Friday, February 27, 2004

Another Fucking Weekend

They become more than a little difficult to handle when you are not at home for any of them. I spend more time just getting my TIVO ready to tape all the relevant over the weekend shows than I do relaxing as one is supposed to do on Saturday. Regardless, for the fourth weekend in a row we are headed away. This time its the 350 mile drive to Marist College in Poughkipsie, NY. I have never been down there, but I think it is very close to the city. Maybe an hour and a half North, which seems pretty close. Its not like we have the time or the money to go into the city, but you get the idea. At least the day looks nice outside, so the drive won't be all bad.

I am hoping that the money I sunk into my car yesterday pays off as well. I really would have preferred to sink that money into an MP3 player for my car, since my CD player spends more time licking its own nuts than it does playing CDs. I know that I am capable of just listening to random AM radio most of the way to the other side of the state, but I don't really wish to do that and I am pretty sure that the other three people in the car have no interest in listening to speculation about whether or not TO's agent is the dumbest human being in the world for 6 hours.

Katie has actually put up the shower curtain now, so I don't have to worry about it, and more importantly, I can go take a shower. So, I am going to do that. I might have the chance to update from Marist, since I should only be judging JV and novice rounds so I shouldn't be under too much pressure at any point. I don't really care what debates I judge, fundamentally, but making my decision easier is always fun. I should probably get ready, since we are leaving in like an hour. Chure.

Peace,

MB-K

Brief Shizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So I have not been feeling especiallay well for the past several days. I am not sure exactly why this is the case, but it seems illegit. I came home from my meeting last evening feeling fine, but Katie was all sick and shit. Like 2 hours later I was all sleepy and sicky and whatiz. I know that technically I could have gotten sick from her before she was displaying symptoms, hence why I got sick like 2 hours later. Nonetheless, it feels like I got sick within two hours, which fucking sucks it, and doesn't seem legit. So while I was going to write both last night and earlier this eve I did not because I hit the sack pretty early.

If I just felt really tired this evening I wouldn't be upset, since this day was fucking way too busy. I got up at quarter after ass in the morning, went to take a shower because I needed something to wake me up, and there was no shower curtain. We happen to have selected the worst goddamn shower curtain rings in the fucking world. You wouldn't think that there would really be too much difference amongst shower curtain rings, but the ones we have take more fucking work to open and clip close than you can possibly imagine. Its fucked up, it takes like 10 minutes of serious work, you have to stand up and shit, working with your hands always above your head, you end up sweating just becasue of how fucking awkward it is. Regardless, I didn't decide to put up the shower curtain. I watched some SportsCenter as per usual, but nonetheless, I was thrown off, the whole morning jacked in the nuts from the outset. Its like that episode of Seninfeld where George has a shower that doesn't take. I have often had that experience as well, I fucking hate it when you shower and don't feel all zest-fuckly clean and shit, but that is not the point.

After that I went over to Midas, since the car was shaking at higher speeds for a little while. I also needed to get my brakes checked out since the fucking assdicks at Mazda for not making it adequately clear when the break pads are wearing down. Anyway, turns out the breaks were fine, but the problem was apparently with the tires, which were wearing oddly. In some ways it is helpful, since I was really sick of attempting to not spend random ass fucking amounts of money on random shit that I don't really want to pay for, this was more fun. Well, I wasn't prepared to buy tires there, obviously, so I went to school. On the way to school we hit a milestone in my lifetime of car ownership--100,000 miles. I can point to exactly where it happened, near the blue house on the corner of two streets that none of you have ever fucking heard of. I was hoping that I would organize it a little better so that I could do it somewhere cool, a drive through or whatever, but I had to get to school and there were still too many miles to justify circling around a parking lot when it happened.

I really wanted to do something wacky largely in remembrance of what we did for mi amigo Steve's car way back in the day. Steve spent all the moeny he didn't use for cigarettes or bottled water or random world music on gas because pretty much he just drove around. I went with him much of the time, admittedly. My sophomore year I think I spent one out of 2 or 3 nights in this pursuit. We drove, smoked, talked about random shit which ranged from chicas to Prince to describing the plot for the detective film we planned to make entitled "Drake Bubsby's Penis is the Antidote for Poisonous Vaginas." Anyway, Steve managed to get this car to 100,000 miles in like 3 or four years from brand spanking new, and I think it only left the state of Minnesota two or three times. My guess is that 93,000 of those miles were in the Twin Cities and 50,000+ were just driving around at random, smoking. So when the car got within 50 miles or so of the 100K we decided to celebrate. We planned a little picnic, we got some illegit champagne (because we were under 21 still, all of us who were likely to be around that night at least), and drove to the bluffs down in Hopkins. Rough memory says to me that the final crew ended up being me, Steve, Maroney, Andy, and my brother. It may have even involved a couple others, Kevin or something, because I think we actually took two cars to get to the bluffs. Once we got there, since we had budgeted some extra miles, but slightly overbudged, we ended up with like 10 miles still to go. We all got into Steve's car and drove around the parking lot, which was bare-ass empty. It was not only a litte late at night, but also late in the year, so it was too chilly for many people to be around. I think there was actually only one couple wandering around and they left, maybe not coincedentally, after we had driven 20 or 30 ciricles around the lot. We had stored the champagne in the other car, so we weren't too worried about cops (none of us had had a drop at this point) but we would have been a prime target, its hard to believe 6 sober 19-20 year olds would drive around a park parking lot some Tuesday night. We had also determined that we needed a specific song to commemorate that moment. We had a pretty obvious selection, since the only music we listened to more than random Kenyan-Aboriginal-Brazillian-Scottish music etc., was the Spice Girls. Nothing better to commemorate the exact moment where we turned the odometer over than hearing Scary shout "Soooo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want." It was a classic moment. We picniced and partied the night away from that point onwards, but it was a great noche.

I would go on, but am watching Angel before I go to sleep and need to enjoy without distraction. Maybe I will hit some en la manana before we go to Marist, but thats it for now.

Peace,

MB-K

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Nards

I always forget how fucking awesome the word nards is. I mean, seriously, this word has some incredible qualities, but for some reason is almost totally forgotten on a regular basis. I had a stomach ache for like 5 minutes this morning and in describing it to myself I thought "it feels sort of like I got kicked in the nards" and then I thought to myself "damn, I haven't said the word nards in way too long." Try it out a couple times. Say "I got kicked in the nards" or "Suck my nards" or even the classic pun "Save big money on My-nards." There is something about the possessive form of nards which kicks something more in. While I could go on further with words that I like which are not in the everyday paralance of our times, but I don't really feel the need at the moment.

I should really get back to an argument which I started last week before the trip to Chi-town. To continue...

We had discussed how many non-white people in the activity rarely display what I referred to as "urban characteristics," I guess I will continue with those terms since I haven't been corrected. I certainly won't go as far as to question anyone's racial authenticity, if we want to believe in such a concept, you don't have to act or dress or whatev to be an individual of whatever race you identify as, but there is no question that music, dress, speech, etc are all markers of very different symbolic positionings. Anyway, we have so few of these individuals who display what have been called "radically racial characteristics" that there are very few times that we are actively forced to recognize the facts of exclusion.

