RIP Dessert Tickets

Signing off,

c

Bacon Pop

The future is now and it is refreshingly meaty.

For the vegetarians out there:
"If you’re sick of bacon, no problem. Jones also makes a “Tofurky and Gravy” soda, which it promises is “100% Vegan.”"

Vote for the wealthy white man!

Green party candidate Rich Whitney surprised to see the hilariously unfortunate typo on Chicago ballots.
Vote Rich Whitey!

http://cot.ag/a8D2iL

Is anybody out there?

HELLO?

Anybody?

Watch this.

That is all.

I always knew his baldness was directly related to his Nazism

Well, they spelled his name wrong, but I'm glad he's dead. Never liked Letterman much anyway.

On a related note: I AM SO BORED IN THE SUMMER THAT ALL I DO NOW IS POST MILDLY AMUSING NEWS STORIES ON THIS BLOG. UGH.

One more, just for the road

I can only imagine what these interactions must have been like.

"Hey, is this where the orgy--"

"FOR THE FIFTH TIME, NO!"

I think it's a brilliant idea, personally, but I would've used a library computer.

Stealing Your Roomates Jumbalaya

It's a noble art really.

Thug Wrangler, if you ever check in here again, it was me.

I now consider my sin confessed.

mmmmmmmmmm... Jumbalaya


For further reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKm3I_B-TdI
I don't know how to embed video

"Add a pinch of salt and some finely-ground negro men and women. You heard me."

If you're going to make a typo, you'd better make it count.

“We're mortified that this has become an issue of any kind and why anyone would be offended, we don't know,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald.

"We don't know" might be slopping on the ignorance a little thick there, Bobby. I think it's within reason's realm that grounding black folk could result in a raised eyebrow or two.

At any rate, I hope aliens 1000 years from now find an original copy of the "Pasta Bible" and are absolutely baffled by our approach to both race and religion.

"Should I just call it 'bacon bacon bacon bacon'?"

I’ve always been a picky eater. I have elaborate lists of things I will and will not eat, preparation methods that are or are not acceptable. When people ask, I sum it up for them: “I’m basically a vegetarian. Except I eat bacon.”

They usually tell me, “That makes no sense. ” They're right. It doesn’t. And I don’t care. My love of bacon defies logic and reason. I shall never forsake bacon. Come on, what's not to like about bacon? It's fatty and smoky and salty and savory. I've had bacon so perfect it melts in your mouth like chocolate and it was transcedant, it was sublime. I tasted God in that bacon.

(Speaking of God and pork, sorry to any Jews in the audience. However, of my closest bacon comrades is Jewish. I'm a vegetarian who eats bacon, he's a Jew who eats bacon, of course we're friends. I once made the two of us bacon, drunk, at 4 am. Fuck, I'm going to make someone a great wife someday.)

Maybe my love of bacon is somehow pyschological. On weekend mornings as a kid I'd awaken to the smell of bacon filling the house, rousing me from my slumber with its siren call. In the kitchen would be a plate heaping with bacon, which we would eat with our hands, the skillet still sizzling with grease. My family takes their bacon pretty seriously. The last time I went home my father proudly whipped a ridged yellow plastic thing out of a drawer. "Look!" he said, brandishing it at me.

"I don't get it," I said flatly. "What is it?"

"It makes bacon," he said. "...In the microwave."

"What?" I asked. I had just woken up. I was probably hungover. This concept was beyond me. "But it's soggy and gross, right?"

"No," he said reverently. "It makes it perfectly."

"I refuse to believe this nonsense," I replied, wondering if my father was getting batty in his old age. Bacon in the microwave is unnatural. Next thing he'd be making toast in the shower.

He took out a fresh package of bacon out of the freezer, one of three or four that were stacked in there. Really nice bacon, wood-smoked, obscenely delicious. I told you we're serious about our bacon. He draped it elaborately over the little plastic wall and I understood -- the fat would run down the ridged sides and collect in little reservoirs underneath. Still, I was skeptical-- until a minute and thirty seconds later he produced a plate of flawless, crispy, melt-in-the-mouth bacon. We ate it with our hands. And then we made more.

NAIL LOG

When the te-kwai-la a-flowin' begins

And we're all drunk, just a-startin' ta' spin,

The hammers emerge

And the objects converge

On a log, which the nails are stuck in.

