Today at work I have little to do, so I checked out the Style Invitational challenge and decided to throw my hat into the ring. For those of you who don't know about the Style Invitational, it's a weekly column where the Style section editors put forth a humorous contest for readers to respond to, then run the winners over the weekend. Generally the things are pretty funny. Here's this week's contest:
"It's time once again for our chronic not-much-like- "Jeopardy!" contest, in which we supply 12 phrases and you get to provide questions that they might answer. The twist this time is that all of the phrases were entries in our Week 717 contest, which asked for Googlenopes -- phrases that showed no previous hits from the Google search engine. Some of this week's Nopes got ink last week; most you're seeing for the first time. Winner gets the Inker, the official Style Invitational trophy."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071300684_2.html
Here are the twelve 'answers' given:
1) That controversial "Gilligan's Island" episode
2) Hazy, hot, humid and happy
3) Museum of Suburban Culture
4) Pamela Anderson's elbow
5) More bizarre than Karl Rove dancing
6) Homer Simpson's doctoral thesis
7) The upside of tooth loss
8) Arkansas and Old Lace
9) Outhouse loveseats
10) Too ostentatious for Donald Trump
11) Nuanced fart jokes
12) An inappropriate time to wear a kilt
I will now provide you with my question submissions:
1) Where did the TV Parental Guidelines system come from?
2) What is Cheech Marin’s greenhouse?
3) Where can you find the original PTA Constitution?
4) What can’t you recognize even though you’ve seen it hundreds of times?
5) How can you describe Scooter Libby’s new rap album (Scoot-Dogg: Outta Da Pound)?
6) What is the principal source of information on the etymology of the ‘donut’?
7) What prison phrase is the equivalent of “When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade”?
8) What are two names of undesirable prostitutes?
9) What is a manifestation of the saying “The couple that s#!%$ together, stays together”?
10) What is a hat?
11) What is unisex bathroom humor?
12) What is the Oscillating Fan Parade?
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
Back in the saddle
Peace, muchachos. I took a little week-long sabbatical to compose myself and now I'm back—refreshed, re-energized, and renovated. I'm tucking away the old voice because it's a little too cumbersome, a little too time-consuming and besides I doubt that any of you are reading this for my prose (although I do intend to post a few short stories as soon as I learn how to link them up without copy and pasting the entire document into a blog post... help me, Internet-Savvy Ravi!).
For today, I'm going to throw down the first installment of my series entitled Where Is Jeremy Going To Live Next Year? Breaking each place point by point, I should end up with at least a couple attractive options by the Deadline. So without further ado...
New York
Went there this weekend and in the process got some firsthand experience on what it's like to live in the Big Apple. Also got a taste of what it is like to ride in a bus driven by a Hassidic Jew (bumpy, to say the least).
Food.
The most important factor when selecting a residence—and New York delivers. In fact, the bulk of my Saturday was spent either a) eating food b) thinking about what kind of food to eat or c) travelling to get that food. This is what the melting pot is about, my friends... throwing down a few bagels in the morning, eating a slice of pizza for lunch, gorging yourself on cheap Chinese sweetmeats at night (sounds dirty, as it should), and then having another slice of pizza in the middle of the night because that kind of quality deserves an encore. The only reason I can stand "diversity initiatives" at UVA is because of the food potential, and the culinary community of New York is like a Ryan MccLvene wet dream.
Atmosphere.
Really pretty, in a dirty kind of way. Yeah the ground is covered with random shit and I'm afraid that I contracted typhoid because at one point my sandal fell off and my foot touched the ground. But if you keep your eyes up then it's a worthwhile spectacle—the urban jungle setting that makes you really feel like you're absorbed in a civilization and not simply lying to yourself like in the suburbs where your lawn gives you the illusion of a relationship with nature.
I find myself comparing it all to "Ozzymandez" a little too often, which worries me. The global warming factor could be troublesome.
Things to Do.
Great jazz/blues scene, TV capital of the world, the NBA draft was on Thursday and it sounded incredible to be there (the crowd taunting Steven A. Smith, laughing at Yi Jianliang... oh man, that's my element), museums. Blows D.C. out of the water in this regard. Might be hard to play sports with any frequency. Also, lots of parades and events... over the weekend we stumbled upon the Immigrant Pride Parade which featured, among other things, a swarm of people marching with the Columbian flag while a confused, disoriented guy with a sombrero stood in the middle dressed in the colors of Mexico.
