Mmmm Bullet Points

• Is anyone else bothered by those trucks that claim they are Yellow, while clearly remaining Orange? I see only two possible reasons for their deceitful color scheme:
  

1. The CEO of the company is colorblind and very sensitive. 
   
2. The ineptly named company is using a clever marketing  strategy that relies upon easily enraged bloggers to create "Hype."

• Who remembers the games that came standard with Windows 95? Sure there was solitaire and minesweeper, but there was also SkiFree. I wasted hours playing this game without even a clear conception of the rules. (Download it HERE)

Two bullet points aren't really enough are they? The pictures have captions though, so that's pretty cool. Whatever.

The Weekend That Was

Whoa. That weekend that just happened? That was a good one. Really good. Many epic things transpired. The primary reason behind most of the awesomeness was the weather. Friday was in the high 50s, and on Saturday it cracked 60. There were more happy people this weekend than I've ever seen before. Every bit of grass on campus was chock full of kids grilling, tossing frisbees, laying out on beach towels, listening to portable speakers, and in a few cases being crazy and doing homework. It was a picture-perfect adaptation of the mental vision I had for college going into the year.

Friday night, while out behind our dorm burning pizza boxes in the fire pit - site of a major party earlier in the day - my friends and I were passing time exclaiming angrily about the staggering number of empty bottles and cans left abandoned on picnic tables or dropped casually to the ground. One particularly wise friend had an epiphany: what if we picked up all the empties and returned them for money. This seemed like a particularly brilliant idea, so we filled up several trash cans, drove to the local grocery store, and made around $15. For the less mathematically-inclined, that is around 300 bottles/cans returned. And when you figure in the cans that were too crushed or dented to return, and the more exotic brands that the machines didn't recognize, you're looking at probably 500 empties in total. Consider that this is enough for 100 people to have 5 beers each, and that the party was done by nighttime.

Saturday afternoon a convoy of 5 cars left for a waterfall/camping site about 20 minutes away, where we grilled steaks, hung out, listened to music, and otherwise continued the activities from school in a slightly more secluded and scenic location. And while I'm sure that sounds pleasant, the epicness is hard to capture. We had no idea where this waterfall was, but managed to find it anyway. We assumed there would be grills at the campsite, and there weren't. Yet while wandering in the woods to use the bathroom, one girl found a discarded stainless steel cooking grate, which we combined with sticks and rocks to create a lovely homemade grill. It was most fortuitous.

Of course, there's snow predicted for tomorrow.

Daniel Day Lewis Can Kill You With ANYTHING

I just finished watching the film "Gangs of New York" which stars the eponymous and eternally bad-ass Daniel Day and the plays-the-exact-same-character-in-every-movie Leonardo DiCaprio. Oh and also that actress with the big face. 

Anyways, now that the I've stereotyped the actors, I can get into the actual movie. "Gangs of New York" is set in Civil War era New York where the Irish Immigrants and the "Nativists" are dueling over some ghetto called The Five Points. Now you may be asking yourself "This is a Leonardo DiCaprio movie right? So what happens early in the film that establishes his character's angst-filled existence for the rest of film?" The answer is of course Daniel Day Lewis kills Leo's father by pointing out the obvious superiority of his moustache (that and stabbing him with knives). 

Little Leo (being about five at the time) runs away only to return after a brief cut to darkness which lets us know 16 years has passed. Leo than insinuates himself into Daniel Day's now dominant gang and establishes himself as the son figure Daniel never had (That's such a good setup I think I'll remake it in Boston. Except replace Daniel Day Lewis with Jack Nicholson, and daddy issues with existential angst. AM I THE ONLY ONE SEEING THIS?!). Then Leo has lots of existential angst (holy crap. Seriously?) because he finds himself drawn to Daniel Day Lewis' incredibly awesome moustache, but is also torn because he wants to avenge his father. 

In the end everyone dies but the two characters we were emotionally attached to, and the viewer is left with the empty feeling that usually accompanies watching a film that was trying to win an academy award.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the North Country

By the way, the region of New York that I go to school in is indeed referred to as the "North Country." That's right, we're above upstate New York. Yay geography!

Anyway, I'm rather proud of that title up there. Not only does it just sound good, but I recently reread the Douglas Adams classic (which is far, far, too short) AND picked up a hitchhiker (sort of), thereby achieving a multifaceted degree of effectiveness that I for one certainly think is commendable.

