How Observant

I know I shouldn't use the R word

2012-02-09T18:54:00.000-05:00

I was reading a couple of NY Times articles online recently (this and this) and, while the content was troubling, the fact that these are online added a new wrinkle to bring all kinds of other trouble: comments. This could very easily be a self-defeating topic since this blog has a label "comment-whoring" since like all narcissists who write these things, comments are like money, crack and Reese's cups all rolled into one. (I love Reese's cups, by the way.)

The comments in the two stories kind of remind me of the reaction to the Halftime in America ad, which I'm pretty sure you've seen already. People saw what they wanted to see in it, regardless of response. I know I myself am not above bias, so I do that too. But, being an engineer, I also know that data is important. I want to point you towards this link of of Confirmation Bias and Hostile Media Effect, both are cognitive biases that I think are relevant. (There are probably more, but who are we kidding? You're not clicking those links.) For example, the Depression and Post WWII eras are cited by both Keynesians and anti-Keynesians as justification for their positions. The same data yields wildly different conclusions. How? Those biases.

Another example: last week, the latest unemployment numbers came out, and they declined and currently sit at 8.3%. To quote from Businessweek, "While the unemployment rate has declined 1.4 percentage points over the past 24 months... the population-to-employment ration hasn't budged, holding at 58.5%..." Both supporters of the president and his opponents have cited the unemployment decline as a vindication, as an improvement of the statistics on the one hand on the one hand, and a demonstration of the ineffectiveness of his policies on the other.

In each case, they both can't be true at the same time. Yet, the folks who leave comments on those articles assert each position with such verve that the other side must be stupid or deceptive to disagree. I'm not sure that deception is entirely out of the question in some cases, but really, a lot of this is driven by confirmation bias and seeking out data that supports your established position, rather than looking for real data. Data is, after all, boring.

Sometimes, though, finding legitimate data is a challenge. For example, who is a credible source on climate change? (Honestly, I don't believe either side. I don't think anybody understands the science to nearly the degree they say they do.) Or, if you saw Meet the Press on Sunday, Mitch Daniels asserted that a lot of the stifled business climate is a result of excessive government regulation, to which Michael Bloomberg later agreed. However, neither really said which regulations. It's just a mantra that people say. Then again, there are plenty of people think that the business climate is the way it is due to insufficient regulation. They can't both be right at the same time.

Many comments in the first NY Times link talk about how the Constitution is both obsolete and hard to change and, just like Daniels, don't really talk about why. There is also a sense that the stagnation caused by the Republicans as an opposition party is somehow contrary to the intent of the document is a rather sever misunderstanding of its purpose. An active government was not considered a positive by the authors of the Constitution. Additionally, it being hard to change is by design. That is a problem, though, for people who think that government should be more active regardless of how they feel. On the other hand, it is venerated as a sacred document by those who think it is from the hand of God, and any desecration is blasphemy. They both can't be right at the same time.

I frequently call these discussions, especially on public pages like that as arguments between retards on the internet, so I don't know how seriously I should take them. I feel bad about calling them retards, though, because it's not a nice word. It carries a weight, though, that I think is hard to convey otherwise. How can I imply that same weight without being offensive?

That's not fair

2012-01-30T05:55:00.002-05:00

Next Sunday, the Super Bowl between the Patriots and the Giants will be played for the second time in 4 years. I'm about as disinterested in this Super Bowl as I've been in any in a long time, because I don't have particularly strong feelings about either team. I like the Buccaneers, and they stunk. I dislike the Panthers, and they stunk, so that's fine. Cam Newton's smug smile will haunt my dreams.

Tom Brady, the quarterback for the New England Patriots, has won three Super Bowls, and Eli Manning, the quarterback for the New York Giants, has only won one Super Bowl. All the talk this week in the news about fairness has gotten me thinking that maybe, in the interest of fairness, they should adjust the rules in this game to accommodate Eli (since he's only won one championship) to correct Tom Brady's touchdown throws and make them worth one third of Eli's (since he's won three Super Bowls and, objectively, is three times the quarterback that Eli is) and only be two points a piece. (Note: The NFL touchdown is worth 6 points.) That would be fair, right?

What is fair? Fairness is, to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter, "Hard to define but easy to identify." (Note: Potter was talking about pornography. Isn't that weird?) Equal chance of outcome? Well, I personally think the Patriots are a much better team than the Giants, so making an adjustment like I described would make the game "fairer" in that sense. However, I also thought that the Packers were a better team that the Giants, and look where that got us now.

The thing about football, much like the tax code that the president is arguing about making fairer, is entirely arbitrary. It's a set of rules agreed upon before "play". If the NFL decided that next season every team's running back must wear a tiara or be disqualified from play, they could do that. There is no universal standard by which football must be played. The rules of the college game are different than the professional one. Taxes can similarly change from year to year, and there is no definitive truth as to what the best tax plan is, or what an individual's fair share is. How much is your fair share? How much is mine?

Changing rules like this really serve to change incentives. In the Super Bowl, if Tom Brady's touchdowns were in fact worth less, then the Patriots would run more inside the red zone, because that would maximize their scoring potential. But, it wouldn't necessarily take away Tom Brady's advantage anywhere else besides the end zone. Likewise, if the tax regimes were different, people would spend their money differently to maximize their return. It seems exaggerated for rich people because they have more disposable income than the rest of us do, and are better able to take advantage.

Think of it like this: Dr. Sighted loves beef jerky. If beef jerky costs 3.99 at Publix, but 4.59 at Bi-Lo, I would buy beef jerky from Bi-Lo. Now, what if Publix were 30 miles away? How much beef jerky would Dr. Sighted have to eat for making that trip to be worth it? There comes a point where the economics for rich people are really different. It may seem unfair, but possession is 9/10ths of the law. (In the interest of full disclosure: I don't really understand that phrase.)

If I have a lot of money and investing yields the best return, that's where I'm spending it. Simple as that. Is it unfair that the tax rate is unequal? Maybe. But, remember, our tax code is progressive, so it's more exacting on higher incomes. However, people with more income (and thus more to lose) have more incentive to find ways not to pay it -- so with a code like ours, rife with loopholes, people with means are able to find them. But, honestly, if you had the resources to find ways to pay less, you'd do it. I think it's very easy to make an argument that it's not fair that rich people pay more simply because they can. Elton John can sing really well, why shouldn't he sing at my wedding as well as Rush Limbaugh's?

Fairness is ultimately arbitrary, unless you cite a standard. (Really, everything is arbitrary without a standard.) So why do we think that the rich should pay more, other than we think they don't really deserve what they have? Or they don't need what they have? What standard are we using? And at what point to you become rich?

Responsibility is hard

2012-01-20T20:49:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure it's evident, but I live in South Carolina again now. It's my second favorite state, but has the potential to pull into first because I wasn't born here so I'll never really be accepted as one of their own but hope to participate in their society, like Jame Goodall and the apes, but since I live with my wife here, the best times of my life are ahead of me with her here. I also had two pretty good years at Clemson.

As a resident of the Palmetto State (which has a rather obsessive, borderline creepy relationship with its imagery [see below]), I get to vote in the primaries tomorrow.

As a former opinions editor, this makes me giddy. It's like Christmas or St Patrick's Day that only comes around every four years. Politics are the bread and butter of opinions editors, and most other people don't like discussing it, and when they do, they normally don't know what they're talking about. So, soccer fans, I know how you feel.

I went through the emotional gamut that I always go through during these primaries -- excitement about the strength of the field, and then eventual disappointment once we get to know them. That's the way that most things work, though; I got excited about watching the Orange Bowl, and well, that was kind of a disappointment, too. Really, though, it's not as bad as it looks, because exaggeration gets attention. "Worst. Episode. Ever." It's funny because it's absurd.

My position, as described by the political compass, is economically right and a little libertarian. (See below again.) So, I'm trying to figure out where I fall. Sounds kind of mopey, like every high school drama, "Where do I belong?" But really, that's the fun. That's what life is like. It's choosing the new meal at the restaurant, seeing the new movie, and surprising your wife with something fun. It's figuring it all out. This time, figuring out for whom I want to vote is quite significant for the rest of the county. It's fun, but it's also a little intimidating, because it feels important.

I have taken this responsibility seriously, pretty aggressively consumed the media about the candidates to make informed decisions and I hope that when it's your turn, you will too. People say every election, "This is the most important election of our time." It might be true every time, but if so, it's silly to say. That's like saying, "This is the most important meal ever. If I never eat again, I'll die. So I must eat this Reuben sandwich." I do love Reuben sandwiches, though.

Sins are bad, mmkay

2012-01-11T06:14:00.000-05:00

One of the prongs of a recent political discussion has been clanging around in my head, and I have not been able to quite put it to rest. It comes from the role of faith in politics and the perception that its presence leads to oppression, if not specifically targeted at disadvantaged groups, then effectively so -- primarily women and homosexuals. Since this discussion was concerning American politics, it was really in regards to Christianity.

It bugged me, because Christianity, if properly understood, has no room for that. When it enters politics, though, that's a different story -- Theodosius's decision to establish Christianity in the 4th Century created a new privileged class within the Roman Empire and Europe hasn't been the same since and, unfortunately, frequently not for the better. This gets to the issue of "religion" vs. "faith" and, while seemingly nuanced, is significant.

This is important to me because this image that became presented, one of an oppressive and restricting Christianity is not the same image that I have of it in my experience. Christianity is primarily about love and forgiveness, because each of us has found love and forgiveness through Christ based on His mercy and nothing to do with our actions. That mercy extends to anyone who seeks it -- regardless of color, gender, sexual preference, or behavioral history. That is, it is entirely inclusive to anyone, so long as a relationship with Christ is pursued. That's at the heart of John 3:16, the verse that nearly everyone has heard at least once. Additionally, when asked what the most important commandment is, Jesus answers with love God -- and the second, love your neighbors (Matthew 22:35-40).

Christianity has no inherent political aims within its scripture, really highlighted by Matthew 22:21, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." We have applied a rather crude litmus test to our politics to require the appearance of Christian faith from our leaders whether they really believe it or not. It is very important to note that there are a number of ways that belief manifests itself, we are all sinners and no one really knows another's heart, so it is difficult to say who falls in which category, but the more vocal certainly get tougher scrutiny.

Rick Perry is an example of such a candidate. One of the issues that he put front and center in his ad entitled, "Strong" is one that really gives credence, unfortunately, to the position I am trying to argue against. He opens with a volley against homosexuals, which is a controversial subject. I think that Christians and homosexuals frequently get hung up on another way out of proportion to the need. While there is ample scriptural evidence that points to homosexual behavior as being sinful, it's also important to note other common things that are sinful: divorce, gossip, not giving freely, greed, and putting God to the test. There aren't really protests of objection against divorce courts, celebrity tabloids, politicians who claim to be faithful but are not with their money when their tax returns are released, television shows that have a character make a deal with God or threaten Him with unbelief unless some desired outcome is reached with nearly the enthusiasm that religious people go after homosexuals.

This sort of public reaction that we do see begs the question that some sins are worse than others. That is a rather nuanced theological question, but ultimately, sin is failing to meet God's expectations, and failure is failure. In order to reach fellowship with God, we need forgiveness from that failure, and Christ is the vehicle God provided to achieve that, out of God the Father's love for humanity. (See Romans 6:23.) Every sin is a source of separation from God -- a lack of Christlike perfection -- so we are all in this boat together. The very powerful story of Jesus and the sinful woman in John 8:2-11 shows us that we are not able to judge and should not. By judging, we are assuming for ourselves the role of God the Son, which is also sinful.

Now, this isn't to say that we shouldn't object to sinful behavior. The charge for Christians to share our story (Matthew 28:16-20) is based on a sense that we have something valuable -- a relationship with Christ, a loving God -- that others might want. It is a path to redemption, truth, and freedom. Sinful behavior is an obstacle to achieving that relationship, and not loving people is unmistakably contrary to God's will.

That's an important o

2011-12-21T17:36:00.000-05:00

I read an interesting article on the New York Times blog the other day. It's a philosophy professor at Amherst, Louise Antony, trying to defend her point of view of moralistic atheism. The basic premise is that she considers there to be a natural right and wrong in nature independent from God, whether He exists or not. She breaks down two concepts of morality that she calls the Divine Command Theory (DCT) -- where things are good because God wills them -- or the Divine Independence Theory (DIT) -- where God wills only things that are good.

She talks about how the second is a more enlightened way to think because, well, it allows people not to need God and people like her to feel better about the fact that they are living in a similar fantasy that she thinks people like me do. She has a long explanation about how different the two theories are, centering around the arbitrariness of DCT versus the steadiness of DIT. If "goodness" were a natural property, like mass or electrical charge, then for us to make any use of it, there must be a way to measure (or at least detect) this property. She posits that we can, and cites some examples involving home invasion, slavery and torture. And I think we can all agree that those are in fact, wrong. However, they weren't always.

Private property is a very old concept and violation of it has been considered socially unacceptable behavior outside of wartime in just about every culture as long as we have written things down. Slavery was practiced by just about every major culture for a very long time, with most Western countries banning it in the 19th Century and some Middle-Eastern countries acting as late as the 1960s. The Geneva Conventions were adopted in the 20th Century, not because we became enlightened and grew out of it like witchcraft, but because the practice was rampant and the countries that did not abandon a Judeo-Christian worldview wanted to stop it.

That's not to mention cultures like the Aztecs who practiced human sacrifice, Indians who had the institution of sati until the British outlawed it, the Arab concept of honor killings, and our very own policies of institutionalized racism that were finally taken off the books in the 1960s. I think we can also agree that they are wrong as well.

So why didn't we know enough then that it was wrong? The simplest answer is that there is no universal and innate natural "goodness" outside of an agreed upon standard. The laundry list of sins that humankind is evidence that we need such a standard, and Western culture (and Middle-Eastern culture as well) has adopted the Abrahamic traditions as that standard. Prof. Antony's concept, absent some sort of evidence that this idea of natural goodness can be identified is no different than pagan pan-theism -- there are petty gods in everything (or a single universal force permeating everything) providing its intrinsic value -- not unlike George Lucas's Jedi religion.

She also makes a point about how it is better to be good absent the threats of punishment or promise of reward. Maybe. But if there are no consequences to our behavior, why is it better? We call electrical charge positive and negative, and I always preferred working with positive charges in class because it's easier to work with, and the word negative carries bad connotations. Think of another example. The NCAA has myriad arbitrary rules about what college students can or cannot do in order to play their sport. Reggie Bush used his talent to provide a house for his family beyond their means. However, that was against the rules. Did he do anything wrong? According the NCAA, yes. Is that rule right or wrong? Does it matter?

The largest point, though, is that her worldview requires faith. Just like mine does. And it is intellectually dishonest of her to argue that she is morally superior because she subscribes to DIT and thinks she can arrive at moral behavior without needing God because she's smart, without regard to the moral infrastructure that was built by a history of religious people. The two concepts ultimately are different only in the academic sense that she presents, not in the real world in which we live, because the objectivity she claims cannot be divorced from the culture that surrounds us.

She also discusses interpersonal relationships, and says that by acquiring value through God you are essentially denying the human value of everyone else. We kind of do that now, as well; society determines value by the law, and for a while in the United States, even, black people were worth less than white people, and we even defined the ratio. Fetuses are worth very little in the eyes of the law. That changes when society decides it would. We, as enlightened smart people, changed our minds.

Tribalism, where we prefer and value people who are like us or related to us more than others, kind of fits the mold as well. Most of history was driven by this or the similar idea of nationalism. In many places, history still is driven by them. We look at the Janjaweed and know that they are doing wrong, but they see themselves as looking out for their own people, because they feel that their people are worth more. The Japanese thought they were worth more than the Chinese in Nanking. I could go on.

I suppose her counter-argument would be, "Those things were wrong even then, we just disobeyed them. We were wrong, too." Maybe, but how would we have known? She cites Plato as positing this argument before the birth of Christ, so it's not like we haven't had the material to work this out until the 20th and 21st Centuries.

If there really is a natural goodness we can identify without God, humans suck at it. Christians already knew that, though. We need a standard. Christians identify that as the unchanging Bible and the life of Christ.

There are good arguments about the ability of atheists to be moral people. However, this one, this particularly condescending one, is not it. (That's why people don't like atheists: they tell you that you're wrong while claiming to be morally superior. It's not a very becoming look.) An example is quite simply to follow the Golden Rule -- but then again, that owes its origin to millenia of religious thinking.

The title of this post is a lie, too

2011-12-16T16:11:00.002-05:00

Christopher Hitchens died today. I haven't read a lot of him, mostly essays that appeared in the Atlantic over the time that I subscribed to that publication. I enjoyed them. I don't remember any of them particularly like I do the piece about autism by John Donvan or the incredible book review by Caitlin Flanagan that I can't quite recall, but I never passed Hitchens by because he is Christopher Hitchens. His essays carried a certain weight, almost a shot across the bow, simply because they carried his name in the by-line. He was more than just a prominent atheist, he was anti-religion's wittiest voice.

I read those essays because I wanted to see what the fuss was about, mostly. Not all of them were about anti-religion, not even most of them were. I didn't read God Is Not Great, though, because it seemed like too much of an affront. I could guess the content, though -- religion in general and Christianity in particular is bad because it is exclusive, cruel, misogynistic and anti-intellectual. I say this with a dose of irony, specifically because I don't know the man; I only know about him. I contend that the same was true for him; he didn't know God, he merely knew about Him, or rather, thought he did. If he really did, it would be hard to make the mistake of saying that God is not great, let alone writing a book about it. If I addressed those incorrect assertions about Christianity I think appear in his book, I would be a simple hypocrite, attacking straw men that may not be accurate representations of the work with which I disagree. So I will not, aside from saying that if those opinions are held about the teachings of Jesus Christ they are categorically in error.

I think it's easy to get tied up in concerns like that with people like Hitchens, and get frustrated because he is calling me stupid. He isn't saying it to me personally, but the accusation is, nonetheless, very personal. I think in the greater sense we Christians owe Mr. Hitchens a debt of thanks for reminding us that our work is not done. It is very easy for us to live in places where there are churches all over town and think that the most important thing for our spiritual development is to remember to bring the green bean casserole to the church social. People like Hitches show us that it is not. We have a lot of work to do for our lives to look like Christ's did. If we live in a world where Christians behave in a way that a book called "God Is Not Great" can be published and not be a comedy, we are failing.

We are not showing what grace looks like. We are not showing what service looks like. We are not showing what humility looks like. We are not showing what love looks like. It is not easy to hear that we are failing, but that's what Hitchens's life is: a neon lit billboard exclaiming that it is easy for people to look at Christians and not see Christ.

And that's a shame, because our message is so powerful. It is the message of unfailing hope, that the creator of everything cares enough to sacrifice His son to relieve us of the burden of sin. In return, we are simply to get to know Him, love Him (which would be inevitable if you truly do the former), and love others. If that's not great, I don't know what is.

Moves Like Dabo*

2011-11-15T20:14:00.001-05:00

Did you know that there is a phrase in the college football consciousness "pull a Clemson"? (Search for that, or typical Clemson, or something along those lines...) Basically, it means that your goal is yours for the taking as long as you do what you're supposed to do and don't screw up -- but you do anyway. For as long as I can remember, that's been emblematic of the Clemson football team, because I'm not old enough for the big days of the 80s when Clemson was busy being awesome on the gridiron. This year, though, actually looks different.

It's a funny thing how that "always been there" kind of attitude affects you. I cannot believe I am going to reference the Sing Off two posts in a row, but when Vocal Point, a talented group of Mormon boys, sang Ain't Too Proud to Beg on the show, I looked up from my smartphone where I was doing something completely unrelated and manly like reading about football and monster trucks and said, "This sounds really white." (In the interest of full disclosure: I am allowed to say that, because I am really white.) It made me appreciate the Rolling Stones in a way I never really had before, because they had always been the Rolling Stones -- this icon of music in a way that you just don't understand unless you know that they were one of the pioneers that broke barriers by making it ok to listen to music that black people made by trying to sound like them, like Elvis and other white blues musicians. While that may sound vaguely racist, it was a revolution in all the positive ways that art is supposed to be revolutionary by sharing white and black experiences (which ultimately, are the same experiences, which wasn't really universally accepted in 1966, when the Temptations first recorded that song).

This lack of perspective is why people think that politics are the ugliest they've ever been right now or that Justin Bieber is the greatest musician in the history of musicians. (Clearly Rick Astley is ahead of him. [Interesting note: Rick Astley also covered Ain't Too Proud to Beg.]) It also leads to the strange acceptance of the status quo that Christians feel about their faith and what it really means.

Just like I've never known a world where Clemson didn't choke away ACC title opportunities or an undiscovered Rolling Stones, I've always been exposed to the Christian message that by faith and faith alone we are forgiven. There's never been a discovery kind of moment like the first time you see HDTV or taste real vinegar barbecue sauce and think, "This changes everything."

That's how Christianity is supposed to feel: revolutionary and liberating. Christ's arrival changed the way that men and God could relate and broke down barriers that separated men from one another. Those are no small things and because we've been steeped in the culture it's really easy to look at church and see something stodgy and establishment, like seeing Sir Michael Jagger and Keith Richards, cultural icons, rather than two kids from Kent trying to sound like Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley. Most of us probably have never even heard a song by Muddy Waters or Bo Diddley.

Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley are key parts of the Rolling Stones' story, as 1981 and Frank Howard (and the football wilderness of the 1990s and 2000s, for that matter) are to the Clemson story. The inaccessibility to God before Christ (and God's desire to bridge that gap as explained by the prophets) and the Greco-Roman concept of class are parts of the Christian story, too. And it makes the whole thing look bigger.

*Title from this edsbs.com blogpost
**I just had to. Here's the actual link. It's not bad, really.

Singing off of what?

2011-11-07T20:52:00.000-05:00

Dr. Sighted loves the Sing Off. In the mornings, she occasionally makes me watch a Capella versions of Queen or Britney Spears or Daft Punk. There are few things she likes more than people singing pop songs without music, and one of them is competing in things that aren't appropriately competitive. So, really, this is a match made in heaven for her. Or, at least, a heavily focus grouped Los Angeles boardroom.

It's actually a pretty entertaining concept, when they do a good job. One of the groups did Video Killed the Radio Star that was better than the Buggles. I don't remember if I saw it live or on Dr. Sighted's phone in the car. The best part, though, is the talking from the judges and the host.

Nick Lachey hosts, and for a guy who used to be in a boy band and married to Jessica Simpson, is surprisingly wooden with every obligatory pun that he reads from the cue cards. I don't know if he's thinking, "Dammit, I'm better than all of these jokers!" while he says, "We're going to see if the Ball State Ballers are going to get caught in a trap with this Elvis tune -- using only their voices!," but he is not acting like he is having fun, and quite frankly, that makes me have fun watching him.

The judges have their moments, too. Shawn Stockman is like the wacky guy who has positive things to say. He's also the most boring, because he's nice.. Ben Folds is also there, and I can't help but think that he's really Dana Carvey dressed as Ben Folds. I know who he is and all, but I'm not convinced that he's a real person. Ben Folds never fails to talk about the groove in every post-song commentary. Every single one. I have yet to know what any of them mean.

The best, without question, is Sara Bareilles. I'm still not quite sure why she's famous. Dr. Sighted has repeatedly told me that she sang, "Not Gonna Write You a Love Song," but I'm pretty sure that song is actually by Colbie Caillet. (I saw her in concert by accident once. [Isn't it weird that they both have unnecessary i's in their names?]) She is sarcastic, occasionally nonsensical, and sometimes mean. Just tonight, she said something like, "I'm not sure if the reason I didn't like your performance was because you were trying to hard or your stage props but I just wasn't into it." And then there was Nick, right on cue, saying, "Thank you judges. And next we'll see if we can resist Vocal Point's version of the British Invasion -- using only their voices!"*

*None of the quotes in this post are real.

