle), Germany.

Like many of you, I first saw the Watchmen trailer during the previews before The Dark Knight. The second time seeing it (in IMAX, no less) really blew me away visually, but what really got me was the premise for the graphic novel on which the movie is based. As a YouTube commenter under the trailer so eloquently (!) surmises:

The Watchmen are a group of superheroes centered in an alternate reality during the 1980s. Nixon is still president having served five consecutive terms and is highly popular among Americans. The U.S and the Soviet Union are on the brink of nuclear war. Superheroes are banned by law “Keeane Act”

Top that trailer with a great track by the Smashing Pumpkins, The Beginning is the End is the Beginning and you’ve got some serious hype going for this movie! I’m going to check out the graphic novel when I get a chance for sure.

This is what $140 a night gets you. A lousy paper/styrofoam cup the likes of which you wouldn’t even find included with the purchase of a watercooler.

When some American hotel chains were reportedly caught not cleaning their rooms properly last year, most chains panicked after a ridiculous public outcry.

So here’s what we are left with. The Lowest Common Denominator. Forget solving the actual problem of lazy cleaning staff (Edit: or poorly equipped, as Paul rightly points out in the comments below), and take the bottom of the barrel route by doing away with glasses entirely and putting an even greater burden on the environment.

Oh, and that yellow paper the cup is sitting on? It’s a reminder to place it on your bed if you want your sheets cleaned to “help reduce the amount of water and energy we use.”

Long live disposable culture.

(This post was written with the new Wordpress app for the iPhone and while it’s not perfect, it’s a big step in the right direction. With ubiquitous wireless access everywhere I go, it’s less of a barrier to blogging!)

I’ll get it out of the way and say that I’m not the biggest fan of instrumental music (read: music without lyrics). Ratatat falls almost squarely into that category with their electronic-instrumental mixes (and the occasional lyrical track thrown in), but with one exception - just about everyting I’ve heard from them is well-produced, crisp, and really, truly sonically stimulating.

They’ve got a new album coming out at the end of the month called LP3 that Dillon turned me on to, and by the wonders of the Internet, the whole thing has already leaked and I can say that it’s another good one. Stand out tracks for me are Mirando, Imperials, and Shempi which you can check out above.

BMW Isetta, the company’s first mini car from 1955 had bench seating and was loved in Europe. On the back is a luggage rack where you strap your suitcases to.

This photo is garnering quite a bit of attention on Flickr, as are the rest of mine from the newly launched BMW Museum. Such a unique little car!

Reading for me has become a passive activity - one that I only take to when I’m waiting for the plane to take-off, taxi to the terminal or eating alone at a restaurant in Denver. I still thoroughly enjoy it, but since I base a lot of what I do on efficiency, there’s rarely a time when I can justify spending the time to do so.

I picked up the novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War quite some time ago, but have only now started reading it that I’m in full-swing travel mode again and have an ample amount of idle time. The novel is a series of interviews with survivors from the fictional (?) zombie war - how they survived, and what they experienced.

The story is peppered with really thought-provoking social commentary and gives an epic stage for showcasing the human condition. I’ll keep from spoiling it foryou (since I haven’t finished it yet myself), but I thought I’d share a strategy that one of the characters explains that they proposed in containing the zombie scourge.

A problem they faced in this war is that conventional war tactics were completely useless against the zombies. American “Shock & Awe” strategies were completely ineffective against an enemy that could not experience fear, and there was no salvation against an enemy who could survive drowning, burning, being torn to pieces or exposed to extreme environmental conditions. All you could do is blow their brains out.

Stick together

The outbreak was way too far out of control by the time any sort of defense could be organized, and armed forces were so weakened and spread out to do anything about it. They would have to withdraw to a special safe zone like an island or mountainous area to eradicate any immediate local infestation and then defend against further attacks.

There’s no way to save everyone

Only a small fraction of the population could be safely evacuated, and this fraction would have to be selectively chosen to keep society going once things settled down in terms of labour pool.

And easily the most controversial suggestion by this character…

Herd the rest of the survivors as bait

Distracting the living dead from the actual evacuation would be of critical importance due to their numbers, and this would involve herding the survivors that would not be evacuated into isolated areas, defending them, and even resupplying them to keep the hordes away from the rest of the survivors.

I haven’t read far enough ahead to see how effective this strategy is, but it really gives you an idea about how unsettling the book is in how it forces you to think logically, but often that is contradictory to being humane in a situation like this. The really intriguing parts of this novel are those that deal with how different societies and governments reacted (or failed to react) to the enormity of the situation. I’d highly recommend giving it a read!

Photo by James Calder

I’ve linked to the Eight Principles of Fun for quite a while now over on my quotes page (which, incidentally, will probably tell you a lot more about me than anything else on this site). I recently revisited it after Mark checked it out based on my link and noticed that the same guys who started the site had put together something new - The 5.75 Questions You’ve Been Avoiding.

In the spirit of being largely transparent and to hold myself to these, here I present my Five Big Answers:

1. What’s working for me?

- My career is moving along extremely well. I’m on the right track and much farther along than I anticipated that I’d be a year ago.
- I’m making great strides in being where I want to be with regards to the living situation. 1 month and counting until I move downtown
- I have a wonderful family who I love and that loves me.
- I’ve reached a point where I can pursue several different creative ventures outside of work, and I’m reasonably confident that I could be successful in any one of them.

2. What have I been avoiding?

“Anxiety is the tap on your shoulder that says, ‘Hey! Something important is happening here!’”

- Questions about some of the decisions I’ve made about past relationships and unresolved feelings surround them.
- Friendships that have kind of withered away but I haven’t bothered to either kill them off for good or resurrect them.

3. What’s boring me?

- The gay village in Toronto. There’s so much more to see in the city, but I constantly resort to the ’safe choice’ because I know what to expect there.
- Driving. I can’t wait to get out of the car, sell it for good (and hopefully never own one again) and get on my bike, and feel the wind on my face.
- Commuting. Going along with the last one, I spend far too much of my day going to and from places, and this has a lot to do with not living close enough to the majority of my close friends, and my work.
- Traveling for work, week after week just to appease other people. I have my own life, and I really have no desire to constantly travel to the same place week after week. It’s exhausting and pointless.

4. How do I want to be remembered?

- As someone who creates creative solutions to lingering problems.
- As a guy who cares about what you say, but might challenge you on it once in a while
- As a spirited person who wants to get the most out of life, as often as possible

5. Who do I love?

- Everyone in my family, directly related and otherwise. I really cherish my family and value the heritage and ancestry from where I come.
- People that open my mind to new possibilities, ideas, and paths.
- Nice people who make cool things.
- People who smile a lot.
- Those that are passionate about what they do, no matter what the pay bracket, industry, or possibility for pension or reward.

Dan Flavin (1933-1996), American artist famous for flourescent light installations on display at München’s Pinakothek der Moderne modern art museum.

Over the next while I’ll be featuring photos from my trip to Germany like the past few posts. Enjoy!

See more photos in the Flickr set

Olafur Eliasson’s BMW Art Car, titled "Your Mobile Expectations" is an ice-covered BMW H2R racing car, one of BMW’s official ‘art cars’.

Eliasson replaced the chassis of the car with an inter-woven skin of metal and then covered that in ice. The result can be viewed by visitors in a -10 degree Celcius room at the Pinakothek der Moderne modern art museum in München (Munich), Germany.
This was easily one of the highlights of my trip to Germany a few weeks ago - I was just in awe being alone in the room with this thing!

See more photos in the Flickr set

BMW’s Headquarters Tower in Munich, Germany. Designed by Karl Schwanzer, inaugurated in 1973.