not an “international” spelling bee. So why are we letting Canadians in it??
It’s about time we stopped letting those canucks in there. What’s next? Red coats??
I think I need to start a petition…and a website… Keepthenationalspellingbeenational.com
The other week I saw a photoset of a very cool building mural/ graffiti in San Francisco, based on an icanhascheezburger image (this one to be specific).
I was running errands in Chinatown during lunch and thought some things looks familiar so I went around back, down the alley and saw this:
It’s still there! As it turns out, the building owner consented to having that painted on there. It’s still pretty cool, though.
I’m not saying out this out of want or need of pity and I’m not here to use the internet as some grand confessional. I’m just stating a fact (that probably won’t surprise anyone close to me): there was a time when I had a lot of self-hatred. Do you know what helped me greatly in this regard? Losing my hair.
As a 21 year-old struggling with an immense pile of school work that never ended and problems or failures regarding relationships, faith, weight, and any pursuit that I once fancied myself good at, the realization that the hair at my temples was too far up to be normal was not warmly received. Self-love dipped even lower.
Five and six years later, along with the realization that once someone is a couple years past 25, they don’t really change much came the realization that I’m balding. This is life. I can’t change it (unless I want to vainly clutch at something that’s not mine), so why let it cause any stress or consternation.
1. challenging each other to eat cake after a large meal. mid-afternoon at a local diner, surrounded by regular patrons and served by a pleasant waitress. after finishing a meal that was larger than any of us thought it would be, looking at a dessert menu and practically demanding that friends get a slice. then: devouring despite the already-present stomach pain.
2. sitting on shaded grass, eating fast food frozen dairy desserts quickly. after the rehearsal, realizing none of us had eaten for many hours, deciding to sneak off before the rehearsal dinner to a close-by fast food restaurant. surreptitiously eating the chocolate shake-ice-creams while taking a minute to relax in the shade by the parking lot before sneaking one to the groom.
3. hugging pillows. with some having gone off to run errands and pick up supplies, watching mediocre TV filler and making inane jokes that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else (and often didn’t make sense to us) about hugging pillows (while hugging pillows)
4. frantic typing and nervous suggestions. mid-afternoon in a hotel room, people hurrying about and dressing. half tuxed, ten minutes left till we were to leave for the ceremony, groom and friend debugging and typing out a last-minute script to make the big project work. (it worked.)
5. radiant smile and glowing cheeks. early evening by a pond and many flowers, under the shade of trees. above a magnificent and flowing white dress, a radiant smile and glowing cheeks and eyes staring into her partner’s.
I haven’t talked about him in a few years but I’ve been following Oscar Pistorius, the young South Africa double leg amputee that runs fast enough to compete in able-bodied events. His goal was to compete in the 2008 (able-bodied) Olympics.
I was just expressing my consternation last week to a friend that he’d been banned based on his carbon fiber lower leg prosthetics “giving him an advantage” and being against a rule that appeared to be written by the running governing body solely to ban him.
Well, unexpectedly, he got reinstated on Friday. He still needs to cut half a second off of his 400m time before the Olympics to qualify, but if he does, he’ll be able to compete.
Check out this video of him competing in Rome. The ground he makes up starting in the last turn is pretty amazing.
It’s Bike to Work Day and it’s going to be a hot one. I’m drenched.
Also, I think they forgot a very important aspect of this day: biking from work.
A billboard on the building opposite of my work’s:
15’x22′?? I don’t think so!
As anyone with spacial abilities can tell, that banner is not even close to a 1.46:1 ratio! From the windows and scale of the people, one can tell it is more like 15’x40′.
You can’t fool me, CBS Outdoor Advertising!
Apparently, my mixtapes come out every month. This is what I’m told, at least. Oops. I’m finding it hard to get these together in a month.
You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)
(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008march-april playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).
If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one was a long one in coming. I’ve listened to it a lot of times and I like it. There’s a mix of local (the Dodos, the Botticellis, Speakers), national (Deer Tick, Unwed Sailor) and international (Adem, the Rational Academy) bands.
Adrian’s March-April 2008 mix tape (rapidshare link [1])
If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.
[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) chose a mirror (or you can leave it) 4) input the number/ letters they show in the graphic into the box 5) click on “download via…”
The left side of my butt chin is bigger and lower than right.
My brother pointed out a a Firefox extension called YouTube Comment Snob that hides youtube comments that fail criteria like “user-defined threshold of spelling errors (using Firefox’s spell-checker), excessive punctuation, and excessive capitalization.”
Awesome. Do they make that for the whole internet?
CEOs for Cities has an interesting presentation (pdf) of the top 50 cities ranked by various metrics. For instance, Pittsburgh is 49th in the category of “ratio of people reporting attending a cultural event to the number of people subscribed to cable”. (The biggest loser in that category: Nashville.)
Boston and San Francisco both rank highly (#3 and #1, respectively) in the “ratio of ethnic restaurants to fast food restaurants” category.
A lot of the page headings are confusing or misleading but the actual ratio that they are measuring is also listed on the page and I find those are much clearer.
(via the best non-blog out there Scott)
1. Coronado, a beach near the Hotel Del. Mid-afternoon. Walking across that area of sand that’s firm because water has run over it recently and dipping my fingers into the chilly Pacific and pondering aloud if the military planes roaring overhead on their way to the base were Harriers. I don’t think they are.
2. A bar in South Park. Night time. Between local bands giving it their all on a small stage in the dark club and packed in among the local young hipster population, discussing merits of a variety of many recent bands on the scene with a new friend.
3. Balboa Park, near the Moreton Bay Fig. Late afternoon. Lying on my back on the slightly damp grass, staring up at the deeply saturated sky, talking about finances and how it’s strange to be an adult with an old friend.
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