Emang udah begitu mestinya!!!

Setelah hari minggu lalu saya melakukan percakapan yang sejenis lumayan berat dengan alfie.Kemarin dulu saya terlibat dan terjebak lagi percakapan yang sama dengan weda. Semuanya berputar dan berkisar pada hal yang sama, apa planning kuh untuk satu tahun kedepan?
Saya akui, saya sekarang ini bener-bener freaking out. Secara ni semester udah setengah periode terjalani. Itu berarti skarang udah masuk minggu mid semester, sudah itu menghitung hari, eh final deh.
Ketakutan terbesarku adalah... sampai saat ini saya belum mempunyai bayangan akan apa yang mestinya saya lakukan dalam beberapa waktu yang akan datang. Jangka pendek dan jangka panjang. Kemarin saya udah berleha-leha dan terlena, karena emang apa yang saya jalani sekarang merupakan apa yang udah saya prepare satu setengah tahun yang lalu, sampai ke titik ini. Dan disinilah saya sekarang, jalanku tinggal belok ke pojokan-yang-entah-berakhir-di-mana.
Emang udah beberapa rencana yang akan saya lakukan. Untuk magang di semester 8 saja saya masih agak-agak blank. Apakah sekarang saya sudah bisa memasukkan prgram youth camp dalam magangku? Ataukah saya masih mencari tempat bernaung lain? Mengenai kerjaan juga, apakah nanti saya akan berani untuk melangkah dan go public? Arrghhhhhh! Semuanya masih blank! Masih serba tidak jelas mengenai apa yang akan terjadi. Dan yang paling membebaniku adalah, kemana saya akan berjalan ketika selesai magang? Itu berarti saya sudah menyusun skripsi dan sudah siap menyandang gelar pengangguran yang tergabung dalam ikatan sarjana mudah-yang-tidak-mempunyai-masa-depan-yang-jelas.
Kemarin saya sudah berkata sama weda, yang saya pikirkan skarang bukan magang ato skripsi, justru yang saya pikirkan adalah kemana saya setelah selesai kuliah. Alur berpikir saya terlalu cepat? Emang begitu mestinya!!! Sekarang teman-temanku ajah baru mengurus surat buat magang di instansi-instansi tapi yang saya pikirkan dimana saya akan berkerja? Karena saya emang sudah niat untuk keluar dari Makassar setelah semua huru-hara ini berlalu. Mencoba berpijak pada kakiku sendiri, mencoba bernapas dengan tidak ada rasa sesak lagi didada. Karena sedikit banyak memang begitulah mekanisme otakku. Sudah sejak lama keadaan otak dipaksa untuk berpikir bukan hanya satu langkah tetapi 3 langkah kedepan. Karena saya akui, saya tidak bisa membayangkan hidupku tanpa gambaran yang jelas mengenai apa yang saya lakukan di hari esok. Perfeksionis? Bukan, saya hanya menyebutnya saya tidak ingin berjalan tanpa kehilangan arah. Karena bukankah semua juga memerlukan tujuan?
Saya kemudian menjadi ingat akan sebauh quote yang berkata, biarlah semua mengalir-let it flow. Saya juga berpendapat yang sama, tapi saya akan membiarkannya mengalir ketika saya sudah tahu aliran mana yang dia lalui. Supaya saya bisa mengetahui ujungnya dan sedikit banyak mengetahui apa yang akan dilaluinya. Kalo gak tau, bagaimana kalo ujungnya jurang? Mampus! Syukur kalo emang punya kesiapan buat menghadapinya, kalo enggak?
Waduh tambah ribet nih bahasanya, yang pastinya sekarang kayaknya saya mesti mengatur skala waktu lagi untuk tahun 2008 (karena ancang-ancang sarjana di bulan 9, what??!!!), kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.... untuk memastikan semuanya berjalan dengan sebagaimana mestinya. Ada yang bisa membantu saya untuk mendefrag otak agar semuanya bisa diatur kembali? Tolong!

Oh, and btw...

In case you are in a coma but somehow reading this (tragic, really, that your only contact with the physical world is telepathic reading of a sporadically updated blog. I feel for you), the Red Sox came back from down 3-1 to win the AL pennant, outscoring Cleveland 31-5 in the last three games. Which is essentially meaningless, you know, that run differential (at least according to DBacks fans). And now they are facing the NL Champs the Colorado Rockies, who according to the NY Times, are playing with god on their side. And it seems there is no sarcastic, biting political edge to that, unlike the time Bob Dylan made the world series. How the Rockies god (let's call him ROCK-TAR!!!) ties in with the one who successfully cursed the Sox for 96 years is undetermined, so don't bust out your apocalyptic thunderstix just yet.

