Also, Football

Apparently there was a big soccer (football) game a few days ago.

Dear Americans, can we agree to stop talking about this like we understand it? I'm pretty sure the average seven year old ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD understands European League Whatever Soccer better than the most educated of us, so let's butt out, lest we sound foolish.

Dear Europeans, we will try and ruin stuff like this for you. Sorry about that. If you're good sports about it, we'll send you Lady GaGa, and take back Madonna.

Canon

As far as I have been able to discern, all fiction ever created exists in the same canon, and I'm not certain I can be convinced otherwise. Thus reading a book or watching a movie has, for me, added urgency. I paced while watching 1995's Clueless, knowing that a young Paul Rudd is only two years from incineration at the hands of Skynet - that was, until the old John Connor sent back the T-800 to save a young John Connor from the T-1000. Didn't turn out great in the long run, though.

It gets kind of confusing when you factor in the idea that somehow Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and the more recent update Pride and Prejudice Zombies somehow have to exist contemporaneously, with plots that have implications on one another. Honestly, I find a concept as difficult as this much easier to wrap my head around then trying to keep track of the hundreds of thousands of independent timelines created by various writers throughout the centuries.

This renders tone completely irrelevant, and makes lots of works enjoyable on a whole different level. "Top Gun" is still pretty much "Top Gun," but now at least some of the fighter jocks at Miramar went to Annapolis with Pete "Dead Meat" Thompson and Lt. Topper Harley. I mean, just because they wouldn't let you-know-who into the Academy because he's Pete Mitchell's kid, doesn't mean that Tom Kazansky didn't have Jim "Washout" Pfaffenbach as his lab partner in plebe-killer chemistry. Hell, now that I think about it, they probably had Dr. Jack Ryan as their history teacher. Pretty rad when Samuel L. gave him that "Purple Target," I wonder if they still talk about that at reunions...

In other news, my girlfriend finally made me watch Gossip Girl, and I am happy to see that this Chuck Bass character is making it okay to be a dandy again.

Not to mention I am skeptical of all the hullabaloo over this ad campaign, as everyone I went to college with is fully aware that the most interesting man in the world is (by a wide, wide margin) the one-time chaplain of our alma mater. The Chaplain's exploits include (in no particular order):

-Swimming at the Berlin Olympics
-Traveling in a Zeppelin
-Getting arrested with Martin Luther King, Jr.
-While in the military, ditching his unit for a day and avoiding its mysterious fate
-Also while in the military, accidentally sinking a U.S. destroyer. ZOOPS

So, suck it Dos Equis.

Also, let me just say that I know plenty about the concept of Filibustering, thanks to The Source. However, before I did such research, the brilliant poetry of the idea of filibustering and what I imagined to be its creation was staggering. What happens if a guy staggers a little bit? Do people start to freak and psych him out? Do congressmen sense their coworker going for the filibuster, and try to sheepishly sneak out before he begins? Do they lock the doors? Do congressmen know it's coming when they see aides go to lock the doors? Is there a secret signal? YES so many thoughts. The idea that someone's power of sweeping oratory and rhetorical gesture and pure intestinal fortitude can grind the wheels of a bicameral legislature to a halt! If we imagine that this was a purely American invention, who came up with it? Was this some sort of concession to Adams? DID THE FOUNDERS NOT FORESEE ITS TERRIBLE POWER??

And that is all.

Radmobile

Taken from The Source:

• In the 1992 comedy Encino Man, Brendan Fraser's character Link loves to play Rad Mobile, so much so that when he takes a road test he speeds and drives wildly.

Thus "Rad Mobile" has for me turned into the adjective "radmobile," which I reserve for things with a radness so great that they are worthy of being described as "national treasures." The spoken word into to the version of "The River" on Springsteen's Live 1975-1985 album is radmobile. The U.S. hockey team winning in Lake Placid is radmobile. "90,000 Tons of Diplomacy" Nimitz-class carriers undergoing sea trials is radmobile (see image above.)


And then I found an anonymous Yahoo Answers post about a kid whose boarding school banned a whole bunch of books, and in response, started running a wildcat library out of his dorm room (hat tip to Metafilter.)


