Confession.

I am sitting in the Student Records office, on an iMac, listening to Belle and Sebastian on my iPod while reading a humor piece in my New Yorker by the coauthor of The Life Aquatic (who I identified as such without looking him up.).

I am one Starbucks coffee away from dying of hipster overdose.

Mu Mo and Me (and others)

Mo, Vince Tom and I (plus two new castmembers, Christina and Colleen) went up to Buffalo to see Mu, an electronica, dancy, crazycrazy lady. It was a lot of fun, and we even got to meet her briefly!

Here are the two of us together:


They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so - Good Lord, that's a terrible segue into my flickr account. Just click here and keep hitting next. It'll be much easier on both of us.

I hate to spoil the ending, but I need to share this: our friend Vince made his way on to the stage with the singing sensation:

That, my children, is called cannibalism.

The evening last I saw Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolat Factory. I really enjoy the work of Mr. Tim Burton and this was one of his best in quite a while.

What was missing? The Gene Wilder version featured only one song that took it's lyrics from the book. This song was the insanely creepy riverboat song, and I am linking to it here so you can all enjoy it/remember how out of place it was. Link!

The New Yorker recently did a great article on the book's author Roald Dahl, that wacky anti-semite. Well worth your time. Link!

Doing my duty.

President Bush announced Roberts as his nominee for Supreme Court judge. I haven't heard too many people talking much about his stance on a lot of positions, so here's a look:

• Hates on animals - Wants to limit Endangered Species Act.
• Hates voting for things - Wants to make Congress stop caring about parts of the Voting Rights Act
• Love that Jesus, and so must you - He's down with schools forcing religious speech on public discussion.
  
• Hates treating people fairly - Geneva Conventions isn't for all the prisoners. Just some.
• Tippin' the scales - Roe v. Wade = no good.
• Hypocracy - Has been known to eat babies. We can't kill them but he can?
• Never Graduated Law School - I checked through two different college websites and on neither of their front pages did they mention that Roberts graduated from their school. I can only assume that this would be true of all college websites, including ones that he actually attended. Through modus tollens we can infer that Roberts never graduated and MAY HAVE NEVER BEEN TO SCHOOL.

And the first five of those aren't even made up! Now you know the facts and some things that are not facts. I am pleased to be of service.

Scotty Dies.

I'm not a huge Star Trek fan, I definately wouldn't consider myself a Trekkie, and I would barely use the word "fan," to be honest, but I do enjoy the Original Series, if only for Shatner. Rubber monster suits and really cheesy acting help as well.
Well, early this morning James Doohan, Scotty died, and as you can imagine, there are a lot of obituaries that use some derrivitave of the phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" in them (my personal favorite of the ones I've seen: Beloved Scotty is Beamed All the Way Up). I remember when DeForest Kelley, Bones, died wishing that somebody would use his catch phrase from the show in an obituary. I think the best title would be: I'm Dead, Jim.
So what will the other Star Trek obituaries read as when the time comes? Nimoy's is probably going to be something like:

Actor Leonard Nimoy Lived Long and Prospered

...though I wish it would turn out to be something like "Nerds Begin Search for Spock." The others actors aren't as obvious. Here are some attempts that no one but myself will find funny:
Nichelle Nichols: Lt. Cmdr. Uhura Hailed by the Great Beyond
George Takei: Star Trek's First, Last Legitimate Actor Dies
Walter Koenig: Guy Who Played Chekov Dies, No One Cares
and finally:
William Shatner: KHHHAAAAAANNNN! or
Shatner Dies, Survived by Hairpiece

Not funny.

Sex Alert: "Ella, my mallet relaxes!"

I don't know why but I like palindromes, phrases that are spelled the same way backwards and forwards. It's such a fun, nerdy, English-majory thing to like. To prove I'm not lying, here is my favorite palindrome:

Egad, a base tone denotes a bad age.

But do you know what I like more than palindromes? Jokes about 'em.

How I Spent a Piece of My Summer Vacation

Last weekend I went to the Siren Festival along with regular castmember Mo and friends Vince and Lou. (I apologize to all those who have already read Mo's recap of this trip as it'll be much the same, except more hastily composed.)

We started a fancy French restaurant which turned out to be not so fancy once we saw their "garden area."


I bought new shoes. (They're a lighter shade of red than my last pair.)


Here's what the actual stage looked like, with a VHS or Beta performing for added measure.


And here are the Mates of State, one of the best bands ever, doin' their thang.


And if that's not enough, there's even more images over at my Flickr account. It was a most excellent weekend. I had a great time in my favorite city, watching one of my favorite bands, with my favorite person. How was your weekend?

More than meets the eye.

