I've been mentally writing a post about Knocked Up, but for a few reasons (insane busy-ness, unwillingness to analyze the movie to death, still thinking about it in general) I haven't written it yet. I did love it and I think you should all go see it and I'll write my thoughts on it later BUT in the meantime, this is a good interview with Seth Rogen. The AV Club always does good interviews I think - you always feel like you know the actor better afterwards. I think Seth Rogen would be fun to hang with. Him and Paul Rudd (yum, I have to admit).

AVC: Was there any one character that you felt most comfortable writing [for Da Ali G Show], that you connected with most strongly?

SR: Oddly enough, we ended up writing a lot of the Bruno stuff. That just started to be very funny to us. I found myself speaking in this gay Austrian voice for weeks and weeks on end. [Laughs.] It kind of begins to seep into your brain. I would go to sleep thinking of Bruno jokes. Ali G was fun to write for, too, just because he was so stupid. [Laughs.]

AVC: In the movie, the decision on whether to keep the baby is settled pretty quickly. You have that scene where Jonah Hill suggests something "that rhymes with sma-smortion," but the story doesn't linger there long. Was there any discussion of having that decision be a bigger part of the movie? Or is that sort of a non-starter as far as the comedy goes?

SR: We always knew that was not something we wanted to dwell on. It wasn't a movie about a woman deciding whether she should keep her baby; it was about a woman who decided she was going to keep the baby. We shot a lot of versions of the scene with Katherine and her mother, where her mother's talking about it. And there's the scene you mentioned where the guys talk about it. But ultimately, we just used as much or as little of it as we felt we needed to and was entertaining. Politically, I have no relevant opinions. I'm not going to shatter anyone's world by our take on Planned Parenthood. But it just seemed like, you need her to make that decision to get to the other hour and a half of the movie, so let's just try to get there.

AVC: What were your experiences showing The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up in front of a test audience? Do you feel like there's anything constructive to be learned from that process?

SR: Yeah. I have become a giant fan of the testing process, especially with a comedy. I mean, they tell you what's funny. It's almost tailor-made for people who shoot the way we shoot, trying a million different options and versions of things. Because the audience doesn't laugh at a joke, we put in another joke. If they don't laugh at the next joke, we put in another joke. We did about 10 test screenings of Knocked Up, and I would have happily done 10 more if the studio would have given us the money. You just keep doing them and you can get the movie to the point where every joke is funny, if you have enough options in the can. It's always a little nerve-wracking, because you never know how that first audience is going to react. But luckily, our movies have tested pretty well. I think it's outrageously useful, the information we get from those audiences.

AVC: But aren't there times when you just have to just trust your instincts that something is funny, even if not everybody gets it?

SR: Yeah. Take the crowning shots [in Knocked Up], for example. Like, I'd say, probably more people pointed out that they didn't like that in the movie than that they did. But we're there, we see how the theater reacts to it, and you know, they clearly like it. [Laughs.] They might not want to say they do. Even if, in retrospect, they didn't enjoy watching it, it made the movie a little bit better and more interesting, and we know that, so we just kind of have to trust that. Same with the singing and dancing at the end of Virgin, actually. Over half of the test audience didn't like the dancing. They were like, "It's weird, it comes out of nowhere." And we just had to say, "It's fucking funny." "I think it's funny. Do you guys think it's funny?" "I think it's fucking funny, too." "Fuck it, let's just put it in."

I liked the dancing parts.

You can learn so much from TV

So I know I said I was cutting back on TV, and I am - I finally deleted all the unwatched Grey's Anatomy episodes off the Tivo. But I can't help but love Top Chef. It officially started tonight and as usual evoked a mixture of awe and horror. Awe at the variety of talents and creativity that all the chefs exhibit... if only I knew how to make an amuse bouche out of a buffet lunch. If only I knew how to cook alligator or ostrich. Or if I knew that kangaroo was something that you could conceivably cook (aren't kangaroos endangered or something?). And the elimination challenge was disgusting... an array of the ugliest meats I've ever seen. But with horror comes a bit of enlightenment. Did you know what a geoduck is? It's pronounced gooey-duck. And apparently it's not a duck but some kind of clam. And it's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. So ugly I don't want to put the picture on my page, so just go here to see what it looks like.

That aside, I do feel rather inspired to cook now, albeit with normal, non-black-chicken. I'm loving all the summer grilling issues of food magazines. I bought TWO Martha Stewart magazines the other day (Living and Everyday Food). Luckily it's summertime, and it's time for some barbecues!

And also, Anthony Bourdain is awesome. If I had better drinking tolerance, I'd totally go on a bender with him.

American workers, on average, spend 45 hours a week at work, but describe 16 of those hours as “unproductive,” according to a study by Microsoft. America Online and Salary.com, in turn, determined that workers actually work a total of three days a week, wasting the other two. And Steve Pavlina, whose Web site (stevepavlina.com) describes him as a “personal development expert” and who keeps incremental logs of how he spends each working day, urging others to do the same, finds that we actually work only about 1.5 hours a day. “The average full-time worker doesn’t even start doing real work until 11:00 a.m.,” he writes, “and begins to wind down around 3:30 p.m.”

...

“The longer you work, the less efficient you are,” said Bob Kustka, the founder of Fusion Factor, a productivity and time-management consulting firm in Norwell, Mass. He says workers are like athletes in that they are most efficient in concentrated bursts. Elite athletes “play a set of tennis, a down of football or an inning of baseball and have a pause in between,” he says. Working energy, like physical energy, “is best used in spurts where we work hard on a few focused activities and then take a brief respite,” he says.

And those respites look an awful lot like wasting time.

It has taken me years to make tentative peace with my stops and starts during work. Every morning I vow to become a morning person, starting full speed out of the gate. And every morning I daydream, shuffle papers, read e-mail messages and visit blogs, and somehow it is time for lunch. Then, at about 2 p.m., a sense of urgency kicks in, and I write steadily, until about 5 or 6, when I revert to the little-of-this, some-of-that style of the morning.

Amen, sista.

Spanning years and continents.

I keep thinking about this.



EDIT: And this.

Nothing like excessive sarcasm and cursing to get your point across. (No, I'm not kidding.)

Young Mustafat, who maintains a strict diet of inner turmoil and bleached hope, looks forward to watching the ESPN-televised event to better understand what gigantically wasteful, fucking super-retards we all are.

