The first time I got into your car

My car is due for a checkup. Though, come to think of it, so are my eyes and teeth. Any suggestions?

Several days ago I was thinking that Monday/Thursday was a nice sort of posting groove to be getting into, and, just like that, I totally flaked. Huh. Or more precisely, I had a lot going on which momentarily took precedence. Which leads me to my Thought for the Day: "The human mind is a remarkably plastic thing."

Okay, maybe I should back up a bit.

For the last couple weeks, I have been really busy. As those of you who have had the misfortune of hearing my bitch about this will already be aware, I have so many little things going on at any given time that I have had to seriously restructure my daily routine. So the crazy thing is how incredibly differently one's brain acts when immersed (even for a short time) in an unfamiliar environment. Aside from the auditory hallucinations and weird reactions to caffeine, I'm suddenly walking differently, eating differently...today I became positively giddy at the drug store's stationery selection.
And these new habits and tendencies feel as natural and familiar as the old ones had; if I didn't remember doing otherwise, I'd assume that I had always been that way.

It's quite a blow to one's sense of identity. I recommend it.

You tell me it's the institution, well, you know

Boy, people have been viewing the hell out of this page lately. I guess I should say something.

Ok, first, the GSA's "Snow goddess" party was on Friday. One thing I keep forgetting is how incredibly counterproductive it is to discreetly confiscate the drinks of people who've had too much, especially when there is a table full of free drinks sitting across the room. In the end, they drink too much, I drink too much, it's...well I guess that's not so bad. Still, if this situation arises in the future, I encourage you to remind me of the futility of my efforts. Paternalism's not all it's cracked up to be.

And this Sunday I went up to Riverside
woooooooooooooooo
For a meeting, at that.
It was not quite as I expected...casual, if demanding, and with a slightly schizophrenic feel to it; first there was breakfast and acronyms and lots of informal strategizing on butcher paper and talking past one another, then came committee commiserations and lunch, and then it was like OH HEY HERE COME EIGHTY MOTIONS MOVE TO SUPPORT SENATE BILL 87rhy4ew8h IF AMENDED, SECOND, MOVE TO AMEND TO OPPOSE UNLESS AMENDED, SECOND, OBJECTIONS, VOTE, VOTE, MOVE TO APPOINT SOMEBODY, VOTE MOVE VOTE MOVE VOTE, and lastly we decided, among other things, which of two voting policies to endorse, which is actually kind of interesting in the philosopher-geek sort of way that things can be sort of interesting when one is surrounded by things that aren't.

The idea is that one of the offices of the VC or somebody (that's the Vice Chancellor...I mean, I assume my readers know that "Charlie" is not providing recommendations on University policy, but it's best to be sure about these things) has recommended that we implement a 20 percent minimum voting pool requirement on university referenda, and we were trying to decide whether to go with this, or with an alternative in which a vote will meet the voter turnout requirement as long as it gets 10%+1 yes votes. Eventually we opted for the alternative, partly because it better suited our own interests, but it is also kind of strange to do it the other way, in which a measure won't pass with 19% of the students unanimously voting yes, but it will with 11% yes and 10% no. But it is also pretty strange to get past the students a referendum that only 10% of them have an opinion on, regardless of whether those 10% are united in their support. I think the problem is that anything will seem counterintuitive when one is attempting to derive majority rule from a system with more than 80% nonparticipation.

Is that interesting? It really isn't, is it.

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

(double entry follows! exclamation!)

I'm skipping out on a Regents' meeting this morning because it doesn't look like there's much point in my going. This has given a few much-needed hours of free time, some of which I've already sybaritically devoted to sleep. After this, I'll go do a lesson plan, but I figure I have a few minutes to spare here as well.

Oof.

Moving on,
If you thought that whole Google maps satellite thing was pretty impressive (and it has made driving a lot easier to see in advance what the streets and turns and offramps actually look like), then A9's street-level views will be, like, yikes. Obviously, they're only available for limited areas, but you can totally see storefronts and uh, well, cars and people and such. Privacy enthusiasts are not entirely thrilled about this.

Also, some of you don't know about Lunarama, R and Eric's directory of late- and all- night restaurants. I notice San Diego is not well-represented. This is a hint.

