Several questions. First, of all, more feelings about the experimental format from the recent past. I have received brief negative feedback from Alejandro Jimenez and an even briefer rebuttal of that feeback (the Katie equivalent of "meh") from the format's originator. The American Idol like window for your feedback remains open. The numbers for you to call will be on-screen at the end of the show (speaking of which, if you still have the chance, you should call 1-866-IDOLS-05, because John Stevens sucked tonight and I think he will be voted off, which blows, because he is literally and figuratively my near-homeboy (since I live near his home and I nearly dig him really hard)). If you have an opinion voice it now or I am going to introduce a new format where I just I only discuss various social issues as if I were the Trix Rabbit, seriously, don't push me.
On a more serious question, how do you think it works if you are working the overnight shift on either end of daylight savings time. I mean, lets say you are working when you fall back, obviously, you would be pissed if they just did the math and said "you worked from 12 to 9 with an hour lunch, so 8 hours for you Jackaroo" (notably, you should also be pissed about the fact that they are calling you "Jackaroo" because that shit is not professional, unless of course your name is Jackaroo, which is also pretty fucking unprofessional, so you are likely a roadie for the version of Dogstar that tours without Keanu Reeves, so the chances you get paid by the hour are pretty low). The opposite situation occurs in springime, where they would be kinda pissy if you were paid for 8 hours instead of the seven you actually worked (this is the only potential advantage I can conceive of to springing ahead). I guess if you had people who worked on both it would just sort of even itself out, but you can't plan on that. If it were up to me I would just give the ol' wageearner the benefit of the doubt, or at least the benefit of the artificially created temporal distortion not recognized by the state of Arizona (I believe I have discussed the flamboyance of the state of Arizona's temporal politics at least once before, if not, I will be happy to do so later). I don't think management is typically in favor of that approach. So instead of paying you for what you actually worked when that is more and what you worked by the clock when that is more, my guess is that there is probably some policy about this shit, but I don't know. Any ideas from labor folks in the audience.
To continue by the title, we move to Wilking, and its corrollary Jen. We found out on Sunday afternoon that the Wilk-fam had driven to NYC to see the sights on Sunday afternoon and hence would not be along until later. That proved to be true and although Wilking was within 4 hours of his original 10 pm estimate, it was still quite late. We kicked it for a little while, had a glass of Kool-Aid (Tropical Punch, very refreshing, my personal Kool-Aid favorite) and went to sleep. We awoke early the next morning, I walked into the living room to find Wilking and Jen in the bathroom together, presumably having butt-sex. I watched Sportscenter and attempted not to freak out about the Zack debacle and we hung for a while before going out for lunch and beer at the Buffalo Brew Pub. I actually sort of dug the place, though I had never been there. It had a pretty decent house-brewed Pale Ale, free peanuts which you can eat and then throw on the floor (not classy maybe, but fun as hell, and not everything has to be classy after all, take crack for instance), and aight food highlighted by wings that get a B to a B+ on the Baxter scale of wingaliciousness. I was the only non-weak jeuce in the place who was able to eat a quarter of a plate of wings and their full lunch (its not like we ordered a whole roasted antelope, Wilking had a turkey reuben for ass-sake) so everyone filled up their dorky doggy bags while I polished off my beer and the peanuts.
Upon our return home we realized that 1) we should have smoked before we went out for lunch 2) its better late then never and 3) Wilking and Jen had to fly in a couple hours and there is no better way to do so then drunk and intoxicated. So we sparked some shit up and watched the Simpsons episode guest starring SMG, Buffy was quality as usual. Literally, the first time the pipe gets passed to Wilking he lights it, begins to inhale, begins to cough, hands the pipe to Jen, coughs some more, then proceed to vomit into his hands on the couch. It was like a spontaneous vomiting, something you usually see only when hanging out with Andy. Seriously, I know Popes who handle themselves better. Wilking, though you would be hard pressed to believe it based on this story, the others I tell about him, or his personal appearance, is actually a fairly together guy when not completely wrecked, so at this point still had the remarkably un-Andy Kemp like ability to react quickly and scamper to the bathroom were he finished the whole deal. We smoked a little more and the afternoon ended with both our guests passed out on the big couch while Katie and I watched Christina Aguilera on Ellen. This was a ridiculous moment, by the way, since Christina literally wore a pastel suit and a wig that was what I would imagine someone would choose if they were running for Student Council president in a New Jersey high school. She talked to Ellen for a while and then did a performance of "Beautiful" which was cool, but I really wish she would have ripped her pants off in the middle and done a performace of "Dirrty" in her thong and suit jacket only.
So those were the highlights of the visit. It wasn't a long one, but it marks the 3rd total set of visitors in the apartment in the 18ish months we have occupied it. Who wants to be big number four!! Maybe I will start some sort of contest, where you can call in and vote, or whatever, and the winner gets to be my fourth guest. We could sort of drum up some demand for it or whatever. Anyway.
I was in my literature class today, just minding my business and hating on the book that I am still not very far in, nor is anyone else, when something really fucked up happened. Basically, the dude teaching the class suggested an excercise which I considered both entirely worthless and really pretty ridiculous for a graduate class: reading several pages of the book out-loud with different people playing different parts. I had nothing else to do, however, so I read along. Guess what happened, you never will. Check this: at least the opening section of JR is fucking hilarious when acted out loud. It reads dead in the water, I mean, it reads like a dead-goat smells, but this was funny as hell. I knew that it was humorous, I identified what the joke was, but this was incredible. I was laughing literally out-loud in class and so was everyone else, whom I had been with in earlier trashing this gibberish. I have determined, with some piggybacking on the ideas of those in the class, that the basic deal has to do with the book essentially being written in real time. There was something about being forced to go through the dialogue in this way that made me at least appreciate the odd manners of speech considerably more. Whether or not that will result in my liking the read more or affecting at all the lack of chapter titles and breaks and shit is yet to be seen, but I have canceled the public burning of the book pending its completion.
The final comment I wanted to make today was on Corn-Dogs. I really like them, and I just don't get to eat em that often. Obviously the best time for a corn dog is a warm August or September afternoon at the Minnesota State Fair, but really any time will do. I think a really solid business idea would be for an ice cream truck company to also open a corn-dog truck and have it drive like 5-7 blocks ahead of the ice cream truck. I mean, there are a bunch of people who want the corn dog alone, and then, since we all know that there is nothing better than an overpriced ice cream sandwich after a tasty corn dog, you've got a brand new audience. Patent!! I call, seriously. If I see a corn-dog truck coming down my street the first thing I will do is buy and eat several corn dogs, then the second thing I will do is wait for the ice cream truck and buy and eat several ice cream sandwiches, but the third thing I will do is beat you like a red headed stepchild.
I have done alot of internet stuff tonight, and you know, or rather, you don't even know, how my Tuesdays are. Catch you manana.
The phone lines are now open:
To Vote for the old format: dial 1-785-341-4373 and say "Butt-penis" when the call is picked up
To Vote for the new format: dial 1-785-341-4373 and say "Ass-ball-ass" when the call is picked up
Call now, call often, and remember, the louder you say the indicated phrase, the more your vote counts.
Peace,
MB-K
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Infuckingfuriating
I love reality television, don't get me wrong. I love it, I will always love it, and unless it goes out of style qua prime time game shows I will watch every new one until it bores me. That said, the last two big reality finales I have seen have totally bitten it. I have already expressed my frustration with ANTM, where they both eliminated the best person first and eventually chose wrong between the two finalists.
Dream Job now steps up and challenges them by eliminating the two strongest contestants first. It was no surprise that Maggie went away, I liked her but I knew they wouldn't let her on the air. However, and I shit you not, the second cut, that of Zack, was explained, literally, with the phrase "Zack, you are the best, I cut you!!!" What the fucking fuck. I don't get it. I know Tony thinks that Zack is better cut out for hosting a talk show, and that is probably true, but still, he is the best motherfucker in this game and it is weak that he is out.
Okay, I am going to watch the finale and calm down. I was so looking forward to watching Zack on the SC every day. Weak Al Jafee, weak Tony Kornheiser. Weak.
Peace,
MB-K
Dream Job now steps up and challenges them by eliminating the two strongest contestants first. It was no surprise that Maggie went away, I liked her but I knew they wouldn't let her on the air. However, and I shit you not, the second cut, that of Zack, was explained, literally, with the phrase "Zack, you are the best, I cut you!!!" What the fucking fuck. I don't get it. I know Tony thinks that Zack is better cut out for hosting a talk show, and that is probably true, but still, he is the best motherfucker in this game and it is weak that he is out.
Okay, I am going to watch the finale and calm down. I was so looking forward to watching Zack on the SC every day. Weak Al Jafee, weak Tony Kornheiser. Weak.
Peace,
MB-K
People Inside Me are Asking Me to Blow Up City Hall
I wonder if that Tenacious D lyric is gonna make my blurty show up on some FBI sheet. Scary thoughts for a scary day in a scary world. I can't really think of any more ways to gratuitously utilize the word scary in the previous sentence, so I guess I will move on. We rented School of Rock yesterday, as shocking as it was that I hadn't seen it until now. Seeing as how I worship Jack Black like a golden calf of some sort, I don't know why I never bothered to enjoy it in the theater, but whatev, I didn't. It is a fantastic film though, and I completely understand why it was so popular. For the most part it maintains Jack Black's incredible enthusiasm while subtracting the things that occasionally alienate people from the D. I personally don't understand why the swearing and dick jokes are bothersome, but what do I know. The point is that Katie enjoyed the show almost as much as I did and if we were watching the Tenacious D DVD she would have simply alternated between bored, shocked, and offended. While I don't want Jables to get rid of the blue schtick, I certainly will continue to enjoy the clean moments he needs to pay the bills.
We spent the rest of yesterday reading, shopping, and eating. In terms of the reading I progressed another 40ish pages in JR, which remains the worst fucking book I have ever read. Not only is there nothing to distinguish one section from another or one character from another or to indicate what the fuck is going on, it also has yet to articulate an interesting story. There is an obvious developing plot line, but its fucking boring, a completely traditional story told in what is so far a format which entirely proves true the criticisms of experimental fiction as "literary masturbation." Normally I laugh at that phrase, both for the deconstructionist critique by which masturbation remains productive activity and supplemental to the sexual relation and because its usually advanced in such a non-sensical fashion as to be nothing more than laughable, but its gained alot of credibility as I continue to push through this nonsense. Kathy Acker, a woman whose Empire of the Senseless, I read earlier in the semester, writes in a fashion which is occassionally entirely incomprehensible, but the blatantly obvious interaction between the intricacies of the form and the development of the narrative (if such a thing can be distinctly identified here) made sense, the two played off each other. The point is that they better get it together pretty soon here.
After the reading we headed to the mall for a little bit of Katie's favorite activity. We were going to go over to the SPCA animal shelter to look at kitties before that, but not only were they closign early, but I was quite certain (Katie was doubting this for a reason unbenounced to me) that if we entered a kitten-having facility with enough money to purchase a kitten that there was a significant risk we would leave with a kitten. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the kitty as much as anyone, but we should really be saving the money, waiting until we will be in town for sure, and until we can get the perfect cat, which is, notably, a persian cat named Hippopotameow. So we skipped the animales and arrived at the Walden Galleria. I could give you the highlights of the shopping extravaganza itself, but its pretty much all the same to me. I know we were in like a billion different stores, but most of them sold women's clothes, and most of those clothes were neon pink. I do my best to just shut up and let Katie enjoy the Limited, Gap, Lerner New York, etc. since she is always considerate in allowing me to watch football, hockey, basketball, etc. but the fact of the matter is that I fucking hate those stores. I am not an indie, punk, goth, hipster, or otherwise, but even my largely conformist self feels icky when I walk into Express. On the bright side, the mall had two really sweet groups with table set up. One was a greyhound rescue program with a bunch of really cute greyhounds, the other was a raptor rescue center which we had seen there before. This time they had two different owls as opposed to an owl and a hawk, and one of the owls was the smallest fucking thing I have ever seen. Literally, the owl was like the size of a robin. I mean, about that height at least, a little thicker. We stood there and looked at it for a couple minutes and it was really hella cute. It was also the most active owl I have ever seen, flapping its wings and turning its head around all the time. I also learned that owls turn their heads like that because their eyes are stationary, which is fucking really really weird. Katie bought a couple shirts which were very noise and very on sale, so we both got something positive.
Eating we did upon the return home. Since neither of us could decide what we wanted we ended up at Topps determining our dinner as we went. We found a high quality loaf of bread, some tomatoes, some garlicy-chicken pasta, and parmesan cheese sauce. Upon our return home we assembled those ingredients into a pasta with white sauce and bruschetta meal. I didn't make the uberschetta because Katie is not always in favor of the ginormous amount of garlic and peppers which are involved, but it was still tasty. We were going to buy some sort of Katified ice cream (Haagen Daaz or Edy's Dreamery, vs the Ben and Jerry's which I will virtually always go with) but instead opted cheesecake style and ended up with the first situation in either of our memory where we had baked goods in the house not made by Katie while I was at work.
So not a bad Saturday if I do say so my elf. And I do, because I like elves. Elves is good people in my world. Elvis is also good people in my world, but not nearly as small or proficient in toy design.
As so many Sundays are, today is a big sporting day. You've got the second half of the elite eight and you've got the college hockey version of the elite eight. The former is okay so far, potential to be awesome if Xavier keeps this up. The latter sucked a fat nut when Ski-u-mah fell to the Bulldogs of UMD (which, according to everyone I know who went to school there, stands for Use Marijuana Daily). It was a totally weak performance by the first-year goaltender, but the Gophs offense was a little slow too. It will be a sad day for Puffy, even more so than it was for me.
I could blabber on and on like I usually do, but you people deserve a break. Anyone loyal or bored enough to bother reading this many paragrpahs about no topics more socially relevant or interesting than ice cream topping, well, this bud's for you.
Peace,
MB-K
We spent the rest of yesterday reading, shopping, and eating. In terms of the reading I progressed another 40ish pages in JR, which remains the worst fucking book I have ever read. Not only is there nothing to distinguish one section from another or one character from another or to indicate what the fuck is going on, it also has yet to articulate an interesting story. There is an obvious developing plot line, but its fucking boring, a completely traditional story told in what is so far a format which entirely proves true the criticisms of experimental fiction as "literary masturbation." Normally I laugh at that phrase, both for the deconstructionist critique by which masturbation remains productive activity and supplemental to the sexual relation and because its usually advanced in such a non-sensical fashion as to be nothing more than laughable, but its gained alot of credibility as I continue to push through this nonsense. Kathy Acker, a woman whose Empire of the Senseless, I read earlier in the semester, writes in a fashion which is occassionally entirely incomprehensible, but the blatantly obvious interaction between the intricacies of the form and the development of the narrative (if such a thing can be distinctly identified here) made sense, the two played off each other. The point is that they better get it together pretty soon here.
After the reading we headed to the mall for a little bit of Katie's favorite activity. We were going to go over to the SPCA animal shelter to look at kitties before that, but not only were they closign early, but I was quite certain (Katie was doubting this for a reason unbenounced to me) that if we entered a kitten-having facility with enough money to purchase a kitten that there was a significant risk we would leave with a kitten. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the kitty as much as anyone, but we should really be saving the money, waiting until we will be in town for sure, and until we can get the perfect cat, which is, notably, a persian cat named Hippopotameow. So we skipped the animales and arrived at the Walden Galleria. I could give you the highlights of the shopping extravaganza itself, but its pretty much all the same to me. I know we were in like a billion different stores, but most of them sold women's clothes, and most of those clothes were neon pink. I do my best to just shut up and let Katie enjoy the Limited, Gap, Lerner New York, etc. since she is always considerate in allowing me to watch football, hockey, basketball, etc. but the fact of the matter is that I fucking hate those stores. I am not an indie, punk, goth, hipster, or otherwise, but even my largely conformist self feels icky when I walk into Express. On the bright side, the mall had two really sweet groups with table set up. One was a greyhound rescue program with a bunch of really cute greyhounds, the other was a raptor rescue center which we had seen there before. This time they had two different owls as opposed to an owl and a hawk, and one of the owls was the smallest fucking thing I have ever seen. Literally, the owl was like the size of a robin. I mean, about that height at least, a little thicker. We stood there and looked at it for a couple minutes and it was really hella cute. It was also the most active owl I have ever seen, flapping its wings and turning its head around all the time. I also learned that owls turn their heads like that because their eyes are stationary, which is fucking really really weird. Katie bought a couple shirts which were very noise and very on sale, so we both got something positive.
Eating we did upon the return home. Since neither of us could decide what we wanted we ended up at Topps determining our dinner as we went. We found a high quality loaf of bread, some tomatoes, some garlicy-chicken pasta, and parmesan cheese sauce. Upon our return home we assembled those ingredients into a pasta with white sauce and bruschetta meal. I didn't make the uberschetta because Katie is not always in favor of the ginormous amount of garlic and peppers which are involved, but it was still tasty. We were going to buy some sort of Katified ice cream (Haagen Daaz or Edy's Dreamery, vs the Ben and Jerry's which I will virtually always go with) but instead opted cheesecake style and ended up with the first situation in either of our memory where we had baked goods in the house not made by Katie while I was at work.
So not a bad Saturday if I do say so my elf. And I do, because I like elves. Elves is good people in my world. Elvis is also good people in my world, but not nearly as small or proficient in toy design.
As so many Sundays are, today is a big sporting day. You've got the second half of the elite eight and you've got the college hockey version of the elite eight. The former is okay so far, potential to be awesome if Xavier keeps this up. The latter sucked a fat nut when Ski-u-mah fell to the Bulldogs of UMD (which, according to everyone I know who went to school there, stands for Use Marijuana Daily). It was a totally weak performance by the first-year goaltender, but the Gophs offense was a little slow too. It will be a sad day for Puffy, even more so than it was for me.
I could blabber on and on like I usually do, but you people deserve a break. Anyone loyal or bored enough to bother reading this many paragrpahs about no topics more socially relevant or interesting than ice cream topping, well, this bud's for you.
Peace,
MB-K
Friday, March 26, 2004
Mouse Pizza
When Katie started to dust her computer desk because Wilking was coming I literally laughed out loud. I told her, in plain non-hyperbolic or analogic language, that Wilking didn't give a fuck. I understand not wanting the house to be filthy, but it wasn't, and he wouldn't care at all. Somewhere to sit that is not coated in Pepto Bismol, or maybe even one that is, is pretty much all he requires. Besides the fact that I decided the phrase "Dusting for Wilking" should definatively be the sequel to "Bowling for Columbine" I realized that to accurately get my point accross I would need to resort to the art of storytelling passed on to me by Tristan Taromino.
A long, long, time ago. I can still remember how, living at the house used to make me cry. And I knew if I had my chance, I would make the Domino's pizza dance, and maybe all of the stoners at the house would be happy, for a while. But payning for pizza made us shiver, with every pizza they'd deliver. I can't handle that shit anymore. So one day the pizza dude arrives during the middle of a large and particularly thorough smoking session. I think there were like 10 of us all taking many large bong rips, and when the door was opened to receive the cinna-stix, a cloud exited the place quite forcefully. I don't remember if we invited him in or if he asked, but this dude named Eric sat down and had a couple hits while we enjoyed the 'za. He told us to ask for him next time we called, and we would work something out. Our relationship with Eric remained quite strong for quite a while. We would call the dude and order like a small cheese pizza and he would bring boxes and boxes of pizzas, full pizza style cinnastix, buffalo wings 2 liters, etc. Then he would sit down, we would all smoke hard, and eat hard, we would give him a nominal amount of cash in comparison to the ginormous amount of pizza and that was it. It was a stoner's dream relationship.