Now I will try to lay out the analogy which I have yet to figure out how to state in a fashion which is in no way offensive, but I am not sure how. For the purposes of the argumemt lets take the assumptions of Louisville's argument (that non-white people are excluded from the activity for reasons besides simply accidents, that the community makes active decisions which facillitate this exclusion, and at the very least there is unconscious and structural racism) to be true. As a pre-empt, I understand the potentially dangerous things that can result from a comparison of non-white people to children, I would never intend or support those connotations, but since we are taking Louisville's statmentents for truth we have to imagine that the people most in question or the structural components of the activity do assume that they hvave some smaller capacity for participating. Now that said: Imagine that two really little kids, like 6 month olds, sit down and start painting. 10 minutes later you look at their work and Kid A (Radiohead not intended) has a nice jumble of colors that they have sort of slopped on the paper. It may be really cool for a child and maybe it even reflects to you something of the child's perspective on color and the world and what they deisre to create. Thats cool, its valuable, there is no question. Now, you look at Kid B and they have done an exact replica of dogs playing poker, I mean an exact fucking replica. Which one is more shocking to you, which one makes you go "Holy what the fucking fuck."

There are some important elements to this analogy that deserve note. Kid B's painting isn't a technical masterpiece, I choose to avoid the Mona Lisa for a reason. Its not that they are necessairly saying something more advanaced or more developed or cultured or whatever, but just something that you never would have thought the child capable of producing. The basic point is that when someone occupies a category of difference from you it is not subversive for them to do something different from you. The child painting like a child, no matter how incredible of a children's painting, is just that. It isn't a shock to anything when difference produces difference. The second forces you to recognize that whatever it is you conceive yourself as participating in is not your exclusive province. Differnce does not imply any inability to produce the same, just a difference in term of initial identity. Why is it that people have such a problem imagining that Baghdad, before Gulf War I and the sanctions was one of the premiere cities of the world. The contemporary perception that it is essentially a large camel ridden shack village runs pretty strongly contrary to the National Geographic articles run in the 80s which described it as the city of the future, the first Paris or London or New York of the Middle East. On the West Wing there is an episode from season 4 called "Red Haven's on Fire" which deals with maybe four American soldiers ambushed and taken hostage in Kumar. Their families come to the White House, fairly standard procedure I would guess. One woman, someone's mother, is more than a little smarmy and snippy towards both Leo and the president. At one point Leo tells the families that they got a picture of Kumari TV and the woman says, in a voice which is an odd combination of snottiness and genuine surprise, "Oh, they have TV." I mention this line in relation to the Baghdad example because one of the big controversies of the Kumar conflict, which is obviously related both to Somalia and Rwanda, is the American public's resistance to sending their boys (and girls) to die in some wasteland they have never even heard of.

Now, there is some resistance to these ideas obviously. If for no other reason then the postmodern logic of difference, as many have called it, has become pervasive. That argument tends to indicate that just because something is different that it is automatically a form of resistance, any novel which experiments with form or vocabulary, any film which breaks the conventions of traditional Hollywood cinema, that it is a challenge to the ideologies which back those up. There are more than a few people who don't want to accept the same as oppositional. You don't have to know alot about postmodernism or, as Frederic Jameson put it, the cultural logic of late capitalism, to know that the basic ideology of capitalism is the production of difference, of niche markets. Produce as many different things as possible, make sure there is something for everyone. Slavoj Zizek talked about this when he was here last spring in relation to Deleuze and Guitarri. Their whole thing, especially in the Anti-Oedipus books, about the rhizome and the production of multiplicitites, multiple identities and paths, lines of flight as they say it, fundamentally is the exact same structure that they are attacking. In a world where difference is already the order of the day, where capitalism is the ruling ideology in the first place, producing more difference is nothing it can't handle.

Anyway, I have a number of arguments I am still trying to work out in relation to all this. Some things which are at best tangentially related, especially involving a narrative trend which has sort of struck me recently, epitomized by the film Frailty. I think I may have discussed this somewhat earlier, I will check before I issue my full arg, but yeah.

Besides these issues I have been thinking about these two dogs that I saw at the grocery store this afternoon. They were outside with their owner and it was a little chilly and they were two little wimpy dogs, one I am certain was a weiner dawg and the other appeared to be (I am fairly certain of this ) a papillon. They are cute little dogs, members of the toy group which look quite a bit like black and tan chihauhas with big poofy ears. Anyway, the papillon appeared to be pretty chilly and was attempting to warm up under its friend the dachshund (literally badger-dog, which I think is pretty cool), so the dachsund would be standing in one place and the little papillon would come scurrying up and ram itself into the front of the weiner dog. As you might know, dachshunds are fairly low to the ground, so the attempt to sneak under it wasn't really working so well. Basically it was just ramming the other puppy and then trying to cuddle up to it. A very cute little display.

I am really in the mood for waffles. I have been for a while, its sort of like the chocolate martini thing. We don't have a waffle maker, or I would remedy this situation. What I would really like is a good plate of waffles and a couple chocolate martinis. Too bad most Waffle Houses don't have bars, so that is not going to happen anytime soon. I mean, when you think about it, its no odder than chicken and waffles. I fucking love chicken and waffles by the way, far too many people diss on that shit without experiencing how wonderfully they work together. Its not like you are eating waffles with chicken strips on top of them or anything, but still, you get the drift. There aren't alot of places anywhere I have lived which really serve chicken and waffles, I have only had the pleasure in St. Louis and Charlotte. I am thinking that I really want to open up a high quality restaurant that serves oft-neglected delicacies. We've already had the hot dog discussion, you can't get better ingredients than Vienna Beef, but maybe some experimentation with the perfect waffle and frying chicken, the right syrup consistency, etc. could turn it around. At one point I had dreams of doing something like this in another country, but I guess it would take on more of an "American restaurant" flavor, though it by no means has to. I have never really eaten true Belgian waffles, at least according to Diane (a Belgian woman I coached at Roseville a couple years ago), but I think they would work for this dish. Belgian waffles are much thicker than belgian waffles in this country. Its essentially batter filled with sugar, so that you've got the outer crust of waffle, then some very doughy batter and molten sugar on the inside. Diane has spent alot of time in Brussels and I guaruntee that I will get there at some point because of her descriptions. Vendors on all the corners serving french fries and waffles wrapped in newspaper cones. Damn Gina damn.

Alright, thats enough.

Peace,

MB-K

Monday, February 23, 2004

Pas de Mas Ninos

Thats messed up Sprenchnish to indicate that we are at home in Buffalo without the kids. While they were nice kids and all it is a relief to not have to deal with them all the time and I am fucking tired after the weekend. Having this many young children compounds that shit too, how can you deal with them all at the same time. Anyway, we got to the airport at 11:30 and after making our way through a terminal roughly the size of Georgia (the state or the nation, pick your favorite) we stopped near our gate for lunch. I said that I wouldn't leave that fucking city without a Vienna Beef hotdog, even if I just had to have one at the airport. Well, I didn't leave Wind-town without a hotdog and I did indeed get it at the airport. There was a Vienna Beef stand right by gate C2, so if you are flying out of O'Hare on a gate in the Low "C"s you don't have to worry about food until you get there. The hot dogs are right next door. Even if you are a little behind, its all good. I fucking love a Vienna Beef hot dog with everything. I know that vegetarians don't get to enjoy this delicacy, and I feel bad for ya'll, seriously I do, at least in some respects, but I feel worse for the food snobs, those people who may eat meat but won't in this specific tubular form.

