Banditos! Banditos! Banditos!

Banditous! Banditous! Banditous!

Why the British spelling?  Because I am off to the U.K.  I'll be in London and Dublin, but I'm especially excited about Greenwich, home of the Prime Meridian.  It's the first time I'll ever really know my exact longitude.  I'll also see the National Maritime Museum, home of John Harrison's chronometers and one of Martin Behaim's globes, featuring a wildly inaccurate depiction of the West African coast.  If you're going to be inaccurate, be wildly inaccurate, that's Martin Behaim's motto!  Sadly, the tea clipper Cutty Sark was damaged in a fire just a few months ago, so at best I'll see it being repaired from a distance.  But I don't let fire get me down.  I mean, most of London burnt to the ground in 1666, which is why I'm heading over there, to help rebuild.

Hopefully I'll have some interesting stories to tell when I get back in early September, but until then, no new posts, because I won't have Internet access.  So for the next couple weeks, thanks for your patience, and feel free to trawl the (admittedly very skimpy) archives.  Here are some posts folks have liked:

Marie Curie's Secret Diary

Word Fixer: The Perfect Storm

How to Like Music

Who's Gonna Betray Me?

Girls, Violent Games, and Feminism

Phone in Friday: Adventure Game Hints

Kebooms!

The Baltimore Orioles

I Touched a Witch Last Night

The Swingin' Age of Swing

The Vulpine Life: Foxin' and Reloxin'  (Very recent but it got a good response)

Technorati Tags: no tags, because it's not a real post, whoops

But Along the Way, I Learned Something

In my first year teaching nursery rhymes to inner city high schoolers, I had days where it seemed like I'd never get through:

"These three mice, three blind mice, they had a violent upbringing, too.  Sound familiar?"

"It's OK to experience setbacks.  Does it frustrate you when you don't 'climb a spout' on the first try?  Does it make you feel eencey?  Maybe a little weencey?"

"On first glance, all this "baa baa" and "three bags" stuff seems pretty wack, right?  But what is Goose really saying?  If she were writing today, would she ask, Baa baa, Latina sheep, have you any self esteem?"

But by the time we made it to the Tri-County Nursery Jam -- and won! -- I knew that these kids, who on my first day of teaching had stolen my shoe, had ended up stealing my heart.  I would never forget them, and they would never forget me.

But they did!  Those motherfuckers!  They all became famous rappers, and never once did those ungrateful bastards give me a shout out or name a clothing line after me.  Or even just mail me back my shoe.

Well, I'll show them.  I've been hopping my way up the administrative ladder and I just got made Vice.  Fucking.  Principal.  That's right.  I have your files.  Let's see what your legions of fans think of your essay writing skills.  What kind of street cred will you have left once they find out you can't even write a topic sentence?

Remember these first paragraphs, betrayers?

The speed limit: is it too low?  Yes.  There are good arguments on both sides, but the arguments against it are not good.  In this essay, I will discuss the concept of speed, the drug called speed, that movie, the second movie (the one with the boat), possibilities of a third movie, and in conclusion, I will show that the speed limit isn't high enough, and they should lower it.

The prostate gland:  we all have one, but what does it do?  In men, the prostate helps you lie down, or lie "prostate," when you feel like lying down.  In women, it's a mystery.  Most women won't even admit to having one.  In this essay, I will show that they are totally faking.

Me: in love with Ciara, or maybe not?  In this essay, I will show that I am for real.  Although many sources believe that I am merely infatuated with her, they make several unfounded assumptions that are not supported by the facts of my heart.  Furthermore, I believe that with hard work, I will someday become famous so that Ciara will have to notice and fall in love with me, although it must be stated that she is not shallow and will fall in love with the real me, deep inside.  The best advice I ever received was when my Nursery Studies teacher taught me to always follow my dream.  My dream is to get with Ciara.

Oh my.  I've -- I've been a fool.  I let the spider of jealousy chase me away from my curds of accomplishment.  That's one good kid.  I shouldn't have said those things about him.  I'll take down that web site where I drew stuff on his face.  And I should go to his mansion and tell him I'm proud of him.  Maybe, if I hurry, I can get there before the pipe bomb goes off.  Oh, I hope so!  But it's funny -- who would have thought, all that time I was teaching them, they were teaching me!  And none of their lessons got through to me until now, years later.  Wow, they were some seriously shitty teachers.

Technorati Tags: teachers, nursery rhymes, rap, speed limits, prostate health, Ciara, no pictures in this one, use imagination

Cook Sister!

