As Promised / The Posthumous Challenge

The entirety of the old blog posts are now housed here. I probably destroyed all the links in the process, but you can still get the text and the majority of the pics. If you're up for reading about 2006 adventures in the Nyetverse, up to and including our first meeting of Ben-Ali (and a wealth of accounts of my aggro encounters on the Ultimate field - I believe I quote Dennis Leary when I say, at least on the Ultimate field, I'm as a$$hole, e-olio-o, e-olio), then just check Les Archives over at the right.

Of course, the blog wasn't the only thing going at the old website. There was all kinds of other crap that I can now mine for Ballad-filling material. I'll periodically throw up some movie reviews, musings on all kinds of stuff. I can't pretend to remember when those various things went up originally, so I'll just pretend I'm writing them in the present. Yeeha. In fact, what the hey, here's my innovative marketing for my art career. This offer still stands, btw:

The Posthumous Challenge

I am doomed to be painfully misunderstood during my lifetime, dragging my world-weary art into a sad chasm that could never dream to be understood in the present tense. I will lead a staggeringly fruitless artistic life, eventually winding up selling out and doing web design for ConglomoCorp wondering where it exactly all went wrong. My attic and basement will contain a bevy of pieces that will never bring a smile unto anyone's face until I leave this earth, at which point my treasure trove will be unearthed by a snooping relative and the world will have a cataclysmic bomb of artistic after-the-fact nirvana dropped on its lovely head. The name Nyet Jones will become synonymous with "beacon of genius in the darkening landscape of the soul-less, alienating and ultracorporate modern world," and people will say "Nyet Jones" in Post Modern Sociology classes across the country to save themselves syllables. "Nyet Jones" will be listed somewhere between Emily Dickinson and Kafka on the "Top 100 Role Models for Depressed Teenagers: There is Hope After Death" list now put out annually by USA Today. I will, without a doubt, become unfailingly posthumously famous.

You want great art for cheap.

This is just perfect. We are Bonnie & Clyde; Sid & Nancy; you're the drunken millionaire businessman and I'm the Las Vegas stripper who makes you forget to sign a prenup; I'm the used car salesman with a lemon Hummer and you're the rich kid from the burbs with the word "sucker" plastered on his forehead. Wait, scratch that last one.

I present to you The Posthumous Challenge: You can rent any piece of my art for the bargain basement one time fee of $50. In the event of my death, you can keep the piece of art. If you play your cards right, given the inevitability of my fame and the millions of dollars my works will someday fetch, you could turn your $50 investment into a gargantuan payoff. Just think: there will be that initial wave where the name Nyet Jones becomes famous, and then after all of the art from my house gets distributed to worldwide museums, things will die down a bit once everyone realizes that there is just no more exciting work by this artist to be had. But just as people are lamenting the drying up of the Jonesian well, you pop out of the woodwork and say "But wait, I have this Nyet Jones original that I bought over the internet in 2006!" And people will question you, but all kinds of DNA testing and various other scientific advancements that I couldn't hope to predict will validate your claim, and next thing you will be hearing "6.2 million, do I hear 6.3 million?" at an auction stocked with celebrities. You'll be rolling in it! How exciting! And all for 50 U.S. Dollars in 2006!

However, and there's always a however, that is the way the scene plays out if I die before you do. If you die before I do, I get my painting back AND you must will 1/3 of your estate to me (the other 2/3 can go to your spouse, mistress, pool boy, offspring, gold-digging playboy model, etc., however you see fit). I will, natch, have to get a notarized account of your estate and a guaranteed approximate dollar value of my payoff - no fair getting diagnosed with terminal cancer and then blowing all your money on cocaine, strippers, Crystal and life-sized edible models of the Jackson Five. That's not cool. I will also have to set some kind of minimum dollar amount that I am willing to take this gamble on, but if you're scouring the internet looking to buy art you're probably doing okay financially. Plus if you are ridiculous enough to take me up on this, you might as well have "Eccentric Millionaire" tattooed on your left thigh. But still, I don't want to give one of my fine pieces away only to later discover that I've inherited the Denver Broncos. Again, not cool.

