End The Cola Wars!

REDIRECT

2010-07-09T11:39:00.003-05:00

Go to the new window into my brain at http://offcenter.tumblr.com/ . This old blog has been dormant for awhile, and until I finish school I doubt I'll get back to it. Tumblr expects less, which is better for my ADD. Oh, and let me reiterate that Jimmy Buffett sucks ass.

Are You Colorblind?

2010-05-11T09:47:00.003-05:00

http://fakescience.tumblr.com/

Easter Bunnies Will Steal Your Soul

2010-03-04T14:49:00.003-05:00

This Easter bunny incubus was photographed as it bent down to suck the essence out of the sweet old woman pictured. Holy shit these things are freaky.

Easter Bunnies Will Steal Your Soul.

Ball.

2010-02-02T22:15:00.001-05:00

Wise Fwom Your Gwave !!!

2010-01-15T08:49:00.004-05:00

I just found the best web site in existence. For anyone who owned a Sega Genesis this will be nostalgically hilarious.

Somebody captured the 4 spoken-word audio clips (and 1 groan) from Altered Beast, the game that came with Genesys, and looped them infinitely on a tiled screencapture backdrop and large swooping letters spelling "ALTERED BEAST." It's nothing if not brilliant.

When you click the link make sure you have your sound on.

http://alteredbeastclassic.ytmnd.com/

New Blog Post

2009-12-14T15:26:00.003-05:00

Things I've done since September 17, 2009:

Worked,
Two work trips (CA x2),
Two personal trips (RI & IA),
Two friends got married,
Two friends got engaged,
Studied less than I probably should have,
Played Medieval 2: Total War more than I probably should have,
Missed seeing Dan in DC at least 3 times,
Lived & Died in LA,
Hyperventilated for 25 straight minutes in a soccer game,
Ignored Andrew's snarky comments on the blog (until now),
Didn't go out for Halloween,
Spoke through a translator,
Rained,
Saw Slumdog Millionaire and the second half of No Country For Old Men,
Found some cool new music (The Dead Weather, Plants & Animals, The Dodos, Hospital Ships, Fuck Buttons, ...),
Tried cheese for the first time,
Saw Steve Vai shred on TV,
Thrice decided to take a photo of the Capitol out my office window every morning but then forgot about it,
Made $28.50 off of Andrew because he's lazy as shit,
Was disappointed by a grade
Was appointed by a grade, and
Didn't blog.

Now we're all caught up, so don't ask me what I've been up to next time you see me. You may ask me how I'm doing, though.

What Are The Odds?

2009-09-17T19:51:00.006-05:00

I just made a pun and you don't even realize it yet.

I might've learned something "useful" in a class this week. Well, it was in a book, actually: Against the Gods, The Incredible Story of Risk. It's slightly more interesting than it sounds. Slightly.

This week's lesson is about odds. Specifically, odds on horse (or dog, rabbit, turtle, or other raceable animals) racing. Let's say my horse, Brice Lord's Testicle, has odds of 1-to-1 (1:1), and your two horses, Crippleplex and Wendy's Testicle, have odds of 3:1 and 6:1, respectively. Since there's only 3 horses allowed on the track at Brice Lord Memorial Downs at anytime, then my horse has a 50% chance of winning, and yours have 33.3% and 16.7% chances. For example, with 3:1 odds there's a 1/4 chance Crippleplex will win, and with 6:1 odds there's a 1/7 chance that Wendy's Testicle will win. See the pattern? You've learned something already. Anyway, notice how the three horses' odds add up to 100%; this is because some horse must win the race, unless of course they all break their legs.

Wait, it gets a little bit more interesting. At a track that isn't named after me things work a little differently, because they're interested in making money, whereas I am already so goddamned rich I make money from giving it away. The odds at Charlestown Races & Slots for tomorrow are as follows:

Horse, Odds, Relative Probability
1, 5:1, 16.7%
2, 42:1, 2.3%
3, 3/5:1, 62.5%
4, 3:1, 25%
5, 12:1, 7.7%
6, 7:1, 12.5%
7, 53:1, 1.9%
8, 48:1, 2.0%

Right now you're probably thinking, "Brice comma this is boring as shit semicolon go back to writing about the cola wars period" Exactly! The relative probabilities of all the horses in the race does not add up to 100%, it adds up to 130.6%.

So, what the shit is going on here? How can we be 130.6% certain that a horse is going to win this race? Ever notice how attending races is free? No? Never been to a horse race because it's really boring, simultaneously low- and high-brow, far away, and quite possibly cruel to the animals? Well, it's because that extra 30.6% is the house's take. They skim off the top. It's the bookie fee, the Jew's usury, the Cossack's bargain, the what-have-you.

So next time you rush off to the races to see Cunnilingus 2 run around a dirt path twice in a matter of minutes and then forget where you parked remember that your hard-earned recession-proof cash is lining someone else's lined pockets.

By the way, I don't really know anything about horse racing, so if you do and I'm wrong about any of this, please don't hesitate to immediately explain how you know so much about horse racing.

An Obvious Metaphor

2009-09-15T09:23:00.006-05:00

Having lost to William & Mary already, the University of Virginia Cavaliers football team probably didn't need their mascot to literally fall off his horse during his otherwise rousing entrance at the beginning of the game on Saturday. Following the mascot's lead, the Cavs watched Texas Christian University put up 30 unanswered points in the 30-14 at home loss. Maybe for the next game he'll switch out his horse for a bicycle.

Visited States Update

2009-08-25T13:33:00.004-05:00

After another 2 years of aimful (the opposite of aimless) travel, I've created a new visited states map. Note my artful dodge of the central states, which is both incidental and intentional. I've also created my visited Mexican states map, which is somewhat less inspiring.

A comprehensive tally of where I've been in the U.S. of America.

A comprehensive tally of where I have/haven't been in the U.S. of Mexico. Mexico supposedly has states, by the way.

The Stock Market Is Not A Leading Indicator

2009-08-25T09:53:00.000-05:00

The logic: "Since the stock market leads economic recoveries, once the stock market recovers, the economy will recover." That is, the stock market is a leading indicator.

I disagree.

I could've asked you between mid-October 2008 - mid-January 2009, "What would you say is the current health of the economy?", you might've said something like, "Well, the stock market seems to have found a natural bottom around 8,500 (DJIA), so I think we've seen the worst of it, and so I'd expect a recovery in not too long once investor confidence returns in full." How would you explain then the following month and a half we spent below 8,000?

There's an inherent problem in using a stock market index both as a measure of economic health and as a future indicator of economic performance. Analogously, you need both a thermometer and a barometer to perform an analysis of the current environment and to create a forecast. The stock market has no foresight, it is purely reactionary, and so cannot be a barometer.

Why Any Index Sucks
What the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index (DJIA), for example, represents is an instantaneous assessment of investor demand for what the Dow Jones Company deems a representative sample of all publicly-traded companies on the New York Stock Exchange. When the DJIA goes up, the investor demand to own a percentage of those companies within the representative sample of publicly-traded companies goes up, and vice-versa when the DJIA goes down. In fact, it may be the only real world example of a Giffen good. Leaving aside the validity of any non-statistically selected sample to accurately assess a whole market, we have to question whether the dynamics of that index are capable of capturing (1) the entire current economic state of affairs, and (2) the outlook for the future.

On (1), conceivably, the movement and value of an index, being a representation of investor willingness to own publicly-traded companies, would accurately reflect the overall state of the economy because those informed people buying up company assets in the form of shares would be reacting to a full set of up-to-date economic data, financial forecasts, industry surveys, and deep corporate analysis of assets and liabilities. The errors enter when you consider how inaccurate that full set of up-to-date information really is. E.g. No nation's central bank forecast this global recession. Alan Greenspan just shrugged his shoulders back in 2004. "A new paradigm!" Can you say the U.S. economy was actually strong 1.5 years ago when the DJIA was tickling 14,000? Or was it a facade of cheap capital that bloated the market's perception of those companies' value and led to our current situation? Even greater than inaccurate information is the investing feedback loop. A big mutual fund company dumps a load of cash into a company or industry, prompting others to do the same to catch the ride upward, prompting smaller investors to do the same and grab the sloppy seconds. All parties then unload their shares, in the process taking some good profit, to the latecomers who think they're onto the next hot stock. Did the value of the company ever actually change, or was it just the perception of the value of the company that controlled the stock value? Of course it was just the perception, and when you start attaching numbers (in this case, dollars) directly to people's perceptions, you get misinformation. For example, I'm an Orioles fan (as much as one can be anymore). Would I have put $10,000,000 on a bet at the beginning of the season that the Orioles would make the playoffs because their new pitching talent was being talked up on local sports radio? What if they're winning percentage in the first 20 games is .750? Doesn't sound like a bad bet, until you consider that the Orioles fucking suck and they have been hot early on but then collapsed at or before the All-Star break every year for the past 12. Anyway, the point is that gambling follows the same principle. You attach a value to your perception of the likelihood of the team you bet on winning, and your perception is based on imprecise information compounded with a dependency on the actions of individual people. The stock market is no different.

On (2), I think the obvious volatility caused by overreaction is enough to tank any stock market index's ability to forecast economic performance. Sure, whatever happens today may have residual effects in the future, but on the whole, it's merely a snapshot and an instant history. Looking at the artificial floor at ~8,000 in early February is enough to call this into question. You could point out that the market is back to about 9,500, but then I'd have to wonder why it ever bothered dropping 20% to 6,500 at all if it were a solid predictor of economic activity. It's not, and its value only tells you what other people just like you think it's worth. For that reason it is often considered a measure of investor confidence. This, I think, is true, but it doesn't really matter that much how confident investors are in the long-run. If all it took was confident coke-snorting traders on Wall Street then the DJIA would have gone into orbit by now; investors were mighty confident two years ago until they realized a lot of their money was tied up in things that weren't worth anything. That is, investor confidence is just a projection of past performance onto the future.

Why Weathermen Are Better At Their Jobs
The weather is a chaotic system. There are countless variables that influence it and there are countless attempts to do so. But despite its complexity, weather still follows the immutable laws of physics. The stock market, and for that matter, the economy, ultimately relies on a deeper chaos: human behavior.

What the stock market, or any index, really is is a forced amalgamation and an instantaneously fleeting assessment of what investors think of the value of traded companies, with no memory and no foresight. Simpler? It's an artificial grouping of what people think things are worth right now. Any attempt to derive much of a prediction from stock market data is doomed to fail eventually, because it's essentially a prediction of what people will do, and predicting people's behavior is, well, impossible, unless you work for Pixar.

Why I'm So Damn Right
Instead of breathing a sigh of relief watching the DJIA tick up-up-upwards, I'm rather concerned about the fact that unemployment---as measured by our screwy method---has increased by 62% since last July. If we're looking for a recovery, it's consumers, as always, that will drive it, and if there is less capacity for consumption, then there's less recovery. Less consumption and wages also means less tax revenue for federal and state governments, and the current government economic stimulus is not sustainable in the medium-term anyway.

I know people don't like thinking pessimistically, and for those without jobs it's particularly difficult to bear, and of course I hope I am wrong and the economy does turn around, but I think for financial analysts in the media and in the markets to continue to herd after the stock indexes is overly simplistic and will only lead to further calamity in the future.

I Want to Own an Aviary (repost)

2009-08-19T10:51:00.002-05:00

I WANT TO OWN AN AVIARY
by Count Langenhoffen (originally posted February 2006)

An Aviary (capitalized because I would own it, and everything I own instantly accords capitalization) is a large enclosure filled with trees and such for the purpose of enclosing birds. You've seen aviaries in such blockbuster classics as Jurassic Park 3 (dazzlingly directed by Joe Johnston, between October Sky and Hidalgo) and The Haunting (which features a pre-celebrity Owen Wilson decapitated by a haunted fireplace[seriously]). So essentially the birds think they can fly through the webbed steel forming the aviary, but it turns out that steel reacts to birds the same way it does to everything else; they hit it, fall, and usually die. BUT, as Darwin taught us, the next generation of birds will know how the system works, and shall obey it unflaggingly, and so they become the living attraction of said Aviary.

Now, my Aviary will be different. First of all, it'll be fucking enormous; not because the birds need room to fly, but because I'm a big guy. In fact, my Aviary will be devoid of those dirty ornithological rats, and if birds end up in my Aviary, it's entirely coincidental. And as soon as you walk into my Aviary you'll be confronted by some kind of spike or boulder trap; notice I use "you," since I would never fall victim to one of my own traps. If you make it past the trap(s?), you'll notice the air is pungent with a tenebrous pall, due in large part to the still black pond to your right and the cobwebbed man-sized iron cages squeaking longingly towards the floor which are numerous and hanging from the roof on long, ancient chains. Spiders are rampant, of course, though not so many so as to draw your attention too much from an omnidirectional moan permeating the wispy white fog. There's some wilting shrubbery that's not been clipped for years, but its plainly obvious they were shorn to resemble souls writhing in the fires of Hell. Twisted trunks of half-dead trees litter the place haphazardly, and there's an exhausted cherry blossom, too (for contrast by juxtaposition). This is obviously just to create the mood for my Aviary, so that the next door neighbor's kids feel compelled to explore it. Then, once inside, they'd be trapped and thusly forced to serve me (not sexually) until their premature death or they embark as a group on a dangerous quest for a pirate ship full of gold hidden in a secret cave within the sewers of the town. If none of the kid's are Asian, then they won't have the quest option, since no one can convincingly yell, "Booby traps!"

Now, being a business-minded person, the logistics of maintaining such an aviary requires some serious rumination. First, there's manpower. Simple solution here: Pay some poor Polish countrymen to immigrate over and maintain my Aviary (I wouldn't use "Aviary" in the Warsaw newspaper ad so as not to stir suspicion). Their rudimentary belief in the spirits of the Old Country would surely remain lit as they torment and toil in my hellish Aviary. And while they toil and cry out at spirits nonexistent, they'd come to me begging to allow their indenture to end. I, of course, would grow to twice my size and cackle ghoulishly at their simple beliefs and hilarious terror. I might allow them put a bird in my Aviary if they agree to stop being fed, but the odds that they learn conversationl English are slim to none since the grand expenditures needed for the Aviary would prevent me from being able to afford Rosetta Stone.

Another important logistical consideration is making sure the Poles and trapped children remain motivated to work, so once in awhile I'd release into the Aviary a pack of hounds or a swarm of locusts. I might also release one of those badass string-tripped swinging log traps that did in the Predator, and I think also may have taken care of Benicio's character in the cinematic feast that is The Hunted.

If the INS gets too hot on my Aviary, I'd just cover it with a tarp whenever they came by looking for missing children and Poles. If they ask what's under the tarp I'd probably just make the whole damn thing send itself into another dimension, and then flash back into our realm when no one's looking.

What's most important for an Aviary is, of course, having a secret room where you crossbreed various hapless animals via torture. There'd be bunny rabbits, little kittens, cuddly otters, happy dolphins, chatty parrots (since they can talk), and tasty chickens (in the form of buffalo wings in the freezer), and also for good measure there'd be a couple of random beating cows' hearts connected to more electrodes than seems necessary. In this room I'd also pay Edgar Allen Poe's great grandson to sit in a tall black chair and read aloud The Telltale Heart and The Raven at odd temporal intervals. Once the creatures I manifest are ready to unleash doom upon the world I'd make sure they go straight for the places of worship, just to fuck with everyone's psyche.

One last item, let's throw in some gargantuan pterodactyls with lasers attached to their shoulders like those Dinobots.

I feel that building from this simple Aviary template, I'll have countless hours of entertainment to tide me over until my battleship is complete.

Bravo

2009-08-19T10:36:00.002-05:00

A Fond Farewell

2009-08-07T01:22:00.003-05:00

A coworker (someone who works with me, a coworker) recently left and thought it'd be fucking hilarious to dump about $17.28 worth of pennies in my office. Only, he didn't just toss them across the floor, he meticulously placed them in and on every conceivable thing. under my mousepad, on my "Rookie" award, etc. It probably took him an hour. The damage is done, my wrath rose and subsided, but as with any offense put toward me I naturally need to reciprocate asymmetrically. The problem is that he's no longer in his office, so aside from vandalizing his actual personal property (house, car, dog), I have limited recourse. So, I've decided the best way to get back at him is to hit him where he can't defend himself: his ideology. He's a stalwart Republican, and takes quiet pride in his antiquated political philosophy. So I'm trying to find the most left-wing, out-of-his/her-mind public figure who takes donations to whom I will glady donate the 1,728 pennies in his name (and address, phone number).

So, I need your help finding the most left-wing elected official in the country. Any ideas? And by the way, Brice Lord never needs anyone's help, by definition; I only phrased it this way to make you feel altruistic, for which you should feel guilty and used.

Thanks so much.

Caffeine Free Diet Coke is the methadone of soft drinks

2009-07-07T15:09:00.002-05:00

Cyanide & Happiness

2009-06-11T13:05:00.008-05:00

Cyanide & Happiness is definitely my favorite web comic, which isn't too much of an accolade, I suppose, because I don't really read any others, and I don't read this one regularly either. But anyway, it's pretty damn funny. It's quite twisted, too, so if you get offended easily, and you are aware that you get offended easily, and you also have the self-control not to enter potentially-offensive situations, you shouldn't read any further. Ever notice that my sentence structure is too complex?

Here's a recent favorite:

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Bubbles & Manias

2009-06-10T10:32:00.007-05:00

I came across this nice little graphic that generically depicts the market swings that occur during manias and bubbles. The graphic was posted on Jesse's Café Américain, an excellent, albeit dire, economics and finance blog that New York Nick pointed me too. The figure originally came from one Dr. Rodrigue at Hofstra University.