Scene: the local Walmart, which moonlights as the cradle of civilization in St. Lawrence County. I needed apple juice, Derek needed a sewing kit because he wants to be me, Kathleen needed any number of odd things, and I'm not sure if James needed anything per se, but ventured out with us with the idea that something useful would present itself once he was there. After purchasing what we needed, discussing whether the Walmart would be the ideal sanctuary in event of a zombie apocalypse (upside - has everything possibly necessary to survive, including a water tower on the property; downside - only one story, with large glass windows of the sort that zombies could easily break through), and contemplating buying a potted plant, we finally set off into the parking lot, searching for Derek's car.

It was there that we encountered our hitchhiker. Upon seeing us heading to the car, he tried to hail us with a heavily accented "Hallo?" and a flailing wave, weighted down by around twelve grocery bags. Upon us acknowledging his presence, he inquired: "Do you guys go to Clarkson?" Clarkson is a rival college one town over, known mostly for engineering and hockey, and its subsquent 80/20 male to female ratio. My friends gave distainful sniffs, and replied that we were proud students of St. Lawrence University, thank you very much. I, on the other hand, asked if he needed a ride, the idea of which was was greeted warmly by our new friend, but rather more dubiously by the rest of my little group. Turns out that he was a French student studying abroad in New York, and had undertaken the fairly lengthy journey from Clarkson University to Walmart on foot, but it had become dark before he could return. We ended up dropping him off at his dorm, after a 6 or 7 minute drive filled by polite if awkward conversation.

I bring this up not to demonstrate my kindly and outgoing nature (although it does work quite well on that account), but rather as a commentary of the times we live in. After dropping our new French friend off, my friends and I discussed what had just happened. Everyone else said they probably wouldn't have offered him a ride, and certainly not as quickly as I had, and in retrospect, I have no idea what prompted my prompt offer. In the not too distant past, someone could use hitchhiking as a very real way to get from point A to point B, even if point B was in Alaska. In 2009, I'm afraid, you generally wouldn't be able to get home from Walmart. I mean, the guy we picked up was waving at us in a parking lot, not the side of the road, and we barely offered him a 3 mile drive to his college. And he was notably harmless looking, boasting spectacles, a slight build, and a French accent. I'm certainly not advocating that we all start picking up hitchhikers by any stretch, but I just think it's all a bit sad.

The History of Ultimate Frisbee

Ultimate Frisbee has collected quite a few stereotypes over the years. I decided to do some research to perhaps alleviate these injustices. 

To my surprise it turns out the stereotypes are in fact richly deserved. The actual founder of Ultimate Frisbee said on the first Ultimate players "There were also druggie types. We were about evenly split between the better students and the half who smoked dope."

Somewhat disheartened by this fact I decided just to give up and summarize the history of Ultimate. The history of Frisbee follows the general thought pattern of a high schooler (who may or may not be smoking the reefer):

Hey wouldn't it be cool if we made a game with a frisbee?

Totally! Lets make it like football and soccer and basketball combined!

Dude, wouldn't it be sweet if we got our school to recognize us?

DUDE! We should totally make jackets that says we're a varsity sport!

Haha yeah! Lets make up some funny names on the roster.

We can say our head coach is that crazy janitor!

Oh man we should definitely challenge the newspaper staff to a game in the parking lot!

I didn't make any of this up. The newspaper game ended with a fight. Legend has it the winners of the fight went on the found South Carolina Ultimate. Don't ask me why. 

Even stranger, the guy who brought frisbee back to his high school went on the write some of the Die Hard series (And thus was discovered the tenuous but significant connection between Samuel L. Jackson and Ultimate).

