Hiatus or No, Have to Share This

Today in class, we were discussing the evolution of sexual reproduction vis a vis asexual reproduction. The general question is why is it beneficial to combine dissimilar genotypes rather than to maintain a singular genotype? To make a rather complicated topic bulled-pointed:

• All told, sexual reproduction is weird. Given the "choice" of passing on 100% (asexual) of one's genome to the next generation or 50% (sexual), you would think that 100% (asexual) would be a more effective technique. Consequently, there must be some kind of advantage to sexual reproduction; otherwise, it's extraordinarily odd that it's so commonplace.
• One major speculation is that sexual reproduction (along with the recombination often involved in meiotic events) sort of shuffles the genome and results in a level of variation that is beneficial enough to compensate and then some for the 100 v. 50% transmission. I.e., it's a lot easier to get novel combinations when the various mutations occurring randomly in the population are routinely combined in parallel fashion, rather than waiting for a single line of asexually reproduced genomes to accumulate those same mutations serially. These variations would theoretically be key to evolutionary flexibility to changing environments.
• However, sometimes particular allelic combinations are, to whatever extent, idealized , so it would be beneficial if they were kept together. So there exists a second tension - while sexual reproduction is best at creating these sorts of beneficial allelic combinations (consisting of multiple novel mutations at multiple loci), asexual reproduction is best at maintaining a particular combination. Sexual reproduction effectively shuffles and loses those "perfect" combinations.
• This model / theory is called the "Sisyphean Model," as just like good ol' Sisyphus, sexual reproduction will push the alleles up the proverbial hill of higher fitness, only to lose that powerful combination via another sexual reproduction. And the boulder rolls back down, and sexual reproduction must begin again.

I don't really care if that makes all that much sense; the major point is that we spent four hours talking about sexual reproduction v. asexual reproduction, sans "sexual reproduction" jokes, and the whole shebang ended by discussing a metaphor based on the myth of Sisyphus. When the professor asked if anyone in the room knew why it was called "Sisyphean," I was one of two people who could give an account of the actual myth of Sisyphus. (You will recall my Camus fanboydom). I didn't know this at the time and thought I was just the only person willing to talk. So I described the myth. We're rolling along, and the major point is that this is something of a tricky situation, that clearly something MUST be going on to explain why sexual reproduction is so common, but this Sisyphean Model seems to at least partially counteract that effect. Class winds down, the professor asks if there are any questions, and after a couple seconds of silence and blank faces, I simply ask:

"So, what you're saying is that we're supposed to imagine sexual reproduction happy?*"

* - Just so we're all on the same page here, Camus rather famously ends his metaphor of Sisyphus as stand-in for the human condition by declaring that we must imagine him happy as he pushes the rock pointlessly up the hill. Defiance of his fate is his only means to maintain anything resembling individual freedom, etc. This is, imho, a fairly major 20th century philosophical quote, and someone in the room *should* have been familiar with it.

The professor - who, mind you, just described how these kinds of literary metaphors sometimes shape scientific thinking - just stared at me blankly. Mark, a classmate from my program (and the only other guy in the room, it turns out, who could have explained the myth), almost fell off his chair laughing. Everyone else: crickets.

And you know what? Screw you, roomful of academic biologists. That was GOLD JERRY GOLD, and I don't even care if you didn't get it. On three hours of sleep, I delivered a second level, perfectly-timed literary joke, and it's not my fault y'all's all ign'ant.

That is all.

The Blurst of Times

Well, the monkey in me will do nearly any task ... but one of those tasks is not, it seems, blogging on any kind of consistent basis.

School is sort of crushing me, time-wise and residual-mental-energy-wise, so I thought that rather than let the Ballad sort of trail off into several measures of rest, I'd at least announce that I'm taking a semi-official semi-hiatus, or at least handing this off to my army of orangs. This probably doesn't amount to a whole lot - I'll still post here and there, but that's basically what I'm doing now, so feel free to observe the unobservable change.

Change you will observe - the album reviews are going to get a lot shorter. No, really, I mean it. I'm spending way too much time on particular albums - e.g., I've been listening to Pink Floyd's The Wall for a solid week and a half now, trying to develop a fresh angle on it - and it's badly interfering with my ability to enjoy my music collection. So screw that - if something bogs me down even in the slightest, I'll give it a snapshot, placeholder, three line review and move on. I'll mark those reviews accordingly in the Album Review Depository, and perhaps some day come back to flesh them out. But for now, time and lack-of-energy plus a desire to, you know, hear some of my tunes, all dictate that the format change.

Otherwise, the trickle of posts may drop to a drip. I still owe a writeup of Sprawl's performance at regionals* this coming weekend, and I'll deliver something in that vein. And I'll very periodically give updates on the Nyetian Narrative** and the state of school***. But for now, I am turning my limited energies elsewhere. 18,263 days, give or take, left on the planet, and I've got to get some stuff done. Apologies and thanks for reading so far - again, I'm not stopping the Ballad, just warning that I'm entering a minimalist composer phase, that's all. Have a good one.

* - the state currently? More trouble with practice attendance, spotty play at practices and SLUGs ... I'm a cynical guy, but I can't say we've looked particularly good lately. That said, it's probably more the doldrums of constantly playing against yourselves more than anything. The fresh competition in Santa Barbara, I anticipate, will bring out the best of us. I.e., I'm excited if not optimistic - we have a tough road, and I know we can do it, but we're going to have to gel like never before. Interested to see if we've done enough to get there.

** - After a good maybe week and a half, my energy crashed right back down again. It's affecting me in all domains, but the last couple of Ultimate practices have been the worst - it's a skipping record complaint at this point, but I'm topped out at 65%, have no second gear to go make plays, am having lots of trouble judging what I can and can't do, etc. Somewhat miserable, but I am pressing through and trying to keep head held high and all that. I really only need to make it six more days (Nationals, honestly, would be gravy personally - obviously I would still want to do well, there, but I'll worry about that bridge etc.), so I'm confident I can buck up and get it done. After that, though, man, the cleats are coming off for a bit. I can't believe I've spent five months now in this two-thirds-of-myself state; it's pretty much interfered with everything in life. So it goes - I'll keep truckin' on. Can't keep a good Nyet down. Or a bad Nyet, for that matter.

*** - Things are, um, concretizing? I'm pretty much officially done with courses after this semester, will be defending my prospectus soon, and then entering the vast wasteland of thesishood. But I have a reasonable plan, an interesting project, and I think I'm making headway. We'll see.

Crowd-Pleasing Bullets

Well, *apparently* album reviews are not certain readers cups of tea. And while some may ignore their readers' beverages of choice and post about the 21st century max-banal*, I am nothing if not a slave to my single-digit** readership. The people want Ulty updates? The people get Ulty updates. Abbreviated, ill-informative bullet-form updates - mildly appropriate given emoticon-titled subject posts - but updates nonetheless. The last few weeks, in (insert Megadeth scream here) BULLETS!!!

* - I kid, I kid. But seriously, you didn't think you could rag on my album reviews on facebook sans repercussion, did ya? :) But really, cute stuff from the Mark. If I'm ever forced to cover him in an Ultimate game, I will just say, "I've got Iheartyou."

** - My DFW impulse to clarify that "single digit" is a description of the quantity of the readership and not their individual mutant and/or shop-class-related finger-and-toe-statuses*** is kicking in. Clarified?

*** - My sensitive-'90s-ponytail-guy-sans-the-ponytail (and probably the sensitivity) impulse to clarify that there is nothing wrong with missing nineteen fingers/toes is kicking in. Morally or essentially wrong, I mean; let's be honest, you're probably going to deal with some functional difficulties in life, not the least of which will be throwing a flick**** and/or typing "Eff you Nyet" into the comments below in a timely fashion.

