I like to hear myself type...

2012-01-09T14:51:00.001-05:00

"Man, Tim Tebow is like Moses. He's been chosen to lead the Jews out of the Promised Land."((overheard just now))

2011-12-26T02:05:00.002-05:00

Ten Songs from 2011

I actually "planned" it this year, wondered all the time this year which ten would make this list. Number one was fixed forever, but the rest of the list changed all year and changed again when I did my review today.

The song titles should all link to videos.

1. Wild Flag - Future Crimes

Pardon my life this time.

The desperation and urgency that make rock and roll. Sleater-Kinney had it and now Wild Flag have it.

2. The Weeknd - Wicked Games (explicit)

I left my girl back home.

The voice sells it. Party 'til you weep.

3. Fountains of Wayne - Someone's Gonna Break Your Heart

All we want to do is go home.

You can hire the actor who fits the part, or you can just hire the best actor.

4. Sloan - Unkind

You haven't got a clue.

They do such a clean job of it.

5. St. Vincent - Year of the Tiger

My kingdom for a cup of coffee.

It's never easy.

6. Terius Nash - Form of Flattery (explicit)

Stop acting like a freshman.

Better to skulk away than to apologize.

7. Emmy the Great - Paper Forest

You're not unlucky, no, you're just not very smart.

All in staccato. We can say the song is high-strung.

8. Adam and the Amethysts - Dreaming

We waded through up to our waists.

A fantasy, I guess. Someone spent a lot of time on this one.

9. The Good Natured - Skeleton

Never speak of this.

A pile of thrills.

10. Gotye (ft. Kimbra) - Somebody That I Used to Know

Now and then I think of when we were together.

Storytelling, I think. The xylophone is infectious.

Some HM's that maybe should have made it
Austra - The Beat and the Pulse
Azealia Banks - 212
Bon Iver - Holocene
Class Actress - Weekend
DJ Khaled ft. Drake, Lil Wayne, and Rick Ross - I'm On One
Drake ft. Rihanna - Take Care
Ronnie Dunn - Cost of Livin'
Kathleen Edwards - Change the Sheets
Florence and the Machine - What the Water Gave Me
Florrie - I Took a Little Something
Foster the People - Pumped Up Kicks
Frank Ocean - Novacane
David Guetta ft. Flo Rida and Nicki Minaj - Where Them Girls At
Heems - New York City Cops
Icona Pop - Manners
Kreayshawn - Gucci Gucci
Lana Del Rey - Video Games
Laura Marling - Sophia
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Heart in Your Heartbreak
Purity Ring - Ungirthed
Release the Sunbird - Outlook's Anonymous
tUnE-yArDs - Powa
Kurt Vile - Jesus Fever
Kanye West and Jay-Z - N****s in Paris
Wye Oak - Civilian

2011-12-07T06:21:00.001-05:00

Waverley Salad
1 pile of spinach
1 apple (chopped)
1 banana (chopped)
1 Christmas orange
2 spoons hummus

Prep should be self-explanatory. I recommend a tupperware instead of a bowl so you can fasten the lid and shake.

2011-10-20T00:41:00.001-04:00

I like John Hodgman, but Lemony Snicket has the power of a thousand John Hodgmans.

2011-10-19T21:38:00.000-04:00

First recorded use of the phrase, "Small Sample Size Theatre." Thanks, Baseball Prospectus!

(For those not hip to it all, it means sports results.)

2011-09-20T14:38:00.001-04:00

"You can get a Harvard education at the library for a dollar and fifty cents in late fees."
-- Cat and Girl author Dorothy Gambrell explains the problems with Good Will Hunting

There's a lot of articles about how [your, my] liberal arts degree is worth everything and nothing. And it could go either way, in terms of monetary value; there's still some invisible factor that still puts college grads in higher income brackets, no matter the other circumstances. But in terms of appreciation for life, or of understanding about the world, I don't know if it's really that much different from any other four-year experience.

I would guess that, of the great works I read in school, my understandings of those were at least as deep and thorough as most B.A. students, and that the rate of readings I completed was about average. And it happened a lot of the time that I would finish some classic and say, "That's a really nice piece of writing," or, "That's a pretty neat thought experiment." But it happened very rarely that I would finish my reading and say, "This changes everything," or, "This is completely right." To be honest, the times when I felt like my education was expanding my horizons or something came a lot more at the start of my degree -- maybe my horizons hit their limit after a couple of years.

What I got more often from my readings and lectures were answers to "why" questions, explanations of the origins and motivations and sources of important ideas. The things that taught me, in the last five years, about how life works, were (other than life, and other than conversations) mostly just stuff from pop culture.

I'm a pretty great pop culture snob, I think, and like getting a B.A., being a snob is one of the luxuries of having some money -- instead of watching TV for an escape, say, I'll want to watch TV for an experience. The TV and movies and music (and even books) that I go to for fun will "speak my language" and resonate, because they come from the same world as I do. Those are the works that actually have something to tell me.

If you ask an English major who her favourite poets are (and asking poets instead of writers should restrict the question to things they teach in school), she'll probably tell you Yeats or Eliot or someone who comes at the very recent end of the spectrum of required courses. And even if she says a Browning or Shakespeare (which is its own weird fetish in a lot of places), she probably won't go further back and say Chaucer or Pearl Poet or writer of Beowulf. Those poets are studied because they're a sort of foundation for other poets; their actual art and wisdom is nothing we still have use for.

(Philosophy is more complicated field, in terms of classic vs. contemporary, which is one of the many reasons it confuses the life out of me. Probably someone could use philosophy to prove most of this wrong.)

So I might be okay with the death of the arts education for now, because of libraries, because any Arts student could study Kant or Milton any time for free, but none of them actually wants to. Learning arts is a grind like any other degree, and the mind-expanding resonance of it all, or the spiritual payoff of it all, is only a shadow of the exact same payoff that the exact same students get from watching The Wire or reading Jane Eyre in their spare time.

I've finally got my arts degree, and I did kind of a bad job of it, and I think now that the better decision would have just been to go to school and get my Bachelor of Widget-Making. I may still go back to school and do that. I just want to put it out there that maybe young people should invest less in the cultural and mind-development value of learning the arts, when there's a richer version of that same experience on the campus file-sharing network. Maybe find a program with a better return on your time and tuition.

2011-09-11T23:03:00.000-04:00

There's a famously-dumb scene in Glee where Gwyneth Paltrow says, "What do I know about Ceelo? Hit it!" And then she sings the Ceelo song with a bad word in it, but she sings the censored for radio version, which really takes away the whole purpose of the song, if having Gwyneth Paltrow sing it didn't already do that.

If anyone ever asks me what I know about Ceelo, I will definitely repeat the question and then tell them to hit it, and then I'll just start howling and howling. It will sound really nice:

2011-08-16T15:19:00.000-04:00

Everyone says the hobo wedding is some kind of insult to poor people.
But you know what else is an insult to poor people? Every wedding.
Even when broke people get married they just throw away great dumpster-loads of money on their stupid wedding.

2011-08-03T00:24:00.002-04:00

Important explanation of our important language, here.

2011-07-29T01:50:00.000-04:00

Site looks a bit sleazy, but there's a sweet list of things that the Daily Mail says will give you cancer. Favourites so far are children, childlessness, and third-hand smoke.

(via the Awl, like any good blog post)

2011-07-14T23:46:00.000-04:00

Although I think we’re going to end up in an age where being mean to dumb people is up there with the other “isms.”

- the guy who runs the The Awl

2011-07-06T01:19:00.002-04:00

from Marc Maron:
"I think instead of having a 'status update' feature, there should just be a button on Facebook where every time you click it posts the words, 'Would somebody please acknowledge me?'"

from Nick:
Your chances of answering correctly are:
a) 0%
b) 25%
c) 50%
d) 25%

2011-06-20T00:49:00.000-04:00

"She skips her classes and gets good grades.
I go to my courses rain or shine."

I missed the point,
I missed the point.

2011-06-17T00:46:00.001-04:00

Some nice ones from the foreign country travelers these days:
- People You Meet in China
- Screening Star Wars in Ghana

I also really like this new YACHT album, in a candy-synth Magnetic Fields kind of way. More people should know about album preview sites.

I could also just link the stuff I read on The Awl, or some scene I like from Game of Thrones or Bridesmaids or something. But that might not be your thing; you'll discover it yourselves I bet. I could talk about hockey, but why bother? Everyone who wants to know about hockey already knows about hockey.

Here's a Renoir painting that's really pretty:

2011-05-18T14:12:00.001-04:00

There are some things the public just needs to know.

2011-04-22T18:28:00.001-04:00

"Listen, if you're looking for a good time, why don't you come on down to the toilet party?

"(It's what we call the sewage department.)"

Best show on TV.

2011-03-26T23:49:00.004-04:00

The Superbowl is Gay

I understand Andy Milonakis now, so much better now, so much better now that I know he did a song with Lil B.

2011-03-24T22:46:00.003-04:00

Thoughts for the NHL playoffs:

- The Ducks and Predators are just better than the Stars or Flames, I think. Maybe it's goaltending, or else just that Teemu Selanne is such a hero. If Stars or Flames make the playoffs, they'd get eliminated pretty quickly.

- Penguins are in trouble. Whichever team plays the Penguins first round could make the finals just by not being worn out.

- I think Jonathan Toews just wins the Hart Trophy now? Stamkos hasn't scored in forever, and the Sedins get way too much support to win. I would also be fine with Sidney Crosby winning MVP for his two thirds of an MVP season.

- I'm pretty excited about the Senators getting Craig Anderson. I think Craig Anderson is just a good goalie; he took a horrible Avalanche team to the playoffs last year.

- Michael Grabner surely deserves to win the Calder Trophy, but I bet he won't.

- The Canucks are in a lot of trouble without Manny Malhotra. He was their biggest penalty-killer, and he was basically leading the league at faceoffs. With Maholtra injured, the Western Conference is kind of a crapshoot.

