It's Sunday, and I'm sick. Blah! Fevery, coughy, chilly, generally achy. May or may not have something to do with consistent exposure to school-aged children throughout the week. Either way, Beck is currently hiking with the Wrigster and I am curled on the couch with Sparkle, skipping hiking and Ultimate for the day and watching a terrible basketball game (Detroit just slaughtered the Suns) (Shaq = Fail). This = lame.
In other news, after a full day of Tutoring yesterday, Beck and I watched the tail-end of 8 Mile. It's not the best movie in the history of ever, but (and excuse the language / obscene gestures and general depravity), the rap battles at the end are quite sweet. Rocky's got nothing on that.
We then rushed over to the movie theatre to catch some ACTING in There Will Be Blood. I figured with all of the hype around this movie, I'd be remiss as a pop culture participant if I didn't at least check the fuss. And I did check it, and I was pretty let down. I won't review it in full, but we're talking in the 60 ballpark: good, but nothing close to what the director / actors wanted it to be. The bombastic Daniel Day Lewis, whom Beck has dubbed "a tool*," distracts throughout. Though the score was pretty cool, especially in its discordant moments which out-Losted Lost, the opening of the film, with its oh-so-clever lack of dialog, reeked of 2001. And the ending reeked of Citizen Kane. I found the narrative compelling and engaging up until about halfway though the movie, when an old relative shows up (so as not to ruin any surprises), at which point things became hideously disjointed. And while I recognize that the disorientation created by non-standard directorial choices was entirely intentional, it left the film with a sort of "who cares?" feel AND it accented the fact that much of this charade was oriented around putting DDL in SCENES so that he could ACT. I'm thinking here largely of the baptism scene and the now infamous milkshake / bowling alley scene. Those scenes were thrilling, yes, but the fall-apart narrative - and, as Beck noted, the fact that the film fast-forwarded 20 years as if it, too, was tired of the slow pace - render them non-sequiturs. This film certainly aimed at EVENT status but came up well short. I appreciate the strong aesthetics, the score, the scenery / camera work and such, but as a story, it was a transparent lead actor's vehicle. And don't even get me started on the stupidity of the Eli character. Insert generic and farcical preacher here. I also did not buy the depth of connection b/w Lewis and his "son" which other reviewers have commented on as a highlight; I thought he was every bit the puppet for the film that the character was to Plainview's. Sigh... and hence, there will be bleh. Not that I put a whole lot of weight on Oscar voting, but I'll be pretty disappointed if this overblown (though again, still good) film wins tonight.
* - note that "a tool" is pejorative, whereas "Meghan-esque sleeping habits" are merely descriptive.
(And if you've made it this far, I'll reward you with a little comedy at the expense of TWBB. If you think this scene is odd out of context, trust me that the context does not add a whole lot).
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Nyet's Brain Echo, Vol. 2
Another classic:
Case of three:
Marked see two others, know there are two or three.
Unmarked see three, know there are three or four.
After first night, marked are still waiting to see if the two person scenario plays out.
After second night, when two person scenario doesn't play out, the three realize there are three, and leave on the third night.
At next dinner, there are only seven left, and they all realize they must be unmarked.
Of course, the thing that is severely counterintuitive about this is that the logic would apply if we had 1000 monks and 998 of them were marked. They would seemingly sit around for 998 days before anyone left??!?!?
Weird. And weirder, this all theoretically hinges on the idea of "common knowledge," in that knowing at least one person is marked and knowing everyone else knows this is the key. Notice that in any of these scenarios, the action doesn't take place until the minimum number of marked monks becomes universally agreed upon.
Anyways, ponder, comment, talk about milkshakes and then smack a monk with a bowling pin. Whatever; your call.
Ten exceptionally logical and pious monks live in a monastery where it is strictly forbidden to speak (especially about one's appearance) or look in mirrors/reflections. The monks go about their daily routine and each night meet for supper, where all of the monks can see one another, but none can see himself. One night, the voice of God appears to all of the monks in a dream and states, "At least one of you will receive a blue mark on your forehead tonight. If you determine at any dinner in the next two weeks that you have a mark, you are to leave the monastery that night at midnight, never to return." Eight of the ten monks receive marks. How many days does it take the eight monks to leave the monastery?Ready? The answer, as gained from Mathland, is eight days, arrived at via inductive reasoning. Say there were only one monk: he would show up at dinner that night, see nine monks sans marks, and deduce that he must be the marked monk. All of the other monks would see the monk with a mark and think "either there is only one marked monk and that guy is it, or there are two and I am the other one." They wouldn't be sure whether they had a mark or not, so they wouldn't leave, but when the monk was missing the next night, they would realize that he must have been the only one. In the case where there are two monks, on the first night each of the two marked ones would see one other marked monk and, as above, deduce that either there is one or there are two and he is the second one. The unmarked monks would see two marked monks and note that there are either two or three. No one would leave after the first night, but on the second night, the two marked monks would realize that the other was not alone, and so they would leave that night. Again, on the third night, the two marked guys would be gone, so everyone else would realize they were unmarked. This same effect - similar to the previous post's exam example, actually - continues if there are three, four, five, etc., monks each time, and the marked monks leave on the corresponding (third, fourth, fifth, etc.) night. Quickly:
Case of three:
Marked see two others, know there are two or three.
Unmarked see three, know there are three or four.
After first night, marked are still waiting to see if the two person scenario plays out.
After second night, when two person scenario doesn't play out, the three realize there are three, and leave on the third night.
At next dinner, there are only seven left, and they all realize they must be unmarked.
Of course, the thing that is severely counterintuitive about this is that the logic would apply if we had 1000 monks and 998 of them were marked. They would seemingly sit around for 998 days before anyone left??!?!?
Weird. And weirder, this all theoretically hinges on the idea of "common knowledge," in that knowing at least one person is marked and knowing everyone else knows this is the key. Notice that in any of these scenarios, the action doesn't take place until the minimum number of marked monks becomes universally agreed upon.
Anyways, ponder, comment, talk about milkshakes and then smack a monk with a bowling pin. Whatever; your call.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Nyet's Brain Echo, Vol. 1
A classic, courtesy of a paper I was reading by Timothy Chow:
**********************************************
UPDATE
**********************************************
It seems clear, especially with the help of Margie's link, that this is a problem that even the headiest of modal logicians and epistemological theorists cannot solve. Rather than bore my already bored audience with the details, suffice it: our seemingly simple statements like those above are worm-cans of confusion. Consider this next time someone unverifiably tells you that they *know* something.
A teacher announces in class that an examination will be held on some day during the following week, and moreover that the examination will be a surprise. The students argue that a surprise exam cannot occur. For suppose the exam were on the last day of the week. Then on the previous night, the students would be able to predict that the exam would occur on the following day, and the exam would not be a surprise. So it is impossible for a surprise exam to occur on the last day. But then a surprise exam cannot occur on the penultimate day, either, for in that case the students, knowing that the last day is an impossible day for a surprise exam, would be able to predict on the night before the exam that the exam would occur on the following day. Similarly, the students argue that a surprise exam cannot occur on any other day of the week either. Confident in this conclusion, they are of course totally surprised when the exam occurs (on Wednesday, say). The announcement is vindicated after all. Where did the students' reasoning go wrong?Ponder this one. This puzzle and another (to be revealed soon) have been eating away at my brain the past couple of days, not because of the ooh-ahh nature, but the "how do you actually formulate the argument" nature. Clearly something is going on with the word "surprise" and the impact of knowledge. More later.
**********************************************
UPDATE
**********************************************
It seems clear, especially with the help of Margie's link, that this is a problem that even the headiest of modal logicians and epistemological theorists cannot solve. Rather than bore my already bored audience with the details, suffice it: our seemingly simple statements like those above are worm-cans of confusion. Consider this next time someone unverifiably tells you that they *know* something.
Update Promised, Update Delivered
Played a tight first half but eventually rolled our way to a 15-10 win in Thursday night's huckfest. More importantly, I made it through an entire game WITHOUT laying out, so no blood-oozing from the Nyetian corpus after this one. Huzzah.
Big-time highlight: we managed to have a one-throw score last night, which as you can pretty much guess is the lowest number of throws it takes to score. They pulled it to us, reasonably deep (about 10 yards outside our endzone), and my defender sprinted down the field, head down and hoping for some sort of first throw glory. I'd been playing handler all night, hanging back around the disc, so in his enthusiasm he assumed I would be headed back toward the guy who picked up the pull. But that guy was "Big Nate," a player with excellent hucks, and an all around cool dude whom I've played with quite a bit the last three months (he was on Velvet, Immaculate Goat, and this hat team). Not to mention there is one thing and one thing only to do when your defender sprints at you full speed, head down off the pull: go deep. So I did. As we "ships-pass-in-the-night" and my defender looks up just in time to see me going fast in the complete opposite direction, he yells out something in the general "OH @#%$!" vein. No one else is back there, Nate launches a gorgeous 70 yard huck that just floats in nicely as I run it down for the score. One throw! And this was around the 12-10 mark, so it was pretty devastating for them. The coolest part about it was that after the screamed obscenity, the entire field went silent. He didn't even have the heart to ask for help deep, which would've been pointless anyways since by the time I caught it I was abut 40 yards behind everybody. And no one cheered, stunned as we were by the beauty of the throw. Tres exciting.
Rewind to earlier in the day, and a pathetically sick Essa was not up to her usual hijinks. She was super sniffly, but stuck to it and made it through the lesson. We were reading about the 1984 Olympics, and she said that she didn't remember that. I told her of course she didn't remember that, she hadn't been born yet. She said that must have been sad. I said she didn't really exist yet, so it couldn't really be sad or happy. She said, "No, I meant sad for everyone else, not to have me around."
Rewind a bit further, and we learn that the lunar eclipse was not the only thing we missed in the sky on Wednesday night. In another glorious moment of "Team America, @#$% Yeah!," the U.S. of Aim BLASTED a satellite OUT OF THE SKY. You can watch videos and press conferences here, or check out some groovy pics here. I really feel like one of those pics should be turned into an LOL-rocket, with something along the lines of "O Hai China/North Korea/Iran, did U see whut we did ther?"
Yowsers.
Big-time highlight: we managed to have a one-throw score last night, which as you can pretty much guess is the lowest number of throws it takes to score. They pulled it to us, reasonably deep (about 10 yards outside our endzone), and my defender sprinted down the field, head down and hoping for some sort of first throw glory. I'd been playing handler all night, hanging back around the disc, so in his enthusiasm he assumed I would be headed back toward the guy who picked up the pull. But that guy was "Big Nate," a player with excellent hucks, and an all around cool dude whom I've played with quite a bit the last three months (he was on Velvet, Immaculate Goat, and this hat team). Not to mention there is one thing and one thing only to do when your defender sprints at you full speed, head down off the pull: go deep. So I did. As we "ships-pass-in-the-night" and my defender looks up just in time to see me going fast in the complete opposite direction, he yells out something in the general "OH @#%$!" vein. No one else is back there, Nate launches a gorgeous 70 yard huck that just floats in nicely as I run it down for the score. One throw! And this was around the 12-10 mark, so it was pretty devastating for them. The coolest part about it was that after the screamed obscenity, the entire field went silent. He didn't even have the heart to ask for help deep, which would've been pointless anyways since by the time I caught it I was abut 40 yards behind everybody. And no one cheered, stunned as we were by the beauty of the throw. Tres exciting.
