nuclear weapons? no ipod for you!

if isolationist trade policies don't work, then we might as well mock kim jong il.

and you know what? the funniest part of this story isn't imagining kim riding on a segway. it's this sentence:
"The 5-foot-3 Kim is an enthusiastic basketball fan."
as if short people aren't allowed to like hoops. i'm pretty sure this is why he hates the united states.

does anyone have a cardboard cutout of lloyd carr?

so i'm not sure if i'm allowed to say this. it might be proprietry information (company secrets and all that). but there is one very scary thing about working at where i work.

there is a life-sized cardboard cutout of joe paterno in the library.

scared the crap out of me.

housing adventures of the dc kind

i've visited what seems to be every kind of housing situation possible.

beautiful brand new studios ($1800 a month), funky hippie rooms ($1400), rooms that fit a full bed and not much else ($1100 in georgetown) and drab and scary boarding houses ($625).

my one conclusions? dc is damn expensive. i looked up what the most expensive rental areas were, and not surprisingly, new york tops the list. DC is all the way down at 13th, which made no sense at first, but makes sense now. this is a town where anywhere safe enough for young folks w/ overprotective parents can live tend to be insanely expensive. meanwhile, the shady-ass areas are cheap as hell. this averages out to a moderately expensive area, especially if you include northern virginia and maryland. not exactly happening, but safe, i suppose.

in the end, i'll probably live in the gay part of town. not gay as in stupid, but gay as in many gay people live nearby. think theater and art and everything straight people will think is cool in 5 years. apparently i love living with the non-straight types. my apartment in boston was located in what one friend lovingly called "lesboland." but whatever. rent is low and culture is high.

i don't really like thinking ...

but when driving for 10 hours straight, you really can't help it.

one thought i had: what's with the "falling rocks" signs? if you're driving on the highway in the mountains and rocks really do start falling, is there really much you can do? swerve off the side of the mountain? but at least you didn't get hit by rocks. seriously, what has this sign done except make you white knuckle the steering wheel? it reminds me of deer crossing signs. if you're on a highway, and there's deer, someone's gonna be a goner, whether there's a sign or not.

on a separate note, when i get tired of all that thinking, i like to race the cars around me. i must say, i win this game a lot. you should really only play this game in michigan, a true lawless state. those dumb ohioans don't realize that "70 mph" is more of a suggestion than a limit. esp near detroit where the cops are too busy not deterring crime and being corrupt.

also fun is the giant semi truck that was full of SHEEP. only in pennsylvania. i have a picture of the truck, but you can't really see much. but you could sure smell it. a high-speed petting zoo. BAAHHH.

rediscovering casper

who thought casper would last the test of time? after watching it today (don't ask, it involved a 5-year-old in princess pajamas and kid cuisine), i realize it was one of the great and lasting cinematic experiences of 1995. screw the 5.5 rating it got from IMDB. the masses don't know what they're talking about. let alone the fantastic fx (minus mama angel floating not-so-majestically from the window), we see christina ricci in her PRIME. before she got fat, then skinny, then became woody allen's muse only to be replaced by (barf) scarlett johansson. in any case, she's cute, in that virginal tough chick sort of way.

speaking of in their prime, what happened to devon sawa? i mean, wasn't casper his launchpad into the covers of teenbop and j-14? well after serious oscar fodder such as "SLC punk!" and "Final Destination" (but only the first one), we see that devon has not fared as well as leo.

But there is hope! His new movie, "Hunter's Moon" reads like a winner. the synopsis: "The story of four young couples drawn to the remote dunes for off-roading in their extreme machines. But the outing turns into a night of terror when they are attacked by the Catcher, a skilled and brutal hunter of human specimens for alien science."

EXTREME MACHINES? ALIEN SCIENCE? can't wait.

mary sue, won't you blog for me?

the nytimes has a story about university presidents' blogging.

it's a pretty sweet idea, if you ask me. even michigan state's prez does it. i'd even read it, and i don't even like reading blogs (besides my own, of course). here is a sample of my fantasy mary sue coleman blog.

posted 8:05 a.m.: just had a brueggers bagel with some deelish strawberry jam. i really can't believe they closed that einstein's on state street. i really should get that re-opened, and even better, in the union so i can use entree plus! it IS fake money and all. i really miss that asiago with garden vegetable cream cheese.

posted 10:05 a.m.: ugh. finally got to the office. ken has been a real bitch lately. must be that tough homework he's been struggling with. some women's studies course. how typical, sucking it up in studying women.