I made an asparagus and mushroom risotto the other day, which is always a hit, but kind of boring to prepare.  Asparagus and mushroom is my default setting for risotto, and risotto is my default setting for rice cooked in broth.  Sometimes I raise it one level of tastiness to paella, and sometimes lower it to pilaf.  Occasionally I trick the rice and make it into rice pudding, and it's all, "Hey, I thought I could only aspire to paella!  What gives?" and I reply, "No.  You are rice, but you can be pudding.  Tell the others."

Coincidentally, I just found out about Cook Sister!, a great, tasty food blog by a South African expat in London, from her recipe for butternut squash and boerewors risotto.  She explains that boerewors is a coil of sausage "made of several types of meat – usually a combination of beef, lamb and pork, but sometimes ostrich or game meat – combined with cubed pork fat (“spekvet”) and natural preservatives such as vinegar and spices (coriander seeds play a large part!)."  You can order it online in the US.  In DC, there was a place called the Cape Dutch Bakery, in Accokeek, MD, but it closed down a couple years ago.  See, this is where the Banditos! food entries start to edge into food nostalgia.  Rather than useful information, I provide you with the news that a convenient local grocery no longer exists.  The proper mood when reading a Banditos! post should always be unfulfilled longing.  Work on that.

The Cook Sister! boerewors risotto, which actually exists and is pictured here, looks like a great idea, even if I can't easily procure boerewors.  But there are plenty of other sausages available in DC.  Kielbasa, chorizo, Kenyan sausage, bloodwurst -- the important thing is to get some chunks of meat into my next risotto.  I once had some German sausage with brain tissue in it and although flavor-wise it wasn't incredibly special, if you threw that into a risotto you'd have some hard core risotto.  Risotto can be just a little too Parmesan-y, a little rice-y, you know?  Risotto-y.  I want to take risotto up one more level, beyond paella, and make it steak and mashed potatoes.  It sounds crazy, but you know what else is crazy?  Feeling unfulfilled longing for a South African sausage I've never tasted.  And you know what?  I'm doing that right now.

Technorati Tags: food, Cook Sister, boerewors, sausage, risotto, mentally pre-tasting delicious food

Harry Potter Has Many Feelings

Harry Potter is an ordinary teenage boy, with one difference.  He feels things.  His scar hurts.  It hurts a lot.  And every time his scar hurts, his glasses get pinchy.  Because Harry Potter is the Boy Who Feels Two Things.

Spoiler-free examples:

p. 21:  . . . Harry, whose sadness mixed with a sense of humiliation . . .

p. 40:  Harry was embarrassed and astonished himself.

p. 41: . . . said Harry, torn between annoyance and a desire to laugh . . .

p. 181: . . . while inside him a kind of quiet eruption sent joy and grief thundering in equal measure through his veins.  [Ugh.]

p. 206: . . . their expressions reflected the mingled shock and gratitude he felt.

p.326:  He did not want his excited trepidation tainted with resentment.  [Without resentment, that's just one emotion, right?  No.  Excited trepidation.  Tricky!]

p. 327: . . . he felt a little lurch of apprehension and anticipation.

p. 362: . . . hardly knowing whether he was trying to hold in his anger or protect himself from the weight of his own disillusionment.

p. 368:  All the same, a little more fear leavened his exhilaration . . . [Shockingly, this takes place during Passover, when we feel only unleavened fear.]

p. 396:  "Fine," said Harry, half amused, half irritated.

p. 508:  Harry met her eyes with a mixture of defiance and shame.

 I mentioned in a previous post J.K. Rowling's prose style, which started out barely tolerable and got worse with each book, perhaps because she forced herself to knock them out so rapidly.  Consider this a simultaneous expression of annoyance mixed with more annoyance.  When characters feel two things simultaneously, neither emotion makes much impact on the reader.  Readers can figure out how a character feels in any given situation if you have well-defined characters acting realistically.  The English language doesn't have a lot of subtle words for emotions, but it has a lot of verbs, so let us use our brains a little and extrapolate motivation from action.  Or write in Russian, it has tons of emotions.  Japanese seems to have a lot, too, and I think at some point every single one of them has been displayed on a game show.  Japanese people have an emotion that encompasses saltiness, fear of lions and a desire to win.

 Or, if you want to exhaustively describe someone's inner life, create a timeline of emotion.  I've never been half amused, half irritated all in one go.  One feeling flows into another, following certain channels previously carved into my mind.  Henry James set most of his novels in other peoples' heads, but he created little stories out of their interior struggles, rather than just tagging a line of dialogue with two adjectives.  Daniel Radcliffe can figure out how to say this shit in the movie without Rowling beating us over the head with, "Harry is angry!  Also, he's sad!"