Now, maybe there are not people who really do all sorts of complaining and shit about VIENNA BEEF hotdogs, maybe they are just referring to the regular Oscar Mayer franks, I am not sure. But I really think that there arethose who fall into this category. This is beyond hot doggity, when Ball Park franks plump, its not cause you cook em, its cause they are having wet dreams about Vienna Beef hotdogs. When you bite into them, they actually taste like beef, seriously, like a beef sausage. Its incredible. Take this, put it on a bun, cover it in mustard. This is already the nuts. Onions, relish, peppers, tomatoes, and a pickle. Rock on, this is truly, to quote the Diznobs, a fantastic example of the rare form of the pure brilliance. Damn, get over your fucking snobbery. Walk up to a dirty stand with a blue and yellow sign on it and order 2 with everything. You will thank me. After that, come back for more suggestions, but to begin with download Justified and watch the video for Toxic.

We watched the series finale to My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance and I am really quite impressed. There were about 12 minutes at the very end of the show that in some ways got everything completely fucking wrong, but at this point we had already passed the climax, and they had their reasons, so I understand. If you haven't watched this show and intend to, check your TIVO before you read on. Steve mentioned this near the finale and I think this is true, that this show took a drastic turn right about halfway through. Now chronologically this was actually more than half of the way through the making of the show, closer to eighty percent of the time, but it was exactly half the number of shows. Anyway, it began very lighheartedly, mostly slapstick comedy and fart jokes. The idea was, for the most part, Steve is a klutz and has some pretty gross habits. Its little different from those practical joke videos that they have infomercials on late at night where you watch normal proper people react to fat guys falling down stairs and farting next to them on the bench. This was funny as hell, both because her reactions were great and because the people working on this show did a great job writing and selecting the characters involved. Regardless, the change was incredible, because when Randi's family shows up this show was a pretty incredible portrait of a family stretched to an absolute fucking breaking point. This is where the show was straight up lying. Steve. obviously speaking almost explicitly off a script, says that the show turned into a picture of how strong a family's love is. The Coys were a petty and frighteningly incestuously group. While they didn't seem as overtly religious as I would imagine that they must be, ass-fucking a, I cannot imagine that there are actually people who would care this much if their sister decided to get married to someone who sucked balls. Obviously, yes, you should tell them that they are licking ass at the moment and should think about what the fuck they are doing. But the phrase "I refuse to be a part of it." Oh, you refuse to be a part of this racist policy your company initiated. No, well you must be refusing to take part in some excercise which people are encouraging you to do, but you find to be completely and dangerously offensive, threatening to the character of life as you see it. Oh, nevermind, I see, you were refusing to take part in your sister's wedding." I could tie this into the whole gay marriage issue, and that comparison would be timely and accurate, and possibly even somewhat insightful, but iI am not going to do that at the moment. Now, some of Randi's family memebers were right on at the end, they did say that ultimately they had to simply be at their sister's wedding even if she was fucking up, but they were so incredibly pissed about something that I cannot imagine every being this pissed about that we got an incredible show. While I like shows like Average Joe and Mr. Personality aim to put contradictions and ethics to the test, for the most part those themes are rarely incredibly convinving. I mean, on AJ2 Fredo was obviously pissed about what she did with Jim, but we didn't really get to watch him deal with an incredible conflict which, for us, was completely false. Its awesome. My jaw dropped several times during this show and you could literally just see these people, who were so infuriarted, on the absolute fringe of exploding. Anyway, I loved this show, I remain in the thrall of Fox's reality developers. I would love to watch these folks get wrecked and come up with pitches.

We actually flew home on a full size plane today, which is very rare for the Buffalo airport. I suppose if there is gonna be one there it would come from O'Hare. I once flew a smaller version of this plane on Northwest, though I don't know if there is a plane which is fundamentally just a smaller 737. I mean, the plane I am referring to had a first class section, only like 2 or 3 rows, but I don't think it had the 20+ 6 seat rows we occupied today. It was in some ways refreshing, the flight is 10 minutes shorter, you've got the audio entertainment, the potential for first class, the higher class snack foods, you know the drill. We got the Snyder's of Hanover pretzel on the small plane on the way there, but we rolled snack mix style coming home, yep, pretzels, cashews, and little sesame sticks. If I owned an airline I think I would have like a little tub full of that snack mix, or an even better one, on the snack cart, and you could just scoop out however much of the snack mix you wanted. I know there are some potential germ issues about this when you have the whole hermetically sealed environment thing going on and its not like I couldn't just ask for some more snack mix, and I know that few people would really care about having all the snack mix they want. I also know that if I had the money and it wasn't really that much more expensive or inconvenient I would roll in favor of unlimited free snack mix. I also know that the airline would alter their snack mix costs by about 30 cents a year, so they just don't see any need one way or the other. I know that logically the "dude, they will give you more packets of snack mix" argument answers all of mine, but fucking A dude, I just want free scoopable snack mix in a bin on the drink cart so I can have all I want without asking for a bunch of extra packets and feeling like a wad.

I should mention that I have had a couple margaritas tonight, I figure I earned that type of relaxation after the weekend. I admittedly also had more than a couple on Saturday, but still. I have had this crazy obsession with chocolate maritnis, for a little while. I had a couple Saturday night and would be drinking right now if chocolate liquer was not inordinately expensive. I will have to pick up a bottle of Godiva at some point, but I will also need more Stoli. If we have the money I am very much looking forward to making the next stay at home weekend a chocolate martini tasting festival. I will discover the perfect one, I guaruntee it.

I downloaded this thing for my computer that lets me type these entries in a word like program and do bunches of other new things that I didn't know how to do on the website. Like, I can make links now or TYPE IN BOLD or put lines through words, maybe to indicate that I already did this . I can also have it put what music I am listening to up, but since I never listen to music and the computer is not connected to my DVR I can't have it indicate that I am watching the early edition of the OC. Spolers tomorrow maybe.

Peace,

MB-K

Sunday, February 22, 2004

Observations on El Ciudad Del Windtamos

So we rolled into O'Hare on Thursday afternoon. I have two brief observations on that airport:

1) It is too fucking big. What the fuck.

2) No offense Alejandro, no airline needs as many e-ticket check in spots as United has at this airport. They aren't even just in the concourses, there are like rows of them everywhere, in the parking garage, in every skyway thing, every hallway, practically in the fucking bathrooms. Yes, they are convenient, yes, its good that we can check in ourselves. Never in all of human history have even half these things been occupied at the same time. I think you could condense the airport from 5 to three terminals if you just controlled the population bomb of e-ticket check in places. At this rate in 20 years you won't even have to take a taxi to the airport, because every house, apartment, and hotel room in the greater Chicago area will have its own United e-ticket check in. The "L" will be replaced by the O'Hare monorail since Evanston will just become O'Hare Terminal 93859. Having money problems United? I understand war and terrorism and all fucks your profit margins, but maybe buying 40,000 computers to line up through each of 50 different food courts isn't the world's greatest investment when times are tough for air travel. If I'm running a deli that is struggling I don't order 500 extra "Pick Up Order Here" signs.

Having spent the last several days with three fairly small children I have several observations about them as well. For the moment, I will begin with the fact that there are a shocking number of things which you might say about either Andy Kemp or a pre-linguistic 1 1/2 year old toddler.

--I would pay so much money to know what is going through his head.

--Dude, why did you just throw that shit accross the room.

--He fucking threw up in the middle of the living room.