Not my job

2011-09-27T20:50:00.003-04:00

The year 2011 has been a rather transitional one for the Sighted family, both immediate and extended. My wife graduated from medical school, married me, I left the country for the first time (Canada doesn't count), moved back to the Palmetto State, my brother graduated from law school (as did his fiancee), and he's going to get married. (My family is a very professional one -- I want to open a restaurant and call it Doctor, Lawyer, Engine Chief to cover all of our professions.) He, of course, has posted pictures of him in his dapper suit as he intimidates opposing counsel and slaps paralegals on the behind and whatever else attorneys do on the ol' Facebook, and the thing that struck me most is that his hair looked really good.

Not that that's unusual, but I work in a factory and I pretty much just need to arrive fully clothed to look appropriate. Lawyers and doctors deal a lot more with people than we do, so saying things like, "What moron is responsible for this flabby body?" or "Divorces for broken marriages like this are fun!" which would be more than acceptable on the shop floor are frowned upon in an office or hospital. Which is a shame, really.

It has been kind of surprising how much I have learned about the experience of doctors and lawyers, since I have seen pretty much every Scrubs and Law & Order episode that there are. (But I saw it on television! It must be true!) Dr. Sighted has not had sex even once in a closet at the hospital. Why bother even being a doctor in that case?

There aren't a lot of tv shows about engineers, for really all those same reasons. I imagine if there were, the main character would be a lot like House (also not a faithful representation of reality, as it turns out) without being a genius -- he'd just think he was. Antisocial behavior and disheveled appearance is tolerated in the only person on earth who can save your life; not so much in the guy who is really good at math, has mismatched his socks again and insults you in Elvish.

Anyway, it's an exciting time. I am surrounded by talented people in my family. With two newly minted attorneys, I am pushed even further down the list of best dressed -- and that includes the fact that my wife went to work tonight (yes you read that right) in scrubs and my other brother is a deputy sheriff. I included that last one because I have never, not even once, seen him wear the Sgt Slaughter hat.

Blow it up

2011-09-03T22:22:00.002-04:00

This blog cut its teeth on criticizing commercials, and quite frankly, I think I ought to get back to my roots. I don't watch as much tv now as I did in school, so it's going to be harder to actually manage. Now that football has started, and Dr. Sighted is inconsolable because UGa is behind by 2 TDs right now to Boise, we are seeing and will continue to be seeing more commercials. She did a better job during the first half of the Clemson game when we looked like injured garbage. Adjusting to marriage is hard.

Dick's (the sporting goods store) has a fun campaign where they have professional athletes giving instruction to people buying apparel and explaining why they need it and how it will make them perform better. A few memorable ones were Darelle Revis selling shoes or shorts or whatever and talking about going to his island -- Revis Island -- only to find out that his protege is named Gilligan. There is another one involving Ndomakong Suh (best name ever) hunting quarterbacks selling whatever Revis wasn't There is a good one now with Steven Jackson (not the basketball player) moving in slow motion. There is one, however, that goes over dumber than Kris Humphries answer inevitably will the first time Kim Kardashian asks, "Does this make my butt look big?"

Clay Matthews is the go to guy after the Packers won the Super Bowl, because he looks like a mutant Midwestern wrestler with hair like the cute blonde in your sophomore biology class. He is selling shorts or shoes or whatever in this commercial and it's just him running into stuff in the store. No clever comment from the store, they try to be funny with the family blocking him, except there's nothing going on that they are blocking. There's nothing to blow up! There should have been cowboys robbing a train or a caped man with a handlebar mustache kidnapping Song Girls (Clay went to USC, you see [the real one in LA, not the fake one in Columbia, SC] and the Song Girls are the best thing about the school) that he could blow up. Right now, it just feels like build up with now release. No snap, no crackle, no pop!

The wasted opportunity of the situation is what gets me most. Bad commercials are a dime a dozen -- just ask Taco Bell. But bad commercials with potential to be great? They are the ones that make us feel like we did when Utah State choked away the Auburn game today.

Reaching out and touching

2011-08-21T20:34:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone, it's that time again -- cell phone time. I've come to you before with this issue, but I didn't pull the trigger because my job wouldn't let me have one before. Now the world is a different place, I can play with toys at work, and my phone needs to start picking up some of the intellectual slack in this relationship.

Dr. Sighted has largely settled on the iPhone, because "it has more medical apps." Sure it does. But, as for me, the world is my oyster. I'm pretty sure that there is 4G to be had in our area, and I think I want it. I've never had any Gs before, but settling for less than 4 really seems irresponsible at this juncture based on what I know so far.

I am AT&Ter at the moment, but she's a Verizonist (it's a mixed marriage) and we have pretty much decided that I'm going to convert since the reception is better a work for her kind. I am trying to sort out whether I want a Samsung Charge, LG Revolution or HTC Thunderbolt or just doing the simple thing and iPhoning myself. Do any of you have any thoughts? There are rumors all over the place about awesome new phones right around the corner, and I don't to be further left behind. Then again, I'm on the Trabant of cell phones right now (an improvement over the Soviet Phone Mark II, at least), so will I really miss not being on the leading edge? That's a silly question; as awesome as I am, I deserve the best.

Hack, cough, etc.

2011-08-15T18:49:00.003-04:00

I don't like laziness at work. Laziness, like whiskey or bubble baths, is great in its own right -- so long as they happen on your own time. I take my work time seriously and expect the same from others. I think that's fair, after all, when engineers slack off, things break. You wouldn't want your things to break, would you? (Doesn't that sound like a mafia threat?)

Television writers, though, don't live by the same credo. At least not all the time. Dr. Sighted and I have gotten into a few shows that like to take the lazy way out. I have mentioned the USA shows before, and White Collar is one of them. Leverage, however, is the biggest offender of the phenomenon I am keeping you in suspense over.

Does everyone remember when the second Matrix came out? Nerds do, because it was a time of huge let down even though they refused to admit that their precious Wachowskis could err; then the third one came out and then there were no followers left. A false prophet can only fail so many times. The second one, though, had a scene that got nerds all excited because it proved an accurate representation of a computer hack in a movie for the first time. Leverage has a character whose sole purpose is basically to use a computer to do magic and call it "hacking". It's like the Green Lantern's ring of power for plot points, except it is defeated by out of date technology instead of the color yellow.

The USA shows do this too: Burn Notice infrequently and typically it's electronic manipulation that is a little more credible; White Collar does it periodically, which is unfortunate because the whole premise is the glorification of the con and forgery as art, which this totally defies; and Suits, in the most recent episode, which used a hack as a plot point that didn't really make sense.

It is unfortunate, because the shows entertain me, and I don't want to be entertained by lazy things. ("Here kid, is a balloon animal." "But it's a circle." "Lots of animals are circles.") You should already know how I feel about lazy comics, (and good comics, too). So, I'm troubled; I'd hate for you to think I'm inconsistent.

Freedom Just Around the Corner for You

2011-08-03T17:13:00.006-04:00

I think language is fun. You pretty much have to in order to write a blog, something that Dr. Sighted loves making fun of me about. I was going to write about a clever hook in a song, but got to thinking that since I merged the Fear and Trembling part of the blog with this space, I really ought to the think twice, because that line is not the sort of thing you'd say in mixed company. (It's a sexual thing not a pee joke. I continue to reserve the right to make pee jokes in this blog. Poo grosses me out, though, so it's not funny.) This got me thinking about Christian Liberty again about something other than alcohol, which is kind of refreshing.

This topic is something I've thought about a lot and written about before, and art (as an extension of my appreciation of language) is something I think is valuable as humans and Christians. But, 2 Cor 6:16-18 points out that we should associate with no unclean thing. Rom 12:2 reminds us that we should be different after choosing to follow Christ, separate from earthly things. 1 Cor 10:23-24 famously says that "Everything is permissible, but not everything is profitable..." So, I think an argument could be made that anything that that is not active worship or sustenance is bad. I think there are people who believe that, but I feel like I am using weasel words and that makes me feel like a jerk. No jerks allowed on this blog, so I'll stop.

I think that's overstating it. Proverbs 3:13-14 praises people who learn (but in the context of 3:3-5, it's not to build oneself up but to expand your relationship with God and other people). The point, though, is that learning is not necessarily active worship. Luke 15:11-31 (the Prodigal Son) describes the Kingdom of God in the contexts of celebrations, implying that celebrations are good in the appropriate context, and celebrating isn't inherently worship either. (Note: I specifically opted not to mention Psalm 104:14-15 which thanks God for his role in growing bread and making wine in order to demonstrate my self-control.)

I think the important thing from that is that context is relevant. Intent and sincerity are relevant. Celebration isn't inherently worshipful, but it can be. Learning isn't inherently worshipful, but it can be. Both of those things, in fact, can be sinful if abused. I think the same is true of art and how we view it.

If I watch South Park, Dogma, or The Life of Brian and simply enjoy them for the surface level vulgarity and titillation, that's probably not ok, but if I appreciate them for their satiric value exposing hypocrisy, they might be. I think the same attitude is true about alcohol -- Prov 20:1 says that Wine is a mocker and beer is a brawler, yet SoS 1:4 praises your (presumably Solomon's) love more than wine, implying that wine is good -- which are written by the same author. Intent is important -- Song of Solomon is a book entirely about seduction, which is really an untapped aspect of the Bible's PR, but an excellent case study of the importance of context. Habakkuk, in Hab 1:2-4 questions God's commitment to His truths, but the context is one of seeking justice, seeking to know Him better, not one of disrespect or lack of confidence. (The book concludes in chapter 3 with a long song of praise.) Habakkuk is one of the Deep Tracks of the Old Testament.

So, if I remind myself that the line "The neighbors complain about the noises above/ But she only comes when she's on top" is extremely clever in appreciation of language as a tool created by God, and in the context of thanks for the talent to be able to identify with its intricacies and delight in its power. However, because it is vulgar, I must remind myself of that. I must also be aware and respectful of the concerns raised in Romans 14 about stumbling blocks to others as well. And I must be sincere, because lies make Baby Jesus cry.

While I write this, a bumper on the news used "Way Down Yonder on the Chattahoochee," which also has a sexual reference in it, yet I doubt there are many who would object to it on grounds of vulgarity. Or "I Love Rock and Roll," or "Only the Good Die Young." But that doesn't make the casual ignorance of vulgarity in James's "Laid" ok. Because Jesus turned water into wine is not an excuse to drink wine to get drunk. And I think if I am going to have a drink, have Laid on my iPod or throw parties that aren't explicitly worshipful, I need to be able to defend myself and maintain the attitude of sincerity and thankfulness of the gifts I have received, because I need that attitude all the time.

Monkeys bore me

2011-07-30T20:01:00.003-04:00

When I was in middle school, I watched Star Trek: TNG. (That's The Next Generation for you non-nerds out there. [Who am I kidding? If you read this, you already knew that.]) I was a little more receptive to science fiction then because, key words, I was in middle school. I have no shame admitting that I enjoyed First Contact and rather recently watched The Undiscovered County, but I still contend that is a good stand alone movie. I have a variety of other embarrassing things that I liked when I was younger, like Magic the Gathering, for instance, but I'm sure your VHS tapes of Jem are not embarrassing at all.

I don't have any particular affinity towards Mark Wahlberg, or Marky Mark, as I was introduced to him initially. I thought he did a good job in The Departed, liked his cameo on SNL with Andy Samberg, and enjoyed I Heart Huckabees (I guess). I also saw his remake of Planet of the Apes, which I thought would be good if for no other reason Tim Burton's directorship. He's not my favorite director, but he did direct my favorite movie (Big Fish) and is responsible for the move that gave us both the lines, "Where does he get such wonderful toys?" and "This city needs an enema," so good on him.

Here's the thing: it was terrible. Beyond awful. I have had more entertaining haircuts. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I have never seen the originals. (I have seen the Simpsons Episode where Troy McClure gets a role in a PotA musical, though -- classic.) I have never seen Charleton Heston say, "Get your paws off me, you damned dirty apes!" I have seen Soylent Green though, which gave me everything I wanted as far as Heston one-liners go.

All this PotA talk is all well and good, but they've made another one. Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I know it's summer, and dumb, blockbuster movies come out in the summer, but I just didn't realize anybody liked this one enough to make a sequel. It is ten years later, I guess, but still.

Am I missing something? Is this movie series so good that modern remakes are worthwhile? Are the PotA originals worth my time? My time, after all is precious; I could be catching up with Jerrica Benton.

Everything is new all over again

2011-07-26T19:09:00.004-04:00

A lot has been happening and changing in my life lately. New wife, new job, new city, new house, new kitchen knives, and a new dog (sort of). One thing I've learned through the course of all of this "newness" is that people like to pay a lot of attention to you. And you know what? It's awesome. Attention is fantastic; it's why people want to be famous, it's why girls where slutty clothes, it's why arsonists start fires. It's a little weird to start coming back down to earth, since my brother and his fiancee are taking the bar today and tomorrow and will be getting married in November, and it's their turn now. I'll have to think of something to steal the spotlight again once I get bored.

One thing that is missing from that new list is new church, because getting settled into a new place is hard. We had a pretty good thing going in Augusta, so we're looking for a group like that, we've tried four so far: First Baptist Charleston, Grace on the Ashley, East Cooper Baptist, and Ashley River Baptist. Nothing final yet, but it's something that I am starting to recognize that needs to happen sooner rather than later. I find it's much easier to lose focus (hey! is that a bird? [Actually the other day, a cardinal {not the Catholic dignitary} was hanging out on my porch. The new dog (sort of) didn't even notice.]) when you're not plugged in. Also, it's a grounding I could use after having four months of people solidly asking me what's next for such an exciting life. ("Well, after a few weeks in South America, I think we'll summer in Charleston.")

It's a reminder, really, that to be successful in Christianity, you can't really exist out there on your own. A lot of people feel that it's a personal matter better served in private, and while part of that is true, it's a self-deception to think that you can grow alone. You need to be plugged into a community, growing and struggling together with other people. I have been encouraged, though, that a lot more people at work than I was expecting to have asked me if I have found a church home yet. I haven't been reading or praying as much for a variety of reasons, but it just feels easier without being part of a church community. Just like my clothes get piled up on the floor a lot less often now that I have a wife living with me. I also watch a lot less Dirty Jobs.

Anyway, I am hoping for humility and discipline as we try to get settled, and to be a good leader for Dr. Sighted. Also, I am looking forward to eating really good Charleston food at church cookouts.

Harry whatter?

2011-07-22T21:48:00.004-04:00

I like the news. I like a lot of things. I was listening to a podcast about news analysis (Slate Political Gabfest -- I don't typically agree with them and they are super pretentious but for some reason, I keep coming back) and one of the contributors, Emily Bazelon, made a comment that was pretty insipid that compared the debt ceiling resolution to an event in the Harry Potter series that most folks would call a "spoiler" and then denied responsibility for it.

I have never seen a Harry Potter movie, so while I didn't previously know the outcome of the matter that came up, it didn't really spoil the issue for me, either. The biggest reason is because Harry Potter is a book for children. There is a saying in the Sighted household, mostly said by Dr. Sighted, when things like American Idol, Daniel Radcliffe or flowers appear as a commercial on the ol' television: "You're lucky to have me," because she typically has no interest in any of them and knows I am grateful. Show her a novelty lunch box in the shape of an elephant, though, and her aloof distance from children's tastes vanishes. And she's right, too.

The sadistic inappropriateness of spoiling a big movie series notwithstanding, I notice it is a little strange to have just watched a cultural phenomenon roll by on the outside. I imagine this is how rednecks felt after disco was over. What happens next? Will people finally stop dressing up with lightning bolts on their foreheads? (That is like 85% of what I know about the franchise.)

I occasionally find myself hung up in tv series or something trying to escape, but cannot, because the story is unfinished. (Although, I did try to watch Firefly or Serenity or whatever the show is on Netflix and wanted to force myself to finish it but abandoned ship [get it?] after like 6 episodes. I have a rule: any new show gets 5 episodes, which is why I was the only person in the country to watch the entire series of Teachers.) How liberated do the people caught in JK Rowlings's orbit feel? I do feel a sense of relief after football season is over, even though I love it, because I get to have Saturdays back. What will these Potter fans do with all this found time? (Do Harry Potter fans have a slick nickname like Gleeks or Trekkies?) I'm pretty sure that people who obsess over things are pretty reasonable when it comes to moving on, so it shouldn't be an issue. I'd ask my doctor, but she just doesn't care. (Can my wife be my doctor?)

The Fall is Becoming My Favorite Season

2011-07-05T20:46:00.004-04:00

I am watching my first Braves game of the season in HD. I've caught a little better than half a dozen, probably, and not a one of them has been in HD, because of the move and how my beloved tv (let's call her "Trudy") has been in storage. Dr Sighted's tv, a might 13 incher, made me pine for the apple of my tv watching eye. Baseball is fine, and the Braves are doing very well considering they are in the same division as the best team in baseball, but it just doesn't measure up to the fall sports, sadly. Fall is when the best tv events happen, namely, football season resumes (Go Clemson!), which, as far as television experience goes, is like soy sports.

Summer used to be my favorite of the seasons, because I like warm weather and there was no school. Now that I'm married and adult and what not, it's still good, since long days mean more time for barbecuing and warm water for beach going (I haven't been in so long, though, that I'm not sure it would recognize me anymore -- it's the one with the sand, right?), the school benefits don't really apply as much and my youthful resilience to the heat requires me to drink a lot more water and change my shirt a lot more often. Fortunately for me, my sweat smells like cinnamon, so it's more a comfort issue for me than a smell one.

Another thing that comes up in the fall is Psych. Dr. Sighted has turned me on to the this program, and it is the flagship of the USA shows, which, I'm pretty sure, are all exactly the same. They found their formula and they are sticking to it with Law & Order like consistency. Psych, White Collar, Burn Notice, Suits, Covert Affairs, and Royal Pains are all exactly the same show in different contexts. I've gotten in arguments with people in my life over this, so I feel like the guy in Mystery Men trying to convince William H Macy that Greg Kinnear really is Captain Amazing. Yes, I just reference Mystery Men.

Here's the premise: the main character has some sort of outlandish skill that is not quite superhuman although still wildly unrealistic, but just specialized enough to make him excellent in a specific niche but also has a somewhat (or very) troubled past that is probably not his fault that causes him to be an outsider in the community where that very skill would ordinarily permit him to excel. He has a loyal but confrontational cadre of friends who stick with him through thick and thin, lives in a place with an odd frequency of circumstances where his skill is useful, and there is a minor celebrity who somehow is part of the action (Psych - Corbin Bernson. White Collar - Tiffani Amber Thiessen (your Amber will always be in my heart, Tiffani. [Also, Dr. Sighted asked, "Is that Kelly Kapowski? Her face looks fat." when we watched an episode. Yes. Yes that is Kelly Kapowski and shut your mouth.] Covert Affairs - Piper Perabo. Burn Notice - Bruce Campbell, although it causes me actual physical pain to call him a minor celebrity.). There are, inevitably remarkable opportunities for witty quips, charming romantic plotlines, and temptations that try to push our hero off the straight and narrow but he (or she) always chooses the right path.

It's brilliant, really. Psych does feel a little bit different, but I can't quite tell how; it might be just that I like it better. I also don't know why I don't like them all with the same enthusiasm I do Psych and Burn Notice (or even the Mentalist, for that matter, which is basically the same show as Psych except less funny, two years later, and more Australian). So, if you like lawyer shows, there's Suits. If you like doctor shows, there's Royal Pains. If you like spy shows, you have a choice! Still no engineer show, so far. Closest thing is White Collar, with a suave, handsome gentleman using only his wits to solve interesting problems. Was that convincing? Oh well. By the way, did the find the pineapple?

Tradition!

2011-07-03T14:34:00.002-04:00

So, this morning, I wanted to take in a piece of Charleston history when I went to church. I headed to First Baptist Charleston, because it's 4th of July weekend and this church predates the country. (The preacher casually mentioned that this church donated its treasury to the Revolution. The American Revolution. The one that started in 1775.) The subject of the sermon was Christian liberty (with the primary citation of Romans 14:1-4), which is never an easy topic to cover, since one thing that people love to do, Christians or not, is to remind themselves that they're better than everyone else. (You think I am unable to button my own pants? Well, at least I don't wear spray deodorant.)

He mentioned the usual historical examples that we all laugh about as adorably out of date now, like dancing and playing cards and makeup and whatever. (I do kind of wonder how many of the average church goers ever obeyed those things; but back then, there was no World Series of Poker on tv, so I guess the temptation was a little easier to take. On the other hand, if Maverick is any representation of reality, then poker was way more awesome in the 19th Century.) Baptists aren't nearly as anti-dance in our platform as we used to be. One of the other things, though, that always comes up for Christians in general and Baptists in particular is the booze.

It is an true and actual struggle for Christians (or, at least, ones I know) because we have those very concepts shown in Romans 14, but we also have 1 Corinthians 6:12. I am "permitted" to eat Doritos and chocolate chips for breakfast everyday, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. I personally am rather fond of craft beers and fancy whiskeys (note the "e" in whiskey). Today's message, where the preacher says that "strong drink" is never ok, made me think. If I have a single barrel bourbon in my pantry, am I abusing that liberty? Is it more ok if I don't drink often, or ever to excess? Or is this rationalizing in the way that people just say that the prohibition on sex outside of marriage is an anachronism, because they just want to do it? Christianity is hard.

I don't know the answer. There is scripture that can be used to justify both sides. I think the thing we know for sure is that abuse of alcohol is clearly bad, in the same way that abusing credit, dancing, cheeseburgers or football could be -- if it interferes with your ability to live your life and maintain your relationships (especially with Christ) then it's bad. I also think culture is important; if there is a problem where makeup indicates something un-Christian, then setting oneself apart by not wearing makeup might be a worthwhile thing for a church to urge. But we can't lose sight of the why, since we can do something stupid repeatedly for no real reason, just because we always have, like watch the newer Star Wars movies.

Back to the Old...

2011-07-03T14:07:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone, I have an announcement: I am going to stop keeping up Fear and Trembling in Augusta because I no longer live there. I was also never an especially big fan of Hunter S. Thompson. My wife (!) and I just moved to Charleston, SC, and the other blog just doesn't seem appropriate any longer. Dr. Sighted is starting residency, so hopefully I will have more time to keep up this space. I am also no longer writing for a paper or preparing Sunday School lessons, so I need to write somehow, right? I will also rescind my earlier promise of no politics in this space -- my vision for the future is that any topic is fair game here, from movies, to politics, my favorite chilis, religious themes (like in Fear and Trembling) but with a little less formality. I promise there will still be jokes, but I cannot promise they will still be funny.

I also noticed that I have a giant pile of spam comments, and some posts are more popular than others. This one has 35 comments on it, which is slightly higher than my previous high of like 4. I'm pretty sure I would have to post on some sort of controversy like we should execute all double parkers by hanging. I don't know if the uptick in spammers is representative of a an uptick in traffic, which would be swell, (I did notice an upswing in followers -- Hello new folks) but it's still troubling. It might require me to activate some sort of interceptor to keep odzwyki from posting about about how to buy pharmaceuticals from China in weird broken English. My favorite is the insincere flattery (is there any other kind?) about how smart and great my blog is -- while I love having my ego stroked, when they say "I imagine you have a excellent information in particular while dealings with these kinds of topics" it kind of takes some of the vim out of it when it's not actually whether they can read it, let alone did. But why my blog? How many of you readers are out there?

Let me know with comments. Coherent is preferable, but not technically required.

Jeopardy!

2010-04-05T05:18:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone. Read this then watch tonight.

I don't speak Creole

2010-01-26T22:15:00.000-05:00

I, like most emotionally healthy people, am (overwhelmed, empathetic, worn out) by the horror in the imagery of the Haiti earthquake. I cannot say what my first thought was when I found out, or even where I was when I first heard. It did not quite ring as personally as the 9/11 attacks, as I have never been to Haiti. I cannot say I even know anybody who has been to Haiti, even though it is closer to where I was born than as far as I traveled last week. The small nation has been almost an abstraction in my mind, not just in the ways that those foreign places like Greenland, Okinawa and Papua New Guinea are; Haiti represents suffering and poverty in a way very few other words can.

