New Music Onslaught

Let's get this out there in the open, right now:

I'm burned out.  I'm not "burned out for a while" or "burned out right now" I'm burned out forever.  Imagine a fire that is no longer flaming.  Sure, there are coals there, with a lot of burn and a lot of heat still there, but this isn't a raging inferno anymore.  Ok, that's not entirely accurate, there's a lot of rage.  But there isn't a lot of fire...which is why I say I'm burned out.  

I'm much more likely to just say "Clearly we're not going to agree on this, so let's just stop here" than I am to say "Clearly you're not going to convince me to adopt your idiocy as my own belief, so why don't you just stop embarassing yourself."  Why is this?  Because I'm falling into the same damned pattern of every other human in western society "Give up the fight and just get by."  I can't tell you how infuriated it makes me to have all these choices and no idea which is correct and which is wrong and somehow I'm building myself a walled enclosure in middle america that superficially resembles the very same damned white-picket-fence, dream-world that I despise.  

Why am I turning into prototypical American Dream lifestyle?  Because it is so easy.  Look, that Wal-Mart over there?  That's the ONLY place within an hour that I can buy coconut milk or giram masala, or, for the love of judas, unseasoned pork loin.  And that's the only place with a pharmacy that doesn't mess it up and take 6 hours.  But it's Wal-Mart...bastion of all that is wrong with western society! I scream in my own head every time I go there, Why?

And go to the Dillons instead?  Are these better choices?  Are these really choices at all?  How did I end up here, in the middle of the country, working a dead-end job that is constantly documenting the destruction of another chunk of irreplaceable beauty, in a town 10 times too small, spending 2 hours a day talking and reading sports, and with no single decision along the way that appears wrong?  Who could look at my current lifestyle and think that I was ever anything but just another clone buying into the american ideal?  I'm just some guy with an over-inflated sense of his own individuality.  

 
But, you sat on the doorstep of your church youth director at 18 and read On the Road and discovered that you were a human...doesn't that count for anything?  You stayed up all night at a lock-in playing electric guitar!  You basically got a physics degree in two years!  You wrote and published your own poetry journal!  You have a Ph.D. from a fantastic university!  You can cook fantastic gyros!  How many people can say all that?

Probably not many, but as far as I can tell, that doesn't really mean anything.  

And so today I ended up calling my landscaping buddy and asking him what herbicides I need to use on my lawn to get rid of the non-grass and how to best get my yard looking good and having grass my kid can roll around on recklessly without fear of stickers.  Me...with a yard that's cleansed by herbicides and well-watered...That was the last log on the fire crumbling into coals.  My wife was incredulous, but this was pretty much the last bastion of my unusuality, and it hurts like hell to let it go.  

I don't know what this means...the straw and the camel's back isn't the right analogy.  This isn't a breaking, it's a change, and I think I'm going to have to figure out how to make it work in this new format.  Does that mean figuring out how to recycle all my grey water for watering the lawn?  I guess.

Yeah, this sounds all sad and depressing to me now that I re-read it, but it really isn't all that sad and depressing.  This isn't a padded cell, it's just a situation.  And I can't break out of the decisions I set up for myself...I just have to try to make something awesome out of it.  

Which leads, pretty much thought-for-thought, to me getting into gardening like crazy.  The wife and child and I planted 10 strawberry plants, 4 broccoli, 4 cabbage, and about 40 spinach plants.  Like everything we do outside and with the boy, that was some great fun.  

Anyway, long story short:  I have no interest in writing anymore.  Like a lot of my ridiculous dreams, I just can't sustain it right now.  I'll probably continue to post here, but my online life is dead everywhere else.  

But wasn't this supposed to be about cool music I was listening to?  Feast on the following:

Where have I been?

Our hero awakes in a white room with two rows of fluorescent bulbs hanging from wires in the ceiling. There is no floor or furniture, he is laying on the floor, which is painted white. He has forgotten...something...something important. There is no sound in the distance. There is nothing.

The baby:

Pneumonia. Yeah, not really that much fun. We've gone through a couple more rounds of sickness, with an ear infection and a round of antibiotics. But the boy is doing pretty well. He's sleeping through the night, by himself, pretty consistently. He's actually getting big enough that I'm starting to feel sad about the transitory nature of children. In less than two years we've passed a lot of milestones, and I honestly miss the crawling a little, and the laying there looking silly. Fortunately, he is now insane. When he and I play, we spend most of our time wrestling or chasing each other, I'm sure at some point we're going to hurt ourselves.

At this age, they are so much like a little puppy that it is impossible to be around him without thinking that.

We've been doing a lot of walks in the evening. To the lake, around a wetland, down by the river, around the block, through the grocery store, around dad's work. He's fascinated by birds and cats, and has no control when he sees one. He's gotten good, though, at the grocery store of staying close when you're checking out or doing something. Those places are the ones where I can barely imagine having a second child.


Work:

My wife pointed out that all I ever talk about is my next job. Clearly, I'm not entirely happy with what I'm doing. That isn't to say my job is terrible, and I'm not actually sure I could move. Not so much because of the job, but just because judas I do not really want to move again. We've purchased a house, added new furniture, settled in, and I am terrified by the prospect of moving again. But my job is dead-end, no possibility for advancement, with no window, no research, no possibility for something more. I don't really know how to work with some of the people I work with on 'research-light' kinds of projects, just because I'm not very good at not being in control.

I've spent quite a bit of time in the last week or so doing science. Writing papers, doing data analysis, learning R. I'm not sure if I'm actually any good at that stuff, but I feel like I am. I feel like I'm good at ideas, experimental design, and interpreting data. I haven't been writing much of anything lately, because I just having felt inspired, but what I have been writing is mostly science.

So I keep thinking about jobs where I can do more of that. But there aren't a lot of those out there that I could really get into without a major life change. It has been 2 years since I was in a lab environment...as my wife said "Could you go back?" That's a legit question...I like having a sense of smell again.


