10 Random Observations:
1) The OC continues to rock. The dude who they brought in to edit Newport Living was wasted in his open air living room wearing a Husker Du t-shirt and listening to the Pixies "Debaser." Ryan however, has been a little weak in relation to his bro. Come on, Chino, the Cohens gave you a chance.
2) Katie and I have been cooking like hella well recently. Mad props to Katie's experimentation with non-traditional Katie food. We ended last week with a sundried tomato and lemon bowtie pasta and last night enjoyed a spinach and goat cheese stuffed chicken and pan glaze with mashed butternut squash and zuchinni spoonbread. All around very yummy.
3) Hippo has been really playful, but I think she is mad at me, since I went all APK on the bit and stepped on her toy. I am going to buy her a new one along with a scratching post, since we decided not to get her declawed. The observation here being, our cat is the cutest. End of story.
4) We had thai food in Rochester this past weekend and I don't think I had a chance for curry since I've been in St. Paul. Thai food in Buffalo sucks and is practically non-existent. The place in Rochester is right by the house that we conceivably pay rent for. Much better deal.
5) The internet is developing into the "other cable tv" that I have always believed it should be. Gordie has the mlb.tv package and while I would never pay 100 bucks to watch baseball, the picture quality and speed is incredible. Why NFL? Why? Katie also watches internet talk shows specific to her fave reality shows, including House Rules for Big Brother and Survivor Live. Loves it.
6) Spring is awesome. Its beautiful here and has been pretty much solidly for a week. Sunshine in Bufalo is like prison moonshine: you don't get it all that often, but enough of it makes you forget the general assiness around you.
7) Playing catch (hehehehehe): when I was young I threw the baseball around for hours all summer, pretty much everyday. I haven't played catch in prolly 8 years, but I think a baseball glove would be a sweet investment. See the weather section above.
8) Toblerone appears to have the market for 3-d traingle shaped chocolate bars cornered. If I worked at M+M/Mars I would get on top of it before things were completely out of hand. What if our mouths evolve into a traingle shape? Snickers won't satisfy so much at that point will it now.
9) The NFL draft is so cool. It signals that the offseason is half over. I'm not extremely excited about the Pack prospects, but its fun overall. I think there are 4 stand out players and then alot of quality talent that could be either a bust or a ridiculous steal between the 5th pick and the 50th. Not to mention that there is a kicker who good legitimately be a first rounder. Maybe he's no Janikowski, but quality nonetheless.
10) Popular Mechanics is the most oxymoronic periodical title around. In second is the Wall Street Journal.
Peace,
MB-K
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
So I Cried, and I Begged, For You To, Love Me Love Me, Say that You Love Butt
Buffalo seems to have actually decided that it is officially spring. I was talking with my Grandfather on Easter and he officially told me that it would snow at least a couple more times and he was dead on. More specifically, last thursday night, as we were transferring from March to April, and Katie officially pronounced herself ready for summer (and accordingly traded in the comforter for the quilt, opened the windows, and generally rejoiced in springiness), it got frickin freezing and started snowing like an ass. There was prolly an inch on my car the next morning and it continued all that day, picking up into Saturday afternoon. It wasn't quite cold enough during the whole day to keep all the accumulation and it would occassionally switch from snow to rain and such, melting and producing hideous Buffalo slush.
We went to the mall on Saturday (too late, unfortunately to see the owls) and Katie bought some stuff and then got a very pretty haircut (pictures to come soon-ish). I note first that it is a very pretty haircut and secondly that it is very dramatic, much shorter than it has been in a long while and very well crafted. Its a high quality haircut, without question. In third place, I note that this haircut took, and I shit you not here, in the area of 1 1/2 hours. We were at a joint in the mall, so I went to find a restroom and make a phone call while Katie took care of the follicle-snippage and when I returned 25 minutes later I was initially worried that she would have already been done for a while. She was not, so I took a seat at a bench nearby and waited. And waited. An hour later she got out of the chair. I seriously did not think that an hour and half was a possible length for a haircut. You can get highlights and a haircut in an hour. I could have watched almost the entirety of Coneheads the movie in the time this haircut took. I could have literally driven home from the mall, watched an episode of Good Eats, enjoyed a sandwich, and driven back with time to spare. If there is any haircut that is worth an hour and a half this is it, but that said, I get pissy if it takes me more than 20 minutes to get in and get out of Fantasic Sams. I would just buy a SuckCut (it certainly does suck) if they weren't like 50 buck.
Our drive home from the mall was long, cuz it had been snowing like the author of Oliver Twist during the world's longest haircut. We got home and watched the bball that had originally inspired the mall trip itself and it was enjoyable and so forth. We went to sleep as it was still snowing and of course got approximately 60 minutes less sleep than we deserved thanks to the assclowns who put daylight savings at 2 in the morning instead of like 4 on Tuesday afternoon. Regardless, it was still snowing and it didn't show signs of stopping. Not only had I neglected the corn for popping, I had a meeting downtown that afternoon and was meeting up with some prospective UB CompLit students afterwards. I was more than a bit nervous about the whole proceeding, largely because I don't really know shit about Buffalo itself, and I would imagine that I come off as a general wad to people who don't already know me. Anyway, the editing went as planned, Katie got the opportunity to make a return trip to the Walden Galleria, and we made a number of restauranting screw ups before we finally got to a trendy joint called the Left Bank. We of course hadn't realized that UB was picking up the tab on dinner, at least the tab that wasn't alcoholicly inclined.
We actually had a pretty decent time at that dinner. Not only was the food pretty good (I had a tasty dish of medallions of tenderloin with a red wine reduction on chevre mashed taters) but we actually had an entertaining conversation and what I hope was some form of assistance to the three prospective grad students in attendance. It was kinda weird, both because I don't usually have dinner with people I don't know, and because these people all took the whole getting into grad school thing much more seriously than I ever did. By that I mean they had all gotten into a bunch of different places, were comparing offers etc. I only bothered applying to Buffalo and the U when I went about it and I suppose I wasn't entirely convinced that it was what I needed to do at that time. Regardless, I think I delivered a pretty good sell for UB, even if we are, apparently, losing one of our biggest draws in Ernesto Laclau. Anywho, we came home around 11:00ish after a 2 1/2 hour meal, which was pretty intense. My estimate is that I spent more time out doing social shitty last weekend then I have in any other weekend of my life in Buffalo. You can see that as either really sad re: my life in general or as really sad re: my last weekend. Either way I was tired.
Hippo has been really enjoying the nice weather, specifically sitting at the now slightly open window. Its her first experience allowing the breeze to tickle her whiskers and the fresh air seems to do a kitten good. If only we had a patio and a grill, we could sit out under the stars and cue up some Kitty Chow kabobs.
Peace,
MB-K
We went to the mall on Saturday (too late, unfortunately to see the owls) and Katie bought some stuff and then got a very pretty haircut (pictures to come soon-ish). I note first that it is a very pretty haircut and secondly that it is very dramatic, much shorter than it has been in a long while and very well crafted. Its a high quality haircut, without question. In third place, I note that this haircut took, and I shit you not here, in the area of 1 1/2 hours. We were at a joint in the mall, so I went to find a restroom and make a phone call while Katie took care of the follicle-snippage and when I returned 25 minutes later I was initially worried that she would have already been done for a while. She was not, so I took a seat at a bench nearby and waited. And waited. An hour later she got out of the chair. I seriously did not think that an hour and half was a possible length for a haircut. You can get highlights and a haircut in an hour. I could have watched almost the entirety of Coneheads the movie in the time this haircut took. I could have literally driven home from the mall, watched an episode of Good Eats, enjoyed a sandwich, and driven back with time to spare. If there is any haircut that is worth an hour and a half this is it, but that said, I get pissy if it takes me more than 20 minutes to get in and get out of Fantasic Sams. I would just buy a SuckCut (it certainly does suck) if they weren't like 50 buck.
Our drive home from the mall was long, cuz it had been snowing like the author of Oliver Twist during the world's longest haircut. We got home and watched the bball that had originally inspired the mall trip itself and it was enjoyable and so forth. We went to sleep as it was still snowing and of course got approximately 60 minutes less sleep than we deserved thanks to the assclowns who put daylight savings at 2 in the morning instead of like 4 on Tuesday afternoon. Regardless, it was still snowing and it didn't show signs of stopping. Not only had I neglected the corn for popping, I had a meeting downtown that afternoon and was meeting up with some prospective UB CompLit students afterwards. I was more than a bit nervous about the whole proceeding, largely because I don't really know shit about Buffalo itself, and I would imagine that I come off as a general wad to people who don't already know me. Anyway, the editing went as planned, Katie got the opportunity to make a return trip to the Walden Galleria, and we made a number of restauranting screw ups before we finally got to a trendy joint called the Left Bank. We of course hadn't realized that UB was picking up the tab on dinner, at least the tab that wasn't alcoholicly inclined.
We actually had a pretty decent time at that dinner. Not only was the food pretty good (I had a tasty dish of medallions of tenderloin with a red wine reduction on chevre mashed taters) but we actually had an entertaining conversation and what I hope was some form of assistance to the three prospective grad students in attendance. It was kinda weird, both because I don't usually have dinner with people I don't know, and because these people all took the whole getting into grad school thing much more seriously than I ever did. By that I mean they had all gotten into a bunch of different places, were comparing offers etc. I only bothered applying to Buffalo and the U when I went about it and I suppose I wasn't entirely convinced that it was what I needed to do at that time. Regardless, I think I delivered a pretty good sell for UB, even if we are, apparently, losing one of our biggest draws in Ernesto Laclau. Anywho, we came home around 11:00ish after a 2 1/2 hour meal, which was pretty intense. My estimate is that I spent more time out doing social shitty last weekend then I have in any other weekend of my life in Buffalo. You can see that as either really sad re: my life in general or as really sad re: my last weekend. Either way I was tired.
Hippo has been really enjoying the nice weather, specifically sitting at the now slightly open window. Its her first experience allowing the breeze to tickle her whiskers and the fresh air seems to do a kitten good. If only we had a patio and a grill, we could sit out under the stars and cue up some Kitty Chow kabobs.
Peace,
MB-K
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Til Now, I Always Got By On My Own, I Never Really Cared Until I Met Butt
Minnesota, at least in parts, has now instituted a smoking ban. It doesn't matter for me anymore, thanks to my non-smoking ways, not to mention that I have lived in the smoke-free state of New York for a couple years. Nonetheless, I abhor the idea of smoking bans. Katie and I have been disagreeing over the last couple days regarding employment ethics, what should and shouldn't be required of people at the workplace. I am generally in agreement that people shouldn't have to be exposed to dangerous shit as a condition of keeping their jobs, but I also have a certain amount of sympathy for the rights of private establishments to do what they please. I will always identify as a smoker in one way or another, so I have a sense of righteous indignation whenever these things come up. To begin with, maybe there is some way to make a reasonable accomadation to people who want to work in bars but don't want to be exposed to smoke. I see two solutions in this respect: 1) places are required to provide safety equipment (breathing masks, gas masks, whatev) for them so they have protection. Yes, it would suck to wear a gas mask at work, but if you work with dangerous chemicals thats what happens. There are things that are intrinsic job risks and since there is a significant part of the population that likes to smoke when they are at bars (in NYC the estimate was 40+ percent, I'm not sure in Minnesota) I think smoke there is intrinsic to the job. 2) smoking areas should be sealed off, so that no employess are required to enter them. I mean, for instance, as you may have seen at a Perkins or a Dennys, there is a smoking section which has windows and an air-sealed door, so no one who chooses not to be in it is exposed. Basically it means that if you want to get your drinks, you have to go out to the bar and bring them back to your table. That option puts the added burden on the customer rather than the worker, so its up to you witch is more important. If you owned an establishment and wanted to be tricky (which I personally would) you could set up little windows at the tables like at old school fast food restaurants in bad areas, where you put the bags on a tray which is then spun around into the smoking area, meaning that you could have wait staff bring people food/drinks without ever having to enter the smoking area. Anyway, I think there are good solutions to this problem that don't require impinging the rights of smokers nor telling waiters/waitresses/bartenders, to suck it up.
Certainly much more importantly to my life than a ban on something I no longer do in a state where I no longer live, is the fact that living comedic legend Mitch Hedberg, is no longer living. Mitch was one of the funniest people I think has ever lived. I love that dry one-liner sense of humor (My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana, and I said no, but I want a regular banana later, so, yeah) and the ridiculous set ups that made me crack up every time I heard his bits (My apartment is infested with koala bears. Its the cutest infestation of all time. Way better than cockroaches. Every time I turn on the light, a whole bunch of koala bears scatter.) I was unfortunate to never see Mitch perform live, though I listen to his CD pretty religiously and have the Comedy Central specials all but memorized. It seems that he had a heart attack and though it would be sad to lose Mitch at any age, for him to go at only 37 is hearbreaking. Personally my thoughts and prayers go out to his wife and family, I'll think of him everytime I end up screaming some insignificant shit: "that tree is far away."
Other shitty news: Fox officially canceled Point Pleasant, so they can go suck my ass. Fox has now canceled two of the potential heirs to Buffy's domain after less than half a season. Its a freaking mystery show for the love of ass, you can't evaluate it before things have really started to go down. I swear that if the OC hadn't debuted during the middle of summer allowing it to build an audience without any competition they would have canceled it before the Summer/Ana conflict even developed. It looks like Veronica Mars will get another full season and Katie assures me that things are looking up for Arreseted Development, which I thought was as good as dead.
Katie, who is awesome in every respect notably, was especially awesome in her quick dealing with of the massive figure skating glob that accumulated in her absence. I only had to watch about an hour of total figure skating as well, which is an uber-bonus. Those 14 hours move fast without commercials and minute long breaks for judging, not to mention that when I annoy Katie about the repetitive boring ass biographies alot of those get skipped too. It seems that figure skating is the reverse of a regular sport, where you use the off-court biological crap to fill in the holes during the game (i.e. halftime) since the skating is basically an afterthought after hearing the story of each of the 12 ponies that Slutskaya raised during her childhood. The only other note I intend to offer re: figure skating is that the art of the exhibition seems lost on today's generation. You want to see an exhibition figure skater, check out none other than the immortal Elvis Stojko!! Dude used to do incredible shit, slidey moves and ridiculous jumping combinations and freaking backflips! We have seen all your good footwork and arm movements during your lame-ass ice dance, the whole point here is to show off what you wouldn't do in normal combinations, not just do your boring routine to a Cherry Poppin Daddies tune.
Hippo was playing with her fishy-pole today, which is prolly her all time favorite toy. I mean, she's got alot of toys still to come, so its a bit early in her playing career to determine all time favorites, but she likes the fishy-pole. Anyway, somehow she got herself all tangled in the pink string that attaches the fishy to the pole and after getting fed up with being tangled, decided the best way to deal with it would be to take off as fast as her kitten paws would allow. She heads for the bedroom and as the pole smashes around behind her, clattering against doorways and furniture we realize what has happened. She went through every room in the apartment at least once before I was finally able to catch her when the pole got wrapped around my cell phone charger. Not a happy Hippo. I had to agree to let her watch at least one David Cronenberg movie before she would cheerup. I think she can handle eXistenZ.
Peace,
MB-K
Certainly much more importantly to my life than a ban on something I no longer do in a state where I no longer live, is the fact that living comedic legend Mitch Hedberg, is no longer living. Mitch was one of the funniest people I think has ever lived. I love that dry one-liner sense of humor (My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana, and I said no, but I want a regular banana later, so, yeah) and the ridiculous set ups that made me crack up every time I heard his bits (My apartment is infested with koala bears. Its the cutest infestation of all time. Way better than cockroaches. Every time I turn on the light, a whole bunch of koala bears scatter.) I was unfortunate to never see Mitch perform live, though I listen to his CD pretty religiously and have the Comedy Central specials all but memorized. It seems that he had a heart attack and though it would be sad to lose Mitch at any age, for him to go at only 37 is hearbreaking. Personally my thoughts and prayers go out to his wife and family, I'll think of him everytime I end up screaming some insignificant shit: "that tree is far away."
Other shitty news: Fox officially canceled Point Pleasant, so they can go suck my ass. Fox has now canceled two of the potential heirs to Buffy's domain after less than half a season. Its a freaking mystery show for the love of ass, you can't evaluate it before things have really started to go down. I swear that if the OC hadn't debuted during the middle of summer allowing it to build an audience without any competition they would have canceled it before the Summer/Ana conflict even developed. It looks like Veronica Mars will get another full season and Katie assures me that things are looking up for Arreseted Development, which I thought was as good as dead.
Katie, who is awesome in every respect notably, was especially awesome in her quick dealing with of the massive figure skating glob that accumulated in her absence. I only had to watch about an hour of total figure skating as well, which is an uber-bonus. Those 14 hours move fast without commercials and minute long breaks for judging, not to mention that when I annoy Katie about the repetitive boring ass biographies alot of those get skipped too. It seems that figure skating is the reverse of a regular sport, where you use the off-court biological crap to fill in the holes during the game (i.e. halftime) since the skating is basically an afterthought after hearing the story of each of the 12 ponies that Slutskaya raised during her childhood. The only other note I intend to offer re: figure skating is that the art of the exhibition seems lost on today's generation. You want to see an exhibition figure skater, check out none other than the immortal Elvis Stojko!! Dude used to do incredible shit, slidey moves and ridiculous jumping combinations and freaking backflips! We have seen all your good footwork and arm movements during your lame-ass ice dance, the whole point here is to show off what you wouldn't do in normal combinations, not just do your boring routine to a Cherry Poppin Daddies tune.