A Case Of The Mondays

First day back from spring break, and you know what I had to do at 8:00 this morning? Take a freakin' environmental exam. It was the worst. Now I'm just starting a 4-6 page paper due tomorrow. But let me offer a couple of rays of sunshine to brighten your day:

- REALLY AWESOME THING OF THE DAY = THIS. It is Neil Gaiman, reading aloud his recent work The Graveyard Book. It is literally perfect to have playing as you do homework or fall asleep or whatever.
- Today saw I Love You, Man for the wonderful price of $4 (movie theatre "downtown" offers half-off to college students on Mondays), and it was very funny. We had a crisp debate on the walk back on whether it was superior to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and there were strong cases made on both sides.
- Do you live in MA? Do you enjoy good things? Check out the Lowell Summer Concert Series, a very cheap - most tickets are $25 - series of concerts going on over the summer in Lowell (as the title suggests) held in a wonderful little park which is my favorite place to see concerts ever. This summer the lineup features artists like Los Lonely Boys, Blues Traveler, Ani DiFranco, Michael Franti, Aimee Mann, and Joan Baez, who's apparently still amongst the living.
- I know I promised rays of sunshine here, but I need to be briefly shouty about the fact that the Nicholas Cage vehicle Knowing was the top movie for the weekend. Really, America? He was brilliant in Leaving Las Vegas and oddly tolerable in National Treasure, but besides that he and his increasingly unlikely toupees have been doing terrible things to cinema. And Knowing looked to be truly godawful, the sort of movie that could improve under the direction of M. Night Shamalymnaynan, who in the time since The Sixth Sense and Signs has been trying his hardest to join Cage in murdering cinema himself. Bah.
- I was actually quite interested in this article, which details a many-hour brainstorming session held by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, where they invent the Indiana Jones franchise. I fully encourage readers to first check out the quite humorous article and then at least glance through the actual PDF. Cool stuff. Except admittedly when the article stops commenting on the discussion between Lucas and Spielberg, and starts riffing on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it gets notably less funny. Anyone can do that.

Oh Cool 100 posts. Also a Razor Phone

The MotoRazr, the iPhone, The BlackBerry, The Palm Pre, all have had their share of the spotlight. But now there's a new phone to get excited about: The Cool 758 Razor Phone!

In case you can't tell, this phone actually lives up to its name (Unlike the aforementioned MotoRazr) and in fact is also a razor. When the owner of this fine device is feeling particularly bristly, they simply pop off the bottom part of the phone and start grooming. 

The Razor Phone was produced in "Shenzen on this magical land of outstanding manufacturers" (Google translator was having a rough day) and features a "Built-Razor." It costs the mysterious amount of 750 RMB, but can you really put a price on combining telecommunications and personal hygiene? I didn't think so.

Watch Out For Snakes!

My intense fear of snakes, while perhaps not a subject addressed yet in this forum, is well-known and indeed severe. However, I feel strongly that this particular news story should terrify the beejesus out of everyone. See, Burmese pythons are taking over Florida. Thousands of morons in Florida keep buying these animals as pets, neglecting to consider that these things grow up to be 20 feet long and 250 pounds (!), and upon realizing that their pet could dispatch of them with relative ease, release the snakes into the swamps, where they meet other snakes, and have lots of little baby snakes. Several recent developments have brought this story to national attention. First of all, the pythons keep eating endangered species in the Everglades, which is bothering some environmentally-minded folks down there. They decided to find out how many Burmese pythons there were in the Everglades, reasonably enough, although the methodology employed for capturing rogue snakes alarms me a bit: "You cruise the roads, and when you see a python you grab hold of whatever part of the python you can, and hope you're faster." Sorry? That is the US Fish and Wildlife strategy for dealing with the exponential boom in the Florida python population? Consider this excerpt from a news story about a group of biologists being trained in snake wrangling: "Ostrom got a sharp reminder later on why he takes all this so seriously, as an anaconda bit him as he was putting the snake away. 'That's why you wear gloves,' he said good-naturedly. Despite the bite, the group feels well-versed for its next exotic encounter." Whaaaat? An anaconda bit him? And he was okay about this?

Anyway. When the Fish and Wildlife people did their count, they estimated there were many many thousands of Burmese pythons in the Everglades alone, and lots more living across the rest of southern Florida. Then, a couple of days ago, a report was issued saying that about a third of the United States features terrain and climate suitable for the pythons, and that we could soon be seeing pythons as far north as Virginia. You know how alien species like kudzu basically take over their ecosystem because they have no natural predators? It's like that, only kudzu is generally not disposed to or capable of eating you whole.

Perhaps you think I overstate things. Maybe. But take this account of an Everglades park ranger into account: "Although elusive by nature, these giant snakes have been seen doing battle with alligators, climbing trees fast enough to catch nesting chicks and swallowing animals as large as wood storks and deer." Doing BATTLE with ALLIGATORS?!?! Why on earth am I just hearing about this now?

