Mentioned a Libertarian candidate below. Just checked out American Realpolitik and found a post about some of the more colorful candidates in the DC Democratic primaries. I’m particularly impressed with this guy.

I mentioned that my fridge died on Thursday. Today I’m cleaning it out. Pretty unpleasant. I’ll tell you what though, you take a gallon of partially melted rainbow sherbet and toss it into the sink and it looks pretty damn cool. Not quite cool enough to get over throwing three pounds of tasty, tasty beef into the trash, but it looked good. Shoulda taken a picture.

My phone rang last night as I was leaving for dinner, and it was my bro with some huge news. Right now he’s living in a real shithole of a town called Los Angeles, and in a very short time he’ll be moving to one of the nicest towns in the country. Here’s a demo of my lame photoshop skilz:

He’s been transferred from LA to Merrimack, New Hampshire, a city situated in between Manchester and Nashua, and close to Boston. That puts him close to the East Coast family, whom he can piss off by rooting for the Red Sox in the AL in the Cards in the NL. This is a damn good thing.

I was just looking over the Libertarian Party candidates for this year’s presidential election. No Harry Browne? I hope this guy gets the nomination. What a weirdo.

Snicker

I submitted my paper today. It’ll hopefully only need another rewrite or two before being accepted. If you’d like to check it out, it’s available online here: Cataphora in Anaphora Theory. Nice title, huh? It’s considered to be the best form of writing where it’s accessible to anyone. In this case, I imagine I fell well short, since you have to know a bunch of esoteric logical techniques like lambda-calculus and stuff, but I tried to make it as clear as possible. If anyone reads it, shoot me an email and tell me if it sucks real bad.

Update: Hmmmmm…. looks like the PDF didn’t encode properly. I could read it at work, but C-Rae said he didn’t see any text, just some of the formulas. That’s what I’m getting at home too. Odd. You can see it with a PS reader like GhostScript. I’ll fix it soon.

Cards picked up left handed batting OF Colin Porter off the waiver wire from the ‘Stros. Also check out the sub-headline of that article. I like that very, very much. Will Clark saved our backsides a few years ago.

My paper is finished. Writer’s block smote.

If you only read one “letter to the editor” this year, make it this one.

Update: Also should have mentioned where I got this, from Spoons, an Illinois lawyer/blogger who’s been keeping an eye on it for some time. He’s got some commentary on the letter and legal opinions in the comments.

So I get home and fire up the ‘puter to do some writing. Preheat the over. BEEP! Grab a box of totino’s mexican pizza to throw in, pull the pie out of the box. It’s thawed. Freezer died. Fridge died. Just went grocery shopping. I’m gonna write, then try to fix it. And throw out some food, damnit. I pulled it out, it’s one of those models where the heat transfer coils are underneath instead of on the back. Opened it up and the coils are packed with dust and ugly. I think the compressor is toast. That means I’m probably going shopping this weekend.

Howard Dean is breaking up, just like our cute little robot. That makes my democrat/poli-sci major friend happy, since he worked on the Kerry campaign and is a big fan of his. And he doesn’t like Republicans too much. I don’t know if you heard it, like maybe you don’t watch any late night talk shows, but he gave a speech when he ended up with a distant third in Iowa that sounded something like the end of a Blues Explosion song from the Orange record called Flavor. Dean ended the speech with a war cry of sorts that’s officially written Yeaeeagh! I listen to the radio (or sing along to a mixed CD, mostly Lionel Richie) in the shower every morning, and this morning they played that YEAEEAGH! sound a few times and it’s been stuck in my head all day. The only recourse? Listen to James Lileks’ crappy song based on it, called “Yeaeeagh!” If you haven’t heard the speech, you oughta check that link out, it’s pretty doggone funny.

Update: Wes Clark had a meltdown too. Badly. Read the comments for the context to what he says there.

I was outside a little while ago, strolling along with a friend of mine who’s from tropical Thailand. She complained, “How come it’s so cold!” I’m a smartass, and not particularly funny, so I told her that it’s because the Earth’s orbit about the sun wobbles on it’s axis, and so half of the year, this part of the world is further away from the sun during daylight hours. She didn’t believe me. Didn’t have a clue why there would be winters in the first place, and what could make the place go from 100 degrees in the summer and -10 in the winter. I laughed at her a whole lot, because that’s a good way of convincing people to agree with you.

Chaplain Puts Green Beret Past to Use With Troops That’s a pretty decent article about a very decent man.

Today’s Bleat is short and sweet. Starts out with disillusioned lawyers ends with a splendid attack on Jar-Jar and Lucas.