Rewind to earlier in the day, and a pathetically sick Essa was not up to her usual hijinks. She was super sniffly, but stuck to it and made it through the lesson. We were reading about the 1984 Olympics, and she said that she didn't remember that. I told her of course she didn't remember that, she hadn't been born yet. She said that must have been sad. I said she didn't really exist yet, so it couldn't really be sad or happy. She said, "No, I meant sad for everyone else, not to have me around."
Rewind a bit further, and we learn that the lunar eclipse was not the only thing we missed in the sky on Wednesday night. In another glorious moment of "Team America, @#$% Yeah!," the U.S. of Aim BLASTED a satellite OUT OF THE SKY. You can watch videos and press conferences here, or check out some groovy pics here. I really feel like one of those pics should be turned into an LOL-rocket, with something along the lines of "O Hai China/North Korea/Iran, did U see whut we did ther?"
Yowsers.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Nothing I Can Say, A Total Eclipse of...
The eclipse. D'oh!
Sunny AZ was cloudy AZ yesterday at exactly the wrong time, and the moon and its eclipsed-ness were obscured by clouds. Sigh. Better luck next time; natch, I can always look at pictures on the web for the fauxperience. Of course, as suggested in the previous post, I had a back-up plan for the lack of moon-viewing: the quite excellent Star Trek in Wonderland video. I was pretty excited to share this glorious piece with Beck, especially since she had just heard "White Rabbit" for the first time in the car on Saturday. It led to this conversation:
"Hey Beck, since we can't look at the moon, check out this video."
"How long is it?"
"Three minutes."
"THREE MINUTES!!!?!?!"
I can't convey the inflection appropriately. Just know that it's just about the same thing as if a little kid asks if we're there yet, you say "still thirty minutes" and he whines "thirty minutes!" Hilarious. Beck has apparently joined the short-attention span few.
Saw this on the interwebs yesterday:
It's the panaorama scene from the Simpsons intro, excellently written about by this dude. I take no credit for this.
This is fairly genius, too:
He clearly just stumbled across nyetjones.org.
Otherwise, it's business as usual here at Nyet Jones, Inc. I dragged myself to the gym this morning, took the pups for a long walk and am shortly headed to TutorCorps. Fans of Essa, be excited: it's Thursday, and that means I should be full of ridiculous stories tomorrow. Fans of Nyet, be excited: more Thursday Ultimate, and I've been on a little bit of a hot streak lately. Ever since that layout D at New Year's Fest, I've seemed to remember that I'm actually pretty decent at this game and can dominate when it's, you know, hat league. Sigh. Regardless, there should be more pointless highlights here tonight. Look forward to it!!!
And we'll cap this with a dedication to Christina:
----------------
Now playing: Bob Dylan - Love Minus Zero/No Limit
Sunny AZ was cloudy AZ yesterday at exactly the wrong time, and the moon and its eclipsed-ness were obscured by clouds. Sigh. Better luck next time; natch, I can always look at pictures on the web for the fauxperience. Of course, as suggested in the previous post, I had a back-up plan for the lack of moon-viewing: the quite excellent Star Trek in Wonderland video. I was pretty excited to share this glorious piece with Beck, especially since she had just heard "White Rabbit" for the first time in the car on Saturday. It led to this conversation:
"Hey Beck, since we can't look at the moon, check out this video."
"How long is it?"
"Three minutes."
"THREE MINUTES!!!?!?!"
I can't convey the inflection appropriately. Just know that it's just about the same thing as if a little kid asks if we're there yet, you say "still thirty minutes" and he whines "thirty minutes!" Hilarious. Beck has apparently joined the short-attention span few.
Saw this on the interwebs yesterday:
It's the panaorama scene from the Simpsons intro, excellently written about by this dude. I take no credit for this.
This is fairly genius, too:
He clearly just stumbled across nyetjones.org.
Otherwise, it's business as usual here at Nyet Jones, Inc. I dragged myself to the gym this morning, took the pups for a long walk and am shortly headed to TutorCorps. Fans of Essa, be excited: it's Thursday, and that means I should be full of ridiculous stories tomorrow. Fans of Nyet, be excited: more Thursday Ultimate, and I've been on a little bit of a hot streak lately. Ever since that layout D at New Year's Fest, I've seemed to remember that I'm actually pretty decent at this game and can dominate when it's, you know, hat league. Sigh. Regardless, there should be more pointless highlights here tonight. Look forward to it!!!
And we'll cap this with a dedication to Christina:
----------------
Now playing: Bob Dylan - Love Minus Zero/No Limit
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Feed Your Head!!!
Hey folks - lunar eclipse tonight (wednesday the 20th) from 8:45 to 12:00 EST, so check it out. It's supposed to be cloudy here in Phoenix, so we might miss it. So if you are in that situation, come back to your computer and watch this instead:
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Frank
Beliefs II is up. It's hella long. Sorry. Enjoy. And comment.
In non long essay-writing news, I played one helluva Ultimate game last night. The score stayed within one or two points the entire game, and wound up tied at 12s. After the game, my teammate Tyler nicely commented that "It seems like you just decided that we were winning the game." That was excessively kind of him to say. I did "dig deep" a little bit: skyed a couple of guys for crazy scores, a couple of yoink* grabs, made some crazy layouts and grabbed a couple of Ds to seal the win, 15-12. Fun times, and I don't feel quite as crappy as last time. In fact, I'm gonna go for a run. NOW!
*yoink grab = running deep, the thrower hucks to you but underthrows it, so your defender stops and waits for it to go right to him. But you come back and layout around him to grab the underthrown disc. The defender goes from a state of "Oh crap, I'm getting burnt deep" to "Sweet, easy D" to "Where the hell did that guy come from?" Bonus points if you actually say "yoink" while making the grab.
Okay, NOW!
In non long essay-writing news, I played one helluva Ultimate game last night. The score stayed within one or two points the entire game, and wound up tied at 12s. After the game, my teammate Tyler nicely commented that "It seems like you just decided that we were winning the game." That was excessively kind of him to say. I did "dig deep" a little bit: skyed a couple of guys for crazy scores, a couple of yoink* grabs, made some crazy layouts and grabbed a couple of Ds to seal the win, 15-12. Fun times, and I don't feel quite as crappy as last time. In fact, I'm gonna go for a run. NOW!
*yoink grab = running deep, the thrower hucks to you but underthrows it, so your defender stops and waits for it to go right to him. But you come back and layout around him to grab the underthrown disc. The defender goes from a state of "Oh crap, I'm getting burnt deep" to "Sweet, easy D" to "Where the hell did that guy come from?" Bonus points if you actually say "yoink" while making the grab.
Okay, NOW!
Be Zen, Dang It!!!
You know, if you're going to mock my hobbies, in particular my penchant for playing self-on-self solitaire scrabble, the least you can do is point out that I played "Justify" on a triple word score for 143 points (!!!). I'll admit to being a nerd, but at least I am a good nerd.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
I Heart The Self-Checkout Lane
Mainly because it eliminates the ridiculous human interaction of the normal checkout lane. The disembodied automated voice at the checkout lane never asks me about paper or plastic. She never tells me how much I saved using my VIP card, or comments ont he weather, or asks where I'm from, all of which happen to me in the normal checkout lane on a frighteningly regular basis. I do like that the disembodied self-check out voice responds to me sliding my VIP card across the red beams by announcing 'WELCOME, VALUED CUSTOMER!" for all the world to hear. And that is the key, because clearly no one, computer-driven or not, would address a human being int he second person as "valued customer." It's much more an announcement that this institution, represented by this nothing of an automated device, values me. I question how much a "corporation" can value anything, let alone me, and let alone whether this computerized non-entity is qualified to value things. Can you feel the linguistic analytical love?
Still, this is not why the self-checkout lane is awesome. It's awesome because I have the procedure down to a science: Start button, swipe credit card, swipe VIP card, swipe items, clcik done, click no coupons, click credit card, out. When I'm just shopping for Ulti-stuff, like a power bar and two gatorades, I get in and out of the store in two minutes. That's ridiculous! And it rules.
But THAT is also not why the self-checkout automated disembodied voice lady is awesome. She is awesome for a primary reason. When I buy produce, she runs me through the "type in the PLU code" game. Sometimes produce costs X per weight, sometimes it costs X per item. But she averts this semantic situation via the brilliance following: after I enter the item and the quantity of the item, she says,
"Put the item on the scanner and wait."
Or is it, "Put the item on the scanner and weigh it???!?!?!?!"
So whether it's a cost per item or per weight, she's covered. All the results, half the programming! That would be the efficacy of a pun in action, people. YEAH!
And yes, you just got tricked into reading something incredibly mundane with a bad punchline. SUCKA!!!!
Still, this is not why the self-checkout lane is awesome. It's awesome because I have the procedure down to a science: Start button, swipe credit card, swipe VIP card, swipe items, clcik done, click no coupons, click credit card, out. When I'm just shopping for Ulti-stuff, like a power bar and two gatorades, I get in and out of the store in two minutes. That's ridiculous! And it rules.
But THAT is also not why the self-checkout automated disembodied voice lady is awesome. She is awesome for a primary reason. When I buy produce, she runs me through the "type in the PLU code" game. Sometimes produce costs X per weight, sometimes it costs X per item. But she averts this semantic situation via the brilliance following: after I enter the item and the quantity of the item, she says,
"Put the item on the scanner and wait."
Or is it, "Put the item on the scanner and weigh it???!?!?!?!"
So whether it's a cost per item or per weight, she's covered. All the results, half the programming! That would be the efficacy of a pun in action, people. YEAH!
And yes, you just got tricked into reading something incredibly mundane with a bad punchline. SUCKA!!!!
Monday, February 18, 2008
It's 10 AM Somewhere: The Weekend That Was (to die)
After Thursday night's double header, I felt pretty much awful. The cumulative effects of Tuesday's insane dose of running-around and Thursday's fuel to the fire left me pretty nauseous; I couldn't eat when I got home Thursday and that pleasant feeling continued through most of the day Friday. Blarf. I rallied a bit for a burrito or two on Friday night, but still, it was a pretty crappy way to spend the day. We capped it off by watching Lost and Eli Stone, both of which registered somewhere in the annoyingly incomplete to annoyingly annoying range. Pile this in the death of modern culture heap, right next to the place where I had a student tell me that yes, she's seen The Nanny reality show but has never seen Mary Poppins.