While it may be impossible to understand the mental temerity and physical excellence it takes to master these dazzling sports, we can expect great things in the future from exciting athletes like Don Lerman and Mustafat Osmana. And although oceans and even the most basic human rights may separate these two great peoples, we are ALL bound together by the vibrant spirit of competition and grotesque displays of boundless, unapologetic shitheadery.

I never thought I'd say this about Ryan Reynolds, but I kind of wish I'd written that. via Lindsayism (one of my imaginary internet friends).

Thoughts on Al Gore and tv addiction

I know this is kind of missing the point, but:

According to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of 4 hours and 35 minutes every day—90 minutes more than the world average. When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time the average American has.

It makes me wonder where I fall in relation to that average. (Does TV on DVD count?) And it makes me want to excise useless TV from my life. Becca and I were talking yesterday about how we like Heroes a lot, except we don't miss it when we aren't watching it. Whereas the Office, when it isn't on (like right now, sad), I feel a void in my life. I almost think that's the only show that makes me feel that way when it's not on, except for maybe Friday Night Lights. That's it! One half-hour show. And yet I still theoretically "watch" 24, Heroes, Grey's Anatomy (I'm definitely giving that up), and Ugly Betty, plus there's always the reality TV shows like Top Chef which is coming back in a few weeks. The thing about a TV show you kind of care about but don't deeply care about is that it's not just a 2 hour commitment like a movie - it's 20 hours a year, or a season at least, if it's an hour long show. That's a lot of time when you think about it.

I have been thinking a lot though, recently, about getting rid of things that aren't useful - I've been cutting back on my blog reading, trying to only stick to what I care about or am really interested in - I've noticed a lot more clothes in my closet that I just don't care to own anymore - this TV thing - the candy that's been sitting in my room for months - and so on. It's almost like I can feel the necessariness of all these things just slipping off of me like layers of clothing (like a towel falling off). I'm trying to embrace it and act on it - if I feel the need to toss something or if I suddenly have this gut feeling that I don't need something, I'm acting on it. Even if it's something small like deleting part of my Facebook profile.

Anyway, not to digress too far from my original point. I should learn to split up blog entries! There are a few more good bits in the piece of Gore's book that's posted online:

I vividly remember a turning point in that Senate campaign when my opponent, a fine public servant named Victor Ashe who has since become a close friend, was narrowing the lead I had in the polls. After a detailed review of all the polling information and careful testing of potential TV commercials, the anticipated response from my opponent's campaign and the planned response to the response, my advisers made a recommendation and prediction that surprised me with its specificity: "If you run this ad at this many 'points' [a measure of the size of the advertising buy], and if Ashe responds as we anticipate, and then we purchase this many points to air our response to his response, the net result after three weeks will be an increase of 8.5% in your lead in the polls."

I authorized the plan and was astonished when three weeks later my lead had increased by exactly 8.5%. Though pleased, of course, for my own campaign, I had a sense of foreboding for what this revealed about our democracy. Clearly, at least to some degree, the "consent of the governed" was becoming a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder. To the extent that money and the clever use of electronic mass media could be used to manipulate the outcome of elections, the role of reason began to diminish.

As a college student, I wrote my senior thesis on the impact of television on the balance of power among the three branches of government. In the study, I pointed out the growing importance of visual rhetoric and body language over logic and reason. There are countless examples of this, but perhaps understandably, the first one that comes to mind is from the 2000 campaign, long before the Supreme Court decision and the hanging chads, when the controversy over my sighs in the first debate with George W. Bush created an impression on television that for many viewers outweighed whatever positive benefits I might have otherwise gained in the verbal combat of ideas and substance. A lot of good that senior thesis did me.

I like Gore. I think he'd be kind of fun to hang out with.

And, the hitting home. This strikes me as a very Googley attitude:

Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It's a platform for the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets—through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.

The danger arises because there is, in most markets, a very small number of broadband network operators. These operators have the structural capacity to determine the way in which information is transmitted over the Internet and the speed with which it is delivered. And the present Internet network operators—principally large telephone and cable companies—have an economic incentive to extend their control over the physical infrastructure of the network to leverage control of Internet content. If they went about it in the wrong way, these companies could institute changes that have the effect of limiting the free flow of information over the Internet in a number of troubling ways.

The democratization of knowledge by the print medium brought the Enlightenment. Now, broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it. We the people—as Lincoln put it, "even we here"—are collectively still the key to the survival of America's democracy.

From the Time Magazine excerpt of "The Assault on Reason." Which I would read, if I read serious non-fiction.

Deep thoughts about Facebook Apps...

I have been thinking about what bugs me about the new Facebook applications. I like some of them. I think Extended info isn't a bad idea. I like the Twitter app since I have been twittering to no audience for weeks now and like to get it out there, my mini-blogging and "emitting" as Dan puts it. (I like that I can twitter at work and express those momentary small thoughts that are semi-interesting but not worthy of a blog post or a conversation. It helps me keep my brain from atrophying.) Some of the apps are totally useless, or just opportunities for branding or marketing, like the Red Bull Roshambull and the Fortune Cookie app. I wish there was a goodreads.com app, and I wish there was a shared-in-Google-reader app (I use del.icio.us as mobile bookmarks, but nothing I feel the need to share with anyone, so the del.icio.us app isn't useful to me though I definitely see how it could be for other people). Then there's the "what the fuck" app, Trakzor, which tracks visitors to your facebook site IF they choose to identify themselves, so that's a) nice for privacy and b) totally pointless. So there's a lot across the board.

However, the apps I was initially tempted to use were things like Flixster and iLike and then another one called EF Globalprint. I came very close to adding all of them. And then I realized what it is that bugs me about them. It's too much information. Yeah, I know, I am an oversharer and I have an excessively long facebook profile, especially for someone my age (shouldn't I be over that by now), but this is too much to the point where it actually takes away from potential conversation you may have with people off of the internet. Can't you see it? You are sitting with someone in a coffee shop and you mention that you are going to the Feist concert (woooooo!) and they say "Oh yeah, I saw that on Facebook." Either that, or they don't say it, they just think, "Shit, this person is boring." How often do you talk to people and say "I saw this movie last weekend" and they ask how it was and did you enjoy it and you relate it to the conversation at hand? Not all the time but it happens, especially with movies that make an impact on you or are particularly zeitgeisty ( Knocked Up, for example, or Pirates of the Caribbean, or Borat). But with Flixster, you will already have reviewed that movie online and said everything you thought of it. And I know I have lots of conversations with people about places we've traveled to and where we want to go next and it's one of the best things to talk about with people, and now if you have the EF Globalprint app, you don't need to reveal that information slowly. With all these new apps, you show your whole hand.

