L'histoire de sa vie

Every child loves construction implements. Some people outgrow this, while others, such as myself, still hold a place in their hearts for the awesome masters of machinery that build our world. Specifically, I am most enthralled by the Bobcat, the maker of the first and most popular skid loader, or, as I like to call it, the KitchenAid of construction implements.

See, the skid loader is a compact construction vehicle on which you can attach a number of different add-ons: bulldozer, snow blower, forklift, hopper, stump grinder, etc. There are tons of attachments for the skid loader, and Bobcat’s is not only the most popular, but also the most exciting looking.

Anyway, since Tom at camp owns a Bobcat, and since I’m a little obsessed with how awesome they are, I asked him if I could take a shot at driving it. Luckily, since Tom is a very cool guy, the answer was yes. So when Ribnick and I were asked to make a video for the upcoming all-staff meeting at camp, we decided that would be the perfect time to get the opportunity.

Driving the Bobcat is unbelievably awesome. There’s a lot of power in the skid loader, and even though the throttle was down, we were able to get much more speed than I assumed would be realized in a construction vehicle. Furthermore, since the wheels are controlled by two separate joysticks, the Bobcat has the tightest turn-radius, zero, of any vehicle I’ve ever driven. That’s right: it turns on itself.

The forklift attachment was easy to operate as well; using the two foot pedals, I was able to lift a pallet with Ribnick on it with no trouble whatsoever. The whole interior of the Bobcat is designed for comfort as well, with a padded safety bar and seat. It’s airy, comfortable, and full of awesome.

More pictures: [1] [2] [3] [4]

About a week ago, two staff members at camp organized a bachelorette party for themselves, as both are getting married soon after camp. The party was organized, as any bachelorette party would be, to be strictly for women only. Upon hearing of the party and the restriction, I came up with an idea while talking to Heidi: to show up in a policeman’s outfit with a boom box and pretend to be a male stripper.

Heidi thought the idea would be hilarious, so I went to seek out Lynda in order to get access to the costume room and acquire cop clothes. However, since camp apparently has no 5-0 uniforms, I had to come up with another idea. The play earlier that night had been South Pacific, so the idea arose that instead of the fuzz, I would dress as a sailor.

I arrived about thirty minutes after the party began, wearing a sailor costume, hat, and belt, and carrying a boom box filled with stripper music. Unfortunately, I was unable to find D-batteries and there was no convenient plug so rather than play my music, I was forced to dance to the already-playing music.

The “stripping” entailed me taking off my belt and unzipping my top to show a white shirt beneath. The joke was significantly more successful than I expected it would be, and numerous people approached me over the following days to tell me that they have “never laughed so hard,” or that “it was the best part of the night,” or just to ask me how the idea came about. I’m glad it was successful because I thought it was hilarious and a lot of fun as well.

And at least I know that the world of male stripping is open to me if I can go nowhere else!

There’s not much to this post except that I want some of these quotations to survive into posterity. Long ago I ripped them off of my Facebook wall when I trimmed down my account to prepare for the deletion that has still yet to arrive. In addition to preserving a few quotations that perhaps only exist here, I also think this provides an interesting look into the Nathan of several years ago when I created my Facebook account. What things were interesting to me, what quotations did I find funny or important?

• "Don’t invite bicycle" – Dr. Dimiev
• "If you can’t explain something in thirty seconds, it’s not worth knowing about" – Rick Mercer
• "Ben Yehuda Street is like Rodeo Drive in Israel" – Jaime C.
• "Those yellow eggplant things… oh yeah, Squash." – Debbie K.
• "Anything is walking distance if you’re willing to walk it." – Yana G.
• "Actually, you tested into the lower half of Ulpan Alef." – Rabbi Diamond
• "When a relative dies, you go to the funeral whether she was Danish or not." – Veslamay, from "The Danish Poet"
• "I’m pretty much indifferent to everything… even genocide." – Jacob S., former USY international Social Action/Tikkun Olam VP
• "Checks under the bed/Then opens the dresser/He looks at the closet/I pull out my Beretta" – R. Kelly, "Trapped in the Closet," Chapter 1
• "We can’t put a forkful of waffles into our mouth without coughing up the ball." – Leo McGarry, the West Wing, S2E11
• "The day I follow Aubrey Hale Clayton on a wet deck – that day, I cut my throat." – Detroit 9000
• "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas." – Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson (1875-1961)
• "You can have this seat because I’m taking this ass to go." – A character in the movie, ‘Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘n’ Waffles.’
• "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." – Benjamin Franklin