Saturday fared better. Long day at the tutoring factory, but the crush was salvaged when I got a text message from Dan that went something like "Bowling or guitar hero tonight?" I responded that I was sure he meant AND instead of OR. After some emergency apartment cleaning Saturday afternoon / evening, we trekked down to Phoenix to hang with the DC crew. Christina has not only gotten a cute haircut, she has whiled away countless hours at the GH and is now a medium level superstar. I killed Knights of Cydonia, but my skill on the fake guitar falls somewhere under my skills on the real guitar and my skills on the computer keyboard fake guitar. Christina five-starred everything, including "One," and Dan claims it's no longer fun to play with her. Sigh. Dan also says things like "the tomatoes made me like to die," so you always have to wonder what seventh level of English he's using. Still, watching Christina kill the GH was mesmerizing, but could not hold our attentions for long. We were hungry.
Dan drove us to the TeePee, a nice little mexican joint complete with tvs to show all-star dunkage (Huzzah to Superman!) and teenage conversation. Dan and I mocked people whose musical tastes don't match our own, for something new and different, and I may have maxed out on Pitchforkish snobbery when i claimed that you wouldn't get Xiu Xiu if "you were the kind of person who likes melody and/or rhythm." Subjunctive tense and slamming elitism regarding conventional staples of music appreciation: 72 points in the big dork game, methinks. Sigh. After an exceptional dinner accented by margaritas and highlighted by existential comments re: teenage boys' valentine gifts, we headed over to our local trashy bowling alley, which was about 2/3 full.
"Sorry, no lanes available," the counter man chimed. Huh? Christina looked briefly over her shoulder at the twelve empty lanes; Dan speculated that they had been reserved by George Clooney "just in case." The option given to us by counter man (who, in retrospect, may have been politely telling us that we were way too cool to be hanging in an adolescent-laden bowling alley on a Saturday night) was to wait until 10:00 to reserve an *Extreme Bowling* lane which would be available for play at 10:30. Given Beck's Meghan-esque sleeping schedule of late, this option did not strike us as particularly viable. We left for casa DC, taking solace in the fact that if we couldn't get our faux-sport on with some bowling, we'd get our faux-faux sport on and bowl on the Wii.
The bowling was fun; Beck annihilated us. Christina decided we needed characters; Christina and I created reasonable likenesses, and Beck rendered herself as a "Mii" which invokes names like "Brumhilda, Eater of Villagers." We're talking one impressively hideous animated un-doppleganger. Yikes. We golfed briefly with our new selves, and Beck predictably crashed asleep. Said goodbye, and got ready for an "Ethical Brunch" on Sunday.
Woke up at 7 am to clean the bathroom and the parts of the apartment we didn't get to the previous evening. Fun times. Went to Fry's to buy honey, poppy seeds and...
They don't serve alcohol before 10 am at the grocery stores in Phoenix. I know this, because I tried to purchase champagne (technically, sparkling wine, you crazy Wayne's World fans) for mimosas at 8:57 and set off all kinds of alarms at the self-checkout lane. Seriously, the automated voice*, normally so pleasant and kind, all of a sudden blurts out, "Please put down the item. A sales associate is coming to take it from you." WOAH! Indeed, a sales associate laughs his 20 some odd year old ass at me as he takes away the champagne and tells me I can't buy alcohol until 10 am. "Why 10 am?" I ask. He doesn't know. I guess that it's because it's noon on the east coast, and that qualifies as "noon somewhere." He doesn't reply, just walks down the alcohol aisle. Sigh.
* - oh, the automated voice. Separate post.
I went home, cleaned some more and went back at 10 for the champagne (to a different Fry's, of course; don't want my neighbors thinking I'm sort of crazy champagne-obsessed alcoholic). Tim and Wren and DC came over about 11, and we had an EXCELLENT brunch prepared by Beck. Bread pudding, spinach souflee, eggs and bacon and sausage, fruit salad, mimosas, coffee, and topped off with ice cream and bananas glazed in orange rum sauce. Ridiculous good, and a great time; this satisfied our "host a veggie party obligation" and was a nice party, taboot. Naia (TW's daughter) made the trip, and outside of a baby-phenomenon euphemistically referred to as "a blowout" - yeah, that's right, she popped a tire - she had a good time. The dogs didn't even try to eat her, mainly because we separated them soon after T & W entered. Phew. NEhoo, great brunch; the people left at about 2:30 and I headed out to play some Ultimate.
(Blar - I tweaked what I'll refer to as my Roger Clemens muscle pretty much as soon as we started playing. Between that and a charlie horse I received Thursday night, I was hobbling something awful. No fun. I have a game tonight (Tuesday), so hopefully I've recovered to the point where I can function. We'll see).
Leftovers and scrabble Sunday, tutoring and Terminator and the rest of the leftovers Monday. Good times had by all. And now you're caught up. As always, I will try to be more exciting in the upcoming week. But seriously, who doesn't love a story about bowling and brunch???
Saturday fared better. Long day at the tutoring factory, but the crush was salvaged when I got a text message from Dan that went something like "Bowling or guitar hero tonight?" I responded that I was sure he meant AND instead of OR. After some emergency apartment cleaning Saturday afternoon / evening, we trekked down to Phoenix to hang with the DC crew. Christina has not only gotten a cute haircut, she has whiled away countless hours at the GH and is now a medium level superstar. I killed Knights of Cydonia, but my skill on the fake guitar falls somewhere under my skills on the real guitar and my skills on the computer keyboard fake guitar. Christina five-starred everything, including "One," and Dan claims it's no longer fun to play with her. Sigh. Dan also says things like "the tomatoes made me like to die," so you always have to wonder what seventh level of English he's using. Still, watching Christina kill the GH was mesmerizing, but could not hold our attentions for long. We were hungry.
Dan drove us to the TeePee, a nice little mexican joint complete with tvs to show all-star dunkage (Huzzah to Superman!) and teenage conversation. Dan and I mocked people whose musical tastes don't match our own, for something new and different, and I may have maxed out on Pitchforkish snobbery when i claimed that you wouldn't get Xiu Xiu if "you were the kind of person who likes melody and/or rhythm." Subjunctive tense and slamming elitism regarding conventional staples of music appreciation: 72 points in the big dork game, methinks. Sigh. After an exceptional dinner accented by margaritas and highlighted by existential comments re: teenage boys' valentine gifts, we headed over to our local trashy bowling alley, which was about 2/3 full.
"Sorry, no lanes available," the counter man chimed. Huh? Christina looked briefly over her shoulder at the twelve empty lanes; Dan speculated that they had been reserved by George Clooney "just in case." The option given to us by counter man (who, in retrospect, may have been politely telling us that we were way too cool to be hanging in an adolescent-laden bowling alley on a Saturday night) was to wait until 10:00 to reserve an *Extreme Bowling* lane which would be available for play at 10:30. Given Beck's Meghan-esque sleeping schedule of late, this option did not strike us as particularly viable. We left for casa DC, taking solace in the fact that if we couldn't get our faux-sport on with some bowling, we'd get our faux-faux sport on and bowl on the Wii.
The bowling was fun; Beck annihilated us. Christina decided we needed characters; Christina and I created reasonable likenesses, and Beck rendered herself as a "Mii" which invokes names like "Brumhilda, Eater of Villagers." We're talking one impressively hideous animated un-doppleganger. Yikes. We golfed briefly with our new selves, and Beck predictably crashed asleep. Said goodbye, and got ready for an "Ethical Brunch" on Sunday.
Woke up at 7 am to clean the bathroom and the parts of the apartment we didn't get to the previous evening. Fun times. Went to Fry's to buy honey, poppy seeds and...
They don't serve alcohol before 10 am at the grocery stores in Phoenix. I know this, because I tried to purchase champagne (technically, sparkling wine, you crazy Wayne's World fans) for mimosas at 8:57 and set off all kinds of alarms at the self-checkout lane. Seriously, the automated voice*, normally so pleasant and kind, all of a sudden blurts out, "Please put down the item. A sales associate is coming to take it from you." WOAH! Indeed, a sales associate laughs his 20 some odd year old ass at me as he takes away the champagne and tells me I can't buy alcohol until 10 am. "Why 10 am?" I ask. He doesn't know. I guess that it's because it's noon on the east coast, and that qualifies as "noon somewhere." He doesn't reply, just walks down the alcohol aisle. Sigh.
* - oh, the automated voice. Separate post.
I went home, cleaned some more and went back at 10 for the champagne (to a different Fry's, of course; don't want my neighbors thinking I'm sort of crazy champagne-obsessed alcoholic). Tim and Wren and DC came over about 11, and we had an EXCELLENT brunch prepared by Beck. Bread pudding, spinach souflee, eggs and bacon and sausage, fruit salad, mimosas, coffee, and topped off with ice cream and bananas glazed in orange rum sauce. Ridiculous good, and a great time; this satisfied our "host a veggie party obligation" and was a nice party, taboot. Naia (TW's daughter) made the trip, and outside of a baby-phenomenon euphemistically referred to as "a blowout" - yeah, that's right, she popped a tire - she had a good time. The dogs didn't even try to eat her, mainly because we separated them soon after T & W entered. Phew. NEhoo, great brunch; the people left at about 2:30 and I headed out to play some Ultimate.
(Blar - I tweaked what I'll refer to as my Roger Clemens muscle pretty much as soon as we started playing. Between that and a charlie horse I received Thursday night, I was hobbling something awful. No fun. I have a game tonight (Tuesday), so hopefully I've recovered to the point where I can function. We'll see).
Leftovers and scrabble Sunday, tutoring and Terminator and the rest of the leftovers Monday. Good times had by all. And now you're caught up. As always, I will try to be more exciting in the upcoming week. But seriously, who doesn't love a story about bowling and brunch???
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Pembuktian
saya tidak akan pernah menyangka
akan bisa terjebak lagi seperti ini
berawal dari rasa yang saya kira telah menghilang
tapi dia muncul dan meminta haknya kembali
setelah sekian lama berdiam
dia mencoba berkata
dan mencoba bertutur
akibat melihat hal yang sama kah?
mungkin saja.
ego yang sama,
hal yang sama
deja vu
dengan hal yang tampaknya kita lakukan
dalam beberapa rentan waktu belakang
semua tersaji tetap di depan mata
tapi,
ada yang berbeda
kenpa dia tidak merasa jera??
kenapa dia sangat menikmatinya??
ataukah memang begitu rasanya dulu??
aku memang sudah lupa
dan penasaran itu akhirnya menang juga
dia MENANG!!!
dan membwaku ke satu tempat
yang (mungkin) tidak semestinya saya berada disitu.
argh,,,
bodoh!!!!
dengan segala keinginan untuk mendamba
tangan untuk menyentuh
dan suara untuk terdengar
dia dari khayal
menjadi nyata
dan akhirnya menjadi maya kembali
pembuktian???
ternyata memang saya yang salah
tidak ada yang mesti dibuktikan dengan perasaan ini
yang pasti cuma satu
berBEDA.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Sun Devil Nyetium
So, the envelope contained an acceptance letter from ASU. Wahoo! Funding and all that stuff remains to be worked out, but step17-B along this stupid path of life looks complete.