It occurs to me a fairly high percentage of my friends are currently tossing frisbees or rowing about right in the middle of snake territory. Watch out.

Things That Are On Television

- A couple of weeks ago, I watched new episodes of The Simpsons and Family Guy on Hulu,and for the first time it really hit home that the latter is much, much funnier these days. I think I've known that for a while, but while I watched The Simpsons I may have chuckled or smirked once or twice at most. My viewing of Family Guy, on the other hand, was accompanied by plenty of loud and embarrassing laughter (I really ought to retire to the sanctity of my room whenever reading or watching comedy). My roommate assures me that South Park is funnier than either, but I've never really gotten into that.

- So I walked into my living room earlier this evening to find American Idol playing, and to my horror, the other members of my family were all crowded onto a couch watching. My sister, that I can understand. But to see my parents sucked into the machine... that was just sad. I gave my father a look in which I tried to communicate pure disappointment, but that's not my strong suit emotionally, and it may have simply come across as baffled amusement. He confessed to me afterwards that he has become a regular viewer, and has been watching for a decent portion of this season. It occurs to me that if I started watching, I would probably enjoy the whole experience: disagreeing with the judges, making fun of the contestants, maybe enjoying a performance once in a while. However, I have a false sense of superiority that I am very fond of that needs upholding, so I daresay that American Idol shall proceed unwatched by me.

- I enjoy the average episode of 30 Rock more than the average episode of The Office right now, and not just because of my love for all things Alec Baldwin.

- I was flipping channels yesterday (which is something I love about being home. I never find myself channel scanning at college; my TV viewing is almost exclusively online. Yay conforming to generational stereotypes), and I bumped across an episode of Friends guest-starring Tom Selleck's mustache. In what was an entirely not-eerie coincidence, tonight the oddly titled movie Quigley Down Under was showing on AMC, starring Tom Selleck's mustache as a American cowboy and sharpshooter hired in Australia by ALAN RICKMAN (who tries, and fails, to compete with Selleck mustache-wise), who wants him to kill Aborigines. Tom Selleck's mustache is apparently against such things however, and the stage is set for an epic showdown. Also features a woman enigmatically named in the credits as "Crazy Cora."

- I have all three seasons of Arrested Development on DVD and you don't. Nyah nyah.

Buses

On my way back from a Frisbee tournament this weekend I was stuck in a good old yellow school bus for a few hours, and I got to noticing some things.

• Has anyone wondered what's in the mysterious "Bodily Fluids Clean-up Kit"? My guess is a bunch of sawdust and a shiny sticker to make the kid who just earned himself the title of "Kid who barfed on the bus and it smelled, like, really bad" for the rest of his school days feel better.
• Those cameras that watch the entire bus. I can't help but be creeped out by the constantly blinking red light letting elementary age kids know they're being watched. (Not to say that they don't have their uses)
• Can anyone name all the exits in a school bus?...............................I bet you forgot the POP OUT WINDSHIELD. (I was a cautious child)
• During my happy years in South Elementary School, I had a bus driver who would bring a super-soaker on the last day of school and squirt kids as they got off. This wasn't any pansy super-soaker either. Smaller kids would routinely be knocked over. (Anyone else remember Mike the bus driver?)
• What's the deal with the small seat in the back that was known as "The retard seat"? I can't imagine it was actually for the mentally handicapped...
• Cam? Any quirks you care to pass on? Leave a comment fool!

Spring Break! Woohoo!

In my Wikipedia travels, I somehow bumped into this little tidbit:
Glitter can be used in criminal forensics, as its distinctive color, size, thickness, materials and patterns can link perpetrators to victims or locations.
Can it, now? The percentage of crimes solved by glitter, I would venture, is severely hampered by the lack of glittery crooks, who occupy only a small (but fearsome!) niche of the criminal underworld. Anyway.