The eponymous "Jesse" seems to know his stuff, although I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough to know one way or the other, the admission of which is proof enough that those of you reading my opinions on the economy and the policies created to effect it should stick with caveat emptor.

That said, I'm pretty skeptical of everyone's enthrallment with the "green shoots" of economic recovery. Unemployment is still increasing in absolute terms, some assets' values are still dropping---most obviously housing, which precipitated the entire collapse---and the financial industry is still shackled with nasty debt. Any apparent recovery now would be artificial and lead to yet another empty, unsupported bubble. How does anyone expect the economy to grind forward when so many people have lost their jobs, and thus have no money to spend to prop up GDP? Consumption by households was 76% of nominal GDP in 2006. Where will this recovery come from? Remember that scene from Shawshank Redemption when the U.S. Army launches a nuclear weapon at one of the alien motherships, thinking the bomb will get through their fancy alien energy shields, and then for a moment everybody thinks the bomb worked and all their problems are solved, but then the smoke clears and the ship is still intact, floating above a flattened metropolis? It's gonna be something like that.

Anyway, to counteract the glum I've pasted a picture of the album cover from Kenny Loggins' "Return to Pooh Corner" below the "manias and bubbles" one. Now everybody go out and spend! Consume Kenny Loggins concept albums!

Porno Spam

2009-06-08T14:28:00.003-05:00

I'm infinitely amused by the bizarre subject lines spammers come up with to get their porn product emails through my spam filter. Usually they're either unimaginative ("Become the lover of his dreams") or too much of a metaphorical stretch ("Make your spire reach skies"). But once in awhile you get a real gem.

Here's my recent favorites:

"Get the longest banana."
I can't help but giggle when I read that. It's so ridiculous. What are we, 6 years old? "Hey baby, guess how big my banana is? It's big, yellow, curved like a crescent moon, and turns to mush after a day in the sun."

"Prosperity in banging."
Screw that ho-hum prosperity in life or career. I want to focus on "banging." And not just success, but prosperity. I want my banging to flourish, to thrive beyond all known bounds of banging.

"Equip your battleship with main caliber."
Picturing my penis as a battleship is pretty novel, and if that's not enough, it needs to be equipped with "main caliber." Kaboom!!! Face full of equipped battleship. The author gets serious credit for this one, and it's a great example of a porno spam that, in another context, would read like a unproof-read Chinese menu.

"Make your pecker your trump."
No, there isn't an "-et" at the end, it does just say "trump." So, next time I'm in a political argument with my conservative friends about, say, progressive taxation, I'll just confidently bang my dick onto the table and call "trump." Done. Argument over. If the author meant "trumpet," the image it conjures is one that every 15-year old boy has wondered about, and maybe even tried (only spontaneously, while stretching, of course).

"Suck it."
Refreshingly direct, though it could easily be misinterpreted as a crude insult from the early part of this decade.

"You're a moron."
Nothing to misinterpret here. Maybe I am a moron for missing out on "Drilling and drilling more, all night long!" I like this aggressive marketing style, it reminds me of those Macho Man Slim Jim ads where he bursts through walls and basically forces delicious Slim Jims down kids' throats. Tear into the spice!

Jaywalkers Beware

2009-06-02T08:44:00.005-05:00

While walking to the Metro last Tuesday (May 26) I noticed something peculiar going down at the southeast corner of 13 & U, NW. A police officer was giving some poor bastard a $5 jaywalking ticket for crossing without a "walk" signal. Understandably, the guy looked a bit confused.

As I scuttled by, late to work as always, I overheard the officer trying to justify the ticket with something like, "...and it's dangerous because if you step into that intersection when the light's still green, you may be paying attention, but the people behind you will just follow you, thinking they have a walk signal."

I saw the same cop standing at the same corner today, so I thought it time to raise the alarm. And as a blogger, I naturally feel a duty to also opine valuably on the justice of jaywalking.

First of all, I don't buy that people will unknowingly fling themselves into dangerous intersections without looking just because someone else does. To quote society from the 1940's, "if your friend jumped off a bridge, would you?" Of course not, it's a stupid question, just like the 1940's. Unlike in the 1940's, people don't hang out around bridges. We hang out at upscale dive bars and places where we can pretend to understand jazz. Getting back to it, it's pretty obvious when the sign says "don't walk," and it's pretty easy to tell who among the group standing on the corner is gonna go for it. Those people are always hanging out 5 feet into the street, staring intently at the traffic patterns, looking like they're trying to steal third base.

And I don't even really know what jaywalking is. I always thought it meant you crossed the street where there's no crosswalk. I can understand why that's undesirable since it can impede traffic. But apparently jaywalking can take place in a crosswalk, too. In my opinion, if there's time to cross---i.e. not needing to weave through heavy traffic---and you're in a cross-walk, this is perfectly fine. It brings to mind the jaywalking scene in Harold and Kumer Go To White Castle when docile, law-abiding Harold gets thrown in jail for being pressured into crossing an empty country street in the middle of the night even though the sign says "don't walk." Who cares? Not me, not the drivers that don't exist, and not my independently-minded fellow pedestrians.

Mr. Kevin, Esq., pointed out that drivers trying to take righthand turns find it annoying when pedestrians cross the street when they don't have the "walk" signal, because it prevents them from making the turn. Nevermind that DC is a heavily pedestrianized city, let's first remember that pedestrians have the right-of-way in this situation, and that said driver is sitting at a red stoplight. The driver can legally take the righthand turn so long as s/he yields the right-of-way, which the pedestrian possesses. BUS-TED, Mr. Kevin!!

Finally, given that DC does indeed have other problems (do I even need to name them?), it's a bit annoying that the cops have chosen to crack down on jaywalking. I know what you're thinking..."But Brice Lord, 'broken windows,' Rudy Giuliani, the crack epidemic, 1990's urban crime, you know what I mean!!!" 'Broken windows' is applied psychology gone horribly wrong, and I'd rather see more cops working the beat on foot, getting to know the communities and building trust and understanding rather than ticketing the low-hanging fruit.

Sure, this really isn't that big of a deal, but I know if I got a jaywalking ticket while rushing to work at 8:00 am I'd be pretty pissed off. Not just because I think it's a ridiculous waste of time for the police (and for me), or because I think I should be able to do it, but also because it's inconsistent with previous enforcement behavior. Worse, it's essentially an indictment by my government that I've done something wrong, and that pisses me off more than anything (except Comcast). Nor do I get the impression that the general public really considers jaywalking that important. Run a Google image search on "jaywalker" and you'll get a page full of knitted socks and a horse (below).

A sobering reminder of the perils of jaywalking: a horse in a weird prone position.

how do you get ... ringworm?

2009-05-18T09:56:00.007-05:00

What is wrong with people? This morning I went to google "how do i get a star 5-up in super mario 3 slot machine game" and while I was typing I noticed that Google was helpfully trying to fill-in my train of thought with what turned out to be an unexpectedly bizarre and sad look at humanity:

Of all the questions someone might ask that begins with "how do you get..." these are the most popular:

"how do you get pregnant"
"how do you get pink eye"
"how do you get herpes"
"how do you get a yeast infection"
"how do you get mono"
"how do you get hpv"
"how do you get a passport"
"how do you get ringworm"
"how do you get rid of stretchmarks"
"how do you get aids"

Now, let's think of some normal questions for the sake of comparison:
"how do you get a good night's sleep"
"how do you get rid of a cold"
"how do you get rich"
"how do you get rid of hiccups"
"how do you get free cable"
"how do you get laid"
"how do you get a star 5-up in super mario 3 slot machine game"
...and so on.

But instead we're presented with enough evidence of biological malfeasance to lock up all of humankind: pink eye, pregnancy, AIDS, herpes, yeast infections, mono, stretch marks, ... and then ringworm. I barely know what ringworm is but apparently it's at the forefront of people's minds.

The odd man out among these is "how do you get a passport." I'm sure the U.S. Passport Office is ecstatic about sharing prime web space with people who really want to know how you get herpes. If I was actually trying to figure out how to get a passport I'd probably get so distracted by the ringworm question and completely forget what I was doing. "Passports, passports, passpo... Ringworm. Huh. That sounds disgusting. Better clear my afternoon, I need to find out more about this."

I guess it's good that people are trying to find out how you get pregnant, herpes, AIDS, or passports before it happens. But my guess is, as with most "life events," these questions are being posed after the fact. And you might just end up with a passport after a one night stand if you're not careful.

February Spites East, Prepares Impassioned Exit

2009-02-27T23:45:00.006-05:00

In a move described by weather policy experts as puzzling and exasperating, February has signaled its general dislike for both the people of the East Coast and the month of March in its declaration of a warm weather embargo to conclude its annual rotation in the weather presidency.

"It's a general 'Fuck all of you'", says Robert Straus, an expert in foreign weather policy at the University of Colorado's Center for Atmospheric Research.

Straus is not alone in his assessment of February's brusque behavior. Conditions seemed to be warming between the rogue month and the people of the East Coast for several weeks, bringing higher temperatures and brighter spirits across the land. "Easterners who were led to believe the harsh winter cold was in a welcome recession are now left wondering what happened as they grab for their down jackets, scarves, and little colorfully patterned rubber boots that I guess they buy at Urban Outfitters."

Some speculate that February is again using its position as a bridge month between much-reviled winter and favored spring to gain leverage with the international weather community after a particularly unfruitful meeting of the G12. February is believed to have lured in half the country with a delightful warm spell, only to lash out in a childishly retributive manner to bring much-desired attention on its supposed plight. "February has long wished to use the arctic blast weapon to convince the 12-member governing body that its allocation of 28 or 29 days is unfair and moreover, bizarre" believes James Ogden, the U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the UN Special Commission for Clouds, Rain, and Grey Skies.

But Straus doesn't think it's that simple. "Why now?" asks Straus. "If this is the feared arctic blast weapon then where's Jake Gyllenhaal and those crazy ice wolves everybody predicted?" Straus favors engagement with February, noting that as the month warmed, the public began to write it off and take its unusually pleasant weather for granted. "I think this really pissed February off. It didn't have to be nice outside on the weekends. It could have been a blustery hell, as February always is, with crazy ice wolves lurking around every corner."

There may be some truth in that. As January's annual reign of terror came to a close, relations between the neighbors were frosty, at best. At a temperature-fixing summit in Kathmandu, Nepal, January delivered a scathing polemic to February for its cozy relationship with March, a month considered to be partly aligned with the centrist Spring bloc. January, long the hard-line member of the G12, was likely lambasting February for its decision not to support January's Joint Resolution To Act In Accordance With The Groundhog Day Proclamation, thus depriving it of the needed supermajority.

"I really don't think the public understood what February had given up to leave January...out in the cold. I'm not particularly surprised this happened, particularly considering the potential for puns" says Frank Case, a former national climate and weather security adviser to President Clinton.

Additionally, while much of the attention has been paid to February's drastic actions and its affect on the East, little mind has been paid to February's other immediate neighbor, March. The enigmatic month has been conspicuous in its denunciations of February's measures. Enraged at its stained reputation as it is forced to swallow a massive cold front and late-winter snow and ice squall pushing eastward across the Midwest just as it begins its term, March has threatened to cut off diplomatic ties with February. "It's just what we need, a more disjointed, confusing transition of power from February---a month with a variable number of days---and March---a month symbolized by two completely opposite animals, the lion and the lamb," says Straus.

February, at least, for its part, is not so pessimistic. While senior officials could not be reached for comment, a high-level source within the month's government tell End The Cola Wars Digest that the reasons for the row came down to the economy. According to the source, February receives covert netback revenues from the natural gas and power industries. Given the presumed state of the month's treasury (it does not release official figures), it comes as little surprise that it has chosen to turn the screws on the public in a bid to shore up domestic reserves. "February has no real economy of its own when it comes down to it," says Case," it's essentially a middleman between the prolific cold exporter January and Ides-heavy March; February's' just a broker."

How the breakdown in relations between February and January and the general public in the future remains to be seen, but cracks have already started appearing in February's grip on state control. "I've about had it with this damn month," proclaims Mary Radabaf, a manager at a Washington area Haagen Dazs. "Every time you think February's had enough, it turns out you were wrong, and it's cold as shit all over again." Sentiments among the public do not stray far from Ms. Radabaf's harsh remarks. A Pew poll on the 25th showed that 95% of people disagreed strongly with February's handling of its rotating presidency; the remaining 5% of people indicated to the pollster that they hadn't left their residences since September ended.

Ogden is more pointed: "We're looking at a possible paradigm shift in the whole world order. Blizzards in July, heat waves in November, fall in April, and frogs in May. The whole system could be on the brink of collapse."

There may still be some hope, believes Case. "With such opposition from all fronts, it might be difficult for February to continue to isolate itself. February's unexpected cold tantrum will really damage its ability to influence the annual two straight weeks of misty drizzle, this year planned for late May."

August could not be reached for comment.

Brice Lord reporting from Los Angeles.

Your Oil, My Oil

2009-02-06T09:34:00.002-05:00

As part of my graduatification I'm taking a course that examines the depth of oil's entrenchment as a commodity, as a source of conflict, and as a tool of foreign policy. It's actually pretty interesting.

I recently read "The Oil Crisis: This Time the Wolf is Here," by James Atkins from Foreign Affairs, April 1973, and found a pretty poignant excerpt that I pasted below. The "wolf" here is the oil crisis, and it being here this time refers to other experts having been accused of crying wolf when sounding the alarm of an impending oil crisis (which it turns out they did). Atkins' hypothesis of the coming crisis stems from an inflexibly tight coupling between oil demand and supply, the U.S. and developed world's rapacious consumption and reliance on imports from the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S.' support for Israel in the face of the exporting nations, the lack of a cohesive supply disruption contingency plan among the OECD nations (consumers), and, especially, the newly proven success of OPEC at wrenching control from the oil companies. It turns out Atkins got it right, because 6 months later, in October, OPEC instituted the infamous oil embargo that left Americans waiting in miles-long lines waiting to fill up their 400-cubic inch GTOs. To avoid what Atkins viewed as an impending crisis, he recommended the following:

"In the long run, though, the only satisfactory position for the United States
(and to a lesser extent for its main allies) must be the development of
alternative energy sources. The United States is particularly blessed with large
reserves of coal which can be converted to hydrocarbons, and of shale oil. The
United States shares with all nations the possibility of developing geothermal
energy, solar energy, and energy from nuclear fission and fusion. But the lead
time is long for the development of all of them and some are still purely
hypothetical.

Suggestions a few years ago for a vast program of development
of new energy sources received no support in the Congress or from the public.
Yet, had the United States a few years ago been willing to accept the realities
which became evident in 1967 or even in 1970, it might have started sooner on
the development of Western Hemisphere hydrocarbons and domestic energy sources."

That kinda sounds familiar, doesn't it? Maybe we can follow through with it a little better this time.

stop coughing

2008-12-29T15:26:00.004-05:00

As soon as the temperature drops below 50 degrees, why is it that everyone starts coughing everywhere all the time? I can't go outside my door without hearing someone in the hallway cough. Then someone at the bus stop coughs as I walk by. Then someone at the Metro stop coughs, then on the Metro, and again at the next stop, then on the escalator, and on the street, then at the intersection with the long light, again in lobby of my building, another time on the elevator, and finally one last time as I walk down the row of cubes to my office. Today I heard someone coughing for 30 straight minutes at McDonald's across the street from my window. Cough. Cough. Cough. I think it must be boredom or something. You're sitting on the metro, thinking about how bored you have been for the last 6 minutes and how bored you'll be sitting there for the next 12 minutes, and wondering why you're so bored even though you've taken the same metro trip twice a day for 15 years and haven't thought to bring something to read or listen to, and then you hear someone cough, think to yourself, "Holy shit, that would break my boredom for 4/10 of a second," and then "COUGH!" Suddenly the rush of boredomlessness is over, and you wallow in its passing, and yearn for it to lift your spirits again, so again, you "COUGH! COUGH! COUGH!" But by now it's getting old, and you don't get the same thrill as the first time you coughed. Your marginal utility on each successive cough decreases, you reassess your boredom reduction strategy, and you start to risk seeming rude to the other passengers, assuming that you have even considered the other passengers standing 6 inches from your face in every direction at 7:55 am. So you pause and collect yourself, retreating into a deeper boredom. Then you hear someone on the other side of the train cough several times, and you wistfully recall how it was when you coughed, growing ever more jealous of their cough-induced glee. The cough continues its slow echo around the train: from the elderly man to the high school girl to the unkept person everyone knows is sick and/or crazy and tries to avoid at all costs without looking like they're trying to avoid him. "How long before I can go back to coughing without seeming suspicious?" you think. You know you don't have a cold, or even a chronic cough, in fact whenever you cough you giggle to yourself about how implausible it is that 9/10 of the passengers riding the train at any one time has either of these conditions. But still you debate within yourself the merits and demerits of sending yourself into another artificial coughing episode. So 45 seconds after your last cough, you "COUGH!!!" again, this time really loudly, partly to convey the seriousness of your made-up condition to your fellow passengers, so that the next fit of fake coughing you engage in a minute from now, and each minute thereafter until you get off at Gallery Place, is presumed to be necessary rather than entirely unnecessary and completely annoying. You get off the train, cough again, go up the escalator, cough, walk down the street, cough, stop at the long light, cough, walk into the lobby, cough, go up the elevator, cough, walk down the hallway, cough, and then turn around, go outside, and sit outside at McDonald's in the 35-degree weather sipping your hot cup o' jo for a half hour, coughing the whole goddamn time.