--I told you not to fucking climb on the table.

I am sure there are more. Gotta go.

Peace,

Mike Baxter

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

BadgerBadgerBadger

I admittedly stole this link from Bob Mould's blog, but if you counted the number of things I had stolen from Bob Mould you would have, well, you would have this link and the lyrics to Hoover Dam. I mean, I guess I haven't really stolen the lyrics to Hoover Dam, but I do like the lyrics to Hoover Dam, if that counts for anything. Those lyrics aren't really from his blog either, they were around before I think the whole concept of the blog was even around. Maybe not.

Regardless, the link in question is, not surprisingly, www.badgerbadgerbadger.com. Check it out, its fucking awesome. Watch it as long as you can humanly stand it. After about 5 minutes or so it will simply get funnier and funnier. Seriously, its like this joke I know, which I would just type out but I think there are some key details which don't really transfer to the electronic medium. Chure. I really like these types of websites, like the punk rock kittens at rathergood.com or the banana donkey, which no longer appears to exist, which makes me quite sad. If there are others that I should be aware of let me know. There is also the Britney naked cat-a-phone, but since Katie doesn't really like it I will speak of it no more.

So, this weekend Katie and I are flying to Chicago. I am not entirely sure why we are doing so, but we aren't paying for it so whatev. Katie's Aunt and Uncle live there so we are heading into town to watch their kids for the weekend while they take of for Vegas. They wanted us to drive, originally, and that was straight out of the question. I would have thought that they would offer to fly Katie in, but I am not sure why they bought me a plane ticket too. Katie told me that she needs another person in order to watch all three of the little folks. I admittedly am not entirely wild about watching children for the weekend, even though I know that these are nice little kids. I have never been in a situation where I was among the primary caregivers for someone else for any extended period of time and to be honest am scared that it will really suck. If I can still watch some TV and get some work done and not be ridiculously uncomfortable like all of the time then that is a plus.

This is why having a cute little pug dog would rock. I mean, sure, sometimes they require some work or are inconvenient, but you can leave them at home during the day, you never have to worry about the TV you are watching, so on and so on. Anyway, so I will be in the Windy City. Katie's fam lives near Wrigley Field, so while its a pretty nice area I am not sure where is the best place to go to get a solid hot dog. If worse comes to worst I am pretty sure there are some joints I can get one with everything in the airport, but I would rather have something more authentic. We might also get to meet up with Katie's friend Erica, who I am pretty sure neither of us has seen in like 2 full years. I never knew her ridiculously well, but that would be a nice use of a weekend away.

So this is not related in any way shape or form, but I was thinking about a combination of debate things and an idea Joan was discussing in class. So the debate related part of the issue involves Louisville, a University whose debate team is apparently quite good. I haven't seen them, but they were in some big debates and right on the border of getting a first round. I am not a big wig enough in the community to know if there is any underground resentment towards their not receiving one, but still. Anyway, apparently these Louisville teams all make arguments which primarily concern the relation of race to the activity of collegiate debate. I won't speak too much to what they say because I haven't seen them, but I think generally their argument could be safely defined as not traditional debate, I would even go further and call it an experimental form of debate argumentation. It should also be mentioned that I believe both of the students in question are African American women.

For the purpose of this discussion lets imagine that debate arguments could be subversive and that what you say in the context of supporting the university structure could matter in any way besides who wins a debate round. I don't think this argument is subversive. Lets make this comparison. There is a guy who debates for NYU who exhibits many of the qualities that would be stereotypically associated with an urban black male. I won't testify to what this dude always argues, he may make race based arguments on occassion, I am not sure. Regardless, at least in the debates where I have seen him, he was just running threat construction and security arguments. He and his partner were pretty good, but the thing that struck me was the complete lack of individuals like him in the activity. Don't get me wrong, I was aware before this that there are almost no non-white people in debate and even fewer African Americans, since debate's ridiculous class preferences make it far more likely that Asian-Americans and those whose ancestry is of the Indian Subcontinent will be participating. Even then there is a drastic underrepresentation. Regardless, the thing that struck me specifically was that the non-white individuals in the game almost never have these "urban" characteristics. Excuse me, by the way, if this term is not an acceptable one, I am not sure if there is a different term.

Fuck, I actually have shit I need to do right now. I will return to this argument later, it has some further development anyway. Gotta change the laundry.

Peace,

MB-K

Warm It Up Kriss

So what is up. I have been busy since Friday, some unexpected debate drama, a long ride home related to that drama, and then a belated Valentine's Day celebration. As a final debate note, mad props are required to go out to Doug and Shannon for clearing at their second tournament ever. They were 4-1 and lost in quarters, but overall they were rocking on.

Katie and I were obviously unable to celebrate La Journee de Sant Valentino on Sabado Gigante because of the tournament, so we moved it to yesterday. I had to bring the present with me to Binghamton anyway of course, since the chance that Katie would wait 2 whole days to open a wrapped package is less than zero. I got her a nambe silver bowl, its this really impressive brand of silver shitty which is all shiny and shit. It is shaped like a heart enough to be tangentially related to the holiday, but not so much that it would be unusable at other times of the year. Anyway, I knew she liked this stuff, since we registered for like 3 pieces of it, but I can't imagine that we would get it. Maybe more people really like this stuff and I am just unaware, but regardless, she did.

I also got her a box of truffles, as what would the day be without chocolates. They are the Watson's variety, the same ones I used to give her the ring a year ago this February, so I figure they are sort of tradition. Four different flavors which I imagine are all delicious, though I don't think I will get the opportunity to try them all. We decided to head up to Niagara Falls, Ontario for the evening. We did a little research and hopped in the car. Niagara Falls downtown is only about 30 minutes including a little backup at the bridge, so it wasn't bad. Its a weird area during the winter months, since the closer you get to the Horsehoe Falls the more misty, icey, snowy stuff is everywhere. We didn't really feel like getting out and walking around in it, but we drove by and we had been there a couple times anyway. After that we made our way to the Fallsview Marriot. It lives up to its name, I will concede that. We showed up early enough for our reservation that we were able to wait for a window seat at the Terrapin Grille. The view is primarily of the American falls, which, while not nearly as impressive as the Canadian Horseshoe, are fun to watch from directly accross. They were lit up all night more than often in classic Katie Kauf-rainbow style. It was like an engagement first anniversary tribeuce to the rainbow wedding.

While the view was totally sweet the dinner also roxored. I ordered red wine, thinking that I would, qua always, have a steak or the like. It was a decent pino noir, not extraordinary or anything, but alright. Katie rolled a riesling, which is surprising only if you have never met Katie. Katie was in the mood for food from the sea so we had selected a place with decent selccions del mar. She tried the sea bass, which apparently she had never enjoyed previously. I've always loved it to be frank, whether Chilean or Carribean, pan seared or broiled, in a merlot reduction or simply well crusted. Katie's variety was the latter of each of those groups and overall got an A. I surprised even myself by selecting the Fetturine Pescatore, making it an all seafood all the time dinner. It was fettucine (admittedly just a tiny bit overcooked, but that is cool, I am a firm pasta man, didn't mean that to be a dick joke either, seriously) in a garlic cream sauce (a to the g) with mussels, squid, oysters, clams, smoked salmon, scallops, and just a wee bit of the l-OO-bster (fucking sweet). We rounded everything out with a very large piece of chocolate cake and even though it wasn't the flourless chocolate tort that fills in the equation Baxter:Loobster::Katie:____ it was hella sweet. If you are ever on Fallsview avenue and want a pricey but tasty dinner, roll Terrapin style.