Hippo was playing with her fishy-pole today, which is prolly her all time favorite toy. I mean, she's got alot of toys still to come, so its a bit early in her playing career to determine all time favorites, but she likes the fishy-pole. Anyway, somehow she got herself all tangled in the pink string that attaches the fishy to the pole and after getting fed up with being tangled, decided the best way to deal with it would be to take off as fast as her kitten paws would allow. She heads for the bedroom and as the pole smashes around behind her, clattering against doorways and furniture we realize what has happened. She went through every room in the apartment at least once before I was finally able to catch her when the pole got wrapped around my cell phone charger. Not a happy Hippo. I had to agree to let her watch at least one David Cronenberg movie before she would cheerup. I think she can handle eXistenZ.
Peace,
MB-K
Monday, March 28, 2005
I Got a Man, Whats Your Man Got To Do With Butt
So I have been watching the Contender, largely because I will check out at least the better part of any season of reality television that Mark Burnett is willing to attach his name to. I figure I owe the man that much after all. Anyway, there are a couple things that should be noted. 1) The show has all the quality characters you expect amidst the boxers, by that I mean there are people who are involved for significant family dramas and there are people who are just in it for the money. There are conflicts of personality and there are conflicts of style and all the key ingredients of any quality program. 2) The celebrity-host model fits in really well. This isn't a Mark Cuban style rip off, let me tell you, Sly Stallone really works, he's not authentic in some way, I don't take him seriously, but look at him in the same vein as you would The Donald and he'll stick to your ribs. Not to mention they put an old boxing trainer (literally, the physical embodiment of every stereotype you think of in a boxing movie, the washed up old white-ethnic guy with a scraggly voice) in the mix, a la George and Caroline. 3) The drama in this program is in-fucking-tense. They've done alot of things to enhance that feeling of course, most notably involving the boxers families so significantly in the show. The very fact that its a boxing show, whose contestants are up and coming boxers, means that its drawing from communities who are often in down and out situations, people who are trying to raise their families either out of poverty, or into something unique, through boxing. Maybe that could be there in American Idol as well, but there seems to be something unique about the boxing aspect. Maybe its the idea of getting knocked out that didn't really apply to Lindsay Cardinale, but what do I know. Anyway, all this was merely to say that while I like this show, I'm not sure Katie could handle it. Thats not even to mention that the dude who lost last week and was so incredibly optimistic about what it had taught him, the dude who they showed saying that "I see nothing but goodness and beauty before me" in voiceover while he played around the room with his baby daughter, is the one who killed himself a month or so ago. Its pretty hardcore.
I have watched the NCAA tournament for about as long as I have really been a sports fan, probably pretty regularly for the past 12-15 years. I know I can't remember every game I have ever watched, but I cannot imagine that there was ever a series of games as exciting as the 4 games which comprised the elite 8 were this past weekend. 4 games, 3 in overtime. The Big Ten even ended up with half of the Final Four. While I would have really liked to see the Badgers take down the evil monster that is UNC, the games were close enough that its hard to even care. Katie timed her "spring break debate trip" very well, since she missed the intense heat of the tournament, but she'll have to tolerate three final games. Luckily for her the Wolves appear to suck enough not even to end up in the Western Conference Playoffs, meaning there will be few significant sports viewing demands put on her until we are once again ready for some football.
A brief debate shout out to those who were debating at CEDA Nats and the NDT. Most notably were the successes of Meiches (quarters at CEDA) and Maggie (walked over in sems at CEDA, quarters at the NDT), both former students of mine. I would never take credit, per say, for their success even when I was their coach, and I certainly wouldn't claim to have anythign whatsoever to do with these recent and extraordinary accomplishments, but I will say that I am incredibly proud to have ever been involved in their careers in any way. Thats not even to mention the Josher, who had a tough CEDA nationals and prolly got a bit "seniored-out" regarding their shot at the NDT, but who I am 100% confident has some incredible showings to come. Finally, mizzle prizzles to those Minnesotans who I didn't coach, including Stillwater's own S. Apel, the guy who puts the DC in AC, J. Oie., and someone whose arguments could not possibly have gotten any crazier in college then they were at Wayzata, D. Falt-y-sack. There might be more, who I am then by ommission insulting, and I certainly don't mean it in that regard. Besides, I can just update them in if I remember who you are. Suck it.
Has anyone tried Diet Cherry-Vanilla Dr. Pepper? I am really curious, but I am not just gonna buy one without some sort of endorsement. Now keep this in mind: Diet Dr. Pepper is in actuality closer to tasting like regular Dr. Pepper than, for instance, Diet Coke is to tasting like Coke. Notably, however, both Diet Coke and Goat Urine are approximately equally different in degree, from original Coke. Obviously one is a better tasting beverage, but neither of them tastes remotely like Coke. Diet Dr. Pepper is at least in the same league. That said, if this Cherry-Vanilla thing tastes just like a flavor shot in a diet soda then screw it, I can add grenadine and vanilla extract to real DP if there's something about the flavor combo. I am also confused because I have been told that Dr. Pepper itself was originally a cherry flavored soda, which I think is crap, cuz it tastes like almond and thats the way I likes it.
Hippo and I were reading Lacan's Seminar VII this afternoon on the couch and she noticed that there is potentially some tension in the interpretation of Sade that occurs here and that in Kant avec Sade. Very smart on her behalf I should say. She also has decided that there are a couple things in the apartment which she doesn't usually get to investigate that she would very much like to. First and foremost is the refigerator. She does like to climb in down by the crisper every now and then, but more often than not she comes running when she hears it open and either just walks around in between the door and the fridge proper, or lays down next to the open front. I have no idea what this fridge thing signifies, but I think the hopping up in Katie's sock and underwear drawers is a pretty clear sign that she is excited for Katie's return manana. Hippo sends her purrs out accross the interweb in a true spirit of love.
Peace,
MB-K
I have watched the NCAA tournament for about as long as I have really been a sports fan, probably pretty regularly for the past 12-15 years. I know I can't remember every game I have ever watched, but I cannot imagine that there was ever a series of games as exciting as the 4 games which comprised the elite 8 were this past weekend. 4 games, 3 in overtime. The Big Ten even ended up with half of the Final Four. While I would have really liked to see the Badgers take down the evil monster that is UNC, the games were close enough that its hard to even care. Katie timed her "spring break debate trip" very well, since she missed the intense heat of the tournament, but she'll have to tolerate three final games. Luckily for her the Wolves appear to suck enough not even to end up in the Western Conference Playoffs, meaning there will be few significant sports viewing demands put on her until we are once again ready for some football.
A brief debate shout out to those who were debating at CEDA Nats and the NDT. Most notably were the successes of Meiches (quarters at CEDA) and Maggie (walked over in sems at CEDA, quarters at the NDT), both former students of mine. I would never take credit, per say, for their success even when I was their coach, and I certainly wouldn't claim to have anythign whatsoever to do with these recent and extraordinary accomplishments, but I will say that I am incredibly proud to have ever been involved in their careers in any way. Thats not even to mention the Josher, who had a tough CEDA nationals and prolly got a bit "seniored-out" regarding their shot at the NDT, but who I am 100% confident has some incredible showings to come. Finally, mizzle prizzles to those Minnesotans who I didn't coach, including Stillwater's own S. Apel, the guy who puts the DC in AC, J. Oie., and someone whose arguments could not possibly have gotten any crazier in college then they were at Wayzata, D. Falt-y-sack. There might be more, who I am then by ommission insulting, and I certainly don't mean it in that regard. Besides, I can just update them in if I remember who you are. Suck it.
Has anyone tried Diet Cherry-Vanilla Dr. Pepper? I am really curious, but I am not just gonna buy one without some sort of endorsement. Now keep this in mind: Diet Dr. Pepper is in actuality closer to tasting like regular Dr. Pepper than, for instance, Diet Coke is to tasting like Coke. Notably, however, both Diet Coke and Goat Urine are approximately equally different in degree, from original Coke. Obviously one is a better tasting beverage, but neither of them tastes remotely like Coke. Diet Dr. Pepper is at least in the same league. That said, if this Cherry-Vanilla thing tastes just like a flavor shot in a diet soda then screw it, I can add grenadine and vanilla extract to real DP if there's something about the flavor combo. I am also confused because I have been told that Dr. Pepper itself was originally a cherry flavored soda, which I think is crap, cuz it tastes like almond and thats the way I likes it.
Hippo and I were reading Lacan's Seminar VII this afternoon on the couch and she noticed that there is potentially some tension in the interpretation of Sade that occurs here and that in Kant avec Sade. Very smart on her behalf I should say. She also has decided that there are a couple things in the apartment which she doesn't usually get to investigate that she would very much like to. First and foremost is the refigerator. She does like to climb in down by the crisper every now and then, but more often than not she comes running when she hears it open and either just walks around in between the door and the fridge proper, or lays down next to the open front. I have no idea what this fridge thing signifies, but I think the hopping up in Katie's sock and underwear drawers is a pretty clear sign that she is excited for Katie's return manana. Hippo sends her purrs out accross the interweb in a true spirit of love.
Peace,
MB-K
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Here Comes Peter Cottontail, Hopping Down the Bunny Trail, Hippity Hoppity Easter's On its Butt
Happy Easter to you all. Hope the hams/roasts/egg hunts/bunnies/baskets/etc. were fun for all those in the celebratory mood. I followed my typical Easter ritual of stopping at McDs on my way home and enjoying a Double Quarter-Pounder With Cheese. It was officially the best cheeseburger of 2005, though you never know what it will take to beat it. I almost wish I had an excuse to drive down to Cleveland and hit up the nearest White Castle, cuz a slider sounds mighty to the good right now. I think someone could make alot of money by either franchising a White Castle out in this neck of the woods or even just building a copycat burger joint. It doesn't take alot of work to grill shit on a bed of onions, even without the characteristic slider grease I would stop in for a 20 sack every now and then. Unfortunately Katie loathes the gut busters, so I can't even motivate her to make a journey with me. Maybe I need to work on homemade belly-bombs...I'll get back to you on that.
Besides that little has been going on this week that deserves bloggification. I read, I watched TV, I brushed Hippo, I hung around. There are great things to be excited about at least, since Katie returns home on Tuesday. Its been a rough NDT for many of the people who I give a rats ass about, though at least Maggie is going to clear. I've never debated at the ndt jobviously, but just looking at the tournament makes it pretty easy to realize how ridiculously difficult each of those rounds are. I would shoot myself before I could go through what is essentially an entire weekend of outrounds. You have to listen to 24 decisions just in prelims, which means you could clear and still hear the reason why you lost 14 times. Just too much. Luckily, it is the finale of the season, meaning that we are done with travel, done with one form of stress, and able to relax at least a bit.
Comedy Central finally put the vag badger bit up on their website, btw, if you feel like checking it out here. What the hell does "a href" mean? I understand what it functionally does when put in the text of a websitelike device, but why isn't it just , is it just that there is little chance that you would accidentally type "a href" or is it a stupid abbreviation or something. I think using the <> things should be the functional equivalent of having a cursor in an old school text based computer game where you can just type in any action and have the computer do it.How far? I would almost always get bored with those games after about 20 or so commands and end up telling the game to do various obscene things to itself, though I would imagine my obscene vocabulary was pretty limited in the days I used to play around on my grandparents 1980-something IBM.
Hippo is chasing a fly and its a fairly difficult task, because the fly is just buzzing around the cieling, which is about 8 or so feet out of Hippo's range. So instead of really chasing this fly, she is just walking around the room looking at the ceiling, but she is doing it in a very intense manner. If that fly descends about 7 or so feet, this persian kitty to my left is gonna wreck its shop. Seriously, it has no idea what its in for. I'm gonna follow the Hipmaster's example here and go find some food. Mine is not gonna be a fly and hopefully its not gonna buzz around so much, but it will be every bit as fascinating.
Peace,
MB-K
Besides that little has been going on this week that deserves bloggification. I read, I watched TV, I brushed Hippo, I hung around. There are great things to be excited about at least, since Katie returns home on Tuesday. Its been a rough NDT for many of the people who I give a rats ass about, though at least Maggie is going to clear. I've never debated at the ndt jobviously, but just looking at the tournament makes it pretty easy to realize how ridiculously difficult each of those rounds are. I would shoot myself before I could go through what is essentially an entire weekend of outrounds. You have to listen to 24 decisions just in prelims, which means you could clear and still hear the reason why you lost 14 times. Just too much. Luckily, it is the finale of the season, meaning that we are done with travel, done with one form of stress, and able to relax at least a bit.
Comedy Central finally put the vag badger bit up on their website, btw, if you feel like checking it out here. What the hell does "a href" mean? I understand what it functionally does when put in the text of a websitelike device, but why isn't it just , is it just that there is little chance that you would accidentally type "a href" or is it a stupid abbreviation or something. I think using the <> things should be the functional equivalent of having a cursor in an old school text based computer game where you can just type in any action and have the computer do it.
Hippo is chasing a fly and its a fairly difficult task, because the fly is just buzzing around the cieling, which is about 8 or so feet out of Hippo's range. So instead of really chasing this fly, she is just walking around the room looking at the ceiling, but she is doing it in a very intense manner. If that fly descends about 7 or so feet, this persian kitty to my left is gonna wreck its shop. Seriously, it has no idea what its in for. I'm gonna follow the Hipmaster's example here and go find some food. Mine is not gonna be a fly and hopefully its not gonna buzz around so much, but it will be every bit as fascinating.
Peace,
MB-K
Sunday, March 20, 2005
I Smell Sex and Candy, Here, Who's that Lounging, In My Butt
Tournament fun, Corned beef and cabbage goodness, and a veritable television fiesta sort of summarizes my last several days. I've seen all the good upsets, really enjoyed the Vermont win despite the fact that I kinda like Syracuse. Its always fun to see kids in that environment get that kind of opportunity, their coach is hilarious, and while the drama didn't quite stack up to Wake Forest's loss in double OT last night, it was pretty solid. I think Hippo has a pretty solid case of March Madness as she has spent most of the long weekend here on the couch with me. She has been climbing up on the laptop to check her bracket every couple minutes. She seems to be big into UW-Milwaukee, but she lost a final four team with UConn's loss earlier today. I've been brushing her all weekend and her coat is in pristine condition. Hippo gives everyone a shout out and promises to update her blog a little later.
I went to the Fireside Lounge down the street for Corned Beef and cabbage, since the Irish place was jammed to the freaking rafters. I figured that at least it was a steakhouse type joint and would have a higher quality brisket than the Greek or family restaurants which had signs indicating their Irish wares. The cabbage could have used a little salt and was more mushy then I would like but it was still delish. I don't eat alot of corned beef during the year, but when I do I prefer it to be perfectly done and the Fireside succeded there. If I ever again get the chance to celebrate St. Patrick's day with one or more other people maybe i can enjoy more than one green beer in the process. As it was I came home and dyed a couple of my remaining Summit's a pure Kelly green and enjoyed the late games.
I did some work on Friday and decided that the best use of the afternoon's tournament was to make a good solid meal and enjoy it near the conclusions of the first set of contests. I whipped up a couple of tasty tuna melts and some fresh cut fries. Since the oil in my deep frier was on its last legs I was on my way to empty it when I noticed a pack of Double Stuf Oreos (I had earlier been telling Katie something I wholeheartedly believe, which is that Double Stuf Oreos are so vastly superior to regular Oreos that they should simply become Oreos and normal Oreos should be Half Stuf or Oreos for people who suck it). Hmmm, I thought, Deep Fried Double-Stuf Oreos. So I did some recipe searching and made a tasty plate of crispy melty cookie treats. You can see a shot of them at my moblog.
I have also had a couple chances to catch up with the enormous amounts of TV we had stored up from the constant debate stuff. In the process I found three funny moments whose lack of recognition at large is really pissing me off. First is "City Court with Aaron Neville" from the SNL with Hilary Swank a couple weeks back. Seriously, Horatio Sanz as Aaron Nevile may make "cocoa butter" even funnier than "bottle of pineapple schnapps." All the references to it on the interweb are panning and one even cited it as an example of how SNL sucks this year, an assertion I categorically deny. The second had at least a couple positive reviews, that being Kelesy Grammar Presents The Sketch Show. I was a little hesitant at first, since the show is the kind of thing that hasn't really been on TV since Laugh-In, a series of comedy bits which are mostly just acted out puns or one liners, a very rapid fire approach to sketch comedy. Every 3rd or so sketch would be about a minute or two, but the average length was certainly less than 30 seconds. Some is crap but at least two were LOL style and the show does feature two people who were once on Mr. Show, which is about as good a job of casting as you can do. Finally, the Hollow Men, a sketch troupe ala Monty Python or Kids in the Hall who got a show on Comedy Central. I taped the first episode just to see what was going on and while alot of it was pretty stupid (too much fascination with naked dudes and british slang for genitals, even for my taste) the final sketch was one of the funniest things I have seen in a while. I won't repeat the whole routine, since I am confident that at some point I will be able to find a copy online. Suffice to say that the vag badger is a permanent fixture in my vocabulary.
Katie has been gone for like three full days and me and Hippo are ready for her to be home. I think Hippo enjoys sleeping on her pillow, but finds it much more fun to attack her in the middle of the night. Its not like Katie's head being there has ever prevented Hippo from taking a nap where she wanted to, but still. All of Katie's teams were in the hunt to clear as of last night and it looked like Meiches was off to a good tournament as well. Josher had one of day one's biggest wins, taking down Dartmouth CS (probably a top 5 first round, or near there at least) so mad props go to Californ-i-a in all regards.
Alright, Hippo has some questions about the tournament selection/ranking process and the basic system of college conferences that may take a while, so I am going to enjoy Vermont's last moments of the season (so it seems). Hippo sends ya'll a big meow.
Peace,
MB-K
I went to the Fireside Lounge down the street for Corned Beef and cabbage, since the Irish place was jammed to the freaking rafters. I figured that at least it was a steakhouse type joint and would have a higher quality brisket than the Greek or family restaurants which had signs indicating their Irish wares. The cabbage could have used a little salt and was more mushy then I would like but it was still delish. I don't eat alot of corned beef during the year, but when I do I prefer it to be perfectly done and the Fireside succeded there. If I ever again get the chance to celebrate St. Patrick's day with one or more other people maybe i can enjoy more than one green beer in the process. As it was I came home and dyed a couple of my remaining Summit's a pure Kelly green and enjoyed the late games.
