Carpe Hot Dog

'Carpe Hot Dog' Carpet Mutationem*

After nearly four years with Typepad, the time has come for "Carpe Hot Dog" to move on and seek out greener digital pastures.

Starting today, you can find a new, improved, and less blue "Carpe Hot Dog" at doogs.wordpress.com.

Why the change?  Back-of-house issues, mostly.  That, and Typepad's frustrating service outages, which seem to have been growing more frequent of late.

I'll be keeping this site up a while longer, but please be sure to direct your browsers to the new, improved 'Carpe Hot Dog', as you won't see any new posts appearing here.

* Translation: 'Carpe Hot Dog' Seizes Change

Troubling...

While there were a number of factors that contributed to the collapse of the Roman Republic, one of the more significant ones was undoubtedly the willingness of politicians to exploit obscure loopholes for personal gain.

Without going into details (which would no doubt bore most of you to tears), let me just say that the sense of honor and, for lack of a better term, "gentlemanly conduct" that existed during the early and middle Republic were little more than wistful memories by Caesar's day.  Acts that would have been unconscionable a century before became commonplace, and even necessary if a politician was to avoid prosecution and exile.

Like so many things in this world, this exploitation started small, with little acts here and there, before eventually snowballing out of control.  Next thing you know, heads are being displayed in the Forum and guys who have salads named after them are crossing some river called the Rubicon at the head of an army.

Well, as Santayana said, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".  Apparently our legislators missed out on some of their ancient history...

Just sayin', guys.  You may want to stop acting like asshats before this spirals out of control.

BookPeople to the Rescue!

The wife and I were both looking forward to yesterday and the delivery, at last, of our two copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by those Santas in brown shorts, UPS.

I was so anxious that I even put aside my typical morning ritual of writing at Seattle's Best so I could be home when the doorbell rang. 

But UPS didn't come.  Midday passed into afternoon, and all of the sudden it was 7:30, and we were still without our books.  Calls were made, and we learned that Amazon had arranged things so that UPS would deliver the books to the USPS, who would then handle the final leg of the distribution.

Pissed off that they would do this without passing word along to their customers, yet hopeful at the same time, I made the trek to our mailbox (or mail cubby, more like) to see if the books had been delivered that way.  No dice.  We received a nice tax refund check, and some credit card applications, but no books.

More calls were placed.  The first was to Amazon, to claim the promised refund for not making the guaranteed delivery on the 21st.  The second was to Barnes & Noble, in hopes that they would still have some in stock.  Of course, they didn't, but we could feel free to check back on Tuesday.  The story was the same at Borders, and even at the nearby grocery store.

I went to bed fuming.  I'd been looking forward to curling up with this last Harry Potter adventure, and, as appropriate as the refund was, I didn't feel it was enough.  Amazon - or more correctly, the Post Office - had failed to deliver, in more ways than one.  If I'd known that was the plan, and that UPS would be passing things off, I'd have cancelled my order and reserved a copy at one of the many area bookstores.  I felt cheated.

This morning, I got up early and, with no Harry Potter to read, made my way to Seattle's Best to do make some progress on my Chapter V revisions.  Then, while I was packing up, I decided on a whim to head over to BookPeople - an awesome independent bookstore next to the office - and see if maybe, just maybe, they had a few in stock.  I wasn't hopeful, but it was only a few hundred yards out of my way, so what could it hurt?

As I walked in, I saw a crowd of people around the information desk, and figured they were probably reserving copies for when the next shipment came in.  But then they parted, and I saw a handful of copies left on the display shelf.  Turns out that BookPeople, unlike just about every other retailer in the Austin area, foresaw something like this happening, and has been receiving shipments throughout the weekend.

Eager to reward them for this foresight, I was sure to snag copies of The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass as well.  I just finished The Golden Compass (excellent, by the way) yesterday, and will be diving into its sequels once I get through Deathly Hallows.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a book to read.

Gosh, No One Saw This Coming...

The Jeep Wrangler.  With the possible exception of the pickup truck, it's the most distinctly American vehicle on the planet.  It is also, to this day, one of the most capable out-of-the-box offroaders that money can buy.  While rivals have done away with solid axles and transfer cases, the Wrangler has soldiered on as one of the few SUVs actually designed for the rigors of off-pavement travel.

Until last year, however, it had always been a two door, and thus losing buyers to less capable but more livable vehicles such as the Nissan Xterra and Hummer H3.

With the recent redesign, Jeep finally did what many had been begging them to do for years.  They made an honest-to-goodness four-door Wrangler.

