Facebook is Targeting Your Obsession

Before the Facebook platform was introduced, I knew plenty of people (in fact, I'm probably one of them) who had accounts, but rarely logged on — most people weren't sufficiently compelled by the minute changes in their friends' music taste to check it daily.

But once the platform was introduced, all my friends suddenly started finding reasons they NEEDED to check Facebook constantly (for most of these people, those reasons were Scrabulous). This is why the platform is such a brilliant business model. No matter what your obsession, Facebook can now target it. Not into "poking"? Fine, here's some zombies. Not into zombies? How about political propaganda?

I never got into Scrabulous, but just as Long Tail advocates would predict, I've found an app that targets my obsessive streak. So far I've mostly percieved the platform as an opportunity to crankily delete dozens of invitations from people I've forgotten I ever knew to install apps I would never care about. But the allure of seeing my friends neatly categorized by type and temperament compels me to switch to the other side.

So if we're Facebook friends, you should expect an invitation to add the "personality type" application. And you NEED to accept it.

Southern Vacation

Recently, Jesse and I took a road trip through the South (or rather, Appalachia and parts of the upper south); we visited my parents (and their dog and chickens) in West Virginia, drove through Virginia, visited Knoxville and Nashville in Tennessee, crossed Kentucky, drove back up to my parents' house through Western West Virginia's mountainous highways, and visited more family in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

I've been procrastinating on blogging about this because I'm not sure what to say. I could list the places we visited and things we did there, or I could try to describe the people we met, but none of that would really convey how I feel about it. It will have to suffice, then, to say that this was a strong contender for my favorite of all the vacations/trips I've ever taken.

Transit-Filled Weekend

This weekend brought me a handful of new T stops, visited both deliberately and in the course of my other adventures. I spent Friday afternoon working at a cafe in the Charles MGH area (the last new-to-me Red Line stop that's on both lines!); its architectural feel is a pleasant mix of modern urban business district and (literally centuries-)old-school upscale rowhouses.

I'd also heard great things about "that liquor store at Charles MGH", as friends had been describing it, so I stopped by. The store did not disappoint! They had two entire walls lined with single bottles of beer, including a lot of fancy/unusual brews. I've been a deficient beer geek (and hop lover!) in that I haven't yet had a chance to try 120 Minute IPA, so I was excited to be able to pick up a bottle -- though at 20% alcohol, I haven't yet found the right time to try it.

Saturday Jesse, Sam, and I spent the afternoon on an odyssey of many-transit-typed adventures around the city. We first went to an art space in the South End to see more of this guy's work (first encountered at Somerville Open Studios). We hit the Silver Line to uber-terminal Dudley Station for lunch -- though the Silver Line isn't a T stop for the purpose of my transit project (the Silver Line is not a train, my friends! it is merely a bus laboring under the *delusion* that it is a train!).

Post-lunch we took one of Dudley's approximately 7234582910 buses to Roxbury, where much to our dismay The Greater Boston Bigfoot Research Center was closed. Another time! The visit was not in vain, however, since on our way to the Stonybrook Orange Line stop (in a pretty neat place, across from a cutely-landscaped park), we accidentally walked by the Sam Adams brewery and accidentally got free beer (they were asking visitors to vote between two samples of beer, only one of which can make it into next year's officially-marketed lineup). Nom nom nom!

Since our evening plans were in Somerville (and since this was a stop I hadn't yet visited), we rode the Orange Line all the way across town to Sullivan Square. Like Dudley, Sullivan is a mega-transfer point, where many bus lines have their termini; unlike Dudley, Sullivan, as far as we could tel, offers absolutely no motive for visiting other than transferring to a bus. So, that's what we did!

Vegetables!

After spending some time with some vegan friends, I decided (at least for an indefinite trial period) to give up eating mammals. Additionally, Jesse and I are subscribed to a farm share this summer, which means that we have more vegetables than usual hanging around our house.

Combined, these factors have given rise to a new dietary algorithm. Whether I'm at home or at a restaurant, I first look to see if there's a vegetable-based food I feel like making/ordering; next, I look for a vegetarian option; and only if I particularly don't feel like one of these options or they're not available do I turn to a poultry- or fish-based option.

After a week or two of this, I'm finding myself with improved mood and energy -- and I've started craving vegetables and thinking "om nom nom salad!" in situations where in the past I'd usually have chosen fried cheese. Added bonus: years of frustrating "choice anxiety" in restaurants is substantially alleviated -- I feel more relaxed going through these decision-making tiers than tackling the entire menu at once.

Vacation and Electro-Sabbath

I just got back from a week with some college friends on a yacht one friend's parents had rented in the Virgin Islands for her college graduation -- which is pretty much as awesome as it sounds. I caught up with old friends, swam with a turtle, learned some sailing, drank piña coladas, and many more adventures.

Another remarkable thing about this trip was that I had no laptop, no cell phone, no blogs, no webcomics, no email, no TV, for a week straight -- a distinctive experience for someone who's accustomed to spending hours tied to a screen every day. When we were first planning this trip, I was worried about being forced to be not working and out of contact with clients for so long, but you know what? It was fantastic. I even uncharacteristically declined the opportunity to check my email when it was available at some places we pulled into port -- and since I'd warned my clients about my vacation plans and worked a little extra the week before, nothing urgent had piled up when I got home.

