Friday, March 16, 2007

I Don't Wanna Be Anything Other Than What I've Been Tryin To Be Lately, All I Have to Do is Think of Me and I've Peace of Butt

What I am going to say first is hard to dispute. If you want to dispute it, I will fight you. Also, the chances are low that we are especially close friends if we disagree about this fact. To be honest with you, I think that is for the best, as your life must be full of sadness and despair if you do not agree. The claim is this: one of the greatest single phrases in the English language is this: The frosting on the cupcakes has set up. The reason this phrase is so great, greater even than what it represents (“You can eat the cupcakes now”) is because at the same time it signals the immediacy of the arrival of cupcake into belly it carries with it the happy connotation of frosting at its perfect texture. It is the phraseological equivalent of an onomatopoeia and you can take that shit to the bank.

Admittedly, the first day of the tournament was not the greatest NCAA Day on record. We were spoiled last year and its not like we are gonna see George Mason style upsets every year. Nonetheless, both the Xavier and Duke games were fantastic action and there were at least 3-4 other significant contests. I still think there will be a big upset or two in the first round. If the lowest seed to win is an 11 I think it will be an uncharectaristically top-heavy tournament—Gwyneth Paltrow style.

There was a sweet story about biscuits on the UNC game (which ended without excitement but was pretty hawt for about 10 minutes in the middle). The origin of nicknames is generally more interesting for me than it might be for a lot of people, but I love two things about this story. First, how awesome is the nickname biscuits. Plural nicknames are underrated and if you are one of the few people lucky enough to enjoy one, I suggest you run with it, cuz someday you are gonna be selling copy machines in Tulsa with a moniker in the singular like all the rest of us and begging for the glory days of nominal multiplicity. Second, how sweet is it that people in North Carolina are so excited about Bojangles biscuits that this kid’s contribution to cheap biscuit deals earns him the status of cheering and gasping etc. when their squad is up by 20+ as a number one seed in the first round of the tournament. That’s freaking Hosea status, minus the excellence of that specific chant, and all for a free biscuit. (I know many of you won’t remember “play ho-se-a” but 1) it was awesome 2) Hosea went to my high school and I used to play basketball with him cuz he was trying to bwn my friend’s sister. This same fact lead to me meeting Voshon Lenard, which was far more exciting in 1996-1997 than it is today.

Hippo is cheering for all of the cat named teams in the tournament: Davidson, Nova even Pitt, despite not being a big fan of the Big East. She thinks that one of these squads teams needs to change their name to the Persians (maybe Pacific next time they make the dance or Pennsylvania, imagine the impact if they would have beaten A&M) to attempt to remedy the general ignorance in kitty circles. Anyway, she enjoyed today’s action, is the point.

Peace,

MB-K

Thursday, March 15, 2007

I Can Go Where No One Else Can Go, I Know What No One Else Knows, Here I am Just Drowin in the Rain, With a Ticket For a Runaway Butt

I read a random blog post about cupcakes today and tonight, Katie decided to make cupcakes. If, as I fully expect, this reading a blog about something awesome makes something awesome really happen trend continues, I really hope tomorrow there are blog entries about spontaneous trips to Vegas and, well, probably more cupcakes. Seriously, they are ALMOND cupcakes with ALMOND frosting. When’s the last time someone made ALMOND cupcakes for you? Suck it.

Tomorrow kicks off what is very likely my favorite weekend in sports. This week is spring break for me and its not like I teach classes right now anyway, but I will get to continue my streak of not going to class on the opening two days of the NCAA tournament, a tradition I am proud to say has been going since my first year in high school. I am gonna work out and get home before the first game so I can spend the rest of the afternoon cutting some cards while the basketball action surrounds me.

Hippo, who looks fabulous after Katie managed to purchase her a furminator at the local PetSmart, is in the mood for a bite of chow and a nap before she finishes her bracket. She is not happy that Kentucky and Villanova have to face off in round 1 (both wildcats).

Peace,

MB-K

Thursday, March 08, 2007

And I Can't Fight this Feeling Anymore, I've Forgotten What I've Started Fighing Butt

Wedding Bells was a funny enough show. The only times I was surprised by the episode were the few moments where Sherri Shepard showed up (she is hilarious in general and by far the funniest part of the show) and the end when I discovered that it’s a David E. Kelley show. It wasn’t Boston Legal or Ally funny, but maybe it will build into it someday. There are some pretty good character actors and some people who Kelley clearly likes to work with (see Delta Burke’s cameo) and in retrospect the bizarre sexual politics fits right in with the likes of Alan Shore and Richard Fish. Anyway, its moving to Friday’s at 8:00, a timeslot that we do not even watch anything in. You might as well watch it, is the point.

I had one of those days where the entire world seemed to be making comments about the notion of career and gave me a sort of “work instability queasiness” for the majority of the evening. It was all clearly coincidental; finding out that my boss at Kaplan was moving onwards and upwards, getting an email from someone about job stuff, reading an interesting opening online and seeing the Lifehacker job boards all contributed to my constant questioning. In any event, if anyone has a high paying job with little work required, please let me know.