Just like the old man in that book by Nabokov

Sometimes I forget that this space can be used to disseminate all kinds of information, not just quotidian snarkiness and Internet réchauffé. And so, from time to time, I might post something here just for the sake of convenience.
With that in mind, I apologize to those of you for whom the following list is totally useless.
As for the rest of you, here, as per our conversation, is a(n incomplete) selection of the audiobooks I have. If you'd like to borrow any of them, lemme know.
(oh uh and in case anyone is wondering, I still haven't read most of these myself. This is what happens when one lets one's Audible membership get out of hand.)

01/14/06 A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
11/05/05 A Guide to Wine, Julian Curry
01/14/06 American Gods, Neil Gaiman
05/10/05 Art of War, Sun-Tzu, translation by John Minford
03/01/05 Battletech: Blood Legacy, Michael A. Stackpole
04/18/05 Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
03/13/05 Catch Me If You Can, Frank W. Abagnale
06/24/05 Confessions of Saint Augustine, Saint Aurelius Augustinus
02/26/05 Destructive Emotions, Daniel Goleman and the Dalai Lama
06/24/05 Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
01/15/05 Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
06/24/05 Jennifer Government, Max Barry
10/16/04 Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
12/11/04 Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
06/24/05 Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
03/01/05 Old Time Radio Shows: Detectives, Volume 1, Dick Powell, Jack Webb, Sydney Greenstreet, Jeff Chandler, and more
12/29/05 Our Inner Ape, Frans de Waal
06/12/05 Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
01/15/05 Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
02/10/05 Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
07/26/04 Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
11/17/04 The Bad Beginning, Lemony Snicket
10/16/04 The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
06/12/05 The Commentaries, Julius Caesar
07/26/04 The Glass Key, Dashiell Hammett
10/16/04 The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
06/24/05 The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides (translated by Richard Crawley)
04/18/05 The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs
06/24/05 The Moral Sense, James Q. Wilson
12/11/04 The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
08/12/04 The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean
11/05/05 The Penultimate Peril, Lemony Snicket
09/21/04 The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
06/12/05 The Stranger, Albert Camus
05/10/05 The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius
11/17/04 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
12/29/05 The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki
09/21/04 Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake
03/13/05 Why We Buy, Paco Underhill

My shadow is a Monday

My having spent a goodly portion of last Monday's entry heaping scorn upon the "next blog" link apparently had the net effect of convincing everyone to try it out and see for themselves just how great it is. "But no," I attempted to explain. "The point, you see, is that it isn't great. Rather, it is dumb."
There's just no reasoning with some people, I guess.
So I tried it for myself. And yeah, it's pretty good. My first click inauspiciously led to a service that attempted to sell me...I forget what. I subsequently found a political site that was nearly as interesting as the advertisement had been (indeed, I'm reluctant to describe it as such, as no substantive political views were actually expressed on the first page of entries, except that liberals are bad people and that it is good to quash whatever their unspecified agenda might happen to be. Political discourse has been taking an interesting turn lately.). But then it started to get good. There was a page with some really nice travel pictures, something in french, the first entry in a brand new blog that described, in flowery (literally) language the human need to confide one's secrets, etc. So uh, I guess I take it back. Next Blog, you are okay in my book.

I suppose it's time for me to finally talk about classes a bit. I wound up rather aggressively pruning my schedule in order to preserve my sanity; even now it looks like there's a lot on my plate. I stuck with the Happiness seminar, and Andy's Madness thing, both of which should be really fun and relevant to my work. But my TAship is looking like it will consume the bulk of my time (they're estimating 22 hours a week, and I can see it going well over that unless I stay vigilant), and I have this Legislative Liaisoning deal on top of that, oh, and I should really get on that whole advancing to candidacy thing at some point. Honestly though, I'm at my best when I have too much work to do. Just you watch.

Oh crap, I almost forgot about the point of this entry, which was to mention that Becky and Steve came down to UCSD to perform at an art show. It was fun, as always. The venue made for a nice change of pace; it was very cozy, if sterile, unlike the other places I've seen them, which, interestingly enough, were grungy yet impersonal. Perhaps as a result, Becky was a bit chattier; we got to hear more of her jokes and endearing banter than usual. (at this point I'm debating whether to link to this review and mp3s, because the thing is that the recordings don't really capture the experience...I feel like in order to appreciate it, one needs the discussion and the pointing and the clothes and the dancing and the peace on earth, and--actually, uh, most of you were there. So at this point either I'm talking right past you, or else you already know everything I was going to say. Oh well.)