Pride

This contest is quite a good trick
To get writers back to the d-tick
So filthy, I’ll talk
About boobies and cock
And brag ‘bout the size of my dick


If you travel to Halifax
You will find we do things to the max
the only down side
though I say with great pride;
Such big balls are quite hard on our backs

Some Tuesday Afternoon Limericks!

One week into the contest, we have several submissions, but we'd love to see some more

Here they are thus far, in case you don't want to trudge through the comments.

From "I Cant Give You Anything But Love":

Bernice, your idea is terrific
(Though your meter was unscientific)
DT has of late
Been slow out of the gate
Our posts have been dull, unprolific.

And a contest! My heartbeat, it quickens!
That'll surely cure what we've been with-stricken!
I can't wait to observe
The poetic hors-d'oeuvres
We'll produce--unless you're all chicken.

There once was a chap from Bermuda
Who delighted in Pablo Neruda
He was swimming around
When, still reading, he drowned
And was lunched on by two barracuda.

I'm writing a paper on China
Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah
He plays the banjo
But I'm stuck in the library
Vagina vagina vagina.

There once was a grizzled old panda
Who enjoyed a drink on the veranda
He drove a Mercedes
And cavorted with ladies
Until they sent him straight back to Uganda.

In addition to this, a young turkey
With a yen for breasts little and perky
Liked to wiggle his snood
In a manner quite rude
For a bird, 'twas surpassingly quirky.

From Bernice:

There once was a lass named Mcnerney
who rogered a fella named ernie
it would have gone fine,
but ernie was equine,
and McNerney wound up on the Gurney.

There once was a man named McGrath
whose lovers all trod the same path
they wanted a roll
but he got the wrong hole
yes, mcgrath went straight for the ath.

On how many roads walks a man?
until he develops a plan
for passing the tricky
tests to dip dicky
with another, and not just his hand

From My Mom Thinks I'm Funny:

My dear sir, I implore, just try me;
Your rhymes are just fit to wipe hineys;
I'll take up your task,
And drink from my flask--
After all, today is St. Patty's.

In Hali, the sun is a-blooming,
And you Mo-town kids should be swooning,
'Cause I'm out and about
In a t-shirt no doubt
And ignoring those tests which are looming.

(That last rhyme was rather pathetic,
I shouldn't have writ, but I meant it;
In hopes to regain
My standing, though lame,
A line about boobs: "I love tits.")

I once knew an elderly hobo
Who'd share all his wisdom pro bono,
He'd wander around
And yap on profound
Until screaming aloud, "I'M HAN SOLO!"

From Weasel J. Bag:

There once was a blog named The 'Tick
Whose members learned very quick
that if they need snogging
to yell "I love blogging!"
for young hipsters will fall for their shtick.

there was a young fellow, Bernice
who buggered a young girl, Elyse
with all said and done
he'd ravaged her bum
but at least she was still in one piece.

More reasons why the Internet is the BEST THING EVAR

A Tuesday Morning Limerick

The 'Tick is a blog delightful
with humour and chatter insightful
blessed with content anew
once in a moon blue
I hope this didn't sound spiteful.

I'm hoping to spread the word out
so we can continue to grow our nerd clout
it's time to keep blogging
our brains are all clogging
prescription: get some absurd out.

I know posts like this are so lame
so i've decided to make it a game
if you can't think of nothin'
instead of sittin and cussin,
why don't you try doing the same.

Two Hundred and Ninety posts in
There's gotta be something to win
"Dessert Tickets Jest"
a limerick contest!
first prize: a bottle of gin.

If we can't be the Blog that Keeps Thinkin'
At least be the ones who keep drinkin'
please keep them dirty
ribald, hurdy-gurdy
to save this old ship here from sinkin'

So come back right here to the tick
and send in your finest limerick
Y'all should have something to show
i've set the bar oh-so-low
and it's easy to rhyme about dicks.

Just start a new post like normal
click the link in the top right cornah
just try your best
in our silly contest test
you don't need to rewrite the mourner's.

Thanks to you for reading my rap
at times it was great, others: crap.
all i hope that i did
was appeal to your id
who doesn't love a poetic fap?

Akbar Zeb is a love machine.

Dear Blag,

I saw this link on facebook and thought I'd share it with you, totally without commentary or analysis.

