Real Fans

I can't begin to explain to y'all how excited I was to write this post. I do my best writing when I feel like I have important stuff to say. Anyway, I'm driving back to my parents' apartment today and I'm listening to the Michael Kay Show after the Yankees' victory. Anyone who was watching could tell you how exciting it was, how they came back to win after being down 6 - 2 with two outs in the ninth inning and nobody on base. Solo home run, single, walk, single, single, wild pitch, and all of a sudden Alex Rodriguez can win the game with a single to the outfield. And then he hits a walk off home run and they win 8 - 6. Now for anyone who hasn't been paying attention for the past year and a half, if you were to ask any Yankee fan how they feel about Alex Rodriguez and his $25,000,000 per year salary, 90% of them will tell you that he's a scrub; for that much money he should hit 60 home runs and drive in 150, and hit .330. Anything less is inexcusable, especially in the playoffs, where that same percentage of Yankee fans will swear on their grandfather's season tickets that he's never done anything of value. Az basically, the guy was screwed; if he does well, that's what he's supposed to be doing and he's not worthy of praise, but if he sucks a fat one, then he gets booed out of town. Now, all of a sudden, he's the hottest athlete on the planet, and he can't help but hit a home run every day. Seriously, at the rate he's going, he's on pace to hit .351, with 116 home runs, 301 RBI, 197 runs scored, 231 hits, an on base percentage of .418, 12 stolen bases, and a .965 slugging percentage. Obviously, he won't be able to keep up with this torrid pace, but that's not the point. The point is, now that he's succeeding, you have all these Yankee fans coming out of the woodwork and saying things like "oh, I was always defending A-Rod, but none of you cared! I'm a real fan; I don't boo our own players." But where the hell were all of you last year when he got booed every time he got up to the plate? When you listened to the radio last year you never heard from any of his defenders, only from his attackers? How dare you all call yourself real Yankee fans! I can't say I'm ashamed because chas v'chalilah, I would never even attempt to convince anyone that I supported the Yankees. And you know what? This is why. The average fan couldn't give a crap about the players, because they simply don't know a damn thing. Like I said earlier, "Anything less is inexcusable, especially in the playoffs, where that same percentage of Yankee fans will swear on their grandfather's season tickets that he's never done anything of value." Those 90% have no idea that in his post-season career in 132 at-bats, he's hit .280 with 6 home runs, 16 RBI, 19 runs scored, 4 stolen bases, a .375 on base percentage, and a .485 slugging percentage. These are highly respectable numbers for such a small sample size. Wanna hear what else I hate? A guy called in to the Michael Kay Show saying that the Mets fans should also be embarrassed, because they did the same thing with Carlos Beltran in his first year, when he only hit 15 home runs and 79 RBI. To set the record straight, these two situations are completely, totally different. Carlos Beltran had essentially done nothing in his career except have a nice post-season the year before the Mets signed him. He stunk in his first year in New York, az he got booed. But Alex Rodriguez WAS THE FREAKIN MVP IN 2005!!!!! WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE THAT YOU CAN BOO HIM THE FOLLOWING YEAR?!!!!!! I'm about to call out my roommate, which isn't really fair, but I'll do it anyway. We're sitting in the palace watching baseball, and someone asked us what the most important statistic in baseball is, to which my roommate responded, "batting average." I almost had a seizure. I asked him what the difference is between a .280 hitter and a .320 hitter. You guys know what the difference is? Let me show you. Last year, both Garret Anderson and Carlos Guillen had 543 at-bats. For the average everyday player, this seems to be a fairly pedestrian amount. Garret Anderson hit .280, and Guillen hit .320. Want to know how many more hits Guillen had than Anderson? 22. 22! That's roughly one more hit every 7.5 games. That's roughly 3.5 more hits per month. How is .320 hall of fame material, and .280 isn't? All you fans out there should try to learn more about the game of baseball. Baseball is a dynamic sport that changes all the time. Each and every day, people are coming up with new ways of analyzing the game so that we can get a more complete understanding of how it works. Do yourselves a favor; go to baseballprospectus.com and look up some players. If you're really feeling frisky, sign up to be a member at baseball prospectus for a month so you can get access to players' PECOTA cards. Learn what VORP, WARP3, and FRAA mean. Baseball is a beautiful game, and it's a shame that people are missing out.

Navel Ring Follow-Up

Man, yesterday's post got some mixed reviews. I don't mean that I pulled a Don Imus and insulted people, and now my financial backers are threatening to pull their funds; I mean that people felt the need to put in their two cents about the issue. From what people have told me, and from various pieces of literature I've been given, I've come to the conclusion that body piercings are generally frowned upon for a variety of less-than-satisfactory reasons. As with most things about which I feel strongly, a variety of less-than-satisfactory reasons is good enough for me. As I've mentioned before, I certainly don't have the proper intellectual ammunition to defend any conclusion one way or the other, az I'm just going to let the issue lie. This certainly isn't the place to discuss halachic issues, and I'm certainly not the person to do said discussing. And just to clear things up, since I got a lot of feedback yesterday, a little too much for comfort if you ask me, whether or not a girl has a navel ring won't affect my decision to go out with her or not. Another words, you can completely disregard anything I might have said yesterday about navel rings, diamonds, and any combination of the words "super" and "hot," especially if they were all found in the same sentence. For those of you who have been dedicated readers since before the days when I moved all my posts onto facebook, and for those of you who have come to see the light over the past coupla weeks, I would like to refer you to my post entitled "Favorite of All Time" from December 14th, 2006. There I discussed the reasons for a player or team being your favorite, and I came up with this brilliance: "What would happen if those criteria stopped applying?...This is the same for any kind of love...There can't be a reason you love someone or something. You love your team just because." Another words, what I said about navel rings was superficial and not intended to be serious. Now that I've successfully bludgeoned that point into submission, let's move on to other things.

Since today was such a nice day (just to clarify for those who read this post at any point after Thursday, April 12th, 2007, it was a horribly gross, wet day. In the words of the immortal Guy Gavriel Kay in "The Summer Tree," "Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain." Someone name for me one more author who could get away with writing a sentence like that.), and since I had time to kill between interviews, I ended up walking from 42nd Street and Madison Avenue to Kosher Delight on 37th and Broadway for lunch, and then from there to Waverly Place and Broadway to investigate the selection of Scotches at the Warehouse. Now walking straight down Broadway through different parts of Manhattan is crazy cool; there are so many different neighborhoods to see. Sometimes it's hard to remember that the Broadway by 187th Street where I live is the same Broadway by 116th Street where I went to school, and the same Broadway by 72nd Street where I used to gorge myself on sushi on Mondays, and the same Broadway where I was today in the 30s and in the village, and the same Broadway by Wall Street where I had my second interview. It's just cool is all.

Anyway, since I can't really afford to spend much money these days, because my roommates would kill me, I was trying to get some liquid chametz as cheaply as possible. Az I'm standing in Warehouse down in the village examining their selection and I noticed not only their bottles of Finlaggan, which I grabbed immediately; it's the first time I've seen it in the USA, and I've been looking for it all over the place, but also their obscenely low price for Lagavulin 16, my favorite reasonably priced malt. Now they used to sell it for $59.99, which is the lowest price in the city, and it's even lower than the one I saw at the Duty Free shop on the Canadian border by Buffalo, NY on my way back from Toronto. Now, they lowered their price to $49.99. Anyway, I didn't buy any because that's way too much for me to spend right now, but I'm definitely storing away that info for later.

Yesterday, I went to pick up a friend from the airport, and on the way back we stopped off at Grille Point for some more chametz. While he was picking up the grub, I went over to Gifts Plus to pick up some A Capella CDs for sefira. Now my two favorite A Capella groups, Six13 and AKA Pella, each came out with new albums this year. Az I was playing some of the songs in my apartment, and one of my roommates said that the songs couldn't be A Capella since they sounded too much like real instruments. I assured him that no instruments were used on the CDs and suggested that he try to think about fancy sefira music in the same way as fancy sheitels. One can assume that the requirement for married women to cover their hair is not designed to enable women to wear attractive wigs, because that would take away from the law's original intent, which was to prevent married women from enticing men other than their husbands. Az this totally awesome A Capella music, while technically still halachically valid, is probably only following the letter of the law and not necessarily the spirit. Either way, I'm still gonna listen to it. If anyone wants to steal some of it from me, that's cool; that's why I'm here! Besides, I like having visitors at the palace. Wow, almost 1000 words; good for me.

Oh, and just in case some of you get uppity, I was merely referring to the most stringent of halachic practices when I was discussing the "requirements" for married women to cover their hair, and for people to refrain from listening to instrumental music during sefira. Az don't anyone think that I'm telling y'all what y'all should and shouldn't be doing. Geez, I really gotta be careful what I say; I wouldn't want to insult the wrong people.

More Road Rage

For the last (past?) week, we celebrated the holiday of freedom, the holiday of redemption. Now, I have trouble with this holiday; I find that it has no redeeming values. Hehe, that's my favorite Passover pun, but seriously. I understand that holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur should be tough, because we're fighting for our souls, but a happy one like Passover shouldn't be a burden. Honestly, I hate cleaning. I know you're all surprised to hear such an admission from me, but it's true. Also there is bread. I love bread in all of its forms: rye, white, bagel, whole wheat, brick oven topped with mozzarella and marinara, fermented and brewed with hops, oat, spelt, video games, you name it. Additionally, I think the Matzah might have caused irreversible jaw damage this year. I won't get into the rest of the reasons, but you get the idea.

Az there I am, on the way over to H&H Bagels West in an effort to end the Matzah madness, and I run into this moron. Going southbound on Broadway between 82nd street and 81st street, the right two lanes were closed off for construction. This didn't bother me; it was pretty late, but what did bother me was that said moron put his girlfriend/wife/concubine into a taxi, which was blocking the only open lane. Then he made her get out so he could give her another hug and kiss, and all the while I'm honking away, expressing to my friend how I couldn't believe what was happening. Then the cab and the car ahead of me finally sped away through the green light, and guess what. THAT VERY SAME MORON STUCK HIS HAND OUT AND MADE ME WAIT WHILE HE CROSSED THE STREET ON MY GREEN LIGHT! Sorry for the caps, but it had to be done. Imagine the chutzpah of this guy. I was honestly frothing at the mouth. The good news is that he went into H&H right ahead of me, az I had the perfect opportunity to tell him off. It's a crying shame that I'm the least confrontational person I know, az I didn't really tell him off. I know you're all upset with me, but I think I'd rather have y'all think I'm a wuss than have y'all think I was capable of cursing a guy out. Anyway, put "being a moron" up on the list of my pet peeves.