posted 4:50 p.m.: now that diversity is illegal, i had to spend the whole day thinking of how to get minorities into michigan. recruiting is clearly the key. i need a new handle. how's mary S dot cole mizzle. has a nice ring to it. i also can expense out the 2007 escalade - gotta protect my rep and all.

i suck at blogging

i really do.

i don't do it often enough, and i'm too easily distracted.

take, for instance, the michigan/OSU game. it completely took over my sense of humor. i could make no online jokes because of it. and now b/c i'm devastated, i still sort of can't.

on a separate note, i tried dyeing my hair red today, and it only kinda worked. now my hair is brownish w/ a hint of red. i want unnatural red, but it seems the only way that's gonna happen is if i go to a salon and get it bleached or something. should i? or shouldn't i? to be honest, i'm scared. i'm as afraid of bleach or peroxide as i am of dying alone with lots and lots of cats. i don't even like cats and can't think of a reason i'd have them, but i'm afraid of dying with them nonetheless. in short, i'm afraid of commitment.

casino royale - can you BELIEVE daniel craig's thighs?

I'm pretty confident casino royale was a great movie.

just can't be sure because my brain is completely numb (fight scenes! machine guns! fast cars!). in fact, i'm so numb, i've actually forgotten what i didn't understand. who was the traitor again? which angry british man was who? mathis did what to who, when, and where? is this actually james bond, or really an english jack bauer? oh who cares! pretty explosion!

cannot compute. cannot compute.

1%: i know it when i see it

Apparently there aren't that many pervs in the world.

In other internet musings, why is it not OK to sit at home at the computer for 5 hours, yet if i go to a coffee shop with wifi, it's fine and not pathetic? i guess being part of the world is fantastic.

LA: postmodern heaven ... or nightmare?

imagine a town where all genres, all eras and all styles get mashed up, consumed, then vomited all over a 498 square mile area. that is LA. it's hard to explain, but easy to show. case in point ...



hot dog + thai food = city of angels.

win ben stein's money

ben stein was on my flight from phoenix to LA the other day, which is kind of neat. he was acting all weird, pacing back and forth. which got me thinking:
1. wow. that's really annoying. stop pacing.
and 2. wouldn't it be sweet to go ahead and STEAL ben stein's money? it would be like winning it, only illegal.

nfl update

so just to be funny, 3 of the teams i mentioned as being terrible in a previous post won their games on sunday. just to prove me wrong, i suppose. then again, they are all still awful. just not as awful as we all thought.

in other football-related news, doesn't pete carroll look like owen wilson? i think pete is the long-lost wilson brother ... who is good at football.

the taste of "men"

if you've ever been an asian child, you know what pocky sticks are - breadsticks dipped in delicous chocolate.

they also come in different flavors. such as the "men's" flavor.


now, are the japanese saying men are bitter? or dark? or that being able to eat bitter chocolate is a man's job? that women are too weak to handle bitter? or that teal is inherently a man's color? as jessie spano would say, what chauvinist pigs!

needless to say, i didn't buy such sexist propoganda. i did, however, buy the strawberry flavor.

tales from DC: scandal, stupidity and a nice view

first, the nice view. i literally wandered around the city, no map, no idea where i was going. but like a north star shining bright in the sky ...



from there i was able to find my way to my destination: the bar. i have radar for that kind of thing.

also in my travels, was the fantastic interpretive artwork of fans paying tribute to their school:



the letter omission in this piece is quite stunning, striking even.

lastly, i interviewed at a publishing house that is run out of the watergate building, the most notoriously infamous (redundant) building in DC. i felt compelled to sneak behind the receptionist's desk when she went to the bathroom and rifle through her papers. and take pictures. and then say i worked for bush. then impeachment proceedings could begin. how sweet!
and if anyone cared, this is what it looks like:



i wanted to take some shots of the inside, but i think it would have reflected badly on me to the recruiters. maybe i'm wrong.

where did i go?

the best part of having a last name that is also a common verb is that it's so easy to blend into google. search my name, and you mostly get analysis of a chaucer poem or a lot of commentary on a project runway exile. (they are all apparently very sad to see me go)

all this is very good for when i run for public office. i don't need anything like an incoherent, yet pithy, blog to hold me back.

seat 5B

how hard is it to get on a plane and get in the correct seat? apparently, it's really difficult. how is it that when i get to my row, every single person there was in the wrong seat? everything is clearly labeled and it's not as if they change the order of letters or the seats, ever.

... and i continue to lose faith in the human race.

thank you captain obvious

I'm guessing if you sold more full meals for 20 cents a pop, they'd be "hot sellers" too.

the sad state of halloween in troy

why were 75% of this year's trick or treaters taller than me? why did they all have deep post-puberty voices? few cute babies or toddlers. how very depressing.