I did some work on Friday and decided that the best use of the afternoon's tournament was to make a good solid meal and enjoy it near the conclusions of the first set of contests. I whipped up a couple of tasty tuna melts and some fresh cut fries. Since the oil in my deep frier was on its last legs I was on my way to empty it when I noticed a pack of Double Stuf Oreos (I had earlier been telling Katie something I wholeheartedly believe, which is that Double Stuf Oreos are so vastly superior to regular Oreos that they should simply become Oreos and normal Oreos should be Half Stuf or Oreos for people who suck it). Hmmm, I thought, Deep Fried Double-Stuf Oreos. So I did some recipe searching and made a tasty plate of crispy melty cookie treats. You can see a shot of them at my moblog.
I have also had a couple chances to catch up with the enormous amounts of TV we had stored up from the constant debate stuff. In the process I found three funny moments whose lack of recognition at large is really pissing me off. First is "City Court with Aaron Neville" from the SNL with Hilary Swank a couple weeks back. Seriously, Horatio Sanz as Aaron Nevile may make "cocoa butter" even funnier than "bottle of pineapple schnapps." All the references to it on the interweb are panning and one even cited it as an example of how SNL sucks this year, an assertion I categorically deny. The second had at least a couple positive reviews, that being Kelesy Grammar Presents The Sketch Show. I was a little hesitant at first, since the show is the kind of thing that hasn't really been on TV since Laugh-In, a series of comedy bits which are mostly just acted out puns or one liners, a very rapid fire approach to sketch comedy. Every 3rd or so sketch would be about a minute or two, but the average length was certainly less than 30 seconds. Some is crap but at least two were LOL style and the show does feature two people who were once on Mr. Show, which is about as good a job of casting as you can do. Finally, the Hollow Men, a sketch troupe ala Monty Python or Kids in the Hall who got a show on Comedy Central. I taped the first episode just to see what was going on and while alot of it was pretty stupid (too much fascination with naked dudes and british slang for genitals, even for my taste) the final sketch was one of the funniest things I have seen in a while. I won't repeat the whole routine, since I am confident that at some point I will be able to find a copy online. Suffice to say that the vag badger is a permanent fixture in my vocabulary.
Katie has been gone for like three full days and me and Hippo are ready for her to be home. I think Hippo enjoys sleeping on her pillow, but finds it much more fun to attack her in the middle of the night. Its not like Katie's head being there has ever prevented Hippo from taking a nap where she wanted to, but still. All of Katie's teams were in the hunt to clear as of last night and it looked like Meiches was off to a good tournament as well. Josher had one of day one's biggest wins, taking down Dartmouth CS (probably a top 5 first round, or near there at least) so mad props go to Californ-i-a in all regards.
Alright, Hippo has some questions about the tournament selection/ranking process and the basic system of college conferences that may take a while, so I am going to enjoy Vermont's last moments of the season (so it seems). Hippo sends ya'll a big meow.
Peace,
MB-K
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Found a Reason for Me, To Change Who I Used to Be, A Reason to Start Over New and the Reason is Butt
I wouldn't normally be typing at this point, but I am letting Katie watch an episode of American Dreams, a show which she enjoys which I cannot freaking stand. I have no nostalgia for the 50s to begin with, not for its music or its culture or its family, and since I can hardly ever tolerate family based dramas to begin with, there was nothing about this program that interested me. The brain-wizards at NBC decided that since it was running in second to Desperate Housewives on Sunday nights they shoud move it to Wednesdays so it could smashed by Lost and also take a beating by That 70's Show, American Idol, and/or The Simple Life. Regardless, that is what is going on.
Hippo and I have been very sad today, since Katie is on her way out of town for almost 2 full weeks. Hippo was explaining that while she knows that she will get the chance to celebrate all the relevant Easter traditions with Katie when she gets home and for many years in the future, a kittenish part of her wishes she would be around to bake a spring ham and such. She told me this in between chapters of Beyond Good and Evil today, which she managed to read without sitting on the book, a great improvement by my mark. Anyway, I told Hippo that Katie will call and update her blog, and she said that was reasonable. I promised Hippo that the Easter bunny would come twice and while Hippo will not categorically assure me that she will not attack and tear to shreds aforementioned Easter Bunny with her persian strength, she seemed excited.
Brief one today. Gonna eat chinese food and watch the West Wing. Check it.
Peace,
MB-K
Hippo and I have been very sad today, since Katie is on her way out of town for almost 2 full weeks. Hippo was explaining that while she knows that she will get the chance to celebrate all the relevant Easter traditions with Katie when she gets home and for many years in the future, a kittenish part of her wishes she would be around to bake a spring ham and such. She told me this in between chapters of Beyond Good and Evil today, which she managed to read without sitting on the book, a great improvement by my mark. Anyway, I told Hippo that Katie will call and update her blog, and she said that was reasonable. I promised Hippo that the Easter bunny would come twice and while Hippo will not categorically assure me that she will not attack and tear to shreds aforementioned Easter Bunny with her persian strength, she seemed excited.
Brief one today. Gonna eat chinese food and watch the West Wing. Check it.
Peace,
MB-K
Your Moves are So Raw, I've Got to Let You Know, I've Got to Let You Know, You're One of My Butt
Okay okay, I got it, I suck at updating these days. Can't do anything about that, I just suck at updating. I will work on it over the next little while when Katie is gone, but until I have finished my orals and such, once a week-ish is the best I can shoot for. Well, it is Spring Break, and between the episodes of Girls Gone Wild that are being filmed all around me while I drink my Long Island from this enormous neon-green plastic tube thing, Katie and I have managed to relax while still studying/prepping for the NDT like mad. We have also managed to fix shit on the car, develop our spring-time greetings, and play with Ms. Hippo. I was reading some Bergon today and she was really really intersted, but just like I often have to have my neck in a certain position to concentrate, she apparently had to have her front paws on the book in order to understand it. Maybe tomorrow we will more thoroughly break down the concept of virtual imagery.
We are about a week and a half from the end of lent and only two days from St. Patrick's Day. I guess those dates pretty explicitly reveal my blantant Irish Catholicism, but nonetheless, its exciting. If for no other reason than I am so fucking dying for a chicago-style hot dog and a DQPw/C. Thursday is my only chance to enjoy red meat until then and though I do think that Corned Beef and Cabbage is hella tasty in general, its even better after 30 odd days without any cow. I have to pick out which psuedo-Irish restaurant in the area will be my pick for the evening, but there is time on that regard still. I will have to take Katie to the airport on her way to CEDA nationals and the NDT so I guess I can make my decision on the way home.
TV things that deserve reporting: The OC just keeps getting better and better. Though I loathe the situation that has developed between Alex and Marissa, I love Summer and Seth enough to make up for everything. The only show I would say was above it was pretty good last week as well and for the first time I actually enjoyed watching Matt Santos run for President. The Hoynes angle was awesome and though I can't handle not getting to see Jed Bartlett but every third week, I can at least tolerate Smits as his follow-up. I have plenty of feelings about what needs to happen at the end of the Bartlett administration next year, but I will wait until they more approach relevancy. ANTM is off to another good start this season, though it sucked that Brita was the first to go. I really don't want them to play Brandy like she is this years Eva, but I have no explicit favorite yet. There certainly is no Norelle, but I mean, what do you want.
American Idol was embroiled (one of the new nominees for best verb of the week by the way) in scandal with the departure of Mario Vazquez, and while I am glad that Niko Smith got back into the top 12, it sucks that Mario isn't around. My guess, after tonight's performances, is that we lose either Jessica Sierra or Mikaylah Gordon (who, while looking uber-slutty cute and sounding like Fran Drescher singing some 60s tune, was not any good at all) but Katie is convinced that I will at long last get to say goodbye to Lindsay Cardinale whose version of "Knock on Wood" made me want to drive a railroad spike through my face. Simon's comment was that 30 million TV sets simultaneously turned down the volume during her performance and I certainly almost did. If we do happen to kiss one of the gentlemen adieu, I can't believe it would be anyone besides Anthony Federov, though I guess Niko had fewer votes the first time around anyway. I mean, I would think with the two rockers you wouldn't need the non-threatening young blonde white boy, but I suppose I continue to not make up a majority of the voting public.
Anyway, I will try to say hey again St. Patty's night or summin. Erin go bragh.
Peace,
MB-K
We are about a week and a half from the end of lent and only two days from St. Patrick's Day. I guess those dates pretty explicitly reveal my blantant Irish Catholicism, but nonetheless, its exciting. If for no other reason than I am so fucking dying for a chicago-style hot dog and a DQPw/C. Thursday is my only chance to enjoy red meat until then and though I do think that Corned Beef and Cabbage is hella tasty in general, its even better after 30 odd days without any cow. I have to pick out which psuedo-Irish restaurant in the area will be my pick for the evening, but there is time on that regard still. I will have to take Katie to the airport on her way to CEDA nationals and the NDT so I guess I can make my decision on the way home.
TV things that deserve reporting: The OC just keeps getting better and better. Though I loathe the situation that has developed between Alex and Marissa, I love Summer and Seth enough to make up for everything. The only show I would say was above it was pretty good last week as well and for the first time I actually enjoyed watching Matt Santos run for President. The Hoynes angle was awesome and though I can't handle not getting to see Jed Bartlett but every third week, I can at least tolerate Smits as his follow-up. I have plenty of feelings about what needs to happen at the end of the Bartlett administration next year, but I will wait until they more approach relevancy. ANTM is off to another good start this season, though it sucked that Brita was the first to go. I really don't want them to play Brandy like she is this years Eva, but I have no explicit favorite yet. There certainly is no Norelle, but I mean, what do you want.
American Idol was embroiled (one of the new nominees for best verb of the week by the way) in scandal with the departure of Mario Vazquez, and while I am glad that Niko Smith got back into the top 12, it sucks that Mario isn't around. My guess, after tonight's performances, is that we lose either Jessica Sierra or Mikaylah Gordon (who, while looking uber-slutty cute and sounding like Fran Drescher singing some 60s tune, was not any good at all) but Katie is convinced that I will at long last get to say goodbye to Lindsay Cardinale whose version of "Knock on Wood" made me want to drive a railroad spike through my face. Simon's comment was that 30 million TV sets simultaneously turned down the volume during her performance and I certainly almost did. If we do happen to kiss one of the gentlemen adieu, I can't believe it would be anyone besides Anthony Federov, though I guess Niko had fewer votes the first time around anyway. I mean, I would think with the two rockers you wouldn't need the non-threatening young blonde white boy, but I suppose I continue to not make up a majority of the voting public.
Anyway, I will try to say hey again St. Patty's night or summin. Erin go bragh.
Peace,
MB-K
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Baby When You Finally, Get to Love Somebody, Thats Why, Its Gonna Be Butt
So yes, it has been hella long since I updated. I could give some excuses and I will. For one I had two orals meetings that I had to get ready for and actually worked most of the week as I intended to. That certainly took up much of my time. Another portion of the overall time, specifically evening time, was destroyed by the GSA (Graduate Student Association) meeting that I attended on behalf of Umbr(a) this Wednesday. The best analogy I could come up with was this: imagine spending an hour and a half masturbating a castrated goat. You would have gotten more useful things done in that 90 minutes than I did between 7:00 and 8:30 in that room. Its like high school student council except they have money to give out. Here is the messed up thing, the Group for Discussion of the Freudian Field (who publishes Umbr(a)) is among the acadmeic clubs that doesn't get any sort of a vote. Literally, we don't get to raise our hands when they, after ten minutes of repetitive stupid questions, unanimously approve a thousand bucks for the gender institute. I'm all in favor of the programs they support (well, the serious ones, I think I could live without the "GSA Happy Hour" or "GSA Bowling Night") but why do you take my club's money away if one of us doesn't show up to eat cheap greazy pizza and listen to idiots babble. If I wanted that I could just tivo Navy NCIS and/or Jag.
But regardless, I will not concentrate on that now, since there is at least some happiness on the horizon. To begin: debate, as of this Monday, for me, is done for the year. I am thinking that the entire drive home from D.C. should just be a repetition of "Celebrate (Good Times Come On!!)". This isn't even a diss on debate, its just that I am excited to have weekends and stay at home with my Hippo (and after the NDT, my Katie) and not have to work. Maybe by the time I take the next road trip I happen to embark on I won't still be recovering from the previous one. We won't have to spend 100 dollars every weekend on McDonalds and hotel sodas. I'm totally psyched but in no way mean to diss on those who will miss it or whose careers are coming to an end. Please don't hate me.
I am writing this from a basement "room" its somewhere between an actual classroom and a broom closet with an overhead projector and overlybright lights (specifically ICC 211B if Cassie or any other Georgetown alums are in the hizzy) at Georgetown University. I have had very mixed feelings about D.C. in the day and a half that we have been here. We had a long drive to get here and crashed on Friday night without even getting something to eat. The tournament, while far away and long and so forth, is actually pretty well run and scheduled. The Georgetown campus, while huge by my standards and a very different University setting then anything I am used to (which are admittedly fairly limited to the U (which is like a school integrated with a city) Buffalo (which is a crappy practiaclly new suburban campus nowhere near civilization) and Mac (which is overall, a bit smaller than the building I currently occupy)). But if nothing else, the architecture is fucking gorgeous. The one thing we Catholics got right for sure is window/spire/arch design, we rock the architectural heezy. As of yet I have gotten zero debates off (and to be honest, I am not optimistic about either of the last two) and so have performed no exploration of the Georgetown neighborhood, which suxorz largely because it looks so interesting. It has the appearance of an older and slightly less racially gentrified (though obviously pretty fucking gentrified) Wrigley park area, with all the extraordinarily expensive 10 foot wide homes and tapas joints. Anyway, I think a trip to the intersetion of Wisconsin and M would be a way better use of my time than a doubles debate that will inevitably come down to a dropped voter anyway.
After we finagled our way home last night (no directions, only Katie's vague intuition of the city's seriously faulty geography) Katie and I dropped all the debaters off and went out to find some food. We are staying right near the Pentagon, which is awesome, but it appears that people who are by the Pentagon do not eat. By that I mean there is not a restaurant within several miles of the hotel. We literally drove a couple miles in either direction before determining that if we wanted to eat something beyond missiles or copies of the "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside US" PDB, we would have to get on the highway. Of course we hadn't prepared for this instance, so we really just went randomly and as often happens when you jump onto highways near Washington, D.C. (at least so it seems to me) we ended up Downtown (again, I think its "Downtown," its where all the shit is, monuments and capitals and stuff, near the Mall, you might say, we were up on the hill for a while, Toby taught me that one, you are on the hill, not at the hill)). The least good thing about many debate tournaments is that we get to enjoy none of the benefits of the tremendous amounts of travel we do. This is actually an instance where I would really like to have the time to enjoy the place we are rather than just listening to Chalupka or Calibresi.
Anyway, Katie has never been to D.C. so even if the sightseeing never materializes further, she got a brief driving tour of the nation's capital. We drove down Constitution from behind the Lincoln Monument up to the Capital, picking out whatever we could of the buildings given the traffic and limited light/eyesight concerns. I think the Capital building itself is really beautiful and Katie was a little blown away. We got up right in front of it and also saw the perfect view from right in front of the Washington monument, where the trees up and down the boulevard frame the lit up building perfectly. I have only been here on the one occassion with my family in like the 8th grade and I certainly didn't remember how huge all the buildings are. The department of agriculture literally takes up two buildings that are 4-5 stories and entire square blocks. It was hella impressive even from the rented mini-van.
Despite the imposingly cool design and the multitude of shit to see, I am not convinced about D.C. yet. Besides the general large-cityness of it, problems it shares with pretty much anything bigger than Minnneapolis, it seems to have 2 distinct disads. 1) The design is confusing as shit, thats not surprising given the age of the area, how it developed, and how odd it is to have an enormous section of the city with nothing but big ass statues, but it made it a pain for me to get around, alot like Boston in that regard, thankfully, without Boston drivers. 2) There is no food. I think the best warrant for any argument that our government is run by aliens (and I know there are alot of good ones) is the lack of restaurants in the area. My guess is that they eat vacuum cleaners, which, when you think about it, explains alot.
Anyway, we ultimately found our Boston Market, enjoyed a tasty rotisserie chicken dinner and spent a lively evening joking and laughing amongst the best of company. Unfortunately Hippo was not there, which technically means it was not the absolute best company, but close enough by my count. I drank a good bit of vanilla vodka (for some reason no one has had Stoli vanilla recently, its all Smirnoff all the time) and went to sleep later than I would have liked, but at least with a buzz. I woke up this morning looking out on the sun rising, over/near the Washington monument in the distance.
Alright, gonna try 2 find somewhere to post this. In Washington, I'm MB-K.
Peace,
MB-K
But regardless, I will not concentrate on that now, since there is at least some happiness on the horizon. To begin: debate, as of this Monday, for me, is done for the year. I am thinking that the entire drive home from D.C. should just be a repetition of "Celebrate (Good Times Come On!!)". This isn't even a diss on debate, its just that I am excited to have weekends and stay at home with my Hippo (and after the NDT, my Katie) and not have to work. Maybe by the time I take the next road trip I happen to embark on I won't still be recovering from the previous one. We won't have to spend 100 dollars every weekend on McDonalds and hotel sodas. I'm totally psyched but in no way mean to diss on those who will miss it or whose careers are coming to an end. Please don't hate me.
