Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

Duggars Victorious

(The title above is a variant on The Onion's Ebert Victorious headline upon Gene Siskel's death.)

Unrelated thoughts based on watching the television event of the summer:

1. I know all publicity is good publicity, but do you really think the makers of Crooked Houses are happy with their product being featured in that of all episodes? Crooked Houses: When you know your marriage is terminal!

2. As of a few days ago I was dead convinced this was all a stunt to get more ratings. And it worked: I watched tonight, as did untold millions of us. On actually watching, and listening to them, I have to admit it's obviously legitimate. Not a happy situation, either.

3. I'm going to go out of my way to avoid passing judgment, because there are so many things we don't know. I admit I was curious: "It's her fault because X" or "It's his fault because Y." But the simple explanations strike as too simple.

4. Notwithstanding #2 and #3, I can't believe the chutzpah involved in bitching and moaning about the paparazzi. Sure, those people with cameras can be creepy... but the people who've paid you to photograph your every move for years now are somehow fine because you're making enough money on it? I don't want to join the "reality TV exploits your children" camp - it's a free country, and they did what they thought was right as parents - but they can't have it both ways about the publicity.

5. Oh, a data point in the "it's all a stunt": They couldn't wait one more day to begin the court proceedings? The divorce had to begin THE DAY this show aired?

6. And a more important data point: Somehow, in spite of it all, they're still doing the one thing that bears the most responsibility for their breakup, the show itself. It's not any of my business (above and beyond my privileges as a TV viewer) but so help me, in their shoes, having long since gotten fabulously wealthy off of this, I'd end the show for the good of the kids' privacy.

7. Can we have a special 18 and Counting where the Duggars watch, and react to, the Gosselins' marital demise?

8. Or better yet a shot-for-shot Simpsons parody wherein Cletus and Mrs. Cletus get corrugated shacks as their own marriage falls apart?

9. On a much more serious note, part of what transfixed me about this was how the TV show would handle it -- and going forward how many (other) real life families will have the Gosselins as their big point of contextualization. Including kids, of course -- from the shots of her book tour, obviously kids are among the family's biggest fans.

10. I feel extremely lucky that my parents are happily married, as are my in-laws. Fingers crossed for Simon's parents and grandparents. In a lot of ways this is a "don't let that happen to you."

11. Nick and Jessica didn't last either, of course. What other reality shows are/were out there that center on particular married couples? The Duggars, of course... and are the Osbournes still together?

12. After all that, what an anti-climactic Cake Boss? But I'm much more of an Ace of Cakes guy, right down to a huge man-crush on Duff. He might be (and I'm totally straight of course) the sexiest Food Network personality of all.

13. Did I mention that the growth (and continued airing) of the show is, in my highly uninformed opinion, the biggest reason their marriage didn't last?

14. But if you'd rather not deal with such weighty issues you can always go to the TLC web site and see bonus footage of the kids with their playhouses.

The Best Comment I've Ever Read About Too Much Information

In the extended entry because of graphic concepts.

Had to think long and hard before I did that Gretzky SModcast, because as far as I was concerned, that was REALLY pulling back the curtain on my life and who I am. I didn't sweat telling the stories about fucking my wife for the first time with an open sore (long, seriously romantic tale), or relating the painful epic of my anal fissure; I sweated sharing my Gretzky interest. Something's wrong with me.
--Kevin Smith

He and I may be polar opposites about our wives' privacy, but I completely sympathize with his choice to guard his innermost hopes and dreams tighter than his medical problems.

Thoroughly Outdated Program of the Day

The former Chart Your Course magazine (long since renamed Creative Kids but I like the old name better) had a "penpals sought" section that, in hindsight, was remarkably similar to how personal ads work, except that one was seeking letter writing buddies.

I had a few pen pals, probably about an equal mix of boys and girls. As far as I know they were all who they claimed to be. (One was from Singapore; I think I only ever got one letter from... him? Her? Anyway I hope that person is OK.)

Is it safe to say that Instant Messages have superseded the idea of writing to someone, hearing from them three days later, writing back 10 days after that?

So the whole inspiration for this post was that in my "pen pals sought" I claimed to love school -- because I did, in fact, love school. Just like Pasquale Gumbo.

When did that change? Probably around middle school. Anyway it changed enough that, meaning no offense to any of my high school classmates or teachers, I read this proposal (if kids test highly enough, let 'em out a few days early) with great enthusiasm.

For some reason this reminded me of my senior spring high school English* teacher. She knew that I was capable of great work, and I knew that she knew [and so on to infinity]. Ditto the full knowledge that, in my senior spring, I was doing nowhere near my best work. Getting an A for my particular output was ridiculous in hindsight, especially compared my immediate previous English classes (from the same teacher three semesters in a row, by choice) wherein I was given challenging grades.

*- i.e. semester of composition, semester of literature; it never ceases to amuse me when Fark (or the like) posts a link to a story complaining about, say, Mexican immigrants acing high school Spanish classes.

Under the Gown

Besides the connection I'm about to draw (and having easy-to-mispronounce last names), I doubt Tom Batiuk and Drew Magary (second link contains NSFW video) have much else in common.

If Only They'd Traded Partners First

This story and this story were back-to-back on Fark this morning.

Two Terrible Columns, With Nothing in Common

1. The new guy at Deadspin beholds, and mocks, "The Mother Of All Steroid Columns," as penned in the LA Times.

Chad (comment to the post three below here) is probably right about how best to rehabilitate someone who's done his time after a sexual assault conviction. There's surely a happy medium between athlete demigod worship and those stupid registry lists that result in people having to live under a bridge. The main, albeit clumsy, point behind my post was that if people-outraged-by-steroids applied their outrage consistently, they'd be orders of magnitude more vocal about athlete bad behavior. Brett Myers, for example, would be booed more loudly than Barry Bonds (at Phillies' away games, that is, for how he treats his wife; not to be confused with his being booed in Philly for daring to allow a cheap home run or two).

2. As linked from Fark, this is a pretty good list, but as linked from the right nav bar of that list itself, this is a horrible column (about bathroom etiquette) because instead of the great points I expected it to make, it drew entirely the wrong conclusions.

Precisely because the bathroom is the one place where people will (and for health reasons should) make embarrassing biological noises, it's also the one place where you should go out of your way to preserve plausible anonymity. For your typical two-urinal, two-stall setup (ladies' equivalent is 3-4 stalls?) that means:

*- If possible, it's better to enter/exit a stall when the bathroom is otherwise empty.

*- If you're not interested in knowing who's in a stall (and you shouldn't be), then avert your eyes appropriately as a stall is entered/exited.

*- No conversations. Not in person, and especially not on the phone.

*- (Goes without saying but) WASH YOUR HANDS. I can easily block out of my mind any other bathroom behavior, but seeing someone failing to wash his hands would be very hard to forget.

A Non-Hypothetical Question About Fleeting Expletives

Tonight in Seattle, the A's and Mariners wore throwback uniforms to the 1939 Oakland Oaks and Seattle Rainiers (both of the Pacific Coast League). According to an on-screen graphic, which I double-checked at Baseball-Reference.com, one of the 1939 Rainiers' best hitters was Mike Hunt, also known as "Old Baggy-Pants" (both the on-screen graphic and the B-R page point this out, though it's not germane to the story).

So anyway, Ray Fosse has obviously never made or gotten a crank phone call, as he pronounced Mike Hunt's name with absolutely no sense of what it would sound like. No sign on the broadcast that anyone in the booth or the truck caught the homophone.

Since this is Comcast Sports Net, cable TV standards would apply anyway, but let's say this had been network TV: Could the FCC get you for saying "Mike Hunt" when you obviously did mean a guy named Mike Hunt?

WTF is With These Recent Animal Abuse References?

I stopped watching last night's Family Guy about eight minutes into it. I didn't want to make too big a deal about the particular breaking point -- given that this came after the previous three episodes were unbelievable, middle-finger-to-the-viewers clunkers -- but along those lines, could someone do me a favor and read this Dana Milbank article (via this Megan McArdle post) and whatever she links to and reassure me it's nothing outrageous?

Animal abuse: Not cool. Maybe this is a "lighten up, Francis!" moment, but still it's where I draw the line. (And it's also where the 4chan /b/ board draws the line (link goes to Fox News). I'm pretty confident that if there were ever a group of people who don't have their undergarments in a bunch...)

A New Rejoinder, Reprinted on This Holy Day

Whenever someone says something rude, you can quote Victoria's four-year-old daughter (born December 7, 2004, according to her blog archives) and ask:

"I forgot, are you Jewish or are you Christian?"

USA Today Sets the Child Prodigy Bar Pretty Low

This story led to some Fark mocking. Let's see what we've got:

1. IQ of 176. USA Today describes this as "one in a million" while a USA Today commenter suggests it's more like one in 300,000. Here's the Wikipedia page on IQ. I don't know which particular test this kid took, though my educated guess that there are anywhere from 10 to 100 six-year-olds in the U.S. with his level of genius. Still quite impressive, if not necessary "write him up in USA Today!" impressive.

2. He can recite the list of U.S. presidents in the order they served. By far the least impressive part of the article: How is this any different from memorizing a book? It's just a sequence of names.

3. Give him a date back to 2000, and he'll tell you the day of the week.

Why only back to 2000? Back in my day you could go arbitrarily far just taking one year at a time, or get it even more quickly if you did the 28-year trick. (I can't say for sure how old I was when I could have subtracted reliably enough to do the 28-year track, and of course I would have screwed up anything before 1900 until I learned the leap year exception.)

Idle, Perhaps Pointless Psychological Speculation

Why do the subject lines of so many "male enhancement" junk e-mails imply that the target audience would want to inflict pain, as well as pleasure, on their future partners?

Share Something Very Marginally Sad About Your Childhood

(It has to be about an epsilon level of sadness, though. Think of the least sad thing you can think of that would still be plausibly sad.)

When we did the "Time Warp" dance at Duke's summer program (for me, the summers following 8th grade and 9th grade), on the line "put your hands on your hips" we were taught to shout "YOUR OWN HIPS!"

I wouldn't learn the more common rejoinder until years later.

("Duke sucks"? Ironically, Drew Curtis (yes that one) was one of my classmates in the 1989 class (U.S. history, 1941 to the present))

Dan Savage's Voters Chose Wisely

It says here they picked exactly the right definition of saddlebacking, and I will oblige Savage and give his new URL a link for the Google PageRank cred.

(Speaking of which, I've been meaning for weeks to restore the proper #1 search result to ACF Question Writing Guidelines.)

Sexual Arousal Is Not the Same Thing as Sexual Desire!

"On the way to the ballpark tonight Ray Oyler, sitting in the back of the bus during a bumpy ride, discovered an erection. He promptly offered to buy the bus from the driver."
--Ball Four, start of the May 22 entry

"Before [Meredith] Chivers could use a computer program to analyze her data, she needed to 'clean' it, as the process is called - she had to eliminate errant readings, moments when a subject's shifting in her chair caused a slight pelvic contraction that might have jarred the plethysmograph, which could generate a spike in the readings and distort the overall results."
--What is Female Desire? the cover story in today's New York Times Magazine

It was never completely clear to me whether the goal of the Chivers research is to learn what causes female sexual desire, or to learn what causes female sexual arousal. If it's the latter, then the slight pelvic contractions caused by shifting in one's chair should not necessarily be just thrown away as noise - shifting in one's chair is to a woman as riding a bumpy bus is to a man.

If it's the former, then the genital readings she took could very easily mislead. Earlier in the article there's a big deal made about how vaginal lubrication, and even orgasm, sometimes happens during rape, as the body's way of avoiding (further) harm rather than as a sign of sexual desire itself.

For men, I infer that anti-impotence pills are purely to cause arousal (that desire is what prompted the men to take the pills). It may remain mysterious what causes women to feel sexual desire, but surely it's somewhat less mysterious what causes vaginal lubrication.

(Maybe this is philistine of me, but I also infer that any new drug for women would be intended more to treat desire: If it were strictly about arousal then one would need an interesting price point to improve on various glides/jellies. It was unclear to me whether the drug briefly mentioned at the start of the NY Times piece caused woman to desire more sex, or simply lubricated them.)

Really, though, I'm appalled by how the article depicts Chivers's time management. I dearly hope the reported got (or presented) a distorted picture, otherwise this painstaking process by which Chivers "cleans" the data signifies some fundamental point of incompetence, whether by Chivers, by the designers of the computer program she uses to analyze data, or by the people who taught her how to use that program.

Whenever someone is a pioneer in the field, the only person [or only woman, or only person of some other distinction] doing that work, imagine the profound difference that can result from whether that person is actually any good. (I'm not saying Chivers isn't, just that the magazine profile does her few favors.)

Which Mother is Worse?

Door #1?

Door #2?

Maybe it's apples and oranges. #2 poses a much greater direct threat (expert judgment there, ma'am!) but both need to be taught some very specific lessons. (For #1, "love is a verb" -- it's not just a cliche.)

Lesson Learned from Today's XKCD

(for a long time I got the premise, but not the direct punchline, of this)

A tiny pianist and a 12-inch pianist (or some similar measurement) would actually be about the same thing, but even if my first thought was the former, the heroine's first thought was apparently the latter.

Saddlebacking

It's gotta be #5. The rest aren't even close.

(Link goes to Savage Love, so you can expect Not Safe For Work themes.)

OK, distant honorable mention to #7, except that there's already a verb for that: In context, everyone knows what "trying" means.

Juror Removed for Excessive Body Odoer

The Case of the Stinky Juror, via Eugene Volokh (and surprisingly not via Fark).

While we're here, one TV commercial from this year's NFL playoffs is significantly more memorable (and creepier!) than the rest. It won't make my change my car insurance, but it won't leave my mind any time soon either.

Second- and third-most memorable: Subway, which actually did lead me to crave its F***-D***** F***-L***s, though not to bother buying one (not sure if I'll have occasion to any time soon); and the car company that decided to waste my money (bailout dollars being fungible) on commercials that exist entirely for Howie Long to question the manhood of people who drive rival trucks.

Oh, honorable mention to the beer company that forever ruined "Are You Gonna Be My Girl."

Alarming Banner Ad of the Day

"Want to make your own sorority with your closest friends?! [name of site] let's [sic] you do this and more! Check It Out!"

So I've heard of people who form sororities with their closest friends; I think those are known as "sororities," and I think the way they form is that the members actually meet and just do it.

On the other hand, technically I can't be part of a sorority with my closest friends; it would be either a "fraternity" or some gender-neutral variant. Or we could insist on calling it a sorority, but that would be a bit like insisting our two-bedroom apartment be referred to as a hacienda.

Anyway, there's no way I could ever be a sorority girl in real life (barring expensive and undesirable (to me) surgery) -- so is that the real point of this on-line endeavor? [shudder]

My New Year's Resolutions

1. Always make Simon my top priority. (This doesn't mean pay attention to him every second of the day but does mean that, within a balanced home life, he gets dibs.)

2. Never pay for coffee by the drink. (Coffee by the bean is fine, of course.) This became a lot easier when I realized that I can pour half a cup of fresh coffee at work and just put it in the vegetable crisper until it is the ice cold (but without ice!) temperature I love.

3. Work out at least six nights a week. (Or "days" but in practice this tends to be at night.) Four a week is acceptable under special circumstances (travel).

4. At most one consumption of junk food per day, of a reasonable portion (i.e. fewer than 200 calories if that information is readily available; one cookie instead of multiple cookies, and so on).

5. 1024 x 768 (okay, I stole that from McSweeneys.net)

6. At most 24 ounces of soft drinks per day.

Anyway, as stated these are all process-centered rather than outcome-centered.

Mom insists daughters continue Santa photos

I think something like this was the premise of some erotic fiction I read on the Internet 10-15 years ago. Except there was no mother, the protagonist was the mall Santa, and the main plot point was that he bought the girls pink hand-held massagers (as this blog will choose to call them).

You Can Tell Who Is(n't) A Parent

From reactions to this video (be sure to watch all 18 seconds; it's not a rickroll, etc.)

Dear Great Britain,

Marriage: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

Parenthood: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

Blaming everyone else for your problems: That you're especially doing wrong.

(Both links via Fark, one today one earlier this week.)

I'm Ambivalent About Whether This Deserved its "Silly" Tag on Fark

(I assume "Obvious" was close behind.)

Now men can also be diagnosed with depression after their kids are born.

Isn't this just common sense, though? I'd like to assume that psychiatrists were well aware that becoming a new father, just like any other life-changing event, could cause depression.

If you're fumbling around with the language, as I was just now, it says here that "postpartum refers to the mother and postnatal to the baby," though I have no idea what analogous term would refer to the father.

In any case, though, this brings up what isn't necessarily an over-diagnosis problem so much as a terminology confusion. It seems to me that (very roughly speaking) "I'm depressed because I had a kid" is to "I'm tired because I had too much caffeine a few hours ago" as depression is to fatigue. (Or, if you prefer, as event-driven depression is to diet-induced crashing.)

Things One Would Probably Never Add to a Scrapbook

1. Midnight Madness
2. Margot at the Wedding
3. Galapagos: The Enchanted Voyage [IMAX]

1. 30 Rock: Season 2 (Disc 1)
2. 30 Rock: Season 2 (Disc 2)
3. You Don't Mess With the Zohan
(so far all of the first, most of the second, haven't gotten to Zohan yet, all after we put the baby to bed of course)

1. Family Guy: I Dream of Jesus (best known for running Surfer Bird into the ground
2. Angels 5, Red Sox 4 (12 innings)
3. Fox Business Channel coverage of this past Friday's afternoon trading (the day of the thousand-point range) (this might not count, since the kid was mostly in the kitchen while Julia's uncle and I watched)
4. Rays 9, Red Sox 8 (11 innings)
(and then, if we can help it, NOTHING until he's 2 (3?), just to be safe)

[Boston Red Sox' 2008 playoffs: undefeated (so far) if Simon J. Bruce isn't around, but winless if he's in the room.]

1. 99 yards rushing, 17 receiving
2. bye week
3. probably back to special teams and 3rd down work with Willie Parker's return

One Night Down, Many to Go

The kid woke up a few times last night, as expected, but slept soundly from 2:30-5 and again from 5:30-9:30. (Yes, four hours.)

A few minutes ago my son and my cat were both simultaneously crying for food, which of course meant I fed the cat. (Yes, after seeing that my wife was about to feed the kid, but it was still fun to phrase it like that since it was technically true.)

Simon Jonathan Bruce

Born at 7:47 Sunday morning, October 5, 2008.

All three of us are well.

Weeks ago I composed a barebones e-mail draft with appropriate recipients in the BCC field. The iPhone seems not to realize BCC exists. Therefore I apparently sent the announcement only to Julia. Well if anyone needs to know, the mother would.

UPDATE: a couple people did get the e-mail, though other intended recipients told me they did not. Might just be filtering issues.

All four grandparents have seen us many times.

Home tomorrow?

most common birthday

a cow orker claimed that the most common birthday was October5. Ask.yahoo.com confirmed this.

Nothing New To Report

I think even under normal circumstances I would have noticed the similarity between this story and this story.

Meanwhile, you all know we named our cat after this guy, right?

Random Associations With Waiting for a Kid

(No sign of labor yet. Due date was yesterday. I continue to work.)

The attempt at a bank bailout, of course. (Megan McArdle expects doom. I fervently hope she's wrong, though of course so does she. The difference is that I honestly believe she's wrong.) And the first McCain-Obama debate.

My parents watched the end of this game and together we saw parts of the fourth quarter of this game.

Despite living in the East Bay and having family in Chicago, I felt no allegiance towards either home team.

In theory my rooting interest was sealed by growing up with the John Elway era Broncos (a favorite of Tulsa's NBC affiliate - there's no way I could have become a Dallas Cowboy fan), though these days it's hard to feel that strongly about a team that manages to win under such sketchy circumstances.

If anything I feel affinity for the Pennsylvania teams despite having no ties to that state at all. My cat's namesake is a Steeler now (and Dwight sent us a Terrible Towel) and my fantasy teams of the past 3-4 years have been unusually likely to get Stillers/Iggles. (No Roethlisberger for me this year but I have McNabb, Parker, and Westbrook on different teams.)

I wonder which will come first between the kid's birth and the 2008 AL Central being decided. This game is still not under way as I type.

Rent a U$C Song Girl for $150

It says here:

The only catch is that you have to fill out a request form. Of course the form requires you to answer a few pressing questions. Such as, "What do you want the Song Girls to do?" I'm sure you can manage that. In fact, there's a good chance you were thinking of what you'd like the Song Girls to do, before you knew you could get the Song Girls to do anything at all.

What Has Stoked My Misanthropy Lately?

In no particular order:

Mayonnaise. Funny because it rings true, sad for the same reason. (I cannot emphasize enough my virulent dislike for mayonnaise.)

Slate women on sports, part one (presented without comment):
A few minutes in, we began to wish we were watching back home. "Where are the up-close-and-personal segments?" my sister asked. Sure, there was a bit of commentary, but none of the polish and packaging that you'd get from the folks at NBC. Not much history or background on the contestants beyond where in China they were born. And certainly no visits to hometowns and no proud, teary-eyed parents. Sure, these stories of sacrifice, injury, and adversity are cheesy, but they serve a necessary function, allowing you to identify with athletes whom you've never heard of before and probably won't hear from again.

Slate women on sports, part two:
The kids on the other team had made up the "you're safe if you fall down" rule midgame. They didn't seem inclined to apply it uniformly—no one on Eli's team tried to invoke it, and he didn't think it would have flown if they had. Still, we were a bit uneasy about urging Eli on in his fight for the rule of law. [...]

The problem is that the point of playing games isn't only to win, most of the time. It's also to hang out with friends, have a good time, while away a sunny or rainy afternoon. Viewed through that lens, it's important to tolerate a little rule bending. Did the dice fly off the board? OK, roll them again. Game playing takes a lot of that kind of compromise and improvisation.

It's important to tolerate a little rule bending, WHEN THE RULE-BENDING SERVES A PLAUSIBLE PURPOSE. The point behind "dice that fell off doesn't count" should be obvious to anyone who's ever played dice games. I'm completely baffled as to how a "if you fall down you're not out rule" would serve any purpose in kickball other than the naked interest of the team that pulled it out of thin air.

Anyone who can't tell the difference between "if you fall down you're not out" and "dice that fall off the table get re-rolled" is someone that I fervently hope isn't the sole philosophical mentor of his or her offspring.

And last but not least: Olympic gymnastics judges who give a zero ("no exercise score") to someone who didn't wait for a red light to turn green are the moral equivalent of quiz companies that rule an answer wrong if the player who rang in "didn't wait to be recognized."

Which Circle in Hell...

...is the appropriate place for whoever designed those social networking ads that use the names and head shots of your own friends?

("Is [X] is funny as Ed Asner?" "Which of [E], [F], [G], [H] is more likely to listen to the new single by Burl Ives?")

I've never understood the people who think of text-correlated ads within their e-mail as a privacy violation. (The only thing that "knows" what the text was was the automatic process itself; in theory whoever owns the process could infer things about your e-mail, but in theory you could accomplish the same thing by packet sniffing, and about as tediously.) This practice of using one's own friends' names and likenesses, though... I'm not going to claim it's deceptive (anyone with half a brain will realize that these friends aren't actually endorsing those things) so much as violative.

It also inexplicably reminds me of the voice a kindergarten teacher might use. "Does a COW like to eat grass? Does a DUCK like to eat grass?"

Anyway, there is already one movie (plus a handful of music acts whose names fortunately escape me) that I will make it a point of going a lifetime without seeing.

Father Knows...

This column led me to this blog and in particular this post.

He's dead-on about both the anecdote in the opening paragraph and the fifth item on his list. Especially the fifth item on his list. That video singlehandedly delayed my Metallica acceptance/appreciation by at least five years.

The Aidan/Emma Complex Isn't Quite the Scourge I Thought it Was

The diversity in U.S. baby names has exploded since the 1950s. Back then, a quarter of all boys and girls got one of the top 10 baby names, according to Laura Wattenberg, author of "The Baby Name Wizard" (Broadway, 2005). In recent times, the top 10 names account for only one tenth of all baby names
--Yahoo! News via Reason

(link below also via Reason)

Pride Week on The Onion

If you're wondering what new stories The Onion will post tomorrow, compare this list to what they've already posted this week.

UPDATE: Through Friday, we're still waiting on Closeted Father... and ...thinks he's still in the closet. I suspect carload of... won't make the cut because of the bad word, which is a shame given the real thrust of the article is the ignorant slack-jawed kids working the drive-through.

Dear Party B,

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Love,
Party A

Postscript #1: Congratulations also to the thousands of other Party A's and Party B's who finally became eligible for official recognition today.

Postscript #2: Party B figures that the "B" stands for "Bride" but wonders whether the "A" stands for something obscene.

Postscript #3: Country music fans urgently need to keep their own marriages intact (and I suspect whatever problems they face have nothing to do with anybody else's relationship or marriage), because songs like this and this are way too depressing.

Postscript #4: And of course, as you know, it was two years ago today that Italy drew the U.S. (1-1) and this game outlasted our reception.

I Now Know The Names of Two Current Gymnasts

(That's two more than before this past weekend.)

Saturday we went to visit friends who have a new baby. They also happened to be watching gymnastics (live from the Boston University campus!) on NBC, on HD. I wonder if I'll ever get used to seeing close-ups of athletes where you can also clearly see the person in the front row idly sucking 32 ounces of Pepsi through a straw.

Anyhow, Shawn Johnson reminds me of someone (facially) but I can't place who. Near the end of the first page of results for Google Image Search for her name also happens to be, even with Moderate Safe Search on, an image of a bare backside (yet completely unrelated to the gymnast herself).

The other name I know is Nastia. She's in her teens (I presume), she's a gymnast, and her name is Nastia. Ten years from now she'll be a 20-something named Nastia who'd been a gymnast ten years ago. She'll probably be way too rich and famous to have to resort to being a stripper, yet that's a stripper name if I ever heard one.

Google Image Search: "Miley Cyrus" "Vanity Fair"

If the picture that the NY Daily News and UK Telegraph both host is the one that got everyone in a tizzy then I'm completely dumbfounded.

1. Celebrities have backs? Who knew?

2. Don't most teen swimsuits show more skin than that?

3. The two most offensive elements of that photo are her Medusa hair and whoever butchered her makeup. I'd let a kid wear an outfit that skimpy (i.e. a toga) long before approving of that much lipstick.

Ann Althouse Makes Strange Use of Language

Despite the italicized phrase in the last line of this post, as far as I can tell, the images linked from this article (in theory there exist workplaces where those images are NSFW) don't actually depict any body parts, naughty or otherwise.

They depict erotic toys, to be sure, but they come no closer to representing "images of penises" than would a photo of the Washington Monument.

People Who Stress Me Out Way More Than They Should

(In no particular order)

Radio interviewers who take way too much time (and too many words) to ask an athlete a question, especially when the second half of the question is all but giving the guy's answer for him. He's already taking time out to talk to us listeners, why make him wait even longer to open his mouth?

People at large restaurant tables who are too busy with whatever conversation they're in to recognize the name of their main course when the harried waitstaff brings it out. "Santa Fe chicken? Santa Fe chicken?" And then just when the waitstaff are about to give up, Mr. Talky finally gets a clue. "Oh yeah, that's mine."

There Are Some Truly Frightening Wedding Reception Videos on YouTube

1. Google "Frank Thomas" pillow fight site:youtube.com -- you will see my favorite baseball promotional ad ever.

2. One of the Related Videos will involve Lyle Overbay -- click on that

2a. Another Related Video somewhere in there will involve Torii Hunter -- this doesn't relate to the post at hand but you should watch that as well

3. One of the Related Videos to the Overbay promo will bill itself as "bouquet catch of the year." It really isn't, though it's not bad.

4. The videos related to that take you into "I want that minute of my life back!" territory.

Anyway, welcome back.

The Erotics of Investing

Men who see sexually explicit images go on to take bigger risks.

If I ever ran an underground poker room, I'd show pornos to make sure the pots (thus the rake) were that much bigger.

I Hate Falling for Things

Usually I can spot a satire pretty quickly, but last night Slate briefly had me convinced that Jenna Jameson was a virgin. (Actual article is an exercise for the reader.)

I suppose thousands of people think they've seen video evidence to the contrary (unless the special effects were just incredible). Would you believe I'm not one of those people? (As far as I know, I'm not.) I've seen very few adult movies.

1. Debbie Does Dallas (loved everything about it)
2. Behind the Green Door (hated the last few scenes, when they decided to just pretend to be Doc Edgerton)
3. Some guy recruited women into a cult. (Soft-core, despite the potential there.)
4. The meta-concept was recruiting college co-eds to do first-time adult movies.
5. Some French thing from the 1930s.(?)
6. I remember when (hotel room, during a blizzard that canceled a bunch of flights) but couldn't tell you a thing about the content.

Sexuality Link of the Day

Will Saletan quotes a study. But Alex Tabarrok downplays the study results, correctly pointing out that correlation is not causation.

Megan McArdle cites both posts, and adds a delightful YouTube link from the TV series Coupling.

Let's say for the sake of argument that tying kids up were about as widespread a punishment as spanking is. Would anyone be truly surprised to find a correlation between people who were tied up as a childhood punishment, and who tie each other up as a sexual kink?

I'd like to suggest as a general rule that you SHOULD NOT USE AS CHILDHOOD PUNISHMENT anything that adults use for sexual pleasure with any degree of frequency.

(Even though this is surely common sense, there's a problem with how to craft it, inasmuch as I know there are random (e.g.) diaper fetishists out there, and you surely wouldn't use them as a reason not to give your kids diapers. But as far as I can tell, "don't use it as punishment" is the simplest, most effective workaround.)

Sometimes I Really Don't Understand Myself

By all rights this video should make me livid. You know how I feel about cruel pranks, and it's hard to think of anything more cruel. And yet I enjoyed it.

The most plausible explanations for why I enjoyed it are all beyond creepy.

Where Were You February 29, 2004?

(It was a Sunday if that jogs your memory.)

I was helping a friend move from Berkeley to Oakland. I actually have a much more satisfying answer to the deeper question involved there, but it would be about a 1,500-word essay whose best medium might not be this weblog.

Even though a minor element of the story is a bit bittersweet, on balance I am significantly better off now than I was four years ago.

As I drove from Berkeley to Oakland I made (took?) at least two phone calls. On one, a friend sought romantic advice; that friend is now happily married (wedding was a few months ago) to just the right spouse.

On the other call I arranged for a ride to the airport, to avail myself of what seemed like an incredible opportunity. For convoluted reasons, that "opportunity" became the most frustrating situation I've ever been in, and yet if I'd never had that initial opportunity then I have no idea what other circumstance would have led me to reach out to the most important person in my life.

And hey, the friend I helped move is now happily married also (got married this past July)! -- that couple were still a long ways away from even meeting as of February 29, 2004.

Recurring Subject Line

[adjective] [singular noun that refers to performance] with [female celebrity name] + [number] [plural noun that refers to people in a kinky way]

Sadly, none of them have been all that compelling or even unintentionally funny.

Q'Orianka Kilcher

Happy belated birthday (turned 18 on February 11).

Something something Colin Farrell etc.

But everyone knows the real milestone this year is April 15.

Good Luck Enforcing This

Middle school issues ban on intentional flatulence.

That Onion Image

...is androgynous (probably on purpose), despite what you may have inferred the first time you saw it.

(Yesterday I took it to be a boy. Today I realized either interpretation is plausible.)

10 Things You Didn't Know About Women

This is brilliant.

Fun with Backward Conversion Factors

So it turns out I don't weigh almost exactly 500 kg after all.

The Shirt is Correct

She is kind of a big deal.

It's hard to think of a better-looking Internet insta-celebrity.

The Fine Line Between Chick Flick and Girl pr0n

"Lovely Lisa is throwing a girls-only slumber party at her new home and she has invited some of her hottest and wildest girlfriends over to help her celebrate. Whenever these lovely ladies get together you can be assured of two things: the gossip is going to be hot and steamy; and the clothes are coming off at some point along the way."
--peachdvd promo for Girls Night In 2*, as just hit my work e-mail inbox

"Georgina throws a sleepover party for her friend Jamie, a moderately successful actress, on the night of Jamie's fiancée's bachelor party. Jill, Jamie, Marcy, Rachel, and Georgina have been friends since childhood, and as the evening progresses they talk about a variety of topics: Georgina's heterosexual fantasies and her uncertainties about Chris, her live-in lover; Jamie's doubts and insecurities about marriage; and all of their attitudes toward sex and sexual fantasies."
--IMDB synopsis of Live Nude Girls (1995)

The latter has (all links are Google Image Search: any Safe Search settings should just be whatever you've already set up on your local machine) Dana Delany, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Stevenson, Laila Robbins, Lora Zane, and Olivia d'Abo.

The former has Erica Ellyson, Lisa Daniels, Hannah Harper, and Valentina Vaughn.

*- I missed the original?

Is This A Joke?

"High school girls usually carry textbooks and binders in the up position, against their chests; high school boys usually carry textbooks and binders in the down position, on their hips. If you have a theory on why this is so, propose it using the address at Reader Animadversion."
--Gregg Easterbrook

In the words of Bob Seger, something something "tight pants, points" something something "way up firm and high."

Best Two-Sentence Comment I've Read Today

"So instead of being a local rocker, he's a local rocker who The Man won't let play because he's too dangerously sexy. He'll never attract 15 year old girls now."
--a reader of this post succinctly demonstrates the problem with an unusual judicial order.

Propriety by Obscurity

Isn't this exactly the right place for a strip club?

Easy to get to (and monitor), yet difficult to discover by accident.

Bright College Days

I never smoked, didn't play the guitar in college, didn't wear sandals, and certainly didn't eat dining hall ice cream (rather, I ate several helpings of those seasoned curly fries). But that's just nitpicking.

I Didn't Previously Know the Part About the Foosball Table

This story is just crazy. (As is this comment thread.)

(Fark had the same story a week ago if memory serves, but I didn't look too closely.)

Hypothetical Prank of the Day

Replace the picture on this profile with the infamous (NSFW) photo seen here.

Worst Gossip Ever

Also, I agree with Mickey Kaus (from November 23) that the last sentence of this column is absurdly inane.

Gosh: some single guy likes to get drunk and pick up women. Scandalous!

I Can Do Gymnastics

Speaking of books found in the children's section of a local bookstore (in blog posts with unsavory framing devices), this might have been the other book that caught my eye a week ago. I can't really tell for sure, but for purposes of this post the point is the book in question had cover art of a smiling girl in a leotard.

Whichever picture it was reminded me of part of this SVU episode (which aired as a rerun some time during the 2005 Christmas week) where as part of undercover work, Stabler had to take a test given to paroled sex offenders to determine to what extent non-sexual images of children [still] arouse them.

Speaking of sex offenders, [bangs head against wall]. Where sound public policy and well-designed data models intersect: Blow up the entire sex offender registry system and replace it with something that makes sense. Among other things, don't treat high school kids caught in oral sex the same way you treat rapists.

What Happens At Bruce Elementary, Stays At Bruce Elementary

This substitute teacher had issues.

Not quite on-topic (the only link is age group), I saw this book in the children's section of a local bookstore and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The "Home Run Heroes" in question (McGwire and Sosa) are a bit less highly esteemed now than when the book came out in 2001.

Despite being a sports fan I'm deeply averse to teaching children to think of athletes as heroes. Maybe they will anyway, but my preferred choice of "heroes" would include anything from firefighters to Founding Fathers.

(Even at that, Thomas Jefferson owning slaves is orders of magnitude worse than any given ballplayer using needles or pills. People do terrible things sometimes; explaining that to children seems to be an interesting challenge of putting everything in the right perspective.)

Oh hey, the Amazon page claims that this book is for ages 4-8. Yet the page I randomly turned to in the bookstore contained the phrase "tremendous binge." By contrast it says here Dr. Seuss' publisher supplied him with a sight vocabulary of 223 words which he was to use to write his books, a sight vocabulary that was in harmony with the sight words the child would be learning in school.

Theodore Geisel 1, Major League Baseball 0.

Is Your Affair Monogamy-Neutral?

Cheating Offsets: I can only assume this is brilliant satire.

Skin on Wikipedia

Your mission, should you choose the time-suck, is to find at least one sexually explicit image on Wikipedia. The one I saw just now has clearly visible nipples. (If I told you it was someone related to a historical figure, that would probably give away who it was.)

New Frontiers for "Yo Mamma" Jokes

"...so fat she went on It's a Small World and it sank!"

I rode the Orlando "It's a Small World" once. It did not end well. (This was right after dining at the Epcot food court.) I was not, however, ordered to drink the water.

(I feel special sympathy for Lisa for her traumatic experience on the analogous ride. One of many (at least 10!) reasons why "Selma's Choice" is my favorite Simpsons episode.)

Peach DVD: A Critique

So for legitimate work reasons I'm on the e-mail list of Peach DVD, an adult video company whose talent is 100% female. Every so often they send promo e-mail for new releases.

Girlfriends: Brazilian Lovers 3
The cover models both look flat chested. From the camera angle no idea what their backsides are like. This seems to be a historically inaccurate depiction of Brazil's standards of beauty.

Secrets of the White Room
"Something inexplicable happens to women when they enter The White Room: they are overcome with a powerful erotic energy and lose all of their inhibitions." There was actually a Get Smart episode (guest-starring Carol Burnett!) with a room exactly like that (30-second gag, not central to the plot).

