The crux of his argument seems to be that denim was created for poor, dirty laborers, and our uncivilized society has idiotically adopted it as our primary fabric.  He attributes it to a “thou shalt not dress better than society’s most slovenly” mentality, simultaneously revealing that he believes denim-wearers are unclean and–of course–that he’s superior (who didn’t see that coming?).

He goes on to bemoan this “misuse of freedom” (oh yeah, denim is far more damaging to society than the KKK), all the while revealing his jealousy of people more successful (“Silicon Valley billionaires are rebels without causes beyond poses, wearing jeans when introducing new products”), who have more fun (“Seventy-five percent of American ‘gamers’ . . . are allowed to vote”), and of apparent inferior intelligence (“children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies”).  Boohoo.

Personally, I wear jeans because they’re comfortable, not as some fashion statement.  It seems that Will puts more thought into what I wear than I do, which he might argue is the root of his discontent.  In reality, I do like wearing suits, but there’s at least two problems with wearing one all the time:  1) I don’t feel like sweating in my office all day, and 2) frankly it devalues the few times in my life that I do dress up.

It reminds me of an early episode of House (yeah, George, I watch TV.  Fuck you.) in which House doesn’t hire a female doctor, because it’s apparent she’s more concerned with her looks than with being comfortable.  Assumedly, Will would prefer the opposite:  that we all dress uncomfortably to create false facades of importance and self worth.   He calls wearing denim “the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances”.  I call his editorial a carefully calculated attack on lower castes.

After all, his argument isn’t that, as a society, we’ve outgrown denim.  No, it’s that denim is meant for laborers and bums, and everybody else should have better taste–everybody else should dress their stature.  I suspect he would have loved to live in the middle ages.  Back then, everybody knew their place.  You had royalty, and you had peasants.  And they most certainly didn’t dress alike.

Honestly, I would have expected it to be the other way around–my first thought would have been that people with strong religious beliefs would be more willing to accept death, with the knowledge that an afterlife is awaiting them.  Apparently that’s not the case, though, and I’m curious if anybody has thoughts on why that might be.  I have a couple guesses myself, but I won’t get into them unless somebody’s interested in the comments.

Moving on to last Tuesday, I went out for a belated birthday dinner. I went to a Brazilian steakhouse called Gaucho’s here in Northville. The fifteen cuts of the all you can eat meat are so delicious you just can’t stop eating. It’s pretty much the best meal you can ever have. My favorite meat was the Parmesan encrusted pork tenderloin, and I don’t even like pork that much.

My sister came up to visit on Wednesday and just left this afternoon. I had a pretty good time with her here. We went to see The Killers on Thursday night. I hadn’t been to a concert in several years, and I had forgotten how cool the atmosphere is. The Killers are probably one of my favorite bands as well, so it was pretty sweet.

Saturday night, we headed down to Ann Arbor to see a stand-up comic. He was pretty good, though I’d never heard of him. The star of the evening was the Ethiopian food though. It was my second all you can eat meal of the week, though this one was much, much healthier. They bring out a bunch of entrees and some bread-like stuff. You use the bread-like stuff to scoop up the entrees. Pretty sweet.

Yesterday was tobogganing. I thought it was going to be like sledding, but it was more like a slide, covered with ice. They put the toboggan on the slide, you jump on, they kick you off, and blam, you fly down the hill at 30mph. It’s pretty fun.

It snowed all day too. I was out running errands after Whirlyball, and every time I went to my car, there was a good inch of snow on it. So I decided to take advantage of it. I went snowshoeing on Sunday afternoon. In hindsight, there really wasn’t enough snow to justify the snowshoes. Although, if there were more of it, it would have been crazy hard. So I guess it’s a bit of a paradox. The snowshoes really didn’t keep on top of the snow all that well. I sunk about 80% into the the 8 inches. I did go through some drifts though, and the seemed pretty helpful there. They sunk in a lot, but they kept the snow out of your shoes, making the walk bearable.

On a side note, I think one of the keys to happiness is taking advantage of what the area has to offer. That’s why I’ve kicked off my Embrace the Winter series. So far, I’ve done cross country skiing, downhill skiing, and now snowshoeing. I still really want to go snowmobiling, and a guy at work today made a list of other stuff I need to try. It included ice fishing, pond hockey, and dog sledding. I think I’d rather be waterboared than go ice fishing, but dog sledding peaked my interest a bit.