As a result of this combined with the general lack of cleanliness esoupsed by a majority of house occupents, especially intoxicated unemployed house occupents, there was pizza lying everywhere. Pretty much every point on the floor was occupied by pizza boxes. some of which had a couple pieces remaining. So one night when we were sitting around, doing what we usually do, Wilking got really hungry. Eric was off that night, so we would have had to pay for our food in the normal fashion. At some point, when he reached a degree of hunger which really only a stoned Wilking or a stoned Dobs can testify to, he decided that he would just grab some pizza off the floor and eat it. The specific piece of pizza he decided upon was fantastic. For one thing, it had been sitting on the floor for at least 4 days or so. It was entirely dried out and crusty. I can't tell you exactly how old it was, because it was mixed in among all the other random pizza boxes, but it was not fresh. The other distinguishing mark of the pizza were the small nibbles taken out of the crust and various other parts of the slice. Basically, a mouse or several mice, had been eating this pizza prior to Wilking deciding to do the same. As soon as someone realized that Wilking was eating the mouse pizza and I can't imagine that we didn't laugh for years. It added to the legend of the fact that he at one point ate a chipotle burrito which had been sitting on the table for several days (notably, a burrito which contained sour cream, a substance known far and wide for its wonderful reaction to time sitting on the table) and at another point attempting to kill Sanjay by feeding him boiled eggs which had gone rotten in the previous calendar year.
I guess that is enough for the moment. Time to evaluate how annoying the new format is.
Peace,
MB-K
A long, long, time ago. I can still remember how, living at the house used to make me cry. And I knew if I had my chance, I would make the Domino's pizza dance, and maybe all of the stoners at the house would be happy, for a while. But payning for pizza made us shiver, with every pizza they'd deliver. I can't handle that shit anymore. So one day the pizza dude arrives during the middle of a large and particularly thorough smoking session. I think there were like 10 of us all taking many large bong rips, and when the door was opened to receive the cinna-stix, a cloud exited the place quite forcefully. I don't remember if we invited him in or if he asked, but this dude named Eric sat down and had a couple hits while we enjoyed the 'za. He told us to ask for him next time we called, and we would work something out. Our relationship with Eric remained quite strong for quite a while. We would call the dude and order like a small cheese pizza and he would bring boxes and boxes of pizzas, full pizza style cinnastix, buffalo wings 2 liters, etc. Then he would sit down, we would all smoke hard, and eat hard, we would give him a nominal amount of cash in comparison to the ginormous amount of pizza and that was it. It was a stoner's dream relationship.
As a result of this combined with the general lack of cleanliness esoupsed by a majority of house occupents, especially intoxicated unemployed house occupents, there was pizza lying everywhere. Pretty much every point on the floor was occupied by pizza boxes. some of which had a couple pieces remaining. So one night when we were sitting around, doing what we usually do, Wilking got really hungry. Eric was off that night, so we would have had to pay for our food in the normal fashion. At some point, when he reached a degree of hunger which really only a stoned Wilking or a stoned Dobs can testify to, he decided that he would just grab some pizza off the floor and eat it. The specific piece of pizza he decided upon was fantastic. For one thing, it had been sitting on the floor for at least 4 days or so. It was entirely dried out and crusty. I can't tell you exactly how old it was, because it was mixed in among all the other random pizza boxes, but it was not fresh. The other distinguishing mark of the pizza were the small nibbles taken out of the crust and various other parts of the slice. Basically, a mouse or several mice, had been eating this pizza prior to Wilking deciding to do the same. As soon as someone realized that Wilking was eating the mouse pizza and I can't imagine that we didn't laugh for years. It added to the legend of the fact that he at one point ate a chipotle burrito which had been sitting on the table for several days (notably, a burrito which contained sour cream, a substance known far and wide for its wonderful reaction to time sitting on the table) and at another point attempting to kill Sanjay by feeding him boiled eggs which had gone rotten in the previous calendar year.
I guess that is enough for the moment. Time to evaluate how annoying the new format is.
Peace,
MB-K
Productivity Makes a "pro" out of "u" and "tiv"
So immediately after my productivity for the weekend is publically announced on the old blurtaroo I decide to perfectly excecute the introduction into the well worked weekend. In someways it is legit, but still. So last night Wilking calls me to let me know that he will be coming into town at 8 am on his way to his sister's hockey tourney. However, since his sister has a game at the same time he was landing, he wanted to know if I could pick him up and have some bfast before his rents came to pick him up from Rochester.
Katie reacts to this news by cleaning the house. This was not really the reaction I would have expected, seeing as how Wilking's standards for cleanliness have never quite matched up to Katie's anyway. The house was not like disgustingly dirty, notably, Katie had just re-organized the living room the day before and most of the dishes were done, etc. So we spent an hour or so organizing shit that Wilking wouldn't notice and altering things that Wilking wouldn't care about. We finally got to sleep at like 2:30 and woke up 5 hours later to head to the airport. Besides the fact that Wilking's hair (which has not been cut in like 5 months and is in full mutherfuckin effizzect affro style) rocks, we also got a noise breakfast out of this situation. I mean, we paid for the breakfast, but it was an excuse to get out early enough to legitimately demand an omelete. I also got to have some Perk-style choco-chip pancakes, which I had been craving for a long time anyway.
Regardless, then we came back here, bullshited, watched TV, played Mario Party 5 for a little while, and the like, until the Wilk-rents arrived right around noon. I made some efforts to read, got about 10 pages done in this stupid fucking book, then realized that I would fall asleep if I kept reading, so we watched some TV instead. About 2:00 I decided to return to the book, read 10 more pages or so, realized that if I continued reading that I would fall asleep, kept reading anyway, and fell asleep. Katie and I decided to take a more formal nap, ended up waking at like 7 and entirely shattering my drive to read this motherfucker. I can't explain to you the lack of interest I have in this novel, it sucks a gigantic asspenis. I am determined to read it at some point, but I can't imagine that I will finish it by the time required by this class. It may become the worst summer reading in all of human history.
Peace,
MB-K
Katie reacts to this news by cleaning the house. This was not really the reaction I would have expected, seeing as how Wilking's standards for cleanliness have never quite matched up to Katie's anyway. The house was not like disgustingly dirty, notably, Katie had just re-organized the living room the day before and most of the dishes were done, etc. So we spent an hour or so organizing shit that Wilking wouldn't notice and altering things that Wilking wouldn't care about. We finally got to sleep at like 2:30 and woke up 5 hours later to head to the airport. Besides the fact that Wilking's hair (which has not been cut in like 5 months and is in full mutherfuckin effizzect affro style) rocks, we also got a noise breakfast out of this situation. I mean, we paid for the breakfast, but it was an excuse to get out early enough to legitimately demand an omelete. I also got to have some Perk-style choco-chip pancakes, which I had been craving for a long time anyway.
Regardless, then we came back here, bullshited, watched TV, played Mario Party 5 for a little while, and the like, until the Wilk-rents arrived right around noon. I made some efforts to read, got about 10 pages done in this stupid fucking book, then realized that I would fall asleep if I kept reading, so we watched some TV instead. About 2:00 I decided to return to the book, read 10 more pages or so, realized that if I continued reading that I would fall asleep, kept reading anyway, and fell asleep. Katie and I decided to take a more formal nap, ended up waking at like 7 and entirely shattering my drive to read this motherfucker. I can't explain to you the lack of interest I have in this novel, it sucks a gigantic asspenis. I am determined to read it at some point, but I can't imagine that I will finish it by the time required by this class. It may become the worst summer reading in all of human history.
Peace,
MB-K
Suggestions Make a "Ggest" out of "u" and "tions"
So Katie commented abdout the randomness of yesterday's extended random blog. Those of you familiar with my somewhat faulked up style will think this is no surprise and not recognize anything odd about a transition between the vaginal nature of the modern tunnel and a brief dissertation on pouched tuna, but Katie thinks its distracting. She has several rationale, which I will allow to articulate later on if necessary, but basically she thinks that I should make seperate concets into seperate entries.
I have a couple concerns about this, for instance that it will distract from the overall disconnected homogeny (c) 2004 that I aim to promote. There is something about the juxtaposition between these moments that sort of adds to their je ne sai quoi. I am also more than a little concerned that making an entry like yesterday into 10 or so seperate entries would just discourage people from reading, enjoying, etc. I mean, you can say while you are busy at work, I will read one blog entry, but probably can't justify 10. Its unwieldy damn it, it does not have enough wield. Maybe it won't be an issue, but I fear that it will. It might also interrupt my ability to employ the classic throwback to jokes made earlier in the same blog entry. I guess the whole subject of pillow-ology would be contained together in the peanut-butterology, so those jokes would be a to the g, but potentially it fucks shizz. Finally, it completely inverts the order of my posts. I don't know if people will have enough forsight to scroll to the bottom of the new post to develop this, or if this post will read like a weblog version of Memento, but oh well. I guess this would be the end of the first entry. I suppose the other disad is that I have to sign my name at the end of every section.
Peace,
MB-K
I have a couple concerns about this, for instance that it will distract from the overall disconnected homogeny (c) 2004 that I aim to promote. There is something about the juxtaposition between these moments that sort of adds to their je ne sai quoi. I am also more than a little concerned that making an entry like yesterday into 10 or so seperate entries would just discourage people from reading, enjoying, etc. I mean, you can say while you are busy at work, I will read one blog entry, but probably can't justify 10. Its unwieldy damn it, it does not have enough wield. Maybe it won't be an issue, but I fear that it will. It might also interrupt my ability to employ the classic throwback to jokes made earlier in the same blog entry. I guess the whole subject of pillow-ology would be contained together in the peanut-butterology, so those jokes would be a to the g, but potentially it fucks shizz. Finally, it completely inverts the order of my posts. I don't know if people will have enough forsight to scroll to the bottom of the new post to develop this, or if this post will read like a weblog version of Memento, but oh well. I guess this would be the end of the first entry. I suppose the other disad is that I have to sign my name at the end of every section.
Peace,
MB-K
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Wingin' it With Dickie V
About 2 weeks ago Sportscenter did this 5 part story bit on Sex and Sports. The gist of the story was to investigate the ways the sports media intertwines sex with its reporting about entirely diverse subjects. Tony Kornheiser pretty much nailed what was going on with this bit, since for the most part it ripped on ESPN as much as it did newspaper coverage or Fox Sports, CBS, etc. First of all, the reporters had a very "well they do it too!" attitude towards the things they seemed to admit were more than a bit sketchy. The most memorable argument in this section was discussing the "cute-sideline" reporter genre made famous by Bonnie Bernstein, Melissa Stark, and Jillian Barberie, among others. I can't remember who started this trend, my guess is that it was Fox, but I don't know that for sure. Everyone does it at this point, not just for football coverage notably, though the relative paucity of games, length of contest, demand for the sport, and intensity of coverage does result in more reporters in general and as a consequence more of the women in question. While some of these ladies (Melissa Stark most obviously) have significant experience and qualification in sports journalism some (Jillian Barberie) are pretty much Coors Light ads in the making. While no one else wanted to emphasize this particular point, I think it is worth noting that not all the women in sports broadcasting are there just for their looks. Even though I think Linda Cohn is pretty hot in a very CJ Craig sort of way, the woman knows her shit. Put her on with Steve Berthiaume and I am pretty psyched for My Sportscenter. Regardless, ESPN made it a very explicit point that everyone else has hot sideline reporters too and that female sports journalists are increasingly popular despite the few who are qualified. While I recognize that the reason there are not nearly as many women who are qualified as sports reporters is influenced by a number of patriarchal constraints (society directs sports coverage mainly at heterosexual men 18-34, men don't believe women can cover sports, etc.) the fact is that those societal factors remain functional and in existence for the time being. Chure. Not an interesting story, but chure.
Secondly, and I think Tony pretty much phrased this one as accurately as humanly possible, this was ESPN's very mild equivalent of an occassional self-flagellation. Basically they opened up on Sportscenter with a "oh we are so bad, so bad, we exploit these poor gorgeous women, and show the pictures of them in their scampy tennis outfits, bad us, bad ESPN" and then were free to go back to shooting Anna Kornikova from a curious angle which does little for her foreHAND, but gives a little summin summin to her backSIDE if you know what I'm saying. They spent 5 minutes scolding themselves on Sportscenter one day, pretty much just so they wouldn't have to feel guilty.
Finally, and most humorously, immediately after the conclusion of this segment, we go to commercial. The first advertisment that follows this powerful piece: Dick Vitale flying Hooters Air for an NCAA promotion entitled, quite wonderfully, Wingin' It With Dickie V. Not that you would expect any differently from Hooters, but there are more than a couple moments in the commercial when Dick's gigantic bald head is framed by several other hair-less mellons, and very few times when those "Hooter girls" were connected with their "faces." Funny stuff.
So I am the first to admit that my extemp questions from this morning are not the greatest I have ever come up with. I mean, there are some I am particularly fond of, but I will let ya'll pick your personal faves. I don't know that any of them can stand up to "Have you seen this boy" or whatever, but they ain't bad. If I had an extemp tournament these would be the questions. Notably, if I ran a speech tournament I would also tell the debate people to stay home then lock the doors and start the building on fire, but thats another story. Actually, its sort of another story, but its related to this one. Whereby Reuter and I determined that the best way possible to murder someone was to send them an invitation to the Ole Piper Inn, then get a machine gun, light the pocorn ablaze, stand one person at either door, and just cut them down on their single file exit. Fuckers.
So the West Wing was pretty fucking good last night, fairly comparable to an old school episode. Now, don't get me wrong. You can tell that the show is no longer written by Aaron Sorkin, his voice for and understanding of these characters was so far and above everyone else's that it is quite obvious when he is no longer there controlling where they go and what they do. Nonetheless, while I am not 100% certain that I agree with Josh's argument from last night, I know that it was promoted in the same fashion it would have been in season 3. Glenn Close was fantastic as the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and there were some moments that really reflected the ethics of democratic politics the show used to push for. While I don't know that I can still argue that the West Wing is the best show on the air (The O.C. is fucking good and Angel has been in-fucking-croyable this season) this episode convinced me that it is still in contention. We'll see if they are able to keep everyone on track once they've had more than one congressional session under their belts.
Well, we have reached the conclusion of my first week back after Spring Break. I have gotten a fair amount of work done, I think the rest will get taken care of in the next couple days. There is the potential for good times and some quality shiz too. I am reading a book called JR by William Gaddis which is, I shit you not, 800 pages of virtually continuous dialogue. There are no chapter breaks, no starred or dashed off sections, no consistent narration. It takes forever, I believe I finished just over 35 pages in an hour and a half this afternoon. Even a novel like The Public Burning which read somewhat slowly would have easily been an eighth of the way done in a sitting like that. I feel that it is very unlikely that I will finish this book before Tuesday, but fairly possible that I will get through half. Getting that, paper grading, and maybe 5-10 pages of writing done would be considered an unqualified success.
So I was getting ready to come home from la casa de mi padres I was digging around in the cupboards to find stuff to bring home when I noticed my mom's multiplicity of sprinkles. I mean, this woman has alot of fucking sprinkles. 15+ bottles by my count. Katie, the intuitive, beautiful, insightful, and observent young woman that she is, has remarked to me that my mom goes grocery shopping without any regard to what groceries she has at home. She buys the same things at about the same time independent of her need for them. For instance, since the whole divorce situation and the kids not being there situation, my mother cooks about never. So while they have cut back on their grocery purcahsing significantly (ie: there is nothing to eat in the house ever) the things that they do buy are absolutely useless. Enough sprinkles to fill a butthole, 4 boxes of corn starch, like 20 packs of Crisco Sticks. I also think my parents have a very pronounced obsession with purchasing things they believe to be neat, useful, or simply contemporary developments which they thing they shouldn't go without. Sort of the way I think people in the 50's felt about TV dinners: "its SPACE AGE crappy meatloaf." I doubt anyone in that house besides me has made a tuna sandwich in like 2 years and while I am sure part of that is due to the fact that I repeatedly burglarize all the tuna from the house, the point is that my parents have no business purchasing the new vaccuum sealed pouches of StarKist. If you are going to select an arbitrary product like this one, however, tuna is a pretty rocking one, because this tuna tastes leagues and balls above its canned brethren and sistren. I mean, I don't know if the vaccuum sealing is better for freshness or if the water drains away flavor or what, but I suggest that you at least try the pouches. If, for some reason which not even my mildly creative mind can fathom, you are serving tuna sandwiches at a fancy party, you should splurge for Charlie's hermetically sealed body-bag. If you are a rich bastard and can justify paying 2 bucks for a fucking serving of tuna, rock on, but at that price you St. Paul folk should probably just head to Cecil's for a tuna-melt whenever you get the mood. The ambiance is worth it if nothing else.
So I know people have always thought that tunnels are stongly vaginal, both because you insert long pointy things, like trains, into them, and because, well, they are both holes, I don't know how else to explain that one. Nonetheless, I am thinking that, were I a tunnel, I am not sure I would want to be necessarily identified as a vagina. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against it, but what human-made structure is represented by the body's other orifices. Natural phenomena sure, you've got the urethra-like geyser and a very nostril-ish cave formation, but human made, I am not sure. At the same time, I am not sure if the association of tunnels with the vagina, and hence a fairly strong identification of the vagina as the privileged bodily opening, is indicative of a patrairchal stance wherein heterosexual males traditionally saw female genitalia in everything, or if it is a fortuitous recognition of the glory of the female body. Even the latter has its dangerous tensions, since "glorifying the female form" has been used as an excuse to "check out naked chicks" by more than just horny art students.
I don't think topography is a very good name for the science of maps. I mean, what is wrong with "map-ology". When you think about it, the folks at the NCAA have really nailed down this naming stuff. "We need a name for the round of sixteen, something catchy, then the same for the rounds of 8 and 4. Maybe we should make sure that the first letter of the descriptive word is the same as that of the first letter of the number. Brilliant!!" (by the way, I know this sounds like a Guinness commercial, and it should, and even though I think those commercials are hilarious, I don't think they are innovative as I am quite sure the whole stupid sarcastic question ended by a complimentary phrase (Brilliant!!) is an old trick, I know for a fact we used to do it with "OUTSTANDING!!") They followed up that one by: "People really seem to like brackets, what should we call the science of filling out your bracket. Bracket-ism...brackety-stuff..." you got the deal. Nonetheless, I think it would be cool if we just all agreed that if something wants to be a science it has to end with -ology. Now, I think we should make it a necessary but not sufficient condition, you shouldn't get to be a science just because you call yourself "peanut-butterology", but if the study of peanut butter is ever going to be taken seriously it has two important priorities:
1) Call itself "peanut-butterology"
2) Stop the violent Chunky-Smoothy conflict which has torn apart the people who should be most committed to the same goals
What about pillows. Would you rather take advice from a dude who has looked at alot of pillows or some chick who studied pillowology. Notably, I think pillow advice should always be taken from cats, who univerally select the softest cooshiest pillow available. In a way you could say that cats are the grandparents of pillowology, but if the study of pillows is ever going to be taken seriously it has three important priorities:
1) Call itself "pillowology"
2) Stop admitting that it is fundamentally a field of study already mastered by the everyday housecat
3) Stop haning out with peanut-butterologists, because sticky pillows blow
My guess is that if this blog were contained on google, this entry would be among the only websites to pop-up in response to the search "sticky pillows blow". I was just about to check and see if that were true, but I realized that this isn't on the internet yet, so it wouldn't even work. Nonetheless, I will indicate later if this is the case. Maybe one of you more internet literate folk could tell me a little about how I go about getting it so the google search for "sticky pillows blow" will turn up this site.