I realize that what really makes for human interaction is not what you like, but what you ARE like (that's the big lesson of the High Fidelity book), but a big piece of what brings people together and keeps things interesting is overlapping tastes, interests, and so on - or perhaps more than that, it's the discovery of those overlapping tastes and interests. I know one of the things that stood out to me the most early on with Sean was that he had also had the Spooky the Ghost typing game when he was a kid that I had had. And I love that my friend Santiago has also read the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. And Rachel also listened a lot to Marc Cohn when she was on road trips with her parents. And Jordi and I just discovered last week that we both love Josh Ritter (and solidified our original friendship when we spent 30 minutes in the Stanford Bookstore perusing the Berenstain Bears books). And there are a million things that do NOT overlap and that provides for conversation and debate and connection as well. And so on. (I still haven't met anyone who read The Dwindling Party or Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe or saw The Christmas Toy when they were little.) So I object to putting all those cards on the table. I want Facebook to be a snapshot of me, not the whole photo album. I want it to be the cliffhanger and you have to wait the whole summer to get to the next season. The internet and social networking sites are good insofar as they bring people together OFF the internet. At least, that's the way I see it. ( #432.)

Too Much Information

So, a disturbing trend that has appeared since I started working at the Goog... In my building, at least, we have automatic toilets and sinks, and we also have those crazy Japanese toilet modules with all the functions like front and rear water washing and deodorizing and such. I will say for the record that I have not used those functions but the seats are warmed. And they automatically flush. So now whenever I go to any public restroom (this doesn't happen in my own house, just in other shared, public facilities) I expect my seat to be warmed and my toilet to flush automatically and I have come thisclose about 20 times to just walking out of the stall without flushing. And on the occasions when my preferred stall on my floor is occupied and I have to use a toilet that is set to a normal, freezing-cold bathroom temperature, I get really freaked out.

So yeah, it's not just the food and volleyball courts that spoil me at my workplace, it's also the WC.

I know this is sort of lame and belated and it's not my job to play Time magazine and analyze what is happening to childhood or whatever, but:

Michelle Dale, a second-grade teacher in Brooklyn who works with the youngest of the tweens, said she is “always blown away” by all the things her students know about. “The movies that these little second graders have come in and watched,” she said, “I’m like, ‘Oh, my goodness.’ ”

Second graders are considered tweens? When I was in second grade, I was 6, and then 7. Ignoring the fact that I was young for my year: SEVEN! How exactly is seven years old "tween" anything? I hate everyone.

(From the NYTimes article about little girls reading gossip magazines.)

Making love in the green grass?

Hi, my name is Adam Brody. My life is a walking American Apparel/Nylon Magazine spread.

(All I can think, besides the above, is: wow, that looks scratchy.)

Cadet Azia Kim

I swear I'm not doing this just to up the traffic on my blog, but there's more on Azia Kim:

Kim — the 18-year-old from Fullerton, Calif. who was revealed by The Daily last Thursday to have been squatting in Stanford dorms since September despite not being affiliated with the University — duped ROTC officials into thinking she was an honor-roll Stanford student for eight months. She took classes on Army tactics and history, received military equipment worth more than $1,000 and even earned official military awards for her top grades at Stanford.

Captain Michael Regnier taught Kim, Ally Ha ‘09 and Michael Rice ‘10 a weekly military lab and a weekly class on topics ranging from land navigation training to rifle marksmanship to battle drills. Because of Stanford’s ROTC ban in the 1960s, cadets must commute to other Bay Area schools. Kim excelled in the courses at Santa Clara, particularly wowing her classmates with presentations on Dwight Eisenhower, Robert E. Lee and military values.

If you click through to the article you will also find that the dorm staff in Okada printed out a sign for her door (like all residents in a dorm get). I love how they did that without thinking to themselves, "Hmm, maybe we should check with ResEd to see why we never were notified that this person was going to be moving in?" I'm stating for the record that my dorm staff would not have done that.

And read the comments on the Daily article. They're pretty hilarious. I particularly like this one:

I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
IM IN UR SKOOL, IMPOSTERING UR SOLDGERS!

(Don't get it? See here and here.)

and this one:

I'm still waiting for a Tom Feliz article.

(That one may only be amusing to people who have attended Stanford within, like, the last 8 years.)

Seriously though. I have to say that I do agree that there's something seriously wrong with the family and/or the society that leads someone to do something like this. But I also don't think that just growing up in a culture that puts high pressure on success and achievement, even if it is extreme pressure, leads someone to do this. I feel like something else must be wrong.

That said, I also think the fact that she is Asian and the general stereotype of Asian-Americans is that they are crazy studiers and have crazy school-success-obsessed families is not helping the evaluation of this story in the media or the public. It's just too easy for people to let their natural prejudices inflate their natural shock/awe at this story. I don't know what to do about that, but I do think it's out there. (Sophomore year cultural psych rears its ugly head.)

Finally, I think this has raised a lot of negative comments about Stanford this year. As a Stanford grad and a former RA and a member of "When I was your age, Stanford was fun" group on Facebook, I do have some things to say about all of this in regards to Stanford and their polices and practices. But I also don't want to get stuck in a huge argument/debate about all of it. I loved Stanford and I had and have issues with it as well. I think that most college students would say that about their alma mater (unless of course they genuinely did hate it). It really bugs me when people let their criticism get out of hand or let one incident drive their entire opinion about their school or let one incident justify their own particular grudges. Call it like it is. That's all I have to say for now.

(Update: Sorry, forgot to include link. It's there now.)

This is really awesome. It's a map of what an LA subway should/would look like if the map looked like the London Tube map. I'd be way out on the yellow line somewhere between the Colima and Beach Blvd. stops. In Zone "I say I'm from LA but when I say that to people who are from LA proper they get a funny look on their face."

Via Notcot.org

More Azia Kim

From my friend:

speaking of which, this girl is my personal hero.
she's awesome. someone give her a medal.

and really, so easy to do. no one checks anything at
stanford. and remember freshman year -i lost my key
in like november or something. so i just climbed
thruogh the window every day.

Yeah. Kind of true.

Creation Museum

My dad sent me this hilarious and terrifying article about the new Creation Museum opening up in Kentucky. It's worth reading the whole thing but here's a taste:

Located in Petersburg, Kentucky, near Cincinnati, the museum has an elaborate walk-through exhibit of Noah’s ark. As you enter the giant exhibit you encounter 12 animatronic figures building the vessel. You can then meander around two floors of animal pairs, walking both inside and outside the ark. There is also a display of the design plan of the ark to lend scale, demonstrating to visitors that this massive diorama represents only 1 percent of the total ark space. The walls are covered with mural paintings that show how Noah’s family took care of the animals, including engineering speculations about food and waste management. And crucial to the logic of the entire ark display is the exhibit showing how two of every “kind” of animal was brought on board, not two of every “species.”