I guess I'll pick, like, Kings and Canucks in the West, Flyers and Bruins in the East? That doesn't feel right. If Crosby comes back healthy, then I just choose Penguins to win the cup.

2011-02-23T03:07:00.004-05:00

"The trial also generated political controversy when Zuma, who at the time headed the National AIDS Council, admitted that he had not used a condom when having sex with the woman who now accuses him of rape, despite knowing that she was HIV-positive. He stated in court that he took a shower afterwards to 'cut the risk of contracting HIV'."

All the Silvio Berlusconi fans are going to go crazy when they find out about Jacob Zuma.

2011-02-04T01:16:00.001-05:00

It's like, sometimes, you just want some information about something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetherball

2011-01-24T22:39:00.000-05:00

Link to a Rick Astley video I found online.

2011-01-09T23:26:00.003-05:00

Penguins locker-room nicknames make me cringe.

I like watching illegal Youtube clips of the NHL reality show, but I wish maybe that the Penguins had better nicknames. Or that they used their real names.

Here are the this year's Golden Globes nominees for best actor in a motion picturedrama and the nicknames they would each have if they played for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Jesse Eisenberg - "Eiser"
Colin Firth - "Firthy"
James Franco - "Frankie"
Ryan Gosling - "Gossy"
Mark Wahlberg - "Wally"

Here is a simple way to find out your "Pittsburgh Penguins name."

1. Take the first syllable of your last name.
2. Go read a book.

2010-12-29T22:08:00.002-05:00

Shake hands with fans that demand a picture
Like "Hey man, hey man, are you Himanshu or Victor?"

2010-12-25T21:21:00.007-05:00

Ten Favourite Songs for 2010

A shortlist just for fun: Blue Hawaii, Caribou, Das Racist, Dragonette, LCD Soundsystem, Robyn, Sally Seltmann, Stars, Sugarland, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, the Thermals, Sharon van Etten, Vampire Weekend, the Very Best, Kanye West, and Yeasayer.

And then a real list:

10. jj - No More You (The-Dream cover)

i fell in love with a real heart-breaker

I think Alex called it "midnight music." Piano snowflake music, pinecone bird music. They sell the sadness of it.

9. Crystal Castles - Not in Love ft. Robert Smith (Platinum Blonde cover)

I saw your picture hanging on the back of my door

The right chorus, the exact right voice to balance that electric scream. Pathetic musical fallacy; the notes tell you there's a storm outside.

8. Warpaint - Undertow

nobody ever has to find out
what's in my mind tonight

"His wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song."

7. Joanna Newsom - Good Intentions Paving Company

but i fell for you, honey, as easy as fallin' asleep

The clip-clop in the piano, the banjos on "honey jar." Like she snuck out of Ys and got lost in New York somehow.

6. Phoenix - Fences (Poindexter Remix)

she's been building up a castle in l.a.

A soft touch to this one. A little spacey, a little dreamy, but mostly it just rolls along. They bring the "Naive Melody" flutes and everything.

5. Los Campesinos - A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; or, Letters from Me to Charlotte

both were far too needy not to fall for the other

They've shifted a bit from the youth-in-despair thing, but they still make it all so serious, so deadly. They keep the stakes high, these ones.

4. Hot Chip - I Feel Better

maybe if we'd never come this way, then we would live and prosper
but i doubt it

A shelter song, a warm bed song. You can't cover the earth in cloth, but you can always still cover your feet in cloth.

3. The National - England

you must be somewhere in london
you must be loving your life in the rain

The National can use a brass section with so much more restraint than other bands. The weight of history, the solemn dignity that makes you feel bigger as it makes you feel smaller.

2. Tokyo Police Club - Not Sick

get comfortable, get unfrustrated

So much bounce, so poppy. This song sounds like a party.

1. Superchunk - Learned to Surf

i can't hold my breath anymore
i stopped swimming and learned to surf

A power song. A song for action time and for celebration time.

2010-12-24T17:17:00.003-05:00

Alright, I probably owe the world a post right now. Two days out of exams; I don't know what the lessons are, but I'm free to do stuff like this for a little while.

Survivor - I gave up on Survivor. I get drawn in every time by the same exciting premise, but every season just gets boring as more people leave.

Exit Through the Gift Shop -- That thing tried my patience. It was kind of like a Borat thing, except to convince us it was real, it always had to just be unusual instead of ridiculous. I still like all the art, but come on.

English classes - I'm proud enough of the job I did finishing out my three English course; I worked hard plus I knew my way around. I even got A's on my papers, which is something I could get used.

Math classes - I failed at least one of these. This is alright, I think; I take these classes largely to challenge myself, but it's still dumb to just procrastinate when I get discouraged. My goal for the spring is to do at least one math course properly.

Christmas - Who cares? It's just Christmas. I like my family and everything, but Christmas is pretty much the same as not Christmas.

The Fighter and Dogtooth - These movies were both pretty cool, and they both made me pretty scared about living in my parents' house. Parents can be pretty scary.

McDonald's - Sorry universe, but I really like McDonald's. At least 80% of my McDonald's visits are for small coffee + muffin.

Elf - Why did I watch the last thirty minutes of Elf? Maybe I should have known better. If it's PG13 or lower, skip the last thirty minutes from now on.

The future - I'm looking at my English degree here, and I think I want to do back and do another undergrad degree, on some career. It's kind of silly, but if I want, like, a smart-person's career, it might be the best way.

Quizzing - I have to scrape up the troops for our tournaments this spring. Fall tournaments were all a success -- decent showings at the two I played, and pretty good outcomes at the two I organized. Our team will have to improve loads to get good enough for this year's Nationals.

Cookies - I baked cookies last night. They were a little burnt, but I was proud I did it. I should do kitchen things more.

Exercise - In winter, it's not even my fault I don't get exercise. I like play ball hockey (and I think I found a better league for next season), but there's barely anything I can do in the winter. Go the Carleton and ride a bike through the tunnels?

For as much as it's worth, that's my summary. I think tomorrow I'll to do top ten songs, because it's top ten songs are a nice thing to do on Christmas afternoon.

2010-10-22T21:09:00.002-04:00

Survivor Report - Old vs. Young, ep. 6

Holly's tribe voted out a known enemy (Yve) over an unknown (Dan). This is right.
Brenda's tribe voted out an unknown (Kelly B.) over a known enemy (Marty). This is wrong.

I wonder if Alina really called the vote on Yve this week. If she did, that means she's "in" with the other Young-tribers. I wonder what she'll think when she finds out that Kelly B. is gone.

Winners at this point are, like, Chase, Benry, Jane, and Sash. People who only appear in the episode to agree with the vote. It was always clear that Marty was over-playing, but now it looks like Brenda's over-playing just as badly.

I like the dynamic where the old people want to get work done and the young people want to sleep all day. Somehow the younger tribe still had a better camp and more food.

I am a young person and lazy. My excuse for being lazy is that I am "low-maintenance." I bet Fabio is pretty low-maintenance.

I don't like how every challenge ends with a beanbag toss.

2010-10-20T19:21:00.012-04:00

Stuff You Missed in Trivia Class
October 20, 2010

We played on these packets:
- Valencia Delta Burke, round 1 and 2
- CULT nationals (trash), round 6

Warning: Don't read past round 6 of CULT nationals. Rounds 7 and up are for future practices. I haven't read them either.

Amaterasu

Aaron Copland

Interior Secretary James Watt

L'Absinthe:

Marty the Zebra:

Lucy:

Investiture Controversy

Moses with horns

Aral Sea

Graveyard:
- Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"
- twelve-tone composer Arnold Schoenberg
- the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur
- the comic strip Mutts
- current(?) Eagles coach Andy Reid
- the WB's The Steve Harvey Show
- playwright and actor Sam Shepard

2010-10-01T23:00:00.002-04:00

Survivor Report - Old vs. Young, Ep. 3

This guy Marty, he needs to talk less about making moves and playing the game. Sure, he got 8-1 for Coach, but he could have gotten 8-1 for Dan with less arguments. "Playing the game," from what I can tell from who wins every year, should have more to do with making friends than with voting strategies.

Is Naonka for real? Survivor is a little bit of an Antoine Dodson sort of a minstrel show sometimes. I'm pretty sure that in the actual ghetto, people don't normally bob their head from side to side when they talk.

2010-09-23T21:23:00.002-04:00

Survivor review - Old vs. Young, ep 2

Tribal council is usually a boring part of Survivor. This time it was the best part.

I liked it that Shannon talked openly at tribal about who he was voting for and who was on his side. So many people give non-answers at tribal and keep their votes secret, and that trick always leads to them making enemies.

Shannon's problem, other than bigotry, was that he got angry at people for not agreeing with him. No one ever wants to hear how "unfair" their decisions are. Did he really think that they'd all just understand if he talked some more?

Favourite character is Fabio. I never quite understood the appeal of Snooki, but I think Fabio is helping me understand why Snooki is so popular. It's fun and kind of refreshing to see someone on TV who just doesn't get it.

Naonka took a guy's socks, and the one lady on the older tribe got mad and buried someone's shoes. I kind of like this. I think that if they've had no sleep for three days, these people should just all be allowed to get angry and do stupid things like that.

2010-09-19T14:02:00.003-04:00

Survivor Review - Old vs. Young, ep. 1

This episode kind of annoyed me because it was so much about the outside world and no one tried to hide the fact that they knew Survivor was a TV show.

- everyone knowing who Jimmy Johnson was
- Jimmy Johnson saying he'd seen every second of Survivor
- Jimmy Johnson talking about the jury right in the first episode
- two dudes comparing themselves to Rob and Russell
- poodle-haired woman being MVP of episode 1 because she read Jeff Probst's book and actually prepped for Survivor

This probably happens in the reality of every season and just gets edited out, but the last season was just annoying; everyone was already friends outside the game and always knew exactly what was happening.

