the plague

My sister is visiting from Florida with her kidweeds and they have brought the plague with them. Or it may have come from Boston, as my brother's daughter was the first to fall ill, but they left last week. It's the Florida kids that are perpetuating death in the household. Everything that is in common space has been coughed on by one or both of the children at least 40 times. Now my dad has fallen ill. He returned from the hospital today with a sore spot on his nalgas where he received an injection of antibiotics to combat the pneumonia he's contracted. There are currently 8 people in the house, and the plague has now affected 4 of them, with a 5th starting to feel some uneasy symptoms. I am happy to have now finished my semester, and, although I'd rather not catch whatever respiratory virus is prevailing, I now have time for it. Reason number 52 to not have children: the Plague.

this was my favorite google image result for "the plague".

a short story about guitars, mystery and directions

My dad uses Bing.

My little brother called the other day and needed help finding an address. My dad had his laptop open and proceeded to search for maps on Bing. He asked if he should look for MapQuest. I said, "Dad, go to www.google.com", and his reply was, "I like Bing". So I took over, or at least I tried to. "Is this a browser Dad, are you even online? Oh, I see, it's MSN or something. Lets close this puupy. The only other browser you have is IE? I guess that's better than whatever the hell was open before. Ok, google. Geez. What's the address little brother? See, Dad, just type in the address and hit enter. Bam, there's the map, top search."

Thanks, Google, for your constant expansion of global domination. "Look, Dad, you can even see a picture of the house he's going to." Thanks again, Google.

I wish I could have the working Les Paul google guitar here for your entertainment, but I just don't think that's possible. So feel free to take a few minutes to spend some time on google and play it a bit here. Or you can just click the photo. I linked 'em both. Yay!

I should be working on my homework

But instead I'm checking out music on youtube. I like this one.

The semester ends on Friday, and I've finished up all my classes already except for Intro to Hospitality. I have 2 papers to write and 4 chapters of review questions to answer/type up. It's easy to find excuses, and I'll say number 1 are the kidweeds. My sister is in town with her kids, and her 5 yr old and 2 yr old share my office with me as their toy room. I sat down here intending to do my homework, but they're just so distracting with their playing and their whining and banging on things and causing trouble. I read an article in Scientific American that talked about a study on people doing math problems and found their performance was consistently worse when they listened on their headphones to children whining compared to other annoying noises like table-saws. So I'll continue to try to ignore the chaos and listen to more music.
I like this one, too:

and on that note, Cafe Tacuba sings other songs:

Did you see Reggie Watts on Conan last night? This one's from a while back. Last nights was equally strangely entertaining. Yay Reggie Watts.

and now that we're into the strangely entertaining, how about Beck's weirdness?

that's it for today kids. I hope nobody with rights to these videos gets mad that my for-my-own-entertainment blog has them posted. Peace.

Super 8

Not the motel chain. My cousin, my brother, his friend and I went to see Super 8 last week. My cousin was apprehensive, not wanting to spend full-price on a movie, preferring to go to the cheap theater and watch Rio. We talked him out of it through democracy. Sorry dude, 3 to 1 means we're going to a good movie. Fortunately for our budget-conscious cousin the new theater by the mall was sold out, and the old Wynsong down the road wasn't. I've disliked the Wynsong, in the past driving an extra 10 miles to another mall until the new one opened, but not wanting to see an animated movie about birds in Brazil, the old theater had to make do. With student IDs tickets were only 6 bucks. Well worth the price for the movie we got to experience.

Are you sick of action sequences ala Michael Bay's Transformers that don't make sense, and don't matter because you could care less about the characters? How about dialogue that does nothing more than serve as trailer clips to get people in the theater? Yeah, me too. And the summer movies are the worst. You get hyped up CGI'd 3D eyecandy and you're bored halfway through the opening scene. Super 8 is a tribute to how movies used to be - Good. There's plenty of mystery, action, and adventure, but you actually care about the characters. Remember how much you loved all the Goonies? You'll feel the same way about these kids in the town of Lilian. And like every good heist movie, these goonies have their own explosives expert. He's the kid you grew up with who was always setting fire to things and modifying his fireworks with duct tape. Maybe you were that kid. You probably got a lot of your friends in trouble with your fascination with firepower.

I don't want to spoil the movie, because not knowing much about it is what makes it so great. I'll just say it takes all the good elements from Goonies (kids who curse, and work with a determination despite their parents' wishes) and replaces the cheesiness with scary and mysterious action. A huge train crash, followed by strange occurrences, violence, and general weirdness. And the government is probably trying to cover it up. Or something. The Air Force is there, and they're being vague. Go watch it. You'll smile and remember that summer movies aren't all bad.

I used to hate Dallas

And it was all because of this guy. I mean look at this tool making us all hate him with his doucheyness. Now I realize it is pure jealousy that made me hate him. After my Jazz didn't make the playoffs, I had to invest my fandom in something, and just being a fan of the NBA in general wasn't cutting it, so I toyed with the idea of liking the Mavericks. Once I realized what I disliked about this team, I realized my irrationality. As I said earlier, Cuban was because of envy. Got over it and respected the guy for his hard work to get to where he is. And you have to respect someone for doing what he loves. Dirk. Why did I hate Dirk? He was too good, and German. After I admitted half of why I didn't like him was borderline racist, and the other half was his incredible talent, I was able to embrace his quest to win himself a championship. He's another example of a hard worker. 6 years ago when he faced the same team, he lacked the extra skills to pull his team to a victory and they got beat. Those six years gave him the chance to put in the hours perfecting his shot, improving his floor play, and Cuban's guys then put the team around him to give him the edge he needed, and this was his year. They brought in Kidd to give some young guys the experienced leader. Barea got good, real good, and came through in a big way. Terry was hot and cold, but mostly hot, and when he got cold at the wrong time Dirk tactfully called him out on it and Terry stepped it up. Marion followed Dirk's example and worked hard underneath, cleaning up the boards, pressuring the D and shooting those weird looking J's that kept going in.