**** - See? Ulty content. In the fourth paragraph!

• When we last left our Sprawling heroes, they had won the Open Division of the Colorado Cup, even whilst missing famed superathlete co-captain Dheintime. This apparently went directly to the entire team's collective heads, as the plan - ramp up practices in August in preparation for the start of the Open Series proper in September - fell flat on its collective face. We started having attendance problems almost immediately as the month clicked "8," struggling to get sixteen-to-eighteen people out to the fields. And sixteen-to-eighteen people - particularly when that sixteen-to-eighteen is partially comprised of four-to-five non-Sprawlers - does not make for effective practicing with your top lines. Boo-urns.
• I can hardly talk, as I continue to be a mysteriously malaised, topping out at 75% wreck. Seriously, it's been better, but I'm still fading out here and there, and it got bad enough that I missed a couple of practices in there. Think about it - Nyet, willingly skipping Ulty practices! Not even going! Egads! The good news is that I've pursued all kinds of standard-issue medical explanations, and nothing overtly serious is going on. So put your worries away - cardiologists, pathologists, even surgeons assure me that everything is fine and this is merely some post-viral badness. One of those tests involved an incision and sitting out of all athletic activity for a week-plus - that was awesome - so maybe now you're starting to get an idea of why I haven't been entirely enthused about writing about Ultimate lately.
• Again, just to emphasize, DO NOT WORRY, and DO NOT WRITE me with bizarro speculations. "Nothing is effed here, dude," as Lebowski would say, so other than sympathizing with my suffering suckitude of late, you don't need to expend another thought on the health of Nyet. I'm fine. And raring to go for this weekend, taboot.
• Random side note - my funniest self-joke of the past month? Well, I'm still tracking my diet, which has been extra challenging with the sporadic cessations of exercise. But I'm maintaining my weight and eating well. Huzzah. The joke, though, is that the first self-e-mail chain I used to track things back in January was entitled "Food Diary." After a couple of months, I got tired of scrolling so far down the screen and created "Food Diary II." Then the nutritionist wanted me to track carbs / protein, so I started "Food Diary III." Tracking carbs means keeping track of a bit more info, so it was convenient to keep on elong e-mail and copy-paste frequent foods rather than repeatedly look them up. So this time I let the scrolling go long. And it turns out that e-mail threads in gmail max out at 99 messages; after that, it changes to "Re: Food Diary III." Annoying! So I had to start a new thread. Its title? "Food Diary Zoso." I. Am. Hilarious. Even if you don't get that particular joke, appreciate the meta-joke of having read one of the more mundane paragraphs e'er featured on this blog. Outside, you know, those dreaded album reviews.
• NEhoo, our solution to the attendance problem was to back it down to an optional practice on Mondays and a mandatory one on Wednesdays. This helped somewhat, but the curse of Phoenix-summer continued to afflict, and we continued to have problems. J-Ro even berated the team in an e-mail with the subject, "WTF?" When the excessively chilly and ubercool J-Ro gets feathers a-rufflin', things are problematic.
• We did (at least) continue to SLUG it out on Saturdays, occasionally having some stellar games. So there's been a thread of competition throughout, even if the practice issues have caused a lot of consternation.
• Speaking of consternation, we (in case I haven't mentioned it here yet) are going to be playing the series without stalwart Garret, who has run into way too much work and a new PhD program this fall. We're also going to be missing BP for sectionals (ugh), but it's better that way than having him miss regionals. And Cole has been 100% AWOL - I am relatively certain that I haven't seen him since CO Cup. Now, again, I missed three practices in there, but by all accounts, dude has just been GONE. So, um, that's disconcerting. Hopefully he rolls in this weekend to grab his reserved seat on the Pepsi Max Where-Have-You-Been-Dude? Bench. I mean, I'm one to talk, but I know where I was. Hopefully it's just been scheduling conflicts and not a dedication issue. Either way, communication is preferred.
• Speaking of, sectionals this weekend. Exciting times. We're carrying a roster of 23 and facing off against Monsoon, Le Tigre, El Ponderosa, ASU and U of A. You'll note the conspicuous lack of a Sweet Roll there - they have split between a master's squad and a co-ed team that could give Barrio a run. Pretty sure I mentioned this in the CO Cup writeup, but we never got that last official crack at 'em. Oh, well. Sectionals, fwiw, is conveniently located at the Scottsdale Sports Complex in Sunny Azz, so if you're around, be around! We play pretty much all day both days.
• I am sure all of that sectionals talk has you wondering how things have been going lately. Well, we changed practice fields to Eastern M(es)A in September, and have been making the trek to the east coast on Wednesdays for two hours of intense scrimmaging fun. Last week we played vert stack to give our D a look at the alternative O set, and then had to the D give the O lines nasty poaching sets. With the latter, we let the D play with eight guys - eight on seven! - and we still managed to score a good amount of the time. So hopefully that'll have us ready for the junk defenses our man-O will likely inspire.
• I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that things are intense enough at practice that some people on our D line - lets call them "& the Argonauts" and, um, "Red-headed Electrolyte" - got in an argument over coverage responsibilities that escalated in approximately six seconds into a drag-out, pit-bull-death-grip fight/wrestling match. YOWSERS! Shades of Nyet v. Ariel, 2002! (No, not really; we just yelled a lot. I don't think I'd seen a *physical* fight at a frisbee practice EVER before - you'll very, very occasionally see skirmishes at tourneys, but this was two guys who know each other at each other's throats with intent to harm). The whole thing was uncomfortable - it was broken up quickly and everyone was fine, so no biggie in the end. And the intensity was good to see on some abstract level, I suppose. But still. Eesh.
• So of course after all that quality O and leading-to-fights defensive intensity, we came out Saturday to SLUG and played sloptastic frisbee. Just didn't look good at all, tons of turns, people tired, leading to a lot of "glad sectionals is next weekend" sidebars. Ugh.
• Then fast forward to last night, where things looked a little better, but I - clicking on maybe three of my eight cylinders - managed to have a terrible, terrible practice. Qualify it - I was fine, more or less, for the "O" part of practice (when we were playing 7 against 8 and not allowed to throw it upside-down to simulate, as best we can, windy conditions) , and just had a really bad stretch of throws in the middle of the D section of practice, where we were running a vertical stack O. I probably took it too hard - it was just an exceptionally bad stretch of about ten minutes or so - but wow, can't go through that this weekend. I am sure the 106 degree forecast will help with that tremendously. Ugh, again.
• But all else considered, it was a good, hard, well-attended practice. Hard to know how we'll look this weekend, but for the first time in six weeks or so, we get to play someone other than ourselves, and that's always nice.
• So how are we feeling re: the weekend? Well, on some level, it's immaterial; all the teams who want to can go to regionals. I.e., our finish doesn't *really* matter. But we (obviously) want to win the section for seeding purposes, so we're going to have to crack down and get over the spottiness of late. Hopefully we will manage to play well AND work on our game, as regionals is still sitting as the smack-us-upside-the-head sudden change in intensity. We just don't have the same opportunities as JB and SG to engage serious competition at tourneys yet, so I envision a wake-up call in our future that we may or may not respond too with enough juice. All of that said, we look as good as we ever have of late, the people who are rolling out to practice are flat out bringing it, and there's adequate excitement in the air. O is crispy even without our blond deep threat, and D bothers me at practice, which is pretty much my barometer for goodness. So the weekend should be fun and enlightening. Wish us luck.
• In non-Sprawl Ulty news, my league team "The Way to Wikki Wakka" is 1-1, having staked out big leads which were choked away in both of the first two games. If I didn't mention it, my spring co-captain Lindsey is out for a bit with bad back issues (no!), but the league director made the sweetest - literally, sweetest - okay, you caught me, that would be figurative - of lemonades out of the situation for me and allowed me to captain with Jenga. She's a PHXaion / Spitfire player who is solid AND notorious for shattering all happiness/coolness scales, so despite our precarious play in the first couple of weeks, we're having a great time. Our team is the usual mix of skill/experience/talent - I'll do a full scale writeup at some point - but suffice it for now to say that I'm doing my best to run that team while my energies are really focused on and, more importantly, accustomed-to-the-level-of-play-of, Sprawl. So if I don't seem my usual fired-up-self with ridiculous VOTS game posts and such, it's only as an act of maintaining balance and not getting frustrated with the inevitable Sprawl-to-VOTS drop-off. I'm sure things will return to the usual VOTS-detail-obsessed state once I hang up these club cleats for good.
• In news a further step removed from Ultimate, school is back on. I have a relatively light semester courseload-wise, though I am writing this post at breakneck speed during a half-hour break from reading one of many five hundred page books that are staring me down. I am (allegedly) defending my prospectus at some point this semester, and continue to feel woefully unprepared. At least I don't have to grade undergrad essays this semester and can actually spend some time getting down to the brass tacks of, among other things, post-Darwinian evolutionary ethics. I know you're intrigued.
• As a final removed step, congrats to good friend Reena and her new husband Rob - the Nyetfam, Beck and I headed down to Dallas a couple of weekends back to attend her traditional Hindi wedding and had a fantastic time. We used the opportunity to spend Labor Day weekend in Texas and a good time seeing Aaron & Kristen, Grandpa, Deb, Pat & Ron, and my parents in various contexts, most of which involving delicious food. We *may* have even gotten my family hooked on grilled pineapple! May.

Hope that scratches the itch. Sectionals writeup due next week, though hopefully it will be a relatively boring weekend. We shall, as always, see.

This is Not a Fun Blog, Vol. 6: Bacalao!

Perhaps revealing my utterly uncreative nature, I took the opportunity on this, my third night of captivity, to keep the streak alive. My affinity for the -burger suffix is unmatched; in Beck's absence, I am three for three* in that department and tonight made myself codburgers topped w/ mango chutney a la Salt Spring Island's Moby's. I salt-and-peppered the cod, threw in a touch of Penzey's Cajun seasoning, broiled the fish, toasted buns, shucked and boiled corn, cut and steamed broccoli to make a delicious if somewhat formulaic dinner (that, ftr, has SALSA AUTENTICA on the broccoli and some of the corn, not some plebeian catsup. So phbbbbbbbbt!).

* - Through no fault of my own - last night was *going* to be a burrito dinner, or maybe even a breakfast for dinner at a local diner, but as I straggled my way out of practice, Skunk came up and revealed that he had locked his keys in his car. In this age of remote keys, it's fairly puzzling to me how that could even happen, but I suppose it continues to be Skunk's world, and I just take up residence. So I gave Justin a ride home (as planned, and incidentally, homeslice just moved and now lives something like 200 yards from Tuck Shop, dios mio!) and then took Skunk up to his place several blocks north and west of mine, then ran low on gas and got some, then drove Skunk back down to Tempe several blocks south of my place to grab his car, then found myself getting home at 11:30 instead of the planned 10:30. So leftover chicken burgers it was, and they were quick and delicious and hit the spot after sweating out some 13 pounds last night**.

** - I'm not even joking. I weighed seven pounds less when I got home than when I left, despite having drunk half a gallon water and 32 ounces of gatorade during practice. E-freaking-gads, Sunny Azz! And e-freaking-gads Sprawlers, whose poor practice attendance requires me to play at near savage frequencies.

Super-filling meal, and pretty reasonably good for me, too - I went with two quarter pound burgers and low-cal whole wheat buns, so all told this ran a conservatively-high 730 calories with 8 grams of fat and 73 (!!!) grams of protein. Again, subbing fish for your beef is a great way to keep that -burger streak going while preventing, um, other streaks. Like ones in your arteries? Yes, that was terrible.

No real plans for the next couple of night's meals, but I'll keep you appraised. Practice tomorrow night, though, so it'll probably be back to the burrito plan, Pepe Le Kendall's plans notwithstanding. We'll see. Otherwise, things roll along quietly here; a fresh batch of 20,000 lightly-clad freshmen-to-bes have littered campus, making everything up at school a madhouse (I'm pretty sure all 20K registered at the gym today, sheesh). We're adding 9 people to our little department, too, so it'll be nice to have some fresh faces. And I continue to be in a constant state of should-be-reading/writing/doing-more. So it goes - more when it happens.

