Music in Minneapolis

My favorite friend Chris Koza and his band and some other people are playing a show at the Varsity on February 1st. Proceeds help refugees in Darfur. Go be beneficial!

google

There is a site meter on this website. It tells me (and you, if you care) how many people look at the website and where they live.

Bonjour, French people! Helloooo, somebody at the House of Representatives!

And it also tells us if somebody did a google search for something and then arrived at this website as a result of that. And it tells us what the google search was for.

Here are examples of google searches that people did, with the result that they ended up here:

-drinking beer back hurts
-interpreter for ASL
-marker fumes
-cecily whitworth
-video show of teaching how to do mutter paneer
-especiallymessily
-Tourists comments on Akagera
-half gallon growler, Montana
-picture of a thirty-ought-six rifle
-joke handshake
-britney dance concepts toledo
-pictures of authentic cowboy costumes

And last, but certainly far from least:

-PEPFAR, Britney

The awesomest part about that is that my name isn't even the top result! There are pages and pages of websites that (apparently) discuss PEPFAR and Britney!

America is a great nation.

UPDATE: A new google search! "morpheme martini"! This one is probably going to be the inspiration for a cocktail party of some sort. Some heavily linguistic sort.

I told you water is dangerous!

This lady died from drinking water! Remember last summer when I went on and on about how thirsty I always am and how one time I tried to drink a gallon of milk and my friends kept threatening me about electrolyte poisoning? Well as it turns out, staying hydrated is more risky than I thought!

I'm sticking to beer and coffee from now on. Just to be safe.

Kilimanjaro!

My dad is a famous mountaineer.

I heart education

Well, school started again today. So far I didn't go to any classes, but I did go to lots and lots of offices!

(What follows is fiction) I didn't have to wait in any lines, and every office was staffed by friendly, helpful, knowledgeable people who did their best to assist me in a timely manner. I got all of my errands done and all of my business taken care of. It was great!

(What follows is true) I hate almost everyone on that stupid campus.

Here is an illustration of my attitude:

presentastic!

Remember a long time ago when I went to Albuquerque? Here is me giving my fancy presentation. I can't remember what I was talking about exactly but apparently there were two of something.

Either that or I was just talking about the hand configuration there. That's what my main point was, to talk about hand configurations.

As it turns out, that is often my main point. It came up three times at my party last weekend. I am a barrel of fun at parties, let me tell you! If you ever want to go out to a bar and draw diagrams of sentences and examine different types of phonological notation, let me know!

good v evil

The party was a huge success. I do not have any pictures. Except this one, which did not occur at the party but was printed out and used as a decoration/visual aid:
Of course these fine lads are not actually good OR evil, but more of a standard mix of high-school-boyness. Snakes and snails, etc. The white and black suits were too good of a thematic match for me to pass up though. Don't worry Matt. I don't think you're COMPLETELY evil.

Other good/evil pairs:

Rocky and Bullwinkle/Boris and Natasha
Wesley Autrey/Karl Rove
Abe Lincoln/Ghengis Khan
T. Rex/miniature poodle
Luggage/that Dodgers guy with the steroids (I don't know!)
Coretta Scott King/Republicans

There was collage-making and costume-wearing and food-eating and drink-drinking. And Boggle. And lots of beer (good and bad) and Devil's Food Cake and Angel Food Cake.

Plus more delicious treats. An excellent time was had by all.

prizes

I like it when people do a good job and get a reward. Especially if it's me getting the reward. Especially if the reward is an ice cream cone. Or something sparkly.

That is TOTALLY beside the point though. Here's what I'm talking about: rewards that don't match their ... whatever is the word that means "why someone got the reward".

One example is one time in college when I was driving way too fast in Montana. It was back when the speed limit in Montana was "reasonable and prudent" so it really wasn't my fault. It seemed reasonable to me! Anyway I got a speeding ticket, so I paid the nice highway patrol man my $20 and was about to be on my merry, prudent way when Mr. Highway Patrol noticed that I was oh-so-prudently wearing my safety belt. So as a reward for this he gave me a coupon for a free Happy Meal or Big Mac (my choice) at my nearest participating McDonald's. Of course! What all safe seatbelt wearers have earned!

