Saturday, March 31, 2007

Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm

Finally, the review of White Noise is up.

And now, a "review" of the "film" I endured / watched last night. Ready?

Hustle & Flow (2005): 5

Overwrought, flush with stereotypes, trite, painful to sit through and embarrassing.

(For the record, the word of the day is "overwrought").

To be fair, Terrence Howard did a good job... in a ridiculous role. I really would like my Friday night back.

Also to be fair, this thing got rave reviews. So maybe I am just ceasing to be able to get it. But just take a look at the preview. I cringe badly at this, I get a "wow, this is what bad actors look like when they're trying to do "serious acting,"" vibe that makes this intolerably uncomfortable to endure. Maybe that's just me. I hear ya. Anyways... "enjoy:"

Saturday Morning Sweetness!

I am on my way out to tutor this fine Saturday morning, so I played a quick game of strat while eating breakfast (warning, this is not going to be interesting to you at all unless you are a BIG dork. But this is a very rare event):

Francisco Liriano Tosses a No Hitter!!!!

I hope your day starts as well as my imaginary one did.

Friday, March 30, 2007

The Amazing Contortionist Janet Weiss...

I am not.

Just got home from the first Ultimate of 2007 - work* ended at about 11:45 today, so I jaunted over to Cognex across Route 9 and joined the computer programmers for a quick game. And I am totally out of shape, couldn't really run for any more than two seconds, tweaked a hammy, my right IT band seized up, my ankles were sore and my heel ached a little by the end. If this game was** a Magic Eight Ball, then "Signs point to No."

* - Work: Egads. A very mixed week. A fairly egregious academic dishonesty incident where two students took advantage of my niceness (they essentially asked me for help on a math problem that I thought was from their homework when it was actually from a test they were actively taking - good good y'all), evoked the wrath of their normally nice math teacher and one of them may have gotten the big fat starts-with-E-X-P thrown at them. I also have three students in my class, all seniors, who continue to skip assignments and not participate in class and are all in danger of failing / not graduating. AWESOME. On the plus side, we watched a couple of Global Warming videos this week and the response was great - we actually had a solid 55 minute sdiscussion session on Thursday. Good times.

** - Just wanted to point out that this is one of the few times that "if it was" is correct.

I'm kinda a wreck out there, and all I'm good for right now is the throwing (which I can still do well). Or, in fantasy parlance, I am like Dave Roberts - only good for one category.

Geez, fantasy. two leagues in which I am trying to be relatively dedicated / serious is quite a burden. But fear not, I won't let it take away from my awesome blogging responsibilities. Both of you will still have something to read every day.

Just finished the Modern Scholar's Faith and Reason, a lecture series by Peter Kreeft, a philosophy professor from our very own Boston College. In contrast to the other one-sided accounts I read yesterday, Kreeft's series is extraordinarily methodical and presents the arguments on both sides of the table. If there was a weakness to this lecture series, it's that the topics were a little to broad for even a seven CD collection - there was a lot fo general debating on the existence of God, heaven, hell, morality, and whatnot, but because Kreeft was debating the general concept of God and not a particular religion's version, some of his claims became a little washed out. That's a very minor complaint - overall Kreeft nails down something of a religious philosophy canon - he expounds upon every argument out there, points out which ones are arguments for certainty and which ones are arguments for probability. He also restricts much of his discussion to a strict Socratic logic, limiting the shots he takes at the various calims to addressing their internal consistency. He very evenly elucidates the two sides to each question, continues to elucidate what the two sides responses would be, and imho very fairly assesses each one. I'm going to NR it because it's a lecture series and not really intended as a work of art or a piece of entertainment, but I will recommend it, especially to the believer who doesn't always delve into what they believe: this is a nonconfrontational set of lectures where you can really evaluate if what you have been taught makes sense to you. If the unexamined life is not worth living, then it's a very short jump to conclude that the unexamined religion is not really worth believing.

That's more or less it from this end - beck just finished up in Phoenix, so she'll be home shortly. I have some tutoring and some more self humbling Ultimating to do this weekend, and otherwise I'll just be chilling with the S&W. So give a shout if you want, and if I don't answer, I am either out or screening my calls. :)

I'll leave you with a very cool shot of a samurai sword slicing an egg is SUPER SLO MO....

Idle

Idle
In describing a person or machine, idle means the act of doing nothing or no work. Thus a person who spends their days doing nothing of relative importance could be said to be "idly passing his days

Ground state
The ground state of a quantum mechanical system is its lowest-energy state. An excited state is any state with energy greater than the ground state. The ground state of a quantum field theory is usually called the vacuum state or the vacuum.

Zero-point energy
In physics, the zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may possess and is the energy of the ground state of the system

This is my culmination point,,, is there's a way to turning back?

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Screaming at the Choir

I just finished reading Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. And if this is a review, it gets the NR treatment from me.

It was a mixed exercise at best. The book is a response to the slew of criticism from the religious right that Harris received for his other NYT best seller, The End of Faith, and I suppose I have committed a literary foul of sorts by reading his before the book that engendered the original criticism. But it isn't hard to extrapolate backward to what his first book said - I'll still read it, of course - but I'm getting the impression that he's delivering an old message with a caustic tongue that quite unsurprisingly is making a lot of people mad.

I say "an old message" because Harris largely uses philosophical arguments that are so notorious that they have names. He cites a number of classic arguments against theism (e.g., the problem of evil, the superfluousness of god, contradictions within "perfect" texts) but angles them sharply at Christians, citing an overwhelming number of problematic passages from the Bible. He cites, among other things, the recurring theme of violence and God's wrath that permeates the Old and, hate to say it, New Testaments. He points to the obvious fallibility of an allegedly infallible text: e.g., Leviticus 25:44-46, which illustrates the propriety of slavery, or the moral instructions of Deuteronomy 13:6-15, which instruct you to kill your family members if they follow a religion other than your own. He points to the questionable profundity (and general cross-cultural ubiquity and therefore non unique character of numbers 6-9) of the ten commandments. He speaks of the divorce of aspects of Christian morality from any regard to human suffering or emotion (see recent statements by Evangelical leader Reginald Finger that he (Finger) would oppose an AIDS vaccine that would save millions of lives because he thinks it would encourage premarital sex). I am finding myself tracing the book and looking at all of Harris's arguments, all of which I've heard before in other forms, many more eloquently and evenly presented. I will spare you a full page by page run through of a book that you too could read in an hour; suffice it to say that the arguments are very solid, classic complaints, but Harris doesn't *really* bring anything new to the table in this regard.

What he does bring to the table is a negative consequence of the beliefs - arguments over religion and the existence of god can lend themselves to the sort of late night college dorm room ramblings that amount to little material consequence. Harris argues that the choice to believe or not believe is not immaterial, not just one of personal preference and that to believe is a delusion that is not just wrong but dangerous and an impediment to global civilization. The consequences of radical or fanatic belief have rather overt 9/11-scale consequences, but Harris pushes it further - he claims that it is exactly the atmosphere engendered by the more moderate religious devotees and the religious tolerance exhibited by atheist and agnostic moderates and liberals that allow for the radical factions to exist, prosper and ultimately destroy. Harris thinks that religious faith is pure lunacy and that our future is dependent upon rational minds coming to this conclusion, requiring a fact-based dialog in the public sector which would alienate and theoretically eliminate the fringes that cause the danger. He is downright fervent in this assertion and does not understand why we allow an outmoded form of thought continue in our culture - he is quite clearly baffled by the very existence of organized religious faith in the scientific age. You can practically hear him screaming between the lines, "Isn't this obvious? What the hell is wrong with you people?" He even goes so far as to say that the word "atheist" should not exist, comparing it to the fact that no one is forced to identify themselves as a"non-astrologer." He likens his efforts to abolish religious belief, even moderate belief, to the abolishment of slavery 140 years ago. Harris is a missionary of a different sort, and not surprisingly, he uses the same fiery attitude and self-assuredness that his opponents behind the pulpits have used for centuries. He is right, and he all but states that if you cannot see this, you are an idiot.

Which is where the central flaw of LtaCN comes in - it's suppose to be a response to his Christian critics and is addressed to a Christian nation, but his vitriolic tone would be so off-putting to a believer that i find him equally foolish to believe that this is the manner in which to convince people. His stance, as Roger Penrose puts forth on the back cover, is uncompromising, and I believe more strongly resembles a political fundraiser than a debate. As such, i envision it as a cheering session for the already-atheists and more senseless noise to the devout. And the a-a's are likely to stand and shout and speak in tongues and yell "Praise Harris," but no one without those special robes is going to take heed. Which is a shame, because I think Harris is very much on to something here - I, too, share his opinion that dogmatic belief in this day and age is absurd at best and horrifically dangerous at worst. I am more humble about it, I hope, and believe that he could have accomplished a lot more with an even-keeled book that did not damn his titular target audience. His response, which is almost certainly an accurate one in the current airwave cacophony, is that you have to shout to be heard; you have to throw the curve to get the average to fall where you might like. The effect for your more considerate readers is the book seeming disingenuous - if Harris is really as smart as he is professing, he would clearly be aware of the stylistic absurdity in his own work, so he is either not quite that smart or he is intentionally overshooting and manipulative. And manipulative is exactly what he is trying to be, but in this case, I don't think his MO is going to work.