Just a Diary Entry: Good Times Weekend / Sprawl MMX

Despite the annual plunge into 110+ degree days, I pulled off a thoroughly enjoyable weekend down here in Sunny Azz. After Friday afternoon's ill-timed* afternoon class, I trekked down to my advisor Jason's place for the summer Bio & Society Society (that's right, BS Society, so clever) BBQ featuring philosophers and real life scientists. Andrew, Shannon, Mark&Amy (currently a singular entity), Jake, Chris and, natch, Jason comprised the relatively humanoid spectrum of the attendees, with grad students of the predictable social-tic genres rounding out the crowd. Beck was kind enough to make the trip after work, only to suffer the consequences of conversation crafted by people involved in parsing arguments, manipulating snake glands and staring at plants for hours per day in secluded quarters. Straight from the If You Thought Med School Party Conversations About Exams Were Bad Channel, we heard all about whether a snake's decision to bite is a conscious one, whether a goatee indicates that one is an evil twin or "just that we are in the evil universe right now," a not-so-appetizing nickname for facial hair beneath the lip - let's just call it a "malphemism" - and a "who can top whom" competition of gross-out tales culminating in a strip club narrative of venereal disease and necrophilia. Oh, these were ungood times. Nonetheless, we managed an enjoyable evening by singling out the few normals in the crowd and munching away on sausage, pita bread, grilled sweet corn, apple pie and the tasty beverages of our choosing (coke nada for me, as I had SLUGgin' to do in the morning - yes, I am starting to be that guy [hangs head in shame]).

* - Seriously: Friday afternoon classes? Whose idea was this? IMHO, the only sort of viable workplan for a Friday afternoon involves a margarita and blasting Erasure. See Rice comma 2000 comma Danimal's Balcony. Right now, for one more painful week only, I'm locked up helping students with paper topics from 2:30-4. Surely there are worse things in life. But equally surely there are better. That involve Erasure.

Beck and I escaped by the appointed 9 pm Beck bedtime and caught a Wire episode before bed - I should note that we are mowing that series down, and I'll try to write something with a fresh angle at some point. Saturday started HEXTA early with a wake up, eat a carby breakfast, go to the fields at 6:45 for a 7:30 warmup before SLUG. Beck had CE all day that fortunately started at noon, so she got to sleep in a bit. Kinda a crappy way to spend a day off for her, though, and worse it left me on my lonesome for the day's and evening's social activities. Egads.

SLUG went really well - for the first time, I got bitchy about the time of the game (we had World Cup to watch afterwards) / RSVP process and required people to sign up ahead of time or pay an extra five dollars to pay. This also carried a five dollar penalty for no-showing (the collection of which will undoubtedly prove challenging). Consequently, I was able to set and balance the lineups well ahead of time, and with the extra time to balance things out, I actually did a reasonable job. And then... Cole no-showed (cough, cough, five dollars), leaving one of the teams decidedly short-handed in the talent department. I pulled a little bit of an ornery "this is not my problem; if you want to get mad, get mad at Cole" line, which may or may not make me a bitchy individual but got across my overall lesson of personal responsibility w/r/t Sprawl. Of course, a new guy from Florida, Fernando, showed up late, and as he wasn't on the mailing list and is new to the area, it would have been *really* bitchy of me to charge him an extra five. Fernando is quite the decent player, so Cole's absent talent was at least partially replaced, and the game roared on. Lesson lost. So it goes. At least we started at 8 for once!

Good, tight game with few turnovers* - dark took the first game 13-12 on serve, and white took the second game 13-6. A wind had kicked up right around 11-6 in the second game, leading white (my side, btw) to throw a Z that dark couldn't crack. We continued the trend in the overtime game to 3, got a few bad turns out of their hands, and took a 2-0 lead. They eventually cracked the Z to make it 2-1, then threw one at us that Garret, Trant and I devoured for the 3-1 win. So, you'll note, my losing streak was not one, and I am back on the sunny side of life: 11-1 in 2010 in SLUGs (and my personal game in this one was just fine, with a few big IO hucks, only one turn (on which a "new" guy** made an impossibly bad play), and some breakmark throws taboot). Huzzah.

* - So, a forty-to-fifty year-old experienced player who will remain nameless showed up to compete... and played more than his share, didn't know the offense, blew his mark, didn't go to the disc, and turned an easy possession over on the goal line. I am generally not one to directly turn people away from our weekly competitive scrimmage - I try to let people figure out whether they belong - but wow, hombre did not get it and accepted no empirical evidence. And you'll note that when you lose a game 13-12 on serve, and one dude contributes three turnovers in a game that features no more than ten per side... well, this entirely contradicts Justin G's thesis that individuals cannot lose team games, but there you have it. Look at me, keeping up the bitching throughout a post. To be fair, this behavior aggravates me independent of whether said offender is on my team at the scrimmage. Sure, come out and play, but know thy role - I'm not going to call myself the primary cutter in a game with All the Young Dudes, you need to dump it back to a handler in key situations. Rant over.

** - Yeah, same guy.

Even better, almost everybody came out for pizza at Venezia's and the World Cup USA-Ghana game afterwards. Exciting atmosphere - we all had a good, relaxed, USA-cheering time and hung around until the end of regulation. Of course, I tried to rush home before the start of the two fifteen minute OT periods, only to turn on the tele at home to find the U.S. of A. down 2-1. Oof. So not a great end, but a good athletic playing and watching morning regardless.

Came home to scrub dishes and the pool and generally hang with the dogs. Aforementioned frisbee pal Garret was having a non-frisbee shindig at his house in Tempe that night, so I ran to the store to buy beers and ears (of corn). Beck was still stuck at CE, so I trekked down to Tempe to be the seventh wheel of a couples' party - 'twas okay, 'cause I had a great time playing water volleyball, eating turkey/salmon burgers, and generally chatting with a bunch of really nice folks who all turned out to work at ASU. Garret (and Amanda, his Pippen) have a lovely house, and it's recently been augmented by a RIDONCULOUS outdoor surround sound HD home theater system that, oh yeah, resides just beyond the pool. We watched a few minutes of Pirates of the Caribbean at all kinds of epic, neighbor-disturbing volume before my 5 am wakeup time and a waiting Beck necessitated my departure. Great to hang with the Westlakes and friends in a non-Ultimate environs - I'd like to thank them on behalf of the group, and hope my semi-sleep-deprived solo-self passed the audition. Seriously, thanks for a fun social evening.

Beck sadly enough worked on Sunday, so I spent the day doing chores - more pool-scrubbing and some lawn-mowing - then caught a Cubs game, did some reading and waited for PM Ulty to roll around. Oh, right, and decided the fate of Sprawl. No, really, I finally got a hold of JD and went over tryouts, the roster, everything - it involved a fair bit of deliberation, mulling over, insert your term here, but we whittled things down to a traveling roster of 21 that we believe maximizes chances for our Natties aspirations. I can't go into details for all of the obvious, authenticity-destroying-yet-feeling-sparing reasons, but sure, I'll list the initial roster below (note that it's already changed, as people have backed out. D'oh). That was a stressful endeavor, one that continues to be stressful, but yeah, I feel we got the job done. The reviews thus far are, I don't know, mixed? Not a whole lot of bitching to our faces, and some people who say we more or less "got it right," so I suppose we did okay. Definitely the sucky part of the captaining gig, and naming the alternates whom we choose to replace the no-goers to particular tourneys will continue to be an ulcer-inducing pain. Comes with ye olde territor-e, though.

That was me being entirely nondescript about a process that was more stressful than perhaps I'm willing to let on, but there ya have it. Anyways... we *finally* had a good turnout at Sunday pickup, despite the 108 degree weather and a water-logged (!*) field, so I got another heady workout in on the weekend. A little awkward to play pickup with guys whom I had already "cut" or "accepted," but I got through it okay. Actually, on the physical end I did not get through it okay - my knee got wonky toward the end, and stayed wonky to the extent that I was unable to practice Monday. D'oh. The beat rolls on. I rushed home post-pickup to yet another delicious grilling meal from the Beck. Nice cap to a fun weekend, even if I did not get to spend quite as much of it with my SLF as I might have liked.

So yeah, good times, and then back to the grind of ASU on Monday. It's stupidly hot lately - over 110 pretty much every day - and my enthusiasm for, among other things, the 0.7 mile walk from my parking lot to my office, has started to wane significantly. Sentiments for another post. In the meantime, here's the Sprawl roster as of that Monday morning. That Monday night involved more of the awkward non-referencing the disappointment and/or joy of not-making / making the team, and my injury / inability to practice made the whole experience relatively miserable. Ah, I whine with the best of them. Time to stop typing. More reports later...

Sprawl MMX Initial Roster (6.27.10)

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1. Eric Bay

2. Cole Cairl

3. Justin Dhein

4. Kyle Gerschutz

5. Justin Gries

6. Aaron Harczynski

7. Will Holt

8. Nyet Jones

9. Joe Kauffman

10. Josh Kohl

11. Vince Noe

12. Dixon Oates

13. Rob Ozdoba

14. Bryan Paris

15. Ian Phillips

16. Josiah Roberts

17. Tom Studer

18. Jason Trant

19. Andy Wade

20. Garret Westlake

21. Jia Xie

Nine Times (Entirely Untimely Version)

Editor's note: I started this two weeks ago, and it is as such now horrendously out of date. So it goes. It was originally just titled "Nine Times."

Q: Does that post title refer to Buellerian absences, or a multiplier for That Same Song?