So, half in VDay eve mode and half in celebratory mode, we hit up Houston's for dinner. Great night.
This post is pretty worthless outside of its "HEY I GOT INTO GRAD SCHOOL!" component.
Supplemental: rocked Ultimate last night, winning two games in the 15-4 range and making a hellacious layout grab that also hellaciously deskinned my arm. Yikes. Today has been painful.
So, half in VDay eve mode and half in celebratory mode, we hit up Houston's for dinner. Great night.
This post is pretty worthless outside of its "HEY I GOT INTO GRAD SCHOOL!" component.
Supplemental: rocked Ultimate last night, winning two games in the 15-4 range and making a hellacious layout grab that also hellaciously deskinned my arm. Yikes. Today has been painful.
Wednesday in all its glory
I didn't even have to use my AK. After waking up from the previous night of exhausting Ulti, I jumped into action Wednesday with some errands to run before traipsing in for a 8.5 hour tutor-a-thon. I was almost out the door when the Roger Clemens debacle began, and I forced myself to sit down and watch a few minutes so that I could bask in the cultural experience and have all those remember-when reference points.
Interesting things about it? Well, one, it seems bizarre to me that a guy like Roger Clemens, with access to mounds of cash and the lawyers that those mounds afford, got such terrible advice on how to comport himself. Stuttering and repeating "I'm a good guy" and interrupting the inquisitors, egads. He basically made himself look like more of a criminal than he already was. Again, it's not that "Roger Clemens looked like a criminal" is an interesting opinion or statement, it's more "how does that happen?" when you've got the best counsel money can buy. Idiotic.
The second were some rather interesting conceptions of truth. Sports dudes, and I've already rantily posted about the quality of their coverage, repeatedly referred to the two stories being "diametrically opposed." They chose this vocabulary as opposed to "inconsistent" or "contradictory." It may have been catch-phrase sloppiness, but it's indicative of a prevalent precept of "common-sense" truth, namely that matters are always by nature dichotomous. While the entirety of the truth of the two parties' stories may have been said to be inherently inconsistent, there is nothing left-right opposite about them, at least in an absolute sense. The "either he is lying or he is lying" invokes an unfounded exclusive or - both could be lying, right? And with the complexity involved in years-old memories, etc., it seems that "lying" oversimplifies concepts that might overlap quite a bit with "misremembered." It's nothing necessarily new, but the mainstream approach to these things - one state two state red state blue state - by nature dumbs things down and renders them inaccurate. I'm all for simplification as a teaching method, and I recognize (and profess) that our knowledge system is doomed to incompleteness, but to go around intentionally dumbing things down - why? Do the PTB just assume that people are too stupid to grasp nuance? Seems a self-feeding approach.
Beyond that, just listening to the continued "Is it true that you had a conversation where you said that you had said that she said...?": whatever happened to hearsay? And the reliability of memory? I've talked about this with super neuropsychologist Meghan before; the unreliability of memory (and its plasticity and susceptibility to intentional bias) is mind-boggling. But we incarcerate routinely on its basis. Yikes.
Anyways, I eventually dragged myself away from the TV to go on a failed trip to the recycling center. Bins full - yay Scottsdale. I then headed over to the grocery store for some materials for a VDay Eve present and my normal holiday gift to the Beck of sushi. You say roses, I say raw fish. I also say peeps - I made a Peeps bouquet. It had all the quality of a five year-old's masterpiece in pasta medium. The intent - to obliquely celebrate my love for the Beck without kowtowing to typical capitalist VDay commodity - was there; the execution lacking. Oh, well, she appreciated it.
Moment of surreal at the grocery store - I rounded a corner to stumble into about 20 Fry's employees, all decked out in red garb, posing for a picture. Only: no camera man. So we've got people dressed in crazy Valentine's Day celebration garb on the wrong day (this was the EVE) posing for a picture that doesn't exist. "Performance art!" I accused. Nope, the guy with the camera had gone to replace the battery or something. Still, I definitely had a "glitch inthe matrix" moment there. I've probably failed miserably in relating this.
So I headed home, made the bouquet, took care of dogs, and headed in for a long day of work. Nothing that crazy*. I was working with a lot of SAT kids, but we also had an influx of youngins who were working with some of the other teachers. And one of the other teachers asked every single kid a litany of detailed questions about the Valentine's cards they had bought for their classmates. Holy indoctrination!
I'm admittedly not the world's biggest VDay fan - some of my friends and I routinely referred to it as "Black Thursday," or whatever day it happened to be that year, back in high school. But hearing the same series of questions leveled at academically struggling seven year olds brought part of the problem into clear focus. We're teaching, at a very early age, that the appropriate manner in which to express your affection for others is by purchasing pre-constructed cards and then delivering one of these to every single person in the class. Now, the egalitarian approach of giving one to every student is on surface a good idea - we don't want to be crafting Timmy into a world-hating, angst-ridden and potentially violent future adolescent by isolating him in the "who-gets-a-VDAy card, not you" world - but it's also false. Kids aren't stupid. Pretty chicas Keri Mendoza and Kelly Southwell get the Valentine's with Road Runner and Bugs Bunny, while fat-girl Susie Sally Millicent gets porky pig. Our commodities have relative value, duh, and a whole level of cultural analysis could go into the subtle implications of giving a fellow male the Bugs Bunny dressed as a girl Bunny card. Choo-choo-choose me, indeed. All of this is predicated on the actions of teachers and parents who, like my colleague, made the purchase of VDay cards a mandatory action. What are the teachers teaching? How are we molding the creative process via such actions?
I was talking about this with my dad, and suggested that we "celebrate" this dumb ass corporate-devised holiday by teaching our kids that they should write or say something nice to everyone in the class. Or if you insist on the heart and lace motif, just stick to using construction paper for constructed celebrations. This seems to foster all kinds of individual creativity, personal sentiment, and educational opportunities (you could even check the grammar on their cards!). Of course, I'd be asking a culture to do something heartfelt when the radio is saying things like "is your VDay budget only $100 this year?" VDay budget? Whaaaaa....? This all points toward the great idea of giving our loved ones lumps of coal for VDay. When the inevitable disappointed glances come, you say, hey, carbon is carbon.
(or, to reuse a joke that I originally stole from Mitch Hedberg, say "Just wait").
Heard on the radio this morning: "Is your diamond jewelry out of style?" No, this is not a problem that I have. This is not a "problem" that anyone has. STFU, mr. radio salesman. Though I do give you some unintentionally funny points for saying such things the day after VDay.
ANyways, that's enough of an anti-VDay diatribe. I got home after work, and in a joking mode, Beck greeted me at the door. Sparkle had a sock, Wrigley had a shoe, and Beck had an envelope...
* - Not as crazy as, say, Thursday. I have an adorable 8 year-old student named Essa whom I work with on math and reading every week. I walked into the office, and she is sitting in the waiting room *reading an issue of Arizona Parenting*. I give her a weird look, and she says, "Just in case my baby comes early." Straight-faced.
Later, we read a story about a rabbit who couldn't sleep because a frog was singing. I asked Essa why she thought the frog was singing at night. She responds, in her best Barry White, "for the ladies."
I also made the mistake of teaching Essa to add by using dice. I rewarded her efforts by teaching her a simple version of craps. And now she comes in every week and asks,"if I do a good job, can we gamble today?" Oops.
Shimon once argued that he disliked Sixth Sense because he thought kids don't act as precocious as Haley Joel Osmond. I continue to contest.
Interesting things about it? Well, one, it seems bizarre to me that a guy like Roger Clemens, with access to mounds of cash and the lawyers that those mounds afford, got such terrible advice on how to comport himself. Stuttering and repeating "I'm a good guy" and interrupting the inquisitors, egads. He basically made himself look like more of a criminal than he already was. Again, it's not that "Roger Clemens looked like a criminal" is an interesting opinion or statement, it's more "how does that happen?" when you've got the best counsel money can buy. Idiotic.
The second were some rather interesting conceptions of truth. Sports dudes, and I've already rantily posted about the quality of their coverage, repeatedly referred to the two stories being "diametrically opposed." They chose this vocabulary as opposed to "inconsistent" or "contradictory." It may have been catch-phrase sloppiness, but it's indicative of a prevalent precept of "common-sense" truth, namely that matters are always by nature dichotomous. While the entirety of the truth of the two parties' stories may have been said to be inherently inconsistent, there is nothing left-right opposite about them, at least in an absolute sense. The "either he is lying or he is lying" invokes an unfounded exclusive or - both could be lying, right? And with the complexity involved in years-old memories, etc., it seems that "lying" oversimplifies concepts that might overlap quite a bit with "misremembered." It's nothing necessarily new, but the mainstream approach to these things - one state two state red state blue state - by nature dumbs things down and renders them inaccurate. I'm all for simplification as a teaching method, and I recognize (and profess) that our knowledge system is doomed to incompleteness, but to go around intentionally dumbing things down - why? Do the PTB just assume that people are too stupid to grasp nuance? Seems a self-feeding approach.
Beyond that, just listening to the continued "Is it true that you had a conversation where you said that you had said that she said...?": whatever happened to hearsay? And the reliability of memory? I've talked about this with super neuropsychologist Meghan before; the unreliability of memory (and its plasticity and susceptibility to intentional bias) is mind-boggling. But we incarcerate routinely on its basis. Yikes.
Anyways, I eventually dragged myself away from the TV to go on a failed trip to the recycling center. Bins full - yay Scottsdale. I then headed over to the grocery store for some materials for a VDay Eve present and my normal holiday gift to the Beck of sushi. You say roses, I say raw fish. I also say peeps - I made a Peeps bouquet. It had all the quality of a five year-old's masterpiece in pasta medium. The intent - to obliquely celebrate my love for the Beck without kowtowing to typical capitalist VDay commodity - was there; the execution lacking. Oh, well, she appreciated it.
Moment of surreal at the grocery store - I rounded a corner to stumble into about 20 Fry's employees, all decked out in red garb, posing for a picture. Only: no camera man. So we've got people dressed in crazy Valentine's Day celebration garb on the wrong day (this was the EVE) posing for a picture that doesn't exist. "Performance art!" I accused. Nope, the guy with the camera had gone to replace the battery or something. Still, I definitely had a "glitch inthe matrix" moment there. I've probably failed miserably in relating this.
So I headed home, made the bouquet, took care of dogs, and headed in for a long day of work. Nothing that crazy*. I was working with a lot of SAT kids, but we also had an influx of youngins who were working with some of the other teachers. And one of the other teachers asked every single kid a litany of detailed questions about the Valentine's cards they had bought for their classmates. Holy indoctrination!