Music:

NPR is single-handily keeping my job interesting, if only because of the huge number of really interesting songs they have on their website. I recommend (you'll have to find videos/links yourself) Passion Pit "Sleepyhead", Lilly Allen "Not fair", "My 45" by someone I forgot, Blitzen Trapper's "Furr", "Skinny Love" by Bon Iver(?), and some others that I've forgotten.


Dam Removal:

This is supposed to be the kind of thing that should keep my job exciting and interesting. I'm working on getting some dams removed from the Neosho River. You might recall me getting some money from the fish and wildlife service to do this. Well....that's great and all, but I can't actually do any of the science to go along with it. Like, what the heck is going on in these low-head dams as far as nutrient cycling goes? How are we going to quantify the movement of fish before and after? What's going on with the sediments?

So yeah, I mean, this is more interesting than what I spend a lot of my time doing, but it isn't really all that interesting unless you can do the science as well. And I'm not going to be doing that. I'm just struggling to get permits in order, a good design, a plan everyone can live with, and a procedure for the next one. Great.


NCAA Tournament:

I'm so sick of the Big East talk. Look, these aren't that good of teams! This isn't the best conference ever, and it probably isn't even the best conference this year. There are three 'good' teams in the Big East, and UCONN isn't even one of them (did you see their non-conference schedule?). The Big East has three of the worst schools to play in a major conference this year (South Florida, DePaul, and Rutgers). This isn't the best conference ever.

The amazing thing I keep hearing is talk like the Big East is this always fantastic conference. Really? Hell, 90% of what the Big East accomplishes it does by just having more damn teams than everyone else. The conference has 16 teams! They keep putting 7-8 teams in the tournament. Big flippin' deal. From 1998-2008, the Big East has won 3 rings and has had 4 teams reach the Final Four. The ACC has 3 rings and 10 teams in the Final Four. The SEC has 3 rings and 5 Final Four teams. The odd balls are the Big 10 and Big 12, which have 1 ring a piece and 9 and 6 Final Four appearances respectively. The Big 12 even had the era of unrealized potential, when 4 teams made 5 Final Four appearances in 3 years (DAMN YOU SYRACUSE and MARYLAND!!).

And as for the ACC...good god. How many years are we going to keep giving Duke and North Carolina home games for the first two weeks of the tournament? Does this happen for anyone else? Duke isn't even a 1 seed this year! Arggh.


KU:

For the record, I predicted KU would win the Big 12. If KU hadn't won a championship last year, I would expect this team to make the Final Four. The bracket they are in is stacked with top coaches, but mediocre talent (yes, especially Louisville). KU is stacked with top tier talent, just really, really inexperienced. However, Sherron Collins has no ceiling in the college game (he is the best PG in the country, I won't even discuss this). As he goes, so will go the Jayhawks. So far in his career Collins has been ridiculously good during big games (he's the one who stole the inbounds pass from Memphis last year and hit a quick three to give us a bit of life). However, this is his first year as a starter, and when he plays bad (like he did against Baylor and Texas Tech), this KU team could lose to anyone. There is, literally, no one else on the KU roster who can propel them into a win at this stage in their career. I'm not sure they have a second player who can even run the offense at all.

As always I predict a championship. But that first round game scares the hell out of me.

Another facebook thingy

This is what the tag said:
"Think of 15 albums, that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. FIGURATIVELY socked you in the gut, is what I mean. Then when you finish, tag 15 others, including moi. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it!"

Yes, i hate these things, but I got to thinking (in personal chronological order, with no repeated artists)...and since this is my blog, you get an explanation


1. Hysteria by Def Leppard
- First record I ever got.

2. Kerosene Hat by Cracker (actually, this list could have 3 Cracker albums)
- Favorite band of all time

3. The Presidents of the United States of America, by the same
- Fun and exciting

4. August and Everything After by Counting Crows
- The best music to be depressed to ever written, although honestly their second album was
even more so.

5. Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo
- This a story about drugs, rage, comical hormones, and lots of theft

6. Sparkle and Fade by Everclear
- For some reason this is the song I associate with not lying all the time anymore

7. Motorcade of Generosity by Cake
- A fun and weird trip to Denver that changed everything :)

8. John Wesley Harding by Bob Dylan
- History sucks

9. Nevermind by Nirvana
- Not what you would think. Didn't even listen to Nirvana until 2000.

10. Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ by Limp Bizkit
- Yeah...I dig Limp (at least the first couple albums). College nihilism.

11. The Lonesome Crowded West by Modest Mouse
- Modest Mouse made me realize there would always be better bands, and better everything in the future. For some reason this seemed less true when they weren't on SubPop.

12. Rockin' the Suburbs by Ben Folds
- This album got me through my last semester of undergrad

13. Left of Self-Centered by Butch Walker
- This album got me through my first horrifyingly year at grad school

14. The Sunset Tree by the Mountain Goats
- And this one got me through my orals

15. Separation Sunday by The Hold Steady
- I don't think I'm done using the Hold Steady as a crutch to get me through hard times. This is pretty much who I am, raw emotion, goofy appearance, and probably not as imaginative as I wish I was.


Yeah, not always pretty, but life-altering? Sure.

Some artists who didn't make the cut only because some other artist altered my life just before I found them (they continued a trend, they didn't start it), or because they changed my life, but not as much:

The White Stripes, Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, G-Love and Special Sauce, Gren, Eminem, Outkast, Distorted Penguins, Flaming Lips, Nickle Creek, Bright Eyes, Our Lady Peace, Third Eye Blind, Gomez, Ani Difranco, System of a Down, Local H, REM, Cheap Trick, Ella Fitzgerald, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Presidents of the United States of America, Neutral Milk Hotel, Johnny Cash...

God..hard to even cut that down to something manageable.

25 Things

For some reason I consider my readers here (both of you) to be more friendly than my 'friends' on Facebook. Which is why I won't post my 25 things list on facebook, but I will here. Frankly, I don't really like all those high school friends well enough to want them to know me that well.