- Did you follow the Jim Cramer/Jon Stewart exchanges over the past week? If not, I heavily encourage you to view the past week's worth of the Daily Show for a lesson in not just humor but in what has been increasingly viewed as an example of holding the media accountable. Good stuff.
- It just wouldn't be break if my first activity upon arriving home wasn't to retire to the couch with a glass of milk, bag of Tostitos, and a well-worn Michael Crichton book. The man wrote the world's most infinitely re-readable books. Watch out for them nano-robots. Get you every time.
- It's a gorgeous 50 degrees today here in Andover, serving as yet another occasion to ask myself: Why on earth do I go to school 20 minutes south of Canada?
- I've been listening to a lot of Neko Case, John Butler Trio, and Blitzen Trapper. You should too!
- Boo haircuts. They make me itchy and cause my ears to stick out.
- I am currently passing the hours watching To Kill A Mockingbird, and am much pleased.

Boo Midterms! Yay Chair-Sailing!

That's a fairly descriptive title up there. The past two days have been dominated by the large amounts of free time and nagging feelings that I should be studying that seem to characterize midterms. For finals, I can generally muster up the resolve to hole up in the library and get solid multi-hour blocks of studying done; midterms don't quite warrant such drastic measures, and so there's plenty of time for unusual little adventures.

For example, we have the titular chair-sailing that occurred this afternoon. It was a very blustery day, so a friend and I constructed a kite out of some ski poles and a bedsheet. Sadly, this contraption proved a tad heavy for actual flight, so we altered out plan, stole an office chair from the computer lab, and decided to go chair-sailing in the parking lot. The terrain proved a bit rough for the office chair, and the wind was very swirly and difficult to capture, but nevertheless we did manage to travel via wind power for some distance. This modest accomplishment was, however, severely tempered by the number of times I fell, took a ski pole to the face, and was snickered at by passerby.

Less unusual, but equally awesome, was the foray several friends and I made to the roof of our dorm, where we appreciated the view, debated whether the moon was full, and terrified our more scholarly friends by banging and whooping outside their windows. It was fun.

I suppose enough blog-time has been spent on the subject that I'm decidedly obligated to offer up a brief review: Watchmen was pretty awesome. Not comparable to the graphic novel, naturally, but a fine movie in its own right. Sometimes unwieldy, sometimes incredibly awesome, characterized by mediocre acting throughout (exception: Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach). On a scale of Daredevil to Dark Knight, it was a solid 6 or 7. Probably 7.

The past month or so of my life, ever since I delofted my bed and re-did my room, has seen the appearance of a poltergeist in my life. Not a particularly destructive poltergeist, mind you, but a malevolent entity nonetheless. It is very specific in its evilness: the album covers hanging above the head of my bed steadfastly refuse to remain attached to my wall. I have literally tried every trick up my sleeve. First I just used my usual mounting putty. All three quickly fell. I then added scotch tape to the mounting putty, which was briefly successful, but before long all three were again on the ground. I next took out the actual vinyl, leaving just the covers hanging on my wall and theoretically reducing the weight by a large factor. They fell anyway. Next I took off all the old tape and putty, and instead substituted duct tape, which I had thought was sure to hold. As I look at my wall now, however, only The Who remain standing. After break I'm going to try and end this war of attrition by implementing album frames and some serious mounting equipment, although I'm sure the poltergeist will foil this as well.

Cam is Limp and Vaguely Fraying

This blog has seen its fair share of Watchmen induced tingles (as Cam so graphically put it), so I will resist posting my opinions on the oft discussed film. I will, however, point you in the direction of the first issue (it's online here).

• This weekend while other students may have been out partying or interacting with humans, I was sitting in my room playing Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for hours on end. As a child I was deprived of video games, so now I'm happily making up for lost time with n64 games running on my laptop. Right now, saving Hyrule is far more important to me than getting a passing grade in Child Development Psychology.

• Have you ever watched a performance and felt embarrassed? I find that some performances are just so awkward that you (the audience) is compelled to feel embarrassed for the performer. Its as if the dancer/actor/whatever has such a clear lack of shame, that the audience is forced to make up for it with some shame of their own. The main offenders in my experience are Interpretive Dancers. It's actually painful for me to watch an interpretive dance.

• Seriously guys, no love for the ugly car post? Cam got 6 comments on his failings at sewing.

• I've decided that Sugar Ray is very underrated band. Except for the few years when they thought they were heavy metal, most of their songs are the musical embodiment of summer.
  

• One more Watchmen thing then I'm done, I swear. This video is just awesome if you're a fan.

That's all for today, I'm going back to kicking Ganondorf's ass.