The text message campaigns, fund raisers and benefits have been inspiring. I have reservations and questions about what, exactly, success in this rebuilding effort will look like. It is a thought that convicted me, because history has not been kind to the Haitians and, strangely enough, a post I read on a Clemson sports message board pointed out that this earthquake is not God’s judgment being meted out; rather, we will be judged by our reactions to it. I think that is a fair statement.

By this measure, or any other really, I think one of the bigger de facto voices of Christian representation, Pat Robertson has surely failed. I find it intensely frustrating when these de facto voices are de facto without actual regard to the fidelity of their content. My associations are publicly judged by the opinions of Robertson and others like him, when the most (in)famous are directly contradictory to the very philosophy to which he espouses. I decided, then, that it is our responsibility, my responsibility, to say that the idea that Haiti is suffering because of sin or an insufficient faith is not representative of what Christians believe. In fact, John 9:3 pretty succinctly discounts this idea: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”

This is a problem for us. When I say us, I do not just mean Christians. I mean people. The relationship that Christ wants is world changing. And the picture of that relationship that Robertson’s most publicized and controversial comments paints are, unfortunately, the only picture that many might see and as representative of how such a relationship should function as Joe Jackson’s fatherly relationship with the Jackson 5. Personalities like Robertson’s going unchecked are obstacles for spreading the Truth, and easily trump the (I’m sure) numerous virtuous and positive efforts that his ministry has effected. We must be good examples.

I do want to do something to help, though. But I want that something to be more than an anonymous text message that disappears down the memory hole and makes me feel better. The Haitian society was dysfunctional before this happened and how many text messages will I have to send so the Red Cross can afford to fix that? What can I do in order to be a better model of the life Christ wants us to live than Pat Robertson?

My butt feels papery

2010-01-05T20:11:00.003-05:00

Hey everyone, it's been a while. I know, I know, you've been waiting with baited breath for this observation. I could tell by the overwhelming silence of comments I have gotten lately. Thanks for that, by the way. Makes me feel loved. And why does a blogger blog if not for unsolicited and unearned attention?

I am puzzled by a fixture on many a public bathroom wall. (No, not toilet paper, smartalec. That does not puzzle me at all anymore.) I remember as a child that some relative suggested that you put strips of toilet paper down on the seats in order to not sit on foreign toilets, and there has been a proliferation of doughnut shaped tissue paper in dispensable containers in bathroom stalls to achieve that end. They have it where I work, at air ports where TSA rifles through your things without really accomplishing much other than increasing the inconvenience in the world (like government paid entropy generators) and disgusting gas stations (I'm sure).

I have a question, though. What good does it do? What kinds of toilet borne plagues are out there? And what is that paper thin barrier really going to stop? I can understand wiping down before landing, because there are certainly contaminants that can be removed. But sitting on top of them? It's like the sneeze guard at salad bars if those guards were completely permeable to sneezes. What they should really have are something to keep the struts warm, because, well, sitting down on a cold morning makes me feel bad for girls every winter.

I wonder how big an industry that useless paper thing is. I think I have a brilliant business concept: some of that alcohol hand sanitizer strictly for toilet seats. It might not exactly keep you warm, and it might be weird when you try to put your pants back on, but you wouldn't have to worry about getting motaba virus on your bum.

Veteran's Day

2009-11-11T05:09:00.000-05:00

Veteran’s Day is for us all, whether we actually put on the uniform and saw combat or not. We turn ourselves upon those who did, awestruck, and try in any demonstrable effort to point our collective American focus on those who traded some measure of their freedom in exchange that we might not have to bargain with ours. We can’t know what it’s like to be 7000 miles away from everything we’ve ever known because our country, our people, asked us to go there. We can’t know how changed, transfigured, one might be afterwards.

There is a photograph of my grandfather in his living room standing in uniform arm in arm, smiling, with his wife who sits in that same room with him every day. They are who they are because he wore that. I am who I am because he wore that. We are all who we are because they wore that.

Sadly, last week reminded us that these stories do not always end in picturesque black and white photographs and the romance of how the Greatest Generation allowed us to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school in English. Sometimes the transfiguration, whatever its source, is not into something noble, beautiful, and romantic; sometimes there is a horrible metamorphosis, twisting at the soul of those caught between commitments and tragically unmoored from the mission they are commissioned to execute – our country, our people, who count on every man and woman in service, who need every man or woman in service – our safety, our freedom and our identity is their mission. Sometimes the tragedies are not quite so grotesque as unfolded last week in Texas. Sometimes it’s small, and simple, like the nameless stories that newspapers never cover like newly married couples who make their lifelong commitments just months before being flung across continents to carry out the yearlong ones. But I guess it’s only small and simple from the outside.

I have faith that that photograph and that couple and every wonderful and morose moment in between occurs under the watchful eye of a loving God, even, paradoxically, the murders at Ft. Hood. I certainly don’t understand how, and I am returned to the often unsatisfying “My ways are not your ways” from Isaiah 55:8, but to be fair, I don’t understand how the two people found their way from the photograph to their living room half a century later, either.

Let it at least serve as a terrible reminder for us, all of us, that we need them. And that we need Him. We need the servicemen and women, because without them, we are not “we.” Our country, our people are defined by the dividends of freedom they have voluntarily surrendered so that ours may collect interest. As we realize this, though, it may be easy to overlook the fact that as much as we need them, they need us, too. They keep going because of us. A care package, a letter, a meal, a handshake, a thank you serves to remind them that we have not forgotten that they have done something incomparably gracious just by doing their job, by being who they are. So I take this opportunity to say thank you to them for in their sacrifices, I see lives lived in the example of that loving God, whether they realize it or not, and a simple reminder to put our focus on them, and Him, today, on Veteran’s Day. But I guess it’s only simple from the outside.

Rain, rain, go away. (Not really; you're cool rain)

2009-10-05T20:18:00.009-04:00

It's been raining around here a lot. That's ok on its own, but it's also getting cold, and the cold is empirically bad. It is a proven fact that people who like cold weather are sociopaths. I know you are probably thinking, "Ted Bundy killed people in Florida!" Aha! He was born in Vermont. Count it.

With these rains, though, comes thunder storms. It got me thinking about how when we were kids and somebody would say, "I saw thunder!" and then the other little smartass kids would say, "HA HA HA! You can't see thunder!" I was probably one of those smartass kids. I had a pretty vicious habit of correcting people when they made innocuous blunders when I was younger. Then I learned that people don't like it when you point out their flaws so pointedly, so I tried to lay off. I'm a recovering correctaholic.

The thing, though, is that there are two separate words, thunder and lightning, for basically the same thing. If you take a gander at my handle there, you can probably guess I know a little about sciencey things. So for those of you who don't know, I'll lay a little meteorology knowledge on you.

The exact mechanism of lightning forming is not well understood, but it's a discharge of static electricity (static electricity is the bitch kind of electricity) from a cloud to [usually] the ground. Even though it's the bitch kind, it's still a horrendous bolt of electricity that travels through the air, kind of like the boy in A Boy Named Sue. If you've ever held electricity in your hand, or things like extension cords, you notice that they kind of heat up. The lightning bolt named Sue is like that times a million. I don't know if a million is enough, but the air gets super hot and that expansion and re-contraction of air makes a boatload of noise. Think of the pwoompf sound that you hear when you light something on fire really fast. Except times a million.

Here's the thing: thunder is the sound that lightning makes. They are different sensory reactions to the same event. It's just that you see the lightning sooner due to the fact that it's really bright and you can see it from far away and light travels faster than sound. But, they aren't really different. If a cop asks about a barfight and the guy says he heard a slap, nobody's going to say, "HA HA HA! You can't hear a slap!"

So the moral of the story is, lay off on thunder and lightning. It's just a universal shared experience and the concept of language developed before we understood high energy fluid mechanics.

Also, I am writing this as I am watching the Green Bay-Minnesota game, and I have to say that I would not be that disappointed if I never heard Brett Favre's name ever again.

Sitting-O

2009-09-20T21:22:00.004-04:00

I just got back from listening to Neal Jeffrey, a former QB (that's quarterback) for Baylor University and the San Diego Chargers, who gave what he called a pep talk for life at church. It was pretty much what you expect, a good testimony about his life in service to Christ, impressive (and self-deprecating) stories about playing football, and a little bit of stuttering. That's kind of his thing; he is a speaker who stutters (very well, he points out) while talking about faith.

It got me thinking, though, about how weird it is that when you sit around clapping for something cool somebody said, how do you know when to stop? Like, for instance, if you are at a Starland Vocal Band concert and after they finish Afternoon Delight, sure, you're clapping, but for how long? Eight claps? Twelve? Usually, you judge based on everyone else, right? Well, somebody's got to be the pioneer. He's like the guy who starts the wave, except in reverse. The guy who gets tired of smacking his hands together first.

I also have questions about when exactly a performance traverses from just sitting and clapping to standing up and clapping. What is that element in your speech that takes you over the edge? I'm guessing it has something to do with quality of booger jokes told. The same applies to jazz concerts.

Anyway, if any of you have been to performances and remember thinking, "This is the thing that will make me stand up when I start clapping. This guitar solo/tennis serve/ventriloquist trick/sawing magician's assistant in half/etc puts him over the edge." Or, "He was so close, but because he made fun of Democrats/Republicans/black people/children/asthmatics/applesauce/whatever, I'm only going to clap from my seat. And indignantly for only four claps, at that," I want to hear about it. I want to know where that edge is.

Would you please enter your phone number?

2009-09-10T14:08:00.004-04:00

I made a pretty happy discovery yesterday: it looks like I can save some money on automobile insurance this year by switching to a different provider (oddly enough, not Geico). I had been using a certain online provider that has a cartoon trying to convince me to save the world by going paperless or something, and they don't have actual stores so it's all online or over the phone, which reminded me of something I hate. (I know, surprised, right?)

Have you ever called into an automated system and they ask you to enter a phone number or social security number or something? I have. The computer knows who you are, they can tell you your upcoming balance, your service plan, your whatever. But as soon as your fight your way through the labyrinthine thicket that is that computerized navigation system, the person makes you give them all that information all over again. There is nothing you can tell me that will convince me that this is not asinine.

There are a few conclusions I can draw from this: 1) Their technology is not sophisticated enough to tell the person who is calling, even though the Homework Hotline at my college could do that, 2) they don't trust their computer system to deliver the proper information, 3) they enjoy being inconvenient. All of which are good options.

So, the moral of the story is that the computerized navigations are stupid, and they don't have to be. Come on, non-threatening electronic voice. Step up your game.

Hey Sports Fans

2009-09-02T21:56:00.001-04:00

I wanted to advertise some sports writing I and some of my friends are doing. Check it out at almostcompetitivechatter.blogspot.com and keep reading the observations at howobservant.blogspot.com

Here are a couple of phrases that I hate

2009-08-19T20:34:00.003-04:00

I probably come across as an authoritarian agressor when it comes to proper speech usage, commercial likes, and decision making. That's not that true. I respect your preference to like stupid stuff, so long as you respect my right to criticize it. You can, of course, defend yourself (as you should), but chances are you are wrong anyway and will not win.

This is especially the case if you make a habit of using a particular set of words or phrases. My mom has a huge list, while most of hers are common errors made with actual words, notably the inexplicable "supposably" pronunciation for supposedly, which, in her mind, is grounds for sterilization. I have issues with that sometimes too, but I also have issues with words that are used that probably should not be nearly as often as they are. Let's take a look, shall we?

Myself - This is one of the former complaints. This is misused all the time. It is the reflexive pronoun used for emphasis or reflection, like when the subject and object of a verb are the same: for instance, "I laughed so hard at their grammar mistakes that I peed myself." It is not a replacement for the standard nominative (I) or objective (me) pronouns like, "John and myself will empty the tiger's cage" or "Please send the shoes filled with champagne to either Hector or myself." No dice.
Utilize - This is a longer word that means the same thing as use without bringing anything extra to the soup. This word should be used never.

I used an unnumered list, the inferior form of list, because I could only think of two at the time of writing this and a numbered list of 2 looks tacky, and quite frankly, we're all better that that. If you feel the need to demonstrate, please add your distasteful phrases in the comment section.

Is Little Debbie a good Hostess?

2009-08-05T20:16:00.007-04:00

A discovery I made recently has the potential to ruin whatever health gains I may have been making in my unfortunately not regular enough visits to the local olympic swiming pool: the vending machine in my building at work has cinnamon streusel cake. You may not have known this about me, but I have strong and far reaching food tastes and opinions, and one of the is that Hostess makes super excellent breakfast baked goods. Another is that cinnamon is a flavor not to be trifled with; it does get jealous of chocolate and peanut butter. Hell hath no fury like a spice scorned.

My dad has been involved in the grocery business in some fashion for basically my whole life, and most of his -- he is the leprechaun from Lucky Charms. I'm joking of course, as that would be absurd. My mom's side of the family is my Irish side. As a result, though, he would periodically bring home retail products -- almost always "day old," which is groceryspeak for "old" -- some of which were sometimes strange and obscure, like weird cookies shaped like windmills or clogs, or lemon turnovers that come in that weird wrapper that can't quite decide if it's paper or plastic. It's the same stuff that breakfast burritos, the you know the kind that everyone seems to own but nobody really ever eats. Sometimes, though, my siblings and I would hit the individually packaged jackpot when he'd score something like Teddy Grahams, Koala Yummies or some other bear shaped cookie. Or, those glorious, glorious Hostess cakes.

Honey buns and the aforementioned delicate sweetness that is cinnamon streusel cake were the top choices in my mind. Like preservative laden versions of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, they were unmatched by their peers. Sure, Ho-Hos and Ding Dongs are vaguely inappropriately named delights and the confections that made my lunches the envy of the middle school (and it's a wonder I didn't weigh like 300 pounds) but they weren't an excuse to let you eat cakes that taste like candy for breakfast.

The hitch, though, is that for some reason the vending machine versions of these products tend to taste more decadent than the ones in stores. Maybe they benefit from aging, like a fine cheese, or maybe they have gone away from trans fats and the vending machine versions don't turn over fast enough for the inventory to have caught up. Or maybe the stores I shop at are just too high brow for such simple pleasures. All I know is that I have looked forward to coming into work everyday this week for y reakfast that will probably take 5 years off my otherwise impressive life expectancy.

I don't want to ruin the friendship

2009-07-30T23:54:00.001-04:00

I was thinking about something that came up in the life of one of my girlfriend’s friend. One of the age old clichés that girls give guys, “I wouldn’t want to ruin a good friendship” is complete poppycock. Poppycock, I say! There is no circumstance that this statement would be true. The girl is either lying to him, and that she is really, quite simply, not attracted to him, or lying to herself, and is afraid of what would happen if she said yes. If she really valued the friendship, she would tell him the truth and actively ensure the friendship would not be ruined afterwards. If he cannot accept that, then he was lying to himself and was not really invested in the friendship, but rather a convoluted courtship and reached an unfortunate failure.

I have been lucky enough to experience one go the good way and one go the bad way. The difference is how we reacted to the admission. In both cases, it was I who wanted more. The good one happened earlier in my life, and fortunately for me, the friendship was important enough to her not to allow something like my romantic interest keep us from being friends; today, she is one of my closest. I don’t really understand what happened with the other. All I can figure is that I was not important enough for her to put in similar effort, and we are not part of each other’s lives, and it still bothers me, even though this happened some time ago. The fact that I have endured the first of these, though, proves that expression of romantic interest need not doom an actual platonic relationship.

The honest expression of emotion, however easy for me to write here, is not easy to actually commit to in practice. There is an established fear of rejection in all of us, and this is clearly a manifestation of that, which is counterintuitive, because the person doing the rejecting in this case is being pursued. But the real reason for hesitation is obscured, and when that happens, the friendship is being held back anyway. Like every healthy relationship, platonic, romantic or otherwise, honest communication is critical.

That idea is antithetical to the desired outcome of relationships, anyway; if someone is worth your friendship, they ought to be worth your better friendship, right? If they are worth a romantic relationship, they ought to be your friend, too. That is a definite success that my girlfriend and I have experienced, even if the achievement of that was realized in a roundabout way. To a degree, she could be a character in this story, with a very positive outcome.

The point is, though, that a friendship is not ruined by the expression of one party wanting more. It is ruined by the negative reactions of the parties involved. The object of desire can handle it perfectly and the desirer can e a crackpot and result in tragedy just as easily as the desired can turn awkward. Or there can be a combination of both. Or neither, and growth can occur. It’s all choice, and I hope my girlfriend’s friend makes a better one than the second girl in my story and I did.

iTunes? More like iSuck! No wait, that came out wrong...

2009-07-29T21:28:00.007-04:00

Apple has done a great jo cornering the market on cool. Their gadgets and computers and cell phones are what it is to be cool in electronics right now. Kind of like Chevy Chase was for that brief year in 1975. If Apple made a toilet, hipsters would line up to do something like mix trendy drinks in them while listening to Vampire Weekend. What do hipsters drink? Zima? Do they still make that anymore?

I considered getting a Mac, because while no hipster, I am a marketing sheep. My interest in the iPhone is well documented and while I ended up not getting either one (the cost of a Macintosh computer made me want to vomit in my mouth), I did buy an iTouch. It is pretty phenomenal, actually, and proably the coolest thing I am likely to buy for some time, even though I am Paul McCartney tickets. It feels a little anxiety inducing to spend as much as he wants to his play his violin shaped bass, but it is getting better all the time.

My only complaint on the magnificent iPod (and is a growing complaint) is that usint iTunes, the software rudder that steers the entire iFleet, is a horrendously flamty experience. I don't know how everyone doesn't bring this up when talking about Apple products. So much of the Apple lineup is considered cool and accessible and what not (we used a Power ac in the Film Clu in college and it made me get all tingly inside -- sadly, they made me write on the social and technological equivalent of stone tablets), but iTunes, their ambassador the PC World, is like the equivalent of having Joe Biden deliver a speech when Barack Obama is sitting down next to him eating M&Ms.

The interface is not intuitive, it is not fast and it is not flexible while pretty much all of the qualities Apple wants us to think of when we think of them. The corporation has a very vertical organization, maintaining a sort of autocratic control of their products and software, which is delightfully ironic coming from a company that made an ad identifying its competition with Big Brother.

The default synchronization operation is to copy every music file I own to the 'Pod (what is with the iEverything anyway? I nGaeilge is the only place I've seen capital letters show up in the middle of the words...) How any people really want every mp3 they have on his or her player? I am not exactly Lester Bangs or Cameron Crowe, but all of ine doesn't fit and some of my music (gasp!) is kind of crappy (Sugar Sugar by the Archies? Really?) or at least not all of it is everyday material. It is a giant resource hog, too, and unless this is some cheeky, trendy form of self-sabotage, I don't get what their problem is. They also make a huge nagging production out of updating the version and make you couple it with Quicktime. If I wanted to be nagged about my music and movies, I'd have Jewish parents. (Jewish moms still nag, right?) As I am switching from one computer to a new one, my podcast schedule is really screwed up and it has not been obvious how to correct it and it took like 3 hours to fix my playlist because, I can only suspect, someone was mean to Apple founder Steve Jobs as a child and did this to get back him.

This is all particularly baffling because the iTouch itself is so completely the opposite. It took me like two seconds to do figure out how to do awesome stuff on it. I'm pretty sure I just found an app to make it a functional Star Trek phaser. My question is this: What's your deal, Apple? Did you decide "Hey, let's make like 90% of our stuff really cool, and the remaining 10%, the most critical 10% that the gadgets and things can't run without, the technological equivalent of gargling malt vinegar." I feel like we're getting a Steve Job on this.

I am such a nerd

2009-07-25T17:29:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone, I am typing this from my brand new desktop computer. I built it myself! As if writing this blog didn't make me nerdy enough. I am still trying to fill in all the gaps and what not of doing all the software loads from scratch and copying my writing and music collection over, and I am also trying to think of a way not to make this sound like a 13 year old girl's livejournal.

Oh, I have it. My parents had no faith that I could accomplish this task. While the only hiccups so far tthat I have run into are that I bought a fan I didn't need and I haven't sorted out my S/PDIF to HDMI issues so I am silently blogging right now, neither my mom nor my dad really expected that I would end up with a working computer at the end of my little purchase. Surely I am not the only one of you who gets this treatment.

Engineering has had a strange effect on the way they handle me. This task of building computers, routinely handled ably by 15 year olds, is one of those things that their skepticism will not permit them to think I am capale of, even though I do in fact have a master's degree in a technical field. It's not like I'm trying to pick out a tie for a suit, am I right?

God Bless America

2009-07-04T13:34:00.003-04:00

I write this as I am watching what might be the greatest television spectacle in all of sports. Before, I thought it was the Super Bowl or New Year's Day or possibly the opening weekend of March Madness. (I, myself, am partial to the New Year's Day bowls, as I feel like it is football's birthday gift to me.) I was wrong, all this time. The greatest television spectacle in all of sports is the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. If you doubt me, you have not watched it.

There is so much drama involved in this, so many story lines, so many jokes. I watch a good deal of football, some basketball, and even less of the other insignificant sports, so I see the coverage and interview cliches that athletes have to endure from reporters, like, "How did you prepare for this?" or "What's on your mind as you get ready?" none of which tells us anything about anything. Watching Erin Andrews ask Sam Bradford about how he's feeling after beating Texas Tech means nothing to me; clearly he's happy, and going to say that he's thinking about the next game. Who cares.

That all changes in competitive eating. I want to know what these people are thinking. I want to know what kind of human being looks at a hot dog and things, "You know, Nathan's hot dogs are tasty, and two are pretty good. But what if I ate 40 of them?" I want to know what someone who holds the title of World Asparagus Eating Champion does to prepare for a match. I want to know who this guy's heroes were growing up. I don't want to know what this guy's pee smells like afterward.

The announcers take this seriously, and I would have it no other way. They discussed the different eating techniques and broke them down in the same way that Bobby Knight might describe a 3-2 zone. (There are Solomon Methods, Tokyo Methods, and some other shake named after a guy.) It is incredible.

There are also women involved. What would you do if met a reasonably attractive girl, started flirting with her, and then when you ask what she does, she says, "I am a competitive eater. I ate 11 pounds of cheesecake in my last contest." And she weighs 105 pounds. What is the next move? Do you think, "Holy crap, that's incredible?" or "I will never be able to afford dinner with this woman." I don't know how these people don't weigh 400 pounds.

There is no doubt that this sport could only come from the nation that values individual liberty and thumbs its nose at past convention to the point that says, "Gluttony is how we roll, hombres." We created the Constitution, flight, the nuclear reactor and the shamwow. We can do anything. Happy Fourth of July everyone, and do something to celebrate individual liberty and defy convention today. Eat 68 hot dogs.

Yes, I need them all.

2009-07-02T15:53:00.003-04:00

I went grocery shopping today, which is probably my favorite form of shopping. I do like liquor shopping too, but I don't drink it fast enough to really need to go very often, so it's not really the same. You can consume the purchase from the grocery store for breakfast without being Charlie Sheen.

As you read in a previous entry (or better have!) I have taken to going to Sams. But not today. I was thinking about an item I needed, though, and how strange it is to buy them in bulk. Somethings work out fine when you buy a thousand of them, like ziploc baggies or Teddy grahams. There are a few things that are not quite as seemly. At least, that's the impression that I get.

I am thinking, of course, of toilet paper. Is it just me, or is there some sort of weird stigma for someone carrying around a giant package of toilet paper? When you see someone, particularly a guy, carrying a 64 roll package of bathroom tissue, isn't your first immediate thought, "Wow, he must like tacos." Women, particularly middle aged women, get a little bit of a pass because they tend to be buying for families more often than men, and is probably dealing with children who are [probably] boys and don't know how to take care of themselves.