Sincerely,

W. Bag.

"In an unfortunate result of translation, Pakistani diplomat Akbar Zeb will not become the next Pakistani ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Zeb’s credentials seem in order: He is the former ambassador to the United States, India and South Africa. He held the post of High Commissioner Designate of Pakistan to Canada and is the former director general of Pakistan's Foreign Ministry.

But despite Mr. Zeb’s impressive career, the 55-year-old diplomat’s name proved to be the immovable hurdle. When translated into Arabic, Akbar Zeb means “Biggest Dick.” In a region that stresses modesty, particularly in public, this could not stand."

Floating Moose, Neil Young, and a Mime

the olympic closing ceremony ended with michael buble singing next to eighty-foot cardboard cutouts of hockey players and inflatable beavers.

If only we had Googled "silver more valuable than gold" before the Olympics!

As Canada celebrates its huge successes in the Winter Olympics, revelling in the transient passion of a gold in men's hockey, leave to Elvis "Why Does He Cry So Much" Thrust to bring you the shocking and scandalous TRUTH about our misplaced belief that we did "well" in "the" "Olympics":

"Silver has heavy demand by industry, while gold has limited demand, other than for jewelry. In terms of its necessity to a modern society, silver has the highest value and the greatest utility...For 60 years more silver has been consumed by industry than produced. That's the most bullish circumstance possible for a commodity. Silver is in much greater demand by industrial users worldwide than is gold. Yet gold sells for fifty times the price of silver.

For the past 60 years silver was dumped onto the market without much regard to price. The U.S. Government sold off inventory of five billion ounces. This silver has been used up by industry and is gone forever. A few years ago the U.S. Mint announced they would have to buy silver on the open market.

That's only part of the story. You may be shocked to learn that there's more gold around than silver. About five times more gold is documented in above-ground supplies than silver. Furthermore, there are less years of silver production remaining underground to be mined than gold. These powerful facts are not currently reflected in the price. However, some day they will be. That's why the opportunity for profit exists in silver like no other opportunity in history. Nothing in the world has the potential to multiply your net worth like silver...Today, world silver inventories are at the lowest point in 200 years."

In short, Dr. Theodore Butler (unclear as to if he is actually a doctor, but it just seems to make sense, what with his smarts and logical points), thinks that silver will be, long-term, more valuable. And with 90% of Olympic athletes prepared to sell their medals at pawn shops (statistic unverified, in fact largely made up), this means that we've got a much less valuable haul staying north of the border.

And yet another trustworthy internet page with nothing but a white background and simple Arial font--perhaps a Geocities page--lists the following statistics:

• According to the World Gold Council (and others) there are between 4-5 billion
  ounces of gold remaining in the world http://www.gold.org/discover/knowledge/faqs/index.html.
  

• According to the Silver Institute and GMS, there are only 671 million ounces left of
  identifiable silver bullion left in the world http://www.silverinstitute.
  org/publications/index.php (World Silver Survey 2004).
  

Firstly, we cannot ignore the urgency of these numbers, as they come from the World Gold Council and the Silver Institute, which are real organizations which likely house a number of supervillains with mutant powers. But while Sidney Crosby prepares himself for national canonization for his overtime gold-medal winning goal past American goaltender Ryan Miller, perhaps truly it would've been far more heroic for him to have to snuck it past his own goaltender.

Factually yours,

Elvis Thrust

The Miracle on Rice

To many Americans, our true north strong and free's obsession with tonight's big honkin' game is worthy of a jape or two.
Why's that? Simply put, the team, the fans, and the entire US Olympic Machine has nothing to lose. They've already won more medals at a single winter olympics than any other country ever, and their hockey team wasn't supposed to be here tonight. Seriously, utterly, literally, they weren't supposed to be here tonight.

Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen another 13-day stretch of better hockey. The tournament has been excellent, and whatever happens tonight, we'll all be thrilled and entertained. Go Canada, but if the US team with their top-of-the-world goalie and youngest-average-age-in-the-tournament wins, that's one hell of a story, too.

Embrace the game, friends. Should be one for the ages.

Current Events, DT Style

I HAVE JUST LEARNED, to my surprise, that Jack Layton, Canadian Prime Ministerial wannabe, is Prime Minister already.

Luckily for Canada, he is Prime Minister of Greece. His name is George Papandreou.

True Patriot Love

Canadian women win Olympic gold; underage players drink booze on former battleground.

"Up In The Air" Was a Total Lie, Or: Bernice, Live from Ft. Lauderdale International!