This morning, I asked a friend about her holiday, and she said it was pretty boring and she played a lot of Rummikub. Az I asked her how she pronounced the word "Rummikub." Is it "Rummy-kuhb" or "Rummy-kyoob?" Apparently she ascribes to the former while I ascribe to the latter. I should take a poll. If anyone has any thoughts, please don't hesitate to share.

Oh man, I never add to a post after it's been published, but someone just brought up a fascinating, and potentially important topic. Why don't frum girls have piercings in places other than their ears? Could be for the same reason that tattoos aren't allowed, but for the moment, let's assume that body piercings aren't assur. I think navel rings are super hot. If I got set up with a girl who had a navel ring I'd bring the diamond with me on the first date. Okay, now I'll go ahead and republish this bad boy.

Road Rage

Az today I drove back to my apartment from the East Side so that I could catch up on the shows I missed over the holiday. I ended up not watching them yet, but that's another story. Anyway, I was driving northbound on York avenue, and I got stopped at a red light behind a guy that was signaling a left turn. I figured, "okay, great. He'll turn right away when the light turns green, and I'll be able to drive ahead." But, no, he decides to wait until all the cars going in the opposite direction go before he turns. This is one of the most important unwritten rules of driving. If you're turning against traffic, you better be the first one to go when that light turns green. Keep this in mind when you're driving southbound on Broadway and you want to make a left onto 178th street.

Once that debacle was over, the drive up the FDR should have been a breeze, right? Right?! Wrong! Just as I was getting to the end of the ride, I was preparing to exit from the left lane onto Amsterdam avenue by 179th street. Sometimes the cars are backed up there, but it's never much of a problem. This time, there was one of those street pavers going up the ramp, and it was actually PAVING THE ROAD! Seriously, it's a one lane road and that machine was actually inching its way towards Amsterdam avenue. At least have the common decency to close the road so that the cars don't get stuck behind! It would cause far fewer problems if everyone were forced to go under the apartments via the Trans-Manhattan Expressway and come out on the other side. It's just not right.

On the topic of important lessons we need to impart to the ignorant, I decided that the single most useful rule to teach to children is the "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey" rule. If you're unfamiliar with this rule, please ask me in person, because it might look embarrassing were anyone to post up their ignorance for all to behold. And boy, wouldn't I like to be holding your ignorance right now, especially if your ignorance is super-hot. Mmkay, anyway, this rule is uber-important, az please teach it to your children.

OOO Donuts!

As my friend so aptly reminded me this week, I've only written three posts in March. I realize that I've been slacking, but it's because I'm not working! While I was at work I wanted to futz around, so I had a reason to post all the time. But now that I'm not working, I have all sorts of other ways to waste time, like by watching movies and playing fantasy baseball. Okay, obviously I'd still be doing fantasy baseball at work, but still. Anywho, for all my loyal readers, I humbly beseech your forgiveness on this, the day of my daughter's wedding, uh, I mean at this holiday season (See "Family Guy," season two, episode 16, "There's Something About Paulie"). I'll try to do better. It's my new year's(?) resolution.

Az, as everyone knows, I'm not only anal about grammar, I'm also really good with standardized grammar tests. Hold on, lemme break my arm patting myself on the back for a sec. Ah, there we go. Anyway, so I got a perfect score on the SATII Writing exam, and even back in high school, they made everyone in the entire grade take the same grammar test, and I got the highest score with a 98.5. What happened to the other point and a half, you ask? I still claim the teacher made a stnank. Whatever, who cares? Ehenyway, today I received a request for to bring, and I quote, "wine or grape juice and fruit?" for a Shabbos meal. Az even though I completely understood the request, I had to be the consummate mathematician/grammarian and responded, "I assume that's (wine or grape juice) and fruit." Another words, in order to determine exactly what was requested of me, I reverted to the old school Order of Operations. I thought that was sufficiently nerdy of me. I was quite pleased.

Az I was recently having a conversation with a certain acronymably delightful young lady about donuts. Just as an aside, during the course of this conversation, she asked me what kind of donut I would be if I was one, az I replied that I would be a glazed cream filled: all smooth and shiny on the outside, and all sugary sweetness on the inside. Ehehenyway, I just finished a book called "Beyond Numeracy," by John Allen Paulos. Basically it's just a collection of short essays on various topics in mathematics, ranging from Calculus to humor. In the entry on topology, he explains that a coffee cup is topologically equivalent to a donut. Another words, without tearing the donut, you could theoretically stretch it to resemble a coffee cup. I thought that was a nice way of explaining a relatively esoteric topic. Just to reinforce my coolty, allow me to explain the difficulty I had with this book. In one of the entries, he discusses Fermat's Last Theorem as being one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in mathematics. I immediately went to check the copyright date on the book, and to my immense chagrin, I saw that the book was published in 1991, a full three years before Fermat's Last Theorem was proved by Andrew Wiles. I don't think I can read a math book containing modern topics that was written before 1994. I just find it weird is all, unsettling... Wow, that's two references to the same part of the same Strong Bad e-mail two posts in a row; I'm starting to get repetitious. I'll try to mix it up next time; I'm a bit out of practice. Yep, that was two sentences in a row with semi-colons.

By The Numbers

Remember a few posts ago when I mentioned I was having difficulties with my computer keyboard? Well, my new keyboard came in the mail today and I just installed it. Yay! Not only does this one actually work 100% of the time, but it also matches the rest of the computer; it's black! And anyone who knows me knows how I feel about matching. Plus, the buttons on Christina here press oh so smoothly, reminiscent of the HCHPAC, a reference which exactly one of my readers will understand. I'll explain that in a minute.

Az in an effort to break in Christina, I went to latimes.com to do a Su Doku. Now, for those of you who think that people who are good with numbers are better at Su Doku than other random folks, you're wrong. All those numbers in that big square (that guy. Unsettling! See SB e-mail #114, "The Facts") might as well be letters because you don't need to perform any operations on them. You just need to use each number between one and nine once in each row and column. Another words, they might as well be the letters between A and I, or for that matter the letters between K and S, or for that matter, the symbols: !, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, and (.

Anyway, while I was doing that Su Doku, I was using the new number pad on my keyboard, and it occurred to me that number pads on keyboards are different that number pads on touch-tone telephones and on Automatic Teller Machines. On keyboards the 1, 2, and 3 buttons are on the bottom while the 7, 8, and 9 are on the top. But on telephones it's the exact opposite. If anyone has any idea why that is, please run it through my idiot filter "Edga Jr." (See SB e-mail #127, "Long Pants") before submitting it in any comments, and certainly if you wish to share your thoughts with me in person.

Okay fine, I'll tell the HCHPAC story, not like it'll improve anyone's opinion of me. Back when I was at CTY (The Center for Talented Youth. Yes, I'm a bloomin' genius. I know.) the summer after 10th grade, I took a three week course in high school level Number Theory. Now my professors, Timmer and Quimby, were pretty crazy guys, and they realized that we were studying Mathematics over the summer instead of playing sports like normal children, az they tried to keep class exciting by doing various skits and making lots of jokes. Anyway, my roommate loves to shower. Anyway, they liked to have each student come up to the blackboard to solve problems all the time, and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE wanted to go up to solve the problem when the rights to the HCHPAC were at stake. Nothing draws on the blackboard as smoothly as the Highly Coveted Hot Pink Artist's Chalk. So smooth...
There, happy now? That's all it is with you people; take take take. Ah well, I couldn't resist.

A Coupla Random Tidbits

Firstly, I've never gotten as many google messages from different people as I have today. Why? Because today is Pi Day. Yes, that's right, March, 14th, 3/14 is Pi Day. 'Member Pi? That thing you learned about in elementary school that's defined as the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter? Well, since the decimal expansion of Pi comes out to 3.14 accurate to two decimal places, it was determined that 3/14 would be Pi Day. Someone asked me today how many digits I know by heart, so in case anyone else is curious I know these by heart: 3.14159265358979323. Yay, me. Remember my post "Technical Names" where I discussed quarks having a quantifiable characteristic called strangeness? I mentioned that my strangeness would probably be at least e^(i*Pi)+1. That's that crazy cat Pi showing up in bizarre places again. Btw, e^(i*Pi)+1 = 0, for all you curious folks out there. Mmkay, enough nerdiness for today.

Az, the urbandictionary.com word of the day a few days ago was "pre-pull." Here's the definition: "The act of pulling the car door handle at the moment the driver unlocks the door, rendering the attempt fruitless, and resulting in minor frustration and/or embarrassment." Seriously, this happens all the freakin' time! First people just try to open the car door, and then I reach to unlock all the doors, and they're still a-pullin'! Okay, that was my rant against pre-pullers.

Az, I'm watching Lost at the Ar-Aitch-Ar's place and she pulls out this generic soda for us to have. Apparently, it came highly recommended from her friend. Now, let me tell you, nothing quenches my thirst quite like a room-temperature, store brand, diet black cherry soda. So to spice it up a little bit, she added in ice cubes. But I felt bad drinking the soda until the ice melted, because her ice-cube maker has duck shapes in it. Az, I waited until those cute little ducks no longer resembled their flying, feathered brethren. That made me feel better about myself, especially since I gorged myself on chicken earlier in the day. Moving right along...

A coupla nights ago I applied to a job online, and they asked you to take an online typing test and have the results sent to them. They wanted to be sure that their applicants could type more than 55 words per minute with at least 95% accuracy. Guess who rocked that test! Yeah, that's right, 106 words per minute, 97% accuracy. Okay, now I'll look for a real job. Anyone has any leads on any entry-level finance jobs, lemme know. Or if y'all know any high school kids who need help in math I can do that too. I charge $80 an hour. :)

Some Good Ol' Stories

There are a coupla stories that I like to tell because they're somewhat cutesy wootsey(?) and appropriate for all ages. I think I'll even add in a new one because I found it hilarious. Mmkay, here goes:

1. As many of you know, I have a subscription to Blockbuster online, which allows me to rent a monstrous mountain of movies. I even get to rent movies that I otherwise probably wouldn't see, like "Brokeback Mountain." One Monday night a coupla months ago, I was engrossed in said film, and a friend of mine IMed me asking me if I wanted to join him to watch Monday Night Football. I told him I was busy watching Brokeback and I would rather do that. Obviously he won't let me hear the end of it. A few weeks later he said something like, "hey, remember that time I asked you if you wanted to do something really manly with me and you decided to watch 'Brokeback' instead?" Never gonna live it down.