Finally, Katie and I made turkey-enchiladas last night with some of the multitiudes of t-bird we have remaining from that late-winter-early-spring and they rock. I may have slightly over-turkeyed them, since I think we had like twice as much as recommended. This was not a bad thing, notably, since extra turkey just made them more and more turkeylicious. I think I am going to make some biscuit donuts a little later to satisfy the Katie-saurus, who is not pleased about the prospect of spending all weekend engrossed in basketball. Alright, enough.
Peace,
MB-K
Secondly, and I think Tony pretty much phrased this one as accurately as humanly possible, this was ESPN's very mild equivalent of an occassional self-flagellation. Basically they opened up on Sportscenter with a "oh we are so bad, so bad, we exploit these poor gorgeous women, and show the pictures of them in their scampy tennis outfits, bad us, bad ESPN" and then were free to go back to shooting Anna Kornikova from a curious angle which does little for her foreHAND, but gives a little summin summin to her backSIDE if you know what I'm saying. They spent 5 minutes scolding themselves on Sportscenter one day, pretty much just so they wouldn't have to feel guilty.
Finally, and most humorously, immediately after the conclusion of this segment, we go to commercial. The first advertisment that follows this powerful piece: Dick Vitale flying Hooters Air for an NCAA promotion entitled, quite wonderfully, Wingin' It With Dickie V. Not that you would expect any differently from Hooters, but there are more than a couple moments in the commercial when Dick's gigantic bald head is framed by several other hair-less mellons, and very few times when those "Hooter girls" were connected with their "faces." Funny stuff.
So I am the first to admit that my extemp questions from this morning are not the greatest I have ever come up with. I mean, there are some I am particularly fond of, but I will let ya'll pick your personal faves. I don't know that any of them can stand up to "Have you seen this boy" or whatever, but they ain't bad. If I had an extemp tournament these would be the questions. Notably, if I ran a speech tournament I would also tell the debate people to stay home then lock the doors and start the building on fire, but thats another story. Actually, its sort of another story, but its related to this one. Whereby Reuter and I determined that the best way possible to murder someone was to send them an invitation to the Ole Piper Inn, then get a machine gun, light the pocorn ablaze, stand one person at either door, and just cut them down on their single file exit. Fuckers.
So the West Wing was pretty fucking good last night, fairly comparable to an old school episode. Now, don't get me wrong. You can tell that the show is no longer written by Aaron Sorkin, his voice for and understanding of these characters was so far and above everyone else's that it is quite obvious when he is no longer there controlling where they go and what they do. Nonetheless, while I am not 100% certain that I agree with Josh's argument from last night, I know that it was promoted in the same fashion it would have been in season 3. Glenn Close was fantastic as the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and there were some moments that really reflected the ethics of democratic politics the show used to push for. While I don't know that I can still argue that the West Wing is the best show on the air (The O.C. is fucking good and Angel has been in-fucking-croyable this season) this episode convinced me that it is still in contention. We'll see if they are able to keep everyone on track once they've had more than one congressional session under their belts.
Well, we have reached the conclusion of my first week back after Spring Break. I have gotten a fair amount of work done, I think the rest will get taken care of in the next couple days. There is the potential for good times and some quality shiz too. I am reading a book called JR by William Gaddis which is, I shit you not, 800 pages of virtually continuous dialogue. There are no chapter breaks, no starred or dashed off sections, no consistent narration. It takes forever, I believe I finished just over 35 pages in an hour and a half this afternoon. Even a novel like The Public Burning which read somewhat slowly would have easily been an eighth of the way done in a sitting like that. I feel that it is very unlikely that I will finish this book before Tuesday, but fairly possible that I will get through half. Getting that, paper grading, and maybe 5-10 pages of writing done would be considered an unqualified success.
So I was getting ready to come home from la casa de mi padres I was digging around in the cupboards to find stuff to bring home when I noticed my mom's multiplicity of sprinkles. I mean, this woman has alot of fucking sprinkles. 15+ bottles by my count. Katie, the intuitive, beautiful, insightful, and observent young woman that she is, has remarked to me that my mom goes grocery shopping without any regard to what groceries she has at home. She buys the same things at about the same time independent of her need for them. For instance, since the whole divorce situation and the kids not being there situation, my mother cooks about never. So while they have cut back on their grocery purcahsing significantly (ie: there is nothing to eat in the house ever) the things that they do buy are absolutely useless. Enough sprinkles to fill a butthole, 4 boxes of corn starch, like 20 packs of Crisco Sticks. I also think my parents have a very pronounced obsession with purchasing things they believe to be neat, useful, or simply contemporary developments which they thing they shouldn't go without. Sort of the way I think people in the 50's felt about TV dinners: "its SPACE AGE crappy meatloaf." I doubt anyone in that house besides me has made a tuna sandwich in like 2 years and while I am sure part of that is due to the fact that I repeatedly burglarize all the tuna from the house, the point is that my parents have no business purchasing the new vaccuum sealed pouches of StarKist. If you are going to select an arbitrary product like this one, however, tuna is a pretty rocking one, because this tuna tastes leagues and balls above its canned brethren and sistren. I mean, I don't know if the vaccuum sealing is better for freshness or if the water drains away flavor or what, but I suggest that you at least try the pouches. If, for some reason which not even my mildly creative mind can fathom, you are serving tuna sandwiches at a fancy party, you should splurge for Charlie's hermetically sealed body-bag. If you are a rich bastard and can justify paying 2 bucks for a fucking serving of tuna, rock on, but at that price you St. Paul folk should probably just head to Cecil's for a tuna-melt whenever you get the mood. The ambiance is worth it if nothing else.
So I know people have always thought that tunnels are stongly vaginal, both because you insert long pointy things, like trains, into them, and because, well, they are both holes, I don't know how else to explain that one. Nonetheless, I am thinking that, were I a tunnel, I am not sure I would want to be necessarily identified as a vagina. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against it, but what human-made structure is represented by the body's other orifices. Natural phenomena sure, you've got the urethra-like geyser and a very nostril-ish cave formation, but human made, I am not sure. At the same time, I am not sure if the association of tunnels with the vagina, and hence a fairly strong identification of the vagina as the privileged bodily opening, is indicative of a patrairchal stance wherein heterosexual males traditionally saw female genitalia in everything, or if it is a fortuitous recognition of the glory of the female body. Even the latter has its dangerous tensions, since "glorifying the female form" has been used as an excuse to "check out naked chicks" by more than just horny art students.
I don't think topography is a very good name for the science of maps. I mean, what is wrong with "map-ology". When you think about it, the folks at the NCAA have really nailed down this naming stuff. "We need a name for the round of sixteen, something catchy, then the same for the rounds of 8 and 4. Maybe we should make sure that the first letter of the descriptive word is the same as that of the first letter of the number. Brilliant!!" (by the way, I know this sounds like a Guinness commercial, and it should, and even though I think those commercials are hilarious, I don't think they are innovative as I am quite sure the whole stupid sarcastic question ended by a complimentary phrase (Brilliant!!) is an old trick, I know for a fact we used to do it with "OUTSTANDING!!") They followed up that one by: "People really seem to like brackets, what should we call the science of filling out your bracket. Bracket-ism...brackety-stuff..." you got the deal. Nonetheless, I think it would be cool if we just all agreed that if something wants to be a science it has to end with -ology. Now, I think we should make it a necessary but not sufficient condition, you shouldn't get to be a science just because you call yourself "peanut-butterology", but if the study of peanut butter is ever going to be taken seriously it has two important priorities:
1) Call itself "peanut-butterology"
2) Stop the violent Chunky-Smoothy conflict which has torn apart the people who should be most committed to the same goals
What about pillows. Would you rather take advice from a dude who has looked at alot of pillows or some chick who studied pillowology. Notably, I think pillow advice should always be taken from cats, who univerally select the softest cooshiest pillow available. In a way you could say that cats are the grandparents of pillowology, but if the study of pillows is ever going to be taken seriously it has three important priorities:
1) Call itself "pillowology"
2) Stop admitting that it is fundamentally a field of study already mastered by the everyday housecat
3) Stop haning out with peanut-butterologists, because sticky pillows blow
My guess is that if this blog were contained on google, this entry would be among the only websites to pop-up in response to the search "sticky pillows blow". I was just about to check and see if that were true, but I realized that this isn't on the internet yet, so it wouldn't even work. Nonetheless, I will indicate later if this is the case. Maybe one of you more internet literate folk could tell me a little about how I go about getting it so the google search for "sticky pillows blow" will turn up this site.
Finally, Katie and I made turkey-enchiladas last night with some of the multitiudes of t-bird we have remaining from that late-winter-early-spring and they rock. I may have slightly over-turkeyed them, since I think we had like twice as much as recommended. This was not a bad thing, notably, since extra turkey just made them more and more turkeylicious. I think I am going to make some biscuit donuts a little later to satisfy the Katie-saurus, who is not pleased about the prospect of spending all weekend engrossed in basketball. Alright, enough.
Peace,
MB-K
Extemp Attempt 1
Why do they call it the Economist?
If prescription drugs are so damn expensive why don't old people just smoke crack?
Will Martin Brodeur win the Heisman Trophy?
Do you want fries with that?
Would the best way to promote democracy in the West Indies involve changing the name of Haiti to Love-i?
Social security: whodat?
What does Howard Dean sound like when he reaches orgasm?
You had sex?!?!?
If the war in Iraq is not about oil, then why didn't we just invade Antartica, there is no oil there?
Does anyone take the tuba seriously these days?
True or false: General Musharraf is both the leader of Pakistan and a sweet name for a Convenience Store on the subcontinent.
Is Toxic a better video than Stronger?
Dude, do you have Cuba's number?
You want some North Korea?
If Osama bin Laden is always hiding in caves, does that make him gay?
Given that the organizational structure of the EU requires further expansion into post-Soviet Europe, should Seth have chosen Summer or Eve?
Can you name anything about Brazil besides Carnival, Pele, and its famous bikini wax?
Would the Supreme Court be more effective if it just spent all afternoon huffing paint?
What is up with Colin Powell these days?
Should America renounce its "One Mexico" policy?
Who sucks more ass: Yoanna, Richard Hatch, or Larissa?
Why do you let that rabbit cut its own hair?
Say you worked at Wendys and you had a sign that said "The Customer Is Always Right" and I drove up and said "I am wrong" what would you do? You'd have yourself a little paradox there, huh smartguy?
Alright, that's all I got for now. I may try for more later. Feel free to use them at your speech tournament this weekend.
Peace,
MB-K
If prescription drugs are so damn expensive why don't old people just smoke crack?
Will Martin Brodeur win the Heisman Trophy?
Do you want fries with that?
Would the best way to promote democracy in the West Indies involve changing the name of Haiti to Love-i?
Social security: whodat?
What does Howard Dean sound like when he reaches orgasm?
You had sex?!?!?
If the war in Iraq is not about oil, then why didn't we just invade Antartica, there is no oil there?
Does anyone take the tuba seriously these days?
True or false: General Musharraf is both the leader of Pakistan and a sweet name for a Convenience Store on the subcontinent.
Is Toxic a better video than Stronger?
Dude, do you have Cuba's number?
You want some North Korea?
If Osama bin Laden is always hiding in caves, does that make him gay?
Given that the organizational structure of the EU requires further expansion into post-Soviet Europe, should Seth have chosen Summer or Eve?
Can you name anything about Brazil besides Carnival, Pele, and its famous bikini wax?
Would the Supreme Court be more effective if it just spent all afternoon huffing paint?
What is up with Colin Powell these days?
Should America renounce its "One Mexico" policy?
Who sucks more ass: Yoanna, Richard Hatch, or Larissa?
Why do you let that rabbit cut its own hair?
Say you worked at Wendys and you had a sign that said "The Customer Is Always Right" and I drove up and said "I am wrong" what would you do? You'd have yourself a little paradox there, huh smartguy?
Alright, that's all I got for now. I may try for more later. Feel free to use them at your speech tournament this weekend.
Peace,
MB-K
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Girls Gone WILD on Spring Break '04
That is an accurate description of my Spring Break '04 assuming that by "gone wild" you mean "went to Ole Piper Inn" and by "girls" you mean "me, Reuter, and a bunch of old drunk hicks." There was very little going wild in any respect, though it was a large consortium of good times. I tried to detail everything that happened over my winter break in a row but that simply didn't happen so I will divide into categories and mention the most relevant or interesting portions of that section:
--WEDDING SHITTY--
This category consumed beaucoup de nosotros tiempos. The highlight, however, is pretty easily identifiable, since it was pretty much the nutzors. On Wednesday I picked Katie and her mom up at Herbergers to roll over to the Hyatt. Tom was meeting us there and we were all in the boardroom right around 12;00. There was a table in the foyer set for the most part as it would be at the reception. We looked at it and moved into the board room itself. I was surprised that neither George nor Caroline were in the corners and there wasn't really even a convenient door for The Donald to enter from, so instead we just ate. This was, after all, the tasting for the wedding menu. We had selected a bunch of tasty items that we were interested in and a vegan option too. We met up with our wedding co-ordinator, who is a fantastic addition to the whole wedding planning thing. The Hyatt, being a pretty reasonably moderately not-too-finicky but certainly not un-sophisticated establishment, does alot of shit for you under the assumption that you and your guests are gonna drop more than their share on booze and rooms and the associated things. We talked about those and then tried some of the hors d'oeuvre that had been selected for us. I will leave these for a little surprise, but they include some vegan shit and some flesh, a good combo. We had some wine, a chardonnay that doesn't do much for me and another one that also did little for me but was significantly better tasting. We chose that one, since it was only marginally more expensive, and also a pinot noir, which I am hoping people will be okay with, since I am not sure as many people like pinot noirs as much as they would prefer a calmer merlot or whatev. Anyway, we tried a couple different types of fish. The walleye, which we had wanted to be hella awesome since it would be a Minnesota fish and we were looking at a potential Minnesota culinary theme thing alongside the Summit EPA, wasn't as good as the halibut with lemon and spinach. We denied them both, however, opting for a very tasty pecan-crusted chicken breast and the obvious filet. The filet was almost, not quite, but almost, overshadowed by the potatoes that accompanied it, mashed yukon golds with garlic and some type of garlic cheese whose name I forgot. It was incroyable, absolutely so. Pretty much the highlight of the day. The surprise of the afternoon was surprisingly contained in the vegan section. For my thoughts about veganism and vegetarianism you can see several entries of last summer I think, nonetheless, we have at least some potentially vegan people involved. This is to the detriment of the vegetarians in the crowd, since the food designed for vegetarians loses all the flavor potentially contained in cream sauces and cheese that would normally go on the vegetables, but its better than the alternative. So we had selected a "Portabella Napoleon" from their vegetarian menu to give a try, it was just a well presented stack of veggies grilled and served with some rice and marinara sauce, and it was alright. Nonetheless, when you do this shitty at the Hyatt, they ain't gonna just serve you crap. Both the executive chef of the Hyatt and the executive sous-chef had come into the board room to meet us during the tasting, as did the catering manager and some of the event managers etc. They had designed for us an additional vegan entree, seeing as how Katie had projected that it would be important for our wedding, that we would have many vegans. This was the vegan nuts, pretty much. It was boiled red kale leaves stuffed with hummus and topped with grilled vegetables in a red-chili sauce and served with a tasty spinach and sun-dried tomato risotto. Wow, I was blown away. Don't get me wrong, it would be better if you had some bacon wrapped around the kale or had one of those nine ounce filets elsewhere onhe plate, but damn, being vegan at the Hyatt isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Notably, the two restaurants featured down the hall become somewhat useless when you quit eating meat and that distracts more than a little from the wonders of the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis, but still. We also met with the priest who will do the wedding thing, a bunch of photographers, and some other stuff, but I already explained this process. Go fuck yourself.
--FAMILY--
I saw my sister for like a minute while she was home. Prior to the whole divorce-gay-new partners thing I think she was home alot more, though I guess that doesn't surprise me. She was only at the house for about 10 minutes during the week that I was there, though she does admittedly like being at school hella more than I ever did and she was out of town the last weekend. Regardless, she is doing aight. My parents are a to the g as well, I hung out with both of them at least a couple times, though I get the impression that my mother is far busier than she lets on. Its not all work-busy, but busy nonetheless. I got to watch two different afternoons of tournaments while I was at home with my dad, high school hockey one weekend and NCAA basketball the other. Good times. The more interesting focus is of course my brother's return home. I woke up after hearing someone wandering around the house at like 11:00 pm on Tuesday night. This was odd since my parents had been going to sleep and pretty much staying that way after about 9:00, same routine as always for my dad but slightly off para mi madre. Anyway, I was going to turn off the lights when I, pretty much by accident. looked out the window and saw my brother's car. He and Melia (sic) (his girflriend who I think I mentioned once before when returning from winter break) had come back for a couple days over their own Spring Break. It was an unexpected but totally sweet situation. We had planned to stop in Madison on our way back to St. Paul for lunch or something, but the whole Disasterbacle starring my dipfuck alternator affair set us too far off course. Regardless, this made it irrelevant. Katie had to work the next morning so I went out with them that night. It wasn't really impressive until the following evening, when virtually the entire old House crew gathered. There were some missing individuals obviously and fairly significant ones, Sanjay, AJ, Andy, etc. but Kevin, Maroney, Reuter, Ari, Andy J, myself, and my bro made for a significant faction. I guess there are some times we have all been together en masse since then, at least more complete than this gathering was (ie: New Years) but this didn't really have the special occasion feel that brought that one together. I guess it was interesting largely because it came out of nowhere, there was no holiday to be celebrated or reason to be home. Admittedly, St. Patrick's day was the following night, and as much as I wish like fucking asshell that it were, St Patrick's day does not an "everybody's coming home" holiday make. We drank some green beer at Andy J's place that night and shit. Becca Walter-Hansen seemed to be drunk, which, if you knew the woman, would constitute a novelty in and of itself. Anyway, it was nice to see the fam, for the varying amounts of time that I got to, and it was equally enjoyable to hang out with them.