9:25 AM

After spending the last five days in sunny south Florida, I had a flight to catch to get home. The plan was this: 11:25 flight to Toronto, 4 PM connection to Montreal. This allowed me a buffer zone of 90 minutes to clear customs, re-check my bags, and get on the second plane. Risky, I know, but riskier airplane connections have certainly been made. When I get to the airport, the check-in lineup is four people wide, stretching around the back wall of the terminal building, snaking around corners and staircases. crap. At this point, I should add, my Toronto flight has been delayed 35 minutes until 12:00.

10:00

I get pulled out of line and asked to check in at the automated kiosk, because my flight is soon and I've made virtually zero progress so far. Boarding passes now printed, I go to the special baggage drop-off counter and the woman looks at my boarding passes and laughs at me. I smile, ask what's up, and she says in a jolly Caribbean inflection, "Dere is no way you ah makin' dat connection!". I laugh, I was already resigned to that, so she says she'll try to get me on another flight. Cool. First, though, she makes a joke that I'll first have to pay for my mistake of going to the kiosk, when I should have known that I would miss my connection. I hate when people at airports, restaurants, or school do that because you have absolutely no way to tell when they're kidding. I mean, I don't know the rules for when you express-check in to a connection you're probably going to miss, but they lady tells you to use the express in order to make your first flight that's already delayed. Anyway, she tells me that "I shouldnt be doin' dis, but I can get ya on de flight direct to Montrayal at two fitty-five. But dat means you be doin your waitin' heah instead of in Toronna because all de Montrayal flights in de rush howa ah full". That will get me into Montreal at 6:15, only an hour behind schedule, which has since long been shot anyway. I reply "Hell Yes". My flight boards at 2:15, which means I have four hours to kill in the airport! hello, Liveblog!

11:00

It turns out that there's free wi-fi in the entire airport. Sweet. This makes it way easier to kill all this time. My original, former flight to Toronto is now leaving at 12:30, which means that i would have had to get a connection at 5 the VERY EARLIEST, and every single flight in toronto is delayed. this direct flight might be the only way I get home tonight. The only goal is 9:30, in time to watch the hockey game. I really want a vanilla coke, i've only had one since i've been here.


11:30

I had two novels to buy this trip that I need for school next week. I went to a Barnes and Noble and a Borders, no luck at all. They were BOTH in the airport bookstore. the day is looking up. Toronto flight now at 12:45.

12:20

I checked my baggage at 10:15 AM for a 2:50 PM flight. I'm afraid that they're going to lose it, or they sent it on the 11:30 to montreal. - why? are we that distrustful of airports that we assume that if any thing is remotely out of the ordinary, then they're just going to screw it up?

12:50

So now, all flights in and out of New York are cancelled due to weather. uh-oh. Toronto flight just left.

1:15

Still waiting for my flight, hasn't been cancelled yet. boarding at 2:15, in 60 minutes, but the plane hasn't showed up yet. no worries, it's got time. However, i took a stroll to the duty-free and saw A BOTTLE OF PATRON FOR 35 dollars, and the gold kind for 40! what the hell? that shit is 70 bucks AT LEAST in canada, and 90 for the gold! I wanna feel like a rap star! WHY THE FUCK AM I NOT 21?!?!

2:15

just destroyed a sbarro personal pizza. feel sick. should be boarding right now, ain't for whatever reason. for a while behind me there was a french guy telling what must have been an unbelievably entertaining story, because everyone he was telling it to was screaming and laughing the whole time. he's gone now, and the mood round these parts is definitely less upbeat. hopefully boarding soon.

2:25

the plane just got here everyone is getting off this is getting really intense! people are standing up and stuff as if it'll make the plane take off faster! in other news, i'm sitting in the gate across from someone who must be a charter member of the John Calvert Look-alike club.

2:45

Boarding! Success! Five hours waiting for a flight complete! See y'all soon

Changing and changing back and changing better.

Carlton Cinemas to re-open in June! Hooray!

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/February2010/18/c2870.html

That's all.

Desserttickets does the olympics!

I've been meaning to write this for a while now - better late than never, I suppose.

UPDATE TUESDAY NIGHT: Maelle Ricker won! yay!
p-chigs , patrick chan, canada's best hope in figger skating, is on right now. Go, P-Chiggity!