In conclusion and in summary, I feel conflicted about this subject.  On the one hand, this style of writing is insulting to the reader.  On the other hand, maybe the Harry Potter reader deserves to be insulted.  But if it were written less insultingly, no insult would be necessary.  Let's not head any further down that path.  Unlike J.K. Rowling's prose and Celine Dion's heart, I won't go on forever.

Technorati Tags: books, writing, J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, emotion, Daniel Radcliffe, potions, lotions, love

The Vulpine Life: Foxin' and Reloxin'

I don't know about your iGoogle theme, but I'm all about the Tea House fox.  Some people get sick of him, because his daily routine centers around tea, rowing on a lake, and hanging out with a bee and a baby chick.  Well, life is what happens when you're hanging out with bees and chicks.  Life isn't full of explosions and parachutes, it's full of tea, and you better drink it before it goes lukewarm.  Maybe once in a while you see a parachutist explode, but not every day.  It's an unexpected treat, like a briefly shrieking rainbow.

Every day, I load up my Firefox browser, see the little fox doing his little foxy chores, and click on a certain pixel of his ear which takes me to What's A Fox to Do Dot Net.  It's a laid back, hare-free forum where socially conscious foxes can discuss the challenges of brewing tea without thumbs and the possibilities of peaceful cohabitation with smaller, tastier animals.  Did you know foxes eat grasshoppers?  It's true!  Also, it's a hurtful stereotype.  Not all foxes eat grasshoppers, you bigot.  For shame.

StarFox4EVR:  o hai i am a fox

StarFox4EVR:  taht bby chik looks prtty sweet

StarForx4EVR:  i'd eat that he he amirite

Reynard74:  StarFox, this is your last warning.  We do not eat our animal compatriots.  We dine with them and give them rides in our rowboats.  This isn't FoxYumForum.  Maybe you should lurk around over there.

StarFox4EVR:  srry i jsut liek 2 steal chikens

StarFox4EVR:  u know natur red in tooth n claw lolz

StarFox4EVR:  hay i was in farmr macgregorz henhouse the othr night were u there?

Reynard74:  No, I wasn't, "StarFox".  Nice try, MacGregor.  Say hi to Chris Hansen for me.

StarFox4EVR has signed off.

Technorati Tags: Google, iGoogle themes, tea house, foxes, Tennyson, Starfox, Reynard, To Catch a Natural Predator

Charles Simic, Poet Laureate

Wonderful news from the world of poetry and the world of honorable leaves landing on someone's head.  Charles Simic has been appointed America's Next Top Poet Laureate, and recently won the 2007 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.   But you know who really wins here?  All of humanity.  Particularly people who like Charles Simic?  Oh, and Simic wins, too.  He gets the money.  Good for him!  Money is nice.

I started reading Charles Simic in college and discovered not only a world of weird, fully consistent images and rhythm, but also a reassuring voice for all those nights I couldn't sleep.  I don't know how to sleep properly and there's something about being the only one awake that gets to me.   The futile energy, the endless series of self-asked questions.  Simic doesn't offer any answers but he lets you in on his own worries and dreams, not in a confessional sense but more as someone who lets the poem take its own path toward some obscure goal.  You don't generally "get" a Charles Simic poem, or solve it like an equation, but if it affects you, you get to carry it around like a colorful scrap of foreign currency.  Here are some more samples of his work, see what you think.

In The Unemployed Fortune-Teller, a collection of essays and memoirs, Simic mentions that he sometimes walks around the house, opening books at random and writing down images to use in a poem.  But he doesn't trust pure chance enough to just let them sit there, so he re-works them to play off each other in interesting ways.  That's the key to "surrealist" poetry that actually works.  Be random, then start cheating.  If you set out to write something random, you'll end up with, say, "Octopus.  Cheese.  Parking tickets.  Mint."  All of that is worthless, except for "mint".  "Mint" is solid.

But the opposite is also true.  Once you have a thing that you're trying to say, you need to stop trying to say it.  Otherwise, that's not a poem, it's a very concise essay.  Let the unknowing part of yourself have a whack at it.  So you kind of hop back and forth until the poem is done or you're exhausted.  You'll know it's done if you don't remember how you wrote it, although that could just be the exhaustion.  Then you should go eat something.  Eat something nice.

