Every once in a while, I learn about something that not only wasn’t something I knew about, but was so completely foreign to my way of thinking that I didn’t think it could have existed.  Not surprisingly, a lot of these discoveries are from spending extended periods of time with the other sex.  Girls are weird.  Beyond weird.  They are unfathomable.  And they have taught me something I wouldn’t have “known” otherwise: Clothes are disposable.

When I buy clothes, I plan on wearing them in rotation for the rest of my life or they fall off me in threads, whichever comes later.  I’m sure this is particularly galling to Christina, a fashionista of the 9th degree, as it’s highly likely the clothes I’m buying now are already several years “out of style”.   I don’t enjoy clothes shopping.  I don’t have any hopes of impressing people with my wardrobe choices.  I only buy new clothes when absolutely necessary.  As a result, a not-insignificant portion of my clothes has been with me more than 1/2 my life.

The steady stream of clothing catalogs that started arriving in the mail about the time Christina and I moved in together should have been my first clue that things were going to be a bit different.  But hey, I spend money on games and movies, she can spend money on clothes… seems like a reasonable trade-off.  Each of us will spend money on things that can provide long-lasting value for our dollar.

Or so I thought.  As I “learned”, clothing is disposable.  Nothing wrong with wearing it once and out it goes.  This is particularly acute for special events and vacations.  “Every girl needs a new dress for a wedding… you can’t expect a girl to wear a dress she wore before”.  If you plan a vacation, she of course needs new clothes as the clothes she currently has are only for the 10 mile radius we reside in.  Apparently, there are whole store brands that are designed for cheap, throwaway-able clothes.  My sister Erin takes the idea to the highest level when it comes to shoes.  She is adamant that her shoes are clean or they get thrown away.  I don’t know about you but I have never been able to wear shoes without letting them touch the so-called dirty ground at least once.  Dirt on the shoes leads to shoes in the trash.  All of this is mind-boggling to me.

When I get an invite to a wedding, there is no doubt what I’m going to wear: my suit.  My only suit.  Vacation?  My shorts.  The same shorts I’ve own for years.  I don’t care if the left leg is ripped and falling off.  My shoes only get replaced when Christina complains that she can see my toes through them.

I’m not sure if this is a local thing or not but there are suddenly these clothing collection bins in every parking lot in Northern Virginia.  These are (I’m assuming) well-intentioned, charitable organizations that take this old clothing and does who knows what with it.  More power to them and I hope they do some good but I’m more impressed with their insight into this whole disposable clothing phenomena.

At least they get it… I’m still completely dumbfounded by the whole concept.

I usually leave stuff like to my Google Reader feed but this post on TechCrunch was good enough for it’s own blog post. Why?

1. A Few Good Men is awesome.
2. Jack Nicholson is even more awesome.
3. AT&T is worthless. Though, to be fair, no more so than their primary competitor.
4. Google Voice is neat (if largely useless for me).
5. iPhone is “the” phone.

AT&T: You want answers?

TechCrunch: We think we’re entitled to them.

AT&T: You want answers?!

TechCrunch: We want Google Voice on our iPhones.

AT&T: You can’t handle the iPhone with Google Voice!

Son, we operate on network that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by carriers with restrictions. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Verizon Wireless? We have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Google Voice and you curse AT&T. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know: That pulling Google Voice, while tragic, probably saved the network. And our existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves the network.

You don’t want the Google Voice on your iPhone. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at TechCrunch50, you want us protecting the network. You need us protecting that network. We use words like rate limiting, application approval and restrictions…we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline.

We have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ourselves to a blog who writes and profits under the blanket of the very network that we provide, then questions the manner in which we provide it. We’d prefer you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, we suggest you pick up a router and build your own network. Either way, We don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to.

TechCrunch: Did you order Google Voice taken down?

AT&T: We did the job you sent us to do.

TechCrunch: Did you order Google Voice taken down?

AT&T: You’re goddamn right we did.

If you have no idea what this is about, AT&T recently blocked the release of a Google Voice application for the iPhone.

Update: Brian would like it known that he saw this before me.  Please don’t let this remarkable event lead you to idolize him as he has a big enough ego as it is. 

The general quality of TV shows is so abysmally low that when a good and/or critically-acclaimed show is cancelled, it’s heartbreaking for those viewers who had invested some time into it.  Worse, certain shows that need to fail will find an audience and continue on indefinitely.   (That last link is particularly mind-boggling — One great CSI (Las Vegas), one good CSI (NY), and somehow the god-awful, torturous waste of time known as CSI:Miami, becomes the most popular show in the world?!).  Regardless, the networks are in the business to make money and they continue to churn out new episodes of popular shows until the quality degrades far enough that the viewership drops below their “not-renew” cutoff line.  The end-result is that good television series are kept on the air long after they should have been cancelled, often ruining the show as they try to eke out the last bit of profit from the series.