If Noah had to get every species on board, then Ham and the other Creationists would be in deep trouble. The Amazon rain forest alone, according to some researchers, may contain as many as 20 million species of arthropods, which are themselves only a piece of the rain forest biosphere. The popular college textbook Biology (Campbell, Reece and Mitchell) sums up the numbers by saying that, “To date, scientists have described and formally named about 1.5 million species of organisms. We can only estimate how many more currently exist. Some biologists believe that the number is about 10 million, but others estimate it to be between 30 million and 80 million.” Even if we take the most conservative numbers of species and then add the staggering numbers of now extinct species (like the dinosaurs), we have an insane amount of animals to fit on a boat that’s less than two football fields long.

But the Creation Museum argues that Noah never had to take two of every species, but only two of every “kind,” and that cuts the numbers enough to reasonably pack the boat. What is a “kind”? Creationists are invoking the next level up on the ladder of taxonomy, the genus. To skeptics who think there were too many species of dinosaur to fit on the ark, for example, Ken Ham responds: “there were not very many different kinds of dinosaurs. There are certainly hundreds of dinosaur names, but many of these were given to just a bit of bone or skeletons of the same dinosaur found in other countries. It is also reasonable to assume that different sizes, varieties, and sexes of the same dinosaur have ended up with different names. For example, look at the many different varieties and sizes of dogs, but they are all the same kind — the dog kind! In reality, there may have been fewer than 50 kinds of dinosaurs.” In reality, scientists estimate that there were over 2,000 genera of dinosaurs.

My favorite thing about the article is that the guy in charge of the museum or the tour or what have you is named HAM. Like, as in, the son of Noah. Sometimes these things are just too tidy.

Oh, and, just in case you don't feel like reading the whole thing:

The socially conservative political stance of the museum is prevalent in almost every exhibit, but the coup de grace is the “Culture in Crisis” exhibit. Here the museum gives us a “natural history” of the breakdown of the American family. Visitors are invited to look through three windows of a contemporary American home. Videos loop to show two young boys looking at porn on the computer and experimenting with drugs. Another window shows a young girl crying, surrounded by abortion pamphlets. And finally the parents are shown arguing. A recreated church facade stands at the other end of the room, but the foundation of the church has been damaged by a large wrecking-ball labeled “millions of years.” The signage explains that the cause of all this misery is our move away from Genesis and toward the scientific ideas of geology and evolution. Ideas about an old earth make people feel small and insignificant, so naturally they do drugs and have abortions.

Hot Trends

So there is this new Google thing called Hot Trends that documents the top spikes in searches every day. So not the most popular, but just the most rapidly popular. Kind of tracks where the cultural moment is. I played with it on Tuesday and there were tons of results for things like "andy and tessa" and "tessa horst" and "the bachelor after the final rose" because, in case you are not aware, the Bachelor's finale was Monday night. (Yes, I sort of started half-watching the Bachelor because my roommate works at the same place as the girl who got second place and who got totally screwed over because Andy Baldwin the "officer and a gentleman" told her that the connection they had was electric and then dumped her the next day for the other chick. And so I half watch at home and then Monday night I was at a friend's house channel surfing and what do you think was on? So I watched.)

This is kind of awesome.

Hot Trends hasn't gotten the best reviews and such (if you google "hot trends" the first link is to an article saying it's "not so hot" - don't you love the ridiculous titles people come up with for news?), but I love how temporary and shallow and stupid it is. How it shows this insane weird web community of people all searching the same things. Everywhere, and on the same day. And to top that off it also shows a great little compilation of news and blog posts and web articles all at the same time, which I find very helpful. Like, today for a while the highest search was, of all things, ancestry.com because they apparently released 90 million war records since 1607 and so you can get all this new data. Of all things! Now, of course, that has been replaced by Azia Kim, the imposter girl at Stanford that I wrote about earlier.

The best thing about it is that it shows that the day that the Office season finale was on, a crapload of people were searching for "Creed thoughts."

Just a little later we have another demographic, the "I like music that plays on Grey's Anatomy" peeps.

Oh, the Internets.

This is crazy!!

Azia Kim was like any other Stanford freshman. She graduated from one of California’s most competitive high schools last June, moved into the dorms during New Student Orientation, talked about upcoming tests and spent her free time with friends.

The only problem is that Azia Kim was never a Stanford student.

Kim, an 18-year-old from Orange County who graduated from Fullerton’s Troy High School, lived in Kimball throughout fall and winter quarter. She lived in Okada, the Asian-American theme dorm, until Monday night, when University staff finally caught onto her ruse.

To avoid suspicion while in Okada, Kim pretended to be a sophomore majoring in human biology, going as far as to buy textbooks and study with friends for tests she would never take. Residents of the 94-person dorm were none the wiser.

“She really knew her stuff, and really knew the schedule,” Zhou said. “For HumBio, she would say, ‘I have a midterm Monday in this room,’ and I knew that was true because my friends are HumBio [students].”

I really don't get how someone can a) do this or b) want to do it. But seriously - I don't really know what to say. How does this happen? What does it mean?

The Office.

I might die.

It's just... I can't express. I really, really cannot express how I feel right now about that finale. It was honestly, just, too perfect. I spent the last three minutes of the show STARING at my computer (oh btw, I watched half of it last night when I got home from pub night, and then I bought it on iTunes because I had to see it and there was no other way to see it before Sunday, and I watched the last 20 minutes at work. Don't tell anyone).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I feel the way you feel before a first date.

I am doomed. I just added the RSS feed of recent updates/reviews from my friends on goodreads.com to my Google Reader. Which is already excessive. And the fact that Casey manages to review like 438492 books a day, with COMMENTS, and GOOD MEMORIES of them, does not help this situation. Not to mention every time I sign in there I feel panicked about all the great books I will never have time to read. How do you do it, Case?

I will say, for the record though, that Mom is a good reads stud. She writes good comments. I feel very related to her on there. (I mean, obviously I am, but sometimes it's magnified a bit more.) The fact that it's her and me and Casey on there going nutso for online book reviews-in-brief makes so much sense it kills me.