Game one is tonight, and if I'm lucky I'll catch the last two innings or so. I'm faced (as my dad pointed out) with the usual dilemma of rooting for my pseudo-hometeam Red Sox or the team that plays actual, real baseball, the heaven-bound Rockies. Of course, the rockies, due to altitude and humidors and the like, could be said to be playing some kind of crazy techno-nightmare 2236 baseball. So when faced with the choice of fake baseball or dystopian robot baseball, I'll go with the fakies, and root for the Sox. Besides, who wants to endure punny headlines like "Rox in your Sox" if the NL wins? Barf. Though, really, let's all admit that we want to see the Sox win just for another dose of PapelDANCE:

Remiss!!!

Wow! I completely forgot to post the pic that is the creme de la bunch yesterday. Here is an unbelievably shot of shifty-eyed beck and Sparkle, both looking off-frame at the hilarious antics of Wrigs:

I mean, wow. I am in stun (copyright Liz, 2000). It's just beautiful. And telling, oh so telling.

So, getting back to the pseudo-narrative of the past two weeks: Ultimate has been sweet. In the post that started with the fabulous picture of Sparkle Amuck, I left a post with a vague reference to a game in which I thought we were going to get stomped, massacred. Well, in short, we did not. We had a very hotly contested and generally awesome game - awesome within the context of hat league, but still awesome. Awesome. I am so verbose and eloquent. Anyhoo, the other team had a good handler named Sam and a great mid named Cole and there were just tons of hotly contested catches and scores and Ds and excitement all around. We were down more or less the whole game but clawed our way back and ended up losing by two, the equivalent of a 6-4 game in tennis. Big fun - and it started us (and me) on a great streak of Ultimate. The past two weeks featured two more wins in fun, fun games, also punctuated by good pick-up on Sundays. So it's been cool - a huge 15-7 win against the second place team in our div last week, a tight 15-10 win last night, lots of running and hucking and spiking and all kinds of good gooey goodness.

On the minus side, I'm getting hella dehydrated after each game, making me feel sick once I get home and feeling not so great the next morning AKA right now. I've been drinking plenty of water and gatorade and eating powerbars like normal, so I don't know what's up with that. Will keep you posted, but it may be some combination of the gerund "getting" and the adjective "old."

In other life-related news, the job is still the job - a lot of SAT tutoring, a lot of repetitiveness, but all in all pretty low-key, and it feels reasonably decent to help people. So, steering the focus away from the now and toward the future - the PhD program hunt is in full swing! I spoke with a college professor of mine Martin about writing a letter of rec for me for the ASU philosophy program, and because he is a great advisor, he immediately steered me toward some of the ASU professors on campus to talk more specifically about what the ideal program would be. I spoke with one of Martin's colleagues at the Honors college at ASU, and she directed me to some of the heads of the interdisciplinary science / philosophy programs that are available. There's one in the Biology Dept. called Biology & Society, which has tracks in both History and Philosophy of Science or Bioethics, Policy and Law, but also has a lot of leeway for individualized programs as well. There's another brand new one called Human & Social Dimensions of Science and Technology that would could offer more than just biology-based science / philosophy. And I met with a great potential advisor, Jason Robert, yesterday (and am meeting again with him tomorrow) who was fantastic in telling me about the programs, being highly encouraging and essentially recruiting me to join their department. He is a philosopher by training and also is very familiar with / interested in some of the postmodern philosophy angles I am interested in; he actually did his master's thesis on Foucault and the genome project. He does a lot of work in bioethics, neuroscience and applications of philosophy from a very scientifically / technically knowledgeable standpoint. So this is very cool and good.

So the questions I have, mainly of myself, is how much of a selling out is this, delving back into scientific angles at the expense of something "purely" philosophical? Not much of one, I hope. AS I'm writing statements of purpose and trying to figure out exactly what research niche I'm going to carve for myself, I'm realizing that a primary function of my interest, while on one level involving the collision of postmodern cacophonous narratives and the decentralization of truth, also fully involves a big overarching collision of science and ethics. I phrased it this way yesterday: "On the one hand, I'm disturbed by science's confusion of how and why - the recent explanations of morality / ethics as a survival trait fly in the face of humanistic reasoning, and in my mind have a treacherous relativity that seems to validate any action so long as it is a recourse towards "group survival advantage." And that to me is a plain-faced undesirable conclusion, as it supports reprehensible actions such as genocide, or any atrocity that you care to include that could conceivably grant one group survival over another. So I feel a strong need to reinforce humanistic leanings that truth, value, ethics and meaning are more than just a facilitation of continued survival, more than just an evolutionary product. At the same time, I recognize that both the hard science angle and the overly subjective humanistic one are entrenched in social narratives, and therefore have their own suspect assumptions that should be investigated. Both of these methods of investigation are highly socially constructed; I think it would difficult to argue that science is not the more effective, pragmatic one, if also the more brutish. I want to reconcile their narrative implications in a way that fully addresses their constructedness but maintains a reasonable respect for both as truth-seeking entities; in other words, I want to avoid both the extreme that science is the end-all be-all and the extreme that it is some kind of "social myth."