Did you ever know that you're my hero?

A recent shopping trip unexpectedly presented me with the opportunity to indulge a bizarre food craving. Long story short, in case anyone was wondering whether tzatziki was a suitable dipping sauce for buffalo wings, the answer is "oh hell yes." Luckily, the fact that everyone around me is being so damned health-conscious this year means that I am allowed, nay, obligated, to eat such unhealthy foods in the interest of preserving balance in the universe.

Speaking of the importance of balance, I have a new mattress. I'd forgotten how comfortable they can be. Also how large. This thing is seriously thick; if I fell off it, I would probably sustain a mild injury. Heck, a few more inches and I'd have to high-jump my way into bed each night.

So, Alexis recently mentioned several pictures being on someone's Facebook page, and so I decided to check them out. Despite my concerns that the website would have some sort of "geezer detection technology" that would turn me away at the door, I managed to sign up for an account without getting carded. Anyways, the important part of this story comes when I looked at the profile that was created for me (nb: You must also be a member to view it. This is how the scam works, you see. Otherwise you can just take my word for it.). It featured all my sparse information, a section for the photos that I'm not going to upload, and a list of my friends, in which it made the following humorous observation: "Evan has no friends at UCSD." This is very funny to me. It's one thing to not have any photos, or not have any new messages in one's inbox--these are value-neutral observations--but when Facebook tells the Internet that I have no friends, I can positively feel the gleam of digital smugness in its inhuman eye as it icily passes judgment on my social life.

Maybe I am reading too much into this.

Every single day, every word you say

Today is the first day of classes. More on that some other day.

So you know that thing I do where I steal other peoples' ideas in lieu of having my own? Behold the sitemeter.
Sitemeter is my new obsession. I have been watching this puppy like a hawk
(Hawks have been known to watch puppies. Please do not leave yours unattended.)
It seems that in addition to my dedicated fanbase of roughly seven avid readers, a couple of whom I haven't quite been able to identify from their locations (but don't worry, mysterious strangers, I now know your IP addresses by heart), there are a handful of people who breeze through every time I post, having been referred here from some random blog or another. After some confusion, I realized that they arrived by way of the "next blog" link at the top of the screen, whereupon they promptly went somewhere else. And frankly I don't blame them! I'm impressed that I've managed to maintain the attention of seven friends for this long; totally random passersby are sure as heckfire not going to be flocking to this page anytime soon.
So uh hello visitors, I'm glad you could come, I'd love to have you stay, but I'm sorry to tell you that nothing I have to say will be of the slightest interest to you. Perhaps you clicked that "next blog" button because you are unclear on what the whole "blogging" phenomenon entails? I mean, honestly, what is even the point of that dang link? Someone is all "well, I'm done catching up with my friends, I might as well see what someone else's are up to"? Look; select a page off the Internet at random. It has about a .00001% chance of containing information that would interest you...now restrict your sample to those pages containing the daily idle thoughts of some random dude, and that is what people are getting when they click "next blog." Really.
Oh but uh thanks, Blogger, for providing this free service that I am now disparaging the hell out of
Woo, tangent. Back to the sitemeter. As you know, sometimes people also stumble across one's page with search engines and such. As it happens, two of my visitors came here that way, using the search terms "counting flowers on the wall." So, apologies go out to those two Statler Brother fans who came looking for lyrics. Maybe you would have better luck if you enclosed the phrase in quotes and added the word "lyrics"? Maybe also if you used a search engine that doesn't suck so bad?

Oh and as a "thank you" for suriving my rant, here is this insanely cool thing that Jose linked too.
You doodle a little picture in the search box, and it searches Flickr for pictures that resemble your drawing. How frigging amazing is that.

She sends a cable comin' in from above

(This is the first time I've ever posted on successive days, and you can expect my frequency to plummet once the quarter starts.)