As a seperate section I suppose that I should mention Katie's family, which are not yet technically my family, but that is a distinction as fine as good cut heroin. Katie remarked upon our arrival that she had not seen her parents together in almost exactly a year, for me it had been even an extra 4 or so months. Anyway, we spent a good amount of time with them over the week, having a couple dinners, a couple afternoons, and as always, more than a couple drinks. My friendship with Katie's parents has resulted in my drinking far more delicious beers than I would likely ever have been able, but my do I enjoy it. Its nice that there are people who aren't like college students who keep beer in their fridge on a regular basis. Maybe thats just because my parents almost religiously avoided the whole alchohol in the casa thing until very recently, but I digress. They joined us at the tasting and even though not everything got accomplished regarding the wedding or other logistical creations it was so incredibly useful to be in the right area at the right time. When we went to the tasting at the Hyatt we were able to come to decisions pretty quickly, I can imagine that if Katie and I would have gone alone we would have left with a "well, we will think about it and email you soon." Instead we have everything but a single appetizer taken care of. We also have a photographer and a list of all the things which need to be acheived, monetarily and otherwise, I bet we would have moved the wedding up a couple months if we would have been in Minneapolis. Fucking Buffalo.
--FRIENDS AND FOLK--
We certainly didn't get to see everyone while we were at home, but at least glanced at most people. You've got the boys and girls from the burbs who we hung out with at Andy J's place and the like, you've got some Mac-debate folk who we saw before everyone took off for CEDA nats and shit, and you've got the address crowd (AJ, Pete, Meg, and Mary in this case, whom I refer to as such insofar as their places of residence are known by the number and street ie: 100 N. Howell or 812 Holton) whom I was with only briefly at Dixie's on the night before I returned. Each of those was a good night in its own respect. It was a blast to be back with the RHS crew if for no other reason than I was really able to kick back, the exact type of thing I can't do at all in Lockport. I mean, all you really need is some form of intoxicant, a comfortable place to sit, a TV, maybe a video game system, and a group of friends in the area of 4-10 people. There are other things you can add into this equation of course, a fine cigar, some hockey, the NCAA tournament, or a well set up poker table, but its not necessary of course. You sit down and don't have to consider work the next day or whatever, which is much easier to do when you are 1000 miles from where you would be working of course, but having friends you associate with the good ole days helps too.
I can't really think of a specific moment, however that really deserves mention in the way I did above. My usual activities are known, for the most part, so let me isolate a couple random elements. Reut and I went to the Ole Piper Inn on Friday night because we had no one to hang out with and all the other bars were crowded. For the most part I would assume you have never been to the Ole Piper Inn, and in all honesty this is probably for the best. If you want to experience it, go over to the local VFW or the Lodge or the Legion or whatever, there is one in every smaller town in America. The places are for the most part all the same, there is usually some sort of covering on the wall, at the Ole Piper Inn it was a wonderful fake log cabin paneling. The tables and chairs feel like they could be in a high school band room from the 1970s, they are always metal tubing with oddly colored padding, Ole Piper had selected something I can describe only as "butt-orange" the color you would get if you took a heaping teaspoon of ass and spread it on top of an orange. Bunches of crap on the floor, usually a combination of some complimentary bar food and the pull tabs. The OPI came in strong in both regards, selecting popcorn instead of peanut shells but keeping the pull tabs in full effect. Anyway, Reuter and I spent like 3 hours at this bar because we had nofuckingwhere else to go. The only positive thing to come out of the evening is that our check came to, I think 9.40 for 5 beers. It wasn't more than 10 bucks, so a decent deal at least. If they have a happy hour it must be like a beer vending machine, put in two quarters and pull the handle. Our waitress was fucking awful and I am pretty sure that she lied to Reuter about the very existence of a non-kids menu personal pizza. There was also a couple of really incredible dudes there, with some high quality mullets, and feed hats (if you don't know what a feed hat is you should check out a copy of How To Speak Minnesotan) and one guy who was screaming at the top of his lungs at the Gophers-UMD game even though there was literally 20 seconds left and Ski-U-Mah was up two goals and playing in the offensive zone. See, the OPI has only two purposes: 1) you take your son or daughter's baseball team after the friday night game 2) you are a hick and want crappy beer. Its hard to explain, but the joint is located in this section of Rosemount that is like an island in the middle of Apple Valley. There is just a little square cut out that they call Rosemount, its right by the area affectionately called Valley Pork (that may just be by the debate team though, its probably better known as Valley Park) which is odd, but you just get it after a couple years in the area. Its only like a couple miles in either direction. Nonetheless, that area is somewhat known for its awkward mix of individuals who fit the above stereotypes. Oh, oh oh, I almost forgot the best part. So from our booth we had a pretty good view of the many televisions throughout the bar. We sort of convinced ourselves that we should stay there because they do have some quality Televisual equipment, Sony Vega TVs I believe. Eventually we got up to play a round of Golden Tee 2k5 and upon closer inspection noticed that the TVs appear to just be random old televisions with gray plastic panels attached to the front to make them appear more expensive. Seriously, it is fucked up. I don't know how they pulled it off, but they are explicitly not the flat screens they are trying to make them out to be. Funny shit.
Before we return to the categories, let me just say something. We just watched the finale to Season 2 of America's Next Top Model, and for as much as I dig on this program they have repeatedly screwed the pooch when it comes to selecting the winner. Tonight was especially bad, since they were given one girl who licked nuts like they were cotton candy, one who was pretty good, and one who Shandied the other ones out of the competition. I really want to find how I can get some of Shandi's t-shirts, they were hella sweet. Maybe she will get a website, because I want a Shantrhax shirt pretty badly. Anyway, they jobbed her, she should have one, I will purchase one of any product that chooses her to endorse it. Anyway, while I will certainly be on board and excited for ANTM 3 I will be uber pissed if whatever chick I like goes the way of Elyse and Shandi. There are only two reasons I can think of that would make me want to be a hot chick, the first is of course, unlimited access to a hot chick's vagina, the second is the ability to be on ANTM. I am really just not cut out for reality television, but since I don't have a chance at this one anyway, I can pretend that I would like to be on it.
--DRIVING HOME--
At the last minute we decided to alter our admittedly silly plan for leaving, though our solution ended up only moderately less silly. Since Katie spent her weekend in New Orleans and wasn't getting back until sometime later on Sunday afternoon or evening we had planned on just leaving when she returned and either pushing it to somewhere Indiana-ish or just getting to Mad-town and crashin with the bro. I knew, after the Cleveland home thing in 12 hours, that the drive from Madison back to Buffalo wouldn't be anything too difficult. Nonetheless, we decided that instead of just having her return all the way to Minnesota, it would make more sense for me to pick her up somewhere along the way. So I got up on Sunday morning and, like the stupid sentimental fuck that I am, went goodbye saying goodbye to all the places in my house. I mean, I didn't literally say goodbye, but I wandered around for 10 minutes and sort of remembered all the things we did back in the day. After that I said goodbye to the living things in the house andSin rolled. I made fantasgreat time and hit Madtown in like 3 and one half hours. Katie and I were playing it by ear where we would meet up and I eventually ended up halfway through the fucking state of Illinois to pick her up. While Katie's optimisim and my pessimism usually balance each other out, apparently in this instance some geographical errors complicated the picture. We ended up about 90 miles out of the way, but at least we were about 40 percent done with the drive by 6:00 pm, about the time I was otherwise hoping to leave the Twin Cities. So while we were making good time, this meant that by no means were we going to stop at a hotel for the night. That decision almost changed when, suffering from severe ass-exhaustion (and here I mean literal exhaustion of the ass via sitting in a driving position for too long) and lack of basketball scores (I didn't even get to hear the second half of the Kentucky UAB showdown) I traded seats with Katie and we proceded, on the immediate Eastern side of Cleveland, to encounter several moments of absolute whiteouts on the highway. It was, admittedly, pretty horrifying when these semi trucks refused to slowdown and barrelled by us at like 45 miles an hour when there is no possible way the drivers could see the speed they were trying to inhale off the dashboard. Maybe they just thought all the blowing white powder was like the trucker equivalent of being in one of those money blowing phone-booths. I can see the mullet blowing in the wind while they stuck their septum-lacking noses out the windows only to encounter the coldest blow this side of the Trans-Siberian methlab. But we did get home, right around 5:30 am eastern time. I didn't even have time to play with my beloved DVR before hitting the sack.
Alright, thats enough about the whole spring break experience for one bloggerific moment. I will try to keep on sched for a little while since we have no immediate plans to leave town. Keep it real like a deal with a value meal and a dude who eats veal with a seal named after Jessica Beal.
Peace,
MB-K
--WEDDING SHITTY--
This category consumed beaucoup de nosotros tiempos. The highlight, however, is pretty easily identifiable, since it was pretty much the nutzors. On Wednesday I picked Katie and her mom up at Herbergers to roll over to the Hyatt. Tom was meeting us there and we were all in the boardroom right around 12;00. There was a table in the foyer set for the most part as it would be at the reception. We looked at it and moved into the board room itself. I was surprised that neither George nor Caroline were in the corners and there wasn't really even a convenient door for The Donald to enter from, so instead we just ate. This was, after all, the tasting for the wedding menu. We had selected a bunch of tasty items that we were interested in and a vegan option too. We met up with our wedding co-ordinator, who is a fantastic addition to the whole wedding planning thing. The Hyatt, being a pretty reasonably moderately not-too-finicky but certainly not un-sophisticated establishment, does alot of shit for you under the assumption that you and your guests are gonna drop more than their share on booze and rooms and the associated things. We talked about those and then tried some of the hors d'oeuvre that had been selected for us. I will leave these for a little surprise, but they include some vegan shit and some flesh, a good combo. We had some wine, a chardonnay that doesn't do much for me and another one that also did little for me but was significantly better tasting. We chose that one, since it was only marginally more expensive, and also a pinot noir, which I am hoping people will be okay with, since I am not sure as many people like pinot noirs as much as they would prefer a calmer merlot or whatev. Anyway, we tried a couple different types of fish. The walleye, which we had wanted to be hella awesome since it would be a Minnesota fish and we were looking at a potential Minnesota culinary theme thing alongside the Summit EPA, wasn't as good as the halibut with lemon and spinach. We denied them both, however, opting for a very tasty pecan-crusted chicken breast and the obvious filet. The filet was almost, not quite, but almost, overshadowed by the potatoes that accompanied it, mashed yukon golds with garlic and some type of garlic cheese whose name I forgot. It was incroyable, absolutely so. Pretty much the highlight of the day. The surprise of the afternoon was surprisingly contained in the vegan section. For my thoughts about veganism and vegetarianism you can see several entries of last summer I think, nonetheless, we have at least some potentially vegan people involved. This is to the detriment of the vegetarians in the crowd, since the food designed for vegetarians loses all the flavor potentially contained in cream sauces and cheese that would normally go on the vegetables, but its better than the alternative. So we had selected a "Portabella Napoleon" from their vegetarian menu to give a try, it was just a well presented stack of veggies grilled and served with some rice and marinara sauce, and it was alright. Nonetheless, when you do this shitty at the Hyatt, they ain't gonna just serve you crap. Both the executive chef of the Hyatt and the executive sous-chef had come into the board room to meet us during the tasting, as did the catering manager and some of the event managers etc. They had designed for us an additional vegan entree, seeing as how Katie had projected that it would be important for our wedding, that we would have many vegans. This was the vegan nuts, pretty much. It was boiled red kale leaves stuffed with hummus and topped with grilled vegetables in a red-chili sauce and served with a tasty spinach and sun-dried tomato risotto. Wow, I was blown away. Don't get me wrong, it would be better if you had some bacon wrapped around the kale or had one of those nine ounce filets elsewhere onhe plate, but damn, being vegan at the Hyatt isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Notably, the two restaurants featured down the hall become somewhat useless when you quit eating meat and that distracts more than a little from the wonders of the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis, but still. We also met with the priest who will do the wedding thing, a bunch of photographers, and some other stuff, but I already explained this process. Go fuck yourself.
--FAMILY--
I saw my sister for like a minute while she was home. Prior to the whole divorce-gay-new partners thing I think she was home alot more, though I guess that doesn't surprise me. She was only at the house for about 10 minutes during the week that I was there, though she does admittedly like being at school hella more than I ever did and she was out of town the last weekend. Regardless, she is doing aight. My parents are a to the g as well, I hung out with both of them at least a couple times, though I get the impression that my mother is far busier than she lets on. Its not all work-busy, but busy nonetheless. I got to watch two different afternoons of tournaments while I was at home with my dad, high school hockey one weekend and NCAA basketball the other. Good times. The more interesting focus is of course my brother's return home. I woke up after hearing someone wandering around the house at like 11:00 pm on Tuesday night. This was odd since my parents had been going to sleep and pretty much staying that way after about 9:00, same routine as always for my dad but slightly off para mi madre. Anyway, I was going to turn off the lights when I, pretty much by accident. looked out the window and saw my brother's car. He and Melia (sic) (his girflriend who I think I mentioned once before when returning from winter break) had come back for a couple days over their own Spring Break. It was an unexpected but totally sweet situation. We had planned to stop in Madison on our way back to St. Paul for lunch or something, but the whole Disasterbacle starring my dipfuck alternator affair set us too far off course. Regardless, this made it irrelevant. Katie had to work the next morning so I went out with them that night. It wasn't really impressive until the following evening, when virtually the entire old House crew gathered. There were some missing individuals obviously and fairly significant ones, Sanjay, AJ, Andy, etc. but Kevin, Maroney, Reuter, Ari, Andy J, myself, and my bro made for a significant faction. I guess there are some times we have all been together en masse since then, at least more complete than this gathering was (ie: New Years) but this didn't really have the special occasion feel that brought that one together. I guess it was interesting largely because it came out of nowhere, there was no holiday to be celebrated or reason to be home. Admittedly, St. Patrick's day was the following night, and as much as I wish like fucking asshell that it were, St Patrick's day does not an "everybody's coming home" holiday make. We drank some green beer at Andy J's place that night and shit. Becca Walter-Hansen seemed to be drunk, which, if you knew the woman, would constitute a novelty in and of itself. Anyway, it was nice to see the fam, for the varying amounts of time that I got to, and it was equally enjoyable to hang out with them.
As a seperate section I suppose that I should mention Katie's family, which are not yet technically my family, but that is a distinction as fine as good cut heroin. Katie remarked upon our arrival that she had not seen her parents together in almost exactly a year, for me it had been even an extra 4 or so months. Anyway, we spent a good amount of time with them over the week, having a couple dinners, a couple afternoons, and as always, more than a couple drinks. My friendship with Katie's parents has resulted in my drinking far more delicious beers than I would likely ever have been able, but my do I enjoy it. Its nice that there are people who aren't like college students who keep beer in their fridge on a regular basis. Maybe thats just because my parents almost religiously avoided the whole alchohol in the casa thing until very recently, but I digress. They joined us at the tasting and even though not everything got accomplished regarding the wedding or other logistical creations it was so incredibly useful to be in the right area at the right time. When we went to the tasting at the Hyatt we were able to come to decisions pretty quickly, I can imagine that if Katie and I would have gone alone we would have left with a "well, we will think about it and email you soon." Instead we have everything but a single appetizer taken care of. We also have a photographer and a list of all the things which need to be acheived, monetarily and otherwise, I bet we would have moved the wedding up a couple months if we would have been in Minneapolis. Fucking Buffalo.
--FRIENDS AND FOLK--
We certainly didn't get to see everyone while we were at home, but at least glanced at most people. You've got the boys and girls from the burbs who we hung out with at Andy J's place and the like, you've got some Mac-debate folk who we saw before everyone took off for CEDA nats and shit, and you've got the address crowd (AJ, Pete, Meg, and Mary in this case, whom I refer to as such insofar as their places of residence are known by the number and street ie: 100 N. Howell or 812 Holton) whom I was with only briefly at Dixie's on the night before I returned. Each of those was a good night in its own respect. It was a blast to be back with the RHS crew if for no other reason than I was really able to kick back, the exact type of thing I can't do at all in Lockport. I mean, all you really need is some form of intoxicant, a comfortable place to sit, a TV, maybe a video game system, and a group of friends in the area of 4-10 people. There are other things you can add into this equation of course, a fine cigar, some hockey, the NCAA tournament, or a well set up poker table, but its not necessary of course. You sit down and don't have to consider work the next day or whatever, which is much easier to do when you are 1000 miles from where you would be working of course, but having friends you associate with the good ole days helps too.
I can't really think of a specific moment, however that really deserves mention in the way I did above. My usual activities are known, for the most part, so let me isolate a couple random elements. Reut and I went to the Ole Piper Inn on Friday night because we had no one to hang out with and all the other bars were crowded. For the most part I would assume you have never been to the Ole Piper Inn, and in all honesty this is probably for the best. If you want to experience it, go over to the local VFW or the Lodge or the Legion or whatever, there is one in every smaller town in America. The places are for the most part all the same, there is usually some sort of covering on the wall, at the Ole Piper Inn it was a wonderful fake log cabin paneling. The tables and chairs feel like they could be in a high school band room from the 1970s, they are always metal tubing with oddly colored padding, Ole Piper had selected something I can describe only as "butt-orange" the color you would get if you took a heaping teaspoon of ass and spread it on top of an orange. Bunches of crap on the floor, usually a combination of some complimentary bar food and the pull tabs. The OPI came in strong in both regards, selecting popcorn instead of peanut shells but keeping the pull tabs in full effect. Anyway, Reuter and I spent like 3 hours at this bar because we had nofuckingwhere else to go. The only positive thing to come out of the evening is that our check came to, I think 9.40 for 5 beers. It wasn't more than 10 bucks, so a decent deal at least. If they have a happy hour it must be like a beer vending machine, put in two quarters and pull the handle. Our waitress was fucking awful and I am pretty sure that she lied to Reuter about the very existence of a non-kids menu personal pizza. There was also a couple of really incredible dudes there, with some high quality mullets, and feed hats (if you don't know what a feed hat is you should check out a copy of How To Speak Minnesotan) and one guy who was screaming at the top of his lungs at the Gophers-UMD game even though there was literally 20 seconds left and Ski-U-Mah was up two goals and playing in the offensive zone. See, the OPI has only two purposes: 1) you take your son or daughter's baseball team after the friday night game 2) you are a hick and want crappy beer. Its hard to explain, but the joint is located in this section of Rosemount that is like an island in the middle of Apple Valley. There is just a little square cut out that they call Rosemount, its right by the area affectionately called Valley Pork (that may just be by the debate team though, its probably better known as Valley Park) which is odd, but you just get it after a couple years in the area. Its only like a couple miles in either direction. Nonetheless, that area is somewhat known for its awkward mix of individuals who fit the above stereotypes. Oh, oh oh, I almost forgot the best part. So from our booth we had a pretty good view of the many televisions throughout the bar. We sort of convinced ourselves that we should stay there because they do have some quality Televisual equipment, Sony Vega TVs I believe. Eventually we got up to play a round of Golden Tee 2k5 and upon closer inspection noticed that the TVs appear to just be random old televisions with gray plastic panels attached to the front to make them appear more expensive. Seriously, it is fucked up. I don't know how they pulled it off, but they are explicitly not the flat screens they are trying to make them out to be. Funny shit.
