Saturday, September 10, 2011

In which I complain about getting free stuff

I unexpectedly got a big, thick envelope in the mail yesterday from St. Joseph's Indian School. I knew its contents were going to be odd based on this:
 

But despite its promise of 3 - no 4! - free gifts, I was still surprised by the sheer volume of crap contained in the envelope:

I've gotten guilt-mailings from charities before, but this is ridiculous. In case you can't make out what everything is, there are two notepads:


A personalized calendar, a sticker sheet, and a sheet of address stickers:

A preemptive "Certificate of Appreciation" for my help:


A personalized letter from an Authentic Indian Child, and personalized gift certificates for me to provide said child with food and clothing:

And last, but certainly not least, a real live dreamcatcher:

I can't think of anything that would make me less inclined to donate to a charity than them sending me all this crap in the mail. In addition to making me feel resentful for trying to guilt me into giving them money because of the reciprocal nature of gift-giving, it also casts serious doubt on what they would actually do with my money once they got it - send more dreamcatchers to more random people in the mail? How is that helping any Lakota children?

Some quick googling revealed that not only have they been doing this trick for awhile, but that St. Joseph's Indian School is actually pretty negatively reviewed by the BBB's Charity Reports Index - for, among other issues, only spending 51% of their money on their actual program. I guess the other 49% goes to dreamcatchers and postage.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

More Harry Potter!

Look where I went this weeekend!

Me and my friend DJ at "Harry Potter: The Exhibition" in NYC

That's right, even though the last movie has come out, I still found a (sort of) new method of experiencing Harry Potter! Unfortunately, you weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so this photo is all I have to show you.

The exhibit had a bunch of the props and costumes from all eight movies, it was crazy how detailed they were. The annotated potions textbook from HP6 in particular was a work of art - they actually made up an entire book of potions, and then wrote all kinds of crazy stuff all over it. Other props were less meticulously crafted - the small print on Prof. Umbridge's educational decrees from HP5 (you know, these things) was just "blah blah blah blah blah."

The craziest thing was how tiny the main actors' costumes were from the first several movies - I mean, I knew they were only 10 and 11 when they started, but seeing those little kid clothes really hit home how young they were. It boggles my mind. Also, I always thought Snape's robes were black, but apparently they were really dark blue.

Next item on my agenda of perpetual HP excitement: the Harry Potter set tour in London?

Thursday, September 1, 2011

(lambda (cross-stich) (awesome cross-stich))

Behold, my latest nerdy cross stitch:

Yes, that's right, they make black cross-stitching cloth!
Figuring out the pattern for this one gave me quite a headache. I kept thinking, "Okay, I'll base this lambda's height off of the shield next to it, but I need that shield to be big enough for a lambda inside of it, but I need that lambda to be the same height as the shield next to it..." and recursing into frustration. But thanks to lots of arithmetic, I finally did it!

See, it is really cross-stiched:

And it is really recursive (to a point):

Bonus nerd feature: The outer shield is 128 stitches wide, the next one is 64 stitches, the next one is 32, etc... I am a nerdy cross-stitching genius!