Three days into the Five-Ring Circus, our home country (thats Canada for you out there in Cleveland) is settling nicely into its biennial routine of disappointment and racking up those fourth place finishes (Canadian Gold!) one after another (We had 13 in Turin, we already have three in Vancouver so far).

But, fear not, the exciting sports are to begin today.
After this morning's lackluster showing in Alpine, we get the event Sports Illustrated dubbed "Downhill Darwinism", SnowboardCross, the event in the olympics which closest resembles a video game. As i write this, there's four canadians in the final 16 spots, so that's at least a good sign.
UPDATE: we got silver, and fifth. so that's four medals, three fourths, and two fifths.

Anyway, the games look to be pretty exciting, with some skeleton (those crazy bastards) starting in a few days and hockey starting tomorrow.

I'm watching women's luge right now, and somehow, zee chermans are losing. For those who don't know, they're really damn good at it (Zip! Zip! Zip!)

In about ten minutes (8:35 PM Monday), Canadian Greatest-ever-at-his-sport Jeremy Wotherspoon will get his fourth and final chance at winning a gold medal. He's never won in three previous olympics, and at this point a beam from the roof or a bolt from the zamboni will probably fly through the air and knock him down.
UPDATE: He fucked it up again.

The Education Conflation

TRANSACTION. Supplier. Consumer. Product. Price.

It all seems so simple. Someone makes something, someone buys it from them, everyone goes home happy. Sure, market terminology can't cover all human interaction, and shouldn't be asked to--but where there's a money purchase involved, there's bound to be a product. And usually everybody involved knows what the heck it is.

I spent $6,011 last year on a product I can't describe. I don't mean that in a surly, "I'm not learning anything" kind of way (I am) and I don't even mean it in a pontificating, "What is the value to society" kind of way (who cares)--but in a purely descriptive, non-pejorative sense, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be getting for that money.

Let me explain.

There are really two traditional schools of thought as to what a university should offer to society: the "knowledge transmission" version and the "knowledge factory". In other words, a university will supply pedagogy or research, and often it dabbles in both. So far as the undergraduate is concerned--with the exception of the occasional lab assistant and so on--the research is moot, simply because we don't carry it out, profs usually don't tell us about it, and we don't benefit from the growth in human knowledge very much more than the average person outside the university does. What does that leave for us? Pedagogy.

But we all sort of know that that's not the only thing we're getting out here. So what does the university sell to an undergraduate, really? There are two answers, one cynical and one idealistic, perhaps, and both are correct: it sells teaching, and it sells a diploma. We can call these two products education and accreditation, the separate tasks of cause people to know things and to know how to do things on the one hand and collect information about people's skills and provide that information to employers on the other. I think both are important--you couldn't very well have a complex, globalized, knowledge-based, 21st-century-Web-2.0-blah-de-blah-blah-bloo economy if people didn't keep learning after high school--and as much as we may hate the notion, the diploma/GPA/honour roll/whatever acts as a valuable lubricant in the economy by helping employers find the best of the best without having to spent that much time or money trying to evaluate them. It lowers, in other words, the transaction cost of finding the best man (woman) for the job. What's more, it's worthwhile for a bright young student to be able to pay to get "certified" in order to differentiate himself from his dumber/less educated/less talented peers. So both these products are socially valuable, and it may be that to get both at once is a bargain.

But I begin to think they entail fundamentally divergent production processes--in other words, the task of educating and the task of evaluating have different and contradictory requirements--and that they should perhaps be carried out separately. It seems to me they have been conflated mostly in order to solve a problem of motivation, and their conflation obscures that problem and its obvious, though perhaps unpalatable, solution.

Altering Our Appreciation of Space and Time

Okay homies, this is pretty cool.

It looks like throughout today the lineup for Bonnaroo 2010 will be slowly revealed by the artists themselves through their own twitters, facebooks, myspaces, youtubes, what have you.


As Bringers Of The New Internet Age ourselves, we should be excited by this - it's pretty exciting (cause we're all learning the damn lineup), and not hard to view Bonnaroo.com today as a blog that parallels our own. Invited participants announcing their arrivals, in order to form a collective entertainment and community experience.

You may remember the 'Roo from last year when myself the lover and funmom all piled into bubbie's acura and spun wheel over wheel 'till we got to Tennessee.

Maybe we'll go again, we'll see. But, if only Weezer or These Guys

would write here.

Also, Stevie Wonder is heavily rumoured, i wonder how the hell he's going to announce his performance.

