"THIS IS ESS EEE SEE SPEEEED"

Wikipedia fascinates me to no end. One of the little things I like to say is, "Wikipedia teaches me so much, I think I should pay it tuition." To a certain extent, that's true for me at the university level - I have learned some pretty valuable information from that lovely bland website that netted me quite a few points on exams, information that my professors conveniently refused to disclose.

The great thing about Wikipedia is the constant updating. As a makeshift bullshit social experiment, I wanted to see how long it took in real-time for a new critical piece of information to be included on Wikipedia. The NFL Draft is the perfect fit for this because everybody gets the information at the same time, so all you have to do is open the page and hit refresh until the information is updated.

Jason Smith was drafted by the Rams at 1:15:02PM, PST. At that point, the information for Round/Pick had not yet been filled in. At 1:16:27PM, PST (last available load of Jason Smith's Wikipedia page), the information had been updated to Round 1, Pick 2, St. Louis Rams.

Mark Sanchez's page was literally updated as soon as he put on that J-E-T-S hat. I watched him put the hat on, hit refresh, and the color scheme had changed from Crimson and Gold to Green and White and all the appropriate information had been filled in. I'm guessing that the teams have hired some people to do this stuff for the franchises.

We remarked that some people have no lives, but then again, what the hell am I doing constantly hitting refresh on Wikipedia pages?

We Live in a Fabricated World

2:25AM. Channel surfing.

SRS: "Oh snap, Vivica A. Fox and Jean-Claude Van Damme!"
Me: "In what?"
SRS: "Does it matter? It got two stars. It has JCVD. It HAS to be good."
Me: "Did you just call that ass-clown by his initials?"
SRS: "Shut up. So what?"
Me: "MLK. JFK. MTT. NPH. These are great men, brave men who earned the privilege to be mentioned by nothing more than their mere initials. Everyone knows who they are merely by the combination of the initial marks of their names. This is a revered brotherhood, the most prestigious Princetonesque eating club that gets their way. YOU TAINT THEIR FRATERNITY WITH THE NAME OF THAT BLOND, TALENTLESS JACKASS."
SRS: "It's called 'The Hard Corps.'"
Me: "Oh. Let's watch it."

There's Not Much to Say

You know, I don't specifically remember a whole lot about anything that happened yesterday, but looking back, I don't think there's really a need to specifically form any memories. I seem to remember buzzing around for what must have been hours looping my "LA Summers" playlist, which includes a good sprinkling of JT, Timbaland, Jason Mraz, Chris "Beat 'Er Down" Brown, and the one song that defined my entire summer of 2008, M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes." (See The Great Seth Rogen Adventure, August 2008.)

There's something about contemplatin' and pontificatin' in a separate mind, writing it all down somehow, and then looking back on what you and your friends discussed and realizing that most of it makes no sense to a normal person, yet there's always one or two really good points that filter down through the process and the five of you somehow managed to polish a big ol' cow dung into a finely tuned de Beers diamond worthy of a night of your girl's best lovin'. Jonas Brothers, your purity rings are killing your creativity. Let your brains breathe for a bit.

I don't know much right now. All I know is that there's a receipt for four Double-Doubles and two fries sitting on the kitchen counter and that only one Double-Double is left right now. I should go get a blood lipid panel soon to make sure my bodily fluids didn't become 30% cheeseburger overnight.

Asshole Moment of the Day

News came today that Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics might be out for the entire playoffs this year due to a knee injury.

Danny Ainge, General Manager of the Boston Celtics, had a heart attack today.

Coincidence? I think not.

Note: Laughing about heart attacks is almost never okay.

Screw anonymity

Today, I woke up at 5AM to finish my Immunology Lab "problem set" due at 1PM today, a series of questions that might as well be a full-length lab report anyway. Just as I was finishing it at 8AM, I got a class email announcing that the deadline had been extended to Friday. Now I'm sleep-deprived, tired, and jittery from my first dose of my short-term Prednisone regimen. FML

Sponges for brains

SRS: "Aw man, so hungry. What are we gonna get for dinner?"
Me: "Dunno."

It was Easter Sunday night. We walked around downtown Berkeley for twenty minutes. Everything was either closed or not appealing enough. We returned to the apartment, defeated, hungry, and crying.

SRS: "Well, it's Easter Sunday. We can't decide. I guess we just have to ask, What Would [deity] Do?"
Me: "He would watch TV and go to the first restaurant he sees advertised on the television."

We turned on the TV.

Nine seconds passed.

"Well, I guess we're going to McDonald's."
"FUCK."

Missing the point entirely

I have a couple of embarrassing guilty pleasures, one of which is The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

You may now kindly shut up. Thanks.

I’m a fan of Ellen because of her brand of comedy – her style of speech is marked with fast-shootin’, quick-thinkin’ jokes that appeal to the basal intellectual side yet don’t get bogged down in stupid technical detail (one reason why I’m not a huge fan of technical jokes – lack of broad appeal). Her monologues are usually well-done, and while she has some dumb segments along the lines of Dave Letterman, those are pretty rare. Unlike Jay Leno, she’s excellent with interviewing guests – she’s never boring, she’s smart in her responses, and when she’s interviewing, there’s almost never dead air (a major flaw of Leno’s). I’m usually pretty happy with the product she puts out on the market.