In other news, I was utterly shocked that the Cardinals upset the Panthers last weekend. I guess it’s a bit redundant to say that though as pretty much everyone feels that way. I’m jumping on the Cardinals bandwagon now though. Like most people, I like a good underdog story, even if they are division rivals of the Rams.

This year, on the other hand, we’ve already gotten probably about a foot, and even though I didn’t think I would, I’ve gotta say I’ve enjoyed it.  It just does something to add to the season, and it’s been fun seeing Athena mess around in it for the first time.

Anyway, there’s definitely a lesson to be learned from driving around in the snow here:  people who aren’t used to driving in the snow don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.  The ratio of SUVs to cars on the road has at least tripled, and I’ve seen more chains on tires than I’ve ever seen in my life.  That doesn’t stop them from driving 10mph though.  Oh no, you could almost walk faster than most of these bums drive.

Let’s not forget the morons who just slam on the gas when their tires slip.  “Well, if a little gas doesn’t work, I’m sure flooring it will!”  Wish us luck…

The snow day was an eventful one. First of all, Bush finally announced that he is giving an auto bailout. That’s a huge relief for me, personally. It essentially means I get to keep my job. I was honestly pretty worried about that for the last month or so.

So I’m sitting there on my couch in the afternoon, getting a little work done. I’m on my last task for the year, and feeling pretty good. And then, the power cuts out. How annoying. I take it in stride though. Nothing can ruin this most awesome of days. I’m feeling a little stir crazy anyway, and the snow has stopped. So I decide to go out and catch a movie. There were 3 trucks from the energy company there at the apartments so I figured I’d be ok.

The parking lot at my apartment was plowed, and they do a pretty good job keeping the roads clear so I figure I’m ok. The road right in front of my apartment was clear, but then I pulled out on 8 mile into massive ruts of snow. I did actually make it to the movie theater ok, though I almost got stuck trying to turn left into the theater.

But I digress. I ended up watching the new Will Smith movie, Seven Pounds. I can’t tell you whether it’s any good or not though. In the middle of the movie, they had to evacuate the theater. Apparently, a snow plow hit a gas line. I can tell you that I was very engrossed in the movie. I definitely want to see the end of it to find out what happens.

I got home, and the power was still out. There was a sign saying that it would be back on by midnight. I’m a little worried at this point because it’s cold. The heat obviously doesn’t work without electricity. I started trying to find a place to stay for the night because I didn’t want to freeze. Plus, it was like 6 o’clock and I had nothing to do until bedtime. Talk about boredom. As soon as I got a friend on the phone, though, the electricity kicked back on. I finished up my work, and now I’m on Christmas break until January 4th. Can’t beat that.

Sorry for the crappy quality. My phone doesn’t take the best pictures.

I left after work Friday, carpooling with two people I met that afternoon. We stopped off in this cool little restaurant on the way up called Iva’s Chicken Dinners in Sterling Michigan. It was hillbilly classy, and I liked it a lot. It was nice to take in some culture on the trip.

We got to the cabin around 1am after getting lost a few times. One of the guys in the group had opened up his family cabin for us to stay it. It was a pretty nice place, though it didn’t have electricity and the toilet didn’t flush. I met all of the people I would spending the weekend with at that time, and I was way too tired to make much conversation. I was also pretty nervous too.

Saturday we went to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior. We hiked for a bit and went to the beach. Then, we took a boat ride to see the pictured rocks. Afterward, we went to this local restaurant called the Bear Trap to sample the local specialty, the pasty. Unfortunately, they were sold out. I ate one on Monday morning, though, so it’s ok.

Sunday was pretty much a lazy day. We chilled around the cabin and the river it was on, and took a brief trip to a fresh water spring which had crystal clear water. Then, we had a nice campfire in the evening.

Monday was just driving back home. Michigan opens the bridge between the UP and the lower part of the state on Labor day for people to walk across it. My car decided to go on home, but a few people from the group did the walk. I never did understand the novelty of walking across a bridge, but whatever.

The highlight of the weekend was easily the people I was with. They were an incredibly interesting and diverse bunch. I really enjoy meeting people outside the usual circle of engineers at GM.

When I moved here, I knew that making friends would be tough so I tried to look at the problem as an adventure. I would honestly say that it is a bigger challenge for me than learning to live in a foreign country. I have come to appreciate other people a lot more in this journey, though. I have found that almost everyone I meet has something interesting to say, and it is fun “exploring” them in conversation to learn more about their lives. I think I have also become much more sociable as well, but much of that change happened in Prague and Bangkok.

I still haven’t made a lot of friends here, but I am enjoying the process of finding them a lot more now.