Tuesday, March 27, 2007

No unleavened bread, no pot

If you celebrate Passover, you're not allowed to smoke marijuana next week:

http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2007/03/27/israel_group_nixes_pot_on_passover/?p1=MEWell_Pos2

However, this apparently does not apply to all Jews. My favorite part of the article:

"But not everyone needs to give up their habit for the duration of the festival. The rabbinic injunctions banning hemp were never adopted by Sephardic Jews, who come from countries in the Middle East and North Africa. That means there is no reason they can't keep smoking marijuana, Levine said, except that it remains illegal, despite her party's best efforts."

That last part struck me funny.

"There's absolutely NO reason you shouldn't steal this car right now, except for that minor point about it being illegal and all."

Monday, March 19, 2007

The PO-lice

With the Police reuniting and touring this summer, it struck me as weird that three of their most popular songs are about prostitution, pedophelia, and stalking.

And people say today's music is a bad influence...

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Jersey

A couple of weekends ago, I travelled to Jersey to attend Mithu and
Steve's wedding reception. They officially got married in January in
Massachusetts, but I was not there. Nor was I at the Indian ceremony
they had the night before the reception. I just came for the party.
It's my philosophy on life, actually:

"Fly into a place just in time for the thing you're trying to go to, have someone pick you up in a car so you don't have to take a cab, and just stay one night in a
hotel room, preferably with the person who picked you up from the airport...also, try to get a lot of really good, free food out of the deal."

Remarkably, it all worked out according to my
philosophy. I flew into Newark on Saturday afternoon and landed just an
hour and a half before the reception. Neil, who had been circling the
airport and drinking coffee for hours, promptly picked me up, and off
we went. The drive was pretty uneventful (Neil, after all, is an
extremely boring individual). We did, however, make it there just in
time, despite having to pull a U-ey (does that make sense? has anyone
ever had to figure out how to actually write the short form of
"U-turn").

The first part of the reception was right in the lobby area, where we had champagne. We went to another room for hors d'o....um, i can't spell that word.....another room for appetizers, and really good ones. I couldn't possibly list them all, but one station I frequented quite a bit was the sushi station. I think I would have been just fine if they had let us stay there all night. But eventually we were ushered into the ballroom, where the parents were introduced, followed by Mithu and Stephen to thunderous applause. They danced, there were speeches, and we got to eat more food. Mithu & Stephen (we'll just call them the Dulinns) did a good job of circulating and seemed to have a good time. The night went by really fast. Before I knew it, it was time for crepes and after dinner drinks and Sweet Caroline was playing.

We got to hang out with the Dulinns more afterwards at the hotel bar, where I caught the tail end of an Irish band. We also saw them again the next day at brunch (more food!). After that, it was pretty much time to go. Neil returned me to the airport and I headed back to STL. All in all, it was a quick visit, but definitely worth it.

P.S. I tried to post some pictures from the reception, but Blogger doesn't want to cooperate. Also, I'm not a very good photographer so they're mostly dark, out of focus, and at a distance. I'll just leave it all up to your imagination.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Got a minute?

For people who don't have enough time to listen to the entire song, here's a website that has been running a contest where people condense songs into 60 seconds.

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/01/the_sixty_secon.html

Especially interesting, I thought, was the mashup of Missy Elliot and the theme from Seinfeld (I know, weird, you just have to hear it).

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Switzerland accidentally invades Liechtenstein

This is funny for many reasons.

1. The historically neutral position of the Swiss with regard to war.

2. The fact that it was an "accidental" invasion, which is probably one of the most hilarious things you can imagine.

3. Liechtenstein is, if I'm not mistaken, quite a small country, making the probability of a foreign army stumbling into it quite small.

4. Liechstenstein does not even have an army.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

February recap

A lot has been going on lately, and yet I haven't posted about ANY of it. The ironies of blogging - when you've actually got something to blog about, you have no time to tell people about it.

Let's see, where to begin....a few weekends ago was the visiting weekend for prospective grad students. Not much to say about that, except that free food and drink abounded, everyone in the department was on their best behavior (which is kind of funny to see), I hosted a student for the first time in my grad school career, and there were lots of nervous people walking around in suits for 2 days. Overall, it was fun but tiring. By the end, all the people you've met and spoken to kind of blur together. But I'd still rather be on this side of it than the other side.