The Jenna Jameson Gold Collection
Forgive me for being naive but what's so special about her? Is she just the pr0n star whose name everyone happens to know? Which well-known athlete has a career arc in his or her sport that most closely resembles Jameson's?

It's Been A Quiet Week in Sodom, The Place That Time Forgot and the Decades Cannot Improve...

Maribeth has brought to our attention that Garrison Keillor has a stalker, whose letters described "graphically making love to" him.

I'd pay to hear Garrison Keillor recite obscene stories. I'd pay even more to hear him narrate obscene stories of his own creation.

I wonder if Frank of "Frank TV" has a Keillor impression.

xkcd Made Me Look

This Wikipedia article isn't half-bad (the text is not necessarily work-safe). It succeeds on both levels: Informative at face value, and unintentionally funny.

The Wrong Article had a Picture

This article was useless without a picture (co-ed columnist writes about trying out for Playboy but refusing to pose nude).

This article was worse with a picture (pants lawsuit judge not reappointed) -- I'd previously assumed that anyone that maliciously litigious had to be white.

On the other hand, this is the best picture I've seen today.

Two Unrelated, Out-of-Context Punchlines

One is from recent news, the other is from a couple weeks ago but I never got around to typing it:

1. Just wait a few months, he'll use the same melody for another car commercial.

2. You'd know if it were real because the action would be mechanical and uninspired but eerily on-rhythm.

Very Uncomfortable Thoughts About a Recent News Story

The only part I can leave "above the fold":

You may remember the McDonald's coffee case, on first impression a textbook "frivolous lawsuit" (plaintiff holds coffee cup between legs while driving, spills hot coffee, sues because the coffee was too hot) except that there's much more of a case than people (including me) credited, just because McDonald's kept its coffee so much hotter than anyone else did.

McDonald's just lost a different multi-million dollar suit, one that I think it deserved to lose, based on its failure to warn managers/franchisees not to fall for a hoax that had become surprisingly common. (You could argue that companies shouldn't have to pretend their affiliates are idiots; even so, the magnitude of harm here very high, and very foreseeable.)

1. The next time you hear about any given sexual assault trial, shudder to think that statistically, a good chunk of the jury will approach the evidence the same way some of these Fark commenters did. Their ability to infer consent from the facts on the ground is just a jaw-dropping lack of common sense.

2. I can't remember the last time a story that didn't involve death, dismemberment, or child abuse left me so horrified.

3. And yet, maybe because it's so horrifying, it works disturbingly well as a fantasy scenario. (The Houston Chronicle didn't help matters by putting the employee's picture prominently above the article itself.)

It's a vicious cycle of being creeped out, intrigued, even more creepd out, even more intrigued, etc.

UPDATE: I also share Joshua's outrage about the other lawsuit.

Hey Man...

Nice... (you get the idea)

Vanessa Hudgens

...does not have a Brazilian wax.

I'd been aware for some time now of a picture with the face of Hudgens and a body that fits the above description. This is the first reliable confirmation that it's a real photo and not a retouch hybrid.

But I should have suspected its veracity given (counter-intuitively) that in the picture her face isn't as attractive as you'd expect. It's recognizably her face but apparently she wears a lot of high-end makeup to look so fetching on screen.

This Isn't Dyslexia So Much As Dissonance

(But like the example two posts below it's from ESPN.com)

No, thank you, I'd prefer not to think of U.S. gymnasts as "Golden Girls." (Nor the converse.)

Sometimes My Quasi-Dyslexic Speed Reading Goes Badly Wrong

I read things very quickly, and have come to realize that this mainly involves my mind filling in context and syntax from a series of words without consciously parsing the exact order in which they appear.

In any case banner ad + "Dick's Sporting Goods" + "Wear Your Team Out" + the layout + how I read things = "wear your [...] - HUH?!?"

Are You Ready For Some Gay Fan-Fic?

"Nothing makes a straight man question his sexuality more than the sudden realization that he just wrote gay fiction."
--John, of The Dugout

I shouldn't have enjoyed this baseball story nearly so much.

(By the way, did I ever mention the irony that the Onion AV Club had this review of Chuck & Larry up at the same time as this other bit of gay Yankee fan-fic?)

While we're posting links to The Dugout: this continuing saga just killed me, especially an extended bit on the third "page."

Drew Barrymore

It took a libertarian blog for me to learn that People named Drew Barrymore as the most beautiful person of 2007.

Ten years ago I knew someone who thought Drew Barrymore's appearance (black-haired at the time, for some horror movie I think, namely this horror movie) looked like her. Coincidentally, I thought of that same person after a Google Image Search on Lily Allen.

Plotless pr0n Prose

You too can write such gems. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Come up with one-paragraph treatments of hypothetical adult DVDs (no plot is necessary beyond some convenient framing device), then promote them in the writing style you see below.

Even though I no longer focus on video, my work e-mail is still on some studio lists, including at least one adult video vendor. Synopses (written by the studio) for two titles to be released in September:

"Synopsis: It starts with a look: two beautiful girls making eye contact from across a crowded room. They sense something in each other's eyes: a burning desire that only their moist lips can quench. They are drawn to each other by an uncontrollable sexual energy. It ends with a night of incredible passion. Take a glimpse into the world of female eroticism... it begins with the Look of Passion."

"Synopsis: What if you had a magic vending machine that offered nothing but the sexiest super models you had ever laid your eyes on? A sensual selection of the world's finest female playthings, all available to you at the flip of a switch or pull of a lever. And what if each of these luscious ladies were determined to fulfill your every wish and indulge in your wildest fantasies. Well your dream has come true my friend, courtesy of Peach DVD. So settle in, break loose the change, and make your choice."

Bear Grylls: Sham?

The weekend before last we went to LA to see our niece and nephew. We don't get cable TV at home but there we had access to it. After everyone else had gone to bed, and even though we were exhausted ourselves, Julia and I had a battle of wills over the choice between Man vs. Wild and the Sarah Silverman Program.

Should I feel vindicated after learning (via Cooch's World) that Bear cut some corners (as Cooch points out this is more interesting)?

Is it strange that I even find "How fake is Sara Silverman?" to be a more interesting question than "How fake is Bear Grylls?" (For instance the supposed obsession with poop screams out gimmick.)

Ironically, something I said a long time ago about Silverman's sex appeal might also apply to Bear's sex appeal: She's (or "He's") not at all sexy on a first order but is so good at pretending to be sexy that you end up convinced.

I'm mildly surprised it took me this long to get around to raving about Silverman's show: with the specific exception of poop jokes everything she does almost seems calibrated to seem funny/just wrong to me personally. But maybe only up to a point -- from the next morning onward I felt no strong inclination to go out of my way to see more episodes.

I Have Some RLS Symptoms

"Restless Leg Syndrome," that is. The severity of my symptoms is closely related to how much (read: how little) exercise I'd gotten that day.

Aside from my own experience (I feel no need to take medicine for it), I can't say anything better than Virginia Postrel already did.

Sort of along those lines, Julia and I were catching up on previous Sundays' New York Times yesterday. She came across an article about a new name for repetitive stress injuries caused by Wii overuse. Strictly speaking Wii elbow isn't a "new disease" but just a new way of achieving a well-known injury. Years ago I'd do something similar to myself by playing too much pinball.

Confess To A Mildly Embarrassing Word Association

The source of mine is obvious (but no less embarrassing):

"participating"

"McDonald's"

Near Misses on My "List"

It would be Alanis-ironic if Danica McKellar turned out to be my Isabella Rossellini.

It would be even more Alanis-ironic if Alanis Morissette did, but she's not as close a near-miss (nor as plausible an "actually end up meeting her": I claim Danica could randomly turn up by way of other math geeks I know).

The last time (and only meaningful time, i.e. only time I'd be getting dispensation from someone) I was asked to put my "list" together, Danica didn't even occur to me, which is actually real-ironic given [redacted but should be obvious to an insightful reader]. Alanis did occur to me but just didn't make the cut.

She and Meg White would both be reasonable candidates if the cutoff were 10 instead of five.

This is probably as good a time as any to add McKellar to my "list" (the celebrity who drops from fifth to sixth doesn't play on the appropriate team anyway).

Set Someone You Know Up with a Fictional Character

I realize Cooch is in a steady relationship (his better half refers to him as her "future husband") but if it were possible to break the real-fictional boundary then I'd still try to set him up with Margo from Apartment 3-G. I think he'd find her enjoyably bitchy.

Your turn. (This works better if the real half is someone we know, for some vague definition of "we.")

BONUS COOCH MOCKERY: The picture at the end of his July 27-29 entry is crying out for a LOLCAT-style caption.

How Many Sex Offenders Read This Weblog?

I have no idea (for obvious reasons). Similarly, I doubt MySpace has any real idea how many sex offenders are on their site.

As long as the service is free, there's no foolproof way to check (text matching is problematic enough when it doesn't involve people's name, some of which could be ID theft), and trying to remove them just results in travesties like this.

While we're here, I have no idea what to make of this story. I was once a "butt-grabbing middle schooler" (three times, give or take). It's reasonable for that kind of harassment to be illegal, not so reasonable for it to be charged as a felony.

Icon Update

It looks like one of Chad's favorite Congresspeople recently got married.

Trip Log: Monday, June 11

(Last installment of many.)

Chicago-Oakland. I reduced my e-mail backlog. Julia did laundry and showed my mom pictures. The four of us had brunch at a Cracker Barrel and then home-grilled dinner on the patio.

Our previous Midway departure we'd carried everything on. This time, the heck with it: Four checked bags (one of which was entirely Julia's parents': Julia watched her mom pack it so that she could answer the airport security questions truthfully).

The Midway skycap has a posted sign making explicit that bag handlers do accept gratuities. Well, if you value your luggage, that pretty much dictates your plan of action. Our guy looked like he'd been in the sun awhile: Blond hair, skin getting a bit pink. I gave him a fin; he gave me directions to Terminal A that I appreciated but didn't need. (After he finished: "So, left at Harry's?" - that intersection, just past security, might be the only place in Midway where your terminal letter affects which way you go.)

The guy in front of us in the "A" line had used his (thin and valuable-looking) computer case as a placeholder while he sat down. The guy in front of him accidentally knocked it over right as we were approaching. I was paranoid that Julia and I would step on it. I say this was bad airport etiquette of him and that it's on him if anything bad happened to his bag (nothing did): Can we get a ruling?

Uneventful flight (I slept?) followed by an emotional reunion with our kitten. She'd been cared for well in our absence, with daily visits, but that's no substitute for the people she'd shared her life with. Eighteen nights of nobody getting into that bed.

She was suspicious when we came back. (She'd also left us a tiny present just inside the front door.) Every little noise made her skittish. Most of all she talked at us. Maybe she was telling us what happened while we were out, maybe she was lecturing us about how she'd worried that we were dead. She eventually forgave us and has been sweet, affectionate and adorable ever since.

Trip Log: Sunday, June 10

London/Detroit/Chicago: Our mission for the day was to catch our London-to-Detroit* flight after waking up in a hotel immediately adjacent to the terminal. To that end we got in line with three hours to spare.

*- in previous entries substitute "Detroit" for "Chicago" on references to the transatlantic flight.

After waiting 45 minutes in the baggage check line we learned that our (re)booking, though supposedly confirmed, wasn't actually in Northwest's computer yet (the attendant got a "Wrong Date Error") and that we'd have to go around the corner to the ticket counter to pay our rebook fee (even though we'd given a credit card number the day before).

At the ticket counter we were next to a couple (+ baby) trying to get from Dublin to Idaho so that the American's mom could see the grandkid for the first time. They'd had the same Heathrow-to-Gatwick missed flight problem today that we'd had the day before.

After half an hour at the ticket counter of the lady trying and failing to get the system to process our payment, she found that the only option was just to waive the payment and book us. She did that and also put us in the Business Class line (albeit still our normal seats) so we wouldn't have to wait through the whole line again.

From among our dining options we opted for Garfunkel's (same ambiance as Friday's) where Julia finally got her fish & chips and I had a cottage pie.

We were told to be at our gate at 12:50 to board. We were walking to the gate at 12:54 when we saw a message flashing in red on the departures screen: CLOSING. No way... but when we got there the line was processing routinely.

As previously mentioned, I thoroughly enjoyed Wild Hogs but was ambivalent about I Think I Love My Wife. (Julia also watched them both, in sync with me, and had similar reactions.) On the music side of things I highly recommend First Message (huge in Japan). Whoever directed the NY Philharmonic recording of Pictures at an Exhibition, however, is in sore need of a few cups of coffee: It's called "Promenade," not "dirge"!

Customs in Detroit was pretty routine. We learned that they don't allow Fabergé eggs back in because those are literally made of egg (and there's a bird flu issue). (Since we'd mentioned both Czech Republic and Ukraine on our form, we had to go through a special security screening but even that only took a few seconds.) My least favorite thing about customs was the security screening that everyone had to go through, I suppose because the U.S. is tighter than European countries.

(For example, at no European checkpoint did I ever see anyone remove their shoes.)

In our three-hour layover we walked from one edge of Detroit's Terminal A to the other. On the phone with Chad I correctly inferred that a Michigan pitcher had a no-hitter going in the College World Series. (He and I both abide by the same tradition/superstition that yesterday the A's TV guys and radio guys all flouted.) I sat at an airport bar to see whether the Michigan guy would hold on (he didn't). Next to me was a guy in a Met jersey who'd just seen Tom Glavine get clobbered.

Northwest's 19:38 from Detroit to Midway wasn't in much demand (it was right around the same time as the Detroit to O'Hare). The gate was sparsely populated, no attendant, then she came up and picked up the PA and phoned in the usual verbiage ("Welcome to flight [pause to look up at the placard]") and announced boarding for all rows, etc.

We actually did have a seat mate, one of the last guys on the plane, who was in a Seventh Day Adventist seminary. "We're Jewish" is a good way to circumvent the obligatory salvation conversation. (It's half true, and since any children we have will have a Jewish mother...)

Between the somewhat late departure and the early landing, I think we actually did arrive "before we left." Speaking of time zone issues, you could say we'd been up since 3 a.m. Chicago time or you could say that we were still up at 4 a.m. London time. Either way, we slept soundly but got a nice earlyish (8 a.m.) start to the final day of our vacation.

Trip Log: Saturday, June 9

London: How to miss your international flight, the silver lining being a night on the town after all.

By the by, this is the best Tube map I've ever seen even though it's not the standard diagram. It's much closer to scale (the "real" map is distorted, more the shape than the size).

Maybe the difference is EU point of origin vs. U.S., or the lack of haggard red-eye syndrome, but the Heathrow customs weren't as time-consuming as Gatwick's 11 days earlier. We got through shortly before 11:00, needing only to find the Express Bus terminal and get to Gatwick in time for a 13:50 departure. No problem, right?

I'm not sure how this happened but we didn't make it down to the terminal until 11:26. Based on the departure screens Gatwick buses seemed to leave every 20 minutes (11:25 [we watched this one pulling out], 11:45, 12:05, etc.). It turns out there was an 11:35 bus that we would have caught if the bus driver simply accepted cash payment (as train conductors do, though obviously the bus driver can't just wander the aisle while en route). We knew the fare was 20 pounds per person but didn't realize we needed to literally buy tickets.

(If you know how Gatwick departures work, you know we're already in trouble here. If you know more now than we did then about the commute length, all the moreso.)

The earliest departure time the kiosk would give me was 12:05, berth 15A. Well, a Gatwick-bound bus pulled into berth 15 at 11:57. We moved up to board it; the guy took our luggage, looked at our ticket, waved us on. Then I saw that there really was a berth 15A next to the 15. A Gatwick-bound bus pulled into it around 12:02 -- with the same number on it as our tickets. Sure enough, that bus left at 12:05, ours at 12:15.

That's when the driver told us our estimated time of arrival was 13:35. Moreover, once that stressful (despite there being nothing we can do about it) I got off at the wrong terminal. Future mnemonic for Gatwick: If you're flying on Northwest, then naturally you're leaving from South terminal. Julia hailed me back just in time to not miss the bus itself (driver even restowed our luggage).

So finally, South terminal. As promised, 13:35. No sign of our flight on any Departure screen. Worse yet, no sign of Northwest anywhere. We finally found their ticket desk: Completely empty. Security couldn't let us through without boarding passes. By the time we got a hold of a Northwest rep on the phone, she told us that according to her information the flight had just taken off. For a small fee she could (and did) rebook us on the same flight 24 hours later.

Long call with my parents, who arranged for our Chicago-to-Oakland (on Southwest) to be 24 hours later.

Now, where to stay? As it happens, Gatwick's South Terminal is physically connected (you don't even go outside!) to a Hilton Hotel. The posted room rate (on a sign at the check-in counter) was 250 pounds (about $500!). Not as shocking on a Saturday night as it would be otherwise. So I went up to the check-in counter and I told him honestly, "We'd been interested in staying here but it turns out to be out of our price range. Do you have any recommendations?"

How WASP am I that I assumed his answer would be a list of cheaper hotels, rather than the better offer that I'd inadvertently solicited? He told me they could give us a room for 133 pounds (tax brought it to 145). That works. And that meant we got to go out on the town!

We picked up maps from the Concierge and figured out the plan on our Gatwick NON-express train (10 pound all-zone day passes good for trains, Tubes, and buses). Here's your Tube map for reference: Our theater, like most of the other West End Theaters, was closest to Leicester Square. We got into Victoria and learned that the Circle and District lines were both closed for weekend maintenance. No problem -- just take the Victoria Line north to Green Park (one stop) and the Piccadilly Line two stops east (through its namesake). They even had an official Half Price Ticket window in the Leicester Square stop itself.

We meant to eat Indian food at The Red Fort but before we actually walked to/past it, we happened across this charming hole in the wall nearby and figured, this should also be fine. It was. Tasty food, just the right amount of spice, good use of potato in the dishes. I should note, though, that the cheese on the cheese nan was cheddar: So they may be vegetarian but they're a bit less than authentic!

Julia had wanted to see Mary Poppins on stage since she was 3. It was everything she'd hoped for. So did we inadvertently see anyone famous? Maybe.

Real-time update: The Mary Poppins London Cast recording is on Amazon for $10. Same CD was sold at the theater for 15 pounds.

Julia had been somewhat interested in fish & chips after the theater but my goodness, SoHo on a Saturday night is streets full of soused Londoners. We had a minor Tube adventure (a result of my forgetting about the Circle/District closures until we already got to Embankment) but made it to the Gatwick train without event.

On the train back we were across the aisle from ladies returning from a bachelorette party. The bride to be was in her 40s and one of her companions was her mother. They were all delightfully drunk, and trying to reach their husbands by cell phone. "Hubby wubby..." "It says 'call failed.' It says I'm a failure." My favorite was, "Hubby, did you just go into a tunnel?" -- when the train itself went into a tunnel.

From the train station to the hotel took us through the place where all the check-in stations were.

Trip Log: Friday, June 8

Prague.

The Marriott runs a shuttle every half-hour between its locations in central Prague (V Celnici) and at the airport. The brochure we got quoted a price of 90 crowns per person, though we learned that the price had been raised to 120. (That is, $6 a person instead of $5.)

[The point at which a cab would make more sense is probably at least four people.]

Breakfast at Coffee Fellows following a silly argument about whether we'd go back to the same place as yesterday. (I'd assumed we would; I was wrong.)

Then we made the 10-minute walk to the airport pickup place. Julia's parents speak very highly of my ability to find things armed only with a map. We bid adieu and as the van pulled away we were again two instead of four. En route we saw the same McDonalds (Nonstop McDrive) again: You can't miss it because the lot is so big.

British Airways scheduled departure of 12:40 (Europe = PDT + 9), arrival 13:50 (Greenwich = PDT + 8). Well, 12:40 came and went. The first acknowledgment of our delay was a patently false claim about the departure window assigned to us. Then the captain admitted that a maintenance light was on and they weren't sure what to do about it. They'd attempt a fix and try to get us off the ground; if it worked, great, but if not...

I'm not sure when/where the rumor began that BA would send a replacement plane from London, but implicitly that turned out to be false. Nor could they do anything useful in the short run with the scheduled plane. We couldn't even return to the departure lounge until shortly after 15:00. This is about when I changed from fretting about our evening plans in London to fretting about making our flight out of London the next day.

I learned that our flight was actually canceled from waiting in line for more information at the departure lounge (where they couldn't rebook people: as you might guess anyone with a cell phone was making frantic arrangements). I said something sarcastic about how I must have missed the PA announcement; sure enough, 90 seconds later they made it.

Was the best part of all of this:
A. We had to go back through passport control, wait in line there, and then to the baggage claim?

B. They did not begin off-loading baggage until at least 17:00 because this was unanticipated labor for which they didn't have extra workers?

Julia and I decided to split up. She would wait for our baggage while I stood in line at the BA customer service counter. That counter was staffed by two employees; the plane itself had around 180 people (about 30 rows, A thru F per row), so probably about 90 flight plans?

There were only 7-8 people in front of me when I got to the line but each transaction took on the order of five minutes, since most people had connections. (Technically Julia and I also did, but not on BA; for their protocols we did not have a connection to make.)

I stood at the Arrivals meeting point for about an hour before Julia emerged. We walked past a very, very long customer service line (Smart Cart after Smart Cart of baggage...) and across the way to the Marriott, where we decided to make one last foray in the city -- just in time to miss the 18:00 shuttle.

This is where we took the cab whose driver had an open beer can in the cup holder. He spoke very little English (and we spoke no Czech) but we communicated okay auf Deutsch.

If our cell phones had worked maybe Julia and I could have spent a bit more time with her parents. We went to their apartment and rang the bell, to no avail. This missed connection was among the most frustrating parts of the cancellation.

Instead, one last dinner in Old Town, and this time I had the best mixed grill I'd encountered there.

Back on the Marriott shuttle and eventually to a fitful sleep. I should note that contrary to what I claimed at the time, the movie on TV was not Beverly Hills Cop: It was actually Beverly Hills Cop II.

Trip Log: Thursday, June 7

Prague.

After a bit of a money-changing adventure we ate breakfast at a bakery with very nice sandwiches.

Our first stop on "my" walking tour was this metronome. It's a neat installation but my biggest point of frustration was the complete lack of descriptive information (does it work? the Internet says yes; how does it work? what is its period of rotation? no idea).

Onward and (literally) upward to the castle. Contrary to what you might think from the skyline, the building in the middle is a church. The surrounding structure is the castle.

Julia and I parted ways with her parents here so that we could catch the 15:00 Jewish Ghetto walking tour. From the castle back to town took us directly across the Charles Bridge (pedestrian only). We were going to find the place, catch a bite to eat, then go tour, but in the middle of the Old Town Square we found a guy with a placard for his 14:30 Jewish Ghetto tour at a fraction of the price of the one with the glossy flyer. We stopped at a mini-mart for water and then joined him.

Seven tour customers: Us, couple from Manchester, couple from Germany, and recent McGill alumna. We saw synagogues, memorials, and the grave site with up to 12 layers of bodies.

Jewish history in Prague, general overview: Everyone got along OK until the Fourth Lateran council decided Jews were official to blame for Jesus's death. From that point on they were sequestered, in Prague and other cites (actually expelled from many other European cities). Things got a bit better with the Toleration Edict of 1781 (HRE Joseph II). By the early 20th century, all but the most impoverished Jews had vacated the Ghetto: But the ones left over experienced squalor and sanitation issues, so they gentrified a bit.

Everything fell apart in the 1930s with the Nuremberg laws: If you had any drop of Jewish blood the Nazis considered you Jewish and confiscated most of your property (and prohibited Jews from most jobs and schools). Things got worse from there, as you're well aware.

The Nazis inadvertently created a museum of Jewish artifacts by gathering them all up, storing them at a synagogue in Prague, and opening their own museum on the conceit of ridiculing the ugly [sic] art of an "inferior culture."

One of the synagogues had a very sobering memorial, with names of the fallen and children's artwork from Theresienstadt. (Stark contrast to Monday's tour of the Odessa Jewish Museum (if you're ever in the neighborhood, don't go), where the room that explains how 250K Jewish Odessans died in World War II is immediately followed by the room where you can get your photograph taken with your head on a horse-riding Cossack's body.

At the end of this tour, the tour guide saw his rabbi on the street and the rabbi engaged him in conversation.

We were supposed to meet Julia's parents at our place at 18:00, after they took care of a cell phone internationalization among other things. Somewhere along the line they got bad directions. They ended up cabbing back to us, arriving at 18:55.

On the plus side, our tour guide gave us discount coupons to an Italian restaurant (also right near where we were staying) on whose name I've blanked. I had an excellent mixed grill. After Julia's parents called it a night, she and I walked around the Old Town area until after midnight, and took in a beautiful view looking across the bridge just north of Charles Bridge.

Trip Log: Wednesday, June 6

From Odessa to Prague, after a morning spent packing.

(By the way, back in the present -- i.e. Tuesday, June 26 -- Julia's parents returned to the U.S., ending a 45-day odyssey that included Israel, Odessa and Prague (with us), and a Czech spa.)

There are McMansions in the U.S. larger than Odessa's airport. I previously mentioned the cramped passport control room, the "find it in a pile" baggage reclaim, and the lobby full of would-be taxi drivers & tour guides. On the flip side there's one check-in area (four lines), one security check-point, one duty-free shop, a smokers' area (enclosed in glass), and one duty-free shop.

We checked in remarkably quickly, then the ladies went duty-free while the men sat waiting. Every PA system announcement was preceded by, so help me, quasi-Tetris music. Every announcement was given twice, the second time in English, delivered very melodically. At one point they announced boarding for Warsaw and my father-in-law briefly, inexplicably thought this was our flight: Several years ago he'd spent time in Warsaw.

As with the deplaning five days earlier, boarding involved getting on a bus that took us maybe 200 feet to the plane. This time, though, the Prague deplaning involved a covered walkway. (On the plane itself, we'd been assigned seats 17A, 17B, 17C, and 17E. Bad: The woman in 17D adamantly refused to switch seats with my father-in-law. Good: Seats 18A-18C were all unoccupied, so he just lounged behind us. While on the plane I read about the G8 summit and felt glad that Bush was out of Prague by the time we got there.)

A driver had been assigned to meet us at the airport. We managed to make it outside without seeing him, but found him upon doubling back. Prague's airport, like Odessa's, has something you'll probably never (again) see in the U.S.: A small set of parking spaces right across from the entrance, with free spaces (in both senses of "free").

On the ride into downtown I noticed the same McDonalds (with "Non-stop McDrive") that I'd previously seen from the bus to the airport. One of the first places I noticed once we'd crossed a bridge into the city was a Belgian restaurant. We never got around to trying either of the aforementioned eateries.

Julia and I were given four keys to our apartment and told we'd figure out what key fit where. The pink key was for both the outside door and an interior gate; the black key was for our second-floor apartment door, though it did not work on the analogous first-floor door (being American, I went up one floor from the Ground Floor to what I briefly, mistakenly, thought of as the second floor); the white and green served no obvious purpose. Conversely, at least two locked doors within the apartment were not accessible to us. I presume the people who usually live in that apartment had put valuables there.

Julia's parents' apartment was here, on the north side of the street. The one-way streets foil Google Maps (since I'm really giving pedestrian directions) but Julia & I were on the west side of Kozi, a half-block south of Hastalska (so two quick block from her parents). At the corner of Kozi & Bilkova was a Mexican restaurant, of all things (another place we didn't try). Next to our place was a sports bar with a banner promoting French(?) Open coverage.

When we asked around about getting authentic Czech food we were directed to Kolkovna, right around the corner from our place. It was crowded (not a chance of eating outside) and the service a bit slow (interesting reviews here: it certainly wasn't this bad!) but my father-in-law and I both got some pretty good lamb out of it.

Afterwards we strolled north. Made it as far as the Intercontinental Hotel but not as far as the bridge. Back at the parents' place we mulled over what tours to take. Julia had her heart set on a Jewish walking tour, leaving in the afternoon, but her mom was only up for so much walking. For flexibility (and to avoid some sticker shock) we agreed on the "Motya tour" (Motya ["MOYCH-uh"] = me), where I'd look at a map, figure out a route, and play it by ear for how people felt and where they wanted to go. Tune in tomorrow for how that worked out (very well, if I say so).

Trip Log: Tuesday, June 5

Odessa: Day 4 of 5

In the morning Julia and I joined her mother in seeing more of the city center, particularly places that didn't exist until long after the 1970s.

One shopping center spanned six stories, with 2-3 stores per floor (mostly clothes) and nothing especially interesting. On the plus side, in a book store Julia found all sorts of bilingual (Russian/English) children's books. That this was the same store where they charged money for a bag (after asking if she'd like to have her books bagged) was at most small annoyance.

Around 13:30 we stopped at a cafe, not for lunch (we'd had a late breakfast) but for ice cream (them) and a "nice to sit down and get off my feet" beer (me).

Last round of shopping involved some local music at a CD store and a shaving razor et al at a grocery/drug store.

We'd been supposed to meet back up with Julia's dad at the host's house at 15:00. Things ran late enough that we got back at 15:30 -- yet were the first ones back. So instead of meeting one more old friend between meals (someone whom I'd initially understood to be an old friend of Julia's brother, but apparently more of a mentor than a friend given his age), that meeting instead took place over dinner.

In the evening Julia's dad took us to the country dacha that he and his own father had built themselves. It's vacant now but the landlady gave us explicit permission to visit. Julia and I climbed over the fence (locked gate), took pictures/video, and picked a lot of cherries.

Immediately after that the four of us (Julia and I, her dad, and our host) went to a beautiful beach. We spent maybe an hour there. It frustrated me in hindsight that we hadn't gone there sooner or spent more time there.

Trip Log: Monday, June 4

Odessa, day 3 of 5.

As became our custom, in the morning Julia and I walked 20-25 minutes from our apartment to our hosts, then had a hearty breakfast.

Julia and I went with her mom to meet an old childhood friend. We walked around and saw the places those two spent their childhood, leading to conversations like:

"Why are you taking pictures inside our school?"

"I went here, [round number of] years ago."

"Oh, welcome back."

(But in Russian.)

Then we went to the physical headquarters of The World Odessit Club. Julia's dad explained his sheet-self-changing hospital bed invention to a potential investor, whose daughter (coincidentally) will be at Hayward State Cal State East Bay.

Further exploring required a car, so the usual quintet piled in. We stopped by the apartment where Julia's dad spent most of his life. He knocked on the door. He knocked again. He knocked again. A dazed-looking man in gym shorts (and no top) answered the door. Julia's dad explained that he used to live there and wanted to show his daughter around. They went in together. Julia's mom and our host and I stayed back, idling in the fresh air of the courtyard-facing corridor.

(Have I explained yet about Odessa's literally crumbling? Apartments that were state owned are now privatized but apartment buildings -- courtyards and stairwells -- are a no man's land about whose maintenance obligations nobody can agree. Services in general (plumbing, say) are abysmal. It's as if the outgoing Communists said "You don't want us to take care of everything?!? Then screw you, we'll take care of nothing." One piece of graffiti in the stairwell where Julia and I stayed name-checked The Eminem Show.)

After enough time passed that I wondered about a potential rescue (you never know which parts of the world "Americans" = "ransom opportunity"), father and daughter emerged. As Julia recounted to me later: Three young adults had been inside (counting the guy who answered the door), all either hung over or drugged out or both. When Julia's dad pointed out the place on the ceiling where the apartment had been bombed during World War II, they got a bit creeped out. He did also show off the bathtub fixtures he'd built himself, and other examples of his handiwork.

Our last activity of the day was dining out. I knew only that the well-to-do winery guy had organized this and that it was "the best place to eat in Odessa" and that we'd meet at 18:00 to ride there. The ride was in the van ("Autobus") I mentioned earlier: Chauffeur, room for two adults (and a child in their lap) in the front, then three (or four tightly squeezed) in the traditional back seat, then up to four in the very back (bench seats facing each other sideways).

Between 18:00 and 20:00 our wine magnate showed more things that involved multiple instances of "stop, get out, walk around a bit, get back in." One was a mall whose ambiance reminded me of Stonestown. Then there were some condos (we looked out the window but didn't disembark), a boardwalk/amusement park area, and finally the dacha where an old friend was picked up.

Dinner itself (party of 10) was on a converted boat deck on the Black Sea shoreline. I think we were literally on the water but moored tightly enough that the ship (ship fragment?) didn't rock. I had beef Stroganov, Julia's mom had chicken Kiev, Julia had a dish involving chicken stuffed with crab.

Many toasts ensued, stories told, notes compared about what August 1991 was like as viewed on televisions in San Francisco vs. as experienced behind the falling Curtain.

Trip Log: Sunday, June 3

Today's Odessa highlights: Cemetery visit, Black Sea cruise.

When a Russian host serves guests a meal (or a course of a multi-course meal), the custom is to fill the table with various dishes of food and let no taste desire go unmet. Along with this, nobody starts eating until all dishes (and the host) are at the table. So meals are very good, but quite long.

A note on driving in Odessa: On two occasions (to be narrated as they come) the well-to-do winery owner had his driver take us places in a van. The rest of the time, our host Mr. G drove the four of us in his Fiat while Mrs. G stayed at the house. He's like a Boston driver to the nth degree: The space in front of his car was his, by golly, and if anyone threatened to trespass on it he'd honk twice and speed up.

Anyhow, after breakfast, the five of us went to Odessa's main cemetery to pay some respects.

The last thing we did before exiting was, of course, to wash our hands. (Even if you're not familiar with this custom, you understand why, right?) The next-to-last thing I did was find restrooms. I won't say it was a hole in the ground -- since Men and Women were separate it was basically two holes, though each did have walls and a ceiling.

After the cemetery we went out to the pier to gain information about the Black Sea cruises. Not to take one (not yet), but just to learn when they left (basically on the hour).

Meanwhile back at the hosts' house: June 3 happened to be our host's birthday and they were having a party there starting at 16:00. The dilemma: We're in Odessa for four days (actually five days, four nights). Julia's parents didn't want to burden their friends, but it turns out their friends really wanted them at the party. Some indecision (and dead time) later, the consensus was to give me and Julia the rest of the day to explore by ourselves while her parents did attend the party.

At about 14:45 we wandered back over to the top of the Potemkin Steps. Hungry for lunch, we ended up dining outdoors at a place with a view straight down those steps. It might have been a tourist trap, but hey, beautiful day, prime location, we had leisurely fun. Julia had an elaborate salad; I had a chicken dish that turned out to be breaded. A bit like chicken Kiev but with the butter on the side instead of squirting out.

We expected to take a 16:00 boat but with our late lunch running long (we split a bottle of wine and felt no need to rush), no worries, we took the 17:00.

The Black Sea is beautiful. We sat on the top deck of a double-decker boat. Across the way from us a young couple (pregnant wife), and a few feet away a couple Americans talking a bit too loud (Americans talking loud?! - never!) about what they'd been drinking and would drink later.

Back upstairs, through the park, past a pole with bronzed arrow signs with mileages to cities around the world. And then hey: There we were right by the apartment. Might as well take a nap.

Fast forward to around 20:30 (sun still up), and the quest for yet more outdoor dining took past several overpriced places and/or tourist traps, to Top Sandwich (oddly, this dining guide describes it as a "snack bar chain") on the pedestrian mall. I had a hot skillet with pork, tomatoes, et al -- one of the most expensive items on the menu. Julia had a "Julia kebab" (beef). (Since they named it after her on the menu, how could she not?)

Julia had asserted before we left that nearly everywhere we went, nearly everyone would take Visa. That wasn't quite the case but we did find enough places. The problem in Odessa, though, was that they told us they couldn't process a tip with Visa because the money would go straight to the bank. Instead any tips would have to be cash. As a result we stiffed the lunch place (sorry people! - but in fairness you were distinctly slow anyway) but I did make some change to enable a respectable cash tip. (On most of the continent, unlike in the U.S., 10% suffices.)

We strolled a bit after dinner and next thing we knew it was 22:30, 22:45. Would her parents and their hosts still be up? Would they want us to visit? (Our cell phones weren't working so it was in-person visit or nothing.) We decided to stop by, and had plenty of late-night conversation. We agreed we'd walk over there for breakfast the next day, and eventually called it a night and walked back to our apartment.

Trip Log: Saturday, June 2

The rest of this entry includes a decent map of Odessa city center, but this page has a much, much better map, put out -- ironically -- by the people two doors down from the apartment Julia and I used.

From Sunday onward our days typically began with a walk to Julia's parents' friends house and ended with the walk from there back to the apartment. One way to do that (the trip there) involves going west on Deribasov or Lanzheronov until the City Garden, then north on Gavann and jog over to Gogol. The better (shorter AND more scenic) way that I wish I'd discovered sooner, took us through Moon Park from the west edge of Dumskaya Square.

Last in a series of included-with-the-hotel-price breakfast buffets, this one most notable for the amazing sausage.

The morning desk clerk at Hotel Golf (Prague) was much friendlier and more helpful than the previous evening's. She told us we could take the Metro (any Metro) two stops outbound and then connect to the 178 bus going to the airport. It would cost us 20 crowns (about a dollar) each, with a free transfer.

We walked out to the Hotel Golf's namesake Metro stop and waited about ten minutes. We got on: Despite my expecting a cash slot by the driver, he was behind Plexiglas. There was a box that looked fare-related, though it was unclear what if anything would happen if we put our money there. Nobody asked us for a fare; two stops later, oh well. We got off.