Brice Lord sighting?

2008-12-29T15:03:00.004-05:00

A contemporary of mine alerted me to a possible Brice Lord sighting at an anonymous Holiday Sweater Party on 12/13. Well, I guess it isn't anonymous if it's capitalized. The Brice Lord candidate seems to have been seen and noted by an amorous 25-year old woman at said Holiday Sweater Party who then posted this missed connection ("naughty or nice") on Craig's List 6 days later; the 6-day delay was likely put to good use in developing the playfully suggestive post (e.g. "you looking for a mrs. claus, mr. claus? hit me up and we can spread a little holiday cheer..."). Apparently the enamored saw Brice Lord's likeness on "an acquaintances' photos on facebook" and decided to act on this particularly productive and fortuitous episode of stalking.

Unfortunately for Brice Lord proper---that is, the real Brice Lord---he was not at the Holiday Sweater Party but instead dutifully studying for final exams that evening, so the gentleman with dashing good looks, brand new Nike kicks, a fitted olive green faux-WWII-era military issue shirt, a questionable black and yellow scarf, what looks like half a knit beanie, and proportionally large hands gently grasping a solo cup filled with jungle juice as if it were a snifter of cognac is not, alas, Brice Lord. It should also be noted to the readership, and to the lascivious Mrs. Claus, that Brice Lord is exceedingly homosexual, so in actuality, were Brice Lord even at this party---and if he were he would probably dress quite similarly---he would be surveying the "m4m" section later that week instead.

Dokken and the Electoral College

2008-11-04T14:04:00.013-05:00

I got an email earlier today from my friend Nate, who, after years of ridiculing blogging (for good reasons), told me he just caved in and started his own blog. I realized when he said this that I "haven't posted anything in forever," as my life partner, Michael, friends, creditors, and pen pal Vladimir have been telling me for a few months. Sorry everyone, I guess work, grad school, and moving got in the way. Bitter? No...

So this gives me a good opportunity to both introduce Nate's blog, "Rockin' with Dokken," and to step back into blogging. [I hate any word that uses "blog" as its root, by the way.] You see, now that I have immediate competition from my friends, I'm once again motivated to write on my blog. It's the same behavior that results when you have two guitarists and one guitar in a room. As soon as one guy picks up the guitar and starts playing, the other guy eyes it feverishly and, masking his craving to show that he can also play, calmly asks, "Hey, uh, can I play/give it a whirl/grab the axe/shred for a bit?" So it's not truly altruistic on my part to plug Rockin with Dokken---to the extent someone who gets like 25 hits a day can plug anything.

Nate's first post on those stupid "I Voted" stickers is pretty dead on. I always feel an annoying pressure to vote whenever I see them, which I guess is the point. If I don't vote, I'm not in the sticker club, and I haven't done what I was supposed to do, so I should feel bad. I never saw the point of voting for someone who I didn't think would be a good leader (not to be confused with a good politician), and I still feel that way. I'm not going to exercise my civic right to support a politician in an election just because P. Diddy tells me to (or threatens me to). This pressure led me to vote for Bush in 2004 for god knows what reason, so I'm pretty skeptical that just voting for the sake of voting empowers people to elect leaders that serve their interests any more than not voting does.

"Seriously, I will kill you."

Since it's Election Day, I have a unique opportunity to sway massive public opinion (ha!). I'm not going to get into who to vote for---if you haven't figured it out by now, just don't vote (seriously). Here's my gripe: why do we still have an electoral college? A few days ago I heard Pat Buchanan on MSNBC talking about the possibility of McCain threading his way to victory by way of a popular vote loss but an electoral college win. The New York Times has a story discussing this possibility, as well.

Does this make sense? I realize the the U.S. presidential election system is an indirect democracy, but the present manifestation of something doesn't lend evidence for its existence. That is, just because we're doing something a certain way doesn't mean we can't do it differently, and better. Why not have a direct democracy, (i.e. a true democracy) in which each vote is equal to every other vote. Why should my vote in heavily-Democratic DC have far less impact than someone's vote in Arlington, Virginia, which is 2 miles away?

Good question. Let's look at where this wacky idea of an electoral college came from: the U.S. Constitution. According to the source of infinite knowledge, Wikipedia:

The design of the Electoral College was based upon several assumptions and anticipations of the Framers of the Constitution:
1. Each state would employ the district system of allocating electors.
2. Each presidential elector would exercise independent judgment when voting.
3. Candidates for either office would not pair together on the same ticket.
4. The system as designed would rarely produce a winner, thus sending the election to
Congress.

Hmm. Number 4 looks like a troublemaker. Seems strange to me that the framers would construct a system that intended to rely on Congress to pick a President and Vice President. Turns out this bit them in the ass in 1796 and again in 1800 after the emergence of political parties, which became effective in gathering large blocks of electoral votes, and thus in manipulating the electoral system to their advantage. In fact, the famously bitter schism between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton arose from Hamilton's support for Thomas Jefferson when Jefferson and Burr were tied for electoral votes for President in the 1800 election, resulting in the Jefferson Presidency. Burr (the sitting Vice President) later shot and killed Hamilton (the sitting Treasury Secretary) for this transgression. Who ever said the Framers were perfect?

The 12th Amendment changed the original system from one in which electors would cast two votes for President to one in which they would cast one for President and one for VP. This is still in place today. No further shootings occurred.

"Hey Hamilton, go fuck yourself."

Enough of the boring stuff.

So it is apparent to me that the Framers were more concerned with establishing an electoral system that satisfied the political whims of the time rather than one that was grounded in democratic principles, those being equality of representation and justice.

If the electoral college system worked such that it exactly represented the popular vote, there would be less of a case against it. Of course, then we'd have to wonder why we even have such an elaborate (and thus, expensive) system. But, unfortunately, as we saw in 2000, the electoral vote put Bush into the Presidency, even though the popular vote should have carried Gore, by half a million votes, to the White House. Whoops. That should have been enough to motivate us to replace the electoral system with a direct democracy. Obviously it didn't. Whether or not the current election actually results in another split between the votes of the electorate and the votes of the people is entirely unimportant. The prospect that it is still a possibility in this and all future elections is grounds for dismantlement or systemic repair. It flouts the contemporary concept of democracy.

So, why do we still carry on with this antiquated system? Precedent provides momentum, sure. But, remember what happened once the electorate was first formed? Political parties self-organized, gathering electoral votes, and accreted power. In any social institution, people will always expand their authority to the extent allowed by the rules, and once that power exists, it is very difficult to change rules that would affect the distribution of power. And so, though the Republicans may hate the Democrats, and the Democrats may hate the Republicans, they need each other to perpetuate the dominance of the two-party system, in the same way that Fidel Castro needs the United States, Garfield needs Odie, and peanut butter needs jelly (why do you think there's an ampersand between them? They HATE each other).

Garfield and Odie: now a compelling political parable.

I'm sure this is rife with applications of game theory, if I understood it. Basically, without an electoral college, third, fourth, and fifth parties could start to eat away at the incumbent parties' votes, and thus their political power. And why would they want that?

Now let's all get drunk and watch the results.

Postlude: I realize there are argument of states' rights, urban overrepresentation, and others, that can be made in favor of the electoral college, and perhaps they can be made convincingly, but any system that strives to be a democratic one must, as a first principle, ensure equality of representation. Before any argument for keeping the current system is considered, I believe you have to first assess whether the current system is functioning to preserve the fundamental democratic rights of the people. If it is not, any argument in support of it fails. But I'm open to argument.

So it is a Crusade to some people

2008-09-15T12:32:00.004-05:00

I don't need to spend much time on this to get my point across.

I caught this story on Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's belief that the war in Iraq is "a task that is from God." When war is described as "a task from God," it is a crusade, if you are Christian. It's a jihad if you're Muslim. Think about that.

Apparently she also asked voters to approve the proposed $30B Alaskan natural gas pipeline, citing that "God's will has to be done ... to get that gas line built." And how could you vote against God?

The Republicans are Socialists

2008-09-08T09:37:00.003-05:00

With the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, supposedly to "cushion" the economic decline, one has to wonder how anybody who likes small government and fiscal responsibility could ever continue to support the Republican Party. This move by the Executive Branch essentially constitutes nationalization of the biggest U.S. mortgage lenders, or, put more directly, a big step toward socialism. What's wrong with socialism? I'm not sure; Canada, Sweden, and a host of other better-run countries sure get along fine with it, but if you're a Republican, "socialism" is about equal to "Nazism". What is wrong with this is that those of us who didn't overextend ourselves financially during the artificial housing boom now get to pay for all of those who did, including the lenders, consumers, mortgage backers, and stockholders. And let's not forget the regulators.

This sounds familiar. What other monstrous government programs have seen massive expansion during the past 8 years of Republican Executive control? Oh right, the military. This will saddle each and every American with an incredible amount of tax burden. And don't forget the party's inability to reform mandatory medical programs, which have been growing rapidly. Thanks again, Republicans!

So, while I support small government and fiscal responsibility, I certainly can't in good faith support the Republican party, nor can I see how anybody could who shares my support. The Republican party's actions and its traditional goals have clearly split ways. It's a political shell with only historical rhetoric inside, thus the puffy RNC last week. So, when you go to vote in November, don't forget the fact that John McCain has an "R" following his surname. If you don't want to vote for a Democrat, that's fine, just don't vote. That's an option that is too-often overlooked and unfairly criticized.

The Tempest

2008-09-05T13:56:00.005-05:00

Us East Coasters got ourselves a big fancy tropical storm motorin' up to meet us this weekend. Fortunately, it's striking at the precise moment at which it could never possibly result in us getting any time off work. Awesome.

After having no snow days for the past 5 years, this isn't terribly surprising: the DC Council did pass the No Fun Act of 2003 followed by the Sucks To Be You Amendment in 2004. In addition to diverting or stalling potentially fun-inducing major weather phenomena, this legislation is responsible for allowing Mayor Fenty's recent questionable behavior. Apparently he's been seen knocking cigarettes out of smoker's fingers hands followed by that walking-backwards double-middle-finger move, and aggressively enforcing parking laws by torching offenders' cars with molotov cocktails.

Anyway, we're all looking forward to this squall. Last time we had one everyone just drank their faces off and partied. Seems like a rational and adult way to approach severe weather to me.

Yacht Rock

2008-08-01T11:08:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure if I've ever seen early 80's corporate rock portrayed so well. Yacht Rock Episode 11 tells the story of Jimmy Buffett coercing Kenny Loggins into writing Footloose for a favor to be paid by Kevin Bacon and a Hollywood music exec. Kevin Lee guest stars as Bacon. And it's fucking hilarious.

Word to the Dubs for sending me this.

It's Been Awhile

2008-08-01T10:37:00.007-05:00

No, I haven't posted anything since June 12, that's right. I got married on June 22 and then had 3 weeks of vacation following, but I haven't yet determined if that's related.

Since you've all waited so patiently, here's a gem from Wired Magazine's coverage of Comic-Con 2008. A 38-year old self-styled Los Angeles superhero who I've dubbed The Blue Bulge.

The Blue Bulge is: Repulsive.

This is another mark against humanity's survival, I think.

I've got a busy weekend ahead rooting for losing DC sports teams (DC United and the Nationals), so I'll add stories and pictures from our wedding and honeymoon in Greece sometime in next week-ish.

Dumped for Obama

2008-06-12T09:03:00.006-05:00

My friend Rachel wrote a pretty clever song about her relationship with her ex, who was feverishly in-love with Obama, despite not working on the campaign or in politics at all. Things got weird when he wanted to spend the weekends cruising the swing states during the primaries just to be part of the scene, and maybe catch a shiny glimpse of the populist pin-up himself. Not that I haven't had mancrushes before (c.f. Bear Grylls), but I doubt I'd lay my relationship down for it...unless that's what Bear wanted.

Anyway, Rachel, inspired by the "I Have a Crush on Obama" girl, put this song together out of light-hearted recrimination for the platonic political estrangement (I am HOT on alliteration right now). My sexxxy Moroccan boyfriend, Michael, directed the video. He was also the Dolly Grip, if you know what I mean.

The clip has received some legitimate press, including Politico, DCist, as well as a nod from the original Obama Girl herself. It's okay if you don't know who the Obama Girl is. I didn't, but it's still funny.

So here's the video, and cheers to Rachel!

Stumble for the Cure - coming this summer

2008-05-19T12:23:00.004-05:00

The other day I was thinking of new ways to pass the long, hot, humid summer months here in DC. Ways that would involve the three cornerstones of metropolitan DC life: overdressed 20-somethings, charity events, and drinking. So, one day, like the guy who sells those $600 vacuum cleaners, "I had it."

This summer I'm organizing "Stumble for the Cure."

Attire is black-tie optional. Male and female participants will wear their two-piece suits or tuxes (ties required for the gentlemen, hose for the ladies), and all will be encouraged to also don outer jackets, such as an overcoat, and hats. We will begin the day with the most important activity of all: networking over a dozen or so drinks at a bar, beginning around 12:00 pm or so on a clear, hot Saturday in July or August. Then around 3:00 pm we'll head down to the Mall for the race. Yes, the race.

Participants will line-up, in full Hill garb (man purses recommended), and wait for the starting whistle. Upon starting, we'll sprint through the 1-mile course and do our best to outrace our friends and contemporaries. We will require a business card to be affixed to your suit so that we can properly award the top 3 finishers with glowing praise and flowing beer at the celebration to follow at a nearby bar. And since no DC event is complete without some sort of philanthropy, we'll ask all participants to donate $25 to a legitimate, well-purposed, and nonpartisan charity.

I hope you're as excited about this idea as I am, because sprinting for a mile in DC's humid summer sun with a belly full of delicious dirty martinis sounds like as good a charity event as I've ever heard.

Email me at endthecolawars@gmail.com if you're interested in participating.

STUMBLE FOR THE CURE!

Overheard in DC

2008-05-17T13:45:00.004-05:00

On the Metro, as people try to squeeze onto the train:

Woman #1, polite, smiling: Pleeease don't push, I'm very pregnant!

Woman #2, snarky, pushing: Well maybe you shouldn't ride the Metro during rush hour, honey!

Rest of the train: (rising "oooooh" as if Rudy from The Cosby Show just mouthed off to Bill Huxtable)

Thursday, ~6:30pm, Red Line, Metro Center.

Stock Picks

2008-04-29T08:01:00.002-05:00

All's been quiet on ETCW! lately. Your wondrous authors have been too busy coping with real life to put much time into the ole' blog.

Anyway, in my spare time, I've been watching my fortunes in E*Trade (ETFC) float up and down...okay, mostly down...since late November. In fact, I managed to pick a local maxima when I bought it. As it has shed most of its mortgage debt, it's still probably a good buy considering how low the price is, though it's now turned into a long-term investment.

Also, I've been studying up a bit on technical analysis, for what it's worth. Essentially, it's a mathematical, analytical approach to stock analysis, though one that doesn't stand on its own. You need also be aware of prevailing economic conditions (our little recession), sector trends (such as booming oil), the quarterly earnings reports, and any issues with the company's management. So, that said, here's a little prognostication I'm going to make based on my rudimentary understanding of stocks.

Get ready to short Google (GOOG). Google's price is booming right now due to a much better than expected earnings report and a general sense of buoyancy in the tech sector (it's fared better than the Dow). GOOG's also pushed along by it's forward P/E as well as the general mysticism associated with the company. But, here's the problem I see coming down the pike. GOOG is approaching being overbought, and its momentum will start to burn out soon (see the Relative Strength Index plot). When this happens, the price will deflate, spurred on by lackluster advance GDP numbers for the 1st Q of 2008 to be released tomorrow. Another thing that's tipping me off is the slow convergence of the Slow Stochastic Oscillator (the chart below the RSI plot). Basically, when the blue line is above the red line, there is positive pressure, but when they start to converge, and the red overtakes the blue, the price is going to drop. Of course, just looking at this one tool you don't know if it's just a momentary pause, which is why you need to look across a variety of indicators. Additionally, checking out the Money Flow Index (GOOG), the divergence between the jump in price and the MFI is telling me that this is probably a weak advance. Now, that's a 1-year retrospective analysis, and I'm not looking to short Google for the next year. So, looking at the 3-month chart, the situation looks the same. All these factors put together, and you've got the making of a reversal. My superexpert financial advice: short Google.

Admittedly, this is a bit crude and elementary, but I think an empirical approach seems to make the most sense if you want to learn about stocks. Pick a few stocks to watch, learn a little bit, form a hypothesis, then watch what happens.

Don't want to buy stocks? Afraid of inflation? Get a hold of some TIPS.

Note: Past performance absolutely guarantees future performance. Buy Buy Buy.

Success!

2008-04-11T19:44:00.005-05:00

Somehow, I got into grad school. I'll be going back to school in the fall, which means I have to fit in 3 years of fun I won't have over the next 3 years into 6 months of fun over the next 6 months. I hope you like that redundancy. I'm looking forward to commuting on the green line and being an awkward mascot gag at parties, like my man Testudo here.

Steak-Umm in your mouth!

2008-04-01T13:38:00.010-05:00

So I was recently on business travel in Colorado this weekend, and per usual, was casually perusing my computer for the next stock I can lose hundreds of dollars on while half-heartedly watching a CSI episode in the background.