A: Neither. It refers to this:

Beck and I caught ASU's opening game against Milwaukee-Wisconsin in the Round-of-64 regional playoffs. ASU, in the grand Nyetian-attended-Div-I-school tradition, is ranked #1 in the country and boasts a RIDICULOUS, all-around lineup of super-studs. They won their first 24 games of the season, have top-notch starting pitching, slick fielding, and batting stats to die for - granted, college numbers are often gaudier than their wooden bat-gained MLB counterparts, but check out this lineup. The salient points:

1. They are batting .338 / .436 / .539 *as a team.* Yowsers.

2. Their opponents, for reference, have batted .239 / .324 / .331.

3. They have scored 8.3 runs per game while giving up 3.8-ish.

4. They draw 6 walks per nine innings while giving up 2.3.

5. Their pitching staff K's 9 per game.

6. They hit over one homerun per game, playing in a quite spacious home stadium.

The numbers are all there; I could go on, but let's just "suffice it" - this is a dominant, nearly perfectly constructed baseball team. In person, it's even bigger - they take the Bill Jamesian approach and take lots and lots of pitches at the plate; they foul off two strike pitches like nobody's business; they hit TONS of line drives. It's a juggernaut - granted, there are some "ASU 26, Northern Illinois 1" games in there that undoubtedly inflate things a bit, but this team has easily achieved "helluva" status.

Which takes us, however obliquely, back to the post title. This is arguably the best team in the country and is ranked as such. And in the game that Beck and I watched, against a vastly inferior opponent - theoretically the 64th seed in the tourney - ASU made no fewer than 9 mistakes. In order:

1. In the first inning, after one MW player had closed his eyes and tapped a seeing-eye single to left, the next batter hit a grounder about three feet to the right of the ASU shortstop. He kicked it, blowing a sure double play. Sounds like a physical error... but the SS did not hustle to get in front of the ball, he took a half-step and attempted the needlessly more difficult backhanded play. Mental error, in that he skipped the higher percentage play. Instead of the end of the inning, there were then runners on 1st and 2nd with one out.

2. The next batter hits a shot right back to the pitcher, who, instead of turning and setting his feet, whirls and fires the ball into left center. The SS snagged it , but with a dive off the bag, killing the easy double play. So instead of the end of the inning, again, bases are loaded with one out. MW scores on a sac fly a few pitches later.

3. Slugger Kole Calhoun gets hit with a pitch in the bottom of the 1st. With one strike on clean-up hitter Riccio Torrez, Calhoun gets picked off of first by the catcher. Inning over. Why was Calhoun that far off the base, w/ 2 outs and the cleanup hitter up? Ugh.

4. In the bottom of the 2nd, with 2 outs and runners on 2nd and 3rd, ASU drills a single to center field. One run scores, and the ball is thrown into the middle of the infield. The runner on 2nd failed to get a secondary lead on the 2 out pitch, and so is just rounding third as the CF catches the ball... the third base coach stops him. Meanwhile, the MW firstbaseman forgets to come to the middle of the diamond to cut off the throw - so no one catches it, and the ball bounces around the middle of the infield. This runner would have scored easily with a secondary lead, and would have scored anyways if the third base coach had noticed the absent first baseman and sent the runner afterwards. So this is almost two mistakes, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

5. But we won't give the single hitter the benefit of the doubt, as he did not aggressively round first. There's no first baseman in the middle of the diamond, so someone - the 1b coach? - should have noticed this; that ball is either going through to the plate, or it's going to bounce around the infield. Either way, an extra base is there for the taking, and it goes untaken. And natch, the next batter hits a shot into the hole b/w 3rd and short... the SS makes a great play to dive and stop it, and his only play is to 2nd to end the inning and prevent the run that already should have scored. And that's a play that should not have been available, because that forced out runner should have been at second, not first. Another run lost.

6. Later in the game, with the bases loaded and 2 outs, the Sun Devil at 2nd gets over-zealous... and gets picked off by the catcher. Another rally killed.

7. Just to round things out, another Sun Devil missed a sign and got picked off at third. If the catcher could have picked off someone at home, he could have completed the rare pick-off cycle. Alas... just another rally-killing mistake. And this one is perhaps, say, three times as bad, as there's ample evidence at this point that the hombre behind the plate has a runner-picking-off hose.

8. Later, a killer - with runners on 1st and 2nd and no outs, playing with a team that has no one with an OBP under .350, the coach orders a bunt. This is stupid enough in its own right, but the bunt is perfectly placed down the third base line, and the pitcher can't get to it in time... except that the runner on first either missed the sign or thought the ball would be caught in the air (a bizarre thought), because even though the batter is through the first base bag already, the runner on first is only half-way to second. He's gunned out, and what would have been bases loaded no outs becomes 1st and 3rd with one. The next batter hits a run-scoring single that quite overtly does not score a second run...

9. And our favorite - conference player of the year Zack McPhee laces a shot down the right field line in the bottom of the 8th, in a 6-2 game that is being played with aluminum bats, and tries to stretch it to a triple. Dude has 14 triples in 60 games this year, so he has the wheels / bat for this sort of thing, but you guessed it, he is gunned down, making the first out at third. And yes, this was followed by a single that would have scored him and his wheels anyways. I, predictably, made a lot of fun of him when this happened. This may or may not have had something to do with my pregame beverage:

Total aside - that is a four dollar 22 oz. Guinness from my friends at Cornish Pasty Company, a FRIGGIN' AWESOME dining establishment that Beck and I discovered that evening. A Cornish pasty is effectively a gourmet British-style hot pocket, with more flavors / combinations than you can imagine. SO GOOD! There were at least 25 varieties that I could have tried - we elected to split the sausage, cheese and potatoes version - so we will be going back soon and often.

But seriously, as you may be able to imagine, I spent the bulk of this game giving a running commentary on these mistakes and other plays on the field, and special thanks to Beck who, per usual, put up with my nonsense. Despite the mistakes, it was a fun game, and capped by some delicioso Yogurtland concoctions (their Pecan and Pralines flavor is a local winner, imho).

But back to those mistakes - what gives? This is how the #1 team in the country operates? That's *nine* mistakes in a post-season, elimination-is-at-least-close-by here game. In baseball, a sport notorious for happenstance, where the best teams ever only win 75% of the time. You're going to hand runs away in a situation like this? With the continuous rhetoric of "champion teams are like X" that gets ballyhooed all over the place, you would think at least one of those X's is "does the little things right." None of this mattered in the acute sense, of course - they relied on their dominant pitching (some of the MW batters were blatantly overmatched) to win 6-2, beat up on Hawaii the next day, and beat up on Hawaii again to advance to the super-regional (which, now that I'm finishing this two weeks late, we know they won; they're in the college world series and starting things in Omaha tomorrow (Sunday)). So these mistakes get buried, or just noted as "gaffes" in the course of the narrative, and things move on. But I've got to wonder:

1. Do they just exhibit some kind of reckless attitude that benefits them overall via aggression but just results in these sorts of goof-ups?

2. Are they "playing down to the competition" - is there some kind of measurable effect that their concentration is down when they play against the likes of MW?

3. Are they just so good in other aspects of the game that handing away runs like that never really catches up with them? So the carrot works for their hitting and pitch-taking and all of that - those pay off - but the stick is stickless, as they can routinely get away with these mistakes because they are so badly going to outplay opponents in those other respects.

It's that last one that interests me - I am sure those players get yelled at after the game for these mistakes, but is there maybe some underlying sentiment of "yeah, but whatever" coming from everyone involved that makes that yelling lack the teeth to compel correction? The outcomes are not guaranteed, of course - it could catch up with them and cause them to get upset, or it could never catch up with them, and they could waltz on to the world series title despite habitually handing runs away on both sides of the ball (note misused football metaphor there :) ). One would *think* that the better opponents would make these things matter more, and maybe ASU amps its little-things concentration up for the bigger opponents. Still, the habit of letting these things go against weaker competition exposes the team to unnecessary risk, and whether the risk manifests itself in a disastrous upset or not in the next few weeks (note - it didn't, or at least hasn't yet), I still like to think that it's important to note that it's there.

And yeah, because this is the all things Ultimate blog, I've got to think about this w/r/t Sprawl. We've got more talent this year than in years past, I think, but it's a given that we are going to run into the ASU-esque super-stud teams. And they'll likely outmatch us. But unlike ASU, we're going to have to maximize our chances via every available avenue. I.e., we can't afford to have three runners picked off in a game, as those runs are going to get us those 15-13 victories. Or, um, something.

All of this is to point out the perhaps obvious, but reinforced-by-direct-observation point - it's not necessarily the championship teams that do all the little things right. Sometimes they just don't have to. But it might be the teams that are looking to grab upsets that have to. Good thing to keep in mind in the coming months...

Yes I Am Stumbling...

I *promise* I will write something substantive in the next few. I'm neck deep in exams, papers, the usual right now. But this forced me to take a five second break to post. Enjoy:

Uoma Don't-a

I'm giving myself 20 minutes to write this while icing my knee after a 3BK game on Wednesday night...

Uoma Donna came and went this weekend, and despite Keith's better organizational efforts, our stacked Phoenix team badly failed to bring home the gold. We essentially never clicked at any point the entire weekend - messiness in the middle of the field throughout - which didn't bother us during a 4-0 Saturday against some reasonably mediocre competition, but then caught up with us and then some in a horrific loss to the Tucson team on Sunday. Boo-urns indeed.