I'm admittedly not the world's biggest VDay fan - some of my friends and I routinely referred to it as "Black Thursday," or whatever day it happened to be that year, back in high school. But hearing the same series of questions leveled at academically struggling seven year olds brought part of the problem into clear focus. We're teaching, at a very early age, that the appropriate manner in which to express your affection for others is by purchasing pre-constructed cards and then delivering one of these to every single person in the class. Now, the egalitarian approach of giving one to every student is on surface a good idea - we don't want to be crafting Timmy into a world-hating, angst-ridden and potentially violent future adolescent by isolating him in the "who-gets-a-VDAy card, not you" world - but it's also false. Kids aren't stupid. Pretty chicas Keri Mendoza and Kelly Southwell get the Valentine's with Road Runner and Bugs Bunny, while fat-girl Susie Sally Millicent gets porky pig. Our commodities have relative value, duh, and a whole level of cultural analysis could go into the subtle implications of giving a fellow male the Bugs Bunny dressed as a girl Bunny card. Choo-choo-choose me, indeed. All of this is predicated on the actions of teachers and parents who, like my colleague, made the purchase of VDay cards a mandatory action. What are the teachers teaching? How are we molding the creative process via such actions?
I was talking about this with my dad, and suggested that we "celebrate" this dumb ass corporate-devised holiday by teaching our kids that they should write or say something nice to everyone in the class. Or if you insist on the heart and lace motif, just stick to using construction paper for constructed celebrations. This seems to foster all kinds of individual creativity, personal sentiment, and educational opportunities (you could even check the grammar on their cards!). Of course, I'd be asking a culture to do something heartfelt when the radio is saying things like "is your VDay budget only $100 this year?" VDay budget? Whaaaaa....? This all points toward the great idea of giving our loved ones lumps of coal for VDay. When the inevitable disappointed glances come, you say, hey, carbon is carbon.
(or, to reuse a joke that I originally stole from Mitch Hedberg, say "Just wait").
Heard on the radio this morning: "Is your diamond jewelry out of style?" No, this is not a problem that I have. This is not a "problem" that anyone has. STFU, mr. radio salesman. Though I do give you some unintentionally funny points for saying such things the day after VDay.
ANyways, that's enough of an anti-VDay diatribe. I got home after work, and in a joking mode, Beck greeted me at the door. Sparkle had a sock, Wrigley had a shoe, and Beck had an envelope...
* - Not as crazy as, say, Thursday. I have an adorable 8 year-old student named Essa whom I work with on math and reading every week. I walked into the office, and she is sitting in the waiting room *reading an issue of Arizona Parenting*. I give her a weird look, and she says, "Just in case my baby comes early." Straight-faced.
Later, we read a story about a rabbit who couldn't sleep because a frog was singing. I asked Essa why she thought the frog was singing at night. She responds, in her best Barry White, "for the ladies."
I also made the mistake of teaching Essa to add by using dice. I rewarded her efforts by teaching her a simple version of craps. And now she comes in every week and asks,"if I do a good job, can we gamble today?" Oops.
Shimon once argued that he disliked Sixth Sense because he thought kids don't act as precocious as Haley Joel Osmond. I continue to contest.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
T.R.O.Y.
So I got my soul-brain-mind-body kicked in last night. (That's right, I'm a Cartesian tertralist). "Showstopper" Christastrophe went and reminisced over me, only he, being a real-life, professional-style writer, wove it quite brilliantly into a narrative post. Here's the dilly. Extraordinarily flattering, but more just beautiful to me. I recognize all kinds of Built-to-Spill "Made Up Dreams" based arguments as to why it's merely a good post and not a transcendent one, but to that I simply mutter "subjective truth" sentiments and a general "sucks to your ass-mar" rebuttal. Big thanks to Chris.
As noted by the 'trophe, The Ballad constitutes a continual attempt at authentically authentic authenticity. Hence the faux-dense philosophical* rantings juxtaposed with His Holiness Weird Al (and yes, CA got me hooked on that one, too). As such, I can't exactly pretend that my head is not currently brimming with C-based memories. So I will try to flush a few of the higher quality ones here. Forgive me a little gushy m'lane trip. In no particular order:
One fine Sunday spring afternoon in college, after an EPIC day of Ultimate in Austin, the Rice crew and I decided to stop by Freebird's, a staple burrito joint, on the way out of town. As was and is my post-Ultimate tournament habit, I stumbled along in a dehydrated daze as I approached the counter. And I look up from the bean selections to see: Chris! Awesome, unexpected happiness. But C-Being-C, an enthusiastic hello is not enough. He jumps the counter!!! My teammates: freaked out. Everyone in the restaurant, pretty much: freaked out. For me, a nice sort of stupor-and-friendship based mystical experience. Cool. Chris's manager: unpleased. He gives C something on the angrier end of the WTF spectrum. And Chris just says,"But it's Nyet." In the moment, this a completely rational explanation not just for the behavior, but as to why the behavior is appropriate, demanded. The manager does not see things this way. Dramatically hilarious.
This gives you an idea of how much C can inject into isolated moments. (Btw, just to deflect the coming man-crush accusations: sucks to your ass-mar. I subscribe to "such a holy place to be" classifications. See Bowie Comma David, or more accurately, Stardust Comma Ziggy). It's a melodramatic scale that deconstructs my deconstruct. Example, and hopefully not too personal of one: wait, requires backstory. I LOVED the Grateful Dead in high school. Blasting that, as opposed to Dre or f'ing Bush, just added to my personal globe cachet of holier than thou coolness. Which, incidentally, I have yet to outgrow. I had dead stickers on my car; I stuck out in Texas (San Antonio, anyways). So Chris got me a schwank plush Grateful Dead dancing bear stuffed animal for graduation. It's made all my life trips and is currently sitting on my bathroom counter. The animal = great, but I remember even better the card. The writing on the card, I mean; the hallmark card proper, whatever. The writing said, "All these years. No one stuck by, no one cared. Just you."
I mean, holy epic graduation commentary, right? It's patently over the top, not to mention inaccurate; as Chris mentioned, we were tangentially connected towards the end of high school, only reuniting for Talent Show gigs and miscellaneous parties. I was hardly "always there." Despite it's factual inaccuracy, though, it carries a sort of spiritual accuracy (with the normal "if such a thing exists" qualifier). This is undoubtedly going to fall into "you have to be one of us to get this" territory, but via mutual respect, unconditional support, etc., the lack of hanging out every Saturday night didn't really touch the deal. Chris suffered his share of "hero worship," meaning there was a whole lot of guffawing groupie-ism and seeming ideas of "we'll be able to say we knew him when" floating around the halls of CHS. He was our superlative "most-talented." He plaintively sings on one of the Suckapunch songs, "if I fall, will you follow me?", which I suppose is a typical fear-of-failure lyric. But I get what he's saying, and my answer would've been "Um, yeah, duh." So I think the deep-seated sense of knowing there's a someone with ye-olde unconditional support firmly indoctrinated (without the asterisk of familial obligation) provides a great anchor. So yeah, on one level I look at that the ridiculousness of the grad card and launch into the usual analytical mode, identifying an overly emotional distortion of the narrative. But the last level is always, "But, yeah, he's kinda right," and the vice versa of the sentiment is there, too.
So this is a whole lot of personal, eh? Sorry, but you can't *only* get in depth dismantlings of faux-philosophers here at the Ballad. Otherwise, we would start knowing what's happening here. And we categorically can't have that.
To draw things back a level, Chris and I also stood back and got on our musical critic high horses when we were in fourth grade. Some of the fifth grade girls were doing dance routines as an audition for our elementary school musical. They were permitted to choose their own music, and a lot of them went with some very un-Episcopalian choices. Chris and I derided the vast majority as "hella lame," or the equivalent label in the 1987 9 year old vernacular. But when one bunch of them gyrated to George Michael's "Faith," oh did our collective toes start a tapping. A nod of approval, and we definitely agreed: "*that" was a cool song. (Probably our subconscious acceptance of the greatness of the "Chuck Berry rhythm"). Of course, Mr. Michael has since (among other things) sold out and performed on an ABC sitcom. So NOW that song is uncool.
All right, I'm cutting myself off from the fount of memory. There are boatloads more, but I'll now get my ADHD on and switch angles. Until next time.
* - You want dense? READ ON, brave soul!
I'm currently reading Neuroscience and Philosophy, a great gift from the iPJ, review-pending. The current paragraph is trying to differentiate between the perception of an object, the qualitative experience of perceiving an object and the impossibility of linguistically distinguishing the two, and whether this constitutes a failure of language or an indication that perception of an object and experience of that perception are events with indistinguishable descriptions and therefore actually the same thing. The paragraph before that attempted to clarify that whereas behavioral attributes are necessary to ascribe psychological attributes to an entity, they are not necessary for those psychological attributes to exist (debatable, especially if posession of those attributes entails certain behavior). But density occurs when it is qualified this way on p. 179:
Ah! After re-reading this for the fifteenth time, I realize that the bold part means "visible only to the person holding the label," meaning "the person thus labeled," and not "holding the box." So damn you Daniel Robinson and your unclear antecedent. But beyond that, he's trying to give parallel examples of things that are neither true nor false but meaningless and indicating that these brain statements are meaningless in the same fashion. That talk of "tall" being meaningless means that you can't be tall without reference to an average height, nor is "tall" in the sense that a beetle would be tall a meaningful label for a human. So it's not brains "don't behave consciously therefore they are not conscious," it's "the word conscious means nothing when applied to things inherently capable of things involved in consciousness." I presume, then, you could not say that a rock is unconscious, but rather that consciousness has no meaning when applied to rocks.
All of this is to say that dense is relative. I try to avoid the type of befuddling writing (and SAT-level grammatical mistakes, damn!) quoted above. I recognize that philo-writing, because of its attempts at precision, is often necessarily this way. But I try to distinguish boxes from labels.
As noted by the 'trophe, The Ballad constitutes a continual attempt at authentically authentic authenticity. Hence the faux-dense philosophical* rantings juxtaposed with His Holiness Weird Al (and yes, CA got me hooked on that one, too). As such, I can't exactly pretend that my head is not currently brimming with C-based memories. So I will try to flush a few of the higher quality ones here. Forgive me a little gushy m'lane trip. In no particular order:
One fine Sunday spring afternoon in college, after an EPIC day of Ultimate in Austin, the Rice crew and I decided to stop by Freebird's, a staple burrito joint, on the way out of town. As was and is my post-Ultimate tournament habit, I stumbled along in a dehydrated daze as I approached the counter. And I look up from the bean selections to see: Chris! Awesome, unexpected happiness. But C-Being-C, an enthusiastic hello is not enough. He jumps the counter!!! My teammates: freaked out. Everyone in the restaurant, pretty much: freaked out. For me, a nice sort of stupor-and-friendship based mystical experience. Cool. Chris's manager: unpleased. He gives C something on the angrier end of the WTF spectrum. And Chris just says,"But it's Nyet." In the moment, this a completely rational explanation not just for the behavior, but as to why the behavior is appropriate, demanded. The manager does not see things this way. Dramatically hilarious.