Now what? We were at an intersection where it wasn't immediately clear where to catch the transfer but then three things became clear at once:
1. On our left (coming from the south), waiting at the light, was a bus with the correct bus # and with an airplane dot logo
2. On our right (to the north), just past the light, was a bus stop (for northbound traffic)

A rather long trip to the airport but we still made it in plenty of time. The Prague airport numbers its check-in stations, for example British Airways 141-144 or Czech Air 161-167 (maybe only certain flights at a time). They also have a stand where people can saran-wrap their checked bags for greater security: This was really popular, though we did not use it. But like Stansted, Prague had weight restrictions per piece of carry-on, lead us to check more than we'd intended.

Our passport stamper lady (passports stamped in the place one might have expected the security checkpoint to be) was the more bored human being I've ever seen. It was as if every passport she stamped reduced her will to live.

There were several Duty Free shops between that point and our gate, and the X-ray security was gate-specific, or at least 2-3 gates at a time. (Kansas City has the only U.S. airport I've ever seen with this set-up.)

At our gate, when boarding began, the object boarded was a bus. The count of people on our flight required two of these. We were among the last people on the first, which was barely under way before it had to slam on the breaks and send a bunch of us tumbling (including a little kid who got hurt enough, or surprised enough, to bawl/howl the rest of the way).

From the bus straight onto the plane, which had both a front entrance and a back entrance. (Might as well mention here that our Nuremberg flight had deplaned on the tarmac and we'd walked a few feet, under the watchful eye of security.)

Unexpectedly many Germans on this flight, including our row mate and his colleague across the aisle, both of whom read the same sports magazine. We read the in-flight magazine, whose articles all had an English translation immediately after the original Czech.

Like the departure, the arrival in Odessa involved a bus trip, this one embarrassingly short (maybe 200 feet: why they couldn't have just let us walk it is beyond me).

The space after coming in from outside but before passport control was a room not quite large enough for its intended purpose, full of people many of whom didn't quite understand (or philosophically disagreed with) the logistics behind forming separate queues. A bit frustrating but this turned out not to take as long as I'd feared.

Next step: luggage. But not on a conveyor! In Odessa you pick out your bags from the pile.

Then through one last door, the sort of door that every time it opened a crack there seemed to be people waving their hands if not trying to get in. Once we were on the other side, in the throng, at least three people offered their services as cab drivers before we found Julia's parents and their friend.

Things I noticed on the ride from the Odessa airport, in no particular order:
1. Hot day
2. Trees lining all the streets
3. Sidewalk construction/rubble everywhere, kicking up a bit of dust

Next stop, the apartment where Julia and I would lodge the next four nights. My impression had been that the drive from the airport was mostly south with a bit of east (I may have been 90 degrees off, or even 135 degrees off), with a sharp downhill grade going "south" to our door. Even though ours was a side block there were tiny restaurants on either side of our apartment entrance, plus one at the north end of that block.

(We later discovered that something called an American Business Center was two doors up, and that every restaurant on our block was laughably overpriced.)

If this map is to be believed then we were also on the same block as "Continental Hotel": Deribasovskaya, between Pushkinskaya and Polskaya.

Misleading things about that linked-to map:
1. It shows streets but not easy pedestrian routes, including (ironically) the Potemkin Steps themselves (which run from Primorskyy Blvd. downward to Primorskaya).

2. It shows neither which streets are one-way nor which streets are pedestrian-only, e.g. Deribasov itself from Rishelyev to the City Garden.

The car trip from our place to her parents' friends place: Deribasov for half a block, left onto Puskins for one block, right onto Greche for two blocks, right onto Yekaterinin (if you're wondering, at the time I had no idea what any of these streets were named but did build up a map in my head), over the Sabaneev Bridge and finally right onto Gogol (which Julia points out had previously been named for a Communist).

From this point on, "our hosts" = Julia's parents' friends, with whom they stayed. Her parents had arranged for us to stay in a nearby apartment but our hosts opined that the cost (maybe about $65 a night?) was what a palace should cost, and found our actual digs at around $35 a night, albeit a 25-minute walk away.

Anyway our hosts served us a wonderful multi-course dinner, then we went walking through the city center with various landmarks from Julia's parents' previous life pointed out to us.

On the map I linked to, between the Primor* streets, is a beautiful walkway/garden that runs to a fountain at the end of Pushkin street. On a Saturday night this quite popular, and where I first noticed that most of the guys were dressed straight out of the disco era, with most of the women in fabrics that were short and tight. Also, so many women in heels, despite all the cobblestone!

We walked back and forth and back and forth, pictures all around, Julia's dad making phone calls. One particular old friend, who now owns a winery and is fairly well off, agreed to meet us at the Garden within minutes of that conversation. He showed us around a bit. Before long it was 23:30, and for me nature called. As we happened to be near our apartment they simply dropped us off with the plan to meet Julia's mom in front of the Opera House the next morning.

Trip Log: Friday, June 1

Between Nuremberg and our brief cameo in the non-touristy part of Prague we probably did more walking that day than any other.

After another fantastic breakfast buffet this included 90 minutes walking around the sunken perimeter of Old Town. We got as far as the Castle but then cut across (overall path a backwards "D") to make it back to check out in time and catch our train.

We saw so many dogs (on leashes), everywhere we went in Nuremberg! Didn't see (m)any animals in London or Prague, but Nuremberg was all about the dogs. Odessa would turn out to be overrun with stray cats, especially tabby, all of the amazingly well-fed. Nobody took them in, spayed them or neutered them but by golly they ate to the point of contented fatness. But that's Odessa, and here we are still in Nuremberg.

Checked out around 11:15, carried our stuff with us to the Hauptbahnhof, easily caught our 11:40 train. Pick your own second-class carriage, room in each berth for five people (three facing forward two backward), luggage over our heads.

A mother and daughter shared our berth from Nuremberg to the small German town where they lived. The latter is an Iron Lady triathlete. Both spoke a tiny bit of English but we conversed in broken English and broken German. Apparently I told them our life story.

We had a 20-minute pause at the border. A young man with a dirty blond mullet (think of the Family Guy vignette with Stewie at a diner in Nebraska) asked us if he could put his luggage in our berth while he went for a beer. (He also offered to get us drinks.) Julia was asleep when I assented to this. She was certain he was using us to reduce the risk of taking weed across the border, but he did come back and retrieve his luggage well before the passport check.

(I'm still not sure why he couldn't have left his luggage in "his" berth. It wasn't empty. Apparently he just mistrusted his own berth-mates yet didn't want to disturb our privacy?)

The passport officers were a distinct East-West clash. The German Fraulein had a very neat-looking uniform, bright face, cheerful but businesslike. The Czech guy had an unkempt beard, wrinkly uniform, and my wife suspected he'd been drinking.

Shortly after the border crossing an older woman sat in our berth and almost immediately fell asleep. Shortly after that we went through Plsen and saw, right by the tracks, this beautiful synagogue with a star of David up top.

Later on a professor joined us. He apparently taught history but spoke very little English and was eager to improve what little he had. He asked us in pidgin English what we thought of Bush, Democrats, et al. We were going to get hotel directions from him (maybe even a ride?!) but we got separated in the crowd.

...and I mean CROWD of people, all going the opposite direction from us trying to catch trains out of downtown Prague at almost exactly 17:00 on a Friday. With little if any English signs to be found, I helped us get out of the hustle and bustle and into the outdoors. We saw a map. Since our hotel (Hotel Golf ("close to the city centre" my ass!)) is the namesake of a metro stop, we saw exactly where to go.

Julia says the map was not to scale. I think the problem is just I made either a bad thumb-finger measure or a faulty conversion. Either way, each of the four times we asked directions we were going the right way (and would have continued to go the right way), just significantly further away than we thought.

At the electronics store downtown (we were on a very business-oriented street, walking southwest, it turns out just 3-4 blocks southeast of where the tourist friendly things would be) the staff didn't speak much English but a customer in a suit and tie helped us out. He told us we should take the #14 train (from the bajillion metro cars on the track along our street -- by the way these all had the exact look and feel of San Francisco's Muni cars, except red instead of orange) and thought we were crazy to walk.

Across the bridge and onto Plzenska. A bartender also told us we were crazy to walk, even though the distance figure he gave was just 2 kilometers remaining.

Once we figured out the street number discrepancy (blue signs numbers in ascending order, larger red signs with numbers with no rhyme or reason), we watched the numbers ssslllooowwwlllyy ascend two at a time (each side of the street) headed up to 215A. 71, 73, 75 [...] 155, 157, 159 [...] 199, 201, 203 [...], then 215. And then a whole lot of grass/park on the side of the road.

A group of people who'd just parked the car told us we were two tram stops away, but as it turns out just getting from 215 to 215A was about a third of the 7.5-kilometer walk.

At the hotel itself an indifferent (rude?) man checked us in and told us that the best way to get to the airport the next day would be to call a cab. I asked him about taking a train to the airport and he told us the trams went direct to city center (quite unhelpful since I already knew the airport was even further outbound in basically the direction we'd been going).

In our hotel room the toilet and shower were behind separate doors. Towels were hung inside the shower area in the later.

We were insanely dehydrated, so of course dinner (at the hotel restaurant itself) was one of those European places where you can't easily get water, to say nothing of American-style free water refills. Julia had a tiny amount of bottled water. I had a beer and kept getting refills (obviously not free).

We sat down at 20:45 and were done at 21:45. Place closed at 22:00 (when we got there the dining area was full of older people who may have been having a banquet: all were served the same dessert cake) but the guy who gave us the 565-crown (about $28) bill told us the cash register had already been closed so paying by Visa was impossible. Julia wanted to hold out (Visa or nothing) but I foolishly said "does that mean I should go exchange some money?" and exchanged it at the front desk.

Drifted off to sleep boiling mad at the hotel. Like in Nuremberg our bed was actually two twins pushed together; unlike in Nuremberg, they were on wheels and kept wanting to push apart (I almost fell in the crease a couple times).

Trip Log: Thursday, May 31

Nuremberg (map).

The day began with the best free breakfast buffet we experienced on the whole trip: Fresh meats, fresh cheese, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and most of all these huge fresh rolls, perfect for European-style breakfast sandwiches. This was the day of cherry juice; Friday's juice specialty would be black currant.

The level of resolution in the link is just enough to show you Old Town. The Hauptbahnhof is just south of the picture and a quiet creek runs west to east. You can also see the pedestrian street running through the heart of Old Town (it comes up from the southeast). You probably can't make out the sunken walkway running around just inside the perimeter of Old Town.

We were going to go to the Trial Museum, but... we didn't. It was a couple of U-Bahn stops away and we opted to walk everywhere. Instead we went to the German Museum (Germanisches, and NOT Deutsches) for a whole lot of Central European anthropology: Old silverware, medieval musical instruments, neat stuff. The last exhibit we saw had a lot of Albrecht Durer, as you might imagine.

Outside the museum were 29 pillars representing articles of the United Nations declaration of Human Rights. We walked through Old Town a bit and even ducked into a Woolworth's!

A brief afternoon nap and we were right back out there, first to buy our train tickets to Prague and then in search of good food (preferably outdoor dining). As it happens, Nuremberg's outdoor cafes are overwhelmingly coffee-and-ice-cream places, so we kept walking and looking around (the wife found very inexpensive Birkenstocks!) and finally headed downstairs into a Franconian place that specialized in asparagus. Julia got asparagus soup and Nuremberg brats; I had potato soup and pork cutlets with spaetzle.

Then we walked around a lot more, including up to the Imperial Castle, some rooms of which appeared to be in use as dormitories for a summer camp(!).

Finally we drank on the creek-front: Beer for me, Irish coffee for her.

Trip Log: Wednesday, May 30

We almost drove across Europe; we would have if it weren't for stick shifts. But first: There were two flaws (one minor, one major) in my plan for us to see more of London without having to schlep our luggage around.

The day started with a fantastic breakfast buffet (included in the cost of the hotel), with both Western-style hot food and the more European meat/cheese/bread.

After checking out and storing our bags we took the DLR into Tower Gateway around 9, all set to take the city cruise from Tower Pier to Westminster Pier... except that (minor issue) the first cruise wasn't until 10:10. We walked around the Tower of London, decided not to pay the high admission fee to see inside, strolled leisurely across the Tower Bridge and back, and then it was close enough to 10:10 to sit tight and wait for our boat.

From Westminister Pier (Big Ben! Parliament!), a walk through busy city streets to Trafalgar Square. Past the Buckingham Palace guards and the people who inexplicably crave having their pictures taken with security people who aren't allowed to have a facial expression. Past the Scotland Office inside whose locked door a large black security guard stood (it probably wasn't Idi Amin). Past the pigeons in the square itself.

The National Gallery is free and has a lot of wonderful art, except that every room smells as though somebody recently passed gas. (The actual smell is probably paint/varnish, in a building that just needs better ventilation.)

We saw everything we wanted to see in just under two hours, then retraced our steps, crossed Westminster Bridge, and used the ride on the Eye as a half hour break from walking.

Moving right along, on the south bank of the Thames we passed (I may have these out of order) the OXO Building, the Tate gallery, and the Globe Theater, where we stopped and looked around a bit. We crossed the London Bridge for the sake of crossing it, and pressed on to reach the Tower again right on schedule (15:00).

DLR back to the hotel, five-minute walk from the stop to the hotel itself, grab bags, five-minute walk from the hotel to the stop, DLR inward, downstairs from Tower Gateway to Tower Hills, Tube two stops over to Liverpool Station, train northbound to Stansted.

For our 18:50 Air Berlin flight to Vienna we walked into the Stansted terminal and... wait, what? (Major problem.) Check the paperwork again, as the flight was really 6:50 that morning. When I was still angry and flustered, Air Berlin initially claimed we were SOL. So: Other options? No trains to continental Europe but the guy at the train information desk suggested an overnight cruise to Amsterdam.

Europcar does not do one-way rentals, yet their 10-day rate was surprisingly reasonable under the circumstances. We would have only been allowed one driver, and would not have been allowed to drive to Prague (or into any other former Warsaw Pact nation), but we were quite willing to give lip service to both of those restrictions. We walked out our assigned vehicle, Julia suggested I grab a map, I went in to talk to the guy who turned out not to have maps for giveaway, I got back to a wife in tears: Neither of us drive stick!

That was our sign that maybe the car wasn't the right idea. We went back to the counter, got the buyer's remorse refund. While I was standing by for a confirmation number on the credit card non-charge, Julia made her way back to Air Berlin. Once the customer in question was sweet and hopeful rather than flustered and angry, they credited our initial airfare towards alternate travel. They had one flight left that night... to Nuremberg.

This worked out surprisingly well given that our travel to Odessa was round trip from Prague, and that Nuremberg is the closest major German city to Prague (Vienna is actually an eight-hour train ride away!). On the last flight into Nuremberg that evening, we were almost the only English speakers.

Got through customs lightning-fast (the guy was basically stamping passports and waving people through), claimed our baggage around 23:30 continental Europe time. Now, where do we lodge? (And for two nights, since we'd decided not to bother traveling on to Vienna.) The hotel information kiosk had touch-screen navigation, and an English option, though booking a room any given place would require a phone call.

The call in question (Best Western, near the Hauptbahnhof) took place in rapid-fire German (yes they had a room, two nights, single bed, no smoking, 109 Euro, yes I want it), until the point where he asked for my Vorname and immediately clarified in fluent English that this was my first, or given, name.

"Sprechen Sie Englisch?"

"Yes -- of course."

From that point onward, English it was. The U-Bahn airport stop was immediately outside the airport entrance, and the end of the line at that. (Nuremberg has two subway lines, U1 and U2, which intersect at the Hauptbahnhof.) So a routine trip to the main train station, from which of course we walked the wrong way and briefly got lost.

Finally checked in around a quarter to one. For the location and the price, this hotel was an amazing deal. Kudos to Best Western.

Tomorrow: Nuremberg.

Trip Log: Tuesday, May 29

London: The most miserable line I've ever been in was the customs line at Gatwick Airport. We spent more than an hour filing through the serpentine path, surrounded by people who desperately needed to brush their teeth and/or bathe. A piped-in announcement repeatedly apologized for the inconvenience caused by an evacuation earlier that day.

Directions from Gatwick to our hotel, as given to us at an Information desk: Take the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station. Take the Circle or District tube line east to Tower Hill. Transfer to Tower Gateway and take Docklands Light Rail (DLR) to Prince Albert. That is, train to subway to train. With one notable exception we actually followed those directions.

The exception: At Victoria Station, still laden with our luggage, we encountered a throng of people going in all directions, making their Tuesday midday rounds. Neither of us could deal with a subway ride at that point, so we used our already purchased Big Bus tour tickets as a form of transportation. It only took us 2.5 hours to get from the stop outside Victoria Station to the stop next to the Tower of London.

We saw just about everything you'd expect to see on a London tour bus. We sat on the upper level, exposed to the elements, despite intermittent drizzle. The length of the trip resulted mainly from intense traffic, especially in the City of London around St. Paul's Cathedral, apparently construction-induced.

(Maybe I should adjust my standards for what was possible in the 17th century, but even for how long we got to stare at St. Paul's, I didn't see the majesty.)

Our hotel was a bit east of ExCel Center, which five years removed from the Olympics is still itself very much under construction. We also inadvertently saw a lot of it as a result of getting off the DLR a stop too soon.

Mid-afternoon check-in, very long nap, late dinner at the hotel restaurant (I had lamb with lentils; the wife had tuna), and then on TV we found the strangest, but most enjoyable game show I've ever seen. (The Wikipedia writeup clears up a plethora of points of confusion I'd had.)

Trip Long: Monday, May 28

(Incidentally, this was also Memorial Day.)

We walked from my parents' house to a neat little brunch place and back. Perfect weather all day, especially to sit on the back porch and look at photographs, i.e. move pictures from camera to computer and put new memory into camera.

Pop quiz: You're flying from Chicago to London on Northwest, so of course you change planes in Detroit. Where does the leaving-the-U.S. passport processing take place? If you thought "in Detroit" then you're like me but you're also wrong.

We printed out our boarding passes on a home computer and carried on all of our luggage (two green backpacks as carry-ons, one black backpack as my personal item, Julia's purse as hers), thus went directly through security to the Chicago departure gate. We were among the first people in the boarding line, but upon scanning our passes the gate agent needed to see our passports and frantically type a lot while most of our fellow passengers walked past us to board. Oh well, still found the overhead space we needed.

Detroit-to-London was already boarding when we got to that gate, yet many of the fellow passengers for that flight boarded after we did. The plane had a 2-4-2 row configuration and we had window seats, i.e. nobody next to us. Passengers behind/around us were mainly girls from a high school class. Three weeks later I've forgotten what was so annoying about a couple of them.

Northwest's TV monitors are on the seat-backs and the in-flight entertainment system is menu-driven and magnificent. Gone are the days when you'd sit through Big Bully with or without headphones whether you like it or not. The "in-seat yoga" demonstration (immediately after the safety instructions) was a bit tedious but only because it felt like a strange choice for the last vestiges of captive audience.

(I presume this is a ploy to buy the system time to boot up, etc.)

Julia did not like Because I Said So. By contrast, I was blown away by Monsters, Inc. Not even the animation (which was also impressive, but by now everyone knows what to expect of Pixar) so much as the story itself: The best of both worlds is to get a Tim Burton-style story but without the gratuitous Gothness of Burton-style animation.

Somewhere over the Atlantic I fell asleep (which is my blog post ends about here). Julia did not sleep (if this were her blog you'd be reading about "Monday/Tuesday"?) but instead watched The Bridges of Madison County. She had very low expectations but was pleasantly surprised.

Three Weeks? Try One Year!

We got married on June 17, 2006.

In theory I should log that, but what is there to say? Obviously it's the best wedding I've ever been to, since I'm biased that way.

Five interesting things about our wedding:
1. It started late because our band was running late. But better late than never!

2. Both wedding and reception took place at a magnificent banquet hall run by an Afghan gentleman. But you wouldn't expect a place this beautiful to be in the same strip mall as an Albertson's.

3. Our interfaith ceremony was presided over by a rabbi and had very traditional overtones. Among other things I wore a yarmulke.

4. Chad was a fantastic emcee.

5. This game was still going as of when most of our guests left the reception. It ended in the bottom of the 17th with a walk-off walk. Time of Game: 5:02 Attendance: 35077

Trip Log: Sunday, May 27

(If you happen to be apathetic to quiz bowl logistics, take heart: Every Trip Log entry subsequent to this one does actually involve European travel!)

The previous two HSNCT playoffs (with fewer than, but close to, 48 playoff teams) had reached a "cross-bracket" situation going into Round 7: That is, one team still undefeated and exactly five teams with a loss apiece.

To save time we'd had all six of those teams play that round. If the undefeated team took care of business then it would still retain the one-game finals advantage, and round 8 the other two teams that won round 7 would play each other for the other finals spot. If not (the "upset," but it never came to pass), then we'd have four teams at a loss apiece, and basically single elimination from there. So far so good, right? Not terribly confusing, I hope.

Onto 2007: For roughly 64 teams, something similar happens in round 8: An undefeated team (who had a round 7 bye while the six single-loss teams faced each other) plus the three single-loss teams who'd won in round 7. No matter what, the former team has a finals berth and the latter three teams are each three wins away from a championship.

Let's call the teams A (undefeated), B, C, and D, with B thru D ordered by initial seed. So round 8 is A vs. D, B vs. C. And then with no loss of generality let's suppose B beats C. (If C beat B then the next two paragraphs would still be analogous, just with the letters flipped.)

If A takes care of business then A is still undefeated, B has a loss, C and D have two losses apiece. So C and D play the 3rd-place game for trophy size; A and B are the finalists, A with an advantage.

If A doesn't take care of business then A, B, and D have one loss each, with C in clear fourth place. B and D would face each other in Finals: Part 1, winner to face A in a winner-take-all Finals: Part 2.

If the above immediately makes sense to you then I did a better job explaining it in writing than I did orally. (In real life, my oral explanation made immediate sense to to Team A, at least for what was at stake for them. But since Team A did take care of business and did become the champions, you can infer they're pretty smart.)

Nobody had called my cell before 2 a.m., the "call by" number on the standings page if anyone thought their record was in error. Even so, I was downstairs to my usual Atrium spot by 7 because I was sure people would have questions about standings or playoffs or such.

N times I got to tell people "Can't hand out playoff cards yet because I want to be absolutely certain nobody disputes their record, but assuming nothing changes you're [...]".

People kept asking about individual stats, because of an honest-to-goodness printer malfunction the previous night. They were being (re)printed as I stood there, and I got to participate in some very haphazard posting.

Playoff card distribution went smoothly (my favorite part: the split second I'd gotten the crowd to hush was the very moment one team was doing their motivational shouting) and Joel et al had my back when it came to playoff buzzer setup and pack distribution. The only thing that fell through the cracks: 61 teams made the playoffs. (I'm told we were guaranteed at fewest 59, at most 63.) The card system allowed for up to 64, with two rooms "double-booked" for overall and small school playoffs. (Would've been a small, fixable problem if exactly 63 teams made it in.) So at 61 teams we had exactly one "don't need to use it after all" playoff room -- and naturally I forgot to communicate this downstairs, leading to a brief mini-panic when staff expecting a game had ZERO teams come to their room.

For 10-15 minutes not much was happening. Then playoff round 1 scoresheets came en masse (33 in all). Then another lull, then two intervals where it was not only scoresheets en masse but also waves of buzzer takedown plus buzzer reclaim. But -- eerily, uncannily -- no delays, no protests.

There was a tiny bit of suspense regarding how long it would be until all three of the top Small Schools were eliminated from the overall playoffs (two went 0-2, the other survived to a fourth round), and Emily let me go ahead and explain to the interested parties what was going on with that.

(Small School playoffs amounted to two tiers of double elimination: First the four non-overall-playoff teams (two each had been 5-5 and 4-6), treating it as though the 4-6 teams already had a loss. The last remaining team from that was put in with the other three schools. Of those four, the one not yet eliminated from the overall playoffs obviously started with a bye, as did the top ranked of the other three.)

Lunch after round P6, exactly as I'd planned (but not announced, in case of some random delay). In hindsight I wish I'd let a seventh round go before lunch, if only to get all the consolation competitors another round.

After lunch, round 7 (plus the Small School semifinal), and then everything explained in the lead-in to this entry, with the added complication that the Small School Final had been moved into the main ballroom. (So even though the four remaining Overall schools had been told to report there for their gameroom assignment, R. had kicked them out of the room to get the game under way.)

In any case, at some point in the explanation of the cross-bracket game, Craig (one of the game officials in that room itself) interjected "I understand." That moment melted away my final point of HSNCT stress. Clear sailing from there, and thanks to a late timeout I even got to watch the final two minutes of the championship game.

Back to my parents' house (an hour west of the city), where the weather was perfect, we dined outdoors (was Sunday fish and Monday chicken, or vice versa? - both were grilled to perfection in any event), and next thing I knew I was asleep.

Trip Log: Saturday, May 26

Did I already mention 160 teams, 14 rounds, 10 games per team, 58 game rooms?

You should know (many (most?) people reading this already do) that I feel very possessive about the HSNCT Sunday playoffs. It's a cross between Al Haig ("I am in charge") and Jim Mora ("PLAYOFFS?!"). Sunday, unlike Saturday, the buck stops with me.

But of course we're not there yet. So, Saturday...

Between when I got downstairs at 7:30 and when Round 1 began at 9:30 there were several useful (though mutually exclusive) things I could have been doing.

In theory I could have attended the players/coaches meeting at 9, along with the 800-900 people from the teams. I don't think I've ever witnessed this, though I presume it's R. at his best. But this is the least useful of the plausible options.

In theory I could have been at the game official meeting -- not running it (even though I know exactly what I want to tell everyone, this is one context where I just don't come off authoritatively) but piping up now and then with observations or leading questions.

I could have been setting up my computer and verifying the Internet access: Although I had no real-time statistician role Saturday, our failure to verify convenient Internet access bit us early on.

Instead of any of those, at some point I volunteered myself to hand out folders to the half-dozen teams who couldn't make Friday's registration. (In essence another of the "fill in for Chad" jobs.) For what it's worth, I really really enjoyed doing this.

This also involved answering questions and directing traffic ("O'Hare Ballroom 3, starts at 9, get there about 15 minutes early if you all want to sit next to each other" on repeat). Oh, and the TV crews were interested in following a particular set of contenders, which meant digging out where those teams were for Round 1.

When I finally made it to our headquarters room (406: one floor above most of the game rooms we served) the place was packed (anywhere from 28-56 game officials plus Julia). Made some quick procedural announcements, inadvertently threatened to kill my wife (along with a hypothetical staff member) if things went wrong.

(If there was any doubt just how screwed up Elijah Dukes is: The stunned reaction to the last comment led someone to mention his name to me, in light of his PREVIOUS scandal -- the one where he text-messaged death threats to his wife, NOT the one where he impregnated a 17-year-old foster child.)

This is as good a time as any to mention how little I actually did Saturday. When the tournament was running without a hitch (90% of the time), Julia had all the scoresheet intake and packet distribution taken care of. When we had the biggest issue of the day (see next paragraph), my face froze in apoplexy and R. and Joel did the actual problem solving. Rather, I handled all of the "sort of a problem but not really": Protests that became moot based on the outcome of replacement questions, teams that weren't sure they were in the right place but who were actually half a round early for their games in junior suites.

Round 4: Team A and Team B were supposed to play in Room X. Team B got delayed by a cascading protest issue. Team C had a bye round 4 but went directly to Room X, where the game officials didn't stop Team A from playing a match against Team C as Team B patiently waited outside. I had the honor of retrieving Team C (which had already taken a card from the bogus round 4 game and gone down to the basement, where it was one minute into a game) and explaining the mix-up to a coach/adult who inexplicably came out of the experience thinking of me as a very nice person (the next day she offered me food). But R. and Joel did the sorting out of who plays when where to avoid hosing teams out of their lunch breaks.

Round 6 (last one before lunch), Jason K. had a game go to overtime and require questions from a backup pack. Julia had arranged for the staff's catered lunch at the Mexican place two (long!) blocks away from the hotel (probably a longer walk than between this year's ICT hotel and game rooms), and had left early to get that all set up. We told all game officials "go straight there if you know where you're going; if you don't know, wait for people who do know." So a group including the Coens got to applaud when JK got back downstairs from the overtime resolution. We walked over in a drizzle ("Are we there yet?") and into a room full of happy-seeming game officials, chowing down and chatting animatedly.

Afternoon protests? Not much in the way of factual resolution. There was a three-protest game, two of which became moot because the flip side to unprotestbale moderator judgments (i.e. whether a player paused too long before answering, or in this case whether he uttered a substantive part of a wrong answer before stopping himself and answering correctly -- a bit like checked swings in baseball, did he "go around?") is that I can't give a moderator leeway to say, "wait a minute, in hindsight what I heard 15 minutes ago wasn't what I thought it was."

Twice we had protests where the result of accepting the protest would be that a team trailing by 15 points heard a tossup (and bonus if necessary) off the clock. Both times on the conditional tossup, the team either couldn't convert the tossup or couldn't get any bonus points. Ah, mootness.

Then there was the part where we called around (three headquarter rooms, and alas walkie talkies didn't work well in the basement) to get on the same page for end-of-the-day team/staff instructions. (Staff had to hear this before Round 13 so that teams with Round 14 byes got the messages in time.)

As best I remember: Staff, leave buzzers set up in your rooms. Take batteries out of clocks but leave both clock and battery in your rooms. Bring Round 14 scoresheet to HQ room, turn it in along with a couple other forms. Bring folder with collated rounds 1-14 down to Kitty Hawk (a basement meeting room). If you're on the playoff staff grid, Kitty Hawk at 8 a.m. Sunday, otherwise room 302 at 8:30 for consolation staffing. If you don't know which one you are check with Matt.

Teams, standings posted tonight with a phone number to call if we screwed up your record. Playoff teams meet at 8:15 in the atrium to get your cards; consolation teams meet in the atrium at 8:40. If you're not coming back Sunday, buzzers can be picked up Saturday (check at Kitty Hawk), but if you are coming back then don't pick up your buzzers until you leave Sunday.

After all this died down I spent about two hours helping the stat guys catch up, in the interest of posting team standings (and knowing how many playoff teams we had) before it was TOO late at night.

And then of course the drinking at Maria's. Three of the four stat guys imbibed, as did I: 12 tequila shots among us.

Phone calls with Chad and in-person discussion with Emily to square away the Small School playoff format (yet another "fill in for Chad" role, this time Emily with the filling in). Then at the very end of the day, just when you'd think it's bedtime for all:

Who knew it would take me two hours to fix a couple room changes on the Sunday playoff cards and fix the schedule on my computer (the latter to make game score entry a lot easier, and in turn get playoff results printed/posted faster)? Caught the end of a Law & Order: SVU where a 28-year-old former foster child keeps posing as a 16-year-old, then all of the one where whats-her-name comes back out of the witness protection program to testify against the Irish guy (who didn't actually kill her, only attempted to) so that the Colombian boy (whose parents the Irishman killed) won't be afraid to testify as well.

The last thing I did before falling asleep was shave. Not sure why I remember this or why you need to know, but it was that one last thing while my wife slept soundly and I really wanted to join her.

Trip Log: Friday, May 25 (Part 2)

Suppose you ran a small cafeteria on the ground floor of a Chicago (actually Rosemont) office building. At five minutes to two, the Friday before Memorial Day, wouldn't the last thing you expected be a dozen hungry customers? And yet the guy managed to take care of us all.

At 3:00 we had the same meeting with the Crowne Plaza people we've had in previous years. Very nice people, with amazing fresh-baked cookies. Going into the meeting Joel told me all about the last-minute room changes. During the meeting I made those changes on the staff grid on my computer (then Joel made the 4:00-hour Kinkos run) but as for the room cards:

If you happen to have been on an HSNCT team, and you kept the card you held as of the end of Saturday, and you notice game rooms crossed out with a different room written in, then you happen to have a tiny sample of my handwriting.

A quick theory about queues: Suppose you tell people registration will be ready by (say) 6:00. People will start wanting to register no later than about 5:50. If you look like you're ready even sooner then people will start wanting to register even sooner.

Option A: Don't take anyone until the start time sharp. A queue will form and lengthen and that will end up being about the line that everyone has (just like rush hour traffic causes a ripple effect).

Option B: Take everyone as soon as possible. This has the persistent effect of no lines, though apparently some tiny procedural things fell through the cracks (the only one I happen to remember is getting tape with very clearly labeled school names on the first of the buzzers).

Other nice breaks in registration streamlining:
1. Teams had been given suggested registration times staggered by state. Of course we took them any time but still, it smoothed things out.

2. Any of four different stat guys could verify a team's roster.

Now the final frontier of line shortening is to get teams to understand that one person per team is more than sufficient. (That said, there was almost never an actual line: Every team basically got to either walk right up or wait for the one team ahead of them.)

Oh, I had a different role from usual: In our CFO's unexpected absence (family reasons) I got to be upstairs at registration in a faux CFO role while my wife was only a few feet away selling T-shirts. So instead of being downstairs handling staff and scrimmages, I got to hand that role off to the talented Mr. Philpy. A bit of a bottleneck at first for lack of buzzers ready to be set up (someone compared the scene downstairs to a restaurant on a Friday night, with teams waiting for scrimmages analogous to diners waiting for a table: all we lacked were the (pardon the overloading of the word!) buzzers).

After registration we all had way too much Chicago-style deep dish pizza right before bed. But it was good pizza and good people. Then a collapse into bed.

Five hours of sleep later, I was the first leadership-type person downstairs, the one who got to call facilities and get rooms unlocked. (Same as every year, because I'd be too nervous not to be down there.) 2-3 eager game officials were already down there anticipating the staff meeting -- but all that has to wait for the "Saturday, May 26" entry!

Trip Log: Friday, May 25 (Part 1)

Staying two nights at the Crowne Plaza meant yet another packing interlude, since there was no point bringing two weeks worth of stuff there.

For a quick 10 points what this function is and why did I find myself making the appropriate transformation in Excel in the car on the way to the tournament?

(I still owe a blog entry about NAQT's "card system" but it's basically a way to simulate Swiss pairs without the waiting time. The card you hold tells you what room to go to in your next round. You and your opponent each hand cards to the reader. At the end, reader gives the winning team the card closer to #1, other team other card, and you look at the card you just got (50% chance it's the same one you came in with) to see where to go next.)

f(1) = 1
f(160) = 2
f(80) = 3
f(81) = 4
f(40) = 5
f(121) = 6
[...]
f(2) = 33
f(159) = 34
f(79) = 35
[...]

Actually producing this in Excel involved multiple columns named like "32-pod", "8-pod", "32-sort", "8-sort", all to guarantee:

1. A school's A team and B team couldn't face each other in their first five rounds.
2. Teams from the same state couldn't face each other in their first three rounds.
3. The best teams (based on 2006 playoff finish) faced each other no sooner than necessary.

(Thanks to a small miscommunication, these very attempted safeguards almost caused several schools' A teams to face their B teams in Round 1.)

Anyhow, we averted catastrophe (and added a tiny bit of obfuscation that we probably didn't even need). No time to reprint the "Which team starts with which number" grid but appropriate cards made it to folders.

Lunch, etc., in the next entry.

Trip Log: Thursdsay, May 24

This is by all rights the most boring day-specific Trip Log entry.

We spent most of the day packing and preparing, as you might imagine. Questions had been squared away but one last e-mail flurry involved staff assignments and a lodging issue: For lodging, the Crowne Plaza had put me and Julia in one of the same junior suites that we thought we'd obtained for game room use.

Luggage and "Personal Items":
Purse
Computer bag (Chicago only)
Black backpack
Green backpack #1
Green backpack #2 (initially within the large blue suitcase)
Large blue suitcase (Chicago only)

We planned to check the blue suitcase, which was so heavy we also had to check a green backpack (and wait in line twice because of confusion about which green backpack would have the liquids we couldn't carry on).

As of 1 a.m., Midway airport Terminal A had a line of cots on one stretch of corridor, many of them occupied.

Parents picked us up, drive us home, and we chatted until 3 a.m. At this point the trip hadn't truly begun.

Missing British Girl

Aside from Google News, this story has gotten astonishingly little U.S. coverage, though that's not quite as astonishing as how all-over-the-place the story was in Britain.

Hey, it turns out the "look into my eyes" poster tag line was about more than just co-opting a Bryan Adams song (she apparently has a distinctive mark in her right eye that I never actually noticed in the posters).

So much for my snark about how "Beware of the girl, beware of the pain" would've been a lot catchier.

Trip Log: Prologue

I think the right way to cover (not just summarize) a trip like this is one entry per day. Since the trip began with our flight to Chicago Thursday night and since tomorrow is a Thursday, my grand scheme will end up with entries always about events exactly three weeks ago.

The exception is this post itself, about events at least three weeks ago.

The primary impetus for this trip was Julia's desire to see where her parents grew up, and to see her parents reunite with their old friends and old haunts. Her parents themselves planned an even bigger trip that started with a couple weeks in Israel, then the time with us, and finally a Czech spa.

So Odessa was a given. But Odessa is halfway around the world from San Francisco and so if we're going there, we should also go to other places in Europe, right? Someone suggested St. Petersburg for more of the best of the "old country" (no disrespect intended to Moscow or Kiev) but... well, look at a map. Someday we'll see St. Petersburg as part of a Baltic trip.