I decided to give the other side a try immediately after reading LtaCN and read Francis Collins's The Language of God. Cousin-in-law Frank reviewed it on his site, and despite a mixed review, I was intrigued enough to give it a try, especially by this line:
I figured he would illuminate some amazing information about the structure of DNA that would truly amaze and wonder (and he did…sort of). I wasn’t expecting a philosophy text.
Nor, Frank, did you get one. Collins sets an embarrassingly bad tone for rigorous philosophy very early in the book. For one, he culls from C.S. Lewis with reckless abandon, throws Lewis's arguments into single paragraph quotations and then proceeds as though they were law. He repeatedly presents one-sided arguments including only his supports and doesn't just ignore opposing views but takes pot shots at them: the anti-intellectual aw-shucks attitude towards modern philosophy is transparent. He even goes so far as to say that something confusing is "like existential philosophy, and who understands that?" He attempts to throw postmodern theory on subjective truth under the proverbial bus with a single line - he claims that it is a Catch-22 (BIG FAT SIC) because it claims that there are no objective truths, but, Collins claims, if there are no objective truths, then how can postmodernism be true? Um... perhaps because you just evaluated a system with no objective truth with a standard of objective truth? You know, the standard that is non-existent within the system? This is the same method that tries to introduce a contradiction into nihilism by saying that nihilists "believe that there are no true beliefs." But the nihilists have a true belief... hyuk hyuk - I apologize for the informal tone here, but I just have the gut reaction that these arguments are painfully juvenile in that they don't recognize that they are evaluating systems with the very standards and concepts that the systems purport do not exist.

I actually don't have a complaint with those arguments; I personally don't buy them, but I recognize that serious people make them quite eloquently and they are worthy of consideration. My main objection is that Collins routinely dismisses entire schools of thought with one liners! It's actually the same fault that Harris has - he is equally saying "you know, it's completely obvious that you're wrong, and you're a moron for not being able to see it - I can destroy your whole worldview in one quip." It's completely invalid, and not to take a pot shot myself, but I get the impression that the same person who identifies existentialism as "impossible to understand" is not exactly qualified to assess postmodern philosophy.

Which, to get to the point, is the central flaw in this book, that a scientist is claiming to give a (presumably scientific) proof of god via his work with the genome and DNA (his actual area of expertise). The entire concept of the book and its title hinge on his authority as a scientist, but he turns in an amateurish philosophical proof where he and ends up spouting C.S. Lewisisms and doing a bad job of it. I wholeheartedly agree with Frank that when Collins "sticks to his day job" and discusses DNA and junk sequences and the like, he does a reasonable job. But his philosophy is atrocious. His entire argument hinges on the argument from morality, an argument that essentially claims that the existence of an absolute standard morality proves the existence of a supreme being. Collins gives this classic argument one of the worst treatments of ANY argument I have ever read. He starts by saying that there exists an absolute moral standard because "deep down, we all know what's right and wrong." He then goes on to say that because there are certain laws that are found repeatedly in different cultures that it must have a source. He answers the obvious, "Um, but people break the laws in all of these cultures all of the time, which seems to indicate that we don't really all deep down "know" the absolute morality" challenge by saying that human beings are fallible and can't live up to the absolute moral code.

Which is a sort of beg the question 101 logical argument, that we know there is an absolute moral code because it's everywhere and even when it's not it's because we are weak and can't possibly live up to the absolute moral code which by the way exists.

Collins violates all kinds of rules of argument by claiming that maybe even if you don't believe there is an absolute code b/c people don't all follow it, saints, specifically people like mother theresa, do follow it and are evidence that a universal moral code must exist. For those of you keeping score, he just used individual (and rather exceptional at that) cases to prove a universal.

I must admit that I set (THREW) the book down several times as I encountered these braindead arguments. And I have to emphasize that it's not like I was picking apart long arguments on technicalities; these two to three paragraph assertions were his version of proofs. Egads man! But I muscled through the book and got to watch - he did make some progressively more solid arguments later, most of them revolving around, again, his actual work and not his philo-moonlighting, but even those "solid" arguments invoked the "plainly existing" absolute moral authority again and again and again. Unspeakable levels of sloppiness went into this book - and I won't even get started on the fact that there's a whole absurdity in there about how he saw three waterfalls an KNEW the trinity and Christianity were right, nor will I mention that even the editing was sloppy - the first chapter was peppered with phrases like this:
"This book is only a small antidote to that circumstance, but will perhaps provide an opportunity for reflection, and a desire to dig deeper."
And, the, unnecessary, use, of, commas, award, goes, to...

I was obviously not impressed by Collins's book - another NR and Harris presented somewhat more sound arguments with an intolerable level of bile that rendered the whole exercise pointless. Disappointing foray into a couple of religious books, but fear not, I will, like Lee, press on .

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Close the door; I feel a...

Before we get to the results of my *2nd* fantasy draft in three days, let's give a big shoutout to Mom, who has after many-a-deserving year been awarded a full professorship down at ol' UTHSCSA. Congrats mom!

And in other news - my apologies for the slow White Noise review. I want it to be reasonably decent and haven't had time to sit down and mull it over yet. I have finished two books since then which are in the reviewing queue as well.

Okay, so here goes - you get a double dose this time: my team and Mike NTPB's team. Commentary. Time-wastage! Oh joy!

(And before we even start that, a little response to a snooty little comment made by a certain Pippen... let's call her a little chirpy bird, K. Wren:
Beck, wherever you are, let us form a fantasy cooking league so that we can bore our menfolk (AKA The League Of Dorks, credit: Sports Gal) to tears with endless talk of stuff THAT DOESN'T ACTUALLY HAPPEN.
Um, the stuff totally DOES happen, you ill-informed misanthrope. It's just fantasy baseball, not fantasy fantasy baseball. I mean, it's not like I am playing simulations on my computer; that would be ridiculous. This is real life, the real thing. And our players NEED us. So shhhhhh...)

On to the teams...

Batters

C - Michael Barrett
Cubs catcher; probably about 5th best at the pos, and was having a career year last year before he got a intrascrotal hematoma. *cringe*

1b - Derek Lee
Cubs 1b; hurt last year but was a monstrous stud the year before. Here's hoping...

2b - Marcus Giles
Great a couple of years back, and maybe he could turn it around. I got him very late.

3b - Miguel Cabrera
Thirdbasegod.

SS - Rafael Furcal
Not a bad pickup, he's the dodgers SS who has been a near superstar for a very long time now...

LF - Nick Swisher
Sweet god yes, plus Mike tells me he's rf eligible after a little while this year.

CF - Torii Hunter
Contract. Year. For the twins superathlete - not a great choice, bu tit's a thin position.

RF - Vlad Guererro
The impaler! Another top flight fantasy option.

Util - Pat Burrell
I'm banking on this guy for both of my teams. Don't disappoint!

Bench

Joe Crede - my starting 3b on my other team, he should grab a trade.
Jacque Jones - ugh. But he hit 27 HRs last year, so - no, still ugh.
Jim Edmonds - Sympathy pick.

Pitchers

SP - Brandon Webb
Last year's NL Cy Young

SP - John Smoltz
Smoltzy! Personal fave and super pitcher. Kinda old, though...

SP - Chris Young
Very solid 3rd man from San Diego.

SP - Kelvim Escobar
Also on my other team; he could be great... or not.

SP - Ian Snell
Prospect type; he'll ride the pine til we see how this year's gonna be.

RP - Chad Cordero
Closer for the (yikes) Nats

RP - Bob Wickman
Closer for the Braves

RP - Takashi Saito
Closer for the Dodgers, and Mike informs me tha the had craptastic splits v. the NL West last year... uh oh

RP - Joe Borowski
Another guy who made it onto both rosters; he closed for the CUbs onceuponatime; here's hoping he holds his job at Cleveland.

Phew... again, we'll see.

Mike NTPB's team:

C - Johnny Estrada
Late round acquisition with a cool name.

1b - Jason Giambi
In these post steroid times; Mike wanted Konerko here and just missed him.

2b - Howie Kendrick
Big noise prospect for the dodgers. Could be huge.

3b - A Rod
Yup.

SS - Troy Glaus
Ridiculous that he's eligible here, but rules are rules. bats .250 an d hits 35+ hrs.

LF - Matt Holliday
Super Slugger from Colorado, grea toption.

CF - Andruw Jones
Star player who has hit 50 hrs and gotten lost and lost of rbis in the past. Contract year... another could be colossal, but he bats .250, too.

RF - Gary Sheffield
Coming off an injury - if he's good, he's on eof the best, if not...

Util - Jim Thome
Had a huge year for the White Sox last year and a terrible one for the Phils the year befor ethat. Old, but a monster.