At the end of that weekend was my first scans for my dissertation, a playoff victory for my IM basketball team, and the Shins concert (which I've already mentioned). The following weekend I went to visit my grandparents in Manhattan, Kansas (the Little Apple!), and my mom was there visiting too. It was the last time I'll see them in that house, since they're moving to a new place soon. So that was sad, but there are plenty of happy memories. Getting there, by the way, was pretty dicey at times. This was right in the middle of a nasty winter storm, and somewhere about halfway into my 6 hour drive conditions got pretty bad. I kept passing cars who had skidded out and visibility got really poor. Luckily, I made it just fine. On the way back to St. Louis 2 days later, you wouldn't believe the number of cars I passed that had just been abandoned by the side of the road. I'm trying to imagine the mindset of some of these people who just leave their cars on the highway - "Aww, screw it...I'm walking!"

Shortly after that, my IM basketball team got thrashed in the semi-finals. The game featured, for the first time I've ever seen one in an IM game, a dunk. You don't really know how demoralizing it is to be dunked on until it happens to you. In the NBA, sure, it's no big deal. Guys do it all the time. I don't think Shaq even needs to jump. But to have it happen amongst guys whom you assume are roughly as athletic as you is a big kick in the pants. And that was the problem - these guys were quite a bit more athletic than us. Thus, our Cinderella run came to a screetching halt.

Somewhere in all this, karaoke had been floundering. For various reasons, it hadn't been able to happen for a few weeks and something had to be done. So armed with karaoke listings from the RFT, we set out to find a new place to make our American Idol dreams come true. The first place was a dud - or so I heard. I didn't actually go in. Kia and Tal went in and came back quickly. They described a pretty large place with a stage but only two people there. And one of them was on stage. We left. The second place on our list had the same address as the first, with a slightly different name. So we're 0-2 at this point.

Next, we mosey down the street to a promising place that has actually hosted karaoke before. No dice. It's getting desperate. We decide to give it one more try before acknowledging defeat. So off we go, one more shot. The place looks good from the outside. In fact, it's got a big sign on the side claiming karaoke until 3am. I had no idea. If you think you sound good at 11, imagine how great you think you'll sound at 2:30am! So clearly we had hit the jackpot.

Until we actually stepped inside. I'm not sure really how to describe the place. This is a situation in which pictures would be much better than words, and video better than pictures. Let's just say that it was thematically jumbled. Pictures of nostalgia-inducing figures (Frank Sinatra and Elvis come to mind) were under the glass on the bar. Irridescent angels were in nooks and crannies on the wall. Bright green and red neon lights zigzagged all around. The clientele was a whole different story. Notable characters included the guy who sat at the end of the bar, nursing his drink and smoking, getting up only to go sing a sad country song, and then retreating to the bar. There was also the annoyingly flirty woman (girl?) who seemed to be real close with a few of the guys there and knew she was the center of their attention and loved it. Overall, though, the place seemed kind of deserted. None of us could quite get up the nerve to go sing, so we sat at a table in the corner and watched. I think the owner could tell we weren't regulars and came to tell us to let him know if there was anything we needed. What we needed most was to get out of there, and we shortly did. So it was a failed (if entertaining) karaoke pilgrimmage that night.

In other news, Kia got me Madden '07 for Valentine's Day. It's a great game, but one of those sports games that has almost too many options. It's not just run and pass. You've got pump fake, juke to the right or left, spike the ball to stop the clock. Your linebackers can pump up the crowd to make them louder, and your QB can quiet the crowd if you're at home. If you really want to get serious, I think there are options to monitor college players and draft them for your team. It's crazy how much time you can spend on this thing.

Oh, and we had a tornado warning this morning. It's March 1st. Something is pretty wrong with that. Ah well, business as usual in "The Big Muggy" of St. Louis.

And finally, over on Leavy's blog (oberlin.blogspot.com), he's challenging his readers to name as many bands with living (non-human) things in their names as they can in 5 minutes. I got 15 the first time around, but sitting in class I came up with another whole 15. That blows my mind. Without geeking out too much, that's what makes memory so fascinating. What made me think of those 15 first? Clearly the second set of 15 were in the already, but they just weren't accessible at the time. And even though I was in class, my brain kept working on the "problem" at hand, and was moderately successful at it. It's like being slightly distracted was actually helpful in retrieving more information. It's sort of like how certain stars in the sky are only visible if you're not looking directly at them. Anyway, a little fun memory test if you want to try it.