2. Another one of my friends likes to remind me of one of the first jokes I ever made to her. I forget what the context was, but apparently she was wearing a jean skirt and a jean jacket. I said something along the lines of "do you have any idea how many poor denims they had to kill to make that outfit?" The highest of high comedy. Onto the new story!

3. Last night we went to our new building to have a meeting with their co-op management board in their package room. On the door to the package room hangs a list of all the apartments in the building with three check boxes next to each. The boxes are there to indicate what kind of pests reside in the corresponding apartment. The boxes read "rodents," "insects," and "other." Now, all of the apartments that have pests have the "insects" box checked, except for one. That apartment had the "other" box checked, and on the line next to the "other" box is written a single word: "monsters." They nearly had to call the board to tell them to come another night because I was in absolutely no condition to meet with anyone for the next 10-15 minutes. Great times all around in the new building. Should bode well for things to come.

S'more Quotes that I Really Like

'Member a coupla posts ago, I transcribed that conversation from "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang?" Well I put that up as an away message along with a similar conversation from later in the movie. Harry tries to turn the tables on Gay Perry by correcting his grammar the same way that Harmony corrected his earlier on:

Perry: Go. Sleep badly. Any questions, hesitate to call.
Harry: Bad.
Perry: Excuse me?
Harry: Sleep bad. Otherwise it makes it seem like the mechanism that allows you to sleep...
Perry: What, f**khead? Badly's an adverb. Who taught you grammar? Get out. Vanish.

Another words, if any of you try to get above yourselves and correct my grammar, you'll probably screw up, az don't even bother.

So one of my friends saw the quote in my away message, and he said it reminded him of a scene from the movie "With Honors." The following exchange takes place between Joe Pesci's character and a professor:

Simon: Which door do I leave from?
Professor Pitcannon: At Harvard we don't end our sentences with prepositions.
Simon: Well in that case, which door do I leave from, asshole?

I immediately put that up as another away message. Oh, it's a mere coincidence that both of those quotes have inappropriate language. As many of you know, I am in staunch opposition to filthy language of any kind, especially here. This is a family progrum. Anyway, I was inspired to put up these quotes because of a conversation I was having with a certain super heroine about apple pie. As everyone knows, I make the best apple pie this side of the East River, and I've recently been able to increase my output by purchasing an apple peeler/corer/slicer. I said that it was safer for me to use one of those than to use a knife because I'm no longer allowed around sharp things. This reminded me of a quip from "Whose Line is it Anyway" involving Wayne Brady, Drew Carey and the inimitable Ryan Stiles:

Drew: I'm giving you 1000 points for the zippers on your pants. What's that about?
Wayne: It's my tribute to Michael (Jackson)!
Drew: Hey, we should all get zippers on our pants if Wayne's gonna have 'em.
Ryan: They don't let me around zippers.

If any of you haven't seen the show, check out some episodes on peekvid.com. It's finally back up!

Now That's Just Irresponsible

At the end of last night's post, I carelessly mentioned that I was copying all of my posts onto facebook because I was jealous of my friend's readership, but clearly this merits further discussion. I mentioned that it wasn't fair of me to enlighten only my few devoted readers, so facebook provides a platform where many, many others will have access to my musings. It's all about the advertising. There's also a minute chance that someone will offer me a writing job somewhere, like espn.com. Even Bill Simmons had humble beginnings. Meanwhile, facebook.com has this feature that will allow you to update your blog here on Blogger, and facebook will automatically receive the data feed and print it on there too. It will also post up all of your existing posts. I just tried to do this, and facebook only received 25 of the posts, and the software that gets the feed from Blogger can't find the others. This is gonna be an enormous waste of time, but I guess I'll just have to manually copy and paste each entry onto facebook. Can't nobody say Strong Bad never did nothing for the peoples. Now it is my intention to sit down and play video games for several hours (See SB e-mail #64, "English Paper"). I just took a nap so I'm in no condition to be coming up with deep philosophical reasons for posting up on facebook, but I'll work on it later.

Just as a side point, I had endless trouble typing that paragraph, partially because I had no idea where I was going with it, but also because I ran into some keyboard issues last night. For whatever reason the ergonomic keyboard I bought a couple of years ago didn't come with a USB plug, and my one year old computer didn't come with a ps/2 port, az I was forced to buy one of those USB to ps/2 adapters. Anyway, sometimes the connection between the keyboard and CPU resets itself and the keys get stuck. Last night I got so frustrated with it, I just unplugged Kiki (yes, I just named my keyboard) and plugged in my standard keyboard, not realizing that once you go ergonomic you never go back. Az now I'm trying to reacquaint myself with Kiki; I'll be fine in an hour or two. Maybe I should just switch to Dvorak and be done with it.

And now, a word on friendship. Many of you saw me leave a party at around 1:30 am with little or no explanation. There are some times when you have to just drop whatever you're doing when a friend calls you and tells you to meet him/her somewhere, even when he/she doesn't tell you why. And no, I'm not writing this so people can pat me on the back and say "what a good friend you are." I'm writing this so that all of you out there that were ever in the same position realize how honored you should be to receive such a phone call. It's a fantastic feeling to know that someone considers you to be such a close friend that they would ask you to do something like that, no questions asked.

***Spoiler Warning*** (Tee-hee, I feel like one of those people who has nothing better to do than write video game walkthroughs so that other players don't have to do any work.)

This is gonna sound uber-cheesy, but on a recent episode of "Grey's Anatomy," Christina decides that she needs to tell Meredith that she and Dr. Burke are engaged before she tells anyone else. Why? Because if she ever murdered someone, Meredith would be the person she would call to help her drag the body across the floor.

***End Spoiler***

Do all of you have a friend like that?

Early Week Update

It's only Monday, but it's already been a productive week. My life potentially changed twice today. This morning I received a call from a recruiter who's trying to get me a job in investment banking. He asked me how much I'm making at my current position (he thought I was still working), and when I told him, this was his response, verbatim: "Dude, you need to get outta there." Tell me about it. So he said I really should get into one of the training progrums (see SB e-mail #s 113, 120, and 167, entitled "pizzaz," "radio," and "the movies" respectively) at a big bank; it would change my life. I told him "yes" and "yeah" so many times, I think he thought I was obsessive/compulsive. And just now, in preparation for tomorrow morning's interview at the ISE, I finally took the plunge and learned how to use Pivot Tables in Microsoft Excel. Man, if any of you out there don't know how to do these, make it a top priority. Now all (=2) the spreadsheets I have on my computer can become all kinds of fancy, those being my non-existent spreadsheet containing data on all the girls I've dated, and the spreadsheet with the list of the scotches I'm gonna buy when I become rich (and maybe I'll have a seat by the eastern wall!). Ooh, I also found a pair of glasses to buy. They're really hot; I might have to really set aside some sticks before Shabbos to ward off the girls. Az, I clearly made several positive strides in improving my career situation today, and it's only Monday! Additionally I got to hang out with some top quality people, eat some top quality Hot Dog / Laffa, and watch some top quality Jack Bauer action. It's amazing how even when life is really stinky, it's still only slightly less awesome than it usually is. Also, I got jealous of my friend, so I decided it was time to have my blog visible on my facebook.com page. News of my brilliance needs to get out; it's only fair to the amei ha'aretz out there. I'll discuss this in detail shortly, but not now; I just received word that there's tons of free sushi available. In my current financial state, it would be criminal of me not to partake.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Today I watched "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," a highly underrated comedy/action/mystery starring the underrated Robert Downey Jr. In a scene early in the movie, we have the following exchange between Downey Jr.'s character and his love interest:

Harry: I feel badly...
Harmony: Bad.
Harry: Bad? Sorry?
Harmony: You feel bad.
Harry: Bad?
Harmony: "Badly" is an adverb. So to say you feel badly would be saying that the mechanism which allows you to feel is broken.

What a brilliant discussion! Nonetheless, Harry ends up getting the girl. Is that the secret to how it's done? I didn't know correcting grammar was an aphrodisiac. All I need to do is start correcting every girl's grammar and they'll be throwing themselves at my feet! (assuming I give them a thorough scrubbing beforehand.) Especially if I looked like Robert Downey Jr.... wait, is he cute? (did you notice the period for the "junior" abbreviation followed by the ellipsis? Yes, that's right, there were four dots there.) I don't think so. I'm more of a Jude Law man, or Josh Holloway. Speaking of which, my buddy mentioned his top five female celebrities to me last week, az I think I need to come up with my own top five. I'll work on that this week. One thing that definitely won't be on my top five? Dry T-shirt contests (absolutely no H2O! See SB e-mail #133, Bottom 10). Hmm, I might have set a new record in parentheses usage; that was my third pair. Sounds like an ancient Greek hero, doesn't it? And Parentheses smote the Kerrek, and all was laid to burnination! (See SB e-mail #62, Interview). Okay, that's just about enough of that. Monster.com here I come!

Weird Dreams

Last night I had a really bizarre dream. Now, the main focus of the dream is one I've had a bunch of times before, but let's start with the other stuff in there. Basically, the dream took place in my old high school. Apparently, they had turned the top few floors into strangely constructed dorms so that out-of-towners could go to school there. That was so not important. The crux of the dream was that at one point, one of my front teeth chipped off, and soon after that, one of my molars fell out. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had dreams about my teeth falling out. Sometimes they all just fall out at once, at other times they just start to shatter into a million pieces.

In the Wikipedia article on recurring dreams, "losing teeth or the ability to speak" is one of the five most common ones. Az, I just googled "Teeth dreams" and the first hit was an article on dreammoods.com. Dreams about losing teeth can mean many things:
1. Anxiety about my appearance. I know I can afford to lose a few pounds, but overall I don't think I'm upset with the way I look. Girls don't care overly much about that anyway, as I hear it told.
2. Embarrassment in a particular situation. I think there are very few people out there who care less than I do about embarrassing myself. Az I don't think that's it either.
3. A sense of powerlessness. I think this one makes the most sense. There are so many things I'm unable to do now because I don't have a job. But even so, I've had this dream at least a dozen times over the past few years, and I certainly didn't have a sense of powerlessness for all that time, az let's just see what else the website says, just for kicks.
4. A woman in menopause. Umm... no.
5. Malnutrition. Umm... probably not.

Schmutter, get a job.