Before we return to the categories, let me just say something. We just watched the finale to Season 2 of America's Next Top Model, and for as much as I dig on this program they have repeatedly screwed the pooch when it comes to selecting the winner. Tonight was especially bad, since they were given one girl who licked nuts like they were cotton candy, one who was pretty good, and one who Shandied the other ones out of the competition. I really want to find how I can get some of Shandi's t-shirts, they were hella sweet. Maybe she will get a website, because I want a Shantrhax shirt pretty badly. Anyway, they jobbed her, she should have one, I will purchase one of any product that chooses her to endorse it. Anyway, while I will certainly be on board and excited for ANTM 3 I will be uber pissed if whatever chick I like goes the way of Elyse and Shandi. There are only two reasons I can think of that would make me want to be a hot chick, the first is of course, unlimited access to a hot chick's vagina, the second is the ability to be on ANTM. I am really just not cut out for reality television, but since I don't have a chance at this one anyway, I can pretend that I would like to be on it.
--DRIVING HOME--
At the last minute we decided to alter our admittedly silly plan for leaving, though our solution ended up only moderately less silly. Since Katie spent her weekend in New Orleans and wasn't getting back until sometime later on Sunday afternoon or evening we had planned on just leaving when she returned and either pushing it to somewhere Indiana-ish or just getting to Mad-town and crashin with the bro. I knew, after the Cleveland home thing in 12 hours, that the drive from Madison back to Buffalo wouldn't be anything too difficult. Nonetheless, we decided that instead of just having her return all the way to Minnesota, it would make more sense for me to pick her up somewhere along the way. So I got up on Sunday morning and, like the stupid sentimental fuck that I am, went goodbye saying goodbye to all the places in my house. I mean, I didn't literally say goodbye, but I wandered around for 10 minutes and sort of remembered all the things we did back in the day. After that I said goodbye to the living things in the house andSin rolled. I made fantasgreat time and hit Madtown in like 3 and one half hours. Katie and I were playing it by ear where we would meet up and I eventually ended up halfway through the fucking state of Illinois to pick her up. While Katie's optimisim and my pessimism usually balance each other out, apparently in this instance some geographical errors complicated the picture. We ended up about 90 miles out of the way, but at least we were about 40 percent done with the drive by 6:00 pm, about the time I was otherwise hoping to leave the Twin Cities. So while we were making good time, this meant that by no means were we going to stop at a hotel for the night. That decision almost changed when, suffering from severe ass-exhaustion (and here I mean literal exhaustion of the ass via sitting in a driving position for too long) and lack of basketball scores (I didn't even get to hear the second half of the Kentucky UAB showdown) I traded seats with Katie and we proceded, on the immediate Eastern side of Cleveland, to encounter several moments of absolute whiteouts on the highway. It was, admittedly, pretty horrifying when these semi trucks refused to slowdown and barrelled by us at like 45 miles an hour when there is no possible way the drivers could see the speed they were trying to inhale off the dashboard. Maybe they just thought all the blowing white powder was like the trucker equivalent of being in one of those money blowing phone-booths. I can see the mullet blowing in the wind while they stuck their septum-lacking noses out the windows only to encounter the coldest blow this side of the Trans-Siberian methlab. But we did get home, right around 5:30 am eastern time. I didn't even have time to play with my beloved DVR before hitting the sack.
Alright, thats enough about the whole spring break experience for one bloggerific moment. I will try to keep on sched for a little while since we have no immediate plans to leave town. Keep it real like a deal with a value meal and a dude who eats veal with a seal named after Jessica Beal.
Peace,
MB-K
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Things that Suck
In first place, alternators. I mean, fundamentally I understand that without an alternator all the electronic elements of my car wouldn't really work. I applaud the effort the alternator puts into transforming kinetic energy to electrical energy, its an admirable move, but fundamentally the way it breaks down really pisses me off. I had a new alternator and battery and shit put into my car on January 20th of 2003. Its not like I just went to Mike's Discount Auto-Shit and had them steal an alternator from an '85 Yugo, I went to Sears and they are at least supposed to know what the fuck they are doing. Jump ahead 14 months...
So Katie picks me up on Wednesday after my lecture and we get on the road. She mentions to me, not that I would know what the fuck to do anyway, that when she accelerates the battery light comes on. We looked in the manual and it just said that we should look at the alternator belt (sure, I know where that is, no problem, the alternator belt, its a commonsense item, like a fucking tire, I can probably just figure it out...) and if that isn't it then get it checked out. Well, we decide to get it checked in St. Paul. So we got on the road. I fell asleep in the backseat, as planned, and Katie took the first leg of the trip. I woke up when the car stopped, unexpectedly, for a longer time then I would expect at a toll booth. I sat up to see that we were at a gas station just outside of Cleveland. The whole electrical system had shut down, for the most part completely. We got a jump and were lucky to make it to a Sears Auto Center that was extraordinarily nearby.
Katie had, by the grace of God-knows-what, been able to maneuver us off the highway 2 miles from a Sears and next to a Motel 6. So we dropped the car off, not that we had any option, and hoofed it over to Tom Bodett's place. At least we got to watch the American Idol results show and learn that three of the right people and John-Fucking-Peter-Fucking-Lewis made it to the top 12. This dude has no chance at all, by the way. His voice sucks. He is kind of entertaining when he just acts like a Wilking-style fuckstick, but in general just a moron. He "sang" Elvis' "A Little Less Conversation" and essentially just spoke the lyrics, maybe rapped them. Somehow America decided that we needed a decent looking blond curly-haired putz in the top 12 or it just wouldn't be complete.
We found the next morning that the alternator had gone out again, that it was for some reason really fucking defective. We had to pay 80 bucks for the labor and 20 bucks for the "serpentine belt" (which I think is just a belt that looks like a snake, which I think is a good idea to aid the average person in understanding their car. Make everything look like an animal and name it after that creature. "It looks like my moose-erator went out, but the porcupine switch isn't in great shape either") which I think was an ass-job since the alterator was only one third through its warranty. Doesn't this just give them an incentive to jack me on the parts so they can charge me to put new crappy parts in. Whatever. That 100 plus the 50 for the hotel room (a little less, but you include the Snickers with Almonds that I needed to survive the expereince) makes a significant dent in our collective wallet, but we will get by.
So now we are home. Its actually Tuesday at the moment, sorry jeuce, I told you I wouldn't get to update often. Anyway, we have been home for half a week, seen some people, partied a little, ate some good food, relaxed, and done wedding shiz. We spoke to the priest who is doing the ceremony, we have some music going down and tomorrow I have at least a couple of further photographia related experiments. I know that it is ridiculous that we still haven't booked one of the major vendors, but I guess we will recover.
I have been intending to put up some extemp questions, but I really need to have internet access while I do that, and since I am too fucking cheap and-or poor to fork out the 30 bucks necessary for a wireless card at Best Buy this week I am sitting at Borders without access to the netterweb while I wait for Katie to finish up her shift at the Herbergers. Anyway, I don't pay enough attention to the news to do them off the top of my head. I do, however, wish to create my own "Blog Survey" which are all the rage these days. These are the random things where you post a list of your answers to random stupid questions. I think mine has the ability to revolutionize internet journaling as we know it. Without further ado (or even adue, or adieux) I give you the First Annual Mike Baxter Stupid Fucking Blog Questionniare:
What is your real name:
What would your real name be if you replaced all the letters in your name with the word "buttsex":
If you had to choose between having your name spelled with "buttsex" replacing all the letters but being pronounced in the same way your name is currently pronounced or having your name spelled as it currently is and being pronounced "buttsex-buttsex-buttsex..." which would you choose:
Do you feel that your right arm is more accurately represented by a black bear then your right ankle is by a manatee:
Name two things:
Would you rather say hippopotamus or play hippopotamus:
My favorite song about being a genie in a bottle:
My favorite episode of Martha Stewart Living:
The best story I have ever heard that involves urination:
The best story I have ever heard that involves Andy Kemp (if different from above):
If you only got to eat one egg roll or were forced to eat 100 egg rolls which would you choose:
Favorite song by Shaqulle O'Neal:
Favorite hair color on Julia Roberts:
Favorite hair color on poodles:
Would you rather lick a toad to get high or just for the pleasure of licking a toad:
If no one had ever told you differently, would you believe that not only are there no terrapins in Maryland, but that terrapin is actually just another name for burrito:
Do you want a burrito:
Will you bring me one:
From Chipotle:
Weak:
Which two adjectives starting with the letter "P" describe the last person you saw:
If you could invent a cherry flavored pretzel but never eat any or eat all the cherry pretzels you want but have eyes that look like dandelions which would you choose:
Best song by LFO:
Would it be cooler if LFO stood for Lotsa Fuckin Oreos or Limiting Frank's Octagons:
My Little Ponies actually hate it when you brush them, so don't think you are so goddamn smart:
If Kid Rock isn't the greatest musician of our generation then why did you tell me that you thought he was, just yesterday, were you lying to me:
Sexiest Disney character that isn't human:
Something that sounds like a sex toy but isn't:
If your blog turned into a small Latvian man named Geheezenbotto would you still update about the time when you saw Winona Ryder at Wendys:
Do you think we have the technology to reverse the process whereby we currently dip Wendy's french fries into a frosty and make it so we could dip sticks of frosty into a cup full of semi-liquid fried potato:
So, if the customer is ALWAYS right, what happens if I tell you that I am wrong--then you got yourself a little paradox there:
If your computer took on the personality of one historical figure who would it be:
Same with your toaster:
Which one of the Spice Girls should be Britain's next Prime Minister:
What song most reminds you of Betty White having sex with two guys, one girl, and a pizza place:
Congratulations. That completes the first installment. If nothing else I think it has really warmed me up for an extemp questions writing session at somepoint soon.
If you want your bloggedy-following to more truly understand you, I recommend you cut and paste from above, post it in your blog, and email it to your boss, your parents, and the first 25 people in alphabetical order whose email addreses end with "@bethel.edu" I suppose I should probably fill it out as well, so here we go:
What is your real name: Mike Baxter
What would your real name be if you replaced all the letters in your name with the word "buttsex": Buttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsex Buttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsex
If you had to choose between having your name spelled with "buttsex" replacing all the letters but being pronounced in the same way your name is currently pronounced or having your name spelled as it currently is and being pronounced "buttsex-buttsex-buttsex..." which would you choose: Call me buttsex, because filling out "Buttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsex Buttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsex" on a bubble-test or driver's license form would suck.
Do you feel that your right arm is more accurately represented by a black bear then your right ankle is by a manatee: yes
Name two things:Dweezil Zappa and toothpaste
Would you rather say hippopotamus or play hippopotamus:play hippopotamus
My favorite song about being a genie in a bottle: Genie in a Bottle by Christina Aguilera
My favorite episode of Martha Stewart Living: the one where Martha makes decorative placemats by wrapping rubber bands around a rolling pin, cutting designs into them, rubbing them in ink and rolling them accross paper
The best story I have ever heard that involves urination: Andy Kemp urinating on someone's drunk friend who is passed out in the parking lot and getting beaten so badly he went to the hospital--this one isn't even close
The best story I have ever heard that involves Andy Kemp (if different from above): see above or elsewhere in this blog
If you only got to eat one egg roll or were forced to eat 100 egg rolls which would you choose: 100, I would egg roll them
Favorite song by Shaqulle O'Neal: Shoot, Pass, Slam by Shaquille O'Neal
Favorite hair color on Julia Roberts: Red
Favorite hair color on poodles: surprisingly, also red
Would you rather lick a toad to get high or just for the pleasure of licking a toad: high
If no one had ever told you differently, would you believe that not only are there no terrapins in Maryland, but that terrapin is actually just another name for burrito: people have told me differently, and I still think so
Do you want a burrito: kinda
Will you bring me one: maybe
From Chipotle: dude, Chipotle is a long ways from Borders in Midway and I don't have a car
Weak: go fuck yourself
Which two adjectives starting with the letter "P" describe the last person you saw: purple and Pakistani
If you could invent a cherry flavored pretzel but never eat any or eat all the cherry pretzels you want but have eyes that look like dandelions which would you choose: I don't think cherry pretzels sound very good, so I would invent them
Best song by LFO: Every other Time by LFO (a darkhorse)
Would it be cooler if LFO stood for Lotsa Fuckin Oreos or Limiting Frank's Octagons: oreos, even though I am sick of Frank's ridiculous octagon intake
My Little Ponies actually hate it when you brush them, so don't think you are so goddamn smart: fuck
If Kid Rock isn't the greatest musician of our generation then why did you tell me that you thought he was, just yesterday, were you lying to me: you caught me
Sexiest Disney character that isn't human: Sebastian from the Little Mermaid
Something that sounds like a sex toy but isn't: a tuba
If your blog turned into a small Latvian man named Geheezenbotto would you still update about the time when you saw Winona Ryder at Wendys: hell yes
Do you think we have the technology to reverse the process whereby we currently dip Wendy's french fries into a frosty and make it so we could dip sticks of frosty into a cup full of semi-liquid fried potato: no, but I am working on it
So, if the customer is ALWAYS right, what happens if I tell you that I am wrong--then you got yourself a little paradox there: fuck
If your computer took on the personality of one historical figure who would it be: Billy Bob Thorton
Same with your toaster: Beethoven
Which one of the Spice Girls should be Britain's next Prime Minister: Baby
What song most reminds you of Betty White having sex with two guys, one girl, and a pizza place: Everywhere You Look, the themesong from Full House
I could just keep babbling on and on about the Golden Girls doing perverted stuff, but I don't really feel like it and Katie is almost done with work. I will post this when I get a chance and start cracking on the extemp questions. I will defeat Chris McDonald and his evil extemporaneous empire yet again. Katie told me that she couldn't really tell if Doobs' extemp questions were really any better than anybody elses, I told her that they are extemp questions and unless they are written by me they can all line up behind the nearest 7-11 and take a flying fuck at the wall. I didn't really tell her that, but it would have been hella witty. I have to work on that.
Peace,
MB-K
So Katie picks me up on Wednesday after my lecture and we get on the road. She mentions to me, not that I would know what the fuck to do anyway, that when she accelerates the battery light comes on. We looked in the manual and it just said that we should look at the alternator belt (sure, I know where that is, no problem, the alternator belt, its a commonsense item, like a fucking tire, I can probably just figure it out...) and if that isn't it then get it checked out. Well, we decide to get it checked in St. Paul. So we got on the road. I fell asleep in the backseat, as planned, and Katie took the first leg of the trip. I woke up when the car stopped, unexpectedly, for a longer time then I would expect at a toll booth. I sat up to see that we were at a gas station just outside of Cleveland. The whole electrical system had shut down, for the most part completely. We got a jump and were lucky to make it to a Sears Auto Center that was extraordinarily nearby.
Katie had, by the grace of God-knows-what, been able to maneuver us off the highway 2 miles from a Sears and next to a Motel 6. So we dropped the car off, not that we had any option, and hoofed it over to Tom Bodett's place. At least we got to watch the American Idol results show and learn that three of the right people and John-Fucking-Peter-Fucking-Lewis made it to the top 12. This dude has no chance at all, by the way. His voice sucks. He is kind of entertaining when he just acts like a Wilking-style fuckstick, but in general just a moron. He "sang" Elvis' "A Little Less Conversation" and essentially just spoke the lyrics, maybe rapped them. Somehow America decided that we needed a decent looking blond curly-haired putz in the top 12 or it just wouldn't be complete.
We found the next morning that the alternator had gone out again, that it was for some reason really fucking defective. We had to pay 80 bucks for the labor and 20 bucks for the "serpentine belt" (which I think is just a belt that looks like a snake, which I think is a good idea to aid the average person in understanding their car. Make everything look like an animal and name it after that creature. "It looks like my moose-erator went out, but the porcupine switch isn't in great shape either") which I think was an ass-job since the alterator was only one third through its warranty. Doesn't this just give them an incentive to jack me on the parts so they can charge me to put new crappy parts in. Whatever. That 100 plus the 50 for the hotel room (a little less, but you include the Snickers with Almonds that I needed to survive the expereince) makes a significant dent in our collective wallet, but we will get by.
So now we are home. Its actually Tuesday at the moment, sorry jeuce, I told you I wouldn't get to update often. Anyway, we have been home for half a week, seen some people, partied a little, ate some good food, relaxed, and done wedding shiz. We spoke to the priest who is doing the ceremony, we have some music going down and tomorrow I have at least a couple of further photographia related experiments. I know that it is ridiculous that we still haven't booked one of the major vendors, but I guess we will recover.
I have been intending to put up some extemp questions, but I really need to have internet access while I do that, and since I am too fucking cheap and-or poor to fork out the 30 bucks necessary for a wireless card at Best Buy this week I am sitting at Borders without access to the netterweb while I wait for Katie to finish up her shift at the Herbergers. Anyway, I don't pay enough attention to the news to do them off the top of my head. I do, however, wish to create my own "Blog Survey" which are all the rage these days. These are the random things where you post a list of your answers to random stupid questions. I think mine has the ability to revolutionize internet journaling as we know it. Without further ado (or even adue, or adieux) I give you the First Annual Mike Baxter Stupid Fucking Blog Questionniare:
What is your real name:
What would your real name be if you replaced all the letters in your name with the word "buttsex":
If you had to choose between having your name spelled with "buttsex" replacing all the letters but being pronounced in the same way your name is currently pronounced or having your name spelled as it currently is and being pronounced "buttsex-buttsex-buttsex..." which would you choose:
Do you feel that your right arm is more accurately represented by a black bear then your right ankle is by a manatee:
Name two things:
Would you rather say hippopotamus or play hippopotamus:
My favorite song about being a genie in a bottle:
My favorite episode of Martha Stewart Living:
The best story I have ever heard that involves urination:
The best story I have ever heard that involves Andy Kemp (if different from above):
If you only got to eat one egg roll or were forced to eat 100 egg rolls which would you choose:
Favorite song by Shaqulle O'Neal:
Favorite hair color on Julia Roberts:
Favorite hair color on poodles:
Would you rather lick a toad to get high or just for the pleasure of licking a toad:
If no one had ever told you differently, would you believe that not only are there no terrapins in Maryland, but that terrapin is actually just another name for burrito:
Do you want a burrito:
Will you bring me one:
From Chipotle:
Weak:
Which two adjectives starting with the letter "P" describe the last person you saw:
If you could invent a cherry flavored pretzel but never eat any or eat all the cherry pretzels you want but have eyes that look like dandelions which would you choose:
Best song by LFO:
Would it be cooler if LFO stood for Lotsa Fuckin Oreos or Limiting Frank's Octagons:
My Little Ponies actually hate it when you brush them, so don't think you are so goddamn smart:
If Kid Rock isn't the greatest musician of our generation then why did you tell me that you thought he was, just yesterday, were you lying to me:
Sexiest Disney character that isn't human:
Something that sounds like a sex toy but isn't:
If your blog turned into a small Latvian man named Geheezenbotto would you still update about the time when you saw Winona Ryder at Wendys:
Do you think we have the technology to reverse the process whereby we currently dip Wendy's french fries into a frosty and make it so we could dip sticks of frosty into a cup full of semi-liquid fried potato:
So, if the customer is ALWAYS right, what happens if I tell you that I am wrong--then you got yourself a little paradox there:
If your computer took on the personality of one historical figure who would it be:
Same with your toaster:
Which one of the Spice Girls should be Britain's next Prime Minister:
What song most reminds you of Betty White having sex with two guys, one girl, and a pizza place:
Congratulations. That completes the first installment. If nothing else I think it has really warmed me up for an extemp questions writing session at somepoint soon.