Woo. R U X-I-ted yet? I am; it is a very cool direction to take my studies and seems to be one with enough flexibility that I can maintain a strong devotion to my school of "contextually-determined meaning" thought. So that is sweet. Now, I just have to get all my app materials in, write a statement of purpose, and... ugh. I need a writing sample, and all of my good ones from senior year at Rice in this vein were destroyed by a computer virus a few years back, with nary a hard copy to be found (thanks for looking, Mom & Dad). So i am kinda stuck, and should probably just write a brand new one, which is obviously time-consuming and, with limited access to university libraries, a bit daunting. So I will have to figure this out, and somewhat soon - apps are due Dec. 15. Yikes!

In other news: Beck trekked up to Boston a couple of weekends ago; pics of the Searl clan can be found here. Her trip to San Diego to see Jamie and the rest of GPGDS was thwarted by the fires. So she's stuck in Phoenix for another couple of days instead of hanging out at the beach for a first visit to CA - sadness. On the plus side, she went into work voluntarily yesterday to work on a surgery and attend a practice meeting. I think that's a pretty clear sign that someone like their jobby job. Today we are hanging out (or rather, I am recovering from Ultimate sickness and Beck is going running/to the dentist) until I have to go into work. SHAZAM! So things seem to be going pretty well lately - we're also looking forward to some hanging with the Dan this weekend and a visit from Greg and Meghan in a couple of weeks. Good times, and 80 degree weather taboot.

Woah - and I complete forgot to mention - I inexcusably had to skip a sacred event last week for an Ultimate game. TRAGIC. But Beck got to go, and if you can figure out what demi-god of music she enjoyed, then you rule:

Either that or you can read. Backwards!!!

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Now playing: Weird Al Yankovic - Bob
via FoxyTunes

Links and Such

Okay, I've got a couple of minutes here; it's time to purge the bookmarks:

A huge mural that seems to be making some sort of comment.

Some A+ material from the Onion.

Some straight up hilarity from James Lipton, via Conan:

As a special shoutout to the iPMM, Meghan, Greg, and other fans of Engrish and similar malapropisms / solecisms, we have the "infinitely entertaining" "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks.

Evidence that some people like their dogs A LOT. Apparently there's something funny in the Edwards Aquifer these days.

A fun little flash site that I've probably posted before, but what the hey. Hint: it's for the art lovers.

And... some dog pics to close:

Futon: Conquered

Mountain Zone TV

Beer, Dogs and Sox (No, Sparkle, "Sox")

Envious Sparkle is Envious.

Sleeping Positions Assumed by Professional Dogs on a Closed Course. Do not Attempt.

Turning Back Point : Get Married!

Nope, nggak lah. Nyangka saya bakal married? Makasih. Tapi tidak. Saya cuman merasa saat ini menjadi salah satu turning point saya lagi. Dimana semua berubah. Entah keatas ato entah ke bawah. Tanya saya? Jangan. Bahkan saya sendiri pun tidak bisa menjelaskan apakah saya sedang mengalami degradasi perasaan ato mencari pembenaran akan semua yang saya lihat dan saya rasakan.
Nggak nyangka udah sebulan, dimana sang isi kepala tetap berada dalam pengasingan. Tetap berada dan menjamur dalam sela-sela otak yang semakin lama semakin menggila. Yak, ini saatnya kalian mengambil nomor antrian lagi. Untuk keluar!!! Dan sedikit memberikan ruang yang kosong bagi otak yang sudah semakin menua ini. Mudah-mudahan semua berjalan lancar lagi, dan semua cerita, semua perasaan dan semua pengalaman bisa terpetakan kembali secara fisik sebagaimana mestinya, sehingga saya tidak perlu mengalami deja vu hanya untuk mengetahui bahwa saya pernah berjalan di tempat yang sama. Salam. Inilah yang berhasil memegang tiket antrian nomor 1 yang mesti keluar dari kepalaku...


