T. V.

for the first time in 17 months, i have a TV. no cable, mind you, nothing crazy, but i have a few good channels and a remote. so far, not entirely different from life in phoenix (last time i had both TV and my own apartment), but not entirely the same either, which is good.

i would like to make some comments about TV. maybe everybody knows these things, but since it's not about Lost or Battlestar or Bones or House or especially The Wire, my social sphere hasn't been talking about these shows:

(i was going to save the good one for last but realized i might not hold my audience through the 2 negative reviews so i'll start here)
--viva piñata. this is an incomprehensible setting for a show, but here goes. there's a land populated by piñatas that are alive. they eat candy and do all the things that civilized beings do but then some day the highest honor is to be shot out of a cannon to end up at a party in which you are used as a piñata. this seems to make everyone happy but the main character who spends his time avoiding 'the call,' enforced by a small footless frog piñata. it makes no sense at all but is really cleverly written. the main character (fergy fudgehog) gets to say 'fudge' when things go wrong, which while not technically swearing is still amusingly dirty for a kids show. and they are doing some great mockeries of presidential ads. seriously, a great show.

-- the suite life with zach and cody. I was intrigued to watch this show (nerd alert) mostly because of Dan Savage's commentary on it on This American Life. DS finds the show creepy because of its horrific portrayal of heterosexuality vis-a-vis zach (or cody. they're twins.), in which 11-year-old zach (or cody) makes all kinds of advances on the 16-year-old girl who works in a gift shop. while i did manage to see the jumbled up stereotypes mentioned by DS (ditzy asian teen heiress, "meticulous"/flaming black bellman), i couldn't stomach enough to hold out for a storyline involving creepy tween love. thumbs down for being a kids show with apparently no redeeming sociological study value for curious old people like yours truly.

-- hannah montana. it was not until i watched this show that i realized that the entire hannah montana thing happened without me and i have no real idea what it is about. actually some of the schtick was amusing. also it has billy ray cyrus, whose meteoric re-career is a good reminder that miracles do happen and so that's a Good Thing. but i guess the show is so far along that they don't really run with the 'pop star' storyline, so it's just a story about a dad and some kids and their friends. i was at least hoping for an unrelated music video or something, kind of like the monkees. (didn't the monkees also have scooby-doo-like action montages set to monkees music? if not, they should have. and HM should have, too.) the acting was really pretty bad on this show, particularly from this kid who is maybe supposed to be HM's brother? from the commercials i gather he's like a tween phenom who's had a few [i'm guessing dvd-only] movies that exist only to increase his visibility. there was one other strangitude, which i can't categorize i can just explain. in one scene, billy ray is attempting to plunge the sink. the pushing step is clearly getting more muscle than the pulling step. admittedly this is not necessarily common knowledge, but a lot of people do know that this is not the right way to plunge effectively. the pulling step is where the magic happens. pushing is just to set things up for the pulling. OK, that's forgivable. but everybody, Everybody, EVERYBODY knows that when you run the garbage disposal, you run water. this is not a fucking secret. so how is it that the writer, director, actors, stagehands, studio executives found it reasonable to have a garbage-disposing scene in which no water is run?? because kids don't know any better, you don't have to portray normal parts of the real world realistically?

ok, although i will probably have the opportunity for actual adult programming (not that kind, you perv, i told you i don't have internet. actually maybe i didn't tell you. i don't have internet yet.), let's decide right now that i don't need to review TV for everyone. most of you already know its witching ways.

no, the donkey didn't fart

most of you know my email address and most of you have gmail anyway, so it's not like this is a terribly new thing... but i just think it's so cool. from the blog, you can chat with me anonymously as long as i'm signed into gmail. amazing.

modern artist

liam is amazing. he does everything himself, throws it on a mac, mixes it around, and what pops out is not only a pretty badass video but also great source of dance moves for skinny white guys.

how would bill vote?

how do you like them "it depends on what the meaning of the word is is"s?



in fairness to Hilary's candidacy, i suppose, we should note that the think/hope candidate did indeed lose to the scare/fear candidate in 2004.

the Firstutts project

"who wants soup?"

announcing the first not a fly ongoing performance art project. many of us have had changes to our living arrangements, jobs, states, etc. in the last year... i daresay that is true for almost all of my known readership.

i issue the following challenge: the first words that you actually utter each day, try to remember them. (an exercise in self awareness at least, perhaps interesting blog fodder at best.) when you're in the blogosphere, go to this post -- there will be a new, prominent link -- and comment with your first utterance of the day (Firstutts... turns out there is already a Firstlines project to catalog olde tyme radio shows by their first line... oh well). feel free to use onomatopoeia, to post anonymously (those two may go together, if your sex life gets that post-30 bump that i keep hearing about but haven't managed to capitalize on), to give an explanation or to leave it as an artfully unexplained flotsam. i encourage both the weird and the mundane, the english and the foreign.

the point is: what was the first thing that was so important that you had to say it out loud?

goin' to california

can you blame me? even a snowstorm with the big fat pretty flakes -- the kind that almost wooed me to winters' virtures -- can't fool me now.

so, no achin' in my heart, no flowers in my hair, but tomorrow i get to go enjoy the lifestyle that i kept reminding the natives "isn't what real life is like."

yae!*

*i really dislike the term yay, for some reason, but i say it all the time. i've decided that's how i spell mine.