1. I write obsessively, probably 5 thousand words a day of poems, short stories, 1-liners, comic strips, NBA rants, and science. Yet the only full-length book I've ever finished was in 7th grade (and I think I lost it).

2. I have always wanted blue hair.

3. I hate to cook anything in a pot or pan that isn't made out of cast iron.

4. Nothing I have ever experienced in life is as fulfilling as dancing in the kitchen with my wife and kid.

5. My favorite TV shows over the last ten years are 30 Rock, Chuck, Firefly, Good Eats, and Iron Chef America. I pretty much gave up on TV after Star Trek: The Next Generation ended.

6. Speaking of Good Eats: I own every episode available to buy and two Alton Brown books (and 8 episodes of Iron Chef America). Yet, I have to admit that I almost always have to 'fix' the recipes to make them work for me.

7. I make a lot of cookies, and I experiment a lot with them. This used to drive my wife nuts, so I started making them the way she wanted them...and now she's turning my son against me to get more! (guess who's getting the all-healthy version next time!)

8. I was involved in every aspect of my church youth group and have probably read the Bible 30 times.

9. I was on the golf team in high school.

10. I was also on the chess team in high school. But I'm actually really good at chess. We won state.

11. The only 'letter' I got in high school was for quiz bowl or knowledge bowl or whatever it was. We won state in that too.

12. I'm pretty sure I skipped the meets where we won state in chess and knowledge bowl.

13. I fell asleep in my Calculus 1 final my Freshman year of College. But I got an A. (I was sick)

14. For 3 semesters I was the editor of our college newspaper...basically by default (nobody else wanted it).

15. As my roommates once discovered to their horror, there is really no level of garlic that I consider "too much".

16. During our Jr and Sr. years at college, my roommates and I confiscated the biology departments seine nets, dip nets, collection jars, etc. and began doing a comprehensive survey of any body of water to which we could get access. Eventually we had fish preserved in jars of formaldehyde in the kitchen, crayfish crawling around the apartment, insects preserved in alcohol on the kitchen table, an 80 gallon plastic bin filled with gar, and the lingering odor of pond-bottom muck.

17. The most hours I've ever been awake in a row is 72 (approximately).

18. I missed my high school graduation.

19. I didn't feel like a real person until after I read Jack Kerouac's "On the Road".

20. The only sports teams I am viscerally connected to are the Kansas University teams.

21. I wasn't really an obsessive NBA fan until Sega released NBA2k1 for the Sega DreamCast.

22. I am not a handyman. I once built a coffee table out of PVC and plywood and everyone who knows me would agree it is the nicest thing I've ever constructed. My wife helped.

23. In 2000, I forgot to register and didn't vote for anyone.

24. My mood is extremely dependent on the amount of sun outside (even if I'm not outside).

25. My uncle asked me which NBA city I would like to live in a few months back, and I've not stopped thinking about it since then. Although OKC is nice, I desperately want to live in Portland, OR.

Weekly Report #9

Our hero is trapped ok?  Trapped in a hospital bed.  You are going to have to save the world and all of human civilization on your own for once.

Baby Stuff:

The munckin is healthy, aside from a few sniffles, and he is a dancing machine.  He likes to break dance.  As in, he rolls around on the floor while the music plays.  What a nut.

Catchment Stoichiometry:

Yay!  I'm going to  be guest editing a special issue of freshwater biology on Catchment Stoichiometry.  Whoo!  Of course, this is all a little weird because a year ago I'd never heard the phrase, and I've really only thought about it at all for like 6 months and I honestly don't really understand how my co-guest editor or many of the authors are thinking about the subject.  I feel a little in-over-my-head in terms of my own development of the idea.  But maybe that's how everyone thinks when they are doing something totally new.  

Basically, this is a great chance for me to improve my CV despite working in a deadend job that doesn't value research at all.  And I don't think the special issue would have happened at all without me, so I feel good about it.  Yay science!

Sickness:

I used over 110 hours of sick leave last year.  I don't have any left.  One of the three of us has been sick (or wisdom teethed) since before thanksgiving.  Right now we're all just a little sniffly, so maybe we're finally past it.  

Basketball:

So one of my friends who I thought I could reliably know what was going on in the NBA told me the other day that he hasn't been following the NBA this season.  "I'm just more into NCAA hoops" was what he said (approximately).  I've heard this from a lot of people I know.  The thing is, I don't really get it.  I mean, I understand the appeal for college hoops.  There's no entertainment experience that is more viseral for me than watching the Jayhawks play basketball.  I feel like a little kid again, and increasingly that's a rare sensation.  I certainly don't get that with any other basketball experience (although I also get it with the Chiefs).  But unless the Jayhawks are playing, the predominant emotion I get when watching regular season college hoops is "awkward".  That's because they just don't play the game at a particularly high level 99% of the time. The appeal is that they play so hard, and when the games start to really matter (conference and NCAA tournament) it's pretty damned appealing to watch people try so hard.  Kinda like watching a whole bunch of game 7s in the NBA.  

 However, most teams in the NBA play a lot harder in the regular season, especially during the first and last quarter of the season.  And they don't play so stupid.  With all the restrictions on the NCAA teams in terms of practice time and studying, there's no practical way for those guys to learn to play together in a season, or usually even two seasons, so what happens is you get the odd teams that have stuck together for odd reasons winning it all (e.g., Kansas wouldn't have won last year if Rush had gone pro, and he only didn't go pro because he got injured in the pre-draft camp)  or you get teams that just have an overwhelming talent advantage taking control in the tournament (North Carolina a few years back, or even Syracuse with Warrick and 'Melo).  Meanwhile, the coaches are emphasizing a very few ideas, and they are primarily inspiring effort.  In college, you can fix everything with more effort.  In the pros, that doesn't work, because, aside from a few very miserable teams, there just aren't that many mistakes.  Those guys are paid to go out there and know exactly what they should be doing.  They spend 40-50 hours a week, all year long, trying to get better (not counting the games), and they are under immense public scrutiny to play better.