Linguist/Blogger Amritas writes some hilarious stuff about eduphemisms and the silly PC bastardization of language. In it he plugs a book by RMW Dixon, a linguist whose work I used while studying the Aboriginal language of Dyirbal. It’s called the Fall of Languages, and is checked out at the library until March… renewed. I suspect some joker Chomskyite here is keeping it to himself. Here’s a really hilarious story about some High School kids in Omaha who nominated an immigrant from Africa for their school’s “Distinguished African American Student Award.” Only problem is that he’s a white guy. Although this hilarious protest against having these unnaturally agglutinative terms shoved down their throats should have prompted some re-evaluation of PC terminology, or maybe even rethinking a policy of giving out racially discriminatory awards; instead it resulted in suspensions. Of course, they did start the campaign on MLK Jr. day, which wouldn’t have been a strategy I’d have advocated as a High Schooler. Still funny, as long as the suspensions don’t affect these kids’ futures. So don’t get pissed off.

I have an enormous amount of respect for Albert Pujols. And then he goes and says something stupid, stupid, stupid beyond words. It’s in this article about his arbitration negotiations, and here it is:

“It’s not about me,” he said. “It’s about what God wants me to have. So if he thinks I’m not ready for a long-term contract, he’s not gonna give it to me. But if he thinks I’m ready, he’s gonna give it to me. I don’t even think about it. My job is to get ready for Spring Training and get ready for the 2004 season.

DUDE! It’s pretty repulsive to me when athletes thank God for helping them win a game. I can understand people thanking God for giving them strength or that sort of thing, but when they claim that God’s will was for their team to win the game, or to hit the big home run, it’s downright repugnant. This is far dumber. God does not intervene in contract arbitrations.

Here’s a picture of a t-shirt that Hawspipe say’s he’d like to have in a post on a Che Gueverra movie, right next to another T-shirt that I’d really like.

   

So anyways, I went up to see Nick’s new show last night. And I missed it. Yup. Missed it. Not my fault though! I was trying to get there a little early, ideally so I could grab a quick bite to eat before the show. And a very impressively hidden state trooper pulled me over doing 80 in a 65. Lipton tea. He kept me on the shoulder for half an hour. My fault, since I’d taken the folder containing all the registration and license plate transfer information into my house to look over the loan papers and left it on the desk. So basically, the cop had to make sure I wasn’t driving a stolen car. If some bastard had stolen my car and this cop pulled him over, I’d get my car back… so I guess I should be grateful he was doing his job. But still, I had my insurance card in my name, and my driver’s license, and the insurance card had a VIN matching that on the car, so it was pretty clear that the car wasn’t stolen. And I knew what car the plates were registered to in their computer, so it should have been obvious I was no thief. He tried to trip me up a little bit… “You say you only got this car a week and a half ago, but the insurance card says August 14th?” “Yes, officer. I started up this policy on my old car back in August, but changed it to the new car a week ago.” A half hour later, I got to leave. But he took my driver’s license as bond. I had enough money to pay for the ticket, but he couldn’t make change. He said I could meet him at a cash station, but I’d been sitting on the shoulder for a half hour and wanted to see at least some of Nick’s group perform. So I took my $75 ticket and split. The directions I had printed up before leaving called for taking I-90 through the city, but I opted to wing it and take Lake Shore since I’m more familiar with that road. Found the club without any problem and had a seat. Nick’s group had already finished. The other two groups that I got to see had some pretty fucking funny people in them. It’s not stand-up though, it’s all improv. So the audience picks a topic and the group on stage runs with it. That’s got to be really hard to do. Some of the stuff they come up with is a bit hard to follow, some of it was hilarious. A little bit too much improvisational dance type-stuff for me, but who am I to judge? After the show, I tracked down Nick and we went over to a nearby Wrigleyville bar called Mullen’s for some chow and brew. I had the Mullen’s Wrap. It was delish. They use those spinach tortillas, very tasty. Also a cheese called chihuahua, which I jokingly confessed to Nick I hoped wasn’t really made from the milk of mexican toy dogs. Left there around 12 for the ride home. Ordinarily I never talk about the women I’m seeing on here, but last night I have to make an exception. Talk about a recipe for a horrible first date: you take a gal you’ve spoken to only two or three times for a date involving five hours in the car to a place you haven’t checked out first, and with no concrete dinner plans. It couldn’t have turned out much better, the speeding ticket that caused us to miss Nick’s act aside. The conversation up there was laid-back and comfortable, we were both having a good time at the show, and she was really friendly with all of Nick’s fellow comedians at the bar afterwards. Not to mention she didn’t seem to mind our first time out together involving me spending some time just joking around with Nick. And on the way home she had fallen asleep when my shoulder started to get a bit sore from driving. She woke up and started rubbing the cramp out. I didn’t ask her to, I thought she was still asleep. That’s pretty awesome if you ask me. And I get to take her out again, too!

He throws hard with good movement on the fastball, yet largely ineffective right hander Estaban Yan will not be playing for the Cards next year, but with the Tigers instead.

ESPN is ranking the top 100 sports moments on the Simpsons. That link goes from 100-75. You can expect me to be keeping up on that.