If you want your bloggedy-following to more truly understand you, I recommend you cut and paste from above, post it in your blog, and email it to your boss, your parents, and the first 25 people in alphabetical order whose email addreses end with "@bethel.edu" I suppose I should probably fill it out as well, so here we go:
What is your real name: Mike Baxter
What would your real name be if you replaced all the letters in your name with the word "buttsex": Buttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsex Buttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsex
If you had to choose between having your name spelled with "buttsex" replacing all the letters but being pronounced in the same way your name is currently pronounced or having your name spelled as it currently is and being pronounced "buttsex-buttsex-buttsex..." which would you choose: Call me buttsex, because filling out "Buttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsex Buttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsexbuttsex" on a bubble-test or driver's license form would suck.
Do you feel that your right arm is more accurately represented by a black bear then your right ankle is by a manatee: yes
Name two things:Dweezil Zappa and toothpaste
Would you rather say hippopotamus or play hippopotamus:play hippopotamus
My favorite song about being a genie in a bottle: Genie in a Bottle by Christina Aguilera
My favorite episode of Martha Stewart Living: the one where Martha makes decorative placemats by wrapping rubber bands around a rolling pin, cutting designs into them, rubbing them in ink and rolling them accross paper
The best story I have ever heard that involves urination: Andy Kemp urinating on someone's drunk friend who is passed out in the parking lot and getting beaten so badly he went to the hospital--this one isn't even close
The best story I have ever heard that involves Andy Kemp (if different from above): see above or elsewhere in this blog
If you only got to eat one egg roll or were forced to eat 100 egg rolls which would you choose: 100, I would egg roll them
Favorite song by Shaqulle O'Neal: Shoot, Pass, Slam by Shaquille O'Neal
Favorite hair color on Julia Roberts: Red
Favorite hair color on poodles: surprisingly, also red
Would you rather lick a toad to get high or just for the pleasure of licking a toad: high
If no one had ever told you differently, would you believe that not only are there no terrapins in Maryland, but that terrapin is actually just another name for burrito: people have told me differently, and I still think so
Do you want a burrito: kinda
Will you bring me one: maybe
From Chipotle: dude, Chipotle is a long ways from Borders in Midway and I don't have a car
Weak: go fuck yourself
Which two adjectives starting with the letter "P" describe the last person you saw: purple and Pakistani
If you could invent a cherry flavored pretzel but never eat any or eat all the cherry pretzels you want but have eyes that look like dandelions which would you choose: I don't think cherry pretzels sound very good, so I would invent them
Best song by LFO: Every other Time by LFO (a darkhorse)
Would it be cooler if LFO stood for Lotsa Fuckin Oreos or Limiting Frank's Octagons: oreos, even though I am sick of Frank's ridiculous octagon intake
My Little Ponies actually hate it when you brush them, so don't think you are so goddamn smart: fuck
If Kid Rock isn't the greatest musician of our generation then why did you tell me that you thought he was, just yesterday, were you lying to me: you caught me
Sexiest Disney character that isn't human: Sebastian from the Little Mermaid
Something that sounds like a sex toy but isn't: a tuba
If your blog turned into a small Latvian man named Geheezenbotto would you still update about the time when you saw Winona Ryder at Wendys: hell yes
Do you think we have the technology to reverse the process whereby we currently dip Wendy's french fries into a frosty and make it so we could dip sticks of frosty into a cup full of semi-liquid fried potato: no, but I am working on it
So, if the customer is ALWAYS right, what happens if I tell you that I am wrong--then you got yourself a little paradox there: fuck
If your computer took on the personality of one historical figure who would it be: Billy Bob Thorton
Same with your toaster: Beethoven
Which one of the Spice Girls should be Britain's next Prime Minister: Baby
What song most reminds you of Betty White having sex with two guys, one girl, and a pizza place: Everywhere You Look, the themesong from Full House
I could just keep babbling on and on about the Golden Girls doing perverted stuff, but I don't really feel like it and Katie is almost done with work. I will post this when I get a chance and start cracking on the extemp questions. I will defeat Chris McDonald and his evil extemporaneous empire yet again. Katie told me that she couldn't really tell if Doobs' extemp questions were really any better than anybody elses, I told her that they are extemp questions and unless they are written by me they can all line up behind the nearest 7-11 and take a flying fuck at the wall. I didn't really tell her that, but it would have been hella witty. I have to work on that.
Peace,
MB-K
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Spring Brizzle for the Biz Bizzle
Its finally approaching the time to return to Minneapolis from the evils of Buffalo for at least a week. We are leaving manana after my course with Joan so we are shooting to arrive in the TC Thursday afternoon-ish. That does of course mean a long night of dizniving without any cigarettes, but we can probably pull it off assuming that we both get some sleep in the backseat during the drive. We have wedding shizzle to do and people to see and Katie is going to New Orleans at the end of the week, but hopefully it will be somewhat of a relaxing experience, at least there are zero seminars.
Besides that I don't have alot to say right now, but never fear. I am staying up for most to all of the evening in order to make sure that I will be able to sleep in the afternoon on the first driving segment. In accordance with that, and in recognition of the fact that I can never guaruntee any frequency of updates while back in the hometizzle I will try to comment on several things over the night.
To begin with I would like to comment on sprinkles. I think we can pretty clearly delineate two different varieties of sprinkles without any dispute. In the first instance you've got "Crystaline Sprinkles." These are the, usually red and green, little flakes of semi-translucent colored sugar you will see covering entire Christmas cookies. You take your frosted sugar cookie and cover the cookie with these things. Besides cookies and cakes I have never really seen these sprinkles in use anywhere. The other category is of course "Jimmy-style Sprinkles." By this we are obviously referring to the small cyllindrical sprinkles which have much more volume than the crystaline ones. I have certainly seen these tasty things on cookies and cakes but they are also prominent features of ice cream sundaes and the like. Now, you have the multicolored variety, which are probably the most popular, but the jimmy-sprinkles are the first to introduce the concept of flavor to the sprinkle-verse. I admit that I may pay a bit more attention to sprinkles than the average fan of America's Next Top Model (Shandi power!!) but I have had a couple different kinds. Regardless, I am fairly certain that almost everyone has at least enjoyed the choco-tastic variety. When Katie and I went to the Capital debate tournament we hit up this ice-cream joint after round 2 on Friday night. I had this phat death-by-chocolate motherfucker which, while I had admittedly had better desserts by this name, was quite good. It was chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake, chocolate fudge, chocolate sauce, chocolate whipped cream, and chocolate sprinkles. While there are two of these defintive categories of sprinkleosity, there are some things that vary from almost exactly sprinkles to only somewhat related to the sprinkle family. Lets start with those which are especially close to the sprinkle fam. There are the little balls of multicolored sprinkle things. They don't fit in with either the tubular jimmy style or the flat crystaline. They would get their own except for two facts: 1) they are the only ones of their type 2) they are more closely related to the metallic silver balls. These are wondeful little things, you can put them on top of the Christmas tree cookies, but you can't put too many of them on any one cookie. They are edible, don't get me wrong, but you don't want a mouthful of em. I guess its an arbitrary distinction but I would put the round multi-colored sprinkles with the metallic candies and once that is made we are just a hop skip and a jump away from the red cinammon candies which everyone loves. Here you are talking about sprinkle accessories, plain and simple. You cannot make an argument that we are still in sprinkle land. Just because you can put them on a cookie don't make them sprinkles.
I wish I could ruminate on sprinkles further, and between only you and I, I think I could, but I simply don't want to type it any further. Sit down and try to write a paper on sprinkles. Its not easy, it takes alot of fucking work. Its much easier to relay with your friends stories about sprinkles, your fond memories of when your parents scolded you for over-frosting the cookies and then covering them in alternating layers of red and green so that the cinammon ones you attempted to put at the points of the tree couldn't even find a bit of frosting to grip in. An alternate excercise, write a paper about your favorite french fries of all time. It ain' that easy, believe me, I have tried, briefly, but still tried. Now, go to a french fry loving compadre or compadrita and have a dialogue. It will take now time at all and stories you can't believe stick in your head which are somehow, maybe only distantly, but somehow related to french fries, will pop into your head. Its incredible.
So I had tivoed this episode of the Sopranos which I am currently watching and I am now recognizing what Jon Stewart's joke last night concerned. He was talking about bears in New Jersey and I now get the joke. Its one of very few moments where I thought I fully understood something and just didn't think it was funny. Most of the time I think I can tell when people are referencing something that I simply don't have knowledge of and its a weird fucking experience when you retroactively get the joke, especially when you thought it was one you had already gotten. I think TiVo sort of does this to people, since Pete pulled the same thing on me a few weeks ago with the "Who would win a fight between a caveman and an astronaut." I heard the question one night, discussed it with him the next, and it wasn't until the next conversation when I found out the origin. I mean I had it on the DVR, I was gonna watch it when I got a chance, I just hadn't gotten one. Fucking A. I don't even have any more examples, so this discussion is going nowhere. Hopefully you know what I am talking about, its just odd.
So I love the Daily Show, I stick by my arguments in favor of the intelligence of the writers and the skill Jon Stewart has in executing those jokes. Nonetheless, I am really frightened by fairly noticeable move to the right over recent weeks. I think that pretty much, since the Newsweek cover we have seen Jon Stewart have like 7 right fucking wing guests. More importantly, Jon is actively attempting to work in, at least 5 times an interview, the "subtle" explanation that the show is tolerant towards different political viewpoints, you can't just charaterize republicans as evil and stupid and fascist. Notably, these interviews have been preceeded by 20 minutes of jokes which indicate exactly that Bush is a fucking numnuts and not a well-intentioned man. I understand that you are trying to capitalize on this serge in popularity and capture an audience which can be older and more moderate to conservative and also to pull in even more of the young crowd. I guess this is the right strategy as a program, I think it will work. People who loved the show when the interview were either with Michael Moore or were just Jon Stewart telling republicans that they were fascist will still watch because its still good and maybe you will catch a couple of those people who were thrown off by overtly radical leftism. Still, I don't think this is what he people in charge (Stewart and the lead writers) believe, I don't think it is as funny as it can be, and I don't think it is as positive a political force as it could be. Katie gave me a stat the other day that some significant majority of young people (18-34) get their daily political news from The Daily Show, I think that means that they should take what they had and run with it. I still love the self-depricating humor, he wouldn't quite be John Stewart without it, but recognize that you are not just shit on a minor basic cable channel. This is big time shit, it is big time shit and it is telling the fucking truth. Katie and I were having a discussion about this last night, and I have not yet fully been convinced that the American public is beyond the point where, if we argue to them, if we explain to them what we mean, they aren't smart enough to understand. Maybe I am just a disnenfranchised Mac graduate, I mean, I know I am a disenfranchised Mac grad, but it might be more than that. I don't feel we're trying.
I don't think that democrats, the Greens, the left, etc. are doing what we need to do. People, important people, should be on TV everyday, explaining to people why it is that we shouldn't (to steal a phrase from Bob Mould's blog) "vivissect the contitution" to codify discriminatory policies. Instead of getting no closer to San Francisco then Washington State and explaining why we just "don't support this ammendment" wouldn't you like to see John Kerry standing next to the Mayor of San Francisco. Shouldn't we be telling people that in 30 years their children and grandchildren will be taught about this day the same way we learned about the forced integration of (was it Alabama or Mississippi) universities in the 1960s. This guy is doing what the national guard did those days. Escorting a person to class, granting them a marriage license, they just aren't that far off. This is not even to mention the relation of McCarthyism to Gitmo and Vietnam to Iraq. There are things that people will really easily understand. We're fucking right, that is all there is to it, and I, at least for now, believe that people will understand if we tell them. Regardless, I want to see someone try, or believe that we have tried and it just didn't work, before I give up entirely.
Oh my God. So the President of the RNC who was on the Daily Show tonight (Tuesday, reruns on Wednesday all day) named Ed Gillespie is freaking hilarious. Not on purpose, I don't think, but still hilarious. He reminds me of the public defender from My Cousin Vinnie who represents the non-Karate Kid one of the defendents before he switches over to Vinnie. The dude who stuttuers and asks fucking awful questions, like Dan Specht giving a cross-ex (oh, much love and props to the Specht) except skinny and Southern and tall. Andy almost got his thorax punctured by a pair of deer antlers in that kid's basement one night, and it was either right before or after that when we had some fucked up capture the flag game in the middle of the night, with no lights on, that at two seperate points involved throwing miniature containers of applesauce and burnt bags of microwave popcorn. I couldn't possibly begin to explain to you how any of those events occurred, or how many hours of clean-up were required the next morning, but it still strikes me in the sense of "good times, good times."
I wonder what percentage of the population, when asked, would be able to off the top of their head, name their favorite large cat. I don't mean like, could they think about it for a couple seconds and come up with some random large cat, but that they actively have one. I personally do, its the puma. I couldn't explain why, but the puma is a hella cute cat. Its got those funky ears and really sleek fur. Don't get me wrong, the mountain lion, the jaguar, the tiger, the lion, the leopard, the cheetah, these are all awesome cats. Nonetheless, I prefer the puma. I also prefer, out of all the members of the owl kingdom, the great Horned variety. They are all good birds, arctic white ones, little tiny barn owls, but you can't really compete with the head turning horns-which-are-actually-made-out-of-feather-having qualities of the Great Horned varieties. Mad props.
I have been trying to figure out a way to make mini-donuts, I mean real fair quality min-donuts. Not the uber-mini-donuts, mind you, the ones they serve at the Tom Thumb booth on the corner of Judson at the MN State Fair, since those are unmatched, but I think I should be able to make donuts as good as the ones you can occassionally by from a trailer in the Cub parking lot, or parked on people's random driveways accross Snelling from the entrance to the fair. Don't diss these donuts hombre, you could do a hella lot worse for a warm sugary breakfast on a brisk St. Paul morning, but once you are already close enough to smell the grease, you might as well just take the natural gas powered tram on over to the am 1500 booth, next to the Minnesota Independent Republican booth, right by the Ayd Mill ride, which I have actually never been on, and wait in line at one of up to 12 individual donut making machine stations. I think a bag is still only like 2.50 and if you won't pay 20-some cents per bite-size sugary grease trap something is wrong wit yizooo.
Why is it that we call chicken strips so many different fucking things. Can't we come up with a basic name for this product, chicken strips, chicken planks, chicken tenders, chicken sticks, chicken filet sections, etc. You don't see this kind of thing happen with mozzerella sticks. They are never called cheese deebie-weebies or anything. What is it about chicken that makes people think you can name it whatever the fuck you please. What exactly is done in order to make popcorn chicken, by the way. Is it just like little strops of chicken breast which are breaded and fried or are we talking about processed and extruded chicken balls. Hella tasty either way, maybe especially so if we are talking about a product which can be accurately characterized as chicken balls.
I don't know what happened while I was watching TV that resulted in the screen displaying "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr492", since I don't think anything had touched the computer while I was at the fridge. I guess that r and 4 are really near to each other, so if something had been sitting on the keyboard in that area it would make sense, but I am not sure where the 9 and 2 fit in. I mean, technically 9 and 2 fit in 5 units after and 2 units before 4, respecitively.
So Katie got her Game Cube not long ago and with it Mario Party 5, which, if you have not had the opportunity to participate in Mario Parties 1-4, is a video board game. You've got the dice cubes and all the stuff you would imagine to be associated with a Mario Bros themed video board game, but also including a fuckload of mini-games that are exactly what the name implies. I will admit that having played like 5 games recently I like it more than I ever thought I could. Notably, each of these games takes between 1 and a half and 2 full fucking hours. I mean, when you play a session of Mario Kart it also takes that long, but this is non stop, nutso as they say.
Alright, I am simply too tired at this point to really continue writing anything. I am going to watch the end of Jason Schwartzman's new TV show, hope it was worth ditching Phantom Planet to work with SUPERSTAR!! More from the Twin Citays over the next few days.
Peace,
MB-K
Besides that I don't have alot to say right now, but never fear. I am staying up for most to all of the evening in order to make sure that I will be able to sleep in the afternoon on the first driving segment. In accordance with that, and in recognition of the fact that I can never guaruntee any frequency of updates while back in the hometizzle I will try to comment on several things over the night.
To begin with I would like to comment on sprinkles. I think we can pretty clearly delineate two different varieties of sprinkles without any dispute. In the first instance you've got "Crystaline Sprinkles." These are the, usually red and green, little flakes of semi-translucent colored sugar you will see covering entire Christmas cookies. You take your frosted sugar cookie and cover the cookie with these things. Besides cookies and cakes I have never really seen these sprinkles in use anywhere. The other category is of course "Jimmy-style Sprinkles." By this we are obviously referring to the small cyllindrical sprinkles which have much more volume than the crystaline ones. I have certainly seen these tasty things on cookies and cakes but they are also prominent features of ice cream sundaes and the like. Now, you have the multicolored variety, which are probably the most popular, but the jimmy-sprinkles are the first to introduce the concept of flavor to the sprinkle-verse. I admit that I may pay a bit more attention to sprinkles than the average fan of America's Next Top Model (Shandi power!!) but I have had a couple different kinds. Regardless, I am fairly certain that almost everyone has at least enjoyed the choco-tastic variety. When Katie and I went to the Capital debate tournament we hit up this ice-cream joint after round 2 on Friday night. I had this phat death-by-chocolate motherfucker which, while I had admittedly had better desserts by this name, was quite good. It was chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake, chocolate fudge, chocolate sauce, chocolate whipped cream, and chocolate sprinkles. While there are two of these defintive categories of sprinkleosity, there are some things that vary from almost exactly sprinkles to only somewhat related to the sprinkle family. Lets start with those which are especially close to the sprinkle fam. There are the little balls of multicolored sprinkle things. They don't fit in with either the tubular jimmy style or the flat crystaline. They would get their own except for two facts: 1) they are the only ones of their type 2) they are more closely related to the metallic silver balls. These are wondeful little things, you can put them on top of the Christmas tree cookies, but you can't put too many of them on any one cookie. They are edible, don't get me wrong, but you don't want a mouthful of em. I guess its an arbitrary distinction but I would put the round multi-colored sprinkles with the metallic candies and once that is made we are just a hop skip and a jump away from the red cinammon candies which everyone loves. Here you are talking about sprinkle accessories, plain and simple. You cannot make an argument that we are still in sprinkle land. Just because you can put them on a cookie don't make them sprinkles.
I wish I could ruminate on sprinkles further, and between only you and I, I think I could, but I simply don't want to type it any further. Sit down and try to write a paper on sprinkles. Its not easy, it takes alot of fucking work. Its much easier to relay with your friends stories about sprinkles, your fond memories of when your parents scolded you for over-frosting the cookies and then covering them in alternating layers of red and green so that the cinammon ones you attempted to put at the points of the tree couldn't even find a bit of frosting to grip in. An alternate excercise, write a paper about your favorite french fries of all time. It ain' that easy, believe me, I have tried, briefly, but still tried. Now, go to a french fry loving compadre or compadrita and have a dialogue. It will take now time at all and stories you can't believe stick in your head which are somehow, maybe only distantly, but somehow related to french fries, will pop into your head. Its incredible.
