style

How come dudes that wear black jeans always wear them really tight and have high-water cuffs, with black satin jackets and big plain white old-school reeboks?

more like my dad everyday

We all know that we will turn into our parents, but nevertheless each step along the way scares us. When we were growing up my dad always had mouthwash - in the bathroom, in his dopp kit, in his office at work, in the car, wherever and everywhere. I don't have mouthwash anywere but the bathroom, but I deffnitely hit that shit everytime I leave the house. I ran out last week, and while I didn't need it bad enough to shell out big bucks at the Teeter, I did hit Target yesterday and am glad to have a fresh supply.

FYI - here is an explanation of the term "Dopp Kit" from Word Detective:

"[T]hanks to a discussion of the term "Dopp Kit" on the mailing list of the American Dialect Society (www.americandialect.org) a couple of years ago, I can assure you that "Dop" or "Dopp" isn't an acronym or abbreviation for anything. According to newspaper accounts unearthed by Merriam-Webster's Jim Rader, the Dopp Kit was first produced by Charles Doppelt, a leather goods designer who immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in the early 1900s. Although it may have been Doppelt's nephew and employee, Jerome Harris, who actually invented the snazzy leather toiletries case, Doppelt was the boss and so the finished product bore a cropped form of his name, giving us the "Dopp Kit." Dopp Kits were manufactured by the Charles Doppelt Company until the firm was purchased by Samsonite in the 1970s, and Dopp Kits today are made by Buxton. The popularity of Dopp Kits was evidently boosted considerably by World War II, in the course of which the U.S. Army issued them to recruits by the millions.

Incidentally, the "kit" part of Dopp Kit is not quite the same "kit" we use to mean "a collection of parts used to assemble a whole," as in "model airplane kit." A soldier's "kit" consists of the standard equipment and personal articles issued to and carried by a soldier on a regular basis.

available at http://www.word-detective.com/103001.html

exams

For the next 3 weeks I will be in exams. That means that the days of the week have even less meaning than they do when you are a normal student, and the hours of the day become totally irrelevant.

Tat also means that my posting here will likely become (more?) sporadic. I could go 10 days with no post, then just break down into delirium and post once an hour for 3 days straight - we'll see how it goes.

Unamailer

This is me - I usually hate trying to have significant communication via e-mail, although I really hate I.M. That is not to say that I won't break off a longer heart felt e-mail now and then, and I see the virtue of properly used I.M., but I hate getting caught in an escalating e-mail exchange where my every reply/response engenders a longer e-mail with more gartuitious detail and more questions to which I am supposed to respond.

From Lisa Belkin in today's NYT:

"Johnny Wong, a public relations consultant from San Bruno, Calif., suggests "Unamailer" to describe "someone who replies to e-mail with one-word responses. Right. Good. Thanks." Ray Symmes, a business consultant in Portsmouth, Va., suggests a similar term. "BlackBerried," he writes, is "a short and possibly patronizing response to a thoughtful e-mail, suggesting it was received on a mobile device: 'good anal. of world hunger. thks.' "

full article available at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/jobs/23wcol.html?th&emc=th

on the iPod:
Neil Young, On the Beach

WARNING:

If you are lucky enough to speak with me or hang out with me on a regular basis, you might discover that I do not embargo my blog topics. That is, in addition to posting them on my blog, I may also talk about the wonderful ideas and observations I have about the world. And, on really good days, I might take something you brought up and post it as if it is my own idea.

time capsules

Remember when time capsules were all the rage? It seemed like there was a ten year period when you were forbidden from building a mall without burrying a collection of notes from 1983 krimpped hair and break dancing 6th graders to futuristic 6th graders who would ride hover boards and wear metalic clothes, living on a diet of re-hydrated pizza like Back to the Future 2.

on the iPod:
Black Sabbath, We Sold Our Soul for Rock & Roll

quote of the day

"I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. " - Dubya

One day, maybe I can be a decider, too.

Texas is Awesome, pt 1

I have a few recurring topics, including "Albums", "Tips for D.C. Tourists," "Cheezy Music," and "The Little Things" series. Today I'm starting a "Texas is Awesome" series. We all know how awesome Texas is, mostly because people from Texas always tell us, but this is just icing on the cake...

Swinging for the Suburban Fences, but Not Too Hard

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

BELLAIRE, Tex. — It's not just one, two, three strikes you're out at the old softball game in Feld Park.

Belting one over the fence will do it, too.

Home runs are outs in this otherwise all-American Houston suburb about nine miles west of downtown, where encroaching development has upended one of the sport's most hallowed rules, even, for a time, getting home run hitters ejected from the batter's box.