Get Married, a film by Hanung Bramantyo



Okelah, sikap skeptis saya akan film dalam negri sendiri sempat membuat bete dan membuat ”perdebatan yang tidak penting” antara saya dan teman-teman saya. Karena menurutku film indo masih agak-agak ”kurang” untuk dijadikan pilihan untuk membuang-buang uang dengan menontonnya di bioskop. Tercatat hanya beberapa film saja yang menarik di mataku, seperti Mengejar Mas-Mas (asli ni film keren banget! Konstruksi budayanya dalem!!!), Coklat Stroberi (just three words, Precious-Emptyness-Desire, salut untuk pesan non verbalnya!!!), Selamanya (sebenarnya film ini sangat tidak penting, tetapi dipaksa menjadi penting karena waktu itu saya sedang merayakan kebahagian satu pasang manusia yang sedang bercinta, dan saya dijadikan kambing congek). Dan inilah film yang memuaskan hasratku untuk melihat tontonan berkualitas. Get Married!!!
Apalagi saya agak heran, tampaknya ramadhan kemarin merantai semua setan emang benar karena sekarang Sundel Bolong, Kuntilanak, dan Pocong sedang gentayangan di bioskop-bioskop. Sangat tidak jelas dan tidak menarik.
Diawal cerita, kita sudah disuguhi sindiran yang lumayan ”pedas” akan gambaran diri sendiri. Mulai dari gambaran masyarakat indonesia yang emang sebagian besar masih berada di bawah garis kemiskinan. Dan itu semua digambarkan dengan nyata dan sangat jelas. Potongan-potongan kehidupan 4 orang anak mulai dari proses kelahiran, sampe cita-cita mereka sudah lumayan memberikan gambaran akan seperti apa tokoh yang akan bermain didalam film ini.
Diawali seorang Mae (Nirina Zubir) yang sobatan dengan ketiga temannya yang sangat tidak jelas kehidupannya, Eman (Aming), Beni(Ringgo), Guntoro (Desta). Disini hidup berjalan sebagaimana mestinya. Dimana persahabatan mereka udah kayak sodara, dan hari-hari mereka lewati dengan tertawa bersama. Satu persoalan yang kemudian diangkat menjadi tema besar dalam film ini oleh Hanung, yaitu tema pernikahan yang kemudian bagi kebanyakan orang Indonesia masih menjadi jalan keluar. Ketika Mae, sudah dirasakan menjadi beban bagi keluarganya (ketika udah berumur 25 tahun, gak jelas status apa, sarjana lagi!), maka dia diputuskan untuk dinikahkan. Penggambaran keinginan orang tua Mae (Meriam Belina dan Jaja Miharja) pun cukup gamblang dijabarkan. Padahal mestinya kita merasa malu, dengan pengungkapan seperti itu, tapi ketika melihat potongan filmnya saya langsung menganggap hal yang lumrah. Larena kita masih tinggal di Indonesia. Maka jadilah orangtua Mae masuk ke kampung sebelah (karena secara habit, orang sekampung udah tau Mae tuh anaknya gimana =D), demi mencarikan perjaka ting-ting buat Mae.
Apakah rencana itu berjalan lancar? Tentu iya dan tidak. Iya ketika sang calon datang kerumah Mae untuk sekedar melihat-lihat (buset bahasanya! Tapi emang ini ada di adegan salah seorang calon Mae!) dan berkenalan dengannya. Tidak, ketika ternyata sang sahabat sudah waib membatu ”menyelamatkan” Mae dari ketidak senangannya pada sang calon. Maka jadilah adegan kocak yang dilakukan di sudut kampung.
Fim berlanjut ke Rendy (Richard Kevin) yang tipikal anak gedongan, besar di state. Tapi masih memiliki sense akan jodoh yang baik. Yang katanya bisa dijadikan tantangan, dan tidak setipe dengan perempuan seperti sekarang (nih pertanyaan buat kaum cewek, kalian merasa setipe gak?). setelah bodyguardnya dikerjai oleh 3 sahabat Mae, dia kemudian merasa tertarik untuk melihat seistimewa apa sih, cewek yang hanya bisa dinikahi ama anak raja, ato anak sultan. Dan berkunjunglah dia ke kampung dimana Mae bermukim. Ketika cinta berkata inilah saatnya untuk bertemu, masih ada 3 makhluk yang tidak jelas yang menghalanginya. Dan disinilah cerita kemudian mendapatkan kuminasinya. Ketika Ibu Mae sakit dan salah penyembuhannya adalah melihat Mae nikah. Udah hopeless akan calon-calon yang tidak jelas, Mae memutuskan untuk memilih dari 3 sahabatnya.
Randy yang tidak puas dikerjai ama anak kampung kemudian dihasut oleh sang bodyguard (lagi-lagi statement di adegan ini sangat menonjok muka moral orang-orang di Indonesia!!!—dimana mari kita memperlihatkan cara Indonesia,, ugh!) dan mereka memutuskan untuk menyerang kampuang tersebut. Di hari jadi Mae dan Ringgo, Rendy dan teman-temannya melakukan penyerbuan ke kampung Mae. Dan kericuhan pun terjadi, suasana chaos digambarkan dengan sangat khas oleh Hanung. Sampai Mae dan teman-temannya pun kabur dari upacara ijab kabul dan memilih untuk membela kampung. Sampai kemudian, pada saat berkelahi, Mae menonjok Rendy... disitulah baru dia kemudian sadar akan apa yang terjadi. Endingnya,,, nonton sendiri kali yee!!!
Dijamin kalian tidak akan merasa rugi untuk mengeluarkan duit 15 ribu perak (kalo dimakassar sih harga tiket Cuma segini diluar hari nomat), karena ekspektasi kalian akan sebuah film yang menghibur akan terpenuhi. Dan janganlah menonton film ini sendirian, kalian akan kehilangan esensi ”kegilaan yang dilakukan bersama teman”. Banyak sekali frame-frame menarik, gambaran pemukiman kumuh yang menjadi gambaran masyarakat Indonesia. Gejala sosial yang sudah semakin menjadi dan persahabatan yang masih mempunyai nilai, digambarkan dengan sangat gamblang di film ini. Apalagi kelucuan yang ada tidak dibuat atrifisial dan dimaksudkan untuk melucu, tetapi hanya dengan dialog yang lugas justru semakin membuat kelucuan didalam pesan yang ingin disampaikannya.
Penataan soundtrack yang sebagian besar di nyanyikan oleh kelompok Slank, sangat membantu atmosfir film ini. Lagu-lagu familiar seperti Orkes Sakit Hati, Pandangan Pertama menjadi backsound yang sangat membantu, sangat membantu untuk tersenyum.
Terakhir, salut buat mas Hanung. Karena satu karya yang menghibur, orisinal, dan mendidik bisa hadir kita nikmati lagi, walaupun saya agak kaget ketika keluar dari studio kemudian melihat poster ”SUSTER N, dendam suter ngesot” yang dikerjakan oleh orang yang sama. Sudahlah, saya sudah sangat bahagia nonton film ini. Udah siap ato udah harus Get Married???