Embrace the day, People!

Today's Lesson: Always Keep Navel Oranges Around

Mmm. What a satisfying, high-in-MSG meal you have served me, random Chinese food restaurant whose tables are covered in classically-Chinese white linen (so you can just wash the linen and not the tables--classic Chinese genius!) I am ready to settle up. After all, a meal this satisfying, this complete, must cost something! I refuse on principle for it to be free. Besides, you owe nothing to me anymore--

Oh, what's this?

For me? This plate of sliced oranges? But--why! I couldn't eat another bite!

Oh my, these oranges are light and refreshing on my palette! I didn't even know it--for it was not on the menu upon which I made my prior meal requests--but I think I've wanted these oranges all this time! I will certainly remember this gift the next time I come to your restaurant, dear slanted-eyed sir! May your Buddha statue never tarnish!

End scene.

Applause, bow-2-3, up-2-3, point to the booth, exit stage right.

You know when you need to get something off of your mind so you write it out somewhere and then things automatically feel better? Well, I do.

Here lies a placeholder for what was once a very personal yet somewhat fictionalized piece of experimental writing. The very act of capturing all my thoughts on paper (digital paper) was therapy enough. Thanks for listening and immediately forgetting all about it, DT.

Crisis over!

------------
(For the sake of the archives, I managed to find the original post using google's cache. Here you go guys, glad you enjoyed it.)

"Who's this idiot who looks like me and what did he do last night?"

Kensington. Friday night. Find a fedora and a ukelele because tonight's a costume party birthday and Jason Mraz is an easy costume. Just go with it.
Get to the house with friends, hey how's it going, I haven't seen you in forever, what's up man, happy birthday, I brought rum, I can't believe you set up an open bar in the basement, let's go get some drinks.
I'll have whatever you're having.
Hey how's it going.
I'll have whatever you think I'll like.
Hey how's it going. Yeah, hat and guitar. John Mayer, close enough.
Give me something I've never tried before. Make it up, why not.
You're a worker from Jurassic Park, that's an awesome costume.
Gin and tonic?
I almost wore my black cowboy hat and came as a bad-ass sheriff, we could have been costume soulmates! I like the cowgirl thing you're doing.
Gin and tonic.
Gin and tonic.
It's getting crowded isn't it, that's cool though.
You need to stop shooting that guy in the face with that dart gun. Oh it's fun? Alright, let me try.
Sorry man.
You're right, that was fun.
Someone told me to try a broken down golf cart. All you have is punch. Is that a star fruit? Awesome.
Wolverine! No I knew before I saw the claws, the sideburns and leather jacket did it. Nice.
Gin and tonic. Yeah, it's kind of manly, everything else you guys are making tastes like candy.
Hey.
She wants something that tastes like candy.
No, that's Jack Johnson. I sang "I'm Yours". Yeah, there you go. No it's a not a real ukelele, it's just a prop. The frets don't align properly. Well, you don't even have a costume.
What are you drinking? Why's it blue?

Wake up on my friend's couch. Um.
I don't know what happened, what happened?
She's mad. I don't remember the last part of the night. What happened?
Vague response.
Shit.
"Get up, we have rehearsal in 20 minutes."
We don't talk on the walk there.

Rehearsal.
Dancing.
How are you feeling?
You alright?
You look like shit.
"How are you doing you had a big night." Apparently. "Yeah." Ugh. "It's okay, I've done worse." That's not reassuring. "...Yeah."

"4 of us walked you to her house. It was a challenge"
"She kept calling you an idiot."

"I thought you were going to die! Haha." Haha.

I think you told your best friend you loved her. And hit on her for the rest of the night. And then she had to take care of you instead of talking to the guy she really liked.
Shitshitshitshit.
Do I? I don't. I don't think so.
Thinkthinkthinkthinkthink.
I don't think I think of her that way. I think.
I can't remember any of this.
Shitshitshit.

"I helped you put on your shoes for half an hour, it was hilarious."

We should talk.
Wondering how to go about this.
Wondering if she's mad for interrupting her potential romance or for interrupting with my drunk notion of potential romance or for throwing up outside of her house at 3am.
Wondering if inebriation brings out honesty or bullshit.
Wondering if "I'm not interested in you but only because you're not interested in me" will be good enough.

You know when you drink amply at a bar then go home and eat a lot of cheese then wake up six hours later unable to go back to sleep?

