Hello, sports fans. I haven't posted much for a while, which is sad.
I was planning to tell all of you about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
and what I saw there. I was planning to tell you about my trip to Ohio
and the Christmas-related times I had. I have not done so. However, it
is soon time for me to pack up the computer to drive to Minnesota, and
Ohio State is playing football on the television, so I don't think now
is the time either. But please notice the new books and music on the
sidebar. And, as always, since my content is lacking, visit the links
on the sidebar because they are almost all worthwhile.
And I think there will be an exciting new link to add in about 12 days, if all goes well.
We drove to Ohio and at the Cracker Barrel. It was like eating in a
shack filled with ugly and unpleasant (the waitress) people. The food
wasn't bad, but it was certainly bland. While in Ohio I played a lot of
Outlaw Golf for the Gamecube, which was fun, but the characters were
stupid. The courses were nice, but there were only three of them.
There was a lot of sugary food. There were babies. There were
grandparents' houses and relatives. There was shopping and discussion.
There was the rock and roll hall of fame,
about which I'd previously had a decent to say, but now I think I will
just let it lie there. You can probably guess what they had there. It
was a museum about rock and roll. The hall of fame consisted of golden
signatures on a black background of all the inductees. It was
all-in-all relatively uneventful.
I watched a goodly amount of football and basketball over break,
both professional and collegiate. I spent New Year's Eve at home, not
having heard of any place I simply had to go to, and, perhaps because
he'd taking quite a nap earlier. My dad stayed up playing Mario Golf
until three. Sadly for him, I won handily on both rounds.
I drove to the MSP airport, stopping at the Iowa City library and a
gas station/Wendy's on the way. I got there ten minutes ahead of time
for the 2:36 flight, which became the 3:15, the 4:00, the 4:30, and
finally the 5:11 flight before it finally became the wrong flight. The
6:06 flight, which had been delayed to 6:41, was ultimately the correct
flight. While there I ate trailmix and read the Kafka collection I
bought at Barnes & Noble before seeing Mystic River.
Then my window in the car stopped working so I had to drive back to
Northfield with it halfway down and now it's covered with plastic bags
(thanks in part to Colleen).
After a delightful night's rest, I got books and mail and a meal or
two and things unpacked today. Everything works (the frozen computer,
the fragile turntable, everything that had to survive an open window in
frigid weather for hours).
On books: I've recently purchased Jim Derogatis's Let It Blurt, but haven't read it. I did read Nicholson Baker's The Fermata.
It was all about doing sexy things with women frozen in time. I didn't
find it to be ultimately dysfunctional, since the protagonist only
enjoys stopping time to do things sometimes involving women in addition
to his relationships with real women. You may or may not agree with his
rationalizations (he doesn't always himself) but it is an interesting
book, and since it's by Baker, one with plenty of insight and quiet
humor.
On music: I'm really glad that I chose to use gift certificate money
to buy the new Strokes album. I've recently listened to polka and
German children's folk songs in the Rumsey basement, and they are all
great. Really. That Do Make Say Think album you see on the list down
there is utterly worthwhile.
May I take this opportunity to tell you all that this mostly high-speed internet access is terrific? I guess I just did.
On movies: Colleen took me out to see The House of Sand and Fog,
which was a tragedy about two people who both want a house and how
humans self-destruct. It was remarkably well put together: everything
served a purpose and the character's motivations were as well defined
as anything I've seen recently, without making them one-dimensional.
I bought Barry Lyndon with gift certificate money and so should you. I might say more about how much I love it later, but it's amazing.
Kevin "Clair" Jackflaps
recently informed me via email that Jim James will be playing in the
Twin Cities (Pantages Theatre, Minneapolis) with M Ward and Bright Eyes
on February 20. This will be exciting. Hopefully it will also be
attended by me.
Today I saw J Maxwell Greene for the first time in just under six
months. He should mention the couch to me next time I see him (if he
sees this). I also may or may not have spotted Cristina Robins. I think
I may have. If she happens to read this she may know that I will bring
her her refrigerator any time, but it would be much appreciated if she
allowed me to first get my car window fixed, because I don't really
relish driving it before then.
I can't think of anything else right now, but if I do, I will likely let you all know.
Well, it appears as though I am going to take my car to get looked
at tomorrow and hopefully it will be a quick and painless procedure to
restore the window to full functionality.
My Macroeconomics class, which was previously to be held in stately
Scoville Hall has been moved, as we discovered at class time by
checking on the computer in Scoville, to the Chapel basement. It looks
to be a step down, and I will be disappointed by not having two
Scoville classes in one term, but I suppose that's how it's going to
have to be.
In the mail I've received Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2004, which was bought with gift certificate money, and Leave Your Name by Statistics well ahead of the release date.
Also, I've realized since seeing it on numerous year-end lists that I watched The Son
at Film Society. Thank you, Film Society. It was a great movie and
would have been somewhere on my own list, but I hadn't realized it was
a 2003 release.
Today I walked around a lot in the bitter cold but my car window is up now, care of the repair shop on Division.
Tonight or tomorrow night I get to watch television for class. Any
television as long as it contains a program change. Who'd have thought?