If you have recently tried to IM my mobile AIM address (visible in my profile), you should know that because my phone is insanely buggy, it sometimes crashes when it tries to read your message. If I don't get back to you, this is probably why. Sorry about that; maybe you'd you'd have better luck trying me at another account, or just texting my phone directly.

The Book of Ratings is back! Hooray! While I'm on the subject, here also are Lore's Slumbering Lungfish and quite possibly the most offensive comic I've ever seen. And let's not kid ourselves, that's saying something. Not that I didn't laugh or anything, mind you.

So, following up on my earlier rum inquiry, I've been doing a little research on the subject. I've never really understood the economics involved here, as even a very respectable 12-year-old rum will probably set you back less than $20. Or you could probably get several gallons of Bacardi Silver for that amount, if that's more your thing. Cheaper than Smirnoff, hell, it's practically cheaper than gasoline, and almost as tasty.
Apparently, however, rum's popularity has been growing in recent years (I suspect the rise of the mojito may be partly to blame for this, as well as the proliferation of freaky flavored rums), and there are those who think the market is just waiting for the arrival of rum connoiseurship, and that there will be this huge demand for superpremium rums once people develop a taste for the stuff. I worry that this analysis is flawed, however, as it fails to address the fact that rum is still basically weird.

Les yeux sans visage

Last night and today I was back in LA, getting, among other things, a facial.

Yes, you read that correctly.

This was the result of a Christmas 2004 gift certificate that my mother gave me, thinking (and rightly so) that this would be a fun sort of novel thing to introduce me to, but which I have only now gotten around to redeeming. There were lots of steps involved:

• The facialist person put some fruit-scented lotion on my face, rubbed it in


• Applied an abrasive lemon-scented thing, wiped it off


• Hand massage, during which I notice that I am hearing New Agey interpretations of the Greatest Hits of Chopin and Pachelbel


• Painted some lotion on the upper half of my face. I suspect, but cannot prove, that this facepainting consisted primarily of a Zorro mask and a pair of "angry eyebrows"


• Neck massage


• More lotion, of an indeterminately flowery scent


• OH DANG HERE COME THE BUZZING SCIENCE-FICTIONY DENTAL TOOLS WHIR WHIR SCRAPE SCRAPE LOOK OUT


• Then an aromatherapy massage


• And so on

Oh and the whole time I had these electric mittens on my hands. Man but those mittens were badass.

On the whole, it was quite enjoyable, and certainly very relaxing. I was out like a light for the rest of the day, which involved a haircut (with my pre-chopping-it-all-off person; she approved of its current form; high praise indeed), dinner at Philippe's, family visits, and lots of driving.

Now I seem to have a sore throat. Hope it's nothing.

Arms entwined, the chosen few

Happy New Year!
(Man I changed the song lyric about five times already. This one will do, I guess. There's just too many New Year's-ish songs out there, and so much I need to express. It's hard to condense all one's thoughts into something so fatuous (but I'm improving with practice!))

You may have stopped reading Okay Pants when the strip ended. If so, you probably missed out on the Holiday Special drawings. The first couple are quite good. Oh, and here are some paintings Julie has also done. Man.

There is a link in blogger that allows me to moderate comments. Whenever I see it, however, the phrase "immoderate comments" comes to mind instead, which would frankly be a much more interesting link to have.

Speaking of immoderation, I had an interesting time at last night's New Year's Eve party. Because of a problem, (ahem), the dress code got stepped up a bit a few hours before the actual party. This was not the first dress-up party that has been held this quarter, and some of us find them pretty fun. Sometimes I forget how many clandestine clotheshorses are running around the department.

So, since I'm in good company, I might as well address a matter that has been on my mind recently: cordovan does not, in fact, go with everything. If you have ever claimed that cordovan goes with every color, I need to know: Why do you lie all the time. It's a nice enough color, especially with navy, but Jesus.
Lord knows one has a hard enough time matching brown pants with equally brown shoes without people trying to systematize things into nice lists of what colors go together. I suppose it is that kind of oversimplification (shoe color, body proportion complements, and, good lord, what "season" one is--do you seriously think I would look good in coral, goldenrod, or other "spring" colors) that gets my proverbial goat.
Uh, sorry, I guess this has been bothering me. And the fact that it has been bothering me has also been bothering me.