This gives you an idea of how much C can inject into isolated moments. (Btw, just to deflect the coming man-crush accusations: sucks to your ass-mar. I subscribe to "such a holy place to be" classifications. See Bowie Comma David, or more accurately, Stardust Comma Ziggy). It's a melodramatic scale that deconstructs my deconstruct. Example, and hopefully not too personal of one: wait, requires backstory. I LOVED the Grateful Dead in high school. Blasting that, as opposed to Dre or f'ing Bush, just added to my personal globe cachet of holier than thou coolness. Which, incidentally, I have yet to outgrow. I had dead stickers on my car; I stuck out in Texas (San Antonio, anyways). So Chris got me a schwank plush Grateful Dead dancing bear stuffed animal for graduation. It's made all my life trips and is currently sitting on my bathroom counter. The animal = great, but I remember even better the card. The writing on the card, I mean; the hallmark card proper, whatever. The writing said, "All these years. No one stuck by, no one cared. Just you."
I mean, holy epic graduation commentary, right? It's patently over the top, not to mention inaccurate; as Chris mentioned, we were tangentially connected towards the end of high school, only reuniting for Talent Show gigs and miscellaneous parties. I was hardly "always there." Despite it's factual inaccuracy, though, it carries a sort of spiritual accuracy (with the normal "if such a thing exists" qualifier). This is undoubtedly going to fall into "you have to be one of us to get this" territory, but via mutual respect, unconditional support, etc., the lack of hanging out every Saturday night didn't really touch the deal. Chris suffered his share of "hero worship," meaning there was a whole lot of guffawing groupie-ism and seeming ideas of "we'll be able to say we knew him when" floating around the halls of CHS. He was our superlative "most-talented." He plaintively sings on one of the Suckapunch songs, "if I fall, will you follow me?", which I suppose is a typical fear-of-failure lyric. But I get what he's saying, and my answer would've been "Um, yeah, duh." So I think the deep-seated sense of knowing there's a someone with ye-olde unconditional support firmly indoctrinated (without the asterisk of familial obligation) provides a great anchor. So yeah, on one level I look at that the ridiculousness of the grad card and launch into the usual analytical mode, identifying an overly emotional distortion of the narrative. But the last level is always, "But, yeah, he's kinda right," and the vice versa of the sentiment is there, too.
So this is a whole lot of personal, eh? Sorry, but you can't *only* get in depth dismantlings of faux-philosophers here at the Ballad. Otherwise, we would start knowing what's happening here. And we categorically can't have that.
To draw things back a level, Chris and I also stood back and got on our musical critic high horses when we were in fourth grade. Some of the fifth grade girls were doing dance routines as an audition for our elementary school musical. They were permitted to choose their own music, and a lot of them went with some very un-Episcopalian choices. Chris and I derided the vast majority as "hella lame," or the equivalent label in the 1987 9 year old vernacular. But when one bunch of them gyrated to George Michael's "Faith," oh did our collective toes start a tapping. A nod of approval, and we definitely agreed: "*that" was a cool song. (Probably our subconscious acceptance of the greatness of the "Chuck Berry rhythm"). Of course, Mr. Michael has since (among other things) sold out and performed on an ABC sitcom. So NOW that song is uncool.
All right, I'm cutting myself off from the fount of memory. There are boatloads more, but I'll now get my ADHD on and switch angles. Until next time.
* - You want dense? READ ON, brave soul!
I'm currently reading Neuroscience and Philosophy, a great gift from the iPJ, review-pending. The current paragraph is trying to differentiate between the perception of an object, the qualitative experience of perceiving an object and the impossibility of linguistically distinguishing the two, and whether this constitutes a failure of language or an indication that perception of an object and experience of that perception are events with indistinguishable descriptions and therefore actually the same thing. The paragraph before that attempted to clarify that whereas behavioral attributes are necessary to ascribe psychological attributes to an entity, they are not necessary for those psychological attributes to exist (debatable, especially if posession of those attributes entails certain behavior). But density occurs when it is qualified this way on p. 179:
It is not that consciousness cannot be ascribed to brains because brains are incapable of exhibiting the appropriate behavior. Rather, the ascriptions in question, if they are to be meaningful in the root-sense of meaning, face the same criterial requirements faced by any predicate. Statements to the effect that Smith is tall, brains are wet, and Harriet is young are intelligible to the extent that "wet," "young," and "tall" are not drawn from the box labeled BEETLE and visible only to the one holding it. The sense in which Smith as an isolate could attach no meaning to his being called tall is the sense in which "pain," too, would be improperly ascribed even to himself. . . the conclusion is not that brains cannot be conscious but that utterances to that effect are incomprehensible as claims to the effect that brains are social democrats.(note that before this paragraph, "Smith" had been described as exhibiting no behavioral criteria associated with pain but only the neurological correlates. So the above states that in the absence of the normal criteria by which one can be judged to be in pain or not, "pain" is a meaningless label. I.e., being in pain means something essentially different from having the neural correlates associated with pain)
Ah! After re-reading this for the fifteenth time, I realize that the bold part means "visible only to the person holding the label," meaning "the person thus labeled," and not "holding the box." So damn you Daniel Robinson and your unclear antecedent. But beyond that, he's trying to give parallel examples of things that are neither true nor false but meaningless and indicating that these brain statements are meaningless in the same fashion. That talk of "tall" being meaningless means that you can't be tall without reference to an average height, nor is "tall" in the sense that a beetle would be tall a meaningful label for a human. So it's not brains "don't behave consciously therefore they are not conscious," it's "the word conscious means nothing when applied to things inherently capable of things involved in consciousness." I presume, then, you could not say that a rock is unconscious, but rather that consciousness has no meaning when applied to rocks.
All of this is to say that dense is relative. I try to avoid the type of befuddling writing (and SAT-level grammatical mistakes, damn!) quoted above. I recognize that philo-writing, because of its attempts at precision, is often necessarily this way. But I try to distinguish boxes from labels.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The State of Sports Reporting
Overheard on Sportscenter just now (severely paraphrased):
Seriously - we have congress testimony from medical experts, and we here at ESPN are deferring to this pair of BS spewing morons for analysis? Entry 32726 on why mass epistemology is pointless exercise.
For the record, there is no standard, scientific-type evidence that HGH improves performance, strength, or eyesight. The logical fallacy of "they do it therefore it must work" is obvious. And hmmmm, it certainly seems that injecting a bolus of cortisone into one's joints (or reconstructing someone's elbow) also falls in the "interfering with the natural healing process" category. Quick, somebody suspend Curt Schilling!
Buster Olney: The last two days, scientists and medical professionals have testified about the lack of evidence for HGH improving performance in athletes.Join us next week, when we discuss how bleeding cures cancer, because otherwise why would people have done it, and why ice has been banned from MLB locker rooms. Also, we'll learn how orange skittles improve your hearing.
Steve Phillips: That can't be the case. The proof that HGH improves performance is the fact that athletes use it. If it didn't, then they wouldn't be using it. Also, HGH improves eyesight, so these older guys are able to see the ball better.
Bob Levy: Really this all boils down to the fact that HGH speeds up the healing process. The body has a natural healing process, and athletes shouldn't be doing things that interfere with that.
Seriously - we have congress testimony from medical experts, and we here at ESPN are deferring to this pair of BS spewing morons for analysis? Entry 32726 on why mass epistemology is pointless exercise.
For the record, there is no standard, scientific-type evidence that HGH improves performance, strength, or eyesight. The logical fallacy of "they do it therefore it must work" is obvious. And hmmmm, it certainly seems that injecting a bolus of cortisone into one's joints (or reconstructing someone's elbow) also falls in the "interfering with the natural healing process" category. Quick, somebody suspend Curt Schilling!
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
I am in need, I am in pain
I am in... love?*
(Dum dum dum dum dum (this is what a Mike Myers-y bassline looks like in text form) dum dum dum dum)
(Blow out candle).
Welcome to late night post-Ultimate delirious Nyet, where Axe Murderers and Indigo Girls dance like 6th grade go-togetherers. Pleasant.
Ultimate was a blast tonight - except for the hour and fifteen minute car ride down there. But once things got going, we played two games with about two operating subs (for the men). Because of both a lack of handlers and a lack of people in shape enough to run for four hours straight, I played a lot and played very, very hard. I am pretty beat, probably in the vicinity of the five game Saturday from a couple of weekends ago.
In the plus column: won the first game with a comeback. In both games - lots of good throws and D's, layouts and sky catches. One turnover. I was on, which is nice. I also had to play mid instead of handler for a lot of the day. Nice. Feeling re: self and Ultimate and 30 year old body, nice.
In the negative column - stupidly lost the second game. We've got a very mixed team without a lot of speed. So this will be "rebuilding" or whatever, but hopefully we can have fun and get some of the rooks to stop making some of the silly mistakes (lofty throws, mainly, we actually have a lot of people who are fine with throws/catches, just get a little excited from time to time. It should be cool to chill them out and watch them get better). Very bad - one of those aforementioned lofty throws went up, I chased it down, and a woman from the other team came in hard to try and get the d but ended up undercutting me a bit. I tried to slam on the brakes quite a bit, but as you can imagine, she lost the m1v1 = m2v2 game. Weird situation - I felt bad that I had drilled her, but it was definitely one of those plays where had it been a guy, I would have been in "WTF?" mode. Undercuts are dangerous; whenever they happen on people going for dunks in basketball, people get understandably upset. I'm running upfield looking at a disc behind me, she is coming in at me and the disc and can see everything in front of her. I fully recognize that this is a hat league game and I have to watch out, but I also feel compelled to point out that she essentially caused the collision. So I feel bad that it happened, sorry that it happened, but I don't feel very responsible for it, if that makes sense. Some of her teammates gave me crap, which I pretty much just accepted without mouthing off - that's an impossible debate to win. But some of my teammates jumped in and pointed out the fouly nature of her play, so hopefully this will get chalked up as merely unfortunate. I'll conclude by pointing out that I SLOWED DOWN, which always seems to be the factor that people forget.
Anyhoo, that was crappy. I came over to the sideline after the point to apologize to her and ask her how she was doing, and she was not polite in the slightest. As wiser men have said, F' it, let's go bowling.
Still, an overall fun night. The illustrious Laurie, a friend of Tuftsbud Josh's is on my team, and it's always cool to play with her; also, Tyler from the Taco team this fall was there. So good times, though I am reasonably confident that tomorrow morning aka 6 hours from now will be sub-awesome. So good night, nyetversers, hope your legs ain't as stiff as mine.
* Actually, I am in love, because Beck rules. I got stuck in ridicu-traffic on 101, so I had to divert west and try to wind my way down to the fields and got lost. I used my phone-a-wife (twice!) and she got me there. Phew. She rules.
(Dum dum dum dum dum (this is what a Mike Myers-y bassline looks like in text form) dum dum dum dum)
(Blow out candle).
Welcome to late night post-Ultimate delirious Nyet, where Axe Murderers and Indigo Girls dance like 6th grade go-togetherers. Pleasant.
Ultimate was a blast tonight - except for the hour and fifteen minute car ride down there. But once things got going, we played two games with about two operating subs (for the men). Because of both a lack of handlers and a lack of people in shape enough to run for four hours straight, I played a lot and played very, very hard. I am pretty beat, probably in the vicinity of the five game Saturday from a couple of weekends ago.