Now this tugs at the heartstrings in a lot of ways; I love resourcefullness like this, I love intentiveness, I love defiance, and I love that this at least sort of reminds me of the film Toy Soldiers. But most of all, I love George Orwell. I re-read "Politics and the English Language" weekly. If you ban the works of George Orwell, the universe will conspire to place under your care the most clever and morally outraged student since Val Kilmer in Real Genius. And he will fuck your shit up.


Because George Orwell is the definition of radmobile.

Mad Libs News

I wake up pretty early. Not real early (I think you have to wake up with a 4 in front of all the numbers on the clock to qualify for that) but pretty early; I get to watch the news channels before the talking heads shows (um, MJ) all start, which means I get MSNBC's First Look.

YES.

At 0530 they haven't quite figured out what is or isn't news yet, so they pretty much just check out whatever the top-rated Youtube clips or the biggest stories on Digg are. For instance, this morning it was reported that an Australian Man, While Surfing, Saved a Baby Kangaroo, From Shark-Infested Waters.

Later they reported that a Chinese guy, while practicing kung fu, saved a dragon from an oncoming tank. And after the break, a guy from Kentucky, while playing his banjo, saved a jackrabbit from a moonshine explosion.

In other, non media-propagated ethnic stereotype news, those Libert Financial commercials about responsibility are ambiguous and confusing, and pretty much the most depressing things on tv, Jim and Pam proved on the season finale why the US version of the Office is somehow the most uplifting thing on television, while the British version (Christmas episode notwithstanding, hope you're still going strong Tim and Dawn!) just makes you feel uncomfortable being around British people.

Monsters. In My Pocket.

So one time in England a bunch of people were experiencing "mass hysteria" over the appearance of the so-called "Beast of Exmoor," some sort of non-native big cat terrorizing the area. In order to calm everyone down, the English sent in a battalion of Royal Marines in order to capture and/or kill said Beast.

The British sent in Royal Marines. To capture a ghostly Puma. In Exmoor (which is to say, it's not running around Pickadilly gobbling tourists, and the Marines can presumably do some rad squad-action shit.) FUCK YES.

According to The Source, this shit happens on a weekly basis in England. Now, I grew up in the shadow of the Pine Barrens, terrified of the Jersey Devil, and rightfully so. Mainly because, as is so often the case, the areas we think of as thoroughly explored and urbanized are either 1) not that at all, or 2) were, but shit changed. For an example of number 2, see the Ramapo Mountain People. Mainly, there is this list.

Now far be it for me to elevate The Source to a position of higher science than it is, but if only 1 or .5% of creatures on that list actually exist, HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE SASQUATCH IS GOING TO EAT ME.

Yes Joc, the boogeyman is real, and he will not be deterred by the high incidence of crime in your neighborhood.

And Liz, stop bugging the English, they have enough to worry about, what with Royal Marines running after various Phantom Cats every odd weekend.

conejo grande

Hey Liz, guess what you look like?

you can't spell 'pandemic' without 'panic'!

A few things to read while you're waiting for CVS to re-stock the hand sanitizer aisle... (honestly, I saw no less than three people whipping out Purell during my two-hour long ride home from work today. And what can go wrong with leaving public safety concerns to the discretion of rush hour commuters?)

-Contrary to research I've spent my whole life doing, astrophysicists claim that the Milky Way tastes like something other than caramel, nougat, and dreams.

-Forget what I ever said in praise of Peter Orszag: The solution to the sub-prime mortgage crisis isn't to be found in the OMB or Obama's magical Cabinet... it's much simpler, more elegant. Two words: ant realtors. The BBC says they're "better than humans" at rationally picking out homes, but I have to wonder... can they make houses that look like this?! Okay, maybe they can. But... can they make houses that look like this?! ...No? And they wouldn't want to? Because ants, unlike people, make "rational decisions"? ...

-lol ESPN.comhax0rd. The glittery unicorns and rainbows are great... utilizing the Konami cheat pushes it into the realm of the awesome... and the finishing touch of changing all the text on the page to Comic Sans? That's just classy.