What other things can you think of that might be better served being bought from Publix rather than Sams? I say tacos.

I am kind of ridiculous

2009-06-17T21:34:00.003-04:00

You know how when you play video games and something absurdly improbably happens and you yell, "Yeah right!" or "That would not happen!" or, my favorite (borrowed from Arrested Development), "Come on!" I find myself doing that mostly when I play football games. I like football a lot, and for some reason, I think that my players would never fumble or throw interceptions, even though I watch enough football to know that everyone fumbles sometimes and throws interceptions sometimes. USC lost to Oregon State, Penn State lost to Iowa and Duke almost made a bowl. In fact, until this season, Duke's last ACC win was Clemson, and to overcome that, they had to hire David Cutcliffe who is kind of a badass.

For those of you who are reading this and snoring by now (who am I kidding? all of my readers are nerds, right?) the point of all this is that while making pork chops recently, I spilled some flour on my kitchen counter. Pork chops are delicious and wildly underrated. I realized that I found myself yelling at real life in very much the same way that I yell at my Xbox. The flour fell, I said, "You're kidding." And then, somehow, my baking soda fell behind it. I legitimately yelled, "Come on!" at nobody. I had valueless white powder all over my counter top and I was doing psychologically worse than yelling an a computer.

I was a little bit comforted, and that's when I knew there was a problem. I would rather my insane yelling at video games be consistent with my normal behavior than an aberration restricted to virtual sports and just yell at nothing than just accept this quirk. At least I had pork chops, right?

Check out my hook while the DJ revolves it

2009-06-14T14:49:00.003-04:00

I made a shocking discovery recently, and I don't know what I should do about it. No, it isn't anything that requires penicillin. I was sitting out on my patio while reading a magazine that if you saw me read it would make me look thoughtful, intelligent and worldly all while not at all appearing pretentious. However, Georgia in June is, to be charitable, kind of warm. But, of course, I was reared in the Sunshine State, so think of Brer Rabbit and the Briar Patch. Was that one of the Disney stories that was racist?

However, I still elected to have a tasty glass of ice water with me out there. I was challenged to meet the medical requirements of 2 liters a day, and I am trying to meet it. It also helps to alleviate the sweating. It also helps at work when it's really boring trying to drink really fast and the results of drinking really fast helps to occupy the time.

The thing that I noticed was, that after a little while in the Georgia sun, the ice in the ice water will, of course, melt. I don't know how much you remember from chemistry, but when you add things to water, the water gets less watery and more what you put in it. However, my ice cubes taste bad. It's hard to describe, but it's a sort of stale and terrible. It didn't always taste like this. What went wrong? Is there anything I can do about this, or does that red Georgia clay turn into gross in ice cubes? I'm counting on you, internet!

A grain of an argument

2009-06-07T22:46:00.005-04:00

My girlfriend and I recently had an argument. Naturally, she could not be more wrong, and as far as I know, she has no blog with three readers to dispute my claims. She made the heinous suggestion that wild rice is the worst rice. The only way this could be more wrong would be if the claim at hand were to say that the Temple of Doom is the best Indiana Jones movie. Everyone knows that Raiders is best, followed closely by Last Crusade. We will just ignore that stupid one with that kid with the weird name. (Similarly, Empire > Jedi > New Hope, ignoring that stupid new trilogy.)

Here's the skinny on rice: Yellow is the best. Yellow rice is the America of rice. No one denies this. It is flavored with saffron, of course, which is superexpensive. Every time I eat yellow rice it's like I am eating gold in every bite. That is incredible, and untouchable by anything else that rice has to offer. Next, though, is wild rice. Wild rice is Great Britain. She is implying that it is like Cameroon. No way. That's like white rice that you cook too long and it's like a paste.

White rice and I have had our problems, though. It is kind of bland and I don't have a rice cooker so I would make a poor Asian and when you boil it, the rice water that spills over the pot is really gross. How much superexpensive herb is involved with white rice? None. Step up your game, white rice. At least the Thais put jasmine in theirs to make it taste like something. White rice is the Cameroon of rice. At its best, it is really just a vehicle to put other things on. Lots of upside there. You can make gumbo with yellow rice, I'm sure, and it would be glorious.

Broccoli cheddar rice is Germany. It has no glaring weaknesses, brings a lot to the table, and doesn't try to be something it's not. You're not putting sweet and sour meatballs on it, but if you have it next to roast beef you are having a heck of a meal right there. I haven't had brown rice in like 35 years so I don't really have anything to say about it.

The moral of the story, though, is that wild rice is great and those that disagree need to be convinced. I would suggest you help convince in the comments section, but I don't think she reads the comments. Or the posts.

That line is there for a reason

2009-06-02T15:02:00.003-04:00

I drive home from work pretty much every day that I drive there. Yesterday was an exception, because I worked my first 12 hour shift. It was just as awesome as you think it would be. Part of my commute includes time on an expressway, which, as you are probably aware, involves retard drivers and on ramps. There are retard drivers on every sort of road, but on expressways, they move faster. Which is good news for everyone.

As speed magnifies dumbassery on the road, the on ramps are the portals by which that behavior is applied to the efficient expressways we all know and love from the tangle of back roads and pedestrians. Stupid things, of course, happen in town, too, so do not think I am trying to minimize that. It is just that I do not drive in town every day, so that is not something that irritates me on quite as regular a basis.

Have you ever been entering the highway and not quite reach the driving lane out of the acceleration lane and behind somebody else, when the jerk behinds you departs the acceleration lane early and pulls around you into the driving lane? That guy deserves, at a minimum, to have his tires slashed. There's that wide triangle shaped strip that (while I'm not traffic signage expert) probably means, "Don't do that, jerkface." Not only that, but that guy cuts me off as I try to pass that slowpoke in front of me.

That sucks, too. When you get stuck in a line of people behind a guy holding everyone up; they cannot be sure that it's not you. I feel like I need to hold up a sign saying, "It's not me! Let me out of this prison! I won't slow you down!" Then again, I am occasionally guilty of that practice. There are certain crimes on the road that are more serious than others. Vehicular manslaughter, for instance. I, however, will fly into a rage when the guy behind me departs prematurely out of the acceleration lane. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

I am just like you, only giant

2009-05-22T16:33:00.004-04:00

Charlotte, NC -- Do you like the dateline? I think I will try it out when I travel. I am in Charlotte for a wedding of a person I don't know, but that's not really relevant to the post. Free food for a weekend is pretty excellent, though. So far only one sporadic reader friend of mine got married and invited me; the rest of you disgusting, unmarriable people need to get it into gear, because who doesn't like free stuff? I will invite you to my wedding when (if) it ever happens. I even promise to write about it and give you free advertising! With a dateline! Spread the word to your friends, and that many more people will hear about how your aunt is loud and the open bar was great.

The prompt for me to write today, though, was that I decided to join Sam's Club this morning, but that was back in Augusta. That place is a strange experience. You can spend a lot of money on junk you don't need and that you might get sick of before you reasonably consume it all. I bought a box of granola bars and it comes with thirty (30) packs of them, for $7. The normal one at the grocery store comes with six (6), for like $2.50. My tastes could change before I eat the last one. I also bought Honey Nut Cheerios, even though I have mixed feelings about cereal. It was like half price, so I am ok-er with it.

More interesting was the sort of shoppers you see there. You see old people who are thrifty to comic absurdity, a lot of moms with 3 teenage boys (or fat girls) who need an endless supply of cokes and mallomars (I actually didn't see any mallomars, but I think it's a funny word), and restauranteurs (hopefully bbqers, another class whose ranks I have recently joined). It kind of blows me away that small restaurants can go get their cooking supplies from the same place that soccer moms get their diet cokes and old people get their oddly large tins of metamucil. For some reason, I thought that there was some secret cabal of restaurant stuff that provides plates and ketchup to cafes and steakhouses with all their needs, painfully unavailable to us mere mortals. Between that and Hell's Kitchen, it doesn't seem like there is any reason I could not open a pretty kickass restaurant myself. I think it would be a gastropub. Maybe even in Charlotte?

It is the green eyed monster which doth mock

2009-05-17T22:03:00.005-04:00

My eyes look particularly green today. I don't mean that in the sense that they are buying reusable bags at Publix and using compact fluorescent light bulbs instead of incandescents (which raises [does not beg] the question, is the mercury used in a CFL less destructive than CO2?). I mean green in the sense of British racing green and green means go. I think I have narrowed the cause of this phenomenon down to two suspects:

I am wearing a green shirt.
My eyes are always greeen.

I have wondered for a long time about how the green shirt business works. Scientists everywhere agree that clothing color impacts perceived eye color. Is this just an effect akin to choosing the proper matte for your print of Dogs Playing Poker? (Why is that painting such a punchline?) It still seems weird to me, though, because the way people talk about it ("Oh your eyes look really pretty brown today") carries some implications, like something caused that to happen an that they are normally not that way. Just to clear up any confusion, my eyes are indeed always green and that is pretty spectacular.

Just to muddle any confusion further, the first choice leads to one of those dilemmas that allows crazy into the world, a la Pandora's Box. You know, if you say, "You look pretty today," that sounds like it is a change in condition. "Wow, you are normally easily confused with an angry warthog, but not today. Today you are worthy of appearing on a cardboard standee advertising chewing tobacco or beer." I am making a ruling: try to avoid fixating on the modifier in a case like that, unless it is especially insulting. For example:

GOOD: You smell nice today.
BAD: Did you finally decide to bathe?
GOOD: The dinner tonight was great.
BAD: How come your other food is way crappier than this?
GOOD: Nice hit!
BAD: Going 1 for 10 still means you missed 9 times.
GOOD: You look nice in that dress.
BAD: You're fat.

I think we can all accept that this is the way things should be. Although, the prospect of having shapeshifter eyes is a little unsettling, sure, it would be cool at first, but it could lead to trouble. ("Is there a problem officer?" "Son, this license says your eyes are green, but they are clearly blue.") What if they decided they liked some other color better, leaving some crappy color combination like garnet and black? Let's hope we never have to find out.

And down the stretch they come

2009-05-08T23:10:00.005-04:00

I had a pretty fun weekend last week -- I attended an event across the river in South Carolina known as the Aiken Lobster Races. The thing is, I never made it to watch lovable crustaceans in their novel competition because we ran into the tragic experience that can challenge the excitement of any lobster race: the Poorly Run Restaurant (or PRR). I guess I should say, in the interest of full disclosure, that the PRR is new, but quite frankly, I am not convinced that should be an excuse. I have been to hundreds of restaurants in my short time here on God's Playground and I am pretty sure of the things that need to happen for the experience to be an enjoyable one. Good food is definitely a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. (Steve Buscemi appearing in a movie is a sufficient condition for it to be good, but not a necessary one. Although it is close.)

The biggest clincher for my lobster party was the crappy waitress. The food came out slowly, and when it did it came out one order at a time. (In the PRR's defense, they claimed to be a tapas restaurant. To their discredit, only like 30% of the menu was actually tapas.) That was not necessarily her fault; the rudeness about being slow to show our IDs, getting infrequent water refills, and making inappropriate comments about how our decision to sit outside seemed to be an inconveniece for her were what convinced me of this conclusion: she sucks.

It also reminded me of one of the most illustrative and terrifying discoveries I have made so far about the human race: there are a lot of people who suck at their jobs. I know you are probably thinking, "Gee, Engineer, very insightful. What's next? Grapes are both nutritious and delicious?" Well, yes, that is also true. (Red grapes for ever!) But think about this on a large scale: there are people who suck at every job, ones you count on, like plumbers, water treatment guys, car makers, doctors, investment bankers, politicians, and even engineers. To quote George Carlin: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." If you were one of those people who bought a Pontiac Aztek, sorry about your bad luck.

Even the high barriers to entry cannot keep some of them out. The head of AIG was not a dummy, you know? People had to elect Barney Frank, and the doctor from the Octomom nonsense got into and graduated from a medical degree granting institution. Soometimes having the capital, drive, and chef to open a restaurant is not enough to run it well, either. So remember all those jackasses in your classes and be nice to them because they might keep you from seeing lobsters race. Jerks.

Sometimes I nuaaowkk qiesa

2009-05-04T20:38:00.006-04:00

A silly thing happened to me last week at work. I know I promised not to talk about work here before, and this will not be too much about that. You do not want to hear me talk about my job because engineers are boring, right? At work, I am an engineer. Here, on the internet, I can be anything! A swashbuckling writer who just does not care what the world things -- I am going to continue observing! You are welcome, internet.

Anyway, I got a reply to an e-mail I sent to a colleague that went something like this:

Colleague,

Do not worry about the content of this message. Rest assured that it was technical and boring yet still reaffirmed how awesome I am.

Thanks,
Engubrrt

Normally, I sign with just my first name, but somehow my fingers managed not to land on the homerow exactly right and my otherwise superlative typing came out a little confused. Colleague had the good manners not to ask, "Who the hell is Engubrrt?" but if I know him, he probably showed everyone in his cubicle row while saying something along the lines of, "Get a load of this guy!"

This is not the first time I have confused my own now in communication. I remember one time I called a Tall Friend in elementary school to ask him about Command and Conquer or whatever we talked about in those days and left him a message along the lines of, "Hey Engineer, this is Tall Friend. I don't remember what this said but it was probably me calling you out as a crappy C&C player." He was both amused and bewildered by my nontraditional approach to trash talk.

The moral of this story is that even I cannot escape my powerful observations. I must continue my swashbuckling. My observations cannot esoy!

You can't shorten "title"

2009-04-20T21:43:00.004-04:00

I was watching 30 Rock the other day (fantastic show, by the way) and a speech practice that was used that made a character purposefully look like a douche bag for comedic effect. Now, I'm all for laughing at douche bags, but even this practice makes me leery because a friend did this very same thing "ironically" recently. As far as I know, he is not otherwise a douche bag, (I have never seen him use a Bluetooth headset or cheer for a Boston sports team, for instance).

I have previously discussed shortening phrases and I think we can all agree that I was totally right: shortening phrases is an affront to God. Now, looking a little bit further, like we saw on 30 Rock, there is a practice of shortening words, too. The character on the shjow asked his personal assistant to make room on his "schedj" for a date with Liz Lemon. Good for him, but his assistant's proper response should have been, "If you ever say 'schedj' again, I will walk out of here in two shakes of the lammie's tail." He later does, and she does not quit. At least, not on camera. (I sometimes like to fill in what happens in other scenes not shown for the ancillary characters during commercials, and in my version of the episode she quits by peeing on his shoes.)

Other words that follow this patter are sitch (situation), natch (naturally), offish (official[ly]), delish (delicious), and so on. My mom has always had a problem with poli(tical) sci(ence), but my brother deicded to major in it. College class names are trickier, too, because they have long and absurd names that probably need to be shortened. My college classes all had nicknames (the most delicious of which was Meatballs), beyond the ordinary things like calc, chem and freshman comp. For whatever reason, these were never particularly offensive to me. Although, differential equations was a battleground between two factions: those enlightened scholars who favored "D.E." and the rampaging and uncouth barbarians who pushed for Diffey Q. Clearly the latter are fools and deserve no more of our attention.

This could have also probably been filed under dealbreakers. I don't quite know how you justify a pronunciation as an invention, or you better believe this would be in the terrorists' aresenal. Feel free to add any shortened words that deserve to be punishable by waterboarding in the comments and watch 30 Rock this week.

Just a little outside

2009-04-16T17:29:00.004-04:00

I have a very long commute to work in the morning. This has caused me to exceed the warranty on my car in a comically fast fashion (that, along with travel to such exotic locales as Atlanta, Clemson and the Homeland). Other benefits include consuming a lot of of radio (still haven't gotten an iPod or an iPhone. What is wrong with me?), some of which is talk radio. This prompted a certain friend of mine to say to me, "You listen to AM talk radio? What are you, like close to death old?" Yes. I am close to death old because I like to listen to ESPN radio and the news.

That last one might not help my cause, but if you look on my link section, you can see that my interest in the news is of a semi-professional interest. (I say "semi" because I don't get paid in actual "money.") The former, though, is completely in bounds, I think. I caught some of Mike and Mike this morning on the way in and was struck by something, though: a lot of people on the radio are not really that good. Sporst in particular has a bit of a weird issue with this, because sports jounralism is necessarily local (or at least regional) due to concentrated loyalties and interest. Try talking Big Ten football with a resident of Georgia or South Carolina. You'll be laughed all the way back to Columbus (OH). And rightfully so.

National sports figures are famous, frequently, for their non-sports production as much as they are for their sports broadcasting or content. Bill Simmons, Peter King, and John Madden (and Mike and Mike, for that matter). This is because, in my mind, ESPN.com, SI.com and ESPN radio have sufficiently large market share that they basically only have to put competent people out there to get an audience. How many people who use Windows or Internet Explorer o so because they tried all the competition and liked it best? My guess is the same number of pirates who don't regret trying to capture the Maersk Alabama.

This leads me to my most paramount rule of irritation when consuming media: if I (or someone I know) can do a job better than a professional making millions of dollars, then that contract is probably ill-advised. I could not write an operating system or internet browser very well, so I'm going to let Bill Gates slide. But he knows I have my eye on him.

I think anyone who watches a lot of sports could do Mike and Mike's show. I think there are probably some rather intelligent pets that could write Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback column. (A friend of mine insists that her Jack Russell has the vocabulary of a 5 year old!) Bill Simmons is talented but burnt out or lazy now or bored. The point is, if I watched sports for 25 hours a week, I could host a 3 hour talk show a day about it, especially if I had a friend with me. I could probably write a weekly column, too. If you put me on ESPN radio and published me on SI.com, people would listen and read because they are big media outlets. With backing like that, I could also even get players, press offices, agents and even owners to take my calls.

Really, what this tells me is that after all this driving in the mornings, I should just break down and buy an iPod Touch and be done with it. That way, I could get angry over podcasts, too.

No question prompting for a y/n ends well

2009-03-31T19:48:00.005-04:00

You know what question bothers me a lot more than it should? It's not one of those cliches like paper or plastic, boxers or brief, or do you want fries with that. (Plastic, boxers and yes.) I know one of you clever jokesters is probably thinking something like, "Are you sure you're in the right restroom, ma'am? Oh, I'm sorry." Nor is it anything as scandalous as "Why on earth would you think she was over 18?" Sadly, both of those questions make better stories, but you will be enthralled by mine; a testament to my highly developed writing powers.

Using my clues, surely you have deduced that it is when automatic card readers say: "Credit or debit?" or "Debit? y/n." This offends my sensibilities for two reasons:

As you can see from my blogger name, I am an engineer. I work in a technological field, so that reflects on me personally, rightly or wrongly, in the same way that when my basketball team gets bounced in the first round by a team from *gasp* Michigan that's not Michigan State, it reflects poorly on the whole Clemson community. It's that personal.
I'm lazy.

I also noticed that you saw more colons in the previous paragraph than your average proctologist. I was going to apologize for that, but then I realized, colons (the punctuation) are great, while colons (the organ), that would demand an apology. I apologize for nothing.

The D or C question bothers me a lot. This card can hold a magnetic strip that contains my entire personal information and credit history* but they didn't think to add "Oh, by the way, this is a credit card"? How ludicrous is that? How different is the billing process anyway? What happens if I choose debit for my credit card? Will the pump take my gas back? Truthfully, that would almost be worth it.

I know there are probably other things I should worry more about. Like about AIDS in Africa and economic collapse and if we all be speaking Chinese in 20 years and what made Mike Myers stop being funny. You know what they say: I don't, I just wanted to throw in another colon.

*I have no idea what is on that magnetic strip, honestly.

Southernfolk talk different

2009-03-24T21:44:00.003-04:00

Growing up, my dad used to use funny idioms that I'd never heard anywhere else, and since his mom is Southern and my mom is not, I just assumed that's where they came from. One I remember is "You better be over here in two shakes of the lammy's tail." This meant very quickly. Evidently, lammies shake their tails so quickly that they can shake them twice before whatever instant you need to deal with is at hand. I'm pretty sure there is another one, but I can't think of what it is. I have lived in the Real South (as my loyal readers know, I grew up in Florida, which is like the bicurious state) since 2004 now, and have yet to hear any of them come out of any other Southern mouths. So I can only conclude that my dad is an amazing idiomologist and made them up.

There are, however, a number of colloquialisms that I have come across that are worthy of sharing. You will, of course, find them listed and discussed below in my favorite and noblest of all lists: the numbered list.

Show [one's] tail - The first time I heard this one, I actually had to ask for an explanation. I have not heard this one outside of rural South Carolina yet, so it might be unique to there and not Southern at large. It has nothing to do with nudity or discovery of morphological changes in humans, to my disappointment. How great would it be if they discovered lizard people in the Upstate of South Carolina? Clemson's swim team would win all kinds of national championships. It actually means to misbehave, as in, "After eating several pixie sticks, the State Senators really showed their tails."
Cut on - This is the phrase that made me want to write this entry. This one bothers me for aesthetic purposes. It doesn't sound right. This is the opposite of (obviously) cut off, as in "Cut off the woodchipper, he's already dead." Cut off should be obnoxious too, since it doesn't really make sense either, but it gets a pass because cutting off and termination kind of make sense, even though cutting off a light switch is not really that permanent or serious of a change. I do feel strongly though that you should not be able to cut on anything.
Might could - These are two linking verbs. I know that because in seventh grade Mrs. Adair made us memorize all of the linking verbs in the English language via a cute little song that I will never forget ever. The thing about verbs like that, though, is that two of them can't follow each other in a sentence, with the exceptions of am/is/are/was/were and being. No other combinations are possible, including might could. This means might be able to, and I grit my teeth every time I hear someone say this. An example of this being used in a sentence is "I might could help you with your math homework, but you have to take off your shirt first." (In this example, the speaker is talking to a girl [who is over 18]. The speaker can be whichever gender you prefer.)
Stay - This one isn't so much a phrase as it is a word. That's ok, though. It means live. As in, "No, I don't stay in this refrigerator box. Thanks for asking." This one, though, isn't really quite as aggravating or funny as the others, but it's still unusual. Like a cat who barks or a complete sentence coming from Rep. Corrine Brown. I am also told that this is restricted to a subset of Southerners who are also black, which is consistent with my very scientific observations.

I really wish I could remember the other prolific one that my dad would say because it would really make the intro stronger and it's really weird. Feel free to share any regionalisms you have encountered, and point out the region. The stranger the better!

I like the Irish. Not Notre Dame.

2009-03-13T15:09:00.004-04:00

It was in high school when I first started to think about what islands of white people my family came from way back when. Of course, like everyone else in the southeast, Britain and Ireland were the primary culprits. I was prompted to look into it because there were a lot of people in my high school whose parents were born in India but they had never seen the place and still managed to feel and act more Indian than American. Don't get me a wrong, there were a lot of awesome Indian people too, but there were some who would only hang with other Indian folks, which strikes me as, well, I don't want to say racist, but a little bit racist.

This coming week is, of course, the holiday for people who like to pretend they're Irish. I have never been to Ireland and my last name is English, but there are Irish people in my family tree and begorrah, I love it. The Irish are a jolly people, and I like being a part of that. There are primarily three things that Irish people are known for, and they're all fantastic. Indian people might have better food, but they sure don't have better booze.

Booze (Biotálle). Distillation came to Ireland from the Mediterranean by way of missionaries, according to wikipedia. How great is that? Missionaries! There's a saying that the Irish discovered whiskey and the Scottish perfected it. You know what I have to say about that? Ireland is independent and Scotland is still run from London. Eat that. Also, everyone loves Guinness. Americans learned to make their liquors when the Irish and Scottish came over and settled the South in the early colonial days. Good for them.
Blessings (Beannachtaí). Everyone knows the "May the road always rise to meet you..." blessing. You may not have known is that there are like a thousand just like it, poetic and fun and cheery. For a people so historically miserable (not quite Polish or Jewish miserable, but certainly more so than the Canadians), most of what you see is very positive, like charming brogues, pots of gold and leprechauns, and excellent smelling soap. I suspect #1 has a hand in this attitude. My favorite is: May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.
Blarney (An Bhlárna). It is a town, castle, rock and gift originating in County Cork. You might think it's just mumbo jumbo, but this community has been able to convince Americans to come to their town and spend good money in order bend over backwards to kiss a rock. If that isn't evidence of the gift of Blarney, I don't know what is. There is also a disproportionate presence of Irish writers in the English language, and I'd like to think that there's something in the blood, and I just have to activate that component of it by drinking Bushmills.