In the plus column: won the first game with a comeback. In both games - lots of good throws and D's, layouts and sky catches. One turnover. I was on, which is nice. I also had to play mid instead of handler for a lot of the day. Nice. Feeling re: self and Ultimate and 30 year old body, nice.
In the negative column - stupidly lost the second game. We've got a very mixed team without a lot of speed. So this will be "rebuilding" or whatever, but hopefully we can have fun and get some of the rooks to stop making some of the silly mistakes (lofty throws, mainly, we actually have a lot of people who are fine with throws/catches, just get a little excited from time to time. It should be cool to chill them out and watch them get better). Very bad - one of those aforementioned lofty throws went up, I chased it down, and a woman from the other team came in hard to try and get the d but ended up undercutting me a bit. I tried to slam on the brakes quite a bit, but as you can imagine, she lost the m1v1 = m2v2 game. Weird situation - I felt bad that I had drilled her, but it was definitely one of those plays where had it been a guy, I would have been in "WTF?" mode. Undercuts are dangerous; whenever they happen on people going for dunks in basketball, people get understandably upset. I'm running upfield looking at a disc behind me, she is coming in at me and the disc and can see everything in front of her. I fully recognize that this is a hat league game and I have to watch out, but I also feel compelled to point out that she essentially caused the collision. So I feel bad that it happened, sorry that it happened, but I don't feel very responsible for it, if that makes sense. Some of her teammates gave me crap, which I pretty much just accepted without mouthing off - that's an impossible debate to win. But some of my teammates jumped in and pointed out the fouly nature of her play, so hopefully this will get chalked up as merely unfortunate. I'll conclude by pointing out that I SLOWED DOWN, which always seems to be the factor that people forget.
Anyhoo, that was crappy. I came over to the sideline after the point to apologize to her and ask her how she was doing, and she was not polite in the slightest. As wiser men have said, F' it, let's go bowling.
Still, an overall fun night. The illustrious Laurie, a friend of Tuftsbud Josh's is on my team, and it's always cool to play with her; also, Tyler from the Taco team this fall was there. So good times, though I am reasonably confident that tomorrow morning aka 6 hours from now will be sub-awesome. So good night, nyetversers, hope your legs ain't as stiff as mine.
* Actually, I am in love, because Beck rules. I got stuck in ridicu-traffic on 101, so I had to divert west and try to wind my way down to the fields and got lost. I used my phone-a-wife (twice!) and she got me there. Phew. She rules.
Being For the Benefit of Mr. Toe
Okay, at least some sort of intro in response to Aaron's "what do you believe" question. Pretty hastily written - it's a musing - so forgive me if I didn't go into full on expository academic mode; it's more of an effort to get the nuts and bolts out there of why I find belief as a concept problematic.
Off to work and ultimate tonight, double header with my Tuesday night hat team. Details forthcoming...
Off to work and ultimate tonight, double header with my Tuesday night hat team. Details forthcoming...
Monday, February 11, 2008
South Mountain, Take Two:
Before all of that, note that I have made a non-liar out of myself, and I have posted reviews to three things in the past few days. WAHOO. You can check them here, here and here.
The Beck and I made a pseudo-weekend of it. After a long Saturday, we lacked the energy to pursue our original goal, indoor rock-climbing - to be pursued at a later date - so we vegged out and caught the remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I don't really think a Saturday night, commercial laced viewing warrants a review, but my general take was that Johnny Depp did a good take on a different version of Willy Wonka, I still prefer Gene Wilder (duh), and the rest of the movie - the kids, primarily - were a lame rehash of the original. By far the coolest aspect of the movie was the now-hipper Oompa loompas, who brought an eclectic mix to the Oompa Loompa musical ouevre while still maintaining those bizarre slave-race overtones. So you can't beat the original, but at least some of the reinventions clicked.
We got off to late start Sunday but eventually drove ourselves down to South Mountain for a beautiful hike. 75 degrees, sunny, just gorgeous. We took Wrigley the dog with us, who turns out to be part goat (though perhaps not as part goat as, um, this). She had a great time even though she got a little sore by the hike's end. Here's a sampling of the hike; check out the full set (note the sunny pictures) for more.
Or, alternatively, I could just post every picture. Sheesh, I need an editor.
So, a great hike, and then Beck and I parted ways as I drove over to Mesa for some Sunday pickup. I hadn't played in a little while, so the ol' lungs were a little rusty. But I had a fantastic time and even made some crazy layout catches taboot. Huzzah! Spring league "starts" this week (I drove all the way down to Tempe last Tuesday to discover that the games had been canceled, blah!), so it's good to get a dose of confidence. Good times!
I came home to an exhausted Beck and Wrigley. We ate some burritos, watched the Grammy's for a little bit and then just chilled and read. Long, good Sunday. ANd now back to the working week.
The Beck and I made a pseudo-weekend of it. After a long Saturday, we lacked the energy to pursue our original goal, indoor rock-climbing - to be pursued at a later date - so we vegged out and caught the remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I don't really think a Saturday night, commercial laced viewing warrants a review, but my general take was that Johnny Depp did a good take on a different version of Willy Wonka, I still prefer Gene Wilder (duh), and the rest of the movie - the kids, primarily - were a lame rehash of the original. By far the coolest aspect of the movie was the now-hipper Oompa loompas, who brought an eclectic mix to the Oompa Loompa musical ouevre while still maintaining those bizarre slave-race overtones. So you can't beat the original, but at least some of the reinventions clicked.
We got off to late start Sunday but eventually drove ourselves down to South Mountain for a beautiful hike. 75 degrees, sunny, just gorgeous. We took Wrigley the dog with us, who turns out to be part goat (though perhaps not as part goat as, um, this). She had a great time even though she got a little sore by the hike's end. Here's a sampling of the hike; check out the full set (note the sunny pictures) for more.
Or, alternatively, I could just post every picture. Sheesh, I need an editor.
So, a great hike, and then Beck and I parted ways as I drove over to Mesa for some Sunday pickup. I hadn't played in a little while, so the ol' lungs were a little rusty. But I had a fantastic time and even made some crazy layout catches taboot. Huzzah! Spring league "starts" this week (I drove all the way down to Tempe last Tuesday to discover that the games had been canceled, blah!), so it's good to get a dose of confidence. Good times!
I came home to an exhausted Beck and Wrigley. We ate some burritos, watched the Grammy's for a little bit and then just chilled and read. Long, good Sunday. ANd now back to the working week.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
So do you click these, or what?
Comment please - here are several weeks worth of links, pilfered from the Sports Guy, Neatorama, Metafilter, etc. per usual:
(Of course, before that I would like to retell a joke I've used five times today. So Obama has a new campaign slogan designed to get the all-important cat vote out:
365 Classic TV intros
Ridiculous Red Sox salaries (including their perks!)
The answer to the fat goalie theory
Interested in basketball. Learn the ins and outs!
Put some "HGH" - or even better, "PZQ" - in your scrabble game
"Box Office Poison" - some "stupid funny" Norm MacDonald on Conan
Speaking of Norms... it's every single one.
Self-deprecating humor from Stevie Wonder
Legendary Michael Jordan - Charles Barkley game
Eddie Murphy on Mike Tyson. Picture it as "Donkey" delivering the comedy and it becomes much funnier.
Easily the creepiest sit-com episode ever. I'm still terrified. And yes, I saw this at Day Care.
Don't yell help help - it's the inside out bear bunch.
Solid beast v. machine clip. Ridiculous dose of cute here. More cute here.
Semi-NSFW gallery of a guy who makes photo-real art using only a blue bic pen.
Computer poetry.
Anti-Pacman. Seriously, this is a cool concept. Maybe not as cool as this, though.
The farce of authenticity, chapter 1459283. And chapter 2876324.
Attack of the cool gimmicky short film. Or a cool special effect. Or informative dark humor.
Separate post - get your education on. A serious list of links to all kinds of basic science principles. Here is another set of videos on mechanical physics.
Schwank origami.
What's a sleeveface?
An argument re: steroids and baseball. Not sure I buy its central premise, but check fo' yo'self.
Incredible Shark pictures. Of the not-Owen Nolan variety.
Get ur lern on, 2: Free podcasts from all kinds of universities.
A new but old comic called buttercup festival.
Separate - I thought this was awesome. And the end-product by the winner is some fantastic music. Currently rocking it, actually.
Steve Martin on comedy. (You though tit would be dry-cleaning?). Seriously, this is great.
This is a great piece on a human sports star.
"Sucks to your Gladwell." A rebuttal to the Tipping Point.
The other day the weather forecast in my browser said "Vincent." Oop, I mean it said "starry night."
TED. I haven't searched this much, but it looks like a cool lecture series. And HERE is an awesome one. Octopus!
Ladies and gents - if "Next" was bad, this is badder.
The Blog of FAIL. HI-larious.
A straightforward explanation of airline delays.
Offset 'cause it's sweet - this is a binaural recording of a haircut. Note: you must use headphones for the full effect. Great.
Offset, ditto - I present you the highlights of "Sadgasm" from the best Simpsons episode in recent memory. "Marvin Cobain" will be my band name, if "The Single Syllable Plural Nouns" isn't already taken:
Funny dino cartoon. Cool video. The latest korean dance craze. Russian Food Art.Bored yet?
I can has first person perspective.
1-31-07: Never Forget. and here it is, DECONSTRUCTED.
Interviews with Murikami.
Performance Art: Improv Everywhere does Grand Central Station.
Brown Tape Art: is cool.
"Womyn" is a word. So is "obviate." As in, "Man has been obviated."
Take a wild guess which Beatles song they've BEAMED TO OUTER SPACE.
The final wave of a now-extinct frog.
Why is Jay Leno popular?
This isn't really that funny, but it is.
Another pair of cool concept games.
Cutting edge Creationism Research. Or is it "Blunt Edge, Hammer of Ignorance Research."
Scrolling world stats for your daily dose of insignificance.
Unbelievably cool Arcade Fire video. Almost done here.
Figure out for whom to vote.
Some of you are all related.
Bacon scarf.
The end of physics. Whew. After that, I need a funny t-shirt.
Beautiful bug photo. More photography as art.
These require a special sense of humor.
Six word stories, like: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. (That's by Hemingway, btw).
Who arrests a polar bear? Honestly?
Ignore the french subtitles, see the funny video.
Muppets for president. Meh, but who doesn't love the Muppets theme song?
I had a textversation with Danimal the other day and we were both referencing Matt Damon without knowing what the other was talking about. Here's why (funny video with NSFW language within). It's probably old at this point, but having seen Matt Damon's Conjoined Twin movie this weekend, I gotta give props to that dude.
And finally, the best way to teach kids about resonant frequency is... now in color!!!
Click those links dammit!
(Of course, before that I would like to retell a joke I've used five times today. So Obama has a new campaign slogan designed to get the all-important cat vote out:
'Yes We Can Has."