Also, I bought five more books yesterday with a gift certificate I had left from my birthday last fall. I don't know why I felt compelled to use it all now. I have like 80 books to read as it is. The scary thing is, most of those are sitting in my room right now. I don't have enough space for anything and I'm starting to develop stacks. Ack! English major nerd!

Facebook is evil. And awesome. And evil.

I have been using it a lot more lately, for some reason. It's part of my general effusiveness of the moment. Oversharing. That is the whole point of Facebook and boy am I taking advantage of that.

Yesterday I purged my groups section. I deleted around 20 groups (you can't see it on my minifeed, because I have that set to private. Yes!). I decided it was no longer time to be in a group if it wasn't one I created or one that was really important or something related to my friends or current state of being. Hence, I deleted my membership from "Carmex Lovers Anonymous." Turns out the two girls who invited me to that group a year ago and were its only other members had also cleared themselves out so when I deleted myself I also deleted the group and removed one, just one, useless page from Facebook's annals. I took myself out of "Fans of Seinfeld." Because isn't that what the "TV" category on Facebook is for? For that matter I took myself out of "TV Lovers" or was it "I love my TiVo"? I can't tell. Whichever one, I'm out of there. Then I took myself out of groups like "Gay Marriage Killed the Dinosaurs" (it's sarcasm, isn't that hilarious!?) because I was already in "Pro Gay Marriage." I took myself out of "Students who feel sorry for students who think Stanford sucks" because, well, I am in "When I was your age, Stanford was cool" and I espouse that philosophy a whole lot more now than the former. I took myself out of "Students against students joining band" because I was one of only two members anyway and it's a losing battle and I'm not a student anymore. You get the picture. I did some editing. I left in "Joey Potter is a whore!" because we're geniuses. I left in a lot. I only managed to weed my groups list down to 48 or so. ADULTHOOD TRIUMPHS.

Sure.

So today I was browsing and on someone's site I found myself pondering the entry "Looking for." See there is "Interested in" (Men), then there is "Relationship status" (I leave this blank. Otherwise people stalk you), and then there is "Looking for." Well I never bothered to have that, thinking it's just a companion to "Relationship status" and what's the point, but then I thought, I can fill this out without having my status. I sat there and pondered. I looked at my profile. I considered what I would put there ("Friendship. Dating. Random play"). I moused over the "Edit" button.

And then I realized, what the hell am I doing?

I believe our generation is one that doesn't believe things are official unless they are documented in detail somewhere online. So, a relationship is official, or officially over, when it is on Facebook. I am not "looking for" anything unless that little box is filled out. If I don't manage to complete all my book reviews on goodreads.com, well, have I really read those books? Just askin'.

So I resisted. I closed Facebook. I angrily messaged Cristina and Becca and told them how much I hate Facebook for feeding in me this desire to document and list everything to make it "real," despite Facebook existing in a virtual environment. I thought seriously for a few minutes about the implications of this, you know, what it means to be part of our generation (an interest, I might add, that I had until recently listed on Facebook), the obsession with lists, that plan I had to write a non-fiction piece that was a) entirely composed of lists or b) a take-off on a Facebook profile or c) (tangent) a take-off on a blog entry. (Kill me now. And don't steal my damn ideas.)

Then I was talking to Renata and she mentioned someone who I wanted to look up online and so I did. And I was looking at the listed groups and I looked at them. And this one was hilarious! And I joined it!

So. Like I said. Facebook. We hate and we love it. God damn us, Generation I/ME/YOU.

(On another side note. Anyone notice how all these books/movies are coming out with long titles and lots of pronouns? Like I Love You More than You Know, Me and You and Everyone We Know, No One Belongs Here More Than You, You Don't Love Me Yet. WHY! Is it part of what it means to be our generation!? A trend? It's got 4 examples so according to the Times/Gawker it is a trend. Or since two of them are Miranda July, does it not count?)

Summer Manifesto

For a long time I have been wanting to write a spring manifesto. I bombed all my New Year's Resolutions and spring is a time of renewal and this spring especially for me is a time of renewal and recharging and rearranging my life. But spring foiled my manifesto with fever and gorgeous weather and good friends, and now it's the middle of May (no matter what the weather in Mountain View thinks right now). Almost June. Therefore, almost summer.

Here, then, is my summer manifesto:

This is the summer I will go outside every weekend in the sun. I will go camping at least once. I will go to the beach. I will kayak at least once. I will go swimming.

I will eat in season - tomatoes, berries. I'll go berry picking. I will do my best to eat naturally. Avoid Splenda overdoses.

I will remember how good it feels to run in golden afternoons. I will buy a bike, and use it.

I will barbecue, have picnics, make cucumber salads and tomato tarts. I will make sangria. I'd like to make sun tea.

I will wake up early on weekends and enjoy the whole day.

I will meet people and catch up with people and value the time I spend with people.

I will take my time. I will write more. I will sit still sometimes, paying attention. I will divorce myself from mediocrity, boredom and superficiality.

I will have at least one party in the hot weather when the nighttime breeze is your only air conditioning and you feel purified by sweat. A party that goes long into the night and is like a beacon of light in the dark summer evening.

I will go to Costa Rica and to Chicago.

I will take time out for solitude, for reading, for cooking, drinking iced tea and iced coffee alone.

I will force the rest of you to join me!!!

I finally have my new computer. It's freaking tiny. But functional. And light. And it has Vista.

I'm still buying a Mac next time.

What I've been up to...

I've been busy! What follows is a brief photo essay of my last few weeks:

Zeitgeist!








Berkeley for Brunch, Playgrounds, and Wiffle Ball with Kevin









Wine with Amelia, Renee, and Laurel for Amelia's birthday







San Francisco with the Google admins to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge









Dolores Park for barbecuing on Saturday



I love spring.

P.S.

The Office season finale is next week. This week, I guess. I might die.

Watch this NBC "preview" to catch up and prepare. Oh Jim, do the right thing! I don't even want to start making predictions, but I have a feeling it just might blow my mind.

After planning for weeks, I finally made sweet basil bacon for breakfast today, and had it with some scrambled eggs (with tomato and basil) and toast. Yummm. I didn't quite make it right (too much sugar) but I made enough that I can use the leftovers for BLTs tonight. In my family we make BLTs with peanut butter (peanut butter, mayo, bacon, tomato, lettuce) and they are absolutely delicious. I think I'm going to make another variety, with basil and spinach instead of lettuce (I don't have lettuce). I am already kind of dreaming about dinner.

Now I need to force myself to write a non-fiction piece for class instead of sitting around and reading blogs and not cleaning up my breakfast mess.