I Can Has Cheese Blintz?

The WD and the Ess-Dog eye Beck's IHOPian dining

You know, if you investigate the Nyetverse a little more closely, you'll notice that its essential components can be reduced to a series of apologies for not posting interrupted by flurries of text, pictures, links and videos. This is a bit like that vase-face illusion, or possibly an Ethan Hawke rant* about aesthetic grasping in the face of meaninglessness, in that you're only going to put into the foreground what you consider to be important. So if you're in the category that's seeing the sad-sap excuses in the foreground, well it's your lucky day - I apologize yet again for the dearth of recent posting. Sometimes my life is just not that interesting, and involves a near-incomprehensible amount of SAT vocab lists and efforts at algebraic manipulation. I yawn along with you.

*Begin - Ethan Hawke's RB Rant
My parents got divorced when I was 9 years old.
And I saw my father about three times a year after that.
And when he found out that he had cancer...
he decided to bring me here...
and he gives me this big pink sea shell...
and he says to me...
"Son, the answers are all inside of this. "
And I'm all, like, "What?"
But then I realized that the shell was empty.
There's no point to any of this.
It's all just a...
A random lottery of meaningless tragedy...
and a series of near escapes.
So I take pleasure in the details, you know.
A Quarter-Pounder with cheese.
Those are good.
The sky about... ten minutes before it starts to rain.
The moment where your laughter becomes a cackle.
And I sit back, and I... I smoke my Camel straights.
And I ride my own melt.
End - Ethan Hawke's RB Rant

In powerful contrast, though, the past two weeks have been full of pep and vigor, unlike, say, a lugubrious dirge. SAT! Barf. But the past two have been fun, involving not one but two hiking excursions, the first to Squaw Peak in the fat middle of Phoenix. We joined approximately 100,000 other visitors in the ascent of this surprisingly short and steep peak that eventually afforded us a spectacular view of Smog City Minor, USA, aka Sunny Azz Phoenix:

A fun but moderately demanding hike; it's a very well demarcated trail, but it's pretty much stair-climbing all the way to the top - the way up was a quad-burner, and the way down was also a quad-burner / knee burner. Cool, if a bit crowded. We followed it up with a more pleasant, less crowded and decidedly more gradually sloped ascent up the Usery Mountain to the Wind Cave. And windy it was - we happened to pick a day with some 45 mph gusts (those same gusts which fanned the flames in Southern CA) which made our ascent past the caves to the apex pretty treacherous. Beck denies this , but I almost died several times on the way back down, my head full of thoughts of "what the hell is the cost benefit ratio of this?" You can judge for yourself; we had a peaceful sit-down on top of the mountain, but I question if the resulting panoramics were worth it:

I mean, it's pretty and life-affirming and all, but worth risking our lives? Dubious. (Beck insists that our lives were not at risk, it was more like I could have skinned a knee, and that I am in fact a big pansy. So it goes). Also notice that in the middle bottom photo, there's a big sign pointing toward Phoenix. The scary, flaming bird is located to the left, off-frame.