So yeah, I prefer the pro game, at least until March Madness, but I like basketball wherever I can get it.  I just can't imagine preferring the college version.  

Unless the Jayhawks are playing.

Economy:

I'm skeptical.  I don't really know if I like Obama's 'stimulus' package.  I just don't think it will work and I think it will make everything worse in the long run.  Parts of it are good.  Parts of it are awful.  Maybe I just need to read up a little more.

Anything else:

Oh probably, but I can't think of it now.

Baby baby baby...

My job is apparently not fulfilling enough. I am intellectually bored
and right now I'm just waiting for ArcView to load. While I'm waiting
I've been looking at funny pics of my kid.

I wish I were independently wealthy so I could just stay home and hang
out with the boy. I'm sure that would be unproductive, but who the
hell cares.

Argh...job so boring. Me want to do something else.

Note to myself

Pretty darn good band here.

Music

Apparently the absence of pop music from my life makes me like it a lot more.

This is more for my own memory than anything, but who knows, maybe some of these guys will entertain you as well.

Mika (who is awesome and "The Darkness")

Sara "Love Song" Baraleladsiaofdsaosss Yeah, I know this song will suck the 35th time I hear it....Actually, I don't like the end as is.

Jason Mraz? Is Jack Johnson getting younger and faster?

Apparently the Ting Tings are too good to embed video....but they're still awesome.

And I'll have to listen to this later.

Weekly Report # 8?

A cold breeze swept in off the ocean, carrying the smell of salt water and seaweed.  The funeral pyre burned defiantly in the darkness.  Silently, the Vikings rowed away from the shore.

Minnow Report:

She's on the farm.  She's staying there.  She's happy...what am I supposed to do?

The Kid Report:

Very mom-clingy.  Very desirous of green vegetables.  

College Football:

People take this way too seriously.

Cool Sciency Video:

Old Lady Drivers:

Pick a damned speed.  If I have to deal with one more white-haired lady driving a boat down the highway at 55 going up hill and 75 going down hill I may invest in car-mounted firearms.  Seriously, clean your funny shades and learn to use the cruise control.

Cooking Lamb:

We have the lamb, we have the bison.  This is all very confusing.  One half of the bison had ~95 or so pounds of ground, the other 55.  Wha-?  Anyway, we cooked some lamb chops last night.  Eh...tasted just like steak.  I don't really like steak.  Of course, i didn't really do anything with it.  I'll have to get a little more creative.  And damn, there's a lot of fat in lamb.  I can't shake the feeling that this whole 'purchase meat direct' thing was big mistake.

Musical Lemonade:

Lemonade is refreshing, like drinking spring.  Oddly enough, I think Colbie Callet's music is the same.

Weird:

I drove by a Wendy's sign today that said "Closed:  Remodeling."  The Wendy's in question had been completely destroyed, even the foundation had been ripped out.  Yes...remodeling.

Baseball is so dumb:

I was listening to sports radio on my drive today, and they were talking to someone who was drafted in the 31st round.  The 31st round.  They have, at least, 31 rounds in their annual draft.  And this guy got a $300,000 signing bonus.  REALLY??  In case you didn't know it, there are 50 rounds in the MLB draft and 1500 players taken.

Last of the Mohicans:

Heard the theme song today...forgot how cool it was.

Some days...

...you just have to drag yourself kicking and screaming to work.

Argh...

Weekly Report #7

The path lead upwards past the timberline, to where the hard rock of the earth's bones was exposed.  All along the way, our hero found evidence of the ogre's passage.  The ogre was no more than a day ahead, and making slow time.  A hard fight was ahead, and it wasn't clear at all who might win it.

The Minnow Report:

I think we're going to make the transition after Christmas.  We'll see though.  

The Baby Report:

Well, mom got her wisdom teeth pulled, so baby and daddy have been spending a lot of time together.  I was borderline terrified about how this would go, considering the kid's love of mom, but it hasn't been hard at all.  Having said that, I took off this afternoon just so I could sit in front of the tv and play video games and then have a nap.  I don't know how single parents do it, I really don't.

Culinary:

I've decided that cooking for the freezer is an appropriate strategy.  What is this strategy, you say?  It's when you cook things in advance and freeze them.  There are a whole host of books and websites about this, but the websites are all crap (for the most part).  Basically, I think I'm going to just try things and see how they turn out.  I've got a few casseroles of enchiladas in the freezer right now, along with a broccoli/chicken casserole (that I've never made before).  We'll see how it turns out.

Oh, and I made Alton Brown's 'stovetop' mac and cheese the other night.  Pretty fantastic, although I left out all the zippy spices because the kid hates them.  I swear, my food has never been so bland in my life.  

Wisdom Teeth:

I must admit that I find it strange when I stick my tongue back there and there's a gap.  For the last six years I've had a tooth pointed all funny like there and no good way to clean it, and suddenly its gone.  Well, not gone gone...I have it in a little bag on my counter.  That tooth is black....yikes.  My wife's teeth seemed to come out more in 1 piece, and judas freaking monkeys, one of her teeth is the size of a small oak tree.   She's in the 'god, I'm never going to feel good again am I?' stage of the process.  I hope things turn for her on day 7 as they did for me.  

Moo:

I moo'd at someone in an email the other day and they shot an email right back to me saying (essentially) what the hell?  Uh...yeah.  Apparently this is a strange thing?  It is an expression of sadness and hopelessness.  It indicates you feel like a cow (domesticated, caged, feed too much corn, left out in the cold, and probably about to be eaten by someone for lunch).  

There's nothing weird about that.

Ok, maybe a little, but c'mon.  At this point, doesn't everybody know I'm a weirdo?