In some ways, this email-less week was similar to the "Electro-Sabbath" that Jesse and I instituted a few weeks ago: on Wednesday nights after 9pm, we don't check email, use the internet, or watch TV or movies. The idea is to clear our heads from the addictive and attention-fraying 20-open-tabs lifestyle of the everyday and free up time to dedicate to non-electronic activities we want to pursue (reading, painting, chatting, going for walks). It's relaxing to do this once a week, but an entire week without the electronic tether is unbelievably refreshing -- obviously something I can't do often in my profession, but something to keep in mind for the occasional vacation.

More T Stops, More Studios

I furthered my plan of visiting new T stops this weekend -- we went to the open studios at the Distillery in South Boston by way of the Andrew T Stop. The Distillery was about a mile from the T stop, so we got to explore South Boston on our walk, which was pretty interesting and cool (though not literally cool -- Boston's 3 weeks of nice spring/summer weather seem to be over, and it's oppressively hot and humid). Southie wasn't quite what I'd expected -- with colorful, close-together houses on hills, some streets looked surprisingly San Francisco-esque, but the Irish pub we stopped into definitely didn't (its decor tended more toward Irish nationalist propaganda).

Later, after walking downtown post-studios, we also hit up the New England Medical Center T Stop to get home -- I hadn't realized that the FAO Schwartz Bear had a new home!

This was the smallest of the three open studios I've seen in the past year, and the artists skewed the youngest -- one friend commented that it seemed like college art, which I agreed with. In contrast, the Fort Point studios from last fall were full of mostly professional artists, and the Somerville studios from earlier this spring seemed to have a lot of adult amateurs (a demographic that I think produces a lot of interesting work!).

A Movie Without Enough Male Presence?

The NYT has a fairly unfavorable review of the Sex and the City movie; while I haven't seen the movie, have no desire to do so, and am sure several of the criticisms are valid, part of the review rubbed me the wrong way:

Unlike the show, which allowed the men to emerge occasionally from the sidelines with lines of actual dialogue, the male characters in the movie stand idly by, either smiling or stripping, reduced to playing sock puppets in a Punch-free Judy and Judy (times two) show. I’m all for the female gaze, but, gee, it’s also nice to talk — and listen — to men, too.

Uh, right. Men don't have enough screen time?

Not according to another NYT article by the same author (!), xkcd, Jezebel, or indeed, anyone with half a brain who watches blockbuster movies (or even their advertisements). It's nice to talk and listen to men in movies, sure, but you have every other movie coming out this summer for plenty of that.

Urban Biomes

One of the things that I like the most about living where we do is that we're within walking distance of so many urban and suburban "biomes" -- different population levels and feels, from dense forest to downtown skyscrapers.

Our apartment is in a neighborhood that's reminiscent of suburban residential areas (though the houses are closer together). When I go running, I can go to the commercial-suburban-feeling strip malls and highways near Alewife and feel like I'm in the sprawling exurbs. Or I can go to almost the opposite extreme, the parks surrounding Fresh Pond, where I can be surrounded by trees and water and out of view of human-made structures. The Cambridge and Somerville squares have almost a small-town downtown feel. Stretching "walking distance" to a few miles, Allston is a bustling urban neighborhood. And then there's the financial district, full-scale city.

Everywhere else I've lived, and most places I could live, have a much more homogenous five-mile radius around them -- but variety is just one of many perks of living in the Boston area.

TV Suspense

I've grown enamored of watching TV dramas; I love being excited about finding out what will be revealed in the episode I'm going to watch next. But there are a couple shows that I started watching and grew tired of before the suspenseful questions were answered: Weeds and Desperate Housewives.

I think part of this is due to a split between different kinds of suspense. On the one hand, there's what I think of as forward-looking thriller suspense -- basically, "how will they get out of this?" On the other hand, there's backward-looking mystery suspense, or "how did they get into this?".

Weeds excelled in building up "how will they get out of this" situations. How will Nancy escape the cadre of drug dealers with guns pointed at her? But it eventually grew tiresome, at least to me, because it seemed like there was no "so what" or larger structure behind it. Desperate Housewives built up some "how did they get into this" questions about the past of Wisteria Lane. Why did Mary Alice kill herself? What happened to Dana? Yet with the forward-looking storylines much less compelling, I didn't feel motivated to keep watching.

I think the best suspense interleaves both styles: like one of my favorite shows, Lost. Lost mixes "how did they get into this" questions (why is there a polar bear in the tropics?) with "how will they get out of this" questions (how, if at all, will they get off the island?). The answers to both questions are often intertwined. Who built the hatch in the jungle? What will happen when they open it? Both types of suspense are given more emotional depth with flashbacks and flashforwards that show just enough to keep you curious.

Which is to say, OMG I am so impatient for Thursday night!!

Harbor Islands

It's not a T stop, but today I went with a group for a local Boston adventure -- we took a ferry to Spectacle Island, in the harbor, for a picnic. It was a beautiful day, albeit a little windy, and our picnic, hiking, and beach football-throwing were fun. I was a little disappointed that the island seemed so landscaped (it had wide paths, and few if any trees), since I'd always thought of the Harbor Islands as a crazy wilderness -- but what do I expect from an island mostly made of landfill. It's also apparently one of the highest points in the harbor -- we saw a nice view when we climbed the south drumlin.