Alright, so I obviously have more to say about shitty, but I am tired and stuff. Will return manana.

Peace,

MB-K

Friday, February 13, 2004

Rama-lama-ham-dam

So we are in Binghamton, at long last. It took us forever to get here, largely because we didn't leave Buffalo for-fucking-ever. Once we did however, the drive was easy as ass-shit, and that shit be e-z. Katie actually let us listen to the D on the drive down, which was sweet on so many levels. For one thing, its awesome driving music. It has that perfect combination of laugh out loud humor, epic narrative tunes, the word fuck, and moments where Katie is both disgusted and amused at the same time. I know she is not always crazy about screaming "cock-ayass" simply because she doesn't think the term "cock-ayass" is necessarily and always funny. However, there is no argument that "Tribute" is a funny song. You can't help but laugh at "Fuck Her Gently" or "Cock Pushups." This really is testament to fucking funny Jables is, when he can get Katie to laugh at dick jokes. No offense KG, he does have a Rock Block of Bach, but not quite as funny.

I can't really think of too much else eventful on the drive down. We stopped at a rest area that had both Burger King and Dunkin' Donuts, so I had a double whopper meal with a two donut dessert. Besides the fact that both donuts and burgers are good, I mention this because I think the debaters may have helped Katie to a revelation about the status of the term "chocolate cake donut." I have always thought there was no real debate on this question. When Katie told me that she wanted a "chocolate cake donut" I was suspicisious only because I have seen her eat donuts a billion times, and never has she ordered a chocolate cake donut. On the other hand, she has often selected "chocolate-FROSTED cake donuts." She refuses to acknowledge this distinction and I was giving her shit about it when I rolled over to the double-D for a snack. All the debaters thought I was being a jerk at first. Then when they were confused by the obvious discrepency between the doughy snack that Katie was consuming and the treat ordered they turned tail quickly. While telling Katie that her argument isn't correct factually is rarely the way to convince her (see for instance, Canadia) maybe this will move in the right direction. At least its cute though, that I can divine her donut intentions from such mangled jargon.

Valentine's Day Tribeuce again, out to all ya'll motherfuckers. I wonder what kind of business SexWorld does tonight, my guess is mad fucking biz. Anyway, I suggest that we find out. Why doesn't everyone in the MSP area head out there and check it out. While you're there, pick up a dildo. No matter who you are, Valentine's is better with dildoes. Big or small, clear or colored, vibrating or stationary, firm or jiggly, thin or thick, long or stubby, dildoes make the world go round. By the way, diagrams of the way the world go around would be much cooler if they featured dildoes. Maybe I can commission Andy Kemp to make said drawing.

Alright, I am out for the evening. Maybe more manana.

Peace,

MB-K

Thursday, February 12, 2004

Westminsters that Don't Run Statism

So I have been gradually watching the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show over the past couple days. We DVRed the two different sessions and I am now in the middle of the toy group. I saw on Sportscenter that Josh, the big-gorgeous newfie who was the frontrunner the whole way (apparently he got jacked last year, even though Mick, the Irish Blue Terrier, was a pretty solid dog) but I don't know the other group winners so it s a good time. Plus, for the most part, I just like dogs, they are pretty fucking sweet. You've got your working group, and you know there are some motherfuckers up in here who rock hardcore-the Bernese Mountain Dog, the Mastiff, the BullMastiff, and of course, one of my favorite dogs of all, the Saint Bernard. Well, you are all pysched up by this point of course, so maybe you get another drink real quick and tune in for the terriers.

You are not, however, excited about this prospect, because all though obviously there are some cute little pups in the terrier group, some scottie-dog little dudes and the rest, that this is kind of a downspot. You are surprised when the announcer lets you know that the terriers are the all time winningest group in Westminster history. I still don't think it really compares to the workers, or the toys, or the sporting, or the non-sporting, its a solid group. There are some dogs that are just really easy to make look good. You don't get the cutenessness that you find with the other groups, but some well built dogs. The announcers, by the way, have also gone a little overboard with the term "animal companion," its not like they don't use the word pet, or dog, but what the fuck. Everyone is not a superior animal companion, the German Pinscher, sorry, thats not a superior animal companion. Its an attack dog, if you don't need a dog that can reasonably respond to the command "Kill" with the thing you would expect a vicious looking dog to respond to that command with, you don't have anything that ends with "pinscher." The name sort of implies pinching and since the most likely scenario for a dog to pinch with is their mouth you can pretty much just rename the dog "German Biting Dog." No one has a Pekineese as an "animal companion" either, that is a pet, it is a lap dog. Your sheep dogs, your wiener dogs, your larger terriers and schnauzers. There be your animal companions.

I'm sure I will have more discussions of Westminster later on, especially since the pug hasn't shown up at all. I should mention, by the way, that the more my love for the pug dog increases the more I start seeing them. There is a pug dog that lives somewhere in the building next-door, but I have only seen it once. There are all these commercials which star the pug dog, especially that one drug ad where the dude chases his pug all around the city and then finds it sitting in the back of a cab. Really fucking cute. Beyond the fact that pug dogs just rock, everytime they look at you you would start laughing.

Okay, thats enough dog-convo. Out of town weekend in a row number two begins late tomorrow. We are headed out, only to Binghamton (about 3 hours) thankfully, but still I will be judging debates and not getting much work done. Katie and I have suspended some aspects of Valentines' Day until Monday to make the whole thing work out, but it is also exactly a year since we got engaged. I guess that anniversary sort of drops off in terms of importance after you get married, at least I think it does somewhat, isn't the wedding anniversary the big one. Fuck, thank God I am not married yet. I still have time to read some shitty.

My hope is that I will do some writing over the weekend, but probably not for my old bloggedizination, since I should keep this roll that I am rolling with rolling hard on the roll. I got a buttload of shit done today, especially considering the amount of time I had to do it in.

Final thing to mention for tonight, three of my favorite things to eat with ice cream.

--Cake-The oldie but hella-fucking goodie. You've got the obvious vanilla ice-cream chocolate cake thing, and thats hella good, but start mixing it up and you can go some crazy fucking places. Not long ago I combined the world's best chocolate cake recipe (Carole Kauf tribeuce) with Friendly's Nuts About Caramel Ice Cream, which was caramel ice cream with chocolate and caramel swirls and spotted (fairly regularly I might add) with chocolate cups filled with caramel, almonds, and cashews. This was a combination which walked that fine fine line between deliciousness and flavor over-load, not to be confused with flavor over-board, which is an entirely different concept that I just made up. You all have my hellafied encouragement to experiment with these combos.