So that's two fun hikes to account for maybe eight hours of the past two weeks - I know I owe you more. But I have to go to work and then play in a to-the-death Ultimate game this evening down in Tempe. The meaningful result for you is this: Enjoy these pics for now, and I promise a more link/text/video/pic intensive intrusion upon your life later tonight.

Until the next apology,
Nyet

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Now playing: The New Pornographers - Testament To Youth In Verse

And on that farm he had an igloo.

Just finished reading an excellent chapter on genre definitions of cartoons in America from 1940s-present in the schwank book Genre & Television gifted to me by the iPMM. So a little celebration is in order...

"Sparkle Amuck"

A little homage to the oft-cited best cartoon ever. Here's a still from Chuck Jones's classic "Duck Amuck:"

And here's the whole thing in its anarchically goofy glory:

Ah, good stuff. And to reiterate, the chapter was awesome, discussing how the widespread concept of the cartoon changes via industry practices, targeted advertising and scheduling practices. One of the more pointed quips in the chapter was noting how in the 1960s station censors bent over backwards to remove racially sensitive content from the cartoon reruns from the 1940s but simultaneously endorsed both child-targeted advertising and hyper-violence, implying some assumptions that children needed to be protected from certain things they could not understand but could be subjected to others safely. Cool.

Otherwise, things have slid back to normal here with Beck back in the casa. I slept NOT-AT-ALL last night thanks to a neck amuck - I aggravated the Ultimate pull from earlier in the week during a romp with the dogs. Thoroughly aggravating, especially since I have a game tonight - I suppose as long as all the throws come directly to my face and I don't have to turn my head at all, I should be fine. We are playing a beast of a team from the other division, so it may be a moot point anyways. We'll see.

Enjoy your Thursday - DBacks series starts tonight, and I've been engaging in a little (surprisingly, for the web) healthy debate over the impact of run differential and win-loss records over at the DBacks blog. Here's the post in question; you can read through the inanity to spot the comments by the jerk nyetjones character.

If you are looking for a more psychedelic way to spend your time, here's an mp3 clip of all of the Beatles albums played in an hour. Art?

And if that's still not enough, revisit the LOLCats, quickly becoming the best comic strip.... ever.

See you on the flipside- wish us luck in our Ulti-massacre tonight.

Degradation

Okay, so I could tolerate the FLips hawking Dell computers, because at least there's some kind of psychedelic subtext and genuine FLippy weirdness going on in this technicolor spectacle (even if it's a bit odd to sell things with a song that screams "we've got the power yeah MFers"):

But I turn on the tele this fine morning to see some kind of SUV roaming the desert while their faux-sage existential "Do You Realize?" plays. And that's pretty sad, especially since it's a song that (in a very straightforward, plain way) talks about the fragility and temporal nature of life. Apparently which is solved by a sweet ride. On the plus side for the ad execs, they did successfully edit the song to NOT include the line "DO you realize that everyone you know someday will die?" Because, as all relevant ad research suggests, Sartre was not big on purchasing SUVs.

But it got progressively worse, because then I saw a University of Phoenix (the online university, not our neighbor) commercial featuring a New Pornographers song. And this is even more crushing in a classic indie-hoard sense, because while the FLips are relatively huge (what with the 90210 and Charmed appearances and such) and their tie-ins to corporations are more or less par for the course, when a lower level (though still, great and popular in their own right) band like the NPs start selling their songs, you just get these desperate starving artist images that make you envision the band as forced into this act of self-degradation. The situation, that they cannot subsist on their artistry in and of itself, is an unpleasant one. Here's the ad that continued my sad morning:

But then you use the power of google (thanks Zach!), and you see that there's actually a pretty funny back story to this, that Carl Newman (NP frontman) got a call from the U of P and, thinking it was just the local city university, said "sure, use our song, it'll only show in the Southwest." Wrong. Anyhoo, cute story, plus in the interview he rips on Of Montreal and their sold song to Outback Steakhouse, which is actually worse because at least the U of P commercial is just saying "hey Yeah hey yeah," whereas the Outback commercial:

Actually substitutes "Let's go Outback tonight" for "Let's pretend we don't exist," which is rock-authenticity heresy of the first order, the equivalent of Mick Jagger crying that he can't get no Snickers Satisfaction. And that's bad. So the NPs don't look so "bad" anymore. But I still have to refuse to be swayed by tragic circumstances, that just because something is becoming ubiquitous - Modest Mouse, the Shins, Postal Service, the entire O.C. catalog have all "sold out" to advertising and mass market capitalism - does not mean that it's not a sorry development. The sacred space is gone, and even though it's a falsely ingrained impression that any of this was ever sacred to begin with - it was ALWAYS about ticket sales and albums, no matter how tempting the true-to-his-heart indie rocker narrative strikes you - it's still sad to have it two times removed from whatever magical feeling it once engendered, to have it forever stuck to greasy burgers like so many artery walls. HA!