On the plus side, we had fun, even though I got the feeling that Keith was looking for some fun plus winning action this weekend. Our team name was "The Birds and the Bees," so oddly , the women went as bees (for the most part) and the men went as various kinds of birds. I will firmly say that we had by far the best costumes on the weekend, so we can take pride in that if nothing else. Here's the end of Saturday crew in all its motleyness (I think this is Joanne's photo):

Vince, Luke, Amanda Lindsey, Bonnie, Garret, J-Ro, Genevieve, Dheintime, Katie, Nicole, Monika, BP, Keith, Michelle
Dixon, Nyet, Rob, Joe

College sectionals was that weekend, so between that and the pretty-late-announcement of the tournament, only six teams showed up to play. Add-in that we were playing on half-grass half-dirt all-concrete-hard soccer fields, and you have the makings of an un-fun tourney. Ugh. We played a Tucson team, New Mexico, an older Tucson team, and the other Phoenix team on day one. As mentioned, we won the games, but really clogged a lot and just didn't get anything pretty going. The, um, "typifier" of this angle was Garret, who put up pretty huck after pretty huck... just out of reach, or to a girl who misread it, etc. The tourney was played on small fields with a 2 point, cross-gender rule, which led to a lot of women cutting deep and guys jacking it. Or vice versa. AKA sloppy disc, and plenty of it.

On the mega-awesome side, Genevieve came into town for the tourney. Here's the G, in costume:

We had a fun time - I picked G up from the aeropuerto on Friday evening, and we booked it to Michaels (to acquire bee-costume fixin's, natch) on the way to a great sushi dinner with some frisbee friends in Scottsdale. Drove up to Tucson early Saturday with Dheitime, Katie and Nicole, played all weekend*, then drove back with the same crew, having hilarious adventures both ways (particularly on the ride back, where we learned that JD is a "name that artist" FIEND).

* - I actually drove home with Clint and JD Saturday evening so I could go to the ASU Art Museum Film Festival, which was really great. I should give it a full post treatment, but given my schedule of late, that's unlikely to happen, so... yeah. We saw it with D/C and really enjoyed it. Definitely worth the double tripping to Tucson and back. Sunday morning, I drove up Griesy and Kaetlynn as well as JD, so we had another solid ride there, too.

Sunday evening, after our early return to Phoenix - see below - Genevieve, Beck and I also hit up the Apple Store (to rescue G's broken comp), Fez (for a lovely dinner with Matt Harsh (of Huckaholics fame) and his fiancee Mariah, and some MoJo to cap the day. G also accompanied me to school on Monday, where we worked all morning and then reconvened for a goodbye lunch with Matt and some other CSPO folks.

Back on the tourney front - the one team we didn't play on Saturday, the good Tucson team featuring some Barrio folks, were missing a couple of those Barrio folks on Saturday (notably one J. Grobe), so they ended up in our side of the bracket. So we rolled in lackadaisically on Sunday morning as they were playing a play-in game. Thus began the drama - Keith really wanted to beat this Tucson team, but the majority of the birds/bees were in "goof-around fun tournament mode." Suffice it to say that it was a mismatch of attitudes / directions, and some strife ensued. Whether it was the strife or the terrifically accurate assessment that we were not properly ready to play to start the day, we got absolutely worked by the Tucson dudes - big hucks, Grobe running around, women putting up two pointed on the break side to their guys, you name it. Far cry from our Hoasis glory, and we went down in flames, 13-6 or so. Ouch. The only consolation is that EBay represented Phoenix well in the finals while playing with the New Mexico guys, so Tucson didn't win. Still, we all felt pretty chumpy, especially Keith (who looked downright depressed), and especially those of use who ended up driving 3.5 hours Sunday to play roughly an hour and a half of frisbee.

I had two big highlights on the weekend, both layouts (one on a laser flick huck from garret, one on a almost too far backhand from Rob on Sunday), both resulting in Shylock-ish missing pounds of flesh. Seriously, my arms are ripped up, and I have an apple-sized strawberry on my right hip. And somewhere in there I inverted laid out for a deflected pass and ripped my back up. Genevieve compared me to an assault victim of sorts - it was pretty bad. And is pretty bad, as I've reopened things Tuesday and Wednesday night since. Anyhoo, I otherwise played okay on the weekend, scoring some goals and such, but really struggling with some hammers and backhand hcuks. I even turfed a backhand to Genevieve, and I haven't turfed a backhand like that since roughly 2003. No, not really, but it is a rarity.

So, to recap - few teams, lackluster competition, an uber-grumpy captain, and Nyet-eating fields. And we never clicked all weekend, meaning our stacked roster went 4-1 without ever feeling totally great about things. And I didn't feel great about my personal play, other than a couple of layouts which made it such that I couldn't sleep for the next few days. So, seriously, I really enjoyed playing with G and everybody, but truth be told, this was a crappy tournament. Good thing the Phoenix peeps were so fun, as I am not really interested in returning next year if this is gonna be the scene.

Nice effort Keith - sorry we couldn't pull it out for ya - and great to see the G per usual. I'll leave you with the funniest exchange, imho, of the weekend.

Keith: This sucked. I could have spent the weekend doing something much more worthwhile.
Genevieve: Um, like cleaning toilets?
Keith: No, hanging out with you. I'm very negative lately, and I could use your positivity.
[Conversation about the most positive person we know ensues. Keith continues to insist that it's Genevieve]
Justin Griesy: But what about us, man? We're not positive enough to hang out with?
Nyet: Yeah, what about us? Come on, Griesy, let's go back to Negativeland.
Griesy: Yeah, Keith doesn't even want us around. Good thing we've got Negativeland.
Nyet: Hey, I like evil, and death, and pestilence.
Griesy [not missing a beat]: I think fire's pretty great.

Anyhoo, yeah, not a great tourney, but a good time, nonetheless. I hope Tucson gets it together for next year - fields are pretty routinely bad in April, but it seems there has to be a better-than-dirt option. Oh, and here's some photographic proof - Nyet v. Big Nate in the fourth game on Saturday. That's Garret in the background. I'm pretty sure this was immediately before a blade forehand to JD for a score. I'm also pretty sure that the dirt on my back indicates that this was after one of the "assault victim" layouts. So there ya have it - Uoma Don't-a 2010, a good one for the hanging and the costumed tomfoolery but not for the disc:

The Aftermath / The State of Nyet

As mentioned, the hits just keep on coming. Beck had Thursday off, so after returning the mountain of papers that Jenny and I graded (in SA / Austin and over the past week) to the class that afternoon, I met her at SMOCA so she, too, could enjoy the Close portraits and the design-in-music exhibit. This was the day after the Jon Spencer Knee Explosion, so I couldn't really walk around the museum very well, but I enjoyed the second time just as much as the first. Home for some delicious (and light) codfish and broccoli dinner, and we got ready to get back to the grind on Friday.

Elaine (Beck's 5th year college roomie) and her new husband Jamie met us with D/C at the Biltmore's showing of Dr. No, the original James Bond movie. Interesting to see both what passed for special effects and good dialog back in 1962 (not to mention the exquisite old school sexism). Enjoyable enough, especially over Red Devil and followed by a stupidly colossal MoJo chocolate mocha mint concoction. After another working day, we met the same crew (plus E/J's friends Mike and Anna) at Barrio Cafe, a neighborhood fancy Mexican place that we've been meaning to try since we got here. Good if stupidly expensive, Barrio at least gave us a good environment to wait an hour-plus to be seated and enjoy some quality grub. The plan is to have Elaine and Jamie over for burgers tonight, too.

And lest you think that the train of family / friends is over, co-captain Genevieve is going to be in town this coming weekend. Yay! We're headed down to Tucson to play in Uoma Donna, a fun co-ed Ulty tourney that includes general silliness as well as good Ultimate (as well as a "two point for cross-gender hucks from behind the half field line" rule, which always makes for hilarity). Getting Genevieve to fly in and forming a siiiiick team has been a plan in the works for a few months now, so my general level of pissedness at potentially driving down and sitting on the sidelines is extraordinary. I've probably ranted about it enough, but the timing of this sucks, and it supersucks that after all the disciplined eating at working out and general effort at preventing this from happening, here I am again with a busted knee from trying to be a club Ultimate player. I'll spare you more because I'd hate for this to become VhinBallad - you know, whatevs. I'll have fun with G et al - my plan is to rest / ice and try to get the swelling down by Wednesday, see how it takes to a league game, and then evaluate whether I think it'll stand up to a full weekend after that. I'm going to try to make a doc's appt. in there, too, because as my dad points out, knee effusion is decidedly un-normal (even though I think I've got subclinical effusion *all-the-time*, so this may just really be a flare-up-plus). I'm trying to stay upbeat about it, but the usual frustration is settling in nicely today. D'oh.

Otherwise, I am suffering the rush of the late semester. Not worth going into details, but there's enough work to do that I should probably stop blogging now. Actually, it's not terrible; just a couple big assignments and all the TAing left to be done, and hopefulyl I'll pull it off. I'm not going to worry.

Alright, to that end, here we go. This post feels boring; sorry for that. Time to grab some food and get back to work. Here we go (incidentally, Alex O. pressed all game long and didn't score. Ah, well).

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part VI - Bonus Houseguestapalooza!)

Parting is such sweet sorrow, which makes it nice that after sending the iPFam off on Tuesday, we would see them but a few short days later... in Texas! I collected a stack of 85 four page essays from the undergrads on Thursday and packed them up along with the usual accessories to make a trip down to San Antonio and Austin for the weekend. Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad was playing a show with G. Love and Special Sauce at the legendary (I think, but what isn't "legendary?") rock club Antone's in Austin on Saturday night, so Beck and I flew down to SA Friday for a nice weekend with the recently seen fam and the rest of the SA crew.