--Combinations of cookie dough, butter, and Oreo cookie crumbs-Katie went out of town one weekend, for the Wake Forest Debate Tournament actually, not to be confused with the Wake Forest Debate Burn-ament, which, all though I just came up with it right now, would actually be pretty fucking dangerous in a forest, even one which is not at all sleepy. But I somewhat digress. The fridge was fairly full and all, but we were admittedly a little low on sweets (Katie says that she doesn't think other people use the word sweets, but I think its ususally a pretty good description for the type of food I am looking for, I mean, sometimes I will be more specific, modifiy it to "cakey-sweets" or "choco-sweets" but generally when I say that I need some sweets, pretty much everyone will follow my gist. Its a very clear gist as far as I am concerned. Anyway, there was a giganto bowl of cookie dough that Katie hadn't had full time to bake, a gallon of good quality vanilla bean, and some random everyday foods. One of which turned out to be Oreo Cookie Crumbs, that would most often be used, I surmise, to make a pie crust for like, a really hella tasty chocolate cheese cake or summin. Anyway, I created what, I must say myself, was a pretty fucking ingenious treat. It was a fairly thin disc of cookie dough, with a significant indentation in the center. I mixed the crumbs with butter, as is called for, and pressed them into the indentation. Then I baked that bad-child for 8 or so minutes, before removing it from the oven and allowing 7ish minutes of cooling before adding a couple scoops to fill in the now nicely crusted cookie bowl. I highly recommend this process, regardless of what type of cookie dough you may have around.

--Chocolate Malt-O-Meal-This one may come as a surprise I know, si, nce I don't know anyone outside of my family whom has ever done it. I guess I havne't asked everyone I know about the process, but more than I would care to count. If any of you out there have enjoyed this psuedo-breakfasty concoction you should let me know. Its pretty simple really. You've got the deliciosity of malted -wheat, flavored delicately with what I would imagine is General Mills or General Foods or whatever's highest quality chocolate. Everyone has realized that in order to properly enjoy this snack you need some dairy and some sugar. Ice cream accomplishes both of those tasks and adds a wonderful creaminess and a temperature shifting delight. I know its the classic choco-van, but there is usually value to the classics.

Have a Happy Valentine's Day to all, enjoy your chocolate, gifts, flowers, lingerie, loneliness, booze, depression, love, or whatev. If you aren't celebrating Valentine's this year do yourself a favor, go buy a bunch of Valentine's chocolate anyway, get stoned, and eat it. Seriously, this is a great holiday if you let it be. Don't get caught by those gothic hippies hating on Hallmark. You've never sent a birthday card Azriel, I'm sure you didn't complain when Grandma's cartoon dog handed you a couple bills after you graduated from Eden Prarie High School. You can spend it at St. Sabrina's if you want but don't pretend its not fun to eat good food, outrageous chocolate, drink good wine, and make some love. I'd imagine we've all spent some February nights alone, but love is something to celebrate. Get on the couch with a couple bottles of Ravenswood, a heart shaped box, a pipe, and put something on the TV. Sure, it can be a love story if you want, but I think West Wing reruns work just as well.

Peace,

MB-K

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Mountain Momma

So there is this commercial that the West Virginia council of tourism runs in Buffalo about coming to West Virginia and it has this song on it, Katie said it was like a John Denver tune, about West Virginia. I have had it in my mind since the moment we entered that state on friday. The drive there was a little shitty, it was raining and snowing and shit so it took a while, but we made it in like 5ish hours. The state of West Virginia has a couple problems, for instance, its inhabited by backwater hicks who live in ramshackle houses that rest on stilts atop hills which are themselves inhabited by winding ill designed streets. Furthermore, it was obviously designed by those same bumpkins since it appears to have snowy, icey, and wet weather, yet winds through treacherously steep hills on very narrow roads. Those roads are also in atrocious condition, let me note.

All that West Virginia griping aside there are some nice things about the weekend. While the debate tournament went a little longer than I wanted it to and Sunday and occassionally took breaks which were long enough to accomadate entire debate rounds in themselves it was easy to judge and deal with. The whole not starting debates until 10 am on Saturday part certainly rocked hard core, we got to sleep until 9ish and I dig. The only nice part about allowing 3 and a half hours between debates is that you can pretty much force debaters to be ready on time. You also get to eat, I suppose, and we did plenty of that since there were good free meals. We missed the Simpsons, becaue we fucking bonered the setting of the Tivo before we left for the weekend, but I suppose that happens your first weekend away from your beloved digital video recorder.

We watched the Grammy's last night, there were a couple things that warrant comment. One: we missed the opening performance, which I have since seen online, but is often. On the odd chance you didn't get to enjoy the awesome-osity of this moment, go to kazaa and search for prince and grammy. Watch and enjoy. If you don't like it you lack both a soul and genitals. I was told Britney was gonna be at the show, but I saw her exactly nowhere. What was the dizneal with that, a last minute cancelation is fucking weak style. She was the subject of the best joke of the evening however, when George Kostanza (Jason Alexander) talked about his marriage to Britney with Tyra Banks. Very funny stuff. Besides that it was also a big evening for OutKast. Katie and I have been discussing the ethical problems involved in selling a group record that is actually just composed of two solo records and then raking in all the benefits. I guess maybe you don't get as big a cut as you would if you just released your album solo, but you can never be sure about that, well, at least I can't. I mean, why don't Sting and Elton John, and Billy Joel, and Chris Cornell, and the Reverend Billy Graham, and Jake the Snake, and Natalie Imbruglia, and Jessica Simpson, and They Might be Giants, and Pauly Shore just each record one song and release an album as "Buttfuckers Assnonymous" and then they can accept all the awards as a group and perform like 12 times, each time as a solo artist. Fuck dat shit.

Let me announce that right now is going to be the official beginning of MIKE BAXTER'S OC SPOILER PAGE. IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ OC SPOILERS SCROLL DOWN WITHOUT READING NOW!!! I WARN YOU. I WILL BORROW MY CONVENTIONS FROM CITYOFANGEL.COM. I THINK IT LOOKS WEIRD WHEN I WRITE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. SUCK IT.

SPOILERS IN 10
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So Ryan is in a bunch of trouble following all this suspicion about Oliver. Though we have been alerted that Oliver is dangerously in love with Marissa, no one else believes him, except, ironically, for Luke. So after Ryan is essentially grounded because Sandy has grown weary of his stunts, Luke proceeds to the hotel to talk to Marissa. We learn, in the meantime, that Ryan and Luke have some questions about Oliver's ex-girlfriend, Natalie. Ryan confronts Marissa on her return home to see her mother and Marissa ends up storming off. Luke, on the phone trying to convince Marissa to come see her mother indicates that he does not believe that Natalie exists. Long story short, Oliver threatens to kill hisself diznead if Marissa leaves, the cops eventually break down the door and Ryan is vindicated.

On the unfortunate side of things, the question of Ana and Seth's over-compatibility was resolved in a sad direction, when Ana said goodbye to Seth at the end of the show. I mean, they are slightly too alike, all the comics and everything, but Ana is also really cute with Seth, and Summer is occasionally too stupid. Anyway, there is some reason to believe that the deflowering of Seth promised by the ads is not at the loins of Ana...

Finally, guess who it looks like Luke is about to take up the butt. If you guessed "Julie Cooper on the rebound from Caleb" you got it right like a mama-jamma.
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Alright, I will try to get my spoiler vocabulary and tone and shit down in the next couple of weeks. I think this is the only show that Canadian television actually shows early enough in advance that I can spoil them for mis amigos americanos, but I will try. I mean, technically, I am like an hour in the future, so I could spoil a whole bunch of things. You guys are gonna love the fucking future by the way, the TV is good and the flying cars are sweet. The hover boards leave something to be desired, but its still pretty similar to my memories of fighting with Biff and his crew.