Well, I do.

Every House Episode Ever

House: Alright team, this amoral sick man/woman/child has something wrong with him.
Foreman: Oh darn. let's run a few diagnostics, see what's up.
Chase: Okay Mr. Patient, We're going to do this test
Patient: WHY?!?!
Thirteen: She/He's Evil, i tells ya!
House: Evil, not evil, everyone's messed up. What did you find
Foreman: I think it's kidney failure
House: WRONG
Foreman: You Never listen to me!
House: WRONG
Wilson: You're a Jerk.Chase: it could be Syphillis
House: Maybe.
Patient: Why would i have syphillis?
*nobody says anything*
Thirteen: Why the fuck are you so immoral?
Patient: Everyone has their habits.
CUE CREEPY MUSIC/STAREDOWN
House: So it wasn't syphillis. i knew that.
Foreman: Were you testing us?
House: WRONG
Everybody: what is it?
House: Check that organ we talk about all the time but seem to always forget - THE PANCREAS
Everybody: Oh shit
Wilson: You're a jerk
Foreman: Thirteen, are you hung over again?
Thirteen: ...No.
House: I need your help with something, Cuddy. i need to do an illegal procedure.
Cuddy: No. go back and do your work yourself, the right way.
House: YOURE TERRIBLE AT YOUR JOB
Cuddy: fine, i'll do it.
House: *Swoon*
Wilson: You're a Jerk.
Foreman: So, we saved the patient!
House: I told you so!
Foreman: no, you had the wrong diagnosis!
House: Who cares?
Wilson: You're a Jerk.

McDonald invites Hortons over for a bite; bill argued over for hours

The district court had it right: "It is just a slice of cheese".

"A McDonald's outlet in the Netherlands was wrong to sack an employee for giving a colleague a piece of cheese on a hamburger, a court has ruled. [...] The fast-food chain argued this turned the hamburger into a cheeseburger, and so she should have charged more."

I haven't figured out the exact algebra yet, but I'm pretty sure an extra slice of cheese--with the employee-discount and all--plus the euro conversion--comes out to even less than seventeen Canadian cents in 2008.

Now, I know the recession's a pain. Corporate morals need to be upheld, regardless of circumstance; without order there is chaos, and all that.

I worked this summer under a number of different retail outlets, all the same company; one of my managers, to summarize, would be the kind of guy who would fire me over giving away a Timbit. He performed obsessively, keeping price tags up to date and managing to push product despite his genuinely awkward personality. The one time I can remember our closing the store together, I asked if we ought to sort the receipts in a certain way. He said no. I asked why. "Because it's not expected of me," he replied.

This is not a profound thought, but when the powers that be value protocol over circumstantial ethics, we should first ask if cultivating the attitude that "yes" never means "it depends" is maybe not the best way to run a business.

Maybe next time that bitch at Sears won't deny me my purchase if I'm short a nickel.

Google pulls out, China not pregnant

HI GUYS.

Little Sino-American business speculation for you today.

No doubt many of you have heard about Google's ultimatum to Beijing--quit asking us to censor our .cn portal results, or we'll pull up and leave the country, period--as a response to cyber-attacks into their private servers, possibly perpetrated by the government, possibly uncovering some moderately sensitive information about the Gmail accounts of some political dissidents. It's been hailed, predictably, as a triumph of ethics over profit, and a welcome return to Google's much-vaunted "Don't Be Evil" strategy; what's more, it's gotten the Western media excited because nobody has dared (so goes the story) to stand up to China before and it's fun to think of this event as a watershed.

I say, feihua [bullshit].

The story of Google in China is simple: compromises were made in order to gain access to a famously large and growing market, for obvious reasons. China has more users online than America has citizens, period. Chinese individuals are getting richer at a little under 10% per year, which means that those who are not the hundreds of millions of poor-ass farmers with no internet are raking in the disposable income like it's--well, it's unprecedented. So you can understand why when Google knocked on the door of the cadre whose job it is to tell giant foreign search engines what they have to do to get in on the pie, they were keen to play ball.