On the plus side, when you search for these videos, you occasionally run into something brutally endearing like this one that includes the entire above-mentioned NP song. So it seems that this kind of thing can save us, even though it's painfully clear that things have degraded to the point where nothing can save us. Fall in love with the inauthenticity:

On a wildly unrelated note - Beck is Back! Yes she's back! Sudden urges to do Clark Cougar mat drills are suppressed! I think I make this joke every time she leaves and returns. Anyhoo, she's back and vetting in the Sunny Azz, so things are back to their normal selves, indie-rock commercials and all. More later.

I... am trying... to break your brain

So much for objective truth. Try to figure out whether the dancer above is spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise - it's an optical illusion that plays with how you interpret where her leg is when its shadow swings across the front of the screen. I promise this is legit, and quite headache inducing.

Speaking of headache-inducing - I got CLOCKED at Ultimate last night. Someone threw a short, come-to hammer, and I jumped to grab it but my defender came in hurricane style and just tomahawk-chopped me across the head. Yoikes. I suppose I'm a bit inaccurate when I say headache, because it's really more my neck that got stretched out that hurts. Somehow I imagine I will pull off Gaynourian survival.

Otherwise a pretty standard day here on the farm, a full tutoring day, a Yankees exit from the playoffs, and a SILLY, SILLY comeback win by the Cowboys up at hapless Buffalo. Good times. Also, somewhere the S/W and I went for a SERIOUS walk. Or, as is the parlance, a W. Of course, our SERIOUS walk was not as SERIOUSLY SERIOUS as Beck, iPMM and iPMeghan's serious 10K walk in Boston. Congrats to them for finishing fast and capping off a whole lot of exercise with a healthy batch of anti-exercise, aka lunch at PF Chang's.

Anyhoo, sans further adieu, the promised reviews of the past few. And we will eschew the normal rating game, as objective considerations, thanks to the ballet monster above, are clearly irrelevant in a pluralistic universe. In fact, we will now institute the rating system of 1 = worthwhile, 0 = not. It's a binary universe; we're just living in it:

M*O*V*I*E*S

Hot Fuzz: 1

Crazy British film from our friends at Shawn of the Dead that shrewdly shifts gears from typical murder mystery to all-out gun-fueled action-fest. Quite funny, quite cute, and quite heart-poundingly awesome. Great send up of both genres.

Premonition: 0

A magnificent crapfest of plot holes and pointlessness. Sandra Bullock made me cry out of pity for such a poor script-choice instead of acting-induced empathy. GOOD GOD this was bad.

Marie Antoinette: 1

Better for its scenery than its substance, and a nice exposition of environment indebted value system generation. Plus, the DVD Extra of MTV Cribs: Versailles is quite nice. I didn't particularly dig this movie; if the 1/0 system came with a "meh," here I would employ it.

Casino Royale: 1

Surprisingly solid edition to the Bond catalog that attempts to explain Bondsy's more misogynistic leanings. Highly entertaining, if a little too stupidly poker focused.

Disturbia: 0

Crappy and uberpredictable teen-horror noir. No me likey.

Simpsons Movie: 1

The assessment that this is a "good episode extended" is quite apt. Not spectacular - not a return to season five glory by any means - but very solid, highly entertaining, and a good trip of Simpsons fan glee. I didn't find the meta-humor of this one quite as great as some did (Homer's pointing through the fourth wall to mock me for spending money on a ticket, for example, was something of an obligatory and non-cleverly rendered comment), but overall it was a nice, overdue experience.

Bourne Ultimatum: 1

Better than one, not as good as two. More innovative Bourne-ian ass-kicking, and I really dug the incorporation fo the previous movie's end-scene into this one. A good adrenaline rush for your cash.

Superbad: 1

Highly enjoyable in person, but I have to agree with some of its critical detractors: this was a hilarious though thoroughly cliche teen romp that dragged a bit in the middle and had some fairly insipid female leads. Plus I've read a solid assessment that one of the male leads is too much of a self-centered, turncoat jerk to be a lovable loser. Still, it was packed with energy and ample guffaws, plus George Michael is stupendous - the slapstick move of being surprised by his cellphone ring was just too good.