So I had tivoed this episode of the Sopranos which I am currently watching and I am now recognizing what Jon Stewart's joke last night concerned. He was talking about bears in New Jersey and I now get the joke. Its one of very few moments where I thought I fully understood something and just didn't think it was funny. Most of the time I think I can tell when people are referencing something that I simply don't have knowledge of and its a weird fucking experience when you retroactively get the joke, especially when you thought it was one you had already gotten. I think TiVo sort of does this to people, since Pete pulled the same thing on me a few weeks ago with the "Who would win a fight between a caveman and an astronaut." I heard the question one night, discussed it with him the next, and it wasn't until the next conversation when I found out the origin. I mean I had it on the DVR, I was gonna watch it when I got a chance, I just hadn't gotten one. Fucking A. I don't even have any more examples, so this discussion is going nowhere. Hopefully you know what I am talking about, its just odd.
So I love the Daily Show, I stick by my arguments in favor of the intelligence of the writers and the skill Jon Stewart has in executing those jokes. Nonetheless, I am really frightened by fairly noticeable move to the right over recent weeks. I think that pretty much, since the Newsweek cover we have seen Jon Stewart have like 7 right fucking wing guests. More importantly, Jon is actively attempting to work in, at least 5 times an interview, the "subtle" explanation that the show is tolerant towards different political viewpoints, you can't just charaterize republicans as evil and stupid and fascist. Notably, these interviews have been preceeded by 20 minutes of jokes which indicate exactly that Bush is a fucking numnuts and not a well-intentioned man. I understand that you are trying to capitalize on this serge in popularity and capture an audience which can be older and more moderate to conservative and also to pull in even more of the young crowd. I guess this is the right strategy as a program, I think it will work. People who loved the show when the interview were either with Michael Moore or were just Jon Stewart telling republicans that they were fascist will still watch because its still good and maybe you will catch a couple of those people who were thrown off by overtly radical leftism. Still, I don't think this is what he people in charge (Stewart and the lead writers) believe, I don't think it is as funny as it can be, and I don't think it is as positive a political force as it could be. Katie gave me a stat the other day that some significant majority of young people (18-34) get their daily political news from The Daily Show, I think that means that they should take what they had and run with it. I still love the self-depricating humor, he wouldn't quite be John Stewart without it, but recognize that you are not just shit on a minor basic cable channel. This is big time shit, it is big time shit and it is telling the fucking truth. Katie and I were having a discussion about this last night, and I have not yet fully been convinced that the American public is beyond the point where, if we argue to them, if we explain to them what we mean, they aren't smart enough to understand. Maybe I am just a disnenfranchised Mac graduate, I mean, I know I am a disenfranchised Mac grad, but it might be more than that. I don't feel we're trying.
I don't think that democrats, the Greens, the left, etc. are doing what we need to do. People, important people, should be on TV everyday, explaining to people why it is that we shouldn't (to steal a phrase from Bob Mould's blog) "vivissect the contitution" to codify discriminatory policies. Instead of getting no closer to San Francisco then Washington State and explaining why we just "don't support this ammendment" wouldn't you like to see John Kerry standing next to the Mayor of San Francisco. Shouldn't we be telling people that in 30 years their children and grandchildren will be taught about this day the same way we learned about the forced integration of (was it Alabama or Mississippi) universities in the 1960s. This guy is doing what the national guard did those days. Escorting a person to class, granting them a marriage license, they just aren't that far off. This is not even to mention the relation of McCarthyism to Gitmo and Vietnam to Iraq. There are things that people will really easily understand. We're fucking right, that is all there is to it, and I, at least for now, believe that people will understand if we tell them. Regardless, I want to see someone try, or believe that we have tried and it just didn't work, before I give up entirely.
Oh my God. So the President of the RNC who was on the Daily Show tonight (Tuesday, reruns on Wednesday all day) named Ed Gillespie is freaking hilarious. Not on purpose, I don't think, but still hilarious. He reminds me of the public defender from My Cousin Vinnie who represents the non-Karate Kid one of the defendents before he switches over to Vinnie. The dude who stuttuers and asks fucking awful questions, like Dan Specht giving a cross-ex (oh, much love and props to the Specht) except skinny and Southern and tall. Andy almost got his thorax punctured by a pair of deer antlers in that kid's basement one night, and it was either right before or after that when we had some fucked up capture the flag game in the middle of the night, with no lights on, that at two seperate points involved throwing miniature containers of applesauce and burnt bags of microwave popcorn. I couldn't possibly begin to explain to you how any of those events occurred, or how many hours of clean-up were required the next morning, but it still strikes me in the sense of "good times, good times."
I wonder what percentage of the population, when asked, would be able to off the top of their head, name their favorite large cat. I don't mean like, could they think about it for a couple seconds and come up with some random large cat, but that they actively have one. I personally do, its the puma. I couldn't explain why, but the puma is a hella cute cat. Its got those funky ears and really sleek fur. Don't get me wrong, the mountain lion, the jaguar, the tiger, the lion, the leopard, the cheetah, these are all awesome cats. Nonetheless, I prefer the puma. I also prefer, out of all the members of the owl kingdom, the great Horned variety. They are all good birds, arctic white ones, little tiny barn owls, but you can't really compete with the head turning horns-which-are-actually-made-out-of-feather-having qualities of the Great Horned varieties. Mad props.
I have been trying to figure out a way to make mini-donuts, I mean real fair quality min-donuts. Not the uber-mini-donuts, mind you, the ones they serve at the Tom Thumb booth on the corner of Judson at the MN State Fair, since those are unmatched, but I think I should be able to make donuts as good as the ones you can occassionally by from a trailer in the Cub parking lot, or parked on people's random driveways accross Snelling from the entrance to the fair. Don't diss these donuts hombre, you could do a hella lot worse for a warm sugary breakfast on a brisk St. Paul morning, but once you are already close enough to smell the grease, you might as well just take the natural gas powered tram on over to the am 1500 booth, next to the Minnesota Independent Republican booth, right by the Ayd Mill ride, which I have actually never been on, and wait in line at one of up to 12 individual donut making machine stations. I think a bag is still only like 2.50 and if you won't pay 20-some cents per bite-size sugary grease trap something is wrong wit yizooo.
Why is it that we call chicken strips so many different fucking things. Can't we come up with a basic name for this product, chicken strips, chicken planks, chicken tenders, chicken sticks, chicken filet sections, etc. You don't see this kind of thing happen with mozzerella sticks. They are never called cheese deebie-weebies or anything. What is it about chicken that makes people think you can name it whatever the fuck you please. What exactly is done in order to make popcorn chicken, by the way. Is it just like little strops of chicken breast which are breaded and fried or are we talking about processed and extruded chicken balls. Hella tasty either way, maybe especially so if we are talking about a product which can be accurately characterized as chicken balls.
I don't know what happened while I was watching TV that resulted in the screen displaying "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr492", since I don't think anything had touched the computer while I was at the fridge. I guess that r and 4 are really near to each other, so if something had been sitting on the keyboard in that area it would make sense, but I am not sure where the 9 and 2 fit in. I mean, technically 9 and 2 fit in 5 units after and 2 units before 4, respecitively.
So Katie got her Game Cube not long ago and with it Mario Party 5, which, if you have not had the opportunity to participate in Mario Parties 1-4, is a video board game. You've got the dice cubes and all the stuff you would imagine to be associated with a Mario Bros themed video board game, but also including a fuckload of mini-games that are exactly what the name implies. I will admit that having played like 5 games recently I like it more than I ever thought I could. Notably, each of these games takes between 1 and a half and 2 full fucking hours. I mean, when you play a session of Mario Kart it also takes that long, but this is non stop, nutso as they say.
Alright, I am simply too tired at this point to really continue writing anything. I am going to watch the end of Jason Schwartzman's new TV show, hope it was worth ditching Phantom Planet to work with SUPERSTAR!! More from the Twin Citays over the next few days.
Peace,
MB-K
Sunday, March 07, 2004
Wednesday Ramblings..Continued on Saturday...But its Sunday...Chure
I think that Hoobastank might be the absolute worst band name ever. I know there are some bad ones, but this one is really truly awful. I don't listen to much Hoobastank, nor do I really intend to begin doing so, but I can tell you that I would be discouraged from doing so were I to see this name. Maybe there are references that I don't get, but it only makes me imagine two things, illegal substances and the female anatomy. I can see a group of dudes sitting around a basement with a joint and someone being like "This shit is HOOBA-STANK!!" I don't think that person would be an especially bright young lad or lassie but stranger things have happened. I can also imagine someone Andy K-style recounting a random hookup in that fashion. This person could be a man or woman obviously, but I don't know that HOOBA-STANK can apply to a male set of genitals. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of stank going on with male genitals the world over...or so someone told me...yeah...anyway.
I began this entry on Wednesday night at some point, but it is now Saturday obviously. I opened up my blog writer thing and there was already three-quarters of a paragraph devoted to Hoobastank. It may not be amusing to anyone besides me, but I couldn't just delete it after it waited so long for me. I have been sick like a motherfucker in the time intervening. I pretty much started lying on the couch when I got back from my office hours on Thursday afternoon and haven't moved since. Thats not entirely accurate, but gives you the gist of things. I fucking loathe being sick and really haven't been in like 2 years or so. I mean, I have had stuffy noses and headaches and shitty but I haven't had that sick feeling, where even beyond the things you can pinpoint (headache, sore throat (I almost wrote soar throat and I think its a pretty sweet concept, I don't know what I will use it for, but if I had a band we would definately name a song or album soar throat, maybe, let me think) , stuffiness, sleepy) there is a general pervasive feeling of sickosity.
So that has sidelined my pre-Spring Break productivity push, which is something I really was looking forward to. I mean, I guess I am not exactly off-schedule, I should have no problem finishing up lpapers and the like by semester's end, but still. I would have really liked to finish one of the 2.5 papers I need to write before this week, but I will nail it down with a couple hours work each morning back in the TC.
I have a couple of my trademark Assorted Observations (C) (I know its a copyright symbol, not a trademark symbol, but I don't know what that one is) :
1) So there are these new Hershey's Swoops! that are in grocery stores and I am kinda pissed. Yes, Hershey, you can do whatever the fuck you want, you're the candy company afterall, if you want to market stupid shit go ahead. Nonetheless, I don't have to stand by and like it like a moron. Damn it, if you are going to shape your candy like Pringles than it needs to be a chocolate covered potato chip. I think this one is self-explanatory. Something intrinsic about the swoopy shape says fried potato crunch. Nothing more to say about that.
2) This has been a great season for reality TV. Yes, you are correct, every season is a great one for reality TV. Reality is a pretty stable market. Regardless, there have been some solid newcomers to the reality market, most notably Dream Job, only going into its third episode tonight, but alright a smash hit according to the Future Baxter-Kauf Demographic, and of course the Apprentice. If you have not heard about the apprentice from anyone before I just told you, then something is wrong with you, because this show rocks. Yeah, in many ways it simply cashes in on classic reality shitty. It is a creation of Mark Burnett after all, you can't mess with the master. Even more so, however, you've got the addition of the Donald, who is a fantastic twist on the whole voted off thing. Making someone the ultimate arbiter of who stays and who goes. In some ways this is obviously related to a Simon Cowel-ish bad tough guy motiff, but the Donald far exceeds that. He has a sensitive and caring side, he repects a set of very predictable things, and hates other ones. Regardless, you should watch these shows. After Dream Job is over tonight I may have something more to say about it. ESPN has been showing it like twice a day all week, so you should have no problem catching it. d
3) Stanford lost, Sanjay is psychic. I talked to the Sanj like two days ago,the one piece of sagely advice he provided to me was not to push Stanford too far in my tourney bracket. While it certainly isn't apparent only to Sanjay that the Pac 10 is weak this time around, it was quite Sanj-stradomas like to mention it right before the unprecendented defeat at Washington.
4) Chocolate is better than Chocolat. Yes, I liked the film too, but funamentally think of the opposition it has. You've got the chocolate half of the black and white cookie (I was talking to Katie about the Black and White cookie, and she asked if I could only have one side of the Black and White cookie, which would I choose, and I said I would choose the chocolate side, and she said why, and I said because I like chocolate better, and she said are you going to go online and talk about this on your Blurty and I said yes...) you've got Rocky Road ice cream, chocolate cake, peanut butter and chocolate, chocolate body frosting, etc. You cannot beat chocolate, maybe you have an argument with steak or general beef, but not Chocolat. If I am going to choose French chocolate there is gonna be some whipped cream involved.
5) Let me ride that donkey donkey. Lemme ride that donkey donkey, let me ride that donkey donkey, let me ride that donkey donkey!!!
6) If I were forced to make a decision between Candice Bergen circa 1989 or Khazikstan, I am fairly confident that I would choose Candice Bergen. At the same time, I think it needs to be noted that I have oft been accused of anti-Khazikistan tendencies. Maybe its because of that time when Khazikistan came to my birthday party and killed the clown that my parents had hired to entertain us. Maybe I was dreaming that. I need to stop huffing housepaint.
7) I needed a book out of the Lockport Town Library. Because I have been sick like a motherfucker for the past several days I didn't go until today. The Lockport Library is closed on Sundays. Let me repeat that, it is CLOSED on Sunday. No, this is not the Lockport library I found in a time-warp back in the 1880s (yep, like when Dobs was in college) it is the contemporary Lockport library. What the fuck. I understand that it would not be much more than a toe-touching strech to call this town podunk, but seriously, closed on Sundays. Not even open for a couple hours, Noon to 5, something like that. You wouldn't have to miss dinner or lunch to work, get with it.
8) Katie and I made a Turkey dinner yesterday. Its high points, it was awesome. We made almost the same things as we did for T-day, but we made almost all of it better. The brining process worked equally well and I learned enough about how to do the actual roasting over the two times that made a difference in the final bird product. Next time we have a bird the size that we did in November we will be good to go, especially if its as high quality as that tasty fowl. Katie rolled the rolls, some of the best I have ever had. I used some homemade white bread for the stuffing and I am discovering more and more about that process. For instance, you've gotta pack the bastard tighter than they recommend and I think it wouldn't hurt if I knocked the cubes down to a-boot a quarter inch.
I think those are enough random observations. We are approaching the return to the Twin Cities very quickly, looking forward to seeing so many of the homeboys and such. Check yo-self. Not yos-elf, unless you are plural and have an elf who can be checked.
Peace,
MB-K
I began this entry on Wednesday night at some point, but it is now Saturday obviously. I opened up my blog writer thing and there was already three-quarters of a paragraph devoted to Hoobastank. It may not be amusing to anyone besides me, but I couldn't just delete it after it waited so long for me. I have been sick like a motherfucker in the time intervening. I pretty much started lying on the couch when I got back from my office hours on Thursday afternoon and haven't moved since. Thats not entirely accurate, but gives you the gist of things. I fucking loathe being sick and really haven't been in like 2 years or so. I mean, I have had stuffy noses and headaches and shitty but I haven't had that sick feeling, where even beyond the things you can pinpoint (headache, sore throat (I almost wrote soar throat and I think its a pretty sweet concept, I don't know what I will use it for, but if I had a band we would definately name a song or album soar throat, maybe, let me think) , stuffiness, sleepy) there is a general pervasive feeling of sickosity.
So that has sidelined my pre-Spring Break productivity push, which is something I really was looking forward to. I mean, I guess I am not exactly off-schedule, I should have no problem finishing up lpapers and the like by semester's end, but still. I would have really liked to finish one of the 2.5 papers I need to write before this week, but I will nail it down with a couple hours work each morning back in the TC.
I have a couple of my trademark Assorted Observations (C) (I know its a copyright symbol, not a trademark symbol, but I don't know what that one is) :
1) So there are these new Hershey's Swoops! that are in grocery stores and I am kinda pissed. Yes, Hershey, you can do whatever the fuck you want, you're the candy company afterall, if you want to market stupid shit go ahead. Nonetheless, I don't have to stand by and like it like a moron. Damn it, if you are going to shape your candy like Pringles than it needs to be a chocolate covered potato chip. I think this one is self-explanatory. Something intrinsic about the swoopy shape says fried potato crunch. Nothing more to say about that.
2) This has been a great season for reality TV. Yes, you are correct, every season is a great one for reality TV. Reality is a pretty stable market. Regardless, there have been some solid newcomers to the reality market, most notably Dream Job, only going into its third episode tonight, but alright a smash hit according to the Future Baxter-Kauf Demographic, and of course the Apprentice. If you have not heard about the apprentice from anyone before I just told you, then something is wrong with you, because this show rocks. Yeah, in many ways it simply cashes in on classic reality shitty. It is a creation of Mark Burnett after all, you can't mess with the master. Even more so, however, you've got the addition of the Donald, who is a fantastic twist on the whole voted off thing. Making someone the ultimate arbiter of who stays and who goes. In some ways this is obviously related to a Simon Cowel-ish bad tough guy motiff, but the Donald far exceeds that. He has a sensitive and caring side, he repects a set of very predictable things, and hates other ones. Regardless, you should watch these shows. After Dream Job is over tonight I may have something more to say about it. ESPN has been showing it like twice a day all week, so you should have no problem catching it. d
3) Stanford lost, Sanjay is psychic. I talked to the Sanj like two days ago,the one piece of sagely advice he provided to me was not to push Stanford too far in my tourney bracket. While it certainly isn't apparent only to Sanjay that the Pac 10 is weak this time around, it was quite Sanj-stradomas like to mention it right before the unprecendented defeat at Washington.
4) Chocolate is better than Chocolat. Yes, I liked the film too, but funamentally think of the opposition it has. You've got the chocolate half of the black and white cookie (I was talking to Katie about the Black and White cookie, and she asked if I could only have one side of the Black and White cookie, which would I choose, and I said I would choose the chocolate side, and she said why, and I said because I like chocolate better, and she said are you going to go online and talk about this on your Blurty and I said yes...) you've got Rocky Road ice cream, chocolate cake, peanut butter and chocolate, chocolate body frosting, etc. You cannot beat chocolate, maybe you have an argument with steak or general beef, but not Chocolat. If I am going to choose French chocolate there is gonna be some whipped cream involved.
5) Let me ride that donkey donkey. Lemme ride that donkey donkey, let me ride that donkey donkey, let me ride that donkey donkey!!!
6) If I were forced to make a decision between Candice Bergen circa 1989 or Khazikstan, I am fairly confident that I would choose Candice Bergen. At the same time, I think it needs to be noted that I have oft been accused of anti-Khazikistan tendencies. Maybe its because of that time when Khazikistan came to my birthday party and killed the clown that my parents had hired to entertain us. Maybe I was dreaming that. I need to stop huffing housepaint.
7) I needed a book out of the Lockport Town Library. Because I have been sick like a motherfucker for the past several days I didn't go until today. The Lockport Library is closed on Sundays. Let me repeat that, it is CLOSED on Sunday. No, this is not the Lockport library I found in a time-warp back in the 1880s (yep, like when Dobs was in college) it is the contemporary Lockport library. What the fuck. I understand that it would not be much more than a toe-touching strech to call this town podunk, but seriously, closed on Sundays. Not even open for a couple hours, Noon to 5, something like that. You wouldn't have to miss dinner or lunch to work, get with it.