It's not obvious exactly how much ball they agreed to play. We know they censored their search results (which, incidentally, they do here too; check this out), but it's been suggested they also agreed to leave the spare key to a few important Gmail accounts under the mat. It seems to me the latter is not too far-fetched. But what's important is this: a security breach was allowed to occur, and when the PR people found out about it, they realized the optics of headlines like "Gmail Accounts Compromised in China, Yours Could Be Next" are a lot harder to swallow than those of "Chinese Political Dissidents Fucked Over, Chinese Government Still Evil and Has Nothing to Do With You". Given than Google had only managed about 25% of the search engine market share anyway, with 70% held by the established homebrew competition, and given that local servers are expensive and local users didn't generate as much ad revenue as expected, it seems sensible to me that they chose this moment to exit with a grand flourish and a slightly underhanded prestidigitation.

Google has put almost all its eggs in the "cloud computing" basket. I'm supposed to trust that my email, my calendar, my reading and purchasing habits, my documents, my finances, whatever the heck Wave is for, and someday my whole operating system are all safe and sound in Google servers across the world. If something happens to undermine that trust, maybe I switch back to using a more secure email, because I realize my online life is, actually, kinda sensitive. Maybe I don't want to end up like those Chinese dissidents, who trusted Gmail to be secure and are now up shit creek. So they make sure I never think of it that way. We all know the Chinese government does sketchy things, but only to its own people, right? Nothing to worry about out here in Google's home turf.

There's something about this deflection that unsettles me. By making sure we hear the story in terms we already understand and habitually ignore--political repression in China--Google's people have ensured that we don't see it in the terms that are relevant to our lives. Maybe that's the essence of effective misinformation: don't lie, exactly, but tell people the part of the story they already believe.

Anyway, that's it for me. Happy Googling!

Elvis Thrust: A Whimpering Introduction

So for about a month now I've hemmed and hawed. I've met most of you at this point but, whether it was the overwhelming argument about the hipster identity or the raging and torch-wielding sinophobia, I've been too nervous to post here. What if they think I'm lame? What if they think I'm not funny? What if Avatar wins an undeserved Oscar? The answer to all those questions has been the same--the end of the world, two years early.

I decided, then to just do a cop-out post as my first, a bit of stand-up that I did at King's College with some of the Picnicface peeps. To my credit, I came up with much of it in the half an hour before the show; to My Mom Thinks I'm Funny's credit, he punched up a significant number of these jokes. To his detraction, he yelled disparaging things throughout the performance, which he claimed was intentional and for my benefit; at one point, I told him to fall off a large rock onto a series of smaller, sharper rocks.

Hopefully that sets the scene.

--

So I'll start off by getting the race elephant out of the room--yes, I'm Nicaraguan. How do I get my skin to look so darned Asian, you ask? Bits of real Chinese people.

Anyway, I've always been awkward about sex. I think it all started when I was in my grade four computer class and I was trying to look up civil war history and I put in www.slavetrade.com, and out came porn, which was a real shock. It could also have been that I just didn't learn enough when I was young; last month, my friend finally told me what a tampon actually was. Apparently, it doesn't let women pee wherever and whenever they want to. I may or may not have been super jealous.

But all these things considered, the thing that I've always wanted, since I was three, is to be a sex columnist. Yes, so what if I'm a little unadventurous in bed; if a girl asks me to talk dirty to her, I would just say "I am not finding this entirely unpleasant", or "your boobs remind me of a funny story". But that's the point--I would put sex in tiny two-point font, and recommend the most conservative of positions. A sampling from Inter-of-course with Adrian Lee: "the next time your lady would like to apply the sex, consider being on top, or perhaps even the doggie-style.

But it's not for my lack of wanting to learn more, about this "sex". I've picked up every issue of Cosmo, not just because they tell me that I should be wearing boho chic this season, but because they tell me they know "what men want", and being a man, I'd like to know as well. The problem is, it's all really obvious things, like "WHAT TURNS YOUR MAN ON: you, naked!" or "WHAT YOUR MAN IS ALWAYS LOOKING FOR: if you touch his penis!" It's disappointing, really, albeit true.

Well, goodbye forever!

"Avatar" hated by Marines, the Vatican

In what is, for me, the best story of the year, Avatar has garnered criticism from liberals, conservatives, the Marine Corps, the Vatican and its own fans for being too white-washed, too critical, too stereotypical, too sacrilegious and too beautiful for mere humans, respectively.

And here I was thinking the plot was basic--what a fool I was! Turns out it's actually deeply offensive on a number of levels I could have never predicted. Oh well!

"I really have nothing to say, but I want the first post of 2010 all the same"

To quote Federico Garcia Lorca:

"Let's get crunk, 2010."