Once her parents' plans were firm, Prague was a nice way to coordinate our plans. And as for the timing of the trip: Piggybacking Europe onto the known Chicago (NAQT) trip would save some redundant air travel (read: fares). But this also left some time between the end of HSNCT (Sunday) and her parents' Odessa arrival (Friday), so... pick a city, look around for good airfare, etc.

I used Kayak.com to try to grab some nice fares. Some surfing later it became apparent that hopping point-to-point would work out cheaper than, e.g., "San Francisco to Odessa" (or even "Chicago to Odessa"). The downside of this of course is all those days in the airport.

(One goal for any future Europe trips is to avoid intra-trip flight: Get across the Atlantic, take the train between nearby places, and recross the Atlantic.)

For the time we'd be "with" her parents, they found agencies that connected travelers to people's apartments in both Odessa and Prague. I highly recommend this for any locale outside of {English-speaking countries, Western Europe}. Come to think of it, I wonder if we could have done the apartment thing for London: Probably not given our short stays.

Aside from the Odessa and (real) Prague legs, Julia found hotels on Orbitz. This worked out fine, although every unexpected surprise along the way is a moment to realize that even in the Internet age travel agents have a valuable store of knowledge.

After all that the biggest point of stress before the trip was what to do with our kitten. We swiftly rejected the kennel option. Oh, there are places. For $25 a night you can put your loved one in a 3-foot by 3-foot cubicle, but why? We actually considered flying her to Chicago and leaving her with my parents, but checking her through is cruel and the carry-on option risks catastrophe where you have to take the animal out of her carrier and hold her through the security checkpoint. This left "leaving her with a friend" versus "having someone come over every day." An agonizing decision but we took the latter: Since cats (and dogs) have a very fluid sense of time, and since cats in particular aren't nearly as attention-seeking as dogs, it seemed better to avoid adding the "unfamiliar place" angst to the "where are mama & papa?" angst.

Oh, and my personal runner-up stress was all the HSNCT run-up, which left almost an afterthought of "oh yeah, once this 160-team tournament is wrapped up we go straight to Europe."

Trip Summary

Before even getting to e-mail (will plow through tomorrow):

Jotting these down to make any more detailed travelogue easier. (But in hindsight already providing random detail.)

Thursday, May 24: Spent all day preparing for our trip, then took the last flight to Chicago (arrived Midway shortly before 1 a.m.) and stayed with my parents. On our itinerary at this point:

HSNCT Friday-Sunday
Transatlantic flight to London Monday red-eye
London Tuesday-Wednesday
Vienna Wednesday-Friday
Train to Prague arriving late Friday
Odessa Saturday to Wednesday
Prague (for real) Wednesday to Friday
London Friday night
back to Chicago Saturday
back to Alameda Sunday

Friday, May 25: Parents drove us to the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare for midday arrival. Fixed a couple schedule quirks on my computer in the car. Took part in the last vestiges of folder stuffing, then walked to lunch with other inner-circle staff to a cafeteria in an oddly ghost-town-like office a long block away. Filled in for our absent (family reasons) CFO at registration, on the "Have you paid your entry fee yet?" step.

Saturday, May 26: 160 teams, 14 rounds (10 games per team), 58 game rooms, 28 of them feeding into our HQ room. About 116 readers/scorekeepers, exactly six HQ people, and four stat guys off in their own room. Handled a couple of protests and a "team went to the wrong room" issue. After Round 14 ended (around 6:20, scheduled to end at 6) I spent about 90 minutes helping the stat guys catch up, then went drinking with three of them.

(Julia arranged for the staff lunch at the Mexican place a 10-minute walk away from the hotel, then was in the group that went to dinner there shortly before we did.)

Sunday, May 27: Handled the card distribution (if you're unfamiliar with NAQT's High School National Championship Tournament format, see separate post for Card System description) to playoff teams. 61 teams made the overall playoffs (by going 6-4 or better Saturday), plus four additional Small School playoff teams (4-6 or better). Up to 10 rounds (nine if the undefeated team would take care of business in the final), 31 game rooms dwindling to one. Exactly 62 playoff staff, plus four of us in the playoff HQ (counting the buzzer czarina), plus a whole lot of volunteers for the consolation rounds. Surprising, in fact blissful lack of protests or delays. After the tournament, back to my parents' house in exhaustion.

Monday, May 28: Very relaxing day with my parents before catching our flight to London (changing planes in Detroit because it was Northwest). Saw Monsters, Inc. on the plane (I'd never seen it before! - it is unspeakably brilliant) just as Julia watched (and disliked) Because I Said So. (While I slept she watched The Bridges of Madison County and really liked it.)

Tuesday, May 29: Got into London (Gatwick) around 10 but customs et al took over an hour. Gatwick Express train tickets (to Victoria) were 16 pounds each, not nearly as good a deal as just getting the 10 pound day-pass and taking a non-express from the airport. Took the Big Bus (our tour) from Victoria all around, though traffic in the City of London (i.e. not City of Westminster) was very very heavy. To reach our hotel required Docklands Light Rail from Tower Gateway to a place just outside ExCel Centre. Crashed there for a bit, had a nice enough lamb dinner at the hotel, crashed for the night.

Wednesday, May 30: Took a 30-minute Thames River cruise, walked to Trafalgar Square, went through the National Gallery, walked back to the South Bank, took the Eye, walked past the Oxo Building and the Tate and the Globe then across London Bridge, thence back to the Tower Gateway DLR station by 15:00. Back to the hotel for our luggage and onto the Stansted Express, arriving around 17:30 for 6:50 flight to Vienna... wait, what? arriving nearly 11 hours after our 6:50 a.m. flight had taken off.

Upon my initial distraught reaction Air Berlin initially told us we were SOL. Went scrounging for other options -- boat to Amsterdam? drive to Europe? -- nearly went with the 10-day car rental (we'd be allowed to drive to Vienna but not to Prague or further) except neither of us can drive a stick. While I dealt with the Europcar refund Julia returned to the Air Berlin counter and got us flight credit plus seats on their last flight of the evening... to Nuremburg.

Arrived Nuremberg (from Stansted via Air Berlin) around 23:30, booked a hotel from the airport kiosk (conversation started in German but switched to fluent English when the desk man thought I didn't understand Vorname = first name), took the U-Bahn from right outside the airport to the Hauptbahnhof.

Thursday, May 31: OK, we're in Nuremberg, what to see? The Trial museum would have required an U-Bahn trip that we never got around to taking. Instead we saw a fantastic set of anthropology & art at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg (note "Germanisches" and not "Deutsches"), including some of the finest work of Nuremberg's best-known Renaissance artist (for a quick 10 points...). After a nap, strolled around Old Town into the late-afternoon and evening.

Nuremberg is picturesque, with a teeny tiny creek running through the city center. Ate Franconian food in a basement restaurant, including the famous Nuremberg bratwurst. Walked up to the Imperial Castle at the north edge and back down for drinks in a creekfront cafe.

Friday, June 1: Morning walk around the pedestrian ring of Old Town (outdoors but sunken down compared to both the outside street and the walls, as if it's where the moat used to be) before catching our 11:40 train to Prague. Saw the Great Synagogue of Pilsen on our way.

Walked 6.8 kilometers from the train station to our hotel (thank you Google Maps!), absolutely none of which was in the touristy areas, but nearly all of which followed Metro tram paths.

Saturday, June 2: Took a tram to a bus to Prague's airport northwest of the city. Got to Odessa where Julia's parents (who'd been traveling in Israel until the day before and who would stay in Prague at a spa for the two weeks after we left) and their friend Mischa (driving) met us. Saw the apartment where we'd be staying (20-minute walk from Julia's parents' hosts), had a nice dinner, and got our first look at the waterfront area, Pushkin Steps, et al.

Sunday, June 3: The five of us drove to Odessa's cemetery, then Julia and I were free for the day. Lunched at the top of Pushkin Steps, took a Black Sea cruise, walked back up the steps, napped, had an outdoor dinner at a place called "Top Sandwich."

Monday, June 4: Joined Julia's mom and her old friend to see her childhood haunts, then to the Worldwide Odessite Club to meet more people. Then a car ride to see e.g. the apartment where Julia's dad lived most of his life, where he built some things from scratch. (He and Julia went in when the current tenants finally answered but the rest of us didn't want to disturb them.) Finally a surprisingly uninteresting tour at the Jewish Museum of Odessa. (In one room we learn that over 250,000 Jewish Odessans died in 1941. In the next room get your picture/headshot taken as a cossack on a horse!)

Dinner that night in a place on the Black Sea hosted by a friend of Julia's parents who has become successful as a wine vintner.

Tuesday, June 5: Quick tour of some outdoor sculpture museum, then Julia, her mom, and I walked around the city and shopped a bit. One more meeting/dinner but then the highlights of Odessa at the very end: Julia's dad's country house (which he and his own dad built from scratch by hand), now vacant, where we climbed a fence and picked cherries; then the beach on the Black Sea.

Wednesday, June 6: Uneventful flight to Prague where we (Julia & I, and her parents) stayed in two apartments a block apart in the Jewish quarter. Dinner at Kolkovna (trendy place a block away), but indoors.

Thursday, June 7: Our full day in Prague, the most beautiful city Julia or I have ever seen. We walked up (self-guided) to the Metronome and on to the castle area, where Julia & I split off to take in a (guided) walking tour of Prague's Jewish history. Finally dinner at La Prima (mixed grill for me).

Friday, June 8: The two of us flew from Prague to Heathrow... whoops, JUST KIDDING. Got on the (British Airways) plane, taxied off the gate, then sat and sat. Heard about an indicator light they couldn't clear, then about mechanical problems they couldn't fix, then about the replacement plane that wasn't coming from London after all. Two hours after scheduled departure they got us back into a departure lounge -- then upon cancellation we had to go BACK through the passport line. Luggage took at least 90 minutes to collect. Long story short, bonus time in Prague, albeit time we couldn't make use of (i.e. actually leave the airport) until it was already 18:00, and at first glance there go our evening-in-London plans.

Saturday, June 9: Arrived Heathrow before 11, needing to catch a 13:50 Gatwick flight (different airport, different airline). Got to the bus depot for the National Express (Heathrow to Gatwick) by 11:26 a.m., at which point the departure screen showed the 11:25 bus as not having left. For a bus that runs every 10 minutes, how this resulted in our not catching a bus until 12:15 is too frustrating and embarrassing. Given that it's a 70-minute bus trip and an international departure... anyhow the NWA ticket counter and baggage check-in were abandoned when we got there. So a nice "screw you" from British Airways, from National Express, and from Gatwick -- though we got a surprisingly good deal at the Gatwick Hilton from my inadvertent haggling.

Blessing in disguise: We did take the train in to Central London, did have Indian food (not quite authentic, e.g. cheese nan with cheddar(!) cheese), and did fulfill Julia's childhood dream by seeing Mary Poppins on stage.

Sunday, June 10: Back to Chicago exactly a day later than planned. (Immediately after missing our Saturday flight we'd called the Northwest reservations line to reschedule.) Saw Wild Hogs (outstanding!) and I Think I Love My Wife (meh) on the plane.

Monday, June 11: Not expected to be a trip day but what with the cascading delay, parents pushed our Southwest flight back a day.

pr0n Satire Convergence

In the same day I read this latest McSweeneys essay and this older Onion article.

"Too Soon?" Thought of the Day

(Michael Vick is involved.)

Until last month I thought Michael Vick's own brother Marcus was the biggest impediment to his becoming the most notorious Virginia Tech alumnus.

From last month until a few days ago I thought the title had been put out of reach.

(Note the subject line says "Thought" of the day, not "Joke" of the day: I'm not trying to be flip. I realize that there's a fundamental difference between massacring humans and massacring dogs, but at some point, depending on the order of magnitude and level of cruelty involved, the comparison becomes not-crazy. It's too bad the next time you hear this comparison drawn it will be by somebody transparently angling for publicity.)

Unrelated Comic Strip Questions

As The Comics Curmudgeon hasn't been updated since Friday:

Is Apartment 3-G really killing off Luann?

Is Zits trying to turn Hector into a sex symbol? I feel icky going anywhere near here but Hector is arguably the most underrated jail-bait on the comics page.

How much longer will Scott Adams keep himself as a Dilbert character?

Savage Love

No politics this time but an interesting assortment of answers.

1. Husband's computer game character engages in virtual sex with other gamers' characters. Wife considers that to be adultery, husband disagrees. Should husband tell wife?

Savage says no and pontificates about libido differences and "minor betrayals." I mostly disagree: There ARE things spouses don't tell each other just because life is too short, but there's a vast world of difference between fantasies thought through in one's head and fantasies carried out through real-time collaboration with another human being. (If nothing else, the latter could easily be discovered; the former cannot be.)

It's not unreasonable for the wife here to consider this an act of unfaithfulness, and if the husband can't live with that then they have irreconcilable differences about, if nothing else, trust.

2. 17-year-old boy and 29-year-old stepmother have same tickling fetish, and may be attracted to each other.

So there are all sorts of reasons why society might place a taboo on stepparent-stepchild incest, and Savage touches on some of those, yet I still don't find his answer completely satisfying. However special a father-son relationship is supposed to be, the trust eroded a bit when the dad and the mom couldn't stick together.

3. Man co-worker in trouble because of sexually explicit IM comment to skittish other male co-worker.

This is exactly why anyone with a lick of sense doesn't "go there" in particular workplace discussions (at least not gratuitously!), though I think Savage's recommended fix is pretty clever.

As My Wife Helpfully Pointed Out,

Suzanne Pleshette is now an eligible bachelorette.

I deplore abuse of all kinds, spousal abuse in particular, and yet: If Dr. Bob Hartman Hartley had ever just completely snapped and just started whaling on Emily, you have to admit you couldn't entirely blame him.

Emily Hartman Hartley is one of the most insipid characters in the classic sit-com world.

How embarrassing! We even own both the first two seasons of the original Bob Newhart on DVD. (But we've never used it for drinking games.)

MySpace

Several months ago I signed up for MySpace for work reasons (which reminds me: a couple months ago did various Slashdot users redirect their ire to Audible Magic or had they stopped paying attention by that point?).

I meant to make a snarky remark here about the default profile settings: Unless you change it to the contrary, MySpace will default you to "Single" and "Doesn't Want Children." We know someone who already has three children, one of them a teenager, whose MySpace profile lists her that way. Apparently she doesn't want the ones she already has.

Some of my wife's musical theater kids are way into MySpace (as you might guess). So as a result of Julia's adding me as a "friend" I am now up to four friends: "Tom" (the tech widget), my wife, and two of the thespians.

But I did grab a custom URL (easily guessable and similar to this blog's URL) and I even added a song and a video to my profile. (Don't worry: They don't play unless you click on them. I'm not a fan of pages that automatically load up audio/video.)

What other uses of MySpace might be worth my time? Please don't suggest anything excessively immoral -- or excessively moral.

(Incidentally, I despise their byzantine navigation system for always making me feel like an idiot. Given how popular the thing is, apparently 14-year-olds all over the country have mastered it, yet I always get stuck somewhere.)

Hypothetical Spam Subject Line

Earn a degree based on your sexual experience!

Sad News Related to the Story of How I Met My Wife

Cody's Books will abandon its San Francisco location.

The only remaining Cody's is on 4th Street in Berkeley, right by where I was working five years ago. "We bumped into each other in a book store": That's the one. I've long since forgotten what I was looking for, given that I found what I needed.

I also met some number of women via Yahoo! Personals that year but the details are starting to fade (moot anyway).

Discuss Your [Least] Favorite Advice Columnists

I'm always struck by how consistently Judith Martin (Miss Manners) gets it exactly right, though I don't have an example handy (I did several days ago and didn't have time to blog it).

Equally often I'm flummoxed at Randy Cohen's (The Ethicist: Sunday NY Times, formerly Slate) ability to get things exactly wrong.

Ann Landers & Dear Abby give nondescript advice but the questions themselves too frequently come from people too stupid to live. (Dr. Laura has a similar problem: In each cases I suspect bad screening.)

Prudie seems to be all right, though she's approaching that same "too stupid to live" problem.

Exhibit A: My husband's friend molested my daughter, should I let him into the house anyway?

Exhibit B: How dare my friend let her 18-year-old son go into the Army and let him be "cannon fodder." Is wrong of me to shun her for life?

Exhibit C: How dare my husband do a favor for his (adult, married) daughter from a previous marriage, why can't he see that I've been in two years of therapy because his ex-family makes me jealous?!

At least the last one was both a good question and a great answer, and at least Prudie successfully gave the first three the bloody obvious answers instead of committing a howler.

Am I Hot or Not?

Joakim Noah.

He's better looking than at least 10% of my female college classmates.

Happy Birthday, A

One of the past presidents of the Boston University quiz team has a non-milestone birthday today.

(The process by which I thought it was a milestone, then realized it wasn't, then again thought it was a milestone, is vaguely amusing. Two particular rites of passage aren't actually a round number of years apart.)

Oh, another past president has an April 20 birthday, and another has August 9(?). But I couldn't tell you off-hand when Matt or Jon has his.

Show Us How Sheltered You Are

I did not know what Valtrex was until it was mentioned in The Onion and on Deadspin in consecutive days.

The Hope That "Zits" Represents

If you had no idea what "texting" was, this entire week's worth of the "Zits" comic strip would seem astoundingly obscene.

"The Hope That [Noun] Represents"

The second letter on this page of responses to Dan Savage has it exactly right: Fantasies Aren't Hopes.

(I have no opinion in particular about the woman mentioned in the URL, except honest bafflement that anyone would "fantasize" about her. That's the best they can do?)

I don't know about you, but my several years worth of "fantasies" include a whole lot of things that never would, should, or could happen in real live -- at least I honest, fervently hope they couldn't.

And of course a few fictional characters. More to the point, a whole bunch of archetypes and composites that don't correspond to anyone or anything in particular, real or fictional.

YKIOKIJNMK

("Your [karma]* is OK, it's just not my [karma]")

Separate bedrooms might be just the secret for some happy marriages. Certainly not for my own marriage, but I can't even pretend to understand or judge how any given pair of people make their lives together work.

*- Anyone know a good word that starts with "K" and generally refers to some combination of living arrangements with relationship upkeep? The original acronym stood for "Your kink...".

We have a two-bedroom apartment. The other bedroom is an "office": It has bookshelves, a desk, etc. I'm rarely ever actually in there - instead I/we compute in the living room.

Oh, fun with comparative advantage: Among our furniture is a twin mattress, and a couch that folds out into a bed. One of those is in our living room, the other is in the office/guestroom. Guess which is where and why (the lead-in to this paragraph should give it away).

A Great Day for Freedom of Choice

Will Saletan's Slate column mentions the growing trend of vaginal cosmetic surgery.

He summarizes the "objections":
1) There's no scientific evidence that it improves sex or is safe. 2) It's foisted on insecure women by pushy men and greedy doctors. 3) Women who ask for it have been brainwashed by porn models. 4) It's another step in changing women's bodies to suit society.

2 thru 4 seem ludicrous to me, at least in a supposedly free society, to the point where I checked the source to see if there were any especially silly direct quotes.

"The question I have is, is this being done for the benefit of the woman -- or someone else?" [plastic surgeon Leory V.] Young asked. Some women undergo the surgery, he said, because a man has told them, "Honey, you don't look like the girl in the movie."

"Critics and supporters of vaginal cosmetic surgery say the mainstreaming of graphic images, including pornography, is fueling demand."

Now, obviously, the people criticizing this trend aren't necessarily asking that it be BANNED. (No, just regulated by the FDA, for whatever good that distinction does.)

When it comes to intimate bodily autonomy this would seem to be the perfect "easy case": On one side is a woman's right to take care of her body as she sees fit, but this time the other side does NOT involve accusations of ending a human life.

I wonder how many opponents of vaginal cosmetic surgery fancy themselves as "pro-choice" when it comes to that other issue.

(Just in case I'm being too cryptic: I claim it's logically inconsistent to oppose vaginal cosmetic surgery, yet support [the right to] abortion. There's a reasonable case for supporting both, or opposing both, or just supporting the one where everyone agrees that only one person's fate hangs in the balance.)

Children of Bad Celebrity Parents

Two notes about Frances Bean Cobain (without looking it up I would've misidentified her as "Frances Bean Love," though my brain cells devoted to the "Frances Bean" part are probably not going to their best use):

1. She'll turn 15 later this year. Does that make anyone else feel old?

2. At least the paternity is well-established, unlike a certain baby about whom you've heard way too much in the past two weeks.

The Sexualization of Young Girls?

This column reminded me that I do have random anecdotal evidence from an extremely small sample size of 7th graders:

Promiscuous is a popular song, with easily recited lyrics. ("I looked up 'promiscuous' in the dictionary; it means 'having multiple sexual partners.'")

Fergalicious is also well-known, though derided for "spelling out everything and wasting our time, and even misspelling some words."

MySpace is ubiquitous (but you already knew that).

One boy sent one girl a picture of a certain heiress wearing bra/panties and told the girl, "you should go to the winter ball dressed like that." The girl responded dismissively.

"The Sweet Escape" (Gwen Stefani Feat. Akon) is well-known. As I'm old enough to remember the George Michael controversy, the lack of Akon-related controversy surprises me a little, but maybe that's just me.

Oh, completely unrelated to the sample size in question, I need to register a deep aesthetic objection to children's pants with insignia on the butt. Paw prints are one thing, but pants with the word "naughty" in glitter? This isn't a hell-in-a-handbasket issue so much as a question of when people completely lost their sense of good taste.

Anagram Server Fun

I already knew my familiar first and last name had at least two anagrams more obscene than "teat crumb." Someone just found a third.

Cat Blogging

Somebody wants to say hi. (800K)

If You Were 20 Again...

...but knew everything you know now, what would you do? Here's what various Farkers would do.

I have a very easy answer: Go to the gym every day. I gained a lot of weight every academic year in my time as undergrad. The first two summers I lost most of what I'd gained, but still. (For what it's worth I turned 20 in March of my junior year, so this would be even more effective as an "if I were 18 again" hypothetical.)

Speaking of when I was 20: How is polyamory just now a Fark-worthy article?! To my great disappointment, the ensuing thread has absolutely no Ric Romero references, even though I became aware of polyamory (and acquainted with polyamorous people) going well back to college (didn't everyone, or was this just a Boston-area thing?).

One of the arguments I remember being made in favor of polyamory was something like, "what if your significant other doesn't like all of the same activities you like?" In hindsight it's possible that "activities" meant "kinks" but I remember treating it at face value and wondering why it was impossible to enjoy bicycling, poker, photography or whatnot unless you were also dating your activity partner(s).

Oh, I've been on at least two dates with poly people but that's neither here nor there.

Ironically, I Used to Think Ali Landry Was Tom Landry's (Grand?)Daughter

The title of this Deadspin post is correct.

Spam Word of the Day

"Assketball"

Count me out. I can't quite picture how this would go but I'd almost certainly find it the opposite of titillating.

Make Fun of Your Spouse (or Signficant Other)

A couple weekends ago, with playoff football on TV and the same ads airing over and over, Julia made an off-hand reference to the "213 [sic] meal combinations" available at Friday's.

I've been meaning ever since then to tell the world about this restaurant that has 3 appetizers, 71 main courses, and only one dessert.

(Despite my mocking, that's actually a perfectly plausible distribution, no? Think of those Chinese places that have 20+ different fowl dishes, 20+ different beef, etc.)

I Hope This Sentence Was Intended to Make People Feel Old

Hopefully you're young enough to remember what you were like at 13, COBIK, halfway past puberty already, masturbating furiously, and checking out online porn regularly.
--Dan Savage

Given that he's responding to a college student, the timing does make sense, but man... the World Wide Web hit the mainstream my senior year of college. Just before that, I'd "checked out" a particular form of online "porn": The sexually explicit prose of alt.sex.stories and similar groups. Ah, smutty* text...

*- And usually laughably poorly written. Sometimes, not, though: Every now and then a story would be so well-crafted that it grabbed the reader's figurative lapels and demanded attention.

Grover

It just this second dawned on me why Mike Hargrove has the nickname "Grover."

How did I not previously notice this?

(Years ago I responded to a personal ad from someone with the handle fernijen. It was immediately obvious to me how she derived her handle, yet later when she asked me if I knew where her handle came from I vapor-locked and couldn't tell her. She'd decided somewhere around that point that my level of interest in baseball correlated with a likelihood that I was neither very bright nor very interesting.)

Dead Pool Update

Yeah, I had Gerald Ford (so did everyone else). I have Michael DeBakey but he'll probably pull through.

Wilford Brimley, Ronald Coase, Estelle Getty, Billy Graham, Gordon Hinckley, Lady Bird Johnson, Norodom Sihanouk, Claude Levi-Strauss, Ron Santo, Studs Terkel, Pauline Phillips (the original Abigail Van Buren), and John Wooden all appear to be alive and well, though John Kenneth Gilbraith passed on months ago.

All of the living seem to have outlived, among other things, my dead pool entry itself. My site of choice had a quarterly blogging requirement that at some point I realized I didn't feel like doing.

When Did Beauty Pageants Get Warlords?

Pardon me for wading into this so late but it took awhile to overcome the inertia of well-placed apathy. I take no stand on pageant winner moral issues aside from "WTF cares?!" -- and this (non)stance goes back to Vanessa Williams when I was 11 years old.

Anyhow, if I became sufficiently rich and powerful, could I just start up (or buy) a beauty pageant that claimed to bestow a national title, and actually be taken seriously as its arbiter?

Why not have a Miss Snoop Dogg Nation? I suppose by definition she'd be expected to party down.

Unflattering Photos or Overrated Women?

Life became marginally worse when I clicked to this inane ESPN Page 2 feature with the "Tom Brady should consider dating so-and-so" hook.

Especially pretty (or just flattering photos): Mandy, Minka, Scarlett

Surprisingly unattractive (or just unflattering photos): Salma, Jennifer A., Lindsay L., Pamela

Help me out here: Why are humongous breasts supposed to be sexy in isolation? Out of proportion they just look grotesque to me, as does leathery brownish-orange skin.

Secretary

Thanks to Fark I already knew that some web poll had classified a scene from Secretary as sexiest moment on film (even though this other poll only ranked it #47). Until last night I'd never seen the movie.

(Spoiler warning.)

The film really seems to be about BDSM as lifestyle (beyond simply BSDM as activity). Even with the living happily ever after, it's unclear whether their relationship has any foundation beyond the dominant-submissive power dynamic.

(In fairness, most on-screen couples don't seem to have much going for them, since the rest of a relationship beyond the central plot is just left implied.)

Before they end up together, he claims that they (she) can't behave the same way 24/7, but (and yes I'm taking the movie way too seriously) they shouldn't have to. That should have been one of the lessons from that stretch of the movie where he was just too busy to discipline her. After all, you can't be "on" all the time.

This might be charged with sexual politics but I think of BDSM as an activity rather than a lifestyle. That is, I have no compelling interest in knowing (and in fact compelling interest in not knowing) whether some guy in the coffee shop spanks his lover or lets his lover tie him up.

(I used to think, foolishly, that "keep it in the bedroom" was also applicable to homo- or heterosexuality. The crucial difference is that you don't keep the identity of your life partner in the bedroom. To anyone who meets us it's obvious that Julia is my wife and is female.)

For a rebuttal, there's a group of people who as of the 1990s spent a lot of time posting to Usenet about their kinks of choice, about what made them tick, about the difference between them and the "vanilla"s of the world. There's also the concept of "coming out" as a dominant/submissive (and the actual book title, Coming Out As a Dominant/Submissive, briefly seen in the movie).

And then in the "neither here nor there" department is transactional analysis theory of psychology, wherein people relate to each other as child-parent or adult-adult. (I hope this doesn't come off as smug or pretentious but I much prefer adult-adult for my own closest relationships, thank you. (Obviously parent-child will apply when I'm literally a parent to a child, at least the first few years.))

Anyhow, fine movie, about two people and a relationship/arrangement that's ideal for them (or is it? - did she really need to leave a bug in the middle of the floor after he left for work? - if he no longer needed to punish her would he stop loving her or something?), that probably resonates very deeply with its core audience yet happens not to resonate with me.

In the context of misfit headcases finding themselves and each other, Secretary is waaay more entertaining and fulfilling than the stuff Zach Braff's peddling.

"don't ask"

Name some idiom that you completely misunderstood the first time you heard it.

The first time I ever heard "don't ask" was in sixth grade. I'd just switched from one set of classmates to another (long story involving my not getting along with particular teachers from the old group). My new classmate Cheryl had a purse, and one day the contents of her purse spilled out on the table, mostly these tiny wrapped mint candies.

She said "don't ask." I said "that's okay, I'm not hungry," because I thought she was telling me not to request a piece of candy.

I don't think I'm autistic.

Another Reason Why Disney Is Deeply Overrated

None of these women of Disney movies are nearly as attractive as Sims characters dressed in swimwear. You can easily find the latter via Google Image Searches.

You Know You've Made It When The Haters Organize Themselves

For some reason today's NY Times Magazine devoted two pages to a story about clubs formed by people who can't stand Rachael Ray. Bully for them, finding a way to pass the time.

My roommate Scott C. already had a Rachael Ray cookbook five years ago. She was already on TV, with a "big things await" vibe rather than the stardom she's already hit by now.

She's on my "list," even after adjusting for my contrary, anti-bandwagon instincts. She joins (an incomplete list, in no particular order) Drew Barrymore, the recently single Reese Witherspoon, Stephanie Herseth (D-SD) (darn you, Chad), Alia Shawkat ["it says here you're still 17 for another five months?" "MARRY ME!"], Alyson Hannigan, Elisha Cuthbert, and (so help me) Mila Kunis ["because of Jackie or because of Meg?" "..."].

I'm so over her, though she's my entry in the "celebrity you once had a crush on who nobody else would find attractive." (In the context where this came up, somebody else cited Condi Rice. On an intellectual level I actually understand and appreciate that particular attraction - I don't like the idea that people would find it shameful, though I happen not to share it.)

Okay, fine: Since you've read this far. Avril and Alanis. Tina Fey. Sarah Chalke (if she's in character as Elliott Reid).

Best Quote Ever

"He wanted to go to a motel in the Bronx where I would defecate on him, but I told him I was uncomfortable going to the Bronx."

Several Things About Sara Gilbert

She's six weeks older than I am -- so neither "about [my wife's] age" nor "35 if she's a day."

Roseanne made its debut in 1988. Without looking it up the wife and I were both about four years off in both directions.

Sara is indeed the one with a kid who has two mommies (and not Melissa: I'm horribly confused sometimes), though it was the other mommy who gave birth.

She would be on my "list" (note: "The One With the List" is not the Friends episode that mentions a list of unattainable people with whom one can hook up and your significant other has to forgive you because how could you not -- apparently I've actually seen neither that episode nor "The One With the List," yet heard about both), but... I believe in just enough biological determinism to think a particular person hooking up with a random celebrity is still far less unlikely than a particular person changing his or her sexuality.

Why Sara Gilbert? By the mid 1990s people thought this was a strange celebrity attraction to have, but there was a time when she was just as obviously attractive as Alia Shawkat is now.

November 19, 1996

"He sure likes the name Debbie." -- Julia's cousin, referring to Seth McFarlane after that name came up in both tonight's American Dad and tonight's Family Guy.

Ten years ago today at quiz practice, I held hands with a teammate under the table and maybe some other shameless displays of quasi-public affection. (By the way, is this prose style a public display of affectation?)

Afterwards we walked all around Kenmore Square and surrounding Boston neighborhoods and talked, then went to my apartment and talked some more. I mentioned having Eric Clapton's "Running on Faith" stuck in my head; she had U2's "All I Want is You" stuck in hers.

Over the next two months I became much more familiar with Hamilton House. Then on January 19, 1997, we had a long talk (that word again, "talk," but very different context) interrupted by "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson"; "Square Peg"; and a rerun of The X-Files.

Nine years and ten months after the King of the Hill episode in which Peggy Hill teaches sex education, Fox aired the Family Guy episode in which Lois Griffin teaches sex education. If anything, my biggest surprise there is that it's been so many years, since the former episode seems so recent to me.

Oh, yesterday I was one third of the staffing for a quiz tournament whose TD and pack editor I've known for about ten years. In fact, ten years and three days ago (four days ago?) he was a freshman reading at the first ever NAQT sectional and I berated him for some supposed shortcomings as a reader. (Given how good a reader he's always been, this just goes to show I could be a complete bastard sometimes as a player. I do regret that.)

That was just a weird weekend, though (1996, not 2006). Four of us of drinking age went to an Allston bar after the Friday evening quizzing. Two of were competing for the affection of a third (which I didn't even realize until after the fact). [The fourth was not only married but also studying to become a minister.] I slept maybe two hours that night, and realized in the shower the next morning that one of our club's dominant personalities had a name that fit the meter and assonance of "Iron Man." (He also listened to that kind of music.)

The "other guy" at the bar from the night before didn't show up for that day's portion of the tournament, and was never seen at quiz practice again.

(He was in my 1L section, though, and I saw him whenever we were both in class. I remember the conversation in which I'd gotten him to come to practice to begin with, and exactly what motivated him to participate.)

If I mentioned an incident at The Border Cafe from ten years and three years ago today, the over/under is one on the number of readers who'd know exactly what I was talking about. (And at least one more who knows all this second hand but simply wasn't there that weekend. Just remembered that part of it. Oh, the icy reception I got at one particular point when I called someone the wrong name by mistake...) The heroine of this entry made a cute double-entendre about the meat from my fajitas, someone else referred to an off-color 1970s song, someone else made a lewd comment involving that song, someone else decided to walk out of the restaurant.

I tried to stop her (not the heroine of this entry)... except that I really didn't. When she saw me follow her up the stairs she asked if I had anything to say. Every time I replayed that incident in my mind I'd have all sorts of ridiculous Hollywood dialogue to say, but in real life I played it off as just needing to use the men's room. So cowardly.

Then again I came to learn that this wasn't the first time she'd staged that kind of walkout.

Ten years and two days ago... blah blah blah idly watching football (I was interested in the early game), people who grew up in Western Pennsylvania assume that a guy watching football isn't to be bothered even though in this case I was just marking time.

Anyway, with my wife reading the paper at my side and our kitten playing with said newspaper, this is all water under the bridge, years removed from a happy ending that has nothing to do with anyone mentioned here (other than me). That Seth McFarlane character name thing is still spooky though.

(It would be even spookier if this post were really about who it's supposedly about.)

Oh, apropos of nothing: Have you ever been sitting at a nice quiet Italian restaurant with a friend (just a friend) of the appropriate sex, when your friend began talking about the beginning of your friend's current relationship, and mentioned that it began before your friend's previous relationship ended, and reminisced that the two of them would go places but your friend's current significant other was too dense to realize the two of them had begun dating? If so, did you idly wonder at that point whether you and your friend had yourselves begun to date behind your friend's current SO's back? But then did you dismiss this as clearly false, as clear evidence that precisely because it was so obvious, it wasn't happening? (Just as the babel fish is conclusive proof of God's nonexistence.) If it indeed turned out that your friend wasn't interested in you and never had been, would the whole thing just make you shake your head?

Mewelde is sitting on my and loudly purring.

Oh hey, Drew Barrymore was even a guest voice on Family Guy tonight. So here's to happy memories of when Drew had her hair black, and the tournament at Princeton ten years minus four days ago, and Wing It, and Thanksgiving dinner at that Indian restaurant. And somehow convincing myself that I liked The X-Files.

Today's Subtle Cleavon Little Reference

"At the time the two of them were in the honeymoon stages of the relationship and couldn't keep their hands off each other. They did nothing all day but have sex -- and play the odd game of chess."
--some gossip column

Judy Came From O-Hi-O, She's A Scientologist

At least 100 lines about at least 20 women

The Market Value of a Short-Lived Marriage to Britney Spears

Suppose Britney Spears traded her marital status as a commodity.

If you were an up-and-coming wannabe music star with infinite credit, how much would you be willing to pay for the goodwill value associated with being Mr. Britney Spears for two years?

(Assume that she gives you none of the "benefits" normally associated with a relationship. Or... assume that she does, but that she charges extra. How much extra?)

Hmm

The most arousing (in my opinion) passage from this quiz was also the only quote I actually recognized. I should point out that I didn't recognize it until the final sentence (the previous sentences were news to me) and that the shock of recognition completely drained the paragraph of its aphrodesiac effects.

But now I do have a much better understanding of what "they" think "we" think.

Oh also, for what it's worth I didn't read the author choices past William F. Buckley. I didn't feel like trying to guess the matchups, though knowing that one of these pieces was by WFB, I found it very obvious which piece that would be. Sadly, I did not recognize the Barbara Boxer one as Boxerian prose.

And while we're here, read these all-time great personal ads. (both this link and the main link via Fark)

SFW?

I get work e-mails from Peach DVD. These contain images, if you choose to right-click and download same. The images are mainly the covers of their DVDs, which are all "adult."

Yet oddly, none of those images are as risque as the Lindsay Lohan pic included with the latest Bill Simmons column on ESPN.com.

Oh, while we're here: Today is narc day (no particular reason...). Post stories of ruining someone else's good, clean (but technically illegal) fun. Bonus points if they're teenagers and you fueled their righteous anger.

Ah, the Circus Was in Town

Happy belated (but only 47 minutes belated by Pacific time, or 3:47 if she's still on the east coast) birthday to an old acquaintance. I realized this morning that it was her birthday but didn't have anything in particular to say about it.