East Sizide and Some Other Jazz

Az last Sunday while I was skiing, I had quite the ocular mishap. Instead of leaving my glasses in the car I put them in my jacket pocket, and obviously they split right down the middle when I fell in the snow. And thus ended the blue Oakley/Captain Transition Lenses era. Az now I need a new pair, az on Thursday, I invited my buddy on an exciting eye-glasses excursion. It's been a while since we had an opportunity to spread cheer around the neighborhood whilst running an errand, az it was time. Since my parents are staunch supporters of exactly one optician/glasses store, I brought my friend over to said store on the east side. He needed his glasses' screws tightened anyway, az he wasn't coming only for moral support and for the spreading of said cheer, but also for utilitarian purposes. Forget the fact that I couldn't find any glasses I liked which fit; that's not the purpose of this post. The point is that whenever we left the car or whenever we left any store, he had absolutely no idea where we were and which direction we had to go; he was completely and utterly lost. Now, whenever I'm in my 'hood, I always assume that people know where they're going because I do, but then I remember that no one goes to the east side. Ever. There's just no reason for any of my friends to go there; there are plenty of restaurants on the west side and tons of other stuff to do. Learn about your city, people! Sewiously!

Az today I returned from Toronto, and during the long, cold, snowy trip, my beautiful anthracite gray car got all frosty white. Even though I knew it would just get dirty again in a hurry, I still needed to give Erin a bath, az I bought her a car wash. A couple of hours before that though, as I hear it told, two of my friends were walking out of the store and saw a beautiful gray car that was all frosty white. One nudged the other, pointing at said car, and stated flatly, "man, sucks for that guy," at which point I lowered my window and said hi to them. Oh, those two tricksters, always in and out of prison. They didn't mean it, Erin. Don't worry, the joke's on them, they don't even have cars. They're just jealous of your sublime beauty.

A couple of posts ago, I gave a little insight into how the Coswell cogs of my brain operate, az now I will give another example. Az tonight, I went with some friends to an all-you-can-eat sushi event at a restaurant on the upper west side. On the way down there, one of them mentioned that even though she wasn't going to eat a lot, she was still gonna order the buffet (pronounced boo-fay). Obviously I made fun of her for incorrectly pronouncing the word "buffet," noting that the word is not pronounced the same was as Lisa Kudrow's character on Friends' name is pronounced. Now at that point I made the connection between the name "Buffay" and the name "Bouvier." A couple of days earlier, when I was on that glasses errand with my other friend, the name Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis came up. I'm not shy to admit that I had no idea that Mr. Onassis was her last husband, but the point is that he said that she was born Jacqueline Bouvier. According to Wikipedia, her full name is Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. When he told me that, I automatically recalled the episode of The Simpsons, where Marge's sister Selma gets asked if she would marry Apu, to which she responded that she didn't want to be Selma Bouvier Terwilliger McClure Nahasapeema-whatever. I need to lay off the doobies. Now that all of these ideas are off my chest, several things can happen: A. One of my loyal readers can stop complaining that I haven't posted in a while, B. I can look online for jobs, and C. I can drink myself into oblivion. Hameivin Yavin.

dnL

Az, I just left my friend's place, and as I was hitting the button for the lobby in his elevator I noticed something odd. Apparently the lobby button was broken so they needed to replace it, however they were out of "L"s. I kid you not, in the place of the "L" button they put an upside-down "7." Now, normally I would give the superintendent a pat on the head, a tuna-flavored treat, and some sage advice (see SB e-mail #130, "Do Over"), but in this case, I can only thank him for adding more hilarity to the situation. Once I noticed the upside-down "7" I examined it more closely, and then I realized that you could turn the button around to make it a normal "7." Obviously, anyone smart enough to read will know that to get to the 7th floor you need to hit the "7" above the "5," but still. By the way, as an aside, "yeah, but still," is the best comeback in the English language according to Bill Simmons. So, on my way out of the building, while I was contemplating this 7-L phenomenon, I was reminded of the dnL era. Remember dnL? The upside-down 7up? It came in a green bottle with a green label, and the website listed on the wrapper was www.dnL.com. I wonder if the site is still up? Lemme check. Aha! Interesting. Normally, I would say that typing in www.dnL.com redirects you to the regular www.7up.com website, but it doesn't; the address in the navigation bar never changes to www.7up.com, it just stays as www.dnL.com even though it's the exact same website. Reminiscing about old sodas brings back some memories. Like, remember Crystal Pepsi? I remember it tasting almost exactly like plain ol' Pepsi, but that might just be me. Also, for some reason I remember the commercials for Cherry Cola Slice and Apple Slice. I need to investigate these to see if they ever actually existed. I'll do it tomorrow. And yes, I mean tomorrow, Friday, it's still 11:53 pm. Let's make these last seven minutes productive. Happy last seven minutes of Nirvana Day!

Restaurant Depot

On Sunday, I went with a couple of friends to this place in Teterboro, New Jersey, called Restaurant Depot. This is one of the most amazing places I've ever seen. The last time I was in a building that interesting was a few weeks ago, when I went to a baby furniture warehouse in Piscataway. I'll return to that trip shortly. Anywho, Restaurant Depot is like a grocery/drug store, that has everything in industrial sizes. You know when you go to the store to buy sugar and the packages of Domino sugar say like "Five Pounder" on them? Well, they had the "25 Pounders" at Restaurant Depot. My favorite moment was when I found a massive egg-whisk. I decided I must have it, at least in pictorial form. Check it out on facebook.com. But they don't just have giant-sized versions of normal things, they also have all that other stuff you see in restaurants and wonder where they got them, like signs for the restroom and no-smoking signs. It really was the highest of high comedy.

Now onto my previous trip to a large, flat building in Jersey. A couple of weeks ago I went with my buddy to get baby furniture from the Munire warehouse in Piscataway. He knew I was not working, and we have been known to spread cheer around the neighborhood whilst running errands. There were several hilarious moments, including our almost right-turn onto South Randolphville Road. Our turn was actually on New England Avenue, and once we realized our almost-error, it was inevitable that we start cracking jokes about the South Randolphville Patriots, and perhaps turning down said road on the way back to "see how she rides." Anyway, the reason we went all the way to the warehouse, was that my friend's father knows a guy who knows a guy in the baby furniture business, and got him a special deal. So we're in the warehouse causing a ruckus and discussing various ways we could use 99,000 square feet of warehouse space. We concluded that we could have four football games going on simultaneously without anyone bumping into anyone else. Then we could play video games on our 1,000 inch plasma screen. One day...

Lighters, Shavers and Pens, Oh My!

Az I was making small talk with the RHR this morning, and she mentioned that she got some new pens. Az I wanted to know if they were fancy pens or just the plain ol' Bics. What a bizarre company! When you look up "Bic" on Google, the top hit is for bicworld.com, and the description is as follows. Ahem. "Leading manufacturer of stationery products, lighters and shavers." Now, from my experience, when companies make more than one product, they're usually related in some way, like Sony makes TVs and DVD players, and other types of electronic equipment. But what's the connection between pens, lighters, and shavers? They're all made of plastic, and they all fit in your pocket, but still. You might as well say they all have the letter "e" in them. Speaking of companies that make a wide variety of products, what's the deal with White Rose. Is there anything they don't make? Nothing says "yummy!" like a tall glass of White Rose Orange Juice in the am. Okay, time to watch some more Hoiz. "You're risking the patient's life!"

Stupid Gifts and How My Mind Works

Az I was at my friend's place last night, and sitting on her table she has a post-it pad shaped like her first initial? Now, what on earth is the point of that? Yes, it's cute the first couple of times, but who wants to have a wall-full of pink letters near her desk? And furthermore, let's say your first initial is a "B," "D," "O," "P," "Q," or "R." You'll be writing your note on the paper and all of a sudden you'll come to a hole on the sheet. Do you continue writing on the other side of the hole, or do you continue writing on the next line? Give me a plain ol' yellow post-it any day. Oh, and I promised she could be a potential hero for giving me the idea for this post. Moving right along.

I was in synagogue yesterday morning praying the silent prayer, when I started to examine the stained glass windows at the front of the room. By the way, I'm recounting my thoughts here to give you all an insight into how my brain works. Anyway, earlier, one of the people sitting nearby mentioned how something on one of the windows evokes the old Milwaukee Brewers' logo, the one with the "m" and "b" made to look like a baseball glove. Az while I was praying I saw the logo look-alike, and I remembered an old ESPN.com article, which discussed potential nicknames for the newer baseball parks. Since the Milwaukee franchise is the Brewers, and brewers make beer, the sponsor for their ballpark is Miller. In the ESPN.com article, they jokingly referred to Miller Park as "The Keg." Brilliant. As soon as I thought of "The Keg," I immediately remembered one of the older Strong Bad e-mails, #44 entitled "Lures & Jigs." When Coach Z asks Strong Bad which lure he's using to attract the fish, Bad responds that he's mostly been using this one: "Hey fish! Hey fiish! I'm gonna, I'm gonna recommend that you guys come up here in the boat. We've got a, uh, a keg! Of worms! And, uh...phytoplankton!" Anyway, all of these thoughts were going through my head during the silent prayer. It's no wonder G-d is too busy laughing at me to actually grant any of my requests. That's okay, He'll come through for me in the end; He always does.