Transportation.
Metro and walking. The metro is worse than the one in D.C. or Boston—too much dirt/crazies, but it takes you anywhere.
People.
This is a tough one. I'll break it down into categories.
Lifers: Obnoxious, loud, surly, have names like Jimmie "The Swatch" Carone. Entertaining, however.
Tourists: People like me who ask irritating questions about directions, snap pictures of everything in sight (including crime scenes), and drive all the prices up/clog all the metros.
Young Professionals: Toolbags who when they're not working 80 hour weeks are in the strip clubs doing coke off each other's stock portfolios.
Artists: The hipster bunch. Responsible for the abundance of organic produce markets. Some of these people are cool, some are not.
The Chinese: self-explanatory
The Crazies: I don't know why... maybe they all made the progression from tourist to CRAZY or lifer to CRAZY or Chinese to CRAZY (actually, haven't met any crazy Chinese so far... can someone explain this phenomenon to me?) but the fact remains that I have encountered more Crazies in New York than anywhere else. Just this weekend we were sitting in a pizza place in a pretty nice area of New York when one of the patrons just got up and started calling the guy behind the counter all sorts of epithets, culminating in angry chant of "show me some respect! show me some respect! you don't even speak English!" I was 40% confident that there was going to be a stabbing/shooting/firebombing. I can't imagine how it is to work in the service sector.
Jobs.
The ones where I could keep a pretty high standard of living all blow... wall street investment nonsense crap. Still, there are interesting possiblities provided that I'm okay with sharing a bathroom with a Cuban drug-dealer or living in a "Joe's Apartment" type situation (remember that movie?)
Weather.
Too cold in the winter, uncomfortable in the summer. Why couldn't they have built this place on the West Coast?
Cost.
Fuck. And not in the "cheap as fuck" way. Just "fuck."
X Factor (positive).
That sense of superiority that you get by virtue of living in New York—the ability to stare down a visitor and nod your head and give that pretentious "you'd get raped in two seconds if you ever lived here" smile, even though that's probably not true and you yourself are a testament to how easy it is to live in the city but they don't know that and so you can pretend.
Z-Factor (negative).
The "Midnight Cowboy" potential.
Conclusion: It's good, but let's not get carried away just yet. More places await.
For today, I'm going to throw down the first installment of my series entitled Where Is Jeremy Going To Live Next Year? Breaking each place point by point, I should end up with at least a couple attractive options by the Deadline. So without further ado...
New York
Went there this weekend and in the process got some firsthand experience on what it's like to live in the Big Apple. Also got a taste of what it is like to ride in a bus driven by a Hassidic Jew (bumpy, to say the least).
Food.
The most important factor when selecting a residence—and New York delivers. In fact, the bulk of my Saturday was spent either a) eating food b) thinking about what kind of food to eat or c) travelling to get that food. This is what the melting pot is about, my friends... throwing down a few bagels in the morning, eating a slice of pizza for lunch, gorging yourself on cheap Chinese sweetmeats at night (sounds dirty, as it should), and then having another slice of pizza in the middle of the night because that kind of quality deserves an encore. The only reason I can stand "diversity initiatives" at UVA is because of the food potential, and the culinary community of New York is like a Ryan MccLvene wet dream.
Atmosphere.
Really pretty, in a dirty kind of way. Yeah the ground is covered with random shit and I'm afraid that I contracted typhoid because at one point my sandal fell off and my foot touched the ground. But if you keep your eyes up then it's a worthwhile spectacle—the urban jungle setting that makes you really feel like you're absorbed in a civilization and not simply lying to yourself like in the suburbs where your lawn gives you the illusion of a relationship with nature.
I find myself comparing it all to "Ozzymandez" a little too often, which worries me. The global warming factor could be troublesome.
Things to Do.
Great jazz/blues scene, TV capital of the world, the NBA draft was on Thursday and it sounded incredible to be there (the crowd taunting Steven A. Smith, laughing at Yi Jianliang... oh man, that's my element), museums. Blows D.C. out of the water in this regard. Might be hard to play sports with any frequency. Also, lots of parades and events... over the weekend we stumbled upon the Immigrant Pride Parade which featured, among other things, a swarm of people marching with the Columbian flag while a confused, disoriented guy with a sombrero stood in the middle dressed in the colors of Mexico.
