Kablammo!

Wal-Mart: where else are you going to go when you need to buy golf balls and dandruff shampoo at the same time?

Here’s a partial list of key shots in games played by New Zealand’s men’s Olympic curling team in Torino:

• vs Sweden:
  Facing two opposing stones New Zealand Skip BECKER S misses an open Take-out, failing to remove any stones and sets up a Draw for three points for Sweden and a commanding lead in a game that had so far been very close.
• vs Great Britain:
  New Zealand Skip BECKER S, missed a critical Hit and Roll allowing Great Britain to steal four and take control of the game.
• vs United States:
  United States was counting two behind Guards and had forced New Zealand to attempt to navigate a very tight path to promote one of their own stones. New Zealand Skip BECKER S was light and the stone over-curled, touching a Guard. USA seemed to gain momentum from this point in the game and was encouraged by the enthusiastic crowd.
• vs Switzerland:
  Swiss Skip STOECKLI R played a perfect Draw to guard his shot stone and force New Zealand skip BECKER S to attempt a difficult Draw. New Zealand missed and Switzerland stole 3 to take command of the game.
• vs Italy:
  The Italian Skip RETORNAZ J made a cross house Double Take-out to lie two stones and turn the end around in Italy’s favour. The difficulty of this shot was increased by having to avoid jamming the New Zealand shot on one of Italy’s own stones lying in the back of the house. New Zealand Skip BECKER S was forced to make a Take-out to lie shot which RETORNAZ J removed to score two shots and take a lead into the fifth end break.
• vs Norway:
  In an attempt to limit Norway to one point by pushing back a Norway stone, New Zealand Skip BECKER S added a touch more weight than necessary and tapped his own second shot back enough to allow Norway an easy last stone draw for three points to take control of the game.

Better luck next time, Skip.

Happy independence day.

In the past week, I’ve more-or-less randomly bumped into a few friends acquaintances, including two whom I’ve known since elementary school (kindergarten, in one case). Apparently I’ve changed a lot in the five-and-a-half years since I’ve seen them, or so they told me. Though they told me that outright, there was really no need since it was quite explicit in the total lack of recognition in their eyes before I told them my name and gave them a few moments to process it.

I guess most people don’t grow another two or three inches after high school. What this might mean is that if I keep my fool mouth shut, I can walk around my hometown completely incognito.

Sadly there’s other recent news involving people I’ve known since kindergarten, in this case the kid I sat next to in Mrs West’s art class. Britton was one of the nicest people I ever met, and for what it’s worth he recognized me immediately, different though I may look, when I ran into him just before Christmas.

I’m glad that at least I ended up seeing him one last time, though it’s certainly terribly depressing that he apparently won’t end up finishing pharmacy school after all.

I thought I was too young for this, but then I thought he was too young for his part in this too. Rest in peace.

The best part is definitely the muted orange glow that envelops the world in its snug embrace.

And the worst, without a doubt, is the local news coverage. As always.

Song of the Moment: «One of These Days» — Doves

Reuters: Cheney authorized aid (sic) to leak in CIA case – report

OK, it’s another article claiming (or at least insinuating) that high-level Administration officialdom is, or has been known to be, up to no good. With an Administration like the present one, that’s no big shocker.

Know what else isn’t a shocker? This, but also the following:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to comment.

“Our policy is we’re not going to discuss this while there’s an ongoing legal proceeding,” McClellan told reporters.

I’m sure the staff writers at Reuters (or any other wire service or newspaper that ever discusses American politics) have the above-quoted passage saved as a keyboard macro.
Every one of Scott McClellan’s graceless and sweaty attempts to stonewall just makes me nostalgic for the good old days, when Ari Fleischer brought some dignity and artistry to the position of spokesweasel. Fleischer and his grab-bag of Aes-Sedai-style not-actually-lying tricks were always entertaining to see in action.

McClellan, on the other hand, is only worth watching if you enjoy trainwrecks, and seems even unhappier than the host of Supermarket Sweep.

I can’t believe it took me this long to finally realize/notice that Jack Feeny and Mark Prindle are not, in fact, the same person.

So a week after I spend all that time and vitriol complaining about an automatic-transmission van, a squirrel decided to gnaw through random wires that connected the battery to such inconsequential things as the ignition. Getting a car towed to the garage and having your mother give you a ride to school is, as it turns out, much more bothersome than having to drive a car you don’t like driving.

Which will teach me to be ungrateful, I suppose.

See, the problem is that I know an awful lot more than my professor—about one pretty minor subset of the subject matter. He’s obviously an expert in Protools; that much is obvious from about 5 minutes’ worth of class. And since he’s evidently made his living as a music producer and engineer for quite some time, I’m going to go ahead and assume his knowledge of the empirical, æsthetic, and business aspects of music production dwarfs mine. That’s basically all I could have asked for in an instructor, and I intend to learn a lot from him in the areas of his expertise.

The problem comes with everything pertaining to the physical manifestation of sound, and anything even vaguely resembling mathematics. The professor’s only talked about this stuff very briefly, and he seemed rather uncomfortable about it, and he qualified what he said with the disclaimer that he doesn’t like talking about physics because he doesn’t know squat about physics, or something along those lines. Which is all well and good, and I’m quite happy he admits it up-front when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

I don’t want to come off to the class or the professor as some show-off brainiac, but a gay DJ once taught me an awful lot about acoustics, so I had to bite my tongue when my current professor said, for example, that a handclap in a room was an example of a standing wave.

I feel like it would be awful presumptuous to privately ask him if he’d want me to give the class a brief primer on things like v = fλ, but it would be even more presumptuous for me to blurt that shit out in the middle of class one day. So my current plan is to continue holding my tongue and hope that the topic never comes up again.

UPDATE: As it happens, I didn’t hold my tongue after all. Some of the professor’s comments and explanations to other people’s questions were quite helpful and informative, but then he claimed that the speed of sound was not a medium-dependent property. So I had no option but to strenuously object. And later I drew a picture on the board.

We’re on the verge of really diving into Protools, though, so I can’t wait for more of the class.

Song of the Moment: «Run» — Ratatat ft. Ghostface Killah and Jadakiss

So I was going to practice Finnish by reading this book:

But then it opened like this: » » Continue reading . . .