There are a lot of aspects to this agreement that only enhance the intrigue. One, we will instantly have motive to kill one another, which adds a little flavor to the day to day. No more, "Hey, it's Nyet, I wonder what he's up to these days;" more like "Crap, there's Nyet, did I remember to pack the antivenom?" Two, even if we don't go around trying to kill one another, if our agreement were ever to become public and one of us were to die under strange circumstances, then blammo, instant prime suspect! Chances are you've never been a prime suspect in a murder investigation, so that would be a new experience, right? Also interesting is the subtle dynamic between us - I kinda need you to die quickly so I can pay off my med school loans, but I can't do anything too obvious or when I surprisingly inherit 1/3 of your estate I'll become the prime suspect. You, on the other hand, need me to die pretty quickly (I am, in all likelihood, younger and in better shape than you are) AND you need me to die in as dramatic and ridiculous and traumatic a way as possible, because that will only add to the hoopla of my posthumous fame. Seriously, which one gathers more notoriety: "died of natural causes" or "was crushed to death by 10,000 frozen parrots while composing a love song to his dog?" The answer is obvious. You also need to realize, though, that I'm not an idiot, and I'll probably leave something in my will like, "Hey, if there are frozen parrots involved in the circumstances of my death, you might want to check if Bob Smith has an alibi."

Everybody's life needs spice. Everybody needs great art. I would really appreciate the 50 bucks plus the potential inheritance thing will give me a solid reason to wake up each morning and read the obituaries. The Posthumous Challenge: for me, it's win-win - either I get cash or I become famous, which pretty much encapsulates the American Dream right there. For you, $50 for fine art in your home, and you'll never suffer a lull at a cocktail party again. Imagine, the laughter dies down into silence after some lame Republican in a bar joke, and you break the ice with "So, I hired a guy to kill an unknown artist." Your popularity will skyrocket, and maybe that cutie in accounting will reconsider both her stance on dating in the workplace and sex with people the age of her father. It could happen to you! So please, consider taking me up on the Posthumous Challenge. It's a deal you either won't or will regret.

Why do they lie?

Tim Kurkjian lied to me this morning:

"(Manny) being out allowed guys like Andre Ethier to become an even bigger part of that offense, and boy has he been good since Ramirez went out..."

Now, Andre Ethier has done some things in Manny's absence - he had a 3 HR game, he had a 2 HR game, he had some walk off basehits. Granted. But this is what Andre Ethier has done in Manny's 50 game absence overall (with the national league average for 2009, including pitchers, in parentheses):

BA: .222 (.257)
OBP: .297 (.330)
SLG: .438 (.404)
OPS: .735 (.734)
wOBA: .318 (.333)

(For the uninitiated, wOBA is a kind of overall offensiverun production stat calibrated to .333 being average).

So he is moderately outslugging the league, including all of those pitchers and catchers and scrawny second basemen, and as a consequence his OPS is average. Average, not "good." And those other stats are way below average. How do I know this? Because Ethier has been sitting on my fantasy bench, grinning at me and busting out with very occasional big nights (the aforementioned 3 HR game, the walk-offs, etc.) while being mediocre if not subpar the majority of the time. If you play fantasy at all, you know this is jsut annoying, because you can't afford to play him, and yet you look like an idiot when you miss his breakout games. He has been badly missing Manny, if anything, these past 50 games, and irking me in the process.

So my larger question is: why does TK not know this? Or if he does know this, why does he identify it as "good?" Why does he present an "expert opinion" that is patently false? Why do we tolerate this? Maybe it was just a flippant side mark and, like your average human being, he was basing a large scale assessment on the outlier, highly touted and therefore more easily memorable games. But seeing as he's an expert, you would think he would manage to get beyond the highlight-watching part of the job. I have no opinion of TK orhis reporting, and I don't even mean to imply that he in particular was at fault or that he does this routinely; I really just want to emphasize the question: why do we make and/or permit such casual assertions that fly in the face of easily accessible information?

Tahu Tahwa, oleh-oleh kuliner dari Malang

Berbekal wangsit yang saya dapatkan dan menangkan (halah), akhirnya saya berhasil juga menginjakkan kaki di tanah jawa. Padahal baru saja saya ngobrol dengan sahabat saya, si Ontz, bahwa saya ingin pergi dari Makassar. Even it just for a while. Dan holla! Tampaknya Tuhan mendengarnya, saya akhirnya bisa ke Malang menemani bos yang akan ikut workshop wirausaha muda mandiri. Be careful what you wish for dude!