I hope some future seasons are purposely cast with people who don't watch reality TV. Or with 20 people who all speak different languages.

2010-09-07T20:49:00.001-04:00

The Business Machine society has been top notch. Tomorrow I hit the ground running and go back to school. Hope you folks are all doing good out there.

2010-08-24T20:14:00.001-04:00

A year later, I'm pretty sure that Randall Munroe eats fruit without washing it.

2010-08-10T17:38:00.001-04:00

Favourite names to get called by people who work in service industries:
(in order from least favourite to most favourite)

- "Big Guy"
- "Sir"
- "Chief"
- "Kid"
- "Boss"

2010-08-05T22:44:00.001-04:00

"Who is that little waif?"
"That is Colette. She's in my scene-study class. She's cool. She's, like, super-deep."
"Like you."
"Yeah. I really wanna bang her."

(from Party Down)

2010-08-03T23:15:00.003-04:00

I hate you, Google Maps.

I hope one day you will label some bodies of water on your map. Or maybe you could make another, better site, which would be called Google Atlas. Maybe Google Atlas can show me where rivers are.

I hope Lycos starts a better maps website and they steal all your traffic.

2010-07-26T12:53:00.003-04:00

"Except in my scenario, my grandmother is 25 years old and looks like Bat for Lashes."
-- Jon Hamm

2010-06-21T20:13:00.002-04:00

Dear comedy,

Please stop doing the thing where you pretend to be super-serious, and then you "surprise" me with some kind of awakening. You use that trick all the time. I always expect that trick. I know you are trying to trick me. I never just "forget" that I am watching comedy.

Thank you.

2010-05-01T02:42:00.003-04:00

Here are some things from in Chicago.

Flying to Chicago - not good
This part was not good. My computer battery died fast and I had nothing to do.

Waiting for the shuttle - not good
I waited like an hour for a shuttle from airport to hotel. This was partially my fault. People were pissed off that I was late to the hotel.

Writing a paper - good
My paper was about poems about two poems about the death of English farming. I stayed up until about 4am drinking hotel coffee. It felt really good to be working.

Sleeping - not good
I was sleeping on an inflatable bed that I should have inflated more. I hadn't slept at all the last night, but probably there was still coffee in my system.

Trip Downtown - good
The power lines in Chicago look like what I would guess power lines look like in India. Like they were strung up by someone's neighbour instead of by the power company.

Breakfast - good
We might have been in the only place that serves fruit in Chicago.

Writing a paper - good
I wandered into what I think was the DePaul law library, on the tenth floor somewhere. I actually think I wrote a decent paper, though that might not matter, because I didn't proofread. Like any good paper, my paper is about how the Whigs are right and the Tories are wrong.

Architecture Tour - good
The theme of this tour was, "Mies van der Rohe had autism." Mies loved symmetry, balance, geometry, light, 90-degree angles, straight lines, and stuff like that. He did not value colours or designs or anything elaborate. I loved this stuff. Buildings that just look like buildings. The other, fancier buildings were all pretty cool, but Mies was the best.

Moose-Canoe Cafe Coffee Bar - good
I ate a "French toast muffin." How could I not? The hotel gouged us on WiFi, but this place had it for free.

Magnificent Mile - not good
This is a shopping district. This was just not my thing.

Ferris Wheel - good
The ferris wheel played songs featuring the word "Chicago" on a loop. Eddy got a phone call and answered and said, "I'm in Chicago," and he could prove this because Frank Sinatra in the background kept repeating the word "Chicago."

Dinner - good
We ate at an Italian restaurant that took itself very seriously. Every restaurant in Chicago serves huge portions.

Registration - not good
This was basically me wandering around for half an hour trying to recognize people. I really didn't. Wasn't there a side-tournament going on? I was too shy to talk to strangers. I probably should have just gone to bed.

Sleeping - not good
Once again my mattress felt like a trampoline, or maybe more like an inner tube. I got a midnight phone call asking if I wanted to give up my bed so some friends of friends could have a bed. I did not want to do this. I still slept poorly on this bed.

Then there was a quiz tournament. This was exciting. I was excited for this to happen.

Round 1 vs. Louisville - not good
There was no moderator or scorekeeper at room, so we just hung out with Louisville for a while. They were a lot of fun.

The staff showed up, we played probably our worst round of the day. Louisville had good knowledge (Mary Wollstonecraft), but they also won every buzzer race ("We Are Family," George Foreman). The best part was a toss-up on the writer of the autobiography The Education of, the grandson and great-grandson of Presidents; they got the points for just buzzing with "Adams."

L, 105-285
0-1

Round 2 vs. Washington - good

This felt like the only easy match we played. Washington got something about the Battle of Marengo, but a lot of questions were in my exact wheelhouse (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, "The Dead," New Jersey Devils). I also get a tossup by just guessing the name of the Flight 93 Memorial.

W, 250-105
1-1

Round 3 vs. Valencia CC - good

We neg a bit and squander an early lead. Aaron hears something like, "This chemical killed Sylvia Plath" and buzzes with "sticking your head in an oven." I get to power something on Romanian movies, and then we go on a good run at the end -- Eddy gets one about the phrase "art for art's sake," I get an anthro tossup and fraud another one about the word "frontier." Teams are tied going into the last tossup, but it's about an "Aymara leader" so I power with Evo Morales.

W, 240-220
2-1

Round 4 vs. Michigan State - good

I think they got a tossup on "moraines" from Magic cards knowledge. I fraud a question on Monica Seles, and I win the points race to get a power on "Winnipeg." Eddy gets a tossup full of Bible clues, where the answer turns out to be "foreskins." I thought it was a close game, but the score said it wasn't.

W, 375-170
3-1

Round 5 vs. Carleton College - good

They had really good stats going into this tournament, so expectations were low. Pamela gets tossups about "Prince Igor" and "archaeopterix," which sounded like fun after she explained what an archaeopterix is. Eddy powers Ricardo Montalban, so I would go around for a while thinking Ricardo Montalban was a philosopher. They beat me to Dali and Garcia Llorca, but we still win. Maybe we got some points off trash bonuses?

W, 275-245
4-1

Round 6 vs. Alabama - good

That win races on the first four tossups; we are down at the half, but we are still probably the stronger team. Robert Frost came up twice in this round, which is nice for Aaron and me, and I win another race to power a Canada question, this time about Vancouver Island. Pamela gets to power Enigma Variations and Aaron gets to power T.S. Eliot. In the second half, my teammates block me on a bunch of questions that end up going dead (Laplace Transform, Galbraith, Gabriela Mistral), but we still win by a lot.

W, 300-165
5-1

Round 7 vs. Chicago - good

They had the best numbers before the tournament, plus they'd already beaten everyone else in our bracket. I know they're good, so I buzz extra-early and get some points that way (Stockholm, G.B. Shaw, Boccione), but I also end up blocking my team on some easy ones ("tailor" for seamstress, Mackenzie River for Yukon River). Pamela still gets two powers in this one. From the stats, it looks like this was one of their best games.

L, 185-405
5-2

Lunch - not good

Everything to eat is expensive hotel food. We walk to Dunkin Donuts and it's closed, and then McDonald's is too far, because we have to be on call for a tiebreaker round. We go back to the hotel and I pay $7.50 for a sandwich in a plastic case. Aaron pays a lot for the buffet; Eddy and Pamela just skip lunch. We learn that the Polish cabinet died in a plane crash, and that John Paul Stevens retired.

I see the Louisville people and ask if they are playing us in a tiebreaker. The answer is probably yes. My teammates bitch me out for potentially tipping off Louisville to the existence of a tiebreaker, which makes it less likely that we can win the tiebreaker by a forfeit. I do not understand my teammates.

Tiebreaker - good
I didn't take any notes on this one. I steal a power from Aaron for like the fifth time this morning; this one is about Six Feet Under. According to stats I was awesome and I got three powers, but I mostly remember being jealous of Louisville's bonuses. Aaron and I both forget the name of Thomas Carlyle, and the score is tied at the end; now we need a tiebreak for our tiebreak. Louisville wins. I am kind of relieved we don't have to play in the top bracket now.

L, 240-250
(second bracket now)

Round 9 vs St. Charles CC - not good
They tell us we are half an hour late for the round. We explain that we were busy playing a tiebreak round. The one player buzzing on St. Charles is a guy who is famous on the quizbowl forums for being sort of a goof. Also, some of them snubbed me in the hotel lobby yesterday.

Their guy gets early buzzes on Bucephalus and some other things; I power 100 Years of Solitude but I blank on fractals. Eddy was great in this game, including power on Children of Men, but I was playing sleepy and I couldn't dig very deep on bonuses.

L, 185-245
0-1 in afternoon

Round 10 vs. Cornell - not good
This is around when Aaron starts giving pep talks, mostly about how we could all get some wins if we just focused and tried harder. I tell Aaron that we can't win them all, so I want to just relax and have fun. I think I turn all of Aaron's pep talks into debates this way.

I get some powers (Tiresias and Measure for Measure) in this round, but I am still not playing great. Pamela gets a bunch, but somehow Eddy gets no tossups this round. They get some weird ones (Ron Paul, tibia), but they probably just have more knowledge than us (Boss Tweed, Joseph Conrad).

L, 170-255
0-2

Round 11 vs. Caltech - good
We get to the room before they do, so I run downstairs for badly-needed coffee. I think I might have delayed the whole tournament by doing this. We lose some trash tossups (Wolfgang Puck, me negging "Jay" for Silent Bob), but Pamela gets some science, and I calm down enough to do well on bonuses. There's some question with "Dorothy Sayers" in the first line, Pamela gets negged for "mysteries" and it goes dead. It turned out to be about locked-room mysteries. We still won this round.

W, 245-230
1-2

Round 12 vs. Chipola CC - not good
I beat a guy to "pieces of flair" who says Office Space is one of his favourite movies, but then he beats me to Amy Poehler on a clue about, uh, Mr. Woodcock. Aaron steals the points when they neg on Christian Slater, but I steal the points on a question about "Canadian provinces." The buzzers keep crapping out on us, so we use the honour system for some tossups, and we have to throw out other ones.