Sure, there are terrorists and domestic violence too, but all that has largely been drowned out by the Muslims blowing people up in more dramatic fashion. And their accents aren't nearly as fun. Can you imagine a Saudi breakfast cereal? Magically delicious, insha'allah. Anyway, everyone have a happy SPD on the 17th, eat some corned beef and cabbage and say sláinte as you think about your favorite blogger. The Wonkette.

Things I Learned on the Oscars

2009-02-23T19:16:00.005-05:00

I have to confess that I did not watch all of the spectacle last night. I made it until the all important short documentary award, which was won by a movie called Smile Pinki about children with cleft palates which I'm sure was super uplifting. It was presented by Bill Maher. The presenter is relevant, but I don't want to say anything further because I don't want to step on my toes later on. As you probably already know, I like numbered lists. I am going to use this technique to describe my discoveries.

Of Hugh Jackman's talents, being funny without scripted jokes is not one of them. He was pretty impressive with his singing and dancing and making out with Anne Hathaway, but he was not funny after the opener. Later on, though, in his second dance number, it gave us another image of Vanessa Hudgens to think about where she looked good with her clothes on. I was going to post a pic of her from the show, but all I could find was that shot of her naked in her bedroom. No kiddie porn for me.
Bill Maher is not funny. At all. To be fair, I knew this one already. He is not funny, nor is he insightful. This man upsets me, because he reflects poorly on Irish people. Maher is the same as my grandmother's maiden name (although her family name was corrupted upon their arrival in this country). I might go see Religulous just so I can storm out and be indignant. Being indignant is suprisingly satisfying.
Jack Black is still capable of hilarity. He had a great joke series about animated films and how much America loves him. He even involved gambling, and quite frankly, gambling is fun. He presented with Jennifer Aniston and they did surprisingly well together. I don't care if I'm alone when I say this, but Brad Pitt made the wrong call with Angelina. She is crazy and has too many kids. Jennifer is crazy and has no kids and presents with Jack Black. Jack Black tells jokes about betting on the movie studio that employs him on national television and I'm pretty sure neither of them have tattoos.
The only difference between Sarah Jessica Parker and Dee Snider is Matthew Broderick. I don't know how Sarah Jessica Parker got famous. Is she supposed to be a sex symbol? Is she supposed to be a glam metal rocker? I never saw a single episode of Sex and the City (how surprised are you?), so I don't get what it's all about. I had a cosmopolitan once, and it was pretty good, but all girly drinks are and as far as girly drinks go, it kind of sucks. What's that you and your Sex and the City friends say, Jessica? You disagree with my joking abuse and you're not gonna take it?
They should have awards for movies that came out last year. I had seen a grand total of zero of the movies that were up for best picture. I had seen one last year -- Michael Clayton. My living room is so awesome that I never want to go out to movies anymore. The academy should reflect that.

They hit a grand slam

2009-02-21T12:52:00.006-05:00

I saw the greatest commercial ever yesterday. I think it was a Super Bowl commercial, so I might be a little behind the eight ball on this one, but a late compliment is still better than no compliment. When I say greatest, it might be a little bit of an exaggeration. It is, however, on the level of Free Pie and Chips.

I don't want to jump right into it, because I don't like spoiling surprises. I like the build up. Do you remember the funniest commercial you ever saw? Did it involve a talking animal, like a lizard convincing you to buy beer or a chihuahua trying to sell you on... meat? It's not really Mexican food or even food in the abstract, but they call it meat so I'll be charitable. Geico had some great ones, like the Lauren Wallace series and the aforementioned Pie and Chips. I miss him.

Somehow, I missed this one at the Super Bowl. I don't know how, but then again, I wasn't really paying that much attention. So I guess I kind of do know how. I wanted the Cardinals to win, because they have a cool story and they had such a long line of futility and Larry Fitzgerald is a mad man and I'm pretty sure that Ben Roethlisberger is borderline retarded. But he has twice as many Super Bowl rings as Peyton Manning, so I guess having an IQ of 80 isn't so bad after all.

I don't even want to give away the what happens in this commercial, because it cracked me up so hard. I was in tears and laughing uncontrollably for like 7 minutes. That hasn't happened since the last time I watched Beerfest with Wachapreague Warrior. I backed up on my DVR. Here's my advice: watch it once, then count to ten, then watch it again. Let it sink in. It is comedic brilliance on the order of Blazing Saddles. I like pancakes, too.

First step towards immortality

2009-02-16T12:04:00.007-05:00

Why did the chicken cross the road? Have you ever stopped to think that somebody somewhere was the first person to ever tell that joke? That joke was written (or invented, depending on whether you think of jokes as simply pieces of writing or discoveries that should be shared). Stand up comics write jokes all the time, but there aren't really that many that become part of our cultural consciousness that the joke's existence becomes distinct from the writer. Knock knock. Who's There? Ima. Ima who? I'ma kill the guy who came up with the knock knock joke. You can have that one for free.

Sure, we all know the bit about the 7 Words You Can't Say on Television by George Carlin. You can't separate that phrase from Mr. Conductor. Barney from How I Met Your Mother is an innovator of this ilk with his Lemon Law. Who was the first guy to call people "cat" instead of sir or man? I want to congratulate that guy and I'm pissed we don't still do that.

Somewhere down the line, there was a first guy to do that. We don't know who he is; he is an innovator lost in the sands of time, like the inventor of the wheel or penicillin. I do think, however, that whoever that guy was, he would be happier if we started calling each other cat again that erecting a monument in his honor in our downtown city squares. It would probably just come out as a giant marble cat anyway.

I want to join that pantheon of creativity. I was challenged to invent a word as my first offering to those demigods of comedy and posterity for entry into their Olympus over the weekend, and I think I have it: flamty. It started out as flamtankerous, but we can all agree that was way over the top. Flamty is where it's at. The exact defintion is hard to pin down exactly, but I can use it in a few sentences to make it clear for you.

I was going to ask that girl for her number, but that dress makes her ass look flamty.
Hmm, I there's something funny about the marinade, does that steak taste a little flamty to you?
Let's be reasonable here, your sister is clearly the flamtiest in the room. I haven't thrown up even once!

I hope that this will be the first of many inventions of a lexicographic nature to bolster your conversation. Please feel free to post your own interpretations and uses of the word, and also let me know about circumstances in out there away from internetland where this comes up. I hope none of your coming days are flamty.

Where's the third ring?

2009-02-06T15:43:00.004-05:00

I'm pretty sure I'm not crazy on this one: I don't understand the Family Circus. I don't mean that it looks like Greek letters and alien shapes, I recognize that it's a comic composed of images and dialogue intended to portray a scene or story, but I can't figure out what the Family Circus's motivation or appeal is. It's not really a story. Is it because I don't have children? Is that why it seems like a waste of newspaper ink to me?

Let me clarify, though, that the Family Circus is not as maddeningly offensive as, say, Frank and Earnest. It's just confusing. Why is this comic so universally popular? Am I on crazy pills? Let me cite an example that I found on the family circus website, which if this blog ever gets readership I will probably have to take down or risk being sued:

When I say I don't understand it, it's not that I don't know what it's saying, even though for a Floridian the concept of icy sidewalks is about as familiar as tse tse flies biting Bengal Tigers while aborigines watch while playing the accordion. I have conceptual understanding that ice forms in the winter on sidewalks and it's slippery, increasing the risk of falling, or sliding, if you will. I get the "joke." Only, it's not a joke. This is a bad pun dressed up as cute because a child (presumably his?) said it. Aww, adorable. No. This is a newspaper. There is no room for adorable, Trixie Flagston aside.

I want to know who it is that looks for this everyday. I want to know if having children will make this comic seem less like something only boring people enjoy to something I look for all the time. If enjoying Family Circus is what I have to look forward to in parenthood, I am going to never stop drinking Mountain Dew.

Coming out of hibernation?

2009-02-02T20:24:00.004-05:00

Hey everybody. I know, I haven't written here since for like four months. And you know what? Only one of you, my favorite of all my friends both real and imagined, mentioned it. Bloggers feed on comments. They are like the water that makes the tiny foam dinosaurs turn into scary and disappointing monsters. That's what your comments do to my ego.

Maybe you've lost interest or I've started repeating myself. I don't know; I don't read my own stuff very often. I am a poor judge of my writing. Each blog entry is like one of my children: I barely remember any of them.

I do hope that I can put more effort into this in the near future, and that y'all do too. I am going to give you a few previews of what you can expect. Some of them are classic topics (like commercials I hate, comics I hate, and other things that begin with c that I hate), some will be new (like things I haven't decided yet, but I will probably talk about how much I like period hats), I still owe you a Graphs Aplenty (from my favorite of all friends both real and imagined), and I think there might be a visual redesign. I might lose interest, though, if you people don't step up your game.

Oh, and I have a beard now.

Click here to begin

2008-09-22T20:06:00.005-04:00

All of you faithful reader out there know how much attention I pay to commercials, even with my DVR, which I have not previously mentioned. I have a DVR, and it has kind of changed my life. Kind of. I still watch them. I still judge them. I still love the Sonic commercials, regardless of what one of my friends might think. Microsoft has made a big splash lately. They've got Bill Gates running around with Jerry Seinfeld. They've got Bill Gates running around with all sorts of other pcs. I guess he has a lot of time on his hands nowadays, now that he's no longer running the world from his evil throne. (Notice that I have not made a judgment about Gates; just his throne. Or did I?)

I don't know how I feel about the Seinfeld commercials. They're weird and avant-garde and memorable, but I can't say that they're funny. They're just weird for the sake of weird, and since they are both famous, people notice. The question, though, is when did Seinfeld stop being funny? Actually, Gates isn't too bad. But that's because he's Bill Gates on a tv commercial telling Jerry Seinfeld that he doesn't wear his clothes in the shower. That's weird for the sake of funny.

The other one is the answer to the Mac vs. PC commercials. It isn't that funny either, but that's not really what they're going for. It's actually a pretty cool commercial, except it's like 5 years too late. The Mac vs. PC commercials are ridiculous now (although I did laugh at the pizza one) and not really that relevant anymore. Where have you been, Microsoft ad people? Or Windows ad people? I don't really understand what the companies are anymore.

What is the best party story ever?

2008-09-12T18:45:00.002-04:00

I think everyone loves Jeopardy, whether they freely admit it or not. There is something lovable about Alex Trebek and his feigned sympathy when somebody confuses Hirohito and Akihito. Everybody feels the same way about the inane stories people tell in the middle of the Jeopardy round, mostly how much more interesting we are than the people on the show and their stories about their cats and proposing to their wives at football games. Last week, I drove to Savannah to try out for the chance to tell my inane cat stories to millions of people all over the country, right before or after Wheel of Fortune.

It all started about eight months ago when America’s favorite quiz show put out its annual online online qualifying test. I had been waiting on this moment for a long time; probably since the very first time I heard the category title “Potent Potables.” This would be my time to shine.

Before the 8:00 pm start time, the 50 question exam could he about anything, from Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” to the reign of Tiberius Caesar or this year’s Best Picture winner. I do not remember a lot of the details, and since they kept most of the details hush-hush, they kept my score a secret. It reminded me a lot of “the permanent record” that teachers kept in elementary school. They also tell you that there is an element of randomness involved, I assume to keep your ego in check enough not to go around to your friends and discuss how you knocked the test out of the park. You cannot get on the show with out a little luck. In fact, you cannot even make it past the first cut.

Last month, though, I got word back. After eight months of waiting on pins and needles, I got an e-mail telling me to arrive at a hotel in Savannah. The only warning, the only preparation really, they offered me was to arrive prepared for a written exam, a personality interview, and a mock Jeopardy round. I expected the written exam to be a lot like the online test, and it was, and I had seen enough of the show to kind of know what to expect from a simulated game, but personality interview? What does that even mean? Do they have a personality type in mind? Are they worried I am going to arrive in an oversized hat? It is television, after all, and you never really know what it is they are thinking. They could be thinking something like, “His head will look huge on camera.” Oh they did have one more suggestion that I forgot: have fun!

When I got there, they gave us a little history of the show and explained how the trick is as much about timing as it is about knowing the answers to Alex’s Questions. Or questions to his answers. Or whatever.

The written exam was another 50 questions with eight seconds for each. It was just as tense as it sounds, since the questions about opera are just as hard in Savannah as they are from your couch. After it was over, the discussion was just like the ones that happen after tests in school or a after a poker game: obnoxious. I do not care if you knew who created Daisy Buchanan, this is competition. This is deathmatch. This is Thunderdome.

The next step was the mock game and the personality interview (they happened together). They ask you about your inane cat stories and your job and what you would do with the money. The trick, though, was that they did it at a rapid, television pace to catch the unwitting civilians off guard. Everyone did ok, unfortunately. The herd was not thinned that much at this stage.

They insisted that the mock round would not be “graded,” but I am a little skeptical. I think it was an effort to try to diffuse the nervousness, and every wrong answer was really black mark on our secret Jeopardy permanent record. It is a bit intimidating, there’s a lot to think about: wait for the question to be read completely, think of the right answer, buzz in, answer loud, smile, and please oh please do not forget to answer in the form of a question. This is all while you are standing in front of the other Jeopardy gladiators. One question sticks out in my mind – to which dynasty did Mary, Queen of Scots belong? I knew the answer, and kept saying in my head, “It’s Stuart, do not say Tudor.” Yet, invariably, I buzzed in and said, “What is Tudor?” Wrong. That is a black mark on my Jeopardy record forever, I just know it. I did get other questions right, but Mary, Queen of Scots will haunt my dreams.

They told us that they keep us on file for eighteen months. So, anytime between next week and a year and a half from now, I might get a phone call (hopefully from Alex himself) saying, “Mr. Hathway, we need you in Los Angeles right away.” Then I can start bragging to my friends about how I knocked the Jeopardy tests out of the park, and hopefully, will not fall on my face on television after doing so. Luckily for you guys, though, I do not have any cats.

Best. Campaign. Ever.

2008-08-29T13:33:00.003-04:00

Here's another thing that I hate: people in blogs who don't write for a long time and then come back and say, "Oh, I'm sorry I have been away so long! Here's what I did..." That's not what this blog is about, and if you were expecting that, then I'm not sure you'd enjoy this blog anyway. Go read some camwhore's Amazon wishlist. Just assume I was doing pretty much what you were doing, except four or five times more awesome. Yeah. It was that good.

I try to avoid politics here, because I write about that other places and I know that not all four of you like politics. But the next few months are going to be amazing. We just finished the Olympics, where we were beaten in the golds by the evil Chinese, Democratic Convention was this week, Republican is next week, college football opens this weekend (I will be in Atlanta watching Clemson crush the Crimson Tide, by the way, look for me -- you'll know me when you see me), and McCain announced his running mate today. And it's a girl! (I think my little brother has a crush on her.) This makes this race exciting again, and maybe even more accessible to people who care more about Dancing With the Stars. (I'm guessing, I don't watch that show. Although I do think it would fun if Missouri settles their electoral votes by a dance-off. Maine should do a lobster-off. There need to be more competitions ending in -off in my life.)

Joe Biden is a fun pick too, because he's like your crazy old uncle who has opinions on everything and doesn't give a damn about who is listening. I love that in a politician. And an uncle. But most of the excitement on Democrats came when Obama joined this shindig, and that's yesterday's news now. Like bologna. That's right, I don't eat bologna anymore.

I'm pretty sure I've said this here before, but election season is like my World Cup. It comes around every four years, most of the country is really bored when it happens, and I like to wear a cape made from the flag of my favorite team while watching. I can't really intelligently make a soccer analogy, because I don't understand how the game works, but imagine if an extremely exciting game became boring (tough, I know) and then suddenly became the most exciting game ever played. That's what I'm looking at right now. No matter what happens, history will be made, like if a baby led the Lions to a Super Bowl. Can you imagine? The Lions in the Super Bowl?

Sing it loud and sing it proud

2008-07-28T22:35:00.004-04:00

People have their favorite songs and places to sing. Most folks say theirs is in the car or shower or even both. I don't get what the deal with the shower is, really. I'm not any more or less likely to sing in the shower than I am anywhere else. Is it a privacy thing? Or are there a lot of waterproof drum kits out there that I don't know about? (I want one.) Don't misunderstand me, I sometimes sing in the shower. I just sing in other places too, like when I'm making dinner or standing in line at the grocery store.

The car makes complete sense, what with the radio and all. There are etiquette questions that arise if you are not alone, though. How loud to sing the chorus of Angel is a Centerfold? How high do you go on I Get Around? That's really an indicator of comfort, isn't it? If you're in the car with someone and he or she is doing his or her very best Axl Rose on Sweet Child o' Mine, then you know there is a definite comfort there. Or this person just doesn't care what you think. Can you blame them? I don't either. (That's not true, I need your approval. Why else would I be writing this on the internet? Please don't go.)

One of the problems I run into, though, is the gender of the singer. What's your favorite Rolling Stones song? Mine is Beast of Burden. (If you chose Can't Always Get What You Want, you're close. If you said Satisfaction, you need to listen to more Rolling Stones.) Like most Stones songs, this one is about Mick Jagger trying to convince a girl to have sex with him. I saw Cobie Caillat at a concert (no, it's not what you're thinking -- I was there to see Hootie and the Blowfish) and she did a cover and changed the words to be gender appropriate. Bette Midler has a cover (surprisingly good, too) and I think she did, too. When you hear a song you like by a woman singer, do you change the words, or do you just go with it?

I found myself in this predicament when I heard The Tide is High by Blondie, when Debbie Harry says she's not the kind of girl who gives up just like that. I realized that I do it about half the time, because I am both self-conscious and lazy. It's probably a bigger problem for the ladies, since there are a lot of guy singers out there. What do you do about this?

Inline outline leave me alone

2008-07-18T15:58:00.004-04:00

You know what I miss? Aside from Crystal Pepsi, I mean. Then again, my tastes have probably changed since then. I remember liking Wild Cherry Pepsi a lot, but I bought a 12 pack for a poker game and I don't think I like it quite as much. It might be because I have been drinking a lot more cherry flavored sodas lately, like Cheerwine (one of the glorious discoveries I made in Clemson) and IBC Black Cherry (2/$5 at Kroger!), both of which are like Naomi and Wynonna compared to Ashely, except in reverse. I hope that wouldn't be true of Crystal Pepsi.

That's not what I meant to get started on, though. I miss Roman numerals. I think they are a classier way of counting, and identifying things, numerically speaking. I know that Arabic numerals revolutionized math, what their zero and all, but why do we write Thurston Howell III and not Thurston Howell 3? Class, that's why. Also, crossword puzzles.

Think of all the things that Roman numerals are used for: fancy watches - classy. Kings and queens - classy. Super Bowl - classy. Sort of. Outlines - actually, this one isn't as easy to see. To be honest, it took me a long time to really understand how outlines were supposed to work when I was first exposed to them. I know you are probably thinking, "Wow. And you went to grad school?" My explanation is this: shut up. Taking notes was a little foreign to me, and organizing things in a number-letter-number-etc hierarchy just didn't click, like the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies. I grew out of it, though, I think. Let's see if that's true.

I. Good Actors
A. Actors
1. Anthony Hopkins
2. Paul Newman
a. The Verdict
b. Sells food with proceeds to charity!
i. Like salad dressing and spaghetti sauces
ii. Don't forget limeade!
3. Keanu Reeves
a. Just kidding.
b. Or am I?
B. Actresses
1. Amy Adams
a. I love her
b. I could be a driver
2. Zhang Ziyi
a. I'm not sure if it's Zhang Ziyi or Ziyi Zhang. It's the opposite here than in China
b. That hair stick scene in Rush Hour 2 is amazing
3. Meryl Streep
a. I hear she's pretty good
b. I saw a preview for Mamma Mia last night in Batman and that song is infectious
c. Death Becomes her
i. Totally underrated.
ii. She shoots Goldie Hawn with a shotgun!
II. Evil Actors
A. Actors
1. Mel Gibson
a. Racists are evil
b. Or was that Australians?
2. Russell Crowe
3. Keanu Reeves
a. Just kidding.
b. Or am I?
B. Actresses
1. Angelina Jolie
a. I think Brad made the wrong choice
b. She's crazy
i. Remember that thing with her brother at the Oscars?
ii. And her kids' names?
iii. And Billy Bob Thornton!?!
a) Vial of blood
b) Tattoos
c) Billy Bob Thornton!?!
2. Rosie O'Donnell
a. Does she even count anymore
b. I liked A League of Their Own
3. Winona Ryder
a. Shoplifting is illegal
b. Day-O

That's right, isn't it? And you what the best part of it is? Of course you do; you're smart. It's the Roman numerals! So everyone, go watch a sequel featuring Amy Adams.

2008-07-09T17:16:00.003-04:00

As some of you loyal readers know, I watch Law & Order from time to time. Over the weekend, I spent some time in the Homeland, and my parents watch L&O way more than I do. So I caught an episode or 8. It's hard to deny the entertainment value of Jerry Orbach's quips, but the thing that does it for me is the lawyer part. There is the pre-packaged, disposable hour serving size of television aspect that does make the whole experience interesting, but I think the real appeal is the awesome jargon that lawyers get to use. And, according to L&O, lawyers use it all the time. I hope I never have to sit for jury duty or get arrested for murder (and inevitably plea reject a deal where they offer Man 2) and have this vision dispelled. Dun dun.

I guess I should clarify that judges get some of the best ones, but they're lawyers, too, sort of, right? They go to law school and everything! I will point out a few of the highlights, a few of which I try to use in everyday parlance, although I have to wonder how often people understand what it is that I'm getting at with all this.

I'll allow it. This is what judges say when Sam Waterston, the reason you watch the show, tries to do something that in real life would be a gross government overreach, but is great because he's trying to get the bad guy. This is unquestionably my favorite of all legalisms.
Withdrawn. This one comes from the trial attorneys, not the judge. It's when one of them asks a question that is clearly illegal, but used to manipulate the jury. The judge always instructs the members of the jury to disregard, but really, how easy it to disregard something like, "So, it was the first and third child that you smuggled into tend your rose bushes that you didn't beat with a hose, but not the second?" It's a way to just surrender, and move on. How convenient would that be?
Objection! Probably the most versatile, anytime you disagree, you can just throw this one out. "I did not steal your waffles." "Objection! Those are clearly my waffles."
Overruled. You're wrong. Simply put. One word, can't beat that sort of efficiency.
Chambers! Sam likes to yell this one too, and it always seems so forced. I don't really know what sort of practical application it would have, unless you are demanding a romantic rendezvous. That's also pretty direct and would be efficient, if it worked.

And this didn't even begin to discuss the Latin. Habeas Corpus? Latin for "That you have the body." I think you can imagine a few contexts where that would be handy while chatting. I'd consider going to law school just for the lingo. What do we get? A mathematical definition of "work"? Objection.

Graphs Aplenty: DOES NOT COMPUTE

2008-06-30T21:50:00.006-04:00

This one is easily my favorite Graphs Aplenty so far. Venn Diagrams are almost inherently funny, but when paired with a dystopian future joke, that is a recipe for success every time. Come for the math, stay for the dystopian futures, guys! I miss the days I used to write about going to the bathroom.

This one is pretty self-explanatory, my favorite part is that our future oppressors will not only speak to us in a hybrid of the two most widely spoken languages in the United States now, but also a 30 year old programming language. So when the robots take over, programming technology will not have changed since you computer science 101 as a freshman in college. Although, to be fair, my roommate studied biology, which I'm not even sure uses computers.