My second class today was a little more on track, we rolled only until 6:17, which I think is two minutes beyond the acceptable time to run over, but I can deal. Hopefully we continue moving in this direction, a movement which I am pro. Katie made a sweet fucking dinner, which I just finished eating. It is actually an improvement over the way we traditionally ate this dinner, that being Bruschetta Chicken, now that we tried it with some alfredo pasta instead of mashed potatoes. I think that the intrinsic perm to "do both, but make the potatoes with like 20 cloves of garlic" is ultimately net beneficial, but churee.

Alright, that is all. I have now to devote my attention to the WB's New Tuesday.

Peace,

MB-K

Thursday, February 05, 2004

On Tyatyas

I think that the philosophical tendency to name writings "On ____" is really cool, especially when the subject being discussed is not one you would aoften associate with much philosophical or intellectual clarity. I think that the tyatya works especially well in this situation. My treatise is of course in reaction to the Janet incident this past weekend. I used it as an example in my class today in attempting to discuss what a "self-fulfilling prophecy" is. I had given them sex-ed, arms races, and racial profiling before asking them to come up with a different one. They weren't able to of course but I didn't really expect that they would, its not easy when put under the gun. I brought up Janet since it was a contemporary thing they would be able to discuss. I don't know that there was a good argument for why it was self-fulfilling, very few things you can say will make someone's breast fall out. Fall out is more than a slight misnomer obviously, more accurately Justin ripped it out like a winning pull-tab, but I digress.

Someone seriously needs to inform me about this, however. Is seeing the majority of Janet Jackson's right breast really that shocking. I was watching the halftime show, I was watching Justin-fied buttgrind Janet and I heard "gonna have you naked by the end of this song" then Justin opened up the breast-shield. I was like, "Was that her breast." We hit rewind and checked it out a couple times. We both determined pretty conclusively that you couldn't really see her nipple, because there was some big gold thing on it. It looked like one of those nipple-tassle pasty things (I guess it turned out to be conspicuously large jewelry, which I would imagine felt wondeful under a skin-tight vinyl corsety thing, but to each his or her own nippular accessoriums) but we both decided there was nothing really that special about it, and we moved on. Lo and behold, the story leads the NYT and Sportscenter not only the day after the SuperBowl, but into freaking Wednesday. There are a buttload of things that I don't get:

1) There is a uniqueness problem-Janet Jackson is responsible for one of the most famous Rolling Stone covers of all fucking time and it may as well have been an advertisement for a breast grabbing competition (dude, I bet you would get fuckloads of entries into a breast-grabbing competition, assuming you had the necessary breasts this could become a new national past time, I may have to put some thought into how you determine the winner, since finding the requisite breasts would be especially difficult if you just went by strength of squeeze, though it could double as a mamogram. Oh mamogram jokes, I slay me). If you haven't seen this cover you went somewhere fucking re-mote for most of the early-mid-90s. I'm pretty sure there are other instances as well. CBS didn't air a close up, ie: the The Bare Wench Project, so if this was the most anyone in your home has seen of a breast recently you either you were watching the game with Ray Charles or you had snuck a TV into the Amish colony for the afternoon.

2) Would this have been more family friendly if Justin had merely attempted to enter Janet anally through her pants when singing "gonna have you naked" as he was doing it before. I will admit that I am rarely representative of the family values crowd but once you have already decided to be provactive what exactly does three-quarters tit add to the process. Did you assume that Justin was referring to his pasta or baked potato. "I guarauntee you!! I WILL have the sauce off this pasta by the end of this song. DAMN IT I WILL OR MY NAME IS NOT JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE!!!" The lyrics give me some damn good ideas about what is going on, the illustration did little to enhance the experience.

3) Was it just the fact that the breast went from not revealed to revealed during the song. Is the actual process of revelation the problem. Two days later I watched America's Next Top Model and there was like 2 solid minutes of bare-teenage-model-girl-ass on screen. I mean, they had their thongs on, but this was even on UPN, which is essentially a combination of GodTV and shows that the WB rejected. Why is completely visible butt during prime time on WhatWouldJesusWatch (nothing on that channel by the way) a to the fucking g, while the breastial majority is worthy of Dan Rather's attention.

I could go on and on about the tyatyas, believe me, but I feel no need. As a brief summary of my feelings, I am pro. I have often waxed more than poetic on the subject, particularly the first time I saw the video for "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know," but that is enough.

Katie and I are headed to the out of town, as I have mentioned, so I may be OOC for the weekend. I am a little worried about tomorrow mornings weather sit, but once we are on the highway I think we should be alright. Keep it real. See you on the flip.

Peace,

MB-K

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

Shake it for a Golden Globes Picture

I cannot believe I forgot to mention this shitty by the way. So the intro to the Golden Globes last Saturday was a parody of the Outkast smash-hit "Hey-Ya" about all the people arriving at the Golden Globes. The song was obviously a pre-written and pre-recorded number that was played over the video of the relevant people on the red carpet ten minutes earlier. Apparently there were people who thought this was good, but I literally fell off the couch laughing at how bad it was when it aired last Sunday. This is, I swear to God, an actual line from this song. You could probably find it online somewhere, maybe download the video or at least the tune on kazaa, if you don't believe me, or even if you are just in the mood to hear some funny ass shit. Back to the line, this is word for word from the song. Fit this to the rhythm of one of the lines that come just before the chorus. We see a picture of Uma Thurman, then we hear the brilliant words drift in:

"And here comes Uma/Uma Uma Uma/ and no its not a ruma'/ Ashton Kutcher is really here....2-3-4 HEEEEYYYY--YAAAA"

It was so wonderful, I cannot even explain to you how wonderful it was. I can, however, explain to you how annoying it is when my last class of the day runs almost 20 minutes over. I understand, of course, that sometimes you need a couple minutes or whatever to finish up a thought. That is cool with me. Take five of them even. If you have to do more than that, at least tell me. Say something like "I will need 10 more minutes, sorry about that." And then do what you gotta do so I can go home, but at least with a reasonable expectation. I would also prefer that the other estudiantes in aforementioned lecture shut the fuck up after that 5 or so minute mark. Either you really want to talk about this shitty or you just want to impress somebody and I don't particularly think that either of those excuses warrants it. Talk during the class, there was no shortage of opportunities, save your comments for next time, whatever. I have nothing against people liking their education or being involved or whatever, but I have been at school for like 10 hours, I am hungry and thirsty and haven't watched any television or hung out with Katie in that same amount of time. Enough of the complaining about schedulistic concerns.

We have plans this weekend, heading down to West Virgina to judge some debate tournament. I would have thought that the ole Virginnies were too far South, since I always sort of associated them with Dixie, Carolina, etc. I guess that the part of West Virginia we are heading to is just a straight shot south of here though, no more than 5 or so hours. We are judging for Binghamton folks, since Katie has no teams debating this weekend, so we actually will make a good amount. At the very least we get a couple hundred bucks after all relevant expenses and to add another state on my visited states list. Since moving out to Buffalo that number has increased substantially, you tack on Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont. I guess that is really about all that you tack on, but three is a significant percentage of like 14. A 20% increase is all good as far as I am concerned. If I was playing baseball I would have jumped from batting just over three-hundred to about 500. I would be a lock for the hall of fame and everybody would totally want me, which would be sweet.

I would imagine we will be at a debate tournament the week after as well, which blows insofar as it is Valentine's Day and hence the one-year anniversary of our engagement, but I guess we will have to celebrate another day. Katie will likely already have a commitment then, but I should be able to at least make up our expenses. Could be a lot worse, let me tell you.