Jadwalnya sendiri dimulai tanggal 22-24 Juni kemarin. Sudah berlalu 2 minggu. Baru sekarang baru sempat menuliskan apa saja yang terjadi selama perjalanan kemarin. Rencana kami memang sudah harus ada di malang tanggal 22 sore. Jadinya kami berangkat via jakarta, yang ternyata bisa via surabaya! Ckckc. Jadinya kami harus transit selama 7 JAM di Cengkareng. Gosh.

Akhirnya kami bisa tiba juga di Malang. Kota yang kata orang dingin. Well, probably not. Kalau sudah pernah ke Toraja atau Malino, disana lebih dingin. Di Malang saya masih bisa berjalan-jalan tanpa menggunakan jaket. Mungkin istilah yang paling tepat untuk menggambarkan kota Malang adalah sejuk. Dengan banyak pepohonan sampai di pusat kota.

2 hari disana saya tidak sempat mencoba mencicipi aneka jajanan Malang karena jadwal yang memang begitu padat. Hari rabu, 23 Juni, kami seharian di Universitas Brawijaya mengikuti workshop Wirausaha Muda Mandiri. Astamedia sendiri kebagian satu booth untuk mempromosikan apa saja unit usaha kami. Pematerinya hebat euy! Ada Anang, Rhenald Kasali, malamnya ada Gigi. Jadi gak sempat mutar-mutar. Besoknya sudah harus pulang. Padahal saya penasaran dengan bakso bakar yang ada di malang. Huhuhuhu.

Satu kuliner yang sempat saya cicipi adalah Tahu Tahwa. Kebetulan ketika saya jalan-jalan di sekitar hotel kami nginap ada penjual Tahu Tahwa. Dengan segala kepenasaran yang ada, kok banyak banget yang makan yah? Emang apa yang dijual?


Ternyata ini adalah salah satu makanan khas malang. Sebuah sajian yang terdiri dari sari kedelai yang menyerupai tahu, ditambah kuah yang pedas plus kacang goreng. Rasanya? Aneh! Haha! Pertama, kita seperti memakan air tahu yang dipadatkan, dicampur dengan kuah sarabba. Atau karena saya memang yang tidak terlalu suka dengan sarabba kali yah? Kalau kalian tidak tahu sarabba itu apa, ini adalah minuman yang terbuat dari campurann jahe, gula merah, santan yang dimasak bersama-sama. Sedikit menyerupai bandrek katanya. Dengan rasa yang manis dan pedas. Cocok di minum di malam hari. Jadi ketika ditambah dengan sari kedelai, it just akward!

Suapan kedua dan seterusnya saya masih berusaha untuk menikmatinya. Haha! Bentuk penghargaan jugalah dengan mas-mas yang menjualnya. Saya terus menikmati kombinasi manis+pedas+lembut dari tahu tahwa ini. Apa yang membuatnya terasa aneh? Karena mungkin sudah terpaku dalam pikiran saya bahwa kalau minum sesuatu yang ”pedas” seperti ini hanya bisa dilakukan di malam hari. Pada saat udara sudah dingin dan butuh penghangat tubuh. Tapi saya lupa saya berada di Malang. Biarpun di siang hari tetap terasa sejuk. Hahaha!

Dengan harga 2000 ribu seporsi, tahu tahwa ini bisa lumayan mengenyangkan dan menghangatkan tubuh. Saya tidak tahu apakah memang penjual Tahu Tahwa ini berupa geroba dorong atau ada yang membuka warung sendiri. Karena walaupun terletak di pinggir jalan dan kami makan di trotoar, banyak sekali yang singgah makan. Mulai dari pekerja kantoran, ayah dan anak, sampai ibu-ibu. Berarti ini barang enak yah!

Perjalanan meninggalkan Malang saya lalui melalui Surabaya. Ditemani dengan keinginan bahwa suatu hari saya harus kembali ke Kota Malang untuk berjalan-jalan. Dan menikmati aneka jajanan khas Malang lainnya. Wait for me guys!

How to refresh stress after work

At this time we can see a lot of people spent their time in the office. From 8 to 4, or 9 to 5. Working at the office means one thing. You could only talk and work with the others. No matters how simple your task at the office, it usually makes you tired when you are back to home.

Just be careful. When you get a lot of stress at the office, you may need something to make you more relax. Watching a football game maybe a better idea. You can call your buddy or take you kids in the weekend. You can see the list on the nfl sunday ticket schedule. You can ask them first to go with you.