I am writing this from a basement "room" its somewhere between an actual classroom and a broom closet with an overhead projector and overlybright lights (specifically ICC 211B if Cassie or any other Georgetown alums are in the hizzy) at Georgetown University. I have had very mixed feelings about D.C. in the day and a half that we have been here. We had a long drive to get here and crashed on Friday night without even getting something to eat. The tournament, while far away and long and so forth, is actually pretty well run and scheduled. The Georgetown campus, while huge by my standards and a very different University setting then anything I am used to (which are admittedly fairly limited to the U (which is like a school integrated with a city) Buffalo (which is a crappy practiaclly new suburban campus nowhere near civilization) and Mac (which is overall, a bit smaller than the building I currently occupy)). But if nothing else, the architecture is fucking gorgeous. The one thing we Catholics got right for sure is window/spire/arch design, we rock the architectural heezy. As of yet I have gotten zero debates off (and to be honest, I am not optimistic about either of the last two) and so have performed no exploration of the Georgetown neighborhood, which suxorz largely because it looks so interesting. It has the appearance of an older and slightly less racially gentrified (though obviously pretty fucking gentrified) Wrigley park area, with all the extraordinarily expensive 10 foot wide homes and tapas joints. Anyway, I think a trip to the intersetion of Wisconsin and M would be a way better use of my time than a doubles debate that will inevitably come down to a dropped voter anyway.
After we finagled our way home last night (no directions, only Katie's vague intuition of the city's seriously faulty geography) Katie and I dropped all the debaters off and went out to find some food. We are staying right near the Pentagon, which is awesome, but it appears that people who are by the Pentagon do not eat. By that I mean there is not a restaurant within several miles of the hotel. We literally drove a couple miles in either direction before determining that if we wanted to eat something beyond missiles or copies of the "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside US" PDB, we would have to get on the highway. Of course we hadn't prepared for this instance, so we really just went randomly and as often happens when you jump onto highways near Washington, D.C. (at least so it seems to me) we ended up Downtown (again, I think its "Downtown," its where all the shit is, monuments and capitals and stuff, near the Mall, you might say, we were up on the hill for a while, Toby taught me that one, you are on the hill, not at the hill)). The least good thing about many debate tournaments is that we get to enjoy none of the benefits of the tremendous amounts of travel we do. This is actually an instance where I would really like to have the time to enjoy the place we are rather than just listening to Chalupka or Calibresi.
Anyway, Katie has never been to D.C. so even if the sightseeing never materializes further, she got a brief driving tour of the nation's capital. We drove down Constitution from behind the Lincoln Monument up to the Capital, picking out whatever we could of the buildings given the traffic and limited light/eyesight concerns. I think the Capital building itself is really beautiful and Katie was a little blown away. We got up right in front of it and also saw the perfect view from right in front of the Washington monument, where the trees up and down the boulevard frame the lit up building perfectly. I have only been here on the one occassion with my family in like the 8th grade and I certainly didn't remember how huge all the buildings are. The department of agriculture literally takes up two buildings that are 4-5 stories and entire square blocks. It was hella impressive even from the rented mini-van.
Despite the imposingly cool design and the multitude of shit to see, I am not convinced about D.C. yet. Besides the general large-cityness of it, problems it shares with pretty much anything bigger than Minnneapolis, it seems to have 2 distinct disads. 1) The design is confusing as shit, thats not surprising given the age of the area, how it developed, and how odd it is to have an enormous section of the city with nothing but big ass statues, but it made it a pain for me to get around, alot like Boston in that regard, thankfully, without Boston drivers. 2) There is no food. I think the best warrant for any argument that our government is run by aliens (and I know there are alot of good ones) is the lack of restaurants in the area. My guess is that they eat vacuum cleaners, which, when you think about it, explains alot.
Anyway, we ultimately found our Boston Market, enjoyed a tasty rotisserie chicken dinner and spent a lively evening joking and laughing amongst the best of company. Unfortunately Hippo was not there, which technically means it was not the absolute best company, but close enough by my count. I drank a good bit of vanilla vodka (for some reason no one has had Stoli vanilla recently, its all Smirnoff all the time) and went to sleep later than I would have liked, but at least with a buzz. I woke up this morning looking out on the sun rising, over/near the Washington monument in the distance.
Alright, gonna try 2 find somewhere to post this. In Washington, I'm MB-K.
Peace,
MB-K
Saturday, February 26, 2005
So Take Your Hat Off, When You're Talking to Me, and Be There When I Feed the Butt
I still have not entirely concluded that Pete Nikolai is 100% right about Project Runway, at least as it being the best single season in relaity history. I think it will have to stay in my mind for the next couple months before I give it that, but it is, at the very least, a strong contender. The more I think about it, the more I am sure that Jay McCarroll is the greatest reality show contestant of all time. Some things that Project Runway has in its favor:
1) the right conflict went the WHOLE season--usually the villain or some half of the great conflict disappears early, i.e. Rupert goes out as one of the first individual immunity weeks, Omarosa barely makes the top 10. For all that I don't enjoy about Wendy Pepper she provided great plotlines the whole time. The entirety of the audience enjoyed watching Jay rip on her and the finale was a great opportunity for Jay to prove his humor wasn't mindlessly cruel. It also complicated our hatred for Wendy by the Kara Saun shoe disaster, which was so incredibly weak I can't even describe it. She wasn't just a whiney Omarosa, but at least once per season, she had something not stupid to say.
2) the show was funny--while obviously there was alot at stake, besides Wendy's daughter's picture-mustache situation (which relates to the above complication as well), never did this show get way over serious. I mean, Wendy cried when Jay and Kara Saun were running late, but it was hilarious, not presented like the people on Big Brother who haven't seen their families for 40 days. The conflict on the get-together episode was awesome and the person who stormed off was on the show for like a week and not very interesting, which meant we didn't have to care if she was all pissy. Reality TV that doesn't always make itself life or death is good.
3) the right character won--if you don't watch alot of reality TV this may not be such a huge shock, but its a big freaking deal. I can't imagine anyone who watched this show and wasn't cheering for Big Gay Jesus by the end. He was my obvious favorite from the first moment I turned Bravo on back in December. While it was nice that Rob and Amber had final 2 or that Eva pulled it out, but its not the same. Jay was the coolest, from beginning to end. He wasn't the technically proficient robotic winner week in and week out that Kara Saun was.
I hope the second season can stick it up, that it doesn't go all Dream Job on the bit (the third season of which I won't even glance at) and follows closer to the ANTM model that its obviously based in. Heidi Klum still bites it in comparison to Tyra Banks not to mention that the catch phrases (I mean, "Wendy, you're out" doesn't compare to "Kelly, congratulations, you're still in the running towards becoming America's Next Top Model") the prizes ("a mentorship with the Banana Republic Design Team" gets smacked by "a photo shoot with world famous fashion photographer Gilles Bensemot") and the judges (Nina Garcia vs. Nole Marin, how's she gonna beat his little dog huh?) are all leaning huge in favor of ANTM. Regardless, the three factors above all tilt towards Jay over Norelle, and thats a hard thing for me to say.
So I am in Vermont, after like a seven hour drive yesterday which included a one hour stop at Target, for reasons that, while still very cool, are entirely bizarre to me. We did make pretty good time and managed to beat everyone else up here though I drove all but 67 miles of the journey (Steve Perry) this is not something I am likely to repeat on the way back to Asschester. Today apparently features 5 more JV-Novice debates, and as excited as you might imagine I am about that prospect, I would literally rather make one of those little clacky desk toys where you drop the one silver ball and it makes the one on the other end fly up etc out of my balls then listen to two more of these. At this point in the season all the kids I am judging should be sucking it up and debating varsity, but this weekend being NDT quals saps that idea so instead its just low-level varsity debaters mucking their way through complicated arguments they sort of understand. The exception to this being of course, my round 2, which featured the Cornell "masochism" affirmative.
I put that word in quotes because its the oddest definiation of "masochism" i can possibly imagine. I will explain it further later on, but now I must go to round 4. 4:00, round 4, on floor 4. Thats some scary hullabaloo!
Peace,
MB-K
1) the right conflict went the WHOLE season--usually the villain or some half of the great conflict disappears early, i.e. Rupert goes out as one of the first individual immunity weeks, Omarosa barely makes the top 10. For all that I don't enjoy about Wendy Pepper she provided great plotlines the whole time. The entirety of the audience enjoyed watching Jay rip on her and the finale was a great opportunity for Jay to prove his humor wasn't mindlessly cruel. It also complicated our hatred for Wendy by the Kara Saun shoe disaster, which was so incredibly weak I can't even describe it. She wasn't just a whiney Omarosa, but at least once per season, she had something not stupid to say.
2) the show was funny--while obviously there was alot at stake, besides Wendy's daughter's picture-mustache situation (which relates to the above complication as well), never did this show get way over serious. I mean, Wendy cried when Jay and Kara Saun were running late, but it was hilarious, not presented like the people on Big Brother who haven't seen their families for 40 days. The conflict on the get-together episode was awesome and the person who stormed off was on the show for like a week and not very interesting, which meant we didn't have to care if she was all pissy. Reality TV that doesn't always make itself life or death is good.
3) the right character won--if you don't watch alot of reality TV this may not be such a huge shock, but its a big freaking deal. I can't imagine anyone who watched this show and wasn't cheering for Big Gay Jesus by the end. He was my obvious favorite from the first moment I turned Bravo on back in December. While it was nice that Rob and Amber had final 2 or that Eva pulled it out, but its not the same. Jay was the coolest, from beginning to end. He wasn't the technically proficient robotic winner week in and week out that Kara Saun was.
I hope the second season can stick it up, that it doesn't go all Dream Job on the bit (the third season of which I won't even glance at) and follows closer to the ANTM model that its obviously based in. Heidi Klum still bites it in comparison to Tyra Banks not to mention that the catch phrases (I mean, "Wendy, you're out" doesn't compare to "Kelly, congratulations, you're still in the running towards becoming America's Next Top Model") the prizes ("a mentorship with the Banana Republic Design Team" gets smacked by "a photo shoot with world famous fashion photographer Gilles Bensemot") and the judges (Nina Garcia vs. Nole Marin, how's she gonna beat his little dog huh?) are all leaning huge in favor of ANTM. Regardless, the three factors above all tilt towards Jay over Norelle, and thats a hard thing for me to say.
So I am in Vermont, after like a seven hour drive yesterday which included a one hour stop at Target, for reasons that, while still very cool, are entirely bizarre to me. We did make pretty good time and managed to beat everyone else up here though I drove all but 67 miles of the journey (Steve Perry) this is not something I am likely to repeat on the way back to Asschester. Today apparently features 5 more JV-Novice debates, and as excited as you might imagine I am about that prospect, I would literally rather make one of those little clacky desk toys where you drop the one silver ball and it makes the one on the other end fly up etc out of my balls then listen to two more of these. At this point in the season all the kids I am judging should be sucking it up and debating varsity, but this weekend being NDT quals saps that idea so instead its just low-level varsity debaters mucking their way through complicated arguments they sort of understand. The exception to this being of course, my round 2, which featured the Cornell "masochism" affirmative.
I put that word in quotes because its the oddest definiation of "masochism" i can possibly imagine. I will explain it further later on, but now I must go to round 4. 4:00, round 4, on floor 4. Thats some scary hullabaloo!
Peace,
MB-K
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Win Big, Mama's Fallen Angel, Lose Big, Livin Out Her Butt
I still personally prefer the pug, the St. Bernard, the Bernese mountain dog, and the Irish wolfhound, but I really do believe that the best named dog breed out there is the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. I am watching our tivoed edition of day 2 at Westminster and the sporting group, which is a not shabby set of puppies in general, is really coming strong this year. I mean, all of the water spaniels are pretty cool and no one can dis the German wirehaired pointer, which has a terrier like muzzle and the same mottled gray body with a brown face as, for instance, the Australian shepard. Not to mention the clumber, which is by far my favorite spaniel. Its a big dog that looks like it has at least some relation to a Newfy or even the Neapolitan mastiff (one of the year's new breeds, which I saw earlier at the Eukanauba show and is freaking awesome). Anyway, more power to the sporters.
So it is now Wednesday eveningish, on the verge of the second to last debate tournament of the year, well for me at least. I suppose Katie is still well in the thrall of the multi-headed beast. Hopefully the lack of debate tournaments will allow me to get beyond caught up with the reading lists and actually ahead. I am feeling pretty confident about psychoanalysis with Steven and I think I can read literature fast enough that the 20th Century probably won't be a problem. Luckily for me, the list that I am not as good on is with the professor who likes me the most. I know that I'm capable of reading this enormous mass of shit, but I just have not gotten as much of it done as I would like. Anyway, a little bit of worry is helpful, but I'm not panicing until I absolutely have to. I just need to find a way to enjoy the "filler" stuff in those texts like I can with Lacan et. al. I mean, the moments in the Critique of Pure Reason that are great are truly fantastic. There is just so much that is repetitive or summarizing or just a review of literature I don't care about. Thats not to say its not important for the overall argument of the book, but simply that it makes it harder to keep going and going.
Regardless, probably the reason I haven't been blogging to mention any of this was my overrelaxed nature following the night in Niagara Falls which Katie gave me for Valentine's day. We went up to the Niagara Fallsview Marriot, which is directly up the hill from the Canadian (far cooler) section of the falls. Its right in the same area as the new casino, which we visited in fact. But that barely makes the highlight reel of the weekend. We should begin, of course, with the room. I can say with a good amount of certainty that it is the second coolest hotel room I have ever stayed in. Our wedding-night suite at the Hyatt obviously takes the cake and while the suites we use for the party at Blake are pretty awesome, they don't have any of the elements available here. To begin with there was the view. I mean, what a sweet ass view. We were 18 floors up and directly in line with the horseshoe. I will put good pictures online at some point, this is one from my moblog:
I know thats not especially clear but its the best I can do. The giant puff of mist you see is the dead center of the falls. You cannot believe how incredibly clear this all looked, the rushing water, the spraying mist, the ways you can literally follow the flow over the side of the cliff. I spent probably an hour, in toto, just watching the falls from our window. Thats not even to mention the two other important facts of the room. 1) the fireplace: it was gas of course, but it was still gorgeous and it was right along side the almost floor-to-cieling window. I turned it on the second we walked in and only extinguished it when we left the next morning. Having a fire roaring was all but intrinsic to a relaxing evening in the Baxter household when I was growing up, and while a big part of that was obviously the wood crackling and the smell, even just the aesthetics of the orange glow does alot. It meant the room stayed a Katie-riffic temperature as well, I suppose. 2) the jacuzzi--in terms of pure jacuzzi-dom, by which I refer to just the actual tub itself, this thing was the nuts. It was ginormous, to begin with, designed for two people to be able to lay side by side with room to spare. Beyond that there was also the fact that, due to a window in the wall, you could choose to watch tv from the bath or enjoy the view of the falls. I did both and overall my back felt incredible when I walked away from that hotel in the morning. Admittedly it didn't have the gray marble or the LCD tv for Buffy/Sportscenter but it was stell a great tub and bathroom overall.
Alongside the great accomodations, there was the great food. The restaurant in the hotel, The Terrapin Grille, was actually where we went to dinner last Valentine's Day (well, as close as we get to Valentine's Day). They have great fish, so its a perfect lenten choice not to mention that it has a pretty view of the water and overall solid quality and atmosphere. We arrived about 7:00 for dinner and sat down soon after. I was going to eat fish anyway, so Katie chose the wine and it was a pretty decent Riesling. I must admit that I'm not a fan of sweet grapes, but if you've gotta drink white wine I would prefer a riesling with some character to what seems to me a universally lame chardonnay. We started of the fish-festival with a tasty platter of smoked salmon, which apparently Katie had never had before. I figured she would enjoy it and I was fairly sure when what came was true high quality salmon I knew I was right. Soon after finsihing that we received the entrees: Katie went for a repeat performance of the Pan Seared Chilean Sea-Bass, which was really perfectly cooked. It was about as tender and soft as you can make a piece of fish like that, it didn't flake or crumble in any way. Not to mention that whatever the glaze happened to be, it added a perfect sweetness to the whitefish that simply accented the mouth feel without in anyway interfering with the flavor. It wasn't a marinade, and that shows intelligence in preparation, you didn't need more flavor in a fish that good. I don't know if it was the exact same as last year, but it was chweet. I selected the special for the night, a pecan-crusted rainbow trout. Katie had apparently never even enjoyed the wonders of a trout fillet, which surprises me from a midwest gal, but nonetheless, it was truly a great meal. I can't describe it with the detail of the sea-bass, but let me simply tell you that it was as good a piece of trout as I have ever enjoyed. The lemon-garlic-butter sauce accented it perfectly and the contrast in crunchy pecans and firm but flaky flesh was solid. We finished the whole thing off with a chocolate gateaux that was really like a tiramisu for someone who hates either marscapone (impossible) or coffee (even less possible).
We made our way back to the Terrapin Grille for the breakfast buffet, primarily because I fucking love the breakfast buffet. The buffet in general is a fine art, but a truly excellent breakfast buffet is a masterpiece, a Sistine Chapel of my culinary world. It doesn't take anything special, you don't have to be innovative, but you have to execute a number of things in specific ways. Step 1) adequate "regulars"--by which I mean that you have a decent selction of breakfast breads, coffee, juice, milk, prolly some cerial, you know. This step includes most of the shitty you would find at a decent contintental breakfast, some bagels, croissants, maybe pastries. Step 2) quality meats--I didn't eat them, but they looked and smelled good and Katie like the requisites of sausage and bacon. Our buffet didn't exceed those requirements, there wasn't a carving station or anything, but it satisfied. Step 3) The fine touches--fundamentally the fine touches could be anything from hashed browns to some pancake like item to eggs and so on. Terrapin Grille proffered oven roasted breakfast potatoes and scrambled eggs to begin with. This was tipped over the edge by what may well be my two favorite things about breakfast buffets overall: fluffy waffles with whipped cream and an omelette station. Oh my God do whipped cream coated waffles and omelette stations rock. A fresh omelette made by someone who really knows what they are doing (which you fucking well better when given both your own fucking station and the nutzors of omelette making equipment) and has all the necessary fixings is awesome. I think that not only does its speediness and self-serve nature beat the omelettes that come out of a kitchen, but the fact that they know you are watching means they don't leave the omelettes alone to let them cook forever and dry out.