After all the questions the score is still close, and no one knows who buzzed first on a tossup about what river flows from Victoria Falls. We agree to meet back after the final round and play a replacement tossup.

???
1-2

Round 13 vs. Princeton - good
I get six tossup off stupid races (chess in literature, "Paradise City"), and looking back at the answer sheet, I should have gotten even more. Eddy gets a really cool question about a "former construction worker" who turns out to be Hu Jintao, but the American content hurts us a bit, and we don't have a chance in this one.

L, 240-325
1-3

Round 14 vs. Northeast Alabama CC - not good
This was a pretty bad game. I thought we lost by the end, but it turned out that we won, because something like nine tossups went dead. I neg when I forget the name for Ernst Rohm, but I beat some Americans to a question about Bill Buckner, and I clinch the win with Tintoretto. Throwing out my two dead rounds against St. Charles and Cornell, we actually scored pretty well on bonuses this afternoon.

W, 185-155
2-3

Round 12 again vs. Chipola CC - not good
We go back to the room and wait for Chipola to show up so we can do replacement questions. I ask our moderator (blonde woman in a pink dress) what the answer was to the tossup that got cancelled, she says Nile, and I realize I would have negged. I don't tell anyone this.

I squabble a bunch with my teammates; they have some opinions about my attitude towards competition and towards getting advice. I am pretty cranky today.

Chipola shows up and I ask what their answer was; they say Blue Nile and we try to figure out if it would have been accepted. They win the tiebreaker, and they tell us that St. Charles is going to win the community college title.

L, 225-275
2-4

I looked it up just now, and Victoria Falls feed the Zambezi River, so I was right all along. This is a moral victory. This means we might have won if the buzzers had worked.

Ottawa stats for the tournament. In the final standings, we tied for 12th out of 32 teams in the tournament for new/young players. I got 14th in scoring, which is kind of inflated because it counts the morning and not the afternoon. Toronto came 6th in the main event, which is really cool. This is the best any Canadian team has ever done at a US Nationals.

Watching the Finals - good
This was a long, exciting process. Harvard won, largely on their geography knowledge. I took down some notes, and I might recap the finals on another website somewhere.

Pizza - good
We were long due for pizza. Eating a slice of deep dish pizza is like eating two slices of pizza.

Party - not good
I was way to sleepy for this party. I stayed for something like fifteen minutes, and then I got bored and started sliding off my chair. Someone asked if I should just go to bed. This was a good idea.

Bed - good
I inflated the bed all the way this time, and I phoned home, and I got to sleep in the next morning. I was due for this.

McDonald's - good
I checked out of the hotel and went to McDonald's. Wireless access was free, and McDoubles and sundaes were each a dollar. I am glad that McDonald's is not this cheap in Ottawa.

Travelling - good
Somehow I spend four hours getting from one side of the north side of Chicago to the other side of the north side of Chicago. There is a novelty to getting lost, because it means walking around a neighbourhood you haven't seen before.

Willows Hotel - good
I arrive at the hotel; Dad has already checked in for us. (My dad joined me for this part of the vacation for some reason.) The hotel offers free cookies. We would take great liberties with this access to free cookies.

Turkish restaurant - good
If I lived in Chicago, I would eat one meal a day at a restaurant and the other two from leftovers, because there would be two meals' worth of food left over every time I went to a restaurant. Dad seems like a nice guy.

Improv Olympic - not good
I chose this over seeing Wale and K'Naan do a show. It was alright. I might be in a phase where even the good comedy is a little boring for me. Half this show was in a "show and tell" format, and looking back, the show and tell stories were cooler than the actual improv. The cab home cost less than my sandwich cost yesterday.

next day, Hotel Breakfast - not good
Dad has told me pretty excitedly about the microwave Egg McMuffins they have at hotel breakfast. These are a disappointment. Maybe they should have just left out the cookies during breakfast hours.

Getting lost - not good
I got lost probably six times on this trip. I don't know why I didn't just get a decent map.

Hot dog restaurant - good
There are, like, four different kinds of pickles on a traditional Chicago hot dog. I remove the pickles and manage to have a good time.

Zoo - not good
I don't know what I was expecting from this zoo. Probably I just went because it was free. There are some decent pictures on my cell phone, but I don't know how to get those off my cellphone. The rhino is the best animal, because it has the most confidence.

Chicago Museum of History - good
This was also free, but the suggested donation was like $12.
They had a great exhibit about Benito Juarez and a pretty cool exhibit about Lincoln.
All of their regular collection was specifically about Chicago history, which is kind of boring. The best parts are the riots and World's Fairs.
The Juarez exhibit was by far the best; I knew nothing about him, but the exhibit a huge fan.
Also I got to read an actual copy of the Declaration of Independence. I liked that part.

I go back to the hotel and look online for things to do; the best is a production of Into the Woods which turns out to be sold out. Dad and I agree to split up and meet at another theatre in twenty minutes; I take the wrong train and I can't text him to say what happened. It turns out my phone is out of money. I scramble a lot to try and payphone him. Eventually I get a message to him via Mom in Ottawa, and I just go back to the hotel so he'll know where I am.

Wrigleyville - not good
This neighbourhood was right next to our neighbourhood. Drunk people really seem to love the Chicago Cubs. My dad wondered why all the Cubs fans were white.

Hamburger restaurant - not good
The diner had one sign saying that Cubs fans were welcome and one sign saying that hippies were not welcome. The man at the counter mumbled a lot about the baseball game on the TV in this restaurant. I was glad that they were open late, but I was also glad when I got to leave the restaurant.

next day, El-train downtown - good
I should have done this more often. The subway cares around downtown all have a sweet aerial view of Chicago's downtown. It's fun sometimes to start recognizing things in a new city and feel like you know your way around now.

Diner - not good
Somehow I got stranded somewhere downtown where the food was expensive. I bought a plate of gyros, just because I'd never tried gyros before. I will not try them again.

Art Institute of Chicago - good
I got lost a lot inside the Art Institute building. They had a great exhibit showing the ways different painters used light after Caravaggio. The Impressionists were alright, but the Dutch masters were better.

Winners from the modern section were Le Corbusier, Brancusi, and Yves Tanguy. And the great Magritte, of course, as always.

Thai restaurant - good

Thai restaurants are always good.

After the Thai restaurant, we tried to go see Mid-August Lunch, but I got us lost again. It turns out that it's common to have multiple El-train stops with the same name, just as long as they're not on the same line. Dad finds a cab and we get to the movie just in time.

Music Box Theatre - good
This is an old-timey movie theatre, where there's vines painted on the walls and worn-out couches and lampshades all over the lobby. Dad took a lot of pictures. The movie really good, too; it was a man who has to take care of old ladies. Old ladies break my heart every time.

We go back to the hotel and sleep. In the morning, I take a plane home. I eat breakfast tacos at Chili's at the airport; I'm not going to count that on my list of activities.

---

The final count is 30 good things, 21 things that were not good. I'm pretty happy with that. I have high standards, and this trip brought me 30 good things, and I'm really glad I went. I might have to go again sometime.

2010-04-29T19:08:00.002-04:00

Here is a lemma:

The amount of excitement a person expresses when they find out what's for dessert is inversely proportional to the amount of dessert that person will eat.

If anyone has a proof for this lemma, even an inductive proof, then please send me an email.

2010-04-26T18:44:00.003-04:00

Survivor Recap

I don't have much time for recaps this week. Basically, I think the producers screwed the Heroes by picking an immunity challenge that only tiny people could win. Villains needed three people to have immunity to survive that vote, plus they needed Amanda to be a bad liar. I still think Russell goes next. Potential winners at this point are Parvati, Candice, and Sandra.

2010-04-16T00:53:00.003-04:00

Tegan and Sara are freak-out music. I think almost all their songs take place in the moments, like, where you've lost control and you're just squirming, waiting for it all to slam into you. Like a sack of doorknobs.

A lot of people don't like me. I don't understand this, and I don't know how to control it. Being nice works okay, but sometimes things just slip by. Probably more people would like me if I talked less, but that wouldn't really be me anymore.

Then the other thing kicks in, which is, Why do I care if people like me? It always just seemed like the simplest measure of whether I make people happy, but more and more, it's something I'm not in charge of. The psychology of it, I hope, is that because I'm nice in all the general, short-term bits of life, it becomes more memorable to people if someone like me does something to piss them off. Or maybe the other thing is just that I say so much dumb stuff. If you're in a bad mood and someone nearby is saying dumb stuff, it's kind of easy to start arguing.

I should think less about whether people like me. What was the plan? Ten percent to the church, ten percent to the UN, ten percent to the Red Cross, Oxfam, Greenpeace. I'll stay out of everyone's way, and I'll tithe my ten percent to public broadcasting, and hopefully no one can complain.

I should stop wanting people to like me.

I like me.

2010-04-16T00:27:00.002-04:00

Survivor Recap - Season 20, Episode 9

Courtney and Sandra are cooler people than the other villains. A big part of cheering for them and Boston Rob was because they were interesting, because they all had fun and ran their mouths. I don't want the late game to be just Russell telling us all how great he is.

I give Parvati the best odds to win. She sets up votes the same as anyone, and she doesn't make enemies the way Russell does. Plus she has her own secret idol -- is she the first person to pull that off? "If anyone can win this game twice, it's me."

JT was my favourite but now he can't win; if the Heroes get numbers, the only good winner I could see is Candice. Rupert and Colby were too soft all along, and Amanda stood by James, who was pretty much the worst. But Candice is good in challenges, and after losing her ally in the first week, she sort of played the whole game from the outside. Go Candice.

Sandra should flip, and the Heroes should find out fast enough that Russell's in charge, but then the challenge is voting around Russell's idol.