Peyton Manning and The Super Bowl

There are so many moments from yesterday that I'll remember for longer than necessary, especially considering that my team wasn't playing. Just as a preface, allow me to recall the first season of Peyton Manning's career. In an earlier post I mentioned the one football team with whom I lived and died, the 1998 Jets. The Jets started that season with Glen Foley as their quarterback, lost the opener 36-30 against the 49ers in overtime; a game in which he threw for 450 yards. They lost the next game before Foley went down with an injury. Next, they brought in the aging Vinny Testaverde who won the next two games before Foley returned. Foley was just awful in the next game, so Testaverde was handed the reins of a 2-3 team destined for mediocrity. Needless to say, Testaverde led those New York Jets to a 10-1 finish before they finally lost to the Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship game. The one game they lost during their last eleven was to a lowly 4-12 Indianapolis Colts team led by rookie quarterback Peyton Manning. The Jets led 21-13 at halftime largely because Aaron Glenn returned a missed field goal 104 yards from his own end zone at the end of the first half. When Manning led his team to a second half comeback, even though his team was already eliminated from playoff contention, I thought to myself "geez, I really really don't want to have to play this guy twice every year for the next ten years." It's not often that you get to watch a legend in the making. Anyway, after so many failures despite a Hall of Fame career, Peyton Manning is finally going to the Super Bowl. Even though I'm impartial about the success of the Colts, I found myself rooting for them yesterday, mostly because I hate the Patriots, but also because Manning has this charisma about him, which is essential to the NFL, and if he had lost his career would have been over, figuratively speaking. After the Colts took the lead with a minute left, and Tom Brady trotted onto the field with his sights set on another game-winning drive, you could just tell what was going on inside Manning's head, "Uh oh, here he comes. Not again." The cameras panned to Manning sitting on the sidelines with his head in his hands as Brady led his team to the Colts' 45 yard line. I kept pointing at him and telling my friend, "look at him sitting there; he's a mess." But really, I was a mess. Regardless of the fact that I had money on the Patriots, I still would have been steamed had Brady led his team into the end zone. When Marlon Jackson intercepted Tom Brady with 16 seconds left, icing the game, I was relieved. Peyton Manning was finally going to the Super Bowl where he would join the Chicago Bears who won earlier in the day. (Just as a side point, the NFC Championship trophy is called the George Halas trophy, and the current owners of the Chicago Bears are the McCaskey family. Virginia McCaskey, formerly Virginia Halas is George Halas's daughter. Can you imagine being handed a trophy named in memory of your father, a pioneer in the desegregation of football; the man who's name is attached to the street on which the football Hall of Fame is found in Canton, Ohio?) I don't think you realize what that means. Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts are going to Miami to play against the Chicago Bears for the Vince Lombardi trophy. Talk about the game's greatest star finally playing on the biggest stage in American sports, with 75,000,000 people watching. It didn't really hit me this morning how emotional I was about the whole business. On Mike and Mike in the Morning on ESPN radio, they replayed Jackson's interception announced by the Colts' radio broadcaster shouting, "...throws it undernea-INTERCEPTED BY MARLON JACKSON, MARLON'S GOT IT! WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!" I remembered what I loved about football, what it means to play in the Super Bowl, and how much I want the Jets to get there someday soon. I started thinking about my good buddy who's a huge Bears fan, and how excited he must be to see his team play for the championship. I remember what a wreck I was during the baseball playoffs this year, but if I had to wait two weeks before my team played in the one game that would decide everything, I really think I would be utterly incapacitated for the entire duration. I can't wait.

ACPJrB Redux

Please allow myself to correct...umm...myself. I drove back the Heights today...again...via Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard at about 5:00, and I realized that during evening rush hour they switch the light sequence to be favorable going uptown. This is excellent; it's quite clearly the most cleverly constructed street in the history of New York City. However, my driving experience this afternoon fell quite short of euphoric. Here's why: There are certain reasons why there is so much traffic in New York. Some of it is because of double-parking, which really can't be helped, so that doesn't really bother me, unless it's those gypsy cabs waiting around to get a fare. Much of it is due to uncaring drivers. Most drivers don't care how much trouble they cause to other drivers as long as they get where they're going as quickly as possible. This is my biggest driving pet-peeve: If you're going to make a turn from the left or right lane, please please please signal your turn in advance. Don't let me get right behind you with the intention of driving straight ahead and then put on your signal at the last second. Not only will I have to wait until the cars going in the other direction let you turn, but also it's exceedingly difficult to switch lanes from a complete stop. Nothing about driving bothers me more than this. It's for this reason that my trip up memory lane, I mean ACPJrB today, took twice as long as it should have. Drivers beware, lest my road rage consume ye all.

Blogorrhea

Tuesday's urbandictionary.com word of the day: blogorrhea. Definition: To write a [blog] entry just for the sake of posting an entry, not because you have done anything interesting today.

That's not to say that I don't have anything interesting to say, I just thought it was a fun word. Anyway, over that past two days I've had to drive uptown to Washington Heights from the upper east side twice. Both times driving on the highway would have been poorly planned routes, so instead I pulled the ole' Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard routine. The "R" in "routine" stands for RRRRRRONG! you raving racketeer of recondite routes! (See SB e-mail #54, Morning Routine) Apparently, depending on the time of day, the sequence of traffic lights changes! That's right! Even though it's a two-way street, the light sequence works in your favor if you are driving downtown in the morning. At other times of day the lights work like every other two-way street, either all green or all red. (Disclaimer: This next statement could be viewed as being racist. I do these things to attract more readers.) This is the kind of brilliance I expect in higher-class neighborhoods like York Avenue or Central Park West, but not for a relatively unknown street existing only between 110th and 155th streets. But I paid the price for my racism. This morning I headed back to the heights along ACPJB only to realize, to my immense chagrin, that I got caught in the wrong sequence. Whereas last night I only hit two lights from 125th to 155th, I hit a light every five blocks this morning. This is not a mistake I intend to repeat; it was a lesson well learned.

24 Continued

Okay, I caught up on the first two episodes. It has the usual business, Jack somehow is able to completely recover from two years of torture and a recent stabbing and save the wrong guy from getting killed. Once again, if everyone just listened to Jack the show would be called "12." What's cool is there's an FBI agent whom we're not sure we like who's played by the same dude who played Cyril O'Reilly on Oz. Az, tonight we're back to the usual ritual, all-you-can-eat sushi at Eden Wok followed by 24. Should be good times all around. Lemme know if you want in. Constance does, do you?

Loaners and 24

Az since my car is still in the shop, I've been driving a loaner car around for the past week. It's great; I can basically do whatever I want with it until I have to give it back. I have no problem treating the engine like a tavern wench. I get the cheapest gas, I accelerate with no regard for the car's whining, etc. I should damage my car more often so I can get these loaners.
Anyway, tonight I was at a wedding so I missed the season premiere of 24. It actually causes me physical pain to know that some people have watched the first two episodes while I have not. I need my dose of Jack Bauer or else I might, like, turn not straight or something. I'm gonna spend the next two hours catching up, and then I'll get back to y'all.

Rock Bottom

Well, things are pretty stinky right now, but I won't break my own rule by sharing information from my personal life. Instead, let's explore the exciting word of Things-I-can-do-until-I-get-a-new-job. Oh, and the only money I'm allowed to spend meanwhile is for food and my car. So, without further adieu, onto the list!:

1. Finally sit down and write the great fantasy novel: This is something I have wanted to do for a long time. Hey, if a 15 year old kid can write "Eragon" then I should be able to do at least as well, no?

2. Play Madden NFL '07 and Gran Turismo 4. It's a switch from my normal genre, but they should occupy me for a few weeks. Let's see, which teams should I pick for my Madden season? San Diego, Carolina, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and of course, San Diego, I mean New York.

3. Read lots of books. This isn't really a good idea, because after I finish "Eragon" and "Eldest" I'm gonna have to go back to Terry Goodkind, which means I'll probably finish rereading them all before the last one comes out.

4. Learn how to solve a 5 x 5 x 5 Rubik's Cube. I sorta learned how a couple of years ago, but I never practiced it enough to learn it by heart, so I can go ahead and do that now. Great party trick, that.

5. Work out. Well, the least I can do is start eating healthier and maybe go jogging every day. If I can fix my ipod it would be great.

Well, if anyone is around on days I'm not interviewing, let me know and we can play.

Once and For All

Do do do, dusting off the cobwebs, couple of tumbleweeds, aaanndd... we're back. Rorry for the bear bit. (For "rorry," refer to Jetson, Astro. And by bear bit, I mean that I am sorry for the big paws, erm, pause.) Anyway, I figured I'd just turn over the ol' engine just to keep the wheels of this well-oiled machine a-tranglin'. I don't really have anything important to say, but since I'm one-dimensional, and I like to go out of my way to appear even smarter than I actually am, I'm going to jot down the Doomsday Calendar method so that people don't keep asking me how it's done. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my brilliance (read: for those of you who have never eaten a Shabbat meal with me), one of my many talents is the ability to determine the day of the week for any date. I can usually figure this out in roughly five seconds. Pay close attention; here's how it works:

1. This is called the Doomsday Calendar method, so for our purposes, "Doomsday" is defined as the last day of February in any given calendar year, be it the 28th or 29th. The first step is to determine what day of the week the Doomsday is for the year in question. This requires some memorization: The Doomsday for every century year, e.g. 400, 1900, 3000, can only be Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday. For argument's sake, let's use the year 1900. The Doomsday for 1900 is Wednesday. Going backwards in centuries, the Doomsday for 1800 is Friday, for 1700 it's Sunday, for 1600 it's Tuesday, and for 1500 it's back to Wednesday. The cycle continues like this, with those four days in exactly that order as you go backwards in time.

2. Now we must determine the Doomsday for a specific year in that century. Here's how we do it. Firstly, we know that there are 365 days in a non-leap year. Just to use some mathematical terminology for a moment, when you divide 365 by seven you get 52 with a remainder of 1. Or, in math-talk: 365 modulo 7 = 1. Another words, the year is exactly 52 weeks and one day long, az the same calendar date next year will be exactly one day of the week later. For example, if the Doomsday of 1900 is Wednesday, then the Doomsday for 1901 is Thursday. Obviously, in a leap year you would gain two days, so 1902 is Friday, 1903 is Saturday, and 1904 is Monday. Good.

3. But let's say you wanted to figure out the Doomsday for my birth year, 1982. It's extremely tedious to have to add 82 days plus 20 leap years onto the Wednesday from 1900. Az, in order to make it easier, we divide everything by twelve. Why twelve you ask? Listen closely: in twelve years you would gain one day for each of the twelve years plus three additional days for the three leap years contained in those twelve years. Az in twelve years you actually gain 15 days, which is really just two weeks and one day, which for our purposes is just one weekday. Just like tomorrow is Thursday, two weeks and one day from today is also Thursday. For example, the Doomsday for the year 1972, is just six days after the Doomsday for 1900, because 72 divided by twelve is six. So the Doomsday for 1972 is six days after Wednesday, or just Tuesday.

4. Now we need to deal with the remainders, because not all years are divisible by twelve. Let's continue using 1982. To determine the Doomsday for the year 1982, we need to divide 82 by twelve and take note of the remainder. Az 82 divided by twelve is six with a remainder of ten (82 mod 12 = 10). Now, for the ten remaining years we need to add ten more days, and in those ten years there are two leap years, so we need to add two more days. To sum up: for 1982 we add SIX days plus TEN days plus TWO days (Six because 82/12 = 6, 10 because it's the remainder, and 2 because there are 2 leap years in 10 years). Now, six plus ten plus two equals 18. Az to determine the Doomsday for the year 1982, we must add 18 days to the Doomsday of 1900, which is Wednesday. Az the Doomsday for 1982 is 18 days after Wednesday, or just Sunday. Great, that's the hard part.