Then this stat roundup mentioned the two weeks that elapsed before the Boston Bruins got to play a home game. I knew immediately why they'd been on the road so long - and I was right.

October 19, 1997, was the last time I ever went to a circus and if all goes well the last time I ever will. I'm just not a fan of circuses in general, though I actually did enjoy that particular one. It was a spontaneous decision to make good on her birthday wish, after her dormmates flaked out on her (possibly breaking a promise in the process). She was despondent because she assumed that surely the circus would be sold out as of the day of, but I asked around, found the tickets, no biggie.

I have no idea what's become of her. For whatever reason I can't even bring myself to Google her name (the half-dozen of you who know exactly who I'm talking about can do the honors if you want).

All this gratuitous vagueness makes this post way more melodramatic than it should be. In short, I had a big crush on her, yet at the same time I wanted to be a good friend to her and look out for her. Those two are incompatible almost by definition, but at least we had some very good memories here and there.

She's almost a year older than my wife. I guess that just goes to show how young my wife was in 1997.

Weddings Are Contagious

At least three couples have become engaged since attending our wedding four months ago. Men in our wedding party account for two of those engagements.

Going through our wedding party:
Groom -- married to bride (duh)
Groom parents and bride parents -- both couples still happily married
Best man -- married
Matron of honor -- married (obv., since not "maid of honor")
Groomsmen -- married, recently engaged x2
Bridesmaids -- married, long-term relationship, 10 years old
Ushers -- married, married, long-term relationship
Flower Girl and ringbearers -- younger than youngest bridesmaid

No pressure either of the aforementioned "long-term relationship" couples. (The logistics of being a Berkeley grad student are relevant to both cases if I remember right.)

UPDATE: Just because I felt like looking it up, here's how I learned of a previous couple's engagement (find "19 April") Also, wedding/honeymoon (find "05 October" and scroll up).

West Berkeley Flats, Call Your Office

I suppose this article pretty much says it all (Berkeley* football player mistakes peep show theater for brothel), but I'd still love to see Brian R's pithy reaction.

*- Why is it "Cal" in sports contexts but "[UC-]Berkeley" in any non-sports context? No other part of the University of California system has that duality going for it.

Six Adults

My wife invited a longtime friend to see her play last night, so that afterward the three of us could hang out. A more recent friend of hers also wanted to spend time with us. So my wife and I, the old* friend (guy), and the new friend (gal) met up at a place by where the latter lives. When we got there, she had two friends (women) of her own. Julia told me this morning that her friend had just met the other two last night, despite my assumption that the three of them had known each other awhile.

(*- Despite the other meaning of the word "old," he's right around the median age of the six title characters.)

Anyhow, we met at a neighborhood bar and then migrated to a late-night Mexican place for a pitcher of margaritas.

How to put this: There's a remarkable change in market forces between the post-college era and what I'll call the "post tenth-reunion" era. Of course it's also possible our guy friend is just that much more attractive than the guys I spent time with ten years ago, but I think market forces (as a result of everyone's age) have more to do with it.

I actually didn't feel a "thank god I'm married" sense of relief: From what I saw last night I could imagine having a respectable social life amongst my age group (before even needing to contemplate hitting on younger women). The sense of relief I did feel, however, was "thank god I'm married to Julia." We were in good company but my wife was still clearly (at least clearly to me) the most attractive woman at the table.

Everything You Need to Know About San Francisco Labor Unions

All in one news story.

For what it's worth, I completely approve of everything else in this article but submit to you that the union angle is what made everything farcical. More to the point:

1. Scheduling an all-"Big Beautiful Women" show is bad business unless you specifically attracted customers who'd enjoy that.

2. The dancer who printed the e-mail on a dressing room message board is the bad actor (not to mention idiot) in all of this. The guy who relayed the customer complaints was just the messenger.

I Think She's Pretty But YMMV

Actually first let's get "I think she's pretty and so does almost everybody else" out of the way: Reese Witherspoon, Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson.

Now then...
Mila Kunis
Maggie Gyllenhaal

(Hmm, I guess there aren't very many.)

People Who Are Busted, But Portrayed As Beautiful

I've meant forever now to point to this thread.

It starts out with an oddly bad example, in that although everybody says "everybody says Sarah Jessica Parker is beautiful," I don't actually know anyone who does say that. This seems to be a frequently used strawman.

Seven of the best exemplars of this trend seem to be Jennifer Aniston and three pairs of sisters (Simpson, Hilton, Olsen). Especially Jessica Simpson, which is not even a comment on her looks so much as a comment on how deranged some of her biggest fans seem to be.

Best addition to this list, who I wouldn't have thought of without reading the thread (but who undeniably belongs): Lucy Liu.

I'm ambivalent about Angelina Jolie, probably making me one of the few guys without a strong opinion of her looks either way.

10 Athletes: Some Notes for a Future Revision

(See the post right below this one.)

Recent e-mail correspondence has reminded me that John Starks absolutely must make my list. And Michael Jordan. So drop Jeff Francis (I'm curious about Canadian baseball and about the humidor, but not that curious!).

People who know hockey: Which is more likely to be intelligent and engaging in real life, Tie Domi or Bob Probert (or someone else of that ilk)? If I could meet just one (male) hockey player, I'd want to meet a goon, so help me.

Oh, to clarify the meaning of "meet" (re Anthony's comment): Let's assume this is over a leisurely dinner, like e.g. assigned seating on a cruise ship but one night only. So more than a handshake and photo-op, yet a no-holds-barred interview might not be kosher (unless you'd all had enough to drink). I have no idea what effect this has on meeting athletes for the sake of hitting on them.

This brings us to female athletes. I love the idea of women in particular sports but I don't know enough about specific female athletes to specify one over another. The only female athletes who've carved out distinct identities, don't really call out to me. Some real-time brainstorming:

Neither of the Williams sisters. None of the infamous Russian tennis starlets: indirectly through Julia I've already met younger Russian women with (this is a wildass guess but I know I'm not totally wrong) more or less the personality I'd expect of a Kournikova or Sharapova.

Maybe an N-way tie between the current rosters of the U.S. women's national soccer, softball, and hockey teams (plus the Northwestern lacrosse team - ha!), but this doesn't make for interesting listmaking.

The first Google hit for Cammie [sic] Granato is this page. I suspect this isn't her most flattering headshot. Of the other big names on that page: I'm not a Picabo person. Mia and Nomar might be interesting as a package deal, but for some reason their dating each other makes them less appealing to meet as individuals (I can't put my finger on it).

The WNBA isn't a likely source of people I'd want to hit on (though for all I know it might have people I'd like to meet as interesting people), if only because I don't like string beans. Now, if there were a women's pro rugby league... (but not football - that women's football league just sounded creepy).

Oh, I just remembered beach volleyball. Holly or Misty might be interesting to meet, though I'd feel sheepish having been one of the multitudes who ogled them when they were on TV. Meanwhile, I don't think Danica Patrick would crack my top 10 (aside: it took me forever to accept that Danica Patrick existed - I was adamant that this was some elaborate prank involving Dan Patrick in drag) just because I don't see the appeal.

Very uncomfortable confession in the extended entry...

So help me I still want to meet Tonya Harding.

And Yet I Insist I'm Completely Straight

Unrelated observations:

1. The more I think about it, the more I love Erasure.

2. I'm wearing a pink shirt and dark blue shorts right now. If I were a girl these colors would be fantastic on me.

3. Last Friday the A's-Mariners pitching matchup was Barry Zito vs. Jarrod Washburn. Eye candy all around.

(But we've covered this before: Apparently the conventional wisdom is that Washburn is ugly, which completely baffles me.)

This Is Funny, and Not Even Aristocrats-Funny

Note both the subject and the message body.

If I Got A Makeover...

Whose look should I go for?

Above the neck the best options seem to be Seth MacFarlane or Dan Haren. Below the neck... well, ask me again after a few more months of workouts. Still a work in progress.

My New Favorite Obscene Quote

Uncensored version here, reprinted in the Extended Entry with an important word bowdlerized.

"No limit [poker] = more exciting than limit, less exciting than directing porn"

"I think you meant starring in porn. Directing is the worst case of blue balls in the world."

Dear Yahoo! Chat

Please ditch the living smiley ad campaign. Those things are just unnerving.

Please also get rid of that shimmery-sounding audio cue for received messages (or convince people within my earshot to turn their sound off when they Yahoo! chat).

Also, for those of us who in the very distant past used Yahoo! chat for risque purposes, the shimmery sound effect triggers the same conditioned response as a caricatured pr0n0-style bass riff.

The Strangest TV Show We Saw On Our Honeymoon

Life Network proudly presents: Sex Toys & Chocolate, a show devoted entirely to good-looking young Canadians(?) sitting in a studio holding a panel discussion that gets surprisingly explicit.

Questions For Married Readers

Of all the guests at your wedding:

1. How many were your exes? (That is, former significant others.)
2. How many were your spouse's exes?
3. How many were people on whom you had a crush at some point?
4. How many were people on whom your spouse had a crush at some point?
5. How many were people who had a crush on you at some point?
6. How many were people who had a crush on your spouse at some point?
7. How many were exes of some other wedding guest?
8. Did any of the broken relationships from #7 cause any guest list and/or table assignment drama?

Just idly curious.

For ours, most of those questions I obviously can't answer accurately, though I can tell you that #1 is zero and #3 is amusingly non-zero. (But everyone who qualifies is attending with a guy who's perfect for her.)

A Time When I Truly Was Race-Blind

(I'd been about to type "color-blind" there, but of course I've always been able to distinguish red hues from green etc.)

The Brien Taylor saga from the post right below this took place in 1991. I was well aware of most of the major baseball draft news then, e.g. Kubi's references to 1990 draftees Chipper Jones (then a SS) and Todd Van Poppel. Somehow the race angle went completely over my head.

Every race issue went completely over my head back then, though: I attended a high school that by design was about 50% black student body. Everything about it seemed routine enough then, though I did notice (and was disappointed) that any given specific English or math class period wasn't so diverse. But just walking through the halls from day to day, I either fit in or was too naive to realize I didn't.

After a year or two at a very politically aware college, I came back to my high school alma mater and suddenly the racial makeup and how different students interacted made me feel awkward. Apparently I'd gained some insight that I'd rather not have had (or perhaps just gained false insight).

Random rednecks in downtown Tulsa (just one passing car, but that's still one too many) threw bottles and yelled bigoted things to me and my prom date, the first I realized that something I thought of as a non-issue, would be seen as an issue in the eyes of some.

In hindsight I remember being stared at when we walked together through the halls, though at the time I either didn't notice or brushed it off or thought it was a lot of to-do about PDA (even though the A in question was just hand-holding).

In Senior Superlatives we were given the "Most Likely To Win the Nobel Peace Prize" awards. It took me forever to realize the specific direct reason we were both chosen for this.

Several years of higher education and ad hoc diversity training later, I'd join on-line dating sites yet consistently pass on African-American profiles. (My default search settings didn't exclude any racial background but that's just because I was paranoid that someone would not only see these (private) settings but also think less of me for them. In practice, I was unlikely to give a second look to someone who identified as African-American or Asian.)

I really wish I had the approach to racial issues now that I had back then.

(Admittedly it's a tradeoff: I was just as unobservant about sexual identity. I assumed (without realizing my making the assumption) that everyone was straight; I made off-color comments to guys that outside of a heteronormative context might be quite flirtatious -- that let to some unfortunate misunderstandings my freshman year in college. I even failed to realize why it was impossible for a same-sex relationship to be merely part of the participants' private personal life ("do whatever you want in the bedroom, I just don't need to know about it") until I had acquaintances and friends who were dating other acquaintances and friends of the same sex. The biggest downside to my having my circa-1990 unobservance would be if it led me to actually agree with George W. Bush about that silly, needlessly divisive marriage amendment.)

A Very Impolitic Thought About Mistaken Identity

You've probably already heard about this very sad story. Words can't fairly express how sad it is. That said...

It's an entirely plausible worst case scenario when you have friends who look that much alike (see pics in link).

Not that these women tried to look alike on purpose (coincidence I'm sure), but I'm sure there are many cases where people do go out of their way to conform to a particular societally-accepted look, and they really shouldn't.

Mental Images of the Day

Doctors said sexually transmitted diseases among senior citizens are running rampant at a popular Central Florida retirement community.

Namesake of the Day

The nudist "activist" quoted here -- and this was just a Fark link; I wasn't even searching for that name.

These Required an Apology?

Compared to the buildup, aren't these a letdown?

(Maybe NSFW, but if these are NSFW then perhaps you should work elsewhere.)

This Called For A Pick-Up Line

(But the only other people in the room were attached, flaming, or both.)

Saturday afternoon in Downtown Santa Cruz, back room at Camouflage (comparable to Good Vibrations). Shapely brunette was returning defective merchandise.

She said a lady at the front of the store had told her she could get store credit, but the pretty-boy behind this counter had the authority only to exchange for the same item. So he had to get on the phone and explain the situation to someone, and his end of the conversation was a bit like the archetypical "pharmacy price-check" embarrassment situation. But she didn't look embarrassed; she had that look I imagine everyone gets when they have to wait in line for something and their wait is a mild inconvenience but only mild.

I have no idea whether the customer ultimately achieved satisfaction.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Apparently on MySpace it's possible to rank your friends from 1 to N.

I don't know this first-hand because I avoid MySpace for all the reasons you might guess. There aren't any valid reasons for me to use it, and the idea that I'd use it for invalid reasons (read: voyeurism, NOT actually meeting anyone) is just too creepy to contemplate.

Would You Rather...

After Delphin's post in this thread, compare T-God's first post to danzasmack's rejoinder.

(Warning: A bit risque.)

This Just In: Depressing Radio Station Spam Subject Line of the Day

(The listed "Sender" is a morning team that I find unlistenable.)

"Def Leppard & Journey Pre-Sale!"

Oh boy. I'll get right on that.

Speaking of things that make me feel ancient, many years ago (when the World Wide Web was young) I signed up for a personals web site that did things a bit differently than the current norms. Among other things, your username was pre-set for you as just your first name with some numbers appended (hence my e-mail handle and even post-tilde part of this blog's URL); people's ages would be grouped by five-year intervals: 18-20; 21-25; 26-30; etc.

At the time I was in the 21-25 interval, as were the women in my queries. (Profiles in the 18-20 range were almost nonexistent.) Now and then I'd look at the 26-30 interval just to expand my scope.

I am now too old to fit in the 26-30 interval.

Quote of the Day

It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
--Rita Rudner

Julia and I both agree with every aspect of this quote.

Is It Okay to Spoil an Old "Mad About You" Episode?

I saw the main plot point of "Out of the Past" (from Season 1) coming a mile away.

Incidentally, both Paul and Jamie would be less neurotic if either of them had a hobby. They have an embarrassing amount of spare time on their hands. As a blogger who also writes quiz questions, attends baseball games, etc., I'm quite jealous of their spare time.

Speaking of Paul's neuroses, given the way he reacted to that amateur video, there's no way in the world Lynn was nearly as into him as he was into her. Also, he's the kind of guy (that is he reminds me of me) who instead of having old flames would have old unrequited crushes.

I claimed to Julia that there's no way I'd do what Paul did in that episode. Subsequently I racked my brain to think of exceptions (and also whether the exceptions were flames or unrequiteds).

Nobody whom I actually dated would get that kind of reaction from me now (meaning no disrespect to anyone, it's mainly the lack of loose ends). Of the unrequiteds, probably a lot of idle curiousity about how their lives turned out but nobody who'd get the same reaction from me that Lynn got from Paul.

Thinking through almost a lifetime of unrequited crushes, I wound up with a grand total of three people I was infatuated with, whom I haven't seen in forever, where I would even plausibly have that kind of reaction. No matter how well you know me you're unlikely to guess more than one of them correctly.

(redacted)

Tasteless and inappropriate.

Guess He Just Wasn't Enough of a Man
Paraphrasing (here's the reference): "You either want to live or or you don't."

The Wit

Compared to Joe Wright I'm somewhat more vulgar, somewhat less dark, and a lot less spontaneous.

That said, we're both "The Wit" (rather than "The Idiot Savant").

(I am 52% dark, 19% spontaneous, 26% vulgar; you can see the rest at Joe's page or take the same quiz he and I took.)

Speaking of The Aristocrats

Now I understand why so many people think of Sarah Silverman as sexy. It's all about the outfit, the pose, and the delivery in that specific bit. She pretended to be sexy, and in a testament to her tremendous acting skills, she succeeded at it.

Welcome Interstate Managers

Sure you can always Google yourself, but the real fun is when a colleague Googles you on an overhead-projected computer for a legitimate work reason within a company meeting.

Maybe I gained up to four new readers today, who knows?

(Every result on the first page was either this site or someone else with my name.)

Obviously This Was the On-Line Matchmakers' Fault

Don't know about you but I stopped reading this article right at the first comma of the second paragraph.

It's sort of like Stella's groove aftermath.

UPDATE: Okay I lied. I skimmed further. "Anna Murray, a 39-year-old New York technology executive, knows the pitfalls of online dating. Her solution: She ran her Match suitors by her therapist."

[speechless]

Google: Nice One

I have yet to click on today's "Google Romance" link but it didn't take long for me to "get" what was really up. It's hard to top Pigeon Ranking but I assume this will come close.

If Julia didn't exist I'd have probably walked right into it.

UPDATE: Pigeon Rank is a funnier concept but I like the execution on Google Romance a lot better. These are hilarious.

Anthropomorophic Hilarity

This post from a card players' forum brought me to tears.

Re: Things said in chat that blow your mind and leave you speechless

Once witnessed two players debating online whether they would rather do the queen of hearts or the queen of diamonds - they got pretty heated and it degenerated to insults as each was certain his queen was somehow hotter than the other's.

States I Haven't Experienced After All

Based on Richard's comment on Joe's weblog (with which I've come to agree), my lifetime of U.S. travel is three states further away from completion than I thought.

Strike Indiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia from my list. Also, now I know for sure I've never been to Wisconsin.

Despite close calls in each case, Iowa and Utah both remain on the list. Both involve overnight stays on consecutive evenings (Council Bluffs, barely not making it to Omaha; Wendover, UT, after a minute or two of technically being in Wendover, NV).

New and Improved Utah Anecdote: The front desk at our hotel gave us free slot machine coins even though we would have had to cross a state line (i.e. walk several feet) to use them.

Iowa remains nondescript, even though the hotel chain in question (Comfort Inn? give or take), the chain where we ate breakfast, and the parking lot between the two are arguably almost as extraterritorial as the inside of a car. It's not as though the pavement and indoors in question were uniquely Iowan.

Wedding Stuff

Julia got us a hotel block at the Crowne Plaza.

As for the "other hotels of various quality," if you're convenient to the East Bay and bored, try driving past the All Suites Islander Motels. It's easy to miss but does have a neon sign if you know where to look. I'll describe the place's "discreet charm" and leave it at that. (We felt no need to stop for a closer inspection.)

If I were a better person I'd also blog on our wedding blog, or at least change the stylesheet so that the blog has the same color scheme we adopted for the main wedding page.

March 26, 1976

I knew someone with that birthdate. I wonder how this weekend's milestone will be celebrated. March 26, 1997, featured quite the party, so I'm told.

(By the way, don't let this entry fool you: I'm generally quite bad at (bothering to) remember people's birthdays.)

Google: For Love and For Lust

Mike has a shot in the dark. I suppose this has to have a higher success probability than those Craigslist "Missed Connections" posts.

While we're here, I should mention that my new favorite pr0n site (not that it's really intended to be such) is Google Image Search. There's a fine art to finding the non-obvious terms that will lead to high-quality lascivious (yet not repulsive) results. The trick seems to be to think in the language that adult web site proprietors use, and not in the language that simple-minded horny fellow searchers use. Oh, and for degree of difficulty restrict yourself to a single word (though admittedly phrases and related words cut to the chase more quickly).

By the way, how many words are there that you would honestly be afraid to type into an Image Search? Not fearful that the results would demoralize you but fearful of the consequences to you personally of typing that word? I claim that there's exactly one word too taboo to be typed on its own into an image search, along with four two-word phrases that are all variants on one concept.

Oh, as of 2003 there were (probably still are to this day) a handful of pr0n aggregator pages, just databases of links with on-page ads to make money. You could click on a keyword to see a list of links, of which way too many were to places that would completely mess up your machine if you used IE. Anyway, if you remember choice keywords from such a site then you can use GIS pretty effectively.

All of which is to say that the best GIS (in my opinion) for lascivious depictions of women is the brand name of a particular one-of-a-kind device. That device is an exercise for the reader.

Chick Lit

Julia went away this past weekend and complained when I got back that I'd never blogged. Apparently I don't blog when she's gone, yet when she's around I blog things instead of telling her directly.

As a former lit major she'd probably find this article of interest. We'll discuss it further in person.

By the way, I turned out to miss her terribly even though on a first order I didn't immediately think I did so much.

Either I missed her but thought "of course you miss your beloved but be practical and adjust for that" and so did make the mental adjustment, or I'm so absent-minded that I didn't immediately consciously miss her but subconsciously did so profoundly. Not sure whether this makes one a better or worse mate than direct first-order pining would.

My New Favorite Personal Claim To Fame

If this is really true then your head will explode. (I wonder if I have any possible way to verify this, or if I'm completely imagining it.)

So the other day I was casually poking around Fark and saw a picture of Fark founder Drew Curtis and had the faint glimmer of recognition. "He reminds me of that guy I was in the summer program with... that guy from Kentucky... named Drew... named Drew Curtis?!?"

Anyhow, unless I'm totally wrong about this, I am one of a several dozen people who've not only met Drew Curtis but also happened to meet him on the Duke campus.

This guy who I claim was Drew Curtis (but who may have been some other Drew from Kentucky) liked to use the phrase "piss off."

Other people I met from the same program include (but are not limited to) the Matthew Leach who I'm 95% sure is the same Matthew Leach who now writes for MLB.com. (Diehard Red Sox fan at least as of 1988-89.)

Open Thread

I haven't had much to blog in awhile, so take it away.

If you're stuck for a topic, confess to something truly picayune, something so ticky-tack that it almost feels like a waste of typing yet still is worth getting off your chest.

This Probably Never Happens To You

Two of my colleagues are dressed in good-looking hues today, one each blue and pink (the gender breakdown you'd expect).

I thought I was wearing my blue shirt today but instead I look down and it's the pink one. Hard to tell but probably the same shade of pink. My blue shirt was yesterday.

Change in Venue

We (Julia and I) just announced a major change here. I'll let my better half speak for us on the wedding blog when she gets a chance, but the short version is that this change represents good news. And even better, though the location changes, the date is the same, which means nobody will have saved that date in vain.

Farking Ribaldry

Australian tomfoolery.

UK nymph.

Neither comment thread has much to offer.

Celebrity Anti-Makeovers

There may have been more ruinous decisions than Rachael Ray changing the color of her hair, but I can't think of any.

Every time I see her new look, life is a tiny bit worse.

Shorter Ayn Rand

(This entry is in part a savage attack on a well-known, somewhat overrated sports columnist. For a much more direct, on-point, elegant, "needed to be said" critique of that same columnist, go here.)

8:04 -- The Sports Gal is excited because there's a code black on "Grey's Anatomy" tonight. Neither of us knows what this means.

(Note: I think God created "Grey's Anatomy" as a way to stick it to guys who watch football all day, then have to deal with girlfriends or wives who play the "Screw you, you're watching this with me, you spent all day watching football!" card on Sunday night. There's really no way out unless you're giving up any and all hope for sex later that night. This is why the ratings are so high, I'm convinced. Wait, am I sharing too much here?)

If pop culture even remotely reflects real life then 90% of relationships are completely gratuitously dysfunctional for exactly one particular reason: People are too selfish and clingy to give each other space.

Every TV commercial ever built on the theme "Wife went shopping and forced husband to come along" makes me want to scream for that very reason. No matter how much you love your significant other, if there's something your mate enjoys doing that you don't enjoy (or vice versa), there's a blindingly easy solution to this.

No matter how much you love someone, you don't "owe" them a single moment of your time, nor vice versa. Spend it together when both of you enjoy (or tolerate) whatever you're doing at least enough that your inherent enjoyment of being together itself makes it worthwhile. "If you loved me, you'd [X] with me" is never a valid test of the existence or quality of one's affection.

(Despite what you'd infer from this post, I do a fair number of things with my fiancee that I probably wouldn't have bothered with were it not for her interest. And vice versa. But there are all things to which I was willing to give benefit of the doubt. If I honestly "sorry but" lacked interest -- "Well, have fun, see you later.")

Bonus Curmudgeonly Thought(s)

THIS POST MIGHT BE FREQUENTLY UPDATED.

Jessica Simpson is unfit to hold Ali Landry's [female equivalent of a jockstrap].

Does nobody have ideas that are original yet appropriate?

Of all the reasons to despise Phil Simms, everyone knows the biggest one, right? (Think of Mickey Mouse.)

If the Mike Myers Cat in the Hat movie was (as an old roomate put it) the equivalent of "exhuming Theodore Geisel and defecating in his skull," what level of body fluid corresponds to that butchering of "The Places You'll Go"?

Between Bud and BK, I can't remember a more disappointing "first set of commercials just after the kickoff" bloc. Okay, "Magic Fridge" makes up for it.

Onion Archives

Victoria's latest reminded me of an Onion article that I tried to find but couldn't. While searching for it I found a lot of other great archival material, including this piece.

Do I remember right that the person identified as "[socialite]" was nowhere near as (in)famous then as now?

1990-91 Continued: Classmates

Why are those high school reunion web sites so popular when you can approximate the same results with a leading search engine?

Here's one of the reasons Music Theory class was so fun. Two anecdotes in particular made me think of him. Unfortunately for you the readers, they're both off-color.

Hmm, I suppose if he were truly successul he'd have an IMDB profile. Getting there, I imagine.

I Am Almost Russian

By forthcoming marriage, at least. Perhaps that's why I chafe at the idea of using the word "The" within variable names or function names.

Overheard

While waiting for an elevator two hours ago:

"My son and daughter are ten years apart. We let him participate in the delivery [sic] by choosing the decorations for the new nursery. The shade of wallpaper he chose is called Tundra, and so it turns out he also got to give the baby her name."

Parasite of the Day

Toxoplasma gondii. Plays both cats and rats for all they're worth.

The Other Cody's

Joanne Jacobs begins her book tour tonight. (It seems to be a very local tour.)

The passage that made this worth mentioning:
Update: I just realized there are two Cody's stores in Berkeley. I'll be at 2454 Telegraph Ave., not at the other location, which is the one I've been telling everyone about. Oy vey.

"The other location" (4th Street, just north of the University Avenue exit off 80/580) is central to the story of how Julia and I met. I haven't been there in awhile (no idea whether she has), though I haven't been to the El Torito in Jack London Square in awhile either (come to think of it that one closed several months ago).

Boid News

Is your mate cheating on you? Your parrot can help you find out.

My own mate and I share a great antipathy for "our feathered 'friends'", partly since so much of class Aves seems to have it in for her, often randomly divebombing straight at her head.

That said, I agree with Althouse (in the link) that if the guy's going to own a parrot in the first place, getting rid of it just because it reminds him of the girlfriend is no way to reward it for exposing her.

The UneExamined Life Is Not Worth Living

It says here that research confirms my longstanding belief that the old philosophical saying is almost 100% wrong.

In one study, mildly depressed college students were asked to spend eight minutes thinking about themselves or to spend the same amount of time thinking about mundane topics like "clouds forming in the sky."

People in the first group focused on the negative things in their lives and sunk into a worse mood. People in the other group actually felt better afterward, possibly because their negative self-focus was "turned off" by the distraction task.

I really like the subsequent advice:
If we are dissatisfied with some aspect of our lives, one of the best approaches is to act more like the person we want to be, rather than sitting around analyzing ourselves.

Yeah, this two hours after the "2005 in review" post, though you'll notice how brief that one is. My most self-absorbed annual recappage (years before weblogs existed) corresponded to years where I was already really sad in December but had had fantastic summers. After that, years where I was sad in December but hadn't had all that good a summer anyway. Years where I was quite happy in December anyway are the years that get the perfunctory-at-best recap.

2005 in Very Brief Review

Did I mention I'm engaged? By definition that makes a very good year. My parents and her parents like each other a lot, and all four parents love both of us.

Barring something unthinkable in the next 28 hours, this stands to be the first calendar year in which I was never once completely single. (A typical year in my life was spent entirely single, with nothing more serious than a date or two.)

Some highlights, all of them involving our shared life:
Valentine's Day - takeout sushi and an excellent DVD (I could tell you which one but I'd have to look up an old blog entry).

My birthday - surprise weekend cruise to Mexico with J and my parents.

July 4 weekend - San Diego, where it became clear to me that we'd become engaged imminently.

Her birthday - weekend up near Lake Shasta, where we did become engaged.

She directed Winnie the Pooh in February and Pippi Longstocking in September/October.

Aside from our shared life, my life in 2005 stayed pretty much exactly the same as 2004: Work, quiz-bowl, and so on. ICT swamped my March (we just did manage to see New Orleans in its former glory); HSNCT swamped both my April and my May. A successful 96-team tournament, with more involvement from me than any prior tournament had or any subsequent tournament will have.

(2006 HSNCT is two weeks before the wedding; I'll still be somewhat involved, of course...)

2006 promises wedding planning, a wedding, a honeymoon, and married life. More children's theater productions on her end; I presume I'll remain gainfully employed with gradually more tech-geek stuff.

(I write more perl, VBA, and hand-rolled SQL than my job description or place in the org chart would suggest, though not enough of any of it for this to really stand out.)

Last but not least, we watched two seasons of Arrested Development and two of Scrubs in the last half of 2005 alone; that has to count for something.

If I Ever Went on A Violent Spree

People who abandon pets for frivolous reasons would be my first N victims.

Reasons Why A Canadian Fetish May Not Be Healthy

(In no particular order.)

Avril
Alanis
FBoFW
Exhibitionist doorbell-answerers

I did know at least two Canadian math women in college. The two who come to mind had very different personalities.

Non sequitur (sneaking a second via-Fark link into one post): Stupidest restraining order ever.

Some People I'm Not Related To

(That I know of.)

Tammy Bruce, pundit recently prolific at Pajamas Media.

Isaac Bruce, NFL wide receiver.

Jay Bruce, Cincinnati Reds outfield prospect (often compared to Larry Walker despite being a Texan and not a Canadian).

Lenny Bruce, groundbreaking comedian. (It's a stage name anyway.)

Cousin Brucie, longtime DJ.

Me Or Not Me?

The formatting on this probably won't work and even if it does the comparison is probably overblown but here goes:

Tip of the cap to The Smart Bohemian, whose opinion of the Beethoven cult is dead-on. (And also to one or more members of the University of Chicago quiz team as of the mid-1990s, for first suggesting the comparison seen above. Right click the image if you don't recognize the composer (not Beethoven).)

Someone at The Onion is Evil

Do not -- repeat, do not -- do a web search on the first item mentioned for the Google reference within this infographic.

(I already knew what this referring to, having stumbled across it to my abject horror three years ago. I wonder how many people will stumble across it as a result of that infographic, and compound their agony by doing so at work.)

Please trust me that I don't mean this ironically either. I know full well that an entry like this all but amounts to attractive nuisance, although I imagine The Onion gets a bit more traffic than this does.

Mummycat

Wow.

Dead Pool Update

Rosa Parks, Max Schmeling, PJP2, and William Rehnquist all came through for me (and for every other person who put any thought into their picks).

Billy Graham, Andy Rooney, Fidel Castro, Paul Harvey, Walter Cronkite, Lady Bird Johnson, Gerald Ford, Abigail Van Buren, Wilford Brimley, Studs Turkel, and Ron Santo all have another month, though any of them who don't go in 2005 I'll stick with in 2006.

That still means at least four new faces to brainstorm over the next month.

What Happens in Beirut, Stays in Beirut

The Las Vegas of the Middle East (or Amsterdam, take your pick).

I knew a Lebanese woman in college (actual ethnicity, not in the Ellen sense). She had an active lifestyle.

"You're going to die anyway..."

"...so why not in Cambodia?"

What would Spalding Gray think?

X-Mas

My parents are coming to town for an end-of-year wedding. They get in a couple days after the 25th. I think that means this is the first time I'll go an entire December 25 not in their company. (Many times December 25 has been either my incoming flight or return flight, getting around blackout dates.)

Of course (not to get all schmaltzy but) the point is our own self-contained family unit will be together, the first of many holidays wherein I get to be head of household.

(That said, I suspect more often than not we'll take future kids to see their grandparents on Christmas, or invite grandparents over or such.)

Pathetic Plaintiffs

How much money would you need to win in a lawsuit for it to offset your broadcasting the world your inability to get a real date?

Rhinoceros

I've had the Smashing Pumpkins song "Rhinoceros" stuck in my head ever since Live 105 played it last night. It's infectious but after too long becomes infuriating, a lot like having Bolero stuck in your head.

Nine years ago yesterday was the "Somebody call the National Guard, we're killing the Patriots!" Denver-New England blowout. I happened to think of that in traffic yesterday right as Live 105 was playing "Rhinoceros." Later that afternoon (in 1996) I was idly watching the 4:15 game on Fox (at Arizona) and got the phone call where someone who'd grown up in western Pennsylvania asked what I was up to, heard that I was watching football, and using her own life experience wanted to end the conversation right there in the mistaken belief that I was raptly focused on the game.

That same person had gone to a Smashing Pumpkins concert earlier that month and had asked around for someone to come with her. At the time I outspokenly derided the Pumpkins (all I really knew of them yet was "1979" and the various ways in which Billy Corgan can come off as a poseur), so of course I didn't go. I realized in the car yesterday that now literally every Pumpkins song reminds me of the same person despite no logical reason to support such a sweeping generality.

(My hearing "33" after a study break that same day figures into this, as does a Mellon Collie t-shirt worn (not by me) to that same study break.)

Yesterday itself, as the song was played, I was on the way to pick up flowers for Julia's mom since it was her birthday. It's nice to think of November 17 as Julia's mom's birthday and leave it at that.

She (Julia) asked me, pretty recently, whether I missed living in Boston. This related to the idea that I supposedly picked my law school with the express intent of staying in Boston (admittedly that was part of it). Words can't describe the extent to which I absolutely positively do not miss living in Boston.

Bringing this post full-circle, this past weekened Live 105 professed to have an "I Hate the '90s" weekend, in which they would play absolutely no '90s music and in fact their DJs would at regular intervals bring up specific 1990s pop cultural elements with the express purpose of deriding them.

Cheerleader Link of the Day

By the time the week is out, you will have heard about this story approximately 900 times, give or take a dozen. Let me be the (estimated) eighth person to share it with you.

That's pantheon-level weird news, up there with the equestrian incident in Washington state (though I was instantly tired of that one) and the Most Disgusting Story Ever (Dallas, about a week ago, self-serve pastry stations were involved and I refuse to any speak further of it; trust me, if you haven't heard about it yet, you will, and your life will immediately be a tiny bit worse).

That Infamous Buried Lede

It says here I only have 7.5 months left of single life.

Chili

Greg is right to be dumbfounded.

So at every station at least one person around me asks, "Is this spicy? I can't eat it if it's spicy." People, people. It. Is. Chili. I'm not saying Guatemalan insanity peppers are a requirement in each crock, but perhaps you'd be better served judging a corn chowder cookoff.

In other /^\w*i\wi$/ news, when you get a phone message, does your fiancee ever ask you "What did he say?" Does it ever turn out that before even listening, you know what he actually said was "Tiki Tiki Tiki!"

Even with the five Brett Favre interceptions, Sunday was a red letter day for the Tonganoxie Kings fantasy football team. For a team in a redraft league with an above-average owner, Tongie gets an insane degree of repeat offenders. Maybe just Favre and Tiki, but Favre and Tiki alone are enough to set the tone. Check that: Uncle Rod is on board, plus I think Chad's had every year of safety Roy Williams's career.

Cheerleaders...

Is there anything they can't do?

Pyramid, With Urban Clues But Painfully White Contestants

(Just off the top of my head. I'd be surprised if I were the first person to take things this direction though.)

"A pinball machine?!? [pause] Oh... jewelry, watches... Aki the gardner when he wants me to give him his lake-lake!"

"With my hands on both ends of the pin as I flatten the dough... with a quick flick of the wrist and some topspin to make sixes come up more often."

bovine musicology

Julia dreamt last night that she was studying Bovine Musicology at UC Davis and had to teach these cows how to sing Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven."

When I woke up she pointed out angrily that cows can't sing.

Happy Birthday

An old acquaintance from college is 26 years old today.

Oddly Alluring Link of the Day

Prom dress rugby.

We Will Have Four Children

We will name them Rudi, LaMont, Mewelde, and Tatum.

We will tour the country as a family R&B band.

Giffen Good Sighting

One sex worker...explained why she no longer offered her favorite clients free sex or cheaper rates: "They pretend to be flattered, but they never come back!...There was one client I had who was so sexy, a tai-chi practitioner, and really fun to [f'k]. Since good sex is a rare thing, I told him I'd see him for $20 (my normal rate is $250). Another guy, he was so sexy, I told him "[?] for free." Both of them freaked out and never returned...They don't believe they can have no-strings-attached sex, which is why they pay. They'd rather pay than get it for free."
--Viviana Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy, via Marginal Revolution.