But then, something caught my attention. Maybe it was the obnoxiously funky bassline or the male/female back-and-forth reminiscent of a radio commercial from the mid-90's, or maybe it was that I hadn't heard "Steak-Umm" uttered since I was 5 years old. It may also have been the lyrics to the jingle:

Guy: "You can Steak-Umm in the North!"

Girl: "You can Steak-Umm in the South!"

Together: "But the best part of all..."

"...is when you Steak-Umm in your mouth!" (emphasis added)

Video of the 10-second ad.

I don't want to start picking apart the logic here, but, well, it's confusing to combine two locational possibilities of having a Steak-Umm with the optimal place to Steak-Umm someone (or something), which is "in your mouth," or more suggestively, my mouth. I'd go so far as to say that many people wouldn't be too pleased if I starting Steak-Umming in my mouth in a public place, even if it were in the North.

Also tremendously disturbing is the use of "Steak-Umm" as a verb. You can't "verb" meat without causing a dry-heave in the audience. For instance,

"The best part of all is...

...when you pork in your mouth!"

...when you shrimp in your mouth!"

...when you ground chuck in your mouth!"

...when you sausage in your mouth!"

...when you crab in your mouth!"

...when you tuna in your mouth!"

...when you fowl in your mouth!"

Now, I don't blame Steak-Umms for going cheap on their first ad push in 300 years, but somewhere in the management chain there needs to be that quality control person who has at least a feeble connection to reality (and who also wants to keep their job). You would expect anyone above 13 years old to understand that Steak-Umming in someone's mouth might not be taken at "face" value. Ha! Welcome to PunTown. McDonald's made a similar mistake in their "I'd Hit It!" dollar double-cheeseburger marketing campaign. To any and all, that would mean that McDonald's wants you to fuck its sandwiches. But, hey, who has time to do 5 minutes worth of background research (i.e. Googling)? Print it, get it out the door, and watch the profits rollllllllllll in!

To capitalize on this fully self-unaware ad campaign, I suggest a strong follow-up:

"Steak-Umms, Come and Get Some!"

Google's sense of humor

2008-04-01T13:21:00.003-05:00

Google's April fool's joke this year popped up on Gmail in the form of a back-dating capability, so that you can tell your girlfriend (or in my case, hot Moroccan boyfriend) you sent an email to her three weeks ago saying that if she didn't respond in three weeks she owed you $4,000. An ostensible three weeks later, I'd be rolling in the dough. Unfortunately, it's a joke, and I still need $4,000 to pay off my lost bet that Bengay would work better as a drink mixer than as a pain reliever. Google knows better than to trust people with the fabric of space-time.

Bible History #1

2008-03-25T17:33:00.002-05:00

From the same twisted mind that brought us the George Washington music video, Bible history has never been so illustrative and perplexing.

Jeff Foxworthy "digs in" to mass marketing

2008-03-17T10:09:00.007-05:00

Here's something I've been sitting on for awhile. When I was in Boulder in January I stopped at the local S-Mart and picked up some Jeff Foxworthy brand beef jerky. I bought it out of the same tragic need for masochistic irony as when I went into Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville in Las Vegas.

According to Jeff himself, it's so good you'll want to eat it naked, but you shouldn't. The only part of the joke I got was when I realized that I had shelled out six bucks for this bag of mediocre jerky, and eaten it naked. Jeff Foxworthy wins again.

Munch

2008-03-17T10:04:00.003-05:00

I've been too busy with work and applying to grad school as of late to produce anything noteworthy for the ole' blog, so I'll just regurgitate something cool I saw. Look at this picture. Marvel at how awesome it is, and by association, me. The picture's real from what I read.

It's a shark eat shark world, HAHAHAHA1HA!HAHA!!!11!!! LOL..sigh

Cold

2008-03-07T16:13:00.002-05:00

I'm on DayQuil right now, and life is, for the moment, unconcerning and surrounded by fuzz.

I caught a cold somewhere in Utah probably. Now I'm enjoying self-medication. Last time I said something like this I ended up in the hospital after taking Vicoprofen and passing out at work...but caution be damned! God Bless the benevolent alchemists at Vick's Co.; may their bells ring stridently for the lives of a thousand Suns.

Utah

2008-02-27T19:32:00.003-05:00

Here's a picture from my first day out here in Utah. I took it with my phone at the top of Deer Valley. I wanted to take real pictures with my real camera, but the batteries somehow slipped out of it when I took it out of my pocket and then fell 40 feet below into the snow while on the lift. Oh well.

Skiing, Beers, and Mormons

2008-02-25T22:53:00.006-05:00

I'm headed to Utah tomorrow to ski for about 4 or 5 days. This will be my first ski trip since Vail last year. Skiing in the Rockies is really incomparable to anything you can find on the East Coast. It's going to be a most righteous trip. I don't have much else to say because I'm afraid of jinxing it, despite my firm disbelief in jinxes. If irony is to be glaring, I'd prefer not to goad it on a public forum. So, all I can say is that I'll bring back pictures of skiing, beers, and Mormons.

And I apologize for not posting much lately. I have some things in the works but no time to work on them. Sigh, I know; a blogger palliating his laziness with extenuating circumstances is about as pathetic and dull as watching Tron on a nice Sunday afternoon.

let the heavens open

2008-02-06T10:21:00.000-05:00

Since it doesn't snow in the Mid-Atlantic anymore, it's hard to get excited about dangerous winter weather phenomena, which is why I'm giddy about the crazy thunderstorms rolling across the "South" and bearing down on the East Coast. Summer thunderstorms can be spectacular, so I'm really looking forward to (hopefully) seeing some fireworks outside later this afternoon, and what a treat that would be for early February. God bless SUVs.

In the spirit of unfettered chaos, I took this picture from my apartment last summer as a deep dark storm rolled in the late afternoon.

Superbowl Monday

2008-02-04T10:54:00.000-05:00

Ever since my Junior year (high school) AP Chemistry teacher obstinately gave us a test the day after the Superbowl, I have strongly advocated Superbowl Monday becoming a national holiday. Considering about 1/3 of the entire country watch this game, I think it's only fitting to have a national day of rest following dedicated to the event. If you disagree with me, you're a terrorist.

Does this look like a productive worker to you? No. It's Superbowl Monday.

Sundial

2008-01-31T14:30:00.000-05:00

I just moved into an office after more than 3 years in a windowless cubicle. New office has a window and an angled view of the Capitol Building, which is pretty cool. What's especially neat is knowing the weather and time of day without using my computer. This south-facing office gets lots of light from the mysterious yellow ball in the sky throughout the day, so I decided to build a sundial one day. For some reason, I half-expected it not to work. It does. Minor triumphs like this make life worth living; well, that and buffalo wings.

This means it's almost 2:30, which it was. Rock.

Oh politics.

2008-01-31T09:27:00.000-05:00

Ever since we started to think that there probably weren't any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (besides our army of course) I've skewed leftward and, um, upward (?), distancing from my Republican roots. It's not surprising I considered myself a Republican. Everyone where I grew up was a staunch Republican with varying degrees of conservative dogma.

For example, the other night I was around my parents' friends in Baltimore when one of them came up to me and said, "Hey! We have the same birthday! And we share it with Rush Limbaugh!" In Washington, outside of the Caucus Room or some other Republican haunt, this statement would have carried the implication that Limbaugh's a pompous demagogue. Forgetting my environment, my reflex was to say, "That's unfortunate." The woman promptly huffed off. Somehow I never bothered to think that someone could still seriously consider a man like Limbaugh to be a positive figure. Now that I have realized this I'm sort of depressed.

Similarly, I quit watching Fox News years ago because I realized it was essentially a flag-waving, jingoistic wad of propaganda. It made the invasion of Iraq look like a fucking videogame. I remember sitting at a bar watching the tanks triumphantly roll through the deserts and cheering them on while drinking my $1.00 beers (it was an AWESOME happy hour special). Over on CNN, they were a bit more skeptical of the war, so I didn't even bother to watch it. Why should I waste my time with those left-wing nay-sayers; they're just bitter they lost the election (even though they actually won it). "Just wait until they unearth the nuclear weapons," I thought. Say what you will about CNN--"Communist News Network" or twatever you want to call it--they were right to be skeptical. And I'll emphasize that they were only skeptical, because being adversarial to the Administration at that time was considered "un/anti-American" in those few years of McCarthyist patriotism. Sure, overall, CNN may have a leftward lean, but on the bidirectional seesaw of mass media political ideology, Fox News sends it careening into the stratosphere. Since I'm going to be taking a grain of salt anyway, I'd rather take my political and social commentary from conceited middle-left pundits than exuberant right-wing nationalists. At least I'm given the option to filter out the conceit.

Now, I still treat Fox News with scorn and contempt, but I've also realized that it's just as self-polarizing to blank out the praddle coming into my right ear as it was to do so for my left ear years ago. So, I'll watch a few minutes of Fox News now and then just to contemplate what they're going on about. For instance, John Bolton, the former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, was being interviewed by someone two days ago on FN. He said something like "the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] report has been the most damaging thing to our country's foreign policy in a long time." I think I might have yelled at the TV then. If you don't know, the NIE report represents the collective wisdom of our entire country's intelligence resources and said what every right-wing asshole doesn't want to hear: Iran hasn't been working on a nuclear weapon since 2003. Whoops. But, rather than showing weakness and accepting the facts, our former UN Ambassador prefers to stammer in disbelief that this report had the nerve to even exist! What especially pissed me off was that the Fox News anchor agreed with him. If we just wanted to to hear what we wanted to hear all the time then I don't even know why we'd spend billions upon billions of dollars on intelligence programs. Unfortunately, I think this interview is quite representative of the Administration that I used to support. As infuriating as this is, it's useful to try and see where the Republican establishment is getting its information from.

A final fit of anger erupted from me during the State of the Union address, during which Bush contradicted his own record and wrongly chastised "Congress" for not fulfilling his wishes. The fact that he uttered ideas of fiscal restraint was beyond laughable. If you're looking for that extra trillion dollars or so to fix things in our own country that desperately need fixing (social security, health care, infrastructure, education, security, immigration, etc...), you might want to check that big hole in the ground in Iraq we've dug ourselves into. Fiscal restraint, fuck you Bush, seriously.

What should be particularly depressing for "true Republicans" is that this Administration isn't really Republican, or at least so they say. Being sponsored and supported by the Republican National Committee largely undermines that argument. And the fact that political camps evolve ideologically over time is another point against [e.g. the Democratic Party under Woodrow Wilson successfully resegregated the federal government so that whites and blacks couldn't work in the same offices]. Here are your Republicans.

This Administration has shown that it is indeed possible, in 6 years time, to take an overwhelming majority and turn it on its head through gross incompetence and a sense of righteous entitlement. What was hailed as the New Conservative Movement is now fractious, irreconcilable, and irreperable. I guess it should be somewhat comforting that this camp evolved itself out of power, but then again, we still have another goddamn year to go.

Did Hertz just threaten me?

2008-01-24T15:08:00.000-05:00

Is this a promise or a threat...or both?

a weekend in the city

2008-01-17T11:43:00.000-05:00

I'm headed to New York tomorrow for the weekend. I haven't been up there since last February I think, and I remember it was utterly frigid. I always complain that it's always cold when I'm there, and judging by the snow squall outside, this time will be no different. Fortunately, my winter jacket is out for repairs, so all I have is my Fall/Spring jacket. Looks like it'll be a weekend of the collared-shirt-under-sweater nights for me, as if that'd be different anyway.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, meeting my friend's new kid, and going to my cousin's BBQ restaurant in Crooklyn (Fette Sau).

GRE

2008-01-17T11:41:00.000-05:00

I'm taking the GRE in about an hour. I don't like standardized tests, but I've studied a lot for this one so hopefully it'll go better. 5 hours from now I'll be either really disappointed or really appointed. All I gotta do now is "rock it!".

Here's the rub

2008-01-09T00:38:00.000-05:00

BBQ master and attorney Kevin J. Flay, Esq. came over a few months ago to enjoy some Brice Lord-style ribs, which, probably to his surprise (and mine), he enjoyed thoroughly. I promised Mr. Kevin, Esq. the recipe for the rub I used, so here it is.

1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup paprika
3 tbsp black pepper (coarse is better)
4 tbsp kosher salt
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp onion powder
2 tsp celery seeds
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 finely-grated dried chipotle pepper

Just put it all into a bowl and mix it real well with your fingers until it looks like something you would probably buy off the shelf. Rub it into whatever hunk of beast you want to cook an hour or more before you cook, if you have time, to give the oils in the seasonings some time to mingle with the meat. Or, just lick your forefinger and run it through the rub and eat it raw, as Mr. Kevin, Esq. did before getting yelled at. Disgusting.

This recipe was slightly modified from the one given in Steven Raichlen's "How To Grill" book, which is highly recommended by the staff here at End The Cola Wars!

"Cyanide and Happiness"

2008-01-08T13:53:00.001-05:00

I did a rare browse of College Humor today and came across this online cartoon strip series called "Cyanide and Happiness". The name was enough to get me to check it out. Some of it's pretty funny. This one made me laugh out loud.

Movies

2008-01-07T17:49:00.000-05:00

I saw a bunch of movies while I was away on travel thanks to unusual access to Blowtime, Skinemax, and HBO (sorry, no clever pun), and the lack of internet at the hotel in which I stayed. I don't feel like giving lengthy descriptions of movies and why I did/didn't like them, so here's a quick summary.

Lord of War: Nicholas Cage as Nicholas Cage in every other movie, but playing a gun runner this time. Supposedly "events" in the movie were based on real events, I'm not sure which ones, though. A pretty good movie with a blatantly obvious political/social message; still worth a view.

Edmond: William H. Macy plays an unusually violent and sociopathic professional living in NYC. Some shit goes down, his psycho switch trips, and people end up dead. Similar office-dude-gone-batshit work was done in Falling Down, but it's still an interesting watch. His character's rambling speeches are meaningful and lucid only to himself, and the movie feeds the darker desires in watchers' id.

Saw II: I never saw any of these slasher/thriller movies because they looked too reliant upon gore and the short attention spans of today's youth (cue me waving a rolling pin over my head at some kids who just ran their BMX's over my lawn), but I'm glad I was more or less forced to watch this. It has some stupid super gorey/fucked-up scenes, but all in all it's a good thriller with a neat little twist whereby some fucked-up asshole named "Jigsaw" masterminded the kidnap and imprisonment of a bunch of teens in an equally fucked-up dungeon and forces them to try and get out by facing some pretty fucked-up situations. It's pretty fucked-up. Naturally, Jigsaw gets the last laugh since there's two other Saw movies following this one.

Survival Island: Some Hispanic guy, a bikini model, and Billy Zane get stranded on an island after a shipwreck. The title of the movie is about as deep as the movie goes. If you're on a business trip and nostalgic for USA's Up All Night, then you should take the opportunity to watch this.

Friday the 13th Part 2: I never really saw this when it came out 27 years ago, and I didn't really have any desire to see it this time either. I watched about a total of 15 minutes of this interrupted by switching to Survival Island for beach scenes, and it was more than enough. For 14 of the 15 minutes the filmography was too dark to tell what in the hell was going on in the scene, and for the other minute teenagers were screaming. Sweet. It certainly justified the 20 or so additional sequels.

I think I saw some other movies, but I don't remember them, so it's probably not worth my, nor your, time.

American Gladiators

2008-01-07T17:34:00.000-05:00

During the run-up to last night's climax of the long-awaited return of American Gladiators---which, by the way, Took It To The Max---we were teased by limitless replays of the original series. The contestants always had a knack for being chodish and plum dumb (see Purple Roundy, whose name is pronounced exactly as you'd expect). So, I thought I'd share this quote from some contestant on the original series who, naturally, ended up losing.

"I'm gonna win this. I was inbred for competition."

Maybe that's why he lost.

Purple Roundy trying to see past his ridiculous mustache and back-length curly hair during The Assault. "Assault" turned out to be a bit of an overstatement in this particular case.

RIGHTEOUS!

2008-01-02T12:38:00.000-05:00

It is an excellent thing when your team has lost its last 4 bowl games (including 3 Rose Bowls) and then wins a big upset. It is an excellent thing when your retiring coach and exceptional senior class wins their last bowl game after an underwhelming season. It is an excellent thing to beat the Heisman winner at a venue that is essentially his home field and breaks everyone's preconceptions about your style of play. And it is always an excellent thing to beat the obnoxious Florida Gators, who before the game were jumping up and down on your team's logo in the endzone. Congrats to the team and coaches, it was an excellent game.

Story.

Dear DC cabbies...

2008-01-01T03:04:00.000-05:00

One last word of thanks for ridiculously ripping me off the entire time I've lived here in DC. Tonight, I paid $13.50 to get from DC to Arlington but $19 to get from Arlington to DC. To my taxi driver this evening: you and your fake family can fucking go to hell, since I'm sure it's just an excuse to squeeze out those extra bones from my non-profit salary. Yes, I chose that job, but you also chose to be a greasy longhaired pennygrubbing-whore-asshole. It may surprise you, but this city was not intentionally built to only support taxi drivers. I really hope you and your family starve to death on the marginally-fair meter system imposed upon you later this year. You, and only you (my taxi driver tonight), I seriously hope you go to fucking hell. Fuck off and die. I would love to salt [sugar] your gas tank.