Yup. This team earned it. And they did it beautifully. They had to go through Portland, battle with the young legs in OKC and sweep the defending champs in LA. Then they got their shot at Miami, led by D-Wade and muscled (sometimes) by Lebron and Bosh. Miami had a real fancy team this year, and I think that's what did them in. They knew they were good, and they would get complacent, allowing Dallas to comeback in the final minutes in games they should have had locked in for the win. Congrats to Dallas. Watch out for Miami next year, and keep your eyes on Durant and his friends in Oklahoma. They got a sampling of what it takes to win it all and they're coming back with experience and determination.

The draft is coming up, and the analysts are all saying its weak. That shouldn't matter. The draft more than just getting a star. You can't have a Lebron/Carmelo/D-Wade lineup every year. The draft is more about recognizing talent and potential, and having the staff that can develop that potential into something big. Or sometimes that potential doesn't get drafted, so he walks on to practice with a team, works his ass off, gets picked up and plays a key role, where he then gets a huge offer in Portland and says adios and goes on to help lead his Blazers to the playoffs while his newly Sloanless Jazz struggle for, what was it, 10th in the West? Still miss your tenacity Wesley Matthews. Here's hoping for a good draft, and a continuation of Sloan's ability to develop young players into solid NBA competitors.

Sleeping in the Boy's Room

After class today I stopped to use the restroom and while I was at the urinal taking care of business, I thought I heard what sounded like snoring. I paused the stream so I could hear better and it was clear there was someone in the bathroom with me and he was asleep. His snoring seemed to get louder, and after I washed my hands I thought maybe it was a joke. If so, I figured I could crack him up by making snoring noises myself. His continued heavy snoring convinced me it was no joke, and apparently his movement was so exhausting, a deep sleep was needed to recover. Personally I find public restrooms extremely uncomfortable, and a small amount of anxiety usually accompanies me into any public restroom, so I don't think it would be possible for my mind to allow me to fall asleep in the stall knowing people will be coming and going, leaving their bowel stenches with them. I make my visits to the restroom as long as necessary and no longer. A few times in my own personal bathroom at home I've found myself reading while on the can, but any more then 5-10 minutes in that seated position will cause my legs to go numb. I would have liked to see the gentlemen this morning try to walk out of there dead-legged after spending 30+ minutes on the porcelain.



Google images gives a lot of hilarious bathroom pictures. Here are some more of my favorites:

reading books

2 or 3 years ago I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I didn't really get it. I remember I mostly read it at night before bed, ending with the usual intended result of falling asleep. That is probably why I didn't get much out of it. The gist of what I got was the importance of caring about what you do and that is where quality comes from. Anyone can follow a plan and build a birdhouse, but it's the people that care about it that build exceptional birdhouses. I think that's what it was about.

I pulled the book off my shelf this morning and went outside to read in the sun. This time I'm determined to delve into Pirsig's philosophy a bit  more deeply. To do so, I'll need to take into account his statement on how he wishes to explain his outlook, "I just want to get at it slowly, but carefully and thoroughly..." I've finished the first two chapters, and deliberately took a break to reflect and be sure I understand what he's talking about. But the first two chapters don't really contain a lot of depth. I want to establish the habit early in order to avoid reading for too long and getting lost in my usual pattern of forgetting what I'm reading about and daydreaming of something else. Which is why I've made Moby Dick my bedtime book, and Zen my summertime book.

we feel fine

I came across this site via Roger Ebert's tweet today. Check it out. wefeelfine.org. Looking through their mission page, (or about us page) I got an idea what this site is all about. They have an automated system that scans public blogs for phrases "I feel..." and publishes those on the site in their categorized feelings, where you can organize the feelings by location, gender, age, date, etc and see all these emotions bouncing around. Hover your mouse over a location and you'll find what that person said in their blog post, and get an idea of how the blogging public is feeling. So it looks like all you have to do to have your feelings and a link to your blog appear on their site is to tell people how you feel. I think I'll start doing this daily, just to see if I can spot myself on their site, although I'm not sure if I can narrow it down to a specific person to find myself, I'll just be one feeling bouncing around with countless others. To get started and to make up for lost time, I'll let you all the feelings I've experienced in the last 8 hours since I got up this morning.

6:30 I feel reluctant to get out of bed.
7:00 I feel congested.
7:15 I feel relieved to blow my nose in the shower
7:30 I feel naked
8:00 I feel hungry
8:30 I feel like I need a coffee
9:00 I feel disappointed that I arrived too late to sit in my usual spot in class next to the cute girl I'm crushing on
9:30 I feel pleasant that we get out of class early today, but I feel bad for our professor who sounds terribly sick.
10:00 I feel enthusiastic to finally get my room cleaned up
10:30 I feel like I shouldn't be such a procrastinator
11:00 I feel like a nap
11:30 I feel like wasting time on the internet all day
3:00 I feel bad because I was so ready to get my room organized and now I've wasted all day online.
3:20 I feel itchy. Effin allergies.

the end. Later I'll pop over to wefeelfine.org and see if I can find myself.