(Cleaned up a bit by the secondary source, but as a matter of taste I don't like "****").

Did I Ever Mention How Much I Hate This Time of Year?

There's a fine dividing line between my favorite time of year and right about now.

It's the difference between "dog days of summer" and "back to school," between "NFL training camps have begun but only the diehard fans care" and "suddenly football is everywhere."

If pre-season football is underway then my time-of-year enjoyment is in rapid decline; if hurricane season is underway, all the moreso (this became bloggable as a result of my checking in on Rita).

I suppose my actual least favorite time of year is in the January/Feburary range, favorite is July to early August. Two local maxima coincide with the World Series and Christmas; there's a rapid decline in time-of-year satisfaction from mid-August to the end of September and a slower declines from the end of the World Series until Christmas Eve and from Christmas until things bottom out in mid-January, and a long steady rise that begins when pitchers and catchers report for spring training and keeps going onward and upward for nearly half a year.

Family Guy Epiphany

The show would be much better if they either dropped all tampon jokes or at least stopped bludgeoning us over the head with them.

That said, there's a subtle yet astonishing obscene connotation to the spit take scenes from Sunday's ep, a connotation that didn't even occur to me until days later.

Great Salacious Marketing Campaigns

Have I mentioned the Dove girls here yet? If not, it's probably because the Slate article on those billboards said all that needed to be said.

Meanwhile, have you seen ESPN's fantasy football promos, with the ladies in pink pajamas, getting all they can out of the play on words on "fantasy." Given how ridiculous it is to call these "fantasy" sports, it's about time this happened.

(Where did I see the joke about the man who's so into these games that when his wife offers to play out his biggest fantasy, his first reaction is to wonder how she could possible manage to get Albert Pujols on his team.)

Forget Lindsay Lohan

When did Scarlett Johansen decide to ruin her face and shouldn't someone have done an intervention?

20 Weekend Notes

Basically in chronological order:

1. The Berkeley-Sacramento corridor is a parking lot on Friday afternoons. (Fortunately it clears right up as soon as you veer off onto 505.)

2. Vallejo, California, has the largest Safeway we've ever seen. Unfortunately, the tomatoes and pepperoncini from their sandwich counter tasted as though someone had sprayed them from the counter cleaning fluid bottle instead of the water bottle. Having not lived in Concord for quite awhile now, I'd forgotten what it felt like to step out into 98-degree afternoon.

3. You know you're going somewhere off the beaten path when the directions call for you to exit from the interstate onto a 4-lane highway that becomes a street whose name changes, turn at two particular traffic lights, follow some other two-lane road for 10 miles, and then turn onto another road (ignoring the "Not A Through Street" sign) that winds uphill another 4 miles.

4. Yep, it's a castle. And a B&B. Nowhere near this body of water, but that's okay. The caverns would still be within an hour's drive. And hey, despite my temptation I didn't book us here (note the special on-page message targeted at bass fishermen).

5. I've gotten into the bad habit of driving places with my sunglasses on, then getting out of my car with the sunglasses still on and my "real" glasses still in their case in the car. Gets a little inconvenient. No worries: I just spent my first few minutes in the castle glasses-free.

6. Our spacious, rose colored suite did indeed feature a cozy sitting area surrounded by windows overlooking the forest and South Fork Mountain. Not to mention a CD player for which J chose to play this CD (The Pachelbel Canon with Ocean Sounds).

8. Shasta County prohibits B&B operators from serving lunch or dinner. However, a Snack consisting of chili, cornbread, and tritips from the grill really hit the spot.

9. Not much happens in Redding, California. Top headline in Saturday's newspaper: Fountains Keep Fido From Feeling Foul. (i.e. if you run across an outdoor water fountain in Redding, don't drink from it - you don't know who's been in it).

10. It's part of Red State America, though. I got gas from a Shell station whose display showed off this mangling of a Reagan quote: [original was all caps] "Government's take on the economy: If it moves, tax it, if it keeps moving, regulate it, if it stopes [sic] moving, subsidize it."

11. So yeah, those caverns. "Three adventures in one," they say. Nice scenery on the tour.

12. We had an errand to run that entailed unsuccessful stops at a Wal-Green's, a Rite-Aid, two standalone jewelry stores, and a mall jewelry store, before finding the mall jewelry store that had what we needed (at no charge!). Such great service I decided to buy something as well. (It was someone's birthday that day anyway.)

13. After the caverns but before successfully completing our errand, we partook of a Marie Callender's Early Bird dinner special. For a chain restaurant designed by white people, they had surprisingly good chicken quesadilla. Early Bird dinner specials are a great way to feel old, until you realize it's actually just your very late lunch.

14. The same FM station that carried feed from the Giants radio broadcast, had feed from the A's radio broadcast. Both Saturday and Sunday, every time the signal came through the A's were scoring some more runs in/on Kansas City. (What's better than facing Jose Lima? Lima being relieved by Jimmy Gobble.)

15. Saturday's snack: Spaghetti with sauce, bits of chicken, olives, and fantastic parmesan cheese. While Friday's snack involved a full table, this night the other guests were all either involved in a wedding or dining out elsewhere. Just the two of us for spaghetti, as the innkeeper made it clear that she was retiring to her bedroom and we'd have the castle to ourselves all evening.

16. What do you do on a Saturday night with the castle to yourself? Play Scrabble, of course. Several turns in a row I had SINGLE-*, but could never find a bingo and finally settled for a 35-point play involving SINGLE and a triple-word score. Got 30+ points each of my next four turns, which is good given that I ended with unplayable Q-V and had to squeak out the win.,

17. The castle's DVD collection included Big Fish. That movie might get its own blog entry later on. (We ended up liking it a lot.)

18. Would you trust the yogurt at a TCBY that shares a roof with a Quiznos and a 76 station? Apparently we did.

19. Vacaville, California, has outlet stores. I needed clothes of a smaller size than I'd been wearing. The Gap outlet was frightening (mainly the crowds and demographic). In contrast the Eddie Bauer outlet and Haggar outlet were like ghost towns. Is The Gap just that trendy a brand?

20. So after the quiet weekend in a place with no Internet and no cell phone reception, the parents threw J's big birthday dinner with some of her and their closest friends. Good times, great catered Russian food. (In place of the usual home-cooked Russian food.)

Mary Richards or George Costanza?

Nearly every time Craig has run a single elimination tournament among pop cultural entities, I've vehemently disagreed with at least one of the consensus finalist choices.

This time, though, the voting collective absolutely nailed TV's two best characters. (Julia vehemently disagrees with me about Costanza, who admittedly has little redeeming virtue aside from his being so darned entertaining.)

I suspect I will be swayed to vote for Mary, but I'm still on the fence as the one is a little bit too ironic for the #1 spot and the other one not quite ironic enough. Still, great work by everyone on the top two (including the good bracketing that they were in opposite halves, by no means guaranteed inasmuch as Mary was only a #4 seed).

Although it's hard to picture Mary Richards and George Costanza in the same setting (much less "together"), put together they do remind me disturbingly much of my own household.

Fark Roundup (Sexual Overtones Edition)

Alarming story out of Utah, where whoever decided to charge the eight-year-old boy should be fired. Then again, I don't have much sympathy for the mother, given that her boy being charged was a direct consequence of her taking it seriously enough to go straight to protective services (rather than, say, the babysitter's own parents). The saddest part of all is that I'm sure at least one erotic story has been posted to Usenet with a similar premise. In fact I'm sure I've read steamier involving the same ages/genders/situation.

Shifting gears completely: The real intended audience for this quiz isn't the jerks but rather the people who hate them. Only #8 applies to me; but then only #3 reminds me of anyone I work with.

Thanks to my quasi-management role I had to do some on-line training today as mandated by the State of California -- some really basic stuff about avoiding a hostile work environment. Quick solipsistic observations:
1. In my professional life, my immediate work surroundings have been overwhelmingly male through the years, to the point where I can't envision any particular pair of women who would interact with each other in some way that impacted my career.

2. Those many men and relatively fewer women have been unfailingly courteous across gender lines.

3. Strictly within the menfolk, I've overheard some astonishingly bawdy comments over the years, borderline flirtatious (whose comedic value I suppose stems from the implicit assumption that speaker and target are both straight). Nobody ever complained that I know of.

They still paddle in Mississippi schools. The permission slip mentioned at the end is interesting. I believe my elementary school had an opt-out (not opt-in) system, and at least one classmate whose parents did indeed opt out. He was teased mercilessly, at least partly for the very reason that his parents had made him paddle-proof.

Coming full circle: the life of a Florida undercover vice cop: You can indulge in the flesh and arrest the lovely ladies who titillated you.

Attire

Good Lileks screed here, rebutting a WaPo columnist who seems to think that the Roberts family dressed too well for the Supreme Court nomination announcement.

I don't think the kids should have been there to begin with (it was past a typical five-year-old's bedtime; no wonder his son was hyper), but given that they were, they were dressed appropriately.

(On the other hand, I can't believe that a college athletic team's choice of footwear for a White House visit became a sociopolitical issue last week. Maybe I'm just a guy, but the differences in open-toed women's footwear are so slight that why wouldn't you go with the massive comfort in a situation where they'll be inconspicuous anyway?)

Really this post serves to repeat this Lilek's quote:
when it comes to dressing the kids, it’s quite possible they look at parents who get on airplanes in flip-flops with 12-year old daughters who have the word JUICY spelled out on their behinds, and they actually do think they’re better than those parents.

He's wrong about flip-flops, but I will openly question the sanity of any parent who buys their kids clothing with "juicy" or "naughty" or whatever else you can think of on their backsides.

Unfortunate Photo of the Day

Did you spot the most embarrassing element of this one? (Don't look at the walking woman, though her presence makes an all the more alarming juxtaposition.)

What Adjective Best Describes Naked British People?

Pasty.

The Couture of Pedagogy

Apparently some teachers don't know how to dress themselves.

[As opposed to our humble narrator's own take on "business casual"?!?]

N.B. I frequently wear shorts to work. Not just frequently, >90% of the time. By sheer coincidence, not today, but usually. My pants of choice are Dockers, usually tan; my shorts of choice are knee-length and cargoish, also usually tan. Add in a short-sleeve knit polo shirt.

I realized the other day that many of my workplace peers dress overwhelmingly alike: Jeans, tucked in t-shirt, and unbuttoned button-front t-shirt to go over the shirt. They all look like they're about to take the stage for a rock concert (oddly appropriate for the specific workplace); I tend to look as though I'm about to go take a potential client golfing.

I Call Shenanigans

This isn't even plausible.

The Hookers of Madison Street

Not quite the Waller novel...

Sex Column Fatigue

Remember when sex columns in college newspapers were a fad? Maybe they still are. Maybe I have weird perspective from reading Glenn Reynolds going back several years to when either Slate or Salon had a sex columnist that (he claimed) was inferior to a UC-Berkeley sex columnist.

Anyhow, this Wired piece comes to my attention courtesy of Fark. Superb lead sentence for a piece like this -- certainly grabs the reader's attention.

And yet... on a moment's more reflection I can't think of anything less sexy than the article's content, nor more overrated (given what the technology actually consists of) than slapping together a password protected folder and some adult-themed media player skins.

Never has the intersection of sex and the Internet seemed less appealing to me.

She Just Needed the Touch of a Man?

That's one way to find out you're straight despite intending to be otherwise.

While the single specific data point recalls the old canard about a lesbian who just needs to find the right man, it actually demonstrates why that idea is generally false: She immersed herself in a world where the expectation was that men love men and women love women, but her surroundings couldn't overcome her innate identity. Kind of a mirror image of what I assume happens to most gay people. This probably rebuts both the people who think sexuality is a choice and (more importantly) the people who treat it as a political statement.

Communication Skills: A Scathing Self-Review

Thinking about this weekend (overanalyzing; reading too much into feedback; and so on) I realized that of the two times I personally stood in front of a room full of game officials I brought nothing to the table, in fact less than nothing.

Sunday's best case would have been to print out the playoff staff assignments (as done), give Tim W. a quick greeting, retire to the playoff stat room, and tell Tim to report back if anyone no-showed. In the particular case nothing bad would have come of it, and a bad that happened in real life would've been prevented. I suppose in the one case where a moderator brought his personal scorekeeper but the printout listed him with a different scorekeeper (and didn't list "his"), something would have had to be sorted out.

Friday's best case: Again, list of people plus list of rooms yields printed out assignments without much trouble, certainly more of a personal comfort zone than choosing people arbitrarily. There's the twin problems of "What if there's a no show?" and "Shouldn't people have incentive to be prompt?" but as problems go those are small.

As much as I'd like to claim well-written prose (or bask in the compliments on same) by far the best communicating I ever do takes the form of an Excel workbook, or printouts from some.

E-mails (not to mention blog posts) run into the quantity problem, at least for me. In person... I never thought of myself as someone who gets stage fright, certainly not someone who's afraid in advance of public spectacle, but on the spur of the moment I freeze up in the darnedest situations. Size of the crowd isn't even a factor: I'm surprisingly bad at one-on-one or one-on-two conversation.

Really if I know what's good for me, I'll plan/delegate well enough that ever speaking to someone at these tournaments is unnecessary for me (aside from reading questions; on that note stat program technology and personnel have reached the point where the only time I'm "needed" is HSNCT Sunday stat room, and even at that I'm sure I underestimate how replaceable I am).

90% of who I used to be

The last time I was my current size or smaller, I had yet to move to California.

On Language

It's not quite right to say the more I write the less I care about my choice of words. I care very much about using exactly the right words, though I want to express an idea as clearly, concisely, and quickly as possible. It should take as little time as possible not only for me to write but also for someone to read it and understand it.

This came up yesterday in a conversation about my writing compared to the prose of someone else I know (not a blogger) who is deeply infatuated with word choices and in particular with erudition. He wants his writing, I think, to be challenging yet rewarding. The last thing I want my writing to be is challenging (at least not the delivery; of course the content should challenge), though of course it shouldn't be boring either. You should say "I really like Matt's ideas" (even if you violently disagree with them) or "nice choice of topics" (even if you honestly wouldn't have cared a whit about baseball) and take the actual words for granted.

Cutting to the chase, I think we all know people whose vocabulary and writing style make something like this funny. (Those people would vehemently defend themselves by noting that their word choices are right whereas the Thesaurusized song lyric parodies are comically wrong choices.)

Ranking the Diet Plans

I'll believe this article (via Fark). The points system rocks.

Fiber is good for you; fiber's main side effect is also very good for your body. Eating enormous portions (always my main pitfall) is of course bad for you.

Also recommended by this blog: Take 4-mile walks along the beach. (I suppose 4-mile runs would be all the better.) Don't eat in the 4-hour interval before bed. Use your "extra" points only as extra points - they're there as a cushion; if you budget them then that defeats the purpose and you'll inadvertently exceed even your cushion.

"Activity points" are all well and good; if you're not earning them, you should be. But if you are earning them, pat yourself on the back and pretend they didn't exist. Unless you're about to collapse from exhaustion, you don't need to convert those.

Of course getting on my high horse is a good way to jinx things this week. Knock on wood that the progress continues, though,

That Would Be The Butt, Bob

Link via Fark, to a gentlemen who probably isn't helping his cause any more than his adversary is helping hers.

Seven years ago I had a homophobic co-worker who claimed that anal sex was "gross" if the person on the receiving end were male but not if the person on the receiving end were female. The only relevance was that he made vocally and gratuitously anti-gay comments in a conversation about, of all things, knuckleball pitchers (which sounds like should be a euphemism but isn't).

(Hmm... "receiving" is a funny word for sex acts involving a penis but no vagina; the "receiver" of oral sex has the penis in question but the "receiver" of anal sex doesn't.)

I think anuses and sex are a poor mix for either women or men but that's just my taste; there's no good reason to generalize from that preference to social policy, much less gender-specific social policy.

Mouths and sex are a different story. I claim I'd recoil at a male mouth but with no obvious way of knowing. Nothing about the practice seems gross to me, though again any social or political policy based on that reaction would be absurd.

10 Questions

Inspired by this entry, though my spur-of-the-moment answers seem not to be so creative:

1. What is your favorite word?

serenity

2. What is your least favorite word?

cunt (drag your mouse over it)

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Intelligence and dedication.

4. What turns you off?

Dishonesty.

5. What is your favorite curse word?

Bitch (only when applied gender-neutrally).

6. What sound or noise do you love?

The vibes in Ella Fitzgerald's "Midnight Sun."

7. What sound or noise do you hate?

Fake gross sound sound effects (as heard on the radio etc.)

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Operations manager

9. What profession would you not like to do?

Sales

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

"Welcome."

Self-Esteem

Even before seeing this self-absorbed article (the one the post links to, not the post itself) I had a "Things I hate about my support group" write-up kicking around in my head, with idle speculation about how much of the meeting is a self-esteem trick for the masses.

(I'm smart and quick-witted, and heaven knows deeply pretentious about same, but I get antsy sitting in a room of people where "I stopped using my car to go to the grocery store" is a zen-level epiphany greeted with applause and noisemakers, a room where a group leader will do a whole presentation on variety and then at the end present a riddle about the "spice of life" to which other people in the room make wild guesses of "salt" or "garlic.")

On the support group front, I suppose I can't argue with results. Five weeks in, and on pace to hit my first target in two more weeks. In theory this same pace would put me at my final goal four months from now - in theory.

On the self-esteem front, I too fall short, though apparently not the way most people do. It seems as though most people will low self-esteem have their esteem lifted surprisingly easily. For me, there's a perfectionism problem going. Somewhere here was a musing on perfectionism that I wanted to link to but now can't find. Never mind, it was actually here:

i'm a generalist whose brand of perfectionism involves living life perfectly, not doing minute tasks perfectly.

Hey Ladies

Looking for a single cute-geek?

I doubt Mike's the only single guy on my blogroll (or even the only single cute-geek), but the actual prose on the linked page (as of the timestamp of this post) seemed to call for the plug.

(Not to mention #FFCCFF as a text color.)

Tying this post to the one below it, I could never put "Hey Ladies" on a superlative song list, but whenever I think of it (much less listen to it), the thing burrows its way into my head for hours on end.

"She's got a gold tooth - you know she's hardcore. Show you a good time, then she'll show you the door."

"Man Date"

Brian has exactly the right attitude about this "man date" article that apparently became the talk of overeducated social circles recently.

This, Brian's prose in particular, reminds me uncannily of my life as of the late 1990s, when for a couple years on end I had a weekly engagement to dine out with a male friend, alternating between various mid-level chain restaurants (most notably the TGIF on Newbury Street).

Conversely, a female friend and I would go through stretches of seeing a lot of each other, flanked by stretches of awkwardness whenever I made an ass of myself.

Guess which one of the two I longed for romantically? (I'd write "was attracted to," but if you think of it sexually, particularly if you think of it only sexually, then you get a woefully incomplete picture.) By extension, guess which one of the two I'd delude myself into thinking I was "dating"?

There seem to be two mutually reinforcing cycles: If it didn't occur to me to think of a guy in a romantic/sexual way, then it would never occur to me NOT to see him socially one-on-one. We'd see a lot of each other, but I'd still utterly fail to think of him in a romantic/sexual way.

The only thing that'd prevent me from a "man date" would be if somewhere alone the line I already worried about giving the man himself the false impression of a romantic/sexual subtext. Even at that, isn't the relevant issue totally what you and your friend think? If what other people think matters enough to you that the situation becomes awkward then I'd suggest you weren't really that close as friends anyway.

There's one, and only one, distinction that I see, illustrated by example: Every couple years I've gone up to Portland and spent a couple days with Corwyn. We'll go to a ballgame, get a drink, rent a movie, whatever. When I did this as a single guy, one particular night I remember thinking, "This is a nice evening. Too bad there's zero chance of my hooking up with someone." [Implicitly, of my hooking up with someone female.] By contrast if it were a female friend I were visiting for a couple of days as a single guy, the thought would be: "This is a nice evening; I wonder if there's any chance we'll hook up?"

Am I wrong?

Links: Obscure Store Portion

(Main page here...)

Pitfalls of the ex-dominatrix... I'm typically less sympathetic to employment law plaintiffs than most people, but this lady has a very strong case.

On the other hand, this lady has a really weak case. Res ipsa loquitur ("the facts speak for themselves"), I'd say odds are overwhelming that she staged the finger thing. People who do this are among the lowest forms of life on Earth and deserve the worst possible fate. I'm tempted to eat at Wendy's sometime just to do what I can to counteract their effect.

What cops look like when they've been tasered. Interesting, useful exercise. On a tangent: There's at least one reasonably good erotic story on Usenet based on an analogous exercise in a different line of work (the actual line of work involved in the Usenet story is an exercise for the reader).

The obligatory Star Wars story.

I'm deeply annoyed that people made this a political issue. He wasn't hiding a damn thing. If he had mentioned his line of work, then you could justifiably bring the alleged grossness of various piercings in as a campaign issue, otherwise you're just being a busybody.

This is even more annoying.

Two Parental Notes

Happy birthday Mom!

My dad is doing a 15-mile bike ride for the American Cancer Society. His personal page is here (the URL redirects to a page on http://www.walkandrollchicago.org/).

A New Traditional Holiday Meal!

Todays' "Get Fuzzy" was really sneaky - if it weren't for the fourth panel, the real joke would have slipped right past me. I love it.

The Latest Meme

As seen all over the place, including here:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?

Obviously Fahrenheit 451 itself, on the theory that maybe the infinite recursion could infinitely postpone the catastrophe.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yes - Lisa Simpson.

The last book you bought is:

Depending on how you time Amazon pre-orders, the sixth Harry Potter book.

The last book you read is:

Baseball Prospectus 2005 (yes, essentially cover to cover)

What are you currently reading?

Weblogs.

Five books you would take to a deserted island.

Is "Thomas's Guide to Practical Shipbuilding" a real book or just a notably clever answer to variants on that question?

Otherwise, assuming I could easily return from the deserted island when I wished, off the top of my head:
Atlas Shrugged
A Tale of Two Cities
Shakespeare's First Folio (is there in fact an anthology with most or all of his plays?)
Look Homeward Angel
Infinite Jest

(None of which I've read - other than a handful of Shakespeare plays - but that's the idea, to read new things.)

Thoughts From A Sunday Walk

For about a month, Joe and I were of different decades. During that time we were messenging at the same time once and I remember telling him that instead of regretting the things he didn't do, he could take solace that he now has ten years to procrastinate on the same.

Thinking about that advice as applied to myself made me happy. Had that revelation while reading the Sunday paper and sitting in a comfy Starbucks chair, the exact same Starbucks corner in which several months ago Joe and I were reading a Sunday paper when he mentioned (verbatim), "Something called Jake Westbrook was just named to the All-Star team."

Well, it didn't have the hyperlink when he said it.

Sample size irony: In the bookstore a half-block from the Starbucks, I opened this book to a random page where I found Tony LaRussa obsessing that three ex-Pirates the Cubs had just acquired were a combined 19-for-42 against that night's starter, Garrett Stephenson. "Dangit, LaRussa, don't you know anything about sample size bias?!?" I thought to myself, shutting the book and putting it back in disgust. Maybe I'd have liked the book more had I opened it to each of 4-5 random pages.

We just spent a combined total of at least two hours walking, in a four-hour span. Also, I had 12 points worth of sushi/sashimi (well, 10 of fish, 2 of salad dressing on the "free" salad, but 0 of rice because I didn't touch the bowl of rice) at the best sushi place in Alameda (arguably best in the Bay Area).

One More Non-White-Male "Voice"

http://onceadored.blogspot.com/

Words can't describe... Jeff Jarvis (who of course inspired the post right below this one) critiques it plenty well enough.

Drinking Joke

What follows is an e-mail forward that I'd seen before but still among the top 2% (by quality) of all e-mail forwards.

Reminded me of some of the ladies on ship, not even the (at least) two bachelorette parties so much as the random femme-packs you'd see on deck now and then, uniformly hammered, talking loudly to each other, at least one of them nursing a penis-shaped beer bong.

(Hammered women so far outnumbered hammered men that I'd say if you're single, male, and in a dry spell, it behooves you to find a friend or several and make a group weekend cruise of it. Don't go alone, though - that's creepy.)

Why females should avoid a "girl's night" after they
are married:

The other night I was invited out for a night with
"the girls." I told my husband that I would be home
by midnight, "I promise!"

Well, the hours passed and the margaritas went down
way too easy. Around 3 a.m., a bit loaded, I headed
for home. Just as I got in the door, the cuckoo
clock in the hall started up and cuckooed 3 times.
Quickly, realizing my husband would probably wake
up, I cuckooed another 9 times. I was really proud
of myself for coming up with such a quick-witted
solution (even when totally Smashed), in order to
escape a possible conflict with him.

The next morning my husband asked me what time I got
in, and I told him "Midnight".
He didn't seem pissed off at all. Whew! Got away
with that one!

Then he said, "We need a new cuckoo clock."

When I asked him why?, he said, "Well, last night
our clock cuckooed three times, then said, "Oh.
shit.", cuckooed 4 more times, cleared it's throat,
cuckooed another 3 times, giggled, cuckooed twice
more, and then tripped over the coffee table and
farted."

30

My birthday surprise wasn't Los Angeles so much as the Port of Los Angeles.

Coming soon: Notes about the cruise. Quick tidbits already:

Ensenada is a nice Baja coastal city whose reason for being seems to be cruise ship service.

Useless trivia: In my passport photo (taken in 1996), you can clearly see a baseball team name and part of the logo on my t-shirt - which team? (It's really random; there's no obvious reason. If it's the t-shirt I think it is, there are actualy TWO teams on the shirt.)

Astonishingly low bar tab compared to how much I drank, much less astonishing when I think of how many drinks were free or bought by other people.

Best Amazon Delivery Ever

(At least in terms of delivery to me.)

Aforementioned iPods.
I Love Lucy: Season 3 (includes "Ricky Minds the Baby" with his Spanglish version of Little Red Riding Hood)
Two baseball books (one of which is BP 2005)
A new clothes hamper.

"Mind if I blog our material goods?"

"No... but couldn't you just call instead?"

"Well, who would I call?"

"Exactly."

(Probably an apt comment on whether this entry is worthwhile.)

Caption of the Day

Go here and search the page for "Drew Barrymore." (Top caption as I type this, may not still be on top when you see it.)

Runaway Coulter Effect?

Who is that ass-ugly model sporting conservative T-shirts on various of the web sites I read (including Fark), and who on Earth decided she'd make a good model? "Equine" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Ten Things: My Edition

(As with all such lists, these aren't necessarily the ten most interesting things I've done, though they're the most interesting things I not only could blog but also thought of to blog.)

1. Gone to law school, only to spend the summer after my 1L year in an overnight job getting paid to process baseball statistics. Returned to the same job after 2L and 3L.

2. On at least four occasions, led the stat room of either an entire 64-team national championship quiz tournament or at least one division thereof. (Yes, both Craig and Mike have similar experience; what about the rest of you?)

2a. Organized a pair of quiz tournaments (one academic, one trash) that took place three days before I took the bar exam. Discovered the unfortunate timing when I asked a player if he'd be attending and that player declined on account of said bar exam. (Unlike me, I assume Answer Guy passed his...)

3. Covered an NHL game for a wire service, including access to both teams' postgame locker rooms highlighted by a mostly naked Martin Brodeur answering interview questions in broken English. (Yeah, Cooch blows this out of the water...)

4. Played chess at a Canadian collegiate team tournament as Harvard's first board, then chess at the Pan Am as Boston University's first board, then chess in New Jersey as BU's fourth board with teammates of Italian, Belarussian, and Russian heritage.

5. Won a high school quiz-bowl national championship on a team with my sister, then won a college quiz-bowl national championship with her on the team we beat in the final.

6. Gone undefeated in 17 lifetime games at CBCI nationals. (Unless some other team has gone undefeated in recent years, I hold this distinction alone, as all three of my teammates from that year played on subsequent CBCI NCT teams, though all three of them topped me on PPG in '95. We were all between 40 ppg and 22.5 ppg.)

7. Gone to baseball's Winter Meetings in seach of a job, and - at a forum sponsored by Baseball America - asked Sandy Alderson a question tough enough to make Scott Boras (also on stage) smirk.

8. Strategically dressed in baby blue sweater and white slacks, snuck out of a college journalism conference on the first amendment, taken a Manhattan subway train, and walked right into a college football stadium, trumpet case in hand, to sneak into the halftime show of a college band whose school I didn't even go to. (Sight-read the music over some other trumpeter's shoulder, faked it as best I could for formations...) Led other members of that band to believe I was an alumnus who'd managed the band a few years earlier.

8a. In postgame festivity, gotten wasted along the banks of the Hudson(?) River, consuming so much that nobody would sit next to me on the Greyhound bus back to Boston and even by the time I got back to my dorm I still purportedly smelled like a brewery.

9. Been referred to as "editor cum puppet" (all normal typeface in the original; by not italicizing the middle word I claim they inadvertently made the reference obscene) in a Harvard Crimson staff editorial for my work on a libertarian/conservative alt-paper.

10. Done contract work at $100/hour, then eighteen months later done contract work for $20/hour. (Which one involved Java programming and which involved Excel tricks is an exercise for the reader.)

Ten Things: Julia Edition

A new twist on the old meme - here are ten things I know Julia to have done (my "knowledge" is second-hand on some) that most of you haven't.

1. Directed a children's play.
2. Taken a college course taught by Tom Lehrer.
3. Driven her ex-boyfriend (at the time) to the airport, then decided to buy a ticket for the next flight to that destination.
4. For a whole summer, not only let her best friend sleep in her bedroom but also gotten up at 6 a.m. each morning to drive her to BART.
5. Received a work e-mail from a Nigerian professor (NOT spam!).
6. Traveled to Israel and inadvertently left a backpack unattended in public long enough to trigger a security alert.
7. For her first quiz-bowl tournament experience, handed out packets for Division 1 of a national championship.
8. Spent exactly one day at a job that involved cold-calling lawyers before realizing that it was such an awful job she couldn't do it any further.
9. Spent hundreds if not thousands of hours (over a several-year period) as de facto office assistant and correspondence editor for a great inventor whose best work will transform the health care industry once it's finally widely produced and sold.
10. Had her boyfriend write a "10 things" weblog entry about her rather than about himself.

Where Not To Spay Your Cat

How many people had to take leave of their senses for this to happen.

We love to mock the "Won't somebody think of the children?!?" cliche, but here apparently nobody did think of the children.

C's'k'rs 1, MacKinnon 0

Funniest mental image I've had all day.

(And best excuse I've ever had to write "c's'k'rs.")

Famous Last Words

Suppose on my deathbed, I said, "I want to leave you with just four words," then immediately gave up the ghost.

Would the four words I'd planned to say become the stuff of speculative legend?

The "Ten Things" Meme

The idea is " ten things I've done that most people on my friendslist have not." Maybe later I'll write mine.

For now, read Julie's and Fred's and think of your own if you'd like.

Meanwhile, something that isn't a meme but should be: Read Paul's How to build a particle detector (Part 1). Useful exercise for anyone who does something both enjoyable and technical: It's all about the writing style you need to use to teach a layman to do what you do.

And Now, Some Blasphemy

Inspired by a recent addition to Joe's blog, I did some hack work of my own.

Here are my church signs. Not bad in a pinch; I assume you can do a lot better. Glad to see that even after putting all my best links here (Blogrolling premium: more than worth it), the Geocities space isn't totally useless.

UPDATE: The Yahoo! sponsored links complete the ironic appreciation. Idle discussion question - given my complete lack of objection to sponsored ads, or even supposed privacy compromises, why is my Yahoo! Mail user experience so much more pleasant than GMail that I not only stick to Y! in practice but also continue to pay for the annual subscription?

(To be sure, 2 gigs is more than 1 gig, but will I even need the 1 gig?)

The DVD Theory of Life

Wouldn't it be awesome if life as we know it corresponded simply to the main feature of a movie DVD, with all the extras to come after we pass from the mortal coil? Outtakes, deleted scenes, commentary tracks... the possibilities are dizzying.

What Do You Believe?

Julia knows someone who's taking a religion course at UC-Berkeley (this came up only in passing), reminding me of the well-known factoid that the percentage of all Americans who believe in God is higher than the percentage of Harvard Divinity School students who do. This makes perfect sense when you think about it: The more you study something like this, the harder it is to hold onto beliefs that (while possibly true!) are so irrational that they don't withstand scrutiny well.

All this reminded me that religion hasn't been a serious part of my life since, well, probably last Easter. It's not that I don't believe in God - in my heart of hearts, I not only do, but also tend to assume that Jesus really was who He said he was. (For all the profound teachings, given various claims he made, if he wasn't the Son of God then he was by definition acutely insane.)

The thing is (here's where Pascal's Wager gets turned on my head), I don't have my hopes up. That sounds pessimistic but quite the opposite: Life on this Earth is really really good, so much so that if I die, even if there's no afterlife, can I honestly complain? (Well, of course not, I'd be dead, but you know what I mean.)

This is actually a way to appreciate the gift of Salvation all the more. Life is wonderful enough as it is, but eternal bliss as an encore? My goodness, it defies words.

(Things I emphatically don't believe in include eternal damnation, salvation by works - given how serious a curve He'd have to apply to spare any of us, why go that far and yet no further? - and a whole lot of other things that seem central to (e.g.) Catholic theology but dispensed with by most Protestants. Oh, and I think it's silly to consider the Almighty in gender-specific terms, except that referring to such an entity as "It" just seems insulting.)

Always Counterclockwise

After office expansion/remodeling we take up most of our floor, though the floor still has the same elevator and central hallway structure as other floors.

Picture a very blocky "G" shape, with the top bar extended to the far corner of the building, no middle crossbar, and elevator shafts next to the bottom bar. Our main entrance is across from the bank of elevators, with side entrances at the end of the hall and next to the elevators.

Anyhow, my "office" (shared) is in the bottom right corner of the G. To get to the breakroom (where free caffeine is kept), I always go out the side door nearest me, take a few feet of hallway, go back in the main entrance, and hang a left. Yet, to go from the breakroom (drink in hand) I always walk around the C-shape of the interior corridor.

Is it that I'm reluctant to take a drink off the premises?

Two Sex Crime Stories Via Obscure Store

Probably not the image Target wanted to convey. As much as I sympathize with the need for ex-cons to work somewhere, there are deal-with-the-general-public positions where a sex offender (registered or otherwise) doesn't belong. Wonder what this says about the deficiencies of available background checks.

Meanwhile, from this article, I think the first direct quote from Marion County deputy district attorney Darin Tweedt was... unfortunate. Made me laugh without any good sense of why I was laughing.

Actually, the victim quote at the end of the third-from-last paragraph is really poignant. If someone had pedophilic inclinations but they were only mild, and that person had a good sense of right and wrong, remembering a quote like that would all the more ensure that this someone never did anything like that.

(Am I irrational or abnormal in that I find the idea behind the quote more compelling as a deterrent effect than the going to jail part?)

First Amendment, Call Your Office

This was probably offensive but it had to be done at least once, in fact exactly once.

In a perfect world, this not only kills off the "turn a mainstream title into a lame pr0n movie" meme but also kills off its own genre ("turn a mainstream title into a bizarre Holocaust-themed pic") along with it.

(N.B. Any "Gerbils" reading this, the paragraph above really doesn't apply to you. Gerbils are cute, and any double-entrendre really is double: A good Gerbil team name is amusing even if you read it the "clean" way.)

Oh, did you see the Cristo-themed Fark photoshop contest where somebody put an orange curtain around the Arbeit Macht Frei concentration camp gate?

Anyhow, back to the story at hand: Is this really something that should get you in trouble at Princeton? As a private institution they have a right to (etc.) but that's not exactly the open-minded spirit I associate with a intellectually rigorous academy.

Your Valentine's Day Experience, In Two Noun Phrases

Mine: Take-out sushi and Breakfast at Tiffany's

(You can describe either your 2005 Valentine's Day or your first not-single Valentine's Day of your adulthood, take your pick.)

Hypothetical Cheesy Valentine's Package

(As inspired by driving past a temporary roadside stand.)

One red rose (not a dozen, exactly one)
A Hallmark card
A gigantic teddy bear
A heart-shaped Whitman Sampler chocolate box

(Julia's comment on the last one: "What are you, 80 years old? Kids these days go for Sees".)

Mind, over the years I've one or more of the above more times than I care to think about.

Hey, what do my present self and the 11-year-old me have in common? Of the 30 Valentine's Days for which I will have been alive, those stand to be the only two times I've gone into Valentine's Day unsingle. (Knock on wood that nothing catastrophic happens tomorrow I guess.)

It's actually somewhat daunting.

Does That Really Count?

Our preferred highway on-ramp (880 northbound from 23rd street in Oakland) has a carpool lane (2 passengers) and metering lights. Coming out of Alameda we were right behind the County Coroner van, which (just like we did) took the carpool lane.

"He must have a passenger..." and then we just looked at each other funny.

When I go, take me to a good taxidermist and put me forevermore in shotgun, seatbelted in, so that you can always take 2-passenger lanes (and are one step closer to 3-passengerdom).

This Is My State of Birth

Welcome to Oklahoma, home of the masturbating judge.

In hypothetical best-to-worst state overall rankings, Oklahoma has been a consensus #48 for as long as I could remember (#49 if you include the District of Columbia). Stories like this, though... Mississippi and West Virginia could get a run for their money.

L-O-L-A, Lola...

Walks like a woman and triple jumps, javelins, and shot putts like a man.