(Inside-the-park home runs — what the Amateur Softball Association soothingly calls "four-base awards" — are still O.K.)

It is not as if this city of 17,000 — named perhaps for the gulf breezes and swallowed by the Houston metroplex nearly 60 years ago — has anything against the American pastime. The bulbous white water tower that looms over town like a giant onion still celebrates Bellaire's two baseball legends, the 1999 high school national champions and the Bellaire Little League All-Stars that took the American pennant in 2000, making it to the World Series in Williamsport, Pa., only to lose a heartbreaker to Maracaibo, Venezuela, 3-2.

But when the love of green space and recreation ran headlong into property rights amid a homebuilding boom, something had to give.

"I don't want to be in the backyard to be clunked on the head with a softball," said Lee Decker, a builder whose new and yet-unsold $721,000 two-story house overlooking left-center field lost two windows late last year to homegrown sultans of swat in the park's Optimist Club league. Mr. Decker has since been mollified by the long-ball sanctions and a 50-foot-high fence-and-net barrier that has proved impervious to all but one improbable blast of 300 feet or more several weeks ago that broke another window.

If I was a kid down there, all of that dude's windows would be busted out.

On the iPod:
Tom Petty, She's the One

full article available at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/us/16bellaire.html?th&emc=th

It was rainy and 41 degrees when I woke up

These are the seasons of emotion and like the winds they rise and fall
This is the wonder of devotion - I see the torch we all must hold.
This is the mystery of the quotient - Upon us all a little rain must fall.

today is the first day...

...of the rest of your life. But, more important for students like me who are at the end of the semester and student loans are running out, today is also the first day of the next credit card statement period, which means that what I buy today I don't have to pay for until June 11.

End of Days

I watched Saturday Night Live last night for the first time in a long time. I don't know what the show is normally like, but I know it had been in a dark period of unfunny for quite some time. Last night there were four skits that made me laugh outloud and to tears. Good stuff.

p.s. Happy Easter, now repent. . .

ninjas - don't call it a comeback

ATF rids Univ. of ninja threat

By CAROLINE ERVIN
Published , April 12, 2006, 06:00:01 AM EDT

This photo, taken by a student’s camera phone, shows ATF officials pinning down Jeremiah Ransom in front of Snelling dining hall. He was coming from a pirate vs. ninja event at the Wesley Foundation and was not arrested. (Kathleen Ruark | The Red & Black)

ATF agents are always on alert for anything suspicious — including ninjas.

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm agents, on campus Tuesday for Project Safe Neighborhoods training, detained a “suspicious individual” near the Georgia Center, University Police Chief Jimmy Williamson said.

Jeremiah Ransom, a sophomore from Macon, was leaving a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was detained.

After being held in investigative detention, he was found to have violated no criminal laws and was not arrested.

“It was surreal,” Ransom said. “I was jogging from Wesley to Snelling when I heard someone yell ‘freeze.’”

Ransom said he thought a friend was playing a joke before he realized officers had guns drawn and pointed at him.

ATF agents had noticed Ransom’s suspicious behavior and clothing and gave chase, apprehending him, Williamson said.

“Agents noticed someone wearing a bandanna across the face and acting in a somewhat suspicious manner, peeping around the corner,” said ATF special agent in charge Vanessa McLemore.

Ransom was wearing black sweatpants and an athletic T-shirt with one red bandanna covering the bottom half of his face and another covering the top of his head, Williamson said.

“Seeing someone with something across the face, from a federal standpoint — that’s not right,” McLemore said, explaining why agents believed something to be amiss.

Agents noticed Ransom peering around a corner and said when police sirens sounded, he took off running.

After chasing Ransom and identifying themselves, ATF agents detained him, turning him over once University Police arrived, McLemore said.

Ransom said Williamson told him the incident should not have been handled in such a manner and he would file a complaint with the ATF.

“I was in shock, to say the least,” Ransom said.

new highlighters

when you are a student, there is something special about breaking into a new package of highlighters. The old ones faded slowly, so much so that you barely even noticed until one day they just didn't light up the page the way they used to. So, you go out hunting for you favorite brand of highlightre, which is vastly superior to all other ones but somehow only makes it on 20% of the shelvs. When you finally find them and glide the felt-tip across a page for the first time, everything runs so smooth and the words jump off the page with a new-found glee that you actually enjoy highlighting so much, the next thing you know, you've decided that the whole page is extra important. Then you turn to the next page and reality hits that you still have 29 more pages to go, and today is only Thursday.

laundry & house cleaning

When we were kids, my mom always made us clean up our rooms before we went on vacation. For whatever reason our pleas of "but no one will even be here to see if it's messy" never seemed to sway her perspective. To this day I never end up leaving for a road trip at the time I planned to because I am stuck making my bed and putting my laundry away.