Also, last night I got further on Mario 3 than I've ever gotten. I mean, not single-handedly, I had help. But I'm still rather proud, despite restarting multiple times starting in World 3 and warping to World 8 and restarting many, many, many times there. Maybe I will finally win!

For the record:

I did like John Mayer before he was cool.

(Or uncool. Or both. But the point is that it was before the bad haircut, the good haircut, the blog, the bluesy jams, Perez Hilton hating/loving him, him loving/hating Perez, all the bad girlfriends, the John Mayer Dundee Award, the Time 100 Most Influential, and anyone in the blogosphere admitting that he's kind of funny.)

For some reason I felt the need to state that. Also for about 4 months my jam was "I'm Gonna Find Another You." I especially like the line "Now I'm gonna dress myself for two - once for me and once for someone new." This isn't really so much a reflection of current things going on in my life as an appreciation for the phrase "dress myself for two."



Ugh. I'm a geek. Consider this my PopWatch Confessional.

It's official. Memorial Day weekend I am going here.

Led by the ever intrepid Dan, I'll be hiking in 11 miles and camping and then hiking out 11 miles.

I can't wait for sore muscles, sleeping bags, nature, fresh air, quiet, sunrises, and dinners of vacuum packed tuna.

Let's all take a moment to recognize the fact that it's already May 7.

2007.

Yikes.

Absolutely hilarious Onion article.

CBS To Release Own Version Of NBC's The Office

The producers made several other changes to the show in order to promote a greater crossover appeal. The faux-documentary format has been dropped in favor of a traditional three-camera setup, and a laugh track has been added to fill in any painful, awkward pauses in dialogue that might slow down the show.

Dan alerted me yesterday to let me know that Cafe Amelie, this tiny little courtyard cafe restaurant we went to in New Orleans on our road trip, is still open. Despite the fact that less than three months after we ate there, Hurricane Katrina hit. And despite the fact that when we did eat there, only about 2 other couples were eating in the restaurant and it employed 2 people, which includes the owner, who was a transplanted New Yorker who I suspected, but hoped, would never have weathered the troubles in NOLA post-Katrina. Turns out he did! There isn't really any information about the restaurant on the web, but it's in this courtyard and on a certain level I am thinking to myself... damn, that would be a good place to get married! Not that I am getting hitched ANYTIME soon, but if I was...

Anyway I love the idea that the owner of this restaurant stuck it out and stayed. It was such a beautiful, tranquil, not to mention delicious place. I really want to go back.

I really admire the determination that this girl has... She is reading all 160 or so Babysitters' Club books over again. (Or some for the first time I imagine.) On one hand I'm like... you've been doing this since 2005! You have read nothing else for two and a half years! On the other hand, I'm like... you are AWESOME and I want to be friends with you. The excerpts she pulls out describing the "cool" outfits that Stacy and Claudia wear are pretty much to die for:

• Stacey dresses up to pick Laine up at the airport train station [Oops. Thanks for the correction...I think I've been in the Midwest too long]: "a purple shirtwaist top over flowered leggings, my cowboy boots...a purple hair ornament made from shoelaces, and long dangly silver earrings." [Sounds like the outfit on the cover of Mary Anne's Makeover. Wild!]


• But Laine out-fashions her: "She was hard to miss, considering she was wearing a jean coat with a fur collar (I sincerely hoped the fur was fake), black capri pants edged with lace, very chic black ankle boots, and on her head, a brilliant red oversized beret." [There are a lot of outfits in this book! Fuckin' sweet!]

One of the most tragic days of recent memory was when I went to the library to reread some old BSC books and found that they were gone. I'm sure Patty, the children's librarian at the Whittwood Branch Library, couldn't wait until that series was finished and she could sneak them out into the dumpster, but I really, really wanted to re-read book #4 where Mary Anne ends up babysitting the girl who gets a crazy fever, and she has to be independent and grow into herself.

(Side note: I feel about Mary Anne cutting her hair in later books the way the rest of America felt about Felicity. It just wasn't the same anymore for me once she had that awful bowl cut look.)

(Second side note: I actually REMEMBERED accurately without checking Amazon that my favorite book was #4. I shit you not.)

The Baby-sitters Club was truly awful. Each book started with a full on chapter describing each character in massive detail in the worst tell-not-show way. But it has such a firm place in every woman's memory if they are under the age of like 28. (See also: The Baby-sitters' Little Sister, Sweet Valley Twins - NOT High, that was for sluts - and Sweet Valley Kids.) When I was in the Columbia Publishing Course we met Ann M. Martin's editor and as soon as we found out she was responsible for the series, we pounced on her and all told her who was our favorite and how we remembered X and Y about the books. My clearest memory is when Janine, Claudia's bossy smart older sister, comes up to their room and critiques their spelling/punctuation of Baby-sitters. She debates whether or not they need an apostrophe at the end of "Baby-sitters." At another point she criticizes someone for saying "Hopefully" instead of "It is to be hoped." These are, swear to God, my clearest memories of the books apart from Book #4 and vague memories of a haunted house involving Dawn (the hippie blonde California vegetarian girl) and the one where Mary Anne gets a boyfriend (Logan, he was a hottie).

I think I've got a problem. I really, really want to re-read or at least buy some of these books. For posterity, you know?

Holy shit.

I love this part:

Before we discuss the findings, though, we need to clear up a little matter. It’s come to my attention that some people believe martinis are made with vodka. I hate to get snobbish about it, but a martini should be made with gin or it’s not a martini. Call it a vodkatini if you must, but not a martini. Gin and vodka have as much in common hierarchically as a president and a vice president. Vodka can fill in for gin from time to time and might even be given certain ceremonial duties of its own, but at important moments you need the real thing. Vodka generally makes a poor substitute for gin in a martini or any other gin cocktail.

The panel found common ground here. Each of us is partial to the classic martini made with gin, although Audrey was sensitive to the desires of her clientele.

“You have to revisit which generation is drinking the martini,” she said. “We might be classicists, but is the newer generation?”

Still, after perhaps 8 or 10 martinis, Audrey fessed up, referring at one point to “a generation lobotomized by vodka.”

That's my generation!

(Thanks to Pablo, who introduced me, not to the martini but to the gin & tonic.)

Apollonius!!

This is excellent. My daemon is a fox. Named Apollonius.

Take the test!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10

Okay! I am officially obsessed with Feist. (I feel like I'm getting my music nerdiness back. It feels good.)