Speaking of which, here's a little Simic poem from The Book of Gods and Devils:

CABBAGE

 

She was about to chop the head

In half,

But I made her reconsider

By telling her:

"Cabbage symbolizes mysterious love."

 

Or so said one Charles Fourier,

Who said many other strange and wonderful things,

So that people called him mad behind his back,

 

Whereupon I kissed the back of her neck

Ever so gently,

 

Whereupon she cut the cabbage in two

With a single stroke of her knife.

 

Technorati Tags: poetry, Charles Simic, poet laureate, cabbage

BioShock Demo for the Xbox Peoples

 

I don't have the Xbox, live or dead, but if you have Xbox Live, the demo of BioShock is now ready for download.  There's no PC demo, so I can stay pure and free of spoilers until the full game drops on August 21.  I'm getting the collector's edition with a little figurine, soundtrack CD, and art booklet.  I haven't menti0ned it much but I'm as excited as a bee in bee town about this game.  If, somehow, you haven't heard of it and would still care, it's a spiritual successor to the System Shock series, a terrifying Art Deco parody of Ayn Rand's Objectivist ideas set in a collapsing underwater dystopia.  In fact, although I won't be in the country when it arrives, I'll take a moment that day to think about how cool it must be for everyone just starting to play.  Maybe I'll ridicule Ayn Rand in my own little way by opening an atlas and shrugging or finding a fountain and sticking my head in it.  Or, I guess I could pursue my own self-interest and happiness that day, but I was gonna do that anyway.  I know!  I'll pursue my own self-interest Objectivist style and act like it's some kind of goddamn virtue.  Join me, won't you?  August 21st, a day to be insufferable.

Technorati Tags: BioShock, Xbox, Ayn Rand, Objectivism

The Rossiya Ice Breaker

So, Russian scientists in mini-subs went under the North Pole and planted a titanium capsule with a Russian flag?  What's not to love?  I especially like the Rossiya, a nuclear powered ice breaker, seen here.  Its 1.8 inch thick steel hull can break 2-3 meter thick ice at a constant speed of 3 knots, the equivalent of 4,350 old credit cards simultaneously scraping a windshield the size of Australia.  There's something charming about trying to claim a land mass with a flag nowadays, even a waterproof titanium flag.  Don't they realize the symbol of a modern land grab is the Halliburton contractor?  Stick a couple of those on a pole and no one will mess with you.

Here's a drink called the Russian Ice Breaker, which involves breaking ice literally and socially.  Pour three shots of room temperature vodka (Russian or Polish, whichever you prefer) into a glass that's nearby but may not be yours.  Then hold part of an ice cube against the roof of your mouth until you start to get a headache.  Quickly kill the headache by downing the warm vodka, then find a stranger and say something amiable to them.  You'll become instant friends, at least in what's left of your mind. 

Maybe more than friends!  Try this line:  "I know we've only just met, but I feel like we connect on a deep level, via an underwater mountain range called the Lomonsov Ridge."  It's guaranteed to melt that special someone's Arctic shelf.

Technorati Tags: Russia, ice breaker, North Pole, Lomonsov Ridge, Love in the Time of Permafrost

Current Mood: Atari 2600

It's the Atari 2600 Label Maker!  (First seen on Insert Credit, then Kotaku, and I read about it on a CRT monitor.)  Make your own nostalgic Atari labels and then close your eyes and imagine playing them!  Don't imagine too hard, though, or the graphics will be unrealistically good.  To start you off:

I don't remember if the Mooninite invasion was technically in Southie, but had we not defeated that first wave, all of Boston would be speaking Atari right now.  One more:

Technorati Tags: Atari 2600, Mooninites, David Beckham, game cartridges

Marvin the 1337 Baby

Marvin, the comic strip baby who remained the same size for 25 years, Tin Drum style, has started talking, as an anniversary treat sure to delight anyone who ever fantasized about text messaging with an infant.  For everyone else, it's just creepy.  The obvious question is, how can anyone tell it's 1337 speak unless it's written down?  I like to think that Marvin makes clicky typing noises as he speaks each word, and before each sentence he makes a sound like a really annoying ring tone.  Dick in a box?  Too far?

The above link goes to The Comics Curmudgeon, a guy in Baltimore who manages to say something funny every single day about the newspaper comics, even the depressing ones like For Better or For Worse, or the ones like Gil Thorp which no one really understands.  In fact, he excels at making the least funny comics perversely fascinating and hilarious.  It's like slowing down to laugh at a highway accident where the car has twisted itself into a particularly witty shape.