I AM LEGEND

2007-12-31T12:30:00.000-05:00

Saw "I AM LEGEND" at the Dupont Theater this weekend, complete with the usual drunken mumbling homeless sociopath in the theater. It was pretty good, you should see it (the movie, not the bum). It's kinda like Castaway meets 28 Days Later, but with less gore. Basically, mankind screwed up again with its godless science and pretty much everyone is either dead or has become scary predatory monsters. The movie takes places three years after the mass carnage subsides and we meet who may very well be the last person on Earth, Robert Neville, who is living in New York City. A series of flashbacks help to explain the intriguing backstory of what happened. Even though a post-apocalyptic city isn't exactly a groundbreaking idea for a film (the book was written in 1954, however), the movie does a good job of immersing you in the weirdness and isolation of the setting, and minor details really magnify the eeriness.

There's still a few big questions I have, but that's probably what happens when you adapt a book and don't have the luxury of making a 3.5-hour movie. This movie's runtime is 101 minutes.

As for acting, Will Smith, in general, is pretty easy to hate just because he's so damn lovable, but he's still he's pretty convincing in the movie. He does a good job of portraying the psychosis and paranoia that someone who might actually live through those events might display without resorting to the usual cockiness of a Converse commercial turned into a movie.

All in all, it's a pretty solid post-apocalyptic suspense/thriller movie despite its PG-13 rating. See it, and tell em Brice Lord sent ya. (Don't actually do that because you'll look like an asshole.)

Every time you come around my hood

2007-12-31T12:15:00.001-05:00

Bling Bling.

A little update on my so-called investments in the stock market. E*Trade hasn't fared so well, and has lost about 35% of its value since my purchase. Awesome. So, it's gone from a quick turnaround lottery stock to a longer hold and wait-for-the-recession-that-won't-come-to-pass stock. Oh well.

Ironically, the best investment I made over the last year seems to have been the involuntary one. I've still got about 50 units worth of Euros and Swiss Francs in my wallet, which have both appreciated.

I'm particularly annoyed that the two other stocks I had seriously considered buying, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd: VSL and Tata Motors Ltd: TTM, have appreciated by 45% and 7%, respectively. Oh well, what're you gonna do?

NewCDs

2007-12-28T01:40:00.000-05:00

I got some new CD's for Xmas. Here's what they are:

1) Black Moth Super Rainbow: Dandelion Gum
2) The Advantage: The Advantage
3) Say Hi To Your Mom: Numbers and Mumbles
4) Okkervil River: The Black Sheep Boy Appendix
5) Emperor X: Central Hug/Friend Army/Fractal Dunes

Is this sufficiently indie or should I try better next time?

indisputable

2007-12-28T01:33:00.001-05:00

Ever think of something in the shower that seems so clever and illuminating that you think everyone should hear? Me too.

Bill Parcells. Spencer Pratt. The latter is 35 years the younger of the former. Get that?

New Year(')s

2007-12-28T01:15:00.000-05:00

Does that have an official apostrophe? Does anyone know? Anyway, I have no plans for New Year's, and I hereby officially announce my hatred of the holiday. Here's what I hate about it:

1) requirement to go out, and
2) requirement to do something extraordinary, and
3) requirement to pretend like it's fun.

Additionally, here's what's not's fun's about's New's Year's:

1) paying $80 for a bar that would otherwise cost you $0.00
2) waiting an hour to get a single drink
3) being caught in a smash

Fuck this "holla-day". I'll ring in the new year the usual way instead: gutting a fetal goat. Wait, what?

<>L<>A<>

2007-12-16T17:57:00.000-05:00

reggolB

2007-12-16T17:47:00.000-05:00

Brice Lord kindly thanks N8K from Slain By An Elf for the sweater. Brice Lord is available for your bearded debt collection needs, 24-hour convenience store stick-ups, and Darkon-staged invasions of the Velkyn Velve realm.

STOP

2007-12-12T10:48:00.000-05:00

Oh my god, stop fucking coughing. Everyone please just stop coughing for one fucking minute. What, is consumption making a comeback in downtown Washington? It's like I'm in the tense 40 minutes of lead-up in a zombie movie where everyone around the main character is getting noticeably sicker and it's only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose. I better keep a blunt object nearby and a backback with a stockpile of vitamin water and Clif bars in case I need to make a run for it. I hate everybody.

Thanks H&M

2007-12-09T02:41:00.000-05:00

Thank you H&M for making this holiday super unexpectedly fagtastic!

Into the fray...

2007-11-29T13:06:00.001-05:00

After several years of neglect, I finally got motivated to get my finances in order. I've had money sitting in a few different retirement accounts and I never really bothered to check and see what they've been up to. It turns out they were automatically dumped into money markets for some reason, which are good for, say, loose cash you don't need, but bad for long-term growth. So I rearranged everything and now I'll be a multi-billionaire when I retire in 10 years.

Relatedly, I've also gotten interested in stocks. After only two weeks or so of research, I've come to the realization that playing the stock market isn't too much different from playing roulette. I don't gamble at casinos except for roulette, and when you play you get an energizing sense of anticipation as you watch the ball go around and around until it lands on "00" and you lose $50 in 45 seconds. Stock investments seem to be kinda like that, though it's much different because you at least have an opportunity to make an informed decision about your investments rather than blindly choosing "red" and "black".

Does anyone know what these people actually do?

Yesterday I plunked some change into E*Trade, having been watching it oscillate between $3.50 and $6.00/share over the last two weeks, and having read about potential buyouts by other firms. I couldn't help but check the ticker every 30 minutes, expecting it to shoot up. Of course it didn't, but I did know that going into it.

Sure, a financial firm with a big mortgage debt doesn't seem like a great pick right now, but that's why I think it is. The chance of it going under is slim, and before it does it'll very likely be bought out. It's been crippled with debt and has seen its stock tumble from $26.00/share in June to where it is now. If it's bought out, I win, and if it recovers over the next few years, I win. I think the same strategy will work for Citigroup, though it's probably more of a long-term investment than E*Trade. Of course, I'm a blind novice, so I'll probably lose my shirt, but hey, it's a good way to learn, and the more I try, hopefully the more successful I'll be.

I have some other stocks I'm eyeing, and I'll probably be updating the ole' blog as I buy in.

For those interested, I bought 100 shares of E*Trade on 11/28/07 at $5.30/share.

Here's the latest ticker.

My Hero

2007-11-28T09:19:00.000-05:00

Man arrested for shooting traffic camera

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Police have lost red-light cameras to traffic accidents but never to gun play. "This is the first one that's been shot," Capt. Gordon Catlett said of the wounded camera at the intersection of Broadway Avenue and Interstate 640 — one of 15 camera-equipped
intersections in the city.

Clifford E. Clark, 47, was charged with felony vandalism and reckless endangerment for allegedly firing at least three rounds from a .30-06 hunting rifle at the camera, knocking it out of action.

He was arrested after patrol officers heard shots around 2 a.m. Sunday, spotted a minivan leaving the parking lot of a closed business and pulled it over. Inside they found Clark and the high-powered rifle.

Clark, now facing a $50 fine if convicted and loss of his rifle, refused to say anything about the incident to police, leaving the motive unclear.

Catlett, who oversees the red-light camera program, said 6,798 drivers have been photographed running the red light at Broadway and I-640 and ticketed since the camera was installed in 2006. Clark was not one of them, he said.

I've always dreamed of shooting a stop light camera out of raw enmity, but I've never had the guts, nor the $50, to go through with it. What I find most humorous is that felony vandalism and reckless endangerment with a firearm only add up to a $50 fine in Tennessee. Shit, I wonder what you'd have to do to get slapped with a $500 fine? Shoot speed, strangle a puppy and throw babies off a roof?

This reminds me of my trip to Tennessee in senior year of cool-ege when a few buddies and I visited an old friend in Nashville. Posted on the walls of every bar bathroom you can find were advertisements for DUI Mike, who was an attorney that did exactly what you think he would do: get you out of DUIs. I made fun of DUI Mike while in the bathroom and some well-meaning countryboy was sure to get the facts straight by saying that, "Hey, don't make fun of DUI Mike. DUI Mike got my buddy out of a DUI." Touche.

When DUI Mike died unexpectedly a few years ago, there were rumors swirling that, ironically, he died when a drunk driver hit him. This isn't too dissimilar from the hilarious rumor that local fitness "celebrity" John Basedow died in the Thai tsunami in 2005. Here's the originating seed of that rumor. It even inspired some amateur photoshopping (below). Upon hearing this, Basedow himself quickly took action, and wrote on his MySpace page, "John Basedow is not only still alive but has never even been to Thailand." John Basedow smart.

Note the cherubic glow surrounding Dr. Basedow. Also note the hot pants and amazing abs.

Anyway, though DUI Mike does maintain an eerie posthumous web presence, he just died of a heart attack. Tennessee is a straaaaaange place.

Brice Lord predicts snow days this year

2007-11-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

Okay, so maybe the title is a little misleading, because

Brice Lord's prediction for snow days this Winter = 0.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAA!!!!

I've lived in this goddamn city for 4.5 years now and I have not had a single fucking snow day. I'm sick of it. I'm tired of it. I'm sick and tired of it. I want a snow day. We've had plenty of bullshit like getting off work 2 hours early, or getting in 2 hours late, but that's for suckers, and I'm no sucker. We did have that one day off when that pussy "hurricane" Isabel hit DC in 2003, but by "we" I mean "everyone but me" because I was scolded for getting into work the next morning---hungover as hell mind you after going to two different hurricane parties the night before---an hour late.

So here's how this Winter's snow day forecast will go. Sometime in mid-to-late-December there will be a dire 20% threat of 1-2" of snow 3 days from Monday, and that's all anyone will talk about in the office until we end up getting cold rain that Thursday morning. Regardless of this, some woman (this is specific to my office, so no offense to my female readers) with a high-pitched whiney voice will start waxing idiotic about how "they're saying" the rain will change to freezing rain this afternoon and "I heard we're going to get let out at 3." Apparently Whiney has a spy in the Office of Personnel Management and everyone else in this city doesn't. She also seems to have a poorly-tuned sixth-sense for weather prediction, because I end up working until 6pm and NOT going home to smoke weed and do snow angels in the middle of Connecticut Ave. [ETCW! does not condone the consumption nor possession of illicit and hilarious narcotics.]

Anyway, this will repeat roughly every 3 to 6 weeks throughout the winter until we break 70 for the first time in March. At that point it'll become evident that, once again, we haven't had a single snow day all Winter, and once again I'll want to push Whiney out of the 9th floor window. Oh right, she's too fat! God I'm heartless.

I blame the big three for this snowless imprecation: global warming, god, and Gyromite. I also blame the trend of decapitalizing "Winter", but I'm finding it hard to identify evidence for this in the literature. I guarantee that Old Man Winter and Jack Frost are none too pleased, though.

All in all, if it's going to be cold, it may as well snow, because that's all it's good for. Otherwise we're all just walking around in fancy zippered blankets and not having profligate Springtime bunny sex for nothing.

Snow = AWESOME!

Q.E.D.

Perhaps a rain dance next time?

2007-11-16T14:08:00.000-05:00

I'm sure the atheist "blogosphere" is proudly abuzz with Georgia Governor George Ervin "Sonny" Perdue III praying for rain, but I'm guessing the old coot thought it worked since Georgia was hit with a violent thunderstorm a day later. Never mind that the same storm blew the roof off of a Baptist Church in Tennessee and injured three school children with flying glass, and that it delivered an inconsequential amount of precipitation. No matter. If I were him, I'd probably plan to pray for rain next Wednesday and again next Friday. Just a hunch.

Anyone ever read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by the way?

Oh, email.

2007-11-06T15:06:00.000-05:00

I left for Orange County on Friday for a business trip and returned last night. As of Sunday afternoon I had about 9 new emails. When I checked my email this morning I had 54 new messages. Oh, the horror.

More notes from the road...sort of

2007-11-06T11:38:00.000-05:00

I was in the process of putting together a follow-up to my wildly successful "Notes from the road" whilst in Geneva, Switzerland when a microbial interloper interloped. My guess it was the bouillabaisse I had at the cafeteria that did it, and having ignored my own cardinal rule of no sea-based foods in cafeterias, come Thursday night (two Thursdays ago) things started to go south. By that Friday morning, it became pretty evident that I had eaten something that didn't like me very much, and it was tearing me up. My flight was set for the next day, Saturday, and as the day wore on it became pretty evident that wasn't going to happen, so I had to change it to Sunday, which cost me about $200. Of course, what guarantee did I have that I'd be ready for a 15-hour day of air travel with no control over what I could eat? So, for another $200 or so, I had a Swiss doctor call on my hotel room and check me over for about a half hour. She told me I probably had bacterial food poisoning and it had set up camp in my intestines. Pretty sweet stuff. She gave me a prescription for 3 different meds, one of which was a strong antibiotic which ended up killing the bugs off. Of course, getting to the pharmacy, which isn't 24-hours like CVS by the way, was a bit of an ordeal itself, considering my state. She also told me what I could only eat bread, plain rice, and plain pasta for the next few days. If I could find a brothy soup, that would be okay too, but good luck finding a non-cream-based soup in a city that borders France. Anyway, I was able to find a Vietnamese place that had a chicken noodle soup, and get my meds, without too much issue. My ritual of getting Wingos the minute I get back home from a trip had to be put off a week, and I lived on soup and crackers for about 2 more days after getting back. It's amazing how much you miss solid food and things that taste like things after only a few days.

Anyway, there's a few more little tales I wanted to share while in Geneva that were either pretty funny or interesting.

Auf gut Glück!

So the first night I'm at the hotel I call down before I get to sleep to ask for a wake-up call at 7:00am. The standard practice of performing the wake-up call is to call said hotel occupant at the requested time in order to wake him/her up. Around 5:05am I woke up in the middle of a dream about Erika Christensen (just kidding) to a repetitive knock on the door. It was still pitch black outside, and I thought the cleaning crew was going around a bit too early. It's Europe, so you never really know what's going to happen in hotels. After throwing on my jeans to cover up my huge dong I go and open the door and there's this hotel employee who says, "Bonjour! Bonjour! Wake up call! Wake up call!"

Naturally, I'm perplexed, I look at my watch, and sure enough it's 7:00am. But seriously, what the fuck? How confusing is that for someone who just woke up? Couldn't they just have called me, as the name "wake up call" implies? Silly Swiss. Of course I couldn't have that weird scene happening every day, so I had to rely on just waking up on my own and therefore ended up being about an hour late every day.

A big 450-foot jet of water coming out of Lake Geneva known as "Jet d'Eau," or "Jet of Water."

Another little observation of mine was that no matter where I went, I was known and referred to as "the American." At a restaurant, one waiter told another that "blah blah blah the American blah blah blah blah." At the hotel, "the receptionist told the other that "blah blah blah the American blah blah blah blah." When the doctor came to my hotel room, she called someone and asked a question because "the American blah blah blah blah blah blah blah." Obviously I don't speak any French whatsoever, Spanish is my game, but no matter the language the word "American" is still pretty much the same. Take note, my Swedish friends!

This is not Epcot Center, actually, this tram is part of Geneva's excellent public transit system. The woman in white ended up getting hit by the tram, by the way.

At the conference I went to I met people from all over the world. The most memorable interactions were with representatives of Lesotho, one of two countries enclaved within South Africa (just because of novelty), Iran, Syria, Palestine, and North Korea. I was particularly amazed to see anyone from the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" at all. You hear and read so much about these places, so that when you actually meet someone on a personal basis a lot of your preconceptions are challenged. Of course, the people I met aren't responsible for the massive human rights abuses in most of the countries I listed, so it wasn't too difficult to have a conversation with them. In general, I did notice that most of the Arab countries' reps never said "thank you" for the complementary materials they took, they just kinda walked away. Having sat in on one of the general sessions, which looked exactly like a UN meeting with translators in overhead booths and earpieces so you can understand what everyone is saying, I was able to pick up that "shokala" or similar meant "thank you" in Arabic. So even a simple "shokala" would have done.

A big, fancy, important building somewhere near Lake Geneva.

notes from the road

2007-10-22T15:42:00.000-05:00

A couple funny things have happened during my trip tonight, and when you're traveling alone on business in a foreign country it doesn't take much for something to be funny, by the way.

Eurocar and Eurodude.

So I went to this Indian restaurant on Rue des Pasquis tonight on a whim; don't ask me why I wanted Indian whilst in a country composed of an odd French-German culture fusion. It was delicious, so eat me. So I got the check, and asked if I could pay with credit card, which for some reason is not as commonplace as it is in the States. The guy shook his head no, I looked in my wallet: no cash. I shrugged and he looked at me and yelled in French, probably saying something like "you goddamn Americans!" As he turned away from me I dashed for the door but the bartender saw me going for it and locked it electronically. As the waiter turned around to grab me I drew and put one between his eyes; his suddenly lifeless body cut his legs out from under him. Patrons began screaming. I fired another few shots toward the bartender before he unlocked the door to let me leave without hurting, or killing, anyone else. I wasn't planning on killing anybody this year, but I got carried away and walked up to the bar and plugged him in the back a few times. A few children got in the way and are on the news now. The American flag that came out of my pocket as I initially drew my firearm hit the ground just as I exited the restaurant, the smell of lead thickening the air as I bowed my head and walked into the sunset, the fatally-wounded still falling to the floor. God Bless U.S.A. So I had to check out of my hotel and am now in a hostel in Cartigny, just over the border in France. I'm writing this because I need someone to Western Union about CHF 1,640 to bribe the customs people in Marseilles and then in Tunis. It's an odd amount to request because we all know that Western Union screws you royally on money transfers and I need about CHF 1,500. After that I'm out of your hair. Please send your donations to endthecolawars at gmail dot com. I'm standing by. And please don't report these slayings, I really didn't mean to increase Switzerland's annual homicide rate threefold in one evening. You would've done the same thing if some brasserie didn't take VISA.