Transportation.
Metro and walking. The metro is worse than the one in D.C. or Boston—too much dirt/crazies, but it takes you anywhere.
People.
This is a tough one. I'll break it down into categories.
Lifers: Obnoxious, loud, surly, have names like Jimmie "The Swatch" Carone. Entertaining, however.
Tourists: People like me who ask irritating questions about directions, snap pictures of everything in sight (including crime scenes), and drive all the prices up/clog all the metros.
Young Professionals: Toolbags who when they're not working 80 hour weeks are in the strip clubs doing coke off each other's stock portfolios.
Artists: The hipster bunch. Responsible for the abundance of organic produce markets. Some of these people are cool, some are not.
The Chinese: self-explanatory
The Crazies: I don't know why... maybe they all made the progression from tourist to CRAZY or lifer to CRAZY or Chinese to CRAZY (actually, haven't met any crazy Chinese so far... can someone explain this phenomenon to me?) but the fact remains that I have encountered more Crazies in New York than anywhere else. Just this weekend we were sitting in a pizza place in a pretty nice area of New York when one of the patrons just got up and started calling the guy behind the counter all sorts of epithets, culminating in angry chant of "show me some respect! show me some respect! you don't even speak English!" I was 40% confident that there was going to be a stabbing/shooting/firebombing. I can't imagine how it is to work in the service sector.
Jobs.
The ones where I could keep a pretty high standard of living all blow... wall street investment nonsense crap. Still, there are interesting possiblities provided that I'm okay with sharing a bathroom with a Cuban drug-dealer or living in a "Joe's Apartment" type situation (remember that movie?)
Weather.
Too cold in the winter, uncomfortable in the summer. Why couldn't they have built this place on the West Coast?
Cost.
Fuck. And not in the "cheap as fuck" way. Just "fuck."
X Factor (positive).
That sense of superiority that you get by virtue of living in New York—the ability to stare down a visitor and nod your head and give that pretentious "you'd get raped in two seconds if you ever lived here" smile, even though that's probably not true and you yourself are a testament to how easy it is to live in the city but they don't know that and so you can pretend.
Z-Factor (negative).
The "Midnight Cowboy" potential.
Conclusion: It's good, but let's not get carried away just yet. More places await.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Taking Care of Business
Honorable Reader,
Another day goes by: another day to learn more and more about the potential of markets for vegetable oils in the Middle East, another day to spend sitting at a desk wading through blurry spreadsheets, another day to experience the dull, magical process of converting time into money (story idea: Character A is worrying about his future. Character A finds a genie lamp.The genie promises to provide Character A with untold riches in exchange for years of his life... with hilarious results.)
Anyway: scratch government econ work off the list of post-graduation possibilities. Let's consult the board (in no particular order)....
1. Writing (for some magazine/periodical/journal)
X 2. Government Econ Analyst
3. Chimney-Sweep
4. Bard
5. Publishing
6. Grad School of some sort
7. Bowyer
X 8. Economic Consulting
9. Furrier
10. Able Seaman
As you can see, all options involving economics have been eliminated. Way to go, Major!
Methinks I need to improve my list.
Another day goes by: another day to learn more and more about the potential of markets for vegetable oils in the Middle East, another day to spend sitting at a desk wading through blurry spreadsheets, another day to experience the dull, magical process of converting time into money (story idea: Character A is worrying about his future. Character A finds a genie lamp.The genie promises to provide Character A with untold riches in exchange for years of his life... with hilarious results.)
Anyway: scratch government econ work off the list of post-graduation possibilities. Let's consult the board (in no particular order)....
1. Writing (for some magazine/periodical/journal)
X 2. Government Econ Analyst
3. Chimney-Sweep
4. Bard
5. Publishing
6. Grad School of some sort
7. Bowyer
X 8. Economic Consulting
9. Furrier
10. Able Seaman
As you can see, all options involving economics have been eliminated. Way to go, Major!