Also, is Marvin unable to think in complete sentences anymore?  It seems like that old story about how babies know the secrets of the universe until they're able to talk, when they start to forget.  That seems unlikely.  I've hung out with babies, and they're very ill-informed and credulous.  At best, they have a certain low cunning, but I've never met a baby with a truly first-rate mind, much less an insightful theory about the universe.  They're a little like Deepak Chopra.  Or, alternatively, Deepak Chopra is just a rich, oddly unblinking, lanky baby.

Technorati Tags: Marvin, leet speak, Comics Curmudgeon, babies, Deepak Chopra, sub-par infant cosmology

Numbing Repetition vs. Nummy Repetition

Every game has some amount of repeated action, and every game player has some internal clock ticking down towards boredom.  For me, that point feels like I've stopped playing the game and started practicing it.  Although I want to do well at a game, I don't feel like spending hours developing any skills that will only help me in one game.  Improvement in any FPS, rhythm game, adventure game, or strategy game can transfer to other games of that genre, but learning the abstruse rules of a particularly complex fighter or RPG feels pointless unless I get a steady feed of small victories.  Otherwise, there's no guarantee you'll ever master that one game.  You may suddenly discover your personal glass ceiling, only this ceiling has spikes and slowly lowers itself towards you and also the ground is covered in lava.  Not to mention the employee sex discrimination in the video game world.  I say, if women want to work in Bowser's castle, they have every right to go all the way to the top and someday kidnap and threaten princesses for full pay.  But ask yourselves, though, am I part of the problem?

I'm on about repetition because I played a bit of the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars beta this weekend.  I doubt all 25,000 keys are gone yet, so go install it now and play for several hours, so you can understand the next two paragraphs.  Oh look, you're back.  As you can see, Quake Wars is a multiplayer FPS, meaning you and a bunch of guys run around fighting off the other guys until time runs out.  You run out there, kill some guys, get killed, respawn, and run out again.  If you're lucky, there's some strategy and team comradery, but you don't actually know these people, and there's no time to chat.  Although it's mindless and impersonal, you also have to stay constantly alert and predict your enemies' actions.  But you never really win.  Anybody you kill just comes back a few minutes later and you have to kill them all over again.  I want the satisfaction of permanently killing someone, in a video game, I mean.  Even America's Army, the FPS developed by the Army (a free download, and rated T, for Teen!  "Enlist" today!) brings everyone back to life in the next round.  In real life, this only works when the Army invades someplace like India, where they have reincarnation.

Some folks already like Quake Wars ("roXorz" level satisfaction) and will probably love it once it's finished.  I've enjoyed Counter-Strike and some other multi FPS's, so maybe I'll like the finished product, too.  But I felt too much like an unpaid tester to really get into this beta.  I was there to fight the same battle, over and over, to help the developers work out bugs.  With time, I would have improved, the way everyone improves, by "learning the map."  By memorizing the map.  Go for the sniper rifle, it's over there.  If they show up over there, come at them from this direction.  I'd be all over that map like Carmen Sandiego.  But when do you get to kick back and enjoy the map?  I want to blow up a bunch of nondescript soldiers, but then I want to have a leisurely stroll along the battlements with a cooling drink and some cucumber sandwiches.  I want the crusts cut off my sandwiches, too, and I don't want them to respawn.  So what if the game is called Enemy Territory?  Once you kill all the enemies, then it's just territory.  My territory.  And I'm building an aboveground pool.

Technorati Tags: games, FPS, Enemy Territory, Quake Wars, America's Army, Carmen Sandiego, cucumber sandwiches, relaXors

Times Square

I only just discovered, from this New Yorker article, that Times Square was named after the New York Times.  It was called Longacre Square until the Times built their offices there in 1904.  I've been to Times Square countless times and never wondered about the name.  Now that I think about it, it sounds odd to name a square after something plural.  Reds Square?  Washingtons Square?  If it were Time Square, I would probably have just assumed it was a reference to the ball drop.  The next time I design a city I'll name part of it Annual Slowly Descending Ball Square.

 My memory for these "aha!" moments is directly proportional to how obvious the connection should have been.  When I was a kid I loved Chip's Ahoy! cookies, and I loved the ocean, but never realized the name was a play on "Ships ahoy!"  If I'd seen a barbershop called "Hair She Blows!" I think I would have caught that one, but who knows?  Wow, that's atrocious.  Looks like I can come up with terrible names for barbershops on the fly.

