(Get on up) Like a Bread Machine

Pursuant to Jack's thing below, I'll note that he generally outdid himself on the tags for his gifts under the tree this Christmas. The one attached to the book about ants that he got me is reproduced here. As you can see Jack's work in the genre continues to exhibit both novelty and a keen understanding of exactly what his various siblings are going to find funny. (Nate: "Awesome, it's an 8-bit Nintendo Santa." Mike: "I thought that was a Lego Santa." Dad: "If Nate thinks it's an 8-bit Nintendo Santa, it's definitely an 8-bit Nintendo Santa.")

My 2011 feels like it's off to a slow-rolling start, though a good one. Thanks to the steady build-up of yoga classes and daily stair climbs at work, I can say with confidence for the first time since December that I no longer feel like someone who ate pie for breakfast every day between Christmas and New Year's. Also like Jack, I'm enjoying the production of a bread machine at home, in fact the very same model; this was a thoughtful gift from my parents and so far it's providing an excellent vector for whole wheat bread flour, letting me carbo-load for a marathon I will never run. I'm also putting a ton of miles on Janelle Monáe's rangy, genre-straddling album The ArchAndroid, a present from Pete, who's been keeping me in sci-fi concept albums ever since Deltron 3030. The Steelers' playoff run is all up in my head these days, too, though that's mostly letting out into long-running email threads with Jack.

Contrary to 2010, 2011 really doesn't feel like a milestone; it has this second-order interest in that it's this advanced-seeming year that's otherwise uninteresting. So far it just feels like the future. I just want to yell at the people around me -- who, granted, are mostly software developers and are more put out as a body that there aren't transporters and such yet -- "It's the future! Your phone is a tricorder! You are carrying around a computer screen like a book! You're in the future!"

(Further riffing on the James Brown reference of this post's title, a while ago an office-themed magnetic poetry kit was put onto the fridge in my workplace's break room, and one of the things I spelled out of the available words was "get on up like a fax machine". Due to extremely slow magnetic poetry turnaround it's still there on the freezer door. And -- although this blog is testament enough to the fact that I find a great many things I do unjustifiably funny -- this is maybe the only thing recently that I've just thought those around me have not found suitably hilarious. It's clever, people! Like Brian Wilson -- the Beach Boy, not the spooky-eyed Giants relief pitcher -- I guess I just wasn't made for these times.)