From Sparknotes' commentary on Rousseau's The Social Contract:

"Fans of the Transformers may recall the "Constructicons," a group of smaller robots who could join together to form one, large robot: one Constructicon would be the left arm of this larger robot, another would be the right leg, and so on. This is the same sort of principle that Rousseau is applying here."

I am going to fail for using this as a replacement for actually reading the book and deserve nothing less.

(Larger update on my weekend (with photos!) when I get home from work. Until then, enjoy ElectronoMo's coverage of the event.)

LiveBlogging: Ramsey in Binghamton

I am in Binghamton.

The Trouble With Harry

I have nothing to say about Harry Potter, or the Hitchcock film named above, I just wanted to beat all the Christian protest websites/New York Times headlines/other concerning whatever sort of flack may arise from the new book.

The Whiner's Bio

• I spent all last weekend laboring over six pages of an essay I had to write. So why did it take me half an hour to write one third of that when I realized I forgot a major chunk of it? Because my brain hates me, that's why.
• I am now reading CollegeHumor.com even less after this.
• I'm spending this weekend in Binghamton with Mo, where I will see one of my favorite bands of all time The Mates of State. And in addition to that, Spoon and Q and Not U, other bands I like as well. They don't get hyperlinked like The Mates of State, though.
• I just couldn't justify a post with a mere three bullets.

(Edit at 9:30am: Also, this.)

one zero zero zero zero zero zero

I know, I know. More than one update on the same day, what do I think I am, Google News? (LOLOLOL!!!!) Seriously though, I'm checking in again to share with you the greatest music video ever.

It is for OK Go's "A Million Ways."

Check it, totally, out.

What a rotten application of one's self.

I am a computer user. I have been a computer user for a great many years and have collected literally tens of files that I would be upset if I lost. Just last night I noticed that I somehow picked up a virus and spent the next seven hours fighting with it to no avail.

When I get home I have made plans to un-and-reinstall Symantec Antivirus with the Internet disconnected, and if that doesn't do the trick. I will. Reformat.

I should be able to back things up, but that's still depressing. Reformating is like admitting you're a bad parent. Yeah, I could've kept the computer free of viruses, but I was too busy reading snarky music reviews on Pitchfork and telling some guy at MIT why Fantastic Four wasn't that bad. Now I guess I'll just kind of, you know, hit the reset switch. I'm declaring bankruptcy on my computer.

M.C. Hammer declares bankruptcy, I don't.

But I'm going to save as much as I can/need. My archive of cancelled comedy shows and funnygiggle cartoons will hopefully live on to entertain generations of illegitimate children.

I'm Hamster Happy!

Hey, people. I drew a comic strip over the span of four months. It is now on the Internet. There are more of them around the website I will now link you to:

www.BeatnikSquad.com

Bullpen Bulletin.

I could've sworn I did another Mo in Warsaw Liveblog, but I guess I didn't. There's a ton more pictures over at the flickr, and she has some too, so check those out why not.

ITEM! I have a cold. I get one every summer. Fortunately, it is in it's last throes.

ITEM! I saw The Fantastic Four last night. This was my comic book of choice since I was six. They were never super popular like Spider-Man or the X-Men, and maybe that's why I liked them. As a result, I was kind of nervous that this movie would stink, like some other attempts I can think of. I spent the whole day reading negative reviews so it ended up being much better than I expected. There are some things that I would change (dialogue, soundtrack, extreme sports, wink-at-the-audience foreshadowing, Dr. Doom), but I could also spent 20-30 years making my perfect version.

ITEM! That's all I've got. Thanks for reading.

Mo in Warsaw: Post 1

My girlfriend Mo is visiting again, so in the interest of bring in the constant hits I so honestly desire, I will be "liveblogging" the event, like all those nerds at the Apple keynote speeches.

12:32PM - Mo dropped my camera yesterday, accidentally.

It works fine still and it was kind of my fault anyway.

Star Wars

Recently I've begun rating all of the songs in my collection with the iTunes staring system. I guess there's no real reason to do it but it's kind of fun so don't judge me. However, in the process I've noticed some interesting quirks about myself and my music likes and dislikes.

Examples: While listening to They Might Be Giants' song "Dead," I thought to myself: "This is an okay song. Not one of my favorites, but definitely not a bad song. This is a solid three." I paused for a moment. "But the backing vocals on the chorus and the vinyl pops through the background make it a four." The song itself didn't improve it's rating, just a particular bridge.

While listening to the Pixies album Doolittle, as a track started I said to myself, "Okay, this is an okay song. I'll start it at three stars. If it gets better I'll bump it up accordingly." On more than a few occasions a good middle eight, or bridge towards the end gives a song an extra star.

I guess I'm just surprised at how easily swayed I can be while ranking my music. And how often I have a tendency to forget if I rated a song, only to give the iPod a thumbs up when I find I still agree with the number of stars I gave it in the past.