People will say JT was dumbest for giving Russell an idol, but I also think Rupert was the dumbest for going to challenges and just shouting what he thought the other team was up to. And even after the "women's alliance" fake worked for Russell so well, I still think it was dumb to vote out Coach when he could have voted out Sandra and Courtney first. Sandra is guaranteed to flip; Coach would have just been on the fence. The Heroes are up 6-4, and they don't hate each other the way they did a week ago. JT giving up the idol proves his and every other Hero's loyalty.

Everyone was smart enough to second-guess the "strongest to weakest" ranking game; they'll be smart enough to second-guess their way through idol-voting. If the Villains want to give the Heroes trouble finding a good target, one of the four will have to win real immunity.

2010-03-12T02:58:00.003-05:00

Survivor Report (season 20, episode 5)

I don't like it when the Heroes lose. First, it means there's no tension in the vote, and second, it means JT does worse. When he voted out Cirie, he could have brought the whole tribe together -- because it was a vote for the weakest, most suspicious player, and because it was going to win them immunity. But people made enemies too early and now the Heroes tribe just kind of hates each other. I wonder if, like, James had been voted out first, if they'd co-operate better.

Also, the fact that there's a puzzle in every immunity challenge kind of means they needed Cirie for immunity.

The Villains were way more interesting this week. Between Shambo and now Coach, Russell is really good at selecting his allies.

It freaks me out a little whenever James shows up on screen. His muscles are, like, thicker than any wrestler or any baseball slugger, let alone any actual athlete who has to do actual running. Some people are scared by what Courtney looks like, but even Courtney looks healthier than James to me.

Somehow Rupert is not a nice a person this year. He was playing way too dirty at reward challenge; the reward wasn't even protein or anything useful. Producers maybe shouldn't have brought back a challenge that was guaranteed to end in headshots and injuries. In terms of "nice" versus "mean," the tribes are about equal -- maybe James should not have been cast this year.

What might happen soon is a tribe swap. If they don't do a swap soon, they're risking some boring episodes after the merge when the Villains just vote out Heroes. This whole Boston Rob vs. Russell thing might not stay entertaining for much longer. The Villains have had so little camera time that it sort of telegraphs that they'll stick around for a while longer, so we can get to know them.

EDIT: Okay, JT voting for Tom was really stupid. It completely defeats the purpose of him voting for Cirie last week; now all his allies hate him. Maybe Stephen was the one in Tocantins who was really earning it.

2010-03-07T02:27:00.001-05:00

Someone else stole my dream of one day opening a Wilco-themed sandwich restaurant.

2010-03-05T01:47:00.003-05:00

Survivor Report
(Season 20, Episode 4)

There's sort of a rule, that you hear about from chess or checkers, where whichever player can think more turns into the future is the player who will win. If Kasparov can think, let's say 20 turns ahead about all the possible outcomes of a move, and Deep Blue can think 21 turns ahead, then Deep Blue can just make a move on turn 11 or 12 that will bury Kasparov on the 31st or 32nd turn.

JT is a shark. He is by far the smartest guy in a room full of smart people. There's a tradition, in Survivor, where long-term thinking gets people in trouble. Your friend will get mad at you if he finds out you're thinking of voting him off in a week, so it's best just not to plan that far ahead. Another thing in Survivor is that people completely ignore the fact that they have to win a jury vote at the very end, so they play a game to guarantee themselves second or third place.

JT is playing for the long term. He did the opposite of what everyone told him to do, but no one is going to get mad at him. Colby and Tom have the exact kind of pride that means they would never flip to the Villain tribe. It's not a matter of trust, because everyone is planning to vote you out sooner or later, but it's more about who knows how to control things.

Colby and Tom would take JT to the end because they think he's a good guy. Cirie would get rid of JT because it's a smart move to get rid of JT. And the best part of it all is that JT can say he was voting his heart and making a good guy decision, when really he was just clearing the path for his endgame.

JT's decision also unites the Heroes tribe, enough that I think they'd stick together after a merge. There were no previews about any post-vote fights; the Heroes are grown-ups and they know that sometimes their friends will lose, and it's easy to swallow if it boosts their chances at immunity. Basically except for Candice, JT's decision gave every member of the Heroes tribe a better chance at winning the game.

The Villains also would also stick together after a merge, as long as they get to vote out Russell first. Probably this means the producers will want a swap instead of a merge. Voting out Russell, though, depends a lot on him not having an immunity idol, so they should maybe stop giving him so much space to look for immunity idols. Rob was immunity MVP again today, but he should be calling open season on the idol, just to keep it out of Russell's hands.

The other cool thing this time was the relationship between Coach and Tyson. At Tyson looked like he completely didn't know what to do when his friend was upset, but then he redeemed himself with "don't wear feathers to tribal." This is, like, the first time anyone has acknowledge how ridiculous Coach and shown him respect at the same time. If Tyson is a good friend like this, I think this means no one in the Villains tribe is an actual villain.

Courtney might not do well with a jury, but she is probably doing something right if no one has talked about voting for her. She is by far the worst player at almost every challenge; all I've seen her do so far is goof around for the cameras. Courtney should be the narrator of Survivor.

JT is still my favourite, and he is still going to win. He lies to everybody and they all still love him.

***

Also, I think JT's voice sounds like Gucci Mane. Is this accurate, or have I just never heard a Southern accent before? Tell me what you think in the comments.

2010-02-19T23:46:00.002-05:00

"I found a sandwich in one of your parks, and I want to know why it didn't have mayonnaise."

Could there be any better show than Parks and Recreation?

2010-02-18T17:56:00.001-05:00

"Hi, are you one of JoeMac's kids?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, your dad loaned these to me about thirteen years ago."

(So glad I answered the door.)

2010-02-12T20:57:00.002-05:00

"Hey Bruce, can you settle a bet I have going? Are you a decathlete or a triathlete?"

"I'm a triathlete. I did the decathlon once."

"How'd you do?

"I got three of the ten."

--(from something called Superego podcast)

2010-02-08T22:50:00.000-05:00

Yo La Tengo - Sugarcube

2010-01-25T14:51:00.000-05:00

Man Gets Life in Order for 36 Minutes
from the Onion

2010-01-14T16:27:00.003-05:00

The thing about Conan O'Brien hosting the Tonight Show is that no one watched it. I call myself a fan of Conan O'Brien, and I never watched it. Maybe there are people out there who want smart TV, but I think those people don't really watch TV -- or maybe they stream it online. Even The Office never really got very good ratings, and the Office didn't have to bring people back five nights a week.

Saying Conan needs more time to build an audience? I don't know. Most shows get a lot less than seven months to build an audience. The best way to build an audience would be to put stuff on Conan's show that a Harvard graduate probably wouldn't want on his show. His demographic already likes Jon Stewart better.

The way I understand it, the exact same thing happened to Letterman a while back; NBC was all set to put him on at 11:30, but then they realized at the last minute that no one would watch. So they switched him up for something lighter and friendlier, and then the light and friendly guy beat his ratings for twenty years straight. And then Conan didn't.

Television is what it is, which is television. It's only television. If I were trying to make money from a late night talk show, I would just get an attractive woman to host. It would save millions of dollars.

2009-12-25T10:00:00.006-05:00

I think this will be a tradition to do on Christmas day. No write-ups this year, because I lost my write-ups, and I didn't like them much anyway. I will note, to everyone's relief, that the Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell song just barely missed the cut.

Ten Best Songs of 2009

10. Animal Collective - My Girls

i only want a proper house

9. K'Naan - Take a Minute

it ain't every day that you get to give

8. jj - Things Will Never Be the Same Again

i close my eyes and remember
a place in the sun where we used to live

7. DJ Quik and Kurupt - Nine Times Outta Ten

get your mind in the right position

6. Yo La Tengo - Gentle Hour

i couldn't have done
anything else

5. The xx - Stars

no need for talking
i already know

4. Run Toto Run - Sleepyhead

flicking fire like saltwater in my eyes

3. Taylor Swift - You Belong With Me

she's going off about something that you said

2. Phoenix - 1901

it's not a miracle we needed
no, i wouldn't let you think so

1. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Hysteric

flow sweetly, hang heavy

When I was making this list, I sort of realized how much all my favourite music just sounds like Coldplay.

I hope everyone is doing well this December. Today it's Christmas, and I hope everyone is having a good day. Maybe a merry day, but maybe just a nice quiet secular day. When someone wishes me merry Christmas it sounds insensitive, and when someone wishes me happy holidays it sounds kind of awkward. I should just realize that people are just trying to wish that I have a good time this winter. Have a good time this winter, everyone.

2009-12-24T03:47:00.002-05:00

I remember learning the story of Jacob and Esau, to be honest like two months ago, the way Esau was going to get a birthright and a blessing, but Jacob and his mother were much craftier, and they snuck in and took them both for Jacob. And Esau the older brother stays a hunter, but Jacob the younger brother becomes Israel, becomes the new patriarch because he won the birthright and the blessing.

And I think at the time, all I felt was that it was wrong, that my people and everyone else's people had descended from not just a trickster, but a hustler. From a man who could have just given his brother some food, but instead he would have let him starve, held the food hostage until he got something valuable. I hated the way Esau went outside and worked all day, but Jacob was the only one who got rewarded. I hated the way their mother had a favourite. Jacob was sort of like an underdog because he was the youngest, but he had so much entitlement; he just lucked into God's favour while his brother was out there earning it.

There's a Wiretap show online about Jacob and Esau, and when I saw it, I hoped it would answer my question, what was so great about Jacob. And it answered the question, but it did so much more. It wove together the lives of Jacob and Esau, as children and adults, with their mother and without her. It turned everything into a story about shame, about guilt, about jealousy and forgiveness. It says everything that needs to be said about how it works to have a brother.

If you are curious about the Bible, or if you have a brother, or if you are my brother, and if are willing to spend half an hour listening to a short story, then go to this Wiretap archive, Season 6, and look for the Jacob and Esau show. It was pretty magical.