The getaway car. Sam drove. I didn't get his last name.

THE REAL STORY

...which is nowhere near as entertaining. So I put my credit card down for the meal, and the Ukranian waiter who spoke great English says, "oooohhh, uhhh, hmm, is that American Express?" First thing that crossed my mind was, "Shit, you have to be kidding me; those commercials can't be true." I say, "No. It's VISA." Him: "Oh okay, good, that's fine." And he ran off with the bill. Goes to show you what a bullshit slogan like "Don't leave home without it" gets you in real life. Fuck AmEx. Then I started shooting.

You can just hear a crow cawing, can't you? You'd better pick up that whip extension or you'll never make it past the gargoyle at the entrance.

My Mom?

2007-10-18T09:25:00.000-05:00

Somebody in Arlington was somewhat displeased with my parking job on Sunday. That person is also a Bank of America customer, apparently.

Geneva

2007-10-17T08:14:00.001-05:00

So I'm going to Geneva next week for about 6 days or so for work. If anyone has any suggestions about what to do, where to eat, what to see, etc, I'd appreciate your advice. That is, unless your advice sucks.

What's better than a big box of NERDS?

2007-10-16T21:56:00.000-05:00

¡¡¡ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING!!!

Drukgz

2007-10-11T15:04:00.000-05:00

I was planning on putting together a polemic "hip-hopera" on our great nation's War on Drugs and the impotence and hypocrisy therein, but I came across something much simpler in the Economist that I could plagiarize and still get the general point across, thus saving me about 4 hours during which I can instead work sedulously and exacerbate my slightly sore throat and stuffy nose... RUN-ON!!!!

"NEARLY 1.9m people were arrested in America for drug offences in 2006—over three times the number detained in 1980. Around one in eight arrests is now drug related. But what they achieve in the "war on drugs" is unclear, according to a report by The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group. Fewer people take drugs: 14% of people reported using them monthly in 1979, but only 8% in 2005. But arrests are increasingly for more trivial crimes: in 2006 only 17.5% of arrests were made for the sale or manufacture of drugs, whereas some 39% were for the possession of marijuana. "

- Economist, October 09, 2007

So, over 700,000 people were arrested for having some weed in 2006, while 1.4 million were arrested for drunk driving (2004). Weed killed nobody, but drunk driving killed over 17,000 people. Hmm.

New Study Proves Liberal-minded People are Easily Fooled

2007-10-05T08:19:00.000-05:00

A new study linking liberalism and gullibility is bound to find favor with conservatives but rouse the liberal base.

The research, conducted by Dr. Brice Lord, M.D., Esq., Ph.D., LLM, M.S.E.E. of the Cola War Memorial Institute for Social, Political, and Flavor Studies (CWMISPFS), finds a strong correlation between liberal-minded individuals and the degree to which they succumb to deception and guile. He explained that further study will not be needed since the results are perfectly definitive.

Dr. Lord began by polling what Dr. Lord calls "a blind, representative superset" of readers on his personal blog. This began with a seemingly insignificant question requesting his readers' political tilt. After gathering responses from over 8 individuals, he next posted a poll whose goal was to trick readers into admitting their ease of manipulation. Out of more than 13 people who took the second poll, over 71.42% of people honestly registered their submission to Dr. Lord's artful deception. After analyzing and comparing data from the two supersets, Lord was able to produce the results he was looking for.

Dr. Lord explains the results to two victims of his research.

What he discovered Dr. Lord describes as "a shocking presupposition solidly confirmed with uncorrupted scientificy." He adds that "the data is so unbelievably statistically significant I guarantee you've never seen anything like it." Lord found that, by water weight, the majority of liberals fell for his linguistic chicanery whereas the sole conservative poll-taker "mostly pretty likely" didn't fall for it. He added that the write-in populist/anarchist seemed particularly susceptible to "manipulation by the liberal machine."

Lord isn't jumping to any conclusions, however. "I isn't jumping to any conclusions", Lord states, but he does believe the study should be worrisome to the left. "If I was proved beyond a doubt to be ridiculously gullible and unattractive I'd probably be pretty careful from here on out." Lord recommends that concerned liberals may want to consider "watching fair and balanced news programs like Fox News and maybe change shampoos," but stresses that this goes beyond the statistical relevance of his research.

A CWMISPFS scientist researches the transparency of glass objects and liberal bias.

While the Freemen, Montana-based CWMISPFS continues "research-as-usual"---a phrase emboldened on the stock of the 20-foot solid bronze statue of a Winchester rifle outside the research compound---a public backlash has begun to stir back in Washington.

Critics have complained that Lord's methods have not been properly vetted in other studies, and that results need to be refabricated in order to verify his conclusions. MoveOn.org complained that shampoos such as Garnier Fructis are too expensive for the average worker, and that a government program should be created to help the lower classes "Take Care" of their hair. MoveOn and Barbara Boxer, D-CA, are co-sponsoring the Clean The Hair Act in hopes to advance the legislation.

Others have even questioned Dr. Lord's motives, claiming that he's merely a conservative shill and a gun-toting fanboy. In a recent press conference, Lord rebuffed this criticism directly, stating that he's "gun-wielding" rather than gun-toting, a difference his critics seem not to fully appreciate.

In fact, Lord has been positively linked to the right-wing MoveAlong.org, which casts some doubt on his research. During a recent interview, Lord was asked whether his research may have been funded by politically-motivated private interests, to which he responded tacitly, "Maybe ... I'm a fucking scientist, not an accountant... Yes, I do have gum, in fact, but it's Big Red; is that okay, do you like cinnamon?"

Dr. Brice Lord can bench press 500 pounds.

Dr. Lord showing off at Muscle Beach, California.

Damn Richers

2007-10-02T12:09:00.000-05:00

So I took my little jaunt to Southern California this weekend for work; I got back yesterday evening. The being in SoCal part was good and fine. I took an afternoon drive on Sunday down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) to Laguna Beach and then turned around and went up nearly to Long Beach. It's a good place to drive, though it can be pretty trafficky, which detracts from the Hollywood image of freely cruising up and down the idyllic Pacific coast in a convertible. Oh, and portions of it are flanked by oil derricks on the right and offshore oil platforms on the right. Pretty scenic stuff.

Speaking of cars, I saw possibly every major brand and model of luxury car while in and around the 5-star Newport Beach hotel in which I stayed. Upon pulling into the hotel the first night, there was a yellow Lamborghini just sitting there. Next to it was Bentley and a MB SLR McLaren. The next evening there was a Ferrari parked on the curb outside of the restaurant we went to, which is really intelligent since that's the place it's most likely to get hit. But hey, what's a couple hundred thousand dollars? The next day I saw one or two more Bentley's, a Rolls Royce, a Maserati, and another Ferrari. Aside from the superstar sightings, there were, of course, an innumerable quantity of Mercedes SLs, BMW 7-series, Land Rovers and Porche Cayennes. I'm not counting the Orange County Lamborghini dealership (next to a yacht dealership) that I passed, either. I'm not so impressed by the cars themselves but by the amount of money it takes to acquire said cars. Where the hell did these people get so much money, and why are they all in exactly the same place? Should I have answered that Nigerian guy's email afterall? I thought it was a scam!

The people who were driving these cars were a REAL interesting breed of rich douchebag scum, by the way. It looked like were really trying to pull off the West Coast vibe and the Long Island daddy's boy look at the same time. For all their real estate profits I guess they still couldn't afford a decent image consultant. You might have seen some of them featured on Hot Chicks With Douchebags.

So as I pull up into the big fancy hotel lined with big fancy cars in my rental Nissan Sentra whose stated color was "Sparkles", you can imagine what the valets are thinking. On the contrary, however, I gave them $2 instead of $1, except I only tipped them when they went to get it, not when I dropped it off.

Travel

2007-09-21T08:49:00.000-05:00

Fall's always a busy business travel time for me, but this year is looking to be unusually busy. As it stands right now, I'll be traveling a total of 26 days between now and the end of the year. Eep.

My travel schedule is roughly:
Late-Sept: Southern California
Late-Oct: Geneva, Switzerland (you can hate me for this)
Early-Nov: Southern California
Mid-Nov: Detroit, MI (you can pity me for this)
Mid-Dec: Southern California

I usually enjoy traveling for work, but it is tiring and can get boring and lonely. If I have any free time and have a car at my disposal, I like to drive around a place for a few hours to get a feel for what everything looks like and how the people are, and take a few pictures if anything strikes my fancy. I've been fortunate that my job has taken me to a lot of places I doubt I would see otherwise.

This year I've been particularly fortunate to go abroad to Spain and Switzerland for work. I've never been to Europe before this year, but counting my honeymoon next June (Greece), I'll have gone to Europe three times within the span of 11 months. That ain't so bad.

So if I had to give you the top 5 destinations I want to see before I die, as of right now they'd be (not in priority order):

1. Japan
2. Southeast Asia (Laos, Thailand, Vietnam)
3. Antarctica
4. South Africa
5. Saharan Africa

Maybe five isn't enough, because I really want to see China, New Zealand, Peru, Scandinavia, and India as well. Hmm...I'd better start saving.

Anyway, enough daydreaming. I actually have an entire label on the blog devoted to travel; my expeditions are loosely documented here. This includes New Mexico, Colorado, Spain, and a hodgepodge of others. Looking back at this I obviously haven't posted a lot of my photos from various other trips like Seattle, Chicago, LA, Minneapolis, and Santa Barbara. Maybe I'll do that later, if only for my own edification.

My visited U.S. States (35/50). Airports exluded.

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Movie Review!!!!1!!!1!1!

2007-09-20T14:09:00.000-05:00

I went through quite a long period of movie-less activity recently, which was abruptbptbltpylbluly ended ...god "abruptly" is awkward to type... by watching three movies over the past week or two. They were of varying "goodity", which is a value derived from "goodness" using the "sexy", "guns", and "originality" coefficients. The movies I saw, and my ratings of them, are:

1. Hot Fuzz: &++
2. And the Band Played On: C-
3. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: H
4. Bubba Ho-tep: R-

Did I say 3 movies? I meant 4. That's how good Bubba Ho-tep wasn't.

Now you might have noticed something peculiar about my grading scheme. Unlike the overgenerous school system, I operate on an extended grading scale that doesn't stop at "F" for "fucking failure" nor "A" for "altogether awesome." I just don't think there's enough gradation in there to properly encompass any movie you might see, from crappy Kazakh hardcore porn to mind-blowing action movies sent back in time to us from the future. My rating scale may or may not bottom out at "Z-----", which is five minuses below a "Z" rating. I'm also not sure where the top of the scale is. In fact, there is no top since it's my scale, but so far Hot Fuzz is close to topping it with an "Ampersand ++." In the future I may need to extend to exponentials and factorials of alphanumerics to properly rate movies, but we'll cross that turtle when we come to it. Movies are also awarded "Awesome Points" for being awesome, and the amount awarded is entirely at my unpredictable discretion.

Now that you fully understand my rating system, here comes the part where I tell you why I rated these movies as such, also known as the "content" of the blog post.

Here we go:

1. Hot Fuzz. RATING: &++ with 180 Awesome Points

Written and directed, and acted, by the same genius British minds behind Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz tells the story of a overachieving London police officer (not policeman), Nicholas Angel (played by Simon Pegg) who is transferred to a small, quiet village in the English countryside which it turns out is vying for the "Village of the Year" award, an honor that is perennially just barely out of its grasp. This is of little consequence as several suspiciously violent accidents start to befall the residents of Sandford and the supermarket manager, Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton), is the focus of the potentially-criminal investigations. Let me pause here, because casting Timothy Dalton is a brilliant call. Not only does he perform outstanding in this character, but casting one of the worst James Bonds adds a measure of je ne se qua to the film's feel. So, Sgt. Angel's convinced these accidents are perpetrated by Skinner but can't get the homeboy police force to believe him. Angel is, however, joined in his quest for justice by one thick-headed officer, Danny Butterman (Nick Frost). What makes the movie truly stand out is the combination of subtle British humor, wacky British humor, wry British humor, dry British humor, ...wait, I think I can just say "British humor and capture all of this. The movie also makes purposefully obvious tributes to American action movies, particularly Bad Boys 2 and Point Break, which are done so as not to be hokey nor unnecessary. As with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's previous accomplishment, Shaun of the Dead, the movie is chock full of both subtle and obvious foreshadowing, as well as using self-referential techniques within the film, which make the movie worth watching over and over. All in all, this movie easily earns it's "&++" rating.

2. And the Band Played On. RATING: C- with 5 Awesome Points

Meh, this movie was a bit of a shame. From what my taught Moroccan fiancee, Michael, tells me, the book upon which this made-for-HBO movie is based is fantastic. However, the film obviously doesn't get the adaptation right. In short, the movie portrays the onset of the AIDS blight that struck in the early 1980's and how the U.S. government, including the NIH, CDC, and White House, deftly kept it under wraps, since it was a "gay cancer." Only after about 25,000 Americans had died did President Reagan first utter the word "AIDS." Sadly, all of this is blindingly true, and it's scary because this tragedy could easily repeat itself. For such an important subject matter and one of considerable political tenderness, the movie does a disappointing job of explaining anything in any detail, and ultimately leaves you stuck trying to figure out if you're really watching an Oxygen Channel 2-hour feature or a Dateline NBC special investigation reenactment rather than being perplexed by what went wrong with the AIDS epidemic. The film boasts an "all-star" cast (Ian McKellen hit .315 in the majors) featuring Anjelica Houston, Richard Gere, Ian McKellen, Phil Collins (seriously), Steve Martin, Alan Alda, and a bunch of other people for which you'll find yourself saying "hey, I know that guy from something..." Problems immediately begin when you realize several scenes have been cut for brevity's sake but that leave you wondering what the hell is going on and who the characters are before they ultimately die of AIDS. For instance, Richard Gere portrays a nameless character credited as "The Choreographer," but it's not clear how he knows one of the main characters, who he is, why he's important, or why he's in the movie at all. The only saving grace for this movie, and the only reason I don't give it a "H.5 +", is that the subject matter is worth knowing more about. Although these days it's not particularly unimaginable to think the government is keeping important information from us, but it's valuable to understand there's plenty of awful precedent.

3. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. RATING: H with 35 Awesome Points

As supersexyrawcool as the film noir genre can seem, actually pulling it off is another thing entirely. This is what, in my opinion, doomed Sin City to pointlessness. Similarly, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang misses the mark by 9 letters, getting an "H". I originally rated it "J", but then remember Val Kilmer, surprisingly, did a tremendous job playing a sociopathic gay private investigator. It also gets bonus points for positive "sexy" and "guns" coefficients. However, its negative "Robert Downey Jr. taking neurosis too far again" coefficient drags this back down a bit. Basically, as with every noir, we get a guy, a girl, some faceless bad guys, a big city, and a couple of murders. There's some funny lines in the movie, and some interesting plot twists that, admittedly, I am never able to follow in movies, and a good bit of unrealistic gore and violence. I think that, and the picture [caption: Robert Downey Jr.'s gotten himself into yet another mess] pretty much sums up the entire movie, so I'm done.

4. Bubba Ho-tep. RATING: R- 1 Awesome Point

.......... ............ .......... I'm sorry, I blacked out trying to figure out how many other movies I could have watched instead of this one. You'd think that any movie with Bruce Campbell would have some measure of subculture appeal one way or another, but this movie succeeds thoroughly in this absence. Bubba Ho-tep starts off with some fat old guy (Campbell) who thinks he's Elvis Presley waking up from a coma or something in an East Texas nursing home. Then an Egyptian mummy with a cowboy hat and torn jeans starts walking around late at night sucking the residents' souls out and killing them. Seriously. So Elvis and a black guy who thinks he's JFK devise a plan to torch the mummy using some sort of makeshift flamethrower, but something goes wrong and JFK eats it, but then Elvis ultimately bakes the mummy, but who then comes back to "life" somehow, but then Elvis wins again somehow and destroys it for good. It's all really fucking stupid. There was one funny line though: "Now the two key words for tonight- "caution" and "flammable."" That soft chuckle was certainly not worth 2 hours of my time, nor the 4 awards and 6 nominations it has gotten from such venerable institutions as the Fant-Asia Film Festival. Fuck it, this movie gets an "R-".

Pillowfight '07: Michigan vs. Notre Dame

2007-09-14T14:57:00.001-05:00

As a devoted Michigan fan, I've naturally been de-testacled this season after successive losses to unranked opponents, one of which shall remain nameless for the rest of my life, to open the season 0-2. This is the first time Michigan opened its season with two straight losses at home since 1959. That's almost 50 years. It's truly a season of historic ignominy for my favorite teams. Michigan sucks as bad as it has for a half-century, the Orioles lost a game by 27 runs, the first time in 110 years, and the Ravens can't seem to beat the perennial cross-town underachievers (Redskins) nor the perennial convicted criminals (Bengals).

Some idiot UM fan made this tshirt before the season started (obviously). Now we all know where to point those fingers.

This weekend Michigan faces one of its archrivals, Notre Dame. Thankfully, Notre Dame is equally awful, having lost their first two games this season as well. Of course, it'll be the first time in history that's ever happened. Lucky me. Watching this game should be like watching blind, retarded sumo wrestlers play checkers in space.