How do you Plead?

I'm enjoying Meatloaf just enough to admit listening to it (which is to say, WAY too much). So I begin my list of guilty pleasures:

Meatloaf: Bat Out of Hell 2 (Back into Hell)
-Everything louder than everything else!
-I would do anything for love!
Blink-182: Enema of the State, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, and other puns that are clever in middle school:
-Anthem
-Anthem Pt. II
-fuck it, i usually listen to the whole damn thing
Oreos:
-the white stuff
-the cookies
Ignoring my blog and then expecting loyal readers to read and comment back with their guilty pleasures:
-obviously!

wake UP, shaka zulu!

this morning i discovered how shocking it is to be half-asleep when the NPR reporter says, "According to <your name here>..."

turns out that if you mix the adrenaline of being caught in class unprepared with the self-indulgent glee that I think one would and should take in the elitist intellectual hall of fame known as NPR, it's one hell of a morning latte:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19266657

<full disclosure, I edited this blog entry. turns out if you just type the <> things, blogger thinks it's html and ignores what's written in the middle.>

blog update

since it is Part of my Page and therefore Incredibly Important, might I draw your attention to the new lineup of links, who will live below the delegate counters, flawed as they may be, until we have some Republican and, God and my American Express willing, Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee.

yep, one should not blog via neighbor's wireless* after finishing off the 2nd day of a bottle of red wine. ok, not quite finished. but it's time to stop.

Anyway, I invite you to check out the new-ish lineup of links, somewhere to the right of the post. AdamX, the "canadian blogger" will show you what a real blog looks like and behaves like. Too Beautiful To Live is just an awesome new radio show out of Seattle on AM 710 KIRO; they podcast and allegedly the new TBTL website drops tomorrow. I recommend Jan 21 as an excellent show to start on. Both hours 1 and 2 are great. I'm sure hour 3 is great too, but... i don't exactly remember.** Oh hell, i'm listening to hour 2 again and it is so great.

Biologists Helping Bookstores hasn't done Anything in awhile, but in fairness, i lived that year that he's living last year (make sense?), and I don't blame him. Four Miles from Boring has been slow, yet definitely living up to the name. In a weird way that FMfB sentence relates to the one before it in ways that luckily i'll never need to describe.

all my blogs? seems to think that South Dakota is colder than Michigan. Luckily for amb?, i've been told about the dakotas and i admit that yes, they are coldest. however, somewhere in this blog I intend to document the horribly cold beauty i have endured here in the cold white Midwest.

OK, I don't think I'll offend the BPP by neglecting to mention anything interesting on its blog. That leaves two matters to attend to. 1) The inexplicably broken in German, blog de Patricia has been removed... like me and social networking sites, there's just too much bullshit to deal with as an adult to do that. And after it was broken in English, it was much less interesting as broken blogs go.

2) Finally, Barack Obama. Please, please, please lend this man (and NO, I don't just mean "man" because THAT's somehow better than a woman) your ear and, if you are a citizen and you believe in what a really different, really awesome candidate can do to really rescue our country from the huge, huge hole we've dug ourselves, give him some money. Or, if you are in a Super Tuesday state, or even a state that has friggin' nonzero delegates at the convention, just vote for him!

and get a good night's sleep. say your prayers and be optimistic!

*why is it that "maggs Library" shows up in iTunes regardless of whether i'm pirating off one neighbors "linksys" OR "NETGEAR"? If we all sign up for comcast or something, will we be able to listen to each other's iTunes in the neighborhood?


** be proud of me not mentioning that I have been mentioned on an earlier episode. actually almost entirely out of context and fairly inaccurately.

2008 Presidential Delegate Counter

Friends--

(ever notice that when someone uses the word "folks," they are invariably going to say something obnoxious? I will say ... I'm a bit worried that Friends is the Gen X / Gen Y version.)

It's surprisingly difficult to find a well maintained counter of the delegate count in the 2008 race. Luckily MyDD not only does the job for you, there are neato applets for me and you here. But you don't need them, you can always come to Not A Fly blog :) Just because I've effectively stopped checking the hit count doesn't mean that I don't care a little.