Alright, thats as much as I can humanly say about the breakfast buffet for now. Subject to begin with next time: Project Runway and its general ruleitude.
Peace,
MB-K
So it is now Wednesday eveningish, on the verge of the second to last debate tournament of the year, well for me at least. I suppose Katie is still well in the thrall of the multi-headed beast. Hopefully the lack of debate tournaments will allow me to get beyond caught up with the reading lists and actually ahead. I am feeling pretty confident about psychoanalysis with Steven and I think I can read literature fast enough that the 20th Century probably won't be a problem. Luckily for me, the list that I am not as good on is with the professor who likes me the most. I know that I'm capable of reading this enormous mass of shit, but I just have not gotten as much of it done as I would like. Anyway, a little bit of worry is helpful, but I'm not panicing until I absolutely have to. I just need to find a way to enjoy the "filler" stuff in those texts like I can with Lacan et. al. I mean, the moments in the Critique of Pure Reason that are great are truly fantastic. There is just so much that is repetitive or summarizing or just a review of literature I don't care about. Thats not to say its not important for the overall argument of the book, but simply that it makes it harder to keep going and going.
Regardless, probably the reason I haven't been blogging to mention any of this was my overrelaxed nature following the night in Niagara Falls which Katie gave me for Valentine's day. We went up to the Niagara Fallsview Marriot, which is directly up the hill from the Canadian (far cooler) section of the falls. Its right in the same area as the new casino, which we visited in fact. But that barely makes the highlight reel of the weekend. We should begin, of course, with the room. I can say with a good amount of certainty that it is the second coolest hotel room I have ever stayed in. Our wedding-night suite at the Hyatt obviously takes the cake and while the suites we use for the party at Blake are pretty awesome, they don't have any of the elements available here. To begin with there was the view. I mean, what a sweet ass view. We were 18 floors up and directly in line with the horseshoe. I will put good pictures online at some point, this is one from my moblog:
I know thats not especially clear but its the best I can do. The giant puff of mist you see is the dead center of the falls. You cannot believe how incredibly clear this all looked, the rushing water, the spraying mist, the ways you can literally follow the flow over the side of the cliff. I spent probably an hour, in toto, just watching the falls from our window. Thats not even to mention the two other important facts of the room. 1) the fireplace: it was gas of course, but it was still gorgeous and it was right along side the almost floor-to-cieling window. I turned it on the second we walked in and only extinguished it when we left the next morning. Having a fire roaring was all but intrinsic to a relaxing evening in the Baxter household when I was growing up, and while a big part of that was obviously the wood crackling and the smell, even just the aesthetics of the orange glow does alot. It meant the room stayed a Katie-riffic temperature as well, I suppose. 2) the jacuzzi--in terms of pure jacuzzi-dom, by which I refer to just the actual tub itself, this thing was the nuts. It was ginormous, to begin with, designed for two people to be able to lay side by side with room to spare. Beyond that there was also the fact that, due to a window in the wall, you could choose to watch tv from the bath or enjoy the view of the falls. I did both and overall my back felt incredible when I walked away from that hotel in the morning. Admittedly it didn't have the gray marble or the LCD tv for Buffy/Sportscenter but it was stell a great tub and bathroom overall.
Alongside the great accomodations, there was the great food. The restaurant in the hotel, The Terrapin Grille, was actually where we went to dinner last Valentine's Day (well, as close as we get to Valentine's Day). They have great fish, so its a perfect lenten choice not to mention that it has a pretty view of the water and overall solid quality and atmosphere. We arrived about 7:00 for dinner and sat down soon after. I was going to eat fish anyway, so Katie chose the wine and it was a pretty decent Riesling. I must admit that I'm not a fan of sweet grapes, but if you've gotta drink white wine I would prefer a riesling with some character to what seems to me a universally lame chardonnay. We started of the fish-festival with a tasty platter of smoked salmon, which apparently Katie had never had before. I figured she would enjoy it and I was fairly sure when what came was true high quality salmon I knew I was right. Soon after finsihing that we received the entrees: Katie went for a repeat performance of the Pan Seared Chilean Sea-Bass, which was really perfectly cooked. It was about as tender and soft as you can make a piece of fish like that, it didn't flake or crumble in any way. Not to mention that whatever the glaze happened to be, it added a perfect sweetness to the whitefish that simply accented the mouth feel without in anyway interfering with the flavor. It wasn't a marinade, and that shows intelligence in preparation, you didn't need more flavor in a fish that good. I don't know if it was the exact same as last year, but it was chweet. I selected the special for the night, a pecan-crusted rainbow trout. Katie had apparently never even enjoyed the wonders of a trout fillet, which surprises me from a midwest gal, but nonetheless, it was truly a great meal. I can't describe it with the detail of the sea-bass, but let me simply tell you that it was as good a piece of trout as I have ever enjoyed. The lemon-garlic-butter sauce accented it perfectly and the contrast in crunchy pecans and firm but flaky flesh was solid. We finished the whole thing off with a chocolate gateaux that was really like a tiramisu for someone who hates either marscapone (impossible) or coffee (even less possible).
We made our way back to the Terrapin Grille for the breakfast buffet, primarily because I fucking love the breakfast buffet. The buffet in general is a fine art, but a truly excellent breakfast buffet is a masterpiece, a Sistine Chapel of my culinary world. It doesn't take anything special, you don't have to be innovative, but you have to execute a number of things in specific ways. Step 1) adequate "regulars"--by which I mean that you have a decent selction of breakfast breads, coffee, juice, milk, prolly some cerial, you know. This step includes most of the shitty you would find at a decent contintental breakfast, some bagels, croissants, maybe pastries. Step 2) quality meats--I didn't eat them, but they looked and smelled good and Katie like the requisites of sausage and bacon. Our buffet didn't exceed those requirements, there wasn't a carving station or anything, but it satisfied. Step 3) The fine touches--fundamentally the fine touches could be anything from hashed browns to some pancake like item to eggs and so on. Terrapin Grille proffered oven roasted breakfast potatoes and scrambled eggs to begin with. This was tipped over the edge by what may well be my two favorite things about breakfast buffets overall: fluffy waffles with whipped cream and an omelette station. Oh my God do whipped cream coated waffles and omelette stations rock. A fresh omelette made by someone who really knows what they are doing (which you fucking well better when given both your own fucking station and the nutzors of omelette making equipment) and has all the necessary fixings is awesome. I think that not only does its speediness and self-serve nature beat the omelettes that come out of a kitchen, but the fact that they know you are watching means they don't leave the omelettes alone to let them cook forever and dry out.
Alright, thats as much as I can humanly say about the breakfast buffet for now. Subject to begin with next time: Project Runway and its general ruleitude.
Peace,
MB-K
Friday, February 18, 2005
Just Like the Pied Piper, Led Rats Through the Butt
Katie and I finally watched the Project Runway end of the season get together thing and its freaking hilarious. Pete's contention is that Project Runway Season 1 is the best single season of a reality show in all of time and while I haven't been convinced entirely yet, this hour leads me towards that conviction. I think there is no question it is in the top three or so, if for no other reason than Jay is one of the best characters reality has ever seen. The behind the scenes shots indicate that not only is Jay funnier than he is portrayed (the impression of Olga's boyfriend, his "Hoe-si Klum" thing, etc) but that Robert is even stupider than you can imagine and that Wendy Pepper didn't just get Omarosa-ed. It seems that she is the jerk she looks like on the show.
Our tivo situation is dire at the moment, we are completely unable to keep up with the being gone every other weekend thing. I mean, its not like we don't record a buttload of shit, and at the moment we're behind on the Daily Show and Ellen. I mean, I'm also a week behind on Point Pleasant and a little more on 24 and Carnivale. I have finally been in the mood to catch up on those shows, at least 24, and I really want to watch Carnivale, but I feel so behind on the premise of the program that I don't know when it will make enough sense to prove completely enjoyable. Its got some great David Lynch-like moments and I'm a sucker for large scale good-evil conflict played out in unlikely small time circumstances. Anywho, Katie was gone last night and I watched tv like it was going out of style, but we were still like 90% full. Hopefully being home for most of the weekend will mean that we can catch up before we go on the final debate bender of the season.
That bender is a vicious whore, by the way, that for me includes Vermont and Washington, D.C. Thats two pretty extensive drives, espeically in comparison to previous trips to Buffalo, Rochester, Cornell, and Binghamton. Not to mention that I hate driving in the first place and certainly am not a big fan of doing it with a bunch of college personnes qui je ne connai pas. Apparently the drives are 6 and 8 hours respectively, but I'm not entirely sure I agree with that assessment, seeing as how last year's trip to Vermont took between 8-10 and I fundamentally just don't believe that D.C. is 8 hours away. I know what mapquest and google maps and rand mcnally all say and Katie has told me as well, but there is no way its only 8 hours away. While the tournament at Georgetown is hella far away, at least the schedule is pretty easy for a pretty cool place. Burlington, on the other hand, while seeming to be a pretty legit town, is a repeat of the ass-licking schedule from last weekend. 5 debate rounds on Saturday munches it, even if it is just JV and novice. I can hope/assume that they will lag power round 4 and since there are fewer complicated debates/decisions, that we will be out by 9 or so. Nonetheless, the prospect of another 14 hour Saturday looms large on the horizon. After those two Katie will likely be gone for a 10 day jaunt around the Northwest from San Francisco to Spokanne. Obviously the first half of that journey is way fucking cooler than the second. It means that while I will likely get alot of work done in early March, I will spend the 10 days leading up to and including Easter alone with Hippo.
Alright, I just wanted to say happy weekend. If you need me I will be watching this week's all new "The O.C."
Peace,
MB-K
Our tivo situation is dire at the moment, we are completely unable to keep up with the being gone every other weekend thing. I mean, its not like we don't record a buttload of shit, and at the moment we're behind on the Daily Show and Ellen. I mean, I'm also a week behind on Point Pleasant and a little more on 24 and Carnivale. I have finally been in the mood to catch up on those shows, at least 24, and I really want to watch Carnivale, but I feel so behind on the premise of the program that I don't know when it will make enough sense to prove completely enjoyable. Its got some great David Lynch-like moments and I'm a sucker for large scale good-evil conflict played out in unlikely small time circumstances. Anywho, Katie was gone last night and I watched tv like it was going out of style, but we were still like 90% full. Hopefully being home for most of the weekend will mean that we can catch up before we go on the final debate bender of the season.
That bender is a vicious whore, by the way, that for me includes Vermont and Washington, D.C. Thats two pretty extensive drives, espeically in comparison to previous trips to Buffalo, Rochester, Cornell, and Binghamton. Not to mention that I hate driving in the first place and certainly am not a big fan of doing it with a bunch of college personnes qui je ne connai pas. Apparently the drives are 6 and 8 hours respectively, but I'm not entirely sure I agree with that assessment, seeing as how last year's trip to Vermont took between 8-10 and I fundamentally just don't believe that D.C. is 8 hours away. I know what mapquest and google maps and rand mcnally all say and Katie has told me as well, but there is no way its only 8 hours away. While the tournament at Georgetown is hella far away, at least the schedule is pretty easy for a pretty cool place. Burlington, on the other hand, while seeming to be a pretty legit town, is a repeat of the ass-licking schedule from last weekend. 5 debate rounds on Saturday munches it, even if it is just JV and novice. I can hope/assume that they will lag power round 4 and since there are fewer complicated debates/decisions, that we will be out by 9 or so. Nonetheless, the prospect of another 14 hour Saturday looms large on the horizon. After those two Katie will likely be gone for a 10 day jaunt around the Northwest from San Francisco to Spokanne. Obviously the first half of that journey is way fucking cooler than the second. It means that while I will likely get alot of work done in early March, I will spend the 10 days leading up to and including Easter alone with Hippo.
Alright, I just wanted to say happy weekend. If you need me I will be watching this week's all new "The O.C."
Peace,
MB-K
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Can't Fight the Seether, I Can't See Her Till I'm Foaming at the Butt
There were a ton of possibilities for butt-lyrics in this song. If I ever begin repeating tunes Veruca Salt has a couple more go-rounds. So Katie thinks my transcription of the Andy-Sanjay message is inappropriate. I think it both evades the use of naughty language and, since it is a direct quote/transcription, I don't think I get the blame. Not to mention, I just don't think there is a funnier way to convey the story than by transcribing it. I avoided the text of the less than presentable Auld Lang Sygne message so I think thats hard core restraint.
I haven't mentioned recently enough, how great a program the O.C. is. Important plot updates, it looks like Marissa is about to get involved with Alex, Seth's very brief girl-toy. Seth Cohen is still my second favorite character on TV and to be honest with you, now that Josh left the Bartlett administration, he's gaining some ground. Not to mention that Seth is in that great melodramatic angsty sarcastic situation that seems to always precede his relationship with Summer. I don't know for how many consecutive seasons they will be able to pull off that plotline, I guess you can keep varying his opposition from Luke (the anti-Seth) to Zack (the non-Seth) and at the very least you will have whoever happens to fill next season's logical role (according to the Grascian square) of the non-anti-Seth. Maybe it will be a sensitive water-polo player, I don't have the concept down yet.
The points I intended to make about this point in the season were twofold: 1) it rocks, everything about it rocks on and rocks hard, watch the OC, its one of the best shows on the air. 2) people are really pissy that Marissa likes girls. I mean, I can't say that most people are pissed about it and I don't really give a shit about what idiots who post on the O.C. forums have to say, but outside of people whose opinions I could have predicted (i.e. non-bigots) they are my only source of info. I can somewhat understand people who would say its a cheap publicity stunt, but if you've watched the show at all, its completely not the case. The whole idea fits pretty well into Marissa's life at the moment. A number of people indicated that their kids were pissy about the show, even if it didn't bother the parents, which just goes to show that you eat balls at capitalizing on potential teaching moments with your children.
Katie and I had a very nice Valentine's Day. I got her a pajama-gram which featured a pair of cashmere pjs I think she is very happy with. It was, of course, complemented with a box of Watson's truffles, a throw-back to the chocolates I gave her the night we got engaged. Even better, we are not done, since we are going to a suite in the falls next weekend, when we actually don't have a single debate to judge.
I am tired and I can't continue typing during one of Katie's favorite programs What Not to Wear. As a result I will say adios until sometime later. I feel profoundly unwitty. How bout this to wrap up. Should we get a google bomb started? Katie suggests "penis penis."
Peace,
MB-K
I haven't mentioned recently enough, how great a program the O.C. is. Important plot updates, it looks like Marissa is about to get involved with Alex, Seth's very brief girl-toy. Seth Cohen is still my second favorite character on TV and to be honest with you, now that Josh left the Bartlett administration, he's gaining some ground. Not to mention that Seth is in that great melodramatic angsty sarcastic situation that seems to always precede his relationship with Summer. I don't know for how many consecutive seasons they will be able to pull off that plotline, I guess you can keep varying his opposition from Luke (the anti-Seth) to Zack (the non-Seth) and at the very least you will have whoever happens to fill next season's logical role (according to the Grascian square) of the non-anti-Seth. Maybe it will be a sensitive water-polo player, I don't have the concept down yet.
The points I intended to make about this point in the season were twofold: 1) it rocks, everything about it rocks on and rocks hard, watch the OC, its one of the best shows on the air. 2) people are really pissy that Marissa likes girls. I mean, I can't say that most people are pissed about it and I don't really give a shit about what idiots who post on the O.C. forums have to say, but outside of people whose opinions I could have predicted (i.e. non-bigots) they are my only source of info. I can somewhat understand people who would say its a cheap publicity stunt, but if you've watched the show at all, its completely not the case. The whole idea fits pretty well into Marissa's life at the moment. A number of people indicated that their kids were pissy about the show, even if it didn't bother the parents, which just goes to show that you eat balls at capitalizing on potential teaching moments with your children.
Katie and I had a very nice Valentine's Day. I got her a pajama-gram which featured a pair of cashmere pjs I think she is very happy with. It was, of course, complemented with a box of Watson's truffles, a throw-back to the chocolates I gave her the night we got engaged. Even better, we are not done, since we are going to a suite in the falls next weekend, when we actually don't have a single debate to judge.
I am tired and I can't continue typing during one of Katie's favorite programs What Not to Wear. As a result I will say adios until sometime later. I feel profoundly unwitty. How bout this to wrap up. Should we get a google bomb started? Katie suggests "penis penis."
Peace,
MB-K
Monday, February 14, 2005
Nothing Can Stop Us, Not Now, I Love You, They're Not Gonna Get Butt
I am writing from the Binghamton debate tournament. It blows. I have judged every debate the whole tournament, including all 5 that occurred yesterday. Not to mention that each of those rounds was scheduled for like 3 hours, which meant that I literally left my fifth debate at 10:05 pm. That doesn't even account for the fact that 1) my last round was JV and 2) I get my shit started and finished on time. We didn't leave the school until about 10:45. It sucked ballz and sucked them very aggressively. Yesterday was a bad day all around. I officially have it off my chest and absent something more shitty occuring over the course of awards, sems, and finals, I will make no further mention of it. Leaving it there.
What follows is a literal transcription of a phone message I received the other day from the mobile telephone of APK:
"Penisssssss, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis. No dude, we should, uhh, watch Lost first. Penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis. Can we watch Lost first...(trailing off, phone handed to Sanjay)
Penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis penis...(2 second break)...penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis. (to Andy) You wanna do some penis? (phone handed back to Andy)
Penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis.
(Sanjay in background) I wanna do some penis. Lets do some penis. (phone handed to Sanjay) Penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis.