There's a lot of talk this time around about which team is worse rather than the usual "which team is better" madness. For some reason Notre Dame fans think their quarterback's extra 6 quarters of gametime experience over Michigan's freshman QB (our senior got hurt last week) will make the difference somehow. Oh, and thanks to the Big 10 for filling our bye week with an out-of-conference game; that should really give the injured players the respite they need midseason. But, for some reason Michigan fans think that this is a fluke and we'll turn it around all the sudden against the hated Irish. I'd love to believe that, but as far as I can tell this fluke is less the gastrointestinal variety and more the Dune Sandworms variety.

This is not a fluke.

No matter what happens on Saturday, what I am absolutely 100% sure of is that everyone can look forward to watching a 4.5-hour football game, compliments of the ABC network, Doritos, Carmax, and Cialis.

And that's why it's called Pillowfight 2007*. But hey, Go Blue.

* I didn't come up with this.

busy week = mind melt

2007-09-07T08:43:00.000-05:00

As the title implies, I've been pretty busy at work. My work isn't interesting to read about---or anyone's work for that matter, unless you're Batman---so i'll spare you...for now. Random thought, but what in the hell ever happened to Pacey from Dawson's Creek? I'm not sure what his name was (past tense is indeed appropriate here), but the last movie I remember him being in was The Skulls, which I think came out in 2001. I wonder what's worse, being a jobless Dawson graduate (Pacey) or being a jobless Dawson graduate AND having your career driven into a ravine and being impregnated by a inculcating madman (Holmes). I guess I answered my own question. If you can't tell from the sharp rise in multisyllabic words I've been using lately, I've been studying for the GRE and putting a lot of time (read: 2 hours per week) in what I call WordBlasting. WordBlasting is where you take a list of several hundred words, intravenously-introduced Peruvian blue cocaine, 7 minutes, and a cool, damp cloth. It works wonders, believe me. I'm planning on asking for my $565 back from the USDA Grad School where I took test prep classes recently. The only problem is that I tend to pass out for about 6 hours after WordBlasting, but when I wake up, boy do I know my vocabulary. Sure, I'm usually bleeding from one ear and have a mysterious amount of change in my pockets when I come around, but it's imperative that I improve my GRE English score. I mean, it's not just because I need to do well on the GRE, who doesn't need to know words like "prolix" and "interregnum?" I can't tell you how many times Tony Cornheiser has described The USC Trojans' uniforms as "incarnadine," and Anderson Cooper has referred to Iran's nuclear program as "sub rosa." MathBlasting is a little different because it tends to involve things like the quadratic formula and the rhombus. These godless machinations require artful square root signs and articulated spatial relations skills, so I have to make sure my head's a little clearer. Nothing's worse than dropping blotter acid while MathBlasting and winding up with two parallel lines shooting straight out of my chest. Want to know the 12th power of 2? It's 4,096. What about the hypotenuse of a triangle whose legs are 9 and 40? It's 41. Do you know how I know that? Because I have to for the GRE, and because I get emails all the time from ETCW! fans demanding that I make simple calculations in my head for them. I don't get it either, but that's how useful all of this is in real life. No matter how much drugs I do, nothing can prepare me for the two essay questions, one of which fools me every time with deceptively cogent logic like, "Garyville is a small town with a big factory. Because it has a big factory, it absolutely must have a man who owns a saddle. Unicorns don't allow men with saddles to ride them, so it is unquestionable that no unicorns own more than 1 acre of property in Chuckton, the town 10 miles down the road from Garyville." Honestly, for the life of me, I just am unable to identify the logical flaws in that argument. By the way, have you ever wondered what would happen if you secretly walked up behind someone at their computer in your office and blew an airhorn? Or threw a brick at their head? That would make for some good, incarcerative YouTube. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that someone keeps stealing my staple remover? I'd staple it down to my desk, but then how would I get it off? I bet Confucius wondered the same thing at some point. Actually, I bet he didn't, not because there was no such thing as a staple remover back then, but because I'm way smarter than he will ever be. "Man with hand in pocket not always playing with coin." What the fuck Confucius? You fucking pervert. I'd better lock up my daughters around you. Wait, maybe this has something to do with why I always end up with coins in my pocket when WordBlasting... uh-oh.

Mr. Beckham Goes to Washington

2007-08-31T12:32:00.000-05:00

I suppose it's been about 3 weeks, but I figured it's about time I post the two crappy pictures I took with my phone during David Beckham's debut MLS game against the DC United on August 9 in Washington. Our seats were officially in the nosebleeds, literally one row back from the top, but us Barra Bravas snuck down to the lower level after the usual halftime mosh pit in the concourse concluded.

DC United fans give Mr. Beckham a very warm welcome during his August 9 MLS debut.

Yeah, Beckham's hurt yet again, and that sucks for the MLS for a variety of reasons, none of which I feel like going on about, but mostly because despite how polarizing his arrival was, soccer's actually made SportsCenter pretty much every single night since he got here. Any publicity's good publicity, right? Well, not if he can't play. Soccer-haters like nothing more than something else underwhelming to complain about.

The recent injury also may threaten the possibility of other post-peak foreign soccer stars from following his lead, like CrazyHead Zidane, which would otherwise help buttress the league's skill level and overall attractability both for players and fans. Naturally, a foreign athlete's first loyalties lie with his home country and, after seeing Beckham disappear from the England team's beleaguered march toward the UEFA Euro Tournament, may not want to risk injury, not to mention enmity, by playing extra matches here in the States.

So does Beckham playing in the MLS really matter for soccer? Naysayers like to think that if Pelé's participation in the North American Soccer League (NASL) in the 1970's couldn't promote soccer beyond nichedom, an injured Beckham sure can't either. That may be true, but it's not the whole case. K-12 participation in formal soccer leagues has grown substantially since then, which carries with it the obvious assumption that interest in the sport has grown commensurately. How many of us had fathers who played soccer when they were a kid? Very few. In fact, the US Youth Soccer League, begun in 1974: the same year Pelé started playing in the NASL, has grown from 100,000 to 3,000,000 registered players; and this doesn't count the 800,000 coaches and volunteers or any bullshit like that. That's a 2,900% rise concomitant with the 41% rise in overall population.

Popularization of soccer in the U.S. has also benefited from the massive influx of Latin Americans, who, like most of the rest of the world, hold soccer as their #1 sport. At one-seventh of the total U.S. population, and a demographic that prefers to settle in urban areas, this should not be trivialized. In fact, DC United's most boisterous ultra firm, La Barra Brava, was founded by South American immigrants.

He's in there somewhere on the left half of the field. Just look for the sexy and you'll find him.

After all is said and done, whether or not Beckham's U.S. tour makes any difference to U.S. soccer will ultimately rely on him actually playing. And if he ends up heading back to England soon rather than later, and thus cutting short his term with the LA Galaxy and the MLS, it will probably prove more detrimental to the league than had he never come at all.

The Baltimore Orioles make history again!

2007-08-24T09:51:00.000-05:00

110 years is a long time.

In the past 110 years, the Ottoman Empire and its Muslim Caliphate were dissolved, two World Wars involving over 100 nations in toto were fought and decided, 20 U.S. Presidents have passed through the White House, six of whom were shot and two of whom were killed (the West Wing was not built until ~1909), the first production automobiles were sold (590 million now exist globally), powered flight and the escalator were invented, man harnessed the atom, narcotics were stigmatized internationally, world population increased four-fold, and humankind stepped foot on an astronomical body 240,000 miles away---the Moon---six times.

Nope, it's not a typo.

Perhaps it's somewhat less consequential, but do you know what else happened 110 years ago? A Major League Baseball team, for the first time in history, scored more than 30 runs in a single game. This rapacious feat was performed by the Chicago Colts against the hapless Louisville Colonels in 1897, with a final score of 36-7. Notice how you've never heard of either of these teams. So, how many teams since have scored 30 or more runs in a single game? Well, as of Wednesday, August 22, 2007, one.

That team would be the Texas Rangers, a team 15 games below .500 and with the 4th worst win percentage in the entire League, when they came back from a three-run deficit to beat my hometown team, the Baltimore Orioles, with a final score of 30-3 in Camden Yards, the O's home field. Loooong sigh. If I had known in advance, by divination or by Biff's anachronistic sports almanac, that an unknown baseball team would lose a game that night by 27 runs, I most certainly would have put my money on that team being my fucking Orioles. For a team that's spent nearly half a billion dollars on player salaries (actual > $400M) in the past decade, this shit will not pass.

It's only natural that the enfeebled, incapable Orioles were on the losing end of such a record. We always manage to outdo our own mediocrity somehow. Like it's not enough to have an entire decade of consecutive losing seasons. Like it's not enough to have an autocratic tyrant for an owner. Like it's not enough for the team to not have even reached the World Series in 24 years. Like it's not enough for the Orioles to hold the record for the most consecutive losses at the beginning of a season (1988). Like it's not enough for the Orioles to have had 6 different managers in the last decade. Sure, if it was opposite year the Orioles would be in great fucking shape. But we don't live in opposite town, and opposite year was 1989 ("Why Not?!"). How could all these comedies of error not be the end of Lord Mephistopheles' (pictured below) artful machinations? How could schadenfreude knows such infinite depths? After this game, I am utterly convinced that the Orioles are damned to persist indefinitely in underachievement or, perhaps by some grace, will finally achieve obsolescence and demise. Truly, for Orioles fans, the end is extremely fucking nigh.

One of Mephistopheles' fiendish doppelganger minions. And he hates steamed crabs.

In case I haven't yet been able to fully evoke the magnitude, rarity, and historic relevance of this defeat, allow me to try to put it in context:

The Orioles could have scored 27 runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, only to tie the game and go into extra innings.

The last time a baseball team scored this many runs, the Civil War was a more recent event than the Vietnam War is now.

The first American League no-hitter was pitched in 1902, 5 years later, by the Chicago White Stockings. 234 no-hitters have been pitched in all, and 17 of those were perfect games.

In 1897, the Cy Young Award would not be awarded for another 59 years.

22 years after the Chicago Colts' victory, Jackie Robinson is born in Cairo, Georgia.

At the time of the 36-run game, the Louisville Colonels had a budding young shortstop on the roster named Hognus Wagner.

The knuckleball would not debut in the MLB for another 11 years.

And lastly... the first subatomic particle, the electron, was discovered that same year. It would be 35 years before the neutron was discovered and high school students would need to start worrying about p's, e's, and n's outside of the alphabet.

Sadly, this unfortunately-historic game was the first in a double-header on Wednesday night. If the 30-3 loss wasn't enough---and "loss" doesn't quite convey the true absurdity of the event---the Orioles also lost the second game that night 9-7, meaning that the Rangers put up 39 runs to the Orioles' 10 in a single night. When put in that perspective, the Rangers may as well have beaten the record for all I care.

Kevin Millar has never seen a ball hit that far that many times in so short a time. No one else alive today has either.

So how does this stack up against other baseball records? Well, it's quite difficult to compare these, right? How do you compare batting average with ERA records, or career no-hitters with career RBIs? Well, it seems there is one easy way to do so, and that is rarity. The less likely something is, the more of a feat it becomes. Sure, specific circumstances determine some records, like unassisted triple plays. But not this one. This game represents not only the unmitigated implosion of one team, but also the sudden impulse and collective synergy of the opposing team in response. Indeed, that is a rare thing. And 110 years is a long time.

Super Mario Bros. 2: A Cover-up...REVEALED!

2007-08-22T13:22:00.000-05:00

In case you didn't notice when you were 7 years old, Super Mario Bros. 2 kinda sucks. The game deviated entirely from the original's formula of enemies, attacks, movement, health, and even level design. Instead of Koopa Troopas, we get Shy Guys, which look like psychotic Ewoks wearing Jason masks (fortunately these nightmarish chimeras can be injured by a thrown turnip or sundry other veggies). Instead of your Seattle hippie-style mushroom-based health regeneration scheme have to collect cherries seemingly nailed to thin air. And instead of Bowzer, the inimical lizard-tyrant at the end of the first SMB, you get Wart, a bloated, effete, burping frog that's deathly allergic to thrown vegetables as the final boss. And oh yeah, the whole game is a fucking dream. Snooze.

(LEFT) Super Mario Bros. 2. (RIGHT) Doki Doki Panic. Fuck you, Nintendo.

As it turns out, there's a reason for this: SMB2 isn't actually a Mario game. Wait what? Indeed, the U.S. Super Mario Bros. 2 game we were all playing was, in fact, a very slightly doctored version of a Japanese game called Dream Factory: Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. The levels are identical, the enemies are identical, and the playable characters are identical, except for the graphical sprites themselves. So while the Japanese were all enjoying their actual SMB sequel (now titled Super Mario Bros. All-Stars in the U.S.), we were gullibly swallowing some cheap Japanese knock-off. Seriously, did they think we'd never figure this out? Well, it took 20 years, I suppose.

The thing on the right is the effeminate final boss to SMB2, Wart. I guess that's an Asian crab on the left.

Truth be told, I didn't figure this out. Some guy in search of YouTube glory put together a whole exposé which I'm just summarizing here. Oh, you want to watch it---and I strongly suggest you do---well then here's the video. Credit goes to NJB '08 for this find.

Mindless Entertainment

2007-08-21T08:25:00.000-05:00

Yet another piece of evidence that Tokyo may be overpopulated. Apparently this is a wave pool, but there's a lot of Japanese people in the way so you can't see the water. It actually looks kinda cool once the waves get going. Yeah, I know, "whatever."

The Spanish Exposition

2007-08-15T09:40:00.000-05:00

However belated, I put together some final thoughts, observations and impressions developed during my recent trip to Spain. This was the first time I'd ever been to Europe, and the first time I'd really ever been to a truly foreign country (not counting Mexico and the Caribbean), so whatever I write may seem pretty obvious or self-evident to those of you who've had the benefit of traveling abroad, but this is my goddamn blog and I'll say what I want, alright?

The Royal Palace in Madrid

1. Pickpocketing is rife, especially on heavily-trafficked streets and plazas. Maybe I was a little paranoid, but anytime I walked through large crowds I'd casually put my hands in my pockets. But hey, I didn't get my wallet taxed, did I? I actually stopped on the side of Las Ramblas a few times to watch the people watching the pea game to see if I might spy a pickpocket on the job. The best thing you can do to protect yourself from these people is to know all their tricks and keep very aware of people around you. This isn't always easy, because...

2. The sense of personal space is VERY different than the U.S. I found myself saying "pardón" a lot when I'd rub against someone or nearly knock into them when I first got to Spain, but then I realized that they never said it back. People constantly bump into one another, cut each other off, and dodge in and out of pedestrian traffic. Aside from the obvious language barrier, this was probably the hardest thing to get used to.

LEFT: The Barri Gotic, or Gothic Quarter, in Barcelona.

3. Some people in Barcelona know English well enough to communicate, but many in Madrid definitely don't. I found myself needing to use my Spanish far more often there than in Barcelona, though I always tried to speak Spanish regardless.

4. Servers at restaurants are definitely not very friendly at all, possibly because they're not really working for tips and thus have many more tables than they do here. It was actually kind of annoying dealing with unfriendly waiters constantly, I definitely enjoyed coming back to the States and having friendly service, even if it may be put-on a bit.

5. Madrid quite literally shuts down at 3:00pm for siesta, though Barcelona pretty much stays open throughout the day. This is probably because Barcelona is about 10-15 degrees cooler than Madrid.

The Toledo cityscape.

6. Traffic laws are more like suggestions, particularly in Barcelona. Rush hour in Barc. was an amazing site. In one cab ride home I saw two people riding a large ATV in the middle of the city, cutting back and forth across lanes, cleverly dodging the countless dirtbikes, motorcycles, and scooters. The whole scene looked like some sort of varied vehicle race.

7. I'd like to know why the DC Metro can't work the way it does in Spain. In both cities, trains came every ~2.5 minutes. I really never waited longer than that, and there's no such thing as off-peak. The trains just keep going and going and going.

8. Prostitution seems to be A.O.K. in Madrid, where you can find hookers lining the streets and sketchball Spaniards sidling up to them once the sun starts to go down.

9. The beaches are topless, which in my opinion is most triumphant. It's actually kind of interesting, too. Since Spain is such a vehemently Catholic society, you'd expect them to be more conservative, but of course my definition of "conservative" as an American clearly differs from theirs. Kudos to nudity.

10. I saw a lot of Yao, LeBron, and Iverson jerseys while over there, which was surprising.

11. As beautiful and awe-inspiring as the palaces and cathedrals are---particularly in Madrid and Toledo, respectively---I can't help but think the Monarchy and Church completely fleeced the people to build these things, forcing everyone but the elites to live in abject poverty.

The Cathedral in Toledo. Yes, that's all gold.

I guess that's about it. Now leave me alone.

When weathermen do cocaine...

2007-08-15T08:35:00.000-05:00

... this happens:

Weather Forecast Weather Maps Weather Radar

About a minute into the 1:30 clip he finally gets to the "Washington DC Forecast" we were kinda hoping to hear about. This video is probably for a limited time only, so act fast. And it's entirely work safe.

Movies to Look Forward To

2007-08-14T09:14:00.000-05:00

While browsing Apple's movie trailer page (I'm not sure why they have one) I found a couple of movies that look like they have potential. And here they are:

Ghosts of Cite Soleil

THINKfilm

This film follows the story of two brothers who lead opposing factions in a gang war for control of Haiti's abject slum of Cite Soleil leading up to the overthrow of Aristide's regime in 2004. If that and the movie's poster (left image) doesn't sound menacing enough, the gangs' foot solders are called "chimeras," or ghosts, thus the title. Sounds dangerous, huh? Amazingly, this is a documentary. I have a strange fascination with places of complete moral neglect and base depravity, but I lack the adrenaline lust to go see it for myself, so I'm glad that this camera crew risked their lives for my $8. I hereby nominate them for a "Balls of Steel" Oscar Award.