Interesting side note: as a mechanical engineer, I would only be able to satisfy A and B of the diagram above. I never learned to program in C++. I know you are probably thinking, "How embarrassing!" Well, I speak Spanish and a little Irish and you're reading my blog, so I don't need your sass.

Interesting side note 2: my roommate is all grown up. He started his own blog! Go read it, the three of you who are still out there. And post comments! Comments are how we measure our self-esteem, like the way women do with their weight. Except more is better for us.

What is left?

2008-06-26T18:28:00.003-04:00

Every left-handed writer, especially those who [try to] write humor, has written this column. The world is conspiring against us with awkward tools that we can use to kill ourselves, like right handed scissors or chainsaws. They are right, you know. It is probably the reason there are so few of us around. They do tell us (other left-handed people, that is) that there are more left-handed geniuses, per capita, than right-handed ones. I believe it, because we have to be smarter, on account of all the deadly instruments. Natural selection, really.

There are a lot of other things out there, too, that are designed for the less sinister of us. (Sinister is the Latin word for left [dexter is right]. Isn't that wild? The Romans thought we were evil! I assure you that we are not. Or is that just the sort of thing that an evil person would say to deceive the masses?) A lot of them are things you don't really think about. My friend has been complaining (a lot) that the whammy bar on his Xbox 360 Guitar Hero Les Paul is not suited for left-handed rocking out (I only have the Rock Band Stratocaster). Who would have thought that Guitar Hero would discriminate?

The thing that set me off on this (most recently) is my coffee mug. It is a Rose-Hulman mug that I got for free that proclaims our greatness via US News and World Report (we're #1!) vintage 2003. If I want to show that proclamation to the world, I have to hold it with my left-hand, meaning that I cannot write while I drink my crappy hot tea. Why else would I have a mug with a message that bragadocious, if not to show it off to the world? Actually, now that I think about it, if I have to use my left hand, does that make it left-handed? I'm so confused now.

Just like I was when trying to figure out on which hand to wear my watch around Christmas time. Pants are also right-handed. Left-hand drive cars are right-handed. Most desks are right-handed, so much so that the first time I found a left-handed desk in a classroom I got really excited and was determined to sit in it, regardless of where it was in the classroom. So I did, even though it was stacked on top of three other desks.

I am the only person I know who puts my mouse on the left side of the computer. You can always tell where I sat in the computer lab, and people will freak out if I don't put it back. I'm sorry to disrupt your apple cart, Mr. Right-hander, but welcome to our world, but it's all part of our sinister plan. I mean, there is no plan.

I'll say "Go Tigers" instead of "Go Eagles," but I think he'd understand

2008-06-13T16:53:00.004-04:00

One of my very good friends plays the saxophone. He was a pretty big deal in high school with it, and because of it, he influenced me a little to try to get into jazz. It worked a little; I saw Wynton Marsalis once, and he was good, but the "date" was less than ideal. But he loves Michael Brecker. Apparently, Brecker is one of the best saxophonists ever. I don't really know a lot about jazz, so I have to take his word for it. When you really get into a hobby like that, you really kind of get to know who the people worthy of admiration of in the field.

My hobby is writing and politics and journalism. Even though it isn't really as exciting or sexy as jazz music, there are still those people, those giants in my field, too, and you might look at those giants the way I look at those in the jazz pantheon: you can recognize that they are good, but really, the distinctions of their styles might be lost if you have never written a political commentary or tried to get information out of a person in a way that other people would want to read it.

Tim Russert died today. He was the biggest of the giants. He was Michael Jordan. He was Wayne Gretzky. He was Michael Brecker. I didn't decide to write because of him or start to like politics because of him. But I liked politics better because of him. I liked journalism better because of him. Not only that, but he made those things better, too. He made America better. Remember that time when John Stewart appeared on Crossfire to criticize the show about their failing the media and the country? Tim Russert was doing it right.

He had one of the five best jobs in the world, and he loved it. He loved holding powerful men and women accountable, and we got to see it at least once a week. When you see an actor, or an athlete, or a musician, having fun with their role, we can tell. Tim Russert was doing that. He was having fun, he was excited to be in the media, and whatever you feel about politics, you can't sit through an episode of Meet The Press and not see that. You just can't.

Interestingly, too, during Meet the Press, we did actually get to meet him. We saw how important his family, his faith, his hometown and his country were to him. He wrote a book about his dad, rather than one about his career, as impressive as it was. There was no doubt about his Catholicism, his loyalty to Buffalo, and his love of the American process. We got to see all that, we got to hear about Big Russ, his son Luke, his love of sports, and it was never imposing. He was the kind of guy who would be just as happy to talk about the NFL or baseball as he was the upcoming election (well, maybe not just as happy), and would probably know more about both than you. But you'd still leave the conversation smiling.

I TiVo Meet The Press. I get excited about watching his show on Saturdays (I know, I'm a nerd). There is a gaping wound in American journalism today. Even though I am only an amateur in this field, he was the best we had. He was 58, died at work of a heart attack. He was just one of those people who seemed to understand life so well, had his priorities in order, and had managed to keep all that in tact after achieving the summit of his profession. This is one of those times that the country has lost as much as his family has. While I won't forget them in my prayers tonight, the rest of us need it too. While I can't bring myself to say "Go Eagles," I can say "Go Sabres!" I think he'd get it, though.

Stealing Bad Commercials

2008-06-09T19:35:00.003-04:00

Have you guys seen the Pizza Hut commercial where they all go in and eat some fancy looking pasta, and, oh my gosh, the chef comes in and says that it's really Pizza Hut? You know, this advertising masterpiece? Everybody there gets a good chuckle, and one even says something like, "I like it better now" at the end.

You know, if it were me, I would be pretty darned pissed (that is, assuming that this isn't completely staged, which it clearly is) if I took my date out for Italian (although, it would probably have to be at least like a fifth date, because I don't like girls to see me eat noodles too early in a relationship. I'm messier than I am happy with being) and it turned out that it was really Pizza Hut, I would demand a refund. If I were at a seafood restaurant and Captain D came out and said, "Hey guys, it's fast food!" Engineer Sighted would have to have a mutiny on the Captain's ship. Although I could probably figure out that something was up. Unless it was a Northern, cold-water or freshwater fish, of which I am woefully ignorant.

This is not a good commercial. What makes this even weirder is that Hardee's ripped it off almost exactly. Don't believe me? Check this out, fools. The only difference is they are only trying to hoodwink one person, rather than the entire restaurant. That's laziness. If I'm tricking people in a restaurant, I am going for complete deception. Sometimes I tell the hostess that my name is Roger McDormand. (My name is not Roger McDormand.) And you know what? They never figured it out. If there is a person in there who is on to my game, then I have failed. And that's what I have to say about Hardee's. Failure. McDormand, party of 2, your table is ready.

All hail my feet

2008-06-03T21:04:00.005-04:00

Isn't it weird how different some surfaces that you walk on every day feel on bare feet? Like how completely different your car accelerator feels? I heard somewhere that it was illegal to drive with bare feet, but I kind of like it. I like to live on the edge. Someday, you may see a "Wanted" poster featuring Engineer Sighted, for driving barefoot. I will be the second celebrity to have the nickname "Shoeless."

I was in a rather long car ride today, and I found myself taking off my shoes, because as I am pretty sure I have mentioned this before repeatedly, but I hate wearing shoes. I prefer flip flops, and even then, it's iffy. The floor mats of the automobile in which I was riding was one of those new/old surfaces. They felt kind of fun. I, fortunately, got to avoid wearing shoes for most of the weekend because I managed to return to my homeland, Florida. We shy away from shoes down there in the same way that Britney does underwear. Beaches and sand are not conducive to shoes, you see. Sand gets pretty much in everything, and the fewer crevices, the better. That might be good advice all the time.

I decided to make take this trip because a week and a half ago my car got smashed by hail. It was like that scene in the iconic Apple commercial. They were like tennis balls falling from the sky. There is nothing good that comes from things that are colder than 65 degrees Fahrenheit, unless it comes in a glass. I had no car or way to get to work, so why not go to the beach? I thought so too. It was awesome. If I were here, I would have to wear all kinds of shoes.

But I'm back now. It's going to be a pretty hellacious transition, though, and I can't say that is going to be an enjoyable time. It's rather early and I am already ready to crash. I apologize for the "already ready" construction; I hate that almost as much as I do shoes. But right now, my bare feet are on the surface of my couch, and it's a nice feeling, so it is alleviating my concerns as I write this. I suggest you try it.

Man I Miss Video Cameras: So You Think You Can Write?

2008-05-27T20:57:00.005-04:00

I don't know if you knew this about me, but I used to write movies in college. Actually, all of you probably knew that already, since most of you were there. Well, I miss it. I wish I had a camera so I could talk my friends into making fools themselves and broadcasting it on the internet via something along the lines of youtube. Although, if I continue to generate the sorts of media I am like this blog and newspaper articles and (soon) movies, then maybe it should be time to invest in an actual domain of my own. I just need you people to tell your friends so I can make money off this endeavor. I know you are probably thinking, "Why should we do that?" For two reasons: you have nothing better to do at work and I would be happy to buy you a drink if I were making money off of this.

This isn't quite a whole movie, but it's a sort of preview. This will probably be the longest entry I've posted, but you might find yourself reading more things written in the style of a screenplay more often.

So U Think U Can Write?

[Fade in]

[Crowd of 20 somethings shown sitting in a classroom, writing in notebooks.]

NARRATOR
[in voice over]

In a class of some of the best young writers in America…

[Fade out]

[Fade into an office with STAN and an older person, INSTRUCTOR. STAN is seated, while the INSTRUCTOR is standing and reading from a notebook.]

INSTRUCTOR
[yelling]
You think this is good? You waste my time with this… this garbage? You’ll never get published with that. Do you even want this? You have to want this. Do you want this…?

[Fade out]

[Fade into a bookstore coffee shop. STAN is seated at a table by himself, three other 20 somethings are together, with coffee drinks.]

[ANGLE ON bookstore façade. QUICK CUT to STAN.]

NARRATOR
Where the only thing that flashes as bright as the talent…

[ANGLE ON ERIN, TOM and VICKY. ERIN and TOM are clearly together.]

ERIN
[looking at STAN]

He writes so well, but with his reckless attitude, he’ll never last in this career.

TOM
Some people just aren’t cut out for this.

VICKY
I think you’re jealous, Tom.

[Fade out]

[Fade in. ANGLE ON chalkboard that says “Open Mic Night.”]

NARRATOR
…are the egos.

[ANGLE ON TOM, ERIN and VICKY at the bar of the coffee shop.]

TOM
I killed! It was perfect.

ERIN
[kissing Tom on the cheek]
Wonderful job, Tom.

[STAN approaches to pick up a tea and cookie.]

ERIN
What did you think, Stan?

STAN
I really liked it. It was a little heavy on alliteration, though.

[TOM aggressively knocks the mug out of STAN’s hand.]

TOM
Too much alliteration? I didn’t see you up there, Tennessee Williams. You want a go, with me Oscar Wilde? I’m gonna shove your head so far up your ass you’ll be a walking enjambment!

ERIN
Guys, no! Don’t hurt him Tom!

[Fade out.]

[ANGLE ON a party. ERIN and TOM are on a couch, surrounded by people. TOM is talking loudly but unintelligibly. ERIN does not look like she’s enjoying herself.]

NARRATOR
This is the time…

[ANGLE ON VICKY talking to STAN]

VICKY
You know she loves you, right?

STAN
Why should I care about that? She’s with Tom now.

VICKY
Yeah, well she shouldn’t be. He’s a jerk. And he’s been saying that he doesn’t think you’ll ever get published. He said he’s not even sure you should call yourself a writer anymore. Are you gonna let him talk about you like that and get the girl?

STAN
Give me a damn pen.

[Fade out]

[ANGLE ON ERIN and STAN]

NARRATOR
…when you have to ask yourself…

ERIN
We shouldn’t.

STAN
I know.

[They go in to kiss but fades out in a way to make it seem unclear if they actually do.]

[Fade out]

[ANGLE ON TOM, VICKY, ERIN and STAN in the coffee shop.]

NARRATOR
One simple question:

TOM
[yelling at STAN]
I know about you two! This should be settled the way men do this! On paper! See you Friday at the reading you lousy pulp writer!

[Fade out to title: So You Think You Can Write?]

NARRATOR
So You Think You Can Write?

[End scene.]

Graphs Aplenty: Matt Drudge

2008-05-25T16:55:00.004-04:00

I myself am not an avid reader of the Drudge Report. I'm not a reader of it at all, I guess, avid or not. Do you ever describe anything as avid other than consumption of various sorts media? (I am an avid watcher of the news. I am an avid eater of salsa. I am an avid sleeper. Do those work?) I don't have a lot of personal insight to add to this graph.

It is important, however, to note that the Y-Axis shows Personal Anger at Matt Drudge and not necessarily at the content being presented. As my avidness in going to the Drudge Report is so lacking, I cannot provide stylistic input as to the potential source of the anger from a "factual" point of view, so I'm just going to speculate that Mr. Drudge is a jackass, and that clearly shows through in his writing. But I don't know that for sure; I need to stress how I am speculating that Matt Drudge is a jackass.

A little information

2008-05-15T21:33:00.004-04:00

I was made aware of the fact that one of my friends was unaware of the rules. No, not to Bridge, although I don't know how that game works either. I know how to play Euchre and Spades, which are like Bridge's less sophisticated Midwestern and less sophisticated popular cousins. I don't know where Spades is from, but I would suspect something like a military family, because it comes from everywhere. But, I wasn't talking about Bridge.

Also, some people have trouble with the rules to some sports. For example, football can be tricky to the novice. I myself have no problem with football, but hockey is like some sort of crazy game that Yetis and Canadians play. I'm pretty sure that the rules to that game change as it goes on, not unlike Marshgammon.

I was talking about relationship ages. I was pretty sure that the rule for this was common knowledge: half your age plus seven. That's the youngest girl that a guy is allowed to date. Wikipeidia says that it's just the older to younger regardless of gender, but I'm pretty sure that women have more leeway. If guys guy younger, then they are bringing more creepiness into the world, and nobody wants that. If you're the girl and allowing it, then you are abetting creepiness, and you have nobody to blame but yourself. But y'all knew that already, right?

That's our word for making fun of you! We need it!

2008-05-09T19:26:00.005-04:00

I found myself watching some Hardball tonight, which is actually a pretty common occurrence in the Engineer Sighted household. Chris Matthews is my favorite of the cable news personalities, because he can go from angry and belligerent to inexplicably sycophantic faster than it would take Abe Lincoln to throw a punch while on a bender. Also, he (Matthews) has the same smile as my nephew when he laughs.

He was talking about Al Gore as a potential Cabinet Secretary, since he (Gore) just released a statement saying he didn't want to be one. (I don't know how much you know about politics, but that's tantamount to saying "I'm not interested in her. Really. I'm not. Not her smooth skin, beautiful hair or excellent smile. Not interested." [I don't know why I started with skin.]) Matthews goes on to say that Gore would make a fabulous Secretary of State, and suggested that it might be the best job in the world.

There are two issues with that sentence. First, SecState isn't the best job in the world; Vice President is and Gore already had it. VP is the best job in the world because you get all kinds of awesome perks and basically zero responsibility. So, pay attention, Matthews. The second thing, though, is the use of the word fabulous. It has pretty much been co-opted by gay guys and fans of Sex and the City. Or so I hear.

I don't like the fact that there are words and phrases that are relegated to certain groups. Whenever I want to use some sort of superlative word that begins with "f", I am stuck with fantastic. Not that I dislike fantastic, it's a great word. I like synonyms. Bourgeois is another one that is hard to use anymore, because of the Communists. I don't think I need to say anything more about Communists, do I?

I'm not Mr. Rogers yet

2008-05-04T21:23:00.002-04:00

I found myself watching Family Guy, kind of by accident, and saw the latest installment of the Alltel commercials featuring Chad. I wanted to write about how aggravated I am by both of those things, but I didn't want to repeat myself. Although I do want to say again that Family Guy is really daggum overrated.

The thing that made me even more aggravated about the latest installment of the Alltel commercial (other than the fact that I wasted my college career studying engineering instead of marketing where I could have probably had an easier go of it and make more money because I'm not retarded) is that they ruined the large vans with wizards painted on them. No longer are those vans with giant wizards painted on the side limited to stoners and people who would rather be driving motorcycles. Apparently now it's for screwups trying to sell cell phones.

I, of course, have concerns about running out of new material, but I feel like this is a battle that needs to be renewed periodically. Both of them. It was like the tv gods were teasing me by rubbing my nose, naughty kittenlike, into the mess that they made. Family Guy isn't that funny. If you meet the actor who plays Chad, make fun of him for selling his dignity. Ask him how prostitution feels. And not the good kind.

But why a spoon, cousin?

2008-04-21T21:29:00.006-04:00

I like eating things. I hope you do, too, because really, there are fewer pure pleasures than delicious food. I noticed today, while I was eating a rather tasty pizza [that I assembled myself], that there are a couple of pitfalls that one can run into when eating. One of the more obvious and moderately embarrassing is burning your tongue. This one is redeeming quality of burning your tongue, though, is the reaction that immediately and inevitably follows. It's always the same, too, no matter who does it: a quick ducking of the eater's head, pulling into the body along with the squaring of the shoulders and raising of the arms into a bracing position; a polite removal of the offending food and replacement onto its plate; a public declaration of "Ih ott", as if there were any doubt.

That's not what happened to me, though. That never happens to me. The pitfall I experienced was one that was less destructive to my taste buds but has a higher potential for humiliation. I was taking a bite of my tasty pizza when, due to all of the awesome toppings, the sauce and cheese touched my nose, causing some of it to remain on my face. I hate that. It happens sometimes with drinks like hot cocoa that has whipped cream on it (I also never burn myself on that) or like a cake that you eat with your hands. Or if you stick your face into a bowl of ice cream, if, for instance you don't have any spoons. I myself have a comical of excess spoons; I never want for spoons.

Not only was there the disgrace of pizza sauce on my face, that was pizza sauce that would never make it into my mouth. It would be wasted, tragically, on some paper towel, unable to fulfill its designed purpose, its destiny. I'm not sure if that's worse that getting spilled on the floor -- not it's not worse, because it's a bit easier to clean up and I have the added bonus of smelling pizza for the rest of the evening. But the point is, that bit of food is deliciousity that I don't get to experience because of an awkward bite. How unfortunate is that? Eight. It is eight unfortunate.

Vampires aren't so bad

2008-04-19T14:25:00.005-04:00

You know how people talk about classic literature like they're great, but when you had to read them in English class in high school, they were terrible? Like Great Expectations? Or Catcher in the Rye? How did some of these things get to be classics? If I met Holden Caulfield in person, I guarantee I would want to hit him. But then again, he wouldn't be the first fictional character for whom I have a heaping dose of contempt. That honor goes to a certain bi-polar train who went from painful lack of self-confidence to an excess of smugness after completing the task he was designed to perform. I think you know who you are, train.

I have discovered one of those books, however, that escapes this unfortunately common bit of literary boredom. I have, of course, found many others, but this one in particular made me want to speak out. You might remember this from a previous entry, but it has had a rather healthy impact on me: Dracula. It is excellent. I was warned that Frankenstein (note: not the young variety) was a pretty boring book, so I had my doubts. I'm not quite finished, but I am pretty sure that they kill the Count. Which is kind of weird, when you think about it, because he can do pretty much anything awesome at night but is pretty useless during the day. So how hard would it be to make sure that nobody can mess with you during the day? It does kind of sound like it's shaping up to be a little bit of the vampire version of Wile E. Coyote, though.

Anyway, he's still a pretty awesome villain. Way better than Frankenstein's Monster. This book has one of the coolest images I have ever read in the commandeered ship's captain (I don't want to give away too many details) and he drugs the help of one of the women that he feasts on with laudanum. Anyone who uses laudanum is automatically awesome. Case closed.

Graphs Aplenty: Death Wish

2008-04-16T21:20:00.006-04:00

Charles Bronson is a Man among men. Of that, there really is no question. So it was really only a matter of time before my old roommate demonstrated, in graph form, just how that works out when his famed Death Wish movies are compared to one another.

This one took a bit more analysis than the previous Graphs Aplenty, and it shows in the confusing but scientific multiple axes. This, of course, is only a qualitative comparison because it is difficult to get hard numbers without including the various hypotheses on what sort of drunkenness was reached. You see, this was only testing the one variable, not severity of inebriation. That is clearly for further study. Please make whatever comments you notice.

[Insert overused catchphrase]

2008-04-05T13:33:00.004-04:00

In a rather inexplicable and unfortunate turn of events, I find myself carpooling a lot less now, which "frees" me to listen to the radio morning programs when I can't decide on a cd with which to rock off my face. I sometimes go for the news, because you just need to know what is going on out there. NPR, however, isn't always the most dynamic or even relevant, because honestly, there are only so many times you can hear about how brutal the Chinese are being to Tibet and how uptight they are about the Olympics. Not to minimize the brutality, but I already don't like authoritarian governments. I'm on your side already on this one, NPR.

I normally default back to Lex and Terry, who I guess are one of those interchangeable morning DJs who are kind of funny and sometimes have a caller driven show. Typically, on this particular program, it is either about relationship advice or asking for some sort of merch. I can understand the merch, because who doesn't like free stuff? I know I do. In fact, callers into L&T even say, "GIVERS!" when they get on air, and are answered with "Us." So, I'm guessing this has some sort of precedent in the history of this show.

The thing that I don't really understand is why do these people call into Lex and Terry to ask if he or she should break up with his or her significant other who is clearly cheating on him or her? (Isn't that pronoun construction awkward?) I understand that there is nominally some variety of screening process in order to become a radio personality, but I have to wonder what sort of qualifications the callers think that our friends Lex and Terry might have that they can solve their problems?

On the other hand, it is really funny when these people call in with some story that really makes no sense and the resolution is to beat the crap out of the guy's sister's boyfriend. That is precisely the sort of entertainment I want on my way to work in the mornings.

Now Introducing: Graphs Aplenty

2008-04-03T19:15:00.003-04:00

You know, for being an engineer, there has been a dearth of data analysis on this here blog. You know what? That ends here, right now. My old roommate, the one who likes both Vonnegut and Death Wish, started generating some graphs that needed a home (other than in the finest of scientific journals, that is), and luckily, I happened to have a blog that nobody reads. So, naturally, there will be more graphs in our future.

This, of course, is a Venn Diagram. I want to stress that this is not representative of my findings, and that this conclusion should be under the same sorts of review and verification that any other scientific result would be. There are plenty of other things that make me happily vomit.

I am trying to be a better reader

2008-03-27T21:25:00.004-04:00

Over the weekend, I added to my collection of books. I say collection of books like I have a Scrooge McDuck style bin of them, which I, sadly, do not. I have maybe 20 on my bookshelf, unless you count text books. The two that I bought were Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and Dracula by Bram Stoker. I just finished Cat's Cradle today, and I recommend it like I would recommend whole milk. (Which, by the way, I slipped and went back to after a noble experiment. It made me understand what it was like when smokers finally go back and have a cigarette after quitting for a few weeks. It was glorious. It was scrumtralescent.)

I was introduced to Vonnegut by my old roommate. He had a surprising appreciation for culture both high and low -- for example, his favorite movie was probably Death Race 2000, yet he frequented the ballet. (Interesting fact: He had a box of movies, in which was a copy of the original Batman. I thought he had stolen my copy, but he did not; it turned out we both owned the Adam West classic. He also hated Catcher in the Rye, as I did, so we got along famously. I really don't know in what other context famously works like that.)

Anyway, I didn't really appreciate Vonnegut that much at first. Breakfast of Champions was pretty dang weird. I really liked Sirens of Titans, though. Cat's Cradle is definitely worth your time.