-Between this Churchill Downs piece and the dramz last week with the polo horses, I'm beginning to think pdclem2's blog posts have even more of an impact on the real world than I had previously thought... I guess I'm just glad he's on our side? I mean, let's be honest, horses had it coming, but... I don't even want to think about what could happen if powers like Pete's were used injudiciously.

-And for good measure, my favorite swine flu humor so far. I spent the better part of the day Wiki-reading about things like cytokine storms and the last big bad flu, and honestly, I don't know what to tell you except that Gizmodo's got some really good links to H1N1 outbreak GoogleMaps if you're like me and would rather geekily indulge in amateur (and somewhat morbid) epidemiology than seriously think about any precautions you should actually be taking.

things to read!

So, blah blah, you know the drill... essentially, I'm super tired from a great long weekend and my first-ever post-kickball debauch, but not too tired to share a few gems from the webs:

"Despite a threat from Islamists, two Pakistani brothers stealthily manufacture fetish and bondage wear"... I honestly don't even know where to begin dissecting the brilliance of this piece, but please please PLEASE watch the video, as it's just transcendent in its (I'm assuming unintentional) hilarity. Much deserved shoutout to resident Paki-nerd cmhogle for the link...

...TrueSlant is pretty baller lately (and I'm not just saying that because some ladies I know are launching a blog there soon)... my favorite pieces to come out of there of late are Matt Taibbi justifiably hating on Tom Friedman for bad metaphors and Ryan Sager letting us know that birds are smarter in groups. (Actually though, between links to Jeopardy, beer goggles and some nice speculation on Arlen Specter's really old brain, Sager's Neuroworld blog is kinda awesome overall for all the geekazoids comme moi out there...)

...Ryan Lizza never disappoints the D.C. policy wonk in all of us, as proven by this week's read into Orszag, Summers, and the whole budget clusterf*ck. Maybe I'm just a sucker, but on the eve of the 100th day into the administration, talk like this (from an OMB deputy director) still makes me feel pretty warm and fuzzy: "“One of the things that was really surprising to me is the amount of value that was put into analytics and academics, and thinking constructively about a project. I’m not saying that people completely ignored the Hill reaction or the public reaction, but we began with: ‘This is what smart people are saying about this, and this is why.’ ”"

...Just when I thought I was the only one noticing that Marc Thiessen is borderline batshit crazy, Slate adds some fuel to the anti-former-Bush-speechwriter fire...

...This is kinda old-school, but I must have missed it when it came out a few months ago... basically, OMG I kind of want to write an Indiana Jones spinoff about this crazy awful scary Nazi scientist who may or may not have single-handedly created an entire community of Aryan twins in Brazil...

...And last but CERTAINLY not least: the Washington Capitals are FREAKING AMAZING and they only had to bash (Brash?) one head to prove it. And thanks to Carolina, we're going to get the chance to eat Crosby for dinner even sooner than I had imagined. Can't wait. Meanwhile, the Redskins managed to actually not eff up the draft, although I'm going to thank the Jets for that before I deign to believe that it had anything to do with Dan Snyder having a single rational/thoughtful bone in his body... whatever though, the draft is ridiculous anyway and I'm over it and hopefully so is JC because it's time to get started. The Skins D is so money I can't even wait to watch it destroy (is it too early to say No. 1 in the league?) and in the meantime I'm looking forward to hearing my favorite Kings of Leon fan issue dispatches from things like minicamp, the first of which is this Friday!!

In Continued Defense of the Greylock Gun, Two Years Later

When I was in college, I took a class on the History of Warfare. It was, needless to say, totally fucking rad. I totally pwn3d the final exam too, despite two TOTALLY EGREGIOUS SLIGHTS NEVER TO BE FORGIVEN.

Slight 1: My team was tasked to construct a wall, to withstand the opposing team's battering ram. We chose the counter-battering ram rudiments, rebar, concrete, and plywood. The other team had (if I remember correctly) seventeen recently commissioned Marines, and a champion MMA fighter. Our wall did not fare well. In the end we didn't clean up our mess, and we pretty much inadvertently built a patio in front of the big lecture hall on campus. Oops.