NBA:

   I don't know if people realize this or not, but Dirk Nowitzki is having a fantastic season...too bad the rest of his team stinks.  The Mavs are just a miserable collection of talent.  This ought to be some kind of lesson in how to go from 67 wins and a deep and talented squad to fighting for the playoffs and getting key contributions from J.J. Barea.

   Different NBA teams need different things, and I understand the Mavs and Suns looking at the Lakers and the Hornets last year and saying:  Wow, they are going to be good.  But you've got a window.  The Lakers and the Hornets were still teams looking for an identity.  Although they had all the talent they needed, they didn't have the chemistry.  And the Mavs and Suns had that chemistry, and a comparable amount of talent.  They each had a much better chance of winning a championship last year before the Shaq and Kidd trades than they did afterwards, because they lost the chemistry edge.  That was the only edge they had over the Lakers/Hornets/Jazz...and it's an important one.  Just look at how well the Spurs did with arguably less talent.  

  Instead the Mavs and Suns reacted to how good the Lakers would be this year and not only threw away last season, but, in the case of the Mavs, threw away the ability to get better this year.  

  My NBA fandom has always exceeded my Mavs fandom, and right now I almost want to re-declare as a free agent.  I have no particular loyalty to Dallas (I've never lived there, and I've only visited once), I only started rooting for them because it was a shorter drive than Denver.  And it isn't like its been all sugarplum kisses with this team either.  Cuban managed to swap Nick the Quick for Antawn Jamison and then ruined that by adding Antoine Walker.  Then he swapped Steve Nash and Walker for Erick Dampier and Jason Terry.  That doesn't even begin to get into paying $45 mil for Shawn Bradley (who did have 2 good seasons with the Mavs) or $80 mil for Raef LaFrentz.  And he pissed of the Heat in the Finals by talking about the victory parade after the Mavs went up 2-0.  This just isn't fun sometimes.  I don't need to be addicted to one team.

Other stuff:

I spent most of this week learning R and writing a paper.  R is both way more difficult and a lot easier than I imagined.  The help files are either incomprehensible or impossible to find or (occasionally) both.  R commander helped a lot...I was struggling to even get my data into the damned program without it.  So yeah R commander.

Weekly Report #6

Sure, our hero had been kidnapped, beaten, called nasty names, and left for dead in the snow. But he wasn't the type to hold a grudge. Especially when that had all been part of The Plan.


The Minnow Report:

Is it time? Maybe its time. I think it is getting close to time.


The Baby Report:

Such a cute little baby (toddler?). He's really developing an unstoppable engine though. Some days, we're just not ready to come inside. On Tuesday we went to Sears, and he wanted to run around the store. Ok...headache, but fine. Let's run around the store. The problem was, he didn't ever want to stop. So I ended up wrestling a small child into a car-seat. While he's crying. Sigh.

Of course, I also was able to successfully put him to bed (after making dinner for the next night) without any tears. I am a golden buddha!


Meat:

So I've gone so far away from my quasi-vegetarian mentality that it is hard to even see where I was. Does anyone remember how I didn't used to eat meat? I mean, at all? Yeah, what the hell was I eating?
The more I get into cooking, the more meat I cook. This isn't because I don't think you have to cook meat to be a good cook, far from it. Instead, I cook a lot with meat because I want to try a lot of different things. Also, being in Kansas, when you have conversations about food with people, you tend to talk about meat a lot. All this is made weird for me by my continued insistence to not eat beef. This is the last hold-out for me. The last vestige of me being an environmental vegetarian.
I told someone the other day that I act so weird that I'm approaching normal from the other side. This is a perfect example of that: First I was weird for not eating seafood, then I was weird for not eating meat, then I was weird for not eating meat because of environmental reasons (as opposed to ethical or health concerns), then I was weird for eating certain meats (chicken and turkey), but not others. Then, because I was dealing with such a limited diet, I started getting really interested in culinary science, which made me a weirdo male-in-the-kitchen in Oklahoma and Kansas. And now I'm weird because I'll pretty much eat anything except beef, provided you can tell me how you made it and its culinary history. I'm practically normal again.


Cooking (disasters edition):

Just a word of warning: No matter how good of an idea it seems like at the time, never put tomatoes and orange juice in the same dish. Especially if it is a breakfast casserole.


Cooking (anticipation edition):

My parents bought us an early christmas gift this week (THANKS!): A chest freezer. Why do I need a chest freezer? Well, hopefully next year's garden vegetables will be stored frozen (for starters), but also, I've got about 150 pounds of meat on the way (have I mentioned the meat yet?). That's a half a lamb and at least a quarter of a bison. I'm ridiculously excited about this: I've almost never cooked with lamb, and never cooked with lamb chops or leg of lamb. I've eaten plenty of ground bison, and I've tried a few roasts, but this is the first grass-fed animal I've had. I'm also excited because of aging. What's aging?
Well, after an animal is slaughtered, skinned, gutted and chopped into big chunks of meat, it is pratically inedible. That's not true, but it isn't far off. Especially with red meats, a critical step is letting the meat hang in a clean, cold, dark locker for awhile. According to the U. of Minnesota extension office, commercial cuts are aged 7 days on average, but according to everyone I know in Kansas, that is unlikely. According to some people I've talked to at the K-State Ag School, commercial operations often age their meat just 3-5 days. By comparisons, fine resturants purchase meat aged between 11 and 20 days.
I'm buying my lamb and bison from family farm operations, and they are/were butchered at local butchers. At this scale, meat gets aged a lot more (in both cases 10 days). The upshot is a much more tender cut of meat. This is especially true for bison, which are pretty much exclusively grown on grass (and therefore grow much slower than cattle). I'm hopeful that this will mean I will have more luck with my bison steaks than I've had in the past. We'll see.