Nope, Still Haven't Seen Watchmen

A movie titled Watchmen, with its most famous quote being "Who Watches the Watchmen" really is a headliners dream come true. That said, if I read another article titled "Who Will Watch Watchmen" or the like, I shall punch something (albeit carefully, I still remember dislocating my thumb during an ill-conceived joke punch). That said, my promise to see the movie yesterday fell through, as my friends and I considered that going downtown to a 9:30 showing would result in us being back on campus after midnight, which several of my more studious pals felt was less than wise. BUT I'M SEEING IT TONIGHT AT 7:30! FOR SURE!

Whew. Feeling the part of the wild-eyed blogger a bit back there. I should be reading a book about the Holocaust right now for my 20th Century Europe class, but frankly it's a bit glum, so I shall blog about other things. Happy Things. The happiest thing these days, apart from waking to find that someone had scribbled an advertisement for Nostalgia by Veidt on the whiteboard on my door, is my discovery of Firefly. For those of you who haven't seen or heard of it, Firefly is a short-lived (one season) TV show that was aired on, and canceled by, Fox (where good TV shows go To DIE! sorry, wild-eyed again). It's a wonderfully badass and hilarious Western sort of show, except it takes place in space. And it's crazy good.

Quick self promotion: a still have a radio show from three to five on Tuesday afternoons, and I think you'd rather like it. Currently my mom has coerced the larger portion of my extended family into tuning in, and although I greatly appreciate every listener, it's not exactly the fan base I was aiming for, you know? First hour is just music off my computer, second half my friend and I go old school and play some vinyl, which is ridiculously fun. Go to iTunes, open "Radio," open "College Radio," and scroll down until you find KSLU.

As I sit writing this, I notice a pencil laying nearby. With a Jesus eraser. The idea of Jesus erasing my wrong answers is enticing enough that I may steal it.

Damnit! I Still Haven't Seen Watchmen

In case the title wasn't enough of a give-away, I haven't had a chance to see the bloody movie yet, much to my displeasure. I was in Lake Placid last night, and the one movie theater in the area was tiptoeing into the digital era with sufficient trepidation as to neglect to post showtimes online, which hampered my efforts to see the film considerably. The local theater here in Canton may be about the size of my living room, and it doesn't offer online ticketing or anything crazy like that, but at least if you go to movietickets.com you can find showtimes. The Lake Placid theater, I feel a need to reiterate, does not provide this service. I'm frankly baffled by this, and I don't think I'm just being a whiny technology-dependent product of the 90s; having to drive the twenty minutes to the theater just to find out when Watchmen is playing seems grossly gratuitous. Bah. Tomorrow, though, I am DEFINITELY seeing the freakin' thing. Several friends who did see it have reported that while not great by a long shot, the movie certainly does not disappoint. Thank goodness.

- I have discovered the cereal "Reese's Puffs" in the past week, and may have grown addicted.
- Welcome to the world, baby Oliver. Mind if I call you OJ? I'll be seeing you next week, we can discuss the matter more fully then.
- Today was the best day of skiing I've had in some time, and I feel a need to snicker at all of you who had more mundane Saturdays.
- Milk has been showing on campus for free this weekend, and I have not been able to make time to see it. Which is frankly tragic and unforgivable, I know.
- HAPPY (slightly early) BIRTHDAY RYAN!
- My roommate broke his hand on a door while I was in DC. I feel it is important to stress that this happened to my roommate and not I, although it does start to beg the question of if I am contagious.

Watchmen-Induced Tingles

Tingles is officially a word I need to use more often. It's not a word one encounters too often outside of the phrase "My spidey-senses are tingling," which admittedly does come up fairly often. This little window of opportunity does give me a chance to shout out to some of my other pleasant-not-particularly-common words: windswept, ominous, tangent, baffled, lurk, bemused, abyss, jaunty, demigod, ramshackle, and of course swoop. If I was really awesome I'd make a paragraph or perhaps short story including all of those, but I'm not feeling the vibes.

Well that was an agreeable little tangent (hey! One of the words I like!), yes? The main topic for this evening is, however, the forthcoming epicness that is Watchmen. The movie opens tomorrow night, and I've been trying my darnedest not to read any reviews or anything like that, and not spend too much time reading interviews with the cast or that sort of thing, but it's not easy. Whenever I turn on a TV, the problem is complicated by Warner Bros. decision to barrage mainstream channels and viewers with a torrent of Watchmen ads, which I can't help but feel is slightly futile. If you're going to see the movie, you bloody well know at this point. Either you are looking forward to seeing to seeing 40-foot tall Dr. Manhattan's giant blue junk flopping majestically across the big screen or you're not. How/if they managed to do that tastefully is fully beyond me.