Come to think of it, when we were kids we never left on time either. My brother and I would sit in the fully packed car with a stack of Golden Books inbetween us, marking the border between his side and my side, waiting for what seemed like an eternity while our parents took care of whatever they were taking care of inside. As if the 8 hour drive to Mimi & Grandady's house wasn't enough to drive us into a crazed and agitated state, they had to make it an 8.5 hour trip by making us sit in a hot car that was parked in front of our house just waiting.

I also learned to do my own laundry at an early stage of life. It probably wasn't long after I was physically able to do my own laundry that I started getting annoyed by the fact that my dad was stealing all the good socks and grossed out by the idea that my brother and I were basically sharing tighty-whities. It's pretty gross to have skid-marks in your underwear. It's even grosser when they're someone else's skid marks.

I complained about the communal laundry idea, and of course my mother's natural reaction was "If you don't like it, do your own laundry." I don't think she realized how expensive of a proposition that would be, as I promptly turned all my clothes pink and grey and shrank everything at least two sizes. I've figured out how to keep things from shrinking, but I really can't say that I own any "white" socks or undershirts.

You Want It Clean? You Clean It!

By LISA BELKIN

KENDRA LEE would not go so far as to call herself a neat freak, though her husband does consider her a nut. Let's just say she can't leave on vacation until her countertops are polished and her carpets are vacuumed. "The thought of coming back to an unkempt house would ruin my entire trip," said Ms. Lee, an event planner from Hill City, S.D. For this she blames her mother, who planted her seeds of neatness early, actually using a white glove to look for dust in little Kendra's bedroom.

Diane Dobry, on the other hand, would not go so far as to use the word slob, but she notes that her marriage broke up in part because she and her spouse had different views of cleanliness, and she does use capital letters when she sends an e-mail message to say "I HATE housework, and do everything to avoid it." Ms. Dobry, currently working toward her Ph.D. at Teachers College at Columbia University, also blames her mother, a woman so meticulous that she once got out of bed while recuperating from surgery to clean the guest bathroom. "If my mother had lower standards, and let me do things myself, I might have learned how," the daughter said. "But I never learned how to do anything because she always did it for me."

. . .

A common thread through so many of these stories, though, is that of men doing what they want (Mr. Thompson wanting the house clean and simultaneously wanting to leave his dishes in the sink; Mr. Gussman wanting to do chores in the dark because during the day he is a competitive cyclist) and women doing what is left, a thread that still makes this conversation all about women.

What men want to do, they say, is most often a domestic version of something macho. Mr. Chethik enjoys the laundry, he said, not only because he gets to watch television while he folds, but because "it's basically working with heavy machinery: picking up big loads of stuff, moving them from one place to another, setting buzzers and timers and then hitting the on button."

That's why Michael Peck loves to vacuum. For the first few months of their marriage, his wife, Lori, did almost all the cleaning of their apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. ("He cooked while we were dating," Ms. Peck said. "He lured me in.") Back then, though, they had no dog and their vacuum was an ancient Hoover inherited from Ms. Peck's grandmother.

A year and a half ago they adopted a Jack Russell terrier, because they had been told the breed does not shed, and soon their apartment was covered with dog hair. Mr. Peck, a graphic designer, spent $400 on a bright yellow Dyson vacuum, and now a joy of his day is using it to suck their 700-square-foot apartment clean. "I'm not allowed to touch it," said Ms. Peck, who also works in advertising. "If I do, he comes home and looks so disappointed."

And does Mr. Peck vacuum properly? "However he does it, that's fine with me," she said.

That attitude — and the difficulty many women seem to have with it — is central to any conversation about housework. Yes, it is true that society still assumes this to be women's work. And yes, it is true that many men do all they can to avoid their share. But it is also true that many women are guilty of what sociologists call "gate keeping": building a fence around a territory, be it vacuuming or child care or grocery shopping, and defending it as theirs. They set the standards in that realm, and they set them high. Sometimes unrealistically so.

full article available at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/fashion/sundaystyles/09HOUSE.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

umbrellas

It's raining. I don't mind the rain so much, but I hate dragging around a big wet umbrella and I hate having to deal with a wet rain coat - so I usually go without when I can.


It was raining just a little bit yesterday when I went to work, and I was worried that it would rain harder later, so I finally broke down and decided to buy an umbrella - but low & behold there were no stands selling umbrellas at any of the metro stops I go to - wierd. I guess it was a sign, because the sun ended up comming out in the afternoon & it was a great day.

