Tonight George II will be giving his 6th State of the Union address, which I will be using a an opportunity to drink. I have vaguely fond/fondly vague memories of partaking in a State of the Union drinking game with htrouser and lady mctrouser in the past, but since they've fled for the Big City I've been searching for my own drinking game.
A Google search for "State of the Union drinking game" yields no less than 16 million results. Unfortunately, the pickings are actually quite slim. Most links point to this game at drinkinggame.us, which is kind of your typical drinking game with far too many rules for an increasingly inebriated person to keep track of. The other drinking game dominating the Google results isn't so much a drinking game as a satire, by Will Durst. It's reasonably funny, but not really meant to actually be enacted, though I'd like to know how many lefty political nerds try. Wonkette has a couple of additions to the drinkinggame.us one, which provide some much-needed cleverness. Overall, a disappointing selection. But this is the sort of lack of cohesiveness and direction we've all come to expect from the Democrats.
Maybe this year my drinking game will be "Drink constantly during entire speech."
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Monday, January 23, 2006
mmmm, donuts
I've never been to Portland, but now I really want to go.
(They also do weddings: The service is performed by ordained ministers beneath the holy doughnut and a velvet painting of Isaac Hayes. )
(They also do weddings: The service is performed by ordained ministers beneath the holy doughnut and a velvet painting of Isaac Hayes. )
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
bag obsession
I'm not one for New Year's Resolutions, but after getting some nice lights and street tires for my bike for xmas I've resolved to bike-commute to work more. I live only 2 miles from work, so it's hard to argue against biking. I used to bike more often when I only worked at my current job part-time, but I discovered that my inherent sweatiness was a problem with my biz-casual attire. Plus carrying all my crap to work - laptop, lunch, etc. - is a bit of a pain in the ass.
About a week ago I found a website that provides instructions on commuting to work. Apparently, non-bike fanatics like me have problems commuting to work because we're silly enough to think it doesn't require some change in routine. The advice I found most helpful is to not wear your work clothes while biking to prevent that unpleasant sweaty shirt syndrome and to get some panniers to transport your crap. Backpacks make your back sweaty, raise your center of balance, and are uncomfortable on you neck.
After some searching, I've located the dream bag for bike commuter made by an English company called Carradice. Carradice has been making bags for bikes for over 60 years, and I figure if anyone knows how to keep your crap from getting wet it's the English. Now I'm lusting after their bike bureau, which is a shoulder bag with laptop pouch made out of cotton duck fabric (nice and old school) that clips onto a rack on your bike. It has loads of brilliant features and looks good enough to carry around work.
If I had the funds, I'd add a rain cape and some rain spats to my shopping cart, because I'd love to be able to say I commmute to work in spats and cape.
About a week ago I found a website that provides instructions on commuting to work. Apparently, non-bike fanatics like me have problems commuting to work because we're silly enough to think it doesn't require some change in routine. The advice I found most helpful is to not wear your work clothes while biking to prevent that unpleasant sweaty shirt syndrome and to get some panniers to transport your crap. Backpacks make your back sweaty, raise your center of balance, and are uncomfortable on you neck.
After some searching, I've located the dream bag for bike commuter made by an English company called Carradice. Carradice has been making bags for bikes for over 60 years, and I figure if anyone knows how to keep your crap from getting wet it's the English. Now I'm lusting after their bike bureau, which is a shoulder bag with laptop pouch made out of cotton duck fabric (nice and old school) that clips onto a rack on your bike. It has loads of brilliant features and looks good enough to carry around work.
If I had the funds, I'd add a rain cape and some rain spats to my shopping cart, because I'd love to be able to say I commmute to work in spats and cape.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
blogger of slackness
Apologies for not blogging in a month, but I have been extremely busy eating cookies.
The highlights of my existence of late have been twofold:
1) A brownie consumed minutes ago, acquired from a plate of the same located in the break-room provided by an anonymous co-worker. These brownies had nuts in them, which is ok, but ultimately nuts in brownies are wack. For some reason, however, almost all recipes for brownies call for some sort of chopped nuts. What is up with that? Are brownie recipe-makers in denial about the general lack of enthusiasm for nutted brownies? Is there a secret deal between the chocolate industry and the nut industry? Regardless, the maker of these brownies was too easily tricked by the attemps of the recipe-maker to make him or her include nuts in the brownies.
2) The Elements of Style Illustrated, a Chrismtas gift from Dick. In the last few months I've hardly read more than five pages of anything, excepting the optics book I finally started only to discover that I have to learn calculus first to undertand any of it. Having attended a small Catholic school that paid its teachers so poorly that some of them qualified for food stamps, the quality of my education was highly variable. I learned how to write from my 11th grade English teacher, who was kind of nuts but passionate about literature. In 12th grade AP English my teacher was an ex-southern belle. Her husband had left her, and she spent our classes telling stories about the days when she was young, thin, and wealthy; about how she had never paid bills before her 40's; about how she was part of an organization of young women at Clemson in the 70's that helped recruit football players by joining them for dinner in a uniform of white miniskirt and orange go-go boots. "That is not selling sex," she claimed, "it's showing school spirit!"
Where am I going with this? Oh, right...so I never actually had to buy, read, or use The Elements of Style in high school, and at college they expected that I already knew everything there was to know about that sort of thing, so this is my first encounter with Strunk and White's little book. And it's great. It reads less like an instructional book than a manifesto and reminds me a great deal of Ezra Pound's ABC's of Reading. I like the illustrations in themselves for their sort of childish surrealism and in the book becauase they are completely gratuitous in a text about grammar and language usage. It's a wonderful piece of simple, aesthetically pleasing bookmaking.
The highlights of my existence of late have been twofold:
1) A brownie consumed minutes ago, acquired from a plate of the same located in the break-room provided by an anonymous co-worker. These brownies had nuts in them, which is ok, but ultimately nuts in brownies are wack. For some reason, however, almost all recipes for brownies call for some sort of chopped nuts. What is up with that? Are brownie recipe-makers in denial about the general lack of enthusiasm for nutted brownies? Is there a secret deal between the chocolate industry and the nut industry? Regardless, the maker of these brownies was too easily tricked by the attemps of the recipe-maker to make him or her include nuts in the brownies.
2) The Elements of Style Illustrated, a Chrismtas gift from Dick. In the last few months I've hardly read more than five pages of anything, excepting the optics book I finally started only to discover that I have to learn calculus first to undertand any of it. Having attended a small Catholic school that paid its teachers so poorly that some of them qualified for food stamps, the quality of my education was highly variable. I learned how to write from my 11th grade English teacher, who was kind of nuts but passionate about literature. In 12th grade AP English my teacher was an ex-southern belle. Her husband had left her, and she spent our classes telling stories about the days when she was young, thin, and wealthy; about how she had never paid bills before her 40's; about how she was part of an organization of young women at Clemson in the 70's that helped recruit football players by joining them for dinner in a uniform of white miniskirt and orange go-go boots. "That is not selling sex," she claimed, "it's showing school spirit!"
Where am I going with this? Oh, right...so I never actually had to buy, read, or use The Elements of Style in high school, and at college they expected that I already knew everything there was to know about that sort of thing, so this is my first encounter with Strunk and White's little book. And it's great. It reads less like an instructional book than a manifesto and reminds me a great deal of Ezra Pound's ABC's of Reading. I like the illustrations in themselves for their sort of childish surrealism and in the book becauase they are completely gratuitous in a text about grammar and language usage. It's a wonderful piece of simple, aesthetically pleasing bookmaking.
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