I shot this on our way into the West Seattle Puget Consumer’s Co-Op yesterday:

That really made me smile. I thought of how often I myself had been guilty of such a silly dereliction, picking up a new bag or two at the checkout counter because I had left my stash of bags in the car and the parking lot was just so far away…. I like the fact that the folks at the PCC have sufficiently high regard for their customers’ intelligence, humility and good humor to feel free to poke gentle fun at us in the name of a good cause.

We don’t normally travel so far for our groceries, but we had gone for a stroll along the waterfront at Lincoln Park, which we hadn’t done in a while. Since we were already in the ‘hood we decided to get some shopping done and to pick up our weekly dessert at Cupcake Royale, the Puget Sound area’s premiere source for expensive but really tasty cupcakes. They have a new Salted Caramel cupcake in honor of our new President’s favorite candy that is to die for. After that it was off for a quiet evening at home. We considered going to an evening showing of Coraline, which we both really want to see. However, after spending most of the ride home sharing stories about the stupid/evil/neglectful things we’ve seen people do to themselves/each other/their pets, we decided we were in entirely too misanthropic a mood to be released into the wild.

So it was home for a nice steak dinner, cupcakes and a DVR’ed episode of Dollhouse, which we’re both really enjoying. I’d heard Joss Whedon describing the show in an interview on NPR and had been sucked in. We don’t buy into the common sturm und drang offered up by the show’s detractors, that it is misogynistic. The idea of a shadow industry that offers human beings as reprogrammable puppets for the delectation of an ultra-rich clientele is disturbing in its implications, for sure. But you just know that if the technology arises, that’s exactly the use to which it will will soon thereafter be adopted. One might conceivably argue that the selection of that sultry, most rasa of tabulae Eliza Dushku (perhaps the finest job of casting since Arnold Schwartzenegger was hired to portray an intimidating robot) to play the part of the main character Echo constitutes a bit of sexism on the part of the producer and others involved. But really: assuming a world in which this service actually exists, the market for fat, plain, dumpy—in a word, real—people to use as meat-puppets would likely be extremely small. There are gorgeous male “actives” (as these Pop-N’-Fresh personae are known) portrayed in the show as well, but as Whedon and Fox no doubt understood quite well, a show that depicted the story of a man being forced to fulfill the needs of the amoral moneyed elite week after week—unless he is always being programmed as The Ultimate Killing Machine or something—would never sell hatchbacks and toothpaste. And Whedon is not typically known for his anti-woman sentiments. I’m very interested in seeing how this program develops.

In other news, I went in for a series of neuroelectrical tests for my carpal tunnel on Friday, which proved to the satisfaction of all present that I do indeed have CTS and that I do not seem to have any other aggravating conditions such as a pinched cervical nerve or a gypsy curse. Hooray, I’m fucked up in exactly the way I thought I was! As a consolation prize, my doctor gave me a script for a popular neruopathic pain reliever called Neurontin, which, in case you are suffering from CTS, I highly recommend. This stuff has made the difference between sleeping the night through and being woken up four or five times a night with burning pain in my hands. It’s only a treatment for the symptoms, but perhaps it will let me get along without surgery until we’re in a better position to afford it. Sure has helped over the short term, lemmetellyou.

Last but not least, I have been spending a decent chunk of my spare time in the last week working on getting more use out of my silly overfeatured Windows Mobile smartphone. A recent upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1 means that the built-in Micro SD card slot can now read Micro SDHC cards, with capacities up to 16 gigabytes (or 320 times the capacity of my first SCSI hard drive). I promptly got myself an 8-gigger and set about trying to figure out how to use the thing as my primary music player so I could switch from my 4 gig iPod Nano. The big trick lies in finding a piece of software for Windows Mobile that plays files encoded in Apple’s AAC format. There are a few prominent candidates out there, but my experience with them so far has been somewhat lackluster. Many of them offer up way too many bells and whistles—visualizers, slick interfaces, aggressive auto-inventory of your media—that can really suck up the processor cycles in what is, after all, supposed to predominantly function as a phone. Anything that affects the speed or stability of my phone is out. My wish list for a music app would include playlists, an equalizer with presets, and very little else. Maybe a podcast subscriber if I were feeling luxurious. Haven’t found that magic combination yet, but I’m optimistic that it exists. And I’ll be God-damned if I’m going to buy an iPhone. Though maybe I can get my boss to buy one for me. 😛