Tuesday: Grumpy contrarianism

Part 1: Thermodynamics is better than chemistry.

I've tried piles of different cleaning supplies, and have never been that happy with them.  There are three main examples of this:

1. Toothpaste in the sink.  How do other people not have this problem?  Do you all just rinse the sink until it's clean right away?  In any case, I believe I've proven that toothpaste residue is impervious to all chemicals known.
2. Bathtub...soap...ring...thing?  Basically that grey bar in my tub where the minerals in my water and the soap suds combine to form another substance that laughs at chemicals.
3. The floor in front of my stove.  Because of the way my apartment ventilates, grease from cooking fumes condenses down next to the wall.  Swiffer glides over this, shrugs it's shoulders, and silently mocks me for believing it could clean a damn thing.  The problem is that the vinyl flooring is textured, and the only way I've discovered to clean this is to scrub with a toothbrush.  Therefore, as you can expect, this doesn't happen often.

Sure, there are probably harsher chemicals, but my apartment building is reasonably old, so dumping concentrated aqua regia down the drains isn't a good idea.  Plus, my apartment isn't quite ventilated as well as a fume hood.  Therefore, let's take the strategy that if heating aqua regia is a default chemistry step, super heating regular water is basically the same concept: admitting that chemistry has failed you, and you need to start adding heat, due to the fundamental principle of the universe: Chemistry sucks, and Thermodynamics is by definition, way cooler.  And hotter.  It does both.

Yeah, sure, Mr. XKCD, whatever.  Stat Mech is almost entirely math anyway, so adding that large gap to be funny isn't that accurate.

Enter the McCulloch MC1235 1300-Watt Handheld Steam Cleaner.  Not the most powerful device around, but I'm willing to throw $40 on a new toy that might help me clean things.  I tried it against the three things listed above, as well as just about everything that wasn't covered in books (since books + steam = wrinkly pages, and that's never good).  Let's rank it!

• Ease of use: 6.  You kind of have to get close to the surface to ensure the hottest steamiest steam steams the surface clean. With steam.
• Noxious smells: 2.  You can get that "angry clothes iron" smell occasionally.  Since, honestly, they are the same devices with different outer shells.
• Cleantissitude: 5(9).  Decent enough, steaming things up, wiping them down with a paper towel, noticing it's better.  Yeah, ok.  Then you change to the scrubby nozzle.  Shoot steam into a forest of hard plastic scrubby brush.  This immediately solved all of the "I have Grime X on this surface. Woe is me" kind of issues.  Toothpaste? Gone.  Grey bar of nastiness? Gone.  Oven grease on uneven vinyl? Shiny clean.
• Practicality: 4.  The effective working area is roughly an inch in diameter.  This isn't really practical for cleaning an entire floor.  Cleaning the bad spots on the floor isn't really that bad, but a full room would be hard.
• Cool "rooty-tooty-point-and-shooty" stylings: 10.

So, adding up the numbers, this earns a 31.  That's a prime number.

I will therefore be cleaning random things that can be steamed this weekend.  I guess it does shirts too?  Like a regular non-shooty iron?  I'll find my wrinkliest shirt, and see if I can make that work too.  Of course, 95% of the time, I'm wearing shirts that need ironing after cramming them into a suitcase and flying them across the world before pulling them out in a wadded mess.

Part 2: I'm going to complain about Pokemon Genders

I saw this pop up in my RSS feed today:

My initial thought: "they have different tails for male and female pikachu?"  So first step was off to the internets to learn about that.  Serebii has sprite pictures:

Which further research notes were first introduced in Gen 4.  

This led me to remembering a previous episode "Pikachu's Goodbye," where Team Twerp runs into a pile of wild pikachu, Team Rocket/blasts away, Ash thinks he should leave Pikachu with the wild ones, flashbacks, Pikachu returns.  Turns out that episode (like all of everything) is available online now.  So I grabbed some screen shots:

Pika-kiss?  Does that suggest that the "fringed tail" seen on the left pokemon is a girl?

Straight tails seem to dominate, but there's another fringe tail.

Same here.  Similar statistics. 6 straight to 1 fringe.

Composite of those two frames.  Note the ghost face and the double face.  Still, not bad. :)

Pikachu shows up, with initial distrust.

Mostly straight tails as they approach.

Cute tail shake.

Rescue from a rive with a chain of fringe tail pikachu.  Lazy animation or bizarre gender roles in pikachu society?  "Men: surround strangers! Women: form living chains to rescue swimmers!"

Team Rocket captures everyone.

Ok, assume a spherical net.  I estimate a chord across that bottom right edge as having length  C = 353.9pxl with height H = 48.8pxl.  This leads to the sphere radius of R = (h/2) + (c^2)/(8 h) = 66.37 ft^3, using the relation that 1 pikachu = 182.8pxl = 1.33 ft.  Assuming a volume of a pikachu is Vpika = 1.33 * (pi * (1.33 / 2)^2) = 1.8478 ft^3, so this net holds about 35.919, say 36 pikachu.  Yeah.  I can see that based on the pictures.

Flashback time:

First meeting.

First running in terror from swarms of pissed off pokemon.

Then the wild pikachu offer up a pikachu salute as everyone leaves, and it's a happy ending.

This picture is from a different episode, but I had to include it. Due to the derp.

What was I talking about again?  Oh yeah, cosplayers not being totally accurate with a retcon that showed up to add another dimension to the collect them all game.  And then people bitching about it, largely in what seems to be a "you fail, nerd girl" kind of attitude.  And then I decided I wanted to look at pikachu, and now it's officially an hour later than I thought it was.  Fuck.

Wait, did I just accidentally come up with something close to a definitive study of the tails of pikachu?

TL;DR: if you want to dress like Pikachu, you have every right to do so, and no one should tell you you're wrong.  Unless you're dressing up as an eldritch evil demon disguised as Pikachu.  That's not cool.

Part 3: But...that's not my Monte Cristo

I saw this on the Whole Ox twitter feed today:

source

source

Mortadella is not both ham and turkey.  Gruyere is not both swiss and cheddar.

I still want to eat one.

Also, to Instagram: I can still download those photos.  Why not just give me a link so I don't have to jump through hoops.

Part 4: Links. Do I have any of those left?

• Grant Morrison is a hack.  People who are secure in what they do and know that they write good, original things don't tend to lash out at people who say bad things about them.  And in case he reads it: You are like 80% of the reason that I stopped reading comics.  Your bullshit with Batman, your bullshit with the Fifth World stuff, your bullshit story-and-sense-free Final Crisis.  I don't want to read you masturbating to the comics you read as a kid.  I want to read interesting stories about characters that I actually give a damn about.
• I hope this isn't the final end to Baman Piderman.  Drawn crudely, minimal dialogue, and characters I actually give a damn about having interesting adventures.  Huh.  Seems like I now know why I like this show even more.
• No good third link, so here's weather cat. "Fuck you, Eduardo."