Bench

Adam LaRoche - 1b with a lot of pop, though he moves to a harder park.
Dave Roberts - SB's and that's really about it.

Pitchers

SP - Jason Schmidt
Great a few years ago, this year... he's on my other team.

SP - Curt Schilling
Yep, mr. Bloody Red Sock himself. Actually could be solid, and our league is laced with bostonites, so should be overvalued in trades.

SP - Cole Hamels
Prospect who is projected to do nasty things this year, but has had an injury bug in th eminors.

SP - John Patterson
Fairly innocuous pitcher from the Nats...

RP - Francisco Cordero
The other Cordero closer, he's from the Brewers.

RP - Jason Isringhausen
Cardinal closer if his hip stays healthy.

RP/SP - Adam Wainwright
World Series stud for the Cards last year. He's on my other team. Good pick by NTPB here.

RP - Jorge Julio
Closer for the Marlins. Mike reads the waiver news, apparently.

RP - Octavio Dotel
Closer for the hapless Royals

(SP) - Tim Hudson
Mike should probably stay far, far away from this guy.

So there you have it. Our teams. Our decidedly REAL fantasy teams. We will now proceed to rock everyone's face.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Do I Realize???

How lame my baseball draft post was?

Yes, so I edited and threw in some comments; scroll down the page and peruse if you'd like. i will not, as I just did in an e-mail to Mike NTPB, take you through the agonizing selection process.

Nothing much spinning the planet in this neck of the woods - Beck is currently in sunny Arizona and three hours behind here, so though it is 7 o'clock here she is still at work. And she is also not enjoying yet another day of mid 30 degree weather with rain. This is truly the faux spring of our discontent.

On the plus side, I have been a whirlwind of done-getting these past few days. Wedding bands, passports, you name it. The apartment even looks relatively nice. And if I really get on top of my game, I may even write you a review of White Noise for you all.

So, a short sweet post - when nothing happens, nothing is written; the blog reflects the real and the real reflects something else entirely...

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Sign O' The Times

Spotted this one during the games today:



I am apparently supposed to feel nostalgic for times that were so economically difficult that overworked mothers had to spend their nights doing extra work so that their sons could fit into an artificial consumerist youth culture that was created by the very product that this commercial is selling, a culture that worked so well that not only are you addicted and overstocking your fridge with Coca Cola, but you are in the present actually shilling for your mother's oppressors.

Coke took advantage of my poor mother's eager tendency to please and made her a raise a coke-grubbing ad whore; please buy coke.

(All of this typed while sipping on a can of Coke Zero Cherry, which is like, really, really good, even though I'm alone and we are not currently in an economic depression).

Miller Genuine

Phew. Draft is finally over. Here's my team

Batters

C - Brian McCann
Big-hitting catche rfor the Braves; probably the #3 guy at this position
1b - Ryan Howard

Last year's NL MVP with 58 HRs and a truckload of RBIs. Like a baby Papi.
2b - Rickie Weeks
Up and comer from Milwaukee who was en route to a great season last year when he got hurt. Maybe an Utley in the making...
3b - Joe Crede
Craptastic White Sox third baseman who none-the-less manages to hit some HRs. I rather famously had to choose between this guy and Beltre in 2004; I chose Crede and lost badly. Welcome back, my man.
SS - Miguel Tejada
One-time superstar SS who left Oakland for big bucks in Baltimore - he put up some absurd numbers a couple of years back but has since been trading HRs for average. Stilla fantastic option at short.
OF - Manny Ramirez
Manny being Manny; the famously , um, Manny-ish OF from the Sox. 10+ years in a row of .300 BA /30 HR / 100 RBIs. On the downslide of his career but still a beast.
OF - Pat Burrell
Inconsistent OF from the Phils with a good deal of pop; has theoretically been working out hard this winter so... who knows.
OF - Michael Cuddyer
great late round option for the OF from Minnesota. Goodly amount of HR/ RBI / R and he should be starting in RF this year.
Util - Lyle Overbay
Notorious Cub Killer, SHOULD be fantastic but has been coming up short of late. He's up in TOR now...

Bench

Moises Alou
One year deal with the Mets. Old, so he probably won't tear it up like he once did.
Dave Roberts
Drafted him as SB trade bait, but it's probably not going to work out. He actually had some very serviceable numbers considering how willing the Sox were to part with him.
Nick Punto
Another Twin with multiple position eligibility. He keeps saving my butt in Strat-o-matic so I thought I'd try him in fantasy, too...

Pitchers

SP - Carlos Zambrano
Really emotional K master from the Cubs. If he could get his act together and be consistent, he has CY Young stuff. Sigh...
SP - Jason Schmidt
Dominant LA starter (if he stays healthy).
SP - Derek Lowe
Another Dodger - not thrilled with his lack of K's, but he should be solid.
SP - Kelvim Escobar
A Angels pitcher guy who threatens every year to be great but usually ends up staying just good. We'll see.
SP - Dave Bush
Prospect player from the Brewers. This is supposed to be "the year." So they say.
RP - Trevor Hoffman
Career saves leader; 38 and going strong.
RP - Joe Borowski
Inconsistent Cubs closer who, when he gets it together, is fairly nasty. With the Indians this year.
RP - Adam Wainwright
My lone Cardinal - he tore it up out of the pen last year for the World Series champs and is in the starting rotation this year, or could become a closer if Izzy's hip doesn't hold up. A nice late round pick.
(SP - Ian Snell)
Another prospect type who is a bit more of a stretch than Bush; he pitches for the Pirates. I'm gonna keep him near the exit.

Not bad. As usual, remains to be seen. I'll keep you updated, and Tuesday I should have my other team drafted in my league with Mike NTPB. Somewhere, a K and a Beck are crying.

Flaming (Lips? Moes?) Toes

SO Friday was relatively uneventful (for me; Beck won over yet another vet clinic in the S'th. Huzzah! She is kicking ass and taking names. Or something). Went for a little run at one point and had to stop because of my toe - I took my shoes / socks off to discover a slightly ingrown toe-nail. Argh. So I did the usual self-surgery, clipped the offending nail bit off, soaked it in hot water and then bacitracin-ed it up. All was good with the world. Made myself a little pizza sandwich thingy for dinner and settled down to watch the basketball games - Gringoat were nice enough to call and invite me to Bauhinia (sp?), but I had just clicked the on button on the remote when the phone rang. So that was a no go, and I told them I'd see them early in the AM. More on that later...

So good times with the basketball - Georgetown won on a buzzer beater (where the guy blatantly traveled) and UNC demolished USC. Fun. I also devoted an inordinate amount of time on Friday to fantasy baseball - the drafts for my two leagues are coming up (today and Tuesday), so I had to set my draft order, which just takes forever if you want to do it to any reasonable extent. And yes, I noticed how much time I was wasting repeatedly throughout the process. Sigh.

So I finally got to bed fairly late after the basketball, which was stupid because I had told GG I would pick them up at 5:30 to whisk them down to Logan (they are LA bound). But I figured everything would be okay - except at 2:45 or so...

ATTACK OF THE GOUT!

I got that great sensation that they always talked about in school re: the gout, that it's so painful and sensitive that if the bed sheets brush your toe you'll scream. Well, that's pretty much exactly how it felt - my toe flared up like MAD. In the middle of the night! So I went walking in my sleep and extracted the additional part of the nail that I had missed that was still sticking into my soft toey flesh. Ouch. And I had to soak it in the tub for 20 minutes beforehand in order to be able to attempt this. Plus did I mention the SCREAMING PAIN that had taken me straight from REM stage to battle-the-invading-martians level of alertness. Egads. So I eventually managed to ply the nail out the bed and clipped the offending part off and more or less got instant relief - it still hurt from being sore and swollen, but there's nothing like removing an organic blade to relieve pain. Ah, nice. But at this point it's about 4:30 and I need to get up at 5 so... I got up and worked on my draft order some more.

Needless to say, my Saturday was spent in a haze. But I got gringoat to the airport - we actually had an awesome time, or as awesome as one can have at ass AM (many jokes about corvettes on Dunkin menus) - and I must have done a really good job because Ben tipped me at the end. Seriously, this was one of the funnier situational comedy moments I've experienced - I was helping Ali get her bag out of the trunk right as ben was handing me money for the mass pike tolls, so it definitely looked like a typical customer-porter exchange. Ali afterwards said she felt dirty. Anyways, they headed off away from the sunrise, and I headed back to lonely Grafton...

And had about enough time to walk the pups and eat a bowl of Kix when I had to head back out for the first of four consecutive tutoring appointments. Yowsers - not that it's really that bad, but I was half asleep and choking down coffee the whole while, so it turned into some kind of existential experience. Plus it took 40 minutes to explain the Hershey Chase experiment to the last kid, something that should probably take two. So I finally came back (after a grocery store stop) to crash...