The real reason I started to write this post, though, was that I wanted to say how awesome Bram Stoker's name is. Bram. Stoker. It sounds made up. I could see Javier Bardem playing a character in a movie named that, kicking ass while being awesome. Bram. I want to name my kid that.

More on spring

2008-03-23T12:15:00.006-04:00

Hey guys, it's still spring. Hasn't changed from a few days ago. It's starting to look better, though. Warming up, getting brighter and greener. If you are anywhere near where I am (and probably a lot of other places too), things are getting a lot yellower, too. Pollen is everywhere. It is on my car, my apartment, my shoes, my eyes, everywhere. My toilet even looks like a bowl of chicken soup, from the yellow coloring. I keep my actual chicken soup in the sink.

This raises a few questions. First, is my invincibility starting to be in question, since my eyes are a little itchy? But that's small potatoes, all things considered. You know, if two dogs were having sex on your lawn or car or shoes, you'd probably shoo them away or spray them with a hose or something. But all this pollen is basically lots and lots of tree sex all over us. But we don't get nearly as outraged. Why is that? I can imagine some rhododendrons or ficuses (fici?) sitting around and looking and tree porn that would look a lot like what we're living in now. It's too bad that trees don't have money; we could make a fortune in the dendro-pornography business.

The other major question how much effort is it worth for me to wash my car? It's just going to get yellow again in a few days. Then again, this is really gross looking, and I don't know how long I can abide by it. Since I don't have a hose, I have to go take it somewhere to get it washed. I'm thinking it's not that worth it. Back home, we didn't have this problem. Palm trees are much more prudish than, say, cedars, so they keep their mating behind closed coconuts.

Spring is here, blogger skeptical

2008-03-20T12:33:00.007-04:00

Today is the first day of spring, which is supposed to be this super exciting time when the birds start singing louder, pheromones are unleashed, and the weather gets awesomer. You know what? Poppycock, I say. This is the coldest day that it's been for like three weeks. It's like the calendar is drunk. I know it was just St. Patrick's Day and all, but come on calendar, you have responsibilities. The weather is not any awesomer today.

Although, I do have something positive to say: I figured out a gimmick that would make a chicken fingers place get all kinds of crazy buzz. It doesn't necessarily have to be a chicken fingers place, but a restaurant that specializes in food that come in discrete and countable amounts -- chicken fingers, chicken nuggets, any variety of chicken in some sort of bit form, shrimp, etc -- but not French fries, because you can't count them. (I do have a question -- which term [finger, strip, tender, etc] is the proper one?) You know how excited you are you when you find that you have an extra chicken nugget? Well, my restaurant would always do that. All of the relevant things on the menu would be like four chicken fingers, but you'd get five. Twelve fried shrimp, but you'd get fourteen. None of the servers would talk about it and it wouldn't show up in humorous Sonic style faked improv commercials. It would just happen. Order six jalapeno poppers and bam get seven.

The word of mouth advertising for such a place would be through the roof. They would have to be pretty good, too, I guess. But there'd have to be something about everything on the menu. For deli style sandwiches, they come with two pickles or something. Hamburgers might have to be out, since hamburgers are a deeply personal experience and arbitrarily adding ingredients may not be endearing in quite the same way; ordering a double cheeseburger is considerably different from ordering a cheeseburger in ways that getting an extra fried mushroom is not. I know you are probably thinking right now, "Man, I wish such a place existed so I could spend my money there and tell my friends how great it is to spend my money there!" Hopefully, soon, that will be realistic.

I was also looking over my tags and found one that I didn't remember using (pi is delicious) which led me to this post, which reminded me that I owe one of my most loyal readers a larger picture of Ana Ivanovic. And since this is the first day of spring, why not?

That's nice, but does she come in black?

2008-03-12T20:56:00.003-04:00

I'm sure you've probably heard by now that Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York, has tendered his resignation to the people of that state after being implicated in a prostitution ring. Although I haven't read a lot, and I do not know if he had a preference for a particular race of call girls, I really liked that title. I have two questions about this situation that I would like to discuss with you today.

I. I have decided to number my questions the way that Julius Caesar would have, because Roman numerals are vastly superior to all other numerals. This question is why on earth would the governor of the second most populous state in the country need to pay for sex? Was he really such an assbag that he couldn't convince someone who was both attractive and discreet to sleep with him? Or was his ego so big that he had sexual demands that somebody who wasn't a professional wouldn't be able to handle? This is the angle that I think needs more attention.

II. If this guy was good at his job and actually cleaned up stuff as the attorney general and governor, is this bad enough to make him stop? Sure, he's a raging hypocrite, but really, everyone is. (Maybe you don't rage quite as hard as he did, but you can't be consistent all the time.) Certainly he lost a lot of credibility. But I don't mean just for Spitzer -- let's say that it turned out that Abraham Lincoln was actually a violent alcoholic or Gandhi owned a sweatshop full of British children, how much would that overturn of their life accomplishments?

Probably all of them. Because remember when I said everyone is a hypocrite? I meant to exclude myself. You see, I am rigidly slavish to my opinions. Spitzer should lose everything. I just wish he wanted to fight it because impeachments are rare and fun. I wish I could impeach my neighbors. Also, I don't think I would drink with Abe. He is clearly a belligerent drunk, and with his height he'd have like an foot reach on me and that's a recipe for disaster.

Can I wander in your garden

2008-03-09T16:23:00.006-04:00

I have heard a few Led Zeppelin songs on the radio lately, and quite frankly, that pleases me. I wish there were a station in Augusta that played only Led Zeppelin. Actually, that doesn't seem all that practical, considering I do own their entire studio catalogue. Anyway, I just wish I could hear whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I know what you are probably thinking, and it involves an mp3 player and I don't want to hear it. I am not going to buy an iPod and it is unlikely that you are going to convince me otherwise since I don't really have a good reason not to buy one other than I just want to resist the temptation of selling my soul to Steve Jobs for a little while longer. Also, I still kind of want an iPhone, although now my job would make it pretty much completely useless.

The drawback, though, to Led Zeppelin is that I can only sing along if I am alone in the car. You see, my singing voice is not what one would call "pleasant." I am a terrible singer, although I do enjoy singing on Rock Band. I don't a care who's around for that, because the computer generated AI fans love me. This also applies to other bands, like AC/DC, G'n'R and the Beach Boys, all of which are comically out of my range. When I try to be Robert Plant, I sound like an angry person screaming It's been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time sped up quickly, in the style of the Chipmunks. AC/DC is a little bit different, but my throat hurts after I listen to that cd for a while.

Listening to a lot of classic rock can get to you sometimes, though, because really, they don't really make a lot of it anymore. So I feel like I've pretty much heard all of the songs in the genre. And there are only so many times one can listen to Peaceful Easy Feeling without screaming and throwing rocks and other cars on the highway. Sometimes, though after going long enough without hearing a little Zep you can be reminded of how kickass they really are. I could listen to Gallows Pole like nine times in succession without any problem, especially if you throw in a little Custard Pie. I'm pretty sure that last song is dirty, though.

Invented by Terrorists: Don't blame me, I voted for Amanda

2008-02-28T20:29:00.004-05:00

My mom called me tonight and demanded that I give American Idol a chance tonight. Apparently there is a lovable little guy who sang "Imagine" that blew the doors off the place. As it turns out, that would have been good information to have a few days ago, based on how this show's schedule runs. It's on more often than SportsCenter, but all American Idols are not created equal. I know this is breaking news, since this show has been on the air in this format for like 70 years by now. This is, in fact, the first time I have seen an episode in its entirety.

I can't say that I really got it. I don't watch it normally. I know people who do, and they seem to enjoy it. Each year, you get maybe two or three people who can perform the songs they sing better than the people who made them famous, so it seems like a lot of musical vomit from wannabes to watch before you get to the good stuff. I am not ashamed to concede that the Katharine McPhee "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was one of those performances. But you see how I avoided committing to a tv show for like 90 hours each week?

Well, I watched tonight and I think I figured out the appeal. I have figured out what the magic formula is that keeps people coming back. The singing is part of it, sure, but the trick is the voting. It's the same thing that you get when you watch Family Feud -- you get to yell at the retards who voted the wrong way and feel superior. Also, watching a chick breakdown and cry after being told she sucks by 30 million Americans is pretty compelling television. Hillary Clinton won't get told she sucks by that many people when she inevitably loses the nomination to Obama. And quite frankly, I thought the girl who got voted off who sang "If You Leave Me Now" was way better than the girl with the comically ostrich-like hair who sang "Carry On My Wayward Son."

And you know what? After it's over, I'm probably going to call my mom and tell her that. Which means I am turning into a gossipy old woman and the terrorists have won.

Inspired by a webcomic

2008-02-27T21:32:00.004-05:00

In a short amount of time (19 days), my fourth favorite holiday will be upon us. St Patrick's Day is awesome. Or should I say, Tá sé uamhnach lá Fhéile Pádraig. There will be food, spirits, shamrocks and music. I might say a few words i nGaeilge and try to impress people who don't really seem to care that much. But more on that closer to the day. (Also, the best part about the Irish language is that you can have capitals as the second letter of words. How weird looking is that?)

After reading a particularly clever and nerdy webcomic today, I was considering inserting into my play list filled largely of The Pogues, Flogging Molly, the Dropkick Murphys and Gaelic Storm (I have left out a few other Irish bands as well) inserting a certain number one hit song from the late 80s into the mix.

I just wonder if there would be a single person in attendance who would even understand. Your thoughts?

Never forget

2008-02-15T15:03:00.004-05:00

I was washing my hands today in the men's restroom at work and noticed something amusing. No, it doesn't have anything to do with the awkward guy who will go descriptionless (awkward doesn't give you any hints among an office populated by engineers!) who neglected to wash his hans after a visit to the urinal. (Actually happened, by the way.) I noticed something startling about the soap.

Aside form the container being transparent, which lets us see that it is pink, which is only amusing because it kind of makes me feel like I am washing my hands with Pepto-Bismal (what do those words even mean? I'm both a sciencey and wordy guy, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen those roots anywhere else), it has directions on it. Directions. For soap. It would have been ok, had it read something along the lines of:

"Directions: Rinse hands, dispense soap, ha ha, are you really reading this! It's soap! You learn how to use soap before you learn how to read! Even the slow kid in your first grade class knew how to wash his hands!"

But it doesn't. It has real directions. It's absurd! Like on a Dasani water bottle where it says Ingredients: water. Thank you for that. It also has separate instructions for particularly soiled hands (you put the soap on before you rinse your hands in that case). I do like the use of "soiled" in place of dirty, it does add an air of classiness to the plastic, transparent container of industrial soap. The best part, thought, is towards the end when it says "for external use only," just in case someone really does think it's Pepto-Bismal.

It's a shame, really

2008-02-10T14:54:00.000-05:00

I was bored at work and came up with an idea that I wish I could make happen. I think we're probably still a few hundred years away, technology wise, but when it happens, people will look back on this blog entry and realize my genius. It'll be like Leonardo da Vinci and the helicopter. Oddly enough, the train of thought started with a joke involving seeing Tommy Tutone on MTV's Unplugged before it formed into this piece of majesty you're about to read. The path from that one hit wonder to animal sitcoms is a long and tortuous one, so I really don't know how to explain how I got here.

If we could make animal sitcoms, these are a few that I think I would watch. I think I'll stop at five, because I could probably go on all day. Feel free to add one of your own.

Pelican Barbershop Quartet - A story about four lovable pelicans, each with their own quirks, who formed a barbershop quartet and travel the coast entertaining sea birds in exchange for fish and love. There really are not that many things which are more amusing than a barbershop quartet, and one of those is a pelican. Combine them? Instant success. For those of you who don't know what a pelican looks like, here is a picture I found on Google of a pelican trying to eat a bear.
Loi et ordre: Unité Spécial du Paon (Law and Order: Special Peacock Unit) - By the time this becomes a realistic television option, every other Law and Order possibility will have been taken. It ties in with the NBC network, which I'm sure would have been overtaken by CSI and American Idol if not for Dick Wolf and Sam Waterston. For some reason, I think this concept of having peacocks in a courtroom works better if they have French accents and berets while they are arguing about Man 1.
Dog Ross - A public access program where a German Shepherd shows us how to paint things like fire hydrants, cats, and other dogs' butts. I would imagine his hair to be a little frizzy, like an aging pothead's would be, if he were a dog. You know?
Panda Gladiators - The resurgence of American Gladiators really opened up a lot of possibilities. But thinking of how lazy Americans tend to be and how lazy pandas are, this really seemed like a pretty good match. Also, I know of at least one reader out there who rather enjoys pandas, and this picture is really funny. The panda gladiators would need names a lot more hardcore than Ling-Ling, though. Like 1000 Golden Pandas of Fury. I guess that they would be named a lot like Chinese restaurants.
Dr. Rocky - A talk show for raccoons, where they try to break stereotypes of things like looking like burglars and eating garbage. They are just like me; they have to eat and can't help what they look like. And, really, who hasn't looked at a mostly eaten chicken bone and thought, "There's still another good two or three bites of meat on that"? Also, they would discuss the fashion merits of coonskin caps.

Ideally, we'd be able to watch some of these shows before the end of my life. Frankly, watching pandas shoot tennis balls at each other is better than like 85% of whats on tv now. And if you say that you wouldn't be interested in hearing a pelican sing the bass line of "Hello My Baby," I'm basically calling you out as a liar right here on these internets in front of God and everyone.

Super Week!

2008-02-03T12:56:00.000-05:00

Hey, I heard there's a football game on today. It's supposed to be super. Every single person I've spoken to has said that they aren't particularly excited about the game, because at this point everyone hates the Patriots and nobody liked the Giants before anyway. I knew a guy at Clemson who liked Eli, though, which always amused me; it was like wishing that Rambo would have starred Frank Stallone instead. Frankly, I think that the Pats are unstoppable, but I can't say I'm terribly happy about it. Also, I hope the commercials are a little better this year than they have in the past years.

Tuesday is also a super day. Super Tuesday, in fact. I think it's also Mardi Gras, but I'm neither Catholic nor Cajun, so it really doesn't have a huge impact on me. I did make gumbo for the game tonight, though. But I think I'm looking forward to Tuesday than I am about the game. You see, this is the first time I get to go to the polls to vote for President of the United States. (I had to do it by absentee ballot before. As far as civic satisfaction goes, you don't get quite the same feeling as pulling a lever, or in my case, using a touch screen to identify my candidate in the same way that you make reservations at Epcot.) Afterwards, I get to come home and drink martinis while watching the returns come in. Election day is too class a day to drink anything other than martinis. I want to have a small party for it. I already know that I am taking off Nov 4.

Here's a little way to make Super Tuesday more fun (as if it could be any more fun!):
-Every time somebody says "Too close to call," you drink.
-Every time a future press conference by a candidate is referenced, you drink.
-Every time Keith Olbermann takes a gratuitous shot at Bush, you drink. (Be careful if watch MSNBC with this one...)
-Every time Keith Olbermann does something unnecessarily smug while trying to make a joke that isn't funny, you drink. (This will be the last Keith one, because this game could be dangerous. I don't want to be a case study for a Law & Order episode where somebody dies from reading a blog entry. Actually, that would be pretty awesome.)
-Every time Chris Matthews throws in an unnecessary compliment to some guest on his show that you've never heard of, you drink.
-Every time Chris Matthews's smile reminds you of the smile of your five year old nephew (not to mention haircut), you drink.
-Every time Brit Hume looks disgusted by the lack of professionalism by someone on his panel, you drink.
-Every time a pundit is confused by a disagreement between polling data and actual election returns, you drink.
-Every time a candidate who lost a state makes it sound like they really won it, you drink. (You may have to stay up late for this one.)
-Every time someone says "Billary," you drink.
-Every time someone compares Obama to JFK, you drink.
-Every time someone talks about Mitt Romney's hair, you drink.
-Every time someone talks about how conservatives don't like McCain, you drink.
-Every time we are reminded by a commentator how relevant Huckabee still is, you drink.

If you aren't laughing at all of Romney's and Olbermann's jokes after an hour with this game, then I don't know what to tell you. Sláinte!

Sweet and delicious. I am probably going to weigh 900 pounds.

2008-01-22T21:14:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking a lot about desserts lately. That's not to say I don't think about desserts a lot in ordinary circumstances, because I do. Like cake. But this was precipitated by a few other happenings, notably a coupon finding its way into my possession for an entire dollar off of two packages of Pillsbury's version of break and bake cookies. They are so handy, but a little dangerous because there's only so much willpower a person can have. I think I may have eaten an entire package over the past two days. I used to eat like six oreos a day, though, so I think I'm ok. Also, these all go with the drink of the gods, milk, rather well.

I was also thinking about key lime pies again. It's such a great dessert, and I want one. I just don't have any key limes. I even exhausted my supply of conventional limes today. I feel food naked. Key lime pie is undoubtedly the greatest of all pies, and I have been under fire for saying so. Challenges coming from such nonsense as strawberry rhubarb and cherry (you know who you are) make me really wonder if these people could identify a key lime in a lineup. Poppycock, I say! But I guess it's not all their fault, though, because if you do a google image search for key limes, most of the results are not actually key limes. These are key limes.

Aside from its complete and total deliciosity, though, there is more to love about key lime pie. For one thing, it's the state pie of Florida, a state which is probably better than yours. How many other states have state pies? According to wikipedia (if you believe them), two: Vermont and Oklahoma -- apple and pecan, respectively. I only have one word to say about that: lame. Actually, I have nothing against either pie, but apple is pretty ordinary. Also, apparently a state congressman wanted to fine people $100 if they mistakenly labeled a key lime pie as such if it did not, in fact, contain key lime juice. How awesome is that guy? I'll tell you: very. This paragraph has an awful lot of colons, and fortunately, not the gross ones. Here's what you can do: tell me something hilarious or awesome that your state has made official. Like, hopefully, the state pro wrestler of South Carolina is "Nature Boy" Ric Flair. It doesn't have to be factual! Just ask wikipedia!

Stunning realizations

2008-01-21T11:27:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I opted to escape my apartment briefly to the mighty Atlanta. I saw mighty because it is bigger than Augusta, they have Fellini's pizza, and word on the street is that they want to steal our water. Those big cityfolk shan't have it! I don't really feel that loyal to Augusta just yet.

But it snowed this weekend. All of you northernfolk are probably saying, "So? It's January." January isn't supposed to work like that down here. It snows like once every two or three years. Guess how many times it snowed this week? If you said twice, give yourself a cookie, because that's how many times it did in the State of Georgia. I'm not particularly ok with that, and if I have to look for an engineering job in the Bahamas to get away from this weather, I guess that may just have to be the price I will pay. Then while watching all those football games where the temperature is smaller than the number of right thinking people in the Spears household, it makes me wonder how people live like that. I feel the same way about winter the same way I do when I look at pictures of mud huts in National Geographic. It's a shame, really.

The bloke in whose apartment I stayed, though, had a rather interesting feature in his bathroom that made me a little uncomfortable: a full length mirror. It's a little unsettling because as I was standing over the toilet, if I looked up BAM there I was. Right in my face. I don't think I'm necessarily a nervous goer (but then again, it's never really come up), but I don't like the idea of a person standing over me as I do. Even if it's me, especially considering the unnatural angle of me having to watch what that other me is doing. What exactly is the purpose of such a tall mirror? Is it for little people? I hope they appreciate it, because it is creeping me out.

It's not boring, really!

2008-01-17T18:24:00.001-05:00

I love this time every four years. Primary season for me is like the World Cup for pretty much everyone who is not an American. I'm a bit of a news junkie and a politics nerd, but I don't care. I still think that's less lame than reading Harry Potter, and everybody does that. There's a big one coming up on Saturday, the next state up from me and my old grad school stomping grounds, the Palmetto State. If that doesn't excite the cockles of your heart, then you should go watch soccer, commie.

But really, this is a pretty exciting time. This is a really unique alignment of confusion, and really, the American political process and media is an engine that runs on chaos, similar to the propulsion system in that book by Doug Adams that runs on improbability, so I'm not the only one going nuts. It's also kind of fun to see the look of terror that appears in people's eyes when I start talking about how exciting and unexpected that John Edwards came in second in Iowa, beating Hillary. I'd kind of imagine it's the look that people get when they start to suspect that you might be a werewolf.

This is also pretty important. We are looking at possibilities that we've never had before -- a real shot at having a First Dude instead of a First Lady, someone who's not a WASP or a Kennedy, the guy who should've gotten the nomination in 2000, or possibly a Baptist preacher. Aside from the historical firsts, they each represent pretty serious differences in policy direction, and we have a lot of leeway as to which direction we can choose, particularly in open primary states. The races are still pretty open and probably will be going into Super Tuesday (which I think is the same week as the Super Bowl and Super Thursday, which is super because I'm pretty sure I don't have to go to work on the following Friday). So pay attention, and then leave comments about how smarmy Mitt Romney is. Besides, the guy's name is Mitt.

It also exposes the media pundits who think they know so much screw up with their predictions. It's fun! Remember New Hampshire, guys? Everyone though Obama was going to run away with it, and he didn't! Classic! Also, I am jealous of those pundits.

Name three things

2008-01-10T19:36:00.000-05:00

I have gone back on three things that I toyed with before this week, and finally made the plunge. I am not opposed to trying new things, in fact, I rather like doing that. You know the first time I ate cake? I don't remember it, since I was probably like two, but I bet that was pretty freaking awesome. Just think on how much cake I would have missed out on if I didn't have that kind of courage back then. I'm a pretty big fan of cake.

I am also a pretty big fan of milk, as well. Especially with cake. I have been pretty loyal to whole milk for as long as I can remember. It is creamy and delicious. However, I no longer have the metabolism of a jungle cat or a meth addict because I sit in an office for the better part of 9 hours a day. I scaled it back to 2%, and it's still pretty delicious. But it isn't creamy and delicious. It's a little bit watery by comparison, but it still has some of that wonderful, life-giving fat in it. Twice as much as 1%. I won't even begin to discuss skim; it is an abomination.

One of my Christmas gifts was a watch. It's Swiss and fancy, so I imagine it's good. If there are four Swiss things that I trust, they are these: Swiss banks, Swiss chocolate, Swiss Misses, and Swiss watches. I also like Swiss cake rolls, but I'm skeptical that they actually come from Switzerland. I haven't worn a watch in ages (probably since the days of Shark watches -- man, they were so cool), so this has taken some getting used to. We also had a big discussion about which wrist the watch goes one between me and my also left-handed mom. We decided even though she wears it on the right hand, she's doing it wrong.

I also decided it's time to go back to the fusion. My old razor that was three razors was leaving me wanting, and the cartridges were getting hard to find. And I figure life's too short not to use an unnecessarily excessive number of razor blades to perform a morning task that I hate. I also am making pretty good money, so I can afford to spend an extra three dollars on my razor blades and have a face as smooth as a well shaven baby.

So are these steps forward or steps backward? Will I miss that Whole minus 2%? Will I be a changed man now that I always know what time it is? Will I be satisfied with 6 blades? Stay tuned for the next installment of... How Observant.

The guy is everywhere

2008-01-06T00:17:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I have to wonder what sorts of people watch infomercials. I don't really have any idea, but it 's really kind of compelling that there is a definable profile, my guess is very lonely people who quietly sit at home in bed at night eating bugles in bed before they turn off all of their appliances with the Clapper. It seems like it must be a definable sort of person because the same guy sells everything, so he must appeal to somebody.

I know you know who he is, you just may not know his name. I think he is most famous for selling OxiClean, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that's all he's good for. Oh no. His wikipedia page is full of all sorts of useless products that this energetic bearded man is trying to convince you that you need. He is, of course, Billy Mays.

Why Billy Mays? What makes his screaming so much more special and marketable than other people screaming? Why would anyone want a picture of him to be autographed? How did he even get that job? Does it pay well? Can he get into posh clubs with his late night cable celebrity? I certainly hope so; I wouldn't want to party at any place that would turn this man down.