My latest reason to adore Watchmen - not that such a thing was needed in the least - is the release of the soundtrack on iTunes a couple of days ago. My mind was blown. Bob Dylan. Jimi Hendrix. Simon and Garfunkel. Billie Holiday. Janis Joplin. Leonard Cohen. "Ride of the Valkyries," for crying out loud! This is a good sign that the film shall be as epic as I envision.

I have at least a full post's worth of bullet points, but I reckon I'll save those for a rainy day. Perhaps I'll leave you to bask in the glow of my awesomeness: yesterday, all by myself, I patched a huge hole in my jeans. Now they look awesome. Like me.

Cars I Think are Ugly

These are, as you may have surmised, some cars I think are ugly. Enjoy.

Pontiac Aztek:

I don't know what kind of substance the designers for this car were on, but it must have been only marginally stronger than the stuff the people who actually purchased this ugly beast were dosing. 

"OK guys, this SUV is going to be called the Aztek, and Aztek kinda rhymes with Pontiac so we can't go wrong. What should we do to make it stand out?" 

"Undersized wheels!" "Two Grills!" "A gap where the hood meets the fender!" "Lots of Plastic!"

PT Cruiser:

This car actually makes me angry it's so ugly. It's as if one of those sweet roadsters that have an engine sticking out the hood gave birth to a creepy child that the family doesn't like to talk about. Even worse are the ones with the faux wood paneling. Do you think you're a surfer from the fifties? DO YOU? BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT.

Saturn SL2

This car is just a straight up eyesore. If you look quickly, you could almost be fooled into thinking it has some semblance of DeLorean-esque coolness, but in reality the SL2 looks more like a vacuum cleaner. Also it is the vehicle of choice for Andrew Dwyer.

Toyota Prius:

I understand the Prius is going rid America of foreign oil dependency, save the environment, and bring your dead cat Sniffles back to life, but seriously, it is one ugly vehicle. Yes it's an efficient combination of gas and electric power, but it looks more like a hybrid between a pregnant horse and a station wagon.

F*** this. I'm buying a Mini Cooper.

OK, Maybe The Titles Were Getting Excessive

Hello! I'm back up here in Canton NY, and feeling excitable and perky after a lovely afternoon powernap. Napping is easily one of the best couple of things I've discovered so far at college, and I encourage all of you to indulge yourselves occasionally. Anyway. I got back from Washington DC at 2 this morning, and I have a couple of tales to share from this weekend:
- After being briefly tantalized by 60 degree temperatures when we arrived Friday afternoon, a cold front quickly swooped in, ruining all my visions of tossing a frisbee around the Mall, which was terribly disappointing.
- The icing on the cake, however, was that on Monday I was in DC when they got 5 inches of snow, the most they've received in a couple of years. Sadly, DC only employs 3 plowmen, so upon the first sight of a snowflake the city totally freaks out. 5 inches was enough to paralyze every major mode of transportation and send the apparently snow-phobic Nancy Pelosi scurrying back to California.
- This is sad, because Nancy was supposed to deliver a speech to the PowerShift conference that I was at. Pretty awesome conference, by the way. 12,000 college kids all crowded into a huge convention center, listening to various panels on climate change. It was sorta like being at an Ultimate Frisbee players' convention: numerous times over the weekend I looked up only to notice several discs flying overhead.
- Although Ms. Pelosi did duck out, I was able to listen to speeches by the head of the EPA, Secretary of the Interior (who was a ridiculously cool old dude), and Ralph Nader. I shook hands with the latter, and complimented him on his tie. Also shook hands with James Cromwell (the actor who plays the old farmer in Babe, amongst other things).
- Hanging out on the roof of a dorm at GW was very picturesque and enjoyable.
- The Metro in DC blows away every other subway system in America by a considerable margin.
- Highlight of the weekend: discovering the National Botanical Garden. This place was quite literally a jungle, and it was indescribably awesome to escape the gusty coldness and hang out in a series of tropical greenhouses. If you're ever in the area, go check it out.