Another example is something I just read at the BBC website about a very great man in New York who leapt into the tracks of the subway to rescue a kid who had a seizure and fell in there. They dramatically rolled under an oncoming train and escaped to tell their story. I'm always impressed by people who leap under oncoming trains to save other people, and I firmly believe that they deserve all the rewards they can get. This guy, though, got an especially entertaining combination of rewards: New York's highest award for civic achievement, $10,000 from Donald Trump, a trip to Disney World and a year's free subway travel. I like the money. Disney World, though, strikes me as pretty random. I like it all the more for that. And the subway travel is a nice touch, plus if anybody else falls in there we're all set.

All of this is making me think about what kinds of prizes I will be handing out for the winners tomorrow night. I foresee multiple minor skirmishes between Good and Evil, and knowing me, there is bound to be some kind of large scoreboard with tally marks for the points everybody earns. If no skirmishes ensue I will probably have to provoke them, if only so I can award points and prizes.

One of the prizes will probably be something very sparkly. I hope I win it.

What time is it? No time to look back!

Last night my excellent roommates and I watched "True Stories" the David Byrne movie from 1986. It's my favorite, I always forget about it for years on end and then suddenly have an urgent need to look at it again, right now! I highly recommend it to anyone who has an hour an a half they just can't figure out what to do with.

Meanwhile, I'm not doing very great on the "nose to the grindstone" front. I have a lot of school-and-work-related things I am supposed to be hard at work on, but instead I somehow keep spending all of my time building shelves out of cardboard and papier-mache and looking at 5th century bible fragments. Damn this city and all of its free public museums!

The bible fragments (and some whole entire bibles) were at the Sackler, where there is an exhibit of Bibles Before 1000. It was okay, but not as great as I'd hoped. Partly because of all the annoying other people who wanted to look at MY exhibit. But mostly because I wanted to know more about the individual scrolls and codices and scribes and whatnot, and instead there was just a lot of sort of vague, general information about the early spread of Christianity. Which is all very well but I already knew about that. I just wanted to know about the books!

On a marginally related note, and tying this whole entry back to my evening last night: Before we put the movie in, me and the old roommates were sitting around the living room drinking beer and looking up things in the Bible. Why, you ask? Well, why not? Really it was because we became involved in a heated dispute related to our upcoming Good v. Evil party (see below). I said that we should have apples and pomegranates as "evil" food and Gabe said there are no apples in the Bible.

He is right, of course, but there was some disagreement about if there were any other fruits mentioned in the whole Eden thing. As it turns out, not. There are fig leaves, but no figs. Alyssa suggested that we hand out fig leaves to partygoers as they enter and then direct them to a changing area. That would be quite the party. Don't worry, we decided against it. Although feel free to come wearing your own fig leaves, if you so desire.

The apple/fig conundrum having been got out of the way, we kept looking up other things that we thought of. Cruden's Complete Concordance is my best friend. Eventually and I don't remember how, we came upon this, which is practically the eleventh commandment as far as I can tell:

"This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel says:
'Drink, get drunk and vomit, and fall to rise no more.'" (Jeremiah 25:24)

On that note, I think the wine downstairs is getting lonely.

extremes

We're having a party over here on Saturday.

As usual I've been spending all of my time daydreaming about thematic party foods and beverages, and planning my outfit, and playing with the cat, instead of doing all my work. Work is for sissies. I'll start doing work tomorrow.

My cat is very glad to see me. Especially because I accidentally spilled catnip all over the room while I was trying to make something. But I think she was glad to see me before that happened, too. And I am glad to see her, and to be able to lie around in my pajamas drinking coffee and staring out the windows all the time. And not have to put anything into or take anything out of a suitcase. I am never travelling anywhere again, I mean it. To prove that I mean business, I didn't leave my house at all today. I probably will have to leave the house tomorrow, but I think by then my point will have been made.

If you have any ideas about Good and Evil (as they relate to my party) please tell me right away!