But no! More basketball! OSU to be exact. I have decided that stoic Greg Oden is awesome. Here's a picture, and remember that this guy is 19 years old:

He has a little bit of the look and definitely the attitude of Robert Parish, a Celtics center from the 80s. In fact...
Do you see it, at least a little bit? Both 7 feet tall, both crack a smile approximately never. That's the main similarity, the "I'm above this emotional crap" facial expression. Anyhoo, Oden, except for constantly being in foul trouble, is a total beast and very much fun to watch. So that has been cool. BUT I stayed up to watch the games, so here I am another day later and STILL exhausted. I actually didn't stay up all that late - went to bed at about 9:30 and missed Beck's boyfriend aka Peyton on SNL last night - and have a vague memory of Beck calling here after her shower / dinner festivities in San Antonio - but I woke up this morning at about 7 all wired because Fantasy Draft with the Emen starts in a couple of hours. Oh, boy! I will be sure to post the results... for now, I'll leave you with my top 20 picks, which pretty much match everybody else's top few picks:

1. Albert Pujols
2. José Reyes
3. Álex Rodríguez
4. Ryan Howard
5. Chase Utley
6. David Ortiz
7. Carl Crawford
8. Alfonso Soriano
9. Johan Santana
10. Miguel Cabrera
11. David Wright
12. Vladimir Guerrero
13. Lance Berkman
14. Jimmy Rollins
15. Travis Hafner
16. Carlos Beltrán
17. Grady Sizemore
18. Derek Jeter
19. Miguel Tejada
20. Manny Ramíre

Friday, March 23, 2007

Late Nights / Later Mornings

First, a warning to my brother, whose apartment currently features no shower curtain and a dead cricket in the doorway - some kind of misguided Kafka motif going on there - dude, people are getting killed over crickets! You should clean that apartment up.

I got entranced by the basketball last night and ended up staying up way too late... but it was pretty damn worth it, as it turned out. If you didn't hear, Ohio State was down by 20 but came back to win last night. Greg Oden was in foul trouble all game long and they were even O-possession D-possession subbing him at the end to keep him from fouling out - which potentiated the last play of the game, where a Vol threw up the inevitable Goliath-slaying buzzer beater, only to have Goliath Oden block the Bathsheebus out of it. Very exciting way to end a game... and damn, the Vols must feel terrible:



But I have the postmodern (and perhaps anti-consumerist) inability to watch commercials during the fifteen timeouts called in the last "five minutes" of the game, so I flipped around to eventually settle on NBC. Wait, NBC, late at night? Isn't that Leno territory? Well, normally, yes, but tonight it was Wayne Coyne territory.

Wayne Coyne - on national TV! Wahoo! He was doing some weird documentary / comedy sketch thing at the SXSW festival in Austin where he basically talked to a bunch of (fearless) freaks from the scene and let them say all the weird things freaks do for the entertainment of the late night watching public. Weird, but somehow perfectly Wayne - he has reached that point where he can do pretty much anything short of clubbing baby seals and it will somehow fit perfectly into the overall weird character gestalt he has built up.

I will write about it at length some day, but if you don't know who the heck I am talking about, Wayne Coyne is the frontman for superband extraordinaire The Flaming Lips. Very creative, very out there artist who is willing to try things like multidisc albums where you have to play all four CDs at once, rock operas involving girls fighting robots, movies about aliens and Santa Claus, etc. And serious about that rock opera; it's headed for Broadway. Sweet. Here's a Wayne Coyne visual series to break up the montony

Suffice it to say, weird dude. He's also a bit of an uber-optimist which leads to the occasional overly earnest faux philosophical ramblings in his song lyrics, but it's hard to blame him for that since he's by all accounts a sincerely great guy. Anyways, I'll leave the Wayne-praising with this: an NPR show where he and the band performed some songs and an essay of his on what he believes. If you haven't ever heard of the Flaming Lips, I would recommend starting with Yoshimi or The Soft Bulletin and working your way back; the FLips are the quintessential example of a band that started very rough and managed to polish themselves just enough to retain the early weirdness and achieve some solid beauty at the same time. I can't leave things like that - here are some samples from our friends at youtube. I will now get back to my later morning and do some work...


Fight Test

W.A.N.D.

Yoshimi

Covering Bohemian Rhapsody at SXSW


War Pigs Encore - YEAH!!!


Thursday, March 22, 2007

Crapular Calvinism

And now I understand the pain of the Beck...

(Insert "Sequel to The Passion of the Christ" joke here)

The dogs were lowing (last night at 2 am) and poor Nyet - he waked, and you'd better believe there was some full on cry/yelling going on. I still have not determined what caused the sudden middle of the night bark fest, but they hit me at the crux of sleep cycles and sent me into a sympathetic (nervous system, not emotional pity kind) storm that made me get up and look at the computer for answers as to why i could not fall asleep. Fortunately, such searching came up with this, which was not good for my sleeping but good for a very twisted laugh...



SO I got next to no sleep last night, which made me something of a highly incompetent teacher-drone (and a pilotless one at that!). I shlepped my way through biology tutoring, a class (which went quite well, actually), algebra tutoring, a talk on Martin Luther and the Guttenberg press, miscellaneous school work and some calculus tutoring before I won the right to head home after a solid 7:15-3:15 no breaks workday.

And this is the part where I knew the Pain of the Beck - ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS TAKE A NAP, somethign which anyone who knows me can attest is something I never do. So that indicates teh death con seven level tired state I was in. So I lay down and got maybe 15 minutes in when the rumble rumble pound pound bark bark began drifting downstairs... Don't Call Him Owen or COmma Ryan:

IT'S NOLAN!!!!!!!!!!!

The upstairs Calvin-look-alike who has a propensity for running lap after lap after lap around his apartment, screaming all the while and apparently taunting his dog into a near-rabid frenzy. I can't imagine how his mom puts up with it. NEhoo, it was LOUD AS HELL in our bedroom and I could not sleep at all, but I was too borderline comatose to do anything productive. So I basically sat there in half asleep stupor, unable to formulate any kind of standard non zen koan-esque line of thought that could lead to me falling back asleep. Despite the fact tha tit doesn't even work in the movies, I tried pounding on the wall and ceiling, nothing. SO the nap was destroyed, and hours later I am still in the same sleep-deprived trance-without-the-psychotherapeutic benefits state.

Oh, But Nappyless Nyet Will Have His Revenge on Seattle, er, Nolan: I finally dragged myself out of bed, walked into the study, plugged in a guitar, turned it to 7 (which, trust me, what with the advances of science and all, is way better than the 11 from years ago - trust me, it's kinda like volume inflation), walked out of the study to protect my ears, closed the door and played a Grafton-shaking A5 chord. After some of the loudest, most experimental discordant riffs I could muster in my insomniac delirium, I stopped, turned off the amp, and listened. Nary a Nolan stomp to be heard. Scared straight, or at least still. Tromp on my ceiling, will you, exuberance of youth? Behold the power of avant rock. I'll have that little Watterson-esque bastard listening to Sonic Youth in no time (which mean, I suppose, that my revenge really will have been had on his parents and / or future girlfriends who can't stand his indie rock record guy ramblings). The whole of his future determined on the second afternoon of spring in 2007 by your restless downstairs neighbor - I hope Nolan appreciates the magnitude of such a gift.

So almost immediately after the St. Fun debacle, Ali called and invited me over for dinner with the Gringoat. SO I went, and we ate Chinese and watched a show about Chinese Bones. Awesome. I highly appreciate the GG's hospitality (horse brutality?) in these Beckless Times, and I will gladly repay their generosity in the future, perhaps with some kind of ride to an airport - or, failing that, a ride to an IT factory, or a similar Sodom & Gomorrah inspired Gyroscope based vehicle.

Word. SBeck reports that all is going well in texas; she has one more interview to go in austin. She's alread received a couple of job offers, so Nostradamus's prediction taht "The Beck and the Nyet will eat in the year 2008" is looking to be true. Sweet.

And before I forget, another couple of pics which show the eye tracking study trends I may or may not have mentioned to you. The gist is that some eye tracking studies have revealed a strange tendency in men to stare at crotches. And another one shows that artists look at the world differently. (Um, for the first one, interesting, but for the second, I'd like to hire those "scientists" at Proctor & Gamble's new "2 + 2 Still Equals 4" R&D branch. SOLID WORK, PEEPS.


Life in mono

stuck, nih headset udah hampir sampai ajalnya juga. yang kedengaran tinggal sebelah kiri doang. life in mono! oh i hate it!

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Scapular Calvinism

(Prequel - Here's a shoutout to K, who couldn't remember what the Postal Service song sounded like. Here it is in youtube form, though I make no claims as to the relative awesomeness of the videos. The first is the Postal Service original, the second is some random video set to Iron & Wine's version which was featured in the Garden State soundtrack) (though reportedly iron & wine will not, like, sooooo change your life)





Hey world - still recovering from what I presume to be a Margie-dealt cold here in the cold, windy, Beckless wonderland. I ended up skipping out on the inservice on Monday with my craptastic feelings, judging that the Nut would be better served by my absence than my coughing presence at the collection of gabbing circles.