A lot of these I still find meaningful or interesting. I still vividly remember stories surrounding a few of these. Others, I have no idea how they entered my life. In any case, it’s just another view into my past.

Pretty much on the heels of winning my iPad, I entered another contest associated with @neatorama, sponsored by @RandomGoodStuff. The contest was simple, and required pretty much no work on my part (just a comment and a tweet), but the result was awesome: another victory and more free stuff!

Here’s the post declaring my victory. More importantly, here’s the stuff I won: Black Buckyballs (216 powerful magnetic orbs) and an Arrogant Bastard Tumbler (seriously this is a glass made out of an Arrogant Bastard 22oz bottle. It’s awesome. And I love Arrogant Bastard Ale.)

I’m hosting a radio show at camp tomorrow night. Because my radio show will feature entirely rap music, Benji pointed out that I need a DJ name. Immediately I realized that it’s a pretty good idea.

So here’s what I’ve come up with, but I don’t particularly love any of them. Comment with some suggestions and if I like yours, then you’ll hear a dedication when I post the recording of the show (hopefully on Tuesday).

My (not so great) ideas:

• DJ 713 [I have to rep my city.]
• DJ Magnificent Combo [MC]
• DJ Fireplace Contraband [After my beer.]

I bought UnitedNathan.com a while back, and now I’m announcing its rebirth as my online profile. It contains my résumé, a feed of my recent tweets, and my most recent blog post, without pictures. (Pictures look good here, but are wack on a profile of this style).

Check it out, at www.unitednathan.com or cv.nathan-miller.com. Best part? It’s fully HTML5 and CSS3 compliant (with the exception of some browser-specific hacks to deal with IE sucking), and I learned a bit of jQuery in order to build it. Special thanks to @brodyberg for the jQuery suggestion, and @ChinaSchau for the basic idea.

My next step? Who knows. At this point, the only thing not working is the CUvend link, which points to a placeholder, since our vending database has to be completely redone. In any case, the United Nathan Network is now this much bigger.

I read the New Yorker pretty avidly. I’m a big fan of the publication and enjoy reading everything except for the fiction, which I skip pretty much every issue. The “Summer Fiction Issue” therefore remains pretty unread.

Anyway, a lot of people ask me why I, as someone with relatively conservative views, read the New Yorker. At camp, where the people around me are significantly more liberal, as Jews tend to be, this question comes up even more often than elsewhere. How can I read a publication with such an obvious and stated liberal bias?

Well the answer is pretty simple: more than liberal, the New Yorker is intellectual. I learn more about the world, the way people think, and myself by reading an intellectual magazine, more than I could from the garbage that is found in most other publications. On top of this, because I often find myself disagreeing with the articles I’m reading, it enables me to come up with arguments and feel more solid in my own beliefs. Sure, during the election season, some of the articles became too much, and I had to skip quite a few out of ennui for the continued Obama-mania. Nonetheless, I find that the political issues are usually more tolerable and interesting.

On top of that, I welcome bias in the media and think that everyone – the content producers and consumers (myself included) – benefits from slanted writing. In addition, though I tend to lean to the right on many issues, there are enough issues on which I align myself with the left that I find the New Yorker to be quite interesting on these issues as well.

Finally, it should be noted that there are not a lot of conservative publications of the same intellectual caliber. This is a shame, because the right seems content to align itself with people such as Sarah Palin and others who look on intellectualism as a sin or an affront. This is mindboggling to me, as it seems like the future can only be bright if everyone in charge is thinking, not shaming those who do.