(handed back to Andy) Penis, penis, penis, penis, penis. Penisssss!"
Its up there among the best messages I have ever been left. It doesn't really top the genital version of "Auld Lang Syne" or Kevin's series of computer speak raps. But its a high quality message none the less.
I am in one of the weirdest debates that could possibly exist. If you know anything about debate I've probably told you my general feelings towards performancey args. While I have voted for them before and will do so again (unfortunately) I don't find them really interesting. The thing that really doesn't make sense to me is that this is a novice debate and at this here Binghamton tournament, the novice debates are supposed to be (and I think mostly are) true novices, in their first or second debate tournament. While I certainly am not intending to imply that as a result they don't know anything or aren't capable of sophisticated argument, but what they certainly are not capable of are arguments about the way "debate is always done" or the way "debate traditionally deals with the concept of history." Not because they are stupid, but simply because they don't have any experience with policy debate. It doesn't seem genuine and its not a convincing personal advocacy when the audience knows for a fact that its no more a personal advocacy than any other team that has had their 1ac handed them by their coach. I think that would be a good argument, but its irrelevant for the purpose of this debate.
If you want to fuck with traditional debate, thats cool. You can debate however you want in the time allotted to you, don't get me wrong. That doesn't necessarily mean you win, it doesn't necessarily mean you don't. The way you win performance debates is by being such a quality debater that you can overcome the general stupidiy of your arguments.I think thats alot easier to do if you've learned the basics of the activity, the way to most efficiently phrase and articulate arguments. Its alot easier to mess with something when you understand it then it is to screw with it from the outset. I should also note that during the 1ar we were about as close as its possible to get to a repeat of the dot's NDT performance without public indecency ( I don't know if bras count or not).
Last comment about the debate I am judging. One of the dude's from Army has a distinctly non-American accent, seems to be Eastern European, I'm not smart enough to place it more specific than that. Anyway, the dude from Bard spent a fair amount of time juggling and the Army folks caught on this really quickly and it was their specific example of the ridiculousness of the aff. This resulted in both the 2nc and 2nr noting that he did not come "to learn about juggling balls." Thats funny in anyone's book.
I would normally add something to this, since I wrote it yesterday and am posting it today. However, it is Valentine's day, and hence the day Katie and I got engaged 2 years ago, so I'm going to spend my time with her.
Peace,
MB-K
What follows is a literal transcription of a phone message I received the other day from the mobile telephone of APK:
"Penisssssss, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis. No dude, we should, uhh, watch Lost first. Penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis. Can we watch Lost first...(trailing off, phone handed to Sanjay)
Penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis penis...(2 second break)...penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis. (to Andy) You wanna do some penis? (phone handed back to Andy)
Penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis.
(Sanjay in background) I wanna do some penis. Lets do some penis. (phone handed to Sanjay) Penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, penis.
(handed back to Andy) Penis, penis, penis, penis, penis. Penisssss!"
Its up there among the best messages I have ever been left. It doesn't really top the genital version of "Auld Lang Syne" or Kevin's series of computer speak raps. But its a high quality message none the less.
I am in one of the weirdest debates that could possibly exist. If you know anything about debate I've probably told you my general feelings towards performancey args. While I have voted for them before and will do so again (unfortunately) I don't find them really interesting. The thing that really doesn't make sense to me is that this is a novice debate and at this here Binghamton tournament, the novice debates are supposed to be (and I think mostly are) true novices, in their first or second debate tournament. While I certainly am not intending to imply that as a result they don't know anything or aren't capable of sophisticated argument, but what they certainly are not capable of are arguments about the way "debate is always done" or the way "debate traditionally deals with the concept of history." Not because they are stupid, but simply because they don't have any experience with policy debate. It doesn't seem genuine and its not a convincing personal advocacy when the audience knows for a fact that its no more a personal advocacy than any other team that has had their 1ac handed them by their coach. I think that would be a good argument, but its irrelevant for the purpose of this debate.
If you want to fuck with traditional debate, thats cool. You can debate however you want in the time allotted to you, don't get me wrong. That doesn't necessarily mean you win, it doesn't necessarily mean you don't. The way you win performance debates is by being such a quality debater that you can overcome the general stupidiy of your arguments.I think thats alot easier to do if you've learned the basics of the activity, the way to most efficiently phrase and articulate arguments. Its alot easier to mess with something when you understand it then it is to screw with it from the outset. I should also note that during the 1ar we were about as close as its possible to get to a repeat of the dot's NDT performance without public indecency ( I don't know if bras count or not).
Last comment about the debate I am judging. One of the dude's from Army has a distinctly non-American accent, seems to be Eastern European, I'm not smart enough to place it more specific than that. Anyway, the dude from Bard spent a fair amount of time juggling and the Army folks caught on this really quickly and it was their specific example of the ridiculousness of the aff. This resulted in both the 2nc and 2nr noting that he did not come "to learn about juggling balls." Thats funny in anyone's book.
I would normally add something to this, since I wrote it yesterday and am posting it today. However, it is Valentine's day, and hence the day Katie and I got engaged 2 years ago, so I'm going to spend my time with her.
Peace,
MB-K
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Miss A Beat, Lose The Rhythm, and Nothing Falls Into Butt
The WB is currently promoting, during pretty much every commercial break that I saw, both going into and out of the program "A World Premiere Valentine Scooby Event" and while that does serve to differentiate it both from the "Rerun Valentine Scooby Events" and the "World Premiere St. Patrick's Day Scooby Events" I'm not really sure how the whole concept fell together. If you wanna go with a whole stoner love theme or something chure, but that doesn't appear the case. In case you didn't watch the WB New Tuesday you might not be aware of these changes, I thought I should make you so and while I still think you should fucking start watching the Gilmore Girls (sidenote to AJ: though you are still obviously on the Uncle Pervy train for Rory over Lorelie, how hot did she look as Richard's best man? they're trying to make her hair all wavy and full so she can catch up with her mom...) since its really funny.
You take the good you take the bad, you take them both and there you have...the Project Runway Final Three. By that I mean to say that while Jay made the cut fucking Wendy Pepper beat out Austin Scarlett. I like Austin and hate Wendy with the burning passion of a red hot pair of testicles, so it was a bittersweet moment. Really I can't imagine anyone beating out Kara Saun anyway, so Jay essentially won by not going out at this stage. I'm sure that Bravo will have a marathon to catch everyone who didn't get the opportunity to share in Jay's gay-Jesus-ian glory up with the situation before the finale. They like marathons over there, Bravo : Marathons :: Baxter : Mashed Taters .
Tuesday, being Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Martes Gordo, Phat 2sDei, was the last day before Ash Wednesday, and hence time for a yearly delicious-steak dinner. We made the trip to Outback because Katie enjoys the comfort of the chain rather than the less certain atmosphere of a local joint. That doesn't really bother me, both cuz the Outback is pretty cheap and has a fairly decent porterhouse. The steak is not quite thick enough to be really cooked very-rare, but I still dig it. The whole thing was paid for by a leftover Christmas Visa gift card. Katie had the salmon that Hippo mentioned on her blog the other night. The one thing I will give Outback over and above most chain restaurants is the high quality breadstuffs that begin the meal in earnest. Obviously some quality joints have tastier bread, but a majority of places don't stack up to the pumpernickely goodness.
Did ya ever wonder why they call it Tinseltown? I mean, I haven't been there, but I doubt there is tinsel anywhere. Fuck tinsel anyway.
We are going to Binghamton tomorrow for the old Valentine's weekend debate tournament. It shouldn't be a bad time, though the Saturday schedule is more than a little dangerous. I mean, I can appreciate the necessity of not wanting to make the tournament three days or whatever, but if we're debating until 10:00+ on Saturday and don't leave the tournament until 9:00 on Sunday I don't think I will be very awake for the drive. The tournament has some tacky fundraising items which seem hella high school to me (not things that were hella cool in high school, either) but at the very least many people enjoy it and it raises more than a couple bucks for legit causes.
Alright. Best of the weekend to you all. I will say hey if the chance arises,otherwise rest assured that I will do more than my fair share of chocolate eating from now until Monday-ish. I suggest the lot of you do the same and enjoy the holiday if/when you celebrate it. Hippo says hey. And meow. And Purr. Chweet.
Peace,
MB-K
You take the good you take the bad, you take them both and there you have...the Project Runway Final Three. By that I mean to say that while Jay made the cut fucking Wendy Pepper beat out Austin Scarlett. I like Austin and hate Wendy with the burning passion of a red hot pair of testicles, so it was a bittersweet moment. Really I can't imagine anyone beating out Kara Saun anyway, so Jay essentially won by not going out at this stage. I'm sure that Bravo will have a marathon to catch everyone who didn't get the opportunity to share in Jay's gay-Jesus-ian glory up with the situation before the finale. They like marathons over there, Bravo : Marathons :: Baxter : Mashed Taters .
Tuesday, being Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Martes Gordo, Phat 2sDei, was the last day before Ash Wednesday, and hence time for a yearly delicious-steak dinner. We made the trip to Outback because Katie enjoys the comfort of the chain rather than the less certain atmosphere of a local joint. That doesn't really bother me, both cuz the Outback is pretty cheap and has a fairly decent porterhouse. The steak is not quite thick enough to be really cooked very-rare, but I still dig it. The whole thing was paid for by a leftover Christmas Visa gift card. Katie had the salmon that Hippo mentioned on her blog the other night. The one thing I will give Outback over and above most chain restaurants is the high quality breadstuffs that begin the meal in earnest. Obviously some quality joints have tastier bread, but a majority of places don't stack up to the pumpernickely goodness.
Did ya ever wonder why they call it Tinseltown? I mean, I haven't been there, but I doubt there is tinsel anywhere. Fuck tinsel anyway.
We are going to Binghamton tomorrow for the old Valentine's weekend debate tournament. It shouldn't be a bad time, though the Saturday schedule is more than a little dangerous. I mean, I can appreciate the necessity of not wanting to make the tournament three days or whatever, but if we're debating until 10:00+ on Saturday and don't leave the tournament until 9:00 on Sunday I don't think I will be very awake for the drive. The tournament has some tacky fundraising items which seem hella high school to me (not things that were hella cool in high school, either) but at the very least many people enjoy it and it raises more than a couple bucks for legit causes.
Alright. Best of the weekend to you all. I will say hey if the chance arises,otherwise rest assured that I will do more than my fair share of chocolate eating from now until Monday-ish. I suggest the lot of you do the same and enjoy the holiday if/when you celebrate it. Hippo says hey. And meow. And Purr. Chweet.
Peace,
MB-K
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Lets Get it Started, Ha!, Lets Get it Started in Butt
So we are counting down the moments to the Super Bowl and while we do so, I should simply mention to you the amazing thing that is currently taking place on Animal Planet. It is THE PUPPY BOWL!! You should tune to Animal Planet right now and see if you can catch a little bit of the show, especially if you're reading this on Sunday. Literally, this is a three hour program of puppies playing on a mini-football field. I have no idea who came up with this programming concept, but I think its clear that s/he is the smartest person ever to exist in any context ever. Without question. While you are on the Animal Planet website do me a favor, hi up the "Vote for MVP" link and vote for Itsy, the French Bulldog, as most valuable puppy. It was really really cute when it was playing with the big German Shepard.
I watched this Budweiser commercial that was rejected from the Super Bowl telecast. Its available at their website if you want to see it. The two things to note are: 1) its not really very funny, like the people on local sports radio were arguing for the entire fucking week 2) its not at all offensive, holy ass. I mean, I get that they don't want to draw attention to the fact that last year they showed a titty, but no one has forgotten. Why not allow a commercial that makes the whole thing seem like an accident? The Ostrich strategy is not going to get you anywhere on this one.
We're having a fairly low-key Super Bowl evening, just Katie, Hippo, and I. Hippo got a bunch of invitations to Super Bowl parties but she decided to stay in and enjoy some snacks with us. We're having cheese and crackers, sour cream and cheddar chips, bacon wrapped water chestnuts, fresh chocolate cake, and cheddarwurst with french fries. Its a tasty collection of foods but I sort of wish we had a group of friends in the area, the idea of throwing a Super Bowl party, or really any party, is very appealing to me. We have a great amount of entertaining materials and abilities, but I think the last person who came over to our apartment was Andrea on Katie's birthday. Admittedly we did plenty of hangin round the holdiays and we spend alot of our weekends at debate tournaments, but its still kinda sad. Maybe someday we will be able to figure something out so I have an opportunity to show off my wife, kitty, and skillz. We don't have much space I suppose, irregardless...
Fox just did a little piece on Javon Kearse and his inspirational brother-dying story. The intro to the film was Pam Oliver explaining that "Kearse lived for sacks." Unfortunately, the woman doesn't seem to differentiate enough between her soft "a" and "e" sounds and I had to rewind to determine that #93 isn't APK style.
I've been taking part in a virtual superbowl party at Big Screen's house this afternoon. Its pretty chweet. I am now officially a dual user of AIM and MSN Messenger, so go fuck yourself technology. Its just like being at home except everyone is small and they don't talk clearly and I can't talk to them and they look a little like there is a strobe light constantly going off. I wish I was there having a PBR right now.
Anywho, the game calls. I will betray my beloved NFC (as Pete has rightfully noted) and cheer against the Eagles. I just can't forgive the 4th and 26. Alright, time to enjoy the last NFL experience of the season. Its bittersweet, like the chocolate that went into this delicious moist cake, in front of me right now.
Peace,
MB-K
I watched this Budweiser commercial that was rejected from the Super Bowl telecast. Its available at their website if you want to see it. The two things to note are: 1) its not really very funny, like the people on local sports radio were arguing for the entire fucking week 2) its not at all offensive, holy ass. I mean, I get that they don't want to draw attention to the fact that last year they showed a titty, but no one has forgotten. Why not allow a commercial that makes the whole thing seem like an accident? The Ostrich strategy is not going to get you anywhere on this one.
We're having a fairly low-key Super Bowl evening, just Katie, Hippo, and I. Hippo got a bunch of invitations to Super Bowl parties but she decided to stay in and enjoy some snacks with us. We're having cheese and crackers, sour cream and cheddar chips, bacon wrapped water chestnuts, fresh chocolate cake, and cheddarwurst with french fries. Its a tasty collection of foods but I sort of wish we had a group of friends in the area, the idea of throwing a Super Bowl party, or really any party, is very appealing to me. We have a great amount of entertaining materials and abilities, but I think the last person who came over to our apartment was Andrea on Katie's birthday. Admittedly we did plenty of hangin round the holdiays and we spend alot of our weekends at debate tournaments, but its still kinda sad. Maybe someday we will be able to figure something out so I have an opportunity to show off my wife, kitty, and skillz. We don't have much space I suppose, irregardless...
Fox just did a little piece on Javon Kearse and his inspirational brother-dying story. The intro to the film was Pam Oliver explaining that "Kearse lived for sacks." Unfortunately, the woman doesn't seem to differentiate enough between her soft "a" and "e" sounds and I had to rewind to determine that #93 isn't APK style.
I've been taking part in a virtual superbowl party at Big Screen's house this afternoon. Its pretty chweet. I am now officially a dual user of AIM and MSN Messenger, so go fuck yourself technology. Its just like being at home except everyone is small and they don't talk clearly and I can't talk to them and they look a little like there is a strobe light constantly going off. I wish I was there having a PBR right now.
Anywho, the game calls. I will betray my beloved NFC (as Pete has rightfully noted) and cheer against the Eagles. I just can't forgive the 4th and 26. Alright, time to enjoy the last NFL experience of the season. Its bittersweet, like the chocolate that went into this delicious moist cake, in front of me right now.
Peace,
MB-K
Friday, February 04, 2005
I'm Hooked on a Feeling, I'm High on Believing, That You're in Love With Butt
It was like medical day in the B-K household or something, regular doctor and optometry for Kate Marie and the vet for Hippo. I hate the medical establishment and I really do feel like all the fringe specific doctors are 99% sham. I know this is not accurate and a pretty silly distinction in the grand consideration of the fact that they are both subject to the same functions of capital and fundamentally, your average family practitioner makes about 10 times as much as the corporate dentist, but regardless. I feel like real doctor's shouldn't be trying to sell you shit. Your doctor is never like "We can cure your strep throat and if you want something else cured, we are offering a second condition for 1/2 off" or "You can go with the regular penicillin, or for an extra 39.99, you can get the SuperPen, which will do it in half the time." Not to mention that at a real doctor's office they try to keep the ads sort of in the background, mostly in the form of useful products which just so happen to be marked with random Proctor and Gamble shitty. You've got a pen from Mucinex and a stapler from Pfizer, etc. The eye-doctor, nope, they just fill the waiting room with brochures and booklets and posters and displays. Its like getting your oil changed at Precision Tune, where they really try to make their money by offering you useless shit and get you into the store with a $15 oil change thats worth a buck and a quarter. Pisses me off, but whatev.
Katie is listening to country music, and it blows. I'm not saying all country blows, I can totally handle country thats just twangy pop (i.e. Shanaya) or country thats just twangy rock (i.e. some Garth Brooks, Johnny Cash, etc.) but the shit that is truly country just horrifies me.
Bottle of Red...Bottle of White...Bottle of Pineapple Schnapps
Hippo started her own blog the other day. She doesn't have a complete grasp over the medium yet, but I think she will get the hang of it soon. Today she was talking to me about the fact that she feels Adorno's condemnation of contemporary art is too harsh, but resonates with her general anti-aesthetic sympathies. I told her that this is exactly what she should be explaining to the world, that she would help to remove the common perception that female persian cats have no interest in philosophy. She articulately explained that she doesn't feel that every time she presents herself to the epublic that she should be held responsible for the entire persian kitty community. Power to the pussycat.