This is no mp3 blog so I will just direct you for musak itself to the Hype Machine. Or better yet, why not treat yourself to a few videos?



The above song is appropriately titled 1 2 3 4, and it's what first got me into her, just because I had the song stuck in my head for days. But I just now discovered this one:



Which I love. It's such a sweet song (check out the lyrics).

Enjoy!

It's ok, Hugh. I still love you.

(I think that sheepish, Edward-Farrars look in the old mug shot is HILARIOUS!)

More fantasy movies...

How excited are YOU for the newest Harry Potter? I hated book 5 so much for its rambling and loose ends and disintegration of plot, but I'm hoping the movie will condense it enough to make it good. It certainly looks good. Is it wrong that Harry and Cho kissing looks kind of hot?

Man with a gun

More gossip about The Golden Compass movie. I really don't want this to be overhyped. I also don't want it to be ruined. I am really devastated that Tom Stoppard isn't writing it anymore... his play adaptation was so good.

The daemon is an idea borrowed from Socrates, who believed he had a divine presence within himself. He called it a "daimon" and it would warn him if he was about to do something bad.

For Pullman, the daemon was also a great literary device. As he told the Oxford audience: "The moment I thought of daemons was on the 16th draft of the first chapter. Before that I had to tell the reader what Lyra was thinking. I realised then I didn't have to explain so much. You don't need exposition. Exposition kills the flow of the narrative.

"The best advice ever given to a writer was by Raymond Chandler, who said, 'When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun.' This works. If you're stuck with the story, it moves it on like nothing else."

Lyra's daemon, Pantalaimon, "was my man coming through the door with a gun. It was a wonderful moment when I realised that."

...And Pullman is working on a new Lyra book, The Book of Dust, which will be published in a couple of years or whenever he gets a long spell away from the autograph table.

By the way, his own daemon, Pullman said, is a raven.

What do you think your daemon is?

What I did this weekend...

I had a GREAT weekend. I won't bore you with the details of how much I drank and where, and with whom (there are a lot of details!), but there were a few awesome places I visited that are actually worth sharing. I am so kicking myself for not having a camera. I'm going to have to go back to all of them, just to properly document. Consider this a mini-tour of San Francisco.

Friday night, 7:30pm:
21st Amendment, for a pint of 21A IPA

Saturday morning, 11:30am:
Limn
For all those chrome piggy banks, fuzzy-like-hair carpets, and $6,500 ottomans that you reallly, really need. Plus, outdoor rooftop gardens and art gallery with paintings made of staples.

Saturday, 1:30pm
South Park
A leetle slice of a London park square in the middle of SOMA

Saturday, 2:15pm
21st Amendment, again, for a pint of watermelon wheat on the patio

Saturday, 3pm
826 Valencia
Why else? For pirate supplies and back issues of the Believer, and Karl, the blowfish (#2) in his own viewing room

(photo from unsure shot)

I love the curvy curiosity cabinets/drawers at 826 - I wish I could put these in my house and store things like paperclips and dishtowels.


(photo from mary jane watson on flickr)

Saturday, 3:30pm
Paxton Gate
The COOLEST random discovery. It's like a crazy taxidermist/gardener/curiosity shoppe, with string of pearls plants, butterflies under glass, fox penis bones (not kidding), loose leaf teas, deer heads, taxidermy mouse art, and so on. I really am obsessed with it. It's literally next door to 826 Valencia and the two of them together make up this great collection of curiosities and weirdnesses. I loved it.

(photo from The Mitzikin Revolution)

(photo from diavolerie)

(photo from pixability)

Saturday, 4pm
some thrift store on Valencia
for a truly awesome dress that reminds me of something Mare Winningham would wear in St. Elmo's fire. It's 80s-tastic. It is an 80s virgin dress. I will post pics.

Saturday, 4:30pm
The Apartment
I wanted to go there because I read on a blog that it was The Place to go for mid-century furniture. Can I afford, and do I need, furniture? No. But I needed to go. We stayed for about 3 minutes.

brief detour to Japantown, then, 5:30pm
Suppenkuche!
For beer! In boots!

(this pic is from when we went to Suppenkuche in March)

brief detour to Niketown (what's with all the towns?) and the Levi Store where Dan and I both purchased ridiculous pairs of jeans, then, 9pm
Tunnel Top
For a dirty martini for me, and caipirinhas and mojitos for the boyz, plus a sort of karmic payback for the time I was supposed to go there and didn't

10pm
Laurel's apartment, for, among other things, forties, a cop mustache, excessive conversation, Colbert ice cream and debate over the best mix cds of all time (playlist to come, or TK as they say in publishing, which means To Come which is silly because everyone knows publishers can spell)

Sunday, 11:30am
Home
for make-your-own bloody marys, proving the point that you (if you were a restaurant) don't need much to become awesome and packed during brunch time

Sunday, 3pm
The DeYoung
Self explanatory. I especially like the apples in the sculpture garden.


(foe-toe from Pengrin)

Sunday, 9pm
TORONADO!
For - Warriors fans, excellent beer, and a lame jukebox. And companionship. Obvi.

(photo from gadgetgeek)

A truly hilarious list from McSweeney's. Really makes me want the Mountain Man Dance Moves book.

Aiee! This is the best thing ever.

Originally uploaded by k7lim.

Apparently my friend Kevin is a god damn genius. Last Halloween he went as a yip yip! You know, these yip yips. He is the pink one. HOW FREAKING AWESOME IS THIS COSTUME!?! I think it's the best Halloween costume I've ever seen.

And as if that wasn't enough...

This is awesome!! Free museums in May with a BofA card.

Those damn abortion doctors

Reason I hate George W. Bush, or at least his politics, number 4389240382490320:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking in the courtroom for the dissenters, called the ruling "an alarming decision" that refuses "to take seriously" the Court's 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirming most of Roe v. Wade and its 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking down a state partial-birth abortion law.

Ginsburg, in a lengthy statement, said "the Court's opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman's health." She said the federal ban "and the Court's defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives. A decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power."

In the course of her dissenting opinion, Ginsburg accused the majority of offering "flimsy and transparent justifications" for upholding the ban. She also denounced the Kennedy opinion for its use of "abortion doctor" to describe specialists who perform gynecological services, "unborn child" and "baby" to describe a fetus, and "preferences" based on "mere convenience" to describe the medical judgments of trained doctors. She also commented: "Ultimately, the Court admits that 'moral concerns' are at work, concerns that could yield prohibitions on any abortion."

I read this summary of the situation on Salon and it's very good and scary. The Ginsberg quotes are from here. Via Feministing.