But that didn't stop me from trekking over to Ali and Ben the Zygomatic Grin's place last night for a yummy spaghetti dinner. Fun times - hung out, shared stories, and heard about Ben & Ali's new very strange business, something about selling numbered cashews that are stored in weaponry, or what they have tentatively named "Digits / Nuts in the Arse-nal." Don't worry, I don't get it either.

NEhoo, I greatly appreciated being rescued from my lonely abode for a nice dinner with friends - we even followed it up with hot chocolate and an episode of South Park. Sweetness!

Beck has completed 2/10 interviews on her Southwestern Vet Tour and everything's gone reasonably well so far (with the possible exception of minor details). She's also had fun staying with Aaron at the Home of the Cricket & Wet-Floored Curtainless Bathroom. He has reportedly moved on from 24 to Numbers, and the quick among you will not that he just moved from the singular to the plural. (Urge to tell joke is gigantic right here; I refrain out of love and or fear of consequence).

Class went okay this morning, though thanks to some monstrously picky peeing by the Ess-dog this morning I was 10 minutes late. The students did not cry. They have a long overdue presentation tomorrow; we'll see how that works out. In other Nut News, one of my advisees got into Cal Arts which is seventeen kinds of awesome - very pumped for him.

After a long day of tutoring and such, I came home and got a call from Liz who inspired me to, perhaps for the first and only time, take advantage of one of the shower gifts Beck received. I made Liz's 20 minute brownie sludge - WAHOO! - and it was awesome. Great way to spend an evening. Highly recommended.

I have also gotten massive amounts of wedding stuff done today. I rock! I also ran 3+ miles yesterday and 4+ today - I double rock. I'm also just a few short pages away from finishing White Noise - I triple stone from the Sun!

I have also found the dream room for my future abode - if anyone is wondering what I might have registered for, this is it.

And now, miscellaneously cool links:

Plasma Pong
Wowsers. Too sweet for verds.

Boomshine
Sweet chain reaction game.

How Police Interrogation Works
Oddly interesting article from howstuffworks, which is incidentally a sweet site.

Ariel Santos
Cool feature on a bud of mine from the Tufts Ultimate team

Curt Schilling's Blog (or perhaps you'd prefer Gilbert Arenas's?)
The future is now.

Say it ain't O-prah
Absolute Power does something.

A Dramatic Reading of an Ill-Written Breakup Note
Nice.

And finally - you've been waiting your entire life for this one - A SKIING OSTRICH!!!!

Sunday, March 18, 2007

If A.I.= The Answer, Well Then, What is the Question? (No NBA Content Within)

The question is, "how much do I love Sparkle?"

Our yard has about a foot of snow on it, plus banks, and due to the freezing rain has a nice crusty layer of ice on its surface. I started this morning by taking Beck to the airport (at 5:30), driving back, taking the dogs out (at 7:10), seeing a squirrel and thinking oh n...

SPLAT.

Wrigley and Sparkle bolted simultaneously very hard and I was standing on said ice sheet and I wiped out. If anyone else in the neighborhood had been awake they would have been highly amused. As it were, a solo performance, art for art's sake and not for the adulation. I am nothing if not sincere. Anyways, I emerged relatively unscathed.

But that is not even what I'm talking about. We took several other trips outside today, all of which involved antics of the dogs trying to balance themselves to urinate / defecate. I am heavy enough to break the ice (when I am not falling on it), but the dogs are not, so there were a whole lot of Bambi moments out there. Hilarity ensued. But Sparkle, as is her wont, went on strike. After dinner tonight, she was clearly about to explode, so i went out in the yard WITHOUT THE DOGS and stomped out a nice flat stretch for her own personal latrine. How very exciting. Mission accomplished, and a much more comfortable Sparkle now sits on the sofa, staring off into the night.

It's been that kind of a day. Tutoring, NCAA, blah. I did manage to crank it to 11.3 and learned the Theme to Buffy the Vampire Slayer *and* I reaffirmed Thursday night's learning of Uncle John's Band. Sweet! Good times.

Back to school in the A.M., though one day of inservice before the artists return. Wish me luck... and wish the Beck luck, too - her string of interviews starts tomorrow morning. She is now napping in Austin and reports that Aaron's apartment is nice, but may have violated the entirety of subheading XIV.a13 of the LSOCA (Linda's Standards of Cleanliness Act). Shocking. Knot.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Snakes? Or something...

Happy St. Patrick's Day peoples. This holiday has an astounding significance for a people of which I am not a part.

I am alone again tonight - Beck is in Walpole for a last day in the ER before a jaunt South-ward to, you know, determine our future - and am having an overly emotional response to Postal Service's "Such Great Heights," which, all of its musical merits aside, has one of the most beautiful / sappy emotional first verses in the history of etc. (google lyrics such great heights) (though this is my own rhythmic meteric arrangement):

I
Am thinking it's a sign
That the freckles in our eyes
Are mirror images
And when we kiss
They're perfectly aligned
And I
Have to speculate
That God himself did make
Us into corresponding shapes
Like puzzle pieces
From the clay
And true,
It may seem like a stretch,
But it's thoughts like this that catch
My troubled head
When you're away
When I am missing you to death
When you
Are out there on the road
For several weeks of shows
And when you scan
The radio
I hope this song will guide you home

It's beautiful touching and excellently constructed (and touching) in some kind of lonely missing you much sentiment. Whatever; I think I take too much credit if I portend a romantic element to this tendency of angst (pronounced ahngst). It's really the same old same old, or more directly, S.O.S. Meanings fade and I "just don't know what to do with myself;" I end up staring and fixing a drink and thinking of meals as rewards and dreams as capitalist enterprises. It's all largely sickening, despair-inducing and in all other senses another Saturday night.

I get the feeling that the Midwestern tendency is to smile and pretend everything is alright and mindlessly pursue that which is mandated to be pursued; I don't mean that as insulting but rather as casually anthropologically observant. I guess I mean to insinuate that I don't necessarily think all bars are set the same, or not in the same places, or the same (such great) heights, and oh is that the sound I hear of the metaphor dying.

There's a sameness to the basketball (the March Madness, exciting in its mundane repetition of buzzer beaters and parity) that is soothing and rip-roaringly pointless. I read today that Vivaldi and others of his ilk died penniless and buried in unmarked graves; one (and by one I mean I) wonder(s) if there's an eerie correspondence in the 10% Ohio State graduation rate and this sad fact. As much as I dig his tunes... I mean that there's no real connection there other than an approximate name and some kind of very abstract concept, and maybe I should appreciate that it's just the limits of things and I should no more be lamenting my lack of an ability to fly, but seeing these boy-men flounder all over the court for a second round upset that will be dropped from the collective memory *even harder* than last week's celebrity poker scandal is chokingly sad.

It was Xavier 2007 that almost upset the super one seed Ohio State today, for the very transient record.

There's no thesis here. Other than to say that I am nonplussed to be alone on yet another night and miffed that Beck is leaving and that more than anything I am no more looking forward to the future (at least in this very present second) than I am looking forward to the past.

Exercise Review

Suture: 67

This is an exercise in juxtaposition between what is plainly evident on the screen and what is evident via the plot. The whole film revolves around the idea that a black man is being mistaken for a white man - and further more, the whole film is shot and black and white and given a mistaken identity vibe headily reminiscent of Hitchcock. Everything about the film is expertly executed - crunchy dialogue, fine, plain-faced acting, and jsut a gorgeous noir take on the Southwestern U.S. The overt absurdity is very effective throughout and makes this a highly enjoyable film to watch, but it is hard not to notice that what you are watching is really an exercise piece, as though you had caught a snippet of a maters studies or their resultant palette rather than a finished product. In othe rwords, it's a little bit style for style's sake, which while highly entertaining and fascinating to watch, keeps this gem from making its way into great movie categories.

Stranger Than Fiction: 30

This flick, on the other hand, was an exercise in attempted absurdity that failed. Actually, two spectacular things about this movie - one, the intro, for two minutes, was spot on, tightly constructed and promised a huge picture (which did not deliver). The second is that Will Ferrel playing the punk song "Whole Wide World" and having Saggy Gyllenhaal knock him over to make out with him was pretty much the textbook romantic comedy turn scene and was perfectly executed within its own stupid universe (egged on by the fact that WWW is a TWO CHORD SONG). That said, even that perfect moment occurred in a sea of stupidity - Maggie's character had no business falling for him other than the convenience of a subplot, and her character in general was a complete waste of time; though she did ti well, you get the feeling someone asked "a couple million dollars for a weekend of work?" and she said " Sure!" Dustin Hoffman's character was worse, and worse still was that this insipid story could be construed by any stretch to be "great literature." The author (Emma Thomson) was raving caricatured moron and Queen Latifah's presence seemed like an effort at target-marketing. The whole "watch" subplot was aimless and dumb and Ferrell's math visions, while pulled off excellently in that intro, wandered about aimlessly and showed up inconsistently for the rest of the movie. For me, this was just an embarrassing film - one that tried to use a gimmick and failed miserably through a complete lack of effort. Cliche-ridden, and clichely bad. But, it did have...