Wisdom Teeth:

Despite my drug-induced optimism on full display elsewhere, it turned out to be a pretty crummy thanksgiving week. The pain felt minimal on Wednesday of last week, but by Thursday I was in agony again. Eventually I got back on the serious pain meds again, and they combined to make me 1) extremely hyperactive and 2) a very poor thinker. As you might imagine, that's a combination that makes for a very interesting week. Hopefully I didn't offend anyone. The best story I've heard from the wife is about my ridiculous excitment upon purchasing some pants. Yeah.
I mean, I need pants, and they are nice + cheap. But apparently I was really excited.


The NBA:

The more I watch the NBA (and I'm up to ~10 games a week), the more amazed I am that the Lakers and Celtics are doing so well. Talent-wise, there are a lot of really good teams in the NBA. The Memphis Grizzlies spring to mind as a perfect example of a team with loads of talent, but no cohesive plan for putting it together on the court. The Cleveland Cavs, by contrast, seem to have no significant talent after LeBron, but they definitely have a plan.
The Utah Jazz are a better example of this. There's no reason the Jazz shouldn't be the best team in the league when healthy. Obviously that hasn't been very often this year, but this should have been the case last year as well. They have excellent big men, an extremely good point guard, quality shooters all over the floor, the most versatile sixth man in the game, overachieving role players, and they've all been together for years. Yet the Jazz are often miserable to watch, can't control games at all, and never seem to be cohesive.
Is it coaching? Is that the problem? I think Jerry Sloan's a good coach, but maybe he's not? The Lakers under Phil Jackson always have had an identity. They've always had a plan. When they almost beat the Suns in the first round 3 years ago, it was because they had a plan. Turns out, it wasn't quite a perfect plan, but you could tell they were committed to it (until Kobe quit playing in Game 7). The teams I've seen this year that seem to have that plan are: the Lakers, the Celtics, the Knicks (on the court), the Heat, the Cavs, and the Spurs (the Blazers might be on this list, but they have two plans: 1 involving Greg Oden, and 1 involving just winning games). But that sure isn't every team with a good coach: The Bucks and Dallas seem to have good coaching, and I really think Terry Porter is a good coach in Phoenix (although not for the Nash-Bell-Amare-Diaw group).
I don't quite get it. The talent gap just isn't that great. The Bobcat's Richardson-Wallace-Okafor combination isn't that much worse in terms of pure talent than Allen-Pierce-Garnett. But the Bobcats play some of the stupidest basketball I have ever seen in my life, while the Celtics play as if they are all operated by a single brain.

Oh, and D.J. Augustine is the best guard on the Bobcats. I think he's bulked up since college.


AND:

That's all I've got to talk about.

I was wrong

I thought the bulls were crazy for passing up on Beasley. But I just
watched Derrick Rose kill the Jazz (with a last second assist from
Larry Hughes). Derrick rose, today, is the 2nd best point guard in
the league.

The wisdom teeth were no problem (yet). Little to no pain. No
loopiness that I can detect. Too much pain to sleep, unfortunately.

Weekly Report #5: The Fog of Mind

At another time, our hero might have felt bad about pushing the big red button, but when he woke up this morning, he found the milk had gone bad. From there, the day had gotten worse. He was definitely pushing the button.


The Minnow Report:

The cat is on the farm. Still. I miss having a cat around, but I'm beginning to forget what it was even like.


The Baby Report:

This is the kind of weekend it has been: I was in the kitchen doing something, and baby was snuggled up in Mom's arms looking tired. I walked into the living room and went to hug the two of them, and baby swung his arm at me and shouted 'dap!' (stop!). So I went and sat down. The baby promptly squirmed until mom put him down, walked over to me, and smacked me on the knee and shouted 'dap! dap!'. Yeah. The boy has been irritable.


NBA Thoughts:

Shaq suddenly got new life, but the Suns as a whole are depressing. Outside of the Lakers, the West is wide open. The Iverson Pistons might be better than I thought, but the Celtics look to be head and shoulders about everyone out East. Is this going to be another one of those decades?


The Beat Goes On:

I heard on NPR this morning that some study found that only three things seem to correlate to 'happiness': Camping, singing and dancing. I could believe that.


The Teeth...:

...Are coming out tomorrow. I've passed through terror and am over into acceptance. It will happen, it will be fine, and I will be better off because of it. Right? Right. I'll practically be on vacation.


And nothing else:

Yeah, I guess not much has been happening.

Sitting in the hotel room

Depression. I don't think I have any kind of clinical depression, but damn, sitting alone in a hotel room, with the sun down, and only memories of friends in my mind, drags me to a weird place.

I remember earlier today, standing on the gravel banks of the Neosho, looking at the clouds weaving across an otherwise sunny blue sky, and I felt the anger and sadness boiling out of me under the pressure from the blazing sun.

I miss my friends, and I miss times that have already passed. I yearn for times that have not yet come.

The present seems quaint and pointless when you are 300 miles from redemption and your other half. Especially in the dark.

So many cool people I've known in my life, who have slipped away, or are slipping away, or are likely to slip away, out of my limited ability to remain in contact. Washed or washing away by time and circumstance and my own inability to stay in touch.

Everything seems unbearable in the dark.

Weekly Report #4

Ahh Veteran's day. I have Veteran's day off. Yay.


The Minnow Report:

I once had a cat,
Who sat in a hat,
And rolled around on her back.

Eventually she got up,
And ate some sup,
And fell asleep on the heating vent.


The Baby Report:

Son. I hope someday, you read this, and you ask me about it, and I explain it to you.

Learn some damn patience. You have never been so close to being put in your crib and left there to cry all damned day for all I care. And that would require me to put your crib back together first!

It has been a long couple of days, and I have seen that screaming baby face too often.


Veteran's Day:

Just like every other damned holiday, somebody's sick. This time its the wife and the baby is probably coming down with it. I'm drinking OJ like a madman.


Walking in the cold and dark:

For some reason, my job has evolved into one where I sit in the office all the danged time. How did this happen? Regardless, in order to get any outdoor time at all, I'm taking walks at night. In any weather. Last night was cold, drizzly with a strong north-western wind. I've never been so happy to have my face chilled.