Max Schmeling

If you're in a Dead Pool somewhere you probably already saw this.

My first points of 2005 and third dead pool "hit" ever. (Yes, I do feel a little guilty, but he lived a full life and my predicting his death did nothing to hasten or prolong it.) Not as "special" as Fay Wray but not as trite as Reagan.

Oxymoron?

Sin City, South Dakota?

Worst. Dating Service. Ever.

I can't believe this actually happened.

Granted, one day out of morbid curiosity I went to the California sex offender locator website to see how many registered sex offenders were in Alameda. But clearly that's not why I was there.

(Actually it was when Jesse Walker of Reason had just posted a link on Hit and Run about an LA Weekly story about the poor old guy who'd been arrested for homosexuality decades ago and ended up on a sex offender registry as a result. I wondered if any of the Alamedans on the web site would turn out to be obviously misplaced, though none seemed to be.)

A Clean Place To Live

Comments on the post right below this reminded me:
This apartment is much neater now after the work I put in on Saturday cleaning and redocrating. Before that there were telltale signs that at least one resident had recently moved in; now, not so much.

I wish I could remember where I saw this but there's an old chestnut of a woman asked about the romantic thing her mate could do and answering, "vacuum."

Apparently I'm domesticated. I also learned from today's brought lunch that couscous salad is overrated: I like the rough-and-ready flavor of unadorned couscous (think of brown rice); dousing it with lime is way too unsubtle.

Today's Heartwarming Story

Not for the faint of heart.

Just the right amount of tastelessness without going overboard or "trying too hard."

Monkey pr0n

Hey, sweet: this is legitimate research!

Golden Gate Suicide

Count me explicitly NOT offended by the fact that it's still really easy to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Maybe barriers or scaffolding would save a handful of lives (fewer than the # of people who do jump off the bridge - 18/year - since most of those would have found some other way to go anyway), at the cost of uglifying one of the world's most beautiful landmarks. With zero guilt I claim that the beautiful landmark takes precedence, certainly over people who want to die.

Even if you don't respect their decision (and yes, it's one of the stupidest decisions anyone can possibly make, though it's still theirs to make), at least respect the Darwinian nature of the outcome.

And yes, other landmarks have anti-suicide measures on them. Two major differences:
1. None of those landmarks have been uglified by the change (go ahead, name one; for all I know I"m wrong).

2. If someone jumps off a bridge into a body of water, they're not doing other people any harm. (Okay, very marginally their corpse will pollute, if you want to be anal.) By contrast, if you jump off a building you could land on something or someone.

UPDATE: Regarding the second item (rent breaks at SFO), this reeks of corruption. What's especially bad about it is that the storefronts at SFO are horrible. Nothing remotely resembles either good food or good souvenirs. On this front (and many others) OAK mops up the floor with SFO. Granted, if you're flying halfway around the world, you probably have to use SFO, at least until Southwest sets up 20 flights a day between Oakland and Omnibad.

Prom Dress Follies

To: Girls in high school classes of 2005 and/or 2006
From: me
Re: this $495 dress

Please do wear this dress in public, especially any place that I happen to walk past or drive past. If you promise to be seen in it at a place and time when I'm around, then I'll send you my day-to-day schedule and chip in N% (negotiable) of the price of the dress. I'll even forge your parents' signature on the permission slip if you're buying from one of those stores.

I promise I will do you no harm.

(Sentiment shared, no doubt, by any number of voyeuristic men older and creepier than myself. I can't promise that they will do you no harm, though I'll strongly support laws and law enforcement that lead them to a swift and painful end if they do.)

Link via No. 2 Pencil. Seriously, though, I can't believe a paper as respectable as the NY Post (ahem) would give so much free publicity to the maker of this dress. Tongue in cheek aside, if you're nonplussed about this, then don't buy any dresses by that maker nor any dresses sold at places that carry the infamous dress in stock.

Not What You Expect on the ESPN Front Page

But it is newsworthy and sickening.

Sexual abuse by youth athletic coaches (both sexes actually, even though ESPN spins it as Title IX) is coming out more and more and may eventually rival abuse by clergy.

For me the most disturbing thing about skimming these articles was reading a quote like "The club coaches can be powerful brokers. Girls live in a more emotional world. The chemistry, the camaraderie. So much is about being accepted. Then you have a male coach with a 14-year-old girl wanting to please this person. Girls are really motivated by being pleasers. Are they more vulnerable? Yes, I think they are."

I'd have never thought of this but even the athletes are "wanting to please," maybe especially the athletes. For a split second it's easy to slip into a twisted fantasy of something that would be far to evil to contemplate in real life, and yet...

Anyhow, it's neither the first nor the last time I thought crossed my mind that I really really wanted to un-think.

UPDATE: There's actually spin here that makes me uncomfortable for a completely different reason but might as well be addressed. Now that I think of it... although U.S. clergy have probably abused more boys than girls, my impression is that the opposite is true of youth sports coaches. And also that more kids have been abused by their priest than by their coach, it may turn out to be that more girls have been abused by coaches than by clergy.

It'll be interesting to see the comparative reaction to these two trends. I'd like to believe that any differences result from something other than homophobia, but who knows?

Luckily(?) for me the girls' sports that get all the hype (basketball and gymnastics) are the ones played by, no matter what their age, people that just aren't my body type.

A Country That Cares About Its Prostitutes

Belgium isn't an interstellar obscenity for nothing.

A Crude Personal Take On Math and Gender

Maybe it is or was different at other schools in other years (this thread suggests as much), but Harvard's math department in the early to mid 1990s was overwhelmingly male. Extremely diverse in any other imaginable respect, but just overwhelmingly male.

I can specifically remember most the female undergraduates from the department individually, there were that few of them. Given everything that makes me tick (especially then), my platonic ideal mate would be (among many other things) a math geek. But with a ratio that skewed (and a small department to begin with), asking any of them out seemed fraught.

(My instinct was that they probably got hit on all the time anyway, though I never actually witnessed it. You quiz players reading this can probably identify: Other than one particular guy (and other than anything I did myself), I never saw a quiz player hit on another quiz player, yet we all heard the stories after the fact about particular players who weren't quite socially appropriate.)

Long story short, I had an extremely selfish reason to wish there were a lot more women studying math, and (indirectly) to welcome them to do so. I suspect that presenting this as a selling point for them to get into math would have backfired (understatement).

Harry Potter Poll

Been ruminating on this all week. I'm 250 pages into Order of the Phoenix (hardcover), or about a week into the Hogwarts term. Apologies to anyone who isn't so far (assume that the main entry is spoiler-free but that the Extended Entry and comments might contain spoilers, though NOT for anything in Phoenix past what I've already read). Obviously only JKR herself knows what happens in Half-Breed Prince onward.

Anyhow, consider these young ladies:
Cho Chang
Hermione Granger
Luna Lovegood
Ginny Weasley

Which one do you think is the best mate for Harry? If you're hard-wired to be attracted to females, then which one do you think would make the best mate for you?

POSSIBLE SPOILERS...

First things first: Does the identity of the Half-Breed Prince have anything to do with Hagrid's dual heritage or his absence from the first part of Phoenix?

From Goblin of Fire and the intro to Phoenix, Harry clearly has a crush on Cho, though Rowling doesn't do a very good job demonstrating what it is about Cho that he'd find attractive.

All four of the gals I mentioned might very well have crushes on Harry. In descending order of likelihood or obviousness, I suppose it's Ginny, then Cho, then Hermione, then Luna (since we don't know much about her yet, those of us who've only read as far as I have).

I actually think Ginny is the best mate for Harry (and Hermione for Ron, though that's another story). Harry seems to disagree with me, though. As for myself, I'm at least very intrigued by Luna; need to read more about her. Previously I'd wavered between Hermione and Ginny.

David's opinion will vary of course.

Physical Appearance vs. Misinterpretation

Quoth Salpi:
im proud to say that ive been taken OFF the guys' "omg i wouldnt hit that if the continuation of the human species depended on it" list. so now i feel like if im friendly or funny or any of that, a guy might misinterpret it....

Am I wrong to think that this is a problem only in situations where some guy likes the heroine but she does not like him?

Wait... it's a bit more complex than that, but not really. It seems to depend on how positive (or negative) the prospect is that she would like him. If he's indifferent to her liking him, then he'd be extremely unlikely to misinterpret something because he wouldn't think of it. If her liking him would be a big positive (i.e. wishful thinking), then he'll look for any excuse to misinterpret. If her liking him would be a big negative, then maybe he'd also misinterpret, but only if he's paranoid and maybe also mean.

I'd think that become more physically attractive makes it easier to interact with superficially attractive (but potentially mean) guys whom you might have feared in the past, though maybe things become awkward [or "more awkward"] around guys who you find unattractive but who you previously assumed also found you unattractive.

There's also the situation where you really do like a guy (and, more importantly, don't fear the consequences of his believing you like him, though you might fear the consequences of some particular way of finding out), except that independent of your liking him, you'd also want to say something friendly or funny, and you don't want to be mistaken for someone who's affecting friendliness or funniness just to flirt. The best way around that seems to be to behave brutally unpretentiously, but then what do I know?

Who among you remembers the character Sparkle from the Divorce Isn't Everything episode of "Mary Tyler Moore"? (Blatantly ripping off a shared experience with Julia, both the DVD viewing and a later conversation over a long walk -- but at least in this case that means I shared something with her before sharing it with the world.) She went around telling guys she'd had dreams involving them, to gauge their potential interest in her. Why I mention this: Salpi seems like plausibly the sort of person who would truthfully mention random dreams about other people, for the sake of discussing them at face value.

(Random side note: Is there irony in writing what im most interested in is language use in grammar-indifferent IM prose style? Is it intentional? Would this entry (my own post-in-progress) be more insightful or less insightful if I gave in to the temptation to talk about myself other than meta?)

BONUS IRONY: berkeley kids care about the football team, working out, hipster music, and family guy. i care about such things as phenomenology, semantics, spirituality, environmental awareness.

I did have a Harvard classmate (well, '94 to my '96) who once complained without irony about how disappointed he was when he got to Harvard and realized his classmates weren't very intelligent (in his opinion). Had a personality that exuded darkness... not pessimism, just darkness. He was grim and serious in a way that reminded some people of an evil Dark Lord, except not in a creepy way (not even remotely).

Anyhow, as stereotypes go, complaining about Berkeley students' lack of spirituality or environmental awareness seems akin to complaining that Harvard kids are stupid. Even if it turns out to be true, it's still hilarious to contemplate, mainly because of what it superlative things it implies about the speaker.

A parallel universe where I knew Salpi (her current age) in the mid to late 1990s (my age as of then) would be an interesting test case for whether I really handled various social situations that poorly then, or whether it was other people handling them that poorly, or both.

Busybody of the Day

Look, I disapprove of corporal punishment just as much as anyone else in our circle of people who think we're more civilized than the rest, but still: Do we really need a federal ban on spanking implements?

"She also asked the federal government to deem The Rod hazardous to children, and ban the sale of all products designed for spanking."

Take it to the states, lady. (Of course she won't, because she lives in Massachusetts and has the conceit of saving the butts of those poor kids in Mississippi and Alabama and so on.)

At least the article wasn't a hatchet job on homeschoolers themselves - what the link from Obscure Store led me to fear.

Blog-Related Quote Of The Year

The first comment on this post is astonishingly insightful, although I'm not sure whether it's on purpose. If I ever suddenly cut my on-line presence to close to zero, it will be from taking it to heart.

"It's amazing how many people you meet who have rotten jobs and miserable marriages who have rich and fulfilling online lives."

(Note: I do have a very enjoyable job and am sharing my life with the love of my life.)

Dead Pools vs. Rotisserie Baseball

"Hey, how'd the pope do last night?"
"1-for-4 with an RBI"
--Allyson's best one-liner ever (from January 1998 when he was visiting Cuba), at least of the ones I've heard (since the last time she updated that page, she's gotten a new job, her husband's passed the bar, she may have even moved)

Anyhow, the 2005 game is underway. Looks like none of you followed my footsteps, or at least none of you credited me as referer (couple years ago I remember a New Year's Eve party where Mike was talking animatedly about this very pool). Rosters and picks are up and of the most frequent picks, my biggest regret by far is missing the Richard Pryor gimme. (Never took Warren Zevon either - didn't feel sporting.)

My team:
Brimley, Wilford
Pope John Paul II
Rehnquist, William
Santo, Ron
Turkel, Studs
Ford, Gerald
Rooney, Andy
Parks, Rosa
Castro, Fidel
Harvey, Paul (replacement pick for Johnny Oates)
Cronkite, Walter
Graham, Billy (replacement pick for Artie Shaw)
Schmelling, Max
Johnson, Lady Bird
Van Buren, Abigail

The way dead pools run, where any contestant can take any eligible person, reminds me of a salary cap baseball league except with no salary cap. Eventually dead pool knowledge and forecasting acumen will approach fantasy sports knowledge and forecasting acumen (as soon as enough money is involved in dead pools, I suppose - no cash riding on this one, though: no entry fee and modest donated prize fund), and then what? In a baseball league run like this, 98% of entries would have Barry Bonds as their left fielder, 70% would have Alfonso Soriano at second base, and so on.

Flip it around and things get interesting. Say your dead pool has unique "ownership" of the potential dead people. With a 23-man roster and a $260 rotisserie budget, just how much is Pope John Paul II worth? Does he crack $100?

Back to real life, how on Earth am I the only player with Ron Santo? I guess there's the "Why this year rather than any other year?" hypothetical question, plus if he already died then what does he have to lose?

They say Pat Summerall's still drinking (or at least Laurence says so); he was on my 2004 list and I kinda wish I'd stuck with him.

2004: Year In Review

Okay, fine, I'll do this one too. Unlike Craig's, my list will be a full-on navel-gaze. Unlike Cooch's, I won't just rehash my own quotes.

Executive summary:
2004 was so good a year for me that if I didn't write anything, you'd know it was because I'd been too busy to reflect. In contrast, most years that yield long introspections from myself are years where I was emotionally drained by the end of December and trying hard to convince myself that the year had been good despite my annual snow-based, darkness-based post-Christmas gloom.

As good as 2004 was, 2005 will be even better (either that, or 2005 will absolutely suck). I say this with complete confidence because of two particular ongoing storylines.

One saga will finally resolve itself in 2005, or at least ought to: you really never know. The other -- well, we passed a few milestones in 2003 and a few more in 2004, but the big milestone won't be until at least 2006 and even after that "happily ever after" isn't just a convenient denoument, it's actually where the most interesting stuff ends up.

January
2004 for me began at a co-hosted party. I thought the party was perfectly cromulent but the hostess didn't. The hostess was also making insanely little at a job she absolutely hated (with good reason); unhappy with her job, unhappy with where she lived, unhappy that she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do in the near future.

On Tuesday, January 6, this all translated to something that'd make me really unhappy and severely impact the next seven weeks of my life. (Would you have ever guessed seven weeks? I had faith all along that all was not lost, or at least I claim to, although if this was just going to be a temporary thing, you'd think it'd be something like a two-week thing rather than a seven-week thing.)

Anyhow, when I made cryptic blogposts about some major setback in my life, nobody even came close to reading between the lines; that or you were all too polite to say.

Most of January (at least a plurality, aside from sleep and work and question writing) I spent watching the NFL playoffs. In order: Boring game I actually didn't watch (but was thrilled Baltimore would lose); boring game I watched just long enough to be confident Dallas would lose; thrilling overtime game; absolute abomination of a Denver failure to show up (outcome obvious within 15 minutes); thrilling double-overtime game; game New England might have lost in more clement weather; neither defense stood a chance; thrilling overtime game (possibly involving 4th-and-26, my memory's cloudy); blatant mugging of defensive backs by New England receivers in a game singlehandedly responsible for the "we'll finally start enforcing the rules" decision that Bill Simmons and his ilk foolishly mischaracterize as a rules change; surprising offensive letdown; and most thrilling Super Bowl of my life time (in which I managed to be watching the halftime show yet not realize anything amiss had happened, maybe I turned my head or something when the song ended).

Enough football: Towards the end of January I got the good news I'd been waiting months to hear. Shared the news with some close friends and associates, one of whom told me, "What a coincidence! Me too!" Those heady days between the news itself and the "what a coincidence!" were probably the point in 2004 when, compared to now, I'd have been most shocked to hear what happened between then and now.

Despite the good news from the last paragraph, January was pretty obviously my worst month of 2004. January is usually the worst month of one's year, though I wonder if there's any endpoint bias here. If you constantly evaluated your life in August-to-July chunks, would you consistently find that August was the worst month of the period in question?

Oh yeah, the "casino night" office party my roommate's boyfriend took me to when the roommate herself wasn't up for it. Got rip-roaring drunk and made a regrettable phone call or two (no live person, all voicemail).

February
This being an even year, NAQT SCT was in northern California rather than southern. So, no road trip (Stanford doesn't count as a road trip). Read at ACF Regionals a week later, on Valentine's Day proper. Left a non-foolish voicemail message in which I had no idea what to say and possibly made a fool of myself in person (but not much of one). The fantastic person to whom I did give a Valentine, apparently has found happiness with a guy closer to her taste (and certainly closer to her age).

On Sunday, February 29 I helped a friend move and had a nice phone conversation relating to my alleged bafflement over what to wear on my upcoming L.A. trip. (Well, not just alleged: I really was flummoxed. But it was a convenient excuse.)

At work I became a superviser again (in theory I'd overseen some temps where I contracted last summer but in practice I hardly ever interacted with them directly; here of course I would interact directly).

March
The big trip to L.A. Of course, in lieu of fashion advice (or maybe I did get some fashion advice?) I ended up getting the ride to the airport that culminated in my spontaneous like, something like, "No matter what happens, just know that I love you and I always will."

(The only other thing I remember about the conversation on the ride to the airport was that the driver had seen The Passion in a theater and been apoplectic that at all the scenes that most moved the Christians, even as moved as they were they still loudly crunched their popcorn.)

When I got to my hotel in L.A. I had five cell messages. One was from Chad wishing me luck; the other four were about somebody's spontaneous decision to take the Oakland-L.A. flight right after mine and join me there.

So at the TV studio, hours before what I still thought would be my big TV debut, I met the other people in my situation, one of whom was a holdover from the previous week, who warned us all just how good the reigning champion was. He'd set a new record (eight and counting) and he just knew everything. My stomach fell about a foot and I was going to ask her, "Hey... blonde guy from Utah?" But then there he was anyway.

Still, instead of a competitive-juices trip it was a togetherness trip. Not a reconciliation as such; at least, at the time we said all the right things about how it wasn't necessarily, how we'd play it by ear and take one day at a time. But in hindsight....

Julia's parents went on vacation the week of my birthday. Somewhere around that time I decided Alameda would be a nice place to live, certainly a better commute to Emeryville than Concord ever was. Little note to set aside and refer back to in coming months.

Then NAQT ICT prep work consumed my life, not to mention the big end-of-April work deadline.

April
St. Louis was Julia's first quiz tournament, and also easily the best quiz tournament I've ever had any association with. She and Chad and Shelly and I spent some time together. I vaguely remember being in a van (Shelly driving) and picking up various Caltech alumni (I could link to three different blogs here!) who we saw at a street corner.

Then Sunday, the big future-of-NAQT discussion that R. wanted to have but couldn't really because so many people whose input we needed had conflicting flights. Instead we had four NAQT members, two colleagues who found the conversation interesting anyway, and one colleague who found the conversation distinctly not.

Two weeks later, Chattanooga, TRASH, and Julia's first chance to see me as a quiz player. And she and Matt and I rode together between Nashville and Knoxville.

We met our end-of-April work deadline, to much rejoicing.

In between quiz trips there was the Easter Sunday baseball game, after which I got a specious ticky-tack traffic ticket that was subsequently dismissed. Nick and Gina and Matt had me over for Easter dinner and some Trivial Pursuit and way too much fantasy sports (actually Scoresheet) chitchat.

May
Then NAQT HSNCT prep work started to consume my life, as did helping Julia apartment-hunt.

Two Sunday afternoon A's games; no particular weekend trips that I recall. I did join a gym.

June
Houston was mostly good, though there were major facilities issues. Julia and reader Aaron and I all went to see Prisoner of Azkaban on IMAX; my main memory is being dead tired. Had this been Julia's first quiz tournament, it might have been her last, even though it mostly went well. (The stress I showed was unbecoming. Apparently St. Louis had gone so fantastically it wasn't even stressful.)

Wedding season 2004 began with Cindy's nuptials. Delightfuly brief nondenominational ceremony on the rooftop of a downtown San Francisco hotel, with the reception several hours later at a Chinese-family-owned seafood place in the Inner Sunset (many-course meal, chance to see some Harvard computer geek types).

Julia quit her job and moved into her apartment (the two aren't related; they just happened to come around the same time and also become a bit tricky).

One of my roommates also announced she was moving out - not to be with her boyfriend, but to... I'm not sure where she lived or exactly why she moved out, though she'd have more privacy wherever she was.

Summer weekends by this time generally consisted of some combination of baseball games, walks around the lake, and mall trips vaguely related to wedding presents (though the specific wedding presents I remember getting, we bought on-line; was this actually wedding attire?).

If I hadn't told the sys-admin not to worry about my archives when we had the site move, I could have referred back to the blog and told you what Julia and I were getting from Netflix right about now.

July
Julia's best friend got married: Traditional mass in Alameda (very small ceremony and reception, just family and close friends), reception on the 52nd floor of a building in downtown SF, with much mocking by Julia of the whole wedding audience's need to cross the Bay Bridge. Julia was maid of honor in everything but name; the party proper was all family but Julia did a tremendous amount of the logistics.

Even aside from Netflix, if I were a better boyfriend I'd be writing about all the plays we saw together in 2004.

At the Hentzel wedding (Minneapolis/St. Paul), I managed not to tell Julia that "the river" (i.e. The River) that we sort-of-crossed in route to the ceremony (actually on an island pavilion) was in fact the Mississippi River. Fantastic outdoor ceremony, leading directly to the midday reception inside. Picnic later that night with mosquitos and everything. Artificially-arranged quiz practicing that night.

(Somewhat of a bone to pick with the tone of the ensuing Washington Post article: It's one thing for a reporter to ask you to play on quiz questions just so she sees what an impromptu practice looks like, since there's a decent chance you'd have done that anyway. But if the biggest reason you do it is at her request, then her leading off the article itself with how strangely geeky it was for people to do this at a wedding seems not entirely kosher. You can write that we did this because we were really just that geeky, but for full disclosure, let the record show we did this in large part because you want us to. Anyhow - been wanting to get that off my chest for months now.)

At the picnic I beat R's sister's boyfriend at chess and learned that there's an every-other-Wednesday sushi-chess thing somewhere in The Mission. Haven't followed up on that yet. Told Julia some backstory that, no, you don't get to read yourselves.

My best political line of the year, in a situation where the last thing you'd expect is a political line: Julia asked me why I always gave such equivocal lawyerlike answers to simple questions (i.e. I typically say "probably" or "I think so" instead of just "yes"). Spontaneously I told her something like, "So if it turns out I'm wrong, the liberals won't claim I lied to them."

Oh: Between and aside from the weddings, Joe visited me! I thought he was coming up for the summer tournament that happened to be that weekend, but no - the firm where he was a paralegal needed him to hand-deliver paperwork to SF on a Friday, and why not turn it into a visit? Julia marked the occasion by, ironically, going to see her niece and nephew in LA (where Joe came from). He and I went to the Giants game that was our company outing (and that he blogged about) the evening after the tournament (he played, I read). We had a miscellaneous afternoon tooling about San Francisco and dim-summing with Cindy and Justin after they got back from their post-wedding trip (not their honeymoon proper: They went to Tuscany, but waited until September for off-peak reasons). Then he got back to LA before Julia got back from LA, so they met up and watched Anchorman in a theater. Crap: When will I ever watch that DVD? No need for Julia to if she's already seen it, and it's probably not good enough to own. Oh well.

August
At the height of my supervisor role, I had four people under me. The story of one of them moving on probably belongs in the May entry but I didn't feel like elaborating. His moving on was good for everyone. The transition from three people to two was certainly good for the guy who left: If you're a wannabe desktop-support admin, data entry work is something for which you'd be heinously overqualified and underpaid.

My other two associates both went on long vacations in August. (Totally coincidentally, they also both had deaths in the family a couple weeks after their vacations - moment of silence...)

A's games, Giants games (should I be writing about these? - to be a true recap these should be in here, but it'd just bore you and take up my time), frantic writing of short, easy high school questions, and an especially nice trip to Sausalito on a day when the weather was perfect. (If you care: The Joe paragraph in July stems from my remembering that he and I also stopped by Sausalito.)

Most importantly by far, after several weeks of interviews, Julia found the full-time job that she now enjoys. Whenever I was her guest, the routine began of my getting up alarmingly early (by my standards) to take her to BART. Before this, though (and I think also before her job began) was the annual visit where her brother, sister-and-law, niece, and nephew came up to celebrate her brother's birthday and her own birthday, and leave the kids in Alameda and extra week to give the parents a break. I probably spent a bit more time in Concord that week than immediate previous or subsequent weeks.

There was that one great Saturday where Julia, her niece, and I, did brunch, minigolf, Monopoly, and Uno.

September
Baseball's stretch drive. Off and on all month Julia and I would observe that I wasn't spending much time in Concord and that continuing to pay rent there was in some sense inefficient. What actually to do about this was another story.

Anyhow, back to the baseball: Both the Giants and A's came up painfully short just by losing at not-the-right times to the Dodgers and Angels. The Saturday game that eliminated the A's was the day that Saurabh and Frances, Cindy and Justin, (were there really just six of us or am I blanking out on an unattached male?!) Julia and I all did the pregame tailgate thing.

Not that you even remotely need details but this was the day of the second-worst fight Julia and I have ever had. For what it's worth I was entirely wrong (as I also was for the worst fight we ever had, which came up in December but I won't touch in this narrative with a ten-foot pole). Oh, a smattering of details: We were running late to the tailgate party and also had trouble finding it because I miscopied something, and I was freaking out way beyond what the situation called for and so the fight itself was over my overreacting.

Maybe that freakout itself is karmically why the A's lost? Blah.

Also in September, Julia's middle school drama teacher directed an outdoor children's production of the Disney special Holes. Look it up; pretty good story.

Not sure if Joe Egg was already running in September, it might not have begun in October, but Julia was housemanager for it, for a Bay Area drama company whose specialty is that they only perform plays that had never before been performed in the Bay Area.

September was also our first trip to the symphony, at least for the 2004-05 season. I think also the first time the two of us went to the symphony rather than the four of us (with her parents). I love these outings, especially if we go to Max's (diner) afterwards, but of course mainly for the wonderful music. Maybe I should pretend to be making a sacrifice to balance the major sacrifice Julia pretends to make at baseball games?

And Labor Day weekend I sent out a bunch of Requests For Proposal for 2005 quiz site selection; this hung over my head for three more months. Not "took up my time" so much as "hung over my head" (with guilt that I wasn't letting it eat up all my free time).

October
Speaking of Julia and baseball, the playoffs actually managed to get her hooked, and what's really remarkable about this is that the addiction happened before the Red Sox did anything dramatic.

Even so: We'd watch parts of games together (worked great at her parents' house, less so here where the TV her brother gave her gets questionable rabbit-ear reception - the problem is with her apartment location rather than the TV), or when she was at Joe Egg I'd listen to games on the radio, or when I was at the office over the weekend or at Concord or en route I'd find a way to hear Jon Miller and Joe Morgan.

Really, "THE RED SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES" sums up October just fine, though even that gives short shrift to the Sunday-Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday of Boston out of nowhere... well, you know what happened. I was in Berkeley when the 9th inning of Game 4 happened.

Also, Julia and I decided I'd move. (The move became official December 1.)

November
L.A. trip for TRASH Regionals (and another chance for Julia to see her brother, this time with me!).

Kansas City trip for Thanksgiving.

In either November or December (let's say November), Julia's old middle school drama teacher asked her if she'd be interested in directing a children's production of Winnie-the-Pooh. Little did he know that she'd actually been dreaming of directing and wondering how best to pursue it, which upcoming play(s) would be a good chance to assistant-direct.

The trip to Petaluma to see Laughing Wild was also in November.

For weeks now Julia and I have been trading colds; not sure whether this began in November or December. Either way, better off unremembered but still.

Ken's loss aired.

December
An entire week in Chicago for Christmas! (Even when I'm insufferably verbose in a recap - I mean ten times more words than even this one - November and December are where my interest flags because it was just so recent.)

Right before that, we went up to Richmond to see You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown.

While in Chicago, went to the gym day after day after day. That was nice, though bonding with my parents was even nicer. The four of us, to borrow a line from myself from above, though my own parents this time.

Before long I'll be able to write about something the six of us do. (Knock on wood.)

Anyhow, Matt's "Man of the Year" = Ken Jennings. (What, you expected Ben Roethlisberger?)

No more time to write, which just means a Happy New Year.

P.S. Did I mention RED SOX WIN WORLD SERIES yet?

The Guy Who Overanalyzes His Female Friends

I think a whole lot of the women I know have a guy like this in their lives.

("I had kind of forgotten that, in most of my previous conversations with my friend, things would get horribly philosophical, and depending on the philosophy of the day I became either completely infatuated or completely infuriated with him. This is a good example of the latter circumstance.")

Not sure offhand which I know more of: Women who have a guy like this in their lives, or guys who obviously would be a guy like this to some woman. Well, obviously the former, since if I know the gal then I know the guy. But if you filter by which party am I closer to? then it's tougher. Also, it's not immediately obvious why the people who give this effect are overwhelmingly male and the people who react with infatuation/infuriation are overwhelmingly female. Might just be sample bias.

For all I know at some point I may have been that guy. But really, I'm harmless, I swear. I also have enough of a bullshit detector not to get too "deep" with anyone without at least believing I'm on pretty firm ground. (Anyone who's that philosophical, not to mention that harshly analytic, is at least to some extent putting you on. Call their bluff without mercy.)

I also think life is too short for headgames (aside from the "real" kind, like poker or chess or Monopoly or fantasy sports), and so anyone who's ever thought I was playing mental games could safely assume it was idle rambling and nothing personal.

UPDATE (and gratuitous "this reminds me..."): Have you seen this Malcolm episode? Males obviously don't have a monopoly on mindgames; then again, what good are mindgames when your HAIR looks like that?!?

Haiku!

Nature setting, season-word, element of surprise...

"Wind screams through the trees
Divine wrath upon the earth
Cause you touched yourself."
--seen among these fake captions

Migraines

If you ever wonder whether you have a migraine headache, you don't have one: You can tell you don't have one from your act of wondering. When you do get a migraine, there's no need to wonder.

3.5 hours and counting. Of that time: Two Simpsons episodes watched on DVD (44 minutes?). One weblog post, plus this one in progress (20 minutes?). Lots of lying awake. Apparently a good bit of being asleep, where what I think of as the headache intensifying would really just be its continued presence being enough to wake me up.

Dreamt of stars (the five-pointed kind, not the astronomical kind) suddenly getting so bright they hurt to look at, and DVD menu items that would do the same.

Excedrin for Migraines isn't working. Perhaps it would have worked better were it not for all those times that I took that same strength level for headaches that in hindsight clearly weren't migraines?

There's an outside chance my brain is bleeding as I type this. Only an extreme outside chance, though; hope and pray it's not the case. Here's a weird disconnect: It's bad enough to make me hope not to die but not bad enough to go to an emergency room, partly because of my extreme aversion to those (more precisely to the set of people who go to emergency rooms in obvious non-emergencies).

I'm going to see a doctor about this, obviously. Physical pain happens for a reason, not for its own sake. [insert banality about your body warning you that you put your hand on a burner, and why it's a Bad Thing that some people are born without the capacity to feel pain] If only pain were rational, though: I could assert, "look, I'll go see a doctor; here, I'll even book the appointment on-line" and if pain were rational it would accept that I'd heeded the warning (WARNING: your brain may have an abnormal artery) and subside. Instead...

(Full disclosure: I have yet to attempt to make a doctor's appointment, not even on-line.)

Someone who loves me is either sound asleep or sleeping fitfully and dimly aware that I'm not there beside her (after being well aware that I'd had the headache).

The Best LiveJournal Parody

This really does seem to be what most LiveJournals are like, though it's also a cautionary tale about turning weblogging into a family thing.

What Part Of "His Favorite Celebrity" Did They Not Understand?

The real suspension should've gone to whoever gave this stupid assignment without defining the parameters well enough to avoid something like this.

I do have to take points off from the boy for choosing Jordan. Tawnee yes, Devon maybe (it's been way too long since I had any need to tell them apart; maybe I never did bother to learn which one was Devon and which one was Jordan).

Come to think of it, how does BBC (and Fark) get away with identifying her on a first-name-only, household-name basis? Is she that famous?

UPDATE: Okay, wow, so there really is a model that famous named Jordan. Not to be confused with the one I was thinking of (go to the Fark comment thread and scroll to the name "Capri"). That one is definitely a cut above her colleague Devon, but still no Tawnee.

Who Writes This About His Own Daughter?

Find the line in this column that will one day cause a father to be strangled by his (by then teenaged) daughter.

Probably the first time I've ever been truly offended at a parent's on-line lack of respect for his kid's privacy, and prefacing it with the would-be ironic line, "nd if I can quote her directly, to ensure that she will HATE ME however many years hence when she reads this," doesn't excuse it.

Could be worse, I suppose. Boston-area readers probably saw the horrible horrible news story about the parents (well, one true and one step, or maybe it was a boyfriend) who posed their kid for Internet pr0n but got caught.

Your Assistant Vs. Your Boss

Which one you'd rather marry, that is.

Before reading the article I suspected that this related to people's inherent assumptions that the more you've accomplished, the older you are. (I find high achievement sexually attractive but also find youth sexually attractive, even in a potential life partner. Maybe especially there, since the younger you are, the more time there will be before you're "old and gray.") By controlling for looks, and just showing the men pictures, they might have eliminated that factor, though not completely.

(To control for this I'd run a study nearly identical, but instead of "she's your boss" versus "she's your secretary," I'd have the researchers say "she's 22" or "she's 34.")

Odd corporate chain-of-command trivia: For each of the companies I've ever worked for, if you go up the ladder from the positions I've had all the way to the top (president, CEO, partners, etc.), there's never been a woman to whom I report even indirectly. Temps of both sexes have reported to me.

Pleasure and Indulgence

Hey, and while I'm being cranky and contrarian (see one post below this one), I'll be cranky and contrarian about the post that got me there. The thesis is that "Porn [...]is an industry built on distorted fantasy, loneliness, and despair."

Almost but not quite. Distorted fantasy, loneliness, and despair may contribute heavily to making porn profitable. They also contribute heavily to making chocolate profitable, not to mention liquor, pet stores, even particular religions (both the good ones and the bad ones; "profitable" obviously isn't quite the right word as applied to the "good" ones).

I have exactly two problems with porn, both of which associated entirely with how it's executed:
1. Issues of consent and abuse.
2. Issues with it turning up in places where reasonable people wouldn't expect to find it (like their e-mail inboxes)

But as long as it's by consenting adults (only) and for consenting adults (only), something undeniable about porn is that it's about pleasure. At least, it depicts pleasure. When people with deep personal issues find themselves unnaturally drawn to this kind of ephemeral pleasure, don't blame the indulgence itself; rather, look at why these people are (supposedly) screwed up to begin with and fix that.

(And sorry, no, the fact that they're consuming porn is not a priori evidence that they're messed up.)

On a figurative "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" note, I've had past experiences that were ultimately unsatisfying because I wanted them to be something that they weren't. (At this level of vagueness, haven't we all?) That said, taking the possibilities involved for exactly what they are, no more and no less, I could imagine having a really good time back in the same context, (CLICHE ALERT) if only I knew then what I know now. As always, what matters are the people having an experience like this; the experience itself is surprisingly value neutral compared to what so many people want to attach to it in all different directions.

The Concept of "Damn, I'm Good"

What an astonishingly bad idea (at least in my opinion). I'm perplexed that an outspokenly Christian weblogger apparently came up with something -- point to your own "top 5 posts" of 2004 -- that seems precipitously close to pride. Maybe I'm missing something about this exercise.

I'd rather not contemplate whether I even have five superlative posts, much less what they'd be. For that matter, why do I even have archives? I write things that you might find interesting today, tomorrow... okay, cutting the facade, I write things that I find interesting and have the chutzpah to assume that you'll also find interesting. Anyhow, I don't pretend that what I write will be remotely useful to you more than a few days from now.

(Maybe you could say that the original posts are for me and the archives are for you, where the "you" is someone whose interest in me just confuses me.)

Dead Pool: Reminder

Go sign up for this 2005 Dead Pool and tell Laurence I sent you.

(Trolling for referrals...)

Other Random Personal Keepsakes

Two dark purple folders. One is empty, one contains printed-out obituaries of Charles M. Schulz.

A loose-leaf diary entry from 1987. Make that three.

NAQT Invitational Series 13 (all questions copyright 1998), put into a binder for some reason.

My 1999 Tax Return

Photo of Allyson & Matt H-N with pyramids behind them.

Newspaper photo of Harry Caray captioned 1920-1998

Loose-leaf explanation of why I was miserable in August 1997

Loose-leaf chronology of the summer of '96, as written some time around New Year's Eve later that year.