Surprise, surprise, it's a smash hit.  Jeep can't build them fast enough.  And now, word has arrived that the four-door Wrangler Unlimited accounts for 82% of total Wrangler production.

I don't know whether to say "good for them" or "about damn time".

Now all they need to do is drop a diesel into the sucker.

Headline of the Day

Courtesy of Fark.com:

"Mom wants schools to ban books filled with sin. There goes my trigonometry textbook"

I Didn't Sign on for Portland...

I don't get it.  I really don't.  The rain just WILL NOT STOP.  It's been going on like this for something like six weeks now.  I think we've had maybe two or three rain-free days since the official start of summer. 

Something, somewhere, is seriously out of whack.

It's July 20th, and we haven't hit 100 degrees once this year.  Hell, we haven't hit 95.

This time last year, Austin had hit temperatures of 95 or above 32 times.  Two years ago, it had already done so 35 times.  This year?  Not once.

Mind you, I'm not exactly missing the usual inferno that is Texas in the summer.  But this persistent, gray drizzle is really something of a mood killer.

Predictions for "Deathly Hallows", aka, Yes, I'm a Dork

With the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a mere ten days away, I thought I'd take a moment to post up my predictions of what will happen and how things will shake out.

You'll find them after the jump.

A word of warning...predictions could contain spoilers if you haven't read the other books...

On the Shelf

I've been in a bit of a lull since finishing 1634: The Baltic War.  I've had my eye on Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, but with the next - and final - Harry Potter just around the corner, I've been hesitant to crack open anything so hefty.

Seeking a quick diversion, I took a chance and picked up Max Brooks' World War Z, and am I ever glad I did.

The book is about a global zombie war that takes place in the near future.  As crazy as it sounds, the story is presented as a series of interviews with various witnesses and survivors, in a similar vein to the works of Stephen E. Ambrose.  I'm finding it a fascinating format, as it allows Brooks to introduce dozens of wildly different characters, each filling in the larger story with their own, personal experiences.

Well worth the read.

Order of the Phoenix

Continuing what's become something of a tradition, Jamie and I made our way out to the Alamo Drafthouse last night for the midnight (okay, 11:55) screening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

My initial reaction?

If I were ranking the five extant movies, the list would go something like this:

1. Prisoner of Azkaban
2. Order of the Phoenix
3. Goblet of Fire
4. Chamber of Secrets
5. Sorcerer's Stone

Order of the Phoenix was good.  Quite good, actually.  But frustrating at the same time.  If director David Yates had slowed down the pace just a touch, and let the film run twenty, maybe thirty minutes longer, I think he could have elevated it to greatness.  As it stands, there is just enough missing, especially in the final act, to make everything feel a bit rushed. 

Apart from the runtime (which, being honest, I would prefer to see somewhere nearer to four hours), it's hard to find places to criticize the movie.  The directing was strong, as was the acting, which struck me as more natural this time around.  And the casting was spot on, as usual.  If there's one thing that continually amazes me about this series, it's how, not just good, how inspired the casting has been, not only with respect to the three leads, but all the supporting characters as well.  Maggie Smith as McGonagall, Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid, Alan Rickman as Snape, and now Imelda Staunton as Umbridge.  They fit so naturally that, were it not for their splendid work elsewhere, one might be tempted to think these actors were born for the singular purpose of playing these characters.

See the movie.  And if you haven't yet, see Transformers, too.

What Are They Doing?

I have two questions for the people at Volkswagen.

First.  What gives with your bizarre SUV naming conventions?  You name your passenger cars for the various winds (or, in the case of the Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn), but the best you can come up with for your SUVs are "Various African Tribes that Start With a "T" and Are Difficult to Spell, Much Less Pronounce"?  The Touareg was bad enough, and now we've got the Tiguan coming down the pipe?  If that is really the best you can do, you'd fit in quite well in the U.S. government.  I hear FEMA has some openings.

Second.  How can you debut a compelling concept vehicle, and one that is clearly already near-production, to boot, and somehow go and turn the final product into the blandest vehicle this side of the Ford Explorer?

The Tiguan that showed up at Los Angeles last November was, in my opinion, pretty damn slick.  Strong stance.  Cool grillework.  Paint color that made me want to guzzle Sunkist.

I had high hopes for this strangely-named SUV.  Had Volkswagen managed to translate the look to the final production model, Jamie and I might have even considered looking at it, especially considering Volkswagen's love of diesel engines.  Unfortunately, that rather attractive concept turned into this:

The same basic shape, I'll grant, but come on, what happened?  One is pretty slick, and the other one is the visual equivalent of an article out of Dental Economics.