5. Now that we know the Doomsday for our year, we need to determine the day of the week for any other date in that year. Here's how we do it: all you need to do is remember certain key dates. There are many easy-to-remember dates throughout the year that are the same day of the week as the Doomsday: 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, and 12/12 are all the same day of the week as the last day of February. Additionally, for the odd months: 5/9, 9/5, 7/11 and 11/7. Finally, July 4th and Halloween are also the same day as the Doomsday. For example, if the Doomsday is Sunday, then April 9th is Friday, because it's five days after 4/4. November 25th is Thursday, because it's two weeks and four days after 11/7. Great, we're done.

Just to leave you with an arbitrary example, let's see what day of the week the Declaration of Independence was signed:

1. The Doomsday for 1700 is Sunday.
2. 76 divided by twelve is six remainder four, so you add six plus four plus one, or eleven days to Sunday, so the Doomsday for 1776 is Thursday.
3. July 4th is the same day of the week as February 29th 1776, so America declared its independence on a Thursday.

If anyone has any questions, fire them over; I'll be sure to correct your spelling and grammar, I mean answer them.

Sorry, One Last Thing

I know I said I finished Bill Simmons's book yesterday, which is true, but at the time I wrote those words yesterday I actually still had a few pages left. Az this is really going to be the final word. While discussing Boston's signing of Josh Beckett, he quotes Jack McKeon, "this guy has got the guts of a burglar." Then Simmons says in his own words, "I don't even know what that means, but I'm excited." What a fantastic nickname! Allen Iverson is "The Answer," Karl Malone is "The Mailman," Gary Carter is "The Kid," and now Josh Beckett can be "The Burglar." I love it for a couple of reasons. a) The word "burglar" is an extemely funny word. The "rgl" construction makes for high comedy. More on funny words in a minute. b) I always associate the word "burglar" with the Hamburglar from the McDonald's family. Also, Bilbo Baggins is commonly referred to as a burglar by Gandalf and the dwarves in "The Hobbit." Az this goes back to the nickname post. I still haven't come up with anything for myself, but "The Burglar" is a really good one. I'm gonna keep working on it.

Now onto the inherently funny word buisness (not misspelled, see SBe-mail #104, Theme Park). Most inherently funny words have some sort of inappropriate overtone or at least sound like they do. Examples of such words are: derriere, masticate, jiggery-pokery, thespian, and hormone. Other ones just sound funny because of the letters, like: tomfoolery, kerfuffle, kumquat, fisticuffs, and callipygian (If you look up "callipygian" you'll see that it means "having beautifully proportioned buttocks" as in "the quest for the callipygian ideal." Ladies, get to work.) I'm investigating some websites to find other funny words. Here's what else I got: cromulent, bonkers, crapulence, gubernatorial, phloem, polywog, platypus, whirligig, hootenanny, brouhaha, malarky, smarmy, fulcrum, nincompoop, bamboozle, cheese, penal, barnacle, garbanzo, rutabaga, doppelganger, fork, egg, duty, trousers, fondle, squeegee, flibbertigibbet, sasafras, gerbil, doohickey, syphylis, ointment, flan, and noodle. If anyone has any comments about this endless enumeration of entertaining expressions, feel free to add to the list. Until next time, help control the pet population. Have your pet spayed or neutered. Heh, add "neuter" to the list.

Random Thoughts of The Day

So after a grueling nine days, I finally finished Bill Simmons's book. My final thoughts are as follows: During the afterword, Bill mentions that it was a great feeling when he was standing in Barnes and Noble, and someone picked up his book to buy. I think I want to feel that at some point. To think that someday, someone might actually spend money to read something I wrote. Cherish these days my friends. One day I might start charging $9.95 per month for access to my musings.

So, I was doing the crossword puzzle today, and one of the clues was something like "friends with Tinky-Winky." Now I rarely cheat at the crossword by looking something up online, but I knew we were talking Teletubbies, and I really wanted to remember the other three (Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po). If I ever meet a purple creature named Tinky-Winky, I'm demanding a hug. Oh, if anyone wants to offer professional help in exchange for tutoring in math, let me know. ASAP.

So yesterday was just an awful day. Before I continue with that train of thought, I'm noticing that I start paragraphs with the word "so." All the time. Not only that, but I'm also typing a few sentence fragments today. You're gonna have to let those fragments slide. The "so" thing is valid; it was just something I noticed. I think I'm going to replace the word "so" with the word "az," in homage to a great man, one of my heroes. Az yesterday was just an awful day. Aside from a catastrophic, collective brain-fart by 3/4 of my fantasy football team, there were also a bunch of little things, which drove me up the wall. Ever try to take public trans on a sunday? It's the worst feeling in the world to JUST miss the subway, because you know you're going to have to wait another 17-29 minutes for the next one. Twice. Reason number two: Garbledina (See SBe-mail #114, The Facts). Anyway, the day was just unpleasant. But it's amazing how a word here, or a joke there, or an IM mixed in that can make everything alright again. At the end of the day, it's just money, or it's just a girl, or it's just a smashed up car, or it's just an extra 17-29 minutes. Things will work out; they always do.

Az I signed up for urbandictionary.com word of the day a week or two ago, and the word today was "pre-walk." A pre-walker is someone who positions himself or herself on the subway platform so that he or she can get off the subway in the optimal place to exit the destination station (Ooh, that's like conjunction junction except not at all!). The listing claimed that this phenomenon is especially true of the New York subway system and its riders. I do this; I'm definitely a cool cool guy. This can also be evidenced by the fact that a friend quoted me on her faceblog (read: facebook note). Not only am I cool because a cool girl quoted me, but also the quote was very funny. "Just call me Captain Transition-Lenses." Yep, definitely a cool cool guy.

This weekend I visited my Alma Mater. Now, my friend claims that I'm still a household name there (I even got a shoutout during a speech), but I think that's totally false. Either way, I learned that I could still throw my weight around over there. I can still drink them all under the table, and I can say whatever I want to whomever I want. What are they going to do, expel me? What's gonna happen, I'll freak out the 17 year old first-year girls who didn't go to Israel? They'll get over it. It's a great feeling to know that you absolutely OWNED a place for a year or two.

Ok, az that's all for today. Until next time, happy Nigeran Republic Day.

The Big One

Continuing my on-going series of commentary/reactions to Bill Simmons' book "Now I Can Die in Peace," I want to discuss two issues. When Bill proceeds to rehash his feelings during the 1986 playoffs, he mentions that everyone has a team from their teenage years with whom they lived and died. They can remember every pitch, every emotion, every bittersweet tear. For Bill it was the 1986 team that lost arguably the greatest World Series of all time to the New York Mets. Now, I was too young to know what was going on; I was only four, and I'm glad. I don't think I would appreciate baseball as much as I do now if my team had won during my formative years. Anyway, for Bill it was the 1986 Red Sox; for me it was the 1999 Mets. For the second straight year, the Mets, who were in good position to make the playoffs as the wild-card team had to endure a seven game losing streak at the end of September. In 1998 the streak finished us off, but in 1999, we still had a chance to at least tie for the wild-card spot if we could win two out of three on the the last weekend of the season. Anyway, the Mets did, and were forced to play the Cincinnati Reds in a one game playoff, the winner advancing to the playoffs. Al Leiter pitched his best game as a Met and they advanced to face the Arizona Diamondbacks. Two of the four games of that series took place on the Sabbath, so I couldn't watch them, but here's what I remember. On that saturday afternoon, my friend and I walked across the Queensboro Bridge to pass the time. I was wearing my Mets jersey, of course, and just as we were returning to my apartment building, a gentleman on a bicycle callously told us that the Mets had won and were advancing to the NLCS. Little did I know what was in store for me on SportsCenter that night. I got to see Todd Pratt clinch the series in the tenth inning with one of the greatest home runs in team history. Next stop: Atlanta, a veritable gehinom for the Mets over the last decade. There is not much to say about the first three games of that series. My hatred for the Joneses was at an all time high. No matter who was pitching you couldn't get the guys out. I think Chipper had like a .500 OBP for that series. Anyway, I was at the movies with my girlfriend for most of game four. I certainly don't remember what movie it was, but I do remember the yellow radio I had with me. (At this point my brother would insert a clever rejoinder like "still not married, huh?") When John Olerud's bouncer deflected off Rafael Furcal's glove to score the winning run, we almost had to leave the theater. I don't even need to write more than two words to describe my feelings about game five: "Grand Single." I don't think I need to write more than two words about game six either: "Kenny Rogers." Yes, the same Kenny Rogers who looked like he was a flame-throwing 24 year old in the World Series this year. When he walked Andruw Jones to force in the winning run in the ninth inning I was in utter despair. This was my team: Fonzie, Olerud, Rey, Al, Robin, Turk, Mikey. They were like my family; they were at my dinner table every night. Those were good days, innocent days. Geez, that was only seven years ago.

Anyway, the other issue I wanted to discuss was winning the big one. Even in his Red Sox book, Bill prints his article from when the Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2001. He describes his feelings as his team raised the Vince Lombardi trophy after Adam Vinatieri won the Super Bowl with the greatest kick of all time. That got me thinking, how would I react when my team wins the big one. Since I became a coherent, rational human being, the only time a team I supported won a championship was in 1994 when the Rangers beat the Canucks for the Stanley Cup. Now that doesn't count, because even at the time I could probably only name half a dozen of the players. The Giants have won, and the Yankees have won, but neither the Mets nor the Jets have earned the right to be called World Champs over the past 20 years. I don't know how I will react, but at this point I try to compare my relationship with my teams to my dating career. As I'm so fond of saying, you can strike out every time; you only need to hit one home run. Bill says that it's worth it. Keep supporting your team because eventually, they will win the big one. That euphoric feeling you get when your team reaches the pinnacle of its sport is worth all the heartache. So I'm going to write the Jets off for this year, and the Mets obviously broke my heart in October, but at least I still have the four most magical words in sports: "there's always next year."