Friday, March 16, 2007

track review



maafkan saya, niat untuk menghadirkan track review setiap minggu belum bisa terlaksana. Mudah-mudahan dikedepannya, track review ini bisa hadir setiap minggu. Silahkan…

artist : Avril Lavigne
title : Girlfriend
album : The Best Damn Thing


so damn frustated! maaf cuma asli saya kecewa bangetttttttt dengan track satu ini. diantara semua pujian yang masuk, apakah hanya saya yang mencelanya? karena terus terang saja, avril tidak "naik kelas" dengan singel cetek ini. saya teriritasi berat dengan track ini. kok rasanya balik lagi dari ke album Let Go miliknya. seolah-olah kita ingin ditarik kembali ke masa kita bisa menikmati having fun dalam hidup ini. secara lirik, track ini jelas kalah dengan kekuatan dari "My Happy Ending", "Fall To Pieces", bahkan dibandingkan "I'm With You" saja tidak bisa. okelah dari segi musik, beat yang lumayan catchy dan enak buat dipake goyang mungkin jadi salah satu bagian yang membuat track ini langsung nancap di otak. plus lirik yang cemen langsung membuat orang bisa sing-a-long dengan "Girlfriend" ini. secara komersil track ini berhasil (rasanya memang ini yang diharapkan yah :P). lihat saja request an di radio lokal, track ini jadi playlist wajib, plus dia sudah menduduki di beberapa chart pencari lirik, sebagai lirik yang paling banyak di download. tetapi tetap saja, sebagai seorang yang sudah addict dengan Avril Ramone Lavigne saya kecewa. mudah-mudahan ada track lain yang bisa menutupi track ini dalam album The Best Damn Thing Ini. Semoga.

artist : Within Temptation feat Keith Caputo
title : What Have You've Done
album : The Heart of Everything


dengan mengambil keith caputo sebagai teman untuk diajak featuring, jadilah track ini menjadi bagian kedua dari "Bring Me To Life". bahkan dengan teriakan di awal track pun sudah langsung bisa mengingat kalau lagu ini mirip dengan lagu milik Evanesence itu. sebegitu kuatnya kah image yang sudah terbangun? okeh FYI Within Temptation ini sendiri salah satu produk di Eropa sana. jadi wajar aja kalau misalnya musik "cadas" mereka itu memang lumayan terdengar beda. menjiplak? bisa jadi kesan yang ditimbulkan track ini. tapi asli sumpah, lagu ini berasa membuat kita ingin teriak bersama vokalis dari Within Temptation ini (tapi sayang yang menjadi visualisasi tetaplah Amy Lee). butuh lagu untuk dijadikan soundtrack kamu untuk meneriaki seseorang karena meminta dia bertanggung jawab (dan kemudian tanyalah dia, “would you mind if I kill you?”) cari track ini!

artist : Monrose
title : Even Heaven Cries
album : Temptation


salah satu lagu yang berjenis self help lagi. yakz, bukan hanya buku saja yang bisa dijadikan bahan self help, alias membantu disaat kamu sudah berada dalam taraf hopeless banget. dengan beat yang cenderung bermain di daerah middle (ataukah dengan kata lain so-poppish) track ini langsung bisa masuk ke dalam otak dan memberi suntikan semangat baru. tapi kok saya lebih suka dengan versi live mereka yah? soalnya memang vokal dari cewek-cewek Monrose ini begitu kuat, jadi dengan track yang secara resmi dirilis vokal mereka kedengarannya menjadi serupa. "Even Heaven Cries" ini sendiri dijadikan track yang bersaing dengan "Shame" yang juga dicap senjata mereka untuk album Temptation ini. dari Eropa lagi? tentu saja, karena saya juga sebenarnya sudah jenuh dengan musik dari Amerika. Jadi kalo kamu tipikal orang yang sering berkelahi dengan dirimu sendiri, mengenai apakah yang kamu perbuat itu benar atau salah dan selalu takut dengan ketakutanmu sendiri. Dengarkan track ini, sambil membayangkan bahkan surga pun bisa juga menangis.

artist : Finger Eleven
title : Paralyzer
album : Them Vs You Vs Me


satu yang paling saya ingat dari Finger Eleven hanyalah track “One Thing” yang slow mellow banget. Maklum lah, track ini yang menjadi airplay saya tahun 2003 yang lalu. Tetapi saya sangat shock mendengar track andalan band ini. Dengarkan suara bridge dan refrain bagian terakhir dimana vokal dari frontman Finger Eleven lebih jelas dibandingkan musiknya, wuih canggih!!! Kita bisa membayangkan untuk ikut serta dalam otak mesum (ataukah desperate?) yang terwakili melalui “I hold out for one more drink/Before I think/I’m looking too desperately”. Yeah, terkadang memang sangat menyakitkan teman, ketika kita melihat suatu sosok yang sudah ada di depan mata, tapi sama sekali gak bisa disentuh. Sakit!

artist : Sheryl Crow
title : Try Not To Remember
album : Ost. Home Of The Brave


rasanya seorang Sheryl crow tidak usahlah dipertanyakan lagi tentang bagaimana mengapresiasi sebuah karya. Terus terang, saya merinding ketika mendengar lagu ini untuk pertama kali. Walaupun belum pernah menonton filmnya, saya dapat membayangkan bagaimana perasaan para tentara yang berusaha untuk tidak mengingat lagi apa yang terjadi di masa lalu. Dengan musik yang jelas ketika bagian refrain masuk, justru semakin memperjelas apa yang ingin digambarkan kepada kita. Dengarkan lagu ini sambil memeluk lututmu ditengah lapangan ketika kau sedang ingin melupakan sesuatu. Belajarlah untuk menyimpannya, sebagai bagian kenangan yang dikemudian hari akan terbuka secara tidak sengaja.

artist : Big Brovas
title : Big Bro Thang
album : Re-Entry


pertama dengar track ini, bayangkan suara Lena (from Tatu) menyanyikannya dan kemudian dia menyadari bahwa ternyata dia bukan lesbian karena ada suara cowok yang masuk dan mengambil alih intro dari track ini (agak gak nyambung yah?). hip-hop? Bukan, lagu rock? Gak kayak begini instrumennya. Kalo misalnya jeli mendengar bahkan ada suara biola pula yang menjadi latar dari musik yang ditawarkan grup ini. Pokoknya beda dengan tipikal lagu hip-hop lainnya deh. Kalo memang kamu sudah jenuh dengan lagu ajub-ajub dari dataran amerika (lagi) saatnya track ini bisa dijadikan pembanding. Bahwa ternyata memang hip hop juga bisa memasukkan unsure-unsur seperti rock misalnya. Jadi nikmati sajalah!

artist : Brooke Fraser
title : Saving The World
album : What To Do With The Daylight


Hohohohoho, inilah track jagoan saya. Skala 1 sampe 10, ni track dapat 9! Kemungkinan besar menjadi long life playlist, bisa banget. Karena dari segi lirik dan musik, begh. Nendang banget! Mungkin kalo pertama kali dengar, seperti track-track mainstream lainnya. So pop! Tetapi lagu ini bisa menjadi bahan pelajaran bahwa memang selama ini janganlah melihat semuanya dari benar atau salah saja. Ada area ditengahnya dimana saya adalah salah satu makhuk penghuni daerah abu-abu itu :D. segi vokal, Brooke Fraser ini bisa dijadikan jagoan karena memang tipikal yang gampang dikenali. Tapi kenapa setelah album ketiga saya baru mengetahuinya yah? Well, kalau memang kamu sudah jenuh dengan keadaan dunia dan berniat untuk menyelamatkannya, rubahlah! Kalo memang misalnya butuh sidekick, just call me okeh! Siberuang :D

artist : Emilia
title : Var Minut/Each Minute
album : Little Words From Heart


jangan Tanya saya apa artinya. Saya pun tidak mengetahuinya, kecuali mungkin artinya kita harus menghargai setiap menit yang terus berjalan :D (* sok bijak Mode ON). Tapi inilah owner dari “Big-Big Girl” yang sudah semakin mematangkan vokalnya dan bahwa sebenarnya kita masih bisa menikmati suaranya tanpa harus menunggu setiap acara “Evergreen” yang akan memutarkan lagu-lagu lawas. Kenapa dirilis dengan bahasa swedia? Tanya kenapa? Tapi yang jelas dari segi musik, mid mellow dengan suara vokal ketika Emilia menyanyikan bagian reffrainnya menjadi sangat menarik. Mudah-mudahan track ini bisa dirilis dalam bahasa inggris supaya kita bisa menjadikannya teman ketika sedang berdiri di depan jendela dan melihat dunia yang terus berputar dengan satu pertanyaan besar. “bagaimana jalannya dunia ini tanpa saya atau kamu di dalamnya?”

artist : Joss Stone
title : Tell Me About It
album : Introducing Joss Stone


tidak kenal dengan Joss Stone? coba cek kembali apakah kamu tinggal di bumi atau tidak. soalnya suara cewek ini asli dahsyat abis! dengan suara soulnya bisa membuat kamu langsung jatuh cinta. setelah melepas "Fall In Love With a Boy" yang membuatnya mendapatkan banyak pengakuan dari dunia, termasuk menembus pasar Amerika, Joss Stone menawarkan "Tell Me About It". dengan suara yang mengintroduce Joss Stone di awal track ini, plus intro yang beda, langsung mendapat respon posistif. apalagi dengan tarikan suara yang enak banget pas bagian reffrain, Joss Stone is so sexy! sampling permainan terompet dan choir yang menemaninya selama track ini, membuat suasana Soulnya begitu terasa. jadi kalau memang ada perasaan kamu yang sudah tersimpan lama banget, just tell it honey! jangan sampai kamu merasa menjadi pecundang di hadapan si dia. tapi, hey! kemana sisa tracknya? hanya 2 menit 50 detik? ah, sayang sekali...

artist : Rob Thomas
title : Little Wonders
album : (Ost. Meet The Robinsons)


let it in/let your clarity define you/in the end/we will only just remember how it feels. That’s it. Hanya itu yang ingin saya bagi dengan kalian mengenai track yang satu ini. Ditambah dengan vokal Rob Thomas sendiri yang bisa menyuarakan maksud dari track ini. Tidak usah saya jelaskan lagi. Cari!!!!