Okay, clearly these reviews are entirely worthless. Remember when I used to say things? I don't. I will hold off on the lit so something more impactful is put down than "Man, did Updike ever stop to think that maybe Rabbit was so unhappy because he was just an asshole?"

It's All Over Now, Baby Bears in Blue

"The Sad Bear" by the cool artist over at nedroid.com

Another playoff appearance, another swift delivery of heartbreak to the North Chicago faithful. The Cubs lost 5-1 tonight in decidedly pathetic fashion, stranding a truckload of runners and completing an 0-3 2007 post-season "performance." Or, as aptly summed up by Cubs-theme-named Wrigley the Dog, "Barf - I will now go stare out the window, longingly:"

Okay, obviously that is not Sunny Azz (and also obviously not our schwank now-unwrapped leather couch); that is our apartment in Arlington, MA, from many moons ago (I'm in the process of putting a lot of our old pics online). But Wrigley's and Sparkle's hearts long for that widescreen "TV" these days because the Beck, aka "lady who smells of interesting things and feeds us," is up in Boston right now getting ready to run the Tufts Women's Health 10K tomorrow. Or maybe she's walking the 10K. Regardless, she's not here, making for a lonely weekend here in the Nyetverse and a whole lot of walks with the pups down to the Greenbelt. I'm passing the time by alternating between a whole lot of tutoring and watching the fated demise of stupid baseball teams. Huzzah. I'll also trek out this afternoon to play some Ultimate in some absolutely FANTASTIC fall weather. Nice.

But Beck is the real winner, because she gets to hang out with the iPFam, including iPJ, iPMM and iPMeghanandGreg (and possibly Jamie? I don't know if Margie placed her Panda call the other night from New York or from Boston). AND Beck got to see Nyetverse stalwart/stars Ben the Grin and Christ-rah-colm for a nice dinner down in Beantown. I am supremely jealous. Christophe was kind enough to reiterate his loyal Nyet-reading habits, so

HERE IS HIS OFFICIAL DELIMITED SHOUT-OUT

and general recognition that he is the Man. In fact, I'm relatively certain the pecking order in the greater Massachusetts area goes "Tom Brady, Christophe, others." Though he is starting to receive some stiff competition from pimp-in-the-making Malcolm, who (just in case you haven't seen him lately) is prominently featured at Christophe's flickr page. Of course, what you should really do is check this one, where Malcolm is showing all kinds of red-eyed devious intent and is popping his collar. Somewhere around 2023, fathers, lock up your daughters.

Otherwise, things are pretty low-key here. I am going to actually try to write some of those promised reviews in the next couple of days - I'm currently reading a brilliant book supplied to me by the iPMM entitled Genre & Television, and I'm sure I'll have all kinds of faux-intelligent things to say about it after I dig my way through it, so I should get that fluffy "greatest lit of the last 25 years" out of the way. So that's it for the near-future of the blog and the life - sorry for the lack of more entertaining anecdotes, but I'm spending a lot of time reviewing the same SAT concepts over and over again, so I can't say that a daily life account would blow your mind.

So cry, cry, cry for the Cubbies, when they don't win it's another year-delay for the pending apocalypse. I managed not to let it make me violently ill this time (as compared to 2003), so that's good, but still - this time, the "next season" we're waiting 'til is 2008. That's 100 years folks. Long time. They didn't even have wi-fi in 1908. Wow. Crippling.

Shea-denfreude

I can't not post this. Ladies and Gents, sweet, sweet sadistic revenge for 1969 on behalf of Cubs fans everywhere, courtesy of Conan O'Brien:

(In case you're unaware, the Mets stormed back from 9.5 games down halfway through August in 1969 to catch the hapless Cubs. 38 years later, they get theirs thanks to the Phillies as the Mets dropped a 7 game lead in the last 17 games of the season. Meet the Mets... Beat the Mets. With all apologies to tuftsbud Andy, who I hope will at least get a little bit of a laugh out of the preceding videos).

Why are there so many posts about:

Snapped this one a couple a months ago from our deck during a Phoenician "monsoon" and just stumbled upon it while cleaning up some photos - cool, eh?

Up on Cave Creek... You Send Me

A quick post to show you all of the prettiness we encountered this Sunday up at the Cave Creek trail. Here it is in a slideshow, and I'll put some highlight pics below:

That's about it for now... the Beck and I have been working and tackling Heroes season 1, I've got another feisty Phoenix league Ultimate match tonight and this weekend Beck heads to Boston for a 10K and hanging with iPmm, iPMeghan and the Gringoat and Malsarahstophe. Awesome! Oh, yeah, and some team from Chicago and some team from Arizona are in some kind of "play off" situation. SWEET. But, don't get your hopes up...