2009-12-16T10:59:00.000-05:00

Google suggestions are my Jaywalking.

2009-12-08T20:32:00.004-05:00

In every movie I watch, Philip Seymour Hoffman is my proxy for me. He's just got a voice -- an educated, uncomfortable egghead voice -- and I know he's going to be the closest thing in the movie to me. A guy who groans a lot, who follows sports because he likes the statistics. A guy who doesn't go to strip clubs. A guy who doesn't get it but still he gets it.

But then they put him in the room with any woman, or with any guy who's got street smarts, and he's just an idiot. Not uncomfortable, like he's a smart guy who's out of his element, but actually stupid, like he's an idiot. Like all of a sudden, this character who's a literature professor can't understand how subtext works.

And I'll take credit, because I can stammer when I sit with girls and I can get squeaky when I sit with the tough guys, but I still know how to ask for directions. I still how know to sit in a waiting room, how to give someone space when they're upset. I can still function in public.

The movie I'm watching now, he teaches high school poetry, because he's an egghead, and that's fine, that might end up being me someday. But in the movie, he's obsessed with his student, his high school student, because he's sad and lonely, because that's supposed to be what eggheads are like. And naturally, sometimes when you get sad and lonely, you turn to pedophilia. That's supposed to be how it works when someone is an egghead.

And then he goes out and spends some time with Barry Pepper, and Barry Pepper tells him how the waitress has great tits, because of course that's what you do when you have street smarts, you slick back your hair and evaluate women's tits. And Philip Seymour Hoffman, instead of just telling the guy Come on, instead of asking How's your wife doing, his answer is that he completely stumbles over a monologue about My Friend. You see, My Friend, who's also a high school teacher, is seriously falling for a sixteen-year-old girl, who is, like, well technically, she's one of My Friend's students, I guess at his high school. And My Friend is so embarrassed about this, and the girl thinks he's old and gross, but My Friend just can't stop thinking about her, and well, you know, maybe it could turn into a serious thing.

And it's kind of depressing but it's mostly just insulting, like, because Philip Seymour Hoffman is still my Brendan proxy in every movie, because in general he's today's definition of what a nerd is like. And I'm pretty sure most real nerds don't act like that, but I know there are people going That sounds just like that librarian, that college professor, that one guy I know who reads New York Times, who's always just kind of awkward, kind of surprised to see me. I bet he tells the most humiliating, transparent lies when he meets his cool friends.

And you could put me in any group and I'd still be one of the nerds in the group, like, even in a group of nerds. But just being awkward doesn't mean I can't speak the vernacular, doesn't mean I can't shoot the fat with you, doesn't mean I'm not in control of my own hands and mouth. Somehow Spike Lee thinks there's something seriously broken about guys like me, that we can't handle ourselves like grown-ups. Which is stupid, because in his way, Spike Lee is also an egghead. Probably everyone involved in a Philip Seymour Hoffman movie is some kind of egghead, but they still make the egghead the one character who doesn't have any dignity.

So if Philip Seymour Hoffman is the best Brendan they can find to put in a movie, then it seems like a guy like me should have no business leaving his house in the morning. Like for whatever reason, someone out there is trying really hard to tell me that I don't know how a conversation works.

2009-12-08T11:54:00.003-05:00

This is a pretty great Brendan Shanahan story. (Via Puck Daddy.)

2009-12-05T21:36:00.001-05:00

Tis not enough your counsel still be true --
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.

(Alexander Pope has a message for all you straight shooters.)

2009-12-03T15:26:00.001-05:00

Dear everyone I meet at work,

When you write out your email address, please include all the letters and symbols, and put them in the correct order. Do not abbreviate your email address. Do not make typoes.

Thank you for your time,

-Brendan

2009-11-16T00:05:00.001-05:00

What I want is a site that says how to get rid of expired eggs.
What Google offers me is fifty sites about whether I should eat expired eggs.

2009-11-15T23:35:00.003-05:00

The idea behind World War Two, I think, is that there was Hitler, that Hitler had a cult of personality, that Hitler had completely control over maybe the most powerful country, even though he was a crazy person.

And it's one of the saddest things in history, that absolute power and weapons and millions of people were trusted to a crazy person, to someone so weirdly racist and destructive, to someone who was never going to do anything good in the world.

But then the thing is, when I start hearing the details about how this stuff worked, is that even when he was fighting battles, Hitler was still a crazy person. He could sort of understood what you do to secure world domination, but he started fights for no reasons, he made strategy decisions in a way that a crazy person would make strategy decisions.

And I think I like the idea, that all the exact traits that made him so awful in the world, that made him see enemies everywhere, that made him rule a country at his own drunken whims, that those things were why he lost. A madman is exactly the kind of person who might take over the world, but even if he takes over the world, he's going to suck at it because he's still a madman.

And I like it that if anyone as awful as Hitler were to ever become as powerful as Hitler, if the Milgram experiment is right and you could have a Hitler as soon as people get hungry, I like the idea a lot that the next Hitler is going to fail too. Because if anyone ever again is horrible enough to persecute people and ambitious powerful enough to take over the world, he'll have gotten there by thinking out of his gourd and by taking all the stupid risks. And a man like that is just going to keep screwing up and he won't last very long.

This is why we're all still safe from Hitler.

2009-10-30T00:22:00.003-04:00

So the Owl City song hit number one. And I know everyone will say it would be cooler if the Postal Service had a number one, but I think it's still pretty cool that Owl City got number one.

In the battle between zombie Imogen Heap and synthed-out Fireflies, like, we should all be on the same side.

2009-10-30T00:08:00.000-04:00

Finally!

2009-10-28T01:58:00.000-04:00

This was not what I was looking for ...

2009-10-14T23:26:00.002-04:00

made-up website!!
-->PaperPlaneMovies.com

The idea of this website is that you can go to the website and select any movie you like, just choose a movie, and then my website will play the trailer for that movie and you'll watch the trailer.

Except the one difference is that the trailer will be on mute and the song "Paper Planes" will be dubbed over the entire trailer. You won't learn much about the movie, but it will all seem really cool.

2009-10-14T21:59:00.007-04:00

This is canned jackfruit.
Do not buy the canned jackfruit.

There is no shame in going to the Thai grocery and just buying tomatoes and apples.

I wonder what the standard deviation is for how many hours I sleep at night.

I went home to Ottawa this weekend. I liked that. Everyone in Ottawa is nice to me. Maybe just everyone is nice to me, but still.

People come in to tutoring and their papers are written in very simples sentences, one line per sentence. And I tell them, you don't need to learn better sentences, you just need to keep your childrens' sentences and put "comma and" between every one of them. I tell them that "comma and" is the ultimate shortcut, and it fits almost every place where you'd want to put it.

I think I would learn a whole lot of English before I signed up to get my degree from a school that's in English.

Music, for the fun of it.

On the bus back from Ottawa I was reading a basketball magazine. Basketball is all about having a "magnet team" that every star wants to join -- are all sports like this? Probably soccer, at least.

I put my head up, and I looked out the window, and I completely forgot which way the bus was going.

2009-10-02T02:16:00.001-04:00

No cage is able to hold the abominable flowman.
Tell Zohan / Don't mess with me.

-Joell Ortiz

2009-09-12T01:19:00.002-04:00

I saw this on Facebook ...

2009-09-11T16:22:00.002-04:00

Escalator to Success is the new Railroads Around Europe.

2009-09-08T19:56:00.005-04:00

I fixed the light switch!

The light switch was broken all day, so I couldn't turn any lights on, so I just had to sit and talk to the computer and fumble around for all my stuff I moved in yesterday.

Then I started unscrewing all the light-switch parts with a dime, because I don't have a screwdriver. Then I got zapped so I unpacked the rubber gloves my mom packed (thank you, Mom!). And then the dime stopped working, so I went upstairs and asked my landlords for a screwdriver.

Brendan, why you always got to be asking people for their stuff?

I'll tell you why. If they hadn't lent me a screwdriver, they would have had to lend me a light-switch repairman, and they don't have one of those.

A flat-head screwdriver, please.
NOT a star-head screwdriver.

Then I started loosening the screws and pushing things around and there was another zap and the lights went on. It looked like this.

And from another angle, it looked like this.

So I screwed everything back in and I returned the screwdriver.

If the light switch had stopped working in Ottawa, or anywhere, my answer would probably have been to do nothing.

But this is Scarborough. I will fight against all enemies in Scarborough. I'm the HBIC.

(head brendan in c)

I miss Ottawa people of course, you are all wonderful and I will be one of you again soon. I have some memory of an Ottawa person trying to give me a bag of tools yesterday, and me saying I'd never use the tools and getting rid of them.

I may have been wrong.

But I am happy to be here tonight in Scarborough. I am eating grilled cheese sandwiches, and I am sitting on my lawn-chair throne.

If you try to stop me, then I will repair you just like I repaired the light switch.
I am captain of the basement.
I am Brendan.

EDIT: The light switch stopped working about an hour later.

2009-08-17T04:13:00.001-04:00

Fireworks are like a screen saver. It's like everyone goes downtown to look at the screen saver.

2009-08-17T01:51:00.004-04:00

Dear everyone I've ever met,

Remember that time I said something impossibly stupid? And then when you challenged it, I came back and supported my crazy idea with even more confidence? And then I expressed some other beliefs of mine that made even less sense?

Well, I just want you all to know that I meant one hundred percent of everything I was saying. The dumber it was, the more certain you can be that it was spoken in complete sincerity. I was in no way trying to engage you in any kind of a joke, and I would have been insulted if you had laughed or started "playing along".

I will admit it, sometimes I was saying these lies to try and trick you. My plan was to say really nonsensical things in a serious tone of voice, so that if you went along with it, I could laugh at you as soon as you left the room. I was never trying to share a light moment with you -- far from it! I make these kinds of jokes just because I find it satisfying when someone falls into my trap.