Speaking of television, I wasn't watching any today because I was in
the library reading a pretty good decade old article from the Atlantic
Monthly about how Americans and Britons tend to ignore any school of
economics not indebted heavily to Adam Smith. The article focused on
Friedrich List (and Alexander Hamilton somewhat) and how he argued that
protectionism was sometimes necessary for an economy and a nation to
develop strong industry, as opposed to unlimited free trade. He made a
good case for Britain, the US, and Japan having done so even though the
first two don't like to mention the boost they got from protecting
their own markets and setting prices until they were strong enough to
be the major player on the international scene.
Also, I have linked to Paul Krugman's columns on the left as a blog.
Now, they don't really comprise a blog, but they are regularly updated
online and are collected on his page in the editorial section, so let's
just pretend, okay?
What's more, the Guardian has a series of photos from and about the Mars mission.
I have checked out records from the Record Library to play on my turntable. They are Kraftwerk: The Man Machine, Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley, Ray Charles: Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, and Joy Division: Closer. It's very convenient, I must say.
In other news, all of my classes interest me, which is nice. Tonight
there will be bowling. KRLX will soon get under way for the term. And
the blog is still featureless.
Paul O'Neill, former Secretary of the Treasury for George W Bush, tells all about his days in the administration.
The colors are all backward now. And this Ray Charles record skips
all over the place, which is too bad, because it's pretty good.
Last night I watched Cannibal: The Musical and it was just a
little too much for me, or too little. I knew that those in charge were
trying to be irreverent and wild and crazy, but it wasn't quite smart
enough. It had its moments, though.
I also watched a lot of football yesterday. The Panthers and the
Rams played forever and Jeff Wilkins almost had the best kicking
performance in the history of the world, but fell just shy. (He had
five field goals and had recovered his own onside kick before missing a
sixth field goal in overtime after which the Panthers eventually scored
a touchdown to in double OT to win the game. The Pats and the Titans
wasn't quite as exciting, but at least there wasn't any Tony Siragusa
logo popping up in the bottom-left corner every five minutes. There was
also some football today.
Friday night Colleen and I went to St Olaf where we saw Nashville.
Their Viking Theater is pretty nice, and it would be nice to have
something like that here, but whatever. I liked the movie, which was
long and full of characters, as might be expected from Robert Altman.
It had a lot to say about America near the bicentennial (it centered,
in some way, around an event for a presidential candidate of the
"Replacement Party") and it was funny. I think it would be worthwhile
to see it again because there was probably too much going on between
the characters to catch all of it the first time.
KRLX is selling merchandise online. You can buy some at the CafePress shop. It is currently understocked but it will grow.
Go apply for a radio show at the KRLX website. It's ready.
War on terror and war in Iraq criticized by Army War College.
German potato computer machines.
The New York Times on the Iowa caucuses.
Film Society is showing Spellbound tomorrow night.
Thanks to Kyle Yoder and Andrew Herschberger I have finally upgraded
to Windows XP Professional, which went very well. I am still having a
few problems getting Mozilla to recognize the Myrealbox email account
and old messages stored on my hard drive, but no real problems.
I have also upgraded to iTunes for Windows,
which is terrific. I haven't been able to use it for too long yet, but
maybe I will have more to say about it when I have. Well, I guess it
did remove all my songs I'd collected as non-album tracks into separate
folders which is mildly annoying. But that's okay. Now I have to do
homework.
Perhaps you should do yourself a favor and check out the newest e-zine on the web. I did.
It would seem that correlation does not imply causation.
It would also seem that room draw numbers come out in 18 days.
Finally, if anybody already has tickets to the
JimJamesMWardConorOberst extravaganza on 20 February you should leave a
comment. If you don't have tickets but are going you should also leave
a comment. If you know other people who want to go you should leave a
comment.
You may go about your business.
Brian Wilson in the Guardian on his new old album/masterpiece/disaster Smile.
I spent my weekend doing the KRLX schedule.
If I had had time to think today, I might have thought of something else to say, but no.
Guess what? For the first time in forever, I'm technically done with
my homework and stuff. The schedule has been all worked out, I have no
assignments left for the next class, I even have the bulk of a new
story for Professor Yeti.
Perhaps now I can be less neglectful of other people and whatever else
it is I might do if I wasn't doing homework and KRLX 100% of the time
I'm not asleep. I like being busy because it means, as long as I have
the energy for what I'm doing, I don't have time to think about what
else I could be doing. Then again, I don't like being busy because I
don't have time to do anything fun, so that sucks.
Jim James/Bright Eyes/M. Ward: Sold out.
Never doubt the power of the moustache.
This site is boring!!!!
