Tea Leaves

For today some short items that I never found the energy to turn into one of my normal-length wank-fests. These sit, like un-played games, on the pile for a while, and then I decide to just give up.

Mio Kitchen and Wine Bar

This is a new restaurant in Aspinwall that you should try. The chef used to work at Veritas in New York. Prices are high for Pittsburgh but for once the entrees are as good as the starters. I can’t comment on the wine list, I know nothing about wine. We’ve only been once so I can’t provide specific menu recommendations, but everything we had was good and everything we saw looked good. My only complaint was that the room is molded in the “if it’s really dark, the food will taste better” design style.
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I was walking around in my local Borders a couple of months ago just after they rearranged the Music and DVD section. My eyes scanned through the shelves of DVDs, and I realized something that was at once horrible and amazing. There, on the shelves, was most of the history of broadcast television archived in little boxes of silver disks. You could get anything, almost no show was too obscure or too low quality to miss the cut. All of this is made possible by the digital encoding of the content. With enough storage, you can capture anything in bits and then instead of being available only at the whim of the content producer, you can watch it anywhere.
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What is it with these stickers that come stuck on the boxes of CD, DVD, video game and other media disks? I notice nothing in the damn box. The box is full of nothing but the disk and various flyers and advertisments begging me to buy other shitty movies that happen to be made by the same company that just pissed me off by putting this sticker on the box so I can’t open the god damned item to watch the movie or play the game. Why are retailers such clueless, mean-spirited bastards?