But here’s why I REALLY watch the show. If you’re reading this, you can participate in this little game too and see how massively entertaining the show can truly be.

The Ellen show market is targeted towards women who watch daytime television, so…uh…slightly older than me, I guess. Of course, that means that the major party of interest for people who get tickets and attend live tapings are those very same older women.

Here’s where you come in: go on YouTube and find any Ellen clip that shows the audience members at some point. The audience is a chlorine-filled swimming pool of estrogen waiting for Patrick Dempsey or Matt Damon or whomever else is the Sexiest Whatevers of the Arbitrary Time Period. Stuck – nay, DROWNING – in that pool of estrogen are a very few number of men who all look extremely uncomfortable. This look of discomfort has one reason and one reason only: they’re present at the taping because their wives promised awesome makeup sex in exchange for voluntarily taking them to get their ya-yas off by seeing male celebrities in person sexier than their own husbands.

This game is most fun when Ellen does her little dances as transitions between segments and the entire audience, full of raucous, excited women, also get up to dance. The men always just kind of stand there and shift around a little bit, forcing a laser-etched, unnatural smile, thrust upon him by the desire to not look like an idiot on national TV. (There are, of course, some men in the audience who possess slightly more flamboyance and therefore dance along with all the other women, but those are more common.)

I ALWAYS point out the men out loud, even when I’m by myself. It’s like I’m playing Where’s Waldo for adults and with fewer papercuts. I like to reward myself with +10 points per man found, equally exchangeable for 0.16 oz. of ice cream. I still haven’t made a full bowl yet. (+5 points for flamboyant men found. +50 points for anybody who looks like they’re under 25 years old.)

Here’s a demo: 1:04 into the video, man in a Dwight Schrute-esque mustard yellow Polo shirt looking angry because he is surrounded by screaming 30- or 40-year-old cougars who all think that Patrick Dempsey is the shit and he’s just a lump of balding, aging chopped liver who has to dish out the hard-earned cash out of his own wallet to pay for the expenses for this bullshit. YES +10 POINTS

Let’s play!

Fixing Senioritis

I’ve been clicking back and forth between months on my Google Calendar. Some might be hit with the sobering realization that they will be graduating from college in about six weeks and start freaking out and locking themselves in their rooms and crying and slamming the Jack.

I am one of those people.

But that freakout moment happened a couple of weeks ago. The reason why I haven’t written much is because I’ve found so many other things with which to occupy my precious, precious time before I have to leave childhood forever. Note: I’ve never considered myself an adult except in the legal sense. It’s quite obvious if you take a look at my sense of humor. I’m the kind of guy who wants to live in a house with a pile of dead babies in one corner, roadkill kittens in another, a bookshelf full of vulgar jokes and pictures of boobies, and a fully-stocked bar on top of an endless Jewish deli (my last meal on Death Row, before I get electrocuted for drinking a smoothie made of one dead baby, three cups of puppy organs, one tablespoon of fresh endometrium and blood from Hillary Clinton’s latest estrous cycle on national television, will be a potato knish with gravy, a jalapeno bagel with lox, tomatoes, cucumbers, and shmear, a bowl of matzo ball soup, a bottle of Dr. Brown’s black cherry-flavored soda, and a whole smothered fried chicken from Chicken and Waffles).

Calvin said to Hobbes while sitting under a tree, “The end of summer is always hard on me, trying to cram in all the goofing off I’ve been meaning to do.”

Having admitted my childishness and immaturity, I can now safely say that I have been really happy cramming in all the things that I have not really had the time to do in the previous 3.5 years because I simply haven’t had the time and had too many other obligations to face. Here’s what I’ve been up to:
-Making all five flavors of Skittles vodka en masse
-Drinking in my room
-Crying
-Falling asleep while listening to Jim Gaffigan, masturbating my navel, and craving Hot Pockets
-Chilling and drinking at Beta Lounge, the greatest bar I have had the good fortunate of meeting. [Shameless plug: If you haven’t already, PLEASE go check out Beta Lounge at 2129 Durant, cross Oxford. They have some awesome deals like 4-7pm Happy Hour daily, $5 cocktails on Mondays, $20 wine bottles on Wednesdays, and $3.50 sake bombs and half-off sake on Sundays. To boot, Gabe, Elon, and J.A., the owners and operators, are the best people EVER. Tell them Gordo recommended them.]
-Playing as much badminton as possible before RSF membership expires
-Somehow losing ~10lbs since January
-Working on speeches
-Reworking those speeches while drinking
-Apartment-hunting in the Richmond area
-STAYING THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE RICHMOND IRON TRIANGLE
-Promoting synergy LIKE A BOSS
-Continuing my three-month-long search for a real-life nautical-themed Pashmina Afghan that I can wear to graduation