NBA- OK City Edition:

So Russell Westbrook is an exciting player who pretty much singlehandily gave the thunder their only win of the year (he also rallied them back in their first game of the year). But he's a 6-3 shooting guard in a point guard's body with no play-making abiliity. Can anyone think of another player that has been at all successful in the NBA with that formula? Does Allen Iverson count? He might be the only one, and it isn't like AI's teams have been constant playoff contenders. I'm not sure if I have a point, but damn, there's a long list of guys who fit that description and never made their teams better.


Music:

Before NPR, would anyone in the US have ever heard Mongolian folk music? Seriously Hanggai is awesome. I like all three of the songs on that page.


The Election:

Have I not talked about this yet? How strongly can I put this:

I have never, in my entire adult life, been inspired by any politician. Not even a little. The most I could say is that some politicians have convinced me that they wouldn't be complete failures (Nader in '00; Gore in '06...yes I realize he ran in '00). I've also been convinced for some time that a third party would be beneficial, but I've come to realize this is impossible in a psuedo democracy like we have (it would only be appropriate in a parlimentary system).

On the other hand, Barack Obama inspires. I don't think it is too little to say that he's the most inspiring politician of the modern era, and only JFK would be in the conversation. The reason is that he is an intelligent, motivated, articulate, principled person. He treats people with respect, he is opposed to all the things America ought to be opposed to, and, like a lot of us, he is dismayed with the way America has been run into the ground over the last 8 years.

I'm with you Barack. All the way.


And in closing:

The Kansas Jayhawks are beginning their quest to repeat as NCAA college basketball champions. The road is long. The road will have ups and downs, but mark my words, this will be a good team.

Weekly Report No 3.

We now return to our hero's residence, where he pens a short account of his week's travels and submits it to the internet. Where no-one will read it.

The Minnow Report:

Meow meow meow meow.


The Baby Report:

Fussy this evening. Probably exhausted after a weekend of playing with Grandma and Grandpa on the Lake and Grandma and Grandpa on the Farm. Pretty exciting stuff! Honestly, mom and dad were downright boring tonight.


Wal-Mart:

I'm not sure how to say this. I know I don't dress like a hippy, and I've never smoked weed, and I've never seriously pushed to adopt a communal living lifestyle...But damnit, ideologically, I'm the most left-leaning person I've ever met. And yet, I have to admit that I have been going to Wal-Mart. This is what living in a small town does to you: There are 2 grocery stores.

Here are some of the things that Dillons (Kroger) doesn't stock but that are available at Wal-Mart:
Garam masala
Coconut milk
Acorn Squash
Pie Pumpkins
Pork roasts (!)

And then there are things that are prohibitively expensive at Dillons, but affordable at Wal-Mart:
Wheat Thins (I'm 9/10ths Wheat Thin at this point)
Canning supplies (all of it!)
Organic chips
Vinegar
Olive oils

So what am I supposed to do here? I can't very well cook indian food without garam masala! And why doesn't Dillons have coconut milk? It's frustrating.


Oklahoma City Thundar:

Last week my uncle and I added to the list of NBA teams we've seen play in person. We were on-site for the first ever game of the Oklahoma City Thunder. I've had a long discussion internally about whether I could support this team because of blah blah blah: It was a good time and yay! it is now a relatively short drive to see the NBA!!


Places to Live:

One of the interesting discussions my uncle and I had was: "If you could live in any NBA city, where would it be?"
Oklahoma City was pretty spectacular while we were there. 70 degrees, Chicago style (and quality) italian food, a bar with 212 different beers on tap, a really good brewery. I'd say it probably vaulted into my top 5 just from that trip alone. The other two cities I would like to live in are Portland and Chicago (although Chicago is pretty cold for my soul), and I could envision living in New Orleans or Charlotte. The basic idea is the city has to have fun natural areas nearby, not be so big that I'm intimidated, be a nice climate, and have a 'weird' vibe. I actually can't think of an NBA city that fits all those criteria, but Portland is probably the closest.


Daylight savings:

This is stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.


Culinary Fun:

Did I mention I've been making a really easy squash soup? Half an onion, a slice of bacon, a smallish squash (softened with skin removed), and chicken stock. Cook the onion and bacon first, then add the squash and stock. Cook longer. Puree in food processor. Add a little pepper (Alton Brown would probably use white pepper). The original recipe called for sage, of which I have none, so whatever. The whole thing takes about thirty minutes to make. Delicious. 2 slices of bacon is too much.

Let's see, I also made chicken satay, cookies, lasanga, a tator tot casserole, cabbage soup (cream, canned tomatoes, and cabbage...w/ a little basil, that's it), tacos, and yogurt cheese spread. The yogurt cheese spread is actually really cool too. Just take some plain non-fat yogurt, wrap in a cheesecloth or tea towel and allow it to drain. Then chop up chives and onion (not too much) and set aside (or hell, use whatever spice you want...garlic can be a bit much). After the yogurt has drained for ~ 2-3 hours (longer = better), mix the spices and the yogurt (which could be considered 'greek yogurt' or yogurt cheese depending on the consistency), apply to Wheat Thins and enjoy.


Final thought:

"I wonder if making lasanga every other week is too much"
- Wife and I discussing our weekly cooking strategy. I made lasanga last week, but wasn't around to really eat it. On the other hand, she had it for 4 meals. Maybe every third week.

Actual Quote

Sitting in the K-State Library. Listening to a wanna-be intellectual.

"Really funny story. One of those popular girls in school was a
senior when I was like, a freshman. And she was like dolphins don't
have sex. And I like, think she like meant 'fish'. And I said, 'they
breathe air', and she's like 'no way'. And I saw her on facebook the
other day and I thought of that story. And I like laughed and
laughed."

Holy god. I may shoot myself if I hear 'like' forty more times.

Weekly Report #2

Ahh...life on the road. Too much crappy corporate food. Too little sleep. Random moments of feeling like I'm a bad parent for missing some cute moment from my son's life.