Favorite of All Time

So this post will be similar to the last post in that both are inspired by Bill Simmons's book, "Now I Can Die in Peace," and both have to do with how we view athletes. (On a side note, while I was at Random McRandom's apartment for dinner on friday night, I skimmed through a bit of the aforementioned "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves," which had been minding its own business on her living room table. I noticed the chapter about apostrophes, and concluded that I didn't realize how many people screw them up. Notice above where I use the word "Simmons's." Since "Simmons" is a proper noun, you must put an apostrophe-S to make it possessive. If, however, I wanted to refer to the Sports Guy and Gal as a unit, I would pluralize them and say "the Simmonses." If I wanted to make them possessive, I would have to write "the Simmonses's house." I know it's absurd, but that's the way it is. Oh, and Random McRandom, at whose apartment I ate on friday night, and I are inextricably linked since we both have a blog. You can check her out, I mean check hers out at http://mabakankan.blogspot.com. I haven't read it yet, but I'll try.) In the second part of the book, Simmons recounts a story about how his buddy Gus, who had Tom Seaver spend time at his house, got to catch for him while Tom was considering making a comeback with the Mets in the early '90s. Bill wants us to understand what was going through his friend Gus's mind while this was going down: "Pick your favorite athlete of all time, then imagine that entire sequence of events somehow unfolding with you and that athlete." Now, I'm trying to imagine being in that situation, but who would the athlete be? I'm trying to create a set of rules for selecting a favorite athlete, and I think I've been pretty thorough.
Disclaimer: Instead or typing "he or she" and "him or her" and "his or her" all the time, I'm just going to use the masculine pronouns. I fully approve of women engaging in sports, and everyone is free to select Sheryl Swoopes or Annika Sorenstam or Danica Patrick for their favorite athlete. Ok, here goes:

1. The athlete must have played for your favorite team for at least a few years, or at the very least made a large impact on your team over a shorter period of time. For example, Arizona Diamondbacks fans are allowed to select Randy Johnson as their favorite player because even though he was there for a short time, he helped them win the World Series.
2. You must have liked the athlete from the beginning of his career. He did not necessarily need to start his career on your team, but you must have liked the athlete even before he arrived to play for you. For example, Mets fans are allowed to select Carlos Beltran, but only if they followed his career in Kansas City from its early stages. Bandwagon jumpers will not be tolerated here.
3. This rule applies not only to favorite players, but also to favorite teams. You cannot choose your favorite player based on anything tangible. You can't say "Albert Pujols is my favorite player because he hits 500 foot home runs," or "Orel Hershiser was my favorite player becase he pitched 59.2 consecutive scoreless innings," or "the Mets are my favorite team because my house is geographically closer to Shea Stadium than to Yankee Stadium." What would happen if those criteria stopped applying? What if you moved to the Bronx? What if Hershiser's record was stricken because of a technicality? This is the same for any kind of love. Saying, "I love my wife because she is a smokin' hottie," is foolish for obvious reasons. There can't be a reason you love someone or something. You love your team just because. You can't explain it; it's a sensation you feel deep inside your very soul. It's not even a consious decision you can make. You know you love a team when everything they do affects you. It's the ones you love who can cause you the most pain. To explain this point, allow me to quote Simmons from later on in the book: "Twenty minutes after the Yankees eliminated the Red Sox, I called my father to make sure he was still alive. And that's not even a joke. I wanted to make sure Dad wasn't dead. That's what it feels like to be a Sox fan. You make phone calls thinking to yourself, 'Hopefully, my dad picks up, because there's at least a five percent chance that the Red Sox just killed him.'" You live and die by your favorite players and your favorite teams; you can't help it.

With these thoughts in mind, I need to decide who my favorite player is. I can't come up with a list of players I like and then narrow it down; I need to look deep within myself and let my emotions decide for me. I realize that my mind already knows who it is, but it's keeping its thoughts to itself for the time being. It might be Wayne Chrebet, who left his heart out on the field every time he put on the green and white, and gave me a concussion every time he got one. It might be David Wright, who looks like he won the lottery every time he strolls out of the dugout, because he knows he gets to play baseball for a living. He might not even be on any sports radar yet, because he's only 11 years old. It might not even be fair for me to have a favorite player yet, because I'm only 24, and G-d willing I have 60 more years of watching sports ahead of me. For now, I'll continue to watch the players I like, and hopefully the moment will come when I know who my sports hero is.

Potential Hero

Ok, I'm probably exaggerating about his being a potential hero, but Ken Tremendous is definitely a man after my own heart. Since their website firejoemorgan.com is so outrageously awesome, I've been looking through their archives. I was reading the comments for one of their posts when I came across this gem from Ken:
'KT:
Actually, I didn't write any of the above except for "No idea who wrote this, but it's something:"

Rest assured, I would never, EVER, use the word "less" in place of the word "fewer."'

If anyone can't figure out why he is a man after my own heart, please go give yourself Tommy John surgery or something. And then read my blog.

Heroes

So, yesterday I started reading "Now I Can Die in Peace" by Bill Simmons, aka. The Sports Guy. I can foresee that I will make numerous references to this book for the next week or two, because Bill is hilarious, and I love sports. Had I been writing a blog when I read "Moneyball," the same thing would have happened. I mean, all I could talk about while I was reading moneyball was Scott Hatteberg (sole member of the most potent lineup in baseball), Kevin Youkilis (the Greek God of Walks), and Jason Giambi. I tried not to talk about Scott Kazmir a lot because every time he was mentioned in the book, and subsequently on SportsCenter, I died a little inside. I guess this also happened while I was reading a couple of books about e, Pi, and the Golden Ratio, but I won't regale you with those tales of suspense because my purpose here is not to put you to sleep. Although, there was this time I was discussing the theory of Special Relativity as described in Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe," and someone actually asked me to explain it to her again, but that was a statistical anomaly.
Anyway, moving right along, all I've read thusfar of Simmons's book is the prologue, and already it's begun to have an impact on my life. On page 14, Bill explains how he almost became a Mets fan in 1985 because he moved to southern Connecticut as a result of his parents' divorce, the Red Sox had just given away his childhood hero (Fred Lynn), and the Mets had a solid core of young talent (Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden, etc.). This innocent statement got me thinking about who my childhood heroes were, and who my heroes are today. It's only natural for a boy to embrace his favorite sports players as heroes, especially because they seemed to truly play for love of the game and not for the exorbitant contracts for which they play today. When I became sports fan at the age of five in 1987, it was also natural for me to embrace the players on my team as my heroes. But looking back, would it be fair for me to call Darryl Strawberry my childhood hero? When my parents set my bedtime at 8:00, I was always praying that the Mets would get a runner on base in the first inning, so Darryl would get an at-bat before 8:00. 1988 was a magical year for the Mets, who finished with the best record in the National League and lost an epic seven game series to Orel Hershiser and the Los Angeles Dogders, who then went on to defeat the Oakland Athletics in the World Series. When the Dodgers exploded for six runs to start the seventh game of that series, I really cried. The only other time I can remember crying because of a sports-related event was in 1999 when my New York Jets lost the AFC championship game to the eventual Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos. But back to my point; who were these misfits who captured my heart in the mid/late 80s? Were they my childhood heroes? What is a hero? According to Dictionary.com, a hero is "a person of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his/her brave deeds and noble qualities." In what way is an athlete a hero? I guess you could call Lance Armstrong a hero for overcoming incredible odds and inspiring millions of people across the globe. But Darryl Strawberry was certainly no hero. He was a tall, thin man who was gifted with the ability to swing a wooden stick well. Was Fred Lynn a hero? Was Babe Ruth a hero? Is Barry Bonds a hero? I want to think of someone whom I can embrace as a hero, someone who embodies all the characteristics I admire. First, I need to determine what these characteristics are. I think the biggest indicator of someone with heroic qualities is someone who's approval I would strive to seek. I need to consider this carefully. If anyone wants to describe a hero of theirs, just so I could know some sample responses, that would be terrific.

Oh, and as a side note, in order to maintain the grammatical integrity of my site, my brother added another comment to the Thanksgiving post, so that below the post it said "2 comments." So, if anyone wants to respond to my Heroes post, please put two up there if you're the first. Gracias.

1 Comments

So my friend was reading my ridiculous post, and as he was scrolling down the page he noticed that below the "Observing Thanksgiving" post was printed "1 Comments." I was so excited about this for a few reasons. Firstly, it strengthens my claim that when it comes to grammar, the blogger people have absolutely no idea what's flying. Another words, when I sue them for removing a space each time I put a period, the only way they'll get off is with an insanity plea. I mean, anyone who can't program their websites to correct such a simple error as "1 Comments" must have a few gears loose. Secondly it provides an extremely smooth segue into talking about one of my favorite Strong Bad e-mails, which makes fun of the very same thing. Now, I mentioned e-mail #122 earlier when I was expounding on the "another words" phenomenon, but this e-mail has so much more good stuff in it. Anyway, when SB begins to describe his "dreamail" in accordance with Danny's request, the dream begins with the lappy turning on and happily declaring in her sexy, robotic voice: "Good morning, Strong Bad. You're looking prooty hot. You have one unread messages." According to hrwiki.org, this is a reference to older computer programs and answering machines that would use the word "messages" as a default and would not correct it when there was only one. Another words, the people at blogger are LAZY. The programmers, g-get some real programmers. G-get some real gloves. (See Halloween Costumes '03) There all sorts of other fun things in that e-mail. The "dreamail" he would like to receive reads as follows: "Dear Mssr. Eleganté, You left your pocketwatch in the hot tub. When will you be back to retrieve it? -128 Hot Katies" And during his response he comes up with several gems, such as: "I will triumphantly/abundantly return to the chateau for my ruby-encrusted pocketwatch. I have plans tonight, however, but I will, furthermore, heretofore, be back on morrow next. Please tell Adelaide that the poached eggs were tremendous." I really like the "triumphantly/abundantly" and "furthermore, heretofore" business. The rhyming/archaic language makes me feel all jangly. (See SB e-mail #130, "Do Over")

The poached eggs being tremendous also reminds me of the main writer for firejoemorgan.com, who calls himself Ken Tremendous. This has all the makings of the perfect nickname; it's short, self-explanatory, has alliterative qualities in that "Ken" rhymes with "men," and the word "tremendous" happens to be quite humorous. So, in homage to Ken, and in an effort to cement my legacy in the blog world, I decided that I need to come up with a nickname for myself, so I don't have to keep referring to myself as "Schmutter." So, if anyone has any ideas, feel free to send them in. Only serious responses will be considered. Another words, "Noah Croatoan," or some other such nonsense will only get a cursory glance. That was actually pretty impressive that I was able to come up with an adjective that sounded like my name so quickly. If anyone wants to know what "Croatoan" is, a link is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Island

So last night, I watched the movie "Match Point," starring the sublime Scarlett Johannson. At one point, one of the characters asked another if he was cross. Apparently, words I thought were used only in fantasy books are also used by the British. I'm not sure how I feel about that. If all fantasy books were written using British style English, then maybe when I finally get around to starting my fantasy novel, I'll write using American English and it's treasury of idioms. I'll need to think about it. Meanwhile, I'll be back in my doghouse crying myself to sleep. Happy Thai Father's Day.