8) Katie and I made a Turkey dinner yesterday. Its high points, it was awesome. We made almost the same things as we did for T-day, but we made almost all of it better. The brining process worked equally well and I learned enough about how to do the actual roasting over the two times that made a difference in the final bird product. Next time we have a bird the size that we did in November we will be good to go, especially if its as high quality as that tasty fowl. Katie rolled the rolls, some of the best I have ever had. I used some homemade white bread for the stuffing and I am discovering more and more about that process. For instance, you've gotta pack the bastard tighter than they recommend and I think it wouldn't hurt if I knocked the cubes down to a-boot a quarter inch.
I think those are enough random observations. We are approaching the return to the Twin Cities very quickly, looking forward to seeing so many of the homeboys and such. Check yo-self. Not yos-elf, unless you are plural and have an elf who can be checked.
Peace,
MB-K
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
The Whipmaster...The Whipmaster!!
I know that its really hip to rip on Billy Crystal as the host of the Oscars, but I personally choose to give the man his props. He has hosted the show 8 times now, and most of the moments I really remember from the program involve him. Okay, I admit the whole self-congratulatory ethic of the day can get a little overblown, but I think the songs are pretty funny. Yeah, the funniest part of the evening was obviously Jack Black and Will Ferrell, but how do you compete with that much comic genius packed into one little stage. When Will Ferrell whispered "Sting" I thought even Jables was going to completely crack up.
I am totally pissed about the new Tuesday night TV line up, by the way, since Fox has decided to run Forever Eden, this summer's version of Paradise Hotel, on Tuesdays at nine, opposite both America's Next Top Model and One Tree Hill. We don't really have a choice obviously, you've gotta roll ANTM especially this close to the end of the season. Nonetheless, we did miss a couple seconds while we checked on what was going on with Mary, the first bimbo of the summer. At least there are only 4 more episodes of Tyra's mega-hit (I mean, Pete, Katie, and I all like it) so I won't have to worry about falling entirely behind. I think Shandi has this stuff in the bag by the way, she is a fantastic model and really quite attractive. Something about those girls from Kansas City...
My thoughts on William Hung, in case you were interested, are that he rocks. He has obviously been working pretty hard lyrically since his days at the tryouts, but the dancers are the big addition. He is cashing in hardcore on the opportunity that he has and while that isn't much of one at least he has made a 100 g or so. American Idol gave him 25K for appearing on the thing yesterday and since I have seen that he has appeared at Northwestern, on Ellen, a couple other big speaking engagements, and signing a record deal, I have to be glad for the dude. If nothing else it pays his way through Berkeley and guarauntees him a gig somewhere, in civil engineering or not.
I know that is brief. My bad. Busy Tuesdays are bad. Much worse than Ruby Tuesdays, who have good burgers.
Peace,
MB-K
I am totally pissed about the new Tuesday night TV line up, by the way, since Fox has decided to run Forever Eden, this summer's version of Paradise Hotel, on Tuesdays at nine, opposite both America's Next Top Model and One Tree Hill. We don't really have a choice obviously, you've gotta roll ANTM especially this close to the end of the season. Nonetheless, we did miss a couple seconds while we checked on what was going on with Mary, the first bimbo of the summer. At least there are only 4 more episodes of Tyra's mega-hit (I mean, Pete, Katie, and I all like it) so I won't have to worry about falling entirely behind. I think Shandi has this stuff in the bag by the way, she is a fantastic model and really quite attractive. Something about those girls from Kansas City...
My thoughts on William Hung, in case you were interested, are that he rocks. He has obviously been working pretty hard lyrically since his days at the tryouts, but the dancers are the big addition. He is cashing in hardcore on the opportunity that he has and while that isn't much of one at least he has made a 100 g or so. American Idol gave him 25K for appearing on the thing yesterday and since I have seen that he has appeared at Northwestern, on Ellen, a couple other big speaking engagements, and signing a record deal, I have to be glad for the dude. If nothing else it pays his way through Berkeley and guarauntees him a gig somewhere, in civil engineering or not.
I know that is brief. My bad. Busy Tuesdays are bad. Much worse than Ruby Tuesdays, who have good burgers.
Peace,
MB-K
Monday, March 01, 2004
Marist College IT Can Lick It
Seriously, I am typing this in clasrroom number 7 in some random building at Marist College and while I have nothing against the debate team or even the school at large the fucking IT department swallows. So I plug my computer into the ethernet jack so I can check my email during this deabte. The computer is going to hotmail and instead of displaying the log in page I see a little Marist page. A cute little logo with a little red fox (I think I wrote my fox story somewhere earlier in this blog) and some text. Anyway, I go to switch over to hotmail and it brings me back here. Turns out this is like a fucking log-in page and I have to log in to use their internet. I didn't think actual instituations of higher learning, like above high school, needed this kind of internet securtiy. Uh-oh, little jon or jane could plug in their laptop and search for pornography without permission. Its not like I am trying to use their computer terminals, I have my own.
I would imagine there is someway that I can get by this without a password, but I have no idea how I would do that. This is the problem with understanding almost nothing about computers. What the fuck are they worried about, I just don't get it, it makes absolutely no sense to me. I can't do anything that costs them money, I can't hurt their computers. All I can do is access the internet. I can't bill porno to their server, or whatever fucking stupid internet term is relevant here. I need to find one of the Marist people and ask them if there is some way to resolve this issue or whatever. I just want to check my email. People annoy the hell out of me.
I haven't discussed the whole gay marriage thing much, largely because I would imgaine you, like me, and everyone else, are so constantly infuriated by the idiocy of what is apparently a majority of this country that I can't believe you would want to hear more about it. I do want to mention, however, a mad props shout-out to two mayors. One is of course the dude from San Francisco who looks alot like I think Norm Coleman if he was just out of college and cool. You can see him lighting up a joint in some shady place back in his Haight-Ashybury days and talking about how much he likes pissing off the terminator by going against the contitution. While I agree with John Stewart's argument "Wow, what courage, standing up for gay people in San Francisco"- I do think it takes guts to do something you know will get you national attention and will inevitably get overturned. It however must be fun to hear Arnold talk about all this stuff, I would want to take the stupid Austrian fuck on as well if I were the mayor of a signigicant city. I cannot figure out how even someone as stupid as Bush can stand behind and say "I support Governor Schwarztenegger" without snickering under his breath. I don't think this ammendment will possibly pass, but the fact that it would even get a chance is so ricockulous. Why exactly do you give a fuck. Haven't you noticed that the constitution is written so as to not specifically deal with these issues of specific legislation. I am obviously no law-talkin-guy but I am fairly confident in my assertion that the only other ammendment which has dealt with a negative right (that may not be the proper legal term, I am meaning a restriction of rights) was prohibition. Ah, hopefully we can return to the good old days of prohibition, the prominence of the mafia, prolific murder and fear as well as completely ineffective laws which render the public increasingly complacent against a government which refuses to understand it. What exactly is it that this ammendment outlaws, its still legal to suck whichever set of genitals you want. If you really hate gay sex, believe that it is an abomination, I could understand why you would want to outlaw gay sex. But all this ammendment does is outlaw me giving another dude my inheritance automatically or including him on my medical insurance. I doubt they would care if I just donated my property to a same sex friend, but once someone rolls deuce on you its magically different. Not to be confused, of course, with being magically delicious, which applies only to Lucky Charms.
I also want the shout out to include the mayor of New Paltz, NY. This person is apparently doing the same thing and I find it wondefully reassuring to see gay couples walking out of a court with their marriage licenses in hand, even if it will only go on for a little while longer. We drove through this area today, it doesn't seem to be very large and I am pretty sure most of the gay couples getting married here took a day trip up from the city, but what do I know. I can also tell you that New Paltz, NY sounds like a made up name from Mad magazine, Paltz just really seems like one of the terms Mad would use for an assfucking dipshit. I'm talking their ridiculous overuse of words like "schmuck." I don't know that these words have yiddish roots, but to a gentile from the midwest it has always sounded like they do.
So in conclusion, to echo Scarface in Dave Chappelle's classic film Half Baked: "Fuck you (to the Marist IT department), fuck you (Governator), fuck you (Mr. President), you're cool (mayors in question), fuck you (executives at the WB, I know I haven't talked about it yet, I am still too pissed).
I actually have an adddendum that I just thought of. I know exactly what it is that most pisses me off about contemporary technology. No, its not the lack of working with my hands. No, its not my alienation from the products of my labor. No, its not the weird beeping sounds computers make. It is technology attempting to regulate how much of something I can have. In some ways this applies to the Marist IT thing, since those bastards are attempting to regulate how much internet access I can have, but I am referring more to the regulation of an actual phsycial product. The example that keyed this off today were the paper towel dispensers in the bathrooms in the Rest Stops on the NY State Thruway. These are the little blue ones that you have to wave your hand in front of and then they dispense to you what it considers exactly one unit of paper towel. Now, this would be all cool, since it is essentially just an automatic version of pushing the lever down on a normal paper towel dispenser. It gets fucked up because the automatic refuses to dispense you another towel until it determines that enough time has passed. You can wave your hand and do a little fucking dance in front of it, but no way in hell is it going to spit out another one until it is damn good and ready. Its like it has to determine whether or not you have even attempted to dry your hands with just one, and if you decide, only after thorough initial drying, that another unit of towel is imperative for optimum dryosity, can you renew your subscription to paper towel weekly.
The same thing happens with those coupon dispensers at the supermarket, that stick one coupon out at you, which you take. Then they delay like 5 seconds and spit out another, which you also take. Then it waits another 5 seconds and spits out a third, which you again take. Just now, when you are really in the spirit of removing coupons it decides that you have had enough. Nope, it says, you get a maximum of three coupons. I have an idea instead. Yep, instead of you dispensing me only three coupons and then deciding arbitraily that I can have no more, you just do your machine duty and spit out the coupons and I will determine whether or not I need to remove them. I will determine for my self how many towels I need to dry my hands. You were created simply to give them to me. I am in one of those moods where I hate these pieces so much I would just smash them to remove an adequate supply of paper towel were they not monitored by video cameras and constitutive of some sort of misdemeanor against the State of New York.
Maybe I got a little carried away there, but I will admit that I have more than once purposefully run either my cart or my shoulder into those red coupon spitters as I walked down a supermarket aisle. I know they are hinged and just bounce back but it makes me feel better. I think it might be a good idea to insert computer chips into random devices which make the thing say "You have succesfully used violence against an inanimate object to demonstrate that your position is accurate" or even just "Ouch!! Okay, you are right" so that we would feel some sense of vindication when we inevitably smacked a coke machine or copier. Even if that didn't alter the performance of that particular technological item at all my day would be instantly enlivened by hearing a machine even superficially acknowledge that it completely bonered something. Maybe you could make the chips say different things depending on how hard they were hit. So you could either get it to say "Whoops, my bad" or "Calm down, calm down, I said I was sorry deuce. Chill." Anything would be appreciated.
Now that I am on the subject, I really like Special K. I saw this ad the other day for the Special K diet and here is what they said, almost literally word for word: "Replace two meals a day with Special K cereal and you can lose 6 pounds in a week." I was like, "Holy shit, I should totally do that. I love Special K, I can lose like 312 or so pounds over the next year." Katie turns to me and says, "You know you only get one bowl, right." And I think it was quite obvious that I indeed did not know that I only got one bowl. That fact makes this diet like the least interesting thing in the entiere world. They didn't even say it on the commercial, I saw it again and paid close attention. It wasn't even in the random small print. It was no where. I want to become an ad exec for Edy's Ice Cream--Join the Edy's Ice Cream Diet!! Just replace all three of your meals with Edy's Ice Cream and you can lose about 20 pounds a week!!!!--of course you only get to eat like 2 spoonfulls of ice cream every meal, but thats okay, you should be able to figure that out. I have not once, never once, in my life sat down with a box of Special K, a gallon of milk, a spoon, and a bowl, and eaten only one bowl. I am pretty sure that the amount of Special K which I regularly pour into a bowl is actually more than an actual bowl. That is kinda screwed up notably, that a bowl can be more than a bowl.
While I did write this at various times over the weekend I am now returned to Buffalo. We got back fairly late last night and while I may have something to say later about the Oscars, for now I just want to get this shitty up.
Peace,
MB-K
I would imagine there is someway that I can get by this without a password, but I have no idea how I would do that. This is the problem with understanding almost nothing about computers. What the fuck are they worried about, I just don't get it, it makes absolutely no sense to me. I can't do anything that costs them money, I can't hurt their computers. All I can do is access the internet. I can't bill porno to their server, or whatever fucking stupid internet term is relevant here. I need to find one of the Marist people and ask them if there is some way to resolve this issue or whatever. I just want to check my email. People annoy the hell out of me.
I haven't discussed the whole gay marriage thing much, largely because I would imgaine you, like me, and everyone else, are so constantly infuriated by the idiocy of what is apparently a majority of this country that I can't believe you would want to hear more about it. I do want to mention, however, a mad props shout-out to two mayors. One is of course the dude from San Francisco who looks alot like I think Norm Coleman if he was just out of college and cool. You can see him lighting up a joint in some shady place back in his Haight-Ashybury days and talking about how much he likes pissing off the terminator by going against the contitution. While I agree with John Stewart's argument "Wow, what courage, standing up for gay people in San Francisco"- I do think it takes guts to do something you know will get you national attention and will inevitably get overturned. It however must be fun to hear Arnold talk about all this stuff, I would want to take the stupid Austrian fuck on as well if I were the mayor of a signigicant city. I cannot figure out how even someone as stupid as Bush can stand behind and say "I support Governor Schwarztenegger" without snickering under his breath. I don't think this ammendment will possibly pass, but the fact that it would even get a chance is so ricockulous. Why exactly do you give a fuck. Haven't you noticed that the constitution is written so as to not specifically deal with these issues of specific legislation. I am obviously no law-talkin-guy but I am fairly confident in my assertion that the only other ammendment which has dealt with a negative right (that may not be the proper legal term, I am meaning a restriction of rights) was prohibition. Ah, hopefully we can return to the good old days of prohibition, the prominence of the mafia, prolific murder and fear as well as completely ineffective laws which render the public increasingly complacent against a government which refuses to understand it. What exactly is it that this ammendment outlaws, its still legal to suck whichever set of genitals you want. If you really hate gay sex, believe that it is an abomination, I could understand why you would want to outlaw gay sex. But all this ammendment does is outlaw me giving another dude my inheritance automatically or including him on my medical insurance. I doubt they would care if I just donated my property to a same sex friend, but once someone rolls deuce on you its magically different. Not to be confused, of course, with being magically delicious, which applies only to Lucky Charms.
I also want the shout out to include the mayor of New Paltz, NY. This person is apparently doing the same thing and I find it wondefully reassuring to see gay couples walking out of a court with their marriage licenses in hand, even if it will only go on for a little while longer. We drove through this area today, it doesn't seem to be very large and I am pretty sure most of the gay couples getting married here took a day trip up from the city, but what do I know. I can also tell you that New Paltz, NY sounds like a made up name from Mad magazine, Paltz just really seems like one of the terms Mad would use for an assfucking dipshit. I'm talking their ridiculous overuse of words like "schmuck." I don't know that these words have yiddish roots, but to a gentile from the midwest it has always sounded like they do.
So in conclusion, to echo Scarface in Dave Chappelle's classic film Half Baked: "Fuck you (to the Marist IT department), fuck you (Governator), fuck you (Mr. President), you're cool (mayors in question), fuck you (executives at the WB, I know I haven't talked about it yet, I am still too pissed).
I actually have an adddendum that I just thought of. I know exactly what it is that most pisses me off about contemporary technology. No, its not the lack of working with my hands. No, its not my alienation from the products of my labor. No, its not the weird beeping sounds computers make. It is technology attempting to regulate how much of something I can have. In some ways this applies to the Marist IT thing, since those bastards are attempting to regulate how much internet access I can have, but I am referring more to the regulation of an actual phsycial product. The example that keyed this off today were the paper towel dispensers in the bathrooms in the Rest Stops on the NY State Thruway. These are the little blue ones that you have to wave your hand in front of and then they dispense to you what it considers exactly one unit of paper towel. Now, this would be all cool, since it is essentially just an automatic version of pushing the lever down on a normal paper towel dispenser. It gets fucked up because the automatic refuses to dispense you another towel until it determines that enough time has passed. You can wave your hand and do a little fucking dance in front of it, but no way in hell is it going to spit out another one until it is damn good and ready. Its like it has to determine whether or not you have even attempted to dry your hands with just one, and if you decide, only after thorough initial drying, that another unit of towel is imperative for optimum dryosity, can you renew your subscription to paper towel weekly.
The same thing happens with those coupon dispensers at the supermarket, that stick one coupon out at you, which you take. Then they delay like 5 seconds and spit out another, which you also take. Then it waits another 5 seconds and spits out a third, which you again take. Just now, when you are really in the spirit of removing coupons it decides that you have had enough. Nope, it says, you get a maximum of three coupons. I have an idea instead. Yep, instead of you dispensing me only three coupons and then deciding arbitraily that I can have no more, you just do your machine duty and spit out the coupons and I will determine whether or not I need to remove them. I will determine for my self how many towels I need to dry my hands. You were created simply to give them to me. I am in one of those moods where I hate these pieces so much I would just smash them to remove an adequate supply of paper towel were they not monitored by video cameras and constitutive of some sort of misdemeanor against the State of New York.
Maybe I got a little carried away there, but I will admit that I have more than once purposefully run either my cart or my shoulder into those red coupon spitters as I walked down a supermarket aisle. I know they are hinged and just bounce back but it makes me feel better. I think it might be a good idea to insert computer chips into random devices which make the thing say "You have succesfully used violence against an inanimate object to demonstrate that your position is accurate" or even just "Ouch!! Okay, you are right" so that we would feel some sense of vindication when we inevitably smacked a coke machine or copier. Even if that didn't alter the performance of that particular technological item at all my day would be instantly enlivened by hearing a machine even superficially acknowledge that it completely bonered something. Maybe you could make the chips say different things depending on how hard they were hit. So you could either get it to say "Whoops, my bad" or "Calm down, calm down, I said I was sorry deuce. Chill." Anything would be appreciated.
Now that I am on the subject, I really like Special K. I saw this ad the other day for the Special K diet and here is what they said, almost literally word for word: "Replace two meals a day with Special K cereal and you can lose 6 pounds in a week." I was like, "Holy shit, I should totally do that. I love Special K, I can lose like 312 or so pounds over the next year." Katie turns to me and says, "You know you only get one bowl, right." And I think it was quite obvious that I indeed did not know that I only got one bowl. That fact makes this diet like the least interesting thing in the entiere world. They didn't even say it on the commercial, I saw it again and paid close attention. It wasn't even in the random small print. It was no where. I want to become an ad exec for Edy's Ice Cream--Join the Edy's Ice Cream Diet!! Just replace all three of your meals with Edy's Ice Cream and you can lose about 20 pounds a week!!!!--of course you only get to eat like 2 spoonfulls of ice cream every meal, but thats okay, you should be able to figure that out. I have not once, never once, in my life sat down with a box of Special K, a gallon of milk, a spoon, and a bowl, and eaten only one bowl. I am pretty sure that the amount of Special K which I regularly pour into a bowl is actually more than an actual bowl. That is kinda screwed up notably, that a bowl can be more than a bowl.
While I did write this at various times over the weekend I am now returned to Buffalo. We got back fairly late last night and while I may have something to say later about the Oscars, for now I just want to get this shitty up.
Peace,
MB-K
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