Unduh Lagunya disini (tau kan caranya?)

New England Comma Be Effing

We left Boston at 3 o'clock... and here we are, 6:30, sitting down in Grafton after a historically crappy drive. Ay Carmaba, man, you could not possibly pay me enough to leave this little corner of the world sooner.

We had trucked down to Boston to visit with Meghan and the iPMM for lunch - for the record, I had considered this plan dubious considering the upcoming snowstorm, but Beck and I decided to press on anyways. Fun time there; we hung out and chatted and ate some good soups from Whole Foods. And, as Margie reported, both of Meghan's dogs (Simon and Nigel, respectively)(which is very important for the forthcoming XTC reference) are doing just fine:


I am too cool for photos. Focus on the floor in front of me!


You may ONLY make plans for me.

Then again, you too would be fine if you had this sleeping option available at all hours:



So Beck had to leave 3 so we could be back by 5 so she could meet her ride for work tonight. Easy, yes? Fool, you know New England not. At the beginning of the trip, Beck was fine (and looking colorfully dashing, I must say):


But by the end, the cabin fever of sitting in a car for 3+ hours had gotten to her. She underwent a frightening transformation:


And you thought you couldn't sleep after you watched The Blair Witch Project. Egads. Anyways, I'll spare you the boring details of a long plodding ride with nothing but th egrating nastiness of Michael Graham's voice to comfort you; here's a photo montage of the scene. Keep a lookout for the exit to Route 30 - in doing so, you will be not mimicking the Beck who managed to add fifteen minutes to our trips by ignoring it.


The coolest pic in there is one I took out the window. We're in the middle of the Tufts Vet School Farms, not that you can tell at all. While you gaze at this, put yourself approximately 30 hours before this scene when it was 70 degrees...

Ugh. We did eventually make it home, and I was feeling sickly / sniffly / back hurting / heat hurting / abdomen cramping , so I jumped in the bath to try to relax for a bit. No rest, though - the PGoat called demanding that we come over for pizza and games. Huzzah! I got dressed and we trudged back into the snow for a two mile drive to the GrinGoat Castle. Beck neglected to tell me that *I* was in charge of bringing the games, so we ended up just eating some pizza, watching a bit of the bball games and hanging out with The Grin, PGoat, Saviour and Mound. For some reason a lot of the conversation revolved around proptosis, which is funny because it makes Ben cringe like crazy. Good times, and we eventually headed back at about 11 after a pair of Pelligranos (sp?) were not delivered.

We managed to get the car stuck in our own driveway at 11:30, so we blasted our way out and got it ready for this mornign (Saturda) - I was supposed to tutor this fine freezing rain AM but couldn't get the car to budge at 9:30 this morning so i rescheduled everything for tomorrow. Beck then dug the car out and went to grab Ali so they could go shopping at Le Gap (being the pair of white people that they are) (did I mention that Sucka Ali bought the boyfriend pants the other day? She's going to be so sad when they turn out to be husband britches, I tell you what) for interview clothes for the Beck. iF has to trek down to Texas/Arizona for a slew of interviews at prospective clinics this week, so wish her a lot of luck... it seems that the universe, or at least this Nor'easter, is trying to give her some hefty motivation to do well...

Until next time - gonna watch some bball, read, and get ready to do all today's tutoring tomorrow.

Gettin' the Band Back Together...

After another weddingful day yesterday - Beck and I rented tuxes, tried shoes, looked at rings, etc. - I came home and started to watch the basketball games when Ali called - her hubby The Grin (TM) was at a work-related dinner function and the Beck was down in Walpole at the ER clinic, , so we went out and grabbed dinner and a couple of terrible margaritas at Cancun's, the classy joint up the street. Good times!

On a whim I brought my guitar to Ali's, and there was a great deal of Rawkin' Out. Booyeah! Fun times, definitely something we should do something more often. I'll let the setlist speak for itself:

Nyet & the PGoat
Providence Rd. Pavilion (aka Ali/Ben's abode) - Grafton, MA
2007.03.15

Dust in the Wind*, American Pie, Landslide*, Unidentified Campfire Song**, Uncle John's Band, Ripple, Misc Led Zep Medley***, Ali Learns Barre Chords^ -> Strong Enough, Blowin' in the Wind -> Me and Bobby McGee^^

* - Fingerpicked intros by Ali
** - Something about not wanting to work in a field; Nyet can't remember
*** - Ali on the phone with Ben, Nyet noodling
^ - First time played; original avant garde composition w/ squeaks and unsounded notes
^^ - Super rambunctious wake-up-the-neighbors version complete with La-di-da outro


ABout this time Ben came home and was feeling migrainey so we put the guitars away and just hung out for a bit. OoOFGC (one of our favorite Grafton couples) (not to be confused with Sarah & Christophe, aka OOFGC (our other favorite Grafton couple)) is doing quite well, aside from the aforementioned migraines. before I left for home (and watched a slew of generally uninteresting and sloppy college basketball), they showed me this pair of youtube clips which I will now pass on to you to echo mercilessly in your skull:





Thursday, March 15, 2007

kronologis gramedia fair 2007

tempat kejadian perkara : balai m jusuf (atau yang biasa disebut manunggal)

para pelaku : iQko (siberuang), Memey, jeng sHanty

pelaku tambahan : kosmik's girl 05, chiwang, om dari tribun (maaf bahkan nama anda pun saya tidak tahu), rara, mamie