So, when I was a kid I was kind of afraid to eat strawberries because of the seeds.

Now, it occurs to me that the weirdest part about them isn't the seeds, but the little strawberry hairs on the outside of them:

Totally weird, right?

Oh well, they are still delicious.

I wish I had an excuse to buy these.


All of them.

Will Ferrell and buds started a website called funnyordie.com and this is their sort of premiere video: The Landlord.

I am jumping on an internet bandwagon by posting it, but Pearl, who plays Will Ferrel's landlord, is hilarious AND adorable. Just watch.

In related news, not only did "Blades of Glory" not suck, but it was actually pretty funny (despite under-usage of Will Arnett).

UPDATE: Entertainment Weekly talks about Pearl, who I really am entirely obsessed with.

This is the pub where Sean and I went for New Year's Eve dinner (delicious, and great beer, but they had a bit of an issue with credit card payments and made us miss the fireworks above the London Eye).

Anyway, apparently since then they have more of an issue with "40 thugs carrying knives, baseball bats, wooden clubs embedded with nails and hockey sticks."

Classy.

Check out pictures from The Golden Compass movie!!

I think Lyra looks pretty good. Sort of half-feral. I wonder how they will do the daemons.

It's funny. I read this book right when it came out in paperback (recommended by the lovely Casey) and liked it well enough. It wasn't the best book ever but it was good. But ever since then I've had this urge to reread it, that's sort of itching all the time. Unfortunately I loaned it to someone so I don't have my copy anymore, and besides, I don't really have time to reread anything because I'm too busy reading things the first time. But maybe I will, in time for the movie. I like Rachel McAdams for some reason, despite The Notebook. Maybe it's the pink hair.

P.S. On a related note, this is one of those books that gets lauded in fiction (and, I know now, non fiction) writing classes. Why? I mean, why in particular? I have no idea.

I had this link sitting in my Mozilla tabs for days (I have a tab problem). I was about to delete it and then I thought, no, I'm going to read it after all. Boy do I not regret that! This is full of such juicy retardedness about our favorite idiotic "celebrity" couple... yes, Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag. I haven't even really been watching the Hills for a while (i missed the end of the season), but I don't really care. I may even become a conscientious objector to bullshit reality tv and the celebrities that spring from it, but really, for now, this is too hilarious. Some special moments with Heidi and Spencer, excerpted:

Spencer: My new plan to keep everything secret like a ninja. Too many ideas are taken from me. I wouldn’t even know where to start with that one. My hustle is just too crazy. I’m trying to take over the world.

...

MTV Reality World: What’s in the future for you guys?

Heidi: I’m never letting this one go!

Spencer: The bottom line about me wanting to move in with her is that I haven’t left this girl’s side since I met her. I’m obsessed with her. Everyone says* I can’t get into the clubs anymore, but the truth is I don’t go to clubs anymore because I like to cuddle up in bed with my girlfriend with some DVDs.

Heidi: I wouldn’t want to go to clubs anymore. I have so much more fun watching DVDs with Spencer and cuddling.

MTV Reality World: I understand you have some blogs coming out. What can we look forward to seeing there?

Spencer: Well, I want to start to have our side of the story come out. I want to get a blog so people can know what’s going on with Spencer on the daily. Lauren narrates The Hills. Spencer is going to narrate his blog. Imagine if Spencer narrated The Hills… It’s how you skew it. If I’m the narrator, wait to see how much people love Spencer.

*by everyone, clearly he means my friend Rachel...

And, scene. Cannot wait for Spencer's blog.

More and more I think to myself that Paul Rudd and I should be friends.



From BestWeekEver

Things They Should Invent

Ok, so perhaps not all of this website is genius, but parts of it are, namely:

GCat
Ice-9 (sad, good tribute)
Jordan Catalano Flavored Gum

Perhaps even more than that, the tags on the site alone read like some weird post-modern poetry:

this is all about

• 13 pumpkin avenue (1)
• 420 (2)
• axis of teavil (1)
• babies (1)
• backup plans (1)
• bad apples (1)
• bad cats (1)
• beauty (1)
• being yourself (1)
• birthday cake (1)
• black to the future (1)
• blogpsot (1)
• boom for breakfast (1)
• boxing (1)
• breakfast or brunch (1)
• bus map (1)
• butts (1)

Don't you agree?

All here, thanks to someone I don't remember.

A few awesome animal videos for your enjoyment. This first one is a classic claymation by the guys who did Wallace and Gromit and I used to love it! I love the koala's glasses and the lion (who wouldn't?).



Then there's this one, which I sort of object to on principle since it's a video of someone's hamster and I think people are weird who are obsessed with their hamsters (see: at least 50% of cuteoverload.com's audience). Even weirder are people who make videos of their hamsters. But gosh darn it this hamster is cute! And even cuter are its feet when it waves them around. It's truly worth watching.



And, finally... If you thought otters were cute before...



Thanks for the last video to Ravi, and for the hamster video to one of the Google chatlists.

You say a lecture isn't romantic? I say but of course it is

Ha! Got this one thanks to Pablo, my most intellectual of friends, or at least, my friend with the most incomprehensible academic vocabulary.

"Let's face it, there really is nothing more sensual than caressing someone's mind," said Paul Holdengräber, who launched the library's live lecture series that is now a staple of New York's "intellidating" scene.

Amen. (Hey, another trend piece!)

Kurt is up in heaven now.

I am really going to miss him.

I haven't read anything he's written since Timequake, but the fact that he's not out there anymore, this great, little figure with a sharp wit and a kind heart, makes me really sad.

Luckily he himself came up with ample ways to mourn his death, or at least quotes to employ. Besides "So it goes," there's "unstuck in time," and there's my personal favorite:

I spoke at a Humanist Association memorial service for Dr. Asimov a few years back. I said, “Isaac is up in Heaven now.” That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. . . . When I myself am dead, God forbid, I hope some wag will say about me, “He’s up in Heaven now.”

And then there's the thing I think a little bit about what he must have been thinking recently, not just about himself but sort of about everything:

Here was what Kilgore Trout cried out to me in my father's voice: "Make me young, make me young, make me young!"

I could go on, but I can't... There are so many things he has written that I would like to repeat here because they are so good (in the moral sense as well as the quality sense), but I think it's better, more fitting, to leave that to him.

Gah. I wish I could say something better. I'll leave you with some quotes.

No, wait:

"Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. Why don't you take a flying fuck at the moooooooooon!"

(It's not all sadly sentimental.)