Spring Break

I remember anorexia being a big topic in highschool, but it really isn't something that I have heard a lot of recently. Maybe that is because of my age and demograpic, although from what I understand female law students and especially female lawyers in big firms, may be an "at risk" group. At any rate, there was an article in the NYT about it, springbreak, and blogs.

There is brief mention that blogs suporting anorexic behavior and other eating disorders by instituting "lowest caloric intake" games may be helpful as a support network for girls who have nowhere else to turn, which is pretty much like saying that a bar may provide a valuable support network for alcoholics who have nowhere else to drink.

Before Spring Break, the Anorexic Challenge

By ALEX WILLIAMS

I REALLY gotta start losing weight before spring break," a 15-year-old from Long Island wrote in her blog on Xanga.com, a social networking site. "Basically today I went 24 hours without food and then I ate green beans and a little baked ziti. Frankly I'm proud of myself, not to mention the 100 situps on the yoga ball and the 100 I'll do before sleep ... Yey for me."

. . .

Not all those discussing weight loss on the site fit the criteria of anorexics or identify themselves with the ana underground. Xanga is one of many meeting places on the Web for weight-related discussion rings. John Hiler, its chief executive, said in an e-mail message: "We have zero desire to host any 'pro-ana' groups. If users report them to us, we delete them from our system."

Still, some therapists suggest that pro-ana Web pages can have some value, serving as support groups for young anorexics, who feel they have no place else to turn.

. . .

"Every year spring break seems to get bigger and bigger," Dr. Maine said, adding that body-image pressure also rises. She said the expectation that you have to "party like a rock star and be over the top" also "includes looking like a rock star," that is, fashionably, even dangerously, skinny.

It's also an opportunity to show a little skin, and parade in front of the opposite sex.

"It's showoff time," said Eileen Adams, a psychologist and treatment specialist at Remuda Ranch, a Bible-based eating disorder center in Wickenburg, Ariz. "That puts a lot of pressure on young people."

And most young women are already feeling pressure, at least when it comes to body-image anxieties. Eating disorder associations say that about 86 percent of the approximately 10 million American girls and women — and one million boys and men — who suffer from an eating disorder reported the onset of their condition by 20.

The pressure has only become worse over the years, therapists said, as spring break has become more sexualized at beaches like South Padre Island, Tex., or Cancun or on MTV. String bikini and wet T-shirt contests make a simple weeklong break from teachers and exams look more like a Mardi Gras for the 18-to-21 set.

available at

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/fashion/sundaystyles/02BREAK.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

text messaging

First of all, I would like to say that although today is April 5th, and the state I live in likes to call itself a "southern" state, the windchill outside is 36 degrees - seriously. But I'm not bitter, I just ignore it and walk to school in a long sleeve tshirt freezing my balls off.

...Now back to our regularly scheduled program...

It is probably not a good idea to send text messages when you are wasted. Of course, if you are wasted, you probably don't realize that it is a bad idea to send text messages. This is an e-mail my buddy sent me:

i just checked my outgoing text messages from last night. this girl i met a few weeks ago sent me a text saying go gators. my reply was "I have a ten foot penis"

i dont think i'll be talking to her anytime soon

on the iPod:
Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
Chris Isaak, Heart Shaped World

pre-dyed Easter eggs

yep, you read that right. I was at the Harris Teeter the other night and they have rolled out their Easter goods - jelly beans, peeps, cadbury cream eggs, and the newest item - pre-dyed Easter eggs.

Seriously? Has the rest of your life gotten so hectic and out of control that you can't even sit down with your kids and make Easter eggs? Dying Easter eggs was great fun when I was a kid - the perfect kind of mess with newspaper all over the kitchen table, and the yellow dye quickly becoming green as I double dip eggs after re-wraping them with rubberbands trying to get that perfect checkerboard.

Rather than spending 5 bucks on some pre-dyed Easter eggs, you should figure out how much of your time 5 bucks can buy, and even if it is only 60 seconds, leave work 60 seconds early and spend time with your family.

on the iPod:
Green Day, American Idiot

losing an hour

Daylight WastingsTime is finaly over. Of course, that comes at the expense of one hour of our time as we all "sprang forward" some time in the early hours of Sunday morning. I commented to a friend that you don't actually lose an hour of sleep that night, because you just wake up an hour later - so you actually lose an hour of day on Sunday. She appropriately corrected me by pointing out that the hour would indeed come out of sleep time, because you have to stay up an hour later Sunday night to do everything you normally do. I guess that explains why I didn't get to bed until 2am last night.