waktu kejadian : rabu, 14 maret 2007 pukul 02 siang - 08 malam

kronologis kejadian

bete! hanya itu yang bisa mendeskripsikan perasaanku ketika meninggalkan kampus jam 2 siang. sebabnya? janganlah. tidak usah saya paparkan disini. tidak enak seandainya si objek yang tertuduh membaca postingan ini. tapi mengenai smua yang terjadi di kampus lah, selama sesiangan rabu lalu. daripada saya berkoar-koar karena nafsu untuk mencela dan menghujat saya sedang sangat tinggi, saya memilih untuk pergi. daripada banyak yang tersinggung karena saya yang bete. yah, sudahlah. perjalanan dari kampus pun berlalu begitu saja. saya kira saya tidak akan pernah bisa menikmati yang namanya gramedia fair ini. yah, karena perasaan yang sudah sangat tidak beraturan, mana saya ditinggal anak-anak spice dan spice boyz yang sudah duluan kesana. jadinya niat saya sih, palingan liat-liat buku doang, abis itu pulang.
tapi ternyata yah, agak sedikit berbeda lah kenyataan yang terjadi di lapangan. sesampainya disana, ternyata spice dan spice boyz udah mo balik. secara emang mereka dari jam 11 an disana. sudahlah, saya toh juga terbiasa dengan keadaan sendirian ini. masuk ke stand-stand, liat ada tulisan besar obral buku 2500 sebiji. gila aja, buku apaan tuh? ternyata yang dijual yah seperti bisa ditebak, komik-komik lapuk dari tahun 2 plus novel-novel yang ada gambar-gambar pasangan di depannya (aduh gak penting deh penjelasannya!). yah, secara emang saya cowok apaan? kalo bukan komik serial cantik, yang ada malah buku resep masakan. halah!!! pindah ke stand berikutnya, ada satu majalah yang sudah menarik perhatianku. dari headline yang ditawarkan juga udah kliatan banget kalo majalah ini bagus. pc+ nama majalahnya. yang dibahas? apalagi selain blog?? kekekekeke, tapi ternyata masih belum ada niatnya buat membeli. soalnya mo liat buku dulu. pas masuk ke stand yang ada ditengah, naujubillah.ckckckckckckck. banyaknya manusia! mana badan segede-gede beruang lagi. sudahlah, toh semuanya sedang asyik liatin buku yang emang sedang di diskon. entah apakah konsep, menaikkan harga kemudian memberikan diskon berlaku disini. tapi yang jelas, banyak skali orang!!!!!!!!!!1 begh. sampai gak bisa liat buku yang ada di rak bawah, soalnya tu manusia semua berjejer di depan rak, sehingga menutupi semua rak. plus ditambah orang-orang yang sengaja memegang buku, sok mencari padalah matanya ke arah panggung. yo oloooooo, kalo emang mo nonton panggungnya, keluar sana! bikin penuh-penuh saja. setelah lama berjalan-jalan-jalan. gulp (suara ludah tertelan) kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! ada barang bagus!!! mantap deh pokoknya! skala 1 sampe 10 dia dapat 8. dan yang anehnya nih sayang.... saya merasa pernah melihat dia. ge er? biar sajah. toh memang itu kenyataannya. curi-curi pandang otomatis terjadi, and you know what? dia ternyata melakukan hal yang sama. 2 kali saling ke gep bahwa kita curi-curi pandang. mo nyamperin, gak enak. soalnya dia lagi kerja. sudahlah, lain hari kesini lagi ah.............
nope, ceritanya belum berakhir disini, setelah keliling-keliling akhirnya saya melihat buku yang wajib di beli. vandemekum wartawan karya parakitri. nih buku udah dicetak ulang, malu dong sebagai seorang PR gak atau bagaimana membuat press release (tau nggak waktu saya pegang buku ini, saya juga iseng nanya ke mbak-mbak penjaga stand, mo minta etntative acara di book fair, eh malahan ada yang nanya, "mas wartawan yah? dari koran mana?" :D). dan buku ini juga udah lama jadi incaran, namun belum punya bujet, jadinya kau milikku sekarang! pas mo bayar... ketemu ama gerombolan cewek-cewek kosmik anak 2005. yah sutralah, cekikikan sudah pasti terjadi. dan celaan? maaf saja buat orang-orang yang udah kena celaannya kita. di dekat meja kasir ada sesuatu aneh yang menumpuk. gratisan? hehehehe ya iya lah. segera mi. ngambil majalah gratisannya. jadi pas udah diluar stand, tu cewek-cewek langsung nanya, ngambil dimana majalah gratisannya itu. segera kasir menjadi ajang amuk massa (:D) yang anarkis menginginkan majalah return itu. dasar mahasiswa yah, yang namanya gratisan juga gak bakal dilewatkan. dan akhirnya apa yang terjadi? pandangan tidak rela, plus bete, jengkel, memenuhi penjaga stand dan kasirnya. hahahaha, santelah!
jalan-jalan-jalan lagi. ketemu satu sosok yang sudah lama skali ingin saya temui. yaitu Anda! yupz namanya memang anda'. tema yang dibahas? seputar masalah isu putusnya dia dengan ucchank. saya juga sudah ngomong sama dia, itu urusan pribadi kalian kalo emang mau putus, cuma karena saya merasa bukan orang lain, makanya saya cuma prihatin dengan semua isu, rumor, gosip, skandal yang beredar di kampus mengenai hubungan mereka. dan jadilah, pojokan manunggal menjadi saksi bagaimana kita berdiskusi mengenai, apa, mengapa, dan bagaimana kedepannya antara dia dan ucchank. keep tough yah!
kekacauan berikutnya terjadi ketika 2 personel spice kembali ke gramedia fair ini. yaitu memey dan shanty. katanya mereka mau menunggu undian meraup buku yang ada sebentar malam. dan jadilah kami tiga setan yang membuat acara ini sebagai arena bermain raksasa. tujuan berikutnya? seminar PR! kirain ini seminar apaan.. soalnya banyak banget PR-PR dari beberapa perusahaan yang ada di Makassar, dan semuanya tuh asli, cantik-cantik en cakep-cakep. gak kayak kita, udah dekil, kusam, eh si shanty malahan cuma make sendal billabongnya lagi! untungnya kita diizinkan untuk merusuh disini. ternyata kita juga salah masuk acara sodara-sodara. kirain nih seminar PR, nyatanya cuma Public hearing dari tribun timur yang mengundang dan memberikan penjelasan kepada PR bagaimana membuat press release ke tribun. capeeeeeeeeeek deh! tapi berhubung kue sekotak plus sertifikat sudah ada di tangan, ya sudahlah. go with the flow saja.
lepas magrib, suasana di book fair ini udah lumayan sepi. dan kita bersiap-siap buat ikuti undian meraup bukunya. eh, ketemu mamie, rara, sama cikal. salam blogger! kirain banyak blogger yang akan datang, soalnya mo ambil baju. keren juga bajunya. tapi haruskah itu ada tulisan "i'm blogger" :D. ehm, si memey terlihat bersama om-om. dan memey anteng aja menyuruh membelikan salah satu mie instant yang ikutan juga di acara ini.
"siapa tuh mey?"
"temannya MYD di tribun"
"ooooooooooohhhhhhhhh. skalian suruh belikan dong :D"
hahahahahahahaha, maaf! soalnya lapar banget. dan ingat status kita sebagai mahasiswa, yang namanya gratisan jangan ditolak. pamali! jadinya kita standing party sambil makan mie instant tersebut. ditambah, kue dari seminar PR udah cukup untuk memberikan amunisi ke perut dan tentu saja tambahan tenaga untuk mengacau. sambil keliling bersama rara, mamie, dan cikal, saya akhirnya memutuskan untuk membeli majalah pc+ plus yang tadi masih setengah-setengah buat membelinya.
karena siapa tau lain waktu kita mau buat materi mengenai blog lagi, jadi bisa mengambil bahan dari sini. beli majalah kelar, sekarang waktunya stand the djakarta post menjadi sasaran.
saya memprovokasi (dengan kata lain menggombal) mbak-mbaknya untuk memberikanku note book dari the jakarta post. sumpah asli keren banget. tapi ternyata ada tantangannya, yaitu SUDOKu! ckckckckck, secara otak udah cetek masih ditawari buat yang beginian. males! inilah salah satu permainan yang menurutku sekarang not so important banget. jadinya, ngeliatin aja rara ama mamie yang ikutan sudoku ini. puas, main di standnya, liat orang yang meraup buku, plus kita mengacau di stand playgroupnya BNI. yupz, masih bersama om-om dari tribun tadi, yang menawari kita untuk ikutan gamesnya. sebenarnya permainannya sih sederhana aja. cuma tau lah anak kosmik, banyakan teriaknya dan jadinya kita menjadi pusat perhatian lagi. sudahlah, saya sudah tidak mempunyai muka lagi di book fair ini, saya menyeret memey dan shanty buat pulang (padahal kita udah mau mengacau di demo masak yang sedang terjadi di panggung). sudah capek nih tenggorokan teriak, dan nih betis udah bengkak. ada proposal yang mau dikerjain. dan sekarang secara resmi gramedia chronology ditutup. :D

Nolan's View on Things

There's a two year old who lives upstairs from us whose name is Nolan. He's the spitting image of Calvin from Bill Watterson's comic strip. His vocabulary is (appropriate for his age) limited, but he delivers his lines with aplomb. Yesterday he spent a good deal of time in the back yard with his mom; the recent heat wave has melted all the snow, so he was shlepping around in the mud. I had an entire conversation with him that revolved around the fact that his hands were dirty. Beck had this gem of a conversation:

B: Hi Nolan!
N: Mud!
B: I see! You're all dirty.
N: You're a girl.
B: Yes, yes I am.
N: Where's your man?
B: (Laughs)
Mom, embarrassed: Nolan, that's Rebecca, and her man is Nyet.
B: He's inside.
N, not missing a beat: Mud!

So apparently even Nolan knows that we're getting married, because indeed, what's Beck doing walking around Giraffetown by herself. Where's your man?

A final note on Wedding Planning Weekend (TM). It has been pointed out to me that I perhaps overemphasized the stress of the weekend without noting the fun. Well, it was indeed fun - lotsa great food and great times. My dad and I finally got to see the HOF together which is SWEET. And we've got the Enos Slaughter & Dad pic to prove it:


And Beck and I were clearly having a good time at the cake tasting:


So fear not older reading population, all is good in Weddingville. I wish I could say the same for Wrigleyville (meaning the Cubs chances this year, not the dog, who trust me is A-okay, if A-okay means "writhing around under the covers and generally acting like a moron").


Bored with all of this wedding and dog talk? Fine, I hear ya. Check out this beautiful example of Chris Rock's ability to foretell the future... this clip is from around 1998 or so (I think).




Crazy eh? Oh, no. That's not crazy. THIS is crazy.

Until next time - when I will possibly announcing the exciting news of where my multitude of Med-friends matched and will start to dissect my upcoming fantasy baseball drafts, which are going to be awesome. I see you shiver with antici...



Pation. But maybe the rain (praise the lord, hallelujah) is really to blame (no, Sue's to blame, she made the costumes)... So I'll remove (your clothes) the cause - but NOT the


BIG CHORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!