I've been reading Patrick O'Brian's 21-novel Aubrey/Maturin series for a couple of years now and I'm on the last book.  (I read other books as well these past couple years, so my reading rate isn't as slow as you might think.  Also, I savor every page and stop to look up every early 19th century nautical or medical term.  But I admit that as I get older, I read less often than I should.)  In every Aubrey/Maturin novel there's at least one common phrase that suddenly takes on new meaning when you discover its nautical origins.  Sailors had a lot of free time to come up with odd phrases and adapt ordinary words to a multitude of shipboard objects.  Then the phrases and meanings filtered back into ordinary speech, stripped of context.  I won't give any away, because it's a rare pleasure to suddenly re-think a word you never noticed before.  But for example, I find it cute that on a ship, the word "ship," as a verb, means at least three different things, in addition to the noun that the sailor stands on the whole damn time.  The Times Square ball has nautical origins, too, which may be why I ended up on this tangent, and seems a good place to stop.

Technorati Tags: Times Square, New York Times, New Yorker, Chips Ahoy, Patrick O'Brian, Aubrey/Maturin, nautical terms, words

The Ultimate Phone In Friday!

Oh, boy are you folks in for whatever the opposite of a treat is!  It's Friday, and all week I've had something akin to writer's block.  But rather than a lack of ideas, I've been overwhelmed by a surplus of truly awful ideas.  They're worse than ever!  Check 'em out:

The Appellation Trail -- a long, mountainous trail where all the trees and woodland creatures call you names.  Sometimes they call you by your actual name, and sometimes they call you insulting, but apt names.  Either way, it's unnerving.  Hikers beware!

Knock Knock!

Who's there? 

Sarcastic Dog. 

Sarcastic Dog who? 

"Woof."

See, that one doesn't even come across in print.

The Wisdom of Crowds.  I would go out and ask crowds what they thought of important questions like, "Is it better to have loved and lost, or never to have loved at all?" and their answer would be something like, "Sit down!  We're trying to watch the movie!"

Metal Fatigue, the metal band with clinical depression.  But then that goddamn bridge in Minnesota collapsed.  It would've looked like I was just cashing in on the bridge-collapsing fad.

A reality competition called So You Think You Can Detect Trace Amounts of Poison, where each week ordinary people would walk out on stage, take small bites of food, and then vomit.  The big twist at season's end is that the poison is actually in their makeup!

Ryan Adams' new album, Easy Tiger.  I think I was going to say that Ryan Adams was looking for a tiger to fuck.  And then something about how, if you're going to fuck a tiger, it should be a slutty tiger?  And then it went into a lot of unnecessary detail.

A list of thing that can be swallowed whole which would include a grapefruit, which is funny because realistically, almost no one can swallow a grapefruit whole.  But you write something like that and the next day it's hello lawsuit.

On Thursday, a whole bunch of day laborers held a rally at Capitol Hill.  So let's say on that one day, construction foremen were driving around in their pickup trucks totally freaking out because they couldn't find anyone to finish up the building before the weekend.  And then on Monday, the mayor cuts the ribbon in front of the new shopping center and it just collapses behind him.  But, again, that goddamn bridge.  I wish it had never happened.

And on Wednesday, Herman Melville's birthday.  If he were alive today, he'd be pretty surprised!  Right whales are an endangered species now.  He'd be like, how can I get my whale hunt on? and we'd be all, Herman!  Not cool!

You know that crazy Left Behind series?  The evil U.N. Secretary-General, who turns out to be Satan or something, is a Romanian named Nicholae Carpathia.  And no one sees that coming?  What kind of idiotic U.N. representative votes for a guy named Dracula von Fangenbat?

Gender differences!  I'm sure there are some!

In honor of the Simpsons movie I thought I might write a post filled with all sorts of Simpsons quotes, like "Worst.  Something.  Ever." and so on.  But then someone ripped off my idea!  Actually, everyone has ripped off my idea, over and over, for years now.

Frog and Toad at the House Un-American Activities Committee: 

"Mr. Frog, how would you characterize your relationship with Toad?"

"Senator McCarthy, I say now, and I have always said, Frog and Toad Are Friends." 

"Would you say this is a temporary friendship?"

"On the contrary, Senator.  I would go so far as to say Frog and Toad All Year."

Finally, remember that old computer game Oregon Trail?  I thought it might be illuminating to live for an entire year using only items and techniques from that game.  This turned out to be a pretty bad idea.  Now I have cholera and a house full of dead oxen.  Those are the two telltale signs of a bad idea.

Technorati Tags: Friday, phone in Friday, bad ideas