What about the time? Maybe you don't have more time to buy the nfl sunday ticket, you can ask a help from your friends. If you really busy to work, you don't have to afraid didn't get the ticket.

Now you can arrange a strong relationship between father and son, earn some money for nfl sunday ticket price and you enjoy the time. From monday to friday get work and having fun in the weekend!

Hello.

THAT was the best two month nap I've ever had.

Well, what happened was a confluence of a number of things. One, I got mired in writing two term papers, both of which I waited a little too long into the semester to start writing (though I had done a fair amount of reading for both along the way). That'll be a good mistake to not replicate. Still, the relevant-to-you consequence was that I spent several days in a row hammering away at papers, both of which i was not thrilled with and so required a lot of nitpicky editing and brain-wracking editing. Basically the sort of stuff that would have made for the worst blog-reading you've ever encountered, things like, "Today, I fixed minutiae X about topic that you do not care about Y; it took me Z hours and this is all i've been thinking about for days and I have become a unidimensional log bump." See, you didn't need that. If you're really interested, one paper was on scientific realism and the need for a working understanding of scientific model justification amongst policy-makers; the other was on the possibility of cross-cultural translation in cultural psychology and a recommendation for statistics-based methods of validating comparisons of intercultural test results. Sexy, sexy, i know.

Two, my hard drive crashed. Well, first my computer turned into a discombobulated pile of mechanical do-nothing, which turned out to be due to the hard drive slowly corrupting and the CPU having trouble accessing the appropriate files for start up, running programs, etc. I spent a couple of days practicing all kinds of ninja-witch magic on my computer getting it back up to form, and it ran well for abut a day before whatever corruption that was going on in the hard drive finished itself and it (the computer's soul) emitted its death croak. Because I am so SMRT, though, I had backed everything important up (well, most everything*), and manged to rebuild my computer on the backup hard drive I installed a while back. Reincarnation, yes. The end of this was that after finishing my papers and having absolutely nothing exciting to write about, I had spend several days frustratingly banging away at my computer. I had become unidimensional in another dimension (what?), and not only that, it was a dimension that made me want to avoid the computer at all costs. So I didn't blog through that ordeal either.

* - I'm still missing some of the miscellaneous software that I can't find discs and/or registration codes for - things like a photoshop clone, my music recording software, etc. Non-essentials, and I'll eventually get it together and put them back on the machine. No worries. The big things - photos, music files - are all good to go and thoroughly backed up. Take that, fallible human artifacts.

Three, I made an executive decision, partially in an effort to save money and partially just because I wasn't using it, to cancel my GoDaddy account and thereby rid the world of nyetjones.org. That website is all backed up, too, so I'll start the slow and insanely boring project of transferring all of those blog entries and any other redeeming content over here sometime soon. I don't know if anybody even noticed this - certainly no one has contacted me about it - which just speaks to the pointlessness of maintaining such an unviewed website. This, in addition to my blogging apathy, only furthered the elimination of my active online presence, and at some point in here I began to seriously question the audacity of updating the unseen millions (okay, unseen twelves) w/r/t my daily activities. This is what is known in the biz as a lack of motivation.

Four, perhaps obviously, the vast majority of my blogging of late had been all about Ultimate, and there were no league games to recap. I could have told you all kinds of exciting things about pickup, but that would have been even dumber than the VOTS writeups. I also could have told you about some exciting softball times (2nd place finish in spring league; lotsa stupidity in the il Vileno realm)... actually, that Il Vileno stuff probably contributed to my apathy quite a bit. Lotsa effort, totally unappreciated. Eff that; no more discussion necessary.

Five, after finishing those two papers, my job has effectively turned into full-time reading. I'm getting a lot done and forming a strong base on which to build whatever thesis plan I'm going to design this year, but again, the daily accounts of "today I read pages 231-398, yay" did not seem especially enticing. I've also been running into repeated super-stupid arguments or, more exactly, clear exhibits of the world of academia being entirely self-concerned/located and not really interested in any application to the real world outside of itself, which is somewhat disheartening. This is a little bit of a difficult feeling to convey, especially since it's not like it's something I wasn't aware of; the concept of ivory tower is hardly a hidden one. But seeing its mechanisms up close, repeatedly, just got old, and I didn't want to blog about a broken-record wah wah of my feelings of how insular the academic world is and how difficult any authentic interaction with the world from within it is likely to be. I chose to silence my inner Eeyore.