I'm going to tell you what I ate today. For lunch I had a croissant,
a cup of Green Mountain coffee, and a fish sandwich with lettuce and
tomatoes. Bill was the server. He seemed nice, though that might just
have been because he was inexperienced, but he still seemed nice. At
dinner, I ate a slice of cheeseburger pizza, which is unique and
different every time, a sandwich of my own manufacture, two pretzels
with cheese, a piece of cake, and drank a glass of both Dr Pepper and
Sierra Mist, followed by hot cocoa, though I didn't get to drink very
much of that because it was in a container banned by the library, where
I went immediately afterwards. I had a granola bar just now, and am
going to drink hot cocoa made with my coffeemaker that still has coffee
grounds in the filter. I don't know if it will be good. I will update
you in the next paragraph. By the way, the coffee filter is permanent
in my coffeemaker is permanent, which is weird.
I don't really know what to say about the hot drink I am currently
consuming. It's not great but not bad. I don't mind drinking, but don't
know if I'd jump at the opportunity to drink it again.
I saw the Unicorns on Monday, they were okay. I saw Monster
last night, and it was really depressing. It was also a good movie, but
it was depressing and I already knew the story so that part didn't
excite me so much. I'm glad I saw it though.
Also, there is the SUMO movie schedule for Winter Term. (SUMO is the
student organization that shows popular movies on Friday and Saturday
nights at Carleton.) There are nineteen movies this term. They have a
mean score of 60 on RottenTomatoes.com. The best is Chasing Amy, a brilliant choice both due to the hilarious Kevin Smith dialogue and its proximity to the release of Jersey Girl. The worst is The Order
with Heath Ledger. The biggest weekend (movies are shown at a rate of
two per weekend, generally) rates an 84, while the worst gets a 27! The
schedule seemed disappointing at first, and I think that's largely
because the average score of the movies I haven't seen is 55. I am
actively excited to see only American History X and 28 Days Later,
which may have been the biggest factor in my disappointment. There are
two movies under 20, three under 30, and SEVEN under forty. That means
that 37% of the movies screening on weekends on campus this term
weren't even deemed mediocre by a broad range of critics. I can't
compare this with past terms statistically, but I can say that it makes
me sad that so many movies can provide so little entertainment.
If I were you I'd read the new Dave Eggers novel in serialized form at Salon.com. If I were me I'd be lazy and wait around for the finished product.
Today featured snow, which began last night some time and even now
continues. There has been a decent accumulation, though I've not taken
my ruler out yet to measure. Today also featured a victory for me in
the singles bracket of the badminton tournament in class. I was a
little surprised because I'm not as good at singles because those games
tend to focus on moving around the court well, and I'm better at
standing in one spot and placing the birdie in a tough spot for the
opponent. Next up is Amy Tenute, instructor. I'm not sure what sort of
chance I stand in that match.
Bob Daily of the television show Frasier spoke this afternoon to our
Television Studies class as well as numerous others. It was all very
interesting; he started by discussing the process by which an idea
becomes an actual episode of a TV show, then proceeded to answer a
number of questions. I can't think of any particular details right now,
but if I do I'll be sure to let you know.
I've reached the playoffs with the Vancouver Grizzlies in NBA Live
2000. They've been shooting poorly of late, but I'm confident that they
will win the championship.
I also made headway on completing my taxes, looking for roughly 8% of my total income to come back sometime soon as a refund.
CDs to MP3s for $$$s.
This seems like a good proposition, one I'm sure I'd take advantage of
if I were heavily employed, and didn't spend my time on things like
that in the first place. I don't know what to think about the guy who
claims to have ripped 400 CDs in one afternoon. I suppose if he just
tossed the WAV files on at a rate of one every 90 seconds, and didn't
compress the files, he could have done it. But without compression,
that's 280GB. I don't know many people with that kind of storage. Plus,
it would have taken forever to convert WAV->MP3 with good ID tags.
Now it's time for me to go do my radio show.
So I'm trying to find a TV and VCR where I can watch and record a
television program to analyze for TV class. It seems that neither VCR
in Evans works correctly, even when hooked up and configured. Maybe
I'll check out some other dorms this evening.
Grandaddy is playing the Quest with Saves the Day and Fire Theft on 6 April. $21.50, all ages.
It is demoralizing to always work late and never get work done. It
is more demoralizing to have to wake up too early and go to a class
which consists of seventy solid minutes of note-taking. It's even worse
when it feels like -30F outside, which isn't even uncommon.
Yes, I'm writing my paper on the Cosby Show, but I also remembered that today is Professor Yeti day. This week I bring you a feature and last issue, in case you missed it, there was a review.
The AOL Presidential Match below seems to be less variable than I
thought it should be. Seemingly everyone who takes the test rates 100%
with Kucinich and on down the scale in pretty much the same way I did.
I assume this is because most people taking the test are planning on
voting Democrat or liberal in the first place, and thus the test shows
the candidates general right/left stand on issues rather than anything
to do with personal preference. If I find a better quiz I will be sure
to post it here, but for now, just remember that you scored 100% with
Dennis Kucinich.
Kucinich: 100%
Sharpton: 91%
Kerry: 83%
Dean: 79%
Clark: 75%
Edwards: 73%
Lieberman: 61%
Bush: 2%
Presidential Match
Bill won't get killed until 16 April, according to the latest reports on iMDB.com.
I'd previously thought it was coming out in February, but I guess we
will all have to wait a little longer for a second serving of blood,
gore, and samurai violence.