The slight? Our wall made it 10 rams, fair and square, but the professor allowed them to go for a bonecrushing eleventh swing, felling our masonry. FOLLOW YOUR OWN RULES, SIR.

Slight 2: My partner and I were tasked with crafting a strategic war footing for Berkshire County, to defend against the neighboring counties in Vermont, New York, Eastern Massachusetts, and Connecticut. I can't even remember what they were, because I (uncharacteristically, I might add) completely eschewed realpolitik in favor of building a giant fucking cannon on top of Mount Greylock, next to the epicly spooky World War I lighthouse.

Limited to Revolutionary-Napoleonic Era technology and tactics, I thought this pretty damn reasonable. It worked on many levels, 1) tactically, as it was placed to rain hot iron on Routes 7 and 8 on either of its sides, the most likely invasion points from the South, West, or East; and 2) as the scariest terror weapon in history (pre-Waterloo liberal arts alternative history anyway) which, even if woefully inaccurate (a factor I took into account, as it would only have to be accurate to within an acre at a distance of 5 miles to really impact against Napoleonic-Era troop formations) would have devastated the morale of an invading force from Columbia County, New York (carpetbaggers). After detailing the strategic nuance of the Greylock Gun, I took part in this exchange.

Prof: Do you two really think this would have been effective as a weapon? Or an effective use of resources?

Me: I think it would have been awesome.

A in the class, thank you grade inflation. Since that day two years ago, I have been working on my time machine (Terminator rules; one way trip, can't bring anything back) in order to first go back and rescue famed ballistician Gerald Bull from early retirement in Belgium, whenceupon the two of us could travel back once more and construct said Greylock Gun, finally I would then travel further back in and set in motion some chain of events in which Aaron Burr's New York secessionist movement actually gained steam and led to him (foolishly) marching an army on North Adams via the Petersburg Pass... only to meet certain doom.

Creepers

One of the great things about being alive and young in this modern age is the fact that people keep coming up with exciting new words for stuff. It's interesting to watch things that have been around since the dawn of time finally get the names that they so deserve. I get that you needed to create the word "telephone" when someone featured out you could telegraphically communicate, um, phonically with someone. But words like cougar, creeper, lingerer? Bromance had its fifteen minutes, a passing word for a passing fad, but these are enduring terms, like "computer" or "sandwich" that are here to stay.

I think cougar as a word may be well past its expiration point, but I think we are so permissive with the idea because it is such a perfect word. Calling someone a "Mrs. Robinson," while more high-brow, was always sort of cumbersome.

But creeper? Fuck yes. Give me more where that came from, invisible wordsmith. Even the urbandictionary entry is written in prose at once florid and blunt, playfully succinct like Hemingway at his best:

A person who does weird things, like stares at you while you sleep, or looks at you for hours through a window. usually a close friend or relative. you know right away if that person is a creeper or does creeper things. it is not hard to spot the creeper.

Creeper is versatile as a term, because unlike cougar (and creeper's cousin, lingerer) it is more of a point on a spectrum. Instead of just thinking of your friend Winchester as that guy who stares a little too long, and says inappropriate things to women, Winchester is now a data point somewhere between Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs and an Easter Island statue, and its funny because he's much closer on the spectrum to the former than the latter. Oh Winchester, such a creeper. Don't creep too hard Winchester, that line between you and pederasty is closer than you think! And so on.

And then there is the "hard creep." The hard creep, cousin of the lurk, is more premeditated and self-aware. When creeper becomes to verb "to creep," it somehow gains a lightheartedness, or at least loses some of its awkwardness. A creeper is a sad individual, while someone creeping might just be having a good time. The hard creep is the apex. If you've ever spent a lot of time at a small college, or with a tight group of friends where everyone has already dated and/or lived together, then you know the hard creep. The hard creep is when you stop giving a fuck and turn into a human paint mixer. Not only are you out to find those new acquaintances that have been hiding somewhere weird this whole time, but you're out to make someone weird out of those acquaintances you already have.


Note: facebook stalking is not "creeping." It is just facebook stalking. It's good though.


PS Holy fuck what is this? Theory of Flux Creep in Hard Superconductors


All of those words are maaaaaaagical