I reread Bret Easton Ellis' Glamorama today. Its on my 20th Century American Literature list and it might be my favorite book. Its certainly not for the faint of heart and it kinda blows that Katie will most likely never read it, but seriously its an incredible read if you've got some resistence to language, sex, and violence. I have a pretty high tolerance for representations of all those things, so I think its pretty notable that there is one scene towards the end that I can barely read. If anyone else has read it and can comment on the scientific viability of what happens to Chloe, I would be intersted. I can find no further information on the subject online and while I think Katie might be able to, she rightly figures that if it causes me to audibly groan, she doesn't want to know. Someday I'm gonna teach this book, but I think I'll wait until I've got tenure at a conservative christian school...
If you haven't started actively cursing the Eagles in advance of Sunday, its never too late to start...
Peace,
MB-K
Katie is listening to country music, and it blows. I'm not saying all country blows, I can totally handle country thats just twangy pop (i.e. Shanaya) or country thats just twangy rock (i.e. some Garth Brooks, Johnny Cash, etc.) but the shit that is truly country just horrifies me.
Bottle of Red...Bottle of White...Bottle of Pineapple Schnapps
Hippo started her own blog the other day. She doesn't have a complete grasp over the medium yet, but I think she will get the hang of it soon. Today she was talking to me about the fact that she feels Adorno's condemnation of contemporary art is too harsh, but resonates with her general anti-aesthetic sympathies. I told her that this is exactly what she should be explaining to the world, that she would help to remove the common perception that female persian cats have no interest in philosophy. She articulately explained that she doesn't feel that every time she presents herself to the epublic that she should be held responsible for the entire persian kitty community. Power to the pussycat.
I reread Bret Easton Ellis' Glamorama today. Its on my 20th Century American Literature list and it might be my favorite book. Its certainly not for the faint of heart and it kinda blows that Katie will most likely never read it, but seriously its an incredible read if you've got some resistence to language, sex, and violence. I have a pretty high tolerance for representations of all those things, so I think its pretty notable that there is one scene towards the end that I can barely read. If anyone else has read it and can comment on the scientific viability of what happens to Chloe, I would be intersted. I can find no further information on the subject online and while I think Katie might be able to, she rightly figures that if it causes me to audibly groan, she doesn't want to know. Someday I'm gonna teach this book, but I think I'll wait until I've got tenure at a conservative christian school...
If you haven't started actively cursing the Eagles in advance of Sunday, its never too late to start...
Peace,
MB-K
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Got Me A Movie, I Want You to Butt
Look, I have put off commenting on this for a long time. I didn't even see it until way after everyone else had and my guess is that most people here have seen this. Anywho, I should provide it for the people who haven't, because along with Ludacris' "Get Back" and Lindsay Lohan's "Over" it is quickly becoming my favorite song. Once you get addicted and spend half your time on the Internet doing the roof-raising dance in tribeuce to the dude (who, yes has some fucked-up similarities once he tilts his head back) you may want the lyrics and their translation. You may also not care about the lyrics since the best part about this song being in Romanian is that you can do a bunch of crazy make-em-ups and make the song about, for instance Hippo and how she likes to play with fishies or the idea of meowing. You could make it about APK and his proclivities for butt if you wished. The possibilities are endless.
So American Idol this season is interesting. The folks at Fox intelligently realized that the audition episodes do inordinately well in comparison to how hard they are to make and hence are airing like an entire month's worth. A shitload of people have tried to pull this year's William Hung but as of yet no one has been nearly that badly hilarious. The interesting thing has been the tremendous amount of people who are soemwhere between not traditionally attractive and completely butt-lickingly ugly but who, in the epic words of Randy, "can really blow." One dude today looked like he had mild mental disabilities but I could see him getting in the top 10. I forget how much I like American Idol and how fabulous the combo of judges is. There are combinations that just work on TV and Simon, Paula, and Randy are among those combos.
The only other television I will mention at the moment is Medium, which is a decent program. I think of it in much the same light as the show that immediately precedes it, Las Vegas. By that I mean that both are decent programs, both in their stand alone episodes and their overall plotlines. I wouldn't be upset if I missed either of them, but as long as they are on they will make my tivo. Medium has a tremendous amount of potential, since every episode opens with a dream. They could use those dreams in the style of Six Feet Under, but I can't expect every series to measure up to HBO Original Programming. Instead they would fit in with a serious moment on Two and Half Men or something. The show doesn't really explore much of the implications of her psychicness, though this week's episode had a moment very much reminiscient of the Oracle in the original Matrix. Its really just a decent regular cop-show with a psychic, though its fun to see how the dream's manifest in the context of the show. The true test of good mystery television is entirely lacking (there are no moments like occur with Locke on Lost for instance) but if you aren't a CSI: Miami fan or need something else to fill the lack of Monday Night Football its worth giving Patricia Arquette a try.
I need some new blogs to read by the way. I've got a number of good ones, but some of the folks I used to count on quit the biz in the past several months. I mean, I can just randomly select people's blogs but it does little for me. I don't have Katie's fascination with reading blogs simply for the voyeuristic qualities, I prefer stories I can follow in some sense, i.e. I have at least some tangential connection to. I read some high school debate kids blogs, both because I somewhat know them and because I have reference to their subculture. I could write an ethnography about them, probably better than the fake ethnography I wrote about ska culture my senior year. I don't know if that was a better acheivement than the fake quotes I made up from Joe and Cort for my American Studies paper when I was a sophomore. I wonder if those teachers paid enough attention to those term papers to find it odd that like 5-7 debaters cited two Minneapolis attorneys and "foreign relations experts" for their interview subjects.
A related story I don't think I've mentioned. In 10th grade district 196 "randomly" selects 3-5 English classrooms to participate in a writing sample thing to grade the district's overall composition abilities. I put randomly in quotes because what they actually do is select 2-3 random classes and then the two specialized-track English classes to artificially jack the scores, at least thats what they did at good old RHS. So anyway, the day we were to do these little writing things the teachers sat down and had a little conversation with us about how important they were for the school and the district and shit. We weren't the most respectful kids in the world around 10th grade so a bunch of us decided that, besides each choosing assinine ways to answer the potentially more assinine question "What was the most disappointing moment of your life?" we would each put my name into the essay somewhere. We were specifically told to not put our own names on them so as to prevent cheating or some nonsense, so we decided that got us around it. Corcoran wrote his about a track practice where I used to physically beat him, Ruiz indicated that when I lost the tiebreaker-game to Deep Blue he almost never recovered, and a number of others were fanstastic as well. Mine described the disappointment I felt when Nixon lost the 1960 election to Kennedy. Regardless, about a month later the whole class got a firm what's-for from Chazbo (Chuck Hokkannen) when the district flipped out that their ringers' scores were actually well below those of the regular classes. The readers also asked who the hell this "Baxter" person was, which did give Chazbo some hint as to who may have been responsible for the scores, not that he thought Jamie Tschida was screwing around on the assignment, but still. Good times.
Kurt on the Gilmore Girls tonight mentioned that the breakfeast buffet had "bagels and a variety of shmear." That is my new favorite phrase, all spreadable sauces are officially dubbed shmear from now on. I might have toast with peanutty shmear tomorrow. I could make a chocolate cake with a cream-cheese shmear. My shmearing life has just begun, I have alot of catching up to do.
Peace,
MB-K
So American Idol this season is interesting. The folks at Fox intelligently realized that the audition episodes do inordinately well in comparison to how hard they are to make and hence are airing like an entire month's worth. A shitload of people have tried to pull this year's William Hung but as of yet no one has been nearly that badly hilarious. The interesting thing has been the tremendous amount of people who are soemwhere between not traditionally attractive and completely butt-lickingly ugly but who, in the epic words of Randy, "can really blow." One dude today looked like he had mild mental disabilities but I could see him getting in the top 10. I forget how much I like American Idol and how fabulous the combo of judges is. There are combinations that just work on TV and Simon, Paula, and Randy are among those combos.
The only other television I will mention at the moment is Medium, which is a decent program. I think of it in much the same light as the show that immediately precedes it, Las Vegas. By that I mean that both are decent programs, both in their stand alone episodes and their overall plotlines. I wouldn't be upset if I missed either of them, but as long as they are on they will make my tivo. Medium has a tremendous amount of potential, since every episode opens with a dream. They could use those dreams in the style of Six Feet Under, but I can't expect every series to measure up to HBO Original Programming. Instead they would fit in with a serious moment on Two and Half Men or something. The show doesn't really explore much of the implications of her psychicness, though this week's episode had a moment very much reminiscient of the Oracle in the original Matrix. Its really just a decent regular cop-show with a psychic, though its fun to see how the dream's manifest in the context of the show. The true test of good mystery television is entirely lacking (there are no moments like occur with Locke on Lost for instance) but if you aren't a CSI: Miami fan or need something else to fill the lack of Monday Night Football its worth giving Patricia Arquette a try.
I need some new blogs to read by the way. I've got a number of good ones, but some of the folks I used to count on quit the biz in the past several months. I mean, I can just randomly select people's blogs but it does little for me. I don't have Katie's fascination with reading blogs simply for the voyeuristic qualities, I prefer stories I can follow in some sense, i.e. I have at least some tangential connection to. I read some high school debate kids blogs, both because I somewhat know them and because I have reference to their subculture. I could write an ethnography about them, probably better than the fake ethnography I wrote about ska culture my senior year. I don't know if that was a better acheivement than the fake quotes I made up from Joe and Cort for my American Studies paper when I was a sophomore. I wonder if those teachers paid enough attention to those term papers to find it odd that like 5-7 debaters cited two Minneapolis attorneys and "foreign relations experts" for their interview subjects.
A related story I don't think I've mentioned. In 10th grade district 196 "randomly" selects 3-5 English classrooms to participate in a writing sample thing to grade the district's overall composition abilities. I put randomly in quotes because what they actually do is select 2-3 random classes and then the two specialized-track English classes to artificially jack the scores, at least thats what they did at good old RHS. So anyway, the day we were to do these little writing things the teachers sat down and had a little conversation with us about how important they were for the school and the district and shit. We weren't the most respectful kids in the world around 10th grade so a bunch of us decided that, besides each choosing assinine ways to answer the potentially more assinine question "What was the most disappointing moment of your life?" we would each put my name into the essay somewhere. We were specifically told to not put our own names on them so as to prevent cheating or some nonsense, so we decided that got us around it. Corcoran wrote his about a track practice where I used to physically beat him, Ruiz indicated that when I lost the tiebreaker-game to Deep Blue he almost never recovered, and a number of others were fanstastic as well. Mine described the disappointment I felt when Nixon lost the 1960 election to Kennedy. Regardless, about a month later the whole class got a firm what's-for from Chazbo (Chuck Hokkannen) when the district flipped out that their ringers' scores were actually well below those of the regular classes. The readers also asked who the hell this "Baxter" person was, which did give Chazbo some hint as to who may have been responsible for the scores, not that he thought Jamie Tschida was screwing around on the assignment, but still. Good times.
Kurt on the Gilmore Girls tonight mentioned that the breakfeast buffet had "bagels and a variety of shmear." That is my new favorite phrase, all spreadable sauces are officially dubbed shmear from now on. I might have toast with peanutty shmear tomorrow. I could make a chocolate cake with a cream-cheese shmear. My shmearing life has just begun, I have alot of catching up to do.
Peace,
MB-K
Monday, January 31, 2005
Yeek Yeek, Woop Woop, I Ain't Playin' Around, Make One False Move and I'll Take Ya Butt
So we are at the Cornell Tournament this weekend, back judging in CEDA East. Its been a long time since we were judging collegiate debates and I had begun to slip back into the high school debate mentality. Maybe its not the high school debate mentality, but rather my own particular experiences in Minnesota. By that I mean having lots of people I know at debate tournaments, not having to deal with a billion+ students and generally just feeling comfortable. This is my second full year judging debates in this region and while I think that most of the people around here know who I am, I'm still not entirely comfortable in these parts.I also think its notable that in terms of the quality of debate, these kids would get crushed by Minnesota. I mean, seriously, I don't know if anyone at this tournament, in any division, would even have a chance to get out of the Southern district.
This team from Vermont is running The Scream Kritik. They pretty much ran this argument in every debate last year and I kinda wanted to hit them back then. It has apparently begun to rear its ugly head again this week. The argument itself is not completely ridiculous, its an idea of statism, the alternative for which is to express frustration through screaming against the state. I am not sure if the author of this shit really intends people to audibly scream about their oppression or is using the scream as a metaphor, though my intuition is the latter. The folks from Burlington, however, have selected the former. This means that each negative speech is punctuated, several times, by ear-shattering screams. Like seriously, they freaking bellow, and not like shouting "Damn you STATE!!" (fist shaking) they just scream, in the way you might textually represent as "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!" This seems silly to me, but even if its right, can't you just do it once, maybe at the "alternative " section of your argument. Do you need to do it every time you mention that the alternative is to scream ("Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!" ) in each of the negative speeches. By the 2nr I've got the idea already. (TIME PASSES) No longer in the scream debate, now I appear to be embroiled in a headlong contest regarding the positive and negative aspects of an immediate nuclear war, spark baby.
I like that Faulkner-esque insert of (TIME PASSES) in the above paragraph, I've got a bombasss stream of consciousness blog going on up in here. I've had this Ludacris song in my head (Get Back) for like 2 days now. I picked it up watching the MTZ Hitz the other day, stayin in touch with the kids. It is teaming up with Lindsay Lohan's "Over" to contend for my new favorite song, a slot most likely still held by Ashlee. You know how funny the talking goat is by the way, I hadn't listened to that shit in years until the other day and it really is comedic gold.
So last Wednesday or Thursday night Hippo went into the bedroom closet and managed to get really dirty. My suspicion is that she got shoe polish or something on her, becuase she was all grayish black on the left side of her face. Anyway, we tried to wipe her off with a washcloth and then thought about just letting her take care of it in her cattish ways, but ultimately determined that the stickyness combined with the discoloration was not good and decided to thoroughly wash her off, which meant her first bath, of sorts. Not surprisingly, Hippo was not especially keen on the idea of taking a bath. Katie thought it would work best in the sink, rather than the tub, and holy ass was she wrong. At least in the tub she didn't feel all claustrophobic. Anyway, we should have taken a picture but I was all occupied by making sure that hippo didn't hate me. It was hilarious, she was about 1/3 of her normal size and looked like a long haired skinny chihuahua. The funniest part was that we were trying not to get her head really wet, so the fur on her face was still totally puffy. I'm certain this will happen again at some point and I will make sure Katie has the camera ready.
So at the Econo-Lodge which was our home away from home for the weekend (I could pretty much, at this point, by the way, make an exhaustive survey of Econo-Lodges in the upstate New York region, "Econo Lodges of Upstate New York: Wireless Internet, Frozen Waffles, and/or Pert Plus") the "continental breakfast" came up completely weak style. Don't get me wrong, the wireless came correct, but it was coffee and one of those plastic pastry cases full of cinammon rolls and muffins. It didn't completely wrap its mouth around sheep-genitals, but it lacked the usual charm of cereal and certainly the sophistication of toaster-delectables. Anyway, today they added to the cinammon rolls one of my all-time favorite breakfast treats: bread-bag powdered sugar donnettes. If you don't know what I am referring to, first off, you poor unfortunate ass, and secondly, think of a long plastic bag (bout like a bread-bag (whoop-whoop) but full of mini-powdered-sugar-donuts instead of (whoop-whoop)). These are specific, they aren't just the regular Hostess powdered donettes, they transcend that earthly state and through the medium of the bread-bag (whoop-whoop) gain some sort of cool dryness that smacks on your tongue like the English forest-fire-prevention-representative.
I'm now watching last week's edition of Point Pleasant. Its Marti Noxon's new show, on Thursdays at nine on Fox. That is incredibly weak of the Fox-crew of course, but since they always intend to destroy their best programs (qua Wonderfalls and Firefly), not much of a surprise that they didn't move House to play it after American Idol or something. The show is pretty good through 3 episodes, a very Buffy-like set up of good and evil. I thought it had some chance to resonate with people (the few who weren't watching the Apprentice or CSI) due to the popularity of the whole Desperate Housewives evil emerging in innocuous places thing. Unfortunately, however, Katie tells me the reviewers trashed it. Beyond the generally high quality style of the program, it also features the comeback of one of America's greatest loved actresses: the chick who played Diz in Starship Troopers. Let me tell you, she doesn't play second fiddle to Carmen Ibanez anymore, not even in Johnny's heart. My bet is they cancel it in 2 more weeks, so enjoy this year's installment of Fox licking its own scrot while it lasts.
Peace,
MB-K
This team from Vermont is running The Scream Kritik. They pretty much ran this argument in every debate last year and I kinda wanted to hit them back then. It has apparently begun to rear its ugly head again this week. The argument itself is not completely ridiculous, its an idea of statism, the alternative for which is to express frustration through screaming against the state. I am not sure if the author of this shit really intends people to audibly scream about their oppression or is using the scream as a metaphor, though my intuition is the latter. The folks from Burlington, however, have selected the former. This means that each negative speech is punctuated, several times, by ear-shattering screams. Like seriously, they freaking bellow, and not like shouting "Damn you STATE!!" (fist shaking) they just scream, in the way you might textually represent as "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!" This seems silly to me, but even if its right, can't you just do it once, maybe at the "alternative " section of your argument. Do you need to do it every time you mention that the alternative is to scream ("Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!" ) in each of the negative speeches. By the 2nr I've got the idea already. (TIME PASSES) No longer in the scream debate, now I appear to be embroiled in a headlong contest regarding the positive and negative aspects of an immediate nuclear war, spark baby.
I like that Faulkner-esque insert of (TIME PASSES) in the above paragraph, I've got a bombasss stream of consciousness blog going on up in here. I've had this Ludacris song in my head (Get Back) for like 2 days now. I picked it up watching the MTZ Hitz the other day, stayin in touch with the kids. It is teaming up with Lindsay Lohan's "Over" to contend for my new favorite song, a slot most likely still held by Ashlee. You know how funny the talking goat is by the way, I hadn't listened to that shit in years until the other day and it really is comedic gold.