But most of the time, I am talking like an idiot because I really don't know what was going on. I am genuinely curious to find out what's the capital of Ottawa, and I actually believe that humans are the smartest of all the animals after dolphins, and I was really waiting for the number 2000 bus to get me home. Even though I can put up the front of a functioning human being, I really have no idea how life works, and I will not budge from any of my countless mistaken opinions.

Please, if I ever say something that sounds unusual or makes no sense to you, take me as seriously as you can. When you find out that I've never heard of Twitter, or that I think water is bad for you, please raise your voice and correct me. It's the only way I'll learn. Do not in any case try to make "joke mistakes" of your own, because these will just add to my confusion.

This is a serious problem for me, and I appreciate all of your co-operation.

-Brendan

2009-07-31T20:13:00.002-04:00

Some right answers I got:

Toronto Raptors, Alexander Calder, Arthur Miller, Edward Hopper, Dominion of Newfoundland, Marc Chagall, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Gideon vs. Wainwright, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Spanish Civil War, John Stewart and Jim Cramer, Crassus, Mordecai Richler, David Foster Wallace, New Pornographers, Bar at the Folies-Bergeres, the Purloined Letter, Mauryan Empire, Measure for Measure

And a quote from a tossup on August Wilson:

"In one work by this man, Hambone repeats the line, 'I want my ham' ..."

But the text is just for prestige. I'm really here to show you the Butterfield diet. It will change your life, just a little bit.

2009-07-23T02:13:00.002-04:00

"You know the invisible line? You've just stepped over it."
"Yeah, that's the problem with it being invisible."

(from television)

2009-07-15T01:05:00.002-04:00

My mom and dad normally shovel the snow at our house. They are good people. I came home today and I had ninety-nine problems and I ate cold spaghetti for dinner because I didn't want to microwave the spaghetti. But then my mom agreed to help with something, and my dad went out and bought snack cakes, and now I am doing okay. My parents, they are good people.

2009-07-15T00:55:00.002-04:00

The snow is more beautiful in Japan than it is in Canada.

I watch this anime show now called Honey and Clover, and whenever it snows there's a soft piano and they're talking about lost love. Girls wearing scarves, footprints fading into white. The snow makes you cry.

I wait for December and we have grey snow like mud. It gets in your shoes, gets in your recycling box. The snow makes you scream. If you've ever wanted a foot deep of sand to get dumped all across your town, that's pretty much how snow works.

Lucky it's July. Lucky you can wear sandals to school and it barely even rains.

But every spring here in Canada, I will do another turn of my countdown. I will thank God that it ended and I will say to myself, there's only fifty-one more times I'll ever need to see snow.

2009-06-30T00:14:00.003-04:00

Let's take an IQ quiz.

When I lose at Magic cards, the other guy starts telling me what mistakes I made and what he did right. This is his way to share his skills and help out kids.

When I win at Magic cards, the other guy starts telling me how close it was and explaining why I was lucky. This is his way to calm down after a humiliating loss.

I think this is what I get for playing Magic cards.

2009-06-23T21:55:00.002-04:00

I wonder what will happen, when I get bored of being a Magic-cards fan or a quizbowl fan. Maybe I will have to be a fan of real sports, like hockey or track and field. I already started being a fan of the Billboard charts and what movies gross the most money. But I am such a fan right now of some sports that no one really does after college.

Maybe when I get older I will still follow these things. I can be like the guy they interview in the bleachers who's never missed a game in fifty years. Or like the guy who travels from town to town following the Springsteen tour.

Or maybe I'll be a fan of grown-up things more. I can have my favourite members of parliament and I can get autographs from Guy Giorno and Kevin Lynch downtown. I can tell anyone who will listen how Cornel West is better than Slavoj Zizek, and who actually deserved the Nobel Peace Prize this year. That has to be worth something, I think.

Here are three songs you might like:

The National - The Geese of Beverly Road

The words are so carefree but the lyrics are so wistful. You can't believe it's really happy out there. Like maybe if someone's addicted to drugs and they're only happy because they didn't run out of drugs yet.

Phoenix - 1901

This sounds it sincerely happy. Keyboards are always happy. It says "Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey". This song is a lot like a dog.

Gang Gang Dance - House Jam

This is a song you can dance to. I have probably danced to this song just walking home playing it in my head at some point. It's smooth but it's never slick. It doesn't waste any notes.

2009-06-09T20:47:00.003-04:00

JIMMY: This is very exciting, this is Matt Belknap with a sports report. The Half-Assed Sports Report.

MATT: That's right.

JIMMY: Here's Matt Belknap with a half-assed sports report.

MATT: Well Jimmy, you know, the Lakers are in Denver tonight, looking to close out the series, the Western Conference Finals. They're hoping to get their second straight trip to the NBA finals, if they win tonight. They're up 3-2 on the Nuggets thanks to some inspired play by an injured Lamar Odom on Wednesday.

JIMMY: Okay, terrific, so that's basketball. What's going on in baseball?

MATT: Oh, I don't follow baseball.

from Comedy Death Ray Radio

2009-05-15T00:03:00.002-04:00

Today there was a girl asking if anyone had bus tickets, so I said no, because I always say no. And then when she asked the next people it got really clear she was freaked out and stranded downtown all alone with no bus tickets.

2009-05-14T22:13:00.002-04:00

Q: What did the second-last cereal-eater say to the person who had to finish the box of cereal?

When I see phone numbers written on bathroom stalls, that I am supposed to call for a good time, how many are pranks and how many would actually lead to a good time? I wonder often about this.

A: Eat my dust!

2009-05-04T21:27:00.002-04:00

Self portrait because my bus pass photo was ugly
by Brendan

2009-04-26T00:47:00.002-04:00

From a packet of trivia answers:

1 I would have gotten
- Ashoka

5 someone else might have gotten first
- Dude Where's My Car
- Borodin
- Call Me Al
- Flowers of Evil
- house of Orange

4 I wouldn't have gotten
- quintessence
- counterpoint
- redistricting
- Caravaggio

4 science so they don't count for me
- garnet
- utraviolet divergence
- dendrochronology
- Robert Hooke

9 I've never heard of
- Raft of the Medusa
- Main Street (Sinclair Lewis)
- Sidonius
- logotherapy
- American Names
- Journey to the West
- Narvaev
- Hermaphroditus
- the Isonzo

The packets in Canada are a lot easier than the packets in the Stanford Packet Archive. But it is still crazy how much stuff I have everything to learn about.

Also I'm trying to think what stuff I can learn about next. Right now it's American history, Roman history, and famous paintings.

Of the six I knew: one was a term paper, two are pop culture, three I basically just know through trivia.

2009-04-17T00:46:00.001-04:00

"On the Oxygen Network, they make television by women, at women."

- Paul F Tompkins again

2009-04-10T01:36:00.003-04:00

This show Parks and Recreation is pretty cool. I watched five minutes of the Office today before I turned it off. Parks and Recreation is the same kind of funny, I guess, and the same kind of small-town depressing, but it hasn't completely outlasted its purpose. And also it doesn't use nearly as many zooms.

Here is a link to watch Parks and Recreation on a fairly convenient website. The website may try to offer you a job at Google, but you should skip that part and just watch the TV show.

2009-03-31T22:18:00.002-04:00

NEW INVENTIONS

I have decided to start some new inventions. They will be new kinds of pizza. Here are some possible pizzas I will invent.

Music Lover's Pizza:
This will be like a regular pizza, but all the toppings will be named after your favourite recording artists -- Ben and Jerry's-style. There will be Frank Sinatra green peppers, Hanna Montana mushroom slices, and Flo Rida pineapple chunks. Everyone loves music, and everyone loves pizza.

Fun Lover's Pizza:
This is a similar idea to the music lover's pizza, except everything will be named after something fun. It will have a roller coaster crust and funny-clown tomato sauce. With twenty toppings to say yes or no to, there will be over one million possible outcomes to your pizza. Do you know any another restaurant that serves a million kinds of pizza?

Knowledge Lover's Pizza
Did you know? "Philosophy" comes from the Italian word that means, "I love knowledge". The knowledge lover's pizza is jam-packed with your favourite ingredients, like Soren Kierkegaard green peppers, Charles Taylor mushroom slices, and Flo Rida pineapple chunks. It's the smartest pizza in town!

Fire Lover's Pizza:
This pizza is cooked with 100% real fire. What's wrong, are you afraid of a little fire?

Garbage Lover's Pizza
Psych! You didn't think we'd put garbage on a pizza. This is a pizza can either be eaten or thrown in the garbage, no one will be offended. Ideal for people who are not sure if they want any pizza.

My other project on the go right now is a book about how to invent different pizzas.

2009-03-22T00:33:00.002-04:00

Every March, the town of Ottawa holds a grand unveiling of the March Arch. The Arch, which spans the two-lane width of Ottawa Street in the city centre, has been a springtime fixture in town for over ten years.

For this year's unveiling ceremony, Mayor Larry O'Brien will make a speech about arches, rainbows, and springtime. The Ottawa town band will play a rousing rendition of the Arch March. And a reception will be held for children at the nearby Arch Marsh, with balloon animals and face-painting.

"The arch has been around for years," claimed Ottawa historian Steve Harris. "I remember driving under the March Arch with my grand-parents." Harris's book, M'Arche, is a personal history of the Arch and will be published sometime in the spring.

Just like last year, the Ottawa March Arch will be reflected by the Ottawa March Arch-Arch, which is a tunnel directly below the arch. The ceremonial "last dirt" will be dug out of the tunnel by photographer Yousef Karsh. Funds for the March Arch and the March Arch-Arch raised by town-wide participation in Ottawa's yearly March for the Arch.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who unveiled the Arch-March Arch in September in Ottawa, has called the Arch a "great feat of Canadian engineering." He will be unable to help with this year's unveiling because he is attending a trade summit in St. Louis.