Effectively, I've been feeling like quite a boring human being of late and did not want to blog about it terribly much. But I've decided over the past couple days that July 1st was a good enough time to snap out of the fnuk and realize that there have been quite a few things going on of late that I could have thrown on here. In no particular order:

1. Julliette got married! Huzzah! We went to New Orleans. I will post about this.
2. Andy got married. Huzzah deux!!! We went to Long island. I will post about this.
3. I say Mike whilst in Nueva York! And new SLF Jen! I will post about this.
4. Beck's been playign real life women's frisbee! On a team I am coaching! I will post about this.
5. I made the local club team Sprawl! I am an O-line player! I will post about this.
6. Phish has been back on tour! This is unspeakably great! I will post about this.
7. I organized a Saturday morning competitive Ultimate game for money. This is all kinds of awesome. I... have pretty much relayed everything you need to know about that.

Alright. That's a good framework to start, and between those beauts and the backlog of old posts that I'll throw up soon (throw up, HA - no really, you can go down memory lane a read a whole lot of Ali-Ben content!), you should have some entertainment coming up. Soon. I promise. No, really.

Oh, and I have about 2000 saved links to share, none of which will be current any more.

Fashion statement : have you choosing the right color?

One of the biggest problem for a man is choosing the suit for themself. This is important, because you are what you wear. For an example, you are a bank account. You must wear a shirt and a tie every day.

This is not a simple problem for a man. Sometimes we didn’t care about the color between the shirt and the tie. Or even with the pants! Using a blue shirt with the red tie, or using the brown pants with the green shirt. This is a nightmare. And how to fix the problem?

First, if you don’t have a girlfriend, than ask a help from your sister. Women always know how to get the right suit or the right tie for us. The reason is because we looking a shirt which comfortable with us. For women, not only comfortable, but a shirt must be eye catchy. Not only about the material, it’s also about the color, the style, even the details. So other people didn’t boring to stare at you. Just one problem when you go to mall with your girlfriend or your sister, they took a long time just for looking around! I know this is the hard part, but for your own sake just do it. So you can find the right color or the right style for you.

Second, go to your room and see what color from your room is the dominant. People say what the color from your room is the dominant color from your life. If you choosing white, you must be a simple man. If you have a grey color, than you are modern man. But don’t think that white is your color then you use white color from shirt, tie, even the pants! Nope. This is just the basic color! You can buy a white shirt and choosing the maroon tie with the black pants. Sometimes you must see the designers too. Because they mix a different color with their suit. There’s a broken white, a white sky, there’s a lot of combination color. With a different style too. You feel comfort with your suit and the other people is also comfort when they near you.

The last thing you must care is about the weather. Is it a spring, winter, or the rainy season. Why this is important? You can’t wear a dark suit in the spring or in the summer. That’s too weird. The color that you can use in the spring is the bright color and chose the right material. If you are spending your time with your family, you can use the cargo pants with the brown color and white t-shirt. You can use it as a dress code for the summer with all family member. In the winter or the rainy season you must use a little bit dark color such as broken maroon, dark brown, even black. You must have a coat, a scarf with the same color too. So you didn’t get a difficult when you want to use it.

So, I hope there’s no more problem with the suit or the pants that you want to wear. Wherever you go, whatever the time, you can find your own color in your own suit.

Woman and their sixth sense of clothes

I always adore woman and their sense of fashion. Maybe it's natural gift for them? Woman always know how to mix and match. Using the right color and the right size.

At this time we can't say work at the office just for man only. Nowadays the woman have a same position with the man. And that's why almost woman have their own suit. To handle a meeting with the client, to assign a task, and doing a lot more. Of course the clothes are comfortable and fashionable also.

Even though the pressure is same, woman can do the job like man do. After work hour, woman still have some time to spent their time with friends. I know it sound ridiculous, but it seems woman have their own sense about their suit. So they don't get bother if they have to go to the party after work hour. They always have a second clothes, and they always great! Woman can use it for works and use it too for the party.

In the weekend, woman know how to enjoy the time. Off course with using the right clothes too. Woman always know what to wear when try want to go the mall, playing with the children in the park, or just a little gossip time with the others. Woman's key is just one. Using the right clothes at the right time.

Now I know how they can spend a lot of time just to choose what they want to wear. It makes them more beautiful.