Moo.


The Minnow Report:

Uh...still on the farm. For some reason I'm wedded to this item.


The Baby Report:

Well, he was a little 'sensitive' today. I'm not sure how else to describe it. When the boy gets sensitive, then random little things can just cause him to lose it. Apparently at the day care today, another little baby (the 2nd youngest) took an oversized lego block from him (he wasn't playing with it or anything). And Alton just lost it. Tears, wailing, extended crying. I kinda think this is a lingering effect of his sleep schedule being all screwed up by the sickness. On the other hand, what the heck do I know?


Facebook Monster:

The monster swallowed me back in March or April or something. So far, I'm pretty much just using it to lose fun word games against my friends and family. Oh, and to annoy the hell out of everyone else by posting about politics.


Speaking of politics:

The more I read and hear Obama, the more I wonder: Is this too good to be true? I almost wonder if McCain conceded the race when he picked Palin. "Hey, I don't even think Obama would make a bad president," I envision McCain saying to himself, "But we gotta run some kinda candidate. Let's just appease the damn ultra-conservative nutjobs and kill the campaign."

I'm generally skeptical of all the talk that "this election is so important." Every election is like that. This election is actually a lot less important than 2000, given what we know now. Which brings us to another interesting point.


My abilities to predict the mid-term future are eerily accurate:

Let's just go over some of my fearless predictions from the last ten years:
- "Bush is as intelligent as a brain-dead monkey on crack" (published in my college newspaper)
- "Are you kidding? If Gore had been president, I wouldn't be worried that our President is going to start a war with a random country and get thousands of people killed" (spoken to my sister on 9/11/01; My sister's comment "Right now, I'm so glad Gore didn't become president")
- "John McCain is just supporting Bush because he knows there isn't anyone else in the Republican party that will be able to run in a general election in '08" (spoken to my wife after McCain started campaigning for Bush in '04)
- "Bush will delay any environmental progress to the point where it will cost us ridiculous amounts of money to fix the problems, and since the problems will already be occurring, we might not be able to." (paraphrased quote that I repeated ad naseum from 2000-2004)
- "Well, at least now it will be obvious whose policies turned the country into a disaster." (2 days after the 2004 election...I spent the first day drunk and depressed)
And these are just the big ones. When it comes to political policies and politicians, I have never been wrong. I know, I know. That sounds impressive doesn't it? It isn't. That was the most obvious common sense.


Music:

God...anything but politics please. I am too addicted. I can't stop...I really can't.




The Oxford Comma:

There's a long-overdue discussion that needs to be had about the Oxford comma. Let me first explain what the hell it is. The classic example is the following sentence:

To my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.

The comma of relevance is the one after Ayn Rand. Oxford comma enthusiasts would ask you to consider the same sentence without the comma.

To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

The problem is that this is ambiguous. Are the parents in question Ayn Rand and God? Or is the author thanking her parents, and Ayn Rand, and God. This kind of ambiguity lead Oxford (and some other significant style guides) to advocate using the oxford comma in all cases. As far as my major advisor was concerned, that's the end of the story. PUT THE DAMN COMMA IN THERE!

But hold on, no rule in english makes any sense, and here's why: The Oxford comma may additionally add ambiguity. Look at this sentence (I pulled this off Wiki):

To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God.

Is her mother Ayn Rand? Or is she thanking both her mother and Ayn Rand? Ah HA (Fuck you very much Council of Biological Editors)! This is where the controversy comes from.

If I could take a step off of my 'anti-oxford' podium here: The problem/blessing is that the English language is the most versatile, confusing, mis-mashed, unregulated, wishy-washy, dialogue-driven language on the planet. (by comparison, French has a single dedicated authority that governs grammar, L'Académie française, and as a result the language is damn idiotic: Further reading in Bryson and here [ug-that was a long parenthetical statement]). Where was I?

This English weirdness means that no rules exist in English with exceptions. Those exceptions are granted not by some authority, but by just being used and to hell with the authorities. The Grammer Nazi's [SEE!]in this country are fighting that battle for consistency for good reasons (how else are we going to understand each other), but they are constantly losing that battle for reasons related to common sense and necessity.

I think Lynne Truss in Eats, Shoots & Leaves said it best:
"There are people who embrace the Oxford comma, and people who don't, and I'll just say this, never get between these people when drink has been taken."

Needless to say my advisor was in the former category, I in the latter, and we were lucky that alcohol was rarely served in our Monday morning lab meetings.


Random comment I made to myself when watching cable in the hotel room:

“There’s a place called hidden valley where kids don’t only eat their vegetables, they love them.”

That’s a very hidden valley.

Final thought:

The older I get the more I don't care about pissing people off. Based on my experience with people older than me, this is just going to get worse.

Christmas List

We're doing this early this year, because otherwise I'll forget and just want everyone to buy me "world peace". Pretty boring gift if you've ever gotten it, I always end up taking it back.

The list almost ended up being in completely reverse order. I'll add to it in time. Remember, if we don't spend recklessly, the economy will suck.

1. An Angry Minnow Brewpub hat (http://www.angryminnow.com/). The black one.

2. An XCKD t-shirt. Specifically, the one that says "Stand Back, I'm going to Try Science" (http://store.xkcd.com/)

3. Help is on the Way. A collection of comics from Basic Instructions.

4. Some Bob the Angry Flower Books: This one and this one.

5. The Free Darko Book.

6. Books 2 and 3 of the Bartimaeus Trilogy (by Johnathan Stroud).

7. A digital scale for the kitchen (like this one...ooh, or this one!).

8. Some of those salt cellars that Alton Brown uses.

9. This should be much higher on the list, because I want it so desperately, but the entire Red Versus Blue boxed set is now available. Somebody please buy it for me!

10. This image of a walleye.

11. This comic book creator program.

12. This old copy of Frank Cross's Handbook of Fishes of Kansas.

13. This poster for the kitchen. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one.