2009-03-14T23:25:00.002-04:00

"Kanye West had his own Storytellers concert this week, and you know how kids say the darndest things? Well Kanye's a grown man, so he says the damndest things."

Paul F Tompkins is a wizard.

2009-03-04T23:35:00.005-05:00

Mad Men runs so hot and so cold. I don't understand. It's like Mad Men is the best show ever, except half the episodes are the minor league episodes that don't make the cut to be actually Mad Men.

"Listen, if your mind's made up, I'm not going to talk you into it."
"I thought you can talk anyone into anything."

---

Also Survivor runs hot and cold.

"I am so true, that existing around people that smile evilly when somebody else is on their knees kills me."

Today both of them are running hot.

2009-03-02T17:50:00.003-05:00

I pulled in to the red light.
I checked the mirrors,
looked around for pedestrians.
I'd failed once already.
I gave in and asked.
"Have I failed the test yet?"

The man laughed.
"You haven't finished the test yet."

I've spent six years learning to drive, and I've hated all six of them. I don't know how I got my license this time, but I thank the driving gods that I don't have to go back and try again.

2009-02-22T00:54:00.005-05:00

She sent me her book, in the mail, with nice printing on the envelope. It was the third issue.

And then I opened up the third issue, and it was all her nightmares in black and white. There were people with no limbs, bleeding and vomiting, people with no skin on their faces. She'd made a torture book.

And on the back cover she made this drawing.

2009-02-20T23:28:00.002-05:00

I like Charlie Kaufman's movies, how the heroes all cower before women. Craig the puppeteer, Caden Cotard, Tim Robbins, the other Charlie Kaufman.

Women make me cower in my own life, and not just because they're pretty. It's my instinct, for any kind of woman I've ever met, that I just assume she wants me to go away. This gets tricky when my bosses are women.

I wonder how many men share this trait. I wonder what kind of men they are. I hope forty-year-old Brendan will not be mean to women.

---

Five things from when I went to the comedy show with Simon:

1) "I was watching the History Channel and the Today Show came on."

2) The comedy club was at a new location. I had to look at the map on the busted-down comedy club and run to the new club before the show started.

3) They gave me a ticket when I paid admission, but no one ripped it at the door. There was a sign up saying, "Lost tickets will not be replaced until closing time." I cannot guess what the tickets were for.

4) We went to the deli afterwards. A really beautiful short-haired girl showed us where our table was. I cowered.

5) I ordered blueberry cake at the deli. It was very moist. Before the waiter gave me my cheque, he asked if I wanted dessert.

---

The final Conan is tonight. It will be the first time I've seen Conan in maybe a year. I wonder if he gets to bring his writers for the Tonight Show.

---

I told this story to three people already, so I will just blog it to put things to rest:

At the end of every episode of Flavor of Love, when Flav had to eliminate a girl he really liked, he sometimes does a tribute to the girl. He pours some champagne into the ground and says, "That's for Prancer," or, "That's for Hotlanta." The girls all have nicknames on Flavor of Love.

The trouble is that the show takes place indoors. Flavor Flav is pouring champagne onto the carpet.

2009-02-15T20:08:00.002-05:00

Get going. Get guilty. You gotta kick it up, kick in until it starts. Hit it until the picture gets clearer. You gotta get your head in the game. Get your game in the zone. You gotta get started.

At work I am drinking less water than I used to. A week ago I was reloading my water bottle four times a day at work, which meant I was going to the bathroom four times a day at work. I don't think I liked the water but I think I wanted to stretch a lot. What are the ethics of this?

But what I was also saying was that I didn't do that anymore. That I could get going and I could stay going. That I could sit down and figure stuff out and type stuff up for four hours. Most of this is because I made a schedule. Instead of saying, "Only six more hours of work", now I say "Only one more hour of filing", and then at the five hours left mark I switch to another job. My job gets broken into chunks, like Sesame Street. I love it.

And then I get home, and it is so much better. I don't want to eat or sleep or work again. I will leave my couch to get cookies, or else blankets. I have a nest and I have an Internet that grows faster than I can eat it up. Every link sprouts two more links, and sprouting two links means it actually wants to sprout six links. And then fourteen links. I will grow a big Internet tree and it will never weave in on itself.

I will build myself a nest and then I will build a roof on the nest and then I will be wrapped in my nest and I will never leave and no one will ever find me. I guess I would blog from the nest so people would know I was doing fine.

It seems to me that nearly all the good things in life are things you can have at home.

2009-02-08T21:13:00.005-05:00

Abraham Lincoln, Martha Graham, skulls, Rutherford Hayes, the Ecstacy of St. Theresa, Versailles, The Mist, Chris Brown, James Joyce, Clarence Darrow, perfect numbers, George Steinbrenner, Bhagavad Gita, Boo Radley, August Strindberg, Walter Mondale, and Hartford.

I got these answers and also some other answers. It was a pretty cool weekend.

2009-02-08T20:54:00.002-05:00

"If this is airing in the future and no one knows who Karl Rove is ... he's the reason you all live underground."

-Eugene Mirman

2009-01-30T23:02:00.000-05:00

"30% less fat per two cookies than regular Oreo!"
Something is wrong with that sentence.

2009-01-28T21:58:00.000-05:00

"Imagine a dimly lit house filled to the brim with people with the occasional strobe light effect. In the background, rehashings of the day's popular "hip-hop" blares really loudly. Many semi-attractive girls are crowded on the dance floor. Some guys are there, mostly trying to dance with the girls, who push them away. You and your friends order alcoholic drinks. You laugh at some of your male friend's attempts to talk to women because you are too drunk to feel sympathy. Some of your female friends go out to the dance floor to have the pleasure of rejecting men. At some point someone invites you out for a smoke. You take it and burn your lungs. Then you and your friends argue about who shares a taxi with whom and you all go home."

2009-01-14T18:50:00.005-05:00

Putting your troops next to your schools is like if someone was playing capture the flag, and to guard his team's flag he decided to put it down his pants.

Bombing the troops next to the schools is like if the opponents actually reached down his pants to try and capture the flag.

2009-01-11T14:26:00.001-05:00

According to sponsored links, Alex Ovechkin has a higher IQ than President Obama.

(Senator Obama? I don't know when they bring him in.)

2009-01-06T20:47:00.002-05:00

The Emancipation of Miami

I have decided I don't like the regular phonetic alphabet because it is too hard to remember. If more of the words were similar, people would have a much easier time remembering how to spell things out. Here is a new and better phonetic alphabet that you can use with your friends.

A - alpha
B - box
C - comprising
D - dalpha
E - Elphaba
F - full
G - gnu
H - hoverboard
I - icicle
J - jay
K - knew
L - lemon
M - melon
N - new
O - overboard
P - pee
Q - queue
R - rightful
S - surprising
T - textbox
U - uprising
V - villain
W - write
X - XBox
Y - Yemen
Z - zalfa

It will be harder to understand but it will still be easier to remember.

2008-12-25T16:40:00.008-05:00

Everyone out there is still following my music links I posted when I was fifteen. I better fix that. Pitchfork posted a really nice albums list (read the part about Lil Wayne), but their singles list didn't really line up with mine. I better fix that too.

Ten best songs of 2008

10. Calexico - "Victor Jara's Hands"
I don't know what the lyrics are, but I like that it's about something from real life. The riff means nothing when Sergio Leone uses it, but from Calexico it's charged with emotion.

9. Dawn Landes - "Money in the Bank"
I'm still the only hit for these lyrics. The images are so simple but they could still mean anything.

8. Why? - "Fatalist Palmistry"
I like the sad songs that still have a bounce or a kick to them. Dance and cry, I guess. The lyrics are serious but goofy; you can tell he listens to rap a lot.
"I sleep on my back because it's good for the spine, and it's coffin rehearsal."

7. Fleet Foxes - "Mykonos"
Ghosts should sing this song. There is so much anger but it gets muted; by the time you let it out it just sounds wistful. More intense than their other songs.

6. Ashlee Simpson - "Outta My Head"
I can't explain it. I like the singalong parts. There are Rubik's cubes and melting clocks in the video.

5. The Hold Steady - "Constructive Summer"
Kind of a big loud rock song. The album is called Stay Positive, and the idea is maybe that the characters stay positive. You get a project, you drink at the water tower, whatever keeps you going. It sounds triumphant but it never really feels triumphant.

4. Kathleen Edwards - "Buffalo"
My dad said her voice was mournful. I like listening to this one late at night. A lonely winter song.
"Yeah, you can go, but you won't make it home."

3. Loney Dear - "Ignorant Boy, Beautiful Girl"
This song is all full of murmurs. There is a whole soft choir of soft voices, you don't know where they come from or how they got in the room. So fragile. Sometimes people like heartbreak music with just a voice and guitar, but those songs have much more potential. This song does everything and still stays quiet, and it really works.

2. Los Campesinos! - "We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed"
I like the youth. People think youth is about rebelling and taking risks, like, but that's never how I feel it. Youth is about how the small things seem big and the big things seem epic, how easy it is to get broken when you've never lived before. Bob Dylan might not have known this, but Los Campesinos! know this. They're too clever and too friendly to make sad music, but they're all full of the bursting panic that you get with youth.

1. Johnny Foreigner - "Cranes and Cranes and Cranes and Cranes"
Finally a happy song. These guys are friends with Los Campesinos! at #2, and my "real" top ten might just be five tracks from each band. The thing that kills me about this song is that they celebrate when they've got nothing to celebrate. They start out on an angry rebellion and end up on "if I had the guts", but they sound like a party the whole way through. Even going "from one grey mess to another grey mess", they can stay positive in a way that the Hold Steady never could. Other bands keep brooding, but this band starts dreaming. "I don't worry about those things" is the line they repeat. They must know something we don't.

Music is so subjective. Maybe these songs won't work for you. I just want to shout-out the ten; I had a crazy year and songs like these made it a lot easier.

---

I found my slippers. Call it a Christmas miracle.