Dennis Kucinich held a rally in the same building as my lab the other day! What a pure-hearted, well meaning, brilliant, well read, unrealistic crazy person. He's the kind of person who I am glad is able to actually get elected every 2 years, but certainly not the person I am ready to trust as President.

Now I can add him to my collection of blurry photos of presidential candidates. (For those of you who haven't read the small town Iowa press, I went to an Obama rally in Guttenberg, Iowa, to begin my collection.) No matter who is speaking, the flash seems awful rude to me, but that particular situation isn't terribly conducive to long exposures! Below are the two clearest pictures.

from across the room (okay, 10 feet)

new colleague says, hey, is that some kind of gourmet sandwich or something?

RIP, SS

FOR those of you who have ever driven from Portland to the coast, I have sad news to deliver:
http://www.katu.com/news/local/12043736.html

cafe tom and ray

guys who know cars, know politics, and have something salient and intelligent to say to congress:
http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/cafe/

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated (but click here for discussion)

******** G*****
8*** ***** ***** Rd
*****, UT 8****

Verizon Wireless
Customer Service Department
Post Office Box 96082
Bellevue, WA 98009-9682

November 17, 2007

To whom it may concern:

My name is ******** G*****, and I have been a customer of Verizon Wireless for 5+ years. My Verizon mobile phone number is ***-***-**** and my account number is *********-*****. My social security number is ***-***-****.

Apparently, yesterday evening you called my alternate phone number, 801-***-****, and asked to speak with me. My father was so surprised that someone would ask for me at his house (it has been 10 years since I lived there) that he said “He’s dead” and hung up, assuming it was telemarketing. This is in spite of my being very much alive. And, in fact, sitting in the same room.

I suspect you were calling about my address, which has recently changed. I did not inform you of it because all my transactions with Verizon are electronic, and I just forgot. I updated my address information online today at 11:53 AM Utah time, and received a TXT message confirming the change.

I then called *611 and spoke with a representative named Chris. In spite of – I’m guessing – not having much training for what to do when a customer calls and says “I’m not dead” he did an excellent job listening. And, when he checked the notes regarding my account, indeed found one stating that the customer is “deceased.” He told me he would insert a note that the customer is NOT deceased, but he was not sure whether any other action had been taken by Verizon as a result of this miscommunication.

Thus I am formally contacting you in writing. I am not deceased. I like Verizon, I like my phone number. I instruct you to take any necessary action to remove any hint that I am deceased from my account. I also specifically request that you do not inform any business partners of the erroneous news that I am dead.

Next time, just call my [Verizon] mobile number!

Sincerely,


******** G******

No Way

In the most recent Newsweek, or today on NPR's Day-to-Day, there's a story about name-letter preference. I'm so000 hoping this is a hoax... but it's not April...

Statistically, people gravitate toward concepts, names and things that begin with the same letter as their name. No way! (in the science-is-awesome no way, not the science-is-bollocks no way)

My name is g*****. For what seems like an eternity, i have been a Graduate student in Genetics. Other than the friends I have met in Graduate school, a very large fraction of everyone else I care about is Gay. (or other g******s, but i suppose that's hardly a coincidence)

for my friends in vegas ... i nearly choked when he told me his last name... it sounds more like hers than any other utterance i've ever heard.

of the head-over-heels crushes i've had, and there aren't too many of them, are a g****** (which i didn't even know for like 6 months) and a gr***. did i mention i'm a gr****?

for some reason Newsweek doesn't have the short pithy article on their web site, but the full science blog link is:

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2007/11/07/a-my-name-is-alice-moniker-madness.aspx

great

mas music-o

my parents get some XM stations by DirecTV. Since when did my musical tastes tend to involve the word "adult"?

i think i can take a lot of comfort in how much i still can't stand Steely Dan. there's nothing else though! my goodness, it's like having every PBS music special ever produced jammed up your ass all at once. that includes Lord of the Dance.

16 years later

something about roadtrips and quasi-homelessness (the kind where you live at your parents'), something about changing the things you see and hear and do everyday also makes your musical soundtrack veer away from the ruts of comfortable but stale playlists.

R.E.M.'s Out Of Time is remarkable.

to california

I Miss You. Very Much.

for those of you who also yell profanities at your computer

in excel, if are sorting your data, and for some reason it keeps deciding you have a Header Row when you don't,

don't yell out "not fucking header row" because no one around you will think that's what you said.

MY new 7oy

i bought atablet that Ieahwrite with. Iguess its not perfect. In othernews ) I had a great dinner with friends M Vegas The burgers and company were great, and try service was dinine divine Its so sadwhen bad handwriting gets innuway of a goodjoke.