So last Wednesday or Thursday night Hippo went into the bedroom closet and managed to get really dirty. My suspicion is that she got shoe polish or something on her, becuase she was all grayish black on the left side of her face. Anyway, we tried to wipe her off with a washcloth and then thought about just letting her take care of it in her cattish ways, but ultimately determined that the stickyness combined with the discoloration was not good and decided to thoroughly wash her off, which meant her first bath, of sorts. Not surprisingly, Hippo was not especially keen on the idea of taking a bath. Katie thought it would work best in the sink, rather than the tub, and holy ass was she wrong. At least in the tub she didn't feel all claustrophobic. Anyway, we should have taken a picture but I was all occupied by making sure that hippo didn't hate me. It was hilarious, she was about 1/3 of her normal size and looked like a long haired skinny chihuahua. The funniest part was that we were trying not to get her head really wet, so the fur on her face was still totally puffy. I'm certain this will happen again at some point and I will make sure Katie has the camera ready.
So at the Econo-Lodge which was our home away from home for the weekend (I could pretty much, at this point, by the way, make an exhaustive survey of Econo-Lodges in the upstate New York region, "Econo Lodges of Upstate New York: Wireless Internet, Frozen Waffles, and/or Pert Plus") the "continental breakfast" came up completely weak style. Don't get me wrong, the wireless came correct, but it was coffee and one of those plastic pastry cases full of cinammon rolls and muffins. It didn't completely wrap its mouth around sheep-genitals, but it lacked the usual charm of cereal and certainly the sophistication of toaster-delectables. Anyway, today they added to the cinammon rolls one of my all-time favorite breakfast treats: bread-bag powdered sugar donnettes. If you don't know what I am referring to, first off, you poor unfortunate ass, and secondly, think of a long plastic bag (bout like a bread-bag (whoop-whoop) but full of mini-powdered-sugar-donuts instead of (whoop-whoop)). These are specific, they aren't just the regular Hostess powdered donettes, they transcend that earthly state and through the medium of the bread-bag (whoop-whoop) gain some sort of cool dryness that smacks on your tongue like the English forest-fire-prevention-representative.
I'm now watching last week's edition of Point Pleasant. Its Marti Noxon's new show, on Thursdays at nine on Fox. That is incredibly weak of the Fox-crew of course, but since they always intend to destroy their best programs (qua Wonderfalls and Firefly), not much of a surprise that they didn't move House to play it after American Idol or something. The show is pretty good through 3 episodes, a very Buffy-like set up of good and evil. I thought it had some chance to resonate with people (the few who weren't watching the Apprentice or CSI) due to the popularity of the whole Desperate Housewives evil emerging in innocuous places thing. Unfortunately, however, Katie tells me the reviewers trashed it. Beyond the generally high quality style of the program, it also features the comeback of one of America's greatest loved actresses: the chick who played Diz in Starship Troopers. Let me tell you, she doesn't play second fiddle to Carmen Ibanez anymore, not even in Johnny's heart. My bet is they cancel it in 2 more weeks, so enjoy this year's installment of Fox licking its own scrot while it lasts.
Peace,
MB-K
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
When Love is Running Wild on the Diamond Butt
So I know its been forever, its my bad on that one. Busy crazy times back in the MSP are over and done with and we have returned to Buffalo, just Katie, Hippo, and me. The trip back was good, listened to football, stopped in Chicago and hung out with Katie's uncle and cousins. It was fun. The second half of the drive was a bit longer and encompassed more than a little bit of snow towards the end, but beyond that uneventful. Hippo actually did pretty well in the automobile, she meowed and was nervous for the first half hour each day, but then she found a comfy place to sit and slept most of the trip. We had her pretty well set up in the back seat and in a world where the entire car wasn't loaded down with shitty it wouldn't have been difficult at all.
This weekend, when we went down to my sister's hockey game, my dad surprised me, telling me that he had (in the process of googling his own name or something) found my blog. While he didn't mention any issues of content (though I'm sure they exist) he made a pretty good argument about my occassional propensity to work blue. I guess it is possible that people who would potentially employ me could see this or that it could in some way damage things. Anyway, I don't plan to lose my general style and certainly none of the content, but maybe just a toning down of the langue and/or parole (for all you Sausurrians in the hizzy).
Lets see, what deserves mention from the remainder of the month in Minnesota. We judged a good amount of important Minnesota tourneys, two sections for me, State, and the Southern NFLs. The sections were uneventful, State was pretty easy. I mean, I didn't judge on Friday, so the whole finding a different restaurant for ech round business wasn't likely to put me in the ICU. Katie had a slightly more difficult afternoon. I judged three debates, including the quarters and semis. They weren't especially difficult to adjudicate, but the sems debate was especially close. I really like alot of the kids from Edina and obviously I go way back with Joe, but damn do those folks need some guidance on the K. Apparently they were real proud of their frontline to ManWest's Agamben dealio, which I didn't hear, but you can only blabber about the Mearshimer evidence in so many ways. I understand not wanting to switch your negative strategy over, especially when you've got something that works so well for you in the first place, but you gotta be able to deal with changing trends. Anyway, when you've only got one real weekness even people who don't like it will try to exploit it. Thankfully those weaknesses did not prevent their top team from winning State and qualifying for a trip to Philly. Katie, who was coaching at Mankato West, also managed to help them go undefeated at Southern and clear at State, losing to the eventual champion. Yeah rah to her, I think the 507 crew got their money's worth (though obviously the debaters and existant coaches had something to do with their own success :) ).
The Most Assy End-of-the-Minnesota-Season award goes to Rosemount, in my mind definitively the second best team fielded in the state this time around. They ran into Edina in Sems (and while it very often happens that the best two teams don't meet in the finals, in this instance I think it was quite a gap (admittedly, I did not see the team from Eagan who was in the final debate) and at the semi-debacle that is the Southern NFL Bloodbath had to hit them in round 4...in the one down bracket (its a double-elimination tournament). Edina won that debate and Rosemount, who, at the absolute least should have been in the rounds deciding who goes to nationals, was eliminated before some of the throw-away teams had left the building. What was even worse was what sounds like the pretty sketch nature of their first loss and while I will continue my policy of not claiming to know precisely what occurred in rounds I did not see, let me just say, ouch.
So Hippo is doing really well. She seems to dig her new surroundings. Anytime she is not locked into a single room and doesn't have to worry about the constant threat of other hissing cats or inquisitive dogs, she seems to be in heaven. She found a place that she likes to sit and especially enjoys sitting on the back of the couch where she can leap towards anywhere in the apartment while also being able to bat at Katie's hair and scratch her shirt. I'm sure I'll have some pictures soon.
So I should probably describe my greatest discovery of the past month or so: its a screenplay I intend to write called "Himmler's Donut." Its basically an ethical dilemma story in the vein of Sophie's Choice. Here is how it breaks down: you are sitting around somewhere, minding your own business, when all of a sudden, Himmler shows up and offers you a donut. Its not just any donut mind you, its a fresh, Hot Now Krispy Kreme donut, somehow its the greatest one in the world. Himmler didn't have anything to do with the purchase or production of the donut, notably, there is nothing evil about the donut itself. Himmler just picked the m up off the table and is offering them to you. You have no other donut options, if you want a donut you are going to have to go through Himmler. What do you do?
The crazy thing about Himmler's Donut is that everyone I have proposed it to so far is firmly convinced that it is not at all a conundrum and respnd with something like "thats easy, obviously everyone would choose X." This is only odd when someone that person would usually trust says the same thing with "y." There are also a number of marvelously expressive possibilities for innuendo in the suggestion that one is "eating Himmler's donut." Hehhhehehehe.
One other good random story: the last night I was in Minnesota I met up with a bunch of the crew at Old Chicago to have a final Summit or three. Thor, Maroney, Wilking (on his way through the TC to FermiLab for the Spring), Reuter, and Nermgoise were all there at various points in time so it was a good crowd in general. Apparently the folks I was meeting had a couple drinks earlier while watching Ski-U-Mah lose a series to Michigan-freaking-Tech, so after a couple Stoli-Red Bulls Wilking was ready to make a trip to the TouchTunes jukebox. If you've never used this particular technology (as I, for instance, had not) it apparently has the ability to not only play the 100 or so songs programmed into it, but can also download pretty much anything you request. Well, Wilking decided to search for some Sonic Youth and came acrross the epic conclusion to Washing Machine "Diamond Sea." I won't pretend to be a huge Sonic Youth fan and truth be told I have often hated them. Nonetheless, let me just inform you that I at one point have heard this track enough to know what was coming. Its 19:34 minutes long and a pretty intense combination of soft lyrical harmony and fairly aggressive noise-rock. Here is a pretty decent little description. Anyway, you might imagine that the crowd at the Apple Valley Old Chicago would not be incredibly receptive to such a song. Wilking had played it largely to see if it was the 5 minute edited version or indeed the nearly 20 minute full-length track. It was indeed the latter and by about the 3rd minute of non-stop guitar noise the rest of the patrons were beginning to be audibly annoyed. There were a number of comments, most of which were pretty funny.
Finally the relentless rhythm gave in to temporal pressure and was replaced by The Barenaked Ladies' "The Old Apartment" which the balding late 20s guy at the next table had urgently selected with the play-it-now option during the particularly repetivite section at about the 13 minute mark. One of the drunken secretaries out for margarita night commented on how happy she was to "finally hear some words." Reuter, with the impeccable genius only he can sometimes muster, went back to the jukebox and re-downloaded Diamond Sea, and, in some confusion that may or may not have been influenced by Stolichnaya, also selected play-it-now. Hence after three minutes of one of the worst songs ever recorded, Sonic Youth for the second time that night (and probably the second time ever) graced the suburban land of 100+ beers. There were two hilarious results of this occurrence, the first very predictable. The quicker folks in the crowd quickly began to wonder if "they had just heard this song" or "if the jukebox was working" and to comment loudly about its anal-qualities. When the noise began again in full, the displeasure in the room was tangible, and more than just the bald dude went to try to displace the track. The second, probably funnier consequence, was that Wilking decided that not only would the crew from Andrew Morgan and associates enjoying their tall Miller Lights at the next table respectfully disagree with our musical tastes, but might decide to go Grand Theft Auto on the bit and decide to take it into the Americ-Inn parking lot. He reacted to this by cowering in the corner of the booth and freaking out something fierce about how quickly we needed to run screaming from the restaurant.
I can't possibly explain how funny that moment was, unless you know how Wilking seems in this situation. I will leave you with a thought that Hippo posed to me today: The blogosphere and its occupants are both proof of the increasingly seperated and alienated cultural divide and the hyper-connectivity allowed for by an electronic conversation with hundreds of people at a time. She hasn't quite grasped the fineities of the interweb yet, but its pretty smart for a 5 month old.
Peace,
MB-K
This weekend, when we went down to my sister's hockey game, my dad surprised me, telling me that he had (in the process of googling his own name or something) found my blog. While he didn't mention any issues of content (though I'm sure they exist) he made a pretty good argument about my occassional propensity to work blue. I guess it is possible that people who would potentially employ me could see this or that it could in some way damage things. Anyway, I don't plan to lose my general style and certainly none of the content, but maybe just a toning down of the langue and/or parole (for all you Sausurrians in the hizzy).
Lets see, what deserves mention from the remainder of the month in Minnesota. We judged a good amount of important Minnesota tourneys, two sections for me, State, and the Southern NFLs. The sections were uneventful, State was pretty easy. I mean, I didn't judge on Friday, so the whole finding a different restaurant for ech round business wasn't likely to put me in the ICU. Katie had a slightly more difficult afternoon. I judged three debates, including the quarters and semis. They weren't especially difficult to adjudicate, but the sems debate was especially close. I really like alot of the kids from Edina and obviously I go way back with Joe, but damn do those folks need some guidance on the K. Apparently they were real proud of their frontline to ManWest's Agamben dealio, which I didn't hear, but you can only blabber about the Mearshimer evidence in so many ways. I understand not wanting to switch your negative strategy over, especially when you've got something that works so well for you in the first place, but you gotta be able to deal with changing trends. Anyway, when you've only got one real weekness even people who don't like it will try to exploit it. Thankfully those weaknesses did not prevent their top team from winning State and qualifying for a trip to Philly. Katie, who was coaching at Mankato West, also managed to help them go undefeated at Southern and clear at State, losing to the eventual champion. Yeah rah to her, I think the 507 crew got their money's worth (though obviously the debaters and existant coaches had something to do with their own success :) ).
The Most Assy End-of-the-Minnesota-Season award goes to Rosemount, in my mind definitively the second best team fielded in the state this time around. They ran into Edina in Sems (and while it very often happens that the best two teams don't meet in the finals, in this instance I think it was quite a gap (admittedly, I did not see the team from Eagan who was in the final debate) and at the semi-debacle that is the Southern NFL Bloodbath had to hit them in round 4...in the one down bracket (its a double-elimination tournament). Edina won that debate and Rosemount, who, at the absolute least should have been in the rounds deciding who goes to nationals, was eliminated before some of the throw-away teams had left the building. What was even worse was what sounds like the pretty sketch nature of their first loss and while I will continue my policy of not claiming to know precisely what occurred in rounds I did not see, let me just say, ouch.
So Hippo is doing really well. She seems to dig her new surroundings. Anytime she is not locked into a single room and doesn't have to worry about the constant threat of other hissing cats or inquisitive dogs, she seems to be in heaven. She found a place that she likes to sit and especially enjoys sitting on the back of the couch where she can leap towards anywhere in the apartment while also being able to bat at Katie's hair and scratch her shirt. I'm sure I'll have some pictures soon.
So I should probably describe my greatest discovery of the past month or so: its a screenplay I intend to write called "Himmler's Donut." Its basically an ethical dilemma story in the vein of Sophie's Choice. Here is how it breaks down: you are sitting around somewhere, minding your own business, when all of a sudden, Himmler shows up and offers you a donut. Its not just any donut mind you, its a fresh, Hot Now Krispy Kreme donut, somehow its the greatest one in the world. Himmler didn't have anything to do with the purchase or production of the donut, notably, there is nothing evil about the donut itself. Himmler just picked the m up off the table and is offering them to you. You have no other donut options, if you want a donut you are going to have to go through Himmler. What do you do?
The crazy thing about Himmler's Donut is that everyone I have proposed it to so far is firmly convinced that it is not at all a conundrum and respnd with something like "thats easy, obviously everyone would choose X." This is only odd when someone that person would usually trust says the same thing with "y." There are also a number of marvelously expressive possibilities for innuendo in the suggestion that one is "eating Himmler's donut." Hehhhehehehe.
One other good random story: the last night I was in Minnesota I met up with a bunch of the crew at Old Chicago to have a final Summit or three. Thor, Maroney, Wilking (on his way through the TC to FermiLab for the Spring), Reuter, and Nermgoise were all there at various points in time so it was a good crowd in general. Apparently the folks I was meeting had a couple drinks earlier while watching Ski-U-Mah lose a series to Michigan-freaking-Tech, so after a couple Stoli-Red Bulls Wilking was ready to make a trip to the TouchTunes jukebox. If you've never used this particular technology (as I, for instance, had not) it apparently has the ability to not only play the 100 or so songs programmed into it, but can also download pretty much anything you request. Well, Wilking decided to search for some Sonic Youth and came acrross the epic conclusion to Washing Machine "Diamond Sea." I won't pretend to be a huge Sonic Youth fan and truth be told I have often hated them. Nonetheless, let me just inform you that I at one point have heard this track enough to know what was coming. Its 19:34 minutes long and a pretty intense combination of soft lyrical harmony and fairly aggressive noise-rock. Here is a pretty decent little description. Anyway, you might imagine that the crowd at the Apple Valley Old Chicago would not be incredibly receptive to such a song. Wilking had played it largely to see if it was the 5 minute edited version or indeed the nearly 20 minute full-length track. It was indeed the latter and by about the 3rd minute of non-stop guitar noise the rest of the patrons were beginning to be audibly annoyed. There were a number of comments, most of which were pretty funny.
Finally the relentless rhythm gave in to temporal pressure and was replaced by The Barenaked Ladies' "The Old Apartment" which the balding late 20s guy at the next table had urgently selected with the play-it-now option during the particularly repetivite section at about the 13 minute mark. One of the drunken secretaries out for margarita night commented on how happy she was to "finally hear some words." Reuter, with the impeccable genius only he can sometimes muster, went back to the jukebox and re-downloaded Diamond Sea, and, in some confusion that may or may not have been influenced by Stolichnaya, also selected play-it-now. Hence after three minutes of one of the worst songs ever recorded, Sonic Youth for the second time that night (and probably the second time ever) graced the suburban land of 100+ beers. There were two hilarious results of this occurrence, the first very predictable. The quicker folks in the crowd quickly began to wonder if "they had just heard this song" or "if the jukebox was working" and to comment loudly about its anal-qualities. When the noise began again in full, the displeasure in the room was tangible, and more than just the bald dude went to try to displace the track. The second, probably funnier consequence, was that Wilking decided that not only would the crew from Andrew Morgan and associates enjoying their tall Miller Lights at the next table respectfully disagree with our musical tastes, but might decide to go Grand Theft Auto on the bit and decide to take it into the Americ-Inn parking lot. He reacted to this by cowering in the corner of the booth and freaking out something fierce about how quickly we needed to run screaming from the restaurant.
I can't possibly explain how funny that moment was, unless you know how Wilking seems in this situation. I will leave you with a thought that Hippo posed to me today: The blogosphere and its occupants are both proof of the increasingly seperated and alienated cultural divide and the hyper-connectivity allowed for by an electronic conversation with hundreds of people at a time. She hasn't quite grasped the fineities of the interweb yet, but its pretty smart for a 5 month old.
Peace,
MB-K
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