Got in to SA around 1 pm and hung out for the afternoon; tried to teach Dad the art of playlist composition in iTunes until Aaron got there around 2:30. Aaron, Dad and I headed up to Clark to toss ye olde frisbee around, which was a tonne of funne*. Aaron has crazy disc golf throws, so it was funny seeing our different approaches / angles of launching the disc. We came back to clean up and hang around the house a bit more with Deb and Mom, and then the iPfam pulled into town. With the set complete, we jumped in cars and took the entire crew - Pat, Ron, Grandpa, iPJ, iPMM, Dad, Mom, Deb, Aaron, Beck and Nyet - to the Alamo Cafe for some old time greasy food. We ate dinner and then proceeded to "camp," as Aaron put it, a behavior I'm sure made us lots of friends at the Cafer. Good meal and good times - the next day would be a busy one with all kinds of travel and coordination, so we went home, watched part of the Spurs game and then fell asleep. (Or, you know, graded more papers. THEME!). The iPFam headed on to Austin to meet up with the band and make sure they got into their hotels alright and were rewarded with a smelly Marriott and a band that never showed up for their troubles (they changed hotels, and the band would show up at about 3 the next afternoon. Sheesh, the GPGDS life).

* - Though in retrospect - especially given the balloon job my knee has done this week - running around without all of my braces was perhaps not the smartest thing I've ever done. Sigh...

Got up early Saturday morning at roughly 6 aka 4 Sunny Azz time to get some grading done. Beck and I had been DYING for some Chuy's - real style, Texas Chuy's, not the facsimiles we have here in Phoenix - so we headed out of SA at about 10:45 to go to Barton Springs Road in Austin for some more Tex Mex delight. Aaron made the trek with us separately in his truck, the iPFam met us at the restaurant, and we also hooked up with Rice bud Jason and his relatively new wife Phoenix. Had a delicious meal, complete with left over burrito, and a fun time catching up with my old college roomie. Somewhere in there we got a call from Jamie; he said the band was in Houston, which was a tad bizarre given they had been in Oklahoma the previous night. Lesson learned? Between this and the iP "Tulsa = Tucson" MM, we should never trust an iP with directions. Seems the band is in need of an GP(GD)S.

Back to the tale - we bid Jason/Phoenix adieu and headed into the gorgeous Austin day. Nyetfam plus Deb was originally planning to meet us up at Aaron's place in north Austin, and Kristin (Aaron's SLF) was going to meet us up there as well. But given that the show that evening was in south Austin and we were already there, we threw a wrench in the plans. Aaron and I went for a too-brief trip to Waterloo Records (for my first honest-to-life bin scouring record store experience in quite some time) - I picked up the new Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars album, Rise and Shine, while Aaron picked out a Bela Fleck album and a Dodos album - while Beck and iPFam headed to Zilker Park. Turned out everyone and their dog was headed there, too, on account of the lovely Saturday afternoon, so the iPFam redrew the plans. We called the Nyetfam and coordinated a meeting at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden, requiring all of us to battle the nutty Austjam. Eventually everyone got there, and we enjoyed some intriguing bronze sculptures in a shady spot. Evidence!

That's St. Francis of Assisi (1,1); Icarus (1,2 & 1,3); Gabriel (Michael?) & Lucifer (1,5 & 2,1 & 2,3); a stunning pieta (2,2 & 2,4); and a weird, distorted image of the Beck (2,5). And a nice romantic pond statue in full size.

Idyllic little place, even if the moisture in the air and the gnats quickly reminded me why I like my new home's arid ambiance. Hung out there for a bit, then the iPFam, Beck and I went back to the iPHotel to meet up with Jamie while the Sr. Joneses went up to Aaron's with the plan to reconvene in a few hours for dinner.

Great to see Jamie; he's doing very well and feeling much happier since the band rearranged its lineup not too long ago. They've been touring with G Love & Special Sauce, a '90s alterna jazz-blues-rap band of sorts that specializes in a sort of slacker frat vibe (their most famous song is Baby's Got Sauce," followed by "I Like Cold Beverages") that is legitimately known by anyone anywhere near my age group and into such things. Jamie regaled us with great behind-the-scene tales of band drama and personalities, of how Matt McHugh cornered G Love and got him to agree to let Matt use BGS for the soundtrack of a comedy short. Hilarious stuff, and quite nice to see a happy / healthy GPGDS bassist / (lead?) singer.

We combined our iPhones into some sort of Captain Planet monstrosity to locate a nearby sushi restaurant and grabbed some delicious sushi appetizers. Or allegedly delicious; I cannot pretend to know such things. I did, however, get my requisite Ziegenbock! Huzzah! Left there to meet the entire clan (all the aforementioned plus Paige!) at the Moonshine Cafe where we had some excellent down home food (I grabbed bbq chicken and red beans and rice). Beck easily won the award for innovative dinner choice as she got the biggest piece of apple pie a la mode I have ever seen (that's Aaron's gargantuan 6'5" person hand for reference):

Ay caramba! Good times and good dinner (part two); we walked a few blocks from there to Antone's and got ready for the show. GPGDS took the stage a little early (9:20?) and TORE IT UP. I was too stupid to write down a setlist, but they threw down a number of great new tunes as well as some hot versions of classics. "Seasons Change > Jam > On the Moon" was particularly shwank, and I finally got to hear a personal favorite, "45," live. The catalog has changed a little bit in the absence of Matt / Rachel - some "Matt tunes" are no longer in the repertoire, and the melodica tunes are no more, either. (Beck finds this a-okay, as she thought the meolidica killed all energy, and one song in particular that she is downright venomous against, "Pollen Song," appears to have been stricken from the record for good). (Btw, if you're interested in hearing the new quartet's sound, check a show at archive.org here, but trust that this is not entirely representative of the type of mixing that the band likes to employ on their live recordings). It was also shwank to see Aaron, the now sole keyboardist, able to really show his chops. He played two to three sets of keys at once at times, pulling off some serious wizardry. Two of the Special Sauce crew made appearances, too - Timo, the Sauce bassist, played a wicked "Summertime"-derived sax solo, and the Sauce keyboardist jumped in for some blistering solos, too. Fiery, energetic set that seemed to grab the crowd (Jamie gave it a 6 or 7 out of 10 in terms of the energy they had experienced on tour), and my parents got an anniversary shoutout taboot. Well worth the trek. I got some decent pics in the low light of Antone's - feel free to check out the set on flickr, but here are a few solid entries:

We stuck around a bit to watch G Love et al - they're exceptionally talented and delivered a solid set, but the entire shtick is a little samey and played at this point. Don't get me wrong; highly entertaining and silky slick, but gimmicks like the "smoke the joint from the guy in the front row during the song about weed" has got to be old by this point, no? Still, fun and catchy enough to entice Beck to buy a shirt (and later a CD on iTunes). We headed out a little before midnight and after a bit of an adventure taking Paige back to her car, we made it back to Aaron's by 1.

Left Aaron's early the next morning (he and Kristin were headed to her family's for Easter dealings) to meet the iPFam and the remainder of the band for a hotel brunch. Said goodbye for real to everybody - Houseguestapalooza iPEdition finally seeing its end - and drove back to SA. Had a laid back afternoon at the homestead, watching the Spurs and hanging a bit with Pat and Grandpa before eating some burgers and heading on our way. We got back to Phoenix around 8 and I jumped into super-work mode while Beck grabbed us some small MoJo snacks to cap our nice weekend.

And *that* was actually the end to Houseguestapalooza. Phew. Another good March / early April in Sunny Azz, but it was nice to have things settle down somewhat to normal, too. Of course, Rice friends Jamie and Elaine are in town this weekend, so...

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part V)

The Thursday that the iPFam returned to the Jones abode, the 25th, was an epic date in the grand scheme of The Ballad. Beck's and my T-Mobile contracts were running out, and we had a few Christmas gift certificates to the Apple Store burning holes in our pockets. We had been T-Mobile customers since we had gotten cell phones - way back in '01 or '02 or somethings - so about a month ago, we tried to do the reasonable thing and holds our friends at the T hostage. The argument was something along the lines of, "Well, we basically have free iPhones waiting for us, so you should make it worth our while to stay with T-Mobile by giving us free equivalent phones. Basically, we either get new phones and renew contracts with you guys - and at, say $100+ bucks per month for the next two years, that's $2400 you'd be making - or you hassle us over what are surely in reality $10 free phones, we leave, and you get $0." Seemed like a totally reasonable threat / offer to us. Of course, our friends at T-Mobile were a bunch of jerks and refused to even talk to us about it, and instead offered "free shipping on the phones," an offer their website made anyways. When we asked if we could just leave now and call it a T-day, they threatened us with $200 fines EACH for early terminating the contracts early*. Even though the contracts had a whopping $90 left on them. What the hell - we decided to stick it out and wait until the end of the contract.

* - Lawyer-to-be friend Mike NTPB pointed out that invariably, these phone companies have to make small changes to your contract over the two year period - tax rate changes, fine print type stuff. Those, though, constitute "material changes" to the contract, and according to Miguel, effectively make it a new contract that you didn't *really* sign. Apparently if you stick to that party line, you can successfully dodge those fees. So there ya go.

Beck called T-Mobile back on Wednesday the 24th to make the offer again. Now they were much happier / more scared to talk and offered us the phones, but too late, T-fools! Beck was about to get the iPhones when T-Mobile told her that our contract was still live, so if we tried to change our phone numbers over, we would still be charged the $200 each. ARGH! So Beck said fine, she would do it Friday. Ah, but that would mean our month-to-month plan on T-Mobile would have automatically renewed, so we would owe them for another month of service. Eh? Basically, we had to make the change over to the iPhones and AT&T at the precise minute window or T-Mobile was going to try to screw us. And there was something about virgin's blood and the moon being at the correct degree above the horizon, too. Or something. Basically, this all meant that I had to run to the Apple Store on Thursday, with iPFam on the horizon, to get our phone situation all figured out.