More Fun with Words

I'm sorry I haven't posted for a while. I've been entertaining myself at work with this fantastic website, which is right up my alley. It has 15 pages worth of interesting facts about words. The reason I'm posting about it now is that I'm up to the page where it discusses "uncommon double letters," which is directly related to my last post. Just a couple of tidbits before I go into excruciating detail on uncommon double letters. That last sentence is a fragment, but I'm going to leave it. Anyway, onto the tidbits:
-CONSERVATIONALISTS/CONVERSATIONALISTS is an example of a long transposal (words which are anagrams of each other). The longest "well-mixed" transposals (no more than three consecutive letters in common) are BASIPARACHROMATIN/MARSIPOBRANCHIATA (17 letters) and THERMONASTICALLY/HEMATOCRYSTALLIN (16 letters).
That's pretty cool. What else:
- Craig Kasper says GORAN IVANESEVIC (a top tennis player) may be the longest name of a relatively famous person that alternates consonants and vowels.
-In English, ignoring spaces, the longest palindrome in Morse code is INTRANSIGENCE (.. -. - .-. .- -. ... .. --. . -. -.-. .). If spaces are not ignored, the longest word is FOOTSTOOL (..-. --- --- - ... - --- --- .-..)
- Some common words which change from one to three syllables upon the addition of just one letter are: ARE/AREA, CAME/CAMEO, LIEN/ALIEN, RODE/RODEO, ROME/ROMEO, SMILE/SIMILE.
-At a dam, there is a flooddoor. The controls for the flooddoor are in the flooddoorroom. Let's say the the boss at the dam calls a meeting in the flooddoorroom. The people who go to this meeting are FLOODDOORROOMMEETINGGOERS. And James Lehmann suggests: In the flooddoorroom, there is a book, which explains how to use the controls for the flooddoor, a FLOODDOORROOMBOOK, in which all four double-O's are pronounced differently.
-SYZYGY and ZYZZYVA, when written in cursive, have five letters in a row which descend below the line. SYZYGY is also the shortest word with three Y's.
-CWM (a glacial hollow on a hillside) has the rare W as a vowel, as does CRWTH (a type of stringed instrument). Both words are in MWCD10. They are pronounced "koom" and "krooth" (rhyming with room and truth).

Ok, those were pretty cool. If my coolty was ever in doubt, I believe any of those doubts have been sufficiently squushed. Oh, btw, according to urbandictionary.com, the word "coolty" has an extremely inappropriate definition. For all those interested, the definition can be found here: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=coolty
Since this is a family website, I can't state the definition here. Just know that when I used the word "coolty" I really mean the word "coolness." I just use "coolty" because in Strong Bad e-mail #115, when describing what would happen when his time capsule is found, he states: "Ooh! Then I'd put some dry ice in there so when they open it up it looks all smoky and steamy and it says a-like "froosh" when they first open it. There'll be no doubt about my coolty." Anyway, back to the uncommon double letters!
I don't understand the order they use on the website, but here goes:
HH appears in words such as withhold and bathhouse, but only in such compound words.
UU appears in words such as continuum, vacuum, and perpetuum; these are all very similar.
We already mentioned the VVs last time.
WW also only appears in compound words such as arrowwood and powwow.
All the other ones are either trivial, proper names, or extremely obscure such as Yablonovvy and jghaxxaq.
There are also several triple letters, but the only one that is not obscure is SSS, like in goddessship or countessship. Okay, that's all I got for now, but if I see some more cool jazz on that website I'll let you know. Until next time, it's back to the doghouse with me. Hameivin yavin.

Funny Word Things And Something Else

So you know how some letters should never be doubled in words? Like in the word "vacuum." There should never be two Us next to each other, because you would want to pronounce both of them, like you would want to say "vakyoo-um," because that's what it looks like. I was trying to find some words/letters, which should not exist. Here's what I found. Going back to U for a second, I found the word "squush." This is pronounced "skwush," with the U pronounced like the "oo" in the word "book." "Squush" is a fantastic word, up there with "floppy." So this whole thing got started when my friend was describing his father's lack of business sense. I recommended he use the word "savvy" instead. Two Vs should never be together like that. I didn't find any other great examples with "vv," but I'm on the lookout for other letters. "Bazaar" is a pretty good one. It's too difficult to find many others because when you search for things like "cc" online it shows you trivial words like "success" and "accentuate," while you want to find words like "soccer." Anyway, it was a fun exercise while it lasted. For some reason, while I was looking up the "aa" words and filtering through foolishness like "aardvark" and "salaam," the word "gaol" popped into my head as a terrific word. Now "gaol" is just a British way of spelling "jail," but they are pronounced the same; they are homophones. Okay, enough of this masochistic, maniacal mayhem.
I have to apologize. In one of my recent posts I mentioned some of the hilarity from this year's homestarrunner halloween costume commentary. Somehow I neglected to note the picture of the young woman wearing a hooded sweatshirt in a The Cheat pattern. Strong Bad's comments are as follows: "Hey, it's The Cheat's hot mom...dressed up as... The Cheat's hot mom! Is she giving out frozen margar-a-Cheat-as again? Ah, The Cheat's hot mom. Always in and out of prison." For some reason I didn't find that mind-bogglingly hysterical until a week or two later. Now I find myself referring to all sorts of people as being "always in and out of prison," even newborn babies and other G-d-fearing folk. I sometimes go one step further and mention conjugal visits, but you don't need to know about that. Okay, so until next time, have a happy Albanian Liberation Day!

Anonymous Responders

Now I know there aren't many of you out there who read my blog, but for those of you who do, know this: this is MY blog, not mine and everyone else's. If anyone has any comments or questions or concerns about anything I write, at least have the common decency to sign your name on your comments so that I know to whom I may direct my responses and/or farts. One of you out there is the Hermione Granger of blog commentators, i.e. an insufferable know-it-all. If you want to comment but you don't want to write your name, at least make your comments funny so that you add some value. Otherwise, get your own blog. I hear there's this thing called the internet, which has an amount of memory negligibly smaller than infinite, so there should be PLENTY of space for you to make fun of me. Hopefully this is the angriest I'll ever get on here; this is supposed to be a calming exercise; my therapist says so.

Observing Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, THE true American Holiday. Regardless of the reason for the holiday, Thanksgiving has emerged as a holiday different from every other one in this country. It is not a religious holiday like Christmas, which has become more Americanized than intended. It is not a day observed in respect of various American groups like President's Day or Veterans Day. It is not a "Hallmark Holiday," which exists primarily for commercial purposes, like Valentine's Day or Mother's Day. It is one of the only American holidays that commemorates a particular event in our history, the other one being Independence Day. There are those that would claim that July 4th is a more American holiday than Thanksgiving, and I'm glad that there are those who would claim such, because it provides a smooth segue into my real purpose for this post.
How does one observe Independence Day? People customary gather with friends and eat burgers and dogs from the grill, and then later watch fireworks. I admit that the fireworks are a measure of observance, but how can frankfurters and hamburgers be the staple food of an American holiday when both were popular foods in Europe half a century before we ever heard of them? In this way Thanksgiving wins out over July 4th. Thanksgiving has so many truly American aspects. It begins with a parade, which is obviously not unique to this holiday, but I believe it to be a nice way to "usher in the holiday season," whatever that means. Then we get to the meat of the day; families (and I stress the word "families") get together and have a meal consisting of, but not limited to, turkey, sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce. Now turkeys and sweet potatoes are native ONLY to North America. Another words, these are truly American foods, foods the colonists had almost certainly never seen or eaten. Next up on the agenda is football, commonly called American Football everywhere except here and in Canada. There are often basketball games played on Thanksgiving, but there is hardly a tradition. One of the teams that plays on Thanksgiving is the Dallas Cowboys, often referred to as "America's Team." Let's just say that Thanksgiving is riddled with American symbols.
People tend to disagree with me about many things, which is fine. You might disagree with my ideas from the last paragraph, which is fine. Many of you will certainly disagree with what I am about to say, but I need to jot it down somewhere, because when the topic comes up and I make my point, I often have staunch opposers who can provide no reasonable support for their opinions. Okay, here goes.
I just spent a paragraph delineating the modes of observing Thanksgiving. I'd like to transition into the observance of Jewish holidays. Most, if not all biblical Jewish holidays have observances that are clearly defined in the Old Testament. In many situations the exact particulars of the observance are left out, but the basic levels are meforash from the mouth of G-d through Moses. G-d has told us how we are to commemorate events in Jewish history and usually the reasons for each item. Since biblical times the sages have established other holidays to commemorate other events, such as Purim and the Fast of Gedalia. They decreed that certain commandments be followed in observance of these days. From off the top of my head, I can only think of one truly modern Jewish Holiday, which is not officially associated with the State of Israel, and that is Yom HaShoah, the day of Holocaust remembrance. Now since Yom HaShoah is not a biblical holiday and not a holiday established by rabbis it does not have any official observance. Many people spend the day watching Holocaust movies and hearing stories from survivors, etc. Some even accept upon themselves a fast for the day. Each person is entitled to his or her own form of observance. There is certainly no right or wrong way to do things. This past year I was invited by my friend to see a Holocaust movie and to hear a speaker. I told her that I didn't want to go because I felt that I wouldn't enjoy myself. She said that I had to go because it was Yom HaShoah, and you're supposed to be sad. This statement is categorically false. I don't feel like I need to suffer in order to commemorate those who did. Don't get me wrong, the Holocaust was a terrible event, and there are people who are still greatly affected by it. My heart goes out to those people and to their families. However, here is no biblical, or even rabbinical requirement to participate in any Holocaust related activity or event on Yom HaShoah. So next year don't bother inviting me to hear any speakers unless it's someone you genuinely think I would be interested in hearing. And if I happen to politely decline the offer, PLEASE don't make me feel bad about it. Who are you to judge?

I'm putting a double space here just so you all know that this has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the post. After I finish a post I usually read it over once it's been published just to make sure that everything is spelled correctly and the sentences are grammatically and stylistically accurate. If there are any stnanks then I fix them. This time when I went to fix something I noticed something sinister. The evil blogspotters have a built-in editor, which modifies the text of the post to fit nicely onto the web page. This time I noticed that each time I put a period there was only once space before the next sentence. This is awful, AWFUL! Almost as bad as the Jets' run defense. Since when did blogspot take over for Microsoft Word as the Guru of Grammar? Why am I bothering to put two spaces after my periods if they're just going to edit one of the spaces out? In an effort to express solidarity for our missing spaces I am going to continue to put two spaces after each period. Don't worry about it guys, I still haven't figured out which one of you gets deleted, the first or the second, but even if I do figure it out I won't tell you. I want you to know that each of you is important, and you will not be forgotten. This cold one goes out to those spaces that got sent up the river.