Trailer

1.18.08

Paramount/Bad Robot

At least there's no risk of anachronisms for this title. The trailer begins by putting the audience in the middle of the story as a character videotaping the surprise birthday party that's unfolding. Everyone's having a good old time, there's some hot chicks and slick i-bankers sharking them, and then shit starts to go south unexpectedly. Interestingly, there's no summary text for the movie, just the trailer alone, which adds to the mystery. Some even speculate it's a Voltron movie. It's obviously some sort of monster or alien invasion flick, but it's got potential for several reasons. First, it's written by Drew Goddard and directed by J.J. Abrams, the masterminds behind Lost, Angel, Alias, and Buffy. Sure, most of these you might consider cultish WB series, but they have a surprisingly large, rabid, and maniacally defensive following. Second, filming in the first-person seems to be more engaging to the audience (see the end to Dawn of the Dead (2004)--spoiler). And lastly, I have a big soft spot for Godzilla-type movies, having watched the same ones ad nauseum as a tyke. Anyway, this movie's got potential, though it has to toe a very thin line in order to pan out.

Trailer

I Am Legend

Warner Bros/Village Roadshow

Another apocalyptic movie, right? Well, yeah, but if these "end of days" type movies were done right the first time we wouldn't be left wanting for more. Sure, this is your typical Will Smith movie that starts out with something like, "My name is John Armstead. I am the last man on Earth," but damnit it's cool. N8K over at Slain By An Elf joked that it looks like The Day After Independence Day, and it does, but The Day After Tomorrow was terrible, and Independence Day made me wonder why the aliens didn't try more than once, so why wouldn't this cinematic gold? Oh wait. My prediction: entertainment.

Trailer

Sunshine

Fox Searchlight

The plot goes something like... the Sun is dying in the not-too-distant future and the Earth sends a cadre of attractive astronauts to plant a device inside that will reinitiate the nuclear fusion process to keep us all alive. The mission starts to turn for the worst when they discover the Sun is pretty hot and the ship isn't working right. Sounds pretty droll, but toward the end of the trailer we discover that there's some weird shit going down on the ship and, in fact, there's an unidentified additional "crew member" that might have something to do with their difficulties. It looks like a hybrid of Event Horizon, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Sphere (the book, not the awful awful movie). Probably the film's most encouraging feature is Cillian Murphy, who's one of my favorite actors (28 Days Later, Batman Begins, The Wind That Shakes the Barley). It could be a wash, but I'm guessing otherwise.

Trailer

We Got To Do Better

2007-08-10T10:01:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the show of the same name that pointed me in the direction of this, uh, commercial? Words can't really even begin to describe this clip, so you be the judge. Make sure the sound is on and that you're not within anyone's earshot.

Newz U Can Yewz: IT'S HOT!

2007-08-09T10:11:00.001-05:00

In case you've been staying home from work this entire week, have entirely ignored TV, the Internet, and email, and have isolated yourself from all interpersonal contact, I have some very very important news for you today:

It's HOT outside!

I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this, but the temperature seems to be really high lately, and I don't feel comfortable walking around in my long wool pants and sateen dress shirt lately. It also seems to be the topic of conversation in every elevator, cafeteria, Potbelly, Chipotle, doghouse, chickenhouse, cathouse, crackhouse, and outhouse. I'm guilty of it, too. Shit, it's about all you can think about when the Heat Index is 105 Degreez (though it could get hotter).

So, in conclusion,

"fuck you" Mother Nature.

I Know Where You Live(d): Google Maps Street View Coming to DC?

2007-08-07T12:49:00.000-05:00

It looks like we'll finally be able to waste countless hours looking at streets we actually recognize rather than waste countless hours looking at streets we don't. Why? Because Google Maps' Supercreepy Street View tool might be coming to DC.

A picture of the Immersive Media car used to collect images for Lord Google's infinite appetite that I successfully stole from a better website.

Reports have come in from a variety of sources that Immersive Media, the company doing Google's bidding to capture millions of 360-degree photos along the streets of New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver (seriously, why Denver?) for use in its dominant Maps feature, has been prowling the streets of DC in retrofitted VW Beetles. Normally, anything that's retrofitted is okay in my book, but you just have wonder about privacy issues in this case. For instance, what if I'm caught coming out of Rhino Bar in Georgetown at 3am with a 17-year old boy who's visiting his older brother at GW? Or what if I'm filmed shooting lethal doses of heroin into the homeless fellows lining up at St. Ursula's for their Sunday meal? These are all serious considerations we have to.....seriously consider.

Some people that have seen the aforementioned harvesters of photos:
Blogoscoped, June 6
Flickr, June 21

While new cities have recently been added to Google's list of owned cities, such as LA, Orlando, Galveston (again, seriously?), apparently it took several months after spotting the Immersive Media cars before the feature went live, so there's probably some time left to wait.

So in the meantime, DC, keep homoeroticizing and homiciding to your heart's content. The party's almost over.

More to come...

2007-08-07T09:09:00.001-05:00

I survived my trip to Spain and am back on U.S. soil, I'm happy to report. The fiendish pickpockets of Barcelona's Las Ramblas and Madrid's El Rastro Sunday flea market, Toledo's 104 degree heat (one degree above being "Hot-Blooded", even), and the 6.5-hour U.S. Airways Customer Service desk line to rebook my cancelled flight home were not enough to defeat me.

I haven't posted anything in awhile, but will follow up with my final impressions from Spain, a couple hundred photos, and maybe even some candy.

First Impressions from Spain (not Mars)

2007-07-22T16:52:00.000-05:00

It's midnight here in Barcelona and it's 6:00pm where I came from. I'm a little, uh, confused right now. After the seemingly undending soporific waves, I seem to have fought my way into the Spanish lifestyle okay. I haven't even been here 24 hours, so I won't make grand assertions or rash generalizations; what I will do is make broad observations and baseless assumptions. Wait, those are the same. Anyway, here's some things I've noticed about Barcelona so far.

1. The taxis don't know where you're going unless you point to it and they can read it. I was dropped off at the wrong hotel because I misprounced (Duques de Bergara). How dare I!

2. Las Ramblas is where you can find, at 9:30am on a Sunday, Brits stumbling blindly down the street after a night at the clubs and Spanish hobos pissing on trees in the middle of the walk.

3. People babbling in foreign languages is much easier to ignore than people babbling in your native tongue. The plane was full of Spanish-speakers but I didn't have much trouble getting to sleep.

4. Immersion is the fastest way to learn any language. I came to Spain only 16 hours ago with a broken understanding of it. After only a day, I've managed to have at least four long conversations with people involving an exchange of information leading to an answer entirely in Spanish, the last of which the American-ish couple next to me didn't even realize I was from the U.S. Everyone figured out I was from the U.S. after I told them and so I had to eventually apologize. They're not fond of Americans.

5. The "WALK/DON'T WALK" transition lasts about 2 seconds, leading any elderly person in certain peril if they're not careful. I've seen 4 geriatrics get nailed by Vespas already today.

6. Speaking of, everyone here rides Vespas or bikes. It seems more practical, but this is a far different city than anything in the U.S.

7. Las chicas son buenas.

8. Everybody smokes everywhere; even the metro smells like smoke.

9. Don't stand near the sewers, they smell like a port-o-potty.

10. You owe me $50.

11. Spain is a generally homogenous society. There's a few black/darker-skinned people, but all in all everyone's the same, kinda. It's a whole lot different. It's also a good thing I got something of a tan (while death-camping) before coming here.

12. There are powers of the Force you can't even begin to imagine.

Anyway, enough of this self-referential cultural screed. I'm going to bed. Buenas noches.

Sen. Redenbacher (D-WV) castigates Michael Vick for "barbarism"

2007-07-20T08:46:00.000-05:00

REUTERS, July 20, 2007, Washington, D.C.:

The posthumously revived corpse of beloved popcorn-spokesman Senator Orville Redenbacher took to the Senate floor for over 25 minutes Thursday to decry the indictment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick for allegations that he led a dogfighting ring out of one of his homes in Virginia. After much legal scrutiny, Reuters has confirmed that dogfighting is indeed illegal in all 50 U.S. states and its territories, in addition to every developed and most developing countries around the world. The indictment would appear to hold up in a court of law.

Sen. Redenbacher took the moral lead in this fight against the inhumane treatment of other creatures, even as many of his fellow legislators recently celebrated Vick's revival of the ancient pastime of dogfighting. "It's barbaric! Barbaric! Barbaric! It's barbaric! ......................... Barbaric! ...... Barbaric!!! It's barbaric! ................ BARBARIC!!!" Redenbacher strongly repeated 8 times while madly pumping his fist at a handful of bewildered tourists and a sleeping C-SPAN 2 cameraman in the cavernous Senate chamber Thursday [5:20 - 6:40 in the clip].

Clearly finding his wheelhouse, Sen. Redenbacher again vituperated the indictment by vicariously handing down God's own judgment on the matter by stating that "I am confident that the hottest places in hell are reserved for the souls of sick and brutal people who hold God's creatures in such brutal and cruel contempt." Some critics have wondered whether Redenbacher's 12-year hiatus in the tomb has affected his recollection of having been a leading member of the Klu Klux Klan's Exalted Cyclops chapter for 5 years in the 1940's before winning his first seat in Congress, where he has led for over 55 years. In the past, Redenbacher has indeed made several vague allusions to his views on racial integration:

"Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side."

It appeared that Redenbacher worked himself into a froth enough to have even caused a brief, mild stroke, evidenced by the long pause in his oratory [located at 6:10 in the clip]. An aide of the reanimated Sen. Redenbacher was seen shooting a concerned glance at the Senator just as he began to regain consciousness and his soul returned to his body.

Following this long-winded, meaningful diatribe, Sen. Redenbacher retired from the Senate chamber and stiffly plodded toward the nearest cemetery.

Sources say he forgot to validate his parking.

---Brice Lord, reporting

The only news you'll hear from the Tour de France this year

2007-07-19T08:13:00.000-05:00

Trivia Question: When will the Tour de France be held this year?

Answer: It's been going on for nearly 2 weeks.

Despite the extreme condition of physical fitness required of individuals to compete in this 22-day marathon on wheels, nobody really cares about it; that is, unless Lance Armstrong plans to win again with the gross audacity not seen since Babe Ruth pointed to the center field wall in 1933.

Is the Tour even on television anymore? Or is it on something crappy like ESPN The Ocho, reserved for niche events like Japanese Shame and Pain Tournament and Hot Dog Eating competitions? Sometimes you'll meet someone that is like really into the Tour de France and just needs to tell you that he enjoys it because he doesn't miss the forest for the trees like everyone else. These are a similar breed of asshole to those who dig the America's Cup sailboat race. I bet the application to the America's Cup looks something like this:

Registration for America's Cup (Sailboat Race)
Complete the following information, filling in the circles when necessary.

Name: _Brice Lord___________
Address: __1549 Awesome Lane______
Race: o White o Other
Annual Income: o $19,000,000-$20,000,000 o >$20,000,000
Domeciles: o 2 o 3 o 4 o more than my neighbor
Wife's Modeling Agency: o Ford o IMG o Elite o DNA
Boat type: __sail-thingy with big pole in the middle for the wind__

Notice how the America's Cup administration department hasn't even figured out how to use the "forms" function in MS Word.

You know, the America's Cup would be a SHITLOAD cooler if each boat was given a mounted Howitzer and a couple of sea mines. The commentators then might stop talking about a teams' tacking ability and focus on something more interesting, like casualty rates.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the Tour de France.

So a dog got hit by a bicyclist the other day and it's downright hilarious. Fucking dog. It just walks across the road, on which a hundred bicyclists are streaking past every minute---at probably around 30mph---and thinks that's a fine idea. It gets hit and sends the bicyclist flying. The dog walks away from the wreck sheepishly eyeing the camera like a child who just poured milk onto his little sister's head. And when I saw this last night, predictably, Erica Hill, Anderson Cooper's own Ed McMahon, says, "Well I hope the dog is alright." Fuck you Erica! If I drove my Moroccan boyfriend's yellow Miata against traffic on I-495 causing a wreck that ejected a family of four from their Chevy Tahoe would you hope aloud that I came out of it okay without regard to the family? No, you wouldn't because any reasonable organism wouldn't do that. Just because it's a dog doesn't mean it's allowed to be fucking retarded. You're still pretty hot though, Erica.

Anyway, here's the video of the dog getting hit by the bicyclist:

Voy a España.

2007-07-18T08:56:00.000-05:00

No viajé Europa nunca, incluye España: un país que quiero visitar. Afortunadamente, por mi trabajo, voy a Barcelona para asistir a un simposio. ¡Qué bueno! ¡Me divertiré! Después de Barcelona, nosotros visitaremos Madrid. Dije "nosotros" porque mi prometido Marroquí estará conmigo. El viaje será diversión, pero en Barcelona especialmente, debemos guardarnos de carteristas.

Hay muchas problemas con carteristas ("pickpockets") en Barcelona. Tan muchas problemas que Web sites advierten a turistas de los peligros. Mirar este video del trabajo de los carteristas.

Me iré para Barcelona el sábado y mi prometido se irá el lunes. Nosotros seremos en España por 10 diás. Hasta que volvemos, ustedes sean excelente el uno al otro.

Para una traducción, ir aquí.
[For a translation, go here. Requires some copy and pasting.]

Overheard in DC

2007-07-18T08:38:00.000-05:00

Outside the L. Ron Hubbard Church of Scientology at 20th & R St, NW:
[on cell phone] "Well, now we might be talking statutory rape."

Perspective

2007-07-12T08:13:00.000-05:00

"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were here and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant . . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time -- and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights -- or very early mornings -- when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike
sparks anywhere.

There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
--- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971

It must be July ...

2007-07-10T09:10:00.000-05:00

Now, I'm not a huge sports fan, but I enjoy watching my share of football (college and pro), March Madness, NBA playoffs, and the odd Orioles game and soccer match now and then. But, come summer, we're all hung out to dry in the sere desert of mid-season MLB baseball. The problem here is that by the all-star break there is absolutely nothing happening in any sport except baseball. The NBA and NHL playoffs are over, both drafts (NFL and NBA) are finished, and even golf is lukewarm. There's Wimbledon, but the matches are played in the middle of the day and I'm not exactly going to take 2 weeks off of work to watch British people clap supportively every time the chair judge repeats that flash photography isn't permitted because tennis players wear all white and there's a chance the extra light rays might stain their clothes. This would all be fine and dandy if the MLB were gearing up for the quadruple-fortnight World Series, but at this point it may as well be another 8 years away.

The unique majesty of baseball's World Series is only 5 short months away.

Mid-season baseball is boring. By now we all know who's good and who sucks. The Red Sox are good. The Yankees suck. The Mets are good. The Cubs suck. The Nationals suck. The Orioles suck [of course, we're never really given an opportunity to wonder if the Orioles will suck or not because they have been thoroughly consistent in this aspect for the past decade, largely thanks to an opprobriously egomaniacal owner]. And we're only at the fucking All-Star break for god's sakes, of which its Home Run Derby is as big a joke at the NBA's dunk contest---not to mention that Barry Bonds opted not to enter the homerun derby, which is bewildering on 10^5 levels (sorry, I've been taking a GRE test prep class). By the way, to call this period a "break" is hilarious to me. The only people on a baseball field at any time that ever actually do anything are the pitchers and the ball boys/girls, so having a "break" is pretty unnecessary. Well, maybe we should count the fans who occassionally interfere. Even the baseball commentators are obviously bored right now. There could be a game-winning inside-the-park grandslam hit by a wheelchair-bound, terminally ill 10-year old girl in the bottom of the 9th inning and the announcers would still be talking about how they're continually amazed at the number of bugs there are buzzing around the stadium lights.

Kevin Garnett remains seriously concerned about what everyone is telling him that he's thinking.

So except for baseball dragging us along, what are we left with to entertain us while hiding inside from the brutal summer heat? Well, as far as sports news goes right now, there's three huge, earthshaking stories I absolutely need to follow closely right now. First, we can all vapidly gossip about whether or not Bud Selig will end up sitting down in a baseball stadium when a chemically enhanced titan hits another ball over a wall. Second, that little Asian hotdog eater got beaten by a three-hotdog margin by an American named after a yuletide nut. And finally we can continue to follow the neverending carnival of rumors about Kevin Garnett being traded to the Boston Celtics (June 19), Phoenix Suns (June 25), LA Lakers (June 26), Charlotte Bobcats (June 28), Chicago Bulls (June 30), Dallas Mavericks (July 5), Golden State Warriors (July 9), and the Miami Sound Machine (July 10).

An acute visual representation of my wasted time.

Smartly, the hosts on the only sports show I enjoy, Pardon The Interruption, have taken vacations for what feels like a month, and so I'm left with listening to the possibly unintentionally self-deprecating humor of Dan Le Betard and the pacifist verbage of J.A. Adonde, whose dialogue together leaves me feeling like I just ate a pound of feathers without knowing it.

Fortunately, it's just under 2 months until college football kicks off and I can begin worrying about Michigan coming back in the fourth quarter of every game rather than worrying about the Orioles struggling to tread above a .450 win record.

Sir Charles

2007-07-10T09:04:00.000-05:00

This is what it would look like if somebody had a stroke in the middle of their golf swing. It's actually Charles Barkley's.