And even that simple act - walking into the store, knowing exactly what I wanted and asking for it, turned into an ordeal with those friggin' koolaid consuming automaton jackasses aka the Apple Store Geniuses. I even told them directly that they could drop the act with me, but this didn't help as apparently their prime directives are just too powerful. So annoying; I just wanted to grab them by their big fat heads and say "LOOK, MAN, NOTHING IS THIS EXCITING,OKAY?!!?!?!" On top of the bizarre and thoroughly inauthentic human interactions, they didn't know how to preserve my number for the phones since I use an out of state area code. The solution was to to have me buy all the iParaphernalia at the Apple Store, assign me random numbers with AT&T with Phoenix area codes, and then trek over to the AT&T store where they would know what to do. Fine, whatever. Done and done (and oh yeah, I celebrated my purchase with a fruity MoJo concoction), so I headed over to AT&T ... where they told me the magic solution was to call a 1-800 number and do it myself. Fantastic. Some two hours later, it was all figured out, and I had me an iPhone, and one for the Beck, taboot!

And yeah, it's completely changed our lives. We don't ask questions any more, we answer them with the brain in our pocket. It's pretty amazing, and I haven't even spent a dime on an app yet. Maybe a topic for another post - I'm not even sure how excited I am about writing the experiential shift that comes with ownership of an iPhone, let alone you reading it - but suffice it, I've joined the masses and now "get it." I definitely achieved a certain sense of iZen while walking to class the other day, listening to Kind of Blue and checking my e-mail in the glorious sunshine. Good times.

More importantly, it's almost as a document has come out that I am secretly Ashkenazi, and now the iPMM and I can finally understand one another. Just kidding - but it was strangely appropriate that the we had the iPJ himself and his trusty, even more addicted partner to teach us in our formative iPhone days. This may seem trivial, but the amount of conversation that was dominated with talk of apps and such was astounding over this phase of Houseguestapalooza. And yes, rightfully so; they're incredible devices that alter your interface with the world. Sometimes, sough cough, make your interface with the world entirely a handheld device. I am terrified of what facebook + iPhone will do to the Beck, but so far so good. Anyways, that's probably enough about that. Just note that we are now officially an iPFam Jr. and are likely to suffer and suffer you all that entails. (Also note that AT&T is hexta-expensive, and we had to give up our cable subscription - that we weren't really using anyways - to make things balance out. We're also on the lowest minutes plan, so only call us on nights and weekends and such, unless you're a fellow AT&T subscriber and all that).

Wow, long intro - the iPFam got in late that Thursday night such that I had already eaten. Friday had fun in store - I got some work done early and headed out at 10 to watch my last Cubs game of the spring. Woohoo! Greg and Meghan had given me a gift certificate to StubHub, so I found some remarkably cheap (very near face) tix directly behind home plate for the Cubs Friday game against the A's. I took my buddy Jim from Sprawl, a fellow tortured Cubs fan soul, and we enjoyed a nicely pitched game by Carlos Z (who won today, incidentally, to make up for his horrific opening day start). Great fun - here was the vantage:

Marmol imploded in the 8th or so in this one, so the Cubs lost, but still, great afternoon and a good cap to the spring season for me personally. I went home and picked up the iPJ (the iPMM had driven to "Tulsa" for the day) and we headed to the Biltmore to catch another Friday evening movie classic, The Philadelphia Story. Got some delicious Slice of Sicily pizza - our routine RULES - and we actually skipped MoJo for once. The movie was quite enjoyable, full of repartee and a stellar cast (Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, etc.). Another great evening on the lawn...

Alright, back to the outline:

Saturday - SLUG and a chill day; we ate and ate well at home
Sunday - got up early and crushed a lot of work; more iPChilling; pickup Ulty; hit up Zinburger...

Oh, wait, exit outline. We went to Zinburger, a wine and burger bar adjacent to MoJo. And we were served by one of my bioethics students. More exactly:

Waitress: What will you have?
Nyet: Medium cheeseburger with cheddar and no veggies - basically bun, meat, cheese, bun.
Waitress: Okay. This is a weird question, but do you work at ASU?
Nyet [uh-oh]: Why yes...
W: Are you the bioethics TA?
N: Oh yeah
W: I'm in your class...
N: Hey, right, I didn't recognize you out of context...
W: I got an 80 on the midterm. I stayed up all night. Whatevs. [Walks off]
N: Um, that was above average...

And the jokes flowed. Spit in food was mentioned by more than one person, and is pretty much brought up every time I relay this story. Awesome times. She *did* get a ridiculous tip from the iPJ, so I hope all is right in the universe. Still, I did not enjoy the experience.

Sunday, ctd - followed by MoJo. Ah, all is right in the world, at least.
Monday - Back at school, sadly. Class canceled. Seder w/ the iPFam. Including: matzah ball soup, brisket, and the most ridiculous chocolate covered matzah desert you've ever heard. The iPJ opened the door for Elijah and in walked Wrigley. Who knew? Good meal, even if it was a 30 minute version.
Tuesday - Had to teach very late, and made it home in time to do leftover brisket sandwiches with the iPFam. Beck and I hit up Zinburger for dessert; she had a big as her face slice of pie and I had a ridiculous mint chocolate milkshake.

And the iPFam headed back out on the road on Wednesday. Thus ended Houseguestapalooza. Or did it?

...

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part II)

Oh, my failures are too many to count. Here we are three weeks later, and I haven't written up Houseguestapalooza. I. Suck. The quality of the product has deteriorated substantially, I'm sure, as I can hardly remember who all was here, let alone what we did. But here's the best effort.

Wednesday and Thursday were the Grand Canyon experience. We (my parents and I) drove up on Wednesday and stayed the night at a lodge in the park which is *definitely* the right call if you ask me. The canyon is, as advertised, amazing, though I liken the experience of seeing it the throngs of people to the worst of the worst museum commentary experiences. "The colors; the play of light and shadow!" they exclaimed for the millionth time. I spent the bulk of my viewing time pondering the meaning of the term "reverence" and wondering whether Thoreau and Whitman exclaimed inanities at nature all the time, too.

I'm such a critic. Seriously, though, it was Spring Break, and the people were out in droves and exercising no self-censorship. Letting that go, the views were fantastic, and I got tons of photos (see below). We also had the pleasure of hearing a national parks ranger talk about going into the Canyon off-trail and the different precautions he takes to, you know, avoid death. He told us a great story about a pair of lost hikers and other ones about annoying, food-stealing ravens. Great stuff, and BEST OF ALL, he taught me how to tie my shoes to avoid "canyon toe" (no, that's something different) which hopefully means I'll be breaking my toenails less often. (Two days too late, actually, as I broke them Monday night).

I've spent the last five minutes trying to decide which pictures to post, and it's pretty impossible. So just check out a slideshow and enjoy this pair of enticing shots to whet your appetite with, you know, colors and light and shadow:

That first one is from sunset Wednesday; we failed to get up for the Thursday sunrise, so the second is a midmorning shot. Beck insisted that you can't get a feel for it via pictures, and she's of course right. I think you also can't really get a feel for it until you go down into it. Standing on the rim still gives you the vague impression that you're seeing something on TV, and the brown L.A. haze doesn't help matters.

We slept in on Thursday as mentioned; my dad and I grabbed a free, powdered egg style breakfast, and the three of us took a bus tour to catch all the views. In lieu of lunch, we hit the general store on the way out for some road snacks where I spotted this:

It's pretty low on the universe's list of cosmic coincidences, but Cactus Candy is a shut down shop on a street I drive down in Sunny Azz Phoenix every day - seems at one point they actually did make a product. Who knew? Anyways, lots of good pretzel and light fare treats for the road trip home, and I'd say we did quite a good job eating well for being restricted to highway fare.

After spending the day site-seeing and visiting a couple of artists studios that overhung the rim, we made the drive back home without incident. I had the unfortunate job of grading undergrad exams all spring break (I think I mentioned this earlier), and I spent most of the trip home head down, red-inking. Less than fun. We got back to SA at roughly five and made some turkey burgers for Beck's arrival home from work. Delicious times, and we capped off the day of glorious natural wonders by watching Iron Man, which was entertaining if silly.

On Wednesday morning, I took Mike NTPB back to the airport so he could head on to California. Great visit with the Miguel which I will detail reverse time style in the upcoming posts. Came back to pack and head off to the Grand Canyon, and like I said, probably not going to do it justice with words and pics - we had a good time, though the place was overrun with stereotypical middle class overweight tourists who spouted nonsense with a vengeance. maybe headphones are in order next time...

Alright, TBC with Tuesday in a few.

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part I, it seems)

This may be premature, as Houseguestapalooza MMX is not technically over yet. The iPFam is still in Californ-aye-ay and will be swinging back through Sunny Azz in the next few days. Still, it was a solid couple weeks of much fun, so might as well get the accounting in while the accounting's good.

I'll go backwards because, well, why not. Today did not involve HGaPaMMX, but I didn't have to use my AK. I read three articles and an entire an entire book (granted, it was only 160 pages or so, and I didn't *write* it, as Beck demanded) this morning, hanging around the house so as not to give the S/W/F too long of a day. Took the D-O-Gs for a W-A-L-K, then booked it to school at about 11 for a quick weights workout (and weighed a crisp, little-sweat-loss 171 afterwards - not bad given the guests and dining outs of late). Ran a brief honors discussion section for the undergrad bio course, then finished up the grading for the midterms*. Meeting w/ Jason, meeting with Manfred, a more or less figured out thesis project (for which I still need to write a prospectus, but still, DAMN!), and a semi-interesting class on medical student ethics education, and it was a day. Drove home, warmed up some leftover pizza, and am currently blogging to the erratic spastic blasts of Ornette Coleman and what he claimed will have been the shape of jazz that came. Or something.

* - In case you're not the facebooking type, I had a crushing pile of 90+ essay midterms as part of my spring break joy. They were horrendous (average grade = a generous 73). Painful, though I did learn the invaluable lesson that "disjustice" is a verb.