Methinks I need to improve my list.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Lost in the City
Dear Reader,
My ephemeral Transcendent Summer of Unemployment came to an official end today as I found myself crammed inside the metal exoskeleton of an Orange Line metrocar with a hundred other commuters, dressed in mismatched business casual—the ceremonial garb of lost dreams and acquiescence and, in short, tooldom. I have mixed feelings about the situation. A preliminary analysis of the position reveals that it will be tolerable at best, tedious at worst. But it will hopefully provide enough moe-ney so that next summer I may take an extended sabbatical in someplace wonderful like Europe without having to whore myself out to horny Dutchmen. So that's that.
The metro ride was less painful than usual. A young woman exchanged frequent "I'm not looking at you, really" glances with me, though it was early in the morning and I probably had Crest on my forehead having unconciously missed the mark with my toothbrush (which would account for the attention in the first place).
I shall not weary you with the humdrum details of my day—the introductions, the security orientations, the sexual harassment debriefings (ho ho! you can almost taste the delicious pun!), the paperwork and the like. Instead I would like to focus on a particular incident that has me in a tizzy/flap/dither/clamor. The Human Resources Office of the Forgein Agricultural Service is located 2 blocks away from the FAS offices themselves, on the top floor of a non-government office building (talk about efficiency!). I went there to fill out some paperwork. Upon leaving, I followed the red Exit signs towards what I thought was the exit.
Of course, it wasn't a real exit. The door closed behind me and I found myself in a dimly lit stairwell where a sign on the wall pointed downwards, towards P1. I had found the fire escape. Preventing me from exiting via P1 was a large metal door whose handle was clearly attached to a red trip wire that would, upon opening, cause the entire fucking building to hear the alarm. I realized my mistake. I tried to get back through the door I came from, but it automatically locked from the inside. Why have fire exits where the door does not open both ways? Will people head back into the fire? It makes no sense. No sense.
Anyway, there I was trapped in the fire escape of a 10 story building, with only one way to leave and that way led to a certain hoo-hah. I felt like a lame Indiana Jones. So I ran up and down the stairwell, deciding and then quickly undeciding with each step. Should I trip the alarm? But there were video cameras and HR had just finished taking my fingerprints! Fie! Each door was locked. I was stealing myself for the inevitable conclusion.
But lo! The eigth-floor door had malfunctioned and was not locked properly. I hurried inside, finding myself in a floor of extensive cubicles—the center of some random company. The workers nearest to the door turned to look at me, emerging from the fire escape. I waved, then hustled away in search of an elevator.
My ephemeral Transcendent Summer of Unemployment came to an official end today as I found myself crammed inside the metal exoskeleton of an Orange Line metrocar with a hundred other commuters, dressed in mismatched business casual—the ceremonial garb of lost dreams and acquiescence and, in short, tooldom. I have mixed feelings about the situation. A preliminary analysis of the position reveals that it will be tolerable at best, tedious at worst. But it will hopefully provide enough moe-ney so that next summer I may take an extended sabbatical in someplace wonderful like Europe without having to whore myself out to horny Dutchmen. So that's that.
The metro ride was less painful than usual. A young woman exchanged frequent "I'm not looking at you, really" glances with me, though it was early in the morning and I probably had Crest on my forehead having unconciously missed the mark with my toothbrush (which would account for the attention in the first place).
I shall not weary you with the humdrum details of my day—the introductions, the security orientations, the sexual harassment debriefings (ho ho! you can almost taste the delicious pun!), the paperwork and the like. Instead I would like to focus on a particular incident that has me in a tizzy/flap/dither/clamor. The Human Resources Office of the Forgein Agricultural Service is located 2 blocks away from the FAS offices themselves, on the top floor of a non-government office building (talk about efficiency!). I went there to fill out some paperwork. Upon leaving, I followed the red Exit signs towards what I thought was the exit.
Of course, it wasn't a real exit. The door closed behind me and I found myself in a dimly lit stairwell where a sign on the wall pointed downwards, towards P1. I had found the fire escape. Preventing me from exiting via P1 was a large metal door whose handle was clearly attached to a red trip wire that would, upon opening, cause the entire fucking building to hear the alarm. I realized my mistake. I tried to get back through the door I came from, but it automatically locked from the inside. Why have fire exits where the door does not open both ways? Will people head back into the fire? It makes no sense. No sense.
Anyway, there I was trapped in the fire escape of a 10 story building, with only one way to leave and that way led to a certain hoo-hah. I felt like a lame Indiana Jones. So I ran up and down the stairwell, deciding and then quickly undeciding with each step. Should I trip the alarm? But there were video cameras and HR had just finished taking my fingerprints! Fie! Each door was locked. I was stealing myself for the inevitable conclusion.