I am not a [strong] man

2008-01-03T19:46:00.002-05:00

There are some things that I feel like I should be able to do. Some of them are pretty grandiose, like I feel like I should be given an orb and scepter as visible symbols of my awesome. I also wouldn't mind getting paid for this. I have no shame for wanting to sell out. Writing nonsense for a living? I'm pretty sure that's the life that Jesus wants for me. Also, I want some sort of animal or robot to do my laundry for me. Are those things too much to ask for?

Well, not all of them are so dramatic. I think I should also be able to blow a bubble out of gum, but I can't. It's really the secret reason that I don't chew gum anymore. I'd like to be able to tolerate the less interesting, but I'm just not that big of a person, sadly. It's a lot like the attitude that Rudy Giuliani has for Iowa. I just don't see the point.

The thing that I am thinking about, though, is that I would like to be able to release the emergency break of my new car with one hand. I can't; I have to grip the handle with both hands, much like I would imagine Arthur did when he grabbed Excalibur out of the stone,
so I can drive my car after I park it on a hill. I don't really know what sort of exercises I can do with my thumbs in order to make this dream a reality. There really hasn't been anything that makes me feel quite as weak as this. Not the time I was barely able to bench the bar, not the time that couldn't pick up my backpack in high school, and not the time I got beat mercilessly by a class of kindergarten girls in tug of war. My last vehicle was a pickup truck, so I only had to use my feet to engage this break. I miss those days, because I kick like a mule.

There are luxuries we can't afford

2007-12-30T19:48:00.001-05:00

I just got back from Christmas today. It was tiring. I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. Every time I go home I feel like I gain 20 pounds because my mom is bad at portions and not making delicious food that is bad for you. So, I have to spend the next two weeks working out extra hard to get back to where I was two weeks ago. Isn't starting a new year grand?

One of the things I noticed once I got back is that I still haven't killed off the crappy cheap toilet paper that I brought with my from grad school. It is astonishing how much less of everything one person uses. Either that or I eat way too much cheese. But I didn't really notice, because I don't have good toilet paper to compare it to. (Actually, that's not true. I have some good tissue in the bathroom, but I want to use the crappy stuff first. It's a little like this concept.)

It makes a big difference, though, comfortwise. If you get nothing else from this blog, let it be this: spending a little extra on nice toilet paper is worth it. Saving a few pennies is appealing, but don't you remember how awful it was to blow your nose on those rough, brown paper towels they have in the bathrooms in high school? Yeah. I do have some questions about bidets, though, and how they fit into this scheme. I've never used one, but I've heard good things.

2007/8 Bowl Picks

2007-12-19T19:28:00.000-05:00

Holy cow! Bowl season, the second best and only other good thing about winter besides Christmas, starts tomorrow, and I almost didn't get my picks in on time. Feel free to make your own picks in the comments! And now, in chronological order...

12/20/07
San Diego Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl
Utah (-7.0) vs Navy
I think if PJ hadn't gone to Tech, I'd take Navy to win outright. What's Utah got going for it, other than the prospect of voting for a Mormon this presidential election? I say Utah wins, but Navy wins the spread.

12/21/07
R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl
Memphis vs. Florida Altantic (-3.0)
I don't think I've seen either of these teams play this year. But FAU has a national championship coach and Memphis has the Blues and ribs. Unfortunately, kickass music and delicious ribs don't help on the football field. FAU wins.

12/22/07
Papajohns.com Bowl
Southern Miss vs. Cincinnati (-10.5)
I think that is a generous spread for USM. Bearcats win big. I know you are probably thinking "There is no such thing as a bearcat." You are right. Doesn't help the Golden Eagles of USM, sadly.

New Mexico Bowl
Nevada vs. New Mexico (-2.5)
Nevada has a wacky pistol formation, but that didn't help last year against a terrible, terrible Miami team (who you will not see on this list, incidentally). New Mexico is playing in a bowl named after them. I'll take New Mexico, even though I don't know what their mascot is. Nevada is the Wolfpack, though. Just like NC State, who sucks too.

Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl
UCLA vs. BYU (-6.0)
Ouch. The Bruins were projected to be contenders for the PAC-10 in the preseason, now their coach is unemployed and they are dogs to the Cougars. There's no way UCLA can pull this out, because none of the BYU players will be distracted by the siren's song of Sin City. The Bruins, however, can indulge in whatever debauchery they want. BYU wins the spread.

12/23/07
Sheraton Hawaii Bowl
Boise State (-10.5) vs. East Carolina
I think ECU is coached by Lou Holthz's son. Won't help. Boise State is better, because they have the running back who proposed to the cheerleader last year. How can you not like him? And how awesome is a trip to Hawaii? The Broncos will be happier to be there than the Pirates, because the Carolinas are nice while Idaho is pretty rough this time of year.

12/26/07
Motor City Bowl
Central Michigan vs. Purdue (-8.0)
This is the first game with real teams. Eight points in this game is an outrage. I would bet my insulin money on CMU to cover if I had diabetes. But I don't, and it would be illegal. The point is, I think the Chippewas are better than the Boilers and will win this game.

12/27/07
Pacific Life Holiday Bowl
Arizona State vs. Texas (-2.5)
This has traditionally been the bowl for teams who wish they went to a better one and then get blown out by an inferior team. This is a hard one to pick, because Texas has been a gigantic disappointment and ASU was pretty terrible last year and kind of came out of nowhere with a new coach. I think I like the Sun Devils, though, and sorry UT, but the Horns get hooked.

12/28/07
Champs Sports Bowl
Boston College (-3.5) vs. Michigan State
Boston College. By like two and a half TDs. Jesuits win, and the Spartans have to go back to the Midwest after seeing the glory that is Central Florida.

Texas Bowl
TCU (-4.0) vs. Houston
Two Texas teams playing in the Texas Bowl! Isn't that cute? But that line is very small. That would be a fair line if Houston didn't just lose their coach. Which they did. TCU by 10.

Emerald Bowl
Maryland vs. Oregon State (-4.5)
Maryland is not a good football team or state. Beavers are also a more hilarious mascot than the Terrapins, although they are pretty funny. Gotta go against the ACC. OSU wins by a TD.

12/29/07
Meineke Car Care Bowl
UConn vs. Wake Forest (-2.5)
This is one of the hardest ones to predict of all of them, I think. Which is sad, really, because the Deacs were ACC champs last year and the Huskies have only been 1-A for like 8 years. I have shoes older than that. I still think I like Wake Forest, though.

AutoZone Liberty Bowl
UCF (-3.0) vs. Mississippi State
This is a really interesting matchup. UCF has the NCAA rushing leader and MSU has the SEC coach of the year. I think this could be a big momentum builder for UCF, who should have beaten Texas in the Citrus Bowl. UCF wins a close one, but doesn't win the spread.

Valero Alamo Bowl
Penn State (-5.5) vs. Texas A&M
Penn State is going to put such a hurt on ATM that there will be Nittany Lion prints on Kyle Field next bowl season. A&M lost their coach and everybody loves JoePa. Even Hitler would have loved him 60 years ago.

12/30/07
Petro Sun Independence Bowl
Alabama (-3.5) vs. Colorado
I know that they are experts and all in Vegas, but this line is non-sense. Bunk, if you will. I would take Colorado any day of the week and twice on Tuesdays. You see what I did there? I mixed it up at the end.

12/31/07
Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl
Cal (-3.5) vs. Air Force
I like AF, but I can't take them over Cal. Sorry, America. I've let you down.

Roady's Humanitarian
Georgia Tech (-5.5) vs. Fresno State
Georgia Tech. I guess.

Brut Sun Bowl
USF (-6.5) vs. Oregon
If Dennis Dixon didn't trade away his future for a chance to lose at Arizona, I'd be picking the Ducks to win the National Championship over Ohio State. But without him, I have to go with Da Bulls.

Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl
Florida State vs. Kentucky (even)
This is Christmas right here. Go to your local loan shark and take out as much as he'll give you and put it all on the Wildcats. FSU was a coinflip if they had everyone, but they are going to be without twenty-five players. Good Lord.

Insight Bowl
Indiana vs. Oklahoma State (-4.0)
The line for Gundy is 4.0! He's a man! And he's going to win! (I know this is lazy, but this would be like talking about Howard Dean's primary effort last election and not mentioning the scream.)

Chik-Fil-A Bowl
Clemson (-1.5) vs. Auburn
I wish I could be at this game, but this is a tough venue to get into. I, of course, am picking Clemson. Since the spread is 1.5, I guess I am going to pick them to win that too, but I think it will be close.

1/1/08
Outback Bowl
Wisconsin vs. Tennessee (-2.5)
I still like a Cutcliffe-less Tennessee. Vols drink their corn from a jar over Badger corpses.

AT&T Cotton
Mizzou (-3.0) vs. Arky
Ha ha. Arkansas is a confused place right now. The players are all like, "Petrino's a good coach, I guess, thanks for hiring him..." Then again, Missouri got kicked right in the pants by the BCS committees and are probably going Show Me where leaving us out is a good idea. Least motivated teams? I'll trust Vegas, I guess. Tigers by a little.

Konica Minolta Gator
Texas Tech (-5.5) vs. Virginia
I think that Mike Leach might be the closest thing I have to a celebrity man crush. Besides Eddie Vedder, I mean. I am not ashamed to say he is a handsome man. I consider myself a defensive football fan, but how can you not love Mike the Pirate? Texas Tech humiliates UVa by forcing Jacksonville Municipal to use scientific notation to keep score.

Capitol One Bowl
Michigan vs. Florida (-10.5)
It's looking like 10.5 is about as many points as Vegas is willing to give. I'd still take Florida. Michigan lost its coach and is playing a spread offense with way better talent that App State. Florida could win by a bigger margin than they did last year.

Rose Bowl
USC (-13.5) vs. Illinois
I guess I was wrong. Vegas will give the Illini 13.5. I think I'd take that bet, actually. I don't think Illinois can win the game, though. Brink back Illiniwek!

Sugar Bowl
Hawaii vs. Georgia (-7.5)
Man, the BCS matchups suck. UGa wins in a walk. Colt Brennan puts up a bunch of yards but doesn't win because Knowshon Moreno has the best name in college football.

1/2/08
Fiesta Bowl
Oklahoma (-7.5) vs. West By God Virginia
I wanted to see OU vs. VT so bad. This is ridiculous. The Sooners are going to win, and probably would have won even if RichRod stuck around.

1/3/08
Orange Bowl
Virginia Tech (-3.5) vs Kansas
I would have liked to have had another shot at VT , but they probably would have beaten us again. Just like they will beat Kansas. By many, many more points than 3.5. Although the Jayhawk might be my favorite imaginary bird. Behind the fantastakeet, of course.

---Begin Bowls that make me cry---
1/5/08
International Bowl
Rutgers (-10) vs Ball State
What's the point? Ball State? Are you kidding me? At least Toronto picked two teams for whom their awful wintry surroundings will be an improvement from where they have to return. Muncie, IN and Piscattaway, NJ? No thank you.

1/6/08
GMAC Bowl
Bowling Green vs. Tulsa (-5.0)
Tulsa, but I have to say, I don't care that much.

---End Bowls that make me cry---

1/7/08
National Championship
LSU (-4.0) vs. Ohio State
Ohio State is going to stop wanting to get to this game. They just aren't that good. LSU wins by 10, but the team's athleticism will bail Les "I'm stupid, but I think I'm gutsy" Miles out. Tressel will think "I'm a genius (just look at the sweatervest), and I'm losing to this guy? At least Urban Meyer was a good coach." Good defensive game, though.

It's like my kryptonite

2007-12-17T18:47:00.000-05:00

You folks already know about my various superpowers (if you have forgotten, you can read about them here, here and here. But it's only fair if I tell you about my superpowers I start mentioning some of my weaknesses. After all, I'm Observant, not vain. Well, not so vain that I think this blog is about me.

You might also remember that my purchasing cycle of underwear had reached an increased blip a few months ago, and I neglected to mention a key feature: the button fly. Up until that point, I had been rocking with just ordinary open fly boxers. There are, of course, pluses and minuses for both of those. The pluses of the button fly is that makes you feel fancy because they cost more and the button keeps your peep from popping out. The pluses of the open fly is that it doesn't have a damn button.

I didn't think this would be all that revolutionary before I found myself in the midst of this new sort of fly. But it is. The departure from open to button makes every trip to the urinal a furious race to open the fly, and that takes the experience of relieving oneself in a semi-public place to the next level of awkward. Especially if there is a line, because not only are you taking up valuable real estate, but you are fumbling with your hands on your underwear. Not only that, but afterwards, there is the effort of putting the button back in the eye. Sometimes you just have to abandon ship and forget about the button, reverting back to the open fly arrangement.

I feel, though, that while the button is inconvenient, I never know when I'll need it. Like if my pants are suddenly lost in a horrific tragedy involving a swarm of insects that eats khakis. I'd feel pretty silly in that case if my fly were unbuttoned, wouldn't I?

I feel the need...

2007-12-13T19:35:00.000-05:00

Do you ever wonder why everyone on earth is slower than me? (If you want, you can replace the pronoun "me" with "you," but I have to tell you, I like mine better.) It's everywhere: grocery stores, the ATM, the hallways at work, and while I'm on the couch. I know I'm pretty good at things like not taking 45 minutes to buy tomatoes, remembering my PIN, not stopping in my way and watching tv, but what's the deal? Am I really that good?

I hate getting behind people at the ATM. I honestly have no idea what these people do there. It's like they don't understand that there is an actual bank right next to this machine. There are only so many possible button combinations on a machine and it would take like 8 minutes to go through all of them.

You know what holds me up at the grocery store? The fact that almost no cashier knows what a tomatillo is. Blogger is even hitting me with the red underline on it. Other than that, I am flying through the grocery lines like a buttered slip n' slide.

I really have to ask, though, what are the things that are happening in these peoples heads that made you think it is a good idea to do your weekly banking at a glorified drive-thru teller (my bank does not have a clown mouth, sadly)? How about the shock of, after walking through a building full of food and selecting things that you want to take home, and realizing that you might have to pay for it? I guess sometimes Publix ambushes you.

It's just not worth it

2007-12-08T19:08:00.000-05:00

You know how exciting new gadgets are when they seemingly make life easier, but really don't accomplish all that much? I remember when I was a kid, I really wanted a phone that could be a speakerphone. I don't know why; I just thought it was cool. As it turns out, it was not cool. It wasn't even useful. What does an 8 year old need with a speakerphone in his bedroom?

This thing has been out for a while. And frankly, I apologize for being so slow moving on this. This should have been my first post. The bluetooth headset might be the dumbest product ever made. I know you are probably thinking, "But Mr. Sighted, it's hands free!" So was the speakerphone. Doesn't make it any less retarded. Also, you can't use one and not look like a douche bag.

This guy is probably a douche bag.

Maybe it's an issue of unfulfilled fantasies of being Madonna. Maybe it's a question of having such an inflated sense of self-worth that the people who use these that they can't put down the latte in their left hand to hold a telephone. I hate people who carry lattes outside of places that serve lattes and I hate when people are talking on the phone without clearly holding a phone so it makes them sound like the sort of people who are yelling about Nixon on a subway and smell like a ripened combination of Mad Dog and pee. I don't care what the explanation is, I just think you should stop.

The evil citrus

2007-12-03T06:07:00.000-05:00

I don't understand grapefruit. It looks like a giant orange on the outside, which is a pretty good start. It even looks pretty nice on the inside, but it's all deception; not unlike a beautiful woman who turns out to have syphilis. Take a bite into what looks like a delicious fruity meal (at least compared to its citrus brethren) and you are shocked and amazed by how frighteningly terrible this actually is. What other fruit to people make a habit of adding sugar to in order to enjoy? Grossberries?

Now, as a Floridian, I have sworn an oath to protect and defend citrus. However, now that I am officially a Georgia resident I can finally speak out publicly. This doesn't change my opinions of the others; oranges, limes, tangerines and lemons are all still pretty great, although lemons are a little boring. Limes are, as always, underrated.

On a recent visit, my dad purchased grapefruit juice, because he was afraid the other items in my refrigerator were being unruly. Grapefruit juice is like the fridge warden. I decided this morning that I might give it a try with my breakfast because I neglected to purchase orange juice, the heavenly citrus juice, yesterday at the grocery store. It is an unforgivable oversight, really. But I couldn't do it. I've said this before and I'll probably say it many, many times in the future: grapefruit juice tastes like bile. It evokes in me the same reaction you get when you burp a little too hard and get some throw up in the back of your mouth. Not my idea of a good experience.

There is good news, though: I do still have limeade. While it's a little bit sugary for a juice, it's still citrusy and satisfied my need for an acidic morning. My throat is frequently dry when I wake up, and orange juice is that cure for that. Among other things. Like scurvy.

Invented by Terrorists: The NFL Network

2007-11-29T20:05:00.000-05:00

I am an NFL fan. I follow the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and have an affinity for the Colts because they do their spring training at my alma mater. But when they play each other, I want to see Gaines Adams hit Peyton Manning so hard that he knocks the upside-down horseshoe on his helmet right side up.

If you got a newspaper today (which I didn't), you probably saw a lot of editorials and ads by the NFL apologizing that your cable provider doesn't carry the NFL network. I did manage to get a hold of a USA Today today, and there was both a letter to the editor from the president of the network and a full page ad by the NFL apologizing and another large ad unveiling NFL.com live. There was also a staff editorial calling shenanigans on the NFL. And you know what? The NFL needs a good kick in the pants.

You see, tonight is a big game. The Dallas Cowboys are playing the Green Bay Packers. If you don't know what a Packer is, just take my word for it: this is going to be a fun game to watch. If you have an HDTV, you can play a game where you try to count Brett Favre's gray hairs. (It's 67, by the way.)

I am one of the chosen few to get the NFL network. My cable provider is some wacky corner store variety of company, meaning they aren't involved in the politics of the situation. I'm pretty sure that I got a free hot dog or something for choosing them (even though I had to). I tuned in to watch the star of There's Something About Mary play against the Romosexual, and you know what I saw? If you guessed a football game, you'd be wrong.

I saw a special on football in some city in Ohio. And it wasn't Cincinnati, Cleveland or Columbus. Not that it would have mattered if it were. It was some small town, I don't remember what it was exactly, but I think it was something like Whogivesadamn. But I did get a little ticker at the top saying, "Your carrier doesn't do the football games. Call and bitch about it." I could not believe it. I get the NFL Network, but I don't get the games? Do you know what else is on the NFL Network? Nothing. This network somehow manages to make cheerleader tryouts boring. Cheerleader tryouts.

So, I am with the USA Today Editorial Board on this one. I'm on the side of the Empire, the Soviet Union, Wal-Mart, the New York Yankees and people who say "I know, right?". The cable companies are right. Why should the cable carries charge us a boatload of money for a channel that shows two games a week in the last half of the season, if you're lucky? Thumbs down, NFL, thumbs down.

Invented by Terrorists: Pay Wi-Fi

2007-11-16T22:41:00.001-05:00

I went to Starbucks this evening, because I have not yet discovered a local coffeeshop that does not require me to drive like 8 miles. I recognize that it is a Friday and I am doing a rather solitary activity, but it's the weekend before Thanksgiving and everyone I know is out of town. I mean that in the most literal sense possible; every single person I know is not in town right now.

But I went over to the Maw of the Beast and bought myself an ironically named tea -- Awake -- and opened up my laptop, connected to the wireless network and couldn't figure out why my AIM client wouldn't log in. The reason, it turns out, is that they make you pay for it now. I have just one question: What do I look like, a gullibull? Thumbs down, my friends, thumbs down.

Guess what else: it's really expensive. They wanted to charge me $10 for 24 hours of connection on their precious network. That's like half the cost of the service for the month. I'm already paying twice as much as I should for a mediocre Grande tea, (I know they've been doing this forever with their Italian and what not, but I never understood why the middle size is large) and you want me to shell out more money to use the internet? It's like they think they're a bar. Except people go to bars to get rejected by women. There were only high schoolers at this Starbucks and they didn't even have a hot bartender. Or barista. I forgot where I was in this analogy.

I heard on the news today that Starbucks is suffering from a decline in customers for the first time in like forver. That's what happens when you screw people. All those years of successfully trying to take over the world got to your head, didn't it Starbucks? Well look at you now. You'll be like that hot girl who never got into serious relationships because her life was going so well and her career was too good, but it all came crashing down when she couldn't keep up with expectations and got involved with coke and will die bitter and alone, with a face and body wrecked by all the hard livin'. You won't get any sympathy from me, Starbucks. Not this time.

You know he was Nightcrawler, too

2007-11-08T19:54:00.000-05:00

The weather is turning cold again. This is terrible. I don't know what sort of brain defect causes people to form sentences like, "I'm so glad the weather is cooling off." I equate this to the same sorts of people who do crazy things like collect stamps or use "antique" as a verb. I know what you're thinking: "But it'll snow!" You know what? That sucks too. Snow is great in two places: on vacation and a post card. Otherwise, snow = terrible. It looks nice at first, then it gets gross and dirty and makes your socks wet. Go antiquing for stamps, jerk.

It also means that people start getting sick. The crazy changes in climate affect people in ways that lower their orange juice defenses. I don't pretend to understand it, I just know that it's flu season now based on the number of e-mails I get at work trying to convince me to get a flu shot. I'm not getting one, and here's why: I'm invincible.

I don't get sick anymore. I haven't gotten sick in a very long time, either. I think this is one of my beneficial super powers. I'm due a good one after getting shafted on not being able to sleep in and detecting ammonia. Not getting sick is pretty great, because you know how much it sucks when you have a cold? I don't, because I can't remember. I sneeze sometimes, but sneezing is pretty fun. I wish I could sneeze on command. But I'm not stuffy, I'm not drowsy and I don't have a sore throat. Mario's Starman has got nothing on me.

So long EDT

2007-11-04T10:31:00.001-05:00

Last night we switched back to Eastern Standard Time, unless you live in some backwards place like Iowa or New Mexico where they use Goofy Time. Daylight Saving Time is pretty ridiculous, when you think about it. The best thing about the whole ordeal is right now, when you get the hour back. Is it really worth all this hassle to borrow an hour from April and pay it back in November? I think I'd rather have the hour in April, since the weather is way better.

Also, there is only one "S" in saving. Many people erroneously call it Daylight Savings Time, and this practice simply has to stop. As crazy as it sounds, I think Indiana had the right idea, and recently fell into the practice of the rest of us sheep. During my stay in the Hoosier State, that part was pretty nice -- never having to switch the clocks. I do miss that. We're back on EST now, so things are right with the world, timewise, until the spring.

That figures

2007-10-29T20:39:00.000-04:00

Oh man, guys, I need to apologize to you folks. I had this really great story about how I found this pen at work that had this really hilarious note on it -- it was waterproof. What kind of pen is waterproof? In what context would that possibly be useful? Is it like an astronaut pen for scuba divers? I could only imagine someone in a sinking submarine trying to write a note warning the people who discover the wreckage of the giant squid that swallowed the propeller, realizing he had a Bic, and then swearing (sailors swear a lot), wishing he had my pen.

I found myself outside with the pen and your run of the mill Post-It pad, trying to write something down. I don't remember why I was outside writing things down, but that's not the point; the point is, it was raining. What a glorious coincidence! I was oddly outside writing things down in the rain with a waterproof pen! It seemed to work ok, but afterwards it started to crap out. I threw the pen away today. So who would make an outlandish claim about having a waterproof pen, and then have it not be true? That'd be like a pot manufacturer saying that you can use their saucepan upside-down on the burner and get the same results when you boil your spaghetti. Why would you even bother making such a statement?

The problem, though, is that I can't find a link to this pen. It's a Vivo Microfine, one of those wacky ballpointers that looks almost like it's a felt tip. It's black (I refuse to use any pen that is not black [unless it's red, and then only in certain cases; the point is that blue ink was invented by terrorists]), has a nice grip, and nice balance. I like the pen. But it isn't waterproof! I haven't felt this cheated since that time I read a Shakira interview where she said that she wanted to sound like Led Zeppelin.