Sunday was also productive, as I woke up early and got a good deal of reading / writing done that I could not catch up with while the peeps were in town. Decided I was a glutton for punishment and went to do a track workout at Rhodes *before* pickup - I got in a mile, some buildup sprints, some straightaway sprints, and tried to run a 400 before my hamstring said no. Oh, and I timed myself on 40 yard dashes, and could do no better than a five flat. Sadness. I did get myself good and tired, which was the intention, and then played pickup starting off more tired than everyone out there. Good deal - made a silly lay out grab over/around somebody at one point, met a dude named Kyle from Ohio who looks to have club potential, and hit Kaysie for some scores... on her boyfriend. Yikes. Came home to the industriously awesome Beck, who had mowed the yard after a day of work. She is, indeed, awesome. We ate leftover Chinese and watched an Eddie Izzard DVD which was so funny that I had to pause it so I wouldn't asphyxiate from laughter. Good times.

I left very early Saturday AM to head to Sprawl SLUG IV. My parents arrived on their way out of town just in time to catch a layout Nyet goal - WAHOO. We (the light team) won 12-6, 13-11, another free lunch for the good guys. Said adios to my parents - they were headed to Fort Stockton and got there quite late thanks to the two hour time change. I came home and powered through grading while watching NCAA basketball. Beck came home and, after some reading, took a nap. As you may have guessed we picked up Chinese food for the evening and made it all the way to the first skit of SNL, in which Sigourney Weaver looked a whole lot like the PGOAT. Woah!

Friday AM, my dad and I headed to the golf curse to demonstrate how not to hit golf shots. Or rather, my dad demonstrated how not to hit golf shots; I just demonstrated how to not hit golf shots (the distinction is subtle). We came back to the homestead to pick up my mom and head over to SMOCA, where we saw a couple of nice exhibits: Chuck Close prints and Rewind Remix Replay: Design, Music & Everyday Experience. Very cool trip to the museum, and we followed it up with some nachos / a margarita at Los Olivos next door. Good times, only to be outdone by the GREAT times we had at the Biltmore movie that night - we watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off over Slice of Sicily Pizza and followed that up with some off-the-hook MoJo. Very fun day to end my parents' stay in Phoenix.

Alright, I am running out of gas here, and the next days involve some pic posting, so I'll hold off until my energy comes back. Trust that they'll be great. In the meantime, NAP. And yeah, this has had surprisingly little houseguest content given the post title. My bad.

Pedagogy Prob

Jenny, my labmate and fellow PhD student, is teaching the undergrad bioethics class for which I am a TA. Her basic teaching philosophy is a fair amount of reading, no busy work, few papers and few exams, lots of participation. However, the class is 180 people, and undergrads are happy to take advantage of a professor who simply asks that everyone do the reading and be prepared to discuss. To combat this, she gives quizzes on the class reading in every lecture. They are not hard quizzes - what was the thesis of article X, what is androcentrism and why is it important to ethics, the sort of thing you'd be able to answer easily if you 1, read the article, and 2, read it while not stoned. However, the averages on these quizzes have been terrible - we give them 0 points for a wrong answer, 1 point if they can demonstrate that they did the reading, and 2 points if they read and understood the reading i.e. got the answer correct. The averages have been 0.9, 0.6, and 0.5, etc. Awful.

So Thursday, Jenny asked me to write a quiz question. We wanted to cut them a break, so I tried to make it something that was severely easy if you had read the articles, but completely obscure if you hadn't. The first article was called "Dancing with the Porcupine" and was about the relationship between university-based research and industry (namely the pharmaceutical industry). It certainly seems like it should be obvious from the title alone, but the porcupine is a metaphor for the caution one need to exercise when working closely with people of different values and goals who could, um, prick you. The metaphor framed the short article, and, as you may have noticed, the metaphor was in the title of the paper (not to mention there was a subtitle that said something to the effect of "The Tricky Intermingling of University and Industry Research"). So, I came up with the murky but would-be-obvious-if-you read-it question:

"From the reading: what was the deal with porcupines?"

I'll fully admit that this was at least somewhat motivated by the sadistic desire to read the answers of floundering students who hadn't done the reading, as out of context, being asked about porcupines in a bioethics class conjures all kinds of images of throwing train track switches to kill one porcupine instead of five. So it was a bit of a silly question. But it should have been clear, given the reading, that we would have accepted any sort of answer that included "metaphor" and "for the relationship between universities and industry." Jenny was a little concerned that it was too casual, too obvious from the reading, and maybe not funny enough. Another article that had been assigned for that day recounted the tale of Joe Smith, who died essentially because a clinical trial researcher had a vested (financial) interest in his participation in a pharmaceutical trial, failed to disclose this fact, pushed Joe Smith through the trial when JS perhaps should not have been pushed, and killed Joe Smith via a reaction to the drug under study. The "drug" was an attenuated form of a virus that caused JS to have a overblown immunological reaction such that he died from shock. So Jenny appended our original question:

"From the reading: what was the deal with porcupines? (Extra Credit: Did Joe Smith die from a porcupine-inflicted wound?)"

Ooh. I really liked this question now, as it had some kick and depth to it. If you had read neither article, you would either be utterly confused and surrender with an "I don't know" or offer some ridiculous tale of Joe Smith and a quill puncture. If you had read the first and not the second, you could easily say what the deal was with porcupines, but only able to offer a guess as to how JS had died. Read the second and not the first, and you come out with "I don't know what porcupines are, but no, JS died from anaphylactic shock in a clinical trial." Read both, though, and you get to put two and two together (hopefully) - you could recite the porcupine metaphor, and then say yes, JS did die from a porcupine-inflicted wound, because it is at least arguable that the prickly relationship b/w the researcher and the pharmaceutical industry caused him to push JS through the study and killed him. That, natch, would require the ability to read / understand metaphors and apply them, but what the hell, that application would be in the extra credit portion of the exercise and not vital to the quiz. Right?

Right... so, tragically, it turns out, you can't do anything remotely this complicated when the vagaries of undergrad thought (or, notably, lack thereof) are involved. Note that I didn't say you can't do anything "complicated," as this is not what I would call a complicated question. You just can't even do anything "this complicated," because chaos ensues. What happened?

1. Bold ignorance of the concept "Extra Credit," not to mention parentheticals and italics. The majority of students answered the second question without even addressing the first. I don't know why. Some of them had read at least the second article and answered quite literally, "No, he died of anaphylactic shock in a clinical trial." No breath of porcupines, though. Others had clearly not read and said overtly wrong things - "he died in a car accident" - but again, no mention of the porcupines. Others still took the coin flip chance and answered simply "No," but again, no mention of porcupines. I can't begin to comprehend how one looks at a two part question, the second part of which is labeled as bonus and is in parentheses, and does not address the first art of the question at all.

2. Just hadn't read. The second largest portion of the class had no clue what was going on. These resulted in the anticipated hilarious answers, the best two of which were:

"I don't know what the deal was with porcupines. But no, he did not die from the porcupine wound, but from the infections that resulted from the wound."

"Porcupines are prickly critters not be messed with. Joe Smith did not die from the porcupine wound because they are quite small, but I ask you: when Joe stepped on the porcupine, what became of the quilled beast?"

3. Did the reading, didn't get metaphors. A portion of the class did the reading, accurately described the porcupine metaphor, but then said, no, he died from anaphylcatic shock. We shook our heads in disappointment and gave them full credit anyways.

4. Tried to game the system. More than one student rushed up immediately after the quiz and protested, "I did the reading. I knew the answer. But I thought you were trying to trick us!" They ended up giving answers that just said, "Yes, he died from a porcupine wound." And some, also citing that they had thought we were trying to trick them, said, "no." Again (see category 1), no reference to what the metaphor meant. Baffling. These were some of our better students, too. They protested adamantly, and we ultimately decided that we would give a "yes" answer the benefit of the doubt for the ones who talked to us and score it a 1. But why had they assumed that gaming was going on??!?!

5. Had a clue. Approximately five students described the metaphor and explained precisely how yes, one could describe Joe Smith as having died from a porcupine wound in the sense of X, Y, Z. I gave them full credit, but I may need to go back and give them 3's.*

* - Leading to a Mike TPB Gordon-esque quip, on a scale of 1 to 2, I'd give it a 3.

So that's where we're left - the base assumption that students 1, understand quizzes; 2, do the reading; and 3, can understand and use the simplest of metaphors, are decidedly bogus ones. The worst feeling of all was that I noted the bevy of 0's and 1's and complete misconstruals of the quiz and its purpose, so I couldn't help but feel guilty for having composed an apparently impenetrable quiz. It was so obvious that an entire range of the class never could have "gotten" the joke gave me a flash of an insight:

The quiz was biased. It was biased in favor of smart people.

I mean, even more biased than all quizzes are biased in favor of smart people. Which killed me. I mean, it's not like Jenny and I had composed a stunning poem of untold beauty. We had simply written a little bit of metaphoric play that turned out to be inaccessible to all but a fraction of the class. You had to have a level of linguistic comprehension that is, again, laughingly low, to appropriately engage the question. Which, pedagogically speaking, crushes me. I understand that for testing purposes, things should be clear, straightforward, etc. But this quiz just gives me the idea that we can't even work toward any kind of literary understanding of our everyday. Again, not that the joke was genius, just that it required an ounce of stepped back insight into word meanings. An insight that is obliterated by preoccupation with this notion that education is a game, that the teacher is a binary figure who either 1, gives it to you literally, or 2, is out to trick you. Nothing to be said for a clever turn of concepts that makes you, say, integrate the material.

Okay, end rant. I am sure I am making more of it than is there. The easy move is to say "ASU kids" derisively and move on. I'm not sure that is the case (though I did recently get the comment on a regrade request that a student's grammar was fine because "I can put a semicolon wherever I want." Um, okay). Sure, lots of university kids don't do their readings, don't get it, etc. It's the smart ones who were so distracted by grade-consciousness as to limit their interpretations to fifth grade reading levels that bothers me. How do we speak to others? I only have so many straight-forward, literal ways to convey that "I am in here." Sheesh.