But lo! The eigth-floor door had malfunctioned and was not locked properly. I hurried inside, finding myself in a floor of extensive cubicles—the center of some random company. The workers nearest to the door turned to look at me, emerging from the fire escape. I waved, then hustled away in search of an elevator.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Help me, Will! Pale Fire.
Most Noble Reader,
I have just finished rereading Vladamir Nabokov's Pale Fire, the first time that I have reread a book immediately after reading it the first time. It's that good—a perfect combination of entertaining plot, innovative design, intellectual gamesmanship, humor, and general ass-kickage. At the basic level of structure, the book presents a forward, a poem, a commentary on that poem, and an index. You could go through a straightforward, linear reading but I followed the poem and the commentary simultaneously the first time (good idea) before reading the whole poem on its own during the second reading.
Seriously, it's like nothing I've ever read before. Like Joyce or Pynchon, but coherent.
An additional dividend: it was the source of a new road game that proved particularly challenging/entertaining/time-consuming and alleviated some of the tedium of a recent 20-hour round trip car ride. Check it: you pick two words that relate to each other in some way (opposites preferably, but synonyms and sentence constructions work too). Each have to have the same number of letters. The more letters in the word, the harder. Changing one letter at a time to construct a new word, you progress from the first word to the second in the fewest number of moves. And you can't use any kind of writing implement.
Here are some of the ones I constructed...
BLACK to WHITE:
black
clack
clank
clink
chink
think
thine
whine
white
GLASS to CRACK to BROKE:
glass
grass
crass
crams
clams
clans
clank
clack
crack
track
trace
brace
brake
broke
OH SHIT.
I have just finished rereading Vladamir Nabokov's Pale Fire, the first time that I have reread a book immediately after reading it the first time. It's that good—a perfect combination of entertaining plot, innovative design, intellectual gamesmanship, humor, and general ass-kickage. At the basic level of structure, the book presents a forward, a poem, a commentary on that poem, and an index. You could go through a straightforward, linear reading but I followed the poem and the commentary simultaneously the first time (good idea) before reading the whole poem on its own during the second reading.
Seriously, it's like nothing I've ever read before. Like Joyce or Pynchon, but coherent.
An additional dividend: it was the source of a new road game that proved particularly challenging/entertaining/time-consuming and alleviated some of the tedium of a recent 20-hour round trip car ride. Check it: you pick two words that relate to each other in some way (opposites preferably, but synonyms and sentence constructions work too). Each have to have the same number of letters. The more letters in the word, the harder. Changing one letter at a time to construct a new word, you progress from the first word to the second in the fewest number of moves. And you can't use any kind of writing implement.
Here are some of the ones I constructed...
BLACK to WHITE:
black
clack
clank
clink
chink
think
thine
whine
white
GLASS to CRACK to BROKE:
glass
grass
crass
crams
clams
clans
clank
clack
crack
track
trace
brace
brake
broke
OH SHIT.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Sing in me, Muse and through me tell the story...
Dear Reader,
What follows is a chronicle of one man's life: a series of rants, anecdotes, articles, and digressions—mere scraps that over time will perhaps formulate a comprehensive narrative of existence, or at least the bits that I a) feel like writing down and b) remember to write down. Anyway, get ready for a veritable banquet of ego maniacal whining that you—my Devoted Reader—may gormandize like a Yorkshire Terrier that feasts on the excrement of a Golden Retriever.
So, without further ado:
"The Unfiltered Babbling of Genius"
aka
"Confessions of a Temperate Mind"
"El Blog Viscoso"
"Meine Geständnisse"
What follows is a chronicle of one man's life: a series of rants, anecdotes, articles, and digressions—mere scraps that over time will perhaps formulate a comprehensive narrative of existence, or at least the bits that I a) feel like writing down and b) remember to write down. Anyway, get ready for a veritable banquet of ego maniacal whining that you—my Devoted Reader—may gormandize like a Yorkshire Terrier that feasts on the excrement of a Golden Retriever.
So, without further ado:
"The Unfiltered Babbling of Genius"
aka
"Confessions of a Temperate Mind"
"El Blog Viscoso"
"Meine Geständnisse"
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