Which one of the various movies with the word “monster” in the title would you most like to bwn? There’s Monster, Monsters Inc., Monster’s Ball, Gods and Monsters or Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. There are clearly better and worse movies on this list, but isn’t it kind of surprising how diverse they all are? I mean, lots of words produce pretty identical seeming films. Take, for instance, the word “fire.” You would notice a lot of films named simply “Fire” and imagine that most of them were about either burning shit and firefighters or had to do with the idea of something (most likely passion) burning like fire. All pretty much united in the theme of heat. Monster seems to have no such uniting principle, since there are literal monsters, human beings who act like monsters, and movies about obnoxious British people who bear seemingly no relation to monsters. As a side note, I attempted to use “butt” in the above paragraph for the word “fire” but searching for “butt” on IMDB produces some messed up stuff. Take, for instance, the shockingly enormous amount of people whose last name is butt. My personal favorite, I believe, is McCoskry Butt. Whose IMDB profile is far far far less interesting than his exceedingly awesome name. Ghazala Butt is up there too. Also notable about the butt search is that it highlights the bizarre way in which IMDB chooses what pr0n to index as a “movie” and what it neglects. Clearly there is far more porn, gay and otherwise, that uses the word “butt” then just what is suggested by The Perfect Bubble Butt, but for some reason its not deserving of the index. Finally, the list of partial keyword matches is freaking priceless. I haven’t actually seen Below Zero, but any movie which can be matched by the keyword “water-butt” is worth 20 minutes of my time.

Hippo says meow. Also she purrs, but I don’t know if that means I should say “Hippo says purr” or just mention that she purrs. Either way, she does. Decidedly though, she does say meow, not just actually meow.

Peace,

MB-K

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

A Lesson Learned in Life, Known From the Dawn of Time, Re-spect, Butt

This was posted on Cute Overload, so clearly anyone who reads even the most basic of important blogs is already aware of it. I suppose you could be like Katie and for some reason not like watching Internet video, but its not likely. Anyway, the point is, watch this video. So I think its pretty clear from just watching it, but as a summary, the two bunnies are playing-fighting and then the chickens show up and BREAK UP THE FIGHT. They separate the bunnies, get them back to normal and then take off. Are chickens the cops of the bunny universe? This is baffling and a relationship I had never imagined. Why would the chickens even care, much less care so much that they come flying in from the coop (I assume, where the fuck else would the chickens be. I hope its not problematic to assume that chickens are always in coops. Though everything I know about chickens (like that they are not rabbit cops) appears to be up for grabs.)

Decent weekend at the JV/Novice National Championship in West Virginia. There was sadness and happiness, but overall a good opportunity to succeed in some debates (5 speaker awards, 4 teams clearing) relax with the crew (stopping at the bar for a drink turned into closing the joint down and stumbling upstairs) and celebrate younger students in debate. I judged some really impressive rounds including the best novice negative block I’ve seen all year given by the team who ultimately finished second. A great tournament that moved us even closer to the end of the debate season, not to mention ushering in two full weekends off before heading out to Oklahoma.

Hippo was fantastically excited to see us return home and scampered about, playing with us on the bed, racing up and down the stairs and generally being super adorable. While this was certainly related to our arrival, it may also have been due to the fact that she had run extremely low on kitty chow while we were away. Since she has been snacking down hardcore since I returned home with a sack of chow this afternoon, I will fill up her bowl again before going to sleep.

Peace,

MB-K

Friday, March 02, 2007

I'm Not Ready to Make Nice, I'm Not Ready to Back Butt

We seriously went to Target for a second time in 2 days today. We did, admittedly, look at different things today then we did yesterday afternoon, but seriously, twice in a row. We also went to Macy’s, but I do not have any funny and paradoxical theories to share about Macy’s products. I could, however, quickly improve on the Macy’s organizational system by suggesting that they choose a structure and going with it. By this I mean, sometimes the store decides to place stuff according to who might wear it or size (i.e. juniors, plus sizes, etc.) and at other times it groups things according to what they are (i.e. shoes or jewelry). When Katie decided that she needed a pair of jeans we not only had to deal with the special spring jeans area of the store, but also the misses and juniors sections, each of which had jeans in entirely overlapping sizes and styles. Thankfully I do not shop.

Kelly Pickler got one of the dumbest haircuts I have seriously ever seen. It was clearly an attempt to make her all “old Laura Bush-Dolly Parton country” rather than “hip-bwnable Carrie Underwood country” but its still terrible.

How often do people really need to buy new coats? I clearly am not representative of the population at large, but I would estimate that after purchasing a coat of even moderate quality I would not need to buy a new coat for around 10 years, absent some drastic change in my size or number of arms. Now that I’ve learned how to sew on a button, it might be closer to a decade and a half. I get that there are fashion-forward folk who want multiple coats (a fantasy almost as ridiculous as the “multiple pairs of shows” fetish) but having multiples means that they should need replacement even less frequently. Its not like the world is getting progressively colder or that coats lose their insulating ability after a year’s worth of time. Nonetheless, even as we enter March every store has a fully stocked coat department like people are flocking to the mall shocked that the mercury has gone the way of the geese. I guess people lose their coats on a fairly regular basis, but still.

We got Hippo a new little house to play with while we are out of town this weekend. It has a couple of feathers on either side and a dangly-fluffy ball in the middle and a little patch of carpet to scratch. She also gets to sit inside a plastic little tent and nothing makes Hippo happier than plastic tents: except maybe chow.

Peace,

MB-K