I was going to start an O.C. spoiler page this week, as per the suggestion of some wonderful bastard, but unfortunately there is no new O.C. Instead of enjoying that wondeful newerific program this week CTV showcased this Wednesday's upcoming epsiode of the West Wing. I would post spoilers but you don't want them, just watch the show. You could email me if you are desperate to know Josh's choicest tales this week, but I would suggest that they are better when he uses them himself. "Eric is pregnant!! Feel those kicks, he's gonna be a soccer player!! He is!! He is!!"

Who would you rather bone: Ashtabula, Ohio or Janet Jackson's fully covered breast. I personally would choose Ashtabula, Ohio, because once you get there one of two things happens. Either you are on your way home from somewhere West of Buffalo, which means you will get home fairly soon, or you are on your way West from Buffalo and since you are already in Ashtabula, you get to stop at the Ashtabula MickeyD's for lunch/dinner/breakfast/snack. After all, if you are driving in the middle of the night the Ashtabula McDonalds is the first 24 hour one visible from the highway. I mean you have all your Tollway rest areas and shit, but some of them not so hot in the middle of the night. Lets say you hit the point in Ohio where 80 and 90 connect and go toll style. Well, right away you have a fairly decent rest area with about 7 different restaurants, a gas station, a convenceince area, and that shitty. Notably, however, most of those are closed late at night. The Great Steak and Potato Company, your Panda Express, even the Sabaro. Obviously the Panera Bread is shut down, but that place pretty much borders on sit down food anyway, especially one right off the freeway. Even the Starbucks, which I would think would be the most important place to roll durante la noche caps it at like 10 on weekdays, maybe earlier. There is one more of those quality ones about 40 miles further Westward. After that everything in Ohio starts to suck major assbutt. The gas stations switch on and off between Sunoco and Mobil, but the restaurants are just Hardees, Hardees the whole fucking way. Sometimes, I will admit, I am game for a solid Monster Burger, but those times are few and far between. Furthermore, for some inexplicable reason, late at night there is nothing which feels shadier than an empty Hardees in the middle of the Ohio turnpike.

As fascinated as I am sure my multitude of readers are to hear these varied stories about the Ohio turnpike and its rest stops, I will leave you be now with the mention of the only place technically more shady then an abandoned Hardees. That place is of course, Lake Shady. We happened upon this wonderful place on our way to the Spriz-Griz, a story which I just realized has some melancholy to it. Anyway, we happened to notice a sign for Lake Shady right near the Conoco in Oronoco, off 52. We obviously had no choice but to stop on our way back. That was a Sunday afternoon I believe, a beautiful sunny day. It was not fiery warm outside, but it was late summer and there were a bunch of families hanging around the lake front, which was a parkish area with benches and the like.

So two Mazdas, mine and Sanjays, pull into the parking lot of Lake Shady park (I don't know if this is actually the name) and 9 or so of us stumble out, hungover, and walk down to the shore. With families playing back further near the parking lot, regarding us with more than some suspicision. No one said anything or whatever, but as we huddled and smoked a bunch of cigarettes to cover up the significantly more shady activity, I can say for certain that we satisfied the standards of the name. Wait, who is that. I think its...wait...here comes Uma! Uma-Uma-Uma...

Peace,

MB-K

Monday, February 02, 2004

T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T- TJ Maxx--You Get the Max for the Minimum, Minimum Price

So I lied about the pre-SuperBowl blogging, thats what happens on SuperBowl Sunday, everything goes crazy Crazy CRAZY. I might have had a superbowl party yesterday, if I had any friends in Buffalo, but we don't so instead Katie and I decided that we would just eat all fucking day long. We were going to have a big breakfast, but because neither of us felt like going out to get eggs we ended up just eating hashbrowns, which, when you eat them alone for breakfast aren't really hashbrowns, they are just french fries. I mean, technically, yes, they are still the same potatoes that they would have been had they not been, but you cannot argue that they don't take on a brand new disposition if you put them alongside some cheesy eggs and toast. Its like ham, you know, or even certain types of sausages, that just take on brand new forms if you put them on a grill and then move them to a bun with mustard and kraut then if they just lay there next to the eggs and stuff. Try this, go to Perkins right now, with one other person. I mean you don't have to bring anyone else, but it might seem odd if you go into Perkins and order two meals as one person. You can bring three people too, since Perkins is used to three people ordering two meals, but the inverse just doesn't stand. Here is the idea: one person should get the open-faced ham and cheese sandwich (for the world's best story that involves an open-faced ham and cheese sandwich, see my entry from when we returned to Buffalo and Katie moved here, its an Andy story and even if you know it its worth a brief recollection) and the other person should get some sort of ham and eggs breakfast.

You will have the same fucking ham alright, the exact same fucking ham, becuase, trust me on this one, no matter how high-falutin Perkins may seem to be when they are running their seafood specials and shit, they are fundamentally not that fancy. I was talking to Sam Perkin this one time and I says to Sam I says I says, "Hey there Sam," I says to him, I says, "Sam" I says, "I think you should use different types of ham for your ham and cheese sandwich than you use for your ham and eggs breakfast," is what I saysed. Sam turns to me and puffing on his pipe he grimaces. "Damn it all, hell and tarnation, jimminy christmas, and dancin elijah tammany hall. I refuse, absolutely-dabsolutely refuse to stock two types of ham. Let them eat chocolate chocolate chip muffins." While I have to agree with his favorable rating on the muffin front ( and can even respect those who prefer the non-chocolate chocolate chip muffins or, on occassion, the banana chocolate chip muffins) I am simply not sure about the multiple hams. Anyway, it should be obvious that the same ham takes on a new flava' when combined with fries.

That was far too much time dedicated to the whole ham situation, at Perkins or elsewhere. I would make a promise that I will not discuss ham for any serious amount of time in the future of this writing, but we actually have a fairly large ham in our freezer and the chance is high that when we eat it I will mention it for more than just a second or two.

After our breakfast taters we took a break for a little while until we had some mid afternoon leftover pizza and stuff. Then SuperBowl time rolls around so we have to go hardcore. First we break out the chips and dip-two types notably, the classic French Onion and a cheesy-beany-little number that Katie whipped up which was quite delicioso. We added to our appetizer menu my favorite hors-d-oeuvre, bacon wrapped water chestnuts. Katie was all hating on these bad mama-jamas until I whipped them out after 5 minutes under the broiler and damn they rox. The crispy-bacon quality of the outside combined with the salty sweet watery crunch of the chestnuts, oh yeah babe. She loved it, couldn't get enough. Pretty much everyone could eat like a billion of these things, I have never been anywhere where all the bacon wrapped water chestnuts available were not consumed. Maybe that is just because I will consume as many as I think I can get away with without being yelled at. I should look into having them at the wedding. Share my bacony-wrappy-watery-chestnutty love with the rest of mi amigos y amigas.

This all came to a climax just after 8 minutes in the third quarter when, after spending an hour in the oven, I removed our sausage-walnut stuffed pork roast from the oven. The recipe we ganked from Emeril Lagasse, but it was really fucking easy and it will definately form the basis of future pork roasts, assuming we get any. We mimosaed during Survivor All-Stars first episode and finished a full magnum of the last of the new-years leftover Asti. It was, all in all, way too much fucking food, even for me, but I think we all need to eat that much once every two-three days.

Peace,

MB-K