January 2009
26 posts
When I was a kid, I have this strong recollection of wanting to get away from College Station, Texas, where I’d lived from 4 (or so) till 17. Now I think I’ve lived in more places than most (or anyone) I know, and I don’t particularly envy myself.
I’m reading Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo, about this wandering pair of orphans. At this one part, they come across a lagoon and take a bath that’s a long time coming. I got to thinking about how expensive simple pleasures are, really, if you want to buy them. To replicate something like that in a spa in NYC will cost you a lot of coin. I remember when I drove with a family from Taipei...
When I was in college, I took a class from a logician who had worked with Kurt Godel. The guy liked to tell us stories about Godel. Anyway, he mentioned Godel had a few good ideas. I was like, whoaz. He mentioned what the couple of good ideas were, but I don’t quite remember what he said. I think the concept underlying Godel numbering was the main one, and I don’t remember the others....
I heard Kanye’s Heartless and Akon’s Right Now (Na Na) back to back driving back from Ann Arbor to Detroit today. Right Now seems pretty generic while it’s been well-documented that Heartless is a personal track with a definite, specific referent. I imagined that if I was Kanye, I’d be pretty embarassed to hear a tirade on the radio against a girl I knew in real life. At...
This is my life.
davidcho:
alexbalk:
I am at a bar where Cracker’s “Low” just came on I started ROCKING OUT. Please, help me.
The main difference between Alex and me is that this is his ‘Low’, whereas this is mine.
mine??!?!???!?!??! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2xHLAzLZXo
Bored, I was browsing Wikipedia, and I came across Zooey Deschanel’s page which says that she’s engaged to Ben Gibbard of Death Cab. That blew my mind because it took be back to 1999 or 2000 or so when Death Cab was accessible even to a loser like myself. Kevin and I met/interviewed Death Cab’s bassist back then, and now Ben Gibbard is going to marry Zooey Deschanel who is a...
People who eat fancy food talk frequently about seasonality. I realize that part of that conversation means eating the freshest ingredients—therefore the tastiest—while they’re in season. But part of the thought is also that when it’s winter, we eat heavier food because it warms us up, and when it’s summer we eat lighter food because we don’t want to be all...
I just bought a plane ticket to Taipei for the summer (beginning of June to mid-July). I’ll have a two-day stopover in Tokyo on the way back as well, and maybe I can hop over to Hong Kong for a second some time in between. It is time for fans of smalter.org in the States and around the world to make plans to join me. Hollaz.
In those Quizno’s commercials the Quizno’s people go around handing out samples of their sandwiches. They ask a guy how much he would pay for that sandwich, he says $8, and he’s pleasantly surprised when he finds out that it’s only $5. I can’t really buy into the commercial because they’re clearly in San Francisco, where everything costs a million bucks. An $8...
The end of M.I.A.’s Gulang reminds me so much of the end of Episode I, The Phantom Menace.
Every football team should have a player that specializes in quarterback sneaks. I’m talking about a guy that’s 5’1” and maybe 200 pounds. You don’t need a versatile quarterback for this speciality position because everyone knows when a QB sneak is coming, anyway. Eli Manning was just stuffed on a QB sneak because he couldn’t get low enough quick enough. I dunno...
“I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”
– Lewis Carroll
“The more you overdo it, the less stupid you look.”
– MTV Made hip hop dance coach.
Seems to me that there are some people who are saying that the economy is broken and we need to fix it by actually doing things differently (business strategy, organization, etc.) and there are those who just use words like “downturn,” which suggest that this recession is part of the cyclical behavior of the economy which happens regardless of whether we’re doing things right or...
That game was horrible. Someone please give USC or Utah the national championship.
Reggie Walton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia →
Walton’s father worked two jobs in the steel town Donora in which the young Walton appeared in court three times over gang fighting. Walton credits an incident in which a friend nearly killed a rival with an icepick with convincing him to turn towards academics. He won a football scholarship to get his Bachelor of Arts degree from West Virginia State College in 1971, and then a law degree...
The Volokh Conspiracy - Movie Day at the Supreme... →
I was reminded recently of this remarkable story, from Woodward & Armstrong’s excellent The Brethren. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Court’s obscenity doctrine essentially called for case-by-case Supreme Court decisionmaking about whether various films were obscene. Those Justices who took this view therefore watched the movies, together with the clerks. Here’s...
Dear Elle or whatever your name is:
antikris:
To follow someone in hopes to gain popularity is fucking retarded. How old are you? To make a big deal out of unfollowing someone is even more retarded. If I quoted you incorrectly it was because I didnt care enough to pay all that much attention to the details of the pile of diarrhea you had written. Your post was emailed to me because someone else thought it was retarded. Tumblr...
I like the sentiment of Akon’s Right Now (Na Na Na). Whereas 50 Cent said he’s into having sex he’s not into making love, Akon goes on and on about wanting to make love (right now na na), regretting the break-up, and missing straight snuggling. I’m reminded of reading somewhere that 50 Cent was baffled by the success of Lil Wayne, mostly considering simply the concept of...
I guess in Fitzgerald’s version of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Benjamin not only starts out looking like an old dude, he has the mind of an old guy. In the movie, he just looks old and maybe has some physical infirmities that make it so he can’t run around carefree like a kid as a kid. But pretty much the only real consequence of his being old that differentiates the movie...
Easy Solution to the NFL Overtime Problem
Each overtime is an additional pair of 7:30 minute periods. Both teams will get possession at the start of one period. Whoever has the most points at the end of the OT wins; otherwise, another two period OT round. 1 timeout per team per OT round. This guarantees both teams the ball at least once, doesn’t cut out special teams for the game, and won’t result in retarded games that end up...
I was sorta sad to see that after such a fantastic game—Chargers/Colts—Andrea Kramer asked Philip Rivers and Antonio Gates such stupid questions. I really hoped that Antonio Gates would make some kind of mind-blowing comment about how he fumbled in OT but happened to land on top of the football and rolled over to cover it. She asked him how he got himself ready for the game where he...
The Volokh Conspiracy - Sixth Circuit En Banc... →
The debate surrounding the use of acquitted conduct to impose sentencing enhancements is pretty dang interesting and the kind of thing that probably makes it worthwhile to be a lawyer.