Two loose-leaf pages dated January 29, 1998, and headlined "Quiet Confidence." Everyone involved in the narrative eventually had happy endings that I'd have never guessed at the time. (Including me.)

Ironic looseleaf entry titled "Matt's Surefire Method For Doing Well on ACT's", where the final entry was if all else fails, be Sarah [my sister].

Looseleaf sheet chronicling 1996 Red Sox games I went to

Looseleaf sheet of 1997 resolutions including "Quiz Bowl: NO UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT"

Looseleaf sheet written some time in high school titled "ADVENTURES OF ACADEMIC BOWL MAN."

"Journal IX: January 1994 -> (with forward by [my roommate's girlfriend])"
...incongruously and anachronistically, includes several looseleaf entries related to events of 1996, unsent letters, etc., that Julia is about to read and gain a strange new understanding of what made me tick(?) through those law school years.

Staff paper, containing my handwritten transcriptions of:
Several songs from a spring 1993 Harvard musical version of "Around The World in 80 Days," written by a music student as his thesis.
The Conan O'Brien theme, as arranged for three trumpet parts.
Abortive attempt to arrange "Margaritaville" for an entire pep band.

Brown book labeled "Diary" with 1998 calendar, and several January-March annotations trailing off around spring.

Four handwritten pages explaining how I'd use object-oriented programming to generate a 32-team NFL schedule. Written on a plane en route from Boston to SF to interview with Silicon Age, January 2000, but obviously I wasn't foolish enough to try to use something like this in a job interview.

Notebook that begins with Law & Economics classnote but degenerates to late 1990s fantasy football stuff, then contact information for various baseball front offices. E-mail addresses of minor league teams. Titles and extensions from various adult-themed personal ads, presumably from the back pages of some alt-weekly. Half-decent tossup that I might use someday. More fantasy football & fantasy baseball. Unsent letters to not one, not two, but three different women. Notes from the year 1999. And then on the very last page, Comm. Law notes (apparently I'd brought the wrong notebook to class that day).

Quasi-looseleaf evidence notes morphing into a 1997 year-in-review.

Two more music staff notebooks, one with assignments from my junior year in college, one with similar but also an attempt to arrange "I'll Stop The World (And Melt For You)" for pep band.

Spiral notebook with 1998 "best-of."

Contents Of An Old Notebook

[While Julia is having fun with some summer 1996 journal entries (right when I moved into the studio apartment, long before anything melodramatic, at least I hope), I'll share a much sparser notebook with you, then throw it away.]

Handwritten on the front: "EVIDENCE"

Leads you to believe the contents would evidence notes, and yet not. Many many pages missing.

First non-missing page has two columns, with entries like:
1. Waiting For A Star / World Cup
2. Apollo Creed / Mae West
3. Bil Keane / Chandra Levy
[etc.]

I presume this is from a free-lance Trash pack I wrote years ago.

Back of the page much more free-form:
Stanford/Fiedler
29-29 / squash
(with random gaps)

Next page:
The name "Toby Hall"
the numbers $220 -> $245
a five-digit number and an eight-digit number

(several blank pages)

Two bibliography citations: Constitutionalism In America and The Making Of The Constitution

more bibliography

Then notes from some sort of end-of-year music countdown, details in the jump

(any annotations below are in the original source, except "[REDACTED]")

101. Gus Gus - "Before"
100. Radiohead - "Karma Police" (my November angst song. November was a reaction to previous months)
99. Fun Loving Criminals - "Fun Loving Criminal"
98. Faithless - "Insomnia" ("tearing her tights with my teeth...")
97. Manson - "Wide Open Space"
96. Lionrock - "Fire Up The Shoe-Sock"
95. Orbit - "Medicine (Baby Come Back)"
94. Nerfherder - "Sorry"
93. Cornership - "Brim Full Of Asche"
92. Rage Against The Macine - "Ghost Of Tom Joad"
91. [?] - "She's A Star"
90. Ramona Silver - "Wonder Woman"
89. Atari Teenage Riot
88. Moby - "That's When I Reach For My Revolver"
87. Pavement - "Shady Love"
86. Tricky - "Christian Sense"
85. Papas Frietas - "Hey Hey You Say"
84. Fiona Apple - "Criminal"
83. Morissey - "Alma Maters" (Newbury Street, 4 a.m., late July / early August, thinking about [REDACTED])
82. Ben Folds Five - "Brick"
81. Monaco - "What Do You Want From Me?"
80. Beck - "Dead Weight"
79. Space - "My Neighborhood"
78. SP's - "Eye" (Swarthmore/Penn *)
77. Letters To Cleo - "Anchor"
76. Malocco - "Fun For Me"
75. U2 - "Discotheque"
74. Marcy Playground - "Sex and Candy"
73. Oasis - "Don't Go Away"
72. Toad The Wet Sprocket - "Come Down"
71. Weezer - "Gotta Get Back"
70. Bosstones - "Royal Oil"
69. Love Spit Love - "Long Long Time"

[but no more countdown for you: exercise for the reader is what year this was (obviously I know myself, given one of the references and what other songs would have been]

Cassettes: An Inventory

How embarrassing: I recently missed a Trivial Pursuit question about an album that I own (on cassette). The question was, which band's third album (release date some time early 1990s) was titled "II"?

The answer, and literally every other cassette tape I currently possess, after the jump. If you want any of these tapes, as-is, I'll make you an offer you can't refuse.

First, the hefty bag full. These are my least mediocre tapes, coming from two particular sources: The tapes I'd used so much that they were out loose as of my last move (and/or rescued from my previous car), and the tapes I'd hated so much that I'd shunted them to a particular drawer.

(You'd think someone would throw things like that away. You'd think. Knowing full well that the only rational solution is to throw them away, I'll still wait until Julia makes me.)

Anyhow,
Hefty Bag: Rock/Pop
Brad Paisley - Who Needs Pictures? (what I most want to preserve; not sure whether to rebuy the whole album, cherrypick songs, or just break down and go to a P2P)
Britney Fox - Britney Fox (already bought all three good songs on iTunes)
Nirvana - Unplugged In New York (already burned the Black Album CD, which has a lot of the same songs)
Bon Jovi - New Jersey (already bought "Lay Your Hands On Me"; if and when I want "Livin' In Sin" or "I'll Be There For You," a dollar isn't too bad; not now, though)
Beck - Odelay
Metallica - Reload (it frustrates me to no end that iTunes doesn't have the rights to any Metallica)
Metallica - And Justice For All
Radiohead - OK Computer (ditto)
AC/DC - For Those About To Rock We Salute You (ditto)
The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream (ditto)
The Breeders - Last Splash
The Breeders - Pod (I really needed TWO Breeders tapes?!)
Barenaked Ladies - Born On A Pirate Ship
Boyz II Men - II
Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill
U2 - The Joshua Tree (already re-bought on iTunes)
POTUS - II (I really needed a second POTUS album?! This stinks in the way that only an unfortunate follow-up album could)
Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell
Jeff Healey Band - Feel This (Angel Eyes is worth 99 cents)
Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble - Texas Flood
Green Day - Dookie (already ripped my CD version)
Queensryche - Empire (already bought 2-3 of its songs from iTunes)

Hefty Bag: Classical And Home Burns
Rimsky-Korsakov - Russian Festival Overture / Borodin - Prince Igor
Mendelssohn / Bruch: Violin Concertos (nice gift from a h.s. pen pal)
Rachmaninov - Corelli Variations (Ashkenazy)
Harvard Band / Peants (tape made from CDs, both of which I've ripped)
"Dances With Wolves / Garth Brooks"
"Scheherezade / Rimsky-Korsakov"
"Chariots Of Fire / Peer Gynt"
"Rachmaninoff | Liszt / Suppe"
"Smetana, Dvorak, & Joplin" (incidentally, most of these are tapes made FROM RECORDS)
"1812 Overture"
"Phantom (Tape 1)"
"Phantom (Tape 2)"
"Liszt Piano Concertos"
"Nauseating Love Songs" (all taped from the radio)
"Johnny Mathis / April & May '87"
"Clouds: 1997-1991 In Reverse" (if you've read this far and you're from Boston U. and he wasn't before your time - heard from "Monkey" recently?)
"Super Hits Of The Seventies" (tape an old co-worker burned for me, probably from a P2P, but he had free or semi-free access to some of the cheesiest songs imaginable)

Hefty Bag: Total Dreck
The Church - Somewhere Anywhere (a Church album WITHOUT "Under The Milky Way": No wonder Nuggets sold it for $2)
Pink Floyd - The Division Bell
Made In The Shade (I think this was a demo album by a band that included "Banjo Bob" Sundstrom, frequent Park Street MBTA soloist - UPDATE: no... see below)
Bob Seger And The Silver Bullet Band - The Fire Inside (won this from the "prize vault" of Tulsa radio station KMOD, actually from winning a contest on their AM sister station KAKC. The "vault" was literally a desk drawer full of cassettes; this particular one was new Seger material from the late '80s, starting with "Like A Rock" and going downhill)
"Rush 1992?!" (that's what the post-it note says: I bet this is conservative talk radio and not Canadian prog-rock)
Pearl Jam - Vitalogy
Marcy Playground - Marcy Playground
Paul Shaffer and the World's Most Dangerous Band - World's Most Dangerous Party (double-album)
Cornershop - When I Was Born For The Seventh Time
Paul Shanklin - This Land Was Your Land (Rush Limbaugh fans from the mid-1990s will remember Paul Shanklin; sorry mom, these were fine gifts but didn't age well culturally)
Paul Shanklin - Bill Clinton: The Early Years

Second, the stackable containers. Probably my second and third quintile of tapes: Good enough to have convenient but no so good that I'd recently had them in my car.

Top Deck
Barenaked Ladies - Gordoon (Just rebought in toto in iTunes; figure by now the tape quality is bad enough to justify getting a much better mix)
Beastie Boys - License To Ill
Beatles - Revolver (iTunes Beatles stock is shamefully sparse)
Beatles - Rock N' Roll Music
"Beatles + Simon & Garfunkel"
Ben Folds Five - Whatever And Ever Amen
Bloodhound Gang - One Fierce Beer Coaster
Buddy Guy - Feels Like Rain
City Of Angels: Music From The Motion Picture
Cake - Fashion Nugget (rebought...)
Metallica - Metallica
SINGLE: White Lion - When The Children Cry
Poison - Flesh & Blood
Veruca Salt - Eight Arms To Hold You
AC/DC - Back In Black
Lita Ford - Lita
Nirvana - Bleach
Nirvana - Nevermind
Nirvana - In Utero (as mentioned above, already ripped my Black Album CD; I'll probably want greater Nirvana selections some time soon)
The Offspring - Ixnay On The Hombre
POTUS - POTUS
Queensryche - Promised Land
The Vaughan Brothers - Family Style
The Who - Quadrophenia
SINGLE: Bon Jovi - Bad Medicine

Middle Deck
(my blues deck: most purchased in September 1993 for $3 apiece)
Chuck Berry - New Jukebox Hits
Chuck Berry - Missing Berries (Rareties Volume 3)
Bo Diddley & Chuck Berry - Two Great Guitars
Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger
Bo Diddley In The Spotlight
Buddy Guy
Mojo Hand: The Lightnin' Hopkins Anthology (double) (great gift from a roommate)
B.B. King - The Electric B.B. King: His Best
B.B. King - Live In Cook County Jail
B.B. King - Live At San Quentin
B.B. King - King Of The Blues: 1989
B.B. King - Blues SUmmit
Songs From A Happy Country Christmas (STILL IN ITS SHRINKWRAP!) (a freebie from some CVS purchase if I remember right)
Howlin' Wolf - Ain't Gonna Be Your Dog (double)
Howlin' Wolf - His Greatest Sides Vol. 1
Howlin' Wolf - The Real Folk Blues
Muddy Waters - The Complete Plantation Recordings
Muddy Waters - Trouble No More: Singles (1955-1959)
Muddy Waters - Hard Again
Muddy Waters - The Real Folk Blues
Muddy Waters - I'm Ready
Muddy Waters - The Best Of Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters - Rolling Stone
Muddy Waters - At Newport 1960

Bottom Deck:
Aerosmith - Permanent Vacation (spent 99 cents for Angel on iTunes)
Aerosmith - Greatest Hits (released in 1980: have to admit their stuff up to that point blows the subsequent 20+ years out of the water; I'll rebuy and/or P2P some of these when I feel like it)
Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band - Live 1975-1985 (triple)
Cheap Trick - Lap Of Luxury
Debbie Gibson - Out Of The Blue
Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms
INXS - Live Baby Live
George Michael - Faith
Jeff Foxworthy - You Might Be A Redneck If...
George Thorogood & The Destroyers - Haircut
SINGLE: Billy Joel - We Didn't Start The Fire
Neil Diamond - The Greatest Hits 1966-1992 (double)
Best Of The J. Geils Band
J. Geils Band - Freeze Frame
Journey - Greatest Hits
KISS - Smashes, Thrashes, And Hits
Queen - Greatest Hits
SINGLE: Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Of Righteous Brothers
The Commonwealth Jazz Quartet: Sounds Of Halcyon Days (double) (oops: THIS is the one featuring "Banjo Bob" Sundstrom)
40 Scottish Melodies
"Weird Al" Yankovic - Alapalooza

Red "Case Logic" Bag
Ah: HERE's the good stuff...
Eminem - The Slim Shady LP
Tesla - The Great Radio Controversy
The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie... (already ripped the CD)
two blank recordable Maxell tapes
Mussorgsky - Pictures At An Exhibition (w/Night On Bald Mountain & Russian Easter Festival Overture)
The Beavis & Butthead Experience
Beavis & Butthead Do America (soundtrack)
Warrant - DRFSR
Warrant - Cherry Pie
Slaughter - Stick It Live
Dokken - Back For The Attack
GNR - Appetite For Destruction
Nelson - After The Rain
Poison - Open Up & Say Aah
"Spring 1987"
"Summer 1987"
"Nov-Dec 1987"
"'87 Top 100 / January 1988"
"Early Spring '88"
"May-July '88"
"Late Summer 1988"
"Fall 1988"
"Summer 1989"
"Fall 1989"
"1990"
"1991 - Spring & Summer"
"Top 100 & Blank"
"Oldies"
"Motley Crue / Skid Row"
"Look What The Cat Dragged In / Grieg" (Yes, you read that right: Smurf music and "Talk Dirty To Me" on different sides of one tape)

Butt Cream

One day my freshman year I came home from a class to see one of my roommates greet me at the door yelling "Butt cream! BUTT CREAM!!!" with unrestrained glee.

(That's the entire story. Its significance is an exercise for the reader.)

Cum batter and Teat crumb also came up in the same conversation if you're still lost.

Or if you're really really perplexed, cuM Batter and teat cruMB.

Another School Moment

My freshman year, I invited a fellow first-year to this spring dance. She accepted, though she subsequently told me she'd have to ditch me just before midnight to keep a date she'd made with someone whom she'd meet at midnight. (Fun, huh? Spend a quasi-romantic evening with someone, with the ultimate effect only of "warming her up" for the next guy?)

I knew her as the only female student in a 15-person expository writing class (Expos being required for all frosh) on "Moral Principles and War." The class had a nontrivial ROTC contingent. Oversimplifying, I'd say I wasn't on either political flank relative to that class, though she was.

Our pre-dance dinner was Indian food. I don't think it was the first time I ever had Indian (was about to write that, but the remembered walking to Central Square, but now I can't remember whether that was as a freshman or sophomore), though it was close. I remember her talking about various people she met through SCA.

As of the fifth reunion handbook she was a writer for this TV show. No idea what she's up to now.

Truth Be Told, The Alumni Do Suck

How embarrassing for my alma mater. So embarrassing I've been sitting on this for two weeks now.

The obvious response - that this pales in comparison to CalTech hacking a Rose Bowl halftime show - just comes off as sour grapes.

Oh well. I got the better education, in a vastly superior setting (this includes Boston proper; otherwise New Haven could probably hold its own vs. Cambridge), from the school with an outrageous endowment instead of the year-to-year threat of financial collapse (or at least grad students going on strike). For all that, I really don't mind "sucking."

Makes it hard to justify forking any money over to this venerable institution, though. Aside from their obvious tasks (Good music, irreverant humor, and those ugly red jackets that made us a cross between used car salesmen and theatrical ushers), any self-respecting school band would have the werewithal to keep this stuff from happening and maintain permanent style superiority. (As in, the Band remained undefeated or such.)

How did they not put a stop to this? Easily enough: If this were right after halftime then they were too busy self-indulging their way through the senior staff transition, elevating members of the Class of 2006 to the leadership posts they currently hold. That's one way to feel old: I graduated in '96; the reigning senior staff are ten class years younger than me. (That's a total of 11 slates of staffers, of whom I think I stopped knowing anyone with the senior staff from the class of 2001.)

Another way of putting it, given that I moved to California in 2000 and haven't done anything college-related since then beyond a perfunctory appearance at the 2001 reunion: Not only have I never met any of the current undergraduate bandies, but there are some who are already alumni who were still in high school as of when I moved.

Yep, we alumni pretty truly suck, at least within the context of school/band spirit. But it's a natural progression. Certain alumni ("crusties") were welcome to hang out with their old classmates, for awhile. That said, I remember seriously making fun of some of the ones who stayed too long -- and I'm older now than they were then.

My 2005 Dead Pool Roster

"You know, I thought that Dear Abby was dead, but she's just... barely... alive."
--posted to the dead pool site by Laurence, who runs the pool I'm in (or, as he wrote in his e-mail: "Holy freaking crap... Dear Abby is still ALIVE?")

(To be fair, Dear Abby was already a comedic element of his own site.)

Anyhow, without further ado... (anyone who dies in December I'll get to replace)

PICKS
Max Schmeling (Boxer September 28, 1905)
Artie Shaw (Bandleader May 23, 1910)
Studs Terkel (Writer May 16, 1912)
Lady Bird Johnson (Ex-first lady December 22, 1912)
Rosa Parks (Civil rights February 4, 1913)
Gerald Ford (Ex-president July 14, 1913)
Walter Cronkite (Newscaster November 4, 1916)
Abigail Van Buren (Advice giver July 4, 1918)
Andy Rooney (TV commentator January 14, 1919)
John Paul II (Pontiff May 18, 1920)
William Rehnquist (Chief Justice October 1, 1924)
Fidel Castro (Tyrant August 13, 1926)
Wilford Brimley (Actor September 27, 1934)
Ron Santo (Baseball player February 25, 1940)
Johnny Oates (Baseball player/manager January 21, 1946)

Vanilla Cooch?

Even aside from the fact that Clay Aiken clearly really is Dr. Ruth's love child, the most disturbing element of the latest Cooch's World post is that if you scroll the blog frame to exactly the right alignment, you see four pictures in a row that go disturbingly well together.

This is why those "Here's Looking At You" and/or "Separated At Birth" picture pairs are so overrated. That said, I stand by my friend Corwyn as Andy Richter (or Eagles coach Andy Reid, if Corwyn ever grew a moustache: So by extension if Andy Richter grew a moustache...?).

"The Reason For The Season"

What she said.

Strictly speaking the reason for the season is a Roman pagan festival. Otherwise, how would somebody who's either a Taurus or a Gemini have his birthday celebrated on the cusp of Sagittarius and Capricorn?

(More anthropologically, the reason for the season is that winter is so damn depressing that a celebration helps people cope.)

I used to be mildly distressed that Christmas was so much of what it is, at the expense of the birth of Christ. But I'd much rather it be a universal celebration than an overtly religious one, since as overt religion goes, the holiday that really matters is Easter.

Conversely, this is why I've never felt any particular need for family togetherness or outwardly festive spirit on or around Easter. If you believe, you try to make it to church, preferably at least one pre-Easter service (I'm partial to the Saturday vigil) and one Easter proper (partial to sunrise, though you really can't do Saturday night vigil and Sunday sunrise without staying up all night or being really tired/cranky. If you don't believe, there's no need for your life to be affected in any way.

(The Easter bunny is deeply overrated. Both the "candy" holidays are overrated.)

Heroes of the Day

Oklahomans unite and stand up to everybody's favorite publicity whore of a homophobic clergyman.

Everything about this article rings true to me (in addition to, of course, being true), especially how the folks in Sand Springs processed the information that they had a gay teenager in their midst (discomfort) about to be attacked by hateful outsiders (scorn for the attackers).

(Useless Sand Springs trivia: It's just WNW of downtown Tulsa, en route from Tulsa to Stillwater, the closest thing Oklahoma has to a standalone university town. For no apparent reason my high school hosted Sand Springs for a football homecoming game at least twice. If I had any interest whatsoever in pep, floats, or both, I too could have fashioned gigantic model insects for a "Stomp the Sandites" theme. What is a "sandite", anyway? Well, ironically, the first Google hit makes this all self-referential. Anyhow, I think a hornet would just sting a sandite rather than stomping on it.)

Funny that the "God hates..." guy derides the distinction between hating the sin and loving the sinner, since I imagine a lot of progressive people would scoff at it as well, but for contrapositive reasons (instead of "loving the sinner implies loving the sin," as this wacko claims, the progressive opinion would be "hating the sin implies hating the sinner").

I don't think of homosexuality as a sin. (Side note: Does that make me a good Lutheran or a bad Lutheran? Read more if you care...) But as religious beliefs go, I can think of far less reasonable tenets for people to hold onto.

(Incidentally, the Christian case for homosexuality being a sin really needs to be based on more than a verse in Leviticus, since the coming of Jesus made a whole lot of Leviticus moot.)

Speaking of notional sin, remember the Bon Jovi song "Living in Sin"? It's pretty explicitly about premarital cohabitation, something I'm becoming more and more familiar with. This was a taboo in Oklahoma circa 1980s, and I presume a lot of other places for the song to have been such a hit without irony. Nowadays, though... aside from what parents think of their kids (and I certainly haven't met with any parental disapproval that I know of), when's the last time you heard of someone speak ill of someone else for living with a (heterosexual) lover before marriage?

Societally, I'm glad this has become a non-issue (if my perceptions are right), but I'm also idly curious how we got there. Any sociological or anthropological theories? This does tie together, because I assume most people who honestly believe that homosexuality is a sin, also honestly believe (or ought to) that premarital cohabition is a sin.

(Much more directly they'd think of "sodomy" and "pre-marital sex" as sins, but in both cases it's not necessarily true that people who live the lifestyle also do the deed.)

Anyhow, I'm dead certain there are people who would not-unreasonably see my upcoming living situation as sinful. If they had to deal with me on a day-to-day basis... well, duh, they just would. Their opinion doesn't bother me and I presume we'd live and let live.

Trying to carry the metaphor too far actually leads to a very compelling socially conservative case for gay marriage: If I raised a stink because the love of my life weren't covered by my health plan, I assume my complaints would be laughed out, since the thing to do to get her on my health plan would of course be to marry her. But then a gay guy or lesbian comes in with the same complaint. You can't say, "Well, why aren't you married?" Not yet at least.

Then again it's also a very compelling technocratic case for fixing various right-of-contract and family visitation policies rather than necessarily futzing with marriage definitions: If J were seriously ill and hospitalized, in many ways I'd be SOL.

Me Update

Sick this week, stayed home from work Tuesday. Julia worked Tuesday. I think both those decisions contributed heavily to my working yesterday and today (and her staying home both days), and by extension my coming out one day ahead of her.

On the day I stayed home legitimately sick, apparently a lot of people nationwide feigned illness to play Halo 2. In a way I'm glad to have clearly identifiable symptoms, to ensure nobody would mistake me for a truant gamer.

Off-site meeting at work yesterday; this movie was involved. From the marketing/advertising I expected to loathe it; the opposite was true. (Funny how that was also true of Nemo. Something about how Pixar promotes its movies consistently rubs me the wrong way, despite very high quality actual movie content.)

Interfaith, Interracial...

This short essay landed in my inbox this morning. Food for thought, generally optimistic.

Making Kids Share Bedrooms

I don't like this at all: Rich parents who live in mansions are nonetheless putting their kids in the same room, as a supposed "character building" exercise.

Obviously they can raise their kids however they want but this just seems so wasteful to me. Depriving someone of utility solely to build character is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. It's also why people like David Brooks every now and then come out and claim we need National Service or whatever.

On the other hand I can completely see the "they might enjoy it" argument, where you spin sharing a bedroom as an actual privilege. Hey, whatever works. I just know that when I was in college, the four semesters where I had my own bedroom were immensely better than the four semesters where I did not.

On the third hand, I slept alone last night and didn't much care for it after all. Have I mentioned here yet that the formality of my living in Concord will soon not even be formally true? This involves either a Big Step in life or just a simple decision that paying rent two places was silly, take your pick. (Both, really, but no need to jinx anything, nor to anti-jinx anything.)

Getting back on topic... The only thing the news story really needed was this paragraph:

But the danger, psychologists say, is that parents may treat room-sharing as a simple fix to more complex childrearing issues. "If the parents are raising little self-centered materialists, then making them sleep in the same room is just tokenism," says William Doherty, a professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota. And demonstrating that you can set limits on kids may only result in resentment, particularly if children feel they're being deprived so Mom and Dad can indulge their own desires for, say, a media room.

Astonishingly many of life's problems are caused by selfish, lazy parents.

Louie Anderson and Tony Tarrasco

Oh yeah, and I'd forgotten until just now, but Saturday was the eighth anniversary of the Jeffrey Maier game. I'd asked out a 1L classmate that day. By phone. And unsuccessfully.

But I did get to go out spontaneously with a friend. We were supposed to see Louie Anderson at a comedy club, along with her boyfriend, but my understanding is that both Anderson and the boyfriend canceled out. (Hmm, if nobody saw either of them that night, maybe the two of them... nah. Being facetious of course.)

So I really should think of October 9, 1996, vaguely in context with the 1997 madness; and October 15, 1996, smack in the middle of that extended week. And then a lot of stuff I remember even if I don't have specific dates in my head for it all, and stories associated with chess games, and stories associated with the Beaver Bonspiel (MIT quiz tournament) from October 26, the same day that the Yankees won their first World Series in forever.

"D" Week

Hey, October 11 marks the seventh anniversary of the first Crimson Puppy Chow, one of the best names ever for a tournament, the amalgamated BU/Harvard junior bird that resulted when one quiz team claimed the weekend and the other quiz team ordered NAQT's questions. (I forget which team was which, and I had active ties to one and recent-former ties to the other anyway.)

From October 11 to October 19 of that month... well, it was an interesting time. The older I get the less I'm inclined to write at length about these things, but it was a nine-day period over which I became infatuated (or at least the infatuation manifested itself), did some odd things, learned more than I necessarily wanted to know, and when all was said and done ended up going to the circus on my friend's birthday.

October 12 marks the 7th anniversary of The Livan Hernandez Game. There was also a Student Fair in Boston that afternoon. I didn't go, but I did end up in possession of a free condom distributed at that fair. No idea what became of that condom (it was never used) but for the longest time it sat in my dresser. I named it "Livan" in honor of that day.

What's funny is that I'm doing something on November 19 of this year (symphony to be exact). When I first heard the date I thought it was familiar, as in someone's birthday. Then I remembered... 1996. There's a whole other set of whirlwind events from November 13-19 of that year that as I get older I'll write less and less about, mainly because the baseline is so high for what I'd have written in the past.

On the other hand, there's no time like the present. February 29, 2004, I helped my friend Scott move and got a phone message from Julia. March 1, I flew down to Los Angeles for a game show taping. Julia was my ride to the airport... then next thing I knew, she'd caught a last-minute flight herself. For all my pleasant associations there, why on Earth would I devote brainspace to events leading up to the circus?

(Well, other than that February 29 only comes up every four years...)

Why Did I Just Almost Die Laughing?

"It smells like a menstruating cow in here."
--Julia, after we got back to her apartment from seeing her parents, on the lingering odor from cooking organic beef in the George Foreman grill.

"The one time my mom made lamb, the dog ran away for two weeks it smelled so bad."
--Julia again. It's the second one that set me off. Every little disclaimer she added after that just made things worse:

"It's true!"

"You know, Blue, man's best friend, Papa's pride and joy, and when he finally convinced her to make lamb..."

"We knew where she was, she was just in the park across the street hanging out until the smell ran way."

"She came back."

That last one sent me right back into convulsions just when I'd recovered. Of course intersperse "What's so funny?!?" and "Please, please, just tell me what's so funny".

I wish I knew why it were so funny; it is. I told her to write that up in 300 words and it'd be the best thing any of us had ever read. She asked if she should write it up for here, and if so how on Earth she'd get 300 words out of "Mom made lamb. The dog ran away. Matt almost died laughing."

Travel By Franchise City

(A meandering entry written while waiting, not so in-vain, for the Internet connection to come back...)

The states and countries travel-blog-brags were all played out months ago (and counties - tip your cap to Mike Burger), but this week's Expos franchise relocation technically made me more well-traveled if you go by cities where baseball teams are. For this exercise, make commonsense judgment calls on different metro areas, and don't count airport layovers.

Anyhow, been to 21 of 30, though only at the appropriate stadium for nine.

NL East: New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Washington, Miami
Made it to D.C. in 7th grade on a class trip. Might have seen Philly as a child while visiting cousins in Delaware, though my lingering memories are of a college band trip and several quiz tournaments. Harvard at Columbia, September 1992, was definitely my first NY trip. First non-airport-specific Atlanta experience was the 2000 High School National Championship Tournament. Been to Orlando, but my none of my Florida experience goes further south or east of Disney World.

NL Central: Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati
Lots of airport experiences for most of the above cities, of course. My first real Chicago was a U of C campus visit, fall 1990. St. Louis might not have been until the 2001 ICT; Houston many high school quiz championship tournaments.

NL West: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, San Diego
I'd actually never been to California until moving out here! That was in 2000 (SF); made it to LA for a quiz tournament not too long after that. Non-airport Phoenix debut was less than a year ago, for Arizona Fall League baseball. Went to Denver with my dad on a business trip in 1994; oh, also we went to Boulder as a family for an Ohio State at Colorado college football game back in the 1980s. Everyone assumed we were related to Earle Bruce, but we weren't.

NATIONAL LEAGUE TOTAL: 11/16

AL East: Boston, Baltimore, New York, Toronto, Tampa Bay
(First Boston was a college visit in October '91. Baltimore and Toronto both resulted from chess tournaments, December '96 and November '95 respectively. See above for New York; if you were borough-picky, Columbia trips would get me The Bronx - band bus once went right past Yankee Stadium - but the time I flew in to see Bogg, I think I landed in the wrong airport relative to Queens. Or did I? Hmm. Finally, I was tempted to count Orlando's proximity to Tampa, but I'll be hardass.)

AL Central: Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Minneapolis
(Airport technicality: I've never had Detroit as my final destination but I've landed there to get to Ann Arbor, and ridden on the local highways. Quiz-bowl of course; ditto Cleveland (TRASHionals one year). First Twin Cities trip was for Frozen Four hockey the year Lake Superior State beat both Harvard and BU. See above for Chicago; if you care about North Side vs. South Side then my North debut wasn't until '96. Despite growing up in Tulsa, didn't get my first real KC trip in until visiting Chad a couple Thanksgivings ago.)

AL West: Oakland, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Anaheim, Seattle
(Here's true hardass: I won't count Anaheim since I've never really been in that part of greater LA that I know of. DFW - flown into the airport many times but never had that as my final destination despite a whole lot of Austin, San Antonio, etc. Seattle is clear-cut, never been there. Those of you who don't live around here, count Oakland if and only if you made it to the east side of the Bay Bridge.)

AMERICAN LEAGUE TOTAL: 10/14

Another Way To Fight Breast Cancer

You should help Allyson (entry below this), but you should also click here. And then if you're Allyson, you should get a cleavage photo taken just for kicks.

Cavity Calvinism

I've never in my life had a cavity or a filling. Given how my tooth maintenance compares to other people's, this is mostly luck. Julia has the same good fortune, though in her case I think good maintenance is a bigger factor.

There are people with routines comparable to mine, who get a cavity seemingly every trip to the dentist, or a half-dozen if they haven't been in awhile.

Anyhow, does anyone else remember having the impression as a kid that people (dental assistants, at least) associated not-having-cavities with behaving well and cavities with behaving badly? Given how much luck (I think) is involved, that just seems really unfair to the cavity-prone. Not that childhood was ever entirely fair.

(Mind, I really don't eat sugary snacks. My gustatory weaknesses are salt-and-fatty, not sugary.)

Narrative, in Calendar Form

That weekend with three days in a row of poker-or-gaming has passed, though there's still a lot I'd wanted to creative-write about that experience (not the experience itself but what it shows of my identity and my friends', just how dorky-in-a-good-way we are). This week, as best I can reconstruct it:

Monday, quiet night with Julia. Went to the gym. We were at the gym when the chair throwing incident happened, and I know they were listening to the game at the front desk, but for some reason I wasn't even curious at the time (had no idea about the chair until later that night).

Tuesday, celebrated her promotion (actually a transition from temp to perm) with her parents and best friends at a very good sushi place. Then the gym.

Wednesday in Concord, in theory I should have done NAQT stuff but really I did things around the house.

Thursday, birthday celebration with my friend and ex-roommate (when I lived in SF proper) Scott. We took him to the same sushi place from Tuesday.

Friday, symphony.

Today, Julia is having two friends over, a gal from work and a guy from college, just to get together for casual fun.

Tomorrow, Giants' game. Brian Lawrence vs. Kirk Rueter. Also, some NAQT time.

Monday, TBA, probably similar to the previous Monday with a trip to the gym (but no chair-throwing in Oakland's game, I hope... hmm, day off for Oakland, so no).

Tuesday, Giants' game. Carlos Hernandez vs. Bret Tomko.

Wednesday, one of Julia's friends is involved in a play and there's some sort of pre-opening night performance by invitation only. I forget whether I'm joining her for Wednesday's or for Friday's.

Thursday, symphony.

Friday: The play's actual opening night.

Saturday onward: TBA.

Delightfully Tacky, Yet Unrefined

(WARNING: Much of this post will come off as poor taste. You know who to blame (me). Part of the point in posting at all is just how disturbing I found some various incongruities.)

Pre-game yesterday featured one of those moments where I wish I'd brought either a digital camera with me or a DEK with me.

It was Breast Cancer Awareness Day, so sure enough this guy 15-16 rows in front of us wore a Hooters shirt to the park. I recognized the tagline on the back, and a few innings into the game I did see him stand up and turn and sort of face us.

Ask yourself who does this and whether he does this on purpose.

Some breast cancer survivors marched around the field and then formed a ribbon on the field, although as they were forming the ribbon they briefly looked like cleavage. (Someone suggested this wasn't quite right because in that case one side should have been smaller than the other.)

The ceremony ended with the release of doves, though thanks to both Mount Davis and the third deck, the doves had slight trouble figuring out how to egress the stadium.

Anatomically confused statement of the day, from a gentleman who appeared on the videoboard: "When I found out I had breast cancer, it was like a kick in the shin."

No Fear

Eight hours (and a couple minutes) until my next dental appointment. God knows how long since my last one. Appointment arranged by the lovely and talented Julia, who very memorably (not too long after I'd first met her) told me once just how much she enjoys going to the dentist.

(Paraphrasing: "He cleans your teeth! How cool is that?!?")

When Cultures Collide

"An old Jew told his friend, 'I came to Israel to make my children happy.' His friend asked, 'Do you live with them?' He said, 'No, they're still in Russia.'"

One of Julia's relatives turned 60, and there was a big celebration yesterday at a restaurant in the South Bay that catered us as a private gathering. Julia feared I might be bored, with ceremonies taking place entirely in Russian, but the host couple strongly urged specifically both her to come and me to come.

Lots of sitting at a long table and eating multiple courses of good food. Also skits written by the guests about the passage to age 60, an old Russian melody (probably no older than the cheesy movie it came from: I transcribed the melody and chords by ear after hearing it on tape and might scan the image if anyone wants to see).

The highlight still had to be the house band: One guy for guitars/vocals, one for keyboards, both more-or-less doing for Russian DJing what Fericito does for Venezuelan comedy. Their first song was "Girl From Ipanema" (instrumental of course); so far so good. Then their cover of "I Love You Just The Way You Are" really set the tone.

I especially enjoyed when Julia translated for me a joke that she didn't get. I did get the joke and explained to her why it was funny. (Not the joke at the top of this post.)

Kitten

News update from my home life:
Here (Concord, California) my roommate has a new kitten. Charcoal-gray, given away by one of her co-workers. This was the last kitten to be given away and, but for my roommate stepping in, apparently would have gone to a shelter.

We're just starting to introduce Cosmo [sic - not really a sic, as the name will apparently stick, but let me stress that I didn't name this creature; then again, Fluffy, who will turn 20 next spring, can attest to my lack of cat-naming creativity] to the dogs. Actually, what do I know? I'm only here once or twice a week. But at this point the Gizmo (shi tzu) : Cosmo size ratio may be greater than the Sammy (rottweiler) : Gizmo size ratio.

Gizmo grew into a surprisingly big dog for his breed and Sammy is tiny as rotts go; still, Sammy could eat the kitten in one bite, I think, whereas Gizmo might be too big for one meal.

I'm spending a lot of time in Alameda, waking up butt-early (7:35, after Julia has already been up 30-40 minutes) to take Julia to BART for her job in SF, and consequentially get to my job a lot earlier than before. Except nights like this, when I go to Concord, try and fail to write quiz questions, try and fail to go to bed at 10:30, and end up staying up late watching TV, waiting for laundry, and snuggling with a household pet or two.