Laugh, damn you, laugh!It's funnier if you've seen this piece of celeb-fueled propaganda, which is actually well done, though I must admit it kinda accentuates the "rhetoric" aspect of the Obama campaign)
365 Classic TV intros
Ridiculous Red Sox salaries (including their perks!)
The answer to the fat goalie theory
Interested in basketball. Learn the ins and outs!
Put some "HGH" - or even better, "PZQ" - in your scrabble game
"Box Office Poison" - some "stupid funny" Norm MacDonald on Conan
Speaking of Norms... it's every single one.
Self-deprecating humor from Stevie Wonder
Legendary Michael Jordan - Charles Barkley game
Eddie Murphy on Mike Tyson. Picture it as "Donkey" delivering the comedy and it becomes much funnier.
Easily the creepiest sit-com episode ever. I'm still terrified. And yes, I saw this at Day Care.
Don't yell help help - it's the inside out bear bunch.
Solid beast v. machine clip. Ridiculous dose of cute here. More cute here.
Semi-NSFW gallery of a guy who makes photo-real art using only a blue bic pen.
Computer poetry.
Anti-Pacman. Seriously, this is a cool concept. Maybe not as cool as this, though.
The farce of authenticity, chapter 1459283. And chapter 2876324.
Attack of the cool gimmicky short film. Or a cool special effect. Or informative dark humor.
Separate post - get your education on. A serious list of links to all kinds of basic science principles. Here is another set of videos on mechanical physics.
Schwank origami.
What's a sleeveface?
An argument re: steroids and baseball. Not sure I buy its central premise, but check fo' yo'self.
Incredible Shark pictures. Of the not-Owen Nolan variety.
Get ur lern on, 2: Free podcasts from all kinds of universities.
A new but old comic called buttercup festival.
Separate - I thought this was awesome. And the end-product by the winner is some fantastic music. Currently rocking it, actually.
Steve Martin on comedy. (You though tit would be dry-cleaning?). Seriously, this is great.
This is a great piece on a human sports star.
"Sucks to your Gladwell." A rebuttal to the Tipping Point.
The other day the weather forecast in my browser said "Vincent." Oop, I mean it said "starry night."
TED. I haven't searched this much, but it looks like a cool lecture series. And HERE is an awesome one. Octopus!
Ladies and gents - if "Next" was bad, this is badder.
The Blog of FAIL. HI-larious.
A straightforward explanation of airline delays.
Offset 'cause it's sweet - this is a binaural recording of a haircut. Note: you must use headphones for the full effect. Great.
Offset, ditto - I present you the highlights of "Sadgasm" from the best Simpsons episode in recent memory. "Marvin Cobain" will be my band name, if "The Single Syllable Plural Nouns" isn't already taken:
Funny dino cartoon. Cool video. The latest korean dance craze. Russian Food Art.Bored yet?
I can has first person perspective.
1-31-07: Never Forget. and here it is, DECONSTRUCTED.
Interviews with Murikami.
Performance Art: Improv Everywhere does Grand Central Station.
Brown Tape Art: is cool.
"Womyn" is a word. So is "obviate." As in, "Man has been obviated."
Take a wild guess which Beatles song they've BEAMED TO OUTER SPACE.
The final wave of a now-extinct frog.
Why is Jay Leno popular?
This isn't really that funny, but it is.
Another pair of cool concept games.
Cutting edge Creationism Research. Or is it "Blunt Edge, Hammer of Ignorance Research."
Scrolling world stats for your daily dose of insignificance.
Unbelievably cool Arcade Fire video. Almost done here.
Figure out for whom to vote.
Some of you are all related.
Bacon scarf.
The end of physics. Whew. After that, I need a funny t-shirt.
Beautiful bug photo. More photography as art.
These require a special sense of humor.
Six word stories, like: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. (That's by Hemingway, btw).
Who arrests a polar bear? Honestly?
Ignore the french subtitles, see the funny video.
Muppets for president. Meh, but who doesn't love the Muppets theme song?
I had a textversation with Danimal the other day and we were both referencing Matt Damon without knowing what the other was talking about. Here's why (funny video with NSFW language within). It's probably old at this point, but having seen Matt Damon's Conjoined Twin movie this weekend, I gotta give props to that dude.
And finally, the best way to teach kids about resonant frequency is... now in color!!!
Click those links dammit!
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Minor Adjustments
Phew. Just got back from a little rehaul on the old nyetjones.org site. So little that you won't even notice it. All I really did was change the rating scheme (at least on the reference pages, if not within the reviews themselves) so that everything is multiples of five - i.e., MASH is no longer a "68," it's a "70." This makes it a lot easier for me to think through the relative ratings (I effectively changed it to a 20 point scale), plus it garners cheers from Shavano Creek because we can finally equate MASH with Knocked Up. Thank goodness.
More importantly, I got tired of staring at the electronic pile of reviews that I have yet to do, so i quickly reviewed everything I've seen / read in the past 8 months in this little ditty:
8 months!
So that's that. I also am hereby publicly promising to get back on my review bandwagon, because I know that's what the people want. The now greatly shortened pile includes Murikami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and the excellent movie we saw on Saturday night, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I am getting on those pronto. Wahoo!
As for the weekend, Beck and I slugged our way through and suffered tremendously Sunday night. Oh, those poor Pats. I have no problem with the upset or all the glee that comes with the "18-1" chants; clearly the giants played very well and their defense gave the Pats O-Line et al much more than they could take. More than anything it's just disappointing to see such a lackluster performance - again, all credit to the Giants, but having by far the worst game of the year in the super bowl just makes the whole event disappointing. (And it all would have been okay were it not for one of the most amazing helmet pinning catches, um, ever).
So minus that tragic Sunday occurrence, Beck and I made a good weekend of it. We caught up on Lost on Friday, and Beck renewed her hatred for the "show where nothing happens." And yet she likes Seinfeld. Woah. I worked all day Saturday and unfortunately could not connect with tufts-bud Jesse - you may remember him as the wedding air guitar legend - who was in town for the superbowl. Sorry, homes. Beck and I were supposed to go to a Chinese New Year party but lacked the energy / motivation, and wound up going to watch the aforementioned French flick instead. Drove around Scottsdale and got to see all the beautiful people humming it up in their hammers or various other elongated cars. We hit a mexican restaurant where I paid a stupid amount of money to eat a fried tortilla with cheese, which I can make at home for about 120th of the cost. D'oh.
On Sunday morning we looked at the rain and wind and coldness outside and said, "hey, let's go hiking!" Kidding, kidding - it was pretty cold and a little wet, but we did a nice easy jaunt around South Mountain park and got some nice, cloudy views of our smog-smothered town:
So not the most beautiful setting, but a haunting one that provided some nice pics regardless. We next contemplated the face that it was Superbowl Sunday which means time to eat - we headed over to Chompie's, a New York style deli around the corner from our house. Beck was feeling Druish, so she ordered some unpictured scrambled matzah & eggs, and I was feeling heart-attacky so I order a Monte Infarct:
Sooooo bad. That reflection off the plate is due to the flavor. Those plates are actually black. Scary.
Replete with calorific goodness, Beck and I headed to the grocery store to buy our super snacks. Given the choice of two Fry's within walking distance of our house, we chose the lesser of the two, and boy are we glad we did!
Oh, we wish we were. Were. WERE.
Then the game, and... well, this guy captured our feeling:
More importantly, I got tired of staring at the electronic pile of reviews that I have yet to do, so i quickly reviewed everything I've seen / read in the past 8 months in this little ditty:
8 months!
So that's that. I also am hereby publicly promising to get back on my review bandwagon, because I know that's what the people want. The now greatly shortened pile includes Murikami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and the excellent movie we saw on Saturday night, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I am getting on those pronto. Wahoo!
As for the weekend, Beck and I slugged our way through and suffered tremendously Sunday night. Oh, those poor Pats. I have no problem with the upset or all the glee that comes with the "18-1" chants; clearly the giants played very well and their defense gave the Pats O-Line et al much more than they could take. More than anything it's just disappointing to see such a lackluster performance - again, all credit to the Giants, but having by far the worst game of the year in the super bowl just makes the whole event disappointing. (And it all would have been okay were it not for one of the most amazing helmet pinning catches, um, ever).
So minus that tragic Sunday occurrence, Beck and I made a good weekend of it. We caught up on Lost on Friday, and Beck renewed her hatred for the "show where nothing happens." And yet she likes Seinfeld. Woah. I worked all day Saturday and unfortunately could not connect with tufts-bud Jesse - you may remember him as the wedding air guitar legend - who was in town for the superbowl. Sorry, homes. Beck and I were supposed to go to a Chinese New Year party but lacked the energy / motivation, and wound up going to watch the aforementioned French flick instead. Drove around Scottsdale and got to see all the beautiful people humming it up in their hammers or various other elongated cars. We hit a mexican restaurant where I paid a stupid amount of money to eat a fried tortilla with cheese, which I can make at home for about 120th of the cost. D'oh.
On Sunday morning we looked at the rain and wind and coldness outside and said, "hey, let's go hiking!" Kidding, kidding - it was pretty cold and a little wet, but we did a nice easy jaunt around South Mountain park and got some nice, cloudy views of our smog-smothered town:
So not the most beautiful setting, but a haunting one that provided some nice pics regardless. We next contemplated the face that it was Superbowl Sunday which means time to eat - we headed over to Chompie's, a New York style deli around the corner from our house. Beck was feeling Druish, so she ordered some unpictured scrambled matzah & eggs, and I was feeling heart-attacky so I order a Monte Infarct:
Sooooo bad. That reflection off the plate is due to the flavor. Those plates are actually black. Scary.
Replete with calorific goodness, Beck and I headed to the grocery store to buy our super snacks. Given the choice of two Fry's within walking distance of our house, we chose the lesser of the two, and boy are we glad we did!
Oh, we wish we were. Were. WERE.
Then the game, and... well, this guy captured our feeling:
Tragic. An episode of HOUSE, and off to bed. Sad. Nothing too crazy from the next two days, other than my driving all the way down to Tempe last night only to find our game had been canceled due to rain the day before. BARF! PIZZA THE HUT!! Annoying. I made up for it by scoring 360 points at Scrabble instead.
Okay, so those reviews will come, AND I will make more of an effort to write on the site proper. Ideas, Thoughts. Essays. RANTS!!!!
Okay, so those reviews will come, AND I will make more of an effort to write on the site proper. Ideas, Thoughts. Essays. RANTS!!!!
Friday, February 1, 2008
Things that need to be invented, part I
Doesn't it seem like all radio stations should simply have a link so that one can buy whatever song they just played?
Obvious, nu?
They should have their website constantly updating what track it was they just played. This would be nice in and of itself, right? (Some stations do this, already.)
But then the playlist should link to i-Tunes, Napster, or directly to the four major record lables, Sony-BMG, EMI, Universal and Warner and for a standard fee one could purchase the track one just heard on the radio.
Record companies would sell a lot of music on impulse buys. Radio stations could get a tiny cut of each transaction and they would have something else to show their own advertisers about listeners and their spending habits, besides specious Arbitron ratings.
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