That’s why I like when I see the networks try to develop mini-series that are designed to run for a set number of episodes and that’s -it-.  Lost would have been much more interesting if it had been done in this format… then we wouldn’t have had the rambling mess that it became sometime in the 2nd & 3rd seasons.  A similar idea, telenovelas, are extremely popular in Mexico.  Christina and I were able to get into the recently concluded series Harper’s Island, an otherwise modest murder-horror-mystery series, due to the nature of the series — we knew the plot had been developed from start-to-finish with a cohesive storyline and it was the better for it.  (Though the last 30 minutes or so were … disappointing). One of the better fantasy book series out there, A Song of Ice & Fire, is being developed by HBO in this format and I have high expectations.  I hope more networks try this approach.

As the “provider” of the THE PHONE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING, aka, the iPhone, one might think AT&T would be the darling of the tech world these days.  One would be wrong.  Instead, AT&T is being vilified as the anchor holding the iPhone back.  Articles pop-up daily claiming that Apple needs to drop AT&T exclusivity pronto and get another carrier to pick it up.

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Christina’s brother came into town this past weekend for a surprise visit which not only left my mother-in-law in shock but left me with a weekend full of in-law activities, past indulgences, and 3 different movies.  I’m not sure how we managed to find the time but somehow I saw The Interpreter, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and He’s Just Not That Into You.

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It has struck again.  Other than a few weeks about 1.5 years ago, my trip to Vegas last October, and the annual Superbowl poker tournament I play in with friends, I have focused my attention elsewhere since my last trip to the WSOP Main Event in 2006.  For better or worse, I started following poker again in my news feeds and the hype of the 2009 WSOP caught up with me.  The 2009 Main Event just whittled down to the “November Nine” with 2 major pros surviving to the final table including the Tiger Woods of poker, Phil Ivey.  So I decided to give it a go this past weekend.

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Despite his eccentricities and his alleged scandalous activities, there is one thing we can thank Michael Jackson for other than his music talent: Single-handedly reviving the economy.  In a time when celebrities seem to be dying off at an alarming rate (Ed McMahon, Billie Mays, Farrah Fawcett, Steve McNair, etc), only the early demise of Michael Jackson was enough to send the populace out in a panic to purchase his legacy.  Eat your heart out, Bernanke.

While I’m more than willing to enjoy mainstream Hollywood movies like Up and The Hangover, I also like to find and watch less well-known but well-regarded movies.  I would never have seen the very good (but frightening) documentary Jesus Camp or the enjoyable Rudo y Cursi, and I knew Slumdog Millionaire was a winner long before it won Best Picture.  The most exciting, as a Genghis Khan history buff, was the discovery of the beautiful Mongol.  So I’m always on the lookout for other movies that are catching peoples attention but aren’t necessarily in the mainstream.  Therefore, when I started seeing more and more positive mentions of the Swedish film Låt den rätte komma in (Let The Right One In), I moved it to the top of my NetFlix queue.

While the plot — a love story between a bullied boy and a girl who turns out to be a vampire — gave me pause (it sounded like the unnecessary teen-angst Twilight film), the praise it was getting across the interwebs was more than enough for me to have an open mind about it.  Unfortunately, I finally watched it last night and was underwhelmed.  It definitely comes across as an art-house movie — beautiful, deliberate… but boring and pointless.  I suspect the filmmakers were trying to convey that love can outweigh terror or some other metaphorical agenda.   All I took away from it was that I wished I had spent those rare 2 free hours doing something else.

However, of those that have seen the movie, I seem to be in the minority in my opinion.  There are already plans in the works for making a Hollywood adaption of it by the same guy who made Cloverfield.

In between Tiger Woods and Grand Slam, I found time to check out my most recent GameFly arrival: Ghostbusters (Wii).  It’s gotten some modest reviews across the board but in my time with it, I’ve enjoyed it.  Not only does the Wii-mote work quite well as a Proton Pack but the dialog between all of the characters, voiced by the “real” Ghostbusters, really carries it.   Definitely worth a rental or purchase once it comes down a bit in price — it seems a bit too short for a full price game.  If nothing else, it’s a quick diversion to remind me how great the Ghostbusters movies were.  Now, if only 2012 would hurry up and get here…