Danimal Can't Critique Pure Unreasonableness

So we headed down to Thomas Ave. last night to hang out with Wren, Tim, Danimal and Xtina. Another shipment of licit greens had come in (woah! i mean organic veggies. no really! They came from a commune. i mean... oh, no) so Wren cracked her cooking knuckles and made some delicious salmon, salsa, salad, potatoes, "chocolate" cake and green tea ice cream. Yummy city. An altogether great time was had by all, and Wren professed her undying love for Robert Edwards. We also managed to catch a bit of the Red Sox choke (though they thank goodness won today, sheesh) and a couple of skits by Dave Chappelle. Excellent. And Dan and I talked about books and meaning and Derrida and stuff, because we are awesome and not at all nerdy. And FTR, Dan is the one who played laser tag yesterday. So there. The evening also, natch, contained a fair amoutn of Naia-gazing - she is a bit bigger at the two month mark, but still requires pacifier aka BINKY-assistance. We enter this world as we leave it, requiring BINKY assistance.

The super duper highlight of the evening was Christina's account of her own Outlook mastery. She has recently discovered that not only can you create tasks in Outlook (in a to-do list fashion), you can assign them to people. Being (insert adjective for evil here), she immediately assigned Dan the task of a two hour back-rub for Christina. Dan received this in his inbox. Dan replied that Christina "[was] being unreasonable," and for emphasis (and potential hyperbole / offense of everyone) added "like Hitler."

Now, this is obviously a bold and perhaps quick drawing (and let's not forget, offensive) claim. Christina was stunned, and admittedly wanted to reply to Dan to inform them that his Hitler reference was itself unreasonable. But since Dan dropped his ace on the first hand, Christina had nowhere to go; she could not escalate the conversation. it seems no one is more unreasonable than Hitler.

Dan went to lengths to explain his comment, but the whole shebangle is better handled with diagrams. First is Dan's admitted account of the unreasonableness spectrum:

So Dan is really just saying something akin to "red, you are a color, like purple." But this is perhaps not exacting enough, as there are certainly a lot of colors in the mauve ballpark, and this might imply that the two share more than they do. So quick, someone call up Mr. Venn:

So Christina merely shares a quality with the oft-cited worst human being ever, not an extent of that quality. Phew, glad we cleared that up.

Fun, nerdy times. There was also a drastic, near-come-to-blows discussion of whether humidors humidify products or regulate their humidity. Dan was in the regulate camp; Beck, apparently representing the kitchen implement naming institute, stated that they only "humid" things. That is a fresher; she's going on break. Comparisons to items placed in refrigerators in a post-freezer state were made. Forks and knives were threatened to be thrown. The passive voice was used. A madcap evening. And we got to leave with a box of licit greens. Hoorah.

Good times in Phoenix. Today we worked, and I got home in time to watch UT eek it out. Quiz time:

You just scored a TD and are up 35-24 with 2.5 minutes left. Do you A) kick the extra point for a 12 point lead, requiring two TDs to beat you or B) go for two for a 13 point lead, requiring two TDs to beat you?

If you answered duh, I would kick the XP, because a 13 point lead and 12 point lead are equivalent in that situation, and missing the two point conversion would leave you vulnerable at only up 11... well, you are not the genius that Mack Brown is. He correctly feared the inevitable "they score a touchdown, we have to take a safety, then they kick field goal" scenario and accordingly went for two. Or maybe he feared the "two field goals and a touchdown" scenario. When the other team had one timeout. Regardless, UT didn't get the 2 point conversion, and yep, UCF scored a TD, got their 2 point conversion and UT had to sweat out an onside kick at the end of the game. ?!?!?!?!?!!!!!?!! And the spread was 16 points, so the point shaving angle doesn't even add up here!

So sportswriters will scream about Vick / cameras / HGH and the like for hours, but when a coach does something completely inexplicable and stupid like that, it fades into dust. Yo, sports writers! Write about sports!

(Also golden from last night, Dan complaining about The Emperor's Children being overly episodic and dramatic: "I kept turning the page expecting an ad for detergent and tampons!" Fantastic).

More later. And again, FTR, the next post is #200 of the Ballad, so I'd better do something AWESOME with it. Hmmmm...by the pricking of my thumb...